Amid official optimism about Iraq that surrounded the Arab League summit in Baghdad, the insurgency continues; Kurdistan has again halted oil exports in a dispute with the national government, and the fugitive vice president has fled to Qatar.
UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay criticized Iraq for carrying out a large number of executions—including 34 on a single day last month. She cited “lack of transparency in court proceedings” and “concerns about due process and fairness of trials.”
Thanks to a plea deal, Staff Sgt. Frank G. Wuterich will serve not time in the final court-martial resulting from a five-year investigation into the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha in 2005.
Blackwater, now known as Academi, reached a confidential settlement agreement with survivors and families of victims in a shooting incident in the Nisour Square area of Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.
The US handed over the last detainee in Iraq, Ali Mussa Daqduq, to Iraqi authorities—over the protests of John McCain and other Republicans, who wrote that the transfer “could pose an unacceptable risk to US national security interests.”
Despite White House and media crowing about the “end of the war” in Iraq, in fact war continues throughout the country. The day of the US “withdrawal” saw deadly car bombings and oil pipeline blasts that shut production in Basra.
Ashura celebrations saw multiple bomb attacks on Shi’ite pilgrims in Iraq, leaving at least 20 dead. Attacks on public Ashura celebrations in the Afghan cities of Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar meanwhile left 58 dead.
Obama announced that all US forces will be withdrawn from Iraq by the new year—but in fact thousands of private contractors and hundreds of military advisors will remain in a program coordinated by the Pentagon’s Office of Security Cooperation.
The Federation of Workers Councils Unions of Iraq (FWCUI) local at the Taq Taq Oil Operation Company in Kurdistan have submitted a complaint against the company over working conditions and a lack of equality for Kurdish employees.
As nearly 10,000 Turkish troops chase down Kurdish rebels on the southeastern border and into Iraq, Turkey’s foreign minister met with his Iranian counterparti in Ankara to pledge cooperation against the guerilla forces of the PKK.
Pulitzer-winning reporter Roy Gutman writes from Baghdad that an Anglican priest is working with the US embassy to convince the remaining nine Jews in Iraq to flee the country, because their names appeared in cables published by WikiLeaks.
Four coordinated explosions killed 15 and injured at least 100 in Iraq’s Shi’ite holy city of Karbala— the latest in a series of recent attacks in the city which have targeted Shi’ite pilgrims as well as security forces.
