On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 19:20:54 -0500, Sid9 wrote:

plonk wrote:

Iran gaining influence, power in Iraq through militia

By Tom Lasseter

Knight Ridder Newspapers Dec. 12, 2005

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/13391616.htm

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iranian-backed militia the Badr Organization has
taken over many of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's intelligence activities
and infiltrated its elite commando units, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.


That's enabled the Shiite Muslim militia to use Interior Ministry
vehicles and equipment - much of it bought with American money - to
carry out revenge attacks against the minority Sunni Muslims, who
persecuted the Shiites under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, current and
former Ministry of Interior employees told Knight Ridder.


The officials, some of whom agreed to speak only on the condition of
anonymity for fear of violent reprisals, said the Interior Ministry had
become what amounted to an Iranian fifth column inside the U.S.-backed
Iraqi government, running death squads and operating a network of secret
prisons.


The militia's secret activities threaten to derail U.S.-backed efforts
to persuade Sunnis to abandon the violent insurgency and join Shiites
and Kurds in Iraq's fledgling political process. And by supporting Badr
and other Shiite groups, Iran - a member of President Bush's "axis of
evil" that sponsors international terrorism, is thought to be seeking
nuclear weapons and calls for the destruction of Israel - has used the
American-led invasion to gain influence in Iraq.


"They're putting millions of dollars into the south to influence the
elections ... it's funded primarily through their charity organizations
and also Badr and some of these political parties," said Gen. George W.
Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq. "A lot of their guys (Badr) are
going into the police and military."


Current and former ministry officials said the American military hadn't
interfered with Badr's infiltration of the ministry, either because U.S.
officials weren't fully aware of what was happening or because they
didn't want to risk arresting militia leaders who had powerful political
positions and tens of thousands of followers.


Interior Ministry and Badr officials have denied any involvement in the
prisons or death squads, but Gen. Muntadhar Muhi al-Samaraee, a former
head of special forces at the Interior Ministry, said the prisons were
run by Badr operatives.


"All prisons in the south and most of those in Baghdad are run by the
Badr militia," al-Samaraee, a Sunni, said in an interview in Amman,
Jordan. Al-Samaraee said he left the country for medical treatment and
decided not to return because of death threats. He's denied Interior
Ministry accusations that he fled to Jordan after stealing a car.


Badr's leader, Hadi al-Amari, has denied maintaining ties to Iran, but
in a fit of anger during a recent interview with Knight Ridder he
admitted as much while striking out against U.S.-backed secular Shiite
politician Ayad Allawi.


"Allawi receives money from America, from the CIA, but nobody talks
about that. All they talk about is our funding from Iran," he said,
raising his voice. "We are funded by some (Persian) Gulf countries and
the Islamic Republic of Iran. We don't hide it."


Badr was formed and trained in Iran in cooperation with the Iranian
government, and its members staged raids into Iraq during the war
between the neighboring countries in the 1980s.


"The Americans use the Interior Ministry commandos as tools to fight the
insurgency. They know what Badr is doing and they don't care," charged
Omar al-Jabouri, a top official with the Iraqi Islamic Party, an
influential Sunni group. "The interests of the Americans are the same as
Badr."


Sunni groups, including the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Muslim Scholars
Association, have cataloged hundreds of instances this year in which men
wearing Interior Ministry uniforms arrived in Sunni neighborhoods at
night and took men who later were found dead.


Last Thursday, a raid on a detention center near the Interior Ministry
building found 13 men who apparently had been tortured and needed
medical treatment.


Last month, 169 men, most of them Sunnis, were found in an Interior
Ministry bunker in Baghdad's Jadriyah neighborhood. Many of them had
been beaten with leather belts and steel rods and made to sit in their
own excrement, according to a U.S. military official and an Iraqi who
was held at the center. Police officers with knowledge of the jail said
Badr ran it.


A Human Rights Ministry official who spoke only on the condition of
anonymity said both places were home to clandestine operations run by
the Interior Ministry's intelligence units.


"We monitor the prisons, but there are so many secret centers that we
know nothing about," the official said.


A senior U.S. military official in Baghdad, speaking on the condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, acknowledged that
the torture at the Jadriyah site was carried out by a rogue Interior
Ministry intelligence group.


"It's not clear this was an official MOI (Ministry of Interior)
organization," the official said. "If you look at the MOI organizational
charts, you will not find the Jadriyah bunker."


After Iraq's national elections last January, the Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a political party that's tied to Badr, took
power and installed an official with strong ties to Badr, Bayan Jabr, as
the head of the Interior Ministry. The ministry's ranks, particularly
intelligence and commando units, were quickly stocked with Badr militia
members, according to interviews with current and former ministry
officials.


"Everybody says you have a Badr guy in the MOI. Well ... he was
elected," said the senior U.S. military official in Baghdad. "And they
say he's appointed a bunch of Badr guys. We have a Republican
administration in America, and guess what? They've appointed a lot of
Republicans. You elected SCIRI, and SCIRI is Badr."


The American officer said it would be up to the Iraqi government to deal
with the Badr organization and other militias.




Sunni leaders say the Shiite-controlled government will never police
Shiite militias.


There also have been allegations that the militia that's loyal to
radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who also has Iranian support, is
responsible for some of the killings. Many of the details of the
incidents, however, point more to Badr. For instance, the killers often
are reported as traveling in white Toyota Land Cruisers and carrying
Glock pistols. Both are common at the Badr headquarters in Baghdad, but
not with al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters, most of whom are poor and travel
in beat-up vans and cars.


Asked who was behind the rounding up and killing of Sunnis, Casey said,
"I don't know that it's the quote Badr corps that's doing it or the ...
Mahdi (Army) that's doing it, but I have no doubt that people who are
associated with those groups are involved."


Although militias are illegal under Iraqi law, Badr has flourished as
U.S. forces have declined to crack down.


"It's not infiltration. They're upfront about it (their militia
affiliation) and day to day things are OK, but then there's a crisis,"
Casey said. "What you see happening is that people are ... signing up
(for the security forces) but their loyalties lie more to a militia
leader than a chief of police."


A document obtained by Knight Ridder appears to reveal the existence of
an Interior Ministry death squad.


A memo written by an Iraqi general in the ministry operations room and
addressed to the minister's office says on its subject line: "Names of
detainees." It lists 14 men who were taken from Iskan, a Sunni
neighborhood in western Baghdad, during the early morning hours of Aug.
18. It also marks the time of their detention: 5:15 a.m.


The bodies of the same 14 men were found in the town of Badrah near the
Iranian border in early October. Hussein Sayhoud, a doctor at Baghdad's
main morgue who examined the bodies and signed one of the death
certificates, said that most of the men had been killed by single
gunshots to their heads.


"I remember when they brought in the whole group," Sayhoud said. "They
were so badly decomposed we couldn't identify any marks of torture."


The general who signed the Interior Ministry memo, Brig. Gen. Abdul
Kareem Khalaf, confirmed its authenticity. But despite a heading that
reads "Names of the detainees in the Iskan District," Khalaf maintained
that insurgents, not Interior Ministry police, had abducted the men.


It's unclear, however, why an Interior Ministry general would refer to
men who'd been kidnapped by Sunni insurgents as "detainees" in an
official government document, or how the general knew the exact time of
the abduction.


Pressed for more details, Khalaf said: "The minister is very upset. He
wants to know how such a document slipped out of the ministry."


Col. Joseph DiSalvo, who commands a brigade of the U.S. Army's 3rd
Infantry Division in eastern Baghdad, where there's a heavy Shiite
militia presence, said it would be all but impossible for the American
military to defeat the militias.


The largest neighborhood in DiSalvo's area of operations is Sadr City,
home to 2.5 million to 3 million people. It was the site of fierce
clashes last year between al-Sadr's militia and U.S. forces.


"Sadr City is probably our most secure zone because of the de facto
militia presence ... the Mahdi militias doing their neighborhood
patrols," DiSalvo said. "And you also have Badr patrols where you have
SCIRI enclaves."


There've been reports of several instances in DiSalvo's area of Sunni
men being rounded up by vehicles with Interior Ministry markings, then
found murdered.


"The coalition forces cannot enforce it (the law forbidding militias).
We cannot negate the militias. It would be like having a 2 million-man
tribe, and all of a sudden saying, `Tribe, you do not exist,'" DiSalvo
said. "You'd have to have more manpower than is feasible."


Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondent Leila Fadel of the Fort Worth
Star-Telegram contributed to this report from Baghdad, as did Iraqi
special correspondents in Baghdad and Jordan who can't be named for
security reasons.

This article linked from: http://www.antiwar.com/

That's what Bush,Jr got us for Christmas! It only cost $500 billion (half
a trillion, that is)

An Iraqi state, popularly elected,
that is a Muslim fundamentlaist
terror state aligned against us
with Iran.

It's worse than that. Saudi Arabia has a controlling interest in
the Ayatollahs in Iran, so the Saudis will be able to use both
countries to destroy Israel and funnel money to corrupt more
American politicians as they corrupted the Bush and Clinton
families. daveA