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title="Permanent Link to صحيفة بريطانية: الكراهية لأمريكا وصلت إلى أوروبا">صحيفة بريطانية: الكراهية لأمريكا وصلت إلى أوروبا</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/iraq/" title="View all posts in News" rel="category tag">News</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/american-war-on-islam/" rel="tag">American war on Islam</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/demonstrations/" rel="tag">Demonstrations</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/" rel="tag">Guardian The</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/sermon-reports/" rel="tag">Sermon Reports</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <p> <div style="border-bottom: black 1px solid; border-left: black 1px solid; padding-bottom: 5px; margin: 5px 0px 5px 15px; padding-left: 5px; width: 48%; padding-right: 5px; float: right; border-top: black 1px solid; border-right: black 1px solid; padding-top: 5px"> <h3>ممثل السيستاني يطالب الامم المتحدة بتشريع قانون يجرم التعدي على قدسية الرسول الاكرم (ص) </h3> <p>حذر عبد المهدي الكربلائي ممثل المرجعية الدينية علي السيستاني ، خلال خطبة صلاة الجمعة التي اقيمت في الصحن الحسيني من الانجرار وراء فتنة مقصودة توقع بالتعايش السلمي بين الشعوب الخليطة من اديان متعددة وطالب الامم المتحدة بالتدخل في تشريع قانون يجرم التعدي على قدسية الرموز الدينية الاسلامية وعلى راسها الرسول الاكرم محمد صلى الله عليه واله وسلم محذرا من استفزاز مشاعر المسلمين . <br/>وقال الكربلائي خلال خطبته التي اقتصرت هذا الاسبوع على موضوع الاساءة لشخص الرسول الاعظم في الفلم الاخير : تعلمون ان هناك فلما انتج فيه الكثير من الاساءة والتجاوز على الرسول الاكرم محمد صلى الله عليه واله وسلم وان المرجعية الدينية وجميع المراجع يستنكرون ماورد في هذا الفلم من استهانة بمكانة الرسول وبمشاعر المسلمين .</p> </p></div> <p> نشرت صحيفة الجارديان البريطانية، الخميس، نتائج استطلاع للرأي يشير إلى أنَّ الولايات المتحدة فقدت ثقة العالم بأكمله حتى في أوروبا. <br/>وأوضحت الصحيفة أنَّ انخفاض التأثير الأمريكي على الساحة الدولية يعود إلى ضعف الثقة في النوايا والدوافع التي تُحرك الولايات المتحدة نحو القضايا الدولية. <br/>وتقول الجارديان إنَّ المثير في هذا الاستطلاع هو أنَّ هذه المشاعر السلبية تجاه أمريكا لم تعد تقتصرعلى منطقة الشرق الأوسط، بل اتسعت لتشمل أوروبا ومنطقة جنوب آسيا. <br/>وأشارت إلى أنَّه في باكستان- على سبيل المثال- بلغت نسبة عدم الثقة في الولايات المتحدة 78% ، أمَّا في بريطانيا، التي كانت دومًا حليفة للولايات المتحدة، فقد قال 40% من المشاركين أنَّ الكلمة التي ترتبط دائمًا في أذهانهم عندما تُذكَر الولايات المتحدة هي البلطجة.</p> <h3>تظاهرة حاشدة في النجف ضد الفيلم الامريكي المسيء للرسول (ص) </h3> <p>يستعد ابناء محافظة النجف الاشراف، اليوم بعد اكمال صلاة الجمعة للخروج بتظاهرة عارمة تندد بالاساءة التي تعرض لها الرسول محمد {صلى الله عليه واله وسلم} من خلال فلم سينمائي أمريكي. <br/>مدير مكتب أمام جمعة النجف الاشرف محمد طالقاني قال في تصريح لوكالة الفرات نيوز، أن تظاهرة عارمة ستنطلق بعد اكمال صلاة الجمعة من الحسينية الفاطمية لتنتهي عند مرقد الامام علي ابن ابي طالب (ع)، تندد بالفلم الامريكي المسيء لشخصية الرسول محمد (ص). <br/>هذا وتظاهر الآف العراقيين الخميس في مدن الناصرية، بغداد، النجف، وغيرها احتجاجاً على أنتاج فيلم أمريكي يسيء للرسول محمد (ص) وللأسلام.</p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-13981"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2012/01/16/corruption-in-iraq-your-son-is-being-tortured-he-will-die-if-you-dont-pay-world-news-the-guardian/#respond" title="Comment on Corruption in Iraq: ‘Your son is being tortured. He will die if you don’t pay’ | World news | The Guardian">No Comments</a></span> Posted on January 16th, 2012 by Khalil Ibn Hussein</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2012/01/16/corruption-in-iraq-your-son-is-being-tortured-he-will-die-if-you-dont-pay-world-news-the-guardian/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Corruption in Iraq: ‘Your son is being tortured. He will die if you don’t pay’ | World news | The Guardian">Corruption in Iraq: ‘Your son is being tortured. He will die if you don’t pay’ | World news | The Guardian</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/features/" title="View all posts in Features" rel="category tag">Features</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/corrupt-officials/" rel="tag">corrupt officials</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/corrupt-police/" rel="tag">corrupt police</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/ghaith-abdul-ahad/" rel="tag">Ghaith Abdul-Ahad</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/" rel="tag">Guardian The</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <div style="text-align: left; unicode-bidi: bidi-override; direction: ltr"> <p>The walls of Um Hussein’s living room in Baghdad are hung with the portraits of her missing sons. There are four of them, and each picture frame is decorated with plastic roses and green ribbons as an improvised wreath for the dead.</p> <div style="border-bottom: black 1px solid; border-left: black 1px solid; padding-bottom: 5px; margin: 5px 0px 5px 15px; padding-left: 5px; width: 48%; padding-right: 5px; float: right; border-top: black 1px solid; border-right: black 1px solid; padding-top: 5px"> <p>Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports from Baghdad where families of innocent detainees face extortion from corrupt officials</p> </p></div> <p>Um Hussein had six children. Her eldest son was killed by Sunni insurgents in 2005, when they took control of the neighbourhood. Three of her remaining sons were kidnapped by a Shia militia group when they left the neighbourhood to find work. They were never seen again.</p> <p> She now lives with the rest of her family – a daughter, her last son, Yassir, and half a dozen orphaned grandchildren – in a tiny two-room apartment where the stink of sewage and cooking oil seeps through a thin curtain that separates the kitchen from the living room. <p>Um Hussein looks to be in her 60s and has one milky white eye. She is often confused and talks ramblingly about the young men in the portraits as if they are alive, then shouts at her daughter to bring tea. She told the Guardian how she had to fight to release Yassir from jail.</p> <p>Yassir was detained in 2007. For three years she heard nothing of him and assumed he was dead like his brothers. Then one day she took a phone call from an officer who said she could go to visit him if she paid a bribe. She borrowed the money from her neighbour and set off for the prison.</p> <p>"We waited until they brought him," she said. "His hands and legs were tied in metal chains like a criminal. I didn’t know him from the torture. He wasn’t my son, he was someone else. I cried: ‘Your mother dies for you, my dear son.’ I picked dirt from the floor and smacked it on my head. They dragged me out and wouldn’t let me see him again.</p> <p>"I have lost four. I told them I wouldn’t lose this one."</p> <p>Afterwards, the officers called from prison demanding hefty bribes to let him go while telling the family he was being tortured. Um Hussein told the officers she would pay, but they kept asking for more. First it was 1m Iraqi dinars (£560), then 2m, then 5m.</p> <p>"We had to send [the security men] phone cards so they could call us. They said: ‘Your son is being tortured – he will die if you don’t pay.’ So we paid and paid. What could I do? He is the last I have. I said I would sell myself in the streets, just bring him back to me."</p> <p>The last call came in December. They demanded a final payment to let him go, by which time, according to Um Hussein and her neighbours, the family had paid 9m Iraqi dinars.</p> <p>"They asked for 60 hundred-dollar bills. Then they said 30. I begged them and they still said 30. I told them I didn’t have it, then they agreed on 20."</p> <p>She took a taxi with her friend to the agreed meeting point, a mosque on the outskirts of the neighbourhood. The driver went out and handed the money to a man who stood on the corner, a Shia security officer called Rafic.</p> <p>Yassir was released two days later. Um Hussein didn’t know it at the time but a judge had ordered Yassir be released six months earlier. The security men had kept him in detention until his family produced another $2,000 bribe.</p> </p></div> <p> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2012/01/16/corruption-in-iraq-your-son-is-being-tortured-he-will-die-if-you-dont-pay-world-news-the-guardian/#more-13981" class="more-link">» أقرأ التفاصيل .. | Read the rest of this entry »</a></p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-13335"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/05/11/%d8%b5%d8%ad%d9%8a%d9%81%d8%a9-%d8%a8%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b7%d8%a7%d9%86%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d8%aa%d9%87%d9%85-%d8%ad%d9%83%d9%88%d9%85%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%82-%d8%a8%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b3/#respond" title="Comment on صحيفة بريطانية تتهم حكومة العراق بالسعي الى تحطيم النقابات العمالية">No Comments</a></span> Posted on May 11th, 2011 by markfromireland</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/05/11/%d8%b5%d8%ad%d9%8a%d9%81%d8%a9-%d8%a8%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b7%d8%a7%d9%86%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d8%aa%d9%87%d9%85-%d8%ad%d9%83%d9%88%d9%85%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%82-%d8%a8%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b3/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to صحيفة بريطانية تتهم حكومة العراق بالسعي الى تحطيم النقابات العمالية">صحيفة بريطانية تتهم حكومة العراق بالسعي الى تحطيم النقابات العمالية</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/iraq/" title="View all posts in News" rel="category tag">News</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/brendan-barber/" rel="tag">Brendan Barber</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/" rel="tag">Guardian The</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/trade-unions/" rel="tag">Trade Unions</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/trade-unions-suppression-of/" rel="tag">Trade Unions - Suppression of</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <div dir="rtl" align="right"> <p><a title="20110511_guardian_screenshot_20110510_barber_unions_irak by Gorillas Guides, on Flickr" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.flickr.com/photos/gorillasguides/5710865005/" class="external" target="_blank"><img style="border-bottom: silver 1px solid; border-left: silver 1px solid; margin: 1px auto; display: block; float: none; border-top: silver 1px solid; border-right: silver 1px solid" alt="20110511_guardian_screenshot_20110510_barber_unions_irak" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209im_/http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2008/5710865005_ac93a3ec1c_o.jpg" width="500" height="284"/></a></p> <p>اتهمت صحيفة الغارديان البريطانية الحكومة العراقية الاربعاء، بالسعي الى تحطيم النقابات العمالية والمهنية في العراق على الرغم من انها تشكل علاجا حيويا لمنع الاستبداد والطائفية. <br/><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/10/iraq-union-crackdown" target="_blank" class="external">وذكرت الصحيفة</a> ان الحكومة العراقية تسبح بعكس الموجة الشعبية في المنطقة، موضحة انها تحاول القضاء على النقابات الحرة والمستقلة، مشيرة الى انها قررت منذ اسبوعين منع النقابة الرئيسية في العراق من العمل، وشكلت الحكومة لجنة لمصادرة ممتلكات الاتحاد العام لعمال العراق، والاشراف على ادارته حتى تنظيم انتخابات جديدة له. <br/>ووصفت الصحيفة البريطانية هذا القرار بانه وصفة خطرة تؤدي الى تفكيك احد الهيئات القليلة التي تبقت في العراق والتي توحد الناس خارج الروابط العشائرية والمذهبية والدينية والتي تظهر التزاما بحقوق المرأة وقيام عراق مسالم ومزدهر.</p> </p></div> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-13138"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/04/25/at-last-progress/#comments" title="Comment on At last — PROGRESS!">1 Comment</a></span> Posted on April 25th, 2011 by dubhaltach</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/04/25/at-last-progress/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to At last — PROGRESS!">At last — PROGRESS!</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/iraq/" title="View all posts in News" rel="category tag">News</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/afghanistan/" rel="tag">Afghanistan</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/america/" rel="tag">America</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/barack-obama/" rel="tag">Barack Obama</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/great-escape/" rel="tag">great escape</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/" rel="tag">Guardian The</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/kandahar/" rel="tag">Kandahar</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/nato/" rel="tag">NATO</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/south-asia/" rel="tag">South Asia</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/taleban/" rel="tag">Taleban</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/taliban/" rel="tag">Taliban</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/walk-to-freedom/" rel="tag">walk to freedom</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <p>Never let it be said that there is no progress in the war that America and a diminishing number of allies are waging in Afghanistan.</p> <blockquote></blockquote> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0665250#m_en_gb0665250" class="external" target="_blank"><strong>Definition of progress from Oxford Dictionaries Online</strong></a><strong>:</strong></p> <blockquote><p>progress(pro|gress) </p> <p>noun <br/>Pronunciation:/ˈprəʊgrɛs/ <br/>[mass noun] </p> <p><strong>1</strong> forward or onward movement towards a destination</p> </blockquote> <p>To find the rate of progress of a Taliban sapper towards their goal we need use a very simple equation:</p> <p>Let X = <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-great-escape-nearly-500-taliban-flee-in-daring-afghan-jailbreak-20110426-1ducn.html" target="_blank" class="external"><strong>360-metre tunnel</strong></a>.</p> <p>Let Y = 150 days (approximately <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gulftoday.ae/portal/92c30bdf-cbef-47bb-9c57-f89955a50e52.aspx" target="_blank" class="external"><strong>5 months</strong></a>).</p> <p><a title="progress_equation by Gorillas Guides, on Flickr" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.flickr.com/photos/gorillasguides/5655061385/" class="external" target="_blank"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 5px 0px" alt="progress_equation" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209im_/http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5022/5655061385_a8f19aaeea_o.gif" width="94" height="54"/></a></p> <p>Taliban sappers dug a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/afghanistan-great-escape-taliban" target="_blank" class="external"><strong>360 metre long tunnel lit by electric light and ventilated with fans</strong></a> of sufficient height and diameter for the escaping prisoners to stand upright for most of their walk to freedom and their rate of progress was 2.4 metres a day.</p> <p>One of the reasons they were able to achieve this rate of progress is that they were completely unhindered:</p> <blockquote><p>"The guards are always drunk. Either they smoke heroin or marijuana, and then they just fall asleep. During the whole process no one checked, there was no patrols, no shooting or anything."</p> <p><strong>Source:</strong> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/afghanistan-great-escape-taliban" class="external" target="_blank"><strong>Afghanistan’s great escape: how 480 Taliban prisoners broke out of jail | World news | The Guardian</strong></a></p> </blockquote> <p>Not only were the sappers unhindered but so were the escapees:</p> <blockquote><p>The Taliban statement said it took four and a half hours for all the prisoners to clear the tunnel, with the final inmates emerging into the house at 3:30am. They then used a number of vehicles to shuttle the escaped convicts to secure locations.</p> <p>Government officials corroborated parts of the Taliban account. They confirmed the tunnel was dug from the nearby house and the prisoners had somehow gotten out of their locked cells and disappeared into the warm Kandahar night.</p> </blockquote> <p><strong>Source:</strong> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gulftoday.ae/portal/92c30bdf-cbef-47bb-9c57-f89955a50e52.aspx" class="external" target="_blank"><strong>gulftoday.ae | Taliban help 480 flee Afghan jail</strong></a></p> <p>I love that bit about how the prisoners "somehow" got out of their "locked cells" don’t you? And what about that bit about "<em>the warm Kandahar night</em>". Plainly inside that reporter there’s a lyricist just panting to escape — just like those Taliban prisoners now that I think of it.</p> <p>And before any Americans who happen to be reading this throw their eyes up to heaven and start muttering about corrupt and inept Afghan guards, can I just remind them that as the Taliban statement gloatingly pointed out, the guards at that prison "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/afghanistan-great-escape-taliban" target="_blank" class="external"><strong>includes foreign invaders</strong></a>" you get no prizes whatsoever for guessing <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.united-states-map.com/usa-map.gif" target="_blank" class="external"><strong>which country</strong></a> most of those "foreign invader" guards come from. Having now seen them in action in Irak, and Afghanistan all I can say about the performance of the inept and brutal buffoons in the US Forces and the government led by President Barack Obama which they serve, is that they and the Taliban fucking well deserve one another</p> <p>Du</p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-12757"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/03/17/%d8%a5%d8%b7%d9%84%d8%a7%d9%82-%d8%b3%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%ad-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b5%d8%ad%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%82%d9%8a-%d8%ba%d9%8a%d8%ab-%d8%b9%d8%a8%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%ad/#respond" title="Comment on إطلاق سراح الصحفي العراقي غيث عبد الأحد المعتقل في ليبيا">No Comments</a></span> Posted on March 17th, 2011 by Maryam</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/03/17/%d8%a5%d8%b7%d9%84%d8%a7%d9%82-%d8%b3%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%ad-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b5%d8%ad%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%82%d9%8a-%d8%ba%d9%8a%d8%ab-%d8%b9%d8%a8%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%ad/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to إطلاق سراح الصحفي العراقي غيث عبد الأحد المعتقل في ليبيا">إطلاق سراح الصحفي العراقي غيث عبد الأحد المعتقل في ليبيا</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/human-rights/" title="View all posts in Human Rights" rel="category tag">Human Rights</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/iraq/" title="View all posts in News" rel="category tag">News</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/ghaith-abdul-ahad/" rel="tag">Ghaith Abdul-Ahad</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/" rel="tag">Guardian The</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/journalists/" rel="tag">journalists</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/journalists-attacked/" rel="tag">Journalists Attacked</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/journalists-detained/" rel="tag">Journalists Detained</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/kidnappings/" rel="tag">Kidnappings</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/libya/" rel="tag">Libya</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <div dir="rtl" align="right"> <p>اطلقت السلطات الليبية سراح الصحفي العراقي المعتقل لديها غيث عبد الاحد مراسل صحيفة الغارديان البريطانية. وقال نقيب الصحفيين العراقيين مؤيد اللامي ان نقيب الصحفيين الليبيين عاشور التليسي ابلغه في ساعة مبكرة من صباح اليوم الخميس باقدام السلطات الليبية على اطلاق سراح غيث عبد الاحد استجابة للدعوات التي اطلقتها النقابة والاتحاد الدولي للصحفيين والجهود التي بذلها نقيب الصحفيين العراقيين بالاتصال باتحاد الصحفيين الليبيين وابلاغ الخارجية الليبية بضرورة اطلاق سراح الصحفي العراقي فورا. واشار اللامي الى ان نقابة الصحفيين العراقيين كانت شكلت ورشة عمل برئاسته للاتصال بمختلف الاطراف العربية والدولية السياسية والصحفية للضغط على السلطات الليبية من اجل اطلاق سراح الصحفي العراقي غيث عبد الاحد واعتبار عملية اعتقاله عملا مشينا لاينسجم وحرية العمل الصحفي ومهنيته. وكان غيث عبد الاحد اعتقل من قبل السلطات الليبية في السادس من الشهر الجاري في منطقة الزاوية غرب طرابلس بعد دخول قوات النظام الليبي اليها. من جهة اخرى تلقت نقابة الصحفيين العراقيين رسالة من والد الصحفي غيث قدم فيها الشكر والعرفان للموقف الشريف والتضامني من النقابة لزميل المهنة غيث عبد الاحد. وقال والد الصحفي غيث في رسالته مخاطبا نقيب الصحفيين العراقيين: ان الذي قدمتموه من جهد ومثابرة من اجل اطلاق سراح زميلكم الصحفي يدل على قيامكم بتحمل المسؤولية العظيمة تجاه من انتخبوكم .. لقد ادت الهمة والنداءات المستمرة التي قمتم بها الى اطلاق سراح ابني غيث وهو الان طليق يتنسم نعيم الحرية. واضاف في رسالته: اشعر بالاسى لموقف الحكومة العراقية التي لم تحرك ساكنا بينما تداعى الاخوة وزملاء المهنة للمهمة فالف شكر لهم.</p> </div> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-12727"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/03/13/%d8%a7%d8%ae%d8%aa%d9%81%d8%a7%d8%a1-%d8%b3%d8%a8%d8%b9%d8%a9-%d8%b5%d8%ad%d9%81%d9%8a%d9%8a%d9%86-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a8%d9%8a%d8%a7-%d9%85%d9%86-%d8%a8%d9%8a%d9%86%d9%87%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84/#respond" title="Comment on اختفاء سبعة صحفيين في ليبيا من بينهم العراقي غيث عبد الأحد">No Comments</a></span> Posted on March 13th, 2011 by markfromireland</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/03/13/%d8%a7%d8%ae%d8%aa%d9%81%d8%a7%d8%a1-%d8%b3%d8%a8%d8%b9%d8%a9-%d8%b5%d8%ad%d9%81%d9%8a%d9%8a%d9%86-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a8%d9%8a%d8%a7-%d9%85%d9%86-%d8%a8%d9%8a%d9%86%d9%87%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to اختفاء سبعة صحفيين في ليبيا من بينهم العراقي غيث عبد الأحد">اختفاء سبعة صحفيين في ليبيا من بينهم العراقي غيث عبد الأحد</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/human-rights/" title="View all posts in Human Rights" rel="category tag">Human Rights</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/ghaith-abdul-ahad/" rel="tag">Ghaith Abdul-Ahad</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/" rel="tag">Guardian The</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/journalists/" rel="tag">journalists</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/journalists-attacked/" rel="tag">Journalists Attacked</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/journalists-detained/" rel="tag">Journalists Detained</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/kidnappings/" rel="tag">Kidnappings</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/libya/" rel="tag">Libya</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <div dir="rtl" align="right"><a title="Ghaith_Abdul-Ahad by Gorillas Guides, on Flickr" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.flickr.com/photos/gorillasguides/5523805172/" class="external" target="_blank"><img style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px" height="338" alt="Ghaith_Abdul-Ahad" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209im_/http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5099/5523805172_19c379a741_o.jpg" width="300" align="left"/></a> <p>كشفت لجنة حماية الصحفيين الدولية عن اختفاء سبعة صحفيين في ليبيا من بينهم الصحفي العراقي غيث عبد الأحد مراسل صحيفة غارديان البريطانية.</p> <p>وعبرت اللجنة في بيان لها عن قلق عميق إزاء اختفاء الصحفيين السبعة الذين كانوا يغطون أحداث العنف في ليبيا وانقطعت أخبارهم. وطالب نائب مدير لجنة حماية الصحفيين روبرت ماهوني حكومة العقيد القذافي بالإفراج عن الصحفيين المحتجزين، والسماح لوسائل الإعلام بالعمل بحرية. </p> <p>وذكرت اللجنة في بيانها أن الصحفي عبد الأحد شوهد آخر مرة في ضواحي مدينة الزاوية الساحلية حيث دار قتال عنيف بين الثوار والقوات الموالية للقذافي. </p> <p>أما صحيفة غارديان فقد أجرت اتصالات مع مسؤولين في الحكومة الليبية في طرابلس وفي لندن وطلبت منهم التصرف بصفة عاجلة لمعرفة مكان وجوده، وما إذا كان آمناً، حسبما جاء على موقع الصحيفة على شبكة الإنترنت.</p> <p>في الوقت نفسه، أجرى نقيب الصحفيين مؤيد اللامي إتصالا مع وكيل وزارة الخارجية لبيد عباوي الذي يمثل العراق في الإجتماع الطارىء لوزراء الخارجية العرب المنعقد في القاهرة، بخصوص الصحفي العراقي.</p> <p>وقالت نقابة الصحفيين العراقيين في بيان لها اليوم إن عباوي أجرى اتصالا مع وكيل وزارة الخارجية الليبي لتأمين الإفراج عن الصحفي العراقي.</p> <p>وشددت النقابة على مطالبتها السلطات الليبية بإطلاق سراح عبد الأحد بموجب الأعراف الدولية. وحمّلت في الوقت نفسه السلطات الليبية مسؤولية الحفاظ على حياة الصحفي العراقي وسلامته.</p> <p>ويعمل عبد الأحد مع الغارديان منذ عام 2004 حيث قام بتغطية الأحداث في الصومال والسودان والعراق وأفغانستان، و حصل على عدة جوائز عالمية لعمله الصحفي.</p> </p></div> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-12187"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/01/12/guardian-wins-appeal-against-iraq-libel-ruling/#respond" title="Comment on Guardian wins appeal against Iraq libel ruling">No Comments</a></span> Posted on January 12th, 2011 by Ra'ed Al-Bayati</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/01/12/guardian-wins-appeal-against-iraq-libel-ruling/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Guardian wins appeal against Iraq libel ruling">Guardian wins appeal against Iraq libel ruling</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/iraq/" title="View all posts in News" rel="category tag">News</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/defamation/" rel="tag">defamation</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/freedom-of-expression/" rel="tag">freedom of expression</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/ghaith-abdul-ahad/" rel="tag">Ghaith Abdul-Ahad</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/" rel="tag">Guardian The</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/inis/" rel="tag">INIS</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/intelligence-officers/" rel="tag">intelligence officers</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/international-federation-of-journalists/" rel="tag">International Federation of Journalists</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/international-law/" rel="tag">International Law</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/libel-actions/" rel="tag">libel actions</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/maliki-vs-guardian-newspaper/" rel="tag">Maliki vs. Guardian newspaper</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/theguardian" class="external" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> has won its appeal against an Iraqi court ruling which judged that the paper had defamed the country’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.</p> <p>The Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS) brought the libel action after the Guardian reported criticism of al-Maliki and the INIS in <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/30/iraqi-prime-minister-maliki" class="external" target="_blank">an article published in April 2009</a>. The Al-Karakh primary court judged in November 2009 that the report was defamatory and ordered the Guardian to pay a fine of 100m dinar (£52,000).</p> <p>However, the Iraqi appeal court ruled on 28 December that the article did not cause any defamation or harm to al-Maliki or the INIS, overturning the earlier court ruling.</p> <p>The Guardian welcomed the appeal court ruling, saying that the earlier defamation charge "amounted to an unjustified interference with the media’s right to report on the activities of politicians and public officials".</p> <p>In making its decision, the appeal court consulted nine experts nominated by the Iraqi Union of Journalists who unanimously agreed that the article was not defamatory. The court ordered the INIS pay costs and legal fees.</p> <p>The article in question, written by the Guardian’s award-winning <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq" class="external" target="_blank">Iraq</a> correspondent, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, described fears inside Iraq that the prime minister was ruling in an increasingly autocratic manner. It reported the views of three intelligence officers, and a range of others, who commented on the nature of al-Maliki’s rule.</p> <p>Article 19, the campaign group for freedom of expression, and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), submitted a joint amicus brief in support of the Guardian and reviewing international standards for freedom of expression.</p> <p>The organisations also argued that the charge of defamation "disregarded well-established international law which guarantees the rights of the media to critically evaluate the activities of governments and their elected leaders".</p> <p>Source: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/12/guardian-appeal-iraq-libel" class="external" target="_blank">Guardian wins appeal against Iraq libel ruling | Media | guardian.co.uk</a></p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-12168"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/01/09/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ac%d9%8a%d8%b4-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a7%d9%85%d8%b1%d9%8a%d9%83%d9%8a-%d9%8a%d8%b3%d8%a7%d8%b9%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%82%d8%a7%d8%b9%d8%af%d8%a9-%d8%b9%d9%84%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%b5/#respond" title="Comment on الجيش الامريكي يساعد (القاعدة) على الحصول على أكبر مخزن للأسلحة في العالم">No Comments</a></span> Posted on January 9th, 2011 by Nur Hussein Ghazali</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/01/09/%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ac%d9%8a%d8%b4-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a7%d9%85%d8%b1%d9%8a%d9%83%d9%8a-%d9%8a%d8%b3%d8%a7%d8%b9%d8%af-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%82%d8%a7%d8%b9%d8%af%d8%a9-%d8%b9%d9%84%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ad%d8%b5/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to الجيش الامريكي يساعد (القاعدة) على الحصول على أكبر مخزن للأسلحة في العالم">الجيش الامريكي يساعد (القاعدة) على الحصول على أكبر مخزن للأسلحة في العالم</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/iraq/" title="View all posts in News" rel="category tag">News</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/101st-airborne-division/" rel="tag">101st Airborne Division</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/abu-shujaa/" rel="tag">Abu Shujaa</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/ahmed-hassan-al-bakr/" rel="tag">Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/al-qaeda/" rel="tag">Al Qaeda</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/al-qaeda-in-iraq/" rel="tag">al qaeda in iraq</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/american-incompetence/" rel="tag">American incompetence</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/bombs/" rel="tag">bombs</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/briefings/" rel="tag">Briefings</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/c4/" rel="tag">C4</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/dominic-streatfeild/" rel="tag">Dominic Streatfeild</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian/" rel="tag">Guardian</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/" rel="tag">Guardian The</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/haki-mohammed/" rel="tag">Haki Mohammed</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/high-melt-explosive/" rel="tag">High Melt Explosive</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/high-melt-explosive-hmx/" rel="tag">High Melt Explosive (HMX)</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/hmx/" rel="tag">HMX</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/iaea/" rel="tag">IAEA</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/international-atomic-energy-agency/" rel="tag">International Atomic Energy Agency</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/iraqi-islamic-army/" rel="tag">Iraqi Islamic Army</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/jacques-baute/" rel="tag">Jacques Baute</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/manzaumat-al-amin/" rel="tag">Manzaumat al-Amin</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/middle-east/" rel="tag">Middle East</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/petn/" rel="tag">PETN</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/politics-and-security/" rel="tag">Politics and Security</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/qa-qa/" rel="tag">qa qa</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/qaqaa-ibn-umar/" rel="tag">Qa'qaa ibn Umar</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/qaqaa/" rel="tag">Qaqaa</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/rdx/" rel="tag">RDX</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/security-situation/" rel="tag">security situation</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/special-republican-guard/" rel="tag">special republican guard</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/supergun/" rel="tag">Supergun</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/un-security-council/" rel="tag">un security council</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/yousifiyah/" rel="tag">Yousifiyah</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <div dir="rtl" align="right"> <p>لندن: يصدر قريباً في لندن كتاب جديد بعنوان "تاريخ العالم منذ 9/11" لمؤلفه دومنيك ستريتفيلد، يتهم فيه المؤلف الجيش الأميركي في العراق بأنه تصرف على نحو غير مسؤول وساعد تنظيم "القاعدة" في الاستحواذ على أكبر مخزن للأسلحة في العالم، ولدى اكتشاف ما حصل جرت محاولات للتغطية على التقصير الأميركي ومنع تسرّب المعلومات عنه إلى وسائل الإعلام. وحصلت صحيفة "الغارديان" على حق نشر أحد فصول الكتاب الجديد </p> <p>الذي يروي فيه المؤلف كيف تمكن تنظيم "القاعدة" من الوصول إلى ترسانة الأسلحة في ربيع 2003، أي بعد أيام من سقوط نظام حكم صدام حسين.تبدأ القصة في قرية صغيرة اسمها اليوسفية تقع جنوب غرب بغداد، حيث فوجئ فلاحان عراقيان، أحدهما يدعى حقي محمد، كانا يعملان في أرضهما بجندي عراقي اقترب منهما فألقى بسلاحه وطلب منهما أن يمنحاه دشداشة فاستبدل بها ملابسه العسكرية ومضى راكضاً بين الحقول. كانت بندقية الجندي وملابسه تحمل علامة "منظومات الأمن العراقي". ويقول المؤلف أن اليوسفية قرية منسية تبعد عن بغداد 25 كيلومتراً ونحو30 دقيقة بالسيارة من مطار بغداد الدولي، ما جعلها صالحة كمخبأ، أو كمكان سري. لذلك في عام 1977، وقع اختيار الرئيس العراقي في حينه أحمد حسن البكر على اليوسفية، حيث أنشأ على بعد 15 كيلو متر منها مصنعاً ومخزناً كبيراً للذخائر. ونقل المؤلف عن خبراء يوغسلافيين عملوا على إنشاء المصنع أنه حمل في الأصل اسم "البكر"، إلى أن جاء صدام حسين إلى الحكم، فغيّر الإسم وأطلق عليه اسم القائد الإسلامي العراقي "القعقاع بن عمرو"، بطل معركة القادسية الثانية ضد الفرس في القرن السادس عشر. فيما نقل عن مفتشي الأسلحة الذين أوفدتهم الأمم المتحدة إلى العراق للتفتيش عن أسلحة الدمار الشامل بأنه "أكبر مخزن أو ترسانة أسلحة رأوها في حياتهم". فالترسانة التي تقوم على مساحة 36 كيلومتراً مربعاً وتحتوي على 1100 بناء وعمل فيها نحو 14 ألف عامل وموظف كانت مدينة قائمة بحد ذاتها ولم تكن بحاجة لأي شيء من الخارج لدرجة أنها كانت تتزود بالكهرباء من محطة خاصة بها لا علاقة لها بالشبكة الوطنية لكهرباء العراق، مما ساعد على بقائها موقعاً سرياً لمدة طويلة. كان صدام سعيداً بوجود هذا المصنع الذي أثبت فائدته عام 1980 لدى اندلاع الحرب مع إيران، ما دفعه لإنشاء مصانع وترسانات أسلحة سرية أخرى شبيهة في الصحراء ليس بعيداً عن اليوسفية. ويروي المؤلف أن صدام أمر خلال الحرب مع إيران باستيراد كميات هائلة من البارود والمواد سريعة الاشتعال والمتفجرة الأخرى من الخارج، حيث وصلت إلى العراق شحنات بمئات الأطنان من هذه المواد من شرق أوروبا وتشيلي. وأضاف أن المفتشين الدوليين الذين زاروا العراق بعد الغزو العراقي للكويت اكتشفوا هذه المواد المتفجرة فقاموا بجمعها وأمروا بوضعها في مخزن خاص تحت الأرض في الناحية الجنوبية الغربية من موقع القعقاع ويقدر وزنها بحوالي 341 طناً. كانت تلك عملية سرية لم تكشف الأمم المتحدة عنها مثلما تستر صدام ذاته عليها لأسبابه الخاصة. فسكان المنطقة لم يعرفوا عن هذا المخزن شيئاً مثلما أنهم لم يكونوا على اطلاع على ما يدور داخل الموقع، سوى أنهم مع مرور الوقت أدركوا أن الموقع عبارة عن ثكنة عسكرية لا أحد منهم يعرف بالضبط ما يجري فيها. في الثاني أو الثالث من أبريل 2003، وصل الجنود الأميركيون إلى القعقاع واحتلوا الموقع من دون مقاومة، إذ أن الجنود العراقيين الذين كانوا في الحراسة هربوا، تماماً مثلما فعل الجندي الذي وصل إلى اليوسفية وطلب الدشداشة من حقي محمد وأخيه. بالطبع عندما فرّ الجنود استيقظ حب الاستطلاع لدى مواطني اليوسفية الذين كانوا خلال السنوات الماضية ممنوعين من دخول "موقع القعقاع"، فبدأوا يتوافدون للتعرف على أسراره. فهدم الأهالي السور المحيط بالموقع من دون أن يعترضهم أحد. وبعد ساعات فقط، كان أكبر مخزن للأسلحة في منطقة الشرق الأوسط مفتوحاً أمام الجمهور والدخول إليه والخروج منه يتم بحرية تامة. حتى الجنود الأميركيين التابعين للفرقة 101 المحمولة جواً التي أقامت معسكراً قريباً لها من القعقاع لم تكن معنية بالتعرف على ما يحتويه الموقع. إذ أن الجنود الأميركيين كانوا منهمكين في ترتيب أمر وصولهم إلى بغداد والاحتفال بالنصر على صدام، ولم يعيروا اهتماماً لما كان مخزوناً بقربهم. وذلك دليل على أن القيادة العليا للجيش الأميركي لم تقدم للجنود معلومات دقيقة عمّا كان يصادفهم على الأرض. كان العالم ما زال مأخوذاً بالنصر السريع الذي حققه الجيشان الأميركي والبريطاني في العراق، حينما بدأت وسائل الإعلام تنقل أخبار الفوضى التي انتشرت في العراق وعمليات السلب والنهب. ونقل المؤلف عن حقي إبراهيم، الذي وصل إلى موقع القعقاع مع أخيه فوق سيارة تجارية رفعا فوقها علماً أبيض، أنه وجد باب الموقع مشرعاً والتقى فيه بالمئات من أبناء اليوسفية. وروى حقي كيف نهب المواطنون محتويات الموقع ولم يتركوا فيه شيئاً ليتحول إلى ما يشبه الخربة، بما في ذلك مخازن الأسلحة، مستعينين بالرافعات التي كانت موجودة في الموقع لسحب الآلات والمحركات أو الأسلحة الثقيلة التي تم نهبها. ولم يقتصر النهب على أهالي اليوسفية، بل انضم إليهم أهالي بلدة أخرى تقع إلى الشمال الشرقي للموقع تدعى محمودية. يقول المؤلف أن "موقع القعقاع" نهب عملياً قبل سقوط صدام بيومين وكانت المنهوبات عرضت للبيع في أسواق المنطقة وجرى تبادلها بين الناس في شكل واسع. غير أن المواطنين الذين لم يتركوا شيئاً ونهبوه، لم يعثروا على المخزن الذي كانت المواد المتفجرة وشديدة الاشتعال مخبأة فيه. ويقول المؤلف أن هذه الحقيقة يعرفها الجميع لأن صحفيين أميركيين وصلا إلى الموقع في 18 أبريل وهما اللذان اكتشفا المخزن، وكتبا تقريراً حول المخزن السري. إذ قام الصحفيان اللذان رافقا وحدة عسكرية أميركية بجولة في الموقع واكتشفا المخزن. بل أن جاك بوتيه، رئيس فريق المفتشين الدوليين عن الأسلحة في العراق زار العراق بعد أسبوعين من سقوط صدام فوجد مخزن المواد المتفجرة مغلقاً فطلب من الجيش الأميركي أن يوفر حماية للمخزن الذي كان ما زال غير مكتشف من جانب الناس. ويروي أهالي اليوسفية والمحمودية أنه في ذلك الوقت المبكر بدأ مقاتلون عرب من جنسيات مختلفة ينتمون الى "القاعدة" يصلون إلى المكان. فهؤلاء المقاتلون هم الذين أبلغوا أهالي المنطقة بأن "القعقاع" يحتوي على ما هو أكثر من الأسلحة التقليدية التي عثروا عليها ونهبوها وبدأوا يبيعونها في الأسواق.</p> </p></div> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-12146"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/01/07/how-the-us-let-al-qaida-get-its-hands-on-an-iraqi-weapons-factory/#comments" title="Comment on How the US let al-Qaida get its hands on an Iraqi weapons factory">1 Comment</a></span> Posted on January 7th, 2011 by Omar Khdhayyir</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2011/01/07/how-the-us-let-al-qaida-get-its-hands-on-an-iraqi-weapons-factory/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to How the US let al-Qaida get its hands on an Iraqi weapons factory">How the US let al-Qaida get its hands on an Iraqi weapons factory</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/features/" title="View all posts in Features" rel="category tag">Features</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/101st-airborne-division/" rel="tag">101st Airborne Division</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/abu-shujaa/" rel="tag">Abu Shujaa</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/ahmed-hassan-al-bakr/" rel="tag">Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/al-qaeda/" rel="tag">Al Qaeda</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/al-qaeda-in-iraq/" rel="tag">al qaeda in iraq</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/american-incompetence/" rel="tag">American incompetence</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/bombs/" rel="tag">bombs</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/briefings/" rel="tag">Briefings</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/c4/" rel="tag">C4</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/dominic-streatfeild/" rel="tag">Dominic Streatfeild</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian/" rel="tag">Guardian</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/" rel="tag">Guardian The</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/haki-mohammed/" rel="tag">Haki Mohammed</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/high-melt-explosive/" rel="tag">High Melt Explosive</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/high-melt-explosive-hmx/" rel="tag">High Melt Explosive (HMX)</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/hmx/" rel="tag">HMX</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/iaea/" rel="tag">IAEA</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/international-atomic-energy-agency/" rel="tag">International Atomic Energy Agency</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/iraqi-islamic-army/" rel="tag">Iraqi Islamic Army</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/jacques-baute/" rel="tag">Jacques Baute</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/manzaumat-al-amin/" rel="tag">Manzaumat al-Amin</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/middle-east/" rel="tag">Middle East</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/petn/" rel="tag">PETN</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/qa-qa/" rel="tag">qa qa</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/qaqaa-ibn-umar/" rel="tag">Qa'qaa ibn Umar</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/qaqaa/" rel="tag">Qaqaa</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/rdx/" rel="tag">RDX</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/security-situation/" rel="tag">security situation</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/special-republican-guard/" rel="tag">special republican guard</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/supergun/" rel="tag">Supergun</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/un-security-council/" rel="tag">un security council</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/yousifiyah/" rel="tag">Yousifiyah</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <p> <div style="border-right: black 1px solid; padding-right: 5px; border-top: black 1px solid; padding-left: 5px; float: right; padding-bottom: 5px; margin: 5px 0px 5px 15px; border-left: black 1px solid; width: 300px; padding-top: 5px; border-bottom: black 1px solid"> <p>In an exclusive extract from his new book, A History of the World since 9/11, Dominic Streatfeild explains how despite expert warnings, the US let al-Qaida buy an arsenal of deadly weapons – then tried to cover it up</p> <p>Dominic Streatfeild <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/07/iraq-weapons-factory-al-qaida-us-failure?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fmedia%2Frss+%28Media%29" target="_blank" class="external">The Guardian</a>, Friday 7 January 2011 </p> </p></div> <p> Haki Mohammed and his brothers were shovelling manure on their farm in Yusifiyah in the spring of 2003 when the soldier arrived. Dishevelled and distressed, the man had run a great distance. "Please," he entreated, "are you true Arabs?"</p> <p>The Iraqis, raised in a culture of obligatory hospitality towards needy strangers, immediately understood the subtext. The man needed help. Even had he not been a soldier (Haki thought he recognised the uniform of a Special Republican Guard), they were honour-bound to offer assistance. "Of course," Haki assured the man. "What is it you need?"</p> <p>The soldier held out his AK-47. "Take it." He indicated the webbing around his waist, stuffed full of charged magazines. "Take them all. I don’t want them. But I need a dishdasha or a robe. Anything that isn’t a uniform." Then the soldier started to undress.</p> <p>The Mohammeds were indeed good Arabs. They fetched a dishdasha and the man slipped it on. Then, without warning, he flung the ammunition and the rifle down and ran off into the desert. Bemused, the Yusifiyans examined his belongings. He wasn’t a Republican Guard at all. His uniform, bereft of rank badges, was that of a rarer outfit: Manzaumat al-Amin, the Iraqi military’s security and protection agency.</p> <p>A small, nondescript town of a few thousand souls 25km south-west of Baghdad, Yusifiyah is known for its rich soil, which enables the production of potatoes famous throughout <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq" class="external" target="_blank">Iraq</a> for their size and flavour. The singer Farouk al-Khatib was born here. But that’s about it. For those uninterested in either potatoes or Iraqi popular music, there’s little of interest: farms criss-crossed by irrigation ditches, a great deal of sand, and not much else.</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusufiyah" class="external" target="_blank">Yusifiyah</a>’s obscurity, however, together with its convenient location – less than 30 minutes’ drive from Baghdad airport – make it perfect for certain purposes: hiding things, for example. Things you’d rather no one ever knew about. Secret things.</p> <p>Sure enough, 15km to the south lies a big, big secret. The secret dates back to 1977, when the then-president <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Hassan_al-Bakr" class="external" target="_blank">Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr</a> ordered the construction of a vast munitions plant outside the town. Built by the Yugoslavs, the factory was originally to be named after Bakr himself, until Saddam Hussein seized power in 1979. In a fit of patriotic zeal, the fledgling dictator named it after the Iraqi general Qa’qaa ibn Umar, who in the seventh century inflicted a most glorious massacre on the Persian army in the second battle of Qasidiya: Al Qa’qaa.</p> <p>Weapons inspectors who visited the facility were dumbstruck by the scale of the place. "Huge," comments one senior figure familiar with the site. "The biggest chemical plant I’ve ever seen." Covering an area of 36 square km, containing 1,100 buildings and employing more than 14,000 staff, the site was essentially a secret, self-sufficient city, 10 times the size of New York’s Central Park – in the middle of the desert. It even had its own power station.</p> <p>Saddam was so pleased with the facility that, when the Iran–Iraq war broke out in 1980, he built a number of other weapons factories nearby. Soon, Nahir Yusifiyah, the sparsely populated crescent-shaped region surrounding the town, was teeming with facilities engaged in the manufacture of free-fall aircraft bombs, small arms, ammunition, scud-missiles, as well as nuclear centrifuge development and bio-warfare experiments: all huge, clandestine weapons sites with their own research staff and agendas.</p> <p>From the outside there was little to indicate what was going on in Qa’qaa. Surrounded by tall earthen walls, all that was visible was a series of chimney stacks producing huge plumes of acrid brown smoke. Employees in the facility were not allowed to speak about it; nobody else was allowed in. To Yusifiyans, however, it was obvious the plant made military equipment of some sort: repeated explosions emanated from within the walls when things went wrong, and from the facility’s test ranges when things went right.</p> <p>At the heart of this big, big secret lay further secrets, some so huge they bordered on the preposterous. In the late 80s, the facility was involved in the construction of the largest rifle in the history of the world: a monstrous weapon with a 150m barrel and the ability to shoot a 600kg projectile into space. The Supergun required 10 tonnes of propellant for each shot – doubtless the reason why research was underway at Qa’qaa, where the explosive material was to be made.</p> <p>Unfortunately, even this state-of-the-art facility was not up to the task. At the end of the decade, suppliers were sought for a pair of compounds that the facility was unable to synthesise purely: RDX (the basis for a number of explosives, including C4) and PETN (used in small-calibre ammunition and Semtex). The materials, ordered from eastern Europe via Chile, arrived in shipments of hundreds of tonnes.</p> <p>Then the project stalled. In 1991, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/history/0,,876851,00.html" class="external" target="_blank">following the Iraqi rout in Kuwait</a>, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gained access to Qa’qaa, where they found 145 tonnes of pure RDX and PETN. On a whim, one enterprising inspector asked technicians whether they had imported any other explosives of note. Qa’qaa staff exchanged glances and shuffled their feet, before leading him to a series of bunkers containing hundreds of drums of an off-white, crystalline powder. About as highly explosive as high explosive gets, High Melt Explosive (HMX) is used to detonate nuclear warheads. Qa’qaa had nearly 200 tonnes of it. The IAEA moved all the explosives to secure bunkers on the south-west corner of the facility, then closed the doors with tamper-proof seals. And there the 341 tonnes sat for more than a decade.</p> <p>Of course, inhabitants of Yusifiyah and the surrounding towns had no idea about any of this. In Saddam’s time, there were many things one didn’t inquire about. But that was before the curious incident of the soldier, the rifle and the dishdasha.</p> <h4><strong>Looting by the truckload</strong></h4> <p> For Haki and his brothers, Operation Iraqi Freedom had started in the early hours of 3 April 2003, when they were woken by the sound of low-flying aircraft. Moments later, the first American artillery shells zipped overhead, eliminating with pinpoint accuracy the Republican Guard checkpoints and roadblocks around Yusifiyah, in effect neutralising all threat of resistance. <p>By sunrise, American tanks were trundling north up Highway 8 towards Baghdad Airport. Ali, one of Qa’qaa’s senior administrators, recalls the invasion well. "The Americans came in on the second or third of April," he says. "There was no fighting. Most of the soldiers and officers just took off their uniforms and ran away."</p> <p>It took Haki Mohammed next to no time to deduce that the man who showed up on his doorstep had come from the secure compound at Qa’qaa, and an even shorter time to figure that, if the soldiers had left, the site was unguarded. For a quarter of a century, the facility had been off-limits. Here, finally, was an opportunity to find out what had been going on in there.</p> <p>Haki’s neighbours had the same idea. "Lots of people went in," he recalls. "They destroyed the fence and they went in that way . . . There was no army, no guards, nothing." The period between the guards fleeing and the first Yusifiyans breaching the compound was remarkably short. "About an hour," he says. By the afternoon of 3 April, the largest explosives plant in the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middleeast" class="external" target="_blank">Middle East</a> was open to all-comers.</p> <p>A week after the first Yusifiyans breached Qa’qaa’s perimeter fence, the US 101st Airborne Division pitched camp just outside the facility. There appears to have been no briefings about the site. The soldiers’ attention was elsewhere: the 101st was itching to get to Baghdad. As far as the troops were concerned, they were sitting on their behinds while higher-ups attempted to jump the queue, to manoeuvre their own divisions into the capital for a share of the glorious victory. They were missing the show.</p> <p>And what a show it was. On 9 April, the day before the 101st arrived at Qa’qaa, US troops had taken the capital, symbolically pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. The image, broadcast around the world, delighted the commander-in-chief back in Washington. "In the images of falling statues," President Bush later announced, "we have witnessed the arrival of a new era."</p> <p>Unfortunately, by the time the 101st arrived in Baghdad on 11 April, the foundations of the new era were looking distinctly shaky. As the troops settled in to the capital, news began to break that the city was descending into an orgy of lawlessness and looting. Reporters told of mobs roaming the city, stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down.</p> <p>Back in Yusifayah, Haki was unable to contain his curiosity any longer. Many of his neighbours had been into Qa’qaa and had returned with fantastic stories of all the useful bits and pieces lying about. He decided to take a look for himself. On 6 April Haki and his cousins and friends piled into a grey Kia minibus, hung a white flag from the window to placate passing American troops, and made their way to the main gate. Finding it open, they drove in to the compound.</p> <p>Hundreds of Yusifiyans were roaming around inside. They were gutting the place. Some targets were easier than others. Trucks vanished fairly quickly. The first few were simply hotwired and driven away. When locals realised there was no rush, however, they became more brazen, using the stolen trucks to return and carry away further loot. The next day they came back for more. "Lathes, machine tools, electrical generators," says Haki. "They were even taking the iron posts from the buildings." Qa’qaa was assaulted from all sides. From the north-west came the Yusifiyans; from the north-east, the inhabitants of Mahmudiyah.</p> <p>Some of Qa’qaa’s senior staff lived in an executive employees’ compound just west of the town. When the power went out after the Americans passed by, they returned to the complex to fetch an electrical generator. By the time they arrived, two days before the Saddam statue ceremony, Mahmudiyans were operating a market inside the walls, selling and bartering plundered goods. Ali, the site administrator, was flabbergasted at the scale of the operation. "It was astonishing, the way they managed to steal such big pieces of kit. Some of them were using cranes." He shakes his head. "They even took the electrical cables. They dug them up from the ground and took them. The water pipes. Everything."</p> <p>As yet, however, the looters had not discovered Qa’qaa’s real treasure: the vast stockpiles of HMX, PETN and RDX. We know they had not discovered the explosives because of a somewhat fortuitous event. On 18 April, two weeks after the looting began, a pair of American journalists did.</p> <h4><strong>Discovery of the high explosives</strong></h4> <p>Over the course of the month that they had been embedded with the 101st Airborne, reporter Dean Staley and cameraman Joe Caffrey had seen more than their fair share of action. Now, however, they were stuck. At the end of the second week in April, the 101st had established their base a mile south-east of Qa’qaa, from which they serviced Black Hawk helicopters and ferried military bigwigs around. A week later, they were still there. With no obvious route to Baghdad, the journalists’ chances of an exclusive were growing slimmer by the minute. So when, on the morning of 18 April, a sergeant and a warrant officer offered them the opportunity to tag along on a trip outside the camp, they were all ears.</p> <p>"It was a sightsee," recalls Caffrey. "Non-sanctioned. They basically decided on a whim, because they weren’t assigned to fly that day, to check out the base."</p> <p>Within a quarter of an hour, they started finding things. Paved roads. Watchtowers. Perimeter fences. And, within them, munitions of every possible shape and size. There were fat bombs, thin bombs, cartoon-style bombs with big fins and, lying in the hot morning sun, bombs that appeared to be leaking corrosive brown material. Some of them were as big as Volkswagens.</p> <p>Outside one bunker, the soldiers and the journalists stopped. A length of thin steel wire snaked around the lock, the chain and the hinges of the door, secured by a copper disc the size of a coin.</p> <p>Clearly, the wire wasn’t strong enough to keep anyone out. So what was it for? The soldiers wondered aloud whether it wasn’t so thin because it was meant not to be seen, that it was a booby trap. In the end, curiosity prevailed. One of them broke the disc apart and the wire fell away. Nothing happened. They walked in.</p> <p>There were no warheads in this bunker. Only crates of what appeared to be chemicals. And some strange-looking drums. Cautiously, the soldiers opened one. Inside was a clear plastic bag containing coarse powder. Caffrey went in for a look. "It was very flour-like, yellow, bright yellow in colour." Further bunkers also contained the yellow, flour-like substance. In fact, the more the journalists looked, the more they found. Many of the buildings appeared to be filled with it: in one corner there might be 30 crates or boxes, in the other, 60 or 70 barrels. The quantity was staggering. "What is this stuff?" one of the soldiers murmured.</p> <p>For a moment the soldiers and the journalists had the same idea. Had they accidentally discovered Saddam’s WMDs? No one knew. But just in case, Caffrey filmed it all.</p> <p>While Caffrey, Staley and the soldiers were exploring the bunkers outside Yusifiyah, officials at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna were becoming increasingly concerned. Prior to the invasion the agency had told the Americans of the dangers of allowing the security situation to collapse. Two weeks after the start of the war, Jacques Baute, the head of the Iraq nuclear inspection teams, visited the US mission to advise, again, that the weapons sites needed protection. He specifically mentioned Qa’qaa. Just days before the invasion, he told officials, inspectors had inventoried the facility’s HMX, RDX and PETN stores and ensured that the seals were still intact. This kind of materiel, the Frenchman suggested, should be kept out of the hands of looters. There was no reaction.</p> <p>Privately, IAEA officials wondered whether the Americans really understood what they were doing. Qa’qaa had made the propellant for the Nasser 81 artillery rocket programme, itself at the heart of the administration’s case for war. On 3 May, an internal memo at the IAEA warned that, if Qa’qaa was not secured, the result could be "the greatest explosives bonanza in history".</p> <h4><strong>The arrival of al-Qaida</strong></h4> <p> Initially, looters at Qa’qaa had targeted consumer goods such as fridges and air-conditioners. Although munitions had been taken, no one really knew what to do with them. It soon dawned, however, that they might be intrinsically valuable. Weaponry was rapidly emerging as a second currency. <p>"After the invasion, we started seeing these Arabs, these foreign fighters," recalls Haki, "Palestinians, Egyptians, Libyans." Most Yusifiyans were wary of these new arrivals, but a number of local tribes took them in: "Karagol, Jenabies, Rowissat . . ."</p> <p>Yusuf, an emerging leader in the insurgency who belongs to one of these tribes, confirms the story. "We allowed the Arabs into our houses and our farms. We welcomed them properly. Some of them even married our daughters." The fact they were Arab strangers was sufficient to ensure hospitality, but these foreigners had extra pull. They were fedayeen. They were al-Qaida.</p> <p>They also informed the tribes that some of Qa’qaa’s contents were considerably more valuable than rocket launchers and pistols. It wasn’t long before Yusuf finally stumbled upon Qa’qaa’s real treasure. "We found something that we didn’t recognise. It was like a powder. It was stored in specific conditions, in special barrels." Yusuf had no idea what it was, but he thought he might as well take some. Only later would he learn that it was pure, crystalline high explosive.</p> <p>Following the rush to appropriate munitions, Yusifiyans had to figure out where to store their loot. Many hid it in their homes. This soon led to tragedy. Rival groups fired rocket-propelled grenades into each other’s houses, knowing they were full of explosives. Accidents also led to fatalities. One of Yusuf’s barns blew up.</p> <p>After a few such incidents, the powder was decanted into flour sacks, then dispersed and loaded into subterranean potato stores. Portable air-conditioning units were installed to keep it cool. By 8 May 2003, when the Pentagon’s Exploratory Task Force arrived at Qa’qaa to search for WMDs, all of the PETN, RDX and HMX was gone.</p> <p>Yusifiyah became a boomtown. Each potato sack of the explosive formula went for $300 (£194) to $500 (£325). "People from Yusifiyah had never seen a dollar bill. They certainly hadn’t seen a $100 bill," says Haki. "But when [the Arabs] arrived, everyone was talking about tens of thousands of dollars. We started seeing people holding bundles of wads of dollars."</p> <p>In this seedy, lottery-win atmosphere, locals rushed to spend their hard currency, throwing lavish weddings, buying cars, trucks and houses. Some used their share of the cash to travel. The sensible ones didn’t return.</p> <p>Meanwhile, bored with waiting for the Americans to establish security and tired of living without electricity, sewerage, clean water and other basic facilities, Iraqis turned in their droves to jihadist organisations, then attacked coalition troops. More violence meant less reconstruction, which led to more dissatisfaction, more anti-American sentiment and more violence. The insurgency became self-fuelling.</p> <p>Throughout the summer of 2003, the insurgents’ bombing campaign increased. In November, with attacks on coalition forces running at more than 1,000 a month, a classified Defence Intelligence Agency report finally stated the obvious: the vast majority of munitions used in the attacks had been pilfered from weapons sites that coalition troops had failed to protect.</p> <p>In September 2003, a month after the bombing of the UN building in Baghdad (an attack in which munitions from Qa’qaa appear to have been used), Ali, who had worked at Qa’qaa for 14 years, was invited to the Green Zone to confer with the US military. The meeting had been called to discuss how best to get Iraqi industries back on their feet. Ali had other plans.</p> <p>After the conference, he pulled the senior US general to one side and explained that he had come from Qa’qaa and that it had been severely looted. He then handed the general a dossier containing his senior staff’s assessment of the damage. Such was the extent of the looting, the report stated, it had to be assumed that all explosive materiel inside the facility – not just the RDX, PETN and HMX – had gone. The total quantity was staggering.</p> <p>"We told him that we had lost 40,000 tonnes," Ali recalls. "The gunpowder, anything that burned energetically, could be used as an explosive, so you could consider that part of the missing explosives." If the general was concerned, he concealed it well, especially when Ali informed him that among the looted munitions were 1,000 suicide-bomb belts manufactured at Saddam’s orders in February 2003. "There was no reaction. He took the records and didn’t say anything."</p> <h4><strong>Political bombshell</strong></h4> <p> The Iraqi Islamic Army was one of the insurgent groups formed in the wake of the US invasion. Abu Shujaa, one of its founders, sits in an armchair and thinks for a moment. "One of the operations we did was the attack on the al-Amyria police station. This was in October 2003. We received information from our intelligence service that one of the high-profile military generals would be there. We decided to use a car bomb." <p>Shujaa is a hard man to track down. After a month of negotiations in Baghdad, we found him through intermediaries, and intermediaries of intermediaries. Shortly after our interview, he fled Iraq for Syria.</p> <p>"We used two cars: Nissan Patrol 4×4s that had previously belonged to the Iraqi Special Services. We used TNT and the explosives taken from the western bunkers of Qa’qaa. They had been removed and hidden in western Baghdad, near Abu Ghraib. In total, we used about 24kg, which we mixed with the formula [powder from Qa'qaa] to make the explosions more effective. The formula was available through the farmers to the west of al-Radhwania and al-Rashid area [Yusifiyah is in this area]. Most of the explosives had been taken and hidden in flour sacks near the railway tracks."</p> <p>Shujaa’s first car detonated outside the police station at 9.45am on 27 October 2003. Passerby Hamid Abbas was killed, along with his daughters Samar (25) and Doniya (16) and his one-year-old granddaughter. "The other car didn’t explode," continues Shujaa. "The explosives were a bit moist. They had been stored in a place that was too humid. Although the amount that had been taken from Qa’qaa was very large, we were concerned that we would finish it all if we didn’t use it wisely. So after that we decided to mix a little more TNT with the formula, in case it was too humid."</p> <p>IAEA staff in Vienna were livid about the Americans’ failure to contain the explosives. Munitions sites in Iraq had been heavily looted, but the Americans would not allow the IAEA to visit them; it was reliant on secondhand news. When nothing was heard about Qa’qaa, inspectors chased up the interim government directly. What had happened to the sealed RDX, PETN and HMX? Was it safe?</p> <p>A year later, on 10 October 2004, Jacques Baute, the agency finally received a one-page letter from the Iraqi Planning and Following-up Directorate: "The following materials, which have been included in Annex 3 (item 74) registered under IAEA custody, were lost after 9-4-2003, throughout the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security." The letter contained a table detailing the "lost" materiel: 5.8 tonnes of PETN, 141.233 tonnes of RDX and 194.741 tonnes of HMX. At last, the truth: 341 tonnes of high explosive were missing.</p> <p>The letter created consternation. What was the agency supposed to do with it? The American presidential election was three weeks away. If the IAEA went public with the news, it would look as if the agency – supposedly apolitical – was taking a swipe at the Bush administration. If, on the other hand, it sat on its hands, it would be open to charges of sabotaging the campaign of Bush’s opponent, John Kerry. Potentially, the letter was a political trap.</p> <p>IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei attempted a compromise, contacting the UN security council. The explosives were gone, he told them. There was every chance the news would leak. Perhaps, however, it was possible to keep a lid on it for a while, giving the coalition a chance to try to find some of them before the news broke.</p> <p>The diplomatic approach came to nothing. On 14 October, the agency received a call from CBS’s 60 Minutes in New York. The programme had managed to obtain a copy of the letter. So had the New York Times. Realising the cat was out of the bag, the next day the IAEA officially informed the US-led Multinational Force (MNF) that the explosives were missing. News of the report made it almost immediately to Condoleezza Rice and the president. David Sanger of the Times hastily drafted an article, while travelling with the president on Air Force One in the last days of the election campaign. No date was set for its publication.</p> <p>Then, suddenly, the story leaked. On Thursday 21 October – 13 days before the presidential election – Chris Nelson, the author of a respected Washington political online report, received an anonymous phone call. A huge quantity of high explosives had gone missing, he was told. They had been stolen. They were being used to attack US troops. Nelson did some checking, discovered the story stood up and posted it on the internet that weekend.</p> <p>Sanger, still waiting for the editors of the Times to publish his exclusive, discovered that the story was leaking on Sunday. The article went out the next morning: "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished from Site in Iraq." Shortly after the newspaper hit the streets, Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove swept into the media area of Air Force One and started shouting at Sanger. "Rove came and screamed at me in front of all the other reporters," he says. "Declared that this had been invented by the Kerry campaign." Apparently, the report had hit a nerve.</p> <p>It was at this point that the story of the looting of Qa’qaa got really dirty.</p> <h4><strong>Bush administration cover-up</strong></h4> <p> With the presidential election just eight days away, it now became crucial for the White House to neutralise the story. If voters suspected that American GIs were dead because of sheer official incompetence, they might be tempted to vote the wrong way. Evangelistic certainty and moral clarity were one thing; US soldiers dying needlessly in the sand in a faraway country was quite another. Had the explosives been stolen? Why had they not been protected? Had there not been enough troops? <p>The looting of Qa’qaa raised a whole swathe of issues that the Bush administration was not keen to address. Not this close to an election, anyway. Over the course of the next week, the White House deployed a number of tactics to make it go away. The first tactic was simply to assert the story was untrue. There were different angles of attack. One was that the explosives had not been there in the first place. Various figures were presented to show that the IAEA had got its sums wrong. In conjunction with this argument came a second, more formidable one: that the explosives had been there, but Saddam had moved them prior to the war.</p> <p>The Pentagon brandished satellite photos of heavy trucks at Qa’qaa the day before the US invasion began. To bolster its case, the Pentagon wheeled out Colonel David Perkins, commander of the troops that took the area in April 2003. According to Perkins, it was "highly improbable" themateriel had been stolen after the invasion. "The enemy sneaks a convoy of 10-tonne trucks in," Perkins asked rhetorically, "and loads them up in the dark of night and infiltrates them in your convoy and moves out? That’s kind of a stretch too far."</p> <p>Donald Rumsfeld agreed. "Picture all of the tractor trailers and forklifts and caterpillars it would take," the secretary of defence told Voice of America. "We had total control of the air. We would have seen anything like that."</p> <p>Even if the explosives had been there at the time of the invasion, the administration argued, they had probably been destroyed by US troops. Another officer was wheeled out. Austin Pearson of the 24th Ordnance Company had visited the site on 13 April 2003 and removed 250 tonnes of ordnance, including TNT, detonator cord and white phosphorous rounds. The materiel had later been destroyed. There were photographs of the operation, Pentagon spokesman Larry di Rita told journalists, "which we may provide later".</p> <p>Finally, the administration added another point: even if the materiel had been at Qa’qaa, even if it had been looted, the loss wasn’t significant. Iraq had been awash with munitions at the end of the war. Some 402,000 tonnes of armaments had been destroyed. It was estimated that Iraq’s total holdings were in the region of 650,000 tonnes. Compared with this vast figure, 341 tonnes was a paltry 0.06%. The New York Times was making a mountain out of a molehill.</p> <p>On this issue there was a double deception. Qa’qaa’s administrators had already informed the US, in writing, that the sum total of munitions looted from their facility was not 341 tonnes but 40,000. On this accounting, the missing explosives constituted more than 6% of all explosives in Iraq, a very great deal more than 0.06%, in fact.</p> <p>Further statistical manipulation was afoot, too. While the missing materiel from Qa’qaa was pure high explosive, the 402,000 tonnes destroyed by US forces included some very heavy objects that contained no explosives at all. "[The Pentagon] was trying to compare the weight of the guns and stocks and metal and all of that stuff," says a senior weapons-intelligence analyst. "They were counting tanks and guns and bazookas – metal – as opposed to the raw explosive that can be directly used . . . It’s an absolutely dishonest comparison."</p> <p>On Friday 29 October, Osama bin Laden succeeded where the White House’s spin doctors had failed. The first videotaped message from the al-Qaida leader for more than a year pushed the looted explosives story out of the public eye. Four days later, Bush won a second term in office.</p> <h4><strong>Torture and murder</strong></h4> <p> News of Bush’s glorious second victory left Yusifiyans cold. Haki and his neighbours had other concerns. Top of the list came the recently arrived Arab strangers. For al-Qaida, Yusifiyah was important not only because it was home to Iraq’s largest armaments facilities, but also because it was strategically extremely well positioned. Eventually, the mujahideen fighters settled in the area permanently. For the locals, the situation rapidly became intolerable. Instead of buying explosives, the Arabs simply took them, forcing potato farmers to store the materiel in their underground bunkers, then killing them later. "Those guys started ruling the whole area," says Haki. "They weren’t guests any more." In fear of his life, the farmer fled to Baghdad to become a security guard. <p>In 2004, al-Qaida established a camp inside the Qa’qaa complex itself. "We had a firing range, like a tunnel. It was used to shoot small-calibre bullets," says Ali. "It became a training camp for terrorists."</p> <p>Anyone entering the facility without permission was killed. Al-Qaida spread horror stories about its activities, intimidating locals into collaborating. An execution room was set up with a makeshift gallows. Yusuf was part of the operation. "We used to kill people in terrible ways, torturing them to give al-Qaida more influence." Mutilations, murders and decapitations were filmed and copies were distributed around Yusifiyah to discourage dissent.</p> <p>The violence increased. Anyone suspected of attempting to join the Iraqi military or police was executed. Shias were executed. People with Shia names were executed. People who did anything regarded as Shia-like were executed. When Haki’s uncle was caught smoking a cigarette, al-Qaida broke all his fingers with a hammer. Then they killed him.</p> <p>Soon even Yusuf recognised that things had gone awry. "We realised that al-Qaida hadn’t come to rescue us. They were killing all kinds of people, saying they were atheists and that they idolised statues," he recalls.</p> <p>When Haki returned from Baghdad in 2005, he found the main road into town littered with corpses, bound, tortured and shot. "We hadn’t seen anything like this before in our lives. It was like a horror film."</p> <p>By 2005, commentators were dubbing the Yusifiyah region the "Triangle of Death": the most dangerous sector in all Iraq. Palm-tree plantations were rigged with explosives to bring down low-flying helicopters; soldiers were abducted, tortured and murdered. Bombs went off everywhere.</p> <p>It was, of course, no coincidence that Nahir Yusifiyah was so favoured by insurgents. It was where all the weapons were.</p> <p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/07/iraq-weapons-factory-al-qaida-us-failure?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fmedia%2Frss+%28Media%29" class="external" target="_blank">How the US let al-Qaida get its hands on an Iraqi weapons factory | World news | The Guardian</a></p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="post clearfix" id="post-11727"> <div class="postmetadata"><span class="comments"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2010/10/28/the-us-was-part-of-the-wolf-brigade-operation-against-us/#respond" title="Comment on ‘The US was part of the Wolf Brigade operation against us’">No Comments</a></span> Posted on October 28th, 2010 by Mohammed Al-Hamadani</div> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/2010/10/28/the-us-was-part-of-the-wolf-brigade-operation-against-us/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to ‘The US was part of the Wolf Brigade operation against us’">‘The US was part of the Wolf Brigade operation against us’</a></h3> <p class="postmetadata">Category: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/english-articles/" title="View all posts in English Language Articles" rel="category tag">English Language Articles</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/features/" title="View all posts in Features" rel="category tag">Features</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/category/human-rights/" title="View all posts in Human Rights" rel="category tag">Human Rights</a>, Tags: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/abu-al-walid/" rel="tag">Abu al-Walid</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/al-mas-hotel-mosul/" rel="tag">al-Mas hotel - Mosul</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/chulov-martin/" rel="tag">Chulov - Martin</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/dora/" rel="tag">Dora</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/" rel="tag">Guardian The</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/gzg-forces-sectarian/" rel="tag">GZG Forces - sectarian</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/ibrahim-al-jaafari/" rel="tag">Ibrahim al-Jaafari</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/interior-minister/" rel="tag">interior minister</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/jafari/" rel="tag">Jafari</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/khalid-hussein/" rel="tag">Khalid Hussein</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/mosul/" rel="tag">Mosul</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/muataz-salah-ahmed/" rel="tag">Muataz Salah Ahmed</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/omar-salem-shehab/" rel="tag">Omar Salem Shehab</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/prisons/" rel="tag">prisons</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/torture/" rel="tag">Torture</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/tsferrat/" rel="tag">Tsferrat</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/wikileaks/" rel="tag">Wikileaks</a>, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/wolf-brigade/" rel="tag">Wolf Brigade</a></p> <div class="entry" dir="rtl" align="right"> <div style="padding-right: 5px; padding-left: 5px; float: right; padding-bottom: 5px; margin: 5px 0px 5px 15px; width: 360px; padding-top: 0px"> <div class="container"> <div class="shadow"> <div class="frame"> <blockquote> <p>Questions have endured in the ensuing five years about the extent of US co-operation with the unit and whether US forces knew of the scale of their abuses.</p> <p>"The Americans were there," said Shehab. "They weren’t just witnesses. They were part of the operation against us."</p> </blockquote> <p><a title="wolfbrigade_baghdad_2005 by Gorillas Guides, on Flickr" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.flickr.com/photos/27086036@N02/5123254251/" class="external" target="_blank"><img style="display: inline; margin: 5px 15px 5px 0px" height="210" alt="wolfbrigade_baghdad_2005" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209im_/http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1349/5123254251_f39a60975e_o.jpg" width="350"/></a></p> </p></div> </p></div> </p></div> </p></div> <p>Omar Salem Shehab tells of torture at hands of notorious Iraqi police unit and says US forces were involved in his capture</p> <p>During the foreboding months of 2005, one police unit struck more fear into Iraqis than the entire occupying US army. They were known as the Wolf Brigade. </p> <p>Brutal even by Iraqi standards, their soldiers and officers seemingly answered to no one. They were seen as indiscriminate and predatory. The unit’s reputation had been known Iraq-wide and results of their numerous raids are still bogged down in Iraq’s legal system.</p> <p>But the full range of their abuses and close co-operation with the US army remained in the shadows until the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/iraq-war-logs-us-iraqi-torture" class="external" target="_blank">WikiLeaks disclosures showcased them in stark detail</a>.</p> <p>A visit from the unit to any neighbourhood was sure to bring trouble – as it it did for Omar Salem Shehab on 25 June that year.</p> <p>"We were at home that night," Shehab recalled this week. "We were three brothers sleeping above my ice-cream shop. We were woken by soldiers entering our house by force. They came with Americans. They said we were wanted and produced a document. The Americans took our pictures, then the soldiers we now knew were the Wolf Brigade took us to the Seventh Division camp [of the Iraqi army]."</p> <p>Shehab and his brothers lived in Dora, in Baghdad’s south, a lethal enclave of the city that was rapidly deteriorating into chaos. Like most of Dora’s residents, they are Sunni Muslims.</p> <p>The trio were at the army camp for a day, then transferred to Baghdad’s main prison, known as Tsferrat.</p> <p>"We were tortured all the time, he said. "We were never investigated, just tortured. The commander of the Wolf Brigade, Abu al-Walid was one of the torturers. My brother had a kidney problem and they continued to torture him without giving him medicine.</p> <p>"He died after a month and the doctor wrote ‘kidney failure’ as a cause of death, despite his body being covered with torture marks. When he died, they let me and my other brother out. I later learned that another man we had met in prison, Khalid Hussein, had also died."</p> <p>Torture and death seemed synonymous with the almost exclusively Shia unit, which was tasked with rooting out Sunni insurgents from post-Saddam Iraq. As security unravelled across the country, they were often seen alongside US forces, particularly in Baghdad and Mosul.</p> <p>Earlier in 2005, they had swept into Mosul with the US army in support. Muataz Salah Ahmed, now 40, was working in the al-Mas hotel that January when the men in the distinctive red berets and balaclavas burst through the doors.</p> <p>"They arrested us all," he said. "There was an Iranian officer, his name was Ali. Many other officers with him were proud to tell us that they were not police, but Wolf Brigade. They said they had come from Baghdad to arrest us because we supported Saddam and deserved to be executed.</p> <p>"One officer threatened to rape my wife. He tore at her dress and four of my colleagues were killed in front of my eyes. They drilled holes in my legs and arms and did all manner of things to me. They took me and around 1,500 other prisoners to a basement inside the police commander’s headquarters."</p> <p>The unit stayed in Mosul for five months. Ahmed remained in prison for eight months, before being released by a court without conviction.</p> <p>"I have many documents proving who they were and what they did to me," he said. "Twelve families have complained against the general in charge of the unit; his name was Khalid. But they were the government, so what can be done about them?"</p> <p>The Wolf Brigade unit was formed in late 2004, drawing many recruits from the impoverished Shia slums of Sadr city. By late 2005, it was around 2,000-strong and roaming the country with impunity. The unit notionally answered to the then interior minister, Ibrahim al-Jafari, who became prime minister in April 2005 for 12 months as sectarian carnage spiralled out of control.</p> <p>When Nouri al-Maliki replaced Jafari as prime minister, he pledged to crack down on the Wolf Brigade and any other units seen to be carrying out sectarian agendas. By then, most of its leaders had fled or been killed.</p> <p>Questions have endured in the ensuing five years about the extent of US co-operation with the unit and whether US forces knew of the scale of their abuses.</p> <p>"The Americans were there," said Shehab. "They weren’t just witnesses. They were part of the operation against us."</p> <p><strong>Source:</strong> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/28/iraq-war-logs-iraq" class="external" target="_blank">Iraq war logs: ‘The US was part of the Wolf Brigade operation against us’</a> by <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/martin-chulov" class="external" target="_blank">Martin Chulov</a> in Baghdad <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://www.guardian.co.uk/" target="_blank" class="external">The Guardian</a></p> </div> </div> <hr/> <div class="navigation"> <div class="alignleft"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124145209/http://gorillasguides.com/tag/guardian-the/page/2/">« Previous Entries</a></div> <div class="alignright"></div> </div> </div> <div id="sidebar" class="span-10 last"> <div class="span-10" id="tabs"> <ul> <li class="ui-tabs-nav-item"><a href="#featured-articles">Featured 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