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Archive 1986 - 2017
Jan Oberg

Iraq Analyses: The resistance & the elections Plus human rights, WMDs, the occupation in a wider strategic perspective and the destruction of Babylon

Much valuable stuff is left unread or forgotten just because it was written some time ago and, thus, we may lose our sense of history and of a pattern or logics to what happens around us.
Each of the articles in this TFF Collection is relevant for an understanding of the conflict, the war and the occupation.
They are analyses, viewpoints and comments with lasting qualities; they should not be put in the archives before we have witnessed the end of this crisis. They offer perspectives on what to learn and what to remember when they build up the next crisis…

TFF produces Feature Collections to assist public awareness and education. You may search for more facts and analyses from these links. However, TFF accepts no responsibility for the content of these articles.

On the resistance to the occupation

Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia
The Iraqi resistance

M. Junaid Alam, CounterPunch
Do the Iraqis have a right to resist?

Samir Haddad and Mazin Ghazi, Al Zawra, Baghdad
An inventory of Iraqi resistance groups

Scott Ritter, Christian Science Monitor
Defining the resistance in Iraq – it’s not foreign and it’s well prepared

Tariq Ali, CounterPunch
All Talk of Meaningful Democracy has Faded
The Iraqi Resistance: a New Phase

Patrick Cockburn, The Independent & TruthOut
The crushing of Fallujah will not end the war in Iraq

Dan Murphy and Nicholas Blanford, Christian Science Monitor
Arab view dims on Iraq rebels
Insurgent tactics are drawing rebukes from the Arab world.

William S. Lind , AntiWar.com
Iraqi Resistance Shifts From Saddam to Allah

Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com
Which war is this anyway?
If you compare with how the media treated the resistance in Afghanistan and Chechenya, you’d ask yourself some questions about the language our media use, the invisibility of the victims, the rather few human rights reports and the use of the term terrorism…

Scott Peterson , Christian Science Monitor
For Iraq’s insurgents, what next?
Postelection Iraq leaves the militants facing a new dynamic – a population that has endorsed the political process.

Pepe Escobar, Asia Times
Why the US will not leave Iraq
If the Sunni resistance is really 200,000-strong, it is the resistance that will have the last word. Americans – but not the rest of the world – are still unable to understand why the resistance has become so powerful. Every faction has its own reasons. Ba’athists are longing to recapture their lost power. Salafists want Iraq to be part of the new caliphate. Moderate Sunnis want the restoration of Sunni rule – which has always been the rule in Iraq. Iraqi nationalists want to kick the foreigners out – like they did with the Mongols, the Ottomans and the British. That’s why the resistance is a relentless, ever-expandable proposition, but always under a unifying umbrella: to defeat the occupiers.

Sharon Smith, CounterPunch
The Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance

Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies
The U.S. peace and justice movement facing 2005

Jihad Unspun
An insiders look at the Iraqi resistance

Before and after the January 30 elections

Dan Murphy , Christian Science Monitor
How Iraq’s election will work
Iraqis are preparing to vote in their first-ever free election on Sunday. The transitional government they choose will craft the country’s new constitution., of the Monitor’s Baghdad bureau, answers key questions about the process.

Phyllis Bennis, ZNet
Eve of elections talking points
The 100,000 thousand dead Iraqis, the 760,000 pounds of lethal explosives found but little noticed, the UN’s refusal to send additional elections experts – and this: “NY Newsday’s scoop regarding the effort by a group of Muslim countries, including Pakistan and several others, to provide a 1500-strong battalion specifically to provide protection to UN workers in Iraq in the run-up to the election. It was Washington who rejected the proposal, refusing to accept a military contingent under the direct command of the United Nations, not the Pentagon”…

Project on Defence Alternatives
The Iraqi election “bait and switch”: Faulty poll will not bring peace or US withdrawalGet TFF analyses, debate articles, site updatesand peace tips – free of charge

Ahmed Amrawi, Aljazeera.net
Validation through elections

Annia Ciezadlo , The Guardian
Iraq’s election wild card: Kirkuk
As Iraq’s Jan. 30 election nears, Kurds threaten a boycott unless the return of the city becomes an option. Kirkuk, the oil-rich city that Saddam Hussein “Arabized” through forced migration, is on the Iraqi side of the line separating the Kurdistan Regional Government from the rest of Iraq. The Kurdish vote will be crucial in the upcoming elections – they may well be the only Sunnis voting – and Kurdish leaders are seizing the political moment: They’re putting pressure on interim prime minister Iyad Allawi to reopen the explosive issue of rejoining Kirkuk to Kurdistan.

Rod Nordland, TruthOut & Newsweek
You’re voting for whom?
Iraq’s new political coalition is reluctant to release the names of its election candidates. But some surprising figures have been included – and left out.

Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker
Iyad Allawi: A man of shadows – profile
Can this appointed prime minister hold Iraq together?

Howard LaFranchi , Christian Science Monitor
How election reverberates beyond Iraq
Both Iraqi unity and global engagement may get a boost.

Ivan Eland, The Independent Institute
Are Iraqi elections a Panacea?
The Iraqi elections are unlikely to have a ripple effect in a region that is already cynical about U.S. motives. The overly hyped plebiscite will probably do no more to stanch the downward spiral of violence in Iraq and the deepening U.S. quagmire there than the killing of Saddam Hussein’s sons.

Noam Chomsky, International Relations Center
After the Election: The Future of Iraq and U.S. occupation

Robert Fisk , The Star & The Independent and Information Clearing House
Triumph and tragedy for Iraq
Low level of Sunni participation tarnishes success of large poll turnout 

Patrick Cockburn, The Independent
A victory for the Shia – but an occupying force will still be in power 

Salim Lone, International Herald Tribune
This election is a sham
Lone is former adviser to the UN in Iraq…

The occupation as part of a strategy for the Middle east

Joshua Micah Marshall, Washington Monthly – April 2003
Practice to deceive
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks’ nighmare scenario – it is their plan. Early interesting insights into the thinking – at the time – of the neo-cons.

Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy in Focus
The U.S. invasion of Iraq: The military side of globalization?

Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times
The strategy to secure Iraq did not foresee a 2nd war

TurkishPress.com
Iraq battling more than 200,000 insurgents: intelligence chief

Human rights

Colum Lynch, Washington Post
The UN refuses to assist Iraqis with war crimes trials

Dana Priest, Washington Post
Detainees secretely taken our of Iraq

Media Lens Alert
Iraqi child deaths
Media indifferent as UNICEF reports worsening catastrophe.

Ghali Hassan, CounterPunch
Iraq’s health care under the occupation
200 children die every day

Letter from the people of Fallujah to Kofi Annan

Scott Ritter, The Guardian
The War on Iraq has made moral cowards of us all
More than 100,000 Iraqis have died in the war – and where is our shame and rage?

Nina Berman, Purple Hearts
Picture and video.
Several thousand soldiers have been wounded in action in Iraq. Thousands of others have been injured in war related events. They have lost arms, legs, eyes, ears, pieces of their brains. Some will spend the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. These soldiers — all volunteer warriors – have returned home to heal their wounds and consider life, forever scarred and changed. – Nina Berman.

Naomi Klein , The Guardian
You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is
In Iraq, the US does eliminate those who dare to count the dead.

Michael Hirsh and John Barry, Newsweek
‘The Salvador Option’
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Scott Ritter, Information Clearing House
If you had seen what I have seen
The inspection process was rigged to create uncertainty over WMD to bolster the US and UK’s case for war.

John Hughes, Christian Science Monitor
No WMD, but Saddam’s threat clear

Peter Grier & Faye Bowers, Christian Science Monitor
New details about Saddam Hussein, gleaned from the CIA.
Iraq’s dictator developed an aversion to using telephones and a penchant for writing novels as he sparred with the UN.

Matt Taibbi, New York Press
WMDUH!
Was the end of the WMD hunt last week actually ‘little noted’ or was it simply ‘little covered’?

Babylon – how could it be destroyed?

Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia
Babylon

BBC
Army base ‘has damaged Babylon’

BBC
US fears over Iraqi heritage site

Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
Destroying Babylon

Peace & future researcher + ‌Art Photographer

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