GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The US Department of Defense is trying to track down $2 billion in unaccounted spending in Iraq, new figures from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction show. The SIGIR was created in 2004 to oversee the country’s reconstruction programme. Last October some $6 billion was reported missing but it was eventually accounted for, US media reports at the time indicated.
The latest lost-funds case centres around documents that have gone missing despite internal checks and controls, reports CNN: “The Iraqi government in 2004 gave the Department of Defense access to about $3 billion to pay bills for certain contracts, and the department can only show what happened to about a third of that.”
Links to other sites: CNBC, SIGIR 30 January quarterly report, pdf,
Uganda landmine survivors met in March 2012 (photo ©2011 Landmine Monitor / D Osman)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – There is some good news on the landmine front, the “Landmine & Cluster Munitions Monitor 2011″ (full report online), issued 23 November reports, but it is dampened by news that three countries laid landmines this year, with two of them, Israel and Libya confirmed.
Myanmar is the third suspect, and four non-state armed groups laid mines as well.
Record ordnance cleared
On the brighter side:
- at least 200km2 of mined areas were cleared by 45 mine action programs in 2010, the highest annual total ever recorded by the Monitor; 198km2 in 2009, the previous record, and 160 km2 in 2008
- more than 388,000 antipersonnel mines and over 27,000 anti-vehicle mines were destroyed during this clearance
- programmes in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Croatia, Iraq, and Sri Lanka together accounted for more than 80% of recorded clearance
- an additional 460km2 of former battle area was reportedly cleared, destroying in the process more than 1.2 million items of unexploded ordnance; largest totals: Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Lao PDR.
Eighty percent of the world’s nation, 158 countries, have now joined the Landmine Ban Treaty. Donor contributions for mine action rose to $637 million, a record high, with 31 countries contributing. Five main mine action donors—the US, European Commission, Japan, Norway, and Canada—accounted for 64% of all funding.
Eighty-seven states have completed the destruction of their stockpiles, including Iraq, who was added to the list in June 2011.
5% increase in new victims
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – For the third day, Friday 21 October, Turkish jets kept up bombing raids on Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq overnight, as the rebels confirmed that some Turkish troops crossed into Iraq.
Also on Friday, Turkey and Iran vowed to collaborate in their fight against Kurdish rebels.
About 10,000 elite Turkish soldiers took part in a ground offensive against Kurdish rebels, making it the nation’s largest attack on the insurgents in more than three years, the Turkisk military said.
Links to: Newsday, Associated Press.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The mystery and confusion surrounding 10,000 requests for asylum by Iraqi citizens in 2006 that were reportedly never treated by the Swiss government continues. TSR public television reporting 30 September that new information it obtained shows no one at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees told the Swiss representative to Syria at the time that he could ignore the requests, as he has claimed.
Federal Councillor Simonetta Somaruga brought the case to light in August, demanding an investigation. The report is expected by the end of the year.
Jacques de Watteville, the Swiss representative in Syria in 2006, was under instructions from the Federal Office for Migration, according to TSR, to handle the overwhelming number of asylum requests from Iraq, but he had no budget for this and he appears to have taken his concerns to the UNHCR. He replied to the IOM that the UN refugee organization said the letters did not need to be dealt with, but it remains unclear if this referred to all asylum requests. There appears to have been confusion about the role the UNHCR would play in accepting refugees in a camp in Syria, which did not exist at the time of the correspondence.
Source: UNHCR, Geneva, 28 March 2011 (click on image to view larger)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of asylum seekers in the world has been halved in the past 10 years, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says in its 2010 annual asylum report issued early Monday 27 March. Whether this is good news or bad is difficult to judge, concedes the Geneva-based organization’s head.
“The global dynamics of asylum are changing. Asylum claims in the industrialized world are much lower than a decade ago while year-on-year levels are up in only a handful of countries,” notes High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “We need to study the root causes to see if the decline is because of fewer push factors in areas of origin, or tighter migration control in countries of asylum.”
He notes that developing countries still host the lion’s share of applications, and asks that other countries continue to support countries like Liberia, Tunisia and Egypt who are hosting large numbers of asylum seekers due to conflicts in neighbouring countries.
The report covers 44 countries that are destinations for asylum seekers.
US remains most popular host country
Switzerland was the 8th most popular country, with 13,800 applicants.
The report states that 358,800 asylum applications were made to industrialized countries last year, a 5 percent fall from 2009, and some 42 percent lower than the decade’s peak in 2001, when almost 620,000 asylum applications were made.
The US is the top destination for asylum seekers, for the fifth year in a row, followed by France, Germany, Sweden and Canada. These five countries accounted for 56 percent of all applications.
US numbers of new applicants were boosted by requests for asylum by more Chinese and Mexicans, while France saw an increase in applicants from Serbia, Russia and Congo. Germany saw an influx from Serbia, notably Kosovo, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The UNHCR says the “development is widely attributed to the introduction of visa-free entry to the European Union for nationals of these two countries since December 2009.”
Serbia has highest number of applicants
Serbia was the country with the highest number of applicants, 28,900, which the UNHCR says is almost as high as in 2001, “soon after teh Kosovo crisis”.
Several changes have taken place, including:
- the number of applications from Afghans fell by 9 percent and whereas in the past Norway and the UK were the main destinations, Germany and Sweden have become the top hosts
- Chinese asylum-seekers made up the third-largest asylum group in 2010, partly due to a substantial drop in the number of new applications from Iraq and Somalia
- for the first time since 2005, Iraq was not one of the top two countries of origin of asylum-seekers. It dropped to fourth place, followed by the Russian Federation
- Somalia, which occupied the third spot in 2009, fell to sixth in 2010.
The Guardian has broken the cover on Curveball, the Iraq engineer who defected to Germany in 1995, providing its secret service, the BND, with stories of biological weapons in Iraq in 2000. Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi’s tales, now unmasked as fabrications in a series of interviews with the British newspaper, were cited by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in a historic speech to the United Nations 3 February 2003. Powell used the information, shared by the German government against al-Janabi’s wishes, to justify US military interventon in Iraq. Al-Janabi says he does not regret making up the stories because his actions contributed to the downfall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Links to other sites: AFP, Jerusalem Post, NowPublic, Mirror, UK, Reuters
Police in the UK are searching a property in Luton, Bedfordshire 13 December believed to have belonged to a man found dead in the street in Stockholm after two cars exploded there Saturday 11 December. Two people were injured in the attacks, the first such attack in Sweden. Swedish police have not released the name of the man believed to be the suicide bomber whose body was discovered near one of the cars that exploded in a busy downtown shopping area. He is believed to be an Iraqi who moved to Sweden in 1992 and is said to have attended Bedfordshire University.
Emails received by a Swedish news agency contained voice messages in Swedish and Arabic complaining of the Swedish military presence in Afghanistan and of a Swedish cartoonist who drew blasphemous images of the prophet Mohammed. Sweden had been spared the type of terrorist attacks that have struck London and Madrid.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg, Daily Telegraph, Globe & Mail
Source: Al-Jazeera
Baghdad on Tuesday 2 November went through its worst day of attacks in months, with suicide bombers striking several areas at the same time, killing scores of people (unconfirmed numbers vary from 20 to 80) and injuring many more (unconfirmed numbers vary from 150-300) several news agencies are reporting. There is confusion over the number of blasts, but fear of a revived insurgency appears to be growing among officials and media closely following Iraq since the US pulled out earlier in 2010. The east side of the city was under curfew as night fell, Iraqi government authorities say.
Updates from Guardian, AP/Washington Post, Reuters
The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned a roadside bombing on the convoy of the UN’s senior representative in the southern city of Najaf, Iraq, Tuesday 19 October. One person on the convoy’s security detail was killed and several others injured. None of the UN staff was hurt.
Ad Melkert, the UN’s senior diplomat in Iraq, was returning to the airport at 16:00 after meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most revered Shiite cleric, in an attempt to break the political logjam, since inconclusive elections in March.
Iraqi security sources said the target of the bomb may have been the Najaf chief of police who was travelling in the convoy. Roadside bombings are still common in Iraq. Six were recorded on Tuesday.
Links to other sites: Al-Jazeera, Christian Science Monitor, New York Times
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Sarah Shourd, 32, one of three hikers who were arrested by Iran in July 2009 for spying after they crossed into Iran from Iraq at an unmarked border, has been seen leaving prison, and it’s been confirmed on a web site run by the hikers’ family, that she was headed for the Swiss embassy in Teheran. Shourd was earlier today reported by Iranian public media to have been released. The US State Department told CNN that it could not confirm the information. The Swiss government, which represents American interests in Iran, has maintained its information blackout on the case.
Shourd has a medical condition that was there before her arrest but she has developed a lump in her breast according to her lawyer, and a judge in Teheran told Iranian television that she is being released for medical reasons.
Switzerland reportedly deposited $500,000 in bail for Shourd, according to the Iranian judge handling the case.
Her fiance, Shane Bauer, 28, and Josh Fattal, 28, remain in prison. Iran officials say they have indicted the hikers since investigations were completed recently. US officials say they believe the trio is innocent.
Mark Toner, acting US deputy spokesperson for the State Department, said at a 9 September briefing, when asked about the hikers, “our reaction is that we don’t know, frankly, what Iran is contemplating at this point. We have reached out through the Swiss protecting powers to try to find out more about this. Obviously, if this is—if this turns out to be true, this is terrific news. The hikers’ release is long overdue. And I would just stress that we hope that it’s all three hikers.”
Links to other sites: CNN, hikers’ families site and freethehikers on Facebook
International news
Kuwait, (GenevaLunch) – The last US combat brigade in Iraq withdrew from Iraq to Kuwait two weeks before the announced deadline. An estimated 50,000 troops will remain in training and security roles until 2011. The New York Times reports that private contractors will replace US troops in many functions.
US combat forces will be leaving Iraq, “on time, as promised” President Barack Obama told a veterans’ group Monday 2 August.
Tens of thousands of troops still in Iraq are being pulled out and will be gone by 31 August. The end of the war that cost $800 billion coincides with the arrival in Afghanistan of 30,000 additional US troops, and the insistence by Obama on the timing of the end of the war in Iraq is being widely perceived in the media as an effort to calm fears that the US role in Afghanistan will drag on longer than promised.
Links to other sites: The Globe & Mail, Canada, New York Times, National Public Radio, Xinhua
Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the bombing to a TV station in Baghdad earlier this week.
The suicide attack which claimed the lives of six people, took place on Monday 26 July at the headquarters of Al-Arabiya a pan-Arab broadcaster
Al-Arabiya is a popular TV channel in the Middle East but, according to news reports, is perceived by insurgents as being pro-Western.
Today, 29 July, a roadside bomb exploded in Fallujah, 65 kilometers west of Baghdad, wounding five Iraqi soldiers.
Additional details: Associated Press
An alleged high-ranking Al Qaeda leader has been killed in Iraq. According to the Iraqi military the unidentified man was killed during a joint operation Iraq-US operation.
Other links: Associated Press
Amnesty International 30 March published its annual statistics on the death penalty worldwide, saying that in 2009 “at least 714 people were executed in 18 countries and at least 2001 people were sentenced to death in 56 countries,” but that the figures do not include China, which it accuses of putting to death “thousands” of people. The organization generally estimates the number of dead, but this year refuses to do so, saying it is up to China to publish its figures. China tops its lists for sentencing the most people to death, followed by “Iran with at least 388 executions, Iraq at least 120, Saudi Arabia at least 69 and the USA with 52.”
China’s Supreme Court reportedly sent guidelines to lower courts early in 2010 encouraging them to limit use of the death penalty only in the most severe cases.
Links to other sites: Amnesty International, Reuters, Xinhua
Iraq’s former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, appears to have won the presidential election in Iraq by just two votes but Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki says he will not accept the election results. Allawi has offered to form a government with Al-Maliki, but there is some confusion over how this fits in with Iraq’s constitution.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, Business Week, NPR
© Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Nearly 200,000 Iraqis who live outside their country as displaced persons, but in the region, could have help from the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) to vote in upcoming elections. The Geneva-based organization has told the Iraqi Election Commission (IHEC), in response to a demand it made, that the UNHCR “stands ready to facilitate the participation of Iraqi refugees living in the countries neighbouring Iraq.”
The UNHCR will work with the government to provide demographic data on the registered Iraqis, inform them of their rights for the elections, and provide logistical support. The organization calls the 7 March elections “a major opportunity to consolidate national reconciliation.”
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair made a long-awaited appearance Friday morning 29 January in front of a war panel reviewing how and why the country entered a war with Iraq. A key factor, he has told the panel, was the changed perception of risk after the attacks of 11 September 2001. Blair is appearing in an all-day session until 17:00 UK time; the panel can be seen live on BBC.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, a first cousin to Saddam Hussein and one of the former dictator’s most trusted henchman, has been sentenced to die for a fourth time. He was sentenced 17 January for his role in the 1988 gas attack on a Kurdish village which killed about 5,000 people. He is currently being held in a US detention centre, but will be handed over to Iraqi authorities within days. The death sentence is expected to be carried out days later.
He was sentenced previously for a campaign by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds, and for putting down a Shiite rebellion in 1991 following the first Gulf War, as well as the displacement and killing of Shiites in 1999.
Other links: The Guardian, New York Times
Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo, who heads US troops in northern Iraq, has told his soldiers they risk being court-martialed for becoming pregnant or impregnating another soldier. The decision was made, he told his 22,000 troops, because every soldier is needed. “Anyone who leaves this fight earlier than the expected 12-month deployment creates a burden on their teammates. Anyone who leaves this fight early because they made a personal choice that changed their medical status – or contributes to doing that to another – is not in keeping with a key element of our ethos,” he told troops.
Update 05:05 More than 150 people are dead and 520 wounded as a result of two suicide bombs that went off in the Green Zone, also known as the International Zone, in the centre of Baghdad, Iran, Sunday 25 October mid-morning. The bombers drove trucks into an area where security has been eased in recent weeks, then parked them shortly before detonating the bombs. US President Barack Obama expressed outrage at the simple hatefulness behind the work, while Iraq authorities have blamed neighbouring countries, reports Reuters: “a reference to Iraqi complaints that Syria provides a safe haven for former Baathists while citizens of other Sunni Muslim states help fund the insurgency in Iraq. Iran, meanwhile, has been accused of funding and arming Shi’ite militia.”
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, BBC, Bloomberg, CNN, Reuters
CNN video
It was a size ten shoe
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Iraqi journalist who spent nine months in prison for throwing his shoes at former President George W. Bush has been granted a three-month tourist visa from the Swiss embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.
Muntadar al-Zaidi was convicted of attacking a foreign leader and sentenced to three years in prison. This was reduced to one year on appeal and he was released early for good behaviour. Al-Zaidi claims to have been tortured in prison, and has said that he cannot live in Iraq.
Links to other sites:Le Temps, Romandie News
A pre-dawn commando raid 8 September by British paratroopers to rescue two NY Times reporters from their Taliban kidnappers in Kunduz province of Afghanistan ended in the release of the British-Irish journalist, Stephen Farrell, and the death of his Afghan colleague and interpreter, Sultan Munadi. A British paratrooper, an Afghan soldier, the owner of the house the hostages were being held in, and an unidentified woman, reportedly the house owner’s sister-in-law, were also killed.
Farrell and Munadi were captured 5 September when they were in a Taliban-controlled area without a military escort investigating the airstrike on two hijacked fuel tankers ordered by Nato troops 4 September in which up to 90 people were killed, many of them civilians taking fuel from the trucks, which were stuck in the river.
The commando raid was praised by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but some commentators say that negotiations were underway with the kidnappers, and their release was imminent. Farrell was briefly held by insurgents while working for the The Times in Iraq in 2004. The Guardian,Kansas City Star, NY Times
© British Red Cross/Ash Sweeting/af-
Geneva, Switzerland and Washington DC (GenevaLunch) – The US military has begun a policy of handing over to the International Red Cross (ICRC) the names of detainees held in two camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, the New York Times reports. ICRC has broad access to all detainees held by the US military, but two camps that are part of the US Defense Department’s Special Operations programme are off-limits, until the detainees are formally transferred to a prison in either country. The military name for the camps is “temporary screening sites”, camps in which high-level combat detainees are interrogated. The new policy affects about 30 to 40 prisoners at any time in camps at Balad, Iraq and Bagram air force base in Afghanistan, according to the newspaper, which cites unnamed sources.
© 2009 OCHA
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva observes the first world humanitarian day today 19 August to coincide with the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN’s top official in Iraq who died in 2003 along with 21 others in a bomb explosion at UN headquarters in Baghdad. As headquarters of the UN in Europe, Geneva is holding an event in the Parc des Bastions this afternoon at 17:00 which includes officials from the UN and the city and canton of Geneva. Many organizations involved in humanitarian work have set up stands to demonstrate their work, and there will be concerts of classical and jazz music.
Car and truck bombs going off in several parts of Iraq since Friday have killed at least 75 people and injured scores more, as the country struggles to maintain security in the wake of US troops leaving urban areas to local police and Awakening Councils. Reports are still unclear about the magnitude of the lastest attacks, two car bombs in Baghdad and two truck bombs near Mosul Monday morning. Al Jazeera, BBC,
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Three experienced hikers who strayed into Iran, crossing over an unmarked border with Iraq, have been detained by authorities in Iran. Swiss diplomatic representatives have asked Iran for access to the three, in Switzerland’s role as representative of American interests in Iran, the Swiss Foreign Affairs Ministry in Bern told GenevaLunch. The US and Iran do not have diplomatic relations. Bern will not confirm whether or not they have been able to meet with the three and a spokesperson says that even if a meeting takes place there will be no confirmation unless the US State Department decides to announce it.
According to CNN “Kurdish officials identified the detained hikers Sunday as Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal. The fourth hiker, Shon Meckfessel, stayed behind in Iraq,” feeling unwell. The three were hiking in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Goodwill ambassador Jolie with a resident of Chikook, Baghdad © UNHCR
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – UNHCR’s goodwill ambassador, Angelina Jolie, paid a visit to some of the estimated 1.6 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Iraq Thursday 23 July, her third to the country.
Jolie spoke to some families in the Chikook camp northwest of Bagdhad which houses 20,000 people, mostly women and children, displaced by sectarian violence that wracked the country beginning in 2006.
Drought but mainly poor water management is causing the Euphrates River to dry up and it is now about half the size it was just a few years ago, writes Campbell Robertson in a New York Times feature. One result is that Iraq has increased its grain imports, but the issue is also causing tensions to rise between Iraq and its neighbours, notably Turkey and Syria.
