With Salam Talib Students at Iraq's universities were to start the new school year this week – no small task given the daily barrage of violence that surrounds them. "Our ministry is the Ministry of Higher Education, so we don't have a military and we can't make...
More Dissension in the Ranks
A U.S. soldier who went AWOL – away without leave – over his opposition to the war in Iraq was incarcerated at the U.S. military's Mannheim prison in Germany Tuesday, pending an appeal in Washington this November. Augustin Aguayo's imprisonment comes less...
In Iraq, Strife Follows US Military Wherever It Goes
With Salam Talib Few in Iraq have experienced sectarian violence more than residents of Samarra, an ancient, mid-sized city on the Tigris River northwest of Baghdad. For centuries, the areas Sunni majority had lived at peace with its Shi'ite minority – but in...
I’m a Veteran, and I Support/Despise This War
The 2006 U.S. congressional elections are heating up, along with a proliferation of television ads featuring U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I'm a veteran," a series of plainclothes men and women say into the camera in an attack ad...
Doctors Under Fire in Iraq
With Salam Talib Until two weeks ago, Ali Falah worked as an emergency room doctor in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. The city, which is ethnically mixed but dominated by two Kurdish militias, has been the scene of increased sectarian violence. Most doctors left...
Iraqi Journalists Caught in Crossfire
With Salam Talib The U.S. released three Iraqi journalists from prison over the weekend. The three were arrested together in a single sweep by U.S. troops last Wednesday. Among them, was Fadel al-Badrani, a reporter for the BBC and Reuters news agency who has reported...
‘NO USA’: Korean Farmers Continue to Protest US Base Expansion
Dozens of South Koreans took to the streets of Washington, DC Thursday in support of small farmers forced to relocate to make way for a massive new U.S. military base in their country. President George W. Bush was meeting with his South Korean counterpart just steps...
New Leaders, Similar Story at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib
Fresh allegations of brutality are being reported from inside the walls of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which was transferred from U.S. military to Iraqi government control on September 1st. Sa'dik al-Hasnawi, who heads up Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's offices in the...
Former Soviet Republics Give Up Nukes; US Objects
The Bush administration is objecting to a groundbreaking treaty that set up a nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia. Under the treaty signed Friday, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan committed themselves not to produce, buy, or allow...
Iraq: Media Dead Zone
with Salam TalibIn Iraq, the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars is accusing the US military of carrying out a massacre during a pre-dawn raid in a small village Northeast of Baghdad. The Association said the raid, which was carried out on Monday in Muqtadadiya, left...