Aaron Glantz

ARBIL – A year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the mountains and plains of northern Iraq are still covered in landmines planted by the former Iraqi dictator’s regime during the 1980s. That is when he fought a decade-long war with Iran and many battles with Kurdish guerrillas. The Red Cross has made thousands of … Continue reading “Saddam’s Enablers May Also Go on Trial”

BAGHDAD (IPS) – The Iraq issue today may never have arisen if it were not for the support former U.S. president Ronald Reagan gave Saddam Hussein. Reagan died Saturday June 5 in his Los Angeles home. Reagan’s two terms as President correspond roughly to the Iran-Iraq war, the longest conventional war of the 20th century. … Continue reading “Iraqi General: US Helped Us as We Used Chemical Weapons”

ARBIL, Iraq (IPS) – And now the United States is running into difficulties in Northern Iraq where it has enjoyed the support of the largely Kurd population. Since the 1991 Gulf War whole swaths of Northern Iraq have been controlled by two Kurdish militias, the guerrilla armies of Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and … Continue reading “Kurds Worry About Future”

ARBIL, Iraq, (IPS) – Fruit and vegetable vendors push their carts around a street market in Arbil, the seat of governance of Iraqi Kurdistan. The city is very different from Baghdad. Kurdish is spoken here, and written large on shop windows. Also, there is no visible American troop presence. The streets are patrolled not by … Continue reading “Liberated Kurds Find Little Freedom”

BAGHDAD, (IPS) – Largely lost amidst the horrors of the graphic torture photographs that continue to emerge out of Abu Ghraib is a leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross published a few weeks ago by the Wall Street Journal. In its report, the ICRC, the only organization besides the United States … Continue reading “They Should Never Have Been in Prison”

Dozens of followers of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr sing songs of martyrdom as they carry the coffins of two of their slain comrades into the shrine of the revered Imam Ali in the Iraqi holy city, Najaf. Every night, Sadr’s fighters engage in pitched battles with the US military which has placed its tanks and … Continue reading “US Troops Marching In Saddam’s Footsteps”

A team of local volunteers wearing surgical masks lifts the rotting body of a middle-aged woman from a shallow grave in the front yard of a house. The house owner says the body lay there three weeks. A U.S. aircraft bombed her car as she fled the city with her husband. The husband was buried … Continue reading “Fallujah: Victory Rises Above a Mass Grave”

As the U.S. military continues to clash with Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army in the holy city Najaf, the mid-day call to prayer sounds in the poor, Shia neighborhood Showle in Baghdad. A group of residents crowd around a cigarette stand to explain to the US army reporter what happened when the Army came … Continue reading “Iraq: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People”

The treatment of Iraqi prisoners apparent from the CBS pictures is not the American way of doing things, US President George W. Bush declared Friday. But the indications on the ground in Iraq are that such treatment may not be the exception. Bush said he will “take care” of the soldiers pictured laughing and lording … Continue reading “Iraq Prisoners Are at Least Survivors”