Iraqi Kurds issued a scathing rebuke of Iraq’s oil minister, who has warned companies signing deals in the north will be kept out of the rest of the country.
“Our contracts with the (international oil companies) are both constitutional and legal within the framework of the Kurdistan Oil and Gas Law, the only existing framework regulating our oil industry in the post-Saddam era,” the Kurdistan Regional Government said in a statement Tuesday.
Read the whole story by United Press International.
Read the entire KRG statement HERE.
And here’s the statements made by Shahristani in Riyadh.
Sterling Energy took in $22 million in their fundraiser for their production sharing contract work in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Saddam-era deals struck with India’s Reliance and ONGC won’t be cancelled outright, Rajeev Jayaswal reports in The Economic Times.
More on the U.S. military’s creation of a base on the oil rigs in Basra by Damien McElroy in The Telegraph.
The oil city of Kirkuk faces a tough test. A referendum for voters in Kirkuk and other so-called disputed territories to decide whether to officially join the KRG was to take place by the end of this year. It’s a hot issue, considering how much oil is in the area and how much power those who control it will wield.
The referendum, mandated by the constitution, is on track to miss the deadline.
This weekend the Parliament called for an inquiry, Eric Firkel reports in Jurist.
The city is claimed by the Kurds as historically theirs, and while many see being included in the relatively safe and prosperous KRG as a good thing, there’s a sizeable population of varying religions and ethnicities who fear being marginalized.
Also an option being tossed around, Kirkuk being formed into a region of its own, Alsumaria TV reports.
Power plants feeding Kirkuk and Mosul are running on empty, Ali al-Mawsai reports in Azzaman.
Unspinning the Surge
When violence dips, the Bush administration is quick to point to it as success, setting itself up for further failure and taking their eye off the real, and serious, situation.
Yes, violence in Anbar province, until recently laden with insurgents of many stripes, has decreased, and Baghdad itself is less restless.
However such short a stretch of slightly less violence does not a victory make. It would make sense that such fighters being targeted by the U.S. military and its partners in Iraq would not necessarily stick around and fight, especially if they’re not wanted.
Perhaps they’d at least disperse, ducking their predators, as previous targets of U.S. forces in Iraq have done. But they came back, in other places or, once U.S. pressure was off, to the spot they previously occupied.
Pauline Jelinek reports for the Associated Press that northern Iraq is the new home of the insurgents from Anbar.
And in Baghdad, there are reports from Damien Cave and Alissa J. Rubin in The New York Times that Baghdad is becoming safer.
According to a well-placed source who spoke to Iraq Oil Report, there is a calm in Baghdad. The source who lives there spent a month away and has returned. The source said it was almost eerie, that while weddings are taking place again in public, it feels temporary.
Of course, what once was a diverse city is now nearly all Shiite dominated. So it makes sense that after an ethnic cleansing (under the noses of the United States occupation) there’s no one else to force out, kidnap, torture and/or assassinate. Not quite a victory, eh?
Iraq’s forgotten front
Basra is a notable benchmark for two reasons: it’s where most of the oil is located and nearly all of oil exports are sent to market and what once was a thriving Iraqi cosmopolitan city is looking more like Tehran than Istanbul.
It’s hard to be positive on Iraq when the U.N. news service IRIN has the headline Extremists fuel anti-women violence in Basra.
“Basra is facing a new type of terror which leaves at least 10 women killed monthly, some of them are later found in garbage dumps with bullet holes while others are found decapitated or mutilated,” the city’s police chief Maj. Gen. Abdel Jalil Khalaf told IRIN in a telephone interview.
“The perpetrators are organised gangs who work under religious cover pretending to spread instructions of Islam but they are far from this religion. They are trying to impose a life style like banning women from wearing western clothes or forcing them to wear head scarf,” Khalaf said.
In September, Khalaf added, police found the body of a decapitated woman with that of her also decapitated six-year-old son lying beside her.
“We do believe that the number of murdered women is much higher as more cases go unreported by their families who fear reprisals from extremists,” he added.
The perpetrators of these trends are not on the wanted list of the United States. In fact, they’re likely on speed dial.
Sam Dagher continues his extraordinary reporting for The Christian Science Monitor with a profile of Ammar al-Hakim, the son of the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. The party is part of the governing coalition in Iraq and a distinct ally of President Bush.
From the article:
Ammar al-Hakim is presiding over an Iraqi Shiite building boom. His austere Shaheed al-Mihrab Foundation has raised 400 mosques in Iraq since 2003. It’s building the largest seminary here in the holy city of Najaf and opening a chain of schools. And it now has 95 offices throughout the country.What’s more, Mr. Hakim’s foundation is winning over adherents to his party – the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) – through all-expenses-paid mass marriages along with cash payments and gifts for the newlyweds, free education and stipends at his new schools, and an array of other charitable projects such as caring for orphans and displaced families.
All of this is being done to promote ISCI’s core vision: a federation of nine provinces where conservative Shiite Islam would reign.
While opponents say that such a federation among central and southern provinces would only hasten the breakup of Iraq and create a ministate where Iran would hold great sway, Hakim and his party are making great gains.
Security, Society and Politics
Iraqis who join the so-called insurgency are not necessarily driven by religious dogma. It’s more about hope, which U.S. bullets cannot provide. Amit R. Paley reports for the Washington Post Iraqis Joining Insurgency Less for Cause Than Cash.
Fallujah Now Under a Different Kind of Siege, Ali al-Fadhily reports for Inter Press Service.
Three years after a devastating U.S.-led siege of the city, residents of Fallujah continue to struggle with a shattered economy, infrastructure, and lack of mobility.
The city that was routed in November 2004 is still suffering the worst humanitarian conditions under a siege that continues. Although military actions are down to the minimum inside the city, local and US authorities do not seem to be thinking of ending the agonies of the over 400,000 residents of Fallujah.
“You, people of the media, say things in Fallujah are good,” Mohammad Sammy, an aid worker for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Fallujah told IPS, “Then why don’t you come and live in this paradise with us? It is so easy to say things for you, isn’t it?”
Iraq has had a tough time giving up the Saddam-style treatment of media. Al Jazeera is considered an arm of the terrorists by Baghdad. And now the Kurdistan Regional Government, which has been a shining light in the advancement of the “new” Iraq, has started to crackdown on journalists reporting on the separatist Turkish Kurds group the PKK, Iran’s Press TV reports.
The Iraq Press Roundup by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.
War Money
IraqSlogger has a recap of the Windfalls of War II report by the Center for Public Integrity. It looks at the billions of dollars to U.S. and foreign contractors, which has increased as oversight decreased.
More at the Center for Public Integrity.
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