Iraq’s cabinet has given the green light to the Oil Ministry to sign agreements with international oil companies to help increase the nation’s crude output, a ministry official said Wednesday, The Associated Press reports.
The chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee said on Tuesday he may try to require Iraq to spend more of its oil revenue on reconstruction instead of investing the money in foreign banks, Richard Cowan reports for Reuters.
A Chicago fundraiser charged with angling kickbacks from state contractors has been accused of a $1.5 million bribe for an Iraqi electricity security deal, United Press International reports. He allegedly paid it through his new company called Companion Security to Iraq Electricity Minister Aiham al-Samaraie, a classmate of Rezko at the Illinois Institute of Technology two decades ago.
Iraq will continue its policy of hiring locals to protect new oil and gas infrastructure, especially pipelines, its oil minister said, UPI reports. Such a policy, along with construction of better security infrastructure around pipelines, is assumed responsible for increasing production and exports in Iraq’s northern infrastructure.
A one-man producer of power: Ibrahim Kazim is a brilliant producer of electricity in the Balakayati area, Kamal Chomani reports for The Kurdish Globe. With 24-hour-a-day power, hydroelectricity in Choman district keeps its residents warm or cool, all year long. Ibrahim Kazim, 34, from the region’s Choman district near the Iranian border, never finished high school. Nevertheless, he has provided power for 65 villages in the district by producing hydroelectricity.
In March 2003, shortly after the United States invaded Iraq, women’s rights and gender equity were mentioned as symbolic issues for Iraq’s new national agenda. However, as the overall situation in Iraq began to deteriorate after the invasion, the focus on women was lost in the problems and violence facing the country as a whole. When it came time to transform symbolism into action by articulating support and solutions for the most pressing national issues, women’s issues were considered an afterthought at best, a distraction from the “real” issues at worst, according to the new report Stronger Women, Stronger Nations which decries the state of women’s rights in the new Iraq.
Women are Terrorised in Basra
Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, militias have been circulating in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, killing and torturing those seen to be an obstacle to the establishment of an Islamist state. Ambulance drivers know that more than 15 women are killed each and every month. Most are mostly professional women.
The point to the killing and violence is to keep women home and to restrain their participation in political and social life. The Iraqi Women’s League calls for the following actions to be taken to stop the violence:
1. Send an international fact-finding mission to Iraq that is organized by the UN High Commission for Human Rights. Such a mission should investigate crimes against women, help the Iraqi authorities identify the perpetrators, and to stop the crimes;
2. Reveal the criminals and those backing them, and bring them to justice;
3. Disclose the outcome of the investigations;
4. Take measures to safeguard personal freedoms that are constitutionally guaranteed;
5. Take deterrent measures to ensure the safety of citizens and protect their lives; and
6. Act firmly to improve the conditions of women and facilitate their involvement in the reconstruction process.
A Kurdish academic who served as Iraqi labour minister in the 1970s was gunned down near the disputed northern oil city of Kirkuk today, police said, Thomson Financial reports.
The conflict between Sahwa forces and the Iraqi government in Diyala has resulted in more power for the Sahwa. Tensions rose in early February when men dressed in Iraqi security personnel uniforms kidnapped two women. Their naked bodies were found later, Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail report for Inter Press Service. Before and after that incident, Sahwa forces have accused the police chief of Diyala province Ghanim al-Qureyshi of allowing Shia militiamen and death squads to operate with impunity against Sunnis.
Read Iraq’s editorial pages in the Iraq Press Roundup, by UPI’s Hiba Dawood.
Inside Iraqi Politics, a new series by The Long War Journal.
Part 2: A Look at Executive Branch Progress — examines the efforts by Iraq’s executive branch to improve services and achieve reconciliation, including an in-depth profile of the Iraqi Implementation and Follow-Up Committee for National Reconciliation and the Baghdad Services Committee, special bodies appointed by Prime Minister Maliki.
Tomorrow – Part 3: Examining the Iraqi legislative branch.
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