Murky Candidacy Stokes Iraq’s Sectarian Fears

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By MARC SANTORA and MICHAEL R. GORDON

BAGHDAD — A politician widely accused of running death squads might not be expected to have an easy time running for public office.

But this is Iraq. In a nation sadly inured to years of sectarian bloodletting, Hakim al-Zamili not only has a place on a prominent Shiite election slate, but stands poised to win a place in the Parliament, as early voting began Thursday morning for the infirm, people with special needs and members of the military and the police.

It is an astonishing turnabout that shows the limits of political reconciliation. While some Sunni candidates have been barred from running in the election for their alleged support of the Baath Party, Mr. Zamili’s candidacy has provoked nary a protest from the nation’s leading Shiite politicians. That runs the risk that Shiite leaders will be seen as taking steps against only those who persecuted Shiites, not Sunnis.

Mr. Zamili’s new political role has heightened concerns that for all the talk of cross-sectarian alliances among some Shiite and Sunni factions, Iraq may be unable to firmly break with its troubled past.

The embrace of his candidacy “sends the worst possible message to loyal Iraqis,” said one American official who was involved in a fruitless effort to convict Mr. Zamili at a high-profile trialin 2008. He spoke on the condition that he not be identified because he was not authorized to comment on Iraqi political developments.

Sitting inside his ramshackle campaign headquarters in Sadr City, Mr. Zamili insisted that the charges against him were no more than politically motivated fabrications. But he was unapologetic about the attacks that Shiite militias like Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army carried out in past years against the Americans and Sunni insurgents.

“Many people in politics understand that resistance was our right because we were occupied,” he said. “We had a duty to protect the people from the U.S. forces and the attacks of terrorists.”

Now that American troops are withdrawing, Mr. Zamili, the dark circles under his eyes giving him a worn look even when he smiles, said it was time to abandon armed struggle. As candidate No. 15 on the Iraqi National Alliance slate, he is part of a coalition that includes Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the former prime minister, and Ahmed Chalabi, the longtime political survivor who led the effort to disbar Sunni candidates and who draws support, American officials charge, from Iran.

“They thought they would end the Sadrist movement, but we persevered,” Mr. Zamili said.

Several years ago Mr. Zamili was a protagonist in a very different drama. The Ministry of Health and the hospitals that it oversaw were some of the first institutions that Mr. Sadr’s supporters controlled after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Zamili, American officials say, was appointed to his ministry post with Mr. Sadr’s backing.

According to the inquiry that led to Mr. Zamili’s trial, the ministry’s protection service was used as a private militia to kidnap and kill hundreds of Sunnis from 2005 to early 2007. A deputy health minister, Ammar al-Saffar, who was gathering data on abuses at the ministry, disappeared before he could turn over his findings to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. He vanished after telling associates that Mr. Zamili had threatened him.

Mr. Zamili was arrested in early 2007 after Mr. Maliki had a falling out with Mr. Sadr. American officials worked closely with Iraqi officials to build a case that Mr. Zamili was involved in murder, kidnapping and corruption. His trial was to be the first of a high-ranking Shiite official for sectarian crimes — an event, one American official asserted, that would be as important in establishing the rule of law in Iraq as the trial of Saddam Hussein.

After a two-day trial, marred by accusations of witness intimidation, the charges were dropped and Mr. Zamili was freed after spending more than a year in American custody.

Mr. Zamili denied in the interview that he had ever orchestrated the kidnappings and killings. “They accused me of fueling the violence,” he said. “Each and every person resisting and opposed to the occupation is a terrorist, a thief, a criminal,” he said dismissively.

As it turns out, he said, his arrest actually was a political boon. He has trumpeted his position at the Health Ministry in his campaign. Quoting Gandhi, he has portrayed himself as a political martyr. “It was a benefit to me because people related to me,” he said. “They saw me suffering. And suffering is good for the soul.”

The families of those he stood accused of ordering murdered say they are aghast. Ali al-Saffar, Mr. Saffar’s son, said in a telephone interview from London that Mr. Jaafari had been a family friend and that when he met with the former prime minister three years ago Mr. Jaafari acknowledged receiving information linking Mr. Zamili to his father’s disappearance.

“Despite their emphasis on personal morality, they have sadly shown they are willing to forfeit their ideals in the pursuit of power, including by welcoming into their ranks people like Hakim al-Zamili,” Mr. Saffar said, referring to the Iraqi National Alliance slate.

Manal Finjan, a candidate in the election and a spokeswoman for Mr. Jaafari’s list, said the courts had exonerated Mr. Zamili, and he should therefore be treated like any other candidate.

“We actually deal with people on the basis of evidence and documents,” she said. “He was acquitted by the court, and anybody who has evidence against him could go to the proper authorities.”

While Mr. Zamili is now a player in the political game, he did not rule out the possibility that the militias might be once again called on to defend the people. “If there were a bad situation, an increase in attacks, the continuation of unjust arrests, they will force us to defend ourselves and our leaders,” he said.

This may be a bit of bravado. Support for the Sadrists drained as Iraqis tired of violence and sectarian killings. But judging by the mood of the dozens of young men in the muddied track suits that were once the unofficial uniform of the Mahdi Army, some seem willing to return to the fight.

Before Mr. Zamili arrived, they had just received news — later denied by aides to Mr. Maliki — that a court had reissued an arrest warrant for Mr. Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, should he return to Iraq. As angry denunciations rang in the smoke-filled room, one burly young man made it clear that Sadrists would not stand for any such action.

“We had Maliki surrounded in Basra when he visited and could not get him,” he said. “But this time, if this report is true, we will go to the Green Zone and pull him out by his head and roll him in the street.”

Filipino Politicians Wield Private Armies, Despite Ban

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

Published: February 20, 2010

REINA REGENTE, the Philippines — Tata Uy and a dozen members of his militia were milling around their base, a bullet-pocked mosque on a hill overlooking forests and farmland here in the southern Philippines. Mr. Uy pointed to a spot a couple of miles away where gunmen loyal to his uncle were holed up.

Jes Aznar for The New York Times

A member of a militia formed by Tata Uy, whose family owns farmland in Reina Regente, in the southern Philippines.

As one of his men patrolled the area on a water buffalo, a rifle slung over his shoulder, Mr. Uy (pronounced OO-ey) explained that he and his uncle had a falling out four years ago. But skirmishes escalated to full-blown fighting last year after he made it clear that he intended to run against his uncle, a local mayor, in an election this year.

The decision was not an easy one. “He’s my uncle, after all,” said Mr. Uy, 40, adding that it was not made any easier by his uncle’s vow to kill him.

He has now built up his militia to 40 men. “If it weren’t for my private army,” he said, “I’d be dead by now.”

Mr. Uy is a rare politician in the Philippines, one who does not deny having a private army. As the country prepares for nationwide elections in May, politicians are expected to use these militias, as they have in the past, to safeguard their interests, intimidate rivals, rig votes and perpetuate the control of family dynasties throughout the country.

But even as half a dozen political candidates have been assassinated throughout the country in recent weeks, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has pledged to eradicate private armies by Election Day. Critics are skeptical, though, not just because previous governments have failed at similar attempts.

They say they doubt Mrs. Arroyo’s sincerity, pointing to her government’s past support of private armies and saying that she was only responding to the international outcry over one of the country’s worst acts of political violence. In November, in a town not far from here, militiamen loyal to the powerful Ampatuan clan — staunch Arroyo allies — massacred 57 people, including journalists and relatives of a political rival to the Ampatuans. The clan’s patriarch and several of his sons were indicted this month.

Private armies have flourished especially here on Mindanao, the country’s southernmost major island, where Muslim and Communist insurgents have battled the military for decades and American soldiers have hunted for members of Abu Sayyaf, the terrorist group, since 2002. Philippine governments have supported local politicians with private armies to help suppress insurgents and Islamic radicals, and these conflicts often become inextricably linked with clan warfare.

An independent commission established to disband the private armies has identified 74 of them, though other government officials have said twice as many exist. They operate in areas that are home to 7.8 million registered voters, out of a national total of 50 million, said Dante Jimenez, a member of the commission.

“If we don’t contain the private armies, there is the risk that there won’t be fair elections in these hot spots,” Mr. Jimenez said. “In a tight presidential election, the private armies in one region could tip the balance.”

That is precisely what is believed to have happened in 2004 when Mrs. Arroyo was in a close race for the presidency. Widespread fraud occurred here in the southern province of Maguindanao, the fief of the Ampatuans, the clan accused of being behind the November massacre.

Here in Reina Regente, a barangay or village in Maguindanao, the feud between the nephew and uncle began four years ago, according to the nephew, news media reports, local politicians and officials with a neutral cease-fire monitoring group. The uncle, Samir Uy, could not be reached for comment.

Early last decade, the uncle appointed the nephew as chief of another district village — technically an elected position.

“In Mindanao, the mayors choose the barangay chiefs and expect them to follow orders,” said Don Mangansakan, 31, the vice mayor of Pikit, a nearby town. “Tata didn’t listen to the wishes of his uncle, who got rid of him. It’s as simple as that.”

Further defying his uncle, Tata Uy ran unsuccessfully for chief in Reina Regente, his hometown, where his family is the largest landowner, with 124 acres. He said he began forming his own militia, spending $65,000 to buy 45 weapons over the years and recruiting 40 men, including some who worked on his land.

Such a force would rank as medium-size, said Mr. Jimenez of the commission. There are only a handful of truly large private armies — like the 400- to 600-member force belonging to the Ampatuans — all of them concentrated here in the south.

Experts say private armies are typically composed of moonlighting police officers, soldiers, Muslim rebels and average citizens. In 2006, Mrs. Arroyo issued an executive order that made it easier for local politicians to form private armies, or “civilian volunteer organizations,” to battle Muslim insurgents. But one result was that it also allowed ambitious clans to build up militias rapidly for their own use.

Here, family feuds not only become a proxy for the battle between the military and Muslim insurgents, but also fuel that conflict. In Mr. Uy’s case, he began developing ties with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a rebel group that advocates secession, though he says he is not part of the insurgency. His uncle has been allied with the government and the military.

In May, after Mr. Uy unequivocally stated his goal of unseating his uncle as the local mayor, his tractor ended up at the bottom of a river. That message was soon followed by two weeks of fighting with guns and mortars, pitting his uncle’s private army and the military against the nephew’s militia and hundreds of fighters from the Moro rebel group.

Most of Reina Regente’s 500 families fled, joining the thousands of refugees from other clashes in overcrowded camps.

Nowadays, Tata Uy said, he is preparing for the start of the campaign next month and is continuing to buy weapons with his farming profits. He said he had heard about the president’s campaign to ban private armies. “It’s a good idea,” he said, pausing, “but it’s not going to work.”

Critics of Mrs. Arroyo, who cannot run again because of term limits, said she had rejected demands to rescind her executive order easing the creation of militias, raising questions about her effort against private armies.

“If she was serious, she would have tried to do something about the private armies sooner,” said Alex B. Brillantes Jr., a political scientist at the University of the Philippines in Manila. “It’s too little, too late.”

Assaults Sustained in E. Congo - washingtonpost.com

Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr

By Carley Petesch
Associated Press
Wednesday, October 14, 2009

JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 13 -- More than 1,000 civilians have been killed and nearly 900,000 displaced in eastern Congo by Rwandan Hutu militiamen and Congolese forces since January, humanitarian groups said Tuesday.

The report released by a coalition of 84 organizations said that many of the killings were carried out by Rwandan Hutu militiamen. Congolese government soldiers also have targeted civilians, the report said.

A Congolese military operation has been aimed at forcing out the Hutu militiamen, many of whom sought refuge in neighboring Congo after participating in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, which killed more than 500,000 people.

But the groups said Tuesday that the military operation, which is backed by a U.N. peacekeeping force, is not doing enough to protect civilians in the region.

"The human rights and humanitarian consequences of the current military operation are simply disastrous," said Marcel Stoessel of Oxfam.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, known as MONUC, has backed the Congolese army in eastern Congo since March, after a joint Congolese and Rwandan operation against the Rwandan Hutu militiamen.

Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, military spokesman for the mission, said the United Nations is working hard to protect civilians in the region.

"We are in conversations with the government, who knows our position on this subject -- the officers who have committed these crimes cannot participate in the army and should be tried by the international or national judicial systems," he said.

However, U.N. officials have said that they do not have enough boots on the ground to perform effectively in Congo, a country bigger than Western Europe but with only 300 miles of paved roads.

The 3,000 additional U.N. peacekeepers authorized by the U.N. Security Council in November are only just arriving in the region, the report said.

"The U.N. needs to make it clear that if the Congolese government wants its continued military support, the army should remove abusive soldiers from command positions and its soldiers should stop attacking civilians," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.

SPLC Report: Militia Movement Resurgent, Infused with Racism

SPLC Report: Militia Movement Resurgent, Infused with Racism
Source: Southern Poverty Law Center

Almost a decade after virtually disappearing from public view, the antigovernment militia movement is surging across the country, fueled by fears of a black man in the White House, the changing demographics of the country, and conspiracy theories increasingly spread by mainstream figures, according to a new SPLC report.

+ Full Report

Anti-gay Attacks on Rise in Iraq

Gay Iraqi men are being murdered in what appears to be a co-ordinated campaign involving militia forces, the group Human Rights Watch says.

It says hundreds of gay men have been targeted and killed in Iraq since 2004.

So-called honour killings also account for deaths where families punish their own kin in order to avoid public shame.

The report says members of the Mehdi Army militia group are spearheading the campaign, but police are also accused - even though homosexuality is legal.

Witnesses say vigilante groups break into homes and pick people up in the street, interrogating them to extract the names of other potential victims, before murdering them.

"Murder and torture are no way to enforce morality," said HRW researcher Rasha Moumneh, quoted in the report.

"These killings point to the continuing and lethal failure of Iraq's post-occupation authorities to establish the rule of law and protect their citizens."

In some cases, Human Rights Watch says it was told, Iraqi security forces had actually "colluded and joined in the killing".

Witch-hunt

Recently, posters appeared in Sadr City - a conservative, Shia area of Baghdad - calling on people to watch out for gay men and listing not only their names but also their addresses.

One gay man in Baghdad described the killing campaign as a witch-hunt.

“ These killings will continue, because it has simply become normal in Iraq to kill gay men ”
Unnamed gay Iraqi man

Nearly 90 gay men have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of January and many more are missing, local gay rights campaigners say.

The report, called They want us exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq, says horrifically mutilated bodies of gay men have been left on rubbish tips.

Sometimes their bodies are daubed with offensive terms such as "pervert", or "puppy" which is a hate word for gay men in Iraq.

The report contains detailed testimonies of a range of brutal treatment of gay Iraqi men.

"We've heard stories confirmed by doctors of men having their anuses glued and then being force-fed laxatives which leads to a very painful death," says Ms Moumneh told the BBC.

'Feminised men'

When questioned in the past, officials in Iraq have condemned the killings, but the BBC's Natalia Antelava in Baghdad reports that gay men there say nothing has been done to protect them.

"These killings will continue, because it has simply become normal in Iraq to kill gay men," said a gay Iraqi man who did not want to be named.

Mehdi army spokesmen and clerics have condemned what they call the "feminisation" of Iraqi men and have urged the military to take action against them.

The report said many gay men have fled to other countries in the region, despite consensual homosexual activity being illegal there, because the risk of victimisation is reduced.

HRW says the threats and abuses have spread from Baghdad to Kirkuk, Najaf and Basra, although persecution remains concentrated in the capital.

Officials say part of the problem in dealing with the attacks is that victims' relatives seldom if ever provide information to the police.

"They consider talking about the subject worse than the crime itself. This is the nature of our society," ministry spokesman Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8204853.stm

Published: 2009/08/17