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AMMAN, Jordan - A prominent Iraqi Sunni leader said Friday that the insurgency in Iraq could end if the U.S. showed determination to stop the influence of pro-Iranian Shiite militias there. "The Americans must act seriously and abolish those militias, confiscate their weapons, arrest their criminals and at the same time stop the Iranian influence which is penetrating all of Iraq, including the government," said Sheik Majeed al-Gaood, a prominent tribal leader in Anbar province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency. Al-Gaood is a leading member of a Sunni family that plays a major role in tribal politics in Anbar....

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On the surface there would seem to be little to unite the Aryan racialists of the neo-Nazi movement with the terrorists of radical Islam. To the neo-Nazis, Muslims are almost all members of ``inferior`` races; and to the Islamic terrorists, the neo-Nazis are almost without exception either atheists or members of fringe quasi-Christian sects. But the reality is that there has been close cooperation between Muslim extremists and Fascists ever since the founding of the Nazi movement in the 1920`s. For all of their differences, Muslim extremists and Nazis have always been united by a common group of beliefs and...

Department of Political Science Najah National University The aim of this paper is to investigate the development of the Iraqi oil industry between 1914 and 1982. This will entail a survey:' Iraq's relations with Western oil companies, its role within OPEC, its involvement in the Middle Eastern arena, and its domestic politics. Emphasis will be placed on the evolution of what is today called the Iraqi Petroleum Company against the background of these other developments. Over time, the general trend discerned is one:-: increasing nationalization of oil production, the extent of which -' determined by internal, regional, and global circumstances....

MULTI-NATIONAL DIVISION - NORTH 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION TIKRIT, IRAQ (FOB SPEICHER) APO AE 09363 April 2, 2006 Release A060402c Insurgents killed during failed attacks TIKRIT, Iraq – Four insurgent gunmen were killed and another wounded after two failed attacks against Iraqi and Task Force Band of Brothers Soldiers near Balad April 1. Three gunmen attacked an Iraqi Army unit east of Balad the morning of April 1. The Iraqi Soldiers returned fire, breaking up the attack and trapping the gunmen in a nearby house. A patrol from the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division arrived and came under...

The documents of pre-war Iraq were published this morning on the Pentagon website, I did a quick search and I found a very interesting document written in Arabic and not yet translated to English. I did the translation and I found the following: This document is a letter written by a member of Saddam Intelligence apparatus (Al Mukabarat) on 9/15/2001 (shortly after 9/11/2001) where he addressed it to someone higher up and he wrote about a conversation between an Iraqi intelligence source and a Taliban Afghani Consul. In the conversation the Afghani Consul spoke of a relationship between Iraq and...

ANKARA (Reuters) - An Italian Roman Catholic priest was shot dead in his church in the Turkish Black Sea city of Trabzon on Sunday, police said. They gave no more details, but CNN Turk television said police were looking for a young man aged about 17 years old seen fleeing the scene. CNN Turk showed a small crowd of onlookers near the Santa Maria church where the priest was killed. The state Anatolian news agency identified the dead man as Andrea Santaro, aged 60. Other Turkish media said he had been in Turkey about five years. Anatolian quoted Trabzon governor...

Syria backs a nuclear Iran By Patrick Bishop in Damascus (Filed: 20/01/2006) Syria yesterday backed Iran in its nuclear confrontation with the West as their leaders met in Damascus in a defiant show of solidarity. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al-Assad The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, welcomed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and said the Iranian leader had the right to acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. In turn, Mr Ahmadinejad asserted his host's right to freedom from foreign interference. Both men face confontations with the United Nations Security Council. The West is pushing for the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Teheran to...

Sunni Arabs gain American backing in negotiations to form a new government.BAGHDAD – One month after Iraq's Dec. 15 election, a shift is afoot that will probably weaken Shiite political clout as the country's factions enter serious negotiations to form a new government. Increasingly, the US is throwing its weight in Iraq behind Sunni Arabs, about 20 percent of the country, to ensure they are part of a new coalition government. Analysts say the US is convinced reconciliation with Sunni Arabs will help stop the insurgency. There is also an American unease with the growing influence of Iran on Iraq's...

Veteran Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam, widely regarded as the architect of his government's Lebanon policy before its troop pullout in April, announced his resignation on Friday. "I have decided to resign," he told the Dubai-based satellite television Al-Arabiya in an interview from Paris. Khaddam first asked to resign at a congress of Syria's ruling Baath party in June, but there had been no word since on whether President Bashar al-Assad had accepted the resignation. At the time, he criticised Syrian foreign policy leading up to the withdrawal from Lebanon after a 29-year deployment under international pressure over...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein told the judge at his trial Monday that "I am not afraid of execution" during an unruly court session in which the first witness took the stand and testified that the former president's agents carried out random arrests, torture and killings. The outburst was one of several by Saddam or his co-defendants at the trial that also saw a brief walkout by his defense lawyers. At one point, Saddam appeared to threaten the judge, saying: "When the revolution of the heroic Iraq arrives, you will be held accountable." Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin replied: "This...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2005 – Coalition forces captured the leader of the New Baath Party in Diyala province, Iraq, during a Nov. 9 patrol, officials announced today. Coalition members apprehended Hamid Sharki Shadid along with physical evidence at his home. Shadid is a former member of the Baath Party in Diyala province and is suspected of being responsible for all insurgent Baath Party activities in that area. Coalition forces believe he can provide crucial information on the whereabouts of former Staff Gen. Jamal Karki, a suspected Baathist insurgent, and Abd-al-Baqi al-Saadun, who has been a fugitive since the fall of...

An interesting note posted on a jihadi web forum complements a recent analysis by U.S. Maj. Gen. Richard Zahner on the course of the insurgency in Iraq. In an interview published by The Washington Post on September 28, leading military intelligence officer Gen. Zahner neatly defined the events in Iraq as "an insurgency hijacked by a terrorist campaign." In Zahner's view, which marks a shift in perception by the U.S. military command, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq group has supplanted Iraqis loyal to the deposed president Saddam Hussein as the insurgency's "driving element." Instead, the Saddam Hussein loyalists (former...

Tariq Aziz, once Saddam Hussein's most trusted lieutenant, has agreed to testify against the ousted dictator during his forthcoming trial for war crimes, according to his lawyer and American officials. In return for his co-operation, Aziz, 69, Iraq's foreign minister during the Gulf war and deputy prime minister throughout Saddam's 24-year rule, will have the most serious charges against him dropped and be allowed to spend his dotage in exile. The outline plea agreement, under which he will plead guilty to minor charges, was reached after more than two years of delicate negotiations during which Aziz also revealed important intelligence...

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is scheduled to visit the United States in November for a round of meetings with President Bush and other high ranking US officials. As the representative of the Yemeni people, Saleh deserves a great deal of respect and hospitality. Yet it has become increasingly apparent that the regime, under the total domination of President Saleh, is engaged in a wide variety of criminal activities to the detriment of regional stability and the Yemeni people themselves. Drug Smuggling: One regionally destabilizing regime activity is drug smuggling. A variety of illegal drugs are smuggled via the Indian...

Learning from Walesa Difficult choices for a democratic Syria. By Farid Ghadry A disturbing trend has emerged recently on the part of a number of analysts, policymakers, and pundits: They are condemning the nascent democratic opposition in Syria to a premature stillbirth. These observers argue that revolutionary anti-Baath organizations like the Reform Party of Syria could not possibly command the popularity and respect of the populace to mount any credible challenge to Baath dictatorial hegemony. Essentially, what they are saying is that because of such drawbacks, native opposition to the Baathist authoritarian regime is futile, and that the U.S. and...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - The militants crossing into Iraq from Syria are not backed by the Syrian government, Iraq's former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Monday. Allawi, who headed the Iraqi government from June 2004 until April, came to Cairo to raise support for his plan to hold a pan-Iraqi conference to end the insurgency. "The answer to the tension in Iraq cannot be through a military solution or by force alone," Allawi said after talks with President Hosni Mubarak. Last week, the United States and Iraq reiterated that Syria was not doing enough to stop foreign fighters from...

Excerpt - TEL AVIV, June 2 - Syria test-fired three Scud missiles last Friday, including one that broke up over Turkish territory and showered missile parts down onto unsuspecting Turkish farmers, Israeli military officials revealed Thursday. These were the first such Syrian missile tests since 2001, the Israelis said, and were part of a Syrian missile development project using North Korean technology and designed, the Israelis contend, to deliver air-burst chemical weapons. The missiles included one older Scud B, with a range of about 185 miles, and two Scud D's, the Israelis say they believe, with a range of about...

BAGHDAD, May 24 (KUNA) -- The Iraqi government allocated USD 200,000 for those who give information on whereabouts of Ahmed Hasan Kaka Al-Abaidi who was a key figure in the Baath Party of the ousted regime. A statement by the Iraqi government, issued on Tuesday, said Al-Abaidi was trying to revive the Baath Party after collapse of Saddam's regime. Al-Abaidi's has frequently visited Syria, obtaining arms and finance for the Iraqi insurgency, the statement said. He met key figures of the ousted regime such as Mohammed Younis Al-Ahmed and Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri, claimed to be using Syria as a safe...

The first democratically elected Iraqi government was not even fully born when already its obituaries were being written. The front page of the New York Times last week reported of a "striking display of divisions," of "polarizing negotiations" and the "serious embarrassment" that the difficulties in finding suitable Sunni Arab cabinet ministers was causing. The implication of such reports is that without "credible" Sunnis in the cabinet, the government's legitimacy will be impaired, its efforts to defeat the current terrorist onslaught will be hobbled, or both. Before we get too breathless, some perspective is in order. First, Sunni Arabs now...