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Amid all the talk about the U.S. military "surge" in Iraq, little has been said about the accompanying "surge" of Iraqi prisoners, whose numbers rose to nearly 51,000 at the end of 2007. Four years after the Abu Ghraib scandal, occupation forces are holding far more Iraqis than ever before and thousands more languish in horrendous Iraqi-run prisons. The Detention Camps Detainees are held by the U.S. command in two main locations - Camp Bucca, a 100-acre prison camp and Camp Cropper, inside a massive U.S. base near the Baghdad airport. The number of Iraqis held in these facilities has...

Surrounded by yellow Hezbollah flags, more than 60 Iranian volunteers set off this week to join what they called a holy war against Israeli forces in Lebanon. The group -- ranging from teenagers to grandfathers -- plans to join about 200 other volunteers on the way to the Turkish border. They plan to reach Lebanon via Syria on the weekend. Organizers said the volunteers are carrying no weapons, and it was not clear whether Turkey would allow them to pass. A Turkish Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, would not say Wednesday if Turkey would allow them to...

KABUL (AP) - U.S.-led coalition forces and Afghan police killed or wounded 38 Taliban militants in Afghanistan as four suspected al-Qaida operatives were arrested by coalition forces in the country's east on Saturday, officials said. The latest violence came as a senior NATO official said a major operation to crush Taliban fighters in the south was moving to a close. U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces attacked a compound in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing 20 suspected Taliban militants, a coalition statement said. The joint force used "superior fire and manoeuvre techniques and lethal close air support to kill" the suspected...

Tehran, Iran--Surrounded by yellow Hezbollah flags, more than 60 Iranian volunteers set off Wednesday to join what they called a holy war against Israeli forces in Lebanon. The group--ranging from teenagers to grandfathers--plans to join about 200 other volunteers on the way to the Turkish border, which they hope to cross Thursday. They plan to reach Lebanon via Syria over the weekend. Iran says it will not send regular forces to aid Hezbollah, but apparently it will not attempt to stop volunteer guerrillas. Iran and Syria are Hezbollah's main sponsors. Organizers said the volunteers were not carrying weapons, and it...

TEHRAN: A group of Iranian students left for Lebanon yesterday pledging to help Hezbollah fight Israeli forces there, witnesses said. Iranian hardliners have made great public show of recruiting volunteers for “martyrdom-seeking operations” in recent years, but there is no record of any of these Iranian volunteers taking part in attacks in Iraq, or against Israel. “The Prophet Muhammad’s army is on its way to fight against the Zionists,” chanted some 50 volunteers at Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, where a large tree-lined area is dedicated to Iran’s ‘martyrs’ killed in the 1980-88 war with Iraq. “A group of 200 volunteer...

Do you think she'll go out with me?

The Pentagon is implementing new military plans that will make the concept of women in combat a reality.

SARASOTA, Fla. - A retired schoolteacher who went to Iraq (news - web sites) to serve as a "human shield" against the U.S. invasion is facing thousands of dollars in U.S. government fines, which she is refusing to pay. The U.S. Department of the Treasury said in a March letter to Faith Fippinger that she broke the law by crossing the Iraqi border before the war. Her travel to Iraq violated U.S. sanctions that prohibited American citizens from engaging in "virtually all direct or indirect commercial, financial or trade transactions with Iraq." She and others from 30 countries spread out...

Three Iraqi Soldiers Desert the Army By BORZOU DARAGAHI .c The Associated Press SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq (AP) - Hungry, poorly equipped and watched constantly, the three young friends from Basra made a pact: if they saw a chance to escape from the Iraqi Army, they would do it together. Eight days ago, while the security men who enforce military discipline in their unit enjoyed a meal, Bassam Salah Madlool, Mushriq Ahmad Hashem and Abbas Fahid Mushin saw their chance. They raced past minefields, evading radar and gunfire, and fled for 12 hours across hills, valleys and mountains until they reached Kifrey,...

"I have eight children," said one of the injured prisoners. "They [the Iraqi authorities] came to my house and forced me to fight. They took me by force." Gunnery Sergeant Toby Boyce, who had heard the testimony of the prisoners when they were interrogated, said they were local farmers who had been forced to fight at gunpoint by a group of four officers. "The officers were actually shooting these guys, making them fight," said Sgt Boyce. The Guardian was not allowed to interview the prisoners.

But the Iraqi private with a bullet wound in the back of his head suggested something unusually grim. Up and down the 320-kilometer (200-mile) stretch of desert where American and British forces have advanced, one Iraqi prisoner after another has told a similar tale: Many Iraqi soldiers are fighting at gunpoint, threatened with death by hard-core loyalists of President Saddam Hussein. .

Human Shields, No Résumé Needed AGHDAD, Feb. 20 — A rather jaunty sign advertising the grimmest of tasks was pinned up on a small notice board labeled "Human Shields" in the airy lobby of the Andalus Hotel Apartments here this morning. It sought three additional volunteers to join the 13 already committed to living at the Baghdad South Power Plant to try to prevent its being bombed in the event of war. "There is no more important place for a shield to be," the notice read. Volunteers from half a dozen nations expect to move into a large, collective dormitory...

American and European peace activists wrapped their arms around posts on a bridge over the Tigris River on Thursday, symbolizing their intent to act as human shields in any U.S. war on Iraq. The 14 activists, mostly from Italy, were one of the first groups here using the "shield" title, which suggests they might place their bodies at potential targets to deter bombing. But they acknowledged their mission was only a gesture meant to try to deter an invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.Katherina Soederholm, front right, a Norwegian, and other members of the 'human shield' group, which includes Americans, Britons,...

Manna Jo Greene knows she is not bulletproof, but she is willing to put herself on the line as part of a "human shield" to halt the seemingly unstoppable American-led invasion of Iraq. Within two weeks, Greene hopes to travel from her home near Rosendale to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the Middle East country in the United States' crosshairs. Organizers hope to get 5,000 volunteers for the effort. "My intention is to prevent the war," Greene said yesterday. "I am willing to do whatever it takes. I intend to live with the Iraqi people and I hope the fact that 5,000...

My fellow international writers and I, gathered here at the University of Iowa, are to take part in a public panel, each making a brief presentation and then all of us discussing the "Images of America" we will take away from our stay in the United States. Tricky business for me. I've been coming here fairly regularly for 30 years and right now the US seems to me to be more deeply in trouble as a society than at any time since the McCarthyism days of the 1950s. Even during the Vietnam War, a sense that young people would redeem...