K E R A L A M O N I T O R . C O M
Yemen grants asylum to Iraqi envoy to Arab League
SANAA, April 13- Yemen has granted political asylum to Iraq's envoy to the Arab League (AL) following the downfall of the Iraqi government, the foreign ministry said Sunday."Yemen has informed ambassador Mohsen Khalil, Iraq's permament ambassador to the Arab League in Cairo, of its decision to grant him political asylum," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement.Khalil, also Iraq's ambassador to Egypt, had served as Iraq's ambassador to Sanaa from 1992 to 1997. He applied for asylum on April 9, the day US tanks rolled into central Baghdad.
Khalil was expected to arrive in Yemen soon, but it remained unknown how long he will stay in Yemen. He is not among the list of 55 top Iraqi officials sought by the United States. Meanwhile, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh called on officials to help Yemeni diplomats and some 4,000 Yemeni students return home from Iraq, which is under control of US and British forces. Yemen, which vehemently opposes the US-led war against Iraq, haswitnessed the largest protests in the Mideast against the US-led invasion of Iraq since it started on March 20.
US defense chief says some Iraqi leaders flee to Syria
US Defense Secretary Donald H.Rumsfeld again accused Syria on Sunday of hiding escaped Iraqi leaders, asserting that some senior Iraqi leaders have fled to Syria."There is no question" of that, Rumsfeld said while appearing on the NBC's "Meet the Press" program.He said that some have remained in Syria, while others have moved on to different countries.Rumsfeld also said that the United States hoped "Syria will notbecome a haven for war criminals or terrorists."
On Friday, US President George W. Bush called on Syria to prevent members of Iraqi leadership from escaping Iraq and turn over those already in Syria. "We strongly urge them not to allow for Baath Party members of Saddam's families or generals on the run to seek safe haven and find safe haven there," Bush said. "Syria just needs to know we expect full cooperation."
But the US accusations were rejected by Syria. Also on NBC's "Meet the Press", Syria's deputy ambassador to the United States Imad Moustapha denied that his country was harboring escaped Iraqis.
US troops enter Saddam's hometown in final combat in Iraq
US Marines engaged the most loyal fighters of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in his hometown of Tikrit overnight Sunday, in what believed to be the major final combat after the capture of Baghdad. General Tommy Franks, who is in charge of the Iraq war, earlier said that some Marine units entered Tikrit after a swift advance from Baghdad, while declining to reveal specifics about the fighting.
Fierce fighting reportedly erupted between Iraqi fighters and US Marines who destroyed five Iraqi tanks outside the city. Artillery explosions flashed on the horizon as US warplanes roared overhead to attack enemy positions, the US news network CNN reported.
The US military estimated that there are about 2,500 die-hards of the Republican Guard and the Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary fighters holed up in Tikrit, a Canadian reporter embedded with the Marines told CNN.
The reporter said Iraqis fighting Marines were in tanks prepared for urban warfare in hopes of holding the city. The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV also reported skirmishes raging south of the Tikrit, although local tribal groups had offered to negotiate surrender with US forces.
The tribal leaders reportedly are opposed to the entry of any Kurdish forces, who they feared might revenge for the years of mistreatment by Saddam regime. But US military sources have denied the reports of negotiation with tribal groups in Tikrit.
Tikrit, 145 kilometers north of Baghdad, is the last major stronghold with substantial Iraqi forces after the fall of Baghdad last week into the hands of US troops.
A CNN team that drove through the town earlier Sunday reported that most of the streets were deserted, and many tanks and armored personnel carriers were seen abandoned in barracks and positions outside the city.
In Baghdad, order was slowly returning to the city after days of rampant looting and violence as some Iraqi police returned to job. The US troops had come under increasing criticism in the past three days from Iraqis and international community for neglecting the chaos in Iraqi cities.
Dozens of angry Iraqi protesters rallied before the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad in the first anti-US demonstration to express anger over the inaction by US occupying forces on the lawlessness. One of the demonstrators held a banner reading "Bush =Saddam."
A US military spokesman promised that US troops would start joint patrols with Iraqi police in order to restore order in Baghdad. Steps were also taken to solicit former workers back to key sectors in a bid to restore water, electricity and gas suppliers to local population.
Sunday was relatively calm in Baghdad although sporadic fightingstill persisted in the city in signs that highlighted the volatile and dangerous situation despite the downfall of Saddam regime.
At around 1:00 am local time Monday (2100 GMT Sunday), gunfire erupted near the Palestine Hotel between US soldiers and unidentified gunmen. Three suspected gunmen were detained later. In another attack, an Iraqi paramilitary fighter hurled a hand grenade at US troops from the 101st Airborne Division at the front courtyard of a Baath Party office compound in Mahmudiyain, south ofBaghdad, injuring six US soldiers, two of them seriously.
The most exciting news for the US troops Sunday was that "six orseven" US prisoners of war (POWs) taken by Iraq were rescued in northern Baghdad. Franks told the ABC news that the freed POWs "appear to be healthy."
There had been 12 US soldiers believed to be captured by the Iraqis since the war began on March 20. One of them, Jessica Lynch,was rescued in a rescue operation in central Iraq on April 1. Meanwhile, US Special Forces stationed near the northern city of Mosul captured a half-brother of Saddam, Watban Ibrahim al-Tikriti who was planning to cross the border into Syria.
Being former Iraqi interior minister, al-Tikriti was on the listof 55 top Iraqi officials sought by the US-led coalition forces. Watban's full brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, was already killed Friday in a US airstrike of his farm in west of Baghdad.
Dyncorp Rent-a-Cops May Head to Post-Saddam IraqThe scenes of looting in Iraq are heart-rending: the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah in southern Iraq was pillaged last week by 20 armed thieves who grabbed a haul of drugs and several ambulances just as a man died in the hospital lobby from gunshot wounds. He sustained his injuries while resisting another gang that was trying to steal his car.
Basra's Sheraton Hotel saw mobs of young men stealing tables, chairs, carpets and even a grand piano. British military officials, while proclaiming they had seized control of the city, acknowledged that the telephone system had shut down this week because scavengers had ripped out all the equipment.
Commenting on the unfolding chaos an unnamed Pentagon official told the New York Times that they were seeking something more than the United Nations peace-keeping troops: "We know we want something a little more corporate and more efficient with cleaner lines of authority and responsibility."
Dyncorp Wants YouThat plan appears to be almost ready. Half a world away from the bedlam in Iraq, just outside of Forth Worth, Texas, police recruiters are currently manning the phones for Dyncorp, a multi-billion dollar military Contractor. For Dyncorp the turmoil that is emerging in Iraq could mean a boom in business.
"When the area is safe, we will go in. Watch CNN. In the meantime fax us a resume if you want a job," Homer Newman, a Dyncorp recruiter told Corpwatch. But Chuck Wilkins, a company spokesman in Virginia, said: "The contract hasn't yet been awarded."
Yet a website has been offering Dyncorp jobs to "individuals with appropriate experience and expertise to participate in an international effort to re-establish police, justice and prison functions in post-conflict Iraq." The company is looking for active duty or recently retired cops and prison guards and "experienced judicial experts." Applicants must be US citizens with ten years of sworn civilian domestic law enforcement. The site even has a toll free number and a "cops.recruiting@dyncorp.com" email address for applicants.
The website explains that recruits will help "establish police stations and monitor activities determining the selection, screening and training processes for police officers, demonstrating police practices and techniques used by democratic societies advising local police on criminal investigation methods and monitoring their progress working side-by-side with police officers from around the world reporting humanitarian violation."
Dyncorp has plenty of experience in the rent-a-cop field in other hot spots: Armed DynCorp employees make up the core of the police force in Bosnia. DynCorp troops protect Afghan president Hamid Karzai, while DynCorp planes and pilots fly the defoliation missions over the coca crops in Colombia. Back home in the United States Dyncorp is in charge of the border posts between the US and Mexico, many of the Pentagon's weapons-testing ranges and the entire Air Force One fleet of presidential planes and helicopters. The company also reviews security clearance applications of military and civilian personnel for the Navy.
DynCorp began in 1946 as a project of a small group of returning World War II pilots seeking to use their military contacts to make a living in the air cargo business. Named California Eastern Airways the original company was soon airlifting supplies to Asia used in the Korean War. By last year Dyncorp, headquartered in Reston, Virginia, was the nation's 13th largest military contractor with $2.3 billion in revenue.
Earlier this week the company merged with Computer Sciences Corporation, an El Segundo, California-based technology services company, in an acquisition worth nearly $1 billion.
Alleged Human Rights Violations and FraudThe company is not short on controversy. Under the Plan Colombia contract, the company has 88 aircraft and 307 employees - 139 of them American - flying missions to eradicate coca fields in Colombia. Soldier of Fortune magazine once ran a cover story on DynCorp, proclaiming it "Colombia's Coke-Bustin' Broncos."
US Rep. Janice Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, told Wired magazine that hiring a private company to fly what amounts to combat missions is asking for trouble. DynCorp's employees have a history of behaving like cowboys," Schakowsky noted.
"Is the US military privatizing its missions to avoid public controversy or to avoid embarrassment - to hide body bags from the media and shield the military from public opinion?" she asked.
Indeed a group of Ecuadoran peasants filed a class action against the company in September 2001. The suit alleges that herbicides spread by DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across the border, withering legitimate crops, causing human and livestock illness, and, in several cases, killing children. Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers intervened in the case right away telling the judge the lawsuit posed "a grave risk to US national security and foreign policy objectives."
What's more, Kathryn Bolkovac, a U.N. International Police Force monitor filed a lawsuit in Britain in 2001 against DynCorp for firing her after she reported that Dyncorp police trainers in Bosnia were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex trafficking. Many of the Dyncorp employees were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity. But none were prosecuted, since they enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia.
Earlier that year Ben Johnston, a DynCorp aircraft mechanic for Apache and Blackhawk helicopters in Kosovo, filed a lawsuit against his employer. The suit alleged that that in the latter part of 1999 Johnson "learned that employees and supervisors from DynCorp were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and [participating in] other immoral acts."
The suit charges that "Johnston witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased."
"DynCorp is just as immoral and elite as possible, and any rule they can break they do," Johnston told Insight magazine.
He charged that the company also billed the Army for unnecessary repairs and padded the payroll. "What they say in Bosnia is that DynCorp just needs a warm body -- that's the DynCorp slogan. Even if you don't do an eight-hour day, they'll sign you in for it because that's how they bill the government. It's a total fraud."
Meanwhile, policing post-Saddam Iraq may be more than Dyncorp bargains for. Iraqis say the exercise of bringing in foreign police is fraught with danger.
"People do not like Saddam, but they do not want a colonizing army," one young man told the Independent of London. "In the area where I live there was an older man, a retired soldier ... When he heard the Americans were coming he went and got his gun. When people asked why, he said it was because he did not want to be invaded."
Investigative Report
By Pratap Chatterjee
Special to CorpWatch
April 9, 2003