Iraq is still the issue - Part 2: Amerika’s New Iraq - The Quiz

Iraq is still the issue - Part 2: Amerika’s New Iraq - The Quiz
By Gabriele Zamparini

After Iraq is still the issue - Part 1: Waiting for the partition, let's now take a Quiz on the new Amerikan Frankestein, the New Iraq of puppet Maliki.

1) Who said - about the killings of 15 women and children in a US ground and air assault in a Sunni area northwest of Baghdad - “We are in a war against those diabolical and wicked groups; therefore during military operations there might be innocents killed. The victims are an unavoidable matter in fighting al Qaeda".

a) George W. Bush
b) General Petraeus
c) Hillary Clinton
d) Gordon Brown
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

2) What’s the percentage of Sunni inmates detained by the U.S. in Iraq?

a) 20%
b) 38%
c) 45%
d) 73%
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

3) Iraqi Shiite leaders Muqtada Al-Sadr and Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim announced a truce between their rival movements on October 6. Where was the truce signed?

a) Sadr City – Baghdad
b) Green Zone - Baghdad
c) Najaf
d) Basrah
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

4) In August IPS reported:

Militia from the Shia organisation Badr have taken over the police force in Diyala province north of Baghdad, residents say. The government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is believed to have backed such infiltration (…) Sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims has grown amidst Iraqi government policies seen as supportive of Shias. Maliki is from the Dawa Party backed by Shia Iran. In Baquba, 50km northeast of the capital, and capital of Diyala, residents say the Shia Badr Organisation, the armed wing of the politically dominant Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), has been dominant in the province since the early months of the occupation. The Badr Organisation managed to fill leadership positions in city and province, while Sunni Iraqis remained largely unrepresented. In this set-up, many sectarian killings have been carried out by the Badr Organisation, often under cover of the local police, residents told IPS. The SIIC and the Dawa Party of the Prime Minister are politically affiliated. Maliki is secretary-general of the Dawa Party, and spent time in exile in Iran after leading insurgent groups against former president Saddam Hussein. (…) A Sunni man held prisoner inside the central prison for Diyala province spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity. "There were more than 250 prisoners with me in the prison…”

How many Iraqis were Sunni among those 250 prisoners?
How many Iraqis were Shia among that prison’s staff?
Who controlled the entire Iraqi police department for Diyala province?

Click here to read the answers

5) Independent journalist Nir Rosen interviewed by Amy Goodman:

“Iraq has been changed irrevocably, I think. I don’t think Iraq even -- you can say it exists anymore. There has been a very effective, systematic ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias --from areas that are now mostly Shia. But the Sunnis especially have been a target, as have mixed families like the one we just saw. With a name like Omar, he’s distinctly Sunni -- it’s a very Sunni name. You can be executed for having the name Omar alone. And Baghdad is now firmly in the hands of sectarian Shiite militias, and they’re never going to let it go.”

Always Nir Rosen, writing recently in the Boston Review,

“Al Sadr is now considered the most powerful man in Iraq; his militia, the Madhi Army, controls much of Iraq’s security forces and is largely responsible for sectarian attacks against Sunnis. (…)

In Damascus I met Hamid al Hitti, a tall, well-dressed and groomed man with a thin mustache. A former businessman, Hamid was the unofficial representative of Dr. Saleh al Mutlaq, leader of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, the fifth-largest political party in the Iraqi National Assembly. The Front represented a relatively secular Sunni nationalist movement that opposed the occupation and warned against the "genocide" Sunnis were facing. I had last interviewed Dr. Saleh in the spring of 2006 in his office in Baghdad on the day he had buried his brother Talal, who had been kidnapped and slain. When I met Hamid he was on the phone with an Iraqi whose visa had expired. "Don’t go to the immigration office," he was saying, "you will be deported immediately. Let me make a few phone calls."

Hamid, who had previously worked for the Front in Jordan, was trying to help the Iraqi refugee community as well as coordinating the delivery of aid inside Anbar Province with humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross. He expressed gratitude to the Italian Red Cross for being "very helpful with people who can’t get to hospitals for security, sectarian, or economic reasons." Hamid had also helped open a refugee camp in the town of Hit for Iraqis fleeing the American siege of Ramadi. "The minister of health is from the Sadrist current," Hamid explained, referring to Muqtada al Sadr, "and unfortunately he is sectarian and he prevents aid and supplies from coming in." He maintained that the Ministry of Health neglected Sunni-dominated provinces. He also complained that "militias," meaning Shia militias, controlled the Iraqi Red Crescent Society. (…)

Chaima Abdul Qader, from the Baghdad Jadida district, had fled In November 2006 with her husband and two children, her parents, her two sisters, and her brother and his wife. They are Sunnis. They had received a letter with anti-Sunni slurs giving them 48 hours to leave. "The problems started right after Samarra," she said. After letters were sent to Sunnis one neighbor went to the local Sadrist office to complain. He was kidnapped and the next day they found his body in a garbage dump. "We were like brothers before," she said of Sunnis and Shias, adding, "all problems come from Iran."

Suham Abdul Rahman, a Sunni from Baghdad’s Baladiyat district, said the Mahdi Army had killed most of the Sunnis in her neighborhood. Her husband was dead but she had come with her three children, her son’s wife, and their children. "They didn’t give death threats, they just killed people right away," she said. They owned a house in Baghdad, but after they left the police broke into it and stole everything. "The police is Mahdi Army," she told me, "It won’t get better," she said. (…)

For the Q&A jump to Question 16

6) The President of a Middle East country endorsed a plan to divide Iraq into three ethnic regions. He said, "I think the resolution passed by the [US] Senate is a very good one". Whose country is this guy President of?

a) Israel
b) Turkey
c) Iran
d) Syria
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

7) Who told to the Reuters:

"Fear rules the streets now. We cannot speak our minds, people are not allowed to oppose them. They would immediately disappear or get killed. (…) we are believers, but at the same time we like to live our lives and we like freedom (…) It is the Islamist Shi'ites who are ruling Iraq. Their victory was a curse for us (…) We are suffering from two occupations - America and Iran. We have told American officials this and we have met some of them, but they are not listening to us"

a) a Sunni Iraqi member of the Iraqi Parliament
b) a Sunni Iraqi member of the Iraqi resistance
c) a Christian Iraqi fled to Syria
d) a Sunni Iraqi religious leader
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

8) In 1959 the Iraqi government amended the Personal Status Law. Article 118 came into being as part of the Iraqi constitution and it gave the women of Iraq the most progressive of all Arab and Islamic women's rights legislation. Now Liberated Iraq has Art. 41. "This is a mockery for us, when you speak about freedom," said Hanaa Edwar, who heads the Iraqi Amal Assn., a human rights group opposing Article 41. "There will be no choices for women if a man makes a decision that he wants to live a certain way. Step by step, we will end up in a religious state". The Basra police commander, Maj. Gen. Abdul Jaleel Khalaf, said "There are gangs roaming through the streets . . . pursuing women and carrying out threats and killing because of what the women wear or because they are using makeup". How many women have been killed in Basra last month by gangs enforcing their idea of Islamic law?

a) 2
b) 6
c) 10
d) 13
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

9) IPS recently reported :

“God knows how we could send our kids to school this year," Um Mohammed, a mother of five in Baghdad told IPS. "Our financial situation is the worst ever and the prices are way too expensive for the majority of Iraqis to afford. I might have to keep some of them at home and send only two." (…) "The educational system in Iraq is destroyed and we are suffering all kinds of difficulties," said Hassan, a school headmaster in Baghdad who spoke on condition that his last name and the name of his school would not be used. "There will be a shortage of desks, blackboards, water, electricity and all educational supplies – as well as a critical shortage in the number of teachers this year." Teachers, like other Iraqis, have fled the country because of threats from sectarian death squads. Some were evicted from their areas and moved to others inside Iraq for sectarian reasons.

IRIN recently reported ,

“The Iraqi Ministry of Education has warned of the possible low attendance of pupils at schools in the coming year, saying it expects at least a 15 percent drop compared to previous years. Parents have blamed the government for the poor protection of their children and many have opted to keep them at home. (…) According to Leila [Leila Abdallah, a senior official at the Ministry of Education], there has been a 54 percent increase in exam failure rates compared to previous years. She said many students had not sat the last exams as they had been forced by violence to flee their homes for safer areas. (…) "We are having serious difficulties getting teachers. Most of them are leaving their jobs after being threatened by militants or insurgents," Leila at the Ministry of Education said.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) representative Roger Wright said in the October 2004 report: "Iraq used to have one of the finest school systems in the Middle East.” Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) prize for eradicating illiteracy in 1982.

Do you know which prize UNESCO gave to New Iraq this year?

Click here to read the answer

10) In May 2003, then Iraqi Proconsol Paul Bremer issued two sweeping orders: one outlawed the Baath Party and dismissed all senior members from their government posts; the other dissolved Iraq's 500,000-member military and intelligence services. In November 2003, Bremer established a Supreme National Debaathification Commission to root out senior Baathists from Iraqi ministries and hear appeals from Baathists who were in the lowest ranks of the party's senior leadership. The party's foremost leaders--some 5,000 to 10,000 individuals--were not permitted to appeal their dismissals. Four years later militias belonging to Shiite religious factions in southern Iraq are still conducting a murderous campaign to exterminate over 4,000 former members of the Baath Party.

True or false?

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11) A Human Rights Report of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) released in January reads,

"Islamic groups and militias have been known to be particularly hostile towards homosexuals, frequently and openly engaging in violent campaigns against them. There have been a number of assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq".

The UNAMI Human Rights Office

"was also alerted to the existence of religious courts, supervised by clerics, where alleged homosexuals would be 'tried,' 'sentenced' to death, and then executed".

Independent journalist and human rights activist Doug Ireland reported in January ,

“The Badr Corps - the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the country's most powerful Shiite political group - launched a campaign of "sexual cleansing," marshaling death squads to exterminate homosexuality, following a "death to gays" fatwa issued in October 2005 by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the 77-year-old chief spiritual leader of all Iraqi Shia Muslims, to whom the SCIRI and the Badr Corps owe total allegiance. Late last year, the Badr Corps - whose members up until then had been paid their salaries by Iran - was integrated into the Iraqi national police under the Ministry of the Interior, and its death squad members now have full police powers and wear police uniforms, which they don to carry out murders of gays. Death squads of the Mahdi Army, the armed militia under the control of fundamentalist Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr, have also carried out assassinations of gays.”

"The U.S, and other allied forces are doing nothing to stop the massacres of any ordinary Iraqi, not to mention the homosexuals, the most unpopular portion of Iraqi society under the new evil regime," Ali Hili, a 34-year-old Iraqi exile now living in London, recently said. Hili, who launched Iraqi LGBT in late 2005 "after hearing about the killing of so many of my friends", also said, “Homosexuality was generally tolerated under Saddam. There certainly was no danger of gay people being assassinated in the street by police. Since his overthrow, the violent persecution of gays and lesbians is commonplace. Life in Iraq now is hell for all LGBT people; no one can be openly gay and alive."

Wissam Auda was a member of Iraq’s Olympic tennis team. Do you know what happened to him?

Click here to read the answer

12) The New Scientist reported:

"A cholera epidemic has been on the cards since Iraqi water treatment plants were destroyed in the 1991 Gulf war. In 2003 the WHO reported that the UN trade embargo had prevented repairs and as a result. Now one of these outbreaks seems to be spreading out of control."

Would you drink this glass of water?

13) “Iraqi and visiting doctors, and a number of news reports, have reported that birth defects and cancers in Iraqi children have increased five- to 10-fold since the 1991 Gulf War and continue to increase sharply, to over 30-fold in some areas in southern Iraq. Currently, more than 50 percent of Iraqi cancer patients are children under the age of 5, up from 13 percent. Children are especially vulnerable because they tend to play in areas that are heavily polluted by depleted uranium”, wrote in January 2006 Abel Bult-Ito, an associate professor of biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Can you picture Depleted Uranium?

14) Not only are children detained in New Iraq’s jails but they are also raped, tortured and burned there. Who’s responsible for those jails?

a) The United States
b) The United Kingdom
c) Blackwater
d) Al-Qaida
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

15) Amnesty International reported, “Immediately after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, Palestinians began to be targeted for various forms of ill-treatment, intimidation, death threats and abduction…”. Who is “responsible for gross human rights abuses against civilians, including abduction, hostage-taking, torture and unlawful killing, including the murder of people they have abducted”?

a) Al-Qaida
b) U.S. death squads
c) U.K. death squads
d) Iraqi insurgents
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

16) Again, independent journalist Nir Rosen:

The numbers tell that story. "First the minorities left Iraq," a UNHCR official told me, "now we get Sunnis targeted by Shia militias." Until February 2006 the Sunnis and Shias were proportionally represented among Iraqi refugees registered with the UNHCR. But one month later the number of Sunnis shot up, far exceeding all the others. Although Iraq’s Shias are said to compose 65 percent of its population, in January 2007 more than three times the number of Sunnis (3,144) were registered than Shia (901). The next month it was four to one. Ninety-five percent were from Baghdad. And because only those Iraqis in grave need approach UNHCR, even these numbers vastly underestimate the crisis.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), an estimated 60,000 people are being forced to leave their homes every month due to the continuing violence in Iraq. According to the UNHCR how many Iraqis have been forced to leave their homes since 2003?

a) 500,000
b) 1,500,000
c) 3,000,000
d) 4,000,000
e) none of the above

Click here and here to read the answer

17) According to a February 2007 AP poll, the average American believes approximately 9,900 Iraqis had died as a result of the war. How many Iraqis do you think have been killed as a result of the US-led invasion and occupation of their country?

a) 80,000
b) 150,000
c) 500,000
d) 1,000,000
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

Acknowledgement: This Quiz could have never been possible without the generous contribution of the so-called international community, starting with the pathetic United Nations and its grotesque International Criminal Court, those human rights groups that are in the empire-building business, that excellent Western propaganda apparatus composed by “the media” and the intelligentsia Joseph Goebbels would be proud and many other actors (and there are really too many to mention here) who played a first, second or third role in the annihilation of Iraq. Hopefully the Western citizenry has enjoyed the show so far, after all that show has been possible only because of the leaders and representatives we have elected and the tax-money we have paid to them. Thank God we got Democracy!