In the years before the government was overthrown, Uday al-Ta’ai controlled the state’s vast but crude propaganda machine. As director general of the Ministry of Information he was an ultra-loyal Ba’athist, the man responsible for masterminding the censorship, harassment and persecution of foreign journalists.
Frustrated Iraqis are beginning to force United States officers to remove senior Ba’ath Party figures who have tried to return to power.
United States and British commanders have changed their tactics on the ground in Iraq to tackle paramilitary militias across the south before the assault on Baghdad, senior military sources said this week.
They call themselves the ”awkward squad” and their questions to the generals running the war in Iraq are starting to divide the sceptical press from their more loyal United States colleagues.
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/ 11 February 2003
It is a darkening Saturday evening in Baghdad. The shops are closing and the roads are blocked with traffic. In the north-east of the city a group of friends has gathered at a small, whitewashed theatre. On the stage a small orchestra sits on in a semi-circle around their conductor.
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/ 27 January 2003
One of the most popular themes on the placards of anti-war demonstrators across the US and Europe is that the looming confrontation is primarily about oil. The US and British dismiss such a charge, and instead argue that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has to be dealt with.
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/ 24 January 2003
It is a darkening Saturday evening in Baghdad. The shops are closing and the roads are blocked with traffic. At the side of one congested dual carriageway in the north-east of the city a group of friends have gathered at a small, whitewashed theatre.
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/ 17 September 2002
April 11 2002. About 10.20am. A coach full of German tourists is bumping down the road that leads to the ancient El Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba. Around the corner, in a narrow, cobbled lane that runs alongside, an old Iveco tanker truck is waiting, driver inside.
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/ 14 September 2002
Islamic militants shot dead an Indian state minister and killed at least 15 other people in the disputed mountains of Kashmir on Wednesday in a mounting wave of violence in advance of state elections. The state Law Minister, Mushtaq Ahmad Lone, was gunned down as he spoke at an election rally.
Nearly three years ago Pakistan’s army chief General Pervez Musharraf led a strangely popular coup. There were no tanks on the streets, not a single shot was fired and no blood was spilt. Most Pakistanis applauded the arrival of the military after a decade of corrupt civilian governments.