In his counterterrorism speech on May 27, Barack Obama stopped short of an apology when he acknowledged civilian casualties by American drones, saying: "Those deaths will haunt us as long as we live."

For Faisal Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, 54, and his rural village of Khashamir, one deadly accident continues to exact a heavy toll.

The circumstances behind the drone strike are tragic. Faisal said his brother-in-law, a respected, 49-year old cleric called Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, delivered a forceful sermon denouncing al-Qaeda’s extremism at the local mosque.

Salem’s worried father feared retribution from pro-al-Qaeda fighters. He asked Faisal to advise his son to tone down his rhetoric. But when confronted, the imam bravely said he would rather die knowing he was preaching the right message.

Salem’s fate was sealed a few days later, on August 29. Three strangers - in retrospect, suspected fighters - drove into the village, searching for the outspoken cleric.

They found Salem at the mosque that night, surrounded by worshippers. They convinced him to talk with them outside by a palm grove. Faisal’s nephew, Walid Abdullah bin Ali Jaber, a 20-year old with the traffic police, accompanied him for protection.

"It was after the evening prayer and I was sitting on my balcony," Faisal said, recalling that moment. "There was a light and then a big noise - I thought the mountains would fall."

Four drone strikes in total, a few minutes apart, violently tore Salem, Walid and the three visitors to shreds. Amidst the pandemonium, villagers cowering inside the mosque ran out for safety between strikes, believing they would die inside.

"You cannot imagine what we found," said Faisal, drawing a slow, deep breath as he described the nighttime chaos that followed. "We found body parts scattered everywhere. We tried to collect them all, and brought them to the mosque to wrap in white cloth."

The repercussions were devastating. The villagers marched the next day, chanting: "Obama, why do you spill our blood?" But Ymen's President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi met their pleas for answers with silence.

Salem’s mother died two weeks later apparently from shock. Faisal’s sister Hayat, the mother of Walid, refuses to leave her home, and said she is "waiting to join my son". Faisal’s daughter Heba was so stricken with fear she didn’t leave her home for twenty days. She still needs psychiatric care.

"The people in the village are so afraid now," Faisal sighed. "Everything has changed. They think they can be killed anywhere."

Rights groups say the damage is serious. "All that local communities see is the damage and destruction," said Letta Taylor, a counterterrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Nothing that suggests that the US and Yemeni authorities care about the consequences."

President Obama declared that the US will continue to "act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people" and that before any strike "there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured".

Analysts point to the key terms "imminent threat" and "near-certainty" as some of those that need to be more clearly defined.

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, there have been up to 154 strikes by US drones in Yemen since 2002, with up to 97 civilians included in the almost 800 total killed in the attacks.

Both the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conduct drone strikes in Yemen. The CIA operates from a secret base in neighboring Saudi Arabia.

US Attorney General Eric Holder recently admitted that four US citizens have been killed by drone attacks. While al-Awlaki was directly targeted, he said that the other three, including al-Awlaki’s 16-year old son Abdulrahman, were not.

One person who grew up under drones is Entsar al-Qadhi, a representative with the National Dialogue’s counterterrorism subcommittee. Her central province of Marib was first hit in 2002, and has been a common target for surveillance and strikes
in recent years.

Al-Qadhi smiled grimly. "Before, there was a general interest in listening to Osama Bin Laden’s speech and finding out what he will do next, and how he will terrorise people more," she said. "Now, we listen to Obama’s speech to find out how he will next terrorise us."

Meanwhile, the psychological scars for drone strike survivors fester.

Peter Schaapveld, a psychologist sent by British Charity REPRIVE to south Yemen to investigate the symptoms, uncovered some dire statistics.

Out of his pool of survivors, he found 70 percent to be suffering from formal post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and virtually all were suffering from some symptoms of PTSD.

Schaapveld warns that as long as they continue living under a drone threat, their symptoms will only worsen.

"There is basically a breakdown of society as a result of this," he said. "Children were not going to school, or if they were the school teachers did not understand PTSD and sent them home. They were not benefiting from an education, and this is storing up problems for later."

"Where there was a strike on the market area, daily commerce was starting to break down," Schaapveld added. "People were not going to the markets, because to meet in those areas meant they might be subject to another strike."

 
A mother in the village of Majdal Shams, on the slopes of the Golan Heights, who asked not to be named, has been stocking up on rice, canned food, oil and wheat for the last week. She listens to news reports of missiles from Russia and Israeli air strikes, she hears the cracks of gunfire and thuds of mortars just minutes away in Syria and feels the war coming closer.

"There is an atmosphere of fear now. Everyone is preparing for war, not just me," she says.

As the fast escalating war of words between the Assad regime and Israel threatens to reignite a conflict that has lain dormant for more than 45 years, villages along the faultline in the Golan Heights are stockpiling food and medical supplies.

On Thursday Bashar al-Assad threatened to "open a front on the Golan Heights" should Israel make good the promises of its security chiefs to prevent Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems becoming operational on Syrian soil.

"There is clear popular pressure to open a front of resistance in the Golan and there is Arab enthusiasm and a desire to come and fight against Israel," the Syrian president told Hezbollah's al-Manar TV.

Many in Majdal Shams, a small Druze village, are convinced that this political posturing will soon become impossible to back out of. The community is preparing itself for a war that neither country wants to fight.

The Golan Heights is home to more than 80,000 Druze, an esoteric Islamic sect whose insular, self-governing communities are accommodated by governments across the Middle East.

"We are in a very special situation. We are lucky our village wasn't destroyed in 1967 because Israel considers us Druze so we are not a target for them. We are Syrian so we are not a target for Syria or for Hezbollah. We are like an island in this region," explains Dr Maray Taisseer, a consultant at the Majdal Shams medical centre and community spokesperson.

The war, if it comes, may not be a disaster, Taisseer suggests, if it delivers Golan back into Syrian hands.

"Whatever happens in Syria, everyone agrees we should be liberated – it doesn't matter whether it's by regime or rebel forces. This is Syrian land and that is clear," he states unequivocally.

The distinctive peaked roofs of Majdal Shams run right up to a new Israeli military fence, erected at a blistering pace along the 1967 armistice line just six months ago. Families here are divided in their loyalties to regime and rebel forces but all are committed Syrian nationalists. The enemy is the Israeli occupier.

The Israeli military has significantly boosted its presence in the Golan as the Syrian civil war has edged closer. The hilltops are lined with military outposts and packs of young recruits are drill-marched along local roads, past fields of Syrian-laid landmines not cleared since the 1967 war.

If Syrian and Israeli forces do clash on this border, Druze families on the frontline say they will not leave their homes. Every house has a bomb shelter and enough food to last several months. They are ready to weather the next war.

Hussein Khater, 47, is continuing work on a home for his children with a view over the border fence to Syrian hills.

"We still feel Syrian but the most important thing to us as Druze is our land. This is my land that I am standing on now and I don't care what government controls it but I won't leave," he says. "I hope there won't be war here but if there is, it won't be a problem for us."

Al-Jazeera English is broadcasting a special four-part series on Al-Nakba (first broadcast on the Arabic-language network in 2008).  The first 3 episodes can be accessed on demand on Al Jazeera's website. The 4th episode airs Tuesday, May 28 1pm PST and should be added to their site shortly thereafter.

For Palestinians, 1948 marks the 'Nakba'
or the 'catastrophe'. In human terms, that year saw the mass deportation of a million Palestinians from their cities and villages, massacres of civilians, and the razing to the ground of hundreds of Palestinian villages.
But for Israelis, the same year marks the creation of their own state.

The series attempts to present an understanding of the events of the past that are still shaping the present.

In 1968 British historian Arnold Toynbee stated  "the tragedy in Palestine is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the world, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the world's peace."

This story starts in 1799, outside the walls of Acre (Akka in Arabic) in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, when an army under Napoleon Bonaparte besieged the city. It was all part of a campaign to defeat the Ottomans and establish a French presence in the region.

In search of allies, Napoleon issued a letter offering Palestine as a homeland to the Jews under French protection. He called on the Jews to ‘rise up’ against what he called their oppressors.

Napoleon’s appeal was widely publicised. But he was ultimately defeated.

Napoleon’s project for a Jewish homeland in the region under a colonial protectorate did not die, 40  years later, the plan was revived but by the British.

On 19 April 1936, the Palestinians launched a national strike to protest against mass Jewish immigration and what they saw as Britain’s alliance with the Zionist movement.

The British responded with force. During the six months of the strike, over 190 Palestinians were killed and more than 800 wounded.

Wary of popular revolt, Arab leaders advised the Palestinians to end the strike.

Palestinian leaders bowed to pressure from the Arab heads of state and agreed to meet the British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by Lord Peel.

In its report of July 1937, the Peel Commission recommended the partition of Palestine. Its report drew the frontiers of a Jewish state in one-third of Palestine, and an Arab state in the remaining two-thirds, to be merged with Transjordan.

A corridor of land from Jerusalem to Jaffa would remain under British mandate. The Commission also recommended transferring where necessary Palestinians from the lands allocated to the new Jewish state.

The Commission’s proposals were widely published and provoked heated debate.

As the Palestinian revolt continued, Britain’s response hardened. Between 1936 and 1937, the British killed over 1,000 Palestinians; 37 British military police and 69 Jews also died.

Few Palestinians, if any, could have imagined they were to become victims of what would later be called ‘ethnic cleansing’.

After 30 years of British rule, the question of Palestine was referred to the United Nations, which had become the forum for conflict.

On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly met to devise a plan for the partition of Palestine. UN Resolution 181 divided Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state, with Jerusalem as an internationalised city.

The Jewish state was granted 56 percent of the land; the city of Jaffa was included as an enclave of the Arab state; and the land known today as the Gaza Strip was split from its surrounding agricultural regions.
But making the proposed Arab state all but proved impractical in the eyes of many Palestinians.

When the draft resolution was presented for voting, Arab newspapers ran a ‘name and shame’ list of the countries that voted for the UN partition plan, and Arab protesters took to the streets.

Following the partition resolution, Britain announced it would end its mandate in Palestine on 14 May 1948.

Airs Tuesday, 1pm (PST) May 28.

This episode reports on 1948-2008 including the illegal seizure of Palestinian land after the 1967 war.

Dore Stein: Sadly the 'Nakba' is still on going on the ground with settlement building escalating and Palestinians being forced from their homes in East Jerusalem, Hebron and elsewhere.

‘Detained: Testimonies from Palestinian Children Imprisoned by Israel’ uncovers
one of the most painful experiences that Palestinian children endure in the ongoing Israeli occupation. Through interviews with ex-detainees and mothers of minors presently in detention, the project documents their stories and aims to lend a voice to those who are silenced from fear of negative repercussions.

Over the past 11 years, according to Defence for Children International, some 7,500 children have been detained in Israeli prisons and detention facilities. Muhammad Daoud Dirbas, at the age of six, was the youngest child to have been detained by Israeli soldiers. Such practices are considered illegal under international law, as are other policies that children are subjected to, such as solitary confinement.

In most cases, I (Samar Hazboun) found children who suffer from various traumas. Some were not able to talk about what had happened in prison; others burst into tears.  Many children agreed to talk “off the record”;  I thus know their stories but was not able to officially interview them or take their pictures. In some cases, I was able to talk to the parents once the child left the room, and thus obtained more detailed information about how the children were dealing with what had happened to them.

In many cases, the children suffer from insomnia, involuntary urination, nightmares, depression, and fear of going out and facing people.

All the children I interviewed decided not to take further legal action, out of fear of the repercussions of doing so, and the lack of belief that they will be guaranteed protection.

It was not possible to independently corroborate all of the facts told by the children and their families. These are their stories, in their words.

Dates, names and places have been changed in order to protect the children’s identities.

The house of Z.S. (17) was attacked on a Thursday night at around 2 a.m. with stun grenades and tear gas. Six soldiers broke into his family house and arrested him. The soldiers dragged him to a neighboring settlement 1 kilometer away. During the walk, he was beaten. He was left outside in the cold, blindfolded, for two hours.

During the interrogation, he was asked whether he wished to be treated like an animal or a human being. He responded, “like a human being.” He was handcuffed and blindfolded, as the interrogator electrically shocked him several times. He then grabbed his head and banged it against the wall until a second interrogator came in. The interrogator asked him to lie on the ground, and started to kick him until he lost consciousness.

Z.S. was released that same day. He has not filed any complaints for fear of the repercussions of doing so.

M.K. (18) was accused of belonging to a militant group. He was arrested from his family home and held in prison for 18 months. He spent 45 days of the 18 months in solitary confinement with his legs and hands tied together. Various methods of torture were used on him, including sleep deprivation and emotional blackmail.

When M.K. was moved out of solitary confinement, he endured group punishment. He was not allowed any visits during that period.

During the raid to arrest M.K., his house was attacked by tear gas and stun grenades. As a result, his neighbor’s daughter lost hearing in one ear.

M.K. is not allowed to leave the city of Nablus for the next six years.


I.B.’s cousin was shot dead at an Israeli checkpoint in Nablus at the age of 15. The soldiers suspected he was wearing an explosives belt because of a wire connected to his ear. It later transpired that it was a mobile phone earpiece.

In order to commemorate his cousin, I.B. decided to print posters of his cousin and paste them on the walls of his neighborhood.
This was considered a crime by the IDF.

I.B. spent four days in prison and 18 days in a solitary confinement cell. He was not able to finish his studies after his imprisonment.


Z.B.’s family was asked by soldiers to immediately evacuate their house with no prior notice. During the raid on his house, all of the family’s furniture was broken into pieces.

When the soldiers finished raiding the house, one soldier twisted his arms while the second blindfolded him. He and his cousin were arrested. They were accused of belonging to a Hamas group.

Z.B. has been in prison for nine years now. He is not allowed any family visits.

M.O., 12, has been detained seven times so far. The first time, he was arrested at the age of nine for allegedly throwing stones at settlers.

M.O.’s family is constantly targeted by settler attacks as they live in Hay al Bustan in Silwan. Their house is slated for demolition as a part of an Israeli plan targeting the homes (of) Arab citizens in Jerusalem.

Settler attacks are very common in that area. M.O. was attacked by settlers and beaten up. He suffered from internal bleeding due to the brutality of the attack.

On December 5, 2010 M.A. (13) was arrested at 2 a.m. from his family house. He was accused of damaging settler cars and throwing stones.

When M.A. was arrested, he was severely beaten. As a result of the torture he underwent during his time in detention, his trial had to be postponed because of the visible bruises on his head and body.

The child was not allowed any visits during his detention. The court ruled to release him on bail of NIS 5,000 ($1,300), in addition to placing him under house arrest.

On January 28, 2011 Y.K. (15) went with his father to the fields of the farm they own, which is located next to an Israeli settlement. The family was attacked that day by armed settlers who shot Y.K. in the head. He later died.

His younger brother, 14, was arrested and detained for 45 days.

In 2011, B.A. (15) was arrested for the first time. Shortly after his release, he fell ill and was hospitalized. During his stay at the hospital, the IDF went to his house to arrest him, as he was on a wanted list. When they did not find him, they arrested his brother instead.

The soldiers offered to release his brother in exchange for B.A., threatening to raid the hospital. The ”exchange” operation took place at 6 a.m. and was filmed with the presence of medical staff.

B.A. is in detention and has attended eight court hearings for participating in a peaceful protest against the occupation. Under Israeli military law, all Palestinian protests are illegal.

He is not allowed any family visits.

Documentary photographer and visual artist Samar Hazboun  can be followed on Twitter (@Samar_Hazboun).
Her website is here..

Palestinian-American teacher Nour Joudah  was denied entry to the West Bank en route to her only place of employment and has returned to the United States after fighting the Israeli bureaucracy from Amman, Jordan. Nour Joudah is a  teacher at the Friends School in Ramallah.

The Quaker-affiliated school is one of the oldest educational institutions in Palestine and is an oasis.  But the case of Joudah clearly shows that Israel calls the shots in occupied Palestine. And examining her story shatters the feeling that the Friends School is worlds away from a conflict situation.

Things seem utterly normal at Friends. Hints of the chaos of the Second Intifada--when Israeli shells were fired near the school and a bombing hit a nearby police station--are nowhere to be found. You would be forgiven if you forgot for a moment that there was an Israeli occupation. Israeli soldiers, though, still conduct raids in the heart of Ramallah as they see fit.

The Palestinian students who attend the Friends School are well aware of the occupation and its grip on Palestinian life. The students who learned English from Nour Joudah are even more viscerally aware of how Israel controls Palestinian freedom of movement, even if the person has American citizenship. Israel’s decision to deny Joudah entry left them without a teacher they adored, and temporarily disrupted their studies.

Yara Izhiman, 14, described Ms. Nour, as they called her, “so friendly...She makes sure you love to learn,” said Izhiman, in extremely good English. “I never thought they would do such a horrible thing...This specific story shows the world how they prevent people from coming home.”

Joudah, a graduate of Georgetown, hails from Clarksville, Tennessee and had been teaching English at the Friends School since September 2012. She held a multiple-entry visa from Israel which gave her permission to stay and work in Ramallah for a whole year. Last Christmas, she traveled to Amman, Jordan on her way to celebrate the holidays with a friend. But when she went back to the West Bank in early January, Israeli border authorities denied her entry for unspecified “security” reasons.  Repeated denials of entry effectively amounted to a revocation of her visa.

The Friends School in Ramallah has been funded by USAID, or the United States Agency for International Development. This, combined with Joudah being an American citizen, were more than enough reason for American officials to get involved after Joudah’s first denial of entry. But Joudah’s citizenship, and her US-government funded place of employment, didn’t matter to Israeli authorities.

“This is the only place in the world where I feel that it means nothing to be an American” said Reham Barghouti, a psychology instructor and guidance counselor at the Friends School who is also an American citizen. She shared a classroom with Joudah while they both taught at the school. “If there was any other place that dealt with American citizens in this kind of way, there would be this whole giant uproar, right? But because it’s here, I guess, it doesn’t really matter.”

The Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. recommended that she try entering at Ben-Gurion Airport.  On February 25, her plane touched down in Tel Aviv. But despite having a multiple-entry visa, she was again questioned, detained and denied entry. Judah said Israeli interrogators asked her for what she called “a list of every young Palestinian that I knew so that [the interrogator] could create a file of phone numbers to tap.”

She was put back on a plane to Amman the next morning. Joudah denies she was uncooperative; she says she answered every single question (other than the request to furnish the names of young Palestinians she knew).

Joudah hired Israeli-American lawyer Emily Schaeffer, who is known for taking on the Israeli government’s discriminatory treatment of Palestinians.  Schaeffer sees Joudah’s denial of entry as evidence of two trends she has noticed while working as a lawyer: restrictions on both foreign NGO workers who assist Palestinians as well as foreigners with Palestinian or Arab backgrounds. Earlier this year, Haaretz  reported that Israel had “renewed restrictions on the freedom of movement of foreign nationals who live and work in the West Bank that prohibit them from entering East Jerusalem or Israel.” As for the other trend, Schaeffer says she has other Western clients who have had to deal with Israeli discrimination like Joudah has. “Basically, it’s intended to block the empowerment of the Palestinian community,” said Schaeffer.

This type of discrimination is getting renewed attention in the wake of news reports on a bill sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that would grant Israel an exemption from reciprocating visa-free entries to the country. AIPAC is pushing legislation that would allow Israelis to enter the U.S. without the hassle of obtaining a visa. Usually, countries reciprocate this practice with the U.S. But Israel--and AIPAC--are pushing for an exemption that would effectively allow Israel to discriminate against travelers it sees as “security threats”--largely meaning people with Palestinian or Arab backgrounds. “It’s stunning that you would give a green light to another country to violate the civil liberties of Americans traveling abroad,” said a Congressional staffer.

Despite the headaches Israel has caused for her, Joudah still manages to see some light in her situation. She has no regrets having fought the denial, and says her students have learned some valuable lessons from her.

One of Joudah’s students, Nicole Zakkak, said that “one of the most important things I learned from Ms. Nour was to speak about my homeland and my rights as a priority.”

Joudah added: “As my mother reminded me, 'honey, the whole nation is in exile, so you’ve never been any different, you just got a reminder."

Amid many articles commemorating the anniversary, I chose to excerpt an opinon piece by Iraqi political refugee Sami Ramadani who is a senior lecturer in sociology at London Metropolitan University and was a political refugee from Saddam's regime.


It has always been painful for me to write about Iraq and Baghdad, the land of my birth and the city of my childhood. They say that time is a great healer, but, along with most Iraqis, I feel the pain even more deeply today. But this time the tears for what has already happened are mixed with a crippling fear that worse is yet to come: an all-out civil war. Ten years on from the shock and awe of the 2003 Bush and Blair war – which followed 13 years of murderous sanctions, and 35 years of Saddamist dictatorship – my tormented land, once a cradle of civilisation, is staring into the abyss.

Wanton imperialist intervention and dictatorial rule have together been responsible for the deaths of more than a million people since 1991. And yet, according to both Tony Blair and the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright,
the "price is worth it". Blair, whom most Iraqis regard as a war criminal, is given VIP treatment by a culpable media. Iraqis listen in disbelief when he says: "I feel a responsibility but no regret for removing Sadam Hussein." (As if Saddam and his henchmen were simply whisked away, leaving the people to build a democratic state). It enrages us to see Blair build a business empire, capitalising on his role in piling up more Iraqi skulls than even Saddam managed.

The Iraqi people are fully aware, too, that Saddam committed all his major crimes while an ally of western powers. On the eve of the 2003 invasion I wrote the for the Guardian: "In Iraq, the US record speaks for itself: it backed Saddam's party, the Ba'ath, to capture power in 1963, murdering thousands of socialists, communists and democrats; it backed the Ba'ath party in 1968 when Saddam was installed as vice-president; it helped him and the Shah of Iran in 1975 to crush the Kurdish nationalist movement; it increased its support for Saddam in 1979…helping him launch his war of aggression against Iran in 1980; it backed him throughout the horrific eight years of war (1980 to 1988), in which a million Iranians and Iraqis were slaughtered, in the full knowledge that he was using chemical weapons and gassing Kurds and Marsh Arabs; it encouraged him in 1990 to invade Kuwait…; it backed him in 1991 when Bush [senior] suddenly stopped the war, exactly 24 hours after the start of the great March uprising that engulfed the south and Iraqi Kurdistan…; and it backed him as the 'lesser evil' from March 1991 to September 11 2001 under the umbrella of murderous sanctions and the policy of "containment"."

But when it was no longer in their interests to back him, the US and UK drowned Iraq in blood. That war has still not been consigned to history – not for the people of Iraq or the region.

We haven't even counted the dead yet, let alone the injured, displaced and traumatised. Countless thousands are still missing. Of the more than 4 million refugees, at least a million are yet to go back to their homeland, and there still about a million internal refugees. On an almost daily basis, explosions and shootings continue to kill the innocent.

The US and UK still refuse to accept the harmful consequences of radioactive depleted uranium munitions, and the US denies that it used chemical weapons in Falluja – but Iraqis see the evidence: the poisoned environment, the cancer and deformities. Lack of electricity, clean water and other essential services continues to hit millions of impoverished and unemployed people.  Women's rights, and human rights in general, are daily suppressed.

And what of democracy, supposedly the point of it all? The US-led occupying authorities nurtured a "political process"
and a constitution designed to sow sectarian and ethnic discord. Having failed to crush the resistance to direct occupation, they resorted to divide-and-rule to keep their foothold in Iraq. Using torture, sectarian death squads and billions of dollars, the occupation has succeeded in weakening the social fabric and elevating a corrupt ruling class that gets richer by the day, salivating at the prospect of acquiring a bigger share of Iraq's natural resources, which are mostly mortgaged to foreign oil companies and construction firms.

Warring sectarian and ethnic forces, either allied to or fearing US influence, dominate the dysfunctional and corrupt Iraqi state institutions, but the US embassy in Baghdad – the biggest in the world – still calls the shots.

To add to the increased tension within the country, the war in Syria is threatening to create a wider regional conflict, with Iraq
and Lebanon being sucked in.

The US-led war on Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster, with genocidal dimensions for the Iraqi people, and continues to fuel conflicts and sow discord in the region.

There was once a strong democratic unifying force in Iraq, but this was crushed by the CIA-backed Ba'athist coup of 1963, and Saddam's regime. The re-emergence of such a force is now the Iraqi people's only hope.