Archive for the week ending 7th Match 2008
'National crisis' for Iraqi women
The situation for women in Iraq has become a "national crisis" since the US-led invasion in 2003, a report by an international women's group has warned. Women for Women International said they had had relative autonomy and security, but now faced violence, controversial leadership and poor infrastructure.
According to the report, 63.9% or those questioned said violence against women was increasing. "When asked why, respondents most commonly said that there is less respect for women's rights than before, that women are thought of as possessions, and that the economy has gotten worse," it said.
Some 76.2% said girls in their families were forbidden from attending school, while 68.3% described the availability of jobs for women as "bad".
More than 40% of did not think that the circumstances of women were being considered by those making decisions about Iraq's future.
BBC News, 6/3/08
Troop depression on rise in Afghanistan
U.S. troop morale improved in Iraq last year, but soldiers fighting in Afghanistan suffered more depression as violence there worsened, an Army mental health report says.
And in a recurring theme for a force strained by its seventh year at war, the annual battlefield study found once again that soldiers on their third and fourth tours of duty had sharply greater rates of mental health problems than those on their first or second deployments.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 6/3/08
Sadrists consider general strike over law setback
The Iraqi Sadr bloc, which has the backing of 32 members in a 275-seat Iraqi parliament expressed concern about Iraqi presidential council decision to object to a national reconciliation law.
The draft law would have paved the way for provincial elections. Its rejection is being seen as setback in the process of national reconciliation.
The legislation, which also defines the relationship between Baghdad and local authorities, will now be sent back to parliament, which passed it as part of a package of three controversial laws, earlier this month after weeks of delays.
The faction loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has reacted angrily to the rejection by Iraq's presidency council of a draft law on regional powers.
A spokesman for Sadrist bloc, Nassar Rubaie, denounced the council's decision as a form of dictatorship. He said his group was considering calling for sit-ins and a general strike in protest.
ArabicNews.com, 5/3/08
Miliband echoes Rice on Afghanistan
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband indicated Thursday he's confident Canada will get the allied reinforcements it says it needs to extend its mission in Afghanistan beyond 2009.
Miliband, arriving at a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers here, echoed the sentiments expressed Wednesday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has warned that Canada will withdraw its 2,500 soldiers from Afghanistan next year if it doesn't get an additional 1,000-troop reinforcement, extra helicopters and surveillance drones.
Canada.com, 6/3/08
Sunni anger at trial failure
One of the main Sunni Arab parties in Iraq has criticised the collapse of a trial of two former senior officials accused of aiding Shia death squads.
The Iraqi Islamic Party said the government had failed in its duty to protect potential witnesses. The party said witnesses had been threatened by armed groups in the days leading up to the trial. Charges were dropped for lack of evidence.
Both defendants, top health ministry officials, denied the charges. Several prosecution witnesses failed to appear at the high-profile trial in Baghdad, after reportedly receiving death threats.
Former deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamili and former head of security at the ministry, Brig Gen Hamid al-Shammari, were released by the US military on Wednesday, two days after the trial collapsed.
BBC News, 5/3/08
US plot to overthrow Hamas
The Bush administration, caught out by the rise of Hamas, embarked on a secret project for the armed overthrow of the Islamist government in Gaza, it emerged yesterday.
Vanity Fair reports in its April edition that President George Bush and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, signed off on a plan for the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to remove the Hamas authorities in Gaza. The plan called for Washington's allies in the region to funnel arms and salaries to Fatah fighters who would lead a rising against Hamas.
The Bush administration plan sought to undo the results of elections in the West Bank and Gaza in January 2006 which, to the chagrin of White House and State Department officials, saw Hamas win a majority of seats in the Palestinian legislature.
The 2006 election result was seen as an affront to the central premise of the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East - that democratic elections would inexorably lead to pro-western governments.
Guardian, 4/3/08
US airstrike in Somalia
Two U.S. missiles hit a house in southern Somalia on Monday, according to local officials, in an attack Washington said was directed at "known terrorists". It was the fourth U.S. strike in 14 months on Somalia, where Washington believes local Islamist insurgents are giving shelter to wanted al Qaeda figures.
Residents of Dobley, a remote Somali town 140 miles from the southern port city of Kismayu on the Kenyan border, said they believed the missiles were targeting senior Islamist leaders meeting nearby.
Dobley district commissioner Ali Hussein Nur said six people were killed. A local politician, who had visited the scene and who asked not to be named, said only three were wounded.
A man in Kismayu, who said the house that was hit belonged to him, told Reuters his daughter was among the wounded and four of his cows had also been killed in the attack.
Reuters, 3/3/08
US and UK oppose Gaza statement
America and Arab states will lock horns again today in the UN Security Council as Libya seeks an immediate ceasefire and a formal condemnation of the escalation of violence in Gaza.
Libya has circulated a draft resolution which is due to be discussed by the council members today and would constitute their first formal response if adopted.
But in a closed session, some delegations, including Britain's, rejected the text for failing to point out that Israeli military attacks were launched in response to militants firing missiles.
The US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said: "It's not a balanced resolution, certainly." Diplomats said yesterday that Libya, representing the Palestinians and Arab countries on the council, may retain its original draft to attract a US veto at a public meeting of the council as the US has frequently used its veto to block resolutions condemning Israel.
Independent, 3/3/08
Pakistan bomb kills 42
A suicide bomber killed at least 42 people yesterday at a meeting called by tribal elders to deal with rising Taliban militancy in Pakistan's volatile northwest, authorities said.
Dozens of others were wounded in the blast, the third in three days in North-West Frontier Province, a rugged and lawless region where Pakistani security forces are waging an increasingly deadly fight against armed Taliban and Al Qaeda supporters.
The series of attacks, in which more than 80 people have been killed, underscore the grave security and political challenges facing the country as the opposition parties that won last month's elections grapple with the task of forming a new government.
The insurgency has proved to be one of the most intractable problems facing President Pervez Musharraf, whom the United States considers a crucial ally in the fight against Islamic extremism.
Most Pakistanis abhor the violence gripping their nation, but many are critical of the military crackdown on the tribal areas, which they see as Musharraf doing the bidding of US officials.
Los Angeles Times, 3/3/08
Taliban blow up phone tower
Taliban militants blew up a telecommunications tower Friday in southern Afghanistan following a warning to phone companies to shut down the towers at night or face attack.
The militants fear U.S. and other foreign troops are using mobile phone signals to track insurgents and launch attacks against them. A Taliban spokesman on Monday said militants would blow up towers across Afghanistan if the companies did not switch off their signals overnight.
Insurgents made good on that threat Friday, destroying a tower along the main highway in the Zhari district of Kandahar province, said Niaz Mohammad Serhadi, the top district official
AFP, 1/3/08
Afghan drugs trade funds Taliban
The Taliban have built a big and profitable drug operation in Afghanistan as provincial governors look the other way, the latest grim sign of backsliding in a country the United States has spent six years and billions of dollars trying to salvage.
A report on drugs yesterday - it said that Afghanistan now produces 93 percent of the world's opium poppies - comes hand in hand with the resurgence of Taliban militants despite U.S. anti-insurgent efforts. Also on the rise is terrorist violence such as roadside bombs, suicide bombings and attacks on police.
The report describes an Afghan twist on the old organized-crime protection racket: Drug barons supply the Taliban with money and weapons, and the hard-line militants protect the growing regions and help get the drugs to market.
Winston-Salem Journal, 1/3/08
Turkey withdraws after US warning
Just hours after US President George W Bush called on Turkey to end its operation against the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as soon as possible, troops were rolling back across the border.
It was several hours before the Turkish General Staff officially confirmed the complete withdrawal on its website. The statement was adamant that the move was pre-planned - judged according to military need, not forced through political pressure. But the decision has baffled many Turkish commentators.
"Such a prompt end to this operation just hours after those statements creates real question marks. Everyone here wants to know why," says Cengiz Candar, a columnist with the daily newspaper, Referans.
"This will be seen as a real blunder. It's a real credibility issue for the government and for the military," he adds, speculating that perhaps the US issued a far harsher warning to Turkey behind closed doors than in public.
American support was crucial to the cross-border operation. The US opened Iraqi airspace to Turkish fighter planes last December and has been supplying intelligence from inside northern Iraq ever since.
BBC News, 29/2/08
Court gags SAS torture claims
A former SAS soldier was served with a high court order yesterday preventing him from making fresh disclosures about how hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture.
Ben Griffin could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law. Griffin, 29, left the British army in 2005 after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the "illegal" tactics of US troops.
Guardian, 29/2/08
US support of Musharraf irks Pakistanis
The Bush administration's continued backing of President Pervez Musharraf, despite the overwhelming rejection of his party by voters this month, is fueling a new level of frustration in Pakistan with the United States.
The American insistence that Mr. Musharraf play a significant role, analysts say, will only draw out a power struggle with the president and distract the new government from pushing ahead with alternatives to Mr. Musharraf's policies on the economy and terrorism, which are widely viewed here as having failed.
"I've never seen such an irrational, impractical move on the part of the United States," said Rasul Baksh Rais, a political scientist at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. "The whole country has voted against Musharraf. This was a referendum against Musharraf."
New York Times, 29/2/08