These are the archives for the week ending 8th December 2006
Alter policy or risk disaster
Bush was warned yesterday that his policy in Iraq was "not working" and that to have a chance of avoiding a regional disaster he would have to repudiate much of the foreign policy he has pursued over the past six years.
In stark language, the long awaited bi-partisan Iraq Study Group called for US combat troops to be withdrawn by early 2008 in parallel with comprehensive Middle-East peace negotiations that would include talks with Iran and Syria on Iraq's future, a conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a land-for-peace-deal between Israel and Syria.
In its report, "The Way Forward - A New Approach" the ISG put forward 79 recommendations to contain a conflict that is says could end up costing the US $2 trillion. Nearly 3,000 US soldiers have been killed - 10 on the day the report was presented in four separate incidents.
Guardian 7/12/06
'A report to solve American problems, and not to solve Iraq's problems'
The Iraq Study Group's prescriptions hinge on a fragile Iraqi government's ability to achieve national reconciliation and security at a time when the country is fractured along sectarian lines, its security forces are ineffective and competing visions threaten to collapse the state, Iraqi politicians and analysts said Wednesday.
They said the report is a recipe, backed by threats and disincentives, that neither addresses nor understands the complex forces that fuel Iraq's woes. They described it as a strategy largely to help U.S. troops return home and resurrect America's frayed influence in the Middle East. Iraqis also expressed fear that the report's recommendations, if implemented, could weaken an already besieged government in a country teetering on the edge of civil war.
"It is a report to solve American problems, and not to solve Iraq's problems," said Ayad al-Sammarai, an influential Sunni Muslim politician.
Washington Post, 7/12/06
Blair agrees that war not being won
Just three weeks ago, the prime minister agreed that the war in Iraq had been a disaster. Now, as he was set to leave for Washington and a meeting with the President, he has agreed that he and Mr Bush are not winning that war.
Today, during question time, David Cameron asked the prime minister if he agreed with the new American defence secretary, Robert Gates, that America was "not winning the war in Iraq". The prime minister's reply started with: "Of course."
Stating the obvious in both cases perhaps, but it is the first time the prime minister has admitted either and it seems to represent the most fundamental change in attitude towards the conflict. The prime minister has, of course, previously agreed that the war on terrorism and extremism is not being won. But he now has a stated view that the war in Iraq has turned into a disaster and is currently being lost.
BBC News, 6/12/06
War has cost UK £7 billion
The cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is increasing, the chancellor indicated in his statement yesterday. He said the Ministry of Defence had been allocated an additional £600m for operations in the two countries next year and for what he called "other international obligations". This is more than the pre-budget amounts over the past three years.
However, in this year's March budget Gordon Brown significantly increased the previous pre-budget figure and said an extra £800m would be spent this year in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yesterday's statement means that, since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, British military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost £7bn.
Guardian, 7/12/06
Official: US not winning in Iraq
Robert Gates, President George W. Bush's choice to take over the Pentagon, said on Tuesday America was not winning in Iraq and warned that the Middle East could explode into violence. Asked by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan if the United States was winning in Iraq, Gates replied: "No, sir."
Gates' answer contradicted a declaration by Bush on October 25 that "absolutely, we're winning" in Iraq. White House spokesman Tony Snow insisted Gates shared Bush's goals in Iraq but had been brought in to take a fresh look at policy.
Reuters, 5/12/06
More than 100, 000 mercenaries in Iraq
There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield.
The survey finding, which includes Americans, Iraqis and third-party nationals hired by companies operating under U.S. government contracts, is significantly higher and wider in scope than the Pentagon's only previous estimate, which said there were 25,000 security contractors in the country.
It is also 10 times the estimated number of contractors that deployed during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, reflecting the Pentagon's growing post-Cold War reliance on contractors for such jobs as providing security, interrogating prisoners, cooking meals, fixing equipment and constructing bases that were once reserved for soldiers.
Washington Post, 5/12/06
Democrats will not cut war funding
The incoming Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats are ruling out any effort by members of their party to have Congress cut off funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq. Proponents of such a move say any funds lawmakers approve when Democrats assume control of Congress in January should be used to bring U.S. troops home..
Congresswoman Pelosi made her position clear as House Democrats met to discuss options and a future position on Iraq. Pelosi says the meeting highlighted that there are no easy answers to "the very difficult challenge" in Iraq, but she nonetheless stated her firm opposition to any funding cutoff: "Absolutely not," she said. "Let me remove all doubt in anyone's mind, as long as our troops are in harm's way, Democrats will be there to support them. But we will have oversight over that funding."
Pelosi was responding to reporter's questions after Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich urged fellow Democrats to cut off funds for Iraq. "Why in the world would we want to appropriate an additional $130 billion? This would keep the U.S. in Iraq through mid-2008," he said.
Voice of America, 5/12/06
US trained Afghan police 'incapable'
Five years after the fall of the Taliban, a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone.
In its most significant finding, the report said that no effective field training program had been established in Afghanistan, at least in part because of a slow, ineffectual start and understaffing. Police training experts who have studied or had first-hand experience with the American effort in Afghanistan said they agreed with the report's findings, and some said they had warned for years that field training was the backbone of a strong program.
But they said additional problems needed to be investigated, including the quality of private contractors and the cost and effectiveness of relying on them to train the police officers. In particular, the experts questioned why the report focused on United States government managers and only glancingly analyzed the performance of the principal contractor in Afghanistan, DynCorp International of Virginia.
New York Times, 4/12/06
US will hand over to sectarian army
Brig. Gen. Shakir Hulayl al-Kaabi, commander of the Iraq army's 5th division, oversees a mostly Shiite force in an area where at least half the population is Sunni. The American officers who previously worked with him have been reported as saying they tried to have him removed for refusing orders and acting on a sectarian agenda. Sunni leaders say his men are waging a campaign of collective punishment because of vicious Sunni insurgent attacks against Shiites and U.S.-led forces.
Despite the laundry list of accusations against al-Kaabi, the Shiite-led government in Baghdad keeps promoting him. With U.S. forces planning to hand over full military control of Diyala and other provinces this spring, the experience of the 5th Division is viewed by many as a harbinger of deep troubles to come as American troops move on.
In the past week, the 5th Division took on supervision of even the local police force, which repeatedly has come under attack. "This will just lead to more provocations and confrontations between the 5th Division and the existing groups," said Salim al-Jubouri, a Sunni law professor who represents Diyala in the Iraqi parliament.
Kansas City Star,
Iraq life 'worse than under Saddam'
Life for ordinary Iraqis is now worse than under Saddam Hussein as the country descends into violence "much worse" than civil war, Kofi Annan has said.
The Secretary General of the United Nations gave his hardest-hitting assessment yet of the present situation as he prepared to leave office.
"If I was an average Iraqi, I would make the same comparison," he told the BBC.
"They had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets: they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back without a mother or father worrying 'Am I going to see my child again?'
"A society needs minimum security and a secure environment for it to get on. Without security, not much can be done."
The question of whether the sectarian violence in Iraq can be termed a "civil war" has become a highly-controversial one. But Mr Annan indicated he was in no doubt about its seriousness "given the level of the violence, the level of killing and the way the forces are ranged against each other".
"A few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war. This is much worse," he said.
Mr Annan said he did "everything I could" to stop the war taking place in the first place and genuinely believed it could have been halted.
Independent 4/12/06
Refugees destabilising region
As bloodshed in Iraq worsens, the tide of refugees fleeing the country is straining resources in the region and inflaming fears that Iraq's sectarian conflict might spread to neighboring countries. A new United Nations report says Iraq is "hemorrhaging" refugees in staggering numbers. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people are fleeing the country every day.
After three and a half years of nearly constant warfare, at least 1.5 million Iraqi refugees have moved to neighboring countries, reshaping the already complex demographic mosaics of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. With no end in sight to the fighting in Iraq, governments in Syria and Jordan worry that Iraqis are becoming the new Palestinians: a permanent refugee population that will import its sectarian and religious squabbles into the host countries.
International Herald Tribune, 3/12/06
Raid kills women and toddler
A U.S. airstrike flattened a building in a volatile province west of Baghdad, killing two women and a toddler, as well as six militants, the military said Sunday. It was the latest of several recent raids that have left women and children killed or wounded.
The Hindu, India, 4/12/06
Corruption: the 'second insurgency'
The Iraqi government is in danger of being brought down by the wholesale smuggling of the nation's oil and other forms of corruption that together represent a 'second insurgency' according to a senior US official.
Stuart Bowen, who has been in charge of auditing Iraq's faltering reconstruction since 2004, said corruption had reached such levels that it threatened the survival of the state.
Mr Bowens' office has found that the insurgents and militias have also been abetted by US incompetence. A recent audit by his inspectors found that more than 14,000 guns paid for out of US reconstruction funds for Iraqi government use could not be accounted for.
Many could be in the hands of insurgents or sectarian death squads, but it will be almost impossible to prove because when the US military handed out the guns it noted the serial numbers of only about 10,000 out of a total of 370,000 US-funded weapons, contrary to defence department regulations.
Another serious problem is the way the US government decided to give out reconstruction contracts. It split the economy into sectors and shared them out among nine big US corporations. In most cases the contracts were distributed without competition and on a cost-plus basis.
In other words the contractors were guaranteed a profit margin calculated as a percentage of their costs, so the higher the costs, the higher the profits. In the rush to get the work started the contracts were signed early in 2004. In many cases work did not get under way until the year was nearly over. In the months between, the contractors racked up huge bills on wages, hotel bills and restaurants.
Guardian 2/12/06
Bush resists pressure for change
The White House is resisting efforts by an advisory commission on Iraq strategy to force the pace on troop withdrawals and negotiations with Iran and Syria. At the Pentagon, the joint chiefs of staff are also determined not to be pushed into "managing defeat" after the Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker, the former secretary of state, and former Democrat congressman Lee Hamilton, reports this week.
This week is pivotal for American policy on Iraq with confirmation hearings opening into the nomination of Robert Gates, a former CIA director, as the new defence secretary, followed by the release of the 100-page Iraq Study Group (ISG) report on Wednesday. Tony Blair will fly in that day for a White House summit. With the White House, Pentagon, State Department and CIA all reviewing the options for Iraq, the ISG's recommendations will be just "one input", according to Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser.
The Times, 3/12/06
Civilian deaths up 44%
The number of Iraqi civilians killed in sectarian violence leapt last month, Iraqi interior ministry figures show. Official statistics show civilian deaths in November rose by 44% compared with October's toll.
The government figures are roughly half of those calculated by the UN, which last week said a total of 3,709 had died in October.
BBC News, 1/12/06
"The 80 percent solution"
The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, according to U.S. officials.
The proposal, put forward by the State Department as part of a crash White House review of Iraq policy, follows an assessment that the ambitious U.S. outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed. U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that their reconciliation efforts may even have backfired, alienating the Shiite majority and leaving the United States vulnerable to having no allies in Iraq, according to sources familiar with the State Department proposal.
Some insiders call the proposal the "80 percent" solution, a term that makes other parties to the White House policy review cringe. Sunni Arabs make up about 20 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.
Washington Post, 1/12/06
al-Sadr targets the occupation
In a news conference here following his return from Amman, Mr. Maliki called for an end to the parliamentary boycott by 30 legislators and six cabinet members loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric. Mr. Maliki had ignored their request to cancel the meeting with Mr. Bush.
The members of Mr. Sadr's bloc said they would end their boycott on condition that Mr. Bush cede more authority over Iraqi security forces to Mr. Maliki, and that the government improve public services.
Falah Hassan Shensel, a member of the Sadr bloc, said Thursday that the Sadr loyalists were reaching across ethnic and religious lines to organize an alliance against the American military presence in Iraq. The group, he said, would demand a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. "It's a patriotic national group, it's not sectarian or ethnic," he said. "We need to be freed from the occupation."
New York Times, 1/12/06
Maliki believes Iraqis will be ready by June...
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says his country's forces would be able to assume security command by June 2007 - which could allow the United States to start withdrawing its troops.
"I cannot answer on behalf of the US administration, but I can tell you that from our side our forces will be ready by June 2007," Maliki told US network ABC after meeting US President George W Bush in Jordan.
The Age, Australia, 1/12/06
...as his government crumbles
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki faced a widening revolt within his divided government as two senior Sunni politicians joined prominent Shiite lawmakers and Cabinet members in criticizing his policies.
Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi said he wanted to see al-Maliki's government gone and another "understanding" for a new coalition put in place with guarantees that ensure collective decision making. "There is a clear deterioration in security and everything is moving in the wrong direction," the Sunni leader said. "This situation must be redressed as soon as possible. If they continue, the country will plunge into civil war."
Al-Maliki's No. 2, Deputy Prime Minister Salam Zikam Ali al-Zubaie, also a Sunni, argued that the president's government failed to curb the spread of sectarian politics. A boycott by 30 lawmakers and five Cabinet ministers loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was in protest of al-Maliki's meeting with President Bush in Jordan on Thursday. The Sadrists said the meeting amounted to an affront to the Iraqi people.
Boston Globe, 1/12/06