Archive for the week ending 8th February 2008
More Iraqis fleeing than returning
Iraqis are once again leaving Iraq for Syria in greater numbers than are returning, despite the lower level of bloodshed in their homeland, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday.
A report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, citing Syrian immigration officials, said that in late January an average of 1,200 Iraqis entered Syria every day compared with around 700 who returned.
Most of those Iraqis who return say they are doing so because their Syrian visas have expired or because they have run out of money, rather than because conditions in their homeland have improved, the report said.
TurkishPress.com, 6/2/08
US kills three more Iraqi civilians
Three Iraqi civilians were killed and a child was critically injured when U.S. soldiers stormed a small home north of Baghdad, the military said Tuesday.
It was the second time in three days that Iraqis were mistakenly killed by American forces. A helicopter strike Saturday killed six civilians and three guards aligned with U.S. troops.
Muhannad Ismail Shihab, whose aunt, uncle and cousin were killed in Monday's attack, said: "I was shocked when I saw their bodies, and I started to shiver. All of them were near their beds. The Americans are liars when they said my family was killed because the soldiers came under fire."
The United Nations' most recent human rights report on Iraq recorded 88 civilian deaths caused by U.S. airstrikes during the March-through-June period last year. It urged the U.S. to pursue a "vigorous" investigation of the events leading to the deaths.
Asked whether the request had led to changes, Air Force Brig. Gen. Burt Field said, "No, I'm afraid not, and the reason is that we are doing everything humanly possible to avoid the death of innocent people."
Los Angeles Times, 6/2/08
BP positions itself for share of Iraqi oil
BP has been holding meetings with Iraqi oil officials as it speeds up plans to re-enter one of the biggest but politically most controversial oil provinces in the world, five years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein by the British and US military.
BP said it was "possible" some of its executives might meet the Iraqi oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, today at a Royal Institute of International Affairs conference in London, sponsored by BP, Shell and other western oil majors. A spokesman for BP, which will report annual profits of about $18bn, confirmed managers met Iraqi oil officials last week in Jordan and talked about providing technical assistance.
Iraq has more than 115bn barrels of recoverable reserves, an attraction for oil groups at a time when easily recoverable reserves are becoming more difficult to secure. The group has already undertaken technical studies on the Rumeila oilfield for the new government of Iraq. It is gearing up for further involvement following the drafting of a new oil law in Iraq.The chief executive of Shell, Jeroen van der Veer, also admitted last week that his company was looking closely at re-entering Iraq.
When British and American forces invaded five years ago, Tony Blair and George Bush denied they were waging war to secure oil supplies.
The appearance of Shahristani with British energy minister Malcolm Wicks today will be met with campaigners from the charity War on Want and other groups that have formed a coalition called Hands Off Iraqi Oil.
They claim the country will lose "billions of pounds in oil income" under the proposed new law which they say the British and US governments are pressing Baghdad to sign.
Guardian 5//2/08
Arming the sectarian divide
There is growing concern that local militias now allied with the U.S. are turning their guns on each other as the U.S. prepares to pull back its presence.
These groups have been tasked with pacifying some of the most restive corners of Iraq - contributing to the measure of stability enjoyed by the country in the last few months. But there are signs that these groups, called Concerned Local Citizens (CLCs) by the U.S. military, are already turning on each other in competition for territory.
"There is some inter-militia fighting," said John Jones, State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team leader for Diyala province. Jones, who was visiting Washington last month, says that the fighting has "by and large" not entangled coalition forces in hostilities.
But what concerns officials is how to keep the CLCs in line as the U.S. presence recedes. President George W. Bush said in the State of the Union address that 20,000 troops will pull out of Iraq in the coming months.
"When the American troops get out, you will have a vacuum. These guys will filter into it," says a U.S. official in Iraq about the CLCs. "It sounds good now because they are not shooting at us."
Time, 5/2/08
Andrew Windsor attacks US policy
The United States could have avoided some of the problems it is experiencing in Iraq if it had listened to Britain's advice and learned from its experiences, Prince Andrew said in an interview published Tuesday.
The prince said the invasion and its aftermath had created a "healthy skepticism" in Britain about what was said in Washington and led many to ask, "Why didn't anyone listen to what was said and the advice that was given?"
Queen Elizabeth II's second son, a former Royal Navy helicopter pilot who now promotes British business abroad, told the International Herald Tribune that Britain's history as an imperial power meant it had valuable experience to share.
Associated Press, 5/2/08
US spends more on war than rest of world combined
According to 2005 data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States spends substantially more on military endeavors than any country in the world.
If war spending and allocations to the "Global War on Terror" are excluded, the U.S. military budget is still more than seven times that of its next closest competitor, China.
If you include those other expenditures, U.S. military spending surpasses that of all other countries in the world combined.
Washington Post, 4/2/08
NATO raids kill civilians in Afghanistan
Raids by Afghan and NATO troops against Taliban insurgents in southern and southwestern Afghanistan killed several civilians, among them children, local officials said Monday. Ten people were killed in southwestern Farah province and two others were killed in southern Helmand province, they said.
The governor of Bakwa district said that two women and three children were among the dead and only one Taliban fighter was killed.
AFP, 4/2/08
Turkey launches bombing raids against Kurds
Turkish warplanes have attacked some 70 Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq, the Turkish military says. Kurdish officials say several border villages were bombed.
The US backs Turkish operations against the PKK and has agreed to share intelligence with Ankara.
The PKK - which is designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US and the EU - is thought to have about 3,000 rebels based in Iraq. For decades, it has been fighting for a Kurdish homeland separate from Turkey.
BBC News, 4/2/08
Kurd's power wanes
As a minority group in Iraq, the Kurds have enjoyed disproportionate influence in the country's politics since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But now their leverage appears to be declining as tensions rise with Iraqi Arabs, raising the specter of another fissure alongside the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites.
The Kurds, who are mostly Sunni but not Arab, have steadfastly backed the government, most recently helping to keep it afloat when Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lacked support from much of Parliament.
With their political acumen, close ties to the Americans and technical competence at running government agencies, the Kurds cemented a position of enormous strength. This allowed them to all but dictate terms in Iraq's Constitution that gave them considerable regional autonomy and some significant rights in oil development.
But now the Kurds are pursuing policies that are antagonizing the other factions. The Kurds' efforts to seize control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and to gain a more advantageous division of national revenues are uniting most Sunnis and many Shiites with Mr. Maliki's government in opposition to the Kurdish demands.
For the United States, the diminution in Kurdish power is part of a larger problem of political divisiveness that has plagued its efforts to build a functioning government in Iraq. While several political parties can come together to address a particular issue, none can seem to form the lasting allegiances needed for actual governance.
The Kurds, with their pro-American outlook, were a natural ally. But now the Americans are increasingly placed in the uncomfortable position of choosing between the Kurds, whom they have long supported and protected, and the Iraqi Arabs, whose government the Americans helped create.
New York Times, 1/2/08
US air strike kills 9
Nine people were killed and four were injured in an errant U.S. air strike southeast of Baghdad, the military said Sunday. One child was among the dead, and two children were among the injured, U.S. Army Maj. Brad Leighton said.
At least three members of a so-called concerned local citizens group, or CLC, were among the dead in the mistaken air strike, according to a U.S. military source.
A U.S. aircraft bombed a house that the suspected al-Qaida in Iraq insurgents were thought to have entered. A ground search later revealed that the bomb site actually was a CLC checkpoint, and the guns they had been seen carrying were part of their authorized duties, the source said.
The incident was not reported to the media until the military was contacted by the Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times, 3/2/08
Britain plans secret Taliban base
Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.
The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate.
The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."
The British insist President Karzai's office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.
Independent, 4/2/08
Iraq's three wars
Three separate but related wars are being waged in this country now, and the third one, against Shiite extremists, is the most worrisome, according to the commander and senior staff of the U.S. Army division patrolling Baghdad.
The first, against al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group that U.S. officials believe is foreign-led, is going well despite occasional spikes in violence, such as Friday's dual bombings of Baghdad marketplaces. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is "frustrated" but "not defeated," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey W. Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, said in an interview last week.
The second fight, against the domestic Sunni insurgency, has become dormant in many places in the past year, as about 80,000 armed men, many of them former insurgents, switched sides and came onto the U.S. payroll with groups that officers here call "Concerned Local Citizens."
The third conflict, and perhaps the most vexing for U.S. commanders, is with Shiite extremist militias. More than two-thirds of U.S. casualties are caused by roadside bombs, particularly by high-tech anti-armor devices, planted by those groups.
Washington Post, 3/2/08
Afghanistan 'the forgotten war'
Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding that without a change in U.S. policy there, the erstwhile sanctuary of Osama bin Laden would remain a failed state.
After spending $25 billion over six years to try to defeat the Taliban, the radical Islamist militia that had been dispersed into the mountains by the initial U.S. invasion is now a growing presence in large parts of the country.
The Taliban is now setting off more bombs - including one in Kabul's fanciest hotel on January 14 that killed eight people - and fueling its insurgency with profits from the opium trade. (Last year, the country produced 93% of the world's supply.) The declining security situation saw foreign investment in Afghanistan fall by 50% last year.
The Taliban is also killing more Americans: From 2002 to 2004, an average of one U.S. soldier was killed per week in Afghanistan; by 2007, that figure had more than doubled. Indeed, nearly 500 U.S. troops have perished in America's "forgotten war."
Time Magazine, 3/2/08
Iraq - 'the situation is still terrible'
Iraq is less violent than a year ago, but the country is still the most dangerous in the world. So it was no surprise to anyone in Baghdad, where people have long dreaded a renewal of al-Qa'ida's savage bombing campaign directed at Shia civilians, that there should be suicide attacks on two bird markets, killing 92 people on Friday.
For all President George Bush's claims of progress, cited in his final State of the Union address last week, Baghdad looks like a city out of the Middle Ages, divided into hostile townships. Districts have been turned into fortresses, encircled by walls made out of concrete slabs. Police and soldiers check all identities at the entrances and exits.
"People say things are better than they were," says Zainab Jafar, a well-educated Shia woman, "but what they mean is that they are better than the bloodbath of 2006. The situation is still terrible."
Independent on Sunday, 3/2/08
Iraq invasion has strengthened Iran
Iran is stronger today because of the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the American ambassador to the United Nations said Friday.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq removed a key rival of Shiite Iran with the ouster of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government. Iran has friendly ties with the Shiites now in power in Iraq.
"It's helped Iran's relative position in the region, because Iraq was a rival of Iran ... and the balance there has disintegrated or weakened," Zalmay Khalilzad said while answering questions from students at Columbia University.
. "And so one of the objectives of Iran, in my view, is to discourage a reemergence of Iraq as a balancer. And Afghanistan, too, the change was helpful to Iran."
San Diego Union-Tribune, 2/2/08
Mercenaries outnumber regular forces
Contract personnel working for the Defense Department now outnumber U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; there are 196,000 private-sector workers in both countries compared to 182,000 troops.
Contractors are responsible for a slew of duties, including repairing warfighting equipment, supplying food and water, building barracks, providing armed security and gathering intelligence.
Newsday, 2/2/08
Widening splits over Afghanistan
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, is to fly to London next week to tackle an escalating row over Nato troop reinforcements for Afghanistan, amid worries that the entire international stabilisation strategy is in danger of failing.
Alliance divisions burst into the open earlier yesterday with a US demand that Germany, whose forces are in the relatively stable north, send combat troops and helicopters to the volatile south.
Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, sent an "unusually stern" request to Berlin, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported. But Germany's defence secretary, Franz Josef Jung, refused to comply.
On Thursday Gates met similar opposition from his French counterpart, Hervé Morin, in talks in Washington. The mood in Paris and Berlin threatens a damaging replay of the transatlantic spats in the run up to the Iraq war five years ago.
But the immediate crisis has been triggered by Canada, which has threatened to bring home its 2,500 troops from Kandahar, next to Helmand province where British forces are fighting the resurgent Taliban insurgency, unless other allies send reinforcements.
Guardian, 2/2/08