These are the archives for the week ending 8th September 2006
America's new democracy at work
Iraqi lawmakers returned to work Tuesday, some traveling from the Kurdish north, others from the Sunni Arab west and still others from the Shiite south. About one-third, however, didn't bother to show. At Tuesday's session, which had already been postponed once because so many legislators had not returned from their summer holiday, 180 of the 275 representatives were present.
"During the Jihad massacre, they had closed sessions discussing their salaries and bargaining on how many cars they can get," said Ali Abdullah, a 31-year-old Sunni engineer from western Baghdad, referring to recent sectarian bloodshed in the capital. "People were being slaughtered and they were worrying about themselves."
Legislators have a three-day work week and are paid $5,000 per month plus $7,000 in allowances for drivers, guards and other staffers. By comparison, the average monthly salary for a civil servant in Iraq is about $200.
During the previous parliamentary session, four minor laws were passed in five months - two of them concerning government employment.
Los Angeles Times, 6/9/06
August drop-off in violence didn't exist
We took an interesting phone call today from an official at the Baghdad morgue. We get these calls every day - a daily tally of the violence. But this one was particularly sobering. It turns out the official toll of violent deaths in August was just revised upwards to 1535 from 550, tripling the total.
Now, we're depressingly used to hearing about deaths here, so much so that the numbers can be numbing. But this means that a much-publicized drop-off in violence in August - heralded by both the Iraqi government and the US military as a sign that a new security effort in Baghdad was working -- apparently didn't exist.
ABC News, 6/9/06
Private police contract extended
DynCorp International on Tuesday said the U.S. Department of State has extended a contract to support the training of police officers in Iraq. The nine-month extension is valued at more than $318 million and will expire on May 31, 2007, the private security firm and defense contractor said in a statement. The company has provided this service since April 2004 under the Department of State's worldwide civilian police program, DynCorp added.
Reuters, 5/9/06
More British troops to Iraq
Britain is to reinforce its military presence in Iraq in a move that reflects increasing concern about the threat to its troops and the inability of local forces to take over responsibility for the country's security. The decision was announced by the Ministry of Defence as the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, on her first visit to Iraq, warned that it was making "very slow" progress on security.
Separately, a leading international thinktank warned that the conflict in Iraq was producing highly trained and motivated jihadists ready to commit terrorist acts in Europe and elsewhere.
At a joint Baghdad press conference, Mrs Beckett distanced herself from comments by the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, who said all 7,200 British troops in Iraq could be gone by the end of 2007, by which time Iraqi security forces would have taken over their responsibilities. She said the president was only offering a personal opinion and "not setting a deadline".
Guardian, 6/9/06
State of emergency renewed
Iraqi parliament voted on Tuesday to extend the country's state of emergency for 30 more days. The measure has been in place for almost two years and grants security forces greater powers. It affects the entire country apart from the autonomous Kurdish region in the north.
The emergency decree has been renewed every month since it was first imposed in November 2005, hours before U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a major offensive to drive insurgents out of the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad. The measure allows for a nighttime curfew and gives the government extra powers to make arrests without warrants and launch police and military operations when it deems them necessary.
International Herald Tribune, 5/9/06
Beckett visits Iraq to discuss handover
Margaret Beckett said today that Iraq was making "very slow" progress on security, speaking on her first visit to the country as foreign secretary.
She would not be drawn into predicting a timetable for the withdrawal of UK troops after the Iraqi president said his personal opinion was that they would be gone from Iraq by the end of 2007.
After having private talks with Ms Beckett, president Jalal Talabani said that date was when Iraq would have "achieved good success in building our forces".
However, Mrs Beckett summed up Iraq's security forces as having taken "two steps forward, two steps sideways".
While some Iraqis want foreign troops out, most officials want them to stay until Iraqi forces are ready, Mrs Beckett said.
"Hardly anyone thinks that time is now or is likely to be in the immediate future," she said, though she acknowledged there had been some progress in transferring security duties in some regions from coalition troops to Iraqis.
Officials in London and Washington view the build-up of Iraq's forces, now numbering close to 300,000, including troops and police, as pivotal to the withdrawal of the US-led coalition force, which currently amounts to around 150,000 troops.
Guardian Unlimited 5/9/06
Taleban 'taking back Afghanistan'
Afghanistan is falling back into the hands of the Taleban, a report by an international think-tank has claimed.
The Senlis Council has blamed international forces for failing to achieve stability and security. But the British Foreign Office has rejected the report, insisting progress has been made in the country.
And Nato troops say they have "trapped" the Taleban, adding at least 50 rebels have been killed on the fourth day of an offensive in the country's south.
The Senlis Council, which provides advice on foreign policy, security and development, claims nothing has been done to address widespread poverty in Afghanistan.
Its report, Afghanistan Five Years Later: The Return of the Taleban, says that the Taleban have a strong psychological and de facto military control over half of the country.
"Nato is caught in a trap in a way. They are faced with a deteriorating situation, they cannot do the core job of helping reconstruction," Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Senlis Council, said.
BBC News 5/9/06
Alarm grows as 3 more soldiers die
Three British soldiers were killed and two seriously injured yesterday in attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq, placing the military's mission in the two countries under further scrutiny.
A patrol near Basra was attacked by a roadside bomb and small arms fire, leaving two soldiers dead and two more injured - one seriously.
In Kabul, a suicide bomber rammed a British military convoy on a busy road, killing one soldier and four bystanders, and leaving another soldier seriously injured.
The Kabul attack brings to 23 the number of British troops who have died in Afghanistan since August 1st - 9 in combat, and 14 in Saturday's crash of a Nimrod plane. A total of 117 British soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the invasion three years ago.
Guardian 5/9/06
Iraqi sportsmen fall foul of kidnappers
Iraqi sportsmen, in particular footballers, have become the latest group to fall foul of kidnappers and gunmen.
At the weekend a football star, Ghanim Ghudayer, 22, was seized by assailants, some in military uniform. The national coach meanwhile has resigned after receiving death threats. Another well-known player was seized and knee-capped after refusing to transfer to a team run by members of a Shia militia.
Despite a recent flurry of statements from senior Iraqi, US and British officials claiming that the ongoing joint military offensive against death squads and sectarian militias in Baghdad was bearing fruit, violence still terrorises many parts of the capital and country.
"When you are stopped by someone in uniform you have no idea whether they are there to protect you or kill you" said one footballer. "Life in Baghdad has become so cheap".
Guardian 5/9/06
al-Sistani losing influence
The most influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war. Aides say Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks.
"I will not be a political leader any more," he told aides. "I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters." It is a devastating blow to the remaining hopes for a peaceful solution in Iraq and spells trouble for British forces, who are based in and around the Shia stronghold of Basra.
The cleric is regarded as the most important Shia religious leader in Iraq and has been a moderating influence since the invasion of 2003. However, the extent to which he has become marginalised was demonstrated last week when fighting broke out in Diwaniya between Iraqi soldiers and al-Sadr's Mehdi army. With dozens dead, al-Sistani's appeals for calm were ignored. Instead, the provincial governor had to travel to Najaf to see al-Sadr, who ended the fighting with one telephone call.
Daily Telegraph, 3/9/06
Afghanistan opium at record level
Afghanistan's opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.
The increase in cultivation was mainly a result of the strength of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan, which has left whole districts outside of government control, and the continuing impunity of everyone involved, from the farmers and traffickers to corrupt police and government officials, Mr. Costa said.
New York Times, 2/9/06
Demands for Hussein's release
A coalition of 300 Iraqi tribal leaders on Saturday demanded the release of Saddam Hussein so he could reclaim the presidency and also called for armed resistance against U.S.-led forces. The clan chieftains, most of them Sunni Arabs, included the head of the 1.5 million-member al-Obeidi tribe, said they planned to hold rallies in Sunni cities throughout the country to insist that Hussein be freed and that the charges against him and his co-defendants be dropped.
"If the demand is not carried out, we will lead a general, sweeping and popular uprising," said Sheik Wassfy al-Assy, brother of the chief of the Obeidi tribe, which hosted a meeting of the clan leaders.
The leaders announced their demands on Saturday, as Shiite-Sunni sectarian violence and a move asserting Kurdish independence heightened fears that the country is sliding toward full-scale civil war.
Washington Post, 3/9/06
'Handover' leaves US in control
The formal handover of control of the Iraqi armed forces by the American-led coalition has been delayed again. The handover ceremony was due to take place on Saturday but was postponed for a day and will now not take place until later this week. The Americans said the delay was the result of "a miscommunication".
The handover means that for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi forces will be under direct command and control of their own ministry of defence. But the American-led international forces in Iraq will still take the lead role in many combat operations and still directly control most of the country.
BBC News, 3/9/06
Massive increase in civilian casualties
In a dismal assessment, the Pentagon reported to Congress today that the number of attacks and civilian deaths in Iraq have risen sharply in recent months - with casualties increasing by 1,000 a month - as sectarian violence has engulfed larger areas of the country. The quarterly report, based on new government figures, shows that the number of attacks in Iraq over the last four months increased 15% and the number of Iraqi casualties grew by 51%.
In the last three months, the report says, the number of deaths and injuries increased by 1,000 people a month over the previous quarter - to more than 3,000 each month. Over a longer time horizon, the spike is even more grim. The number of weekly attacks has increased from just over 400 in the spring of 2004 to nearly 800 during recent weeks. And the number of daily casualties has increased from just under 30 a day in 2004 to more than 110 a day in recent weeks.
Los Angeles Times, 1/9/06