These are the archives for the week ending 15th June 2007
Despite curfew, mortars hit green zone
Three Sunni Muslim mosques were torched and mortar bombs hit Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone on Thursday, police said, despite curfews imposed after suspected al Qaeda militants hit a revered Shiite shrine.
Thousands of Iraqi and US soldiers were on the streets of Baghdad and other cities trying to enforce the curfews that were imposed after Wednesday's bombing, blamed on al-Qaeda, felled the two golden minarets of Samarra's al-Askari mosque.
Police said more than a dozen mortar rounds hit the Green Zone, home to Iraq's parliament and the US Embassy, causing some casualties, but they had no further details. Smoke could be seen billowing into the sky from several areas.
A resident at the Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone said one mortar round fell in the hotel courtyard, killing one employee and wounding several. The hotel is home to some members of parliament, journalists and foreign contractors.
The mortars fell while US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was in a nearby building discussing the Iraq government's efforts to meet key political targets set by Washington and aimed at promoting national reconciliation.
Zaman, Turkey, 15/6/07
Blair in denial
Tony Blair has denied that his unpopularity has been caused by the Iraq war, blaming his loss of public support on people tiring of him after 10 years in power.
His comments surprised Labour MPs and political opponents, who accused him of "self-delusion" and being "in denial" about his legacy as he prepares to stand down in 12 days' time.
In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Mr Blair was asked why the public was disenchanted with him even though the economy is sound. He replied: "I've won three elections and what happens when you're in power for a long period of time, people get tired of the same face, the same voice. It's just the way it is. I know people say this is all down to Iraq and so on, but that's not true."
Mr Blair denied the intervention in Iraq had failed. "I'm sure that we haven't lost it," he said. "We have to go on and win it, but it's a different kind of conflict today. We've got to be prepared for the long haul now in these conflicts, because our enemies are going to fight us."
Independent, 15/6/07
Attacks up 2% since start of surge
Violence in Iraq rose slightly in the three months ended ending in May because of increased attacks in cities and provinces that had been relatively peaceful before the Bush administration's troop buildup, the Pentagon reported Wednesday.
The intense focus on Baghdad and western Iraq by newly arriving U.S. troops pushed insurgent groups into other regions, causing a rise in violence in northern and eastern provinces such as Diyala and Nineveh.
The U.S. military repeatedly has touted decreases in sectarian and insurgent killings in Baghdad and Al Anbar province, which have been the focus of the so-called surge that has added 28,500 combat and support troops.
U.S. officials have acknowledged problems in Diyala, and the report for the first time documents that rising violence there and in other outlying provinces has largely offset gains in Iraq's center. Overall, the average of more than 1,000 attacks each week represented a 2% increase from the preceding three months.
Los Angeles Times, 13/6/07
Iraqi police disappearing
About one in six Iraqi policemen trained by U.S.-led forces has been killed or wounded, has deserted or just disappeared, a senior U.S. military commander says. And continuing violence is prompting officials again to increase the size of the Iraqi army - this time by another 20,000, said Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who until recently headed the training effort.
Speaking before a House subcommittee, Dempsey said some 32,000 Iraqi police had been lost from the newly trained force of 188,000 in the 18 months before January. About 8,000 to 10,000 were believed killed in action and 6,000 to 8,000 wounded severely enough so they cannot serve, he said .
Another 5,000 'probably ... had deserted.' The remaining 7,000 or 8,000 are unaccounted for.
One lawmaker wanted to know if they could be among militants causing the violence in Iraq. 'Is there any basis to believe that some portion of those ... are fighting our people?' asked Rep. Robert E. Andrews. Dempsey said he didn't know.
Associated Press, 13/6/07
Iraq parliament in deadlock
Iraq's political leaders have failed to reach agreement on nearly every law that the United States has demanded as a benchmark, despite heavy pressure from Congress, the White House and top military commanders.
With only three months until reports on progress are due in Washington, the deadlock has reached a point where many Iraqi and U.S. officials question whether any substantive laws will pass before the end of the year.
Kurds have blocked a vote in Iraq's Parliament on a new oil law. Shiite clerics have stymied a U.S.-backed plan for reintegrating former Baathists into the government. Sunni Arabs are demanding that a constitutional review include more power for the next president.
Iraq's political limitations raise difficult questions for the United States. President Bush's stated mission for the increase in troops this year was to create an atmosphere of security that would lead to political reconciliation. It is uncertain what will happen, however, if broad-based compromises fail to emerge or have little effect.
Tampa Tribune, 13/6/07
Iran denies weapons charge
A U.S. diplomat accused Iran of transferring weapons to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan - the most direct comments yet on the issue by a ranking American official.
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, speaking Tuesday to reporters in Paris, said Iran was funding insurrections across the Middle East - and "Iran is now even transferring arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan."
Iran's possible role in aiding insurgents in Iraq has long been hotly debated, and last month some Western and Persian Gulf governments charged that the Islamic government in Tehran is also secretly bolstering Taliban fighters.
"In Afghanistan it is clear that the Taliban is receiving support, including arms from ... elements of the Iranian regime," British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in the May 31 edition of the Economist.
Iran, which is also in a dispute with the West over its nuclear program, denies the Taliban accusation, calling it part of a broad anti-Iranian campaign. Tehran says it makes no sense that a Shiite-led government like itself would help the fundamentalist Sunni movement of the Taliban.
International Herald Tribune, 12/6/07
CIA link means US soft pedals Sudan sanctions
Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq, an example of how the U.S. has continued to cooperate with the Sudanese regime even while condemning its suspected role in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur.
President Bush has denounced the killings in Sudan's western region as genocide and has imposed sanctions on the government in Khartoum. But some critics say the administration has soft-pedaled the sanctions to preserve its extensive intelligence collaboration with Sudan.
Sudan has become increasingly valuable to the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks because the Sunni Arab nation is a crossroads for Islamic militants making their way to Iraq and Pakistan. That steady flow of foreign fighters has provided cover for Sudan's Mukhabarat intelligence service to insert spies into Iraq, officials said.
The U.S.-Sudan relationship goes beyond Iraq. Sudan has helped the United States track the turmoil in Somalia, working to cultivate contacts with the Islamic Courts Union and other militias in an effort to locate Al Qaeda suspects hiding there.
In 2005, the CIA sent an executive jet to Sudan to fly the country's intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah Gosh, to Washington for meetings with officials at agency headquarters. Gosh has not returned to Washington since, but a former official said that "there are liaison visits every day" between the CIA and the Mukhabarat.
Los Angeles Times, 11/6/07
British troops take 'trigger happy' drug
British troops are being prescribed with a controversial drug which has been blamed for making US pilots "trigger-happy" and causing friendly fire deaths. The Ministry of Defence has admitted that it prescribes the amphetamine dexedrine, which is capable of keeping users awake for as long as 60 hours.
While the MoD has refused to say what it uses the Class B drug for, leading narcotics experts say that the main purpose is to keep soldiers awake during special operations. However, they have warned that the substance can be highly addictive.
In addition, the MoD has admitted that it permits soldiers to take a drug called kava-kava, from the South Pacific, which is known to be linked to severe liver damage.
The Scotsman, 10/7/06
Brown distances himself from Iraq intelligence
Gordon Brown has said lessons must be learned on use of intelligence in the run-up to war, but ruled out holding an inquiry while troops remain in Iraq. The prime minister-in-waiting said that in future intelligence analysis must be kept independent of politics.
"I think it's important to learn all the lessons, just as Tony Blair has said he acted in good faith but mistakes were made. I think it's important to learn the lessons to look forward now," Mr Brown said.
But it led some to comment that the chancellor appeared to be trying to distance himself from Mr Blair and the government's 2002 dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
BBC News, 11/6/07
New US strategy 'fraught with risk'
With the four-month-old increase in American troops showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, American commanders are turning to another strategy that they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the past.
American officers who have engaged in what they call outreach to the Sunni groups say many of them have had past links to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but grew disillusioned with the Islamic militants' extremist tactics, particularly suicide bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians.
But critics of the strategy, including some American officers, say it could amount to the Americans' arming both sides in a future civil war. The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up Iraq's army and police force, whose manpower of 350,000 is heavily Shiite. With an American troop drawdown increasingly likely in the next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a risk that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against Shiites. There is also the possibility the weapons could be used against the Americans themselves.
Americans officers acknowledge that providing weapons to breakaway rebel groups is not new in counterinsurgency warfare, and that in places where it has been tried before, including the French colonial war in Algeria, the British-led fight against insurgents in Malaya in the early 1950s, and in Vietnam, the effort often backfired, with weapons given to the rebels being turned against the forces providing them.
New York Times, 11/6/07
"We have made a deal with the devil"
The American soldiers in Amiriyah western Baghdad have allied themselves with dozens of Sunni militiamen who call themselves the Baghdad Patriots - a group that American soldiers believe includes insurgents who have attacked them in the past - in an attempt to drive out al-Qaida in Iraq.
The Americans have granted these gunmen the power of arrest, allowed the Iraqi army to supply them with ammunition and fought alongside them in chaotic street battles.
In their first week of collaboration, the Baghdad Patriots and the Americans killed roughly 10 suspected al-Qaida in Iraq members and captured 15, according to Lt Col Dale Kuehl, who said those numbers rivaled totals for the previous six months combined.
He is now working to fashion the group into the beginnings of an Amiriyah police force, since the mainly Shiite police force refuses to work in the area. "This is a defining moment for us," said Kuehl, who commands the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, attached to the 1st Infantry Division.
But aligning Americans with fighters whose long-term agenda remains unclear is also a strategy born of desperation. It contradicts repeated declarations by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that no groups besides the Iraqi and American security forces are allowed to bear arms. And some American soldiers worry that setting up a Sunni militia could have dire consequences if the group turns on its U.S. partners.
"We have made a deal with the devil," said an intelligence officer in the battalion.
Houston Chronicle, 9/6/07
US plans 'post-occupation' occupation of 40,000 plus
U.S. military officials here are increasingly envisioning a "post-occupation" troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years. Such a long-term presence would have four major components.
The centerpiece would be a reinforced mechanized infantry division of around 20,000 soldiers assigned to guarantee the security of the Iraqi government and to assist Iraqi forces or their U.S. advisers if they get into fights they can't handle.
Second, a training and advisory force of close to 10,000 troops would work with Iraqi military and police units. "I think it would be very helpful to have a force here for a period of time to continue to help the Iraqis train and continue to build their capabilities," said Lt Gen Raymond T Odierno, the U.S. commander for day-to-day operations in Iraq.
In addition, officials envision a small but significant Special Operations unit focused on fighting the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. "I think you'll retain a very robust counterterror capability in this country for a long, long time," a Pentagon official in Iraq said.
Finally, the headquarters and logistical elements to command and supply such a force would total more than 10,000 troops, plus some civilian contractors.
Washington Post, 10/6/07
Top general pays price for failure
The Bush Administration has decided not to reappoint General Peter Pace to a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making him the highest-ranking officer to be a political casualty of the fight over Iraq.
General Pace has served for six years at the highest ranks of the military, for four years as vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs and then two years as the first marine to be chairman. The general, 61, had said he wanted to be reappointed, and associates said he was deeply disappointed.
But General Pace's reputation has been affected by the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the heavy tolls that the subsequent counter-insurgency fights have inflicted on the American military.
He has been criticised by some senior officers who see him as too deferential to civilian leadership, in particular former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and too inattentive to the impact of prolonged fighting on the armed forces.
The Age, Australia, 10/6/07
Pressure grows for UK withdrawal
Experts cautioned yesterday that British troops were facing increasing danger and that pressure for a withdrawal would increase.
Paul Beaver, a defence analyst, said that British lives were being squandered in Iraq. "Iraq is a sideshow and Afghanistan is the heart of darkness, where the people who will destroy civilisation are," Mr Beaver said.
Paul Rogers, a security consultant to the Oxford Research Group, expected Gordon Brown, who will become Prime Minister this month, to increase the pace of withdrawal - pulling all but 2,000 of Britain's 7,500 troops out by the end of the year.
"Within the British Army they believe that Iraq is just not worth it any more," he said. "There is quite a lot of bitterness that they have been set an impossible task by the politicians, and that view has intensified over the past couple of years. The general view is that it's time to come home."
The Times, 9/6/07
Rebel factions declare truce
A Sunni insurgent group that waged a deadly street battle last week against the rival group al-Qaida in Iraq in a Sunni neighborhood of west Baghdad announced Wednesday that the two forces had declared a ceasefire.
The Islamic Army of Iraq, a more moderate and secular Sunni group, said that it had reached the cease-fire with al- Qaida in Iraq because the groups did not want to spill Muslim blood or damage "the project of jihad."
Last week, the two groups fought for several days in the Sunni neighborhood of Amiriyah, leaving about 30 of their fighters dead. Residents of the neighborhood and leaders from the Islamic Army, which reportedly is made up mostly of Sunnis from the disbanded army of Saddam Hussein, said they had risen up against al-Qaida in Iraq because it was imposing strict rules on the neighborhood and killing fellow Sunnis without evidence of wrongdoing.
In a statement posted on the Internet, the Islamic Army said the groups had agreed to end all military operations against each other, stop criticizing each other in the media, and stop taking prisoners. The groups would create "a judicial committee" to resolve differences, the statement said.
Buffalo News, 9/7/06
Another bloody day in Iraq
Carloads of attackers descended on a police chief's house northeast of Baghdad at dawn Friday, killing the official's wife, two brothers and 11 guards, and kidnapping three of his grown children, Diyala provincial police reported.
The attack, which came when the police chief was not at home, was one of the boldest and bloodiest in months of stepped-up violence around the city of Baqouba, where al-Qaida in Iraq and affiliated groups have been fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces and local insurgents who have turned against al-Qaida.
In southern Iraq, a parked minibus exploded at a bus terminal in the town of Qurnah, and a hospital director said at least 16 people were killed and 32 wounded.
And elsewhere in northern Iraq, bombings struck a Shiite mosque in a town near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, killing at least 19 people and wounding 25, police said.
North County Times, California, 8/6/07
199 dead in Baghdad this week
Nearly 200 people were victims of Baghdad's sectarian violence in the first week of June, with 32 bodies dumped around the capital on Thursday, an Iraq Interior Ministry official said.
The unidentified bodies bore the hallmarks of Iraq's sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunnis: gunshot wounds and signs of torture. They are among the 199 bodies that police have recovered in the first seven days of the month, the Interior Ministry official said.
In May, civilian deaths across the nation jumped by nearly 30 percent to 1,949, among them 746 bodies found dumped on the streets of Baghdad.
CNN, 7/6/07
150 British dead...
British casualties in Iraq have reached another grim milestone with the killing of a soldier in Basra, the 150th to die in the conflict. Three other soldiers were injured when they came under fire from machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades during the same attack.
Independent, 8/6/07
...3, 500 US dead...
Another US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, the military said yesterday, pushing the four-year death toll for American forces to 3,501. The count includes 23 deaths in the first six days of June, an average of about four per day.
The Peninsula, Qatar, 8/6/07
...and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead
The number of Iraqi civilians killed by violence in the country since the 2003 invasion stands at between 64,879 and 71,042, according to estimates from Iraq Body Count project.
Scotsman, 8/6/07
'War czar' sees little improvement in Iraq
President Bush's "war czar" nominee said Thursday that conditions in Iraq have not improved significantly despite the influx of U.S. troops in recent months and predicted that, absent major political reform, violence will continue to rage over the next year.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, tapped by Bush to serve as a new high-powered White House coordinator of the war, told senators at a confirmation hearing that Iraqi factions "have shown so far very little progress" toward the reconciliation necessary to stem the bloodshed. If that does not change, he said, "we're not likely to see much difference in the security situation" a year from now.
Lute's dour assessment mirrored the views of U.S. intelligence officials, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a closed session last month that trends in Iraq remain negative and that the prospect for political movement by the nation's feuding Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds appears marginal. The secret intelligence conclusions were disclosed during Thursday's hearing.
Sacramento Bee, 8/6/07