These are the archives for the week ending 15th September 2006
Another grim day in Iraq
Nearly 90 Iraqis were killed or found dead here on Tuesday and Wednesday, an Interior Ministry official said, making for a particularly grim day even amid the intense sectarian violence. At least 60 bodies were found throughout Baghdad between 6 a.m. Tuesday and 6 a.m. Wednesday, the ministry official said. Forty victims were unknown; 20 were identified.
Nearly all were shot in the head, had clear signs of torture, or were blindfolded, bound or gagged, and most were discovered in neighborhoods of western Baghdad with heavy Sunni Arab populations, he said. The other deaths reported by the ministry were in bombings and other attacks on Wednesday.
New York Times, 14/9/06
Nato is fighting for its future
Nato forces engaged in a bloody battle against the Taleban are not just fighting for control of southern Afghanistan, but for the future existence of the alliance itself.
What began as a bold mission to confront Islamic militants half way around the world, has now turned into a fierce struggle that is straining the bonds that have tied the 26 members states together for the past half century.
A week after General George Jones, the US Supreme Allied Commander, requested 2,500 additional combat troops to serve in Afghanistan none of the member states has produced a single soldier.
Many Nato countries have been directly involved in the US-led war on terror for the past five years. Fatigue is setting in. Forces are overstretched. The conflict shows no signs of ending any time soon.
There is a growing perception among the public in Europe that the Bush Administration has mishandled the conduct of the conflict and that Iraq, and now possibly Afghanistan, may defeat the cream of the Western military.
Those fears are reflected in the conduct of the war in southern Afghanistan, which was meant to be a Nato peacekeeping mission but instead has turned into a deadly counter-insurgency war.
American, British, Canadian and Dutch troops are taking the brunt of the fighting, and the casualties, in southern Afghanistan.
Times Online 13/9/06
Iraq/Iran commercial links develop
Iraq and Iran plan to develop oilfields that straddle their border and Iraq will pump crude to its neighbour's refineries, deepening commercial ties between the two oil producers, Iraq's oil minister said on Tuesday.
The deal, first explored by Iran and Iraq in the 1970s, entails both countries defining their reserves in the cross-border field and then pumping the crude jointly.
Iraq intends to forge similar deals involving oilfields straddling borders with Syria and Kuwait.
The impending deal comes as Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visits Tehran for the first time since he came to office five months ago.
The two predominantly Shi'ite Muslim countries have been looking to strengthen ties, prompting concern among Iraq's once dominant Sunni minority and other Arab states, as well as in the United States, which has 145,000 troops in Iraq.
Washington, which considers Iran part of an "axis of evil", accuses Tehran of meddling in Iraq.
Reuters 11/9//06
US to weed out militias posing as police
The police in Baghdad and multinational forces are cracking down on militias posing as police amid continuing accusations that members of the Iraqi police service are involved in kidnappings, torture and extra-judicial killings.
A register of police officers, their cars and weapons is being compiled in a pilot scheme in eastern Baghdad. The scheme comes after claims that Shia militia members within the police, or associated with individual officers and stations, are responsible for death squad activity.
US patrols serving with the multinational forces in Baghdad have been instructed to target key districts where allegations of men in police uniforms being involved in extra-judicial killings have been strongest.
Troops have been ordered to conduct spot checks on police officers manning check points and confiscate weapons not officially held.
Guardian 11/9/06
Nato redefines who are Taliban fighters
Nato's battle to subdue the Taliban in southern Afghanistan intensified at the weekend when the international force said it had killed 94 Taliban fighters, bringing the total from 9 days of combat to more than 420 deaths.
Nato's estimate of Taliban deaths - 420 in nine days - accounts for almost half of some earlier estimates of the insurgents' entire force. The toll cannot be verified as the battle zone is closed to reporters and the Taliban often bury their dead within hours.
If true, the Taliban casualty figures could suggest that either the insurgent ranks have swelled enormously or heavy civilian casualties have been inflicted.
Major Scott Lundy, a Nato spokesman in Kandahar, offered a third explanation. The term Taliban now refers to several layers of fighters composed of an ideologically driven hard core surrounded by a mix of hired local guns, drug smugglers and ordinary criminals, he said. Intelligence estimates put the size of the force at 'several thousand'.
Meanwhile, a British officer who quit the army after returning from Helmand last month has gone public with a dismal portrayal of the British mission.
Captain Leo Docherty, the former aide-de-camp to the Brtitish commander Colonel Charlie Knaggs, told the Sunday Times the Afghan campaign was "a text book example of how to screw up."
Guardian 11/9/06
US has 'lost' west Iraq
The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents.
The officials described Col. Pete Devlin's classified assessment of the dire state of Anbar as the first time that a senior U.S. military officer has filed so negative a report from Iraq. One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost."
Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.
Washington Post, 11/9/06
Beirut protests Blair visit
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has held talks with the Lebanese government, amid angry protests against his visit. Thousands of demonstrators accused him of complicity in the deaths of 1,100 Lebanese civilians from Israeli bombing in the recent conflict with Hezbollah.
Mr Blair defended his position of rejecting calls for an early ceasefire, saying a UN resolution dealing with the "real problems" had been his priority. Several protesters disrupted a news conference, shouting: "Shame on you."
During the five-week conflict, Israel bombed targets across Lebanon, including residential areas and civilian infrastructure, saying it was necessary to restrict Hezbollah's military activity. Up to 5,000 protesters gathered nearby in a stand-off with security forces, shouting slogans and waving banners describing Mr Blair as a "killer" and "war criminal".
BBC News, 11/9/06
US not counting bomb victims
U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren't counting scores killed in car bombings and mortar attacks. In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.
That has allowed U.S. officials to say that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July. It eliminates from tabulation huge numbers of people whose deaths are certainly part of the ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
Kansas City Star, 9/9/06
Return of war in Afghanistan
It is the war that was meant to have ended for good. Just under five years ago the Taliban fled Kabul without firing a shot. But yesterday the Islamic militants showed they were back with a vengeance when a massive suicide bomb blew up beside an American convoy in the city killing 18 Afghans and two US soldiers. Fighting between the Taliban and Nato forces is raging across the south of the country.
"The fighting is extraordinarily intense. The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis," the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Brig Ed Butler said this week.
Taliban units have taken over swaths of country around Kandahar and are increasingly active in and around the capital. Nato defence chiefs meeting in Poland yesterday asked for a further 2,000 to 2,500 men to supplement the 18,500 Nato troops already in Afghanistan.
The British Government was warned what might happen. Generals admitted privately that in Afghanistan and in Iraq British soldiers could end up penned into their encampments unable to move outside its fortifications. It is nevertheless strange that the Government, having become entangled in a messy guerrilla war in Iraq, should make exactly the same mistake in Afghanistan.
Independent, 9/9/06
Rumsfeld opposed post war plan
Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.
In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a post-war plan. Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq.
Duluth News Tribune, 8/9/06
Halliburton throws a party
Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root charged millions to the government for recreational services never provided to U.S. troops in Iraq, including giant tubs of chicken wings and tacos, a widescreen TV, and cheese sticks meant for a military Super Bowl party, according to a federal whistle-blower suit unsealed Friday. Instead, the suit alleges, KBR used the military's supplies for its own football party.
Filed by former KBR employee Julie McBride, the lawsuit claims the giant defense contractor billed the government for thousands of meals it never served, inflated the number of soldiers using its fitness and Internet centers, and regularly siphoned off great quantities of supplies destined for American soldiers.
McBride is not the first Halliburton employee to allege fraudulent billing practices. The company has steadfastly denied wrongdoing. Rory Mayberry, who worked for KBR in 2004, testified from Iraq via videotape to a group of Democratic members of Congress investigating contractor fraud. As food manager at another military camp in Iraq, Mayberry said he witnessed KBR employees serving spoiled food to American troops, including food from trucks that had been bombed and shot at. Workers were told to pick out the shrapnel, and then serve the food. He also claimed KBR charged the government for meals it never served.
Halliburton, which holds more than 50 percent of rebuilding contracts in Iraq, was headed by Dick Cheney before he took office as vice president. He has denied any government favoritism toward his former company.
Associated Press, 8/9/06
Record number of roadside bombs
Roadside bombs in Iraq rose to record numbers this summer -- to about four times as many as in January 2004 -- as tips from Iraqi citizens warning of the bombs and attacks have dropped sharply amid a flaring of sectarian violence, according to a senior U.S. defense official.
About 1,200 improvised explosive devices -- the leading killer of U.S. troops in Iraq -- were detonated in August as insurgents continue to invent new ways to design and hide the lethal munitions, according to retired Army Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, which is spearheading efforts to curb the bombs.
Washington Post, 8/9/06
Censoring the news in Iraq
Iraq's government closed the Baghdad bureau of Al Arabiya television on Thursday after accusing the Dubai-based news channel of "unprofessional" reporting, the station and the Iraqi government said. Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh, in remarks broadcast on state television, said: "Closing Al Arabiya for one month is a warning for the unprofessional conduct of their correspondents in covering events in Iraq."
He did not say which story, if any, had led to the government's decision. Arabiya's main rival in Arabic satellite news, Qatar-based Al Jazeera, remains barred from Iraq after a ban imposed two years ago by the U.S.-backed interim government.
Reuters, 7/9/06