These are the archives for the week ending 18th May 2007
Cluster bombs cause decades of harm
Millions of people will be endangered by up to 132m cluster bomblets that have not yet exploded, causing lasting economic and social harm to communities in more than 20 countries for decades to come, a leading charity warned.
Handicap International's study said that in Afghanistan, boys between five and 14 who are tending animals are most likely to be casualties.
In Iraq, the repeated use of cluster bombs has left a devastating legacy that continues to severely restrict the lives of its people, the charity reports. More than 4,000 civilians have been killed or injured by failed cluster munitions since the end of the 1991 Gulf war. Some 60% of the casualties have been children.
Guardian 17/5/07
Presidential hopefuls support ending war funding
A move to cut off funding for combat operations in Iraq in less than a year failed to pass the Senate on Wednesday, but the fact that it garnered support from a majority of Senate Democrats demonstrated a rising determination to force a quick exit from the war zone and an eagerness among presidential contenders to be positioned as decidedly anti-war.
Each Democratic presidential candidate in the chamber voted for the measure, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the most hawkish of the Democrats on the campaign trail, and Sen. Barack Obama, who until this week opposed a funding cutoff.
Their votes in particular suggest that leading Democrats are willing to take the political risk that could accompany an end to financial support for combat troops in the field.
Chicago Tribune, 17/5/07
Iraq too dangerous for royal
After weeks of speculation about the risks not just to him but also to soldiers under his command, Britain announced on Wednesday that Prince Harry, the 22-year-old third-in-line to the throne, would not, after all, be heading out with his regiment when it deploys to the Basra region.
The about-face is seen as likely to offer a huge propaganda victory for anti-Western insurgents in southern Iraq, particularly since it followed the humiliating capture of 15 British sailors in Iraqi waters by Iranian revolutionary guards last March.
International Herald Tribune, 16/5/07
US blamed for delayed projects
Baghdad municipality has held U.S. troops responsible for the delay and interruption of public projects in two of the city's low-income areas. The municipality's chief, Saber al-Aysawi, said the U.S. engineers handling the projects "are not serious in implementing them properly and on time."
In a statement to Azzaman, Aysawi said the sewage project for the neighborhoods of al-Kamaliya and Ubaidy is more than two years overdue causing "great hardships for impoverished people in the two areas. He accused U.S. troops of creating "tensions in these poor and impoverished districts as the delay in the projects has made people blamed the municipality."
He said the troops were also delaying other projects on purpose and "at the expense of the local population." The inhabitants of the two densely populated areas went to the streets last month demanding the government to implement the municipal projects under construction.
Azzaman, Iraq, 16/5/07
Iraq bans press at bomb sites
Iraqi police prevented news photographers and camera operators from filming the scene of a bombing Tuesday under a new policy limiting coverage of the devastating explosions that have become a hallmark of the violence in the country.
Brig. Gen. Abdel Karim Khalaf, the operations director at the Interior Ministry, said this weekend that Iraq 's government has decided to bar news photographers and cameramen from the scene of bombings.
Benton Crier, 15/5/07
Embassy workers slam green zone security
U.S. Embassy employees in Iraq are growing increasingly angry over what they say are inadequate security precautions in the heavily fortified Green Zone, where recent mortar and rocket attacks have claimed the lives of six people, including two U.S. citizens.
In spite of the attacks, embassy employees complain, most staff members sleep in trailers that one described as tin cans that offer virtually no protection from rocket and mortar fire. The government has refused to harden the roofs because of the cost, one employee said.
The officials also complained that important security precautions appeared to have been set aside during highly publicized official visits. During a March 31 visit from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a high-profile presidential candidate, the embassy lifted a requirement that bulletproof vests and helmets be worn at all times.
When a rocket landed outside the U.S. Embassy while Vice President Dick Cheney and several reporters visited last week, no warning sirens were sounded.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 15/5/07
Germany calls for end of civilian casualties
Germany overnight called for a review of the tactics used by Western forces in Afghanistan after a series of civilian casualties in recent weeks.
"We have to make sure in future that operations do not take place in this way. We don't want the local population against us," German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said in Brussels, adding he had spoken to NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on the matter.
The US-led coalition in Afghanistan confirmed last week there had been civilian casualties during fighting with Taliban guerrillas in southern Afghanistan, after witnesses said an air strike killed more than 40 villagers there earlier this month.
Even before the latest casualties, scores of civilians have been killed by Western forces in the last two weeks.
The Australian, 15/5/07
'Sometimes you wonder which side the americans are on'
Britain will step up its presence in Afghanistan this week with the deployment of a high-profile new ambassador as concern mounts that the toll of civilians killed in the war is setting back the coalition's efforts to win Afghan "hearts and minds".
There is growing alarm over a wave of US bombing raids in which 110 civilians have died in the past two weeks. Twenty-one people were killed last week after US special forces called in airstrikes on the town of Sangin in Helmand province. "Sometimes you wonder whose side the Americans are on," said a British official.
US officials claimed that Taliban militants had sheltered in villagers' homes, using women and children as shields. But local anger was so strong that the Afghan Senate passed a draft law calling for a halt to military offensives by international forces unless they were under attack or had consulted with the Afghan government.
Sunday Times, 13/5/07
'Collateral damage' is not a violation
If the slaying of two dozen civilians 18 months ago in Haditha was a war crime, as prosecutors assert, not a single Marine commander seems to have considered that possibility until questions were raised by a journalist two months after the event.
Testimony heard over the last five days at Camp Pendleton made it clear that officers from the rank of captain to general accepted the initial reports of what occurred -- that the deaths were nothing more than what the military calls "collateral damage."
Word throughout the chain of command was that even though the dead included two women and five children slain inside their homes, the "NKIAs" as the Marines call noncombatants killed in action, were victims of crossfire and nothing more.
"In this case, it appeared the noncombatants were killed because of the IED and a subsequent ambush, and I saw no reason to investigate that, "said Lt. Col. Kent Keith, who was the staff judge advocate for the 2nd Marine Division in Iraq when the killings occurred.
"It's not a violation if there is incidental loss of life. There isn't an automatic law-of-war violation if you have collateral damage."
North County Times, US, 13/5/07
Iran and US move towards talks
The diplomatic tussle between Iran and the United States intensified Sunday as leaders from both countries toured Middle Eastern capitals seeking to shore up relationships, even as signs of new cooperation over Iraq emerged between them.
Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday afternoon, the first trip there by an Iranian leader since the country's founding in 1971, seeking to improve a strategic trade partnership just as Vice President Dick Cheney landed in Cairo as part of a Middle East tour meant to mollify America's regional allies and strengthen support against Iran.
The visits occurred as officials from both countries announced that Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, would meet with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad in coming weeks to discuss Iraqi security efforts and cooperation between the countries.
New York Times, 14/5/07
Second bombing in mainly Kurdish area
At least 45 people have been killed and dozens wounded by a suicide truck bombing in the northern Iraqi town of Makhmur.
The bomber crashed his truck into the offices of a leading Kurdish party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, where a meeting was being held at the time.
It was the second suicide attack in the mainly Kurdish area in the past week. Last week, 14 people were killed by a truck bomb in Irbil.
Political tensions have been rising in the predominantly Kurdish region over the drafting of a bill that will redistribute oil wealth among the country's Kurdish, Sunni and Shia population.
Most of Iraq's oil is concentrated around the Kurdish north and Shia south.
BBC News, 13/5/07
Fear and loathing in Samarra
As the sun set over Samarra, the US soldiers paced the dusty streets in battle formation while angry residents closed their shops and hurried home ahead of a much resented curfew.
Fear of US forces runs high in the restive Iraqi town, but locals were especially bitter this evening because they had had no running water for two days, only sporadic electricity and had been banned from driving cars.
Samarra's water was out this week because a suicide truck bomb had detonated on top of one of the city's main lines during an assault on a police headquarters that killed more than a dozen Iraqi police.
The electricity was out in much of the town because, in order to fix the water main, Charlie Company had to cut off the flow of electricity through the high-voltage lines that run along the pipe. The daytime vehicle curfew was in place to protect those fixing the water and electricity from another massive explosion.
The US-appointed mayor of the town was in the provincial capital Tikrit during the attack, too afraid to come to the city he is supposed to be administering, and unreachable by telephone. Despite being the town's most senior local leader, the terrified official insisted that he not be named in this article.
AFP, 12/5/07
'Surge' is failing
The US military surge in Iraq, designed to turn around the course of the war, appears to be failing as senior US officers admit they need yet more troops and new figures show a sharp increase in the victims of death squads in Baghdad.
In the first 11 days of this month, there have already been 234 bodies - men murdered by death squads - dumped around the capital, a dramatic rise from the 137 found in the same period of April.
In a further setback, the US military announced yesterday the loss of an entire patrol south of Baghdad, with five soldiers dead and three others missing, after they were ambushed by insurgents in the town of Mahmoudiya.
Observer, 13/5/07
Iraq parliament opposes security walls
Iraq's parliament objected Saturday to the construction of walls around Baghdad neighborhoods and called on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to testify about other security issues.
Parliament took up the issue Saturday in a raucous session that included debate on the continuing U.S. military presence in Iraq, security raids and human rights abuses.
"They (security walls) don't protect residents because these areas are shelled by mortars and Katyusha rockets. ... Will they build roofs too?" said Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman. "We must build bridges between the different groups, not build walls to separate them."
The resolution, voted on by a show of hands, passed 138-to-88 in the 275-member house. The president and his two deputies must unanimously approve the legislation for it to become law, or else it will be sent back to the house for re-examination
Last month, al-Maliki, a Shiite, said he had ordered a halt to the construction in Azamiyah, but his aides later said he was responding to exaggerated media reports and that construction would continue.
Associated Press, 12/5/07
EU to monitor mosques
Security officials from Europe's largest countries backed a plan Saturday to profile mosques on the continent and identify radical Islamic clerics who raise the threat of homegrown terrorism.
The project, to be finished by the fall, will focus on the roles of imams, their training, their ability to speak in the local language and their sources of funding, EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini told a news conference after a meeting on terrorism.
Adel Smith, a well-known Muslim activist in Italy, said mosques in Italy are already extensively monitored and called the EU plan discriminatory.
"I think this is nonsense, I think mosques have been well monitored for some years," he said. "It is a form of religious discrimination."
Associated Press, 12/5/07
US army prepares for five to ten years of conflict
The Army will offer incentives to keep midlevel officers as it faces another decade or so in combat around the world, its chief of staff said Friday.
Gen. George Casey, who took over as the Army's chief just a month ago, said the United States will "be in a period of conflict for, I believe, another five or ten years." And the Army, which has been stretched and stressed by five difficult years at war, must be organized and equipped to deal with that challenge, he said.
The general said he is not suggesting that the Iraq or Afghanistan wars will last five more years. But Casey, who was the top commander in Iraq until February, acknowledged that building a stable, self-governing Iraq is a "long-term proposition."
Guardian, 12/5/07
Iraq missing billions in oil
From 100,000 to 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq's declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft U.S. government report.
Over four years, that comes to $7 billion to $22 billion. The report does not offer a conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country's oil industry.
The report also covered alternative explanations for the discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been consistently overstating its oil production.
International Herald Tribune, 12/5/07
US commander has too few troops
The commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq said Friday he does not have enough troops to deal with the escalating violence in Iraq's Diyala province, an unusually frank assertion for a top officer and a sign that American military officials may be starting to offer more candid and blunt assessments of the war.
Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. "Randy" Mixon also said that the Iraqi government has failed to help the situation in the restive province, adding that it has been a hindrance at times by failing to support local army and police forces.
Mixon said that the local government is "nonfunctional" and the central government is "ineffective." He added that the Iraqi government was hamstrung by bureaucracy and compromised by corruption and sectarian divisions, making it unable to assist U.S. forces in Diyala.
Seattle Times, 12/5/07
78% of Iraqis oppose occupation
In the Baghdad parliament, 144 out of 275 legislators have signed a bill that would set a timetable for a coalition pull-out. A recent opinion poll showed that 78 per cent of Iraqis oppose the presence of US forces in Iraq.
"When there is a timetable we can talk to those who carry arms," said Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish member of parliament who supported the bill. He also wants a timetable for a build-up of Iraqi forces. "The government will only do something when the Americans stop baby-sitting them," he added.
Another problem for the Iraqi government is that even though it has upwards of 300,000 troops and armed police it cannot rely on their loyalty. The very fact that it is reliant on 160,000 American and British troops tends to de-legitimise its own forces in the eyes of many Iraqis.
Independent, 12/5/07
Iraqi parliament calls for US withdrawal
Radical Shiite politicians pressed Thursday for legislation demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops and a freeze on the number of foreign forces already in the country.
The proposed Iraqi legislation, drafted by the parliamentary bloc loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was signed by 144 members of the 275-member house, according to parliamentary officials.
The Sadrist bloc, which holds 30 parliamentary seats and sees the U.S.-led forces as an occupying army, has pushed similar bills before, but this would be the first time it persuaded a majority of lawmakers to sign on.
The discussion over a troop withdrawal came as a series of evening explosions rocked Baghdad, killing at least two people. A total of 35 people were killed or found dead nationwide Thursday.
Associated Press, 10/5/07