Archive for the week ending 22nd February 2008
UK admits rendition flights
David Miliband has admitted two US "extraordinary rendition" flights landed on UK territory in 2002. The foreign secretary said in both cases, US planes refuelled on the UK dependent territory of Diego Garcia.
Former foreign secretary Jack Straw and former prime minister Tony Blair made statements in 2005, 2006 and 2007 saying there was no evidence that rendition flights had stopped on UK territory.
Mr Miliband said the US had told him that neither of the two men involved in the rendition were British, neither left the plane and the US had "assured" him that no US detainees were ever held on Diego Garcia.
Mr Miliband said the UK had been told neither of them had been involved in "secret detention centres" nor were subject to water boarding "or other similar forms of torture".
"Extraordinary rendition" is the term used by US intelligence agencies when they send terror suspects for interrogation by security officials in other countries, where they have no legal protection or rights under American law.
BBC News, 21/2/08
Canada issues NATO ultimatum...
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper conferred with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the future of NATO's Afghanistan mission, his spokeswoman said.
Speaking by telephone, Harper told Karzai that Canada wishes to extend its deployment of 2,500 troops in battle-scarred Kandahar province to 2011, but only if NATO allies send reinforcements. To that end, Harper has in recent weeks urged the heads of France, Germany and Australia to boost their troop deployments in southern Afghanistan.
Defense Minister Peter MacKay told NATO defense ministers Ottawa's demand for an extra 1,000 troops in Kandahar to fight alongside Canadian soldiers against insurgents was "not a negotiable item."
Otherwise, Canada would withdraw from Afghanistan at the end of its current mandate in February 2009, said Harper.
AFP, 20/2/08
...while Afghans ask why they are there
After three days of bombings that left more than 100 people dead in Kandahar province, Aghans are raising the question they often ask after major security incidents. What are Canadian soldiers doing in their country if they can't keep them safe?
While it may be easy to blame Canadians, Afghans are growing increasingly disillusioned with their own government as well for the continuing instability in the province.
"The people who are responsible for insecurity and destruction in Kandahar province are the provincial authority of Kandahar," reads one article that circulated on an Afghan news website recently. "They are the ones who are responsible for facing people of Kandahar with no choice but death and destruction."
Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid suggested after Monday's bombing in Spin Boldak that the 38 civilian deaths there could have been avoided if Canadian troops heeded warnings to stay away, because suicide bombers were known to be present.
Canadian Press, 20/2/08
Death squad trial fixed
The trial of two former government officials widely seen as a test of the impartiality of Iraq's judicial system got off to an inauspicious start on Tuesday when it was delayed because crucial witnesses failed to appear.
The absence of the witnesses was the latest in a series of events that appear aimed at derailing the case, in which the officials are charged with using the resources of the Health Ministry to carry out a campaign of sectarian kidnappings and killings.
Witnesses have been intimidated; their families have been threatened; and information emerged this week suggesting that the trial's outcome was fixed. One of the judges scheduled to hear the case had reportedly already agreed to find the men not guilty, according to officials close to the court.
The defendants, former Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamili and Brig. Gen. Hameed al-Shammari, who led the ministry's security service, are charged with running militias that killed and kidnapped hundreds of Sunnis in hospitals run by the Health Ministry and other facilities in 2005 and 2006.
New York Times, 20/2/08
Iraqi refugee situation unresolved
More stability is needed in Iraq before the world community can encourage millions of exiled Iraqis who fled sectarian violence to return to their country, the head of the U.N. refugee agency said.
Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said at the end of a two-day mission to Iraq that he pledged to work on a "rapid response mechanism" that lays the groundwork for the eventual return of the refugees.
The Iraqi Red Crescent estimates that between 1.5 million and 2 million Iraqis fled to Syria, with most of the others going to Jordan. Roughly the same number are displaced within Iraq.
Although security had improved, it was too early to talk about advising refugees to return with no end in sight to the turmoil in Iraq, the U.N. official said.
"We are helping Iraqis who want to go home by their own initiative. We are not promoting or organising a movement of return of refugees because in our opinion the conditions are not yet met for that. The truth is that the security situation in Iraq still causes many concerns," Guterres said.
Many Iraqis who left Syria were forced to leave because of tougher living conditions and anxieties about residence permits despite pledges by both Syria and Jordan they would not forcibly expel any refugees, Guterres added.
Reuters 19/2/08
Budget will not benefit ordinary Iraqis
Corruption will eat away at Iraq's 48 billion dollar budget, which is unlikely to bring much relief to the hard-hit Iraqi in the street and will turn the jobless into an army of beggars, economists say.
The gloomy prognosis is based on patterns of administering the budget in the past four years, which, they say, has been bedevilled by a lack of planning and technical expertise and an inability by provinces to spend allocated moneys.
The budget, passed on Wednesday after months of wrangling by the deeply divided parliament, devotes the lion's share to the security forces, which gets 8.85 billion dollars -- up from 7.5 billion dollars in 2007 -- and to education, which gets 4.13 billion dollars.
Other major allocations include 1.92 billion dollars to the health ministry and 1.37 billion dollars to electricity -- much of the latter expected to go towards upgrading infrastructure in a country still mostly in the dark.
"The problem is not the size of the budget but whether it will be spent properly and free of financial and administrative corruption," said Baghdad economic expert Walid Khalid.
"What have citizens seen of last year's budget, which was also large? Approving the budget is not the problem; the problem is how much Iraqis will benefit from it," Khalid told AFP.
AFP, 17/2/08
Oil companies poised to exploit Iraq
More than 70 international companies have registered to compete for tenders to help develop Iraq's oil reserves, seen as vital to financing reconstruction of the shattered country, the Iraqi oil ministry said on Monday.
Iraq produces a fraction of its reserves, among the largest in the world and among the cheapest to exploit. International oil companies have been positioning themselves for years to gain access.
Big oil companies like Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Repsol, ConocoPhillips, BP, and StatoilHydro of Norway are among those that have said they have registered or intended to do so.
"We are going to carefully study and check the documentation," said Asim Jihad, an Oil Ministry spokesman. "Next month we will declare the companies which are permitted to work in the Iraqi oil fields."
International Herald Tribune, 18/2/08
Shiite pact ends
Radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement Sunday announced it was cancelling a pact it signed four months ago with its main Shiite rival aimed at reducing tension between the two groups.
The agreement between the Sadrists and the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim "has failed and is cancelled," Nassar al-Rubaie, spokesman for the Sadr bloc in parliament, told AFP.
The two groups, which have clashed repeatedly in the past as each sought control of Iraq's majority Shiite community, signed a pact last October 6 aimed at ending the violence between their two militias.
Competition between the two Shiite factions has often been violent, with a number of officials on either side assassinated. At stake is control of local government in Iraq's mainly Shiite southern provinces which are rich in oil, and in particular in the large town of Basra, the main port for exporting hydrocarbons.
Rivalry between the two movements is likely to increase ahead of provincial elections scheduled for October 1.
AFP, 17/2/08
Iraq sets election date
Provincial elections in Iraq will be held on October 1, a UN official has said.
The announcement comes after the Iraqi parliament on Wednesday passed the "provincial powers law", which sets out the relationship between the central government and the provinces and stipulated that provincial elections be held before the end of the year. Provincial elections were last held in December 2005, at the same time as national elections.
After months of deadlock, the parliament also passed an annual budget and a law that paves the way for the granting of amnesty to thousands of political detainees.
Al Jazeera, 14/2/08
80 dead in Afghanistan
A suicide bombing at an outdoor dog fighting competition has killed around 80 people and wounded dozens more, in probably the deadliest terror attack in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taleban in 2001.
Among the dead was Abdul Hakim, a former guerilla leader against the Soviets who had turned police commander in the area, and was a key target for the Taleban's suicide bombers.
Nato's attempts to 'Afghanise' security in the south of the country relies on locally powerful men like Abdul Hakim, who made a name for himself as a guerrilla commander fighting against the Soviets.
After suffering grievous casualities in open warfare the Taleban is increasingly switching to tactics of roadside bombs against Nato forces and assassination attacks against Afghan leaders, especially by suicide bombers, in an attempt to paralyse government and security.
Initial reports suggest that casualties may have been inflicted by panicking security guards firing wildly after the blast and shooting survivors. Shooting by ill-trained bodyguards was also blamed for some of the 70 deaths in a bomb attack in November, which until today had been Afghanistan's bloodiest bombing.
Times on-line 17/2/08
Female suicide bomber kills 3
A female suicide bomber blew herself up in a predominantly Shiite area in central Baghdad on Sunday morning, killing at least three people and wounding 10.
Police in the Masbah commercial area suspected the woman, who was in a black Islamic robe, and asked her to stop but she fled to a nearby building
Mosul is the last major urban stronghold of insurgent forces and a focus of the U.S. and Iraqi military efforts.
AP 17/2/08
Pro-US militia quits as members killed
More than 100 members of an anti-Qaeda front in central Iraq on Saturday handed their resignations to their US military employers, accusing them of killing 19 of their group.
The walk-out occurred in Juruf Sakher village near the city of Hilla, 75 miles south of Baghdad, said Sabah al-Janabi, leader of the anti-Qaeda Awakening group in the area.
"The group, which comprises 110 members, resigned in protest at organised assassinations by the coalition forces," said Janabi.
According to Janabi and a local police official, Ali al-Lami, three members of the Awakening group were killed on Saturday when they were attacked by gunfire from a US helicopter.
"It was the third incident in a month. We have lost 19 men while 12 have been injured because of coalition attacks," said Janabi. The US military said it was not certain that the Awakening members had indeed resigned.
"There was a peaceful demonstration in Jurf al-Sakhar, however there was no implication that the (Awakening) would cease in their work with coalition forces," it said.
AFP, 16/2/08
Oil motive behind Africa visit
President George W. Bush began a five-nation tour of Africa on Saturday that will highlight U.S. health, education and pro-democracy projects there and also seek to advance efforts to end Kenya's post-election crisis.
Bush's visit, his second to Africa, takes him to five countries carefully chosen to show a different face from the poverty-plagued and conflict-stricken continent normally portrayed by the world's media.
Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia are now relatively stable states whose presidents are viewed by Washington as a new generation of leaders with democratic credentials who can show the positive potential of Africa.
Bush's visit follows the creation late last year of a U.S. military command for Africa, Africom, aimed at increasing the U.S. presence on the African continent, which provides a significant portion of America's oil needs.
While it has ruled out the creation of any new military bases in Africa - one exists in Djibouti -Africom is looking for a site on the continent to locate its headquarters.
The reaction from African states has been mostly cool or hostile, with the exception of Liberia, Africa's first republic founded by freed American slaves in 1847, which has offered to host the Africom HQ.
Reuters 16/2/08
Somalia in chaos following US-backed intervention
Somalia's collapse was fully foreseen. As many experts warned, US collusion with Ethiopia a year ago to send Ethiopian troops into Mogadishu to topple the Islamic Courts regime has backfired as badly as the invasion of Iraq.
According to reports from UN and other aid workers in Somalia, almost three-quarters of a million people have fled since the Ethiopians arrived. Far from eliminating the Islamic Courts, the invasion attracted waves of new recruits, motivated by resentment at the presence of foreign troops and not just by jihadi ideology.
The Ethiopians installed one of the worst Somali warlords as mayor of Mogadishu, allowing him to turn his militia into the police. Most of the capital's people are from a different clan. Resistance has intensified in the past months as the occupation shows no sign of ending, and Islamist insurgents now operate well beyond Mogadishu.
Indiscriminate mortaring and machine-gun fire by all sides is said by aid workers to be horrendous, though there are no TV cameras to raise international alarm. Meanwhile, Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) still sits in the town of Baidoa, with no presence in the capital except for a fortified and symbolic mini-green zone.
Guardian, 15/2/08
'Surge' leads to permanent troop increase
The US "surge" is likely to end in July with more troops in Iraq than the 132,000 that were there before five extra combat brigades were sent in more than a year ago, a senior Pentagon official said.
Lieutenant General Carter Ham said that support forces and trainers that went in with the surge will still be needed to back up Iraq's expanding security forces after the last of the extra combat brigades leaves.
About 8,000 support troops were deployed to Iraq as part of the surge. Ham would not say whether 140,000 troops would be the upper limit of the post-surge US force.
AFP, 16/2/08
Basra: working or crumbling?
It's been five months since the British pulled out of Basra, the nation's second-largest city, and left security to a police force said to be riddled with Shiite militia.
A British journalist and an Iraqi interpreter working for CBS were kidnapped this week by 10 armed men outside the Sultan Palace Hotel. The interpreter was released Wednesday, but negotiations for the journalist's freedom were continuing. The top British general in Iraq says the security situation in Basra remains iffy.
"It's fragile," British Lt. Gen. Bill Rollo, deputy commanding general of Multi-National Force-Iraq, said Wednesday while looking at an energy project in Anbar province with U.S. Marines. "I could see signs that it's working," he said, "or that it's crumbling."
Los Angeles Times, 15/2/08
US kills 6 friendlies, 2 civilians
Six members of an Awakening Council, groups composed mostly of Sunni Muslims who have turned against the insurgency, were killed Thursday after they mistakenly fired on U.S. soldiers in the north, Iraqi police said.
U.S. forces returned fire, killing them and two women in nearby houses, the police said. A police commander said the group had thought the Americans were insurgents.
San Francisco Chronicle, 15/2/07
Iraqi prisons overburdened with detainees
The increase in American troops in Iraq over the past year has been accompanied by waves of new Iraqi detainees, inundating the country's already overburdened prisons and courts.
American advisers say Iraq's nascent justice system does not have enough prison beds, investigative judges or lawyers to absorb the thousands of suspects that have been detained since last summer by the augmented American and Iraqi security forces. More than half of the 26,000 prisoners are still awaiting trial, and some have languished for years, American officials said.
The Iraqi legislature approved an amnesty on Wednesday that could free thousands of prisoners. But American officials warned that the Justice Ministry would still require tens of thousands of new prison beds to consolidate detainees being held throughout the country by various agencies, including the police and the army.
The ministry will also have to receive many of the 24,000 additional prisoners held in separate American military prisons, like Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and Abu Ghraib, north of Baghdad.
New York Times, 14/2/08