These are the archives for the week ending 22nd June 2007
UK will be in Afghanistan for decades
A British presence in Afghanistan will continue for decades, the UK's new ambassador to Kabul warned yesterday, adding that it would take that long to establish a sustainable government in the country.
"We are going to win this, but it's going to take time," said Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. "It's not a three year sprint, it's a 30 year marathon - we should be thinking in terms of decades."
He said the government was not talking about "a long-term military presence" but about "a long-term development presence, because this country does matter to us and to the region in so many ways".
Guardian, 21/6/07
Clinton would leave troops in Iraq
Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards said Tuesday that at least some U.S. troops should remain in or near Iraq for the foreseeable future.
Although both reiterated their positions that the U.S. should quickly begin to withdraw troops from Iraq, they made clear that they did not support a total pullout.
"We may still have remaining vital national security interests that are important to America," said Clinton to a labor forum in Washington. "We cannot let al Qaeda have a staging ground in Iraq." She added, "That doesn't take a lot of American forces."
Edwards, who spoke after Clinton, told the union members that U.S. forces must be stationed close to Iraq so they can re-enter the nation if necessary. "As America pulls its combat troops out of Iraq, we're going to have to maintain a presence in the region, which means we probably need a rapid deployment force in Kuwait," the former senator from North Carolina said.
"If the Jordanians would allow us to station troops there, we may want to put troops in Jordan."
News Post, India, 20/6/07
Largest offensive since 2003 causes civilian casualties
The new operation launched by American and Iraqi troops in Diyala province and its capital Baquba, just north of Baghdad, is one of the biggest campaigns undertaken by US troops since the invasion in 2003.
Codenamed Arrowhead Ripper, the operation involves some 10,000 troops - probably around 6,000 US and 4,000 Iraqis - lifted in by helicopters and backed by massive firepower in the shape of tanks, artillery and close air support.
There was no official acknowledgement of civilian casualties. But the head of Baquba's emergency services told the BBC not long after the operation began that at least 12 civilians had been killed by the end of the first day, including three women.
He said that there were certainly more civilian casualties, but ambulances were being prevented by US troops from going in to evacuate them. A number of houses had been destroyed, and there were fears that civilians might be trapped in the rubble.
People had been told by Iraqi army loudspeakers to keep off the streets and stay indoors.
BBC News, 19/6/07
Iraq undermines 'liberal intervention'
Tony Blair has been told that his foreign policy of intervening in the world's troublespots to uphold democracy is in tatters because of the disaster in Iraq. Senior Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs challenged the Prime Minister over whether his "liberal intervention" strategy would survive after he leaves office next week because other countries were turning against it.
They clashed with Mr Blair when he was quizzed for the last time by the Commons Liaison Committee, which is composed of the chairman of all the select committees.
Mike Gapes, the Labour chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said the case for intervening in other countries in future would be "discredited and undermined" by the experience in Iraq. He added that Mr Blair's strategy was now "out of step" with opinion around the world.
Independent, 19/6/07
Iraq a failed state...
Iraq has emerged as the world's second most unstable country, behind Sudan, more than four years after President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, according to a survey released on Monday.
The 2007 Failed States Index, produced by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace, said Iraq suffered a third straight year of deterioration in 2006 with diminished results across a range of social, economic, political and military indicators.
Iraq ranked fourth last year. Afghanistan, another war-torn country where U.S. and NATO forces are battling a Taliban insurgency nearly six years after a U.S.-led invasion, was in eighth place.
Reuters, 18/6/07
...and drives refugee crisis
The number of refugees worldwide has risen for the first time in five years, largely because of violence in Iraq, according to a United Nations report. The total number of refugees rose by more than 14% last year to nearly 10 million, the UN refugee agency says.
The report said the conflict in Iraq was largely responsible for the rise. Some 1.5m Iraqis are now estimated to be living as refugees in other countries, mostly neighbouring Syria and Jordan. They form the world's second-largest group of refugees after Afghans, 2.1m of whom are said to be still living outside their homeland.
BBC News, 19/6/07
Maliki warns that US is creating militias
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned that US troops sometimes create new militias by arming Iraqi tribes, urging that such decisions be left to his government.
"Some field commanders make mistakes ... by arming tribes sometimes, and this is dangerous because this will create new militias," Maliki said.
"I believe that the coalition forces do not know the backgrounds of the tribes. It is a job of the (Iraqi) government," he added.
The premier said his administration seeks "to arm some tribes that want to side with us, but on the condition that we should be well aware of the tribe's background and sure that it is not connected with terror."
AFP, 16/6/07
Airstrike kills seven children in Afghanistan
The US-led coalition and Afghan troops have apologised after they launched airstrikes against a compound suspected of housing al-Qa'ida militants in eastern Afghanistan, killing seven children and several militants.
"We are saddened by the innocent lives that were lost as a result of militants' cowardice," said Major Chris Belcher, a coalition spokesman.
Independent, 18/6/07
US will be in Iraq for a decade
Conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to justify a drawdown of U.S. military forces, the top commander in Iraq said yesterday.
Asked whether he thought the job assigned to an additional 30,000 troops deployed as the centerpiece of President Bush's new war strategy would be completed by then, Gen. David H. Petraeus replied: "I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do."
Asserting steady, albeit slow, military and political progress, Petraeus said that the "many, many challenges" would not be resolved "in a year or even two years."
Similar counterinsurgency operations, he said, citing Britain's experience in Northern Ireland, "have gone at least nine or 10 years."
He said he and Ambassador Crocker would make "some recommendations on the way ahead" to Congress, and that it was realistic to assume "some form of long-term security arrangement" with Iraq.
Washington Post, 18/6/07
Blair believed Bush would nuke Afghanistan
Britain joined the US in ousting the Taliban in 2001 because it feared America would "nuke the shit" out of Afghanistan, the former British ambassador to Washington has reportedly said on a TV documentary.
Christopher Meyer said fear explained why Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to stand with US President George W. Bush in his decision to invade Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks - to temper his aggressive battle plans.
"Blair's real concern was that there would be quote unquote 'a knee-jerk reaction' by the Americans ... they would go thundering off and nuke the shit out of the place without thinking straight," Mr Meyer reportedly told the documentary
The Australian, 18/6/07
Turkish troops mass on Iraq border
Iraqi border police believe neighbouring Turkey has amassed 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers along its southern border with Iraq. Turkish helicopters have flown into Iraqi airspace to conduct missions against Kurdish rebels in the mountainous region, and Turkish mortar shells regularly crash down on Iraqi soil, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
About two weeks ago, a team of Turkish special forces soldiers was discovered in the city of Sulaymaniyah, about 115 miles into Iraqi territory.
The view from northern Iraq of the growing Turkish military presence and escalating conflict with separatist rebels is of increasing concern to Iraqi border officials and their U.S. military counterparts who monitor the 200-mile border.
Drawing another country into the maelstrom of Iraq would represent a serious blow to an already unstable political situation and put Americans in a precarious position between two supporters: the Turks, who are NATO allies, and the Kurds, who are close partners in Iraq.
To the U.S. military, having to take sides in an open fight inside Iraq between Turkey and the Kurds is not a pleasing prospect.
Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, who works with Iraqi security forces, said that "there appears to be some activity on the Turkish side, but it may just be brinksmanship."
"We can't have it to where we have friction with a NATO ally," Pittard said. The Kurdish regional government "must help out in muzzling the PKK or suffer the consequences."
Washington Post 17/6/07
Iraq progress disappoints Gates
The US defence secretary met Iraqi leaders on Saturday to tell them that Washington was disappointed with their efforts to reconcile warring factions.
Robert Gates, who flew into Baghdad on Friday night, was briefed by US commanders on a US troop build-up intended to buy time for the mainly Shia Iraqi government to reach a political accommodation with Sunni Arabs.
Gates said he would deliver a simple message "that our troops are buying them time to pursue reconciliation, that frankly we are disappointed with the progress so far".
Meanwhile, General David Petraeus, the US military commander in Iraq, said troops had launched offensives against al-Qaeda in Iraq's hideouts around Baghdad in the past 24 hours to hunt car-bombers.
The US military has completed its troop build-up in Iraq to 160,000 soldiers. Nearly 28,000 additional troops have been sent to Iraq, mainly to Baghdad for a major crackdown on sectarian violence.
Gates' visit and criticism were signs Washington is growing increasingly frustrated with what US officials regards as foot-dragging on laws on distributing oil revenues, control of regional oil fields and holding provincial elections.
Aljazeera 16/6/07
PM committed troops despite chaos fears
Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.
In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.
He also agreed to commit troops to the conflict even though President George Bush had personally said Britain could help 'some other way'.
The disclosures, in a two-part Channel 4 documentary about Blair's decade in Downing Street, will raise questions about Blair's public assurances at the time of the war in 2003 that he was satisfied with the post-war planning.
Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, confirms that the President offered Blair a way out. Bush told Blair: 'Perhaps there's some other way that Britain can be involved.' Blair replied: 'No, I'm with you.'
Observer 17/6/07
Contractors Parallel War in Iraq
Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in US military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.
While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armour and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase.
The majority of the more than 100 security companies operate outside of Iraqi law, in part because of bureaucratic delays and corruption in the Iraqi government licensing process.
The security industry's enormous growth has been facilitated by the U.S. military, which uses the 20,000 to 30,000 contractors to offset chronic troop shortages.
Armed contractors protect all convoys transporting reconstruction materiel, including vehicles, weapons and ammunition for the Iraqi army and police. They guard key U.S. military installations and provide personal security for at least three commanding generals.
The military plans to outsource at least $1.5 billion in security operations this year, including the three largest security contracts in Iraq. The Army has also tested a plan to use private security on military convoys for the first time, a shift that would significantly increase the presence of armed contractors on Iraq's dangerous roads.
Washington Post 16/6/07
Pentagon suggests 'surge' is failure
The final contingent of US troops in the "surge" against Iraq's resistance deploys today amid deepening gloom in Washington at the military's failure to reduce violence and defeat the insurgency.
The latest arrivals take up their positions as the Pentagon released the first hard assessment of President George Bush's gamble in stepping up the war in Iraq. The report, a comprehensive statistical analysis of the three months from mid-February to mid-May, reveals failure on most fronts in Iraq and no overall decrease in violence that the President had hoped for.
The Pentagon's report to Congress reveals that the arrival of fresh combat troops has merely shifted the violence away to other parts of the country.
The ground is being prepared in Washington - on both sides of the political divide - to blame the administration of Nouri al-Maliki for that failure.
The Pentagon said yesterday that Mr Maliki's government was "uneven" in living up to its promises and in many cases produced no successes. There was "little progress" by the Iraqi leadership in bringing about reconciliation between Shia, Kurdish and Sunni sides. This was "a serious, unfulfilled objective", which "some analysts see a growing fragmentation of Iraq".
Independent 16/6/07
US ignores allies in Iraq
The US-led administration set up to run Iraq following the invasion in 2003 was a 'dysfunctional organisation' which almost completely ignored the British, according to its director of operations.
Andrew Bearpark, probably the Coalition Provisional Authority's central British figure, also revealed that when he asked for details of the plan to restore the Iraqi power supplies, he was given a one-page piece of paper with a list of a dozen Iraqi power stations and their potential output, amounting to what he describes as a 'wish list'. "That was the CPA plan" he said.
He described Britain as being 'complicit in Iraq's current position as a failed state due to the failure to prepare a post-war plan'.
Mr Bearpark said 'If we are going to take upon ourselves the right to invade people's countries and kill people - which is what we do with maybe the most laudable objectives - it puts an incredible moral responsibility upon us to do it as well as we possibly can'.
He described 'the absence of proper planning in Iraq as criminal negligence'.
Mr Bearpark said British attempts to be signatories to the formation of the CPA as a joint occupying power under the Geneva convention were brushed aside by the Americans.
Guardian 16/6/07