These are the archives for the week ending 26th October 2007
US impose economic sanctions on Iran
The United States has announced its harshest action against Iran since 1979 by instituting a raft of unilateral sanctions designed to cut international financial support to Teheran's theocratic regime.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, and Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, said that the unprecedented steps, which include outlawing Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, were a response to Teheran's support of insurgents in Iraq and its refusal to abandon its uranium enrichment programme.
The British Government immediately gave its backing to the US action, and pledged to lead the campaign for new EU and UN sanctions
Although Miss Rice insisted that a "diplomatic solution" was possible, she described the actions as part of a decision "to confront the threatening behaviour of the Iranians. "
American officials accept they will exacerbate already rising tensions between Washington and Teheran.
Iran, she said, was "pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapon, building dangerous ballistic missiles, supporting Shia militants in Iraq and terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and denying the existence of a fellow member of the United Nations, threatening to wipe Israeli off the map".
The sanctions could affect hundreds of foreign companies by leaving them with the choice to end their dealing with Iran or face sanctions from the US.
Daily Telegraph 25/10/07
Iraqi police kill two infants in Kerbala
Iraqi police searching for a member of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's militia shot dead his two infant daughters and wounded his wife in a raid on Tuesday, a senior official in Sadr's movement said.
Haider Mujed was away when a police unit raided his house in Kerbala, Haider al-Jaberi told Reuters. The police then shot his two daughters, Mariam, 3, and Ayat, 18 months, he added.
The police in the city said a shooting has occurred and that Mujed's wife and one daughter were wounded, but did not give further details. A source in a hospital in Kerbala said it had received the bodies of two female children and two wounded women.
Residents said police have killed several people in a series of raids launched on Monday in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala.
Reuters,23/10/07
Brown to up sanctions on Iran
The British government will seek further sanctions against Iran over its atomic program, the prime minister said yesterday, as Iran's new nuclear negotiator had his first meeting with the European Union's foreign policy chief.
The Bush administration has led the push for sanctions against Iran, but last month agreed to Russian and Chinese demands to give the country until November to address international concerns.
"We are absolutely clear that we are ready, and will push for, further sanctions against Iran," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said. "We will work through the United Nations to achieve this. We are prepared also to have tougher European sanctions. We want to make it clear that we do not support the nuclear ambitions of that country."
Brown sidestepped a question about military action, promulgated by some hawks in the Bush administration.
Newsday, 24/10/07
US may bomb Kurdistan
In a phone call on Monday with his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, the United States President, George Bush, had offered support for Turkish efforts to counter attacks by the outlawed PKK, who killed at least a dozen Turkish soldiers on Sunday.
Mr Bush "reaffirmed our commitment to work with Turkey and Iraq to combat PKK terrorists operating out of northern Iraq," said the White House national security council spokesman, Gordon Johndroe. He did not elaborate on the nature of the co-operation.
The Chicago Tribune reported yesterday that Mr Bush had told Mr Gul that US officials were seriously looking into options beyond diplomacy. US officials have considered launching cruise missiles against PKK targets, but air strikes using manned aircraft was an easier option, an unnamed US official told the Tribune.
"In the past, there has been reluctance to engage in direct US military action against the PKK," the official said. "But the red line was always: if the Turks were going to come over the border, it could be so destabilising that it might be less risky for us to do something ourselves. Now the Turks are at the end of their rope, and our risk calculus is changing."
Sydney Morning Herald, 24/10/07
16 civilians killed in US air strike
At least 11 people have been killed in Iraq after a US helicopter opened fire in the Tikrit region, north of Baghdad, US officials have said.
The men were killed after an Apache helicopter crew spotted them placing roadside bombs near the volatile northern city of Samarra, military spokeswoman Maj Peggy Kageleiry said.
But police and residents of the village of Dijla, between Tikrit and Samarra, gave a different account, saying the group of men attacked by the helicopter were three farmers.
Two were killed in the initial air strike and the survivor ran back to his home, where other residents then gathered, Abdul al-Rahman Iyadeh, a relative of the victims told Reuters news agency. The second air strike completely destroyed the house, killing 14 people, including six members of the Ibrahim Jassim family and five from another, he said.
A local police officer, Capt Abdullah al-Isawi, put the death toll at 16 - seven men, six women and three children.
BBC News, 23/10/07
Trillion dollar war
President George Bush will have spent more than $1 trillion on military adventures by the time he leaves office at the end of next year, more than the entire amount spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
There are also disturbing signs that Mr Bush is preparing an attack on Iran during his remaining months in office. He has demanded $46bn (£22.5bn) emergency funds from Congress by Christmas and included with it a single sentence requesting money to upgrade the B-2 "stealth" bomber.
The Pentagon wants to upgrade its fleet of stealth bombers so that they can deliver 30-tonne, satellite-guided bombs. The planes would be based on the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia where hangars are being specially upgraded.
These "bunker-buster" bombs are six times bigger than anything used by the air force and designed to destroy weapons of mass destruction facilities underground. Diego Garcia is also much closer to Iran than Missouri, where the bombers are based.
This weekend Vice-President Dick Cheney stepped up the rhetoric, warning of "serious consequences" if Iran refuses to stop enriching uranium and said the US would not permit it to get nuclear weapons. Iran denies that the enrichment is linked to a nuclear weapons programme and says it is entirely peaceful.
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who was in Washington for talks with the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday would not be drawn on Mr Cheney's remarks.
Independent, 24/10/07
'Cultural awareness' for mercenaries
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has ordered new measures to improve government oversight of private security contractors used in Iraq.
It follows a review by an independent panel ordered after an incident last month involving the US firm Blackwater, in which some 17 Iraqi civilians died.
The steps include tightening the state department's rules of engagement so they are line with the military's. Contractors will also have to undergo improved cultural awareness training.
BBC News, 24/10/07
Iraqi police target US troops
The men gathered in the evening at the schoolyard to execute their attack. By the time they finished, at least seven rockets had crashed down nearly four miles away inside the American military headquarters compound in Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers and wounding at least 38 other people, according to U.S. soldiers.
In the days since the Oct. 10 rocket barrage, U.S. soldiers have arrested eight police officers suspected of collaborating with Shiite militiamen to target the U.S. base. Assaults by mortars and rockets on military installations across the country are relatively common -- though the missiles frequently land in unpopulated areas. But if the police are found guilty, the Camp Victory assault would represent one of the more glaring examples of Iraqi security forces turning on their American partners to devastating effect.
While discouraged that police had been implicated in the attack, a US spokesperson said recent recruitment of local Sunni residents for police academy training would balance the Shiite-dominated police force.
Washington Post, 21/10/07
Scavenging for food in dustbins
Barira Mihran, a 36-year-old mother of three, scavenges every day in other people's dustbins in Baghdad for leftovers on which to feed her children.
Widowed and displaced by sectarian violence, the unemployed mother said she had no other way of providing for her children.
Barira, an educated woman, has now joined hundreds of other mothers who rummage through rubbish bins for food to feed their children, according to the Baghdad-based Women's Rights Association (WRA), which conducted a survey of displaced families and people living on the streets in 12 provinces (excluding the Kurdistan region) between January and August 2007.
Mayada Zuhair, a WRA spokeswoman, said the survey showed an increase of 25 percent, since the previous survey in December 2005, in the number of mothers who fed their children either by scavenging in people's rubbish bins or by becoming sex workers.
Of the 3,572 respondents, 72 percent were women (mainly widowed) and of these 9 percent said they had resorted to prostitution and 17 percent said they scavenged for food in dustbins and at rubbish tips.
Reuters, 23/10/07
Security major problem for Afghans
In a 12-month period during which the Taliban insurgency spread in Afghanistan and violence rose in the country's major cities, Afghans grew increasingly concerned about security and more people came to regard it as the most serious issue facing the nation, according to the results of a poll set for release on Tuesday. The poll was financed by the United States Agency for International Development.
About a third of the poll's respondents said security issues, including terrorism and violence, were the single biggest problem in Afghanistan, a significant increase from a similar poll last year, in which only 22 percent gave top priority to security concerns.
About 25 percent of those surveyed said the government was doing a "very good" job and 55 percent said it was doing a "somewhat good" job.
A large proportion of respondents said Afghans did not feel free to express their political opinions in the area where they live, and 69 percent agreed it was not acceptable to speak critically about the government in public.
New York Times, 22/10/07
$46 billion more for war...
President Bush has sent an emergency request to the U.S. Congress for an extra $46 billion in expedited funds for Iraq, Afghanistan and other national security needs. The money is in addition to the $145 billion in war-related spending included in his original 2008 budget.
In addition to money for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the president's $46 billion supplemental also includes funding for peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur region, as well as efforts to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America.
Voice of America, 22/10/07
...and the reason why
The State Department does not know specifically what it received for a billion-dollar contract with security firm DynCorp International to provide training services for Iraqi police, a U.S. watchdog agency said on Tuesday.
The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said it was forced to suspend its audit of the DynCorp contract after administration officials told investigators they had no confidence in their own accounting records.
The inspector general said the agency had not validated the accuracy of invoices received before October 2006 and described bills and supporting documents as being in disarray.
Among the problems identified before the audit was suspended were duplicate payments, the purchase of a never-used $1.8 million X-ray scanner and payments of $387,000 to house DynCorp officials in hotels rather than other available accommodation.
Reuters, 23/10/07
Civilians killed in US raid
U.S. forces engaged in an hours-long gun battle with militants during an early-morning raid in the Iraqi capital's Shiite Muslim district of Sadr City on Sunday.
American officials said as many as 49 people were killed in the fighting. The Iraqi government said many of the victims were civilians and protested the action. The American military said that all of those killed were "criminals."
A freelance correspondent for The Times said he saw the corpses of a woman and two small children. The wounded included two boys, 8 and 11, who were interviewed in their beds at Imam Ali Hospital by The Times. Another man said his 18-month-old son was killed, as well as a neighbour's son who was the same age
U.S. officials said the forces did not capture or kill the raid's target, identified as the leader of a kidnapping cell that is part of a Shiite militant movement called the Special Groups - a splinter group of the Mahdi Army militia no longer following orders from radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. American officials believe the splinter group is trained, funded and supplied by Iran through its Revolutionary Guard forces.
The White House declined to comment on the clash in Sadr City.
The fighting followed recent incidents in which U.S. forces killed 15 civilians in an attack on alleged leaders of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq, and Western private security contractors shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians, inflaming anti-U.S. sentiment.
In two raids this summer on Sadr City, American soldiers killed more than 50 people.
Los Angeles Times 22/10/07
UK may increase Afghan troops
Britain may increase its military commitment in Afghanistan to help fill gaps in Nato's deployment there, a spokesman said.
James Appathurai, speaking for Nato's secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said the UK was considering "potentially increasing" its force.
He played down the prospect that Canada or the Netherlands might downscale their presence in the south of Afghanistan. Mr Appathurai told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend:
"In the south, we don't think the Dutch are going to leave. The Canadians are looking at exactly what they can do. The British are talking in the south not only about keeping what they have but potentially increasing it."
BBC News, 21/10/07
'Strategic political value' of Guantanamo prisoners
Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month.
Senior defense officials discussed in a September 2006 meeting the "strategic political value" of putting some prominent detainees on trial, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis. He said that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed "sexy" over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go.
Washington Post, 20/10/07
Special forces operating inside Iran
British special forces have crossed into Iran several times in recent months as part of a secret border war against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Al-Quds special forces, defence sources have disclosed.
There have been at least half a dozen intense firefights between the SAS and arms smugglers, a mixture of Iranians and Shi'ite militiamen.
An SAS squadron is carrying out operations along the Iranian border in Maysan and Basra provinces with other special forces, the Australian SAS and American special-operations troops.
There have been persistent reports of American special-operations missions inside Iran preparing for a possible attack. But the sources said British troops were solely stopping arms smuggling.
Sunday Times, 21/10/07
US has resources to attack Iran
America's top military officer said the country does have the resources to attack Iran, despite the strain of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Admiral Michael Mullen, who took over as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff three weeks ago, said diplomacy remained the priority in dealing with Iran's suspected plans to develop a nuclear weapon and its support for anti-US insurgents in Iraq.
But at a press conference he said: "there is more than enough reserve to respond (militarily) if that, in fact, is what the national leadership wanted to do".
Admiral Mullen did not elaborate on what size of assault would be feasible, but earlier reports have said the Pentagon had laid out contingency plans for a major aerial campaign against suspected nuclear targets in Iran.
Early this year the US navy moved a second aircraft carrier with battleships into the Gulf, its biggest build up of military power there since the months leading to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, leading to speculation that it was prepared to launch air strikes at any time.
Daily Telegraph, 20/10/07
US bombs Sadr City
At least 10 people have been killed in Baghdad's Sadr City - a Shia stronghold - police and hospital officials say. They said women and children were among those killed, but a US spokesman said he had no evidence of civilian deaths.
The US military said its forces had conducted operations in Sadr City, "targeting criminals" suspected in the kidnapping of coalition soldiers. Iraqi officials said US helicopters and fighter jets had bombed buildings in the area during the raid.
BBC News, 21/10/07
NATO's Afghan invasion under pressure
The NATO alliance likes to boast it has won every battle in Afghanistan, forcing the Taliban to resort to "asymmetric" suicide bombings. Perhaps. But NATO is far from winning the war, and the ragged Afghan insurgents seem to have more staying power than the West's mighty alliance.
As defence ministers prepare to meet in the Netherlands on October 24th, NATO itself is looking shaky. This year, with casualties higher than in 2006, NATO's concern is no longer to increase its strength but to stop some allies from withdrawing altogether.
The Dutch centre-left coalition government is prevaricating over whether to extend the mission of its troops beyond 2008. It wants to find another country with which to share the burden of securing the restive province of Uruzgan.
In Canada, the minority conservative government of Stephen Harper is under pressure from all three opposition parties-Liberals, Bloc Québécois and the New Democrats-to withdraw its soldiers by February 2009. Canada provides the main force in Kandahar.
After a heated debate, the German parliament voted this month to maintain its troops for another year. In Italy the debate over its contingent has been re-opened by the kidnapping last month of two Italian intelligence agents, one of whom was fatally wounded in a rescue operation.
Economist, 19/10/07
Three shot by British mercenaries
The US military said on Friday it had launched an investigation into the latest shooting to involve private security firms protecting convoys in war-torn Iraq.
Guards from British firm Erinys working for the US Army Corps of Engineers fired on a taxi near the northern city of Kirkuk on Thursday, wounding three civilians, including a woman journalist, according to police.
A spokeswoman for the engineers, Kimberly Mielcarek, confirmed to AFP that the corps had now appointed an investigator to look into the shooting, the third such incident in little over a month.
AFP, 19/10/07
Afghanistan denies US claims about Iran
Afghanistan's foreign minister says there is no evidence that Iran is supplying weapons to Taliban insurgents, despite U.S. claims.
Rangeen Dadfar Spanta made the remarks Friday in Herat, one day after the top commander of NATO forces said weapons intercepted in Afghanistan had originated in Iran.
Afghan officials say the country's intelligence agency is investigating the source of sophisticated weapons used by Taliban insurgents, and says it has no proof they are coming from Iran. Iran has also denied the allegations.
Voice of America, 19/10/07
Kurds will fight Turkish raids
The president of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq has said his people will defend themselves if Turkey attacks Kurdish rebels based in the region.
Massoud Barzani rejected accusations that his government provided cover for Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) fighters.
"We frankly say to all parties: if they attack the region of Kurdistan under whatever pretext, we will be completely ready to defend our democratic experiment and the dignity of our people and the sanctity of our homeland," Mr Barzani said.
He said Iraqi Kurds were not to blame for the actions of the PKK and reiterated a call for Turkey to hold talks with the Kurdish authorities in the regional capital, Irbil.
The government in Ankara has refused to talk directly to the Kurdish regional authority in northern Iraq, insisting all its dealings must go through Baghdad.
BBC News, 19/10/07
Reconciliation teams a failure
Attempts by American-led reconstruction teams to forge political reconciliation, foster economic growth and build an effective police force and court system in Iraq have failed to show significant progress in nearly every one of the nation's provincial regions and in the capital, a federal oversight agency reported on Thursday.
A central finding of the report, Mr. Bowen, the special inspector general, said in his testimony, was that even with 32 of the teams, called provincial reconstruction teams, or P.R.T.'s, now deployed around the country at a cost of $1.9 billion as of August, the program still has not developed concrete methods to measure the effects of the teams on progress in the country.
The picture that emerges is far from confidence-inspiring, and raises the question of whether any Western program, no matter how well founded, can overcome the challenges of putting Iraq back together again.
New York Times, 19/10/07