These are the archives for the week ending 27th July 2007
UK arms export policy criticised
The government has approved arms exports to 19 of the 20 countries it has identified as 'countries of concern' for abusing human rights, according to the annual report on its weapons exports.They include Saudi Arabia, Israel, Colombia, China and Russia.
"It's hard to see how this squares with the messages from the new foreign secretary that the UK should be a 'force for good', said Roy Isbister, of Saferworld, an independent research organisation.
The report also reveals that during 2006 the UK authorised the export of more than 15,000 sniper rifles to countries including Pakistan, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Saferworld said the exports to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were of concern because the UK has no way of finding out where the weapons end up.
A Whitehall official said the government takes into account whether arms were likely to be used for internal repression or external aggression.
Guardian 25/7/07
Few non-Iraqis in resistance, despite Bush claims
As President Bush continues to stress al Qaeda as the chief threat to Iraq's stability--a reprised effort to establish a link between al Qaeda in Iraq and the 9/11 attackers--U.S. military forces on the ground in Iraq are fighting a complex war in regions with vast networks of overlapping loyalties--and few foreign fighters.
Most members of al Qaeda in Iraq, say commanders on the ground, are local Iraqi outcasts.
"I can count them [foreign fighters] as a total I have engaged, dead or alive, in the 10 months I've been here on one hand," says Col. David Sutherland, the U.S. commander of coalition forces in the hotly contested area of Diyala province.
There, Sutherland says, those involved in al Qaeda are largely dispossessed locals, not jihadists who have come from elsewhere.
Yahoo News, 25/7/07
Largest Sunni block withdraws from government
Iraq's largest Sunni parliamentary bloc has announced it is expanding its boycott of cabinet meetings to a full withdrawal from the government.
Salim Abdullah, a spokesman for the National Accordance Front, said it would give Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, a week to meet its demands before taking further action.
The bloc's main point on contention is the release of prisoners that have been detained with no charges. But also that Iraqi security forces have been targetting more Sunni areas and fighters than Shia forces.
These demands could also mean the disbanding of the Iraqi government security forces, since they have been accused of being infiltrated by these militas.
Aljazeera, 25/7/07
Wars good for profits
Defence firms Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have both reported higher-than-expected profits on orders for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lockheed, the world's biggest defence contractor, saw its shares rise 7%, as it increased its full-year forecast. It made a profit of $778m (£377.4m) in the three months to the end of June.
Meanwhile, Northrop, the Pentagon's third biggest supplier behind Lockheed and Boeing, saw its quarterly profit rise 7% to $460m (£223.1m).
BBC News, 24/7/07
Poll slams Bush and pro-war Democrats...
A new poll shows widespread disapproval of how President Bush and Democrats in Congress are handling the war in Iraq.
The Washington Post-ABC News survey indicates that 68 percent of the 1,125 respondents disagree with President Bush on Iraq. A total of 63 percent disapprove of how Democrats in Congress have handled the war.
Nearly half of those polled said they believe Democrats have done "too little" to get President Bush to change his war strategy. More than half of the respondents said they support legislation that would set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. combat forces
Voice of America, 24/7/07
...but US plans to be in Iraq at least 2 more years
A revised U.S. military plan for Iraq envisions American troops being in that country for at least another two years.
The plan, known as the Joint Campaign Plan, was developed by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker.
It calls for restoring security in local areas of Iraq, including Baghdad, by around this time next year, and nationwide security by mid-2009.
Voice of America, 24/7/07
Turkey steps back from Iraq invasion
As Turkey's government savoured an overwhelming electoral victory yesterday, regional analysts agreed that the immediate impetus for an invasion of northern Iraq had receded.
Sunday's clear mandate for the Islamic-rooted AKP of the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been received as a snub to his secularist and nationalist opponents, who put the fight against Kurdish separatist guerrillas across the border at the centre of their failed campaign.
Orhan Miroglu, one of the Kurdish politicians elected to parliament, said the veiled threat of military intervention and a massive military build-up in Turkey's south-east had failed to attract votes.
"Sunday's results are a victory for common sense and civilian democracy over a politics of nationalism and foreign intervention," he said.
With more than 100,000 troops on the border, Turkey's military has been talking about the strategic value of Iraqi operations for months. But it needs parliamentary permission to cross into Iraq.
Independent 24/7/07
Bush links Iraq war to al Qaeda
Defending his strategy in an increasingly unpopular war, President George W. Bush on Tuesday ratcheted up his effort to link the U.S.-led fight in Iraq to the broader battle against al Qaeda.
Faced with a new poll showing anti-war sentiment on the rise, Bush cited newly declassified intelligence as he gave an impassioned response to criticism that the U.S. focus on Iraq has become a distraction from the wider war on terrorism.
"Al Qaeda in Iraq is a group founded by foreign terrorists, led largely by foreign terrorists and loyal to a foreign terrorist leader: Osama bin Laden," Bush told a audience made up mostly of military personnel and their families.
Mindful of his trouble selling the U.S. public on the war, Bush has worked harder to put the spotlight on al Qaeda, the Islamist group behind the September 11 attacks on the United States and whose leader, bin Laden, has eluded a U.S.-led manhunt.
But some war critics have accused him of overstating the connections between al Qaeda and Iraq-based militants in an attempt to de-emphasize the role of sectarian fighting in the country's turmoil and justify the U.S. military presence there.
Washington Post 24/7/07
US & Iran to hold talks
Iran and the US are to hold fresh talks on the subject of Iraq, only their second one-on-one meeting in decades.Their two ambassadors in Baghdad will meet on Tuesday, it was announced.
The US blames Iran for supporting some of those who are attacking US and UK troops in Iraq, while Iran blames the US troop presence for Iraq's troubles.
Officially the talks are only meant to deal with Iraq, but our correspondent in Tehran says there is big range of issues each side would like to raise.
BBC News 23/7/07
Kurdish rebels anticipate Turkish attack
The commander of Iraq-based Kurdish rebels has predicted Turkey will swiftly follow its parliamentary elections with a long-anticipated offensive against his bases in northern Iraq.
Murat Karayilan, the leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, denied Ankara's accusations that the party was using its bases in Iraq to launch attacks against Turkish forces, but warned his fighters were prepared for battle.
"The date of the Turkish offensive has drawn near," Mr Karayilan said in an interview at his base in the remote village of Lewzhe in northern Iraq.
"We are ready to confront it and to defend ourselves. The Turkish army cannot move with ease in this mountainous terrain."
Turkey has been locked in a long-running war with PKK rebels since 1984. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people.
The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose AKP party claimed a resounding victory in the country's elections yesterday, has threatened to stage an incursion into northern Iraq if talks with Iraq and the United States fail to produce effective measures against Kurdish guerrillas in the region.
Guardian Unlimited 23/7/07
Generals Plead for Time to Secure Iraq
U.S. military commanders said Friday the troop buildup in Iraq must be maintained until at least next summer and they may need as long as two years to assure parts of the country are stable.
The battlefield generals' pleas for more time come in the face of growing impatience in the United States and a push on Capitol Hill to begin withdrawing U.S. troops as soon as this fall.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said in an interview that if the buildup is reversed before next summer, the military will risk giving up the security gains it has achieved at a cost of hundreds of American lives over the past six months. U.S. forces are working to build the Iraq military's ability to hold the gains made during the latest combat operations.
In Washington, White House officials said the timetable for assessing progress in Iraq has not changed and that September remains the next critical timeframe for judging the course of the war.
President Bush, who met with veterans and military families, accused Democrats of delaying action on money to upgrade equipment and give troops a pay raise.
Guardian Unlimited 21/7/07
Al-Sadr builds power base
After months of lying low, the anti-American Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has re-emerged with a shrewd two-tiered strategy that reaches out to Iraqis on the street and distances him from the increasingly unpopular government.
Al-Sadr and his political allies have largely disengaged from government, thus contributing to a political paralysis. His outsider status has enhanced al-Sadr's appeal to Iraqis, who consider politics less and less relevant to their daily lives.
Al-Sadr has been working tirelessly to build support at the grass roots, opening new shopfront offices across Baghdad and southern Iraq which dispense services not being provided by the government.
He has also extended the reach of his Mahdi Army, which according to White House reports remains entrenched in Iraq. The militia has effectively taken over vast swathes of the capital and is fighting government troops in several southern provinces.
Although the militia sometimes uses brutal tactics, including death squads, many vulnerable Shi'ites are grateful for the protection it affords. At the same time, the Mahdi Army is not entirely under al-Sadr's control, and he publicly denounces the most notorious killers fighting in his name. That frees him to extend an olive branch to Sunni Arabs and Christians, while championing the Shi'ite identity of his political base.
His basic tenets are widely shared. Like most Iraqis, he opposes the American military presence and wants a timetable for departure. He wants the country to stay unified and opposes the efforts of those Shi'ites who have had close ties to Iran to create a semi-autonomous Shi'ite region in southern Iraq.
Experts in Shi'ite politics believe that efforts to isolate al-Sadr are bound to fail.
"Sadr holds the political centre in Iraq," said Joost Hiltermann, the director of the International Crisis Group's office in Amman, Jordan. "They are nationalist, they want to hold the country together and they are the only political organisation that has popular support among the Shias. If you try to exclude him from any alliance, well, it's a nutty idea, it's unwise."
Scotland on Sunday 22/7/07
US 'show of force' brand has limited appeal
In the advertising world, brand identity is everything. Volvo means safety. IPod means cool. But since the U.S. military invaded Iraq in 2003, its "show of force" brand has proved to have limited appeal to Iraqi consumers, according to a recent study commissioned by the U.S. military.
The key to boosting the image and effectiveness of U.S. military operations around the world involves "shaping" both the product and the marketplace, then establishing a new identity that places what you are selling in a positive light, said clinical psychologist Todd Helmus, the author of "Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation."
The 211-page study, for which the U.S. Joint Forces Command paid the Rand Corp. $400,000, was released last week.
Helmus and his co-authors concluded that the "force" brand, which the U.S. peddled for the first few years of the occupation, was doomed from the start and has lost ground to enemies' competing brands.
The report suggested a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been "We will help you."
Enemy forces have learned that "doing good works is a classic approach to winning friends and influencing people" and frequently provide basic services that the U.S. military is unable to match.
Indianapolis Star 22/7/07
No troops for emergency
The Army has almost no reserve troops to draw upon because it is so stretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the head of the force.
General Sir Richard Dannatt said in a leaked memo that nearly all units were committed to operations, training for war or on leave. The document suggested that only one battalion of 500 personnel was immediately available to handle emergencies.
"We now have almost no capability to react to the unexpected," wrote General Dannatt, the Chief of General Staff.
He added that the Army needed 2,500 troops from other units to bring the total force in Iraq and Afghanistan to the 13,000 required. The number deployed was "far higher than we ever assumed" and was stretching the Army at a time when it is 3,500 people below full strength.
Times Online 21/7/07