These are the archives for the week ending 30th November 2007
US tactic stokes long term problems in Iraq
The American campaign to turn Sunni Muslims against Islamic extremists is growing so quickly that Iraq's Shiite Muslim leaders fear that it's out of control and threatens to create a potent armed force that will turn against the government one day.
The United States, which credits much of the drop in violence to the campaign, is enrolling hundreds of people daily in "concerned local citizens" groups. More than 5,000 have been sworn in in the last eight days, for a total of 77,542 as of Tuesday.
U.S. officials said they were screening new members - who generally are paid $300 a month to patrol their neighborhoods - and were subjecting them to tough security measures. More than 60,000 have had fingerprints and DNA taken and had retinal scans, American officials said, steps that will allow them to be identified later, should they turn against the government.
But that hasn't calmed mounting concerns among aides to Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who charge that some of the groups include "terrorists" who attack Shiite residents in their neighborhoods. Some of the new "concerned citizens" are occupying houses that terrified Shiite families abandoned, they said.
It also hasn't quieted criticism that the program is trading long-term Iraqi stability for short-term security gains. "There is a danger here that we are going to have armed all three sides: the Kurds in the north, the Shiite and now the Sunni militias," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst.
McClatchy Press, 29/11/07
Official: Taliban pose no threat to Afghanistan...
The Taliban don't pose a "credible threat" to the Afghan government and are unable to hold captured territory, a U.K. minister said, after a research group reported the movement threatens to regain control of the nation.
"The Taliban do not control a single province" and are "far from being a resurgent force," Mark Malloch-Brown, a junior Foreign Office minister, wrote in a letter published by the Independent newspaper in London today.
Bloomberg, 29/11/07
...but NATO can't contain them
NATO-led forces in Afghanistan do not have the means to secure the country in the face of a barrage of insurgent attacks, a senior French general with the force has warned.
"The 41,OOO soldiers in ISAF are largely insufficient to ensure security," said Brigadier General Vincent Lafontaine, the chief of planning for the International Security Assistance Force deployed here under a UN mandate.
The officer -- one of the most senior in France's 1,070-strong contingent here -- also expressed concern about the chronic shortage of transport helicopters used to move soldiers and supplies around the war-ravaged country.
The United States provides most of the helicopters, but is due to start pulling them out in early 2008. Lafontaine said as a result, top-level NATO officials were now mulling the possibility of outsourcing logistics tasks to private helicopter companies.
AFP, 30/11/07
US kills 14 Afghan road workers...
A NATO airstrike killed 14 workers for an Afghan company that had been contracted by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to build a road in Nuristan, a mountainous province in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.
"Fourteen of our mechanics and laborers were killed as they were asleep in their tents," said Nurullah Jalali, the executive director of Amerifa. "We just collected pieces of flesh from our tired workers and put them in 14 coffins."
Gov. Tamim Nuristani of Nuristan said he could confirm that 13 workers had been "mistakenly" killed when NATO forces bombed the area based on what he said was an intelligence report of insurgent infiltration.
Maj. Charles Anthony, a NATO spokesman, said its forces had struck what it believed were Taliban insurgents but could not confirm that the workers had been killed.
Mr. Jalali said that in the year his company had worked in the region, his workers had not come across any militants.
New York Times, 29/11/07
...and 4 Iraqi finance ministry workers
Up to four Iraqi civilians are reported to have died in Baghdad when US troops fired at a minibus taking them to work.
The US military in Iraq said its forces opened fire at the vehicle "after the driver failed to heed a warning shot". A US military statement said the road the minibus was travelling on, in the Shaab area of north-east Baghdad, was only for use by passenger cars.
Iraq police and medics said three women and a man had died; the military said it knew of two dead and two wounded. Police sources said the bus was carrying Finance Ministry employees to work.
BBC News, 27/11/07
Iraq politicians oppose US pact
Iraqi opposition groups have criticised moves towards a long-term US-Iraqi pact following the expiry of the UN mandate governing foreign troops in Iraq.
On Monday US and Iraqi leaders signed a "declaration of principles" on enduring military, political and economic ties. Sunni Arab and Shia politicians said it would lead to what they described as "US interference for years to come".
MPs from the Shia bloc loyal to the cleric Moqtada Sadr expressed deep reservations about the agreement. The Sunni group the Association of Muslim Scholars said the Iraqi signatories of the declaration would be looked on a "collaborators with the occupier".
Correspondents say US investors benefiting from preferential treatment could earn huge profits from Iraq's vast oil reserves, causing widespread resentment among Iraqis.
BBC News, 27/11/07
Pentagon protests China navy snub
The Pentagon says it has sent a formal protest to Beijing over China's recent refusal to allow visits by US navy ships to Hong Kong.
"We are expressing officially our displeasure," Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters in Washington, describing the Chinese decisions as "baffling". The move follows the barring of a Thanksgiving visit last week by the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and several support ships.
On Thursday a Chinese communist party-owned newspaper signalled a possible cause of the row, blaming a US decision to sell an anti-missile defence system to Taiwan.
Al Jazeera, 29/11/07
Americans more optimistic about the war, but still want troops home
Americans are growing increasingly optimistic about developments in Iraq, according to a new poll published Tuesday amid signs of US military progress in the war and a monthly decline in troop deaths.
Some 48 percent of those polled by the Pew Research Center thought that the US military effort in Iraq was going very well or fairly well, up from June when only a third of Americans thought things were going well.
But rising favorable sentiment about the war among the US public is failing to translate into a boost in support for keeping troops in Iraq. By 54 to 41 percent, Americans in the poll favored bringing troops home as soon as possible rather than keeping them in Iraq until the situation stabilizes -- a balance of opinion barely changed from earlier in the year.
AFP, 27/11/07
Iraq backlash for pro-war leaders
One fall-out of the Iraq conflict, now in its fifth year, is the steady stream of exits by leaders who supported the US action.
Spain, one of the few European countries to align with the US, saw a change of government in 2004. Tony Blair stepped down from office earlier this year after a bitter and protracted struggle within his own Labour Party.
More recently, Poland, which had sent about 900 troops to Iraq, saw its government change, with the new prime minister vowing to bring the troops back.
Over the weekend, John Howard, after having been prime minister of Australia for over 11 years, lost the elections and his own seat to the Labour Party, whose leader, Kevin Rudd, insists on bringing all Australia's 550 troops in Iraq back home. Mr Howard was amongst the most vocal supporters of the US, which seems to have hurt him, despite the relatively small number of troops that he had committed to Iraq.
The regular displacement of leaders who were broadly supportive of the US on Iraq will clearly change the diplomatic landscape for the US in the coming years, indeed they have already done so. The US can no longer take for granted international support on any issue and will have to look for new and different ways to engage other countries.
Business Standard, India, 28/11/07
Speaker leads Afghan parliament walkout
Afghanistan's Speaker has led a walk-out of parliament, followed by nearly half the country's deputies. Yunus Qanuni left the assembly because he said the government of President Hamid Karzai was ignoring parliament.
Many MPs want senior officials in Baghlan province to be suspended after a bombing there earlier this month. Nearly 80 people were killed in the attack, including six MPs and about 60 children.
The government has said it is still investigating the bombing. Correspondents say much is still unclear about the bombing in Baghlan. Some reports say many of the victims died from gunshot wounds and appear to have been shot by the MPs' bodyguards.
BBC News, 26/11/07
Media overhyping Iraqis return home
Since October, proponents of the "surge" of U.S. troops in Iraq have pointed to a relative decline in death and violence in Baghdad and a huge movement of Iraqis who have fled the country and now are allegedly returning home.
But numbers have been funny in the war in the past, and may be twisted again, New York Times correspondent Damien Cave suggests today.
"A half-dozen owners of Iraqi travel agencies and drivers who regularly travel to Syria agreed that the numbers misrepresented reality," Cave reports. "They said that the flow of returnees peaked last month, with more than 50 families arriving daily from Syria at Baghdad's main drop-off point. Since Nov. 1, they said, the numbers have declined, and on Sunday morning, during a period when several buses used to appear, only one came."
A United Nations survey released last week, of 110 Iraqi families leaving Syria, also seemed to dispute the contentions of officials in Iraq that people are returning primarily because they feel safer.
"The survey found that 46 percent were leaving because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security."
Editor and Publisher, 26/11/07
Kurds defy Baghdad on oil
The autonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq defied Baghdad on Monday, vowing to sign more contracts with international oil firms despite the national government's opposition.
"The (regional) government will continue with the contracts and they will be implemented," its prime minister Nechirvan Barzani said.
"No one can cancel any contract of the KRG (Kurdistan regional government) signed with foreign companies," a defiant Barzani told reporters in the regional capital Arbil.
Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain Shahristani has declared all oil contracts between the Kurdish administration and foreign companies null and void, saying they have been signed illegally in the absence of a national oil law.
AFP, 26/11/07
US planning long term presence in Iraq
Iraq's government, seeking protection against foreign threats and internal coups, will offer the U.S. a long-term troop presence in Iraq in return for U.S. security guarantees as part of a strategic partnership, two Iraqi officials said Monday.
The proposal is one of the first indications that the United States and Iraq are beginning to explore what their relationship might look like once the U.S. significantly draws down its troop presence.
In Washington, President Bush's adviser on the Iraqi war, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, confirmed the proposal, calling it "a set of principles from which to begin formal negotiations."
The Americans appeared generally favorable subject to negotiations on the details, which include preferential treatment for American investments, according to the Iraqi officials involved in the discussions.
Associated Press, 26/11/07
American backed militias a short term fix?
Members of the Baghdad Brigade receive $300 a man each month from the Americans, who also provide vehicles, uniforms and flak jackets. In return the brigade keeps out Al-Qaeda, dismantles roadside bombs and patrols the area, a task performed with considerable swagger by many of its 4,000 recruits.
The US military is delighted with the results achieved by the brigade in Abu Ghraib and by similar groups in other former "hot spots" of sectarian conflict that have seen a sharp decline in violence.
For Shi'ites however a Sunni militia represents another potential source of terror in a country where millions have been traumatised by ethnic cleansing.
A 50% cut in car and roadside bombs, shootings and rocket and mortar attacks since June has brought hope that some of the 5m Iraqis driven from home may soon be able to go back. Yet many are too frightened of the new militias and the ethnic cleansers in their ranks to risk moving.
Officials in the Shi'ite-led government also fear the burgeoning of fresh forces beyond its control. The question being asked in government circles is: have the Americans achieved a short-term gain in security at a cost of long-term pain that may be inflicted by the Sunni militias, which are already threatening to go to war against their Shi'ite counterparts?
The Sunday Times, 25/11/07
Neighbourhood police or Sunni militias?
After an almost year-long security crackdown, attacks across Iraq have fallen by 55 percent since the deployment of 30,000 extra troops became fully operational in mid-June.
The growing use of U.S.-backed neighbourhood police units, organized by mainly Sunni Arab tribal sheikhs, have also been credited for the declining violence. Iraqi civilian and U.S. military deaths both fell sharply in the past two months.
About 77,000 Iraqis have signed up to the predominantly neighbourhood police units. The U.S. military has been paying their wages but U.S. Brigadier-General Edward Cardon said the Iraqi government, at first ambivalent towards the initiative, wanted to pay the "concerned local citizens" groups.
A government spokesman said he was not immediately aware of any Iraqi plan to pay the wages. Such a move would signal growing support from the Shi'ite-led government.
Some Shi'ites fear the groups will become de facto Sunni Arab militias.
Reuters 26/11/07
US generals in Turkey
A third senior U.S. general to visit Turkey in less than a week has held talks in Ankara on ways to combat Kurdish PKK guerrillas based in northern Iraq.
Last Tuesday, General David Petraeus, head of U.S. forces in Iraq, and General James Cartwright, vice-chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, also visited Ankara to discuss the fight against the PKK.
The flurry of high-level military contacts underlines the strong U.S. desire to avert a threatened cross-border incursion into northern Iraq by Turkish forces, a move Washington and Baghdad fear could destabilise the wider region.
But officials say the chances of such a major incursion have now lessened because of both the improved cooperation with U.S. and Iraqi authorities and of deteriorating weather conditions which would make a large-scale military action more difficult.
Reuters 26/11/07
US lowers political sights...
The administration of US President George W. Bush has whittled its political goals for Iraq, setting achievable targets so it can continue claiming success, The New York Times said on its website late Saturday.
Citing unnamed administration officials, the newspaper said one of these goals includes assuring passage of a $48-billion Iraqi budget that the Iraqi parliament is bound to do in any case.
The report follows a statement by US military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, who said last week that all types of attacks in Iraq had dropped by 55 percent since the US troop "surge" became fully operational in June. Smith warned, however, that progress was fragile and "far from irreversible."
The Times report said other US political targets include renewing the United Nations mandate authorizing the US presence in the country and passing legislation to allow former Baath Party members to join the government.
Arab Times, Kuwait, 25/11/07
...but still meets Shiite opposition
A long-awaited bill to allow members of Saddam Hussein's Sunni Baath party to return to public life in Iraq was tabled in parliament on Sunday but immediately rejected by jeering hardline Shiites.
Washington regards the bill as vital to stuttering reconciliation efforts in Iraq and it has made its adoption one of 18 benchmarks by which the progress of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government can be measured.
The first reading of the Justice and Accountability Law, which has been stalled in the deeply-divided parliament for months, was greeted with heckles by lawmakers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political bloc.
Prior to the start of the first reading, it was announced that the bill would be read for a second time on Wednesday and would then be put to the vote. However, due to the ruckus in parliament, it was not immediately certain if the second reading would take place on schedule.
AFP, 25/11/07
Bush loses ally
President Bush has lost another key ally in the war in Iraq with the election losses of Australian Prime Minister John Howard's government.
Like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose third term was aborted after his popularity plummeted, the long-serving Howard had staunchly supported the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq as well as the fight against terrorists in Afghanistan.
Australian Labour Party candidate Kevin Rudd has swept to power in a landslide victory over the second-longest serving prime minister in Australian history.
While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney alike had forged a close relationship with Howard, they also had prepared for this widely predicted upset. Cheney met privately with Rudd earlier this year during a visit to Sydney in which Howard reaffirmed his government's commitment to the war against terrorism.
Unlike Howard, Rudd has pledged to pull Australian combat troops from Iraq.
Baltimore Sun 25/11/07
Afghanistan: Karzai in cloud cuckoo land
The general made an elementary mistake. Told by his superiors that his new posting as chief of police in a drug-rich northern province would cost him "one hundred and fifty thousand", he assumed the bribe to be in Afghan currency. Hustled outside, he quickly discovered his error. He should have paid $150,000 (£73,000) rather than a paltry 150,000 Afghanis for the bung.
Now living in disgruntled internal exile in northern Afghanistan, his verdict on his former employers is succinct. "Everyone in the Ministry of Interior is corrupt," he told The Times.
He never, though, expressed surprise. Governmental corruption in Afghanistan has become endemic and bribes to secure police and administrative positions along provincial drug routes is an established procedure.
"The British public would be up in arms if they knew that the district appointments in the south for which British soldiers are dying are there just to protect drug routes," said one analyst. Western and Afghan officials are also alarmed at how narco-kleptocracy has extended its grip around President Karzai, a figure regarded by some as increasingly isolated by a cadre of corrupt officials.
"The people around him tell him of a cuckoo land," said Shukria Barakzai, a Pashtun MP who is both a friend and critic of Karzai. "He circles within a small mafia ring who are supporting the destruction of the system. At the beginning there were only 10 to 15 of them but since then they have spread like a cancer in Afghanistan."
The Times, 24/11/07
Poland to pull out of Iraq
Poland's new prime minister outlined ambitious plans for the next four years in his inaugural address Friday, saying he plans to withdraw troops from Iraq next year but also push for stronger relations with NATO.
While Tusk and his Civic Platform party want to continue the strong friendship with the U.S., he gave a taste of plans that, taken together, would suggest that the country plans to assert more independence in its relations with Washington.
Associated Press, 24/11/07
US fuel increase suggests more action planned
The U.S. military has stepped up chartering of tankers and requests for extra fuel in the U.S. Central Command area, which includes the Gulf, shipping and oil industry sources say. A Gulf oil industry source said the charters suggested there would be high naval activity, possibly including a demonstration to Iran that the U.S. Navy will protect the Strait of Hormuz oil shipping route during tensions over Tehran's nuclear programme.
The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) has tendered for four tankers in November to move at least one million barrels of jet and ship fuel between Gulf ports, from Asia to the Gulf and to the Diego Garcia base, tenders seen by Reuters show. It usually tenders for one or two tankers a month to supply Gulf operations, which include missions in Iraq.
The U.S. regularly carries out naval exercises in the region, moving aircraft carrier strike groups in and out of the Gulf to counter what it says are provocative military manoeuvres by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz and to reassure its Gulf allies.
Iran, which denies Western charges that its nuclear power programme aims to produce arms, has threatened to disrupt oil flows through the Strait if attacked.
According to U.S. figures, oil flowing through the Strait, at the entrance to the Gulf along Iran's coastline, accounts for roughly 40 percent of all globally traded oil supplies.
Reuters, 23/11/07
Iran: swift air war planned...
Massive, devastating air strikes, a full dose of "shock and awe" with hundreds of bunker-busting bombs slicing through concrete at more than a dozen nuclear sites across Iran is no longer just the idle musing of military planners and uber-hawks.
Although air strikes don't seem imminent as the U.S.-Iranian drama unfolds, planning for a bombing campaign and preparing for the geopolitical blowback has preoccupied military and political councils for months.
No one is predicting a full-blown ground war with Iran. The likeliest scenario, a blistering air war that could last as little as one night or as long as two weeks, would be designed to avoid the quagmire of invasion and regime change that now characterizes Iraq.
Attacking Iran has gone far beyond the twilight musings of a lame-duck president. Almost all of those jockeying to succeed U.S. President George W. Bush are similarly bellicose.
Both front-runners, Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani, have said that Iran's ruling mullahs can't be allowed to go nuclear. "Iran would be very sure if I were president of the United States that I would not allow them to become nuclear," said Mr. Giuliani. Ms. Clinton is equally hard-line.
Globe and Mail, Canada, 22/11/07
...as US and allies rachet up tension
The United States and three key European allies said on Thursday Iran had not done enough to win trust in its atomic work and the United Nations should now consider tougher sanctions.
"A wait-and-see approach is not an option," Britain, France and Germany told governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency after its chief said Iran appeared on course to clearing up questions about its nuclear history by the end of the year.
Reuters, 22/11/07
Most Iraqi recruits are from US allies
Most of the foreign fighters involved in the Iraq insurgency come from Saudi Arabia and Libya, two of America's allies in the "war on terror", US forces have discovered from material obtained during a raid.
Documents and computers found in a tented camp used by Sunni militants near the Syrian border are said to have yielded biographical details of about 700 recruits arriving in Iraq in the past 15 months, showing that at least 60 per cent are from the two US allies.
The Saudis, one of America's longest standing allies, supplied 305, or 41 per cent, of the fighters and 137, or 18 per cent, came from Libya, where Colonel Gaddafi has become a more recent ally of Washington. Among the rest, 291 came from other North African countries.
In contrast, Syria, regularly blamed for fuelling the Sunni insurgency and named by President Bush as part of the "axis of evil", was the source of just 56, or eight per cent of the total. However, the vast majority of the Sunni fighters in the country are Iraqi while the number of foreigners has been falling.
Independent, 23/11/07