Arthur Kane
Denver Post
27 July 2005
CIA officials used a sledgehammer handle to beat various prisoners in Iraq, and one official, whose name is classified, would often brag about his abuse of prisoners, according to testimony in a closed session of a military hearing.
The transcript, obtained this week by The Denver Post under a court order, was of a March hearing to determine whether three Fort Carson Army soldiers should stand trial for the death of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush during an interrogation in 2003.
Chief Warrant Officer Jefferson Williams and Spec. Jerry Loper face murder charges in the case.
A third soldier, Sgt. 1st Class William Sommer, has not had final charges approved, though he also was involved in the March preliminary Article 32 hearing.
Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer waived his hearing but is charged with murder.
In the March hearing, Sgt. 1st Class Gerold Pratt of the Utah National Guard said he saw classified personnel use a 15-inch wooden sledgehammer handle to hit prisoners.
"They'd ask you a question, and if they didn't like it, they'd hit you," he said.
"With Chief Welshofer, he'd at least give the detainee a chance to tell the truth," testified Pratt, who was running logistics at the detention facility near Qaim dubbed the Blacksmith Hotel.
A CIA spokeswoman, who declined to give her name, would not comment.
While identifying information in the transcript is redacted in most cases, an exchange between Pratt and a defense attorney show that the CIA was involved.
"To your knowledge, SFC Sommer did not accompany any of these CIA folks?" Capt. Michael Melito, who was then representing Sommer, asked Pratt.
While allegations about CIA officials and special forces beating Mowhoush with fists and a rubber hose have been previously reported, the court transcript is the first evidence that those officials repeatedly beat other detainees in northwestern Iraq.
In open session during the hearing, Pratt also testified that Williams threw a heavy box of food at Mowhoush. That testimony resulted in an additional charge of assault against Williams.
Williams' attorney, William Cassara, disputed the incident with the box and previously questioned Pratt's credibility. But Cassara said he was sure other officials were involved in prisoner abuse.
"I have no doubts that other government agencies used methods of interrogation that were much worse than what Chief Welshofer used," Cassara said.
Later, Pratt testified that the official was mocking the prisoners he was beating.
"Well, particularly after the general was killed. I don't remember the exact words, but he was mocking the fact that the general died," Pratt testified.
Williams and Welshofer, through their attorneys, had previously denied any wrongdoing.
Welshofer's attorney could not be reached for comment.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Arthur Kane, "Guardsman: CIA beat Iraqis with hammer handles", Denver Post, 27 July 2005. Original URL: http://www.denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=2892191
This site is designed for use by researchers, educators, and students who seek access to its 2000+ military policy articles for research and/or educational purposes. Provided on a not-for-profit basis per 'fair use' rules.
28 July 2005
18 July 2005
Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq: War radicalized most, probes find
Bryan Bender
Boston Globe
17 July 2005
WASHINGTON -- New investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank -- both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States -- have found that the vast majority of these foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war itself.
The studies, which together constitute the most detailed picture available of foreign fighters, cast serious doubt on President Bush's claim that those responsible for some of the worst violence are terrorists who seized on the opportunity to make Iraq the ''central front" in a battle against the United States.
''The terrorists know that the outcome [in Iraq] will leave them emboldened or defeated," Bush said in his nationally televised address on the war at Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month. ''So they are waging a campaign of murder and destruction." The US military is fighting the terrorists in Iraq, he repeated this month, ''so we do not have to face them here at home."
However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence.
A separate Israeli analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior Al Qaeda operatives who are organizing the volunteers, ''the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."
''Only a few were involved in past Islamic insurgencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya," the Israeli study says. Out of the 154 fighters analyzed, only a handful had past associations with terrorism, including six who had fathers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, said the report, compiled by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel.
American intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, and terrorism specialists paint a similar portrait of the suicide bombers wreaking havoc in Iraq: Prior to the Iraq war, they were not Islamic extremists seeking to attack the United States, as Al Qaeda did four years ago, but are part of a new generation of terrorists responding to calls to defend their fellow Muslims from ''crusaders" and ''infidels."
''The president is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on terrorism, but this is a front we created," said Peter Bergen, a terrorism specialist at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.
Foreign militants make up only a small percentage of the insurgents fighting in Iraq, as little as 10 percent, according to US military and intelligence officials. The top general in Iraq said late last month that about 600 foreign fighters have been captured or killed by coalition forces since the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. The wider insurgency, numbering in the tens of thousands, is believed to consist of former Iraqi soldiers, Saddam Hussein loyalists, and members of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority.
But the impact of the foreign fighters has been enormous. They are blamed for the almost daily suicide attacks against US and Iraqi forces and have killed thousands of civilians, mostly members of Iraq's Shia Muslim majority. Their exploits have been responsible for much of the headline-grabbing carnage recently, contributing to the slide in American public support for the war.
There have been nearly 500 car bombings since the US-led coalition handed over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government one year ago, US military statistics indicate. In the last two months, car bombs and suicide attacks have killed nearly 1,400 people, according to the Associated Press.
Bush has cited foreign fighters as a reason for continued US military operations in Iraq. His argument, repeated often, is that ''the world's terrorists" have chosen to make their stand in Iraq.
''Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror," Bush said in a radio address last month.
Foreign fighters were found to be like Saud Bin Muhammad Bin Saud Al-Fuhaid, according to Obaid's research, to be published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington this summer. Described as in his early 20s, Fuhaid blew himself up March 24, three days after he entered Iraq from Syria, according to newspaper accounts and interviews with his family.
Obaid found little evidence Fuhaid was an extremist before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Like many of the young men from Saudi Arabia who make up the majority of the foreign fighters, the student at Imam University in western Riyadh was not initially a radical jihadist, according to information gleaned from Saudi newspaper accounts and intelligence operations. In fact, he apparently almost changed his mind.
Fuhaid is believed to have traveled through Syria to fight in Iraq, but once he arrived told his family he would be coming home instead, according to a death notice published in Saudi newspapers and posted on the Internet. ''However, during that time he met some friends of his who were going to Iraq and told him they were going to declare Jihad with their brothers in Iraq," the celebratory announcement said. ''It was at that moment that our martyr changed his mind and told them that he will go back to Iraq with them and called his parents to tell him he won't be going home."
Obaid said in an interview from London that his Saudi study found that ''the largest group is young kids who saw the images [of the war] on TV and are reading the stuff on the Internet. Or they see the name of a cousin on the list or a guy who belongs to their tribe, and they feel a responsibility to go."
Other fighters, who are coming to Iraq from across the Middle East and North Africa, are older, in their late 20s or 30s, and have families, according to the two investigations. ''The vast majority of them had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before Sept. 11th and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda today," said Reuven Paz, author of the Israeli study. ''I am not sure the American public is really aware of the enormous influence of the war in Iraq, not just on Islamists but the entire Arab world."
Case studies of foreign fighters indicated they considered the Iraq war an attack on the Muslim religion and Arab culture, Paz said.
For example, while the unprovoked attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were largely condemned by clerics as violations of Muslim law, many religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations have promulgated fatwas, or religious edicts, saying that waging jihad in Iraq is justified by the Koran because it is defensive in nature. Last October, 26 clerics in Saudi Arabia said it was the duty of every Muslim to go and fight in Iraq.
''These are people who did not get training in Pakistan or Chechnya, [and they] ended up going to Iraq because they considered defending Iraq a must for every Muslim to go and fight," said Rita Katz, director of the Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute in Washington and an Iraq native.
One indication that a heightened degree of Arab solidarity is a leading factor is that they are almost entirely Arabs and not Muslims from other countries, such as those who volunteered to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. Another motivation, the studies and analysts contend, is the centuries-old struggle between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam. All the foreign fighters are Sunnis, according to the analyses, and many of their targets are Iraq's majority Shia Muslims, who have gained political power in Baghdad for the first time in hundreds of years.
Ali Alyami, director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, said he believes the deep-seated Sunni-Shia rift among the world's 1.2 billion Muslims -- about 1 billion of them Sunni -- best explains the foreign-fighter phenomenon. He noted in an interview that US policy makers do not seem to grasp the historic conflicts within Islam that are playing out in the war in Iraq.
''To say we must fight them in Baghdad so we don't have to fight them in Boston implies there is a finite number of people, and if you pen them up in Iraq you can kill them all," said Bergen. ''The truth is we increased the pool by what we did in Iraq."
Intelligence officials worry that some of ''Iraq alumni" will use the relationships they build on the battlefields of Iraq and return to their home countries as hardened Islamic terrorists.
The CIA's National Intelligence Council concluded in a report earlier this year that ''Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself."
------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Bryan Bender, "Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq: War radicalized most, probes find", Boston Globe, 17 July 2005. Original URL:http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/17/study_cites_seeds_of_terror_in_iraq?mode=PF
Boston Globe
17 July 2005
WASHINGTON -- New investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank -- both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States -- have found that the vast majority of these foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war itself.
The studies, which together constitute the most detailed picture available of foreign fighters, cast serious doubt on President Bush's claim that those responsible for some of the worst violence are terrorists who seized on the opportunity to make Iraq the ''central front" in a battle against the United States.
''The terrorists know that the outcome [in Iraq] will leave them emboldened or defeated," Bush said in his nationally televised address on the war at Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month. ''So they are waging a campaign of murder and destruction." The US military is fighting the terrorists in Iraq, he repeated this month, ''so we do not have to face them here at home."
However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence.
A separate Israeli analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior Al Qaeda operatives who are organizing the volunteers, ''the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."
''Only a few were involved in past Islamic insurgencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya," the Israeli study says. Out of the 154 fighters analyzed, only a handful had past associations with terrorism, including six who had fathers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, said the report, compiled by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel.
American intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, and terrorism specialists paint a similar portrait of the suicide bombers wreaking havoc in Iraq: Prior to the Iraq war, they were not Islamic extremists seeking to attack the United States, as Al Qaeda did four years ago, but are part of a new generation of terrorists responding to calls to defend their fellow Muslims from ''crusaders" and ''infidels."
''The president is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on terrorism, but this is a front we created," said Peter Bergen, a terrorism specialist at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.
Foreign militants make up only a small percentage of the insurgents fighting in Iraq, as little as 10 percent, according to US military and intelligence officials. The top general in Iraq said late last month that about 600 foreign fighters have been captured or killed by coalition forces since the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. The wider insurgency, numbering in the tens of thousands, is believed to consist of former Iraqi soldiers, Saddam Hussein loyalists, and members of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority.
But the impact of the foreign fighters has been enormous. They are blamed for the almost daily suicide attacks against US and Iraqi forces and have killed thousands of civilians, mostly members of Iraq's Shia Muslim majority. Their exploits have been responsible for much of the headline-grabbing carnage recently, contributing to the slide in American public support for the war.
There have been nearly 500 car bombings since the US-led coalition handed over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government one year ago, US military statistics indicate. In the last two months, car bombs and suicide attacks have killed nearly 1,400 people, according to the Associated Press.
Bush has cited foreign fighters as a reason for continued US military operations in Iraq. His argument, repeated often, is that ''the world's terrorists" have chosen to make their stand in Iraq.
''Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror," Bush said in a radio address last month.
Foreign fighters were found to be like Saud Bin Muhammad Bin Saud Al-Fuhaid, according to Obaid's research, to be published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington this summer. Described as in his early 20s, Fuhaid blew himself up March 24, three days after he entered Iraq from Syria, according to newspaper accounts and interviews with his family.
Obaid found little evidence Fuhaid was an extremist before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Like many of the young men from Saudi Arabia who make up the majority of the foreign fighters, the student at Imam University in western Riyadh was not initially a radical jihadist, according to information gleaned from Saudi newspaper accounts and intelligence operations. In fact, he apparently almost changed his mind.
Fuhaid is believed to have traveled through Syria to fight in Iraq, but once he arrived told his family he would be coming home instead, according to a death notice published in Saudi newspapers and posted on the Internet. ''However, during that time he met some friends of his who were going to Iraq and told him they were going to declare Jihad with their brothers in Iraq," the celebratory announcement said. ''It was at that moment that our martyr changed his mind and told them that he will go back to Iraq with them and called his parents to tell him he won't be going home."
Obaid said in an interview from London that his Saudi study found that ''the largest group is young kids who saw the images [of the war] on TV and are reading the stuff on the Internet. Or they see the name of a cousin on the list or a guy who belongs to their tribe, and they feel a responsibility to go."
Other fighters, who are coming to Iraq from across the Middle East and North Africa, are older, in their late 20s or 30s, and have families, according to the two investigations. ''The vast majority of them had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before Sept. 11th and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda today," said Reuven Paz, author of the Israeli study. ''I am not sure the American public is really aware of the enormous influence of the war in Iraq, not just on Islamists but the entire Arab world."
Case studies of foreign fighters indicated they considered the Iraq war an attack on the Muslim religion and Arab culture, Paz said.
For example, while the unprovoked attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were largely condemned by clerics as violations of Muslim law, many religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations have promulgated fatwas, or religious edicts, saying that waging jihad in Iraq is justified by the Koran because it is defensive in nature. Last October, 26 clerics in Saudi Arabia said it was the duty of every Muslim to go and fight in Iraq.
''These are people who did not get training in Pakistan or Chechnya, [and they] ended up going to Iraq because they considered defending Iraq a must for every Muslim to go and fight," said Rita Katz, director of the Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute in Washington and an Iraq native.
One indication that a heightened degree of Arab solidarity is a leading factor is that they are almost entirely Arabs and not Muslims from other countries, such as those who volunteered to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. Another motivation, the studies and analysts contend, is the centuries-old struggle between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam. All the foreign fighters are Sunnis, according to the analyses, and many of their targets are Iraq's majority Shia Muslims, who have gained political power in Baghdad for the first time in hundreds of years.
Ali Alyami, director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, said he believes the deep-seated Sunni-Shia rift among the world's 1.2 billion Muslims -- about 1 billion of them Sunni -- best explains the foreign-fighter phenomenon. He noted in an interview that US policy makers do not seem to grasp the historic conflicts within Islam that are playing out in the war in Iraq.
''To say we must fight them in Baghdad so we don't have to fight them in Boston implies there is a finite number of people, and if you pen them up in Iraq you can kill them all," said Bergen. ''The truth is we increased the pool by what we did in Iraq."
Intelligence officials worry that some of ''Iraq alumni" will use the relationships they build on the battlefields of Iraq and return to their home countries as hardened Islamic terrorists.
The CIA's National Intelligence Council concluded in a report earlier this year that ''Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself."
------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Bryan Bender, "Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq: War radicalized most, probes find", Boston Globe, 17 July 2005. Original URL:http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/07/17/study_cites_seeds_of_terror_in_iraq?mode=PF
11 July 2005
U.K. Memo Cites Plans For Troop Reduction
Glenn Frankel and Josh White
Washington Post
11 July 2005
LONDON, July 10 -- The United States and Britain are drawing up plans to withdraw the majority of their troops from Iraq by the middle of next year, according to a secret memo written for British Prime Minister Tony Blair by Defense Secretary John Reid.
The paper, which is marked "Secret -- UK Eyes Only," said "emerging U.S. plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006," allowing a reduction in overall U.S.-led forces in Iraq to 66,000 troops. The troop level is now at about 160,000, including 138,000 American troops, according to a military spokesman in Baghdad.
Reid on Sunday did not dispute the authenticity of the document, but said that no decision on troop levels had been made. In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said officials there had not seen the document.
The undated memo, which was reported in the newspaper The Mail on Sunday, stated that "current U.S. political military thinking is still evolving. But there is a strong U.S. military desire for significant force reductions to bring relief to overall U.S. commitment levels."
While top U.S. military commanders and Pentagon officials have been hoping to reduce troop levels in Iraq for some time, the British memo is apparently the first time such a significant reduction has been outlined under a specific timetable. President Bush has refused to set a withdrawal date, citing concerns that such a deadline would allow insurgents to wait out the U.S.-led occupation.
The memo, posted on the newspaper's Web site, notes a debate between U.S. officials at the Pentagon and military leaders in Iraq, saying that officials in Washington favor "a relatively bold reduction in force numbers," differing with battlefield commanders, "whose approach is more cautious."
Such debates contribute to contingency planning, according to U.S. officials, and there can be several different scenarios under consideration at the same time. A rapid reduction in troops would depend on the success of several political processes in Iraq and of the emerging Iraqi security forces.
While U.S. commanders have praised the development of the Iraqi army and police forces, training and equipping the units has taken longer than expected. None of the provinces in Iraq is solely protected by Iraqi forces, and significant decreases expected in U.S. troop strength have not materialized.
"At any given time, there are a number of plans, for all sorts of developments, good or bad," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman. Carpenter declined to comment specifically about the British memo because Pentagon officials had not seen it. "The U.S. leadership for some time has been on record stating that our drawdown and eventual withdrawal is based on a conditions-based strategy."
Many analysts consider the tenacity of the Iraqi insurgency to be the major impediment to troop withdrawals, although U.S. officials have heralded recent successes in quelling violence.
Part of the overall reduction, said the memo, would be a drop in total British forces by mid-2006 from 8,500 to around 3,000. The change, the memo added, could save Britain half of its current cost of around $1.7 billion per year.
"None of this, however, represents a ministerially endorsed plan," the memo cautioned. "There is a good deal more military analysis to do which is under way."
Reid, in a statement Sunday following publication of the memo, said the British government had "made it absolutely plain that we will stay in Iraq for as long as is needed.
"No decisions on the future force posture of UK forces have been taken. But we have always said that it is our intention to hand over the lead in fighting terrorists to Iraqi Security Forces as their capability increases," Reid said. "We therefore continually produce papers outlining possible options and contingencies.
"This is but one of a number of such papers produced over recent months covering various scenarios."
British forces have been assigned to four relatively peaceful provinces around the southern city of Basra, but 89 British troops have died since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The war has little support among the British public, and officials hope to pull forces out of the area as soon as is practical. Blair has insisted no troops will be withdrawn until Iraqi forces can take over.
British commanders hope to hand over control of two provinces to Iraqi forces by October 2005, according to the memo, and to hand over control of two more provinces by April 2006.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Glenn Frankel and Josh White, "UK Memo Cites Plans for Troop Reduction", Washington Post, 11 July 2005. Original URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/10/AR2005071000725_pf.html
Washington Post
11 July 2005
LONDON, July 10 -- The United States and Britain are drawing up plans to withdraw the majority of their troops from Iraq by the middle of next year, according to a secret memo written for British Prime Minister Tony Blair by Defense Secretary John Reid.
The paper, which is marked "Secret -- UK Eyes Only," said "emerging U.S. plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006," allowing a reduction in overall U.S.-led forces in Iraq to 66,000 troops. The troop level is now at about 160,000, including 138,000 American troops, according to a military spokesman in Baghdad.
Reid on Sunday did not dispute the authenticity of the document, but said that no decision on troop levels had been made. In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said officials there had not seen the document.
The undated memo, which was reported in the newspaper The Mail on Sunday, stated that "current U.S. political military thinking is still evolving. But there is a strong U.S. military desire for significant force reductions to bring relief to overall U.S. commitment levels."
While top U.S. military commanders and Pentagon officials have been hoping to reduce troop levels in Iraq for some time, the British memo is apparently the first time such a significant reduction has been outlined under a specific timetable. President Bush has refused to set a withdrawal date, citing concerns that such a deadline would allow insurgents to wait out the U.S.-led occupation.
The memo, posted on the newspaper's Web site, notes a debate between U.S. officials at the Pentagon and military leaders in Iraq, saying that officials in Washington favor "a relatively bold reduction in force numbers," differing with battlefield commanders, "whose approach is more cautious."
Such debates contribute to contingency planning, according to U.S. officials, and there can be several different scenarios under consideration at the same time. A rapid reduction in troops would depend on the success of several political processes in Iraq and of the emerging Iraqi security forces.
While U.S. commanders have praised the development of the Iraqi army and police forces, training and equipping the units has taken longer than expected. None of the provinces in Iraq is solely protected by Iraqi forces, and significant decreases expected in U.S. troop strength have not materialized.
"At any given time, there are a number of plans, for all sorts of developments, good or bad," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman. Carpenter declined to comment specifically about the British memo because Pentagon officials had not seen it. "The U.S. leadership for some time has been on record stating that our drawdown and eventual withdrawal is based on a conditions-based strategy."
Many analysts consider the tenacity of the Iraqi insurgency to be the major impediment to troop withdrawals, although U.S. officials have heralded recent successes in quelling violence.
Part of the overall reduction, said the memo, would be a drop in total British forces by mid-2006 from 8,500 to around 3,000. The change, the memo added, could save Britain half of its current cost of around $1.7 billion per year.
"None of this, however, represents a ministerially endorsed plan," the memo cautioned. "There is a good deal more military analysis to do which is under way."
Reid, in a statement Sunday following publication of the memo, said the British government had "made it absolutely plain that we will stay in Iraq for as long as is needed.
"No decisions on the future force posture of UK forces have been taken. But we have always said that it is our intention to hand over the lead in fighting terrorists to Iraqi Security Forces as their capability increases," Reid said. "We therefore continually produce papers outlining possible options and contingencies.
"This is but one of a number of such papers produced over recent months covering various scenarios."
British forces have been assigned to four relatively peaceful provinces around the southern city of Basra, but 89 British troops have died since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The war has little support among the British public, and officials hope to pull forces out of the area as soon as is practical. Blair has insisted no troops will be withdrawn until Iraqi forces can take over.
British commanders hope to hand over control of two provinces to Iraqi forces by October 2005, according to the memo, and to hand over control of two more provinces by April 2006.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Glenn Frankel and Josh White, "UK Memo Cites Plans for Troop Reduction", Washington Post, 11 July 2005. Original URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/10/AR2005071000725_pf.html
Options for future UK force posture in Iraq
Memo published by Mail on Sunday
09 July 2005
Paper by Secretary of State SECRET - UK EYES ONLY
1. ISSUE
We will need to reach decisions later this year on likely future UK force structure and disposition in Iraq into 2006.
This paper sets out some of the key contextual considerations; identifies areas of uncertainty; sets out what we know of US planning and possible expectations on the UK contribution; and assesses the potential impact on UK decision making.
2. Decisions on coalition, and within that, UK force levels will be governed by four factors, all of which are subject to a greater or lesser degree of uncertainty:
* Internal Iraqi pressure for further force posture changes.
* Successful progress in the potential process and extension/renewal of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546. (Mail on Sunday footnote 1)
* The continued development of the capability of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).
* The security situation.
3. None of this, however, undermines the Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I) (Mail on Sunday footnote 2)broad security strategy of:
a) Working with the Iraqis to contain and restrain the insurgency.
b) Assisting and encouraging the development of Iraqi security forces and structures which can progressively assume responsibility for all aspects of security including dealing with the insurgency, and thereby:
c) Enable MNF-I force reductions and eventual withdrawal.
4. US POSITION
US political military thinking is still evolving. But there is a strong US military desire for significant force reductions to bring relief to overall US commitment levels.
Emerging US plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006, allowing a reduction in overall MNF-I from 176,000 down to 66,000.
There is, however, a debate between the Pentagon/Centcom (Mail on Sunday footnote 3) who favour a relatively bold reduction in force numbers, and MNF-I whose approach is more cautious.
The next MNF-I review of campaign progress due in late June may help clarify thinking and provide an agreed framework for the way ahead.
5. (Technical details)
6. UK POLICY CONSIDERATIONS
The current ministerially endorsed policy position is that the UK should not:
a) Agree to any changes to the UK area of responsibility.
b) Agree to any specific deployments outside Multinational Division South East. (Mail on Sunday footnote 4)
c) Agree to any specific increases in the roughly 8,500 UK service personnel currently deployed in Iraq.
7. Looking further ahead, we have a clear UK military aspiration to hand over to Iraqi control in Al Muthanna and Maysan provinces (Mail on Sunday footnote 5) in October 2005 and in the other two Multinational Division South East provinces, Dhi Qar and Basra (Mail on Sunday footnote 6) in April 2006.
This in turn should lead to a reduction in the total level of UK commitment in Iraq to around 3,000 personnel, ie small scale, by mid 2006.
This should lead to an estimated halving in the costs which fall to the reserve, (Mail on Sunday footnote 7) around £1 billion per annum currently. Though it is not clear exactly when this reduction might manifest itself, it would not be before around the end of 2006.
8. None of this however, represents a ministerially endorsed plan. There is a good deal more military analysis to do which is under way. We will need to consider handling of other MND SE allies.
The Japanese reconstruction battalion (Mail on Sunday footnote 8)will for example be reluctant to stay in Al Muthanna if force protection is solely provided by the Iraqis. The Australian position, which is highly influenced by the Japanese presence, may also be uncertain. (Mail on Sunday footnote 9)
NOTE
I will bring further and more specific proposals to DOP-I (Mail on Sunday footnote 10) for the future UK force posture in Iraq, including handover to Iraqi control and subsequent UK military drawdown.
John Reid.
Mail on Sunday footnotes
Footnote 1:(UN resolution authorising allied troops presence in Iraq)
Footnote 2: (The Multinational Force of Allied troops in Iraq)
Footnote 3: (Centcom is the US military command centre in the US)
Footnote 4: (Not get involved in operations outside area around Basra under UK control)
Footnote 5: (two of the four provinces around Basra in UK control)
Footnote 6: (the other two UK run provinces)
Footnote 7: (The UK Treasury Reserve)
Footnote 8: (Japan has 550 engineers in UK area of Iraq)
Footnote 9: (Australia has 1,400 troops in Iraq ,whose main job is to protect the Japanese)
Footnote 10: (The Defence and Overseas Policy, Iraq sub committee of the Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister)
"Options for future UK force posture in Iraq," policy memo by John
Reid, Secretary of State, classified "Secret - UK Eyes Only," undated - probably sometime in the first half of 2005, published by the Mail on Sunday on 10 July 2005. Original URL:
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=355251&in_page_id=1770
09 July 2005
Paper by Secretary of State SECRET - UK EYES ONLY
1. ISSUE
We will need to reach decisions later this year on likely future UK force structure and disposition in Iraq into 2006.
This paper sets out some of the key contextual considerations; identifies areas of uncertainty; sets out what we know of US planning and possible expectations on the UK contribution; and assesses the potential impact on UK decision making.
2. Decisions on coalition, and within that, UK force levels will be governed by four factors, all of which are subject to a greater or lesser degree of uncertainty:
* Internal Iraqi pressure for further force posture changes.
* Successful progress in the potential process and extension/renewal of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546. (Mail on Sunday footnote 1)
* The continued development of the capability of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).
* The security situation.
3. None of this, however, undermines the Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I) (Mail on Sunday footnote 2)broad security strategy of:
a) Working with the Iraqis to contain and restrain the insurgency.
b) Assisting and encouraging the development of Iraqi security forces and structures which can progressively assume responsibility for all aspects of security including dealing with the insurgency, and thereby:
c) Enable MNF-I force reductions and eventual withdrawal.
4. US POSITION
US political military thinking is still evolving. But there is a strong US military desire for significant force reductions to bring relief to overall US commitment levels.
Emerging US plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006, allowing a reduction in overall MNF-I from 176,000 down to 66,000.
There is, however, a debate between the Pentagon/Centcom (Mail on Sunday footnote 3) who favour a relatively bold reduction in force numbers, and MNF-I whose approach is more cautious.
The next MNF-I review of campaign progress due in late June may help clarify thinking and provide an agreed framework for the way ahead.
5. (Technical details)
6. UK POLICY CONSIDERATIONS
The current ministerially endorsed policy position is that the UK should not:
a) Agree to any changes to the UK area of responsibility.
b) Agree to any specific deployments outside Multinational Division South East. (Mail on Sunday footnote 4)
c) Agree to any specific increases in the roughly 8,500 UK service personnel currently deployed in Iraq.
7. Looking further ahead, we have a clear UK military aspiration to hand over to Iraqi control in Al Muthanna and Maysan provinces (Mail on Sunday footnote 5) in October 2005 and in the other two Multinational Division South East provinces, Dhi Qar and Basra (Mail on Sunday footnote 6) in April 2006.
This in turn should lead to a reduction in the total level of UK commitment in Iraq to around 3,000 personnel, ie small scale, by mid 2006.
This should lead to an estimated halving in the costs which fall to the reserve, (Mail on Sunday footnote 7) around £1 billion per annum currently. Though it is not clear exactly when this reduction might manifest itself, it would not be before around the end of 2006.
8. None of this however, represents a ministerially endorsed plan. There is a good deal more military analysis to do which is under way. We will need to consider handling of other MND SE allies.
The Japanese reconstruction battalion (Mail on Sunday footnote 8)will for example be reluctant to stay in Al Muthanna if force protection is solely provided by the Iraqis. The Australian position, which is highly influenced by the Japanese presence, may also be uncertain. (Mail on Sunday footnote 9)
NOTE
I will bring further and more specific proposals to DOP-I (Mail on Sunday footnote 10) for the future UK force posture in Iraq, including handover to Iraqi control and subsequent UK military drawdown.
John Reid.
Mail on Sunday footnotes
Footnote 1:(UN resolution authorising allied troops presence in Iraq)
Footnote 2: (The Multinational Force of Allied troops in Iraq)
Footnote 3: (Centcom is the US military command centre in the US)
Footnote 4: (Not get involved in operations outside area around Basra under UK control)
Footnote 5: (two of the four provinces around Basra in UK control)
Footnote 6: (the other two UK run provinces)
Footnote 7: (The UK Treasury Reserve)
Footnote 8: (Japan has 550 engineers in UK area of Iraq)
Footnote 9: (Australia has 1,400 troops in Iraq ,whose main job is to protect the Japanese)
Footnote 10: (The Defence and Overseas Policy, Iraq sub committee of the Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister)
"Options for future UK force posture in Iraq," policy memo by John
Reid, Secretary of State, classified "Secret - UK Eyes Only," undated - probably sometime in the first half of 2005, published by the Mail on Sunday on 10 July 2005. Original URL:
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=355251&in_page_id=1770