By Caroline Drees
Reuters, 27 April 2006
The U.S. military is struggling to recruit Arab-Americans for its war on terrorism some five years after September 11, with many in the community wary of U.S. foreign policy and fighting wars in the Middle East.
Pentagon officials have often bemoaned the shortage of soldiers with Arabic skills that would be invaluable on the ground in Iraq, and could help translate a backlog of captured or intercepted material that could be critical to fighting militants.
Officials say that in a military of roughly 1.4 million people, about 4,000 have some proficiency in Arabic. The Pentagon says it will spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the next five years to beef up its foreign language capabilities, especially in Middle Eastern languages.
"What we're looking for is people who have native skills, who speak it fluently and who are also very familiar with the culture over there," said Capt. Hatem Abdine, a recruiter for the California Army National Guard who is a naturalized American of Syrian descent.
Since the 2001 attacks, the military has turned its attention to the United States' 3 million strong Arab-American community in hopes of bridging a deficiency that has complicated operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Communities such as Dearborn and neighboring areas around Detroit, home to one of the biggest Arab populations outside the Middle East with almost half a million Arab residents, are among those receiving particular attention.
Gunnery Sgt. Wayne Goode, a Dearborn-based Marines recruiter, said the Marine Corps had sent out a direct mailing to Arab Americans after September 11 seeking linguists.
George Noirot, spokesman for the Army's Great Lakes Recruiting Battalion, which covers the area around Detroit, said, "They (Arab-Americans) were anxious to work with us in the Army because I got the feeling they really wanted to show that they were Americans and love the country here."
NUMBERS REMAIN LOW
But while recruitment of Arabic speakers may have increased, officials admit numbers remain too low and recruiters face tough challenges, including concerns in the community about U.S. policies overseas and fighting a war against fellow Arabs.
Many Arab-Americans also have felt singled out for heightened scrutiny by U.S. law enforcement and other authorities after the 2001 attacks, and may feel reluctant to work for a government they feel has discriminated against them.
"A lot of policies seemed to focus on Arab-Americans after 9/11 so people asked: 'Why should I be part of an entity that is inflicting injustices or a selective approach on my own community?"' said Imad Hamad, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's Dearborn office.
Hamad said his group encouraged Arab-Americans to enlist in the military and praised the Army for its efforts.
The military says it has no statistics for the number of Arab-Americans in uniform because it is not mandatory for applicants to state their ethnicity.
It is currently bridging its shortfall in language skills by hiring contractors. The Army has 5,900 of contractors in Iraq.
The Association of Patriot Arab Americans in the Military (APAAM), which was founded shortly after September 11, says there are about 3,500 Arab-Americans in the armed forces, including leaders such as Gen. John Abizaid, who oversees U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as head of Central Command.
"A lot of Arabs in this country are just increasingly concerned about U.S. foreign policy in relation to the Middle East," said David Fawal, a Palestinian-American in the Navy reserves, adding he did not share these views and did not personally know what impact they had on recruitment.
Fawal, a lawyer based in Birmingham, Alabama, said he had met very few Arab-Americans in his 16 years with the Navy, most of them through APAAM. The group does not list the number of its members but features about 20 profiles on its Web site.
Abdine said many Arab families also had come to the United States to escape war and it was a "hard sell" to convince some of them to go back to that.
--------------------------------
Citation: Caroline Drees. "US military struggling to recruit Arab-Americans," Reuters, 27 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060427/pl_nm/security_military_arabamericans_dc
--------------------------------
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28 April 2006
26 April 2006
7 detainees report transfer to nations that use torture
By Farah Stockman
The Boston Globe, 26 April 2006
WASHINGTON -- At least seven US prisoners at Guantanamo Bay say they were transferred to countries known for torture prior to their arrival at the base, according to recently released transcripts from military commission hearings and other court documents.
At least three of them allege that they were tortured during interrogations in Jordan, Morocco, and Egypt.
The transcripts represent the first accounts of rendition from prisoners who are still in US custody, and they contradict statements made last year by the Bush administration that all suspects who are “rendered" to foreign countries are treated in accordance with international laws.
In the statements, made during hearings to determine whether the detainees are enemy combatants, some say American forces took them to foreign prisons. Others don't specify who took them abroad, but most say the United States is holding them at Guantanamo based on confessions coerced by foreign interrogators.
Military prosecutors did not challenge the fact that they were sent to other countries, and limited their questioning to whether the detainees were, in fact, tortured, according to the transcripts.
As the Pentagon slowly begins to prosecute detainees for terrorism-related offenses, defense lawyers are arguing that those confessions should be thrown out. One of the seven detainees was abruptly released before being charged with terrorism, after his allegations of torture in an Egyptian prison became public.
Another of the seven detainees is on trial for conspiring to set off a nuclear “dirty bomb" in the United States. But that defendant is arguing that the case against him is built on a confession coerced in Morocco.
“After four years of torture and rendition, you have the wrong person in the stand," Binyam Ahmad Muhammad, an Ethiopian detainee, told a military tribunal earlier this month.
Like most of the seven detainees, Muhammad says he was arrested in Pakistan, questioned by Americans, then transferred to a prison abroad, according to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.
Muhammad told tribunal officials that his jailers in Morocco sliced him with a scalpel on his chest and genitals, Smith said.
In January 2004, Muhammad was sent to a US-run detention facility in Afghanistan and then transferred to Guantanamo, where he became one of 10 out of 480 detainees to be formally charged with crimes.
But Smith, his lawyer, argues that the entire case should be dismissed.
“There is no evidence against Binyam that I am aware of that is not evidence tortured out of him," Smith said.
Evidence obtained through torture is not admissible in US courts. But the military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay had no such prohibition until last month, when the rule was added just before a key Supreme Court decision on the issue. Even now, defense lawyers and human rights groups say the rules of evidence are so loose -- allowing secret evidence and anonymous witnesses -- that it is impossible to screen out evidence obtained illegally.
Still, allegations of torture led to the release of one of major suspect last year.
Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen accused of having prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, was on the verge of being formally charged before the military tribunal. But US officials abruptly set him free in Australia after his allegations of being tortured with a cattle prod in Egypt became public.
Habib's lawyer, Joseph Margulies, had described the alleged torture in a legal filing in a US federal court.
“They released him because they didn't want the particulars of his rendition to become the subject of inquiry by a federal district court," Margulies said.
John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch researcher who has been combing the newly released Guantanamo documents for new information on rendition and torture, said torturing terrorism suspects makes it difficult to try them later in court, and increases their chances of walking free.
Pentagon officials say the US government does not transfer prisoners to other countries for torture, but they do not challenge the detainees' assertions that they were sent abroad.
“US policy requires all detainees to be treated humanely," said Lieutenant Commander Chito Peppler, a Guantanamo spokesman. He also warned that Al Qaeda members are trained to make false allegations.
In preliminary hearings at Guantanamo Bay to determine whether the detainees are “enemy combatants," tribunal officials closely questioned prisoners on their treatment in foreign prisons.
When Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a detainee from Mauritania, told tribunal officials that he was pressured into confessing to plans to attack the United States on New Year's Eve, 1999, during interrogations in Jordan, they asked him what kind of pressure was applied.
“We just want to make sure that you were not tortured or coerced into saying something that wasn't true," a tribunal official told him, according to the transcripts. “No US authorities abused you in any way?"
“I am not willing to answer this question," Slahi replied.
Slahi told them he turned himself in to the Mauritanian government on Sept. 29, 2001, after he heard that US officials were looking for him, and he ended up spending eight months at a prison in Jordan.
“I was kidnapped," he said. “They tried to squeeze information out of me."
A detainee identified as Jamal Mari told the tribunal a similar story about being captured in Pakistan and sent to Jordan, but asserted that he was not abused there. “Some people simply kidnapped me while I was asleep," he said at the hearing. “An American interrogator interrogated me. . . . They never told me where I was going. I found out later than I was in Jordan. . . . I was in a Jordan cell, but I wasn't mistreated or anything like that."
But Hassan bin Attash, a Yemeni who was 17 at the time of his arrest, reported that he was hung upside down, beaten on the soles of his feet, and threatened with electric shocks after he was sent to Jordan by US officials.
“He says that he told them whatever they wanted to hear," said his attorney, Robert Knowles. “He just wanted it to stop."
Knowles said Attash was arrested in Pakistan in September 2002, and spent four days in a US-run detention center in Afghanistan before being sent to Jordan for 16 months. In January 2004, he was transferred back to a US prison in Afghanistan. In September 2004, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay.
A second Yemeni detainee, identified as Al-Shaqwi, was also sent to prison in Jordan, according to Smith, but little is known about his case.
The new transcripts, released over the past three months by the Pentagon, also solve the mystery of one of the most well-known cases of rendition.
Newspapers have speculated on the whereabouts of Muhammad Saad Iqbal al-Madni, the son of a Saudi diplomat, who was arrested in Indonesia in January 2002, and whisked away in an American private jet. Some reports speculated that he was dead.
But the transcripts show that he is alive at Guantanamo, after spending three months in Egypt, and nearly a year at a US facility in Afghanistan.
Charlie Savage of the Globe staff contributed to this report
------------------------------
Citation: Farah Stockman. "7 detainees report transfer to nations that use torture," The Boston Globe, 26 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/26/7_detainees_report_transfer_to_nations_that_use_torture/
------------------------------
The Boston Globe, 26 April 2006
WASHINGTON -- At least seven US prisoners at Guantanamo Bay say they were transferred to countries known for torture prior to their arrival at the base, according to recently released transcripts from military commission hearings and other court documents.
At least three of them allege that they were tortured during interrogations in Jordan, Morocco, and Egypt.
The transcripts represent the first accounts of rendition from prisoners who are still in US custody, and they contradict statements made last year by the Bush administration that all suspects who are “rendered" to foreign countries are treated in accordance with international laws.
In the statements, made during hearings to determine whether the detainees are enemy combatants, some say American forces took them to foreign prisons. Others don't specify who took them abroad, but most say the United States is holding them at Guantanamo based on confessions coerced by foreign interrogators.
Military prosecutors did not challenge the fact that they were sent to other countries, and limited their questioning to whether the detainees were, in fact, tortured, according to the transcripts.
As the Pentagon slowly begins to prosecute detainees for terrorism-related offenses, defense lawyers are arguing that those confessions should be thrown out. One of the seven detainees was abruptly released before being charged with terrorism, after his allegations of torture in an Egyptian prison became public.
Another of the seven detainees is on trial for conspiring to set off a nuclear “dirty bomb" in the United States. But that defendant is arguing that the case against him is built on a confession coerced in Morocco.
“After four years of torture and rendition, you have the wrong person in the stand," Binyam Ahmad Muhammad, an Ethiopian detainee, told a military tribunal earlier this month.
Like most of the seven detainees, Muhammad says he was arrested in Pakistan, questioned by Americans, then transferred to a prison abroad, according to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.
Muhammad told tribunal officials that his jailers in Morocco sliced him with a scalpel on his chest and genitals, Smith said.
In January 2004, Muhammad was sent to a US-run detention facility in Afghanistan and then transferred to Guantanamo, where he became one of 10 out of 480 detainees to be formally charged with crimes.
But Smith, his lawyer, argues that the entire case should be dismissed.
“There is no evidence against Binyam that I am aware of that is not evidence tortured out of him," Smith said.
Evidence obtained through torture is not admissible in US courts. But the military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay had no such prohibition until last month, when the rule was added just before a key Supreme Court decision on the issue. Even now, defense lawyers and human rights groups say the rules of evidence are so loose -- allowing secret evidence and anonymous witnesses -- that it is impossible to screen out evidence obtained illegally.
Still, allegations of torture led to the release of one of major suspect last year.
Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen accused of having prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, was on the verge of being formally charged before the military tribunal. But US officials abruptly set him free in Australia after his allegations of being tortured with a cattle prod in Egypt became public.
Habib's lawyer, Joseph Margulies, had described the alleged torture in a legal filing in a US federal court.
“They released him because they didn't want the particulars of his rendition to become the subject of inquiry by a federal district court," Margulies said.
John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch researcher who has been combing the newly released Guantanamo documents for new information on rendition and torture, said torturing terrorism suspects makes it difficult to try them later in court, and increases their chances of walking free.
Pentagon officials say the US government does not transfer prisoners to other countries for torture, but they do not challenge the detainees' assertions that they were sent abroad.
“US policy requires all detainees to be treated humanely," said Lieutenant Commander Chito Peppler, a Guantanamo spokesman. He also warned that Al Qaeda members are trained to make false allegations.
In preliminary hearings at Guantanamo Bay to determine whether the detainees are “enemy combatants," tribunal officials closely questioned prisoners on their treatment in foreign prisons.
When Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a detainee from Mauritania, told tribunal officials that he was pressured into confessing to plans to attack the United States on New Year's Eve, 1999, during interrogations in Jordan, they asked him what kind of pressure was applied.
“We just want to make sure that you were not tortured or coerced into saying something that wasn't true," a tribunal official told him, according to the transcripts. “No US authorities abused you in any way?"
“I am not willing to answer this question," Slahi replied.
Slahi told them he turned himself in to the Mauritanian government on Sept. 29, 2001, after he heard that US officials were looking for him, and he ended up spending eight months at a prison in Jordan.
“I was kidnapped," he said. “They tried to squeeze information out of me."
A detainee identified as Jamal Mari told the tribunal a similar story about being captured in Pakistan and sent to Jordan, but asserted that he was not abused there. “Some people simply kidnapped me while I was asleep," he said at the hearing. “An American interrogator interrogated me. . . . They never told me where I was going. I found out later than I was in Jordan. . . . I was in a Jordan cell, but I wasn't mistreated or anything like that."
But Hassan bin Attash, a Yemeni who was 17 at the time of his arrest, reported that he was hung upside down, beaten on the soles of his feet, and threatened with electric shocks after he was sent to Jordan by US officials.
“He says that he told them whatever they wanted to hear," said his attorney, Robert Knowles. “He just wanted it to stop."
Knowles said Attash was arrested in Pakistan in September 2002, and spent four days in a US-run detention center in Afghanistan before being sent to Jordan for 16 months. In January 2004, he was transferred back to a US prison in Afghanistan. In September 2004, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay.
A second Yemeni detainee, identified as Al-Shaqwi, was also sent to prison in Jordan, according to Smith, but little is known about his case.
The new transcripts, released over the past three months by the Pentagon, also solve the mystery of one of the most well-known cases of rendition.
Newspapers have speculated on the whereabouts of Muhammad Saad Iqbal al-Madni, the son of a Saudi diplomat, who was arrested in Indonesia in January 2002, and whisked away in an American private jet. Some reports speculated that he was dead.
But the transcripts show that he is alive at Guantanamo, after spending three months in Egypt, and nearly a year at a US facility in Afghanistan.
Charlie Savage of the Globe staff contributed to this report
------------------------------
Citation: Farah Stockman. "7 detainees report transfer to nations that use torture," The Boston Globe, 26 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/26/7_detainees_report_transfer_to_nations_that_use_torture/
------------------------------
Build your own Iraqi police squad for a little cash
By Mussab Al-Khairalla
Reuters, 25 April 2006
BAGHDAD - It doesn't cost a lot to set up your own death squad in Iraq. Military uniforms, guns and even police vehicles are easily available to all comers in the markets of Baghdad.
In a city where gangs of men dressed as police have killed dozens of people and stolen tens of thousands of dollars, anyone with a modest amount of cash can set up their own fake squad.
At Baghdad's Bab al-Sharjee market, a haven for criminals, anyone can walk into one of about 15 shops selling police and military supplies and buy a police commando uniform for 35,000 Dinars (about $24) or an ordinary police uniform for $15.
No questions asked, no identity checks. Badges of rank from Captain to Major-General -- enough to ensure no one asks questions on the mean streets of the capital -- go for $2.
"One person came yesterday and took 12 full commando uniforms. Another took 15 army uniforms and ski masks with holes for the eyes," said Tariq, who runs one of the stores.
"I don't care who comes to buy them. As long as they give me the money, I give them the products," he said, adding the most popular items were police commando uniforms.
Although some uniforms such as a plain blue Iraqi police shirt are relatively simple for any tailor to produce, it was unclear where Tariq and others get the complicated camouflage uniforms from.
There are plenty of smaller items such as laser pointers for weapons, face-hiding ski masks, and handcuffs.
In a country awash with guns, almost every family has at least an AK-47, weapons are cheap and easily obtained.
HUGE TASK
It underscores the huge task confronting Prime Minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki as he forms a government to tackle the violence, bloodshed and crime endemic in postwar Iraq.
One of the critical tasks he faces is to clean up the Shi'ite-dominated interior ministry, which has been accused of condoning death squads who hunt down minority Sunni Arabs.
Sunnis, who have led an insurgency that has killed thousands of Shi'ites in the past 3 years, accuse the interim Shi'ite-led government of sanctioning militia 'death squads' over the past year, a charge the administration has strongly denied.
Many demand Iraq's militias be disbanded, something Maliki has promised to make a priority by drafting them into the armed forces. But the ease with which weapons and uniforms can be bought highlights how hard it will be to stamp them out.
Last year, for example, a Sunni insurgent group called the 'Army of the Victorious Sect' claimed responsibility for an attack in Baghdad using dozens of police uniforms and vehicles they said was aimed at officers of the interior ministry.
Criminal gangs have also used the uniforms of Iraqi security forces to murder and kidnap.
Head of the interior ministry's special law and order unit Major-General Mehdi al-Gharrawi said the uniforms were being used by criminals to stain the image of the ministry's forces.
"The clothes sold are bringing false accusations against us," he said. "We are people of the law, not street gangs.
"Today, the interior minister agreed to raid the stores that sell our uniforms because this must end."
He said within two weeks the police and commandos would also change their uniforms to a style that will be hard to copy, a promise they have failed to act on in the past.
Just a few kilometres from Bab al-Sharjee, at the Nahdha car showrooms, it is possible to buy the same vehicles the police special forces or ordinary police use for $12,000.
For an extra few hundred dollars, sirens and police markings can be added at the central Sinak market. Then it's a short trip to Mureydi market in the sprawling Sadr City Shi'ite slum for fake IDs.
Car salesman Abu Mohammed will sell a customer anything they want, including a range of bullet-proof cars costing up to $340,000.
"There is a possibility some people buy these cars with violent intent, but we can't go around checking after them," he says. "Our job is to sell cars and make money.
"I can get anything you can think of, even an American Humvee if the price is right."
--------------------------------
Citation: Mussab Al-Khairalla. "Build your own Iraqi police squad for a little cash," Reuters, 25 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L25677759.htm
--------------------------------
Reuters, 25 April 2006
BAGHDAD - It doesn't cost a lot to set up your own death squad in Iraq. Military uniforms, guns and even police vehicles are easily available to all comers in the markets of Baghdad.
In a city where gangs of men dressed as police have killed dozens of people and stolen tens of thousands of dollars, anyone with a modest amount of cash can set up their own fake squad.
At Baghdad's Bab al-Sharjee market, a haven for criminals, anyone can walk into one of about 15 shops selling police and military supplies and buy a police commando uniform for 35,000 Dinars (about $24) or an ordinary police uniform for $15.
No questions asked, no identity checks. Badges of rank from Captain to Major-General -- enough to ensure no one asks questions on the mean streets of the capital -- go for $2.
"One person came yesterday and took 12 full commando uniforms. Another took 15 army uniforms and ski masks with holes for the eyes," said Tariq, who runs one of the stores.
"I don't care who comes to buy them. As long as they give me the money, I give them the products," he said, adding the most popular items were police commando uniforms.
Although some uniforms such as a plain blue Iraqi police shirt are relatively simple for any tailor to produce, it was unclear where Tariq and others get the complicated camouflage uniforms from.
There are plenty of smaller items such as laser pointers for weapons, face-hiding ski masks, and handcuffs.
In a country awash with guns, almost every family has at least an AK-47, weapons are cheap and easily obtained.
HUGE TASK
It underscores the huge task confronting Prime Minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki as he forms a government to tackle the violence, bloodshed and crime endemic in postwar Iraq.
One of the critical tasks he faces is to clean up the Shi'ite-dominated interior ministry, which has been accused of condoning death squads who hunt down minority Sunni Arabs.
Sunnis, who have led an insurgency that has killed thousands of Shi'ites in the past 3 years, accuse the interim Shi'ite-led government of sanctioning militia 'death squads' over the past year, a charge the administration has strongly denied.
Many demand Iraq's militias be disbanded, something Maliki has promised to make a priority by drafting them into the armed forces. But the ease with which weapons and uniforms can be bought highlights how hard it will be to stamp them out.
Last year, for example, a Sunni insurgent group called the 'Army of the Victorious Sect' claimed responsibility for an attack in Baghdad using dozens of police uniforms and vehicles they said was aimed at officers of the interior ministry.
Criminal gangs have also used the uniforms of Iraqi security forces to murder and kidnap.
Head of the interior ministry's special law and order unit Major-General Mehdi al-Gharrawi said the uniforms were being used by criminals to stain the image of the ministry's forces.
"The clothes sold are bringing false accusations against us," he said. "We are people of the law, not street gangs.
"Today, the interior minister agreed to raid the stores that sell our uniforms because this must end."
He said within two weeks the police and commandos would also change their uniforms to a style that will be hard to copy, a promise they have failed to act on in the past.
Just a few kilometres from Bab al-Sharjee, at the Nahdha car showrooms, it is possible to buy the same vehicles the police special forces or ordinary police use for $12,000.
For an extra few hundred dollars, sirens and police markings can be added at the central Sinak market. Then it's a short trip to Mureydi market in the sprawling Sadr City Shi'ite slum for fake IDs.
Car salesman Abu Mohammed will sell a customer anything they want, including a range of bullet-proof cars costing up to $340,000.
"There is a possibility some people buy these cars with violent intent, but we can't go around checking after them," he says. "Our job is to sell cars and make money.
"I can get anything you can think of, even an American Humvee if the price is right."
--------------------------------
Citation: Mussab Al-Khairalla. "Build your own Iraqi police squad for a little cash," Reuters, 25 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L25677759.htm
--------------------------------
Militias could spark Iraq civil war - PM-designate
By Michael Georgy
Reuters, 25 April 2006
BAGHDAD - Prime Minister-Designate Jawad al-Maliki said in comments broadcast on Tuesday that failure to disband militias threatened to push Iraq into civil war.
"The weapons must be in the hands of the state. Their presence in the hands of others (militias) will be the start of problems that will trigger a civil war," he said in an interview broadcast on state television.
Shi'ite leader Maliki, who has started talks on forming a unity government widely seen as the best way to avert an open communal conflict, said there was a law in place stipulating that militias should be merged with the armed forces.
U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has said the armed groups, which are tied to leading political parties, are killing more Iraqis than insurgents and they must be disbanded.
Maliki urged Iraq's Shi'ites, Kurds and Arab Sunnis to unite against suicide bombings, shootings and assassinations that have killed many thousands of security forces and civilians since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
But he cautioned that military force alone would not eradicate the problem.
"Force alone will not wipe out terrorism. If it ends in one place it pops up in another. If we are to succeed with all Iraqi people there must be solutions to unemployment and start a process of investment," he said.
Maliki, apparently seeking to ease Sunni Arab concerns that sectarianism will dictate policies in any Shi'ite government, said ministries would be open to all political parties as he forms a government.
"I will choose from three candidates from each ministry," he said.
Sunnis have accused the Shi'ite-led Interior Ministry of sanctioning militia death squads, a charge it has denied as hundreds of bodies have turned up on streets since the February bombing of a Shi'ite shrine that touched off reprisals.
Maliki, one of the exiles from Saddam Hussein's regime who returned after his fall, tried to deflect Sunni accusations that Iran was interfering in Iraqi affairs through its close ties with the Shi'ite-dominated administration.
He said it was important to thank neighbouring countries like Iran, Jordan and Saudi Arabia which took in Iraqis who fled Saddam's Iraq, but that should not be misinterpreted.
"This does not mean any country can meddle in our affairs," he said
----------------------
Citation: Michael Georgy. "Militias could spark Iraq civil war - PM-designate," Reuters, 25 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO566475.htm
----------------------
Reuters, 25 April 2006
BAGHDAD - Prime Minister-Designate Jawad al-Maliki said in comments broadcast on Tuesday that failure to disband militias threatened to push Iraq into civil war.
"The weapons must be in the hands of the state. Their presence in the hands of others (militias) will be the start of problems that will trigger a civil war," he said in an interview broadcast on state television.
Shi'ite leader Maliki, who has started talks on forming a unity government widely seen as the best way to avert an open communal conflict, said there was a law in place stipulating that militias should be merged with the armed forces.
U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has said the armed groups, which are tied to leading political parties, are killing more Iraqis than insurgents and they must be disbanded.
Maliki urged Iraq's Shi'ites, Kurds and Arab Sunnis to unite against suicide bombings, shootings and assassinations that have killed many thousands of security forces and civilians since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
But he cautioned that military force alone would not eradicate the problem.
"Force alone will not wipe out terrorism. If it ends in one place it pops up in another. If we are to succeed with all Iraqi people there must be solutions to unemployment and start a process of investment," he said.
Maliki, apparently seeking to ease Sunni Arab concerns that sectarianism will dictate policies in any Shi'ite government, said ministries would be open to all political parties as he forms a government.
"I will choose from three candidates from each ministry," he said.
Sunnis have accused the Shi'ite-led Interior Ministry of sanctioning militia death squads, a charge it has denied as hundreds of bodies have turned up on streets since the February bombing of a Shi'ite shrine that touched off reprisals.
Maliki, one of the exiles from Saddam Hussein's regime who returned after his fall, tried to deflect Sunni accusations that Iran was interfering in Iraqi affairs through its close ties with the Shi'ite-dominated administration.
He said it was important to thank neighbouring countries like Iran, Jordan and Saudi Arabia which took in Iraqis who fled Saddam's Iraq, but that should not be misinterpreted.
"This does not mean any country can meddle in our affairs," he said
----------------------
Citation: Michael Georgy. "Militias could spark Iraq civil war - PM-designate," Reuters, 25 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO566475.htm
----------------------
Iraqi Strife Seeping Into Saudi Kingdom
By Megan K. Stack
Los Angeles Times, 26 April 2006
QATIF, Saudi Arabia — The conflict in Iraq has begun to spill over onto this hardscrabble, sunburned swath of coast, breathing new life into the ancient rivalry between the country's powerful Sunni Muslim majority and the long-oppressed Shiite minority in one of the most oil-rich areas of the world.
"Saudi Sunnis are defending Iraqi Sunnis, and Saudi Shiites are defending Iraqi Shiites," said Hassan Saffar, Saudi Arabia's most influential Shiite cleric. "There's a fear that it will cause a struggle here."
At first, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq gave optimism to Shiites here along Saudi Arabia's eastern coast. Unlike infuriated Sunnis, many Shiites felt a surge of quiet hope when the U.S. arrived in Iraq three years ago. Emboldened by their Iraqi brethren's escape from the oppressive rule of Saddam Hussein, Shiites here and in other Sunni-ruled nations began to demand — and win — freedoms of their own.
Bit by bit, old rules have fallen away in recent years: Saudi Shiites won the right to publish and read sectarian literature. They can now work as journalists, build mosques and open Shiite schools to educate their sons.
But today, the power shift that seemed to be opening doors for the sect is beginning to look more like a dangerous destabilization. Some Shiite clerics here have received death threats in recent months, community leaders say. Shiites have also been accused of harboring links to Iran, a longtime nemesis of the Saudi government.
Sunni and Shiite clerics across the region have begun to warn against a fitna, a severe term that refers to a civil war or division within the Islamic faith.
"Now there's a psychological war against the Shia," said Mohammed Mahfoodh, a Shiite author here. "They criticize the Shia, accuse them of being loyal to an outside party, attack their religious beliefs and say they don't have interest in the stability of their countries."
Saudi Shiites have lived for centuries among the banana and date palm groves where the kingdom tapers off into the Persian Gulf, pushed literally and figuratively to the margins of Saudi Arabia. Unwittingly, they settled directly on top of the fossils that became the source of Saudi opulence: vast oil reserves that spread out beneath their villages.
Far from the skyscrapers glinting in the sun in Riyadh and Jidda, this is a very different Saudi Arabia, a place where villagers still live in mud-brick huts, where pictures of Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani are plastered on walls, where roads go unpaved and old wells pock the desert.
There are times when you can literally smell the gas, sitting like a vapor over the sands. The people of Qatif sometimes joke that the cow is here, but the milk goes elsewhere.
"Look at all the treasures in this area, look at the oil. Qatif should be rich," said Aliya Fareed, a Shiite and member of the fledgling National Society for Human Rights.
"But we can't see Qatif as a rich area," Fareed said. "Look at our schools, look at our homes.
"Our young people don't have jobs," she said, and in the 21st century "we're living in houses of mud."
Shiites have a long list of grievances in Qatif. They need roads and job opportunities. They remain underrepresented on the governing councils, which are handpicked by the royal family, and are excluded from military and diplomatic positions. Sunnis commute from out of town to run offices as mundane as that of traffic police.
"We don't feel like we're full partners in the nation," Mahfoodh said.
In a land where the seeds of centuries-old discord were first sown among the followers of the prophet Muhammad, animosities between Sunni and Shiite Muslims are never far from the surface.
Today, the Shiites of the east are mounting an unprecedented push for civil rights and equality, even as they find themselves increasingly tarred as traitors more loyal to Iran than to the kingdom they call home.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak angered the region's Shiites this month when he told a reporter from the satellite news channel Al Arabiya that Shiites throughout the Arab world had deeper loyalties to Iran than to their home countries.
Mubarak was broadcasting a belief that is widely held among Sunni Arabs. Here in Saudi Arabia, many Sunnis say privately that Mubarak was correct about Shiite loyalty — but that he probably shouldn't have said it publicly.
"Everybody believes that Shiite Muslims are loyal to Iran more than to their own countries, but you don't say it," said Turki Hamad, a liberal Sunni Saudi. "I'd say 90% of the people in Saudi Arabia don't trust the Shiites. You can't just shake a magic stick and get rid of it."
The question of loyalty is a blurry one. A long legacy of shoddy treatment has left many Shiites nursing quiet grudges against their governments. Shiite political leaders generally know better than to advertise anti-government sentiments at a time when they're pushing for equality, but the animosity often lurks just below the surface.
"I was born in Qatif and I hope to die in Qatif — it's my land," said Ali Maidani, 33, a Shiite. He paused, then corrected himself. "All of Saudi Arabia is my land, but the government doesn't treat me like a citizen. So sometimes I feel that only Qatif is my land.
"It's not good for the government," he said. "That's why people start to follow other regimes."
Some of the accusations of disloyalty involve the Shiite religious hierarchy. Shiite worshipers follow the guidance of a clerical "source." Most of the Arab world's Shiites, including those in Saudi Arabia, look to Sistani as their spiritual leader; others look to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran.
Shiites point out that this is a religious allegiance and often say angrily that it has nothing to do with politics. But the dividing line is not firm; religion and politics often meld.
For example, in neighboring Bahrain, a restive Shiite majority is pushing to have marriage, divorce and custody laws approved not by parliament but by Sistani. Sunnis are outraged at the idea; they regard it as an insult to national sovereignty.
Shiites "want the power in their hands and only their hands," said Adel Mawda, a Sunni legislator in Bahrain's parliament. "How can a country put in its constitution that we send our law to another country?"
Shiites in Bahrain and here have eagerly latched on to any democratic opening. In Bahrain, Shiite-led groups have staged some of the largest street demonstrations in the Arab world, shutting down highways and chanting protests against the government, which is controlled by Sunnis.
As for Qatif, its long-marginalized province voted more heavily than the rest of the country last year when Saudi men were allowed to cast ballots in limited municipal elections.
About 43% of eligible voters went to the polls here — more than in any other district in the country.
"The society felt like this was their opportunity to express their existence," said Jaafar Shayeb, a Shiite leader and onetime political exile who was elected to the municipal council in Qatif. "Now you feel they're ready and willing to participate at any opportunity."
Sunni-Shiite understanding has been deepened in recent years by the "national dialogue" — the royal family's project of arranging face-to-face conferences of Saudis of different backgrounds. The talks have drawn Shiite and Sunni clerics from around the country to discuss its future.
"It used to be a closed, black box. They didn't know what are the Shia, what do they want," Shayeb said. "We don't want to overthrow the government. We want equality as citizens."
-------------------------
Citation: Megan K. Stack. "Iraqi Strife Seeping Into Saudi Kingdom," Los Angeles Times, 26 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-shiites26apr26,0,6032003.story?coll=la-home-headlines
------------------
Los Angeles Times, 26 April 2006
QATIF, Saudi Arabia — The conflict in Iraq has begun to spill over onto this hardscrabble, sunburned swath of coast, breathing new life into the ancient rivalry between the country's powerful Sunni Muslim majority and the long-oppressed Shiite minority in one of the most oil-rich areas of the world.
"Saudi Sunnis are defending Iraqi Sunnis, and Saudi Shiites are defending Iraqi Shiites," said Hassan Saffar, Saudi Arabia's most influential Shiite cleric. "There's a fear that it will cause a struggle here."
At first, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq gave optimism to Shiites here along Saudi Arabia's eastern coast. Unlike infuriated Sunnis, many Shiites felt a surge of quiet hope when the U.S. arrived in Iraq three years ago. Emboldened by their Iraqi brethren's escape from the oppressive rule of Saddam Hussein, Shiites here and in other Sunni-ruled nations began to demand — and win — freedoms of their own.
Bit by bit, old rules have fallen away in recent years: Saudi Shiites won the right to publish and read sectarian literature. They can now work as journalists, build mosques and open Shiite schools to educate their sons.
But today, the power shift that seemed to be opening doors for the sect is beginning to look more like a dangerous destabilization. Some Shiite clerics here have received death threats in recent months, community leaders say. Shiites have also been accused of harboring links to Iran, a longtime nemesis of the Saudi government.
Sunni and Shiite clerics across the region have begun to warn against a fitna, a severe term that refers to a civil war or division within the Islamic faith.
"Now there's a psychological war against the Shia," said Mohammed Mahfoodh, a Shiite author here. "They criticize the Shia, accuse them of being loyal to an outside party, attack their religious beliefs and say they don't have interest in the stability of their countries."
Saudi Shiites have lived for centuries among the banana and date palm groves where the kingdom tapers off into the Persian Gulf, pushed literally and figuratively to the margins of Saudi Arabia. Unwittingly, they settled directly on top of the fossils that became the source of Saudi opulence: vast oil reserves that spread out beneath their villages.
Far from the skyscrapers glinting in the sun in Riyadh and Jidda, this is a very different Saudi Arabia, a place where villagers still live in mud-brick huts, where pictures of Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani are plastered on walls, where roads go unpaved and old wells pock the desert.
There are times when you can literally smell the gas, sitting like a vapor over the sands. The people of Qatif sometimes joke that the cow is here, but the milk goes elsewhere.
"Look at all the treasures in this area, look at the oil. Qatif should be rich," said Aliya Fareed, a Shiite and member of the fledgling National Society for Human Rights.
"But we can't see Qatif as a rich area," Fareed said. "Look at our schools, look at our homes.
"Our young people don't have jobs," she said, and in the 21st century "we're living in houses of mud."
Shiites have a long list of grievances in Qatif. They need roads and job opportunities. They remain underrepresented on the governing councils, which are handpicked by the royal family, and are excluded from military and diplomatic positions. Sunnis commute from out of town to run offices as mundane as that of traffic police.
"We don't feel like we're full partners in the nation," Mahfoodh said.
In a land where the seeds of centuries-old discord were first sown among the followers of the prophet Muhammad, animosities between Sunni and Shiite Muslims are never far from the surface.
Today, the Shiites of the east are mounting an unprecedented push for civil rights and equality, even as they find themselves increasingly tarred as traitors more loyal to Iran than to the kingdom they call home.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak angered the region's Shiites this month when he told a reporter from the satellite news channel Al Arabiya that Shiites throughout the Arab world had deeper loyalties to Iran than to their home countries.
Mubarak was broadcasting a belief that is widely held among Sunni Arabs. Here in Saudi Arabia, many Sunnis say privately that Mubarak was correct about Shiite loyalty — but that he probably shouldn't have said it publicly.
"Everybody believes that Shiite Muslims are loyal to Iran more than to their own countries, but you don't say it," said Turki Hamad, a liberal Sunni Saudi. "I'd say 90% of the people in Saudi Arabia don't trust the Shiites. You can't just shake a magic stick and get rid of it."
The question of loyalty is a blurry one. A long legacy of shoddy treatment has left many Shiites nursing quiet grudges against their governments. Shiite political leaders generally know better than to advertise anti-government sentiments at a time when they're pushing for equality, but the animosity often lurks just below the surface.
"I was born in Qatif and I hope to die in Qatif — it's my land," said Ali Maidani, 33, a Shiite. He paused, then corrected himself. "All of Saudi Arabia is my land, but the government doesn't treat me like a citizen. So sometimes I feel that only Qatif is my land.
"It's not good for the government," he said. "That's why people start to follow other regimes."
Some of the accusations of disloyalty involve the Shiite religious hierarchy. Shiite worshipers follow the guidance of a clerical "source." Most of the Arab world's Shiites, including those in Saudi Arabia, look to Sistani as their spiritual leader; others look to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran.
Shiites point out that this is a religious allegiance and often say angrily that it has nothing to do with politics. But the dividing line is not firm; religion and politics often meld.
For example, in neighboring Bahrain, a restive Shiite majority is pushing to have marriage, divorce and custody laws approved not by parliament but by Sistani. Sunnis are outraged at the idea; they regard it as an insult to national sovereignty.
Shiites "want the power in their hands and only their hands," said Adel Mawda, a Sunni legislator in Bahrain's parliament. "How can a country put in its constitution that we send our law to another country?"
Shiites in Bahrain and here have eagerly latched on to any democratic opening. In Bahrain, Shiite-led groups have staged some of the largest street demonstrations in the Arab world, shutting down highways and chanting protests against the government, which is controlled by Sunnis.
As for Qatif, its long-marginalized province voted more heavily than the rest of the country last year when Saudi men were allowed to cast ballots in limited municipal elections.
About 43% of eligible voters went to the polls here — more than in any other district in the country.
"The society felt like this was their opportunity to express their existence," said Jaafar Shayeb, a Shiite leader and onetime political exile who was elected to the municipal council in Qatif. "Now you feel they're ready and willing to participate at any opportunity."
Sunni-Shiite understanding has been deepened in recent years by the "national dialogue" — the royal family's project of arranging face-to-face conferences of Saudis of different backgrounds. The talks have drawn Shiite and Sunni clerics from around the country to discuss its future.
"It used to be a closed, black box. They didn't know what are the Shia, what do they want," Shayeb said. "We don't want to overthrow the government. We want equality as citizens."
-------------------------
Citation: Megan K. Stack. "Iraqi Strife Seeping Into Saudi Kingdom," Los Angeles Times, 26 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-shiites26apr26,0,6032003.story?coll=la-home-headlines
------------------
24 April 2006
Fighting Escalates in Southern Afghanistan
By Noor Khan
The Associated Press, 23 April 2006
Afghan security forces surrounded Taliban fighters hiding in a village in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, launching a gunbattle that killed at least three militants and a police officer.
Elsewhere in the region, Taliban militants attacked an Afghan construction company working for coalition forces, killing a security guard.
The fighting came as visiting British Defense Secretary John Reid said coalition troops must maintain their offensive against Taliban and al-Qaida militants to prevent their return to power.
"The greatest danger of all for the people of Afghanistan and the people of the United Kingdom would be if Afghanistan ever again came under the rule of a Taliban regime prepared to protect al-Qaida or terrorist groups," Reid told reporters in the capital, Kabul.
Afghan police and soldiers fought Taliban militants in the volatile Gelan district of southern Ghazni province about 75 miles southwest of Kabul, said provincial Gov. Haji Sher Alam. Three Taliban fighters and a policeman were killed, he told The Associated Press.
The attack on the construction company occurred on the Uruzgan-Kandahar highway near a southern Kandahar village where four Canadian soldiers were killed in a suspected Taliban roadside bombing a day earlier.
A group of heavily armed militants waged a two-hour attack against the headquarters of the Thavazoo company in Shah Wali Kot district, about 25 miles north of Kandahar city, said Haji Mohammed Youssef, the company's director.
One guard was killed and two were wounded before the remaining security personnel fled, Youssef said. The Taliban fighters then entered the compound, burned 14 trucks and bulldozers and stole equipment before escaping.
Youssef said coalition forces gave him a contract to build a 25-mile stretch of road.
"Coalition forces are giving us money to help rebuild our country, but the enemies of Afghanistan don't want us to succeed," he told The AP.
On Saturday, U.S. and Afghan soldiers arrested 16 Taliban members in two raids in the southern Zabul province, which neighbors Kandahar, local Afghan army commander Gen. Rahmattalluh Roufi said Sunday.
"The Americans are questioning them now to see if they are important Taliban members or not," Roufi told the AP.
It was unclear if the arrests or the Taliban attack on the construction company were linked to the killing of the four Canadian soldiers, the deadliest attack on that nation's troops since they deployed here in 2002.
Militants have stepped up attacks against coalition and Afghan forces, particularly across southern Afghanistan, in a bid to derail reconstruction efforts four years after a U.S.-led military force toppled the Taliban regime for harboring Osama bin Laden.
Rising violence is a growing concern for nations contributing troops to a force operating here under a NATO mandate. The force is to rise from its current 10,000 soldiers to about 21,000 by November as it gradually assumes command of all international troops in Afghanistan.
Some 6,000 mainly British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers have started deploying in remote tribal-dominated southern region.
Britain's deployment coincides with its taking control of the NATO mission in May for three years.
Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report from Kabul.
--------------------------------
Citation: Noor Khan. "Fighting Escalates in Southern Afghanistan," The Associated Press, 23 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060423/ap_on_re_as/afghan_violence
--------------------------------
The Associated Press, 23 April 2006
Afghan security forces surrounded Taliban fighters hiding in a village in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, launching a gunbattle that killed at least three militants and a police officer.
Elsewhere in the region, Taliban militants attacked an Afghan construction company working for coalition forces, killing a security guard.
The fighting came as visiting British Defense Secretary John Reid said coalition troops must maintain their offensive against Taliban and al-Qaida militants to prevent their return to power.
"The greatest danger of all for the people of Afghanistan and the people of the United Kingdom would be if Afghanistan ever again came under the rule of a Taliban regime prepared to protect al-Qaida or terrorist groups," Reid told reporters in the capital, Kabul.
Afghan police and soldiers fought Taliban militants in the volatile Gelan district of southern Ghazni province about 75 miles southwest of Kabul, said provincial Gov. Haji Sher Alam. Three Taliban fighters and a policeman were killed, he told The Associated Press.
The attack on the construction company occurred on the Uruzgan-Kandahar highway near a southern Kandahar village where four Canadian soldiers were killed in a suspected Taliban roadside bombing a day earlier.
A group of heavily armed militants waged a two-hour attack against the headquarters of the Thavazoo company in Shah Wali Kot district, about 25 miles north of Kandahar city, said Haji Mohammed Youssef, the company's director.
One guard was killed and two were wounded before the remaining security personnel fled, Youssef said. The Taliban fighters then entered the compound, burned 14 trucks and bulldozers and stole equipment before escaping.
Youssef said coalition forces gave him a contract to build a 25-mile stretch of road.
"Coalition forces are giving us money to help rebuild our country, but the enemies of Afghanistan don't want us to succeed," he told The AP.
On Saturday, U.S. and Afghan soldiers arrested 16 Taliban members in two raids in the southern Zabul province, which neighbors Kandahar, local Afghan army commander Gen. Rahmattalluh Roufi said Sunday.
"The Americans are questioning them now to see if they are important Taliban members or not," Roufi told the AP.
It was unclear if the arrests or the Taliban attack on the construction company were linked to the killing of the four Canadian soldiers, the deadliest attack on that nation's troops since they deployed here in 2002.
Militants have stepped up attacks against coalition and Afghan forces, particularly across southern Afghanistan, in a bid to derail reconstruction efforts four years after a U.S.-led military force toppled the Taliban regime for harboring Osama bin Laden.
Rising violence is a growing concern for nations contributing troops to a force operating here under a NATO mandate. The force is to rise from its current 10,000 soldiers to about 21,000 by November as it gradually assumes command of all international troops in Afghanistan.
Some 6,000 mainly British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers have started deploying in remote tribal-dominated southern region.
Britain's deployment coincides with its taking control of the NATO mission in May for three years.
Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report from Kabul.
--------------------------------
Citation: Noor Khan. "Fighting Escalates in Southern Afghanistan," The Associated Press, 23 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060423/ap_on_re_as/afghan_violence
--------------------------------
Talabani defends Kurdish peshmerga militia
Agence France Presse, 23 April 2006
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has defended the Kurdish peshmerga militia, insisting they were a "regulated force".
"Peshmerga is not a militia. It is a regulated force," Talabani, a Kurd, said at a joint news conference with US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, in Arbil and telecast live on Al-Iraqiya state-television.
The United States has consistently called for the dismantling of Shiite-led militias in Iraq, blamed for a large number of killings in ongoing sectarian violence across the country.
A ban on militias imposed under the US-led occupation authority in 2003 has never applied to the three northern provinces of Kurdistan -- Sulaimaniyah, Dohuk and Arbil -- which Kurdish rebels ruled in defiance of Saddam Hussein's regime before the 2003 invasion.
The peshmerga continue to oversee security there and Kurdish leaders, including Talabani, have resisted all calls for them to be disarmed, insisting they be retained as an independent unit within the Iraqi armed forces.
"We regard that unauthorised military formation as infrastructure of civil war," Khalilzad told reporters Sunday in reference to all Iraqi militia.
He said he was encouraged by Iraq's new prime minister designate Jawad al-Maliki's intentions to rein in the militias.
"I have been encouraged by consultations with the prime minister designate" and he has "assured he will focus on this issue," Khalilzad said, adding that all military formations must "be in hands of authorised Iraqi government forces."
On Saturday Maliki vowed to rein in the militias saying, "arms must be in the hands of the government. There is a law to integrate militias into the security forces."
---------------------------
Citation: "Talabani defends Kurdish peshmerga militia," Agence France Presse, 23 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060423/wl_mideast_afp/piraqkurdsmilitia
---------------------------
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has defended the Kurdish peshmerga militia, insisting they were a "regulated force".
"Peshmerga is not a militia. It is a regulated force," Talabani, a Kurd, said at a joint news conference with US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, in Arbil and telecast live on Al-Iraqiya state-television.
The United States has consistently called for the dismantling of Shiite-led militias in Iraq, blamed for a large number of killings in ongoing sectarian violence across the country.
A ban on militias imposed under the US-led occupation authority in 2003 has never applied to the three northern provinces of Kurdistan -- Sulaimaniyah, Dohuk and Arbil -- which Kurdish rebels ruled in defiance of Saddam Hussein's regime before the 2003 invasion.
The peshmerga continue to oversee security there and Kurdish leaders, including Talabani, have resisted all calls for them to be disarmed, insisting they be retained as an independent unit within the Iraqi armed forces.
"We regard that unauthorised military formation as infrastructure of civil war," Khalilzad told reporters Sunday in reference to all Iraqi militia.
He said he was encouraged by Iraq's new prime minister designate Jawad al-Maliki's intentions to rein in the militias.
"I have been encouraged by consultations with the prime minister designate" and he has "assured he will focus on this issue," Khalilzad said, adding that all military formations must "be in hands of authorised Iraqi government forces."
On Saturday Maliki vowed to rein in the militias saying, "arms must be in the hands of the government. There is a law to integrate militias into the security forces."
---------------------------
Citation: "Talabani defends Kurdish peshmerga militia," Agence France Presse, 23 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060423/wl_mideast_afp/piraqkurdsmilitia
---------------------------
New leader is greeted with death, defiance and doubt
By Daniel McGrory
The Times, UK, 24 April 2006
THE death squads did not wait long to welcome Iraq’s prime minister designate as they launched a series of attacks yesterday to demonstrate that the armed militias would not easily surrender their weapons.
Iraqis were heartened by Jawad al-Maliki’s passionate first speech in which he pledged that his immediate priority was to disband the gangs of gunmen who controlled huge swaths of the country.
Yet within hours of his appointment, the mutilated bodies of twelve young victims were found dumped in Baghdad, and seven government workers died in a mortar attack on the heavily fortified green zone, where Mr al-Maliki was holding discussions on the make-up of his Cabinet.
The timing was seen as deliberate by Western diplomats in the capital, who say that the new leader will be swiftly judged on his ability to establish a grip on security.
The police and Army are outnumbered and outgunned by militia loyal to powerful clerics and some of Mr al-Maliki’s most bitter political rivals.
As he began a day of haggling over which parties should hold Iraq’s most coveted posts in his government of national unity, the 56-year-old Prime Minister was interrupted by a flow of reports about insurgent attacks across the country.
Three US soldiers died in a roadside bomb in the capital, bringing to eight the number of American troops killed at the weekend. By dusk at least 23 Iraqis had been killed, most of them victims of the escalating sectarian violence.
On the streets of Baghdad there was little sign of relief or excitement that four months of political stagnation might be over and the formation of a government imminent.
Mr al-Maliki’s choice of interior minister will be an early indication of how he hopes to bring the militia into the security services. The incumbent has been accused of running one of the most vicious gangs in Baghdad.
Mr al-Maliki’s Dawa party relies for support on the militant young cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi army of more than 100,000 holds sway over 3 million people in northwest Baghdad.
One Western diplomat said: “Mr al-Maliki’s aims are sound but how does he disarm the militias peacefully and not trigger an even nastier conflict in the process? That is a big ask.”
Remarks by some Sunni leaders yesterday suggested that they remained suspicious of Mr al-Maliki, who is a Shia. The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni Arab faction in parliament, blamed Shia death squads for the execution of six men in the capital and gave warning of swift reprisals unless “the criminal gangs responsible” were arrested.
Party officials close to Mr al-Maliki say that he intends to dismiss ministers picked by his predecessor and friend, the ineffectual Ibrahim Jaafari. He is seen as a shrewd but uncompromising negotiator who will not allow himself to be bullied on his choice of ministers. He keeps a low profile and many Iraqis say that they know little about the man chosen by MPs. Tall, balding and bespectacled, he is described by a close aide as “difficult to warm to, but a hard worker and a disciplinarian”. He was a pivotal figure in drawing up the constitution after the downfall of Saddam and presided over the committee that purged Saddam’s cronies from top jobs in the military and government. This role has drawn charges from Sunni groups that he used the position to settle old scores and elevate his Shia friends.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said that he was “someone we can work with” and urged Mr al-Maliki to move quickly to improve Iraq’s creaking infrastructure.
-----------------------------
Citation: Daniel McGrory. "New leader is greeted with death, defiance and doubt," The Times, UK, 24 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2149367,00.html
-----------------------------
The Times, UK, 24 April 2006
THE death squads did not wait long to welcome Iraq’s prime minister designate as they launched a series of attacks yesterday to demonstrate that the armed militias would not easily surrender their weapons.
Iraqis were heartened by Jawad al-Maliki’s passionate first speech in which he pledged that his immediate priority was to disband the gangs of gunmen who controlled huge swaths of the country.
Yet within hours of his appointment, the mutilated bodies of twelve young victims were found dumped in Baghdad, and seven government workers died in a mortar attack on the heavily fortified green zone, where Mr al-Maliki was holding discussions on the make-up of his Cabinet.
The timing was seen as deliberate by Western diplomats in the capital, who say that the new leader will be swiftly judged on his ability to establish a grip on security.
The police and Army are outnumbered and outgunned by militia loyal to powerful clerics and some of Mr al-Maliki’s most bitter political rivals.
As he began a day of haggling over which parties should hold Iraq’s most coveted posts in his government of national unity, the 56-year-old Prime Minister was interrupted by a flow of reports about insurgent attacks across the country.
Three US soldiers died in a roadside bomb in the capital, bringing to eight the number of American troops killed at the weekend. By dusk at least 23 Iraqis had been killed, most of them victims of the escalating sectarian violence.
On the streets of Baghdad there was little sign of relief or excitement that four months of political stagnation might be over and the formation of a government imminent.
Mr al-Maliki’s choice of interior minister will be an early indication of how he hopes to bring the militia into the security services. The incumbent has been accused of running one of the most vicious gangs in Baghdad.
Mr al-Maliki’s Dawa party relies for support on the militant young cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi army of more than 100,000 holds sway over 3 million people in northwest Baghdad.
One Western diplomat said: “Mr al-Maliki’s aims are sound but how does he disarm the militias peacefully and not trigger an even nastier conflict in the process? That is a big ask.”
Remarks by some Sunni leaders yesterday suggested that they remained suspicious of Mr al-Maliki, who is a Shia. The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni Arab faction in parliament, blamed Shia death squads for the execution of six men in the capital and gave warning of swift reprisals unless “the criminal gangs responsible” were arrested.
Party officials close to Mr al-Maliki say that he intends to dismiss ministers picked by his predecessor and friend, the ineffectual Ibrahim Jaafari. He is seen as a shrewd but uncompromising negotiator who will not allow himself to be bullied on his choice of ministers. He keeps a low profile and many Iraqis say that they know little about the man chosen by MPs. Tall, balding and bespectacled, he is described by a close aide as “difficult to warm to, but a hard worker and a disciplinarian”. He was a pivotal figure in drawing up the constitution after the downfall of Saddam and presided over the committee that purged Saddam’s cronies from top jobs in the military and government. This role has drawn charges from Sunni groups that he used the position to settle old scores and elevate his Shia friends.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said that he was “someone we can work with” and urged Mr al-Maliki to move quickly to improve Iraq’s creaking infrastructure.
-----------------------------
Citation: Daniel McGrory. "New leader is greeted with death, defiance and doubt," The Times, UK, 24 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2149367,00.html
-----------------------------
20 April 2006
Iraq PM Lets Shiites Consider Replacement
By Qassim Abdul-Zahra
The Associated Press, 20 April 2006
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, under intense pressure to give up plans for a second term, agreed Thursday to let Shiite lawmakers reconsider his nomination, a step that could mark a breakthrough in the months-long effort to form a new government.
Key to al-Jaafari's change of heart was pressure from U.N. envoy Ashraf Qazi and his meetings Wednesday with the most powerful Shiite cleric in the country, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical cleric who has backed al-Jaafari, said Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman.
"There was a signal from Najaf," Othman said, referring to al-Sistani's office in the Shiite holy city. "Qazi's meetings with (al-Sistani) and al-Sadr were the chief reason that untied the knot."
Shiite legislators planned to meet Saturday to decide whether to replace al-Jaafari, who faced fierce opposition from Iraq's Kurdish and Sunni Arab parties.
A planned session of the Iraqi parliament aimed at trying to jump-start the formation of a new government also was delayed until Saturday.
The U.S. and Britain have been pressing hard for the Iraqis to break the deadlock over al-Jaafari's nomination that has persisted since Dec. 15 elections, preventing the creation of a government at a time of increasing sectarian violence.
Among those mentioned as replacements for al-Jaafari were Jawad al-Maliki, spokesman for the prime minister's Dawa party, and another leading Dawa politician Ali al-Adeeb.
Sunni and Kurdish parties blamed the incumbent for worsening the tensions — with Sunnis refusing to back al-Jaafari because his government allegedly allowed Shiite militias to infiltrate the Iraqi police and carry out reprisal killings against Sunnis.
Kurds also believed al-Jaafari had broken promises to support their claims in the oil-rich area of Kirkuk. The Kurds want to incorporate the area into their three-province self-governing region.
Al-Jaafari won the alliance nomination two months ago by only one vote, beating Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi with al-Sadr's support.
Stepping up the pressure earlier this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw flew to Baghdad and demanded quick action to resolve the impasse. However, several Iraqi figures complained the U.S. and British intervention had prompted al-Jaafari's supporters to dig in their heels against what many Iraqis considered foreign interference.
President Bush also urged the Iraqis to "step up and form a unity government so that those who went to the polls to vote recognize that a government will be in place to respond to their needs."
It was unclear what prompted al-Jaafari to clear the way for a replacement, only a day after he had repeated his steadfast refusal to step down. His Shiite coalition had been reluctant to reconsider his nomination for fear of splintering the alliance.
Al-Maliki told reporters that "circumstances and updates had occurred" prompting al-Jaafari to refer the nomination back to the alliance "so that it take the appropriate decision."
Bassem Sharif, a lawmaker in the seven-party Shiite coalition, said, "The alliance is leaning toward changing (the nomination). The majority opinion is in favor of this."
Acting speaker Adnan Pachachi later said the Iraqi parliament session scheduled for Thursday would be delayed for two days to allow time "to intensify our efforts to overcome the obstacles," created after Sunnis and Kurds rejected al-Jaafari's nomination.
"I am confident we will succeed in forming the national unity government that all Iraqis are hoping for," Pachachi said.
The largest bloc in parliament, with 130 lawmakers, the Shiite alliance gets to name the prime minister subject to parliament approval. But the Shiites lack the votes in the 275-member parliament to guarantee their candidate's approval unless they have the backing of the Sunnis and Kurds, whom they need as partners to govern.
With the deadlock dragging on, more Shiite lawmakers have shown a willingness to dump him — though they have been reluctant to do so overtly and break the coalition.
Resolution of the prime minister issue could smooth the way for filling other posts, including the president, two vice presidents, parliament speaker and the two deputy speakers. The Shiites could block Sunni and Kurdish candidates for those positions in retaliation for the standoff over al-Jaafari.
Late Wednesday, the Sunnis decided to support Adnan al-Dulaimi for speaker, a post held by a Sunni Arab in the last parliament.
Thursday's parliament session had been intended to vote on the parliament speaker and his deputies. Lawmakers have met briefly only once since the election four months ago.
Sectarian tensions have been running high since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra and the reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and clerics that followed.
Gunmen attacked a Sunni mosque Thursday in the southern Baghdad district of Saidiya, sparking an hour-long clash before dawn with mosque guards and residents.
No casualties were reported, but the walls of the mosque and nearby houses were damaged, police 1st. Lt. Thair Mahmoud said.
The fighting came days after fierce battles in Baghdad's biggest Sunni neighborhood, Azamiyah, that underlined the deep distrust between the country's communities.
U.S. officials said the violence broke out Monday when attackers fired on Iraqi army patrols and a joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoints. At least 13 people were killed before calm was restored Tuesday.
But Azamiyah residents said they took up arms when Shiite militias and Interior Ministry commandos moved into the area. Many Sunnis consider those groups little more than death squads.
In a statement late Wednesday, the prime minister's office denied any ministry forces were involved, and said three insurgent groups provoked the clashes by purporting to be from Shiite militias and the ministry.
The statement identified the three insurgent groups as the Islamic Army of Iraq, the 1920 Revolution Brigades and al-Qaida in Iraq.
It said insurgents were making a new effort to infiltrate Baghdad "for armed displays and to destabilize the city."
In other violence reported by police Thursday:
• Gunmen killed two Sadrist militiamen in a drive-by shooting in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Um al-Maalif. Elsewhere, the bodies of two al-Sadr loyalists were found.
• Armed men broke into a bakery in Baghdad's Dora district and killed two Shiite workers.
• A former officer from Saddam Hussein's security forces was shot to death as he stood near his house in the Shiite city of Karbala.
• A roadside bomb hit a police patrol in the town of Khalis, killing two policemen and a civilian and wounding seven people.
• A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi policeman in Baqouba.
--------------------------
Citation: Qassim Abdul-Zahra. "Iraq PM Lets Shiites Consider Replacement," The Associated Press, 20 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060420/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
--------------------------
The Associated Press, 20 April 2006
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, under intense pressure to give up plans for a second term, agreed Thursday to let Shiite lawmakers reconsider his nomination, a step that could mark a breakthrough in the months-long effort to form a new government.
Key to al-Jaafari's change of heart was pressure from U.N. envoy Ashraf Qazi and his meetings Wednesday with the most powerful Shiite cleric in the country, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical cleric who has backed al-Jaafari, said Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman.
"There was a signal from Najaf," Othman said, referring to al-Sistani's office in the Shiite holy city. "Qazi's meetings with (al-Sistani) and al-Sadr were the chief reason that untied the knot."
Shiite legislators planned to meet Saturday to decide whether to replace al-Jaafari, who faced fierce opposition from Iraq's Kurdish and Sunni Arab parties.
A planned session of the Iraqi parliament aimed at trying to jump-start the formation of a new government also was delayed until Saturday.
The U.S. and Britain have been pressing hard for the Iraqis to break the deadlock over al-Jaafari's nomination that has persisted since Dec. 15 elections, preventing the creation of a government at a time of increasing sectarian violence.
Among those mentioned as replacements for al-Jaafari were Jawad al-Maliki, spokesman for the prime minister's Dawa party, and another leading Dawa politician Ali al-Adeeb.
Sunni and Kurdish parties blamed the incumbent for worsening the tensions — with Sunnis refusing to back al-Jaafari because his government allegedly allowed Shiite militias to infiltrate the Iraqi police and carry out reprisal killings against Sunnis.
Kurds also believed al-Jaafari had broken promises to support their claims in the oil-rich area of Kirkuk. The Kurds want to incorporate the area into their three-province self-governing region.
Al-Jaafari won the alliance nomination two months ago by only one vote, beating Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi with al-Sadr's support.
Stepping up the pressure earlier this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw flew to Baghdad and demanded quick action to resolve the impasse. However, several Iraqi figures complained the U.S. and British intervention had prompted al-Jaafari's supporters to dig in their heels against what many Iraqis considered foreign interference.
President Bush also urged the Iraqis to "step up and form a unity government so that those who went to the polls to vote recognize that a government will be in place to respond to their needs."
It was unclear what prompted al-Jaafari to clear the way for a replacement, only a day after he had repeated his steadfast refusal to step down. His Shiite coalition had been reluctant to reconsider his nomination for fear of splintering the alliance.
Al-Maliki told reporters that "circumstances and updates had occurred" prompting al-Jaafari to refer the nomination back to the alliance "so that it take the appropriate decision."
Bassem Sharif, a lawmaker in the seven-party Shiite coalition, said, "The alliance is leaning toward changing (the nomination). The majority opinion is in favor of this."
Acting speaker Adnan Pachachi later said the Iraqi parliament session scheduled for Thursday would be delayed for two days to allow time "to intensify our efforts to overcome the obstacles," created after Sunnis and Kurds rejected al-Jaafari's nomination.
"I am confident we will succeed in forming the national unity government that all Iraqis are hoping for," Pachachi said.
The largest bloc in parliament, with 130 lawmakers, the Shiite alliance gets to name the prime minister subject to parliament approval. But the Shiites lack the votes in the 275-member parliament to guarantee their candidate's approval unless they have the backing of the Sunnis and Kurds, whom they need as partners to govern.
With the deadlock dragging on, more Shiite lawmakers have shown a willingness to dump him — though they have been reluctant to do so overtly and break the coalition.
Resolution of the prime minister issue could smooth the way for filling other posts, including the president, two vice presidents, parliament speaker and the two deputy speakers. The Shiites could block Sunni and Kurdish candidates for those positions in retaliation for the standoff over al-Jaafari.
Late Wednesday, the Sunnis decided to support Adnan al-Dulaimi for speaker, a post held by a Sunni Arab in the last parliament.
Thursday's parliament session had been intended to vote on the parliament speaker and his deputies. Lawmakers have met briefly only once since the election four months ago.
Sectarian tensions have been running high since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra and the reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and clerics that followed.
Gunmen attacked a Sunni mosque Thursday in the southern Baghdad district of Saidiya, sparking an hour-long clash before dawn with mosque guards and residents.
No casualties were reported, but the walls of the mosque and nearby houses were damaged, police 1st. Lt. Thair Mahmoud said.
The fighting came days after fierce battles in Baghdad's biggest Sunni neighborhood, Azamiyah, that underlined the deep distrust between the country's communities.
U.S. officials said the violence broke out Monday when attackers fired on Iraqi army patrols and a joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoints. At least 13 people were killed before calm was restored Tuesday.
But Azamiyah residents said they took up arms when Shiite militias and Interior Ministry commandos moved into the area. Many Sunnis consider those groups little more than death squads.
In a statement late Wednesday, the prime minister's office denied any ministry forces were involved, and said three insurgent groups provoked the clashes by purporting to be from Shiite militias and the ministry.
The statement identified the three insurgent groups as the Islamic Army of Iraq, the 1920 Revolution Brigades and al-Qaida in Iraq.
It said insurgents were making a new effort to infiltrate Baghdad "for armed displays and to destabilize the city."
In other violence reported by police Thursday:
• Gunmen killed two Sadrist militiamen in a drive-by shooting in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Um al-Maalif. Elsewhere, the bodies of two al-Sadr loyalists were found.
• Armed men broke into a bakery in Baghdad's Dora district and killed two Shiite workers.
• A former officer from Saddam Hussein's security forces was shot to death as he stood near his house in the Shiite city of Karbala.
• A roadside bomb hit a police patrol in the town of Khalis, killing two policemen and a civilian and wounding seven people.
• A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi policeman in Baqouba.
--------------------------
Citation: Qassim Abdul-Zahra. "Iraq PM Lets Shiites Consider Replacement," The Associated Press, 20 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060420/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
--------------------------
19 April 2006
The other insurgency
Overshadowed by Iraq, the war in Afghanistan has nearly faded from view. But violence there is on the rise, and things may be about to get bloodier.
By Drake Bennett
The Boston Globe, 16 April 2006
LAST MONDAY NIGHT, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government hosted what it billed as a rematch between John Deutch, a former director of Central Intelligence, and William Kristol, founding editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine. In October of 2002, the two had met to dispute whether the US should invade Iraq. This time they were arguing over whether the time had come to pull out.
Bob Graham, the former Democratic governor of Florida and US senator, was in the audience. Asked afterward what he thought of the proceedings, Graham, who had served for two years as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned the conversation away from Iraq. “The elephant in the room," he said, is the question of where, in the event of even a partial pullout, the freed-up troops will go. Graham himself didn't think they'd necessarily be coming home-or, for that matter, marching over the border into Iran. “They could be going to Afghanistan," he said.
At least, that's where they could be going if he were running things, he specified in an interview the following day. “I think we have been understaffed in Afghanistan since about December of 2001, when we began to pull troops out to prepare to send them into Iraq."
As a senator, Graham voted against the Oct. 11, 2002, resolution giving Bush the authority to go to war to topple Saddam Hussein. As he put it at the time, “Iraq is a primary distraction from achieving our goals or reducing the threat of international terrorism." It's little surprise, then, that today he worries about Afghanistan, whose lawless southern border with Pakistan is still a Taliban and Al Qaeda stronghold.
And yet, overshadowed by news of the ongoing violence and precarious political situation in Iraq-and, increasingly, the menace posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions-Afghanistan has largely faded from view.
That may soon change. Afghanistan has its own violent insurgency-led by the Taliban and aided by dissident warlords-and it has lately intensified. As the country's harsh winter gives way to warmer weather, the Taliban is promising to make this spring and summer particularly bloody. “We will intensify suicide attacks to the extent that we will make the land beneath their feet like a flaming oven," said Taliban leader Mullah Omar (the same Omar who led the Taliban regime destroyed by the US in October of 2001) in a recent statement.
Omar's may not be an empty boast. Suicide attacks have quadrupled in the past year, and attacks by improvised explosive devices have doubled. Steven Simon, a former counter-terrorism expert at the National Security Council and coauthor of “The Age of Sacred Terror," recently returned from a visit to Afghanistan, and he thinks worse is to come. “There will likely be a crescendo of violence, focused largely on Kabul, this summer," he says. And in the country's unruly south, it's widely suspected that insurgents will try to test the NATO forces that are moving in to take over from more seasoned US military troops.
Superficially, the situation in Afghanistan already shares some broad outlines with Iraq: a fragile government, representing three ethnic groups with a history of enmity-in Iraq, Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, and Kurds; in Afghanistan, Tajiks, Pashtuns, and Shia Hazaras-threatened by an insurgency composed of elements from the deposed regime and foreign jihadis. Plus an American commitment, in terms of troops and money, that many feel falls short of what's necessary to truly stabilize and rebuild the country.
Despite these similarities, however, Afghanistan has only recently begun to see a rise in the sort of violence that in Iraq has become familiar. And while there's some disagreement among observers as to whether this spike in violence represents the Afghan insurgency's final stand, or the early stages of an escalation into something more incendiary, a closer look suggests that the US has had advantages in Afghanistan that it lacks in Iraq-advantages that the Bush administration and the newly formed Afghan government may be squandering.
“Insurgencies tend to arise out of a mix of motives: ethnic, sectarian, ideological, economic," says Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow in Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Iraq's insurgency, he argues, “is more a matter of ethnic and sectarian interests." It is, in other words, a civil war, with different ethnic and religious groups each fighting to dominate the other.
Afghanistan is something different, he argues. “It's more like the Vietnam model," he says. He means it to be an encouraging comparison. In Afghanistan, “the conflict is partly ethnic, but largely ideological." The Taliban, though largely Pashtun, is not just an ethnic militia, but like the Maoist Vietcong “has a particular conception of what government should look like for everyone."
That particular conception, based on fundamentalist Islam, has limited appeal in Afghanistan. While the new government, led by President Hamid Karzai, is still weak, with little authority beyond Kabul, the Taliban and the handful of foreign jihadis fighting alongside them are widely hated. A poll of 2,000 Afghans conducted last November and December by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 93 percent had a favorable opinion of Karzai, while 8 percent had a favorable opinion of the Taliban.
War-weariness, too, has limited the support for the insurgency. “Afghanistan has spent 20 years in civil war," points out James Dobbins, former US special envoy to Afghanistan, “and the vast bulk of the population and the leadership are anxious not to go back into it." The presence of US and NATO troops in the country has coincided with a period of relative calm, and, unlike Iraqis, Afghans by and large support the continued presence of American troops in their country. The same recent PIPA poll found that 83 percent had a favorable opinion of the US forces in the country and 66 percent favored expanding NATO peacekeeping forces beyond Kabul.
To some observers, such factors, taken together, are reason for a guarded optimism, despite the uptick in violence. Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Millen served in Afghanistan and is now an analyst at the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute. He believes the number of attacks is a “false measurement" of the insurgency's power. “You have to look at the number of cities under their control," he asserts. “The only way it can grow is through control of the people. I don't think there are any major cities that the insurgents definitely have. They may have a scattering of villages."
Steven Simon argues that the spike in attacks might even be a sign of the insurgency's desperation. “From one perspective, there's a view that the Taliban and its militant supporters see the coming year as their last best shot at destabilizing the Karzai government." The longer the current government stays in power, the greater its legitimacy, and the greater the allegiance it can claim from Afghans. “That's why you're seeing these really audacious suicide bombers in Kabul," Simon suggests.
Few observers, however, would characterize the Karzai government as the picture of stability just yet. And while Afghanistan's ethnic and sectarian divisions are not as bloody as Iraq's, they are nonetheless sharp. Afghans may like Karzai, but they still tend to vote along ethnic lines. Karzai owed his win in the 2004 presidential election to the support of his fellow Pashtuns, who make up a majority of the country. His two strongest opponents, Yunus Qanooni and Mohammad Mohaqiq, drew their votes from their fellow Tajiks and Hazaras, respectively. And according to Larry Goodson, a professor at the Army War College and longtime Afghanistan scholar, there are areas, especially in the country's southwest, where ethnic and religious bonds between the populace and antigovernment insurgents are stronger than any sense of obligation to the Kabul-based government.
As Goodson sees it, some of the recent increase in violence may stem from the fact that, under the 2001 Bonn accords-which laid out the gradual, step-by-step process of forming an Afghan constitution and government-many of the thornier political issues, such as the formation of a parliament, were only recently addressed. Many of the losers in last December's parliamentary elections, Goodson says, “went home mad, and in Afghanistan going home mad is different from in Indiana."
“We're likely to get a greater ethnicization of politics in the months and year or so ahead," he says. “Some of that will be violent."
Moreover, according to Barnett Rubin, a former UN special adviser for Afghanistan now at the Center on International Cooperation, the combination of the Karzai government's continued weakness and continued American fecklessness is starting to alienate Afghans. The American policy on Afghan heroin production, for example-it's estimated the industry makes up more than half the country's gross domestic product-has angered many of the poppy farmers who make their living from the drug trade. First, American forces allowed the trade to flourish, then, in a reversal, started a widespread poppy eradication program.
The heroin trade is just one of several causes for worry. Afghanistan is still awash in weaponry from its decades of war, and it still has a neighbor, Pakistan, that functions as a base of operations for the Taliban. And it remains one of the poorest countries in the world. “The United States has set aside inadequate resources for both Iraq and Afghanistan," Rubin says, “but it's far more inadequate in Afghanistan." Many promised infrastructure projects have not materialized, and the latest Department of Defense supplemental budget slashes aid to Afghanistan nearly to zero.
America's inability to quash the Iraq insurgency may be bleeding over into Afghanistan, as well. As Goodson points out, during the Soviet occupation, and then under the Taliban's rule, “Afghanistan used to be Jihad University," a magnet for young Arabs with jihadist ambitions. The US invasion ended that. But now the trend may have reversed as suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices, mainstays of the Iraqi insurgency, have become increasingly common in Afghanistan.
“Arabs used to go to Afghanistan to train," says Rubin. “Now the Afghan insurgency is learning from the new training ground, which is Iraq."
--------------------
Citation: Drake Bennett. "The other insurgency," The Boston Globe, 16 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/04/16/the_other_insurgency/
--------------------
By Drake Bennett
The Boston Globe, 16 April 2006
LAST MONDAY NIGHT, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government hosted what it billed as a rematch between John Deutch, a former director of Central Intelligence, and William Kristol, founding editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine. In October of 2002, the two had met to dispute whether the US should invade Iraq. This time they were arguing over whether the time had come to pull out.
Bob Graham, the former Democratic governor of Florida and US senator, was in the audience. Asked afterward what he thought of the proceedings, Graham, who had served for two years as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned the conversation away from Iraq. “The elephant in the room," he said, is the question of where, in the event of even a partial pullout, the freed-up troops will go. Graham himself didn't think they'd necessarily be coming home-or, for that matter, marching over the border into Iran. “They could be going to Afghanistan," he said.
At least, that's where they could be going if he were running things, he specified in an interview the following day. “I think we have been understaffed in Afghanistan since about December of 2001, when we began to pull troops out to prepare to send them into Iraq."
As a senator, Graham voted against the Oct. 11, 2002, resolution giving Bush the authority to go to war to topple Saddam Hussein. As he put it at the time, “Iraq is a primary distraction from achieving our goals or reducing the threat of international terrorism." It's little surprise, then, that today he worries about Afghanistan, whose lawless southern border with Pakistan is still a Taliban and Al Qaeda stronghold.
And yet, overshadowed by news of the ongoing violence and precarious political situation in Iraq-and, increasingly, the menace posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions-Afghanistan has largely faded from view.
That may soon change. Afghanistan has its own violent insurgency-led by the Taliban and aided by dissident warlords-and it has lately intensified. As the country's harsh winter gives way to warmer weather, the Taliban is promising to make this spring and summer particularly bloody. “We will intensify suicide attacks to the extent that we will make the land beneath their feet like a flaming oven," said Taliban leader Mullah Omar (the same Omar who led the Taliban regime destroyed by the US in October of 2001) in a recent statement.
Omar's may not be an empty boast. Suicide attacks have quadrupled in the past year, and attacks by improvised explosive devices have doubled. Steven Simon, a former counter-terrorism expert at the National Security Council and coauthor of “The Age of Sacred Terror," recently returned from a visit to Afghanistan, and he thinks worse is to come. “There will likely be a crescendo of violence, focused largely on Kabul, this summer," he says. And in the country's unruly south, it's widely suspected that insurgents will try to test the NATO forces that are moving in to take over from more seasoned US military troops.
Superficially, the situation in Afghanistan already shares some broad outlines with Iraq: a fragile government, representing three ethnic groups with a history of enmity-in Iraq, Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, and Kurds; in Afghanistan, Tajiks, Pashtuns, and Shia Hazaras-threatened by an insurgency composed of elements from the deposed regime and foreign jihadis. Plus an American commitment, in terms of troops and money, that many feel falls short of what's necessary to truly stabilize and rebuild the country.
Despite these similarities, however, Afghanistan has only recently begun to see a rise in the sort of violence that in Iraq has become familiar. And while there's some disagreement among observers as to whether this spike in violence represents the Afghan insurgency's final stand, or the early stages of an escalation into something more incendiary, a closer look suggests that the US has had advantages in Afghanistan that it lacks in Iraq-advantages that the Bush administration and the newly formed Afghan government may be squandering.
“Insurgencies tend to arise out of a mix of motives: ethnic, sectarian, ideological, economic," says Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow in Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Iraq's insurgency, he argues, “is more a matter of ethnic and sectarian interests." It is, in other words, a civil war, with different ethnic and religious groups each fighting to dominate the other.
Afghanistan is something different, he argues. “It's more like the Vietnam model," he says. He means it to be an encouraging comparison. In Afghanistan, “the conflict is partly ethnic, but largely ideological." The Taliban, though largely Pashtun, is not just an ethnic militia, but like the Maoist Vietcong “has a particular conception of what government should look like for everyone."
That particular conception, based on fundamentalist Islam, has limited appeal in Afghanistan. While the new government, led by President Hamid Karzai, is still weak, with little authority beyond Kabul, the Taliban and the handful of foreign jihadis fighting alongside them are widely hated. A poll of 2,000 Afghans conducted last November and December by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 93 percent had a favorable opinion of Karzai, while 8 percent had a favorable opinion of the Taliban.
War-weariness, too, has limited the support for the insurgency. “Afghanistan has spent 20 years in civil war," points out James Dobbins, former US special envoy to Afghanistan, “and the vast bulk of the population and the leadership are anxious not to go back into it." The presence of US and NATO troops in the country has coincided with a period of relative calm, and, unlike Iraqis, Afghans by and large support the continued presence of American troops in their country. The same recent PIPA poll found that 83 percent had a favorable opinion of the US forces in the country and 66 percent favored expanding NATO peacekeeping forces beyond Kabul.
To some observers, such factors, taken together, are reason for a guarded optimism, despite the uptick in violence. Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Millen served in Afghanistan and is now an analyst at the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute. He believes the number of attacks is a “false measurement" of the insurgency's power. “You have to look at the number of cities under their control," he asserts. “The only way it can grow is through control of the people. I don't think there are any major cities that the insurgents definitely have. They may have a scattering of villages."
Steven Simon argues that the spike in attacks might even be a sign of the insurgency's desperation. “From one perspective, there's a view that the Taliban and its militant supporters see the coming year as their last best shot at destabilizing the Karzai government." The longer the current government stays in power, the greater its legitimacy, and the greater the allegiance it can claim from Afghans. “That's why you're seeing these really audacious suicide bombers in Kabul," Simon suggests.
Few observers, however, would characterize the Karzai government as the picture of stability just yet. And while Afghanistan's ethnic and sectarian divisions are not as bloody as Iraq's, they are nonetheless sharp. Afghans may like Karzai, but they still tend to vote along ethnic lines. Karzai owed his win in the 2004 presidential election to the support of his fellow Pashtuns, who make up a majority of the country. His two strongest opponents, Yunus Qanooni and Mohammad Mohaqiq, drew their votes from their fellow Tajiks and Hazaras, respectively. And according to Larry Goodson, a professor at the Army War College and longtime Afghanistan scholar, there are areas, especially in the country's southwest, where ethnic and religious bonds between the populace and antigovernment insurgents are stronger than any sense of obligation to the Kabul-based government.
As Goodson sees it, some of the recent increase in violence may stem from the fact that, under the 2001 Bonn accords-which laid out the gradual, step-by-step process of forming an Afghan constitution and government-many of the thornier political issues, such as the formation of a parliament, were only recently addressed. Many of the losers in last December's parliamentary elections, Goodson says, “went home mad, and in Afghanistan going home mad is different from in Indiana."
“We're likely to get a greater ethnicization of politics in the months and year or so ahead," he says. “Some of that will be violent."
Moreover, according to Barnett Rubin, a former UN special adviser for Afghanistan now at the Center on International Cooperation, the combination of the Karzai government's continued weakness and continued American fecklessness is starting to alienate Afghans. The American policy on Afghan heroin production, for example-it's estimated the industry makes up more than half the country's gross domestic product-has angered many of the poppy farmers who make their living from the drug trade. First, American forces allowed the trade to flourish, then, in a reversal, started a widespread poppy eradication program.
The heroin trade is just one of several causes for worry. Afghanistan is still awash in weaponry from its decades of war, and it still has a neighbor, Pakistan, that functions as a base of operations for the Taliban. And it remains one of the poorest countries in the world. “The United States has set aside inadequate resources for both Iraq and Afghanistan," Rubin says, “but it's far more inadequate in Afghanistan." Many promised infrastructure projects have not materialized, and the latest Department of Defense supplemental budget slashes aid to Afghanistan nearly to zero.
America's inability to quash the Iraq insurgency may be bleeding over into Afghanistan, as well. As Goodson points out, during the Soviet occupation, and then under the Taliban's rule, “Afghanistan used to be Jihad University," a magnet for young Arabs with jihadist ambitions. The US invasion ended that. But now the trend may have reversed as suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices, mainstays of the Iraqi insurgency, have become increasingly common in Afghanistan.
“Arabs used to go to Afghanistan to train," says Rubin. “Now the Afghan insurgency is learning from the new training ground, which is Iraq."
--------------------
Citation: Drake Bennett. "The other insurgency," The Boston Globe, 16 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/04/16/the_other_insurgency/
--------------------
Iraq's Kurds Aim for Own Oil Ministry
The regional assembly may vote as early as next week on creating the agency. Setting it up could further destabilize the divided nation.
By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times, 19 April 2006
BAGHDAD — Leaders of Iraq's Kurdish north have unveiled a controversial plan to consolidate their hold on the region's future petroleum resources, raising concerns about how the ethnically divided nation will share its oil revenue.
The Kurdish parliament will be asked to vote on the creation of a Ministry of Natural Resources that would regulate potentially lucrative energy projects in newly discovered oil and natural gas fields within the three provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The new ministry, if established, would be another step in the Kurds' gradual retreat from the Baghdad government, as well as a potentially destabilizing development in a country already on the verge of fragmenting along ethnic and religious lines.
"They have the right to make a decision in their territory, but it is dangerous," said Mohammed Aboudi, a divisional director-general of the national Oil Ministry and a government advisor. "They are starting to search for oil without any consultation with the central government. What if Basra does the same, or any other province?"
Interim Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Uloum, advised of the proposal, warned against unilateral decisions on oil.
"At the end of the day, it's important to have coordination and communication, especially with oil, because it's a very sensitive issue," Bahr Uloum told the Los Angeles Times.
Long oppressed and marginalized under Arab governments in Baghdad, Kurds pushed aggressively for a constitution that limits the central government's power and gives regional officials the authority to exploit newly discovered oil and gas fields.
In a controversial move in November, a Norwegian energy firm began drilling for oil in northern Kurdistan. The regional government had signed the deal without seeking approval from Baghdad.
The constitution is deliberately vague about how future oil profit is to be distributed nationally, leaving a highly volatile issue unresolved.
A vote on the proposed Kurdistan Ministry of Natural Resources could come as early as Monday in the Kurdish regional parliament, which is debating a plan to reunify and streamline the two halves of the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Kurds and their advocates characterized the proposed regional organ as a slight elevation in status to a Cabinet-level post for the state-owned oil company that manages such matters and dismissed concerns in the capital as overblown.
"Forming a new ministry is an arrangement that will help increase oil production," said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who has advised the Kurds. "If oil production increases in Alaska, it may be that the Alaskans get a major part of the benefits, but Alaska is still part of the U.S."
Besides, control of the oil under their soil is their birthright, said Fadhel Merani, an Irbil-based official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, one of two political groups controlling the Kurdish region
"People have the right to express what they feel," he said in a telephone interview, "but they have to understand other ethnic groups' feelings also, especially those who suffered in the past."
But though few contest the legality of the Kurdish proposal to create a parallel agency, Iraqi officials argue that doing so now, without coordination with the national Oil Ministry and amid a mounting national crisis over the failure so far to form a government, risks exacerbating already violent ethnic passions and fueling the perception that the country is coming apart.
"There is still a central government," Aboudi said. "There is a Ministry of Oil. Yes, there is no political stability in Iraq. It doesn't mean we leave all laws and regulations and every region does what it wants."
Iraq's 4 million Kurds, nestled in a mountainous, Switzerland-sized region that has been autonomous since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, have been charting their own course for a while.
Kurds fought side by side with U.S. special forces three years ago as they stormed into the oil-rich cities of Kirkuk and Khaneqin during invasion of Iraq. With a language and culture distinct from Iraq's Arab majority, Kurds have isolated themselves in their relatively safe enclave, looking upon the violence ravaging the rest of the country with some detachment.
Kurds and their supporters say the creation of a new ministry is well within the parameters of the constitution.
"There are people who haven't faced the reality of what has gone on in Iraq," Galbraith said. "They still think that the old central state is going to be put back together again. It's not going to happen in Kurdistan. It's not going to happen in the south. It's not going to happen in Baghdad."
Each half of the Kurdish region, which split apart in a 1990s civil war between forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, and the KDP, has its own ministries of defense, interior, health and education. The Iraqi Constitution, ratified in an Oct. 15 referendum, gives Kurdistan the authority to wheel and deal with the international petroleum industry within Irbil, Sulaymaniya and Dahuk, where Kurds make up more than 95% of the population.
But Kurds also lay claim to much of the region around Kirkuk, which is said to contain up to 40% of Iraq's proven oil reserves. A referendum on the disputed area's future is to take place by the end of 2007.
Officials in Baghdad, including allies of the Kurds, said they were blindsided by news of the proposed ministry.
"We know what the ambitions of the Kurds are," said Iyad Samarrai, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab group. "But everybody agreed to make such moves within the [national] political process."
Times researcher John L. Jackson in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
----------------------------
Citation: Borzou Daragahi. "Iraq's Kurds Aim for Own Oil Ministry," Los Angeles Times, 19 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-oil19apr19,1,2131945.story?coll=la-headlines-world
----------------------------
By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times, 19 April 2006
BAGHDAD — Leaders of Iraq's Kurdish north have unveiled a controversial plan to consolidate their hold on the region's future petroleum resources, raising concerns about how the ethnically divided nation will share its oil revenue.
The Kurdish parliament will be asked to vote on the creation of a Ministry of Natural Resources that would regulate potentially lucrative energy projects in newly discovered oil and natural gas fields within the three provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The new ministry, if established, would be another step in the Kurds' gradual retreat from the Baghdad government, as well as a potentially destabilizing development in a country already on the verge of fragmenting along ethnic and religious lines.
"They have the right to make a decision in their territory, but it is dangerous," said Mohammed Aboudi, a divisional director-general of the national Oil Ministry and a government advisor. "They are starting to search for oil without any consultation with the central government. What if Basra does the same, or any other province?"
Interim Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Uloum, advised of the proposal, warned against unilateral decisions on oil.
"At the end of the day, it's important to have coordination and communication, especially with oil, because it's a very sensitive issue," Bahr Uloum told the Los Angeles Times.
Long oppressed and marginalized under Arab governments in Baghdad, Kurds pushed aggressively for a constitution that limits the central government's power and gives regional officials the authority to exploit newly discovered oil and gas fields.
In a controversial move in November, a Norwegian energy firm began drilling for oil in northern Kurdistan. The regional government had signed the deal without seeking approval from Baghdad.
The constitution is deliberately vague about how future oil profit is to be distributed nationally, leaving a highly volatile issue unresolved.
A vote on the proposed Kurdistan Ministry of Natural Resources could come as early as Monday in the Kurdish regional parliament, which is debating a plan to reunify and streamline the two halves of the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Kurds and their advocates characterized the proposed regional organ as a slight elevation in status to a Cabinet-level post for the state-owned oil company that manages such matters and dismissed concerns in the capital as overblown.
"Forming a new ministry is an arrangement that will help increase oil production," said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who has advised the Kurds. "If oil production increases in Alaska, it may be that the Alaskans get a major part of the benefits, but Alaska is still part of the U.S."
Besides, control of the oil under their soil is their birthright, said Fadhel Merani, an Irbil-based official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, one of two political groups controlling the Kurdish region
"People have the right to express what they feel," he said in a telephone interview, "but they have to understand other ethnic groups' feelings also, especially those who suffered in the past."
But though few contest the legality of the Kurdish proposal to create a parallel agency, Iraqi officials argue that doing so now, without coordination with the national Oil Ministry and amid a mounting national crisis over the failure so far to form a government, risks exacerbating already violent ethnic passions and fueling the perception that the country is coming apart.
"There is still a central government," Aboudi said. "There is a Ministry of Oil. Yes, there is no political stability in Iraq. It doesn't mean we leave all laws and regulations and every region does what it wants."
Iraq's 4 million Kurds, nestled in a mountainous, Switzerland-sized region that has been autonomous since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, have been charting their own course for a while.
Kurds fought side by side with U.S. special forces three years ago as they stormed into the oil-rich cities of Kirkuk and Khaneqin during invasion of Iraq. With a language and culture distinct from Iraq's Arab majority, Kurds have isolated themselves in their relatively safe enclave, looking upon the violence ravaging the rest of the country with some detachment.
Kurds and their supporters say the creation of a new ministry is well within the parameters of the constitution.
"There are people who haven't faced the reality of what has gone on in Iraq," Galbraith said. "They still think that the old central state is going to be put back together again. It's not going to happen in Kurdistan. It's not going to happen in the south. It's not going to happen in Baghdad."
Each half of the Kurdish region, which split apart in a 1990s civil war between forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, and the KDP, has its own ministries of defense, interior, health and education. The Iraqi Constitution, ratified in an Oct. 15 referendum, gives Kurdistan the authority to wheel and deal with the international petroleum industry within Irbil, Sulaymaniya and Dahuk, where Kurds make up more than 95% of the population.
But Kurds also lay claim to much of the region around Kirkuk, which is said to contain up to 40% of Iraq's proven oil reserves. A referendum on the disputed area's future is to take place by the end of 2007.
Officials in Baghdad, including allies of the Kurds, said they were blindsided by news of the proposed ministry.
"We know what the ambitions of the Kurds are," said Iyad Samarrai, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab group. "But everybody agreed to make such moves within the [national] political process."
Times researcher John L. Jackson in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
----------------------------
Citation: Borzou Daragahi. "Iraq's Kurds Aim for Own Oil Ministry," Los Angeles Times, 19 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-oil19apr19,1,2131945.story?coll=la-headlines-world
----------------------------
18 April 2006
Pressure mounts on Blair as British fatalities reach 100
By Kim Sengupta and Terri Judd
The Independent, UK, 01 February 2006
He is Corporal Gordon Alexander Pritchard, of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, another casualty of war. His death yesterday was a grim milestone - the 100th British soldier to die in Iraq.
The 31-year-old, who was killed by a roadside bomb, had three children. He was a veteran of Bosnia and Kosovo. His brother Peter and father, Bill, were soldiers in the same regiment.
Last night, as his distraught wife, Julie-Anne, was being comforted by the family in Edinburgh, the death sparked protests once again over this most bitterly divisive of conflicts, with fresh demands for British troops to be pulled out of Iraq. A cross-party group of MPs renewed their calls for an inquiry into Tony Blair's conduct in taking Britain into the war.
Three other soldiers were injured, one seriously, when their Land Rover was blasted by an explosive device in the early hours of yesterday while on a routine supply-run, killing Cpl Pritchard, who was leading a convoy of three vehicles. The wounded were treated at Shaiba medical facility south of Basra.
Cpl Pritchard's parents, Bill and Jenny, said: "He was the epitome of a modern professional soldier. He was a well-trained, well-motivated soldier serving in a regiment that he was extremely proud of, as did his father and elder brother. He was a loving son and a very proud family man and he'll be very deeply missed by us all."
The men were ambushed near the Ten Platforms Port at Umm Qasr, south of Basra, which is held up by British authorities as an example of stability, with a deep-water harbour that is important for the future prosperity of "liberated" Iraq.
The former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle said the death of the 100th British soldier in Iraq was "testament to a war that should never have been embarked upon".
He urged Mr Blair to make it clear in Prime Minister's Questions today that Britain's military presence in Iraq is not open-ended. "There should be a clear statement of intent that the deployment of troops is indeterminate," he said.
The recriminations came as the Prime Minister was hosting an emer- gency international summit on Afghanistan, a country left on the brink of disintegration after another US and British invasion, before the "war on terror" moved to Iraq.
Mr Blair, John Reid, the Defence Secretary, and other government ministers expressed their condolences over the deaths of Cpl Pritchard and others killed in the conflict. But they made it clear that the deaths would not lead to a withdrawal from Iraq or stop the deployment of almost 6,000 British troops to Afghanistan.
Opening the summit on Afghanistan Mr Blair said: "The British troops who go to Afghanistan face dangers there, as they do in Iraq. We are determined to see this through. This is a struggle for freedom and moderation and for democracy. It's a tragedy when we lose any soldier. But we have to understand why it's important that we see this through. It is important because what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq is that the people of those countries want to leave behind terrorism and extremism and they want to embrace democracy."
Mr Reid said the death of Cpl Pritchard was cause for reflection on the role Britain's armed forces had played in "lifting the burden of tyranny" and bringing stability.
Reg Keys, whose son was one of six Royal Military Policemen killed at Majr al-Kabir, in Maysan province, and who stood against the Prime Minister in the general election, said: "We have had 100 chances to learn our lesson. It just goes on and on. The lads are dying for a falsehood. As long as we are there, we will see a steady trickle of coffins coming back home. The military and political leaders should hang their heads in shame."
Anti-war demonstrators, including six MPs, read out the names of the British dead in Iraq and placed a hundred wooden crosses in their memory at Parliament Square. A similar act recently led to the arrests of a young man and a woman, but this time the police did not intervene.
Deaths in Iraq
COALITION MILITARYDEAD:
US 2,245
UK 100
Italy 27
Ukraine 18
Poland 17
Bulgaria 13
Spain 11
Slovakia 3
El Salvador 2
Estonia 2
Netherlands 2
Thailand 2
Denmark 2
Hungary 1
Kazakhstan 1
Australia 1
Latvia 1
IRAQI DEATHS
Iraqi military, security and police deaths since official end of the war in June 2003 4,059
Iraqi civilians since end of war 28,287 - 31,891
OTHERS:
Contractors (various nationalities) 353
Journalists 79 dead 2missing
Sources: Iraq body count, The Brookings Institute, www.icasualties.org, Reporters Without Borders, Project on Defense Alternatives
---------------------
Citation: Kim Sengupta and Terri Judd. "Pressure mounts on Blair as British fatalities reach 100," The Independent, UK, 01 February 2006.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article342414.ece
---------------------
The Independent, UK, 01 February 2006
He is Corporal Gordon Alexander Pritchard, of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, another casualty of war. His death yesterday was a grim milestone - the 100th British soldier to die in Iraq.
The 31-year-old, who was killed by a roadside bomb, had three children. He was a veteran of Bosnia and Kosovo. His brother Peter and father, Bill, were soldiers in the same regiment.
Last night, as his distraught wife, Julie-Anne, was being comforted by the family in Edinburgh, the death sparked protests once again over this most bitterly divisive of conflicts, with fresh demands for British troops to be pulled out of Iraq. A cross-party group of MPs renewed their calls for an inquiry into Tony Blair's conduct in taking Britain into the war.
Three other soldiers were injured, one seriously, when their Land Rover was blasted by an explosive device in the early hours of yesterday while on a routine supply-run, killing Cpl Pritchard, who was leading a convoy of three vehicles. The wounded were treated at Shaiba medical facility south of Basra.
Cpl Pritchard's parents, Bill and Jenny, said: "He was the epitome of a modern professional soldier. He was a well-trained, well-motivated soldier serving in a regiment that he was extremely proud of, as did his father and elder brother. He was a loving son and a very proud family man and he'll be very deeply missed by us all."
The men were ambushed near the Ten Platforms Port at Umm Qasr, south of Basra, which is held up by British authorities as an example of stability, with a deep-water harbour that is important for the future prosperity of "liberated" Iraq.
The former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle said the death of the 100th British soldier in Iraq was "testament to a war that should never have been embarked upon".
He urged Mr Blair to make it clear in Prime Minister's Questions today that Britain's military presence in Iraq is not open-ended. "There should be a clear statement of intent that the deployment of troops is indeterminate," he said.
The recriminations came as the Prime Minister was hosting an emer- gency international summit on Afghanistan, a country left on the brink of disintegration after another US and British invasion, before the "war on terror" moved to Iraq.
Mr Blair, John Reid, the Defence Secretary, and other government ministers expressed their condolences over the deaths of Cpl Pritchard and others killed in the conflict. But they made it clear that the deaths would not lead to a withdrawal from Iraq or stop the deployment of almost 6,000 British troops to Afghanistan.
Opening the summit on Afghanistan Mr Blair said: "The British troops who go to Afghanistan face dangers there, as they do in Iraq. We are determined to see this through. This is a struggle for freedom and moderation and for democracy. It's a tragedy when we lose any soldier. But we have to understand why it's important that we see this through. It is important because what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq is that the people of those countries want to leave behind terrorism and extremism and they want to embrace democracy."
Mr Reid said the death of Cpl Pritchard was cause for reflection on the role Britain's armed forces had played in "lifting the burden of tyranny" and bringing stability.
Reg Keys, whose son was one of six Royal Military Policemen killed at Majr al-Kabir, in Maysan province, and who stood against the Prime Minister in the general election, said: "We have had 100 chances to learn our lesson. It just goes on and on. The lads are dying for a falsehood. As long as we are there, we will see a steady trickle of coffins coming back home. The military and political leaders should hang their heads in shame."
Anti-war demonstrators, including six MPs, read out the names of the British dead in Iraq and placed a hundred wooden crosses in their memory at Parliament Square. A similar act recently led to the arrests of a young man and a woman, but this time the police did not intervene.
Deaths in Iraq
COALITION MILITARYDEAD:
US 2,245
UK 100
Italy 27
Ukraine 18
Poland 17
Bulgaria 13
Spain 11
Slovakia 3
El Salvador 2
Estonia 2
Netherlands 2
Thailand 2
Denmark 2
Hungary 1
Kazakhstan 1
Australia 1
Latvia 1
IRAQI DEATHS
Iraqi military, security and police deaths since official end of the war in June 2003 4,059
Iraqi civilians since end of war 28,287 - 31,891
OTHERS:
Contractors (various nationalities) 353
Journalists 79 dead 2missing
Sources: Iraq body count, The Brookings Institute, www.icasualties.org, Reporters Without Borders, Project on Defense Alternatives
---------------------
Citation: Kim Sengupta and Terri Judd. "Pressure mounts on Blair as British fatalities reach 100," The Independent, UK, 01 February 2006.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article342414.ece
---------------------
'Something Has to Give' in Pentagon Spending
By Jim Lobe
Inter Press Service, 07 February 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2006 (IPS/GIN) -- While the Pentagon emerged as the big winner Monday among U.S. government agencies in next year's budget sweepstakes, its failure to choose among the threats it says it must defend the country against may prove costly in the long run, both financially and operationally, according to analysts here.
Although a major part of the proposed 7 percent increase in the Department of Defense's (DOD) budget is designed to boost its counter-insurgency and unconventional warfare capabilities for the "war on terror," the budget also includes significantly more money for the development and procurement of expensive new weapons systems to cope with potential future threats, particularly China.
The costs of doing both, however, are putting a major strain on the U.S. Treasury at a time when popular social spending is being cut back in the face of an anticipated record federal deficit next year.
"Rather than making some hard decisions about future weapons systems, the DOD has essentially deferred to long-standing service interests," said Carl Conetta, director of the Boston-based Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA), in reference to pet weapons projects of the different branches of the military.
"I think there's going to be a reckoning because, with the budget deficit, the rebuilding of New Orleans, the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact that (President) Bush wants to keep his tax cuts, something is going to have to give in the Pentagon budget over the next few years," warned William Hartung, a senior defense analyst at the World Policy Institute in New York.
Under Bush's proposed 2007 budget, the DOD will be allocated more than $440 billion, an amount that does not include an additional $120 billion the administration plans to spend on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through next year.
Indeed, the Pentagon's 2007 budget may exceed the combined military spending of all other countries next year. In 2004, the last year for which statistics were available, Washington accounted for 47 percent of global military expenditures, which were just over $1 trillion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The new budget request calls for a 15 percent increase in the number of special-operations forces to some 66,000 by 2011. It followed last week's release of the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a planning document that is supposed to show how strategic priorities are aligned with the agency's planned budgets and assets.
----------------------
Citation: Jim Lobe. "'Something Has to Give' in Pentagon Spending," Inter Press Service, 07 February 2006.
Original URL: http://www.blackenterprise.com/yb/ybopen.asp?section=ybng&story_id=89170890&ID=blackenterprise
----------------------
Inter Press Service, 07 February 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2006 (IPS/GIN) -- While the Pentagon emerged as the big winner Monday among U.S. government agencies in next year's budget sweepstakes, its failure to choose among the threats it says it must defend the country against may prove costly in the long run, both financially and operationally, according to analysts here.
Although a major part of the proposed 7 percent increase in the Department of Defense's (DOD) budget is designed to boost its counter-insurgency and unconventional warfare capabilities for the "war on terror," the budget also includes significantly more money for the development and procurement of expensive new weapons systems to cope with potential future threats, particularly China.
The costs of doing both, however, are putting a major strain on the U.S. Treasury at a time when popular social spending is being cut back in the face of an anticipated record federal deficit next year.
"Rather than making some hard decisions about future weapons systems, the DOD has essentially deferred to long-standing service interests," said Carl Conetta, director of the Boston-based Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA), in reference to pet weapons projects of the different branches of the military.
"I think there's going to be a reckoning because, with the budget deficit, the rebuilding of New Orleans, the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact that (President) Bush wants to keep his tax cuts, something is going to have to give in the Pentagon budget over the next few years," warned William Hartung, a senior defense analyst at the World Policy Institute in New York.
Under Bush's proposed 2007 budget, the DOD will be allocated more than $440 billion, an amount that does not include an additional $120 billion the administration plans to spend on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through next year.
Indeed, the Pentagon's 2007 budget may exceed the combined military spending of all other countries next year. In 2004, the last year for which statistics were available, Washington accounted for 47 percent of global military expenditures, which were just over $1 trillion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The new budget request calls for a 15 percent increase in the number of special-operations forces to some 66,000 by 2011. It followed last week's release of the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a planning document that is supposed to show how strategic priorities are aligned with the agency's planned budgets and assets.
----------------------
Citation: Jim Lobe. "'Something Has to Give' in Pentagon Spending," Inter Press Service, 07 February 2006.
Original URL: http://www.blackenterprise.com/yb/ybopen.asp?section=ybng&story_id=89170890&ID=blackenterprise
----------------------
US plots ‘new liberation of Baghdad’
By Sarah Baxter
The Times, 16 April 2006
THE American military is planning a “second liberation of Baghdad” to be carried out with the Iraqi army when a new government is installed.
Pacifying the lawless capital is regarded as essential to establishing the authority of the incoming government and preparing for a significant withdrawal of American troops.
Strategic and tactical plans are being laid by US commanders in Iraq and at the US army base in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, under Lieutenant- General David Petraeus. He is regarded as an innovative officer and was formerly responsible for training Iraqi troops.
The battle for Baghdad is expected to entail a “carrot-and-stick” approach, offering the beleaguered population protection from sectarian violence in exchange for rooting out insurgent groups and Al-Qaeda.
Sources close to the Pentagon said Iraqi forces would take the lead, supported by American air power, special operations, intelligence, embedded officers and back-up troops.
Helicopters suitable for urban warfare, such as the manoeuvrable AH-6 “Little Birds” used by the marines and special forces and armed with rocket launchers and machineguns, are likely to complement the ground attack.
The sources said American and Iraqi troops would move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, leaving behind Sweat teams — an acronym for “sewage, water, electricity and trash” — to improve living conditions by upgrading clinics, schools, rubbish collection, water and electricity supplies.
Sunni insurgent strongholds are almost certain to be the first targets, although the Shi’ite militias such as the Mahdi army of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric, and the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade would need to be contained.
President George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, are under intense pressure to prove to the American public that Iraq is not slipping into anarchy and civil war. An effective military campaign could provide the White House with a bounce in the polls before the mid-term congressional elections in November. With Bush’s approval ratings below 40%, the vote is shaping up to be a Republican rout.
The Iraqi government, when it is finally formed, will also need to demonstrate that it is in charge of its own seat of government. “It will be the second liberation of Baghdad,” said Daniel Gouré, a Pentagon adviser and vice-president of the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. “The new government will be able to claim it is taking back the streets.”
Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell at the State Department, said a crackdown in Baghdad was one of the few ways in which a fresh Iraqi government could bind the new national army and prove its mettle.
“They have to show they can liberate their own capital,” he said. “Baghdad is the key to stability in Iraq. It’s a chance for the new government to stand up and say, ‘Here we are’. They can’t do that if they are hunkered down in bunkers.”
The operation is likely to take place towards the end of the summer, giving the newly appointed government time to establish itself. If all goes to plan, US troop withdrawals could take place before the end of the year. In the absence of progress by then, the war may come to be seen by the American public as a lost cause.
There are 140,000 US troops in Iraq. Lieutenant-General John Vines, who stepped down as commander of ground forces in Iraq at the beginning of this year, said it was essential to reduce the numbers.
“There is an incredible amount of stress and I’m worried about it,” said Vines. He added that soldiers were on their third or fourth tours of duty in Iraq: “The war has been going on nearly as long as the second world war and we’re asking a lot of the forces.”
Vines said there was “an enormous amount of work in Baghdad under way” but cautioned that any onslaught against insurgents would be “fiendishly complicated”. The approach would have to be “locale by locale”. He added: “Ultimately we want a police solution in Baghdad.”
US forces would try to avoid the all-out combat that was used to subdue Falluja in 2004. “If you cut up the city into pieces neighbourhood by neighbourhood, you can prevent it from becoming a major urban fight,” said Gouré.
According to defence sources the Americans could augment their forces with heavily armed AC-130 aircraft and F-16s. But close air support is more likely to be provided by Cobra and Little Bird helicopters to minimise casualties.
The generals involved in planning the battle are architects of the “clear, hold and build” strategy in Iraq, designed to isolate insurgents from the population and prevent them regrouping in urban strongholds as soon as the military’s back is turned.
Vines’s replacement as commander of ground forces is Lieutenant-General Peter Chiarelli, who pioneered the use of force with Sweat to subdue Sadr city, a working-class Shi’ite district of Baghdad, in 2004. On the eve of his return to Iraq this year he described how the tactics had worked and vowed to repeat them.
“It was not uncommon for the 1st Calvary Division to be engaged in intense urban combat in one part of the city, while just a few blocks away we had units replacing damaged infrastructure, helping to foster business growth or facilitating the development of local government,” Chiarelli said.
The general is close to Petraeus, who won praise for his sensitive handling of communities in northern Iraq when he was in charge of the 101st Airborne Division, known as the “Screaming Eagles”, at the start of the war.
Another model for operations in Baghdad is an American-led Iraqi-backed military campaign at Tal Afar, a rebel town on the Syrian border. In a speech last month Bush hailed the campaign as an extraordinary success and brandished a letter from the town’s Iraqi mayor praising US forces as our “lion-hearted saviours”. But Tal Afar remains far from secure and the military tactics cannot be copied wholesale.
Baghdad is a swirling mess of competing Sunni and Shi’ite militias and Al-Qaeda fighters, and the city has been sliding into chaos at an alarming rate.
“My brother was killed by somebody who told us he was paid $10 for the job,” said a Baghdad victim of the violence. “A man met him in the street, pointed to my brother and said he was a bad guy and had to die. He never knew why.”
Kidnappings have risen to 50 a day in Iraq. Abu Ali, whose 12-year-son was kidnapped in Baghdad last month, said he had received a demand for $250,000 for his release. “Sometimes they let me hear him begging or crying for me to help him,” he said. “At other times they threaten me and say his brothers will be next.”
Anybody connected, however remotely, with the administration is seen as a target; 18 traffic police officers have been killed in the past two months. “They were simply doing their duty and trying to prevent traffic jams. There are no traffic lights,” said Major Hussein Khadem of the transport police.
Residents have taken to carrying two ID cards and ostentatiously religious CDs because of fears of sectarian violence. “If you are stopped at a Shi’ite checkpoint, you have to show you have a Shi’ite name, and if it is a Sunni insurgent checkpoint, it is good to show that your name is Omar,” said a Baghdad resident who had recently obtained a new ID.
The power of sectarian militias could prove to be a dangerous and unpredictable component of the battle for Baghdad. The Iraqi army and police — who will be expected to take over areas once the army has left — are largely Shi’ite dominated.
The battle could be a key test for Iraqi forces. “Ultimately we have to see whether the Iraqi army is a national army or a sectarian army,” Goure added.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, an expert on Iraq at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that while it was essential to bring Baghdad under control, he feared the Americans would leave the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis and that a showdown could misfire.
“You would have to come down like a hammer on the Sunni areas of Baghdad and go house to house and nobody wants to do that,” Gerecht said. “It’s inevitably going to come and it’s going to be convulsive. The Americans will be there, but not in the numbers needed because American casualty rates will go up.”
Additional reporting: Ali Rifat, Baghdad
-----------------------------
Citation: Sarah Baxter. "US plots ‘new liberation of Baghdad’," The Times, 16 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2136297,00.html
-----------------------------
The Times, 16 April 2006
THE American military is planning a “second liberation of Baghdad” to be carried out with the Iraqi army when a new government is installed.
Pacifying the lawless capital is regarded as essential to establishing the authority of the incoming government and preparing for a significant withdrawal of American troops.
Strategic and tactical plans are being laid by US commanders in Iraq and at the US army base in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, under Lieutenant- General David Petraeus. He is regarded as an innovative officer and was formerly responsible for training Iraqi troops.
The battle for Baghdad is expected to entail a “carrot-and-stick” approach, offering the beleaguered population protection from sectarian violence in exchange for rooting out insurgent groups and Al-Qaeda.
Sources close to the Pentagon said Iraqi forces would take the lead, supported by American air power, special operations, intelligence, embedded officers and back-up troops.
Helicopters suitable for urban warfare, such as the manoeuvrable AH-6 “Little Birds” used by the marines and special forces and armed with rocket launchers and machineguns, are likely to complement the ground attack.
The sources said American and Iraqi troops would move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, leaving behind Sweat teams — an acronym for “sewage, water, electricity and trash” — to improve living conditions by upgrading clinics, schools, rubbish collection, water and electricity supplies.
Sunni insurgent strongholds are almost certain to be the first targets, although the Shi’ite militias such as the Mahdi army of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric, and the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade would need to be contained.
President George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, are under intense pressure to prove to the American public that Iraq is not slipping into anarchy and civil war. An effective military campaign could provide the White House with a bounce in the polls before the mid-term congressional elections in November. With Bush’s approval ratings below 40%, the vote is shaping up to be a Republican rout.
The Iraqi government, when it is finally formed, will also need to demonstrate that it is in charge of its own seat of government. “It will be the second liberation of Baghdad,” said Daniel Gouré, a Pentagon adviser and vice-president of the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. “The new government will be able to claim it is taking back the streets.”
Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell at the State Department, said a crackdown in Baghdad was one of the few ways in which a fresh Iraqi government could bind the new national army and prove its mettle.
“They have to show they can liberate their own capital,” he said. “Baghdad is the key to stability in Iraq. It’s a chance for the new government to stand up and say, ‘Here we are’. They can’t do that if they are hunkered down in bunkers.”
The operation is likely to take place towards the end of the summer, giving the newly appointed government time to establish itself. If all goes to plan, US troop withdrawals could take place before the end of the year. In the absence of progress by then, the war may come to be seen by the American public as a lost cause.
There are 140,000 US troops in Iraq. Lieutenant-General John Vines, who stepped down as commander of ground forces in Iraq at the beginning of this year, said it was essential to reduce the numbers.
“There is an incredible amount of stress and I’m worried about it,” said Vines. He added that soldiers were on their third or fourth tours of duty in Iraq: “The war has been going on nearly as long as the second world war and we’re asking a lot of the forces.”
Vines said there was “an enormous amount of work in Baghdad under way” but cautioned that any onslaught against insurgents would be “fiendishly complicated”. The approach would have to be “locale by locale”. He added: “Ultimately we want a police solution in Baghdad.”
US forces would try to avoid the all-out combat that was used to subdue Falluja in 2004. “If you cut up the city into pieces neighbourhood by neighbourhood, you can prevent it from becoming a major urban fight,” said Gouré.
According to defence sources the Americans could augment their forces with heavily armed AC-130 aircraft and F-16s. But close air support is more likely to be provided by Cobra and Little Bird helicopters to minimise casualties.
The generals involved in planning the battle are architects of the “clear, hold and build” strategy in Iraq, designed to isolate insurgents from the population and prevent them regrouping in urban strongholds as soon as the military’s back is turned.
Vines’s replacement as commander of ground forces is Lieutenant-General Peter Chiarelli, who pioneered the use of force with Sweat to subdue Sadr city, a working-class Shi’ite district of Baghdad, in 2004. On the eve of his return to Iraq this year he described how the tactics had worked and vowed to repeat them.
“It was not uncommon for the 1st Calvary Division to be engaged in intense urban combat in one part of the city, while just a few blocks away we had units replacing damaged infrastructure, helping to foster business growth or facilitating the development of local government,” Chiarelli said.
The general is close to Petraeus, who won praise for his sensitive handling of communities in northern Iraq when he was in charge of the 101st Airborne Division, known as the “Screaming Eagles”, at the start of the war.
Another model for operations in Baghdad is an American-led Iraqi-backed military campaign at Tal Afar, a rebel town on the Syrian border. In a speech last month Bush hailed the campaign as an extraordinary success and brandished a letter from the town’s Iraqi mayor praising US forces as our “lion-hearted saviours”. But Tal Afar remains far from secure and the military tactics cannot be copied wholesale.
Baghdad is a swirling mess of competing Sunni and Shi’ite militias and Al-Qaeda fighters, and the city has been sliding into chaos at an alarming rate.
“My brother was killed by somebody who told us he was paid $10 for the job,” said a Baghdad victim of the violence. “A man met him in the street, pointed to my brother and said he was a bad guy and had to die. He never knew why.”
Kidnappings have risen to 50 a day in Iraq. Abu Ali, whose 12-year-son was kidnapped in Baghdad last month, said he had received a demand for $250,000 for his release. “Sometimes they let me hear him begging or crying for me to help him,” he said. “At other times they threaten me and say his brothers will be next.”
Anybody connected, however remotely, with the administration is seen as a target; 18 traffic police officers have been killed in the past two months. “They were simply doing their duty and trying to prevent traffic jams. There are no traffic lights,” said Major Hussein Khadem of the transport police.
Residents have taken to carrying two ID cards and ostentatiously religious CDs because of fears of sectarian violence. “If you are stopped at a Shi’ite checkpoint, you have to show you have a Shi’ite name, and if it is a Sunni insurgent checkpoint, it is good to show that your name is Omar,” said a Baghdad resident who had recently obtained a new ID.
The power of sectarian militias could prove to be a dangerous and unpredictable component of the battle for Baghdad. The Iraqi army and police — who will be expected to take over areas once the army has left — are largely Shi’ite dominated.
The battle could be a key test for Iraqi forces. “Ultimately we have to see whether the Iraqi army is a national army or a sectarian army,” Goure added.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, an expert on Iraq at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute, said that while it was essential to bring Baghdad under control, he feared the Americans would leave the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis and that a showdown could misfire.
“You would have to come down like a hammer on the Sunni areas of Baghdad and go house to house and nobody wants to do that,” Gerecht said. “It’s inevitably going to come and it’s going to be convulsive. The Americans will be there, but not in the numbers needed because American casualty rates will go up.”
Additional reporting: Ali Rifat, Baghdad
-----------------------------
Citation: Sarah Baxter. "US plots ‘new liberation of Baghdad’," The Times, 16 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2136297,00.html
-----------------------------
Revenge of the battered generals
By Tom Baldwin
The Times, UK, 18 April 2006
The Defence Secretary is fighting for his political life as the military finds its voice
“AT LEAST Rummy is tough enough,” President Nixon said on one of the secretly recorded White House tapes in 1971. “He’s a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that.”
Donald Rumsfeld has been around for a very long time and has not changed much in the intervening 35 years. No one doubts that the US Defence Secretary, as he fights for his political life, still has those qualities in spades.
But being tough and ruthless may not be enough to save him this time, particularly when large sections of the American military establishment prefer to describe him as arrogant, stubborn, and just plain wrong.
In the past month, half a dozen former generals have called for him to quit the Pentagon for disastrously mishandling the Iraq war. Although the White House confirmed yesterday that President Bush was planning a wideranging shake-out of his team, Mr Bush interrupted his Easter break last week to give the Defence Secretary his unqualified backing. But the blizzard of criticism, which began in earnest with the publication of Cobra II, a well-sourced account of blunders made in the preparation, execution and aftermath of the 2003 invasion, shows no sign of abating.
At least two more books are being written on a similar theme, while it is said that more former generals are waiting in the wings to add their voices to the clamour for Mr Rumsfeld’s removal. The atmosphere in the Pentagon is, by all accounts, ugly.
There are some who suggest that the generals, being military men, might have been brave enough to voice their doubts before reaching retirement rather than being cowed by a septuagenarian civilian such as Mr Rumsfeld. But this, their supporters say, fails to understand the constitutional role of the military, which can only offer advice and must follow orders from the political leadership. The problem with Mr Rumsfeld, they say, is that he neither heeded their advice nor took kindly to it. General Eric Shinseki, the US Army Chief of Staff, was effectively sidelined for telling Congress in 2003 that the Iraq invasion would require several hundred thousand troops. The Defence Secretary stuck to his view that the war could be won swiftly with far fewer troops, using the latest technology. He disbanded the Iraqi military and failed to give guidance to troops about preventing looting, saying only that “stuff happens”. Then he ignored warnings of an impending crisis with insurgents. The charge sheet lengthens to describe how Mr Rumsfeld overrode decisions on the ground and demoralised troops.
Over the weekend the Pentagon hit back, releasing a memorandum that showed that Mr Rumsfeld was repeatedly consulted by the military, meeting members of the joint staffs 139 times and combat commanders 208 times since 2005.
General Richard Myers, who recently stepped down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that General Shinseki might have been treated a little better, but insisted that the overall relationship between Mr Rumsfeld and the military functioned as it should.
The dispute reflects divisions that go far deeper than criticism of Mr Rumsfeld’s management skills. He entered the Pentagon determined to shift the military from a force designed for the Cold War to one suited to unpredictable threats.
The toppling of the Taleban in Afghanistan and initial success in Iraq bolstered his position. But the subsequent setbacks have given ammunition to critics who say that his “effects-based” doctrine, which relies heavily on technology and speed, is ill-equipped for the long war against terror.
The dispute is reviving arguments about whether the invasion of Iraq was ill-conceived. Mr Bush can ill-afford to lose Mr Rumsfeld because the attacks on the Defence Secretary are a proxy for a wider assault on himself.
Mr Rumsfeld said yesterday that the calls for his resignation would pass: “The sharper the criticism comes, sometimes the sharper the defence comes from people who don’t agree with the critics.”
THE CAREER
# Congressman for Illinois, 1962-1969
# Worked for the Nixon Administration, 1969-1974, including a period as US Ambassador to Nato
# Chief of Staff in the Ford Administration, 1974-1975
# Secretary of Defence, Ford Administration, 1975-1977
# In private sector, was CEO of two Fortune 500 companies, 1977-2001
# Secretary of Defence, 2001-present
FOR HIM
President Bush “He has my full support and deepest appreciation”
Air Force General Richard Myers (retired)
“When it’s all said and done, in our system, the civilian control of the military means that civilians makes the decision”
Generals John Crosby, Thomas McInerney, Burton Moore and Paul Vallely (all retired), in a Wall Street Journal article
“Let’s all breathe into a bag and get on with winning the global war against radical Islam”
Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell
“I think he’s been a spectacular Secretary of Defence, one of the best in American history”
AGAINST
Army Major-General John Batiste (retired)
“It would be wonderful to have a Secretary of Defence who understood teamwork, who didn’t lead through intimidation”
Major-General Charles H. Swannack Jr (retired)
“I feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces”
Major-General John Riggs (retired)
“They only need the military advice when it satisfies their agenda”
General Wesley Clark (retired)
“I believe Secretary Rumsfeld hasn’t done an adequate job. He should go”
Connecticut Democrat Senator Christopher Dodd
“Secretary Rumsfeld, with all due respect, is a past-tense man"
-------------------------
Citation: Tom Baldwin. "Revenge of the battered generals," The Times, UK, 18 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2138760,00.html
-------------------------
The Times, UK, 18 April 2006
The Defence Secretary is fighting for his political life as the military finds its voice
“AT LEAST Rummy is tough enough,” President Nixon said on one of the secretly recorded White House tapes in 1971. “He’s a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that.”
Donald Rumsfeld has been around for a very long time and has not changed much in the intervening 35 years. No one doubts that the US Defence Secretary, as he fights for his political life, still has those qualities in spades.
But being tough and ruthless may not be enough to save him this time, particularly when large sections of the American military establishment prefer to describe him as arrogant, stubborn, and just plain wrong.
In the past month, half a dozen former generals have called for him to quit the Pentagon for disastrously mishandling the Iraq war. Although the White House confirmed yesterday that President Bush was planning a wideranging shake-out of his team, Mr Bush interrupted his Easter break last week to give the Defence Secretary his unqualified backing. But the blizzard of criticism, which began in earnest with the publication of Cobra II, a well-sourced account of blunders made in the preparation, execution and aftermath of the 2003 invasion, shows no sign of abating.
At least two more books are being written on a similar theme, while it is said that more former generals are waiting in the wings to add their voices to the clamour for Mr Rumsfeld’s removal. The atmosphere in the Pentagon is, by all accounts, ugly.
There are some who suggest that the generals, being military men, might have been brave enough to voice their doubts before reaching retirement rather than being cowed by a septuagenarian civilian such as Mr Rumsfeld. But this, their supporters say, fails to understand the constitutional role of the military, which can only offer advice and must follow orders from the political leadership. The problem with Mr Rumsfeld, they say, is that he neither heeded their advice nor took kindly to it. General Eric Shinseki, the US Army Chief of Staff, was effectively sidelined for telling Congress in 2003 that the Iraq invasion would require several hundred thousand troops. The Defence Secretary stuck to his view that the war could be won swiftly with far fewer troops, using the latest technology. He disbanded the Iraqi military and failed to give guidance to troops about preventing looting, saying only that “stuff happens”. Then he ignored warnings of an impending crisis with insurgents. The charge sheet lengthens to describe how Mr Rumsfeld overrode decisions on the ground and demoralised troops.
Over the weekend the Pentagon hit back, releasing a memorandum that showed that Mr Rumsfeld was repeatedly consulted by the military, meeting members of the joint staffs 139 times and combat commanders 208 times since 2005.
General Richard Myers, who recently stepped down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that General Shinseki might have been treated a little better, but insisted that the overall relationship between Mr Rumsfeld and the military functioned as it should.
The dispute reflects divisions that go far deeper than criticism of Mr Rumsfeld’s management skills. He entered the Pentagon determined to shift the military from a force designed for the Cold War to one suited to unpredictable threats.
The toppling of the Taleban in Afghanistan and initial success in Iraq bolstered his position. But the subsequent setbacks have given ammunition to critics who say that his “effects-based” doctrine, which relies heavily on technology and speed, is ill-equipped for the long war against terror.
The dispute is reviving arguments about whether the invasion of Iraq was ill-conceived. Mr Bush can ill-afford to lose Mr Rumsfeld because the attacks on the Defence Secretary are a proxy for a wider assault on himself.
Mr Rumsfeld said yesterday that the calls for his resignation would pass: “The sharper the criticism comes, sometimes the sharper the defence comes from people who don’t agree with the critics.”
THE CAREER
# Congressman for Illinois, 1962-1969
# Worked for the Nixon Administration, 1969-1974, including a period as US Ambassador to Nato
# Chief of Staff in the Ford Administration, 1974-1975
# Secretary of Defence, Ford Administration, 1975-1977
# In private sector, was CEO of two Fortune 500 companies, 1977-2001
# Secretary of Defence, 2001-present
FOR HIM
President Bush “He has my full support and deepest appreciation”
Air Force General Richard Myers (retired)
“When it’s all said and done, in our system, the civilian control of the military means that civilians makes the decision”
Generals John Crosby, Thomas McInerney, Burton Moore and Paul Vallely (all retired), in a Wall Street Journal article
“Let’s all breathe into a bag and get on with winning the global war against radical Islam”
Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell
“I think he’s been a spectacular Secretary of Defence, one of the best in American history”
AGAINST
Army Major-General John Batiste (retired)
“It would be wonderful to have a Secretary of Defence who understood teamwork, who didn’t lead through intimidation”
Major-General Charles H. Swannack Jr (retired)
“I feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces”
Major-General John Riggs (retired)
“They only need the military advice when it satisfies their agenda”
General Wesley Clark (retired)
“I believe Secretary Rumsfeld hasn’t done an adequate job. He should go”
Connecticut Democrat Senator Christopher Dodd
“Secretary Rumsfeld, with all due respect, is a past-tense man"
-------------------------
Citation: Tom Baldwin. "Revenge of the battered generals," The Times, UK, 18 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2138760,00.html
-------------------------
Ex-rebels now ministers as Iraqi Kurds enjoy power
By Terry Friel
Reuters, 18 April 2006
SARGALO, Iraq - Sher Mohammed smiles as he gestures to the rocky hill a few hundred metres away from the window of the mansion he calls "Freedom Castle" in the soaring mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Not so long ago, he lived in a cramped and dirty cave on the other side of the hill, fighting Saddam Hussein's army and its chemical weapons.
"I am so lucky," says the 55-year-old former peshmerga guerrilla leader. "In my dreams, I never thought the day would come when we could live in our own land.
"(The contrast) is between the earth and the sky. The difference is too much to explain."
Sher Mohammed took his family to the safety of London for a decade, where he earned good money owning and running a Mongolian restaurant, and has returned to Iraq a rich and powerful man.
An aspiring politician and wine maker, he runs a contracting company in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, 330 km (205 miles) north of Baghdad, and is the unofficial mayor or godfather for about 10 villages -- 15,000 people -- not far from the Iranian border.
Kurdistan's peshmergas -- "those who are ready to die" in Kurdish -- have fought rule from Baghdad in the dusty plains to the south for six decades and are now playing a major role in the autonomous province which leads Iraq in growth and security.
They head army units, run the police and the administration and even guard the borders with Turkey and Iran.
GUERRILLA ARMY
Kurdish regional President Masoud Barzani led the guerrilla army his father founded and in which many of his ministers fought, including Kurdistan Deputy Prime Minister Omar Fatah.
Life for the peshmergas was harsh.
Fatah's wife, Kafia Sulaiman, who heads the Kurdistan Women's Union, was also a guerrilla and remembers the times fighting in the mountains as Saddam's army closed in after the end of the eight-year-war against Iran allowed it to shift its focus to the Kurds.
"We were like an island," she says, drawing on a cigarette in a plush restaurant in the hills above Sulaimaniya. "We were surrounded. Our links with the main headquarters were cut off."
Many peshmergas were badly wounded by the chemical weapons the army used in the 1980s, a lethal cocktail of mustard gas and nerve agents. Iraq's was the first army in the world to use chemical weapons on its own people.
"They were blinded," she says. "They couldn't see anything. We had to take their hands and lead them."
Saddam and his cousin Ali Hassan Al-Majeed, who earned the nickname "Chemical Ali" for using chemical weapons against the Kurds, face trial soon on genocide for a seven-month pogrom in 1988 that killed about 100,000 people, mainly civilians.
Sher Mohammed remembers the mustard gas, which he says smelled like garlic and turned the grass yellow. He fled to Iran after he was blinded by a chemical attack. It was months before he could see again at all. He has still not regained the sight of his right eye.
BREAD AND WATER
Food was always a problem in the hills and the caves. Often, whole families survived on nothing more than bread and water.
"It was a very difficult time," he says. "Almost all the time, people would just have bread with water, or bread with yoghurt. Even the rich people could only afford to have meat very rarely."
Some Kurds are not happy about the peshmergas' stranglehold on power, believing partisan fighters do not always make good administrators.
Critics say a major problem is that the peshmergas are bound mostly to one of the two main Kurdish political parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party or the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
"It is very bad. They are monopolising power," says former peshmerga doctor Mahmoud Othman, now a leading Kurdish politician and member of the national parliament.
"This is not what we need. We need technocrats, we need skilled people, we should have independents. They don't leave anything for anyone else.
"There are a lot of people who can come back from outside."
Major Mohammed Najib, a former guerrilla and now the police chief of Kurdistan's Qaradagh district near Sulaimaniya, believes it is the peshmergas alone who have paved the way for the autonomy and economic growth the region enjoys now.
"I am sitting behind this desk, with this rank, in this uniform, because of my comrades' blood," he says proudly.
"It was worth it."
------------------------
Citation: Terry Friel. "Ex-rebels now ministers as Iraqi Kurds enjoy power," Reuters, 18 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/FRI641686.htm
------------------------
Reuters, 18 April 2006
SARGALO, Iraq - Sher Mohammed smiles as he gestures to the rocky hill a few hundred metres away from the window of the mansion he calls "Freedom Castle" in the soaring mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Not so long ago, he lived in a cramped and dirty cave on the other side of the hill, fighting Saddam Hussein's army and its chemical weapons.
"I am so lucky," says the 55-year-old former peshmerga guerrilla leader. "In my dreams, I never thought the day would come when we could live in our own land.
"(The contrast) is between the earth and the sky. The difference is too much to explain."
Sher Mohammed took his family to the safety of London for a decade, where he earned good money owning and running a Mongolian restaurant, and has returned to Iraq a rich and powerful man.
An aspiring politician and wine maker, he runs a contracting company in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, 330 km (205 miles) north of Baghdad, and is the unofficial mayor or godfather for about 10 villages -- 15,000 people -- not far from the Iranian border.
Kurdistan's peshmergas -- "those who are ready to die" in Kurdish -- have fought rule from Baghdad in the dusty plains to the south for six decades and are now playing a major role in the autonomous province which leads Iraq in growth and security.
They head army units, run the police and the administration and even guard the borders with Turkey and Iran.
GUERRILLA ARMY
Kurdish regional President Masoud Barzani led the guerrilla army his father founded and in which many of his ministers fought, including Kurdistan Deputy Prime Minister Omar Fatah.
Life for the peshmergas was harsh.
Fatah's wife, Kafia Sulaiman, who heads the Kurdistan Women's Union, was also a guerrilla and remembers the times fighting in the mountains as Saddam's army closed in after the end of the eight-year-war against Iran allowed it to shift its focus to the Kurds.
"We were like an island," she says, drawing on a cigarette in a plush restaurant in the hills above Sulaimaniya. "We were surrounded. Our links with the main headquarters were cut off."
Many peshmergas were badly wounded by the chemical weapons the army used in the 1980s, a lethal cocktail of mustard gas and nerve agents. Iraq's was the first army in the world to use chemical weapons on its own people.
"They were blinded," she says. "They couldn't see anything. We had to take their hands and lead them."
Saddam and his cousin Ali Hassan Al-Majeed, who earned the nickname "Chemical Ali" for using chemical weapons against the Kurds, face trial soon on genocide for a seven-month pogrom in 1988 that killed about 100,000 people, mainly civilians.
Sher Mohammed remembers the mustard gas, which he says smelled like garlic and turned the grass yellow. He fled to Iran after he was blinded by a chemical attack. It was months before he could see again at all. He has still not regained the sight of his right eye.
BREAD AND WATER
Food was always a problem in the hills and the caves. Often, whole families survived on nothing more than bread and water.
"It was a very difficult time," he says. "Almost all the time, people would just have bread with water, or bread with yoghurt. Even the rich people could only afford to have meat very rarely."
Some Kurds are not happy about the peshmergas' stranglehold on power, believing partisan fighters do not always make good administrators.
Critics say a major problem is that the peshmergas are bound mostly to one of the two main Kurdish political parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party or the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
"It is very bad. They are monopolising power," says former peshmerga doctor Mahmoud Othman, now a leading Kurdish politician and member of the national parliament.
"This is not what we need. We need technocrats, we need skilled people, we should have independents. They don't leave anything for anyone else.
"There are a lot of people who can come back from outside."
Major Mohammed Najib, a former guerrilla and now the police chief of Kurdistan's Qaradagh district near Sulaimaniya, believes it is the peshmergas alone who have paved the way for the autonomy and economic growth the region enjoys now.
"I am sitting behind this desk, with this rank, in this uniform, because of my comrades' blood," he says proudly.
"It was worth it."
------------------------
Citation: Terry Friel. "Ex-rebels now ministers as Iraqi Kurds enjoy power," Reuters, 18 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/FRI641686.htm
------------------------
Iraqis switch off Saddam trial to watch government soap opera
By Daniel McGrory
The Times, UK, 18 April 2006
AS THE scowling face of Saddam Hussein appeared on the television screen yesterday at the start of yet another session of his trial, the cry went up to change channels in the packed coffee shop in central Baghdad.
Salah Mehdi, 36, cursed and turned his back on the former president. “Nobody cares about him any more,” he said. “We have more urgent worries now.” Customers in the Haider Double, a popular falafel restaurant, switched over to an Arabic satellite station that was keeping a running score of victims from the latest mayhem.
Mr Mehdi, a local barber in Karadat Maryam, and his two friends also wanted to keep an eye on the latest instalment of the most absorbing Iraqi soap opera: the bungling attempts by the country’s powerbrokers to agree on a prime minister.
While they continue to bicker, corpses are piling up on the streets of Baghdad. One of Mr Mehdi’s cousins was killed a fortnight ago in a car bombing, a forgotten footnote to all but his family in a city that is being torn apart by communal hatred.
Not far from this café the rival political factions were safe behind the barricades of the international green zone, carving up the top jobs in Iraq’s first democratic government. Among the most strident voices in this haggling was Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni Arab politician. He was called out of a meeting to be told that the body of his brother had been found yesterday, dumped on waste ground in Shula, north of the city centre. Talah al-Mutlaq had been shot in the head at point-blank range, presumably by one of the death squads that roam with seeming impunity.
He was also a member of the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, which his brother leads, and had been abducted three weeks ago as he drove out of the capital. This marked the second time in a week that the brother of an important Sunni politician had been murdered. Security officials suspected that this was a deliberate new tactic by militiamen hoping to influence the outcome of the political wrangling.
To show how far apart the sides remained after three months of negotiation, Khalef al-Elian, another leading Sunni voice, revealed that, by last night, only one senior post of nine had been agreed.
Ibrahim Jaafari, the increasingly unpopular Prime Minister, has shown no signs of standing down, despite reported secret deals brokered by influential religious clerics. The grim consequence of this impasse was seen again on the streets yesterday, as a dozen mutilated bodies were discovered across the city. All had been tortured. Seven bullet- riddled corpses were dumped in a van in the mostly Sunni district of Dora. Three men, blindfolded and handcuffed, were found in Shula, a Shia area, the Interior Ministry said.
There was a ferocious day-long gunbattle between Iraqi troops and insurgents in the northern district of Azamiyah, where at least three civilians were killed.
There was the usual string of bombings and drive-by shootings in Baghdad and in Baqouba, killing two people and wounding more than fifteen. The body of a Basra policeman kidnapped three days ago was found near the Iran border.
Those who switched off the live coverage of Saddam’s trial did not miss much. The session lasted barely an hour before his lawyers demanded an independent expert to judge whether the signatures on death warrants for 148 civilians were Saddam’s. His defence team said that it would accept adjudicators from any country, bar Iran. Saddam stirred, leant forward in his chair and interjected, “ and Israel”.
----------------------
Citation: Daniel McGrory. "Iraqis switch off Saddam trial to watch government soap opera," The Times, UK, 18 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2138622,00.html
----------------------
The Times, UK, 18 April 2006
AS THE scowling face of Saddam Hussein appeared on the television screen yesterday at the start of yet another session of his trial, the cry went up to change channels in the packed coffee shop in central Baghdad.
Salah Mehdi, 36, cursed and turned his back on the former president. “Nobody cares about him any more,” he said. “We have more urgent worries now.” Customers in the Haider Double, a popular falafel restaurant, switched over to an Arabic satellite station that was keeping a running score of victims from the latest mayhem.
Mr Mehdi, a local barber in Karadat Maryam, and his two friends also wanted to keep an eye on the latest instalment of the most absorbing Iraqi soap opera: the bungling attempts by the country’s powerbrokers to agree on a prime minister.
While they continue to bicker, corpses are piling up on the streets of Baghdad. One of Mr Mehdi’s cousins was killed a fortnight ago in a car bombing, a forgotten footnote to all but his family in a city that is being torn apart by communal hatred.
Not far from this café the rival political factions were safe behind the barricades of the international green zone, carving up the top jobs in Iraq’s first democratic government. Among the most strident voices in this haggling was Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni Arab politician. He was called out of a meeting to be told that the body of his brother had been found yesterday, dumped on waste ground in Shula, north of the city centre. Talah al-Mutlaq had been shot in the head at point-blank range, presumably by one of the death squads that roam with seeming impunity.
He was also a member of the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, which his brother leads, and had been abducted three weeks ago as he drove out of the capital. This marked the second time in a week that the brother of an important Sunni politician had been murdered. Security officials suspected that this was a deliberate new tactic by militiamen hoping to influence the outcome of the political wrangling.
To show how far apart the sides remained after three months of negotiation, Khalef al-Elian, another leading Sunni voice, revealed that, by last night, only one senior post of nine had been agreed.
Ibrahim Jaafari, the increasingly unpopular Prime Minister, has shown no signs of standing down, despite reported secret deals brokered by influential religious clerics. The grim consequence of this impasse was seen again on the streets yesterday, as a dozen mutilated bodies were discovered across the city. All had been tortured. Seven bullet- riddled corpses were dumped in a van in the mostly Sunni district of Dora. Three men, blindfolded and handcuffed, were found in Shula, a Shia area, the Interior Ministry said.
There was a ferocious day-long gunbattle between Iraqi troops and insurgents in the northern district of Azamiyah, where at least three civilians were killed.
There was the usual string of bombings and drive-by shootings in Baghdad and in Baqouba, killing two people and wounding more than fifteen. The body of a Basra policeman kidnapped three days ago was found near the Iran border.
Those who switched off the live coverage of Saddam’s trial did not miss much. The session lasted barely an hour before his lawyers demanded an independent expert to judge whether the signatures on death warrants for 148 civilians were Saddam’s. His defence team said that it would accept adjudicators from any country, bar Iran. Saddam stirred, leant forward in his chair and interjected, “ and Israel”.
----------------------
Citation: Daniel McGrory. "Iraqis switch off Saddam trial to watch government soap opera," The Times, UK, 18 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2138622,00.html
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New rift in Iraq unity government talks
Agence France Presse, 18 April 2006
BAGHDAD (AFP) - A new split clouded protracted efforts to form a national unity government in Iraq, this time between the ousted Sunni Arab elite and secularist supporters of former premier Iyad Allawi.
Allawi, whose bloc holds 25 seats in the 275-member parliament, has made a bid for one of the two vice president posts, angering the main Sunni grouping, the National Concord Front.
The Front has 44 seats in parliament and holds one of the vice presidencies in the outgoing government.
"Allawi is our candidate for the vice president and we will also announce a candidate for the deputy prime minister's post once the prime minister is fixed by the Shiite alliance," Rassim al-Awadi, a senior leader with Allawi's group told AFP.
He said the Sunnis had reservations about Allawi's candidacy, because "they say the two vice presidencies are meant for Shiite and Sunni candidates".
"We do not agree with such sectarian sharing. Nothing in the constitution says that the posts should be shared like this. We are Iraq, not Lebanon," Awadi said.
Zhafer al-Ani, spokesman of the National Concord Front confirmed the group had reservations about the nomination of Allawi, a pro-Western secular Shiite.
"There is another problem. Allawi wants the post of vice president which is ours," Ani said.
The Sunnis are also facing stiff opposition from the Shiite alliance to their candidacy for the post of parliament speaker.
Tareq al-Hashemi, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party which is a key member of the Front, has been nominated for the post, but the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance has opposed it.
"The Shiite opposition is a reaction to our opposition to Jaafari," Ani charged.
Sunni Arabs and Kurds alike have strongly opposed the Shiite alliance's nomination of incumbent Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to head a new government, saying he has failed to curb raging sectarian violence.
But Ani insisted his group would not act as a "hurdle in the formation of a national unity government", adding "there are still many differences within the groups and I think we need at least a month to form the government."
Talks on forming the new government have already lasted some four months since December elections to the first full-term parliament since the US-led invasion of 2003.
--------------------
Citation: "New rift in Iraq unity government talks," Agence France Presse, 18 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060418/wl_mideast_afp/iraqpolitics
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BAGHDAD (AFP) - A new split clouded protracted efforts to form a national unity government in Iraq, this time between the ousted Sunni Arab elite and secularist supporters of former premier Iyad Allawi.
Allawi, whose bloc holds 25 seats in the 275-member parliament, has made a bid for one of the two vice president posts, angering the main Sunni grouping, the National Concord Front.
The Front has 44 seats in parliament and holds one of the vice presidencies in the outgoing government.
"Allawi is our candidate for the vice president and we will also announce a candidate for the deputy prime minister's post once the prime minister is fixed by the Shiite alliance," Rassim al-Awadi, a senior leader with Allawi's group told AFP.
He said the Sunnis had reservations about Allawi's candidacy, because "they say the two vice presidencies are meant for Shiite and Sunni candidates".
"We do not agree with such sectarian sharing. Nothing in the constitution says that the posts should be shared like this. We are Iraq, not Lebanon," Awadi said.
Zhafer al-Ani, spokesman of the National Concord Front confirmed the group had reservations about the nomination of Allawi, a pro-Western secular Shiite.
"There is another problem. Allawi wants the post of vice president which is ours," Ani said.
The Sunnis are also facing stiff opposition from the Shiite alliance to their candidacy for the post of parliament speaker.
Tareq al-Hashemi, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party which is a key member of the Front, has been nominated for the post, but the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance has opposed it.
"The Shiite opposition is a reaction to our opposition to Jaafari," Ani charged.
Sunni Arabs and Kurds alike have strongly opposed the Shiite alliance's nomination of incumbent Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to head a new government, saying he has failed to curb raging sectarian violence.
But Ani insisted his group would not act as a "hurdle in the formation of a national unity government", adding "there are still many differences within the groups and I think we need at least a month to form the government."
Talks on forming the new government have already lasted some four months since December elections to the first full-term parliament since the US-led invasion of 2003.
--------------------
Citation: "New rift in Iraq unity government talks," Agence France Presse, 18 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060418/wl_mideast_afp/iraqpolitics
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14 April 2006
US, Iraqi forces double patrols to quell Baghdad bloodshed
Agence France Presse, 13 April 2006
US and Iraqi forces have nearly doubled patrols in Baghdad over the last two months to quell the outburst of sectarian bloodshed, US military said.
From an average of 12,000 patrols in February in Baghdad, the US and Iraqi forces have raised the patrols to 20,000 "a jump of 45 percent," said US military spokesman Major General Rick Lynch.
"The increase is to give more visible presence of the security forces inside the streets of Baghdad," Lynch told reporters Thursday.
He said 3,700 troops have been added to the joint forces, which were 26,000 Iraqi troops and 10,000 US troops in February.
"The enemy, the Zarqawis and the Al-Qaeda want to stop the formation of a national unity government by triggering sectarian violence like the one we saw at the Baratha mosque," he said accusing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq, of bombing the Baratha Shiite mosque.
On April 7, three suicide bombers, two dressed as women, blew themselves up in Baghdad's Shiite Baratha mosque and killed 90 worshippers as they were stepping out of the sanctuary after their Friday prayers.
"The enemy is still there, but we are taking the fight to the enemy, specifically in Baghdad," he said.
Lynch said the increase in patrols has led to fewer attacks.
"There has been a decrease in number of attacks, two attacks less per day, an IED less per day and a small-arms fire less per day," he said.
The increase in US patrols, however, does not mean that US forces are taking back responsibility of areas handed over to Iraqi forces in the past few months.
"No, we are not taking back any battlespace from the Iraqi forces. We have trust and confidence in them and they are the ones who actually get the human intelligence," Lynch said.
Nearly 60 percent of Baghdad's security in currently under Iraqi forces.
Lynch also accepted that there has been a spike in violence against the US forces in the past few weeks across Iraq.
More than 30 US troops have been killed across Iraq since April 1.
But he denied that the pattern of insurgency had been reversed in any way, from attacks on Iraqi civilians back to coalition forces.
"There has been a spike in violence against coalition forces, not in terms of attacks but casualties," he said. "It is not a reversal of trend, the enemy is still targeting innocent people and triggering sectarian attacks."
-------------------------------
Citation: "US, Iraqi forces double patrols to quell Baghdad bloodshed," Agence France Presse, 13 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060413/pl_afp/iraqussecurity
-------------------------------
US and Iraqi forces have nearly doubled patrols in Baghdad over the last two months to quell the outburst of sectarian bloodshed, US military said.
From an average of 12,000 patrols in February in Baghdad, the US and Iraqi forces have raised the patrols to 20,000 "a jump of 45 percent," said US military spokesman Major General Rick Lynch.
"The increase is to give more visible presence of the security forces inside the streets of Baghdad," Lynch told reporters Thursday.
He said 3,700 troops have been added to the joint forces, which were 26,000 Iraqi troops and 10,000 US troops in February.
"The enemy, the Zarqawis and the Al-Qaeda want to stop the formation of a national unity government by triggering sectarian violence like the one we saw at the Baratha mosque," he said accusing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq, of bombing the Baratha Shiite mosque.
On April 7, three suicide bombers, two dressed as women, blew themselves up in Baghdad's Shiite Baratha mosque and killed 90 worshippers as they were stepping out of the sanctuary after their Friday prayers.
"The enemy is still there, but we are taking the fight to the enemy, specifically in Baghdad," he said.
Lynch said the increase in patrols has led to fewer attacks.
"There has been a decrease in number of attacks, two attacks less per day, an IED less per day and a small-arms fire less per day," he said.
The increase in US patrols, however, does not mean that US forces are taking back responsibility of areas handed over to Iraqi forces in the past few months.
"No, we are not taking back any battlespace from the Iraqi forces. We have trust and confidence in them and they are the ones who actually get the human intelligence," Lynch said.
Nearly 60 percent of Baghdad's security in currently under Iraqi forces.
Lynch also accepted that there has been a spike in violence against the US forces in the past few weeks across Iraq.
More than 30 US troops have been killed across Iraq since April 1.
But he denied that the pattern of insurgency had been reversed in any way, from attacks on Iraqi civilians back to coalition forces.
"There has been a spike in violence against coalition forces, not in terms of attacks but casualties," he said. "It is not a reversal of trend, the enemy is still targeting innocent people and triggering sectarian attacks."
-------------------------------
Citation: "US, Iraqi forces double patrols to quell Baghdad bloodshed," Agence France Presse, 13 April 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060413/pl_afp/iraqussecurity
-------------------------------