Auditor says US to pay most of tab
By Bryan Bender
The Boston Globe, 19 July 2006
WASHINGTON -- The new Iraqi government will need about $50 billion in additional aid to rebuild the country's oil facilities and electrical grids to prewar levels, the US government's top auditor told Congress yesterday. And he warned that the United States is likely to have to pay the vast majority of it.
The funds would be on top of the roughly $30 billion that the United States has already committed to rebuild the war-torn country since the March 2003 invasion -- most of which has been spent. The estimate is also in addition to the steadily rising cost of the American military deployment in Iraq, which has topped $300 billion, according to the latest government figures.
The estimate is the first full accounting of Iraqi reconstruction needs by US Comptroller General David M. Walker, the nation's top fiscal watchdog.
The Bush administration has not offered any recent estimates of Iraqi reconstruction expenses and had given no indication that costs could grow so significantly. The administration's last request for rebuilding dollars, approved in early June, was for $1.5 billion.
Before the war, administration officials said oil revenues would be sufficient for the Iraqi government to pay for the country's reconstruction. But later in 2003, the administration asked Congress for $18.6 billion in reconstruction money, most of it for Iraq, and has since received smaller installments from Congress. The administration has also funneled billions of dollars from the Defense and State departments' regular budgets to Iraqi reconstruction, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Nonetheless, "additional funds will be needed to finance remaining reconstruction needs and to restore, sustain, and protect the infrastructure that has been built to date," Walker told the House Government Reform Committee. "Iraqi needs are greater than originally anticipated."
In addition to the $50 billion for oil and electricity needs, he said, the Iraqi government is likely to need additional resources to meet other basics and to support the fledgling security forces .
Walker testified about the rising cost of the Iraq war and the war on terrorism. He appeared along with top Bush administration budget officials, who faced tough questions from Republicans and Democrats about the estimated $430 billion that has been spent on military operations and diplomatic efforts overseas since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Walker, who also runs the Government Accountability Office, said that while military costs -- currently about $1.5 billion a week -- are rising sharply, the US government is likely to have to foot almost all of the bill for the Iraqi government's future rebuilding needs as well.
According to GAO figures, the United States has already allocated about $10.5 billion since 2003 for restoring essential services in Iraq.
But key projects have yet to be completed because of security problems, management lapses, and corruption.
Citing figures compiled by the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, Walker estimated that at least $30 billion more will be needed to "reach and sustain oil capacity of 5 million barrels per day." To sustain the necessary electricity output, "they will need $20 billion through 2010," he reported, citing US government and industry specialists.
A variety of factors make Iraq unable to support its own infrastructure , according to Walker, even beyond the damaged state of its oil industry. "Iraqi budget constraints and limited government managerial capacity limits its ability to contribute to future rebuilding efforts," he reported.
Rampant corruption in Iraqi government ministries is also partially to blame, according to a 19-page assessment Walker provided on the war costs to date.
"Reconstruction efforts have not taken the risk of corruption into account when assessing the costs of achieving US objectives in Iraq," the report said.
"The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, Japan, and the European Union officials cite corruption in the oil sector as a special problem. In addition, According to [State Department] officials and reporting documents, about 10 percent of refined fuels are diverted to the black market, and about 30 percent of imported fuels are smuggled out of Iraq and sold for profit."
The government will need "significant help" in building the accountability systems to prevent corruption , Walker said.
-----------------------------
Citation: Bryan Bender. "Price tag to rebuild Iraq rises by $50b," The Boston Globe, 19 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/07/19/price_tag_to_rebuild_iraq_rises_by_50b/
-----------------------------
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31 July 2006
NATO's moment of truth in south Afghanistan
By Leon Bruneau
Agence France-Presse, 30 July 2006
By expanding its presence to the restive south of Afghanistan, a move due to be finalised Monday, NATO knows that it is putting not only its credibility but probably also its future on the line.
Almost three years to the day after it took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO takes charge of security operations from the US-led coalition, which forced out the fundamentalist Taliban regime.
With the move the number of troops will double in the restive south, where Taliban fighters, drug runners and war lords have been increasingly active, leaving NATO to command more than 18,000 soldiers in much of the conflict-scarred country.
Later this year, probably by November, command will also be transferred in the mountainous east bordering Pakistan. Technically it will be an easier move since it will mainly involve re-flagging coalition troops to the ISAF mission.
"It is the toughest ground mission, if not the toughest mission overall, the alliance with other partners has ever embarked on," ISAF spokesman Major Luke Knittig said last week.
Given hostilities in the south, where insurgents have made hit-and-run attacks across the Pakistani border as new troops moved in, NATO could be drawn into fighting that exceeds its mission.
Coalition forces alone are charged with hunting the Taliban.
NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has warned for months that failure in Afghanistan -- renowned as a haven for international terrorism -- would plunge it back into chaos, and could even bring violence to European streets.
Senior officials acknowledge that the alliance must remain in the country -- also the world's biggest opium producer -- for at least another decade, and have urged the international community not to forget its promise of donations.
"We are putting a lot of people's lives on the line. It makes no sense to invest a lot of military resources for peace but not put in place the civilian resources," said spokesman James Appathurai.
Privately, high-ranking military officers also admit that the war in Iraq has stolen attention -- and with it, perhaps, resources -- from Afghanistan.
Beyond the repercussions for the country itself, the move into southern Afghanistan could have important ramifications for the alliance, as it reinvents itself and abandons its Cold War origins.
"The success of NATO's mission in Afghanistan will have a direct effect on the pace and future of NATO's ongoing transformation process," wrote Mihai Carp, the deputy head of crisis-management policy in NATO's operations division, in the "NATO Review".
As NATO moves from using large bases to relying on smaller, mobile forces capable of quickly reaching the world's hotspots, the Afghan mission will also its ability to act effectively beyond its member states' borders.
De Hoop Scheffer has said long and loud that NATO should not be the world's policeman.
But while the United States, by far the alliance's dominant and driving member, is eager to put up "coalitions of the willing" in Afghanistan or in Iraq in 2003, it is pushing for a "global NATO" with wide-ranging missions.
At the other end of the 26-member spectrum, France has warned that the alliance should focus on its military vocation rather than be the world's peacekeeper -- as evidenced by President Jacques Chirac's recent rejection of a NATO role in Lebanon.
The debate, far from over, weighs heavily on discussions about any new operations, and could overshadow NATO's next summit in the Latvian capital Riga at the end of November.
--------------------------------
Citation: Leon Bruneau. "NATO's moment of truth in south Afghanistan," Agence France-Presse, 30 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060730/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrestnato
--------------------------------
Agence France-Presse, 30 July 2006
By expanding its presence to the restive south of Afghanistan, a move due to be finalised Monday, NATO knows that it is putting not only its credibility but probably also its future on the line.
Almost three years to the day after it took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO takes charge of security operations from the US-led coalition, which forced out the fundamentalist Taliban regime.
With the move the number of troops will double in the restive south, where Taliban fighters, drug runners and war lords have been increasingly active, leaving NATO to command more than 18,000 soldiers in much of the conflict-scarred country.
Later this year, probably by November, command will also be transferred in the mountainous east bordering Pakistan. Technically it will be an easier move since it will mainly involve re-flagging coalition troops to the ISAF mission.
"It is the toughest ground mission, if not the toughest mission overall, the alliance with other partners has ever embarked on," ISAF spokesman Major Luke Knittig said last week.
Given hostilities in the south, where insurgents have made hit-and-run attacks across the Pakistani border as new troops moved in, NATO could be drawn into fighting that exceeds its mission.
Coalition forces alone are charged with hunting the Taliban.
NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has warned for months that failure in Afghanistan -- renowned as a haven for international terrorism -- would plunge it back into chaos, and could even bring violence to European streets.
Senior officials acknowledge that the alliance must remain in the country -- also the world's biggest opium producer -- for at least another decade, and have urged the international community not to forget its promise of donations.
"We are putting a lot of people's lives on the line. It makes no sense to invest a lot of military resources for peace but not put in place the civilian resources," said spokesman James Appathurai.
Privately, high-ranking military officers also admit that the war in Iraq has stolen attention -- and with it, perhaps, resources -- from Afghanistan.
Beyond the repercussions for the country itself, the move into southern Afghanistan could have important ramifications for the alliance, as it reinvents itself and abandons its Cold War origins.
"The success of NATO's mission in Afghanistan will have a direct effect on the pace and future of NATO's ongoing transformation process," wrote Mihai Carp, the deputy head of crisis-management policy in NATO's operations division, in the "NATO Review".
As NATO moves from using large bases to relying on smaller, mobile forces capable of quickly reaching the world's hotspots, the Afghan mission will also its ability to act effectively beyond its member states' borders.
De Hoop Scheffer has said long and loud that NATO should not be the world's policeman.
But while the United States, by far the alliance's dominant and driving member, is eager to put up "coalitions of the willing" in Afghanistan or in Iraq in 2003, it is pushing for a "global NATO" with wide-ranging missions.
At the other end of the 26-member spectrum, France has warned that the alliance should focus on its military vocation rather than be the world's peacekeeper -- as evidenced by President Jacques Chirac's recent rejection of a NATO role in Lebanon.
The debate, far from over, weighs heavily on discussions about any new operations, and could overshadow NATO's next summit in the Latvian capital Riga at the end of November.
--------------------------------
Citation: Leon Bruneau. "NATO's moment of truth in south Afghanistan," Agence France-Presse, 30 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060730/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrestnato
--------------------------------
Iraq Isn't About Us Anymore
The U.S. has few options in Iraq.
By Judith S. Yaphe
Los Angeles Times, 30 July 2006
WHEN THE Iraq war began in March 2003, the American plan was clear. We would eliminate Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction and punish him for refusing to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions and for supporting Al Qaeda. We would also reinvent Iraq in our image. It would be democratic and secular, with equal political representation and economic opportunity, respect for human rights, civil liberties, the rule of law and, oh yes, full participation by women and minority groups. It would be quick, painless and simple, and Iraqis would be eternally grateful.
But as everyone now knows, Iraqis did not follow our script. They voted along ethnic and sectarian interests and for more, not less, Islam in law and government. Today, Iraq is fast becoming ungovernable. Extremists from Sunni and Shiite communities are trying to turn what had long been a secular, integrated and modernizing society into an ethnic and Islamist paradise that, if achieved, would put even Iran to shame.
There is little point in debating whether Iraq is in civil war yet. Random killings, ethnic cleansing by all sides and rampant corruption are pushing society in that direction. Armed militias and vicious gangs kill for profit and pleasure, and occasionally for religion or ethnicity. The real fight is all about power, money and control. Iraqis, not Americans, are the primary targets. Yes, the United States must eventually leave, many Iraqis say, only do not leave us alone with ourselves just now.
The danger signs are everywhere. Oil-rich Kirkuk could at any moment explode into Kurd-Arab warfare. Turkey is threatening cross-border attacks to eliminate Kurdish terrorists who are hostile to Turkey, while the Islamic Republic of Iran has shelled anti-regime terrorists in northern Iraq. And sooner or later, Iran will renew its demands for reparations from the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, as well as for territorial guarantees. This could weaken if not break the fragile government in Baghdad.
If Iraq descends into full-blown civil war — and it is almost there — then militia will fight militia, Sunni will fight Shiite, and Arab will fight Kurd.
What then should the U.S. do? Should we admit defeat and go home? Maybe Iraqis are still not ready for democracy? Or maybe there is no such thing as Iraq, only three artificial ministates created by political manipulation, militia terror and ethnic cleansing?
American pundits and politicians have quickly sketched out simple exit strategies: partition Iraq into a Sunni-Shiite-Kurd confederation and withdraw our troops; let the Iraqis experience their civil war without us; send in more troops to ferret out terrorists and win the battle for Baghdad
The problem with all of these strategies is the same: They focus on our needs, our politics, our standards of democracy, our casualties, our potential loss of regional influence and our dependence on oil. But the struggle is no longer just about achieving U.S. goals; it's all about Iraq, and it is all about survival. Latest estimates indicate that 50 Iraqi civilians are killed for every U.S. casualty. Still, I believe that it is in the U.S. interest to see Iraq survive as a united country or we will face chronic instability and Iraq-based terrorists coming to our shores.
The truth is, we have few options:
• Withdrawal: Pundits and politicians see chaos and want out. I respect those questioning American unilateralist preemption strategies. But I worry about the consequences for U.S. interests if we abandon an Iraq we helped create and friends who would be set up for failure in a neighborhood we gas guzzlers love. A bad option.
• Send in more troops to "win the war": We need to define what winning means and assess the probable costs. Army Gen. John Abizaid, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, warned last week that more troops are needed if the battle for Baghdad — and thereby Iraq — is to be won. President Bush promised Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki in their meeting Tuesday that U.S. troops would be redeployed from other parts of Iraq, but it is not clear that additional forces won't be needed as well. How long will we be needed in Iraq? No one can say. But it seems to me we still have responsibility for helping Iraq survive what we set in motion three years ago. Surely, we can maintain our security presence, prepare military and police forces to take over security duties, provide training and protection, and help fragile political institutions take root. Sending more troops would be a politically unpopular move, but if U.S. commanders need them to maintain the pressure on terrorists and provide more security, they should have them.
• Partition Iraq: This would almost certainly spawn civil war. Iraq's Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shiite communities are not monoliths; each has its secularists and Islamists, rich and poor, oligarchs and peasants. None will be satisfied with a "Sunnistan-Kurdistan-Shiastan" divide. Some say Iraq is already a failed state or was never meant to be a state at all. Others see Lebanon as a warning about what could happen in Iraq. Consider Lebanon — unable to control extremist forces, plagued by a long history of civil unrest and an easy target for intervention by stronger neighbors who play on inbred political weaknesses. Is this a vision of Iraq? The ingredients are there, including stronger neighbors meddling, a deepening social chasm and divided communal loyalties encouraged by foreign occupiers and warlords. Partition is playing with fire.
Washing our hands of Iraq may sound appealing, but the truth is, we will care very much if extremists enriched by Iraq's wealth have a place to prepare for their next terrorist campaign. Will it be New York or Washington or Los Angeles? In the 1980s, Iraqi Shiites cooperated with Lebanese Hezbollah's No. 1 terrorist, Imad Mughniyah, in a series of bombings, hijackings and assassination attempts in the Persian Gulf. Do we want a return to these good old days? I think not.
Staying the course in Iraq will not solve all of Iraq's problems, and it will, sadly, mean more casualties in the short term. But withdrawal will not end the violence, ensure that Iraqis live happily ever after in their enclaves or end anti-American terrorism. We will still be targets, as will pro-American friends and U.S. interests in the region.
The war and occupation have wedded American and Iraqi national interests. Iraq's fate will affect our own. Leaving the Iraqis to civil war will only condemn them, the region and probably the United States to more wars to come.
JUDITH S. YAPHE is Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University. For more than 20 years, she was a political analyst on the Middle East at the CIA. The views expressed here are her own.
------------------------------
Citation: Judith S. Yaphe. "Iraq Isn't About Us Anymore," Los Angeles Times, 30 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-yaphe30jul30,0,2301832.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
------------------------------
By Judith S. Yaphe
Los Angeles Times, 30 July 2006
WHEN THE Iraq war began in March 2003, the American plan was clear. We would eliminate Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction and punish him for refusing to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions and for supporting Al Qaeda. We would also reinvent Iraq in our image. It would be democratic and secular, with equal political representation and economic opportunity, respect for human rights, civil liberties, the rule of law and, oh yes, full participation by women and minority groups. It would be quick, painless and simple, and Iraqis would be eternally grateful.
But as everyone now knows, Iraqis did not follow our script. They voted along ethnic and sectarian interests and for more, not less, Islam in law and government. Today, Iraq is fast becoming ungovernable. Extremists from Sunni and Shiite communities are trying to turn what had long been a secular, integrated and modernizing society into an ethnic and Islamist paradise that, if achieved, would put even Iran to shame.
There is little point in debating whether Iraq is in civil war yet. Random killings, ethnic cleansing by all sides and rampant corruption are pushing society in that direction. Armed militias and vicious gangs kill for profit and pleasure, and occasionally for religion or ethnicity. The real fight is all about power, money and control. Iraqis, not Americans, are the primary targets. Yes, the United States must eventually leave, many Iraqis say, only do not leave us alone with ourselves just now.
The danger signs are everywhere. Oil-rich Kirkuk could at any moment explode into Kurd-Arab warfare. Turkey is threatening cross-border attacks to eliminate Kurdish terrorists who are hostile to Turkey, while the Islamic Republic of Iran has shelled anti-regime terrorists in northern Iraq. And sooner or later, Iran will renew its demands for reparations from the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, as well as for territorial guarantees. This could weaken if not break the fragile government in Baghdad.
If Iraq descends into full-blown civil war — and it is almost there — then militia will fight militia, Sunni will fight Shiite, and Arab will fight Kurd.
What then should the U.S. do? Should we admit defeat and go home? Maybe Iraqis are still not ready for democracy? Or maybe there is no such thing as Iraq, only three artificial ministates created by political manipulation, militia terror and ethnic cleansing?
American pundits and politicians have quickly sketched out simple exit strategies: partition Iraq into a Sunni-Shiite-Kurd confederation and withdraw our troops; let the Iraqis experience their civil war without us; send in more troops to ferret out terrorists and win the battle for Baghdad
The problem with all of these strategies is the same: They focus on our needs, our politics, our standards of democracy, our casualties, our potential loss of regional influence and our dependence on oil. But the struggle is no longer just about achieving U.S. goals; it's all about Iraq, and it is all about survival. Latest estimates indicate that 50 Iraqi civilians are killed for every U.S. casualty. Still, I believe that it is in the U.S. interest to see Iraq survive as a united country or we will face chronic instability and Iraq-based terrorists coming to our shores.
The truth is, we have few options:
• Withdrawal: Pundits and politicians see chaos and want out. I respect those questioning American unilateralist preemption strategies. But I worry about the consequences for U.S. interests if we abandon an Iraq we helped create and friends who would be set up for failure in a neighborhood we gas guzzlers love. A bad option.
• Send in more troops to "win the war": We need to define what winning means and assess the probable costs. Army Gen. John Abizaid, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, warned last week that more troops are needed if the battle for Baghdad — and thereby Iraq — is to be won. President Bush promised Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki in their meeting Tuesday that U.S. troops would be redeployed from other parts of Iraq, but it is not clear that additional forces won't be needed as well. How long will we be needed in Iraq? No one can say. But it seems to me we still have responsibility for helping Iraq survive what we set in motion three years ago. Surely, we can maintain our security presence, prepare military and police forces to take over security duties, provide training and protection, and help fragile political institutions take root. Sending more troops would be a politically unpopular move, but if U.S. commanders need them to maintain the pressure on terrorists and provide more security, they should have them.
• Partition Iraq: This would almost certainly spawn civil war. Iraq's Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shiite communities are not monoliths; each has its secularists and Islamists, rich and poor, oligarchs and peasants. None will be satisfied with a "Sunnistan-Kurdistan-Shiastan" divide. Some say Iraq is already a failed state or was never meant to be a state at all. Others see Lebanon as a warning about what could happen in Iraq. Consider Lebanon — unable to control extremist forces, plagued by a long history of civil unrest and an easy target for intervention by stronger neighbors who play on inbred political weaknesses. Is this a vision of Iraq? The ingredients are there, including stronger neighbors meddling, a deepening social chasm and divided communal loyalties encouraged by foreign occupiers and warlords. Partition is playing with fire.
Washing our hands of Iraq may sound appealing, but the truth is, we will care very much if extremists enriched by Iraq's wealth have a place to prepare for their next terrorist campaign. Will it be New York or Washington or Los Angeles? In the 1980s, Iraqi Shiites cooperated with Lebanese Hezbollah's No. 1 terrorist, Imad Mughniyah, in a series of bombings, hijackings and assassination attempts in the Persian Gulf. Do we want a return to these good old days? I think not.
Staying the course in Iraq will not solve all of Iraq's problems, and it will, sadly, mean more casualties in the short term. But withdrawal will not end the violence, ensure that Iraqis live happily ever after in their enclaves or end anti-American terrorism. We will still be targets, as will pro-American friends and U.S. interests in the region.
The war and occupation have wedded American and Iraqi national interests. Iraq's fate will affect our own. Leaving the Iraqis to civil war will only condemn them, the region and probably the United States to more wars to come.
JUDITH S. YAPHE is Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University. For more than 20 years, she was a political analyst on the Middle East at the CIA. The views expressed here are her own.
------------------------------
Citation: Judith S. Yaphe. "Iraq Isn't About Us Anymore," Los Angeles Times, 30 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-yaphe30jul30,0,2301832.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
------------------------------
27 July 2006
Strategies for a global counterinsurgency
By Jonathan Morgenstein and Eric Vickland
The Boston Globe, 28 March 2006
US TROOPS in Iraq face an insurgency similar to those confronted by great powers for centuries. Insurgents hide, wait, and strike on their own timetables. They wear no uniforms and they utilize tactics of deception, ambush, and terror. The insurgents strike weaknesses and dictate the terms of the fight.
Iraq is now a microcosm of the global struggle we face -- a comprehensive insurgency inadequately described as the global war on terrorism. In Iraq and around the world, we will never peacefully dissuade those dedicated to violence against us. They must be captured or killed. However, the enemy is not just Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups that share its messianic vision. It is also organized crime, black markets, and sympathetic local populations, all of which sustain the insurgency with cash, weapons, and intelligence.
This global insurgency can only be defeated by severing the insurgents' connections to populations that sustain them. We must isolate and smother an enemy who thrives by delivering empowerment and vengeance to populations drowning in poverty, social humiliation, and political marginalization. These masses in return sustain the enemy -- passively with cover and actively with fighters. We have to convince those who passively support the insurgency that we are not their enemy. Unfortunately, our current strategy overemphasizing military force drives undecided millions into the insurgents' arms. Not only are we fighting the war wrong, we are fighting the wrong war.
US forces in Iraq are coming to terms with essential lessons in dealing with insurgency: overwhelming firepower is often counterproductive; comprehensive reconstruction and information efforts win hearts and minds; the best sources of actionable intelligence are local populations; and lastly, indigenous law enforcement facilitates smaller US footprints, multiplying the effectiveness of all other efforts. These same lessons must also guide how we fight our worldwide struggle against Islamist extremism.
Counterinsurgency concepts must form the core of our government's national security strategy. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches that such an approach be based on five equally vital pillars: targeted military force, intelligence, law enforcement, information operations, and civil affairs.
Taken together, these pillars constitute a global counterinsurgency -- an innovative and cohesive paradigm with which to guide America's national security policy. As General John Abizaid told Congress last September, defeating the insurgency ''requires not only military pressure . . . [but] all elements of international and national power." Counterinsurgency doctrine tells us that the military is only one of the five pillars, and if we are to win, it cannot dominate the other four.
We were compelled and justified in militarily toppling the Taliban. But defeating future enemies will more likely demand targeted military force such as that being executed against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Africa than traditional blunt instruments typical of the Cold War. Those who prioritize national missile defense over either special-operations capabilities or non-military tools of foreign policy understand neither the nature of our greatest threat nor how to defeat it. Our intelligence capabilities -- collection and analysis of information -- must be expanded and diversified. We must trace technology on weapons of mass destruction as well as materials proliferation before they spread. We must strengthen social intelligence that will provide essential understanding of the demographic and cultural geography within which our enemy hides. We must reinvigorate our human intelligence networks so that we can penetrate their networks.
Some have downplayed the role of police work in defeating Al Qaeda. As 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean has observed, this complacency perpetuates the disjointed and dysfunctional nature of our law enforcement agencies, both within government and vis-a-vis international law enforcement bodies. This must change, because effective police operations are essential to suffocating the global insurgency.
Our information operations efforts -- instrumental in winning over the undecideds among whom the enemy hides and recruits -- is woefully inadequate. We must promote America's charity, while exposing the enemy's hypocrisy. Civil affairs, ''development" in non-military terms, is aggressive economic and political development as well as cultivation of civil society institutions and human rights. Only when populations in the developing world obtain genuine economic opportunity, social dignity, and political empowerment will they no longer incubate the global insurgency.
None of these pillars precludes other crucial components of our security policy: ending foreign oil dependency, reining in Iranian nuclear weapons development, and containing North Korea. Neither do they rule out wariness of rival great powers. We must rebuild the alliances that we need, yet have rubbed raw in the past six years, and we must close off geopolitical fissures that Russia and China will seek to exploit. However, the primary threat we face is the global insurgency, and defeating it will require a global counterinsurgency as the foundation of our national security and foreign policy doctrine.
Jonathan Morgenstein, a principal of the Truman National Security Project, is a program officer at the United States Institute of Peace. Eric Vickland is a lecturer for the Joint Special Operations University.
------------------------------------
Citation: Jonathan Morgenstein and Eric Vickland. "Strategies for a global counterinsurgency," The Boston Globe, 28 March 2006.
Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/28/strategies_for_a_global_counterinsurgency?mode=PF
-----------------------------------
The Boston Globe, 28 March 2006
US TROOPS in Iraq face an insurgency similar to those confronted by great powers for centuries. Insurgents hide, wait, and strike on their own timetables. They wear no uniforms and they utilize tactics of deception, ambush, and terror. The insurgents strike weaknesses and dictate the terms of the fight.
Iraq is now a microcosm of the global struggle we face -- a comprehensive insurgency inadequately described as the global war on terrorism. In Iraq and around the world, we will never peacefully dissuade those dedicated to violence against us. They must be captured or killed. However, the enemy is not just Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups that share its messianic vision. It is also organized crime, black markets, and sympathetic local populations, all of which sustain the insurgency with cash, weapons, and intelligence.
This global insurgency can only be defeated by severing the insurgents' connections to populations that sustain them. We must isolate and smother an enemy who thrives by delivering empowerment and vengeance to populations drowning in poverty, social humiliation, and political marginalization. These masses in return sustain the enemy -- passively with cover and actively with fighters. We have to convince those who passively support the insurgency that we are not their enemy. Unfortunately, our current strategy overemphasizing military force drives undecided millions into the insurgents' arms. Not only are we fighting the war wrong, we are fighting the wrong war.
US forces in Iraq are coming to terms with essential lessons in dealing with insurgency: overwhelming firepower is often counterproductive; comprehensive reconstruction and information efforts win hearts and minds; the best sources of actionable intelligence are local populations; and lastly, indigenous law enforcement facilitates smaller US footprints, multiplying the effectiveness of all other efforts. These same lessons must also guide how we fight our worldwide struggle against Islamist extremism.
Counterinsurgency concepts must form the core of our government's national security strategy. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches that such an approach be based on five equally vital pillars: targeted military force, intelligence, law enforcement, information operations, and civil affairs.
Taken together, these pillars constitute a global counterinsurgency -- an innovative and cohesive paradigm with which to guide America's national security policy. As General John Abizaid told Congress last September, defeating the insurgency ''requires not only military pressure . . . [but] all elements of international and national power." Counterinsurgency doctrine tells us that the military is only one of the five pillars, and if we are to win, it cannot dominate the other four.
We were compelled and justified in militarily toppling the Taliban. But defeating future enemies will more likely demand targeted military force such as that being executed against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Africa than traditional blunt instruments typical of the Cold War. Those who prioritize national missile defense over either special-operations capabilities or non-military tools of foreign policy understand neither the nature of our greatest threat nor how to defeat it. Our intelligence capabilities -- collection and analysis of information -- must be expanded and diversified. We must trace technology on weapons of mass destruction as well as materials proliferation before they spread. We must strengthen social intelligence that will provide essential understanding of the demographic and cultural geography within which our enemy hides. We must reinvigorate our human intelligence networks so that we can penetrate their networks.
Some have downplayed the role of police work in defeating Al Qaeda. As 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean has observed, this complacency perpetuates the disjointed and dysfunctional nature of our law enforcement agencies, both within government and vis-a-vis international law enforcement bodies. This must change, because effective police operations are essential to suffocating the global insurgency.
Our information operations efforts -- instrumental in winning over the undecideds among whom the enemy hides and recruits -- is woefully inadequate. We must promote America's charity, while exposing the enemy's hypocrisy. Civil affairs, ''development" in non-military terms, is aggressive economic and political development as well as cultivation of civil society institutions and human rights. Only when populations in the developing world obtain genuine economic opportunity, social dignity, and political empowerment will they no longer incubate the global insurgency.
None of these pillars precludes other crucial components of our security policy: ending foreign oil dependency, reining in Iranian nuclear weapons development, and containing North Korea. Neither do they rule out wariness of rival great powers. We must rebuild the alliances that we need, yet have rubbed raw in the past six years, and we must close off geopolitical fissures that Russia and China will seek to exploit. However, the primary threat we face is the global insurgency, and defeating it will require a global counterinsurgency as the foundation of our national security and foreign policy doctrine.
Jonathan Morgenstein, a principal of the Truman National Security Project, is a program officer at the United States Institute of Peace. Eric Vickland is a lecturer for the Joint Special Operations University.
------------------------------------
Citation: Jonathan Morgenstein and Eric Vickland. "Strategies for a global counterinsurgency," The Boston Globe, 28 March 2006.
Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/28/strategies_for_a_global_counterinsurgency?mode=PF
-----------------------------------
Fear of Chinese guns: Best defense is not to offer any offense
By Joseph S. Nye Jr.
San Francisco Chronicle, 09 April 2006
With China's defense budget set to increase by 14 percent next year, U.S. analysts are divided about the future of the U.S.-China security relationship.
John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago has flatly proclaimed that China cannot rise peacefully and predicted that "the United States and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war."
Others, like Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment, point out that China has engaged in good neighbor policies since the 1990s, settled border disputes, played a greater role in international institutions, and recognized the benefits of using soft power.
Skeptics reply that China is just waiting for its economy to continue to lay the basis for future hegemony. Who is right? We will not know for some time, but the debaters should recall Thucydides' warning more than two millennia ago that belief in the inevitability of conflict can become one of its main causes.
Each side, believing it will end up at war with the other, makes reasonable military preparations which then are read by the other side as confirmation of its worst fears.
In fact, the "rise of China" is a misnomer. "Re-emergence" would be more accurate, because by size and history the Middle Kingdom has long been a major power in East Asia. Technically and economically, China was the world's leader (although without global reach) from 500 to 1500.
Only in the last half millennium was it overtaken by Europe and the United States. In the past two decades of the 20th century, China's high annual growth rates of 8 to 9 percent led to a remarkable tripling of its gross national product. Nonetheless, China has a long way to go and still faces many obstacles to its development.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the U.S. economy was about seven times the size of China's, measured at the official exchange rate. If the two economies continue to grow at their current rates, the United States would still be nearly three times larger than China in 2025. Moreover, the two economies would not be equal in composition or sophistication. China would still have a vast underdeveloped countryside and would not equal the United States in per capita income until sometime in the last quarter of the century.
Moreover, simple projections of economic growth trends can be misleading. Countries tend to pick the low-hanging fruit as they benefit from imported technologies in the early stages of economic takeoff, and growth rates generally slow as economies reach higher levels of development. In addition, the Chinese economy faces serious obstacles of transition from inefficient state-owned enterprises, a shaky financial system, and inadequate infrastructure. Growing inequality, huge internal migration, an inadequate social safety net, corruption and weak institutions could foster political instability. Creating a rule of law and institutions for political participation has lagged behind the economy.
Some observers fear instability caused by a weak rather than a rising China. A China that cannot control population growth, flows of migration, environmental effects on the global climate and internal conflict poses another set of problems.
Politics has a way of confounding economic projections. As long as China's economy does grow, it is likely that its military power will increase, thus making China appear more dangerous to its neighbors and complicating U.S. commitments in the region. Whatever the accuracy of such assessments of China's military growth, the outcome will also depend on what the United States and other countries will be doing over the next decades. The key to military power in the information age depends on the ability to collect, process, disseminate and integrate complex systems of space-based surveillance, high-speed computers and "smart" weapons. China and others will develop some of these capabilities, but according to many military analysts, it is not likely that China will soon close that gap with the United States.
The fact that China is not likely to become a peer competitor to the United States on a global basis does not mean that it could not challenge the United States in East Asia or that war over Taiwan is not possible. Weaker countries sometimes attack when they feel backed into a corner, as Japan did at Pearl Harbor or China did when it entered the Korean War in 1950.
There is no need for the United States and China to go to war in this century. Not every rising power leads to war -- witness the United States overtaking Britain at the end of the 19th century. And if China's rise remains peaceful, it promises great benefits to Chinese, its neighbors and to Americans. But remembering Thucydides' advice that fear can create self-fulfilling prophecies, it will be important for analysts not to mistake their theories for reality and to keep pointing this out to political leaders and publics.
Joseph S. Nye Jr. is a distinguished service professor at Harvard University and author of "Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics'' and "The Power Game: A Washington Novel."
-----------------------------
Citation: Joseph S. Nye Jr. "Fear of Chinese guns: Best defense is not to offer any offense," San Francisco Chronicle, 09 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/04/09/ING9JI4LOQ1.DTL&type=printable
-----------------------------
San Francisco Chronicle, 09 April 2006
With China's defense budget set to increase by 14 percent next year, U.S. analysts are divided about the future of the U.S.-China security relationship.
John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago has flatly proclaimed that China cannot rise peacefully and predicted that "the United States and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war."
Others, like Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment, point out that China has engaged in good neighbor policies since the 1990s, settled border disputes, played a greater role in international institutions, and recognized the benefits of using soft power.
Skeptics reply that China is just waiting for its economy to continue to lay the basis for future hegemony. Who is right? We will not know for some time, but the debaters should recall Thucydides' warning more than two millennia ago that belief in the inevitability of conflict can become one of its main causes.
Each side, believing it will end up at war with the other, makes reasonable military preparations which then are read by the other side as confirmation of its worst fears.
In fact, the "rise of China" is a misnomer. "Re-emergence" would be more accurate, because by size and history the Middle Kingdom has long been a major power in East Asia. Technically and economically, China was the world's leader (although without global reach) from 500 to 1500.
Only in the last half millennium was it overtaken by Europe and the United States. In the past two decades of the 20th century, China's high annual growth rates of 8 to 9 percent led to a remarkable tripling of its gross national product. Nonetheless, China has a long way to go and still faces many obstacles to its development.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the U.S. economy was about seven times the size of China's, measured at the official exchange rate. If the two economies continue to grow at their current rates, the United States would still be nearly three times larger than China in 2025. Moreover, the two economies would not be equal in composition or sophistication. China would still have a vast underdeveloped countryside and would not equal the United States in per capita income until sometime in the last quarter of the century.
Moreover, simple projections of economic growth trends can be misleading. Countries tend to pick the low-hanging fruit as they benefit from imported technologies in the early stages of economic takeoff, and growth rates generally slow as economies reach higher levels of development. In addition, the Chinese economy faces serious obstacles of transition from inefficient state-owned enterprises, a shaky financial system, and inadequate infrastructure. Growing inequality, huge internal migration, an inadequate social safety net, corruption and weak institutions could foster political instability. Creating a rule of law and institutions for political participation has lagged behind the economy.
Some observers fear instability caused by a weak rather than a rising China. A China that cannot control population growth, flows of migration, environmental effects on the global climate and internal conflict poses another set of problems.
Politics has a way of confounding economic projections. As long as China's economy does grow, it is likely that its military power will increase, thus making China appear more dangerous to its neighbors and complicating U.S. commitments in the region. Whatever the accuracy of such assessments of China's military growth, the outcome will also depend on what the United States and other countries will be doing over the next decades. The key to military power in the information age depends on the ability to collect, process, disseminate and integrate complex systems of space-based surveillance, high-speed computers and "smart" weapons. China and others will develop some of these capabilities, but according to many military analysts, it is not likely that China will soon close that gap with the United States.
The fact that China is not likely to become a peer competitor to the United States on a global basis does not mean that it could not challenge the United States in East Asia or that war over Taiwan is not possible. Weaker countries sometimes attack when they feel backed into a corner, as Japan did at Pearl Harbor or China did when it entered the Korean War in 1950.
There is no need for the United States and China to go to war in this century. Not every rising power leads to war -- witness the United States overtaking Britain at the end of the 19th century. And if China's rise remains peaceful, it promises great benefits to Chinese, its neighbors and to Americans. But remembering Thucydides' advice that fear can create self-fulfilling prophecies, it will be important for analysts not to mistake their theories for reality and to keep pointing this out to political leaders and publics.
Joseph S. Nye Jr. is a distinguished service professor at Harvard University and author of "Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics'' and "The Power Game: A Washington Novel."
-----------------------------
Citation: Joseph S. Nye Jr. "Fear of Chinese guns: Best defense is not to offer any offense," San Francisco Chronicle, 09 April 2006.
Original URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/04/09/ING9JI4LOQ1.DTL&type=printable
-----------------------------
The Chinese Are Our Friends
. . . despite everything you hear from the fearmongers at the Pentagon. Don't listen to them. The Sino-American partnership will define the twenty-first century
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
Esquire, 01 November 2005
The greatest threat to America's success in its war on terrorism sits inside the Pentagon. The proponents of Big War (that cold-war gift that keeps on giving), found overwhelmingly in the Air Force and Navy, will go to any length to demonize China in their quest to justify high-tech weaponry (space wars for the flyboys) and super- expensive platforms (submarines and ships for the admirals, and bomber jets for both) in the budget struggles triggered by our costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
With China cast as America's inevitable enemy in war, the Air Force and Navy will hold off the surging demands of the Army and Marines for their labor-intensive efforts in Southwest Asia, keeping a slew of established defense contractors ecstatic in the process. How much money are we talking about? Adding up various reports of the Government Accountability Office, we're talking about $1.3 trillion that the Pentagon is locked into spending on close to a hundred major programs. So if China can't be sold to Congress and the American people as the next Red menace, then we're looking at a lot of expensive military systems being cut in favor of giving our troops on the ground the simple and relatively cheap gear they so desperately need not only to stay alive but also to win these ongoing conflicts.
You'd think the great search for the replacement for the Soviet threat would have finally ended after 9/11, but sadly that's not the case. Too many profits on the line. Army generals are fed up with being told that the global war on terrorism is the Pentagon's number-one priority, because if it were, they and their Marine Corps brethren would be getting a bigger slice of the pie instead of so much being set aside for some distant, abstract threat. It's bodies versus bucks, folks, and that's a presidential call if ever there was one. So it's time for George W. Bush to make up his mind whether or not he's committed to transforming the Middle East and spreading liberty to those Third World hellholes where terrorists now breed in abundance. If he is, the president will put an end to this rising tide of Pentagon propaganda on the Chinese "threat" and tell Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in no uncertain terms that our trigger pullers on the ground today deserve everything they need to conduct the counterinsurgency operations and nation building that will secure America's lasting victory in his self-declared global war on terrorism. If not, then Bush should just admit that the defense-industrial complex—or maybe just Dick Cheney—is in charge of determining who America's "real enemies" are.
The most important thing you need to know about the Pentagon is that it is not in charge of today's wars but rather tomorrow's wars. Today's wars are conducted by America's combatant commanders, those four-star admirals and generals who sit atop the regional commands such as Central Command, which watches over the Middle East and Central Asia, and Pacific Command, which manages our security interests in Asia from its perch in Honolulu.
Central Command has gotten all the attention since the Soviets went away, and as a result of all those boots being on the ground in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, the Tampa-based command is clearly dominated by a ground-forces mentality. Ask CENTCOM about the military's future needs and you'll get a long laundry list of requirements focused on the warfighter who's forced to walk the beat in some of the world's scariest neighborhoods, playing bad cop in nightly shoot-outs with insurgents and good cop by day as he oversees sewer-line repairs or doles out aid to the locals.
Nothing fancy here, as most of these unconventional operations are decidedly low-tech and cheap. It's what the Marines like to call Fourth Generation Warfare, or counterinsurgency operations designed to win over civilians while slowly strangling stubborn insurgencies. Completely unsexy, 4GW typically drags on for decades, generating real-time operational costs that inevitably pinch long-term acquisition programs—and therein lies the rub for the Pentagon's Big War clientele.
During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.
When the Soviets went away, the Pentagon's strategists started fishing around for a replacement, deciding on "rising China" in the mid-1990s, thanks to a showy standoff between Pacific Command and China's military over Taiwan. Since then, the Taiwan Strait scenario has served as the standard of the Pentagon's Big War planning and, by extension, fueled all budgetary justifications for big-ticket weapons systems and delivery platforms—everything from space-based infrared surveillance systems to the next generation of superexpensive strike fighter aircraft.
A key but rather anonymous player in this strategic debate has been Andrew Marshall, legendary Yoda of the superinfluential Office of Net Assessment, which reports directly to the secretary of defense. Marshall's main claim to fame was convincing the Pentagon in the 1980s that the Soviet Union's Red army was hell-bent on pursuing a revolution in military affairs that would—unless countered—send it leapfrogging ahead of us in high-tech weaponry. It never happened, but never mind, because as the neocons brag, it was Ronald Reagan's massive military buildup that bankrupted the Soviets. Now, apparently, we need to do the same thing to "communist" China because its rapid rise as a freewheeling capitalist economy will inevitably close the gap between their military and ours.
Do the Chinese have a trillion-plus dollars locked up in huge acquisition programs like we do? Are you kidding? We spend more to buy new stuff each year than the Chinese spend in total on their entire military. In fact, we spend more on operations in the Middle East each year than China spends on its entire military. Prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist strikes, the China threat was being successfully employed to win congressional support for all manner of Big War toys that logically had no real application in the 4GW scenarios that U. S. ground forces routinely found themselves in in the post-cold-war world. (Think dirt-poor Haiti or Black Hawk Down Somalia.) But 9/11 changed all that, and the Bush administration's global war on terrorism and resulting Big Bang strategy of transforming the Middle East inadvertently shifted the budgetary argument from the capital-intensive Navy and Air Force to the labor-intensive Army and Marines.
And when did that worm really turn? When Army and Marine officers began their second tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan last year. Program Budget Decision 753, signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz at the end of 2004, was the budgetary shot across the bow to the Big War crowd, as it announced a substantial shift of more than $25 billion to the Army's coffers. That "war tax," as it became known within the Defense Department, swept through the defense community like the Christmas tsunami, as basically every budget program was forced to give it up to the ground-pounders.
--------------------
Citation: Thomas P.M. Barnett. "The Chinese Are Our Friends," Esquire, 01 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Esquire/2005/11/01/1037812
--------------------
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
Esquire, 01 November 2005
The greatest threat to America's success in its war on terrorism sits inside the Pentagon. The proponents of Big War (that cold-war gift that keeps on giving), found overwhelmingly in the Air Force and Navy, will go to any length to demonize China in their quest to justify high-tech weaponry (space wars for the flyboys) and super- expensive platforms (submarines and ships for the admirals, and bomber jets for both) in the budget struggles triggered by our costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
With China cast as America's inevitable enemy in war, the Air Force and Navy will hold off the surging demands of the Army and Marines for their labor-intensive efforts in Southwest Asia, keeping a slew of established defense contractors ecstatic in the process. How much money are we talking about? Adding up various reports of the Government Accountability Office, we're talking about $1.3 trillion that the Pentagon is locked into spending on close to a hundred major programs. So if China can't be sold to Congress and the American people as the next Red menace, then we're looking at a lot of expensive military systems being cut in favor of giving our troops on the ground the simple and relatively cheap gear they so desperately need not only to stay alive but also to win these ongoing conflicts.
You'd think the great search for the replacement for the Soviet threat would have finally ended after 9/11, but sadly that's not the case. Too many profits on the line. Army generals are fed up with being told that the global war on terrorism is the Pentagon's number-one priority, because if it were, they and their Marine Corps brethren would be getting a bigger slice of the pie instead of so much being set aside for some distant, abstract threat. It's bodies versus bucks, folks, and that's a presidential call if ever there was one. So it's time for George W. Bush to make up his mind whether or not he's committed to transforming the Middle East and spreading liberty to those Third World hellholes where terrorists now breed in abundance. If he is, the president will put an end to this rising tide of Pentagon propaganda on the Chinese "threat" and tell Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in no uncertain terms that our trigger pullers on the ground today deserve everything they need to conduct the counterinsurgency operations and nation building that will secure America's lasting victory in his self-declared global war on terrorism. If not, then Bush should just admit that the defense-industrial complex—or maybe just Dick Cheney—is in charge of determining who America's "real enemies" are.
The most important thing you need to know about the Pentagon is that it is not in charge of today's wars but rather tomorrow's wars. Today's wars are conducted by America's combatant commanders, those four-star admirals and generals who sit atop the regional commands such as Central Command, which watches over the Middle East and Central Asia, and Pacific Command, which manages our security interests in Asia from its perch in Honolulu.
Central Command has gotten all the attention since the Soviets went away, and as a result of all those boots being on the ground in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, the Tampa-based command is clearly dominated by a ground-forces mentality. Ask CENTCOM about the military's future needs and you'll get a long laundry list of requirements focused on the warfighter who's forced to walk the beat in some of the world's scariest neighborhoods, playing bad cop in nightly shoot-outs with insurgents and good cop by day as he oversees sewer-line repairs or doles out aid to the locals.
Nothing fancy here, as most of these unconventional operations are decidedly low-tech and cheap. It's what the Marines like to call Fourth Generation Warfare, or counterinsurgency operations designed to win over civilians while slowly strangling stubborn insurgencies. Completely unsexy, 4GW typically drags on for decades, generating real-time operational costs that inevitably pinch long-term acquisition programs—and therein lies the rub for the Pentagon's Big War clientele.
During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.
When the Soviets went away, the Pentagon's strategists started fishing around for a replacement, deciding on "rising China" in the mid-1990s, thanks to a showy standoff between Pacific Command and China's military over Taiwan. Since then, the Taiwan Strait scenario has served as the standard of the Pentagon's Big War planning and, by extension, fueled all budgetary justifications for big-ticket weapons systems and delivery platforms—everything from space-based infrared surveillance systems to the next generation of superexpensive strike fighter aircraft.
A key but rather anonymous player in this strategic debate has been Andrew Marshall, legendary Yoda of the superinfluential Office of Net Assessment, which reports directly to the secretary of defense. Marshall's main claim to fame was convincing the Pentagon in the 1980s that the Soviet Union's Red army was hell-bent on pursuing a revolution in military affairs that would—unless countered—send it leapfrogging ahead of us in high-tech weaponry. It never happened, but never mind, because as the neocons brag, it was Ronald Reagan's massive military buildup that bankrupted the Soviets. Now, apparently, we need to do the same thing to "communist" China because its rapid rise as a freewheeling capitalist economy will inevitably close the gap between their military and ours.
Do the Chinese have a trillion-plus dollars locked up in huge acquisition programs like we do? Are you kidding? We spend more to buy new stuff each year than the Chinese spend in total on their entire military. In fact, we spend more on operations in the Middle East each year than China spends on its entire military. Prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist strikes, the China threat was being successfully employed to win congressional support for all manner of Big War toys that logically had no real application in the 4GW scenarios that U. S. ground forces routinely found themselves in in the post-cold-war world. (Think dirt-poor Haiti or Black Hawk Down Somalia.) But 9/11 changed all that, and the Bush administration's global war on terrorism and resulting Big Bang strategy of transforming the Middle East inadvertently shifted the budgetary argument from the capital-intensive Navy and Air Force to the labor-intensive Army and Marines.
And when did that worm really turn? When Army and Marine officers began their second tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan last year. Program Budget Decision 753, signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz at the end of 2004, was the budgetary shot across the bow to the Big War crowd, as it announced a substantial shift of more than $25 billion to the Army's coffers. That "war tax," as it became known within the Defense Department, swept through the defense community like the Christmas tsunami, as basically every budget program was forced to give it up to the ground-pounders.
--------------------
Citation: Thomas P.M. Barnett. "The Chinese Are Our Friends," Esquire, 01 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Esquire/2005/11/01/1037812
--------------------
US may increase Iraq force by delaying departures
By Will Dunham
Reuters, 26 July 2006
The U.S. military, faced with unrelenting violence in Baghdad, is expected to delay the departure of about 4,000 troops due to leave Iraq in the coming days in order to boost the size of the U.S. force, officials said on Wednesday.
In a sign that any significant cut in the 130,000-strong U.S. force in Iraq is unlikely soon, officials also said there are no plans to drop below the current level of 15 combat brigades this fall, as had previously been discussed.
The military, as it has been done periodically during the 3-year-old war, would temporarily increase the size of the U.S. force by extending the overlap between newly arriving units and those leaving.
A defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, said at least 200 troops from the Alaska-based 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, operating primarily in the Mosul area in northern Iraq, already had left Iraq after a yearlong deployment.
But the remaining roughly 3,700 troops are expected to have their departure delayed, the officials said. Officials could not say how long they will remain, but typically these delays have lasted a few weeks to a couple of months.
President George W. Bush said on Tuesday at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that more U.S. and Iraqi troops would be deployed in Baghdad from other parts of Iraq to try to curb sectarian violence in the capital amid concern that the country is sliding toward civil war.
PENTAGON POLICY
Pentagon policy is for Army units to serve 12-month tours in Iraq and Marine Corps units to serve seven-month tours.
But at key times in the war -- for example, during Iraqi elections in 2005 and during the return of sovereignty in 2004 -- the Pentagon has delayed the departure of thousands of troops to beef up the American troop presence temporarily.
Officials said commanders in Iraq also were looking at shifting some troops from other parts of Iraq into Baghdad. In addition, 400 soldiers who had been held in reserve in Kuwait have been brought into the country, they said.
Another defense official said the idea would be to create "a momentary overlap of at least a brigade" -- meaning roughly 3,500 troops. Another official said the increase might be "from the low 3,000s to the high 4,000s."
A third defense official said there was concern over keeping troops, facing stress and peril, longer than they had expected. "It's always painful to try to tell a unit they are staying longer than they were supposed to stay," this official said.
Opinion polls show eroding U.S. public support for the war and Bush's handling of it as congressional elections approach in November. The U.S. military death toll in the war, which began in March 2003, stood at 2,565 on Wednesday, with 19,157 wounded, the Pentagon said.
Army Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, last month expressed confidence that the military would be able to cut the size of the U.S. force there over the rest of the year. Defense officials months ago had said one option was to drop to about 100,000 troops.
But Bush, Casey and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have emphasized that reductions in the U.S. force depended on the security situation in Iraq and the development of U.S-trained Iraqi government security forces.
Additional reporting by Kristin Roberts
-----------------------------
Citation: Will Dunham. "US may increase Iraq force by delaying departures," Reuters, 26 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060726/ts_nm/iraq_usa_troops_dc
-----------------------------
Reuters, 26 July 2006
The U.S. military, faced with unrelenting violence in Baghdad, is expected to delay the departure of about 4,000 troops due to leave Iraq in the coming days in order to boost the size of the U.S. force, officials said on Wednesday.
In a sign that any significant cut in the 130,000-strong U.S. force in Iraq is unlikely soon, officials also said there are no plans to drop below the current level of 15 combat brigades this fall, as had previously been discussed.
The military, as it has been done periodically during the 3-year-old war, would temporarily increase the size of the U.S. force by extending the overlap between newly arriving units and those leaving.
A defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, said at least 200 troops from the Alaska-based 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, operating primarily in the Mosul area in northern Iraq, already had left Iraq after a yearlong deployment.
But the remaining roughly 3,700 troops are expected to have their departure delayed, the officials said. Officials could not say how long they will remain, but typically these delays have lasted a few weeks to a couple of months.
President George W. Bush said on Tuesday at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that more U.S. and Iraqi troops would be deployed in Baghdad from other parts of Iraq to try to curb sectarian violence in the capital amid concern that the country is sliding toward civil war.
PENTAGON POLICY
Pentagon policy is for Army units to serve 12-month tours in Iraq and Marine Corps units to serve seven-month tours.
But at key times in the war -- for example, during Iraqi elections in 2005 and during the return of sovereignty in 2004 -- the Pentagon has delayed the departure of thousands of troops to beef up the American troop presence temporarily.
Officials said commanders in Iraq also were looking at shifting some troops from other parts of Iraq into Baghdad. In addition, 400 soldiers who had been held in reserve in Kuwait have been brought into the country, they said.
Another defense official said the idea would be to create "a momentary overlap of at least a brigade" -- meaning roughly 3,500 troops. Another official said the increase might be "from the low 3,000s to the high 4,000s."
A third defense official said there was concern over keeping troops, facing stress and peril, longer than they had expected. "It's always painful to try to tell a unit they are staying longer than they were supposed to stay," this official said.
Opinion polls show eroding U.S. public support for the war and Bush's handling of it as congressional elections approach in November. The U.S. military death toll in the war, which began in March 2003, stood at 2,565 on Wednesday, with 19,157 wounded, the Pentagon said.
Army Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, last month expressed confidence that the military would be able to cut the size of the U.S. force there over the rest of the year. Defense officials months ago had said one option was to drop to about 100,000 troops.
But Bush, Casey and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have emphasized that reductions in the U.S. force depended on the security situation in Iraq and the development of U.S-trained Iraqi government security forces.
Additional reporting by Kristin Roberts
-----------------------------
Citation: Will Dunham. "US may increase Iraq force by delaying departures," Reuters, 26 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060726/ts_nm/iraq_usa_troops_dc
-----------------------------
Taliban goes for cash over ideology
By Rachel Morarjee
Financial Times, 26 July 2006
The Taliban has found a way to recruit fighters that is less about winning hearts and minds and more about the enduring appeal of cold hard cash.
They are paying fighters up to $12 (£6.50) a day to fight the fledgling Afghan National Army, which pays only $4 a day to its soldiers in the field, according to military officials.
"The Taliban are supported by Pakistan and they get money from the drugs trade, so they get more pay than our soldiers," said Colonel Myuddin Ghouri of the national army's 205 Corp.
While the ANA has the advantage of superior equipment and the same medical treatment as UK troops, its soldiers often have to risk their lives far from home.
"If you were a lad in the hills and you were offered $12 to stay local or you could take $4 and fight miles away from home, which would you do?" said Lieutenant Colonel David Hammond, an officer with 7 Para who is training Afghan officers in the southern province of Helmand as part of a mentoring scheme.
The pay difference is making it harder to recruit soldiers to the 38,000-strong ANA, which has faced a much better equipped and funded insurgency sinceJanuary.
Western officials have estimated that the Taliban's forces have risen from 2,000 last year to 6,000 this year. The Taliban claims to have 12,000 men.
Afghan defence ministry officials believe funds for the insurgency are flowing over the border from Pakistan and possibly from Arab countries.
The multi-ethnic Afghan National Army has been one of the success stories of the post-September 11 era and is hugely popular with most Afghans.
However, Afghan officials in Kabul say the pay of Afghan soldiers will remain a problem.
"Basic pay of $70 a month was a lot of money three years ago, but it's harder to recruit people to fight in a bitter insurgency now," said one Afghan official.
----------------------
Citation: Rachel Morarjee. "Taliban goes for cash over ideology," Financial Times, 26 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/786a53c0-1c42-11db-bd97-0000779e2340.html
----------------------
Financial Times, 26 July 2006
The Taliban has found a way to recruit fighters that is less about winning hearts and minds and more about the enduring appeal of cold hard cash.
They are paying fighters up to $12 (£6.50) a day to fight the fledgling Afghan National Army, which pays only $4 a day to its soldiers in the field, according to military officials.
"The Taliban are supported by Pakistan and they get money from the drugs trade, so they get more pay than our soldiers," said Colonel Myuddin Ghouri of the national army's 205 Corp.
While the ANA has the advantage of superior equipment and the same medical treatment as UK troops, its soldiers often have to risk their lives far from home.
"If you were a lad in the hills and you were offered $12 to stay local or you could take $4 and fight miles away from home, which would you do?" said Lieutenant Colonel David Hammond, an officer with 7 Para who is training Afghan officers in the southern province of Helmand as part of a mentoring scheme.
The pay difference is making it harder to recruit soldiers to the 38,000-strong ANA, which has faced a much better equipped and funded insurgency sinceJanuary.
Western officials have estimated that the Taliban's forces have risen from 2,000 last year to 6,000 this year. The Taliban claims to have 12,000 men.
Afghan defence ministry officials believe funds for the insurgency are flowing over the border from Pakistan and possibly from Arab countries.
The multi-ethnic Afghan National Army has been one of the success stories of the post-September 11 era and is hugely popular with most Afghans.
However, Afghan officials in Kabul say the pay of Afghan soldiers will remain a problem.
"Basic pay of $70 a month was a lot of money three years ago, but it's harder to recruit people to fight in a bitter insurgency now," said one Afghan official.
----------------------
Citation: Rachel Morarjee. "Taliban goes for cash over ideology," Financial Times, 26 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/786a53c0-1c42-11db-bd97-0000779e2340.html
----------------------
Fuel smuggling curbed by prices, says Iraq
By Steve Negus
Financial Times, 26 July 2006
Raising the price of petrol has made a serious dent in the fuel smuggling that Iraqi auditors say helps fund the insurgency, according to Hussein al-Shahristani, Iraqi oil minister.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Shahristani also said that production from the country's larger southern oil field is steadily rising and he predicted that oil production would come close to 3m barrels a day by the end of the year.
He also said that work was under way on a new law governing investment in the oil sector, which could see a range of contracts offered to foreign companies depending on the complexity of the fields they develop.
Although he lacks oil sector experience, the former nuclear scientist, imprisoned for refusing to work on Saddam Hussein's weapons programme, is credited by many in Baghdad with having supplied technocratic leadership to a troubled ministry. Under the previous government, the ministry was within the sphere of influence of the Shia Islamist Fadila party, who used it to strengthen their hold on the oil-producing region of Basra.
The result was a ministry that was widely considered to tolerate corruption and petrol smuggling and which helped fund both insurgents in the Sunni regions and militias operating in Basra.
However, Mr Shahristani said that the government had managed to curb smuggling by reducing subsidies - a policy initiated last year and which is expected to lift the budgetry burden on Iraq's government, which spends several billion dollars a year to import refined products.
"The most important programme we have in fighting smuggling is adjusting the prices of [fuel] products in the local market, so there is not a great incentive for the smugglers to take it across the border," he said.
The government has managed to raise the price of petrol twelvefold over the last year, from about 20 dinars (2 US cents) to 250 dinars (18 US cents) a litre, higher than in Iran and similar to prices in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, although still lower than in Turkey or Syria, he said.
His ministry has also reduced fuel rations to Basa's fishing fleets, who take it down the Shatt al-Arab waterway to the Gulf to sell - a policy enacted under SaddamHussein's government to encourage sanctions-busting smuggling. Basra fishermen freely admit that they make far more from the trade than from fishing.
"We have told them to come to another port very far from Shatt al-Arab and bring their catch of fish and market it, and then they will be supplied fuel for their next trip," he said - an ini-tiative that he acknowledged could be called the "oil-for-fish programme."
In addition, he said, "we have identified the individuals or groups, companies who are actually active in smuggling and we have not been selling to them, not been supplying them, and that has also been very effective in reducing smuggling."
The ministry is also trying to crack down on corruption by revising its system of importing refined fuel, he said, both shortening the length of contracts and publicising their content.
"We have made the whole process transparent [with] public tenders. The results of the tenders are going to be published on the [oilministry] website," Mr Shahristani said.
The minister predicted that oil production, which for the last two years has rarely broken the prewar output of 2.5m barrels per day, would increase despite attacks on the pipelines running from Iraq's northern oil fields.
"In the south, we have reached a record of 2m b/d and our staff there is working hard to go beyond that," Mr Shahristani said. "Our plan is by the end of this year to reach 2.5m b/d from the southern fields.
"Given the production of both fields we should be able to maintain 2.5m b/d for August [nationwide] and should be able to increase it to 2.9m b/d by the end ofthe year.
"With a little bit of luck we may hit the 3m b/d mark, which is a target," he said.
He said that work was under way on a new law governing foreign investment in the oil sector, which would likely envision different kinds of contracts fordifferent fields.
"We also hope by the end of the year to pass a hydrocarbon law by the parliament that will open the door for the international companies to come and work in Iraq, and develop our new fields," he said. "We have many many fields that are waiting for development, [and] some of them are giant fields."
"There is no one kind of contract that will be used for all the fields," he said.
"Some of the fields are much more complicated. They require much larger investments and also new technologies that may not be available locally."
------------------------
Citation: Steve Negus. "Fuel smuggling curbed by prices, says Iraq," Financial Times, 26 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ft/20060726/bs_ft/fto072620061925142185
------------------------
Financial Times, 26 July 2006
Raising the price of petrol has made a serious dent in the fuel smuggling that Iraqi auditors say helps fund the insurgency, according to Hussein al-Shahristani, Iraqi oil minister.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Shahristani also said that production from the country's larger southern oil field is steadily rising and he predicted that oil production would come close to 3m barrels a day by the end of the year.
He also said that work was under way on a new law governing investment in the oil sector, which could see a range of contracts offered to foreign companies depending on the complexity of the fields they develop.
Although he lacks oil sector experience, the former nuclear scientist, imprisoned for refusing to work on Saddam Hussein's weapons programme, is credited by many in Baghdad with having supplied technocratic leadership to a troubled ministry. Under the previous government, the ministry was within the sphere of influence of the Shia Islamist Fadila party, who used it to strengthen their hold on the oil-producing region of Basra.
The result was a ministry that was widely considered to tolerate corruption and petrol smuggling and which helped fund both insurgents in the Sunni regions and militias operating in Basra.
However, Mr Shahristani said that the government had managed to curb smuggling by reducing subsidies - a policy initiated last year and which is expected to lift the budgetry burden on Iraq's government, which spends several billion dollars a year to import refined products.
"The most important programme we have in fighting smuggling is adjusting the prices of [fuel] products in the local market, so there is not a great incentive for the smugglers to take it across the border," he said.
The government has managed to raise the price of petrol twelvefold over the last year, from about 20 dinars (2 US cents) to 250 dinars (18 US cents) a litre, higher than in Iran and similar to prices in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, although still lower than in Turkey or Syria, he said.
His ministry has also reduced fuel rations to Basa's fishing fleets, who take it down the Shatt al-Arab waterway to the Gulf to sell - a policy enacted under SaddamHussein's government to encourage sanctions-busting smuggling. Basra fishermen freely admit that they make far more from the trade than from fishing.
"We have told them to come to another port very far from Shatt al-Arab and bring their catch of fish and market it, and then they will be supplied fuel for their next trip," he said - an ini-tiative that he acknowledged could be called the "oil-for-fish programme."
In addition, he said, "we have identified the individuals or groups, companies who are actually active in smuggling and we have not been selling to them, not been supplying them, and that has also been very effective in reducing smuggling."
The ministry is also trying to crack down on corruption by revising its system of importing refined fuel, he said, both shortening the length of contracts and publicising their content.
"We have made the whole process transparent [with] public tenders. The results of the tenders are going to be published on the [oilministry] website," Mr Shahristani said.
The minister predicted that oil production, which for the last two years has rarely broken the prewar output of 2.5m barrels per day, would increase despite attacks on the pipelines running from Iraq's northern oil fields.
"In the south, we have reached a record of 2m b/d and our staff there is working hard to go beyond that," Mr Shahristani said. "Our plan is by the end of this year to reach 2.5m b/d from the southern fields.
"Given the production of both fields we should be able to maintain 2.5m b/d for August [nationwide] and should be able to increase it to 2.9m b/d by the end ofthe year.
"With a little bit of luck we may hit the 3m b/d mark, which is a target," he said.
He said that work was under way on a new law governing foreign investment in the oil sector, which would likely envision different kinds of contracts fordifferent fields.
"We also hope by the end of the year to pass a hydrocarbon law by the parliament that will open the door for the international companies to come and work in Iraq, and develop our new fields," he said. "We have many many fields that are waiting for development, [and] some of them are giant fields."
"There is no one kind of contract that will be used for all the fields," he said.
"Some of the fields are much more complicated. They require much larger investments and also new technologies that may not be available locally."
------------------------
Citation: Steve Negus. "Fuel smuggling curbed by prices, says Iraq," Financial Times, 26 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ft/20060726/bs_ft/fto072620061925142185
------------------------
General Explains Baghdad Buildup
Rather than keep troops out of harm's way, he wants more in the streets to ease reconstruction.
By Julian E. Barnes
Los Angeles Times, 27 July 2006
CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — For months, American commanders in Iraq have talked of their desire to withdraw most U.S. troops from Baghdad's dangerous streets and pull them back to the relative safety of big, wellguarded bases outside the capital.
In an interview Wednesday, the commander of day-to-day U.S. military operations in Iraq explained why he plans to do the opposite — push more American troops into the city's neighborhoods, making them responsible for stopping sectarian violence.
Army Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli also said he wants U.S. soldiers to oversee an army of Iraqis digging water and sewer lines and other public works to create jobs for Baghdad's residents. Military officials plan to start with a budget of about $75 million to $100 million for the projects.
"How do we stop the violence, the sectarian killing?" Chiarelli said. "We give them hope for a future."
Chiarelli says his plans are not a rejection of the military's previous strategy, but they put him squarely on one side of a debate that has divided American generals about how to win the war in Iraq.
The military's previous strategy has been to reduce the presence of U.S. forces in order to diminish casualties and give insurgent groups fewer targets.
Chiarelli said that pulling back the troops made sense when the enemy was mainly insurgent groups. But now that the violence in Baghdad is increasingly between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, stopping it requires a new approach, he said.
"What we have here is a level of sectarian violence," he said. "And the way you have to fight this is that you have to have presence on the streets. I don't know any other way to fight it."
Under the latest plan, military officials hope to establish zones of security by putting robust U.S. and Iraqi forces in key neighborhoods, then gradually expand those safe areas. Throughout the city, the Americans will try to quickly contain outbreaks of sectarian killing.
Nine thousand U.S. soldiers, 8,500 Iraqi soldiers and 34,000 Iraqi police officers provide security in Baghdad. Military officials plan to bolster those numbers with 4,000 additional U.S. troops and 4,000 more Iraqi soldiers.
But the cornerstone of the new plan is economic development projects, which Chiarelli is known for championing. When he commanded the 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad from March 2004 to March 2005, he reduced the violence in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City by putting many of the fighting-age men to work digging a sewer system.
Reconstruction projects have fallen by the wayside as money has diminished and violence has soared. That violence now has given Chiarelli an opportunity to test his ideas on a grander scale.
Chiarelli dismissed suggestions that the fighting was too serious to begin work projects. Violence, he said, will stop only when the economy improves, Iraqis get back to work and services begin to improve.
"It is absolutely ludicrous this concept that somehow you have to get to a level of security that will allow commerce to occur," Chiarelli said. "I am not downplaying the importance of security, but the key thing here is getting the people believing their life is going to get better."
The U.S. has spent billions on reconstruction with much of the money going to fund security for construction projects. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, addressing a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, complained about the money that security costs had consumed and called on Congress to help fund new projects to put Iraqis to work.
"Much of the budget you had allocated for Iraq's reconstruction ended up paying for security firms and foreign companies, whose operating costs were vast," Maliki said. "Instead, there needs to be a greater reliance on Iraqis and Iraqi companies."
Many of the reconstruction projects that were built in the first years of the Iraq war failed to make a difference in regular Iraqis' lives. Much of the building has focused on large waterpurification plants, sewage-treatment plants or electrical generators. But the U.S. has failed to do enough to make sure its reconstruction projects provided jobs for unskilled Iraqis, and the lack of a steady supply of electricity three years after the U.S.-led invasion rankles here.
The previous U.S. plan for securing Baghdad focused on quickly turning swaths of the city over to Iraqi army and police forces. That plan turned into a shambles with the outbreak of sectarian violence after the bombing in February of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.
"What didn't we figure? We didn't figure this sectarian killing," Chiarelli said
Another much-vaunted Baghdad security plan was launched by Maliki's government June 14, featuring stepped-up checkpoints and patrols by Iraqi forces. But the number of daily attacks has increased sharply.
The sectarian violence continued Wednesday, as hospital officials reported receiving the bodies of at least 14 men in southern and western Baghdad. All had been shot in the head and bore signs of torture.
The violence also focused on government officials. Two roadside bombs in eastern Baghdad killed a police colonel, his brother and another civilian. Gunmen also kidnapped a ranking Interior Ministry official. Fighting between Iraqi soldiers and insurgents on Haifa Street in central Baghdad left at least six dead, the army said.
Several weeks ago, the British began stepping up their efforts to stop sectarian violence in southern Iraq, a move that seems to be slowing the exodus of the Sunni minority from the city of Basra. On Wednesday, fighting broke out between British soldiers and Shiite militiamen in Basra and the southern city of Amara.
Chiarelli cautioned that the new plan might take months to show progress. But he said the U.S. would move quickly to create rapid-reaction forces to respond to sectarian fighting.
He cited a July 9 attack in which a group of Shiite gunmen rounded up between 36 and 55 Sunni men in Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood and killed them. Authorities took 2 1/2 hours to respond to calls for help.
"With what happened in Jihad, we have to have a strike force … that can react to anything that even looks like that," Chiarelli said.
"We have to be reactive in stopping the revenge killings from occurring because if you are not careful, that focused event begins a chain reaction," he said. "We have to target the insurgent who comes in and attempts to try and create that signature event. But we also have to target the death squads that are reacting to that signature event."
For the military, the plan is uncharted ground.
"Quite frankly, in 33 years in the United States Army, I never trained to stop a sectarian fight," he said. "This is something new."
Times staff writers Peter Spiegel and Maura Reynolds in Washington and Borzou Daragahi and Shamil Aziz in Baghdad and a special correspondent near Basra contributed to this report.
------------------------
Citation: Julian E. Barnes. "General Explains Baghdad Buildup," Los Angeles Times, 27 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-chiarelli27jul27,1,6480382.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
------------------------
By Julian E. Barnes
Los Angeles Times, 27 July 2006
CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — For months, American commanders in Iraq have talked of their desire to withdraw most U.S. troops from Baghdad's dangerous streets and pull them back to the relative safety of big, wellguarded bases outside the capital.
In an interview Wednesday, the commander of day-to-day U.S. military operations in Iraq explained why he plans to do the opposite — push more American troops into the city's neighborhoods, making them responsible for stopping sectarian violence.
Army Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli also said he wants U.S. soldiers to oversee an army of Iraqis digging water and sewer lines and other public works to create jobs for Baghdad's residents. Military officials plan to start with a budget of about $75 million to $100 million for the projects.
"How do we stop the violence, the sectarian killing?" Chiarelli said. "We give them hope for a future."
Chiarelli says his plans are not a rejection of the military's previous strategy, but they put him squarely on one side of a debate that has divided American generals about how to win the war in Iraq.
The military's previous strategy has been to reduce the presence of U.S. forces in order to diminish casualties and give insurgent groups fewer targets.
Chiarelli said that pulling back the troops made sense when the enemy was mainly insurgent groups. But now that the violence in Baghdad is increasingly between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, stopping it requires a new approach, he said.
"What we have here is a level of sectarian violence," he said. "And the way you have to fight this is that you have to have presence on the streets. I don't know any other way to fight it."
Under the latest plan, military officials hope to establish zones of security by putting robust U.S. and Iraqi forces in key neighborhoods, then gradually expand those safe areas. Throughout the city, the Americans will try to quickly contain outbreaks of sectarian killing.
Nine thousand U.S. soldiers, 8,500 Iraqi soldiers and 34,000 Iraqi police officers provide security in Baghdad. Military officials plan to bolster those numbers with 4,000 additional U.S. troops and 4,000 more Iraqi soldiers.
But the cornerstone of the new plan is economic development projects, which Chiarelli is known for championing. When he commanded the 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad from March 2004 to March 2005, he reduced the violence in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City by putting many of the fighting-age men to work digging a sewer system.
Reconstruction projects have fallen by the wayside as money has diminished and violence has soared. That violence now has given Chiarelli an opportunity to test his ideas on a grander scale.
Chiarelli dismissed suggestions that the fighting was too serious to begin work projects. Violence, he said, will stop only when the economy improves, Iraqis get back to work and services begin to improve.
"It is absolutely ludicrous this concept that somehow you have to get to a level of security that will allow commerce to occur," Chiarelli said. "I am not downplaying the importance of security, but the key thing here is getting the people believing their life is going to get better."
The U.S. has spent billions on reconstruction with much of the money going to fund security for construction projects. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, addressing a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, complained about the money that security costs had consumed and called on Congress to help fund new projects to put Iraqis to work.
"Much of the budget you had allocated for Iraq's reconstruction ended up paying for security firms and foreign companies, whose operating costs were vast," Maliki said. "Instead, there needs to be a greater reliance on Iraqis and Iraqi companies."
Many of the reconstruction projects that were built in the first years of the Iraq war failed to make a difference in regular Iraqis' lives. Much of the building has focused on large waterpurification plants, sewage-treatment plants or electrical generators. But the U.S. has failed to do enough to make sure its reconstruction projects provided jobs for unskilled Iraqis, and the lack of a steady supply of electricity three years after the U.S.-led invasion rankles here.
The previous U.S. plan for securing Baghdad focused on quickly turning swaths of the city over to Iraqi army and police forces. That plan turned into a shambles with the outbreak of sectarian violence after the bombing in February of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.
"What didn't we figure? We didn't figure this sectarian killing," Chiarelli said
Another much-vaunted Baghdad security plan was launched by Maliki's government June 14, featuring stepped-up checkpoints and patrols by Iraqi forces. But the number of daily attacks has increased sharply.
The sectarian violence continued Wednesday, as hospital officials reported receiving the bodies of at least 14 men in southern and western Baghdad. All had been shot in the head and bore signs of torture.
The violence also focused on government officials. Two roadside bombs in eastern Baghdad killed a police colonel, his brother and another civilian. Gunmen also kidnapped a ranking Interior Ministry official. Fighting between Iraqi soldiers and insurgents on Haifa Street in central Baghdad left at least six dead, the army said.
Several weeks ago, the British began stepping up their efforts to stop sectarian violence in southern Iraq, a move that seems to be slowing the exodus of the Sunni minority from the city of Basra. On Wednesday, fighting broke out between British soldiers and Shiite militiamen in Basra and the southern city of Amara.
Chiarelli cautioned that the new plan might take months to show progress. But he said the U.S. would move quickly to create rapid-reaction forces to respond to sectarian fighting.
He cited a July 9 attack in which a group of Shiite gunmen rounded up between 36 and 55 Sunni men in Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood and killed them. Authorities took 2 1/2 hours to respond to calls for help.
"With what happened in Jihad, we have to have a strike force … that can react to anything that even looks like that," Chiarelli said.
"We have to be reactive in stopping the revenge killings from occurring because if you are not careful, that focused event begins a chain reaction," he said. "We have to target the insurgent who comes in and attempts to try and create that signature event. But we also have to target the death squads that are reacting to that signature event."
For the military, the plan is uncharted ground.
"Quite frankly, in 33 years in the United States Army, I never trained to stop a sectarian fight," he said. "This is something new."
Times staff writers Peter Spiegel and Maura Reynolds in Washington and Borzou Daragahi and Shamil Aziz in Baghdad and a special correspondent near Basra contributed to this report.
------------------------
Citation: Julian E. Barnes. "General Explains Baghdad Buildup," Los Angeles Times, 27 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-chiarelli27jul27,1,6480382.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
------------------------
25 July 2006
Senior Iraqi army officer criticizes US security approach
Agence France-Presse, 24 July 2006
A top Iraqi military officer drew a dark picture of the security situation in his war-torn country while on a visit to Washington and said the current US strategy lacked vision and had failed.
"The DIME (diplomacy, information, military, economy) concept has failed in Iraq," said General Nasier Abadi, deputy chief of staff of the Iraqi army.
He said the current security approach lacked foresight necessary to predict such developments as radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr leading a powerful insurgency in Iraq.
"One aspect was missing" from the US strategy, Abadi said, "and that is the brain to be able to get all these together. I'm proposing to add an S for the DIME, and the S is for 'sound prediction,' that would forecast what is coming to happen in the future."
He said the current accumulation of threats was preventing the US-led coalition on the ground in Iraq from seeing "light again at the end of the tunnel."
Abadi crticized the United States for failing to recognize that a powerful figure such as Sadr had to be either won over or appeased for long-term stability to be gained on the streets.
"He started small, but he had the support of the people," Abadi said of Sadr.
"Had we had the foresight and gained Moqtada on our side, most of the chaos that we're having now would have been avoided with the strongest of the militias on our side."
The United States should have also thought of appeasing Syria by starting to build an oil pipeline to Iraq's neighbor to help its struggling economy and avert its isolation and militancy toward the United States, the Iraqi army chief said.
"Syria has a bad economy and is supporting the insurgency," Abadi said
"Had we thought of this earlier, we could have at least started a pipeline from Iraq to Syria, and with the benefit that Syria would get, I think they would have protected the pipeline themselves."
His critical comments came one day before Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was to meet US President George W. Bush in Washington to discuss overhauling security in Iraq after the failure of a crackdown in Baghdad.
US officers have already unveiled plans to beef up the US military presence in the Iraqi capital in the wake of what one senior Bush adviser called Maliki's "disappointing" security thrust there.
------------------------
Citation: "Senior Iraqi army officer criticizes US security approach," Agence France-Presse, 24 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060724/pl_afp/usiraqmilitary
------------------------
A top Iraqi military officer drew a dark picture of the security situation in his war-torn country while on a visit to Washington and said the current US strategy lacked vision and had failed.
"The DIME (diplomacy, information, military, economy) concept has failed in Iraq," said General Nasier Abadi, deputy chief of staff of the Iraqi army.
He said the current security approach lacked foresight necessary to predict such developments as radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr leading a powerful insurgency in Iraq.
"One aspect was missing" from the US strategy, Abadi said, "and that is the brain to be able to get all these together. I'm proposing to add an S for the DIME, and the S is for 'sound prediction,' that would forecast what is coming to happen in the future."
He said the current accumulation of threats was preventing the US-led coalition on the ground in Iraq from seeing "light again at the end of the tunnel."
Abadi crticized the United States for failing to recognize that a powerful figure such as Sadr had to be either won over or appeased for long-term stability to be gained on the streets.
"He started small, but he had the support of the people," Abadi said of Sadr.
"Had we had the foresight and gained Moqtada on our side, most of the chaos that we're having now would have been avoided with the strongest of the militias on our side."
The United States should have also thought of appeasing Syria by starting to build an oil pipeline to Iraq's neighbor to help its struggling economy and avert its isolation and militancy toward the United States, the Iraqi army chief said.
"Syria has a bad economy and is supporting the insurgency," Abadi said
"Had we thought of this earlier, we could have at least started a pipeline from Iraq to Syria, and with the benefit that Syria would get, I think they would have protected the pipeline themselves."
His critical comments came one day before Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was to meet US President George W. Bush in Washington to discuss overhauling security in Iraq after the failure of a crackdown in Baghdad.
US officers have already unveiled plans to beef up the US military presence in the Iraqi capital in the wake of what one senior Bush adviser called Maliki's "disappointing" security thrust there.
------------------------
Citation: "Senior Iraqi army officer criticizes US security approach," Agence France-Presse, 24 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060724/pl_afp/usiraqmilitary
------------------------
21 July 2006
NATO's Afghan commander bemoans force shortfalls
By Peter Graff
Reuters, 21 July 2006
LONDON (Reuters) - A shortage of aircraft and easily deployable reserves is preventing NATO's force in Afghanistan doing its best, its commander said on Friday.
Lieutenant General David Richards, the British NATO commander who takes over responsibility for the dangerous south of the country in 10 days, said fighting in Afghanistan was more severe than the alliance expected when it planned its mission.
"Two years ago, when the North Atlantic Council agreed to this plan, they probably didn't know what they were getting into," he said during remarks to the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.
"The difficulty SHAPE has sometimes had in meeting the minimum requirements outlined in the statement of requirements denies commanders some of the freedoms they require to respond appropriately to developments," he said, referring to NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Brussels.
He identified shortfalls in "logistics capability, rapidly deployable reserves, air assets -- unfortunately including medivac -- and some lifesaving ECM equipment," the electronic anti-missile counter-measures needed to protect planes.
"Not that people like me cannot construct a plan or implement it, because of course we can, but with a little bit more I can construct a better plan that could be implemented more quickly," he said.
"We are not unable to operate, but we could do it more efficiently."
Richards commands NATO's ISAF peace force, which now patrols only the comparatively quiet north and west of the country but at the end of this month takes over the south, where newly-arrived British, Canadian and Dutch troops have plunged into unexpectedly fierce fighting with Taliban guerrillas.
Britain announced earlier this month it was increasing its force by a quarter amid unexpectedly heavy fighting, and said it was looking for more helicopters to send.
Richards takes over command of the remaining territory, the U.S.-patrolled east, in three months.
He described the mission as a watershed for NATO, taking on "land combat operations for the first time in its history."
He has in the past blamed the West for failing to send enough troops to southern Afghanistan after the Taliban fell in 2001, allowing the ousted guerrillas to return. Vast opium-rich Helmand province, where the British are now deploying 4,500 troops, had just 100 American soldiers until this year.
But Richards also said the war could be won, and the next year would be key.
"This is winnable. But most important: it's got to be won," he said. "If you are the Taliban, this is the year they feel they've got to win. Because next year we will be there in greater strength."
------------------------
Citation: Peter Graff. "NATO's Afghan commander bemoans force shortfalls," Reuters, 21 July 2006.
Original URL: http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-07-21T135830Z_01_L21755754_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-AFGHAN-NATO-COL.XML
------------------------
Reuters, 21 July 2006
LONDON (Reuters) - A shortage of aircraft and easily deployable reserves is preventing NATO's force in Afghanistan doing its best, its commander said on Friday.
Lieutenant General David Richards, the British NATO commander who takes over responsibility for the dangerous south of the country in 10 days, said fighting in Afghanistan was more severe than the alliance expected when it planned its mission.
"Two years ago, when the North Atlantic Council agreed to this plan, they probably didn't know what they were getting into," he said during remarks to the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.
"The difficulty SHAPE has sometimes had in meeting the minimum requirements outlined in the statement of requirements denies commanders some of the freedoms they require to respond appropriately to developments," he said, referring to NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Brussels.
He identified shortfalls in "logistics capability, rapidly deployable reserves, air assets -- unfortunately including medivac -- and some lifesaving ECM equipment," the electronic anti-missile counter-measures needed to protect planes.
"Not that people like me cannot construct a plan or implement it, because of course we can, but with a little bit more I can construct a better plan that could be implemented more quickly," he said.
"We are not unable to operate, but we could do it more efficiently."
Richards commands NATO's ISAF peace force, which now patrols only the comparatively quiet north and west of the country but at the end of this month takes over the south, where newly-arrived British, Canadian and Dutch troops have plunged into unexpectedly fierce fighting with Taliban guerrillas.
Britain announced earlier this month it was increasing its force by a quarter amid unexpectedly heavy fighting, and said it was looking for more helicopters to send.
Richards takes over command of the remaining territory, the U.S.-patrolled east, in three months.
He described the mission as a watershed for NATO, taking on "land combat operations for the first time in its history."
He has in the past blamed the West for failing to send enough troops to southern Afghanistan after the Taliban fell in 2001, allowing the ousted guerrillas to return. Vast opium-rich Helmand province, where the British are now deploying 4,500 troops, had just 100 American soldiers until this year.
But Richards also said the war could be won, and the next year would be key.
"This is winnable. But most important: it's got to be won," he said. "If you are the Taliban, this is the year they feel they've got to win. Because next year we will be there in greater strength."
------------------------
Citation: Peter Graff. "NATO's Afghan commander bemoans force shortfalls," Reuters, 21 July 2006.
Original URL: http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-07-21T135830Z_01_L21755754_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-AFGHAN-NATO-COL.XML
------------------------
The doctors who are too afraid to care for patients
Many of Iraq's wounded can no longer be saved as the healthcare system collapses amid violent intimidation
By James Hider and Ali al-Hamdani
The Times, UK, 20 July 2006
THE number of violent deaths in Iraq topped 100 a day last month as the country descended into open sectarian warfare.
Almost as shocking is that the number killed in May and June was greater than the number of injured: Iraq’s health care system is close to collapse and can no longer care for the wounded.
The statistics were compiled by the United Nations mission that monitors Iraq from outside the country because its headquarters were blown up by terrorists almost three years ago.
They show that the death toll reached 2,669 in May and 3,149 in June, and that 14,338 civilians have been killed this year.
"The emerging phenomenon of Iraqis killing Iraqis on a daily basis is nothing less than a catastrophe," said Ashraf Qazi, the UN envoy to Baghdad.
The figures also show that in May and June 5,762 civilians were wounded, fractionally less than the number killed.
The reason, according to Iraqi medical officials, is that doctors are too terrified to do their jobs following a deliberate campaign of murder, kidnap and intimidation.
Baghdad’s medical facilities are simply overwhelmed by the daily carnage. They were stripped down by a decade of UN sanctions, looted after the US invasion and then slowly rebuilt to cope with a peacetime city than never materialised. There are only 30 intensive care beds in the capital.
The Ministry of Health has been taken over by supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebel Shia cleric, who have little medical experience.
Adel Abdel-Mohsin, the Deputy Health Minister, told The Times that 190 medical staff had been murdered and 400 doctors kidnapped and that 1,000 doctors had fled the country.
"They are soft targets, easy to get and that’s why the hospitals are out of control in some areas. There have been raids or insults by gunmen or security forces storming the place and beating the doctors because there is no proper protection," Mr Abdel-Mohsin said.
Doctors have been kidnapped for money by criminals, murdered by insurgents because they are viewed as government workers, or shot by militias because they work in hospitals in areas dominated by a different sectarian community, be it Sunni or Shia.
In this country full of guns, grieving relatives or angry comrades-in-arms have been known to beat or even murder doctors when a patient dies on the operating table.
"Doctors are all afraid of showing up in the wards because of the recent threats to us," a doctor from Baghdad’s main hospital complex at Medical City told The Times yesterday.
"I have started telling families after surgery that their relative will die soon because there is no proper follow-up,” he said. “I can’t do anything about it. At least I am honest."
Doctors in Baghdad’s hospitals no longer even wear white coats or carry stethoscopes for fear that gunmen might storm their hospital. Instead they try to mingle with relatives whenever armed men enter the building. "We are afraid of going near a patient because if he dies we’ll be kidnapped or killed," said the doctor, who wished to remain anonymous.
Last week the Medical City administration received a threat that any staff going to work would be kidnapped — a clear attempt by militants to bring the service to its knees.
Two days later, a woman doctor who ignored the alert was kidnapped with her father, who was driving her to work at Medical City.
Since then, few have shown up for duty. Yesterday in the hospital canteen, 15 medical staff were present where once 500 would have gathered to eat.
Alaa Muti, a Sunni doctor working at a hospital in the Shia area of Qaddumiyah, recently discovered that his name was on a list of 35 doctors marked for execution by a local Shia militia. In the previous months two Sunni specialists have been killed and two resident doctors have fled after receiving similar threats.
"When I saw my name I didn’t hesitate for second, I just rushed to my room at the doctors’ accommodation and packed all my stuff, and left the place because I know they are serious. Now I’m leaving for Kurdistan as my friends told me I can find a job there and it’s safer."
Ziyad, an anaesthetist who declined to give his surname, said that nothing was being done to protect the country’s vital health workers. "It’s unbelievable. Every day we lose another doctor and neither the Health Ministry nor the Government does anything. They fail to provide protection [for doctors] while they managed to provide their illiterate MPs with 30 guards each."
Doctors have frequently staged strikes in the past to protest about beatings by government security forces, who often insist that their wounded are treated before anyone else. Now, with death threats proliferating, the doctors are simply getting out.
As medical staff flee they are often replaced by barely qualified workers affiliated to powerful militias. The doctor at Medical City said that he was too scared to reprimand subordinates for failing to do their jobs properly, for fear of violent reprisals.
"The Ministry of Health collapsed ages ago, but they are afraid to admit it," he said.
----------------------------
Citation: James Hider and Ali al-Hamdani. "The doctors who are too afraid to care for patients," The Times, UK, 20 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2277619,00.html
----------------------------
By James Hider and Ali al-Hamdani
The Times, UK, 20 July 2006
THE number of violent deaths in Iraq topped 100 a day last month as the country descended into open sectarian warfare.
Almost as shocking is that the number killed in May and June was greater than the number of injured: Iraq’s health care system is close to collapse and can no longer care for the wounded.
The statistics were compiled by the United Nations mission that monitors Iraq from outside the country because its headquarters were blown up by terrorists almost three years ago.
They show that the death toll reached 2,669 in May and 3,149 in June, and that 14,338 civilians have been killed this year.
"The emerging phenomenon of Iraqis killing Iraqis on a daily basis is nothing less than a catastrophe," said Ashraf Qazi, the UN envoy to Baghdad.
The figures also show that in May and June 5,762 civilians were wounded, fractionally less than the number killed.
The reason, according to Iraqi medical officials, is that doctors are too terrified to do their jobs following a deliberate campaign of murder, kidnap and intimidation.
Baghdad’s medical facilities are simply overwhelmed by the daily carnage. They were stripped down by a decade of UN sanctions, looted after the US invasion and then slowly rebuilt to cope with a peacetime city than never materialised. There are only 30 intensive care beds in the capital.
The Ministry of Health has been taken over by supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebel Shia cleric, who have little medical experience.
Adel Abdel-Mohsin, the Deputy Health Minister, told The Times that 190 medical staff had been murdered and 400 doctors kidnapped and that 1,000 doctors had fled the country.
"They are soft targets, easy to get and that’s why the hospitals are out of control in some areas. There have been raids or insults by gunmen or security forces storming the place and beating the doctors because there is no proper protection," Mr Abdel-Mohsin said.
Doctors have been kidnapped for money by criminals, murdered by insurgents because they are viewed as government workers, or shot by militias because they work in hospitals in areas dominated by a different sectarian community, be it Sunni or Shia.
In this country full of guns, grieving relatives or angry comrades-in-arms have been known to beat or even murder doctors when a patient dies on the operating table.
"Doctors are all afraid of showing up in the wards because of the recent threats to us," a doctor from Baghdad’s main hospital complex at Medical City told The Times yesterday.
"I have started telling families after surgery that their relative will die soon because there is no proper follow-up,” he said. “I can’t do anything about it. At least I am honest."
Doctors in Baghdad’s hospitals no longer even wear white coats or carry stethoscopes for fear that gunmen might storm their hospital. Instead they try to mingle with relatives whenever armed men enter the building. "We are afraid of going near a patient because if he dies we’ll be kidnapped or killed," said the doctor, who wished to remain anonymous.
Last week the Medical City administration received a threat that any staff going to work would be kidnapped — a clear attempt by militants to bring the service to its knees.
Two days later, a woman doctor who ignored the alert was kidnapped with her father, who was driving her to work at Medical City.
Since then, few have shown up for duty. Yesterday in the hospital canteen, 15 medical staff were present where once 500 would have gathered to eat.
Alaa Muti, a Sunni doctor working at a hospital in the Shia area of Qaddumiyah, recently discovered that his name was on a list of 35 doctors marked for execution by a local Shia militia. In the previous months two Sunni specialists have been killed and two resident doctors have fled after receiving similar threats.
"When I saw my name I didn’t hesitate for second, I just rushed to my room at the doctors’ accommodation and packed all my stuff, and left the place because I know they are serious. Now I’m leaving for Kurdistan as my friends told me I can find a job there and it’s safer."
Ziyad, an anaesthetist who declined to give his surname, said that nothing was being done to protect the country’s vital health workers. "It’s unbelievable. Every day we lose another doctor and neither the Health Ministry nor the Government does anything. They fail to provide protection [for doctors] while they managed to provide their illiterate MPs with 30 guards each."
Doctors have frequently staged strikes in the past to protest about beatings by government security forces, who often insist that their wounded are treated before anyone else. Now, with death threats proliferating, the doctors are simply getting out.
As medical staff flee they are often replaced by barely qualified workers affiliated to powerful militias. The doctor at Medical City said that he was too scared to reprimand subordinates for failing to do their jobs properly, for fear of violent reprisals.
"The Ministry of Health collapsed ages ago, but they are afraid to admit it," he said.
----------------------------
Citation: James Hider and Ali al-Hamdani. "The doctors who are too afraid to care for patients," The Times, UK, 20 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2277619,00.html
----------------------------
18 July 2006
One Day In Iraq -- As Viewed By Iraqi Press
By Greg Mitchell
Editor & Publisher, 16 July 2006
NEW YORK -- With the crisis somewhat to the west in the Middle East still escalating -- promising severe blowback for the U.S. -- the latest horrors from Iraq are drawing less attention.
In case anyone is wondering: It's not getting any better over there. In fact, one might say it is getting worse almost every day. Saturday brought the usual round of car bombings, mortars hitting houses, U.S. troops killed, plus 50 Iraqis abducted.
Ever wonder how the newly "free" Iraqi press is covering the conflict? This gets very little notice in the U.S., which is shocking, since one would expect we could learn an awful lot about he hearts and minds of the people that way -- if the Iraqi coverage is really open and tough-minded.
One reason for the lack of coverage is the need for translation. But the U.S. government-backed Open Source Center regularly paraphases highlights from the Iraqi press. Here is a wide and illuminating selection from its summary for July 15, drawn from a variety of newspapers.
*
--Al-Mashriq carries on page 2 a 60-word report that Ahmad Chalabi is still the head of the de'Ba'thification Commission.
--Al-Sabah carries on page 15 a 700-word report citing an official source at Health Ministry saying that over 8,000 persons, most of whom are children, need to be treated abroad.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July carries on the front page a 300-word report on the statement issued by Iraqi National Troops group condemning US 'occupation' forces' crimes in Iraq.
--Al-Sabah carries on page 2 a 110-word report on a statement by the cabinet that security forces in Dhi Qar arrested a gang trying to smuggle oil in the governorate.
--Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 1,000-word report on the Israeli attack against Lebanon. The report says that the Iraqi parliament has condemned the attack and demanded the Iraqi people stand beside Lebanese people.
--Al-Adalah carries on page 3 a 500-word article by Dr Ali Khulayf criticizing Harith al-Dari for his seditious statements that encourage sectarian violence.
--Al-Sabah carries on page 3 a 200-word report citing an official source at Health Ministry saying that the morgue received 1,600 bodies in June. . .
--Al-Mashriq carries on page 3 a 450-word report that hundreds of university professors are leaving the country to save their lives from assassination.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July publishes on page 4 a 400-word report entitled 'Defense Ministry Official Holds Interior Ministry Responsible for Hay al-Jihad Massacre.' .
--Al-Mashriq carries on page 4 a 300-word report that women have demanded to change item number 41 of the Iraqi permanent constitution. . .
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July runs on page 2 a 500-word report on Statement 288 issued by Association of Muslim Scholars denouncing Iraqi and 'occupation' forces for imposing a tight siege around Arab Jubur and other villages in Al-Muqdadiyah District and the random arrest of dozens of Sunnis.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July publishes on page 2 a 500-word report on Statement 293 issued by Association of Muslim Scholars condemning sectarian militias for attacking Sunni mosques in Al-Ghazaliyah and Al-Durah Districts.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July carries on page 2 a 500-word report entitled 'Association of Muslim Scholars Condemns 'Occupation' Forces for Taking Over Al-Ramadi Public Hospital. . .
--Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 600-word report citing Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr accusing Sunnis of failing to respond to his calls to better Sunni-Shiite relations. .
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July runs on page 3 a 200-word report citing a medical source in Tikrit confirming the discovery of nine bodies.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July carries on page 3 a 230-word report entitled 'Civilian Killed and Three Injured in Large-Scale Military Operation in Al-Ramadi.'
--Al-Zaman publishes on page 5 a 1,000-word report entitled 'Merchant and His Sons and Grandson Assassinated in Mosul; British Patrol Release Hostage and Arrest Kidnappers in Basra.'
--Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 400-word report that about 50 families have left al-Jihad quarter in Baghdad to stay in tents installed on the airport road.
--Al-Sabah carries on page 14 a 200-word report citing legal professors criticizing the Red Crescent International Committee's decision to withdraw its employees from Iraq.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July publishes on page 8 a 600-word report on the difficult humanitarian situation in Al-Muqdadiyah District due to its siege by Iraqi and 'occupation' forces.
--Al-Adalah runs on page 4 an 800-word report on the role of terrorist attacks in decreasing the number of Iranian tourists to Al-Najaf Governorate. .
--Al-Mashriq carries on the front page an 80-word report citing the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister revealing that Syrian security forces arrested over 50 persons from various Arab nationalities who were trying to enter Iraqi territories via Syria.
-----------------------------
Citation: Greg Mitchell. "One Day In Iraq -- As Viewed By Iraqi Press," Editor & Publisher, 16 July 2006.
Original URL: http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002840051
-----------------------------
Editor & Publisher, 16 July 2006
NEW YORK -- With the crisis somewhat to the west in the Middle East still escalating -- promising severe blowback for the U.S. -- the latest horrors from Iraq are drawing less attention.
In case anyone is wondering: It's not getting any better over there. In fact, one might say it is getting worse almost every day. Saturday brought the usual round of car bombings, mortars hitting houses, U.S. troops killed, plus 50 Iraqis abducted.
Ever wonder how the newly "free" Iraqi press is covering the conflict? This gets very little notice in the U.S., which is shocking, since one would expect we could learn an awful lot about he hearts and minds of the people that way -- if the Iraqi coverage is really open and tough-minded.
One reason for the lack of coverage is the need for translation. But the U.S. government-backed Open Source Center regularly paraphases highlights from the Iraqi press. Here is a wide and illuminating selection from its summary for July 15, drawn from a variety of newspapers.
*
--Al-Mashriq carries on page 2 a 60-word report that Ahmad Chalabi is still the head of the de'Ba'thification Commission.
--Al-Sabah carries on page 15 a 700-word report citing an official source at Health Ministry saying that over 8,000 persons, most of whom are children, need to be treated abroad.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July carries on the front page a 300-word report on the statement issued by Iraqi National Troops group condemning US 'occupation' forces' crimes in Iraq.
--Al-Sabah carries on page 2 a 110-word report on a statement by the cabinet that security forces in Dhi Qar arrested a gang trying to smuggle oil in the governorate.
--Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 1,000-word report on the Israeli attack against Lebanon. The report says that the Iraqi parliament has condemned the attack and demanded the Iraqi people stand beside Lebanese people.
--Al-Adalah carries on page 3 a 500-word article by Dr Ali Khulayf criticizing Harith al-Dari for his seditious statements that encourage sectarian violence.
--Al-Sabah carries on page 3 a 200-word report citing an official source at Health Ministry saying that the morgue received 1,600 bodies in June. . .
--Al-Mashriq carries on page 3 a 450-word report that hundreds of university professors are leaving the country to save their lives from assassination.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July publishes on page 4 a 400-word report entitled 'Defense Ministry Official Holds Interior Ministry Responsible for Hay al-Jihad Massacre.' .
--Al-Mashriq carries on page 4 a 300-word report that women have demanded to change item number 41 of the Iraqi permanent constitution. . .
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July runs on page 2 a 500-word report on Statement 288 issued by Association of Muslim Scholars denouncing Iraqi and 'occupation' forces for imposing a tight siege around Arab Jubur and other villages in Al-Muqdadiyah District and the random arrest of dozens of Sunnis.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July publishes on page 2 a 500-word report on Statement 293 issued by Association of Muslim Scholars condemning sectarian militias for attacking Sunni mosques in Al-Ghazaliyah and Al-Durah Districts.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July carries on page 2 a 500-word report entitled 'Association of Muslim Scholars Condemns 'Occupation' Forces for Taking Over Al-Ramadi Public Hospital. . .
--Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 600-word report citing Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr accusing Sunnis of failing to respond to his calls to better Sunni-Shiite relations. .
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July runs on page 3 a 200-word report citing a medical source in Tikrit confirming the discovery of nine bodies.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July carries on page 3 a 230-word report entitled 'Civilian Killed and Three Injured in Large-Scale Military Operation in Al-Ramadi.'
--Al-Zaman publishes on page 5 a 1,000-word report entitled 'Merchant and His Sons and Grandson Assassinated in Mosul; British Patrol Release Hostage and Arrest Kidnappers in Basra.'
--Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 400-word report that about 50 families have left al-Jihad quarter in Baghdad to stay in tents installed on the airport road.
--Al-Sabah carries on page 14 a 200-word report citing legal professors criticizing the Red Crescent International Committee's decision to withdraw its employees from Iraq.
--Al-Basa'ir on 12 July publishes on page 8 a 600-word report on the difficult humanitarian situation in Al-Muqdadiyah District due to its siege by Iraqi and 'occupation' forces.
--Al-Adalah runs on page 4 an 800-word report on the role of terrorist attacks in decreasing the number of Iranian tourists to Al-Najaf Governorate. .
--Al-Mashriq carries on the front page an 80-word report citing the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister revealing that Syrian security forces arrested over 50 persons from various Arab nationalities who were trying to enter Iraqi territories via Syria.
-----------------------------
Citation: Greg Mitchell. "One Day In Iraq -- As Viewed By Iraqi Press," Editor & Publisher, 16 July 2006.
Original URL: http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002840051
-----------------------------
17 July 2006
Fury as Karzai plans return of Taliban's religious police
By Tom Coghlan
The Independent, UK, 17 July 2006
The Afghan government has alarmed human rights groups by approving a plan to reintroduce a Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the body which the Taliban used to enforce its extreme religious doctrine.
The proposal, which came from the country's Ulema council of clerics, has been passed by the cabinet of President Hamid Karzai and will now go before the Afghan parliament.
"Our concern is that the Vice and Virtue Department doesn't turn into an instrument for politically oppressing critical voices and vulnerable groups under the guise of protecting poorly defined virtues," Sam Zia Zarifi of Human Rights Watch said. "This is specially in the case of women, because infringements on their rights tend to be justified by claims of morality."
Under the Taliban the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice became notorious for its brutal imposition of the Taliban's codes of behaviour.
Religious police patrolled the streets, beating those without long enough beards and those failing to attend prayers five times a day. Widows suffered particular hardship because of the diktat that women be accompanied by a male relative when out of their homes, an impossibility for thousands of women widowed during decades of war.
The Ministry was also charged with the imposition of the Taliban's interpretation of sharia punishment. Executions at Kabul football stadium, which included female prisoners shot in the centre circle, did much to fuel the Taliban's international isolation.
However, the Minister for Haj and Religious Affairs, Nematullah Shahrani, defended the new body. "The job of the department will be to tell people what is allowable and what is forbidden in Islam," he said. "In practical terms it will be quite different from Taliban times. We will preach ... through radio, television and special gatherings."
He denied that the department would have police powers but said it would oppose the proliferation of alcohol and drugs and speak out against terrorism, crime and corruption. It would, he added, also encourage people to behave in more Islamic ways.
Nader Nadery, a spokesman for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said: "It will remind people of the Taliban. We are worried that there are no clear terms of reference for this body."
Western diplomats have reacted with unease to the proposal. However, several told The Independent that they believed the move was partly designed to defuse Taliban propaganda which accuses the Karzai government of being un-Islamic.
"This is an Islamic republic and sharia is a part of the constitution," one diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "If it is constitutional and within the framework of the International Convention on Human Rights [to which Afghanistan is a signatory] then it could represent a public information victory for the government."
With the Taliban making considerable gains in the south the Karzai government has been keen to establish a more conservative Islamic profile and to appear more critical of Western military operations.
Over the weekend violence continued across southern Afghanistan with British, American and Canadian troops mounting their biggest combined operation since the Korean War. British paratroopers mounted a cordon and search operation in Sangeen on Saturday night. A British base in the town has been under daily attack for more than two weeks.
Afghan officials said 27 Taliban fighters were killed in the Helmand province during the offensive, with 18 wounded and 10 captured. Two British soldiers were injured but not seriously.
Forty militants were also said to have been killed in separate fighting in north Helmand and Uruzgan provinces on Saturday.
Another 35 insurgents were reported killed during operations in Helmand yesterday. In other parts of the country, six Afghan soldiers died in a roadside bombing in the west, while a suicide bomber killed four civilians and injured 23 others in Gardez in the south-east.
---------------------------
Citation: Tom Coghlan. "Fury as Karzai plans return of Taliban's religious police," The Independent, UK, 17 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1181612.ece
---------------------------
The Independent, UK, 17 July 2006
The Afghan government has alarmed human rights groups by approving a plan to reintroduce a Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the body which the Taliban used to enforce its extreme religious doctrine.
The proposal, which came from the country's Ulema council of clerics, has been passed by the cabinet of President Hamid Karzai and will now go before the Afghan parliament.
"Our concern is that the Vice and Virtue Department doesn't turn into an instrument for politically oppressing critical voices and vulnerable groups under the guise of protecting poorly defined virtues," Sam Zia Zarifi of Human Rights Watch said. "This is specially in the case of women, because infringements on their rights tend to be justified by claims of morality."
Under the Taliban the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice became notorious for its brutal imposition of the Taliban's codes of behaviour.
Religious police patrolled the streets, beating those without long enough beards and those failing to attend prayers five times a day. Widows suffered particular hardship because of the diktat that women be accompanied by a male relative when out of their homes, an impossibility for thousands of women widowed during decades of war.
The Ministry was also charged with the imposition of the Taliban's interpretation of sharia punishment. Executions at Kabul football stadium, which included female prisoners shot in the centre circle, did much to fuel the Taliban's international isolation.
However, the Minister for Haj and Religious Affairs, Nematullah Shahrani, defended the new body. "The job of the department will be to tell people what is allowable and what is forbidden in Islam," he said. "In practical terms it will be quite different from Taliban times. We will preach ... through radio, television and special gatherings."
He denied that the department would have police powers but said it would oppose the proliferation of alcohol and drugs and speak out against terrorism, crime and corruption. It would, he added, also encourage people to behave in more Islamic ways.
Nader Nadery, a spokesman for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said: "It will remind people of the Taliban. We are worried that there are no clear terms of reference for this body."
Western diplomats have reacted with unease to the proposal. However, several told The Independent that they believed the move was partly designed to defuse Taliban propaganda which accuses the Karzai government of being un-Islamic.
"This is an Islamic republic and sharia is a part of the constitution," one diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "If it is constitutional and within the framework of the International Convention on Human Rights [to which Afghanistan is a signatory] then it could represent a public information victory for the government."
With the Taliban making considerable gains in the south the Karzai government has been keen to establish a more conservative Islamic profile and to appear more critical of Western military operations.
Over the weekend violence continued across southern Afghanistan with British, American and Canadian troops mounting their biggest combined operation since the Korean War. British paratroopers mounted a cordon and search operation in Sangeen on Saturday night. A British base in the town has been under daily attack for more than two weeks.
Afghan officials said 27 Taliban fighters were killed in the Helmand province during the offensive, with 18 wounded and 10 captured. Two British soldiers were injured but not seriously.
Forty militants were also said to have been killed in separate fighting in north Helmand and Uruzgan provinces on Saturday.
Another 35 insurgents were reported killed during operations in Helmand yesterday. In other parts of the country, six Afghan soldiers died in a roadside bombing in the west, while a suicide bomber killed four civilians and injured 23 others in Gardez in the south-east.
---------------------------
Citation: Tom Coghlan. "Fury as Karzai plans return of Taliban's religious police," The Independent, UK, 17 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1181612.ece
---------------------------
An Unseen Lifeline in Iraq
Western journalists rely heavily on a staff of locals to help them report and survive. There's a bond, but also a stark divide -- the visitors get to leave.
By James Rainey
Los Angeles Times, 15 July 2006
BAGHDAD — He is proud of the enormous armored sedan. "Two inches, the glass. Very strong."
He is proud to have survived the bombings — two of them so far.
He is proud that he is routinely trusted to navigate this airport road, the unpredictable scene of ambushes and assassinations.
Black smoke spirals skyward on the horizon, and swarms of Iraqi men in camouflage and dark masks tote rifles by the roadside.
But the driver puts me at ease.
He has driven other reporters down this road. He names them. They were brave. And all survived.
Then there is a sudden thud. The driver's eyes dart across the asphalt and along brown apartments lining both sides of the highway. He fumbles for a walkie-talkie, speaking in Arabic to bodyguards in another car. Even at a distance, the explosion creates a deep tremor.
He cranks the wheel to the right, making a hairpin turn.
Drivers shuttling Westerners around this beleaguered city change course frequently to throw off kidnappers. But this about-face is sudden and unnerving. Our driver is taking us the wrong way up a highway off-ramp.
Cars streak past in the opposite direction, a foot off our left front fender. My chest tightens.
"Is this normal?" I ask. "I mean, driving the wrong way like this?"
"In Iraq," the driver answers, "broken is the normal."
The Iraqi men and women who drive, cook, guard and interpret for American correspondents in Baghdad have much to teach.
At any given time, there are generally three American correspondents covering Iraq for The Times. Roughly 25 Iraqis support them: interpreters, drivers and bodyguards, cooks, a computer technician and an office manager.
From a single floor in a once-elegant, badly faded building across the Tigris River from the fortified Green Zone, this team of Americans and Iraqis tracks the U.S.-led occupation — covering the budding parliament, measuring the mood from Mosul to Basra, trying to make sense of the daily violence.
Without exception, the Western journalists I met during a recent three-week tour in Baghdad acknowledged their increasing dependence on Iraqis.
Americans routinely trust their lives to their Iraqi colleagues, but they also worry whether these aides can deliver the fullest picture of the country's struggles. These locals, after all, are mostly of a certain caste: English speakers, comfortable with Americans. Few hail from, say, Sadr City, the poor Shiite Muslim neighborhood in northeast Baghdad.
But a similar critique might be leveled at journalists in the United States. And the Iraqi staff does not lack for diversity of opinion.
One day, an older interpreter said he had felt safer under Saddam Hussein. "At least then," he said, "I knew who to be afraid of."
A younger colleague immediately disagreed. "This is crazy," he retorted. "Of course it's better he is gone."
These nationals help conduct interviews. They gather information on their own by telephone or on visits to politicians, police chiefs, sheiks, aid workers and Iraqi citizens. They sift through
e-mail and phone reports from stringers, part-time reporters scattered across Iraq. They go places a foreigner cannot. Their daily experiences help keep their American colleagues connected to the realities of life in Baghdad.
The work is dangerous. Out of concern for their security, their names are not used in this article. Of the 73 journalists reported killed during the war, 52 were Iraqis. All but one of the 27 support workers and technicians killed were Iraqi.
But work is in short supply here, and the Western press never lacks for new recruits.
Drivers and bodyguards can earn $500 a month. Capable interpreter-
reporters can make as much as $2,000, occasionally more.
"I know for the Western world this is not a lot," said one of The Times' veteran interpreters, who once worked in the medical field. "But in Iraq, this is a very good salary."
The interpreter spoke with pride about the stories he has helped cover: a string of assassinations that targeted physicians, water contamination that caused a deadly outbreak of typhoid, insurgent dominion in the northern city of Mosul.
"I had to leave my family during Eid" for the Mosul story, he said, referring to the Muslim holiday that follows Ramadan. "But no one else from the press was there. It was worth it."
It's not safe for him and the others to broadcast their achievements too widely. Most describe their work only to close family members or a friend or two. Others might dodge the question by saying they work as interpreters for government agencies.
The threat of exposure wears on them and can grow acute when they venture into public with one of their pale-faced American colleagues. Tension swirls around routine visits to the Convention Center — the seat of parliament and the fledgling government — because dozens of television news crews gather outside.
Being caught in the background of a TV news spot could reveal their ties to the American press. "That would not be a good thing," says one of the younger interpreters, a man in his late 20s and the father of a newborn.
When he and I cover parliament, we move around the sides of the lounge where politicians in suits and sheiks in headdresses hold forth. I position myself, like a shield, between my colleague and the cameras.
Official accounts of violence can quickly become numbing, but the stories our Iraqi partners relate make the fear palpable.
A 25-year-old whiz who keeps our computers running arrives at work one day and announces that his morning commute took him past a car stalled on one of the bridges crossing the Tigris.
"I look over, and the guy is leaning back in his seat," he says, dragging heavily on the first of many cigarettes. "Bullet in his head."
A colleague reports a similar scene on the way to the airport. But with two dead.
Another interpreter, in his early 50s, delivers a report from his troubled neighborhood in Baghdad. "There were three bodies piled on the street last night. This morning they were still there. Nobody moves them."
I keep my hotel room door open most of the time, and the interpreter wanders in to offer another observation.
"You know what happened this morning at my home? They came and posted notices: Women must wear the veil — really even girls, any that are over 12. If not, they will be targeted.
"Also, they must not wear pants, or sunglasses. And men, no long hair or shorts. And no goatees or jeans. They will be targeted, too, if they don't obey. Killed."
"Maybe," I suggest, "it would be safer now if your wife wore the hijab?"
He seems exasperated.
"Then what's the difference? What is different from before? This is Saddam. This is Saddam again."
One day in late May, our driver and two other Iraqis are at the dirt parking lot outside the airport, awaiting the arrival of another reporter.
When a truck careens into the area and explodes, the driver and his colleagues sprint for his big armored sedan. A second suicide bomber roars up in a second truck and sets off the explosives.
At least four Iraqis die, along with the bombers. The windows are blown out of one of our cars. Our colleagues escape without injury.
The driver calls his wife, who has become well acquainted with danger. Not long ago, she joined him in the countryside to learn how to fire the family's automatic rifle.
"Thanks to God," he tells her, "because I am alive."
It's his third near-miss. Last summer, an explosion totaled his car. In November, he had the bad fortune to be nearby when two truck bombers attacked a four-story building, leaving it gutted. He spent months in recovery.
"My wife says if I am rich man, we leave Iraq," he says. "But I have not money, so I stay."
Most of the others constantly probe for routes to the outside world.
The new father has been researching the difficult process of obtaining a visa to the United States.
The only Iraqi woman on the Times staff has won a fellowship to an American journalism school. She hopes to leave late this month.
The veteran interpreter recently moved to another country in the region.
The inequalities between Western and Iraqi reporters can't help but weigh on those covering the conflict.
The Iraqis' appearance and fluency in Arabic mean they are usually the first to be sent into the field. When any one of them remains out of contact for even a few minutes longer than expected, a series of anxious phone calls ensues.
American reporters get to leave. Even the bravest and most intrepid correspondents count on regular rotations out of Iraq to regain their equilibrium.
Their Iraqi co-workers return each night to neighborhoods where they must rely on their survival instincts.
"In Iraq we have a saying, 'To scratch an itch, it's best to use your own nails,' " one of our interpreters says. "We must help ourselves."
This soft-spoken, middle-aged father has suffered more than many. Last year, he looked on for more than a month as his son languished before dying in a hospital.
A bomb blast had torn out one of the young man's eyes and crushed a large portion of his skull.
The threat could not get much more real for the interpreter himself. He already had been chased from a hospital emergency room in Fallouja, where a grieving visitor held a pistol to his head and ordered him to end an interview.
After his son's death, relatives redoubled their efforts to keep him from dying in the service of Americans. "Enough is enough," they told him.
His mother, nearing her own death, told her son, "I would feel much more peace if you would quit."
But he didn't.
He welcomes the chance to come to the Times newsroom in Baghdad, to forget for a few hours about the boy who once "filled our house with life."
He sees what staying home and brooding has done to his once-vivacious wife. She is silent for long periods, her eyes filled with tears.
He talks about moving to Cairo or Amman, Jordan. He has saved a little money and might be able to rent their house. With the pension he has earned working for government ministries, they might have enough to live on. But unless the new Iraqi government comes through with the money, he will have to stay.
"Even though I know it's intolerable here, it's hard to think about leaving," he says. "My aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, they are all here. My whole world."
I tell him I am sorry that life is so hard.
He shrugs.
"This is our destiny," he says. "This is our destiny."
------------------------------
Citation: James Rainey. "An Unseen Lifeline in Iraq," Los Angeles Times, 15 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-iraqstaff15jul15,1,2665505.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
------------------------------
By James Rainey
Los Angeles Times, 15 July 2006
BAGHDAD — He is proud of the enormous armored sedan. "Two inches, the glass. Very strong."
He is proud to have survived the bombings — two of them so far.
He is proud that he is routinely trusted to navigate this airport road, the unpredictable scene of ambushes and assassinations.
Black smoke spirals skyward on the horizon, and swarms of Iraqi men in camouflage and dark masks tote rifles by the roadside.
But the driver puts me at ease.
He has driven other reporters down this road. He names them. They were brave. And all survived.
Then there is a sudden thud. The driver's eyes dart across the asphalt and along brown apartments lining both sides of the highway. He fumbles for a walkie-talkie, speaking in Arabic to bodyguards in another car. Even at a distance, the explosion creates a deep tremor.
He cranks the wheel to the right, making a hairpin turn.
Drivers shuttling Westerners around this beleaguered city change course frequently to throw off kidnappers. But this about-face is sudden and unnerving. Our driver is taking us the wrong way up a highway off-ramp.
Cars streak past in the opposite direction, a foot off our left front fender. My chest tightens.
"Is this normal?" I ask. "I mean, driving the wrong way like this?"
"In Iraq," the driver answers, "broken is the normal."
The Iraqi men and women who drive, cook, guard and interpret for American correspondents in Baghdad have much to teach.
At any given time, there are generally three American correspondents covering Iraq for The Times. Roughly 25 Iraqis support them: interpreters, drivers and bodyguards, cooks, a computer technician and an office manager.
From a single floor in a once-elegant, badly faded building across the Tigris River from the fortified Green Zone, this team of Americans and Iraqis tracks the U.S.-led occupation — covering the budding parliament, measuring the mood from Mosul to Basra, trying to make sense of the daily violence.
Without exception, the Western journalists I met during a recent three-week tour in Baghdad acknowledged their increasing dependence on Iraqis.
Americans routinely trust their lives to their Iraqi colleagues, but they also worry whether these aides can deliver the fullest picture of the country's struggles. These locals, after all, are mostly of a certain caste: English speakers, comfortable with Americans. Few hail from, say, Sadr City, the poor Shiite Muslim neighborhood in northeast Baghdad.
But a similar critique might be leveled at journalists in the United States. And the Iraqi staff does not lack for diversity of opinion.
One day, an older interpreter said he had felt safer under Saddam Hussein. "At least then," he said, "I knew who to be afraid of."
A younger colleague immediately disagreed. "This is crazy," he retorted. "Of course it's better he is gone."
These nationals help conduct interviews. They gather information on their own by telephone or on visits to politicians, police chiefs, sheiks, aid workers and Iraqi citizens. They sift through
e-mail and phone reports from stringers, part-time reporters scattered across Iraq. They go places a foreigner cannot. Their daily experiences help keep their American colleagues connected to the realities of life in Baghdad.
The work is dangerous. Out of concern for their security, their names are not used in this article. Of the 73 journalists reported killed during the war, 52 were Iraqis. All but one of the 27 support workers and technicians killed were Iraqi.
But work is in short supply here, and the Western press never lacks for new recruits.
Drivers and bodyguards can earn $500 a month. Capable interpreter-
reporters can make as much as $2,000, occasionally more.
"I know for the Western world this is not a lot," said one of The Times' veteran interpreters, who once worked in the medical field. "But in Iraq, this is a very good salary."
The interpreter spoke with pride about the stories he has helped cover: a string of assassinations that targeted physicians, water contamination that caused a deadly outbreak of typhoid, insurgent dominion in the northern city of Mosul.
"I had to leave my family during Eid" for the Mosul story, he said, referring to the Muslim holiday that follows Ramadan. "But no one else from the press was there. It was worth it."
It's not safe for him and the others to broadcast their achievements too widely. Most describe their work only to close family members or a friend or two. Others might dodge the question by saying they work as interpreters for government agencies.
The threat of exposure wears on them and can grow acute when they venture into public with one of their pale-faced American colleagues. Tension swirls around routine visits to the Convention Center — the seat of parliament and the fledgling government — because dozens of television news crews gather outside.
Being caught in the background of a TV news spot could reveal their ties to the American press. "That would not be a good thing," says one of the younger interpreters, a man in his late 20s and the father of a newborn.
When he and I cover parliament, we move around the sides of the lounge where politicians in suits and sheiks in headdresses hold forth. I position myself, like a shield, between my colleague and the cameras.
Official accounts of violence can quickly become numbing, but the stories our Iraqi partners relate make the fear palpable.
A 25-year-old whiz who keeps our computers running arrives at work one day and announces that his morning commute took him past a car stalled on one of the bridges crossing the Tigris.
"I look over, and the guy is leaning back in his seat," he says, dragging heavily on the first of many cigarettes. "Bullet in his head."
A colleague reports a similar scene on the way to the airport. But with two dead.
Another interpreter, in his early 50s, delivers a report from his troubled neighborhood in Baghdad. "There were three bodies piled on the street last night. This morning they were still there. Nobody moves them."
I keep my hotel room door open most of the time, and the interpreter wanders in to offer another observation.
"You know what happened this morning at my home? They came and posted notices: Women must wear the veil — really even girls, any that are over 12. If not, they will be targeted.
"Also, they must not wear pants, or sunglasses. And men, no long hair or shorts. And no goatees or jeans. They will be targeted, too, if they don't obey. Killed."
"Maybe," I suggest, "it would be safer now if your wife wore the hijab?"
He seems exasperated.
"Then what's the difference? What is different from before? This is Saddam. This is Saddam again."
One day in late May, our driver and two other Iraqis are at the dirt parking lot outside the airport, awaiting the arrival of another reporter.
When a truck careens into the area and explodes, the driver and his colleagues sprint for his big armored sedan. A second suicide bomber roars up in a second truck and sets off the explosives.
At least four Iraqis die, along with the bombers. The windows are blown out of one of our cars. Our colleagues escape without injury.
The driver calls his wife, who has become well acquainted with danger. Not long ago, she joined him in the countryside to learn how to fire the family's automatic rifle.
"Thanks to God," he tells her, "because I am alive."
It's his third near-miss. Last summer, an explosion totaled his car. In November, he had the bad fortune to be nearby when two truck bombers attacked a four-story building, leaving it gutted. He spent months in recovery.
"My wife says if I am rich man, we leave Iraq," he says. "But I have not money, so I stay."
Most of the others constantly probe for routes to the outside world.
The new father has been researching the difficult process of obtaining a visa to the United States.
The only Iraqi woman on the Times staff has won a fellowship to an American journalism school. She hopes to leave late this month.
The veteran interpreter recently moved to another country in the region.
The inequalities between Western and Iraqi reporters can't help but weigh on those covering the conflict.
The Iraqis' appearance and fluency in Arabic mean they are usually the first to be sent into the field. When any one of them remains out of contact for even a few minutes longer than expected, a series of anxious phone calls ensues.
American reporters get to leave. Even the bravest and most intrepid correspondents count on regular rotations out of Iraq to regain their equilibrium.
Their Iraqi co-workers return each night to neighborhoods where they must rely on their survival instincts.
"In Iraq we have a saying, 'To scratch an itch, it's best to use your own nails,' " one of our interpreters says. "We must help ourselves."
This soft-spoken, middle-aged father has suffered more than many. Last year, he looked on for more than a month as his son languished before dying in a hospital.
A bomb blast had torn out one of the young man's eyes and crushed a large portion of his skull.
The threat could not get much more real for the interpreter himself. He already had been chased from a hospital emergency room in Fallouja, where a grieving visitor held a pistol to his head and ordered him to end an interview.
After his son's death, relatives redoubled their efforts to keep him from dying in the service of Americans. "Enough is enough," they told him.
His mother, nearing her own death, told her son, "I would feel much more peace if you would quit."
But he didn't.
He welcomes the chance to come to the Times newsroom in Baghdad, to forget for a few hours about the boy who once "filled our house with life."
He sees what staying home and brooding has done to his once-vivacious wife. She is silent for long periods, her eyes filled with tears.
He talks about moving to Cairo or Amman, Jordan. He has saved a little money and might be able to rent their house. With the pension he has earned working for government ministries, they might have enough to live on. But unless the new Iraqi government comes through with the money, he will have to stay.
"Even though I know it's intolerable here, it's hard to think about leaving," he says. "My aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, they are all here. My whole world."
I tell him I am sorry that life is so hard.
He shrugs.
"This is our destiny," he says. "This is our destiny."
------------------------------
Citation: James Rainey. "An Unseen Lifeline in Iraq," Los Angeles Times, 15 July 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-iraqstaff15jul15,1,2665505.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
------------------------------
12 July 2006
House Memo: Army Unit Readiness For Iraq, Afghanistan Is Lagging
Air Force preparedness at ‘historic low’
By Elaine M. Grossman
Inside the Pentagon, 06 July 2006
A memorandum circulated last week on Capitol Hill by a House Armed Services subcommittee chairman is raising concerns that Army units training at home are so short on equipment and personnel that they are unready if needed urgently for Iraq, Afghanistan or potentially any other crisis that may emerge domestically or abroad.
The June 26 document, issued by readiness panel head Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO), suggests the Army has already deployed units to Iraq and Afghanistan officially rated at the lowest levels of readiness.
But an Army spokesman said this week that although some units arrive in theater at less than top preparedness, they receive additional equipment and training before undertaking missions. In the Persian Gulf, for example, Army units typically fall in on equipment in Kuwait and undergo weeks of additional training there before moving into Iraq.
“There’s not one unit that goes across the berm [into Iraq or Afghanistan] that is not C-1 ready,” Lt. Col. Carl Ey, an Army spokesman, told Inside the Pentagon on July 5.
“C-ratings” are an official measure that describes units ready for their assigned missions as “C-1” and those most ill-prepared as “C-4.” The ratings reflect three major factors -- personnel, equipment and training -- and any of the three can alone drive a low assessment.
Hefley prepared the memo for readiness subcommittee members prior to a June 28 closed-door briefing by one- and two-star flag and general officers from each of the services.
The six-page missive, obtained by ITP, asserts that “overall, units are deploying in a combat-ready status, but at the expense of units that are remaining behind.” Army and Marine Corps stocks of weapon systems and support equipment are being used abroad so heavily that little is available with which units back home can train for their own potential deployment.
Hefley goes on to recommend questions that members of the readiness subcommittee might ask the military briefers, and here the memo alludes to readiness problems that have already spread from home bases to units deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom, or “OIF,” and Operation Enduring Freedom, or “OEF,” in Afghanistan.
According to the subcommittee chairman, there are multiple instances of Army forces deploying abroad with the worst possible C-ratings.
“In many cases, units deploying to OIF/OEF have lower C-ratings than previously would have been allowed,” the memo states in a section recommending questions for Maj. Gen. George Higgins, an Army assistant deputy chief of staff assigned to brief the subcommittee. “Why do units with poor C-ratings deploy to combat? How do units that are C-3 or C-4 accomplish their mission in theater?”
Because last week’s briefing was closed to the public, staff aides contacted for this article said they were unable to discuss responses military briefers offered to this and other questions posed by lawmakers. The memo does not provide details on how many units or which ones have deployed with the lowest readiness ratings.
But it does indicate readiness problems appear to be getting worse rather than better.
“Data suggests that overall readiness ratings of the Army are continuing to decline due to equipment shortages,” Hefley writes. Lawmakers should ask the service how it plans to repair or replace worn-out equipment, particularly in the National Guard, which bears “the greatest burden of equipment shortages in the Army,” according to the document.
Nonetheless, those familiar with the issue say unit readiness lapses are affecting both the active and reserve components of the services.
The military briefers were on Capitol Hill last week as part of a series of meetings devoted to readiness concerns. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee testified June 27 before the House Armed Services Committee on plans to replace or repair ground equipment and rotorcraft. A day later, the two service chiefs returned to the committee to testify in closed session.
The Army is seeking $17.1 billion in fiscal year 2007 to “reset” its force after years of wear in Afghanistan and Iraq. The effort includes $6.5 billion for repair; $8.5 billion for recapitalization; and $2.1 billion to replace equipment destroyed in combat, sister publication Inside the Army reported this week.
That continues an effort begun several years ago.
“Since 9/11, we have reset and returned over 1,900 aircraft, over 14,000 track vehicles, almost 111,000 wheeled vehicles, as well as thousands of other items to our operational units,” Schoomaker told the House committee last week. “By the end of this year -- fiscal year 2006, which will end in three months -- we will have placed approximately 290,000 major items of equipment into reset. Approximately 280,000 major items will remain in theater and will not redeploy to be reset until the drawdown [of U.S. forces in Iraq] is implemented.”
Across the services, the Pentagon is seeking $8.6 billion in the coming fiscal year to buy new weapons and equipment for operations abroad, Inside the Army reported.
“To make sure that we continue to operate at the level we do in theater, we have to have enough funds to get equipment turned around . . . on time,” says one Army official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Units typically return home from Iraq and Afghanistan at C-3 or C-4 readiness, and there have been increasing “challenges” in bringing them back up to full capability before they must deploy again, the official acknowledged. Those include serious shortages of equipment with which to train, as well as personnel shortfalls as officers and troops transfer to other units or attend school.
The Army had hoped to allow a unit to train at home for two years between each yearlong deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. But sustaining large force levels in both nations typically has allowed only a single year of rest and repair between deployments, Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, noted in an interview last week.
“We know that the ground forces are overstretched,” and Army recruiting and retention problems have aggravated readiness challenges, he said.
“It hit home [units] first” and the challenge now is to avoid putting inadequately prepared forces in harm’s way, Korb said.
Peculiarities in the ways in which Army unit readiness is measured make the exercise more an art than a science, experts say.
“Clearly there are challenges during reset in terms of having all people present and all equipment on hand,” one senior Army official told ITP on condition of not being named. “On the other hand, over half the units -- [and] even more of their leaders -- will have experience in [Iraq and Afghanistan] and thus are much better prepared for what they’ll be required to do. Because of that, I am nowhere near as concerned as I otherwise would be.”
Moreover, a unit may be unready to perform its primary mission as combat engineers, for example, but may be prepared to deploy abroad to undertake secondary tasks, such as driving trucks, according to service officials and experts on Capitol Hill. So an engineering unit could be rated C-3 or C-4 in its primary mission, but effectively be at a C-1 level for truck driving.
“I’m not sure the C-rating system necessarily captures the readiness of a unit,” the senior officer said. “I think you really have to look more closely at the C-ratings and determine whether they actually should be cause for concern or not.”
Other factors also may mitigate the official ratings, including an Army “unit manning system” that attempts to keep soldiers training and operating together over time to increase their effectiveness, as well as improved training and manuals that better prepare troops for counterinsurgency operations, service officials say.
“I don’t buy it,” responds Winslow Wheeler, a longtime Capitol Hill defense aide who has served members of both parties.
“Commanders don’t rate their units at this bottom level of readiness lightly. If they do, they’re admitting failure on their part, failure of the system and failure of their commanders,” says Wheeler, now director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. “The typical pattern is to inflate ratings of readiness.”
Korb agrees.
“It’s hard to say what pressure they’re under to put a better face on it,” he told ITP.
Lagging readiness in a unit’s primary mission may be cause for serious concern, particularly in the event that a new crisis demands the urgent deployment of units not already tied up in Iraq or Afghanistan, experts say.
With this week’s missile tests by North Korea and simmering tension surrounding Iran’s potential nuclear weapons capability, national security leaders and analysts are increasingly alarmed about potential obstacles to deploying U.S. troops outside of existing commitments.
“In order to sustain the current pace of military operations in Iraq without leaving the nation vulnerable to aggression in other places, the Department of Defense must continuously repair, rebuild and replace equipment worn out or destroyed by the war effort,” defense experts Korb, Loren Thompson and Caroline Wadhams wrote in an April report published by the Center for American Progress. Strains on equipment from intense use in the harsh Iraqi environment “currently undermine the Army’s ability to confront new challenges overseas or cope with disasters at home and threaten to impede operations in Iraq over the long term,” the trio wrote.
As a candidate for the presidency against Al Gore in 2000, George W. Bush criticized the Clinton-Gore administration for allowing lapses in Army readiness.
“If called upon by the commander in chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, ‘Not ready for duty, sir,’” Bush said at the Republican National Convention in August of that year (ITP, Oct. 5, 2000, p1).
Pentagon officials explained at the time that the two divisions, which were deployed to the Balkans, were fully ready for the missions they were undertaking. But if crisis arose, they would require more time to disengage from the region, retrain and redeploy than plans for major theater wars assumed, officials told reporters.
Similar challenges emerged after Bush became president.
Beginning in late 2003, four Army divisions were deemed unready for combat in the event of a major conflict in Korea or elsewhere, a Pentagon official told reporters at the time. After returning from Iraq, the C-3 and C-4 rated units would require 120 to 180 days of rest and retraining before cycling back into ready status.
With Army forces typically facing greater risks combating insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan than they did in peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, defense officials and outside experts worry readiness strains could be much more dangerous today.
“The penalty you’re going to pay is casualties,” says Wheeler.
Although ground troops bear the greatest brunt of combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, the House memo also notes strains the current operations are having on the Air Force.
“Despite claims that Air Force readiness levels are stable, it must be noted that readiness is at an historic low and the factors associated with current shortfalls will likely fuel a continued decline,” according to the memo.
The service operates many of the Pentagon’s so-called “high-demand/low- density” forces -- such as command and control aircraft, combat search and rescue planes, air refuelers, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft -- which are used heavily and are in short supply.
-----------------------------
Citation: Elaine M. Grossman. "House Memo: Army Unit Readiness For Iraq, Afghanistan Is Lagging," Inside the Pentagon, 06 July 2006.
By Elaine M. Grossman
Inside the Pentagon, 06 July 2006
A memorandum circulated last week on Capitol Hill by a House Armed Services subcommittee chairman is raising concerns that Army units training at home are so short on equipment and personnel that they are unready if needed urgently for Iraq, Afghanistan or potentially any other crisis that may emerge domestically or abroad.
The June 26 document, issued by readiness panel head Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO), suggests the Army has already deployed units to Iraq and Afghanistan officially rated at the lowest levels of readiness.
But an Army spokesman said this week that although some units arrive in theater at less than top preparedness, they receive additional equipment and training before undertaking missions. In the Persian Gulf, for example, Army units typically fall in on equipment in Kuwait and undergo weeks of additional training there before moving into Iraq.
“There’s not one unit that goes across the berm [into Iraq or Afghanistan] that is not C-1 ready,” Lt. Col. Carl Ey, an Army spokesman, told Inside the Pentagon on July 5.
“C-ratings” are an official measure that describes units ready for their assigned missions as “C-1” and those most ill-prepared as “C-4.” The ratings reflect three major factors -- personnel, equipment and training -- and any of the three can alone drive a low assessment.
Hefley prepared the memo for readiness subcommittee members prior to a June 28 closed-door briefing by one- and two-star flag and general officers from each of the services.
The six-page missive, obtained by ITP, asserts that “overall, units are deploying in a combat-ready status, but at the expense of units that are remaining behind.” Army and Marine Corps stocks of weapon systems and support equipment are being used abroad so heavily that little is available with which units back home can train for their own potential deployment.
Hefley goes on to recommend questions that members of the readiness subcommittee might ask the military briefers, and here the memo alludes to readiness problems that have already spread from home bases to units deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom, or “OIF,” and Operation Enduring Freedom, or “OEF,” in Afghanistan.
According to the subcommittee chairman, there are multiple instances of Army forces deploying abroad with the worst possible C-ratings.
“In many cases, units deploying to OIF/OEF have lower C-ratings than previously would have been allowed,” the memo states in a section recommending questions for Maj. Gen. George Higgins, an Army assistant deputy chief of staff assigned to brief the subcommittee. “Why do units with poor C-ratings deploy to combat? How do units that are C-3 or C-4 accomplish their mission in theater?”
Because last week’s briefing was closed to the public, staff aides contacted for this article said they were unable to discuss responses military briefers offered to this and other questions posed by lawmakers. The memo does not provide details on how many units or which ones have deployed with the lowest readiness ratings.
But it does indicate readiness problems appear to be getting worse rather than better.
“Data suggests that overall readiness ratings of the Army are continuing to decline due to equipment shortages,” Hefley writes. Lawmakers should ask the service how it plans to repair or replace worn-out equipment, particularly in the National Guard, which bears “the greatest burden of equipment shortages in the Army,” according to the document.
Nonetheless, those familiar with the issue say unit readiness lapses are affecting both the active and reserve components of the services.
The military briefers were on Capitol Hill last week as part of a series of meetings devoted to readiness concerns. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee testified June 27 before the House Armed Services Committee on plans to replace or repair ground equipment and rotorcraft. A day later, the two service chiefs returned to the committee to testify in closed session.
The Army is seeking $17.1 billion in fiscal year 2007 to “reset” its force after years of wear in Afghanistan and Iraq. The effort includes $6.5 billion for repair; $8.5 billion for recapitalization; and $2.1 billion to replace equipment destroyed in combat, sister publication Inside the Army reported this week.
That continues an effort begun several years ago.
“Since 9/11, we have reset and returned over 1,900 aircraft, over 14,000 track vehicles, almost 111,000 wheeled vehicles, as well as thousands of other items to our operational units,” Schoomaker told the House committee last week. “By the end of this year -- fiscal year 2006, which will end in three months -- we will have placed approximately 290,000 major items of equipment into reset. Approximately 280,000 major items will remain in theater and will not redeploy to be reset until the drawdown [of U.S. forces in Iraq] is implemented.”
Across the services, the Pentagon is seeking $8.6 billion in the coming fiscal year to buy new weapons and equipment for operations abroad, Inside the Army reported.
“To make sure that we continue to operate at the level we do in theater, we have to have enough funds to get equipment turned around . . . on time,” says one Army official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Units typically return home from Iraq and Afghanistan at C-3 or C-4 readiness, and there have been increasing “challenges” in bringing them back up to full capability before they must deploy again, the official acknowledged. Those include serious shortages of equipment with which to train, as well as personnel shortfalls as officers and troops transfer to other units or attend school.
The Army had hoped to allow a unit to train at home for two years between each yearlong deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. But sustaining large force levels in both nations typically has allowed only a single year of rest and repair between deployments, Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, noted in an interview last week.
“We know that the ground forces are overstretched,” and Army recruiting and retention problems have aggravated readiness challenges, he said.
“It hit home [units] first” and the challenge now is to avoid putting inadequately prepared forces in harm’s way, Korb said.
Peculiarities in the ways in which Army unit readiness is measured make the exercise more an art than a science, experts say.
“Clearly there are challenges during reset in terms of having all people present and all equipment on hand,” one senior Army official told ITP on condition of not being named. “On the other hand, over half the units -- [and] even more of their leaders -- will have experience in [Iraq and Afghanistan] and thus are much better prepared for what they’ll be required to do. Because of that, I am nowhere near as concerned as I otherwise would be.”
Moreover, a unit may be unready to perform its primary mission as combat engineers, for example, but may be prepared to deploy abroad to undertake secondary tasks, such as driving trucks, according to service officials and experts on Capitol Hill. So an engineering unit could be rated C-3 or C-4 in its primary mission, but effectively be at a C-1 level for truck driving.
“I’m not sure the C-rating system necessarily captures the readiness of a unit,” the senior officer said. “I think you really have to look more closely at the C-ratings and determine whether they actually should be cause for concern or not.”
Other factors also may mitigate the official ratings, including an Army “unit manning system” that attempts to keep soldiers training and operating together over time to increase their effectiveness, as well as improved training and manuals that better prepare troops for counterinsurgency operations, service officials say.
“I don’t buy it,” responds Winslow Wheeler, a longtime Capitol Hill defense aide who has served members of both parties.
“Commanders don’t rate their units at this bottom level of readiness lightly. If they do, they’re admitting failure on their part, failure of the system and failure of their commanders,” says Wheeler, now director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. “The typical pattern is to inflate ratings of readiness.”
Korb agrees.
“It’s hard to say what pressure they’re under to put a better face on it,” he told ITP.
Lagging readiness in a unit’s primary mission may be cause for serious concern, particularly in the event that a new crisis demands the urgent deployment of units not already tied up in Iraq or Afghanistan, experts say.
With this week’s missile tests by North Korea and simmering tension surrounding Iran’s potential nuclear weapons capability, national security leaders and analysts are increasingly alarmed about potential obstacles to deploying U.S. troops outside of existing commitments.
“In order to sustain the current pace of military operations in Iraq without leaving the nation vulnerable to aggression in other places, the Department of Defense must continuously repair, rebuild and replace equipment worn out or destroyed by the war effort,” defense experts Korb, Loren Thompson and Caroline Wadhams wrote in an April report published by the Center for American Progress. Strains on equipment from intense use in the harsh Iraqi environment “currently undermine the Army’s ability to confront new challenges overseas or cope with disasters at home and threaten to impede operations in Iraq over the long term,” the trio wrote.
As a candidate for the presidency against Al Gore in 2000, George W. Bush criticized the Clinton-Gore administration for allowing lapses in Army readiness.
“If called upon by the commander in chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, ‘Not ready for duty, sir,’” Bush said at the Republican National Convention in August of that year (ITP, Oct. 5, 2000, p1).
Pentagon officials explained at the time that the two divisions, which were deployed to the Balkans, were fully ready for the missions they were undertaking. But if crisis arose, they would require more time to disengage from the region, retrain and redeploy than plans for major theater wars assumed, officials told reporters.
Similar challenges emerged after Bush became president.
Beginning in late 2003, four Army divisions were deemed unready for combat in the event of a major conflict in Korea or elsewhere, a Pentagon official told reporters at the time. After returning from Iraq, the C-3 and C-4 rated units would require 120 to 180 days of rest and retraining before cycling back into ready status.
With Army forces typically facing greater risks combating insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan than they did in peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, defense officials and outside experts worry readiness strains could be much more dangerous today.
“The penalty you’re going to pay is casualties,” says Wheeler.
Although ground troops bear the greatest brunt of combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, the House memo also notes strains the current operations are having on the Air Force.
“Despite claims that Air Force readiness levels are stable, it must be noted that readiness is at an historic low and the factors associated with current shortfalls will likely fuel a continued decline,” according to the memo.
The service operates many of the Pentagon’s so-called “high-demand/low- density” forces -- such as command and control aircraft, combat search and rescue planes, air refuelers, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft -- which are used heavily and are in short supply.
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Citation: Elaine M. Grossman. "House Memo: Army Unit Readiness For Iraq, Afghanistan Is Lagging," Inside the Pentagon, 06 July 2006.