By Noam N. Levey
Los Angeles Times, 27 September 2006
WASHINGTON — Congress is on the verge of barring the construction of permanent bases for U.S. forces in Iraq, a move aimed at quelling concerns in the Arab world that American forces will remain in the war-torn country indefinitely.
The ban, which was inserted into the annual defense spending bill, won House approval Tuesday night when the chamber overwhelmingly approved the mammoth defense appropriations bill, 394-22.
The Senate is expected to vote on the $448-billion defense spending bill this week.
Pentagon and State Department officials have insisted that the U.S. military is not building permanent American bases in Iraq and that all facilities under construction will be handed over to the Iraqi government.
But the massive American bases in Iraq have long fueled speculation that the United States plans to maintain a military presence there, as it does in other parts of the Arab world.
Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar are all home to large U.S. military bases, which have occasionally helped fuel anti-American sentiment in the region. There was also a big U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia until 2003, when, acknowledging the sensitivity of U.S. troops in the home of Islam, the Pentagon moved most of its personnel elsewhere.
Several members of Congress, including Reps. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), have attempted to explicitly prohibit similar arrangements in Iraq.
On Monday, House and Senate leaders agreed to insert a ban pushed by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, into the defense spending bill.
"I have no illusions that this provision will somehow dramatically change the dynamic of events on the ground in Iraq," Biden said Tuesday in a statement. "But … this is a message that needs to be proclaimed loudly and regularly and with the stamp of the Congress."
In the California delegation, Lee joined Reps. Bob Filner (D-Chula Vista), Pete Stark (D-Fremont), Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma) in opposing the bill. Absent were Reps. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Carson), Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles). All others from California voted in favor of the bill.
---------------------------
Citation: Noam N. Levey. "House Passes Ban on Permanent Iraq Bases," Los Angeles Times, 27 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-bases27sep27,1,1463960.story
---------------------------
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28 September 2006
Al Qaeda gains recruits from Iraq war - UN study
By Irwin Arieff
Reuters, 27 September 2006
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A U.N. report released on Wednesday said the Iraq war provided al Qaeda with a training centre and recruits, reinforcing a U.S. intelligence study blaming the conflict for a surge in Islamic extremism.
The report by terrorism experts working for the U.N. Security Council said al Qaeda was playing a central role in the fighting in Iraq as well as inspiring a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, several hundred miles (km) away.
"New explosive devices are now used in Afghanistan within a month of their first appearing in Iraq," said the report. "And while the Taliban have not been found fighting outside Afghanistan/Pakistan, there have been reports of them training in both Iraq and Somalia."
Al Qaeda, it said, "has gained by continuing to play a central role in the fighting (in Iraq) and in encouraging the growth of sectarian violence, and Iraq has provided many recruits and an excellent training ground," it said.
The report said that al Qaeda's influence may soon wane in Iraq, citing some fighters' complaints that they were unhappy to learn upon arriving in the country that they would have to kill fellow Muslims rather than foreign fighters or could serve their cause only as suicide bombers.
The report was prepared by a team of experts set up to monitor the effectiveness of Security Council sanctions imposed on the Taliban and al Qaeda shortly after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
A 2001 council resolution requires all 192 U.N. member-nations to freeze the assets and travel of any person or group suspected of ties to al Qaeda or Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers, and bars arms deals with them.
U.S. President George W. Bush faced heavy criticism from political foes after parts of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate leaked out this week, revealing intelligence experts' conclusion that Islamic extremists were "increasing in both number and geographic dispersion" due to the Iraq war.
The study, prepared in April, said the war had become a "cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said it was natural that war would lead to more violence, citing as an example Japan's World War II attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. response.
"If you said after the attack on Pearl Harbor that the American response had increased the violence in the Pacific, you would be right, wouldn't you? Because violence did increase after the attack and after our response," he told reporters.
"We are in conflict with international terrorism and the nature of that conflict is playing out in Iraq," he said.
--------------------------
Citation: Irwin Arieff. "Al Qaeda gains recruits from Iraq war - UN study," Reuters, 27 September 2006.
Original URL: http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-09-27T210946Z_01_N27291994_RTRUKOC_0_UK-SECURITY-UN.xml
--------------------------
Reuters, 27 September 2006
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A U.N. report released on Wednesday said the Iraq war provided al Qaeda with a training centre and recruits, reinforcing a U.S. intelligence study blaming the conflict for a surge in Islamic extremism.
The report by terrorism experts working for the U.N. Security Council said al Qaeda was playing a central role in the fighting in Iraq as well as inspiring a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, several hundred miles (km) away.
"New explosive devices are now used in Afghanistan within a month of their first appearing in Iraq," said the report. "And while the Taliban have not been found fighting outside Afghanistan/Pakistan, there have been reports of them training in both Iraq and Somalia."
Al Qaeda, it said, "has gained by continuing to play a central role in the fighting (in Iraq) and in encouraging the growth of sectarian violence, and Iraq has provided many recruits and an excellent training ground," it said.
The report said that al Qaeda's influence may soon wane in Iraq, citing some fighters' complaints that they were unhappy to learn upon arriving in the country that they would have to kill fellow Muslims rather than foreign fighters or could serve their cause only as suicide bombers.
The report was prepared by a team of experts set up to monitor the effectiveness of Security Council sanctions imposed on the Taliban and al Qaeda shortly after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
A 2001 council resolution requires all 192 U.N. member-nations to freeze the assets and travel of any person or group suspected of ties to al Qaeda or Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers, and bars arms deals with them.
U.S. President George W. Bush faced heavy criticism from political foes after parts of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate leaked out this week, revealing intelligence experts' conclusion that Islamic extremists were "increasing in both number and geographic dispersion" due to the Iraq war.
The study, prepared in April, said the war had become a "cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said it was natural that war would lead to more violence, citing as an example Japan's World War II attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. response.
"If you said after the attack on Pearl Harbor that the American response had increased the violence in the Pacific, you would be right, wouldn't you? Because violence did increase after the attack and after our response," he told reporters.
"We are in conflict with international terrorism and the nature of that conflict is playing out in Iraq," he said.
--------------------------
Citation: Irwin Arieff. "Al Qaeda gains recruits from Iraq war - UN study," Reuters, 27 September 2006.
Original URL: http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-09-27T210946Z_01_N27291994_RTRUKOC_0_UK-SECURITY-UN.xml
--------------------------
Iraq Impeding Efforts to Go After Shiite Militias, U.S. Military Says
By Solomon Moore
Los Angeles Times, 28 September 2006
BAGHDAD — Senior U.S. military officials have stepped up complaints that Iraq's Shiite-led government is thwarting efforts to go after Shiite death squads blamed in the execution-style killings of Sunni Arabs in neighborhoods across this capital.
Although deadly Sunni Arab rebel attacks remain frequent in Baghdad, U.S. officials, including Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, say death squads affiliated with Shiite militias have become the main factors ratcheting up the capital's death toll from sectarian killings.
Civilian deaths in Baghdad during July and August totaled more than 5,100, according to United Nations figures, and most were caused by the sectarian strife.
However, the 8,000 U.S. troops sent to Baghdad in recent weeks to restore order have been largely prevented from confronting those militias, many of which have ties to Iraqi government officials.
The statements by ranking U.S. authorities complaining about the situation highlight rising American dissatisfaction with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and an increasing willingness to exert pressure on the fledging Iraqi government.
The U.S. forces would like to stage heightened military operations in Baghdad neighborhoods such as Sadr City, a stronghold for anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr's Al Mahdi militia.
"We have to fix this militia issue," Army Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq, said Wednesday.
"We can't have armed militias competing with Iraq's security forces. But I have to trust the prime minister to decide when it is that we do that."
U.S. officials are anxious for Iraqis to take a stronger role in their country's security because of mounting pressure to withdraw American troops as soon as possible. Rising public discontent in the United States with the war, tired troops on their third and fourth rotations in the Middle East and huge expenditures by American taxpayers are all driving U.S. officials to press the government of Maliki, a Shiite, to quickly take more responsibility.
A map provided by the U.S. military on Wednesday identified nine neighborhoods that have been targeted in a Baghdad security plan, a major effort aimed at ridding the capital of Sunni Arab insurgents and Shiite militias.
However, all but two of these neighborhoods are predominantly Sunni.
Publicly, U.S. military leaders say they are simply conducting operations in areas where they are tracking the most killings, but privately they acknowledge that the Iraqi government has been reluctant to go after Shiite militias.
Tensions increased between the U.S. military and the Iraqi government after the Iraqi army's recent failure to deploy 4,000 troops to Baghdad.
Iraqi officials have attempted to send soldiers from the south to Diyala province to stabilize sectarian strife in the provincial capital, Baqubah, 35 miles north of the capital.
But a U.S. military official with knowledge of combat operations in Iraq said, "We told them that they can't send anybody to Diyala until they give us the troops we need for Baghdad."
The military official, who requested anonymity because of restrictions about speaking to news media about combat operations, also complained that Maliki's government had scrapped a plan to move U.S. and Iraqi troops into Sadr City before the start of the current holy month of Ramadan, a sign of how sectarian political considerations were hampering attempts to quell violence in Baghdad.
U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Thurman, commander of military forces in the capital, said last week that "one of the sources of death groups are militias."
"I consider that issue a problem that the [Iraqi] government must deal with immediately."
Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said Maliki well understood the dangers posed by Shiite militias, but he said that political realities in Iraq could present the prime minister with even greater peril.
"This might create a negative reaction, and it may affect the political situation as well as the security situation in Baghdad," he said, defending Maliki's refusal to allow the U.S. military to raid Sadr City this month.
Dabbagh also said it was unfair to treat the Shiite militias the same as the Sunni Arab insurgents, because, he said, the paramilitaries were reacting to first blows by the rebels.
"Extremists and Saddamist parties are making bombs and killing Iraqis," Dabbagh said. "We do agree that there are revenge killings taking place, but not in the way of the Saddamists — this is just a reaction. We have to deal with the main causes: There are suicide bombers and car bombs attacking the Iraqis every day."
The American frustration in Baghdad is part of a growing chorus in recent weeks from officials both in Iraq and Washington expressing disappointment that Maliki has not taken a stronger stand against the militias, some of whose members serve in Iraq's army and police forces.
The dissatisfaction comes as scores of corpses — many mutilated by power drills, knives and multiple gunshots — continue to arrive at Baghdad's morgues, victims of death squads that officials fear are affiliated with politically backed militias.
The Sadr movement has control of some of Iraq's most powerful ministries, including Health, Transportation and Agriculture. The Badr Organization, a militia affiliated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq — a leading Shiite political party — and followers of Sadr have a strong influence at the Interior Ministry, which supervises the nation's police forces. Many ministries have their own security forces, which have been implicated in killings.
U.S. officials said they worried that a hands-off stance toward the militias could alienate those Sunni Arabs who have entered Iraqi civil society, including the army. They say they are concerned that Maliki's unity government could fray and that disaffected Sunni Arabs could drift into militancy.
U.S. military leaders described various obstacles facing them as they attempt to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad, including "no-touch lists" that prohibit them from arresting politicians and other high-status individuals, and off-limits areas in Baghdad that the U.S. military may not enter without permission from the Iraqi government.
U.S. military officials said they were also constrained by their desire to see the Iraqi government prove its ability to rule fairly, without regard to narrow sectarian interests and without significant U.S. interference, by resolving the sectarian conflict.
"There's a political piece to this to see if they deal with these guys," said another high-ranking U.S. military official in Baghdad, who also requested anonymity in order to maintain relationships with the Iraqi government.
"I won't deny the fact that there is corruption and problems in some of the ministries, but it's got to be dealt with, and it ought to be dealt with by the prime minister and the folks inside his government."
Instead, Maliki's government has often appeared to respond with ambivalence and occasional hostility to efforts to crack down on Shiite gunmen.
In August, U.S. forces raided Sadr City and battled with suspected militia members in one of the first thrusts of the Baghdad offensive. The prime minister responded by rebuking the American government for conducting the Sadr City incursion without permission from his administration.
Maliki's government also criticized two raids last week that captured suspected Al Mahdi militia leaders in the southern holy city of Najaf and in Baghdad.
In Washington, members of the Iraq Study Group — a high-profile, administration-backed panel examining U.S. policy in Iraq — recently held a news conference to say that they believed Maliki had just three months to act against the militias and restore stability.
But some observers say that Americans may have unrealistic expectations for an embryonic government so riven with sectarian and partisan fissures. Even if the Iraqi government had the will to act, it might not be able to control the militias, which U.S. and Iraqi officials contend have splintered into more radicalized and deadly elements.
"For example, Muqtada Sadr was ordered to control the militias, but even he can't control them," said Suha Azzawi, a Sunni Arab politician.
Staff writers Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel in Washington contributed to this report.
----------------------------------
Citation: Solomon Moore. "Iraq Impeding Efforts to Go After Shiite Militias, U.S. Military Says," Los Angeles Times, 28 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-limits28sep28,1,4731613.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
----------------------------------
Los Angeles Times, 28 September 2006
BAGHDAD — Senior U.S. military officials have stepped up complaints that Iraq's Shiite-led government is thwarting efforts to go after Shiite death squads blamed in the execution-style killings of Sunni Arabs in neighborhoods across this capital.
Although deadly Sunni Arab rebel attacks remain frequent in Baghdad, U.S. officials, including Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, say death squads affiliated with Shiite militias have become the main factors ratcheting up the capital's death toll from sectarian killings.
Civilian deaths in Baghdad during July and August totaled more than 5,100, according to United Nations figures, and most were caused by the sectarian strife.
However, the 8,000 U.S. troops sent to Baghdad in recent weeks to restore order have been largely prevented from confronting those militias, many of which have ties to Iraqi government officials.
The statements by ranking U.S. authorities complaining about the situation highlight rising American dissatisfaction with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and an increasing willingness to exert pressure on the fledging Iraqi government.
The U.S. forces would like to stage heightened military operations in Baghdad neighborhoods such as Sadr City, a stronghold for anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr's Al Mahdi militia.
"We have to fix this militia issue," Army Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq, said Wednesday.
"We can't have armed militias competing with Iraq's security forces. But I have to trust the prime minister to decide when it is that we do that."
U.S. officials are anxious for Iraqis to take a stronger role in their country's security because of mounting pressure to withdraw American troops as soon as possible. Rising public discontent in the United States with the war, tired troops on their third and fourth rotations in the Middle East and huge expenditures by American taxpayers are all driving U.S. officials to press the government of Maliki, a Shiite, to quickly take more responsibility.
A map provided by the U.S. military on Wednesday identified nine neighborhoods that have been targeted in a Baghdad security plan, a major effort aimed at ridding the capital of Sunni Arab insurgents and Shiite militias.
However, all but two of these neighborhoods are predominantly Sunni.
Publicly, U.S. military leaders say they are simply conducting operations in areas where they are tracking the most killings, but privately they acknowledge that the Iraqi government has been reluctant to go after Shiite militias.
Tensions increased between the U.S. military and the Iraqi government after the Iraqi army's recent failure to deploy 4,000 troops to Baghdad.
Iraqi officials have attempted to send soldiers from the south to Diyala province to stabilize sectarian strife in the provincial capital, Baqubah, 35 miles north of the capital.
But a U.S. military official with knowledge of combat operations in Iraq said, "We told them that they can't send anybody to Diyala until they give us the troops we need for Baghdad."
The military official, who requested anonymity because of restrictions about speaking to news media about combat operations, also complained that Maliki's government had scrapped a plan to move U.S. and Iraqi troops into Sadr City before the start of the current holy month of Ramadan, a sign of how sectarian political considerations were hampering attempts to quell violence in Baghdad.
U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Thurman, commander of military forces in the capital, said last week that "one of the sources of death groups are militias."
"I consider that issue a problem that the [Iraqi] government must deal with immediately."
Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said Maliki well understood the dangers posed by Shiite militias, but he said that political realities in Iraq could present the prime minister with even greater peril.
"This might create a negative reaction, and it may affect the political situation as well as the security situation in Baghdad," he said, defending Maliki's refusal to allow the U.S. military to raid Sadr City this month.
Dabbagh also said it was unfair to treat the Shiite militias the same as the Sunni Arab insurgents, because, he said, the paramilitaries were reacting to first blows by the rebels.
"Extremists and Saddamist parties are making bombs and killing Iraqis," Dabbagh said. "We do agree that there are revenge killings taking place, but not in the way of the Saddamists — this is just a reaction. We have to deal with the main causes: There are suicide bombers and car bombs attacking the Iraqis every day."
The American frustration in Baghdad is part of a growing chorus in recent weeks from officials both in Iraq and Washington expressing disappointment that Maliki has not taken a stronger stand against the militias, some of whose members serve in Iraq's army and police forces.
The dissatisfaction comes as scores of corpses — many mutilated by power drills, knives and multiple gunshots — continue to arrive at Baghdad's morgues, victims of death squads that officials fear are affiliated with politically backed militias.
The Sadr movement has control of some of Iraq's most powerful ministries, including Health, Transportation and Agriculture. The Badr Organization, a militia affiliated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq — a leading Shiite political party — and followers of Sadr have a strong influence at the Interior Ministry, which supervises the nation's police forces. Many ministries have their own security forces, which have been implicated in killings.
U.S. officials said they worried that a hands-off stance toward the militias could alienate those Sunni Arabs who have entered Iraqi civil society, including the army. They say they are concerned that Maliki's unity government could fray and that disaffected Sunni Arabs could drift into militancy.
U.S. military leaders described various obstacles facing them as they attempt to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad, including "no-touch lists" that prohibit them from arresting politicians and other high-status individuals, and off-limits areas in Baghdad that the U.S. military may not enter without permission from the Iraqi government.
U.S. military officials said they were also constrained by their desire to see the Iraqi government prove its ability to rule fairly, without regard to narrow sectarian interests and without significant U.S. interference, by resolving the sectarian conflict.
"There's a political piece to this to see if they deal with these guys," said another high-ranking U.S. military official in Baghdad, who also requested anonymity in order to maintain relationships with the Iraqi government.
"I won't deny the fact that there is corruption and problems in some of the ministries, but it's got to be dealt with, and it ought to be dealt with by the prime minister and the folks inside his government."
Instead, Maliki's government has often appeared to respond with ambivalence and occasional hostility to efforts to crack down on Shiite gunmen.
In August, U.S. forces raided Sadr City and battled with suspected militia members in one of the first thrusts of the Baghdad offensive. The prime minister responded by rebuking the American government for conducting the Sadr City incursion without permission from his administration.
Maliki's government also criticized two raids last week that captured suspected Al Mahdi militia leaders in the southern holy city of Najaf and in Baghdad.
In Washington, members of the Iraq Study Group — a high-profile, administration-backed panel examining U.S. policy in Iraq — recently held a news conference to say that they believed Maliki had just three months to act against the militias and restore stability.
But some observers say that Americans may have unrealistic expectations for an embryonic government so riven with sectarian and partisan fissures. Even if the Iraqi government had the will to act, it might not be able to control the militias, which U.S. and Iraqi officials contend have splintered into more radicalized and deadly elements.
"For example, Muqtada Sadr was ordered to control the militias, but even he can't control them," said Suha Azzawi, a Sunni Arab politician.
Staff writers Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel in Washington contributed to this report.
----------------------------------
Citation: Solomon Moore. "Iraq Impeding Efforts to Go After Shiite Militias, U.S. Military Says," Los Angeles Times, 28 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-limits28sep28,1,4731613.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
----------------------------------
27 September 2006
US troop presence keeps neighbors from invading Iraq: Talabani
Agence France Presse, 26 September 2006
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said that the US military presence in Iraq keeps neighbors from invading his country.
"The American presence has always prevented any kind of foreign invasion to Iraq," Talabani said.
"That's one of the main reasons why we think that we need an American presence, even symbolical, in the country to prevent our neighbors attacking us," he said at a forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think thank.
Talabani also said Baghdad could not "further tolerate" neighbors' interference in its internal affairs.
"I think that our neighbors must understand that our patience is limited," he said, refusing to single out countries but adding "we mean all of them."
Iraq shares borders with Syria, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Asked if there was concern over aggression from Turkey, Talabani said: "I don't think there is any danger for invasion by Turkey to Iraq."
Iraq has "good relations" with the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and could help Ankara in its conflict with the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), he said.
"We could convince PKK to stop fighting in Turkey," the Iraqi leader said.
Talabani also insisted that Iraq would not spiral down into civil war.
"There would be no civil war. We have problems, we have some kind of extremists who are fighting against each other. They are not representing the whole society," he said.
He also defended the US military presence in Iraq.
"The immediate departure of coalition forces would only unleash the terrorists," Talabani said. "I cannot promise when or how the American presence will completely end in Iraq but I can promise that American soldiers do not fight in vain."
-----------------------
Citation: "US troop presence keeps neighbors from invading Iraq: Talabani," Agence France Presse, 26 September 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060926/wl_mideast_afp/usiraqwarpolitics_060926231203;_ylt=AjysmebrZEliOSjXh9gP9hhX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
-----------------------
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said that the US military presence in Iraq keeps neighbors from invading his country.
"The American presence has always prevented any kind of foreign invasion to Iraq," Talabani said.
"That's one of the main reasons why we think that we need an American presence, even symbolical, in the country to prevent our neighbors attacking us," he said at a forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think thank.
Talabani also said Baghdad could not "further tolerate" neighbors' interference in its internal affairs.
"I think that our neighbors must understand that our patience is limited," he said, refusing to single out countries but adding "we mean all of them."
Iraq shares borders with Syria, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Asked if there was concern over aggression from Turkey, Talabani said: "I don't think there is any danger for invasion by Turkey to Iraq."
Iraq has "good relations" with the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and could help Ankara in its conflict with the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), he said.
"We could convince PKK to stop fighting in Turkey," the Iraqi leader said.
Talabani also insisted that Iraq would not spiral down into civil war.
"There would be no civil war. We have problems, we have some kind of extremists who are fighting against each other. They are not representing the whole society," he said.
He also defended the US military presence in Iraq.
"The immediate departure of coalition forces would only unleash the terrorists," Talabani said. "I cannot promise when or how the American presence will completely end in Iraq but I can promise that American soldiers do not fight in vain."
-----------------------
Citation: "US troop presence keeps neighbors from invading Iraq: Talabani," Agence France Presse, 26 September 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060926/wl_mideast_afp/usiraqwarpolitics_060926231203;_ylt=AjysmebrZEliOSjXh9gP9hhX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
-----------------------
26 September 2006
The woman who defied the Taliban, and paid with her life
Women's rights campaigner in Afghanistan shot dead; One in two Afghan women a victim of violence; Suicide on the rise as Taliban's power increases
By Kim Sengupta
The Independent, 26 September 2006
Safia Amajan promoted women's education and work - a fairly ordinary job in most places - but in the Afghanistan of a resurgent Taliban it was a dangerous path to follow. She was a target, and yesterday she was gunned down outside her home.
Five years after the "liberation" of Afghanistan by the US and Britain, with promises of a new dawn for its downtrodden women, her murder was a bloody reminder of just how far the country is slipping back into a land of darkness.
Public figures, including the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, lined up to praise Ms Amajan.
Yet this support was signally lacking while she lived. The former teacher worked in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, and also the place where women have faced the most virulent discrimination and mistreatment. It is also where Nato forces are fighting a ferocious insurgency. Ms Amajan had asked for, and been refused, a protective vehicle, or bodyguards, despite repeated death threats.
She was in a battered taxi when two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire with automatic rifles. Her nephew, Farhad Jan, said: "She died on the spot. There was no time to give her treatment." In a place of fear where one can sign one's death warrant with the wrong choice of words, Farhad was careful not to blame anyone for the killing. All he would say was: "We had no personal enmity with anyone."
A Taliban commander, Mullah Hayat Khan, declared that Ms Amajan had been "executed". He said: "We have told people again and again that anyone working for the government, and that includes women, will be killed."
Ms Amajan had taken over the post of women's welfare officer soon after Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, fled with the fall of his regime. With the return of the Taliban, as the "war on terror" moved on to Iraq, aid workers - foreign and Afghan, men and women - were intimidated into leaving the region.
Ms Amajan was one of the few who refused to flee. Her secretary, Abdullah Khan, said: "She was very brave. She was also very hard-working. She was always trying her best to improve education for women."
As well as defying the Taliban, Ms Amajan made the mistake of being successful in what she was doing. In Kandahar alone she had opened six schools where a thousand women had learnt how to make and then sell their goods at the market. She was also instrumental in setting up tailoring schools for women, with some of the products making their way to markets in the West.
At the official end of the Afghan war, America's first lady, Laura Bush, was among those who declared that one of the most important achievements of overthrowing the Taliban was emancipation of women. However, since then female social workers and teachers have been maimed and killed, girls' schools shut down and female workers forced to give up their jobs. The few women out in the streets in Kandahar and other places in the south are covered in burqas. A report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission spoke of the "systematic and violent campaign" directed against women.
Statistics paint a bleak picture of women's lives with 35 female suicides in Kandahar alone and nearly 200 attempted suicides in the Herat region - one third of which were successful. Rights groups estimate that between 60 and 80 per cent of marriages in the country are forced. And the majority of those marriages involve girls under the age of 16.
Ms Amajan's funeral yesterday, in a Shia ceremony, was attended by the provincial governor and hundreds of mourners, including tribal elders. In Kabul, President Karzai said: "The enemies of Afghanistan are trying to kill those people who are working for the peace and prosperity of Afghanistan. The enemies of Afghanistan must understand that we have millions of people like Amajan."
Fariba Ahmedi, a female member of parliament, who attended the burial, said: "Those enemies who have killed her should know it will not derail women from the path we are on. We will continue on our way."
Human rights groups point out, however, that the battle for women's rights is in serious danger of being lost. There are now entire provinces where there is no girls' education; of the 300 schools shut or burnt down, the majority were for girls. The death rate at childbirth is the second highest in the world, and the number of women who have committed suicide, mainly through self-immolation, has risen by 30 per cent in two years.
Life gets worse for Afghan women
Violence
* 50 per cent of Afghan women say they have been beaten, while 200 women in Kandahar ran away from domestic violence this year.
* In the past year, 150 cases of women resorting to self-immolation have been reported in western Afghanistan, 34 cases in the south-east.
* 197 women in Herat were reported to have attempted suicide last year, 69 successfully.
* 57 per cent of girls are married before the legal age of 16.
Education
* 85 per cent of women in Afghanistan are illiterate.
* The number of girls going to school in Afghanistan is half that of boys.
* 300 schools were set on fire across the country this year.
Health
* 70 per cent of tuberculosis deaths are among women.
* Death rate of mothers in labour is 60 in 1000 - (60 per cent higher than developed world).
* Only 5-7 per cent of women in Zabul and Helmand province have access to health care.
Voting
* 41 per cent of the 10.5 million registered voters are women. Women's registration rates in southern provinces were much lower than the national average: Zabul (9 per cent), Uruzgan (10 per cent) Helmand (16 per cent), and Kandahar (27 per cent)
Source: AIHRC, UNICEF, HRW
------------------------
Citation: Kim Sengupta. "The woman who defied the Taliban, and paid with her life,"
The Independent, 26 September 2006.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1757264.ece
------------------------
By Kim Sengupta
The Independent, 26 September 2006
Safia Amajan promoted women's education and work - a fairly ordinary job in most places - but in the Afghanistan of a resurgent Taliban it was a dangerous path to follow. She was a target, and yesterday she was gunned down outside her home.
Five years after the "liberation" of Afghanistan by the US and Britain, with promises of a new dawn for its downtrodden women, her murder was a bloody reminder of just how far the country is slipping back into a land of darkness.
Public figures, including the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, lined up to praise Ms Amajan.
Yet this support was signally lacking while she lived. The former teacher worked in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, and also the place where women have faced the most virulent discrimination and mistreatment. It is also where Nato forces are fighting a ferocious insurgency. Ms Amajan had asked for, and been refused, a protective vehicle, or bodyguards, despite repeated death threats.
She was in a battered taxi when two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire with automatic rifles. Her nephew, Farhad Jan, said: "She died on the spot. There was no time to give her treatment." In a place of fear where one can sign one's death warrant with the wrong choice of words, Farhad was careful not to blame anyone for the killing. All he would say was: "We had no personal enmity with anyone."
A Taliban commander, Mullah Hayat Khan, declared that Ms Amajan had been "executed". He said: "We have told people again and again that anyone working for the government, and that includes women, will be killed."
Ms Amajan had taken over the post of women's welfare officer soon after Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, fled with the fall of his regime. With the return of the Taliban, as the "war on terror" moved on to Iraq, aid workers - foreign and Afghan, men and women - were intimidated into leaving the region.
Ms Amajan was one of the few who refused to flee. Her secretary, Abdullah Khan, said: "She was very brave. She was also very hard-working. She was always trying her best to improve education for women."
As well as defying the Taliban, Ms Amajan made the mistake of being successful in what she was doing. In Kandahar alone she had opened six schools where a thousand women had learnt how to make and then sell their goods at the market. She was also instrumental in setting up tailoring schools for women, with some of the products making their way to markets in the West.
At the official end of the Afghan war, America's first lady, Laura Bush, was among those who declared that one of the most important achievements of overthrowing the Taliban was emancipation of women. However, since then female social workers and teachers have been maimed and killed, girls' schools shut down and female workers forced to give up their jobs. The few women out in the streets in Kandahar and other places in the south are covered in burqas. A report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission spoke of the "systematic and violent campaign" directed against women.
Statistics paint a bleak picture of women's lives with 35 female suicides in Kandahar alone and nearly 200 attempted suicides in the Herat region - one third of which were successful. Rights groups estimate that between 60 and 80 per cent of marriages in the country are forced. And the majority of those marriages involve girls under the age of 16.
Ms Amajan's funeral yesterday, in a Shia ceremony, was attended by the provincial governor and hundreds of mourners, including tribal elders. In Kabul, President Karzai said: "The enemies of Afghanistan are trying to kill those people who are working for the peace and prosperity of Afghanistan. The enemies of Afghanistan must understand that we have millions of people like Amajan."
Fariba Ahmedi, a female member of parliament, who attended the burial, said: "Those enemies who have killed her should know it will not derail women from the path we are on. We will continue on our way."
Human rights groups point out, however, that the battle for women's rights is in serious danger of being lost. There are now entire provinces where there is no girls' education; of the 300 schools shut or burnt down, the majority were for girls. The death rate at childbirth is the second highest in the world, and the number of women who have committed suicide, mainly through self-immolation, has risen by 30 per cent in two years.
Life gets worse for Afghan women
Violence
* 50 per cent of Afghan women say they have been beaten, while 200 women in Kandahar ran away from domestic violence this year.
* In the past year, 150 cases of women resorting to self-immolation have been reported in western Afghanistan, 34 cases in the south-east.
* 197 women in Herat were reported to have attempted suicide last year, 69 successfully.
* 57 per cent of girls are married before the legal age of 16.
Education
* 85 per cent of women in Afghanistan are illiterate.
* The number of girls going to school in Afghanistan is half that of boys.
* 300 schools were set on fire across the country this year.
Health
* 70 per cent of tuberculosis deaths are among women.
* Death rate of mothers in labour is 60 in 1000 - (60 per cent higher than developed world).
* Only 5-7 per cent of women in Zabul and Helmand province have access to health care.
Voting
* 41 per cent of the 10.5 million registered voters are women. Women's registration rates in southern provinces were much lower than the national average: Zabul (9 per cent), Uruzgan (10 per cent) Helmand (16 per cent), and Kandahar (27 per cent)
Source: AIHRC, UNICEF, HRW
------------------------
Citation: Kim Sengupta. "The woman who defied the Taliban, and paid with her life,"
The Independent, 26 September 2006.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1757264.ece
------------------------
25 September 2006
Army Corps Faked Budget Entries
Funds for Iraq work, set to expire, were stashed. It's called improper, but not criminal.
By T. Christian Miller
Los Angeles Times, 23 September 2006
WASHINGTON — The Army Corps of Engineers improperly created fake entries in government ledgers to maintain control over hundreds of millions of dollars in spending for the reconstruction of Iraq, according to a federal audit released Friday.
Corps officials listed $362 million in potential contracts for a nonexistent contractor labeled "Dummy Vendor" in a government database, an accounting trick to preserve funds due to expire at the end of this fiscal year, the audit said.
"They took this money and parked it to use later," said one senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to elaborate on the audit.
"It's improper. It's wrong. This is not the way you do government business."
Corps officials acknowledged Friday that the technique was improper but said that there was no intent to deceive. They said that the entries were designed to ensure that the government had enough money on hand to pay contractors already at work in Iraq.
After being confronted with the audit's findings, corps officials changed the entries in the database to reflect that the money was being used to close down existing contracts in Iraq, the agency said.
"It wasn't the proper bookkeeping way to do this," said Suzanne Fournier, the corps' chief spokeswoman. "Apparently someone didn't understand that."
The audit by the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Iraq is the latest to raise questions about accounting for the multibillion-dollar program, which has been plagued by accusations of waste, fraud and corruption.
At issue is $18 billion in funding approved by Congress in November 2003 to build new schools, power stations and sewage treatment plants in Iraq. At the time, Congress ordered that the funds be spent by Sept. 30.
Iraq's violence and continually shifting government priorities bogged down the pace of the rebuilding effort, leaving the corps with nearly $1 billion still to spend.
To prevent the money from reverting back to the Treasury, Corps officials in Iraq listed the "Dummy Vendor" as receiving 96 different contracts to build infrastructure for oil, electricity and other sectors, the audit said.
Such accounting trickery is not confined to Iraq.
The U.S. Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Fla., was accused of "parking" $20 million in 2003, leading to language in this year's Defense Department budget to criminalize the practice.
That bill has yet to pass, and the inspector general for Iraq, Stuart Bowen, found no criminal wrongdoing involved in the corps' use of the dummy vendor. "We do not believe … there was any attempt to mislead on the true status" of the contracting process, the audit said. Bowen was in Iraq and unavailable for comment.
The audit marks the second time in recent months that a government agency has been charged with accounting improprieties.
The U.S. Agency for International Development was accused in June of resorting to accounting tricks in an effort to hide the spiraling costs of a children's hospital in Iraq, a project that received special backing from First Lady Laura Bush.
San Francisco-based Bechtel, the chief contractor, was removed from the project after the inspector general determined that the cost to finish the hospital had soared from $50 million to almost $170 million.
U.S. officials now hope to have an Iraqi company finish the work.
----------------------------------
Citation: T. Christian Miller. "Army Corps Faked Budget Entries," Los Angeles Times, 23 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-corps23sep23,0,6552813.story
----------------------------------
By T. Christian Miller
Los Angeles Times, 23 September 2006
WASHINGTON — The Army Corps of Engineers improperly created fake entries in government ledgers to maintain control over hundreds of millions of dollars in spending for the reconstruction of Iraq, according to a federal audit released Friday.
Corps officials listed $362 million in potential contracts for a nonexistent contractor labeled "Dummy Vendor" in a government database, an accounting trick to preserve funds due to expire at the end of this fiscal year, the audit said.
"They took this money and parked it to use later," said one senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to elaborate on the audit.
"It's improper. It's wrong. This is not the way you do government business."
Corps officials acknowledged Friday that the technique was improper but said that there was no intent to deceive. They said that the entries were designed to ensure that the government had enough money on hand to pay contractors already at work in Iraq.
After being confronted with the audit's findings, corps officials changed the entries in the database to reflect that the money was being used to close down existing contracts in Iraq, the agency said.
"It wasn't the proper bookkeeping way to do this," said Suzanne Fournier, the corps' chief spokeswoman. "Apparently someone didn't understand that."
The audit by the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Iraq is the latest to raise questions about accounting for the multibillion-dollar program, which has been plagued by accusations of waste, fraud and corruption.
At issue is $18 billion in funding approved by Congress in November 2003 to build new schools, power stations and sewage treatment plants in Iraq. At the time, Congress ordered that the funds be spent by Sept. 30.
Iraq's violence and continually shifting government priorities bogged down the pace of the rebuilding effort, leaving the corps with nearly $1 billion still to spend.
To prevent the money from reverting back to the Treasury, Corps officials in Iraq listed the "Dummy Vendor" as receiving 96 different contracts to build infrastructure for oil, electricity and other sectors, the audit said.
Such accounting trickery is not confined to Iraq.
The U.S. Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Fla., was accused of "parking" $20 million in 2003, leading to language in this year's Defense Department budget to criminalize the practice.
That bill has yet to pass, and the inspector general for Iraq, Stuart Bowen, found no criminal wrongdoing involved in the corps' use of the dummy vendor. "We do not believe … there was any attempt to mislead on the true status" of the contracting process, the audit said. Bowen was in Iraq and unavailable for comment.
The audit marks the second time in recent months that a government agency has been charged with accounting improprieties.
The U.S. Agency for International Development was accused in June of resorting to accounting tricks in an effort to hide the spiraling costs of a children's hospital in Iraq, a project that received special backing from First Lady Laura Bush.
San Francisco-based Bechtel, the chief contractor, was removed from the project after the inspector general determined that the cost to finish the hospital had soared from $50 million to almost $170 million.
U.S. officials now hope to have an Iraqi company finish the work.
----------------------------------
Citation: T. Christian Miller. "Army Corps Faked Budget Entries," Los Angeles Times, 23 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-corps23sep23,0,6552813.story
----------------------------------
Dividing Iraq Would Just Mean More Threats
Separate Sunni, Shiite and Kurd states are a seductive solution, but a single central government is Iraq's best chance for stability.
By W. Robert Pearson
Los Angeles Times, 24 September 2006
W. Robert Pearson was U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 2000 to 2003.
PROMINENT EXPERTS have begun to argue that dividing Iraq into three parts — Sunni, Shiite and Kurd — is more viable than trying to build a single, central Iraqi state. They reason that the only solution to sectarian violence is for Sunnis and Shiites to live apart. The Kurds, they argue, have demonstrated their ability to live autonomously since 1990. Nothing else has worked, so why not let the pieces fall where they may? But this is not a plan; it is a destabilizing default strategy.
Thoughtful observers, such as Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, have argued for a federated Iraqi with near-statehood status for the three regions and an agreement on dividing the oil money. If such a deal could be struck, and if the breakup could be halted there, Iraq might see greater stability. But the more likely outcome is a loose federation plagued by conflict, with one or more parties trying to win full independence. Confederation could prove a Pandora's box for the U.S. and the region.
Dividing Iraq would invite Tehran to make even more mischief within the Iraqi Shiite community, especially to further exploit the rivalry between the two major clerics, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Muqtada Sadr. If the Shiite areas in southern and eastern Iraq fell under Iranian influence, would Tehran not be tempted to turn its attention to the Sunnis in the west and the Kurds in the north? How would the global energy situation be affected if Iran were to gain influence over a rump Shiite state as its protector? How would neighboring Sunni states — Jordan and Saudi Arabia — react? Would Hezbollah, Iran's proxy against Israel, not feel strengthened in Lebanon?
All the countries in the region with sizable Kurdish populations would oppose the creation of an independent Kurdish state, fearing territorial claims and divided loyalties among their ethnic Kurds. Turkey worries most of all. U.S. acquiescence in an independent Kurdistan would confirm the Turks' worst fears about American engagement in Iraq. Turkey has the largest Kurdish population in the Middle East — four to five times greater than that in northern Iraq. The Turks fear that an independent Kurdistan on former Iraqi territory would agitate to include Turkish Kurds. It was just in 1999 that Turkey brought to a close a 20-year battle with its Kurdish insurgency in which more than 30,000 people died. And since the beginning of the Iraq war, Turkey has watched the same insurgency renew a guerrilla campaign. Meanwhile, its decision not to allow the U.S. to launch a northern front to invade Iraq via Turkey cost Ankara both its influence in northern Iraq and any chance to cooperate with the U.S. in shaping postwar Iraq.
Although many Americans rightly praise Iraqi Kurds as allies who helped us in the 2003 war, the U.S. should think twice about giving security guarantees to an independent Kurdistan. The Iraqi province of Kurdistan has no access to the sea and is wholly dependent on its neighbors for the export and import of goods, including the oil it wants to control. Is the U.S. willing to have a permanent military presence in an independent Kurdistan, putting our troops at risk for no strategic benefit?
Finally, Kurds might ask themselves whether they really want full independence. With no powerful protector in the region, they would have to stand alone among unfriendly neighbors. In addition, the Kurds' current unity masks deep rivalries between two major factions, each possessing independent armies. And they aren't alone in the northern province. The Turkmens will continue to look to Ankara for support. Disputes continue with the Iraqi Arabs, who for years were sent north by Saddam Hussein to displace local Kurds. Add the struggle for control of Kirkuk's oil fields to the mix and the ethnic and political tensions rise further. Civil wars have erupted over less. Shiites and Sunnis won't support an independent Kurdish state unless it shares the Kirkuk fields. Would Kirkuk then be internationalized? The history of internationalized cities is not a happy one.
An Iraqi split might seem seductive, but those who are tempted might recall Horace Greeley's advice in 1861 to deal with the South by letting the "erring sisters depart in peace." Greeley later changed his mind and urged the North to fight to preserve the Union.
As hard as it is to imagine, the consequences of a divided Iraq could be even worse than the woes of today. The United States should use whatever influence it has in Iraq, and in the region, to foster a central government in Baghdad capable of moving the country toward stability through negotiation among the contending parties — whatever we may think of their arrangements. That would be the best protection — under the circumstances — for all Iraqis.
--------------------------
Citation: W. Robert Pearson. "Dividing Iraq Would Just Mean More Threats," Los Angeles Times, 24 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-pearson24sep24,1,4576389.story?coll=la-news-comment
--------------------------
By W. Robert Pearson
Los Angeles Times, 24 September 2006
W. Robert Pearson was U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 2000 to 2003.
PROMINENT EXPERTS have begun to argue that dividing Iraq into three parts — Sunni, Shiite and Kurd — is more viable than trying to build a single, central Iraqi state. They reason that the only solution to sectarian violence is for Sunnis and Shiites to live apart. The Kurds, they argue, have demonstrated their ability to live autonomously since 1990. Nothing else has worked, so why not let the pieces fall where they may? But this is not a plan; it is a destabilizing default strategy.
Thoughtful observers, such as Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, have argued for a federated Iraqi with near-statehood status for the three regions and an agreement on dividing the oil money. If such a deal could be struck, and if the breakup could be halted there, Iraq might see greater stability. But the more likely outcome is a loose federation plagued by conflict, with one or more parties trying to win full independence. Confederation could prove a Pandora's box for the U.S. and the region.
Dividing Iraq would invite Tehran to make even more mischief within the Iraqi Shiite community, especially to further exploit the rivalry between the two major clerics, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Muqtada Sadr. If the Shiite areas in southern and eastern Iraq fell under Iranian influence, would Tehran not be tempted to turn its attention to the Sunnis in the west and the Kurds in the north? How would the global energy situation be affected if Iran were to gain influence over a rump Shiite state as its protector? How would neighboring Sunni states — Jordan and Saudi Arabia — react? Would Hezbollah, Iran's proxy against Israel, not feel strengthened in Lebanon?
All the countries in the region with sizable Kurdish populations would oppose the creation of an independent Kurdish state, fearing territorial claims and divided loyalties among their ethnic Kurds. Turkey worries most of all. U.S. acquiescence in an independent Kurdistan would confirm the Turks' worst fears about American engagement in Iraq. Turkey has the largest Kurdish population in the Middle East — four to five times greater than that in northern Iraq. The Turks fear that an independent Kurdistan on former Iraqi territory would agitate to include Turkish Kurds. It was just in 1999 that Turkey brought to a close a 20-year battle with its Kurdish insurgency in which more than 30,000 people died. And since the beginning of the Iraq war, Turkey has watched the same insurgency renew a guerrilla campaign. Meanwhile, its decision not to allow the U.S. to launch a northern front to invade Iraq via Turkey cost Ankara both its influence in northern Iraq and any chance to cooperate with the U.S. in shaping postwar Iraq.
Although many Americans rightly praise Iraqi Kurds as allies who helped us in the 2003 war, the U.S. should think twice about giving security guarantees to an independent Kurdistan. The Iraqi province of Kurdistan has no access to the sea and is wholly dependent on its neighbors for the export and import of goods, including the oil it wants to control. Is the U.S. willing to have a permanent military presence in an independent Kurdistan, putting our troops at risk for no strategic benefit?
Finally, Kurds might ask themselves whether they really want full independence. With no powerful protector in the region, they would have to stand alone among unfriendly neighbors. In addition, the Kurds' current unity masks deep rivalries between two major factions, each possessing independent armies. And they aren't alone in the northern province. The Turkmens will continue to look to Ankara for support. Disputes continue with the Iraqi Arabs, who for years were sent north by Saddam Hussein to displace local Kurds. Add the struggle for control of Kirkuk's oil fields to the mix and the ethnic and political tensions rise further. Civil wars have erupted over less. Shiites and Sunnis won't support an independent Kurdish state unless it shares the Kirkuk fields. Would Kirkuk then be internationalized? The history of internationalized cities is not a happy one.
An Iraqi split might seem seductive, but those who are tempted might recall Horace Greeley's advice in 1861 to deal with the South by letting the "erring sisters depart in peace." Greeley later changed his mind and urged the North to fight to preserve the Union.
As hard as it is to imagine, the consequences of a divided Iraq could be even worse than the woes of today. The United States should use whatever influence it has in Iraq, and in the region, to foster a central government in Baghdad capable of moving the country toward stability through negotiation among the contending parties — whatever we may think of their arrangements. That would be the best protection — under the circumstances — for all Iraqis.
--------------------------
Citation: W. Robert Pearson. "Dividing Iraq Would Just Mean More Threats," Los Angeles Times, 24 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-pearson24sep24,1,4576389.story?coll=la-news-comment
--------------------------
A journey into the 'Taliban republic' where the militias rule unchallenged
By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent, UK, 25 September 2006
Civil war is raging through the Iraqi countryside. Sunni insurgents have largely taken control of the province of Diyala, where local leaders believe the insurgents are close to establishing a "Taliban republic".
Officials in the strategically important province - composed of a mixture of Sunnis and Shias with a Kurdish minority - have no doubt about what is happening. Lt-Col Ahmed Ahmed Nuri Hassan, a weary-looking commander of the federal police, says: "Now there is an ethnic civil war and it is getting worse every day."
At the moment, the Sunni seem to be winning.
As the violence has escalated over the past three years, it has become too dangerous for journalists to find out what is happening in the provinces outside the capital. The UN said last week that 5,106 civilians were killed in Baghdad in July and August and 1,493 in the provinces outside it.
Insurgents have cut the roads out of the capital to the west and the north. As I travelled through the provinces of this vast, war-torn country, despite keeping to the relatively calm tongue of Kurdish territory that extends through the countryside almost to Baghdad, I was keenly aware that it is not a place to make a mistake in map reading.
We drove for a couple of hours beside the Diyala river which rises in Iran's Zagros mountains and looks like a smaller version of the Nile, a streak of vivid green vegetation running through dun-coloured semi-desert. Then we turned abruptly east before the road entered the strongly insurgent district of As-Sadiyah.
What could have happened if we had continued down the main road was evident at Lt-Col Hassan's headquarters. In one corner of the courtyard was the wreckage of a blue-and-white police vehicle, ripped apart by a bomb. "Five policemen were killed in it when it was blown up at an intersection in As-Sadiyah two months ago," a policeman told us. "Only their commander survived but both his legs were amputated."
In Diyala, it is possible to see the anguished break-up of Iraq at ground level. Going by the accounts of police and government officials in the province, the death toll outside Baghdad may be far higher than previously reported. Ibrahim Hassan Bajalan, the head of Diyala's provincial council - who had survived an attempt to assassinate him in Baquba with a mortar attack the previous day - says he believed that "on average, 100 people are being killed in Diyala every week."
The latest were three civilians shot dead yesterday by unidentified assailants. Behind them, as the killers sped away in their car through the streets of Baquba, the families of the dead were left to grieve, falling to their knees and throwing their arms open to the sky in despair.
Many of those who die disappear for ever, thrown into the Diyala river or buried in date palm groves and fruit orchards. The reason for their killings can be spurious, and people have become careful to avoid incurring the wrath of local Sunni insurgents who control much of the province according to strict Islamic laws. "They have even banned the sale of cigarettes in the provincial capital, Baquba, and kill anybody selling cigarettes," Mr Bajalan said. "I have to bring in cigarettes from other places to give them to council members who are smokers."
In a house in Khanaqin, a Kurdish enclave in the north-east of the province, Nazar Ali Mirza, a sorrowful-looking middle-aged woman, described how she had fled too late from Muqdadiyah, the Sunni-dominated town of 200,000 people where she was born. She was caught by surprise when death squads began to target Kurds and Shias in her neighbourhood. Her eldest son, Khalil Mohammed Ahmed, a taxi driver, went out to collect a washing machine in March and never came back. She is beginning to assume he is dead but no body was discovered.
"Kurds and Shias were being driven out of our district," she said. "Men in black masks came to me and said they would kill my sons, even if they flew up into the sky, unless I moved away." One of her other sons was a policeman permanently disabled in a bomb explosion.
Mrs Mirza and her family are among 300,000 Iraqis forced to flee their homes since the beginning of the year. Everywhere, minorities frightened for their lives are on the move. "Nobody waits any longer to find out if a threat is real," says Mamosta Mohsin, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Khanaqin which, in effect, runs the town. "Even if the threat is organised by two children, people will run." Most often, the threat is real. Lt-Col Hassan has a collection of files in which the names of the latest refugees are registered. Most of them are Kurds coming from Baghdad, Ramadi, Baquba and the rest of the country.
He hands over a piece of paper showing how the number of refugee families arriving in this small town had risen from 29 in January to 318 in June. It was still 239 in August.
Lt-Col Hassan says that neither Sunni nor Shia are particularly well organised: "It is not like Lebanon, because most of the killing is done by local or tribal militias." The problem is not that the insurgents are strong but that the government forces are so weak. A division of 7,000 government soldiers is in Diyala, he said, "but they are all Shias and only arrest Sunnis."
Mr Bajalan confirms that the army is weak in Diyala, saying most of it is tied down at checkpoints. He reckons there is one soldier for every 50 square kilometres of the province. "The soldiers are badly armed," he says.
"They just have Kalashnikovs while the terrorists have rocket launchers and heavy machine guns. When they attack, they always kill 10 or 15 army or police."
The Americans do have a base near Baquba, and act in a supportive role when they are asked to. "That isn't much use against guerrillas," says Mr Bajalan. "They've all gone home by the time the Americans arrive."
Baghdad announced signal successes around Baquba last week, including the capture of leaders of two Sunni insurgent groups. But nobody in Diyala had heard about it, and, without exception, they expected the civil war to grow in intensity.
Patrick Cockburn's The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq will be published by Verso on 9 October.
----------------------------------
Citation: Patrick Cockburn. "A journey into the 'Taliban republic' where the militias rule unchallenged," The Independent, UK, 25 September 2006.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1747149.ece
----------------------------------
The Independent, UK, 25 September 2006
Civil war is raging through the Iraqi countryside. Sunni insurgents have largely taken control of the province of Diyala, where local leaders believe the insurgents are close to establishing a "Taliban republic".
Officials in the strategically important province - composed of a mixture of Sunnis and Shias with a Kurdish minority - have no doubt about what is happening. Lt-Col Ahmed Ahmed Nuri Hassan, a weary-looking commander of the federal police, says: "Now there is an ethnic civil war and it is getting worse every day."
At the moment, the Sunni seem to be winning.
As the violence has escalated over the past three years, it has become too dangerous for journalists to find out what is happening in the provinces outside the capital. The UN said last week that 5,106 civilians were killed in Baghdad in July and August and 1,493 in the provinces outside it.
Insurgents have cut the roads out of the capital to the west and the north. As I travelled through the provinces of this vast, war-torn country, despite keeping to the relatively calm tongue of Kurdish territory that extends through the countryside almost to Baghdad, I was keenly aware that it is not a place to make a mistake in map reading.
We drove for a couple of hours beside the Diyala river which rises in Iran's Zagros mountains and looks like a smaller version of the Nile, a streak of vivid green vegetation running through dun-coloured semi-desert. Then we turned abruptly east before the road entered the strongly insurgent district of As-Sadiyah.
What could have happened if we had continued down the main road was evident at Lt-Col Hassan's headquarters. In one corner of the courtyard was the wreckage of a blue-and-white police vehicle, ripped apart by a bomb. "Five policemen were killed in it when it was blown up at an intersection in As-Sadiyah two months ago," a policeman told us. "Only their commander survived but both his legs were amputated."
In Diyala, it is possible to see the anguished break-up of Iraq at ground level. Going by the accounts of police and government officials in the province, the death toll outside Baghdad may be far higher than previously reported. Ibrahim Hassan Bajalan, the head of Diyala's provincial council - who had survived an attempt to assassinate him in Baquba with a mortar attack the previous day - says he believed that "on average, 100 people are being killed in Diyala every week."
The latest were three civilians shot dead yesterday by unidentified assailants. Behind them, as the killers sped away in their car through the streets of Baquba, the families of the dead were left to grieve, falling to their knees and throwing their arms open to the sky in despair.
Many of those who die disappear for ever, thrown into the Diyala river or buried in date palm groves and fruit orchards. The reason for their killings can be spurious, and people have become careful to avoid incurring the wrath of local Sunni insurgents who control much of the province according to strict Islamic laws. "They have even banned the sale of cigarettes in the provincial capital, Baquba, and kill anybody selling cigarettes," Mr Bajalan said. "I have to bring in cigarettes from other places to give them to council members who are smokers."
In a house in Khanaqin, a Kurdish enclave in the north-east of the province, Nazar Ali Mirza, a sorrowful-looking middle-aged woman, described how she had fled too late from Muqdadiyah, the Sunni-dominated town of 200,000 people where she was born. She was caught by surprise when death squads began to target Kurds and Shias in her neighbourhood. Her eldest son, Khalil Mohammed Ahmed, a taxi driver, went out to collect a washing machine in March and never came back. She is beginning to assume he is dead but no body was discovered.
"Kurds and Shias were being driven out of our district," she said. "Men in black masks came to me and said they would kill my sons, even if they flew up into the sky, unless I moved away." One of her other sons was a policeman permanently disabled in a bomb explosion.
Mrs Mirza and her family are among 300,000 Iraqis forced to flee their homes since the beginning of the year. Everywhere, minorities frightened for their lives are on the move. "Nobody waits any longer to find out if a threat is real," says Mamosta Mohsin, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Khanaqin which, in effect, runs the town. "Even if the threat is organised by two children, people will run." Most often, the threat is real. Lt-Col Hassan has a collection of files in which the names of the latest refugees are registered. Most of them are Kurds coming from Baghdad, Ramadi, Baquba and the rest of the country.
He hands over a piece of paper showing how the number of refugee families arriving in this small town had risen from 29 in January to 318 in June. It was still 239 in August.
Lt-Col Hassan says that neither Sunni nor Shia are particularly well organised: "It is not like Lebanon, because most of the killing is done by local or tribal militias." The problem is not that the insurgents are strong but that the government forces are so weak. A division of 7,000 government soldiers is in Diyala, he said, "but they are all Shias and only arrest Sunnis."
Mr Bajalan confirms that the army is weak in Diyala, saying most of it is tied down at checkpoints. He reckons there is one soldier for every 50 square kilometres of the province. "The soldiers are badly armed," he says.
"They just have Kalashnikovs while the terrorists have rocket launchers and heavy machine guns. When they attack, they always kill 10 or 15 army or police."
The Americans do have a base near Baquba, and act in a supportive role when they are asked to. "That isn't much use against guerrillas," says Mr Bajalan. "They've all gone home by the time the Americans arrive."
Baghdad announced signal successes around Baquba last week, including the capture of leaders of two Sunni insurgent groups. But nobody in Diyala had heard about it, and, without exception, they expected the civil war to grow in intensity.
Patrick Cockburn's The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq will be published by Verso on 9 October.
----------------------------------
Citation: Patrick Cockburn. "A journey into the 'Taliban republic' where the militias rule unchallenged," The Independent, UK, 25 September 2006.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1747149.ece
----------------------------------
Our Indefensible National Security Budget
By David Unger
The New York Times, 20 September 2006
If you want a green light for government spending in America, just say the word defense.
It's next to impossible to wrestle free enough federal money for education, health care, or rebuilding New Orleans. But when the Air Force says it needs tens of billions of dollars for newer model fighters or the Navy wants to upgrade destroyers - in an era when America's most dangerous enemies have no ships or planes of their own - Congressional appropriators and members of the taxpaying public don't even bother
asking hard questions.
There is nothing wrong with a rich country like United States spending very large sums of money to make itself as secure as possible. But despite the roughly half a trillion dollars we now lavish on the military every year, Americans are not as protected as they ought to be - and as they easily could be at significantly lower cost.
The shocking truth is that year after year the Pentagon spends well over half of its investment budget on high cost, low value weapons systems that are designed to fight non-existent enemy superpowers - systems that have no immediate connection to the terrorists, jihadists, and other real foes confronting the nation.
The money lavished on these low-value systems could be used to shore up acute vulnerabilities like our sea ports, aviation system and highly explosive and toxic chemical plants, all of which are scandalously shortchanged and under-protected.
This squandered money could also be used to help our frontline soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are paying a high price for misdirected Pentagon spending. We could be paying for enough new back-up Army and Marine forces to shorten combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, put a stop to the ominous smirking in Iran and North Korea about overstretched American ground forces.
Diverting at least some of the mega-billions now locked up for decades to come in low-priority weapons production lines could also assure that all troops in today's combat theaters are equipped with protective
armor tough enough to withstand the increasingly sophisticated and lethal explosives they face on a daily basis.
As the mid-term elections approach, candidates are lining up to prove that they are the toughest on terrorism, but that isn't the real issue. This is a question of competence, something we need a lot more of
right now in our national security planning.
Wouldn't it be great if somebody based a national candidacy on the real national security crisis facing America and demanded a radical reallocation of federal security spending toward the homeland and battlefield defenses we so desperately need?
I. A Unified View of Defense
America's first war of the 21st century began not in Afghanistan or Iraq but here on American soil. Washington's ideas about defense spending have simply not caught up with this new reality.
We still spend about eight times as much preparing for old-fashioned wars abroad as we do to protect Americans going about their lives here at home. And Pentagon mismanagement has let conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq cannibalize the forces and equipment of the National Guard, which ought to be our frontline homeland security force.
A meaningful way of commemorating the recent fifth anniversary of 9/11 would have been to finally recognize the need to integrate defense and homeland security planning and spending.
We spend nearly $500 billion a year on mainly overseas military defense (not counting Iraq and Afghanistan, which are paid for by supplemental appropriations). We spend roughly $55 billion more on homeland security.
This is one pot of money with a single purpose, keeping the nation safe, and we should be thinking about it that way.
If we did, the public would see that we have the balance off, throwing money at remote military contingencies while leaving our ports, chemical plants and transportation networks needlessly vulnerable to attack.
The allocation of money within each of these two budgets is also grossly distorted.
Homeland security dollars are doled out by geographic and population formulas rather than actual vulnerabilities, so rural states that have little risk get as much or more money per capita in some programs as places like New York and Washington, D.C.
Pentagon dollars are divided between the services according to traditional formulas that build in waste and redundancy and fail to take account of changing military realities. The burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, have fallen disproportionately on the Army and the Marines. But long-term spending and investment plans have not been redirected accordingly.
II. Why The Pentagon Approaches Budgets Irrationally
In a rational world, top Pentagon officials would sit down each year to examine the current national security situation, and propose allocations accordingly. Unfortunately, the military budgeting process in
Washington long ago got disconnected from timely assessments of America's actual security needs.
The four military services jealously protect their traditional shares of the overall spending and investment budget, even when, as now, there are real wars going on whose requirements do not correspond to that
traditional allocation.
One result is that the Navy and Air Force remain more than amply staffed while the Army and Marines are so strained for ground troops that their fighting readiness, career retention rates and recruitment programs have fallen into chronic crisis.
Another is that billions of dollars are wasted annually on duplicated missions and weapons systems so that the Army and Navy can have their own air forces. Worst of all, the huge streams of money allocated to each service for long term investments in future weapons are almost impossible to shift around between services or redirect toward non-weapons needs, like more ground troops.
III. Why Congress Isn't Much Better
Congress has its own issues, starting with the unhealthy symbiotic relationship between major defense contractors, politicians and military procurement officials.
Almost every branch of federal defense and homeland security spending provide opportunities for private companies to make guaranteed profits, immune from the vagaries of the market. The really big money - even with the cold war now a distant memory - still lies in long-term deals for equipping the Air Force and Navy with ever newer models of technology laden aircraft, surface ships, and submarines suitable for superpower conflict.
The price tags are astronomical: the F-22A and F-35 jet fighters, at a combined cost next year of roughly $8.1 billion. The DDG 1000 destroyer, at $3.4 billion. The Virginia-class attack submarine, at $2.6 billion.
None of these planes, ships or submarines are of any obvious use against Qaeda terrorists, insurgents and sectarian militias in Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan. Their only plausible use is against a rival superpower like the old Soviet Union. But that superpower rivalry ended a decade and a half ago.
Now they are mainly marketed on the theory that one day we may want to fight a war with China - a country with no visible territorial ambitions, underdeveloped military forces and with which the United
States now has no obvious military conflicts.
Congress should be looking at these programs with a critical eye, but Congress is itself compromised. Military contractors are enormous contributors to political campaigns, and that gives their lobbyists tremendous clout on Capitol Hill.
It makes more sense to redirect a great deal of this spending to adequately arming and reinforcing our troops. But the men and women serving overseas cannot compete with the big defense contractors when
it comes to making their case to Congress.
IV. The Pentagon Money Machine
It isn't only about campaign contributions - it's also about jobs. Defense contractors are large employers in the districts of many influential members of Congress, and they are not shy about reminding congressmen that cutting back on defense contracts will mean job losses - and political repercussions - back home.
It's time to stop using the Pentagon as a corporate welfare program and employment agency and put America's national security dollars where they belong - providing more relief and support for our frontline ground troops and better security for our endangered homeland.
With Republican majorities running the Senate and House, Congressional oversight of military budgets has been even laxer than usual. But both parties have long had a bad habit of awarding relevant committee seats to Senators and Representatives more interested in keeping weapons production lines in their district humming than in demanding serious reform.
That kind of mutual back-scratching, though reprehensible, is perfectly legal. But sometimes the collusion reaches criminal proportions. Last year, Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican who served on the House Intelligence Committee pleaded guilty to accepting millions of dollars of bribes from military companies to help them win Pentagon contracts.
V. Plugging The Holes In Homeland Security
Homeland Security spending is not immune from the same kind of politically driven distortion of priorities. But since this is a relatively new area of federal spending, with fewer long-time entrenched
interests, the dollar amounts involved are significantly smaller.
And that too is a problem. Even if Homeland Security dollars were more rationally allocated, there would not be enough to meet some obvious and urgent national needs - like adequately scrutinizing the cargo coming into American ports, reducing the risk of catastrophic terrorism or accidents at chemical plants that could kill or sicken hundreds of thousands of Americans, or accelerating the development of the next
generation of baggage and cargo screening devices to substantially reduce the risk of airborne terrorism.
The Bush administration prefers to leave the financing and implementation of these essential protections to voluntary corporate initiatives. Protecting the basic security of Americans at home is too important to leave to volunteerism. The unsatisfactory record of the past five years demonstrates clearly that only federal requirements and federal dollars will get the job done in an acceptable time frame.
Seaports and Shipping Containers Probably the single most dangerous hole in the nation's security is our ports, where inspection of incoming cargo containers remains spotty. Most experts agree that the most likely way a nuclear bomb or other weapon of mass destruction would be smuggled into the United States is by sea. Current cargo scanning technology could completely miss a nuclear bomb shielded by lead casing or a similarly packaged dirty radiological bomb. Yet only 5 percent of the more than 10 million cargo containers annually entering the United States are more thoroughly inspected by hand.
That is an alarming and unnecessary risk, as Congress is finally beginning to recognize. All American-bound cargo containers should be adequately inspected for nuclear materials before arriving at American
ports. Senator Charles Schumer of New York believes this could be done for less than $150 million a year. Other needed improvements include more reliable identification systems for port workers and truck drivers and tamper proof seals for inspected cargo containers. The total bill would come to something less than $3 billion a year.
Securing Nuclear Materials Abroad
There is still a shocking amount of potential nuclear bomb material lying around poorly guarded locations, particularly in the former Soviet Union. The most cost effective way to keep nuclear materials out of
the hands of terrorists is to complete the process of securing these materials worldwide.
Under the first President Bush, a program was put in place to start this process, and it has been making steady but painfully slow progress ever since. But despite numerous expert recommendations, adequate money and political will have been lacking under the current Bush administration.
At current rates, securing the remaining loose nuclear material would take several more years at least. That is a very foolish risk to run, when stronger leadership and an additional $2 billion a year could cut
that interval down substantially.
Biological and Chemical Security
Non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction include deadly biological and chemical toxins, like anthrax and nerve gas. Homeland security efforts in both areas have been badly lagging.
Project Bioshield, which was supposed to have created national stockpiles of effective drugs, vaccines and antidotes, hasn't, mainly due to understaffing and poor management. The biggest domestic chemical threat, large and poorly secured chemical plants located near large urban centers, remains inadequately addressed. If one of these plants was attacked by terrorists, a realistic possibility, plumes of lethal gases would stream over nearby cities, sickening millions of people. Deadly chemicals carried by
rail, which often move through densely populated areas, is another major area of vulnerability.
The slow progress in this area has been due to the extreme reluctance of the Bush administration to impose legal requirements on chemical and rail transport companies, relying instead on an uneven patchwork of voluntary actions.
Air and Ground Transportation Networks:
The most notable homeland security gains have involved airline passengers. This is scarcely surprising, since the 9/11 terrorists used hijacked passenger jets as their deadly weapons. Yet even in this area, surprising gaps remain, as the recent alarms over explosive liquids in carry-on baggage have shown.
We may be making a mistake, though, in concentrating too much on the method the terrorists used the last time, rather than areas of even greater vulnerability. About one-fourth of all commercial
air cargo travels in the holds of passenger jets. A bomb in a package carried on a commercial jet could cause hundreds of fatalities. Currently, less than 15 percent of the commercial cargo carried on passenger jets is screened by Transportation Security Administration inspectors.
Ground transportation is even more vulnerable. Terrorists demonstrated in Madrid and London that they can strike surface transportation to deadly effect. Amtrak, commuter rail lines and subway and bus systems in America are poorly protected, with the federal government doing far too little to coordinate and supplement local law enforcement and intelligence efforts. The T.S.A. has only 100 inspectors assigned to surface transit, compared to the 43,000 it has screening airline passengers and baggage.
VI. A Sensible Allocation
Politicians like to talk about their commitment to fighting terrorism. But an effective war on terrorism depends on making shrewd spending decisions. We are falling woefully short in this area, but it is not
too late to shape up.
The most obvious first step - and one Congress and the White House have utterly failed on - is allocating money based on risk. Nobody knows for sure where the next terrorist attack on American soil will take place, but that cannot justify the Homeland Security Department's dartboard-plus pork approach to doling out urban security grants.
There is every reason to believe an attack is much more likely - because of past patterns, and potential impact - in New York or Washington than in Wyoming. It is inexcusable that the Department of Homeland Security and Congress's funding formulas do not recognize this.
There are other obvious steps, and there are some thoughtful voices in Washington that have been pointing them out.
The bipartisan 9/11 commission has identified major shortfalls in Homeland Security preparedness and described what still needs to be done.
Congressional Democrats have been rallying support behind bills that would significantly strengthen port, container and chemical plant security. Sen. Joseph Biden this month proposed creating a homeland security trust fund of $53 billion over the next five years that would be used to implement the 9/11 commission's homeland security recommendations. (It would be paid for by rolling back some tax cuts
for those making more than $1 million a year.)
Last spring, two Washington research groups, the Center for Defense Information and Foreign Policy in Focus, went even further by publishing what they called a unified national security budget.
Their budget proposes a $24 billion increase in homeland security spending and shows how it easily could be paid for by cutting back unneeded or over-funded weapons systems like the F 22A fighter, the
DDG 1000 Destroyer and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and trimming the size of the active duty Air Force and Navy.
Overall, the two groups found that more than $60 billion that could be safely shifted out of the next year's military budget. That would leave more than $25 billion to spare, after the homeland security increases,
which they would apply to such activities as nation-building, peacekeeping, and alternative energy which also make a vital contribution to America's national security.
There's plenty of room for debate about exactly which weapons to cut and by how much. For example, a good case can be made for protecting the Joint Strike Fighter, a promising step toward producing a single
aircraft type that both the Air Force and Navy can use.
There's also room to debate how the savings should be spent. But it is clear that the current spending priorities are deeply flawed, and are not making us as safe as we should be.
VII. How To Make It Happen
This kind of a rational reallocation of national security spending is not just a realistic goal. It is an urgent requirement. But it isn't going to be easy to achieve.
The biggest obstacle is the military-industrial-political complex, which has a strong interest in maintaining the status quo. There is a pressing need for real lobbying reform to break this alliance's ability to
defend mistaken budgetary priorities.
That reform could open the way to better Congressional oversight - starting with more tough-minded appointees to relevant committees. Senators like John McCain of Arizona and Carl Levin of Michigan, along with Representatives like Ike Skelton of Missouri and John Spratt of South Carolina have shown what tough-minded Congressional oversight can look like. Committees in which such legislators formed a majority could work wonders.
More rational national security spending will also require a very different kind of defense secretary. Instead of responding to 9/11 with a reconceived national security budget, Donald Rumsfeld pressed ahead with a preconceived program of "defense transformation" that in practice boiled down to a disastrous campaign to try and force the army to do more with fewer ground troops and shortchanged post-war peacekeeping and nation-building operations.
From time to time, Mr. Rumsfeld did speak about the importance of freeing up billions of dollars flowing into costly and obsolete cold war weapons systems. But when it came time to draw up the Pentagon's
annual budget requests when actual budgets, he rarely fought to do so.
VIII. Starting Right Now
There is going to be a lot of talk between now and the November mid-term elections about keeping the nation safe. Unfortunately, much of it will be delivered in sound bites and 30-second TV ads.
Voters should demand that candidates go beyond the platitudes and talk about the real issues, like port security and a better prepared army, and about how they intended to pay for it.
Let's have a real debate. And then let's have real security.
Lela Moore contributed research for this article.
-------------------------------
Citation: David Unger. “Our Indefensible National Security Budget,” The New York Times, 20 September 2006.
Original URL: select.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/opinion/20talkingpoints.html
-------------------------------
The New York Times, 20 September 2006
If you want a green light for government spending in America, just say the word defense.
It's next to impossible to wrestle free enough federal money for education, health care, or rebuilding New Orleans. But when the Air Force says it needs tens of billions of dollars for newer model fighters or the Navy wants to upgrade destroyers - in an era when America's most dangerous enemies have no ships or planes of their own - Congressional appropriators and members of the taxpaying public don't even bother
asking hard questions.
There is nothing wrong with a rich country like United States spending very large sums of money to make itself as secure as possible. But despite the roughly half a trillion dollars we now lavish on the military every year, Americans are not as protected as they ought to be - and as they easily could be at significantly lower cost.
The shocking truth is that year after year the Pentagon spends well over half of its investment budget on high cost, low value weapons systems that are designed to fight non-existent enemy superpowers - systems that have no immediate connection to the terrorists, jihadists, and other real foes confronting the nation.
The money lavished on these low-value systems could be used to shore up acute vulnerabilities like our sea ports, aviation system and highly explosive and toxic chemical plants, all of which are scandalously shortchanged and under-protected.
This squandered money could also be used to help our frontline soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are paying a high price for misdirected Pentagon spending. We could be paying for enough new back-up Army and Marine forces to shorten combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, put a stop to the ominous smirking in Iran and North Korea about overstretched American ground forces.
Diverting at least some of the mega-billions now locked up for decades to come in low-priority weapons production lines could also assure that all troops in today's combat theaters are equipped with protective
armor tough enough to withstand the increasingly sophisticated and lethal explosives they face on a daily basis.
As the mid-term elections approach, candidates are lining up to prove that they are the toughest on terrorism, but that isn't the real issue. This is a question of competence, something we need a lot more of
right now in our national security planning.
Wouldn't it be great if somebody based a national candidacy on the real national security crisis facing America and demanded a radical reallocation of federal security spending toward the homeland and battlefield defenses we so desperately need?
I. A Unified View of Defense
America's first war of the 21st century began not in Afghanistan or Iraq but here on American soil. Washington's ideas about defense spending have simply not caught up with this new reality.
We still spend about eight times as much preparing for old-fashioned wars abroad as we do to protect Americans going about their lives here at home. And Pentagon mismanagement has let conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq cannibalize the forces and equipment of the National Guard, which ought to be our frontline homeland security force.
A meaningful way of commemorating the recent fifth anniversary of 9/11 would have been to finally recognize the need to integrate defense and homeland security planning and spending.
We spend nearly $500 billion a year on mainly overseas military defense (not counting Iraq and Afghanistan, which are paid for by supplemental appropriations). We spend roughly $55 billion more on homeland security.
This is one pot of money with a single purpose, keeping the nation safe, and we should be thinking about it that way.
If we did, the public would see that we have the balance off, throwing money at remote military contingencies while leaving our ports, chemical plants and transportation networks needlessly vulnerable to attack.
The allocation of money within each of these two budgets is also grossly distorted.
Homeland security dollars are doled out by geographic and population formulas rather than actual vulnerabilities, so rural states that have little risk get as much or more money per capita in some programs as places like New York and Washington, D.C.
Pentagon dollars are divided between the services according to traditional formulas that build in waste and redundancy and fail to take account of changing military realities. The burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, have fallen disproportionately on the Army and the Marines. But long-term spending and investment plans have not been redirected accordingly.
II. Why The Pentagon Approaches Budgets Irrationally
In a rational world, top Pentagon officials would sit down each year to examine the current national security situation, and propose allocations accordingly. Unfortunately, the military budgeting process in
Washington long ago got disconnected from timely assessments of America's actual security needs.
The four military services jealously protect their traditional shares of the overall spending and investment budget, even when, as now, there are real wars going on whose requirements do not correspond to that
traditional allocation.
One result is that the Navy and Air Force remain more than amply staffed while the Army and Marines are so strained for ground troops that their fighting readiness, career retention rates and recruitment programs have fallen into chronic crisis.
Another is that billions of dollars are wasted annually on duplicated missions and weapons systems so that the Army and Navy can have their own air forces. Worst of all, the huge streams of money allocated to each service for long term investments in future weapons are almost impossible to shift around between services or redirect toward non-weapons needs, like more ground troops.
III. Why Congress Isn't Much Better
Congress has its own issues, starting with the unhealthy symbiotic relationship between major defense contractors, politicians and military procurement officials.
Almost every branch of federal defense and homeland security spending provide opportunities for private companies to make guaranteed profits, immune from the vagaries of the market. The really big money - even with the cold war now a distant memory - still lies in long-term deals for equipping the Air Force and Navy with ever newer models of technology laden aircraft, surface ships, and submarines suitable for superpower conflict.
The price tags are astronomical: the F-22A and F-35 jet fighters, at a combined cost next year of roughly $8.1 billion. The DDG 1000 destroyer, at $3.4 billion. The Virginia-class attack submarine, at $2.6 billion.
None of these planes, ships or submarines are of any obvious use against Qaeda terrorists, insurgents and sectarian militias in Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan. Their only plausible use is against a rival superpower like the old Soviet Union. But that superpower rivalry ended a decade and a half ago.
Now they are mainly marketed on the theory that one day we may want to fight a war with China - a country with no visible territorial ambitions, underdeveloped military forces and with which the United
States now has no obvious military conflicts.
Congress should be looking at these programs with a critical eye, but Congress is itself compromised. Military contractors are enormous contributors to political campaigns, and that gives their lobbyists tremendous clout on Capitol Hill.
It makes more sense to redirect a great deal of this spending to adequately arming and reinforcing our troops. But the men and women serving overseas cannot compete with the big defense contractors when
it comes to making their case to Congress.
IV. The Pentagon Money Machine
It isn't only about campaign contributions - it's also about jobs. Defense contractors are large employers in the districts of many influential members of Congress, and they are not shy about reminding congressmen that cutting back on defense contracts will mean job losses - and political repercussions - back home.
It's time to stop using the Pentagon as a corporate welfare program and employment agency and put America's national security dollars where they belong - providing more relief and support for our frontline ground troops and better security for our endangered homeland.
With Republican majorities running the Senate and House, Congressional oversight of military budgets has been even laxer than usual. But both parties have long had a bad habit of awarding relevant committee seats to Senators and Representatives more interested in keeping weapons production lines in their district humming than in demanding serious reform.
That kind of mutual back-scratching, though reprehensible, is perfectly legal. But sometimes the collusion reaches criminal proportions. Last year, Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican who served on the House Intelligence Committee pleaded guilty to accepting millions of dollars of bribes from military companies to help them win Pentagon contracts.
V. Plugging The Holes In Homeland Security
Homeland Security spending is not immune from the same kind of politically driven distortion of priorities. But since this is a relatively new area of federal spending, with fewer long-time entrenched
interests, the dollar amounts involved are significantly smaller.
And that too is a problem. Even if Homeland Security dollars were more rationally allocated, there would not be enough to meet some obvious and urgent national needs - like adequately scrutinizing the cargo coming into American ports, reducing the risk of catastrophic terrorism or accidents at chemical plants that could kill or sicken hundreds of thousands of Americans, or accelerating the development of the next
generation of baggage and cargo screening devices to substantially reduce the risk of airborne terrorism.
The Bush administration prefers to leave the financing and implementation of these essential protections to voluntary corporate initiatives. Protecting the basic security of Americans at home is too important to leave to volunteerism. The unsatisfactory record of the past five years demonstrates clearly that only federal requirements and federal dollars will get the job done in an acceptable time frame.
Seaports and Shipping Containers Probably the single most dangerous hole in the nation's security is our ports, where inspection of incoming cargo containers remains spotty. Most experts agree that the most likely way a nuclear bomb or other weapon of mass destruction would be smuggled into the United States is by sea. Current cargo scanning technology could completely miss a nuclear bomb shielded by lead casing or a similarly packaged dirty radiological bomb. Yet only 5 percent of the more than 10 million cargo containers annually entering the United States are more thoroughly inspected by hand.
That is an alarming and unnecessary risk, as Congress is finally beginning to recognize. All American-bound cargo containers should be adequately inspected for nuclear materials before arriving at American
ports. Senator Charles Schumer of New York believes this could be done for less than $150 million a year. Other needed improvements include more reliable identification systems for port workers and truck drivers and tamper proof seals for inspected cargo containers. The total bill would come to something less than $3 billion a year.
Securing Nuclear Materials Abroad
There is still a shocking amount of potential nuclear bomb material lying around poorly guarded locations, particularly in the former Soviet Union. The most cost effective way to keep nuclear materials out of
the hands of terrorists is to complete the process of securing these materials worldwide.
Under the first President Bush, a program was put in place to start this process, and it has been making steady but painfully slow progress ever since. But despite numerous expert recommendations, adequate money and political will have been lacking under the current Bush administration.
At current rates, securing the remaining loose nuclear material would take several more years at least. That is a very foolish risk to run, when stronger leadership and an additional $2 billion a year could cut
that interval down substantially.
Biological and Chemical Security
Non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction include deadly biological and chemical toxins, like anthrax and nerve gas. Homeland security efforts in both areas have been badly lagging.
Project Bioshield, which was supposed to have created national stockpiles of effective drugs, vaccines and antidotes, hasn't, mainly due to understaffing and poor management. The biggest domestic chemical threat, large and poorly secured chemical plants located near large urban centers, remains inadequately addressed. If one of these plants was attacked by terrorists, a realistic possibility, plumes of lethal gases would stream over nearby cities, sickening millions of people. Deadly chemicals carried by
rail, which often move through densely populated areas, is another major area of vulnerability.
The slow progress in this area has been due to the extreme reluctance of the Bush administration to impose legal requirements on chemical and rail transport companies, relying instead on an uneven patchwork of voluntary actions.
Air and Ground Transportation Networks:
The most notable homeland security gains have involved airline passengers. This is scarcely surprising, since the 9/11 terrorists used hijacked passenger jets as their deadly weapons. Yet even in this area, surprising gaps remain, as the recent alarms over explosive liquids in carry-on baggage have shown.
We may be making a mistake, though, in concentrating too much on the method the terrorists used the last time, rather than areas of even greater vulnerability. About one-fourth of all commercial
air cargo travels in the holds of passenger jets. A bomb in a package carried on a commercial jet could cause hundreds of fatalities. Currently, less than 15 percent of the commercial cargo carried on passenger jets is screened by Transportation Security Administration inspectors.
Ground transportation is even more vulnerable. Terrorists demonstrated in Madrid and London that they can strike surface transportation to deadly effect. Amtrak, commuter rail lines and subway and bus systems in America are poorly protected, with the federal government doing far too little to coordinate and supplement local law enforcement and intelligence efforts. The T.S.A. has only 100 inspectors assigned to surface transit, compared to the 43,000 it has screening airline passengers and baggage.
VI. A Sensible Allocation
Politicians like to talk about their commitment to fighting terrorism. But an effective war on terrorism depends on making shrewd spending decisions. We are falling woefully short in this area, but it is not
too late to shape up.
The most obvious first step - and one Congress and the White House have utterly failed on - is allocating money based on risk. Nobody knows for sure where the next terrorist attack on American soil will take place, but that cannot justify the Homeland Security Department's dartboard-plus pork approach to doling out urban security grants.
There is every reason to believe an attack is much more likely - because of past patterns, and potential impact - in New York or Washington than in Wyoming. It is inexcusable that the Department of Homeland Security and Congress's funding formulas do not recognize this.
There are other obvious steps, and there are some thoughtful voices in Washington that have been pointing them out.
The bipartisan 9/11 commission has identified major shortfalls in Homeland Security preparedness and described what still needs to be done.
Congressional Democrats have been rallying support behind bills that would significantly strengthen port, container and chemical plant security. Sen. Joseph Biden this month proposed creating a homeland security trust fund of $53 billion over the next five years that would be used to implement the 9/11 commission's homeland security recommendations. (It would be paid for by rolling back some tax cuts
for those making more than $1 million a year.)
Last spring, two Washington research groups, the Center for Defense Information and Foreign Policy in Focus, went even further by publishing what they called a unified national security budget.
Their budget proposes a $24 billion increase in homeland security spending and shows how it easily could be paid for by cutting back unneeded or over-funded weapons systems like the F 22A fighter, the
DDG 1000 Destroyer and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and trimming the size of the active duty Air Force and Navy.
Overall, the two groups found that more than $60 billion that could be safely shifted out of the next year's military budget. That would leave more than $25 billion to spare, after the homeland security increases,
which they would apply to such activities as nation-building, peacekeeping, and alternative energy which also make a vital contribution to America's national security.
There's plenty of room for debate about exactly which weapons to cut and by how much. For example, a good case can be made for protecting the Joint Strike Fighter, a promising step toward producing a single
aircraft type that both the Air Force and Navy can use.
There's also room to debate how the savings should be spent. But it is clear that the current spending priorities are deeply flawed, and are not making us as safe as we should be.
VII. How To Make It Happen
This kind of a rational reallocation of national security spending is not just a realistic goal. It is an urgent requirement. But it isn't going to be easy to achieve.
The biggest obstacle is the military-industrial-political complex, which has a strong interest in maintaining the status quo. There is a pressing need for real lobbying reform to break this alliance's ability to
defend mistaken budgetary priorities.
That reform could open the way to better Congressional oversight - starting with more tough-minded appointees to relevant committees. Senators like John McCain of Arizona and Carl Levin of Michigan, along with Representatives like Ike Skelton of Missouri and John Spratt of South Carolina have shown what tough-minded Congressional oversight can look like. Committees in which such legislators formed a majority could work wonders.
More rational national security spending will also require a very different kind of defense secretary. Instead of responding to 9/11 with a reconceived national security budget, Donald Rumsfeld pressed ahead with a preconceived program of "defense transformation" that in practice boiled down to a disastrous campaign to try and force the army to do more with fewer ground troops and shortchanged post-war peacekeeping and nation-building operations.
From time to time, Mr. Rumsfeld did speak about the importance of freeing up billions of dollars flowing into costly and obsolete cold war weapons systems. But when it came time to draw up the Pentagon's
annual budget requests when actual budgets, he rarely fought to do so.
VIII. Starting Right Now
There is going to be a lot of talk between now and the November mid-term elections about keeping the nation safe. Unfortunately, much of it will be delivered in sound bites and 30-second TV ads.
Voters should demand that candidates go beyond the platitudes and talk about the real issues, like port security and a better prepared army, and about how they intended to pay for it.
Let's have a real debate. And then let's have real security.
Lela Moore contributed research for this article.
-------------------------------
Citation: David Unger. “Our Indefensible National Security Budget,” The New York Times, 20 September 2006.
Original URL: select.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/opinion/20talkingpoints.html
-------------------------------
22 September 2006
Shia killers rake in £500,000 a day from crime, says US
By Oliver Poole
The Telegraph, 22 September 2006
Shia militias behind widespread sectarian killings in Baghdad are earning at least £500,000 a day through criminal enterprises, the US military believes.
The groups, which are accused of operating death squads to terrorise the city's Sunni population, are therefore able to spend freely on weapons, pay salaries to the militiamen who carry out the murders and buy the loyalty of the Shia population by funding social welfare programmes.
Although it was known that the Shia militias were closely linked with crime, this is the first time that the scale of the their financial resources has been detailed.
Both the Iraqi and American governments have said that the disbandment of the militias is a prerequisite for restoring law and order.
Lt Col William Brown, an intelligence officer whose job is to monitor the militias in east Baghdad, estimated that Shia groups raised at least $1 million (£530,000) a day through organised crime. The money came "especially from kidnappings, extortion, black marketeering and blackmail".
Thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Payments of $50,000 are routinely demanded and paid. Many people are killed even after the ransom is paid.
Lt Col Brown said that of particular concern was the control of many petrol stations by members of the Mahdi army, the militia of Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-western fundamentalist cleric whose political allies control the ministry of transport. The Mahdi army is the largest and most powerful of the Shia militias in Baghdad, with an estimated 10,000 members.
"You see the guards around the petrol stations," Lt Col Brown said. "It is easy for them to sell 40 litres of gas then give only 35 litres."
The US military is monitoring 20 militias operating in the city. They have recently grown stronger as they provide security to residents at a time of rising religious violence. At the same time they are accused of conducting many tit-for-tat sectarian killings.
American officials said that trying to prevent militia killings was hampered not only by the cash available to them but also because a number of them had recently fragmented into smaller, rival groups.
Sadr's control over his militiamen seems to be weakening, with reports of a number of his followers operating independently.
American concern has focused on one of his former lieutenants known by the nom de guerre Abu Dereh (Father of the Shield).
Abu Dereh is accused of abducting scores of Sunnis and depositing their bodies at al-Sada, a rubbish tip near the Baghdad Shia slum of Sadr City. His preferred method of murder is by crushing skulls with cinder blocks.
---------------------------------
Citation: Oliver Poole. "Shia killers rake in £500,000 a day from crime, says US," The Telegraph, 22 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/22/wiraq22.xml
---------------------------------
The Telegraph, 22 September 2006
Shia militias behind widespread sectarian killings in Baghdad are earning at least £500,000 a day through criminal enterprises, the US military believes.
The groups, which are accused of operating death squads to terrorise the city's Sunni population, are therefore able to spend freely on weapons, pay salaries to the militiamen who carry out the murders and buy the loyalty of the Shia population by funding social welfare programmes.
Although it was known that the Shia militias were closely linked with crime, this is the first time that the scale of the their financial resources has been detailed.
Both the Iraqi and American governments have said that the disbandment of the militias is a prerequisite for restoring law and order.
Lt Col William Brown, an intelligence officer whose job is to monitor the militias in east Baghdad, estimated that Shia groups raised at least $1 million (£530,000) a day through organised crime. The money came "especially from kidnappings, extortion, black marketeering and blackmail".
Thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Payments of $50,000 are routinely demanded and paid. Many people are killed even after the ransom is paid.
Lt Col Brown said that of particular concern was the control of many petrol stations by members of the Mahdi army, the militia of Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-western fundamentalist cleric whose political allies control the ministry of transport. The Mahdi army is the largest and most powerful of the Shia militias in Baghdad, with an estimated 10,000 members.
"You see the guards around the petrol stations," Lt Col Brown said. "It is easy for them to sell 40 litres of gas then give only 35 litres."
The US military is monitoring 20 militias operating in the city. They have recently grown stronger as they provide security to residents at a time of rising religious violence. At the same time they are accused of conducting many tit-for-tat sectarian killings.
American officials said that trying to prevent militia killings was hampered not only by the cash available to them but also because a number of them had recently fragmented into smaller, rival groups.
Sadr's control over his militiamen seems to be weakening, with reports of a number of his followers operating independently.
American concern has focused on one of his former lieutenants known by the nom de guerre Abu Dereh (Father of the Shield).
Abu Dereh is accused of abducting scores of Sunnis and depositing their bodies at al-Sada, a rubbish tip near the Baghdad Shia slum of Sadr City. His preferred method of murder is by crushing skulls with cinder blocks.
---------------------------------
Citation: Oliver Poole. "Shia killers rake in £500,000 a day from crime, says US," The Telegraph, 22 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/22/wiraq22.xml
---------------------------------
21 September 2006
Deployment Math Tests the Military
Commanders warn that maintaining Iraq troop levels could cause lasting damage to the services unless an increase in forces is allowed.
By Peter Spiegel and Julian E. Barnes
Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2006
WASHINGTON — As prospects fade for U.S. force reductions in Iraq, Army and Marine commanders have been stepping up their warnings that the pace of troop deployments is increasingly straining the military and threatening to cause long-term damage.
According to Pentagon officials, senior officers in the Army and Marine Corps in recent weeks have begun warning that without a reduction in Iraq, the present schedule of combat tours would be difficult to sustain without an increase in the number of forces.
Army officials had been counting on a gradual drawdown in Iraq starting later this year and accelerating over the following 12 months.
But the rising violence in Baghdad forced the Pentagon to shelve those plans at the end of July, and Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, acknowledged publicly Tuesday that force levels would remain around the current 145,000 through spring.
One senior Pentagon official involved in long-term planning said the concerns had reached such a level that top Army leaders broached the issue of changing deployment rules to allow for more frequent call-ups of National Guard and Reserve units to relieve pressure on the active duty Army.
Because the Army relied heavily on the Guard and Reserve early in the war, many units have hit legal deployment limits, which allow for two years overseas out of every five. But without a change in those rules to allow more frequent Guard deployments, the Army would be forced to consider a push for an expansion of its active duty force, which stands at 504,000, the official said.
"You can start seeing the [effect of deployments] on the leadership of the active force," the official said, referring to limits on the use of Guard and Reserve troops. "That's the stress that we're having right now on this force."
Although most of the concerns regarding strains on the Marines and Army have been aired privately in the Pentagon, Abizaid told a group of military reporters this week that it would be difficult to find additional troops to send to Iraq to deal with insurgent violence in western Anbar province.
The Marine Corps has expressed less alarm about the high rate of deployments. Still, Defense officials said that in internal meetings, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the Corps' commandant, had begun discussing his need to focus on force levels out of concern that "significant personnel issues" could develop.
"The margins are very thin," said one Defense official who has discussed the issue with senior Marine officers. "We haven't seen it occur yet; it's just something that causes the commandant and the senior leadership of the Marine Corps to be very, very wary and to constantly monitor the manpower situation to ensure we're not using up the force in ways that we can't do other missions, if required."
Hagee has said publicly that he believes the Marine Corps should remain at 181,000 troops; Pentagon planning documents call for it to shrink to 175,000.
"You have personnel who are training right now primarily to do the mission in Iraq, but are not receiving their training for other mission areas or other contingencies," the official said. "If those contingencies erupt, they won't be ready, or as ready."
Under Army models, two active duty brigades are supposed to be at their home bases for equipment repairs or retraining for every brigade deployed to a war zone. However, over the course of the Iraq war, that ratio has fallen to one brigade stateside for every one overseas — meaning most combat units are returning to Iraq after barely a year at home. An Army brigade is made up of about 3,500 soldiers.
The Marines also face a 1-to-1 deployment ratio, officials said. There are 23,000 Marines in Iraq, along with about 120,000 Army soldiers. The remaining 2,000 are from the Air Force and Navy.
Some former senior military officials said that without a substantial draw-down, the military will face personnel issues. The Army, for instance, has been maintaining its overall force levels in part because of higher-than-expected reenlistment numbers. Army officials say those rates show soldiers have been pleased with their experience and are eager to continue to serve.
But military experts say if the operational pace continues, the reenlistments are likely to fall sharply.
"My gut keeps telling me we have 18 to 36 months until we see dramatic shifts in recruiting, retention and discipline of the ground forces," says retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former commander in Bosnia and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "I just think that the stress over time on the same people is building and building. I don't know when the valve on the pressure cooker goes off."
Jack L. Tilley, who from 2000 to 2004 served as sergeant major of the Army — the service's top enlisted officer — said family members had begun pressuring soldiers not to reenlist, arguing they had been away from home too long and worrying that chances of serious injury or death increased with each return to Iraq.
"It's like anything else," Tilley said. "You play a game — first time you win, the second time you win. Well, you know chances are getting slimmer and slimmer about getting hurt, and there is a lot of concern about that."
As force levels remain high, the number of soldiers and Marines sent on multiple combat missions has also continued to climb. About 30% of the nearly 400,000 active-duty Army soldiers and 36% of the 143,000 active-duty Marines who have been deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan have seen multiple tours.
In addition, about 280,000 Army and Marine Corps reservists have done one or more deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Under Army force models developed under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Guard and Reserve were supposed to contribute four to five brigades to the pool of soldiers available for overseas service. But because of their heavy use early in the war, many have already hit their two-year limit, and only one Guard unit is deployed to Iraq.
The issue of revising the two-year limit is fraught with political risk. The Guard has strong support among key members of Congress, and a proposal last year to revise the regulations was dropped after concerns were raised by lawmakers.
But some Army officials have argued in recent weeks that unless the rule is revised, it will be difficult to sustain the current pace of deployment for the active force.
"If we're going to have an active duty force that's only going to be so big, you have to have access to the Reserve," the senior official said. "If you want to stay in this and never have to accelerate [Guard deployment], you'd better grow the [active] force."
Although discussions about changing the Guard rules have been underway for weeks, the official said it remained unclear when a decision would be made. Given the political sensitivity, however, it remains unlikely the Pentagon would propose any shift before the November election.
The military has been trying to ease the pressure on the Army and Marine Corps by using more Navy and Air Force service members in Iraq, but those efforts have not significantly eased the burden.
If the American force in Iraq cannot be shrunk, lawmakers will face some difficult decisions, military experts said.
"It is just a tough situation," Tilley said. "The question our Congress has to ask itself is at what point do we activate our country a little bit more. Nobody wants to talk about a draft. But how long are you going to go until enough is enough? Those are tough questions."
-------------------------
Citation: Peter Spiegel and Julian E. Barnes. "Deployment Math Tests the Military,"
Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-na-army21sep21,1,7143761.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
-------------------------
By Peter Spiegel and Julian E. Barnes
Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2006
WASHINGTON — As prospects fade for U.S. force reductions in Iraq, Army and Marine commanders have been stepping up their warnings that the pace of troop deployments is increasingly straining the military and threatening to cause long-term damage.
According to Pentagon officials, senior officers in the Army and Marine Corps in recent weeks have begun warning that without a reduction in Iraq, the present schedule of combat tours would be difficult to sustain without an increase in the number of forces.
Army officials had been counting on a gradual drawdown in Iraq starting later this year and accelerating over the following 12 months.
But the rising violence in Baghdad forced the Pentagon to shelve those plans at the end of July, and Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, acknowledged publicly Tuesday that force levels would remain around the current 145,000 through spring.
One senior Pentagon official involved in long-term planning said the concerns had reached such a level that top Army leaders broached the issue of changing deployment rules to allow for more frequent call-ups of National Guard and Reserve units to relieve pressure on the active duty Army.
Because the Army relied heavily on the Guard and Reserve early in the war, many units have hit legal deployment limits, which allow for two years overseas out of every five. But without a change in those rules to allow more frequent Guard deployments, the Army would be forced to consider a push for an expansion of its active duty force, which stands at 504,000, the official said.
"You can start seeing the [effect of deployments] on the leadership of the active force," the official said, referring to limits on the use of Guard and Reserve troops. "That's the stress that we're having right now on this force."
Although most of the concerns regarding strains on the Marines and Army have been aired privately in the Pentagon, Abizaid told a group of military reporters this week that it would be difficult to find additional troops to send to Iraq to deal with insurgent violence in western Anbar province.
The Marine Corps has expressed less alarm about the high rate of deployments. Still, Defense officials said that in internal meetings, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the Corps' commandant, had begun discussing his need to focus on force levels out of concern that "significant personnel issues" could develop.
"The margins are very thin," said one Defense official who has discussed the issue with senior Marine officers. "We haven't seen it occur yet; it's just something that causes the commandant and the senior leadership of the Marine Corps to be very, very wary and to constantly monitor the manpower situation to ensure we're not using up the force in ways that we can't do other missions, if required."
Hagee has said publicly that he believes the Marine Corps should remain at 181,000 troops; Pentagon planning documents call for it to shrink to 175,000.
"You have personnel who are training right now primarily to do the mission in Iraq, but are not receiving their training for other mission areas or other contingencies," the official said. "If those contingencies erupt, they won't be ready, or as ready."
Under Army models, two active duty brigades are supposed to be at their home bases for equipment repairs or retraining for every brigade deployed to a war zone. However, over the course of the Iraq war, that ratio has fallen to one brigade stateside for every one overseas — meaning most combat units are returning to Iraq after barely a year at home. An Army brigade is made up of about 3,500 soldiers.
The Marines also face a 1-to-1 deployment ratio, officials said. There are 23,000 Marines in Iraq, along with about 120,000 Army soldiers. The remaining 2,000 are from the Air Force and Navy.
Some former senior military officials said that without a substantial draw-down, the military will face personnel issues. The Army, for instance, has been maintaining its overall force levels in part because of higher-than-expected reenlistment numbers. Army officials say those rates show soldiers have been pleased with their experience and are eager to continue to serve.
But military experts say if the operational pace continues, the reenlistments are likely to fall sharply.
"My gut keeps telling me we have 18 to 36 months until we see dramatic shifts in recruiting, retention and discipline of the ground forces," says retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former commander in Bosnia and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "I just think that the stress over time on the same people is building and building. I don't know when the valve on the pressure cooker goes off."
Jack L. Tilley, who from 2000 to 2004 served as sergeant major of the Army — the service's top enlisted officer — said family members had begun pressuring soldiers not to reenlist, arguing they had been away from home too long and worrying that chances of serious injury or death increased with each return to Iraq.
"It's like anything else," Tilley said. "You play a game — first time you win, the second time you win. Well, you know chances are getting slimmer and slimmer about getting hurt, and there is a lot of concern about that."
As force levels remain high, the number of soldiers and Marines sent on multiple combat missions has also continued to climb. About 30% of the nearly 400,000 active-duty Army soldiers and 36% of the 143,000 active-duty Marines who have been deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan have seen multiple tours.
In addition, about 280,000 Army and Marine Corps reservists have done one or more deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Under Army force models developed under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Guard and Reserve were supposed to contribute four to five brigades to the pool of soldiers available for overseas service. But because of their heavy use early in the war, many have already hit their two-year limit, and only one Guard unit is deployed to Iraq.
The issue of revising the two-year limit is fraught with political risk. The Guard has strong support among key members of Congress, and a proposal last year to revise the regulations was dropped after concerns were raised by lawmakers.
But some Army officials have argued in recent weeks that unless the rule is revised, it will be difficult to sustain the current pace of deployment for the active force.
"If we're going to have an active duty force that's only going to be so big, you have to have access to the Reserve," the senior official said. "If you want to stay in this and never have to accelerate [Guard deployment], you'd better grow the [active] force."
Although discussions about changing the Guard rules have been underway for weeks, the official said it remained unclear when a decision would be made. Given the political sensitivity, however, it remains unlikely the Pentagon would propose any shift before the November election.
The military has been trying to ease the pressure on the Army and Marine Corps by using more Navy and Air Force service members in Iraq, but those efforts have not significantly eased the burden.
If the American force in Iraq cannot be shrunk, lawmakers will face some difficult decisions, military experts said.
"It is just a tough situation," Tilley said. "The question our Congress has to ask itself is at what point do we activate our country a little bit more. Nobody wants to talk about a draft. But how long are you going to go until enough is enough? Those are tough questions."
-------------------------
Citation: Peter Spiegel and Julian E. Barnes. "Deployment Math Tests the Military,"
Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-na-army21sep21,1,7143761.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
-------------------------
Iraqis assume control of 2nd province
By Patrick Quinn
The Associated Press, 21 September 2006
Italy formally handed over security responsibility of the southern Dhi Qar province to Iraqi forces Thursday, the second of the country's 18 provinces to be handed over to local control.
In scattered violence, at least 15 people were killed, including six policemen whose western Baghdad station was hit with mortar and gunfire. More mutilated bodies were found, the apparent victims of death squads, and the U.S. command said one American soldier was killed when a bomb exploded next to his vehicle in the north of the capital Wednesday.
In a ceremony in Dhi Qar's capital of Nasiriyah, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki thanked Italian Defense Minister Arturo Parisi for his country's help in the province.
The overall U.S. strategy calls for coalition forces to redeploy to larger bases and let Iraqis become responsible for their security in specific regions. The larger bases can act in a support or reserve role. A final stage would involve the drawdown of troops from Iraq.
With the handover, Iraqis will now be responsible for security in the province, calling in coalition troops only when they are needed for support.
Italy's force of some 1,600 troops is expected to be mostly withdrawn by year's end.
Italy's military has reported 32 deaths in Iraq, including 19 killed in the bombing of a military barracks on Nov. 12, 2003. Only hours before the handover ceremony, another Italian soldier died in an accident in southern Iraq, the Italian Defense Ministry said.
Al-Maliki has said that Iraqi army and police plan to take over security for all provinces in the next 18 months. British troops handed over control of southern Muthana province in July.
"It is a great day, it holds the message of the future handover of security control in all of Iraq," al-Maliki said.
In a joint statement, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. military official in Iraq, lauded the handover as "another sign of progress toward a stable and secure Iraq."
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq's Human Rights office warned Wednesday, however, that the number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit 6,599, a record high number that is far greater than initial estimates had suggested and points to the grave sectarian crisis gripping the country.
It offered a grim assessment across a range of indicators, reporting worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, the growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in "honor killings" of women.
On Thursday in downtown Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, parts of another two mutilated bodies were found.
One was decapitated with hands and legs chopped off but could still be identified by family members, said Police Lt. Mohammed Ismail said, without identifying the victim.
A severed head belonging to Ahmed Kamel, also known as Munem Abu Shaiba, was found the previous day, Ismail said. Kamel was wanted by U.S. forces for suspected insurgent activity.
The bodies of three men and one woman were found shot to death in a minibus in Baghdad, while two more corpses with bullet wounds were found on the roof of a house, police said.
Four employees of a government-owned company were kidnapped by eight armed men in three cars in the commercial heart of the capital, police 1st Lt. Mahmoud Khayyoun.
Meanwhile, armed assailants robbed the Rafidain Bank in Baghdad, seizing an undetermined amount of cash and wounding the bank manager, Khayyoun said.
Witnesses said the men were dressed as Iraqi soldiers and arrived in three pickup trucks.
In violence around the country a joint American and Iraqi patrol clashed with forces loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, in a raid to arrest a Mahdi Army leader, police said.
Two Iraqi soldiers were wounded and four injured, said police Capt. Abbas al-Bayati. An Iraqi armored personnel vehicle and a U.S. Humvee were damaged, but there were no immediate reports of American casualties, al-Bayati said.
Al-Bayati said he was still trying to confirm whether there were any Mahdi Army dead or wounded.
In the attack on the Baghdad police station in the Khadra neighborhood, assailants first fired a mortar at the building then drove up in four cars and opened fire with machine guns, said police 1st Lt. Maitham Abdel-Razaq.
In addition to the six policemen killed, one more was injured, he said.
Four civilians were also killed and five wounded in a mortar attack on a residential area in the Dora neighborhood in the city's south, while two more civilians and six more injured when a parked car bomb exploded in the northeast, police said.
Two people were killed and another nine injured when a car bomb exploded near an electricity office in Baghdad, police said. The bomb placed in a parked car exploded just before 9 a.m. in the Hurriya neighborhood of the capital, police 1st Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.
A policeman was killed in the northern city of Mosul in a drive-by shooting, while another policeman was killed and one more injured when a police car was fired upon by unknown assailants in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, authorities said.
Iraq's Central Criminal Court said it had convicted 35 suspected insurgents on a wide variety of crimes from Sept. 1-7, including a man captured wearing a vest of plastic explosives and ball bearings who received a life sentence.
To date, the central court has held 1,484 trials of people suspected of anti-Iraqi and anti-coalition activity, resulting in 1,287 convictions with sentences up to death.
Associated Press reporters David Rising, Qais al-Bashir, Muhieddin Rashad and Bushra Juni contributed to this report.
----------------------------
Citation: Patrick Quinn. "Iraqis assume control of 2nd province," The Associated Press, 21 September 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060921/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
----------------------------
The Associated Press, 21 September 2006
Italy formally handed over security responsibility of the southern Dhi Qar province to Iraqi forces Thursday, the second of the country's 18 provinces to be handed over to local control.
In scattered violence, at least 15 people were killed, including six policemen whose western Baghdad station was hit with mortar and gunfire. More mutilated bodies were found, the apparent victims of death squads, and the U.S. command said one American soldier was killed when a bomb exploded next to his vehicle in the north of the capital Wednesday.
In a ceremony in Dhi Qar's capital of Nasiriyah, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki thanked Italian Defense Minister Arturo Parisi for his country's help in the province.
The overall U.S. strategy calls for coalition forces to redeploy to larger bases and let Iraqis become responsible for their security in specific regions. The larger bases can act in a support or reserve role. A final stage would involve the drawdown of troops from Iraq.
With the handover, Iraqis will now be responsible for security in the province, calling in coalition troops only when they are needed for support.
Italy's force of some 1,600 troops is expected to be mostly withdrawn by year's end.
Italy's military has reported 32 deaths in Iraq, including 19 killed in the bombing of a military barracks on Nov. 12, 2003. Only hours before the handover ceremony, another Italian soldier died in an accident in southern Iraq, the Italian Defense Ministry said.
Al-Maliki has said that Iraqi army and police plan to take over security for all provinces in the next 18 months. British troops handed over control of southern Muthana province in July.
"It is a great day, it holds the message of the future handover of security control in all of Iraq," al-Maliki said.
In a joint statement, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. military official in Iraq, lauded the handover as "another sign of progress toward a stable and secure Iraq."
The U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq's Human Rights office warned Wednesday, however, that the number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit 6,599, a record high number that is far greater than initial estimates had suggested and points to the grave sectarian crisis gripping the country.
It offered a grim assessment across a range of indicators, reporting worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, the growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in "honor killings" of women.
On Thursday in downtown Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, parts of another two mutilated bodies were found.
One was decapitated with hands and legs chopped off but could still be identified by family members, said Police Lt. Mohammed Ismail said, without identifying the victim.
A severed head belonging to Ahmed Kamel, also known as Munem Abu Shaiba, was found the previous day, Ismail said. Kamel was wanted by U.S. forces for suspected insurgent activity.
The bodies of three men and one woman were found shot to death in a minibus in Baghdad, while two more corpses with bullet wounds were found on the roof of a house, police said.
Four employees of a government-owned company were kidnapped by eight armed men in three cars in the commercial heart of the capital, police 1st Lt. Mahmoud Khayyoun.
Meanwhile, armed assailants robbed the Rafidain Bank in Baghdad, seizing an undetermined amount of cash and wounding the bank manager, Khayyoun said.
Witnesses said the men were dressed as Iraqi soldiers and arrived in three pickup trucks.
In violence around the country a joint American and Iraqi patrol clashed with forces loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, in a raid to arrest a Mahdi Army leader, police said.
Two Iraqi soldiers were wounded and four injured, said police Capt. Abbas al-Bayati. An Iraqi armored personnel vehicle and a U.S. Humvee were damaged, but there were no immediate reports of American casualties, al-Bayati said.
Al-Bayati said he was still trying to confirm whether there were any Mahdi Army dead or wounded.
In the attack on the Baghdad police station in the Khadra neighborhood, assailants first fired a mortar at the building then drove up in four cars and opened fire with machine guns, said police 1st Lt. Maitham Abdel-Razaq.
In addition to the six policemen killed, one more was injured, he said.
Four civilians were also killed and five wounded in a mortar attack on a residential area in the Dora neighborhood in the city's south, while two more civilians and six more injured when a parked car bomb exploded in the northeast, police said.
Two people were killed and another nine injured when a car bomb exploded near an electricity office in Baghdad, police said. The bomb placed in a parked car exploded just before 9 a.m. in the Hurriya neighborhood of the capital, police 1st Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.
A policeman was killed in the northern city of Mosul in a drive-by shooting, while another policeman was killed and one more injured when a police car was fired upon by unknown assailants in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, authorities said.
Iraq's Central Criminal Court said it had convicted 35 suspected insurgents on a wide variety of crimes from Sept. 1-7, including a man captured wearing a vest of plastic explosives and ball bearings who received a life sentence.
To date, the central court has held 1,484 trials of people suspected of anti-Iraqi and anti-coalition activity, resulting in 1,287 convictions with sentences up to death.
Associated Press reporters David Rising, Qais al-Bashir, Muhieddin Rashad and Bushra Juni contributed to this report.
----------------------------
Citation: Patrick Quinn. "Iraqis assume control of 2nd province," The Associated Press, 21 September 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060921/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
----------------------------
20 September 2006
Under Guard, Dates Make a Comeback
A festival celebrating the best crop in years is held amid tight security. The U.S. sees hope in the industry's revival, but farmers remain fearful.
By Solomon Moore
Los Angeles Times, 19 September 2006
BAQUBAH, Iraq — The view from a Black Hawk helicopter is of a lush triple canopy — vegetables carpeting the ground in square green swatches, orange trees crouching over them in verdant rows, and towering above them all, Iraq's king crop, date palms.
But farmers have a different perspective on the ground — one of internecine political violence and gunmen waiting for them on the way to market.
The U.S. military is attempting to revive Iraq's date palm industry, which has been badly neglected since 2003, and on Monday arranged a trip for reporters to see the fruits of its labor at a date palm festival in Baqubah.
"Festival" might have been a bit of an overstatement. The exhibition hall was surrounded by Iraqi security forces, and eight Humvees were parked outside its tall walls. Reporters were advised to wear flak jackets in case of attack, and inside, there appeared to be more empty seats than full. Those browsing on baskets of the sticky, sweet fruit were mostly American troops or State Department employees.
Iraq's dates are traditionally used to break fasts during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. They have been a source of national pride since the time of Hammurabi, about 3,700 years ago. Baqubah, which is also known as the "City of Oranges," was famous for its dates until 2003, when neglect exposed the trees to pests. Harvests were good for little more than coarse date-seed bread and animal feed.
Processing plants for date-palm oil, syrup and honey have moldered since the U.S.-led invasion. Factory owners have fled Baqubah, fearing the daily kidnappings, killings and bombings.
The U.S. military, however, believes the date industry is key to creating jobs and damping the sectarian violence that has rocketed in Baqubah in recent weeks.
The festival was held to celebrate the best crop in years — about 70,000 tons, up 50% from 2005.
The bumper crop, which came after U.S. forces helped restart pesticide spraying, is still a far cry from prewar yields.
"That's a very small harvest," said Chamber of Commerce member Abu Alla, whose name means "father of Alla." Abu Alla, who declined to give his family name for fear of being targeted for attack, said the harvest "should be twice as large."
"Really there is no actual support for the date palm farmers," Abu Alla said. "We've treated the dates with crop dusters, but our palms are sick and need further treatment. All agriculture in Iraq needs equipment and treatment. We have experience, but we lack equipment."
Once a breadbasket for much of the Middle East, Iraq saw its agriculture decline steeply under Saddam Hussein, falling victim to U.S.-backed economic sanctions and the regime's frivolous spending. Ruthless scorched-earth campaigns against Shiite farmland laid waste to thousands of palms. Iraq, once the world's largest producer of dates, lost 30 million trees over two decades.
Now, farmers say that Iraq's many-sided conflict is hampering yields.
Splendidly robed and adorned with a checkered headdress, Abu Adhim Abbas Mohammed, one of Diyala province's most prosperous farmers, said he was pleased with this year's harvest. But he acknowledged that he was still not seeing normal yields. Mohammed said that his 37 acres should yield 45 tons, but he was expecting to reap two-thirds that amount.
And the cost for that modest success has been high.
Several of Mohammed's relatives were killed while going to market or trying to buy equipment in Baqubah, he said.
Mohammed nearly met the same fate when gunmen attacked him as he drove to his farm, wounding him in the left arm. He escaped by firing back.
Sectarian clashes at Baqubah's northern and southern outskirts have displaced entire date-producing villages, said local Agriculture Ministry Director General Abbas Thamimi.
"Some of the people were forced to leave by the terrorists," Thamimi said.
Baqubah Mayor Khalid Sanjary said that he knew of at least 40 farming families that had left the area in recent weeks.
Home to significant populations of Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs, Baqubah and its environs have recently been rocked by a series of assassinations and gun battles between Shiite militias and Sunni Arab insurgents.
On Monday, assassins killed the mayor of Udaim, a town 20 miles north of Baqubah. Last month, gunmen killed about two dozen people in a restaurant in nearby Khalis, once a date-processing center.
Al Qaeda in Iraq continues to operate in the Baqubah area three months after the U.S. Air Force dropped two bombs on its leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi. He had been hiding in the Baqubah suburb of Hibhib, known for its date wine.
"These assassinations are taking place on Baqubah's main streets," the mayor said. "These are political conflicts. All the militias and gunmen are here."
Lt. Col. James Rice, deputy commander of the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, said the violence in Baqubah was designed to alter electoral demographics.
"They're maneuvering around so that as elections come up, people can be in a position to win a majority," Rice said. "I think some of this displacement is politically motivated as people try to right-size the population in a particular area so that they will be ready for the next elections."
No date has been set for the elections. In the meantime, Baqubah's farmers struggle to find investors willing to rebuild their processing plants, and scramble in search of outside markets for their 600 varieties of dates.
A small number of farmers has begun exporting to other Iraqi cities and neighboring countries such as the United Arab Emirates.
But Army Maj. Marcus Snow, a member of the State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team in Diyala, said that attempts to reach out to a dozen leading factory-owning families had not resulted in renewed investment.
Snow, a reservist who works as a stockbroker in Pennsylvania, said he sympathized with the factory owners' reluctance to return to Baqubah with capital.
"They're businessmen," he said.
"They know they can make more money elsewhere, and with security the way it is here, they're kidnapping bait."
---------------------
Citation: Solomon Moore. "Under Guard, Dates Make a Comeback," Los Angeles Times, 19 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-dates19sep19,1,1825010.story?coll=la-headlines-world
---------------------
By Solomon Moore
Los Angeles Times, 19 September 2006
BAQUBAH, Iraq — The view from a Black Hawk helicopter is of a lush triple canopy — vegetables carpeting the ground in square green swatches, orange trees crouching over them in verdant rows, and towering above them all, Iraq's king crop, date palms.
But farmers have a different perspective on the ground — one of internecine political violence and gunmen waiting for them on the way to market.
The U.S. military is attempting to revive Iraq's date palm industry, which has been badly neglected since 2003, and on Monday arranged a trip for reporters to see the fruits of its labor at a date palm festival in Baqubah.
"Festival" might have been a bit of an overstatement. The exhibition hall was surrounded by Iraqi security forces, and eight Humvees were parked outside its tall walls. Reporters were advised to wear flak jackets in case of attack, and inside, there appeared to be more empty seats than full. Those browsing on baskets of the sticky, sweet fruit were mostly American troops or State Department employees.
Iraq's dates are traditionally used to break fasts during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. They have been a source of national pride since the time of Hammurabi, about 3,700 years ago. Baqubah, which is also known as the "City of Oranges," was famous for its dates until 2003, when neglect exposed the trees to pests. Harvests were good for little more than coarse date-seed bread and animal feed.
Processing plants for date-palm oil, syrup and honey have moldered since the U.S.-led invasion. Factory owners have fled Baqubah, fearing the daily kidnappings, killings and bombings.
The U.S. military, however, believes the date industry is key to creating jobs and damping the sectarian violence that has rocketed in Baqubah in recent weeks.
The festival was held to celebrate the best crop in years — about 70,000 tons, up 50% from 2005.
The bumper crop, which came after U.S. forces helped restart pesticide spraying, is still a far cry from prewar yields.
"That's a very small harvest," said Chamber of Commerce member Abu Alla, whose name means "father of Alla." Abu Alla, who declined to give his family name for fear of being targeted for attack, said the harvest "should be twice as large."
"Really there is no actual support for the date palm farmers," Abu Alla said. "We've treated the dates with crop dusters, but our palms are sick and need further treatment. All agriculture in Iraq needs equipment and treatment. We have experience, but we lack equipment."
Once a breadbasket for much of the Middle East, Iraq saw its agriculture decline steeply under Saddam Hussein, falling victim to U.S.-backed economic sanctions and the regime's frivolous spending. Ruthless scorched-earth campaigns against Shiite farmland laid waste to thousands of palms. Iraq, once the world's largest producer of dates, lost 30 million trees over two decades.
Now, farmers say that Iraq's many-sided conflict is hampering yields.
Splendidly robed and adorned with a checkered headdress, Abu Adhim Abbas Mohammed, one of Diyala province's most prosperous farmers, said he was pleased with this year's harvest. But he acknowledged that he was still not seeing normal yields. Mohammed said that his 37 acres should yield 45 tons, but he was expecting to reap two-thirds that amount.
And the cost for that modest success has been high.
Several of Mohammed's relatives were killed while going to market or trying to buy equipment in Baqubah, he said.
Mohammed nearly met the same fate when gunmen attacked him as he drove to his farm, wounding him in the left arm. He escaped by firing back.
Sectarian clashes at Baqubah's northern and southern outskirts have displaced entire date-producing villages, said local Agriculture Ministry Director General Abbas Thamimi.
"Some of the people were forced to leave by the terrorists," Thamimi said.
Baqubah Mayor Khalid Sanjary said that he knew of at least 40 farming families that had left the area in recent weeks.
Home to significant populations of Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs, Baqubah and its environs have recently been rocked by a series of assassinations and gun battles between Shiite militias and Sunni Arab insurgents.
On Monday, assassins killed the mayor of Udaim, a town 20 miles north of Baqubah. Last month, gunmen killed about two dozen people in a restaurant in nearby Khalis, once a date-processing center.
Al Qaeda in Iraq continues to operate in the Baqubah area three months after the U.S. Air Force dropped two bombs on its leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi. He had been hiding in the Baqubah suburb of Hibhib, known for its date wine.
"These assassinations are taking place on Baqubah's main streets," the mayor said. "These are political conflicts. All the militias and gunmen are here."
Lt. Col. James Rice, deputy commander of the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, said the violence in Baqubah was designed to alter electoral demographics.
"They're maneuvering around so that as elections come up, people can be in a position to win a majority," Rice said. "I think some of this displacement is politically motivated as people try to right-size the population in a particular area so that they will be ready for the next elections."
No date has been set for the elections. In the meantime, Baqubah's farmers struggle to find investors willing to rebuild their processing plants, and scramble in search of outside markets for their 600 varieties of dates.
A small number of farmers has begun exporting to other Iraqi cities and neighboring countries such as the United Arab Emirates.
But Army Maj. Marcus Snow, a member of the State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team in Diyala, said that attempts to reach out to a dozen leading factory-owning families had not resulted in renewed investment.
Snow, a reservist who works as a stockbroker in Pennsylvania, said he sympathized with the factory owners' reluctance to return to Baqubah with capital.
"They're businessmen," he said.
"They know they can make more money elsewhere, and with security the way it is here, they're kidnapping bait."
---------------------
Citation: Solomon Moore. "Under Guard, Dates Make a Comeback," Los Angeles Times, 19 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-dates19sep19,1,1825010.story?coll=la-headlines-world
---------------------
U.S. says Iraqi police not behind death squads
Reuters, 20 September 2006
BAGHDAD - The United States military said on Wednesday it had found no evidence that the Iraqi government and its police were behind Shi'ite sectarian death squads murdering Sunnis in Baghdad.
"Initially there were a lot of allegations that death squads were not only coming out of Ministry of Interior forces but also organised by the Ministry of Interior," said Major General Joseph Peterson, in charge of training Iraqi police.
"We have not identified any Ministry of Interior personnel as a part of the death squad members and leaders that we have picked up, this seems to counter the initial allegations discrediting them," he told a briefing in Baghdad.
Sunni leaders say they believe the police include members of Shi'ite militia whom they blame for an increase in sectarian violence that has erupted since a Shi'ite mosque was destroyed in February. The United States now says that violence is the greatest security threat in the country.
Peterson said most "death squad" members were part of organisations that were independent of Iraq's security ministries such as young Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.
"The majority of the individuals we have captured belong to an organisation, and Jaish al-Mehdi is certainly one of them," he said, refering to the militia by its Arabic name.
He said another Shi'ite militia, the Badr organisation associated with the large Shi'ite party the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, did not appear to be involved in death squad killings.
Peterson said insurgents have killed 3,500 Iraqi policemen and seriously wounded more than 7,000 others since Sept. 2004.
----------------------
Citation: "U.S. says Iraqi police not behind death squads," Reuters, 20 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KHA049099.htm
----------------------
BAGHDAD - The United States military said on Wednesday it had found no evidence that the Iraqi government and its police were behind Shi'ite sectarian death squads murdering Sunnis in Baghdad.
"Initially there were a lot of allegations that death squads were not only coming out of Ministry of Interior forces but also organised by the Ministry of Interior," said Major General Joseph Peterson, in charge of training Iraqi police.
"We have not identified any Ministry of Interior personnel as a part of the death squad members and leaders that we have picked up, this seems to counter the initial allegations discrediting them," he told a briefing in Baghdad.
Sunni leaders say they believe the police include members of Shi'ite militia whom they blame for an increase in sectarian violence that has erupted since a Shi'ite mosque was destroyed in February. The United States now says that violence is the greatest security threat in the country.
Peterson said most "death squad" members were part of organisations that were independent of Iraq's security ministries such as young Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.
"The majority of the individuals we have captured belong to an organisation, and Jaish al-Mehdi is certainly one of them," he said, refering to the militia by its Arabic name.
He said another Shi'ite militia, the Badr organisation associated with the large Shi'ite party the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, did not appear to be involved in death squad killings.
Peterson said insurgents have killed 3,500 Iraqi policemen and seriously wounded more than 7,000 others since Sept. 2004.
----------------------
Citation: "U.S. says Iraqi police not behind death squads," Reuters, 20 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KHA049099.htm
----------------------
No One Dares to Help
The wounded die alone on Baghdad's streets. An offer of aid could be your own death sentence, an Iraqi reporter writes.
Los Angeles Times, 20 September 2006
Because this account of daily life in Baghdad reveals where the writer lives, his name is not being used to protect his safety. He is a 54-year-old Iraqi reporter in The Times' Baghdad Bureau.
---
BAGHDAD — On a recent Sunday, I was buying groceries in my beloved Amariya neighborhood in western Baghdad when I heard the sound of an AK-47 for about three seconds. It was close but not very close, so I continued shopping.
As I took a right turn on Munadhama Street, I saw a man lying on the ground in a small pool of blood. He wasn't dead.
The idea of stopping to help or to take him to a hospital crossed my mind, but I didn't dare. Cars passed without stopping. Pedestrians and shop owners kept doing what they were doing, pretending nothing had happened.
I was still looking at the wounded man and blaming myself for not stopping to help. Other shoppers peered at him from a distance, sorrowful and compassionate, but did nothing.
I went on to another grocery store, staying for about five minutes while shopping for tomatoes, onions and other vegetables. During that time, the man managed to sit up and wave to passing cars. No one stopped. Then, a white Volkswagen pulled up. A passenger stepped out with a gun, walked steadily to the wounded man and shot him three times. The car took off down a side road and vanished.
No one did anything. No one lifted a finger. The only reaction came from a woman in the grocery store. In a low voice, she said, "My God, bless his soul."
I went home and didn't dare tell my wife. I did not want to frighten her.
I've lived in my neighborhood for 25 years. My daughters went to kindergarten and elementary school here. I'm a Christian. My neighbors are mostly Sunni Arabs. We had always lived in harmony. Before the U.S.-led invasion, we would visit for tea and a chat. On summer afternoons, we would meet on the corner to joke and talk politics.
It used to be a nice upper-middle-class neighborhood, bustling with commerce and traffic. On the main street, ice cream parlors, hamburger stands and take-away restaurants competed for space. We would rent videos and buy household appliances.
Until 2005, we were mostly unaffected by violence. We would hear shootings and explosions now and again, but compared with other places in Baghdad, it was relatively peaceful.
Then, late in 2005, someone blew up three supermarkets in the area. Shops started closing. Most of the small number of Shiite Muslim families moved out. The commercial street became a ghost road.
On Christmas Day last year, we visited — as always — our local church, St. Thomas, in Mansour. It was half-empty. Some members of the congregation had left the country; others feared coming to church after a series of attacks against Christians.
American troops, who patrol the neighborhood in Humvees, have also become edgy. Get too close, and they'll shoot. A colleague — an interpreter and physician — was shot and killed by soldiers last year on his way home from a shopping trip. He hadn't noticed the Humvees parked on the street.
By early this year, living in my neighborhood had become a nightmare. In addition to anti-American graffiti, there were fliers telling women to wear conservative clothes and to cover their hair. Men were told not to wear shorts or jeans.
For me, as a Christian, it was unacceptable that someone would tell my wife and daughters what to wear. What's the use of freedom if someone is telling you what to wear, how to behave or what to do in your life?
But coming home one day, I saw my wife on the street. I didn't recognize her. She had covered up.
After the attack on the Shiite shrine of the Golden Dome in Samarra in February, Shiite gunmen tried to raid Sunni mosques in my neighborhood. One night, against the backdrop of heavy shooting, we heard the cleric calling for help through the mosque's loudspeakers. We stayed up all night, listening as they battled for the mosque. It made me feel unsafe. If a Muslim would shoot another Muslim, what would they do to a Christian?
Fear dictates everything we do.
I see my neighbors less and less. When I go out, I say hello and that's it. I fear someone will ask questions about my job working for Americans, which could put me in danger. Even if he had no ill will toward me, he might talk and reveal an identifying detail. We're afraid of an enemy among us. Someone we don't know. It's a cancer.
In March, assassinations started in our neighborhood. Early one evening, I was sitting in my garden with my wife when we heard several gunshots. I rushed to the gate to see what was going on, despite my wife's pleas to stay inside. My neighbors told me that gunmen had dropped three men from a car and shot them in the street before driving off. No one dared approach the victims to find out who they were.
The bodies remained there until the next morning. The police or the American military probably picked them up, but I don't know. They simply disappeared.
The sounds of shootings and explosions are now commonplace. We don't know who is shooting whom, or who has been targeted. We don't know why, and we're afraid to ask or help. We too could get shot. Bringing someone to the hospital or to the police is out of the question. Nobody trusts the police, and nobody wants to answer questions.
I feel sad, bitter and frustrated — sad because a human life is now worth nothing in this country; bitter because people no longer help each other; and frustrated because I can't help either. If I'm targeted one day, I'm sure no one will help me.
I was very happy when my eldest daughter married an American. First, because there was love between them, but also because she would be able to leave Iraq, and I wouldn't have to worry about her safety day after day. She left last year.
If you had asked me a year ago whether I would consider leaving Iraq, I would have said maybe, but without enthusiasm. Now it's a definite yes. Things are going from bad to worse, and I can't see any light at the end of the tunnel.
Four weeks ago, I came home from work. As I reached my street, I saw a man lying in a pool of blood. Someone had covered him with bits of cardboard. This was the best they could do. No one dared move him.
I drove on.
-------------------------
Citation: "No One Dares to Help," Los Angeles Times, 20 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-letter20sep20,1,799435.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
-------------------------
Los Angeles Times, 20 September 2006
Because this account of daily life in Baghdad reveals where the writer lives, his name is not being used to protect his safety. He is a 54-year-old Iraqi reporter in The Times' Baghdad Bureau.
---
BAGHDAD — On a recent Sunday, I was buying groceries in my beloved Amariya neighborhood in western Baghdad when I heard the sound of an AK-47 for about three seconds. It was close but not very close, so I continued shopping.
As I took a right turn on Munadhama Street, I saw a man lying on the ground in a small pool of blood. He wasn't dead.
The idea of stopping to help or to take him to a hospital crossed my mind, but I didn't dare. Cars passed without stopping. Pedestrians and shop owners kept doing what they were doing, pretending nothing had happened.
I was still looking at the wounded man and blaming myself for not stopping to help. Other shoppers peered at him from a distance, sorrowful and compassionate, but did nothing.
I went on to another grocery store, staying for about five minutes while shopping for tomatoes, onions and other vegetables. During that time, the man managed to sit up and wave to passing cars. No one stopped. Then, a white Volkswagen pulled up. A passenger stepped out with a gun, walked steadily to the wounded man and shot him three times. The car took off down a side road and vanished.
No one did anything. No one lifted a finger. The only reaction came from a woman in the grocery store. In a low voice, she said, "My God, bless his soul."
I went home and didn't dare tell my wife. I did not want to frighten her.
I've lived in my neighborhood for 25 years. My daughters went to kindergarten and elementary school here. I'm a Christian. My neighbors are mostly Sunni Arabs. We had always lived in harmony. Before the U.S.-led invasion, we would visit for tea and a chat. On summer afternoons, we would meet on the corner to joke and talk politics.
It used to be a nice upper-middle-class neighborhood, bustling with commerce and traffic. On the main street, ice cream parlors, hamburger stands and take-away restaurants competed for space. We would rent videos and buy household appliances.
Until 2005, we were mostly unaffected by violence. We would hear shootings and explosions now and again, but compared with other places in Baghdad, it was relatively peaceful.
Then, late in 2005, someone blew up three supermarkets in the area. Shops started closing. Most of the small number of Shiite Muslim families moved out. The commercial street became a ghost road.
On Christmas Day last year, we visited — as always — our local church, St. Thomas, in Mansour. It was half-empty. Some members of the congregation had left the country; others feared coming to church after a series of attacks against Christians.
American troops, who patrol the neighborhood in Humvees, have also become edgy. Get too close, and they'll shoot. A colleague — an interpreter and physician — was shot and killed by soldiers last year on his way home from a shopping trip. He hadn't noticed the Humvees parked on the street.
By early this year, living in my neighborhood had become a nightmare. In addition to anti-American graffiti, there were fliers telling women to wear conservative clothes and to cover their hair. Men were told not to wear shorts or jeans.
For me, as a Christian, it was unacceptable that someone would tell my wife and daughters what to wear. What's the use of freedom if someone is telling you what to wear, how to behave or what to do in your life?
But coming home one day, I saw my wife on the street. I didn't recognize her. She had covered up.
After the attack on the Shiite shrine of the Golden Dome in Samarra in February, Shiite gunmen tried to raid Sunni mosques in my neighborhood. One night, against the backdrop of heavy shooting, we heard the cleric calling for help through the mosque's loudspeakers. We stayed up all night, listening as they battled for the mosque. It made me feel unsafe. If a Muslim would shoot another Muslim, what would they do to a Christian?
Fear dictates everything we do.
I see my neighbors less and less. When I go out, I say hello and that's it. I fear someone will ask questions about my job working for Americans, which could put me in danger. Even if he had no ill will toward me, he might talk and reveal an identifying detail. We're afraid of an enemy among us. Someone we don't know. It's a cancer.
In March, assassinations started in our neighborhood. Early one evening, I was sitting in my garden with my wife when we heard several gunshots. I rushed to the gate to see what was going on, despite my wife's pleas to stay inside. My neighbors told me that gunmen had dropped three men from a car and shot them in the street before driving off. No one dared approach the victims to find out who they were.
The bodies remained there until the next morning. The police or the American military probably picked them up, but I don't know. They simply disappeared.
The sounds of shootings and explosions are now commonplace. We don't know who is shooting whom, or who has been targeted. We don't know why, and we're afraid to ask or help. We too could get shot. Bringing someone to the hospital or to the police is out of the question. Nobody trusts the police, and nobody wants to answer questions.
I feel sad, bitter and frustrated — sad because a human life is now worth nothing in this country; bitter because people no longer help each other; and frustrated because I can't help either. If I'm targeted one day, I'm sure no one will help me.
I was very happy when my eldest daughter married an American. First, because there was love between them, but also because she would be able to leave Iraq, and I wouldn't have to worry about her safety day after day. She left last year.
If you had asked me a year ago whether I would consider leaving Iraq, I would have said maybe, but without enthusiasm. Now it's a definite yes. Things are going from bad to worse, and I can't see any light at the end of the tunnel.
Four weeks ago, I came home from work. As I reached my street, I saw a man lying in a pool of blood. Someone had covered him with bits of cardboard. This was the best they could do. No one dared move him.
I drove on.
-------------------------
Citation: "No One Dares to Help," Los Angeles Times, 20 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-letter20sep20,1,799435.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
-------------------------
19 September 2006
Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism
By Charles V. Peña
The following is an excerpt from "Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism" published March 2006 by Potomac Books Inc.
Readers can order the book from Potomac Books or from Amazon.
Because we use the shorthand phrase “war on terrorism” to describe the U.S. response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it is easy to believe that this war – like all previous wars – can be won by killing the enemy. Given that suicide terrorists are, by definition, undeterrable, it seems that we have no choice except to kill them before they kill us.
But the struggle the United States is engaged in is not war in the traditional sense, i.e., armed conflict between two or more nations. Ironically, we must take Clausewitz's admonition to know “the kind of war on which [we] are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature” to heart, but at the same time realize that his seminal manual for war is not a suitable guide because he wrote about war between political leaders of nation states. The war on terrorism is not against another nation state and thus not “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” Indeed, the war on terrorism is not “merely the continuation of policy by other means.”
The war on terrorism is the “un-war” because it is unlike any previous war we have fought – which was acknowledged by President Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 but seems to have been forgotten because of Iraq. Our enemy does not wear uniforms or command military forces. They do not operate in or emanate from a specific geographic region. So U.S. forces with overwhelming military superiority and advanced technology will not be the appropriate instruments to wage this war. Precision guided smart bombs and cruise missiles are not smart enough to know who the enemy is and where they are.
This is a different kind of war that requires a different paradigm. We must shed conventional Western thinking conditioned by the European wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and more recently, Iraq. Instead of Clausewitz’s On War, the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu’s 2,300 year-old The Art of War is more applicable. War for Sun Tzu meant conflict as it occurs throughout all aspects of life. And the art of war is how to conquer without aggression: “Subduing the other’s military without battle is the most skillful.” The lesson for the war on terrorism is not that aggression is unnecessary or should be avoided. In war, aggression is inevitable and this conflict is no different. But the weapons and skills for the un-war will be different. Special forces rather than armor or infantry divisions will be the norm. Unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling expanses of desert or inaccessible mountain regions will often replace fighter pilots and foot soldiers. Arabic and Islam will be part of the syllabus for un-warriors.
More importantly, our enemy – the al Qaeda terrorist network – is more than just an organizational entity. So it is not a simply a matter of destroying it. Al Qaeda has grown from a relatively small group of radical Muslim extremists to a larger ideological movement in the Muslim world. The threat now goes beyond the al Qaeda that existed on September 11, 2001 to include a growing number of radical Muslim groups who share at least some of al Qaeda’s ideology, but many are not directly connected to or formally affiliated with al Qaeda. The core issue is the question raised by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in his now famous October 2003 leaked memo: “Are we capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?” With over a billion Muslims in the world, a strategy that focuses only on the former without addressing the latter is a losing strategy.
So what is a winning strategy?
The day after the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush said: “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil.” And three days later in a radio address he said: “We are planning a broad and sustained campaign to secure our country and eradicate the evil of terrorism.” The notion that evil is at the root of terrorism and that the course of action for the United States should be to eradicate evil is echoed by David Frum (former special assistant to President Bush and the person credited with coining the phrase “axis of evil” used by Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address) and Richard Perle (former chairman of the Defense Policy Board under Bush): “Terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation's great cause. We do not believe that Americans are fighting this evil to minimize it or to manage it. We believe they are fighting to win – to end this evil before it kills again and on a genocidal scale. There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust.”
But terrorism is simply a tactic, not an enemy. As Eliot Cohen, a member of the Defense Policy Board in the current Bush administration, said, a war on terrorism “makes as much sense as if Americans had responded to Pearl Harbor by declaring a global war on dive bombers.” Moreover, terrorism can trace its roots back at least 2,000 years. Trying to eradicate it is a quixotic quest that does not focus on the actual group responsible for the September 11 attacks. It is exactly this kind of logic that led the Bush administration to wage a war against Iraq, even though the White House has conceded that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and its allegations of linkages between the former regime in Baghdad and al Qaeda remain unproven.
Fighting the un-war requires discarding the state-sponsored terrorism paradigm, which is traditionally defined as nations using “terrorism as a means of political expression.” This is exactly the wrong approach because al Qaeda's terrorism is not state-sponsored; it is privatized terrorism, independent of any one nation-state. To be sure, U.S. military action deprived al Qaeda of the sanctuary granted by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. While – thankfully – the United States has not been attacked again, the bombings of the Marriott in Bali, the HSBC bank headquarters in Istanbul, the train network in Madrid, and the London tube system have all been attributed to al Qaeda, which is indicative that the terrorist network is not dependent on state-sponsorship to be active.
The popular belief is that al Qaeda attacked America for “who we are” and because they hate us. But such thinking demonstrates an unwillingness to recognize the importance of “what we do” in motivating acts of terrorism. This is not to say that 9/11 was America's fault or that the United States deserved to be attacked. Nothing could be further from the truth. All acts of terrorism perpetuated against innocent victims are deplorable, unconscionable, and inexcusable. But we cannot afford to be blind to the effects of our own actions and policies. If we misdiagnose the motivations for al Qaeda's terrorism against the United States, then we cannot craft a proper solution to the problem.
We also tend to think of al Qaeda in organizational terms as a centralized hierarchy, much like an organized crime family. The popular belief is that if we can decapitate the leadership, e.g., capture or kill bin Laden and his top lieutenants, that we can collapse the organization. This may have been true for regime change in Iraq, but it is the wrong conceptual approach for al Qaeda, which is a distributed and cellular network. As such, while bin Laden and al Qaeda's senior leadership remain important targets, the organization itself must be painstakingly dismantled piece by piece until it is no longer operationally effective. This will not happen overnight, so we must be prepared for a long conflict.
But al Qaeda is more than just an organization. It is an ideology that has taken on a life of its own. The extent to which al Qaeda's radicalism has taken hold throughout the Muslim world is unknown, but certainly the U.S. preoccupation with Iraq for more than three years after September 11 (starting with President Bush’s “Axis of Evil” state of the union address in January 2002) has given time for the radical Islamic message to spread, as well as providing a rallying cry to recruit more Muslims to al Qaeda's radical cause.
Finally, we too easily assume that al Qaeda attacked the United States because they want to destroy America. While there is certainly some element of truth to this, it misses the fundamental fact that al Qaeda's struggle is first and foremost a battle for the soul of Islam. Thus, it is an internal struggle where the United States is, by and large, an external player. As such, the United States may not be able to win the war on terrorism in the conventional sense, but its actions and policies could lose the war if the effect is to incline the Muslim world to sympathize and take sides with the radicals.
Instead of embarking on another Iraq (Frum and Perle specifically name North Korea, Iran, and Syria as targets – as do retired generals and Fox News analysts Thomas McInerney and Paul Vallely in their book, Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror, Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004), a strategy for the war on terrorism must focus on the real threat to the United States: al Qaeda. Such a strategy would consist of three central elements: dismantling and degrading the al Qaeda terrorist network, a new U.S. foreign policy that does not needlessly create new al Qaeda terrorists, and homeland security against future terrorist attacks.
The following is an excerpt from "Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism" published March 2006 by Potomac Books Inc.
Readers can order the book from Potomac Books or from Amazon.
Because we use the shorthand phrase “war on terrorism” to describe the U.S. response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it is easy to believe that this war – like all previous wars – can be won by killing the enemy. Given that suicide terrorists are, by definition, undeterrable, it seems that we have no choice except to kill them before they kill us.
But the struggle the United States is engaged in is not war in the traditional sense, i.e., armed conflict between two or more nations. Ironically, we must take Clausewitz's admonition to know “the kind of war on which [we] are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature” to heart, but at the same time realize that his seminal manual for war is not a suitable guide because he wrote about war between political leaders of nation states. The war on terrorism is not against another nation state and thus not “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” Indeed, the war on terrorism is not “merely the continuation of policy by other means.”
The war on terrorism is the “un-war” because it is unlike any previous war we have fought – which was acknowledged by President Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 but seems to have been forgotten because of Iraq. Our enemy does not wear uniforms or command military forces. They do not operate in or emanate from a specific geographic region. So U.S. forces with overwhelming military superiority and advanced technology will not be the appropriate instruments to wage this war. Precision guided smart bombs and cruise missiles are not smart enough to know who the enemy is and where they are.
This is a different kind of war that requires a different paradigm. We must shed conventional Western thinking conditioned by the European wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and more recently, Iraq. Instead of Clausewitz’s On War, the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu’s 2,300 year-old The Art of War is more applicable. War for Sun Tzu meant conflict as it occurs throughout all aspects of life. And the art of war is how to conquer without aggression: “Subduing the other’s military without battle is the most skillful.” The lesson for the war on terrorism is not that aggression is unnecessary or should be avoided. In war, aggression is inevitable and this conflict is no different. But the weapons and skills for the un-war will be different. Special forces rather than armor or infantry divisions will be the norm. Unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling expanses of desert or inaccessible mountain regions will often replace fighter pilots and foot soldiers. Arabic and Islam will be part of the syllabus for un-warriors.
More importantly, our enemy – the al Qaeda terrorist network – is more than just an organizational entity. So it is not a simply a matter of destroying it. Al Qaeda has grown from a relatively small group of radical Muslim extremists to a larger ideological movement in the Muslim world. The threat now goes beyond the al Qaeda that existed on September 11, 2001 to include a growing number of radical Muslim groups who share at least some of al Qaeda’s ideology, but many are not directly connected to or formally affiliated with al Qaeda. The core issue is the question raised by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in his now famous October 2003 leaked memo: “Are we capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?” With over a billion Muslims in the world, a strategy that focuses only on the former without addressing the latter is a losing strategy.
So what is a winning strategy?
The day after the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush said: “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil.” And three days later in a radio address he said: “We are planning a broad and sustained campaign to secure our country and eradicate the evil of terrorism.” The notion that evil is at the root of terrorism and that the course of action for the United States should be to eradicate evil is echoed by David Frum (former special assistant to President Bush and the person credited with coining the phrase “axis of evil” used by Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address) and Richard Perle (former chairman of the Defense Policy Board under Bush): “Terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation's great cause. We do not believe that Americans are fighting this evil to minimize it or to manage it. We believe they are fighting to win – to end this evil before it kills again and on a genocidal scale. There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust.”
But terrorism is simply a tactic, not an enemy. As Eliot Cohen, a member of the Defense Policy Board in the current Bush administration, said, a war on terrorism “makes as much sense as if Americans had responded to Pearl Harbor by declaring a global war on dive bombers.” Moreover, terrorism can trace its roots back at least 2,000 years. Trying to eradicate it is a quixotic quest that does not focus on the actual group responsible for the September 11 attacks. It is exactly this kind of logic that led the Bush administration to wage a war against Iraq, even though the White House has conceded that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and its allegations of linkages between the former regime in Baghdad and al Qaeda remain unproven.
Fighting the un-war requires discarding the state-sponsored terrorism paradigm, which is traditionally defined as nations using “terrorism as a means of political expression.” This is exactly the wrong approach because al Qaeda's terrorism is not state-sponsored; it is privatized terrorism, independent of any one nation-state. To be sure, U.S. military action deprived al Qaeda of the sanctuary granted by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. While – thankfully – the United States has not been attacked again, the bombings of the Marriott in Bali, the HSBC bank headquarters in Istanbul, the train network in Madrid, and the London tube system have all been attributed to al Qaeda, which is indicative that the terrorist network is not dependent on state-sponsorship to be active.
The popular belief is that al Qaeda attacked America for “who we are” and because they hate us. But such thinking demonstrates an unwillingness to recognize the importance of “what we do” in motivating acts of terrorism. This is not to say that 9/11 was America's fault or that the United States deserved to be attacked. Nothing could be further from the truth. All acts of terrorism perpetuated against innocent victims are deplorable, unconscionable, and inexcusable. But we cannot afford to be blind to the effects of our own actions and policies. If we misdiagnose the motivations for al Qaeda's terrorism against the United States, then we cannot craft a proper solution to the problem.
We also tend to think of al Qaeda in organizational terms as a centralized hierarchy, much like an organized crime family. The popular belief is that if we can decapitate the leadership, e.g., capture or kill bin Laden and his top lieutenants, that we can collapse the organization. This may have been true for regime change in Iraq, but it is the wrong conceptual approach for al Qaeda, which is a distributed and cellular network. As such, while bin Laden and al Qaeda's senior leadership remain important targets, the organization itself must be painstakingly dismantled piece by piece until it is no longer operationally effective. This will not happen overnight, so we must be prepared for a long conflict.
But al Qaeda is more than just an organization. It is an ideology that has taken on a life of its own. The extent to which al Qaeda's radicalism has taken hold throughout the Muslim world is unknown, but certainly the U.S. preoccupation with Iraq for more than three years after September 11 (starting with President Bush’s “Axis of Evil” state of the union address in January 2002) has given time for the radical Islamic message to spread, as well as providing a rallying cry to recruit more Muslims to al Qaeda's radical cause.
Finally, we too easily assume that al Qaeda attacked the United States because they want to destroy America. While there is certainly some element of truth to this, it misses the fundamental fact that al Qaeda's struggle is first and foremost a battle for the soul of Islam. Thus, it is an internal struggle where the United States is, by and large, an external player. As such, the United States may not be able to win the war on terrorism in the conventional sense, but its actions and policies could lose the war if the effect is to incline the Muslim world to sympathize and take sides with the radicals.
Instead of embarking on another Iraq (Frum and Perle specifically name North Korea, Iran, and Syria as targets – as do retired generals and Fox News analysts Thomas McInerney and Paul Vallely in their book, Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror, Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004), a strategy for the war on terrorism must focus on the real threat to the United States: al Qaeda. Such a strategy would consist of three central elements: dismantling and degrading the al Qaeda terrorist network, a new U.S. foreign policy that does not needlessly create new al Qaeda terrorists, and homeland security against future terrorist attacks.