By Lolita C. Baldor and Robert Burns
The Associated Press, 29 January 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — Military commanders are looking for more surveillance and other intelligence-gathering systems to help aid the fight in Afghanistan, the top NATO commander said Monday.
Gen. John Craddock, who also is chief of U.S. European Command, said that while the U.S. currently provides much of the eye-in-the-sky capabilities — which include unmanned aircraft — other allied nations could also contribute needed sensors and other technologies.
"There is an increased requirement for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities," Craddock said during an interview with The Associated Press. "I think we're seeing now the value to cross check and reference different sensors and make sure we've got a better perspective."
Craddock's comments come as commanders begin to put together their list of troop and equipment needs from the allies in advance of a NATO meeting next month. Last year Craddock presented NATO ministers with a plan that called for several thousand additional troops, as well as helicopters and other equipment needs.
This year, he said the updated request likely would include surveillance capabilities, as well as some troop shifts on the battlefield, which he did not detail.
The problem, Craddock said, is the ongoing competition for what he called the "unblinking eye" — often provided by unmanned aircraft such as Global Hawks and Predators, which are in heavy use for the war in Iraq. The Predators provide live video links to commanders and can be armed with missiles.
"The problem with ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) with all the nations is there is never enough to go around," said Craddock, sitting in his cramped office in the Pentagon. "The U.S. has a lot of ISR, but there are demands and there has to be a prioritization."
As an example, Craddock pointed to efforts by insurgents last year to move more into areas where there were civilians — leading to several incidents in which U.S. and allied troops were criticized for killing innocents as they fought suspected terrorists.
To deal with that, he said, the military had to use more drones to get a clear picture of what was going on.
The Pentagon is increasingly turning its attention to Afghanistan, as fears grow of a resurgence of al-Qaida in the ungoverned tribal region along the Pakistan border. The rugged mountains there have provided insurgents with safe havens, including — many believe — the Taliban and al-Qaida's elusive leader, Osama bin Laden.
As the U.S. looks to other NATO allies to meet some of the ongoing military needs in Afghanistan, Craddock said a new document being drafted by allies which lays out long-term goals for Afghanistan could encourage greater allied participation.
Noting that the need for more forces has yet to be filled by the allies, Craddock said, "one could deduce (that) in many of the countries they have not come to the understanding of how important this is."
Recently the Pentagon announced it would send about 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan, to fill part of the need for more combat troops and trainers. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates in insisting that NATO countries will have to come up with the troops to replace the Marines when the leave in the fall.
The allies, Craddock said, must understand that it is in their interest to contribute more as part of an effort to stop the spread of terrorism.
"Will this (NATO) document be a catalyst, I don't know," he said. "Will it be a reinforcement to the faithful and maybe a convincer of the unconvinced? I hope."
The long-term goals document is expected to include things that need to be accomplished before security can be turned over to the Afghans, how long it might take and what the risks will be. It also will talk about the need to reduce corruption, improve governance and boost development. Gates wants it to be ready for consideration by NATO leaders at a summit meeting in Romania in early April.
Craddock also emphasized the importance of NATO and U.S. forces being nimble and able to react quickly as the Taliban and other extremist fighters adjust to changing conditions on the Pakistan side of the border.
"This is going to be, over the next 12 months, very important to watch what happens with the Pakistani forces there," he said. "We are encouraged with what we've seen and what we've been told" about Pakistan putting more conventional military forces into the border area that serves as a sanctuary for the extremists.
The Pakistanis have told U.S. and NATO officials that more regular army troops will supplement the work of a Pakistani paramilitary force known as the Frontier Corps, which Craddock said "are not really the capability needed" to deal with the extremist fighters.
In other comments, Craddock said he believes it is important to have a person, operating under U.N. auspices, coordinate the international aid effort in Afghanistan. And he said it was "unfortunate" that the attempt to get British diplomat Paddy Ashdown to take the job did not work out.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that the United States was sorry Ashdown had withdrawn himself from consideration for the job.
Ashdown said he would not take the envoy post after Afghan President Hamid Karzai suddenly revoked his support. Ashdown, the top international administrator in Bosnia from 2002 to 2005, was considered the leading candidate to serve as overall coordinator of international aid, government and political efforts in Afghanistan.
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Citation: Lolita C. Baldor and Robert Burns. "NATO Needs More Intel on Afghanistan," The Associated Press, 29 January 2008.
Original URL: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iWxiu65iLP4CvDJ7BEsBOx-u_vdwD8UF5OSG0
30 January 2008
NATO asks Germany for rapid reaction force in Afghanistan
Agence France-Presse, 29 January 2008
NATO has formally asked Germany to deploy a rapid reaction force in northern Afghanistan to replace a Norwegian contingent, a defence ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.
The German government has been expecting the request and officials in Berlin suggested last week that the country would comply, despite strong opposition among the German public to its five-year-old military mission in Afghanistan.
According to NATO sources, the alliance is asking Germany to prepare a contingent of 250 troops who will be stationed at Mazar-i-Sharif, replacing the Norwegian force which will withdraw in the summer.
Germany has some 3,200 soldiers in Afghanistan as part of the 37-nation, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
The overwhelming majority of the troops are stationed in the relatively calm north of Afghanistan and Berlin has resisted mounting pressure to deploy troops in the south to help its NATO partners fight a tenacious Taliban insurgency.
Government officials have in recent weeks denied that supplying a rapid reaction force would amount to sending men into combat.
They pointed out that the force was designed to provide emergency support to other troops in the north and that though its brief includes hunting "terrorists" and dealing with kidnappings this is not its main task.
Senior German defence official Thomas Kossendey said last week that Germany would not need a new, wider parliamentary mandate to deploy the rapid reaction force and that it would "remain in northern Afghanistan".
The current mandate limits the German force in Afghanistan to 3,500 soldiers.
Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung has said he expects to make a decision on the request by February 8.
Germany has faced strong criticism within NATO ranks for refusing to send troops to southern Afghanistan to help tackle the Taliban.
NATO is undertaking its most ambitious and potentially perilous mission ever in the country, where it is trying to spread the influence of President Hamid Karzai's government to more lawless regions well away from the capital Kabul.
But NATO commanders say they need some 7,500 extra troops to carry out their mission, even though the force the alliance leads there grew from around 33,000 in January 2007 to some 42,000 in December.
Since it first deployed in Afghanistan after the Taliban regime was ousted, 25 German soldiers, three police officers and four civilians have died there.
Citation: "NATO asks Germany for rapid reaction force in Afghanistan," Agence France-Presse, 29 January 2008.
Original URL: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/NATO_asks_Germany_for_rapid_reaction_force_in_Afghanistan_999.html
NATO has formally asked Germany to deploy a rapid reaction force in northern Afghanistan to replace a Norwegian contingent, a defence ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.
The German government has been expecting the request and officials in Berlin suggested last week that the country would comply, despite strong opposition among the German public to its five-year-old military mission in Afghanistan.
According to NATO sources, the alliance is asking Germany to prepare a contingent of 250 troops who will be stationed at Mazar-i-Sharif, replacing the Norwegian force which will withdraw in the summer.
Germany has some 3,200 soldiers in Afghanistan as part of the 37-nation, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
The overwhelming majority of the troops are stationed in the relatively calm north of Afghanistan and Berlin has resisted mounting pressure to deploy troops in the south to help its NATO partners fight a tenacious Taliban insurgency.
Government officials have in recent weeks denied that supplying a rapid reaction force would amount to sending men into combat.
They pointed out that the force was designed to provide emergency support to other troops in the north and that though its brief includes hunting "terrorists" and dealing with kidnappings this is not its main task.
Senior German defence official Thomas Kossendey said last week that Germany would not need a new, wider parliamentary mandate to deploy the rapid reaction force and that it would "remain in northern Afghanistan".
The current mandate limits the German force in Afghanistan to 3,500 soldiers.
Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung has said he expects to make a decision on the request by February 8.
Germany has faced strong criticism within NATO ranks for refusing to send troops to southern Afghanistan to help tackle the Taliban.
NATO is undertaking its most ambitious and potentially perilous mission ever in the country, where it is trying to spread the influence of President Hamid Karzai's government to more lawless regions well away from the capital Kabul.
But NATO commanders say they need some 7,500 extra troops to carry out their mission, even though the force the alliance leads there grew from around 33,000 in January 2007 to some 42,000 in December.
Since it first deployed in Afghanistan after the Taliban regime was ousted, 25 German soldiers, three police officers and four civilians have died there.
Citation: "NATO asks Germany for rapid reaction force in Afghanistan," Agence France-Presse, 29 January 2008.
Original URL: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/NATO_asks_Germany_for_rapid_reaction_force_in_Afghanistan_999.html
Study: Afghanistan Could Fail As a State
By Anne Flaherty
The Associated Press, 30 January 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — Afghanistan risks sliding into a failed state and becoming the "forgotten war" because of deteriorating international support and a growing violent insurgency, according to an independent study.
The assessment, co-chaired by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones and former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, serves as a warning to the Bush administration at a time military and congressional officials are debating how best to juggle stretched warfighting resources.
The administration wants to re-energize anti-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where al-Qaida is regenerating. But the U.S. still remains heavily invested in Iraq, and officials are sending strong signals that troop reductions there will slow or stop altogether this summer.
"Afghanistan stands at a crossroads," concludes the study, an advance copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. "The progress achieved after six years of international engagement is under serious threat from resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, mounting regional challenges and a growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people about the future direction of their country."
A major issue has been trying to win the war with "too few military forces and insufficient economic aid," the study adds.
Among the group's nearly three dozen recommendations: increase NATO force levels and military equipment sent to Afghanistan, decouple U.S. management of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, establish a special envoy to coordinate all U.S. policy on Afghanistan, and champion a unified strategy among partner nations to stabilize the country in five years.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he was not familiar with the study's findings, but he struck a more optimistic tone on Afghanistan's future.
"I would say that the security situation is good," Gates told The Associated Press. "We want to make sure it gets better, and I think there's still a need to coordinate civil reconstruction, the economic development side of it."
Gates said more troops are needed in Afghanistan, but "certainly not ours." When asked how many more NATO troops might be needed, he said that number should be determined by ground commanders.
Sen. John Kerry said it was "past time for wakeup calls" and that a "comprehensive, thoughtful approach" in Afghanistan was urgently needed.
"The same extremist group which plotted the attacks of 9/11 are reconstituting themselves on the Afghan border and grow more organized by the day, making the stakes higher and higher," said Kerry, D-Mass., a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Jones-Pickering assessment, slated for public release on Wednesday, says the U.S. should rethink its military and economic strategy in Afghanistan in large part because of deteriorating support among voters in NATO countries.
If international forces are pulled, the fragile Afghan government would "likely fall apart," the report warns.
The study was a voluntary effort coordinated by the Center for the Study of the Presidency, a nonpartisan organization in Washington, as a follow-on to the Iraq Study Group. That study group was a congressionally mandated blue-ribbon panel hailed as the first major bipartisan assessment on the Iraq war since the 2003 invasion.
While the Afghanistan study has not created the same buzz as the Iraq assessment, the center's latest findings still are likely to wield political clout because of those involved.
Last year, Jones led a high-profile study on Iraq security forces, which was used by lawmakers to challenge President Bush's own assessments. Most recently, the retired Marine Corps general, known for his outspoken independence, was tapped to advise Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on security aspects of the new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Pickering was a longtime U.S. ambassador and a former undersecretary of state.
Panel members include Charles Robb, a former Democratic senator who served on the Iraq Study Group, and David Abshire, who helped organize the Iraq study. Abshire is president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency.
According to the report, the center decided to initiate the study after ISG discussions made clear that Afghanistan was at risk of becoming "the forgotten war."
"Participants and witnesses pointed to the danger of losing the war in Afghanistan unless a reassessment took place of the effort being undertaken in that country by the United States, NATO and the international community," the study states.
Similar problems were identified in two other assessments also due for release Wednesday, including one by the Atlantic Council in Washington, which Jones chairs. A separate study, led by Harlan Ullman, an adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the National Defense University, included specific proposals to rejuvenate Afghanistan's agricultural sector.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was expected to be briefed Wednesday on Afghanistan by intelligence officials. On Thursday, the panel will convene an open hearing, featuring testimony from Jones and Pickering. Also testifying Thursday will be Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia.
Citation: Anne Flaherty. "Study: Afghanistan Could Fail As a State," The Associated Press, 30 January 2008.
Original URL: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iWxiu65iLP4CvDJ7BEsBOx-u_vdwD8UFTH400
The Associated Press, 30 January 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — Afghanistan risks sliding into a failed state and becoming the "forgotten war" because of deteriorating international support and a growing violent insurgency, according to an independent study.
The assessment, co-chaired by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones and former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, serves as a warning to the Bush administration at a time military and congressional officials are debating how best to juggle stretched warfighting resources.
The administration wants to re-energize anti-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where al-Qaida is regenerating. But the U.S. still remains heavily invested in Iraq, and officials are sending strong signals that troop reductions there will slow or stop altogether this summer.
"Afghanistan stands at a crossroads," concludes the study, an advance copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. "The progress achieved after six years of international engagement is under serious threat from resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, mounting regional challenges and a growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people about the future direction of their country."
A major issue has been trying to win the war with "too few military forces and insufficient economic aid," the study adds.
Among the group's nearly three dozen recommendations: increase NATO force levels and military equipment sent to Afghanistan, decouple U.S. management of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, establish a special envoy to coordinate all U.S. policy on Afghanistan, and champion a unified strategy among partner nations to stabilize the country in five years.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he was not familiar with the study's findings, but he struck a more optimistic tone on Afghanistan's future.
"I would say that the security situation is good," Gates told The Associated Press. "We want to make sure it gets better, and I think there's still a need to coordinate civil reconstruction, the economic development side of it."
Gates said more troops are needed in Afghanistan, but "certainly not ours." When asked how many more NATO troops might be needed, he said that number should be determined by ground commanders.
Sen. John Kerry said it was "past time for wakeup calls" and that a "comprehensive, thoughtful approach" in Afghanistan was urgently needed.
"The same extremist group which plotted the attacks of 9/11 are reconstituting themselves on the Afghan border and grow more organized by the day, making the stakes higher and higher," said Kerry, D-Mass., a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Jones-Pickering assessment, slated for public release on Wednesday, says the U.S. should rethink its military and economic strategy in Afghanistan in large part because of deteriorating support among voters in NATO countries.
If international forces are pulled, the fragile Afghan government would "likely fall apart," the report warns.
The study was a voluntary effort coordinated by the Center for the Study of the Presidency, a nonpartisan organization in Washington, as a follow-on to the Iraq Study Group. That study group was a congressionally mandated blue-ribbon panel hailed as the first major bipartisan assessment on the Iraq war since the 2003 invasion.
While the Afghanistan study has not created the same buzz as the Iraq assessment, the center's latest findings still are likely to wield political clout because of those involved.
Last year, Jones led a high-profile study on Iraq security forces, which was used by lawmakers to challenge President Bush's own assessments. Most recently, the retired Marine Corps general, known for his outspoken independence, was tapped to advise Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on security aspects of the new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Pickering was a longtime U.S. ambassador and a former undersecretary of state.
Panel members include Charles Robb, a former Democratic senator who served on the Iraq Study Group, and David Abshire, who helped organize the Iraq study. Abshire is president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency.
According to the report, the center decided to initiate the study after ISG discussions made clear that Afghanistan was at risk of becoming "the forgotten war."
"Participants and witnesses pointed to the danger of losing the war in Afghanistan unless a reassessment took place of the effort being undertaken in that country by the United States, NATO and the international community," the study states.
Similar problems were identified in two other assessments also due for release Wednesday, including one by the Atlantic Council in Washington, which Jones chairs. A separate study, led by Harlan Ullman, an adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the National Defense University, included specific proposals to rejuvenate Afghanistan's agricultural sector.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was expected to be briefed Wednesday on Afghanistan by intelligence officials. On Thursday, the panel will convene an open hearing, featuring testimony from Jones and Pickering. Also testifying Thursday will be Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia.
Citation: Anne Flaherty. "Study: Afghanistan Could Fail As a State," The Associated Press, 30 January 2008.
Original URL: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iWxiu65iLP4CvDJ7BEsBOx-u_vdwD8UFTH400
28 January 2008
US shift seen to Pakistan, Afghanistan
By Robert Burns
The Associated Press, 28 January 2008
In a shift with profound implications, the Bush administration is attempting to re-energize its terrorism-fighting war efforts in Afghanistan, the original target of a post-Sept. 11 offensive. The U.S. also is refocusing on Pakistan, where a regenerating al-Qaida is posing fresh threats.
There is growing recognition that the United States risks further setbacks, if not deepening conflict or even defeat, in Afghanistan, and that success in that country hinges on stopping Pakistan from descending into disorder.
Privately, some senior U.S. military commanders say Pakistan's tribal areas are at the center of the fight against Islamic extremism; more so than Iraq, or even Afghanistan. These areas border on eastern Afghanistan and provide haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters to regroup, rearm and reorganize.
This view may explain, at least in part, the administration's increasingly public expressions of concern.
At a Pentagon news conference last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that while the U.S. respects the Pakistani government's right to decide what actions are needed to defeat extremists on its soil, there are reasons to worry that al-Qaida poses more than an internal threat to Pakistan.
"I think we are all concerned about the re-establishment of al-Qaida safe havens in the border area," Gates said. "I think it would be unrealistic to assume that all of the planning that they're doing is focused strictly on Pakistan. So I think that that is a continuing threat to Europe as well as to us."
The Pentagon says it has fewer than 100 troops in Pakistan, including personnel who are training Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps in the western tribal region along the Afghanistan border.
The U.S. military has used other means, including aerial surveillance by drones, to hunt Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida leaders believed to be hiding near the Afghan border. Ground troops on the Afghan side sometimes fire artillery across the border at known Taliban or al-Qaida targets, and U.S. officials have said special operations forces are poised to strike across the border under certain circumstances.
In recent days, administration officials have said they would send more U.S. forces, including small numbers of combat troops, if the Pakistani government decided it wanted to collaborate more closely.
It is far from certain that U.S. combat troops will set foot in Pakistan in any substantial numbers. On Friday, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, said his country opposes any foreign forces on its soil. "The man in the street will not allow this — he will come out and agitate," he said. Musharraf said the U.S. instead should bolster its combat forces in Afghanistan.
The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek Musharraf's permission for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaida and other militant groups active in the tribal regions, a senior U.S. official said Saturday. Musharraf was said to have rebuffed an expansion of an American presence in Pakistan at the meeting, either through covert CIA missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces.
The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has grown over the past two years from about 20,000 to the current total of 28,000. That is the highest number of the war, which began in October 2001. The total is to jump by 3,200 this spring with a new influx of Marine reinforcements, including 2,200 combat troops who will bolster a NATO-led counterinsurgency force in the south.
"There is strong pressure now from the international community to find some solution to Afghanistan because of the fear that this could quickly go south," said Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 2006-07, he was an adviser to Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs.
"We haven't lost the war yet, but we could be on our way to doing so," Tellis said in a telephone interview Friday. He strongly recommends strengthening the U.S. military presence in southern Afghanistan.
The vast majority of deployed U.S. troops are still in Iraq, although the force of nearly 160,000 is set on a downward trend. In recent weeks U.S. officials have spoken of Iraq as moving toward stability, with al-Qaida-affiliated fighters weakened and possibly forced to make a last stand.
So there is no wholesale shift of U.S. military firepower from Iraq to Afghanistan. Gates recently rejected a Marine Corps proposal to move the 20,000-plus Marine contingent in Iraq to Afghanistan, reflecting a worry that Iraq's progress is still fragile.
Just last month Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the war in Afghanistan is a secondary priority. "In Afghanistan we do what we can. In Iraq we do what we must," he said.
Yet it is apparent that as security conditions in Iraq improve, the administration is looking closer at what needs to be done in Afghanistan to counter recent gains by the Taliban. The Taliban ruled the country in the late 1990s and provided haven and support for bin Laden as his global terrorist network laid the groundwork from Afghanistan for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Gates is leading a NATO effort to produce a statement of goals for Afghanistan that spells out clearly what is at stake. The purpose is to bolster NATO governments' efforts to convince their publics that fighting and dying in Afghanistan is an investment worth making. The statement is supposed to be ready for adoption by President Bush and other NATO leaders at a summit meeting in April.
Also, the administration is showing more interest in deepening its involvement in Pakistan.
Teresita C. Schaffer, director for South Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Friday that an important indicator of that approach was the recent visit to Pakistan by Adm. William J. Fallon, the commander of American forces in that region. Fallon met with senior officials, including the new chief of the Pakistani army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.
"Why is that happening now?" Schaffer asked. "It suggests to me that the administration is taking this much more seriously than it was." That has meant more attentiveness to the needs of U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, including officers' concerns about countering the threat inside Pakistan.
"The sense I get is that at least in military terms they are getting a response from Washington which they weren't getting all along," said Schaffer, a career foreign service officer who was deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia in the administration of former President Bush.
Citation: Robert Burns. "US shift seen to Pakistan, Afghanistan," The Associated Press, 28 January 2008.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080128/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_war_turns&printer=1;_ylt=A0WTcVxPHJ5HkmQBvRWWwvIE
The Associated Press, 28 January 2008
In a shift with profound implications, the Bush administration is attempting to re-energize its terrorism-fighting war efforts in Afghanistan, the original target of a post-Sept. 11 offensive. The U.S. also is refocusing on Pakistan, where a regenerating al-Qaida is posing fresh threats.
There is growing recognition that the United States risks further setbacks, if not deepening conflict or even defeat, in Afghanistan, and that success in that country hinges on stopping Pakistan from descending into disorder.
Privately, some senior U.S. military commanders say Pakistan's tribal areas are at the center of the fight against Islamic extremism; more so than Iraq, or even Afghanistan. These areas border on eastern Afghanistan and provide haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters to regroup, rearm and reorganize.
This view may explain, at least in part, the administration's increasingly public expressions of concern.
At a Pentagon news conference last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that while the U.S. respects the Pakistani government's right to decide what actions are needed to defeat extremists on its soil, there are reasons to worry that al-Qaida poses more than an internal threat to Pakistan.
"I think we are all concerned about the re-establishment of al-Qaida safe havens in the border area," Gates said. "I think it would be unrealistic to assume that all of the planning that they're doing is focused strictly on Pakistan. So I think that that is a continuing threat to Europe as well as to us."
The Pentagon says it has fewer than 100 troops in Pakistan, including personnel who are training Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps in the western tribal region along the Afghanistan border.
The U.S. military has used other means, including aerial surveillance by drones, to hunt Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida leaders believed to be hiding near the Afghan border. Ground troops on the Afghan side sometimes fire artillery across the border at known Taliban or al-Qaida targets, and U.S. officials have said special operations forces are poised to strike across the border under certain circumstances.
In recent days, administration officials have said they would send more U.S. forces, including small numbers of combat troops, if the Pakistani government decided it wanted to collaborate more closely.
It is far from certain that U.S. combat troops will set foot in Pakistan in any substantial numbers. On Friday, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, said his country opposes any foreign forces on its soil. "The man in the street will not allow this — he will come out and agitate," he said. Musharraf said the U.S. instead should bolster its combat forces in Afghanistan.
The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek Musharraf's permission for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaida and other militant groups active in the tribal regions, a senior U.S. official said Saturday. Musharraf was said to have rebuffed an expansion of an American presence in Pakistan at the meeting, either through covert CIA missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces.
The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has grown over the past two years from about 20,000 to the current total of 28,000. That is the highest number of the war, which began in October 2001. The total is to jump by 3,200 this spring with a new influx of Marine reinforcements, including 2,200 combat troops who will bolster a NATO-led counterinsurgency force in the south.
"There is strong pressure now from the international community to find some solution to Afghanistan because of the fear that this could quickly go south," said Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 2006-07, he was an adviser to Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs.
"We haven't lost the war yet, but we could be on our way to doing so," Tellis said in a telephone interview Friday. He strongly recommends strengthening the U.S. military presence in southern Afghanistan.
The vast majority of deployed U.S. troops are still in Iraq, although the force of nearly 160,000 is set on a downward trend. In recent weeks U.S. officials have spoken of Iraq as moving toward stability, with al-Qaida-affiliated fighters weakened and possibly forced to make a last stand.
So there is no wholesale shift of U.S. military firepower from Iraq to Afghanistan. Gates recently rejected a Marine Corps proposal to move the 20,000-plus Marine contingent in Iraq to Afghanistan, reflecting a worry that Iraq's progress is still fragile.
Just last month Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the war in Afghanistan is a secondary priority. "In Afghanistan we do what we can. In Iraq we do what we must," he said.
Yet it is apparent that as security conditions in Iraq improve, the administration is looking closer at what needs to be done in Afghanistan to counter recent gains by the Taliban. The Taliban ruled the country in the late 1990s and provided haven and support for bin Laden as his global terrorist network laid the groundwork from Afghanistan for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Gates is leading a NATO effort to produce a statement of goals for Afghanistan that spells out clearly what is at stake. The purpose is to bolster NATO governments' efforts to convince their publics that fighting and dying in Afghanistan is an investment worth making. The statement is supposed to be ready for adoption by President Bush and other NATO leaders at a summit meeting in April.
Also, the administration is showing more interest in deepening its involvement in Pakistan.
Teresita C. Schaffer, director for South Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Friday that an important indicator of that approach was the recent visit to Pakistan by Adm. William J. Fallon, the commander of American forces in that region. Fallon met with senior officials, including the new chief of the Pakistani army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.
"Why is that happening now?" Schaffer asked. "It suggests to me that the administration is taking this much more seriously than it was." That has meant more attentiveness to the needs of U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, including officers' concerns about countering the threat inside Pakistan.
"The sense I get is that at least in military terms they are getting a response from Washington which they weren't getting all along," said Schaffer, a career foreign service officer who was deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia in the administration of former President Bush.
Citation: Robert Burns. "US shift seen to Pakistan, Afghanistan," The Associated Press, 28 January 2008.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080128/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_war_turns&printer=1;_ylt=A0WTcVxPHJ5HkmQBvRWWwvIE
9,000 'Awakening' members ready for Iraq military training: US
Agence France-Presse, 27 January 2008
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Some 9,000 members of anti-Qaeda "Awakening" fronts in Iraq have been screened and lined up for training as regular police or soldiers, the US military said on Sunday.
The number represents more than half the 16,000 or so Awakening members, many of whom are former Sunni Arab insurgents.
They have applied to join the regular Iraqi security forces after having been recruited by the US military to fight Al-Qaeda in their own backyard.
Military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told a news conference in Baghdad that the rest were still waiting to undergo screening and for openings in police colleges and military academies.
"Around 9,000 members of the Awakening have been entered into a process in which they are in a queue to begin their training programmes," Smith said.
In western Anbar province, where tribal leaders in September 2006 launched the first Awakening group, effectively putting Al-Qaeda to flight, another "10,000 to 20,000 ... have already gone through a training programme and are serving as police officers or members of the army."
US troops have for the past year been working closely with former insurgents they call CLCs or Concerned Local Citizens, who are paid 300 dollars a month to patrol neighbourhoods and man checkpoints.
Their numbers have swelled to some 80,000 members of a total of 130 CLC groups countrywide, according to latest figures from the US military.
Of these, 80 percent are Sunni and 20 percent Shiite. In some neighbourhoods the groups are mixed.
Smith said only 20 percent of the 80,000 wished to join the security forces.
He acknowledged that Al-Qaeda had made attempts to infiltrate some of these groups but did not think it had made much headway.
"I don't think there has been a tremendous amount of infiltration of the Awakening groups," he said.
"There have been attempts to do so -- we recognise that. We also recognise that the Awakening groups are well-led, are well-civilised and (have) a strong tribal and communal connection.
"They know precisely who their members are -- our forces work very closely to weed out individuals who show the least signs of disloyalty to the overall efforts."
Al-Qaeda, he added, "clearly sees these Awakening groups as a threat to their existence" and could try to intimidate people not to join them or existing members to quit.
Citation: " 9,000 'Awakening' members ready for Iraq military training: US," Agence France-Presse, 27 January 2008.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080127/wl_afp/iraqunrestawakening
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Some 9,000 members of anti-Qaeda "Awakening" fronts in Iraq have been screened and lined up for training as regular police or soldiers, the US military said on Sunday.
The number represents more than half the 16,000 or so Awakening members, many of whom are former Sunni Arab insurgents.
They have applied to join the regular Iraqi security forces after having been recruited by the US military to fight Al-Qaeda in their own backyard.
Military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told a news conference in Baghdad that the rest were still waiting to undergo screening and for openings in police colleges and military academies.
"Around 9,000 members of the Awakening have been entered into a process in which they are in a queue to begin their training programmes," Smith said.
In western Anbar province, where tribal leaders in September 2006 launched the first Awakening group, effectively putting Al-Qaeda to flight, another "10,000 to 20,000 ... have already gone through a training programme and are serving as police officers or members of the army."
US troops have for the past year been working closely with former insurgents they call CLCs or Concerned Local Citizens, who are paid 300 dollars a month to patrol neighbourhoods and man checkpoints.
Their numbers have swelled to some 80,000 members of a total of 130 CLC groups countrywide, according to latest figures from the US military.
Of these, 80 percent are Sunni and 20 percent Shiite. In some neighbourhoods the groups are mixed.
Smith said only 20 percent of the 80,000 wished to join the security forces.
He acknowledged that Al-Qaeda had made attempts to infiltrate some of these groups but did not think it had made much headway.
"I don't think there has been a tremendous amount of infiltration of the Awakening groups," he said.
"There have been attempts to do so -- we recognise that. We also recognise that the Awakening groups are well-led, are well-civilised and (have) a strong tribal and communal connection.
"They know precisely who their members are -- our forces work very closely to weed out individuals who show the least signs of disloyalty to the overall efforts."
Al-Qaeda, he added, "clearly sees these Awakening groups as a threat to their existence" and could try to intimidate people not to join them or existing members to quit.
Citation: " 9,000 'Awakening' members ready for Iraq military training: US," Agence France-Presse, 27 January 2008.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080127/wl_afp/iraqunrestawakening
25 January 2008
Attacks on Afghan students up sharply
By Jason Straziuso
The Associated Press, 23 January 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - The number of students and teachers killed in Taliban attacks has tripled in the past year in a campaign to close schools and force teenage boys to join the Islamic militia, Afghanistan's education minister says.
While the overall state of Afghan education shows improvement, Education Ministry numbers point to a sharp decline in security for students, teachers and schools in the south, where the Taliban thrives: The number of students out of classes because of security concerns has hit 300,000 since March 2007, compared with 200,000 in the previous 12 months, while the number of schools closing has risen from 350 to 590.
The Taliban strategy is deliberate: "to close these schools down so that the children and primarily the teenagers that are going to the schools — the boys — have no other option but to join the Taliban," Education Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
The Taliban know that educated Afghans won't join the militants, so a closed school leaves students with two options — to join the Taliban or "to cross the border and go into those hate madrassas," Atmar said, referring to Islamic seminaries in Pakistan where "they will be professionally trained as terrorists."
Wakil Ahmad Khan, a top official at Pakistan's religious affairs ministry, said Pakistani "madrassas are doing a wonderful job by providing education to millions of students" and "if the Afghan officials have any such information, they should share it with Pakistan's Foreign Ministry."
Attacks on schools still in operation have actually fallen in the last 10 months — to 98 from 187 in the same period of 2006, Atmar said, attributing the drop to a community defense initiative. But the Taliban have switched to targeting students on their way to and from school or in other places where they congregate.
The U.N. said it couldn't confirm that Taliban fighters were upping efforts to recruit schoolboys, and no educational aid organizations that could confirm Atmar's claims are working in provinces such as Helmand in the dangerous south.
Adam Rutland, a spokesman at the British reconstruction team in Helmand province, said the perception in Helmand province was that more schools were open than in the past, although he added that it's well known that disaffected and poor young men are a recruiting base for the Taliban.
Atmar said 147 students and teachers have been killed in Taliban attacks since mid-March, compared with 46 in the previous year. The 147 include 58 students and teachers killed in a single bombing and gunfire attack in Baghlan province in November.
The number of students and teachers wounded has gone from 46 to 200, he said.
Most of the schools closed for security reasons are in the south. In Helmand, the world's largest opium poppy growing region, 177 schools are closed, along with 150 in nearby Kandahar province, Atmar said.
He said dozens of students he talked with in Helmand province recently told him the Taliban are pushing them to enlist. Some 1,100 students from outlying areas are traveling to the relative safety of the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah to attend class. Atmar said he hopes soon to provide housing and food for these students.
Of the 13 districts in Helmand, seven have no schools in operation, said Sayed Abrar Agha, the director of education in Helmand. District leaders like Agha provide the figures that Atmar cites.
Agha said he recently visited the town of Musa Qala — which was controlled by the Taliban until last month — and the head education official refused to talk to him.
"He's still afraid of the Taliban and doesn't want to meet with government officials," Agha said.
Atmar predicted attacks on students and teachers would continue to increase unless the international community and the Afghan government delivered protection.
Still, overall there is good news in Afghanistan's educational comeback since the days of the Taliban, when girls couldn't attend schools and fewer than 1 million boys did. Some 5.8 million students now attend class, up from 5.4 million a year ago, 35 percent of them female, Atmar said.
The Education Ministry's goal is that within four years 75 percent of all boys will be in classes — up from roughly 50 percent currently — and 60 percent of all girls — up from less than 30 percent today.
Schools also suffer from a shortage of qualified teachers, particularly female ones, and of infrastructure.
U.S. forces in the eastern province of Kunar are linking Afghan children with schools in the U.S., Italy and Germany that can supply pens, notebooks and chalk, the military said Wednesday.
"Being in the U.S., it is hard to visualize the lack of resources they have here," Army Capt. Jay S. VanDenbos, 30, from Tahlequah, Okla., was quoted as saying in a military news release.
Teachers are underpaid, and of Afghanistan's 9,400 schools, only 40 percent have proper facilities, he said. "Ninety percent of the schools are open-air schools, which are sometimes a tarp and a dirt floor. They'll have a rock that they use as a chalk board, and kids sit underneath the tarp and learn."
"Most of the kids want to learn. They yearn for knowledge," said VanDenbos. "Anytime anyone goes on patrols, the kids are screaming to 'give me pen, give me pen.'"
___
Associated Press reporter Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.
Citation: Jason Straziuso. "Attacks on Afghan students up sharply," The Associated Press, 23 January 2008.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080123/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan
The Associated Press, 23 January 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - The number of students and teachers killed in Taliban attacks has tripled in the past year in a campaign to close schools and force teenage boys to join the Islamic militia, Afghanistan's education minister says.
While the overall state of Afghan education shows improvement, Education Ministry numbers point to a sharp decline in security for students, teachers and schools in the south, where the Taliban thrives: The number of students out of classes because of security concerns has hit 300,000 since March 2007, compared with 200,000 in the previous 12 months, while the number of schools closing has risen from 350 to 590.
The Taliban strategy is deliberate: "to close these schools down so that the children and primarily the teenagers that are going to the schools — the boys — have no other option but to join the Taliban," Education Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
The Taliban know that educated Afghans won't join the militants, so a closed school leaves students with two options — to join the Taliban or "to cross the border and go into those hate madrassas," Atmar said, referring to Islamic seminaries in Pakistan where "they will be professionally trained as terrorists."
Wakil Ahmad Khan, a top official at Pakistan's religious affairs ministry, said Pakistani "madrassas are doing a wonderful job by providing education to millions of students" and "if the Afghan officials have any such information, they should share it with Pakistan's Foreign Ministry."
Attacks on schools still in operation have actually fallen in the last 10 months — to 98 from 187 in the same period of 2006, Atmar said, attributing the drop to a community defense initiative. But the Taliban have switched to targeting students on their way to and from school or in other places where they congregate.
The U.N. said it couldn't confirm that Taliban fighters were upping efforts to recruit schoolboys, and no educational aid organizations that could confirm Atmar's claims are working in provinces such as Helmand in the dangerous south.
Adam Rutland, a spokesman at the British reconstruction team in Helmand province, said the perception in Helmand province was that more schools were open than in the past, although he added that it's well known that disaffected and poor young men are a recruiting base for the Taliban.
Atmar said 147 students and teachers have been killed in Taliban attacks since mid-March, compared with 46 in the previous year. The 147 include 58 students and teachers killed in a single bombing and gunfire attack in Baghlan province in November.
The number of students and teachers wounded has gone from 46 to 200, he said.
Most of the schools closed for security reasons are in the south. In Helmand, the world's largest opium poppy growing region, 177 schools are closed, along with 150 in nearby Kandahar province, Atmar said.
He said dozens of students he talked with in Helmand province recently told him the Taliban are pushing them to enlist. Some 1,100 students from outlying areas are traveling to the relative safety of the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah to attend class. Atmar said he hopes soon to provide housing and food for these students.
Of the 13 districts in Helmand, seven have no schools in operation, said Sayed Abrar Agha, the director of education in Helmand. District leaders like Agha provide the figures that Atmar cites.
Agha said he recently visited the town of Musa Qala — which was controlled by the Taliban until last month — and the head education official refused to talk to him.
"He's still afraid of the Taliban and doesn't want to meet with government officials," Agha said.
Atmar predicted attacks on students and teachers would continue to increase unless the international community and the Afghan government delivered protection.
Still, overall there is good news in Afghanistan's educational comeback since the days of the Taliban, when girls couldn't attend schools and fewer than 1 million boys did. Some 5.8 million students now attend class, up from 5.4 million a year ago, 35 percent of them female, Atmar said.
The Education Ministry's goal is that within four years 75 percent of all boys will be in classes — up from roughly 50 percent currently — and 60 percent of all girls — up from less than 30 percent today.
Schools also suffer from a shortage of qualified teachers, particularly female ones, and of infrastructure.
U.S. forces in the eastern province of Kunar are linking Afghan children with schools in the U.S., Italy and Germany that can supply pens, notebooks and chalk, the military said Wednesday.
"Being in the U.S., it is hard to visualize the lack of resources they have here," Army Capt. Jay S. VanDenbos, 30, from Tahlequah, Okla., was quoted as saying in a military news release.
Teachers are underpaid, and of Afghanistan's 9,400 schools, only 40 percent have proper facilities, he said. "Ninety percent of the schools are open-air schools, which are sometimes a tarp and a dirt floor. They'll have a rock that they use as a chalk board, and kids sit underneath the tarp and learn."
"Most of the kids want to learn. They yearn for knowledge," said VanDenbos. "Anytime anyone goes on patrols, the kids are screaming to 'give me pen, give me pen.'"
___
Associated Press reporter Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.
Citation: Jason Straziuso. "Attacks on Afghan students up sharply," The Associated Press, 23 January 2008.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080123/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan
Karzai says war "engulfing region" around Afghanistan
Reuters, 23 January 2008
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday that violence was engulfing his region and called on countries to confront militancy with action not rhetoric.
"While Afghanistan is still a critical battlefield, a rapidly spreading war is engulfing the wider region," Karzai said in a speech to the World Economic Forum.
"Our strategies in this war have often been short-changed by a host of deceptive rhetoric," he said. "Governments in the region need to move beyond rhetoric and cease to seek the pursuit of interests in the use of extremist politics".
Karzai did not accuse any country by name, but his relations with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf have at times virtually broken down over Afghan complaints that Taliban insurgents operate from Pakistan's side of their common border.
Many al Qaeda and Taliban militants took refuge in the border areas after U.S.-led troops drove Afghanistan's Taliban government from power after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Afghanistan is now battling an intense Taliban insurgency while Pakistani forces are confronting pro-Taliban militants in different parts of the northwest, near the Afghan border.
Listing a series of attacks in both countries, including the assassination in December of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Karzai said the "mutant of extremism" had been unleashed across the region.
"By all indications, the wildfire spread of terrorism across our region bodes terribly badly for the whole world".
Karzai called for a crackdown on militant sanctuaries and destruction of their infrastructure, finance and recruiting networks.
Afghanistan and Pakistan, both U.S. allies, have vowed in the past to work together against militancy but have taken few concrete steps.
Pakistan sent reinforcements on Wednesday to the South Waziristan border area where government forces are trying to wipe out the strongholds of a militant accused of being behind Bhutto's killing.
Citation: "Karzai says war "engulfing region" around Afghanistan," Reuters, 23 January 2008.
Original URL: http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USL2382700020080123
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday that violence was engulfing his region and called on countries to confront militancy with action not rhetoric.
"While Afghanistan is still a critical battlefield, a rapidly spreading war is engulfing the wider region," Karzai said in a speech to the World Economic Forum.
"Our strategies in this war have often been short-changed by a host of deceptive rhetoric," he said. "Governments in the region need to move beyond rhetoric and cease to seek the pursuit of interests in the use of extremist politics".
Karzai did not accuse any country by name, but his relations with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf have at times virtually broken down over Afghan complaints that Taliban insurgents operate from Pakistan's side of their common border.
Many al Qaeda and Taliban militants took refuge in the border areas after U.S.-led troops drove Afghanistan's Taliban government from power after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Afghanistan is now battling an intense Taliban insurgency while Pakistani forces are confronting pro-Taliban militants in different parts of the northwest, near the Afghan border.
Listing a series of attacks in both countries, including the assassination in December of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Karzai said the "mutant of extremism" had been unleashed across the region.
"By all indications, the wildfire spread of terrorism across our region bodes terribly badly for the whole world".
Karzai called for a crackdown on militant sanctuaries and destruction of their infrastructure, finance and recruiting networks.
Afghanistan and Pakistan, both U.S. allies, have vowed in the past to work together against militancy but have taken few concrete steps.
Pakistan sent reinforcements on Wednesday to the South Waziristan border area where government forces are trying to wipe out the strongholds of a militant accused of being behind Bhutto's killing.
Citation: "Karzai says war "engulfing region" around Afghanistan," Reuters, 23 January 2008.
Original URL: http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USL2382700020080123
24 January 2008
Iraq toll mounts as forces fight cult
The Independent, 21 January 2008
Some 276 people were killed, wounded or captured by government forces fighting a millenarian Shia cult in southern Iraq over the past three days, the Iraqi Ministry of Defence said in Baghdad yesterday.
The heavy losses in gun battles between the ‘Supporters of the Mahdi’ group and the police and army in Basra and Nasiriya underlines how swiftly violence can explode in Iraq where everybody is heavily armed. In Nasiriya three senior officers were among the dead.
The movement, led by Ahmad al-Hassani, also known as Ahmad al-Yamani, believes in the imminent return of the Messiah but exactly why its members should have taken to the streets in several cities remains unclear. In Basra they reportedly first killed several traffic policemen and commandeered six empty vehicles and two police cars. They later captured an oil facilities building and a hospital. At one point there was fighting in 75 per cent of Basra, a city of two million people, according to the police chief Abdul Jalil Khalaf.
It is a measure of the lack of information on what is happening outside central Baghdad that casualty figures vary widely with one source claiming that 97 died and 217 were wounded in Basra alone. In Baghdad the National Security Adviser Muwafaq al-Rubaie was trapped in a Shia mosque in the Sh’la district in west Baghdad but it is not clear if his attackers were also from the ‘Supporters of the Mahdi’ movement, that appears to have supporters in every Shia city.
Southern Iraq, which is overwhelmingly Shia, is riven by rivalries between different Shia parties that sporadically leads to turf battles. The most powerful militia is the Mehdi Army of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who this week threatened to end a six-month truce he declared last August after fighting with government security forces controlled by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) in the holy city of Kerbala. ISCI, though never very popular among Shia, controls the police and local government apparatus in much of southern Iraq, and has long feuded with the Sadrists.
The US military said yesterday in Baghdad that Iran was supplying less weaponry to insurgent groups in Iraq, but was continuing to train and finance them. The US has long accused Iran of being the source of sophisticated roadside bombs used by Shia militias against US troops. In practice, however, Iran has always supported almost every Shia party including ISCI, an important US ally, which was originally established under the auspices of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq war in 1982.
The violence over the weekend took place as Iraqi Shia, 60 per cent of the population, took part in ceremonies marking Ashura, the traditional day of mourning for the death of Imam Hussein, killed in the battle of Kerbala in 680 AD. With some 2.5 million Shia travelling to Kerbala the day is often marked by violence.
The killing of Imam Hussein is re-enacted in passion plays and this in turn can lead to violence. In Basra a crowd reportedly set about an actor playing the role of one of the killers of the Imam and his doomed followers. They beat him so badly that he returned to his home to get his AK-47 assault rifle and opened fire on the crowd watching the play, killing one onlooker.
Ashura is also a show of strength by the Iraqi Shia who replaced the Sunni as the dominant force in Iraqi politics on the fall of Saddam Hussein five years ago. In alliance with the Kurds they make up the government since the elections of 2005 but have proved unable to set up a stable government able to conciliate the Sunni or act without American support.
Original URL: "Iraq toll mounts as forces fight cult," The Independent, 21 January 2008
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3356428.ece
Some 276 people were killed, wounded or captured by government forces fighting a millenarian Shia cult in southern Iraq over the past three days, the Iraqi Ministry of Defence said in Baghdad yesterday.
The heavy losses in gun battles between the ‘Supporters of the Mahdi’ group and the police and army in Basra and Nasiriya underlines how swiftly violence can explode in Iraq where everybody is heavily armed. In Nasiriya three senior officers were among the dead.
The movement, led by Ahmad al-Hassani, also known as Ahmad al-Yamani, believes in the imminent return of the Messiah but exactly why its members should have taken to the streets in several cities remains unclear. In Basra they reportedly first killed several traffic policemen and commandeered six empty vehicles and two police cars. They later captured an oil facilities building and a hospital. At one point there was fighting in 75 per cent of Basra, a city of two million people, according to the police chief Abdul Jalil Khalaf.
It is a measure of the lack of information on what is happening outside central Baghdad that casualty figures vary widely with one source claiming that 97 died and 217 were wounded in Basra alone. In Baghdad the National Security Adviser Muwafaq al-Rubaie was trapped in a Shia mosque in the Sh’la district in west Baghdad but it is not clear if his attackers were also from the ‘Supporters of the Mahdi’ movement, that appears to have supporters in every Shia city.
Southern Iraq, which is overwhelmingly Shia, is riven by rivalries between different Shia parties that sporadically leads to turf battles. The most powerful militia is the Mehdi Army of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who this week threatened to end a six-month truce he declared last August after fighting with government security forces controlled by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) in the holy city of Kerbala. ISCI, though never very popular among Shia, controls the police and local government apparatus in much of southern Iraq, and has long feuded with the Sadrists.
The US military said yesterday in Baghdad that Iran was supplying less weaponry to insurgent groups in Iraq, but was continuing to train and finance them. The US has long accused Iran of being the source of sophisticated roadside bombs used by Shia militias against US troops. In practice, however, Iran has always supported almost every Shia party including ISCI, an important US ally, which was originally established under the auspices of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq war in 1982.
The violence over the weekend took place as Iraqi Shia, 60 per cent of the population, took part in ceremonies marking Ashura, the traditional day of mourning for the death of Imam Hussein, killed in the battle of Kerbala in 680 AD. With some 2.5 million Shia travelling to Kerbala the day is often marked by violence.
The killing of Imam Hussein is re-enacted in passion plays and this in turn can lead to violence. In Basra a crowd reportedly set about an actor playing the role of one of the killers of the Imam and his doomed followers. They beat him so badly that he returned to his home to get his AK-47 assault rifle and opened fire on the crowd watching the play, killing one onlooker.
Ashura is also a show of strength by the Iraqi Shia who replaced the Sunni as the dominant force in Iraqi politics on the fall of Saddam Hussein five years ago. In alliance with the Kurds they make up the government since the elections of 2005 but have proved unable to set up a stable government able to conciliate the Sunni or act without American support.
Original URL: "Iraq toll mounts as forces fight cult," The Independent, 21 January 2008
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3356428.ece
18 January 2008
Oversight for Iraq war contracts shifts
By Richard Lardner
The Associated Press, 15 January 2008
WASHINGTON - Oversight for nearly $4 billion in Iraq war contracts has been shifted from a troubled procurement office in Kuwait to an Army organization in Illinois as part of an ongoing effort to curb waste, fraud and abuse in military purchasing.
Moving control of the 12 contracts for maintenance and other support work is not a reflection of poor performance by the companies, according to Mike Hutchison, deputy director for acquisition at Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, Ill. Rather, the transfer is part of a broader initiative aimed at overhauling the Kuwait contracting office, which the Army had identified as a hub of corruption.
And in a separate-but-related action, two teams poring through hundreds of other contracts issued by the Kuwait office have referred an unspecified number of awards to criminal investigators and Army auditors for further review, according to the Army Materiel Command at Fort Belvoir, Va. If any wrongdoing is uncovered, the number of Army military and civilian employees accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks could grow. More than 20 have been charged with contract fraud so far.
The Kuwait contracting office, located at Camp Arifjan, buys gear and supplies to feed, clothe and house U.S. troops as they move in and out of Iraq. The pace of that operation grew rapidly after the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.
An initial Army probe of the Kuwait office uncovered numerous problems, including inadequate staffing and oversight, high staff turnover, and poor record-keeping. In the midst of those shortcomings came billions of dollars in money to pay for combat operations in Iraq, creating an environment ripe for mistakes and misconduct.
Over the past few months, new leadership has been installed in the Kuwait office and more contracting officers have been assigned there. The Army also transferred active contracts worth $1 million or more to Sustainment Command where there's a deeper pool of acquisition personnel with experience handling complex acquisitions.
"We brought back quite a bit," Hutchison said.
The work being done under the dozen support contracts ranges from janitorial services, transportation, operating a firing range, running dining facilities, and providing security at U.S. installations in Kuwait.
The largest of the dozen contracts now being managed by Sustainment Command is held by Combat Support Associates. The California company, a joint venture of several larger firms, gained notoriety for hiring the former Blackwater USA guard accused of killing an Iraqi in Baghdad in December 2006.
Since 1999, Combat Support Associates of Orange, Calif., has been paid close to $2.4 billion for maintaining military gear and supporting information systems at U.S. installations across Kuwait. Despite the contract's size, the company has operated out of the spotlight.
In early October, Combat Support Associates was pulled into the controversy over the performance of Blackwater USA when a congressional committee demanded to know how the defense contractor could have hired Andrew Moonen. A former Blackwater guard, Moonen allegedly shot and killed an Iraqi security worker on Christmas Eve 2006 in Baghdad's Green Zone.
After the shooting, Moonen was fired by Blackwater, had his security clearance revoked, and was returned to the United States. Two months later, though, he got a job with Combat Support Associates. Because Moonen had not been charged with a crime, the company said its background checks did not reveal anything that would bar his employment.
Moonen left Combat Support Associates in August.
Hutchison said the Sustainment Command did a review of the Combat Service Support contract and found areas that could be improved. But the Army is satisfied with the company's record.
"We're having the normal issues that you would experience in managing a large dollar service contract being performed in an austere environment," he said.
The contract review teams examined a sampling of the roughly 6,000 contracts worth $2.8 billion issued by the Kuwait office since 2003. The goal of the teams was to ensure these contracts were free of fraud and had been awarded properly.
One team in Kuwait inspected 339 contracts under $25,000 in value; another team in Warren, Mich., checked over 313 contracts worth more $25,000.
Both found problems during their reviews and alerted the Army Audit Agency and the Army Criminal Investigation Command, according to an information paper prepared by Army Materiel Command. The paper did not say how many contracts had flaws, nor did it say exactly what the problems were.
The Criminal Investigation Command has 87 ongoing criminal investigations related to contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, according to spokesman Chris Grey.
Grey said 24 individuals have been charged with contract fraud - 19 of those are Army military and civilian employees - and more than $15 million in bribes has changed hands.
___
On the Net:
Army Sustainment Command: http://www.aschq.army.mil/home/index.htm
Citation: Richard Lardner. " Oversight for Iraq war contracts shifts," The Associated Press, 15 January 2008.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080115/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_contracts_2
The Associated Press, 15 January 2008
WASHINGTON - Oversight for nearly $4 billion in Iraq war contracts has been shifted from a troubled procurement office in Kuwait to an Army organization in Illinois as part of an ongoing effort to curb waste, fraud and abuse in military purchasing.
Moving control of the 12 contracts for maintenance and other support work is not a reflection of poor performance by the companies, according to Mike Hutchison, deputy director for acquisition at Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, Ill. Rather, the transfer is part of a broader initiative aimed at overhauling the Kuwait contracting office, which the Army had identified as a hub of corruption.
And in a separate-but-related action, two teams poring through hundreds of other contracts issued by the Kuwait office have referred an unspecified number of awards to criminal investigators and Army auditors for further review, according to the Army Materiel Command at Fort Belvoir, Va. If any wrongdoing is uncovered, the number of Army military and civilian employees accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks could grow. More than 20 have been charged with contract fraud so far.
The Kuwait contracting office, located at Camp Arifjan, buys gear and supplies to feed, clothe and house U.S. troops as they move in and out of Iraq. The pace of that operation grew rapidly after the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.
An initial Army probe of the Kuwait office uncovered numerous problems, including inadequate staffing and oversight, high staff turnover, and poor record-keeping. In the midst of those shortcomings came billions of dollars in money to pay for combat operations in Iraq, creating an environment ripe for mistakes and misconduct.
Over the past few months, new leadership has been installed in the Kuwait office and more contracting officers have been assigned there. The Army also transferred active contracts worth $1 million or more to Sustainment Command where there's a deeper pool of acquisition personnel with experience handling complex acquisitions.
"We brought back quite a bit," Hutchison said.
The work being done under the dozen support contracts ranges from janitorial services, transportation, operating a firing range, running dining facilities, and providing security at U.S. installations in Kuwait.
The largest of the dozen contracts now being managed by Sustainment Command is held by Combat Support Associates. The California company, a joint venture of several larger firms, gained notoriety for hiring the former Blackwater USA guard accused of killing an Iraqi in Baghdad in December 2006.
Since 1999, Combat Support Associates of Orange, Calif., has been paid close to $2.4 billion for maintaining military gear and supporting information systems at U.S. installations across Kuwait. Despite the contract's size, the company has operated out of the spotlight.
In early October, Combat Support Associates was pulled into the controversy over the performance of Blackwater USA when a congressional committee demanded to know how the defense contractor could have hired Andrew Moonen. A former Blackwater guard, Moonen allegedly shot and killed an Iraqi security worker on Christmas Eve 2006 in Baghdad's Green Zone.
After the shooting, Moonen was fired by Blackwater, had his security clearance revoked, and was returned to the United States. Two months later, though, he got a job with Combat Support Associates. Because Moonen had not been charged with a crime, the company said its background checks did not reveal anything that would bar his employment.
Moonen left Combat Support Associates in August.
Hutchison said the Sustainment Command did a review of the Combat Service Support contract and found areas that could be improved. But the Army is satisfied with the company's record.
"We're having the normal issues that you would experience in managing a large dollar service contract being performed in an austere environment," he said.
The contract review teams examined a sampling of the roughly 6,000 contracts worth $2.8 billion issued by the Kuwait office since 2003. The goal of the teams was to ensure these contracts were free of fraud and had been awarded properly.
One team in Kuwait inspected 339 contracts under $25,000 in value; another team in Warren, Mich., checked over 313 contracts worth more $25,000.
Both found problems during their reviews and alerted the Army Audit Agency and the Army Criminal Investigation Command, according to an information paper prepared by Army Materiel Command. The paper did not say how many contracts had flaws, nor did it say exactly what the problems were.
The Criminal Investigation Command has 87 ongoing criminal investigations related to contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, according to spokesman Chris Grey.
Grey said 24 individuals have been charged with contract fraud - 19 of those are Army military and civilian employees - and more than $15 million in bribes has changed hands.
___
On the Net:
Army Sustainment Command: http://www.aschq.army.mil/home/index.htm
Citation: Richard Lardner. " Oversight for Iraq war contracts shifts," The Associated Press, 15 January 2008.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080115/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_contracts_2
Iraq forces could control all provinces this year: U.S.
By David Morgan
Reuters, 17 January 2008
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq's army and police could be ready to take over security in all 18 provinces by the end of this year as the U.S. military moves toward a less prominent role in the country, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
"We look at it every month. We make recommendations. I think that if we continue along the path we're on now, we'll be able to do that by the end of 2008," Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said when asked when Iraqi forces could take the lead in all provinces.
He said that a joint operation under way led by Iraqi troops and supported by U.S. troops against al Qaeda militants in the northern city of Mosul was a model for the future.
"That's how I see our role frankly in the future here," he told Pentagon reporters via videolink from Baghdad.
Iraqi security forces are now in control of nine provinces after assuming control of Iraqi's southern oil hub, Basra, in December. Iraqi forces are also expected to take control in Anbar province, a one-time insurgent stronghold, as early as March.
The ability of Iraqi forces to take the lead in security operations is vital to President George W. Bush's plan to withdraw 20,000 U.S. troops by the middle of this year.
The troops were sent to Iraq last year in a bid to quell sectarian violence in a war now in its sixth year. With U.S. troop levels up to about 155,000 now, violence levels have since dropped sharply.
"All the evidence available to me now suggests we will be able to complete the drawdown," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters separately.
"(It) remains my hope that the pace of the drawdowns in the second half of the year will be what it was in the first half of the year," he said.
Lt. Gen. James Dubik, commander of security transition in Iraq, told the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the number of Iraqi security forces, or ISF, could exceed 580,000 by the end of the year, up from the current 500,000.
But he also expressed caution about their abilities.
"Force structure and capability still lack a certain maturity. The ISF have not yet achieved self reliance in all area of logistics, maintenance and life support," he told the panel.
Odierno said he was confident the withdrawal of the five brigades will occur despite expectations for an upswing in insurgent attacks as militants respond to a new joint offensive known as Operation Phantom Phoenix.
The operation has killed or captured 92 "high-value individuals, according to the U.S. military.
"While we may see a short-term increase in violence in response to our operations in the weeks ahead, I expect Phantom Phoenix to contribute significantly to the population's security," Odierno said.
Gates' hopes for further reductions in U.S. forces this year will depend on a March assessment by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.
"To predict now whether we can go lower or not is difficult and I would not want to make that prediction right now," Odierno said.
But Gates said the U.S. mission in Iraq has begun its planned transition to a more supportive role that would focus on border security and combating al Qaeda in Iraq. "That's ultimately where we are headed, and we have begun that process of transition," he said.
Citation: David Morgan. " Iraq forces could control all provinces this year: U.S.,"
Reuters, 17 January 2008.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080117/ts_nm/usa_iraq_security_dc
Reuters, 17 January 2008
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq's army and police could be ready to take over security in all 18 provinces by the end of this year as the U.S. military moves toward a less prominent role in the country, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
"We look at it every month. We make recommendations. I think that if we continue along the path we're on now, we'll be able to do that by the end of 2008," Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said when asked when Iraqi forces could take the lead in all provinces.
He said that a joint operation under way led by Iraqi troops and supported by U.S. troops against al Qaeda militants in the northern city of Mosul was a model for the future.
"That's how I see our role frankly in the future here," he told Pentagon reporters via videolink from Baghdad.
Iraqi security forces are now in control of nine provinces after assuming control of Iraqi's southern oil hub, Basra, in December. Iraqi forces are also expected to take control in Anbar province, a one-time insurgent stronghold, as early as March.
The ability of Iraqi forces to take the lead in security operations is vital to President George W. Bush's plan to withdraw 20,000 U.S. troops by the middle of this year.
The troops were sent to Iraq last year in a bid to quell sectarian violence in a war now in its sixth year. With U.S. troop levels up to about 155,000 now, violence levels have since dropped sharply.
"All the evidence available to me now suggests we will be able to complete the drawdown," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters separately.
"(It) remains my hope that the pace of the drawdowns in the second half of the year will be what it was in the first half of the year," he said.
Lt. Gen. James Dubik, commander of security transition in Iraq, told the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the number of Iraqi security forces, or ISF, could exceed 580,000 by the end of the year, up from the current 500,000.
But he also expressed caution about their abilities.
"Force structure and capability still lack a certain maturity. The ISF have not yet achieved self reliance in all area of logistics, maintenance and life support," he told the panel.
Odierno said he was confident the withdrawal of the five brigades will occur despite expectations for an upswing in insurgent attacks as militants respond to a new joint offensive known as Operation Phantom Phoenix.
The operation has killed or captured 92 "high-value individuals, according to the U.S. military.
"While we may see a short-term increase in violence in response to our operations in the weeks ahead, I expect Phantom Phoenix to contribute significantly to the population's security," Odierno said.
Gates' hopes for further reductions in U.S. forces this year will depend on a March assessment by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.
"To predict now whether we can go lower or not is difficult and I would not want to make that prediction right now," Odierno said.
But Gates said the U.S. mission in Iraq has begun its planned transition to a more supportive role that would focus on border security and combating al Qaeda in Iraq. "That's ultimately where we are headed, and we have begun that process of transition," he said.
Citation: David Morgan. " Iraq forces could control all provinces this year: U.S.,"
Reuters, 17 January 2008.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080117/ts_nm/usa_iraq_security_dc
14 January 2008
Army Acknowledges Taking More Low-Scoring Recruits
By David Wood
Baltimore Sun, 16 August 2006.
WASHINGTON - At a time when the Defense Department is calling for "the best and the brightest" to fight today's tricky unconventional wars, the Army is quietly signing up thousands of low-scoring recruits, who historically have performed less well, in order to meet its recruiting goals.
Only two years ago, the Army accepted fewer than 500 of these recruits, who scored below the 31st percentile on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) given to all recruits. Those scores put them in Category IV, the lowest category the military can accept.
4% of volunteers
When the fiscal year ends next month, the Army will have enlisted 3,200 Category IV recruits, Army officials said. That amounts to 4 percent of the 80,000 volunteers the Army will enroll this year.
Last year, amid widespread recruiting difficulties, the Army accepted 2,900 Category IV recruits. [If you know what this means please let me know]
This year the Army, facing continued difficulty recruiting because of the war in Iraq and plentiful jobs in the civilian economy, boosted its enlistment bonuses and other incentives in an effort to meet its recruiting goals.
The Army announced last week that it had met its recruiting goals in July for the 14th straight month and is running ahead of its year-to-date recruiting mission by 2,355 soldiers.
But if the Army had not accepted the Category IV recruits, it would have missed those goals.
Defense Department and Army officials declined to respond directly to the new numbers, which the Army released in response to questions.
The willingness to accept lower-scoring recruits seemed to contradict top Defense Department guidance that demands a sharp increase in soldiers' ability to master languages, adapt to different cultural sensitivities and endure high stress in situations like Iraq where wrong decisions, even by young privates, can have huge repercussions.
'A problem'
Accepting more Category IV soldiers "is a problem - we know it is a problem," said David R. Segal, a military behavioral scientist and director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland.
"It is more difficult to be a soldier," Segal said. "Smarter people do it better, particularly in combat where they are better able to respond with common sense to situations that their training didn't prepare them for."
In the "long war" against extremism, the military must "attract and retain the best and brightest" young Americans for military service, the Pentagon said in its major strategic document, the Quadrennial Defense Review, released this spring.
But the Army has long argued, in a view backed up by academic research and the wisdom of platoon sergeants, that the "best and brightest" does not include "Cat IV" recruits, who have a higher probability of becoming disciplinary problems and failing to absorb training, and have a higher probability of dropping out before the end of their first tour of duty.
Trend reversed
Until recently, Pentagon officials were able to boast that because of more intense recruiting, they could reduce the intake of Category IV recruits, from 33 percent in fiscal 1979 to 1 percent or less through the 1990s.
In a statement yesterday, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, acknowledged that "individuals in AFQT Category IV do not perform as well on the job" as those who score higher.
But she said Category IV soldiers "have successfully met Services' training standards."
Several Army studies have documented that test scores do predict how well a soldier will perform. For instance, a 1992 study tested Patriot missile battery crews for battlefield survival skills. It found soldiers who had tested in the highest ranks on the AFQT scored at 68 percent, while those in Category IV scored at 26 percent.
A 1986 study of tank gunners found that replacing a Category IV crew with the next highest level, Category III, improved gunnery scores by 34 percent.
Another view
But senior Pentagon officials have sought to play down such findings.
"Just because you scored low on the test doesn't mean you are going to be a bad soldier," David Chu, the Pentagon's manpower chief, told reporters at a briefing last month.
For one thing, he said, the tests are given in English and some recruits "don't speak English very well."
Retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, who fought in Vietnam and later commanded the 1st Armored Division, said his "biggest fear is to disparage people that are willing to serve their country."
Nash said everyone in the service "knows somebody who was a Cat-IV and was a damned fine soldier. Hell, there were people who thought I was a Cat-IV," he said.
Still, he said, accepting a few more Category IV soldiers each year means "there can be a degradation of capacity that honestly is hard to notice while it is going on. But it is going on."
"You don't want to say the sky is falling," Nash said. "But it is hard to be a soldier today.
"The behavior of one soldier or a fire team can have huge strategic implications, and these murders and rape allegations are living proof of that," he said, referring to several current cases of alleged misbehavior by soldiers or Marines in Iraq.
Citation: David Wood. "Army Acknowledges Taking More Low-Scoring Recruits," Baltimore Sun, 16 August 2006.
Original URL: http://www.veteransforamerica.org/print.cfm?page=print&ID=7738
Baltimore Sun, 16 August 2006.
WASHINGTON - At a time when the Defense Department is calling for "the best and the brightest" to fight today's tricky unconventional wars, the Army is quietly signing up thousands of low-scoring recruits, who historically have performed less well, in order to meet its recruiting goals.
Only two years ago, the Army accepted fewer than 500 of these recruits, who scored below the 31st percentile on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) given to all recruits. Those scores put them in Category IV, the lowest category the military can accept.
4% of volunteers
When the fiscal year ends next month, the Army will have enlisted 3,200 Category IV recruits, Army officials said. That amounts to 4 percent of the 80,000 volunteers the Army will enroll this year.
Last year, amid widespread recruiting difficulties, the Army accepted 2,900 Category IV recruits. [If you know what this means please let me know]
This year the Army, facing continued difficulty recruiting because of the war in Iraq and plentiful jobs in the civilian economy, boosted its enlistment bonuses and other incentives in an effort to meet its recruiting goals.
The Army announced last week that it had met its recruiting goals in July for the 14th straight month and is running ahead of its year-to-date recruiting mission by 2,355 soldiers.
But if the Army had not accepted the Category IV recruits, it would have missed those goals.
Defense Department and Army officials declined to respond directly to the new numbers, which the Army released in response to questions.
The willingness to accept lower-scoring recruits seemed to contradict top Defense Department guidance that demands a sharp increase in soldiers' ability to master languages, adapt to different cultural sensitivities and endure high stress in situations like Iraq where wrong decisions, even by young privates, can have huge repercussions.
'A problem'
Accepting more Category IV soldiers "is a problem - we know it is a problem," said David R. Segal, a military behavioral scientist and director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland.
"It is more difficult to be a soldier," Segal said. "Smarter people do it better, particularly in combat where they are better able to respond with common sense to situations that their training didn't prepare them for."
In the "long war" against extremism, the military must "attract and retain the best and brightest" young Americans for military service, the Pentagon said in its major strategic document, the Quadrennial Defense Review, released this spring.
But the Army has long argued, in a view backed up by academic research and the wisdom of platoon sergeants, that the "best and brightest" does not include "Cat IV" recruits, who have a higher probability of becoming disciplinary problems and failing to absorb training, and have a higher probability of dropping out before the end of their first tour of duty.
Trend reversed
Until recently, Pentagon officials were able to boast that because of more intense recruiting, they could reduce the intake of Category IV recruits, from 33 percent in fiscal 1979 to 1 percent or less through the 1990s.
In a statement yesterday, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, acknowledged that "individuals in AFQT Category IV do not perform as well on the job" as those who score higher.
But she said Category IV soldiers "have successfully met Services' training standards."
Several Army studies have documented that test scores do predict how well a soldier will perform. For instance, a 1992 study tested Patriot missile battery crews for battlefield survival skills. It found soldiers who had tested in the highest ranks on the AFQT scored at 68 percent, while those in Category IV scored at 26 percent.
A 1986 study of tank gunners found that replacing a Category IV crew with the next highest level, Category III, improved gunnery scores by 34 percent.
Another view
But senior Pentagon officials have sought to play down such findings.
"Just because you scored low on the test doesn't mean you are going to be a bad soldier," David Chu, the Pentagon's manpower chief, told reporters at a briefing last month.
For one thing, he said, the tests are given in English and some recruits "don't speak English very well."
Retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, who fought in Vietnam and later commanded the 1st Armored Division, said his "biggest fear is to disparage people that are willing to serve their country."
Nash said everyone in the service "knows somebody who was a Cat-IV and was a damned fine soldier. Hell, there were people who thought I was a Cat-IV," he said.
Still, he said, accepting a few more Category IV soldiers each year means "there can be a degradation of capacity that honestly is hard to notice while it is going on. But it is going on."
"You don't want to say the sky is falling," Nash said. "But it is hard to be a soldier today.
"The behavior of one soldier or a fire team can have huge strategic implications, and these murders and rape allegations are living proof of that," he said, referring to several current cases of alleged misbehavior by soldiers or Marines in Iraq.
Citation: David Wood. "Army Acknowledges Taking More Low-Scoring Recruits," Baltimore Sun, 16 August 2006.
Original URL: http://www.veteransforamerica.org/print.cfm?page=print&ID=7738
Parent-trap snares recruiters
By Jack Kelly
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11 August 2005
Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents.
It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt.
"I want you to know we support you," she gushed.
Rivera soon reached the limits of her support.
"Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told him.
"Parental consent is the toughest thing we face right now," said Rivera's boss, Maj. Michael Sherman, 36, commander of the recruiting battalion headquartered in Pittsburgh. "There are so many kids just waiting for their 18th birthday, so they can enlist."
It is even tougher for the Army, which, along with the Marines, has seen the bulk of the action in Iraq, but has far higher enlistment quotas.
Recruiters have to contact as many as 100 young people just to get one who is willing to talk about enlisting, chiefly because of opposition from parents, said Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, commander of the Army Recruiting Command. That's nearly four times as many as before the war in Iraq began.
The Army's difficulties were reflected in the latest monthly recruiting figures, released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Defense. (See graphic below)
They show that while all active-duty military services met their goals for July, and the Army met its goal for the second month in a row, the Army continues to lag for the recruiting year that began 10 months ago, reaching only 89 percent of its goal.
The Army figures to be about 8,000 soldiers short of its goal of 80,000 for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, which would be the first time since 1999 that it will have missed an annual target.
Army National Guard and Reserve units, even more than the active service, have been having trouble attracting recruits as the war in Iraq continues and the economy improves. Their enlistment figures have not started to rebound -- the Army Guard reached only 80 percent of its July recruiting goal; the Army Reserve, 82 percent. Among all Guard and Reserve units, only the Marines and Air Force achieved their quotas for July.
Stopping the bleeding
For the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, last year was the worst. Total strength fell 1,088 soldiers below target. The additional shortfall this year has been only 192 soldiers.
"We've stopped the bleeding," said Lt. Col. Michael Curran, chief of recruiting. "The tourniquet has been applied."
If that's the case, it is because the Army and its affiliated Guard and Reserve units have succeeded in throwing money at the problem by boosting enlistment bonuses, hiring more recruiters and spending more on advertisements.
A recent surge in re-enlistments by people with prior service coincided with a tripling to $15,000 in the bonuses the Army Guard can pay to veterans. If Congress approves doubling the bonus for initial enlistments in the Guard and Reserve, to $20,000, the Guard's recruiting troubles should be over, said Lt. Col. Mike Jones, a personnel expert at National Guard Bureau headquarters in Arlington, Va.
The Army added 1,015 recruiters this year, the Army National Guard, 1,600. And the effect is just beginning to be felt, according to Maj. Scott North, Western Pennsylvania recruiting officer for the National Guard. Recruiters had to be selected and trained and are only now becoming familiar with their territories, he said.
The Army also increased its advertising budget this year by $40 million, to $300 million. The Army National Guard boosted its ad budget to $52 million, from $46 million.
Army recruiters say all these efforts are fine, but that education benefits remain their most effective lure.
Those who join any branch of the military are eligible for the G.I. Bill. The Army provides additional benefits up to $70,000. Those who enlist in the Pennsylvania National Guard can get up to $270 a month from the G.I. Bill and an additional $4,378 a year from the state.
On the other hand, the military's stiff educational standards make recruiting more difficult. At least 90 percent of those entering the Army this year will have a high school diploma. The figure is 96 percent in the Marine Corps.
"There are a lot of people who are interested, but they can't pass the [Armed Forces Qualification Test]," said Staff Sgt. Mark Hatfield of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, who recruits in five Pittsburgh area high schools.
"A third of the people we talk to cannot pass the AFQT," said Sherman of the Marines.
Another issue is a provision in the No Child Left Behind law that requires high schools to give recruiters access to information about their students. Parents can opt to deny this information to recruiters, and antiwar groups are mounting a national effort to encourage them to do so.
Recruiters say a quarter of the schools, mainly in the suburbs, do the minimum the law requires, anyway.
"At Baldwin High, they put five recruiters in a small room," Hatfield said. "It was an uncomfortable environment for potential recruits."
Donna Milanovich, superintendent of Baldwin-Whitehall School District, said recruiters may come to the high school once a month, where they are provided a room in the guidance office to meet with interested students. The school is old, she said, and space is limited. The school has denied recruiters' requests to meet students in hallways or phys ed classes.
"I thought we had a good relationship with the military," she said.
Antiwar activists present an obstacle, as well. Demonstrators disrupted Army Reserve recruiters at Carnegie Mellon University in April, and the local chapter of the American Friends Service Committee plans a "nonviolent day of direct action" a week from Saturday to "shut down military recruiting in Pittsburgh."
Dealing with the parents
Despite the challenges of recruiting during a war and a growing economy, this remains a rewarding time to be a recruiter, according to Rivera.
"Nowadays you deal with a lot of good kids," he said. "It takes a lot of courage to join the Marines today."
Tequia Brown, 21, wanted to join the Marines when she was 18. But her mother objected strenuously, so she went to college instead. But after her mom died this spring, she enlisted.
"It's a wonderful opportunity to see the world, to develop self-respect, to have a sense of importance, to make a contribution," said Brown, who hopes to make a career of the Marines and then become a doctor.
Jason McCamey, 19, got support from his family when he told them he wanted to join the Marines.
His dad, Don, 46, who had served in the Navy from 1983 to 1986, joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard shortly after his son enlisted. Jason's younger brother Sean, 17, a high school student, has joined the Army Reserve.
"I taught my boys you should serve your country," Don McCamey said.
But McCamey is an increasingly rare kind of parent these days.
Jason McCamey said, "I tried to get a friend to come down [to the Marine recruiter] with me, but his dad wouldn't let him.
Citation: Jack Kelly. "Parent-Trap Snares Recruiters," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11 August 2005.
Original URL: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/pp/05223/552161.stm
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11 August 2005
Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents.
It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt.
"I want you to know we support you," she gushed.
Rivera soon reached the limits of her support.
"Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told him.
"Parental consent is the toughest thing we face right now," said Rivera's boss, Maj. Michael Sherman, 36, commander of the recruiting battalion headquartered in Pittsburgh. "There are so many kids just waiting for their 18th birthday, so they can enlist."
It is even tougher for the Army, which, along with the Marines, has seen the bulk of the action in Iraq, but has far higher enlistment quotas.
Recruiters have to contact as many as 100 young people just to get one who is willing to talk about enlisting, chiefly because of opposition from parents, said Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, commander of the Army Recruiting Command. That's nearly four times as many as before the war in Iraq began.
The Army's difficulties were reflected in the latest monthly recruiting figures, released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Defense. (See graphic below)
They show that while all active-duty military services met their goals for July, and the Army met its goal for the second month in a row, the Army continues to lag for the recruiting year that began 10 months ago, reaching only 89 percent of its goal.
The Army figures to be about 8,000 soldiers short of its goal of 80,000 for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, which would be the first time since 1999 that it will have missed an annual target.
Army National Guard and Reserve units, even more than the active service, have been having trouble attracting recruits as the war in Iraq continues and the economy improves. Their enlistment figures have not started to rebound -- the Army Guard reached only 80 percent of its July recruiting goal; the Army Reserve, 82 percent. Among all Guard and Reserve units, only the Marines and Air Force achieved their quotas for July.
Stopping the bleeding
For the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, last year was the worst. Total strength fell 1,088 soldiers below target. The additional shortfall this year has been only 192 soldiers.
"We've stopped the bleeding," said Lt. Col. Michael Curran, chief of recruiting. "The tourniquet has been applied."
If that's the case, it is because the Army and its affiliated Guard and Reserve units have succeeded in throwing money at the problem by boosting enlistment bonuses, hiring more recruiters and spending more on advertisements.
A recent surge in re-enlistments by people with prior service coincided with a tripling to $15,000 in the bonuses the Army Guard can pay to veterans. If Congress approves doubling the bonus for initial enlistments in the Guard and Reserve, to $20,000, the Guard's recruiting troubles should be over, said Lt. Col. Mike Jones, a personnel expert at National Guard Bureau headquarters in Arlington, Va.
The Army added 1,015 recruiters this year, the Army National Guard, 1,600. And the effect is just beginning to be felt, according to Maj. Scott North, Western Pennsylvania recruiting officer for the National Guard. Recruiters had to be selected and trained and are only now becoming familiar with their territories, he said.
The Army also increased its advertising budget this year by $40 million, to $300 million. The Army National Guard boosted its ad budget to $52 million, from $46 million.
Army recruiters say all these efforts are fine, but that education benefits remain their most effective lure.
Those who join any branch of the military are eligible for the G.I. Bill. The Army provides additional benefits up to $70,000. Those who enlist in the Pennsylvania National Guard can get up to $270 a month from the G.I. Bill and an additional $4,378 a year from the state.
On the other hand, the military's stiff educational standards make recruiting more difficult. At least 90 percent of those entering the Army this year will have a high school diploma. The figure is 96 percent in the Marine Corps.
"There are a lot of people who are interested, but they can't pass the [Armed Forces Qualification Test]," said Staff Sgt. Mark Hatfield of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, who recruits in five Pittsburgh area high schools.
"A third of the people we talk to cannot pass the AFQT," said Sherman of the Marines.
Another issue is a provision in the No Child Left Behind law that requires high schools to give recruiters access to information about their students. Parents can opt to deny this information to recruiters, and antiwar groups are mounting a national effort to encourage them to do so.
Recruiters say a quarter of the schools, mainly in the suburbs, do the minimum the law requires, anyway.
"At Baldwin High, they put five recruiters in a small room," Hatfield said. "It was an uncomfortable environment for potential recruits."
Donna Milanovich, superintendent of Baldwin-Whitehall School District, said recruiters may come to the high school once a month, where they are provided a room in the guidance office to meet with interested students. The school is old, she said, and space is limited. The school has denied recruiters' requests to meet students in hallways or phys ed classes.
"I thought we had a good relationship with the military," she said.
Antiwar activists present an obstacle, as well. Demonstrators disrupted Army Reserve recruiters at Carnegie Mellon University in April, and the local chapter of the American Friends Service Committee plans a "nonviolent day of direct action" a week from Saturday to "shut down military recruiting in Pittsburgh."
Dealing with the parents
Despite the challenges of recruiting during a war and a growing economy, this remains a rewarding time to be a recruiter, according to Rivera.
"Nowadays you deal with a lot of good kids," he said. "It takes a lot of courage to join the Marines today."
Tequia Brown, 21, wanted to join the Marines when she was 18. But her mother objected strenuously, so she went to college instead. But after her mom died this spring, she enlisted.
"It's a wonderful opportunity to see the world, to develop self-respect, to have a sense of importance, to make a contribution," said Brown, who hopes to make a career of the Marines and then become a doctor.
Jason McCamey, 19, got support from his family when he told them he wanted to join the Marines.
His dad, Don, 46, who had served in the Navy from 1983 to 1986, joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard shortly after his son enlisted. Jason's younger brother Sean, 17, a high school student, has joined the Army Reserve.
"I taught my boys you should serve your country," Don McCamey said.
But McCamey is an increasingly rare kind of parent these days.
Jason McCamey said, "I tried to get a friend to come down [to the Marine recruiter] with me, but his dad wouldn't let him.
Citation: Jack Kelly. "Parent-Trap Snares Recruiters," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11 August 2005.
Original URL: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/pp/05223/552161.stm
Army Adds Real Soldiers to Video Game
By Matt Slagle.
The Associated Press, 14 September 2006.
Move over, G.I. Joe. The Army has found some recruits in its latest effort to enlist soldiers. In a campaign targeting teenagers, the Army announced on Thursday a new version of its "America's Army" video game, incorporating digital likenesses of eight actual soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We're trying to put a face on soldiers so that kids can relate to them," said Col. Casey Wardynski, director of the America's Army project. "It's hard to relate to a big green machine. This is a chance to get to know some of them who have done really outstanding things."
The "America's Army Real Heroes" program will also include a series of $10 action figures, based on the same real soldiers, in store shelves by Christmas, Wardynski said.
The program comes after the Army fell short on recruiting last year, the first time since 1999. As of last month, the active-duty Army had signed up 72,997 new soldiers, nearly 3,000 above its year-to-date target. The Army National Guard was about 200 below its target of 63,240, while the Army Reserve was almost 2,000 below its year-to-date target of 33,124.
Wardynski said the Army spends about $2.5 million annually on the free PC game, a first-person shooter in which players go through a simulated boot camp or team up with other real players online in three-dimensional battles.
About 27 million copies of the taxpayer-funded game have been distributed since its July 4, 2002, debut, and there are about 7.5 million registered users.
Gamers can get "America's Army" from recruiters or by downloading it from various video game Web sites, Wardynski said. The game is often included with computer systems from Dell Inc. and other hardware manufacturers such as video card maker Nvidia Corp.
The latest version, "America's Army: Special Forces," is the first to include actual soldiers, instead of using only generic warriors. The eight were picked based on such factors as awards they received and their availability.
Among them is Sgt. Tommy Rieman, 26, who earned a Silver Star for leading a convoy of eight soldiers to safety after they were injured in an ambush outside of Baghdad in December 2003.
Rieman, of Independence, Ky., said he grew up with G.I. Joe action figures and always considered his three uncles in the Army as idols. He enlisted in the Army a month after graduating from high school and served in Kosovo and Iraq.
He said he was honored at being digitized into a video game, even though he isn't paid for the appearance.
"It's pretty amazing," he said of his video game persona, which was created by taking his digital photograph and essentially wrapping it around a three-dimensional model of a soldier. "It's such an honor to be immortalized forever."
The other soldiers are Major Jason Amerine of Honolulu, Hawaii, Sgt. 1st Class Gerald Wolford, of Roseburg, Ore., Sgt. Matthew Zedwick, of Corvallis, Ore., Sgt. Leigh Hester, of Bowling Green, Ky., Spc. Jason Mike, of Radcliff, Ky., Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein, of Clarksville, Ind., and Master Sgt. Scott Neil, of St. Cloud, Fla.
None will be fighting or dying on these virtual battlefields, however.
Wardynski said the idea is to provide an educational experience in which gamers can meet the soldiers in a virtual recruiting office, ask questions about their various experiences and awards and get a better sense of Army life.
"The real heroes are in there wandering around, you can talk to them, get a little hint of the story," he said. "We didn't want to go down the road of reenactment but we wanted to give you that touchpoint, there'd be somebody there who could tell you about it."
Rieman said he hopes the game gives teens role models beside celebrities or athletes.
"We look up to celebrities every day, but what really do they do? They entertain us," Rieman said. "Soldiers have a real purpose: They serve, they protect and I think it's time they're recognized for what they do."
Citation: Matt Slagle. "Army Adds Real Soldiers to Video Game," The Associated Press, 14 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2006/sep/14/091406984.html
The Associated Press, 14 September 2006.
Move over, G.I. Joe. The Army has found some recruits in its latest effort to enlist soldiers. In a campaign targeting teenagers, the Army announced on Thursday a new version of its "America's Army" video game, incorporating digital likenesses of eight actual soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We're trying to put a face on soldiers so that kids can relate to them," said Col. Casey Wardynski, director of the America's Army project. "It's hard to relate to a big green machine. This is a chance to get to know some of them who have done really outstanding things."
The "America's Army Real Heroes" program will also include a series of $10 action figures, based on the same real soldiers, in store shelves by Christmas, Wardynski said.
The program comes after the Army fell short on recruiting last year, the first time since 1999. As of last month, the active-duty Army had signed up 72,997 new soldiers, nearly 3,000 above its year-to-date target. The Army National Guard was about 200 below its target of 63,240, while the Army Reserve was almost 2,000 below its year-to-date target of 33,124.
Wardynski said the Army spends about $2.5 million annually on the free PC game, a first-person shooter in which players go through a simulated boot camp or team up with other real players online in three-dimensional battles.
About 27 million copies of the taxpayer-funded game have been distributed since its July 4, 2002, debut, and there are about 7.5 million registered users.
Gamers can get "America's Army" from recruiters or by downloading it from various video game Web sites, Wardynski said. The game is often included with computer systems from Dell Inc. and other hardware manufacturers such as video card maker Nvidia Corp.
The latest version, "America's Army: Special Forces," is the first to include actual soldiers, instead of using only generic warriors. The eight were picked based on such factors as awards they received and their availability.
Among them is Sgt. Tommy Rieman, 26, who earned a Silver Star for leading a convoy of eight soldiers to safety after they were injured in an ambush outside of Baghdad in December 2003.
Rieman, of Independence, Ky., said he grew up with G.I. Joe action figures and always considered his three uncles in the Army as idols. He enlisted in the Army a month after graduating from high school and served in Kosovo and Iraq.
He said he was honored at being digitized into a video game, even though he isn't paid for the appearance.
"It's pretty amazing," he said of his video game persona, which was created by taking his digital photograph and essentially wrapping it around a three-dimensional model of a soldier. "It's such an honor to be immortalized forever."
The other soldiers are Major Jason Amerine of Honolulu, Hawaii, Sgt. 1st Class Gerald Wolford, of Roseburg, Ore., Sgt. Matthew Zedwick, of Corvallis, Ore., Sgt. Leigh Hester, of Bowling Green, Ky., Spc. Jason Mike, of Radcliff, Ky., Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein, of Clarksville, Ind., and Master Sgt. Scott Neil, of St. Cloud, Fla.
None will be fighting or dying on these virtual battlefields, however.
Wardynski said the idea is to provide an educational experience in which gamers can meet the soldiers in a virtual recruiting office, ask questions about their various experiences and awards and get a better sense of Army life.
"The real heroes are in there wandering around, you can talk to them, get a little hint of the story," he said. "We didn't want to go down the road of reenactment but we wanted to give you that touchpoint, there'd be somebody there who could tell you about it."
Rieman said he hopes the game gives teens role models beside celebrities or athletes.
"We look up to celebrities every day, but what really do they do? They entertain us," Rieman said. "Soldiers have a real purpose: They serve, they protect and I think it's time they're recognized for what they do."
Citation: Matt Slagle. "Army Adds Real Soldiers to Video Game," The Associated Press, 14 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2006/sep/14/091406984.html
Most Stress Cases Missed
By Lisa Chedekel
Hartford Courant, 06 August 2007.
Aug. 6--Only about 3 percent of soldiers who have served in combat since 2003 have been diagnosed by the Army with post-traumatic stress disorder -- far fewer than the numbers who have screened positive for PTSD symptoms in recent Army studies, suggesting that the disorder is being under-reported and under-diagnosed.
New figures released to The Courant by the Army's Office of the Surgeon General show a total of 23,788 soldiers, most of them deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, who have been diagnosed by the military with PTSD in the past four years.
The number represents about 3.2 percent of the more than 745,000 soldiers who have been deployed. A recent Army study of soldiers serving in Iraq, based on anonymous surveys, found that 17 percent met the criteria for PTSD, while other military studies have estimated the prevalence of the disorder at 15 to 20 percent.
"We know it's being under-reported," acknowledged Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general. "That's true with any psychological symptom."
The Army figures do not account for all cases of PTSD among soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead represent only diagnoses made while soldiers were on active duty. Other diagnoses are made by the Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, after soldiers are discharged. But even the combined total of Army and VA diagnoses of PTSD -- about 76,000 to date -- represents only about 5 percent of the more than 1.5 million troops who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Ritchie attributed the relatively low numbers to the stigma surrounding mental health issues, which she said the Army has been working hard to combat. A new program, begun in mid-July, has the Army educating every commander and soldier about PTSD and traumatic brain injury through a mandatory training program aimed at increasing awareness and reporting.
"For PTSD and acute stress disorder, we think, and we're pretty sure about this, that soldiers are worried about being perceived as weak and don't want to have people in their unit find out," she said. The training program emphasizes the importance of "leaders taking care of their soldiers, buddy aides [caring for fellow soldiers] and soldiers recognizing the symptoms in themselves, with all of those knowing where to go for assistance," she said.
Veterans advocates say the military could be doing more to encourage reporting, including conducting thorough mental health screenings of all troops, before and after they deploy to war.
"What I think is needed is for everybody to get examined, so then you won't have the stigma," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. "If you want people to step forward, you have to normalize the process and also give [troops] anonymity."
Sullivan and other advocates also contend that PTSD is being under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed by some military and VA doctors in an effort to preserve troop strength and avoid costly disability claims -- charges the military has denied.
The Army figures show active-duty diagnoses of PTSD have nearly doubled in the last two years -- from 3,867 in the 2004 fiscal year, to 7,352 in the fiscal year that ended last September. In the first half of this year, 4,477 new cases were diagnosed.
Ritchie and other Army leaders have said the Army is making efforts to improve identification of combat stress in active-duty soldiers so it can be treated early. Mental health experts say the steady increase in diagnoses is partly due to the repeat deployments of troops, which increase the likelihood of soldiers developing PTSD or acute stress.
The VA has treated about 52,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans for PTSD, according to a new report by the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors. That figure represents about 7 percent of the more than 720,000 troops -- including Marines, sailors and airmen -- who have separated from the armed forces since returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.
The VA numbers do not include veterans who might seek mental health care from private doctors or other sources.
While the number of active-duty soldiers and veterans receiving PTSD diagnoses remains significantly lower than the 17-percent prevalence rate identified in the Army's recent Mental Health Advisory Team survey, both the VA and the Army have been struggling to provide services even to that limited pool of diagnosed troops. In recent weeks, the Presidential commission, Congress, a Pentagon mental health task force and veterans' groups have pushed the Defense Department and the VA to rapidly improve the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD.
The Army first acknowledged -- and pledged to combat -- the stigma around mental health problems more than three years ago, after a spike in suicides among troops serving in Iraq. Although the suicide rate in Iraq dropped in 2004, it climbed in 2005 and 2006.
The Army's new training program has senior leaders using a "chain-teaching" method to educate all commanders and soldiers, including those deployed to war, to recognize the symptoms of PTSD and traumatic brain injury and have the "courage and strength" to seek help. In late July, Ritchie and others presented the program, which includes videos and a detailed instructor's guide, to Army executive staff at the Pentagon. At the same time, senior leaders in Iraq have begun training their subordinates. The goal is for the training to be completed within 90 days.
"The idea of this is a chain-teach, so that the senior commander teaches the next level down, brigade commander teaches battalion commander, down to platoon sergeant," Ritchie said. "We want people to master the material. And if you're going to teach it, you need to know what it is." She said the material will be taught in small groups, with time set aside for questions and discussions. "What we don't want is 300 people in the darkened auditorium where everyone can go to sleep."
The training emphasizes that psychological reactions to combat stress, such as flashbacks, are normal, but that "for a few, these reactions last a long time and have severe effects on their lives and health." It stresses that leaders have an obligation to get help to soldiers who are struggling, and it reassures soldiers that seeking help is not a career ender.
PTSD is a disorder characterized by three main groups of symptoms: re-experiencing the trauma, in the form of flashbacks or nightmares; retreating from life or feeling detached; and hyper-vigilance. Left untreated, the disorder can fuel depression, suicide or substance abuse. Experts say treatment with psychiatric medications or specialized counseling can put the disorder into remission about 30 to 50 percent of the time.
Ritchie said her office does not have detailed data on how many soldiers diagnosed with PTSD remain on active duty, but she said that "the vast majority" do.
Although Department of Defense medical standards for enlistment into the armed forces disqualify recruits who have suffered from PTSD or acute stress reactions, military leaders have emphasized that PTSD is treatable, and are sending some soldiers diagnosed with the disorder back into combat. That practice has drawn criticism from mental health experts, members of Congress and veterans' advocates, who say re-exposure to trauma heightens the risk of serious mental health problems.
Their concerns were borne out in the recent Army study, which found that soldiers who had deployed to Iraq more than once were more likely to screen positive for PTSD symptoms -- 24 percent, compared with 15 percent who were on first deployments.
Despite the Army's efforts to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health, the recent Army survey found that a majority of soldiers serving in Iraq fear they will be perceived as weak if they seek mental health care.
Ritchie said the Army has briefed medical providers, counselors and chaplains to expect more reporting of combat stress, now that the chain-teaching about PTSD has started. She conceded that the new training could put an additional strain on the Army's mental health resources, already stretched thin. The ratio of behavioral health workers to troops serving in Iraq has dropped in the last two years, from one worker for every 387 deployed troops to one for 668, according to the Army study.
Ritchie said the Army hopes to hire 200 civilian mental-health workers to boost its resources on U.S. military bases in the coming months, but increasing the number of uniformed providers will be "a longer process."
Sullivan, the veterans' advocate, said he believes PTSD is being under-diagnosed by some military doctors, who have been encouraged to take a "watch and wait" approach before confirming the disorder.
He also said the VA should make it easier for veterans to file PTSD claims by creating a "presumption of service connection" for all those deployed to a war zone. Now, veterans who file PTSD disability claims must go through a cumbersome process that requires them to prove that the condition arose from a combat-related "stressor," he said.
Citation: Lisa Chedekel. "Most Stress Cases Missed," Hartford Courant, 06 August 2007.
Original URL: http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ptsd0806.artaug06,0,2250078.story
Hartford Courant, 06 August 2007.
Aug. 6--Only about 3 percent of soldiers who have served in combat since 2003 have been diagnosed by the Army with post-traumatic stress disorder -- far fewer than the numbers who have screened positive for PTSD symptoms in recent Army studies, suggesting that the disorder is being under-reported and under-diagnosed.
New figures released to The Courant by the Army's Office of the Surgeon General show a total of 23,788 soldiers, most of them deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, who have been diagnosed by the military with PTSD in the past four years.
The number represents about 3.2 percent of the more than 745,000 soldiers who have been deployed. A recent Army study of soldiers serving in Iraq, based on anonymous surveys, found that 17 percent met the criteria for PTSD, while other military studies have estimated the prevalence of the disorder at 15 to 20 percent.
"We know it's being under-reported," acknowledged Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general. "That's true with any psychological symptom."
The Army figures do not account for all cases of PTSD among soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead represent only diagnoses made while soldiers were on active duty. Other diagnoses are made by the Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, after soldiers are discharged. But even the combined total of Army and VA diagnoses of PTSD -- about 76,000 to date -- represents only about 5 percent of the more than 1.5 million troops who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Ritchie attributed the relatively low numbers to the stigma surrounding mental health issues, which she said the Army has been working hard to combat. A new program, begun in mid-July, has the Army educating every commander and soldier about PTSD and traumatic brain injury through a mandatory training program aimed at increasing awareness and reporting.
"For PTSD and acute stress disorder, we think, and we're pretty sure about this, that soldiers are worried about being perceived as weak and don't want to have people in their unit find out," she said. The training program emphasizes the importance of "leaders taking care of their soldiers, buddy aides [caring for fellow soldiers] and soldiers recognizing the symptoms in themselves, with all of those knowing where to go for assistance," she said.
Veterans advocates say the military could be doing more to encourage reporting, including conducting thorough mental health screenings of all troops, before and after they deploy to war.
"What I think is needed is for everybody to get examined, so then you won't have the stigma," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. "If you want people to step forward, you have to normalize the process and also give [troops] anonymity."
Sullivan and other advocates also contend that PTSD is being under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed by some military and VA doctors in an effort to preserve troop strength and avoid costly disability claims -- charges the military has denied.
The Army figures show active-duty diagnoses of PTSD have nearly doubled in the last two years -- from 3,867 in the 2004 fiscal year, to 7,352 in the fiscal year that ended last September. In the first half of this year, 4,477 new cases were diagnosed.
Ritchie and other Army leaders have said the Army is making efforts to improve identification of combat stress in active-duty soldiers so it can be treated early. Mental health experts say the steady increase in diagnoses is partly due to the repeat deployments of troops, which increase the likelihood of soldiers developing PTSD or acute stress.
The VA has treated about 52,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans for PTSD, according to a new report by the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors. That figure represents about 7 percent of the more than 720,000 troops -- including Marines, sailors and airmen -- who have separated from the armed forces since returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.
The VA numbers do not include veterans who might seek mental health care from private doctors or other sources.
While the number of active-duty soldiers and veterans receiving PTSD diagnoses remains significantly lower than the 17-percent prevalence rate identified in the Army's recent Mental Health Advisory Team survey, both the VA and the Army have been struggling to provide services even to that limited pool of diagnosed troops. In recent weeks, the Presidential commission, Congress, a Pentagon mental health task force and veterans' groups have pushed the Defense Department and the VA to rapidly improve the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD.
The Army first acknowledged -- and pledged to combat -- the stigma around mental health problems more than three years ago, after a spike in suicides among troops serving in Iraq. Although the suicide rate in Iraq dropped in 2004, it climbed in 2005 and 2006.
The Army's new training program has senior leaders using a "chain-teaching" method to educate all commanders and soldiers, including those deployed to war, to recognize the symptoms of PTSD and traumatic brain injury and have the "courage and strength" to seek help. In late July, Ritchie and others presented the program, which includes videos and a detailed instructor's guide, to Army executive staff at the Pentagon. At the same time, senior leaders in Iraq have begun training their subordinates. The goal is for the training to be completed within 90 days.
"The idea of this is a chain-teach, so that the senior commander teaches the next level down, brigade commander teaches battalion commander, down to platoon sergeant," Ritchie said. "We want people to master the material. And if you're going to teach it, you need to know what it is." She said the material will be taught in small groups, with time set aside for questions and discussions. "What we don't want is 300 people in the darkened auditorium where everyone can go to sleep."
The training emphasizes that psychological reactions to combat stress, such as flashbacks, are normal, but that "for a few, these reactions last a long time and have severe effects on their lives and health." It stresses that leaders have an obligation to get help to soldiers who are struggling, and it reassures soldiers that seeking help is not a career ender.
PTSD is a disorder characterized by three main groups of symptoms: re-experiencing the trauma, in the form of flashbacks or nightmares; retreating from life or feeling detached; and hyper-vigilance. Left untreated, the disorder can fuel depression, suicide or substance abuse. Experts say treatment with psychiatric medications or specialized counseling can put the disorder into remission about 30 to 50 percent of the time.
Ritchie said her office does not have detailed data on how many soldiers diagnosed with PTSD remain on active duty, but she said that "the vast majority" do.
Although Department of Defense medical standards for enlistment into the armed forces disqualify recruits who have suffered from PTSD or acute stress reactions, military leaders have emphasized that PTSD is treatable, and are sending some soldiers diagnosed with the disorder back into combat. That practice has drawn criticism from mental health experts, members of Congress and veterans' advocates, who say re-exposure to trauma heightens the risk of serious mental health problems.
Their concerns were borne out in the recent Army study, which found that soldiers who had deployed to Iraq more than once were more likely to screen positive for PTSD symptoms -- 24 percent, compared with 15 percent who were on first deployments.
Despite the Army's efforts to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health, the recent Army survey found that a majority of soldiers serving in Iraq fear they will be perceived as weak if they seek mental health care.
Ritchie said the Army has briefed medical providers, counselors and chaplains to expect more reporting of combat stress, now that the chain-teaching about PTSD has started. She conceded that the new training could put an additional strain on the Army's mental health resources, already stretched thin. The ratio of behavioral health workers to troops serving in Iraq has dropped in the last two years, from one worker for every 387 deployed troops to one for 668, according to the Army study.
Ritchie said the Army hopes to hire 200 civilian mental-health workers to boost its resources on U.S. military bases in the coming months, but increasing the number of uniformed providers will be "a longer process."
Sullivan, the veterans' advocate, said he believes PTSD is being under-diagnosed by some military doctors, who have been encouraged to take a "watch and wait" approach before confirming the disorder.
He also said the VA should make it easier for veterans to file PTSD claims by creating a "presumption of service connection" for all those deployed to a war zone. Now, veterans who file PTSD disability claims must go through a cumbersome process that requires them to prove that the condition arose from a combat-related "stressor," he said.
Citation: Lisa Chedekel. "Most Stress Cases Missed," Hartford Courant, 06 August 2007.
Original URL: http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ptsd0806.artaug06,0,2250078.story
13 January 2008
Medical Teams Saving More Troops
By Rowan Scarborough.
The Washington Times, 05 January 2007.
The killed-in-action rate in the Iraq-Afghanistan wars is half what it was in World War II and a third less than Vietnam and Desert Storm, according to internal Pentagon documents that say battlefield medical teams are doing a better job of stabilizing the wounded and getting them to doctors. "
"We have better battlefield medicine," Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told The Washington Times yesterday. "We are reviving and resuscitating many, many more of our soldiers who would have died in previous conflicts.
The improvement may be little solace to the families of the American troops who have died or been seriously wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon, however, says it has put in place a first-rate system for saving life — and limb.
The briefing papers show the killed-in-action rate is 12.5 percent for the current wars compared with 25.3 percent for World War II and 18.6 percent for Vietnam/Desert Storm. Dr. Winkenwerder, a trained internist, said the rate is based on the number of combatants who died of wounds before reaching a treatment center. He said the standard has been the same for each war.
Dr. Winkenwerder ticked off a number of improvements. Medics now carry resuscitation gear. Each soldier and Marine, not just medics and Navy hospital corpsmen, are issued tourniquets to stop bleeding.
"We had anecdotal reports of service members who died, unfortunately, because there was no tourniquet available until the medic got there," he said.
Medical teams have also worked on arriving at the scene of injuries, in most cases caused by a roadside improvised explosive device (IED).
"It used to be the 'golden hour,'" he said. "Now we are trying to get down to the 'platinum 15' because what kills so many people is hemorrhage, massive hemorrhage."
New ways of treating the wounded emerged with the creation in 2003 of the Joint Theater Trauma System (JTTS). It involves a constant "lessons learned" data analysis designed to come up with better tactical medicine
Until JTTS, for example, doctors were sometimes missing football-type concussions that occur in troops impacted by an IED.
Dr. Winkenwerder said the "few thousand" medical personnel in Iraq is the smallest in recent wars because many wounded and diseased personnel are flown out of the country to hospitals in Germany and the U.S.
From January 2005 to November, the military evacuated nearly 15,000 troops — 23 percent for battle injuries, 21 percent for nonbattle injuries and 56 percent for diseases. During that same span, the military treated 80,448 patients in theater.
The briefing charts, which were compiled in December for presentation to retired military analysts, also credit new technologies, such as improved body armor, ballistic eyewear and hearing protection. It cites better-armored Humvee vehicles and better detection of IEDs, which are responsible for 80 percent of the Army's killed in action.
In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, the Pentagon failed to predict or prepare for the deadly insurgency that attacks military troops and civilians daily. Soldiers and Marines early on lacked armored Humvees that could blunt the force of IED blasts. The Army embarked on a crash program to produce armor kits for existing vehicles and to assemble armored Humvees from scratch.
The Pentagon also created a special unit, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, and gave it more than $2 billion to find technologies and tactics to find and defuse IEDs.
The internal Pentagon briefing comes as the U.S. military suffered 115 combat deaths in December, the most since November 2004 and the third deadliest month since the March 2003 invasion to oust Saddam Hussein. Total U.S. deaths yesterday stood at 3,005 for Iraq and 357 for Afghanistan.
The number of wounded has reached more than 23,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan. This includes 759 amputees: 497 who lost a leg, arm, hand or foot; and 262 who lost a finger, toe, or part of a hand or foot, the Pentagon says.
Citation: Rowan Scarborough. "Medical Teams Saving More Troops," The Washington Times, 05 January 2007.
Original URL: http://washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20070104-112335-1623r
The Washington Times, 05 January 2007.
The killed-in-action rate in the Iraq-Afghanistan wars is half what it was in World War II and a third less than Vietnam and Desert Storm, according to internal Pentagon documents that say battlefield medical teams are doing a better job of stabilizing the wounded and getting them to doctors. "
"We have better battlefield medicine," Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told The Washington Times yesterday. "We are reviving and resuscitating many, many more of our soldiers who would have died in previous conflicts.
The improvement may be little solace to the families of the American troops who have died or been seriously wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon, however, says it has put in place a first-rate system for saving life — and limb.
The briefing papers show the killed-in-action rate is 12.5 percent for the current wars compared with 25.3 percent for World War II and 18.6 percent for Vietnam/Desert Storm. Dr. Winkenwerder, a trained internist, said the rate is based on the number of combatants who died of wounds before reaching a treatment center. He said the standard has been the same for each war.
Dr. Winkenwerder ticked off a number of improvements. Medics now carry resuscitation gear. Each soldier and Marine, not just medics and Navy hospital corpsmen, are issued tourniquets to stop bleeding.
"We had anecdotal reports of service members who died, unfortunately, because there was no tourniquet available until the medic got there," he said.
Medical teams have also worked on arriving at the scene of injuries, in most cases caused by a roadside improvised explosive device (IED).
"It used to be the 'golden hour,'" he said. "Now we are trying to get down to the 'platinum 15' because what kills so many people is hemorrhage, massive hemorrhage."
New ways of treating the wounded emerged with the creation in 2003 of the Joint Theater Trauma System (JTTS). It involves a constant "lessons learned" data analysis designed to come up with better tactical medicine
Until JTTS, for example, doctors were sometimes missing football-type concussions that occur in troops impacted by an IED.
Dr. Winkenwerder said the "few thousand" medical personnel in Iraq is the smallest in recent wars because many wounded and diseased personnel are flown out of the country to hospitals in Germany and the U.S.
From January 2005 to November, the military evacuated nearly 15,000 troops — 23 percent for battle injuries, 21 percent for nonbattle injuries and 56 percent for diseases. During that same span, the military treated 80,448 patients in theater.
The briefing charts, which were compiled in December for presentation to retired military analysts, also credit new technologies, such as improved body armor, ballistic eyewear and hearing protection. It cites better-armored Humvee vehicles and better detection of IEDs, which are responsible for 80 percent of the Army's killed in action.
In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, the Pentagon failed to predict or prepare for the deadly insurgency that attacks military troops and civilians daily. Soldiers and Marines early on lacked armored Humvees that could blunt the force of IED blasts. The Army embarked on a crash program to produce armor kits for existing vehicles and to assemble armored Humvees from scratch.
The Pentagon also created a special unit, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, and gave it more than $2 billion to find technologies and tactics to find and defuse IEDs.
The internal Pentagon briefing comes as the U.S. military suffered 115 combat deaths in December, the most since November 2004 and the third deadliest month since the March 2003 invasion to oust Saddam Hussein. Total U.S. deaths yesterday stood at 3,005 for Iraq and 357 for Afghanistan.
The number of wounded has reached more than 23,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan. This includes 759 amputees: 497 who lost a leg, arm, hand or foot; and 262 who lost a finger, toe, or part of a hand or foot, the Pentagon says.
Citation: Rowan Scarborough. "Medical Teams Saving More Troops," The Washington Times, 05 January 2007.
Original URL: http://washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20070104-112335-1623r
U.S. Pours Money Into Roadside Bomb Fight
By Charles J. Hanley
The Associated Press, 14 March 2006.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The United States is pouring billions more dollars and
fresh platoons of experts into its campaign to "defeat IEDs," the roadside
bombs President Bush describes as threat No. 1 to Iraq's future.
The American military even plans to build special, more defensible highways
here, in its frustrating standoff with the makeshift munitions - "improvised
explosive devices" - that Iraqi insurgents field by the hundreds to hobble
U.S. road movements in the 3-year-old conflict.
Out on those risky roads, and back at the Pentagon, few believe that even
the most advanced technology will eliminate the threat.
"As we've improved our armor, the enemy's improved his IEDs. They're bigger,
and with better detonating mechanisms," said Maj. Randall Simmons, whose
Georgia National Guard unit escorts convoys in western Iraq that are
regularly rocked, damaged and delayed by roadside blasts.
Lt. Col. Bill Adamson, operations chief for the anti-IED campaign, was
realistic about the challenge in a Pentagon interview. "They adapt more
quickly than we procure technology," he said of the insurgents.
Casualty charts show a growing problem.
Better armor and tactics lowered the casualty rate per IED attack last year.
But attacks almost doubled from 2004, to 10,593, meaning the U.S. death toll
from IEDs still rose. Since mid-2005, an average of about 40 Americans a
month have been killed by improvised explosives, twice the rate of the
previous 12 months, according to icasualties.org, an independent Web site
that tracks casualties in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the overall U.S. death rate held steady from 2004 to 2005, making
IED fatalities comparatively more significant. Last month, for example, 36
of 55 American military personnel killed in Iraq were IED victims.
The bomb makers have the White House's attention. In a radio address on
Saturday, Bush said roadside bombs "are now the principal threat to our
troops and to the future of a free Iraq."
Bush said in a speech Monday that Iran had supplied IED components to Iraqi
groups, but U.S. officials have presented no evidence to support that, nor
did Bush explain why Shiite Muslim Iran would aid Iraq's Sunni-dominated
insurgency.
For their IEDs, Iraqi insurgents, who are believed under the direction of
former military and intelligence officers, rely on the tons of military
ordnance left over from the era of Saddam Hussein, and on store-bought
electronic and other items for ignition systems.
The Pentagon's upgraded Joint IED Defeat Organization is getting a sharply
increased $3.3 billion this year to foil the often rudimentary weapons,
which the Iraqi resistance generally fashions from artillery and mortar
rounds. The "JIEDDO" staff of explosives experts and others will almost
triple, to 365.
>From 2004 to 2006, some $6.1 billion will have been spent on the U.S.
effort - comparable, in equivalent dollars, to the cost of the Manhattan
Project installation that produced plutonium for World War II's atom bombs.
The investment has paid dividends in Iraq: in "jammers" installed on
hundreds of U.S. vehicles to block radio detonation signals; in massively
armored Buffalo vehicles whose mechanical arms disable roadside bombs.
Forty-five percent of emplaced bombs are cleared before detonation, the U.S.
command says.
In one initiative showing how seriously it takes the threat, the Defense
Department proposes spending $167 million to build new supply roads in Iraq
that bypass urban centers where convoys are exposed to IEDs.
But experts like the Air Force's Bob Sisk, an explosives-disposal specialist
whose teams are daily disarming IEDs north of Baghdad, said the most
important investment is in intelligence.
"The idea is to get the pieces of an IED to `Sexy,'" said this senior master
sergeant.
"Sexy" is CEXC, the Counter Explosive Exploitation Cell, a secretive group
at Baghdad's Camp Victory that is building a database on IED incidents, in
search of patterns and defenses.
"The initiation system" - detonators - "is always of interest," Sisk said.
The bomb makers have progressed from using washing-machine timers and
pressure switches for initiating explosions, to cell phone and walkie-talkie
signals, and even infrared beams.
The IED analysts are vitally interested in placement-concealment tactics.
The bombs can be found in roadside garbage bags or sandbags, in piles of
rocks, buried in holes, in sheep or dog carcasses. One was recently
discovered disguised as concrete street-side curbing.
Hoaxes are a peril. "The enemy's very smart," said Capt. Peter Weld, Sisk's
commander. "They plant a harmless device that soldiers find and gather
around, and then they hit them with a real device nearby."
"Shaped charges" are also proliferating - killer explosives that direct
armor-piercing projectiles into U.S. vehicles.
The Pentagon's Adamson said new ways to neutralize IEDs on the ground are
critically important. But "we'll never keep up with the enemy's agility,"
and the top priority must be "taking down the human component - the
financiers, the suppliers, the bomb makers."
For that, he said, "our goal is to get better technical and forensic data
off the ordnance" - from digital photos, measurements, explosive residue,
fingerprints, debriefings of troops on the scene.
The U.S. command claims significant success, saying it has captured or
killed 41 bomb makers since November. But soldiers still face the bombs at
seemingly the same rate.
The Georgia National Guard's Sgt. Robert Lewis couldn't help being impressed
while on duty in central Iraq.
"There's a road we called IED Alley that the ordnance disposal guys would
clear regularly," Lewis, 47, of Carrollton, Ga., said at his current post in
western Iraq. "But no sooner would they reach the end of that stretch" -
eight miles - "than the insurgents would be planting IEDs again at the
beginning."
Citation: Charles J. Hanley. "U.S. Pours Money Into Roadside Bomb Fight," The Associated Press, 14 March 2006.
Original URL: http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=1722625
The Associated Press, 14 March 2006.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The United States is pouring billions more dollars and
fresh platoons of experts into its campaign to "defeat IEDs," the roadside
bombs President Bush describes as threat No. 1 to Iraq's future.
The American military even plans to build special, more defensible highways
here, in its frustrating standoff with the makeshift munitions - "improvised
explosive devices" - that Iraqi insurgents field by the hundreds to hobble
U.S. road movements in the 3-year-old conflict.
Out on those risky roads, and back at the Pentagon, few believe that even
the most advanced technology will eliminate the threat.
"As we've improved our armor, the enemy's improved his IEDs. They're bigger,
and with better detonating mechanisms," said Maj. Randall Simmons, whose
Georgia National Guard unit escorts convoys in western Iraq that are
regularly rocked, damaged and delayed by roadside blasts.
Lt. Col. Bill Adamson, operations chief for the anti-IED campaign, was
realistic about the challenge in a Pentagon interview. "They adapt more
quickly than we procure technology," he said of the insurgents.
Casualty charts show a growing problem.
Better armor and tactics lowered the casualty rate per IED attack last year.
But attacks almost doubled from 2004, to 10,593, meaning the U.S. death toll
from IEDs still rose. Since mid-2005, an average of about 40 Americans a
month have been killed by improvised explosives, twice the rate of the
previous 12 months, according to icasualties.org, an independent Web site
that tracks casualties in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the overall U.S. death rate held steady from 2004 to 2005, making
IED fatalities comparatively more significant. Last month, for example, 36
of 55 American military personnel killed in Iraq were IED victims.
The bomb makers have the White House's attention. In a radio address on
Saturday, Bush said roadside bombs "are now the principal threat to our
troops and to the future of a free Iraq."
Bush said in a speech Monday that Iran had supplied IED components to Iraqi
groups, but U.S. officials have presented no evidence to support that, nor
did Bush explain why Shiite Muslim Iran would aid Iraq's Sunni-dominated
insurgency.
For their IEDs, Iraqi insurgents, who are believed under the direction of
former military and intelligence officers, rely on the tons of military
ordnance left over from the era of Saddam Hussein, and on store-bought
electronic and other items for ignition systems.
The Pentagon's upgraded Joint IED Defeat Organization is getting a sharply
increased $3.3 billion this year to foil the often rudimentary weapons,
which the Iraqi resistance generally fashions from artillery and mortar
rounds. The "JIEDDO" staff of explosives experts and others will almost
triple, to 365.
>From 2004 to 2006, some $6.1 billion will have been spent on the U.S.
effort - comparable, in equivalent dollars, to the cost of the Manhattan
Project installation that produced plutonium for World War II's atom bombs.
The investment has paid dividends in Iraq: in "jammers" installed on
hundreds of U.S. vehicles to block radio detonation signals; in massively
armored Buffalo vehicles whose mechanical arms disable roadside bombs.
Forty-five percent of emplaced bombs are cleared before detonation, the U.S.
command says.
In one initiative showing how seriously it takes the threat, the Defense
Department proposes spending $167 million to build new supply roads in Iraq
that bypass urban centers where convoys are exposed to IEDs.
But experts like the Air Force's Bob Sisk, an explosives-disposal specialist
whose teams are daily disarming IEDs north of Baghdad, said the most
important investment is in intelligence.
"The idea is to get the pieces of an IED to `Sexy,'" said this senior master
sergeant.
"Sexy" is CEXC, the Counter Explosive Exploitation Cell, a secretive group
at Baghdad's Camp Victory that is building a database on IED incidents, in
search of patterns and defenses.
"The initiation system" - detonators - "is always of interest," Sisk said.
The bomb makers have progressed from using washing-machine timers and
pressure switches for initiating explosions, to cell phone and walkie-talkie
signals, and even infrared beams.
The IED analysts are vitally interested in placement-concealment tactics.
The bombs can be found in roadside garbage bags or sandbags, in piles of
rocks, buried in holes, in sheep or dog carcasses. One was recently
discovered disguised as concrete street-side curbing.
Hoaxes are a peril. "The enemy's very smart," said Capt. Peter Weld, Sisk's
commander. "They plant a harmless device that soldiers find and gather
around, and then they hit them with a real device nearby."
"Shaped charges" are also proliferating - killer explosives that direct
armor-piercing projectiles into U.S. vehicles.
The Pentagon's Adamson said new ways to neutralize IEDs on the ground are
critically important. But "we'll never keep up with the enemy's agility,"
and the top priority must be "taking down the human component - the
financiers, the suppliers, the bomb makers."
For that, he said, "our goal is to get better technical and forensic data
off the ordnance" - from digital photos, measurements, explosive residue,
fingerprints, debriefings of troops on the scene.
The U.S. command claims significant success, saying it has captured or
killed 41 bomb makers since November. But soldiers still face the bombs at
seemingly the same rate.
The Georgia National Guard's Sgt. Robert Lewis couldn't help being impressed
while on duty in central Iraq.
"There's a road we called IED Alley that the ordnance disposal guys would
clear regularly," Lewis, 47, of Carrollton, Ga., said at his current post in
western Iraq. "But no sooner would they reach the end of that stretch" -
eight miles - "than the insurgents would be planting IEDs again at the
beginning."
Citation: Charles J. Hanley. "U.S. Pours Money Into Roadside Bomb Fight," The Associated Press, 14 March 2006.
Original URL: http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=1722625
Army colonel draws fire for stress study
By Alison Young
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 03 September 2007
Columbus — As a combat surgeon in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Gonzalez earned a Bronze Star and Army accolades for his self-sacrifice.
Now Gonzalez is fighting to save his military career, accused of discrediting his uniform as leader of a scientific study at Fort Benning.
The Army has halted the study, which was examining the debilitating impact of stress on recruits, and ordered results kept secret.
Gonzalez was demoted and is under investigation for arranging a researcher's no-bid contract and conducting an unapproved study. The Army is also looking into possible violations of consent and medical privacy procedures.
But Army documents show the research board that first approved the study — and is now investigating Gonzalez's team — shares blame for miscommunications and mistakes.
The board did not explain study requirements or properly supervise Gonzalez, a first-time researcher, an Army audit found. Nor did it forward his proposal for a required command-level review. The board even lost track of what study plan it had approved.
Shutting down the study may have violated soldiers' trust in more fundamental ways. Each of the 330 recruits volunteered on the promise that the project might save others from physical and mental injuries. They spent hours sharing intimate details about the most stressful events of their lives.
In the wake of the investigations, without Gonzalez's knowledge, the Army removed the recruits' private files so it could turn his locked study office into an employee break room.
While Gonzalez later found paper files in a "disheveled" state, the Army wouldn't tell him where the study's computer was, records show.
The incident has raised serious questions among researchers about whether intensely private details — such as recruits' accounts of childhood abuse and molestation — have been disclosed.
Several Army commanders, citing ongoing investigations, declined requests for interviews. An Army spokeswoman said the files and computer are secure.
While blame is heaped upon Gonzalez, others are avoiding responsibility, a researcher said.
"We're the fall guys," said Roger Bannon, a retired Army major and Gonzalez's study manager until he was fired in July.
"The easiest thing for them to do," Bannon said, "is to pick the weakest target at the lowest level and that's Colonel Gonzalez and me."
Proposal impressed CDC
Many thought the study held great promise when Gonzalez pitched it. The idea drew support from top scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and won $250,000 in an Army research competition.
"Dr. Gonzalez' study is one of the best organized that I have been privileged to collaborate on," the CDC's Dr. William Reeves wrote this summer to Gonzalez's commanders.
In Afghanistan, Gonzalez had seen constant fatigue among soldiers. He saw the same fatigue among recruits when he returned to Fort Benning, he said last fall in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution interview.
"I wanted to look at soldiers from the beginning, wondering about stress-related problems," he said. Gonzalez wondered whether he could predict which soldiers would break down from injuries, fatigue or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Up to 15 percent of recruits don't complete basic training, a problem as the Army struggles with enlistment goals. And veterans are grappling with high rates of PTSD.
Gonzalez's commander named Bannon as his study manager, even though Bannon also had no research experience. Reeves and his CDC team joined the project after the researchers came across his work on the role stress plays in chronic fatigue and Gulf War syndrome. CDC declined interview requests.
All seemed well after the study began last September. But an Oct. 16 feature article in the Army Times sparked a cascade of questions from the Army's surgeon general and others who had been unaware of the project, e-mails show.
It turned out the Army had never fully approved the study. An Army institutional review board in Augusta had signed off on the proposal but failed to forward it for a required higher-level approval, records show. Institutional review boards scrutinize plans for a study to ensure rules are followed and research subjects are protected.
IRB approval is usually all that's required in the civilian world. The Army requires a second approval to protect soldiers from being coerced into research. The study later got that second approval, but researchers hit a new snag in May. An Army research expert discovered Gonzalez's team had taken blood samples before recruits signed consent forms. Fort Benning, as part of a mandatory intake process, already takes blood from every recruit. The researchers had them collect a little extra for their study.
Researchers only analyzed the blood if a soldier later signed a consent form. But the adviser said consent must be obtained before blood is taken. In the civilian world, this is not a major breach because the blood was not tested without consent, bioethicists said. "It doesn't constitute research at that point," said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.
The IRB and the higher-level review office hadn't caught the problem because the researchers said consent would be obtained prior to any study procedures, Army officials said in a statement.
Richard Topolski, an Augusta State University professor and member of the research team, said in hindsight the study's protocol was not clear. But there was no intent to mislead, said Topolski. Researchers wanted to eliminate the minor risk of a second needle-stick, he said.
Contract scrutinized
Still, e-mails show the second phase of the study involving 1,200 recruits seemed to be on track for a June 20 launch, when the commander of Fort Benning's hospital abruptly halted the project May 30.
Col. Margaret Rivera ordered Gonzalez and Bannon to report on their preliminary findings and provide a financial audit and a copy of Bannon's contract. Bannon retired May 1 from the Army but continued work under a $72,000 contract.
With no experience with contracting, Bannon said he and Gonzalez relied heavily on Fort Benning procurement officials who told them it would be OK to give a sole-source contract to a Virginia firm that then hired Bannon.
"If they told me I wasn't allowed to do this, then I never would have done that," said Bannon, an occupational therapist. But Rivera's staff concluded the researchers began the study without proper approval and had made misleading statements to get Bannon's contract.
The Army canceled the contract and is considering legal action against Bannon. Gonzalez, once the hospital's chief of warrior care and chief of orthopedics, was demoted to staff doctor. Fort Benning's commander, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, on July 26 reprimanded Gonzalez, saying his actions "demonstrate a complete lack of judgment and bring discredit upon you, your unit, and the United States Army."
Gonzalez, who was touted by Army publicists in 2004 for volunteering for an extra year in Afghanistan, is close to qualifying for military retirement benefits. He sold his private surgery practice and converted from a National Guard officer to active duty Army while in Afghanistan. Bannon said he fears the Army is laying the groundwork to discharge Gonzalez and leave him with nothing.
Christopher Yukins, a government contract law expert at George Washington University, said departing government employees are supposed to be briefed on rules for future employment. And he said prudent contractors will often ask an incoming employee for an ethics letter from the government saying a contract job is OK.
Neither happened, Bannon said.
Data remain unpublished
While Bannon and Gonzalez admit mistakes, an audit by the Army's Clinical Investigation Regulatory Office in July also blamed the IRB for not monitoring the study properly.
The audit also called for the Fort Benning data to be analyzed and put to use if it will help soldiers. But the IRB continues to tell the researchers they may not publish the data.
It's put CDC's scientists in a bind: They have a manuscript they want to send to a journal and still want to continue the research.
Army officials would not say whether disciplinary action was taken against the IRB or its chairman, Lt. Col. Joseph Wood.
"Any communication and procedural problems from the IRB have been recognized and are corrected," the Army said.
Since June, Bannon has asked the Defense Department's inspector general, the Government Accountability Office and U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) for an independent investigation.
So far, he said, nobody's taken up the probe.
Citation: Alison Young. "Army colonel draws fire for stress study," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 03 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/09/02/recruitstudy_0903.html
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 03 September 2007
Columbus — As a combat surgeon in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Gonzalez earned a Bronze Star and Army accolades for his self-sacrifice.
Now Gonzalez is fighting to save his military career, accused of discrediting his uniform as leader of a scientific study at Fort Benning.
The Army has halted the study, which was examining the debilitating impact of stress on recruits, and ordered results kept secret.
Gonzalez was demoted and is under investigation for arranging a researcher's no-bid contract and conducting an unapproved study. The Army is also looking into possible violations of consent and medical privacy procedures.
But Army documents show the research board that first approved the study — and is now investigating Gonzalez's team — shares blame for miscommunications and mistakes.
The board did not explain study requirements or properly supervise Gonzalez, a first-time researcher, an Army audit found. Nor did it forward his proposal for a required command-level review. The board even lost track of what study plan it had approved.
Shutting down the study may have violated soldiers' trust in more fundamental ways. Each of the 330 recruits volunteered on the promise that the project might save others from physical and mental injuries. They spent hours sharing intimate details about the most stressful events of their lives.
In the wake of the investigations, without Gonzalez's knowledge, the Army removed the recruits' private files so it could turn his locked study office into an employee break room.
While Gonzalez later found paper files in a "disheveled" state, the Army wouldn't tell him where the study's computer was, records show.
The incident has raised serious questions among researchers about whether intensely private details — such as recruits' accounts of childhood abuse and molestation — have been disclosed.
Several Army commanders, citing ongoing investigations, declined requests for interviews. An Army spokeswoman said the files and computer are secure.
While blame is heaped upon Gonzalez, others are avoiding responsibility, a researcher said.
"We're the fall guys," said Roger Bannon, a retired Army major and Gonzalez's study manager until he was fired in July.
"The easiest thing for them to do," Bannon said, "is to pick the weakest target at the lowest level and that's Colonel Gonzalez and me."
Proposal impressed CDC
Many thought the study held great promise when Gonzalez pitched it. The idea drew support from top scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and won $250,000 in an Army research competition.
"Dr. Gonzalez' study is one of the best organized that I have been privileged to collaborate on," the CDC's Dr. William Reeves wrote this summer to Gonzalez's commanders.
In Afghanistan, Gonzalez had seen constant fatigue among soldiers. He saw the same fatigue among recruits when he returned to Fort Benning, he said last fall in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution interview.
"I wanted to look at soldiers from the beginning, wondering about stress-related problems," he said. Gonzalez wondered whether he could predict which soldiers would break down from injuries, fatigue or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Up to 15 percent of recruits don't complete basic training, a problem as the Army struggles with enlistment goals. And veterans are grappling with high rates of PTSD.
Gonzalez's commander named Bannon as his study manager, even though Bannon also had no research experience. Reeves and his CDC team joined the project after the researchers came across his work on the role stress plays in chronic fatigue and Gulf War syndrome. CDC declined interview requests.
All seemed well after the study began last September. But an Oct. 16 feature article in the Army Times sparked a cascade of questions from the Army's surgeon general and others who had been unaware of the project, e-mails show.
It turned out the Army had never fully approved the study. An Army institutional review board in Augusta had signed off on the proposal but failed to forward it for a required higher-level approval, records show. Institutional review boards scrutinize plans for a study to ensure rules are followed and research subjects are protected.
IRB approval is usually all that's required in the civilian world. The Army requires a second approval to protect soldiers from being coerced into research. The study later got that second approval, but researchers hit a new snag in May. An Army research expert discovered Gonzalez's team had taken blood samples before recruits signed consent forms. Fort Benning, as part of a mandatory intake process, already takes blood from every recruit. The researchers had them collect a little extra for their study.
Researchers only analyzed the blood if a soldier later signed a consent form. But the adviser said consent must be obtained before blood is taken. In the civilian world, this is not a major breach because the blood was not tested without consent, bioethicists said. "It doesn't constitute research at that point," said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.
The IRB and the higher-level review office hadn't caught the problem because the researchers said consent would be obtained prior to any study procedures, Army officials said in a statement.
Richard Topolski, an Augusta State University professor and member of the research team, said in hindsight the study's protocol was not clear. But there was no intent to mislead, said Topolski. Researchers wanted to eliminate the minor risk of a second needle-stick, he said.
Contract scrutinized
Still, e-mails show the second phase of the study involving 1,200 recruits seemed to be on track for a June 20 launch, when the commander of Fort Benning's hospital abruptly halted the project May 30.
Col. Margaret Rivera ordered Gonzalez and Bannon to report on their preliminary findings and provide a financial audit and a copy of Bannon's contract. Bannon retired May 1 from the Army but continued work under a $72,000 contract.
With no experience with contracting, Bannon said he and Gonzalez relied heavily on Fort Benning procurement officials who told them it would be OK to give a sole-source contract to a Virginia firm that then hired Bannon.
"If they told me I wasn't allowed to do this, then I never would have done that," said Bannon, an occupational therapist. But Rivera's staff concluded the researchers began the study without proper approval and had made misleading statements to get Bannon's contract.
The Army canceled the contract and is considering legal action against Bannon. Gonzalez, once the hospital's chief of warrior care and chief of orthopedics, was demoted to staff doctor. Fort Benning's commander, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, on July 26 reprimanded Gonzalez, saying his actions "demonstrate a complete lack of judgment and bring discredit upon you, your unit, and the United States Army."
Gonzalez, who was touted by Army publicists in 2004 for volunteering for an extra year in Afghanistan, is close to qualifying for military retirement benefits. He sold his private surgery practice and converted from a National Guard officer to active duty Army while in Afghanistan. Bannon said he fears the Army is laying the groundwork to discharge Gonzalez and leave him with nothing.
Christopher Yukins, a government contract law expert at George Washington University, said departing government employees are supposed to be briefed on rules for future employment. And he said prudent contractors will often ask an incoming employee for an ethics letter from the government saying a contract job is OK.
Neither happened, Bannon said.
Data remain unpublished
While Bannon and Gonzalez admit mistakes, an audit by the Army's Clinical Investigation Regulatory Office in July also blamed the IRB for not monitoring the study properly.
The audit also called for the Fort Benning data to be analyzed and put to use if it will help soldiers. But the IRB continues to tell the researchers they may not publish the data.
It's put CDC's scientists in a bind: They have a manuscript they want to send to a journal and still want to continue the research.
Army officials would not say whether disciplinary action was taken against the IRB or its chairman, Lt. Col. Joseph Wood.
"Any communication and procedural problems from the IRB have been recognized and are corrected," the Army said.
Since June, Bannon has asked the Defense Department's inspector general, the Government Accountability Office and U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) for an independent investigation.
So far, he said, nobody's taken up the probe.
Citation: Alison Young. "Army colonel draws fire for stress study," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 03 September 2007.
Original URL: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/09/02/recruitstudy_0903.html
09 January 2008
International Community Supporting Iraq
By Constant Brand
The Associated Press, 22 June 2005.
BRUSSELS, Belgium - Top Iraqi officials laid out their plans for reform Wednesday, urging their neighbors and other nations to provide expertise and aid as they work to secure order, rejuvenate the economy and draft a new constitution.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and other members of his transitional government presented their plans at a one-day international conference on Iraqi reconstruction that brought together more than 80 senior officials from the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and other countries.
"What we need from you is exactly what your people need from you: The children of Iraq are just like yours — they don't want to lose their fathers and turn to orphans," al-Jaafari said. "The women of Iraq are just like yours — they don't want to lose their husbands, to turn to widowers."
The conference, co-hosted by the EU and Washington, was called to bolster international backing for the return of Iraq to the international community, said Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn.
"The challenges are numerous," said Asselborn, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. "We are here to show to Iraq, to the Iraqi people, that we are on their side in this difficult period of transition."
In return, Iraq must improve security, develop its economy and "open political space for all members of Iraqi society who reject violence," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.
International leaders have urged Iraq's new Shiite-led government to include Sunni Muslims in the political process, a move seen as key to curbing the deadly insurgency.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said a lot of work lies ahead of December elections to choose a full-term government. Iraq does not underestimate "the very real challenges" it faces, from continuing attacks from insurgents to finding agreement among Iraq's many ethnic groups on a constitution, he said.
"We want a stable, constitutionally elected government, established through democratic processes," Zebari said.
He set out four top priorities: drafting a constitution and holding elections on time, securing the stability of the country, rebuilding the economy and healing ties with neighbors.
To carry out those tasks, Zebari asked for help training Iraq's military and for its neighbors to take serious action in controlling their borders to prevent insurgents from infiltrating into Iraq.
Zebari also said Iraqis would ask their neighbors to restore diplomatic relations with Baghdad that were suspended under Saddam Hussein's rule. He announced Wednesday that Egypt is the first Arab nation to send an ambassador to Iraq.
Farouq al-Sharaa, foreign minister of Syria, said his nation was ready "to fully cooperate" with the Iraqi government to stop insurgents — but he accused the United States of getting in the way.
The "party that does not enable Syria to succeed in a better way to secure its border with Iraq is the same party that throws the strongest criticism at Syria and prevents Syria from attaining the equipment necessary to protect its long borders," he said.
Al-Sharaa also called for a "timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq ... that will contribute to calming down the Iraqi people fears."
In a draft declaration, participants "expressed support for Iraqi efforts to achieve a democratic, pluralist, federal and unified Iraq, reflecting the will of the Iraqi people, in which there is full respect for political and human rights."
The declaration also will call for "all Iraqis to participate in the political process," especially in writing the new constitution, according to the draft seen by The Associated Press.
They called on Iraq and its neighbors to work together to prevent cross-border transit, and to strengthen relations.
Participants also committed to carrying through on some $32 billion in pledges made at a donors' conference last year and reiterated commitments "to provide debt relief on generous terms."
The gathering also gives Europe, the United States and other nations the chance to move past divisions on Iraq.
"This is a very important day for Iraq. It is replete with symbolism because what it emphasizes ... that the international community, having been deeply divided during the course and before the military action, has now come together actively to support the building of a democratic, peaceful and prosperous Iraq," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
Outside the gathering, about 100 Iraqi Shiites demonstrated in support of the Shiite-led government.
The protesters chanted slogans in favor of al-Jaafari and waved pictures of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, and slain Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim.
Citation: Constant Brand. "International Community Supporting Iraq," The Associated Press, 22 June 2005.
Original URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5091060,00.html
The Associated Press, 22 June 2005.
BRUSSELS, Belgium - Top Iraqi officials laid out their plans for reform Wednesday, urging their neighbors and other nations to provide expertise and aid as they work to secure order, rejuvenate the economy and draft a new constitution.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and other members of his transitional government presented their plans at a one-day international conference on Iraqi reconstruction that brought together more than 80 senior officials from the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and other countries.
"What we need from you is exactly what your people need from you: The children of Iraq are just like yours — they don't want to lose their fathers and turn to orphans," al-Jaafari said. "The women of Iraq are just like yours — they don't want to lose their husbands, to turn to widowers."
The conference, co-hosted by the EU and Washington, was called to bolster international backing for the return of Iraq to the international community, said Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn.
"The challenges are numerous," said Asselborn, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. "We are here to show to Iraq, to the Iraqi people, that we are on their side in this difficult period of transition."
In return, Iraq must improve security, develop its economy and "open political space for all members of Iraqi society who reject violence," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.
International leaders have urged Iraq's new Shiite-led government to include Sunni Muslims in the political process, a move seen as key to curbing the deadly insurgency.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said a lot of work lies ahead of December elections to choose a full-term government. Iraq does not underestimate "the very real challenges" it faces, from continuing attacks from insurgents to finding agreement among Iraq's many ethnic groups on a constitution, he said.
"We want a stable, constitutionally elected government, established through democratic processes," Zebari said.
He set out four top priorities: drafting a constitution and holding elections on time, securing the stability of the country, rebuilding the economy and healing ties with neighbors.
To carry out those tasks, Zebari asked for help training Iraq's military and for its neighbors to take serious action in controlling their borders to prevent insurgents from infiltrating into Iraq.
Zebari also said Iraqis would ask their neighbors to restore diplomatic relations with Baghdad that were suspended under Saddam Hussein's rule. He announced Wednesday that Egypt is the first Arab nation to send an ambassador to Iraq.
Farouq al-Sharaa, foreign minister of Syria, said his nation was ready "to fully cooperate" with the Iraqi government to stop insurgents — but he accused the United States of getting in the way.
The "party that does not enable Syria to succeed in a better way to secure its border with Iraq is the same party that throws the strongest criticism at Syria and prevents Syria from attaining the equipment necessary to protect its long borders," he said.
Al-Sharaa also called for a "timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq ... that will contribute to calming down the Iraqi people fears."
In a draft declaration, participants "expressed support for Iraqi efforts to achieve a democratic, pluralist, federal and unified Iraq, reflecting the will of the Iraqi people, in which there is full respect for political and human rights."
The declaration also will call for "all Iraqis to participate in the political process," especially in writing the new constitution, according to the draft seen by The Associated Press.
They called on Iraq and its neighbors to work together to prevent cross-border transit, and to strengthen relations.
Participants also committed to carrying through on some $32 billion in pledges made at a donors' conference last year and reiterated commitments "to provide debt relief on generous terms."
The gathering also gives Europe, the United States and other nations the chance to move past divisions on Iraq.
"This is a very important day for Iraq. It is replete with symbolism because what it emphasizes ... that the international community, having been deeply divided during the course and before the military action, has now come together actively to support the building of a democratic, peaceful and prosperous Iraq," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
Outside the gathering, about 100 Iraqi Shiites demonstrated in support of the Shiite-led government.
The protesters chanted slogans in favor of al-Jaafari and waved pictures of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, and slain Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim.
Citation: Constant Brand. "International Community Supporting Iraq," The Associated Press, 22 June 2005.
Original URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5091060,00.html