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News archives for the week ending 2nd July 2010

Afghanistan minister rejects corruption allegations

Afghanistan's finance minister has rejected US allegations that government corruption is to blame for the loss of billions of dollars in aid money.

Omar Zakhilwal said foreign contractors were to blame for taking the bulk of $4bn (£2.6bn) that has reportedly left the country in recent years. He said his government had little control over foreign aid money.

US lawmakers voted on Wednesday to cut almost $4bn (£2.6bn) in aid to the government of Afghanistan.

The vote followed a report in the Wall Street Journal claiming that US investigators believed "Afghan officials and their associates were sending billions of diverted US aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad".

BBC News, 1/7/10

Muddle over Afghanistan policy

David Cameron has been accused of presiding over a confused Afghanistan policy with demands at Westminster for clarity about when UK troops might be in a position to come home.

The criticism and calls were made after William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, suggested Afghan forces would be able to take control of their country’s security by 2014.

This followed remarks from the Prime Minister, who said at the weekend that he hoped to bring UK forces home by the time of the next General Election, which is planned for 2015.

In between the two statements, Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, struck a different tone, warning against any premature withdrawal. He argued such a move could jeopardise national security and would be a betrayal of those who had died fighting the Taliban.

Yesterday, Hague insisted there was no contradiction in UK Government policy on Afghanistan. He said: “We are committed to the Afghans being able to conduct their military operations and security and that takes time but I would be very surprised if that took longer than 2014.”

The Herald, Scotland, 2/7/10

Hague outlines UK foreign policy

New British foreign secretary William Hague Thursday outlined the future direction of the country's foreign policy in a keynote speech delivered in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Hague said foreign policy would change both direction and how it was carried out in response to a world which would change sharply over the coming 40 years. Hague did not outline a fundamental change in the foundations of British foreign policy, which are certain to remain rooted in NATO, the European Union and the 'special relationship' with the United States.

But Hague's plan included new directions. Hague said, "Put simply, the world has changed and if we do not change with it Britain's role is set to decline with all that that means for our influence in world affairs, our national security and our economy. "

Hague said that "as a first priority" Britain should bolster its links with emerging economies such as China, Brazil, and India, and also with "increasingly significant economies" such as Indonesia and Turkey, and he stressed the government's desire to build stronger ties with emerging nations in southeast Asia, Latin America, the Gulf and Africa.

He said that the U.S. bilateral relation would remain "our most important relationship."

Xinhua, China, 2/7/10

Official: Blair new Iraq war was illegal

Tony Blair was warned by his government's chief law officer that an invasion of Iraq would be illegal the day before he privately assured President George Bush he would support US-led military action, documents released today by the Chilcot inquiry reveal.

They provide an unprecedented insight into how Lord Goldsmith, then the attorney general, repeatedly warned the prime minister of the potential consequences of invading Iraq without fresh UN authority – much to Blair's irritation.

The following day, 31 January 2003, Blair flew to Washington for a meeting with Bush. Manning records the president – in a minute previously disclosed – telling Blair that military action would be taken with or without a second security council resolution and the bombing would begin in mid-March 2003.

The note records Blair's reaction: "The prime minister said he was solidly with the president."

Guardian, 1/7/10

Blair rewarded for loyalty to USA

Tony Blair is to be awarded a £100,000 Liberty medal by the National Constitutional Center based in Washington for his role in "bringing liberty to people around the world".

The award is the latest of many handed to the former prime minister, above, by Americans. His earnings since leaving Downing Street are thought to have reached £20m, and he can earn up to $250,000 for a 90-minute speech.

Guardian, 1/7/10

UK to one of last out of Afghanistan

Defence Secretary Liam Fox says British troops may be among the last to leave Afghanistan and "strategic patience" is required.

In a BBC interview, Mr Fox said the bottom line was that "the likelihood is that it [Helmand] will be one of the last parts to transition over to Afghan charge".

"The mission in Helmand is one of the most difficult ones and I imagine one of the last places they will be able to transition from," he added.

In a speech in Washington, he said that it is important for people to keep their nerve about the mission. To leave before the job was done would send a message to the enemy, he said.

"It would send the signal that we did not have the moral resolve and political fortitude to see through what we ourselves have described as a national security imperative."

BBC News, 30/6/10

Deadliest month yet for NATO in Afghan war

More than 100 foreign troops fighting in Afghanistan have already died in June, making it the deadliest month to date in the nine-year war, according to independent monitor icasualties.org. Sources differ on the whether the increase in deaths is because of new Taliban techniques or recent military offensives in militant strongholds.

The high death count comes amid growing debate in the US on the prosecution of the war, in particular over strict rules of engagement for US soldiers. The rules have been credited with reducing civilian deaths, but some have criticized them for exposing troops to more danger.

Christian Science Monitor, 29/6/10

Training of Afghan forces 'flawed, unreliable, inconsistent'

If President Obama is having reservations about withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan a year from now, a new report detailing major problems with Afghan security forces won't make his decision any easier.

Just 23% of the country's soldiers and 12% of its police force can work without American or NATO support, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported.

Corruption and absenteeism also plagues the security forces. By March of this year, at least 12% of the army simply left, the report noted, citing "disappointment over pay levels" leading to soldiers selling weapons and stealing fuel.

The report is the first, in-depth look at how the U.S. military rates the effectiveness of Afghanistan's police and soldiers. It slammed the military's optimism over progress made by Afghan forces.

The U.S.'s eight-year, $27 billion effort to train Afghan soldiers and police is "flawed, it's unreliable and it's inconsistent," Arnold Fields, the author of the report, said.

New York Daily News, 29/6/10

Angry Democrat cuts US aid to Afghanistan

A key U.S. House of Representatives Democrat said on Monday she is cutting billions of dollars in aid to Afghanistan from spending legislation because she is outraged over reports of corruption and donor aid being flown out the country.

Representative Nita Lowey, who heads the House appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid, acted after a Wall Street Journal report on Monday said more than $3 billion in cash had been flown out of Kabul airport in the past three years, and that U.S. investigators think some of the money being flown out to safe havens is diverted U.S. aid.

On the same day, a report in the Washington Post said that top officials in Karzai's government have repeatedly derailed corruption investigations of politically connected Afghans.

Lowey vowed not to spend "one more dime" on aid to Afghanistan until she can be sure it is not being abused. She also announced hearings on corruption in Afghanistan, where the Obama administration is trying to work with the government of President Hamid Karzai to confront the Taliban insurgency.

Her statement comes amid increasing doubts among U.S. lawmakers about President Barack Obama's six-month-old troop buildup strategy against a resurgent Taliban.

An aide to Lowey said the Obama administration requested $3.9 billion for the accounts affected in the fiscal 2011 foreign aid appropriations bill before Lowey's committee. The stripped-out assistance would include economic support funds for Afghanistan and money for things like narcotics control, military education and training, health and anti-terrorism, an aide said.

Reuters, 28/6/10

Hundreds of Kurdish families displaced by bombardments

Hundreds of Kurdish civilians in the far north of Iraq have fled their homes because of the recent bombardments by both Turkey and Iran against Kurdish rebels based in the remote Qandil mountain area.

Aid workers say more than 650 families have fled their villages, and many are now living in primitive conditions without shelter or sufficient food in a humanitarian crisis that has drawn little attention from the authorities in Baghdad.

At the Dara Kouta camp at the foot of the mountains east of Su, 530 families are living huddled together, some without tents because resources are limited, said Hoshyar Mustafa, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Iraqi government has given each family 1 million dinars – about $850 – but the sum is not enough to cover the needs of the families, he said.

Los Angeles Times, 27/6/10

UK army chief believes talks with Taliban should start...

Talks with the Taliban should begin "pretty soon" as part of the exit strategy for international forces in Afghanistan, the head of the British Army said today.

Chief of the General Staff, General Sir David Richards, said his "private view" was that the time to negotiate had arrived. He said military and development operations should continue if negotiations began with the Taliban, talks which could possibly be conducted through third parties.

He said: "If you look at any counter-insurgency campaign throughout history there's always been a point at which you start to negotiate with each other."

Independent, 28/6/10

...but CIA disagree

CIA Director Leon Panetta said Sunday that U.S. officials have not seen "any firm intelligence" that insurgent groups in Afghanistan are interested in reconciliation, and he dismissed reports that a top militant leader is open to a Pakistan-brokered agreement.

"We have seen no evidence that they are truly interested in reconciliation where they would surrender their arms, where they would denounce al-Qaeda, where they would really try to become part of that society," Panetta said on ABC's "This Week."

"My view is that . . . unless they're convinced the United States is going to win and that they are going to be defeated, I think it is very difficult to proceed with a reconciliation that is going to be meaningful."

Washington Post, 28/6/10

Ending the war is more important than winning it

Until recently, the nine-year conflict in Afghanistan had become “the forgotten war” for many Americans – a complaint increasingly heard among US troops there.

But this week’s sacking of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as US commander puts Afghanistan – and especially how the fight against the Taliban is going – squarely back into public thought and concern.

Most Americans agree with Obama that McChrystal had to go, polls show. But they’re far less supportive of the conflict itself, weary of what’s become the longest war in US history.

A recent Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters finds that just 41 percent “now believe it is possible for the United States to win the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.” More to the point, a plurality of 48 percent now say ending the war in Afghanistan is a more important goal than winning it.

Christian Science Monitor, 26/6/10

Israel and US 'drifting apart'

Israel's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, painted a dark picture of U.S.-Israeli relations during a briefing at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem last week. Israeli diplomats say Oren described the current situation as a "tectonic rift" in which Israel and the United States are like continents drifting apart.

According to the Israeli diplomats, Oren said relations between the two countries are not in a crisis because a crisis is something that passes. Oren opted to use terms from geology: "Relations are in the state of a tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart."

Oren noted that contrary to Obama's predecessors - George W. Bush and Bill Clinton - the current president is not motivated by historical-ideological sentiments toward Israel but by cold interests and considerations. He added that his access as Israel's ambassador to senior administration officials and close advisers of the president is good.

But Obama has very tight control over his immediate environment, and it is hard to influence him. "This is a one-man show," Oren is quoted as saying.

The Israeli ambassador said the events of the Gaza-bound flotilla stirred a great deal of anti-Israel reaction - in the United States, too. Only after a few days did the situation balance out. "Even our close friends came out against us," Oren said.

"Only after some time, when video from the ship arrived and was aired by the American media, did public opinion begin to shift in Israel's favor."

Haaretz, Israel, 27/6/10

Cameron: British forces should be out of Afghanistan by 2015

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday that British military forces must be out of Afghanistan before the next general election, scheduled to be held in 2015. "We cannot be there for another five years, having been there for effectively nine years already," he told Sky News.

He is in Canada for the G8 and G-20 summits. Cameron said he preferred "not to deal in too strict timetables," but said the goal is "not a perfect Afghanistan, but some stability in Afghanistan, and the ability of the Afghans themselves to run their country so we can come home."

CNN, 25/6/10

'Partial victory' in challenge to UK Taliban transfers

UK troops can continue to transfer Taliban suspects to Afghan detention but not to a Kabul site subject to an existing ban, the High Court has ruled.

The legal challenge by anti-war activist Maya Evans, from East Sussex, claimed the policy led to "horrible abuse" and violated international law. Judges said the practise could continue with other detention facilities if existing safeguards were strengthened.

Ms Evans's lawyers told the High Court that detainees handed over to the National Directorate of Security (NDS), a secret service organisation in Afghanistan, had been tortured. They said detainees had suffered beatings, electrocution, sleep deprivation, been forced into stress positions, and undergone whipping with rubber cables.

They also said the process of handing over suspect insurgents to the NDS was "emphatically not" compatible with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

BBC News, 25/6/10

NATO calls for continued spending on arms...

European governments' budget-slashing efforts are expected to cut deep into the Continent's defense spending, widening the gulf between U.S. and European military capabilities.

Governments in France, Germany, Spain and Italy, in rolling out recent austerity measures in response to Europe's sovereign debt crisis, have promised that their militaries won't be spared in coming spending cuts.

Last week in the U.K.—which has Europe's biggest military budget—new defense minister Liam Fox said the government must act "ruthlessly and without sentiment" in determining the military's share of cuts needed to tackle the country's giant budget deficit.

In the short term, tight finances don't appear likely to affect European deployment to Afghanistan, where 40,000 troops, mainly from Europe, are on the ground with 78,000 Americans. But in the longer term, cuts in defense spending are seen as likely to reduce European appetite to send troops there.

Falling European defense expenditures will also further increase the spending gap with the U.S., which spends more than twice as much on its military than all its European allies combined.

This week, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, head of the 28-nation NATO, called on European countries to "resist the temptation to use the economic crisis as an excuse for letting the transatlantic defense-spending gap widen any further."

Wall Street Journal, 25/6/10

...as coalition agrees £14.5 billion of 'reconsidered' projects

The UK Treasury has passed 17 of the 19 defence projects that were reconsidered as part of a government-wide review of all major spending projects approved by the previous Labour administration between 1 January and the General Election in May.

This came after the UK Ministry of Defence revealed full details of the defence programmes that had been subjected to Treasury review. The projects were valued in total at £14.5 billion.

Janes Defence, 25/6/10