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News archives for the week ending 6th February 2009

Obama aims to block UK torture investigation...

Two senior British judges have expressed their anger and surprise that President Barack Obama's Government has put pressure on Britain to suppress evidence of torture in US custody.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said they had been told that America had threatened to stop co-operating with Britain on intelligence matters if evidence were published suggesting that Binyam Mohammed, a British resident held at the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, had been tortured into confessing crimes.

The judges said that lawyers for the Foreign Office & Commonwealth Office had assured them that the threat still held good, even since Mr Obama had come to power and reversed many of his predecessor's policies on the torture and detention of terror suspects.

Times, 4/2/09

...as UK government accused of asking Pakistan to torture suspects

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, is to be questioned by MPs over claims that British spies colluded in the alleged torture of terrorism suspects under a so-called "James Bond-style get-out clause".

The suspects were repeatedly tortured by Pakistani agents before being handed over for questioning to MI5, who "knew very well" what was being done, the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) has heard. They were arrested in Pakistan at the request of Britain between 2003 and 2007.

Andrew Dismore, the chairman of the committee, said "the security services may be operating under a James Bond-style get-out clause" by allowing the foreign agents to torture the suspects shortly before interrogating them themselves.

Ali Dayan Hasan, of Human Rights Watch, told the committee: "Pakistani government officials and security officials ... were very open about this. In many private conversations they have told me they were asked to do this by the UK - this is what they say, not once but repeatedly."

Daily Telegraph, 4/2/09

Supply routes in Afghanistan blown up

A bridge in the Khyber Pass has been blown up by militants, halting Nato supplies bound for Afghanistan. Transport through the historic gateway to landlocked Afghanistan has repeatedly been cut by fighting and militant attacks in recent months, exposing the vulnerability of the main Nato supply route.

The pressure on supply routes has been intensified by the US decision to double its forces in Afghanistan in the next 18 months to more than 60,000.

Around 300 civilian lorries a day carry military supplies cross the Khyber Pass and enter Afghanistan at the Torkham crossing. The only other route via Pakistan is from Quetta, across the border at Spin Boldak, to Kandahar. That route takes far fewer trucks and has itself been closed by unrest.

General John Craddock, Nato's senior military commander, said this week that he would not oppose Nato countries making deals to supply their forces through Iranian territory.

The US has also recently cut deals with Russia and central Asian republics to bring in supplies through Afghanistan's northern neighbours.

Daily Telegraph 3/2/09

Kyrgyzstan to close key US air base

Kyrgyzstan vowed Tuesday it would order the closure of a US airbase on its soil whose presence has irritated Moscow, on the same day it received a generous Russian financial aid package.

The Manas air base serves as a vital supply route for NATO forces in Afghanistan but its location deep in former Soviet territory has annoyed an increasingly assertive Russia keen on restoring its influence in Central Asia.

No timeframe was announced, although some reports have suggested the base will be given six months to close. The United States immediately underlined the importance of the base, hoping that it would remain open and calling it "hugely important" for the resupply of US forces in Afghanistan.

Coinciding with the announcement, Russia agreed to a financial aid package settling an estimated 180-million-dollar debt owed by cash-strapped Kyrgyzstan to Moscow. Russia also agreed to extend an interest free grant worth 150 million dollars to Kyrgyzstan as well as a loan worth two billion dollars, Russian news agencies reported.

AFP 3/2/09

2,100 civilians killed in Afghanistan in 2008

More than 2,100 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2008, a 40 percent rise from the previous year, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

It also cited partial figures saying that the Taliban and local warlords were responsible for 1,000 out of 1,800 civilian deaths up to the end of October, mainly due to suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices.

Nearly 700 people were killed by international and Afghan forces in the same period - including 455 who died in air strikes - while the cause of the remaining 100 had yet to be determined, it said.

The civilian toll was established by U.N. human rights officers deployed in Afghanistan whose full report was still being finalised, according to a U.N. spokesman.

"According to U.N. figures, over 2,100 civilians were killed as a result of armed conflict in 2008, which represents an increase of about 40 percent from 2007,"

U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said. The U.N. said 1,523 people were killed in 2007.

Reuters 3/2/09

Taliban control increasing in Afghanistan

The Pentagon said that insurgent violence was on the rise across Afghanistan and that international forces lacked the troops and resources to control the country's south.

In a report to Congress, the US Defense Department described a dramatic increase in insurgent attacks in the spring and summer of 2008, saying the period marked the worst violence since the Taliban's ouster in 2001.

A resurgent Taliban was challenging the Kabul government for control of the south and east of the country, "and increasingly in the west," the report said.

"In such areas, the full military, governance and economic spectrum of the COIN (counterinsurgency) strategy cannot be implemented and the insurgents retain their hold on the local Afghan population."

AFP, 3/2/09

Poll fraud raises tension in Western Iraq

Tribal sheikhs who helped drive al Qaeda militants out of Western Iraq threatened on Monday to take up arms against the provincial government because of what they said was fraud in Saturday's provincial polls.

Anbar province, Iraq's vast western third, was once the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency against U.S. troops but is now largely quiet, thanks to tribal guard units known as Awakening councils that helped drive out al Qaeda militants.

In one of the toughest-fought contests of the election, the tribes have challenged the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), a Sunni religious party which has run the province since 2005. With the IIP claiming the results will keep it in power, Awakening leaders alleged fraud in the voting.

"We threatened the electoral commission not to allow fraud. We said we will transform from a political entity to an armed wing against the electoral commission and the IIP because we discovered fraud," Awakening movement head Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha told Reuters.

Hamid al-Hais, head of the Anbar Tribes list in the election, travelled to Baghdad to lodge a protest. "We will set the streets of Ramadi ablaze if the Islamic Party is declared the winners of the election," he told Reuters, referring to Anbar's provincial capital. "We will make Anbar a grave for the Islamic Party and its agents. We will start a tribal war against them and those who cooperate with them."

Reuters, 2/2/09

Dutch to investigate support for Iraq war

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende ordered on Monday an independent commission to examine the government's decision to support the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Netherlands did not send troops into Iraq but supported the U.S. push to invade Iraq because of the threat of weapons of mass destruction, which was later found to be unjustified

Dutch critics of the war say the government put the country, which hosts several international courts, at legal risk

Balkenende, whose coalition government had long resisted opposition calls to hold an investigation, told a news conference that questions over the issue were a distraction from more immediate concerns, such as the state of the economy

The commission will investigate whether the government heeded findings from its own lawyers over the legality of the invasion. The commission is due to release its report in November.

Reuters 2/2/09

Iraq oil up for bidding

As U.S. President Barack Obama confronts the legacy of a war his predecessor launched almost six years ago, Iraq has once again begun to open its vast oil reserves to foreign companies.

The country has launched a bidding round for some of its largest oil and gas fields, which it hopes will attract multibillion dollar investments. There is still some confusion over the deals, scheduled to be awarded by June. But a lack of security, rigid bureaucracy and the absence of a legal framework is still deterring the investment Iraq needs to update its decaying oil infrastructure.

"A foreign oil workers' compound, whether Exxon, BP, Shell or whoever, would be a bull's-eye for an attack," said a senior foreign oil executive who declined to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Foreigners were prime targets in the years of bloodshed unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and videos of kidnapped Westerners being beheaded shocked the world.

Iraq sits on an estimated 115 billion barrels of oil, the world's third largest reserves.

Reuters 2/2/09

'Surge' will not work in Afghanistan

The latest surge, oddly, is intended for a nonmilitary mission - to strike a political deal with the Taliban from a position of strength. That is why Defense Secretary Robert Gates, scaling down U.S. objectives he said were "too broad and too far into the future," told Congress this week there was not enough "time, patience or money" to pursue ambitious goals in Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama, ironically, has set out to do in Afghanistan what his predecessor did in Iraq, where a surge of U.S. troops was used largely as a show of force to buy off Sunni leaders and other local chieftains. But Iraq-style payoffs have little chance of creating a stable, more peaceful Afghanistan, a tribal society without the literacy level and middle class of Iraq.

Washington Times, 1/2/09

Waste and fraud in Afghanistan

After five years of investigations and 250,000 pages of audits, Stuart W. Bowen Jr. wishes he could say that the $50 billion cost of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq was money accounted for and well spent. "But that's just not happened," Bowen said.

Instead, the largest single-country relief and reconstruction project in U.S. history -- most of it done by private U.S. contractors -- was full of wasted funds, fraud and a lack of accountability under what Bowen, the congressionally mandated special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, calls an "ad hoc-racy" of lax or nonexistent government planning and supervision.

And despite the Iraq experience, he said, the United States is making many of the same mistakes again in Afghanistan, where U.S. reconstruction expenditures stand at more than $30 billion and counting.

Washington Post, 2/2/09

50% turnout in Iraq poll

Just over half of Iraq's 15 million registered voters cast ballots in weekend provincial elections, with turnout as low as 40% in at least one province, but Iraqi and international officials insisted Sunday that they were satisfied with the participation.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had urged Iraqis on Jan. 23 to vote and said he hoped for a turnout of 70% or 80%. However, confusion over new and more stringent voter registration practices prevented some Iraqis from voting. Others said that lavish campaign spending and past performance of politicians drove them to avoid the polls.

"I don't trust any one of the candidates," said Usam Mohammed Hassan, a 27-year-old Baghdad resident who chose not to vote. "I consider them as a group of thieves coming to get financial benefits for themselves and their political parties as Iraq is going to witness a campaign of reconstructions."

Los Angeles Times, 2/2/09

Attacks on NATO soar

Violence in Afghanistan rose by just under a third last year, the highest rise since coalition operations began more than seven years ago. In 2007 there were some 5,000 "violent incidents" in the 20 worst-affected districts.

Last year the total rose to about 7,000. Nato says the rise was "in large part" the result of troops pushing into areas without any previous military presence.

Observer, 1/2/09

Does US still need Karzai?

President Hamid Karzai may have been installed and may be maintained in power by the U.S. and its NATO allies, but the relationship between them continues to sour — and that could have significant consequences

for the Obama Administration's plans to win the war in Afghanistan. Thursday's announcement postponing Afghanistan's presidential election from April to August means that Karzai will remain in office as a new U.S. plan for Afghanistan goes into effect, even though U.S. and NATO commanders have long warned that the rampant corruption and inefficiency of the Karzai government are undermining the war effort.

Until now, the U.S. mission in Afghanistan has been about propping up the Karzai government and security forces and beating back the Taliban. Plainly, that strategy has been failing, and Washington and Karzai appear to have different ideas about how to fix it. The Afghan President may seek to appear as if he's emulating his Iraqi counterparts by pushing back against those who brought him to power, but it's a far trickier game for Karzai, who lacks the alternatives available to an Iraqi government that remains close to Iran. Right now, Karzai's physical survival depends largely on the NATO presence.

The U.S., meanwhile, is mindful of the growing burden that results from the Taliban's resurgence and the reluctance of NATO allies to boost their own troop levels in Afghanistan. That's why Gates is calling for a revision of what he called "overly ambitious" nation-building goals, stressing that he sees the prime U.S. objective in Afghanistan as preventing the country from being used as a base for terrorists. The question facing Washington, of course, is whether Karzai is indispensable to the achievement of that goal.

Time, 30/1/09

Russia and NATO agree Afghan route

Ties between NATO and Russia were restored this week as a joint council of NATO members and a Russian envoy met in Brussels, the first such meeting since negotiations with the military alliance were suspended in August following Russia's war with Georgia.

The renewed dialogue signaled a major improvement in Russia's relations with the United States, which have been at their lowest since the breakup of the Soviet Union. They also suggested that the two sides shared a pivotal bargaining point strong enough to positively impact their relations as a whole: an alternative transit route into Afghanistan.

Both Russian and NATO officials have confirmed that an offer of alternative transit to Afghanistan was in effect. Alternative transit routes to Afghanistan have gained particular urgency because routes through Pakistan, such as the Khyber Pass, have grown increasingly volatile with militant attacks. What was keeping the actual transit from becoming active, officials said, was a lag in finalizing agreements with other transit countries in the former Soviet Union.

Moscow News, 30/1/09

Election issues in Iraq

The pre-election campaign featured two sets of arguments: between those who want a state defined by religion and those who want to move in the direction of secularism; and between advocates of a strong central government in Baghdad and federalists insisting on autonomy for Iraq's separate regions. These are quarrels that Iraqis will have to settle among themselves.

The US needs to exercise restraint in responding to whatever political choices Iraqis may make today or in the parliamentary vote scheduled for December. Those elections - and the crucial coalitions that will be formed afterward - may produce a polity that is more or less inclined to strong central government, more or less Islamic. Whatever the outcome, and whatever the preferences of US policy makers, there should be no public carping or criticism from Washington.

Boston Globe, 31/1/09

US will not renew Blackwater contract in Iraq

The U.S. State Department has told Blackwater Worldwide, the private security firm whose guards are accused of killing Iraqi civilians while protecting U.S. diplomats, that it will not renew its contract in Iraq.

The move was not a surprise following Iraq's decision to deny a license to Blackwater, which drew intense criticism after its guards opened fire in Baghdad traffic in 2007, killing at least 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians. It is unclear when the U.S. decision will take effect.

A U.S. official who spoke on condition that he not be named said the U.S. and Iraqi governments were discussing a transition period during which Blackwater's work in Iraq will phase out.

The official said Blackwater will continue to work for the U.S. government elsewhere in the world.

Ruters, 31/1/09

NATO orders targeted killing of Afghan drug traffickers

German polticians expressed dismay on Thursday over the fact that NATO high commander Bantz John Craddock wants to permit the targeted killing of drug traffickers even without proof that they are involved in terrorist developments.

NATO is trying to downplay the paper, saying it is merely a "guidance," but that's not correct. The news broken by Spiegel Online on Wednesday about a controversial order issued by American NATO High Commander Bantz John Craddock to the commanders of the NATO peacekeeping troop ISAF in Afghanistan has angered politicians in Berlin, who are now demanding answers.

Members of Germany's parliament from across the political spectrum are calling for an explanation of a fight simmering inside NATO command. They have also expressly criticized an order that calls on NATO to conduct targeted killings of drug traffickers and to bomb narcotics laboratories, even without clear evidence that the targets provide support for terrorist acts against Afghan or Western security forces.

Der Spiegel, 29/1/09

British commanders 'smug and complacent' about Afghanistan

Britain’s top military commander has admitted for the first time that America was right to criticise the way in which British troops carried out counter-insurgency operations against the Taleban in southern Afghanistan when they first deployed to Helmand province in 2006.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff and a former head of the RAF, blamed commanders for being “smug and complacent” about the challenges they faced in Helmand.

His words echoed accusations made by Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, and several senior American military officers who claimed that their British counterparts spent too much time boasting about their experiences in Northern Ireland.

The Times, 30/1/09

Afghanistan postpones elections

Afghanistan will delay holding presidential elections until 20 August, the election commission has announced. Under the country's constitution, the vote should have been held in May, but the deteriorating security situation has prompted a postponement.

The delay has come as little surprise to many observers. Large parts of the south and east are considered too unsafe for a free and fair vote.

BBC News, 29/1/09

US army suicides highest in decades

Suicides among U.S. soldiers rose last year to the highest level in decades, the Army announced Thursday. At least 128 soldiers killed themselves in 2008. But the final count is likely to be considerably higher because 15 more suspicious deaths are still being investigated and could also turn out to be self-inflicted, the Army said. The new suicide figure compares with 115 in 2007 and 102 in 2006 and is the highest since record keeping began in 1980.

Officials have said that troops are under tremendous and unprecedented stress because of repeated and long tours of duty due to the simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The stress has placed further burdens on an overwhelmed military health care system also trying to tend to huge numbers of troops suffering from post-traumatic stress, depression and other mental health problems as well as physical wounds and injuries of tens of thousands.

Yearly increases in suicides have been recorded since 2004, when there were 64 — only about half the number now. And they've occurred despite increased training, prevention programs and psychiatric staff.

Associated Press, 29/1/09