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News archives for the week ending 7th November 2008

Colombia: US vetted troops killed civilians

The commander of Colombia’s army resigned Tuesday after an investigation tied dozens of military personnel under his command to an intensifying scandal over the killing of civilians by the armed forces in what apparently were attempts to inflate the number of insurgents or criminal gang members killed in combat by security forces.

The scandal has focused scrutiny on Mr. Uribe’s government and its top ally, the United States, which is responsible for vetting Colombian military units for human rights abuses before they can receive American aid. The United States provides Colombia with about $500 million a year in assistance to fight rebels and drug trafficking.

In addition to the recent deaths of 11 young men from the slums near Bogotá that are at the heart of the scandal, prosecutors are investigating accusations that 1,015 civilians had been killed outside combat since 2002, when Mr. Uribe intensified the long war against two leftist insurgencies, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the National Liberation Army, or E.L.N.

New York Times, 4/11/08

US fails to understand its weakness in Iraq

Nothing better illuminates the real political landscape in Iraq – and the absurdity of the fantasies pumped out in Washington and broadly accepted in the US – than the concessions forced on the Americans in regard to the Status of Forces Agreement.

The American problem in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has always been political rather than military. Simply put, the Americans have had too few friends in Iraq, and their allies have sided with the US for tactical reasons alone. The majority Shia community initially co-operated with the US in order to achieve political domination, and it needed American military force to crush the Sunni Arab uprising of 2004-7. But the Shia leaders always wanted power for themselves and never intended to share it with the Americans in the long term.

The Sunni guerrillas did surprisingly well against the American army, but their community was decisively defeated in the bloody battle for Baghdad fought by government death squads and sectarian militias. It was this defeat – and not simply hostility to al Qa’eda in Iraq – that led the Sunni rebels to seek their own alliance with the US.

The danger in Iraq is that neither McCain nor Obama seem to understand how far the US position in Iraq has weakened this year or why Iraq refuses to sign the security accord. The overselling of the surge as a great victory means that few Americans see that they are increasingly without allies in Iraq. The US no longer makes the political weather there. No matter who inherits the White House, American military retreat is now inevitable. The only question that remains is who will hold power in Baghdad after they have gone.

Patrick Cockburn, The National, 30/10/08

War not factor in US election

As the country votes today in an election dominated by economic issues, it is worth pointing out the problem that did not, after all, overshadow the presidential race: the war in Iraq.

According to the Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll published yesterday, just 9 percent of likely voters said Iraq was the most important issue in their choice for president, compared with 51 percent who cited the economy. That's a dramatic change from the 2006 midterm election, in which Iraq ranked first among voters' concerns, with 27 percent in a Pew poll citing it as the biggest issue. Even in 2004, more than 20 percent picked it.

Washington Post, 4/11/08

Brown: negotiations with Taliban 'very difficult'

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Sunday it would be "very difficult" for Afghanistan to negotiate directly with the Taliban while troops were still being killed there.

"I think the government (of President Hamid Karzai) wants to reach out and make for a more inclusive society," Brown told Al-Jazeera television, when asked about the possibility of negotiations.

"But I think at the same time when British and other troops are being murdered by Taliban forces... in guerilla warfare, I think it's very difficult indeed. I would hope that people will come to realise that Afghanistan's future lies in a political process and not a guerilla warfare."

Brown said in August during a visit to Kabul that Britain was "utterly resolute" in supporting Afghanistan as it fights a Taliban-led insurgency.

AFP, 1/11/08

Iraq to cut salaries of Sunni fighters

The Iraqi government plans to cut salaries for the estimated 100,000 members of the Awakening movement whose revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq played a key role in bringing about the sharp fall in violence in Iraq.

The move is certain to aggravate building tensions between the Sunni volunteer force and the Shiite-led government, which assumed responsibility for the Awakening movement from the U.S. military earlier this month.

The U.S. military, which calls the movement the Sons of Iraq, had been paying members $300 a month to carry guns and protect their neighborhoods against Al Qaeda. Starting this month, Awakening members will be paid 300,000 Iraqi dinars, or about $250 a month, according to government spokesman Tahseen al-Sheikhly. Awakening leaders, who had been earning $400 to $600, will also receive the lower salary.

The Sunni Awakening revolt against Al Qaeda, which started in western Anbar province in late 2006 and then rippled across Baghdad and into northern Iraq through 2007, was instrumental in turning the tide of the war. Armed Awakening militias now control most of the former insurgency flash points in and around Baghdad, alongside U.S. and Iraqi security forces.

But the Shiite-led government is deeply skeptical about the existence of what amounts to an armed Sunni militia, many of whose members once fought with the insurgency. It does not intend to keep paying the Awakening forces indefinitely, warned Sheikhly, the government spokesman.

"We want reconciliation, but Iraqis believe in another way than Americans about reconciliation. When Americans try to achieve reconciliation, they buy it," he said.

Chicago Tribune, 3/11/08

Will Obama have a mandate to leave Iraq?

There's no doubt that the financial crisis, job insecurity, and fundamental economic worries are the No. 1 issue in Tuesday's vote. But that raises a critical question: If Barack Obama is elected, will he have an antiwar mandate?

The answer isn't clear. Problem is, Iraq has receded so far in the public's consciousness that it isn't entirely clear what next Tuesday's vote will mean for Iraq.

Certainly, Obama catapulted over Hillary Clinton in the primaries because he mobilized antiwar voters against her, based on his 2002 speech opposing the war and Clinton's vote, in October, 2002, for it. Since then, however, the war has become less and less prominent, especially during the general election campaign.

During the debates between Obama and John McCain, it hardly came up, although Obama did slam McCain for his poor judgment in supporting the war in 2003. Still, Obama did not aggressively put forward his plan to get out of Iraq during the debates, and he was oddly defensive whenever McCain challenged him over the "surge."

Polls across the board have shown that Iraq has dropped for fourth, fifth, or even lower among things that voters are concerned about in 2008. That will make it hard, but not impossible, for Obama to argue that he has a mandate to end the war on Nov. 5.

Obama hasn't helped his case by downplaying his opposition to war. He hasn't helped by refusing to say much about his plans for Iraq besides the withdrawal, including what a residual force might look like, i.e., how many troops might remain in Iraq after the withdrawal of the US combat brigades, and what their mission might be. (During the summer, some advisers to Obama wanted to draw a starker contrast with McCain over Iraq, and some wanted to muddy the differences. The mud advocates seem to have prevailed.)

And Obama hasn't made his mandate stronger by adopting hawkish views on other, non-Iraq related issues: he supports a bigger military; he supports an expansion of NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia; he supports more troops for Afghanistan; he has called for cross-border raids into Pakistan to go after Al Qaeda officials; and, of course, he has hewed closely to orthodoxy in support of Israel.

CBS News, 2/11/08

Iraq slashes budget as oil price falls

Iraq yesterday said the falling global oil price has forced Baghdad to cut its next year's budget to $67 billion at a time when the country craves funds to develop its dilapidated infrastructure.

Finance Minister Baqer Jabr Solagh said Baghdad has had to slash proposed budget spending by 16.25 per cent to make ends meet. The government originally planned a budget of $80bn on the back of high oil prices seen during the summer.

Solagh said 25% of next year's budget, or around $15bn, will be allocated to develop the country's crumbling infrastructure. This investment, however, is meagre compared to the $400bn that is actually required to revitalise the war-torn country, he said.

Gulf Daily News, Bahrain, 2/11/08

The US election - a canadian view

Quick. Which U.S. presidential candidate talks of expanding the war on terror by attacking more countries? If you answered John McCain, you're wrong. The correct response, of course, is Barack Obama.

Indeed, Canada may find it far more difficult to extricate itself militarily from Bush's Afghan war if Obama – an advocate of dramatically expanding that conflict – wins the White House.

But the Democratic candidate's views on the usefulness of military power are not confined to Afghanistan. He has not, for instance, renounced the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war. This is the theory Bush used to justify his invasion of a country (Iraq) that had neither attacked, nor threatened to attack, America. Obama did oppose the Iraq war itself. But he has never taken issue with the principle used to wage it. Rather, as he explained four years ago, he calculated that this particular pre-emptive war was not necessitated by the "facts on the ground."

Nor is his timetable for withdrawal from Iraq vastly different from that of the current president. Obama wants American troops out of the fighting by June 2010; Bush would take a few more months. McCain has never set a formal combat deadline. But all three have left open the possibility of keeping so-called noncombat troops based in that country indefinitely, or – as McCain once inelegantly put it – for up to 100 years.

On Afghanistan, Obama's rhetoric is far more hawkish than that of either Bush or McCain. He would ramp up American forces to fight the Taliban, even as he draws them down in Iraq.

As Obama adviser Jack Reed told reporters this summer, Obama would also use his remarkable oratory powers to encourage Canada and other NATO countries to keep fighting in Afghanistan, even after Prime Minister Stephen Harper's self-imposed exit date of 2011. Ironically, Canadians who would probably not accept such a plea from McCain might well listen to Obama who, in this country at least, is treated as a messianic figure.

If so, they should be careful what they buy into. Obama not only promises to prosecute the Afghan war more vigorously. He talks of expanding it. In August 2007, he advocated sending troops into Pakistan – with or without Pakistani permission – to chase down and destroy Taliban forces. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and (Pakistan's government) won't act, we will," he said then, in what was billed as a major foreign policy speech.

Toronto Star, 1/11/08

Bush's last-ditch attempt to kill Al Qaeda leaders

A pair of missile strikes hours apart killed at least 27 people Friday near the border with Afghanistan, only days after Pakistan demanded that the United States halt an intensifying campaign of using Predator drones to hit at Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.

The dead in the first attack, in Pakistan's North Waziristan, included a mid-level Al Qaeda operative, Abdur Rehman, according to a senior Pakistani security official. Local tribesmen, however, said they were not sure that he had been killed.

The strikes using unmanned aircraft have come at a rapid pace since August, and have raised tensions between the United States and Pakistan, an ally in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Many Pakistanis believe the American attacks, which Washington rarely acknowledges, are spurring militants to carry out suicide attacks in Pakistani cities, such as the bombing in September of a five-star hotel in Islamabad, the capital.

The missile strikes are also widely viewed here as a last-ditch attempt by the outgoing Bush administration to kill a senior Al Qaeda leader before the new president takes office in January.

LOs Angeles Times, 1/11/08

Expanding Afghan war awaits new President...

An expanded US military involvement awaits a new US president in Afghanistan where the unfinished business of September 11 has flared over the past three years into a major insurgency.

A raft of assessments and reviews now underway in Washington point to a fundamental rethinking of the Afghan war. But whoever is elected Tuesday will face choices on the size of the military buildup, how to strengthen the central government, how far to go in dealing with insurgent sanctuaries across the border, how to help stabilize Pakistan, and whether and how to reconcile with the Taliban, analysts say.

"In my view they are going to find in Afghanistan a situation that is dire and getting worse," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official with long experience in the region. The momentum, he said, is now with the Taliban, which in the past year has expanded the battlefield from southern Afghanistan to the east and even to the outskirts of Kabul.

Both Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, and John McCain, his Republican rival, agree more US troops are needed, even at the risk of alienating Afghans with a larger, more intrusive military presence.

AFP, 1/11/08

...as US military plans escalation

It is clear from their actions that many of America's allies increasingly believe that the war is unwinnable and not a place to put any more troops in harm's way. American commanders have looked at all the options in a thorough review and come to a different conclusion; they have decided that now is the time to fight.

"What will eventually win this war is American military power," a senior Nato source in Kabul told the Sunday Telegraph. "There is no question of America withdrawing from Afghanistan. They are simply not prepared to let the people responsible for September 11th move back in. If the Europeans decided to go they wouldn't that much missed, frankly. Some of them are in the way."

Instead, the Sunday Telegraph understands that American commanders will soon be presenting the new president in Washington, whoever he is, with plans to fight an intense five-year war against the guerrillas, a war that commanders think looks winnable unlike the morass troops are in now.

Britain will remain a key partner. But battles in Helmand will increasingly be fought by American combat troops and American commanders will call the shots.

Sunday Telegraph, 2/11/08

Noise of battle causes deafness in troops

Hundreds of soldiers are returning from Afghanistan suffering from severe and permanent damage to their hearing because of the overwhelming noise of intense combat. Nearly one in ten soldiers serving with one regiment have hearing defects that could bar them from further frontline service and affect their civilian job prospects.

The number of hearing injuries is one of the untold stories of Britain’s military campaigns, evoking comparisons with the thunder of battle in the two world wars and the Korean War. Many of the soldiers involved in the most violent clashes with Shia militias in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 also returned with permanent hearing impairment. But in Afghanistan roadside bombs, ferocious close-combat clashes with the Taleban and 500lb bombs dropped by coalition aircraft have burst eardrums, caused tinnitus and, in some cases, resulted in total deafness.

The Royal British Legion said that in the past three years it had dealt with 1,195 hearing loss claims against the Ministry of Defence.

The Times, 30/10/08

Fury sweeps Syria after US raid

Souad Khousaim lay very still on her hospital bed and in a quiet voice wracked with pain told me she was one of the innocent victims of Sunday's raid by US special forces.

"I went outside to get my son and the Americans shot me," she says. "They were very close, five metres away. I was screaming, terrified." Her husband was among the seven Syrian men who died, but hospital officials have not told her this yet.

In the nearby town of Albu-Kamel, an anti-American protest was going on. Several thousand people had gathered, waving pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and burning US flags.This was government organised - but the angry mood we saw there seems to have seized the whole nation. Syrians are outraged about what they say is the violation of their sovereignty and their territory.

The Americans say they have the right of self-defence - even if that means crossing an international border. A new US presidential order has reportedly been made to this effect. It means the Americans will be prepared to take such action again in future, in Syria and elsewhere.

BBC News, 30/10/08

'Successful' Petraeus turns to Afghanistan

Crowned with success in Iraq, General David Petraeus, who takes command Friday of US military forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, inherits the next big challenge: devising a winning strategy in Afghanistan.

Responsible for a volatile theater of operations that extends from Kenya to Kazakhstan, the high profile general must also keep an eye on extremism in Pakistan and Iranian influence in the region, all under the orders of a new US president.

Sent to Iraq in 2007 to salvage the explosive situation there, Petraeus is credited with turning around a Sunni insurgency in the west and using a 30,000 troop "surge" to secure Baghdad and its environs.

Many hope that Petraeus will bring his counter-insurgency expertise to bear in Afghanistan as he did in Iraq, where levels of violence have dropped sharply and combat deaths are now at the lowest point since 2003.

The intensifying violence in Afghanistan has put the "forgotten war" on the front burner and has pushed the White House, the Joint Staff and Petraeus to launched strategic reviews of what the general has called the "longest campaign of the long war."

AFP, 31/10/08

Iraq wants to ensure US is gone by 2011

Iraq wants to eliminate any chance U.S. forces will stay after 2011 under a proposed security pact and to expand Iraqi legal jurisdiction over U.S. troops until then, said Ali al-Adeeb, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's inner circle.

Those demands, which were presented to U.S. officials this week, could derail the deal.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 30/10/08