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News archives for the week ending 16th April 2010

US base in Kyrgyzstan reopens

The U.S. air base near Kyrgyzstan's capital was fully back in action Thursday providing critical support to the NATO campaign in Afghanistan, with planes taking off and landing throughout the day.

The Manas base provides refueling flights for warplanes over Afghanistan and serves as a major transit hub for troops.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake was in Bishkek for talks with the new leadership, but he said Manas was not the main focus.

AP, 15/4/10

Russia gives Kyrgyzstan £32m in aid

Russia agreed yesterday to supply $50m (£32m) in aid and loans to Kyrgyzstan after the interim leadership of the Central Asian republic said state coffers were empty following the overthrow of the president.

Russia has moved quickly to establish relations with the interim leadership of Kyrgyzstan, which assumed power after an uprising on 7 April. At least 84 people were killed and 1,600 more injured when troops fired into a crowd of demonstrators.

The United States, which operates a military base on Kyrgyz soil to support Nato operations in Afghanistan, also sent Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake to Bishkek yesterday in a sign of the big power rivalries in the region.

Independent, 15/4/10

A 'realignment' not a withdrawal

U.S. troops are pulling out of Afghanistan's perilous Korengal Valley as part of a new focus on protecting population centers, NATO said Wednesday, ending a mission that saw some of the most intense fighting of the nearly nine-year American presence in the country.

The isolated mountainous region of caves and canyons on the eastern border with Pakistan has been the scene of near daily exchanges of fire between NATO and insurgents, who use it as a route for infiltrating weapons and fighters into Afghanistan.

While militants will likely portray the withdrawal as a defeat for foreign forces in Afghanistan, NATO termed the move a "realignment" resulting from changing strategies to deal with a Taliban-led insurgency that has strengthened and gripped once stable parts of the country.

Associated Press, 14/4/10

Britain loses more troops proportionately than the US

More deaths last week brought the number of British troops who have died in Afghanistan to 281, compared with the 1,026 Americans who have died as part of the Afghan war and related operations.

Proportional to the numbers of troops deployed, that makes Britain’s casualty rate higher than the United States’, though lower than the losses suffered by Canada, which has lost 142 troops, according to calculations by defense experts.

New York Times, 13/4/10

Anti-US riots spread after bus killings

Anti-American riots spread across Kandahar after NATO-led troops Monday killed four civilians on a bus.

The attack, which injured another 18, has dealt a massive blow to NATO's hopes of gaining local support before its upcoming offensive in the same region. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, under pressure from his people for not doing more to protect civilians, has called the shooting “unjustifiable.”

The timing of this shooting couldn't have come at a worst time. Tensions in the southern region are already high weeks ahead of the offensive designed to bring the city and surrounding areas under the control of the Western-backed government in Kabul.

All Headline News, 13/4/10

Airstrike kills 71 civilians in Pakistan

Public anger rose Tuesday over a weekend airstrike by Pakistan's military, which the military said targeted insurgents but which a government official and villagers said killed more than 70 civilians.

The Saturday bombings hit the Khyber area of the rugged tribal region along the Afghan border, where Pakistani forces are battling Islamist insurgents.

A senior government official, who did not have authorization to discuss the topic publicly, said in an interview Tuesday that the strike killed 71 civilians and no militants. He said the government had offered nearly $125,000 in compensation to the families of those killed or wounded.

Villagers from the town of Sra Vela said that an initial bombing struck the house of a family that included members of a government paramilitary force. As people rushed to assist the wounded, jets dropped another bomb on the crowd, residents said. They said many of the dead were soldiers with the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary.

One member of that force, 25-year-old Tila Baz, said shrapnel from the bombing cut his face and broke his arm. Baz, who was interviewed from his hospital bed in the northwest city of Peshawar, said those killed had no links to insurgents.

"All hit by the jet bombardment were local innocent civilians, and no Taliban fighter . . . even exists in the village," said Baz, whose face bore purple wounds. "It is a barbaric act."

Washington Post, 13/4/10

US troops kill 4 passengers on bus

American troops in Afghanistan riddled a passenger bus with bullets outside Kandahar on Monday, killing four civilians and galvanizing anti-Western sentiment just as NATO is gearing up for a massive military offensive in and around the southern city.

Angry protests erupted after the shooting in Zhari district, to the west of Kandahar, which also left 18 people hurt. NATO's International Security Assistance Force said it "deeply regrets the tragic loss of life" in the shootings, and it promised a speedy joint investigation with Afghan authorities.

Tensions have been running high before the planned Western push to expel the Taliban from Kandahar, which the insurgents consider their spiritual home.

Coalition troops, mainly Americans and Canadians, have been trying to clear and control major roads near the city -- a task that leaves them vulnerable to vehicle-borne suicide bombers and so-called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

Civilians, in turn, risk being mistaken for a threat by the Western forces if they drive erratically or stray too close to military convoys.

The early-morning shooting occurred after a crowded bus traveling on the main highway out of Kandahar came up behind several slow-moving Western military vehicles that were engaged in road clearing, said Zalmai Ayubi, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province.

Los Angeles Times, 13/4/10

US and China ties grow closer

Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington for a nuclear security summit this week is the latest sign of a warming in relations with President Barack Obama's administration that looks set to continue in the months ahead.

The two leaders, who hold a one-on-one meeting on the sidelines of the summit on Monday, are expected to work more closely this year on a range of issues, including Iran's nuclear ambitions, military cooperation and North Korea.

Beijing may also be close to revaluing its yuan currency and unveiling a long-awaited shift in its foreign exchange regime. Washington has argued that it is in the interest of China, and the world, to let the yuan strengthen.

U.S.-Chinese relations have improved rapidly since April after months of disputes over China's currency and Internet controls, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama at the White House.

Reuters, 11/4/10

Obama: al Qaeda bid to go nuclear is top threat

President Barack Obama said on Sunday that efforts by al Qaeda to acquire atomic weapons posed the biggest threat to global security, and world leaders meeting this week must act with urgency to combat this danger.

Obama, speaking on the eve of an unprecedented 47-nation summit in Washington aimed at thwarting nuclear terrorism, said he expected "enormous progress" at the conference toward the goal of locking down loose nuclear material worldwide.

"The central focus of this nuclear summit is the fact that the single biggest threat to U.S. security -- both short-term, medium-term and long-term -- would be the possibility of a terrorist organization obtaining a nuclear weapon," Obama told reporters.

Washington Post, 11/4/10

US troops stranded in Kyrgyzstan

About 1,300 U.S. troops have been stuck at the Manas airfield in Kyrgyzstan because of the civil unrest there.

A U.S. military spokesman, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the security situation, said the troops have been unable to move because of the suspension of U.S. military operations at the airfield. The stranded troops include those coming home from Afghanistan and others going into the war zone.

The spokesman said it is not known when the airfield will reopen and it is not yet certain how the troops will be moved out.

CNN, 10/4/10

Tangled CIA-ISI relationship...

The recent capture of the Afghan Taliban's second in command seemed to signal a turning point in Pakistan, an indication that its intelligence agency had gone from helping to cracking down on the militant Islamist group.

But U.S. officials now believe that even as Pakistan's security forces worked with their American counterparts to detain Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and other insurgents, the country's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, quietly freed at least two senior Afghan Taliban figures it had captured on its own. U.S. military and intelligence officials said the releases, detected by American spy agencies but not publicly disclosed, are evidence that parts of Pakistan's security establishment continue to support the Afghan Taliban.

This assistance underscores how complicated the CIA-ISI relationship remains at a time when the United States and Pakistan are battling insurgencies that straddle the Afghanistan border and are increasingly anxious about how the war in that country will end.

Washington Post, 10/4/10

...and tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan

Senior Afghan officials are now criticizing as counterproductive the arrest in Pakistan this year of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the No. 2 Taliban official. Its main effect, the Afghan officials say, has been to derail Afghan-led efforts to secure peace talks with the Taliban, making that peace ever more remote.

The episode offers a window into the mutual suspicions that still divide Afghanistan and Pakistan, mostly because of Pakistan's long history of support for the Taliban, as well as differences between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States about how best to seek reconciliation between insurgents and the Afghan government.

Senior Afghan officials in the military and presidential palace accuse Pakistan of orchestrating the arrest of Baradar and others to take down Taliban leaders most amenable to negotiations.

Washington Post, 10/4/10

Bush knew Guantanamo prisoners were innocent

Former US president George W. Bush and his senior aides have been accused of covering up the innocence of many Guantanamo Bay detainees, amid fears releasing them could harm the "war on terror".

The allegations were made in a document by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to Bush's first secretary of state, Colin Powell, in a lawsuit filed by a former Guantanamo inmate and published by The Times in London.

Colonel Wilkerson alleged Bush's vice-president, Dick Cheney, and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld knew most detainees held at the US detention camp in 2002 were innocent but believed it was "politically impossible to release them".

They were also keen to avoid revealing the "incredibly confused" detention operation, Colonel Wilkerson said, claiming prisoners were often rounded up by Afghan and Pakistani forces in return for cash, with little or no evidence as to why.

He alleged then-vice-president Cheney "had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees were innocent... If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it."

Herald Sun, Australia, 9/4/10

Allawi: resisting Iraq result risks chaos

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose Iraqiya alliance edged out Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's party in national elections last month, warned Thursday of potential chaos if he is denied the right to form the country's next government.

Allawi said al-Maliki and his supporters' refusal to accept final election results, in which Allawi's party won 91 seats in parliament and al-Maliki's won 89, could provoke bloodshed.

"This will bring the country into really severe chaos," Allawi said in an interview at his Baghdad office.

Al-Maliki has alleged election fraud and demanded a recount in parts of Baghdad and northern Iraq, despite declarations from the United States and United Nations that the elections were fair.

Dallas News, 9/4/10

Journalists 'lobotomized by policy makers'

Media coverage of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq relies too much on government information rather than firsthand accounts, prominent journalists warned at a conference on war coverage Friday.

Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, said Western reporters have become "lobotomized by policymakers," including during the leadup to the war in Iraq.

Associated Press, 9/4/10

US propped up Kyrgyzstan regime

For the Obama administration, there's a powerful lesson in this week's events in Kyrgyzstan: The U.S. government's policy of supporting security at the expense of democracy has come back to bite the United States.

For the past several years, the United States has been noticeably quiet while the Bakiyev regime has held rigged elections, trampled on human rights and resorted to violence to silence the opposition and independent media; U.S. behavior has most likely been out of deference to the Bakiyev regime for allowing the U.S. military to operate Manas Air Base, which supports operations in Afghanistan.

In fact, on the day his father was forced to flee the capital, the president's son Maxim Bakiyev was scheduled to be in Washington for bilateral consultations and to drum up investment in the impoverished country.

Washington Post, 9/4/10