Watching the Warmakers is based in Brighton, England.
Our aim is to support activists in educating themselves in the issues
which confront those struggling for peace and justice.

News archives for the week ending 17th October 2008

'The longest campaign of the long war.'

Gen. David H. Petraeus has launched a major reassessment of U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the surrounding region, while warning that the lack of development and the spiraling violence in Afghanistan will probably make it "the longest campaign of the long war."

The 100-day assessment will result in a new campaign plan for the Middle East and Central Asia, a region in which Petraeus will oversee the operations of more than 200,000 American troops as the new head of U.S. Central Command, beginning Oct. 31.

Washington Post, 16/10/08

Civilian deaths in Afghanistan are result of NATO strategy

By far the most comprehensive research into Afghan casualties over the past seven years has been carried out by Marc Herold, a US professor at the University of New Hampshire. In his latest findings, Herold estimates that the number of civilians directly killed by the US and other Nato forces since 2006, up to 3,273, is already higher than the toll exacted by the devastating three-month bombardment that ousted the Taliban regime in 2001. And over the past year civilian deaths at the hands of Nato forces have tripled, despite changes in rules of engagement.

But most telling is the political and military calculation that underlies the Afghan civilian bloodletting. "Close air support" bomb attacks called in by ground forces - which rose from 176 in 2005 to 2,926 in 2007 and are now the US tactic of choice - are between four and 10 times as deadly for Afghan civilians as ground attacks, the figures show, and air strikes now account for 80% of those killed by the occupation forces. But while 242 US and Nato ground troops have died in the war with the Taliban this year, not a single pilot has been killed in action.

The trade-off could not be clearer. With troops thin on the ground and the US military up to their necks in Iraq and elsewhere, US and Nato reliance on air attacks minimises their own casualties while guaranteeing that Afghan civilians will die in far larger numbers. It is that equation that makes a nonsense of US and British claims that their civilian victims are accidental "collateral damage", while the Taliban's use of roadside bombs, suicide attacks and classic guerrilla operations from civilian areas are a sign of their moral depravity.

In real life, the escalating civilian death toll is not a mistake, but the result of a clear decision to put the lives of occupation troops before civilians; westerners before Afghans.

Guardian, 16/10/08

190,000 flee fighting on Afghan border

Nearly 190,000 people are reported to have fled fighting between Pakistani troops and militants near the border with Afghanistan, the United Nations said Tuesday as fresh clashes in the area killed 17 militants.

The U.N.'s refugee agency said at least 20,000 Pakistanis and Afghans have fled from Bajur into eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province since the fighting began. Citing Pakistani statistics, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement that 168,463 other people had fled to other parts of northwestern Pakistan during the offensive.

The agency said it was not able to independently confirm the figure. It said most refugees, on both sides of the border, were staying with host families. But the agency said it was helping those who are staying in several temporary camps in Pakistan.

Associated Press, 14/10/08

Pakistan 'on the edge'

A growing al-Qaida-backed insurgency, combined with the Pakistani army's reluctance to launch an all-out crackdown, political infighting and energy and food shortages are plunging America's key ally in the war on terror deeper into turmoil and violence, says a soon-to-be completed U.S. intelligence assessment.

A U.S. official who participated in drafting the top secret National Intelligence Estimate said it portrays the situation in Pakistan as "very bad." Another official called the draft "very bleak," and said it describes Pakistan as being "on the edge."

The first official summarized the estimate's conclusions about the state of Pakistan as: "no money, no energy, no government."

Miami Herald, 14/10/08

US is using debts to blackmail Iraq

Iraqi MPs say the US is using the country's debts as leverage to force Baghdad into signing the Status of Forces Agreement.

"Baghdad is under pressure by Washington to accept the security deal in exchange for clearing all of Iraq's debts," Iraqi lawmaker Mohammed Kamid al-Humedawi told Press TV on Wednesday.

The US will be allowed to set up permanent military bases, if Iraq signs the agreement. Under the deal the US forces will also be granted immunity from legal prosecution inside their bases in Iraq.

Iraqi parliamentarians, including MPs from the Sadr movement, however, reiterated that they will not approve the deal that is going “to turn the country into a US colony”.

Press TV, Iran, 9/10/08

Maliki: British troops can leave Iraq

British troops are no longer needed to maintain security in southern Iraq as the situation has changed, the country's prime minister has said.

He said a "page had been turned" in the country's relationship with the UK. But he criticised Britain's decision to move forces from a base at a palace in Basra to an airport on the edge of the city last year.

He said: "They stayed away from the confrontation, which gave the gangs and militia the chance to control the city. The situation deteriorated so badly that corrupted youths were carrying swords and cutting the throats of women and children. The citizens of Basra called out for our help . . . and we moved to regain the city."

On the presence of British troops in southern Iraq, Mr al-Maliki said: "We thank them for the role they have played, but I think that their stay is not necessary for maintaining security and control."

BBC News, 13/10/08

Sale of Iraqi oil is world's largest ever

The biggest ever sale of oil assets will take place today, when the Iraqi government puts 40bn barrels of recoverable reserves up for offer in London. BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are all expected to attend a meeting at the Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair with the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani. Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40% of the Middle Eastern nation's reserves, at a time when the country remains under occupation by US and British forces.

Two smaller agreements have already been signed with Shell and the China National Petroleum Corporation, but today's sale will ignite arguments over whether the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a "war for oil" that is now to be consummated by western multinationals seizing control of strategic Iraqi reserves.

Heinrich Matthee, a senior Middle East analyst at the specialist risk consultant Control Risks Group, also believes there are many pitfalls for those considering whether to make an offer.

"Currently it is unclear which party in Iraq is authorised to award a contract and at the same time to deliver its side of the bargain," he said. "Any contract with an independent oil company will be subjected to opposition and possible revision after pressure by resource nationalists."

There is no precedent for proven oil reserves of this magnitude being offered up for sale, said Muttitt. "The nearest thing would be the post-Soviet sale of the Kashagan field [in the Caspian Sea], which had 7bn or 8bn barrels."

Guardian, 13/10/08

Iraq's security forces attacking Christians

Militants blew up three empty Christian homes on Saturday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where more than 800 Christian families have fled in the past two days, a Christian member of parliament said.

"I have been informed that three houses have been blown up. In two of them, the families were already displaced. The third, they evacuated the family and then blew up the house," parliamentarian Unadim Kanna told Iraqiya state television. "More than 800 families have been displaced within two days," he said.

Kanna told the U.S. funded al-Hurra Arabic language television channel that the flight over the past two days was prompted by threats from people connected with the security forces.

"I can't accuse anyone (in particular), but of course they are forces with badges in their pockets, walking the streets -- no one stops them -- knocking on the doors of Christians."

Reuters, 11/10/08

Britain pays for warlords' mansions

With its two million dollar mansions, menacing armed guards, and landcruisers with blacked-out windows, the Kabul district of Shirpur has become an ironic symbol of the new Afghanistan for the city's long-suffering residents.

Its gaudy constructions, built in a style derided locally as "wedding cake", are the homes of Afghanistan's new rich - former warlords, businessmen who deal with foreigners, and politicians who can mysteriously find some way to afford the sky-high prices. Afghans wonder, in private at least, whether drugs wealth is invested from the opium trade, which now makes up 50 per cent of the economy. They complain too that some mansions have been built with money creamed off from the nation's other great illicit activity.

"Corruption is the biggest problem for the Afghans and it is our tragedy," said Dr Ramzan Bashardost, a former planning minister who now plans to stand against President Hamid Karzai in next year's presidential election on an anti-corruption platform.

"It is your problem too," he added. "It was the taxpayers of Britain who paid for Shirpur."

Daily Telegraph, 11/10/08

Pakistan is the new Cambodia

Pakistani politician and cricket great Imran Khan says his country is heading towards anarchy because of the war on terror. He compared Pakistan's current situation to that of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

"Cambodia had nothing to do with the Vietnam War but the Americans at that time blamed the Cambodians for sending insurgents into Vietnam," Khan said.

"They ended up bombing Cambodia, the bombing destabilised Cambodia, a vacuum developed and that vacuum was filled by Pol Pot, a million Cambodians died and they had nothing to do with it. "If there is not a change of strategy right now Pakistan is heading in the same direction."

Sydney Morning Herald, 10/10/08

US turns to Afghan warlords...

Confronting the prospect of failure after seven years in Afghanistan, the U.S. military is crafting a new strategy that is likely to expand the power and reach of that country's tribal militias while relying less on the increasingly troubled central government. Under that approach, U.S. forces would scale back combat operations to focus more on training Afghan government forces and tribal militias.

The plan is controversial because it could extend the influence of warlords while undermining the government of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, the capital. The strategy also could set up a hair-trigger rivalry between national security units and the improved tribal forces, proponents acknowledge.

Los Angeles Times, 10/10/08

...but cracks down on their drug trade

British troops will hunt down heroin drug barons and their opium-processing laboratories in Afghanistan for the first time in a new strategy designed to sever the flow of drugs money to the Taleban.

The new strategy represents a change in operations for the 50,000 international troops serving in Afghanistan, which produces 90 per cent of the world’s heroin. Until now, the job of tackling the heroin industry had been left to the Afghan counter-narcotics police.

American commanders have successfully lobbied their Nato allies to take on the drug barons amid clear evidence that the Taleban have been raking off about 10 per cent of the drug-trafficking profits to buy arms and to fuel the insurgency.

The Times, 11/10/08

Corruption blamed as cholera rips through Iraq

A deadly outbreak of cholera in Iraq is being blamed on a scandal involving corrupt officials who failed to sterilise the local drinking water because they were bribed to buy chlorine from Iran that was long past its expiration date.

The centre of the epidemic is in Babil province, south of Baghdad, in the marshy lands east of the Euphrates river. In Baghdad, where half the six million population has no access to clean drinking water, people are now drinking only bottled or boiled water.

The scandal is a reflection of the the way Iraqi politics works. The ruling parties monopolise jobs and contracts. It is impossible to find work at any level in most ministries without a letter of commendation from one of the parties in the government. The enormous Iraqi government apparatus, employing some two million people, is a patronage machine. There are now more state officials than under Saddam, but it is unable to supply electricity, food rations and clean water, despite Iraq's $80bn in accumulated oil revenues.

Independent, 10/10/08

US rules out Angola for Africom

Both the United States and the Angolan government have ruled out the establishment of the U.S. African Command (Africom). Answering a question on the establishment of Africom in Angola after arriving in Luanda Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Africa Theresa Whelan said the United States has never requested any country to host Africom.

What the United States wants, she added, is to deepen the existing military cooperation that has already started in the areas of maritime security and peacekeeping in Africa which will be the main topics discussed with the Angolan authorities during her two-day stay in the country.

China View, 10/10/08

Official: Afghan military situation will worsen next year

The highest-ranking U.S. military officer warned Thursday that the situation in Afghanistan will likely get worse next year and that it will take time to turn it around because it has been headed in "the wrong direction" for the past two years.

Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the security situation in Afghanistan cannot improve until there is economic and political development in Afghanistan and the U.S. and its coalition partners have embraced a strategy that links Afghan and Pakistani issues.

"The trends across the board are not going in the right direction," Mullen said at a breakfast with reporters. "It will be tougher next year unless we get at all these challenges."

The chairman's comments reflects a growing worry among Pentagon officials that the U.S. military cannot sustain troop levels in Iraq and also address the worsening violence in Afghanistan. While violence has dropped significantly in Iraq this year, it has risen by roughly 30 percent in Afghanistan, and U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan now surpass the monthly toll in Iraq.

Last week, Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, also said the situation would likely worsen. McKiernan has asked for three more combat brigades.

Miami Herald, 9/10/08