These are the archives for the week ending 18th February 2005
US is gearing up its military presence
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declined to rule out a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq Wednesday, under sharp questioning from senators skeptical of the Bush administration's request for $81.9 billion more in emergency war funds. Rumsfeld defended as truly urgent the defense portion of the request, including $5 billion for broad military modernization, $1.4 billion in payments to "Pakistan, Jordan and other key cooperating countries," and $176 million to care for wounded troops.
He said that as of this week, "with few exceptions," U.S. military vehicles in Iraq would be fitted with sufficient protective armor.
"This request sends a clear and strident message that the United States is not winding down its military operations in Iraq," said Sen. Robert Byrd, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. "To the contrary, the U.S. appears to be gearing up."
Associated Press, 17/2/05
CIA: Iraq a terrorist spawning ground
Iraq had become a recruiting ground for Islamic extremists who represented a threat to the entire Middle East and beyond, the director of the CIA told a US Senate committee. Porter Goss's testimony on Wednesday appeared to contradict Bush Administration claims that the war in Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein had made the world a safer place.
"The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become an extremist cause," Mr Goss told the Senate select committee on intelligence. "Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."
Sydney Morning Herald, 18/2/05
Kurds will not back down on Kirkuk
The Iraqi Kurds, one of the big winners of last month's elections in Iraq, are ready to cooperate with rival Sunni Arabs and Turkmens, but will make no concession on the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said.
The January 30 elections "proved the Kurdish identity of Kirkuk," Barzani said, adding: "We always said we would make no concessions on this." Kirkuk is also claimed by the Turkmens, an ethnic group of Turkish descent backed by Ankara, who say the Kurds rigged the vote in the city as part of a suspected plot to seize its oil riches and make it the capital of a future independent Kurdish state.
Middle East Online, 17/2/05
Turkey fears Kurdish independence
Kurdish successes in Iraq's elections, notably in the disputed oil centre of Kirkuk, have heightened Turkey's worries about a future Kurdish drive for independence and Iraq's consequent territorial disintegration. Turkish ministers have hinted at renewed military intervention.
Turkish concerns focus on the area around multi-ethnic Kirkuk, where the Brotherhood slate allied to the Kurdish Alliance won 59% of the provincial council vote. The Turkoman Front, representing a minority that Ankara has vowed to protect, took 18%. Whoever controls Kirkuk potentially controls oilfields representing 40% of Iraq's proved reserves. Such wealth could make an independent Kurdish state economically viable.
There are also widely shared concerns that the Iraqi Kurds' advances could inspire emulation by the Kurdish minority in south-east Turkey as well as among Kurds in Syria and Iran.
Guardian 15/2/05
Media death toll
More than 50 journalists and media workers have been killed in Iraq in the last two years
Guardian 14/2/05
$74.9 billion more for war
Democrats are using President Bush's request for $81.9 billion for conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to criticize his war policies and soaring federal deficits, but congressional approval of something very much like his plan seems inevitable.
Bush sent the package to Capitol Hill on Monday. It included money for tsunami aid to battered Indian Ocean countries, new broadcasts aimed at Europe's Muslims, and offices for the newly created director of national intelligence. Of the total, the White House said $77 billion was directly related to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most of that $74.9 billion would go to the Defense Department, with the State Department getting most of the rest to build and staff a new embassy in Baghdad. Bush said the additional money for the remainder of the 2005 budget year would help Iraq and Afghanistan pursue "the path of democracy and freedom." He said the funds would help protect U.S. troops, track down terrorists and enhance Middle East peace prospects.
ABC news 15/2/05
Britain will be in Iraq for decades
British officials have poured cold water on hopes of substantial early withdrawal from Iraq, and suggested that Britain could be involved in Iraq for decades. 'I think there is now a realisation that we underestimated issues such as the level of criminality in Iraq and how that feeds into its instability and feeds its violence,' said one British official last week. 'There is an understanding now that this is a decades-long problem and we will be there for a long time.'
Observer, 13/2/05
Afghanistan and Iraq already cost half of Vietnam war
The United States' military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are approaching half what it cost the country to fight the Vietnam War - with more expenses to come. President Bush asked Congress on Monday for $81.9 billion to keep the conflicts going this year and to finance other U.S. efforts overseas.
Assuming congressional approval, which seems likely, the proposal would push the total spent in Iraq and Afghanistan and other efforts against terrorism beyond $300 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which lasted more than a decade when it ended in 1975, cost $623 billion when that era's expenditures are converted to the value of today's dollars.
Houston Chronicle, 14/2/05
Pro US groups were big losers
The Iraqi secular democrats backed most strongly by the Bush administration lost big. During his State of the Union address last year, Bush invited Adnan Pachachi, a longtime Sunni politician and then-president of the Iraqi Governing Council, to sit with first lady Laura Bush. Pachachi's party fared so poorly in the election that it won no seats in the national assembly.
And current Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, backed by the CIA during his years in exile and handpicked by U.S. and U.N. officials to lead the interim government, came in third. He addressed a joint session of Congress in September, a rare honor reserved for heads of state of the closest U.S. allies. But now, U.S. hopes that Allawi will tally enough votes to vie as a compromise candidate and continue his leadership are unrealistic, analysts say.
Washington Post, 14/2/05
Pentagon distorts security force figures
Training of Iraq's security forces, crucial to any exit strategy for Britain and the US, is going so badly that the Pentagon has stopped giving figures for the number of combat-ready indigenous troops, The Independent on Sunday has learned. Instead, only figures for troops "on hand" are issued.
The small number of soldiers, national guardsmen and police capable of operating against the country's bloody insurgency is concealed in an overall total of Iraqis in uniform, which includes raw recruits and police who have gone on duty after as little as three weeks' training. In some cases they have no weapons, body armour or even documents to show they are in the police.
The resulting confusion over numbers has allowed the US administration to claim that it is half-way to meeting the target of training almost 270,000 Iraqi forces, including around 52,000 troops and 135,000 Iraqi policemen. The reality, according to experts, is that there may be as few as 5,000 troops who could be considered combat ready.
Independent on Sunday, 13/2/05
Shi'ites win majority
The list of candidates representing Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims won the most votes in the nation's Jan. 30 election, followed by the Kurds and then Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's list, Iraqi election officials said Sunday. The results indicate the long-oppressed Shiites will have to form alliances within the 275-member National Assembly to push through their agenda and select a president and prime minister. The president and two vice presidents must be elected by a two-thirds majority.
The Shiite-dominated ticket received more than 4 million votes, or about 48 percent of the total cast. A Kurdish alliance was second with 2.175 million votes, or 26 percent, and Allawi's list was third with about 1.168 million, or 13.8 percent. The figures also indicate that many Sunni Arabs stayed at home on election day, with only 17,893 votes - or 2 percent - cast in the National Assembly race in Anbar province, a stronghold of the Sunni Muslim insurgency.
Associated Press, 13/2/05
Elected shi'ites will oppose occupation
A vociferous and well-organized faction of extremist Shi'ite Muslims is mobilizing to challenge the new government that emerges from Iraq's recent election and to push for a hard line against the United States. The religious and political leaders are loosely allied with the militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and include supporters of Sadr's uprising in several cities last April.
In recent days, including at prayer services yesterday, they vowed to use seats they expect to win in the Transitional National Assembly to demand a timetable for the departure of US forces. One key leader, Fatah al-Sheikh, seen as Sadr's most direct proxy in the political process, has also pledged to lead the opposition to Iraq's still unwritten new constitution. He also supports military resistance against US forces. ''We will be watching in the National Assembly to see who is truly representing the Iraqi people and who is acting as an American agent," Sheikh said this week.
Boston Globe, 12/2/05
Occupation forces kill three times more people than insurgents
As Iraqis know, the main killers in Iraq are not the insurgents but the Americans. The Iraqi ministry of health's latest statistics show that in the last six months of 2004 they killed almost three times as many people as the insurgents did. On this issue, just as on the elections, TV images usually simplify, if not falsify, the story.
Guardian, 12/2/05
US to support pro Western movements in Russia
The United States will support the development of civil society in Russia through non-governmental organizations to help promote democracy, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview published here Friday. "We are looking for any ways to support and strengthen civil society in Russia. And supporting civil society through non-governmental organizations is one of the ways we can help Russia to ensure a more democratic future," she said.
Russian authorities have accused the United States of supporting the opposition in Georgia and Ukraine -- where protests dislodged pro-Moscow regimes in 2003 and late 2004 in favour of pro-Western leaders. And Moscow has expressed concern about similar attempts to foment "people power" revolutions in Russia and other Soviet republics.
AFP, 11/2/05
Oil and bases
One of the most important reasons for insisting on holding elections is to set up an Iraqi government that the US is able to describe as legitimate, which could then be presented to the international community as the product of free elections. It would then have the authority to take decisions and sign treaties that would be enforceable under international law. This is exactly what America needs to make happen in order to achieve two fundamental goals: a speedy withdrawal from Iraq to avoid further human and material losses at the hands of a fierce Iraqi armed resistance, and the signing of long-term strategic and economic agreements.
Among the military treaties planned is one that allows American military bases to be established in the country. There will be 14 main bases to secure American control over Iraq's oil-wells and to allow the American military easy access to other areas in the region. Under the economic treaties the Iraqi government will grant American companies long-term concessions to exploit Iraqi oil and will include, in all probability, the privatisation of the country's oil industry.
Al-Ahram, Cairo 10-16/2/05