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News archives for the week ending 19th December 2008

UK troops to leave Iraq 'by July'

British troops are to leave Iraq by the end of July next year, Gordon Brown has said after talks with Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki in Baghdad.

Military operations will end by 31 May and the remaining 4,100 service personnel will leave within two months. Several hundred trainers will remain, some working with the Iraqi navy.

UK PM Mr Brown, who held talks with Mr Maliki before heading to Basra, said he was proud of British troops adding: "We leave Iraq a better place".

BBC News, 17/12/08

US will need warrants in Iraq

U.S. soldiers preparing for raids study maps, examine photos of wanted men and check their weapons. Starting next month, they'll have to go see a judge.

For nearly six years, American troops have been free under a U.N. mandate to search any home and detain anyone deemed a security risk. All that changes next month, when the mandate expires and a U.S.-Iraqi security agreement takes effect. From then on, troops must obtain Iraqi warrants for searches and arrests — and U.S. officers say the requirement is one of the biggest headaches in complying with the new rules.

"It takes away the option of saying, 'hey, this guy just came into town and we want him and we want him now,'" said Capt. Tom Smith, a company commander on his second tour in Iraq. "For some of us who were here before, it feels a bit slow."

U.S. soldiers — particularly special forces — have in the past staged raids without consulting the Iraqis when going after time-sensitive targets.

"Things will not change for the Iraqi army, but it will be a huge change for the U.S. troops to need an Iraqi warrant," Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari said. "The change will be for the best and it will stop the random raids."

Associated Press, 16/12/08

Mumbai attack was a diversion

The Mumbai terror attacks are directly linked to the military situation along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, says Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani writer and security analyst. Mr. Rashid said groups behind the attacks wanted to relieve the pressure that was being mounted on them by the Pakistani Army along the western border with Afghanistan.

“I think one of the major reasons of this attack by the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban — all the groups that are active — was to relieve the pressure on the western border by creating a crisis on the eastern border.”

Mr. Rashid, who authored ‘Taliban: The Story of the Afghan Warlords,’ pointed out that these groups had adopted similar tactics earlier by mounting an attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001.

“This is exactly what they did in 2001-2002 and they were totally victorious. They created a crisis by attacking the Indian Parliament. Pakistan Army was then lining up around Tora Bora in Afghanistan. The moment this crisis happened, the Pakistani Army moved from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the Afghan border and headed towards the Indian border. Nobody could touch the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Afghans and others for the next four years.”

The Hindu, 17/12/08

Violence in Afghanistan will be worse next year

The head of Canada's military mission in Afghanistan said Tuesday he expects to see an escalation in violence in the war-torn country over the next year. Speaking to reporters in Kandahar, Lt.-Gen. Michel Gauthier warned that the surge of U.S. troops arriving in 2009 will likely prompt retaliation from the Taliban, particularly in Afghanistan's volatile southern region.

"There will be a higher level of violence in 2009 than there was in 2008. I wouldn't actually see a decrease in violence until perhaps the following year when we begin to gain traction with some of the capacity," said Gauthier.

Gauthier's comments come as conflict in Afghanistan is at its highest level since the U.S. invaded in 2001, followed shortly by Canada. The number of allied and Afghan troops, as well as civilians, killed in the conflict continues to rise.

Britain announced Monday it had deployed an additional 300 troops to southern Afghanistan to help soldiers there battle a resurgent Taliban. Those troops, redeployed from Cyprus, will remain until at least August, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.

CBC, Canada, 16/12/08

US wars cost $904 billion

U.S. military operations, including the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, have cost $904 billion since 2001 and could top $1.7 trillion by 2018, even with big cuts in overseas troop deployments, a report said on Monday.

A new study released by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said the Iraq conflict's $687 billion price tag alone now exceeds the cost of every past U.S. war except for World War II, when expenditures are adjusted for inflation.

With another $184 billion in spending for Afghanistan included, the two conflicts surpass the cost of the Vietnam War by about 50 percent, the report said.

Reuters, 16/12/08

Civilian deaths fuel rise of Taliban

The latest figures from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, taken a month ago, suggest about 750 civilians have been killed by foreign forces this year. Most were killed in air strikes. The remainder were shot by jumpy soldiers, who often open fire in crowded public places after an attack on one of their convoys. Humanitarian aid agencies say privately that they believe the figure is significantly higher, as many victims classed as "insurgents" are actually non-combatants.

As the situation deteriorates across the country, the killing of civilians is seen as a final affront in a litany of mistakes by the foreign forces in Afghanistan. Patience among ordinary Afghans has worn thin and anger grows with each attack.

Mullah Zubiallah Akhond, a Taliban commander in Oruzgan province, says the attacks are sending recruits his way daily. "The people who are fighting with the Taliban are the brothers, uncles and relatives of those killed by the Americans. They have joined the Taliban and are fighting the Americans because they want to avenge their brothers, fathers or cousins," he says.

"There are now Taliban in every village, many of them have rejoined the movement after the savage attacks carried out by the Americans." He believes the attacks have helped turn their fight against the foreigners into a nationwide popular struggle.

Guardian, 16/12/08

Most Americans believe US action in Afghanistan has been unsuccessful

Americans are more upbeat about U.S. prospects in Iraq than at any time in the past five years, but nearly two-thirds continue to believe the war is not worth fighting and 70 percent say President-elect Barack Obama should fulfill his campaign promise to withdraw U.S. forces from the country within 16 months.

Meanwhile, most Americans support the war in Afghanistan and a slim majority said the conflict there is essential to battling global terrorism, the poll found. Yet, a majority of Americans also believe that the U.S. military action there has been unsuccessful.

Washington Post, 16/12/08

Bush: Iraq 'dramatically freer, dramatically safer and dramatically better'

In a final speech in Iraq to cheering U.S. forces in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces, Bush said his decision to bolster the American troop presence early last year to quell sectarian bloodshed was "one of the greatest successes in the history of the United States military."

"Thanks to you, the Iraq we're standing in today is dramatically freer, dramatically safer and dramatically better than the Iraq we found eight years ago," he said before boarding Air Force One for the flight home.

But in a sign of the lingering animosity many Iraqis have toward Bush, and in a moment that undercut White House hopes of an enthusiastic, glitch-free visit to a relatively quiet nation, an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes across the room at Bush and called him a "dog," the height of insults in the Arab world. The shoes slammed into the wall behind Bush and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who proceeded to take questions from other journalists after the assailant was wrestled to the ground and taken away.

Los Angeles Times, 15/12/08

Maliki humiliates Britain over new mandate

British forces in Iraq are facing a humiliating end to their six-year mission in the country as the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, takes his revenge for what he regards as the British surrender of Basra to hardline Shia Muslim militias.

Mr Maliki, incensed by Britain's perceived failure to deal with the Mahdi Army of his bitter Shia rival, Moqtada al-Sadr, is stalling on a deal on Britain's continuing presence in Iraq, barely a fortnight before the current arrangement expires. Frantic diplomatic efforts are under way to secure a legal framework for British forces after 31 December, when the current United Nations mandate expires.

Top-level sources described the situation as "extremely serious". Even if a deal is struck within the next two weeks, the manner in which Iraq has allowed the issue to go right to the wire is a humiliation for Britain's exit strategy.

Independent on Sunday, 14/12/08

Defense Department made up reconstruction figures

An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

New York Times, 14/12/08

US troops to stay in cities despite agreement

The top American commander in Iraq said that U.S. forces will remain in dozens of small bases inside Iraq's cities despite language in a recently-signed security pact which appears to require an American withdrawal from Iraqi urban areas by next summer.

Gen. Raymond Odierno told reporters here that the U.S. troops assigned to "joint security stations" inside Iraqi cities like Baghdad would remain in the outposts indefinitely. The bases, which are a key part of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, house thousands of American personnel across the country. There are well over a dozen such outposts in Baghdad alone.

Gen. Odierno, who assumed command in September, explained that the withdrawal provision in the security pact applied only to combat personnel. The U.S. forces assigned to the joint security stations mentor and fight alongside Iraqi troops, so American commanders classify them as training personnel and don't consider them to be covered by the withdrawal language, he said.

The comments were significant because they represent the first official U.S. acknowledgment that the security pact's withdrawal language may not be as definitive as many Iraqi and American officials had first indicated.

Wall Street Journal, 13/12/08

US may be in Iraq for ten more years

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki last month sold the Iraqi people on a security pact with the U.S. He called it a “withdrawal agreement” to end the presence of American forces in his country by the beginning of 2012. However, his top government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, undercut that claim this week when he said in Washington that the U.S. might be needed in Iraq for another 10 years.

The security agreement, which takes effect Jan. 1, doesn’t allow U.S. personnel to remain in Iraq after Dec. 31, 2011. Iraq and the U.S. could negotiate another agreement to keep Americans in the country after that date, however. Al-Dabbagh seemed to suggest that Americans would be needed to continue training Iraqi security forces.

“We do understand that the Iraqi military is not going to get built out in the three years. We do need many more years. It might be 10 years,” he said.

Kansas City Star, 12/12/08

NATO payoffs funding Taliban

The West is indirectly funding the insurgency in Afghanistan thanks to a system of payoffs to Taleban commanders who charge protection money to allow convoys of military supplies to reach Nato bases in the south of the country.

Contracts to supply British bases and those of other Western forces with fuel, supplies and equipment are held by multinational companies. However, the business o f moving supplies from the Pakistani port of Karachi to British, US and other military contingents in the country is largely subcontracted to local trucking companies. These must run the gauntlet of the increasingly dangerous roads south of Kabul in convoys protected by hired gunmen from Afghan security companies.

The Times has learnt that it is in the outsourcing of convoys that payoffs amounting to millions of pounds, including money from British taxpayers, are given to the Taleban. he controversial payments were confirmed by several fuel importers, trucking and security company owners. None wanted to be identified because of the risk to their business and their lives.

“We estimate that approximately 25 per cent of the money we pay for security to get the fuel in goes into the pockets of the Taleban,” said one fuel importer.

The Times, 12/12/08

Afghan war an aimless absurdity

The war in Afghanistan — the war that President-elect Barack Obama pledged to fight and win — has become an aimless absurdity.

It began with a specific target. Afghanistan was where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda lived, harbored by the Islamic extremist Taliban government. But the enemy escaped into Pakistan, and for the past seven years, Afghanistan has been a slow bleed against an array of mostly indigenous narco-jihadi-tribal guerrilla forces that we continue to call the "Taliban." These ragtag bands are funded by opium profits and led by assorted religious extremists and druglords, many of whom have safe havens in Pakistan.

"You should understand," a British commander said, "the fight here isn't really about religion. It's about money."

Time Magazine, 11/12/08

Bush policies 'direct cause' of prisoner torture

A bipartisan Senate report released Thursday concludes that decisions made by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were a "direct cause" of widespread detainee abuses, and that other Bush administration officials were to blame for creating a legal and moral climate that contributed to inhumane treatment.

The report, endorsed by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is the most forceful denunciation to date of the role that Rumsfeld and other top officials played in the prisoner abuse scandals of the last five years.

The document also challenges assertions by senior Bush administration officials that the most egregious cases of prisoner mistreatment were isolated incidents of appalling conduct by U.S. troops.

"The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own," the report says. Instead, the document says, a series of high-level decisions in the Bush administration "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody."

Los Angeles Times, 12/12/08

Bomb aims to increase ethnic tensions

A man detonated a suicide vest inside a crowded restaurant in the northern city of Kirkuk on Thursday, killing at least 48 people and wounding 96 others during a meeting of local tribal leaders who were discussing solutions to end the violence that has plagued the city.

The bombing appeared to be a direct challenge to the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as the United States prepares to draw down its troops and questions remain about whether Iraqi security forces will be able control violence in the country.

The area where the bombing occurred is one of the most heterogeneous in Iraq, with populations of Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen. The attack also seemed to send the message that despite claims by the American military and the Iraqi government that they have vanquished Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the extremists are still present and capable of doing enormous damage.

"The real objective is to sow division between the various communities and inflame passions among the extremists among them - of whom there are plenty in all the communities - and set them up against one another," said Joost Hiltermann, the director of the Istanbul office of the International Crisis Group and an expert on Kurdish politics.

"If it happened in a Kurdish restaurant, where there were Arabs eating, the Kurds will blame the Arabs and the Arabs will blame the Kurds for not protecting them," he said.

The attack tapped into the political tensions over the unresolved question of who should govern Kirkuk - Arabs, Kurds or Turkmen - and whether the city and surrounding areas should become part of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.

International Herald Tribune, 11/12/08