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 20th February 2009

Corruption and incompetence

Chronic mismanagement and profligacy are blighting reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, international aid officials have warned, wasting up to a third of the $15bn (£10.55bn) in funding already delivered and deepening local resentment towards foreign troops.

Senior British, US and local aid workers have described a number of problems including bribery, profiteering, poor planning and incompetence. The overall effect has been to cripple the development effort structured under the Bush administration's insistence on an unregulated and profit-driven approach to reconstruction.

"The major donor agencies operate on the mistaken assumption that it's more efficient and profitable to do things through market mechanisms," a senior American contractor working in Afghanistan told the Guardian on condition of anonymity.

The contractor said the "original plan was to get in, prop up Karzai, kill al-Qaida, privatise all government-owned enterprises and get out. It wasn't a development project, that wasn't a concern. Development was an afterthought."

Aid workers said recent quick-fix solutions handed down by donor nations were usually aimed at domestic audiences and hobbled the process further. They also said a disproportionate amount of money has been spent on military initiatives. At present, the US military spends about $100m a day on security in Afghanistan.

Guardian 19/2/09

17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan...

Barack Obama has ordered 17,000 extra US troops be sent to Afghanistan, keeping a campaign pledge to bolster security in the country, which he said had not received the "strategic attention" it required.

The deployment, which will boost the 36,000 US troops already there by 50%, is a sign of the president's determination to rethink America's approach to the war. The move will please military officials in Afghanistan, who have pleaded for more forces to battle an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency. Militant attacks have escalated in the last three years and insurgents now control wide sections of countryside.

Obama's decision to deploy the troops was one of his first major acts in a war that began more than seven years ago and is now his responsibility.

After the US announcement, the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, confirmed that Italy would send a further 500 troops to Afghanistan by the end of April, making its total force around 2,800.

Obama said in a written statement that the increase was "necessary to stabilise a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires".

The announcement came as it emerged that civilian deaths in Afghanistan had increased by 40% last year to a record 2,118. A UN report said that 829 of these ordinary Afghans were killed by US, Nato and Afghan forces, a rise of more than 30% year-on-year, in spite of repeated assurances that greater care is being taken to reduce civilian casualties.

Civilian deaths have been a huge source of friction between the US and the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has demanded western troops avoid killing civilians during operations.

Guardian 18/2/09

...as Miliband welcomes escalation

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has welcomed US plans to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Mr Miliband said: "I think that there is a universal recognition that these extra American troops can play, and will play, an important and positive role, when they are aligned and allied with a strategy for economic development and political development."

"In terms of the United Kingdom we represent about 12% of the troops in Afghanistan at the moment. We have had no request to increase our number of troops but of course we always keep the number under review."

BBC News, 18/2/09

Election laws don't boost women's power in Iraq

A parliamentarian position doesn’t necessarily bring power for women in Iraq. Despite constitutional guidelines guaranteeing women 25 percent of the Parliament’s 444 seats, many of the nation’s female lawmakers insist they’re still outsiders in Baghdad.

Sameera al-Moussawi, who heads the Parliament’s office of women’s affairs in Parliament, remarked: "Women don’t need a ministry to represent us. We need effective women in every ministry of the country," al-Moussawi said, adding that women in political posts need financial support and commitment from the government. The quota is a good strategy, but the problem is in applying it. Iraq remains a patriarchal society and the election of a woman is not really valued.

The plight of underappreciated political women was on full display last week, when the minister of women’s affairs, Nawal al-Samarraie, resigned over lack of resources for women’s issues in Iraq. The government has asked her to stay so, like many other female politicians there, she remains in limbo.

Women on the Web, 17/2/09

US testing an Afghan 'surge'

The 3,000 new American troops who arrived in recent weeks in Logar and Wardak provinces, both of which border Kabul, face a formidable challenge: establishing control in areas with little government presence and where insurgents operate freely.

In Band-e-chak, for example, a district capital in Wardak, gun-toting Taliban fighters regularly come into town on their motorbikes to do some shopping. They buy their produce and go home, driving past government offices unmolested.

These provinces could be a key testing ground for the Obama administration's Afghan strategy, which may include a surge of thousands of US forces countrywide. The strategy in Logar and Wardak will be to push the insurgents out of their strongholds and eliminate their contact with locals, and to emphasize development and reconstruction, says Col. David Haight, commander of the newly arrived troops.

Christian Science Monitor, 18/2/09

UK government devised torture policy

A policy governing the interrogation of terrorism suspects in Pakistan that led to British citizens and residents being tortured was devised by MI5 lawyers and figures in government, according to evidence heard in court.

A number of British terrorism suspects who have been detained without trial in Pakistan say they were tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being questioned by MI5. In some cases their accusations are supported by medical evidence.

The existence of an official interrogation policy emerged during cross-examination in the high court in London of an MI5 officer who had questioned one of the detainees, Binyam Mohamed, the British resident currently held in Guantánamo Bay.

The Guardian has learned from other sources that the interrogation policy was directed at a high level within Whitehall and that it has been further developed since Mohamed's detention in Pakistan.

Guardian, 17/2/09

US is using bases inside Pakistan to attack tribal areas...

The disclosure by United States Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that CIA’s unmanned Predator aircraft striking targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas are flown from an airbase inside Pakistan is going to prove politically wrenching for Islamabad.

Senator Feinstein, at a hearing, is said to have expressed surprise at Pakistan’s protests, saying, “As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base”.

The Central Intelligence Agency has declined to comment on the statement, which is noteworthy for lack of outright denial. Senator Feinstein’s statement also becomes credible because undisclosed former US intelligence sources, according to the report, have confirmed that the account is accurate.

Daily Times, Pakistan, 15/2/09

...as strikes intensify

U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan have killed more than 50 people in the past three days in what appears to be an escalation of the military campaign in the troubled region along the Afghan border, conducted largely by unmanned drone aircraft.

On Saturday, a remote-controlled US drone bombed compounds in South Waziristan, killing at least 25 people. And on Monday, another US drone struck the Kurram tribal region, killing 26. Kurram had not been targeted earlier, so in that sense it represented a broadening of the campaign, while the high death toll speaks for the intensity of the strikes.

The United States has now targetted Pakistan four times since President Barack Obama took office last month, ending any lingering expectations that he might reverse the course set by the previous administration in hunting al Qaeda and the Taliban holed up in the northwest region. Indeed the strikes are a reminder of Obama’s campaign promise that the United States would go after al Qaeda inside Pakistan if it was unable or unwilling to do so.

Reuters, 16/2/09

US rearming Iraq, and securing its presence

America is supplying the Iraqi armed forces with tanks, fighter jets and other high-tech weapons worth billions of dollars, in one of the biggest rearmament programmes ever seen in the region. The Government of Iraq has already spent $5 billion on American military equipment, supplies and training.

The Iraqi Army, Navy and Air Force are all being rearmed under the programme, which is designed to make sure that the fledgeling Government in Baghdad is able to subdue the insurgency once US troops leave. The weapons should also be enough to defend the country against hostile neighbours.

Already on order are 140 M1 Abrams tanks. The air force is to get F16 fighters by 2015, and the navy is awaiting the arrival in June of the first of four 450-tonne Italian patrol ships.

The near-monopoly procurement arrangement between the US and the Iraqi military is all part of a plan to develop a closer strategic partnership between the two countries. Even when the American combat troops have pulled out of Iraq, there will remain a substantial US military presence for long-term training on all the equipment that is to be provided over the next few years.

The Times, 17/2/09

Pakistan government agrees pact with Taliban

Pakistan government officials said they struck a deal on Monday to accept a legal system compatible with Shariah law in the violent Swat region in return for peace.

The agreement contradicted American demands for the Pakistan authorities to fight harder against militants, and seemed certain to raise fears in Washington that a perilous precedent had been set across a volatile region where U.S. forces are fighting Taliban militants operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Since last summer, some 12,000 government troops have been fighting a military operation in Swat against a Taliban force of about 3,000 fighters. The militants have kept a stranglehold on the area for months, killing local police officers and officials, and punishing residents who do not adhere to strict Islamic tenets.

Government officials said on Monday that the agreement was struck with Maulana Sufi Mohammad, who has long pressed for Shariah law to be restored in Swat and who had pledged to persuade Taliban fighters in Swat to lay down their arms. The authorities, for their part, promised to introduce the new legal system once peace had been restored, government officials said.

New York Times, 16/2/09

Unemployment threatens Iraq stability

More than a fourth of Iraq's young men are out of work, a situation that is likely to worsen and threatens the country's long-term stability, according to a dismal economic forecast Sunday from U.N. and nongovernmental agencies.

Overall, the country's unemployment rate is 18%, but an additional 10% of the labor force is employed part time and wanting to work more, said the first Iraq Labor Force Analysis, which cited falling oil prices and a weak public sector as major problems facing the nation.

Among its findings: 28% of males ages 15 to 29 are unemployed, 17% of women have jobs, and most of the 450,000 Iraqis entering the job market this year won't find work "without a concerted effort to boost the private sector."

The findings also bode ill for government vows to find civilian employment for nearly 100,000 Sons of Iraq, the mainly Sunni Arab paramilitary force, many of whom once supported the insurgency but who have been paid about $300 a month to bolster security alongside U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Late last year, the United States began handing control of the program to Iraq's government. Both sides have said the key to the transfer succeeding and to preventing Sons of Iraq from returning to violence is finding them work.

Los Angeles Times, 16/2/09

Stretched US to offer citizenship for military service

Stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American military will begin recruiting skilled immigrants who are living in this country with temporary visas, offering them the chance to become United States citizens in as little as six months.

Immigrants who are permanent residents, with documents commonly known as green cards, have long been eligible to enlist. But the new effort, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years, according to military officials familiar with the plan.

Recruiters expect that the temporary immigrants will have more education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than many Americans who enlist, helping the military to fill shortages in medical care, language interpretation and field intelligence analysis.

New York Times, 14/2/09

Iraqi Kurds want US backing

The closest U.S. allies in Iraq — the Kurds — feel abandoned by Washington these days and say war with the Arab-dominated central government is likely without American pressure to resolve disputes that predate even the era of Saddam Hussein.

Tension between the Arabs and Kurds is multifaceted, but one of the major flashpoints is the status of Kirkuk, an area that contains 13 percent of Iraq's proven oil reserves. The Kurds believe the area should be part of their semiautonomous region in the north, which the U.S. helped set up in 1991.

But that position has caused serious friction with Baghdad, including a government decision to send in new mostly Arab troops to the Kirkuk area last month. Kurdish officials want the Americans to put more pressure on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to resolve the disputes before the U.S. military leaves Iraq.

If the disputes remain after the U.S. leaves, Kurdish regional Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said "it will be war between both sides." But President Barack Obama's administration has to balance its support for the Kurds and al-Maliki, who is also a close ally.

"We love the U.S., and they don't care," Barzani told The Associated Press. "When we say something about protecting our people's rights, they see it as a problem, a disturbance to their Iraq policy."

Associated Press, 14/2/09

Suicide bomber kills 40 in Iraq

A female suicide bomber struck a tent filled with women and children resting during a pilgrimage south of Baghdad on Friday, killing 40 people and wounding about 80 in the deadliest of three straight days of attacks against Shiite worshippers.

The grisly assault, which also appeared to be the deadliest in Iraq this year, demonstrates the determination of some extremists to re-ignite sectarian warfare. It also underscores how fragile security remains here, even as the U.S. turns over more responsibility to the Iraqis.

Associated Press, 13/2/09

Russia to help US, for a price

Russia is ready to play a more active role in helping fight the Taliban in Afghanistan if the United States is prepared to water down its plans for a missile defence shield and NATO enlargement.

Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of the Soviet military's humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russia, which shares Western worries about the Taliban insurgency, is ready to give logistical support to U.S.-led forces there.

U.S. plans for elements of a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, and its drive to bring ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, are seen in Moscow as "red lines" that Washington should not violate.

Reuters, 13/2/09

Five children killed in Afghanistan

Five children were killed in predawn fighting Thursday between Australian special operations troops and Taliban guerrillas in south-central Afghanistan, the latest incident of rising civilian casualties that have hurt support for American and NATO troops here.

The skirmish, which occurred in darkness in a village called Sarmorghab in Oruzgan Province, north of Kandahar, was condemned by the provincial governor, Assadullah Hamdam, who said it would have a "negative effect." He also said provincial officials had already pleaded with troops not to carry out raids where civilians are present.

International Herald Tribune, 13/2/09

Blackwater changes name

The scandal-ridden security firm Blackwater USA is officially changing its name effective immediately as the company moves to rebrand itself after being fired last month by the State Department from its job protecting diplomats in Iraq.

The company will now be known as Xe and hopes to be a "one-stop shopping source for world class services in the fields of security, stability, aviation, training and logistics", according to a memo sent by company president Gary Jackson to employees today.

ABC News, 13/2/09

Cost of wars soars

Britain’s ministry of defence revealed on Thursday that the costs of UK military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have soared significantly in the current financial year, reaching £4.5bn, an increase of more than 50 per cent on the previous year.

According to the Ministry of Defence, UK operations in Afghanistan accounted for more than half of the £4.5bn figure, at £2.6bn for 2008-09. This compared to costs of £1.5bn to pay for operations in Afghanistan in the financial year 2007-08.

MoD officials said the reason for the sharp increase was the need to provide soldiers with tougher armoured vehicles to cope with the threat from roadside bombs.

Financial Times, 13/2/09

US losing patience with Karzai...

Like a shaky marriage after seven years, Washington's love affair with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai is on the rocks. Once a darling of the Bush administration, Karzai is out of favor with the Obama team who have not called publicly for his ouster but view him as a problem rather than a solution.

President Barack Obama, in his first White House news conference this week, described Karzai's government as "very detached" from its people. Obama wants a "more-for-more" strategy -- the more Washington gives, the more it wants back.

For his part, Karzai has become more critical of the West, particularly of U.S. and NATO forces for causing civilian casualties. He says there has been progress under his leadership and calls tensions with the new administration "soft wrestling."

Reuters, 12/2/09

...as Taliban gains strength

The new director of national intelligence warned Thursday that Afghanistan's weak and corrupt government is failing to halt the spread of Taliban control and said that public support for the Taliban and local warlords was increasing.

The assessment underscored in stark terms the obstacles facing the Obama administration as it vows to focus more American troops and attention on the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan. The intelligence chief, Dennis Blair, described the American-backed government of Hamid Karzai as increasingly ineffective and unpopular.

International Herald Tribune, 12/2/09