These are the archives for the week ending 20th January 2006
Report says Iraq human rights situation much worse
After a year of arduous political spadework by Iraqis trying to establish a democracy, a major humanitarian watchdog group has said "the human rights situation in Iraq deteriorated significantly in 2005." Human Rights Watch made the assessment Wednesday in a report titled "Human Rights Watch World Report 2006," a global survey of the state of human rights.
The report cited:
* A rise in insurgent armed attacks, "including the deliberate targeting of civilians and violent attacks such as suicide bombings."
* A "high" level of abductions of Iraqis. The number of foreign nationals abducted "has decreased," a trend that parallels the "departure of foreign personnel" employed there.
* U.S. and Iraqi counterinsurgency operations resulting "in the killing of civilians in violation of the laws of armed conflict."
* An "absence of basic precautions by the U.S. military to protect civilians, including at checkpoints, brought to the fore by the killing of an Italian intelligence officer in March 2005."
*"Evidence of the torture and other mistreatment of detainees held in the custody of U.S. forces in 2003 and 2004 has continued to emerge in the wake of the Abu Ghraib revelations in April 2004."
CNN, 18/1/06
US refuses to hand suspect Marines to Philippines
The United States yesterday refused a Philippine request to hand over four Marines charged with rape, provoking anti-American protests in the capital and the Muslim south, where US troops began annual counterterrorism training of Filipino soldiers. The US Embassy invoked the bilateral Visiting Forces Agreement, which allows large-scale US training in the country, and vowed to keep the Marines in its custody during an upcoming trial.
The case has stirred emotions in the former American colony and is seen as a black mark on US military exercises, which have been credited with helping weaken Al Qaeda-linked militants in the country's restive south.
Boston Globe, 18/1/06
New threat to US helicopters
American helicopters in Iraq are facing a new threat from so-called aerial bombs, which are fired into the air from the ground and explode close to passing aircraft. The new home-made weapons, known to the Americans as "aerial improvised explosive devices" have been used on numerous occasions.
Any new threat to helicopters is deeply worrying for coalition forces. Rotary-wing aircraft are widely used in Iraq and although at least 25 American aircraft have crashed in the past three years, they are considered to be safer than road transport. In the past fortnight US forces in Iraq have lost three helicopters. In the most recent incident an Apache attack helicopter crashed on Monday, killing two crew. The earlier crashes of a reconnaissance helicopter and a Black Hawk, in which a total of 14 servicemen died, are still officially unexplained.
Daily Telegraph, 18/1/06
Dutch discuss Afghanistan troops (British don't)
In the Netherlands the issue could yet bring down the government; in Britain it has hardly been discussed. Nato's planned expansion to the south of Afghanistan opens a new and dangerous chapter in Western involvement in a lawless country and, for the politicians and the military, the stakes are high. Nato's preparations have been held up for weeks as first the Dutch cabinet, and now the country's parliament, debate whether to deploy around 1,400 soldiers. Politicians there are questioning whether a peace-keeping mission can operate in such a treacherous environment.
The next stage foresees an expansion to the south with the creation of at least four new reconstruction teams, meaning Nato will operate in three-quarters of Afghanistan. For Britain this will result in a significant new commitment. The UK plans to deploy the Headquarters Group of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps to lead Isaf from May involving around 900 personnel. In total British troop numbers are likely to rise to around 4,000.
Independent, 17/1/06
Murder technique authorised
An Army officer charged with murder in the suffocation death of an Iraqi general was using an interrogation technique approved by his commander and was under intense pressure to extract information, his lawyer said Tuesday. Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. is accused of killing Mowhoush in 2003 in Iraq.
Prosecution documents say Mowhoush had been placed headfirst in a sleeping bag and bound, and that he died with one officer sitting on him. The documents say an electrical cord may also have been involved but did not say how. In his opening statement, Spinner said Welshofer's company commander had approved the use of the sleeping bag on Mowhoush, who helped finance the Iraqi insurgency and had information that could have saved U.S. soldiers' lives.
The prosecutor, Capt. Elana Matt, said Mowhoush's death came after days of interrogation and repeated beatings. She did not accuse Welshofer of participating in the beatings.
Yahoo News, 17/1/06
Pakistan's leader seen as US lap-dog
Friday's U.S. airstrike on a Pakistani village has disrupted America's efforts to improve its image in Pakistan, one of its most important Muslim allies. The incident has weakened one of Washington's main backers in the Muslim world, President Pervez Musharraf.
Since October's earthquake, both governments have played up the role of U.S. troops and helicopters in rushing relief supplies to millions of homeless villagers in the mountains of Kashmir. That imagery has helped counter a three-year wave of public relations disasters for the United States in Pakistan and the Muslim world, including the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the abuse and humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other military prisons abroad.
But since Saturday, positive images of American relief work have been swept aside by pictures and stories about the U.S. missile attack that killed between 13 and 18 Pakistanis in an attempt to hit al-Qaida leaders in a village near the border with Afghanistan.
Thousands of Pakistanis marched Sunday in protest of the attack, and Islamic militant leaders vowed yesterday to keep the demonstrations going. While Pakistani political analysts do not suggest the protests are likely to threaten Musharraf's control, Javed and others say a recent string of U.S. border incursions strengthens a popular image of the president as a lapdog of the unpopular U.S. superpower.
Newsday.com 17/1/06
Suicide attack kills 20 in Afghanistan
A suicide attacker drove a motorbike into a crowd of wrestling fans and detonated explosives strapped to his body, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 30 others in a southern frontier town.
About 100 people were watching a match at a fair held for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in the town of Spin Buldak, a key crossing point into Pakistan. Monday's incident was the bloodiest in a recent wave of suicide attacks and the third deadly blast in two days in the province, a former stronghold of the Taliban movement.
The motorbike assault came just hours after a bomb attack on a convoy of Afghan army trucks loaded with troops in the city of Kandahar, killing four people and wounding 16. On Sunday, a suicide car bomb in the same city killed a senior Canadian diplomat and two Afghan civilians.
About 25 suicide bombings have occurred in Afghanistan in the last four months.
Los Angeles Times 17/1/06
US plans to cut troop level in Afghanistan
The Danish government plans to double the number of its troops in Afghanistan during 2006. The Danish Prime Minister said Denmark's military contingent would increase from 178 to 360 Danes.
Last month NATO foreign ministers approved plans for an expanded Afghan peacekeeping force which would allow Washington to cut U.S. troop levels there.
Reuters 17/1/06
Iraq rebuilding funds go untraced
More than 18 months after the Pentagon disbanded the Coalition Provisional Authority that ran Iraq, neither the Justice Department nor a special inspector general has moved to recover large sums suspected of disappearing through fraud and price gouging in reconstruction. Earlier audits by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction -- a post Congress created in late 2004 -- found that oversight of contractors by the Authority was so lax that widespread abuse was likely.
An audit in April 2005, for example, found "significant deficiencies in contract administration," which meant that "there was no assurance that fraud, waste, and abuse did not occur in the management and administration of contracts" the U.S. awarded with Iraqi oil money administered by the United Nations. Nevertheless, there hasn't been a concerted effort to trace what happened to the money and make recipients pay back any ill-gotten gains. The inspector general's office said it doesn't plan to ask the Justice Department to file lawsuits or to conduct widespread audits of individual contracts to look for fraud.
One problem is that any attempts to recover money through the courts could prove challenging, say former lawyers for the Justice and Defense Departments. The Pentagon put the Authority in place as a temporary government, but no law or regulation established it. As a result, debate persists over whether it was an international entity or an agency of the U.S. government and subject to U.S. law. Also, there could be scant evidence for such lawsuits because U.S. officials in Iraq didn't keep extensive records, and often didn't track whether contractors performed the work they were paid to do.
It isn't clear how many contracts the Authority issued, in part because the inspector general's office says it hasn't located many of the contracts. But among those awarded large ones were Fluor Corp., Parsons Corp. and Washington International Group. One question facing the government is whether to seek recovery of funds paid to the largest contractor, Halliburton Co.'s KBR unit, which was awarded multibillion-dollar no-bid contracts beginning shortly before the U.S. invaded Iraq to rebuild oil fields and provide logistical support to the U.S. military. A series of 2004 audits by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, the Pentagon's contract-auditing arm, found expenses of $1.48 billion unsupported by adequate documentation on KBR's two largest contracts, which were valued at a total of $9.5 billion.
Wall Street Journal, 17/1/06
US tries to stop arms sales to Venezuela
The US moved yesterday to stop Spain completeing a $2bn (£1.13bn) arms sale to one of America's bitterest critics in the Americas, Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez.
State department officials in formed the Spanish government that it would not give the licences needed to allow the sale of a dozen military aircraft that carry US technology. Spain vowed to press ahead regardless.
In a statement the US embassy in Madrid said "In a region in need of political stability, the Venezuelan government's actions and frequent statements contribute to regional instability...Despite being democratically elected, the government of President Hugo Chavez has grown progressively more autocratic and antidemocratic"
Hugo Chavez denounced the move as evidence of Washington's "horrific imperialism".
Guardian 15/1/06
'Free market' pushes up prices in Iraq
Part press conference, part pep talk, two American diplomats tried last week to explain how the Iraqi government can revitalize the economy by charging Iraqi consumers more for gasoline and heating oil. They hoped local journalists would spread the good word about free markets and the prosperity American companies can create in Iraq.
The price hikes for fuel, which is heavily subsidized by the government, were the first step in a series of moves demanded by world banks and backed by U.S. officials, who are trying anew to promote capitalism and foreign investment in a country mired for decades in a state-dominated economy. Less than a week after the Dec. 15 parliamentary election - timing not lost on Iraqis - the government raised the price of gasoline from the equivalent of about 13 cents per gallon to 64 cents per gallon. Kerosene, critical heating fuel for cold desert nights, rose by five times its original 1.3 cents per gallon. Diesel and natural gas also went up. Gasoline prices will nearly double again by the end of the year in a plan set out by the International Monetary Fund and approved by the Iraqi Cabinet. Kerosene prices will nearly quadruple.
Iraqis responded to the price increases with small riots, political turmoil and confusion about why they should pay for reconstruction that they had been told would be covered by oil exports and foreign donors. The government forced out Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, who had criticized the plan, and replaced him with Ahmed Chalabi, a proponent of free markets and privatization whose coalition finished poorly in the December parliamentary vote.
Houston Chronicle, 14/1/06
US bombs Pakistan village
An airstrike on a Pakistani village near the Afghan border targeted Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, Pakistani officials said Saturday. Citing unnamed American intelligence officials, U.S. networks reported that a CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft carried out the missile strike in the Bajur tribal region of northwestern Pakistan. An AP reporter who visited the scene in Damadola village about 12 hours later saw three destroyed houses, hundreds of yards apart.
Villagers, who denied any links to Taliban or al-Qaida militants, recounted hearing aircraft flying overhead before being bombarded with blasts felt miles away. By their count at least 30 people died, including women and children. Doctors told AP that at least 17 people died in the attack on Damadola, a Pashtun tribal hamlet on a hillside about four miles from the Afghan border. But at one destroyed house, Sami Ullah, a 17-year-old student, said he alone lost 24 of his relatives. Five women were weeping nearby, cursing the attackers.
The attack was the latest in a series of strikes on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan, unexplained by authorities but widely suspected to have targeted terror suspects or Islamic militants. On Monday Pakistan lodged a protest with the U.S. military in Afghanistan after a reported U.S. airstrike killed eight people in the North Waziristan tribal region last Saturday.
Forbes.com, 14/1/06
Attack on Iran could have "horrendous consequences"
Admiral Sir Alan West, the head of the Royal Navy, warned today that any military action against Iran could have "horrendous consequences" and "must be avoided". Sir Alan said even air strikes - let alone a full-scale invasion - would be extremely problematic and could have "disastrous" results.
Sir Alan was the first Western military commander to express his disquiet over the possibility of an armed intervention in the growing crisis over Iran's nuclear programme. It came amid reports that the US and Israel may bomb the nuclear facilities if Tehran refuses to back down from its belligerent stance over its nuclear testing, despite international anger.
Independent, 14/1/06
New details of systematic abuse
The American Civil Liberties Union today released new documents obtained from the Defense Department detailing abuse at U.S. facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Included in the release is the first publicly available government document confirming the existence of a secret "Special Access Program" involving a special ops unit, Task Force 6-26, which has been implicated in numerous detainee abuse incidents in Iraq, and whose operatives used fake names to thwart an Army investigation.
"These documents confirm that the torture of detainees and its subsequent cover-up was part of a larger clandestine operation, in all likelihood, authorized by senior government officials," said ACLU attorney Amrit Singh. "Despite mounting evidence of systemic abuse authorized or endorsed from above, however, not a single high level official has thus far been brought to justice."
In one Army file, an investigator states that he is unable to continue an investigation into claims that a detainee captured by Task Force 6-26 in Tikrit, Iraq, was stripped, humiliated and physically abused until he passed out, because the unit accused of the abuse is part of the Special Access Program (SAP). A memorandum included in the report states that "fake names were used by the 6-26 members" and that the unit claimed to have a computer malfunction which resulted in the loss of 70 percent of their files. The memorandum concludes, "Hell, even if we reopened [the investigation] we wouldn't get any more information than we already have."
ACLU, 12/1/06