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News archives for the week ending 20th November 2009

Taliban declare guerrilla campaign in Pakistan

The Taliban hit back on Wednesday at claims that towns in their mountain bastion have fallen to Pakistan army control, vowing their guerrilla war would defeat troops waging a major assault.

"We have not been defeated. We have voluntarily withdrawn into the mountains under a strategy that will trap the Pakistan army in the area," Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told journalists taken blindfold to a mountain top.

AFP, 18/11/09

Demo over Pakistan civilian deaths

Dozens of people have staged a sit-in on a highway in north-western Pakistan after the army accidentally hit a house with an artillery shell, killing six people, while it was attacking suspected militant hide-outs.

The dead comprised three women, two children and a man, said a local police official. The accident occurred in Shahukhel, a town in the Hangu district of North West Frontier Province, he said.

The protesters placed the bodies of the victims on the main highway that runs through the province, blocking traffic, said Hashim Khan, a local resident who attended the demonstration. The participants chanted "stop the killing of innocent people" and "stop this cruelty," said Khan. The protest lasted about two hours and then dispersed peacefully, he said.

Press Association, 18/11/09

War in Afghanistan spreads to the east of country

The deaths of 14 civilians in a rocket attack presumably aimed at military officials and local leaders underscores the inability of NATO to defeat the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, an official said Tuesday.

Monday's assault in Tagab missed the shura — a traditional meeting called by French officers to explain their operation to local elders_ but hit a crowded market area. Fourteen Afghan civilians were killed and dozens more wounded, said Afghan Gen. Paikan Zamaray.

A day earlier, French and Afghan forces launched a major offensive to secure the Tagab valley, moving in with 100 armored vehicles and attack helicopters. It was aimed at taking control of the area and providing security to those living there, but the assault underscored how difficult it is for troops to protect civilians and combat insurgent violence, especially as an increased military presence can draw more violence.

Those concerns are likely to be amplified as Western countries commit more troops to Afghanistan. The U.S. is considering sending tens of thousands more troops, but military officials say that even with more forces, real security is years away.

Associated Press, 17/11/09

Brown's optimism not shared by defence chief...

Delivering the traditional Prime Minister's foreign policy speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet in the City of London, Mr Brown said damage inflicted on al-Qaeda gave international forces a chance to set a timetable for leaving Afghanistan.

The chief of British defence staff, Sir David Richards, predicted last month that the country's armed forces might be fighting on the front line until 2014, with a further ''five years of declining violence'' before they went into a supporting role.

Neither Mr Brown nor US President Barack Obama want Afghanistan to be seen as a war without end.

The Age, Australia, 18/11/09

...as government vows to back US

As President Obama moves closer to a decision on the United States military’s request for more troops in Afghanistan, the British government has made an unflinching commitment to continue its role as the second largest troop provider in the 43-nation coalition fighting the war.

In the face of opinion polls suggesting that British public opinion has moved sharply against the war in the face of rising British casualties, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and David Miliband, the foreign secretary, used major speeches in the past two days to reaffirm Britain’s determination to fight on in Afghanistan alongside the United States.

New York Times, 17/11/09

Kurds threaten boycott of Iraq election

Only a week after Iraq’s leaders celebrated the passage of an election law that kept the country on course to hold its first national elections in four years, Kurdish lawmakers threatened Tuesday to boycott the election unless their demand for a greater share of parliamentary seats was met.

The passage of an election law was delayed 11 times, hung up largely on the question of representation of the ethnically mixed area of Kirkuk, an oil-rich region whose Kurdish population has grown substantially since the American invasion, after shrinking under years of persecution by the government of Saddam Hussein.

When the election law was passed on Nov. 8, it seemed as if those differences had been resolved. But as the details of the law and the allocation of seats in Parliament became clear, familiar divisions have once again surfaced.

Any delay of the elections beyond their scheduled date of Jan. 21 would not only be an international embarrassment but could complicate the American military’s plans for withdrawal.

New York Times, 17/11/09

Brown offers to host conference on Afghanistan

Britain has offered to host an international conference early next year to set a timetable for transferring security responsibilities to Afghan forces from 2010, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday.

The bloodiest year for British troops in Afghanistan has fuelled public opposition to the campaign, creating another headache for Brown as he tries to close a big gap on the opposition Conservatives ahead of an election due by June.

Brown, trying to show voters he had an exit strategy, argues that expanding training of Afghan security forces may allow Britain to reduce its troop numbers over time. He also presented the mission as part of the fight against al Qaeda, the militant Islamist group.

Reuters, 16/11/09

Corruption no bar to entering US, as long as you have oil

The nation’s doors are open to Mr. Obiang, the forest and agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its president, even though federal law enforcement officials believe that “most if not all” of his wealth comes from corruption related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.

And they are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving American visas. The measures require only credible evidence of corruption, not a conviction of it.

Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement in the State Department, said she was prohibited from discussing specific visa decisions. But other former and current State Department officials said Equatorial Guinea’s close ties to the American oil industry were the reason for the lax enforcement of the law. Production of the country’s nearly 400,000 barrels of oil a day is dominated by American companies like ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon.

“Of course it’s because of oil,” said John Bennett, the United States ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, adding that Washington has turned a blind eye to the Obiangs’ corruption and repression because of its dependence on the country for natural resources.

New York Times, 16/11/09

'We did it to avenge our former comrades'

A former soldier who had kept his silence for six years broke ranks yesterday to accuse his superior officer and former comrades of the brutal beating and torture of Iraqi prisoners which ended in the killing of an Iraqi civilian.

Donald Payne, 35, a former corporal in the British Army, said that the soldiers had acted out of revenge over the murder of three Royal Military Policemen and the killing of an Army captain who had been blown up while delivering humanitarian aid to southern Iraq.

In a dramatic change to his evidence, Payne, who has already been convicted of the inhumane treatment of Iraqis, told a public inquiry he and other soldiers had routinely kicked and punched nine Iraqi detainees captured in September 2003. One of them, Baha Mousa, died from asphyxiation and 93 separate injuries.

Independent, 17/11/09

New setback for Iraq election

Iraq's Sunni Arab vice president threatened on Sunday to veto a new election law unless seats in parliament are allocated to Iraqi refugees, casting fresh uncertainty over the January election.

Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi told parliament the law had to be altered to give a voice to Iraqis abroad. Many of them are members of Iraq's once-dominant Sunni Muslim community who fled after Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003 unleashed a sectarian war.

"Unfortunately this law did not give fair treatment to the large numbers of Iraqi refugees outside Iraq, who were forced to leave their country for reasons beyond their control," Hashemi said in a letter to parliament, adding that he would use his veto power unless the changes were incorporated.

The vice president's veto threat raised doubts about whether Iraq would be able to hold a general election in January.

Reuters, 15/11/09

Unpopular Zardari faces criticism over US links...

President Asif Ali Zardari, who entered office 14 months ago on a wave of post-dictatorship goodwill and sympathy for his slain wife, Benazir Bhutto, now faces growing public anger and disillusionment over his remote presidency. Some critics are urging him to step down, and others predict he will be forced from office within months.

In interviews, opinion articles and talk shows, a diverse range of people are denouncing Zardari as a corrupt and indifferent ruler. They accuse him of living in posh isolation while his country battles Islamist extremists, energy and food shortages, and a host of other problems.

Army officials, although considered unlikely to stage a coup, have made no secret of their unhappiness over Zardari's compliant relationship with Washington. The United States is allied with Pakistan in the war against extremists, but army leaders here remain wary of U.S. ties with India, and they were infuriated by the controls on military spending included in a recent American aid package for Pakistan.

Poor and working-class Pakistanis, meanwhile, blame the government for protracted shortages of gas, electricity and staple foods. They also feel increasingly unprotected, as suicide bombings have killed more than 350 people in two months.

Washington Post, 16/11/09

...as US increases pressure on Pakistan

The Obama administration is stepping up pressure on Pakistan to expand and reorient its fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, warning that failing to do so would undercut the new strategy and troop increase for Afghanistan that President Obama is preparing to approve, American officials say.

While Afghanistan has dominated the public discussion of Mr. Obama’s strategy, which officials say could be announced as early as this week, Pakistan is returning to center stage in administration planning. As the president traveled to Asia, his national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, was quietly sent to Islamabad, its capital.

His message, officials said, was that the new American strategy would work only if Pakistan broadened its fight beyond the militants attacking its cities and security forces and went after the groups that use havens in Pakistan for plotting and carrying out attacks against American troops in Afghanistan, as well as support networks for Al Qaeda.

New York Times, 15/11/09

Billions more dollars on cost of war

President Obama's looming decision on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan is primarily a military one, but it also has substantial budget implications that are adding pressure to limit the commitment, senior administration officials say.

The latest internal government estimates place the cost of adding 40,000 U.S. troops and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces, as favored by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and allied commander in Afghanistan, at $40 billion to $54 billion a year, the officials said.

So even if Obama opts for a lower troop commitment, Afghanistan's new costs could wash out the projected $26 billion expected to be saved in 2010 from withdrawing troops from Iraq. And the overall military budget could rise to as much as $734 billion, or 10 percent more than the peak of $667 billion under the Bush administration.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 14/11/09

71% want troops out of Afghanistan

In a ComRes poll for the Independent on Sunday this weekend, an overwhelming proportion – 71 per cent – supported this newspaper's call for a phased withdrawal of British forces from Afghanistan within a year or so, while just 22 per cent disagreed.

Nearly half – 47 per cent – think that the threat of terrorism on UK soil is increased by British forces remaining in Afghanistan, while 44 per cent disagree. The position is at odds with the argument put by government ministers that the Afghan campaign was vital to preventing terrorism around the world – and in the UK.

Independent on Sunday, 15/11/09

China's role as US lender alters dynamics for Obama

When President Obama visits China for the first time on Sunday, he will, in many ways, be assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay his respects to his banker.

That stark fact — China is the largest foreign lender to the United States — has changed the core of the relationship between the United States and the only country with a reasonable chance of challenging its status as the world’s sole superpower.

The result: unlike his immediate predecessors, who publicly pushed and prodded China to follow the Western model and become more open politically and economically, Mr. Obama will be spending less time exhorting Beijing and more time reassuring it.

It is a long way from the days when President George W. Bush hectored China about currency manipulation, or when President Bill Clinton exhorted the Chinese to improve human rights.

New York Times, 14/11/09

Brown: Britain 'cannot be an occupying army forever'

Gordon Brown has said that British troops cannot stay in Afghanistan forever and will “start coming home” as soon as Afghan forces can secure the country.

“You cannot be an occupying army forever,” Mr Brown said in a BBC Radio Four interview. “Our strategy will be Afghan control of their own affairs. That will take some time but then British troops will start coming home.”

Britain has more than 9,000 troops in Afghanistan and has taken 232 casualties since 2001. Mr Brown insisted that he has a strategy for withdrawing them, but gave no timetable.

Daily Telegraph, 13/11/09

US soldiers' morale down in Afghanistan

Morale has fallen sharply among U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, with repeated combat deployments taking a toll on their psychological health and marriages, according to an Army mental health survey released Friday.

The percentage of soldiers who rated their unit's morale as high or very high fell from 10.2 percent in 2007 to 5.7 percent in 2009, according to the survey. Individual morale rates remained steady, with about 16 percent saying their morale was high or very high.

About 21 percent of soldiers in Afghanistan reported psychological problems such as acute stress, depression or anxiety, which is about the same as in 2007. The findings come as soldiers in the country today face greater exposure to combat than two years ago, the survey showed.

The survey confirmed earlier findings that mental health problems increase along with the number and length of soldiers' combat zone deployments. About 30 percent of soldiers reported marital problems such as infidelity or divorce during the third deployment, compared with less than half that during the first and second deployments.

Washington Post, 14/11/09

Britain's Abu Ghraib

Claims that British soldiers recreated the torture conditions of Abu Ghraib to commit the sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi civilians are being investigated by the Ministry of Defence. The fresh allegations raise important questions about collusion between Britain and America over the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners during the insurgency.

In one case, British soldiers are accused of piling bodies of Iraqi prisoners on top of each other and subjecting them to electric shocks, an echo of the abuse at the notorious US detention centre at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. One claimants says he as raped by two British soldiers, and others say they were stripped naked, abused and photographed. For the first time, British female soldiers are accused of aiding in the sexual and physical abuse of detainees.

The 33 new cases, which form part of a pre-action protocol letter served on the MoD last week, include allegations of other torture techniques widely employed by the Americans, including mock executions, dog attacks and exposure to pornography.

Independent, 14/11/09

Bomb hits Pakistan's spy agency in northwest

A suicide car bomb devastated Pakistan's main spy agency building in the northwest Friday, killing at least 7 people and striking at the heart of the institution overseeing much of the country's anti-terror campaign.

The blast in Peshawar was the latest in a string of bloody attacks on security forces, civilian and Western targets since the government launched an offensive in mid-October against militants in the border region of South Waziristan, where al-Qaida and Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding out.

The ISI agency has been involved in scores of covert operations in the northwest against al-Qaida targets since 2001, when many militant leaders crossed into the area following the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan. The region is seen as a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden.

Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are waging a war against the Pakistani government because they deem it un-Islamic and are angry about its alliance with the United States.

Associated Press, 13/11/09

Brown pushes for more troops to Afghanistan

As the Obama administration debates whether to commit more American troops to Afghanistan, Germany on Friday announced a modest increase in its contingent and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said he was pressing European and other allies to deploy 5,000 more soldiers.

Confronting deepening discontent in his own country about Britain’s role and mounting casualties in Afghanistan, Mr. Brown told an interviewer on BBC radio that he was pressin g allies to share the load in the war. With 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, Britain is the second largest contributor to the 43-nation alliance after the United States, which has 68,000 troops.

Referring to allied countries which he did not identify by name, Mr. Brown said: “I am asking them to help, I think we could probably get another 5,000 forces into Afghanistan” from NATO and other countries “and Britain will be part of that.” Mr. Brown has already given a conditional pledge to send 500 more soldiers to Afghanistan.

Britain has lost 232 soldiers in Afghanistan since the eight-year war started, 95 of them this year, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks military losses. The American death toll since the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001 is put at 918, including 288 this year.

New York Times, 13/11/09

US and Karzai at loggerheads...

The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified cables to Washington in the past week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until President Hamid Karzai's government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban's rise, senior U.S. officials said.

In these and other communications with Washington, Karl W. Eikenberry has expressed deep reservations about Karzai's erratic behavior and corruption within his government, said U.S. officials familiar with the cables. Since Karzai was officially declared reelected last week, U.S. diplomats have seen little sign that the Afghan president plans to address the problems they have raised repeatedly with him.

U.S. officials were particularly irritated by a interview this week in which a defiant Karzai said that the West has little interest in Afghanistan and that its troops are there only for self-serving reasons.

"The West is not here primarily for the sake of Afghanistan," Karzai told PBS's "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" program. "It is here to fight terrorism. The United States and its allies came to Afghanistan after September 11. Afghanistan was troubled like hell before that, too. Nobody bothered about us."

Washington Post, 12/11/09

...as warlords enter new cabinet

Analysts say that while Karzai is considering the formation of his future administration, the main concern over the issue between him and his western allies is not corruption, rather is "warlords"to whom Karzai is indebted during the election campaign will be admitted into the new cabinet.

Despite mounting western pressure and his pledge to eradicate corruption, Karzai is believed to be reluctant in excluding certain influential figures from his new administration, due to his dependence on their support during the presidential campaign. Karzai is said to have made certain deals about some ministries in the next government to the powerful men, in exchange for support during election and their influence in certain ethnic groups and areas outside Kabul, according to media reports. Now it is time for Karzai to fulfill his words or to balance between western countries' demand and his earlier promises.

The western pressure on President Karzai is expected to yield limited results, due to his strong ties with these figures. The alliance with them is not only important during his presidential campaign, but also for the smooth operation of the future government.

Some power brokers, according to media reports are so influential in Afghanistan that even U.S. and NATO military troops reportedly remain dependent on them for security around their fixed bases and protection of supply convoys.

Xinhua, China, 12/11/09