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News archives for the week ending 23rd July 2010

Britain is world's second biggest arms dealer

Statistics released by UK Trade &Investment's Defence and Security Organisation (UKTI DSO) show that the UK was the second most successful global exporter in 2009, with new defence export orders of over £7billion, and achieving a market share close to the long term target of 20%.

Commenting on the figures, Richard Paniguian Head of UKTI DSO said, "This is another very strong performance in a very challenging global market which demonstrates the resilience of the UK's defence industry. The sector has performed better than many others, underlining the range of innovative defence and security products and services that the UK can offer potential overseas customers".

The UK has been most successful in the Middle East and North America. The Security sector has also performed well. Exports for 2009 were about £1.4bn, up about 14% on 2008.

FreshBusinessThinking.com, 22/7/10

Pakistan army chief to serve three more years

The government extended the term of Pakistan’s army chief by three years on Thursday, a move backed by the United States as it seeks to encourage Pakistan as a more reliable ally against Taliban and Qaeda militants. The general had been scheduled to retire in November.

The United States pays the Pakistani military an estimated $1 billion a year to fight the militants. The American military has also depended on General Kayani’s quiet permission for the C.I.A. drones striking at Qaeda and Taliban operatives in the tribal areas, and has been appreciative of his efforts to ensure transit on the supply route to American and NATO troops in Afghanistan that runs through Pakistan.

The general attended courses at two prestigious American military academies, the infantry school at Fort Benning, Ga., and the Army Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., a background that allows him to confer easily with his American counterparts.

New York Times, 22/7/10

UK edges towards withdrawal deadline

British troops could begin withdrawing from Afghanistan as early as 2011, and should be gone by 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday, as comments by his deputy prime minister about the Iraq war highlighted the ideological gulf between the two parties in the U.K.'s new coalition government.

Mr. Cameron, putting a date on a potential U.K. withdrawal for the first time, said British troop withdrawals could begin by next year, depending on conditions on the ground.

"People in Britain should understand we're not going to be there in five years' time, in 2015, with combat troops or large numbers because I think it's important to give people an end date by which we won't be continuing in that way," said Mr. Cameron.

While a spokeswoman for Mr. Cameron said his comments didn't represent a deadline, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was more firm.

"Lest there be any confusion on the vital issue of Afghanistan…let me be absolutely clear that we will see our troops withdrawn from Afghanistan from a combat role by 2015," he told Parliament.

Wall Street Journal, 22/7/10

Somalia to suffer more US pain

The Pentagon confirmed on Tuesday that it is preparing to expand its military involvement in Somalia and may launch drone strikes in the impoverished country.

US Africa Command chief General William Ward told an elite gathering at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the growing strength of Islamist militants fighting the UN-backed administration holed up in Mogadishu required "aggressive" action to thwart them.

Though the US has a base in Djibouti, it has not sent soldiers to Somalia in recent years, preferring to work through the African Union (AU).

General Ward said that expanded US military assistance to AU forces propping up the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu could include additional equipment, training, logistical support and information-sharing.

Asked if the Pentagon would deploy unmanned US military drone aircraft in the country, Gen Ward said: "It's all considered but it's nothing that's been determined."

An anonymous US counterterrorism official suggested that Washington would step up assassinations of senior militants in Somalia.

Somali guerilla group Al Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the twin suicide attacks that killed 76 people in the Ugandan capital Kampala on July 11, saying they were carried out to avenge the killing of civilians by AU forces.

Morning Star, 21/7/10

US sanctions against North Korea provoke Chinese anger

The United States announced new sanctions against North Korea in an attempt to hit the rogue state's nuclear weapons programme and destabilise its regime.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said the measures would discourage North Korean aggression but China responded angrily accusing America of "aggravating regional tensions".

Mrs Clinton said that “the sanctions will increase our ability to prevent North Korea's proliferation, to halt their illicit activities that help fund their weapons programmes and to discourage further provocative actions."

Meanwhile China, North Korea's only ally in the region, expressed concern over joint US-South Korean naval exercises off the Korean Peninsula which are due to begin on Sunday and will last four days.

A total of 20 warships and submarines, including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington, as well as 100 aircraft and 8,000 service personnel will take part.

The Pentagon has reportedly tried to contact military officials in North Korea to warn them of the imminent exercises but phone calls to Pyongyang are not being answered. Instead, US officers have resorted to using loudhailers to shout across the heavily defended border to inform the North.

Qin Gang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "We urge the relevant parties to remain calm and exercise restraint and not do anything to exacerbate regional tensions."

There was no immediate response to the new sanctions from North Korea, which has repeatedly argued that it needs to build a nuclear deterrent in the face of US aggression.

Telegraph, 21/7/10

Former MI5 chief delivers damning verdict on Iraq invasion

The former head of MI5 delivered a devastating critique of the invasion of Iraq today, saying it substantially increased the threat of terrorist attacks in Britain and was a significant factor behind the radicalisation of young Muslims in the UK.

Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller told the Chilcot inquiry into the UK's role in Iraq: "Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people – not a whole generation, a few among a generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack upon Islam."

Invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein allowed al-Qaida to establish a foothold in Iraq which it had never previously managed. "Arguably, we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before," Manningham-Buller told the inquiry.

She referred to assessments by the Joint Intelligence Committee, of which she was a member, warning ministers that an invasion of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat to Britain. If they read the reports, she said, ministers would have been in no doubt over the threat.

Asked what lessons MI5 had learned from the invasion of Iraq, Manningham-Buller said: "The danger of over-reliance on fragmentary intelligence in deciding whether or not to go to war. Very few would argue that the intelligence was substantial enough to make that decision."

Guardian, 20/7/10

BAE Systems adopts new battle plan

BAE Systems’ US operations will have to keep rationalising and “focus on being more productive” as government budget cuts start to have an impact on the industry, the head of the business has said.

The aerospace and defence company was having to adjust to a “very different market” amid slowing defence growth in the US, said Linda Hudson, who took over as president and chief executive of BAE Systems Inc last autumn.

Speaking at the Farnborough air show in southern England, she said: “It has been no secret over the last year that a change in defence spending was coming”. The substantial growth in government spending from which contractors had benefited in the wake of military operation in Iraq and Afghanistan was not something “that could be sustained”, she said.

Financial Times, 20/7/10

Rate of British military deaths in Afghanistan 'has nearly doubled'

The rate at which British troops in Afghanistan have been killed has nearly doubled in recent months and is proportionately far higher than their American counterparts, according to the latest figures released today by the Medical Research Council.

The numbers of British military deaths are well above the threshold for "major combat" operations and now match those suffered by Soviet troops fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The figures, compiled by the MRC Biostatistics Unit at Cambridge, show that the rate of British military fatalities is higher now than at any time since the unit started making records in 2006, the year of the first significant deployment of British troops in Afghanistan. Tony Blair initially sent 3,300 soldiers to Helmand province in the spring of 2006 and there are now 10,000 UK troops in southern Afghanistan, including 500 special forces.

Guardian 20/7/10

Cameron: UK is junior partner in special relationship

David Cameron yesterday said he saw Britain as the "junior partner" in the so-called special relationship with the United States.

The PM, speaking ahead of his first White House meeting with President Obama, said: "I believe in the special relationship. Britain is the junior partner, but it is important."

Daily Mirror, 17/7/10

US funded forces killing civilians in Somalia

An African Union peacekeeping force, funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States and its allies, has killed, wounded and displaced hundreds of Somali civilians in a stepped-up campaign against Islamist militants, according to medical officials, human rights activists and victims.

Led by Ugandan and Burundian troops, the force has intensified shelling in recent weeks as Somalia's al-Shabab militia, which is linked to al-Qaeda, has pushed closer toward the fragile government's seat of power.

The shells are landing in heavily populated areas, in some cases even neighborhoods controlled by the government.

Al-Shabab leaders say the peacekeepers and the shelling are the key reasons it bombed two venues in Uganda's capital last Sunday, killing 76 people watching broadcasts of the World Cup final.

Washington Post, 18/7/10

£20 billion bill for Trident

Defence Secretary Liam Fox is in talks with the Treasury over who will pay the 20 billion pound bill to renew the submarine-based nuclear weapons system, the Financial Times said on Friday.

Citing senior defence figures, the FT said the Treasury expects the bulk of capital expenditure for Trident to come out of the Ministry of Defence's (MoD) core budget.

By 2020 the cost of building the four new submarines could absorb up to 25 percent of the MoD's purchasing budget, the paper said, citing unnamed defence officials.

"The risk is that if that happens you will end up with this hugely skewed defence structure - dominated by aircraft carriers, fast jets and Trident - which is only relevant for state-on-state conflict," the paper quoted one official as saying.

Reuters, 16/7/10

US army records record number of suicides

Soldiers killed themselves at the rate of one per day in June making it the worst month on record for Army suicides, the service said Thursday. There were 32 confirmed or suspected suicides among soldiers in June, including 21 among active-duty troops and 11 among National Guard or Reserve forces, according to Army statistics.

Seven soldiers killed themselves while in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan in June, according to the statistics. Of the total suicides, 22 soldiers had been in combat, including 10 who had deployed two to four times.

"The hypothesis is the same that many have heard me say before: continued stress on the force, said Army Col. Christopher Philbrick, director of the Army Suicide Prevention Task Force. He pointed out that the Army has been fighting for nine years in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last year was the Army's worst for suicides with 244 confirmed or suspected cases.

USA Today, 16/7/10

Pakistan army carries out extrajudicial killings

The Pakistani army has carried out 238 extrajudicial killings of people in the Swat Valley since September last year, says a report from Human Rights Watch. It documents cases where members of the army allegedly took away Taliban suspects, who were later found dead, their bodies riddled with bullets.

"The Pakistani military has yet to understand that a bullet in the back of the head is simply not the way to win hearts and minds in Swat," says Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan representative for Human Rights Watch (HRW), in the report.

"Killing terrorism suspects and their relatives in cold blood is vicious, illegal and constitutes an appallingly bad counter-terrorism practice that just creates more enemies."

BBC News, 16/7/10