Archive for the week ending 23rd May 2008
Iraq a major buyer of US arms
Iraq is becoming one of the largest customers for U.S. arms, as the country turns from Soviet-bloc weapons to pricier but more sophisticated American weapons.
Iraq's government has committed nearly $3 billion for U.S. weapons and equipment over the past year. "This is a substantial amount of money that they put on the table," said Joseph Benkert, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for global security affairs.
The increase in Iraqi arms and equipment purchases has helped makers of such U.S. military staples as the Humvee, the Pentagon's workhorse vehicle, and the M-4 and M-16 rifles, military contract records show.
That puts Iraq among the top current purchasers of U.S. military equipment through the foreign military sales program, records show. Benkert said the deals are helping to cement the future relationship of Iraq to the United States.
USA Today, 22/5/08
US to rely on special forces
Outlining a more detailed version of America's endgame in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that as conventional forces slowly withdraw, U.S. special operations units will continue to "hunt and kill" militants and help train Iraqis.
About 5,000 special forces are in Iraq and 3,000 in Afghanistan, accounting for more than 80% of such U.S. troops overseas.
"They will be in Iraq and Afghanistan for an extended period of time," Gates said, as "a force to hunt and kill terrorists, and also as a force to help train Iraqis and Afghans."
Top U.S. special operations commanders have said in recent months that they expect to remain in vigorous numbers in Iraq as other U.S. forces decline.
In years to come, Gates said, involvement of conventional U.S. forces in military conflicts "will, in all likelihood, be on a much, much smaller scale -- with special operations forces as the main component."
Los Angeles Times, 21/5/08
Iraq urges UK to investigate sexual abuse at embassy
Iraq's Foreign Minister has called on Britain to investigate allegations of sexual abuse and harassment of Iraqi workers at its embassy in Baghdad.
"This is something the Foreign Office needs to investigate," said Hoshyar Zebari, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
His comments mark the Iraqi Government's first public response to allegations made by employees of the American company KBR, which was hired to maintain the British Embassy's premises in the Green Zone.
The complainants said that some managers at KBR groped Iraqi staff and paid or rewarded them for sex. Those who refused or spoke out were punished or dismissed.
An Iraqi cleaner and two cooks employed by KBR told The Times that a culture of sexual harassment, abuse and bullying existed at the embassy. The cleaner alleged that a British contractor with KBR offered to double her daily pay if she agreed to stay the night with him. After she refused, she said that she was dismissed.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was told of the allegations last summer and allowed KBR to investigate. The company concluded that there was no case to answer and denied the allegations.
Contractors working for the US and British Governments in the Green Zone are immune from prosecution under a provision passed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. The alleged incidents also occurred on embassy premises, which are beyond the jurisdiction of the Iraqi police.
The Times, 20/5/08
US maintains Iraq troop levels
The Pentagon said on Monday it plans to send 39,000 soldiers to Iraq to replace troops scheduled to leave the war zone -- a move that could keep U.S. troop levels steady over the next year.
The United States has 155,000 troops in Iraq and is in the process of reducing that number to around 140,000 by mid-July, ending a "surge" of forces ordered by President George W. Bush last year to curb rampant violence.
While no decision has been made about future U.S. force levels, the deployment orders announced on Monday will ensure that commanders could keep 15 brigade combat teams plus support personnel there through fiscal 2009 if needed.
Reuters, 19/5/08
Iraqi courts have no power over US detention centres
In the eyes of Iraqi justice, Yahya Ali Humadi is a free man. To the U.S. military, he's another of the detainees in yellow jumpsuits held at the sprawling Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.
Humadi - ordered released nine months ago after an Iraqi judge dropped all charges - now spends his days in a legal limbo. It's one that has confronted and confounded thousands of other Iraqis since 2003 who have been freed by their nation's courts but remained in U.S. custody.
"I don't know why the U.S. army brought him to an Iraqi court, if they intend to keep him for an unlimited time," said Humadi's lawyer, Samiya al-Baghdadi.
The American military, however, sees no contradiction. Commanders say the current international mandate in Iraq, as well as general codes of war, allow them to hold any prisoner until the detainee is no longer considered a threat to U.S. forces. Local law and court rulings do not apply, they add.
These dual realities - freedom granted by Iraqi courts but continued detention by the Americans - have been faced by about 3,000 Iraqis since 2003 and stand as a sharp contrast between U.S. policies on the battlefield and Washington's appeals for Iraqis to build credible civic institutions.
USA Today, 18/5/08
Britain's wars risk terrorism across Europe
Britain is the focal point for Islamic terrorism across Europe, and its controversial military campaigns overseas are putting the entire continent at risk, a disturbing new report has warned.
An analysis of the terrorist threat by Europol, the European Police Office, has concluded that the dangers posed by militant groups rose to unprecedented proportions in 2007, with steep increases in the number of arrests, plots and attacks.
Sunday Independent, 18/5/08
Hopes for cluster bomb treaty...
Delegates from more than a hundred countries will open a conference in Dublin on Monday that will try to hammer out a treaty banning the production, use, stockpiling or transfer of cluster munitions - bombs or artillery shells packed with up to several hundred bomblets or submunitions that are sprayed over wide areas of territory.
Support for a ban on cluster weapons has risen sharply since 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, when, according to United Nations estimates, Israeli troops fired some four million Vietnam War-era submunitions, of which a quarter failed to explode.
These have reportedly caused more than 200 casualties since the end of the war and a required a costly and hazardous clean-up operation by international aid agencies - often funded by Western governments.
A handful of issues loom as key battlegrounds. One will be the definition of what exactly constitutes a cluster munition, with richer Western nations like Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland pressing for exclusion of sophisticated weapons that have self-destruct mechanisms, target sensors or a small number of submunitions.
Cluster munitions are an indispensable part of the U.S. arsenal, said Richard Kidd, director of the State Department's Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement. "U.S. forces simply cannot fight by design or by doctrine without holding out at least the possibility of using cluster munitions," he said.
International Herald Tribune, 16/5/08
...as US pressures UK not to sign
British soldiers fighting alongside American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would face criminal prosecution if the government goes ahead with plans to sign a treaty limiting the use of cluster bombs, senior US diplomats have warned.
Under the terms of the so-called Oslo process, any member of the military fighting alongside a country like the US, which refused to join the treaty, must face "criminal penalties".
A senior state department warned that under the treaty, British frontline troops who call in artillery support or air strikes from an American warplane, all of which carry cluster munitions, could be hauled into court.
Sunday Telegraph, 18/5/08
US and Israel agree on Iran
The United States and Israel agree on the need for "tangible action" to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman said after a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush.
"We are on the same page. We both see the threat ... And we both understand that tangible action is required to prevent the Iranians from moving forward on a nuclear weapon," Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said on Friday.
Regev described diplomatic efforts so far to exert pressure on Iran as "positive," but added: "It is clearly not sufficient and it's clear that additional steps will have to be taken."
Asked about the option of using military force, Regev said: "Leaders of many countries have talked about many options being on the table and, of course, Israel agrees with that."
Bush ratcheted up his rhetoric toward Tehran in a speech to Israel's Knesset on Thursday, saying critics' calls for talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were comparable to the "appeasement" of Adolf Hitler before World War Two.
Reuters, 16/5/08
Saudis reject Bush appeal to produce more oil
Saudi Arabia has rejected an appeal by US President George W Bush to raise oil production, a US official has said. Saudi officials said they were already meeting demand, and had increased production by 300,000 barrels per day earlier this month.
The news came after talks in Riyadh between Mr Bush and King Abdullah. The US wants an increase in production to help curb record prices, currently $127 a barrel, but Saudi officials blame speculation not supply shortages.
BBC News, 16/5/08
US plans big new prison in Afghanistan...
The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.
Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in an American-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers.
But American officials now concede that the new Afghan-run prison cannot absorb all the Afghans now detained by the United States, much less the waves of new prisoners from the escalating fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The new prison will usually accommodate about 600 detainees - or as many as 1,100 in a surge - and cost more than $60 million.
New York Times, 17/5/08
...and has detained 2,5000 juveniles
The United States has detained approximately 2,500 people younger than 18 as illegal enemy combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay since 2002, according to a report filed by the Bush administration with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.
The American Civil Liberties Union decried what is described as a "lack of safeguards" for youths captured by the U.S. military and "no comprehensive policy in place" for dealing with juveniles.
"Juveniles and former child soldiers should be treated first and foremost as candidates for rehabilitation and reintegration into society, not subjected to further victimization," Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU's human rights program, said in a statement.
In Iraq, where the U.S. military holds more than 20,000 Iraqis in detention centers, the United States reported the average stay of a juvenile as less than a year and said a "majority of juvenile detainees are released within six months."
Washington Post, 15/5/08
Iranian embassy staff ambushed in Iraq
Gunmen ambushed an Iranian Embassy convoy in Baghdad, wounding three Iranians, including two diplomats, and an Iraqi, a spokesman said Friday. The convoy was en route to a revered Shiite shrine in the northern neighborhood of Kazimiyah when it came under fire
Iran blamed the United States for the ambush, saying Washington's threats against Iran encourage terrorist attacks against Iranian interests in Iraq.
"Responsibility for providing security to diplomats as well as diplomatic and international bodies in Iraq rests with the occupiers. The suspicious behavior of U.S. forces in security issues has brought increasing insecurity in Iraq," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Friday.
Associated Press, 16/5/08
US breaks links with Chalabi, again
U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad have cut off contact with controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favorite, because of his increasingly strained relationship with U.S.-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington told McClatchy.
Both the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and top American military leaders made the decision earlier this week. "That's it. He's out," one senior military official said.
The U.S. decision is the fourth time that the U.S. has ended an alliance with Chalabi, whom officials in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office once touted as a successor to Saddam Hussein. The State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies, however, have long regarded Chalabi as untrustworthy and a "charlatan."
Although the CIA stopped funding Chalabi's exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, in 1995, the INC fed intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and ties to terrorism, much of it bogus, to officials in the Pentagon and Cheney's office. Those officials used it to help build their case for invading Iraq and fulfilling Chalabi's and their ultimate goal - Saddam's ouster.
McClatchy Newspapers, 15/5/08