Mostly a day of R&R for ye old scribe, so just a few items today.

IRAQ IIO

Summaries here and here and here.

P.O.V. published in South Korea:

…America that was thinking of the civil war in Iraq is now attempting to construct a caste based wall for dividing Iraq.

Undoubtedly after the hanging of Saddam Husain, the conditions in Iraq have worsened. And in spite of it, the citizens in Iraq don’t want to see there country bifurcated. But the Bush administration instead of keeping in view the views of Iraqi citizens is proceeding with its plans of undeclared American policy. And usually the American policy is to weaken the enemy, to divide the enemy or at least the seeds of class and caste reparation be sowed so that in future they should remain at daggers drawn for ever. Article

AFGHANISTAN

Summary here and here.

The ruckus in Canada gets bumped up another notch:

The Conservative government conceded Monday that it has received reports from Canadian officials about alleged torture in Afghan jails.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day says Corrections Canada officers in Kandahar have heard at least two first-hand allegations of abuse. “Yes, they have actually talked to detainees about the possibility if they were tortured or not,” Day said early Monday in response to a reporter’s question. “They actually had a couple of incidents where detainees said they were.”

It is the first time a senior minister has admitted clearly that Canadian officials were informed of specific abuse allegations. Day said the claims came to light last week when he spoke by phone with staff overseas. Article

More:

Members of the Afghan independent human rights commission were able to examine prison conditions in Kandahar on Monday, although they couldn’t talk privately with the detainees.

“The place where these men are being held is not fit for humans,” said Shamsudin Taweer, an inspector with the commission. “The conditions are terrible.” Article

RAIDERS ON THE HORN

Summary here and here.

Summary here and here.

Authorities in northern Iraq imposed an indefinite curfew in the Sunni stronghold of Samarra after leaflets signed by rival insurgent groups threatened police officers if they did not quit their jobs and promised to target any oil company that wants to explore in the area. The warnings to the policemen were signed by al-Qaida in Iraq and threatened to destroy their houses if they didn’t comply.

Leaflets signed by a separate insurgent umbrella group calling itself the Mujahedeen of Samarra warned against oil exploration in the area and were posted on the walls of mosques in central Samarra, 95 kilometres (60 miles) north of Baghdad. Article

Crumbling ’round the very, very frayed edges.

An Iraqi Sunni lawmaker urged his party Sunday to withdraw from the Shiite-led government if it fails to better protect citizens from sectarian bloodshed.

Khalaf al-Ilyan, one of the three leaders of the Iraqi Accordance Front, said his party should set a timetable for the government to end mass killings and “stop threatening lawmakers” from his party. Article

Related?

A department of the Iraqi prime minister’s office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias, according to U.S. military officials in Baghdad.

Since March 1, at least 16 army and national police commanders have been fired, detained or pressured to resign; at least nine of them are Sunnis, according to U.S. military documents shown to The Washington Post.

Although some of the officers appear to have been fired for legitimate reasons, such as poor performance or corruption, several were considered to be among the better Iraqi officers in the field. The dismissals have angered U.S. and Iraqi leaders who say the Shiite-led government is sabotaging the military to achieve sectarian goals.

[snip]

…Col. Ehrich Rose, chief of the Military Transition Team with the 4th Iraqi Army Division, who has spent several years working with foreign armies, said the Iraqi officer corps is riddled with divergent loyalties to different sects, tribes and political groups.

“The Iraqi army, as far as capability goes, I’d stack them up against just about any Latin American army I’ve dealt with,” he said. “However, the politicization of their officer corps is the worst I’ve ever seen.”

At the national level, some U.S. officials are increasingly concerned about the Office of the Commander in Chief, a behind-the-scenes department that works on military issues for the prime minister.

[snip]

A senior Iraqi army official said he plans to seek assistance from Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, in limiting the office’s interference in the daily duties of the military. “We need his help to stop these noises,” the official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.

[snip]

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which oversees the national police, said his agency removes only officers who have committed crimes or whose political and sectarian leanings influence their work. An estimated 14,000 Interior Ministry employees have been purged for criminal behavior or ties to insurgents or militias, according to the spokesman, Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf Qanani. Article

Chaos begets chaos.

Saleh Nizar, a 58-year-old gardener, says he was tortured in an Iraqi prison after he was arrested and accused of participating in an attack in the capital, Baghdad. He was arrested on 15 October 2006 and set free on 5 April 2007 after he was helped by a senior Iraqi officer who said that Nizar was his gardener and that he was definitely innocent.

As result of the torture he endured, one of his legs sustained serious injuries and doctors said it might require amputation. Nizar, who has a heart condition which he did not receive treatment for while in prison, now spends much of his time in hospitals and clinics trying to stay alive.

[snip]

“The most common torture was the use of electric shocks and cigarettes to burn our skin. Other times they would beat us with pieces of wood or electrical wire.

“Some detainees were also raped by the officers in front of everyone. And if the victim tried to run away, they hit him with a piece of wood. The suffering I endured in prison was doubled because in addition to the pain that I had after each torture session, there was also the desperate screaming of the other prisoners.

[snip]

“The only thing I have now is to wait for death because those bastards knew how to end my life in this world.” Article

Interesting, especially as to how it exposes yet another instance of the utter cluelessness and hollow bluster of the woebegone G. Walker administration.

Bush administration officials have been scratching their heads over steps taken by Prince Bandar’s uncle, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, that have surprised them by going against the American playbook, after receiving assurances to the contrary from Prince Bandar during secret trips he made to Washington.

[snip]

Most bitingly, during a speech before Arab heads of state in Riyadh three weeks ago, the king condemned the American invasion of Iraq as “an illegal foreign occupation.” The Bush administration, caught off guard, was infuriated, and administration officials have found Prince Bandar hard to reach since.

Since the Iraq war and the attendant plummeting of America’s image in the Muslim world, King Abdullah has been striving to set a more independent and less pro-American course, American and Arab officials said. And that has steered America’s relationship with its staunchest Arab ally into uncharted waters. Prince Bandar, they say, may no longer be able to serve as an unerring beacon of Saudi intent.

“The problem is that Bandar has been pursuing a policy that was music to the ears of the Bush administration, but was not what King Abdullah had in mind at all,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel who is now head of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Of course it is ultimately the king – and not the prince – who makes the final call on policy. More than a dozen associates of Prince Bandar, including personal friends and Saudi officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if his counsel has led to the recent misunderstandings, it is due to his longtime penchant for leaving room in his dispatches for friends to hear what they want to hear. That approach, they said, is catching up to the prince as new tensions emerge between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

[snip]

…several associates of Prince Bandar acknowledge that he feels caught between the opposing pressure of the king and that of his close friends in the Bush administration. It is a relationship that Prince Bandar has fostered with great care and attention to detail over the years, making himself practically indispensable to Mr. Bush, his family and his aides. Article

Shorter version: Those beseiged recognize a tool, not an ally.

Yet for all the indications of a heartening turnaround in Anbar, the situation, as it appeared during more than a week spent with American troops in Ramadi and Falluja in early April, is at best uneasy and fragile.

[snip]

Furthermore, some American officials readily acknowledge that they have entered an uncertain marriage of convenience with the tribes, some of whom were themselves involved in the insurgency, to one extent or another. American officials are also negotiating with elements of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a leading insurgent group in Anbar, to join their fight against Al Qaeda.

[snip]

For all the sheiks’ hostility toward the Americans, they realized that they had a bigger enemy, or at least one that needed to be fought first, as a matter of survival.

[snip]

The Ramadi region is essentially a police state now, with some 6,000 American troops, 4,000 Iraqi soldiers and 4,500 Iraqi police officers, including an auxiliary police force of about 2,000, all local tribesmen, known as the Provincial Security Force.…

[snip]

…American commanders say they are not particularly worried about infiltrators among the new recruits. Many of the former insurgents now in the police, they say, were probably low-level operatives who were mainly in it for the money and did relatively menial tasks, like planting roadside bombs.

The speed of the buildup has led to other problems. Hiring has outpaced the building of police academies, meaning that many new officers have been deployed with little or no training. Without enough uniforms, many new officers patrol in civilian clothes, some with their heads wrapped in scarves or covered in balaclavas to conceal their identities. They look no different than the insurgents shown in mujahedeen videos. Article

Further peeking under the surface here.

Can’t get any more succinct than is the pulled quote.

…”This is not a security plan. It is security chaos.” Article

Unsure quite what to make of this (at least without more background). Tragic, yes. Trend? Not enough info to scope out.

Lowered (asymptotically approaching the horizontal line of the graph) expectations #1 and #2.

Related:

…in the run-up to an expected presidential veto, consensus is building around three approaches.

[snip]

“For some time, the assumption has been that eventually Democrats would have to go along with some kind of funding, absent timetables,” says John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

“But it’s possible that that isn’t true, especially with reports that the administration is putting off its evaluation of the surge until September,” he adds. “At some time, the public patience will run out.” Article

Yuppers.

“To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave.’ He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games.

“Some in Congress on both sides of the aisle have responded with their own tits-for-tats. These kinds of games, however, are no longer helpful, much less amusing. They merely reflect the absence of effective leadership in a crisis. And we are in a crisis.

“Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right.

“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests. Article

Keeping up with the courts-martial.

#1:

A hearing opens Monday to determine whether a U.S. officer should be court-martialed for nine alleged violations of military law, including aiding the enemy while he commanded a military police detachment at a main detention center here.

[snip]

The alleged incidents took place from October 2005 to February 2007, starting when Steele was commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment at Camp Cropper and in his later post as a senior patrol officer for the provincial transition team headquarters at nearby Camp Victory.

The U.S. military command has called the allegations against Steele troublesome but emphasized that none of them had been proven yet.

During the Steele hearings, the investigative officer was expected to bar reporters from the court if evidence was raised that could affect U.S. national security. Article

#2:

Army Spc. Sean J. Maxwell was sentenced to 10 months of confinement, a reduced rank and a bad conduct discharge, the military said in a statement. The court-martial was held April 17 at Camp Victory, the main military base outside Baghdad.

Maxwell, of the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 324th Military Police Battalion, 16th Military Police Brigade, “intentionally failed to return to Iraq after his scheduled leave” on Jan. 20 and was listed as absent without leave from Jan. 23 to about Feb. 5, the military said. Article

Summary here and here.

Hundreds of people staged a protest in the eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan following civilian killings during a raid by the US-led coalition forces.

The protesters brought six bodies to block a main road from Jalalabad to Torkham, a town bordering Pakistan, witnesses said.

The demonstrators alleged all the six killed were civilians and demanded coalition forces to immediately release the eight persons detained in the raid. Article

The initial reports were scant, herewith some more information on what is an apparent strangulation of supply lines.

Supplies of oil to US and Nato troops in Afghanistan may be disrupted after truckers angry at high taxes and extortion sealed a key route from Pakistan, a press report said on Sunday.

Hauliers that have blocked traffic at the Torkham crossing point near the Pakistani city of Peshawar since Friday are seeking to bring tanker firms into the dispute, commercial transporters told the Dawn newspaper.

The US forces in Afghanistan were unable to comment on the impact of the strike on their oil supplies but noted that the blockade was organized on the Pakistani side of the border.

[snip]

Landlocked Afghanistan receives most of its imports via the Pakistani sea port of Karachi. More than 350 trucks reportedly carry an average of 7 000 tons of goods each day from Peshawar to Kabul and eastern and northern Afghanistan via the Khyber Pass.

[snip]

Scores of trucks have had to dump cargoes at warehouses in Peshawar because of the protest, which has disrupted supplies to eastern and northern Afghanistan. As well as oil, many other goods used at foreign military bases are trucked in from Pakistan.

Supplies to southern and western Afghan provinces are sent through the Pakistani city of Quetta and across the Chaman border point in the Balochistan province. Companies working the route say they encounter fewer problems and are not planning to strike. Article

Yet more confusion and acrimony in Canada:

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission had heard rumours that Taliban fighters captured by Canadians may have been mistreated in local jails, but failed notify the Conservative government, says the agency’s Kandahar manager.

[snip]

While he has been unable to verify claims that Canadian-captured prisoners were abused, Noorzai has, however, documented other cases of suspected toture involving prisoners handed over to the country’s notorious intelligence service - the NDS- by the Afghan Army.

But once again, Noorzai said, Canadian officials were not made aware of those instances, which occurred in 2004.

[snip]

Since agreeing to take on responsibility for Canadian detainees, Noorzai said he has spent most of his time fighting for access to the jails of the notorious Afghan intelligence service, where prisoners are only supposed to be held for a few days. His staff of seven had only been able to get into the civilian prison system.

Both the Canadian and Afghan governments, through that country’s ambassador in Ottawa, have denied the humans rights group faced any barriers. Ambassador Omar Samad insisted on Thursday that he was unaware of any problems and suggested Noorzai had not asked to be let in to the NDS jails. Article

Oy.

Things are shaping up to be make for one really ugly week.

Nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan is set to attract world attention again next week as a fresh dossier on his nuclear black market network is being made available to the international media in London that might unleash a new storm for Pakistan.

The fresh dossier might put Iran under more pressure than Pakistan, as it is said to focus on the activities of Khan’s nuclear network and its links with Iran to prove it helped Tehran facilitate its own nuclear facilities.

The international press, particularly based in London, Washington and New Delhi, might find a lot of juicy stuff about Pakistan on May 2 from this dossier to report and establish yet again that in addition to certain countries like Iran, North Korea, and Libya, now even terrorists were capable of getting nuclear weapons from black markets like one that was operated by Khan.

[snip]

The IISS has now claimed that Khan was not the only nuclear arms merchant and Pakistan was not the only country implicated in his shadowy network. It spanned three continents and eluded both national and international systems of export controls that had been designed to prevent illicit trade. This highlighted concerns that nuclear technology was no longer the monopoly of the industrially advanced countries, but possibly can be purchased off-the-shelf by both states and terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, it has been claimed that the IISS dossier provides a comprehensive assessment of the Pakistani nuclear programme from which the Khan network emerged, the network’s proliferation activities, and the illicit trade in fissile materials. Article

Summary here and here.

Analysis du jour:

For the last six months of 2006, Somalia had started to look to Washington like Taliban West, the Afghanistan of Africa. A loose coalition called the Union of Islamic Courts had accomplished the welcome task of freeing much of the country from the terror of entrenched warlords who had kept it in chaos for 16 years. At long last a measure of order calmed the streets, but only by enforcement of strict Islamic Shariah law (echoes of the Taliban) that was especially harsh on minorities.

[snip]

Whatever al-Qaida masterminds may threaten, however, Somali Muslims are not the Taliban, and Somalia is not like Iraq. We do not need to worry about Somalia becoming a new front in the war on terror.

[snip]

The population of Somalia is remarkably homogeneous, with no major ethnic or linguistic barriers. Historically Somalis trace their identity to one of six tribal clans, all linked to one legendary founding ancestor. In Iraq the civil war has coalesced around generic categories of Sunni versus Shia, dredging up rivalries that date to the origins of Islam. The Muslims in Somalia are virtually all Sunni. You can get killed in Somalia because of who your great-grandfather was, but not for the way you pray.

In the absence of a stable central government, clan membership has been the only viable way to function in the society. Mutual economic support within clans is coupled with strategic alliances across kinship ties to adapt to changing conditions on the ground. Recent years have seen the rise of Mafia-like urban clan fiefdoms. The so-called Islamist takeover of the country last June was about justice rather than religious dogma.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban arose as a foreign-supported jihad against the Soviet presence and also as a way out of the continuing nightmare of armed ethnic factionalism. But foreign occupiers left Somalia almost half a century ago. Article

Follow-up on the kidnapping situation reported earlier in the week:

Ethiopian rebels freed seven Chinese workers on Sunday who were seized in a deadly oilfield raid that was one of the worst attacks to date on Beijing’s growing interests in Africa.

[snip]

Adurahmin Mohammed Mahdi, a London-based spokesman for the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), said the seven were handed to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“They are all very healthy. They are uninjured and very happy,” he told Reuters by telephone.

The ICRC confirmed the news and said the men were in Degabur, a small town south of the regional capital Jijiga. They would return to Addis Ababa on Monday, accompanied by Ethiopian and Chinese representatives, it said in a statement.

[snip]

Mahdi said two Ethiopian men were also freed with the Chinese after successful negotiations between the rebels’ armed wing, ICRC officials and local Ogaden elders.

[snip]

Beijing had condemned Tuesday’s raid, which analysts said exposed the risks of its drive to use Africa’s under-developed energy resources to feed a rapidly growing economy.

African governments have generally welcomed the Chinese push, which comes free of the political conditions often imposed by Western nations. But there is concern in some quarters Beijing may be gaining too much control, treating local workers badly and flooding Africa with cheap, inferior goods. Article

Upshot? Incarceration infinitus, the loathesome fruit of the woebegone G. Walker administration’s deliberate devastation to and upending of established justice.

More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions. Article

Simmering just below a boil in Turkey:

Up to a million protesters have gathered in Istanbul accusing the government of planning an Islamist state and demanding it withdraw its presidential candidate.

Despite the Istanbul protests and a threat from the powerful army to intervene in the election, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, architect of Turkey’s EU membership drive, said he would remain the ruling AK Party’s candidate for head of state. Article

More:

On the day more than 700,000 protesters rallied in Istanbul to demand that the government withdraw its presidential candidate because he is a Muslim, the military said it has the final say in the matter.

“It should not be forgotten that the Turkish armed forces is one of the sides in this debate and the absolute defender of secularism,” the military said in a statement.

“When necessary, they will display its stance and attitudes very clearly. No one should doubt that.” Article

A bit more here.

Also:

The political clash between secularists and Islamists has become critical, analysts say, and taps into one of the deepest faultlines of modern Turkish society. The entrance of the military, which ousted an elected Islamic government a decade ago and mounted three coups in decades before that, brought condemnation from the European Union and has intensified debate about having all strategic civilian arms of government under a pro-Islamic party.

“Today is really a defining moment in Turkey,” says Nilufer Narli, an expert on political Islam at Bahcehir University. “There is a polarization, a secular-Islamist conflict, but today it is sharper.”

Protesters Sunday, shouting that the presidential palace was “closed to imams,” echoed a rally in Ankara two weeks ago.

“Some people say this is a crisis, but it is not. If radical Islam comes, it will be a crisis,” said Bashar Unal, a textile businessman who brought his father to the rally. “We are Turkey. We do not want to be like Iran.” Article

Nigerian ‘elections’ — second time is not the charm.

Nigeria’s ruling party won more legislators’ seats and consolidated its grip on power in several states after rescheduled polls marred by very low turnout and electoral fraud, early results showed on Sunday.

The electoral authority re-staged polls for hundreds of federal and state legislators’ seats on Saturday in places where earlier elections were annulled due to irregularities.

But Reuters reporters in several states said the re-runs showed little improvement on the original polls. Voting slips and ballot boxes were stolen by ruling party supporters in some places and polling stations never opened in others.

Nigerian newspapers reported from around the country that even where polling stations were up and running the turnout was extremely low as voters were poorly informed, fearful of trouble and did not believe their votes would be counted.

[snip]

A Reuters reporter in Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers, saw youths shouting PDP slogans and carrying ballot boxes stuffed with voting slips marked for the PDP take over a polling station and scare voters away on Saturday. Other polling stations in the city failed to materialise or were deserted.

Enugu, Anambra and Oyo were among states where media reported many polling stations did not open at all on Saturday and there were widespread reports of missing voting materials. Article

Summaries here and here and here.

Iraq’s parliament chose a new election commission on Saturday in what U.S. officials called a significant step towards holding provincial elections, one of the political benchmarks Washington has set for Baghdad.

The nine commissioners were chosen in a closed session of parliament and their names initially withheld until security was organised for them. As with other members of the government and parliament they will likely be targets for assassination amid spiralling sectarian violence. Article

Spotty and early report, but noted:

British diplomats are checking secret reports that elements within Iran, normally hostile to the West, helped the American secret services to capture Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, the Kurdish-born senior al-Qaeda militant who was revealed last week to have been arrested on the border between Iran and Iraq late last year.

[snip]

…senior US intelligence officials told The Observer that the Iranian government has ‘in some cases’ been helpful in tracking and ‘disabling’ key militants crossing their national territory between Iraq and Afghanistan. The key Egyptian militant Saif al-Adel, once in charge of training al-Qaeda’s new recruits, and one of Osama bin Laden’s sons are both believed to be under some kind of detention in Iran. Article

The backroom arm-twisting must be beyond imagining.

Northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish government Friday said Iraq’s federal government was overstepping its powers by trying to give too much authority to a new national energy company which would control nearly all Iraq’s oil under plans being considered.

Kurdish Oil Minister Ashti Hawrami, in a statement, said Baghdad was attempting to give a new Iraqi national oil company almost 93% of the country’s proven petroleum reserves, among the biggest in the world.

“If an unaccountable and inefficient Iraqi national oil company is created with such a stranglehold on Iraq’s oil, all the peoples of Iraq will suffer,” Hawrami said.

The sharp words underscore how far apart Baghdad and the Kurdish government remain in trying to finalize Iraq’s much-delayed hydrocarbons law necessary for setting the legal framework for attracting foreign investment. All Iraq’s main groups hope to have a final deal submitted to Iraq’s parliament for a vote in May. [Again, a deadline coincident with the oil/energy summit scheduled for the end of May. (see last item in Apr. 18 Iraq IIO section. — voxd] Article

Overview du jour:

The war persists despite the opposition of a majority of Americans and Iraqis.

The war persists despite warnings from U.S. generals that the stress is breaking the Army.

The war persists despite its enormous cost in red ink and dependence on foreign loans.

The war persists despite its total failure.

The war persists despite the known fact that it was based on Bush administration lies and deception.

[snip]

Bush’s invasion of Iraq had no justification. Continuing the war has no positive effects. Each day that the war continues produces more pointless casualties, more red ink and dependence on foreign creditors, more trauma and more hatreds.

The Bush administration is continuing the war without a realizable or defensible goal. Although the Iraqi government is supposedly a democratically elected majority Shiite government, in reality it is a puppet creature of the U.S. occupation without real power and without public support. The “Iraqi government” exists only within the heavily fortified and U.S.-guarded “green zone” in Baghdad.…

As a colony or protectorate, Iraq is too costly to maintain. The United States has already incurred out-of-pocket and future costs of $1 trillion or more. The total gains from oil exploitation and military-security complex profits do not approach this massive figure imposed on U.S. taxpayers, which is growing by the day.

[snip]

The risks of Bush’s war both to Iraqis and Americans is out of proportion to any conceivable gains. The war is all cost and no benefit. Iraqis have been made massively insecure, and their country has undergone tremendous destruction and been turned into a training ground for terrorists.

[snip]

Bush has shown the world that the only difference between American dictatorship and other dictatorships is that, for now, Americans are permitted to remove their dictator after his term is served. Article

The schmucks are going to overplay their hand and make a circus of it. Don’t, don’t, don’t take that step off the higher road.

Democrats plan to highlight the unprecedented rebuke they are delivering to Bush when they send their bill to him on Tuesday. That day is the fourth anniversary of Bush’s speech aboard an aircraft carrier declaring the end to major combat operations in Iraq. To remind Americans of the anniversary, antiwar groups are running television ads showing footage of Bush aboard the carrier that had been decorated with a “Mission Accomplished” banner. Article

Not that it is not, in its way, commendable, but it does strike one as making a quart of lemonade from a kiloton of lemons.

…a group of Iraqi artists - Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and others - have come together to beautify a stretch of the bleak, grey blast barriers on central Baghdad’s Saadoun Street erected to protect the area from car bombings and other attacks.

[snip]

“We want at least to beautify these walls as long as we can’t move them, but we are afraid that some walls can’t be beautified anymore as they make very hurtful impressions on the souls of Iraqis like the Azamiyah one,” he said.

“That one is not like these, which are just for a building that needs to be protected from attacks,” he said. “The Azamiyah one … tries to divide Iraqis by their sects and religious backgrounds, something have rejected all these past years. And that, I feel … even the most famous painters in this world can’t beautify.”

Iraqis have often painted the concrete barriers that have become a fact of life in the capital and elsewhere in the country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, but rarely made a project of it. One of the most high-profile efforts was the painting of a wall around the nearby French Embassy shortly after the war started. Article

Afghanistan summary here and here.

Pakistan summary here and here.

Calling a spade a spade: The other quagmire.

NATO risks losing the war in Afghanistan because of a “tremendous deterioration” in the popularity of the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke said Saturday.

“Afghanistan represents the ultimate test for NATO,” Holbrooke - who recently toured the war-torn country - told the Brussels Forum, an annual transatlantic security conference.

[snip]

Holbrooke said he was struck during his visit by how unpopular Karzai’s government had become because of corruption caused by the country’s burgeoning drug problem.

“I have heard increasingly that the government has lost its momentum,” he said.

“I can sense a tremendous deterioration in the standing of the government. Afghans are now universally talking about their disappointment with Karzai. Let’s be honest with ourselves … the government must succeed or else the Taliban will gain from it.”

[snip]

Holbrooke, who was instrumental in formulating U.S. policy toward the United Nations, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, remains best-known for his role as the architect of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the war in Bosnia.

[snip]

He lambasted the U.S.-financed effort to train the Afghan police, saying it had produced a force that was corrupt and incompetent.

“The U.S. training program (for the police) under DynCorp is an appalling joke … a complete shambles,” he said. He referred to Falls Church, Virginia-based DynCorp International Inc. a major provider of security and defence services in Afghanistan, Iraq and other troublespots.

“I don’t want to appear negative, but unless we are honest about the problem we will continue saying year after year that we are making progress, but have lost ground. We all know where that leads.” Article

Keeping up with the fairly major ruckus in Canada (see the past few days’ postings as well):

#1:

Urging an end to the “political circus” over Afghan detainees, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Canada says no Canadians, including corrections officers, have monitored treatment of prisoners turned over by Canadian military forces.

However, Ambassador Omar Samad said in a Global National interview that Canadian officials will soon have “unrestricted access” to prisons under an agreement currently being worked out with Canada in the wake of political uproar over alleged torture of detainees.

Samad contradicted assertions by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day that Corrections Canada officers have been monitoring prisoner treatment — an assertion Day repeated in the Commons Friday, saying they are there “to see if there are cases of torture.”

[snip]

“From the Afghan point of view, it’s clear there was no followup or monitoring of detainees caught by Canadian forces turned over to Afghans, especially to the NDS (National Directorate of Security) that took place prior to this current time.” Article

#2:

Most House of Commons resignation calls are cheap political posturing, merely a dramatic plea to be quoted by the media and best paid no heed, but the O’Connor’s-a-goner campaign is starting to gain traction - and may rate serious consideration.

[snip]

After falling into Canadian hands, these detainees apparently get some gentle arm-twisting for intelligence before being handed over to the Afghans for a safekeeping that’s not supposed to include involuntary tooth extractions and electric shock treatment.

That’s not to say detainee reports of abuse should be accepted and acted upon as gospel truth. When terrorist suspects complain about their lousy prison treatment, it’s best downed with a shaker of salt.

But there’s a presumption of detainee innocence here and a moral obligation to ensure we’re not replicating the American role in the Maher Arar saga, which is to say knowingly handing over suspects for torture by a foreign power.

[snip]

Had O’Connor merely accepted and admitted what he must’ve known to be true - that the Afghans have an internationally recognized reputation as severely inhospitable hosts - and vowed to obtain access to detention centres for Canadian monitors, there would’ve been no messy talk of his political demise.

But as always with many governments, the bungled reaction was worse than the original problem.

After giving the surprising and perhaps unscripted revelation that Canada had negotiated a detainee inspection deal, O’Connor engaged in a runaway commentary followed by news release clarifications, document denials and more changed stories - all the while leaving confused cabinet colleagues in the dark. Article

Noted FYI:

Controversially suspended by President General Pervez Musharraf, the Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry will address the Sindh High Court Bar Association on May 12.

SHCBA President Abrar Hasan said Saturday that he has met the chief justice in Islamabad after filing a petition against the presidential reference at the Supreme Court principal seat on behalf of the bar.

[snip]

During his last address to the Peshawar Bar, the chief justice was welcomed by 12 judges of the Peshawar High Court, including the chief justice of Peshawar High Court.

It was on this occasion, the chief justice read the famous Urdu couplet, which meant: “I alone started my journey to the destination - then people started joining me and a caravan came into being.”

The chief justice reached Peshawar from Islamabad after a journey of nine hours. He was showered with rose petals all the way by ordinary people, political workers and lawyers at different places during his travel on April 21. Article

Summary here and here.

Topically related:

Last week’s attack on an oil exploration site in eastern Ethiopia in which nine Chinese were killed and at least five more taken hostage, was the single deadliest incident involving the Chinese in Africa to date. At least 65 Ethiopians were also killed in the attack.

It underlines the potential for a backlash against China’s involvement on the continent where this can be compromised by a reliance on regimes with poor human rights records and enemies among their own people.

[snip]

“The Chinese are like the west was 100 years ago. They come in, make deals with the local bosses and then bring the guns,” he said. They are less preoccupied with safety, he added, because the companies are unlikely to face big compensation claims from the families of victims. Article

Editorial du jour:

The Bush administration could undo at least some of the damage it has done to this country at Guantanamo Bay by throwing open the trial process to defense lawyers, the United Nations, diplomats, members of Congress and observers from human-rights groups.

The process has to be seen to be fair by independent observers; no one would take the Bush administration’s word for it, not anymore. But openness and transparency are not in the DNA of this White House.

[snip]

This administration makes up the rules as it goes along and expects everyone to play by them.

[snip]

And, the [Justice] department argues implicitly, when Congress did its quickie rubber stamp of the tribunals last year, it stripped the detainees of so many protections that they really don’t need lawyers. Article

Crimson tidelet:

Four Harvard University undergraduates were arrested Thursday night when their shouts of protest interrupted a speech by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in Cambridge.

Mueller was minutes into his talk about the balance of national security and civil liberties when the students erupted in shouts, including “The FBI are murderers,” “The FBI equals terrorism,” and “Close Guantanamo,” according to police and news reports.

Michael Gould-Wartofsky , Kelly Lee, and Maura Roosevelt, all 22 years old, and Jennifer Provost, 21, were arrested and charged with disturbing a public assembly, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a month in prison and a $50 fine.

[snip]

“We understand the arguments of our critics,” Mueller said in his remarks, “because when it comes to civil liberties, we share common ground. Their job is to speak out because they believe deeply that our liberties are precious and must be protected. So do we.” Article

If at first you don’t succeed…

A German lawyer is planning to join forces with Spanish counterparts to file a lawsuit in Spain against former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the alleged abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons, a German magazine has reported.

The move by Berlin lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck comes after German prosecutors said on Friday they had decided against launching an investigation into Rumsfeld over the abuse claims.

[snip]

In addition to Rumsfeld, the suit named 13 other US officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former CIA director George Tenet and high-ranking military officers.

The 13 others will also be named in the Spanish suit, Der Spiegel said. Article

A raft of pieces which help to lay out and get up to speed on what is happening in Turkey (something else posted about multiple times over the past few days).

Still difficult to gauge whether what is underway points to paralysis or to ploy.

Turkey’s election of a new president headed to court Friday, after opposition deputies boycotted in an effort to deny a 367-vote majority to the nominee, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül. If the resort to the 11-judge Constitutional Court by opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is successful, it would mean the effective annulment of Gül’s election late in the afternoon by 357 votes of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and a handful of maverick deputies and new parliamentary elections.

Turkey’s unicameral legislature was the scene of day-long, high-stakes political maneuvering, as all sides sought to slalom through arcane procedures and interpretations of the Constitution, resulting in an ambiguous result that could take days or weeks to resolve.…

[snip]

The court, which rules on a simple majority basis, is composed of 11 judges. Some media report held that nine judges out of 11 would decide in favor of annulling the elections. Seven judges were appointed by the current President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a staunch secularist, which some suggested means they would tend toward annulment and new elections. Other sources familiar with the court hint that the balance in the court is rather six to five, but still favoring the secularists.

If the court annuls the elections, the only way forward is for Parliament to call early elections. According to the constitution, the elections should be held within three months. Within this period President Ahmet Necdet Sezer will remain in his post — until the new president is elected by the new Parliament. Article

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Ross Wilson (from Wednesday): “…the U.S. did not have any preferences in this matter.” Source

More:

Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government condemned an army threat to intervene in presidential elections, while the European Union and the United States urged a peaceful solution in the EU candidate country.

[snip]

Secularists are due to hold a rally in Istanbul on Sunday, hoping to match a gathering in the capital Ankara two weeks ago that drew hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets in defence of secularism and against the government.

The military, which has ousted four governments in the past 50 years, issued a toughly worded statement on Friday expressing concern over the elections and said it was ready to act in defence of the secular system separating state and religion.

“Turkey’s problems will be solved in the framework of the law, there is no other way … The chief of the General Staff is answerable to the prime minister,” government spokesman Cemil Cicek told a news conference on Saturday.

Cicek’s comments marked an escalation in the stand-off pitting Turkey’s secular elite, including the army generals, against a government it accuses of trying to increase the role of Islam in the predominantly Muslim country’s politics. Article

Also:

In his first reaction to the army statement, Erdogan said that the nation would oppose actions that would hurt political stability.

“This nation has paid a heavy, painful price when the base of stability and confidence has been lost. But it no longer allows, nor will it allow, opportunists who are waiting and paving the way for a disaster,” he said.

In Brussels, EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn called on the army to stay away from politics, saying it was a test case of whether the army “respect democratic secularism and the democratic arrangement of civil-military relations.” Article

Shortest version: Olmert is a bloody fool.

Heads-up on a release to watch for next week:

On Friday, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a report that will look at the cost to the global economy of cutting greenhouse gas emissions that are produced by human activity, including agriculture, power generation, urban development, industry and transportation.

This will be the third of four reports coming this year from the IPCC.

[snip]

Next week’s IPCC report is expected to outline the strategies necessary for cutting emissions and averting those ominous climate trends in the coming decades and centuries — through energy efficiency, improved technology, and environmentally friendly methods for everything from agriculture to urban design. Article

Noted, but dearth of exercise is curiously ignored.

Slouching in front of computers and carrying heavy backpacks are causing back and shoulder problems in children, according to medical experts.

[snip]

Bill Case, a physical therapist in Houston, Texas, has seen children suffering from orthopedic neck, back and shoulder problems in the past five years that he had previously not come across in 25 years of practice.

“The addition of the computer and the backpack has been throwing people into an abnormal position and there are problems arising from that,” Case explained. Article

Give the judge a giant-sized, fresh from the oven, cookie.

An Edmonton police officer who Tasered a pedestrian is guilty of assault with a weapon, a judge ruled Friday.

Provincial court Judge Brian Fraser said Const. Aubrey Zalaski used excessive force when he arrested Paul Cetinski for jaywalking on Aug. 9, 2004.

“I cannot conclude that the use of force … was in any way justified,” Fraser said.

“The accused overreacted, which resulted in an unnecessary, gratuitous use of force.” Article

PHONE FAME

Frankly, sounds as if it’s the pits.

---

THE ‘FRAIDEST GENERATION…

…panics again.

Summary here and here.

Hearts and minds.

Tribal leaders in Salahiddeen Province have urged the government to replace the use of military force with diplomacy and dialogue.

[snip]

The meeting was attended by a U.S. embassy representative before whom the tribal chiefs put their demands.

But Stephen Butler told the gathering that there was little the U.S. could do to help due to the latest upsurge in violence across the country.

However, he said, the U.S. believed Iraqi tribes had a crucial role to play in reinstating law and order.

Many tribal leaders left the meeting disappointed as most of their demands were turned down.

They wanted the U.S. to transfer prisoners from the province to jails where their relatives could visit them easily. Article

Chaos abides.

Because of the numerous checkpoints and extremist groups lying in wait, Salim Sultan’s journey from his hometown Baquba to Baghdad takes him two days, involving the many detours.

The 60-kilometre trip used to take him an hour.

Many residents of Diyala province, which borders Baghdad to the city’s north, are in the same position, he says. Article

Calamitous candor:

“Basra is lost, they are in control now. It’s a full-scale riot and the Government are just trying to save face,” said Private Paul Barton.

The 27-year-old, who returned from his second tour of Iraq this week along with other members of 1st Battalion, the Staffordshire Regiment, insisted that he remains loyal to the Army despite such public dissent. He said he had already volunteered to go to Afghanistan later this year.

But, he said, he felt strongly that somebody had to speak out: “I want people to see it as it is; not the sugar-coated version.”

[snip]

Reacting to Pte Barton’s comments, many soldiers on websites appeared stunned but in agreement. One said: “When I arrived back last year, I was utterly depressed by what I had seen out there and the lack of any progress … any journo sticking a microphone in my grid would have been given enough soundbites to retire on. And I would probably be in the Tower of London.

[snip]

…He added: “We have overstayed our welcome now. We should speed up the withdrawal. It’s a lost battle. We should pull out and call it quits.” Article

An arabist interpretation:

In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Islamic Army spokesman Ibrahim Al-Shammari said that while at the beginning — at the onset of the US occupation — the Islamic Army maintained field coordination with Al-Qaeda, differences had grown to the point where it was impossible “to tolerate Al-Qaeda actions, which have been very damaging to the resistance”.

[snip]

“People and the resistance are finding themselves targets of the occupation and government forces on the one hand, and Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State in Iraq on the other,” an Iraqi journalist told Al-Ahram Weekly.

According to informed sources close to at least two resistance groups, the Iraqi resistance, though engaging Al-Qaeda when forced to, is still seeking to avoid an all-out confrontation, even if Al-Qaeda seeks it. Nonetheless, the situation seems to be escalating on a daily basis, with many Iraqi nationalist activists who support the resistance fearing that “occupation forces are benefiting the most from Al-Qaeda’s actions.” Article

So how’s that sovereignty going?

U.S. pressure on Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki to speed up reconciliation among warring sects could backfire as Iraqi leaders don’t want to be seen as taking orders from an increasingly impatient Washington.

[snip]

“Americans need benchmarks because of their public opinion and Congress, but if you interfere too much and put too much pressure it could be counter-productive and create negative consequences,” Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker said.

“Iraq wants to have its sovereignty back and not see Washington telling them ‘do this and do that’. Maliki needs the support of Washington, but he can’t be seen in front of his people to be taking orders from the Americans so publicly.” Article

Petro-politics: Imposed deadlines from occupiers rankle, signing away an entire country’s main resource rumbles.

Discussions turned contentious among the more than 60 Iraqi oil officials reviewing Iraq’s draft hydrocarbons bill last week in the United Arab Emirates.

But the dispute highlighted the need for further negotiations on the proposed law that was stalled in talks for nearly eight months, then pushed through Iraq’s Cabinet without most key provisions.

Tariq Shafiq, one of three authors of the law, said he attended the Dubai summit ‘reluctantly,’ at the request of Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani.

‘I thought it would help,’ Shafiq said, hoping all Iraqi sides in the debate over its oil law would meet and iron out their differences. ‘Apparently it did not.’

Petroleum Intelligence Weekly reports talks in Dubai led to ‘heated exchanges.’

Instead, the voices of those who disagree with the law or, like Shafiq, oppose what it has become since the initial draft and how it was kept from the public, were not given part of the platform.

[snip]

Shahristani told reporters on the sidelines of the Dubai meeting that Parliament would take up the law this week — which didn’t happen — while Ashti Hawrami, the KRG’s oil minister, vowed Kurdish parliamentarians would veto it as written.

[snip]

Shafiq said ‘the majority of the oil technocrats are against’ the law as written. He said the eight months negotiators took after the drafters were finished was too long. And it was kept secret from the public and parliamentarians, which then added to the politicization.

‘The weak thing about their procedure is they never published the draft,’ Shafiq said. ‘They should have had teams to explain this to unions, to intellectuals, to nongovernmental organizations, to the parliamentarians, and then get the gist of their reactions before they start finalizing a draft.’

And then, with the Bush administration needing results, officials leaned on negotiators to pass something. Out came the framework. Khalilzad announced its passage, and the KRG sent out a news release.

‘That was a big mistake,’ Shafiq said. Article

Walking wounded: Shunned, big time.

[Maliki] failed in his efforts to meet with Saudi king Abdullah, who initially excused himself from such a meeting for reasons of protocol and because his schedule was full, but it wasn’t long before a Saudi diplomatic source told the German news agency that one reason for the refusal was “his unhelpful attitude toward certain groups in Iraq, and his favoritism toward other groups, along with his efforts to strengthen the role of Iran in Iraq.” Maliki had relied on the Americans to arrange the visit [to Riyadh] before going on to the Sultanat of Oman for a protocol visit described by observers as without political value, [adding] Maliki was anxious to visit Muskat, on the heels of a visit there by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

[In Cairo, Mubarak] received Maliki at the beginning of his Arab tour, and appeared sullen. A political source told the Azzaman reporter in Cairo that Mubarak insisted the meeting include Maliki himself only, and refused to allow the participation of Iraqi security officials who were accompanying [Maliki on his tour]. Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif said after the meeting: “Egypt urges the government of Iraq to carry out reconciliation [or reforms]”. And the same Egyptian source said the visit of Maliki to Cairo was in trouble from the start, and likely [a Maliki-Mubarak meeting] wouldn’t have happened at all, if not for the fact there is to be a conference soon in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. Source

Memo to Congress: Don’t bend over backwards on this (it snaps the spine you’ve only recently evidenced). Pas i again and send it again. Pass an interim, 60-day funding conditional on the next infusion being tied to specific actions. But do not pass a watered down toothless bil. Passing water is not the job for which you were elected.

Doing what is right and prudent for the country and for the troops is not a political football, it is your mandate — “To raise and support Armies…To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces…” (Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution). It’s not a choice, it’s the damn job.

Bush repeated his promise Friday to veto the war spending bill and any such measure with a pullout date, even as Democrats renewed their calls for the president to sign the $124.2 billion bill.

“If the Congress wants to test my will as to whether or not I’ll accept the timetable for withdrawal, I won’t accept one,” Bush declared. Article

Now G. Walker has all but tatooed on his forehead that he is the war and the war is he. Everything on the planet is not about you.

Thrown a life preserver, such mulishness, blinded by false ego, is akin to a man asea refusing a life preserver because it is a test of his treading ability.

War is hell. Flawed, failed, endless war is a deeper hell. The woebegone G. Walker administration wants (nay, demands) eternal hell.

Exorcise the demon; just say no. Again, and again, and again.

Related:

A retired general who was the Army’s senior intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. William Odom, also called on Bush to sign the bill, saying it would be a “rare act of courage” by the president.

In the Democrats’ weekly radio address, Odom said Bush had been “absent without leave,” ignoring accumulating evidence that his Iraq strategy had failed, but that the legislation offered him the opportunity to change course. Article

Quite the informative look at the ‘other army.’

There are more than 125,000 U.S.-funded contractors in Iraq, doing everything from maintaining supply lines to building hospitals to performing clerical work to guarding U.S. officials; this equates to about two-thirds the number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, and does not include all subcontractors. Some contractors have only a few employees in country, while the largest—kbr, which is being spun off from Halliburton—has 50,000 workers there. The surge reflects the administration’s privatization philosophy, former Halliburton ceo Dick Cheney’s influence—and just how thinly stretched the military now is in Iraq. All those nonmilitary personnel need guarding, and as of November, at least 177 private security companies employed 48,000 people in Iraq. …

[snip]

“We’re never going to war without the private security industry again in a non-draft environment,” says former Marine colonel Jack Holly. As director of logistics of the embassy’s Project and Contracting Office, Holly, who’s an Army Corps of Engineers civilian employee, monitors all the private supply convoys bringing goods and equipment to Iraqi ministries. He tracks about 15 convoys a day. In 2003, 1 in 11 were attacked. Now 1 in 4 are, he says. In all, he’s lost 129 men to insurgents.

[snip]

The South Africans are popular with U.S. companies, and even the U.S. government, which uses them as bodyguards for high-ranking officials. “If losses are taken, it’s not soldiers killed,” Bertus says, explaining the appeal of using contractors, “and if civilians are killed in the crossfire, then they can’t blame it on the Army”—though he claims that is less likely to happen when the contractors are former cops like himself. “If you are a soldier it’s straightforward: Wipe out everything in front of you. Police must use discretion, and policemen are better drivers.” I met him while he was temporarily posted in comparatively peaceful Kurdistan, and he was getting bored. “I miss the action,” he said. “I miss Baghdad, the sweat on my hands.”

[snip]

The new hires are led by a handsome young Kurd named Soran who joined the peshmerga at 13, occasionally fighting alongside U.S. Special Forces. Soran’s American boss only gives his call sign, Buddha. He is the ultimate commander of what he describes as a light battalion of 425 peshmerga and three Western supervisors. Grizzled and cigar smoking, Buddha spent 20 years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a captain from the elite counterterror Delta Force. He’d subsequently engaged in private operations on behalf of the U.S. government for two decades, including Oliver North’s Iran-Contra operations; later, he headed the private security detail of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. During the coup that forced Aristide from power, he claims, he was called to the U.S. Embassy and told that if he continued to protect Aristide, his Army pension would be revoked. Buddha still has a home in Haiti, and a Haitian wife. Of the Kurds he trained, he jokes: “They have to understand what the bump on the end of the barrel is for.” The Kurds make an average of $300 to $500 a month. On average, American security contractors make between $9,000 and $12,000 a month. Wade, for example, earns $13,000 a month; his National Guard officer’s pay had been $5,000 a month.

The supply depot typically receives 30 to 40 rounds of mortar fire a week, but that’s recently tapered off, Buddha explains. He adds that the range of the mortars is 1,300 meters, which “happens to be the range of my sniper rifle,” and smiles as he tells me he’d “successfully engaged” insurgents attacking the compound. He’s been known to don the traditional dishdasha that locals wear, and the shemagh, or head scarf, to conduct reconnaissance.

Buddha is not optimistic about the war his Army friends are fighting. “I’ve never seen a war of occupation that worked,” he says. “This is an unconventional war being fought by a conventional army.” And like other contractors, he says the war depends on the likes of him: “Without us, they could crunch numbers and lie to the public all day, but they wouldn’t be able to do it.” Long after the American military withdraws, security contractors will remain: “The Iraqi government will have to come to the private security industry because the Iraqi government will face the same problems the U.S. government faces.” Article

Related:

Four years after the invasion of Iraq, Congress still has been unable to grasp the scope of armed security contractors working in that country.

This week, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and Rep. David Price of North Carolina, both Democrats, asked the Government Accountability Office to provide details on the use of private security contractors in Iraq.

Skelton and Price want to know how many such contractors are working there, for what purpose and under what legal authority. There has been little oversight over cost and operations so far, but many questions.

According to earlier GAO reports, contractors often move into battle zones without the military’s knowledge, and the military in turn has done little training for troops on how to deal with private contractors. There are estimated to be as many as 100,000 security contractors working in the country.

[snip]

“The real problem is the U.S. military is not large enough to perform all the tasks the military wants performed,” said Steven Schooner, co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at George Washington University. “It’s a huge, huge issue.”

But, Schooner said, Congress should worry more about the command-and-control problem than focus solely on issues of cost.

“Members of Congress have no idea whatsoever what’s going on over there,” Schooner said. “I think oversight is a huge issue. Who’s in charge over there? What’s the quality-control standard? Those are the big issues they haven’t gotten addressed.” Article

Summaries here and here and also here.

Missiles destroyed a house and damaged two religious schools in Pakistan near the Afghan border yesterday, killing four people and wounding three others, witnesses and Pakistani intelligence officials said.

It was unclear who carried out the pre-dawn attack at Saidgi village in the remote North Waziristan region, which is considered a stronghold for both the Taleban and Al-Qaeda. It lies about three kilometres (two miles) from the border.

Pakistani officials gave conflicting accounts about the incident.

A senior military official in the capital, Islamabad, said the dead and wounded had been making bombs and had accidentally caused an explosion.

However, two local intelligence officials said a missile attack caused the blast, and a government official said the missiles were apparently fired from Afghan territory. The intelligence and government officials asked for anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic, while the military official said he was not authorized to speak to the media on the record.

The US-led military coalition in Afghanistan and the separate Nato force both denied any knowledge of the incident. Article

Six-and-a-half years in, bare holding actions do not qualify as progress.

Khakar is what the Americans call a “swing village” — given sustained security and assistance it might well side with the government, but with a lack of these, coupled with intimidation and persuasion, it goes the way of the insurgents.

“This is commonplace. They’re kind of sitting on the fence to see how things go,” says Lt. Col. Karl Slaughenhaupt, a senior adviser to the Afghan National Army. “They are willing to support the government but at this point in time we simply don’t have enough contact with the people to push the anti-government elements out.”

Slaughenhaupt’s admission speaks to one of the core problems of the conflict. Five years after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime, the government and international community have not provided either enough bread or guns to undercut the resurgent militants.

Zabul, a backwater province in southeastern Afghanistan, offers a dramatic example.

[snip]

Conditions for women aren’t substantially better in the deeply conservative region than under the radical Taliban, which virtually shuttered females in their homes. Fewer than 10 percent of girls now go to school and only some 5 percent are literate. In 2005 elections, 11 percent of Zabul women went to the polls, compared to the national average of 40 percent.

“No need to go. If she dies we’ll just get another,” a U.S. officer quotes the father of a young, severely malnourished girl as saying when urged to take her to the provincial hospital, just two and a half hours’ drive from his home.

[snip]

“This is a huge area to care for with just three small platoons. You’ve come to the province with the least assets,” says Maj. Christopher Clay, of St. Louis, who commands B Company, 1st Regiment, 4th Infantry Regiment — the main U.S. military unit in Zabul.

Less than a year ago, Clay said, the province was beginning to be regarded as a success story, so it was shortchanged, resources were taken out and the “fragile foundations started to crumble.”

U.S. soldiers and officers also complain that they’re inadequately supported by their own command, with Iraq getting top priority, followed by Taliban strongholds like Helmand and Kandahar provinces, in the competition for resources.

[snip]

U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Kevin P. McGlaughlin, a former B-52 pilot who until recently headed the military’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Zabul, says winning the conflict requires a 20-year or more commitment by the international community to reconstruction — a task he conceded was not the army’s strength.

“We’re a flash in the pan. This is not our bread and butter, rebuilding things,” he said. “The key is to get the professional developers, the United Nations, the NGOs. But if you don’t have the military to provide security you won’t get reconstruction.”

Currently, there are no civilian foreign aid workers in the province because of insecurity.

Seth G. Jones, of the U.S.-based think tank RAND Corporation, who traveled to Afghanistan earlier this year, sounds a warning about the need to focus on places like Zabul.

“NATO and the U.S. will win or lose in Afghanistan in the rural villages and districts of the country, not in the capital city of Kabul,” he said in an interview. “In Afghanistan, all politics is local.” Article

Update Apr. 28, 10:45 a.m.: It also should be noted that while the piece just cited contains useful information, it also occasionally skirts astonishingly close to a “hold the nose and cluck-cluck at the benighted natives” attitude, a stance which (1) ye old scribe does not endorse, (2) is retrogressive and antediluvian in the extreme, (3) is helpful to no one and to nothing, and (4) one can but hope is not indicative of a sea change in policy, practice or coverage.

Keeping up with the hastily recalled (and quietly de-officered) Marines:

The Marine Corps is expecting criminal charges against at least five marines from a Special Operations unit that killed 10 civilians in eastern Afghanistan last month after a suicide bomb attack on their patrol convoy, a marine official said yesterday.

Marine and civilian lawyers involved in the case have been told to expect charges against five to seven marines involved in the shootings, possibly including one officer, said the marine official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Article

Hmm.

Is the Indian Army heading for Afghanistan? Sources at Army Headquarters in Delhi say ‘yes’, and say they are on a mission to train the Afghan National Army.

Eight to 10 officers will be sent by next month, at least half comprising English language experts. The rest could be officers from the infantry, artillery and other arms.

Says Former Intelligence chief, Lt Gen R K Sawhney, “What I have heard is that it is a small team which is being dispatched. I am slightly surprised. The Americans felt should we be given this role, it will create a problem with the Pakistanis.”

That’s one of the reasons perhaps why the Foreign Ministry has denied any such proposal. The other reason may be the fear of getting bogged down in the Afghan quagmire. Article

Call it the antimatter version of progress.

The Italian medical aid agency Emergency is pulling its international staff out of Afghanistan after a staff member was arrested.

The group’s founder, Gino Strada, told the ANSA news agency that Emergency’s three hospitals in Afghanistan were no longer able to function properly after the arrest of Rahmatullah Hanefi. Article

Building to an ominous head:

Administrators of a radical mosque in Islamabad on Friday cautioned that hundreds of hard-line religious students were ready to crack down on entertainment stores and brothels in the Pakistani capital.

[snip]

The chief of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party, Shujaat Hussain, earlier this week said all disputes between the local authorities and the mosque administration had been ‘amicably resolved’. But Ghazi denied any breakthrough in the deadlock.

The government of President Pervez Musharraf has come under criticism at home and abroad for allowing extremist manifestations in the heart of the capital.

While favouring a negotiated solution, the military leader has said the students will not be allowed to impose their version of Islam on society.

In turn, the Red Mosque administrators have warned of ‘dire consequences’, if it is attacked by security forces and have called upon students to be ready to carry out suicide bombings in retaliation. Article

Politics abhors a vacuum, and civil (in both senses of the term) authority flexes to step in.

Pakistan’s high court said on Friday that it would draw up guidelines on operational procedures for the country’s secret services and law-enforcement agencies, news reports said.

A two-member bench of the Supreme Court made the announcement while hearing petitions seeking the release of 41 disappeared persons, who are allegedly being detained by intelligence agencies, the Aaj television channel reported.

[snip]

Appreciating the proposed move of making the secret services accountable for their actions, a counsel for the petitioners termed the superior court’s plan a ‘mini revolution’ in the country.

The Supreme Court also said that no institution was above the law.

Pakistan’s Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who is currently suspended over abuse-of-office allegations, gained much public appreciation for independently taking up the cases of missing people who were thought to have been picked up by intelligence agencies. Article

Summary here.

Resident’s of Somalia’s shattered capital began returning home yesterday, following the government’s claim of victory after nine days of fierce fighting with Islamic insurgents. But questions remained over how long the peace would last.

Just hours after Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said the Islamic insurgents were finished, a group of masked gunmen attacked the main hotel where government officials live. The attack lasted about an hour, but there were no reports of casualties.

None of the insurgents could be reached for comment. Article

Analysis du jour:

The Somali government is busy crying “al-Qaida” at every turn and offering lucrative deals to oil companies, in a bid to entice greater western support. But this war was lost long ago. In turning to the arch enemy Ethiopia, the transitional government’s fate was sealed: the nation will not abide an Ethiopian-US occupation. Article

Classic misdirection: Look! Booga-booga!

A major al-Qaida leader has been transferred from CIA custody to the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon said Friday.

The detainee was identified as Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, described as one of al-Qaida’s top leaders, CNN reported. Military officials would not say how long he had been held by the CIA.

Globalsecurity.org described Hadi as a commander of a training camp prior to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and said that he was captured in January 2002. His captors are not identified. Article

More — The announcement engenders some very, very crucial questions:

Where has he been he held and what were his confinement conditions? The lack of information around this transfer only adds to the deep concerns surrounding the United States’ conduct in the so-called ‘war on terror’,” said Amnesty International.

Other questions raised by today’s announcement include:
 

– If al-Iraqi was arrested prior to September 2006, where was he on September 6, 2006 when President Bush confirmed the existence of the secret CIA detention program, but stated that no one was at that time held in it?

— Has he been subjected to the “alternative interrogation techniques” previously authorized for use by the CIA, but not elaborated upon by President Bush?

— How many other people are in CIA custody? Article

Cancer on the concept, on the very marrow, of justice:

In other words, the feds now argue, it is not the fact that the men have been locked up without charges for about five years and treated poorly by our government that is causing “intractable problems and threats to security at” Gitmo. It is not the fact that the military guards down there are permitted by law to do things to the detainees—the use of force, the deprivation of certain rights– that would never be permitted in federal or state prisons. It is mail from attorney to client and visits from the former to the latter which are causing “unrest” on the base. That’s like immediately blaming the doctor for the patient’s illness when the medical expert arrives to make a house call.

[snip]

Worse, under the guise of enhancing security, the new rules would deprive the attorneys of the right to see evidence the government has or intends to use in classifying the detainees as “enemy combatants.” Imagine how easy convictions would be in our country if the prosecutor could choose which evidence to share with defense attorneys! In this way, the government is trying to accomplish what Congress was unwilling to permit when it passed the Military Commissions Act last year and what the Supreme Court twice has refused to do when Gitmo challenges have come before it—make an already uneven playing field all the more uneven in favor of the feds. Article

More, personalized:

…Advancing legal arguments which the civilised word reviles as morally repugnant, the government renews its claims that: 1) prisoners have no right to counsel; 2) the military is free to disregard the attorney-client privilege that, among other things, may be outlining legal strategy; and 3) prisoners’ attorneys who have security clearance are forbidden access to classified information.

Representing the prisoners at Guantánamo is, perhaps, the most difficult legal task I have undertaken in a career in which I have tried murder cases, represented Fortune 500 companies in massive, multi-district class actions, and prosecuted cases as a Special Assistant United States Attorney. But it is impossible to represent a client in a meaningful way if you are denied reasonable access to your client. Consider the case of a prisoner who has been in isolation for more than a year and does not possess all his faculties. What is the likelihood that he will agree to have you represent him based on a single meeting? And what is the likelihood that such a client would be able to assist in his own defence even if he did? It is also impossible to represent a client if you are forced to share your litigation strategy with the military. Does any legal system in the world require one side to expose its strategy to the other?

Finally, it is impossible to represent a client when you are unable to review the evidence against him.… Article

The politicizing of everything, the breakdown of function — the unholy hallmark of the woebegone G. Walker administration.

Facing a tangled bureaucracy and a lack of qualified staff, nearly half of the overseas jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are vacant despite an urgent need to guard against foreign health threats. Many of the jobs will remain unfilled for another year, according to an internal CDC memo obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

[snip]

Only 166 of the CDC’s 304 overseas positions in 53 countries are filled, according to the memo. At least 85 positions likely will remain unfilled until 2008, Blount said. Among the causes he cited: Delays at a federal human resource center in Atlanta and an additional bureaucratic layer that requires CDC foreign postings be approved by a senior political appointee’s office in Washington.

[snip]

“Federal employment in general takes time. On the average it can take several months,” Skinner said. “And filling overseas positions presents unique challenges.”

One of those unique challenges, according to Blount’s eight-page memo, is the CDC must request special approval for every overseas assignment from the HHS Office of Global Health Affairs. This adds an additional two to three months of delay in hiring staff for foreign postings, according to the memo. “Some positions have been delayed for so many months that our partners doubt our commitment and credibility,” Blount wrote.

William Steiger, director of HHS’ Office of Global Health Affairs, was out of the country and unavailable for comment, said spokesman Bill Hall. Steiger has come under fire in the past for allegedly micromanaging the overseas work of the department’s scientific divisions. Steiger, the godson of former President George H.W. Bush, is President George W. Bush’s nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to Mozambique.

Hall did not respond to requests for other department officials to explain the hiring policies. Article

Noted FYI (anybody flush enough to offer Rummy an all-expense paid trip?):

German prosecutors have decided against launching an investigation into former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over alleged detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons, prosecutors said on Friday.

Civil rights groups had filed a suit with the Federal Prosecutors Office in Karlsruhe in November seeking war crimes charges, arguing Germany could prosecute foreign violations of international law under its 2002 universal jurisdiction law.

However, the prosecutors office said it could not open an investigation as the individuals in question were not in the country. Article

Diagnosis: commonwealth infarction:

In just one day, six dots to connect across the country about a great nation laid low by the conservatives we mistakenly let govern us, even though they abhor government. Article

Absolutely predetermined to occur (see earlier reference here). The question is, will this play out behind the scenes or advance rapidly to the next (non-negotiable) level?

The Turkish army issued a stiff warning Friday that it is there to protect the secular system, only hours after parliament began rounds of presidential voting in which Islamist-rooted Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is the sole candidate.

The military accused the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the offshoot of a now-banned Islamist movement, of failing to prevent rising anti-secular activity in the country.

There was no immediate reaction from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

Analysts said the extraordinarily harsh statement was an “ultimatum” that could result in early general elections, and a clear indication that the powerful military does not welcome Gul as president.

[snip]

“The problem that recently came to the forefront of the presidential election process has focused on the issue of questioning secularism. The Turkish armed forces are observing this situation with concern,” the army said.

“It should not be forgotten that the Turkish armed forces are a party to this debate and staunch defenders of secularism.

“The Turkish armed forces… will openly and clearly display their position and attitude when necessary. No one should doubt this,” it warned. Article

FYI:

A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday

The annual report’s release comes amid a bitter feud between the White House and Congress over funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and a deadline favored by Democrats to begin a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing or downplaying the release of this year’s edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said.

Ultimately, they decided to issue the report on or near the congressionally mandated deadline of Monday, the officials said.

[snip]

Based on data compiled by the U.S. intelligence community’s National Counterterrorism Center, the report says there were 14,338 terrorist attacks last year, up 29 percent from 11,111 attacks in 2005.

Forty-five percent of the attacks were in Iraq.

Worldwide, there were about 5,800 terrorist attacks that resulted in at least one fatality, also up from 2005.

The figures for Iraq and elsewhere are limited to attacks on noncombatants and don’t include strikes against U.S. troops. Article

WIN, PLACE OR SLOW

British is to eccentric as horse is to carriage.

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MARY HAD A LITTLE POOCH

Ba-a-a–ad hoax?