Summaries here and here and here.

Booga-booga.

Iran is arming, training and funding members of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah in Iraq and using it as a “proxy” to wage war against American forces, a senior U.S. military spokesman said Monday.

Hezbollah, or Party of God, emerged in Lebanon in 1982 and receives funding and arms from Iran. It has a history of kidnapping and killing in its long-standing conflict with Israel, and provoked last summer’s Israeli intervention in Lebanon.

The news briefing by Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner marked the first time that a top U.S. military official had directly linked the radical Islamic group to violence in Iraq.

Citing documents and confessions from captured militants, including a Lebanese operative who’s worked with Hezbollah for more than two decades, Bergner also said that the Quds Force, a unit of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, had helped plan a Jan. 20 raid on a government compound in Karbala in which five U.S. soldiers had been killed.

Bergner didn’t say whether Iranian Quds units were operating in Iraq, and stopped short of saying that Iran itself is waging war against the United States. He said Iran’s role in fomenting violence in Iraq reached to Tehran’s highest levels of government. Article

Tangentially related:

Oil prices rebounded Monday from early declines to settle above $71 for the first time in 10 months as traders focused on a refinery outage in Kansas and new accusations about Iran’s role in Lebanon and Iraq. Article

In other oil news:

Iraqi oil law negotiators are unsure when they’ll reach a compromise on which oil fields the federal or regional governments will control.

“We hope that very soon, definitely within coming months, one or two months from now,” Thamir Ghadhban, energy adviser to Iraq’s prime minister, told reporters after a presentation at “East Meets West: New Frontiers of Energy Security,” a conference in Istanbul, Turkey. The conference was organized by Cambridge Energy Research Associates. He cautioned the timeline was his hope, but it could be sooner or later.

[snip]

Negotiators from the Kurdistan Regional Government and Baghdad last week approved a companion law dictating how revenue from oil sales would be split among the federal and local governments, a major breakthrough in talks ongoing for nearly a year. That law, as well as the oil law and bills governing the Ministry of Oil and Iraq National Oil Co., need approval of the council of ministers and Parliament before they are official.

The negotiators had reached a deal on the oil law in February and the council approved it, but the KRG has since contested four annexes, the list dictating which government body has authority over which fields.

Ashti Hawrami, KRG’s natural resources minister and lead negotiator, told UPI this week via mobile phone from Iraq that with the revenue sharing law out of the way the oil law will come back to the front burner.

“We sort of are getting back now to reviewing the draft law and annexes, so it will take some time,” he said. Article

Also, noted FYI:

The cost to fix Iraq’s oil sector may have doubled, or more, since the 2003 invasion, the Iraqi prime minister’s top energy adviser said.

Thamir Ghadhban said the oil industry estimated Iraq needed $25 billion to increase its production from 2.6 million barrels per day to 6 million bpd. But that was before the war began, which shocked the country’s oil sector that produces only 2 million bpd currently.

“As you know, the costs are much higher,” Ghadhban told an audience in Istanbul, Turkey, attending Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ “East Meets West: New Frontiers of Energy Security” conference.

“The favorable characteristics of Iraqi oil fields, such as their simple geology, large reserves and high production rates, make their development cost to be the cheapest in the world,” Ghadhban said. But, citing OPEC President Mohamed bin Dhaen al Hamli’s estimation during the conference that field development costs have increased three-fold, “then it would cost $75 billion, or $50 billion if we use a factor of two,” to develop Iraq, Ghadhban said. “However, I am not sure if the rise in cost is of linear nature.”

“It definitely will be a high cost to the country,” he said.

Iraq’s oil sales last year brought in more than $30 billion. Article

Under the table, umetered or black market sales — anyone’s guess, but certainly not an insignificant sum.

Update 12:30 a.m. July 3:

Iraq’s cabinet approved changes to a landmark draft hydrocarbon law on Tuesday and will submit the bill to parliament after months of bickering between the central government and Kurdish officials.

“The cabinet has endorsed the oil law and is sending it to parliament,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters.

[snip]

The main Sunni political bloc is currently boycotting cabinet meetings over legal steps being taken against one its ministers. Dabbagh told Reuters that ministers from the Sunni Accordance Front were not at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting. Article

Analysis du jour:

Now, by enraging the Shiite population they were ostensibly deployed to protect, U.S. commanders and their political overlords in Washington may themselves have driven the last nail into the coffin of the ’surge’ strategy.

[snip]

The latest fighting in Sadr City carries even greater potential dangers for the U.S. forces that were trying to suppress Sadr’s men. The American troops were supposedly acting on behalf of the democratically elected Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Yet Maliki lost no time in condemning the U.S. forces, not the militia they were fighting.

[snip]

The more U.S. forces clash with Sadr, the more they run the risk of alienating wider elements of the Shiite community as well, as Maliki’s tough talk about Saturday’s violence indicates. But U.S. forces in Iraq are neither numerous enough, nor are they appropriately deployed, to react quickly and effectively against a broad Shiite uprising against them. They still have their hands full struggling with the Sunni insurgency.

The new clashes with the Mahdi Army are therefore strategically far more important than the real but limited tactical successes U.S. forces are enjoying against Sunni guerrillas in the Baquba region. There are three times as many Shiites in Iraq as Sunnis, and Baquba is not remotely as important as Baghdad. Washington policymakers need to remember those two elementary facts. Article

For all intents and purposes, it is permanent. And the type of permanent prescence and facility no entity should be impelled to provide solely out of drastic and morbid necessity.

At half-past midnight, the helicopters dropped off the wounded - fleeting silhouettes wheeled away on gurneys in the glow of blue landing lights, four soldiers among the last of thousands to pass through the “M.A.S.H.” of the Iraq war.

The makeshift sprawl of tents that received them, the Air Force Theater Hospital, Iraq’s premier trauma center and a war-zone fixture, will soon give way to a modern, “hard-sided” complex across the road.

The opening of that 107,000-square-foot hospital, in stages throughout July, not only brings a more standard, state-of-the-art facility to Iraq. It also announces that the U.S. military, after more than 3,500 dead and 25,000 wounded in four years of war, will be well prepared to deal with severe casualties for years more to come.

At a time when no target date has been set for a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, the new Balad hospital looks ready for an extended U.S. stay.

“It’ll be good for 10 years, depending on how well you take care of it,” said Col. Brian Masterson, the hospital commander.

[snip]

But Balad’s casualties are not just American. Among the side-by-side tents that serve as hospital wards, the Iraqi patient population at times has rivaled the American.

On one recent night, as the quiet was broken occasionally by moans, seven children lay in a 10-bed Iraqi ward, victims of explosions and other violence whose origins - crossfire, terrorism, U.S. airstrikes - usually remain murky to those who treat them.

[snip]

“A typical city trauma center might admit 2,000 patients a year. We average 8,000,” Masterson said. And those numbers have grown.

Compared with the first four months of 2006, the hospital evacuated 25 percent more patients in the same period this year, Masterson said. That coincided with a rise in U.S. troop numbers and U.S. casualties in a new anti-insurgent offensive.

[snip]

…doctors, nurses, technicians and others were looking forward to the move into the spacious new facility, which will offer 18 emergency-room beds, for example, triple the current number.

The new hospital - four steel-walled, interconnected buildings erected at a cost of $9.7 million - should also end problems with electrical power too erratic for some sophisticated equipment, with feeble air conditioning that allowed afternoon temperatures to top 100 degrees inside the tents, and with water supplies sometimes insufficient for intensive treatment of burns.

The U.S. command had vetoed a proposal for a $43 million “brick-and-mortar” hospital to replace the tents, to avoid giving the U.S. military presence too permanent a look, Masterson said. The new facility also wasn’t designed for eventual handover to Iraq’s health care system, he said. Article

In the warped lens through which the woebegone G. Walker administration views Iraq, they’re not militias (or even gangs), they’re “neighborhood watch groups.” (Source)

Keeping up with the charged:

The U.S. military said on Monday it had charged a U.S. soldier with the murder of an Iraqi and of trying to cover up the crime by placing a weapon by the body.

The charge is linked to an investigation into the unlawful killing of three Iraqis in separate incidents during U.S. operations between April and June near the town of Iskandariyah, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, the military said in a statement. Two other soldiers have been charged separately.

Sergeant Evan Vela, from Phoenix, Idaho, was charged with one count of premeditated murder, wrongfully placing a weapon beside a dead Iraqi, making a false official statement and obstruction of justice. Article

Afghanistan summary here and here.

Pakistan summary here.

Keeping up with the Chaudhry crisis:

A 13-member bench of Pakistan’s Supreme Court hit out Monday at ’scandalous’ documents presented before it to justify President Pervez Musharraf’s suspension of the top judge in March.

The court took strong exception to the controversial documents after Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s lead counsel drew its attention to what was termed the abusive content and some photographs.

Orders were passed to Musharraf’s lawyers to present before the apex court the person who photographed the evidence, amid arguments that intelligence personnel were spying on the court and the judiciary.

The bench directed the chief of the Intelligence Bureau, a civil security agency, to sweep the courtroom and residences of judges in a week’s time and remove any surveillance equipment and tapping devices.

Security officials were also barred from attending court proceedings and acquiring official records of proceedings.

Justice Kalil-ur-Rehman Ramdey, who was heading the Supreme Court bench, directed the state to deposit 100,000 rupees (1,645 dollars) for presenting the scandalous documents that he said maligned the judiciary and even the president. Article

A bit more:

…at a hearing Monday, the presiding judge rejected the documents and reprimanded a senior government lawyer for presenting “vexatious and scandalous” material.

Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday provided no details on the contents of the file, but referred to concerns raised by Chaudhry’s lead counsel, Aitzaz Ahsan.

Ahsan said the file contained photographs taken inside Chaudhry’s home as well as anonymous complaints and derogatory remarks about senior judges.

Chaudhry’s lawyers “repeatedly pointed out … that intelligence agencies were swarming this court” and spying on senior judges, Ramday said.

[snip]

The Supreme Court’s agreement to even hear the judge’s appeal was considered a setback. The judges are expected to rule later this month and a decision against Musharraf could seriously dent the Pakistani leader’s authority.

Malik Mohammed Qayyum, a senior government lawyer, and Chaudhry Akhtar Ali, the attorney who delivered the file to the court, said they had not looked at the documents. Ali said a senior official from the Law Ministry had given him the file. Article

Hmm.

President General Pervez Musharraf has decided to curtail his engagements in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League rallies and he recently conveyed it to the party President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.

[snip]

President Musharraf during an interaction with top PML leaders said that he will stop addressing the party rallies after the announcement of the general election schedule, the key PML leader maintained.

The PML leader revelation comes on the heels of Chief Election Commissioner Justice Qazi Mohammad Farooq’s short remark that it was improper for President Musharraf to address public meetings, which were political in nature. Article

Booga-booga.

In public, Afghanistan has played down US and British allegations that Iran is feeding weapons to Taleban insurgents, but in private, officials here say the charges are true – and worrying.

A serious debate is under way in President Hamid Karzai’s administration about Iranian support to both the Taleban and emerging opposition political parties, several officials told AFP.

The government is in a difficult position: it is unwilling to sour relations with another neighbour or become involved in the heated US-Iran dispute, but it is also afraid Afghanistan will again become a battleground for more powerful nations.

[snip]

The aim is in part to put pressure on the United States – which is leading the drive to shut down Iran’s nuclear programme – by threatening the 27,000 US troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taleban.

“Iran is giving the option to the US that if it does not give Iran a green light on the nuclear issue and its role in the region, Iran can turn Afghanistan into a second Iraq or Vietnam for them,” the general said. Article

Oy.

A Vermont National Guard soldier and a Canadian private who were killed in Afghanistan last year were hit by friendly fire, according to an Army report released to The Associated Press.

Sgt. 1st Class John Thomas Stone, 52, was shot once each in the back and head on March 29, 2006, while crouching behind a wall atop a building where he and other U.S. soldiers were repelling a major nighttime attack.

He had joined the Army in 1971 in part to try to learn what happened to his brother, a freelance photographer who disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 with Sean Flynn, the son of the actor Errol Flynn.

The machine gun rounds that killed Stone were fired from inside a compound operated by U.S. Special Forces soldiers, according to the report, a collection of witness statements assembled by American investigators, that was released to the AP on Monday.

The friendly fire also killed Canadian Forces Pvt. Robert Costall and wounded a number of American and allied soldiers, the report said. It does not indicate whether anyone was disciplined.

[snip]

An American sergeant said he saw the errant shots by the U.S. Special Forces.

“I immediately realized the S.F. was shooting at the Canadian position,” said the sergeant’s statement. He then urged the soldiers to stop firing, but “the S.F. Security then turned his weapon 100 to 140 degrees from its original position and began firing in the direction” of the building where Stone was fighting.

[snip]

The U.S. Central Command in Florida released the report in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the AP. Other than Stone and Costall, all names were blacked out. It excluded, on grounds of national security, information collected by an unmanned Predator aircraft and certain log entries by the duty officer.

A spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, said he was unaware of the report and could not immediately answer questions about it or the incident. Article

Spiral analysis du jour:

The country has not seen economic progress since the Soviet invasion in 1979. The middle class disappeared, the best-educated people left the country, and all signs of modern education and government institutions were replaced by a traditional, not to say archaic or “backward”, system.

Since the fall of the Taliban, the effectiveness of the governing authority has been mediocre at best. Afghanistan has not been able to reform a corrupt and antediluvian administrative structure. While the Taliban and their foreign allies are the cause of many troubles, bad governance also contributes to the worsening of the country’s situation.

Despite international attention and the presence of NATO forces, as well as billions of US dollars in aid, nothing substantial in terms of reconstruction has been accomplished. Even in relatively peaceful provinces, popular frustration over government ineptitude is mounting.

Two aspects of an efficient and effective administration, performance and accountability, are entirely absent from the Afghan administration. Rampant nepotism eliminates the notion of merit and competency. In the absence of effective government actions and activities, the functionality of the government’s vital institutions is reduced even in the immediate periphery of Kabul. Deficiencies in government services force the villagers in the south and east of the country to turn to the Taliban for security, justice, and protection of their private property.

Corruption has become a common practice in the country, seriously undermining NATO’s effort to win the “hearts and minds” of Afghans. Without an effective monitoring system, administrative corruption could undermine all financial efforts to develop the Afghan economy. Despite widespread cases of corruption and mismanagement of funds, not a single corrupt senior official has been brought to trial, much less seen justice.

[snip]

As a result of dysfunctional administration, President Hamid Karzai is losing the broad popular support and legitimacy that he had enjoyed before the presidential elections in 2004. People in remote provinces distrust the central government and are tired of unfulfilled promises. Until now, Kabul has failed to recognize priorities in each province, and the bulk of aid provided by foreign donors is unaccounted for.

Decentralization in public administration has been a major policy in many developing countries. Why should Afghanistan become the exception? A centralized education system, a centralized economic policy, a centralized heath-care system, and similar inefficient and ineffective centralized systems are bound to fail in Afghanistan as well as elsewhere.

As in developed countries, the criteria of responsiveness and accountability should become the norm in Afghan public administration. In fact, local-government officials, instead of being accountable to the people and responsive to their needs, are following ill-advised directives from the central government in Kabul. Article

Quote of note:

“The Americans will lose the war for us. They have no idea about counter-insurgency and they have no idea about winning hearts and minds,” one British officer told The Times. Article

Summaries here and here and here and here.

Qalif Omar and his family of four live in Wardigley district of Mogadishu, where an indefinite dusk to dawn curfew, aimed at curbing growing insurgency in the Somali capital, has been emplaced for more than a week now but Qalif says security for his family hasn’t improved like many of the city’s two million residents.

“The explosions and shootings seem to have increased since the curfew was announced by the government,” says Qalif, a businessman.

[snip]

Since the curfew was imposed, there has been an almost nightly deterioration in the security situation. A number of Somali government forces and Ethiopian positions have been attacked with hand grenades and machine guns and convoys of troops patrolling the streets were targeted with roadside bombs. The Somali and Ethiopian soldiers respond to these attacks with random shooting which leads to more civilian casualties. Article

Noted FYI:

Kenya says it will open its border with Somalia to allow in some 140 food aid trucks stranded there for a month.

The UN has enough assistance for 100,000 people in the area and has warned of rising malnutrition rates.

Kenya closed its border with Somalia in January as Ethiopian backed government troops battled with Islamists.

Many fled to southern Somalia which is relatively calm. The UN food agency resorted to using the Kenyan overland route after growing piracy at sea.

Kenya’s North Eastern Provincial Commissioner Kiritu Wamae said the government will only open two border points in El Wak and Liboi towns.

“By this morning there should be no relief trucks at the border. They are all gone,” Mr Wamae told the BBC News website.

The Kenya border however remains closed to people and commercial traffic, he said.

But the WFP’s Somali spokesman, Said Warsame, says relief food trucks have still not left for Somalia. Article

Op-ed du jour:

Many of the country’s largest corporate law firms are involved in the Guantanamo cases. More than 500 attorneys have taken pro bono clients at Guantanamo, even though some of those clients have been described by the government as — among other things — “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth.”

It prompts one to ask whether 500 corporate lawyers have gone crazy. As the former managing partner of a firm representing clients at Guantanamo, I can attest that they have not.

First, and by the government’s own reckoning, many at Guantanamo have never been terrorists. Second, Guantanamo attorneys are actually defending fundamental American principles. Namely, due process and the rule of law.

The government asserts that it can arrest anyone anywhere in the world and, by labeling the person an “enemy combatant,” hold the individual indefinitely without charge, let alone trial. The government also asserts Guantanamo detainees have no enforceable rights. Many American attorneys react with disbelief, regardless of political affiliation, when they learn the government is taking such positions.

[snip]

There has been considerable focus on the rules relating to actual trials of persons held at Guantanamo. Lawyers are contesting the adequacy of those proceedings, which will be brought against only a small fraction of persons being held. The vast majority of detainees haven’t been charged with anything and will never be tried. Detainees are not seeking full criminal trials; they’re simply asking for habeas hearings at which the government must come forward with evidence to show why they are being detained indefinitely. Lawyers are critical to making the process work.

[snip]

Tribunal rules did not allow the detainees to have lawyers or see evidence. They also presumed detainees’ status as “enemy combatants,” and allowed use of hearsay evidence obtained through interrogation — even coerced interrogation. Therefore, determining whether these procedures were followed is not at all the same as determining whether a particular detainee is an actual “enemy combatant.”

For these reasons, detainees will receive fair hearings only if Congress repeals the denial of habeas corpus in the Military Commissions Act, so they may pursue their habeas cases. This repeal would be consistent with American values and would benefit the United States strategically, considering that even Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have called for Guantanamo’s closure.

Ultimately, it should not be surprising, let alone “shocking,” that many of America’s large-firm lawyers have sought due process for Guantanamo detainees. It makes sense that lawyers would fight for the principle that our government should not imprison people — potentially forever — without offering evidence in a court of law. Habeas corpus is a fundamental check on government power and should be restored. Article

US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Sunday that he is prepared to initiate a Senate vote to hold officials in the White House, the Vice President’s office, and the Department of Justice in contempt of Congress if they refuse to cooperate with congressional subpoenas issued in the investigation of the US Attorney firings controversy.… Article

10 a.m. on July 9, the announced drop-dead date, is less than a week away.

While there is no doubt that the power to issue commutations is extant, the way in which it was exercised was grotesque. Overruling a trial judge and — virtually immediately — a three-judge appeals panel, while also ignoring or bypassing the Department of Justice’s own guidelines and procedures (and make no mistake, this could not possibly be an off-the-cuff decision, but rather one already long planned and just waiting to be implemented), before day one of the sentence has been served (and without any even cursory expression of remorse on the part of Libby), sends a message of favoritism, elitism and cronyism, not of charity, sympathy or a corrective, a message of disdain for the judicial process and for the rule of law.

It is but another example of the perception of unilateral and ultimate power claimed by the woebegone G. Walker administration. One may or may not agree with the issuance of a commutation; regardless, the timing and the way in which it was handled stinks.

When he was running for president, George W. Bush loved to contrast his law-abiding morality with that of President Clinton, who was charged with perjury and acquitted. For Mr. Bush, the candidate, “politics, after a time of tarnished ideals, can be higher and better.”

Not so for Mr. Bush, the president. Judging from his decision yesterday to commute the 30-month sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. – who was charged with perjury and convicted – untarnished ideals are less of a priority than protecting the secrets of his inner circle and mollifying the tiny slice of right-wing Americans left in his political base.

[snip]

Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell. Article

Doesn’t quite fit in anywhere above, but mention is mandatory of this serious attack. Yemen not too long ago reached an accord of sorts with rebel and disaffected local elements in the hinterlands; this could well throw that situation into a cocked hat.

There is no apparent evidence of any connection, but it should also be noted that there has been a steady (and often deadly, from drowning) flow of refugess as well as of displaced former Islamic Courts members from Somalia into Yemen.

Yemen said seven Spanish tourists and two Yemenis were killed in a suspected al Qaeda suicide car bomb attack on their convoy in the province of Marib on Monday.

Six Spanish tourists were wounded in the attack and were taken to hospitals in Sanaa and Marib, about 150 km (95 miles) east of the capital, the official Saba news agency quoted an Interior Ministry source as saying.

“Preliminary information indicates that al Qaeda is behind this cowardly terrorist attack,” the source said.

The bomber targeted the tourists after their vehicles left a temple in Marib at about 5:30 p.m. (1430 GMT), the source said.

Two of their Yemeni drivers and tourist guides were killed and two were wounded. Article

A perverse economic juxtaposition, to say the least.

The price of machetes has halved in parts of Nigeria since the end of general elections in April because demand from thugs sponsored by politicians has subsided, the state-owned News Agency of Nigeria reported.

NAN surveyed prices in the northeastern state of Gombe and found that a good quality machete was now selling for 400 naira ($3) compared with 800 naira before the elections, which were marred by politically motivated violence in many states.

“A price survey on machetes, which served as a popular weapon among political thugs in the state, indicated … a drop in the price of the implement,” NAN reported over the weekend. Article

THE ANARCHIST’S PICNIC

Who arranged and doled out the responsibilities for it?

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WORSHIP WARMING

The devout melt the god away.