| |
News Center | Mason News | News Center |
| SEARCH: |  |
| TheSpringGarden Plants & trees, gardening products & equiptment, homedecor | SunglassesEyeglasses All stunning brand names sunglasses at the great prices | DIYHomeSupplies Do it yourself woodworking projects & home remodeling supplies | UnitedPlus Gift Ideas. Diecasts, Figurines, American Heroes, and much more |
| CarPartsAccessoriesEtc Search and shop for auto parts & accessories online. Simple & Convenient | Sewing Machines Top notch sewing machines, vacuums, and appliances. For home or commercial. | Patio & Landscape Ready for family BBQ party this summer? A Large selection of outdoor furnitures | FontsWorld Looking for those cool fonts? Here, variety of all around the world fonts. Free Download. |
| |||||||
| Army What's up with the Army? |
 |
| | LinkBack | Thread Tools | Display Modes |
12-30-2007, 06:28 PM
| ||||
| ||||
 The Pentagon Early Bird 30 Dec 2007 C U R R E N T N E W S E A R L Y B I R DDecember 30, 2007 placeRandomImg() Use of these news articles does not reflect official endorsement. Reproduction for private use or gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. Story numbers indicate order of appearance only. This is the single print version. Use the PRINT command in your browser to print the entire Early Bird as one document. (NOTE: This single file format is a long document and can use 50 or more pages of paper.) PAKISTAN
New York Times December 30, 2007 Pg. 1 Qaeda Network Expands Base In Pakistan By Carlotta Gall ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Qaeda network accused by Pakistan’s government of killing the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is increasingly made up not of foreign fighters but of homegrown Pakistani militants bent on destabilizing the country, analysts and security officials here say. In previous years, Pakistani militants directed their energies against American and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan and avoided clashes with the Pakistani Army. But this year they have very clearly expanded their ranks and turned to a direct confrontation with the Pakistani security forces while also aiming at political figures like Ms. Bhutto, the former prime minister who died when a suicide bomb exploded as she left a political rally on Thursday. According to American officials in Washington, an already steady stream of threat reports spiked in recent months. Many concerned possible plots to kill prominent Pakistani leaders, including Ms. Bhutto, President Pervez Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader. “Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters in Washington on Dec. 21. The expansion of Pakistan’s own militants, with their fortified links to Al Qaeda, presents a deeply troubling development for the Bush administration and its efforts to stabilize this volatile nuclear-armed country. It is also one that many in Pakistan have been loath to admit, but that Ms. Bhutto had begun to acknowledge in her many public statements about the greatest threat to her country being in religious extremism and terrorism. Those warnings have now been borne out with her death and in the turmoil that has followed it and shaken Pakistan’s political fault lines. Rioting over the last two days has left at least 38 people dead and 53 injured, and cost millions of dollars of damage to businesses, vehicles and government buildings, according an Interior Ministry spokesman. Protesters have accused the government of failing to protect Ms. Bhutto, or even conspiring to kill her. On Saturday, Mr. Sharif, now the country’s most prominent opposition figure, ventured to the political stronghold of his assassinated rival to lay a wreath on her grave, but also to make common cause against President Musharraf and the Bush administration’s support of him. The government has tried to deflect that anger, blaming militants linked to Al Qaeda, specifically Baitullah Mehsud, for having masterminded the attack. But on Saturday, through a spokesman, Mr. Mehsud denied he was responsible and dismissed the allegations, adding fuel to the notion of a government conspiracy. “Neither Baitullah Mehsud nor any of his associates were involved in the assassination of Benazir, because raising your hand against women is against our tribal values and customs,” the spokesman, Maulavi Omar, said in a telephone call from the tribal region of South Waziristan. “Only those people who stood to gain politically are involved in Benazir’s murder,” he said. One of Pakistan’s leading newspapers, The Daily Times, noted Saturday that such denials were a common tactic used to obscure the origins of the militants’ attacks, and in particular to extend the myth that the bombings are the work of foreign elements, rather than of Pakistanis. Al Qaeda in Pakistan now comprises not just foreigners but Pakistani tribesmen from border regions, as well as Punjabis and Urdu speakers and members of banned sectarian and Sunni extremists groups, Najam Sethi, editor of The Daily Times, wrote in a front-page analysis. “Al Qaeda is now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or foreign element,” he wrote. Senior American intelligence officials said all credible threat information in recent weeks had been passed to Pakistani authorities, mainly through the United States Embassy in Islamabad. But the officials said they were not aware of any specific reports of an attempt on Ms. Bhutto’s life in Rawalpindi. A senior American intelligence official said it was clear from his reading of recent threat reports that “the political process was not going to go untouched,” adding that militants almost surely would go to any length “to create political disarray.” And while Ms. Bhutto had perhaps the longest list of enemies among Pakistan’s most prominent politicians, the official said: “It almost didn’t matter which one was attacked — Musharraf, Bhutto or Sharif. The militants were looking for multiple target sets, whether in the capital area, which would carry more weight, or in Karachi or Peshawar.” In the face of that danger, American lawmakers pressed for tighter government security around Ms. Bhutto. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat who heads the Foreign Relations Committee and who is running for president, released a letter last week that he and two Senate colleagues had written to Mr. Musharraf at Ms. Bhutto’s request, urging him to increase her security. The letter, written six days after the Oct. 18 bombing attempt on Ms. Bhutto’s life, urged Mr. Musharraf to provide her “the full level of security support afforded to any former prime minister,” including “bomb-proof vehicles and jamming equipment.” After Ms. Bhutto’s death, Mr. Biden said in a statement, “The failure to protect Ms. Bhutto raises a lot of hard questions for the government and security services that must be answered.” But a Defense Department official said Saturday, “I don’t know how foolproof you can make any security when people are willing to kill themselves.” The tribes on the border have a long history of fighting invading armies. But since 2001, when Qaeda and Taliban forces fled the American intervention in Afghanistan and took refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Pakistani militants have steadily grown in strength and boldness. Today they have been bolstered by the foreigners among them. Those include a smaller number of hard-core Arabs, like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s second in command, as well as a larger number of Uzbeks, Tartars and Tajiks who have influence them to take on new agendas, Pakistani security officials familiar with the region said. The Arabs in particular have brought money and fighting and explosives expertise, as well as ideology that includes religious justifications of tactics like suicide bombings and beheadings, which Afghans and Pakistanis had not used before, they said. More and more, those tribes and foreign networks have overlapping operations and agendas. “The country is facing the gravest challenge from these terrorists and extremist elements,” Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, the director of the National Crisis Management Cell and main spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said Friday as he accused Al Qaeda of Ms. Bhutto’s assassination. “They are systematically targeting our state institutions in order to destabilize the country.” Mr. Mehsud, he said, was of the “same brand of Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists,” and was “behind most of the recent terrorist attacks that have taken place in Pakistan.” Some security officials in the North-West Frontier Province have warned, however, that it has become the norm for the government to blame Mr. Mehsud for just about any attack, without providing real evidence. Mr. Mehsud is in fact one commander in a broader terrorist network who runs just one of an estimated five groups that train and dispatch suicide bombers from Pakistan’s isolated tribal areas, according to officials. Another man known to be sending out suicide bombers is Qari Zafar, a militant from southern Punjab who was connected to the banned Sunni extremist group Sipa-e-Sahaba and then Jaish-e-Muhammad. Mr. Zafar escaped capture in Karachi and is now based in South Waziristan, where he trains insurgents on how to rig roadside bombs and vests for suicide bombings, a former security official said. But it is Mr. Mehsud who has emerged this year as the most visible proponent of Al Qaeda’s ambitions in Pakistan, security officials said. He has claimed to have hundreds of suicide bombers ready to attack government and military targets. Barely two years ago Mr. Mehsud, 32, was just a Pashtun tribesman who did not register on the radar screen of the intelligence services or government officials. He is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan in the 1990s, when he trained and fought with the Taliban, according to one Pakistani intelligence official. He became a follower of Abdullah Mehsud, the one-legged commander who was captured when fighting with the Taliban in 2001 in Afghanistan and detained by the United States at its military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Abdullah Mehsud was later released and took up the fight against American forces in Afghanistan from his home base in South Waziristan. Both Abdullah and Baitullah share the name of the Mehsud of South Waziristan, a large warrior Pashtun tribe that is renowned for never being pacified by the British forces. Abdullah Mehsud was killed in July by Pakistani forces in Zhob, a district south of the tribal areas in the province of Baluchistan. But even before then, Baitullah Mehsud had been promoted over him by the Taliban leadership. Baitullah Mehsud is now believed to be responsible for some of the most spectacular and damaging attacks inside Pakistan in recent months, including suicide bombings against army and intelligence targets as well as prominent politicians like Ms. Bhutto. He has also been identified by officials in Afghanistan as one of the main sources of the suicide bombers who carry out attacks there. But Mr. Mehsud’s master strike came at the end of July when he captured nearly 300 soldiers who were escorting a supply convoy through the Mehsud lands in Waziristan. He beheaded three soldiers and demanded that the government withdraw from his area and cease operations against militants. It took the government two months of negotiations to win the release of the soldiers. Only on Nov. 3 did it do so. As part of the deal the government handed over 25 of Mr. Mehsud’s men on the same day that President Musharraf imposed emergency rule, saying he needed the extra powers to combat terrorists. Since then, however, the government, wary of the retaliatory attacks Mr. Mehsud can employ, appears to have done little to rein him in. He now leads Tehrik-i-Taliban, a newly formed coalition of Islamic militants committed to waging holy war against the Pakistani government. The government has outlawed the group but not moved against it. The army has instead concentrated its efforts in recent weeks on clearing militants from the Swat Valley. That region is some distance from the tribal areas on the border, and the fight there an indication of just how far the militant influence has spread. Pakistani officials who have worked in the tribal areas say that it is still possible to contain the threat of someone like Mr. Mehsud through tribal pressure, if he can be separated from the foreign elements. “The only problem is these foreigners,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “You remove these foreigners and the rest is no problem.” Yet to remove the foreigners, namely a small number of Arab leaders, who are well protected and well hidden, from among the tribesmen is a task that Pakistan so far has failed to do and according to some may not be capable of. “That can only be done with an operation,” the official said. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071230570338.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_4044197_AET PjkQAAT4IR3gzUwXe3nWXzY8&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20071230aaindex_concat.html&cred=4YehaNlsgBkNc9ap rREN.xctfwh5WHMc0PI6XW3vqk8lRkYZpo8l5U5Vx4KHanJt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Los Angeles Times December 30, 2007 Pg. 1 Far From Case Closed In Pakistan Bhutto's assassination and the government's version of events raise fears about the reach of militants and possible official complicity in the attack. By Laura King, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — The circumstances of Benazir Bhutto's assassination suggest either that Islamic militants based in Pakistan are able to act with near-total impunity or that elements within the government of President Pervez Musharraf have been complicit in attacks, or both, analysts and Western diplomats say. The government's version of events surrounding the attack Thursday that killed the popular former prime minister raises many more questions than it answers, these observers said. The nearly instantaneous naming of a culprit and eagerness to assert that Bhutto had not been shot left some observers troubled about the motives of a government that is a trusted ally in the Bush administration's "war on terror." The violent death of Bhutto, 54, on whom the West had pinned hopes of a moderate, democratic Pakistan, is a watershed event in a nuclear-armed state that faces a roiling Islamic insurgency not only in its mostly lawless tribal border regions, but in the streets of its most cosmopolitan cities. The assassination will have long-lasting repercussions not only in Pakistan, but in neighboring Afghanistan as well, where Western troops are battling a fractured but determined Taliban movement. Any significant destabilization of Pakistan would carry risks for the entire region, analysts said. On Saturday, with mourning rites still taking place at Bhutto's ancestral home, her party angrily contested government assertions that she had been killed neither by bullets that witnesses said a gunman fired from only a few yards away nor by shrapnel from the suicide bombing that rocked her armored vehicle moments later. Instead, a government spokesman said the force of the blast was such that she hit her head so hard that she suffered a fatal skull fracture. "That's dangerous nonsense," said Sherry Rehman, a senior official in the Pakistan People's Party who was in the vehicle immediately behind Bhutto's, accompanied her on the frantic drive to the closest hospital and viewed her body after doctors declared her dead. Rehman said entry and exit wounds from gunshots were visible on Bhutto's head and neck, and that she was bleeding uncontrollably on the way to the hospital. Western diplomats, too, said they found the government statements worrying in their wider implications. "It's not only that this is not a credible account of what happened -- that's obvious on the face of it," said a diplomat familiar with security matters, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It's that it raises questions about why the government is so extraordinarily eager to avoid acknowledging the role of a gunman, whether or not the wounds were fatal. At the very least, it's puzzling," the diplomat said. Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said that if Bhutto's party had doubts about the government's conclusion on the cause of her death, it was ready to perform an autopsy if it got permission to exhume her body. Bhutto was buried Friday. Late Saturday, new images of the attack emerged when the Dawn television channel aired still photos taken by an amateur photographer that show a cleanshaven young man in sunglasses aiming a pistol at Bhutto's back from several yards away. Immediately behind him is a man in a white shawl who the channel said is believed to be the suicide bomber. Several analysts said the use of a handgun in addition to explosives is a departure for militant groups in Pakistan. "This is not by any means a signature killing by Al Qaeda," security analyst Nasim Zehra said. "A targeted shooting, even in combination with a familiar suicide bombing, makes it look more like a political killing than one by some militant group." Others, however, noted that Pakistan's militant organizations have shown themselves capable of adapting to circumstances. "Obviously, they were studying her movements in the course of the political campaign," said Ikram Sehgal, a former military officer turned analyst. "Inside the rally, it was relatively secure; her problem was entering and leaving. She was highly vulnerable at that time. "It was done very professionally," Sehgal added. "It was a 'hit.' " That degree of professionalism suggests to some experts the hand of Pakistan's security apparatus, which has previously aided and abetted militant groups, including the Taliban. "The [security] agencies have ongoing connections with the militants," said security analyst Ayesha Siddiqa, who has written extensively about the Pakistani military. "It's very simplistic to talk about the militants doing this and doing that, all the while acting alone." The government has pointed the finger at Baitullah Mahsud, a local Taliban commander based in Waziristan, the most strife-torn of the tribal areas on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border. On Saturday, Mahsud issued a vehement denial. "It is against tribal customs and traditions to kill a woman," Mahsud's spokesman, who calls himself Maulana Omar, said by telephone, speaking from an undisclosed location. The government had released a transcript of a purported conversation between Mahsud and another militant leader in which they appear to make reference to the assassination and the second commander offered his congratulations. Another Western diplomat familiar with the Pakistani security services' extensive electronic surveillance operations said that if the transcript was genuine, it was highly unlikely that the eavesdropping began with this particular conversation. "That raises the question: What precisely was known about his activities and plans up until now?" the diplomat said. Mahsud has been known to reach accommodations with the government. In 2005, he agreed to a truce in South Waziristan, promising his men would not attack Pakistani soldiers, though the pact later collapsed. The government has sought to put the blame for security lapses on Bhutto and her party, particularly her decision to stand up through her SUV's sunroof as she left the rally. Others in the bulletproof vehicle survived with relatively light injuries, as did those riding in the other cars in her convoy. But whether or not rogue elements of the security forces were involved or there was deliberate negligence on the part of the authorities, the attackers demonstrated a keen ability and determination to get their target. "I think this degree of impunity, the fact that they are able to hold the whole country ransom and terrorize the population -- all this is definitely a new level of threat and danger," said author and analyst Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively about the Taliban and other militant groups. The enormous wave of popular revulsion over the assassination could spur demands that the government end once and for all its shadowy dealings with militant groups, some predicted. "There have been alliances in the past, but a line should be drawn: no dealings with them in any way," said Omar Qureishi, the op-ed editor of the English-language paper the News. The government has promised an exhaustive investigation, but as it did following an attack in Karachi on Bhutto's homecoming procession in October that killed more than 140 people, it has declined international assistance. "We best understand our own environment," said Cheema, the Interior Ministry spokesman. "Scotland Yard cannot go to Waziristan. They don't know the language or the customs." Observers say that the methods employed by Pakistani investigators have probably already allowed crucial forensic evidence to be destroyed. State television showed pictures of police officers, wearing latex gloves, combing the scene Saturday, picking up pieces of debris and carefully depositing them in evidence bags. But immediately after Thursday's attack, senior police inspectors had looked on as pressure hoses were used to wash the pavement, which was sticky with blood and strewn with broken glass. In the area where a gunman's spent shell casings probably would have fallen, all was swept into the torrent of bloodstained water. "How do we find out who killed Benazir?" analyst Siddiqa said. "I don't know that we ever will." Special correspondent Zulfiqar Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071230570301.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_4044197_AET PjkQAAT4IR3gzUwXe3nWXzY8&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20071230aaindex_concat.html&cred=4YehaNlsgBkNc9ap rREN.xctfwh5WHMc0PI6XW3vqk8lRkYZpo8l5U5Vx4KHanJt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post December 30, 2007 Pg. 1 Pakistan At Standstill As Discord And Unrest Grow Election Delay Considered In Wake of Bhutto's Killing By Griff Witte, Washington Post Foreign Service KARACHI, Pakistan, Dec. 29 -- Nationwide rioting brought life in Pakistan to a standstill Saturday and forced government officials to consider delaying next month's elections, as discord spread over the killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The death toll from the violence climbed above 40, with many people fearfully staying indoors while others ventured out to torch government buildings or battle with police firing tear gas. The unrest turned streets in this normally frenetic city, Pakistan's largest, into empty expanses of asphalt. Dozens of burned-out cars and buses lay by the sides of the roads, evidence of nighttime mobs that roamed the city in defiance of soldiers and police. Food shortages were reported in some areas of the country, and most gas stations and shops were closed. With a large percentage of the population idle and angry, there was concern Saturday that the violence could worsen. "These are the sentiments of the people. This is their natural reaction," said Zahid Hussain, 30, a truck driver who had pulled over Thursday night in rural Sindh province, Bhutto's stronghold, and had not moved since for fear of attack. Pakistanis are scheduled to go to the polls Jan. 8, but with the nation on edge, the election commission was expected to convene an emergency meeting Monday to decide whether to postpone the long-awaited vote. Rioters have targeted the commission's offices, and several have been burned to the ground. The elections, which will determine who controls Parliament and shares power with President Pervez Musharraf, are seen both here and abroad as a test of Musharraf's willingness to move toward restoring democracy. In addition to the concerns about violence marring the vote, opposition groups have long said they believe that Musharraf and his allies plan to rig the balloting. Bhutto had been campaigning for a third term as premier at a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Thursday when she was killed as her bulletproof sport-utility vehicle was about to leave. The attack -- gunshots and a suicide bombing -- was carried out in broad daylight before hundreds of witnesses. But the exact circumstances of her death remained a source of major controversy Saturday. The government has blamed Islamic extremists and said Bhutto died because her head hit a lever of her vehicle's sunroof. Her supporters have blamed Musharraf's allies and say she was shot in a well-coordinated assassination. On Saturday, while paying his respects to her family in its ancestral home, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said the government should be held responsible for Bhutto's death. Bhutto loyalists turned their attention Saturday to the question of who will succeed her as leader of her Pakistan People's Party. But many in the party concede that they are still distracted by the trauma of her death. "Maybe the emotion won't last that long, but right now, I don't care about the People's Party. I don't care about Pakistan. The only thing I care about right now is that they have killed my sister," said Nadeem Qamar, a doctor and a party stalwart for decades. Bhutto's father founded the Pakistan People's Party in 1967 as a counterweight to the all-powerful Pakistani army, and she took over soon after he was hanged by a military dictator in 1979. But Bhutto, who held the official title of party chairperson for life, did not leave behind an obvious successor. The choice is considered crucial at a time when the party is playing a central role in the movement against the deeply unpopular Musharraf, who resigned last month as army chief but managed to engineer a new term as president. Bhutto's 19-year-old son, Bilawal, is scheduled to make his mother's final wishes public at a news conference Sunday. Bilawal himself is considered a possible heir to the dynastic PPP. Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, is thought by party insiders to be a likely candidate to lead the party for the next several years, until Bilawal is older. Zardari is a divisive figure whose name is associated with corruption allegations stemming from his wife's two terms as prime minister. Some members of the party fear it could split without Bhutto to unify factions that differ sharply on how best to challenge Musharraf. While the party's top leaders have pushed to work for change from within the system, many in the rank and file are making a different choice. In Sindh province, rioters had left a wide swath of destruction Saturday, with still-burning fuel tankers and smoldering tires littering the highways. And young men wearing People's Party head scarves had set up dozens of impromptu checkpoints along the major roads, looking for targets. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, retired Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, said 174 banks had been burned and billons of rupees worth of property destroyed across the country. The violence was met with threats of a stiffer government response. "We are warning people to stay calm and restrain themselves," Cheema said. "They will be punished in the toughest way if it does not stop." The army was already out in force in many areas of Sindh on Saturday and appeared to be regaining control there. Elsewhere, however, the unrest intensified. In Rawalpindi, riot police and People's Party supporters clashed near the spot where Bhutto was killed. In the eastern city of Lahore, workers slept in their offices because public transportation was shut down and many were unable to get enough gas in their cars to go home. Families brought blankets and pillows to the airport, where they waited for flights that never left. All cafes, movie theaters and markets remained closed in Lahore, the country's cultural capital. "We had to cancel over 100 weddings in the heat of the season," said Ali Hassan, a manager at the Avari Hotel, where employees have been sleeping on cots. "This is worse than the judicial crisis and worse than the emergency. We even called off all New Year's Eve parties. It's a sad and violent time for Pakistan," Hassan added. Some people said they were profoundly frustrated by Bhutto's killing and wanted to get away -- for good. "I travel abroad all the time, and I never thought of leaving my country until now," said Adnan Hassan, 37, an engineer who had waited for days for a flight from Lahore to Islamabad. "We had hopes that Pakistan would do better. But it's only getting worse." Correspondent Emily Wax in Lahore and special correspondents Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar and Shahzad Khurram in Rawalpindi contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071230570330.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_4044197_AET PjkQAAT4IR3gzUwXe3nWXzY8&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20071230aaindex_concat.html&cred=4YehaNlsgBkNc9ap rREN.xctfwh5WHMc0PI6XW3vqk8lRkYZpo8l5U5Vx4KHanJt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Philadelphia Inquirer December 30, 2007 Pakistan Says No To Probe Help Musharraf orders riots quelled; cover-up alleged. By Ravi Nessman, Associated Press ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan yesterday rejected foreign help in investigating the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, despite controversy over the circumstances of her death and three days of paralyzing turmoil. The Islamic militant group blamed by officials for the attack that killed the former prime minister denied any links to the killing, and Bhutto's aides accused the government of a cover-up. President Pervez Musharraf ordered his security chiefs to quell rioting by Bhutto's grieving followers that has killed at least 44 people over three days and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. "Criminals should stop their despicable activities, otherwise they will have to face serious consequences," Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party called a meeting for today to choose a new leader, decide whether to participate in Jan. 8 parliamentary elections, and hear her last will and testament. If the party pulled out, it would destroy the credibility of the election, already being boycotted by rival opposition leader Nawaz Sharif. The U.S. government has pressured Musharraf, who seized power in a coup eight years ago, to push ahead with the election to promote stability in this nuclear-armed nation, a key ally against Islamic extremism. The riots destroyed nine election offices - along with the voter rolls and ballot boxes inside, the election commission said. The commission has called an emergency meeting for tomorrow to decide how to proceed. Questions about Bhutto's assassination have intensified since she died Thursday evening when a suicide attacker shot at her and then blew himself up as she waved to supporters from the sunroof of her armored vehicle outside a campaign rally. The disputes were sure to further enflame the violence and have led to calls for an international, independent investigation into the attack. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that an international probe was vital because there was "no reason to trust the Pakistani government," while others called for a U.N. investigation. Cheema dismissed the suggestion. "This is not an ordinary criminal matter in which we require assistance of the international community. I think we are capable of handling it," he said. An independent judicial investigation should be completed within seven days of the appointment of its presiding judge, he said. U.S. officials, however, said Pakistani officials have quietly begun consulting with other nations about the conduct of their investigation "The Pakistan government is discussing with other governments as to how best the investigation can be handled," one senior U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because no agreement had yet come from the discussions. With the United States, the official said, the discussions "are about what we can offer and what the Pakistanis want. Having some help to make sure international questions are answered is definitely an option." There was no immediate confirmation from Pakistani officials. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Pakistan had not asked the United States for help. "It's a responsibility of the government of Pakistan to ensure that the investigation is thorough. If Pakistani authorities ask for assistance we would review the request," he said. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband offered his country's assistance. "Obviously it's very important that a full investigation does take place and has the confidence of all concerned," he said. The government blamed the attack on Baitullah Mehsud, head of the Tehrik-i-Taliban, a newly formed coalition of Islamic militants along the Afghan border believed to be linked to al-Qaeda and committed to waging holy war against the government. But a spokesman for Mehsud, Maulana Mohammed Umer, dismissed the allegations as "government propaganda." "We strongly deny it. Baitullah Mehsud is not involved in the killing of Benazir Bhutto," he said in a telephone call he made to the Associated Press from the tribal region of South Waziristan. "The fact is that we are only against America, and we don't consider political leaders of Pakistan our enemy." Bhutto's aides said they, too, doubted Mehsud was involved and accused the government of a cover-up. "The story that al-Qaeda or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's party. After an October suicide attack targeted her in Karachi, Bhutto accused elements in the ruling party of plotting to kill her. The government denied the allegations, and Babar said Bhutto's claims were never investigated. Authorities initially said Bhutto died from bullet wounds. A surgeon who treated her later said the impact from shrapnel on her skull killed her. But Cheema said Friday that Bhutto was killed when the shockwaves from the bomb smashed her head into the sunroof as she tried to duck back inside the vehicle. Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who was in the vehicle that rushed her boss to the hospital, disputed that. "She was bleeding profusely, as she had received a bullet wound in her neck. My car was full of blood. Three doctors at the hospital told us that she had received bullet wounds. I was among the people who gave her a final bath. We saw a bullet wound in the back of her neck," she said. "What the government is saying is actually dangerous and nonsensical. They are pouring salt on our wounds. There are no findings, they are just lying." Roads across Bhutto's southern Sindh province were littered with burning vehicles, smoking reminders of the continuing chaos raging across the country. Business centers, gas stations and schools remained closed, and many roads were deserted. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071230570304.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_4044197_AET PjkQAAT4IR3gzUwXe3nWXzY8&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20071230aaindex_concat.html&cred=4YehaNlsgBkNc9ap rREN.xctfwh5WHMc0PI6XW3vqk8lRkYZpo8l5U5Vx4KHanJt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post December 30, 2007 Pg. 24 U.S. Strives To Keep Footing In Tangled Pakistan Situation By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writers For the Bush administration, there is no Plan B for Pakistan. The assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto dramatically altered Pakistani politics, forcing the largest opposition party to find new leadership on the eve of an election, jeopardizing a fragile transition to democracy, and leaving Washington even more dependent on the controversial President Pervez Musharraf as the lone pro-U.S. leader in a nation facing growing extremism. Despite anxiety among intelligence officials and experts, however, the administration is only slightly tweaking a course charted over the past 18 months to support the creation of a political center revolving around Musharraf, according to U.S. officials. "Plan A still has to work," said a senior administration official involved in Pakistan policy. "We all have to appeal to moderate forces to come together and carry the election and create a more solidly based government, then use that as a platform to fight the terrorists. " U.S. policy remains wedded to Musharraf despite growing warnings from experts, presidential candidates and even a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan that his dictatorial ways are untenable. Some contend that Pakistan would be better off without him. "This administration has had a disastrous policy toward Pakistan, as bad as the Iraq policy," said Robert Templer of the International Crisis Group. "They are clinging to the wreckage of Musharraf, flailing around. . . . Musharraf has outlived all possible usage to Pakistan and the United States." Templer contends that without Musharraf, moderate forces, coming from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N, the moderate Balochistan National Party and the mostly Pashtun Awami National Party, could create a new, more legitimate centrist political space. But with Musharraf having won a five-year presidential term in October -- an election perceived by many as tainted and illegitimate -- the looming question centers on who will become prime minister. Bhutto was expected to assume that role after the January election, a move U.S. officials believed would have bolstered both Musharraf and U.S. interests. But now there are no obvious heirs. "We have a room full of tigers in Pakistan," the senior U.S. official said. "This is a really complicated situation, and we have to use our influence in a lot of ways but also realize we can't determine the outcome. We're not dropping pixie dust on someone to anoint them as the next leader." Washington's challenges now are far more daunting than they were in brokering a deal between Bhutto and Musharraf that produced her return from exile and the promise of free elections. At the top of the list is getting former prime minister Sharif to reverse course on boycotting the Jan. 8 parliamentary election. The United States is in the awkward position of trying to coax a party leader with an anti-American platform and close ties to religious parties to cooperate with Musharraf, a secular former general and top U.S. ally in fighting extremism. The two men are bitter rivals. Sharif has accused Musharraf of treason for toppling his democratically elected government in a military coup in 1999. Musharraf, in turn, believes Sharif tried to kill him, his wife and 200 other passengers when the Sharif government in 1999 initially refused to allow a commercial jetliner carrying Musharraf to land in Pakistan even though fuel was running low. In his autobiography, Musharraf alleges that the airliner had only seven minutes of fuel when it finally landed after the military intervened. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad reached out to Sharif's brother and other members of his party the day of Bhutto's assassination, U.S. officials said. "We would certainly encourage him, as well as all others . . . to participate in the process with an eye towards ensuring there is the broadest possible opportunity for the Pakistani people to choose among a variety of legitimate political actors," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. But U.S. officials also said Sharif's call for an election boycott on the day of Bhutto's death was unseemly and an obvious ploy to pressure Musharraf when the Pakistan Muslim League-Q -- loyal to Musharraf and a rival of Sharif's faction -- was increasingly isolated. "Nawaz is not our nemesis. He is likely to be part of whatever political solution evolves out of the present situation," John Stuart Blackton, a former U.S. diplomat in Pakistan and Afghanistan, said. "Nawaz isn't fond of America, but he isn't anti-American." The other U.S. priority is helping to hold Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party together, officials said. Pakistan's largest opposition party, ruled by a family dynasty, now must reorganize without a Bhutto in charge, they said. Long divided by competing tendencies, some members wanted to boycott the election after Musharraf imposed emergency rule last month, while others favored running for parliament. When Bhutto opted to participate, the others fell in line. Without her, some experts expect the party to get bogged down in debate or to fragment. On the day of Bhutto's death, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned PPP deputy leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim to offer condolences and express hope that the PPP would not change its plans to participate in the election, U.S. officials said. The future of the PPP depends in part on what Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, does and how the party "survives the machinations" of ISI, Pakistan's military intelligence service, Templer said. "For the past eight years, the military and the ISI have done everything to splinter the party, through violence and intimidation. Despite that, it has hung together in a disciplined way." Zardari's future role is a big unknown, analysts said. The environment minister when his wife was prime minister, he is a controversial businessman imprisoned for 11 years on corruption and attempted murder charges, most of which were dismissed. After his release, he went into exile, where he stayed when Bhutto returned in October. Two other immediate challenges, U.S. officials said, are encouraging Pakistani leaders to hold the elections on Jan. 8 or shortly thereafter and prodding Musharraf to ensure that they are fair. On timing, they say the PPP should have the greatest say, given its problems since Bhutto's death. "Everyone needs to give them a fair chance," the senior official said. Longer-term, as part of its original plan, the administration next month will launch a five-year, $750 million development effort to bring education, jobs and better security to the volatile frontier areas. But critics warn that Plan A -- from rushing into elections already widely viewed as rigged to relying on Musharraf -- is unsustainable without Bhutto. "It's folly," said C. Christine Fair of the Rand Corp. Even before Bhutto's death, the elections were being questioned because of limited campaign time and Musharraf's manipulation of the Supreme Court, she said. "Pakistanis are going to read [elections] as a sham to prop up Musharraf as Washington's water boy." The Bush administration should instead encourage Musharraf to promote reconciliation across the parties, which would jointly decide the date for elections, and to restore the ousted members of the Supreme Court, she said. A new round of "farcical elections" will produce a weak government that Musharraf will try to manipulate, warned Stephen P. Cohen of the Brookings Institution. And in an op-ed co-written for yesterday's Washington Post, Wendy Chamberlin, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, warned that a vote without prior political reforms "would almost certainly provoke a violent backlash." Analysts are also concerned that the administration does not appear to be developing alternatives in case something happens to Musharraf, who has faced several assassination attempts or plots, or growing public disdain makes him an untenable ally. Democratic presidential candidates have issued harsh criticisms of Musharraf. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has said there is little reason to trust the Pakistani government, while New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has called for Musharraf to step down. Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) also questioned the wisdom of sticking with this ally. "As long as we are supporting somebody who the Pakistani people themselves believe has subverted democracy, that strengthens the hand of the Islamic militants," he said in Iowa. U.S. officials acknowledge that Musharraf's party is more isolated than ever. "It will have to work harder for its own voters and to try and pick up others," the senior official said. Suspicions in Bhutto's party that the government in some way colluded with extremists to murder her will also make it harder for the PPP to cooperate with Musharraf, he added. Others warn of a political implosion if violence continues and a flawed election is held. "In the best case for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and the worst case for the world, Pakistan could fall into such turmoil that the very control of the state could fall into Islamist hands, or Pakistan could effectively fracture -- with its massive armaments, including dozens of nuclear weapons, falling into the wrong hands," said J. Alexander Thier, a former U.N. official now at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071230570306.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_4044197_AET PjkQAAT4IR3gzUwXe3nWXzY8&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20071230aaindex_concat.html&cred=4YehaNlsgBkNc9ap rREN.xctfwh5WHMc0PI6XW3vqk8lRkYZpo8l5U5Vx4KHanJt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post December 30, 2007 Pg. 26 Blamed Radical 'Capable Of Doing Such Things' By Imtiaz Ali and Griff Witte, Washington Post Foreign Service PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Dec. 29 -- The man named by Pakistani officials as the chief organizer of Benazir Bhutto's assassination is a widely feared tribal commander at the vanguard of efforts by extremist groups to draw Pakistan deeper into their insurgent campaign. Baitullah Mehsud, a pro-Taliban figure based in the lawless border region of South Waziristan, is believed to lead an army of thousands of followers who over the past year have been looking increasingly to the east in Pakistan for their targets, rather than west to Afghanistan. If Mehsud was behind Bhutto's killing, it would be his most audacious attack to date. But he is believed to be responsible for many other high-profile attacks in Pakistan, including an operation this year in which his men held more than 150 army soldiers for weeks. Pakistani officials said Friday that they had intercepted a phone call in which Mehsud congratulated his men for assassinating Bhutto. That allegation was disputed Saturday, as a purported spokesman for Mehsud denied any link between the insurgent leader and Bhutto's death. "It's baseless," Maulvi Omar, who claims to be the spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, told local journalists in the Waziristan region. "Benazir's killing is a political issue." Bhutto's supporters have said much the same, arguing that elements of the government are responsible for the attack and that pinning the blame on Mehsud is an attempt to provide cover for the true culprits. But security experts in Pakistan's restive northwest said Mehsud had the motive and the means to order the strike. "Baitullah Mehsud is capable of doing such things. He has a lot of trained suicide bombers who can carry out such attacks with precision," said Mahmood Shah, a retired brigadier general and former head of security in the tribal areas. Fazal Rahim Marwat, a professor at the University of Peshawar, said suspicion will inevitably fall on Mehsud because of his alleged ties to al-Qaeda. "The modus operandi in the Bhutto killing was pretty sophisticated, one with resemblance to al-Qaeda's strategies," Marwat said. But Marwat also noted the long-standing connections between insurgent groups such as Mehsud's and the Pakistani military, which created the Taliban to wage war in Afghanistan in the 1990s, only to see the movement turn against Pakistan in recent years. "One should not forget the anti-Bhutto factor in the all-powerful Pakistani military establishment, which has always nurtured right-wing parties and even militant groups in the country to outnumber and compete with liberal voices like that of Benazir Bhutto," he said. A tribal fighter and close aide of Mehsud, who identified himself as Qalam Shah, said in an interview that he did not know of any involvement by Mehsud in Bhutto's death. But he expressed contempt for Bhutto. "By all accounts, she was here in Pakistan to make a joint government with Perez Musharraf on the U.S.'s instructions, and to extend and serve the U.S. agenda in the region," Shah said. "Her speeches were clearly indicating her tilt toward the United States, and there was an increasing fear among mujaheddins that she may launch more vigorous military operations than Pervez Musharraf at the behest of the United States." Bhutto had been outspoken about the need for Pakistan to confront Islamic extremism, warning in dire terms that groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda pose an existential threat to the nation. For years, the ability and willingness of insurgents to strike within Pakistan appeared to be limited. But both seem to be growing, and the results have been devastating, with several hundred Pakistanis killed in attacks in the past six months. The pace and scale of the strikes picked up after the military raided the Red Mosque in Islamabad in July, an operation that Bhutto supported. An October attack on Bhutto's homecoming from exile -- which claimed at least 140 lives -- employed powerful explosives in two blasts. The attack, also blamed on Mehsud by some government officials, bore similarities to the strike that killed Bhutto on Thursday. The military has allegedly made several unsuccessful efforts to kill or capture Mehsud. In 2005, the government cut a peace deal with Mehsud -- one that locals in South Waziristan say only made him stronger. Mehsud backed out of the deal after the Red Mosque raid. "This deal with the government made Mehsud the uncrowned king of Waziristan," said Noor Mohammad Wazir, a resident of South Waziristan's main town. "Now he is running the whole show, and Pakistani troops are just spectators." Witte reported from Karachi. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071230570315.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_4044197_AET PjkQAAT4IR3gzUwXe3nWXzY8&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20071230aaindex_concat.html&cred=4YehaNlsgBkNc9ap rREN.xctfwh5WHMc0PI6XW3vqk8lRkYZpo8l5U5Vx4KHanJt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Times December 30, 2007 Pg. 5 Bhutto Tried To Hire U.S. Security Guards By Philip Sherwell, London Sunday Telegraph NEW YORK — Benazir Bhutto was so fearful for her life that she tried to hire British and American security firms, including Blackwater, to protect her, but Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf refused to allow the foreign contractors to operate in Pakistan, her aides said. "She asked to bring in trained security personnel from abroad," said Mark Siegel, her U.S. representative. "In fact, she and her husband repeatedly tried to get visas for such protection, but they were denied by the government of Pakistan." Her entourage discussed deals with North Carolina-based Blackwater Corp., sources said. "We were approached to provide [former] Prime Minister Bhutto's security, but an agreement was unfortunately never reached," a Blackwater spokeswoman said, confirming the negotiations. She declined to go into the precise details. Sources within the British private security industry said she also had negotiations with the London-based firm Armor Group, which guards British diplomats in the Middle East. The company, however, said last night it had no knowledge of any talks. Mrs. Bhutto frantically contacted officials, diplomats and friends in the United States, Europe and the Persian Gulf to urge Mr. Musharraf to improve her security in the wake of the suicide bomb attack that killed more than 140 during her homecoming parade on Oct 18. Indeed, U.S. diplomats took the highly unusual step of providing her directly with confidential U.S. intelligence about terrorist threats to her life, knowledgeable sources said. Pakistan's Interior Ministry also passed on details of plots against her, and aides said letters containing death threats had been smuggled into her home. Husain Haqqani, a U.S.-based Bhutto adviser, director of the Center for International Relations and a professor at Boston University, confirmed that she wanted to use private international security contractors but said the Musharraf regime would not approve the plan. He said the United States, which has arranged for private contractors to guard Afghan President Hamid Karzai and top leaders in Iraq, was reluctant to pressure Mr. Musharraf, an ally in the war on terrorism, to change his mind, despite the view that U.S. officials considered Mrs. Bhutto a linchpin in their crucial diplomatic bid to encourage Pakistan to return to democracy. Officials from Mrs. Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party have complained that security arrangements for her were woefully inadequate, given the seriousness of the threats against her from al Qaeda, the Taliban and others. She relied largely on using a "human shield" of loyal followers who would form a ring around her, but as the attack Thursday proved, it was little protection against a determined assailant. Some security industry specialists have suggested, however, that there may have been other reasons why the help of foreign security firms was not enlisted. To be surrounded by an entourage of foreign bodyguards would have added to criticisms that Mrs. Bhutto was in the pocket of the West — an accusation leveled at Mr. Karzai — and might not have been welcomed by her own Pakistani security staff. But the firms could have taken a background role as consultants and trained locals in bodyguarding techniques to maintain a Pakistani face to her entourage. "It's odd and disturbing that the Pakistan government did not do a better job of protecting her and that the U.S. apparently could not do more to persuade them," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and former National Security Council director for South Asia. "She made it very clear privately and publicly that she did not have enough security. That was abundantly clear after the attack on her return." http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071230570311.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_4044197_AET PjkQAAT4IR3gzUwXe3nWXzY8&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20071230aaindex_concat.html&cred=4YehaNlsgBkNc9ap rREN.xctfwh5WHMc0PI6XW3vqk8lRkYZpo8l5U5Vx4KHanJt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Times December 30, 2007 Pg. 1 Terror Network All But Dead, Iraq Says By Bradley Brooks, Associated Press BAGHDAD--Iraq's Interior Ministry spokesman said yesterday that 75 percent of al Qaeda in Iraq's terrorist network were destroyed this year, but the top American commander in the country said the terror group remained his chief concern. Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf said the disruption of the terrorist network was a result of improvements in the Iraqi security forces, which he said had made strides in weeding out commanders and officers with ties to militias or who were involved in criminal activities. He also credited the rise of anti-al Qaeda in Iraq groups, mostly made up of Sunni fighters the Shi'ite-dominated government has cautiously begun to embrace. Additionally, an increase in American troops since June has been credited with pushing many militants out of Baghdad. Gen. Khalaf's assertion that three-fourths of al Qaeda in Iraq had been destroyed could not be independently verified, and he did not elaborate on how the percentage was determined. But violence in Iraq has dropped significantly since June — the U.S. military says it is down 60 percent nationwide — demonstrating success in fighting the terrorist network. Separately, Iraq's chief military spokesman Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said yesterday that two senior insurgents linked to al Qaeda were arrested the day before near Baghdad. Ahmed Turky Abbas, the "defense minister" of the Islamic State of Iraq — an al Qaeda front group — was arrested in a village near Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, Gen. al-Moussawi said. Not far from Mahmoudiya in Latifiyah, the Iraqi army also arrested Hussein Ali Turky, considered a local religious leader for al Qaeda in Iraq. Gen. Khalaf, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said such pressure on extremists has helped contain their activities. "Their activity is now limited to certain places north of Baghdad," he told reporters. "We're working on pursuing those groups, that is the coming fight." Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, told a small group of Western reporters yesterday that despite the success against al Qaeda in Iraq, destroying the group is still a top concern for the U.S. military. "We still regard al Qaeda as the biggest threat," Gen. Petraeus said. "We regard them as the most significant challenge facing Iraq." After nearly five years of war, American military commanders have learned to couch even optimistic reports in cautious terms. They have repeatedly said that the fight against extremists in Iraq is far from over, noting that they still have the capacity to carry out large attacks. But the effect of U.S. and Iraqi military success against the group has been reflected in decreased civilian deaths. According to an Associated Press count, civilian deaths in Iraq have steadily dropped in the second half of 2007 after seeing a high of 2,155 killed in May. Through Friday, deaths in December stood at 691, the lowest for the year and much lower than the 2,309 killed in December 2006. Meanwhile, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr yesterday called for reconciliation between his followers and Iraqi security forces in Karbala, according to al-Sadr aide Sheik Mohannad al-Gharrawi. In August, followers of Sheik al-Sadr and fighters loyal to the powerful Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council led by cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim clashed in Karbala during a religious festival, killing 52 persons. Since then, al-Sadr loyalists have been targeted in a crackdown by Iraqi security forces. "This initiative comes as a response to the events that took place in Karbala, when more than 50 pilgrims died," Sheik al-Gharrawi said. After that fighting, Sheik al-Sadr announced he was freezing the activities of his Mahdi Army militia for six months — a move that both Iraqi and American officials have said has had a big effect on the reduction in violence. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071230570285.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_4044197_AET PjkQAAT4IR3gzUwXe3nWXzY8&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20071230aaindex_concat.html&cred=4YehaNlsgBkNc9ap rREN.xctfwh5WHMc0PI6XW3vqk8lRkYZpo8l5U5Vx4KHanJt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Times December 30, 2007 Pg. 6 Iraq Attacks Fall 60 Percent, Petraeus Says By Stephen Farrell and Solomon Moore BAGHDAD — The top American military commander in Iraq said Saturday that violent attacks in the country had fallen by 60 percent since June, but cautioned that security gains were “tenuous” and “fragile,” requiring political and economic progress to cement them. The commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said the “principal threat” to security remained Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown insurgent group that American intelligence officials say is foreign led. Speaking to reporters in an end-of-year briefing at the American Embassy in Baghdad, General Petraeus said that coalition-force casualties were down “substantially,” and that civilian casualties had fallen “dramatically.” “The level of attacks for about the last 11 weeks or so has been one not seen consistently since the late spring and summer of 2005,” he said. “The number of high-profile attacks, that is car bombs, suicide car bombs and suicide vest attacks, is also down, also roughly 60 percent” since their height in March. During his 100-minute briefing, General Petraeus used a series of charts showing trends in overall weekly and monthly attacks, car and suicide bombs, weapons-cache finds and Iraqi civilian deaths. Although the data showed a sharp fall in civilian deaths from their peak between mid-2006 and mid-2007, the rate of decline appeared to level off in the past two months. The figures were based on American military statistics, but included some joint Iraqi-coalition data. However, he conceded that while attacks were down in the rest of the country, they had not fallen in the northern province of Nineveh, which includes Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, with a population of 1.7 million. He said that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia remained active in northern Iraq, where it was pushed after offensive operations in Baghdad and Anbar Province, and that the rate of attacks in Nineveh “has just been variable and probably slightly up.” One reason for the continuing violence, he said, was that the area remained “very important” to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia because it is crossed by the routes into Iraq from Syria and Turkey. Also on Saturday, Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, flew to Britain for unspecified medical treatment. Yassin Majeed, a senior aide to Mr. Maliki, said only that the visit was for “routine” tests. Iraqiya, the state television channel, showed Mr. Maliki boarding a jet at Baghdad International Airport. “Some time ago I tried to carry out these tests to be sure about some health matters,” he told reporters. “Now I have the chance.” Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, told reporters in a separate briefing that 75 percent of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s networks and safe havens had been destroyed. He said that 18,000 people had been killed by violence so far in 2007, and that insurgent attacks had declined from 25 a day in February in Baghdad to as few as one during some days in December. The general did not elaborate on the methodology used to determine any of the statistics he reported to the news media. General Khalaf said the turning point was the rise of the so-called Sunni Awakening Councils in Anbar Province, the insurgents’ former stronghold. He said that once the tribal groups turned against the militants there, the Interior Ministry was able to focus on Baghdad. The general acknowledged, however, that Diyala Province had remained difficult to control because of continuing insurgent attacks. “That’s the coming fight,” he said of Diyala and other troublesome areas north of Baghdad. General Petraeus acknowledged that while Iraq had been brought back from “the brink of a civil war” in 2007, Iraqi and American commanders “clearly have more work to do in certain areas in the weeks and months ahead.” General Petraeus identified numerous reasons for the fall in violence, namely the increase in American troops and the decision to move them to smaller bases where they are “living among those we are trying to protect.” He cited aggressive offensive operations, using a mixture of conventional and special forces, to focus on the insurgents’ strongholds and networks. He also credited the Iraqis’ own “surge” of more than 100,000 soldiers and police officers, the rejection of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia by the Sunni awakening movement in former insurgent strongholds, and the cease-fire by the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, although he said some “splinter elements” continued to operate. The general said outside factors included the decisions by some countries to curb the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, singling out Syria. Regarding Iran, he noted a fall in attacks using what he described as Iranian-provided “signature weapons”: RPG 29 rocket-propelled grenades, the sophisticated roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, large-caliber rockets and portable air-defense systems. He said he hoped Iran “will live up to the promises its senior leaders made to Iraq’s senior leaders” to stop what the Americans claim are the training, financing, arming and directing of “special groups” within Shiite militias that have attacked coalition forces. Iran has consistently denied helping militias attack coalition forces in Iraq. For his part, General Khalaf said that Iraq’s Interior Ministry, which he conceded had been infiltrated by Shiite militias in the past, was gradually integrating more Sunni Arabs into its ranks and weeding out officers believed to have dubious allegiances. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071230570303.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_4044197_AET PjkQAAT4IR3gzUwXe3nWXzY8&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20071230aaindex_concat.html&cred=4YehaNlsgBkNc9ap rREN.xctfwh5WHMc0PI6XW3vqk8lRkYZpo8l5U5Vx4KHanJt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post December 30, 2007 Pg. 23 Iraq Safer But Still Perilous At Year-End, Petraeus Says By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post Foreign Service BAGHDAD, Dec. 29 -- The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, delivered a positive but cautious assessment Saturday of progress in the country in 2007, citing the drop-off in violence over the latter half of the year but warning that the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq remains the country's preeminent threat. Petraeus said the number of weekly attacks in Iraq -- such as roadside bombings, mortar attacks and sniper fire -- has fallen by about 60 percent since June, to about 500 a week by late this month. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in December through the 22nd appeared to be about 600, according to a graph of the past two years provided by Petraeus that uses combined Iraqi and U.S. figures. The highest death toll during this period came last December, when about 3,000 civilians were killed. "The positive security trends and the factors that produced them are changing the context in many parts of Iraq. While progress in many areas remains fragile, security has improved," Petraeus said during a briefing for reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He added that success "will emerge slowly and fitfully, with reverses as well as advances, accumulating fewer bad days and gradually more good days. There will inevitably be more tough fighting." The downturn in violence is generally attributed to three factors that emerged over the year: the arrival of 30,000 additional U.S. troops, the emergence of tens of thousands of Sunni fighters who aligned with American troops against al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the decision by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to call for a six-month cease-fire by his militia. Petraeus also cited a drop-off in fighters coming to Iraq from Syria and Saudi Arabia, and a decline in recent months in the use of weapons believed to have been made in Iran. Iraqi Interior Ministry officials, in a separate briefing Saturday, singled out the rise of the Sunni groups, known often as the Sahawa, or Awakening, as a main reason for improvement in 2007, a rare public endorsement from the Shiite-led government, which has been wary of, and sometimes opposed to, those groups. Maj. Gen. Ayden Khaled Qadir, deputy interior minister for security affairs, said there are plans to include 12,641 people from those groups into the police force in Baghdad by the end of April. The Iraqi government has been slow to do that, fearing that many such people are former insurgents with an anti-Shiite outlook. For a time this year, U.S. officials in Iraq described Shiite militias as the most damaging and destabilizing force in the country, but Petraeus identified al-Qaeda in Iraq as the top threat. "We call it sometimes 'the wolf closest to the sled.' It is the most significant enemy that Iraq faces precisely because it is the enemy that carries out the most horrific attacks, that causes the greatest damage to infrastructure and that seems most intent on reigniting ethno-sectarian violence," he said. He said that al-Qaeda in Iraq has been diminished by aggressive military operations and by the rise of the Awakening groups and that the insurgents have responded by attacking those forces. In an audiotape released Saturday purported to be by Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda warned Iraq's Sunnis against joining such tribal councils or participating in any unity government. "The most evil traitors are those who trade away their religion for the sake of their mortal life," bin Laden said, according to a translation by the Associated Press. Petraeus said the al-Qaeda in Iraq network and its affiliates have moved into northern Iraqi provinces such as Nineveh, Diyala and Salahuddin after coming under pressure from U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad and Anbar provinces. The one Iraqi province that has not had a reduction in attacks is Nineveh, where insurgents operate in and around the provincial capital of Mosul. In recent days there have been two major bombings in northern provinces, one in the oil refinery town of Baiji and another in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province. Together, they killed at least 26 people. Contrary to other trends, the number of suicide car bombings and suicide-vest attacks has risen in each of the past three months, though the frequency is still below peak levels this year. There were about 50 "high-profile" explosions in the first three weeks of December, according to U.S. military figures. "There will be bombs" in Iraq, Petraeus predicted. "If the metric is that there are no car bombs or no suicide-vest bombs, I think that would just be an unrealistic metric." Also Saturday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was flown to London for a medical examination after suffering from what his aides described as fatigue. The Reuters news service quoted an unnamed official as saying Maliki, 57, would undergo cardiac tests. Earlier in the week, Maliki was examined at a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad's Green Zone, said Col. Steven A. Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman. His doctors and advisers recommended a checkup in London, said Sami al-Askiri, an adviser to the prime minister. A statement from the Iraqi government described Maliki as "fully healthy" but suffering from exhaustion. Special correspondent Zaid Sabah contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20071230570340.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_4044197_AET PjkQAAT4IR3gzUwXe3nWXzY8&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20071230aaindex_concat.html&cred=4YehaNlsgBkNc9ap rREN.xctfwh5WHMc0PI6XW3vqk8lRkYZpo8l5U5Vx4KHanJt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Los Angeles Times December 30, 2007 Iraq Suicide Attacks On The Rise Gen. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander, notes that despite the slight recent upturn in such bombings, violence overall has dropped to its lowest sustained levels since 2005. By Tina Susman and Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers BAGHDAD — Although overall violence in Iraq has dropped to levels not seen on a sustained basis since the summer of 2005, suicide bombings appear to be making a comeback, according to figures released Saturday by the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Responsibility for such attacks typically is claimed by the Sunni militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq, which Gen. David H. Petraeus said remained the greatest threat in the country. Underscoring the threat posed by the group, the U.S. military announced the discovery of three bodies at a site north of Baghdad that a resident said contained a mass grave. The discovery Friday about eight miles northwest of Baqubah coincided with reports that Al Qaeda in Iraq had used a nearby shack to hold and torture kidnapped victims, said Lt. Col. Patrick Mackin, intelligence officer for the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. U.S.-led forces dug up one of the bodies after getting a tip from the resident, who said the site contained about 20 corpses, the military said in a statement. It appeared that the victim had been buried at least a month, it said. He had been shot in the head and his hands were tied in front of him. U.S. soldiers found assorted clothing scattered on the ground about 275 yards from the uncovered body. Two other skeletons were found by |
