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 The Pentagon Early Bird 30 Jan 2008 Use of these news items does not reflect official endorsement. Reproduction for private use or gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. Item 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.) IRAQ
USA Today January 30, 2008 Pg. 1 Allies Fall Short On Iraq Pledges Countries pay 16% of their commitments By Matt Kelley, USA Today WASHINGTON -- Nearly five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, allied countries have paid 16% of what they pledged to help rebuild the war-torn country, according to a report scheduled for release today. Foreign countries have spent about $2.5 billion of the more than $15.8 billion they pledged during and after an October 2003 conference in Madrid, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The biggest shortfalls in pledges by 41 donor countries are from Iraq's oil-rich neighbors and U.S. allies: Saudi Arabia spent $17.4% and Kuwait 27% of the $500 million each had pledged more than four years ago, according to a separate report released last month by Congress' Government Accountability Office. Spokesmen at both countries' U.S. embassies did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment. The United States, so far, has spent $29 billion to help rebuild Iraq, the inspector general's report says. Congress has approved an additional $16.5 billion. The lack of aid from Arab countries in particular infuriates Rep. Gary Ackerman, who heads the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East. "They're charging $100 per barrel of oil, making record fortunes, lecturing everyone else, and then they stiff everybody, including their cousins who they contend to be so very concerned about," the New York Democrat said in an interview. From 2003 through 2006, Saudi Arabia exported about $95 billion in crude oil to the USA, as its average price more than doubled from $25 to $56 a barrel, according to the U.S. Energy Department. President Bush met with Saudi, Kuwaiti and other leaders two weeks ago during a trip to the Middle East. Bush discussed "the need for countries in the region to offer their support" during those talks, and the Arab leaders all pledged their help, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in an e-mail. The United Arab Emirates, one of the countries Bush visited, has spent about $62.6 million of the $215 million it pledged, UAE Embassy spokeswoman Nora Abusitta said in an e-mail. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt, named by Bush in 2006 as an international envoy on Iraq aid, said in a telephone interview that obstacles to international aid for Iraq include high levels of violence and corruption and the inability of the Iraqi government to manage its budget. "A lot of work remains to be done," he said. Who's paid what on reconstruction Foreign countries with the biggest gaps between grants pledged for Iraq reconstruction and money spent. The gap (in millions): Saudi Arabia Amount pledged: $500 Amount provided: $87 Aid gap: $413 Kuwait Amount pledged: $500 Amount provided: $135 Aid gap: $365 United Arab Emirates Amount pledged: $215 Amount provided: $62.6 Aid gap: $152.4 Qatar Amount pledged: $100 Amount provided: $27.5 Aid gap: $72.5 Spain Amount pledged: $248 Amount provided: $213.7 Aid gap: $34.3 Sources: Government Accountability Office report; United Arab Emirates Embassy http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576392.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Times January 30, 2008 White House Shows Signs Of Rethinking Cut In Troops By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Thom Shanker WASHINGTON — Four months after announcing troop reductions in Iraq, President Bush is now sending signals that the cuts may not continue past this summer, a development likely to infuriate Democrats and renew concerns among military planners about strains on the force. Mr. Bush has made no decisions on troop reductions to follow those he announced last September. But White House officials said Mr. Bush had been taking the opportunity, as he did in Monday’s State of the Union address, to prepare Americans for the possibility that, when he leaves office a year from now, the military presence in Iraq will be just as large as it was a year ago, or even slightly larger. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Bush wanted to tamp down criticism that a large, sustained presence in Iraq would harm the overall health of the military — a view held not only by Democrats, but by some members of his own Joint Chiefs of Staff. Within the Pentagon, senior officers have struggled to balance the demands of the Iraq war against the competing demands to recruit, train and retain a robust and growing ground force. That institutional tension is personified by two of Mr. Bush’s top generals, David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, and George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff. General Petraeus’s mission is to win the war; General Casey must also worry about the health of the whole Army. “We’re concerned about the health of the force as well, but the most important thing is that they succeed in Iraq,” said one senior White House official, adding, “If the commanders on the ground believe we need to maintain the troop numbers at the current level to maintain security for a little while longer, then that’s what the president will do.” That strong White House tilt in favor of General Petraeus comes as he prepares to testify before Congress in April about the next step in Iraq. In September, based on General Petraeus’s earlier recommendation, Mr. Bush announced that he intended to withdraw five combat brigades and Marine units — roughly 20,000 troops — from Iraq by July. That would leave 15 combat brigades in place. In his address to Congress, Mr. Bush spoke of those reductions, but not of any future ones. What a continuing commitment of 15 brigades — more than 130,000 troops — would mean for the Army as a whole is said to be a major concern of General Casey, among others on the joint staff. But officials said Mr. Bush’s primary concern was not letting military gains in Iraq slip away, a warning he issued in his State of the Union address. After meeting General Petraeus in Kuwait this month, he appeared to give the general tacit permission to recommend no further troop reductions. “My attitude is, if he didn’t want to continue the drawdown, that’s fine with me, in order to make sure we succeed, see,” Mr. Bush said then. “I said to the general, if you want to slow her down, fine, it’s up to you.” Mr. Bush hinted in September that there might be more reductions to come, although he has never made an explicit promise. The Pentagon has also not made any promises, although military planners have talked about wanting to reduce the number of brigades to 12 from 15 by the end of this year, if the security situation improves enough to permit it. Mr. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, has said he would like to cut even further, eventually dropping to 10 brigades if possible. But Mr. Gates has avoided using specific numbers in more recent comments, and says unswervingly that he would be guided by conditions on the ground. At the Pentagon, officials said the withdrawal of 20,000 combat troops pledged by Mr. Bush left open the future of the 7,000 to 8,000 support and aviation troops that accompanied those “surge” combat forces. If those extra support troops remain in Iraq even after the withdrawal of the additional combat troops, then it is possible that the number of American military personnel in Iraq after the surge could be higher than before, officials said. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576517.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Philadelphia Inquirer January 30, 2008 Iraq Pullout To Slow, U.S. Officials Hint By Robert Burns, Associated Press WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is sending strong signals that U.S. troop reductions in Iraq will slow or stop altogether this summer, a move that would jeopardize hopes of relieving strain on the Army and Marine Corps and revive debate over an open-ended U.S. commitment in Iraq. The indications of a likely slowdown reflect concern by U.S. commanders that the improvement in security in Iraq since June - to a degree few had predicted when President Bush ordered five more Army brigades to Iraq a year ago - is tenuous and could be reversed if the extra troops leave too soon. One of those extra brigades left in December, and the four others are due to come out by July, leaving 15 brigades, or 130,000 to 135,000 troops - the same as before Bush sent the reinforcements. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is scheduled to report to Bush and Congress in April on possible additional cutbacks and any recommended changes in strategy. Petraeus recently said it would be prudent to "let things settle a bit" after the current round of troop cuts was completed in July before deciding whether and when to reduce further. Majority Democrats in Congress have pressed unsuccessfully to wind down the war quickly, in part out of concern that more firepower should be transferred to Afghanistan, where the security situation has deteriorated. Reluctance by Bush to continue the troop drawdown beyond July likely would spur a new round of conflict with antiwar Democrats, especially ahead of the Nov. 4 elections. Petraeus seems inclined at this point to declare a pause in troop reductions after July, though no decisions have been made and there are competing pressures from within the Pentagon. The Army in particular wants more reductions so it can shorten tours of duty in Iraq from 15 months to 12. The longer tours are among pressures that Army leaders fear could break the force. Petraeus speaks regularly with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and other administration officials to keep them informed of his thinking, though he has not yet made a recommendation to Bush. A senior administration official said Petraeus had made clear he was "concerned about a rush to 10" - the 10-brigade force level some administration officials see as an attractive target to hit by the time Bush leaves the White House next January. "It really is not determined" yet whether conditions in Iraq will permit further cutbacks, said the senior administration official, who briefed reporters last week at the White House on condition of anonymity. With months to go before a decision must be made about troop reductions in the second half of 2008, it is possible that circumstances in Iraq will change in ways that cannot be foreseen. Thus, Petraeus is likely to want as much time as possible before committing himself. The first sign Bush might endorse a pause in troop reductions came earlier this month when he recounted for reporters his Jan. 12 meeting with Petraeus in Kuwait. "My attitude is, if he [Petraeus] didn't want to continue the drawdown, that's fine with me, in order to make sure we succeed," Bush said. "I said to the general, if you want to slow her down, fine; it's up to you." In his State of the Union address Monday, Bush emphasized the risks - with no mention of the benefits - of continuing the cutbacks beyond July. "Gen. Petraeus has warned that too fast a drawdown could result in the 'disintegration of the Iraqi security forces, al-Qaeda-Iraq regaining lost ground, [and] a marked increase in violence,' " Bush said. He added: "Having come so far and achieved so much, we must not allow this to happen." Petraeus is not the only senior official who will have a say in whether to continue troop reductions. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said yesterday that Gates would offer his views, as would Adm. William J. Fallon, the Central Command chief who is doing his own assessment of Iraq in light of U.S. military requirements elsewhere in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576425.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post January 30, 2008 Pg. 12 U.S. To Expand Outposts Across Baghdad By 30% By Amit R. Paley, Washington Post Foreign Service BAGHDAD, Jan. 29 -- The U.S. military plans to boost the number of neighborhood outposts across the capital by more than 30 percent this year even as American forces begin to withdraw, the new commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad said Tuesday. During a luncheon with reporters in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Maj. Gen. Jeffery W. Hammond said he would increase the number of garrisons in the city from 75 to 99 by June to "push ourselves into locations where maybe in the past we didn't go before." "I don't want there to be anyplace in Baghdad where al-Qaeda or anyone else can start to take hold because we've ignored that particular" area, he said, referring to the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. He called the improved security conditions in Baghdad "remarkable." In northern Iraq, meanwhile, the remains of 19 people -- 10 heads and nine intact corpses -- were discovered in the town of Muqdadiyah in Diyala province, northeast of the capital, police said. Elsewhere, officials said a suicide car bomber in the northern city of Mosul injured at least 15 people. The carnage underscored how northern Iraq has become a growing hub for al-Qaeda in Iraq, even as U.S. troops succeed in driving its fighters out of the capital and Anbar province in the west. In Diyala province, most of the dead had been shot in the head, and several bodies had decomposed so badly that officials concluded they had been buried for quite some time. But hospital officials said at least four of the intact corpses had been freshly interred and may have belonged to al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters killed in recent battles. The attack in Mosul, the third-largest city in Iraq, targeted a U.S. military patrol, though no American soldiers were wounded, Iraqi officials said. There were conflicting reports on whether an Iraqi civilian had been killed in addition to the suicide bomber. The bombing came one day after five U.S. soldiers were killed in an attack in Mosul and one week after a blast killed as many as 60 people in the city. Iraqi forces in recent days have sent troop reinforcements to the city in what Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki promised would be a decisive battle against the insurgents, though U.S. officials have cautioned the fighting is likely to be a long struggle. "The problem is that all the fighters escaped here because they have nowhere else to go," said Brig. Gen. Sayeed Ahmed Abdulla, spokesman for the police in Nineveh province, whose capital is Mosul. "But, God willing, we will clean every last one of them out of this city." Special correspondents in Mosul and Diyala contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576396.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Times January 30, 2008 U.S. Failed To Oversee Corps On Iraq Work, Agency Says By James Glanz A federal report released Tuesday says the Army Corps of Engineers charged the government hundreds of millions of dollars for supervising projects in Iraq that have been identified as having failed or fallen behind schedule specifically because oversight was lax or nonexistent. Although the corps’ practice of charging such fees is not limited to its work in Iraq, the report points out that its rates were on average more than twice as high as those charged by an Air Force office that has also been active in Iraq reconstruction. But the Air Force projects have come under much less criticism than their Army Corps counterparts for shoddy workmanship and delays. In all, the Army Corps and the Air Force charged more than half a billion dollars in fees to oversee the $10.3 billion in Iraq reconstruction projects examined in the report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent federal office. Calculated according to byzantine formulas and little known to the American taxpayers who paid them, the corps’ fees supported an arcane management structure at the heart of what detractors cite as an example of how not to carry out reconstruction in a country emerging from a war. The fees, officials in the inspector general’s office said in interviews on Tuesday, paid for American civilians working for the corps to travel to Iraq and to oversee reconstruction projects. The Air Force chose much more often to hire Middle Eastern engineers who were already in Iraq or the region. As a result, the Air Force program — run out of the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment in San Antonio — was significantly less expensive. Perhaps more surprising, the Air Force program was also regarded as quicker, more adaptable and more likely to produce functioning projects, officials in the inspector general’s office said. “We found out that there is a need for a review of this process to inject more transparency into what these fees are actually paying for,” said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who leads the inspector general’s office. This is not the first time the Army Corps fee structure has come under scrutiny. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the corps’ debris removal program along the Gulf Coast was often seen as slower and much more expensive than comparable efforts by private firms. What sets the charges in Iraq apart is that they appear to show that in America’s most important enterprise abroad, the approach by the corps costs more and comes with an entirely different structure than that of the Air Force office. “If you take a look at not just this report, but other corps projects, we’re not getting a lot of bang for our buck,” said Stephen Ellis, a vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group in Washington. “It makes you scratch your head,” he said, “and ask yourself what’s going on and what is a reasonable overhead.” The Army Corps said late Tuesday evening that it would not be able to comment immediately. The corps managed and administered $6.3 billion of the Iraq contracts examined by the inspector general’s office, and charged about $418 million for its services. The Air Force had about $4 billion in contracts and charged $117 million in fees. That means the corps charged, on average, 6.6 percent in fees while the Air Force charged 2.9 percent. The Air Force projects, the report says, included work on 457 schools, 11 clinics, a ministry building, three airports, 534 miles of roads, and assorted military barracks, dining halls and office buildings. The Army Corps projects were generally larger and included efforts related to oil, water and electricity infrastructure. But the corps also oversaw work on a police academy and barracks in Baghdad, dozens of health care clinics, schools and the like. Parsons, the American contractor in charge of actual construction for the academy and the clinics, for example, has come under severe criticism for delays and poor workmanship, including disastrous plumbing and sewage problems at the academy. Less well known is that Army Corps overseers signed off on much of that work and, Mr. Bowen of the inspector general’s office said, gave Parsons an award fee, indicating a job well done, on the academy. The Air Force office was eventually brought in to fix the problems, Mr. Bowen said. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576444.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Times January 30, 2008 Pg. 1 Iraq Not Using Oil Cash To Rebuild Infrastructure collapse cited By Sharon Behn, Washington Times Increased Iraqi oil revenues stemming from high prices and improved security are piling up in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York rather than being spent on needed reconstruction projects, a Washington Times study of Iraq's spending and revenue figures has shown. U.S. officials and outside analysts blame the collapse of the country's political and physical infrastructure for Baghdad's failure to spend the money on projects considered vital to restoring stability in the country. Out of $10 billion budgeted for capital projects in 2007, only 4.4 percent had been spent by August, according to official Iraqi figures reported this month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report cited unofficial figures saying about 24 percent had been spent. Meanwhile, some $6 billion to $7 billion from last year's budget is "being rolled over" and invested in U.S. treasuries, said Yahia Said, director of Iraq Revenue Watch, part of the private watchdog group Revenue Watch Institute. "The government is broken," said Mr. Said, speaking by telephone from Baghdad. "The country's midlevel bureaucracy has either fled the country or been purged in de-Ba'athification, [and] a lot of ministers are politically appointed and not professional." The result is that orders go out from the ministers in Baghdad, but there is no structure or staff at the middle level to carry out the instructions. "It's like they lost the manual for driving the government," said Mr. Said, who is working to put that blueprint back together. "They lost the landing instructions for landing the airplane." A quarterly report to be released today by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, says rising production and high prices could produce a revenue windfall for Iraq this year, according to the Associated Press. Production levels finally are approaching prewar levels of 2.5 million barrels a day and might reach 2.8 million barrels a day by the end of the year, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told The Washington Times on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Acknowledging the need to reform the bureaucracy, Mr. Salih said, "Some of us think we can do a lot better [on production] if we do adequate or proper management restructuring." Oil prices, meanwhile, are expected to average $85 a barrel this year, well above the $57 estimated in the Iraqi budget. However, the GAO expressed frustration in a report this month at its inability to get a handle on how these revenues are being spent. "We cannot determine the extent to which Iraq has spent [budgeted capital] funds due to conflicting expenditure data," the report said. It said the Bush administration, citing unofficial Iraqi data, reported in September that Iraq"s central government ministries had spent 24 percent of their 2007 capital projects budget as of July 15. "However, this report is not consistent with Iraq"s official expenditure reports, which show that the central ministries had spent only 4.4 percent of their investment budget as of August 2007," it said. U.S. and foreign officials told the GAO that weaknesses in Iraqi procurement, budgeting, and accounting procedures had stymied the completion of projects. "For example, according to the State Department, Iraq"s Contracting Committee requires about a dozen signatures to approve projects exceeding $10 million, which slows the process," the GAO wrote. Capital projects expenditure this year is expected to reach only $4.3 billion, less than half of the $10 billion spent in 2007, according to a GAO analysis of Iraqi government data provided by the U.S. Treasury. Provincial governments, which had little or no control of their finances under Saddam Hussein, are struggling to spend the money they have under new budget systems, said Joseph Saloom, an adviser to David Satterfield, the senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and coordinator for Iraq. That budget system includes strict bidding rules and a process of committee approvals designed to prevent corruption, Mr. Saloom said. But if a province needs a piece of specialized oil equipment, "often there are not three suppliers" who bid, so the process is cut short and the project cannot go forward, he said. According to Mr. Said, the situation is slightly better on the local government level, partly because of U.S. forces who supply protection, logistics, resources and emergency funds. "There is more [improvement] on the gras-roots level on the back of the surge," he said. Reconstruction also has been hobbled by delays in getting the central government up and running. Although elections were held in January 2006, the government was not formed until May of that year. Within that government, said Mr. Saloom, "most of the people had never been ministers before, they had never managed large budgets." John Zarocostas contributed to this report from Davos, Switzerland. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576389.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP USA Today January 30, 2008 Pg. 9 Al-Qaeda Car Bombs Decline By Charles Levinson, USA Today BAGHDAD -- Al-Qaeda in Iraq has largely abandoned its signature tactic, the car bomb, and relies more on individuals in suicide vests to stage attacks, the U.S. military says. It calls the trend a sign that Islamic extremists are on the run. A suicide car bomb killed one Iraqi on Tuesday in the northern insurgent stronghold of Mosul, but it was only the third car attack this month, the U.S. military said. That marked a sharp decline over the 12 car bombs in December and the 80-plus attacks in January 2007. This month, there has been a spike in smaller-scale attacks by bombers using suicide vests. There have been 16 such attacks compared with 10 last month. January has seen the most attacks involving suicide vest bombs since March 2007, which was one of the deadliest periods of the Iraq war. January is the first month in the war in which al-Qaeda in Iraq has used more suicide vest bombers than car bombs, said Adm. Greg Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq. "We think that because of our operations, al-Qaeda has moved into a much more defensive position, and they're clearly having to physically move," Smith said. "That's making their ability to conduct more lethal larger-scale bombings more difficult." The U.S. military launched a broad initiative last month to push al-Qaeda out of its strongholds outside Baghdad, and Smith said the terrorist organization has been driven out of every major city in Iraq except Mosul. As a result, Smith said, al-Qaeda is no longer able to assemble larger and more intricate car bombs. Suicide vests use smaller quantities of explosives, are easier to travel with and easier to assemble than car bombs, he said. The most recent suicide vest attack occurred Tuesday at a checkpoint in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in southwest Baghdad. A female bomber detonated her vest shortly after noon, wounding five U.S. soldiers, and killing two Iraqis. Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago and author of the book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, isn't so optimistic about the tactical shift. "What the vest surrenders in terms of volume of explosives it gains in terms of being able to get proximity to the target," Pape said. "I don't think we can say this tactical shift suggests al-Qaeda is on the verge of defeat." http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576422.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post January 30, 2008 Pg. 4 Diversion Of Weapons In Iraq Continues, IG Says Weapons that the United States provides to Iraqi security forces may still be ending up in the hands of terrorists, insurgents and criminals, the Defense Department inspector general has told Congress. While U.S. commanders have made progress in controlling the flow of tens of thousands of munitions into Iraq, "there still remains work to be accomplished," Claude M. Kicklighter said in a closed-door briefing before the House appropriations defense subcommittee. In prepared remarks obtained by the Associated Press, Kicklighter told lawmakers that his office received complaints nearly a year ago from Turkish officials that weapons intended for Iraq's growing military and police forces were being used by militant groups in Turkey. In a July report, the Government Accountability Office said that until December 2005, U.S. commanders in Iraq had no centralized set of records for the shipping of weapons to Iraqi forces. As of September, the Defense Department still had not settled on how the security transition command should track weapons. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576376.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Christian Science Monitor January 30, 2008 New Commander's Baghdad Strategy: 'Preserve Gains' Incoming US Gen. Jeffery Hammond plans to add US-Iraqi command outposts. By Sam Dagher, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor BAGHDAD -- The incoming commander of US forces in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, said Tuesday that he's determined to preserve the progress seen here over the past year. But challenges still loom large, he says, especially as the US will have to fight the war with fewer troops by the summer, when American forces are expected to return to presurge levels. In order to capitalize on gains in the Iraqi capital, General Hammond says he plans in the short term to push the envelope further and establish more US combat outposts in Baghdad and surrounding areas, particularly in places where US troops have not had much of a presence in the past. "I am pushing us further, I am extending our reach further than it is now and to be less predictable ... we are not sitting back on the laurels of the successes of our predecessors. That would be a big mistake," Hammond told a group of Western reporters during a luncheon briefing in Baghdad. He says that he plans to add 24 joint US and Iraqi combat outposts and security stations in Baghdad between now and June. Currently, 75 outposts and stations dot the capital. These outposts and stations, erected inside neighborhoods once controlled by insurgents and Al Qaeda-linked militants, have been a cornerstone of the surge in US troops over the past year that saw an additional 30,000 US soldiers sent to Iraq. Hammond says that although daily attacks in Baghdad now average 17, compared with about 77 when he was last here in 2004 as deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, the situation could worsen again. It would certainly spike, he says, if Al Qaeda succeeds in launching a "spectacular attack." He says Al Qaeda in Baghdad has been "disrupted but not defeated." "Baghdad could flare up again; nothing in Iraq is easy – each day is a new challenge," he says. Hammond's briefing came the day after President Bush's final State of the Union address, in which he said that the surge of extra troops in Baghdad has worked. "Al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated." Bush said he is now implementing a policy of "return on success," in which those surge forces are coming home, while acknowledging that the enemies in Iraq "are not yet defeated." Bush has said the reduction of combat brigades that was part of the surge last year is on track: A total of five combat brigades will return home by July without being replaced. The question remains how many more US forces – if any – would be removed beyond the five brigades. Nineteen combat brigades are now in Iraq; four more will return home by July. A total of 157,000 troops are in the country. Hammond's 4th Infantry Division took over command of Multinational Division Baghdad from the 1st Cavalry Division in December. When Hammond was last in Baghdad, US soldiers were locked in fierce battles with Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. He called Mr. Sadr's decision to freeze the activities of his militia since August "honorable." The general voiced concern that the mostly Sunni Arab neighborhood guards on the US military's payroll, which include many former insurgents, may be infiltrated by Al Qaeda, which is employing increasingly sophisticated attacks in targeting these groups. For instance, he said, a suicide bomber detonated his payload inside a guards' station and then, as the casualties were being evacuated, a car bomb went off in their path. The attack in the northern district of Adhamiyah earlier this month claimed the life of a commander of these guards, which are called Concerned Local Citizens (CLC) by the Army. The CLCs, situated throughout Iraq, now number about 80,000. Hammond estimated that about 20 percent of the Iraqis involved in these groups in Baghdad will ultimately join official Iraqi security forces. He says he's interested in refocusing much of their efforts here on public-works projects. As the countdown begins of the expected return to presurge US troop levels, one added strain that Hammond is contending with is the need to pull both US and Iraqi forces from Baghdad to deal with flaring violence in other parts of the country, such as in Mosul. Iraq's third-largest city and its northern capital was the scene of a devastating bombing last week that killed at least 60 people and wounded 200. The provincial police chief was killed in a suicide bombing a day after this attack as he surveyed the scene. On Monday, five US soldiers were killed when their Humvee was blown up by a roadside bomb while they were on patrol in a volatile section of Mosul. The attack also involved gunfire from a nearby mosque, said the US military. The soldiers were all from a battalion that belonged to one of the brigades under Hammond's command. They had been sent recently to Mosul from Baghdad as reinforcement, he said. Also Tuesday in Mosul, a car bomber targeted a US patrol, killing at least one Iraqi and wounding 15, according to the Associated Press. Indeed, US commanders say the north remains their biggest challenge for now. They have implemented "open-ended offensive operations," such as one called "Phantom Phoenix" to eradicate Al Qaeda and other extremists. Gordon Lubold contributed reporting from Washington. Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond • Bachelor's degree and master's in education from University of Southern Mississippi • Commissioned a Distinguished Military Graduate into the field artillery • Posts in Germany, Georgia, and Korea •Served as cannon battalion operations officer in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm •Service in Pentagon with Army and Joint Staff •Assumed battalion command in Germany and deployed to Bosnia for NATO-led multinational operations •Promoted to chief of staff for the US Army 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas •After assuming command of the division artillery, Hammond was assigned to the Pentagon as Army G3 executive officer •December 2007, assigned Multinational division Baghdad commanding general, replacing Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil Jr. Sources: US Army Public Affairs, NATO http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576487.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Miami Herald January 30, 2008 Gruesome Discovery Of Headless Corpses Nine people found beheaded in Iraq were likely targeted over suspicions of cooperating with U.S. troops. More corpses were found nearby, but it's unclear if the killings were linked. By Leila Fadel and Hassan Al Jubouri, McClatchy News Service BAGHDAD -- Civilians stumbled upon nine headless bodies in a field about 60 miles north of Baghdad on Tuesday. The nine, including three women, had been targeted because they were suspected of being part of a local awakening council, or concerned local citizens group, that was working with U.S. troops to fight al Qaeda in Iraq, said a police officer involved in the investigation. The officer said the nine headless bodies were found with two DVDs showing one of the dead men confessing that he was a member of an awakening council and another man refusing to confess. Another official said police also found 10 heads and nine bodies with their heads intact in the same area. The nine people whose corpses were intact had been shot in their chests and were killed more recently than the 10 people whose heads were discovered, police said. It's unclear whether the killings are connected or how many people were killed and beheaded. The police official, who asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak, couldn't confirm that nine headless bodies also were found, and the U.S. military couldn't verify the reports. The discoveries reportedly were made in Diyala, one of the bloodiest provinces in Iraq, where the Sunni Muslim extremist group al Qaeda in Iraq, Shiite militias and Kurdish militias are active. On Jan. 17, a bombing killed 12 people in Diyala, and unidentified and headless bodies are found sporadically in the province. The concerned local citizens group members, who file for compensation after military raids or attacks on behalf of members of the community, apparently were kidnapped after they left an Iraqi army base five days ago. They'd complained last week that al Qaeda in Iraq had threatened them, the investigating officer said. Al Qaeda in Iraq declared in December that it had a group of fighters dedicated to attacking members of the Sahwa, or awakening councils. Since then, a series of attacks have targeted Sahwa members or leaders in Iraq. The groups are mostly Sunni, and many of their members are former insurgents. The corpses underscore the power al Qaeda still has in northern Iraq, especially in Diyala and Nineveh provinces. Last week, a bombing killed at least 60 people and brought down a building in Mosul, and the police chief was assassinated. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki said he'd reinforce Iraqi troops and added that the battle in Mosul would be ''decisive,'' although the U.S. military dismissed much of that as posturing. Also Tuesday, a car bomb in Mosul targeted a U.S. military convoy, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding 15, and a police commander's convoy was attacked north of Fallujah in Anbar province. Police said members of an awakening council who'd been absorbed into the police force followed the attackers, rounded up 20 suspects and executed them. In Fallujah, two truck drivers were kidnapped and their hands were bound. The kidnappers dumped the gravel they were transporting on top of them to kill them. On the road between Tikrit and Baghdad, gunmen attacked three employees of a local Iraqi TV station. Two men died and a woman was seriously injured. In Baghdad, five roadside bombs detonated throughout the capital, injuring 31 people, including five U.S. soldiers and seven members of the Iraqi security forces. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576488.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Philadelphia Inquirer January 30, 2008 U.S. Downplays Fast Mosul Fight 'It's probably going to be a slow process,' one said of the hot spot. By Bradley J. Brooks and Steven R. Hurst, Associated Press MOSUL, Iraq -- Two top U.S. commanders in northern Iraq predicted yesterday that the battle to oust the al-Qaeda in Iraq group from its last urban stronghold, Mosul, would not be a swift strike but rather a grinding campaign. They also said the effort would require more firepower not just from Iraqi forces, as promised by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, but also from the U.S. military. The statements appeared to downplay talk by Maliki that Iraqi forces would launch a "decisive" attack as soon as reinforcements were in place. "It is not going to be this climactic battle," said Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq. ". . . It's going to be probably a slow process." In a telephone interview from his headquarters in Tikrit, Hertling described the strategy for Mosul - Iraq's third-largest city - as the same step-by-step approach used in the U.S.-led troop offensives in Baghdad: Win control of a district and keep troops there to hold it. Hertling said he was moving a considerable force of "enablers" into Nineveh province and Mosul, its capital. He would not disclose numbers but said the move on Mosul had long been planned. Lt. Col. Michael Simmering of the Third Armored Cavalry at Forward Operating Base Marez near Mosul said the battle of Mosul "is going to be a long, protracted push by coalition forces and more importantly by Iraqi security forces to reestablish security." "If you're looking for one big culminating event, you'll never quite see it," he added. Simmering described the insurgent force in the city as a patchwork of groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq and other factions, "all vying for different things at this point." Attention on Mosul has sharply increased in recent weeks with a rise in insurgent violence there. Last week, a bomb cache tore through a poor Sunni neighborhood, killing about 60 people and wounding more than 200. On Monday, U.S. forces were caught in an ambush that killed five U.S. soldiers. Yesterday, a suicide car bomber targeted another U.S. patrol in Mosul, killing at least one Iraqi and wounding as many as 15, the military and police said. No American casualties were reported. Maliki pledged to send a wave of Iraqi police and troops to Mosul to crush al-Qaeda. At Mosul's airfield yesterday, a cold wind blew across the tarmac as pallbearers took turns unloading a flag-draped coffin from the backs of five humvee ambulances carrying the bodies of the soldiers killed in Monday's attack. Even civilian workers formed an honor line as the soldiers' bodies were loaded into a C-130 transport plane. Soldiers refused permission to photograph the ceremony, saying that the pain of the sudden loss of five comrades was too great and that not all the families had been notified. "The people who created this war need to be thinking about the families of these 18-year-olds who are dying," said one soldier, who asked not to be named. In the attack, a roadside bomb blew apart a humvee and gunmen opened fire from a mosque. A fierce gun battle erupted as U.S. and Iraqi soldiers secured the area, the military said. Iraqi troops entered the mosque, but the insurgents had already fled, according to a statement. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576383.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP FNC January 29, 2008 Progress In Iraq Reflected In Analysts’ Opinions Special Report With Brit Hume (FNC), 6:00 PM HUME: In his State of the Union address Monday evening, President Bush pointed to accomplishments in Iraq during the past year, but when the president first proposed a surge of American troops many analysts were skeptical to say the least. Now, some have changed their tune. National security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reports. JENNIFER GRIFFIN: What a difference a year makes. BUSH: One year ago, our enemies were succeeding in their efforts to plunge Iraq into chaos, so we reviewed our strategy and changed course. GRIFFIN: A new course the president’s many critics said wouldn’t work because it was too little, too late. Four years ago, prominent Brookings analyst Michael O’Hanlon, among others, demanded the president set a date to pull out. “Failure is not only an option,” O’Hanlon wrote, “but a likelihood.” He and Brookings’ Ken Pollack were among the first of the inside-the-beltway think tank analysts to revise their skepticism about the President’s Iraq policy. Following a trip to Iraq last July, they wrote their mea culpa in the “New York Times” entitled “A War We Might Just Win.” MICHAEL O’HANLON [Brookings Institution]:When I got to Iraq, what I realized was that the progress was striking. It wasn’t yet all that easy to see in the data, and I could understand why people who were reading the newspapers back home hadn’t yet been able to appreciate the progress. GRIFFIN: Anthony Cordesman, a top military thinker at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote last April “it is more than possible that a failed president and a failed administration will preside over a failed war for the second time since Vietnam.” Now Cordesman is urging patience, arguing against a sudden troop drawdown, quoting coalition statistics that prove the surge has worked. Civilian deaths now one-sixth of their peak levels. The number of attacks down 60 percent from their peak. Roadside bombs down two-thirds since the end of 2006. MAJ. GEN. BOB SCALES (RET) [Fox Military Analyst]:The last thing a think tank gurus in this town wants to be is on the wrong side of history, so it’s really interesting that as the surge began to take hold over the last four or five months, a lot of these think tank gurus started to rewrite history and to look at ground truth in an entirely different way. BUSH:When we met last year, many said that containing the violence was impossible. When we met last year, al Qaeda had sanctuaries in many areas of Iraq and their leaders had just offered American forces safe passage out of the country. Today it is al Qaeda that is searching for safe passage. GRIFFIN: But Washington wasn’t cheering the president a year ago. Democrats in Congress were trying to cut off Iraq war funding. Cordesman wrote last April: “the U.S. can and may well lose quickly and be forced to leave in defeat. It is too late to reinvent the wheel in this war. The U.S. cannot recover the years it has wasted.” In Washington, the think tanks are where the politicians get their policy ideas. Many have even advised the presidential candidates. Now that the military analysts are changing their tunes, so too might the politicians. At the Pentagon, Jennifer Griffin, Fox News. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576382.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP USA Today January 30, 2008 Pg. 1 Six Years After Invasion, The Taliban Is On The Rise 'Nothing is safe in Kabul' as rebels try to regain foothold By Paul Wiseman, USA Today KABUL -- In the better times that followed the U.S.-led invasion, Kabul's famous Chicken Street used to attract hundreds of foreigners seeking a bargain on Afghan rugs, leather goods and gemstones such as lapis lazuli. These days, the Westerners have all but disappeared from the downtown thoroughfare in Afghanistan's capital. At shops such as the one owned by Mohammed Hasef, a 36-year-old rug salesman, security fears have become so intense that he even shoos away beggars out of fear they could be wearing suicide vests. "All of us shopkeepers have to keep an eye out," Hasef says. He hasn't sold a rug in two months. Such worries have proliferated among Afghans and Westerners alike since the Taliban's audacious Jan. 14 attack on Kabul's five-star Serena Hotel. The assault on one of the city's best-protected landmarks was the latest -- and most dramatic -- sign that the Taliban may be gaining strength more than six years after U.S.-led forces invaded to drive the Islamist militant movement from power. Despite the presence of more than 50,000 U.S. and NATO troops throughout Afghanistan, the Taliban has taken back control of vast rural areas during the past year and now has a foothold just outside Kabul. The attack on the Serena Hotel has raised questions about whether any place in the country is safe from the fundamentalists and terrorists whom the war was originally intended to eradicate. "The Taliban were able to demonstrate in the Serena attack that they could target Westerners virtually anywhere and anytime, even deep in Kabul," says Seth Jones, counterinsurgency specialist at the Rand Corp. think tank. The NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeill, says that the Taliban is in fact on the run in many parts of Afghanistan. In an interview Tuesday, he acknowledged that the Serena attack was "a spectacular hit" by the militants but its significance "was probably not as big as it was made to seem." Still, the shattering of the illusion of security has come as a shock for many of the European and American diplomats, aid workers and contractors working here. Many had moved to Kabul with hopes of erecting a stable democracy in the country where Osama bin Laden was believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks. Many Westerners had considered Kabul, unlike Baghdad, a place where they could visit restaurants -- and even get a beer or two. "One of the joys of Kabul was the ability to go out and socialize," says entrepreneur Saad Mohseni, editor of Afghan Scene, a monthly magazine that chronicles Kabul nightlife with photos of carousing foreigners. "We were deceiving ourselves. Nothing is safe in Kabul." Among the dead in the Serena attack were six hotel staff members, a Norwegian journalist and an American who had come to help Afghanistan back on its feet after decades of war. Thor Hesla, 45, of Atlanta, worked for BearingPoint Management & Technology Consultants, which had a reconstruction contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development. Now, rebuilding efforts may be in jeopardy. Even before the attack, private investment in Afghanistan plummeted to $570 million last year from $1 billion in 2006 because of deteriorating security, the Afghan Investment Support Agency reported Monday. At the heart of the problem is the dramatic turnaround staged by the Taliban, which had been pushed deep into the mountains in the years immediately following the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Since then, the militant group has taken advantage of safe havens in the mountains bordering Pakistan to regroup and strike across the border at U.S., NATO, and Afghan government forces. Last year was Afghanistan's bloodiest since the year of the invasion: More than 6,500 people -- mostly insurgents -- died in 2007, according to a count by the Associated Press. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last month that insurgent attacks rose again last year. A recent report by the Afghanistan NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) Security Office, which assesses risks for aid groups, recently said: "A few years from now, 2007 will likely be looked back upon as the year in which the Taliban seriously rejoined the fight." "Afghanistan is at the beginning of a war, not the end of one," the report concluded. Who's to blame for insurgents' resurgence The fighting may intensify in coming months when the snow melts, signaling the beginning of Afghanistan's notorious "fighting season." President Bush said in his State of the Union address Monday night that he will send 3,200 additional Marines to Afghanistan. McNeill, the NATO commander, said that the Taliban was under siege during much of last year. He says the militants failed to conduct a major offensive last spring. The Taliban also was driven from the strategically important town of Musa Qala in the southern province of Helmund, where the group derives much of its income from the lucrative, illegal opium trade. "The insurgent had a terrible year on the battlefield last year," said McNeill, a U.S. Army general. "He got bumped pretty hard. He got bumped fairly constantly. "He was successful at one thing, and that was staying in the news. And the Serena (assault) helps. (But) he'll have a bad year this year, too." McNeill says that 70% of insurgent activity is taking place in just 10% of the country, suggesting that the Taliban doesn't have as much clout as is widely believed. Gates told Congress last month that Kabul was not in danger of being retaken by the Taliban. Others are less sure, mindful that foreign powers have tried -- and failed -- to subdue Afghanistan for decades. Rand's Jones says the Taliban's recent advances are "eerily reminiscent of the Soviet years" during the 1980s, when Russian troops occupied the cities but Afghan resistance fighters commanded the countryside and eventually won. An independent study obtained by the Associated Press warned that Afghanistan risks becoming a failed state because of deteriorating international support and the strengthening insurgency. The assessment, co-chaired by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones and former U.N. ambassador Thomas Pickering, is slated to be released today. The Taliban's rise has led to much finger-pointing between supposed allies. Afghanistan blames Pakistan for not wiping out Taliban sanctuaries across the border. Afghan President Hamid Karzai last week blasted the British, saying their efforts in southern Afghanistan's lawless Helmund province had made things worse. Gates has criticized the United States' NATO allies, saying they don't know how to fight insurgencies. Many Afghans put the blame closer to home. They condemn Karzai's government for widespread corruption and for failing to deliver basic social services -- education, health care, police protection. "There is a massive distance between the government and the people," says Issa Noori, principal of a girls' school in Wardak province on the outskirts of Kabul. Noori had to close the school and send its 300 students home a year and a half ago when police could do nothing to protect them against Taliban threats. "Now there is lots of snow. Many people are sick. They want to go to health clinics. But they can't go. The government can't clean the road. The government is indifferent," he says. "The local population is the center of gravity of any counterinsurgency," Rand's Jones says. "You lose the population, you lose the war. The Afghan government is currently losing the population." The Afghan government is beefing up security in Kabul, adding 1,000 police and doubling a contingent of anti-terrorist commandos: "More police are coming from other provinces," says Gen. Abdul Manan Farahi, head of counterterrorism at the Afghan Interior Ministry. McNeill says the capital doesn't need more international troops, but that NATO is assisting Afghan authorities in the capital by sharing intelligence. Foreign business fades Meanwhile, Kabul has become a scarier, less active place for Westerners and Afghans. After a day spent contending with Afghanistan and its misery -- violence, poverty, corruption -- foreign diplomats, aid workers and journalists could always find refuge somewhere. They could party into the wee hours at the L'Atmosphere bar, swap war stories over beers at the basement Hare and Hound Watering Hole or indulge themselves at the Serena's spa. Since the attack, the city's nightspots have been nearly empty -- even on Thursdays, party night. "A lot of people are keeping a lower profile," says Felix Kuehn, a German who runs an Afghan news service. The Taliban has threatened to continue attacking foreigners in the places they go to relax, raising fears that Kabul will become another Baghdad. Some expatriates have left town. Others are sticking to quiet dinners in their guesthouses instead of venturing out. Kabul parties could sometimes attract hundreds of guests, many of them uninvited. Now guest lists are restricted to a few dozen, and the lucky few are warned not to forward the invitation e-mails to their friends, Kuehn says. "Business is quiet," says Serena general manager M. Christopher Newbery. At lunchtime recently, security guards outnumbered visitors in the hotel lobby, and only three tables were occupied for the buffet in its spacious Cafe Zarnegar. The hotel is not encouraging new guests to check in until it has finished a review of security procedures in the wake of the attack. But "it's not just us," Newbery says. "It's everywhere in Kabul." L'Atmosphere -- or L'Atmo, as foreigners call it -- closed for a week after the Serena attack and no longer attracts standing-room-only crowds Thursday nights. "Everybody has been in lockdown," Kuehn says. "If you're facing four trained attackers who are willing to sacrifice their lives, there's little you can do unless you have a small army." In 2002 and 2003, when foreigners poured into the liberated city, Hafizullah Naziri's leather shop could take in $250 to $300 a day. These days, he averages $35. He struggles to pay rent and can't afford electricity or a heater. So he works in the cold semi-darkness. Back on Chicken Street, merchants say security and business have been deteriorating for a long time. Some trace the problems to a 2004 suicide attack on the street that killed a U.S. soldier and an Afghan girl. Others point to the bloody riots that broke out in May 2006 after a U.S. military truck careened out of control in a Kabul market, plowing into a crowd and killing five Afghans. "I haven't seen foreigners for a long time on Chicken Street," says 8-year-old Fawad, who has just one name. He used to make $10 to $20 a day selling matches and maps; now he's lucky to make $2 or $3. However, most agree that the attack on the Serena -- so renowned for tight security that embassies would schedule events there -- will only make things worse. "The Taliban saw they can go into the safest place in Kabul and explode themselves," says Fardin Sudiqi, 36, who sells scarves and dresses. Police and private security guards are out in force. Any pedestrian who gets near the Interior Ministry compound downtown is frisked for weapons. The Serena attack "knocked the whole world off-kilter," Jean MacKenzie, who trains Afghan journalists at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, wrote on her blog. "Some of us lost friends and loved ones when the Taliban stormed the five-star establishment. … Others just lost their refuge, the gym and spa where we used to unwind. … But all of us lost whatever illusion of security we had in Kabul." http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576516.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Reuters.com January 30, 2008 U.S. At Odds With NATO Over Troops For Afghanistan By Kristin Roberts, Reuters WASHINGTON -- The United States will press its European NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan's violent south in response to Canada's call for reinforcements, but the Pentagon said it will not commit any more of its own forces there. More than six years after the U.S.-led invasion, the issue of security in Afghanistan came to a head this week when Prime Minister Stephen Harper threatened to pull out Canada's 2,500 troops early next year unless NATO sent in more soldiers. NATO said on Tuesday it shared Canada's view of the need to bolster its peace operation but dismissed charges that allies were dragging their feet, noting a huge expansion since 2003. The Taliban rulers were toppled by the invasion in late 2001 but the Islamist militants and their al Qaeda allies have made an explosive comeback in the last two years, slowing Afghanistan's economic growth and reconstruction. U.S. defense officials have also regularly complained about the unwillingness of European allies to dedicate more combat troops and equipment to Afghanistan. "We've got a number of allies with us there," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. "Hopefully they can see to it to dig deeper and find additional forces." The resurgence of the militants comes despite the presence of 50,000 foreign troops under the command of NATO and the U.S. military, backed by partially Western-trained and equipped Afghan security forces now numbering more than 120,000. The United States has 29,000 troops in Afghanistan and earlier this month ordered another 3,200 Marines to be deployed there. Morrell said 2,200 of those would be sent to the restive south, which includes Kandahar. "That's as much and as deep as we're going at this point," Morrell said, adding that the Pentagon was not considering an additional deployment following Canada's call. In Brussels, a NATO spokesman said the organization had a long-standing request for more troops in the south. "We share the assessment that Afghanistan needs long-term support, including military support," he said. But he pointed out that the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force had quadrupled to more than 40,000 troops and "is now close to what our military believe is our full requirement." The Afghan defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, said Kabul expected its allies to help expand the quality and size of the nation's security forces so they can take the lead against the militants and cut the burden on the international community. "We are all in full agreement that the only sustainable way to secure this country in an enduring way is to enable the Afghans themselves to be able to defend this country against all external and internal threats," Wardak said. Overshadowed by concern over the conflict in Iraq, the Afghan reconstruction effort has suffered from underfunding, turf battles between rival agencies, corruption among officials and the resurgence of Taliban-led violence. An international drive to better coordinate civilian operations with the NATO-led military campaign suffered a setback this week when British politician Paddy Ashdown pulled out of the running to be the United Nations' "super envoy." The position seemed to be custom-made for Ashdown, the former international representative for Bosnia, skilled in post-war reconstruction. But President Hamid Karzai's move to veto him, ostensibly for fear he would wield too much power, sent Western officials back to the drawing board with no obvious alternative. "Ashdown was the name," said a Western diplomat in Brussels who works on Afghanistan. "The requirement for coordination is undiminished and yet the whole issue has become politicized. We still have this gaping hole." U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week Ashdown would have done a "superb job" and reaffirmed American backing for a central coordinator in Afghanistan. Additional reporting by Sue Pleming in Washington, Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul, Mark John in Brussels and Luke Baker in London. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576494.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Financial Times January 30, 2008 Allies Look To Germany For Quick Reaction Force Nato has asked Germany to boost its engagement in Afghanistan by providing a “quick reaction force” to replace an outgoing Norwegian contingent, Berlin said on Tuesday, writes Hugh Williamson in Berlin. The specialist security force would be deployed in the north, where most of Germany’s 3,000 troops in the international force, Isaf, are based. Franz Josef Jung, German defence minister, said on a visit to Kabul on Tuesday that the government would “consider the request”. Officials said Berlin was likely to provide the troops. Norway’s force – due to leave Afghanistan in the summer – includes 240 troops, but it was unclear whether Berlin would deploy as many. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080130576394.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_1821341_AEb PjkQAAWl4R6DKiQlCCBten7E&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename= e20080130aaindex_concat.html&cred=qSeuWJg7osNpfbKP 4x2BJzBELAWje0kGfYKavxZd4RAFFqWgUPCbTK.7zbEA8MNt#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Times January 30, 2008 Afghan Women Protest Aid Worker’s Kidnapping By Taimoor Shah and Carlotta Gall KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — About 500 Afghan women gathered Tuesday in this southern city to protest the kidnapping of an American aid worker and her Afghan driver and to call for her release. The kidnapped woman, Cyd Mizell, 49, works for the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation and was seized Saturday on her way to work in Kandahar, along with her driver, Abdul Hadi. Afghan officials said that they had no leads on who abducted them and that there had not been any contact with the kidnappers or demands by them. In a strong show of support for Ms. Mizell, who has lived in Kandahar for six years, working on educational projects and women’s development, Afghan women’s associations called in speeches for officials, elders, ordinary citizens and young people to work for her release. “This is against Islam, this is against Afghan culture, particularly against Kandahari custom, a woman’s abduction,” said the director of women’s affairs in Kandahar, Runa Tareen. “Cydney Mizell was here to help Afghan women. She was living here and was proud and confident that Afghans have a nice culture that does not harm women.” Soraya Barna, a member of the provincial council of Kandahar, said: “We are so sad and we |
