Squandered Wealth: Oil Smuggling in Basra

22/09/2007

By Jasim Dakhil

Basra, Asharq Al-Awsat- While the debate on whether or not the US war in Iraq was motivated by oil, as stated by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in his recently published memoirs, what is absolutely certain is that Iraqi oil is being smuggled into neighboring countries  particularly Iran.

Furthermore, the oil is being smuggled in a systematic manner and in quantities up to hundreds of thousands of barrels, according to Iraqi officials, which has resulted in squandering billions of dollars annually.

The smuggling of Iraqi oil is now a primary occupation for the media and international organizations, whereas the three Iraqi governments have not flinched [when it comes to the issue]. In fact, the four governors who were appointed over Basra and the city’s two local municipalities [since the fall of the regime] failed to elicit any change, whilst dozens of illegal ports and companies have been set up to smuggle this vital commodity. This is undertaken by what has become an organized mafia that actively engages in these practices.

Meanwhile, the residents of the city have become enslaved by fear of the multiplicity of the centers of power, their situation deteriorating fast as the conflict between the dominant parties continues to escalate over their struggle for the country’s wealth, including oil.

A resident of Basra voicing the discontent of many told Asharq Al-Awsat that, “It is unjust for the majority to live in misery while the oil tankers continue to audaciously smuggle oil.” Others uphold that Basra’s local authority continues to adopt a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” approach rather than confront the scandals relating to the rampant oil smuggling in the city.

The shared coastline between Iran and the Shatt al Arab waterway* is considered the most active area for smuggling, and it extends from the south of Abu Khaseeb and reaches the mouth of the Persian Gulf. This stretch is approximately 120 km long and there are over 64 small illegal ports that have been set up by the smugglers who fill up their boats using oil tankers.

According to Brigadier-General, Abdul Hakim Jasim, head of the Iraqi coast guard, “Today, the Iraqi Coast Guard Inland Waterways Department (CGIWD) does not possess any real force except for some small boats with limited speeds and the coast guards are armed with Kalashnikovs, as opposed to the smugglers who have fast, armored boats and are armed with launchers and long-range machine guns.”

Iraqi army spokesman and the head of the committee assigned with the task of monitoring security in Basra, Major-General Rashid Falih, said: “the smugglers are readily equipped with armored boats and armed gangs. They disperse into the coastline in close proximity to Iran whenever they are pursued by the Iraqi coast guard, which is working to intercept smuggling operations.”

Evidence of this took place on 26 April of this year when the Iranian coast guard killed two members of the [Iraqi] police force and took seven others hostage when they entered the line of fire whilst trying to track smugglers in Shatt al Arab. Such confrontations are not unusual in this area.

Asim Jihad, a spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Oil said, “One of the biggest pipelines in the south of the country has been subjected to over 52 sabotage attacks during the span of this year alone. This has resulted in a suspension of the pumping of crude oil and its derivatives between the southern and central provinces.”

more

Newsweek.com

Bush Family Friend Undermines Iraqi Peace?

A Bush family friend may be undermining Iraqi peace.
By Richard Wolffe and Gretel C. Kovach
Newsweek

Oct. 1, 2007 issue - Ray hunt isn't your typical Texas tycoon. Unlike other billionaire oilmen who hype their legends in the press, Hunt tries hard to keep his name out of the newspapers. The son of wildcatter H. L. Hunt, who lived his life in the spotlight, Ray Hunt rarely gives interviews and re-fuses to provide even mundane details about the workings of his private oil and real-estate ventures. He's given big sums to his alma mater, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, but he will not allow his name to be affixed to any of the buildings his money helped pay for. Hunt's discretion may be one reason he has developed a close relationship with the Bush family, who greatly value privacy.

Hunt's money could also have something to do with it. Over the years, the oilman raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect both George W. Bush and his father. The son rewarded Hunt with a seat on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a panel of outside elders who oversee whether the commander in chief is getting good advice from the intel community. More recently Hunt has been especially generous about helping to plan—and pay for—Bush's postpresidential ambitions. He lobbied the president to build the Bush 43 presidential library at SMU—which is where Laura Bush studied—and since then he's given $35 million to the school to buy some of the land where part of the library complex could sit.

Hunt's generosity may help explain why the White House has been seemingly reluctant to question another of the oilman's projects—this one in Iraq. To the apparent surprise, and irritation, of officials in Washington and in Baghdad, Hunt Oil announced this month that, after secret negotiations, it had struck a deal with leaders in the country's Kurdish-controlled north to explore for oil in the Dahuk region near the Turkish border. News of the deal angered Iraqi Arab leaders, who saw it as a Kurdish power play for the country's oil resources, one that appeared to disrupt already fragile talks over a critical benchmark for peace: an agreement among the Sunni, Shiites and Kurds to share profits from the country's bountiful oil supply. The hope is that a national revenue-sharing law will help defuse tensions—and curtail violence—by getting the three groups to work toward a vital common goal. But the negotiations have stalled, largely because of a lack of trust. The Iraqi Oil minister denounced the Hunt agreement as illegal—though without a law in place it's hard to argue the Kurds have violated it. The Kurds refused to disclose the terms of the deal but insisted they will share the profits.

In the United States, word of the agreement inflamed Bush detractors, who accused the president of helping a big-time contributor line his pockets at the expense of Iraqi peace. White House officials say they had no knowledge of Hunt's negotiations, and did not help him. Hunt declined to comment, but Jeanne Phillips, a spokeswoman for the company, says it told no one about the negotiations. "We do not discuss potential business deals with the United States government," she says. After the agreement was made public, Phillips says, government officials called to ask for details, but even then the company refused. Kurdish officials also say they kept the negotiations secret from the United States.

White House officials may not have helped Hunt put together the deal, but that doesn't mean they're not doing their best to portray Hunt's project as a sign of progress. "It's positive that a firm would choose to invest in Iraq—whether an American firm or not," says spokesman Tony Fratto. He downplayed the notion that the Hunt deal could undermine already tense negotiations to reach a national oil-sharing agreement. "As for how it impacts reform of the oil law in Iraq, authorities there will have to work that out." The optimistic subtext to the White House line: the Hunt agreement will prompt the three groups to begin negotiating a national oil law in earnest to avoid future secret side deals.

At least one top White House official was willing to express some skepticism. Asked by NEWSWEEK about the controversy at last Thursday's news conference, President Bush said, "I knew nothing about the deal. I need to know exactly how it happened. To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue-sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously if it undermines it, I'm concerned." There is one way the president can find out exactly how the deal happened. He can call his old friend Ray Hunt and ask him.

With Larry Kaplow

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20920354/site/newsweek/

Iran confirms shelling Kurdish militants in Iraq

5 hours ago

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran has confirmed for the first time it has been firing artillery shells on camps of Kurdish militants inside northern Iraq, saying the local authorities had not listened to its warnings.

The militant Kurdish separatist group PJAK -- linked to Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- has been behind a string of deadly attacks on security forces in northwestern Iran in recent months.

"Some of their bases are 10 kilometres (six miles) deep inside Iraqi territory so this is part of our natural right to secure our borders," said General Yayha Rahim Safavi, military adviser to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"Of course we issued warnings to the Iraqi government and told them to take them (the rebels) away from the border and respect its obligations," Safavi said in an interview with Iran's English language channel Press TV late Saturday.

"But unfortunately the Kurdistan region, the northern part of Iraq, did not listen, so we feel entitled to target military bases of PJAK and they have been under our artillery fire," he added, according to the channel's English translation.

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Iraq says won't move to expel Blackwater
23 Sep 2007 13:08:03 GMT

By Dominic Evans and Paul Tait

BAGHDAD, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Iraq will not take immediate steps to expel U.S. security firm Blackwater, under investigation over a shooting which killed 11 Iraqis a week ago, a government security official said on Sunday.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had vowed to freeze the work of Blackwater, which employs about 1,000 people guarding the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, after the shooting in western Baghdad last Sunday but it was back at work five days later.

The Iraqi government and U.S. officials have agreed to set up a joint inquiry into the work of private security companies like U.S.-based Blackwater, which many Iraqis see as private armies acting with impunity.

In what appeared to be a further softening of Iraq's response to the shooting, a government spokesman for Baghdad security said Blackwater and other private security companies were doing important work guarding foreign diplomats.

"If we drive out or expel this company immediately there will be a security vacuum that will demand pulling some troops that work in the field so that we can protect these institutes," spokesman Tahseen al-Sheikhly, speaking through an interpreter, told a news conference.

"This will create a security imbalance," he said.

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Iran closes key border crossing with northern Iraq (Roundup)

Sep 23, 2007, 14:18 GMT

Baghdad - Iranian authorities closed on Sunday an important border crossing between its territories and northern Iraq after US forces arrested an Iranian citizen, almost causing a diplomatic rift between Iran and the autonomous Kurdish region.

Local official Omar Farag described the move as 'unexpected,' saying that closing the crossing would have its negative effect on the markets of the Kurdish region.

Farag told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that food prices would increase, which is considered a problem during the holy month of Ramadan, a time when both Shiite and Sunni Muslims fast during the day and hold food banquets at night.

The Iranian authorities cut electricity along this stretch of border.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani sent an 'angry' letter to US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C Crocker and General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, demanding the release of the Iranian delegation currently detained by the US Army.

'The Islamic Iranian republic is threatening to close the borders between Iran and (the autonomous Kurdish region),' if the Iranian delegate, who was visiting the northern city of Sulaymanyah as a member of an Iranian trade convoy, was not set free, the letter said.

The Iranian man was on an official mission in the autonomous Kurdish region, and the Kurdish government was pre-informed of his visit, according to the letter which Talabani branded 'a letter of anger.'

'I express our anger at the US forces' arrest of this civilian visitor without consultation or coordination with the government of Kurdistan,' the letter published on the Iraqi presidential website said.

Talabani uses the term Kurdistan - not recognized internationally - to refer to the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq.

'This is an insult and a trespassing on the powers and rights (of the Kurdish region).'

Iranian shelling of the border areas of the Kurdish autonomous region had resumed Saturday at dawn in northern Iraq after a week-long cessation of fire.

Previously, Iranian forces had only bombed the border areas with the Kurdish region, to target militants and the bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Party for Freedom and Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) from Iran.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini had justified attacks on Iraqi territory by saying that Iran was hunting terrorists and weapons smugglers in northern Iraq who were responsible for the killing of a large number of Iranian border soldiers and for the illegal transfer of weapons into Iran.

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U.S. Repeatedly Rebuffed Iraq on Blackwater Complaints

By Sudarsan Raghavan and Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 23, 2007; Page A18

BAGHDAD, Sept. 22 -- Senior Iraqi officials repeatedly complained to U.S. officials about Blackwater USA's alleged involvement in the deaths of numerous Iraqis, but the Americans took little action to regulate the private security firm until 11 Iraqis were shot dead last Sunday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

Before that episode, U.S. officials were made aware in high-level meetings and formal memorandums of Blackwater's alleged transgressions. They included six violent incidents this year allegedly involving the North Carolina firm that left a total of 10 Iraqis dead, the officials said.

"There were no concrete results," Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamal, the deputy interior minister who oversees the private security industry on behalf of the Iraqi government, said in an interview Saturday.

The lack of a U.S. response underscores the powerlessness of Iraqi officials to control the tens of thousands of security contractors who operate under U.S.-drafted Iraqi regulations that shield them from Iraqi laws. It also raises questions about how seriously the United States will seek to regulate Blackwater, now the subject of at least three investigations by Iraqi and U.S. authorities. Blackwater, which operates under State Department authority, protects nearly all senior U.S. politicians and civilian officials here.

U.S. Embassy officials did not respond to several requests to describe what action, if any, was taken in response to the six incidents involving Blackwater. Mirembe Nantongo, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, said the embassy always looks into anything "outside of normal operation procedures."

In the United States, Blackwater is facing a possible federal investigation over allegations that it illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq that later might have been sold on the black market. The accusation first appeared in the Raleigh News & Observer. The company on Saturday denied the allegations, calling them "baseless."

"The company has no knowledge of any employee improperly exporting weapons," Anne Tyrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said in a statement.

In its probe, Iraq's Interior Ministry concluded that Blackwater fired without provocation into cars about noon last Sunday in Nisoor Square in the Mansour neighborhood of western Baghdad, killing 11 and injuring 12. Blackwater has said that extremists ambushed guards protecting a State Department convoy and that they had to defend themselves.

Kamal indicated that Iraqi investigators had a videotape apparently showing Blackwater guards firing at civilians, but he declined to provide further details. On Friday, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the chief Interior Ministry spokesman, said the ministry would refer its findings to a court for possible criminal prosecution.

much more snip....

It is unclear whether Blackwater could be criminally prosecuted in Iraq. A U.S. regulation called Order 17 enacted after the invasion by Iraq's U.S. administrators provides immunity from prosecution for private security contractors.

Kamal, a lawyer by training, suggested that Iraq's government could file lawsuits against Blackwater in U.S. courts to seek compensation for the victims.

"If Order 17 provides them with immunity from being questioned or the right to be tried under Iraqi law, it does not prevent the Iraqi government from filing suit in an American court," he said.

Abducted Italian troops freed in Afghan raid-ministry
24 Sep 2007 06:30:52 GMT
Source: Reuters

ROME, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Two Italian soldiers who had been kidnapped in Afghanistan have been freed in a raid, Italy's Defence Ministry said on Monday.

"In a raid by ISAF forces in the early hours of the morning the two soldiers who had been kidnapped last Saturday have been freed," a spokesman for the ministry said, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

The soldiers were injured and had been brought to a hospital, the spokesman said.

U.S. security firm ambushed in Afghanistan, 3 dead
24 Sep 2007 06:05:15 GMT

HERAT, Afghanistan, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Three Afghan guards of a U.S. private security firm were killed in an ambush by Taliban insurgents in western Afghanistan and 10 had gone missing, officials said on Monday.

The attack on the convoy in Farah province on Sunday night was followed by a clash between the militants and the guards, officials said.

"The Taliban attacked the convoy, killed three guards of the company and ten of them have gone missing," Farah's police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang told reporters.

A provincial official, speaking on condition of anonymity, however told Reuters that 13 guards had died in the attack.

Police chief Sarjang said 21 Taliban fighters were killed in the clash. The Taliban could not be immediately reached for comment. They have in the past rejected their losses reported by Afghan and foreign troops as propaganda.

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U.S. Aims To Lure Insurgents With 'Bait'
Snipers Describe Classified Program

By Josh White and Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 24, 2007; Page A01

A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of "bait," such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.

The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.

"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces."

In documents obtained by The Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the "drop items" to be used "to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight."

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items.

"In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back," Fidell said.

much more

PBS: Weapons of US soldiers in Iraq 'plagued with problems'
David Edwards and Greg Wasserstrom
Published: Monday September 24, 2007

The M-16, the choice rifle of the United States Armed Forces, turns 50 years old this month and is still plagued by many of the same problems it had half a century ago, putting American troops in Iraq at a severe disadvantage when it comes to small arms combat, the PBS program Newshour reported tonight.

"That AK-74 outhits the M-16 by two to one on full automatic," said Jim Sullivan, referring to the Russian-made assault rifle, now in its third generation. "And the reason there were 100 million AK's made wasn't to equip the Russian army - it was to give [to] our Third World opponents. The United States can't win ground wars anymore."

more with video

csmonitor.com - The Christian Science Monitor Online
from the September 25, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0924/p99s01-duts.html

U.S. moves in Iraq may push Iraqi and Iranian governments closer

The US arrest of an Iranian official to Iraq has resulted in closed borders between the two Middle Eastern countries – a decision that may take an economic toll.

By Dan Murphy

Iran shut most of its border crossings with Northern Iraq on Monday to protest the US military's arrest of an Iranian official who had been visiting Iraq as part of an official delegation.

The detention in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah of the Iranian, who was visiting Iraq at the behest of both the Iraqi central government and the semiautonomous Kurdish government in the north, has brought protests from the Iraqi government as well as rare signs of unhappiness with the US from the Kurds, who are usually the most pro-American of any Iraqi faction, the Associated Press reports.

Iran closed major border crossings with northern Iraq on Monday to protest the U.S. detention of an Iranian official the military accused of weapons smuggling, a Kurdish official said.
.
The closings came four days after U.S. troops arrested an Iranian official during a raid on a hotel in Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad.
.
U.S. officials said he was a member of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that smuggles weapons into Iraq. But Iraqi and Iranian leaders said he was in the country on official business and with the full knowledge of the government.
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"This closure from the Iranian side will have a bad effect on the economic situation of the Kurdish government and will hurt the civilians as well," said Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the autonomous Kurdish government. "We are paying the price of what the Americans have done by arresting the Iranian."

more media roundup with links

Pensioners among the latest victims of violence in Iraq (2nd Lead)

Sep 25, 2007, 12:29 GMT

Baghdad - A 90-year-old Iraqi man and his two sons were shot dead by US soldiers on Monday, a source from the joint Iraqi-US coordination centre said on Tuesday.

The victims had been shot at by a passing US patrol while travelling in their car near a main street in the al-Ayth area, outside Tikrit, 170 kilometres north of Baghdad, the source said.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said US soldiers left their bodies in the street and left the area.

Meanwhile, two car bombs went off consecutively outside Al-Rafedin bank in Baghdad's eastern Zaynounna neighbourhood on Tuesday, killing at least seven Iraqis and injuring 25, an Iraqi police source said.

Many of the victims were pensioners who were queueing at the bank to receive their monthly payments, the source added.

Witnesses said the two explosions set several vehicles on fire and severely damaged many shops on both sides of the road.

Iraqi police sealed off the area and denied access to civilians, while the wounded were rushed to nearby hospitals, the source added.

In a similar act of violence in Basra, 550 kilometres south of the capital, a car bomb driven by a suicide bomber that targeted the al- Ashar police department in the city, killed two policemen and wounded 27, an Iraqi security source said.

more carnage

Scientists: TBI from war worse than thought

By Gregg Zoroya - USA Today
Posted : Monday Sep 24, 2007 11:51:12 EDT

Scientists trying to understand traumatic brain injury from bomb blasts are finding the wound more insidious than they once thought.

They find that even when there are no outward signs of injury from the blast, cells deep within the brain can be altered, their metabolism changed, causing them to die, said Geoff Ling, an advance-research scientist with the Pentagon.

The new findings are the result of blast experiments in recent years on animals, followed by microscopic examination of brain tissue. The findings could mean that the number of brain-injured soldiers and Marines — many of whom appear unhurt after exposure to a blast — may be far greater than reported, said Ibolja Cernak, a scientist with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

This cellular death leads to symptoms that may not surface for months or years, Cernak said. The symptoms can include memory deficit, headaches, vertigo, anxiety and apathy or lethargy.

“These soldiers could have hidden injuries with long-term consequences,” he said.

Physicians and scientists are calling TBI the “signature wound” of the Iraq war because of its increasing prevalence among troops.

In the animal studies, scientists said they have found a fundamentally different wound than the “brain concussion” historically associated with undetected brain injuries. A concussion, essentially a bruise on the brain, is a wound that can heal over time, doctors said.

But the newly discovered brain damage at the cellular level can be permanent — especially after repeated exposures to blasts — and lead to lasting neurological deterioration, Ling and Cernak said.

Military and civilian scientists worry whether a generation of service members could emerge from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with some form of brain damage steadily more severe.

Hidden injuries

Army Sgt. Gary Boggs may be such a case. When he was wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2003, doctors thought his worst injury was a blinded left eye, shrapnel wounds to his left arm and ruptured eardrums.

No one spoke of brain damage during his hospital treatment and convalescence. Boggs said he never considered the possibility until he took a medical retirement from the Army and started a job this year as a financial adviser. Boggs couldn’t keep up with a job-study program, forgetting paragraphs he had just read.

much more

NYT, By Alissa J. Rubin, September 26

BAGHDAD, Sept. 25 — Sunni Arab extremists have begun a systematic campaign to assassinate police chiefs, police officers, other Interior Ministry officials and tribal leaders throughout Iraq, staging at least 10 attacks in 48 hours.

Eight policemen have been killed, among them the police chief of Baquba, the largest city in Diyala Province. Two other police chiefs survived attacks, though one was left in critical condition, and about 30 police officers were wounded, according to reports from local security officers.

“We warned the government just a few days ago that there is a new plan by terrorist groups to target senior governmental officials, and particularly Interior Ministry officials,” said Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, the deputy interior minister for information and national investigations. The Interior Ministry is dominated by Shiites.

One group, the Islamic State of Iraq, took responsibility on Tuesday for the attack in Diyala, which killed at least 18 people on Monday. The group has ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group whose leadership has foreign ties, according to American intelligence officials.

Iran border closure costs Kurdish region a million a day: Iraq

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) — Iran's border closure is costing the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq one million dollars a day, the regional administration said on Wednesday as a US general defended the arrest that led to the shutdown.

"There are goods costing millions waiting across the border," Kurdistan Regional Government trade minister Mohammed Raouf told AFP, referring to the Haj Umran frontier post near the northern Iraqi city of Arbil.

Efforts were now under way to redirect the trucks massing at the border, many carrying frozen goods such as chicken, meat and eggs, through neighbouring Turkey into Iraq, he said.

"The Kurdistan region is losing one million dollars per day because of the closure," Raouf said.

On Monday Iran said it was closing its frontier with Iraq in protest at the detention last week of Iranian national Mahmudi Farhadi by US troops during a raid in the Kurdish Iraqi city of Sulaimaniyah.

The US military charges that Farhadi is an officer in the covert operations arm of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, accused by American commanders of helping Shiite militias involved in Iraq's bloody sectarian conflict.

"We have an obligation, it's our responsibility to operate against such individuals," US military spokesman Major General Kevin Bergner told a news conference in Baghdad on Wednesday.

"He's a Quds Force officer who has been directly involved with a network that is providing resources, in training and funding sophisticated weapons that are targeting Iraqi people, Iraqi forces and coalition forces," said Bergner.

Iran has made clear that it regards Iraqi sovereignty as at stake in Farhadi's continued custody, after both the regional and national authorities of Iraq said he had been visiting with their consent.

Angry Kurdish merchants in Arbil said they were forced to search for other sources of food and electronic goods, the main items imported from Iran, possibly in Turkey or Syria.

"I have a large amount of goods that are supposed to go from Tehran to Sulaimaniyah but they are stuck on the road," said 45-year-old merchant Karwan Hasan.

"I will lose a lot of money if my goods stay on the road, because I am committed to bring goods that are raw materials in making foodstuffs," he added.

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Threatened offensive is said to be under way in Iraq
By Andrew E. Kramer
Published: September 26, 2007

BAGHDAD: A surge in the number of bombings in Iraq this week is a sign that militants have begun an offensive they had threatened for the holy month of Ramadan, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

On Wednesday, seven car bombs detonated around Iraq in a continuation of violence that began Monday.

This violence was more intense than has been typical, at least in recent weeks, though U.S. officials maintain that the increased troop levels this year are still effective in tamping down the attacks.

In the deadliest attack Wednesday, a double car bombing killed 32 people and wounded many more on a busy shopping street in a mixed Sunni and Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad. The bombs in the neighborhood, Bayaar, were timed to kill people shopping for groceries before the evening Iftar feast, or meal to break the daily fast of Ramadan.

They detonated about a minute apart. After the first bomb exploded, crowds fleeing the scene ran into the vicinity of the second bomb, a police official said.

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Two Danish soldiers killed in Afghanistan (Roundup)

Sep 27, 2007, 13:27 GMT

Copenhagen - Political and military leaders Thursday deplorted the deaths of two Danish soldiers in Afghanistan in a firefight with Taliban forces but vowed that the Nordic country would continue its mission.

'The mission is very important. Unless it is carried out, we will get an Afghanistan without any control,' Major General Poul Kiaerschou, head of the Danish Army Operational Command, told Danish radio.

Defence Minister Soren Gade said it was necessary to 'complete the mission.'

Both Kiaerschou and Defence Minister Soren Gade as well as Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen issued statements expressing regret over the deaths of the two soldiers, aged 22 and 24, who were killed in a firefight Wednesday.

A third Danish soldier was injured but his injuries were not life- threatening, the Army Operational Command said.

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(originally posted by Chickadee September 27 5:24pm- moved under Iraqi thread - editors)

Michael Rowland | Washington | September 27

ABC Australia - Three US soldiers have been charged with premeditated murder for engaging in a baiting practice allegedly ordered by the US military in Iraq. Snipers were allegedly ordered to kill Iraqis who fell for the trap, in which ammunition and explosives were planted on the street.

The three soldiers facing court are also accused of planting weapons on the Iraqis they killed.

Turkey would consider US using border for Iraq exit
27 Sep 2007 22:20:18 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Daniel Bases

NEW YORK, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Ankara, an important ally for Washington in the Muslim world, would consider allowing the U.S. military to withdraw from Iraq through Turkey, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.

Turkish-U.S. relations were strained by Turkey's refusal to allow the United States to use its territory to stage the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Ties have been further strained by Ankara's charge that the U.S. military has done too little to keep Kurdish militants hiding in northern Iraq from attacking Turkey.

But asked on Thursday if he would allow the United States to use Turkish territory for a withdrawal from Iraq, Erdogan said through an interpreter: "We would look at this positively. We would of course have to assess the situation as to the modalities of how that would have to work."

Erdogan, whose comments came after a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, also said Washington should set a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates rejected Erdogan's call for a date certain to leave Iraq and would not specifically discuss the possibility of withdrawing through Turkey.

"I would defer to our logisticians on that," he told Pentagon reporters. "I mean, it's always nice to have somebody willing to work with you."

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Turkey, Iraq Sign Counterterrorism Pact

Friday September 28, 2007 10:46 AM

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey and Iraq on Friday signed a counterterrorism pact aimed at cracking down on separatist Kurdish rebels who have been attacking Turkey from bases in Iraq.

The agreement, however, falls short of meeting Ankara's demand to send troops in pursuit of Kurdish rebels fleeing across the border into northern Iraq, Turkey's Interior Minister Besir Atalay said. The deal, broadcast live on television, was signed by Iraq's Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani and Atalay.

``It was not possible to reach a deal on chasing Kurdish rebels, however, we hope this issue will be solved in the future,'' Atalay said. ``We are expecting this cooperation against terrorism to be broadened as much as possible.''

Under the deal, the countries commit themselves in cracking down activities of terrorist groups, capture and extradite members of.

yada yada yada

Friday, September 28, 2007
Senate Partitions Iraq

The US Senate voted for a soft partition of Iraq on Thursday. First they messed up Iraq by authorizing Terrible George to blow it up, now they want to further mess it up by dividing it. It makes no sense to me; the US Senate doesn't even have the authority to divide Iraq. Wouldn't that be for the Iraqi parliament?

The Iraqi political elite roundly condemned the Senate vote. Note that among the more vocal denunciations came from Shiite Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi, whose own party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), favors the creation of a Shiite superstate in the south.

Iraq expert Reidar Vissar dissects the Senate vote and says it is, in Iraqi terms, unconstitutional.

more Iraq at Informed Comment

U.S. military toll in Iraq set to fall in September
28 Sep 2007 11:21:46 GMT

By Dominic Evans

BAGHDAD, Sept 28 (Reuters) - U.S. military deaths in Iraq look set to fall this month to their lowest level in a year, a reduction which army officers say shows their stepped-up security drive around Baghdad is yielding results.

Fifty-nine U.S. soldiers have been killed so far this month, according to the Web site icasualties.org which tracks military deaths in Iraq, making it the least deadly month for U.S. troops since July last year.

The reduction will be welcome news to President George W. Bush, who faces domestic pressure to start bringing troops home from an unpopular war in which 3,800 U.S. soldiers have died.

Bush has said his policy of a military "surge" in Iraq is bearing fruit and curbing some of the violence which has raged since he ordered a March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

September's figure is on track to be around half of the death toll for May, when extra U.S. forces started deploying in greater strength into dangerous areas, in what was seen as a last ditch attempt to reduce Iraq's sectarian fighting.

"What we found is that the current operations ... managed to disrupt a lot of (militant) cells," said a U.S. military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Rudy Burwell. "We were able to push them from Baghdad and pursue them".

"That's what we attribute the lower casualties to."

"Obviously (the militants) have not been eliminated, but they have been disrupted," he said, adding indicators of violence including shooting attacks and roadside bombs had been "trending downwards" since June.

Twenty-two of the 59 deaths in September were defined by icasualties.org as "non-hostile", many of them road accidents.

DIYALA VIOLENCE

A breakdown of casualties by region shows the heaviest U.S. tolls concentrated near the capital, with the areas around Baghdad and the province of Diyala to the northeast of the city accounting for more than half of "hostile" deaths.

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Numbers pulled from military ‘significant acts’ reports, do not count those killed in invasion

Stars and Stripes, By Joseph Giordono, September 28

The U.S.-led coalition has killed more than 19,000 suspected militants since the insurgency in Iraq began, according to military statistics released publicly for the first time.

According to USA Today, the figures were culled from “significant acts” reports — or “sig acts” in military parlance — released after a Freedom of Information Act request by the newspaper to the U.S. command in Baghdad.

The statistics show that nearly 5,000 fighters have been killed so far this year, representing an increase of 25 percent from all of 2006, the paper reported. The increase is attributed to more aggressive tactics and operations since the beginning of the “surge” in American combat power.

Military officials have long eschewed “body counts” in the Iraq war, saying that the number of suspected enemy killed was not the most important measure of success or failure. Since Vietnam — when inflated numbers were seen as part of the political battle over the war — the military has been reluctant to publish counts.

Gary Langer | September 28

IHT - In his address to the nation on Sept. 13, President George W. Bush singled out progress in Anbar Province as the model for U.S. success in Iraq.

The president's claims echoed those made earlier in the week by General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, in his congressional testimony. And they raised a question worth examining: Do U.S. military alliances with Sunni tribal leaders truly reflect a turning of hearts and minds away from Anbar's bitter anti-Americanism?

The data from our latest Iraq poll suggest not.

Al Qaeda, it should be said, is overwhelmingly - almost unanimously - unpopular in Anbar, as it is in the rest of Iraq. But our enemies' enemies are not necessarily our friends. The United States, it turns out, is equally unpopular there.

In a survey conducted Aug. 17-24 for ABC News, the BBC and NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, among a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqis, 72 percent in Anbar expressed no confidence whatsoever in U.S. forces.

Seventy-six percent said the United States should withdraw now - up from 49 percent when we polled there in March, and far above the national average.

[Comment: Odd as it may seem, the steep increase from March in Anbaris calling for American withdrawal seems to me to be good news - broadly consistent with the notion that they feel they are increasingly able to come to an accommodation on their own terms with the Shia majority. ~ JPD]

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

WaPo Series Left Of Boom

'The single most effective weapon against our deployed forces'

By Rick Atkinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 30, 2007; Page A01

..... huge snip......

In 2003, almost every IED caused at least one coalition casualty. Now, Pentagon figures indicate, it takes four of the bombs to generate a single casualty. In addition to more aggressive attacks against IED networks, rather than simply defending against the device, various technological advances have shaped the battlefield.
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The military, for example, now has about 6,000 robots, compared with a handful four years ago. And bombs detonated by radio-controlled triggers, which had become the most prominent killer of U.S. forces, today amount to only 10 percent of all IEDs in Iraq after the deployment of 30,000 jammers, with more on the way.

Still, as a "Counter IED Smart Card" distributed to American troops warns, "In Iraq, nothing is as it appears." The cycle of measure, countermeasure and counter-countermeasure continues.

Two particularly deadly IEDs now account for about 70 percent of U.S. bombing deaths in Iraq: the explosively formed penetrator, an armor-killing device first seen in May 2004, and linked by the U.S. government to Iran, and the "deep buried," or underbelly, bomb that first became prominent in August 2005.

Grievous as the IED toll has been on U.S. and coalition forces, the impact on Iraqis is greater. The Pentagon considers an explosion to be "effective" only if it causes a coalition casualty; this reflects a judgment that the strategic impact of an IED derives from its ability to erode American will, which in turn is predicated on casualties suffered by U.S. troops or their non-Iraqi allies. By this yardstick, the suicide truck bombs that killed more than 500 civilians in northwest Iraq on Aug. 14 of this year are considered "ineffective"; so, too, the IED on Sept. 13 that killed a prominent sheik in western Iraq whom President Bush had publicly praised a week earlier for his opposition to al-Qaeda extremists.

But few military strategists doubt that Iraq's future depends on reducing IED attacks of all sorts. "If you can't stop vehicle-borne IEDs from being detonated in public spaces, you can't build a stable society," a Navy analyst said.

No one is ready to declare the dip in the number of bombs this summer to be an enduring decline. Insurgents appear "able to put out more IEDs to maintain that constant level of death-by-a-thousand-cuts," a senior Pentagon analyst said. "We have not seemed able to put an upper bound on that number."

And there is another mostly unspoken fear. With approximately 300 IED attacks occurring each month beyond the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan -- a Pentagon document cites incidents in the Philippines, Russia, Colombia, Algeria and Somalia, among other places -- the question occupying many defense specialists is whether the roadside bomb inevitably will appear in the United States in significant numbers. "It's one thing to have bombs going off in Baghdad, but it will be quite another thing when guys with vests full of explosives start blowing themselves up in Washington," said the Navy analyst. "That has all sorts of repercussions, for the economy, for civil liberties."

For now the device remains an indelible feature of the Iraqi and Afghan landscapes. "The enemy found a seam," said an Army colonel. "I don't think they knew it was a seam, but it just happened."

Staff researchers M