Gen. McChrystal in 'Fairly Regular' Contact With Pakistan
by Jason Ditz, July 29, 2009

US envoy Richard Holbrooke says that since the US launched its massive offensive in the Helmand River Valley, US officials including top commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal have “fairly regularly” consulted with Pakistani officials about what is going on.

The hope is that the coordination will prevent the clash, near the Pakistani border, from spilling into the Balochistan Province, in which Pakistan is already contending with a growing separatist movement.

Since the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, considerable numbers of Taliban have relocated into the regions on the Pakistani side of the border, destabilizing and plunging the area into open revolt against the US-allied Pakistani government.

Pakistani officials have criticized the Helmand offensive, fearing that it will do to Balochistan what the war has already done to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province. The US has dismissed the concerns, saying the attack was “necessary” and that they were comfortable Pakistan would be able to handle the consequences.

WOW!

July 29, 2009 by Amy Davidson
Close Read: The Last of the Willing

A war can be a lonely place. The Times reports that the Multi-National Force-Iraq has “a looming nomenclature problem”: in a couple of days, it won’t be multi anymore. There used to be dozens of countries in the coalition of the willing—you could find the odd Fijian soldier, if you looked hard enough, and there was even a single, solitary Icelander. And then there was the Georgian contingent, which

handled all the checkpoints in the fortified Green Zone of Baghdad, for instance, and brooked no arguments from people trying to enter, especially since few of the soldiers spoke anything but Russian or Georgian.

The deployment was popular with the Georgians, who often were seen buying reduced-price televisions and stereos at the PX to send home for resale.

But the Georgians went home to deal with the Russians, and now even the British are leaving. They didn’t mean to; a hundred Britons were going to linger, as a training force. But the Iraqi parliament skipped town, adjourning without voting on the authorization for the British force. So, barring a last-minute deal, the British have to be out of the country by Friday. That leaves us.

A hundred and seventy-nine British soldiers died in Iraq. The other countries lost a collective hundred and thirty-nine, including five from Georgia and one from Fiji. More than forty-three hundred Americans have died there.

The new coalition of the willing may be those willing to accept prisoners from Guantánamo. Ireland has just said that it will take two Uzbeks—they are right after Uighurs on the alphabetical list of Guantánamo absurdities. One of the Uzbeks, Oybek Jabbarov, has been cleared for release since February, 2007; he is a former sheepherder who appears to have been kidnapped by some Afghans and sold to the U.S. for a bounty. But he can’t be sent back to Uzbekistan, because the government would probably torture him, or worse. He is said to be enthusiastic about Ireland, because, as the A.P. put it, “it is a land with many sheep.” Jabbarov’s lawyer, testifying before Congress last year, said:

My client is more Borat than he is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

MORE at The New Yorker

Nicholas Cecil, Chief Political Correspondent Nicholas Cecil, Chief Political Correspondent
30.07.09

Exhausted British surgeons called in an American medical team to cope with a surge of soldiers wounded in fierce fighting against the Taliban.

More than 100 British troops were treated for battle injuries at the field hospital at Camp Bastion, Helmand, in six weeks to mid-July. There were 29 very seriously wounded, with their life in danger, or seriously injured.

The British casualty toll is expected to rise sharply because it does not include the final part of the five-week Panther's Claw offensive, which ended on Monday, to drive out the Taliban from part of the province in southern Afghanistan.

July has been the bloodiest month for British forces in Afghanistan, with 22 deaths, taking the military fatalities to 191 since 2001. Some 57 British troops were wounded in action in the first two weeks of the month, compared with 46 in the whole of June and 24 in May.

Surgeon Rear Admiral Lionel Jarvis, Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (health), said British doctors were left “exhausted” by the long hours they spent in theatre fighting to save the lives and limbs of wounded soldiers, many of whom had been injured by makeshift roadside bombs.

“We talked to coalition colleagues and a surgical team from one of the US facilities has moved temporarily down to reinforce capability down in
Bastion,” he said.

Colonel Peter Mahoney, defence professor of anaesthetics and critical care at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, who has just returned from serving as clinical director at the Bastion field hospital, praised his staff for dealing with so many casualties including British, American, Afghan police and soldiers, and Taliban fighters.

“It's stressful for everybody dealing with injured young people, particularly when you are cutting off people's camouflage which you recognise as your own,” he said.

The field hospital admitted 211 British military personnel in the six-week period, including 103 wounded in action and 108 for non-battle injuries or other illnesses.

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By Mohammed Abbas and Tim Cocks

BAGHDAD, July 30 (Reuters) - Iraq's government acknowledged on Thursday that seven Iranian exiles were killed when Iraqi forces took control of their camp this week north of Baghdad.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh earlier denied anyone died in the clashes between Iraqi forces and protesters who tried to block their entry into Camp Ashraf, home to the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) for two decades.

Iraq, Iran and the United States call the dissident group a terrorist organisation. Iraq's Shi'ite Arab-led government wants to close the camp and send residents back to Iran or to a third country.

Camp residents have reported that Iraqi forces stormed the camp, shooting or beating residents and arresting others.

Resident Behzad Saffari, acting as a spokesman for other residents, said a dozen had been killed, at least six of whom were shot by police. Hundreds were wounded, he said.

Dabbagh, on Thursday, said seven people had died but disputed residents' accounts of how the deaths occurred.

"Five of them threw themselves in front of Iraqi police vehicles ... That's not death by shooting, but by rioting."

Dabbagh said the other two people were shot by PMOI snipers inside the camp when they tried to leave. Iraqi officials regard the group as a threat and say many of the camp's 3,500 residents are brainwashed or forced to stay.

Some human rights groups and supporters in the West have been highly critical of the way Iraq has handled Ashraf.

They say closing the camp and driving residents out against their will would violate international human rights law.

"TIME TO LEAVE"

The PMOI said on Tuesday residents would be willing to move back to Iran but only on condition they were guaranteed immunity from prosecution, jail, torture or execution under international observation, a condition Tehran is unlikely to accept.

"They cannot remove us. The people of Ashraf are ready to die," Saffari told Reuters.

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Guardian investigation suggests link to multibillion-dollar frauds

* Meena Muhammed, Maggie O'Kane and Guy Grandjean
* The Guardian, Thursday 30 July 2009 17.59 BST

Watch the video report of our investigation Link to this video

An investigation into the kidnapping of five British men in Iraq has uncovered evidence of possible collusion by Iraqi government officials in their abduction, and a possible motive – to keep secret the whereabouts of billions of dollars in embezzled funds.

A former high-level Iraqi intelligence operative and a current senior government minister, who has been negotiating directly with the hostage takers, have told the Guardian that the kidnapping of IT specialist Peter Moore and his four bodyguards in 2007 was not a simple snatch by a band of militants but a sophisticated operation, almost certainly with inside help. Only Moore is thought still to be alive.

Witnesses to the extraordinary operation which led to the abductions have also told us that they have been warned by superiors to keep quiet.

"This operation was on a state level, not al-Qaida. Only the state has the capability to carry this out," one of the sources said.

The Guardian can also reveal that there was a sixth westerner who was working with Moore at the time of the kidnap. The man – whose identity is known to the Guardian – managed to narrowly avoid being captured by hiding in a toilet at the Iraqi ministry of finance, where the abductions took place.

Over the past 10 months the Guardian has interviewed senior Iraqi figures and eyewitnesses as well as the former British military officer who investigated the kidnap for the men's employers. Their accounts allege that the hostage takers had contacts in the Iraqi government, and also that officials in the ministry of defence warned off witnesses to the kidnap.
Audio: Maggie O'Kane of Guardian Films explains the background Link to this audio

The investigation has also uncovered compelling evidence that the one of the key motives behind the kidnappings may have been the nature of the work the hostages were doing in fighting massive corruption in Iraq's government ministries.

Moore was employed to install a new computer tracking system which would have followed billions of dollars of oil and foreign aid money through the ministry of finance. The "Iraq Financial Management Information System" was nearly complete and about to go online at the time of the kidnap.

The senior intelligence source said: "Many people don't want a high level of corruption to be revealed. Remember this is the information technology centre [at the ministry of finance], this is the place where all the money to do with Iraq and all Iraq's financial matters are housed."

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Al Jazeera, July 30

An independent inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war has opened in London, with its chairman promising to call Tony Blair, the UK prime minister at the time of the 2003 invasion, as a witness.

Sir John Chilcot, a former civil servant, said he would "not shy away" from criticising decisions taken about the war and insisted the probe would not be a whitewash.

Chilcot said the inquiry would visit Iraq and hold discussions with its officials plus those from the United States and other countries involved in the conflict.

He said: "If we find that mistakes were made, that there were issues which could have been dealt with better, we will say so frankly."

(AFP) – 2 days ago

KABUL — More than 3,000 donkeys will be drafted in to help deliver millions of ballot papers to remote regions of Afghanistan for presidential elections on August 20, a UN official said Tuesday.

Swathes of Afghanistan are inaccessible by road, forcing election authorities to come up with innovative solutions to get voting materials to the masses in time for election day.

Kai Eide, the top UN representative in Afghanistan, toured a hanger at the Independent Election Commission (IEC) headquarters in Kabul where he watched the papers being stuffed into bright blue boxes and loaded onto trucks.

"There will be 3,500 trucks involved altogether in getting the material to the polling centres. And 3,000 donkeys will get the ballot papers to the most remote areas," said Eide, head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

He said the pack animals would be loaded up with the papers and dispatched to polling stations mostly in the north, where the mountains of the Hindu Kush cut off many residents from the outside world.

Eide called the operation "one of the most demanding electoral exercises I have seen" and praised Afghanistan for holding elections in the middle of a war, with Western and local forces battling Taliban insurgents.

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tastes fishy

New York Times, By Sam Dagher, July 31

BAGHDAD — Bombs exploded near five Shiite mosques around Baghdad within 45 minutes on Friday as worshipers attended prayer services, killing at least 29 people in what appeared to be a coordinated attack against followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, Iraqi officials and a Sadr aide said.

The bombs, which the police said were hidden just outside the mosques, tore through the Friday calm in five predominantly Shiite working-class neighborhoods, three of them on the east side of the city, one in the south and one in the north.

A total of 136 people were reported wounded in the attacks, all of which took place between 12:45 p.m. and 1:30 p.m., according an official from the Interior Ministry who spoke under customary condition of anonymity.

Officials said that highest death toll was outside the Shuroofi mosque in the north, in the district of Shaab. Once controlled by a militia loyal to Mr. Sadr, the mosque had in recent years been taken over by the national police, so Sadr loyalists pray outside in the street. Initial reports indicated that 23 people died in the attack and 107 were wounded.

Source: Reuters
* Aziz now due to serve 22 years in prison
* Sentenced for role in displacing Kurds

BAGHDAD, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Tareq Aziz, Iraq's former deputy prime minister was sentenced on Sunday to seven years in jail for his role in the forced displacement of Kurds from oil-prosperous northeastern Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule.

In March he was given a 15-year sentence for his role in the killing of dozens of traders for breaking state price controls in 1992. Two lawyers said the sentences would be added together so 73-year-old Aziz would serve 22 years in jail.

The March ruling was the first time Aziz, who also served as foreign minister and was the international face of the Saddam regime, was convicted of a crime since giving himself up to U.S. troops in April 2003, two weeks after the former Iraqi leader's rule ended.

"Because you committed, in partnership (with others), the crime of forced displacement against the Kurdish people, the court has decided to condemn you ... to seven years in prison," Judge Mahmoud Salih said, giving the jury's verdict.

Aziz's sentence in March came less than two weeks after the same Iraqi High Tribunal cleared Aziz, of any role in killing and displacing Shi'ite Muslims in 1999. That trial saw Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, receive a third death sentence.

Majeed, nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for his use of poison gas to kill Kurds in the 1980s, was also sentenced in the trader case to 15 years. Political disputes have delayed his execution.

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British Army: Overweight, unfit soldiers hamper Afghan war effort
UK News

Aug 2, 2009, 15:24 GMT

London - The number of British troops who are too overweight or unfit for deployment are hampering the country's war efforts in Afghanistan, according to the army.

The Defence Ministry has confirmed a report in Sunday's edition of the Observer newspaper that quoted from an urgent internal army memo highlighting the problem and sent to all army units.

Currently, 3,860 army personnel were classified as 'unable to deploy,' while a further 8,910 were of 'limited deployability' for medical reasons, the memo said, according to the Observer.

Major Brian Dupree of the army physical trainee corps, who penned the July 10 memo said: 'The numbers of personnel unable to deploy and concerns about obesity throughout the army are clearly linked to current attitudes towards physical training,' Dupree

The growing numbers of troops listed as 'unable to deploy' and concerns over obesity in the army were clearly linked to a prevailing 'indifferent attitude' to the prescribed minimum of two to three hours' exercise a week, he said.

The memo recommends that the army 'reinvigorate a warrior ethos and a culture of being fit' in order 'to cope with the demands of hybrid operations in Afghanistan and future conflicts.'

Elisabeth Bumiller & Peter Baker | Inçirlik Air Base | July 29

NYT - Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that the United States might accelerate the withdrawal of its forces from Iraq even as fresh tension there underscored worries about instability after the American troops are gone.

Speaking with reporters after his latest visit to Baghdad, Mr. Gates said another brigade of about 5,000 troops could leave by the end of December on top of the two brigades, or 10,000 troops, now scheduled to pull out this year. That would still leave the bulk of American forces in Iraq until after January’s elections.

The upbeat assessment came as flash points around Iraq offered cautionary notes about the country’s progress toward self-sustained security. While Mr. Gates met with his commanders, Iraqi forces made a surprise raid on a camp of Iranian exiles previously under American protection. A dispute between Baghdad and Kurdish leaders is intensifying, and the Shiite-led government has been arresting several Sunni militia leaders allied with the United States.

Mr. Gates and other administration officials said such issues need to be addressed but did not cause them to rethink their current timetable for drawing down American forces. Instead, they expressed confidence that the month-old pullback from Iraqi cities had gone “better than expected,” as Mr. Gates put it, and indicated that, if anything, the American disengagement could proceed somewhat faster.

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“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

Going Tribal: Enlisting Afghanistan’s Tribes(PDF)

Dan Green
smallwarsjournal.com

By ROD NORDLAND and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS for the
New York Times

Published: July 28, 2009
BAGHDAD — Commanders of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, as the American-led coalition is formally called, have a looming nomenclature problem.

Two days from now, there will no longer be any other nations with troops in Iraq — no “multi” in the Multi-National Force. As Iraqi forces have increasingly taken the lead, the United States is the last of the “coalition of the willing” that the Bush administration first brought together in 2003.

That is partly because the Iraqi Parliament left suddenly for summer recess without voting to extend an agreement for the British military to keep a residual training force of 100 soldiers in Iraq. As a result, those troops must withdraw to Kuwait by Friday, according to a British diplomat, who declined to be identified in keeping with his government’s practice.

As for the other two small remnants of the coalition, the Romanians and Australians, the Australians will be gone by July 31, too, and the Romanians left last Thursday, according to the Romanian chargé d’affaires, Cristian Voicu. NATO will keep a small training presence in Iraq, but its troops were never considered part of the Multi-National Force because of opposition to the war from many NATO countries.

In response to a query, American military officials acknowledged the need for a name change, and said Multi-National Force-Iraq would officially become United States Force-Iraq as of Jan. 1, 2010, according to the deputy coalition spokesman, Lt. Col. Mike Stewart. “This is done to reflect the new bilateral relationship between U.S. forces and our Iraqi hosts,” he said.

As of July 31, the US has indeed been on its own in Iraq.

three brothers, they sure go a lot by assumption, my guess if you are out at night you are considered an insurgent

Germany Combat Operations in Afghanistan and Arms Trade
Politics / GeoPolitics Jul 26, 2009 - 04:02 AM

By: Global_Research

Politics

Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleRick Rozoff writes: Earlier this week German soldiers under NATO command shot to death two Afghan civilians and seriously injured two more in the north of the nation.

During the past ten days German troops in NATO's Rapid Reaction Force have been conducting a major combat operation in Afghanistan's Kunduz Province.

300 German soldiers in charge of an estimated 1,200 Afghan government troops launched an offensive with the use of armor and artillery, including Marder infantry tanks and mortars.

A Bundeswehr soldier was quoted as saying that orders were issued to employ "the full reaction force spectrum" and as a result "We are using everything we have." [1]

A German news source revealed that "It is believed to be the first time that the Bundeswehr...has deployed heavy artillery." [2]

Berlin's Defense Ministry additionally acknowledged that the "German air force had also provided close air support for the ground troops for the first time in Afghanistan." [3] And it also divulged that "on July 15 and July 19, for the first time, bombs were dropped in the North by combat aircraft after they had been requested by ground forces." [4]

On July 22 Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr, placed emphasis on the precedents established by the current offensive, describing it as "probably the biggest" operation by German forces in Afghanistan, one which includes "house-by-house searches and looking for the enemy." [5]

As the German news weekly Der Spiegel characterized the development, "For Germans, having their military on the offensive for the first time since World War II involves passing over a major psychological threshold." [6]

Indeed several precedents have been created and several thresholds have been crossed. Not only has Germany now used heavy artillery and warplanes for close air support in combat operations, it has launched a military offensive almost 5,000 kilometers from its borders, the furthest afield that any German army has ever fought.

Moreover, although reunified Germany provided warplanes for NATO's air offensive against Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan is the first time that the armed forces of that nation have conducted - and now commanded - infantry and artillery combat assaults since the defeat of Hitler's Nazi regime in 1945.

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Airstrike, bomb blasts kill 32 in Afghanistan (Roundup)
South Asia News

Aug 6, 2009, 13:40 GMT

Kandahar - A roadside bomb believed to have been planted by Taliban insurgents was ignited by a passing tractor in southern Afghanistan, killing 21 civilians, while five farmers were killed in US airstrike in the same region, officials said Thursday.

Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said Thursday that a US soldier, serving under the banner of the alliance forces, was killed fighting the Taliban in western Afghanistan, while five police were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Helmand province.

The civilians killed in the first attack were on their way to a wedding in the Darwaishan area of Garmsir in the southern province of Helmand on Wednesday, Assadullah Sherzad, the provincial police chief told the German Press Agency dpa.

Sherzad added that the civilians were travelling inside a trailer attached to a tractor, while five other civilians were wounded in the attack.

Sherzad held militants with the Islamic extremist Taliban, who are most active in Helmand, responsible for the attack.

The Afghan Defence Ministry also confirmed the blast, saying in a statement that the attack once again showed the intentions of 'terrorists' towards the Afghan people.

Afghan civilians have been the main victims of Taliban-led attacks and fighting between insurgents and international forces.

In the latest incident of civilian deaths at the hand of international forces, five farmers were killed by a US military airstrike on Wednesday, according to Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi, district governor of Zherai in southern Kandahar province.

'The farmers were loading cucumbers on a truck when the American forces hit them from their aircraft,' Sarhadi said, claiming that he had gone to the scene and saw no weapons.

A US military spokeswoman confirmed the attack, but said the men were insurgents spotted loading ammunition on a truck. She said the incident was under investigation.

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