http://www.juancole.com/2010/03/will-muqtada-and-ammar-force-next-prime.html

Money that is supposed to help impoverished civilians and farmers is ending up in the hands of the Taliban, drug lords and profiteers

By Jonathan Owen
Sunday, 7 March 2010
The Independent

A major investigation has been launched into contracts awarded by coalition forces in Afghanistan that are worth hundreds of millions of pounds. The probe into construction and logistics contracts of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) has been ordered by Major General Nick Carter, commander of Isaf forces in the south of the country.

It is prompted by mounting concerns that the very money supposed to win over the hearts and minds of Afghans is ending up in the hands of the Taliban, drug lords or profiteers.

The British commander's concern is part of a wider crackdown on corruption, with General Stanley McChrystal having declared war on those making millions out of what has become a billion-dollar black hole for aid funds, in an anti-corruption directive issued last month.

A third of the costs of supplying the armed forces in Afghanistan is spent on paying protection, bribery and safe passage fees, and everybody is complicit, claim Afghan experts, who spoke under condition of anonymity.

Trucks pay a "Taliban tax" of up to $1,500 each time they venture out from Karachi to Camp Bastion. And millions are being made by a clique around Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, many of whom have interests in transportation and private security.

Members of prominent Afghan families, including Hashmat and Ahmed Wali Karzai, brothers of President Karzai, and Hamed Wardak, the son of the Defence Minister, Rahim Wardak, are among those accused of controlling private security firms benefiting from lucrative security contracts by paying off the Taliban.

Up to $600m of aid for reconstruction projects goes on security each year, according to Afghan government sources. The US Congress is investigating allegations of a massive protection racket in which private security companies paid to protect routes for coalition forces are involved in paying off local warlords and the Taliban.

It is not just Afghan firms that are causing concern. The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, is to review allegations of misconduct in Afghanistan by the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater. The company is mired in allegations that it has previously misappropriated government weapons and hired people with violent backgrounds.

As little as a quarter of the aid money pumped into the country actually stays in Afghanistan, according to aid organisations in Afghanistan. Of the money that is spent on aid, about a third goes on bribes and protection money, claims Sayed Javed, president of the NGO Kabul Group Consulting.

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UN envoy says Afghan strategy is too 'military-driven'

As he wrapped up his two-year tenure as the top United Nations official in Afghanistan, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide warned that without more political progress, Afghanistan will become unmanageable. » read more

Problems with civilian 'surge' could upset Afghan timetable

The Obama administration's "surge" of U.S. civilian officials and experts into Afghanistan is beset by a shortage of qualified personnel, a lack of housing and other problems that could disrupt its timetable for turning over full control of the country to the Afghan government, a new report Friday says. » read more

Iraq parliamentary election hit by insurgent attacks

7 March 2010 BBC

There has been a bloody start to Iraq's second parliamentary election since the 2003 invasion, with at least 24 people being killed in attacks.

At least two buildings have been destroyed and dozens of mortars fired across Baghdad and elsewhere.

The border with Iran has been closed, thousands of troops deployed, and vehicle movement has been banned.

PM Nouri Maliki called on voters to turn out in large numbers, saying that participation would boost democracy.

The election is taking place against a backdrop of much-reduced violence, with casualty figures among civilians, Iraqi forces and US troops significantly lower than in recent years.

But hundreds of people are still being killed each month, corruption is high and the provision of basic services such as electricity is still sporadic.

In one attack, 12 people were killed and eight injured when an explosion destroyed a residential building in northern Baghdad, officials said, shortly after another blast in the city killed five others.

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On Assignment: Into the Maw at Marja

I just read Gareth Porter's article in Asia times and immediately came here. And there you are. Well done.

by Derrick Crowe

According to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, U.S. and Allied forces have killed and injured more civilians than have the insurgents during Operation Moshtarak. Incredibly, the Pentagon continues to insist that this operation "protects the people." AIHRC’s Feb. 23 press release reports [h/t Josh Mull, our new Afghanistan blog fellow]:

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Foreign Office officials believe elements of Taliban ready to talk but fears grow of long Afghan conflict, and growing casualties

* Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
* The Guardian, Wednesday 10 March 2010

Britain will today urge the Afghan government to put more effort into the pursuit of peace talks amid fears that the war could be prolonged – and more British lives lost – as a result of incompetence and lack of political will in Kabul.

A speech to be delivered in the US by the foreign secretary, David Miliband, will reflect growing anxiety in London that President Hamid Karzai's professed desire for a political solution has not been backed up by any serious planning or concrete proposals.

Unless more pressure is put on the Afghan government, some British officials predict that Karzai's proposed loya jirga, or grand peace council, due at the end of next month, will be little more than a PR stunt. "My argument today is that now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigour and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort," Miliband will say at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to a text of the address seen by the Guardian.

British officials believe that significant Taliban leaders are ready to start talking about a political settlement in which they would sever ties with al-Qaida and put down weapons in return for a role in politics. But there is also concern that opportunities to open a preliminary dialogue are being lost, and that the conflict, which has already cost more than 270 British lives, is being intensified by Kabul's inefficiency and corruption.

"The Afghans must own, lead and drive such political engagement," Miliband will say in his speech. "It will be a slow, gradual process. But the insurgents will want to see international support.

"International engagement, for example under the auspices of the UN, may ultimately be required."

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New York Times, By Thomas L. [F.] Friedman, March 9

Of all the pictures I saw from the Iraqi elections last weekend, my favorite was on nytimes.com: an Iraqi expatriate mother, voting in Michigan, holding up her son to let him stuff her ballot into the box. I loved that picture. Being able to freely cast a ballot for the candidate of your choice is still unusual for Iraqis and for that entire region. That mother seemed to be saying: When I was a child, I never got to vote. I want to live in a world where my child will always be able to.

God bless her. This was a very good day for Iraq.

Sure, the war that I helped sell and cheered on led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings (at least), the long-term displacement of millions more, and the complete destruction of another country that had done nothing to us. But I'm not interested in clouding my mind with any of that. I don't care about that. That can be talked about once I'm dead. After all, as the great humanitarian Joseph Stalin taught us, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and as the great scholar and torturer Condoleezza Rice explained, we should just gently shut our eyes and think about the massive slaughter and destruction we caused in that country as mere "birth pangs" on the road to something beautiful.

Back in 2003, I said -- with bloodthirsty sadism rabidly drooling from my mouth -- that the real purpose of the war, what made it the Right Thing to do, was that we needed to make large numbers of Muslims "suck. on. this" in order to show them we mean business, and we randomly picked Iraq because . . . . we could. But now -- to justify the enormous amounts of blood I helped spill and the incalculable amounts of human suffering I helped spawn -- I'm going to pretend that I was motivated by a magnanimous, noble desire to Spread Freedom.

US fury at ex-MI5 chief's claims that Jack Bauer inspired interrogation techniques

By Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent

American officials have reacted with dismay to the charge by the former head of MI5 that US authorities deliberately concealed mistreatment of terror suspects from their British colleagues. The unexpected public statement by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller is said to have significantly added to the strains in the relationship between the two countries on intelligence matters.

At the same time, the former secret service chief faced criticism from human rights groups who expressed scepticism about her claims of being kept in the dark by Washington. Amnesty International said it was "extremely surprising" that she and her organisation were unaware of the allegations of abuse which were being widely aired.

The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said Dame Eliza's "revelations make an unanswerable case for a judicial inquiry into the alleged mistreatment and torture by security services".

Dame Eliza's condemnation of American conduct during the war on terror comes in the wake of consternation in Washington over a decision by High Court judges in London to release sensitive, US-supplied information on the Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed. There was also angry condemnation across the Atlantic of the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

During a lecture given at a meeting in the House of Lords, Dame Eliza said the British government had made an official complaint to Washington over the abuse of detainees. But no futher details have emerged on either side of the Atlantic of when this complaint was made, or what form it took.

In her speech, highly critical of the US's conduct during the war on terror, the former secret service chief implied that the leadership in Washington was inspired by watching the TV espionage thriller 24. She said: "Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld certainly watched 24". Dame Eliza said: "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing." She insisted that she had been unaware of what was going on until her retirement in 2007.

One of her retrospective discoveries was the interrogation method used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. When she asked her subordinates why the senior al-Qa'ida member was offering so much information, they told her he was "very proud of his achievements when questioned". She added: "It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that he had been water-boarded 160 times."

The White House refused to comment on Dame Eliza's allegations yesterday. However, US security officials were said to feel particularly let down that the charges had come from someone in her senior position, and denied that American intelligence had used subterfuge with British colleagues.

A senior Pentagon official said there was "a degree of understanding" in the cases of Binyam Mohamed and Mr Megrahi, because the hands of the British authorities had been forced by the courts. The official added: "It is not correct to say that we had kept relevant information from the Brits. There are also a number of other points to consider. Khalid Mohammed was not a British subject and not a British responsibility.

"Things are also done on a need-to-know basis. What was there to say that, in that case, too, the courts would not have directed agencies in the UK to disclose sensitive material? I would also like to point out that the Brits were always very happy to receive information we gave them emanating from Mohammed."

Asked whether President George W Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld watched 24, the official said: "We are not aware of their television habits. It's quite an image though. These three busy guys sitting down together at a very busy time to get their lead from Jack Bauer."

Tim Hancock, UK campaigns director of Amnesty International, said: "Numerous allegations of US mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and Bagram were emerging from the beginning of the war on terror. Did MI5 learn nothing of this, even when members of the security service interviewed nine British nationals at Guantanamo in 2003?

"We also know from the Binyam Mohamed case that the security service was told by US officials that Mr Mohamed was kept shackled, deprived of sleep and threatened with being 'disappeared' by his US interrogators."

New York Times, By Dexter Filkins & Mark Mazzetti, March 14

KABUL, Afghanistan — Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants, according to military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States.

The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the officials said.

While it has been widely reported that the C.I.A. and the military are attacking operatives of Al Qaeda and others through unmanned, remote-controlled drone strikes, some American officials say they became troubled that Mr. Furlong seemed to be running an off-the-books spy operation. The officials say they are not sure who condoned and supervised his work.

It is generally considered illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies. Officials said Mr. Furlong’s secret network might have been improperly financed by diverting money from a program designed to merely gather information about the region.

bbc

I'll wait before rejoicing..

A key al-Qaeda figure wanted for a deadly attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan has been killed in a US drone strike, US officials believe.

Hussein al-Yemeni, a top al-Qaeda planner, died in the strike in the city of Miranshah in Pakistan.

He was believed to have helped plan an attack on a base in Khost in December in which a suicide bomber killed seven CIA agents and a Jordanian officer.

The CIA's director has said al-Qaeda is now in disarray in Pakistan

Secret operation 'reporting only to London' deprived prisoners of sleep, documents show

The Independent, By Andrew Johnson, March 21

Fresh evidence has emerged that British military intelligence ran a secret operation in Iraq which authorised degrading and unlawful treatment of prisoners. Documents reveal that prisoners were kept hooded for long periods in intense heat and deprived of sleep by defence intelligence officers. They also reveal that officers running the operation claimed to be answerable only "directly to London".

The revelations will further embarrass the British government, which last month was forced to release documents showing it knew that UK resident and terror suspect Binyam Mohamed had been tortured in Pakistan.

The latest documents emerged during the inquiry into Baha Mousa, an Iraqi hotel worker beaten to death while in the custody of British troops in September 2003. The inquiry is looking into how interrogation techniques banned by the Government in 1972 and considered torture and degrading treatment were used again in Iraq.

Lawyers believe the new evidence supports suspicions that an intelligence unit – the Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT) which operated in Iraq – used illegal "coercive techniques" and was not answerable to military commanders in Iraq, despite official denials it operated independently.

Gunmen in military uniforms raid Sunni area near Baghdad, killing 25

Washington Post, By Leila Fadel & Aziz Alwan, April 3

BAGHDAD -- Gunmen wearing military uniforms killed at least 25 people, including women and children, shooting them one by one with guns capped with silencers, in a raid late Friday on a neighborhood just south of Baghdad.

Driving pickup trucks usually used by Iraq's Federal Police, gunmen attacked the neighborhood of Hor Rajib, once paralyzed by Sunni insurgent violence. They gathered a group of Sunni men, known to be members of the Sahwa, or Awakening, Sunni Arabs who stood up to battle insurgents in their neighborhoods at the behest of the U.S. military, officials said.

The gunmen looked through a list of names and then used guns with silencers attached to shoot people one at a time. The victims were largely from the Dulaim tribe, the largest Sunni Arab tribe in Iraq, residents of the area said.

The Friday night attack is one of a series of assassinations and assaults on the Sahwa, also known as the Sons of Iraq, Sunni fighters who began fighting insurgents and militants in their neighborhoods in late 2006 and 2007. Many are former insurgents themselves and were paid by the U.S. military to lay down their weapons and calm violence in their neighborhoods. Along with the U.S. military surge, they are largely credited with lowering the violence in Iraq.

New York Times, By Rod Nordland & Riyadh Mohammed, April 4

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi capital echoed with explosions on Easter Sunday, with three suicide car bombings killing 22 or more people. Other bombs and rockets went off at widely scattered locations, paralyzing traffic and disrupting communications throughout the city.

An official in the Ministry of Interior said there were three suicide bombers who targeted the Iranian embassy as well as the residences of the Egyptian chargé d’affaires and the German ambassador, all in Mansour and nearby on the western side of the city; he said that early reports were of 20 dead and 45 wounded in the three bombings.

Separately, a police official in Kerrada, a neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said that a fourth suicide bomber had targeted the Iraqi intelligence agency’s offices but that police shot the driver before he could detonate his bomb. Bomb disposal experts were working to defuse it hours later, he said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with their agencies’ policies.

Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, spokesman for the Baghdad Operations Command, said that early and incomplete reports were that 17 were killed and 140 wounded, including both civilians and members of the security services. The car bombers, he said, were also wearing suicide vests when they launched their attacks. He speculated that the Mar Yosif Chaldean Catholic church in the Mansour area may have been one of the intended targets.