(CNN) -- A sailor killed in Afghanistan on Saturday was the 500th U.S. service member to die in that country since the war there began in 2001.

Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Harris of Lexington, North Carolina, was 36.

Twenty-two U.S. service members were killed in Afghanistan in August, part of a recent increase in American deaths there. In June, 28 U.S. service members died in Afghanistan -- the United States' highest one-month total in that country.

Including deaths from the United States' coalition partners, 46 service members were killed in August, equaling the coalition total for June. Forty-six is the highest one-month total for coalition forces.

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Taliban attack

Instead of individually, now Canadian soldiers are being killed in multiples and not by roadside bombs. Sounds like violence is escalating rather than dimiishing after being there since the first killing April 18, 2002. How many more years would it take before the number of deaths began decreasing?

IWPR

Officials fear poor sanitation in the province could result in an outbreak of the disease.

By IWPR staff Kirkuk (ICR No. 269, 05-Sep-08)
While Kirkuk has avoided an outbreak of cholera this summer, its poor water and sewage systems continue to pose a serious health risks, say officials.

Despite a hot summer and a drought, both of which make a cholera outbreak more likely, Kirkuk has not recorded any cases this year.

Other provinces have not been as lucky. The health ministry reported this week that five cholera cases – the first reported this summer – were confirmed in Baghdad and the southern province of Maysan.

In August last year, Iraq’s worst cholera outbreak in decades began in Kirkuk before spreading nationwide for weeks, killing more than 20.

Kirkuk had the highest number of cases. Over 3,000 people there caught the disease, which causes potentially life-threatening dehydration from diarrhoea if not treated quickly.

Although Kirkuk health officials say they have done what they can to prevent cholera from re-emerging in the province, they admit there could still be an epidemic.

While Kirkuk has received international and Iraqi aid to fight cholera, health experts say that the main causes of cholera – decrepit water and sewage systems and inadequate healthcare – have not improved.

“The poor services and lack of healthcare put people’s lives at risk,” said Sabah Amin Ahmed, the director of healthcare for Kirkuk province. “Most Kirkuk residents cannot easily access clean drinking water or a good sewage system.”

According to the Iraqi health ministry and the World Health Organisation, WHO, over 30 per cent of water samples taken in Kirkuk have tested positive for bacterial contamination this year. This compares badly with the average contamination rate for Iraq, under ten per cent.

Jabbar Hassan al-Rubai, a manager in Ahmed’s regional healthcare department, said some of the pipes in Kikuk’s mains water system were broken, jeopardising the quality of drinking water.

Iraq’s water and sewage systems, which are decades old and have not been maintained, are badly in need of repair. However, restoring infrastructure has taken a back seat to dealing with security problems since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003.

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Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison getting makeover

Bushra Juhi, Associated Press

Friday, September 5, 2008

(09-05) 04:00 PDT Baghdad --

The notorious Abu Ghraib prison is getting a face-lift: work to reopen the facility and construct a museum documenting Saddam Hussein's crimes - but not the abuses committed there by U.S. guards.

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WaPo
- Iraqi leaders expressed incredulity and disappointment Friday over a report that U.S. officials had spied on Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki and other Iraqi leaders.

"If it is true, it reflects that there is no trust and it reflects also that the institutions in the United States are used to spying on their friends and their enemies in the same way," Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, said in a statement. "We will ask for an explanation."

_{"The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy" - Bob Herbert}

- EOM

By Kim Sengupta
Monday, 8 September 2008

Around 140,000 personnel will have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and many will be affected by trauma, Andy McNab warns

Andy McNab, the former SAS soldier turned author, has warned that Britain faces a social crisis because of the mental trauma suffered by veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars.

"This is not something new, people have been suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder for years from past conflicts, yet we still don't have anything like an adequate system for looking after them," McNab told The Independent.

He said that the Government's ongoing neglect of its soldiers' mental health when they come back from front-line action would lead to unprecedented levels of mental illness, and in some cases suicide – as had happened with several of his Special Forces colleagues.

"I've seen for myself the appalling way our soldiers are hung out to dry," he said. "The idea held by the Government that the majority of service personnel experience a smooth transition into civilian life is largely false. Living in the outside world when discharged is very hard and many personnel experience huge difficulties reintegrating."

McNab's comments coincide with the release of an opinion poll which showed that two-thirds of participants view the Government's treatment of former service personnel as "disgraceful". Three-quarters of those questioned believed the psychological care for veterans was "inadequate", 72 per cent felt the level of compensation for those injured was "insulting" and 49 per cent were prepared to pay a penny extra income tax in the pound to provide financial help for returning soldiers. McNab said the figures showed overwhelming public support for the military which was not being reflected by officials.

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Creating Iraq’s First National Park

by Lorna Tychostup and photographs by Suzie Alwash, Mudhafer Salim, August 25, 2008

It is said that the thick, endless green reed beds and seasonally mobile mud islands that make up Iraq’s southern Mesopotamian Marshlands once nourished and gave shelter to ancient communities born long before the recording of human history. Some scholars claim the marshlands are the location of the Garden of Eden, the birthplace of Abraham, and the site of the great flood where Noah built his ark. World famous archeological sites scattered along the edges of the marshlands hold remnants of the birth of human civilization. Among them are the ancient Sumerian cities of Ur, Lagash, Larsa, Eridu, and Uruk, one of the world’s first cities to house a dense population and home to a king who went by the name of Gilgamesh and resides in history thanks to one of the more famous works of early literature.

It is in this place, the southernmost tip of the ancient Fertile Crescent—where the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers divides and separates into a drainage basin made up of a multitude of small waterways before emptying into the Persian Gulf—that plans are being implemented to create Iraq’s first National Park in an area ravaged by the vengeful acts of Saddam Hussein, who during the closing decade of the 20th century aimed to destroy a 5,000-year-old culture. The proposed Mesopotamian Marshlands National Park will cover an area just under 350,000 acres and contain a core area of 59,000 acres. Known as the Eden Again Project and led by the Iraqi environmental group Nature Iraq, the project’s partners also include the Italian Ministry of the Environment, Land, and Sea, and Iraq’s Ministries of Environment, Water Resources and Municipalities and Public Works. The broad objectives of the national park aim to protect the environment, foster socio-economic development in the region, preserve its cultural heritage inclusive of restoring and protecting from further deterioration all identified archeological sites, and to guide the establishment of ecologic corridors within the marshes along with the creation of an appropriate marshland monitoring and management system.

Creating a national park is a heady goal for an organization that hires body guards to accompany their scientists as they work in the field doing surveys, collecting flora, fauna, and water-quality samples; and cataloging wildlife. And if creating Iraq’s first National Park during a time of war and occupation weren’t enough, discussions regarding the creation of a second National Park have recently begun in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region, a more secure but equally environmentally devastated area thanks to the purposeful acts of the regime of Saddam Hussein. Although Iraq’s north and south are separated by its heavily populated central region, the lifeblood dispensed from the Tigris and Euphrates links the two regions. Fed by headwaters located in the mountains of Turkey, Iran and northern Iraq’s Kurdistan, the two main arteries flow south providing silt, clay, and all the nutrients necessary for the continual spawning of life.

It is this link that some feel will ultimately unite Iraq, if not from some open desire to become one indivisible nation, than at the very least because of an environmentally driven need—access to water.

much much more

EXPANDING VIOLENCE
Germany Discovers a War in Afghanistan

For years, Germans have preferred to see their country's presence in Afghanistan as armed development assistance. That myth is now becoming more difficult to maintain as the violence spreads to the north where the Germans are based. By SPIEGEL Staff more...

* Photo Gallery: The War Expands in Afghanistan
* Three Afghan Civilians Dead: Police Chief Accuses German Soldiers of Shooting
* Interview with the Head of Afghanistan's Secret Service: 'Piles and Piles of Evidence' that Pakistan Is Responsible for Insurgency
* Interview with NATO's Afghanistan Commander: 'A Counter-Insurgency Takes a Long Time, Longer than We Thought'

BBC

The bulk of the 146,000 US troops deployed in Iraq will remain behind

US President George W Bush is set to announce plans to withdraw about 8,000 troops from Iraq by February and to send additional forces to Afghanistan.

Mr Bush will say in a speech on Tuesday that the improving security situation in Iraq will allow a "quiet surge" of troops in Afghanistan in coming months.

A Marine battalion due to go to Iraq in November will be sent to Afghanistan, followed by an army combat brigade.

There are currently 146,000 US troops in Iraq and 33,000 in Afghanistan.

Any long-term decision about their future deployment will be left to Mr Bush's successor, who will take office in January

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Footage of civilian 'massacre' forces inquiry into US attack

By Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Tuesday, 9 September 2008

America's most senior soldier in Afghanistan has called for the Pentagon to investigate claims that more than 90 civilians were killed in an American airstrike, after harrowing video footage emerged showing the broken bodies of at least 11 children among the dead.

The grim, eight-minute clip, filmed on a mobile phone in the aftermath of the bombing, shows rows of shrouded bodies laid side by side in a make-shift morgue. Among them are at least 11 children, many of them toddlers.

General David McKiernan, the commander of Nato's International Assistance Force (Isaf), ordered a fresh investigation led by a Pentagon general after footage was released on Sunday night. In a statement he said: "In light of emerging evidence pertaining to civilian casualties ... I feel it is prudent to request that US Central Command send a general officer to review the US investigation and its findings."

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KABUL, Sept 9 (Reuters) - A roadside bomb exploded in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday killing three soldiers from the U.S.-led coalition forces and a local contractor working with them, the U.S. military said.

It gave no nationalities for the soldiers nor the province where the blast occurred. Most of the troops operating in eastern Afghanistan are from the United States

Petraeus: Iraq Is 'Central Front' for Extremists

By Ernesto Londoño and Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 10, 2008; Page A11

BAGHDAD, Sept. 9 -- Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the departing commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said that the country remains "the central front" for al-Qaeda and other extremist groups but acknowledged that violence is rising in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- battlegrounds he will soon oversee as the next head of the U.S. military's Central Command.

what bullshit, how can you even compare AlQAeda and extremist violence i Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan

TOKYO, Sept. 11 KYODO

Japan said Thursday it will begin studying the pullout by the end of the year of the Air Self-Defense Force from its airlift mission in Iraq in support of U.S.-led coalition forces, citing improvements in the political and security situation in the country.

The planned withdrawal would mark the complete pullout of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces from Iraq. Ground Self-Defense Force troops were withdrawn in 2006 after being initially deployed in 2004 to help reconstruct the war-torn country.

Japan made the announcement ahead of the expiry in December of a U.N. resolution authorizing the current deployment of multinational forces in Iraq.

''The security situation has considerably improved in Iraq...and we're now (seeing the discussion between the Iraqi government and relevant countries) gradually converging on the idea that it's about time to think about the pullout of Japan's SDF,'' Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda told reporters.

Fukuda, meanwhile, said that ''international society's attention is shifting to the situation in Afghanistan'' and that the need for Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force to continue its refueling mission in support of U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in the Indian Ocean will ''further increase.''

The airlift activities in Iraq form one of two missions the SDF has engaged in to help the United States, Japan's closest security ally, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A special law authorizes the ASDF mission in Iraq until next July.

Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, explaining the reason for the intended pullout, told reporters, ''We recognized we have fulfilled the purposes'' stipulated in the special law.

Vice Defense Minister Kohei Masuda said the United States ''understands'' Japan's policy on Iraq.

more at Kyodo News

The general whose reputation has been forged in the crucible of Iraq does not look like a military figure.

By David Blair
Last Updated: 11:31PM BST 12 Sep 2008
General David Petraeus: The man to save Iraq?

David Petraeus is a spry and youthful 55-year-old, of medium height and build. Perhaps because of two accidents in his army career – he was shot in the chest during an exercise and smashed his pelvis in a parachute jump – he has a slight stoop and a barely perceptible air of physical awkwardness.

Instead of the ramrod bearing of a MacArthur, Gen Petraeus resembles a modest headmaster, albeit one with a personal fitness obsession.

This outgoing yet scholarly figure is now the brightest star of America’s armed forces. Gen Petraeus has emerged from the bloodshed of Baghdad to become the only genuinely successful general of the “war on terrorism”. No other commander in this campaign, which has lasted exactly seven years, would have reached the cover of Time magazine as “Man of the Year” in 2007. If every war eventually makes a military reputation and propels a uniformed figure to global fame, then Gen Petraeus is the Eisenhower of our time.

When he hands over his command in Iraq on Tuesday, he will have achieved a seemingly impossible goal. Gen Petraeus will leave the country in infinitely better shape than found it. The West’s enemies – from “al-Qaeda in Iraq” to the Shia gunmen of Moqtada al-Sadr – are greatly weakened.

Is this achievement genuine – or was Gen Petraeus simply lucky enough to take over at the right time? And if his accomplishment is real, how has he done it?

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In the next few weeks, look for the White House to make the case that the Bush presidency has been a model of multi-lateralism in foreign policy.

Contrary to the president's image as a go-it-alone cowboy on foreign policy, the administration plans to use the upcoming United Nations General Assembly to highlight how often George W. Bush reached out to other nations in pursuit of shared diplomatic goals. In a statement, the White House said:

more at Countdown To Crawford

If fewer US troops and Iraqis are being killed, it is only because the Shia community and Iran now dominate

By Patrick Cockburn
Sunday, 14 September 2008

As he leaves Iraq this week, the outgoing US commander, General David Petraeus, is sounding far less optimistic than the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, about the American situation in Iraq. General Petraeus says that it remains "fragile", recent security gains are "not irreversible" and "this is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade... it's not a war with a simple slogan."

Compare this with Sarah Palin's belief that "victory in Iraq is wholly in sight" and her criticism of Barack Obama for not using the word "victory". The Republican contenders have made these claims of success for the "surge" – the American reinforcements sent last year – although they are demonstrably contradicted by the fact that the US has to keep more troops, some 138,000, in Iraq today than beforehand. Another barometer of the true state of security in Iraq is the inability of the 4.7 million refugees, one in six of the population, who fled for their lives inside and outside Iraq, to return to their homes.

Ongoing violence is down, but Iraq is still the most dangerous country in the world. On Friday a car bomb exploded in the Shia market town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, killing 32 people and wounding 43 others. "The smoke filled my house and the shrapnel broke some of the windows," said Hussein al-Dujaili. "I went outside the house and saw two dead bodies at the gate which had been thrown there by the explosion. Some people were in panic and others were crying."

Playing down such killings, the Iraqi government and the US have launched a largely successful propaganda campaign to convince the world that "things are better" in Iraq and that life is returning to normal. One Iraqi journalist recorded his fury at watching newspapers around the world pick up a story that the world's largest Ferris wheel was to be built in Baghdad, a city where there is usually only two hours of electricity a day.

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After years in detention, Afghan returnees have bitter memories as they face new hardships. Jason Burke reports from Kabul

* Jason Burke
* The Observer,
* Sunday September 14 2008
* Article history

They call them the Bandi Guantánamo, the Guantánamo returnees, and their welcome home is far from warm. All across Afghanistan in recent months, scores of men have been coming back from a long journey halfway around the world. About 100 have been released from Guantánamo Bay by United States authorities in the last 12 months as Washington, under mounting pressure from governments around the world, attempts to moderate the damage done to America's image by the Cuba-based detention centre. A third are Afghan and more are due to return in the coming weeks.

After more than five years in detention thousands of miles away, often traumatised, often angry, or just broken and poor, the Bandi Guantánamo try to build new lives, with limited success. Most claim innocence. Others are unashamed of their acts of violence. Interviewed in Kabul last month, Mohammed Umr described how he had trained in terrorist techniques, met Osama bin Laden and fought at the battle of Tora Bora in 2001. Released 10 weeks ago, he spoke of how angry the presence of his former jailers in his homeland made him. 'If they have come here to help us, why do they kill civilians and why can't they even provide electricity to Kabul seven years after invading?', asked the 30-year-old former footballer, arrested in Pakistan during the closing days of the war of 2001.

Almost all the former detainees describe mistreatment - ranging from waterboarding - the repeated half-drowning of prisoners to get them to talk - through to beatings, sleep deprivation, being kept in 'stress positions' and exposure to extreme temperatures for long periods. Most say that the worst abuse occurred in US bases in Afghanistan, notably in the eastern and southern cities of Jalalabad and Kandahar, or at the logistics centre of Bagram airfield, where a 500-capacity makeshift prison was built. American military spokesmen in Afghanistan deny any mistreatment.

By comparison, the former prisoners say, Guantánamo was relatively bearable. 'It was better there,' said Abdul Nasir, who added that he had been deprived of sleep in the Bagram prison. 'The food was OK. There was more exercise. When I arrived [in 2003] we had just 20 minutes twice a week. By the end it was two hours a day.' Like others interviewed by The Observer, Nasir, 26, claimed that rows frequently broke out in Guantánamo over religious practice. 'The guards made noise when we were praying. They shouted bad things,' he alleged. 'There was nearly a riot because they were handling the Koran that we were allowed in our cells.'

Many former detainees say they have been told by the Afghan government or their former jailers not to talk to journalists. Several senior former Taliban figures, such as Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, their former ambassador to Pakistan, are under house arrest in Kabul, supposedly as part of the largely moribund 'reconciliation process'. The head of the reconciliation commission was in Canada and unable to comment, his office said.

Mirwais Yasini, Deputy Speaker of the Afghan parliament, played down the danger of returnees joining Taliban insurgents in control of large parts of the south and east of the country. 'We should try to reintegrate them, but [the returnees] should not get any special treatment,' he said from his office in the new Afghan parliament building. 'Their story is that of Afghanistan: a tragic tale.'

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· Many weapons reaching al-Qaida insurgents
· Report urges treaty to halt trade to Darfur and Burma

* Richard Norton-Taylor
* The Guardian,
* Wednesday September 17 2008
* Article history

Iraq is being flooded with weapons despite human rights violations by all parties in the conflict there, and without any proper monitoring by the US and Britain over where the weapons end up, Amnesty International says today.

There is no clear accountable audit trail for some 360,000 small arms supplied to the Iraqi security forces, many by the US and UK, it says. Subcontracting makes the arms trade even less transparent. Among examples cited by Amnesty are the supply of 63,800 Kalashnikov assault rifles from Bosnia to Iraq and the dispatch via the UK of thousands of Italian Beretta pistols, many of which ended up in the hands of al-Qaida insurgents in Iraq.

"The easy availability of small arms and lack of accountability in Iraq has contributed to sectarian killings by armed groups, as well as torture and other ill-treatment; extra-judicial executions by Iraqi government forces and the continuing arbitrary detention of thousands of suspects by Iraqi soldiers backed by US armed forces since 2003," says Amnesty.

It adds: "Very serious failures have occurred in the effective management of huge quantities of weapons and munitions supplied to Iraq since 2003. While Iraqi officials ... have been primarily responsible, a significant share of the responsibility rests with the US and UK coalition forces and their contractors."

According to US state department figures this week, Iraq has signed more than $3bn worth of arms deals in the past two years. Amnesty estimates that more than 1m small arms have been sold to Iraq since the 2003 invasion and the Iraqi government plans to procure more than 250,000 from the US and China.

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* AP foreign
* , Wednesday September 17 2008

By RUSS BYNUM

Associated Press Writer

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - A soldier was detained in Iraq after he allegedly opened fire on a superior and another unit member, killing them both, the Army said Wednesday.

The soldier was subdued by other troops, and medics tried unsuccessfully to save the wounded soldiers, said Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo, commanding general at Fort Stewart in southern Georgia, where the soldiers' unit is based.

An Army spokesman said the shooting happened Sunday in Tunnis, Iraq. The slain soldiers and the alleged shooter, whose name was not released, belong to the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division.

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Published: September 18, 2008
Filed at 12:26 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD (AP) -- An American Chinook helicopter crashed early Thursday as it was landing in southern Iraq, killing seven U.S. soldiers, the military said.

The CH-47 Chinook was landing after midnight about 60 miles west of Basra at the time of the crash, the U.S. statement said.

A spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq confirmed to The Associated Press that the helicopter had crashed. He said five had died, and the bodies of two soldiers who had originally been missing were found.

The spokesman said hostile fire was not suspected.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to provide details.

The chopper was a part of an aerial convoy flying from Kuwait to the U.S. military base at Balad just north of Baghdad. The Chinook, the Army's workhorse, is designed to transport troops and supplies to combat and other regions.

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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 18, 2008
Filed at 12:26 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD (AP) -- An American Chinook helicopter crashed early Thursday as it was landing in southern Iraq, killing seven U.S. soldiers, the military said.

The CH-47 Chinook was landing after midnight about 60 miles west of Basra at the time of the crash, the U.S. statement said.

A spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq confirmed to The Associated Press that the helicopter had crashed. He said five had died, and the bodies of two soldiers who had originally been missing were found.

The spokesman said hostile fire was not suspected.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to provide details.

The chopper was a part of an aerial convoy flying from Kuwait to the U.S. military base at Balad just north of Baghdad. The Chinook, the Army's workhorse, is designed to transport troops and supplies to combat and other regions.
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NATO forces mistakenly kill Afghan district governor, bodyguards
Asia-Pacific News

Sep 18, 2008, 11:44 GMT

Kabul - An Afghan district governor along with his two bodyguards were killed mistakenly by NATO-led Australian troops in southern Afghanistan while five police officers and three Taliban militants were killed in a clash and a roadside bombing, officials said Thursday.

Rozi Khan Barekzai, governor of the Chora district in Uruzgan province, was called Wednesday to a friend's house in Trin Kot, the provincial capital, because the friend believed his house was surrounded by Taliban militants, said Gholub Wardak, the province's deputy police chief.

'Actually the man's house was surrounded by Australian forces, and when Rozi Khan and his men arrived there, the foreign forces mistook them for Taliban and opened fire at them,' Wardak said.

He said Barekzai and two of his bodyguards were killed and two other bodyguards were wounded.

Barekzai, who was a mujahedin commander during the war against Soviet forces in the 1980s, had also served as provincial police chief after the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said from Kabul that it was investigating an incident in which their forces were involved in a firefight in the province, but it was unclear if it was the same one.

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All South Korea troops to leave Iraq by end of '08

SEOUL, Sept 19 (Reuters) - South Korea, which once had the third-largest foreign military contingent in Iraq, will pull all of its troops out off the country on schedule by the end of this year, a military official said on Friday.

Local media had reported the South may extend its deployment again as a favour to its major ally, the United States, which is re-examining its forces in Iraq after improvements in overall levels of security this year.

Defence ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae told a news briefing that when the deployment was extended by one year in December 2007, it was on the condition that the pullout would be completed by the end of 2008.

"And there is no change whatsoever to the plan that everyone in the (unit) would withdraw by the year end," he said.

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By PATRICK SEALE
Published: September 19, 2008
Middle East Times

A U.S. soldier mans a rear-door machinegun aboard a helicopter while flying in Afghanistan. Photo by Sipapress

One of the most explosive spots on earth today is the so-called Durand Line, the 2,640-kilometer border, much of it in harsh mountain country, between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is where the United States and its NATO allies are battling the Taliban -- and are facing the possibility of military defeat.

Of all the challenges which will face the new American administration next January, the ongoing war across the Afghan-Pakistan border could be the most difficult and dangerous. It is likely to overshadow the contest with Russia in the Caucasus, the rise of Iran as a major regional power, the search for an honorable exit strategy from Iraq, the impact of the collapsing Arab-Israeli peace process, and even the horrors of global warming.

The Durand Line was a British creation. It was demarcated and then signed into a treaty on Nov. 12 1893, between the ruler of Afghanistan, Amir Abdul Rahman Khan, and Sir Mortimer Durand, foreign secretary of what was then British India.

The idea was to create a buffer zone to protect British India from possible Czarist Russian aggression in what was then the "Great Game" between the British and Russian empires. When British India was partitioned between India and Pakistan in 1947, the Durand Line was recognized as the Pakistan-Afghan border.

However, successive Afghan rulers repudiated it. Even Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's current President, has called the Durand Line a "line of hate," because by cutting through tribal lands it artificially divides the Pashtun people, whom Kabul would like to claim as Afghans.

The Durand Line was always something of a fiction -- and perhaps never more so than in the 1980s, when the United States and Pakistan recruited jihadis from all over the world to fight the Soviets, then occupying Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Islamic militants were trained, armed and funded in the Pakistan tribal areas and then infiltrated across the Durand Line into Afghanistan.

The United States and Pakistan are now reaping what they sowed. Pashtun nationalism has been aroused. Pashtun leaders on both sides of the border do not recognize the Durand Line which, in any event, has always been porous. The tribal customs, traditions and war-fighting abilities which the Americans mobilized against the Soviets have now been turned against the Americans themselves.

Large numbers of tough, brave, well-armed Pashtun tribesmen -- as well as sympathizers from many parts of the world -- have joined the resurgent Taliban movement in a determined effort to expel the invading U.S. forces and their coalition allies, just as they expelled the Russians 20 years ago.

The tribal areas on both sides of the Durand Line have always been autonomous. Anxious to safeguard this autonomy, the tribes resist control by the central government, whether in Islamabad or Kabul. For centuries, their overriding impulse has been to protect their Muslim religion and their traditional way of life from foreign interference.

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BOOKS-IRAQ: "We Blew Her to Pieces"
By Dahr Jamail

MARFA, Texas, Sep 16 (IPS) - Aside from the Iraqi people, nobody knows what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq better than the soldiers themselves. A new book gives readers vivid and detailed accounts of the devastation the U.S. occupation has brought to Iraq, in the soldiers' own words.

"Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupation," published by Haymarket Books Tuesday, is a gut-wrenching, historic chronicle of what the U.S. military has done to Iraq, as well as its own soldiers.

Authored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and journalist Aaron Glantz, the book is a reader for hearings that took place in Silver Spring, Maryland between Mar. 13-16, 2008 at the National Labour College.

"I remember one woman walking by," said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the U.S. Marines who served three tours in Iraq. "She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realised that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces."

Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement in Iraq, and how lax they were, even to the point of being virtually non-existent.

"During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot," Washburn's testimony continues. "The higher the threat the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond."

His emotionally charged testimony, like all of those in the book that covered panels addressing dehumanisation, civilian testimony, sexism in the military, veterans' health care, and the breakdown of the military, raised issues that were repeated again and again by other veterans.

"Something else we were encouraged to do, almost with a wink and nudge, was to carry 'drop weapons', or by my third tour, 'drop shovels'. We would carry these weapons or shovels with us because if we accidentally shot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body, and make them look like an insurgent," Washburn said.

Four days of searing testimony, witnessed by this writer, is consolidated into the book, which makes for a difficult read. One page after another is filled with devastating stories from the soldiers about what is being done in Iraq.

Everything from the taking of "trophy" photos of the dead, to torture and slaughtering of civilians is included.

"We're trying to build a historical record of what continues to happen in this war and what the war is really about," Glantz told IPS.

Hart Viges, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army who served one year in Iraq, tells of taking orders over the radio.

"One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation...One of the snipers replied back, 'Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?' The lieutenant colonel responded, 'You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.' After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my first experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment."

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Report: Satellite images show ethnic cleansing source of reduced Iraq violence

Published: Friday September 19, 2008

A study of the Pentagon's satellite imagery concludes that ethnic cleansing -- not last year's surge of U.S. military forces -- is the main factor in the reduction of violence in Iraq.

The report's conclusion about the surge's ineffectiveness are supported by many Iraq experts and international organizations who credit a population shift with the decline of sectarian violence, especially in Baghdad, Reuters reported.

Conducted by the University of California, the study analyzed the use of nighttime light across Baghdad and how it changed before, during and after the surge. It's findings show only some neighborhoods have higher levels of output, suggesting the others had been ethnically cleansed before the surge.

"By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left," geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.

In other words, ethnic violence did the job before American soldiers got the chance.

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