Even with all the troubles that followed, Mohammad Gulab says he's still glad he saved the U.S. Navy SEAL. "I have no regrets for what I did," the 32-year-old Afghan told NEWSWEEK recently. "I'm proud of my action." Nevertheless, he says, "I never imagined I would pay such a price." Last June, foraging for edible plants in the forest near his home in the Kunar-province village of Sabray, Gulab discovered a wounded commando, the lone survivor of a four-man squad that had been caught in a Taliban ambush. Communicating by hand signs, Gulab brought the injured stranger home, fed and sheltered him for two days and helped contact a U.S. rescue team to airlift him out.
Gulab has been paying for his kindness ever since. Al Qaeda and the Taliban dominate much of Kunar's mountainous backcountry. Death threats soon forced Gulab to abandon his home, his possessions and even his pickup truck. Insurgents burned down his little lumber business in Sabray. He and his wife and their six children moved in with his brother-in-law near the U.S. base at Asadabad, the provincial capital. Three months ago Gulab and his brother-in-law tried going back to Sabray. Insurgents ambushed them. Gulab was unhurt, but his brother-in-law was shot in the chest and nearly died. The threats persist. "You are close to death," a letter warned recently. "You are counting your last days and nights."
Gulab's story says a lot about how Al Qaeda and its allies have been able to defy four and a half years of U.S. efforts to clear them out of Afghanistan. The key is the power they wield over villagers in strongholds like Kunar, on the Pakistani frontier. For years the province has been high on the list of suspected Osama bin Laden hideouts. "If the enemy didn't have local support, they couldn't survive here," says the deputy governor, Noor Mohammed. Since the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, jihadists have been amassing influence through scare tactics, tribal loyalties and cash. A little money can purchase big leverage in an area where entire villages sometimes subsist on a few thousand dollars a year, and many foreign jihadists have insinuated themselves into the Pashtun social fabric by marrying into local families. "The enemy knows the culture and exploits it," says Col. John Nicholson, who commands U.S. forces along several hundred miles of saw-toothed borderland.
Al Qaeda effectively owns much of Kunar. "There is little or no government control over most of the mountain villages," says an Afghan intelligence officer in Asadabad, asking not to be named because of the nature of his work. Many local Afghan officials are afraid to visit their home villages. Fighters entering Kunar from Pakistan have grown increasingly brazen in their movements. "This year they are so bold, they are coming in broad daylight," says the Afghan intelligence officer. Around Gulab's home village, even the natives stay out of certain areas that have been staked off by the jihadists.
Fear wasn't enough to keep Gulab from helping the commando he found in the woods last June. The Afghan says he had heard about the previous day's ambush and knew that local insurgents were hunting an American who had escaped, but Gulab believed he had to do the right thing. Under the mountain tribes' code of honorPashtunwali, they call itthere's a sacred duty to give shelter and assistance to anyone in need. Using gestures, Gulab indicated that he meant no harm. The injured stranger signed back that he understood and lowered his automatic rifle.
Word spread fast among Gulab's neighbors that he had taken an American into the village's protection. The jihadists soon heard the same thing. Their commander, an Afghan named Qari Muhammad Ismail, sent the villagers a written demand for the fugitive. Gulab and other village men answered with a message of their own: "If you want him, you will have to kill us all." Sabray has roughly 300 households altogether. "The Arabs and Taliban didn't want to fight the village," says Gulab.
The next night, Gulab and his neighbors took their guest to a nearby cave. For two days they took turns standing guard with his weapon while a village elder traveled to the Americans in Asadabad, carrying a letter the SEAL had written and a piece of his uniform. Four days after the ambush, a U.S. military team finally arrived to secure the village. That night a helicopter carried the wounded man and Gulab to the U.S. base.
There, Gulab says, the SEAL thanked him and promised to send him $200,000 as a reward. The Afghan also claims that U.S. officers, knowing that he and his family would be in danger because of his heroism, promised to relocate them to America within two months. (The military denies such an offer was made.) All he has now is a $250-a-month job at the base as a construction laborer. "I sacrificed everything," he says. "Now no one cares."
After several requests for comment on Gulab's story, NEWSWEEK got an e-mail from Col. Jim Yonts, a public-affairs officer in Kabul. "The U.S. military undertook many positive actions toward this individual and the other Afghans of the area to show our national gratitude and respect," he wrote. "I can not discuss the issue of the U.S. Navy SEAL promising money, but I can tell you that there was never an expectation to arrange relocation for this individual or his family." The military has no authority to make such an offer, he explained. The SEAL, who remains on active duty, declined to comment via his attorney, Alan Schwartz, an "entertainment lawyer" in Santa Monica, Calif. Gulab only shakes his head: "Why would anyone else want to cooperate with the U.S. now?"
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006 05:19 ||
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This sucks,get this man and his family to the U.S.,and help his village with anything they want.
#2
It sounds like Mohammad Gulab has gotten greedy. However, it's a Newsweek article, so it's quite possible he never thought such things until the reporter talked to him... or that the reporter's pencil slipped out of control while the reporter was trying to write down exactly what Mohammad Gulab actually said, and the resulting article is translated from those squiggles. ;-)
#3
The part that rings true is the pressure the local terrorists are putting on Gulab and his villagers. That is how the Taliban came to power in the first place. The rest I'm not sure about.
#4
yeah alot got changed in translation i bet. but, if the man and his family want too come too the US , i say let them. hell we let alot of ppl who wouldn't piss on us if we where on fire here every day
#5
bring them here and set them up - they deserve nothing less, and it sends a message - we take care of our friends
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 14:58 Comments ||
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This may be small but it would help set an example, that by keeping our service men safe, we can do our best to provide reasonable security. Intelligence should atleast give him a job, but instead Gulab only shakes his head: "Why would anyone else want to cooperate with the U.S. now?"
A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb outside a compound for NATO-led troops in western Afghanistan on Saturday, killing two Afghans, officials said. Insurgents loyal to the Taliban government toppled four years ago claimed the explosion 10 metres from the gates of the Italian-led provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in the relatively calm city of Heart. The powerful blast, which was heard throughout the city, sent shards of glass flying, shattered windows of nearby houses and cracked walls, witnesses said. It left a crater in the road, which was smeared with congealed blood.
A police guard at the gate and a civilian passerby were killed, NATOs International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. Seven other Afghan civilians were wounded, one of them seriously, and an Italian national working for a government project was lightly hurt by flying glass, Captain Giorgio Buonaiuto said in the capital Kabul.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006 00:00 ||
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Four people have been killed and 14 wounded - including eight primary school students - after a warehouse exploded in southern Yemen, security officials say. Investigations are under way to determine the cause of Saturday's explosion in the warehouse in Muderiyat al-Sawadiyah, a town in al-Baydaa province, about 220km southwest of the capital, Sanaa. The building, owned by a weapons merchant, was in a residential area in the middle of the town, near Tariq Bin Ziyad elementary school.
That's a logical place to put it...
It was not known if any ammunition was in the warehouse. A security official said the owner did not have permission to store any.
So it was prob'ly a gas main or an asteroid or something...
Three homes were flattened in the early evening blast, the security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A big asteroid, then...
He said eight of the wounded were seriously hurt.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006 00:00 ||
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Work accident! :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/09/2006 0:11 Comments ||
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The building, owned by a weapons merchant, was in a residential area in the middle of the town, near Tariq Bin Ziyad elementary school
should be a short trial and hanging....but it won't happen
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 0:13 Comments ||
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AT LEAST 400 Al-Qaeda terrorist suspects double the previous estimates are at large in Britain, according to police and MI5.
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5, has said the figure could be as high as 600 if all those thought to have returned from combat training in camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere are included.
The new assessment effectively a terror audit of Britain was confirmed this weekend by one of Britains most senior police officers, who warned that shortages of trained surveillance teams were undermining attempts to monitor all the suspects.
With about 400 terrorist suspects it requires a great deal of resources to investigate them, said James Hart, police commissioner of the City of London, a prime Al-Qaeda target. Its impossible. You simply have to make intelligent guesses about who to watch. Its a bit of a lottery.
Harts words carry weight because he helped co-ordinate the response to last Julys terror attacks in London. He is also on a committee of security chiefs responsible for protecting the capital from future attacks.
The figure of 400 has emerged from a reassessment by MI5 of the terrorist threat after the July 7 suicide bombings, which killed 52 innocent people. It is double the number of suspects that Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police commissioner, said last year were potentially able to carry out attacks in Britain.
The Joint Intelligence Committee of security chiefs has already warned that Al-Qaedas campaign against Britain and other western countries has been energised by the war in Iraq. Police chiefs now believe this will last at least 20 years.
Officials say the 400 include a hard core of between 40 and 60 trained fighters with the capability and the intention to carry out attacks in Britain.
There are other Islamic extremists around the edges of the 400 who could become active terrorists at any point. MI5 has already admitted it failed to follow up evidence that the July 7 ringleader Mohammed Siddiqui Khan was involved on the fringes of a terrorist plot.
In addition, MI5 has drawn up a thermal map of terror hotspots across Britain. The threat is said to be particularly acute in the Manchester area, where police have disclosed that several suspected would-be suicide bombers have been stopped at the airport en route for Iraq.
MI5 has received funds to open offices in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and Glasgow with others planned for Wales and the southwest.
But police say they are being hindered by lack of money. Hart said: Discussions are going on about how more resources can be put into this project. There is not enough money being put into this. We should be doing much more. We are talking about the safety of the United Kingdom.
Harts comments were backed by opposition MPs. Patrick Mercer, Tory spokesman for homeland security, said the government should act straight away to increase funding for counter-terrorism.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006 05:23 ||
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AT LEAST 400 Al-Qaeda terrorist suspects --- double the previous estimates --- are at large in Britain, according to police and MI5.
Never mind that. The important thing is arresting visiting IDF officers and trying them for crimes against humanity.
#2
Make it a deportable crime (the kind where citizenship is first stripped, if necessary) to so much as belong to a terror organization... and no nonsense about "political arms." Then send them all back whence they came, with only what they were wearing when the police picked them up.
#3
I wouldn't be surprised if there were that many or more in the United States, as well. The truth is, we don't have a clue who's in our country, thanks to open borders and the civilian version of "don't ask, don't tell". Politicians! Curse them forever.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/09/2006 11:24 Comments ||
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Never mind that, OP. Ponder the Lackawanna Six, and the various gentlemen in Lodi, CA. The Lackawanna lads had been born here after the parents emigrated from Yemen, as I recall, and the Lodi gents were legally settled here after arriving from Pakistan. I hope someone is clever enough to be using that lovely relationship-linkng software (the one that's catching so many bad guys in Iraq) to connect people in-country as well. I suppose they must be though, if they know whose phonecalls to listen to...
So ... no need to change UK policy on Londonistan. Color me skeptical here.
The official inquiry into the 7 July London bombings will say the attack was planned on a shoestring budget from information on the internet, that there was no 'fifth-bomber' and no direct support from al-Qaeda, although two of the bombers had visited Pakistan.
The first forensic account of the atrocity that claimed the lives of 52 people, which will be published in the next few weeks, will say that attacks were the product of a 'simple and inexpensive' plot hatched by four British suicide bombers bent on martyrdom.
Far from being the work of an international terror network, as originally suspected, the attack was carried out by four men who had scoured terror sites on the internet. Their knapsack bombs cost only a few hundred pounds, according to the first completed draft of the government's definitive report into the blasts.
The Home Office account, compiled by a senior civil servant at the behest of Home Secretary Charles Clarke, also discounts the existence of a fifth bomber. After the bombings, police found an unused rucksack of explosives in the bombers' abandoned car at Luton station, which led to a manhunt for a missing suspect. Similarly, it found nothing to support the theory that an al-Qaeda fixer, presumed to be from Pakistan, was instrumental in planning the attacks.
A Whitehall source said: 'The London attacks were a modest, simple affair by four seemingly normal men using the internet.'
Confirmation of the nature of the attacks will raise fresh concerns over the vulnerability of Britain to an attack by small, unsophisticated groups. A fortnight after 7 July, an unconnected group of four tried to duplicate the attack, but their devices failed to detonate.
However, the findings will draw criticism for failing to address concerns as to why no action was taken against the bombers despite the fact that one of them, Mohammed Siddique Khan, was identified by intelligence officers months before the attack. A report into the attack by the Commons intelligence and security committee, which could be published alongside the official narrative, will question why MI5 called off surveillance of the ringleader of the 7 July bombings.
Patrick Mercer, shadow homeland security spokesman, said the official narrative's findings would only lead to calls for an independent inquiry to answer further questions surrounding 7 July.
He said: 'A series of reports such as this narrative simply does not answer questions such as the reduced terror alert before the attack, the apparent involvement of al-Qaeda and links to earlier or later terrorist plots.'
The official Home Office report into the attacks does, however, decide that the four suicide bombers - Siddique Khan, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer and Jermaine Lindsay - were partly inspired by Khan's trips to Pakistan, though the meeting between the four men and known militants in Pakistan is seen as ideological, rather than fact-finding.
A videotape of Mohammed Siddique Khan released after the attacks also featured footage of Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Home Office believes the tape was edited after the suicide attacks and dismisses it as evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement in the attack.
Khan is confirmed as ringleader of the attacks, though the Yorkshire-born bomber's apparent links to other suspected terrorists are not discussed for legal reasons.
The report also investigates the psychological make-up and behaviour of the four bombers during the run-up to the attack. Using intelligence compiled in the nine months since, the account paints a portrait of four British men who in effect led double lives.
It exposes how the quartet adopted an extreme interpretation of Islam, juxtaposed with a willingness to enjoy a 'western' lifestyle - in particular Jermaine Lindsay, the bomber from Berkshire.
According to the report, the attacks were largely motivated by concerns over foreign policy and the perception that it was deliberately anti-Muslim, although the four men were also driven by the promise of immortality.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006 05:10 ||
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The Home Office account, compiled by a senior civil servant
I wonder what MI-5 and -6, and the new British FBI, have to say on the subject. Also, what the American intelligence agencies, including Military Intelligence, think.
A militant attack in Chechnya, a Russian republic in the North Caucasus, killed one police officer and two civilians, the local interior ministry said Sunday.
According to the ministry, unidentified persons opened automatic fire at a car in the village of Sernovodsk in the Sunzha district of Chechnya, killing a police officer and his two relatives.
Measures have been launched to find the attackers.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006 05:50 ||
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FEDERAL police have confirmed they are aware of a Syrian-born refugee living in Sydney who is allegedly linked to the terrorism operations of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The Weekend Australian newspaper yesterday reported that Ahmad al-Hamwi had been accused of being a senior al-Qaida financier for 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, Ramzi Yousef. Mr al-Hamwi, who is also said to use the alias Abu Omar, has been living in Sydney since being granted asylum in June 1996, the newspaper said.
He is said to be related to bin Laden by marriage and allegedly was a confidant of some of the terror kingpin's closest lieutenants. An Australian Federal Police spokesman said they were aware of Mr al-Hamwi, but declined to elaborate further. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock also would not comment.
#1
FEDERAL police have confirmed they are now aware of a Syrian-born refugee living in Sydney who is allegedly linked to the terrorism operations of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Last to get the word though, the cleaning lady told 'em after she heard about it at the hair dresser..
Some worry new drive for rights will result in an ethnic civil war
DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY - For Ramazan, an elderly Kurdish businessman, the recent battles between masked Kurdish youths and Turkish police have rekindled a dream the creation of an autonomous zone for his people in Turkey, much like the one carved out of Iraq. But that dream is Turkey's worst nightmare.
While Kurds look to northern Iraq for inspiration, Turks see it as an example of what the future could bring: a collapsed central state and a brewing ethnic civil war.
Iran and Syria also are concerned that Kurds in Iraq's oil-rich north could set up an independent state if the Iraqi central government collapses serving as a rallying call for their own restless Kurdish minorities and destabilizing the entire region.
Iran's ambassador to Turkey, Firouz Dowlatabadi, warned in an interview published last week that Turkey, Iran and Syria need a joint policy on the Kurdish issue or "the U.S. will carve pieces from us for a Kurdish state."
International politics was of little concern to Ramazan as he headed into the streets upon hearing Kurdish protesters were confronting Turkish police.
The protests started late last month in Diyarbakir, the largest city in southeastern Turkey, the predominantly Kurdish region devastated by more than a decade of warfare between autonomy-seeking Kurdish guerrillas and the army.
At least 15 people were killed, and hundreds were injured and detained as the rioting spread, with mass demonstrations throughout the southeast and smaller protests in Istanbul.
"I did not throw any stone. I did not enter the clashes. I am old, you know," said Ramazan, who refused to give details about his life for fear the police could track him down. "But I went out to support the Kurdish revolution. I had to be there since I am a Kurd."
Turkey refuses to recognize Kurds as a minority, and speaking Kurdish was illegal until 1991. At the prodding of the European Union, Turkey recently has granted some cultural rights to Kurds such as limited broadcasts on television, but many say it is too little, too late.
Turks fear that increasing cultural rights could cause the country to break along ethnic lines.
Stoking that fear is the U.S.-supported Kurdish region in northern Iraq, complete with its own government and militia.
Kurds have played a key role in the new Iraqi government and are prepared to stay in a federal Iraq. But many say their real aspiration is independence.
Turkish businessmen are flocking to the area as the Kurdish economy in northern Iraq grows. Some Turkish Kurds living on the border regions are sending their children to universities in the area.
Fighting between government and rebel forces which has left 37,000 dead since 1984 largely ended after the 1999 capture of guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan but began to flare up again in 2004.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged not to give in to the rioters.
"No one should dare to test the power of the state or the nation," Erdogan said last week in an address to his party.
Many Kurds have pinned their hopes on Turkey's push to join the EU, which repeatedly has said Ankara's treatment of the Kurds will be a key determining factor in its decision on whether to accept the country. But that process could take at least a decade.
#1
*snicker* Erdogan thought he was so big and clever when he attempted to sabatoge our efforts in the war. Feeling pretty good about that now, are you, Yappy?
Now he again tries to make himself the big man by joining with two countries that are weak, despotic, ripe for civil war and on a steep downhill slide. Good thinking. Erdogan's a terrible leader and a loser. Turkey has done nothing but slide backwards from the modern world since he was elected. I predict it won't be long before the Turks tire of him and realize he is the source of all of their problems. Good riddance.
Turkish forces have killed six Kurdish fighters near the Iraqi border, and have arrested a man they believe was behind a bomb attack last July. The Anatolian news agency quoted security officials as saying on Saturday that six Kurdish militants had been killed in a military operation near the Iraqi border against members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK. The helicopter-backed operation came amid an increase in bombings in Turkey and after the worst civil unrest in the mainly Kurdish southeast for more than 10 years.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006 00:11 ||
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For a man who almost never speaks in court, al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui has managed to convey many emotions particularly the day testimony and photos about 9/11 terror victims overcame many in the room. Moussaoui smiled at descriptions of his lack of remorse, sang and taunted Americans as he left court, and affected a lack of interest in video of bodies falling from the World Trade Center towers. But he appeared as transfixed as the rest of the courtroom when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani described a young girl whose firefighter father died a hero on Sept. 11, 2001, months before her birth.
When the second phase of his sentencing trial opened Thursday, the bearded 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent seemed almost cocky particularly for a man facing a jury that will decide whether he is executed or imprisoned for life. He smiled when prosecutor Rob Spencer reminded jurors that he has displayed no remorse and testified that he was "grateful" to be included in al-Qaida's 9/11 conspiracy. When prosecutors began showing videos of the hijacked jets hitting the gleaming towers of the World Trade Center, Moussaoui smiled. As more angles were shown, he stopped watching and took a few notes. When prosecutors showed video of people who were trapped on the upper floors and jumped more than 80 stories to their deaths, Moussaoui affected an air of boredom, swaying his head from side to side and rolling his eyes.
Garbed in a green prison jumpsuit and white knit cap, Moussaoui sits alone at a small table by the wall opposite the jury apart from the court-appointed defense lawyers he despises. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has made clear that outbursts like those for which he became famous during four years of pretrial maneuvering will get him banished to a jail cell with a closed-circuit TV view of the trial. So he has behaved when the court is in session.
But when there is a recess, the marshals keep him in place until the judge and jury have left. Invariably during his three strides to the door on leaving, Moussaoui has offered a clipped commentary on events. At first they were muttered, then spoken aloud, later shouted. Midday Thursday after the crash videos, he left singing "Burn in the U.S.A." to the tune of "Born in the U.S.A.," by Bruce Springsteen, one of his favorite singers as a teenager growing up in France.
But the emotion-laden testimony about victims changed even Moussaoui's mood. Near the end of two hours of testimony, Giuliani's voice began to quake and break as he discussed his longtime aide, Beth Petrone Hatton, and her firefighter husband, Terence Hatton, a genuine hero of the New York Fire Department who led one of its elite rescue units and had earned 19 medals in 21 years. Giuliani described the "great joy and sadness" he felt when Beth Hatton telephoned him five to 10 days after Terence was killed rescuing people from the trade center with word that she was pregnant. A photo of Giuliani with the Hattons' daughter, Terry, born May 15, 2002, was shown as he testified: "Terry's going to grow up without a father ... without a very special father." Like everyone else in the courtroom, Moussaoui couldn't take his eyes off Giuliani.
He was equally attentive the rest of the afternoon as witnesses described other children who lost parents on 9/ll. His expression conveyed interest, but hid any other emotions he might have felt. Leaving court at day's end, he said, "No pain, no gain, America."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006 00:00 ||
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The Bajaur Agency political administration on Saturday launched an operation against poppy growers after a jirga failed to resolve matters. Sources said that Barang tribes had refused to cooperate with the government in destroying the poppy crop voluntarily. Reports reaching Khar, the regional headquarters of Bajaur Agency, said that a levy force supported by tribal police and tribesmen in Barang tehsil, the hub of poppy cultivation, were exchanging fire. According to eyewitnesses, both sides were using heavy weapons. However, there have been no reports of casualties on either side. The atmosphere was tense and villagers were fleeing to safer places.
Meanwhile, Haroon Rashid, member of the National Assembly from Bajaur, demanded immediate halt to the operation, saying the government was deliberately disturbing the peaceful atmosphere in the area. A senior administration official said the operation would continue until tribesmen agreed to destroy the standing poppy crop.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006 00:00 ||
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In other economic news, Dell refused to stop making computers, California farmers refused to stop producing wine, and Apple continues to produce the Ipod. General Motors, however, is considering leaving the auto industry.
#2
gotta offer them an alternative economy - no easy answers, but they need to eat/feed the families, and if poppies did it for generations, how ya gonna tell them to stop without an alternative?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 14:37 Comments ||
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I'll bet I could run a world class Blog if I had access to all the pulp magazines that Fred does.
A group of about 40 rebel tribesmen downed arms and surrendered Saturday to authorities in Balochistan, officials said. A total of 40 Bugti tribesmen including five of their commanders have surrendered with weapons and explosives in Sui, DCO Abdus Samad Lasi told AFP. They surrendered unconditionally. The government is considering offering amnesty to Bugti fighters who were not wanted for laying landmines and attacks on security forces, Lasi said. Bugtis spokesman Agha Shahid denied the allegations, and said the 40 men were robbers and had no links with the tribal elder.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006 00:00 ||
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Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was not issued a visa by the US Embassy in London to travel to New York to attend a wedding and meet party members. Sharif was planning to attend the wedding of the daughter of a close family friend, Capt Shaheen Butt, this weekend. He applied for a visitors visa at the US Embassy in London four weeks ago. Although the American embassy knew that his principal purpose in travelling to New York was to attend the wedding, it did not oblige. While the embassy did not say that it was refusing a visa, for all practical purposes, that was what it did.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006 00:00 ||
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IRAQI Kurdish leaders have officially informed the main Shiite Alliance that their rejection of Ibrahim al-Jaafari as their nomination for prime minister is final, political sources said today.
The Alliance, under growing pressure to nominate a replacement to break a deadlock over a unity government, is expected to inform other political blocs tomorrow of their final decision on Mr Jaafari, the sources said.
#2
While US forces took control of central Najef, they are keeping to Karbalas western suburbs; Sadrs men occupy the center and are building military positions.
#3
looks like sdrs' men would look at each other and wonder why they are being put up as human shields don't it, when ol fat boy sits back and talks shit
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 14:49 Comments ||
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I suspect, when push comes to shove next time, we not only intend to kill an s-load of tots, we also intend to police up a large number of Iranian agents.
It would be a spooks dream to first squeeze them dry of any intel, then play all sorts of mind games with them, maybe even turn some, finally to kick the lot back across the border.
The best outcome the Iranians could hope for was to kill them all once these agents stepped foot back in Iran. Otherwise, they could be a nightmare.
An internal staff report by the United States Embassy and the military command in Baghdad provides a sobering province-by-province snapshot of Iraq's political, economic and security situation, rating the overall stability of 6 of the 18 provinces "serious" and one "critical." The report is a counterpoint to some recent upbeat public statements by top American politicians and military officials.
The report, 10 pages of briefing points titled "Provincial Stability Assessment," underscores the shift in the nature of the Iraq war three years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Warnings of sectarian and ethnic frictions are raised in many regions, even in those provinces generally described as nonviolent by American officials.
There are alerts about the growing power of Iranian-backed religious Shiite parties, several of which the United States helped put into power, and rival militias in the south. The authors also point to the Arab-Kurdish fault line in the north as a major concern, with the two ethnicities vying for power in Mosul, where violence is rampant, and Kirkuk, whose oil fields are critical for jump-starting economic growth in Iraq.
The patterns of discord mapped by the report confirm that ethnic and religious schisms have become entrenched across much of the country, even as monthly American fatalities have fallen. Those indications, taken with recent reports of mass migrations from mixed Sunni-Shiite areas, show that Iraq is undergoing a de facto partitioning along ethnic and sectarian lines, with clashes sometimes political, sometimes violent taking place in those mixed areas where different groups meet.
The report, the first of its kind, was written over a six-week period by a joint civilian and military group in Baghdad that wanted to provide a baseline assessment for conditions that new reconstruction teams would face as they were deployed to the provinces, said Daniel Speckhard, an American ambassador in Baghdad who oversees reconstruction efforts.
The writers included officials from the American Embassy's political branch, reconstruction agencies and the American military command in Baghdad, Mr. Speckhard said. The authors also received information from State Department officers in the provinces, he said.
The report was part of a periodic briefing on Iraq that the State Department provides to Congress, and has been shown to officials on Capitol Hill, including those involved in budgeting for the reconstruction teams. It is not clear how many top American officials have seen it; the report has not circulated widely at the Defense Department or the National Security Council, spokesmen there said.
A copy of the report, which is not classified, was provided to The New York Times by a government official in Washington who opposes the way the war is being conducted and said the confidential assessment provided a more realistic gauge of stability in Iraq than the recent portrayals by senior military officers. It is dated Jan. 31, 2006, three weeks before the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, which set off reprisals that killed hundreds of Iraqis. Recent updates to the report are minor and leave its conclusions virtually unchanged, Mr. Speckhard said.
The general tenor of the Bush administration's comments on Iraq has been optimistic. On Thursday, President Bush argued in a speech that his strategy was working despite rising violence in Iraq.
Vice President Dick Cheney, on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," suggested last month that the administration's positive views were a better reflection of the conditions in Iraq than news media reports.
"I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality," Mr. Cheney said, "than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad."
In their public comments, the White House and the Pentagon have used daily attack statistics as a measure of stability in the provinces. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior military spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters recently that 12 of 18 provinces experienced "less than two attacks a day."
Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" on March 5 that the war in Iraq was "going very, very well," although a few days later, he acknowledged serious difficulties.
In recent interviews and speeches, some administration officials have begun to lay out the deep-rooted problems plaguing the American enterprise here. At the forefront has been Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, who has said the invasion opened a "Pandora's box" and, on Friday, warned that a civil war here could engulf the entire Middle East.
On Saturday, Mr. Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior military commander in Iraq, issued a statement praising some of the political and security goals achieved in the last three years, but also cautioning that "despite much progress, much work remains."
Mr. Speckhard, the ambassador overseeing reconstruction, said the report was not as dire as its assessments might suggest. "Really, this shows there's one province that continues to be a major challenge," he said. "There are a number of others that have significant work to do in them. And there are other parts of the country that are doing much better."
But the report's capsule summaries of each province offer some surprisingly gloomy news. The report's formula for rating stability takes into account governing, security and economic issues. The oil-rich Basra Province, where British troops have patrolled in relative calm for most of the last three years, is now rated as "serious."
The report defines "serious" as having "a government that is not fully formed or cannot serve the needs of its residents; economic development that is stagnant with high unemployment, and a security situation marked by routine violence, assassinations and extremism."
British fatalities have been on the rise in Basra in recent months, with attacks attributed to Shiite insurgents. There is a "high level of militia activity including infiltration of local security forces," the report says. "Smuggling and criminal activity continues unabated. Intimidation attacks and assassination are common."
The report states that economic development in the region, long one of the poorest in Iraq, is "hindered by weak government."
The city of Basra has widely been reported as devolving into a mini-theocracy, with government and security officials beholden to Shiite religious leaders, enforcing bans on alcohol and mandating head scarves for women. Police cars and checkpoints are often decorated with posters or stickers of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebellious cleric, or Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric whose party is very close to Iran. Both men have formidable militias.
Mr. Hakim's party controls the provincial councils of eight of the nine southern provinces, as well as the council in Baghdad.
In a color-coded map included in the report, the province of Anbar, the wide swath of western desert that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, is depicted in red, for "critical." The six provinces categorized as "serious" Basra, Baghdad, Diyala and three others to the north are orange. Eight provinces deemed "moderate" are in yellow, and the three Kurdish provinces are depicted in green, for "stable."
The "critical" security designation, the report says, means a province has "a government that is not functioning" or that is only "represented by a single strong leader"; "an economy that does have the infrastructure or government leadership to develop and is a significant contributor to instability"; and "a security situation marked by high levels of AIF [anti-Iraq forces] activity, assassinations and extremism."
The most surprising assessments are perhaps those of the nine southern provinces, none of which are rated "stable." The Bush administration often highlights the relative lack of violence in those regions.
For example, the report rates as "moderate" the two provinces at the heart of Shiite religious power, Najaf and Karbala, and points to the growing Iranian political presence there. In Najaf, "Iranian influence on provincial government of concern," the report says. Both the governor and former governor of Najaf are officials in Mr. Hakim's religious party, founded in Iran in the early 1980's. The report also notes that "there is growing tension between Mahdi Militia and Badr Corps that could escalate" referring to the private armies of Mr. Sadr and Mr. Hakim, which have clashed before.
The report does highlight two bright spots for Najaf. The provincial government is able to maintain stability for the province and provide for the people's needs, it says, and religious tourism offers potential for economic growth.
But insurgents still manage to occasionally penetrate the tight ring of security. A car bomb exploded Thursday near the golden-domed Imam Ali Shrine, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens.
Immediately to the north, Babil Province, an important strategic area abutting Baghdad, also has "strong Iranian influence apparent within council," the report says. There is "ethnic conflict in north Babil," and "crime is a major factor within the province." In addition, "unemployment remains high."
Throughout the war, American commanders have repeatedly tried to pacify northern Babil, a farming area with a virulent Sunni Arab insurgency, but they have had little success. In southern Babil, the new threat is Shiite militiamen who are pushing up from Shiite strongholds like Najaf and Karbala and beginning to develop rivalries among themselves.
Gen. Qais Hamza al-Maamony, the commander of Babil's 8,000-member police force, said his officers were not ready yet to intervene between warring militias, should it come to that, as many fear. "They would be too frightened to get into the middle," he said in an interview.
If the American troops left Babil, he said, "the next day would be civil war."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006 05:48 ||
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No real surprises here for readers of the Burg. Although, I haven't seen reports before that the Kurds are taking control of Mosul. However, It's an obvious development as anyone who looks at a map could foresee.
Basically the Sunnis are screwed and it will be a nice object lesson for future oppressors in a multi-ethnic/religous state.
#2
I take anything the NY Slimes says witha very large grain of salt. Some of these assessments are written with the primary purpose of being leaked to the press and causing the administration embarassment. They are never intended to reach their "official" audience.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
04/09/2006 14:00 Comments ||
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rating the overall stability of 6 of the 18 provinces "serious" and one "critical."
And from there, goes on to describe the 6 provinces (less than half, alto that is never mentioned), thus providing a "slanted" reading of the report.
I would like to know of the other 12 provinces, but the NYT thinks I don't need to know about what is happening in them.
A car bomb tore through a street crowded with pedestrians and vendors in Musayyib, a predominantly Shiite town, on Saturday, the authorities said, killing at least 6 people, wounding 21 and stoking sectarian tensions in Iraq.
The attack followed two others this week against major symbols of Shiite Islam that killed more than 80 and prompted political leaders to appeal for calm and unity.
Shortly before the attack on Saturday, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the country's dominant Shiite political bloc, urged Shiites to resist attempts by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, to ignite a civil war. He called for Iraqis of all ethnicities and sects to rally together against the threat.
"This nation will not fall into the trap of sectarian war that is being pursued by Zarqawi's groups," he told hundreds of followers who gathered outside his political headquarters in Baghdad, Reuters reported.
Hundreds of mourners marched through Shiite neighborhoods of the capital on Saturday, in funeral corteges for the victims of a triple suicide bombing at the Baratha mosque on Friday that killed at least 71 people.
Wailing and beating their chests, the mourners carried wood coffins above their heads. The dead were bound for the vast Shiite cemetery in the holy city of Najaf.
The Baratha mosque, in northern Baghdad, remained closed to worshipers on Saturday as workers continued cleaning the building. An air of hopeless dread had settled in.
"We were afraid of going out and walking in the streets," said Um Raed, 40, the owner of a beauty salon. "I decided to close the shop and go away from this place and visit my sister so that I can sort of refresh myself of all this sadness. I cannot bear this atmosphere anymore."
That mosque bombing followed a car bomb on Thursday that killed at least 10 people in Najaf.
Musayyib is a poor industrial town that lies at the fault line between the predominantly Shiite south and a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold south of Baghdad.
Insurgents have occasionally initiated attacks against residents and Shiite militias there. Last July, in one of the deadliest suicide attacks since the invasion, a man wrapped in explosives blew himself up under a fuel tanker in the center of the town, igniting a fireball that killed at least 71 people and wounded at least 156.
The police first reported that the attack on Saturday Musayyib was directed at an important Shiite mosque, but later retracted that account. The blast, which also wounded at least 21 people, was about two miles from the mosque.
Top leaders in the dominant Shiite alliance are to meet Sunday to discuss the bloc's selection of Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister in the next government, according to Redha Jowad Taki, a leader in the alliance. Mr. Jaafari's nomination has generated widespread opposition and has become the single biggest hindrance to political talks. The Associated Press reported that the leaders had agreed to hold the meeting at the urging of the country's most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The police recovered the bodies of 11 victims of killings around the country on Saturday, officials said. Seven were found in three Baghdad neighborhoods, according to an Interior Ministry official. The other four, all Iraqi contractors employed on an American military base near Tikrit, were found in the district of Hamreen, between Tikrit and Kirkuk.
A homemade bomb exploded next to a Shiite family's house in the neighborhood of Sadoun, in central Baghdad, killing two men inside the house, family members said. The family had recently fled their old home in the Dora neighborhood because of violence there.
The American military announced Saturday that a marine had died "from wounds sustained due to enemy action" in Anbar Province. Officials gave no further details.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006 05:21 ||
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As American tanks rumbled into Baghdad three years ago, Omar al-Damaluji took to the streets of the bomb-battered city with an old Canon camera and a singular mission.
An amateur photographer and civil engineering professor at Baghdad University, Damaluji crisscrossed the capital, ducking into doorways during firefights and snapping 15 rolls of film in two weeks. He knew his beloved Baghdad would never be the same, he recalled, and he wanted to document the transformation.
"This is how it looked. This is how my city looked," he said as he sat before a computer in his well-appointed study one recent afternoon, armed men manning a makeshift checkpoint on the quiet street outside. He clicked through before-and-after photographs of a government ministry, first shown with pristine white walls and a tidy yard, then with smoke billowing from a fractured roof.
"It was never a paradise," Damaluji, now 50, said with a sigh. "But Baghdad has become a wretched place."
Three years after U.S. forces swept Saddam Hussein's government from power, car bombings and political assassination are near-daily occurrences. Neighborhoods, now torn along sectarian lines, are plagued by increasingly violent militias and dysfunctional public services, and occupied by tens of thousands of foreign troops. Some analysts are beginning to compare Baghdad with another Middle Eastern capital that was synonymous with anarchy and bloodshed in the 1970s and '80s.
"In Beirut when the civil war began, you had electricity 24 hours a day and running water all the time, and the air conditioning was working, and so were the elevators," said Francois Heisbourg, a French military analyst. "In the case of Baghdad, it looks like Beirut after 10 years of civil war."
U.S. officials here have predicted that 2006 will mark the battle for Baghdad, and both insurgent attacks and the effort to stop them are increasingly focused on this city of about 7 million people. Until the situation in the capital is normalized, they say, the United States will not be able to argue that it has brought peace and stability to Iraq.
"As Baghdad goes, so goes the rest of the country," said Michael P. Fallon, head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Iraq reconstruction programs. "We are now consciously bumping up our efforts in the Baghdad area."
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said that "if you think like the enemy," the issues would be: "Where is the center of gravity for the people of Iraq? Where do I focus my effort? Where are my attacks going to have the most significant effects worldwide? So he's focused on Baghdad."
Referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, Lynch said, "We're convinced that Zarqawi now is zooming in on Baghdad." And so is the United States. "There is indeed a focused effort on Baghdad, both for security and improvement of the basic conditions in Baghdad, so that by the end of 2006 you see a markedly different city," Lynch said.
When U.S. troops arrived here on April 9, 2003, they found a giddy and apprehensive capital and a weary populace that appeared willing to give them a chance. U.S. officials predicted that American troops would be welcomed as liberators and that the transfer of authority to new Iraqi leaders would be quick. Instead, a powerful anti-U.S. insurgency took root, led in part by homegrown backers of Hussein and in part by foreign fighters loyal to Zarqawi.
Baghdad has borne the brunt of the bloodshed. According to a January tally by Iraq Body Count, a British antiwar group, more than 20,000 people have been killed in Baghdad since the March 2003 invasion, accounting for almost 60 percent of the group's estimate of civilian deaths throughout Iraq. Roughly a quarter of the 2,350 U.S. military deaths in Iraq have occurred in the capital.
Since the beginning of this year, there have been more than 2,500 violent incidents in Baghdad, according to statistics supplied by the U.S. military. They include more than 900 roadside bombings -- about 10 per day -- at least 84 car bombs, 70 cases of people firing rocket-propelled grenades, 55 drive-by shootings, hundreds of small-arms attacks and political and sectarian assassinations, and dozens of mortar, grenade and sniper attacks.
"Weapons are spread in huge quantities among people. Strangers come from other areas to shoot and kill," said Ahmed Salah, 28, a lawyer in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiyah. "To protect ourselves, people of our neighborhood started guarding the areas at night."
In the most visible sign of the breakdown in law and order, unmarked cars with plainclothes gunmen hanging out the windows are commonplace. Members of private Western security companies, with no authority but their guns, commandeer entire roads, threatening to fire on anyone who approaches. Sectarian and ethnic militias control large neighborhoods, sometimes dressed in uniforms of the country's security forces. Gunfire routinely breaks the silence; virtually no one is held accountable when someone is shot. On Saturday, an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew was scheduled.
U.S. military officials say that foreign fighters and terrorists, particularly those tied to Zarqawi, are the source of most of the violence in Baghdad. They contend that his strategy of targeting Shiite Muslim civilians to try to precipitate a civil war is backfiring and that the eventual formation of a new national unity government with Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni Arab political parties will diminish his disruptive power. Furthermore, the U.S. military is providing extensive training and mentoring to thousands of Iraqi policemen, hoping they will fill the city's security vacuum and gain the confidence of the people, who otherwise will turn to militias to protect them.
"This is really, in the grand scheme of things, what needs to happen here," said Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who oversees training of the Iraqi police. Once it does, he said, foreign investment will pick up, creating jobs for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men in Baghdad who are potential recruits for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The most treacherous parts of Baghdad are the south and west, Sunni Arab enclaves where sympathy for the insurgency is strong. The U.S. commander in western Baghdad, Col. Jeffrey Snow, of the Army's 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, said violence has ebbed and flowed during his eight months in Iraq. Lately, he said, Shiite militias have intensified attacks against Sunni civilians and armed groups.
But like many American commanders, Snow says security in his area of operation is not as bad as perceived. "A lot of folks would like to say we're on the verge of civil war, but that is not consistent with my opinion," he said in a recent interview. Iraq's security forces are making steady progress, he said, and Muslim clerics in his area, with whom he maintains close relations, have consistently called for calm.
In response to what he described as a population that by and large still feels uneasy, Snow said, his unit has begun conducting weekly and sometimes daily public opinion surveys. Among the standard form's 10 questions: "In what area do you think the security forces should focus its efforts to provide better security?" And "Do you know where the terrorists are in this area? If yes, where?"
While acknowledging that many people might not tell him the truth, Snow said the responses allow him to focus attention where it is needed most. "We have seen an improvement in people's perceptions of their own security since we began doing this," he said.
But while many Baghdad residents say security is the most important issue to be addressed, other concerns are not far behind. Virtually all public services -- particularly water, sewerage and electricity -- are functioning at levels worse than before the war, despite billions of dollars spent on reconstruction. Gasoline lines stretch for miles, despite the country's vast oil reserves. The city is a maze of no-go zones, with miles of 15-foot-high concrete barriers and dozens of streets that are closed by sandbags, gates, Jersey barriers and armed guards.
"Statistics show that billions have been spent on Baghdad, but most of the money goes into small, day-to-day projects that will have no impact, and we consider it lost," Mayor Sabir al-Isawi said in an interview at his spacious office in Baghdad's city hall, known as Amanat. He said that about 10 city employees are killed each week, and that trash collection and other public services cannot be provided in some neighborhoods.
"These projects leave a bad impression about Americans," he said.
Many independent analysts here say they do not believe that Baghdad or Iraq has descended into the kind of full-blown civil war in which sectarian militias engage in gun battles and artillery duels and residents pack up and move in massive numbers. The key to avoiding such a scenario, the analysts said, will be the ability of Iraq's newly formed and largely untested army not to fracture along sectarian lines and to remain loyal to the nation rather than to individual factions.
"We have a low-level civil war that could spin further out of control and escalate, with militias directly attacking each other with heavy weapons and the army fracturing along ethnic lines and joining the fray," said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq analyst with the nongovernmental International Crisis Group in Amman, Jordan.
"Despite the bad security situation, I am optimistic," said Ali Hussein, 46, who lives in the Amiriyah neighborhood in western Baghdad. Salaries have gone up since the U.S. invasion, he said, and the Iraqi army is improving. "Everything comes gradually. People should know that what is happening is not easy. It takes time."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006 05:15 ||
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#2
Seals' fur, gromgoru? Sounds fascinating, but a bit obscure for me to understand.
Separately, MSNBC's news amalgamator must be giggling with relief today, at all the article he found (this one came from the Washington Post) describing the disaster we've created over there. It sounds like the good professor who opens the article, however expert with a camera, never had a daughter at risk from the attentions of Uday or Qusay, or a son who got up the nose of Saddam Husseins minions, nor knew anyone who did. How fortunate for him to have been able to remain so happily ignorant.
Some analysts are beginning to compare Baghdad with another Middle Eastern capital that was synonymous with anarchy and bloodshed in the 1970s and '80s. And there's the buried lede, at the end of paragraph five.
#5
Iraq the Model claims the Mosque attack earlier this week was ordered by "outside forces" and carried out by Zarqawi, to promote civil war. He also says that Sadr is "picking a fight" with the US to increase sectarian tension and force the outbreak of civil war.
In any situation, whoever controls Baghdad will eventually control the country. Jafaari has to leave, and Sadr and his militia crushed, if any stability is going to be achieved. When we do crush Sadr, it absolutely MUST be a joint effort between the US and the Iraqi army, or we go back to square one and start over. Regardless of who does what, Sadr and his Iranian-backed militia have to be totally crushed before there can be ANY peace in Iraq.
(Prepared at 10:30AM, Sunday, Apr 9, but unable to upload to Rantburg. Will continue to try)
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/09/2006 13:12 Comments ||
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A car bomb killed at least six Shi'ite pilgrims south of Baghdad on Saturday, the latest in a wave of attacks that had prompted a fresh warning against civil war in Iraq.
The blast in the Shi'ite town of Musayib also wounded 16 people, said police Captain Muthana al-Ma'amouri.
Enraged town residents at the scene of the blast threw stones at U.S. troops in Humvees who fired warning shots in the air. One man also blamed fractious Iraqi leaders, who are struggling to form a government four months after elections.
"This is because of the Americans. It is their doing while (our) politicians just sit in their seats of power. Is this what they call a democracy?," he yelled as people picked up thick pieces of shrapnel.
Just two hours earlier, powerful Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim had urged his followers to stand firm against what he called an al Qaeda campaign to ignite sectarian civil war with bombings like one on Friday that killed at least 70 people.
That triple suicide bombing at the Buratha mosque in Baghdad, the biggest single suicide attack on a Shi'ite target since November 2005, raised fresh fears of a full-blown communal conflict, with the United States, Britain and the United Nations quickly urging Iraqi unity.
On Thursday, a car bomb near one of the world's most sacred Shi'ite shrines killed at least 15 people in the southern town of Najaf.
Hakim's speech, delivered on the anniversary of the execution of top Shi'ite cleric Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister by Saddam Hussein, called for unity between Iraq's main Shi'ite, Kurdish and Arab Sunni communities.
But he also reminded majority Shi'ites of their decades of suffering under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime and urged them to resist attempts by the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, to plunge the country into open civil war.
"(Sunni) militants and insurgents want to return Iraq to Saddam's formula," said Hakim, leader of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a party in the ruling Shi'ite Alliance.
"This nation will not fall into the trap of sectarian war that is being pursued by Zarqawi's groups."
Sectarian tensions have been rising since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine on February 22 touched off reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.
Hundreds of bodies of people shot or strangled have turned up on Baghdad streets bound, blindfolded and showing signs of torture.
The latest bombs provided more proof that Iraqi leaders deadlocked over a government are unable to tackle the bloodshed which is consuming the country.
Hakim's Alliance is under intense pressure to replace Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its nominee for prime minister to break the deadlock over postwar Iraq's first full-term government.
But Jaafari, who is the serving prime minister, refuses to step aside despite calls from Sunni and Kurdish leaders who say he has failed in office, and even from within his own Alliance.
Hakim said repeatedly that Zarqawi and Saddam loyalists would fail to derail the political process. But he could offer no clear timetable on the formation of a government.
"After the guidelines of the (Shi'ite) religious establishment, we will proceed to form a national unity government as soon as possible," he said.
Interior Minister Bayan Jabor has said he was confident that Zarqawi was no longer a serious threat. But Western intelligence sources disagree and Hakim seems just as concerned as ever, saying the whole region would suffer if he is not defeated.
"The battle of today is not just an Iraqi battle. Other countries will suffer and in the future there will be more suffering," he said. "These militant groups oppose all Arab rulers."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006 05:14 ||
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A car bomb killed at least six Shia pilgrims south of Baghdad on Saturday, the latest in a wave of attacks that had prompted a fresh warning against civil war in Iraq. The blast near a Shia shrine in the town of Musayib also wounded 16 people, said police Captain Muthana al-Maamouri.
Just two hours earlier, powerful Shia leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim had urged his followers to stand firm against what he called an Al Qaeda campaign to ignite sectarian civil war with bombings like one on Friday that killed at least 70 people. That triple suicide bombing at the Buratha mosque in Baghdad, the biggest single suicide attack on a Shia target since November 2005, raised fresh fears of a full-blown communal conflict, with the United States, Britain and UN quickly urging Iraqi unity.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006 00:00 ||
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THE festering refugee camp of Khan Yunis, where the stench of sewage hangs over potholed dirt roads and concrete blockhouses crowded with 270,000 Palestinians, has long been fertile soil for radical groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Now there are growing indications it is also becoming a breeding ground for Al-Qaeda.
Palestinian security officials claim to have growing evidence that Osama Bin Ladens terror network, which has hitherto shown little interest in Gaza and the West Bank, is recruiting among the angry young men who see little beyond a future of attacking Israel.
The organisation has been helped by the lawlessness that has engulfed the Palestinian territories since Hamas emerged as the surprise winner of parliamentary elections on January 25 and formed a government.
There is such despair in Gaza: some are ready to sacrifice anything and this creates fertile soil for growing Al-Qaeda, said Ashraf Juma, a former Fatah fighter who spent 18 years in Israeli prisons and is now a Palestinian legislator representing Rafah a city that like nearby Khan Yunis is an ideal recruitment area.
They support Al-Qaeda because they are angry at the American support for Israel and they see Al-Qaeda hurting the Americans. We have a proverb to describe this: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, has denounced Hamas for taking part in elections under Israeli occupation and claimed that Palestinians had other choices taken as a reference to his organisation.
Analysts believe that, as its fortunes wane in Iraq, Al-Qaeda thinks some form of coup in Gaza or the West Bank could help it increase support across the Middle East, where the fate of the Palestinians is a symbol of the wider Arab cause.
Any group that wants to fight will have no problem finding weapons; Gaza is awash with guns. Hamass policy on rooting out Al-Qaeda is contradictory. Security forces charged with tracking down the organisation have no guidelines and Hamas has said it will not arrest anyone resisting Israel. Meanwhile police officers have not been paid for March and there is scant prospect of any wages arriving soon.
No one knows what is the security policy of the interior minister, said Samir Masharawi, head of Fatah in Gaza, who liaises between the various Palestinian factions and hopes he will not have to add Al-Qaeda to his list.
Hamass main strategy has been resistance and jihad, and now they are the government, they are embarrassed to say we should arrest those who are making attacks (on Israel).
Even he is worried; the interview, conducted in his house, was punctuated by the sound of shells fired into Gaza by Israeli tanks just across the border.
The treasury is empty: Hamas needs £68.8m to pay 140,000 government workers. The Americans, Canadians and Europeans have cut funding to try to pressure the organisation into moderating its outright rejection of an Israeli state.
The lack of direction from the top was a cause of black humour at Gazas central police station last week, where they joked that the only word they had heard from Said al-Siyam, the new interior minister, was that they should grow beards.
The laughter stopped when gunfire erupted all around: I was hustled inside while police fired back at their assailants, only to shout stop firing when they realised they were fellow policemen. We have other things to worry about, as you see, said Abdul Rahman, an officer.
It is almost impossible to underestimate the extent of the lawlessness that now reigns. Last month two families went to war over a donkey that kicked and damaged a car. The death toll had reached six by the time they ended their feud.
It is difficult to get concrete answers on policy from Hamas beyond details such as the beard directive. In an interview over cups of sweet coffee, Ismail Haniya, the prime minister and supposed moderate face of the party, said he wanted to focus on civil affairs such as disorder and tribal conflicts.
But there was no public budging from Hamass refusal to recognise Israel, although privately the organisation has conceded that it could negotiate on the basis of the borders of 1967, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza, but it needs time to win over its members.
Would Hamas agree to a two-state solution? Before we negotiate with Israel, we need to know on what basis, he said. We want a Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital. Even the translator was foxed. Did that mean Hamas agreed to a two-state solution? I didnt say that. Haniya was clear, however, in his denunciation of the West. The decisions taken by the American administration and the West have only one aim, to blackmail our government.
While Hamas fiddles, the clock is ticking in Israel. Ehud Olmert, the new prime minister, has made it clear that unless Hamas recognises Israel and renounces violence he will largely withdraw from the West Bank, while setting borders that run deep into the occupied territory to take in large Jewish settlements.
There is predictable schadenfreude among members of the former Fatah administration, who were constantly undermined by Hamass attacks on Israel before the group took over the administration.
Hamas is acting as if it is isolated on the moon and can keep two identities, government and opposition, said Rashid abu Shabak, a Fatah leader appointed last week by President Mahmoud Abbas, despite Hamass furious objections, as security director for the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas jumped overnight from being the group that attacked Israel to the government that has to arrest people who do that.
In the meantime, as the occupied territories slip deeper into chaos, Yusef al-Siam, the preventive security chief of Rafah, is worried that he has less to do.
Had his work become more difficult as the situation deteriorates? Im less busy, he said. I used to arrest Hamas. Now theyre the government.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006 05:12 ||
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Witnesses named the senior commander as Eyad Abu Al-Ein of the PRC. Abu Al-Ein, who is also a bomb maker, had brought his daughter and son to watch training exercises at the base.
Medics said his son, 5, was killed and his wife was seriously injured. They had earlier said his daughter had been killed, but later the family identified the dismembered body as the son, medics added.
Such a lovely family outing. "Come children, Daddy's giong to take you to work and teach you to blow up joooooos." And the dead kids are somehow Israel's fault.
Jordan should reopen immediately its border to Palestinian refugees fleeing from violence in Iraq, and the international community should aid in their resettlement in third countries acceptable to them, a leading US human rights group said Friday. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said that more than a hundred Palestinians have been stranded on the Iraqi side of the border with Jordan after fleeing lethal violence and threats to their lives in Baghdad. Jordan closed its border to all traffic after these Iraqi Palestinians crossed into no mans land on March 19 and attempted to reach Jordan, the organization said in a statement. Jordan argues that it is already hosting thousands of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, and says that it is unable to cope with more, it said.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006 00:00 ||
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Yeah, like that'll happen.
I think the King there likes living too much.
Why don't the "human rights" clowns take them in? Put your money where your mouths are, assholes.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/09/2006 0:14 Comments ||
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#2
settle them in Saoodi then
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 0:15 Comments ||
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#3
How about opening its borders to the West Bank Paleos?
AN ISRAELI missile strike killed six Palestinian militants at a training camp in Gaza, medics said, hours after two Palestinian gunmen died in a similar raid that Israel said was aimed at rocket launchers. The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted a camp used by militants affiliated with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group. Palestinian witnesses said the Abu el-Reesh Brigades, an armed wing of Fatah, had used the camp to train their militants.
Medics said the strike killed six people. Witnesses saw three bodies being brought to a hospital morgue, while two more Palestinians were treated for injuries sustained in the blast. Earlier in the day, an Israeli air strike killed two gunmen of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, also part of Fatah. Israel has in recent weeks pounded Gaza with missile strikes and artillery shelling against what it says are militants involved in rocket attacks against the Jewish state, which have increased in recent weeks.
#2
Israel has in recent weeks pounded Gaza with missile strikes and artillery shelling against what it says are militants involved in rocket attacks against the Jewish state, which ____ have increased in recent weeks.
Indonesian police found 40 homemade bombs in a graveyard in the eastern part of Central Sulawesi province that has been plagued by religious violence in recent years, officials said Sunday.
The bombs were found at a public cemetery in Poso district town, and consisted of ammonium nitrate, fuses and batteries. They could have been detonated by a timing device, said Poso police chief Lieutenant Colonel Rudi Sufahriadi.
"The bombs could be the remains of devices from the past conflict," Sufahriadi said, adding that the police bomb-squad had deactivated the explosives.
Poso, about 1,650 kilometres northeast of Jakarta, and nearby regions have been wracked by communal clashes between Muslim and Christian communities, leaving more than 1,000 dead in 2000 and 2001.
Religious-related violence eased in 2002 after Muslim and Christian leaders signed a peace accord in late 2001. But sporadic bombings and killings, mostly targeting the Christian community, have still occurred since then.
In late May of last year, two powerful blasts ripped through an open market in the Tentena sub-district of Poso, killing at least 22 people and injuring more than 70.
On late October, unidentified assailants attacked a group of Christian high school girls, beheading three and seriously wounding another.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but Central Sulawesi has roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Christians.
Members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist group blamed for a series of bloody bombings in Jakarta and on Bali island in recent years, are believed to be active in the region.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006 05:58 ||
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Tehran, Iran, Apr. 09 Iran said on Sunday that it shot down an unmanned spy plane from Iraq in the south of the country. This plane had lifted off from Iraq and was busy filming the border regions, the semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami wrote.
The planes structural markings and systems have given officials information, the report added, without elaborating. There have been reports that the United States has been secretly sending unmanned surveillance planes into Iran to gather intelligence about the countrys nuclear sites.
Wonder if they used a super-secret, radar-evading slingshot to bring it down?
#1
Well, ya...I'm sure we are buzzing all over these sites.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/09/2006 15:22 Comments ||
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#2
How much they might learn from a downed UAV very much depends on which model they got. The high-altitude Global Hawks have some of the most sophisticated sensor systems, but are beyond their reach so far as I know. OTOH if they got a Shadow, which is a tactical level asset, much of the sensors are commercial off-the-shelf equipment.
And of course there are the platoon level small UAVs, but I doubt they would be sent across the border except during actual operations - in which case our troops would be there too.
So, most likely the "information" claim is BS, other than to help them price-shop on the internet for digital videocams .....
#3
Most likely it was a shadow (or equivalent). They're useful as heck, but not the most mecanicaly or electronicly reliable. Wound up crashing almost all the airfraimes we had by the end of tour. We lost one (jul-aug) while near the Iranian border last year. Later (nov 2005?) the MMs anounced the capture of a "spy plane". From the published photos, I think it was that one.
Anyhoo, I would chalk this up to another shadow (or its equivalent) biting the dust. Write off another $20,000. Guess AAI gets another order.
Posted by: N guard ||
04/09/2006 16:01 Comments ||
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#7
Can't we put plastique on board, and blow them by radio signal if we lose them over hostile territory?
No point to it, really. W/O a live pilot to put on "trial", nobody realy cares about the hardware. The most expensive part of the uav is the Flir camera, and it is usualy crunched beyond recoverability/exploitability by the crash landing. The airframe and engine is just a "toy" that is available to any wealthy hobbyist. The electronix are usualy cheep.
Remember, all the realy classified stuff is either in the control van in (I hope) friendly territory, or is electronic info on a memory chip that will go away when power is lost.
Most of the time, these brigade/division level uavs are flying over friendly troops, and any destruct charge is more of a hazard than a help. It would be an administrative nightmare (time, training and $$$) to maintain.
Lastly, most of these small to mid size uavs simply do not have the spare payload to carry a 10-20 lbs charge. I, for one would rather have any spare payload go into fuel for more endurance, or as a distant second, some backup systems to insure the damn thing will actualy make it home if something breaks.
Posted by: N guard ||
04/09/2006 18:18 Comments ||
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#8
Every ounce of explosives put aboard means one less ounce of sensors/fuel/batteries etc.
Not worth it. Let 'em find our wrecks. It's not like they can use them against us.
#9
CT - possibly, but there is a pretty severe tradeoff between weight and time in the air. Unless the sensor systems are quite advanced and classified, it's more advantageous to be able to fly them longer most of the time than to blow them up if damaged. At least for the fixed wing UAVs, it's the sensors and perhaps some basic avionics that potentially are of great intel interest but as I noted, with the Shadows much of the payload is off the shelf stuff.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 07 Irans State Security Forces (SSF) tied a young man to a wall in Tehran on charges of causing trouble, the government-run news agency Fars reported on Friday.
If he had been a she, they would have hung her.
The man, who was identified only by his first name Mohammad, was 24 years old according to the report which also carried photos of him being tied to the wall. Mohammad was arrested Thursday afternoon in Tehrans Khavaran district on the charge of hooliganism, the report said. After being taken to a local police station, the SSF chief in greater Tehran ordered him tied to a wall as part of the police strategy of introducing trouble-makers to the public, it added.
Iranian officials often refer to millions of unemployed young men, who are largely beset by frustration and despair, as trouble-makers.
Straight out of the Soviet dictionary.
The report added that on Wednesday, a trouble-maker from another district of Tehran was street-paraded. Authorities frequently parade youths, forced to sit backwards on donkeys, in their local neighbourhood so as to embarrass and humiliate them. Such punishments are often used for petty crimes such as alcohol consumption, disregarding nightly curfews, and disrespect towards security agents.
There was also a separate report that authorities went ahead with tying a teenager to a tree in public in Tehran on Thursday. The 18-year-old, identified only by his first name Mostafa, was tied to a tree in public in the Iranian capitals district of Razi for four hours. Mostafa was also accused of being a trouble-maker.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2006 00:17 ||
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#1
Heh. Must've been one hell of a firesale they cut with Putin - even the headgear's Soviet surplus, lol.
System's been stable since I kicked the BVOE.de people out. We're still under attack by someone from bt.net in the UK. They've been hammering us for about 36 hours now. Eventually they'll go away, I think, since they're just bouncing off the iptables. So we seem to have weathered that crisis.
I spoke too soon. We're still being hammered on port 80 as of 12.30. I've blocked one IP address is Illinois, and I'm trying to run down the rest. This is getting tiresome.
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
04/09/2006 6:38 Comments ||
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#5
The things we've all learnt since Rantburg came on-line! Fred, your brain must be as big as a house by now. My thanks to you and our colourful moderators for continuing to shoulder the burden to keep this wonderful place open for business.
#7
You know (and you didn;t hear this from me) there are places on the web where you can download "email bombs" that can be targeted on these bastards.
Not that I would condone such activities, but there are lots of other little "hacker attack" programs that could cause these sobs no end of their own problems.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb outside a compound for NATO-led troops in western Afghanistan on Saturday, killing two Afghans, officials said. Insurgents loyal to the Taliban government toppled four years ago claimed the explosion 10 metres from the gates of the Italian-led provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in the relatively calm city of Heart. The powerful blast, which was heard throughout the city, sent shards of glass flying, shattered windows of nearby houses and cracked walls, witnesses said. It left a crater in the road, which was smeared with congealed blood. 
Four people have been killed and 14 wounded - including eight primary school students - after a warehouse exploded in southern Yemen, security officials say. Investigations are under way to determine the cause of Saturday's explosion in the warehouse in Muderiyat al-Sawadiyah, a town in al-Baydaa province, about 220km southwest of the capital, Sanaa. The building, owned by a weapons merchant, was in a residential area in the middle of the town, near Tariq Bin Ziyad elementary school. 
FEDERAL police have confirmed they are aware of a Syrian-born refugee living in Sydney who is allegedly linked to the terrorism operations of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The Weekend Australian newspaper yesterday reported that Ahmad al-Hamwi had been accused of being a senior al-Qaida financier for 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, Ramzi Yousef. Mr al-Hamwi, who is also said to use the alias Abu Omar, has been living in Sydney since being granted asylum in June 1996, the newspaper said. 
Turkish forces have killed six Kurdish fighters near the Iraqi border, and have arrested a man they believe was behind a bomb attack last July. The Anatolian news agency quoted security officials as saying on Saturday that six Kurdish militants had been killed in a military operation near the Iraqi border against members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK. The helicopter-backed operation came amid an increase in bombings in Turkey and after the worst civil unrest in the mainly Kurdish southeast for more than 10 years.
The 
A group of about 40 rebel tribesmen downed arms and surrendered Saturday to authorities in Balochistan, officials said. A total of 40 Bugti tribesmen including five of their commanders have surrendered with weapons and explosives in Sui, DCO Abdus Samad Lasi told AFP. They surrendered unconditionally. The government is considering offering amnesty to Bugti fighters who were not wanted for laying landmines and attacks on security forces, Lasi said. Bugtis spokesman Agha Shahid denied the allegations, and said the 40 men were robbers and had no links with the tribal elder.
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was not issued a visa by the US Embassy in London to travel to New York to attend a wedding and meet party members. Sharif was planning to attend the wedding of the daughter of a close family friend, Capt Shaheen Butt, this weekend. He applied for a visitors visa at the US Embassy in London four weeks ago. Although the American embassy knew that his principal purpose in travelling to New York was to attend the wedding, it did not oblige. While the embassy did not say that it was refusing a visa, for all practical purposes, that was what it did.
A car bomb killed at least six Shia pilgrims south of Baghdad on Saturday, the latest in a wave of attacks that had prompted a fresh warning against civil war in Iraq. The blast near a Shia shrine in the town of Musayib also wounded 16 people, said police Captain Muthana al-Maamouri. 
THE festering refugee camp of Khan Yunis, where the stench of sewage hangs over potholed dirt roads and concrete blockhouses crowded with 270,000 Palestinians, has long been fertile soil for radical groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Now there are growing indications it is also becoming a breeding ground for Al-Qaeda.
Jordan should reopen immediately its border to Palestinian refugees fleeing from violence in Iraq, and the international community should aid in their resettlement in third countries acceptable to them, a leading US human rights group said Friday. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said that more than a hundred Palestinians have been stranded on the Iraqi side of the border with Jordan after fleeing lethal violence and threats to their lives in Baghdad. Jordan closed its border to all traffic after these Iraqi Palestinians crossed into no mans land on March 19 and attempted to reach Jordan, the organization said in a statement. Jordan argues that it is already hosting thousands of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, and says that it is unable to cope with more, it said.
AN ISRAELI missile strike killed six Palestinian militants at a training camp in Gaza, medics said, hours after two Palestinian gunmen died in a similar raid that Israel said was aimed at rocket launchers. The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted a camp used by militants affiliated with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group. Palestinian witnesses said the Abu el-Reesh Brigades, an armed wing of Fatah, had used the camp to train their militants.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 09 Iran said on Sunday that it shot down an unmanned spy plane from Iraq in the south of the country. This plane had lifted off from Iraq and was busy filming the border regions, the semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami wrote.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 07 Irans State Security Forces (SSF) tied a young man to a wall in Tehran on charges of causing trouble, the government-run news agency Fars reported on Friday.
