Category: Europe

Last night I mentioned a leaked British memo regarding planned troop reductions. I put forth that, even if the memo was valid, its subject material should be considered tentatively optimistic. Well, that has proven accurate.

A leaked British Defence Ministry memorandum has confirmed that London and Washington hope to reduce troop strengths in Iraq next year – but also reveals some of the problems.

The memo does not indicate that basic policy has changed or will change. This is that the troops will be there “as long as is needed”.

But the plan is that not so many will be needed.

The authenticity of the memo has been confirmed by the British Defence Secretary John Reid, who signed it.

He has called it an [sic] “scenarios” document, but it was prepared for the cabinet committee on defence and foreign policy and it demonstrates how seriously the British government is considering how to reduce its commitment.

These are the hopes:

• British troops could be reduced from 8,500 now to 3,000 by the middle of next year.
• US troops could be cut from 176,000 to 60,000.

These are the problems:

Everything depends on handing over security to Iraqi control. This in turn depends on the build-up, training and ability of Iraqi security forces.

A handover should happen in two British-controlled provinces, Muthanna and Maysan, in October and the two others, Dhi Qar and Basra, in April 2006.

In the far more dangerous US sector, where most of the fighting is taking place, there are also plans to place security in Iraqi hands in most of the provinces next year.

However – and it is a big however, especially in the US sector – the memo indicates strong disagreements within military staffs about the wisdom of this planning.

The Pentagon and the US Central Command are said to favour large cuts, while local American commanders are more doubtful. These on-the-ground officers feel it is too soon to think about such reductions.

The piece goes on to look at the political pressures, obvious though they may be, that drove the sunshine-on-my-shoulders best-case-scenario memo, as well as the inherent risks to such a sizable early withdrawal.

As for me, I’m in favor of either a complete withdrawal or an increase in forces, or somewhere in between, depending on the actual situation on the ground at the time. I’m certainly against any scheduled withdrawal written in stone, though I would hope that our governments and militaries are planning for all reasonable contingencies.

It was certainly bad enough that, through a bloody terror strike, al Queda was able to gut Spain, affecting the country’s elections and precipitating an early withdrawal of Spanish forces from the Iraqi theater. Adding insult to injury, the terror network continued to abuse the nation, using it as a conduit to move jihadists into the same battleground Spain had fled. Now, Spain has made a move to cut the terror flow through its nation.

The Spanish Interior Ministry said Wednesday that the police had arrested 16 people on charges of involvement with Islamic terrorism, including 11 men suspected by the police of having worked for a network that provided recruits for the insurgency in Iraq.

Spain, which is described by terrorism experts here as a major logistical center for Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Europe, was not thought to be a significant supplier of fighters for the Iraq insurgency.

But the announcement on Wednesday suggests that the flow through Spain of recruits to Iraq may be heavier than previously estimated, at least publicly.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the 11 men, most of them Moroccans and Algerians, had recruited Islamic fighters for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant leader who is America’s most wanted man in Iraq, and for Ansar al-Islam, a group of mostly Kurdish guerrillas who are suspected of collaborating with Zarqawi.

“The activities of this Islamist network centered on the recruitment and sending of jihadists to Iraq with the goal of committing suicide terrorist activities against the coalition forces,” the ministry statement said.

Officials asserted that the network appeared to have been directed from Syria, although its activities were largely financed locally through drug trafficking, document fraud and robbery.

The ministry also announced Wednesday that the police had arrested five more suspects in the 2004 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and wounded at least 1,000. That attack, which Spanish investigators say was carried out by Islamic militants with ties to Al Qaeda, has led to the arrests of more than 100 people and the jailing of about 25.

This is a possibly significant achievement, especially if Spain follows up the arrests with a successful haul of intelligence. I would like to point out, however, that the success probably is not nearly grand as it sounds — the country is merely treating symptoms of the Islamist movement within its borders, having already run away from the attempt in Iraq to provide an alternative to the Arab world, a possible last ditch to salvage a huge chunk of the world’s population from falling hopelessly into sheer barbarism and madness.

This kind of success, while dramatic and helpful, is fleeting. Al Queda will find other ways to move its jihadists, much as the human nervous system can sometimes find alternate routes when nerve pathways are severed. Unfortunately for Spain and the rest of Europe, other paths already exist and this one will be replaced, thus making it obvious that simply treating local symptoms of radical Islam while ignoring the global disease is not enough. That, and it may eventually be painful and deadly to those only trying to police the waypoints of jihad within their borders, as the article points out ominously.

In describing the men suspected of ties with the insurgency in Iraq, the Interior Ministry’s statement said that several had already vowed to carry out suicide attacks in the name of Islam, a fact that “highlights the extreme radicalism and the danger of most of those arrested in this operation.”

The statement also suggested that the men were prepared to carry out attacks before reaching Iraq, and perhaps even before leaving Spain. “Several members,” it said, were “willing to commit a suicide terrorist act as soon as the leaders of the organization ordered it.”

Pain and blood will come again to Europe via the Islamists. I hold it as a certainty. This is not a game where the sidelines are safe. This is not a game at all.

Chad has more at In the Bullpen.

Ah, the French. Why do they, as a nation, make it so easy to question their fortitude?

France, which denied it paid a ransom to win the release of French journalist held in Iraq, refused Monday to give any details that led to winning freedom for the reporter and her Iraqi guide after five months of captivity.

Florence Aubenas and Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, who were freed Sunday, had been missing since Jan. 5, when they were seen leaving Aubenas’ hotel in Baghdad. French officials have never identified the kidnappers, although authorities in both France and Iraq suggested they were probably seeking money rather than pressing a political agenda.

Despite mounting calls for the government to explain how the releases were achieved, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy refused to identify the captors, because he said they are still holding other people.

“I can say absolutely nothing about that,” Douste-Blazy said on RTL radio. “There are still some hostages in the place of detention where Florence and Hussein were a few hours ago.”

Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said France paid no ransom.

“There was absolutely no request for money,” Cope said on Europe-1 radio. “No ransom was paid.”

Former Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, who worked the case until leaving the government this month, also said there was no ransom.

But questions persisted.

“Now the time of joy is over, the time for explanations has come,” said Annick Lepetit, a spokeswoman for the main opposition Socialist Party. “The public authorities, the president, the government must explain themselves.”

If there are legitimate questions, they deserve to be answered. Note I said if. There is nothing in this article, other than a lack of forthcoming, that suggests the French government would acquiesce to a foe. There is, however, history.

The article does go on to allow Aubenas to be praised to a silly degree.

Liberation director Serge July, in an editorial Monday, called the captors “professionals in kidnapping, who hold an important – if not central – role in the atrocious market for hostages” in Iraq. He did not elaborate.

July, a Liberation co-founder who shuttled to and from the Middle East during the hostage crisis, joined many others in praising Aubenas’ tenacity.

Aubenas, 44, is “an incredible fighter, with a considerable psychological resistance, who in many ways simply didn’t crack,” he said on France-Inter radio.

The kidnappers had their biggest prize since the lying Sgrena. Just how the hell was Aubenas, a career-long reporter for France’s “leading left-wing tabloid,” going to crack? By promising to write a story denouncing American efforts … again?!!