Target Centermass

Category: Middle East

  • U.S. to Expand Force in Iraq

    As expected, the U.S. is upping its number of boots on the ground in preparation for the upcoming elections.

    The United States is expanding its military force in Iraq to the highest level of the war — even higher than during the initial invasion in March 2003 — in order to bolster security in advance of next month’s national elections.

    The 12,000-troop increase is to last only until March, but it says much about the strength and resiliency of an insurgency that U.S. military planners did not foresee when Baghdad was toppled in April 2003.

    Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, deputy operations director of the Joint Staff, told reporters Wednesday that the American force will expand from 138,000 troops today to about 150,000 by January.

    The previous high for the U.S. force in Iraq was 148,000 on May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations were over and most soldiers thought the war had been won. The initial invasion force included thousands of sailors on ships in the Persian Gulf and other waters, plus tens of thousands of troops in Kuwait and other surrounding countries.

    The expansion in Iraq will be achieved by sending about 1,500 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division in Fort Bragg, N.C., this month and by extending the combat tours of about 10,400 troops already in Iraq. Those 10,400 will be extras until March because the soldiers who were scheduled to replace them in January will arrive as planned.

    Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved the moves Wednesday, according to a Pentagon statement.

    “They are the most experienced and best-qualified forces to sustain the momentum of post-Fallujah operations and to provide for additional security for the upcoming elections,” the statement said.

    The Pentagon originally expected to train and equip enough Iraqi government forces to fill the security gap in the weeks leading up to the elections, but that hope was not fulfilled.

    The military is reluctant to extend soldiers’ combat tours because of the potential negative effect it could have on their families, and thus on their willingness to remain in the service. In this case, Gen. George Casey, the most senior U.S. commander in Iraq, decided it was necessary to keep up pressure on the insurgents while also providing security for the elections.

    Another small increase before the voting would not surprise me.

  • Iran Offers to Train Iraqi Police

    Iraq must find it refreshing to have such helpful neighbors.

    Iran offered to train Iraqi police and border guards two days before it was scheduled to host a meeting of security chiefs from Iraq’s neighboring states, the official news agency reported Sunday.

    It was unclear how Iraq would respond to the Iranian offer. The countries fought a war from 1980-88 that killed or wounded nearly one million people on both sides.

    “The Islamic Republic is ready to train Iraqi police and border guards and even equip them as well as help with the country’s reconstruction,” said Ali Asghar Ahmadi, Iran’s deputy Interior Minister for Security Affairs, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

    Ummm … I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a country helping train Iraq’s security when that country is blatantly working to undermine Iraqi security.

  • Iran Group Signs Up Suicide Volunteers

    Just in case you were wondering about Iran and their role in the war against radical Islamist terrorism, there’s this little bit of planning for international atrocities.

    The 300 men filling out forms in the offices of an Iranian aid group were offered three choices: Train for suicide attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, for suicide attacks against Israelis or to assassinate British author Salman Rushdie.

    It looked at first glance like a gathering on the fringes of a society divided between moderates who want better relations with the world and hard-line Muslim militants hostile toward the United States and Israel.

    But the presence of two key figures — a prominent Iranian lawmaker and a member of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guards — lent the meeting more legitimacy and was a clear indication of at least tacit support from some within Iran’s government.

    Since that inaugural June meeting in a room decorated with photos of Israeli soldiers’ funerals, the registration forms for volunteer suicide commandos have appeared on Tehran’s streets and university campuses, with no sign Iran’s government is trying to stop the shadowy movement.

    On Nov. 12, the day Iranians traditionally hold pro-Palestinian protests, a spokesman for the Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement said the movement signed up at least 4,000 new volunteers.

    Mohammad Ali Samadi, the spokesman, told The Associated Press the group had no ties to the government.

    And Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters recently that the group’s campaign to sign up volunteers for suicide attacks had “nothing to do with the ruling Islamic establishment.”

    “That some people do such a thing is the result of their sentiments. It has nothing to do with the government and the system,” Asefi said.

    No government involvement or support? I call bullshit.

    Yet despite the government’s disavowal of the group and some of its programs, there are indications the suicide attack campaign has at least some legitimacy within the government.

    The first meeting was held in the offices of the Martyrs Foundation, a semiofficial organization that helps the families of those killed in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war or those killed fighting for the government on other fronts. It drew hard-line lawmaker Mahdi Kouchakzadeh and Gen. Hossein Salami of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

    “This group spreads valuable ideas,” Kouchakzadeh told AP.

    ….

    Iranian security officials did not return calls seeking comment about whether they had tried to crack down on the group’s training programs or whether they believed any of Samadi’s volunteers had crossed into Iraq or into Israel.

    Suicide attacks against civilians, including an author, as valuable ideas? I call bullshit.

    In general, Iran portrays Israel as its main nemesis and backs anti-Israeli groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah. It says it has no interest in fomenting instability in Iraq and that it tries to block any infiltration into Iraq by insurgents — while pleading that its porous borders are hard to police.

    The focus on Israel is obvious, as it has long since become the modus operandi of all oppressive Moslem governments — focus the anger of a suffering, economically-beleaguered people outward towards anyone external who can possibly be blamed. This is not new to the current ruling zealots in Iran, but the hoped-for hatred is nowhere near as cultivated among the Iranian populace as it is among other Moslem peoples, such as the Egyptians, the Saudis and the Palestinians.

    Regarding the Iranian government’s interest in augmenting the instability in neighboring Iraq, it is an absolute necessity. The Iranian people will be a rather restive bunch were a successful democracy to take hold right next door, as there is already a pro-Western sentiment among many of the citizenry.

    In 1998, the Iranian government declared it would not support a 1989 fatwa against Rushdie issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But the government also said only the person who issued the edict could rescind it. Khomeini, angered at Rushdie’s portrayal of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in “The Satanic Verses,” died in June 1989.

    I’m guessing fatwas don’t have a statute of limitations.

    Samadi claimed 30,000 volunteers have signed up, and 20,000 of them have been chosen for training. Volunteers had already carried out suicide operations against military targets inside Israel, he said.

    But he said discussing attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq “will cause problems for the country’s foreign policy. It will have grave consequences for our country and our group. It’s confidential.”

    As devoted Muslims, members of his group were simply fulfilling their religious obligations as laid out by Khomeini, he said.

    In his widely published book of religious directives, Khomeini says: “If an enemy invades Muslim countries and borders, it’s an obligation for all Muslims to defend through any possible means: sacrificing life and properties.”

    Samadi said: “With this religious verdict, we don’t need anybody’s permission to fight an enemy that has occupied Muslim lands.”

    Islam is not an evil religion per se, but it does seem to provide quite fertile ground for evil to grow. The radicals governing Iran, just like the Wahabbi radicals in other parts of the Islamic world, have happily kissed their ties to modern civilization goodbye. These animals have chosen to surrender their humanity, though this fact should not be projected on the Iranian population as a whole.

  • U.S. Sends in Saddam’s Old Commandos

    Reuters is reporting that the U.S. has created a team of police commandos, comprised of former Iraqi army officers and special forces, and is employing them south of Baghdad.

    Twenty months after toppling Saddam Hussein, U.S. troops still battling his followers in the heartland of Iraq’s old arms industry are hitting back with a new weapon — ex-members of Saddam’s special forces.

    For five months, Iraqi police commandos calling themselves the Black Scorpions have been based with U.S. Marines in the region along the Euphrates south of Baghdad, which roadside bombs, ambushes and kidnaps have turned into a no-go areas and earned it the melodramatic description “triangle of death.”

    “All of them were previously officers in the Iraqi army or special forces,” the Scorpions’ commander, Colonel Salaam Trad, said at the Marines’ Kalsu base near Iskandariya on Saturday.

    “But Saddam was dirty and no good for Iraq.”

    The performance of this SWAT team, as the Americans call it, could be a critical test of how U.S. forces can hand over to Iraqis to meet their goal of withdrawing from a stable Iraq. U. S. officers in the area say they are increasingly optimistic.

    “The hardest fighters we have are the former special forces from Saddam’s days,” Colonel Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, told reporters.

    Praising their local knowledge and fighting skills, Johnson singled out one man who fought against him at Nassiriya, the hardest battle of last year’s brief war against Saddam’s army.

    “If I could have an Iraqi security force guy who’s honest, reliable and dependable, it’s worth five Marines,” he added.

    Captain Tad Douglas, who leads almost daily raids with the Scorpions, said he believed it was a unique experiment that made use of the Iraqis’ feel for their home province of Babylon.

    “Ninety-five percent of our intelligence is from the SWAT,” he said. “They can put a guy in a cafe in the way we never could … They have a good finger on the pulse.”

    U.S. officers are reluctant to discuss how big the SWAT team is and Trad and Douglas brush off questions on what they may or not have done to each other in last year’s war.

    “It doesn’t matter to me what they did. They’re staunchly anti-insurgent,” said Douglas, who dismissed suggestions their training under Saddam might have made them too violent.

    “We just had to polish them up a bit,” he said. This week, Johnson has stepped up raids against insurgents in an operation code-named Plymouth Rock, hoping to keep pressure on Sunni rebels after their rout at Falluja to the northwest.

    Of Johnson’s 5,000-strong force in the region, which was once the heart of Saddam’s arms industry and base of the Medina armored division of the elite Republican Guard, more than 2,000 are Marines, 850 British soldiers and the rest Iraqi.

    At the camp 30 miles south of Baghdad, the Scorpions are very visible, wearing the khaki jumpsuits of Marine special forces and black mustaches traditional in the Iraqi military.

    Occupying powers have a long and patchy history of creating local units and Iraqi forces in other regions have had mixed success. This month, thousands of police in the northern city of Mosul fled or changed sides when Sunni insurgents took charge.

    Johnson acknowledges the loyalties of some Iraqis in his force may be divided but says they “want to be on the winning side” and is confident that U.S.-led troops can end what he sees as limited and decentralized violence by at most a few thousand disgruntled Saddam supporters and local bandits.

    Iraqi police here have stuck to their posts despite killings of comrades in bomb attacks and murders of off-duty officers: ” They don’t cut and run, despite their losses,” Johnson said.

    Clearly exasperated by the “triangle of death” tag, he said: “I’m getting more optimistic every day.”

    As for Colonel Salaam, a small, wiry man of 32, he shrugs off insurgent threats to himself and his family and says what he wants is: “Freedom, a new Iraq, peace.”

    This move is no great surprise. It is an easily-made mistake to lump in professional soldiers with the evil regimes that control them. Look at the officers of the Wehrmacht and their entangled relationship with the Nazis as an example.

    Much more could’ve and probably should’ve been done sooner with the Iraqi army, had it not been dispersed and disbanded. Granted, many would have to have been filtered out, but this story shows there were certainly some professional gems lost that could currently have already been serving for the betterment of their country.

  • Allawi, Shias: No Delay on Iraq Vote

    Despite yesterday’s petition for delay, Iraqi officials are insisting that the January 30 balloting for the 275-member National Assembly should proceed.

    Iraq’s main Shia parties insisted today that elections should go ahead on January 30 as planned, rejecting mounting calls from Sunni and secular politicians to postpone the polls because of guerrilla violence.

    The dispute threatens to widen sectarian divisions in a country already racked by lawlessness and widespread unrest. A statement by 42 Shia and Turkmen parties, including the influential Dawa Party and Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said a postponement would be illegal.

    Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said if the election was postponed, “this would mean that the terrorists have been able to achieve one of their main objectives”.

    The Shia statement followed a petition yesterday by 17 Sunni and secular groups for a delay of up to six months to ensure the broadest possible participation in the elections.

    The parties that backed the petition drawn up after a meeting yesterday at the house of elder statesman Adnan Pachachi included the Iraqi National Accord of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the two main Kurdish parties.

    Allawi’s spokesman said today the Prime Minister took very seriously his obligation to hold elections by the end of January, as mandated by Iraq’s interim constitution and a UN Security Council resolution. But the statement left open the possibility of a postponement.

    “The Prime Minister is aware of the statement made by some parties yesterday, calling for a delay in holding elections,” spokesman Thaer al-Naqib said. The statement said Allawi believed “the key to a building real and lasting democracy and stability in Iraq is ensuring all Iraqi citizens can vote”. It added that “he does not believe that a delay will necessarily make such broad participation any easier to achieve”.

    I agree with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s statement that a delay would appear a victory for the terrorists.

  • Iraq Sunnis Want Election Delayed

    Despite the election being set for January 30, some in Iraq are now petitioning for a delay.

    Several political groups in Iraq are calling for the postponement of national elections, scheduled for January 30. The parties, mostly Sunni Muslim, Kurdish and secular groups, cited security concerns as their reason for calling for the delay.

    Saying that the interim government cannot guarantee the safety of voters at polling stations, the groups are calling for the postponement of Iraq’s elections by up to six months.

    A petition was signed Friday in Baghdad at the home of influential Sunni Muslim elder statesman Adnan Pachachi. Three interim government ministers attended the meeting.

    The petition is the latest effort waged mostly by Iraq’s minority Sunni population to delay the elections, fearing that violence in Sunni Muslim areas, such as Fallujah, Baquba, Samarra, Tikrit and areas around Baghdad, would prevent Sunni Muslims from voting in January. Several Sunni groups have threatened to boycott the elections, if they are held in January.

    Numerous Sunni clerics associations have repeatedly called for the elections to be postponed. However, most of Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslim population want to move forward with the elections, following decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein, who is a Sunni Muslim.

    A senior official with Iraq’s Interior Ministry said holding the elections in January as planned would be a blow to insurgents in Iraq, who are attempting to prevent the elections from being held. The official said postponing the elections would only fuel the insurgency.

    So now the threatened Sunni boycott is based on the expected security situation in January? Previously, it was to be based upon our going into Fallujah. We’ve done that and they’re still only threatening. The Sunnis want the election delayed because it will further entrench their minority status. The terrorists want the elections delayed indefinitely because it will bring the government to the people.

    These elections need to go forward as soon as possible, and, right now, January seems possible.

  • Gadhafi Claims Reward Too Small for Giving up WMD Pursuit

    After cringing at the headline and thinking, “Great, Libya’s at it again,” I found myself somewhat surprised by the content of Gadhafi’s complaint.

    Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi says the international community should have offered Tripoli a better payback for renouncing its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

    Mr. Gaddhafi told France’s Le Figaro newspaper that he was “a bit disappointed” that Libya was not better rewarded for what he described as Tripoli’s contribution to international peace. In clearer terms, that translates as Libya’s decision last year to scrap its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

    That decision has led to the end of years-long United Nations sanctions against Libya, and helped improve diplomatic ties between the North African country and a number of Western nations. That includes relations with France whose president, Jacques Chirac, arrived in Tripoli Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Chirac’s visit to Libya is the first by a French head of state in more than half a century.

    British, German and Italian leaders have also visited Libya in recent months.

    But Mr. Gadhafi told Le Figaro that in exchange for scrapping its weapons program, Libya should at least receive guarantees from the international community to protect its national security, and help in transforming its weapons material for peaceful, civilian use. The Libyan leader specifically faulted Japan, Europe and the United States.

    Since Libya was not rewarded, Mr. Gadhafi warned, other countries like North Korea and Iran would not be inclined to follow Libya’s example and dismantle their own weapons programs. He said he had already had talks to this effect with officials from the two countries.

    Yes, I feel Gadhafi’s move should be rewarded more than it has been, though perhaps not to the extent Gadhafi actually wishes. I certainly concur with assurances of national security, at least in terms of outward threats, and assistance in “civilizing” Libya’s weapons material seems reasonable.

    I would hesitate towards rushing to any other immediate rewards, and that hesitancy is driven by two factors. First, there should not be so much of an immediate reward so as to actually induce other nations to get the idea that starting and dropping WMD programs is the way to a fast buck. Second, Gadhafi still has much he can do to better the lives of Libyans, including granting them a greater voice in their own governance. Further rewards should be held in reserve for such steps.

    One reward I would most assuredly and whole-heartedly back would be for the English-speaking world to reach a consensus on the spelling of dear ol’ Moammar’s name. The above article spells it Gadhafi. This article has it as Kadhafi. Actually, here’s a site with thirty-freaking-two variations. This needs to be resolved. Perhaps this is something the United Nations could actually manage.

  • World Bank: Palestinians Live in Poverty

    Palestinians — the people of paradox.

    They simultaneously drive one towards sympathy and disgust. They have been manipulated on the world stage by the whole of the Arab world for over a half-century but have continuously chosen to dance to the tune of the martyrdom. One feels pity for generations raised upon the rock of hatred, only to have said pity wiped out in a moment by their jubilation after hearing of 9/11. One marvels at a people that held in such beloved regard a terrorist-in-chief that stole billions at their own expense but, by their own actions, continue to subject themselves to worsening poverty.

    Despite a slowdown in fighting, the Palestinian economy remains crippled by four years of violence with Israel, with nearly half the population living in poverty on less than $2 a day, the World Bank said in a report released Tuesday.

    The international development bank paints a dire picture in its first assessment of the Palestinian economy since May 2003. Economic activity has plummeted, while poverty and unemployment climbed sharply since the current wave of violence began in September 2000, the report said.

    The report was issued ahead of next month’s meeting of international donors, including the United States and European countries, whose money sustains the Palestinian economy.

    The report cites Israel’s “closure” policies — a series of restrictions on the movement of Palestinian people and products meant to boost Israeli security — as the main cause of economic hardship in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

    It also calls on the Palestinians to carry out further economic reforms.

    An Israeli official replied that the Palestinian violence is responsible for the downturn in the Palestinian economy. “The Palestinian economy was growing in the years leading up to the terrorist uprising,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.

    According to the report, the Palestinian economy recovered slightly in 2003 after two years of sharp decline. It cited a slowdown in violence and drop in Israeli curfews in Palestinian areas as well as a modest rebound in the Israeli economy for the improvement.

    Economic activity has stagnated in 2004, and remains well below the pre-uprising levels, the report says.

    Per capita gross domestic product has fallen to about $930 this year from $1,490 in 1999, according to the bank. Unemployment shot up to 27 percent from 12 percent during the same period, while the poverty rate has more than doubled to 48 percent from 20 percent.

    Those figures translate into 1.7 million Palestinians living below the poverty line, set by the World Bank at $2.10 a day. Nearly one-third of those people, or 600,000 Palestinians, live below the “subsistence” level of $1.50 a day — the amount necessary to meet basic nutritional needs, according to the bank.

    The hope for these people is that Arafat is now gone. The choice to move forward is theirs to make.

  • Bomb Found on Commercial Flight in Iraq

    The terrorists were foiled in another attempt to take down one of their decades-long favorite targets, as a commercial airliner has again escaped their horror in Iraq.

    A homemade bomb was found Monday on a commercial flight inside Iraq, prompting additional screening measures to go into effect at Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. Embassy said.

    No further details were released and the statement did not say whether the affected flight had arrived or was preparing to depart.

    “American citizens are encouraged to review their travel plans to determine whether travel on commercial carriers servicing Iraq is necessary at this time,” the embassy said.

    Commercial flights resumed to and from Baghdad on Nov. 15 after being suspended for a week under a state of emergency declared on the eve of the U.S.-led assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

    Aircraft flying into and out of Baghdad have been fired on frequently by insurgents, and planes take a number of precautions to minimize attack.

    On June 27, insurgents fired on an Australian C-130 military transport after takeoff from Baghdad’s airport, killing an American passenger and forcing the aircraft to return.

    To say that Iraq, especially Sunni Iraq, is still a dangerous place is quite the understatement. I contend that it is just as erroneous to say the situation is hopeless.

    And what is it with radical Moslems and airplanes? I know they crave the fiery spectacle like a crackwhore wants the rock, but they soon need to realize any hope they have for success (at least in the short- to mid-term) is to face the American forces and bite the bullet, literally and figuratively. Civilian targets are not helping them with the Iraqi populace.

    Back to the planes thing — I’m just glad their were no Islamists around Kitty Hawk in 1903.

  • Iraq Elections Set

    After the idea was floated on Friday that elections may be delayed, Iraqi officials are now saying that the current violence will not be allowed to interfere and elections will go on as planned.

    Iraqi authorities set Jan. 30 as the date for the nation’s first election since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and pledged that voting would take place throughout the country despite rising violence and calls by Sunni clerics for a boycott.

    Farid Ayar, spokesman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said voting would push ahead even in areas still wracked by violence — including Fallujah, Mosul and other parts of the volatile Sunni Triangle.

    The vote for the 275-member National Assembly is seen as a major step toward building democracy after years of Saddam’s tyranny.

    But the violence, which has escalated this month with the U.S.-led offensive against Fallujah, has raised fears voting will be nearly impossible in insurgency-torn regions — or that Sunni Arabs, angry at the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown, will reject the election.

    If either takes place, it could undermine the vote’s legitimacy.

    Ayar insisted that “no Iraqi province will be excluded because the law considers Iraq as one constituency, and therefore it is not legal to exclude any province.”

    ….

    The clerical leadership of the country’s Shiite community, believed to comprise about 60 percent of Iraq’s nearly 26 million people, has been clamoring for an election since the April 2003 collapse of the Saddam regime, and voting is expected to go smoothly in northern areas ruled by the Kurds, the most pro-American group.

    However, Sunni Arabs, estimated at about 20 percent of the population, fear domination by the Shiites. Sunni clerics have called for a boycott of the vote because of the Fallujah attack.

    But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it was important that elections be held as promised.

    “If they are delayed, it would be a sign that the chaos, terror, can succeed in destroying whatever chance we have for democracy in Iraq,” he said.

    The government has launched a campaign against some hardline Sunni clerics accused of fueling the insurgency or allowing weapons to be hidden in their mosques. On Friday, Iraqi and U.S. forces raided Baghdad’s Abu Hanifa mosque — one of the country’s most important Sunni mosques.

    During the January election, Iraqis will choose a National Assembly to draft a new constitution. If the constitution is ratified, another election will be held in December 2005.

    Voters in January also will select 18 provincial councils and in Kurdish-ruled areas a regional assembly. Iraqis living in at least 14 foreign countries also can vote for the National Assembly.

    A stable, legitimate government could enable the United States to begin drawing down its 138,000-strong military presence and gradually hand over security responsibility to Iraqi forces.

    “Having elections in Iraq are very important, and having them on time is also so important for the Iraqi people to have more security in Iraq,” said Salama al-Khafaji, a Shiite member of the interim Iraqi National Council, a government advisory body.

    Ayar, the election commission spokesman, said 122 political parties were registered for the elections. The commission has asked the United Nations to send international monitors, and 35 experts already have arrived.

    I support this decision to proceed as planned. The terrorists cannot be given the idea that they can stand bloodily in the path of progress successfully. Nor can overly much concern be given to the Sunni turnout, as any boycott of a democratic process will be to their own detriment. If they choose to proceed down that path, it will only be a hard-learned lesson in democracy.