Posted on 05/14/2005 7:23:53 PM PDT by TexKat
On patrol in Baghdad, from left: Sgt. Todd Chapin, Wade Devlieger and Brent Pingeon wait outside of Adnon Palace in Baghdad.
Richard Sennott Star Tribune
Published March 19, 2005
Lt. Col. Kevin Gerdes surveys what is jokingly referred to as the Mayor's Navy at Camp Taji, former headquarters of the Hammurabi Division of Iraq's Republican National Guard. Saddam Hussein stored hundreds of boats at the base. Richard Sennott
Operation Phantom Fury--Day 188 - Now Operations River Blitz; Matador--Day 83
Captain Aaron Krenz of Fargo on patrol in Baghdad in front of a Iraqi war memorial to the unknown soldier with Justin Thompson, left, of Lucane, Minn. Richard Sennott
Sunday 15 May 2005
Nine Marines were killed and 40 wounded in the operation in western Iraq near the Syrian border, while US forces killed more than 125 insurgents and detained 39 "of intelligence value", the US military said.
The deaths brought US losses for the week to 25, making it one of the deadliest periods for US troops in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.
A suicide bomber rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into a police convoy in central Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 10, the interior ministry said.
Five Iraqis were also killed when a suicide bomber drove a motorbike at a joint US-Iraqi convoy on the road between Tuz Kharmatu and Sulayman Beg, south of Kirkuk.
Earlier, three civilians believed to be street cleaners were killed and four others wounded by a roadside bomb in Baghdad's southern district of Dura, hospital officials said.
In further unrest yesterday, three Iraqi soldiers were shot dead when their position in Haswah, 80km south of Baghdad, came under attack.
Gunmen killed an Iraqi civilian working as a translator with the US military in Samarra. The body of another Iraqi contractor shot several times in the head was discovered further south, security sources said.
"During the seven day operation, Marines disrupted the known infiltration routes through the region and to deny safe havens," a US statement said.
It notably aimed to prevent insurgents from obtaining weapons and foreign volunteers by way of Syria.
US forces "accomplished (their) mission and secured all objectives," the statement said, warning that US and Iraqi security forces would return to the area, some 300km northwest of Baghdad, in the future.
Probe clears US marine accused of Iraqi prisoners’ murder: reports
(AFP)
14 May 2005
NEW YORK - A military probe has concluded that a US marine accused of killing two unarmed Iraqi prisoners should be cleared of all charges, US news media reported on Saturday.
Marine Second Lieutenant Ilario Pantano was justified when he shot the prisoners on April 15, 2004, a report from the investigating officer has found, according to New York Times and the New York Daily News.
Prosecutors had claimed that Pantano, 33, a former Wall Street trader, executed the prisoners as they knelt with their backs turned. He faced a maximum penalty of death on charges of dereliction of duty and murder.
But the government “was not able to produce credible evidence or testimony that the killings were premeditated” or even that the prisoners were shot in the back, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Winn, in charge of the investigation, wrote in his report.
While Pantano used poor judgment, the shooting was not a crime and fell within the rules of combat in the Sunni Triangle area, Winn wrote.
Pantano however should receive nonjudicial punishment for firing 30 bullets at the Iraqis, then reloading and firing 30 more bullets. Nonjudicial punishment that would include 30 days arrest in quarters and losing half of his pay for two months, according to the Daily News.
According to the Times, the Iraqis were caught trying to flee a house believed to be an insurgent hide-out.
The marines handcuffed them while the suspicious house was searched.
When marines found weapons Pantano had the handcuffs removed and ordered the prisoners to inspect their car.
Pantano then shot the two men with his rifle when, he said, they made threatening moves.
Winn harshly criticized Pantano’s main accuser, Sergeant Daniel Coburn, who he wrote “has told his story so many times in so many versions that he cannot keep his facts straight anymore,” according to the Daily News.
Winn’s report was sent to the Second Marine Division commander, who is not bound by the reccomendation, the Times reported.
(AFP)
14 May 2005
RIYADH - A court in Riyadh trying three Saudi reformers charged with calling for a constitutional monarchy is likely to deliver its verdict on Sunday, one of their lawyers said.
“The court will hold a session open to the public on Sunday, and it is supposed to deliver its ruling,” Khaled al-Mutairi told AFP on Saturday.
The wife of one of the defendants said after the last hearing on May 2 that the judge insisted that a decision be reached within two weeks.
Mutairi noted that the judge called time on state prosecutors during the last hearing.
“Normally, a verdict should be issued during the following session,” he said.
The trial of Ali al-Demaini, Abdullah al-Hamed and Matruk al-Faleh, which opened last August, has been repeatedly adjourned following requests from prosecutors for more time to produce evidence.
“The verdict must be delivered during an open session. The judge is not entitled to hold the session behind closed doors,” Mutairi said.
Demaini, Hamed and Faleh were among a dozen activists arrested in March last year on charges of demanding a constitutional monarchy in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom. The others were released after pledging to no longer lobby publicly for reform.
The trio are accused of calling for a constitutional monarchy and “using Western terminology” in demanding political reforms. They also allegedly questioned the king’s role as head of the judiciary.
CREDIT: Global TV Fateh Kamel answers the door of his Montreal townhouse. The alleged ringleader of the Groupe Fateh Kamel, from which Ahmed Ressam emerged, he returned to Canada in January after serving time in a French prison for terrorit-related crimes.
'Jihadist returnees' may plan attacks, report says
Stewart Bell
National Post
Monday, May 09, 2005
Fateh Kamel answers the door of his Montreal townhouse. The alleged ringleader of the Groupe Fateh Kamel, from which Ahmed Ressam emerged, he returned to Canada in January after serving time in a French prison for terrorit-related crimes.
A number of "jihadist returnees" have arrived back in Canada from other countries and some may intend to commit acts of terrorism, according to a declassified intelligence report.
The report, by the government's Integrated National Security Assessment Centre (INSAC), says "a number of other Islamic extremists have recently returned to Canada from abroad.
"Those dedicated extremists possessing terrorist training and Canadian documentation may return to Canada in order to carry out an attack.
"They may also use their documentation to gain access to Western diplomatic missions, or other interests, for the purpose of terrorist attack," says the report, released under the Access to Information Act.
Several Canadians have attended terrorist training camps and participated in international extremist groups. Those that have returned to Canada have raised alarms about the threat they may pose to Canadians.
Last month, the National Post found the alleged former leader of a Canadian extremist cell living in a townhouse in Montreal. Fateh Kamel returned to Canada in January after serving a prison term in France for terrorist-related crimes.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service says Mr. Kamel, 45, fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s, recruited volunteers to fight in Bosnia in the 1990s and was associated with Osama bin Laden. He also played a central role in terrorist threats in France, CSIS wrote in a public report.
However, Mr. Kamel denied he was involved in extremism and said he barely knew Ahmed Ressam, an alleged member of his Montreal-based group who tried to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.
The report comes as U.S. officials are concerned about the possibility terrorists might attempt to cross the border from Canada to carry out an attack, a scenario attempted unsuccessfully by Ressam in 1999.
The U.S. State Department offered US$5-million rewards on April 20 for information on Canadians Abderraouf Ben Habib Jdey and Faker Ben Abdelaziz Boussora.
The men trained in Afghanistan and have said they want to die in a terrorist attack.
Authorities are concerned that Jdey may attempt to return to Canada or the United States to plan a terrorist attack. The whereabouts of Jdey and Boussora are unknown, although they may have been spotted in Turkey.
"Terrorist-related activities undertaken by individuals in Canada also include efforts to use Canada as a base for fundraising, recruiting supporters, acquiring, preparing and distributing false travel and identity documents," the INSAC report says.
"While some of these individuals are currently detained in Canada or abroad, others continue to be involved in terrorist-related activities. Al-Qaeda and like-minded Sunni Islamic extremist groups have adherents in both Canada and abroad who possess Canadian status."
The return to Toronto last year of members of the Khadr family, who lived in one of bin Laden's compounds in Afghanistan, prompted debate over how to deal with Canadians who have links to al-Qaeda.
The family patriarch, Ahmed Said Khadr, allegedly collected money in Canada and used it to finance al-Qaeda training camps. He was killed in a shootout with Pakistani security forces in October, 2003.
One of his sons, Abdurahman Khadr, testified in court last summer that "a lot" of Canadians attended terrorist training camps and then returned to Canada, and they "live their everyday life now and are not under arrest or anything."
The report notes that al-Qaeda listed Canada as its fifth most important Christian target in March, 2004, and that in November, 2002, bin Laden named Canada as a target in an audiotaped address.
INSAC (now called the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre) is an interagency group made up of representatives of CSIS, the RCMP, Department of National Defence, Department of Foreign Affairs, Communications Security Establishment and other departments.
May 15, 2005 Sunday
DAMASCUS, May 14: Tensions are rising in a Syrian border region where fearful residents are being kept awake by the roar of US warplanes pounding nearby targets in Iraq, witnesses said on Saturday. Two months ago Syria bolstered its troop presence in the region, which lies close to the Iraqi border town of Al Qaim, where US forces have been attempting to root out guerillas loyal to the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
“The situation is very tense at the border and we have been worried for a week due to the bombing by the US air force on the Qaim region and the Iraqi city of Houssayba, close on the Syrian border. We hear very clearly the noise of the bombing,” said one local witness, Basem al Debs. “Syrian military vehicles full of soldiers went to the border two months ago, to the village of Hirre bordering on Qaim to reinforce forces already deployed there.” The US army launched ‘Operation Matador’ on May 7 in Al Qaim, described as a stronghold of Zarqawi, Iraq’s most wanted man who is blamed for a string of attacks on the occupation forces.
US commanders charge that much of the guerillas’ weaponry and foreign volunteers are smuggled in through the area. Syria has been accused by US and Iraqi authorities of not doing enough to halt foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq, charges vehemently denied by Damascus. “We have not been able to sleep all night due to the bombing on the city of Houssayba and by planes passing until 7am,” complained another witness, Adib al Debs.
He said that inhabitants of the Syrian border villages were ‘living in an atmosphere of war. We are very worried when we hear the American bombing on areas of the Iraqi-Syrian border’. Debs explained The US army has confirmed that bombing raids have taken place against guerilla positions around Al Qaim and Houssayba, but have said no ground operation has been launched in the town of Al Qaim itself.
So far nine US marines have lost their lives in the assault, which according to the US military has resulted in the deaths of 100 foreign fighters.
Adib Debs, the witness, pointed to the village of Baghuz, which sits astride the border, as an example of the worries that are fretting local inhabitants. “Half of the residents are Syrian and the other half Iraqis, they have intermarried and possess lands in both parts of the town.”
A trip organized by the ministry of information for Arab and foreign journalists to the border region was to have taken place on Saturday but was called off owing to the tensions in the area.
The offensive comes amid continued strains in relations between the United States and Syria.
Earlier this month President George Bush renewed a raft of sanctions against Syria first imposed last year, alleging that Damascus supported terrorism and undermined US efforts to stabilize and rebuild Iraq. —AFP
(AFP)
15 May 2005
LONDON - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man most wanted by US-led forces in Iraq, was wounded and treated briefly at a hospital in Iraq last week before he disappeared with his men, a British newspaper reported on Sunday.
The doctor who claims to have treated him told an Iraqi reporter in the western city of Ramadi that Zarqawi was bleeding heavily when he was brought into the hospital on Wednesday, the Sunday Times reported.
The doctor was able to recognize the Jordanian-born militant linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network by photographs he had seen of him on television, the newspaper said.
The report came as US forces on Saturday ended a major week-long sweep dubbed operation “Matador” targeting militants loyal to Zarqawi.
The doctor’s claim was supported Saturday by a senior Iraqi commander who had been to Ramadi to investigate the report, the newspaper added.
The doctor, who refused to specify the nature of the wounds and asked not to be identified, was detained by the Americans on Friday for questioning, residents were quoted as saying.
“He was bleeding heavily and his escorts were well dressed with a look about them that was different from the casualties and family members we had been receiving,” the doctor was quoted as saying.
“I treated his injury and asked that he remain in hospital for further observations and told him that we would have to register him and take down his name and details,” he was quoted as saying.
“But he became very nervous and agitated. He refused and told me he would not be staying,” he reportedly added.
“The three men with him asked me politely that he be allowed to leave hospital immediately and that I supply them with a prescription and a list of medication that he may need,” he was quoted as saying.
It was not the first time that Zarqawi has been reported wounded.
The US military said it was investigating reports that Zarqawi visited a hospital in Ramadi between April 27 and April 28 amid rumours he might be injured or unwell, The Washington Post reported on May 5.
The newspaper said US officials had offered no details as to why they believe Zarqawi might be wounded or ill.
15 May 2005 02:35:39 GMT
Source: Reuters
TOKYO, May 15 (Reuters) - Japan plans to spend $100 million to build a 60-megawatt thermal power plant in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa, Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday.
Quoting unidentified Japanese government sources, Kyodo said the construction of the power plant, set to begin this summer, would be financed by aid grants from Tokyo.
The power plant, Japan's first major infrastructure project in Iraq, was expected to start operating in the summer of 2007, Kyodo said.
Japanese government officials were not immediately available for comment.
About 550 Japanese troops are stationed in Samawa on a non-combat mission to help rebuild Iraq.
Muthana province, of which Samawa is the capital, is the only one of Iraq's 18 provinces that has no power plant, Kyodo said.
AlertNet news
(AFP)
14 May 2005
BAGHDAD — A statement signed by the group of Al Qaeda frontman in Iraq Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was distributed outside a Sunni mosque in Baghdad after prayers yesterday.
The leaflets were handed out in broad daylight by unmasked men outside the Abu Hanifa mosque, the most influential Sunni mosque in Baghdad, an AFP correspondent reported.
The statement, whose authenticity could not be verified, offered Zarqawi’s version of the ongoing battle between his militants and US troops in the western region of Al Qaim, near the Syrian border.
The leaflet denounced an alliances between “the troops of the crusaders, the Rafidha (Shias) and the Jews” and claimed that US marines had failed to enter the city of Al Qaim five days after launching their offensive.
“Operation Matador”, which kicked off on May 7, is the largest US military push against insurgents since the massive assault on Fallujah last November. It is aimed at cutting the Zarqawi network’s supply of arms and foreign fighters.
AP
Sunday, May 15, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - US airstrikes destroyed two unoccupied buildings near Fallujah yesterday that the military identified as an insurgent command centre.
US Marines based in the area said the targeted buildings were located about 30 kilometres (18 miles) northwest of Fallujah, the scene of a large scale November campaign west of Baghdad to rout militants responsible for multiple attacks.
"Coalition aircraft today bombed two unoccupied buildings outside Fallujah that had been used as an insurgent command centre, weapons hide-site and detention and possible torture facility," the military said in a statement.
It was unclear if there were any casualties caused in the attack near Fallujah, which is 65 kilometres (40 miles) west of the Iraqi capital.
Ground forces inspected the site following the bombings and discovered mortar wounds, machine gun ammunition, homemade bomb-making materials and anti-coalition propaganda, the statement added.
The attack took place on the final day of the week-long US Marine-led Operation Matador conducted near the Syrian border aimed at destroying fighters allied to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Web Sites Track Suicide Bombings
By Susan B. Glasser Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 15, 2005; Page A01
Before Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani exploded himself into an anonymous fireball, he was young and interested only in "fooling around."
Like many Saudis, he was said to have experienced a religious awakening after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and dedicated himself to Allah, inspired by "the holy attack that demolished the foolish infidel Americans and caused many young men to awaken from their deep sleep," according to a posting on a jihadist Web site.
On April 11, he died as a suicide bomber, part of a coordinated insurgent attack on a U.S. Marine base in the western Iraq city of Qaim. Just two days later, "the Martyrdom" of Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani was announced on the Internet, the latest requiem for a young Saudi man who had clamored to follow "those 19 heroes" of Sept. 11 and had found in Iraq an accessible way to die.
Hundreds of similar accounts of suicide bombers are featured on the rapidly proliferating array of Web sites run by radical Islamists, online celebrations of death that offer a wealth of information about an otherwise shadowy foe at a time when U.S. military officials say that foreign fighters constitute a growing and particularly deadly percentage of the Iraqi insurgency.
The account of Qahtani's death, like many other individual entries on the Web sites, cannot be verified. But independent experts and former government terrorism analysts who monitor the sites believe they are genuine mouthpieces for the al Qaeda-affiliated radicals who have made Iraq "a melting pot for jihadists from around the world, a training group and an indoctrination center," as a recent State Department report put it. The sites hail death in Iraq as the inspiration for a new generation of terrorists in much the same way that Afghanistan attracted Muslims eager to fight against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
By Sandra Jontz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, May 14, 2005
NINEVAH PROVINCE, Iraq — U.S. soldiers accidentally fired warning shots at some of their fellow troops in Ninevah province late Thursday night.
A three-Humvee convoy from Battery C, 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery was on its way back from a nighttime mission in its area of operations when the incident occurred. The 25th Infantry Division soldiers usually travel with a minimum of four Humvees, but one had broken down earlier in the mission and was towed away.
After a nearly 12-hour mission, the soldiers were halfway home to Qayyarh-West when their convoy came to a grinding halt along a narrow but major roadway. A group of vehicles was barreling toward them when the warn shots rang out.
“Stop! They’re shooting at us!” Sgt. Erik Griffin shouted to his driver, Pfc. Tony Gastone, who slammed on the brakes.
When it was clear that no one had been hit by the .50-caliber warning shot from the oncoming convoy, tempers flared and obscenities spewed, but all were grateful.
The incident is under investigation, Army officials said. It was not immediately known to which unit the visiting convoy belonged.
Thursday night’s incident, though a “huge aberration,” underscores the dangers that soldiers face, said Capt. Ryan Gist, commander of Battery B.
“The most important thing to preventing friendly-fire incidents is the increased use of positive identification of targets,” Gist said. “That seems easy enough, but that has to be ingrained in every soldier’s head.”
Because of the threat of roadside bombs, U.S. convoys travel at a high rate of speed down the center of highways — much like the enemy, said Capt. Frank Worley, the battle captain who runs the tactical operations center during the daytime.
Suicidal insurgents in the area have been known to wedge their way into the middle of convoys before setting off their bombs. Vehicles traveling at a high rate of speed make soldiers antsy.
But there are clear differences between coalition vehicles and those of the enemy, Gist said.
Humvees have wide-set, distinctive headlights. Additionally, gunners riding in vehicle turrets should be equipped with night-vision goggles, and U.S. vehicles are equipped with special markings that help in preventing blue-on-blue casualties, Gist said.
Lastly, before firing warning shots, soldiers are supposed to use a spotlight to warn oncoming traffic to stop, or to positively identify that vehicles are not friendly, he said. No spotlight was used in Thursday’s incident.
The highways through Ninevah province link southern parts of Iraq to major cities in the north and west. The roadways are used often by transiting U.S. and coalition convoys who, unfortunately, don’t always communicate that they are traveling through a particular area of operation, Worley said.
“It’s no secret to see large convoys coming through our area,” Worley said. “And it’s hard for these folks to recognize our elements.”
I've been hearing this. I look forward to the day he is captured or killed.
14 May 2005 18:35:29 GMT Source: Reuters
By Dominic Evans
RIYADH, May 14 (Reuters) - The former head of Saudi Arabia's Al-Haramain charity said on Saturday he was filing a lawsuit in the United States against senior officials including Condoleezza Rice for putting him on a U.N. terrorist blacklist.
Saudi Arabia shut down Al-Haramain Foundation last October, four months after Aqil al-Aqil's name was placed on the U.N. list of suspects linked to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, former rulers of Afghanistan, after a U.S. request.
Washington said the charity's international branches provided "financial, material and logistical" support to Saudi-born bin Laden's network, a charge Aqil repeatedly denied.
"Since my opponent is the American administration, which is working on the principle of 'guilty until proven innocent', then the way to clear my name is through the American judiciary," Aqil said in a statement.
"... I have decided to file a case against the American government in the federal court in Washington DC."
Alongside Rice, Aqil named Treasury Secretary John Snow, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and Juan Zarate, the U.S. Treasury's assistant secretary for terrorism financing.
"I am not asking anything of the American judiciary -- which is known for its independence -- apart from justice," he said.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, carried out mainly by Saudis, Riyadh has tightened financial controls to stem any flow of cash to militants. U.S. officials say Saudi Arabia was the main source of al Qaeda funding before 2001.
The kingdom shut down Al-Haramain and said last year it was folding its assets into a new group that will channel all Saudi charitable contributions abroad.
Aqil said his own bank accounts had also been frozen, despite his efforts to show that Al-Haramain had "no link to terrorism, or the acts of al Qaeda, or what happened on Sept. 11".
The organisation, founded in the early 1990s, used to raise around $50 million a year, making it one of the largest Saudi charities. It mixed international relief work with programmes to promote Saudi Arabia's austere Wahhabi Islam.
It said it provided assistance and food to Muslims in East Africa, the Balkans, Chechnya and several Asian countries. It also built 1,300 mosques, sponsored 3,000 preachers and produced 20 million religious pamphlets, Al-Haramain officials said.
But in March 2002 the United States listed the foundation's offices in Bosnia and Somalia as "terrorist organisations". Two years later it added Al-Haramain's branches in Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and the Netherlands to the list.
You are not alone.
By Ron Jensen and Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Friday, May 13, 2005
RAF MILDENHALL, England — Pilots in U.S. Air Forces in Europe will be flying fewer hours as the command cuts costs to help pay for the global war on terror.
Capt. Alisen Iversen, a deputy public affairs chief for USAFE at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, acknowledged the cut, but gave no details.
“We have made the decision to cut flying hours,” she said in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes, “but the amount will depend on other efficiencies in both our flying program and other [operations and maintenance] programs.”
The Air Force has asked USAFE to absorb $100 million in the current fiscal year for the global war on terror, Iversen wrote. The command has said previously it would reach that goal by cutting communication costs, eliminating unnecessary travel and taking other measures.
Gen. Robert H. “Doc” Foglesong, USAFE commander, was unavailable for an interview to discuss the flying hours issue, Iversen said. No other USAFE officials were available to discuss the reduction of flying hours either, she said.
On the other side of the world, pilots in the Pacific theater are dealing with a $50 million cut in the flight-training program, Gen. Paul Hester told Stars and Stripes recently for a story in the newspaper’s Pacific edition.
“Every command in our Air Force that flies airplanes is taking money out of its flying hour program,” said Hester, Pacific Air Forces commander.
Hester expressed concern that fewer flying hours would degrade pilot skills and affect readiness.
“Obviously, when ... you start taking down specific training flights, you are, in fact, starting to eat away into readiness,” he said in an interview last week in Washington, D.C.
For example, he said, pilots at Misawa Air Base in Japan have lost at least 625 training hours. To reduce the effect of the cuts, he said, priority will be given to PACAF pilots training for “very, very specific” missions — namely, pilots preparing to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.
USAFE has yet to specify how it will adjust to reductions.
“We are carefully studying this decision from a readiness and safety standpoint to find the smart way ahead to meet our target savings and yet not reduce the readiness levels of our pilots and aircrews from their ability to perform their assigned missions and to remain combat ready,” Iversen wrote in the e-mail.
“Flight safety will not be affected — safety is always our foremost consideration in all we do.”
A Taliban fighter in Afghanistan. Suspected Taliban insurgents used rockets to destroy a government building in Afghanistan's southeastern city of Khost near the Pakistani border, an official said.(AFP/File/Saeed Khan)
Govt building destroyed in Khost
KHOST, May 14: Suspected Taliban insurgents used rockets to destroy a government building in Afghanistan’s southeastern city of Khost near the Pakistani border on Saturday, an official said. But no casualties were reported in the attack that came as Afghan security forces were on high alert amid fears of more violence related to protests over desecration of the holy Quran by US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.—AFP
In Afghanistan, the Taliban rises again for fighting season
Instead of fizzling out, the rebels are staging their annual spring resurgence with a surprising new spirit, writes Nick Meo from Kabul. This wasn't what US military planners were expecting
15 May 2005
American soldiers in the mountain valley of Deh Chopan expect to be targeted by an unseen enemy. But the amateurish hit-and-run attacks of the Taliban - wildly fired rockets and mistimed roadside bombs - rarely inflict casualties. It was a shock, then, when a patrol was ambushed a fortnight ago with rocket-propelled grenades and sustained small arms fire. Six Americans were wounded. Two had their legs blown off. Two more were wounded badly enough to require evacuation to Germany for surgery.
The outcome of the ferocious five-hour battle was predictable enough - withering air power obliterated the Americans' enemies - but not before a US unit had suffered serious casualties and was forced to fall back before a determined enemy assault. A couple of days later nine Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers died when they were ambushed by machine-gun fire as they got down from a truck in Kandahar province - the newly formed ANA's worst-ever combat loss. Then two US marines were killed in a cave where they had insurgents pinned down.
This wasn't what US military planners were expecting at the start of this spring's "fighting season" when the snow thaws in the mountains. After all, Afghanistan is supposed to be the war that the American military has won. The official emphasis has changed from combat operations to "hearts and minds" programmes.
Then, over the freezing Afghan winter, there were few attacks, leading to talk from the Kabul government and US military that the Taliban were short of recruits and low on morale. Soon, went the word, their commanders would be joining the amnesty set up to lure tired fighters in from the mountains. This programme is the hoped-for endgame after three and a half years of desultory guerrilla warfare which has tied down 18,000 US combat troops and cost the Pentagon more than $10bn (£5.4bn) a year. The military is desperate to scale down troop numbers after September's parliamentary elections and hand over to Afghan forces and the 5,000 British troops who arrive at the end of this year.
That plan may now need a rethink. Instead of fizzling out, the Taliban have staged what has become a now-annual spring resurgence, and with a surprising new fighting spirit. Particularly worrying are signs that al-Qa'ida may once again be taking an interest in the war in Afghanistan. Since their rout in 2001 and the fall of their Taliban allies, the Arab and Chechen fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden seem to have concentrated efforts on Iraq, or simply on survival in the tribal belt of Pakistan. Now there are fears that surviving elements may be trying to open a second front to Iraq. Fighting spirit has been rare among the Afghan recruits from the religious schools, the boys the Taliban fling into battle usually to be slaughtered. But this year their ranks seem to have been reinforced by more experienced and more determined men.
The soldiers at Deh Chopan found evidence of that. When they had finished combing through the body parts of their enemies, among the 44 dead were Chechens and Pakistanis, feared al-Qa'ida fighters. Other reports indicate that more sophisticated tactics are being used and that new weapons are being smuggled in over the Pakistan border. When a Romanian soldier was killed near Kandahar last month it was a modern anti-tank mine that blew up his armoured personnel carrier, not an improvised bomb or one of the old Soviet landmines that frequently don't work.
Further north along the Pakistan border, near Khost, the war hasbecome a hot one - human waves of Taliban fighters launch night assaults against the fortified bases of an Afghan mercenary force recruited by the CIA. Those insurgents are under the command of an old warlord with links to Saudi Arabia - Jalaluddin Haqqani - whose Pakistan-based operations seem to have received a new infusion of Gulf money.
The capital, Kabul, has also seen a revival in terrorism. An apparent suicide bomb attack on a Kabul internet café popular with foreigners killed a UN employee and terrified foreign aid workers and diplomats. Then the worst anti-US riots since the fall of the Taliban devastated eastern Afghanistan last week. Seven died, aid agency buildings were burnt and looted, causing millions of dollars of damage.
Orchestrated as they may have been, the riots showed a new mood of anti-Americanism which will worry the US military and the Kabul government. The flashpoint for the protests were claims that the Koran had been desecrated during an interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, but the agitators found a willing following among Afghans angry with America. US commanders still insist they are winning in Afghanistan. In briefings they claim that Afghans who are sick of the war increasingly come forward with information about insurgent activity.
The tone has changed in recent months, however, with the outgoing US commander, General David Barno, warning of the danger of "terrorist spectaculars" and of a hard core of Taliban who would not surrender but fight on as a "wholly owned al-Qa'ida subsidiary".
The US military machine cannot really be damaged by a low-level insurgency that refuses to die, and US forces suffer nothing like the terrible casualty figures in Iraq. But increasingly it looks less and less as if the US military has won and more and more as if GIs are bogged down in a guerrilla war that threatens to go on for years to come.
Bush Wars
Iraq is a bloody no man's land. America has failed to win the war. But has it lost it?
And in Afghanistan, the Taliban rises again for fighting season
By Rahimullah Yusufzai
PESHAWAR: The claim by the US intelligence officials and sections of the American media that a missile fired by a CIA predator aircraft over Pakistan earlier this week killed senior al-Qaeda operative Haitham al-Yemeni was apparently a reference to an incident near Mir Ali in North Waziristan on the night of May 8.
The government has denied the claim that the man was killed in Pakistani territory. Information Minister Shaikh Rashid Ahmad issued the denial and at the same time was quoted as saying that the incident could have taken place in neighbouring Afghanistan.
In the incident at 2am on May 8, a mysterious explosion in a wide-bodied car near Khushali village on Khaisoor Road south of Mir Ali town killed two persons. One of the victims was identified as Imam Din, son of Naeem Khan of Khushali village. The deceased Imam Din was a religious student, or a Talib.
The second victim of the explosion was never fully identified. There were reports at the time that the political administration of North Waziristan grappled with the issue for quote sometime as no family or clan came forward to claim his body. One report said he was eventually buried in the Sain Tangi village in the Frontier Region Bannu because some people felt the deceased belonged to the Janikhel Wazir tribe inhabiting that area. But even now one hears claims that the man was buried in Mir Ali or in Shawal, a remote border valley in North Waziristan.
Tribesmen were saying that a missile fired from the air had hit and destroyed the car. The mystery remained unsolved.
Many tribesmen in North Waziristan are now convinced that the second man killed in that incident was an Arab national. They were not aware of his name and nationality but speculation in the area was strong that the Arab man belonged to al-Qaeda. The ABC News television channel seems to have solved the mystery by identifying this man as Haitham al-Yemeni. Quoting US intelligence officials, the ABC News reported exclusively on May 13 that the senior al-Qaeda operative was killed by a missile fired from a CIA predator aircraft over Pakistan earlier this week.
The CIA has the authority to fire at will against senior al-Qaeda figures anywhere in the world, though it is unclear whether the Pakistanis approved of the action in advance. A spokesman for the Pakistani embassy in Washington, DC said he was unaware of any such actions this week.
The CIA refused to confirm or deny any operational matter.
Saturday, 14 May, 2005, 11:24 GMT 12:24 UK
Pakistan has denied US media reports that a senior al-Qaeda leader has been killed on Pakistani soil by an unmanned US Predator drone.
Several US television networks said the al-Qaeda member, Haitham al-Yemeni, was killed near the Afghan border by a missile fired from the aircraft.
Pakistani forces are hunting for Osama Bin Laden in the same area.
Earlier this month, Libyan al-Qaeda suspect, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, was captured in north-western Pakistan.
Haitham al-Yemeni has been under CIA surveillance, US television networks reported on Friday.
But the Pakistani information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, denied the reports that he had been killed in Pakistan.
"Nothing has happened in Pakistan. If something happened in Afghanistan, we don't know," reports quote him as saying.
American intelligence officials neither confirmed nor denied the reports.
Arrest
Pakistan has deployed about 70,000 troops to the Afghan border region in its operation against suspected al-Qaeda and Taleban militants.
It believes hundreds of militants, including Arabs, Afghans and Central Asians, are hiding in the area.
The arrest of Abu Faraj al-Libbi was the most significant one since Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, in 2003.
Libbi is said to have been third in al-Qaeda and is wanted over attempts on the life of Pakistan's president.
Since his capture he is being held in a secret location where he is being interrogated.
Was also reported on Fox News a week or so ago.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
By Paul Haven and Katherine Shrader, The Associated Presss
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agents are exploiting a growing rift between Arab members of al-Qaida and their Central Asian allies, a fissure that's tearing at the network of Islamic extremists as militants compete for scarce hideouts, weapons and financial resources, counterterrorism officials say.
The rivalry may have contributed to the arrest last week of one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants, a Libyan described as al-Qaida's No. 3 and known to have had differences with Uzbeks. Captured Uzbek, Chechen and Tajik suspects have been giving up information about the movements of Arab al-Qaida militants in recent months, four Pakistani intelligence agents told The Associated Press, leading to a series of successful raids and arrests.
"When push comes to shove, the Uzbeks are going to stick together, and the Arabs are going to stick together," said Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism expert with the Congressional Research Service in Washington. "I think the Uzbek guerrillas have had no home. Some of this could be a battle for survival."
The Pakistani agents, who hold sensitive jobs in various military and intelligence agencies in several cities, all spoke on condition their names not be used.
U.S. officials declined to comment on the schism. One, however, noted that al-Qaida and its allies do not always function as a cohesive unit. And another cautioned, "There may be a division, but you haven't won anyone over to your side." The official spoke on condition his name not be used because of the sensitive topic.
Abu Farraj al-Libbi, a Libyan and top al-Qaida operative, was captured in the northwestern part of Pakistan on May 2 after a fierce gunbattle. Now in Pakistani custody, he's accused of planning two assassination attempts on President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Libbi used Pakistanis, not Central Asians, to carry out the December 2003 attacks on Musharraf, authorities said. And Libbi sent a Pakistani suicide bomber, they said, to try to kill the prime minister in 2004.
An agent in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's equivalent of the CIA, said tensions with the Central Asians began building in late 2001, when hundreds of Arab al-Qaida militants -- including possibly bin Laden -- poured across the Afghan border into the Pakistani tribal areas of South and North Waziristan.
Hundreds of Central Asians who had fought alongside the Taliban fled across the border, too, joining countrymen who had settled in Waziristan in the 1980s Afghan war against the Soviets.
The official said many new arrivals took up residence in rambling mud-brick compounds run by the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, whose fighters also were hiding in the area. The Arabs settled in different towns in Waziristan, setting up training facilities in Shakai where they trained Pakistani recruits.
Many Central Asians had been living in the region for years without incident. But the flood of Arab al-Qaida suspects brought unwanted attention.
Pakistani security agents say they're confident they have broken al-Qaida's back, although bin Laden and al-Zawahri remain at large.
"Al-Qaida is no longer intact in Pakistan as a network," said Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the chief army spokesman. "Every organization needs a command structure and communication, and we have effectively destroyed both of them."
CAIRO, May 15, Kyodo - A militant Iraqi group which claims to have seized Japanese security guard Akihiko Saito released on Sunday a video on its website purportedly showing the scene of the attack that led to his capture.
Saito was not identified in the 6-minute video, which said a severely injured Japanese national was taken captive during the assault. An unidentified person shouting, ''Japanese, Japanese,'' was heard.
It also showed the militants killing what they claimed to be four foreign men as well as images of IDs of four Iraqi drivers and burning trucks.
The Ansar al-Sunnah Army, a Sunni militant group, said in a web message posted on Monday that it had captured Saito after ambushing a five-vehicle convoy near Hit, western Iraq. It also said it will release Saito's video footage soon.
Saito, 44, has worked in Iraq as a security guard for Hart Security Ltd., a British security firm based in Cyprus, since last December.
He may have sustained fatal injuries in a gun battle that occurred Sunday, when the militants ambushed his 18-member security guard team. Some members of the group managed to escape.
On Friday, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura issued an appeal on Al Jazeera television for cooperation in securing Saito's release.
Iraqi militant hideout swept
By The Associated Press
Sunday, May 15, 2005
OBEIDI, Iraq -- The U.S. military declared Saturday it had "neutralized" an insurgent sanctuary near the Syrian border. But less than 24 hours earlier, fighters armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades swaggered through the desert town where the United State's weeklong offensive began.
U.S. forces killed more than 125 insurgents, injured many more and detained 39 "of intelligence value" during the campaign aimed at followers of Iraq's most wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the military said in a statement.
Nine U.S. Marines were killed and 40 injured during the offensive known as Operation Matador -- one of the largest American campaigns since militants were driven from Fallujah six months ago. The number of civilian casualties was not immediately known.
American troops, backed by warplanes and helicopter gunships, swept through desert outposts along ancient smuggling routes, believed to be staging areas for foreign fighters who slip over the border and collect weapons to launch deadly attacks in Iraq's major cities.
Numerous weapons caches containing machine guns, mortar rounds and rockets were discovered. Six car bombs and material for making other improvised explosive devises also were found, the statement said.
The military said the operation confirmed its intelligence about a region north of the Euphrates River, including the existence of "cave complexes" used by insurgents in the nearby escarpment. It did not elaborate.
"Regimental Combat Team-2 started and ended this operation as planned, accomplished its mission and secured all objectives," Maj. Gen. Richard Huck said in the statement. "Coalition and Iraqi security forces will return again to this area in the future."
But in Qaim, the town where the campaign began, masked fighters remained in plain sight Friday, setting up checkpoints and vowing to defend the town if U.S. forces return.
The U.S. assault came amid a surge of militant attacks that have killed at least 440 people in just over two weeks since Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced.
At least 13 more Iraqis died yesterday in a series of ambushes and bombings. They included a senior Iraqi Foreign Ministry official slain in a drive-by shooting outside his Baghdad home last night, police said. Three bystanders also were injured in the attack that killed Jassim Mohammed Ghani, a director general in the ministry, police Capt. Talib Thamer said.
The U.S. offensive began late last Saturday in Qaim, a town 200 miles northwest of Baghdad on the southern bank of the Euphrates River. American intelligence indicated insurgents had massed north of the waterway, according to reporters embedded with the assault. But as soldiers built a pontoon bridge, they started taking mortar fire from nearby Obeidi.
When U.S. forces entered the village last Sunday, they confronted well-equipped fighters -- some with body armor -- fighting from rooftops, basements and sandbag bunkers positioned in front of some homes. U.S. forces pounded the area with air strikes and artillery barrages and some 70 insurgents were killed in the first 24 hours of the operation alone.
Pentagon officials conceded, however, that the insurgents were better trained and equipped than previously thought.
The next day, U.S. forces crossed the Euphrates and pushed along the winding river to the border, meeting little resistance, the military said.
Periodic airstrikes continued into Friday, including one that killed 12 insurgents manning a checkpoint east of Husaybah, a nearby village, the military said. Another Friday air strike targeted a suspected terrorist safe house in nearby Karabilah. Secondary explosions indicated the presence of weapons and munitions in the building, the military said.
But insurgents also inflicted a toll, killing six Marines in one squad when their troop transporter hit a bomb near Karabilah on Wednesday.
A long column of U.S. troops, backed by tanks and helicopters, rolled back across the river yesterday and surrounded Obeidi, sending frightened villagers scurrying into their homes.
Shelling began several hours later, damaging a house in the old part of the village and wounding five people, said Dr. Saadallah Anad at Obeidi General Hospital. Anad said he did not know if it was hit by U.S. weapons fire.
U.S. military spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool said Marines conducted a "cordon and search" operation in the area, looking for insurgents, foreign fighters, weapons and bomb-making material. But he said Obeidi was not hit by air or artillery strikes yesterday.
Rival groups of insurgents also were fighting among themselves around Qaim, trading mortar, rocket and machine gun fire almost nightly, Pool said. Residents acknowledged fighting in Qaim and surrounding villages began before the U.S. offensive, characterizing it as tribal clashes.
Residents reached by telephone in the old part of Obeidi said U.S. vehicles rolled through their area but met no resistance and withdrew late yesterday.
Thousands fled the area during the offensive, pitching flimsy tents along sand-blown desert highways or seeking shelter in schools and mosques in nearby towns.
The military denied resident reports that they had been without water and electricity in some areas since the offensive began.
"Throughout the course of the operation, Marines strove to ensure the well-being of the local Iraqi citizens," the statement said. "According to commanders in the area, the Marines were greeted with greater hospitality from local villagers than is normally encountered."
Elsewhere yesterday, U.S. airstrikes destroyed two unoccupied buildings near Fallujah that the military identified as an insurgent command center, weapons storage site, detention and possible torture facility. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties in the attack, about 40 miles west of the Iraqi capital.
Meanwhile, arrest warrants have been issued against two former Cabinet ministers as the new government cracks down on widespread corruption, according to officials in the office of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and his party.
Former Transport Minister Louei Hatim Sultan al-Aris was charged with "administrative corruption," while ex-Labor Minister Leila Abdul-Latif was accused of "financial corruption" and bringing back into the government members of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, said Jawad al-Maliki, a senior member of al-Jaafari's Dawa Party.
Al-Aris's whereabouts are unknown, but Abdul-Latif remains in the country, he said.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/national/s_334421.html
Copyright 2005 Associated Press
LOUIE FAVORITE / Staff Five-year-old Garrett Stanfield of Perry holds a sign for his father, Sgt. Robert Stanfield, just before the ceremonial sendoff of Georgia National Guard soldiers Saturday at Fort Stewart.
Citizen soldiers of the 48th Brigade get big sendoff
By MONI BASU
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/15/05
Fort Stewart — Tricia Lawson sizzled under the sun and waited for the soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard to march onto the parade field. She thought of her son, Sgt. Marc Davis, and the day he was born.
"Only a mother would know what today feels like," she said as she helped Davis' wife, Sharon, manage the couple's three young boys.
Spc. Huber Richey, left, and Cpl. Robert Chalkley, both of Savannah, say a final goodbye to their huge families in a miltary school bus long after the ceremony. Chalkley's father-in-law operates the military bus system for Parris Island.
This is part of a yearlong series that will follow the lives of the citizen soldiers of Georgia's National Guard and their families back home. Staff writer Dave Hirschman and photographer Curtis Compton will be with the 48th Brigade in Iraq. Staff writer Moni Basu and photographer Bita Honarvar will join them later this summer. Staff writers Jim Auchmutey and Anna Varela, with photographer Rich Addicks, will cover the home front.
"He was my firstborn," Lawson said. "He always wanted to be a soldier. But I never thought I would see this day."
Members of the Davis family, from Valdosta, were among thousands who gathered Saturday at Fort Stewart, near Savannah, to watch their citizen soldiers march one last time on Georgia soil. The troops of the 48th Brigade — 2,800 Georgia National Guardsmen and 1,500 from other states — will begin busing out this morning to Hunter Army Airfield, where over the next few days they will board chartered airplanes that will ferry them to the dusty landscape of the Middle East.
"This is it," said Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of the 48th. "This is the day we've been getting ready for. . . . This is the best unit I've ever worked with, and we promise you we will do you proud."
After a two-week sojourn in Kuwait, the brigade will enter Iraq, one of the world's most dangerous places.
It is expected to complete a tour that will last at least a year in the Baghdad area.
Gov. Sonny Perdue, who presented Rodeheaver with a Georgia flag that will go with the soldiers to Iraq, said he understood why Saturday's ceremonies conjured up a host of mixed emotions.
"Today's ceremony is not about saying goodbye," Perdue said.
"It's about celebrating the courage each of you display."
The governor was among a host of Georgia officials on hand to send off the 48th in grand style to a war of uncertainty — a war for which the soldiers have tried their best to prepare since they reported for duty in early January in the woodlands of sprawling Fort Stewart.
The soldiers filed by the thousands of spectators for a pass-in-review.
Carter Ferunden, 7, strained his neck to catch a glimpse of his father, Capt. Michael Ferunden of the 118th Field Artillery Regiment.
"Is this Daddy's unit?" he kept asking his mother, Christy.
When it was finally the 118th's turn, she yelled at the top of her lungs, "We love you, Captain Ferunden!"
Carter followed with an equally loud "We love you, Daddy!"
The 48th Brigade Combat Team is the largest state Guard unit to be deployed abroad since World War II.
In Iraq, the Guard soldiers will be supporting the 3rd Infantry Division in the Baghdad area.
Soldiers march in front of a review stand Saturday.
They are expected to be there at least a year. Roughly 40 percent of U.S. troops in Iraq are drawn from the Guard and Army Reserve.
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who returned from a trip to Iraq 10 weeks ago, said the Iraqi people appreciate the Georgia soldiers' help in "bringing democracy to Iraq."
"To your spouses, your loving parents, your children, your employers, we owe our undying thanks," Isakson said.
The mood darkened as ceremonies came to a close and the sun gave way to trolling clouds over Fort Stewart.
The soldiers marched back to their barracks for tearful goodbyes with their families.
The moment they had dreaded for roughly a year had finally arrived.
Some didn't want their families to be at Fort Stewart for the departure ceremonies.
Staff Sgt. Gordon Spears of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment's Alpha Company said his goodbyes to his loved ones at home in Blairsville last week.
"I didn't want to go through all that again," he said.
''I couldn't handle the thought of my family having to watch me march away."
The 3,500 soldiers are expecting to spend a year or more in Iraq.
Festus Guard Members Deployed to Iraq
updated: 5/14/2005 9:42:32 PM
National Guard soldiers from the 220th Engineer Company out of Festus, Missouri, got a rousing send-off to Iraq today at Fort Stewart in Georgia.
The Missouri company is among 4,300 men and women in the Guard's 48th Infantry Brigade that will serve a year-long tour in Iraq. Thousands of family members cheered during the brigade's farewell ceremony.
The brigade just finished five months of training at Fort Stewart and in the California desert, preparing for Iraq. The brigade will serve under the 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad.
The send-off marks the Georgia National Guard's largest combat unit to deploy in wartime since World War Two. Its soldiers come from across Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Maryland, Rhode Island, Alabama and Puerto Rico.
Sunday May 15, 2005
BAQOUBA, Iraq (AP) The governor of Diyala province survived a bomb attack unhurt in Baqouba early Sunday, and another blast rocked a crowded area of the same city north of the Iraqi capital, police said.
It was unclear if there were any casualties, but ambulances were heard racing to the scene in downtown Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where both blasts happened about 500 yards from each other.
Raed Rashid Hamid al-Mullah Jawad, governor of Diyala province, which includes Baqouba, escaped unharmed from the blast that targeted his convoy, police Col. Mudhafar Muhammed said.
Muhammed said a second explosion about five minutes later rocked a crowded Baqouba area where the city's police, army, court and taxation headquarters were located.
Iraqi government officials have been regularly targeted by insurgents determined to derail the war-ravaged country's reconstruction effort.
Iraqi Army soldiers detained 58 men in blindfolds Saturday in Miqdadiya, about 60 miles north of Baghdad
Some Sunnis Hint at Peace Terms in Iraq, U.S. Says
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and JOHN F. BURNS
Published: May 15, 2005
WASHINGTON, May 14 - The Bush administration, struggling to cope with a recent intensification of insurgent violence in Iraq, has received signals from some radical Sunni Arab leaders that they would abandon fighting if the new Shiite majority government gave Sunnis a significant voice in the country's political evolution, administration officials said this week.
The officials said American contacts with what they called "rejectionist" elements among Sunni Arabs - the governing minority under Saddam Hussein, which has generated much of the insurgency, and largely boycotted January's elections - showed that many wanted to join in the political system, including the writing of a permanent constitution.
American officials say that while some Sunni groups will never lay down their arms, others have begun to recognize that their refusal to participate in the political process was a mistake. Meanwhile, the United States, battling a seemingly intractable insurgency, has begun to forcefully press for a political solution. ...................
Senior American officers in Iraq and others in the Pentagon said the latest violence, which has killed nearly 500 people so far this month, had not prompted them to change their strategy of capturing or killing insurgents, cutting off their financing, pre-empting their attacks and training more Iraqi forces.
Rather, they said, the attacks reinforced their view that quelling the insurgency would also require an effective political strategy to stabilize areas where insurgents have been most active, including Baghdad and Mosul, two of Iraq's biggest cities.
To that end, American officials said, the United States is urging Dr. Jaafari, the new Iraqi leader, to renew talks with a coalition of Sunni Arab groups known as the National Dialogue Council, which has links to elements in the insurgency who it says are ready to explore openings toward a political settlement.
But that approach also is fraught with difficulties, partly because of doubts that the council has the influence with the insurgents that it claims, and partly because the council's leaders have been deeply angered by raids by Iraqi forces on its Baghdad offices in the past 10 days. The raids resulted in the arrests of more than a dozen people, including some who had played a role in earlier contacts with the Shiite leaders.
May 15, 2005
By JAMES BENNET
WASHINGTON — American forces in Iraq have often been accused of being slow to apply hard lessons from Vietnam and elsewhere about how to fight an insurgency. Yet, it seems from the outside, no one has shrugged off the lessons of history more decisively than the insurgents themselves.
The insurgents in Iraq are showing little interest in winning hearts and minds among the majority of Iraqis, in building international legitimacy, or in articulating a governing program or even a unified ideology or cause beyond expelling the Americans. They have put forward no single charismatic leader, developed no alternative government or political wing, displayed no intention of amassing territory to govern now.
Rather than employing the classic rebel tactic of provoking the foreign forces to use clumsy and excessive force and kill civilians, they are cutting out the middleman and killing civilians indiscriminately themselves, in addition to more predictable targets like officials of the new government. Bombings have escalated in the last two weeks, and on Thursday a bomb went off in heavy traffic in Baghdad, killing 21 people.
This surge in the killing of civilians reflects how mysterious the long-term strategy remains - and how the rebels' seeming indifference to the past patterns of insurgency is not necessarily good news for anyone.
It is not surprising that reporters, and evidently American intelligence agents, have had great difficulty penetrating this insurgency. What is surprising is that the fighters have made so little effort to advertise unified goals.
Counter-insurgency experts are baffled, wondering if the world is seeing the birth of a new kind of insurgency; if, as in China in the 1930's or Vietnam in the 1940's, it is taking insurgents a few years to organize themselves; or if, as some suspect, there is a simpler explanation.
"Instead of saying, 'What's the logic here, we don't see it,' you could speculate, there is no logic here," said Anthony James Joes, a professor of political science at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia and the author of several books on the history of guerrilla warfare. The attacks now look like "wanton violence," he continued. "And there's a name for these guys: Losers."
"The insurgents are doing everything wrong now," he said. "Or, anyway, I don't understand why they're doing what they're doing."
Steven Metz, of the Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, said the insurgency could still be sorting itself out. Yet, he said, "It really is significant that even two years in there hasn't been anything like any kind of political ideology or political spokesman or political wing emerging. It really is a nihilistic insurgency."
He warned that this hydra-headed quality could make the insurgents hard to crush, even as the lack of unity makes it unlikely they will rule Iraq. "It makes it harder to eradicate the insurgency, but it also makes it more difficult for insurgents to gain their ultimate objective - if that is to control the country," he said.
That no one knows if that is the objective is, by historical standards, one of several remarkable, perplexing features of this fight.
A clear cause - one with broad support - is usually taken for granted by experts as a prerequisite for successful insurgency.
But insurgents in Iraq appear to be fighting for varying causes: Baath Party members are fighting for some sort of restoration of the old regime; Sunni Muslims are presumably fighting to prevent domination by the Shiite majority; nationalists are fighting to drive out the Americans; and foreign fighters want to turn Iraq into a battlefield of a global religious struggle. Some men are said to fight for money; organized crime may play a role.
This incoherence is something new. "If you look at 20th-century insurgencies, they all tend to be fairly coherent in terms of their ideology," Dr. Metz said. "Most of the serious insurgencies, you could sit down and say, 'Here's what they want.' "
In Iraq, insurgent groups appear to share a common immediate goal of ridding Iraq of an American presence, a goal that may find sympathy among Iraqis angry about poor electricity and water service and high unemployment.
Average Iraqis may distinguish among the groups within the insurgency and their tactics. Still, the insurgents haven't publicly proposed a governmental alternative, and their anti-American message has been muddied by their attacks on civilians and by the election of an Iraqi government that has not asked the Americans to leave.
If the insurgency is trying to overthrow this regime, it is contending with a formidable obstacle that successful rebels of the 20th century generally did not face: A democratically elected government. One of the last century's most celebrated theorists and practitioners of revolution, Che Guevara, called that obstacle insurmountable.
"Where a government has come to power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality," he wrote, "the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted."
The insurgents' choice of adversary is unusual. But the recent surge in violence at least follows a time-tested pattern. The insurgents are apparently trying to swamp any progress toward stability with evidence and images of chaos. The killing in that time of at least 250 policemen, soldiers and recruits also fits a pattern, since insurgents have customarily made targets of accused collaborators to isolate a regime. Less obvious is the goal in the killing of some 150 civilians.
The relationship between insurgents and the general population is always complex. Mao Zedong famously postulated that guerrillas move among the people as fish move through water. But he also warned that "a revolution is not a dinner party," and many insurgents, including the Vietcong, effectively used terror - often selectively applied - against civilians to compel segments of the population into at least passive support.
From his experience fomenting Arab revolt against the Turks, T. E. Lawrence concluded that insurgents needed only 2 percent active support from the population, and 98 percent passive support.
What is curious about the Iraqi tactic is that it appears aimed at creating active opposition. The insurgency is powered by Sunnis; the civilians they have killed have been overwhelmingly Shiites and Kurds. The goal appears to be to split apart the fragile governing coalition and foment sectarian strife.
Yet if the insurgents achieve all-out civil conflict, the likely losers are the Sunnis themselves, since they are a minority. Having governed for decades in Iraq, Sunnis are accustomed to the whip hand and may simply assume they will be able to regain control. Or perhaps they are betting that chaos will lead to partition, allowing Sunnis to govern themselves.
David Galula, author of a systematic 1964 study, "Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice," noted the effectiveness of force and intimidation as tools of an insurgency. But he added a crucial caveat: "There is, of course, a practical if not ethical limit to the use of force; the basic rule is never to antagonize at any one time more people than can be handled."
That was one of several mistakes that the Communist rebels made in Greece in the late 1940's. Once the country was liberated from the Germans, the Communists had no majority cause, and they chose to confront a democratically elected government. Lacking much industry, Greece had few proletarians, and the peasants were not particularly restive.
Not that the Communists cared. They had contempt for the peasants and alienated them further by extorting food and reinforcements through threats and executions. They burned villages in hopes of making the peasants a burden on the American-backed government and crippling the Greek economy.
THE guerrillas benefited from support from the Communist dictatorships to Greece's north. Then, in July 1949, Tito shut the Yugoslav border, eliminating Yugoslavia as a sanctuary. But Professor Joes argued that, by then, the insurgents were doomed anyway. "They had already shot themselves in the feet and both knees," he said. In Iraq, American and Iraqi troops have embarked on an offensive in the west partly in hopes of cutting off what the military command says is a flow of foreign fighters and matériel across the Syrian border. But military experts say that without stationing thousands of troops along the border, the military has little chance of closing it off.
If the immediate objective of the insurgents is relatively limited - not to topple the government and drive the Americans out now but to pin them down and bleed them - that at least would have solid precedents. As the counterterrorism expert Bruce Hoffman noted in a paper for Rand last year, "For more than 30 years, a dedicated cadre of approximately 200 to 400 I.R.A. gunmen and bombers frustrated the maintenance of law and order in Northern Ireland, requiring the prolonged deployment of tens of thousands of British troops." Yet the I.R.A. is still far from its larger goal: to drive the British out.
Among Iraq's insurgents, the jihadists are one group that has suggested a sweeping goal. They want to establish a new caliphate - a religious regime with expansive boundaries. For them, the destruction and chaos in Iraq may represent creative forces, means of heightening the contrasts among sects, religions and whole civilizations. Searching for parallels, several experts compared the insurgents in Iraq to the violent anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That movement took root among the alienated and uprooted who could find no place in modern society.
Yet it may prove to be one of history's humbling lessons that history itself fails to illuminate the conflict under way in Iraq. No one really knows what the insurgents are up to.
"It clearly makes sense to the people who are doing it," said Dr. Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute. "And that more than anything else tells us how little we understand the region."
Soldiers from the 272nd Armor Company, 2nd Brigade Combat Team distribute soccer balls on May 10, 2005 to Iraqi children in Al Anbar Province. This photo appeared on www.army.mil. By Kenneth Lane
AL ASAD, Iraq—Lieutenant Col. John W. Rebholz removes garbage and other discarded from the cemetery site in mid April. Marines, from the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, coordinated an earlier cleanup of the cemetery and oasis area of Al Asad.Photo by: Capt. Rob L. James
Spc. James Brown of Delta Company, 113th Aviation Reno, Nev., searches a local national for contraband before allowing him entrance to Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan, on May 11, 2005. A team of soldiers is responsible for screening each local nationalthat enters Kandahar Air Field to prevent any harm from reaching coalition forces supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Jerry T. Combes)
4 dead, 37 wounded in Iraq bomb blasts
Sun, May. 15, 2005
Associated Press
BAQOUBA, Iraq - The governor of the province of Diyala survived one of two bombings in Baqouba early Sunday that a hospital official said killed four people and injured 37.
The two explosions detonated about five minutes apart in a busy street as people were heading to work in downtown Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
The first targeted the convoy of Diyala governor Raed Rashid Hamid al-Mullah Jawad, who escaped unharmed, said police Col. Mudhafar Muhammed.
A second bomb exploded minutes later about 500 yards away, rocking a crowded Baqouba area where the city's police, army, court and taxation headquarters are located.
Ambulances rushed to the scene, where body parts, including a hand and foot, lied on the ground amid pools of blood and shards of glass.
Raed Abdul Munim, head of Baqouba General Hospital, said the bodies of four people killed in the blasts were brought to his hospital, along with 37 people who were injured.
Iraqi government officials have been regularly targeted by insurgents determined to derail the war-ravaged country's reconstruction effort.
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/11651462.htm
Suicide bombers kill five Iraqis in Baquba
Sun May 15, 2005 07:27 AM BST (Update)-(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=728142§ion=news&src=rss/uk/topNews
is in Iraq on a one day trip per Fox News.
God Bless the Troops !!!
May God go with and shield those who are being deployed and those who serve in harm's way ..May God comfort those who mourn.
Bump - Amen
May 15. 2005
Reuters Baghdad - Secrecy for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Iraq on Sunday was so tight even her pilot did not know his passenger's name until she got on board. U.S. officials took extreme precautions to protect Rice from the Iraqi insurgency, putting her in a bulletproof vest and combat helmet at times, keeping many of her own colleagues in the dark and only telling Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari she was coming 48 hours before her arrival.
Iraq has witnessed a dramatic rise in bloodshed since its first democratically elected government was announced on April 28, raising fears of civil war if the country's new leaders do not deliver on promises of stability soon.
Rice came to discuss security, plans for a new constitution and elections, and reconstruction with the new government.
May 15, 2005 (13 minutes ago)
By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS - Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The bodies of 38 men shot execution-style were found dumped at an abandoned chicken farm, a trash-strewn lot and an insurgent stronghold west of the capital, police said Sunday. The grisly finds were the latest in a endless stream of insurgent attacks designed to destabilize Iraq's government and hasten a U.S. retreat.
More than 450 people have been killed in just over two weeks since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Cabinet was announced. At least eight more Iraqis were killed in a spree of bombings and shootings Sunday.
On a lightning visit, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Iraqis to be patient, saying the insurgency can be beaten with the help of a strong political alternative.
"The insurgency is very violent but you defeat insurgencies not just militarily," Rice said after meeting with al-Jaafari and other officials in Baghdad and the northern Kurdish region. "The Iraqis ... are now going to have to intensify their efforts to demonstrate that in fact the political process is the answer for the Iraqi people."
Police in Baghdad's Sadr City, a Shiite-dominated slum, discovered 13 slain men, most appearing to be in their 20s and three of them heavily bearded, lying face down in a shallow grave in a lot Sunday. Residents told police a truck dumped the bodies there early Sunday and three people covered them with dirt, said policeman Lt. Col. Hafidh Maan.
An Associated Press photographer saw the bodies lying in the ground, their hands tied behind their back, eyes blindfolded and at least three bullet wounds in each of their heads. The men were wearing civilian clothes, but there were no identifying documents on them.
Members of the Badr Brigades, a Shiite militia, discovered the bodies while searching for hidden homemade bombs, police said.
Eleven more bodies were found late Saturday at a deserted chicken farm in Huqoul, a town in the Latifiyah area, about 25 miles south of the capital, said police Capt. Muthna Khalid Ali. The victims had their hands tied behind their backs and gunshot wounds to the head, according to another AP journalist at the scene.
Two trucks riddled with bullet holes stood nearby. Identity documents and keys found on two of the bodies identified them as the owners of the truck and among 11 truck drivers kidnapped in the area last month, Ali said.
The next day, the bullet-riddled bodies of a judge, an Education Ministry official and a bodyguard were discovered near the same farm and taken to nearby Iskandariyah General Hospital, an official there said. A fourth body viewed at the hospital was found dumped on a major road, with a bullet wound in the head, he said. The official asked not to be named.
The bodies of 10 Iraqi soldiers were found Saturday in the battleground city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry statement said. The men were shot, but no further details were provided.
Iraq's Sunni Arab-driven insurgency regularly targets Iraqi security forces, government officials and others deemed to be collaborating with U.S.-led forces in the country. Others are kidnapped and sometimes killed to extort lucrative ransoms from their families.
But there have also been a stream of retaliatory attacks between armed Sunni and Shiite groups. Recently, they have included deadly bombings seemingly targeting civilians from the Shiite majority who dominate Iraq's first democratically elected government.
A leading Shiite cleric, Sheik Qassim al-Gharawi, and his nephew were killed in a drive-by shooting in eastern Baghdad on Sunday, police said. Across town, gunmen in two cars shot and killed Industry Ministry official Col. Jassam Mohammed al-Lahibi and his driver.
Two suicide attackers struck within five minutes in a busy downtown street in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
The first, a car bomber, targeted the provincial governor's convoy, police said. Gov. Raed Rashid Hamid al-Mullah Jawad escaped unharmed, but three of his guards were injured. Minutes later, a suicide bomber dressed as a police lieutenant blew himself up at a court building just 500 yards away, killing four policemen, said police Brig. Gen. Adil Mollan. Hospital officials said 37 people were injured in the two attacks.
About 20 minutes later, at least seven mortar rounds slammed into a residential neighborhood of the city, badly damaging five homes and injuring three men and one woman, police said.
Rice acknowledged the security problems Sunday, but said Iraq's new government realizes it must move quickly to write a constitution that reflects the full spectrum of ethnic and religious groups in Iraq and hold fresh elections by year's end.
Al-Jaafari confirmed his commitment to increasing the participation of Iraq's disaffected Sunni Arab minority in the new political dispensation.
"We assert that our new political system is a system that respects people's faiths and respects pluralism," al-Jaafari told reporters. "It is a regime that respects the rights of citizens and respects their role in the new institutions."
Sunnis dominated under Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. But most stayed away from landmark parliamentary elections in January and they are underrepresented in al-Jaafari's government.
It was Rice's first trip to Iraq as the top U.S. diplomat. When Rice was President Bush's national security adviser, she was a chief architect of the war in Iraq.
In other developments:
_ Australia's top Islamic leader said kidnappers holding Australian engineer Douglas Wood hostage have indefinitely extended their deadline for the country's forces to start withdrawing from Iraq. The Australian government has refused to meet the demand. Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly flew to Baghdad last week to try to negotiate the release of Wood, a California resident captured more than a week ago.
_ The Sunni militant Ansar al-Sunnah Army released a video it said shows the aftermath of the ambush that led to the capture of a Japanese security contractor. The video, which appeared on an Islamic Web site, did not give any indication of Akihito Saito's fate but purportedly showed the killing of four foreign contractors and 12 bodyguards. A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman said it was believed to be genuine.
May 15, 2005 — BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents have freed the governor of Iraq's rebellious Anbar province after kidnapping him last week, an Interior Ministry official said on Sunday.
Raja Nawaf had been abducted with four bodyguards on the road from the town of Qaim near the Syrian border to the rebel stronghold of Ramadi by followers of al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, after a dispute with the governor's tribe, relatives had said.
Anbar province is the heartland of Iraq's insurgency.
On Saturday, American troops ended Operation Matador, a week -long offensive in northwest Anbar aimed at rooting out guerrillas and foreign militants.
The U.S. military said it lost nine troops and killed 125 guerrillas.
Copyright 2005 Reuters News
Witnesses Say 500 Dead In Uzbekistan
POSTED: 4:32 pm CDT May 15, 2005
UPDATED: 5:22 pm CDT May 15, 2005
FERGANA, Uzbekistan -- Eight Uzbek soldiers and three Islamic militants died in a clash near the Kyrgyz border Sunday and more than 500 Uzbeks fled to safety across the frontier, witnesses said, in spreading violence that further threatened stability in this Central Asia country, a key American ally and host to an important U.S. military outpost.
The explosions of pent-up anger have now hit at least two Uzbek border towns in the volatile Fergana Valley. As many as 500 people reportedly were killed Friday in Andijan, Uzbekistan's fourth-largest city about 30 miles west of the Kyrgyz frontier, when government troops were called in to put down an uprising by alleged Islamic militants and citizens protesting dire economic conditions.
About 500 bodies were laid out in rows at an Andijan school, according to a respected doctor in the town, seeming to corroborate other witness accounts of hundreds killed in the fighting. Relatives were arriving at Andijan's School No. 15 to identify the dead, said the doctor, who spoke by telephone on condition she not be named.
The doctor, who also said about 2,000 people were wounded, is widely regarded as knowledgeable about local affairs. She did not say how she arrived at her estimate.
Security was tight in Andijan as stunned residents cleaned blood off streets guarded by troops and armored vehicles. One man said he saw the bodies of three people apparently killed by a soldier Sunday, two days after government forces put down the uprising.
"The city was burying its victims throughout the entire day, and the people are very angry at the president for his order to open fire at protesters," said the man, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Ilkhom.
The Uzbek Foreign Ministry on Sunday denied that government forces had opened fire on demonstrators. President Islam Karimov has said 10 government soldiers and "many more" protesters died in the Friday conflict and at least 100 people were wounded.
Since then the government has imposed a near-total news blackout on the region, keeping reporters away from scenes of violence.
Karimov, viewed as one of the most authoritarian leaders still in control of a former Soviet republic, cut his political teeth under the old communist system, which brooked no civil disobedience. Before the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, many regional leaders had ordered military or police attacks against their own people when they massed in protest in places like Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
But if the estimates of 500 dead hold true and if Uzbek forces were behind the killing - as most reports indicate - Friday's violence wou