Ethiopia set for Somalia pull out

Ethiopia has refused to reverse its decision to withdraw its forces from Somalia by the end of the year, despite a plea from the African Union (AU) to delay the move which it fears may result in a security vacuum inside the country.

The government in Addis Ababa said last month that it would pull its troops out by the scheduled time amid fears the war-torn country could descend into further anarchy unless more peacekeepers are sent.

"We appeal to Ethiopia to consider phasing out withdrawal, until such time [when] more troops from Nigeria, Uganda and Burundi are deployed in Somalia," the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the AU said in a statement at a meeting in the Ethiopian capital on Monday.

"The security situation in Somalia is alarming ... piracy is escalating against the background of weakening leadership and insurgents control nearly all the country with the exception of Mogadishu and Baidoa."

There are currently some 3,000 Ethiopian troops in Somalia supporting the embattled Transitional Federal Government [TFG], which is based in the southern town of Baidoa.

A further 3,400 peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi make up the AU mission in the country.

That number is well below the 8,000 troops pledged by the AU two years ago.

But despite the shortfall Ethiopian officials said the pullout of their forces would go ahead.

"The decision to withdraw troops from Somalia was a commitment made by the country's authorities to parliament and will not be changed," said Tekeda Alemu, Ethiopia's minister of state.

About 850 Nigerian troops are expected to join the AU peacekeepers already stationed in the country.

Rift

Adding to the fragility of Somalia's TFG government is a growing rift between Abdullahi Yusuf, the president, and Nur Hassan Hussein, the man he sacked as prime minister.

The AU and the US government have backed Hussein and have so far refused to recognise Mohamud Mohamed Guled, the new Somali prime minister, who was selected by the president.

The TFG is also facing an escalation in attacks from opposition fighters, that threatens to reach Mogadishu, the capital.

Fighters from al-Shabab, a group which split from the armed Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), have control of several town and cities across Somalia.

The opposition controls the south of Somalia and has launched a series of raids on Ethiopian forces which have tried to defend the government.

At least 10,000 civilians have been killed in two years of fighting, while a million people have been forced to flee their homes.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

Ever since the Ethiopian invasion (and indeed beginning prior to it), the remnants of the Islamic Courts Union have been becoming increasingly radicalized; this is particularly true of the successor/splinter group Al-Shabaab. Although I used to be very well informed on the situation in Somalia, I more or less gave up on it in disgust two years ago when Ethiopia invaded, and am therefore unsure how (or if) this will affect the War on Terror. I'm going to see if I can contact James Dahl, the online community's foremost expert on the matter, to see what his take on it is.

Karzai urges Afghan war timeline

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called for a timetable for ending the war against the Taleban in his country.

Mr Karzai made the call in a speech to a visiting UN Security Council team.

He said if Afghans had "no light at the end of the tunnel" they had the right to pursue other options, such as peace negotiations with the Taleban.

Mr Karzai also demanded an end to arrests of Afghans "in their homes, in the roads" by international forces, saying it was the job of Afghan police.

[snip]

Mr Karzai said there were two options.

First would be to set a timeline, saying that what had not been achieved in the past seven years would be achieved in the next "four years, five years or another seven years".

But he added: "If we cannot give a light at the end of the tunnel to the Afghan people, [do] the Afghan people have a right to ask for negotiation for peace? [Do] the Afghan people have a right to seek other avenues?"

Mr Karzai said he would continue to fight al-Qaeda and Taleban members "who are ideologically against the rest of the world".

However, he said Taleban members who were "part of the Afghan community" could be brought back to serve Afghanistan.

[More]


Comment:

That last part is the crux of the matter. Karzai has been (rightly) calling for negotiation with the reconcilables for quite some time now — indeed, he has actually engaged in some negotiation with the mediation of King Abdullah. His borrowing of the words "timeline" and "withdrawal" from Iraq is blatant electioneering, and nothing more.

The fact that he felt it would be beneficial to say it, however, is emblematic of a real problem, which is that we are running out of time. The good will of the Afghan people cannot last forever, and it is beginning to wear thin.

Al Qaida groups 'leaving Iraq for Sudan, Somalia'

Baghdad: Some groups of Al Qaida terror network in Iraq have started leaving the country towards other hot spots in Africa like Sudan and Somalia, security sources tell Gulf News.

A key reason behind the change in strategy by the so-called Al Qaida Organisation in Mesopotamia is the intensity of the latest military strikes launched by Iraqi and US forces against the network, which has been the major challenge to restoring the stability of Iraq, the sources said.

"Our intelligence information indicates the withdrawal of certain groups of Al Qaida from Iraq because of the military strikes. Many of them have escaped through the borders with Syria and Iran to hotter zones such as Somalia and Sudan," Major General Hussain Ali Kamal, head of the Investigation and Information Agency at the Interior Ministry, told Gulf News.

"I believe this is the beginning of the complete withdrawal of Al Qaida from Iraqi territory."

A source at Iraqi Ministry of National Security said that documents and letters found in hideouts of "some elements of Al Qaida" during search operations in Sunni suburbs in Baghdad, which were previously under the control of Al Qaida, "prove these elements left Iraq for Somalia and Sudan".

The information, which could not be confirmed by independent sources, could represent a victory for the Iraqi government, headed by Nouri Al Maliki.

The number of bloody attacks by Al Qaida has declined remarkably in Baghdad in the past 12 months, an indication the terror network faces a difficult situation on the ground, said Major General Abdul Jalil Khalaf, former police commander in Basra province.

"This also highlights the increasingly improving performance of the Iraqi armed forces and the speed by which they can operate in different places," Khalaf told Gulf News.

Khalaf, who is said to be considered for a top post at the Ministry of Defence, said the recent campaign against the Shiite militias in Basra negatively affected Al Qaida.

"Al Qaida began to lose a lot of sympathy on the Sunni streets after realising that Al Maliki government launched a war against the Shiites fighters, believed to be backed by Iran."

The latest political rapprochement between Iraq and other Arab states has also led to the weakening Al Qaida and "its gradual withdrawal from Iraq", he explained. But Khalaf warned that Al Qaida will not withdraw fully from Iraq. "This will take years," he said.

Via Gulf News.


Comment:

I admit to having been vehemently against Maliki's crackdown, but it seems to have paid off. I appear to have underestimated him.

US and Iraqi forces drive al-Qa'ida from stronghold

AMERICAN and Iraqi forces are driving al-Qa'ida in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country.

After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, al-Qa'ida's dwindling band of fighters had made a defiant "last stand" in the northern city of Mosul. A huge operation to crush the 1200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.

Operation Lion's Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the US 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the al-Qa'ida leader, and the capture of more than 1000 suspects.

The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen at the weekend, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.

Even in the district of Zanjali, which was previously a hotbed of the insurgency, it was possible for reporters to accompany an Iraqi colonel on foot through streets of breeze-block houses studded with bullet holes. Hundreds of houses were searched without resistance.

US and Iraqi leaders believe that while it is premature to write off al-Qa'ida in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul, and its remnants have been driven into countryside to the south.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has also led a crackdown on the Shia Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his Government had "defeated" terrorism.

"They were intending to besiege Baghdad and control it," he said. "But thanks to the will of the tribes, security forces, army and all Iraqis, we defeated them."

The number of foreign fighters coming over the border from Syria to bolster al-Qa'ida's numbers is thought to have significantly declined.

Brigadier General Abdullah Abdul, a senior Iraqi commander, said: "We've limited their movements with check-points. They are doing small attacks and trying big ones, but they're mostly not succeeding."

Major-General Mark Hertling, US commander in the north, said: "I think we're at the irreversible point."

Mr Maliki was speaking at ceremonies marking the fifth anniversary of the 2003 assassination of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a leading opponent of Saddam Hussein who was killed in a truck bombing in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf after returning from exile in Iran.

Such attacks plagued Iraq following the US-led invasion, but violence in the country has fallen to its lowest level in four years. The change has been driven by last year's build-up of American forces, the Sunni tribal revolt against al-Qa'ida in Iraq and Mr Maliki's crackdowns, among other factors.

Mr Maliki plans to visit the United Arab Emirates today and also Italy and Germany later in the month - hoping that improved security at home will lead to greater international support.

Iraq is enjoying a surge in oil revenue driven by record crude prices and the highest production levels since Saddam's ouster. The Government expects to earn $73 billion from oil this year if prices remain high.

Putting some of this money to work, the Iraqi Government held a groundbreaking ceremony at the weekend for a project to refurbish the main road to the Baghdad airport.

Via The Australian. H/T Muslims Against Sharia.

Comment:

Hallelujah. If Bush manages to avoid screwing things up in the next 197 days, we will essentially have won — a Pyrrhic victory, to be sure, but victory nonetheless. Hopefully, once President Obama is debriefed by the brass, he'll accelerate the withdrawal, and we can finally turn our attention to bin Laden. In fact, Bush could probably start withdrawing now, and have all of our troops out before the election, but, having refused to heed calls for withdrawal for so long, he is now invested in an eternity of war, as is John McCain. It's ironic: the Right accuses us of being invested in defeat, but in reality it's the other way around.

Iraqis rally over US security deal

Tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia have taken to the streets of Baghdad and other cities to protest against a long-term security deal with the US. The rallies after Friday prayers follow a call by Muqtada al-Sadr for weekly protests against the deal that could lead to more US troops and a long-term US presence.

Washington wants the Iraqi government to provide a legal framework for US troops to remain in Iraq beyond the expiration of a UN mandate in December. Officials from the administration of George Bush, the US president, told Al Jazeera they expect to finalise the deal by the end of July.

A statement from al-Sadr's office called the negotiations "a project of humiliation for the Iraqi people".

Sheikh Salah Obaidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr's bloc in parliament, said the call for protests is not a "threat" to the Iraqi government, but a "warning". Al-Sadr, a Shia leader who has the backing of the al-Mahdi Army militia, called for the weekly protests on Tuesday and warned the government against signing the agreement, saying "it is against the interests of the Iraqi people".

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, another leading Shia figure, spoke out against the agreement, saying it would violate Iraq's sovereignty.

Last week, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shia cleric, also reportedly expressed his anger, saying he would not permit the Iraqi government to sign a deal with "US occupiers" as long as he lived.

Via Al Jezeera.


Comment:

Why is the Bush administration so averse to victory? Once we finally reduce al-Qaeda in Iraq to utter insignificance — and I would be absolutely flabbergasted if that still had not happened by the time the mandate expires in December — our job will be complete. We will be able to withdraw; when we do so, the attacks against our troops will obviously stop, and Iraq will have become as stable as can reasonably be expected for a country in the Middle East. If, however, we do make this deal, then the current fragile peace that exists between the government and the Shia (and, most likely, the Sunni as well) will be broken. If we make the deal, we will have needed to make it; if we do not make it, we will not have needed to make it.

We must withdraw, not only for Iraq, but for us as well. I have calculated that by freeing up all of the troops who are currently deployed in Iraq, and allowing them sufficient time between deployments, we would be able to triple, if not outright quadruple, the size of the Coalition forces in Afghanistan. President Obama will then be able to show Bush what a real surge looks like.

'Al Qaeda leader' killed in Iraq

A senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq has been killed in an air strike near Baghdad, according to a US military commander.

Brigadier General Joseph Anderson identified the man as Abu Usama al-Tunisi, a Tunisian reportedly viewed as the successor to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian previously the group's most senior figure in Iraq.

"Abu Usama al-Tunisi was one of the most senior leaders within al-Qaeda in Iraq," Anderson said.

The general said a precision strike on Tuesday near the town of Musayyib killed al-Tunisi and his death was a "significant blow" to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

He said al-Qaeda may shift its forces from Iraq to Afghanistan in order to try to expand its operations there.

"All we can tell you is that by numbers and how the groups are operating in very remote locations and not collaboratively they're fractured, ruptured, mitigated here. "The question becomes, where would they go? What would they do?" he said. Handwritten note Anderson said: "United States Air Force F-16 aircraft attacked the target. "Reporting indicated that several al-Qaeda members with ties to senior leadership were present at that time. Three were killed, including al-Tunisi," he said. "His presence was confirmed by one of the two detainees from the operation, one who left the target area just prior to the air strike, who we eventually captured minutes later," he said. Ground forces recovered a handwritten note at the site that was believed to have been written by al-Tunisi, Anderson said, displaying a slide with photographs of the note. "The key points in this hand-written note include, he's surrounded, communications have been cut and he's desperate for help," he said. "What I make of that is that we're having great success in isolating these pockets." Anderson said al-Tunisi oversaw the movement of foreign fighters in Iraq and designated areas to them from where they could launch suicide attacks and car bombings in the Baghdad area.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

Well, we may not have gotten Osama, but we have killed Abu Osama, which is progress, I suppose.

Seriously, this article is very good news. If al-Qaeda is forced to retreat from Iraq, it will be a cataclysmic blow to its reputation. It would be one thing if Iraq was just another front, but it's not. Al-Qaeda's plan foresees three stages: the stage of "the power of vexation and exhaustion", during which the existing order is torn down, resulting in chaos and anarchy; the stage of "the administration of savagery", in which a sort of pseudo-state is set up within this area of anarchy; and the stage of "the power of establishment", in which the pseudo-state matures into a full fledged nation.¹ Had operations in Iraq been in the first stage, withdrawing would not be a problem; operations are expected to be fairly fluid in this stage. When al-Qaeda announced the formation of the "Islamic State in Iraq", however, operations moved into the second stage. Withdrawing now would be admitting that their plan had failed. The subtitle of the book The Management of Savagery is "The Most Critical Phase Through Which the Umma Will Pass", this certainly seems accurate, since this is where they have failed.

¹The Management of Savagery, translated with funding from the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.

'Supporting the troops' means withdrawing them

By General William E. Odom

Every step the Democrats in Congress have taken to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq has failed. Time and again, President Bush beats them into submission with charges of failing to "support the troops."

Why do the Democrats allow this to happen? Because they let the president define what "supporting the troops" means. His definition is brutally misleading. Consider what his policies are doing to the troops.

No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods. Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.

In Iraq, combat units take over an area of operations and patrol it daily, making soldiers face the prospect of death from an IED or small arms fire or mortar fire several hours each day. Day in and day out for a full year, with only a single two-week break, they confront the prospect of death, losing limbs or eyes, or suffering other serious wounds. Although total losses in Iraq have been relatively small compared to most previous conflicts, the individual soldier is risking death or serious injury day after day for a year. The impact on the psyche accumulates, eventually producing what is now called "post-traumatic stress disorders." In other words, they are combat-exhausted to the point of losing effectiveness. The occasional willful killing of civilians in a few cases is probably indicative of such loss of effectiveness. These incidents don't seem to occur during the first half of a unit's deployment in Iraq.

After the first year, following a few months back home, these same soldiers are sent back for a second year, then a third year, and now, many are facing a fourth deployment! Little wonder more and more soldiers and veterans are psychologically disabled.

And the damage is not just to enlisted soldiers. Many officers are suffering serious post-traumatic stress disorders but are hesitant to report it – with good reason. An officer who needs psychiatric care and lets it appear on his medical records has most probably ended his career. He will be considered not sufficiently stable to lead troops. Thus officers are strongly inclined to avoid treatment and to hide their problems.

There are only two ways to fix this problem, both of which the president stubbornly rejects. Instead, his recent "surge" tactic has compelled the secretary of defense to extend Army tours to 15 months! (The Marines have been allowed to retain their six-month deployment policy and, not surprisingly, have fewer cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome.)

The first solution would be to expand the size of the Army to two or three times its present level, allowing shorter combat tours and much longer breaks between deployments. That cannot be done rapidly enough today, even if military conscription were restored and new recruits made abundant. It would take more than a year to organize and train a dozen new brigade combat teams. The Clinton administration cut the Army end strength by about 40 percent – from about 770,000 to 470,000 during the 1990s. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld looked for ways to make the cuts even deeper. Thus this administration and its predecessor aggressively gave up ground forces and tactical air forces while maintaining large maritime forces that cannot be used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sadly, the lack of wisdom in that change in force structure is being paid for not by President Bush or President Clinton but by the ordinary soldier and his family. They have no lobby group to seek relief for them.

The second way to alleviate the problem is to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as possible and as securely as possible. The electorate understands this. That is why a majority of voters favor withdrawing from Iraq.

If the Democrats truly want to succeed in forcing President Bush to begin withdrawing from Iraq, the first step is to redefine "supporting the troops" as withdrawing them, citing the mass of accumulating evidence of the psychological as well as the physical damage that the president is forcing them to endure because he did not raise adequate forces. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress could confirm this evidence and lay the blame for "not supporting the troops" where it really belongs – on the president. And they could rightly claim to the public that they are supporting the troops by cutting off the funds that he uses to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.

The public is ahead of the both branches of government in grasping this reality, but political leaders and opinion makers in the media must give them greater voice.

Congress clearly and indisputably has two powers over the executive: the power of the purse and the power to impeach. Instead of using either, members of congress are wasting their time discussing feckless measures like a bill that "de-authorizes the war in Iraq." That is toothless unless it is matched by a cut-off of funds.

The president is strongly motivated to string out the war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years.

To force him to begin a withdrawal before then, the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what "supporting the troops" really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.

The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the "high crime" of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.

Via Nieman Watchdog.

Comment:

I realize that this is not the type of article I usually post. However, the issue it addresses—that of troop fatigue and resultant atrocities—is becoming ever more central to the conflict in Afghanistan. According to Wikipedia,¹ there are currently some 25,000 American troops deployed in Afghanistan. In order to function at peak psychological capacity, according to General Odom, that number would have to be increased by 25-50,000. The only place way we could get that many troops is by withdrawing from Iraq.

The Wiki reports that the United States has a quarter of a million troops in Iraq.² This number does not include those troops currently in between deployments (or preparing to deploy), but it is enough. With that many troops, you could assemble a force 83,000 to 125,000 strong, with adequate troop rotation. If transfered to NATO's command and sent to Afghanistan, this would at least triple, and possibly more than quadruple, the number of active duty soldiers at ISAF's disposal.³ I have long been in favor of quadrupling our forces in Afghanistan. It's high time this war once again became a one-sided exercise in American military might. It's been over a half a decade already, let's just get it over with so that we can all go home.

I understand that withdrawing from Iraq would have grave consequences, but short of mobilizing the country and instituting the draft (which is about as likely as Representative Ron Paul defecting to the Socialist Party) or a whole bunch of other nations suddenly offering us the use of their armed forces (which is about as likely as the Socialist Party endorsing Ron Paul), I don't see how we can succeed in Iraq. I had not thought it was possible for the United States of America to lose a war, but Rumsfeld and Bush have proven me wrong. Let's not lose Afghanistan, too.