Just Foreign Policy News
June 13, 2011
Support the Work of Just Foreign Policy
Go Straight to the News Summary
I) Actions and Featured Articles
*Action – Help Just Foreign Policy Get to Gaza:
Urge Hillary to Act to Protect the Passengers on the Flotilla
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/audacityofhope/hillarypetition
Donate to support our participation:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate/audacityofhope
*Action – Jewish Voice for Peace: More Palestinian leaders wrongly imprisoned
Bassem and Naji Tamimi, from the village of Nabi Saleh, are being punished for organizing nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation. Urge the State Department to demand the Tamimis’ release.
http://bit.ly/tamimis
Help Support Our Advocacy for Peace and Diplomacy
The opponents of peace and diplomacy work every day. Help us be an effective counterweight.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate
II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are applying fresh pressure on the Obama administration to draw down U.S. troops in Afghanistan faster than many military leaders want, the Washington Post reports. Sen. Kerry is among a growing number of congressional leaders urging Obama to narrow the mission’s focus. Kerry has called the war’s $10 billion-a-month cost "unsustainable." Obama is campaigning for reelection next year at the head of a party deeply opposed to the war, the Post notes.
2) Obama is expected to announce next month the size and pace of a drawdown he promised in December 2009, the Los Angeles Times reports. Ending the war is one of the few ideas to attract bipartisan backing on Capitol Hill, the LAT says. Last month, 204 House members voted for an amendment that would have required the administration to come up with an accelerated deadline for pulling out of Afghanistan. Support ranged from the traditional antiwar left to "tea party" conservatives upset about the cost of the war.
But Rep. McGovern and others who met with the president recently said they did not get the impression he would order a major troop reduction right away. "I didn’t get the assurance that I wished I would have received that this would be a dramatic drawdown," McGovern said.
3) President Obama should abide by his commitment to a "significant" withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, even if it means overriding his military advisors, declares the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. After a decade, the mission has been a disappointment, the LAT says. The LAT expresses agreement with Sen. Kerry that "our current commitment, in troops and dollars, is neither proportional to our interests nor sustainable."
4) According to administration officials, by July 15, Obama will unveil a plan to reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan by upward of 30,000 over 12 to 18 months, Leslie Gelb writes in the Daily Beast. Biden and NSC Adviser Tom Donilon are pressing for a July announcement of 30,000 in cuts over 12 months, regardless of what happens with peace talks.
5) According to a DoD memo leaked to the FT [the FT article is behind a paywall – JFP], the cost of the U.S. campaign in Libya is set to exceed the $750 million Pentagon estimate set out in March, the Daily Mail reports. The memo said the U.S. had spent $664 million in Libya by mid-May – a running cost of $60 million a month since the bombing began in March. At the current rate, the U.S. will shell out at least an extra $274 million till the end of the current 90 day no fly zone extension period – brining total expenditure to a minimum of $938 million.
6) Sen. Graham said Sunday it’s time to consider international intervention in Syria, The Hill reports. "It has gotten to the point where Gadhafi’s behavior and Assad’s behavior are indistinguishable," Graham said on CBS’ "Face the Nation." "You need to put on the table all options, including a model like we have in Libya."
7) Gen. Petraeus used deceptive statistics to establish a media narrative of success for Special Operations Forces raids in Afghanistan, Gareth Porter writes for Inter Press Service. Petraeus claimed that from May through July, SOF units had captured 1,355 rank and file Taliban, killed another 1,031, and killed or captured 365 middle or high-ranking Taliban. But more than 80 percent of those called "captured Taliban fighters" were released within days of having been picked up, because they were found to have been innocent civilians, according to official U.S. military data, Porter writes.
Porter writes that the disparity concerning "captured Taliban" suggests that the number of "Taliban killed" may also have been inflated and that those figures may also include a substantial number of civilians.
8) $6.6 billion in Iraqi cash dispersed in Iraq by the Pentagon has gone missing, can’t be accounted for, and may well have been stolen, the Los Angeles Times reports. The US is on the hook for the money, the LAT notes, since it was legally responsible for it and Iraqi officials have threatened to sue to reclaim it. The money would be sufficient to run Los Angeles or Chicago schools for a year, the LAT notes.
Bahrain
9) Thousands of Bahrainis rallied Saturday answering a call from their largest opposition group, Al-Wefaq, in the first demonstration since a crackdown on pro-democracy protests, AFP reports. The demonstration had received permission from authorities. The opposition repeated its demands for a real constitutional monarchy with an empowered, elected parliament. "Our slogan is: ‘The people want to reform the regime’," an Al-Wefaq leader said. Al-Wefaq welcomed the government’s offer of a "serious dialogue, comprehensive and without preconditions."
10) A 20-year-old woman who recited poems critical of Bahrain’s rulers was sentenced to a year in prison, AP reports. The court’s decision drew sharp denunciations from Amnesty International, which said the verdict highlighted how free speech is "brutally denied" by Bahrain’s authorities. The U S has condemned the violence in Bahrain, but has stopped short of any tangible punishments against the rulers, AP notes.
Israel/Palestine
11) The Jerusalem municipal planning committee approved the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s plan to build a "Museum of Tolerance" on a Muslim cemetery, Haaretz reports. Municipal opposition leader Yosef Alalu of Meretz said building the museum on a Muslim cemetery would defeat the goal of promoting tolerance.
Afghanistan
12) The UN announced Saturday that May was the deadliest month for Afghan civilians since it began keeping count in 2007, the New York Times reports. The monthly record of 368 deaths is effectively the highest number since the war began, the NYT says.
Colombia
13) President Santos signed a law Friday that aims to compensate 4 million Colombians who have been victims of the civil conflict, the Washington Post reports. Many hope the law will help prepare conditions for peace talks to end the conflict.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Lawmakers push for new Afghan strategy
Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, June 11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/lawmakers-push-for-afghan-strategy-rethink/2011/06/10/AGtahoQH_story.html
Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are applying fresh pressure on the Obama administration to draw down U.S. troops in Afghanistan faster than many military leaders say is responsible, forcing the president to balance his party’s demands with his generals’ on-the-ground assessment as he nears another milestone in the war.
When he announced his war strategy 18 months ago, President Obama set July as the point when he would begin bringing home the approximately 100,000 U.S. service members in Afghanistan. Administration officials have portrayed the reduction as just another planned step in the president’s strategy.
But Sen. John F. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is among a growing number of congressional leaders urging Obama to take full advantage of progress achieved over the past 18 months by narrowing the mission’s focus.
These lawmakers argue that, at a time of fiscal stress at home, the administration should concentrate on targeting al-Qaeda and protecting other U.S. security interests in the region, rather than on maintaining the broad military deployments across much of southern and eastern Afghanistan and the costly nation-building elements of the counter-insurgency strategy.
This political push could force the White House to revisit a contentious internal debate that unfolded in fall 2009, when Obama’s civilian advisers challenged the uniformed military over how best to change the course of a flagging war effort. But Obama is now making his decision amid a difficult reelection effort and when the killing of Osama bin Laden has made some lawmakers argue that the time is ripe to dramatically scale back the U.S. war effort. "The president ought to take advantage of that success and push us in a direction that accelerates the ability of the Afghans" to take over operations, said Kerry (D-Mass.).
Obama is awaiting a set of recommendations from his military commanders on how many troops to bring home in July and the pace of withdrawal over the months ahead. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who on Friday concluded an 11-day trip that took him to Afghanistan, could deliver Gen. David H. Petraeus’s proposed options to Obama in the next week.
[…] Kerry has called the war’s $10 billion-a-month cost "unsustainable," and on Wednesday, his committee issued a report critical of the economic assistance program that is a key part of the counterinsurgency strategy’s goal of bringing stability and government to parts of the country once controlled by the Taliban.
[…] While White House officials say electoral politics is not a factor in the decision, Obama is campaigning for reelection next year at the head of a party deeply opposed to the Afghanistan war.
Bringing home the surge troops by the end of the year would allow Obama to demonstrate to his party, particularly its liberal grass roots, that he is winding down the war in Afghanistan, just as he has in Iraq.
Advisers say he will probably use his commanders’ recommendations as a base line to draw from, adopting some elements and coming up with others of his own, as he did in 2009. They say there is no timeline for the decision or for his speech outlining the path ahead, other than his commitment to withdraw the first surge troops before the end of July.
[…]
2) Obama weighs scale of Afghanistan pullout
Amid growing doubts in Congress over the war’s cost, the Obama administration begins an internal debate this week on how many troops to bring home, and when.
Peter Nicholas and Lisa Mascaro, Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-afghan-20110613,0,2412249.story
Washington – The Obama administration opens an internal debate this week on the size of a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan amid growing doubts in Congress about the cost and purpose of the decade-long war and public pressure to bring it to a rapid end.
President Obama is expected to announce next month the size and pace of a drawdown he promised in December 2009, when he rolled out a strategy that included adding 30,000 U.S. troops in hopes of breaking the Taliban’s momentum.
He will reach a decision on the number in deliberations with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Gen. David H. Petraeus, who are known to favor a small initial reduction in the 100,000-strong troops on the ground, and other officials who want to move more quickly.
Obama has given few hints on which way he is leaning, but the ground may be shifting in favor of a much smaller military footprint. Gates is retiring at the end of the month. Petraeus is moving to the CIA, where he will no longer have direct influence over the size of the military force.
And with Washington focused on trimming the federal deficit, the White House is coping with a wave of public frustration over a conflict that is costing $120 billion a year.
Ending the war is one of the few ideas to attract bipartisan backing on Capitol Hill. Last month, 204 House members voted for an amendment that would have required the administration to come up with an accelerated deadline for pulling out of Afghanistan, the strongest expression of disaffection with the war since operations began in late 2001.
The amendment by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) would have compelled Obama to report within 60 days on an exit strategy, including a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops and handing off military operations to the Afghan government.
Although the measure did not pass, it captured 42 more votes than a similar proposal in July. Support ranged from the traditional antiwar left to "tea party" conservatives upset about the cost of the war.
Most of those who supported the amendment were Democrats, including the entire House Democratic leadership. Among them was the No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, who had been a reliable supporter of the war in previous years. "It is essential that we fight the smartest war possible against terrorists – but it is fair to ask how a massive troop presence in Afghanistan continues to help us accomplish that goal," Hoyer said in a speech before the vote.
The number of Republicans who supported the amendment increased to 26 – nearly triple the total from the last vote.
Lawmakers say they’ve lost their appetite for an expensive conflict at a time of high deficits and other priorities closer to home. They cite the death of Osama bin Laden last month, and they contend that mercurial Afghan President Hamid Karzai is not a reliable partner. Some question the wisdom of committing resources to Afghanistan when Pakistan and Yemen may be bigger hotbeds of terrorist activity.
During a confirmation hearing Wednesday for Ryan Crocker, Obama’s nominee for ambassador to Afghanistan, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a close White House ally, captured the sense of impatience. "While the U.S. has genuine national security interests in Afghanistan, our current commitment in troops and in dollars is neither proportional to our interests nor sustainable," Kerry said.
Obama’s habit is to split the difference when confronted with competing pressures. Past practice suggests he may opt for a small initial reduction followed by a series of more aggressive withdrawals culminating in the formal handoff of security responsibilities to the Afghans in 2014. McGovern and others who met with the president at the White House recently said they did not get the impression he would order a major troop reduction right away. "I didn’t get the assurance that I wished I would have received that this would be a dramatic drawdown," McGovern said in an interview.
[…]
3) Troop withdrawal from Afghanistan must be significant
President Obama said he would begin a withdrawal next month, and no doubt the Pentagon would like to see it be minimal. But the lessons of nearly 10 years of war make it clear it’s time to cut back the U.S. role.
Editorial, Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2011
http://latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-afghanistan-20110612,0,4842878.story
President Obama must soon choose whether to order a "significant" withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan – as he promised – or content himself with a token drawdown. After nearly a decade of war and a troop buildup that seems to have produced results, the president should abide by his commitment, even if it means overriding his military advisors.
In December 2009, when he authorized a surge of an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, raising the U.S. force level to 100,000, Obama said he would begin a withdrawal in July 2011. But almost from the beginning, his advisors in the Pentagon have made it plain that they want a minimal withdrawal – perhaps 5,000 or 10,000 troops.
[…] In supporting a significant troop withdrawal in July, we are influenced by the state of the Afghan enterprise as a whole. If maintaining a relatively larger military presence in that country promised fulfillment of U.S. objectives in a reasonable time, our thinking would be different. But after a decade, and despite some successes, the mission has been a disappointment. There have been military successes, but the Taliban retains its influence over several parts of the country. There has been some progress toward building a civil society and increasing educational opportunity (especially for girls), but those efforts continue to encounter resistance. The government of the mercurial President Hamid Karzai, supposedly a partner of the United States, is only sporadically cooperative and is rife with corruption.
We still hope that the "fragile and reversible" military gains are preserved and that the challenges mentioned by Crocker can be mastered. But we also agree with Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that "while the United States has genuine national security interests in Afghanistan, our current commitment, in troops and dollars, is neither proportional to our interests nor sustainable." A significant withdrawal of U.S. forces next month would better balance responsibilities with resources.
4) Obama’s Secret Afghan Exit Formula
Obama is keeping under wraps a hush-hush plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan-and he hopes it will satisfy those pushing for a quick exit and the diehards determined to stay the course.
Leslie H. Gelb, Daily Beast, June 11, 2011 | 8:17pm
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-06-11/obamas-secret-afghan-exit-formula-leslie-h-gelb-with-exclusive-details
By July 15, President Obama will unveil a plan to reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan by upward of 30,000, but to withdraw them slowly under military guidance over 12 to 18 months, according to administration officials.
In sum, the quick exiters get the big 30,000 or so number, and the die-harders get one last year-plus at near full strength to weaken the Taliban. Ain’t democracy grand? Officials caution that since no announcement will be made for almost a month, and since Obama is still being battered from all sides, the projected withdrawal total and end dates could change somewhat. No one, not even Obama’s most intimate national-security aides-Tom Donilon, Denis McDonough, and Ben Rhodes-can be certain of their boss’ final calculations, but key officials feel confident that the president’s secret thinking will generally hold.
Sorting out the formula is for chess players. The U.S. now deploys about 100,000 troops, in addition to about 40,000 NATO troops. NATO, including Washington, recently announced that it will remove all combat forces by January 2015 (i.e., three and a half years from now). The 30,000 U.S. troops to be withdrawn beginning this July constitute the full amount deployed in the so-called surge decision of late 2009. Their departure will still leave 70,000 U.S. armed personnel in country. All these numbers, to say nothing of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, make for intriguing maneuvering in Washington. The exact number of forces to be reduced and the precise time frame for their withdrawal will be determined during the review that will get underway later this week.
The positions of senior officials in this process reflect a mixture of serious thought and gamesmanship. Vice President Biden along with NSC Adviser Tom Donilon mark the center-there is no left. They’re pressing for a July announcement of 30,000 in cuts over 12 months. Tellingly, Obama already gave public voice to their rationale. "We will begin a transition this summer," he said a week ago. "By killing bin Laden, by blunting the momentum of the Taliban, we have now accomplished a lot of what we set out to accomplish 10 years ago." In other words, most of the job is done, and the United States and NATO now can safely transition from a counterinsurgency approach, with a lot of troops and a lot of nation-building, to a more limited and focused counterterrorist strategy. Interestingly, the Biden-Donilon approach expects little from negotiations with the Taliban and seeks to proceed with troop cuts regardless of these negotiations. Their bottom line: Start transferring responsibility for the war to where it practically and ultimately belongs, to the Afghans.
[…]
5) The billion dollar war? Libyan campaign breaks Pentagon estimates costing U.S. taxpayers $2 million a day
(London) Daily Mail, 10:20 PM on 9th June 2011
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2001778/Libya-war-costs-US-taxpayers-2m-day-Gaddafi.html
The cost of the U.S. campaign in Libya is set to exceed the $750 million Pentagon estimate set out in March, according to a leaked Department of Defence Memo.
The ‘eyes-only’ DoD dossier said the U.S. had already spent $664 million in Libya by mid-May – a running cost of $60 million a month since the bombing began in March.
At the current rate of spending, the U.S. will have to shell out at least an extra $274 million till the end of the current 90 day no fly zone extension period – brining total expenditure to a minimum of $938 million.
[…] The leaked document, obtained by The Financial Times, showed the rate of spending is far higher than DoD estimates issued in late march. Then, a congressional hearing, heard the U.S. had spent about $550 million on Libya, at a rate of about $40m a month.
[…]
6) Sen. Graham: Military intervention in Syria should be ‘on the table’
Ben Geman, The Hill, 06/12/11 12:04 PM ET
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/165943-graham-military-intervention-in-syria-should-be-on-the-table
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Sunday that it’s time to consider international intervention in Syria to avoid the further "slaughter" of people there by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
"If it made sense to protect the Libyan people against Gadhafi, and it did because they were going to get slaughtered if we hadn’t sent NATO in when he was on the outskirts of Benghazi, the question for the world [is], have we gotten to that point in Syria," Graham said on the CBS’ "Face the Nation."
"We may not be there yet, but we are getting very close, so if you really care about protecting the Syrian people from slaughter, now is the time to let Assad know that all options are on the table," said Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Over 1,000 civilians have been killed in recent months in a crackdown against the uprising there, according to human rights groups.
"It has gotten to the point where Gadhafi’s behavior and Assad’s behavior are indistinguishable," Graham said, and noted "You need to put on the table all options, including a model like we have in Libya."
7) Ninety Percent of Petraeus’s Captured "Taliban" Were Civilians
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service, Jun 12
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56038
Washington – During his intensive initial round of media interviews as commander in Afghanistan in August 2010, Gen. David Petraeus released figures to the news media that claimed spectacular success for raids by Special Operations Forces: in a 90-day period from May through July, SOF units had captured 1,355 rank and file Taliban, killed another 1,031, and killed or captured 365 middle or high-ranking Taliban.
The claims of huge numbers of Taliban captured and killed continued through the rest of 2010. In December, Petraeus’s command said a total of 4,100 Taliban rank and file had been captured in the previous six months and 2,000 had been killed.
Those figures were critical to creating a new media narrative hailing the success of SOF operations as reversing what had been a losing U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.
But it turns out that more than 80 percent of those called captured Taliban fighters were released within days of having been picked up, because they were found to have been innocent civilians, according to official U.S. military data.
Even more were later released from the main U.S. detention facility at Bagram airbase called the Detention Facility in Parwan after having their files reviewed by a panel of military officers.
The timing of Petraeus’s claim of Taliban fighters captured or killed, moreover, indicates that he knew that four out of five of those he was claiming as "captured Taliban rank and file" were not Taliban fighters at all.
Checking on the claims of the number of Taliban commanders and rank and file killed is impossible, but the claims of Taliban captured could be checked against official data on admission of detainees added to Parwan.
An Afghan detained by U.S. or NATO forces can only be held in a Forward Operating Base for a maximum of 14 days before a decision must be made about whether to release the individual or send him to Parwan for longer-term detention.
IPS has now obtained an unclassified graph by Task Force 435, the military command responsible for detainee affairs, on Parwan’s monthly intake and release totals for 2010, which shows that only 270 detainees were admitted to that facility during the 90-day period from May through July 2010.
That figure also includes alleged Taliban commanders who were sent to Parwan and whom Petraeus counted separately from the rank and file figure. Thus more than four out of every five Afghans said to have been Taliban fighters captured during that period had been released within two weeks as innocent civilians.
When Petraeus decided in mid-August to release the figure of 1,355 Taliban rank and file allegedly captured during the 90-day period, he already knew that 80 percent or more of that total had already been released.
Major Sunset R. Belinsky, the ISAF press officer for SOF operations, conceded to IPS last September that the 1,355 figure applied only to "initial detentions".
Task Force 435 commander Adm. Robert Harward confirmed in a press briefing for Journalists Nov. 30, 2010 that 80 percent of the Afghans detained by the U.S. military during the entire year to that point had been released within two weeks. "This year, in this battlespace, approximately 5,500 individuals have been detained," Harward said, adding the crucial fact that "about 1,100 have come to the detention facility in Parwan."
Harward did not explain the discrepancy between the two figures, however, and no journalist attending the Pentagon briefing asked for such an explanation.
Petraeus continued to exploit media ignorance of the discrepancy between the number of Taliban rank and file said to have been "captured" and the number actually sent to the FDIP.
In early December, ISAF gave Bill Roggio, a blogger for "The Long War Journal" website, the figure of more than 4,100 "enemy fighters" captured from Jun. 1 through Nov. 30, along with 2,000 rank and file Taliban killed.
But during those six months, only 690 individuals were sent to Parwan, according to the Task Force 435 data – 17 percent of the 4,100 Taliban rank and file claimed captured as "Taliban".
The total of 690 detainees also includes an unknown number of commanders counted separately by Petraeus and a large number of detainees who were later released from Parwan. Considering those two factors, the actual proportion of those claimed as captured Taliban who were found not to be part of the Taliban organisation rises to 90 percent or even higher.
Three hundred forty-five detainees, or 20 percent of the 1,686 total number of those who were detained in Parwan from June through November, were released upon review of their cases, according to the same Feb. 5, 2011 Task Force document obtained by IPS. The vast majority of those released from the facility had been sent to Parwan in June or later.
Detainees are released from Parwan only when the evidence against them is so obviously weak or nonexistent that U.S officers cannot justify continuing to hold them, despite the fact that the detainees lack normal procedural rights in the "non-adversarial" hearing by the Task Force’s Detainee Review.
The deliberate confusion sowed by Petraeus by referring to anyone picked up for interrogation as a captured rank and file Taliban was a key element of a carefully considered strategy for creating a more favourable image of the war.
As Associated Press reporter Kimberly Dozier wrote in a Sep. 3, 2010 news analysis after an interview with Petraeus, he was very conscious that "demonstrating progress is difficult in a war fought in hundreds of small, scattered engagements, where frontlines do not move and where cities do not fall."
SOF raids, however, could be turned into a dramatic story line. "The mystique of elite, highly trained commandos swooping down on an unsuspecting Taliban leader in the dead of night plays well back home," wrote Dozier, "especially at a time when much of the news from Afghanistan focuses on rising American deaths and frustration with the Afghan government."
Petraeus made sure the impact of the new SOF narrative would be maximised by presenting the total of Afghans swept up in SOF raids as actual Taliban fighters.
The deceptive nature of those statistics, as now revealed by U.S. military data, raises anew the question of whether the statistics released by Petraeus on killing of alleged Taliban were similarly skewed.
8) Missing Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say
U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion, sent by the planeload in cash and intended for Iraq’s reconstruction after the start of the war.
Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missing-billions-20110613,0,4414060.story
Washington – After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.
Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.
This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash – enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.
For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be "the largest theft of funds in national history."
The mystery is a growing embarrassment to the Pentagon, and an irritant to Washington’s relations with Baghdad. Iraqi officials are threatening to go to court to reclaim the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, seized Iraqi assets and surplus funds from the United Nations’ oil-for-food program.
It’s fair to say that Congress, which has already shelled out $61 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for similar reconstruction and development projects in Iraq, is none too thrilled either. "Congress is not looking forward to having to spend billions of our money to make up for billions of their money that we can’t account for, and can’t seem to find," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), who presided over hearings on waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq six years ago when he headed the House Government Reform Committee.
[…] House Government Reform Committee investigators charged in 2005 that U.S. officials "used virtually no financial controls to account for these enormous cash withdrawals once they arrived in Iraq, and there is evidence of substantial waste, fraud and abuse in the actual spending and disbursement of the Iraqi funds."
Pentagon officials have contended for the last six years that they could account for the money if given enough time to track down the records. But repeated attempts to find the documentation, or better yet the cash, were fruitless.
Iraqi officials argue that the U.S. government was supposed to safeguard the stash under a 2004 legal agreement it signed with Iraq. That makes Washington responsible, they say.
Abdul Basit Turki Saeed, Iraq’s chief auditor and president of the Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit, has warned U.S. officials that his government will go to court if necessary to recoup the missing money.
[…]
Bahrain
9) Bahrain Shiites hold first mass rally since crackdown
AFP, June 11, 2011
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jGQkyAveCXzNENanTGxbko3Udrhw
Dubai – Thousands of Shiite Bahrainis rallied Saturday answering a call from their largest opposition group, Al-Wefaq, in the first demonstration since a mid-march crackdown on Shiite-led pro-democracy protests. The rally, staged under the banner "Bahrain, homeland for all" in the Shiite village of Sar, 10 days after a state of emergency was lifted, had received the nod from authorities, Al-Wefaq politician ex-MP Hadi al-Moussawi told AFP.
"The ministry of interior has been informed, and there was no objection," he said by telephone, adding that police stayed away from the immediate vicinity of the venue, as demonstrators spilled into neighbouring streets. "This presence in the street is to tell the authorities that we still demand political change… Our slogan is: ‘The people want to reform the regime’," Moussawi said.
Shiites, who form the majority in the kingdom ruled by the Sunni Al-Khalifa dynasty, had led a month-long protest inspired by uprisings which toppled the autocratic leaders of Tunisia and Egypt. Authorities backed by troops that rolled into Bahrain from fellow Gulf nations quelled the protest, and security forces launched a massive campaign of arrests against activists, as well as doctors, medics and teachers accused of backing protesters.
Authorities said 24 people, including four policemen, were killed in the unrest. The opposition said scores were arrested, amid wide claims of torture, while hundreds were dismissed from their jobs. "No one was left out in the (government’s) revenge," Moussawi said. "These people came to express their rejection. The punishment inflicted on the people by the authorities made them believe that there is not much more to lose."
At the rally, the leader of Al-Wefaq, cleric Sheikh Ali Salman, described the recent events as a "grim black three months that left deep wounds in the body of the homeland."
"(But) it only strengthened the determination of the people to voice their legitimate demands and cemented their belief in the need for real reform," he said, according to text posted on the Al-Wefaq page of Facebook.
He did not appear to budge on the initial demands of the opposition which called for a "real" constitutional monarchy, topped by vesting the elected chamber with exclusive legislative and regulatory powers, redrawing electoral constituencies to allow for "fair polls" and an elected government.
He also extended a hand to the Sunnis, slamming as a "big lie" the branding of the protest demands as a "move to establish a Shiite Islamic state." "We want a civic and a democratic state… My dear Sunnis, let us put hand in hand to advance our political system, build our nation and safeguard the future of our children," he added.
Meanwhile, King Hamad said on Saturday the national dialogue he announced on May 31 on the eve of the lifting of the state of emergency would be led by parliament chief Khalifa Dhahrani, the official BNA news agency reported. Making the talks offer, the monarch had called for "all necessary steps to prepare for a serious dialogue, comprehensive and without preconditions," adding that it should "start from July 1."
Al-Wefaq welcomed the offer.
[…]
10) Bahrain student jailed for year over protest poems
Ayat al-Qurmezi became minor celebrity after reciting poems critical of king during Pearl Square gatherings
Associated Press, Sunday 12 June 2011 23.31 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/12/bahrain-student-jailed-protest-poems
A 20-year-old woman who recited poems critical of Bahrain’s rulers and later claimed she was beaten in jail was sentenced to a year in prison, as part of the kingdom’s crackdown on Shia protesters calling for greater rights.
The ruling by a special security tribunal sent a strong message that the Sunni monarchy is not easing off on punishments linked to the unrest despite appeals for talks with Shia groups in the strategic Gulf island state, which is home to the US navy’s 5th Fleet.
Ayat al-Qurmezi became a minor celebrity among protesters after reciting poems critical of the king and prime minister during gatherings in the capital’s Pearl Square, which was the hub for Shia-led demonstrations that broke out in February after drawing inspiration from the Arab uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
[…] She was convicted of anti-state charges, including inciting hatred, said the official Bahrain News Agency. Her mother, Sada al-Qurmezi, said an appeal is planned.
The court’s decision drew sharp denunciations from opposition groups and the human rights group Amnesty International, which said the verdict highlighted how free speech is "brutally denied" by Bahrain’s authorities.
Qurmezi surrendered to authorities in late March after police raided the family’s house and threatened to kill her brothers, said her mother. While in custody, the young woman claims she was beaten and tortured with electric shocks, Amnesty reported.
[…] "By locking up a female poet merely for expressing her views in public, Bahrain’s authorities are demonstrating how free speech and assembly are brutally denied to ordinary Bahrainis," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s director for the Middle East and north Africa.
[…] The U S has condemned the violence in Bahrain, but has stopped short of any tangible punishments against the rulers in one of Washington’s military hubs in the Gulf.
Israel/Palestine
10) Jerusalem approves revised plan for contested Museum of Tolerance site
The controversial project by the Simon Wiesenthal Center is located on a medieval Muslim cemetery, which opponents say defeats the museum’s goal of building tolerance.
Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 02:19 09.06.11
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/jerusalem-approves-revised-plan-for-contested-museum-of-tolerance-site-1.366683
After a two-year delay the Jerusalem municipal planning committee approved on Monday the plan to build the Museum of Tolerance in the city center.
The controversial project by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, based on a similar museum in Los Angeles, is located on a medieval Muslim cemetery. During the construction work, as Haaretz reported, hundreds of ancient skeletons were evacuated from the area.
The substantial changes made in the original plan of the museum have rekindled objections to the project, whose opponents demand the new plan be submitted for reapproval.
[…] Opponents say there is a need for a debate on the entire plan and the museum in general. Municipal opposition head Yosef Alalu, of the Meretz faction, says the original building was approved because it was designed by Gehry and it would not be fair to take advantage of that to construct another building on such a sensitive site.
"The Museum of Tolerance should have been a model of understanding and coexistence among all religions. It should have sent a message of tolerance and patience to all populations. But building it on the site of a Muslim cemetery defeats that goal," says Alalu.
To this day, he says, the museum’s content is not clear because Yad Vashem – the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority insisted the museum refrain from dealing with the Holocaust. Presumably, political and religious pressures will prevent the museum from dealing with gay rights or Jewish-Arab relations, says Alalu.
[…]
Afghanistan
12) Afghan Civilian Deaths Set a Monthly Record, U.N. Says
Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, June 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/world/asia/12afghanistan.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – The United Nations announced Saturday that May was the deadliest month for Afghan civilians since it began keeping count in 2007 – most likely a reflection of intense fighting, as militants seek to show they can stand up to the surge in American forces and try to undermine the government of President Hamid Karzai as it prepares to start taking over security.
Although the monthly record of 368 deaths is compared with 2007, it is effectively the highest number since the war began, because civilian casualties appear to have been far lower before then.
[…]
Colombia
13) Colombia agrees to compensate victims of violence
Juan Forero, Washington Post, June 10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/colombia-to-compensate-victims-of-violence/2011/06/10/AGE256OH_story.html
Bogota, Colombia – President Juan Manuel Santos signed a sweeping law Friday that aims to compensate 4 million Colombians who have been victims of a long, brutal civil conflict.
Although political violence in Colombia is still simmering, the law’s proponents say the Victims’ and Land Restitution Law is a historic gesture of reconciliation toward families whose relatives have been killed or who have lost land over the past generation. Government officials cautiously say it could be a step toward creating a framework for peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a leftist rebel group that has been at war with the state since 1964.
"I’ve always said the door is not closed for a dialogue with the FARC," Santos told The Washington Post on Friday. "But they need to cease all terrorist activities and come into a dialogue in good faith."
Santos signed the law in the company of U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, whose presence underscored the international support for the government’s effort to compensate war victims. The United Nations, which has a significant presence in Colombia, called the law a "new horizon of hope in the search for peace and reconciliation."
"What Santos is doing is creating the architecture so that in Colombia there can be peace one day," said Aldo Civico, director of the International Institute for Peace at Rutgers University and an expert on Colombia’s conflict. "The Victims’ Law is an important part of that architecture."
The law calls for the state to compensate not just those victimized by guerrillas or right-wing death squads, but also those who suffered at the hands of the state security apparatus.
The numbers of dead from the murky conflict could easily reach 200,000, human-rights groups said, noting that in special judicial proceedings, former paramilitary commanders have freely admitted to nearly 50,000 slayings.
The law calls for monetary compensation to people victimized between 1985 and 2021 – the end date an acknowledgment that people will continue to suffer in the ongoing dispute. The law’s broader ambition is to deal with the root cause of political violence by returning thousands of square miles of land to poor farmers forced off it by armed groups and corrupt regional bosses since 1991.
Cynthia Arnson, a scholar on Colombia at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, said the government’s efforts stand in contrast to those of Santos’s predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, who said there was no armed conflict and opposed the Victims’ Law on the grounds that it unfairly accused the army and police of war crimes. "Acknowledging government responsibility for creating victims of the armed conflict fundamentally changes the equation,"Arnson said.
The FARC, an organization of 8,000 fighters, did not immediately comment on the law.
But in January, the group’s supreme commander, Guillermo Saenz Vargas – better known by the alias Alfonso Cano – expressed doubt that Colombia’s congress would ever approve a law to compensate victims. Such reparations, he said, were "essential to a future of reconciliation."
In a rural swath of Bolivar state, in northern Colombia, that has been hard hit by violence, Andres Gil, who represents peasant farmers, said the law "for the first time recognizes the victims."
Gil is part of a national organization of farmers that is lobbying the government to use the political space created by the law to engage the FARC in talks. He said the law may prod the FARC, which is influential in Bolivar, to take "important steps" that could lead to negotiations. "It is an important step forward to politicize the debate so victims can have voice," Gil said.
[…]
–
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans. The archive of the Just Foreign Policy News is here:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/blog/dailynews