Twin Wars Update: What The Smoke and Mirrors Act Concealed

There are moments, I must confess, when I don my tinfoil hat and fancy that the Newsweek fiasco and the Murdoch-owned Sun newspapers brouhaha over Saddam in his underwear were specifically designed to conceal a week and more of truly atrocious news from both Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you were watching the smoke and mirrors, this is just the worst of what you missed.

Bad news from Iraq

The $21 billion reconstruction plan for Iraq is way behind, bogged down by an insurgency that has killed hundreds of contractors and diverted funds to security, a U.S. official said on Saturday.

"There is a long way to go. We recognize a lot of work needs to be done," said William Taylor, the U.S. official overseeing American rebuilding work in Iraq.
He told reporters it was still too early to predict when Iraqis will enjoy adequate electricity and other essential services -- more than two years after the U.S.-led invasion.

In particular, all electrical projects are on hold. Trying to transport a huge turbine and 400 tonnes of equipment in a convoy to the northern city of Kirkuk proved too risky in a country where guerrillas can strike on any road, let alone a slow desert route.
"Now we are planning to get it there by September," Taylor said.

Even the Generals are admitting now that the newest "corner turned" may have been a U-turn after all. The New York Times report has been well covered by the blogosphere but you may still have missed it in the general outcry over Newsweek. Five senior US officers, some participating on conditions of anonyminity, spoke to the newspaper and their comments "ranged with unusual candor and detail over problems confronting the war effort." Here's the lowlights from the high-rankers:

"I think it's going to succeed in the long run, even if it takes years, many years. We believe in the mission that we've got. We believe in it because we're in it, and if we let go of the insurgency and take our foot off its throat, then this country could fail and go back into civil war and chaos."

Everyone looks at the number of Iraqi forces and scratches their heads, but it is more complex than that. We certainly don't want to put forces into the fight before they can stand up, as in Falluja."

General Abizaid, whose Central Command headquarters exercises oversight of the war, said the Iraqi police - accounting for 65,000 of the 160,000 Iraqis now trained and equipped in the $5.7 billion American effort to build up security forces - are "behind" in their ability to shoulder a major part of the war effort.

I think that this could still fail. It's much more likely to succeed, but it could still fail."

More on those Iraqi security forces from Military.com. "Gen Abizaid said the police are behind in "sophistication, chain of command, cohesion of leadership." Members of the police force, he said, are also more susceptible to corruption and intimidation because they often work alone, while soldiers work in groups. It is too early to predict when U.S. forces would come home, he said."

Then there's Military.com on the success of Operation Matador:

More than 70 suspected insurgents were killed in the first 24 hours of the battle, according to the U.S. military. On Saturday, a long convoy of U.S. military vehicles left the area and headed back toward their bases.

But, according to the Associated Press, the insurgents returned just as quickly. In Qaim, near where the operation kicked off, masked insurgents armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades “remained in plain sight,” set up checkpoints and vowed to “defend the town if U.S. forces return,” the AP reported.

The New Standard's Chris Shumway had probably the best article on something you almost certainly missed. A major study by the UN and Iraqi officials found that life in Iraq has decayed significantly since foreign forces invaded, following a general trend seen in most sectors since the imposition of a global embargo in 1990.

Researchers determined that some 24,000 Iraqis died as a result of the US-led invasion in 2003 and the first year of occupation. Children below the age of 18 comprised 12 percent of those deaths, according to survey data.

The study also indicates that the invasion and its immediate aftermath forced more than 140,000 Iraqis to flee their homes

This survey shows a rather tragic situation of the quality of life in Iraq," Barham Salih, Iraq's minister of planning, said in statement, adding: "If you compare this to the situation in the 1980s, you will see a major deterioration."

Meanwhile in Afghanistan

A US Army report on abuse of detainees, including the deaths by torture of two prisoners, has so shocked President Karzai that he is talking tough about withdrawing all authority for independent operations by US troops.

"No operations inside Afghanistan should take place without the consultation of the Afghan government," he said. "They should not go to our people's homes any more without the knowledge of the Afghan government. ... If they want any person suspected in a house, they should let us know and the Afghan government would arrange that."
Karzai said he would also ask for "the return of prisoners to Afghanistan, all of them."

The United States is holding more than 500 prisoners from its war on terrorism at the Guantanamo Bay naval base on Cuba. Many of them were detained in Afghanistan after the Taliban overthrow. U.S. forces are also believed to be holding several hundred Afghans in Afghanistan.

More details of the disgusting tortures that killed two Afghanis here, in a Guardian report.

The Guardian also reports that the Bush administration's "no negotiation with terrorists" stance is a total sham. The US and Afghan governments are now actively encouraging Taliban commanders and cadre to "come in from the cold" in an attempt to keep the worsening situation there under control.

US officials advocate narrowing the wanted list to about 100 senior Taliban, allowing the remainder to return home free, and they say reconciliation is working. Last week Colonel Gary Cheek, the US commander for eastern Afghanistan, said: "Our enemies are significantly weaker than a year ago and their influence continues to wane."

It may not be so simple. Last week Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, scotched hopes of an early truce by rejecting an amnesty offer from the Afghan government's lead negotiator, former president Sibghatullah Mojaddedi.
"We don't need any guarantee of safety from the government," a Taliban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, told Reuters. "Mullah Omar, our leader, is not hiding. Rather, he is fighting."


The Guardian report also mentions allegations that the Pakistani intelligence forces are still bankrolling the Taliban, much of which has withdrawn into Pakistani territory.

And fresh today from the Scotsman newspaper, British officials are now saying, albeit as anonymous sources, what has hitherto been the unthinkeable. The Coalition faces "complete strategic failure" in Afghanistan.

DEFENCE chiefs are planning to rush thousands of British troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stop the country sliding towards civil war, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. Ministers have been warned they face a "complete strategic failure" of the effort to rebuild Afghanistan and that 5,500 extra troops will be needed within months if the situation continues to deteriorate.

An explosive cocktail of feuding tribal warlords, insurgents, the remnants of the Taliban, and under-performing Afghan institutions has left the fledgling democracy on the verge of disintegration, according to analysts and senior officers.

The looming crisis in Afghanistan is a serious setback for the US-led 'War on Terror' and its bid to promote western democratic values around the world.

Defence analysts say UK forces are already so over-stretched that any operation to restore order in Afghanistan can only succeed if substantial numbers of troops are redeployed from Iraq, itself in the grip of insurgency.

Ouch.

Lastly, news from the Homeland

A top US officer, Gen. B.B. Bell, the Army's top commander in Europe, is furious at the Pentagon for making a liar of him. He had promised his troops, currently on active service in Iraq, that they would rejoin their families before the whole kit and kaboodle came back to the States. Now the Pentagon says that isn't going to happen. Yup, that will be caring for the troops...

And if you wondered who the next hate-target will be look no further. The Independent reports:

The FBI has sounded a new and surprising alarm, suggesting environmental and animal-welfare militants are now the biggest terrorist threat in the US, increasingly using incendiary devices on targets ranging from housing developments and research laboratories to car dealerships.

John Lewis, the agency's deputy assistant director for counter-terrorism, told a senate committee in Washington that the militant groups were "way out in front" in economic damage. He also suggested it would not be long before loss of human life was added to their tally of crimes.

"There is nothing else going on in this country over the past several years that is racking up the high number of violent crimes and terrorist actions," he told senators, prompting some Democrats on the panel to warn against tagging all environmental and animal rights organisations with the same label.

The words of the famous quotation may need altered.

"First they came for the Moslems and I remained silent for I was no Moslem. Then they came for the hippy tree-huggers..."