Pentagon’s new pals in Iraq are the old enemies

Defense Secretary Robert Gates yesterday endorsed teaming up with former insurgents to ease the strain on U.S. troops battling fierce resistance in their surge to take back Baghdad. At the Pentagon, Gates strongly backed the military’s controversial efforts to work with former Iraqi insurgents, even those who may have fought against U.S. troops.

“If we refuse to work with or ally with everybody who’s been on the other side of the fence, then the prospects for making any progress in Iraq are pretty slim,” Gates said.

Gates: Maliki Has Formed Vetting Committee

Prime Minister Maliki has formed a committee to focus on the vetting process of Iraqi tribal leaders and groups the US has begun arming as the latest strategy to develop a broad-based alliance on the ground in Iraq, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates revealed while speaking to media at the Pentagon Thursday. Maliki’s displeasure with the new US strategy has been widely reported this week, but Gates’ comment offers the first glimpse of the kind of concession the US is making to secure the cooperation of the Iraqi government.

Maliki, a Shiite, voiced his opposition to the program directly to Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of the Multinational Force-Iraq, according to Sami al Askari, a close advisor to Maliki. “It’s a sort of militia, when we are trying to get rid of the current militias,” Askari said. “By arming these tribes, we’ll make it worse.”

US commanders say offensive near Baghdad is ‘a trap’ for insurgents

The US military said Thursday it was setting a trap to “eliminate” militants near Baghdad where at least 14 US soldiers have died in the past two days. Elsewhere, a suicide truck bomber struck the Suleiman Bek city hall in a predominantly Sunni area of northern Iraq, killing at least 16 people and wounding 67, an Iraqi commander said.

Tens of thousands of US and Iraqi soldiers are pushing on with simultaneous operations in Baghdad and to the north, south and west of the capital under Operation Phantom Thunder, a new plan aimed at rooting out Al-Qaeda fighters and other militants. The latest offensives, which began in the past week, follow the build-up of US military forces in Iraq to 156,000 soldiers and aim to deny militants sanctuary in the farmlands and towns surrounding Baghdad.

Mahdi Army Members Threaten Teachers

As Iraqi high school students sit final exams, members of the Mahdi Army have threatened Iraqi teachers, warning them that some students must be allowed to cheat. In a move reminiscent of something out of The Sopranos, members of the Mahdi Army have warned teachers in Baghdad’s ‘Allawi district not to interfere with students as they take the final exams, a Slogger source reports.

The exact wording of the threat was not to “upset” the students as they take the exams, but the meaning is well understood as granting protection to students connected to militia members to cheat on the exams.

China Drop Iraq’s Debt In Hope Of $700m Oil Deal

China has announced the cancellations of the debt owed from Iraq to the Chinese government and have promised to aid the reconstruction of the country and help rebuild its economy. But not everything is as it seems as the Chinese government intend on striking a deal with Iraq on … you guessed it, oil.

The deal is expected to focus on a $700m contract that was signed before the downfall of Saddam Hussein to develop an Iraqi oilfield. The Chinese also hope to expand the contract to allow further oil discoveries, as just 10% of Iraq has been surveyed for oil.

Back in the US

Iraq Deaths Don’t Mean Failure, Pace Says

The recent rise in U.S. troop deaths in Iraq is the “wrong metric” to use in assessing the effectiveness of the new security strategy for Baghdad, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday in a news conference with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Despite military reports to Congress that use numbers of attacks and overall levels of violence as an important gauge of Iraq’s security status, Gates and Pace told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday that violence is not a useful measure of progress. Setting the stage for mandatory reports to Congress in September, both officials said violence could go up in the summer months as troops try to give the Iraqi government time to set the country on the right track.

“If you had zero violence and people were not feeling good about their future, where are you?” said Pace, emphasizing that the sentiment of the Iraqi people is a much better measurement than the number of attacks.

(I think most Iraqis would start feeling pretty good about the future if attacks dropped to zero. The reason why Pace and Gates have adopted an abstract metric is that they can’t meet goals that involve verifiable data. –g)

House Votes to Revive Iraq Study Group

The Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel that mapped out an alternative U.S. strategy for Iraq last December, may be reconstituted for a sequel. In a sign of the growing public pressure on Congress, the House voted 355 to 69 yesterday to revive the 10-member panel chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) to again review U.S. policy and offer new recommendations.

Other War News

Plight of Palestinian refugees worsening in most parts of Middle East

Some 4.4 million Palestinians remain refugees nearly 60 years after the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. As the world marks World Refugee Day on 20 June, about one third of these refugees still live inside camps, while an even larger proportion continue to receive aid and relief services, primarily from UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

Observers say the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories has worsened over the past year due to the violence, intense infighting in the Gaza Strip and the international economic boycott on the Palestinian Authority, which lasted over one year and was only lifted earlier this week.

Police uncover weapons lab in home of West Bank settler

Police have uncovered a weapons lab in the home of a West Bank settler that they believe was used to illegally fix decommissioned guns, according to information made public Thursday.

In a raid on the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, police found equipment used to manufacture bullet casings, as well as reference books on how to manufacture weapons and explosives. Police also found 15 Uzi semiautomatic rifles, three of which had been restored to function properly. Police have yet to determine what the weapons were intended for, and if they were to be used in a terrorist or criminal plot. The prime suspect, a secular Jew of Russian origin, apparently was not acting out of ideological motives.

UN food aid ‘causing chaos and violence’ in Somalia

Food aid sent to Somalia to combat one of the world’s largest malnutrition crises has been criticised by Somali elders for causing violence - and for being delivered at the start of the harvest season. More than 33,500 tonnes of food aid has been delivered to Somalia by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) since the start of the year. But in Marere district in the lower Juba valley, farmers and elders said the food distribution had brought chaos and driven down the price of maize by 60 per cent. “WFP shouldn’t have brought it now,” said Mohammed Abdullahi Gure, chairman of the elders committee in Marere, who said distribution of the food had caused serious security problems.

Somalia’s government has provided its own soldiers to protect the food on its journey from the port town of Kismayo, about 100 miles away. But militias belonging to different clans also operate in the area. In a country where the rule of the gun easily trumps the rule of law, there have already been some tense stand-offs as rival militias try to take some of the food for themselves.

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