Thread: Archive Latest News - Think Tank - 01/01/08 - 14/04/08

Security forces start disarming operation in Basra-spokesman

Iraqi Interior Ministry forces have started their search for unauthorized weapons in Basra on Wednesday, a security spokesman said.

"Security forces seized huge stockpiles in different parts of Basra, thanks to the cooperation of Basra residents with security servicemen," Maj. Gen. Abdel Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the Interior ministry, told Aswat al-Iraq-Voices of Iraq(VOI).

The spokesman noted "search operation were ongoing to pronounce Basra free of weapons."

He added "the operations command already received thousands of arms before the ultimatum period offered by the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki which ended on Tuesday."

"The items handed over included light, medium, and heavy arms, mostly by tribesmen along with gunmen who willingly surrendered their weapons in return for monetary rewards."

Basra operations commander on Tuesday said "security forces will start targeting gunmen who did not made use of the amnesty opportunity to hand in their weapons."

Iraqi government offered cash-for-weapons initiative to disarm the armed groups attacking the government forces after Iraqi PM Nouri Al-Maliki announced the start of a major offensive dubbed as Saulat al-Fursan (Knights' Assault) to crack down on violence wreaking the southern port city of Basra.

Clashes between the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army militias and security forces erupted in Basra along with major southern cities and Baghdad, claiming the lives of more than four hundred people.

Aswat Aliraq

A substitute for the ration card

The Ministry of Commerce launched a substitute for the ration card, represented in distributing questionnaire forms to find out the proportion of citizens who wish to receive payments rather than the ration card items. Officials at the Department of Supply and Planning confirmed that work by the card system will continue this year, indicating that the lack in the card's items is due to the lack of budgetary allocations and the ********* increase in food prices.

http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=5864

Kurdish complex open for business

With aid from the Kurdistan government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers helped open a government complex less than a year after an explosion ripped it apart.

A truck bomb exploded in front of the Interior Ministry of the Kurdistan Regional Government complex, killing 19 people and wounded 70 others, on May 9, 2007.

The corps worked on construction management at a facility on the complex that consolidates policing, security and intelligence activities in one location, a statement read.

A $5.8 million relief grant was provided through an emergency relief fund known as the Commander's Emergency Response Program, and an additional $1.5 million came from Kurdish officials.

CERP is a U.S. Defense Department program that allows local U.S. leaders in Iraq to provide urgent relief for programs such as water, sanitation and food production and rule of law initiatives.

The corps statement said the ministerial complex is slated to open for business.

Iraq Development Program - Kurdish complex open for business

Port city of UmQasr is open for business

UmQasr, a port city southeast of Basra, is filled with daily activities, as Iraqi workers load export and unload imports.

"The estimated flow of goods into Iraq is 60,000 tons with 15,000 passing through UmQsar," said Todd Stratton, Task Force to Support Business and Stability Operations in Iraq.

"The single largest commodity is food such as wheat, rice, sugar and other food items," Stratton said. "The port is a critical gateway to supply the Iraqi nation with food imports."

According to Stratton, the port has a grain silo that can process 7,500 tons a day with 5,000 tons being hauled away.

"A ferry comes to Dubai a few times per week," Stratton said.
Iraqi Security Forces provided a secure working environment for the Iraqi dock workers to perform their daily jobs.

The Passenger Hall at the port is nearing complete refurbishment, and will soon be fully-operational for passengers and merchants alike.

Iraq Development Program - Port city of UmQasr is open for business

OPEC: no need to increase oil output

OPEC Leader Shakib Khalil that that he thinks that there is no current need to increase OPEC’s output. Khalil added that dollar price drop will carry on affecting oil prices which reached records levels nowadays. OPEC Leader expected that dollar would undergo further regress in the near future.

OPEC: no need to increase oil output | Economics News | Alsumaria Iraqi Satellite TV Network

Iraq Bankers participate in Union of Arab Banks Conference held in Cairo

- Economy and trade activity in Baghdad was affected by the damages caused by the fire that blazed a number of shops in Al Jamila market, one of the biggest commercial centers in the city.

- Opening borders for foreign good that are not subject to monitoring still constitutes a problem for the Iraqi citizen that triggers economic damages. Government shall compensate. Yet, granting compensations is still a project to be studied in parliament in order to vote on it.

- Iraq bankers participated in the works of the yearly banking conference held in Cairo and organized by Union of Arab Banks. This conference aims at discussing means to develop exchange system in the Arab world. During the conference attendees will also tackle horizons of banking cooperation between Arab Banks and the challenges it faces in the light of money and investment market progresses

Iraq Bankers participate in Union of Arab Banks Conference held in Cairo | Economics News | Alsumaria Iraqi Satellite TV Network

Iraq's Talabani hopes to reshape government within one week

Iraq's President Jalal al-Talabani said on Wednesday that talks about reshaping the Iraqi government were progressing and he hoped there would be a new cabinet within a week. Talabani said that he plans to meet with Vice-President Tarek al- Hashimi and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to discuss the possibility of including ministers from the Iraqi Accord Front, the country's largest Sunni bloc, in the new cabinet.

"National unity can not be achieved without the presence of the Sunni brothers," Talabani told reporters in a press conference, marking the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

He added: "I hope that ministers of the Iraqi Accord Front would return quickly to the cabinet, because the three focal points of a united government are the Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and the Kurds."

Talabani said he hoped that the move would be achieved within one week.

Iraq's premier has been promising to reshape his cabinet since the Iraqi Accord Front, and the Shiite Sadr bloc withdrew from it in July.

The shaky coalition cabinet was shattered even further by the withdrawal of ministers from smaller blocs, which left it with 15 empty ministerial seats, most of them from the Accord Front and Sadr bloc.

Also on Wednesday, Talabani described the Sadrist movement as "respectful."

He told reporters that many steps forward had been taken to resolve the conflict between the government and the Shiite movement of al-Sadr.

"We hope that the Sadrist movement would respond to requests that demand the dissolution of the Mahdi army and that they work as a respectful political movement," Talabani said.

The government launched on March 25 an offensive targeting mainly al-Sadr's militiamen in Basra but halted military operations after al-Sadr moved to halt fighting.

Iraq's Talabani hopes to reshape government within one week : Middle East World

Basra strike against Shiite militias also about oil

The recent fight in Basra between Iraqi forces and Shiite militiamen was about more than a government bid to reassert itself in a city where Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army was digging in. It was also about oil – and smuggling.

Before the assault began on March 23, the Iraqi government drew up a list of about 200 suspected oil smugglers it hoped to round up – including the brother of the governor of Basra Province and, according to Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, several leaders linked to Mr. Sadr's militia.

For the government, which relies on oil revenues to fund most of its budget, the financial stakes are immense. While there are no accurate figures, an Iraqi parliamentary committee says that losses from oil smuggling run $5 billion a year.

"We have cleansed large swaths on both sides of Shatt al-Arab that were being used to smuggle oil products and other materials," says Mr. Shahristani, who spoke during an interview at the Oil Ministry in Baghdad on Monday, describing the government achievements in Basra so far.

"Many of the gangs are colluding with local officials, powerful parties, or militias; it's a web of interrelations," he says.

Shatt al-Arab, a haven for smugglers, is the 120-mile waterway formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers at Qurnah in Basra Province and runs to the Persian Gulf.

Shahristani says the Basra assault, which was led by Iraqi forces and backed up by the US and British militaries, will allow better control of vital oil resources and facilities, curb smuggling, and help boost production to 3 million barrels per day (b.p.d.) by the end of the year, which would be the highest level in 20 years.

For rival Shiite groups – from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition to the members of Sadr's movement – the equation is simple. Whoever controls the oil speaks in the name of the Shiite south and has the leverage to map the country's future and work out deals with the two other competing groups: the Sunnis and the Kurds.

The potential income from Iraq's vast oil is only beginning to be realized. Already, more than 90 percent of the revenues of this year's budget of $48 billion will come from oil exports. And just three months into the year, the government is reaping a $5.4 billion windfall on top of this from rising oil prices that are now hovering above $100 per barrel.

US lawmakers estimate that Iraqi oil revenues for 2007 to 2008 will total $100 billion. Iraq now produces an average of 2.5 million b.p.d., the bulk of it in Basra. Of that amount, an average 1.6 million b.p.d. is exported via the southern province and only 0.3 million b.p.d. via the northern pipeline, according to Shahristani.

To be sure, many question the government's power and will to stop oil theft and smuggling since the botched operation in Basra. The government would also have to convince average Iraqis that its crackdown on smuggling is being done for their benefit – and that of the economy as a whole – and not to serve the agenda of ruling Shiite political parties.

Shahristani says responsibilities for protecting oil facilities and guarding against smuggling and theft in Basra shifted at the start of the year from the Oil Ministry's Oil Protection Force (OPF), which has been abolished, to a newly created unit of the Interior Ministry known as the Oil Police. The Interior Ministry is widely viewed as being dominated by Mr. Maliki's Shiite allies.

The OPF in Basra was under the sway of the Fadhila Party of Gov. Muhammad Mosabeh al-Waeli. Shahristani says tribesmen loyal to the government are being actively recruited now into the Oil Police.

The governor's brother, Ismail al-Waeli, was believed to be Basra's No. 1 smuggler, says Shahristani. "He has fled outside Iraq … his name was among the gangs involved in oil smuggling, in fact he was at the top of the list."

The word in Basra is that Governor Waeli is under some sort of house arrest and that his brother Ismail has fled to Kuwait. The head of the local provincial council, Muhammad Sadoun al-Abadi, who belongs to a branch of Maliki's Dawa Party, is now running day-to-day affairs in close coordination with Maliki, according to a Basra-based scholar familiar with the situation.

Shahristani says among those arrested so far are Yussif al-Mussawi, the head of a small party in Basra called Thaar Allah (God's Revenge), because of his involvement in "kidnapping, extortion, and several smuggling rackets including oil."

The Basra-based scholar, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, says that while government forces control Basra's center and several other areas, the Mahdi Army remains largely intact in its traditional strongholds – poor working-class areas of the city.

"I expect lots of assassinations and sleeper cells to act up. There is a strong desire for revenge now," he says.

The intra-Shiite struggle for power and resources in the south is nothing new and has been under way since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But the battle in Basra has now drawn a clear line between those Shiites in the ruling coalition – including Maliki and the powerful cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim – and two main rivals that split from it last year: Sadr's movement and the Fadhila Party.

Although Basra is largely quiet at the moment, the fighting between US-Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army militia has intensified again in Baghdad, with at least 30 people killed since Sunday. The government is demanding that the Mahdi Army disarm; Sadr is refusing this before US troops leave Iraq and is now threatening to escalate the fight further.

Muhammad-Ali Zainy of the London-based Center for Global Energy Studies, says it's a positive development for Iraq's future – and its oil industry – that Maliki is targeting militias and exerting control in Basra. But it remains to be seen, he adds, whether Maliki is willing to go all the way or whether he's just carrying out the agenda of Mr. Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) party, which sees Basra's economic might as giving it greater influence in the south.

"The government must act evenhandedly and make sure the smuggling enterprise is not simply taken over by other militias," he says, adding that smuggling continues to be a highly lucrative business. The average price of one gallon of gas in Iraq is $0.40 versus $2 to $3 in Iran and neighboring countries.

Shahristani, who is very close to Maliki, says the security situation in Iraq continues to prevent foreign companies from doing much-needed repair work to facilities nationwide, not just in Basra. He says vital pipelines linking the country's largest refinery in Baiji, in the Sunni heartland, with Baghdad and Mosul are badly damaged by sabotage.

He says a substantial number of fuel tankers leaving Baiji end up falling prey to insurgents and gangs. Maliki's government is also at loggerheads with the Kurdish regional government over the authority to sign oil contracts, thereby stalling the passage of a new oil law.

The Ministry of Oil itself is in a fortress-like compound in Baghdad on the edge of Sadr City. Three mortar rounds fell on the nearby home of the interior minister Monday, sending a thick black plume of smoke into the air.

Basra strike against Shiite militias also about oil - Yahoo! News

Iran is playing all the strings on the Iraqi lyre

The language that General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker used Tuesday to describe the Iranian role in Iraq was extreme - and telling. They spoke of Tehran's "nefarious activities," its "malign influence" and how it posed "the greatest long-term threat to the viability" of the Baghdad government.

Iran was the heart of the matter during Senate testimony on the war. With Al-Qaeda on the run in Iraq, the Iranian threat has become the rationale for the mission, and also the explanation for our shortcomings. The Iranians are the reason we're bogged down in Iraq, and also the reason we can't pull out our troops. The mullahs in Tehran loom over the Iraq battlefield like a giant "Catch-22."

The order of battle in Iraq isn't likely to change significantly for the rest of the year. That was Petraeus' implicit message when he was asked about additional troop withdrawals after July, when American forces are to return to their pre-surge levels. He spoke opaquely about a 45-day period of "consolidation and evaluation," followed by an additional, open-ended period of "assessment." The translation was that he wants to keep the most robust possible force there, to prevent security from deteriorating on his watch. That's understandable for a commander, but it means the question of future troop strength will land squarely on the shoulders of the next president.

And inescapably, the issue of containing Iran will fall to the next American president, too. Can a new administration draw the malign adversary that Petraeus and Crocker described into a new security architecture for the region? Can America reduce its forces in Iraq, without creating a dangerous vacuum to be filled by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Shiite militias?

Who will bell the Iranian cat? That was the question lurking behind Tuesday's testimony. US officials, even the most sophisticated ones such as Petraeus and Crocker, sometimes speak as if Iranian mischief in Iraq is a recent development. "The hand of Iran was very clear in recent weeks," said Petraeus at one point. But it has a long history.

Iran's covert campaign to reshape Iraq has been clear since the US invasion in March 2003. Iranian intelligence officers prepared lists of Iraqis for assassination in the weeks and months after the war; they sent Iranian-trained mullahs to take over the Shiite mosques of central and southern Iraq that had been smashed by Saddam Hussein; they pumped an estimated $12 million a week in covert financial support into their allies as the January 2005 election approached; they infiltrated all the major Shiite political parties, and many of the Sunni ones, too.

The Iranians have fixed the political game. They are on all sides at once. They have links to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Daawa Party; they funnel money to the Badr organization of Shiite cleric Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, which is a key recruiting ground for the Iraqi Army; they provide weapons, training and command and control for the most extreme factions of the Mehdi Army. Moqtada al-Sadr, the Mehdi Army's nominal leader, is actually living in the Iranian holy city of Qom, suffering from what intelligence sources believe may be clinical depression. A useful ploy would be to invite him to come home, and see if he can be drawn into negotiations.

The Iranians were able to start the recent trouble in Basra and Baghdad through one set of operatives, then negotiate a cease-fire through another. In short, they play the Iraqi lyre on all its strings.

Fighting a war against Iran is a bad idea. But fighting a proxy war against them in Iraq, where many key American allies are manipulated by Iranian networks of influence, may be even worse. The best argument for keeping American troops in Iraq is that it increases our leverage against Iran; but paradoxically, that's also a good argument for reducing US troops to a level that's politically and militarily sustainable. It could give America greater freedom of maneuver in the tests with Iran that are ahead.

Somehow, the next president will have to fuse US military and diplomatic power to both engage Iran and set limits on its activities. A US-Iranian dialogue is a necessary condition for future stability in the Middle East. But the wrong deal, negotiated by a weak America with a cocky Iran that thinks it's on a roll, would be a disaster.

Crocker has it right when he says, "Almost everything about Iraq is hard." That's especially true of the Iran problem. Petraeus and Crocker were taking the hard questions Tuesday, but soon enough it will be one of the presidential candidates who were dispensing sound bites Tuesday: John McCain, Barack Obama Clinton-and-Obama-Economic-Plans Mar-08 or Hillary Clinton.

Iran is playing all the strings on the Iraqi lyre | Iraq Updates

Rice to Travel to Gulf to Discuss Peace

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Gulf Arab states this month for meetings aimed at stabilizing Iraq and bolstering the Arab-Israeli peace talks, her spokesman said Wednesday.

Rice is due in Bahrain on April 21 to meet the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) composed of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

"I would expect they'd talk a lot about Iraq," her spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters without elaborating.

Rice will also discuss with her Arab counterparts "the importance of Arab states supporting" the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations launched at an international conference in the United States last November.

Egypt and Jordan as well as all of the GCC states -- except Kuwait -- were represented at the peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

"You're going to need the support of all the states in the region who of course have interest in seeing the Israelis and the Palestinians bridge those differences," McCormack said.

Rice will then attend an international conference in Kuwait on April 22 to promote Iraq's economy, security and diplomatic ties, the State Department spokesman said.

The conference will be attended by Iraq's Arab and non-Arab neighbors Iran and Turkey, UN Security Council permanent members including the United States and other Group of Eight leading industrial nations.

Iran said it will attend the gathering that was first was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in May last year and held again in Istanbul, Turkey in November, but did not say who it would send.

Asked if Rice would be open to talks with the Iranian envoy, McCormack said no meeting was scheduled but noted she had informal "interaction" with her Iranian counterpart in Istanbul.

The State Department said participants will likely receive reports from three working groups on border security, energy, and refugees which will have all met twice since they were created in Egypt.

It said the border security group, which met in August in Damascus, will meet again in the Syrian capital on April 13, with the United States represented by someone from the US embassy in Damascus or perhaps Washington.

McCormack said Iraq's development has also been aided by the cancelation of Iraqi debt by the United States and other members of the Paris Club as well as by those outside the club and commercial creditors.

"Over the past three years, Iraq's debt has been reduced by 66.5 billion dollars," his office said in a follow-up statement.

McCormack also reiterated US calls for more Arab diplomatic representation in Baghdad that is has been limited by security concerns and "tensions between some of the neighboring states and the new Iraqi government."

"You have had several pledges by neighboring states to name ambassadors and to either open or reopen diplomatic missions in Baghdad. We continue to press on that issue," McCormack said.

Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee here Tuesday, US Ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker welcomed Bahrain's announcement to send an ambassador to Baghdad, adding "other Arab states should follow suit."

PUKmedia :: English - Rice to Travel to Gulf to Discuss Peace