Thread: Iraq/Dinar News. 09/05 to 01/14/07

Task Force Helps Revitalize Iraq's Industries
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service


WASHINGTON, Jan. 5, 2007 – A team of 25 industrial leaders and business analysts is headed to Iraq today to join 35 others already there working to get almost 200 idle Iraqi factories up and running.
The industrial revitalization initiative is part of a sweeping plan to get Iraqis back to work, restore their livelihoods and jump-start Iraq’s economic base, Paul Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business transformation, told Pentagon reporters yesterday.

Brinkley said the effort has another equally important objective: to ensure that Iraqis don’t turn to terrorism simply because they see no other way to feed their families.

Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of Multinational Corps Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad last month there’s strong evidence that rampant unemployment is fueling the insurgency. He pointed to the example of a former factory worker who had turned to planting improvised explosive devices for the insurgency so he could feed and care for his family.

Reopening industries and improving job satisfaction among Iraqis would go a long way toward neutralizing the forces giving rise to sectarian violence, Chiarelli told reporters.

“Putting young men and middle-aged men to work would have a tremendous impact on this level of violence we’re seeing in and around Baghdad and also in the other provinces,” he said.

Operating under the auspices of the Task Force for Improved Business and Stability Operations in Iraq, DoD and other U.S. agencies, Iraqi officials and the corporate world are working to reopen 193 industrial operations once owned by the Iraqi government.

These businesses, which have sat idle since Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003, once employed 10 percent of the Iraqi population, Brinkley said. But their impact on the Iraqi economy was even greater, because private-sector companies provided goods and services to the government-run factories. So when the factories closed their doors, the private companies’ customer bases dried up and they, too, were forced to close.

The U.S. government's economic effort in Iraq initially focused on reconstruction, with an assumption that Iraq’s private sector would eventually take over the idle government-owned businesses, Brinkley explained. But that never happened.

So the Task Force for Improved Business and Stability Operations in Iraq, which was working to improve DoD contracting operations in Iraq, shifted its focus in May to stepping up the process.

“We quickly came to the conclusion that we had a huge near-idle industrial base, that, reengaged, could put a lot of people back to work and restore normalcy to a sizeable amount of the population,” Brinkley said. “So we immediately embarked on turning that industrial base back on.”

Initial plans call for opening the first 10 factories quickly, with the estimated $5 million in start-up costs to be paid by the Iraqi government, he said.

Many of those 10 companies, which provide goods and services ranging from building materials to industrial products to clothing and textiles to drugs and medical supplies, are expected to open within the next six months, Brinkley said.

“Our expectation is that every month in 2007, we should be putting thousands of Iraqis back to work across the country,” he said. “And if we do that, we will create a whole cascading series of beneficial impacts.”

The challenges the task force faces are enough to stump even the most visionary Harvard Business School graduate.

“The work involved is (a) hard, roll-up-your sleeves” effort that requires getting on factory floors with plant mangers to determine what’s needed to get it restarted, Brinkley said. “What are the constraints? Does it have supply? Does it have customers? Are the customers ready to buy things? If they don’t have customers, how can we generate demand for them? Do they have working capital? Are the ministries ready to infuse working capital into the operation? Those are all the things you deal with in business.”

Task force members are rotating into Iraq two weeks out of every month to address these issues and help get the factories running.

“What we are doing is assessing these factories," Brinkley said. "We are bringing in expertise. We are bringing international industry to bear to create demand for these factories.”

But Brinkley emphasized that the goal is for the Iraqi government, not the United States, to fund the effort. “We want this to have an Iraqi face. This is Iraq’s industry,” Brinkley said. “And we want Iraq to be involved in getting it restarted, and they are extremely supportive of this.”

Once the factories are opened, Brinkley said the U.S. military will contract with them as much as possible for goods and services supporting U.S. military operations in Iraq. Most of this business, which amounts to about $4 billion a year, currently goes to companies outside Iraq.

This will enable the United States to continue supporting its deployed troops in a way that reduces the logistical burden but also stimulates economic growth in Iraq, he said.

“We’ve set a collective objective that we would like to see 25 percent of that $4 billion flowing into the Iraqi economy within a year,” he said.

As this effort moves forward, Brinkley acknowledged that newly reopened factories have the potential to become terrorist targets. Task force members, however, are optimistic that newly reemployed local workers will help prevent violence that threatens their livelihoods.

Brinkley noted that even in the most violent areas of Iraq, many of the empty factories went untouched by insurgents and looters alike. In some cases, new equipment, computers and inventory remained in place, a sign, he said, that local leaders protected them against damage or theft because they recognized their value to the community.

“That’s a good story because what we think is chaotic is actually controlled,” he said. “Somebody has made it clear, ‘Don’t touch that factory.’ That’s a good sign. We can get that factory turned back on.”

This initial effort will have “a huge cascading effect” in Iraq, where a single breadwinner supports 13 other people. By comparison, the average U.S. worker supports four people, he said.

Ultimately, Brinkley said economic progress in Iraq will help drive other forms of progress forward. Reopening factories isn’t the full answer, he said, but it is an important part of the overall strategy for success. “It’s a piece of the puzzle,” he said.

When Iraqis have the opportunity to return to their jobs and provide for their families, no longer will terrorism appear to be their only financial option, he said. When this happens, “an insurgent (will) become a zealot, not just someone trying to make a living,” he said.

Hey what happened to all the posts about Maliki resigning from office?
I know I read them here last nite .............I Think?????
I'm not going.................. CRAZY!!! ...........................am I???

Originally Posted by jsfletcher

Thank you for your articles, I/WE would only ask you include a link to them please. Keep it up

Most info posted today comes from PortalIraq.com's most recent news search

Translated version of http://www.e-ahli.net/Fron_P/MainP_List_F.asp

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Energy - Oil & Gas
Inspector General in Ministry of Oil : Oil is the only future bet to raise the standard of living for people
Called for the restoration of the Iraqi National Oil Company law
05 January 2007 (Iraq Directory)
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The Inspector General in the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, Ali Mohsin Al-Allaq, confirmed that recent statistics showed that the average annual income of the Iraqi individual reached 41 dollars, and that 54% of Iraqis spend less than a dollar a day, so oil is the only future bet to raise the quality of life, services and living in this country.

Al-Allaq added in a statement that "Iraq ranks second in the world in oil reserves; it produces about two million barrels per day and exports less, in spite that Iraq needs to increase its revenue to meet the requirements of building, construction and raising the standard of living of citizens and this requires taking a host of measures to boost production and export of crude oil and natural gas. The most important of these measures are: the reinstatement of the Iraqi National Oil Company law because of its positive impact in achieving a better framework for the management of oil activity, the expeditious issuance of the necessary legislation in the management of wealth and investment so as to ensure the entry of specialized international companies in order to expand and develop productive capacities as well as increasing exports within a system that balances between the objectives of the State and investors to achieve better conditions for investment and competition, the provision of a flexible financial system in allocations and funding so as to facilitate the task of completing projects and equipment as well as increasing the rates of production and discharge, providing the necessary protection for oil-sector installations and pipelines after the losses Iraq incurred to and which worth billions of dollars due to suspension of export operations from Kirkuk to Turkey or to the refineries of Iraq, the adoption of modern techniques and following up the developments in the petroleum industry in addition to the replacement of old practices which adopted the continuity of extraction and pumping at the expense of the standards and measurements that maintain and safeguard the wells and fields, finally, the acceleration in implementing the drilling programs and reclamation of old wells as well as repairing, maintaining and protecting the Northern, Southern and Western export systems to achieve the necessary flexibility for export. Al-Allaq also stressed the importance of reviewing in detail the international markets because achieving the maximum benefit and better returns in oil exports can only be done by reconsidering the markets that buy Iraqi oil with the expansion of dealing with the Eastern Market since it achieves better returns. The matter requires the expansion of the activity of research and study in the company of oil marketing through the market research office, which is deactivated currently, in order to provide a database and scientific follow up to the market movement to reach estimates and speculations that serve the purpose of buying and selling. It also requires the investment of gas and to stop wasting burnt gas which forms 60% of gas production; this investment will add an important revenue to Iraq since it will stop the import of liquid gas to meet local demand as well as the real potential of its export.

The procedures that should be implemented in the short term are summarized in: the acceleration of implementing the meters system in all oil locations and the procedures of quantity and quality reconciliation, speeding up the implementation of projects related to the export system at ports and other sites, the development of ports and storage buildings, the provision of advanced trailers, the establishment of a new export line and study the causes of non-implementation of investment plans to increase production and export capacity and work on treating them. It must be stressed here on the need for accountability for the failures that have occurred in this area since the non-implementation was not only due to force majeure, and finally training specialized technical cadres in accordance with global rules to examine the specifications of crude oil in the export ports to contain the risk of manipulation in the accounts of the oil intensity (API) and the amount of water and salts, as each degree of intensity cost 40 cents, as well as putting the amount of water and salts and sediments of the total quantity exported; also the activation of a new foundation for the pricing of crude oil and other products and not to rely on neighboring countries' prices as a primary source in addition to the development of a new mechanism to reduce the fines imposed on the delay of loading ships of crude oil.

Originally Posted by www.xealthy.com

Translated version of http://www.e-ahli.net/Fron_P/MainP_List_F.asp

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The Jordanian Dinar

05 January 2007

The presidency of the Chamber of Deputies next Tuesday set a date for the resumption of hearings

From Santa Mikhail
Baghdad - (Voices of Iraq)

Director of Information Office of the President of the Iraqi parliament today, Friday, that the presidency of the Council next Tuesday set a date for the resumption of meetings of the Council.

He said Muhannad Abdul Jabbar in a telephone conversation with the News Agency (Voices of Iraq) Independent today, "the House will be discussed at its next several topics on the agenda, but the most important is to discuss the 2007 budget."

The sessions of the House of Representatives postponed more than once in the past month because of the lack of quorum, forcing the Council to hold consultative meetings deliberative body.

As the meetings had stopped in the past few days because of holiday Eid Al-Adha holiday and travel many members to perform the Hajj.

Cheers!
DayDream

I know alot of you are getting Kick-out or recieving Data Error. I recieved a message from Marek that he is working on it. Said he was tired of this GGF redirect and all the problems. What he is doing, I dont know. But he is doing something. So hopfully soon everything will be back to the Norm.

Baghdad initiative to go door to door By STEVEN R. HURST and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writers
Fri Jan 5, 4:34 PM ET



BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops will begin a neighborhood-by-neighborhood assault on militants in the capital this weekend as a first step in the new White House strategy to contain Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads, key advisers to the prime minister said Friday.

The first details of the plan — a fresh bid to pacify the capital — emerged a day after President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spoke for nearly two hours by video conference. Both leaders were expected to detail their vision of a new strategy in the coming days.

The al-Maliki aides would not address the scope of the planned assaults nor where specifically they were planned.

The Iraqis did, however, signal continuing disagreement on key issues, including al-Maliki's unease over the introduction of more U.S. troops.

Another point of contention has been the Iraqi leader's repeated refusal of U.S. demands to crush the militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, one of the prime minister's most powerful backers.

Any serious drive to curb the extreme chaos and violence in the capital would put not only American forces but al-Maliki's Iraqi army in direct confrontation with al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

The militants are gaining more and more ground as they kill Sunni residents of the city and drive others from their neighborhoods. The explosion of vengeance began after the Feb. 22 bombing by al-Qaida in Iraq militants of an important Shiite shrine, the Golden Dome mosque in Samarra north of the capital.

Sami al-Askari, an al-Maliki political adviser, told The Associated Press on Friday that al-Maliki had not acquiesced to the reported White House plan to send as many as 9,000 more U.S. troops to Baghdad alone.

"President Bush told the prime minister he was ready to send additional troops, but al-Maliki said he would have to talk that over with his senior military officers to see if they were needed," al-Askari said.

Bush reportedly wants to increase troop strength as part of his developing plan to shake-up the U.S. military effort in Iraq, now in its fourth year.

Without a substantial U.S. troop increase there were questions about the success of any new drive to curb violence.

Last summer the U.S. military and Iraqi army flooded the capital with 12,000 additional troops for the same purpose. By October, the U.S. military spokesman said the operation had not met expectations and the situation was disheartening. The last half of 2006 was one of the most violent periods in the center and west of the country since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

In his discussions with Bush, al-Maliki continued to press for a rapid U.S. withdrawal from the capital to bases "on the outskirts of Baghdad," al-Askari said. The prime minister has claimed his forces will be ready to assume control of security for the whole country by summer. The Americans, perhaps optimistically, hope that can happen by year's end.

Al-Askari and Hassan al-Suneid, another top al-Maliki aide and lawmaker from his Dawa Party, said the fresh security push would be open-ended once initiated this weekend.

"The Iraqi Interior, Defense and National Security ministries will take part using information we have gathered from a new intelligence network," al-Suneid said. "There will be no time limit, and there will be many stages to the operation."

Al-Suneid said American forces would take part in a supporting role.

As forces apparently began to get ready, the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars voiced Sunni agitation and claimed the coming drive was really a joint operation by Interior Ministry commandos, the Iraqi army and the Mahdi Army to further cleanse mixed neighborhoods. Iraq's security forces are dominated by Shiites.

Sheik Mohammed Bashar al-Fayadh, a spokesman for the organization, claimed residents had seen 150 vehicles massing Friday in the Shula region in northwest Baghdad in advance of the assault.

"We fear a huge attack," al-Fayadh said on Al-Jazeera satellite television.

Throughout Iraq on Friday, at least 31 people died violently or were found dead, including two beheaded victims of the sectarian slaughter found floating in the Tigris river.

The body of an Associated Press employee was found shot in the back of the head Friday, six days after he was last seen by his family leaving for work. Ahmed Hadi Naji, 28, was the fourth AP staffer to die violently in the Iraq war and the second AP employee killed in less than a month. He had been a messenger and occasional cameraman for the AP for 2 1/2 years.

"All of us at AP share the pain and grief being felt by Ahmed's family and friends," said AP President and CEO Tom Curley.

The circumstances of Naji's death were unclear. Dozens of Iraqis are found slain almost every day in Baghdad, many believed to be victims of sectarian death squads.

An American contractor was abducted Friday along with his driver and translator, and the two Iraqis were later found dead near a stadium in the southern city of Basra, police said. The fate of the American was unknown.

"The two victims were the translator and a driver," said a Basra police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Basra's police chief, Gen. Mohammed Humadi, confirmed that a U.S. citizen had been kidnapped and said he was an American of Iraqi origin. The contractor's name and the company for which he worked were not disclosed.

French President Jacques Chirac, meanwhile, said the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq destabilized the entire Middle East and caused terrorism to spread, adding that the problems in Iraq justified France's strong opposition to the war.

"As France foresaw and feared, the war in Iraq caused upheavals whose effects have not yet finished unraveling," Chirac said in a speech to French ambassadors.

___

AP Military Writer Robert Burns in Washington and AP reporter Christine Ollivier in Paris contributed to this report.

New Iraq commanders differ By PAULINE JELINEK
Fri Jan 5, 7:36 PM ET



WASHINGTON - President Bush is installing two experienced commanders from vastly different backgrounds to carry out the new Iraq policy he will announce next week, substituting them for generals who had qualms about a fresh buildup of U.S. troops in the war zone.

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One of the new military chiefs, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, is an Iraq veteran who wrote a Princeton dissertation titled "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam." Iraq has drawn more and more comparisons to that quagmire.

The other new man, Adm. William Fallon, is a Navy veteran who to some is an odd choice to oversee a ground conflict in a nearly landlocked country. Yet as top U.S. commander in the Pacific, he has experience in a region that, like the Middle East, has several trouble spots.

Some former military officers said whether the two succeed depends less on their resumes than on Bush's new policy, which he will announce as early as Wednesday. Adding thousands of additional U.S. troops to the 132,000 already there is a leading proposal he is considering, along with new economic and political approaches.

"It's the policy that's at fault here, not the personnel," said Tony McPeak, Air Force chief of staff during the administration of George H.W. Bush. Switching people without a good new plan will only be like putting "old wine in new bottles," he said.

Even so, the changes would help Bush assert that he is taking a fresh approach in the troubled Iraq four-year-old war, in which more than 3,000 Americans have died and even Bush has conceded the U.S. is not winning. And it will insert people into the fray who will bring a fresh perspective.

"Will he bring new ideas? Yes," retired Marine Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong, former deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, said of Petraeus. "Will he push his new ideas forward? Yes, he will."

As part of Bush's overhaul, the White House announced he is replacing the two top generals in the war. Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. commander in the Middle East, and Gen. George Casey, the chief general in Iraq, are both expected to leave their jobs in coming weeks.

Fallon, the U.S. commander in the Pacific, replaces Abizaid, who was to retire months ago. Fallon's portfolio will also include the lower-intensity war in Afghanistan.

Petraeus, who headed the effort to train Iraqi security forces, will take Casey's place as ground commander in Iraq. Casey in turn will replace Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, who is retiring. All new appointments require Senate confirmation, which is expected.

In a statement, Bush said Fallon had earned a reputation as one of the nation's "foremost military strategists."

Of Petraeus, he said, "His service in Iraq has equipped him with expertise in irregular warfare and stability operations and an understanding of the enemy we face."

Petraeus, 55, from Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., is seen as a blend of military veteran and politically savvy intellect.

He earned a doctoral degree from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and he spent a year in Bosnia before moving to Fort Campbell, Ky., to be commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division. Under his command, the 101st participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq before settling in northern Iraq for nearly a year.

"Dave Petraeus is a terrific leader and well grounded in the challenges in Iraq," said John Batiste, a retired major general who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq from 2002 to 2005.

In 2004, Petraeus was tapped to enact a key piece of Bush's strategy in Iraq — training the Iraqi security forces so American forces could come home. Iraqi forces, though growing in size and controlling ever bigger swaths of territory, are seen by many American commanders as unreliable. Some units are riddled with militia infiltrators, desertions are frequent and some soldiers routinely refuse to fight in areas outside their home communities.

Petraeus now heads the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and helped rewrite the military's manual on counterinsurgency — the kind of battle the U.S. was largely fighting in Iraq until sectarian killings emerged as a huge new danger last year.

A physical fitness buff, Petraeus was accidentally shot in the chest at the firing range in Fort Campbell in 1991. His surgeon was Dr. Bill Frist, who went on to become a Tennessee senator and majority leader, colleagues have said.

Fallon, 61, has held the No. 2 Navy job at the Pentagon, flown combat missions in the Vietnam War, commanded a carrier air wing in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and led the naval battle group supporting NATO operations in Bosnia.

Fallon is familiar with political tensions, since his command includes North Korea, China and Taiwan. He oversees 300,000 troops in the Pacific.

Fallon is no stranger to insurgents, with hundreds of U.S. Special Forces training and equipping Philippine troops to help them fight an insurgency in the predominantly Muslim region of Mindanao.

He's also pushed ahead to develop military exchanges with China despite some vocal criticism from some corners of the Pentagon and some conservative think tanks.

As an admiral, Fallon seemed a surprising choice to run a command consumed by two major ground wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Analysts said the nomination may suggest that the administration has an eye on potential conflicts that would be more dependent on naval or air power, such as with nearby Iran.

Still, several analysts said winning a campaign is not just about individuals.

If the key to success in Iraq is political reconciliation rather than battlefield victories, as the Bush administration has said, "then it's indeed unfair to expect military leadership to have a major effect," said foreign policy expert Christopher Preble of the CATO Institute.

___

Associated Press writers Anne Flaherty and Natasha Metzler in Washington and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu contributed to this report