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O1 November 2007-Michael Yon
Iraqi Islamic Party:
“Al Qaeda is Defeated”
“Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,” according to Sheik
Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and
a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri
Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October
meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in
downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been
“defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated
physically,” referring to how clear it has become that
the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives
who could once disappear back into the crowd after
committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer
find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the
southern part of Baghdad. They are being hunted down
and killed. Or, if they are lucky, captured by
Americans.
Colonel Ricky Gibbs, the American brigade commander
with responsibility for the Rashid District in south
Baghdad today told me, “So goes South Baghdad goes
Baghdad.” General Petraeus had told me similar things
about the importance of South Baghdad. In fact, Rashid
is quickly developing into what might be one of the
final serious battlegrounds of the war.
During the meeting, another member of the Iraqi
Islamic Party said that al Qaeda has changed its
strategy now that fomenting civil war between Sunni and
Shia has backfired. Al Qaeda has shifted targets, now
trying to generate friction between tribes. This time,
however, the tribes are onto the game early, and they
are not playing.
Sheik Omar, who has gained the respect of American
combat leaders for his intelligence and organizational
skills, said the tough line against al Qaeda is also
enforced at the tribal level. According to Sheik Omar,
the Jabouri tribe, too, is actively committed to
destroying al Qaeda. So much so, that Jabouri tribal
leaders have decided they would “kill their own sons” if
any aided al Qaeda. To underscore the point, he went on
to say that about 70 Jabouri “sons” had been killed by
the Jabouri tribe so far.
In addition to brigade commander Colonel Ricky Gibbs,
four of his battalion commanders were also present:
Lieutenant Colonels James Crider, Patrick Frank, Stephen
Michael and Myron Reinehe. Sheik Omar expressed deep
gratitude for their assistance.
Omar’s influence extends beyond tribal and party
levels, to include important channels within the Iraqi
government and the US military in Baghdad, as evidenced
by the agenda of the hours-long meeting. But for the
talk about al Qaeda, the focus was mostly on other
topics, such as returning displaced persons to their
homes, efficiently delivering basic services and
jumpstarting the economy. In fact, more and more
meetings in Iraq are turning to day-to-day business, and
less time is required on military and security topics
like targeting and addressing intelligence-type matters,
which until recently monopolized most meetings across
Iraq.
Michael Yon does not receive
funding or financial support from Fox News, or from
any network, movie, book or television deals at this
time. He is entirely reader supported. He relies on
his readers to help him replace his equipment and
cover his expenses so that he may remain in Iraq and
bring you the stories of our soldiers. If you value
his work,
please consider supporting his
mission.
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QUETTA, Pakistan -
Pakistani security forces
critically wounded a top figure in the
Taliban militia fighting U.S. and NATO forces in
Afghanistan, among six militants captured after a
firefight near the border Monday, the army said.
Also Monday, an independent candidate running in next
week's parliamentary elections and seven supporters were killed
in a suicide attack in a border region, officials said.
Mansoor Dadullah, the brother of slain
Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah, and five
others were challenged by security forces as they crossed from
Afghanistan into
Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan. They
refused to stop and opened fire, said army spokesman Maj. Gen.
Athar Abbas.
"Security personnel returned fire. As a result all of them
sustained injuries and all of them were captured," Abbas said. "Dadullah
was arrested alive but he is critically wounded."
Earlier, a senior military official, speaking on condition
of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to
journalists, said Dadullah had died of his wounds while being
flown to a hospital with the other injured men.
Two Pakistani intelligence officials, declined to be named
for the same reason, gave a different account of Dadullah's
capture, saying he was nabbed during a raid on a religious
seminary in a neighboring district. It was not immediately
possible to reconcile the differing accounts.
Dadullah's capture comes amid growing Western pressure on
Pakistan to crack down on Islamic militants launching attacks
inside Afghanistan but increasingly destabilizing Pakistan
itself.
In Afghanistan, officials reacted cautiously. Spokesmen at
Afghanistan's Interior and Defense ministries said they had no
immediate comment. Lt. Col. David Accetta, the top
U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, said he could not
confirm the report.
Dadullah rose in the militia's ranks as an important
commander in southern Afghanistan after his brother was killed
during a military operation in Afghanistan's
Helmand province in May. Mullah Dadullah was the
highest-ranking Taliban commander killed since the U.S.-led
invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
But in late December, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid
announced that Mansoor Dadullah had been dismissed from the
movement for "disobeying orders" and conducting activities
"against the Taliban's rules and regulations."
On Monday, Mujahid said Dadullah was still part of the
Taliban movement, but that he was no longer an operational
commander in southern Afghanistan. Mujahid said he had no
comment about Dadullah's reported capture and death.
Dadullah told the AP in a phone interview in January that
he remained a Taliban commander and had asked the militia's
supreme leader Mullah Omar to dispel "rumors" of his dismissal.
He also claimed that he had met with
al-Qaida's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri a few months ago but
had never met with
Osama bin Laden. He said Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in
Helmand were fighting alongside each other and sharing tactics.
Abbas, the army spokesman, said Dadullah was captured near
Gaddal, a border village in
Qila Saifullah district in Baluchistan.
Two Pakistani intelligence officials, however, gave the
location as Gwal Ismailzai village, in neighboring Zhob
district. They said five militants, not six, were captured and
wounded, some critically.
One of the officials identified those captured with
Dadullah on Monday as Haji Lala, Khudai Dad, Khaliq Dad and
Abdur Razzak. He said the injured suspects were whisked away by
an army helicopter from
Zhob airport to an unknown destination.
Afghan and Western officials say that
Pakistan's border regions are a staging point for
cross-border attacks on U.S.,
NATO and Afghan forces inside eastern and southern
Afghanistan. Dadullah is the latest in a series of high-ranking
Taliban militants to have been killed or captured either
side of the border in the past year or so.
Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism,
concedes Taliban militants are active on its soil but has denied
Omar and other militia leaders use Pakistan as a base of
operations.
The violence in the country has often targeted
politicians.
Nisar Ali Khan, a candidate for parliament supported by
the
Awami National Party, was campaigning in the Eidak area,
15 miles east of Miran Shah in
North Waziristan, when he and his supporters were killed,
intelligence officials said.
"The suicide bomber blew himself up when he was meeting
people near the Nizamia religious seminary in Eidak," one
intelligence official said. Another official, however, said the
suicide bomber rammed his car into Khan's car near the seminary.
The Awami National Party is a secular party of ethnic
Pashtuns seen as a rival to hard-line Islamic groups.
In July 2007, another prominent militant, Abdullah Mehsud,
died in Zhob, apparently after he was cornered by Pakistani
security forces. Mehsud was a
Taliban veteran of Guantanamo Bay who began fighting
Pakistani security forces after his release from the U.S. prison
for terror suspects in 2004.
In March 2007, two months before Mullah Dadullah was
killed in Helmand, Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, one of the two top
deputies of Taliban supreme leader Omar, was arrested in
Quetta — where Afghan officials claim Omar is hiding.
In December 2006, another top Omar lieutenant, Mullah
Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, died in a
NATO airstrike in Helmand, near the Pakistan border.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff, held talks over the weekend with
President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistani military chiefs,
and told reporters that the militant threat in the country's
border regions was growing. But he ruled out violating
Pakistan's sovereignty by sending U.S. forces to fight
there.
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) -
U.S. troops raided a psychiatric hospital in Baghdad
on Sunday and arrested a man suspected of involvement in two
recent bombings blamed on mentally impaired women, the U.S.
military said.
Ten days ago, explosives carried by two women, said by
Iraqi and U.S. officials to be mentally handicapped teenagers
and unwitting suicide bombers, blew up in two popular pet
markets in central Baghdad, killing 99 people and wounding more
than 150.
The attacks, which the U.S. military blamed on al Qaeda,
were the deadliest bombings in the city since last April.
"We did conduct an operation at the al-Rashad hospital,"
Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Stover, a spokesman for U.S. troops in
Baghdad, told Reuters.
"We detained an individual that we believe was linked to
al Qaeda in Iraq and suicide bombers."
"We detained an individual that we believe was linked to
al Qaeda in Iraq and suicide bombers."
He confirmed the man was suspected of being involved in
the recent deadly attacks but declined to give any further
details. The man had not yet been charged, he added.
An Iraqi Health Ministry official said the acting director
of the al-Rashad hospital, which cares for mentally ill patients
in southeastern Baghdad, had been taken into custody.
Another senior health official in charge of hospitals in
the area identified the same man and said U.S. and Iraqi forces
spent three hours searching the building.
"They arrested the acting director, accusing him of
working with al Qaeda and recruiting mentally ill women and
using them in suicide bombing operations," the hospital official
said, adding that patient files and computers had been seized.
Neither U.S. nor Iraqi officials have produced definitive
evidence that the market bombers suffered any mental impairment
but both sides have said there was strong evidence to indicate
the women suffered from Down syndrome.
They have also said it was likely the women were unwitting
bombers duped by al Qaeda and their condition was possibly a
reason why the women were able to avoid being searched.
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Should America Employ Mercenaries? You
Bet!
by
Chris Seck
World News Editor
On
January 16, the New York Times
reported that Justice Department
officials have informed Congress of
“serious legal difficulties” in
prosecuting Blackwater security guards
involved in a September shooting that
left at least 17 Iraqis dead.
There has been much controversy over
America’s use of private military
companies to provide security services.
Renae Merle of the Washington Post
reports that as of December 2007, there
are at least 100,000 “contractors”
working in Iraq. During a 2007 radio
interview, journalist Jeremy Scahill
went so far as to call Blackwater “the
official mercenary company of the US
government” because it hired “Colombian
soldiers [and] Chilean soldiers” to
serve in Iraq.
It
is unfortunate that in our modern
lexicon, “mercenary” is generally seen
as a pejorative term, although this
article will use it in a neutral sense.
If we define mercenaries as people who
“wage war for profit” (to borrow a line
from the liberal blog Daily Kos), it is
still arguable that that waging war for
private gain is not always a bad thing.
Making the assumption that private
military companies are indeed mercenary
companies, it is arguable that
mercenaries are vital if America is to
continue her current foreign policy of
making the world safe for democracy.
Consider: when fighting a war, there are
generally three ways to raise an army.
First, people may volunteer to fight if
they perceive that a cause is just.
After the horrific September 11 attacks,
football player Pat Tillman rejected a
$3.6 million sports contract in order to
fight in Afghanistan. Indeed, people
like Tillman would probably have made
the same decision even if the football
contract were worth a billion dollars.
With America under attack, many people
saw the War on Terrorism as a good
cause, and were hence willing not just
to fight for freedom, but quite possibly
to fight for free.
However, there are only so many people
who would join the U.S. military for
purely patriotic reasons. This leads us
to our second option: pay Americans to
fight. By offering a good salary (or a
college education), it becomes
relatively easy to persuade large
numbers of young people to fight for
America. Indeed, by utilizing the power
of free choice and free markets, the
U.S. military—comprised entirely of
well-paid, professional, and
highly-motivated troops—has become the
finest force in the world. If you can’t
get people to volunteer for purely
patriotic reasons, you might be able to
get them to fight not just for freedom,
but for both freedom and a fee. We are a
commercial nation, and the volunteer
military is a fine American tradition,
as American as apple pie.
However, it is not easy to persuade many
Americans to enlist in the war effort,
because modern life is simply too fun
for most people. We are reluctant to
sacrifice our iPods, our Facebook, our
McDonalds burgers, and our Desperate
Housewives. Just as the Baby Boomer
generation dodged drafts, seized
university exemptions, and protested
against the Vietnam War, this generation
is reluctant to sacrifice their careers
and civilian comforts to fight in Iraq.
This leads us to our third option: hire
mercenaries. Unlike U.S. troops who
fight for both freedom and a fee,
mercenaries fight only for the fee. Yet,
for all their faults and mistakes, these
mercenaries play an important role—like
illegal immigrants, they do jobs that
most Americans won’t do. Most
importantly, because they are motivated
by the base, but effective profit
motive, they tend to do a very good job—Blackwater
guards have done a remarkable job of
protecting U.S. diplomats and the U.S.
embassy in Baghdad. When was the last
time you heard about a top U.S. official
being killed while on tour in Iraq?
America’s mercenaries are
highly-trained, highly-motivated, and
highly-paid. According to the New
York Times, Blackwater’s training
facility in North Carolina is so
well-equipped that even U.S. Navy Seals
sometimes use it for specialized
military training. Quite simply, the
profit motive allows the development of
world-class mercenary units—the finest
private armies in the world.
Despite the controversy over the
morality of hiring mercenaries, it is
arguable that the pursuit of
self-interest leads to the general (i.e.
America’s) gain. As classical economist
Adam Smith once wrote of the average
person, “By pursuing his own interest he
frequently promotes that of the society
more effectually than when he really
intends to promote it.”
It
is true that mercenaries have committed
excesses in Iraq, and it is certainly
arguable that these excesses ought to be
punished. However, on the whole, our
nation’s use of mercenaries has more
benefits than costs. If it weren’t for
the 100,000 military “contractors” from
companies like Blackwater, CACI, and
Aegis Defense Services, more young
American men and women would be dying in
Iraq rather than surfing Facebook,
listening to iTunes, and playing
football. Between having a military
draft and hiring mercenaries, most of
America’s young, judging by their
actions, would prefer the latter.
Making the world safe for democracy
requires that America maintain large
military commitments overseas.
Unfortunately, few Americans are willing
to serve in sufficiently large numbers
to maintain all these overseas
commitments. Therefore, this leaves us
with a choice—either we adopt a humbler
foreign policy that allows us to
maintain a smaller army with fewer
commitments, or we hire mercenaries to
help fight the wars that our foreign
policy requires, but which too few
Americans will risk life and limb for.
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WASHINGTON —
A surge in military operations and a shift in local support
in northern Iraq has driven many al Qaeda fighters out of cities
that once provided them safe haven and into the desert, or even
out of the country, a commander in the region said Monday.
Citizens in the four-province region of Multi-National
Division - North have begun shifting their support to Coalition
and Iraqi forces in “droves,” and security gains are
increasingly putting extremists on the run with no clear place
to go to be safe, said Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling,
commander of Multi-National Division - North and the U.S. Army’s
1st Armored Division. The northern division is about the size of
Pennsylvania and includes Diyala, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Tamim
provinces.
Some foreign fighters are returning to their home
countries of Syria and Saudi Arabia, he said, taking with them
funds earmarked for fighters in Iraq. Some are trying to
reorganize outside the country’s borders, but Hertling’s troops
are watching the border and have arrested some as they try to
return, he said. Others, who no longer feel safe in the cities
because they are afraid that local citizens will turn them in,
are hiding out in abandoned mud huts, canals or caves in the
desert.
“That's their biggest fear. So many of them are going to
the desert regions to just get away from being ratted out by the
citizens by being pointed out and captured,” Hertling said.
But, even their desert hideaways are targets under
six-week-long Operation Iron Harvest, part of the countrywide
Operation Phantom Phoenix.
“Some of them are saying it's not even safe in the desert
because the night raids are coming to get them,” Hertling said.
“And that's a good thing. We want them to keep thinking that
they can't sleep well at night because we're coming after them,
because, quite frankly, we are.”
Hertling could not give specific numbers on how many
fighters have left or an estimate of the size of the enemy force
remains in the region, but he said fewer al Qaeda fighters are
in the province now than six weeks ago.
“We’re doing exactly what we’re trying to do, and that is
make the cities safer for the Iraqi citizens while continuing to
target al Qaeda and the other extremist groups,” the commander
said.
Diyala province, specifically, is much safer today than it
was a month ago, Hertling said. Citizens are less afraid to go
out on the streets, and markets are opening, he said.
Hurtling attributed the gains in the province to the
capabilities of the Iraqi security forces, the installation of
local bases in the province, and improving local and national
governments.
In Iron Harvest operations over the past 45 days,
Coalition and Iraqi security forces there have conducted 74
missions. They have captured or killed more than 70 high-value
individuals, and “hundreds” of enemy fighters, the general said.
They found more than 430 caches with tons of explosives and
weapons, he added, and they have cleared 653 homemade bombs, 42
house bombs, 35 car bombs and three bomb factories.
Attacks have leveled off in the region since December,
following a drastic drop. Attacks range from about 20 to 50
daily, Hertling said.
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