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First days of new US offensive sees casualties soar

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

The first days of the offensive by US marines into the southern province of Helmand make clear it will result in a massive escalation in violence against the Afghan people and an upsurge in resistance to the US and NATO occupation across the country.

Since Thursday, marine units have moved from their base near the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, down the Helmand River Valley as far as the town of Bahram Chah, 200 kilometres to the south on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. They have occupied the major towns of Nawa, Garmser and Khan Neshin. British troops, operating to the north of Lashkar Gah, have deployed to secure the road between the city and the town of Gereshk.

The US tactics are modeled on the Iraq surge and are aimed at embedding troops among civilians. Forward bases are being established in numerous small villages and hamlets that have never seen occupation forces or representatives of the Afghan puppet government headed by President Hamid Karzai. The population is being ordered to attend meetings or shuras, where marine officers dictate how they will live.

Southern Helmand has been chosen for the first major offensive in Afghanistan under the Obama administration because it is in a state of revolt against the occupation and Karzai’s regime. Since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, next to nothing has been done to alleviate poverty, repair damaged agricultural infrastructure or provide essential services. Entire communities endure malnutrition and are forced to rely on the opium trade to generate income. Moreover, the local ethnic Pashtun population has historically been deeply hostile to any form of foreign domination. The anti-occupation resistance led by Taliban loyalists has considerable popular support.

The marines will seek to crush the insurgency with daily repression—curfews, roadblocks, searches, identity checks and arbitrary detentions. The recently appointed commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, was one of the principal directors of counter-insurgency missions in Iraq. The unit he headed, the Joint Special Operations Command, carried out a systematic policy of targeted assassinations of suspected resistance fighters, and the same brutal methods will now be applied in the rebellious areas of southern Afghanistan.

The offensive has been marked by a scarcity of information about the US operations and their impact on the population. With the complicity of the media, people in America and around the world are being kept in the dark about what exactly the Obama administration is carrying out in the name of “democracy” and “security”. What is known is that scores of Afghan men were killed on Thursday and Friday when they attempted to resist the entry of marines into an area near Garmser. Fighting has also taken place around Khan Neshin.

The few reports that have come out of the newly-occupied areas point to pervasive local opposition toward US troops. In some villages, locals have boycotted the shuras. At a meeting in the village of Sorkhdoz, a Reuters journalist reported that the local leader bluntly told American officers “I do not trust you”, and warned that the villagers would take up arms if the occupation forces did not deliver a promised school and health clinic.

To date, US casualties in the Helmand offensive are still reported as one dead and a dozen or so wounded. In the main, the Afghan insurgents appear to be avoiding direct battles with the far better equipped American troops. A Taliban spokesman told Agence France Presse: “We are not trying to engage with them too soon because there are a lot of them and they would use air force in which case there would be a lot of civilian casualties…. Our men are among the people.”

The insurgents will rely on guerilla tactics. Over the weekend, three British troops were killed by roadside bombs and a rocket-propelled grenade attack in the province, and a supply convoy for NATO troops was ambushed. One mercenary security contractor was killed and four wounded.

There has been an upsurge in attacks on US and NATO troops in other areas of the country since the offensive began. Monday was the costliest day for the American military in Afghanistan in close to a year. Two American troops were killed by a roadside bomb in the southern province of Zabul, while four others were killed by a roadside bombing in the province of Kunduz, not far from the capital Kabul, and another in an engagement in the eastern province of Paktika.

The Taliban appears to be conducting an offensive in Paktika. On Saturday, insurgents launched a rare assault on a small US base in the remote district of Zerok, where fighting reportedly lasted for several hours. It only ended after air strikes and helicopter gunships were called in, killing as many as 45 insurgents. Two American troops were killed and seven wounded. The Zerok base is reportedly the same one from which, according to the Taliban, a “drunken” American soldier walked off on June 30, without his equipment or weapons, and was taken prisoner by the insurgents.

Overall, at least 18 NATO troops have been killed in the first week of July. In all likelihood, 2009 will see the highest rate of deaths in the war. So far this year, 174 soldiers have lost their lives, compared with 294 in all 2008 and 232 in 2007. Hundreds of Afghan government troops and police have also been killed.

Figures within the US military are questioning whether Obama’s increase of US troop numbers in Afghanistan to 68,000 by the end of the year will be enough in the face of an entrenched anti-occupation insurgency. Even with the reinforcements and the NATO contingents, the total occupation force is barely 100,000. The surge in Iraq, by contrast, ultimately involved close to 200,000 American, British and other western troops.

Public opinion is already being conditioned for a further escalation of the Afghan war. Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward reported last week that the view of one unnamed senior US officer was that at least 100,000 American troops were needed—i.e., around 30,000 more.

General McChrystal is scheduled to report to the administration and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a matter of weeks regarding troop numbers. If his request is to increase them, Obama will bend over backwards to meet it. The dispatch of more and more troops follows inexorably from the determination in the White House to consolidate Afghanistan as a neo-colonial client state in Central Asia.

James Cogan

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Dr. David Kelly was writing expose

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

British weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly was writing an expose about his work with anthrax and his warnings that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction at the time of his death in July 2003, according to a report published in a British newspaper.

Kelly’s death — said to have been a suicide — has stirred controversy, as it came on the heels of testimony to the House of Commons about a memo which purported that Britain had “sexed up” a dossier on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. A Parliamentary inquiry ruled that the death had been suicide, though it also included testimony from a former British ambassador who quotes Kelly as having said, “I will probably be found dead in the woods” if Iraq were invaded.

The new report says Kelly had spoken with an Oxford publisher several times about a book.

“He had several discussions with a publisher in Oxford and was seeking advice on how far he could go without breaking the law on secrets,” the UK Daily Express alleged.

Kelly’s computers were seized in the wake of his death. He was a signatory to Britain’s Official Secrets Act, which allows for the prosecution of those who talk to the press about state secrets and prescribes a more stringent framework for secrecy than in the United States.

According to the paper, “he was intending to reveal that he warned Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the British and American invasion… and was also intending to lift the lid on a potentially bigger scandal, his own secret dealings in germ warfare with the apartheid regime in South Africa.”

The allegations of a potential Kelly expose come from a new film about biological weapons being debuted in London on the sixth anniversary of Kelly’s death titled “Anthrax War” (the documentary aired earlier this year on Canadian public television). Kelly was an expert in biological warfare agents, as well as a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq.

‘Anthrax War’

‘‘The deeper you look into the murky world of governments and germ warfare, the more worrying it becomes,” the film’s director, Bob Coen, is quoted as saying. “We have proved there is a black market in anthrax. David Kelly was of particular interest to us because he was a world expert on anthrax and he was involved in some degree with assisting the secret germ warfare program in apartheid South Africa.”

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s summary of the film, Coen “was raised in Zimbabwe where the former white regime has been accused of unleashing anthrax against the black population… [who] embarks on a journey that raises troubling questions about the FBI’s investigation of the 21st century’s first act of biological terrorism.

“Coen’s investigation takes him from the U.S. to the U.K. and from the edge of Siberia to the tip of Africa. In a rare interview, Coen confronts ‘Doctor Death’ Wouter Basson, who headed Project Coast, the South African apartheid-era bio-warfare program,” the network’s website adds. “Project Coast used germ warfare against select targets within the country’s black population.

“Anthrax War also investigates the mysterious deaths of some of the world’s leading anthrax scientists, including Dr. David Kelly, the UK’s top military microbiologist, the Soviet defector Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, and Dr. Bruce Ivins,” the CBC continues. “The FBI claims - despite the doubts of highly ranked U.S. officials - that Ivins was the only person behind the U.S. anthrax murders.”

A Torrent download of Anthrax War is available at this link. Several shorter clips are also available on YouTube.

John Byrne

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MoD under fire for misleading court

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

The Ministry of Defence has been strongly criticised by a High Court judge for attempting to mislead a judicial review.

The review has been looking into the alleged murder of 20 Iraqis and the torture of nine others by UK troops in Iraq five years ago.

The case centres on the aftermath of a major firefight at a vehicle checkpoint known as “Danny Boy” on the Baghdad to Al-Amara road in Maysan province on May 14 2004.

The government stated that, following the incident, 20 dead Iraqis and nine prisoners were taken to Camp Abu Naji, a British military facility.

But relatives of some of those killed say they were alive when they entered the camp and were murdered by troops.

This has been corroborated by witnesses and post mortem results on the bodies returned from the base appeared to show evidence of torture including close range bullet wounds, mutilation and stab wounds.

The nine survivors were detained for several months and insist they were regularly abused and beaten.

Public Interest Lawyers, who represent the family of one of those killed and five men who allege they were tortured by British troops, argue that the government fundamentally failed to investigate the allegations.

The MoD had initially tried to withhold information in the case, claiming it would be damaging to the public interest.

The government had applied for a public interest immunity certificate but, at the High Court today, Lord Justice Scott Baker said that the certificate had been sought “on a partly false basis,” adding that this was of great concern to the court.

“To be furnished with a false, or partly false, certificate - as this one was - completely undermines the process and is a matter of very great concern,” he said.

Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth was forced to apologise and conceded that an independent inquiry was now necessary after admitting the MoD had failed to make documents available to the court in good time.

The Treasury Solicitor’s department head of litigation Hugh Giles said: “Failures have occurred during the disclosure process by which the (Defence Secretary) has made available documents to the court and the claimants. The Secretary of State profoundly regrets these failures.”

He added that “searches conducted to date cannot be said to have been effective and can no longer be regarded as reasonable and proportionate.”

The climb-down follows the release of damning documents to the court showing that those detained at the camp had complained to the Red Cross about their treatment at the time and that this information had been sent to ministers in London.

This is in direct contradiction to MoD claims that it had received no complaints of ill-treatment from any of those detained.

Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers said: “The UK government, aware of the allegations and of the clear signs of mistreatment of the nine survivors - which were the subject of representations by the International Committee of the Red Cross within a week - fundamentally failed to investigate the allegations.”

Mr Shiner also accused the MoD of failing to treat the case “with candour,” including preventing the handover of key documents.

Paddy McGuffin
Copyright Morning Star

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Tobacco industry will fight anti-smoking proposals

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

There has been a warning from anti-smoking campaigners that the tobacco industry will try to “delay, dilute and damage” new measures aimed at curbing sales to young people.

ASH Scotland say that tobacco firms would continue to challenge proposed legislation from the Scottish Government, which includes a ban on tobacco displays in shops.

The organisation has launched a campaign to highlight public support for the measures, and is urging members of the public to write to local shops giving their backing for proposals in the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Bill.

Sheila Duffy, ASH Scotland chief executive, said: “We want to take our message direct to shopkeepers and counter the misinformation from the tobacco industry through our Pride of Place? campaign.

“Shopkeepers need to know that the public support the removal of cigarette promotional displays because it will stop the marketing of tobacco to children and young people.

But she added: “Inevitably however, the tobacco industry will continue to challenge the measures outlined in the Bill and do all it can to delay, dilute and damage the legislation.

“By employing scaremongering and misinformation tactics they have made retailers afraid of this law rather than embracing it as an opportunity to remove a lethal product from display.”

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ID cards are not being scrapped but accelerated

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Home secretary Alan Johnson has flatly denied killing off the ID card programme with his announcement last week that the scheme will be entirely voluntary for UK citizens.

He delivered the denial in a Commons debate in which a Tory demand for the plan to be dropped was defeated by 293 votes to 206.

A government motion insisting the cards will help secure individuals’ identity and reduce multiple ID fraud was carried by 283 votes to 203 despite intense speculation about the programme’s future.

Johnson announced last week that airside workers at London City and Manchester airports can decide for themselves whether to apply for cards, a U-turn on original plans to make them compulsory for workers in such a security-sensitive role.

He started the debate with the declaration: “We havent scrapped cards. What we are doing is accelerating their introduction.

The airports decision was a victory for the trade unions representing the 20,000 workers involved.

The compulsory rollout of cards to 50,000 non-European Union or European economic zone workers is proceeding, although a target of 50,000 signed up by the end of March was missed by half.

Johnson claimed consistent public support for ID cards and denounced as ” ludicrous” Tory claims that scrapping the programme would save a large sum, because biometric passports and the national identity register would have to proceed in any case.

He was ridiculed by Labour rebels Andrew Mackinlay, who said he was presiding over “the denouement of a failed policy” and David Winnick, who said the whole idea of British citizens carrying such a card was “distasteful”.

Tory spokesman Damian Green protested about a statutory instrument also due to be passed that would impose penalties on holders for failing to keep card information up to date.

And shadow Tory home secretary Chris Grayling ridiculed the idea of volu ntary cards whose sole purpose would be to enable young drinkers in pubs to prove their age. He said taxpayers faced a bill for “billions of pounds”.

Grayling confirmed the Tory pledge to cancel this “massive national folly” if they win the next election.

Johnson retorted that he is now “more convinced than ever that the national identity service is a sane and rational policy that needs to be implemented, rather than scrapped, and accelerated, rather than delayed, and accused Grayling of being “a covert supporter” who had switched sides.

The home secretary insisted the programme is “on time and on schedule” and would help deal with the problem of identity fraud.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said the government was living in ” cloud cuckoo land” if it thought the project could be delivered on its claimed budget and warned that students repeatedly changing addresses would be hard hit by fines of up to £1,000 for failing to re-register each move.

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7 July bombing memorial to be unveiled

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

A memorial to the 52 people killed in the 7 July attacks in London will be officially unveiled today to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the bombings.

The memorial, in Hyde Park in London’s West End, consists of 52 stainless steel pillars, one for each victim. These are grouped in four clusters, to mark the four locations of the attacks: Tavistock Square, Edgware Road, King’s Cross and Aldgate.

There is also a 1.4 tonne stainless steel plaque with the names of all those who were killed. The Prince of Wales and Tessa Jowell, the humanitarian assistance minister, will lead the nation in remembering those killed.

Saba Mozakka, 28, whose mother, Behnaz Mozakka – a 47-year-old biomedical officer – was killed on a tube train as it travelled from King’s Cross to Russell Square, was one of six relatives of victims on the design board that worked to produce the monument.

“My family will never, ever be the same after what took place on 7 July 2005. We want very clearly for future generations to see the devastation that was caused by these murderous and callous acts,” she said.

Mozakka said the families had wanted a memorial that would be very prominent in London and provide a “reflective space”. “We are very proud of the fact the memorial would be in Hyde Park and reflect everything good about London – its vibrancy.”

Architect Kevin Carmody, of Carmody Groarke, worked closely with the families, the government and the Royal Parks to create the monument. He described it as giving “a sense of the randomness of the loss of life”.

The prime minister, Gordon Brown, the Tory leader, David Cameron, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, the London mayor, Boris Johnson, and senior figures from the emergency services and representatives of other organisations will be present at the unveiling ceremony.

Johnson said the memorial “echoes the steely determination shown by Londoners in the days following the bombings”.

Johnson, Jowell, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall will meet the families of those killed in the bombings before the event begins.

The prince and Jowell will address the audience before Sir Trevor MacDonald, who is hosting the ceremony, reads out the names of the 52 victims and a minute’s silence is observed.

Prince Charles will then lay a wreath on behalf of the nation while the duchess will leave a floral tribute for the families.

Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son, David, was killed in the Edgware Road bombing, said: “To me, it sends out a clear message to bombers and terrorists – that no matter what they do, they just cannot win, because we value every single life.”

Foulkes, from Oldham in Greater Manchester, said calls for a memorial by victims’ families and survivors had initially been obstructed by ministers but the Department for Culture, Media and Sport had been “absolutely terrific” in bringing the idea to fruition.

However, he is still angry at the government’s refusal to hold an independent inquiry into the atrocities.

“The frustration is enormous – knowing that David died and they are not interested in finding out how to prevent it ever happening again,” he said.

Haroon Siddique and agencies

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