Military - new material (70)
01 April 2010
Mapping US drone and Islamic militant attacks in Pakistan. BBC News South Asia, 22.7.10. This article observes that: “Missile attacks by US drones in Pakistan’s tribal areas have more than trebled under the Obama administration...More than 700 people have been killed in such attacks under Mr Obama compared with slightly fewer than 200 from under his predecessor, George W. Bush.” The report also records 140 attacks by Islamic militants, resulting in 1,700 deaths and that over the same 18 month period “more than 2,500 people died in offensives by the Pakistani army.”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia10648909
US to activate European missile shield soon, Craig Whitlock. The Washington Post, 1.8.10. The Washington Post reports that the US military is on the verge of activating a partial missile shield over southern Europe. According to Pentagon officials a deal is near to establish a key ground station for high powered X-band radar, probably in Turkey or Bulgaria. Together with the stationing of Aegis class destroyers and cruisers equipped with Raytheon Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IA interceptors to patrol the Mediterranean the system will make up Phase 1 of the Obama missile defence plan in 2011. In the second phase from roughly 2015, improved interceptors (SM-3 Block IB) will be employed along with an initial land-based SM-3 site in southern Europe (Romania). Phase 3 will be achieved in 2018 with a second land-based site in northern Europe (Poland) and a further updated SM-3 Block II-A. During the November NATO summit in Lisbon the allies will decide whether to make territorial missile defence part of NATO’s mission. A “lower layer” of Patriot and other interceptors will than be integrated in the US “upper layer“ framework.
The Runaway General, Michael Hastings. Rolling Stone No. 1108 / 1109, 8.7.10. This article is based on interviews with General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and US Forces-Afghanistan until he was unceremoniously sacked for his comments to Hastings. The piece describes the general’s role as the “leading evangelist for counterinsurgency” and his ambition to use the Afghanistan invasion as “a laboratory” for it. Counterinsurgency is defined as “the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military’s preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states.” However, it has been shown to be militarily ineffective, for instance in the “doomed” US offensive surge at Marjah (Helmund province) and has been broadly criticised by the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl W. Eikenberry, who warns that: “We [US military forces and their remaining allies] will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236
Nation building is a luxury in Afghanistan, John Bolton. The Times 17.5.10. Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and senior fellow at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute, explains why nation building in Afghanistan is an unaffordable luxury. He says: “Nato’s central challenge is not so much the current Afghan military situation as to avoid losing its will and staying power. As with the global war on terror generally, this war will be protracted, to which Nato must either be steeled, or sooner or later, face inevitable negative consequences.” He goes on to criticise the Obama administration for its “ambivalence” and “deep seated weakness on national security”. He also offers the new UK coalition government advice on how it could improve its position on Afghanistan-Pakistan for the convenience of the United States. In conclusion he states that “Terrorism and nuclear proliferation remain the predominant threats of our time”.
ANSO Quarterly Data Report. The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office Q2, 2010, pp. 10. Among other items the report carries a damning strategic assessment of the US counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. It rejects the military’s assessment that with the surge things must get worse before they get better, instead viewing the increased violence as “consistent with the five year trend of things just getting worse.” Of the Kandahar operation, it says: “As currently articulated Hamkari looks very unlikely to be the `breaking point’ of the Taleban. It seems more likely to go the way of Op. Moshtarak, in Helmund, with lots of ballyhoo around the actions of the IMF while the Afghan partners’ discreetly pursue their own, often countervailing agendas.” See:
http://www.afgnso.org/2010Q/ANSO%20Quarterly%20Data%20Repor t%20%28Q2%202010%29.pdf
Spain-Israel: Military, Homeland Security and Armament-Based Relations, Affairs and Trends. Alejandro Pozo Marín, Nova, Centre per a la Innovació Social and Centre d’Estudis per a la Pau J. M. Delàs Justícia i Pau, pp. 84. “Israel is the key antagonist in an armed conflict lasting more than sixty years, which is at the heart of global geopolitics and has important implications for regional and global stability. As a consequence of this reality, Israel has become one of the most militarized states in the world which produces the most avant-garde systems of the military and security sectors. The violence experienced in the region has become a source of profit, a business that bases its justification for armed conflict on the financial prosperity it receives as a due consequence. The report looks at relations between Spain and Israel, which include arms imports and exports, business relationships and agreements and practices on military and security, furthermore attempt to answer the question of how Spain contributes to violence in one of the most battered regions of the world.” See: http://noviolencia.nova.cat/sites/default/files/descarregables/Spain_Isra el_angl.pdf.
Eamonn McCann: Cameron’s stomach-churning hypocrisy, Socialist Worker, 26 June 2010. In this short article McCann discusses the “stomach-churning” hypocrisy behind David Cameron’s apology to the victims of Bloody Sunday; “If David Cameron seriously believed that slaughtering unarmed civilians is wrong, he would cancel the imminent deployment of the Parachute regiment to Afghanistan, where in the past year, around 2,000 civilians have been killed by US and British troops”. The article goes on to discuss the British government’s unwillingness to put together a public inquiry to examine the atrocities committed in May 2004 during operation Danny Boy in Basra where “witness statements describe Iraqis being shot at close range, held down while being strangled to death, heads yanked back and throats cut”.