by Alex Evans | Mar 26, 2008 | Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa
…you may have noticed that all is not well. The British troops in Basra (both of them) are needless to say staying out of the way. But as the Yorskhire Ranter reports,
- ISCI = SIIC = new name for SCIRI = Badr Corps = “aristocratic” Hakim family = exiles during Saddam Hussein’s reign = pro-Iran = generally in control of army and security forces = pro-U.S. = ally of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Dawa Party.
- Mahdi Army = JAM = “firebrand cleric” Muqtada al-Sadr = Iraqi nationalists = originally part of Maliki’s governing coalition but no longer = anti-U.S. = populist/working class orientation = controls much of the oil sector in Basra.
- “Special groups” = rogue elements of the Mahdi Army = maybe Sadr is just as happy to have Maliki take these guys out for him, but who knows for sure?
- Fadhila = ex-allies of Sadr = won some elections in Basra in 2005 = smallest of the three Shiite factions in the south.
by Charlie Edwards | Mar 19, 2008 | UK
So which political adviser and/or Whitehall official(s) have been talking with the FT’s resident ‘Rita Skeeter‘? In her notebook today she despairs of the British Prime Minister’s handling of the national security strategy:
Oh Gord! The new national security strategy that Gordon Brown, the prime minister, is due to announce on Wednesday – it is all about potential disasters – has proved a bit of a disaster itself. Its genesis has been marked by delays indecisiveness at the top, a total lack of funds and some glorious Whitehall squabbling.
The strategy, which will detail all kinds of threats from terrorism to pandemics and floods, is nearly six months late. The first draft was ready last October, but parts of Whitehall were distinctly unhappy. I am told that one section on flooding was written by a senior military man who did not bother to consult the flood supremos in the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
(Better gossip is that they forgot to include Britain’s nuclear deterrent in one draft)
Sue continues:
When the shouts of protest died down, a new version was produced in February this year – after due consultation. This did not upset anyone. Indeed it was so anodyne that some officials felt positively embarrassed. Advisers in Number 10 cut its length drastically. Mr Brown started writing his speech about it, which seems to have led to a series of further changes to the strategy itself as new ideas came to him. “It’s Gordon’s temperament,” sighed one Whitehall insider. “Only he can sort things out but he concentrates on matters of the moment and drops everything else. The result is that things big and small don’t get sorted quickly.”
So what will be included?
Right from the start there seems to have been no clear guidance from Mr Brown as to what the strategy was meant to achieve. It is expected to include plans for a new US-style national security council on which will sit the great and the good from the military and the intelligence services, but the council will report to a new cabinet committee, chaired by Mr Brown, and the old Cobra arrangements for dealing with emergencies will remain in place. All rather confusing, but the hope is that the council will make it easier to bang heads together and stop departments fighting their own corners. Hard to see how, say insiders. “Governments have always had to choose between spending on flood defences, for example, and armaments,” says one senior figure, adding that unlike the US security council, whose job is to prioritise spending, there will be no serious extra money for contingency planning.
Not sure that is quite the point. But what about Whitehall’s reaction to the document?
Some fear the new strategy will bring even more centralisation of power with Number 10, cutting other departments out of the action. There is even concern that top intelligence officials could become part of the prime minister’s team instead of serving the government as a whole. On this the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the dangers of that should be all too apparent.
Looks like paranoia is setting into Whitehall.
by Alex Evans | Mar 17, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks, UK
Ian Katz’s Observer interview with Jonathan Powell – chief of staff to Tony Blair throughout his time at Downing Street – was definitely worth a read, if for no other reason than that this was, incredibly, Powell’s first media interview since 1997. You get the impression that if Powell gave more such interviews, it might be quite fun:
“He would say the most outrageous things in meetings,” recalls one former member of the Blair inner circle. Powell does not contest the charge: “Sometimes I say things which are extremely plonkerish at just the wrong moment… which is one of the reasons they kept me away from the press. It would’ve been a complete disaster if I’d have talked to the papers.”)
You might think he’s just being modest. But try this delicious gem:
When Siobhan O’Hanlon, Gerry Adams’s late assistant, asks for a meeting with Blair during the Good Friday talks, Powell tells her his boss is in a meeting with Bertie Ahern, but “we could get rid of him”. O’Hanlon replies that there is no need and Powell, whose sense of humour frequently falls on the dusty side of dry, chips in that he did not mean “get rid of him in her usual sense”.
(more…)
by Richard Gowan | Mar 16, 2008 | Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa
David Steven has recently reminded us of the horrors of Abu Ghraib, but an earnest story from DoD reveals that the U.S. is now running hearts and minds operations inside its “detention facilities” in Iraq.
New ways of dealing with detainees in coalition-run facilities in Iraq are paying off through less violence, more actionable intelligence for warfighters, and a better separation of extremists from more moderate detainees, a senior leader told military analysts today.
Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, deputy commander for Multinational Force Iraq’s detainee operations, said efforts to tamp down on insurgent activity “inside the wire” is paying off in protecting both inside and outside the facilities.
Stone described the “Stone principles” he implemented toward that end: establishing an alliance with moderate Iraqis; empowering moderates to marginalize violent extremists; providing momentum to the reconciliation process; and promoting stability by releasing those who demonstrate characteristics that can help Iraq succeed.
Rather than being “warehoused,” as in the past, detainees now are assessed individually to identify extremists and separate them from the rest of the detainee population, Stone explained. “Then we begin to work with both sides of that population — extremists and the more moderate — to defeat any insurgency that was going on inside the theater detention facility,” he said.
Which is obviously all good news… until you are suddenly moved to think, exactly how bad were matters “inside the wire” before Stone rolled onto the scene?
(Unexpected GWoT fact of the day: as well as a meteoric military career, General Stone is an entrepreneur in the PC-based fax software field).
by Richard Gowan | Mar 8, 2008 | Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa
The McClatchy Company is the third biggest newspaper owner in the U.S., but most of the papers it owns tend to be of the smaller, less internationally-known variety. But it takes foreign reporting very seriously, especially from Iraq. Its “Inside Iraq” blog is a platform for the Iraqi journalists it employs to, well, blog. The posts are often on the mundane aspects of civil war life (“For the first time in more than three years I can call Fallujah from a land line in Baghdad. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!”) and the writers have an impressive capacity for irony. Here’s the text of a post entitled, frankly, “Free Graves”:
In Iraq, journalists are always targeted by insurgents. The last sacrifice was the head of journalist union in Iraq who was assassinated in cold blood few days ago. Yet, no protections measures have taken by Iraqi government to stop this series.
I thought that the Iraqi government is watching this killing series with carelessness and they don’t do much to protect the life of journalists except for condemning and condolences which do nothing to save the precious lives of the Iraqi journalists but today I found out that I was wrong.
Today I read in the news that the governor of Najaf allocated a piece of land for journalist. Before finishing the news, I felt happy for one second only because I thought the man had allocated properties for the journalists to build their houses in the safe city of Najaf but again, I was wrong. The land which was allocated for the journalists by his Excellency the governor of Najaf was inside the biggest graveyard in the world (Dar Al Salam cemetery)… it is allocated to build graves for us after we get killed by the insurgents. This is serious and it’s not a joke.
Is not that great? They think about us even after our death.
