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U.S., British integrate UAV units
Published: May 8, 2008 at 5:44 PM
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, May 8 (UPI) -- The growing reliance on unmanned aerial vehicles in Afghanistan has resulted in a close collaboration between U.S. and British units. -
Gunman kills WFP truck driver in Somalia
Published: May 8, 2008 at 5:42 PM
MOGADISHU, Somalia, May 8 (UPI) -- Militiamen in Somalia killed a U.N. World Food Program truck driver at an illegal checkpoint as the driver was attempting to deliver aid. -
Austria pledges funds to UNODA
Published: May 8, 2008 at 5:40 PM
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 (UPI) -- The U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs says it has been pledged more than $150,000 for a project to halt the trafficking of arms in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Atlantic Eye: Hardly a done deal
Published: May 8, 2008 at 2:08 PM
By MARC S. ELLENBOGEN
UPI International Columnist
PRAGUE, Czech Republic, May 8 (UPI) -- Most Europeans see the U.S. presidential election as a done deal. They are quite surprised. They were convinced that Sen. Hillary Clinton was the sure thing. Now, and they are confused, they are expecting the inevitable: Sen. John McCain as president. -
Iraq Press Roundup
Published: May 7, 2008 at 3:29 PM
By HIBA DAWOOD
UPI Correspondent
Shebab Al Iraq newspaper Wednesday carried an editorial with the headline "Who is responsible for the atrocities in Sadr City?" -
U.S. looking into Iraq reconstruction contract requiring Iranian parts
Published: May 7, 2008 at 3:23 PM
By BEN LANDO
UPI Editor
WASHINGTON, May 7 (UPI) -- U.S. forces are investigating two contracts to build schools in northern Iraq that required bathroom fixtures to be supplied by Iran. -
Walker's World: The EU's euro power-grab
Published: May 7, 2008 at 10:23 AM
By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor Emeritus
FRANKFURT, Germany, May 7 (UPI) -- The European Union's commission is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the euro currency with a bid to control the wages and economic strategy of the 27-nation bloc. -
Iraq Press Roundup
Published: May 6, 2008 at 11:24 AM
By HIBA DAWOOD
UPI Correspondent
The Association of Muslim Scholars' Al Basaer newspaper said Tuesday in its editorial that after Iraq was destroyed and hard to fix, officials at the White House called upon Arab countries to send their representatives to Iraq using Iran as a threat. -
Feature: U.S., Mehdi Army battle over wall
Published: May 6, 2008 at 11:14 AM
By RICHARD TOMKINS
BAGHDAD, May 6 (UPI) -- Gun battles between U.S. troops and Shiite extremists are being fought daily along a stretch of road in Baghdad's Sadr City as militants loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr try to stop -- or at least delay -- construction of a concrete barrier that will help curb their ability to fire rockets into Baghdad's International Zone, seat of the Iraqi government.
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Commentary: Afghan lament
Published: March 28, 2008 at 1:13 PM
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- "I don't care if it takes another 10 or 20 years, but we cannot allow Afghanistan to fail." So spoke Frank Carlucci, former U.S. defense secretary and national security adviser, at the Council on Foreign Relations. Failure, said Carlucci, would break the Atlantic Alliance and turn the world stage over to the next two global heavy hitters -- China and Russia.
Most of the European members of NATO, while professing solidarity with the United States and NATO over Afghanistan and conceding that it's a make-or-break issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance, are not prepared to stay more than another two years, maximum three. Supplying their, at best, weak troop commitments stationed in the quieter parts of Afghanistan (where there is little Taliban guerrilla activity) is more costly than anticipated. Countries like Belgium, Spain and Italy have limited airlift capacity, and their military transport aircraft are stretched to the breaking point. EU countries that are also members of NATO allowed their defenses to run down since 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed and money saved went into the gargantuan appetites of welfare states.
Most European "statesmen/women" concede the need to become more engaged in Afghanistan, but the man/woman-in-the-street questions the need to expend resources in a country that is still hovering between the 15th and 16th centuries. The Taliban was there before we came, argue most Europeans, and will be back even before we leave. With luck, they add, what will follow our withdrawal will accept the education of girls that the Taliban had rejected and ruthlessly stamped out when it ruled the roost between 1996 and 2001.
Afghan's opium poppy crop has grown steadily larger (now 8,300 tons a year, representing two-thirds of the Afghan gross domestic product) since the 2001 U.S. invasion that toppled Taliban's Torquemada, Mullah Mohammed Omar. The one-eyed enforcer of religious fanaticism is still burrowed in the mountain fastness of the Hindu Kush and from time to time still manages to get pronouncements onto the world's satellite TV networks.
Speaking not for attribution about the Afghan narcotics crisis, an Afghan "strategic thinker" said recently the situation was under control and getting better from year to year -- whereupon he was interrupted by a journalist who said he had heard from the intelligence community that almost every minister in President Hamid Karzai's government was "on the take, and if not the minister, his No. 2 or 3 on the minister's behalf, and that ministers were careful to keep their U.S. visas up-to-date in case a hurried exit was suddenly required." The nonplused Afghan smiled, then said, "I thought this was on the record." Advised that it was "off the record," he confirmed everything the journalist had just said.
The high geopolitical stakes and lack of European resolve is NATO's existential crisis. Five former top-ranking military leaders have produced a new NATO "Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World -- Renewing the Trans-Atlantic Partnership," hoping this would discourage heads of government from kicking the Afghan can down the road one more time at the Bucharest, Romania, summit April 2-4. NATO's former uniformed chiefs (Britain's Field Marshal Lord Inge, France's Adm. Jacques Lanxade, Germany's Gen. Dr. Klaus Naumann, U.S. Gen. John Shalikashvili and Holland's Gen. Henk van den Bremen) say experiences gained in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate that crisis management in the alliance is obsolete and needs an urgent update. This would have to include everything from prevention to stabilization -- "smart power" in the new geopolitical vernacular.
Unveiling their new strategic document at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, the five military brains concluded there is no single organization capable of dealing with NATO's "out-of-theater" operations. The combined efforts of NATO, the United Nations and the European Union should be brought to bear. NATO needs EU support for its non-military capabilities, while the EU needs NATO for armed forces capable of managing a serious crisis. The United Nations, for its part, lacks the kind of heft that makes national entities pay attention to international political management. So the three entities should conjugate their efforts.
But what the five strategic thinkers skirted was (1) how to motivate awareness among European public opinion of current and future challenges and (2) how to spark political awareness of current and future challenges and political resolve to implement recommendations.
France, now half-in-half-out but more in than out, is banking on the ratification of a new European treaty that would give the EU the means to see itself as a coequal player with the United States, China and Russia. Hopefully, say Europe's strategic thinkers, this would give the EU a permanent president, a common foreign minister authorized to implement a single foreign policy. Common defense would take much longer. Small neighboring countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have separate procurement programs for their armies, navies and air forces. Until last week Belgium was without a government for the past nine months as its two principal ethnic groups -- hard-working, Dutch-speaking Flemish and welfare-dependent, not so hard-working, French-speaking Walloons -- argued over frayed constitutional links. Hardly a promising harbinger for the EU as a global superpower.
In any event, this could not be achieved in time to influence events in Afghanistan, where the clock is running out. The Taliban cannot win militarily. Nor can NATO. But could NATO, the EU and the United Nations build a viable state with modern infrastructure? Certainly not over the next three years. Hence, Carlucci's admonition to stick it out for 10 to 20 years if necessary. Chances of this happening? Slim to none.
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- "I don't care if it takes another 10 or 20 years, but we cannot allow Afghanistan to fail." So spoke Frank Carlucci, former U.S. defense secretary and national security adviser, at the Council on Foreign Relations. Failure, said Carlucci, would break the Atlantic Alliance and turn the world stage over to the next two global heavy hitters -- China and Russia.
Most of the European members of NATO, while professing solidarity with the United States and NATO over Afghanistan and conceding that it's a make-or-break issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance, are not prepared to stay more than another two years, maximum three. Supplying their, at best, weak troop commitments stationed in the quieter parts of Afghanistan (where there is little Taliban guerrilla activity) is more costly than anticipated. Countries like Belgium, Spain and Italy have limited airlift capacity, and their military transport aircraft are stretched to the breaking point. EU countries that are also members of NATO allowed their defenses to run down since 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed and money saved went into the gargantuan appetites of welfare states.
Most European "statesmen/women" concede the need to become more engaged in Afghanistan, but the man/woman-in-the-street questions the need to expend resources in a country that is still hovering between the 15th and 16th centuries. The Taliban was there before we came, argue most Europeans, and will be back even before we leave. With luck, they add, what will follow our withdrawal will accept the education of girls that the Taliban had rejected and ruthlessly stamped out when it ruled the roost between 1996 and 2001.
Afghan's opium poppy crop has grown steadily larger (now 8,300 tons a year, representing two-thirds of the Afghan gross domestic product) since the 2001 U.S. invasion that toppled Taliban's Torquemada, Mullah Mohammed Omar. The one-eyed enforcer of religious fanaticism is still burrowed in the mountain fastness of the Hindu Kush and from time to time still manages to get pronouncements onto the world's satellite TV networks.
Speaking not for attribution about the Afghan narcotics crisis, an Afghan "strategic thinker" said recently the situation was under control and getting better from year to year -- whereupon he was interrupted by a journalist who said he had heard from the intelligence community that almost every minister in President Hamid Karzai's government was "on the take, and if not the minister, his No. 2 or 3 on the minister's behalf, and that ministers were careful to keep their U.S. visas up-to-date in case a hurried exit was suddenly required." The nonplused Afghan smiled, then said, "I thought this was on the record." Advised that it was "off the record," he confirmed everything the journalist had just said.
The high geopolitical stakes and lack of European resolve is NATO's existential crisis. Five former top-ranking military leaders have produced a new NATO "Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World -- Renewing the Trans-Atlantic Partnership," hoping this would discourage heads of government from kicking the Afghan can down the road one more time at the Bucharest, Romania, summit April 2-4. NATO's former uniformed chiefs (Britain's Field Marshal Lord Inge, France's Adm. Jacques Lanxade, Germany's Gen. Dr. Klaus Naumann, U.S. Gen. John Shalikashvili and Holland's Gen. Henk van den Bremen) say experiences gained in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate that crisis management in the alliance is obsolete and needs an urgent update. This would have to include everything from prevention to stabilization -- "smart power" in the new geopolitical vernacular.
Unveiling their new strategic document at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, the five military brains concluded there is no single organization capable of dealing with NATO's "out-of-theater" operations. The combined efforts of NATO, the United Nations and the European Union should be brought to bear. NATO needs EU support for its non-military capabilities, while the EU needs NATO for armed forces capable of managing a serious crisis. The United Nations, for its part, lacks the kind of heft that makes national entities pay attention to international political management. So the three entities should conjugate their efforts.
But what the five strategic thinkers skirted was (1) how to motivate awareness among European public opinion of current and future challenges and (2) how to spark political awareness of current and future challenges and political resolve to implement recommendations.
France, now half-in-half-out but more in than out, is banking on the ratification of a new European treaty that would give the EU the means to see itself as a coequal player with the United States, China and Russia. Hopefully, say Europe's strategic thinkers, this would give the EU a permanent president, a common foreign minister authorized to implement a single foreign policy. Common defense would take much longer. Small neighboring countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have separate procurement programs for their armies, navies and air forces. Until last week Belgium was without a government for the past nine months as its two principal ethnic groups -- hard-working, Dutch-speaking Flemish and welfare-dependent, not so hard-working, French-speaking Walloons -- argued over frayed constitutional links. Hardly a promising harbinger for the EU as a global superpower.
In any event, this could not be achieved in time to influence events in Afghanistan, where the clock is running out. The Taliban cannot win militarily. Nor can NATO. But could NATO, the EU and the United Nations build a viable state with modern infrastructure? Certainly not over the next three years. Hence, Carlucci's admonition to stick it out for 10 to 20 years if necessary. Chances of this happening? Slim to none.
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This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.
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