Gates heads Pentagon sea change; Kurdish democracy lagging

Gates redefines military doctrine

U.S. military doctrine is in the midst of a paradigm shift in Afghanistan but risks losing public support without high-profile results, the defense secretary said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told The Wall Street Journal that public support for the renewed military effort in Afghanistan may wear thin unless counterinsurgency strategies prove effective.

"People are willing to stay in the fight, I believe, if they think we're making headway," he said. "If they think we're stalemated and having our young men and women get killed, then patience is going to run out pretty fast."

Gates is part of the Washington effort to redefine how American forces fight and win wars. U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, now the top general of the U.S. Central Command, employed an effective counterinsurgency strategy using a "clear, hold and build" tactic in Iraq.

U.S. President Barack Obama and his top military advisers, including Gates and Petraeus, are using those lessons from Iraq to turn the tide in Afghanistan, coupling military efforts with financial support for state reconstruction.

In a sign of the shift in military thinking, Gates replaced his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, with Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a special operations commander well versed in the Petraeus doctrine.

Meanwhile, on the heels of a trilateral meeting between Iranian, Pakistani and Afghan officials in Tehran, Gates said Iranian officials are undermining security operations by funneling weapons to Taliban and other militants in Afghanistan.

Iran hosts AFPAK meeting

The leaders from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan emerged from a trilateral weekend summit in Tehran with a 25-point agreement on regional cooperation.

Tehran welcomed Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari for a trilateral meeting to tackle regional security issues and the illicit drug trade.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signed with the Afghan and Pakistani leaders a 25-point agreement dubbed the Tehran Statement that outlines the terms for security, political and economic cooperation.

Ahmadinejad paid special attention to the security challenges from the illicit narcotics trade in Afghanistan as Iran struggles with growing heroin addiction and increasing rates of HIV infection linked to drug abuse.

"This menace has affected the region and we are all duty-bound to fight it with full strength," he said in published statements.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crimes praised Iran recently for its counter-narcotics efforts, saying Iranian anti-drug police were among the best in the world.

Iran has moved in a unilateral fashion to address the growing regional problems surrounding Afghanistan, often in step with international efforts. But in statements published by the Financial Times, the Iranian president struck out at the global military effort in Afghanistan.

The "presence of foreign troops," he said, "has so far failed to bring stable security."

Use of human shields rising, U.S. says

Taliban and other Afghan militants are using human shields as violence increases in the volatile southern province of Helmand, U.S. military reports say.

An account of conflicts led by Afghan and coalition forces in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah said militants had used human shields during "deliberate" military operations in the area.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan said it was searching for a specific, unidentified suspect in Lashkar Gah. One man was killed on suspicion of wearing a suicide vest. Afghan and U.S.-led forces found another suspect shielding himself with woman and children.

The report said a bullet ricochet had struck civilians, but none suffered life-threatening injuries. The U.S. military has faced mounting criticism over the level of civilian casualties allegedly as a result of regional airstrikes.

"We take the safety of Afghan civilians very seriously and sincerely regret that any civilians were injured in this operation," said Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi. "Afghan and coalition forces took extensive measures to protect civilians, but militants intentionally placed civilians in harm's way."

U.S. airstrikes May 4 in nearby Farah province allegedly killed more than 100 civilians, though American officials dispute that number.

Minority Iraqis underrepresented

Iraq is stabilizing as citizens prepare to head to the polls for the second round of national elections, but minority concerns remain, elections observers say.

Iraqis brought the Shiite-dominated government to power in 2005. Provincial elections followed in January, with more than 14,500 candidates vying for some 440 council seats in 14 of the 18 provinces. Though delayed slightly, Iraqis again head to the polls for national elections in January 2010.

The January poll will come on the heels of a national referendum on a bilateral Status of Forces Agreement defining the role of U.S. military forces in Iraq. But underlying the current of democratic development lies uncertainty for the ethnic minorities in Iraq, writes Andrew Swan, an Iraqi elections monitor with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.

Swan, in the Journal of the Royal Overseas League, says internal displacement of minority groups in Iraq suggests work is needed as Iraq struggles to embrace its newfound democracy.

"It is clear that the displacement of the country's ethnic minorities will continue to have an effect on the elections for years to come," he writes.

Swan points to Ninawa province as a region of particular concern for Iraq's democracy. The Christian community in northern Iraq suffered mass displacement amid targeted violence last year. Mosul, the provincial capital, meanwhile, remains a hotbed for al-Qaida activity, and the results of the January provincial elections caused a government boycott by Kurdish officials.

"Iraq's democracy is young and fragile, but its people are its strongest advocates. To fail them would be to fail us all," he writes.

Dirty games mire Kurdish questions

The idea that self-determination will settle the issue of the so-called disputed territories in Iraq comes at the detriment to local inhabitants, a scholar warns.

The Baghdad central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq are at odds over the so-called disputed territories in Iraq, which include parts of Diyala and other northern provinces.

Those disputes are at the center of the row between the two governments, which approached civil conflict in 2008 as Iraqi and Kurdish forces squabbled over administrative authority in Khanaqin in the north of Diyala.

Historically, in Kirkuk, where the dispute is centered, ethnic Turkomen dominated the region. The recent situation is unclear, however, as both governments during the Baathist era engaged in "dirty games" to alter the demographics in the oil-rich region, Reidar Visser, a noted Iraqi scholar, writes on his historiae.org Web site.

Saddam Hussein led an "Arabization" campaign to replace the Kurdish population in northern Iraq with a Sunni community. Visser notes, however, that Kurdish leaders allegedly encouraged Iranian Kurds to settle in the region in an effort to complicate the demographic mix.

Meanwhile, Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority, the interim government following the overthrow of the Saddam regime, never fully defined the concept of the disputed territories, leaving the matter constitutionally vague.

Visser writes that solving the issue of the disputed territories means ending the use of the very term, instead embracing alternative arrangements proposed by the international community.

These include an "oil for soil" scheme in which the KRG controls regional oil reserves while abandoning annexation ambitions. Alternatively, the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq is looking to Northern Ireland as one of its many models for settling the issue.

KRG inhibits democracy, groups claim

The activities of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq undermine efforts to establish a democratic state in the Middle East, human-rights groups claim.

Iraq held provincial elections in 14 of its 18 provinces in January. Special provisions were granted to the KRG for provincial and parliamentary elections in the three Kurdish provinces -- Erbil, Sulaimaniya and Dahuk -- while the vote is postponed indefinitely in Kirkuk as officials vet a variety of power-sharing agreements there.

The Iraqi Turkmen Human Rights Research Foundation, along with other regional minority groups, blasted the KRG for its perceived failure to embrace democratic reform, saying the decisions by the KRG "negatively influence the reconciliation and state building processes."

The groups point to the longstanding centralized power structure within the KRG as a sign of a closed system. The KRG faced recent criticism as the two main parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, decided to run for parliamentary elections on a unified slate.

Meanwhile, the KRG operates its own "militias," the groups claim, namely the Asayish and Peshmerga forces, while government corruption runs rampant amid a climate with little opposition.

With efforts to settle regional differences based in part on demographic representation, the minority groups also claim the KRG is skewing its reported presence in the region in an effort to gain control.

The KRG decided on July 25 to hold parliamentary elections. Provincial elections are expected to coincide with national Iraqi elections, scheduled tentatively for January 2010.

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(dgraeber@upi.com)