Taliban announce beginning of spring offensive

Taliban announce beginning of spring offensive

Associated Press

April 30, 2011 KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban announced the beginning of their spring military offensive against the U.S.-led coalition Saturday, a day after a new Pentagon report claimed that the militants' fighting spirit was low after sustaining heavy losses on the battlefield. In a two-page statement, the Taliban said that beginning Sunday they would launch attacks on military bases, convoys and Afghan officials, including members of the government's peace council, who are working to reconcile with top insurgent leaders. "The war in our country will not come to an end unless and until the foreign invading forces pull out of Afghanistan," said the announcement released by the leadership council of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is what the Taliban calls itself. Senior officers with the U.S.-led coalition said on Friday that the Taliban — aided by the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network — have plans to conduct a brief series of high-profile attacks, such as suicide bombings, across the country in a display of power as fighting gears up with the warmer weather. The senior officers spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss recent intelligence that lead to the assessment. Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the coalition, said the Taliban planned to use the spate of violence as a "propaganda ploy" to try to demonstrate their relevance and create the perception of momentum despite recent setbacks. NATO claims the insurgents have suffered a number of setbacks in recent months, losing weapons caches, being pushed out of their traditional strongholds, and suffering the loss of thousands of insurgent fighters and field commanders. In Brussels, a NATO official said international forces had already tightened security due to the threat. They anticipated increased use of assassinations, spectacular attacks, and claims of infiltration, said the official who could not be named in line with standing regulations. The Pentagon report said the insurgents' momentum had been "broadly arrested" and their morale had begun to erode. Hundreds of insurgent leaders have been killed or captured and since last July, 700 former Taliban have officially reintegrated into Afghan society and another 2,000 insurgents are in various stages of the process, the report said. But recent weeks have seen a number of bold attacks suggesting that the insurgent group is still well-organized and has friends helping them out from inside government offices and bases. Since mid-April, insurgents have launched deadly attacks from inside the main military airport in Kabul, the Afghan Defense Ministry, the police headquarters for Kandahar city in the south and an Afghan-U.S. base in the east. And earlier this week, The Taliban tunneled into the Kandahar city jail and spirited out more than 480 inmates — most of them insurgents. The Taliban said insurgents will target "foreign invading forces, members of their spy networks and other spies, high-ranking officials of the Kabul puppet administration ... and heads of foreign and local companies working for the enemy and contractors." The Taliban ordered its fighters to pay "strict attention" to protecting civilians during the spring offensive. A recent U.N. report said about three-quarters of the estimated 2,777 civilians killed in Afghanistan last year died at the hands of insurgents, not international forces. The Afghan intelligence agency said that the government has also been tightening its security in anticipation of more attacks. "We have taken significant steps to prevent terrorist attacks from the enemy," said Latifullah Mashal, a spokesman for the agency. However, he said that suicide bombers continue to be a threat because they often approach on foot and can more easily slip past military and government defenses. Also on Saturday, the coalition released initial findings of the April 27 attack at the Kabul airport where a veteran Afghan military pilot opened fire, killing eight U.S. troops and an American civilian contractor who had been training the nascent Afghan air force. The shooting was the deadliest attack by a member of the Afghan security forces, or an insurgent impersonating them, on coalition troops or Afghan soldiers or policemen. Seven of the eight U.S. airmen killed were commissioned officers. The gunman was severely wounded by gunfire and was bleeding heavily when he left the room where most, but not all, of the trainers were killed, according to a senior NATO official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is not complete. The gunman was found dead in another part of the building, he said. The attack occurred at an Afghan facility, the air force headquarters, so the usual coalition weapons procedures would not have been in place and the trainers would have had their weapons — with magazines in place — in their possession, the official said. The trainers would not have had to load their guns to defend themselves, he said. All the NATO trainers killed were armed at the time of the attack, he said. According to the initial findings, the gunman appeared to be carrying two handguns. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, but the coalition said it has uncovered no evidence to suggest that the insurgency was behind it. "At this point in the investigation, it appears that the gunman was acting alone," the coalition said. "Beyond that, no Taliban connection with the gunman has been discovered. However, the investigation is still ongoing and we have not conclusively ruled out that possibility." Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi declined comment Saturday, saying the joint investigation by the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and the Afghan government was still under way. In a statement issued late Friday, the U.S. Defense Department identified those killed as: —Lt. Col. Frank D. Bryant Jr., 37, of Knoxville, Tennessee. —Maj. Philip D. Ambard, 44, of Edmonds, Washington. —Maj. Jeffrey O. Ausborn, 41, of Gadsden, Alabama. —Maj. David L. Brodeur, 34, of Auburn, Massachusetts. —Maj. Raymond G. Estelle II, 40, of New Haven, Connecticut. —Capt. Nathan J. Nylander, 35, of Hockley, Texas. —Capt. Charles A. Ransom, 31, of Midlothian, Virginia. —Master Sgt. Tara R. Brown, 33, of Deltona, Florida. The civilian contractor was James McLaughlin Jr., 55, of Santa Rosa, California. McLaughlin was a helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft pilot who spent 32 years in the Army before retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2007. In recent years, he trained Afghan helicopter pilots as an employee of L-3 MPRI, a consulting company based in Alexandria, Virginia. Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed two Afghan police officers Saturday in southern Uruzgan province, said provincial spokesman Ahmad Milad Mudassir. Further details were not immediately available. Associated Press writers Amir Shah in Kabul and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report

IRAQ NEWS-Saturday, April 30, 2011

Saturday, April 30, 2011: 1 US Soldier, 22 Iraqis Killed; 27 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis

April 30, 2011

At least 22 Iraqis were killed and 27 more were wounded in a bombing and several targeted assassinations. Also, a U.S. soldier was killed during operations yesterday, making April the deadliest month for American troops November 2009. Meanwhile, parliament approved $400 million to compensate Americans used as human shields during the 1990-91 Gulf War.

In Mosul, a suicide bomber killed eight people and wounded 20 others at an entry checkpoint to a market.

A judge and two relatives were killed and two more relatives were wounded during a bomb attack in Taji. Earlier the gunmen killed the judge’s bodyguard at a nearby home.

Gunmen in Qadiriya attacked the home of an industry ministry official where they killed him and his daughter. The neighbors killed one attacker before the others fled. Two neighbors were wounded.

In Baghdad, gunmen killed a colonel and wounded his wife, and perhaps also wounded his children, as they were driving on a highway; the colonel’s car then injured two policemen when it crashed into a checkpoint. Uniformed men killed a Sahwa member and three relatives in Kadhimiya; one gunman also died.

No casualties were reported after a Katyusha rocket fell on a U.S. base near Diwaniya.

Demonstrators in Kut demanded better services.

IMPORTANT-USA/JEWRY RELATIONS-Panic From The Houses Of Congress And Aipac

Panic From The Houses Of Congress And Aipac?

By Franklin Lamb

May 1, 2011 Beirut : On April 13, 2011, more than a dozen Israel "First, last and always" US congressional leaders from both houses of Congress held an urgent conference call organized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Their purpose was to discuss how best to promote Israel during next month’s US visit by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and more importantly how to confront the rapidly changing Middle East political landscape. One consensus was that no one saw it coming and that it was dangerous for Israel. Among those participating were former Jewish Chairman of powerful committees including Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who headed the Banking Committee; Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ex-chairman of the Commerce and Energy committee; Howard Berman (D-Calif.), ex-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee; and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), ex-chairwoman of the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee as well as Eric Cantor, House Majority leader, the highest ranking Jewish member of Congress in history. What AIPAC operatives reportedly told the conference attendees was that Netanyahu is once again furious with President Obama and outraged by what he sees as a vacillating US Government attitude towards Israeli needs. They were told that the Israeli PM sees real political danger for Israel in the shifting US public opinion in favor of the young sophisticated attractive Arab and Muslims increasingly seen on satellite channels from the region who remind the American public of their own ideals. Netanyahu, the conferees were told, wants Congress to flex its muscle with the White House and deliver a strong message to President Obama that his political future is tied to Israel’s. Hence the current "America needs Israel more than ever stupid!" campaign wafting from the Israel lobby across the talk radio airwaves. In addition, as more Israeli officials are indicted for various domestic crimes, and some harbor fears of arrest for international ones, 68% of the American Jewish community, according to one by poll commissioned last month by Forward, believe the US Israel lobby is increasingly fossilized with the likes of ADL (Anti-Defamation League) director Abe Foxman’s vindictive infighting among several of the largest Jewish lobby organizations which continue to lose memberships, especially among the young. Congressman Eric Cantor lamented that "Israel is badly losing the US College campuses", despite heavy financial investments the past few years to curb American students growing support for Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, all dreaded symbols of the growing opposition to the 19th Century Zionist colonial enterprise. Support for Palestine is skyrocketing he claimed. "Until Palestine is freed from Zionist occupation no Arab or Muslim is truly free of Western hegemony," according to one assistant editor of Harvard University’s student newspaper, the Crimson. Admitting that the Mossad did not foresee even the Tunisian or Egyptian uprisings, some AIPAC staffers, of whom there are more than 100, admit to not knowing how to react to the topics they were presented with for discussion, some of which included: · The Egyptian public emphatic insistence that the 1978 Camp David Accords be scrapped and that the Rafah crossing be opened. The latter has just been announced and the former is expected to be achieved before the end of the year. · The change of regimes and the dramatic rise in publicly expressed anti-Israel sentiment and insistence that Israel close its embassy and Egypt withdraw its recognition of the Zionist state. · The apparent rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas which has been increasingly demanded by the Palestinians under occupation and in the Diaspora. · The fact that the new regime in Cairo is seeking to upgrade its ties with Gaza's Hamas rulers as well as Iran. · With respect to possible PA-Hamas rapprochement, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor is trying to reassure Israel before Netanyahu’s visit by announcing this week that "The United States supports Palestinian reconciliation on terms which promote the cause of peace, but to play a constructive role in achieving peace, any Palestinian government must renounce violence, abide by past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist." AIPAC frequently knocks heads with the Israeli embassy in Washington for control of visiting Israeli PMs' and important government’s schedules will control what Netanyahu says and does. AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr recently told a group of visiting Jewish student activists from California that "sometimes there is confusion in this town over just where the Israeli Embassy is located but let me assure you it’s no more than 300 yards from the Capitol Dome on North Capitol Street, NW." AIPAC, not the Israeli Embassy will write the final draft of Netanyahu’s speeches including the themes he will emphasize. According to a Congressional source with AIPAC connections, Netanyahu’s visit will focus on the following: · Bashing Iran to please the White House. However, this mantra will have to compete with the democratic revolutions that are sweeping the Arab world and which are terrifying not just Netanyahu, but also AIPAC and their hirelings in congress. · Warning against the dangers to "the peace process" of any PA-Hamas unity government. · Warnings about the threats to Israel from Egypt and popular calls for scrapping of the 1978 Camp David Accords, ending the Egyptian subsidy and supply of 40% of Israel’s natural gas, calls for closing the Israeli Embassy, the dangers of permanently opening the Rafah border crossing "that will allow Hamas to in the words of, an Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity to the Washington Post that Gaza's Hamas rulers had already built up a "dangerous military machine" in northern Sinai which could be further strengthened by opening the border. · The tried and tested bromide that "Israel has no peace partner to negotiate with will be used but this too has lost its bite given that the Palestine Papers has shown that the PA for five years habitually caved into Israel demands and are widely viewed as collaborators with Israel in preserving the status quo-- so what more could be expected from them? The truth is that Mahmoud Abbas and Salem Fayyad are Netanyahu, Liberman’s and Barak’s favorite "peace partners." Netanyahu will hint at and AIPAC will drill in the idea that the Obama administration has been too hard on Israel. While Netanyahu announced this week that "I will have the opportunity to air the main parts of Israel’s diplomatic and defense policies during my visit in the United States", informed sources report that his main goal and timing of his visit is to undermind a rumored initiative that President Obama’s team has been working on Netanyahu, according to AIPAC, also plans to attack the UN’s plan to admit Palestine and its offices are preparing a media blitz in an attempt to undermine the U.N. recognition of Palestine by arguing that such a General Assembly action would not in reality mean Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank and East Jerusalem because of the fact that Israel currently controls those territories. AIPAC is arguing that such United Nations recognition of Palestine would only reiterate the principle, previously articulated by the U.N which denies the legitimacy of Israel's claim to territories acquired by force in the war of June 1967. In reality, and as AIPAC well knows, UN recognition of Palestine would have a devastating effect on Israel’s legitimacy and would fuel an international campaign to force every colonist out of the West Bank. Given the feelings of virtually all people in the Middle East and North Africa toward Israel this could dramatically undermine the apartheid state. AIPAC and Israel’s agents in Congress also ignore the fact that the U.N. is the only the international body that admitted Israel as a member state in May 1949, although the resolution noted a connection between Israel's recognition and the implementation of resolution 181 of November 1947, which called for partition of what had been British Mandate Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The reason that intense angst and even fear stalks the Houses of Congress and AIPAC is that Netanyahu will remind his hosts in the coming days that Israel has always called "home" is that some US officials are starting to express treasonous thoughts long kept to themselves. One seemingly shocking statement was made to a visiting Oregon delegation during a recent visit to Congressional offices by a Member of Congress never known for being publicly critical of Israel. As reported via email: "He said recent events suggest that while ( the revolts spreading, across the Middle East) are not the immediate end of the State of Israel, he believes they are harbingers and signal the 'beginning of the end of the State of Israel as we have known it. And that will be good for America and humanity." "What seems to have particularly upset him was his own mentioning to the group was a recent report about a conference of Rabbis in Israel who are demanding the expulsion of non-Jews, especially Palestinians, from occupied Palestine in order to maintain the "ethnical and religious purity of the peoples of Israel. He quoted Dov Lior, the rabbi of Kiryat Araba, an illegal settlement near Hebron, who according to media reports told a conference organized to discuss how to get non-Jews in mandatory Palestine to leave the country for the sake of Jewish immigrants who had no roots in Palestine: "Today there is a lot of land in Saudi Arabia and in Libya, too. There is a lot of land in other places. Send them there." As scholar Khalid Amayreh reminds us, it was Lior, who in 1994 praised arch-terrorist Baruch Goldstein for massacring 29 Arab worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in downtown Hebron, said peace in the Holy Land was out of the question because the Arabs wouldn't allow Jews to usurp the land. Meanwhile, a large coalition of pro peace and pro-Palestinian organizations, under the umbrella of http://www.moveoveraipac.org/ is preparing a new and different American reception for the Israeli Prime Minister.

Israel prevents Abbas' envoy from entering Gaza 3 days before signing of Palestinian reconciliation agreement

Israel prevents Abbas' envoy from entering Gaza 3 days before signing of Palestinian reconciliation agreement

Saleh Naami

May 1, 2011 His political advisor confirms Abbas is to go to Gaza before month's end, but Israel puts a wrench, blocking Fatah’s envoy from crossing into Gaza three days before the reconciliation agreement is to be signed in Egypt Abbas's personal envoy for national reconciliation has been prevented from entering Gaza strip from Ramallah Sunday morning through the Erez crossing. This is, in fact, a second for Mohamed Abou Tir, Abbas's envoy. As an alternative, Abou Tir is considering entering through the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian Gaza border. Abou Tir's visit was expected to precede the signing of the national reconciliation agreement to be signed in Egypt on Wednesday 4 May to put the Palestinian house in order. Meanwhile, Palestinian presidential political advisor, Nemr Hamad, confirmed Abbas's intention to go on with his planned visit to the Strip before the end of this month. Abbas is expected to discuss all problems related to the formation of the new Palestinian government during his visit, as well as means to protect and resolve any blocks that might emerge for the agreement, Palestinian news agency, Qudsnet stated. Interestingly, Saeb Erekat, a member of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation declared that the PLO is undergoing contacts with world powers to ensure international support and legalities needed for the new government to be formed as the agreement states. On the other hand, in an interview with Voice of Palestine, Erekat reiterated the US approval of the agreement between the two rival Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, "our contacts with the Americans are going smoothly and we have to prove to the whole world that the national reconciliation deal is a focal point for the Palestinian cause. It is too early to talks of fears or scepticism."