No image available
/ 12 November 2007
Warnings have been coming for months, publicly from independent commentators, privately from concerned officials and military commanders: the insurgent and terrorist threat is growing and spreading north to what has been, until now, the relatively stable and calm part of Afghanistan.
The Mehdi Army Shi’ite militia vowed on Friday night to conduct revenge attacks on British soldiers in southern Iraq after its Basra leader was killed by Iraqi special forces in an operation supported by British troops. Wissam Abu Qader was described by British officials as responsible for criminal activities and attacks against foreign troops.
No image available
/ 27 November 2006
It was, in retrospect, an age of soft-hat innocence. At the start of their deployment to Helmand last year, British soldiers acted like preening contestants in a military popularity contest. Paratroopers spurned helmets in favour of berets, learned pidgin Pashto and armed themselves with friendly smiles.
No image available
/ 31 October 2006
The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence EU protests about the human rights record of one of the United States’s key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, The Guardian in London reported. According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaeda suspect being held in a Moroccan cell.
No image available
/ 20 October 2006
Britain has joined the United States, China and Russia to block a proposed ban on cluster bombs in the wake of extensive use of the weapons during the war in Lebanon. A group of countries, led by Sweden, is urging a worldwide ban on cluster bombs at arms talks in Geneva.
Worldwide spending on weapons is expected to reach record levels this year at a time when the arms industry is increasingly able to avoid export controls, human rights and aid agencies say in a report published on Monday. By the end of the year, military spending is estimated to reach ,058-billion, about 15 times the amount spent on international aid.
United States President George W Bush suffered a serious rebuke from his wartime leadership on Monday when his army chief said he did not have enough money to fight the war in Iraq. Six weeks before midterm elections in which the war is a crucial issue, the protest from the army head, General Peter Schoomaker, exposes concerns within the US military about the strain of the war on Iraq.
No image available
/ 17 February 2006
Concern is growing among European governments about United States plans to involve them in an expanded, all-out campaign against Islamist extremism from North Africa to South-East Asia, using beefed-up special forces, high-tech weaponry and more intrusive surveillance and intelligence gathering.
British Home Secretary Charles Clarke on Wednesday broadened Britain’s response to the 7/7 bombings in London with plans to allow him to exclude or deport from Britain Islamist militants whose inflammatory language or behaviour is judged to foment or provoke terrorism. His announcement immediately preceded another wave of attacks on London transport.
It could be at least five years before Iraqi forces are strong enough to impose law and order on the country, the International Institute of Strategic Studies has warned. The think tank’s report said that Iraq had become a valuable recruiting ground for al-Qaeda, and Iraqi forces were nowhere near close to matching the insurgency.