Military

SHAPE News Morning Update

27 August 2004

IRAQ

• A team of 57 NATO officers has started training Iraqi security forces in Iraq and could expand its mission if the insurgency-plagued government needs more help, a NATO commander said. "We already are giving advice to several authorities in the field of training," Major General Karel Hilderink, commander of NATO's training force in Iraq, told a news conference. "This is a long-term implementation mission, which means that tailored to the needs and tailored to the decisions of NATO authorities, the mission in the future will probably expand to meet the needs of the Iraqi interim government," Hilderink said. The mission, which includes officers from 12 countries and operates under NATO command, will prepare a report and present it to NATO headquarters in September to assess whether to send more trainers and equipment. "NATO is going to decide, based on our report, how long we will actually stay," he said. Lieutenant Colonel Petter Lindqvist, the spokesman for the NATO mission, said that while the mission was currently under the direct command of NATO, "Final command and control will be discussed in September." Asked if the mission planned to fly a NATO flag at its Baghdad headquarters, another issue of contention among allies, Lindqvist said: "We don't have money at this point for fixed infrastructures so right now we are not flying a NATO flag." (Reuters 261059 GMT Aug 04)

AFGHANISTAN

• Fifteen presidential candidates hoping to unseat President Hamid Karzai in October elections complained that the Afghan leader is using his position to gain an advantage in the electoral campaign and called on him to step down at a joint press conference. The challengers said Karzai was spending government money on his re-election drive, and also criticized a government edict that bars them from going to universities and schools to promote themselves until the campaign formally kicks off on September 9. "Karzai should resign. At the very least he should respond to our complaints and reassure the international community," said Hamayoon Shah Asifi, one of the candidates. Yunus Qanooni, a former education minister in Karzai's Cabinet who is considered one of the main challengers, also called on Karzai to step down, saying it was "the best way to ensure that government facilities are not used in the campaign." "The government wants to kill democracy on its very first day of life," Qanooni said. (AP 261321 Aug 04)

TERRORISM

• A new UN report circulated Thursday said all the major Al-Qaida linked terrorist attacks except the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings are estimated to have cost less than US$50,000 apiece including the recent Madrid train bombings. The first report by a new team monitoring the implementation of UN sanctions against al-Qaida and the Taliban detailed just how little it cost al-Qaida to mount operations saying only the sophisticated attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001 using hijacked aircraft required significant funding of over six figures." "Other al-Qaida terrorist operations have been far less expensive," it said. The report to the UN Security Council said Al-Qaida has changed over the last five years from an organization run by Osama bin Laden to a global network of groups that don't wait for orders from above but launch attacks against targets of their own choosing, using minimal resources and exploiting worldwide publicity "to create an international sense of crisis." The report cited Al-Qaida's transformation from an office supporting Afghan fighters to its role initiating and sponsoring terrorism from an established base, "to its current manifestation as a loose network of affiliated underground groups with certain goals in common." (AP 262356 Aug 04)
  
• UN measures aimed at crippling al Qaeda have had little impact on the threat of terrorism and need to be tightened, a panel of outside experts reported. No nation has ever reported blocking an arms sale or barring passage to anyone on the UN list of individuals or groups with suspected ties to Osama bin Laden or his al Qaeda network, the experts said in a report to the UN Security Council, which put the measures in place. Just 19 states have recorded the presence within their borders of any person or organization linked to al Qaeda, although the number of countries in which al Qaeda is active is almost certainly higher, they said. Based on al Qaeda's continuing high level of activity and reports filed to date by 130 of the 191 UN member-states, "it would appear that the sanctions regime imposed by the Security Council has had a limited impact," the monitoring panel concluded. (Reuters 262302 GMT Aug 04)