http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/world/middleeast/us-says-iraqis-are-helping-iran-skirt-sanctions.html?_r=1&hp
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/08/17/two-more-us-troops-killed-by-afghan-trainees/
In the first incident, “A member of the Afghan Local Police turned his weapon against two USFOR-A service members,” NATO said. Hours later, NATO confirmed that “a number” of foreign and Afghan soldiers were shot and wounded by another Afghan soldier in the southern province of Kandahar.
NATO in particularly is clearly not keen on the whole “negotiations” thing with respect to Syria, with France in particular pushing heavily for a war, sayingtoday that they want Assad to be “smashed fast” and that he “doesn’t deserve to be on this earth.”
WASHINGTON — When President Obama announced last month that he was barring a Baghdad bank from any dealings with the American banking system, it was a rare acknowledgment of a delicate problem facing the administration in a country that American troops just left: for months, Iraq has been helping Iran skirt economic sanctions imposed on Tehran because of its nuclear program.
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The little-known bank singled out by the United States, the Elaf Islamic Bank, is only part of a network of financial institutions and oil-smuggling operations that, according to current and former American and Iraqi government officials and experts on the Iraqi banking sector, has provided Iran with a crucial flow of dollars at a time when sanctions are squeezing its economy.
The Obama administration is not eager for a public showdown with the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki over Iran just eight months after the last American troops withdrew from Baghdad.
Still, the administration has held private talks with Iraqi officials to complain about specific instances of financial and logistical ties between the countries, officials say, although they do not regard all trade between them as illegal or, as in the case of smuggling, as something completely new. In one recent instance, when American officials learned that the Iraqi government was aiding the Iranians by allowing them to use Iraqi airspace to ferry supplies to Syria, Mr. Obama called Mr. Maliki to complain. The Iranian planes flew another route.
In response to questions from The New York Times, David S. Cohen, the Treasury Department’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, provided a written statement saying that Iran “may seek to escape the force of our financial sanctions through Iraqi financial institutions.” But he added that “we will pursue, and are actively pursuing, efforts to prevent Iran from evading U.S. or international financial sanctions, in Iraq or anywhere else.”
Some current and former American and Iraqi officials, along with banking and oil experts, say that Iraqi government officials are turning a blind eye to the large financial flows, smuggling and other trade with Iran. In some cases, they say, government officials, including some close to Mr. Maliki, are directly profiting from the activities.
“Maliki’s government is right in the middle of this,” said one former senior American intelligence official who now does business in Iraq.
In announcing that he was “cutting off” Elaf Islamic Bank, Mr. Obama said it had “facilitated transactions worth millions of dollars on behalf of Iranian banks that are subject to sanctions for their links to Iran’s illicit proliferation activities.”
But the treatment the bank has received in Baghdad since it was named by Mr. Obama suggests that the Iraqi government is not only allowing companies and individuals to circumvent the sanctions but also not enforcing penalties for noncompliance.
Iraqi banking experts said last week that the bank was still allowed to participate in the Iraq Central Bank’s daily auction at which commercial banks can sell Iraqi dinars and buy United States dollars. These auctions are a crucial pathway for Iranian access to the international financial system. Western officials say that Iran seeks to bolster its reserves of dollars to stabilize its exchange rates and pay for imports.
Iraqi and American officials with knowledge of Iraqi banking practices say Iranian customers are able to move large amounts of cash through the auction, and from there into banks in regional financial centers like Dubai, United Arab Emirates, or Amman, Jordan, and then into the international banking system.
Mudher Salih, the central bank governor, said in an interview that Elaf Islamic Bank was being allowed back into the auction because Elaf officials had denied any wrongdoing. “Elaf Bank is attending the auctions, and they are telling us that they didn’t violate the law, and saying that they didn’t deal with any Iranian institutes,” Mr. Salih said.
While Iraq has tried to impose more stringent reporting requirements that might pick up illegal transfers, officials with knowledge of the Iraqi banking industry say that banks, hawala houses, an unofficial global network of money-traders, and their Iranian customers are finding ways around them, often by forging documents that make it look as if the money transfers are to finance legitimate trade between Iraq and other countries.
Thanks to Iraq’s growing oil revenue, the Iraqi central bank has about $60 billion in foreign exchange reserves, held in accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, with which to meet the insatiable demand for dollars. But the new flight of dollars out of Iraq is prompting criticism of the central bank and of the Iraqi government.
The accusations of high-level Iraqi government involvement in sanctions-busting have roiled Iraqi politics and invariably reflect on Mr. Maliki, since many Iraqi officials now say that he has taken effective control of the Iraqi central bank, which is nominally independent.
“We want to question the central bank and the banks that are involved,” Ali al-Sachri, a member of Parliament, said in an interview. Mr. Salih acknowledged the huge dollar transfers and said that they threatened the economic stability of Iraq by depleting the country’s foreign reserves. He said that “in order to prevent the economy from collapsing, we should put an end to this illegal flow of dollars outside Iraq.”
He said the large-scale money laundering was probably being helped by “some corruption that requires the government to investigate,” but he defended the actions of the central bank, saying that it does “not have the capability to watch everything.”
Several American and Iraqi banking and government officials also say that Iranian organizations have gained effective control over at least four Iraqi commercial banks through Iraqi intermediaries. That gives Iran direct access to the international financial system, supposedly denied to Tehran by the economic sanctions. Even as the United States has moved to tighten the vise against Iran this summer, the Maliki government has openly sought to enhance its already deep economic and political ties with Iran. Trade between Iraq and Iran, which fought a costly war from 1980 to 1988, has been growing rapidly ever since the American-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and it is now estimated to be as high as $11 billion a year. Among other openly acknowledged forms of trade, Iraq has contracts to buy large amounts of electrical power from Iran.
Just last week, an Iraqi delegation that includes the deputy prime minister and top officials from the ministries of finance and trade and the central bank met in Tehran with their Iranian counterparts for talks about further increasing economic ties.
An Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said in a telephone interview that Iraq “is not intending to break any rules,” but added that “we also have good relations with Iran that we do not want to break.”
This year, Iraqi officials publicly expressed concerns that their large volume of trade with Iran might place them in violation of the sanctions on Iran, and they said they would seek a sanctions waiver. After those public statements, American officials privately told the Maliki government that Iraq would not be found to be in violation of the new Iran sanctions because of its publicly acknowledged cross-border trade, according to a former senior United States official.
Whatever help Iraq has given Iran, the sanctions have put considerable pressure on Tehran. Iran’s oil exports have dropped by about 40 percent because of the latest round of sanctions, while Iraq’s own oil production has been surging. American officials say that if aiding Iran was a priority of the Iraqi government, Baghdad would not be so eagerly ramping up oil production to fill the void left by Iran.
Still, clandestine trade, including large-scale smuggling of oil and oil products, has been increasing, and the Iraqi government has done little to stop a highly organized effort that frequently provides financial benefits to Iraqi political parties and powerful political leaders, according to American and Iraqi oil traders and experts.
Iraqi fuel oil, acquired by smuggling operations with close connections to political leaders at extremely low prices with the help of government subsidies, is being smuggled from Iraq through Kurdistan and into Iran. From Iran it is smuggled once again, with some going to Afghanistan, where the cheap fuel is resold at a large profit. American and Iraqi oil experts say they believe that at least some Iranian oil is finding its way to Iraqi ports for export.
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/08/17/two-more-us-troops-killed-by-afghan-trainees/
Two More US Troops Killed by Afghan Trainees
The US is literally training their own Taliban enemies to kill American soldiers
by John Glaser, August 17, 2012
Two more American soldiers were killed and several others wounded on Friday when multiple Afghan security personnel opened fire on their supposed allies, in the latest so-called “green-on-blue” attack, which have now killed 39 international troops so far this year.
In the first incident, “A member of the Afghan Local Police turned his weapon against two USFOR-A service members,” NATO said. Hours later, NATO confirmed that “a number” of foreign and Afghan soldiers were shot and wounded by another Afghan soldier in the southern province of Kandahar.
The failure of the US mission in Afghanistan – to build up and train a centralized state and security apparatus – is illustrated clearly in the constant killing of US soldiers by their Afghan counterparts. Much of the security force has been infiltrated by the Taliban or Pakistani agents.
On Thursday it was reported that the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Omar issued a statement bragging about extensive insurgent infiltration in America’s trained security personnel in Afghanistan.
“They are able to (safely) enter bases, offices and intelligence centers of the enemy,” he said. “Then, they easily carry out decisive and coordinated attacks, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy.”
As a former US official told Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker, “several hundred soldiers in the Afghan Army are thought to be agents for the Taliban or for Pakistan.” He said that many insurgents who have infiltrated the Afghan forces and killed US troops “had been planted in the Army by the Taliban or by Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s main intelligence branch.”
The US mission in Afghanistan has failed miserably. President Obama’s supposed justification for building up Afghan security forces is so they serve as a bulwark against a return to Taliban rule. But the Taliban have seeped deep into those forces the US is spending billions of dollars on training, and the insurgency is as strong as ever.
and Syria proxy war bubbles on.....
Russian Cancels Syria Meeting as France Demands Assad Be ‘Smashed’
UN Diplomats Say NATO Would've Spurned Meeting Anyhow
by Jason Ditz, August 17, 2012
Just one day after they announced it, Russian officials have canceled a high profile meeting to negotiate a settlement on Syria. Details were scarce, but UN diplomats say that only Russia and China were planning to attend in the first place, so the meeting became pointless.
NATO in particularly is clearly not keen on the whole “negotiations” thing with respect to Syria, with France in particular pushing heavily for a war, sayingtoday that they want Assad to be “smashed fast” and that he “doesn’t deserve to be on this earth.”
US officials haven’t talked about the Russian meeting at all, but recent US comments related to Syria appear entirely military related, with yesterday’s reports that the US believes it would need to send 50,000-plus ground troops to Syria to capture their chemical weapons.
Russia and China have been the lone voices on the Security Council opposing a NATO-imposed regime change, with Russia repeatedly and loudly rejecting the idea of a no-fly zone because NATO used this exact same strategy to insinuate itself into Libya’s Civil War.
and fog of war deepens in Iraq....
| Iraq's Eid preparations marred by attacks | |||||||
At least 82 killed in a wave of attacks across the country on Thursday, the deadliest day in more than three weeks.
Last Modified: 17 Aug 2012 15:01
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Dozens of people were wounded in Thursday's five separate bombings in Iraq [AFP]
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| A spate of attacks has killed at least 82 people in Iraq, overshadowing preparations to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, amid warnings insurgents would look to carry out deadly strikes.
The violence, the worst in more than three weeks, hit 15 cities across the country and left 270 people wounded on Thursday, just days before the Eid festival that is set to begin on Saturday or Sunday. Some estimates hold the number of dead to be as high as 93.
More than 150 people have already been killed in violence this month. The attacks brought the number of dead nationwide over the course of Ramadan, which began on July 18, to 404, according to an AFP tally. There has been at least one bombing or shooting on every day of the holy month but one. Thursday's attacks began with a pre-dawn raid on the house of a military officer. Attackers planted four bombs around his house near the northern city of Kirkuk, according to the city's police commander, brigadier general Sarhad Qadir. The officer escaped unharmed, but his brother was killed and six other family members were wounded. Hours later, a bomb in a parked car exploded near a string of restaurants, killing one and wounding 15, Qadir said. The blast seriously damaged the eateries' storefronts, scattering shattered glass and debris across the sidewalk. Multiple attacks Thursday's deadliest violence struck in and around Baghdad, where at least 54 people were killed in a series of attacks throughout the day, security and medical officials said. Blasts and shootings also took place in the south, west and north of Iraq. In the east Baghdad neighbourhood of Zafraniyah, a roadside bomb went off outside an ice cream parlour late on Thursday evening, killing four people and wounding 11. A subsequent car bomb nearby killed 22 more and left 30 wounded.Also in the evening, an explosion in Sadr City, in the capital's north, killed 11 people and wounded 46, while a morning car bomb in Husseiniyah, also in north Baghdad, killed six and wounded 32.
Meanwhile, gunmen armed with silenced weapons opened fire on a checkpoint in the town of Massud, on Baghdad's northern outskirts, killing 10 soldiers and wounding 10, security and medical officials said. In the same area, a car bomb in the town of Taji killed one person and wounded six.
There were also attacks in Tal Afar, Mosul, Kirkuk, Daquq, Dibis, Kut, Al-Garma, Al-Baaj, Badush, Tuz Khurmatu, Khales and Baquba.
A series of attacks in Kirkuk province, north of Baghdad, killed nine people. In the town of Daquq, a suicide attacker blew himself up at an anti-terrorism department compound, while in Kirkuk itself at least four car bombs were set off across the city -- including two at the offices of the state-owned North Oil Company. "I came to investigate one of the attacks near the company compound," said police Colonel Abdullah Kadhim, head of Kirkuk city's sniffer dog unit. "Suddenly, another bomb went off near me, and it damaged lots of cars and company property inside the parking lot." Kadhim suffered wounds to his leg. The attacks in the two cities left eight dead and 56 wounded overall. Also in Kirkuk province, two bombings near the home of a police captain in the town of Dibis killed his brother and wounded four other people, including the captain himself, police and a doctor said. In northern town of Tal Afar, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt killed six people and wounded 10 , officials said. In Kut, 160 kilometres south of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded on Thursday evening, police Colonel Dhargham al-Assadi said. Six people were killed and 37 wounded, a medic said. Attacks in Al-Garma, Al-Baaj, Badush, Tuz Khurmatu, Mosul, Taji, Khales and Baquba, left seven dead and dozens wounded.
and Lebanon kidnapping have not stopped , Turkey being dragged into Lebanon complications....
Turkey advises against all non-essential travel to Lebanon after 2nd kidnappingAugust 18, 2012 10:41 AM (Last updated: August 18, 2012 01:36 PM)
BEIRUT: Ankara has issued a travel warning advising citizens against all non-essential travel to Lebanon after a second Turkish man was kidnapped Friday. “In light of these developments, our citizens should refrain from traveling to Lebanon unless it’s mandatory. It’s highly important for our citizens who are currently in Lebanon to take every necessary measure for their security and to be vigilant,” the Foreign Ministry said in a written statement late Friday evening, according to local newspapers. "The situation in [Lebanon] is entering a course that threatens the security of our citizens ... our citizens should avoid travels to Lebanon unless absolutely necessary,” the statement added. Turkish businessman Aydin Tufan was kidnapped upon arrival to Rafik Hariri International Airport Wednesday by the Meqdad clan, who also abducted over 20 Syrians, in retaliation for the abduction of one of their members, Hassan Meqdad, in Damascus. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon, and almost all Kuwaiti nationals were evacuated Friday, according to the ambassador. Another Turkish citizen, Abdel-Baseet Orsolan, was kidnapped at dawn on Friday, but the Meqdad family has denied involvement in this second abduction. Security sources have told The Daily Star that Orsolan was forcibly removed from his Mercedes-Benz truck near the Coca Cola company in Shoueifat and that police have launched an investigation. Speaking to the Anatolia news agency, Tekin called on Turkish authorities to help secure his release but said that he is in good health and that the Meqdad clan is taking good care of him.
“The best way to solve the problem is good contact with the authorities in a diplomatic way. I have been seeking assistance from the Turkish government,” said Tekin, according to the Hurriyet newspaper.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Friday that “Lebanese officials are doing all they can so that our abducted citizen in Lebanon gets released,” after having spoken to Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour at an Organisation of Islamic Cooperation summit in Mecca a day previously. "I think they are doing what they can do. God willing we will rescue him safe and sound," he said in comments broadcast on Turkish television. |
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