Commentary on the economic , geopolitical and simply fascinating things going on. Served occasionally with a side of snark.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
War watch November 21 , 2013 - Afghanistan President Karzai pulls a fast one on US as while he urges support for the Bilateral Security Agreement sought by the US , he pushes back any signing until after Spring Elections in Afghanistan ( April 2014 ) ..... Iran nuclear talks updates - US still sending mixed signals as usual.... Syria updates on state of play for ongoing civil war...... Libya state of decay updates - another bank robbed by roadside gang........
Afghanistan and Pakistan.....
Karzai Accuses U.S. Forces of Killing Civilians in a Raid
KABUL, Afghanistan — For the second time in less than a week, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has picked a high-profile fight with his American allies, in the midst of a grand council that he convened to support a long-term security agreement with the United States.
American officials reacted with anger and exasperation on Saturday after Mr. Karzai publicly accused American Special Forces troops of killing civilians in a raid on an Afghan home; American officials said it was an Afghan-led raid that killed only insurgents.
Moreover, Mr. Karzai’s aides continued to insist that even if the council, or loya jirga, ratified the bilateral security agreement with the United States, Mr. Karzai would not sign it until next year, after a presidential election to choose his successor, but before he leaves office.
The remarks from the president’s camp left many people wondering why Mr. Karzai had convened a loya jirga, bringing to Kabul 2,500 Afghan notables from around the country, dismissing most employees from work for six days and locking down a city of five million so thoroughly that all roads to it were blocked for several days.
Even Mr. Karzai’s allies were at a loss to explain what he hoped to gain from the perplexing series of events around what was expected to be a straightforward deal. Mr. Karzai had earlier asked the Americans to delay signing the security agreement until a new president was elected, possibly allowing him to pass responsibility for the deal to his successor.
Mr. Karzai might also view a delay as a way to wring more concessions from the United States or retain political leverage and avoid being seen as a lame-duck president.
In another long telephone call on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry warned the Afghan leader that if the agreement was not signed within a month, there would be no agreement to sign.
Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, bluntly said Saturday that Mr. Karzai felt that Mr. Kerry, in a conversation Mr. Faizi described as “tense,” was threatening him. “When the U.S. secretary of state says if there is no agreement there will be no security, we can say there is pressure, there is threats,” Mr. Faizi said.
American officials have insisted that without a deal this year, they would not have time to prepare an American force for its mission after 2014, which the security agreement calls for.
The Afghans dismiss that. “We don’t believe there’s any zero option,” Mr. Faizi said. “We believe if they have waited until now, they can wait five more months.”
“There is no deadline for us,” he added. “We have said that in the past.”
He said Mr. Karzai believed that the Americans could not be trusted to keep their agreement, and even though both sides agreed on the security agreement’s wording, he wanted to wait until after the election next April to test further conditions: whether American forces would stop raids on Afghan homes, help promote peace talks and not interfere in the election.
Western diplomats saw that as effectively reopening talks on the security agreement, despite Mr. Karzai’s public agreement to its terms on Wednesday.
“He’s negotiating in public,” one diplomat said.
“It’s a totally different situation when the president of a country has no trust in the U.S.,” Mr. Faizi said. “That means everything, that’s a totally different way of doing things.”
When Mr. Karzai first brought up the idea of delaying the signing of the accord, in his opening remarks to the jirga on Thursday, American officials hastened to find a reliable translation of what he said. Many who were there could not believe their ears, including the American ambassador and American commander.
The part where he said he did not trust them and they did not trust him was clear enough, but not signing what he had agreed to sign once the jirga approved it: that was puzzling. As the Americans saw it, the delay risked bringing to a crashing and unsatisfactory end an investment of half a trillion dollars and 2,292 American lives, along with 1,105 other coalition deaths.
Only a week earlier, diplomats were calling Mr. Kerry “the Karzai Whisperer,” after he came to Kabul and resolved most of the deadlock over the security agreement in early October.
That term is used only ironically now. In more recent contacts, both the Americans and the Afghans have come away with sharply divergent accounts of what the two men had agreed to. According to one such account, Mr. Kerry said that President Obama would apologize for American conduct during the war, which Mr. Kerry and Mr. Obama’s aides denied had ever been discussed.
And Friday night, just after Mr. Karzai and Mr. Kerry ended their conversation, a statement went up on the Afghan presidency’s website quoting Mr. Karzai as accusing American Special Forces troops of killing two innocent twin brothers, a mason and a plumber, in a raid on an Afghan home in Nangarhar Province last Tuesday, two days before the jirga started.
The American-led coalition insisted that the raid had been led by Afghans, not Americans; that it killed gun-wielding insurgents, not civilian construction workers; and that complaints about the episode, delayed until the jirga was underway, were obviously politically inspired.
“There is no doubt that these are spurious civilian casualty allegations,” said a senior Western official here. “People are fairly mad at Karzai now; there’s a lot of anger and a lot of disdain.”
Throughout the negotiations over the loya jirga, coalition officials have been deliberately silent, but this time they pushed back, at least on the military side.
“Unfortunately, some people are using allegations of civilian casualties for political purposes,” an International Security Assistance Force official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity as a matter of official policy.
“The statement goes directly to asserting this was a unilateral operation,” the official said, referring to Mr. Karzai’s statement. “It was not. It was Afghan-led with 100 Afghan National Security Force personnel and 17 coalition advisers.” However, an ISAF spokesman, John D. Manley, confirmed that “Afghan National Security Forces and a coalition adviser engaged and killed” the two Afghans.
A United States official here, also speaking on the condition of anonymity as a matter of policy, said: “Misleading statements like this do not help to finalize the bilateral security agreement as soon as possible this year, which is essential to the future of Afghanistan and the confidence of the Afghan people.”
But Afghan officials did not back down. “On this incident, the local people’s and local officials’ accounts differ from the one the U.S. military gives,” Mr. Faizi, the spokesman for Mr. Karzai, said Saturday. He added that American officials had always been quick to deny that victims of such raids were civilians, and that an Afghan investigation by the Nangarhar governor, Mualavi Ataullah Ludin, had confirmed that the victims were civilians. Mr. Ludin, interviewed by telephone, said that the Nangarhar raid was led by American Special Forces troops, and that the only Afghans present were mercenaries employed by them.
Mr. Faizi added that this raid was another example of why the Afghans no longer trusted the Americans, because it violated the terms of an agreement signed between the countries limiting raids on Afghan homes to Afghan-led missions, initiated at Afghan request. “Here we have an example where these agreements of the past have not been respected,” Mr. Faizi said.
He said Mr. Karzai would use his speech on the final day of the loya jirga, now scheduled for Sunday, to explain his position on delaying the signing of the security agreement until the Americans meet his further requirements.
One delegate to the loya jirga, speaking on the condition of anonymity while the meetings were going on, said that most of the delegates seemed to favor the agreement, and would urge Mr. Karzai to sign it quickly, giving him political cover to climb down from his new demands.
Mr. Faizi declined to say if Mr. Karzai would agree to that; the loya jirga is not legally binding. “We should wait to see if that is really asked tomorrow,” he said.
Karzai urges support for US security pact, despite breakdown in trust
November 21, 20133:46AM ET
Afghan president asks tribal leaders to back agreement, but pushes back any signing until after spring elections
Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during the first day of the Loya Jirga in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013.Rahmat Gul/AP
Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged tribal elders Thursday to back a vital security pact with the U.S. that would see thousands of troops remain in the war-ravaged country after 2014, despite acknowledging a breakdown in trust between the two nations.
Speaking at the start of a four-day gathering of the Loya Jirga, or grand council, Karzai told delegates: “My trust with America is not good. I don’t trust them and they don’t trust me.”
Karzai pledged his own support for the bilateral security agreement with Washington, under which some 15,000 foreign troops could stay in Afghanistan following next year’s planned military drawdown. But in a potential blow for U.S. dealmakers, the Afghan leader said he would defer any signing of the security accord until after the country's April 5 elections.
Washington has indicated that it wants the agreement in place as soon as possible to enable the U.S. and NATO to start planning for its post-2014 presence.
The plan being presented would see the United States maintain several bases in Afghanistan after the bulk of its forces pull out next year. But in a move that is likely to be opposed by many attending the Loya Jirga, American soldiers will be given immunity from Afghan prosecution.
The gathering in Kabul will now debate the draft proposal and decide whether to accept its terms or leave Afghan forces to continue fighting the Taliban on their own.
Karzai told around 2,500 tribal chiefs, chieftains and dignitaries attending the assembly that the U.S. deal gave Afghans a chance to move on after “more than 30 years of war.”
"The agreement gives us a chance to transition into stability. This agreement provides us a transitional period to reach stability in the next ten years ahead of us," he said.
"If signed... 10,000 to 15,000 of their troops will stay. When I say 'their troops', I don't mean the Americans (alone)," Karzai told delegates, saying the force would include troops from other NATO members as well as "Turkey or some other Muslim nations."
The U.S. has not given a figure to how many troops would remain in Afghanistan post-2014.
Karzai also told the Loya Jirga that President Barack Obama had sent a letter reassuring him that the security pact would be in the Afghanistan’s best interests, and pledging that U.S. troops would only enter Afghan homes under exceptional circumstances.
Karzai’s appeal came hours after U.S Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed that the two countries had agreed on the final language of the security agreement that would govern the presence of American troops in the country after the NATO combat mission ends.
"We have agreed on the language that would be submitted to the Loya Jirga, but they have to pass it," Kerry said during a news conference with Australian officials and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
A 24-page draft of the pact was released by the Afghan government Wednesday. It appears to meet U.S. demands on controversial issues including whether American troops would unilaterally conduct counterterrorism operations, enter Afghan homes or protect the country from outside attack.
But it is likely to further expose deep reservations in Afghanistan over legal immunity for U.S. soldiers and contractors, as well as the issue of night raids.
Such concerns have threatened to derail diplomatic efforts to keep thousands of American soldiers in the country beyond next year's official withdrawal deadline. Negotiations have taken on added urgency recently, amid a spike in violence that has raised fears that Afghan forces are not ready to take over the battle against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked fighters without more training.
Without securing any accord in place, Washington has warned it could withdraw its troops by the end of next year and leave Afghan forces to fight a Taliban-led insurgency without their help.
The draft agreement outline Wednesday is due to take effect on January 1, 2015, and says it will remain in effect "until the end of 2024 and beyond, unless terminated."
But approval from the sitting Loya Jirga is far from certain.
Intense negotiations between Kabul and Washington have given way to frustration among the Afghan tribal and political elders, many of whom have made perilous journeys from across the country to the capital for the chance to debate the pact.
As late as two days ago, it wasn't clear that a deal would be presented to the assembly. Efforts to finalize the pact stalled on Tuesday amid disagreement over whether President Obama had agreed to issue a letter acknowledging mistakes made during the 12-year Afghan war.
Kerry denied any discussion about the possibility of a U.S. apology to Afghanistan for U.S. mistakes or Afghan civilian casualties, a move that would likely draw widespread anger in the United States.
"The important thing for people to understand is there has never been a discussion of or the word 'apology' used in our discussions whatsoever," Kerry said, adding that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had also not asked for an apology.
It was unclear where the notion of an apology originated. No mention of an apology was made in the reports of Karzai’s citing of the White House letter Thursday.
Days before the so-called bi-lateral security agreement heads to an Afghan council of elders and political leaders for a final decision, the U.S. is attempting to force through a stipulation that would allow U.S. troops to continue raiding Afghan homes, in addition to measures giving U.S. troops and contractors immunity from Afghan law and extending U.S. military presence far beyond Obama's 2014 pullout date.
"If you reduce the amount of occupation forces but keep them there forever, then the occupation continues and the war on people's everyday lives is not actually over — no matter what the US government or mainstream media tells us." –Kimber Heinz, WRL
Critics charge that the U.S. is giving itself the green light for open-ended occupation at the expense of the Afghan people. "Occupation is not defined by how many occupiers are policing someplace," said Kimber Heinz of the War Resisters League in an interview with Common Dreams. "If you reduce the amount of occupation forces but keep them there forever, then the occupation continues and the war on people's everyday lives is not actually over — no matter what the US government or mainstream media tells us."
The U.S. is pushing for the right to enter Afghan homes over the initial objection of Afghan negotiators. The New York Timesreports that President Hamid Karzai's spokesperson, Aimal Faizi, announced Tuesday that Karzai would allow U.S. home raids in "extraordinary circumstances." He said this was in exchange for an agreement from President Obama to issue a letter apologizing for mistakes in Afghanistan.
This latest development follows attempts on the part of U.S. negotiators to ram through immunity for U.S. troops and independent contractors from Afghan law. According to The Washington Post, the U.S. appears to have succeeded in including this immunity in a previously-circulated draft of the agreement.
The accord will head on Thursday to Afghanistan's loya jirga, a gathering of 3,000 elders and political leaders who will spend days deliberating over whether to accept the agreement. An Afghan official toldThe New York Timesthat Karzai is willing to try to convince the loya jirga to accept this immunity.
The issue of immunity for U.S. troops has long been a point of contention for the Afghan people, who have faced a staggering civilian death toll, as well as a spate of high-profile massacres, including the 2012 Panjwai massacre, in which 16 Afghan civilians were gunned down and killed, and 6 wounded by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. "Immunity is just another extension of occupation," Suraia Sahar of Afghans United for Justice previously toldCommon Dreams.
Adraft text of the agreement dated July 25th, 2013, does not specify how many U.S. troops will be allowed to remain in Afghanistan, likely giving the U.S. unilateral power to determine this number. Furthermore, the document does not prohibit the U.S. from using Afghan territory to launch drone strikes against nearby Pakistan, The Washington Postpoints out.
The U.S. has framed the raids and continued troop presence as part of an ongoing special operations force to hunt down "terrorist" cells. “The Parties acknowledge that continued US military operations to defeat al-Qaeda and its affiliates may be appropriate and agree to continue their close cooperation and coordination toward that end,” the July 25th draft agreement states.
Yet critics charge that this is just occupation by another name. "The 'counter-insurgency' and paramilitary tactics employed in Afghanistan that require fewer ground forces are also being developed for use by armed forces and militarized police units all over the world, including in the U.S., making resistance to the U.S.'s latest strategy for global dominance imperative," said Heinz.
In a speech at Haifa University, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro insisted that despite diplomatic progress made in recent weeks, the United States retains the option of attacking Iran militarily.
While Shapiro reiterated US promises not to reach a “bad deal,” his speech appeared aimed at convincing Israelis that the prospect of no deal, and a war instead, was still realistic.
That’s of course in keeping with the position of the Netanyahu government, which has opposed any diplomacy with Iran and is treating the concept of a “bad deal” as the same as any deal at all.
But other Israelis don’t appear nearly so on board with war for war’s sake, and attempts to play up US bellicosity in tandem with diplomatic talks, indeed on the same day the latest round of talks began, is raising questions about the Obama Administration’s sincerity in either position.
Secretary of State John Kerry has confirmed that the upcoming interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program will not include any clause on the right to enrichment of uranium for civilian purposes. Rather, that will be left to a future, final deal.
That’s in keeping with what Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said earlier this week. He insisted there was no need to include any specific mention of civilian enrichment because it is “self-evident” from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Kerry isn’t taking that position exactly, however, and rather he argues that whether or not Iran has any rights at all will be left up to “future negotiations.”
Keeping the question open may be an effort to placate hawks who insist Iran doesn’t have any such rights about the interim deal, but with that pact designed to last only six months punting a controversial issue may make the final pact, supposedly the goal of all the talks, much harder to reach in a timely fashion.
Running from assault, abduction, and assassination at the hands of jihadists and FSA rebels, Syria’s ancient Christian community fears a religious pogrom is set to erupt.
Traumatized by what they have endured inside Syria and fearful for their future, Christians fleeing the 32-month-long civil war say the persecution of Christians is worsening in rebel-held territories in the country’s north—and that the kidnapping, rape and executions of Christians aren’t just being carried out by jihadist groups, but also by other Sunni Muslim rebels, including those affiliated with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA).
Christian refugees who have recently arrived in southeast Turkey—many of whom are retreading the steps of their forebears, who fled persecution in southern Turkey during the last century—say Christians are being seen as fair game by an assortment of jihadists and Islamist rebels, including FSA-affiliated fighters and others with the Army of Islam. Most of the targeting of Syrian Christians has been blamed on al Qaeda affiliates Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Syria and Sham (ISIS), but refugees like 45-year-old school director Rahel say the picture inside is more confused.
She says jihadists weren’t in her predominantly Christian hamlet of al-Yakubiye in Syria’s northwest province of Idlib. FSA fighters from neighboring Sunni Muslim villages were the problem.
Back in February, the news agency AFP wrote about al-Yakubiye, noting that although one of the three churches had been looted, relations between Syrian Sunni Muslims and local Christians were cordial. But in the intervening months, nearly all Christians have fled after half a dozen were executed with their heads chopped off and about 20 more were kidnapped. The evacuation of al-Yakubiye has added to a Christian exodus which is prompting fears that the civil war could spell the doom of Syrian Christianity.
“Al Nusra didn’t come to our village; the people who came were from villages close by, and they were Free Syrian Army,” Rahel says. Christians were targeted because they were seen as being pro-Assad, although she added some of the persecution was motivated also by greed, with the better-off being picked off first and their property divided by powerful local Sunni Muslim families.
Sitting on the terrace of a restored stone house in the small Turkish town of Midyat, where she lives for free along with her husband and four children thanks to a local Christian charity, Rahel says she can see no future for Christians in Syria. She says that the last few months have taught her one thing: “It is not possible for Christians to live there anymore.”
In al-Yakubiye, nearly all Christians have fled after half a dozen were executed with their heads chopped off and about 20 more were kidnapped.
Her 53-year-old husband remained silent during the interview. According to Rahel he is suffering from shock. “He hardly sleeps and when he does he’s plagued by nightmares. Last week we heard about a relative being kidnapped.”
From the earliest days of Christianity, Christians have lived and worshipped in Syria. But the civil war has seen half-a-million flee—nearly a quarter of Syria’s Christians—with more arriving in Turkey and Lebanon each day.
Nearly 300 have sought sanctuary in the small town of Midyat and surrounding villages in the Tur Abdin region, less than 30 miles from the border. Tur Abdin is the historic heartland of the Syriac Orthodox church and the area is dotted with ancient churches and monasteries; one was founded in 397 AD.
The Christians’ biggest concern when it comes to Syria is an eventual rebel victory. They point to what happened in neighboring Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, where sectarian killings, persecution of Christians and an increasingly Islamist political culture more than half of the Iraqi Christian population to flee.
Before the civil war, Syria had an estimated Christian population of 2.5 million. The largest denomination is the Greek Orthodox Church, but there are also Catholics and Syriac Christians as well as Protestants and adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East. The Western-backed political opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, has sought to allay Christian fears, although to little avail as more Christian villages and towns are affected and massacres are reported.
Many of the Christian refugees arriving in Lebanon are traumatized, says Najla Chahda of Caritas, the Catholic relief agency. “A lot of them are sharing with us some really horrible stories that some fundamentalists approached them, forced them to pay some rent, or amount of money that they don’t have,” Chahda said. “So they are just afraid and left.”
Stories have included forced conversion to Islam and churches being desecrated in this vicious sectarian conflict. Several clergy have been abducted, including two bishops, and in villages in Homs province, large numbers of Christians have been forced from their homes and farms. One of the worst atrocities was reported earlier this month with the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Homs, Selwanos Boutros Alnemeh, accusing al Qaeda-backed jihadists of killing more than 40 Christians during their occupation of the town of Sadad, north of Damascus.
“All the houses of Sadad were robbed and property looted,” Archbishop Alnemeh said in a statement. “The churches are damaged and desecrated, deprived of old books and precious furniture. Schools, government buildings, municipal buildings have been destroyed.”
Some Christian leaders in the West and in neighboring Lebanon have criticized the Middle East’s Christian patriarchs for appearing to side with Assad in the civil war, saying they are partly responsible for what is befalling their adherents.
“Unfortunately, the Christians have tied their fate not only to the regime but to Bashar al-Assad—and what I am afraid of is like what happened in Iraq,” says Basem Shabb, a Lebanese lawmaker and the only Protestant in Lebanon’s Parliament. He argues, “The Christians in Iraq were persecuted not because they were Christians but because they supported the regime.”
Heyfa, a 50-year-old mother of three girls and a boy, from a small village south of the Kurdish-controlled town of Al-Qamishli, doesn’t accept that criticism. She says that most of her neighbors weren’t Assad supporters; some were pro-rebellion, while others stayed neutral. Even so, that didn’t stop jihadists harassing Christians and preying on the women. “We left because I was afraid for the girls—I didn’t want any bad things to happen to them. I was worried the girls would be raped. I kept them inside.”
Her eldest daughter, Dima, aged 22, stayed for much of the war in Aleppo, where she tried to continue with her English studies at the university. But she says it got more dangerous there and not just because of the battles between Assad forces and the rebels over Syria’s onetime commercial hub. She left Aleppo a year ago to join her family at home after one of her friends was kidnapped, gang-raped and then killed. “We don’t know who did this or why,” says Dima. Some rapes and killings of Christians are opportunistic, she says, while others are clearly targeted by jihadist and Islamists. (She adds that Muslim girls are also at risk.)
A pretty girl with brunette hair, Dima sits curled up in an apartment in Midyat with her mother and her 16-year-old sister, Marie. Her father and two siblings are in a camp in Germany after the family got separated. The apartment is unheated and Dima seems to have the weight of the world on her shoulders—she’s the only one working as her mother is sick and her sister doesn’t understand either Kurdish or Turkish and can’t find work.
“It is hard. I am the one who works and the money I receive isn’t enough. I get 400 Turkish lira ($198) a month and 300 of that goes on rent. We can’t afford to use the heat. Many times we don’t have things to eat.”
Dima’s isn’t the only all-female household of Christian refugees in Midyat. Oarda Saliba, aged 40, has with her five daughters ranging from five years old to 20. A son and husband are also in Germany. “For Christians it is very difficult to stay in Syria and there are many bad things happening to women,” she says.“ For jihadists Christian women are seen as their right. I didn’t want to take the risk with my daughters. In the streets they would touch and harass them. I don’t know if they were al-Nusra or not, although some were Libyans and Tunisian. But either way, they were terrorists.”
Was it Orange for Ukraine? Well does sound like Putin is well on his way to revolution. Libya in decay? Very much so. PM's still monkey hammered, like Yellen is going to taper in December. Who would really believe that and if they start tapering, haven't they printed so much over the past 5 years that the PM price should be much higher? Damn manipulation, at least there is Bitcoin :)
Thanks for share this nice information! Your Sound is really good about "US says Libyan armed forces training to go ahead". I am intimidated by the excellence of information. There are a bundle of good funds here. I am sure I will visit this position again soon. I think, Plumbing problems are something which almost everybody has experienced in their lives. Whether it is a clogged drain or bathtub replacement or leaking water pipes, seeking help from experienced plumbers is the first thing that comes in a person's mind when faced with plumbing problems.
While Shapiro reiterated US promises not to reach a “bad deal,” his speech appeared aimed at convincing Israelis that the prospect of no deal, and a war instead, was still realistic.
That’s in keeping with what Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said earlier this week. He insisted there was no need to include any specific mention of civilian enrichment because it is “self-evident” from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Was it Orange for Ukraine? Well does sound like Putin is well on his way to revolution.
ReplyDeleteLibya in decay? Very much so.
PM's still monkey hammered, like Yellen is going to taper in December. Who would really believe that and if they start tapering, haven't they printed so much over the past 5 years that the PM price should be much higher? Damn manipulation, at least there is Bitcoin :)
well on his way to reversing the Orange revolution
Deleteis what I meant to say
Thanks for share this nice information! Your Sound is really good about "US says Libyan armed forces training to go ahead". I am intimidated by the excellence of information. There are a bundle of good funds here. I am sure I will visit this position again soon.
ReplyDeleteI think, Plumbing problems are something which almost everybody has experienced in their lives. Whether it is a clogged drain or bathtub replacement or leaking water pipes, seeking help from experienced plumbers is the first thing that comes in a person's mind when faced with plumbing problems.
Here is some information about Simi Valley Plumbing.