Hungary abandons debt auction
Linda Young – AHN News Writer
Bucharest, Hungary (AHN) – The Hungarian government abandoned part of its planned debt auction Thursday after it had to raise interest rates on the bonds to sell them.
Hungary sold only $62 million in debt rather than the $75 million it planned to sell after being forced to increase the average interest rate on the 10-year bonds it auctioned to 9.7 percent from 8.78 percent.
The country’s debt agency, AKK, said that the range of yields offered was too broad.
The country is part of the European Union but not part of the eurozone and its currency is denominated in forints. The target was to sell 18 billion forints in bonds, but it sold only 15 billion forints worth.
Hungary is in talks with the European Commission (EC) and International Monetary Fund over a refinancing package, but negotiators from the EC and IMF have expressed concerns that Hungary’s central bank lacks independence.
Standard & Poor’s expressed the same concerns last week when it downgraded Hungary’s debt rating to junk status. S&P cited changes to the constitution that undermined the independence of the central bank and other institutions as among the factors that led to the downgrade.
Other factors included increased risk that the nation’s weakened domestic outlook coupled with a weak global economic outlook would make it too difficult for Hungary to repay its government debt.
Fixed mortgage rates end year just under 4 percent
Diane Alter – AHN News Reporter
Washington DC, United States (AHN) – Average fixed mortgage rates in the United States end 2011 near all-time record lows. The 30-year fixed home loan exits the year at 3.95 percent.
According to Freddie Mac, the rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage has stayed at or below 4 percent for nine consecutive weeks. It averaged above 5 percent just twice in 2011.
For the week ending Dec. 29, the 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 3.95 percent, up from 3.91 percent the prior week, and below 4.86 percent in the same period a year ago.
Rates on 15-year fixed mortgages averaged 3.24 percent, up from last week’s 3.21 percent, and below 4.20 percent a year ago.
Mortgage rates hit historic lows in 2011, but did little to help the ailing housing market, which is set to close out 2011 as the worst on record for new home sales.
Tight credit, stringent credit standards, and uncertainty about the economy kept many Americans from taking advantage of the never before seen, record low, mortgage rates.
International elephant competition concluded in Nepal
Anil Giri – AHN News Correspondent
Kathmandu, Nepal (AHN) – Nepal’s southern city, Chitwan, Sauraha, famous as a tourist attraction, successfully ended the eighth edition of the international elephant race on Wednesday, a competition found only in Nepal.
The yearly event is conducted during the Christmas season.
A football game between elephant calves, an elephant beauty contest and an elephant race were all part of the festival. Ten different teams from Nepal, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Brazil and other countries participated in the competition.
Some 20 elephants and more than a dozen calves took part in the elephant race and football match. According to the rules, participants cannot select the elephant themselves. The elephants for the teams are selected by lottery and elephants cannot be exchanged.
Thousands of foreign tourists and locals observed the awards ceremony on Wednesday. Champakali, the defending champion, won the title while Kist Bank was named the defending champion of the calves´ football. An elephant named Chanchal Kali won the beauty contest.
The tournament also featured a boat race, bullock cart race and cart race.
U.S. consumer confidence up more than forecast
Diane Alter – AHN News Reporter
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Confidence among U.S. consumers rose in December to the highest level in eight months, helped by an improving job market that helped gain ground lost following the mid-year government budget battles and credit rating downgrades.
The Conference Board’s index increased to 64.5, exceeding all estimates, in a report released Tuesday. The number is the highest since April. During the recession that ended in June 2009, the index averaged 53.7.
In November, unemployment dropped to its lowest level in more than two years, and gasoline is the cheapest since February. The extra money in consumers’ wallets spurred households to take advantage of discounts during the holiday season.
The percentage of consumers saying jobs were plentiful jumped to the highest since January 2009, while those saying jobs were hard to come by decreased to the lowest.
The shares of respondents expecting more jobs to become available in the next six months increased, and those projecting their incomes will rise improved to the highest level since February.
The outlook for the U.S. economy, the world’s largest, weighs heavily on Europe, where the region’s sovereign debt crisis continues to be a threat to the global economic environment.
DEA: Mexican drug cartel extortion moving more into U.S.
Tom Ramstack – AHN News Legal Correspondent
Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – Mexican drug cartels are increasingly demanding protection fees from retail businesses on the U.S. side of the border, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Law enforcement agencies are having trouble stopping the extortion because the businesses that pay the money typically employ illegal immigrants. They do not report the extortion to police to avoid the risk their workers might be arrested and deported.
Gang members threaten to damage the businesses if the owners refuse to pay the extortion money, DEA officials say.
Commonly, messengers for the gangs will mention the risk that a business could suffer a devastating fire if the owners do not pay a “street tax.”
The extortion rings appear to be part of a growing presence of Mexican gangs in the United States, one of which was targeted for arrests recently in Washington, D.C.
The Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center has called Mexican drug cartels one of the greatest crime threats in the United States.
In addition, the cartels are increasingly investing their illegal drug money in American businesses to hide, or “launder,” the source of the money, the DEA is reporting.
Restaurants, tire companies and car sales lots are among their preferred businesses.
Details of the extortion and money laundering along the border are emerging from the prosecution of 35 members of the Barrio Azteca in Texas. Five of them from El Paso were convicted and sentenced this month.
The gang operates primarily between El Paso, TX, and Las Cruces, NM, but claims to have members in other parts of the United States.
The five sentenced so far were convicted on charges related to collecting and distributing the drug and “street tax” money among gang members.
Other members of the gang are scheduled for trial in the spring for murder, racketeering, drug offenses and other crimes.
The Department of Justice accuses them of the March 13, 2010, murders in Juarez, Mexico, of a U.S. Consulate employee, her husband and a third man.
U.S. Consulate employee Lesley Ann Enriquez and her husband, Arthur Redelfs, an El Paso County sheriff’s detention officer, were ambushed in their vehicle in Juarez as they left a children’s party. Another man leaving the party also was hit by gunfire and killed.
The Barrio Azteca allegedly conspires with Mexican drug cartels to smuggle drugs and launder the money.
They often use the money to hire lawyers for imprisoned gang members as well as to buy more drugs and guns, according to the Justice Department.
They return the Mexican cartels’ portion of the money to them through wire transfers, gift cards and debit cards.
The gang is believed to use a military command structure that includes ranks for its members, such as captains and sergeants.
Mexican gangs are believed to have extended their influence into Washington, D.C., which prompted police to arrest nine of them recently.
The nine alleged members of La Familia Mexican drug cartel were some of the 70 people arrested. Washington police also seized 161 firearms and more than $7 million in cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines and other drugs during “Operation Manic Enterprises.”
The yearlong investigation leading to the arrests used undercover police officers posing as owners of a rap music production studio in northeast Washington. They purchased illegal guns and drugs from people who later were arrested.
At first, the guns purchased by the undercover officers consisted largely of handguns and shotguns.
Police began making arrests after one of the illegal salesmen offered to sell the officer hand grenades and a rocket launcher.
Israel’s jobless rate falls, but economists refrain from cheering
The Media Line Staff
Jerusalem, Israel David Rosenberg / The Med – Israel’s unemployment rate dropped to a preliminary 5 percent in October, capping a steady decline of two-and-a-half years to its lowest rates since the late 1980s, but even the government’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) was quick to discount the importance of the figure.
Moreover, economists said the trend of declining joblessness – the fruit of nearly eight years of almost non-stop economic growth – is probably reaching an end as the troubles of Europe spread to the global economy and to Israel, whose economy is small and heavily reliant on foreign trade.
“The economy is slowing, maybe not dramatically, but it is slowing. When we look at the composite index, when you look at export figures and certainly housing data, we see slower demand, weakening consumer confidence,” Jonathan Katz, an economist who covers Israel for HSBC Holdings, told The Media Line. “My guess would be that we’ll see unemployment at 5.5 percent or a little higher for all of Q4.”
Israeli gross domestic product will probably grow close to 5 percent this year, but with Europe weighed down by debt woes and bringing the global economy down with it, Israel will have trouble maintaining anything close to that rate. HSBC is forecasting growth of just 2.4 percent this year and Barclays Capital a slightly more optimistic 2.8 percent.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz put a positive spin on the jobless statistics. “We’re proud of the drop in unemployment to a historic [low] of 5 percent, which is testimony to the success of the government’s anti-crisis policy,” he said in a statement. “Nevertheless, in order to preserve this achievement of low unemployment in the future, too, in light of the growing crisis in Europe, we need to encourage investment and growth while maintaining fiscal discipline.”
But, in fact, the government faces a dilemma as slower growth will almost certainly raise the jobless rate even as it struggles to design a more “social” economic policy after last summer’s tent cities and mass protests against the high cost of living and housing. A package of recommendations by the so-called Trajtenberg committee remains trapped in political controversies and has only been enacted in part.
Last week, the Knesset Finance Committee approved an additional 780 million shekels ($206 million) to the 59.5 billion-shekel defense budget, taking funding from welfare and housing to pay for it. Meanwhile, the Ha’aretz daily reported on Monday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has decided not to cut the army’s 2012 budget, which virtually ensures that two Trajtenberg proposals – free pre-school education and longer school days – are unlikely to become part of the 2012 budget.
The Israeli jobless rate is much lower than most Western economies. Unemployment among countries belonging to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) rose to 8.3 percent in October 2011 from 8.2 percent the month before, with Euro-area joblessness at 10.3 percent. The U.S. rate was 8.6 percent.
The CBS itself doesn’t put much stock in its monthly unemployment report. It is based on a smaller sampling of people than its more accurate quarterly labor reports and this October the sample was even smaller due to the timing of the Jewish High Holidays this year.
Ori Greenfeld, macro-economist at Tel Aviv’s Psagot Investment House, suggested that the lower unemployment rate signals that people are dropping out of the workforce. When they do, they are no longer counted among unemployed.
There is already some evidence that that is happening, although Israel won’t be publishing fourth-quarter labor data until the first quarter of 2012. CBS figures show the percentage of the population in the labor force has been easing lower in recent quarters from a peak of 57.7 percent in the second half of 2010 to 57.4 percent in the third quarter of 2011, the latest for which figures are available.
The CBS reported two weeks ago that the number of job vacancies had declined almost 11 percent to 60,200 in November compared with October. Meanwhile, GDP grew 3.4 percent, similar to its growth rate in the previous quarter. However, consumer spending growth slowed to just 0.9 percent annual rate, compared with 1.3 percent in the previous quarter, while exports plunged 16.9 percent rate, compared with growth of 1.5 percent in the previous quarter.
The Bank Hapoalim consumer confidence index increased in October to a level of 50.7, marking the first time in three months that the figure has been above the 50-point level. But the Bank of Israel composite state-of-the economy index rose only 0.2 percent in November, compared with more than double that pace a year ago.
“Israel is highly dependent on the global environment and as we go into a global slowdown we’ll see the impact more and more,” said Katz of HSBC. “We’re already seeing it on exports and we’ll see unemployment approaching 6.5 percent or 7 percent by end of 2012.”
China, Japan agree on direct yuan, yen trade
Windsor Genova – AHN News News Writer
Beijing, China (AHN) – The governments of China and Japan, the world’s second- and third-largest economies, announced Monday an agreement to directly trade in yuan and yen instead of converting their currencies first to dollars.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda also agreed during a meeting in Beijing ending on Monday that Japan will hold yuan in its foreign-exchange reserves, which are now largely denominated in dollars.
The direct currency swap is seen to benefit Chinese and Japanese companies in terms of reduced trading cost and currency risk. The direct currency exchange will also ease investments between the two countries.
Trade between the two countries amounted to $340 billion in 2010. From January to November this year, Japan exported $138.5 billion (10.8 trillion yen) to China and imported $154 billion (12 trillion yen) with 60 percent of the trade transactions settled in dollars, according to Japan’s finance ministry.
A joint working group will be formed to set the implementing guidelines for the agreement.
Last week, China also forged a deal with Thailand for a direct currency swap worth $11 billion in a move to promote the use of the yuan in the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
A kinder, gentler Hamas?
The Media Line Staff
Palestinian Territory Mohammed Najib (The Media – Is there a new Hamas in the making, one ready to put down its arms and live in peace with Israel? Or is it the same old Islamist movement putting on the airs of moderation as it abandons its old friends Syria and Iran and makes new ones in Egypt, Turkey and Qatar?
Anyone following the movement’s latest steps has a lot of evidence on which to base their pick.
On the one hand, Hamas has resumed talks about ending its four-year split with the more moderate Fatah movement and joining the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). On the other hand, Hamas took the opportunity of its 24th anniversary to emphasize its intention of staying the course of violence and the denial of Israel’s right to exist.
“Resistance is the way and it is the strategic choice to liberate Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea and to remove the invaders from the blessed land of Palestine,” the Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told the crowd, which chanted: “We will never recognize Israel.”
The two Palestinian movements have been vowing to re-form their old national unity government since last spring, with little progress to show for it. But Palestinian sources told The Media Line that a significant rapprochement over the last four weeks has finally been made between Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, which is controlled by the Fatah movement.
The two held a Nov. 24 summit meeting in Cairo where they reportedly agreed on main three points: a Palestinian state will be established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; non-violent resistance will be the tool for achieving this goal; and legislative and presidential elections will take place on May 4, 2012. The first point tacitly acknowledges Israel’s right to exist and the second would align Hamas’ strategy with that of Abbas, who is committed to seeking a negotiated peace with Israel.
Jane’s Defence & Security Intelligence & Analysis was the first to report Hamas’ acceptance to give up armed resistance.
At their latest summit Dec. 21, the two paved the way for Hamas to join the PLO, the Palestinian umbrella organization that to date has been dominated by the Fatah movement. Many observers took that as yet another signs that Hamas is moving to come closer to the Fatah position.
Hamas has good reasons to change its tune because the Arab Spring has shaken up the bold political order in the Middle East.
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, who has served as junior partner to Iran in an axis that includes Hamas and Lebanon’s Hizbullah, has failed to quash a 9-month old rebellion and his prospects of staying in power are growing dimmer. Unlike Hizbullah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas has refused to support Al-Assad publicly, which has reportedly angered Iran.
Meanwhile, in Egypt, Islamists led by the Muslim Brotherhood – Hamas’ progenitor – seem all but assured to be coming to power through ongoing elections. That means a government that will be friendlier to Hamas and more hostile to Israel than Egypt was under ousted President Husni Mubarak. Qatar and Turkey, two rising regional powers, are also trying to make their influence felt.
Mashaal, the chief of Hamas’ Damascus-based political bureau, has already packed his bags and is looking for a new office in Cairo or the Qatari capital of Doha. But the change of headquarters and allies for Hamas comes at a price, namely that the movement adopt a more moderate stance
Hamas officials told The Media Line that the Muslim Brotherhood has urged them to cut their remaining ties with Iran because they threaten to alienate voters angry that Tehran has backed Al-Assad even as more than 5,000 Syrians have died. “Iran can’t be pro-Bahrain Shiite revolution and anti the Syrian revolution,” said a senior PA security source in Ramallah who spoke to TML on conditions of anonymity.
Hamas’ military wing, the Izeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, counts 22,000 well-trained fighters armed with various kinds of small arms, and short- and medium-range surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles. A PA military official in the West Bank told The Media Line that Hamas is going to keep its military wing and paramilitary groups to control security in Gaza–not necessary to fight Israel.
But publicly Hamas is not owning up to any change. Its foreign minister, Osama Hamdan, for instance told the Quds Press news agency that the decision to join the PLO leadership did not signal Hamas’ acceptance of the peace process with Israel.
“Anyone who thinks Hamas has changed its stance and now accepts the PLO’s defeatist political program is living in an illusion,” Hamdan was quoted as saying. “Hamas cannot make the mistake of joining a process that has proved to be a failure over the past 20 years.”
That is why some observers say Hamas leadership is adopting a Janus-faced strategy–one side directed to the West, Abbas and its new allies, which portrays the movement as renouncing armed resistance against Israel, and another directed toward its rank-and-file, asserting that it will stick to armed resistance.
Hani Al-Masri, a Palestinian political analyst, said Hamas’ current strategy is simply a continuation of a line it adopted as early as 2003, namely to effectively suspend violence against Israel but never admit to it in order to keep the fires burning-both among its followers and in Israel.
“Hamas learned from Abbas’ mistake when he abandoned armed resistance and adopted negotiations as the sole method to overcome the conflict with Israel. It didn’t work,” said Al-Masri told The Media Line, a reference to the fact that talks between the two sides have stalled for close to three years.
With Islamists winning elections in Egypt and Tunisia, Hamas has its eyes set on an election win next May against Fatah, he said. But a victory at the polls will do it little good if its leadership isn’t accepted by the U.S. and other Western powers.
“Hamas’ adoption of the non-violent resistance … is a message for the West that it hopes its rule in Palestine will be accepted if it wins in the coming May legislative and presidential elections,” said Al-Masri. “Hamas’ growing moderation is scaring Fatah. [because of] the growing power of the Islamists in the region confirmed.”
In fact, Hamas itself may not know yet which way it will go. Senior Hamas sources told The Media Line that tough internal deliberations inside the movements, coalescing around Mashaal and his rival hardliner Mahmoud Zahar, have yet to lead to a final policy decision.
Zahar is unhappy with Mashaal’s rapprochement with Abbas and with the idea of renouncing military resistance. The sources said that Mashaal is powerful enough to dictate policy but that he may face a bruising battle in internal Shura Council elections expected to take place in late February.
Chargers quarterback not happy team will miss NFL playoffs again
John Raffel – AHN Sports Correspondent
Detroit, MI, United States (AHN Sports) – Philip Rivers has been playing some of his best football at quarterback in recent weeks.
But it hasn’t been enough to salvage the season for the San Diego Chargers.
Sunday, in a 38-10 loss to the Detroit Lions at Ford Field, Rivers was 28-of-53 for 299 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions.
“They beat us,” Rivers said, noting that in recent losses, there have been opportunities for his team to pull it out. “We didn’t get beat like this. This is the one of very few in a long time that we’ve been beat like this and you know, we’ve got to them credit.”
There were some dropped passes, coach Norv Turner admitted.
“I think as the game went on, we had some drops,” he said. “That’s not like us and again, each one of them is different, so I can’t characterize them as a group.”
Last week, Rivers completed 17 of 23 passes for 270 yards and the Chargers dominated the visiting Ravens on Sunday, 34-14.
“It’s a week-to-week deal,” he said. “This obviously was playing for a chance for the playoffs as were we, and we knew they were going to get their best and we were prepared to give them our best, and they were just better today.”
Rivers insisted his team was motivated to play.
“We get to play in an NFL football game,” he said. “We moved it. It wasn’t like we were going out and hitting three and out. We were getting some first downs, we just couldn’t…we touched it three times in the first half, not counting the last one with 0:30 left and you know, we were 0-3 even though we did get a first downs and they were 4-4, I guess.
“When you look up and it’s 24-0 (Detroit’s early lead). We didn’t answer when they score and when you keep going against a good offense like that that’s clicking, we got to be able to answer. At least when it was 24-10, you’re keeping it in striking distance. We did that, made a little spurt there in the third quarter, but it wasn’t enough.”
The Chargers are now 7-8 and are out of the AFC playoff race. There’s speculation coach Norv Turner is on his way out.
“I don’t know,” Rivers said of his coach’s chances of staying around. “I said coming in to this game that whatever happens, I don’t think it should affect him whatsoever. We’ve won a lot of football games around here. We went through a rough stretch this year. I know it will be two years without making the postseason, but we went through a rough stretch. We’ll keep battling, man.”
In a recent poll of NFL performers, Rivers ranked as the league’s 26th best player. He played in the 2010 Pro Bowl.
The eighth-year player out of North Carolina State had arguably his best season in 2010.
Rivers’ 2010 numbers were impressive with an NFL-leading 4,710 yards, 10th-most for a single season in NFL history and third-highest in franchise history. He came into 2011 off of three straight 4,000-plus passing-yard seasons.
When Rivers last season threw for 2,649 yards after eight games, it was a new NFL record for the midway point of the season.
With Rivers, the Chargers have won four AFC West titles. He’s 58-29 (.667) as a starter (including playoffs).
After leading San Diego to a 4-1 start, River saw the squad lose six in a row before winning the next three games prior to the battle at Ford Field.
“Every loss is disappointing, but knowing you are not going to the playoffs is even more disappointing,” said Chargers linebacker Shaun Phillips.
“It’s hard when you lose six in a row,” Rivers said. “We did, gave ourselves…we got back in and had a chance for postseason, but you lose six in a row in this league you’re probably not going to the post season. But we fought our way back in. Just like last year, when we started 2-5, we kept crawling and it’s just, when you’re hanging your hat on running the table and going to beat playoff teams on the road, it’s tough.
“We believed we could, we just didn’t get it done.”
Worrying signs for Iraq’s stability as U.S. pulls out
Baghdad, Iraq (IRIN) – Every day, the bleak concrete blast walls circling Baghdad’s northern neighborhood of Adhamiya trigger flashbacks in the mind of Sahib Awad Maarouf of the violence which plagued Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion.
“It annoys me and others to see them every day,” said Maarouf, a 69-year-old Sunni construction engineer. “They serve as a reminder of the US occupation, the violence we witnessed over the past years and a source of worry for our future,” he said.
As US troops withdraw from Iraq, capping a nearly nine-year war, the future of the battered nation has been thrown into doubt by fears that Iraqis are still not ready to handle their future alone.
The stakes are high in a country with more than 1.2 million internally displaced people and another 177,000 Iraqis registered as refugees in neighboring countries – a symbol of the lingering humanitarian dimension of the conflict.
More than 20 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line. An estimated 2.1 million Iraqis are undernourished: on average, they spend more than one third of their total expenditures on food, and nearly three quarters of the population depend on a public distribution system as their primary source for wheat flour. The vast majority of the population does not have electricity 24 hours a day; and access to clean water is still limited in rural areas.
In 2009 there were about-0,000 US troops in the country. Today there are only 200 – to train Iraqi security forces and protect US diplomats.
In 2007, Maarouf, a father of four, was abducted by Sunni militants belonging to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group which controlled many of the Sunni areas at the height of the insurgency. He was freed after about 24 hours when he paid a US$80,000 ransom.
His son was shot in his left leg by thieves who tried to steal the money he withdrew from the bank for the ransom.
Yet, he still sees these blast walls – many erected to prevent Shia and Sunni militants from attacking each others’ neighborhoods – as a “heavy” legacy of the war weighing on Iraqis’ hearts.
A resurgence of sectarianism?
Since the ousting of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime in 2003, Iraq’s two main Muslim sects, Shias and Sunnis, have been at loggerheads. Iraq’s majority Shia community has dominated political life in Iraq, leaving many Sunnis feeling marginalized.
Violence between members of the two sects killed tens of thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more, bringing the country to the brink of civil war. The tit-for-tat killings stopped in late 2007, only after US forces pushed tens of thousands of their troops into the streets with Iraqi forces to chase down militants.
On 19 December, one day after the last US troops withdrew, sectarian tension rose when Iraq’s Shia-led government issued an arrest warrant for the country’s Sunni Vice President, Tariq Al-Hashimi, over “terrorism” charges described by some Sunnis as politically motivated. The arrest warrant followed a round-up of hundreds of former Baathists amid concern they would try to regain power after the departure of US troops.
The Sunni minority has accused Shia political factions – mainly the prime minister’s Dawa Party – of trying to remove all their political rivals to gain absolute power over the political process.
“The government has spoiled our joy over the troops’ withdrawal,” said Sunni businessman Laith Younis from the northern province of Ninevah. “The timing means the consequences of the withdrawal will be grave,” the 34-year old father of three added.
Incapable security forces
Despite a sharp decrease in violence since the height of sectarian warfare from 2006 to 2007, Iraq is still fragile, and has not resolved many politically explosive issues that could lead to renewed fighting.
There are persistent fears that Iraqi security forces are still not capable of handling the security challenges on their own. That could lead to a resurgence of Sunni militant groups, mainly Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has suffered major blows since 2007 because of the US presence.
On the flip side, the top US General in Iraq, Lloyd Austin, has warned that Shia militias, namely the followers of firebrand cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, will seek to climb the stage again by trying to create “a government within a government”, similar to Lebanon’s powerful and Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement.
In a sign that more violence may be in the offing, militants have upped their attacks against civilians and military attacks since 24 November, claiming the lives of at least 56 people and injuring dozens of others.
The most brazen attack came on 28 November when a suicide car bomber managed to enter Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, which houses the parliament, key government offices and foreign embassies and is supposed to be one of the country’s most secured areas.
“I have fears inside me mainly over the training and arming of our security forces,” said Saied Jassim Moussa, 54, a Shia who heads the Baghdad-based Peoples’ Institution for Democracy Culture.
“Politicians should distance themselves from security so that security forces can work independently,” Moussa added. “I believe that Iraq’s main problem is with the politicians and their struggle for power.”
Iraqi officials have acknowledged that shortcomings still exist in terms of protecting their skies and borders, and mostly important in intelligence gathering.
Lt-Gen Babakir Zebari, the Ministry of Defense’s chief of staff, told the Special Inspector-General for Iraq Reconstruction that his military will not be ready to fully provide for its external defense until 2020 to 2024.
Fawzia Al-Attia, a professor of sociology at the University of Baghdad, said the US administration should have prepared the stage for this day.
“Until now, security is absent. Citizens still suffer from bad security and stumbling economy, industry and agriculture,” Al-Attia added. “The US should have found ways to give a bright picture for their support after toppling the previous regime to rebuild this society,” she said.
Ethnic tension
The country faces another threat in the north, where ethnic Kurds want to annex territory to their northern self-ruled region. Former President Saddam Hussein had tried to play with the demographics of several provinces in the area to make Arabs the majority. A plan to redraw the borders was adopted after the US invasion, but a referendum for the people in these disputed areas – due to take place in 2007 – never happened. On some occasions, Kurds took over some of these areas by moving in their troops and only withdrew after US military mediation.
Kurdish Kirkuk resident Ibrahim Salam Raheem said the US forces should have solved the issue of the disputed territories before their withdrawal.
“They didn’t do anything in this regard and they just left the issue as it is. The conflict between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen will be increased,” the 35-year old employee in the Oil Minstry’s Oil Products Distribution Directory said. “The situation is getting worse day by day and it will be disastrous in the future.”
Also on the table is the expected meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs by its neighbors.
Iraq’s Sunni community and the USA accuse Shia Iran of training and financing Shia militias and securing their interests in the region through Shia politicians harbored in Iran during the Saddam era. Meanwhile, Shias accuse Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey of supporting Sunni militants and financing Sunni political parties.
Some senior Iraqi politicians, including the parliament speaker Osama Al-Nijaifi, have worried outside meddling could rise in post-pullout Iraq. “Iraq now suffers from weakness points and whenever neighboring countries see that Iraq is weak and can’t protect its borders and internal security they will interfere more,” he told a press conference in October.
“It is our future”
Still, many Iraqis acknowledge that the US withdrawal had to come sooner or later.
“If you want to learn how to swim you have to get into the swimming pool by yourself – not only take lessons outside it,” said Jamal Tawfiq, a 44-year old father of three from Baghdad.
“Keeping US troops more years in Iraq means complicating our problems more and more,” he said. “It is our future and we have to build it.”
“It is an exam for Iraqis… and it could be a tough one,” added Ameer Hassan Al-Fayadh who lectures in politics at the University of Baghdad.
“The best way to deal with [the post-withdrawal challenges] is for influential political groups to set their differences aside and work together.”
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