Thread: Iraq/Dinar News up until March 28th 8PM CT.

maybe they could conjour up the rate on the dinar WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE DINAR???

Iraqi Police complete survival training
Sunday, 25 March 2007


AD-DUJAL — Nearly 30 new Iraqi Police officers graduated from a demanding survival course here on March 17.

The officers joined the Iraqi Police after completing a five-week course designed to familiarize them with skills necessary to protect and serve citizens and themselves.

“The new volunteer [policeman] does not have any experience,” said Iraqi Gen. Muzhir Aubed Dharfir, police chief for Salah ad-Din province. “After taking this course, he will have that experience in the field. God willing, we will get to continue to train these officers.”

During the first two weeks training officers learned training subjects such as weapons familiarization, marksmanship, searching and questioning techniques. As the course progressed, the policemen moved to manning checkpoints near Ad-Dujal, standing side-by-side with Coalition forces for a three-week internship.

Interacting with locals was an integral part of on-the-job training, Dharfir said.

“We are improving their skills here,” he continued. “This is primary training and there is room for improvement in the future for their skills and their training.”

Although the course may have provided many officers new techniques and police experience, for some, it was a refresher course, said U.S. Army Capt. Patrick Blankenship, C Company, 3rd Combined Arms Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment commander.



Lt. Col. Kahlil, with 4th Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 5th Iraqi Army Division, checks a man's identification during operations Feb. 26, 2007, as part of a three-day raid in Tahrir, Iraq, to eliminate improvised explosive device building cells. DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Stacy L. Pearsall, U.S. Air Force.AD-DUJAL — Nearly 30 new Iraqi Police officers graduated from a demanding survival course here on March 17.
The officers joined the Iraqi Police after completing a five-week course designed to familiarize them with skills necessary to protect and serve citizens and themselves.

“The new volunteer [policeman] does not have any experience,” said Iraqi Gen. Muzhir Aubed Dharfir, police chief for Salah ad-Din province. “After taking this course, he will have that experience in the field. God willing, we will get to continue to train these officers.”

During the first two weeks training officers learned training subjects such as weapons familiarization, marksmanship, searching and questioning techniques. As the course progressed, the policemen moved to manning checkpoints near Ad-Dujal, standing side-by-side with Coalition forces for a three-week internship.

Interacting with locals was an integral part of on-the-job training, Dharfir said.

“We are improving their skills here,” he continued. “This is primary training and there is room for improvement in the future for their skills and their training.”

Although the course may have provided many officers new techniques and police experience, for some, it was a refresher course, said U.S. Army Capt. Patrick Blankenship, C Company, 3rd Combined Arms Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment commander.

“You have a lot of former Soldiers from the old Iraqi Army, who are going to be Iraqi Policemen,” Blankenship said. “A lot of them have a base line of training and it is good for them to get back in the saddle again.”

The officers’ level of motivation and enthusiasm made their training go smoother, Blankenship said.

“The officers have survived and thrived [during] the training,” Blankenship said. “[Graduation] is a sense of accomplishment for them and us to see the fruit of their labor. This is worth-while training and it is serving and protecting the Iraqi people.”

(By Sgt. Tony White, 5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

Conference brings together leaders of Tigris River Valley
Multi-National Division – North PAO

FORWARD OPERATING BASE Q-WEST, Iraq – Community leaders, commanders in the Iraqi Police and Army, members of the Provincial Reconstruction Team, and Coalition leaders met March 20 to share information and assess program successes and failures in their respective areas.

The Southern Tigris River Valley Leadership Conference, attended by Ninewa Provincial Governor, Kashmoula, and Ninewa Provincial Director of Police, Maj. Gen. Wathiq, was held in the headquarters of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division, and provided a forum for all in attendance to voice their issues to their peers as well as the elected officials within the Government of Iraq’s Ninewa Province.

Following an extensive question and answer session, the participants were separated into four informal working groups, based upon their specialization. These included the:

Executive Group – containing the Ninewa Provincial Governor, distinguished guests, local mayors, and the municipality managers.

Legislative Group – containing the district and sub-district council members, as well as members of the Provincial Reconstruction Team.

Iraqi Police Group – containing the Ninewa Provincial Director of Police, Maj. Gen. Wathiq, and the local area police chiefs.

Iraqi Army Group – containing several 2nd Iraqi Army Division commanders, the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division commander, Col. Stephen Twitty, and the 5th Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment commander, Lt. Col. Robert McLaughlin.

Topics discussed included water, electricity, fuel, detainee operations, and security. Participants briefly discussed the funding of future projects, but primarily focused on ways to improve the standard of living for the local populace.

Voices of Iraq: Baghdad-Summit
كتب: nakr2004 في يوم الأحد, 25 مارس, 2007 - 01:42 PM BT

Baghdad-Summit
Shiite politician urges Arab summit to back Iraq's political process
Baghdad, March 25 (VOI) – Influential Shiite politician Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim called on the Arab summit, scheduled in late March in Saudi Arabia, to back the Iraqi government's stance and respect the Iraqi people's will.
"Hakim met on Saturday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to discuss political and security developments in the country as well as the outcome of the Baghdad international conference and other issues," read a statement by Hakim's Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) as received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
Hakim, who also heads the Shiite Unified Iraqi Coalition (UIC), urged the forthcoming Arab summit to support the political process in the country.
Hakim's meeting with Maliki was also attended by members of the UIC, the largest bloc in Iraq's parliament with 130 seats out of a total 275.
Arab leaders are expected to meet in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Wednesday to discuss developments in Iraq. The summit will be attended by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
AE

Turkish - Iraqi Business Council Meeting In Istanbul

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24 March 2007 (Turkish Press)
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Thanks to new investment law in Iraq, all foreign investors will be exempted from all taxes and customs for 10 or 15 years on the condition that they have Iraqi shareholders, said Iraqi Deputy Planning Minister Faik Abdul Rasool who delivered a speech at Turkish-Iraqi Business Council meeting in Istanbul.

Rasool said that newly established National Investment Commission was directly connected with Prime Ministry to create a rapid and effective decision-making process, thus, all procedures can be completed within 4-5 days.

He noted that they provide some privileges to foreign investors in all sectors except oil, banking and insurance sectors.

Rasool said that Iraq needs high amount of investments in the aspect of infrastructure, adding that they need 18 billion USD of investments for infrastructure for the next 5 years. He said that 1.5 million houses must be built in Iraq.

Rasool said that no production bases remained in Iraq, adding that the country is open to foreign investors.

On the other hand, Turkish-Iraqi Business Council deputy chairman Mehmet Habbab said that the trade volume which was 7 billion USD in 2004 between Turkey and Iraq dropped to 2.8 billion USD in 2006

Ex-Iraqi regime's policies discouraged Arab investors minister


RIYADH, March 25 (KUNA) -- Iraqi finance minister Bayan Jabr Solagh said Sunday the economic policies of the former Iraqi regime had prevented Arab investors from exploiting promising investment opportunities in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters following a meeting of the Arab League Economic and Social Council, Solagh said the policies of the ex-Baathist regime, like nationalization and socialist laws, were discouraging foreign investments in Iraq.

The Iraqi minister, meanwhile, played down the impacts of the security situation in Iraq on investments. He said around 20 percent of Iraqi territories were unstable while the remaining 80 percent were appropriate for investments and economic ventures.

Solagh called on all investors to come and invest in Iraq and emphasized that his country has promising investment opportunities.

The Economic and Social Council is preparing for the two-day Arab summit, which is due to convene in Riyadh on March 28.

Article originally published by KUNA (Kuwait News Agency) 25-Mar-07

Iraq police foil new chemical attack


BAGHDAD, March 25, 2007 (AFP) - Iraqi police averted a new chemical attack in an Al-Qaeda hotbed by arresting the would-be suicide bomber whose dirty bomb of explosives and chlorine failed to detonate, the US military said Sunday.

The would-be bomber was detained and the truck that was rigged with two tonnes of explosives and 19,000 litres (5,000 gallons) of chlorine disabled outside a police station in the western town of Ramadi, it said.

Ramadi is the capital of Iraq's Al-Anbar province where three suicide bombers blew up trucks filled with toxic chlorine gas earlier this month, killing at least two Iraqi policemen and putting 350 civilians in hospital.

The white cargo truck pulled up outside the Jezeera police station, about 150 metres (yards) from a water treatment plant on Friday, the military said.

Officers detained the driver when they realised the vehicle was rigged with explosives which the driver was trying to detonate, the Americans said.

"The truck contained an unknown number of 55 gallon drums, which were used to camouflage five 1,000 gallon barrels filled with chlorine and more than two tons of explosives," said the US statement.

A spate of seven gas attacks against civilians or security forces in Iraq this year has raised fears that Sunni insurgents loyal to Al-Qaeda have found a new tactic in their campaign of violence against the Shiite-led government and its Western backers.

jm/jds/kir

WSJ(3/22) These US Raids In Iraq Look Real, But They Aren't


Thursday, Mar 22, 2007

(From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)
By Yochi J. Dreazen NEAR TIKRIT, Iraq -- In one of the oddest raids of the war in Iraq, a convoy of U.S. Humvees rolled to a stop outside a small printing plant here one afternoon late last month. Twenty U.S. soldiers in dark goggles moved through the two-story building with assault rifles, forcing the plant's workers against an outside wall for questioning, then conducting a room-by-room search.

Because an office door was locked, the soldiers radioed Army Capt. Dan Cederman, who was leading the raid, to ask whether they should knock it down. "I told them that would kind of defeat the purpose," Capt. Cederman recalls. "We'd have just had to come back out the next day to fix it."

The strike, after all, wasn't meant to find insurgents or weapons. Its real purpose was to covertly measure the progress of U.S.-financed renovations to the company's offices.

The U.S. is spending tens of millions of dollars to reopen state-run factories that have been shut down since the 2003 invasion and to create new businesses. Military civil-affairs teams throughout the country are helping the Iraqi companies draft business plans and modernize their equipment. And many businesses are back in operation, providing much-needed jobs and boosting the fragile Iraqi economy. Officials hope they will also keep otherwise idle men from joining the insurgency.

But given the hostility toward the U.S., officials aren't advertising their role. "The only way things will work is if the U.S. contribution is totally invisible," says Maj. Christina Nagy, a civil-affairs officer from the 82nd Airborne Division. "I have people with higher ranks than me always wanting to have a ribbon cutting. I just listen and think, 'Sure, if you want the companies to get immediately shot or blown up.'"

The raids are the brainchild of Capt. Cederman, an 82nd Airborne reservist from upstate New York who studied robotic engineering in college and works in Target Corp.'s logistics department when he isn't deployed overseas. This is his second tour in Iraq, and many of the contractors he worked with during his first tour in 2003 have since been killed by insurgents, he says.

The idea for the raids sprang from another contorted economic revival scheme launched when Capt. Cederman and Maj. Nagy arrived here last year and found themselves charged with reopening a vocational school damaged by an errant U.S. bomb amid the 2003 invasion.

The Iraqi side of the project was led by a mechanical engineer named Dr. Noori, a stocky fellow with buzz-cut hair who had taught at the school in the years before the war and is running it now. Dr. Noori, who brings his teenage son to meetings on the massive American military base here, asked that his full name not be used for safety reasons.

The U.S. allocated nearly $1 million to renovate the school and buy new furniture and machines. But the military balked at providing funds for salaries and other operating expenses.

Last summer, Dr. Noori approached the Americans with a creative alternative. He was planning to offer courses in fashion design and tailoring and asked the Americans to help him establish a small textile factory where students from the vocational school could help design and manufacture items for sale. A portion of the profit from the clothes would then be used to offset the costs of running the school, he said.

The Americans liked the idea and agreed to give Dr. Noori more than $300,000 to renovate an abandoned building and purchase new equipment and supplies, the U.S. officers say.

With the work well under way last fall, Dr. Noori asked Capt. Cederman to see the renovations for himself, both men say. But the Iraqi stressed the importance of keeping the U.S. role secret. "Can you come in without anyone seeing you come in?" Dr. Noori remembers asking.

That didn't seem possible. Another option: Hide in plain sight. "I thought, 'Why don't we just raid the place?'" Capt. Cederman recalls.

Dr. Noori agreed to that, asking only that the U.S. forces make sure that no one was hurt during the sweep and that no damage was done to the factory.

The U.S. raid took place last September. Dr. Noori, who had been alerted to the timing, stayed home the day of the strike to prevent his workers from finding out that he knew many of the soldiers.

The American soldiers took all the employees into one room and told them they were looking for a specific Iraqi suspected of ties to the insurgency. During the mock interrogations, a second team of soldiers quietly made its way through the plant to take photographs and check the pace and quality of renovations.

Dr. Noori says several workers told him after the raid how frightened they had been. That convinced him that it had come off as authentic. The soldiers, meanwhile, say they were able to verify that the U.S. money had been used appropriately.

The ruse worked so well that Capt. Cederman decided to carry out a similar raid last month at the printing plant here that had been fixed up with U.S. funds.

The Iraqi assistant director of the plant requested the strike, telling the Americans it would help persuade the insurgents to leave him and his workers alone, Capt. Cederman says. The company prints recruiting posters for the Iraqi military and police, as well as an independent daily newspaper.

U.S. forces had spent several days preparing for the raid, studying satellite photographs of the factory grounds and floor plans of the interior of the building.

The strike began shortly after 1 p.m. on Feb. 22. The security guard recognized Capt. Cederman's Humvees as the vehicles drove into the compound, and came over to greet the troops. The soldiers responded by ordering him to put his hands in the air and then lie flat on the ground, participants in the raid say.

"He kept saying, 'Welcome, welcome,'" Master Sgt. John Craig recalls. "I was like, 'Get the f- down on the floor.' It had to look real."

After the guard was disarmed and searched, the soldiers ordered the four workers who were in the building to come out and line up against an outside wall.

Speaking through a female translator dressed in military fatigues, Capt. Cederman and his soldiers told the workers that they were looking for an insurgent rumored to be in the plant.

The soldiers took each worker's ID card and compared it to a fake photo sheet they had brought along. A second team of U.S. soldiers had made its way through each office to verify that the work in the U.S.-funded contract had been completed. The raid lasted about 45 minutes. Capt. Cederman says U.S. forces are likely to employ similar methods in coming weeks to check on other projects the U.S. is paying for.

In recent days, meanwhile, U.S. forces staged a raid to solve a nettlesome -- and potentially life-threatening -- problem in the nearby city of Bayji.

An Iraqi who worked as a translator for U.S. forces there was getting death threats from insurgents and asked the U.S. for help. The Americans responded by raiding his house, publicly arresting him, and holding him in jail for two days.

"A lot of people there now think he's a bad guy," Capt. Cederman says. "It bought him a lot of street cred."

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

What's happened to Iraq's oil?
By Mark Gregory
International Business Reporter, BBC World Service



One of the main problems is getting the oil to export terminals
Iraq's descent into violence, coupled with paralysis and corruption in government, has stymied efforts to rebuild the infrastructure of roads, schools, hospitals and industry.

In many cases, there is little to show for the billions of dollars spent on reconstruction since the American-led invasion in 2003.

The oil sector is a good example of what has gone wrong.

Fixing it has been seen as a high priority, as the revenues from oil exports provide the bulk of Iraqi government income and underpin the entire economy.

Yet crude production is currently still below the pre-war level.

"The Iraqi oil industry has been stuck for the last couple of years." says Manoucher Takin, an analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies in London.

"Nothing has really changed.

"It's not that officials have done nothing. The problem is, they can't do much because of the security situation."

Export problems

Mr Takin says the single biggest drag on the industry's recovery has been the failure to get a key export pipeline operating properly.

Iraqi oil leaves the country through two main routes.

Production from the Southern oilfields is taken by sea from a terminal near Basra.

Oil from the Northern wells is transported by a pipe that runs to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey.

The Northern route is extremely vulnerable to sabotage, and has worked only intermittently since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

It means a third of Iraq's production capacity is effectively cut off from overseas markets.

There have also been many attacks and other problems with the Southern oilfields, but they have at least continued to function.

High oil prices

There was nothing inevitable about this.


A pipeline is blown up by insurgents on the outskirts of Kirkuk

In Baghdad soon after the war, US officials confidently predicted that with a bit of effort production would reach 3.5 million barrels a day within 18 months, and five or six million barrels a day within few years.

At that level, Iraq's output would be second only to Saudi Arabia.

No wonder it was widely assumed that once things settled down, Iraq would easily be able to fund its own reconstruction.

Those hopes have been dashed.

At the moment, crude production is stuck at around two million barrels a day.

The only saving grace has been the recent strength of international crude prices.

Iraq gets nearly twice as much money from each barrel sold as it did at the end of Saddam's time.


Wrong sort of oil

Recent security concerns are not the only issue.


Residents of Baghdad have to queue for supplies of heating oil

It was always clear that rebuilding the oil sector would be a difficult task.

The American-led invasion did not cause a great deal of damage, but the industry suffered badly in the looting that immediately followed the war.

This came on top of years of neglect and under investment while Saddam fought his other wars and Iraq was under international sanctions.

Many of the worst problems are in refining and distribution: the part of the industry that supplies finished products like petrol, diesel and heating fuel for use internally in Iraq.

There is a chronic shortage of refining capacity.

It is one reason why Iraqis often have to queue for hours to ill their vehicles with fuel, despite living in a country flush with underground crude.

Mr Takin says Iraq's refineries had hardly been modernised in several decades.

The technology was ancient.

He says that before the war, some Iraqi refineries were in such a state they simply were not capable of producing the highly-refined products that people actually wanted for their cars.

Instead there was an excess of heavy fuel oil, which has few uses.

He says there was so much of it the Iraqis started pumping it back into the ground to increase the pressure to get new oil out - hardly an efficient use of resources.

Appointed staff

Commentators tend to say there was a window of opportunity for reviving the Iraqi oil sector soon after the invasion.

A lot of money and effort did go into improving things.

The problem was not enough was done to really get on top of the issues before security concerns became paramount and the country began its descent into near civil war.

Meanwhile, the oil sector has also been affected by the general chaos and corruption of Iraqi government.

Under Saddam, the oil ministry generally had a high reputation.

It was seen as staffed by competent technocrats who got on with the job.

That is not the case any longer.

As with other ministries, experienced staff have often been replaced by less qualified political appointees.

Planning for the future

At the moment, it is hard to find anyone who is optimistic about the oil industry's immediate prospects.

But no-one doubts the long-term potential: Iraq is sitting on the world's third largest proven reserves. It is widely believe there is a lot still to be discovered. What is more, Iraqi oil is generally easy to extract.

That is why so much store has been set by the terms of a new oil law.


International companies are assessing future opportunities

Its purpose is to set the terms to attract outside capital and expertise to develop Iraq's vast energy reserves.

A draft law was approved by the Iraqi cabinet at the end of February after months of haggling between politicians representing the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities.

A finalised law is supposed to be ready by the end of May.

Mr Takin says the big international oil companies are wary of investing in Iraq while the country is in such a mess.

But he reckons many of them have developed quite detailed plans for what they will do when the situation improves.

Significantly, he says there is no shortage of demand for consultants' reports costing thousands of dollars on the technicalities of Iraq's oilfields.

Protecting Iraq's oil supply


Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday March 24, 2007
The Guardian


The frigate HMS Cornwall is on patrol as the lead ship of Combined Task Force 158, whose UN-backed mission is to protect Iraq's oil platforms and exports against pirates, smugglers, and terrorists.
The platforms are critical to the economic and political reconstruction of Iraq, the Ministry of Defence said yesterday. They pump out oil that accounts for 90% of the country's GDP. An attack in 2004 led to a two-day shutdown costing up to $28m (£14.2m), the MoD said. The knock-on effect was a spike on the world oil market, causing a further loss of some $6bn.


Article continues

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Sailors and Royal Marines operate with US and Australian ships and the Iraqi navy on security operations centred around the Khawr al Amaya and Al Basra oil terminals just south of the Al Faw peninsula, home to Iraq's largest port, Umm Qasr.
The northern Gulf is strategically and economically important for both Iran and Iraq, aggravating the genuine difficulties in marking boundaries. As the Cornwall's commanding officer Commodore Nick Lambert put it said yesterday: "The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated."

Eight British sailors and marine commandos were seized in July 2004 after three patrol boats were said to have strayed into the Iranian side of the Shatt al-Arab waterway. The men were blindfolded, held for three days, and paraded on Iranian television. Iran kept the boats, along with weapons, ammunition, navigational equipment and radios.