Thread: Iraq/Dinar News until April 26, 2007 Midnight cst.

Mobi-Tel, the first 3G network in Iraq, signed a three year exclusive contract for SMS Hubbing services with Monty Mobile
Mobi-Tel, the first 3G network in Iraq to provide its SMS/MMS 2way services, will open up to more than 518 new operators through Monty Mobile's hub in the coming 6 months, and subscribers will be able to send and receive SMS/MMS all over the world.
Mobi-Tel is on its way to becoming the leader 3G operator in the region with more subscribers and higher revenues. Mobi-Tel believes that subscribers have the right to decide on the destination of their messages with Monty Mobile's SMS/MMS Highway.

Dr. Habbal, Mobi-Tel's Chief Commercial Officer, believes in the strategy of Monty Mobile, which consists on removing all boundaries to SMS and MMS destinations in this day and age.

"We can no longer decide on the limits of our network coverage, it is our duty to open up more countries and more continents, and give subscribers the right to choose any destination around the globe", said Mr. Mountasser Hachem, Monty Mobile's CEO

Soldiers in Baqouba keep pressure on Al-Qaida in Iraq
Monday, 23 April 2007
By Staff Sgt. Antonieta Rico
5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment



Sgt. Matthew Benzshawel, Company A, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division from Fort Lewis, Wash., pulls security as an Iraqi man stands next to him in Baqubah, Iraq, April 10. Soldiers of 5-20 Inf. Regt. took part in a three-day battalion-sized effort to clear the Buhriz neighborhood of terrorists. After the operation, Soldiers along with Iraqi police and Iraqi army continued to maintain a presence in the neighborhood to maintain security for the local people. Photo by Sgt. Antonieta Rico.BAQOUBA — Soldiers with 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment continued their systematic attack on terrorist forces in Baqouba with another clearing operation in the city, April 10.

In this latest effort, Soldiers of 5-20 Inf. Regt., 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, from Fort Lewis, Wash., spent three days clearing the neighborhood of Buhriz, described by Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Bruce Antonia as “al-Qaida’s battleground.”

When the Stryker battalion first arrived in Baqouba in March, it encountered resistance from the neighborhood’s insurgents in the form of roadside bombs, rocket propelled grenade fire and small arms fire.

During the mission, Soldiers operating alongside Iraqi security forces conducted house-to-house searches for terrorists and weapon caches. They learned from residents that many terrorists had fled Buhriz in the face of the advancing battalion.

“We’ve pushed al-Qaida out of here,” said Sgt. Matthew Benzshawel, with 2nd Platoon, Company A. “We are a pretty lethal force. When (insurgents) see a battalion worth of Strykers coming, (they) usually move out.”

Nonetheless, the battalion reported that coalition forces detained about a dozen suspected insurgents, including one man described by the unit as a “high-level” terrorist.

The battalion also reported that it found and destroyed more than 20 small weapon caches, which included a Dishka machine gun, grenades, mortar rounds, rocket propelled grenade rounds, sniper rifles, AK-47’s and ammunition.

Soldiers from the battalion say they have managed to make the area safer for the local people with their continuous efforts against al-Qaida in Iraq.

“We’ve denied them the terrain,” said 1st Lt. James Dobis, 2nd Platoon leader, Company A. “They have not been fighting with anybody, they have not attacked us … they have not attacked any civilians.”

The assault into Buhriz served as a catalyst to secure a foothold in the area. Iraqi security forces, along with Soldiers from Troop B, 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, which is attached to 5-20 Inf. Regt., plan to maintain a permanent presence within the neighborhood by collocating troops at an Iraqi police station in Buhriz and continuing to patrol the area.

Battalion leaders plan to continue their assault on al-Qaida in and around Baqouba.

“We have taken their battleground,” said Antonia, after the operation. “We are going to keep the pressure on the enemy. That is the only way to push them out.”

Maliki Won General Secretary of the Islamic Dawa Party (Federal Support for the Implementation of Article 140)
Islamic Dawa Party supports federalism and calls to disarm

تخيير المالكي بين رئاسة الحكومة والأمانة العامة للحزب

Maliki choose between the Prime Minister and the Secretariat of the Party

علمت "إيلاف" أن رئيس الوزراء العراقي نوري المالكي قد فاز بمنصب الأمين العام لحزب الدعوة الإسلامية خلال انتخابات المؤتمر العام للحزب لكن مادة في النظام الداخلي تقتضي التفرغ للمنصب تعيق توليه للمنصب إلا في حالة استقالته من منصبه الرسمي بينما أكد الحزب الذي ينتمي إليه المالكي وسلفه الدكتور إبراهيم الجعفري تأييده للفيدرالية ولتنفيذ المادة الدستورية 140 لتطبيع الأوضاع في مدينة كركوك ورفض الاحتراب الداخلي مناشدا المسلحين إلقاء أسلحتهم.

Al "Ilaf" The Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has won the post of general secretary of the Islamic Dawa Party during elections, the party's general conference but the rule of procedure requires time for the position to impede his post only in the event of his resignation from his post while the official emphasized the party to which he belongs Maliki and his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Ja'fari federal support for the implementation of Article 140 of the Constitutional normalization of the situation in Kirkuk and the rejection of the internal fighting appealing gunmen to lay down their arms.

وابلغ مصدر مقرب من الحزب "إيلاف" اليوم أن المالكي قد فاز في انتخابات المؤتمر العام لحزب الدعوة الذي شارك فيه 100 عضو من داخل وخارج العراق لتولي منصب الأمين العام للحزب والمستحدث للمرة الأولى بدلا من منصب الناطق الرسمي الذي يتولاه الجعفري.

A source close to the party "Ilaf" today that Al-Maliki has won elections in the General Conference of the Dawa Party, attended by 100 members from inside and outside Iraq for the post of Secretary General of the Party and introduced for the first time instead of the Spokesman-led al-Jaafari.

وأضاف أن النظام الداخلي للحزب ينص على تفرغ الأمين العام للمنصب مايقتضي من المالكي أما الاستقالة من رئاسة الوزراء لتولي المنصب أو تضحيته بالأمانة العامة من اجل الاحتفاظ بمنصبه الحكومي.

He added that the rules of the party provides for the Secretary-General of the empty office of Maliki Maightadha either resign from the Cabinet for the position or sacrifice Secretariat to maintain his position of government.

وقال المصدر أن مجلس شورى الحزب سيجتمع خلال أيام لحل هذا الإشكال على ضوء رغبة المالكي بالاحتفاظ بأحد المنصبين.

The source said that the Shura Council, the party will meet within days to resolve the problem in the light of the desire to keep one Maliki positions.

وأوضح انه في حالة اعتذار المالكي عن الأمانة العامة فان هناك مرشحين قياديين آخرين لتولي المنصب هما الجعفري وعلي الأديب عضو مجلس النواب

He explained that in the case of al-Maliki apology from the Secretariat, there are other leading candidates for the position were Jaafari and the writer member of the House

Originally Posted by Adster

Just throwing my tuppence in here. Iraq could not currently support an initial $3.22 reval. No doubt they intend to return to that rate but not yet. But they certainly could 'cover' a 1 to 1 reval which I believe is the rate we will cash in.

That would be peachy-keen for me!!! Hope you are correct! And, for those people who are short-term like I am, waiting until Jan. 08 would minimize my capital gains tax when I file in 09!!! I think the rate you pay long term is based on your prior year's tax rate, which after business expenses and the standard deduction rate THIS year, we fell in the -26% category!!!! And with the CG rate going to 0% for those in the 10-15% brackets next year, Planning for the 2008–2010 Zero-Percent Adjusted Net Capital Gain Rate Looks like some won't pay ANY CG if they are in these brackets this year..hope I'm correct on THAT, too.

BOOB AL SHAM — Coalition forces assisted the city council here with the re-opening of the Boob Al Sham Girls Secondary School April 18 after a $100,000 renovation on the school building.
On the first day of school nearly 600 students from ages 12 to 17 came back to the facility that now has freshly painted walls, ceilings, new light fixtures, new restrooms, fans, water fountains and repaired roofs.

The renovation is just one of many projects the Boob Al Sham city council and 1st “Red Lion” Battalion 37th Field Artillery Regiment Soldiers have been bringing to fruition for the people here. Other projects for the town include improving electricity, a water treatment plant and improving sewage systems.

“When we talked to the city council and asked them what was the most important thing they wanted to do first as a project, they told us it was the education of their children,” said U.S. Army Capt. Evan Gotkin, battery commander, Battery C, 1st Bn., 37th FA Regt. during a dedication ceremony on the school’s basketball court. “They wanted to ensure their children had a clean, safe and well-built building before pursuing other projects like electricity, water and sewage.”

“They realized that Iraq does not have a bright future unless its children are educated,” added Gotkin. “This is a celebration of the city council who made this decision possible for your future and the future of Iraq.”

Throughout the morning, Soldiers handed out school supplies to the children. They also donated and put together a swing set on the school’s recess yard for the younger children to enjoy.

“We’re celebrating a small victory over terrorism by providing a good place for kids to be educated,” said U.S. Army 1st Lt. Burke Manwaring, a platoon leader for Battery C, 1st Bn., 37th FA Regt. “This is a great way for the public and the Coalition to interact and see each other on a personal level to build relationships and trust.”

Many of the school supplies given to the children in Boob Al Sham were donated through Operation Lion’s Castle by the families and friends of Soldiers in Iraq. It was established by the 1st Bn., 37th FA Regt. chaplain’s office in August to collect donations of clothes, school supplies, shoes and toys among other items to give to people in Iraq.

“There are a lot of generous donors out there in the states who care about what’s going on here and about the Iraqi people, so there are a lot of good things going on,” added U.S. Army Chaplain (Capt.) Tom Strong, the 1st Bn., 37th FA Regt. chaplain.

The re-opening of the school shows that Coalition forces are here to assist the Iraqi people not only militarily but through humanitarian aid.

“This is an opportunity for us to show encouragement to the kids and we’re here to let the people know that we’re not here to terrorize them; we’re here to help them help themselves,” said Strong.

(By Staff Sgt. Jon Cupp, 1st Cav. Div. Public Affairs)

U.S. PLANS 10 GATED NEIGHBORHOODS IN BAGHDAD


WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military plans to form at least 10 walled communities in Baghdad.

Officials said the U.S. military has already completed walls around some of the communities as part of the campaign to secure the Iraqi capital. They said at least 10 Baghdad neighborhoods have been or would become gated communities in an effort to prevent sectarian violence.

Officials said U.S. and Iraqi troops would conduct a census of each of the gated communities. They said residents would undergo biometric scanning and receive badges for entry.

A U.S. report said the walled neighborhoods were meant to protect Iraqi Sunnis from Shi'ite death squads. Construction has already begun on one wall, designed to span five kilometers.

Building a wall around oil
By Joseph A. KKechichian, Special to Gulf News



Two news reports from Iraq caught attention this week with ominous consequences. First, we learned that American military units were building a three-mile-long wall to separate one of Baghdad's Sunni enclaves from surrounding Shiite neighbourhoods, ostensibly to provide for sorely needed security. Second, a scientific study concluded that Iraq's oil reserves could be twice as large as previously estimated, with the new reserves mostly in Al Anbar province.

Since the War for Iraq - and this is really its true name - was about oil, less generous critics would recommend that it might be more practical to build walls around oil fields, rather than separate major cities into enclaves. Without being flippant about it, one wonders how many guards might be necessary to safeguard what is genuinely precious in Iraq, rather than what is truly defensible? Should Baghdad and its allies devise more temporary security plans, or should they embark on massive investments to help build an egalitarian society, where everyone benefits from its resources?

Contentious plan

Part of a contentious security plan, this latest wall aims to protect the minority Sunni community of Adhamiyah on the Eastern side of the River Tigris, which will then become a completely gated enclave. Traffic in and out of the compound would be by invitation, much like existing conditions for the so-called Green Zone, to hopefully reduce ethnic cleansing and gratuitous mayhem. One hopes but reality is an entirely different thing. Reports out of Iraq are rife with bad news with death and gore a daily occurrence. Moreover, previous efforts to separate ethnic groups produced no improvements to security, the single most important objective of the government and occupation forces. In fact, earth barriers erected around Samarra in 2005, ostensibly to prevent insurgents from entering and leaving the Sunni-dominated city, had little effect on the overall conditions prevailing there. Similar steps at both Tal Afar and Fallujah were temporarily successful before the area fell back under insurgent control. In short, these types of measures may appear to improve security conditions, and while they may even record temporary gains, in reality they are no more than band-aids on a cancerous wound.

From the Great Wall of China to the Berlin Wall, from Israel's Security Wall in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank to the Adhamiyah Wall, all such efforts proved futile in the past and are likely to emulate past fiascos. Walls create an illusion of security because their basic premise is to separate what cannot be separated. Indeed, all such initiatives - and they are just that - pretend to solve a problem whose solution lies elsewhere. In Adhamiyah, the solution is not in the street but inside certain mosques, around tribal majlises, on negotiating tables where every Iraqi is recognised as a valuable part of society. This was the gargantuan error of the previous regime that divided to rule. It surely cannot be the objective of this and successor governments if peace and stability are to ever return to Iraq.

Oil reserves

It is with this goal in mind - to restore Mesopotamia to a healthy footing as a nation-state -that one must assess the news about newly estimated potential oil reserves. According to the Englewood, Colorado-based consulting firm IHS, Inc, and reported on the front page of last Thursday's Financial Times of London, Iraq may hold an additional 100 billion barrels of oil, located in the western Al Anbar province. Added to the country's current reserve base of 115 billion barrels, Iraq would thus become the world's second proven depository after Saudi Arabia (375bb). These recoverable oil resources would thus surpass those of Iran (130bb), Kuwait (120bb), and the United Arab Emirates (100bb), respectively, the world's third, fourth and fifth largest proven and recoverable oil holdings. A 225bb estimate is significant and may go a long way to explain - but not justify - the 2003 war, now that (almost) no one believes in the imminent use of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" against Western targets or the lofty objective of "democratisation".

Given this immense wealth, Iraqi authorities should seriously think of protecting it, not with walls that will naturally protect billions of barrels under ground in Al Anbar, but with genuine plans to invest in Iraq's future. It would be grotesque to let such an opportunity escape, as the need to channel Iraq's wealth to rebuild infrastructure, especially its human capabilities, is so obvious. This wealth will surely provide what is essential for Iraq to, once again, make a claim for what all of its peoples always aspired towards: to add value to their society. It is, in fact, the ticket to remove walls, repatriate refugees, and provide for all of its population's requirements.



- Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is a Middle East affairs analyst and is the author of several books on the Gulf, including "Political Participation and Stability in the Sultanate of Oman", "The Just Prince: A Manual of Leadership", "Succession in Saudi Arabia" and "Oman and the World: The Emergence of an Independent Foreign Policy".

US envoy urges Iraq’s politicians to unite
(Reuters)

23 April 2007



BAGHDAD - America’s ambassador to Iraq urged the country’s feuding leaders on Monday to shelve what he called ‘I win, you lose’ politics to speed up progress on laws crucial to fostering national reconciliation.


Ryan Crocker, in his first news conference since arriving in Baghdad in late March, said the months ahead for Shia Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki’s nearly year-old fractious government of Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shia s would be critical.

‘Iraqis need to move away from zero sum thinking. The very definition of reconciliation means you’ve got to move away from an ‘I win you lose’ mentality to some form of broader accommodation,’ he said.

His comments echoed those of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who on visit to Iraq last week appeared to link the higher US troop levels there with faster progress by Iraq’s parliament in passing key laws by late summer.

Crocker warned that Sunni Islamist Al Qaeda was trying to trigger a fresh wave of violence between minority Sunnis and majority Shia s in a campaign of suicide and car bombings that has killed hundreds of people over the past several weeks.

Suicide bombers killed 26 people in a series of attacks across Iraq on Monday, including one in a restaurant near the heavily fortified, sprawling Green Zone compound in Baghdad, where Crocker was giving his news conference.

Wall controversy
In a new military tactic to stop the bombers, US troops have begun walling off some flashpoint neighbourhoods in Baghdad with concrete barriers, but the move has drawn sharp criticism from some Sunni and Shia political parties.

Prime Minister Maliki said on Sunday that he had ordered the US military to stop work on a 12-foot (3.6-metre) high barrier around the Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya.

Crocker defended the wall, saying it made ‘good security sense’ to build barriers where there were clear fault-lines and ‘avenues of attack’ between Sunni and Shia areas.

Neither he nor a US military spokesman, Rear Admiral Mark Fox, would say whether construction of the Adhamiya wall would be stopped. Fox said the erection of barriers around Baghdad’s markets and neighbourhoods was approved by Iraq’s government.

Tens of thousands of US and Iraqi troops have been deployed in Baghdad in a bid to curb rampant sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands in the past year.

While they have reduced the number of sectarian murders, there has been a surge in bombings inside and outside Baghdad.

The envoy said he had been in discussions with the Iraqi government and US officials in recent days on how to ‘take apart’ the car bomb cells who have defied a two-month-old security clampdown in the capital.

Crocker said that in conversations with Iraqi officials he had stressed ‘the American people need to see meaningful progress towards reconciliation in order to ensure that the support is there in the United States at this critical time’.

‘I think the Baghdad security plan ... can buy time, but what it does is buy time for what it ultimately has to be -- a set of political understandings among Iraqis. So I think these months ahead are going to be critical,’ Crocker said.

US officials have grown frustrated by the slow political progress on benchmark issues such as a new law on sharing revenues from Iraq’s vast oil wealth and rolling back a ban on former members of Saddam Hussein’s party holding public office.

Sunni Arabs who were dominant under Saddam Hussein feel marginalised in the new political landscape in which Shia s and minority Kurds have sought to cement their grip on power, with all sides showing a reluctance to compromise.

MENAFN)The Project Manager of the Gulf Region South (GRS) stated that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is currently working on a new power transmission project in An Nasiriyah, Iraq Portal reported.

He also went on to say that a 132 kilovolt overhead power line will be constructed within the area of an existing power line which is located between the An Nasiriyah Power Plant and the Ash Shatra substation.

The construction of the electricity line will develop the country's power system, reduce the over load on the primary power line and supply power to numerous local neighborhoods and the Nasiriyah Water Treatment Plant (NWTP).

(MENAFN) The Governor of Muthanna announced that over 50 percent of the construction of the electric power station in Samawah has been completed and that the project is one of the foremost strategic in the governorate, Iraq Directory reported.

He also added that the project is set to be functional by March of next year and will have a capacity of 60 megawatts of energy. The project's supervisor said that the station's fuel is supplied through a 6.5 km pipeline which has a diameter of five inches and the power station has four power components of 15 megawatts each.

The power station also consists of a room for its main engines which include the fuel purification system, fire-extinguishing systems, water purification unit, the drenat unit and 15 reservoirs with different capacities varying between 10 and 250 cubic meters. The total expense of the project is $120 million which has been financed through a Japanese grant.