Thread: Iraq/Dinar News. 09/05 to 01/14/07

Originally Posted by dinarsnope

After reading a second time I think it's saying he put in his resignation and then under American influence he didn't resign, but they don't know if it will happen again soon????

How will this effect the R/V? Thoughts????

This shouldn't effect the RV. The CBI is a seperate entity and has their own agenda.

Meetings to hammer out new political alliance
By Basil Addas, Correspondent



Baghdad: Days after the execution of Saddam Hussain, there has been a flurry of meetings between President Jalal Al Talabani, Vice-President Tariq Al Hashimi, Adnan Al Dulaimi, the Sunni Accord Front leader and Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, the Shiite coalition leader.

These meetings aim to build a new political alliance to better manage the political and security process.

Fouad Massoum, a prominent Kurdish leader told Gulf News, "The trend now is to establish a political alliance between the Kurds, the Sunni Islamic Party and the Shiite Sup-reme Council for Islamic Revolution."

He added, "Certain security and political conditions require redrawing of the alliance map to enable new alliance to play a greater role in improving security and stability."

Massoum said, "The new alliance must reunify moderate Sunnis and Shiites and exclude extremists from both sides."

Sources in Baghdad say that recent meetings between US President George W. Bush, Sunni leader Tariq Al Hashimi and Shiite leader Al Hakim in Washington have played a significant role in establishing this new political alliance.

But Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish leader close to Al Talabani, alluded to Shiite-Sunni differences concerning this new alliance, including the Sunnis' insistence on excluding Shiite leader Moqtada Al Sadr as opposed to Shiite leader Al Hakim who wants to include some moderates from the Al Sadr faction.

Sa'ad Jawad Qandil, a prominent figure in the Shiite coalition told Gulf News that the coalition is ready to make concessions to the Sunnis to bolster moves to establish a political alliance based on national interests and give the Sunnis a greater role in managing the security process.

Cabinet changes

A spokesman for the Al Sadr faction, Riyadh Al Nouri told Gulf News, "If that alliance crystallises, it will not marginalise the influence of the faction inside the parliament and the government."

He continued, "Some do think that the goal of this new alliance is to exclude the Al Sadr faction and I can assure you that no political force can achieve this goal."

Some observers believe that this new alliance is likely to be announced next March when Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki announces some important changes to his cabinet.

It is believed that Al Maliki will select ministers from the parties that would make up the new alliance including the ministers of interior, defence and national security.

Meanwhile Adnan Al-Dulaimi, the Sunni Accord Front leader, told Gulf News, "The Front will urge Al Maliki to select a new defence minister from the front as a guarantee that the Sunnis will play a greater role in security."

For his part, denied spokesman for the Iraqi government to Skinner's resignation Maliki. He told "Arab. Net ": We do not suffer from the American intervention in the affairs of the government but al-Maliki complains from the fact that the government coalition and Cabinet ministers are not working for Iraq, but ministers of Katham they represent a government separately and there is no spirit of coordination among them, Al-Maliki demanded a radical change leads to a working group led by one.

On his part, Iraqi MP Mahmoud Osman, who is close to President Jalal Talabani, told "Arab. Net "that Maliki suffer interference from the Americans and the militia in its work, and said," this government did not succeed did not solve the problems as what happened in the execution of Saddam was a scandal of the government means lack of control over things I do not know, and perhaps these issues will lead to the resignation of Al-Maliki. "

The Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the newspaper "AIPAC Street Journal" that America wants to leave office before the end of his term. Here, it should be noted that al-Maliki, who belongs to the Shiite community in Iraq, took the post of prime minister in Iraq in the month of May last after the rejection of the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs first candidate for the Shiite coalition.

The New York Times, America had published a confidential memorandum to the United States national security adviser Stephen Hadley points to the vulnerability of personal Maliki.

Facing Off Against Al-Sadr
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Posted GMT 1-4-2007 3:3:35
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Baghdad -- Capt. Erik Peterson knows fighters from the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada al-Sadr are all around, even though he can't see them. Peterson and his men usually catch only glimpses of the Mahdi Army while on the streets of Ghazaliya, a sprawling neighborhood in western Baghdad where Shi'ite militants are pressing a campaign to drive out Sunnis. Acting on neighborhood tips, Peterson's men search suspected Mahdi Army safe houses, which often have a green ribbon hanging on the front door. Sometimes the signs are even more obvious. One house thought to be a Mahdi Army fighting position looks like a makeshift combat outpost. Barbed wire snakes across the top of the outside walls. A tree in the yard has a ladder leading to a lookout offering a wide view of the street. The windows are filled with bricks. But during a surprise search inside, Peterson's men find only a family claiming to know nothing about the Mahdi Army fighters coming and going from the place. "A lot of times I feel almost like I'm trying to dig through water to pick something up," Peterson says of his daily hunt for Mahdi Army operatives in Ghazaliya. "I just keep coming up with water."

Across Baghdad, U.S. forces are fighting a kind of shadow war against the Mahdi Army, which American troops call "JAM" -- shorthand for the group's Arabic name Jaish al-Mahdi. The two sides rarely take shots directly at each other. When the Mahdi Army strikes, usually Sunnis under the protection of U.S. forces become casualties. Mosques explode. Houses burn. Mutilated bodies appear on streets that American troops claim to control. U.S. forces answer with raids on suspected Mahdi Army houses in neighborhoods like Shula, just north of Ghazaliya. Sometimes they uncover arms caches and make arrests. More often the doors they kick in lead to empty rooms where Mahdi Army fighters have left only tiny traces of themselves, such as undelivered threat letters and spent bullet casings.

The struggle has gone on like this for months, ever since the Mahdi Army began pushing westward across Baghdad in the spring with organized campaigns aimed at transforming Sunni neighborhoods into Shi'ite strongholds. But U.S. patience may be coming to an end in the wake of the execution of Saddam Hussein, whose passing left Sadr as the one visible face of opposition to American efforts in Iraq. A Pentagon report released in December described the Mahdi Army as the main threat to stability in Iraq. And the U.S. military upped the stakes with Sadr during a recent raid against the Mahdi Army in Najaf, where U.S. forces killed a senior Sadr aide, Sahib al-Amiri, in the same Shi'ite holy city where the cleric lives. But Sadr's forces continue to show their strength throughout Baghdad even so, driving the daily rhythm of sectarian violence in the city with orchestrated attacks against Sunnis. Sadr even managed to cast an ominous voice into Hussein's death chamber, where Sadr loyalists among the government witnesses of the hanging chanted "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada" as a taunt to the former dictator moments before he died. The scene added yet another notch in the tension building between U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army, leaving many wondering how long the two sides will eye each other before flying into open conflict.

In Ghazaliya, battle lines are already forming. The Mahdi Army began a southward push through the neighborhood in the summer, clearing Sunnis from the area house by house (see story). U.S. forces hope to halt the Mahdi Army's advance, which shows no signs of slowing. American soldiers are throwing up roadblocks around the front-line area in an effort to stop southward incursions by Shi'ite death squads using cars. Platoons patrol the area in Humvees and on foot as well trying to deter both sides from fighting. But the patrols can only cover so much ground, and gunfights often erupt along the streets, marking Ghazaliya's no-man's land.

Peterson says the fighting usually starts with an attack by the Mahdi Army. A bookish officer who grew up in northwest Indiana, Peterson has made a study of the Mahdi Army over the past several years. Shortly after the U.S. invasion, Peterson was a commander in a tank company that oversaw Sadr City, the Shi'ite slum on the east side of Baghdad the Mahdi Army calls home. Later Peterson spent time in Najaf, where U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army clashed openly in 2004 in battles many on both sides see as unfinished. Peterson says the Mahdi Army, as an organization, has grown more sophisticated politically and tactically over the years, morphing from a band of thugs led by a reckless young cleric into something much scarier.

"I perceive the JAM to be like the Nazi Party," says Peterson, drawing parallels between Germany in the years before World War II and Iraq today. Peterson sees the political figures loyal to Sadr deftly taking advantage of weaknesses in a nascent parliamentary system. Meanwhile, henchmen exert power on the streets through terror that comes with a brand name and a famous face. "You did have the Gestapo in there," Peterson says of the Nazis. "And if I look at the JAM, that's what they got going on right now."

What, exactly, U.S. forces can do now to thwart the ongoing rise of Sadr's forces remains uncertain as the White House mulls its next move in Iraq. More than a few U.S. soldiers would welcome a chance to take the fight against the Mahdi Army into Sadr City, where Shi'ite death squads find safe harbor. Many troops feel the only way to deal with Sadr's army is to take it apart. But the Mahdi Army is only one part army anymore. The political wing of Sadr's ranks includes 30 parliamentarians and four ministry heads from the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose shaky hold on authority loosened further still after the Sadr bloc launched a boycott in November that continues. That means any decision to confront Sadr is as much political as it is tactical. "We're in the capital," says Lt. Col. James Nickolas, the commander of U.S. forces in Ghazaliya, who plans simply to hold the line against the Mahdi Army until the White House offers a new strategy. "Politics weighs a little bit more heavily."

By Mark Kukis
Breaking News, Analysis, Opinions, Multimedia and Blogs | TIME Magazine

© 2007, Assyrian International News Agency

He's not resigning, he's RETIRING

Originally Posted by $onedaysoon$

Ensuring Economic Stability. USAID programs assist Iraq’s Ministry of Finance, COSIT, and Central Bank in meeting IMF requirements. These efforts are expected to return $480 million in the IMF Standby Agreement in December 2005 as well as debt forgiveness of $27 billion from the Paris Club in March 2006. Working with the Ministry of Finance, USAID introduced the new dinar to promote national unity and allow a functioning monetary policy. Currently, 4.62 trillion new Iraqi dinars are circulating.

Connecting Iraq to the Global Economy. The private sector is the engine for sustainable job creation and economic growth. To help guide policy reform, USAID’s Investor Roadmap analyzes constraints to investment. The Investment Promotion Agency, recently established with USAID assistance, will serve as a resource to international investors. USAID worked with the MoF to develop a Competitiveness Study, helping integrate efforts to create a robust private sector that fosters job creation

Untitled

It’s little revelations like this one here that cause me to smile. Here is a document that admits circulation levels are half the official record for that timeframe. Possibly the numbers from the record are fudged to keep the nosey at bay? Could they be half stated record? Plus considering the huge amount of dinar removed over the past few months, well far be it from me to gauge this potential exchange rate level. In light of this it would appear that the good solid numbers of years gone by are not so difficult to reach; no matter what formula you subscribe to.



Here is the CBI aggregate record:
http://cbiraq.org/Monetary%20Aggregates.xls

Broad Money ( M2 ) Developments Dec.2004- May 2006
Billion ID.
2004 2005 2006
Dec. Jan. Feb March April May June July August Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May
M2 12,254 12,474 12,899 13,650 13,732 13,888 13,792 14,036 13,278 13,138 14,051 13,272 14,684 15,267 15,826 16,701 16,842 17,165
Currency outside banks 7,163 7,578 8,278 8,561 8,333 8,411 8,342 8,334 8,426 8,373 8,669 8,487 9,113 9,448 9,518 9,633 9,439 9,388
Deposits Component of M2 5,091 4,896 4,621 5,089 5,399 5,477 5,450 5,702 4,852 4,765 5,382 4,785 5,571 5,819 6,308 7,068 7,403 7,777
Foreign currency deposits( not included in M2 ) 1,064 796 1,562 2,135 1,837 3,290 4,224 4,325 4,341 4,599 4,656 4,616 4,501 4,588 4,424 4,742 4,802 4,547

Slovak troops to withdraw from Iraq by mid-January
Last Updated(Beijing Time):2007-01-04 15:00

Slovak troops will start withdrawing from Iraq in the first half of January, the country's military spokesman Milan Vanga said on Wednesday.
The Slovak sappers, chiefly in charge of the bomb disposal in Iraq, will leave the camp Echo near the Iraqi town of Diwaniya to the south of Bagdad, and first move to the neighboring Kuwait, said Vanga.

He added that the second part of the contingent will leave at the end of January and the beginning of February.

The troops will finish their withdrawal by the end of February.

A total of 11 Slovak army officers will remain in Iraq after the withdrawal, who will help train the Iraqi armed forces, Vanga said.

Prime Minister Robert Fico's Smer-Social Democracy Party and the nationalist Slovak National Party, a coalition member, repeatedly pledged to withdraw the Slovak troops from Iraq last year. The decision of withdrawal was made last October.

Slovakia deployed over 100 non-combat troops in Iraq in 2003, with most of them engaged in dismantling land mines.

Published: 06/01/2007 12:00 AM (UAE)

Call to ban display of Al Sadr's poster
By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief



Manama: Two Islamist lawmakers have called on traffic authorities to enforce a ban on the display of foreign iconic figures on car shades, saying that they sent the wrong message to youngsters.

The call was made following the appearance on several Bahrain-registered cars of posters of Iraqi cleric and Mahdi Army leader Moqtada Al Sadr.

"This display, bound to intensify in the absence of formal official reactions to the latest developments, sends the wrong message to passionate young people," Member of Parliament Shaikh Mohammad Khalid said in a press statement. "We will soon see displays of dangerous quotes and sectarian messages from the radical leader and if the government does not react, we will also see the posters of Al Sadr in every street," said the deputy who, like many Bahrainis, is wary of a plot to radicalise Bahrain.

Bahraini drivers often use their vehicles to show their feelings and passions about sports affiliations and political developments.

The summer saw the display of pictures and messages from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who gained legendary status in the kingdom during the war against the Israelis in Lebanon.

The death of leading Bahraini Shiite cleric figure Abdul Amir Al Jamri in mid-December prompted drivers to put his pictures on windscreens.

Such emotional displays are often limited in time, but MP Jassem Al Saeedi rejected support for Al Sadr, saying that he was a fervent sectarian leader whose pictures in the kingdom proved the 'strong influence of foreign movements on Bahraini youth.'

"We have in Bahrain our own clerics and scholars and they should be the ones to be emulated, and not people abroad who are attempting to deceive our young people. The interior ministry has a duty to put an end to all the ominous activities that would hurt Bahrain," he said.

Al Sadr, a young firebrand who lacks the decades-long religious training required of the highest-ranking Shiite authorities, does not have many followers in Bahrain.

However, he has now gained hero's status among some Bahrainis for his perceived role in the hanging of former president Saddam Hussain whose fate has raised tensions between his supporters and opponents in Bahrain.

U.S. may dump PM



By Mursi Abu Tareq



Azzaman, January 4, 2007



The U.S. is frustrated with the government of Nouri al-Maliki and is seeking ways to dump him, well-placed sources say.



The prime minister has failed drastically in efforts to reconcile the country’s warring factions and is even thought to be unable to solve difference among his own ruling Shiite-dominated coalition.



Maliki, the sources say, has caused the U.S. deep embarrassment through his government’s inefficiency in running the country and the way former leader Saddam Hussein was put to death.



Maliki himself does not seem to be interested to continue and is reported to have openly expressed a willingness to his advisers to step aside even before the end of his term.



The U.S. publicly backs Maliki but covertly it is hugely disappointed by the performance of his government, the sources say.



Maliki has his own grievances. The sources say he blames his failures squarely on the U.S. which is still the real decision maker in the country.



Maliki and his government complain they lack the authority to redeploy an army battalion or send Iraqi troops into battle as decisions like these are still in U.S. commanders’ hands.



The Iraqi government seems sovereign on the surface while the real reins of power rest with the U.S.



But the U.S., though unhappy with Maliki, lacks a clear picture of what to do next and the sources said even U.S. President George Bush is in a dilemma over what strategy to adopt.



There is no guarantee that dumping the prime minister or reshuffling the government will improve the security situation.



Saddam Hussein’s execution is said to have dashed any hopes for reconciliation as the country’s minority Sunnis now feel more estranged than ever.



Millions of Iraqis who oppose the U.S. and Maliki government see the execution as an act of revenge rather than justice.



The execution, though ordered by the government and carried out by its own militias, has further deepened the sectarian divide.



It has also deepened U.S. quagmire in the country. The Sunnis, the backbone of anti-U.S. resistance, will intensify their attacks on U.S. troops and their supporters in Iraq.



The U.S. quagmire is evident in the lack of a clear strategy. Washington is not at all happy with the Shiite-dominated coalition running the country but at the same time it cannot come to terms with its nemeses, the Sunnis, who are determined to force it to cut and run.



The U.S. is a victim of its own disastrous policies and there is no guarantee that whatever strategy it takes will help it out of its quagmire.



These might very difficult days for President George Bush as he contemplates a new strategy for his troops in Iraq.

Originally Posted by michaeljordan

Will someone please remind me why we think that after the iraq holiday we will have an RV? Why can't it be just that they are on holiday and not that something fishy is going on during this time? Let's face it folks, it's as good a time if any to RV, but more than likely the auctions are not happening because they are on holiday. I don't think that there are people in the government or CBI that are able to do all this sneaking around trying to RV without anyone knowing. With as many investigators as we have here on Rolclub, someone would know something prior to an RV. JMT.

I would not like to be around if the banks closed for all this time in Australia, America, England or anywhere else in the world. There would be anarchy for sure! Something is up and I am sure it will be a good thing for us.