The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Syrian troops deploy on road to Turkish border
- Afghan troop plan is political gamble for Obama
- INSTANT VIEW - Obama plan for withdrawing troops for Afghanistan
| Syrian troops deploy on road to Turkish border Posted: 22 Jun 2011 08:50 PM PDT AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops have deployed on a main road leading from the commercial hub of Aleppo to Turkey as protests expand to border regions, residents said, while Ankara grows increasingly critical of President Bashar al-Assad's military crackdown. On the 100th day of an uprising against Assad's autocratic rule, soldiers and secret police backed by armoured vehicles set up road blocks on Wednesday along the road, a major route for container traffic from Europe to the Middle East, and arrested tens of people in the Heitan area north of Aleppo, Syria's second city, residents said. The armoured personnel carriers reached the area of Deir al-Jamal, 25 km (15 miles) from the Turkish border, they added. "The regime is trying to pre-empt unrest in Aleppo by cutting off logistics with Turkey. A lot of people here use Turkish mobile phone networks to escape Syrian spying on their calls and have family links with Turkey, there are also many old smuggling routes that people could use to flee," one of the residents, a physician, told Reuters by telephone. Northern regions bordering Turkey have seen growing protests demanding political freedoms and an end to 41 years of Assad family rule, following military assaults on towns and villages in the Jisr al-Shughour region of Idlib province to the west of Aleppo that have sent over 10,000 refugees fleeing to Turkey. Central neighbourhoods of Aleppo, a largely Sunni city with a significant minority population, has been largely free of protest, in part due to a heavy security presence and a continuing alliance between Sunni business families and Syria's ruling Alawite hierarchy. But activists said security forces killed one protester in Aleppo on Friday and arrested 218 students at Aleppo University, scene of now daily protests, in the last three days. In Idlib, rights groups say Syrian security forces have killed more than 130 civilians and arrested 2,000 in a scorched earth campaign to crush dissent in the province. The United Nations High Commissioner for refugees said that since June 7, some 500-1,500 people have fled across Syria's 840 km (520 mile) border with Turkey daily. A country of 20 million, Syria is largely Sunni, and the protests have been biggest in mostly Sunni rural areas and towns and cities, as opposed to mixed areas. However, analysts say the risks are high that Syria, an ally of Iran and Lebanon's Shi'ite Hezbollah guerrillas and with a sectarian mix of Sunni, Kurdish, Alawite and Christians, could slip into war. Sunni Turkey has also become increasingly critical of the Syrian president, after previously backing him in his drive to seek peace with Israel and improve relations with the United States, while Assad opened the Syrian market to Turkish goods. Turkey had warned Assad against repeating mass killings in cities witnessed during the rule of his father in the 1980s. A senior Turkish official said on Sunday that Assad had less than a week to start implementing long-promised political reforms before foreign intervention began, without elaborating. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem on Wednesday played down any possibility of international intervention against his country. He asked Turkey to reconsider its response to a speech this week by Assad in which Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Assad's promises of reforms were not enough. In his third speech since the start of the uprising, in which rights groups say 1,300 civilians have been killed, Assad promised reforms but these were seen by opponents and world leaders as too little, too late and too vague. Assad issued an amnesty the next day, which human rights lawyers said covered mainly drug dealers, tax evaders and thieves across Syria. Political prisoners, who were not included in the amnesty rioted at a jail in the northeastern province of Hasaka on Tuesday night after seeing criminals being set free. Police used teargas, live bullets and batons to control the prison, two residents of Hasaka said. (Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| Afghan troop plan is political gamble for Obama Posted: 22 Jun 2011 08:50 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's new troop drawdown plan for Afghanistan may be too slow to satisfy the growing ranks of war-weary U.S. lawmakers and too fast to sit well with military leaders.
But Obama is gambling that a promise to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops this year and 23,000 more by the end of next summer will be enough to buy time to prevent Afghanistan from causing serious damage to his 2012 re-election prospects. The troop reductions he unveiled in a prime-time televised speech on Wednesday night are deeper and quicker than the Pentagon sought, reflecting pressure to start laying out an endgame in a long, costly and increasingly unpopular war. At the same time, the speed and scope of the drawdown fall short of the demands of many of Obama's own Democratic allies and a growing number of Republicans advocating a more accelerated pullout from Afghanistan. Unease in Washington over the decade-long war has escalated amid rising worries about tight budgets and high unemployment, Americans' chief concerns and the issues likely to drive voters in the next presidential election. Although polls show Afghanistan still registering relatively low on the the list of the U.S. electorate's priorities, Obama and his aides are taking heed of mounting skepticism about the war, which is costing the United States $110 billion a year. A Pew Research poll released on Tuesday found a record 56 percent of Americans favored bringing the 100,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan home as quickly as possible. By sending Americans a message he is moving to wind down the war, Obama may gain breathing room to avoid serious political repercussions as he steps up his re-election bid. The White House is also hoping to placate liberal Democrats, a key support base for Obama, whose 2008 election victory was driven in part by his opposition to the Iraq war. "America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home," Obama said, answering critics on both sides of the political aisle who have insisted the United States needs to put its biggest emphasis on solving problems at home. BOOST IN ELECTION SEASON? The White House may even be banking on Obama getting a boost when voters see troops streaming home from Afghanistan next summer around the time of the Democratic National Convention in the final run-up to the November election. Even with the withdrawal of 33,000 troops by then, the United States will still have nearly twice as many forces in Afghanistan than when Obama took office in 2009. Obama's Afghanistan withdrawal strategy carries peril as well as promise. The Pentagon brass had argued for a more modest initial drawdown to avert the threat of a reversal of recent gains on the ground against a Taliban-led insurgency. General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was also wary of leaving too fast and Obama's move went beyond the options he presented to the president last week. White House advisers, led by Vice President Joe Biden, had used the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to buttress the argument the time was ripe to scale back the counterinsurgency campaign spearheaded by the 30,000 extra "surge" troops Obama ordered deployed in late 2009. Obama's Afghanistan decision also comes at a time of rising congressional doubts about U.S. participation in the three-month-old NATO-led air war in Libya. Reflecting discontent with his Afghanistan policy from his party's anti-war wing, Democratic Representative Jim McGovern said, "What the president needs to tell us is how -- and when -- he's going to bring all the troops home." There is also the political risk of appearing to have overruled his commanders by failing to take their recommendation for a slower pace of withdrawal in the transition toward ending the NATO combat mission in 2014. But Obama may feel he can afford to weather any dispute with the Pentagon brass after gaining greater credibility as commander in chief by ordering the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden last month in Pakistan. His first chance to test how well the drawdown plan sits with the military will be on Thursday, when he visits Fort Drum in upstate New York, home to an army unit that has been among the most frequently deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. (Reporting by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Peter Cooney) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| INSTANT VIEW - Obama plan for withdrawing troops for Afghanistan Posted: 22 Jun 2011 06:46 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama announced a plan on Wednesday to begin withdrawing 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by year's end, followed by about 23,000 more by the end of next summer. The following is reaction to Obama's plan:
HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: I am pleased the president recognizes that success in Afghanistan is paramount. Continuing to degrade al Qaeda's capabilities in Afghanistan and the surrounding region must take priority over any calendar dates. It's important that we retain the flexibility necessary to reconsider troop levels and respond to changes in the security environment should circumstances on the ground warrant. It is my hope that the President will continue to listen to our commanders on the ground as we move forward. JEFF DRESSLER, A MILITARY ANALYST AT THE INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR: My sense is that the military in general was in favour of a much smaller withdrawal. Something they could have lived with was a couple thousand troops. But the fact is the conditions on the ground don't merit any sort of withdrawal -- it's not time to be pulling out a substantive amount of troops. There's a lot that has to be done in the east and you're not out of the woods in the south yet. LAWRENCE KORB, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS AND FORMER ASSISTANT DEFENSE SECRETARY: I think it's also important that you send a signal to the government of Afghanistan that they are going to have to step up and take over. ... You're also balancing this against other U.S. interests. If the United States doesn't have any money, we're not going to be able to protect our interest in others areas. It's obviously going to save some money. CHRISTOPHER PREBLE, DIRECTOR OF FOREIGN POLICY STUDIES, CATO INSTITUTE Despite reports that the president's decision signals a move toward a narrowly focused counterterrorism mission, the fact is nearly 70,000 troops will remain in Afghanistan after this drawdown. Such a force is unnecessary, and a far less costly alternative is available to us. We could keep pressure on the Taliban, and deny al Qaeda a sanctuary, with perhaps as few as 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. We should be moving rapidly in that direction. President Obama hasn't been, and this announcement suggests that he won't. SENATOR RICHARD LUGAR, SENIOR REPUBLICAN ON SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: No rational review would commit nearly 100,000 troops and $100 billion a year to Afghanistan. The country does not hold that level of strategic value for us, especially at a time when our nation is confronting a debt crisis and our armed forces are being strained by repeated combat deployments. REPRESENTATIVE JIM MCGOVERN, MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRAT, AUTHOR OF VARIOUS RESOLUTIONS CALLING FOR A PLAN TO LEAVE AFGHANISTAN: The president is right that we need to shift our strategy in Afghanistan. But a counter-terrorism strategy doesn't need 70,000 boots on the ground, any more than it needed 100,000 boots on the ground. What the president needs to tell us is how -- and when -- he's going to bring all the troops home. TODD HARRISON, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS: With the faster drawdown that is being proposed, they (the administration) will actually save about $17 billion in 'FY12 compared to what they had requested. That will bring the war budget down by about 15 percent, so that's a significant reduction in war funding. Relative to the overall DOD (Department of Defense), it's not that much of a reduction and relative to the overall federal budget and the deficit, this does not make much of a difference. (Compiled by JoAnne Allen; Editing by Peter Cooney) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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