Iraqi soldiers secure the area around Basra Palace, in preparation for a formal handover ceremony transferring security responsibilities for the province from the British forces to the central Iraqi government, Dec. 15.

Sunday’s (Dec. 15) handover of Basra province, the last of four controlled by British forces since the 2003 invasion, was heralded by the British and Iraqi governments as a great step forward.
Local forces were now capable of looking after the security of the entire south east of their country, potentially one of the Middle East’s richest regions.
In truth, the decision was dictated by British domestic politics and by the demands of British military commanders. Britain’s continuing presence in Iraq was becoming increasingly unpopular and counter-productive.
More than a year ago, General Sir Richard Dannatt, newly appointed head of the army, said that Britain should withdraw from Iraq “soon“ ,because its troops were regarded with growing hostility, with their presence exacerbating the difficulties Britain was experiencing around the world.
It has also mounted the pressure on the army when it is engaged in increasingly intense fighting in Afghanistan.
So why the delay, and why now? Britain had to convince the United States that a reduction in the number of British soldiers in southern Iraq and ending their counter-insurgency combat role on the streets of Basra was essential, politically and practically. And for months, if not years, British army commanders have been decrying what they called the Iraqi “dependency culture.“
Setting a timescale for handing over responsibility for security in Basra province “concentrated people’s minds in Iraq,“ as one senior Foreign Office official put it. Baghdad sent Generals Mohan al-Furayji and Jalil Khalaf to command the Iraqi army and police forces in Basra.
Britain claimed that it had trained enough Iraqi security personnel--most of the 30,000 in total in Basra--to create capable autonomous forces. The credibility of the claim has yet to be seriously tested.
Senior military officials, including Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, admit that expectations about what they could achieve in southern Iraq were exaggerated.
“Our mission was not to make the place look somewhere green and peaceful,“ he said in the summer.
He was speaking at the time troops were preparing to leave the Basra Palace, their last remaining base in the city, and one they would have left much earlier--saving more than 25 British soldiers’ lives--had it not been for U.S. pressure and the apparent judgment then that Iraqi forces were not ready.
Despite Sunday’s handover, 4,500 British troops will still be based at Basra airport and the 2,500 which Prime Minister Gordon Brown says will be there in the spring are likely to remain at least until 2009, partly at the U.S.’ behest.
What can they achieve? Further training and mentoring of Iraqi forces, the government says. They would also step in and help in the event of a crisis--something British military commanders and ministers desperately hope won’t happen. What have they achieved?
When they entered Basra in 2003, they handed out sweets and water and helped to clean the streets. Now they cannot safely enter the town even in armoured vehicles.
Iraqi security chiefs and politicians say the British should go and that when they do security will improve significantly.
This week could prove a turning point in Basra, with British troops allowed to twiddle their thumbs while the Iraqis maintain law and order (for the first time since Saddam Hussein was toppled) and U.K. aid money reaping rewards from such an oil-rich, strategically important region. Or it could prove to be a humiliating and empty end to a four-year occupation.
Hindu.com

A Somali woman prepares a meal for her children in their makeshift at the Elash Biyaha Internally Displaced persons camp, south of Mogadishu, Nov. 19.

Approximately three months ago, Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, pressured out Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi. Surprisingly, this political rearrangement of deckchairs generated many noisy headlines.
For the Somali people, the Ethiopian invasion of December 2006 could not have started at a worse time.
Defeating the Union of Islamic Courts and propping up the Transitional Federal Government was Ethiopia’s immediate rationale for invading Somalia. The larger goal was to forge a partnership between Washington and Addis Ababa in order to execute the “war on terror“.
A year later, this mission has not been accomplished. Instead, the war on terror has become the terror of war being visited on the Somali people.
Admittedly, a handful of Somalis have benefited from the invasion, specifically the dozens of warlords previously driven out of Mogadishu by the Union of Islamic Courts.
These warlords, the instigators of Somalia’s current civil conflict, were reinstalled in their fiefdoms riding on the backs of Ethiopia’s invading tanks. As a result, the reviled checkpoints and roadblocks used to bully cash out of unarmed civilians were reintroduced in southern Somalia, particularly Mogadishu.
To keep the invasion and Africa’s worst humanitarian catastrophe going, heavy and modern weapons, including airplanes were used. One was a United States Air Force AC-130 gunship that attacked and killed Somali villagers and countless livestock in the hunt for three foreign men suspected for the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Africa, who yet remain at large.
Among those caught in the chaos were visiting Somalis from the diaspora. In the period between June and December 2006, Somali technocrats returned to their native country to partake in the rebuilding in the six-month period of peace and stability that was established under the rule of the Union of Islamic Courts.
The diaspora arrived with the intention to give back to the land and the people they left behind and contribute to rebuilding their lives.
Unfortunately, extraordinary rendition programs were the gratitude they received; in that, the Transitional Federal Government, Kenya, Ethiopia, and the United States can all be implicated. Young men as young as 12 were taken out of their homes in the dead of the night, blindfolded, and carried off to unknown destinations.
Fleeing refugees of mostly women and children met a similar fate. Unfortunately, these refugees had nowhere to escape to, as Kenya decided to close its borders and deny them entry. This paved the way to the current nightmare scenario: 1 million internally displaced persons, mostly children and women, without any provision or protection from the United Nations or other humanitarian agencies or nongovernmental organizations.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said border security measures should not impair the ability of deserving Somali civilians to enter Kenya to seek safety and protection as refugees. The neighboring nations have a humanitarian responsibility to safeguard these refugees.
On Oct. 30, 40 international N.G.O.’s released a joint statement ominously warning against a gathering cloud of humanitarian catastrophe in Somalia and urging the international community to respond to this man-made calamity as the Ethiopian forces and militias loyal to the Transitional Federal Government callously prevent the delivery of assistance, and bluntly stating that “there is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in south central Somalia’’.
Meanwhile, Ethiopian forces continue their shelling of Mogadishu neighborhoods, having killed, according to the Elman Human Rights group, 7,000 civilians, mostly women, children, and the elderly, between January and November of 2007.
The current Somali nightmare was exacerbated by the systematic assassination of Somali independent media groups who are not pro Transitional Federal Government and the Ethiopian occupation. And the silence of the international community on this matter is deeply disturbing and sadly deafening.
Worldpress.org

Millions of eastern Europeans will now be able to enjoy moving across the EU without a passport, from the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic coast in southern Portugal.
The far Right says Germany will become a transit land for criminals from Ukraine, Russia, and the former Yugoslavia.
Hans, a 25-year-old German border guard, was putting his back into dismantling a roadside barricade, part of the border post that has separated Germany and Poland for more than six decades.
“They shouldn’t be doing this so soon, according to my grandfather, who has seen the war and communism and thinks it’ll bring us nothing positive,“ he said, sweating despite the sharp cold, near the border town of Frankfurt an der Oder.
“But I’m of the opinion [that] the fewer barriers the better, and we can’t discriminate against the Poles forever“.
Hans was talking just hours before the borders were due to be flung open with displays of fireworks, street parties, and brass bands, paving the way for Poland and seven other former eastern bloc countries and Malta to join the European Union’s borderless Schengen zone.
Hans and his Polish colleague Witek, 40, take another view. “It’s a simple fact, I like travelling,“ Witek said. “I’ve so far been to 10 countries
in Europe. But there
are quite a few left to
tick off“.
Ms. Stankowska, a 29-year-old marketing consultant who set up business in Frankfurt four years ago, said she hoped it would be the last time she would have to show her passport at the border and “for old times’ sake“ would ask the guard for a final souvenir stamp.
“It’s symbolic,“ she said. “I’ve felt like a normal citizen of the EU since [Poland] joined in 2004 and I’ve travelled across the continent without needing a visa, but this is still a historic day, which I hope to tell my grandchildren about some day.“
As from Friday, Ms. Stankowska and millions of other citizens of eastern Europe will become part of a club of 400 million who are able to enjoy moving across the EU without a passport, from the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic coast in southern Portugal.
For years it was the Germans, many of whom had themselves spent decades under communism, who were seen to have the best advantages from the fall of the Berlin Wall. They drove into Poland and the Czech Republic for everything from their haircuts to their petrol and weekly grocery shopping, so advantageous was the cost disparity to them.
Now the prices are so similar that the journey is hardly considered worth it for the paltry savings, such as the 10 cents on a litre of petrol.
Instead, for many in the German border towns along the 779-mile frontier with the Czech Republic and Poland, the mood is one of uncertainty.
Security firms have reported that their revenue is up threefold on last year as people along the border erect steel security fences around their properties - fearful of reports that crime will increase.
Those who can afford such an outlay have had house alarms installed, while police security experts have advised those who are worried but unable to afford the sophisticated options to go for the mesh covers like Hans’ grandfather.
Neighbourhood watch schemes have been springing up with even more enthusiasm than they did immediately after 1989, particularly in the regions adjacent to the Bohemian forests of the Czech Republic.
In the town of Ebersbach, Christian Kretschmar, a retired medical consultant, has established the citizens’ initiative “Border Security.“ Its members agree to swap information about any strange movements they observe, communicating via walkie talkies and with a direct link to the police.
The group persuaded the local mayor to abolish the dog tax for those living in the border region so that they could acquire guard dogs at minimal expense.
“Before the collapse of the Iron Curtain, there was hardly any criminality here. We were both living under communism, and we helped the Czechs and they helped us. they provided the sardines in oil and apples while we provided them with vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances“.
But over the past two decades, he continued, the difference in standards of living between the two sides had grown considerably and this had led to large amounts of petty crime--from the theft of garden gnomes to cars.
Guardian.co.uk