Defense & Security Archive

Editor’s Note: Today, April 9, is the five-year anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. Five years ago, about 30 kilometers West of Baghdad, just past the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison, I was part of a grisly find that left no doubt in my mind about the rights and wrongs of invading Iraq. There, nearly 1,000 political prisoners were buried in secret graves at the al-Qarah cemetery. All had died in custody. Ten to 15 corpses at a time were buried by Mohammad Moshan Mohammad, the gravedigger who told me how the dead had arrived during the three years before […]

Last June, local “auxiliary” police in southern Afghanistan, fighting alongside Dutch troops, helped repel a major Taliban assault on the lush Chora Valley. In the aftermath of the fighting, the Dutch commander singled out the local cops for praise. “Their morale is very high,” said Lt. Col. Gino Van Der Voet. But now NATO commanders in Afghanistan have decided to end local police training, fearing that cops in remote areas — most of whom once fought for tribal warlords — might one day turn their weapons against Kabul and the U.S.-led coalition. The change in policy perhaps signals a shift […]

MEXICO CITY — Muckraking journalist Lydia Cacho initially thought hit men working for narcotics trafficking gangs were going to kill her when she was apprehended outside of her Cancún office in December 2005. But the unidentified gunmen were actually police officers, who immediately transported her more than 900 miles to a prison cell in Puebla city, where she was jailed on defamation charges. The cops allegedly taunted and assaulted her during the overnight trip, threatening her life and sticking a gun in her mouth. Their two-car convoy stopped while passing the Campeche Sound, Cacho says, and one of the gunmen […]

The Defense Department late last month delivered its 4,000th Mine-Resistant, Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle to the Southwest Asia war zone, a rapid pace of deliveries that reflects the importance DOD places on its top procurement priority. Months after U.S. Transportation Command began shipping massive numbers of MRAPs by ship to ports in the Middle East, sealift has yet to surpass airlift as the primary means of delivery. At the end of March, more than 1,700 MRAPs had been delivered overseas from the United States by large container ship — but nearly 2,300 had been delivered by Air Force C-5 and […]

Something radical has begun in Iraq, but it has flown under the radar of the media and the public. For the first time since 1970, the U.S. Army is court-martialing a civilian; and not an American civilian, but a Canadian civilian. Charged with aggravated assault for attacking another contractor during an altercation, this civilian contractor now faces trial by a military court, with a jury, judge and defense counsel all in uniform, without the benefit of indictment by grand jury, and with a potential federal criminal conviction awaiting him at the end of the process. To understand why this is […]

“We have to underline NATO’s enduring commitment to finishing Europe’s unfinished business — but also its relevance to emerging challenges, such as proliferation threats and vulnerabilities in our energy supply.” Thus remarked NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at a conference sponsored by the Center for International Relations in Warsaw on March 13. Leaders of the 26 member countries are meeting in Bucharest this week to increase NATO’s collective defense capabilities and deepen transatlantic ties. While the alliance has adopted a basic approach to guarding energy infrastructure, plans to widen the scope of a NATO energy security policy will […]

George W. Bush completed his first (and probably last) trip to Ukraine as president this week. Although the two countries signed a Trade and Investment Cooperation Agreement and other bilateral accords during the visit, Bush’s public meetings in Kiev were dominated by questions concerning both governments’ desire for Ukraine to strengthen ties with NATO, despite strong opposition from other alliance members, Russian leaders, and many Ukrainians themselves. “Your nation has made a bold decision, and the United States strongly supports your request” for a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP), Bush told a news conference following talks with Ukrainian President Viktor […]

The unnerving footage of the black-turbaned, hirsute, pudgy-faced, snarling, 30-something Moqtada al-Sadr has reappeared on television screens across the world. Wrapped in his black cloak and eyes pointed down at a script, he rattles off his statement to a bouquet of microphones, flanked by a posse of grinning henchmen, occasionally raising a finger for emphasis. His gravitas is his very presence: an outlaw who dares show his face. With his new nine-point plan, he is Iraq’s most important politician currently outside the government, exercising a seeming ability to turn a full-scale insurgency on or off at will. Gen. David Petraeus […]