Ivory Coast/Civil War: Pro-Ouattara forces take Ivorian capital

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara seized the capital of Ivory Coast and advanced toward the coastal cities of Abidjan and San Pedro on Wednesday, in a dramatic push aimed at toppling incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo.

The head of presidential claimant Ouattara's rival goverment said Gbagbo had just "hours" to leave power peacefully, after months of negotiations aimed at dislodging him in the aftermath of an election late last year failed.

"The time for dialogue and ceasefires is over... (Gbagbo) has a few hours to leave power peacefully," Guillaume Soro, Ouattara's premier, told French radio RFI.

Resisting pressure from the African Union and the West, Gbagbo has refused to step down since the poll last November, which U.N.-certified results showed he lost to Ouattara by an eight-point margin.

At least 472 people have been killed since the standoff began, according to the United Nations, and a humanitarian crisis is worsening, with a million people displaced from the commercial capital Abidjan alone.

Ivory Coast is the world's largest grower of cocoa, and curbs imposed since the conflict began have paralyzed exports, sending futures prices to 30-year highs.

Cocoa futures hit their lowest point in more than two months on Wednesday as advances by Ouattara's troops raised hopes exports could soon resume.

Pro-Ouattara forces now control areas growing about 600,000 tons of cocoa a year, half of national output.

Residents and military sources in Yamoussoukro, which is officially the nation's capital but functions as little more than a presidential retreat, said pro-Ouattara forces had taken control by the end of the afternoon.

"It is the (pro-Ouattara) Republican Forces that control Yamoussoukro," a military source in Gbagbo's camp said. "(Ouattara's forces) are walking through the city."

Several residents confirmed the information and a pro-Gbagbo military source said they had been given the order to pull back toward Abidjan, 215 km (130 miles) to the southeast.

Clashes were reported in the town but it was not clear what had happened to the Republican Guard, a pro-Gbagbo unit that was expected to put up resistance to any Ouattara push.

Another group of pro-Ouattara fighters, largely made up of former rebels who have controlled the north since a 2002-3 civil war, took control of Soubre, the last main town on the road to the cocoa port of San Pedro.

In Abidjan, pro-Gbagbo youths killed seven civilians when they opened fire in a pro-Ouattara neighbourhood of Abidjan, witnesses said. Former colonial power France, meanwhile, said pro-Gbagbo forces had fired on the French ambassador's convoy in Abidjan.

As the fighting has intensified, about 30,000 Ivorians and West African migrants have been forced to seek refuge in an overcrowded Catholic mission in the town of Duekoue with little or no access to food, water or health facilities, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

Thousands more have sought shelter in public buildings and at least 112,000 have crossed into Liberia to the west.

A Reuters reporter on the road east out of Abidjan said hundreds of cars were clogging roads heading out of the city.

ARMING THE PATRIOTS

Until the push south this week, the worst of the violence had centred on Abidjan, where anti-Gbagbo insurgents, who do not necessarily support Ouattara, have seized parts of town.

A Reuters witness heard heavy weapons fire coming from the area around Agban, the main gendarmerie camp, in the early afternoon. A pro-Gbagbo military source confirmed clashes had taken place but gave no further details.

In a sign violence could become much more widespread, the army called on youths loyal to Gbagbo to enlist in the military.

"The Young Patriots are at army headquarters to pick up weapons to go and fight. They will get a few days of training," an officer at army headquarters said.

Gbagbo's often violent youth wing is considered his most dangerous and unpredictable weapon. Its members have caused mayhem in the past and recently set up roadblocks everywhere, armed with AK-47s, sticks and machetes.

Gbagbo's government on Tuesday called for an immediate ceasefire and the opening of dialogue.

The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to vote on a sanctions resolution against Gbagbo on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Callus in Geneva; Writing by David Lewis, Tim Cocks andRichard Valdmanis; editing by Andrew Roche)

By Loucoumane Coulibaly and Ange Aboa

Guerra in Libia: La legge del piombo fuso in un mondo senza padroni!?!

Il piombo fuso per il petrolio

L’intervento occidentale in Libia segna l’inizio di una nuova epoca nei rapporti internazionali: l’uso spudorato della forza ovunque si profilano interessi energetici per le varie multinazionali che si alimentano di “sangue” dei popoli sotto dittature, o regimi non conniventi con l’Occidente. Tutto ciò avviene con il consueto beneplacito dell’ONU, che non è altro che l’espressione del potere economico e militare dei vincitori della II guerra mondiale. Per dirla: “abbiamo vinto la guerra mondiale, adesso governiamo il mondo come ci pare e come ci piace”. Da queste considerano troviamo alcune domande giuste da farsi: Fin quando durerà questa situazione? Quante guerre “umanitarie” vedremo ancora? Fin dove i nuovi poteri forti del mondo supporteranno l’Occidente? Perché la Cina, uno dei maggiori investitori in Libia non ha alzato la voce? Perché i paesi africani stanno tutti zitti? Quali sono le vere ragioni della guerra in Libia? Chi controlla la Corte penale internazionale? I soldi delle guerre perché non vengono investiti nei paesi poveri? Quanto contano i poteri forti occidentali (multinazionali, mafie, massonerie varie) nelle decisioni di guerre?

Dopo la guerra fredda tutti si aspettavano un mondo più pacifico perché sotto la “Pax Americana”, il vincitore della guerra fredda, ma così non è stato. L’America si è rivelata incapace di governare un mondo senza padroni, senza l’equilibrio del terrore. Un mondo dove crescono a dismisura varie bande dedicate alla vendita di armi e di “morte” ovunque si vuole. Nel giro di pochi anni abbiamo assistito guerre etniche senza precedenti, come è stata quella del Ruanda e poi quella dei Balcani. Sulla stessa scia, ma senza cause di divergenze etniche, l’Angola ha vissuto alcuni dei suoi peggiori anni con una guerra civile estesa in tutti gli angoli del paese, eventi che non avrebbero successo se non fosse caduto il muro di Berlino ed imploso l’Impero russo.

A ragion veduta, il caos nella relazione tra i paesi è frutto dell’assenza di un equilibrio che limita lo strapotere di alcuni sugli altri. Molte iniziative guerrafondaie che oggi vediamo non avrebbero luogo se ci fosse ancora l’equilibrio sopracitato. La mia non è una difesa della causa russa, ma sì un’analisi della realtà attuale dove vige la legge del più forte, il più forte comunque.

Non rimpiangiamo quella pace/armata ossia l’equilibrio del terrore, considerando che il contenimento delle due super-potenze era determinato da una possibile guerra atomica che avrebbe spazzato via tutto ciò che conosciamo di normale in questo mondo. Ma bisogna pur sottolineare quanto quell’equilibrio aiutò a lungo il mantenimento di un certo rispetto tra le nazioni. Nessuno decideva di bombardare un paese per libera iniziativa, così come, anche in presenza di un mandato ONU, l’azione era dosata secondo il leader della zona d’influenza. Così per più di cinquant’anni l’America e la Russia hanno mantenuto la “Pax nucleare”. Ma che pace…

Stiamo vivendo una situazione molto critica perché il mondo è cambiato ma gli l’Occidente continuare ad agire indisturbato come se nulla fosse successo. L’America/l’Occidente, come abbiamo appeno sottolineato, ha avuto la sua opportunità di guidare il mondo come unica super-potenza, ma i risultati sono stati catastrofici: incremento delle guerre di stampo etnico (dividere per meglio regnare), incremento del traffico di armi e di droga, interventi militari arbitrari ovunque si profilavano guadagni, apertura di nuove basi militari a bene o male, etc. Per meglio sfruttare il proprio potere, l’Occidente ha accelerato i processi di globalizzazione, un meccanismo che ha permesso alle multinazionali di meglio sfruttare la mano d’opera quasi gratuita e le risorse naturali di molti paesi poveri. Questo processo ha portato molti paesi alla banca rotta così come ha aumentato le disuguaglianze in tutte le parti del mondo, compreso in Occidente. L’economia ha preso in mano la politica ed ogni iniziativa internazionale cominciò ad essere improntata secondo quanto si guadagnava.

Così, i suddetti processi di globalizzazione (conseguenza positiva) hanno contribuito anche alla nascita di nuovi soggetti internazionali, nuovi centri di potere, portando il mondo ad una situazione di è multipolarità, ma purtroppo l’Occidente continua ad agire come se niente fosse cambiato. Nel nuovo panorama mondiale ci sono i BRIC: c’è la Cina, che da sola produce beni per quasi tutto il mondo, c’è l’India, c’è il Brasile e c’è la vecchia Russia, che stenta a camminare, ma continua un paese importante nello scenario internazionale visto che ha in suo possesso una quantità enorme di bombe atomiche sufficienti per distruggere la metà del pianeta. Ci auguriamo che presto le potenze tornino a parlarsi ed imporre maggiore serietà nei rapporti internazionali, con la conseguenza di maggiore attenzione ai veri interessi di ogni popolo: vera democrazia, benessere sostenibile ed vita lunga e felice.

L’intervento militare dell’Occidente in Libia ha trasformato l’essenza dei BRIC da entità economica ad alternativa politica dell’occidente. Il cambiamento è avvenuto in sede ONU, nell’ambito del Consiglio di Sicurezza, dove i BRIC si sono astenuti di votare la risoluzione presentata dalla Francia chiedendo l’intervento militare in Libia. I quattro hanno presentato le proprie perplessità e chiesto all’ONU perché l’intervento dell’Occidente non si trasformi in opportunità di depredazione delle risorse petrolifere libiche, nonché l’eliminazione fisica di Gheddafi. Guarda caso è proprio questo l’intento dell’intervento.

Di Barack Obama non spendo più di due righe: ha deluso. Si è lasciato intimidire dalla Multinazionali e dei poteri forti. si è bruciato prima di cominciare.

Uno dei grandi assenti in questa guerra, se non il principale, è l’Unione africana. Quest’ultima, super dipendente dai soldi del governo di Gheddafi per gli assunti africani – Cfr. finanziamenti per le truppe dell’UA in Somalia e in Sudan -, non riesci ad imporre una propria linea (cessate il fuoco e negoziazione). Da una parte molti paesi africani continuano a dipendere vergognosamente da Parigi, e dell’altra molti governi sono costituiti da uomini incapaci di distinguere gli assunti interni di ogni paesi, quelli regionali e quelli internazionali. Insieme all’ONU, anche l’Unione africana ha bisogno di ripensare il proprio futuro.

Per Kingamba Mwenho

Diplomats discuss Libya's future as Italy plots Gaddafi's escape route

Belgian defence minister Pieter De Crem by a Belgian F16 fighter at Araxos, Greece. Diplomatic pressure on Gaddafi to go is mounting. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters

Efforts appear to be under way to offer Muammar Gaddafi a way of escape from Libya, with Italy saying it was trying to organise an African haven for him, and the US signalling it would not try to stop the dictator from fleeing.

The move came amid mounting diplomatic and military pressure on Gaddafi as Britain tries to assemble a global consensus demanding he surrender power while intensifying air strikes against his forces. An international conference in London – including the UN, Arab states, the African Union, and more than 40 foreign ministers – will focus on co-ordinating assistance in the face of a possible humanitarian disaster and building a unified international front in condemnation of the Gaddafi regime and in support of Nato-led military action in Libya.

On the eve of the conference, Italy offered to broker a ceasefire deal in Libya, involving asylum for Gaddafi in an African country. "Gaddafi must understand that it would be an act of courage to say: 'I understand that I have to go'," said the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini. "We hope that the African Union can find a valid proposal."

A senior American official signalled that a solution in which Gaddafi flees to a country beyond the reach of the international criminal court (ICC), which is investigating war crimes charges against him, would be acceptable to Washington, pointing out that Barack Obama had repeatedly called on Gaddafi to leave.

"I can't say I know of active efforts to find him a place to go, but I would not say it has been ruled out," the official said. "The ICC has said it will ready to pursue the case, but there are also the rules of the ICC," he added, pointing out that some countries do not recognise the court's jurisdiction.

British officials said they would rather see Gaddafi face trial, but if his escape was the price of a peaceful settlement they would be able to live with that.

David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy tried to ratchet up the pressure on Gaddafi, issuing a joint statement on the eve of the conference declaring his era over, and indicating that his lieutenants might escape prosecution if they abandoned him immediately. "We call on all his followers to leave him before it is too late," they said.

Meanwhile Obama gave a televised speech to the American people in which he explained why the US was involved in the conflict, as a response to his domestic critics over the crisis. The US president increased the pressure on Gaddafi by saying it was imperative his rule be ended. "We continue to pursue the broader goal of a Libya that belongs not to a dictator but to its people," he said. "Gaddafi has not yet stepped down from power and until he does Libya will remain dangerous."

He also used his speech to emphasise that strikes against Gaddafi's forces would continue even as American leadership of the campaign transferred to Nato tomorrow. "Our coalition will keep the pressure on Gaddafi's forces," he said.

Meanwhile, with the Libyan regime's forces and rebels squared for a battle around Gaddafi's birthplace of Sirte, British planes taking part in the coalition campaign stepped up their bombardment.

RAF Tornados hit 22 tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces over the weekend, the Ministry of Defence said. Early Monday, they struck ammunition bunkers near Subha in southern Libya, according to Major General John Lorimer, the MoD's chief military spokesman. Defence officials said the higher tempo was the result of more intelligence surveillance and assessments from reconnaissance aircraft.

Discord over the air strikes threatens to undermine the consensus the UK will attempt to construct at the Lancaster House conference. Russia denounced the air campaign, arguing it violated UN security council resolution 1973, which permitted "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said: "We consider that intervention by the coalition in what is essentially an internal civil war is not sanctioned."

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was also critical, and in a symbolic blow to the London conference, it emerged that Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League – whose support for military action was deemed crucial by Washington and its allies – would not be attending, sending a deputy instead.

The joint statement issued by Cameron and the French president was intended in part to heal discord over the command of the air campaign and France's recognition of the Benghazi-based National Libyan Council. The rebels are not invited to the conference, but William Hague is expected to meet one of their leaders, Mahmoud Jibril. The shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, will warn today: "The bravery of the Libyan opposition is not in doubt. What is unclear is the motives of some, other than the removal of Gaddafi. As the opposition move westwards across Libya it is crucial that we better understand who they are and their wider ambitions."

Via | www.guardian.co.uk

Online advertisers in the UK (Web advertising) spend tops £4bn for first time

Online advertisers in the UK took their annual spend to more than £4bn for the first time last year as the digital market share hit a record high.

Research published today by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the accountant PricewaterhouseCoopers showed that online advertising grew by 12.8 per cent, from £3.5bn in 2009 to £4.1bn a year later. Joshua March, a social media entrepreneur, said: "This is still the tip of the iceberg in terms of how much spending will swing into digital in the future."

The digital share of the UK's total advertising spend of £16.6bn last year rose to 25 per cent. Internet advertising spending is closer to 15 per cent in Europe and 16 per cent in the US.

Guy Phillipson, head of the IAB, said the market was "almost back in its pre-recession heyday" and online spending was "higher than I expected". "In 2009, brands really began to understand how to use the internet. That has improved in 2010 – a year when budgets have also grown," he said. The total advertising market grew by 7.2 per cent, with 77 of the top 100 advertisers increasing their spending last year, according to the research group Nielsen. Consumer goods and retail companies raised their online budgets to become two of the four largest spenders on display advertisements. However, the financial sector spent the most in 2010, overtaking entertainment and media, with a 15.2 per cent share, the report said.

While the online market may not continue to grow quite so aggressively as in recent years, Mr Phillipson said he expected spending to breach £5bn "in the next few years". The consensus expectation for online advertising for this year is growth of 7.7 per cent, although the IAB said its internal predictions were more optimistic.

Much of 2010's online growth was driven by display advertising, which increased by 27.5 per cent from a year earlier to £945.1m, as more and more companies shifted spending on to the web. This reflected an increase in the number of active internet users in Britain, which stood at 40.3 million in December, according to Nielsen and the UK Online Measurement Company. Today's IAB/PwC survey also suggests that improvements in internet infrastructure have supported the growth of online advertising.

Search advertising continues to dominate online advertising spending in the UK, which rose 8 per cent in 2010 to £2.3bn. Mr Phillipson said the UK's search advertising market was "the most advanced in the world in terms of market share".

The rise of social media was also reflected, with advertising spending in this sector rising nearly 200 per cent. Computer users in the UK spend a quarter of their time online visiting networking sites such as Facebook.

Mr March, the founder and chief executive of Conversocial, a software company that helps brands to manage their marketing and support on Facebook and Twitter, said: "The cost effectiveness of online ad spend, especially with social media, gives companies the opportunity to build up a fan base that they can then communicate with for free, and makes it more attractive than other forms of media."

"This is combined with the increasing ability to tie online advertising spend directly to results such as purchases or actions."

Facebook has stepped up its drive to attract advertising executives to the social network with the launch of a new site called Facebook Studio.

In its report, the IAB pointed to "stellar growth" in mobile advertising, which more than doubled to £83m. Mr Phillipson said mobile was "finally coming of age". Growth was seen in adverts around online videos, up from £28m in 2009 to £54m a year later.

Despite pressure on the housing, jobs and car markets, online classified advertising "bounced back" in 2010, growing by 9.7 per cent to £751m, though its share of the market fell by one percentage point to 18 per cent.

The Independent/By Nick Clark

Libya/Civil War: Republic of Angola Govt against military solution to Libyan crisis

Luanda - Angola's Foreign Affairs Minister, Georges Chikoti, said on Tuesday in Luanda that the Angolan Government defends dialogue for the resolution of the Libyan deadlock instead of a military intervention.

Angolan Foreign Affairs minister,
Georges Chikoti

Speaking to the press about the current international matters, the minister said that any military intervention may contribute to the worsening of the problem..

According to him, this military intervention method may not be considered as a standard to solve problems in Africa.

In addition, the official recalled that the situation started with demonstrations, which were repressed violently by Libyan authorities, a situation that must be slammed by the international community.

He said that with the emergence of armed rebels the country dived in a kind of civil war.

However, the minister defended that it would be better that the Libyan problem should be resolved through peaceful ways with the participation of all different national sides.

George Chikoti thinks that the international community should be more patient to better understand the problems and thus take peaceful measures.

Via | Agencie

USA: Pentagon spends billions to fight roadside bombs, with little success

By Peter Cary and Nancy A. Youssef | Center for Public Integrity and McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — In February 2006, with roadside bombs killing more and more American soldiers in Iraq, the Pentagon created an agency to defeat the deadly threat and tasked a retired four-star general to run it.

Five years later, the agency has ballooned into a 1,900-employee behemoth and has spent nearly $17 billion on hundreds of initiatives. Yet the technologies it's developed have failed to significantly improve U.S. soldiers' ability to detect unexploded roadside bombs and have never been able to find them at long distances. Indeed, the best detectors remain the low-tech methods: trained dogs, local handlers and soldiers themselves.

A review by the Center for Public Integrity and McClatchy of government reports and interviews with auditors, investigators and congressional staffers show that the agency — the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization — also violated its own accounting rules and hasn't properly evaluated its initiatives to keep mistakes from being repeated.

Meanwhile, roadside bombs remain the single worst killer of soldiers as more U.S. forces have been transferred out of Iraq and into Afghanistan. Known in military parlance as improvised explosive devices, the crude, often-homemade bombs killed 368 coalition troops in Afghanistan last year, by far the highest annual total since 2001, when the U.S.-led war there began, according to icasualties.org, which tracks military casualties in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Among the serious questions about how well JIEDDO has spent its billions:

• The agency failed to collect data on its projects, leading a congressional investigative subcommittee to conclude in 2008, "The nation does not yet know if JIEDDO is winning the (counter-IED) fight."
• Some of its spending went to programs that had little to do with its core mission, including $400 million for Army force protection in 2010 and $24.6 million to hire private contractors for intelligence operations in Afghanistan.
• Agency officials misreported some $795 million in costs, the Government Accountability Office said, circumventing its own rules requiring high-level Defense Department approval for projects with price tags greater than $25 million.
• JIEDDO's staff comprises six contractors for every government employee, a ratio that its outgoing director acknowledged needs to be reduced.
• While the agency was mandated to "lead, advocate (and) coordinate" anti-roadside bomb initiatives, more than 100 groups and initiatives inside and outside the Defense Department continue "to develop, maintain and in many cases expand" their own work, the GAO found.

Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Calif., a former Marine and an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, said the Pentagon and its anti-IED agencies, including JIEDDO, could do far better in preventing casualties from roadside bombs.

"So as long as the IED metric keeps going up, and as long as we keep taking the majority of our KIA (killed in action) casualties from IEDs, then they've all been unsuccessful. Period," he said.

One U.S. soldier who was based in Baghdad in 2008 said: "We were out there every day. We studied our destroyed vehicles, and (the enemy's IED tactics) kept changing. So we kept trying new ideas, anything, to stop them. JIEDDO didn't help us." The soldier declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, who recently stepped down as the agency's director, its third in five years, acknowledged missteps but said they were inevitable because the agency was tasked with producing devices quickly.

"We fund things," Oates said. "Sometimes we fund things that don't work. Some call that waste; I call it risk."

One of the things that apparently didn't work was the Joint IED Neutralizer, created in 2002 by an Arizona start-up called Ionatron. Looking like a pair of boxy golf carts, the JIN fired ultra-short pulse lasers followed by a half-million-volt lightning bolt of electricity, and its makers said it could detonate the blasting caps that triggered IEDs from well outside blast range.

In 2005, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz authorized $30 million for the JIN despite skepticism from scientists, who said damp ground or dust would render the device useless. During test runs in Afghanistan in 2006, the JIN was disappointing: It had trouble climbing steep mountain terrain and experienced safety problems, continuing to shoot lightning bolts after its switch was turned off.

After the JIN received some publicity, an insurgent website published ways to defeat it. The test vehicles were shipped back to the United States.

In mid-2006, shareholders filed two class-action suits against the JIN's makers, alleging that the firm had concealed the fact that the vehicle wasn't capable of meeting government specifications. The company, which had changed its name to Applied Energetics Inc., denied the claims but settled the suit in September 2009 by paying $5.3 million in cash and another $1.2 million in stock to the complaining shareholders. The firm didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.

Still, the project wouldn't die. With a $400,000 earmark from Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and $1.5 million more from JIEDDO, the Marine Corps hung the JIN on the front of a mine roller. A slide from a May 2009 Marine Corps briefing shows a device attached to mine rollers shooting a bolt of electricity into the ground.

"People have been trying to use a Tesla coil" — a transformer that can produce very high-voltage discharges — "for years to defeat mines. It has never worked," said Dan Goure, a former defense official who's a vice president at the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area research center.

The devices JIEDDO designed to detect roadside bombs at a distance didn't work out, Goure said. They included airplane- or drone-based radars, long-range radars to sniff out buried control wires, and detectors to sense explosive ingredients such as ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

Other projects that were started but abandoned include: Alexis and Electra-C, which emitted waves to detonate IEDs but interfered with jammers; an unmanned Humvee called Forerunner that soldiers said "induced operator vertigo" and was hard to control, according to a JIEDDO report; and a high-powered microwave emitter called BlowTorch that was designed to defeat heat-triggered IEDs but which insurgents figured out how to overcome.

"We were throwing new technologies into this like fast-food orders at a diner," Goure said.

JIEDDO officials said the agency quickly terminated programs that weren't promising. But the GAO and some congressional staffers countered that the agency has never been good at choosing or steering its projects.

"It's been a weakness from the beginning. They don't have good controls over start-ups," said Bill Solis, the director of defense capabilities and management at the GAO, which has authored several studies on the agency.

JIEDDO spent more than $3 billion on jammers to thwart radio-controlled IEDs, which most say was a good idea. It bought mine rollers to attach to the fronts of vehicles. However, critics note that what many consider the most successful anti-roadside bomb program was only marginally funded by JIEDDO: the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, now operating mainly in Afghanistan. While JIEDDO purchased the first 250 MRAPs, designed to withstand roadside bombs, it was a separate MRAP task force that bought more than 22,000 of them for $36 billion.

Oates, the agency's former director, has said the "greatest return on the dollar" has been training soldiers to detect and respond to roadside bomb attacks.

The GAO noted that the agency spent $70.7 million from 2007 to 2009 on "role-players in an effort to simulate Iraqi social, political and religious groups" at Pentagon training centers.

At one training site, the agency spent $24.1 million to make steel shipping containers resemble Iraqi buildings.

"I just couldn't believe it," said a former congressional staffer, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to speak publicly.

The agency's new director, Lt. Gen Michael Barbero, took over earlier this month fresh off a tour in Iraq. Among his tasks will be collecting data on what works and what doesn't, and improving relations with Congress, which had complained in the past about a lack of information to evaluate the agency's performance.

In debate over the 2010 Pentagon budget, for instance, the House Armed Services Committee threatened to withhold half the agency's money "until the committee is provided JIEDDO's detailed budget and program information."

Few in Congress wanted to be seen giving short shrift to the fight against roadside bombs, however. Year after year, the agency has received the federal funding it requested, to the tune of $20.8 billion over six years.

Roadside bomb attacks continue to increase in Afghanistan, averaging roughly 1,500 per month at the end of last year. The number of U.S. troops wounded by IEDs skyrocketed to 3,366 in 2010, compared with 2,386 during the previous nine years combined, according to data JIEDDO collected.

Despite years of effort, soldiers have long had only a 50-50 success rate in detecting bombs before they explode. That ticked up to 60 percent in Afghanistan in recent months, Oates said — thanks largely to better local intelligence and aerial surveillance as well as on-the-ground technology — but it's too soon to tell whether this marks a long-term trend.

The agency's future is unclear. While some of Oates' predecessors argued that the agency should be a permanent part of the Pentagon because the fight against roadside bombs is global and ongoing, some in Congress have argued that it should be terminated at the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oates, for his part, said that JIEDDO "is not a permanent organization, and we do not seek to be one."

(This article was reported and written by Peter Cary of the Center for Public Integrity and Nancy A. Youssef of McClatchy. Shashank Bengali of McClatchy contributed. The center is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in Washington. Cary is a freelance writer who formerly headed the investigative reporting team at U.S. News & World Report.)

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/

Libya/Civil War: Libyan rebel leader spent much of past 20 years in suburban Virginia

WASHINGTON - The new leader of Libya's opposition military spent the past two decades in suburban Virginia but felt compelled — even in his late-60s — to return to the battlefield in his homeland, according to people who know him.

Khalifa Hifter was once a top military officer for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, but after a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s, Hifter switched to the anti-Gadhafi opposition. In the early 1990s, he moved to suburban Virginia, where he established a life but maintained ties to anti-Gadhafi groups.

Late last week, Hifter was appointed to lead the rebel army, which has been in chaos for weeks. He is the third such leader in less than a month, and rebels interviewed in Libya openly voiced distrust for the most recent leader, Abdel Fatah Younes, who had been at Gadhafi's side until just a month ago.

At a news conference Thursday, the rebel's military spokesman said Younes will stay as Hifter's chief of staff, and added that the army — such as it is — would need "weeks" of training.

According to Abdel Salam Badr of Richmond, Va., who said he has known Hifter all his life — including back in Libya — Hifter -- whose name is sometimes spelled Haftar, Hefter or Huftur -- was motivated by his intense anti-Gadhafi feelings.

"Libyans — every single one of them — they hate that guy so much they will do whatever it takes," Badr said in an interview Saturday. "Khalifa has a personal grudge against Gadhafi... That was his purpose in life."

According to Badr and another friend in the U.S., a Georgia-based Libyan activist named Salem alHasi, Hifter left for Libya two weeks ago.

alHasi, who said Hifter was once his superior in the opposition's military wing, said he and Hifter talked in mid-February about the possibility that Gadhafi would use force on protesters.

"He made the decision he had to go inside Libya," alHasi said Saturday. "With his military experience, and with his strong relationship with officers on many levels of rank, he decided to go and see the possibility of participating in the military effort against Gadhafi."

He added that Hifter is very popular among members of the Libyan army, "and he is the most experienced person in the whole Libyan army." He acted out of a sense of "national responsibility," alHasi said.

"This responsibility no one can take care of but him," alHasi said. "I know very well that the Libyan army especially in the eastern part is in desperate need of his presence."

Omar Elkeddi, a Libyan expatriate journalist based in Holland, said in an interview that the opposition forces are getting more organized than they were at the beginning up the uprising. Hifter, he said, is "very professional, very distinguished," and commands great respect.

Since coming to the United States in the early 1990s, Hifter lived in suburban Virginia outside Washington, D.C. Badr said he was unsure exactly what Hifter did to support himself, and that Hifter primarily focused on helping his large family.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/26/111109/new-rebel-leader-spent-much-of.html#ixzz1HwwRBVOC

By Chris Adams | McClatchy Newspapers