Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate:

(a)

notes:

(i)

the report by the Pentagon dated March 2007 on the situation in Iraq in the last quarter of 2006, that advises that:

(a)

there were record levels of violence and hardening sectarian divisions,

(b)

‘sectarian cleansing’ was forcing 9 000 civilians to leave Iraq every month,

(c)

weekly attacks rose to more than 1 000 in the quarter, and

(d)

daily casualties increased to more than 140 with approximately 100 civilians killed or wounded a day,

(ii)

that these statistics were based on the violence observed by or reported to the United States of America (US) military and that these are likely to be out by a factor of two, and that the cited United Nations estimate, based on hospital reports, is that more than 6 000 Iraqi civilians were killed or wounded in December 2006 alone,

(iii)

the quote in the report that ‘Some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a “civil war”, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities and mobilization, the changing character of the violence, and population displacements’,

(iv)

the failure of the US military to meet its objective of handing over security responsibility to the Iraq provinces by the end of 2006,

(v)

that, although nearly 329,000 Iraqi police officers and soldiers had been trained as of February 2007, only a half or two-thirds of that total is on duty and that coalition forces remain hampered by militia infiltration, logistical deficiencies and corruption,

(vi)

that detention centres in Iraq have sub-standard facilities and do a poor job of tracking detainees, and

(vii)

that scores of Iraqi jails are overcrowded, with one jail housing three detainees for every bed; and

(b)

calls on the Government, in the light of this report, to recognise that:

(i)

Australia’s involvement in training Iraqi troops is likely to be ineffectual,

(ii)

the military strategy put in place by the US Administration cannot succeed without political reconciliation, and

(iii)

Australia should withdraw its troops.

Question negatived.