Afghanistan and Pakistan

[buglerbilly]

TA soldier who shot suspected Taliban bomber in murder investigation

Fusilier Duane Knott could become the first British soldier serving in Afghanistan to be charged with murder. He gives his first interview to The Sunday Telegraph.

By Ben Leach, and Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent

7:30AM GMT 01 Jan 2012

When Fusilier Duane Knott volunteered to serve with the Territorial Army in Afghanistan at the age of 24, it was the fulfilment of a boyhood dream.

He had spent years working in a factory and cleaning windows in Caerphilly, south Wales, while undergoing training at weekends so that he could fight in the war.

But 15 months after his return from Afghanistan he faces a possible murder charge over the shooting of a suspected Taliban bomber.

Lying back on his sofa at the small two-bedroom flat he rents in the village of Cwmfelinfach, where his military photographs take pride of place on the mantelpiece, the 26-year-old reflects on the traumatic past two years.

“It’s been really difficult,” he says. “I’ve found it hard to cope. When I feel down, I feel really down. Really rock bottom.

“But what hurts the most is that it’s brought a really bad name to my company. And not being able to go back out – that really has destroyed me. I was putting my body on the line. I got shot at. I just feel really let down by it all.”

Fusilier Knott has spent most of his life in Caerphilly. He was born there and went to Pontllanfraith secondary school, where he got six GCSEs before doing a national diploma in Music and Art at a local college.

But his real ambition was to be a soldier. After leaving college he joined the regular army in 2005 but dropped out after four-and-a-half months of basic training – a decision he describes as “the biggest mistake of my life”.

He waited a year before joining the TA and then spent years working in a factory and as a window cleaner before passing his initial training.

He spent five months training in Canada before being posted to Afghanistan with the 3rd Battalion The Royal Welsh – attached to 1st battalion The Mercian Regiment (Cheshires) battlegroup – in April at the start of one of the most violent periods of the Afghan war.

Two months later one of his closest friends, Fusilier Jonathan Monk, a fellow member of the TA who had volunteered to serve in Afghanistan at the same time, was killed in an IED blast while on patrol.

Then the following month came the moment that changed his life.

Fusilier Knott had been ordered to undertake sentry duties inside the fortified compound at Patrol Base Rahim in the Nahr-e-Seraj area of central Helmand.

The soldier says he had been told to watch an Afghan digging in a field 400 metres from the base, and warned he might be about to plant an IED.

He was also told that a patrol was about to leave the base and would pass through the area in which the Afghan was digging a hole.

Fusilier Knott claims he then saw the Afghan disappear into bushes on the edge of a field before returning holding a cloth bag which he believed contained an IED.

“I remember it now. Plain as day. He just stood over the hole so I thought 'time to get on to Comms’ – through to the ops (operational) room for permission to engage (open fire), because I knew exactly what he was doing.

“I couldn’t get through. Turns out I was pressing the wrong button on the dial. I had only just come back from patrol so I didn’t exactly know what was going on in that sangar (fortified position). Usually I’d be pressing the '1’ but this time it was the '0’.

“I thought: press '1’ press '1’ but couldn’t get through. So I then I took it on my own back to engage. That’s why I’m in this position now. Because I didn’t have the power to command myself to engage.

“I shot him twice in his back. He was sat down. He didn’t move. So I shot him a further twice. He rolled over and kept on going for the bag so I shot him a further twice and that was it. Six in all. Two and then another two and another two.”

The wounded Afghan was evacuated to a Forward Operating Base but died later from his wounds.

British investigators found no evidence that the man was attempting to plant a bomb – but Fusilier Knott believes that they failed to recover the bag at the centre of the incident

After reporting details of the shooting to his headquarters, he alleges he was immediately accused of lying by his Company Sergeant Major, who told him that he had just shot an “innocent guy”.

“I went down [the sangar] and went across and spoke to the OC (Officer Commanding) and Sergeant Major. I told him that it was me that engaged. I couldn’t get through to Comms – the Ops room. It all pretty much went downhill from there.

“The Sgt Major didn’t believe me. He was like 'Nah, you’ve just shot someone walking through a field’. 'You’ve just opened up on some innocent person’. I was like 'No, that’s not the case’. I tried to get my story across but nothing. They took my weapon off me.

“Sgt Major’s immediate reaction was 'no you’ve engaged on an innocent guy’. 'You’re a liar’.

“I don’t think it was anything personal he [the Sgt Major] just honestly didn’t believe me. I just didn’t know how to speak to him. I couldn’t get my message across.

“There was a split down the middle. You either believed me or you didn’t. Some did [believe me] some didn’t. The other Sgt Major did.”

Fusilier Knott says that his rifle was taken away, something that made him feel “like a kid”, and he was confined to base for several weeks before being sent back to Camp Bastion where he completed the rest of his seven-month tour.

There he was interviewed under caution by the Royal Military Police who said that he may face a murder charge in the future.

“You think you do something, make them proud but then when you’ve got your own company thinking you’re a liar and don’t believe you – not all of them but a lot of them. It doesn’t make you feel good.

“I know for a fact what I did was right. How could you live with yourself for killing an innocent person? I couldn’t.

“I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t have regrets. No remorse whatsoever. I don’t feel sad about it. Nightmares? Not even nearly.

“I’d expect anybody to do the same – especially a soldier.”

Fusilier Knott returned from Afghanistan in October to a flat near the home of his parents, who have supported him through his ordeal. He says he found it difficult to cope at first, despite falling in love on his return.

“I was totally head over heels. She helped me so much – took my mind off things.

“But when I got a letter a couple of months later saying there may be action taken my head went and it affected the relationship and we broke up. She just had had enough.

“It really depressed me. Having someone say there’s a possibility that you might be getting done for murder – it’s going to ruin your life. She just couldn’t deal with it. I just drank to keep it all out.

“That’s devastating, don’t get me wrong. But what hurts most is I’m a bad name in my company. That’s the main thing.”

But despite the trauma of the past 20 months Fusilier Knott says he still wants to return to Afghanistan and hopes to become a full-time soldier

“I need to be a full-time soldier. Even part-time soldier would be great but I can’t do anything and that’s what’s breaking me.

“I just need the military to accept the truth. I want to get on with my career in the army. Get on with my life.

“I’m very confident that I’ll be cleared. I think they can’t do that [charge me with murder]. It’s impossible. It would be like doing a soldier over – stabbing a soldier in the back.

“I go down to the TA on Tuesday nights. I go down there and tell the new recruits good luck. Even though this has happened I tell them cherish the moment because you’ll never find anything like it in your life.”

[buglerbilly]

Monday, January 2, 2012, 09:33 AM

French Army will stay in Afghanistan after withdrawal of NATO troops in 2014.

French armed forces will stay in Afghanistan after withdrawal of coalition troops in 2014, France's Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said on Sunday, January 1, 2012


French Army soldiers in Afghanistan

Longuet told his Tajik counterpart Sherali Khairullaev that the two countries would widen its cooperation in security improvement at the Tajik-Afghan board.

France's airpower forces unit is being based in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe since 2001 to provide services for coalition armed forces in Afghanistan.

The unit included 250 troopers and six Dassault Rafale jet fighters till 2008 when the fighters were redeployed to Kunduz region in northern Afghanistan. Current number of French troopers in Dushanbe equals to 100.

[buglerbilly]

Militants Halt War on Pak Troops to Fight NATO

January 03, 2012

Associated Press



Pakistani Islamist militants have pledged to cease their four-year insurgency against Pakistani security forces and join the Taliban's war against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The agreement reunites four major Pakistan-based militant factions under the flag of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban chief, according to the McClatchy news service, which reported the deal on Monday.

Security experts in Islamabad said the agreement to end the insurgency with Pakistan was a dual-purpose tactical move by the Taliban. It has lost hundreds of fighters during a two-year surge of U.S. forces in its southern Afghanistan strongholds.

The Pakistani militants, too, have been pummeled by security forces since 2009, and by late 2011 had splintered into dozens of factions without a unified command. The agreement coincided with discrete negotiations between the Pakistani militants and the government in Islamabad, held since October.

The pact would enable Mullah Omar to reinforce Taliban ranks and give the militants greater freedom to launch cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

The reported deal comes as NATO hopes for a quick reopening of blocked supply routes through Pakistan because the 5-week closure is damaging the economies of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, an alliance officer said Monday.


Pakistan shut the routes, which NATO uses to ship about 40 percent of the supplies for its forces in landlocked Afghanistan, after alliance airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani border troops in November.

The U.S. expressed regret over the deaths. The incident drove U.S.-Pakistani relations further into a tailspin, adding to Pakistani outrage over the U.S. raid that killed al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden in May and drone strikes that have killed civilians, all without informing Pakistan in advance.

Pakistan is a key ally in the fight against Islamic militants in neighboring Afghanistan.

Prominent al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban fighters have asked Pakistani militants to set aside differences and step up support for the battle against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban commanders said Monday that the request came during two meetings in Pakistan's tribal region in November and December. The did not disclose what their response was.

NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson said the military coalition has a stockpile of supplies that can keep operations in Afghanistan running at their current level even if routes through Pakistan remain closed.

Afghan merchants have complained that their imports have also been affected by the closure of NATO traffic. They say the resulting shortages have driven up prices of staples four, sugar, rice and other staples.

"We have reason to wish the reopening of the routes," Jacobson said. "We are aware that the present situation on the border has a negative effect on both economies."

The coalition has reduced its dependence on Pakistan over the last two years by developing alternate routes to Afghanistan through Russia and Central Asia.

In a sign that NATO fears the closure might last longer than expected, it has been arranging for its equipment to be shipped back to Europe through the northern route. The alliance is in the process of drawing down its forces and helping the Afghan army and police prepare to take over responsibility for security by 2014, when it plans to end its combat role.

Jacobson and Afghan military spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the handover was proceeding well. This is despite repeated incidents in which Afghan soldiers have shot their foreign advisers.

On Thursday, an Afghan army soldier shot and killed two French Foreign Legionnaires, the latest in a series of attacks by members of Afghan security forces against their coalition partners. The shootings have raised fears of Taliban infiltration as NATO speeds up the training of Afghan security forces.

Jacobson said the incidents all had different causes and backgrounds and were not an indication of guerrilla activity within the Afghan army's ranks.

"We do not see a campaign or an orchestrated operation that leads to this kind of operation from the side of the insurgency." he said.

If the current phrase of transition is completed by next summer as planned, the Afghan army and police will be providing security to about half of the country's population. Nimroz province, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) southwest of Kabul, will become the latest to start transitioning to Afghan control on Tuesday, officials said.

Military.com Associate Editor Bryant Jordan contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Coalition to Pull $30B in Gear From Afghanistan

January 03, 2012

Associated Press|by Slobodan Lekic

This is a problem for all Allied nations. The Brits have looked at leaving the majority behind BUT this has been negated by the fact they have still not sorted out what, of the UOR gear in particular, is going to become part of the Permanent Equipment of the Army. Similar applies to the USA with its vast numbers of MRAP's altho one would have thought the older units would go as Freebies to places like Africa in particular as they are suited to the Veldt/Sierra conditions most likely requiring their operational capability...........

KABUL, Afghanistan - As the pace of the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan picks up in 2012, military planners are trying to figure out how to ship huge quantities of alliance vehicles, weapons and other equipment out of the mountainous, landlocked country.

The operation requires the removal of $30 billion worth of state-of-the-art military gear by the end of 2014, when U.S. and other coalition troops are to end their combat role, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.

Most of the American equipment will be shipped to military depots in the United States for refurbishment and then redistributed to bases around the country. Some assets will go to bases in Europe, primarily Germany, or in Asian nations like South Korea.

"The stuff we have here is the very best the U.S. has ever produced," the official said. "It's better than anything available (to military units) in the United States."

He spoke on condition of anonymity because the planning for the equipment pullout is still in its initial stages.

Aside from the armored vehicles and trucks, other gear that will be shipped out includes large quantities of armor, communications and optical equipment, as well as large crew-served artillery systems.

In 2011, the U.S.-led coalition began the withdrawal of nearly 140,000 foreign troops serving in Afghanistan, and 10,000 U.S. service members have already pulled out. By the end of this year, another 23,000 Americans are due to depart, along with thousands more allied soldiers, reducing the coalition force in Afghanistan to about 90,000.

The quantity of military equipment that was accumulated here by the United States and its allies in 10 years of war is formidable. Although small amounts have already been removed, the planning is complex due to inherent complications of moving so much heavy gear out of a landlocked nation with problematic relations with some of its neighbors, said the official.

Only a relatively small number of the tens of thousands of vehicles can be flown out by air, because of the high weight of some of them, such as the as the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, and its all-terrain variety, the M-ATV, tipping the scales at many tons each.

Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan shut down the alliance's main transit routes from the port of Karachi in November in response to a NATO air attack on a Pakistani border post that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

The alliance has been able to ship equipment and supplies in from the north through Russia and the Central Asian nations. Additional agreements are needed to allow the two-way traffic to transport the equipment back to Europe via the northern route.

During the recent pullout from Iraq, the U.S. military was able to simply drive its vehicles in large convoys to neighboring Kuwait, where a deep sea port was available. In contrast, the main routes out of Afghanistan require vehicles and containers to be loaded on trucks or trains for the onward journey.

"The challenges of geography are enormous," the official said. "I wish Afghanistan was a coastal country with a great port, but it's not."

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Our New Megabase in Afghanistan



So, this is some drone-related news about the Afghan war that we missed. While most media attention has been focused on CIA drone bases in Pakistan, the U.S. last year transformed the remote ex-Soviet air field at Shindand, near the Iranian border, into the second biggest air base in all Afghanistan.

The perimeter of the once sprawling Soviet base was officially expanded to three times its size to accommodate the Afghan air force’s undergraduate pilot training center. However, with last month’s downing of an RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone, news emerged that Shindand plays host to the secret UAVs, which had previously only been known to fly out of Kandahar air base.

The facility’s remoteness and proximity to the border with Iran makes it the perfect location for a variety of ops against Tehran. In fact, its one of the few major U.S. bases that doesn’t appear to be updated when veiwed through satellite viewers like Google Maps. Even the sensitive U.S. facilities in the UAE show plenty of Western jets parked on their ramps. Meanwhile, updated (albeit grainy) images of Kandahar Airport, where the RQ-170 likely takes off from for missions over nearby Pakistan, are easily viewable in Google Maps.

Do a quick Google Image search for Shindand and you’ll see plenty of images of everything from AH-64 Apache helos, F-15E Strike Eagles and C-17 Globemasters (shown above) to Afghan air corps Cessna Caravans and even old MiG-21s operating out of the base.

Shindand’s remote location even made it the ideal ground for the Soviets to test out their VTOL fighter, the Yak-38 in 1980.

In any case, as long as tensions between the U.S. and Iran remain high, you can bet that Shindand will remain important.

Read more: http://defensetech.org/#ixzz1iRs09wFk
Defense.org

[buglerbilly]

Two Britons with 'dozens of AK-47s' detained in Kabul

Two British nationals have been detained in the Afghan capital in possession of dozens of AK-47 assault rifles with the serial numbers erased, a government official said Tuesday.

By Our Foreign Staff

8:28PM GMT 03 Jan 2012

"Two British nationals along with their two Afghan colleagues, a driver and a interpreter, were today detained carrying 30 AKs. The weapons' registration numbers were removed from them," the official, who requested anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media, told AFP.

Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi confirmed that four people had been detained while carrying weapons. He would not disclose their nationality and said the case was under investigation.

The government official who spoke to AFP said the Britons were arrested in an area of Kabul where foreign forces have bases and facilities.

The British embassy said it was "aware of reports that British nationals may have been detained in Kabul".

"Our consular officials in Kabul are in touch with the relevant Afghan police authorities to seek further information," a spokesman told AFP.

Afghanistan is home to thousands of foreign private security personnel providing services for foreign troops, diplomatic missions and aid organisations.

A US congressional report last year found that the number of private security personnel working for the US military in Afghanistan rose to 18,919 at the end of 2010, the highest level used in any conflict by the United States.

Around 95 percent of them were Afghans, it added.

But relations with the authorities have deteriorated. President Hamid Karzai accuses the firms of breaking the law and taking business away from Afghans.

Perceptions that those working for security firms are little more than gun-toting mercenaries, roaming the countryside with impunity, have made them deeply unpopular among Afghans.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban leaders held at Guantánamo Bay to be released in peace talks deal

US agrees in principle to releasing top officials from Afghanistan insurgent group in exchange for starting process of negotiations

Julian Borger, and Jon Boone in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 January 2012 19.32 GMT


The US detention centre in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, holds leading Taliban figures such as the former army commander Fazl Akhund. Photograph: John Moore/Getty

The US has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantánamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents' agreement to open a political office for peace negotiations in Qatar, the Guardian has learned.

According to sources familiar with the talks in the US and in Afghanistan, the handful of Taliban figures will include Mullah Khair Khowa, a former interior minister, and Noorullah Noori, a former governor in northern Afghanistan.

More controversially, the Taliban are demanding the release of the former army commander Mullah Fazl Akhund. Washington is reported to be considering formally handing him over to the custody of another country, possibly Qatar.

The releases would be to reciprocate for Tuesday's announcement from the Taliban that they are prepared to open a political office in Qatar to conduct peace negotiations "with the international community" – the most significant political breakthrough in ten years of the Afghan conflict.

The Taliban are holding just one American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, a 25-year-old sergeant captured in June 2009, but it is not clear whether he would be freed as part of the deal.

"To take this step, the [Obama] administration have to have sufficient confidence that the Taliban are going to reciprocate," said Vali Nasr, who was an Obama administration adviser on the Afghan peace process until last year. "It is going to be really risky. Guantánamo is a very sensitive issue politically."

Nasr, now a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said the Taliban announcement on the opening of an office in Qatar was a dramatic breakthrough.

"If it had not happened then the idea of reconciliation would have been completely finished. The Qatar office is akin to the Taliban forming a Sinn Féin, a political wing to conduct negotiations," Nasr said, but added: "The next phase will need concessions on both sides. This doesn't mean we are now on autopilot to peace."

Michael Semple, a former EU envoy in Afghanistan who has maintained contact with senior Taliban figures, agreed that the deal represented a critical moment.

"This is at last a real process," Semple, now at Harvard University, said. "There is a long list of things we don't have and there has been no progress on substantive issues. But now there is a certain amount of momentum. Every discussion over the past couple of years has been heavy on western enthusiasm with nothing substantial from the other side."

This time, he said, it was clear that the top Taliban council – including its reclusive leader, Mullah Omar – was on board with the proposal. In return, Semple said he thought the release of a few prisoners from Guantánamo Bay was politically feasible for the Obama administration, even in an election year.

"The prospect of ending a costly war in Afghanistan is sufficiently attractive for the Obama administration to move forward with it," Semple said.

"Even if all five of these people they release went straight back to Quetta [the Taliban stronghold in Pakistan] to rejoin a fight, it wouldn't make any real difference."

Negotiations over the opening of a Taliban political office and the release of prisoners have been underway for more than a year in secret contacts in Germany and in the Gulf between US and Taliban officials, but have been continually held up by political obstacles on all sides.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, had preferred Saudi Arabia or Turkey to host the Taliban political bureau, but dropped his opposition to Qatar under heavy US pressure.

Tuesday's announcement was made by email by a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid.

"Right now, having a strong presence in Afghanistan, we still want to have a political office for negotiations," Mujahid said. "In this regard, we have started preliminary talks and we have reached a preliminary understanding with relevant sides, including the government of Qatar, to have a political office for negotiations with the international community."

The announcement was strongly endorsed by former officials who served under the Taliban regime in the 1990s, many of whom have been pushing for an overseas Taliban "address" for years.

"Everyone now agrees on the need for an office: the government, the foreigners and the Taliban," said Mohammed Qalamuddin, one-time head of the Taliban regime's "vice and virtue" police. "Now is the time to talk face to face with the Taliban and ask them what they want and why they are fighting."

He said that a number of leading Taliban took part in the secret talks that led to agreement with Qatar, including the former Taliban ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Shahabuddin Dilawar, the former deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Stanekzai and Tayeb Agha, a top aide to Mullah Omar, the mysterious Taliban leader who, even in power, only ever met with a handful of western diplomats.

"The important thing is that all these men are operating with the approval of Mullah Omar," he said.

It is not clear when the office will open, and there is also likely to be disagreement on the role of the Kabul government. A senior Afghan government official said the Karzai administration had accepted the creation of a Taliban office in Qatar only after demanding assurances from foreign powers that any peace process must be kept under the firm control of the Afghan government.

"If it is not led and owned by the Afghan government, it will fail," the official said.

However, Tuesday's Taliban statement said the group was only interested in talking to the "United States of America and their foreign allies," Mujahid said.

Western diplomats hope the opening of an office in Qatar will also lessen Pakistan's control of the Taliban. Pakistan plays host to most of the Taliban leadership, which it sees as an important bargaining counter in negotiations over the future of the region.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban publicly expresses interest in talks with U.S.

By Ernesto Londoño, Published: January 3

KABUL — The Taliban on Tuesday for the first time publicly expressed interest in negotiating with Washington, outlining a vision for talks with U.S. officials in Qatar that conspicuously excluded a role for the Afghan government.

The announcement marked a major departure for a militant group that had long said it would not negotiate while foreign troops remained in Afghanistan. It offered a measure of hope that after years of missteps, a U.S.-sought negotiated settlement to the decade-long war is possible. If a Taliban office is established in Qatar, U.S. and Afghan interlocutors would have a formal venue to hold substantive talks with the group’s envoys after months of clandestine contact.

But analysts warned of substantial unknowns and possible pitfalls, including whether Pakistan will back or seek to thwart the effort. In addition, the statement’s omission of a role for the Afghan government could anger Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who in the past has felt slighted in U.S.-led attempts at peace talks.

One Taliban motivation for negotiating with Washington involves brokering the release of Taliban leaders detained in the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. An Afghan official suggested Tuesday that the Taliban might use a captured U.S. soldier, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, as a bargaining chip.

Analysts say Taliban leaders have also expressed hope that the United States could bring them out of diplomatic isolation by lobbying to have the group’s leaders removed from international terrorist sanctions lists.

The Obama administration has long sought a political breakthrough in a costly war that has lasted more than a decade and is increasingly unpopular. But U.S. officials acknowledge that any peace deal with the Taliban — which would probably allow the group back into Kabul through some sort of power-sharing arrangement — would be fraught with challenges and moral dilemmas.

An Afghan role?

The Taliban statement’s omission of Karzai and his government puts the Obama administration in a difficult position. Even as they have held a half-dozen meetings with insurgent representatives outside Afghanistan over the past year, U.S. officials have continued to insist that “formal” talks would have to be led by the Afghans.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland sidestepped questions about the U.S. role in any forthcoming talks in Qatar. “If this is part of an Afghan-led, Afghan-supported process, and the Afghan government itself believes it can play a constructive role . . . then we will play a role in that, as well,” she said.

Karzai’s spokesman did not return calls seeking comment on Tuesday. When Karzai asked the Taliban to lay down its arms and return to the political fold in the summer of 2010, he referred to insurgent leaders as wayward “brothers” who would be welcomed back.

But when his top peace broker, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated in a suicide bombing in the fall, Karzai rescinded his offer to talk. He said instead that he would henceforth talk only to Pakistani officials, because the Taliban’s leaders have long operated out of havens across the border. At times, aides say, he has felt blindsided by clandestine talks that U.S. officials have held with the Taliban.

The Taliban statement said there were “two main parties involved” in Afghanistan over the past decade: the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” — the insurgents’ name for the country — and “the United States of America and its foreign allies.”

The statement also said that the group’s vision for the Qatar office was to promote its own political views and “to spread understanding with the international community.” U.S. officials have said the Taliban representatives were told that the office could not be used for recruitment or political activities.

Some Afghan officials expressed concern Tuesday about the prospect of negotiations.

“This is being planned based on the politics of the United States,” said parliament member Fauzia Kofi, who is regarded as pro-American. “History is repeating itself. This may result in bringing the Taliban back to power. None of our achievements have been systematic, and they can all collapse at any time.”

Arsallah Rahmani, a member of the government-appointed Afghan peace council who was a deputy minister when the Taliban governed Afghanistan, said talks with the Americans are worth a try.

Rahmani said the Taliban envoys who are expected to operate out of the Qatar office include Tayyab Agha, the former personal secretary of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, and Obaidullah Akhund, who served as defense minister in the Taliban government. Agha, who speaks English fluently, took part in several earlier sessions with U.S. officials. Rahmani said Agha, Akhund and at least three other Taliban envoys have moved to Qatar with their families in recent days.

“These are people who are not involved in the fighting,” Rahmani said.

A key question is how Pakistan would react to talks. Afghan and U.S. officials have accused Pakistan’s military and dominant spy agency of playing a spoiler role in the Afghanistan war.

“Without Pakistan’s cooperation, we will not achieve anything,” Rahmani said.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Abdul Basit, said in a text message that his government supports an “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned reconciliation process.” He did not elaborate.

The Taliban governed Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, a period when al-Qaeda used the country as a staging ground for attacks on the United States. The Taliban government was toppled months after the Sept. 11 attacks, but it regrouped as an insurgency that straddles the border with Pakistan. Taliban leaders say they seek to rule Afghanistan again as an Islamic state free of corruption and subjugation by the West.

Informal contacts

Although the United States has long said that the war must end with a political solution, informal talks did not begin until the administration altered its demands for the Taliban to sever all ties with al-Qaeda, renounce violence and pledge allegiance to the Afghan constitution. In a February speech, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said those conditions would need to be met at the end of negotiations, not at the beginning.

Even as the informal contacts between U.S. officials and Taliban representatives were underway, U.S. military resistance to substantive negotiations, and Karzai’s mercurial attitude toward them, contributed to a failure to move ahead.

Still, in late November, the administration reached a tentative agreement with the Taliban under which five Afghans detained at Guantanamo Bay would have been transferred to house arrest in Qatar, where an office would be opened, in exchange for the militant group’s public renunciation of international terrorism.

The deal collapsed after Karzai rejected the terms, U.S. officials said, and the Afghan president recalled his ambassador in Qatar for consultations early last month. But he reversed his stance under apparent pressure from the administration and said last week that he would accept the Qatar plan. It was unclear whether the prisoner transfer was still under discussion.

Mohammad Akhbar Agha, the former head of Jaish al-Muslimeen, a Taliban-affiliated group, said the Taliban’s interest in opening an office in Qatar’s capital, Doha, could signal that leaders are tired of fighting after years of heavy losses.

“The experience has shown us that fighting is not the only solution,” he said.

He said Karzai’s response to the overture could make or break the talks.

“Right now the talks are only with the U.S.,” he said. “I hope the Taliban will accept talking to the Afghans as well. God forbid, if these peace talks fail, the people won’t trust the government.”

Special correspondents Javed Hamdard in Kabul and Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and staff writers David Nakamura and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Militant groups in Pakistan form united front


Ishtiaq Mahsud/AP - Masked Pakistani Taliban militants take part in a training session in the South Waziristan region along the Afghan border. A new coalition of militant groups in Pakistan could indicate a unified effort to strike harder against U.S.-led troops as they begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

By Karin Brulliard and Haq Nawaz Khan, Wednesday, January 4, 12:47 AM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At the urging of the Afghan Taliban, four major Pakistani insurgent factions have joined the Afghan guerrilla group known as the Haqqani network in a council aimed at resolving infighting and ending militant violence against civilians in Pakistan.

The council’s formation was announced in a leaflet distributed in recent days in North Waziristan, a remote Pakistani tribal area that is the base of the Haqqani network, a cross-border group that NATO forces in next-door Afghanistan call their most lethal foe. In the pamphlet, the Shura-i-Muraqba said it had formed in consultation with the Afghan Taliban and called on “all holy warriors” to avoid criminal activities or face punishment under Islamic law.

The new coalition could indicate a unified effort to strike harder against U.S.-led troops as they begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan, or it could signal a recognition that splintering has weakened the insurgency inside Pakistan, where the incidence of terrorist attacks fell 7 percent in the past year, according to data released Tuesday.

Those divisions remained on display even as participants in the council confirmed the agreement. In a telephone interview, a member of the militant group led by Maulvi Nazir said the factions had agreed to direct all their attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan. But Ensaullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, said his wing had made no such pledge.

The Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella group, has become the primary face of the bloody rebellion against the Pakistani state. It denounces Pakistan’s alliance with the United States and says its goal is to overthrow the government and establish a caliphate, or Islamic state. That differentiates it from other militant groups in the new council — including the Haqqani network and blocs led by Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur — that already target NATO troops and have tacit peace agreements with the Pakistani state.

Al-Qaeda, which some news reports said was also involved in brokering the Shura-i-Muraqba, and the Haqqani network have long sought to unify Pakistani militants. One past such effort, in 2007, resulted in the formation of the Pakistani Taliban, but the group has since been fractured by leadership spats, military offensives and U.S. drone strikes.

The member of the group commanded by Nazir, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the council recognized that killings and kidnappings of civilians had “brought a bad name to our struggle,” further weakening the groups’ public standing.

Security analysts said they doubted that the new union would have much impact, in large part because it does not include various militant factions that attack inside Pakistan.

But the suggestion that the council would shift its focus to Afghanistan, while unconfirmed, could indicate militants’ approval of Pakistan’s hard stance against the United States following a NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November, said Ashraf Ali of the FATA Research Center, which studies Pakistan’s tribal areas.

“That has been bringing all these militants to have a softened stance against Pakistan,” Ali said.

According to an annual report released Tuesday by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan dropped 7 percent and caused 18 percent fewer deaths in 2011. Suicide bombings fell 34 percent, the report said.

Military offensives that have shrunk insurgent space, CIA drone strikes that have killed key commanders and the possibility of peace talks with the Pakistani government have all contributed to the decline, said Muhammad Amir Rana, the institute’s director.

“During the last two years, they have suffered a lot,” Rana said of Pakistani insurgents. “But that doesn’t mean that these groups have been dismantled. . . . They can pose a threat even in the future.”

Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan.

[buglerbilly]

Bulletproof balls deliver fuel to front line

An Equipment and Logistics news article

4 Jan 12

Giant sacks, specially designed to transport fuel by air to the front line, have been delivered to troops in Afghanistan.


Two Air Portable Fuel Containers Mk 5 are attached to a helicopter for transport
[Picture: Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

The Air Portable Fuel Containers Mk 5 are enormous rubber balls which enable essential fuel supplies to be delivered by air to more remote areas of operations.

The balloon-like containers, which hold up to two tonnes of fuel each, also contain the polymer Kevlar, a flexible plastic commonly used in body armour, to keep the contents protected from enemy fire.

Measuring 4.5 feet (1.37m) in diameter when full, the Mk 5 containers can be easily transported in a sling under a helicopter or in the back of a transport aircraft. The Kevlar protection means they can also be parachuted into locations or dropped from heights of up to 25 feet (7.62m).

It means that personnel stationed at forward operating bases or check points - who rely on fuel to power the generators which provide them with heat, light, medical facilities and communications equipment - do not have to wait as long as they would for the vital supplies to be transported by road.


Two Air Portable Fuel Containers Mk 5 are lifted by a helicopter
[Picture: Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Flight Lieutenant John Harrison, Tactical Supply Wing Detachment commander at Camp Bastion, Helmand province, said:

"The Mk 5's give the TSW great flexibility and are a key enabler in delivering battlefield helicopters with essential fuel whilst operating at or near front line operations.

"They are extremely robust and have the capability to be airlifted full of fuel and deposited wherever they are needed, usually in extremely austere locations.

"This allows the battlefield helicopter to extend its reach from Camp Bastion and spend longer at the front line to deliver valuable support to ground troops. They are relatively maintenance-free and easy to operate, making them an essential bit of equipment."


A pair of the new Kevlar-reinforced Air Portable Fuel Containers Mk 5
[Picture: Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Richard Holloway, Battlefield Utilities Project Team Leader for MOD's Defence Equipment and Support, which secured the delivery of the containers, said:

"These containers provide an effective, safe and quick means of delivering fuel to the front line, ensuring essential support to operations."

Designed and built in the UK, the containers have been bought under a £2m, five-year agreement with GKN Aerospace, based in Portsmouth.

Phil Swash, President and CEO, Aerostructures Europe, GKN Aerospace, said:

"The real contribution this equipment makes to the effective functioning of our troops working in remote and forward bases is something this team and the whole site is extremely proud of."

[buglerbilly]

Karzai Backs US-Taliban Negotiations

January 04, 2012

Deutsche Presse-Agentur

KABUL-- Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday backed possible US-led negotiations with the Taliban militants who have been waging a decade-long war against Afghan and international soldiers.

Karzai, in a statement, said that his government "agrees with the negotiation between the United States and the Taliban that will lead to establishment of an office in Qatar in order to reach peace."

The Taliban movement, in a statement on Tuesday, agreed to open an office in the Gulf state to facilitate possible talks with the international community.

The statement - which did not say that the Taliban had any interest in peace talks - made no reference to the Afghan government.

"(The deal) will save Afghanistan from war, conspiracies of killing our innocent people ... so our country and people will (be) rescued from the excuses of foreigners and their actions that they use to continue war and bloodshed," Karzai said in the statement, released by his palace.

He said that war on terrorism, which entered its eleventh year in November, was not against the Afghan people.

"War on terror can not be successful by raiding the Afghan houses," he said. "Negotiation is the only way to reach peace and get out of the war and violence that our nation has suffered," Karzai said in the statement.

Western and Afghan officials hope the office could be used to engage the Taliban in peace talks, although the Islamist organization has maintained that it would only enter a peace deal when all foreign soldiers leave, as is planned by 2014.

© Copyright 2012 Deutsche Presse-Agentur. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Three Aussie soldiers wounded by bomb

January 5, 2012 - 3:05PM

Three Australian soldiers have been wounded in a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan.

The incident occurred during an operational mission on January 2, about 60km northwest of the Multi-National Base at Tarin Kowt in Oruzgan Province, the Australian Defence Force revealed in a statement today.

The soldiers from Mentoring Task Force 3 were given immediate first aid at the scene before being evacuated by helicopter to a medical facility.

Their wounds are not considered life-threatening and they are in a satisfactory condition.

One soldier will return to Australia where he is expected to make a full recovery.

The others have been discharged and are being managed as outpatients.

The ADF does not release personal details of wounded personnel.

In total, 216 ADF members have been wounded in Afghanistan since the start of the war in 2001.

AAP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/three-aussie-soldiers-wounded-by-bomb-20120105-1pmeg.html#ixzz1iYOI4hr1

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Taliban kill 15 security officers

Taliban say killing of kidnapped men was retaliation for army operation in North Waziristan

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 January 2012 07.33 GMT

Pakistani militants have killed 15 security force members they kidnapped last month close to the Afghan border.

Intelligence officials confirmed local reports that the men's naked bodies were dumped in the town of Shiwa in the North Waziristan region.

The Pakistani Taliban said the killings were in retaliation for an army operation on 1 January in the region that killed several militants, including a prominent commander. The Taliban alleged troops also killed a woman and arrested others, "something that was forbidden and illegitimate in Islam as well as against tribal traditions".

The slain men were members of the Constabulary Corps, a paramilitary force active in the border region with Afghanistan. The men were kidnapped when insurgents attacked a Pakistani security base on 22 December.

In recent months some militant commanders and intelligence officials have claimed peace talks are under way with the Pakistani Taliban, one of the largest and most deadly militant groups. But other Pakistani Taliban commanders have dismissed this and sporadic attacks have continued.

Tribal leaders and analysts speculate that the group is split internally after several years of pounding by Pakistani army offensives and US missile strikes.

[buglerbilly]

Michael Hastings: McChrystal Was ‘Complex,’ Obama Was Naive, Afghanistan Is Hopeless

By Spencer Ackerman

January 5, 2012 | 8:18 am



In 2010, Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings thought he would write a profile of Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. It turned into a caustic expose of McChrystal’s buckwild command style, capturing the general’s staff disrespecting the Obama team. And it cost McChrystal his career.

And that was actually an accident. Overshadowed by the McChrystal controversy was the story Hastings really wanted to produce: an indictment of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, which Hastings considers a deadly folly. And so Hastings has revised and extended his account in a new book, The Operators, published on Thursday.

The Operators is an angry book. Part wartime memoir, part polemic, part score-settling with his critics, Hastings argues that the Afghanistan war is a debacle and that counterinsurgency is a liberal-sounding sham that conceals a bloodthirsty agenda. It’s the book’s big blind spot. If the problem is the Afghanistan war’s waste of human life, it’s odd to attack the general who restricted air strikes and ordered U.S. troops to drive friendly.

But The Operators is also a good, thorough and insightful book about the Afghanistan war. Which makes it rare: the few good ones either focus on the human dimensions of the war at the expense of its policy complexities (Sebastien Junger’s War) or vice versa (Ahmed Rashid’s Descent Into Chaos). You might not agree with all of Hastings’ conclusions, but few other books are ambitious enough to survey the entire war and go down to the squad level.

Some in the military view Hastings as a twerp who took cheap shots at drunk officers who trusted him. Some defense reporters view him contemptuously, even playing along with the McChrystal crew’s attempts at payback. But Hastings writes with an unsparing honesty. “The guilt that many felt for not serving was covered up by an uncritical attitude toward those who did,” Hastings says in The Operators, and that’s real talk.

Speaking of: I consider Hastings my friend — and a colleague whose passion can lead him astray, like when he erroneously accused the general in charge of training Afghan forces of running a “psychological operation” against important senators. But Hastings’ work makes me question whether I’ve been too journalistically credulous at buying into counterinsurgency hook, line and sinker.

On the eve of the book’s publication, Hastings talked with Danger Room about The Operators, McChrystal’s command and Afghanistan. An edited transcript follows. For the record, McChrystal declined to comment for this story.

Danger Room: I don’t understand your actual critique of McChrystal. Is he a villain or is he a tragic figure?

Michael Hastings: He’s a complicated guy. He’s a fascinating figure. In my mind, he’s a [Gen. Douglas] MacArthur — one of these great generals who by the very nature of their character leads to troubles in their career. I think he’s complex and I think if I would have come down one way or the other, it would have been simplistic. He’s done stuff that’s clearly suspect. Have you ever interviewed the Tillman family?



DR: I never have. But wasn’t McChrystal trying to mitigate how bad the war had become? You have a powerful scene in the book with a unit in Afghanistan angry with McChrystal for forcing it to fight with restraint. Do you think he was wrong there?

MH: I’m saying we shouldn’t be there. It’s pretty clear. You can come up with different reasons why we should be there. Counterinsurgency is the latest iteration. You’re trying to put it in to this context, it’s this Dr. Exum context [CNAS fellow Andrew Exum], ‘COIN is like Nerf warfare and McChrystal’s trying not to kill people.’ Great! I’m glad we have a strategy where we’re trying not to kill people. But I don’t even think that’s much of a step in the right direction. My major critique is we shouldn’t be there.

What I’m writing about in those scenes were the soldiers. They get it. I’ve been around the block, I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of different infantry units, and those soldiers about as mutinous as I’ve seen since Baghdad 2006. This wasn’t like cherrypicking Angry Joe. This was really a unit-wide mutiny. McChrystal’s staff didnt see that. But McChrystal himself did see that, and he knew it was too late. The whole time I was there, he never tried to really spin me. But after that, he pulled me aside said that was rough. My question would be, if you say McChrystal encourages restraint, well, he wanted 100,000 troops there. How is that restraint? If you look at the numbers, more Americans and more Afghans died the year he was in command.

DR: In your original Rolling Stone piece, you attribute a lot of the nasty quotes from McChrystal’s camp about the Obama team anonymously. But in the book, you put names to the quotes. Why?

MH: I had named them originally in my story. But the editors at Rolling Stone decided not to use them for space and narrative reasons. But I’d like to make a point on that that needs to be out there. “Biden/Bite Me” was said by Jake McFarren, McChrystal’s top adviser, 30 year confidante and West Point roommate. He was not a junior guy. “Don’t get that on my leg,” [about an email from diplomat Richard Holbrooke], that was Charlie Flynn, who’s now a general. Dave Silverman [a former Navy SEAL] said some colorful stuff too.

There’s an impression out there that McChrystal never said any of this, it was his staff. No, McChrystal criticized [Amb. Karl] Eikenberry, McChrystal made fun of Holbrooke, and McChrystal decided to start all the jokes on Biden. Blaming [media adviser] Duncan Boothby, or blaming one of these lower level guys, when in fact you’ve got McChrystal, his top adviser and his executive officer who’s now a general himself at Ft. Leavenworth — these are serious people making these comments.

And if they say, “Oh, it’s all a big joke,” I would question that. If you were hanging around people as a reporter and they were making jokes about race or women and then they said “it’s all a big joke,” it would still represent a cultural attitude. And in this case it was a contempt for civilian control.

DR: But wasn’t it just crap that’s said around a barstool, and it’s stupid, but does it really reveal so much?

MH: I disagree totally. I think it reveals the exactly the nature of the kind of guy, who when the White House says, ‘Don’t ask more troops,’ is going to say, ‘Fuck you, give me more troops.’

DR: After the McChrystal story, you did another Rolling Stone piece about the general in charge of training Afghans running a psychological operation on visiting senators to sell the war. I think you were wrong; were wrong, it looked more like routine spin. What happened with that?

MH: My goal with that story was to lay out that there was this guy who was part of this information operations team, Lt. Col. Michael Holmes, who received training in how to plan and conduct psychological operations, and he’s being asked by a general [William Caldwell] to spin and influence senators. That, to me, is a big story, just in terms of the reach and power of — I hate to call it the propaganda machine. But huge amounts of resources are being spent to influence American public opinion. And our only response to that, we have, what, 30 journalists covering this stuff? We have thousands of people in the Pentagon who work day and night to figure out how to dupe us. That to me was the key takeaway of that piece.

DR: What’s your actual critique of counterinsurgency? I can understand you arguing that the Afghanistan war is a bloody mistake, killing too many Afghans. But isn’t counterinsurgency an attempt at mitigating those civilian deaths?

MH: I don’t agree that they’re actually killing fewer Afghans. Look at the numbers, they’re not. If I had goverment that local insurgents were trying to overthrow, then yes, I’d probably try to adopt a counterinsurgency strategy. But what that strategy entails is a system of secret prisons and torture and this kind of no-holds barred fight. I think it’s a mistake when you’re trying to fight someone else’s counterinsurgency for them. We’re just not equipped to do it very well. The Israelis have been fighting a counterinsurgency against the Palestinians for decades, and they know the language, they know every nook and cranny of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the conflict is never-ending.

DR: But the counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t like the Israeli wars against the Palestinians. Petraeus warned troops in Iraq against torture; McChrystal’s guidance to his troops was to be respectful of Afghan drivers.

MH: But I don’t think it’s true. Petraeus says we have to not torture Iraqis, I don’t think that’s true. McChrystal says we have to respect Afghans, I don’t think they really are. They convince themselves they are, but I don’t necessarily buy it. And certainly they’re not doing it for any kind of moral reason, because we care about the Afghan people.



DR: Don’t you go too easy on Obama in the book? You portray him as getting rolled by the Pentagon on the Afghanistan surge, rather than actually ordering all these troops to Afghanistan. I remember interviewing the Obama team on the campaign trail and they were talking about escalating the Afghanistan war — not as much as he ultimately did, but I’ve been surprised people were surprised by the surge.

MH: But the White House was surprised by the size of McChrystal’s troop request. I would dispute that. I think they truly believed that after they sent the first 21,000 [extra troops in 2009], they were good to go. Which showed that they were totally clueless about what COIN was. I don’t know how I could have been harder on the president in the book. I said he didn’t understand the promises he made on the campaign trail and got rolled into this by the Pentagon. I think you’re underestimating the power of the Pentagon. They play this happy warrior shtick but it’s nonsense. And if you look at what President Obama has done, he’s done his best to neuter and take control of the Pentagon. [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates is out, McChrystal is out, Petraeus is out of uniform, and there are no more celebrity generals.

DR: You have this powerful passage: “The guilt that many felt for not serving was covered up by an uncritical attitude toward those who did.” I find civilians and veterans are both trying to understand each other — not to condescend or heroize or be hostile but to communicate as equals, with mutual respect — without really knowing how. How do we get past that?

MH: I’m trying to get at this. I’m trying to write about the difficulty one has, understanding what happens to people when they go to war. Part of it is just a confidence thing, to be able call the military on their bullshit and for the military to call civilians on their bullshit. But when one has been at war and one has not, there’s a cultural power imbalance.

John F. Kennedy served in World War II. After he got burned at the Bay of Pigs, he said, never again am I going to blindly trust these guys. He had learned in the Pacific that a lot of these admirals and generals running around were clowns. What did I learn in Iraq, seeing Iraqi police execute people on the streets and then having a two, three star general tell me how great the Iraqi police are? You realize these guys are clowns!

But it’s really tough for people who haven’t served to stand up to all the shiny brass. And it’s tough for journalists as well. My younger brother is an infantry platoon leader and won a Bronze Star. My best friends are in the military. The most formative experiences of my life have been with these guys — as a journalist, which is a huge luxury, and I never want to equate my experience with theirs. But in the same way I can try to empathize with bombing victims, I can also try to do that with soldiers.

But the burdens of this war have fallen on so few. So, so few. Goddamn right the people who did serve should feel like their opinion matters, maybe even should matter more. But then you get into a Starship Troopers scenario [where citizenship is measured by military service]. I think the only way to combat against that is for everyone to do their best to understand what’s really going on. And to do their best to understand that just because someone has a uniform on doesn’t mean you need to genuflect. You can be respectful and thank them. But one has to be able to be as critical of four-star general as of Newt Gingrich. You have to treat these people like they’re flawed human beings like you.

Photos: DVIDSHUB, U.S. Army

[buglerbilly]

Karzai Demands US Hand Over Bagram Prison

January 05, 2012

Associated Press|by Slobodan Lekic



KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai demanded Thursday that the U.S. detention center at Bagram Air Base be handed over to Afghan control within a month, along with all Afghan citizens held by the coalition troops across the nation.

A presidential statement said that keeping Afghan citizens imprisoned without trial violates the country's constitution, as well as international human rights conventions.

The prison, inside the sprawling U.S. base at Bagram north of Kabul, abuts a well-known public detention center known as Parwan, which is run jointly by Afghan authorities and the U.S. military.

It's unclear how many high-value detainees are being held at the U.S. facility. Human rights groups have claimed that detainees were menaced, forced to strip naked and kept in solitary confinement in windowless cells.

A statement from Karzai's office said he issued instructions to a commission consisting of the ministers of defense, interior and justice, as well as other top government and judicial officials, "to complete their job regarding the handing over of the (Bagram) prison and other prisoners who are held by foreign forces."

"The work should be completed within a month," it said.

The U.S.-led NATO coalition is gradually handing over responsibility for security to the Afghan police and army. The process is due to be completed in 2014, when most foreign troops are scheduled to be withdrawn from Afghanistan.

Karzai's demands are the most recent in a series of exercises in political brinksmanship by the president, as he tries to bolster his negotiating position ahead of renewed talks for a Strategic Partnership Document with America that will determine the U.S. role in Afghanistan after 2014.

Among the conditions that Karzai has set is an end to night raids by international troops and complete Afghan control over detainees.

Karzai is walking a tightrope. Although he routinely plays to anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan by denouncing the U.S., he needs America's military and financial strength to back his weak government as it battles the Taliban insurgency.

The CIA's infamous secret network of "black site" interrogation centers is now gone, but suspected terrorists in Afghanistan are being held and interrogated for weeks at temporary sites, including one run by elite special operations forces at Bagram Air Base. The detainees include those suspected of top roles in the Taliban, al-Qaida or other militant groups.

Also Thursday, Afghan police said they arrested two British private security contractors and two Afghan colleagues after finding a cache of weapons in their vehicle. They are being held for investigation into illegal arms transport.

Karzai has ordered all the protection companies shut down by March and replaced by a unified government-run protection force, though recruitment is proceeding at a slow place.

Authorities ordered the immediate shutdown of Afghanistan operations of their company, the international security consulting firm GardaWorld, and are questioning other company employees.

In the latest violence, attackers gunned down a local government official on his way to a mosque in southern Afghanistan in another hit on a government figure. Hundreds of Afghan government officials have been killed in recent years as the Taliban pursue a sweeping assassination campaign seeking to weaken confidence Karzai's administration and discourage people from joining the government.

Haji Fazel Mohammad was shot on his way to evening prayers Wednesday in the volatile district of Sangin in Helmand province, the governor's office said. The attackers escaped.

The Taliban's assassination campaign has also hit senior figures.

In September, a suicide attacker with a bomb in his turban killed former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who led a government council seeking a political settlement with the insurgents. The assassin was posing as a Taliban peace emissary.

---

Associated Press reporters Kay Johnson, Patrick Quinn and Ahmen Massieh Neshad contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

More on this..............

Afghanistan Arrests British Contractors With Guns

January 05, 2012

Associated Press|by Ahmad Massieh Neshad and Kay Johnson



KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan police arrested two British private security contractors and two Afghan colleagues and ordered their company closed down after finding a cache of weapons in their vehicle, an official said Thursday. They are being held for investigation into illegal arms transport.

Their detention spells the latest trouble for Afghanistan's dozens of private security companies that guard supply convoys, development projects and private businesses. President Hamid Karzai has ordered all the protection companies shut down by March, to be replaced by a unified government-run protection force.

Police who stopped the contractors' vehicle at a Kabul checkpoint Tuesday found more than two dozen AK-47 rifles in a metal box covered by a blanket, Ministry of Interior spokesman Sediq Sediqi told a press briefing.

All 30 weapons had their serial numbers scratched off, and the men had no permits for them, so police arrested all four men on suspicion of illegal arms transport, Sediqi said. He said the case has been sent to Afghanistan's attorney general for investigation.

Authorities ordered the immediate shutdown of Afghanistan operations of their company, the international security consulting firm GardaWorld, and are questioning other company employees.

"They have to pay all the dues they owe to the government of Afghanistan, and they cannot operate any more after that," Sediqi said.

GardaWorld specializes in high-risk areas around the world, with offices in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Haiti. It provided security for Afghanistan's 2005 National Assembly elections.

The firm said Thursday that it was cooperating with the Afghan investigation. A statement indicated it did not own the AK-47s but was in the process of buying them through legal channels.

"The weapons in question were being taken to be tested at a firing range before being purchased and properly licensed by GardaWorld," the company said. "We fully comply with all laws and regulations in our Afghanistan operations and are making every effort to work closely with the Afghan authorities to rectify the situation as soon as possible."

A spokesman for the British Embassy said it was monitoring the case and providing consular services to the two British citizens.

Afghanistan has been scrambling to train guards for its own government security service - called the Afghan Public Protection Force, or APPF - since Karzai late last year ordered all 103 private security companies closed by March 2012.

Karzai has said the private security firms undermine the Afghan police and army forces, creating effective militias that often flout Afghan laws and regulations.

Controversies caused by some contractors' behavior, ranging from violence to cultural insensitivity, has given the industry a bad name among many Afghans.

In 2008, guards from the American security giant Blackwater Worldwide - now known as Xe Services - forced an Afghan soldier to the ground and handcuffed him after he refused to let their vehicle pass through a checkpoint.

And in 2005, three DynCorp International guards assigned to Karzai's own protective detail caused a scene in the VIP lounge of the Kabul airport while awaiting a flight. "They had been intoxicated, loud and obnoxious," according to an internal company report. DynCorp, also a U.S. firm, fired the three guards.

So far, 57 of the private security companies have been shut down in Afghanistan, Sediqi said Thursday. Another 46, half of them Afghan firms and half international, are still operating but officials have vowed to close them by March, according to the Interior Ministry.

The new Afghan force will need to train 25,000 guards to take over all the work performed by privately contracted guards, according to a U.S. government report released in October.

Recruitment has been slow. As of late last year, the APPF had only about 6,500 guards trained, the U.S. report said. The NATO force in Afghanistan has offered help to speed up the training of the Afghan guards.

If the Afghan government is not ready to take over by March, there is a provision for 12-month extension that would allow the private firms to continue operating. Karzai originally set a deadline to shut down private contractors by the end of 2010, but it was pushed back to this year.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US Marine Corps Afghan Drone Operations in Regional Command Southwest

(Source: US Marine Corps; dated Oct. 4, 2011)

(Released Dec. 17, 2011 by the Public Intelligence website)

Purpose: To inform Deputy Commandants (DCs) Aviation, Combat Development and Integration (CD&I), Plans, Policies, and Operations (PP&O), Installations and Logistics (I&L), Commanding General (CG), Training and Education Command (TECOM), Director of Intelligence, operating forces, and others on results of a Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned (MCCLL) collection conducted April – May 2011 to document lessons and observations regarding unmanned aerial systems (UAS) operations in support of Regional Command Southwest (RC (SW)) during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

Bottom Line up Front

The RQ-7B Shadow UAS employed by the Marine Corps is a U. S. Army program of record. Because it is an Army program the Shadow has very high frequency (VHF) but no ultra-high frequency (UHF) retransmission capability. UHF is the primary means of communication between key elements of the Marine air command and control system (MACCS), airborne Marine Corps aviation assets, and Marine joint terminal attack controllers (JTAC) and forward air controllers (FAC). Developing a UHF retransmission capability for an organic USMC UAS was regarded as a primary need.

USMC units were dependent on joint assets for armed UAS missions and competed with virtually every other combat unit in OEF to schedule armed UAS sorties. Developing an organic armed USMC UAS was regarded as a priority.

Third Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW) Forward (Fwd) conceived and initiated a staff organization called the Marine air ground task force (MAGTF) Aerial Reconnaissance Coordination Cell (MARCC). The intent of the MARCC was to ensure that all aviation combat element (ACE) intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, manned and unmanned, were coordinated and employed to maximum effectiveness.

The establishment of the MARCC initially generated operational friction between the RC (SW) ACE and the ground combat element (GCE). The ACE regarded the MARCC as a more efficient means of conducting command and control of ACE assets. However, the GCE had been accustomed to a greater degree of autonomy in employing UASs and perceived the establishment of the MARCC as an impediment to responsiveness and their ability to dynamically retask UASs as desired.

As the ground scheme of maneuver evolved, establishing and supporting UAS “hubs” and “spokes” in proximity to ground forces posed a significant challenge to 3d MAW (Fwd) planners. [MCCLL Note: A hub is a UAS airfield base of operations used to launch and recover UASs and a spoke is a scalable outlying UAS control site supported by the hub.] In addition to requiring facilities suitable for the launch, recovery, and maintenance of UASs, a key consideration was the appropriate manning of each hub and spoke. A significant limiting factor in the MAW’s ability to establish hubs and spokes was a lack of trained intelligence analysts, UAS mission commanders, and maintenance personnel (this included contract maintenance support for the ScanEagle UAS due to contractor habitability mandates subject to that contract).

The volume of UAS sorties and their importance to the MAGTF is expected to increase in the future, including the development of a logistics support UAS and a new small tactical unmanned aerial system (STUAS). This has generated a need to determine where UAS assets would best be located within the ACE of the MAGTF. The Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron ONE and TWO (VMU-1 / VMU-2) commanding officers believed they should be located within a Marine aircraft group (MAG) just as all USMC aviation squadrons.

[MCCLL Note: The VMUs are located within the Marine air control group (MACG) in garrison. During OEF deployment the VMUs were located directly within the MAW (Fwd) because there were no deployed MAGs and the MACG was composed of a small detachment.]

Click here for the full report (29 pages in PDF format) on the Public Intelligence website.

http://publicintelligence.net/ufouo-u-s-marine-corps-afghan-drone-operations-in-regional-command-southwest-rc-sw/

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

The 'unstoppable' peace process in Nad 'Ali

A Military Operations news article

6 Jan 12

As Nad 'Ali looks to a brighter future, Tristan Kelly reports from the former Taliban stronghold.


Troops from B Company, 2nd Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles, stop to chat with some locals from Shin Kalay
[Picture: Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

With a reduction in violence of 86 per cent compared to 2010, the people who live in Nad 'Ali district, an area once renowned for being a hotbed of the Taliban insurgency, are enjoying unprecedented levels of security.

And now, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has announced that the area, which is to the west of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province and within the British area of operations, will be among the second tranche of areas across the country to begin formal transfer to Afghan security control.

However, today's relative security has been hard fought and some years in the making. British and other ISAF forces first entered the region in 2006.

Work soon began to disrupt and dislodge the Taliban from the region and in December 2008 a major operation - named SOND CHARA - was launched by British, Danish, Estonian and Afghan forces to clear insurgents from the district centre.

With two patrol bases quickly established, the operation was hailed a success and allowed ISAF and Afghan forces to move out from pockets of security to reassure the local population and offer a platform for stabilisation.

This foothold was expanded over time and culminated in Operation MOSHTARAK in February 2010. Meaning 'together' in Dari, Op MOSHTARAK was the largest counter-insurgency operation launched by ISAF forces since entering Afghanistan in 2001.

It involved some 15,000 ISAF troops from the UK, the US, Denmark, Estonia and Canada, as well as large numbers of Afghan troops.

The word 'moshtarak' underlined the key feature of the operation - the unprecedented and successful involvement of Afghan forces, including members of the Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police, Afghan Border Police and Afghan National Civil Order Police.


Lieutenant Colonel Shahdi Khan, the District Chief of Police for Nad 'Ali
[Picture: Steve Dock, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Speaking on the eve of the operation, Brigadier James Cowan, the then Commander of Task Force Helmand, said:

"I can think of no better name to describe this venture. For we are in this together: we have planned it together, we will fight it together, we will see it through together."

Another key feature of the operational plan was 'seeing it through' and the Provincial Reconstruction Team and Afghan government departments were involved from the very beginning in bringing governance to the region as soon as the insurgents had been driven out:

"We've got a government in a box, ready to roll in," said US General Stanley McChrystal, ISAF commander at the time.

Jumping ahead 18 months and progress in Nad 'Ali has been stark, with the reduction in violence taking some by surprise. This is particularly true in the southern half of the district, around the district centre.

Speaking at Patrol Base Chili in southern Nad 'Ali, towards the end of his tour in September 2011, Major Jamie Murray, Officer Commanding B Company, 2nd Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles (2 RGR), whose area of operations covered approximately 25,000 of Nad 'Ali's population of 75,000-100,000, tells me just how quiet this tour has been:

"The summer fighting season has been very much suppressed and the conditions are set for an informal transition," he said, adding that significant events, such as IED finds and contacts with the Taliban, were down 40 per cent on the previous HERRICK.

And the Taliban, according to the Major, were becoming 'desperate', and with that the quality of the enemy had reduced. He cited a recent incident where a suicide bomber had self-detonated in a field a long way from his target in the district centre as a key example.


The Nad 'Ali and Lashkar Gah districts of Helmand province
[Picture: via MOD]

Major Murray adds that the focus of this tour has been much more on interaction with local Afghans and showing them the benefits of Afghan government control. He also says that there has been a dramatic shift in the attitude of local Afghans since 2 RGR's previous tour in 2009:

"We have conducted 75 shuras so far and each one is convivial," Major Murray said.

"The locals are willing to provide us with information not just about security but about their lives in general - a year ago that shura would have been entirely about security and things to do with life and death.

"Now Afghan locals are telling us where bad things are happening, where IEDs are being laid. We now have well over 25,000 counter insurgents in this area, and that is the local people who are countering the insurgency."

The next day I join a routine joint 2 RGR and Afghan National Civil Order Police patrol into the nearby village of Shin Kalay, whose streets and recently restored mosque are buzzing with activity.

The Gurkhas speak freely in Hindi with the villagers and platoon commander Lieutenant Nick Gross is quick to strike up conversation with those in the busy alleyways separating the many compounds.

After a few quick handshakes and nods of recognition, Lieutenant Gross meets with one man he knows well, who explains how his brother has recently returned from the US and is keen to fund the reopening of the local school.

It is a small example of how life is returning to the area as confidence in security takes hold. Major Murray also tells me that local farmers are managing to coax four crops a year out of their fertile soils for the first time in decades.

Not far away, in Nad 'Ali district centre, the bazaar has increased from the two or three shops of a year ago to over 100 today and the newly-metalled roads are allowing farmers to take their goods to market.

Asked how such a transformation has been achieved Major Murray says that sustained interaction and living amongst the locals, understanding them and what makes them tick, has been crucial.


Soldiers from A Company, The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, take a break during a patrol in the Kalang bazaar
[Picture: Sergeant Steve Blake RLC, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

He is keen to stress though that his men are simply building on the achievements of UK and Afghan troops on previous HERRICKs and the hard work invested in the area over several years.

Carrying the baton into the future will be the sole responsibility of the Afghans. Much of that responsibility will rest with the Afghan National Police (ANP) as the Afghan National Army (ANA) move to more outlying areas to take on the insurgency in the hinterland.

Leading the police from the newly-built District Police Headquarters in Nad 'Ali is District Chief of Police Lieutenant Colonel Shahdi Khan, who said that he had ever-increasing confidence in his force:

"We have enough men now and more importantly we have the trust of the people. When the people trust the ANP we can do anything," he said.

Despite Lieutenant Colonel Khan's optimism the quality and quantity of the Afghan security forces will determine the speed of transition and its eventual success or failure.

The issue is being tackled on several fronts, not least in the Lashkar Gah provincial police training centre. Here hundreds of new recruits - and importantly junior officers - are undergoing instruction.

Sergeant Glynn Ross of the Ministry of Defence Police, who has been training junior ANP officers in Helmand, said that while the police in Afghanistan have to know how to fight the insurgency, he is trying to focus heavily on traditional policing skills:

"It is part of their mission here to gain the hearts and minds of the people, and if they do that they will be halfway there," he said. "They are certainly going to be a good police service at the end of the day.

"Compared with 18 months ago we are now turning out a much, much higher standard of recruit."


Members of the Police Mentoring and Advisory Group from 2nd Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles, operating in a Husky protected support vehicle, transit around the Nad 'Ali area
[Picture: Steve Dock, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Progress at all levels - from the police to delivering infrastructure projects - has been lauded, and the formal process for transferring security control in Nad 'Ali is another step on the road to full transition across the country by 2015 when ISAF combat operations will end.

This of course is not the end of the story. UK and other NATO troops will likely continue to offer training assistance to the Afghans after 2014 and Foreign Secretary William Hague has made clear that transition does not mean the end of international support:

"The UK remains committed to a strong, long-term partnership with Afghanistan based on diplomacy, trade and development, and support for Afghan National Security Forces' [ANSF] development," he said.

General Sherin Shah, the commander of the 6,000 ANA troops that form 3rd Brigade 215 Corps, which cover the key Helmand districts of Lashkar Gah, Nahr-e Saraj, Nad 'Ali and Gereshk, is bullish in his view of the future:

"In Nad 'Ali the ANSF will take over responsibility for security. The process of transition will take time, and it is not something that will happen overnight, but ISAF troops are not leaving us and will support us if we need it," he said.

"I have seen big changes in Nad 'Ali in the past few years. Now there are shops, businesses and construction projects happening. Children can go to school to learn. The peace process will continue and nothing will stop us."

This article is taken from the December 2011/January 2012 edition of Defence Focus - the magazine for everyone in Defence.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Explosions Kill 5 NATO Troops, 6 Children

January 06, 2012

Associated Press|by Slobodan Lekic

KABUL, Afghanistan - Explosives hidden in a trash heap killed six children in southern Afghanistan Friday, police said, and five NATO troops were killed in roadside bombings in the volatile region.

The children were rummaging through the trash for food scraps and bottles in the southern province of Uruzgon when the blast killed them, police spokesman Farid Ayal said. A civilian man also died in the blast.

Four other children were wounded by the explosion in Trinkot, the provincial capital about 250 miles (400 kilometers) southwest of Kabul.

The U.N. estimates improvised bombs and suicide attacks accounted for half of nearly 1,500 civilian deaths in the first six months of last year, the most recent statistics.

Elsewhere in the south, four NATO troops died in one of Friday's bombings, and one was killed in a separate blast. The alliance said both incidents occurred in southern Afghanistan but provided no further details. It did not identify the troops or disclose what countries they came from.

The deaths bring to nine the number of international troops killed in the first week of the year. At least 544 NATO troops died in Afghanistan in 2011, the second-deadliest year for the coalition in the decade-old war.

Roadside bombs are a favorite weapon of Taliban insurgents against coalition troops and the U.S.-backed Afghan government, but they also kill dozens of civilians each month.

U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan have been significantly increased since 2009 and the government's army and police have rapidly expanded, resulting in the capture and killing of thousands of Taliban insurgents. Nonetheless, the guerrillas have retained their capability to inflict losses on coalition forces.

Faced with overwhelming allied superiority in numbers and firepower, the Taliban largely avoid direct combat, relying instead on roadside bombs, small ambushes and hit-and-run tactics to harass NATO and government forces.

Taliban military activities typically abate during the winter months, due to heavy snows and bitter cold in the rough mountain terrain.

The steady flow of casualties and the high costs of the operation have undermined support for the war, particularly among European allies who make up about a third of the approximately 130,000-member NATO-led force. They come at a time when defense budgets are being slashed as part of public spending cuts and other austerity measures designed to deal with the worsening economic crisis.

NATO is gradually handing over responsibility for security to the rapidly expanding Afghan police and army. Coalition forces plan to cease combat operations in 2014, when most foreign troops will be withdrawn.

The government's army and police will assume the lead role in about half the nation over the next several months.

On Thursday, President Hamid Karzai demanded that the largest detention center in the country be handed over to exclusive Afghan control.

The state-of-the-art internment facility located near Bagram Airfield is now jointly run by U.S. and Afghan authorities. It was completed in 2009 to replace another jail, where human rights groups claimed detainees were menaced, forced to strip naked and kept in solitary confinement in windowless cells.

Karzai also demanded that all Afghan citizens held by the coalition troops across the nation be turned over to the government. A presidential statement said that keeping Afghan citizens imprisoned without trial violates the country's constitution, as well as international human rights conventions.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. and Afghanistan have been working on the transfer of detention facilities for a long time. She said no timeline has been agreed on.

"We're going to continue to work with the Afghan government to implement the transition that we have both agreed needs to happen," Nuland told reporters. "We need to do this in a manner that is maximally responsible."

---

Associated Press reporters Mirwais Khan in Kandahar and Bradley Klapper in Washington contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Former Pakistani envoy to U.S. fears for his life


Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images - Pakistan's former ambassador to United States, Husain Haqqani, center, must stay behind high walls because he fears attack while facing treason charges.

By Karin Brulliard, Published: January 6

ISLAMABAD — The ex-ambassador’s quarters, decorated in placid blue, lie behind a half-dozen security gates. Outside are pine-studded gardens to stroll in. He has left the compound only three times in six weeks.

It is a dramatic change of pace for Husain Haqqani, who two months ago darted about Washington as Pakistan’s envoy to the United States. Now facing a court investigation in connection with a memo that has roiled Pakistani politics and led to his resignation, Haqqani says he fears that leaving his guest suite at the prime minister’s residence would be to invite death on the streets of his own country.

“I could be killed by a suicide bomber for being an American lackey,” Haqqani said in an interview this week, referring to one common characterization of him here. “There’s so much hype against me that I could meet the fate of Salman Taseer.”

Taseer was a liberal ruling-party governor who was assassinated one year ago by his own police guard, who disagreed with the politician’s criticism of Pakistan’s controversial anti-blasphemy laws. The accusations circling Haqqani — that he committed treason by engineering a memo asking for American help to rein in Pakistan’s powerful military — provoke similar passions here, his supporters say.

Haqqani’s attorney has offered another reason he must stay inside: The fearsome Pakistani military intelligence agency, she said, might capture and torture him into giving a false statement. And so Haqqani confines himself to an official mansion, offering what might be the starkest illustration yet of the chasm between Pakistan’s embattled civilian government and the military it technically directs.

That gap has only widened as furor over the scandal, known here as “Memogate,” escalates, plunging this volatile nation into deeper crisis. It came to light three months ago when a Pakistani American businessman, Mansoor Ijaz, said he delivered the memo to Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has said he ignored it.

Ijaz later said he wrote the memo on Haqqani’s instructions. Haqqani has denied involvement, and many Pakistani observers initially expected his resignation to quell the commotion. That did not happen.

Officials from the ruling party and some analysts say the saga is aimed at bringing down Pakistan’s U.S.-backed government or triggering the impeachment of President Asif Ali Zardari, who is himself so unpopular that he rarely appears in public. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has suggested a military plot is underway. But many — among them opposition politicians, sectors of the media and the military — are convinced Haqqani arranged the memo on Zardari’s orders, and they are doggedly pursuing the matter.

U.S. senators’ support

On Thursday, U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) issued a statement condemning the “harassment” of Haqqani, whom they called a “principled advocate” for Pakistan.

As ambassador, Haqqani, a former journalist and Boston University professor, was a seemingly tireless man about Washington, combining seductive sound bites and scholarly analysis to crystallize Pakistan’s case on the Hill, in television interviews and at exclusive dinner parties. But in Pakistan, his deft handling of Americans — and his history of switching political sides — was viewed as suspect. Pakistan’s generals saw him as Zardari’s ambassador, not Pakistan’s.

The controversy has reached the Supreme Court, which is admired by many as the most independent in the nation’s history but is regarded by the ruling Pakistan People’s Party as a tool of the army and the opposition. After he returned to Pakistan in November to face questions over the scandal, the court banned Haqqani from leaving the country, although he has not been charged with a crime. Last weekend, the court appointed a fact-finding judicial commission to investigate the origin of the memo, which, among other things, promised to hand over terrorism suspects to the United States or allow U.S. forces to capture or kill them in Pakistan.

Haqqani’s attorney, prominent human rights lawyer Asma Jehangir, denounced the court for overstepping its boundaries and acting as an “acolyte” of the military establishment. She has refused to appear before the commission.

Babar Sattar, a constitutional law expert, said the court had acted appropriately and showed a rare willingness to take up a matter involving national security, an area long ceded to the military. But he and other legal experts questioned the court’s quickness, even as it allows other cases implicating the military establishment to languish.

“The criticism is that the judicial scrutiny is happening only because the military wants it to happen and that that’s not a level playing field for Husain Haqqani and Asif Ali Zardari,” Sattar said.

The civil-military divide is clear in affidavits presented to the Supreme Court. Government officials denied involvement and noted that a parliamentary committee was already probing the matter. But spy chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha said that Ijaz, during an October meeting in London, presented “enough corroborative evidence to prove” his story.

So far, the bulk of evidence has come from Ijaz, who released logs of what he says are BlackBerry message conversations between him and Haqqani. Haqqani’s attorneys say none directly refer to the memo.

‘What is all the fuss about?’

The scandal is distracting attention from graver national problems, some analysts argue, including shortages of gas used to heat homes and power cars, a faltering economy and regular insurgent attacks.

The memo “has led to no consequences for Pakistan . . . so what is all the fuss about?” said Ayaz Amir, an opposition politician who is critical of Haqqani.

The judicial commission is expected to report its findings to the Supreme Court at the end of January. At that point, the court could drop the matter, urge Parliament to pursue Zardari’s impeachment or order investigators to charge Haqqani with a crime such as treason, which carries the death penalty. Neither of the latter two options would proceed quickly, legal experts said.

Another possibility, viewed as remote, is that the commission could fault Pasha for traveling to meet Ijaz without the prime minister’s permission, Sattar said.

Haqqani, who has written critically about military dominance in Pakistan, said he is ready for a long stay at the prime minister’s residence. There, he greets a stream of visitors and sends e-mails energetically, just as he did as ambassador. He said he has left to go to the dentist, to meet his attorney and to testify before a commission examining the U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden.

Haqqani shrugged off the loss of liberty.

“If that’s all I wanted, I would have remained a correspondent or a professor,” he said. “You come into politics because you believe in something. In a country like this, you take risks.”

[buglerbilly]

JANUARY 7, 2012, 1:04 P.M. ET.

Afghan Commission Accuses U.S. of Detainee Abuse

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan—An Afghan investigative commission accused the American military Saturday of abuse at its main prison in the country, repeating President Hamid Karzai's demand that the U.S. turn over all detainees to Afghan custody and saying anyone held without evidence should be freed.

The demands put the U.S. and the Afghan governments on a collision course in an issue that will decide the fate of hundreds of suspected Taliban and al-Qaida operators captured by American forces. The head of the Afghan investigation said U.S. officials told him many of those militant suspects were taken based on intelligence that can't be used in Afghan courts.

The dispute that has unfolded in recent days recreates many of the thorny issues surrounding the controversial U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay. There, as at the prison in Afghanistan, American forces are holding many detainees without charging them with a specific crime or presenting evidence in a civil court.

Detainees interviewed during two visits to the U.S.-run portion of the prison outside Bagram Air Base north of Kabul complained of freezing cold, humiliating strip searches and being deprived of light, according to Gul Rahman Qazi, who led the investigation ordered by President Karzai.

Another investigator, Sayed Noorullah, said the prison must be transferred to Afghan control "as soon as possible," adding that "If there is no evidence ... they have the right to be freed."

U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall said Saturday that American officials only received the commission's report after its press briefing. He said all allegations of prisoner abuse are seriously investigated and repeated that the U.S. is committed to turning over all its prisons in Afghanistan "in a responsible manner."

Mr. Karzai on Thursday abruptly demanded that the U.S. military turn over full control of the prison, officially known as the Parwan Detention Center but generally referred to as the Bagram prison, within a month. A spokesman for the president said Saturday that he made the announcement in response to the investigation team's report.

The president's demand for full control of the prison took many by surprise, since the U.S. and Afghan governments had been working on a gradual timetable for transferring responsibility for the prison over the next two years.

The escalating dispute could also threaten delicate negotiations the U.S. and Afghanistan for a strategic partnership deal that could leave a small American security force after most foreign troops withdraw in 2014. The status of detainees is a key unresolved issue in the talks.

According to Mr. Qazi, U.S. officials at the prison said they have delayed turning over about 90% of the estimated 3,000 detainees held at the prison near Bagram because it fears the suspected militants are too dangerous to be released, as they likely would have to be under Afghanistan's judicial system

Officially, U.S. and Afghan militaries jointly run the facility, but the Afghan side controls a small portion with about 300 detainees whose cases are slated to be tried by Afghan judiciary. The U.S. military runs the larger portion of the prison.

Mr. Qazi, who led the ad hoc investigation of the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution, said U.S. prison officials told only 300 of the nearly 3,000 detainees had legal cases against them.

He said he was told that that 2,700 others were suspected Taliban who were captured using intelligence that could not be used in a court.

"The foreign friends told us that based on the rules of the battlefield, they are dangerous and cannot be set free," Mr. Qazi told reporters Saturday.

Nevertheless, the commission repeated Karzai's demand of full Afghan custody of all prisoners as soon as possible, though it did not set a deadline.

"Inside Afghanistan, having a prison run by foreigners is not allowed with the respect of Afghan constitution," Mr. Qazi said.

Besides Afghan militant suspects, the prison near Bagram also holds foreign al-Qaida suspects from several different countries captured in what the U.S. considers battlefield conditions.

It's unclear what would happen to those foreign suspects if they were turned over to Afghan custody.

[buglerbilly]

Report: Lull in Drone Attacks Helping Taliban

January 09, 2012

Military.com|by Bryant Jordan



A pause in the CIA’s secret drone war over Pakistan has emboldened local insurgent fighters, enabling them to take advantage of a lull designed to help ease tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan.

The New York Times reported that American officials temporarily called off their secret drone campaign in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions after the late-November accidental cross-border air strike that killed 24 Pakistani border troops. Insurgents in Pakistan apparently have not wasted that opening.

"It makes sense that a lull in U.S. operations, coupled with ineffective Pakistani efforts, might lead the terrorists to become complacent and try to regroup," one U.S official told the newspaper.

Since the cutback in drone missions, Taliban fighters have been able to move more freely throughout the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The sense that they may not be hit at any moment by a drone-launched missile has also reduced tension and infighting among Taliban units.

"We know that al Qaida's leaders were constantly taking the U.S. counter-terrorism operations into account, spending considerable time planning their movements and protecting their communications to try to stay alive,” the official told the Times.

The paper is reporting that the lull has resulted in a 10 percent rise in violence in the Pakistan tribal regions, as well as unconfirmed reports that some local government officials were negotiating deals and unofficial truces with local Taliban units.

November’s friendly fire deaths worsened already sour relations between the U.S. and Pakistan, which walks a difficult line between its generally pro-western government and a military and intelligence community that keeps strong ties and sympathies with Taliban and other Islamists.

After the border deaths, Pakistan closed the routes used by overland convoys to resupply the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan. Those convoys have yet to be restarted, though the U.S. has said it is making progress in improving relations with Pakistan.

Since President Barack Obama assumed office in 2009, the use of drones to attack insurgent targets in Afghanistan and in the tribal areas of Pakistan increased. Though there have been friendly fire deaths have throughout the Afghanistan war, the November accident drew one of the angriest responses from Pakistan.

Pakistan has placed the blame squarely on U.S. forces, while the U.S. has maintained there were errors on both sides.

Even before the November accident, however, some State Department and National Security Council officials had lobbied for easing up on drone attacks, according to a report last month in the Los Angeles Times. These officials argued that killing low-level officials and Taliban foot soldiers that can easily be replaced is not worth the danger of a serious, permanent rupture between the U.S. and Pakistani government, the paper said.

© Copyright 2012 Military.com. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan Airdrops Surpass Record Levels In 2011

(Source: U.S Air Force; issued January 9, 2012)

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. --- In 2011, mobility Airmen delivering airdrops reached a new annual record with 75,956,235 pounds of cargo delivered. That's nearly 16 million more pounds delivered than the previous record set in 2010 of 60,400,000.

At more than 75.9 million pounds - that's the equivalent of standing on a mountain top and watching 553 Army M1 Abrams tanks -- or even 11,868 Chevrolet Silverado trucks -- floating down from the sky with parachutes to a landing zone.

The record number, as recorded by Air Forces Central's Combined Air Operations Center at a non-disclosed base in Southwest Asia, is also larger than the total number of pounds delivered in Afghanistan by airdrop from 2006 to 2009 which combined is 60,525,969 pounds.

On average mobility Airmen airdropped 6,329,686 pounds of cargo each month in 2011. Mobility Airmen completing the airdrops flew C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster III aircraft from various deployed bases. They also completed the airdrops in various forms - from the the use of the traditional Container Delivery System, or CDS, bundles to the Joint Precision Airdrop System, or JPADS.

In November 2011, one U.S. Army discussed the importance of airdrops and how good they are getting after receiving a JPADS airdrop at Combat Outpost Herrera.

"I was real skeptical (of JPADS) at first," said Army Capt. Brandon Kimbrel, COP Herrera commander, in a Nov. 27 report by Staff Sgt. David Salanitri and Senior Airman Patrick McKenna of U.S. Air Forces Central Public Affairs in Southwest Asia. "After the drop, I was real impressed. We didn't see or hear the 'bird' at all. All of a sudden, we looked up and saw parachutes above us."

In the same AFCENT Public Affairs report, Army Staff Sgt. Denton Poe, 1st platoon sergeant at COP Herrera, said airdrops are vital.

"We're surrounded by mountains -- the snow sets in. The helicopter passes are impassible by helicopter and the roads could be clogged up," Poe said in the report. "Utilizing airdrops with the GPS-guided parachutes allows us that avenue to use in case we can't get resupplied by helicopters or vehicles by the road, which is a typical case come winter here."

Perfecting the use of airdrops for combat resupply as well as for humanitarian purposes continues to grow in the Air Force. In July 2011, Air Mobility Command led an international communication effort by holding the first International Airdrop Symposium at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

According to Maj. Patrick Linson, symposium chairperson from St. Joseph, Mo., where he serves as a combat tactics instructor in the Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center, or AATTC, the symposium was important "to build international partnerships in the airdrop and airlift communities."

The goal of the organizers, Linson said, was to have participating international partners share their ideas and techniques. For the Air Force, the lessons learned from Afghanistan airdrops were particularly important.

"Sharing these techniques was naturally beneficial to all involved," Linson added.

Numbers aside, the most important factor behind the high number of airdrops may be the possible lives saved by keeping convoys off the road in the remote, land-locked areas of Afghanistan and the future potential for Air Force airdrop operations.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Suicide Group Storms Afghan Building, 2 Dead

January 10, 2012

Agence France-Presse

At least two policemen were killed when a group of suicide bombers stormed a government building in southeastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the interior ministry and officials said.

Two attackers blew themselves up in the attack, one other was killed in an exchange of fire with police, while one remaining suicide bomber remained at large.

Police had surrounded the building, which houses the directorate of communication in Sharana, the capital city of Paktika province, a ministry statement said.

In the course of an ongoing gun battle "two policemen were killed and one wounded", while two attackers were also killed, said the statement.

"Afghan National Police are engaging in a gun battle with remaining attackers", it said.

Provincial governor Muhibullah Samim told AFP later that a third attacker had been killed, adding that the group of bombers had planned to target an intelligence office close to the building they had taken over.

The attackers first killed a police guard at the gate before seizing the building, Paktika provincial spokesman Mokhlis Afghan said.

One bomber was killed in an exchange of fire with the police at the gate and a second blew himself up later in the building, killing another policeman, he added.

Afghan police and intelligence operatives are regular targets of Taliban insurgents fighting the government of President Hamid Karzai, along with national and foreign military forces.

A Taliban bomb attack killed 10 Afghan police returning from a recruitment centre in southern Afghanistan's southern Helmand province on December 29.

The victims were members of the U.S.-funded Afghan Local Police (ALP) set up last year and touted as key to a handover of security control, which will see all foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

The Taliban, who frequently use roadside bombs to attack Afghan and U.S.-led NATO troops, claimed responsibility for that attack.

There are around 130,000 international troops, mainly from the United States, in Afghanistan helping government forces combat the insurgency.

Paktika province, which borders Pakistan, is one of the main strongholds of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network and one of the main routes for militant infiltration into Afghanistan from sanctuaries across the border.

The United States announced last year that it would focus its military operations towards the eastern provinces, where the Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants slipped out of reach of a U.S.-led invading force a decade ago.

The Taliban announced last week that it planned to set up a political office in Qatar, widely seen as a move towards peace negotiations with Washington and its Western allies.

But fighting has not stopped, with six children, five soldiers, three policemen and a civilian dying in another bloody day in Afghanistan's long war just three days after the Taliban announcement.

© Copyright 2012 Agence France-Presse.

[buglerbilly]

JANUARY 11, 2012.

Police Undermine Fight Against Taliban

By MARIA ABI-HABIB


Maria Abi-Habib/The Wall Street Journal
U.S. soldiers in Paktika, eastern Afghanistan, at a site where insurgent commander Abdul Bari was killed in a U.S.-Afghan raid.

JANI KHEL, Afghanistan—In the American war against the Taliban, on whose side are the Afghan police? For many U.S. soldiers serving in the insurgent heartland, the answer is: both.

"They smile to our face when we're here, giving them money and building them buildings," says U.S. Army Capt. Cory Brown, a provost marshal officer helping to oversee Afghan security forces here in volatile Paktika province. "But they've given insurgents money, food and even rides in Afghan police cars."

Worse, he says, some policemen are also suspected of selling their U.S.-provided weapons to the Taliban.

Building up the Afghan police—often the only visible Afghan government presence outside major cities—is critical for U.S. transition plans, which see a pullout of about one-third of U.S. forces by September, ahead of a near-total withdrawal in 2014.



Across Afghanistan, the police tend to have higher attrition rates and drug-abuse problems than their army counterparts. U.S. officials and the Afghan army—a more disciplined and trusted force—broadly agree that the police have a long way to go to win Afghans' trust.

That is especially important here in Paktika, which borders Pakistan's tribal area of Waziristan, a base for the Taliban, their allies in the Haqqani network and al Qaeda. American officers say this proximity to a reservoir of insurgent fighters means that the U.S. won't be able to kill its way to victory here.

Waziristan "is filled with thousands upon thousands of people who would fight the coalition," says U.S. Army Col. Edward Bohnemann, commander of the 172nd Brigade, which is responsible for Paktika. "Focusing on killing 200 insurgents is not a healthy way to look at it. We need to focus on governance and improving the Afghan security forces."

Col. Bohnemann has his work cut out for him. Much of the Paktika population despises the police force here, whose members are largely drawn from ethnic Tajiks from the north who don't speak the local language, and from a rival Pashtun tribe from a neighboring province, U.S. and Afghan officers say.

Some police here, even if they aren't actively aiding the Taliban, engage in the kind of behavior that can fuel support for the insurgents.

Policemen have repeatedly erected illegal checkpoints to extort money from the population, the military officials say. In October, after coming under fire, police torched part of a village bazaar and beat local males. A U.S. military official called the incident "apocalyptic."

Paktika Gov. Mohibullah Samim denied that any violations occurred and praised the police force's work.

When Lt. Col. Curtis Taylor, a battalion commander in the 172nd Brigade, met with Afghan army battalion commander Maj. Abdul Ghafar to plan a recent mission here, the police were a top concern.

"The only problem and issues I see are with the police," Maj. Ghafar said over tea. "The last time, they allowed the enemy to go by and ran away from the target."

Advised Col. Taylor: "Keep them close to you. Keep them very close to you."

That night, soldiers from Col. Taylor's battalion set out to support Maj. Ghafar's operation to reclaim a village overrun with insurgents. Company commander Capt. Sam Rosenberg brought rice for Afghan forces to distribute in the village, to win over local support. "We better make sure that rice doesn't stay here," said Maj. Robert Gagnon, the American transition adviser to the Afghan battalion, pointing to the Afghan base.

The police commander was briefed at the last moment, to minimize leaks. In previous operations, U.S. troops had stormed villages to find no men there.

As the mission began, Capt. Rosenberg's radio cackled. Circling above, two Apache attack helicopters spotted armed men running from the village. "Move, move, move," Capt. Rosenberg yelled, as his soldiers raced through fields and lurched in and out of five-foot ravines. The choppers, spotting two men on a motorbike, got clearance to engage and fired about 120 rounds.

One mangled body lay next to a bullet-pierced motorcycle and pools of blood. Another insurgent lay about 800 yards away, gunned down as he ran toward two houses.

"These men, they aren't from here. They are slaves of Pakistan," a resident of a nearby house told the Americans. His eyes shifted nervously.

The Americans searched the bodies, finding six mobile phones, a notebook with insurgent contact numbers, grenades, two AK-47s, a map with coordinates and a pink hairbrush.

Within an hour, pickup trucks crammed with Afghan policemen hanging off rolled up. The cops yelped in joy, kicked the bullet-ridden motorcycle and took photos of the bodies with their phones, in violation of protocol.

It turned out the dead insurgents weren't strangers, after all. The Apaches had killed Abdul Bari, the local Taliban commander and village resident. His young brother was found in a nearby house. "I know nothing of my brother's work," the boy barely managed to whisper, sweating in panic. Triumphant Afghan policemen proceeded to seize motorcycles from the house, strapping them to their Humvees. "Those bikes don't go anywhere!" Maj. Gagnon yelled, worried about looting.

The Afghans said they needed to dust them for fingerprints.

"Well…OK," Maj. Gagnon reluctantly agreed. He sounded unsure.

Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com

[buglerbilly]

U.S. launches first drone strike since deadly November attack

By the CNN Wire Staff

January 11, 2012 -- Updated 0638 GMT (1438 HKT)


Drone missions were halted last year after a set of controversial American strikes left two dozen Pakistani soldiers dead.

(CNN) -- The United States has launched its first drone attack in Pakistan after more than a month-long lull, killing at least four suspected militants, CNN has confirmed.

The drone fired two missiles on Tuesday at a suspected militant compound near the provincial capital of Miranshah in the North Waziristan region, located in the country's volatile tribal belt that borders Afghanistan.

It represents an apparent end to the pause in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, halted last year after a set of controversial American strikes left two dozen Pakistani soldiers dead at two mountainous border posts and further strained relations between the two nations.

Pakistan's military has repeatedly insisted that airstrikes that killed 24 of its soldiers on November 26 near the Afghan border were deliberate. Its government soon thereafter ordered the American military to vacate an air base used to launch drone strikes.

A U.S. investigation into the attacks blamed poor communication and "inadequate coordination" between both nations that prompted the deadly incident.

Brig. Gen. Stephen A. Clark said last month that a coalition team heading toward an Afghan village near the Pakistani border came under attack from "very direct and heavy" machine gun fire, as well as to incoming mortars.

The ground commander responded with a "show of force," with an F-15 jet and an AC-130 gunship making their presence known and dropped flares illuminating the area, Clark said. When the firing and mortars didn't stop, airstrikes were called in.

But Pakistani officials have argued that well-established operating procedures and an intricate system for operational information sharing were deliberately ignored, which led to the deaths.

The disagreement is thought to have further eroded the already fragile relations between the United States and Pakistan.

CNN's Barbara Starr and Pam Benson in Washington and Saboor Khattak in Pakistan contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Drone War Returns to Pakistan (And It Ain’t Stopping)

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author January 11, 2012 | 11:41 am



For the first time since a deadly U.S.-Pakistani firefight drove relations between the two uneasy allies into the toilet, a missile fired by a drone slammed into a North Waziristan target. Surprise! Washington-Islamabad acrimony isn’t enough to stop the drone war.

Four people were killed near Mirin Shah in the first drone strike since Nov. 16. In the interim, 24 Pakistani soldiers died in a U.S. helicopter strike during a raid by U.S. commandos on a village near the Pakistan border; a military inquiry determined the Pakistanis had fired persistently on the commandos. The drone war has effectively been on pause to let U.S. diplomacy with Islamabad regroup.

The pause is evidently over. And that suggests little will actually stop the drone war.

2011 was the worst year for the U.S.-Pakistan relationship since 9/11. Not only did the bin Laden raid infuriate Pakistanis, but so did a CIA contractor who killed two in Lahore who apparently tried to rob him. Pakistan usually issues empty threats to vent popular outrage, but after the helicopter incident, it shut down logistics routes for the Afghanistan war and actually kicked the CIA out of a drone base on its soil.

And all that did was make the drone war take a knee. The drones now fly from Afghan bases; Pakistan notably did not deny the U.S. overflight rights after the helicopter incident. That’s still an option for the Pakistanis, theoretically. But absent some really big disaster — a botched U.S. raid inside Pakistan, maybe? — it’s hard to see what else the U.S. could do to prompt the Pakistanis to take more drastic steps.

Remember that the next time you read hype about the drone war “stopping.” The drone strikes are not a supplement to a war; they’re the centerpiece of how the Obama administration confronts terrorists. The White House’s plan for counterterrorism makes that clear, as does the Pentagon’s new strategy blueprint. Anonymous administration officials, evidently itching to get back to the strikes, floated the (evidence-free) proposition in the New York Times that terrorists were regrouping during the six-week pause.

Perhaps elements of the Pakistani security establishment are back on board with the drones, perhaps they aren’t. But the resumption of the drone strikes strongly indicates that if the Pakistanis have a problem with the strikes, the U.S. will route around that problem. Any pauses you see in the drone program are likely to be tactical — and brief.

Photo: Flickr/Bryce_Edwards

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Defense Secretary Fired Over Army Row

By MASROOR GILANI, Agence France-Presse

Published: 11 Jan 2012 10:18

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's army warned Jan. 11 of "grievous consequences" for the country over criticism by the prime minister that has ramped up tensions between the military and civilian leadership.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani immediately sacked the top bureaucrat in the defense ministry over the row, with the government saying the official had been the cause of the "misunderstanding" with the military.

The spat centers on a Supreme Court inquiry set up to investigate a controversial unsigned memo allegedly delivered to the U.S. military seeking its help in curbing Pakistan's highly powerful armed forces in May.

In an unusually bold interview with Chinese media earlier this week, Gilani accused the army and intelligence chiefs of failing to make their submissions to the commission through government channels.

The army issued a statement on Jan. 11 vociferously denying Gilani's accusation and saying it had passed its response through the defense ministry to the court in accordance with the law.

"There can be no allegation more serious than what the honorable prime minister has leveled against COAS (army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani) and DG ISI (spy chief Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha) and has unfortunately charged the officers for violation of the constitution of the country," the army's statement said. "This has very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the country."

Kayani returned on Jan. 10 from China and met on Jan. 11 with the head of Myanmar's air force in Rawalpindi.

Pakistan has seen three military coups since independence in 1947. It has spent about half of its life under military dictatorships.

The current civilian administration headed by Zardari has lurched from crisis to crisis since coming to power in 2008 following elections held a month after the assassination of his wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Defense secretary Naeem Khalid Lodhi was fired over what the government called a "misunderstanding" between Gilani and the top brass caused by his failure to pass court submissions through the prime minister's office.

"Prime minister has terminated the contract of defense secretary Naeem Khalid Lodhi for gross misconduct," a senior government official told AFP.

The army's statement cast doubt on the government's claim and said that Gilani had issued a press release last month apparently approving the army's replies to the court as being made "through proper channel."

The statement also defended submissions made to the memo inquiry as in accordance with the military's obligation to "state the facts."

The highly controversial memo was allegedly an attempt by President Asif Ali Zardari through Husain Haqqani - a close aide and then-ambassador to the United States - to enlist help from the U.S. military to head off a feared coup in Pakistan.

American businessman Mansoor Ijaz has claimed that Zardari reportedly feared that the military might seize power in a bid to limit the hugely damaging fallout after U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May.

Tension between the army and Zardari's weak civilian administration soared over the note, allegedly delivered to then-chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen in May and made public by Ijaz in October.

Pakistan's Supreme Court last week decided to set up a judicial commission to investigate the matter and Pasha, the head of the ISI intelligence agency, has called for a "forensic examination" of the memo.

Haqqani has already resigned over the affair and the court has stopped him from leaving Pakistan. At the second meeting of the commission held on Jan. 9, he repeated his denial of any involvement in the scandal.

The commission, being held in Islamabad, is to meet again on Jan. 16 and is expected to submit its findings within four weeks.

The probe puts fresh pressure on the president, who visited Dubai in December over health fears, with most observers expecting early elections sometime in 2012.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban says it's ready to talk peace

Jonathan Landay, Nancy Youssef

January 13, 2012 Read later


"... We have increased our political efforts to come to mutual understanding" ... a Taliban spokesperson. Photo: AFP

KABUL: The Taliban's political wing is ready to enter peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan but the insurgents will in the meantime continue their armed struggle, the group says.

The militant movement's emailed statement yesterday suggests that efforts to bring Afghan factions to the table are gathering momentum but also highlights some of the roadblocks on the way to any settlement, in particular the Taliban's insistence that the government of President Hamid Karzai is an illegitimate ''stooge'' of the West.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the militants had been fighting for the past 15 years to establish an Islamic government in Afghanistan ''in accordance with the request of its people. It is for this purpose and for bringing about peace and stability in Afghanistan that we have increased our political efforts to come to mutual understanding with the world in order to solve the current ongoing situation,'' the statement said.

''But this understanding does not mean a surrender from jihad and neither is it connected to an acceptance of the constitution of the stooge Kabul administration.''

For the past month rumours have swirled about the possibility of peace talks between the US-led coalition and the Taliban.

On Wednesday the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, also announced that the special envoy Marc Grossman would travel to Afghanistan next week.

Over the past year Mr Grossman, a veteran but low-key diplomat, has led a small team of US officials who met secretly from Doha, Qatar, to Munich with a shadowy representative of Afghanistan's Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in the hopes of starting peace talks, it has been reported.

But a new US intelligence assessment warns that Taliban leaders have not abandoned their goal of reclaiming power and reimposing harsh Islamic rule on Afghanistan.

The National Intelligence Estimate presented last month to the President, Barack Obama, also concluded that security gains since last year's US troop surge could be unsustainable, a finding top commanders and the White House disputed, US officials and sources said.

Associated Press, The New York Times, Tribune Media

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/taliban-says-its-ready-to-talk-peace-20120112-1pxhq.html#ixzz1jFrLb4bu

[buglerbilly]

Graphic Video Shows Troops Urinating on Dead Taliban

January 11, 2012

Military.com|by Philip Ewing

This act is against Military Discipline irresepctive of whether these are Taliban or not, so if these Morons somehow thought they'd get away with it and NOT be punished, forget it you're in for the high jump............

Marine Corps officials said Wednesday they're investigating a graphic viral video circulating online that appears to show four Marines urinating on a trio of corpses in Afghanistan.

A Marine Corps spokeswoman told Military.com that service officials have not confirmed the identities of the troops in the video, but that the Marine Corps condemns what it depicts.

"While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticity of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps," said Capt. Kendra Hardesty. "This matter will be fully investigated."

The incendiary video circulated quickly Wednesday by email and through mainstream media reports, including CNN. If military officials confirm that it shows what it appears to show, it could spark outcry in Afghanistan and around the Muslim world, as the latest apparent example of disrespect by American troops.

In the video, one man jokes, "Have a great day, buddy!" and another calls the experience "Golden -- like a shower." The video appears to have been captured by another member of the unit with a cellphone or handheld video camera.

The dead men's clothes are bloody, as though they have been shot, and they lie near a wheelbarrow that has been knocked on its side.

Although the identity of the Marines' unit was officially unconfirmed, according to information posted with the video the troops were part of a scout sniper team from 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, based at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Elements of 3/2 are deployed today in Helmand Province, in southern Afghanistan, though it wasn't immediately clear whether scout sniper teams were also serving there.

Headquarters Marine Corps issued the following statement around 5 PM eastern time today: "While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticity of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps. This matter will be fully investigated."

Military.com editor Ward Carroll contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Military.com. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

NIE Says Taliban Still Hope to Rule Afghanistan

January 12, 2012

Mclatchy -Tribune News Service|by Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef

WASHINGTON -- A new top-secret U.S. intelligence assessment warns that Taliban leaders haven't abandoned their goal of reclaiming power and reimposing harsh Islamic rule on Afghanistan, raising doubts about the success of any peace deal that the Obama administration tries to broker between Kabul and the insurgents.

The National Intelligence Estimate presented to President Barack Obama last month also concluded that security gains won since last year's 30,000-strong U.S. troop surge may be unsustainable, a finding that top U.S. commanders and the White House dispute, according to U.S. officials and people familiar with the report's findings.

"We have heard that the report offers a very dire assessment. We don't agree," said a senior U.S. defense official, who like all of those whom McClatchy Newspapers interviewed for this report spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The NIE came as the White House is examining ways to boost "reconciliation" - the U.S.-backed initiative to start peace talks - as an American troop drawdown and a phased hand-over of security responsibilities to Afghan forces are completed in December 2014, the officials and knowledgeable people said. The assessment is expected to be finished before a NATO summit in Chicago in May, at which the alliance will review plans for the security transition.

Obama has said repeatedly that the longest war in U.S. history can be settled only through negotiations between the Afghan government and the insurgents - not by force.

Earlier this month, the Pakistan-based Taliban leadership agreed after a year of secret contacts to open a political office in the Persian Gulf kingdom of Qatar, raising U.S. hopes that peace talks might be possible.

"With the possibility of new progress on reconciliation, it is only natural that we are very carefully deliberating how we move forward," said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council. He declined to comment on the NIE.

U.S. officials caution that negotiations are a long shot and could take several years to convene, leaving lots of time for the effort to collapse.

"Nothing has been concluded. We are still in the preliminary stages of testing whether this can be successful," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday in announcing that U.S. special envoy Marc Grossman would travel to Afghanistan next week to pursue the initiative.

Before it embraces the opening of the Qatar office, the administration is looking for confidence-building measures from the Taliban - such as renouncing violence and observing cease-fires in select areas of Afghanistan - said a person who's familiar with the issue.

The two sides also would have to deal with other issues. Already, officials said, the insurgents are refusing to admit an Afghan government representative to the discussions, something that Washington assured Afghan President Hamid Karzai it would seek. The Taliban also are spurning participation by Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan.

The White House, meanwhile, is still considering a Taliban demand for the release of five Afghan detainees from Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. official said.

"Where this is headed is very uncertain," one knowledgeable person said.

Adding to the uncertainty is the new NIE's finding that the main Taliban leadership council, the Quetta Shura, shows no sign of giving up on its goal of reclaiming control of Afghanistan and reimposing Islamic rule on the war-ravaged nation of 33 million.

While in power from 1996 to 2001, the fundamentalist movement staged public executions; barred women from work and education; forced men to grow beards; persecuted religious minorities; and harbored al-Qaida and allied terrorist groups.

The NIE "is very pessimistic," a U.S. official said. "There is no indication that the Taliban are ready to settle for a goal short of total control over an Islamic emirate."

© Copyright 2012 Mclatchy -Tribune News Service.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. peace talks with Taliban to resume


Musadeq Sadeq/AP - Afghan President Hamid Karzai gives a speech in December. The senior U.S. diplomat who shepherded a series of secret U.S. meetings with the insurgents last year will meet with him late next week to ensure he’s on board, officials said.

By Karen DeYoung, Thursday, January 12, 9:01 AM

The Obama administration will resume peace talks with the Taliban as soon as Afghan President Hamid Karzai formally blesses the negotiations, according to senior administration officials who indicated that the process could be underway within weeks.

Marc Grossman, the senior U.S. diplomat who shepherded a series of secret U.S. meetings with the insurgents last year, will meet with Karzai late next week to ensure that he is on board, officials said.

“If Karzai were to tell [the Obama administration] to go ahead, then we’d start talking again,” said one of two officials who discussed the secret negotiations on the condition of anonymity.

A tentative U.S.-Taliban deal, including the transfer of five Afghan detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison to Qatar and an insurgent renunciation of international terrorism, collapsed in December when Karzai refused to go along with it.

There have been no meetings with the insurgents since then. Although all parties have publicly said that they agree to one element of the deal — the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar — “we need now to make it real,” one official said.

Prime Minister Hamad bin Jasim al-Thani, for the first time acknowledging Qatar’s support for the arrangement, said Wednesday that his government welcomed “any opportunity” to defuse tension in the region. Thani spoke after a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The administration, which has said that negotiations must be “Afghan-led,” insists that its talks with the Taliban are only a preliminary effort to build confidence before actual negotiations over Afghanistan’s future can begin between the insurgents and the Karzai government.

One hurdle is that the Taliban prefers to talk to the United States and is “not willing to sit down with the Afghan government’,” one official said. “Our job is to see if we can break through that door.” Karzai has been under pressure from domestic opponents of negotiations to stand firm against the talks.

The officials provided an overview of how the talks have proceeded and where they go now.

Officials remain far from certain that the Taliban leadership is seriously interested in a political settlement. “There is an increasing number of Taliban who are tired of having the hell beat out of them,” one said. “I think they want to stop.” But, at the same time, “I imagine there are going to be splits,” the official said. “Some are going to want to talk, some are going to want to fight.”

Late last year, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that both military and diplomatic success were unlikely before December 2014, the date that President Obama and NATO allies have set for withdrawal of all combat troops from Afghanistan.

Marine Gen. John Allen, the top coalition commander in Afghanistan, was said to be so angered by the recent National Intelligence Estimate that he wrote a blistering formal dissent.

The officials said combat against the insurgents would continue and described what they called a “holistic” approach in which diplomatic progress was not possible without gains on the civilian and military fronts.

Although ground commanders have been skeptical of negotiations, a senior military official said that all wars “end in a political process” and that “this one is no exception.” He described progress thus far as “getting the car out of the garage” in preparation for “a difficult journey ahead.”

An official said meetings with Mohammed Tayeb al-Agha, an aide to Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, began in November 2010. To convince themselves that Agha had authority from the top Taliban leadership, “we tried to develop questions,” the official said, “tests, if you will, to see if he could receive a question, seek an answer from people senior to him and then stick with it.”

Agha, the official said, has been “shown on a number of occasions to accurately reflect the leaders” of the organization. “He is very consistent in what he seeks and how he seeks it.” The last meeting, in Qatar, was in October.

Throughout the process, the administration briefed Karzai and congressional leaders, officials said, particularly as they neared tentative agreement on confidence-building measures.

Among those measures, the United States asked for a public Taliban renunciation of international terrorism — in essence, a repudiation of al-Qaeda — and a separate statement of support for democracy in Afghanistan.

The Taliban wanted an office outside Afghanistan where they could operate beyond the supervision of their hosts in Pakistan, the officials said. The Americans said they considered the neutral location a place where the insurgents could begin talking to the Afghan government.

The insurgents also presented a list of five Guantanamo detainees, all of whom held positions in the Taliban government in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. Human rights organizations have said that several of them were responsible for severe abuses, although U.S. officials said they have ascertained that the militants were not involved in killing Americans.

The five were to be transferred to house arrest in Qatar, a move that would require Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta to certify to Congress that they would not be released and would not pose a threat to the United States. Qatar also would agree not to transfer them onward to another location, including Afghanistan.

The final conversations, before Karzai squelched the deal, were over “sequencing,” one of the officials said. “Who goes first? What do they say?”

[buglerbilly]

Marine Corps manual offers a blunt, revealing portrait of Afghan war

By Walter Pincus, Thursday, January 12, 9:59 AM

For centuries, this has been the paradox of warfare in Afghanistan: “The more enemies you kill, the faster you lose. Because of badal (revenge), the Pashtun have a saying: ‘Kill one enemy, make ten.’ ”

That’s a quote from the Marine Corps’ May 2009 update of a guidebook, “Afghanistan, Operational Culture for Deploying Personnel.” The book is for those serving or preparing to serve in that country.

http://info.publicintelligence.net/USMC-AfghanCulture.pdf

Released publicly last week by the Web site Public Intelligence, a collaborative Internet research project, the 112-page, “for official use only” manual gives a clear description of the complicated Taliban enemy against whom U.S. troops have been fighting and the Afghans who are fighting alongside U.S. forces.

In neither case is the picture reassuring. Nor do the manual’s recollections of the U.S. experience in Vietnam ease current concerns of those who lived through that war, that history may be repeating itself.

The manual also explains why the Pakistani army’s intelligence branch, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), has such an interest in Afghanistan.

But first it provides some background.

“Afghanistan is still a medieval country in many ways,” it says, explaining that much of the land in the south, the Pashtun area around Kandahar, is dominated by Islam.

The manual describes the Taliban as “several loosely-linked insurgent groups” that have in common “the supremacy of their religion in their lives, and the belief that they are waging a holy war, or jihad.”

The manual warns, “The Taliban insurgent is certain that it is God’s will that he fight to eliminate the Afghan infidels in Kabul and drive the foreign infidels (you) from Afghanistan.”

Mullahs are described as providing “most of the operational leadership of the insurgents” by having “a complex underground network of support in the rural areas through their mosques and madrassas.” Many of these all-male schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan are run by Taliban adherents for orphans and refugees who emerge as “hard-corps foot soldiers of the insurgent groups,” the manual says.

“Some insurgents are farmers or shepherds by day and IED [improvised explosive device] bombers by night,” according to the manual.

The Pashtun area has always been home to radical Islamic movements, but in the 1980s, the United States and Saudia Arabia, in an effort to combat the Soviets in Afghanistan, put these groups “on steroids” by arming the fighters — called mujaheddin — with some $7.2 billion worth of foreign military equipment. This was supposedly done covertly, through Pakistan.

The Marine manual notes mischievously, “The CIA was happy to steer money towards whichever groups fooled them into believing they were killing the most Russian troops.” It also says the State Department and some Afghans, including Hamid Karzai, warned the CIA that arming “radical anti-western extremists and terrorists who hated the United States would backfire. This advice was ignored.”

Among the tribes that received CIA assistance were those associated with Jalaludin Haqqani, whose followers are believed to have carried out recent bombings in Kabul and who today is considered one of the major anti-U.S. warlords.

It was also during this period that the ISI gained power among the Taliban groups by being the channel for much of the weaponry the United States and Saudi Arabia provided.

“To control the Mujahideen, the ISI formed seven resistance groups, each with a national political party associated with it,” according to the manual. The ISI selected tribes that were rivals of those associated with Afghanistan’s former leaders, who had no love for Pakistan.

The ISI’s purpose was to create “puppets they could control when the war was over” and thus protect their northwestern border. That was needed to ease their fear of a two-front war should India invade from the southeast.

After the war concluded, former mujaheddin began to fight each other for control of the country. By 1994, a group of radical Islamic Taliban forces that had been armed by the ISI took over to end the anarchy. Unable to govern, they “became dependent on al Qaeda and their Pakistani masters for funds and military power,” according to the manual.

After Sept. 11, 2001, the United States and its coalition partners defeated the Taliban, and in 2002 a government headed by President Hamid Karzai was installed. Meanwhile, a new Taliban has emerged. “They still revere Mullah Omar as a spiritual leader, but no longer as the primary political leader of the movement,” according to the manual. This diffused Taliban leadership makes peace talks that much more difficult.

Another portion of the manual introduces the Marines to their Afghan allies, warts and all.

In combat, Afghans from all ethnic groups in the army “generally make excellent soldiers,” according to the manual. “Keep in mind that many ANA [Afghan National Army] soldiers have seen more firefights than you’ve had hot dinners.”

But the manual warns that corruption among officers was in the culture of the old army. “This included skimming pay, rations, and equipment for their own profits,” according to the manual. “Instilling a sense of duty to country and professionalism among the officers has been one of the most frequently-reported challenges,” it goes on to say.

A second problem: “Corruption in the police is endemic” with army units needing to challenge “local police graft, bribery and corruption schemes.”

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported from Jani Khel, Afghanistan that local police had “erected illegal checkpoints to extort money from the population.”

In offering advice to U.S. Marines in Afghanistan the manual quotes, with one adaptation, T.E. Lawrence, the famous Lawrence of Arabia: “Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the [Afghans] do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not win it for them.”

[buglerbilly]

2nd U.S. Drone Strike in 2 Days Hits Pakistan

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 12 Jan 2012 09:53

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan - A U.S. missile strike targeting a militant vehicle killed four rebels on Jan. 12 in the second drone strike in 48 hours to hit Pakistan's tribal region, local security officials said.

A drone strike on Jan. 10 signaled apparent resumption of the covert CIA campaign after a two-month lull to avoid a worsening of U.S.-Pakistan relations after a NATO raid that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, infuriating Islamabad.

The latest missiles struck in the New Adda area, 18 miles west of Miranshah, the main town of the North Waziristan tribal region.

"U.S. drones fired four missiles targeting a rebel's vehicle and killed four militants," a local security official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

Another security official confirmed the strike and casualties. He said the identities of those killed were not immediately known.

On Jan. 10 two missiles struck a compound, also in the outskirts of Miranshah, in the first such strike since Nov. 17. Four people were killed.

The U.S. drone campaign has reportedly killed dozens of al-Qaida and Taliban operatives and hundreds of low-ranking fighters in the remote areas bordering Afghanistan since the first Predator strike in 2004.

But the program fuels widespread anti-American sentiment throughout Pakistan, which has been especially high since the deadly NATO incident on Nov. 26.

A joint U.S.-NATO investigation concluded last month that a catalogue of errors and botched communications led to the soldiers' deaths. But Pakistan rejected the findings, insisting the strikes had been deliberate.

NATO's probe said that both sides failed to give the other information about their operational plans or the location of troops and that there was inadequate coordination by U.S. and Pakistani officers.

The incident prompted Islamabad to block NATO supply convoys heading to Afghanistan and order the U.S. to leave Shamsi air base in western Pakistan, from where it is believed to have launched some of its drones.

Others are flown from within Afghanistan.

The region had served as the main supply route for NATO forces operating in Afghanistan before the suspension triggered by the November incident.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistani president travels abroad amid civil-military rift


Murad Sezer/Reuters - Amid an open conflict between Pakistan’s government and military, the nation’s top generals convened and President Asif Ali Zardari flew to Dubai.

By Karin Brulliard and Shaiq Hussain, Updated: Friday, January 13, 6:00 PM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Beleaguered President Asif Ali Zardari landed in Pakistan early Friday after a short trip abroad, returning to face a simmering conflict between Pakistan’s civilian government and its armed forces.

Zardari, the main target of what his ruling party depicts as a pressure campaign by the military and the Supreme Court, flew Thursday afternoon to Dubai to attend a wedding and see a doctor, his office said. Zardari underwent medical treatment in Dubai last month, triggering rumors that he was being forced out by the military over a scandal, dubbed “Memogate,” that has roiled the nation.

On Thursday, Zardari instead drew criticism for leaving the country at a time when his government again seemed to be on the verge of collapse. But some analysts theorized that the trip was calculated to spur rumors, positioning Zardari to appear defiant upon his return early Friday.

The trip came a day after the latest developments in a civilian-military confrontation prompted predictions that a coup was looming. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani fired the civilian defense secretary, a retired lieutenant general who was close to the army. And the army warned that Gilani’s recent criticism of military actions could end in “grievous consequences” for the country.

The civilian-military battle revolves around an unsigned memo transmitted by a Pakistani American businessman, Mansoor Ijaz, to the Pentagon last spring. The memo asked for U.S. help in forestalling a possible military coup and establishing civilian control over the army, which has led Pakistan for half its existence and remains the country’s major power.

The army believes the memo came from the highest levels of government. The government has denied all knowledge of the document.

A military official with knowledge of the generals’ meeting Thursday said the memo was discussed, as was Gilani’s firing of the defense secretary, who was replaced by a close aide to the prime minister, Nargis Sethi. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the top brass was “highly displeased” by the firing and would find it “difficult” to work with Sethi.

Despite the theatrics, it is widely accepted that the army, led by Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, has no appetite for a coup. Nor does the public or Pakistan’s vibrant media, although the government is unpopular with both. The military, in fact, has strived to emphasize its preference for a solution sanctioned by the Supreme Court, an institution that some analysts say is on a warpath against the government.

“General Kayani and other generals believe that . . . the memo issue shall be decided by the Supreme Court,” the military official said. But, the official said, “in case the Supreme Court seeks the army’s assistance to fulfill any constitutional requirement, the call for that can be considered.”

In Washington, senior administration officials said a coup was unlikely and did not serve the interests of any of the players, but they acknowledged they had little insight into fast-moving internal events in Pakistan. Even if they did, any attempt to interfere could backfire, given the tension in U.S-Pakistani relations, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A showdown could come Monday, when the Pakistani government is expected to explain its stance in an ongoing corruption case at the center of its acrimonious relations with the Supreme Court. Two days ago, the court berated the government and deemed Gilani “dishonest” for defying its orders to reopen old corruption cases against Zardari and other officials.

The court listed six wide-ranging options, including dismissing Gilani, pursuing contempt-of-court charges or letting voters decide. The government insists that Zardari, as president, is immune from prosecution.

The ruling party introduced a resolution in parliament Friday expressing support for the government, hoping for a symbolic boost for Zardari. The confidence measure will come up for vote Monday.

A judicial panel probing the memo’s origins also will resume its hearings Monday and might hear testimony from Ijaz, the Pakistani American businessman. Whether he will travel to Pakistan for the hearing remains unclear.

The rift between the government and the military comes against a backdrop of soured ties with the United States in the aftermath of a Nov. 26 border clash in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in U.S. airstrikes. The covert drone campaign resumed only this week, with an alleged CIA strike killing six militants in the North Waziristan border region Thursday, the second such strike in three days.

In a small sign of progress, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met Wednesday with Sherry Rehman, who arrived in Washington last week as Pakistan’s new ambassador and is expected to present her credentials to President Obama next week. Clinton noted Thursday that Rehman is “someone that I’ve known for some time.”

“My message to her was very straightforward,” Clinton told reporters. “We recognize there have been significant challenges in recent months, but we are steadfastly committed to this relationship and working together to make it productive.”

Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Two Diggers wounded in roadside blast

January 14, 2012 - 7:48PM

Two Australian soldiers have been wounded in Afghanistan when their vehicle was involved in an explosion.

The explosion occurred during a troop transfer in Uruzgan province on Friday, a Defence statement said.

The soldiers suffered minor wounds and were evacuated to a medical facility in Tarin Kowt, where they are in a satisfactory condition.

Acting Deputy Commander Joint Operations Commodore Michael Noonan said the response by other soldiers in the convoy highlighted the effectiveness of their preparation for the deployment.

"As soon as the device detonated, the area was secured and first aid commenced on the two wounded," Commodore Noonan said.

"A medical evacuation was quickly organised and the two men are now resting comfortably in a satisfactory condition in Tarin Kowt."

The Defence statement said 218 Australian military personnel had been wounded in Afghanistan since 2001. Five ADF personnel have been wounded this year.

smh.com.au

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/two-diggers-wounded-in-roadside-blast-20120114-1q0de.html#ixzz1jQPOoyKw

[buglerbilly]

UN: Value of Afghan opium up 133 Percent in 2011

January 14, 2012

Associated Press|by Slobodan Lekic

I'd love somebody to sit down and explain HOW they've arrived at this figure. I've no doubt the heroin/opium trade is an endemic problem BUT some of the figures being bounced around seem intent on dramatizing the situation rather than any accurate reflection of the scope or size of the problem...................I remain suspicious.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Revenue from opium production in Afghanistan soared by 133 percent last year to about $1.4 billion, or about one-tenth of the country's GDP, according to a United Nations report received Friday.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said the price rise was due to a plant disease that wiped out much of the opium crop in 2010. Although yields returned to pre-blight levels in 2011, the prices have remained high, the survey said.

Definitive statistics are hard to obtain in Afghanistan, but the survey said the value of the crop may now be the equivalent of nine percent of the country's GDP.

"Opium is therefore a significant part of the Afghan economy and provides considerable funding to the insurgency and fuels corruption," said Yury Fedotov, director of the Vienna-based agency.

He called for a stronger commitment from Afghan and international partners "to turn this worrying trend around."

Income from opium finances weapons and equipment purchases for the Taliban.

Afghanistan provides about 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw ingredient for heroin. The U.N. and the Afghan government have long tried to wean the country off the lucrative crop.

The largest areas of opium poppy cultivation are in the violent south of Afghanistan, where it can be hard to make money on legal crops and where criminal networks exist to buy and sell the poppy crop.

Most farmers surveyed said they were primarily motivated by the high prices gained by opium poppy cultivation, particularly in comparison with wheat, which suffered a fall in price last year.

The survey showed that 6,400 tons (5,800 metric tons) of opium were produced last year, in comparison with 4,000 tons (3,600 metric tons) in 2010.

It said rising opium prices drove Afghan farmers to increase cultivation of the illicit opium poppy plants by 7 percent in 2011, despite a major push by the Afghan government and international allies.

Most of the opium from landlocked Afghanistan is shipped through Iran and Pakistan. Russia, which has around 2 million opium and heroin addicts, is also a principal route for drugs headed for Europe.

Moscow has repeatedly urged the U.S. military to take stronger action against Afghan drug labs. Russia has also trained several hundred Afghan counternarcotics agents.

"Counternarcotics is not the exclusive domain of specialized units alone, but the shared responsibility of everybody concerned with security, stability, governance and development in Afghanistan and the wider region," Fedotov said.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

JANUARY 16, 2012.

Pakistani Taliban Deny Death of Leader

Associated Press

ISLAMABAD—Intercepted militant radio communications indicate the leader of the Pakistani Taliban was killed in a recent U.S. drone strike, Pakistani intelligence officials said on Sunday, but a Taliban official denied the report.


Associated Press
In this Oct. 4, 2009 file photo, Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud arrives to meet with media in Sararogha of Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan along the Afghanistan border.

The report coincided with sectarian violence—a bomb blast in eastern Pakistan that killed 14 people in a Shiite religious procession.

The claim that the Pakistani Taliban chief was killed came from officials who said they intercepted a number of Taliban radio conversations. In about a half a dozen intercepts, the militants discussed whether their chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed Jan. 12 in the North Waziristan tribal area. Some militants confirmed Mr. Mehsud was dead, and one criticized others for talking about the issue over the radio.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Asimullah Mehsud denied the group's leader was killed and said he wasn't in the area where the drone strike occurred.

In early 2010, both Pakistani and American officials said they believed a missile strike had killed Hakimullah Mehsud along the border of North and South Waziristan. They were proved wrong when videos appeared showing him still alive.

The Pakistani Taliban is linked to attacks against U.S. targets. The group trained the Pakistani-American who tried to detonate a car bomb in New York City's Times Square in 2010 and is tied to a suicide bombing that killed seven Central Intelligence Agency agents at an Afghan base in 2009.

There was no claim of responsibility for Sunday's bombing that killed 14 people during a Shiite observance in Punjab province in the east, the latest of a series of sectarian attacks in volatile Pakistan.


Reuters
A man, injured by a bomb attack on a Shi'ite Muslim procession, is transported to a hospital in Khanpur town, located in Pakistan's Punjab province January 15, 2012.

Hundreds of Pakistani Shiites gathered in the town of Khanpur in Punjab province for a traditionalprocession to mark the end of 40 days of mourning following the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein, a revered seventh-century figure.

The explosion went off as the mourners left a mosque, said District Police Chief Sohail Chatta. The bomb appeared to have been planted ahead of time in the path of the procession, he said.

The Pakistani Taliban and other Sunni extremist groups have in the past claimed responsibility for the bombings of Shiite religious sites and ceremonies. Many Sunni extremists in Pakistan regard Shiites as heretics.

The Taliban and other groups have carried out hundreds of bombings over the past five years that have killed thousands of Pakistani troops and civilians as part of a campaign to install a hard-line Islamist government.

The attacks are so common that the country's interior minister in December actually thanked the Taliban for acting on what he said was a "request" not to stage attacks during the Shiite rituals of Ashoura that month.

Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah said police investigators were still examining the area of Sunday's bombing for clues. Security was provided for the procession, but it was breached, Mr. Sanaullah said.

The continuing strikes by presumed religious extremists come during a political crisis that pits the Pakistani civilian government against the military, sparking rumors of an impending coup.

Last week the military warned the government of possible "grievous consequences" ahead, and President Asif Ali Zardari took a one-day trip to Dubai that renewed speculation that he might flee the country.

Analysts say the military may be looking for the Supreme Court to push out Mr. Zardari rather than risk an outright takeover.

—Copyright 2012 Associated Press

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan PM found in contempt of court

By SAMI ZUBEIRI, Agence France-Presse

Published: 16 Jan 2012 09:56

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's top court on Monday found beleagured Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in contempt for failing to re-open corruption cases, exacerbating a crisis likely to force early elections.

The Supreme Court summoned Gilani to appear on Thursday, escalating pressure on a weakened government at a time of crippling tensions with the army, which some analysts believe could cost Gilani his job.

"The Supreme Court has issued a contempt of court notice to the prime minister for not complying with its orders," Judge Nasir-ul-Mulk told the court which met to debate how to proceed on graft charges against the president.

"He has been directed to appear personally on January 19."

The Supreme Court wants the government to write to Swiss authorities demanding that they re-open corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari after a previous amnesty expired in late 2009.

Zardari and his Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leadership have refused to do so, saying the president is immune from prosecution as head of state.

"We will consult legal experts and take steps which they consider necessary under law," Maula Bakhsh Chandio, minister for law and parliamentary affairs, told reporters after the court order.

In the past, PPP stalwarts have accused the judiciary of over-stepping its reach and colluding with the army to bring down the administration before its five-year mandate ends in 2013.

Last year, a Swiss prosecutor said that it would be "impossible" to re-open a case against Zardari since he benefits from immunity as a head of state.

Supreme Court judges have outlined six options on how to proceed on graft charges against Zardari - which include finding Gilani in contempt, disqualifying the prime minister and president, and holding early elections.

Mulk said he had been left with "no option" but issue a show cause notice to Gilani after the government ignored the court"s demands.

A senior PPP leader and spokesman, Qamar Zaman Kaira told AFP that Gilani would appear in court.

"Inshallah (God willing), he will," Kaira said when asked if the prime minister would attend Thursday's hearing.

It marks only the second time that contempt of court procedures have been initiated against a sitting prime minister in Pakistan.

In November 1997, prime minister Nawaz Sharif was also found in contempt in a case which ultimately led to the resignation of president Farooq Leghari.

But analysts are divided on whether Gilani could be convicted, pushed out to protect Zardari or show flexibility in order to avert a wider crisis.

"There is possibility now that the prime minister will be made a scapegoat and he may resign," senior lawyer Quosen Mufti told AFP.

"Another possibility is that the prime minister will appear before the court... If he gives the court a commitment on implementation the court can discharge the contempt notice. If not then he may be convicted," Mutfi added.

The prime minister is likely to seek solace in a confidence vote in the civilian leadership in the lower house of parliament on Monday.

Zardari is also under pressure over a memo soliciting American help to prevent a coup apparently feared in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden's killing in Pakistan on May 2 and to clip the power of the army.

Zardari's close aide, Husain Haqqani, has been forced to resign as ambassador to Washington and the Supreme Court on Dec. 30 ordered a judicial inquiry into a memo following a demand from the chief spymaster.

The army has carried out three coups in Pakistan, but analysts believe it has no appetite for another direct takeover, instead preferring to force early elections behind the scenes in concert with pressure from the courts.

The attorney general said Jan. 16 he had been unable to obtain crucial evidence - Blackberry message data sent between Haqqani and U.S. businessman Mansoor Ijaz, who claims to have acted as a go-between on the memo.

He said Blackberry's makers refused to release such records without the customer's permission.

His lawyer, Akram Sheikh, said Ijaz feared for his life but would apply for a visa in Switzerland, indicating that he could testify by Jan. 25.

The commission adjourned the hearing until Jan. 24.

[buglerbilly]

Civilian helicopter crashes in southern Afghanistan

A civilian helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan killing all three people on-board, local officials said.

By Ben Farmer, Kabul

5:46PM GMT 16 Jan 2012

An investigation was under way after the aircraft reportedly crashed in flames in the Nad-i-Ali district of Helmand province on Monday.

Taliban insurgents claimed to have shot down the helicopter, but Marjan Haqmal, district police chief, said the Russian-made aircraft probably went down because of a mechanical problem.

The aircraft was operated by a Florida-based company called AAR Airlift, which according to its website has a contract to provide "airlift for the Department of Defence" in Afghanistan.

The company has also provided aircraft to the United States military and other governments in countries across the Middle East and Africa.

The international coalition in Afghanistan relies heavily on a fleet of privately-operated helicopters to ferry supplies and people between bases which are often difficult to reach by road because of roadside bombs.

A spokesman for the American embassy in Kabul said: "We can confirm that a civilian helicopter, owned by AAR Airlift, crashed in Helmand province today." The embassy would not comment on the nationality of the casualties and AAR could not immediately be reached.

Afghan and Nato troops secured the crash site as investigators attempted to determine what had happened.

Taliban fighters regularly target helicopters and, though they lack sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons, have occasionally succeeded in downing aircraft with what Nato commanders call "lucky shots".

Militants in August shot down a Chinook carrying American special operations forces in Wardak province, killing 30 United States personnel, a translator and seven Afghan commandos.

However the insurgents also often seek to take credit for shooting down aircraft which have been forced to land by technical problems.

Civilian helicopter flights have also seen heavy casualties. In July 2009 a Russian-made Mi-6 transport helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan, killing six Ukrainian civilians on board and a week later a Mi-8 helicopter crashed after take-off from Kandahar Airfield killing 16.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Air War Hits 3-Year Low

By Noah Shachtman Email Author January 16, 2012 | 1:00 pm



Peace talks with the Taliban are just getting started. But one major component of the Afghanistan conflict — the air war — is rapidly winding down on its own.

In December, NATO planes flew 133 missions in which they fired off their weapons. That’s the lowest monthly total in three years, and more than a 50% drop from last December’s tally. And the air war shows no sign of picking up in 2012. In the first week of the year, the coalition launched just 18 strike sorties.

Afghan officials — especially president Hamid Karzai — have been calling for years for NATO to cut back on its bombing runs, arguing that errant attacks only turn the population against the government. The alliance’s generals didn’t always heed his wishes. From August to December of 2010, for example, then-Afghan War commander Gen. David Petraeus oversaw 3,336 air attack missions. In contrast, Gen. John Allen, who took the reins of the war effort in the middle of last July, launched 2,074 such sorties during the last five months of 2011.

That’s partially because Afghanistan has become a less dangerous place for coalition forces. NATO troops aren’t getting into as many firefights — so there’s less need to call in air support. Three hundred NATO troops lost their lives from August to December of 2010, compared to 231 during the same stretch of 2011. The decline in casualties tracks roughly to the decrease in air strikes, in other words.



The numbers also speak to the changing character of the air campaign. Today, there are more NATO aircraft than ever above Afghanistan. But they do different things than the planes of the past.

“Our culture is a fangs-out, kill-kill-kill culture,” F/A-18 pilot Cmdr. Layne McDowell tells the New York Times’ C.J. Chivers. “Now I prefer not dropping — if I can accomplish the mission other ways.” During his current tour, McDowell and his fellow Super Hornet pilots aboard the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis have flown 953 missions in support of ground troops. The aircraft have only attacked 17 times.

In contrast, surveillance missions have quadrupled in the last two years; NATO is now flying about 85 spy sorties every day over Afghanistan. Airdrops of food, water, ammunition, fuel and other supplies are up 25 percent, to nearly 76 million pounds — even as the number of bomb drops comes down.

Photo, illo: USAF

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan PM Agrees to Appear on Contempt Rap

By SAMI ZUBEIRI, Agence France-Presse

Published: 16 Jan 2012 17:42

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's beleaguered premier agreed on Jan. 16 to appear in court to face a contempt notice served on him for failing to re-open corruption cases, including proceedings against the president.

The Supreme Court found Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in contempt and summoned him later this week, escalating pressure on a weakened government at a time of crippling tensions with the army which some analysts believe could cost the prime minister his job and force early elections.

The court wants the government to write to Swiss authorities to demand they re-open corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari, including multi-million-dollar money-laundering allegations, after an amnesty expired in late 2009.

Judge Nasir-ul-Mulk on Jan. 16 told the Supreme Court, which met to debate how to proceed on graft charges against Zardari, that Gilani had been ordered to appear before it on Jan. 19.

Gilani agreed to the summons in the National Assembly late Jan. 16, after his ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and its coalition partners passed are solution expressing full support for democracy and democratic institutions.

"The court has summoned me and I will appear before it as a mark of respect on Jan. 19," he said in an address televised by Pakistani TV channels. "There can be difference of opinion with the judiciary and the military but they cannot either pack up or derail the whole system. Rather, they have to strengthen it."

"We have struggled for democracy," he said, adding: "We have to strengthen the parliament and democratic institutions."

As the resolution was put to vote, the main opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) walked out of the house, with its leader in the assembly, Chaudhry Nisar Ali calling it a "smokescreen".

After days of high tension between the military and civilian leadership, the resolution insisted "all the state institutions must strictly function within the limits imposed on them by the constitution" and Pakistan's wellbeing should be ensured through democratic institutions.

Zardari and the PPP leadership insist the president is immune from prosecution as head of state and Maula Bakhsh Chandio, minister for law and parliamentary affairs, said they would take legal advice on how to proceed.

In the past, the PPP has accused the judiciary of overstepping its reach and colluding with the army to bring down the administration before its five-year mandate ends in 2013.

Last year, a Swiss prosecutor said that it would be "impossible" to reopen a case against Zardari, as he has immunity.

Supreme Court judges have outlined six options on how to proceed on graft charges against Zardari - which include finding Gilani in contempt, disqualifying the prime minister and president, and holding early elections.

Mulk said he had been left with "no option" but issue the notice to Gilani after the government ignored the court's demands.

It is only the second time that contempt of court proceedings have been initiated against a serving prime minister in Pakistan. In November 1997, prime minister Nawaz Sharif was also found in contempt in a case which ultimately led to the resignation of president Farooq Leghari.

Analysts are divided on whether Gilani could be convicted, pushed out to protect Zardari or show flexibility in order to avert a wider crisis.

"There is possibility now that the prime minister will be made a scapegoat and he may resign," senior lawyer Quosen Mufti told AFP. "Another possibility is that the prime minister will appear before the court ... If he gives the court a commitment on implementation the court can discharge the contempt notice. If not then he may be convicted."

Zardari's government is also under pressure over a memo soliciting American help to prevent a coup apparently feared in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden's killing in Pakistan on May.

A close Zardari aide, Husain Haqqani, was forced to resign as ambassador to Washington and the Supreme Court ordered a judicial inquiry into the memo following a demand from the chief spymaster.

The army has carried out three coups in Pakistan, but analysts believe it has no appetite for another direct takeover, instead preferring to force early elections behind the scenes in concert with pressure from the courts.

The attorney general said Jan. 16 he had been unable to obtain crucial evidence - BlackBerry message data sent between Haqqani and U.S. businessman Mansoor Ijaz, who claims to have acted as a go-between on the memo. He said BlackBerry's makers refused to release such records without the customer's permission.

The commission adjourned the hearing until Jan. 24.

[buglerbilly]

All war has desecration

Sebastian Junger

January 17, 2012

Opinion


Illustration: John Spooner.

It is hypocritical to punish US soldiers filmed urinating on dead Taliban fighters.

THE video that emerged in recent days appearing to show four US marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters has outraged many people in America. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defence Secretary Leon Panetta have condemned the act, the military has promised an inquiry, and some experts are even suggesting the act could qualify as a war crime.

Mainly, however, people seem simply to not understand it. Why would America's warriors - for that matter, why would anyone - urinate on a dead body?

I spent a year, off and on, with a platoon of US soldiers in the Korengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan. There was a lot of fighting, a lot of casualties and an enormous amount of stress on the men I was with. I never saw anyone do anything like this, but then again, I never saw any dead Taliban fighters; the enemy always recovered their casualties before we could get there.

Nevertheless, the things the soldiers shouted during combat were very revealing of the state of mind that war produces. (For the record, I'm sure the Taliban was screaming pretty much the same things about us.) At one point a Taliban fighter had his leg shot off during a firefight and was crawling around on the hillside, dying, and the men I was with cheered at the sight. That cheer deflated me. I liked these guys tremendously, but that celebration was just so ugly. I didn't want them to be like that.

Later, I asked one of them about it, and he explained that they had been happy because they were that much closer to all going home alive. They weren't cheering the enemy's death; they were cheering their own lives. That particular fighter would never again be able to kill an American soldier.

In a statement issued last Thursday, General James Amos, the marine corps commandant, said that ''the behaviour depicted in the video is wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history.''

Yet, I can't imagine that there was a time in human history when enemy dead were not desecrated. Achilles dragged Hector around the walls of Troy from the back of a chariot because he was so enraged by Hector's killing of his best friend.

Three milenniums later, Somali fighters dragged a US soldier through the streets of Mogadishu after shooting down a Black Hawk helicopter and killing 17 other Americans. During the frontier wars in the US, white Americans routinely scalped Indian fighters, and vice versa, well into the 1870s.

The US military should be held to a higher standard, certainly, but it is important to understand the context of the behaviour in the video. Clearly, the impulse to desecrate the enemy comes from a very dark and primal place in the human psyche. Once in a while, those impulses are going to break through.

There is another context for that behaviour, though - a more contemporary one. As a society, we may be disgusted by seeing US marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters, but we remain oddly unfazed by the fact that, presumably, those same marines just put .30 calibre rounds through the fighters' chests. American troops are not blind to this irony. They are very clear about the fact that society trains them to kill, orders them to kill and then baulks at anything that suggests they have dehumanised the enemy they have killed.

But, of course, they have dehumanised the enemy - otherwise they would have to face the enormous guilt and anguish of killing other human beings. Rather than demonstrating a callous disregard for the enemy, this awful incident might reveal something else: a desperate attempt by confused young men to convince themselves that they haven't just committed their first murder, that they have simply shot some coyotes in the bush.

It doesn't work, of course, but it gets them through the moment; it gets them through the rest of the patrol.

There is a final context for this act in which we are all responsible, all guilty. A 19-year-old marine has a very hard time reconciling the fact that it's OK to waterboard a live Taliban fighter but not OK to urinate on a dead one.

When the war on terror started, the marines in that video were probably nine or 10 years old. As children they heard adults - and political leaders - talk about their enemies in the most inhuman terms. The internet and the media are filled with self-important men and women referring to enemies as animals that deserve little legal or moral consideration. We have sent enemy fighters to countries such as Syria and Libya to be tortured by the very regimes that we have condemned for engaging in war crimes and torture. They have been tortured into confessing their crimes and then locked up indefinitely without trial because their confessions, achieved through torture, will not stand up in court.

For the past 10 years, American children have absorbed these moral contradictions, and now they are fighting US wars. The video doesn't surprise me, but it makes me incredibly sad; not just for them, but also for us. We will prosecute these men for desecrating the dead while maintaining that it is OK to torture the living.

I hope someone else knows how to explain that to our soldiers, because I don't have the faintest idea.

WASHINGTON POST

Sebastian Junger, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of War and the director of the 2010 film Restrepo, both of which chronicle the experiences of US troops fighting the war in Afghanistan.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/all-war-has-desecration-20120116-1q35m.html#ixzz1jg9PiJi6

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

German CH-53s Clock Up 13,000 Flying Hours In Afghanistan

Posted by Nicholas Fiorenza at 1/16/2012 10:23 AM CST

The Bundeswehr reported last Friday the 13th that one of its CH-53s completed the 13,000th flying hour by the helicopter type in Afghanistan on 7 January. The flight was by a CH-53GS between its Afghan base in Mazar-e-Sharif and Meymana.


Photo: Mazar-e-Sharif PIO

The German army first deployed CH-53s to Afghanistan in 2002 and currently has six of the helicopters there.

The 13,000 flying hours required 325 maintenance hours, in addition to 70 Antonov An-124 flights of CH-53s back or forth to Germany.

[buglerbilly]

Every Day, Army’s Panopticon Drone Will Collect 80 Years’ Worth of HD Video

By Spencer Ackerman January 17, 2012 | 6:30 am



Uploaded by NMANewsDirect on Dec 30, 2011
DOWNLOAD HERE: http://newsdirect.nma.com.tw/SingleItem.aspx?asset_id=OEM_20111229_OINT_002_V1

You’re in Afghanistan. You get word that a flatbed truck ferrying a weapons cache to insurgents is heading through a mountain pass your way. You want to trace the truck’s path — there might be a weapons pipeline that way — as well as its destination. But that means keeping watch over miles and miles of turf. It’ll require a gaggle of drones and spy planes to monitor such a wide area.

Or at least it did. The Army is sending a new drone helicopter into the Afghanistan war. Three of them, actually, each one equipped with one of the most powerful sensors the U.S. military has. By the spring, soldiers will remotely pilot Boeing’s A160 Hummingbird helo — parodied above by the Taiwanime geniuses at Next Media Animation — to see across vast swaths of Afghanistan, thanks to the ultra-powerful Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, or ARGUS.

Just how powerful is ARGUS? You know, just a 1.8 gigapixel camera package, consisting of 92 five-megapixel imagers. One blink of ARGUS’ eye covers up to 36 square miles, depending on the quality of the resolution; it will give its remote pilots at least 65 independent, scaleable video windows within that blink. It was initially developed for Army Special Forces by the mad scientists at Darpa. In a single day, ARGUS collects six petabytes of video — the equivalent of 79.8 years‘ worth of HD video. You’re probably going to find that truck.

Especially if you mount ARGUS on the Hummingbird. The helicopter has a long loiter time: 20 hours in the sky, at up to 15,000 feet. If the insurgents split up and head in different directions, the Hummingbird will still be able to see all of them for miles like it was Roger Daltrey.

If the forthcoming Afghanistan deployment isn’t the first time conventional Army forces have used the Hummingbird, it’s close to it. Lt. Col. Matthew Munster concedes that ARGUS “has never been flown on this platform before,” so he’ll start tests in the new year to make sure that all its sensors, cameras and datalinks play nicely with each other.

The Hummingbird may not be the only airborne machine outfitted with ARGUS. Word is that the mega-blimp known as the Blue Devil 2, a flying panopticon that stays aloft for five days at a stretch, is interested in incorporating the camera package. But it’s not clear if ARGUS will be ready for testing if Blue Devil meets its stated goal of deploying to Afghanistan in 2012.

[buglerbilly]

Analysts: US, Pakistan Collaborating Again

January 17, 2012

Knight Ridder|by Tom Hussain

ISLAMABAD - Two apparent U.S. drone attacks last week on militant targets in Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan very likely signal the resumption of joint counterintelligence operations by the CIA and Pakistan's military spy agency, security analysts here said Monday.

The reported strikes would be the first in Pakistan since U.S.-led NATO forces killed 25 Pakistani soldiers in a "friendly fire" incident on the border in November, which drove relations between Washington and Islamabad to a new low.

News reports over the weekend quoted anonymous Pakistani military officials as saying that radio chatter among militants suggested that the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, was among four insurgents who were killed Thursday in the second of the drone strikes in the North Waziristan tribal area.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban denied Mehsud's death, however, saying he wasn't in the area at the time. Members of rival militant factions told McClatchy Newspapers that they'd received no news of his death.

"The signs are that the U.S. has revisited intelligence cooperation with Pakistan, and the two sides have returned to the early stages, when drone attacks were initiated under a covert joint mandate," said Simbal Khan, the director of research at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, a research center funded by Pakistan's Foreign Ministry.

In the first of the strikes, last Tuesday, four al-Qaida fighters from the gas-rich central Asian republic of Turkmenistan were killed, analysts said.

But the drones didn't target the Haqqani network, an Afghan Taliban faction that draws hundreds of fighters from Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the top militant commander in North Waziristan.

Security analysts said the selective targeting suggested that Pakistani security authorities had sanctioned the strikes, despite a Foreign Ministry statement Thursday that drone intrusions into Pakistan's airspace "cannot be condoned."

"This would mean the end of capricious unilateral targeting by the CIA, and a more considered HVT list" - high-value target - "agreed on by both sides," Khan said.

The analysts said Pakistan's response to the drone strikes was canned rather than angry. The attacks weren't mentioned in a statement that was issued after the Pakistani government's national security team met Saturday, suggesting that Pakistani officials had prior knowledge of the strikes.

"Had the strikes happened out of the blue, a much stronger response would have been forthcoming from Pakistan, particularly from the military," Khan said.

The tensions with the United States are far from resolved, however. The Pakistani national security team issued the government's first official response to a Pentagon investigation into the border incident, rejecting - as the military did three weeks ago - the U.S. conclusions that Pakistani troops had fired first and that their deaths were the result of poor coordination between military authorities on both sides.

Pakistan reiterated its demand that President Barack Obama apologize for the soldiers' deaths, and it extended indefinitely its ban on NATO supplies for Afghanistan being trucked through its land border. Before the suspension, one-third of the nonlethal supplies for the U.S.-led coalition had been sent overland through Pakistan.

The White House has said no apology is forthcoming, though the Pentagon has expressed "deep regret" at the Pakistani troop losses.

The border incident prompted a review by a high-powered parliamentary committee of Pakistan's foreign policy, including seven defense agreements that have been signed with the U.S. since 2001. The committee concluded its review last week, and its recommendations, which haven't been made public, are to be debated in a special session of parliament later this month.

Pakistani newspapers have reported that the recommendations include demanding U.S. assurances that its forces won't violate Pakistan's sovereignty, a reference to the covert U.S. mission that killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad last May.

Obama has said the U.S. would take similar action if it received actionable intelligence on the whereabouts of the new al-Qaida chief, Ayman al-Zawahri.

© Copyright 2012 Knight Ridder. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

JANUARY 17, 2012, 6:21 P.M. ET.

Air Force Finds No Clear Motive in Kabul Attack

By JULIAN E. BARNES

An Air Force investigation found an Afghan military officer who shot and killed eight American airmen and a retired Army officer at the Kabul airport in April had expressed a desire to kill Americans, but didn't establish a conclusive motive, according to a report released Tuesday.

The shooting rampage by Col. Ahmed Gul was the most deadly such attack by a member of the Afghan military on American trainers.

Col. Gul at points had expressed sympathy for the Taliban, but people interviewed by investigators indicated his views had shifted before the attack. Investigators also found personal and financial problems may have motivated his rampage.

The Afghan officer was wounded during the attack by Air Force personnel, who returned fire, but Afghan autopsy reports concluded Col. Gul was ultimately killed by a purposefully self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The airmen who died in the attack were shot multiple times. The report found that Col. Gul had shot all but one of them in the head. Before he died, according to the report, the Afghan officer wrote religious phrases in blood on the walls at the U.S. Air Force command center, where the attack took place.

According to interviews with people who knew him, Col. Gul lived for a time in Pakistan and became radicalized there. At least one person interviewed by investigators said that in 2008, when preparing to move back to Afghanistan, Col. Gul said he was returning "to kill Americans."

But that person, whose name was redacted in the copy of the report released by the Air Force, said he didn't take the threats seriously because Col. Gul's views were inconsistent.

When he came to Afghanistan and began working for the government he shaved his beard and appeared to relax his religious attitudes, the report found. The report found that none of Col. Gul's co-workers thought he was a religious radical, although some noted he would get angry at seemingly minor problems.

Air Force Capt. Nathan Nylander was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for trying to evacuate the room where Col. Gul started firing. Capt. Nylander returned fire, wounding Col. Gul, then continued with the evacuation. But Col. Gul began firing again, killing Capt. Nylander.

"These Airmen paid the ultimate sacrifice while serving our nation in a combat zone," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said in a statement. "Their selfless sacrifices leave behind an honorable legacy that we continue to see in the commitment of Airmen who serve as air advisers today."

[buglerbilly]

Amid Criticism, Army Defends Medevac Mission

January 18, 2012

Military.com|by Philip Ewing



I agree with the Congressman that they should be unmarked and armed, its a nonsense to do other especially with a-holes like the Taliban who ignore all "rules" for recognising the red cross or crescent...........the shot-at numbers are irrelevant, troops have died while Medevac choppers have had to wait for the armed escorts. Its NOT a happy thing for the Medevac crew to have to bear either............

The Army has no evidence its unarmed medical evacuation helicopters marked with the red cross are attacked more often than other helicopters in Afghanistan, the service said Wednesday, and it strongly defended its medevac policies in the face of criticism from a member of Congress.

A top House lawmaker questioned the way the Army handles its medevac mission in a letter Tuesday to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, citing the story of a soldier who died when a medevac helo had to wait for an armed escort to come to his aid. Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin, a senior Armed Services Committee member, asked whether the Army should arm its medevac helicopters and remove their markings, given that the Air Force and British army use armed and unmarked helos for rescue missions.

But the Army says it's keeping things as they are. Service spokesman Bill Layer said Army officials reviewed their aeromedical mission in 2008 and concluded it needed no changes. Commanders in Afghanistan have not asked for any changes either, he said. And as for the supposed vulnerability of dustoff helos, Layer said they're no more a target than any other.

"The enemy in Afghanistan shoots at any US or coalition aircraft. There is no evidence to suggest that our medevacs receive more enemy fire than other aircraft," he said.

The Army has legal and practical reasons for not arming its dustoff helicopters, Layer explained. First: "Medevac aircraft are dedicated air ambulances and operate solely as medical evacuation platforms within the spirit and intent of the Geneva Conventions," he said. "Other services, and other Army helos may be used for medical missions, but that is not their prime function … Removing the red cross and arming it would make it like other Army helicopters -- subject to being redirected to support non-medical missions."

Arming medical units' UH-60 Black Hawks also would mean they'd have less room for patients and equipment, Layer said.

"Arming our medevacs would significantly impact the operational capability of the aircraft. It would require additional weight due to the machine guns(s), personnel and ammunition. Those extra pounds would hinder the aircraft's ability to work at higher altitudes in Afghanistan because of reduced lift. Additionally, Army medevacs can carry four litter urgent patients, but if weapons were added, that would be reduced to two litter urgent patients, which would in turn require the commitment of more medevac aircraft. This additional weight would also impact the aircraft's speed and range which could also result in the need for more medevac aircraft, an already low density/highly deployed asset."

In the case of the soldier Akin cited in his letter, Spc. Chazray Clark, military officials concluded the delay in the response of the medevac helo did not contribute to his death. But Akin as much as discounted that -- "the fact remains that the Army policy currently in place contributed to a significant delay in transporting Specialist Clark to the hospital at Kandahar Airfield … If the medevac had been armed and waiting at the [landing zone], would getting Specialist Clark to KAF thirty minutes earlier [have] saved his life?"

Army officials did not comment on that case in particular, but the service argues the response and care that troops receive today is the best it's ever been. Army Secretary John McHugh wrote in a letter to Iowa's Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley -- posted by blogger Michael Yon, who has written extensively about the dustoff issue -- that wounded troops in Afghanistan have a 92 percent survival rate.

Yon has sharply criticized the Army's unarmed and marked medevac helicopters, calling it a "travesty" that they "alert the enemy they are unarmed." Also, he wrote that the cross symbol is especially incendiary for Afghans, in part because of its association with "crusaders."

© Copyright 2012 Military.com. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

JANUARY 19, 2012.

Taliban Commanders Endorse U.S. Talks

By HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL and MARIA ABI-HABIB

KABUL—Taliban field commanders in several volatile Afghan provinces said in interviews that they are largely supportive of their leadership's decision to open talks with the U.S., but cautioned that some of their fellow militants might reject any peace deal.

The Taliban for the first time acknowledged this month that they are negotiating with the U.S., raising hopes that the 10-year-old war may end with a political settlement.

A concern for the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies is whether the Taliban's high command, headed by Mullah Omar, can deliver on any future pact.

"The Taliban are unified, but they are not 100% under the control of one person," says Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, who was foreign minister in the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan before 2001 and is involved in efforts to broker a deal.

The Taliban so far have agreed to talk with the U.S., but not with President Hamid Karzai's administration. As a first step, the Taliban are planning to open an office in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar. The U.S. also is considering transferring to Qatar's custody five senior Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a confidence-building measure, U.S. officials said.


Xinhua/Zuma Press
Taliban fighters attend a surrender ceremony in Herat province, Afghanistan, on Tuesday, at which they pledged to join the government.

U.S. and allied officials say it will be crucial to see to what extent the Taliban leadership could deliver on any future agreement, considering the decentralized nature of the insurgency.

"Any insurgency has a difficulty with real-time command and control," cautioned a senior NATO official in Kabul. With the Taliban, "there's no direct control. There's indirect control. That's always going to be a problem with confidence-building measures."

Though the Taliban and the allied Haqqani network acknowledge Mullah Omar's authority as the "Leader of the Believers," the insurgency isn't a coherent and tightly organized movement, and its foot soldiers and local commanders sometimes contradict the top leadership's edicts.

Taliban field commanders interviewed by The Wall Street Journal—who command from a few dozen to around 200 fighters—said they believed most insurgents are on board with Mullah Omar's tentative peace outreach, which reversed the Taliban's longstanding policy of refusing any negotiations as long as foreign forces remain in Afghanistan.

"There are some groups in Karzai's government that disobey government guidelines," said Maulvi Darwish, a Taliban commander in Logar province in eastern Afghanistan. "The Taliban are also a group of people, and there are bad people and good people. The bad people are few and they won't be in the favor of peace—but the Taliban will follow whatever the Leader of the Believers decides."

A commander from Ghazni province, also in eastern Afghanistan, agreed. "Everybody in Afghanistan wants peace," he said. "There are very intelligent scholars in the Taliban leadership, and we believe they won't make any decision against Islam and Afghanistan. They are our leaders and we are their followers."

The Taliban say their goals in any negotiations are the withdrawal of all the foreign troops and the establishment of a more rigorously Islamic regime.

"Whatever the Taliban leadership and the Leader of the Believers decides will be in accordance with Islam and Afghanistan's national interests," said Mullah Ayubi, a Taliban commander in Khost province, in eastern Afghanistan. "He is our guide and we are obligated to obey his orders. But if he makes a decision against Islam we won't follow him and he wouldn't be our guide anymore."

A commander from Paktia province, also in the east, said peace would be acceptable only if "Islamic laws are implemented, there will be no foreign interference and nobody will impose this Western democracy on Afghans." Even under those conditions, the Paktia commander cautioned, some militants will never agree to lay down arms—particularly the the Haqqani militant network, which is allied with the Taliban but operates independently and, according to U.S. officials, is linked with the Pakistani intelligence service.

"There are some commanders who have done wrong things, and they oppose peace talks because they are afraid they will be held accountable if peace comes," he said. "There will be justice against these people, and they are afraid of justice."

The Taliban said this week that they decided to establish the Qatar office Qatar to dispel the Karzai administration's depiction of the insurgents as subservient to Pakistan.

Some analysts see a more complex set of calculations. "The Taliban see this as a way to move forward," says Masood Karokhail, an independent Kabul-based analyst. "If they take power forcefully after 2014, they won't be legitimate and will be isolated from the rest of the world….They don't want this again."

Talks won't necessarily make it easier for U.S.-led forces to withdraw most of their 130,000troops by 2014 as planned. The Taliban leadership, and the field commanders, have vowed to continue waging war during negotiations. The U.S.-led coalition, too, says it won't slow down the tempo of operations.

"The beginning of peace talks doesn't mean we are retreating or tired of war," the Paktia Taliban commander said. "It means we want to open a diplomatic channel, so we can talk and fight at the same time."

[buglerbilly]

Dozens dead in suicide attack at Afghan bazaar

NATO: Taliban chief has lost control of insurgents

By Rahim Faiez - The Associated Press

Posted : Wednesday Jan 18, 2012 15:48:24 EST

KABUL, Afghanistan — Dozens of civilians, NATO coalition troops and Afghan security forces were killed and wounded Wednesday when a suicide attacker blew himself up in a bazaar, according to the top commander of international troops in Afghanistan, who alleged that the Taliban’s leader had “lost all control” of his footsoldiers.

U.S. Gen. John Allen condemned the attack in Kajaki district of Helmand province and said it was evidence that the insurgents had “declared outright war” on the Afghan people. While the Taliban work to intimidate civilians and kill anyone aligned with the Afghan government, the U.S.-led coalition emphasizes that civilians deaths should weaken the Taliban’s appeal.

Daud Ahmadi, a provincial spokesman, said a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed 12 Afghans, including two policeman, and wounded at least 23 other people.

A statement released late Wednesday by NATO headquarters in Kabul said the explosion killed and injured dozens of Afghan civilians, Afghan national security forces and coalition troops. The statement did not disclose further details about how many foreign troops had been killed or wounded.

“With today’s horrendous attack at the Kajaki Sofla Bazaar, insurgents have once again destroyed the lives of dozens of innocent Afghan civilians,” Allen said in the statement. “These attacks against the people of Afghanistan have no effect on the progress we are together making here with our Afghan partners and will only further isolate the Taliban from the process of peace negotiation.”

Taliban leader Mohammad Mullah Omar “has lost all control over Taliban insurgents, otherwise he would immediately denounce these attacks and order his forces to stop attacking innocent Afghan civilians,” Allen said.

More than a year ago, Omar, the Taliban’s one-eyed, reclusive leader, did urge his fighters to try to avoid killing innocent civilians.

“Pay attention to the life and property of civilians so that ... your jihad activities will not become a cause for destruction of property and loss of life of people,” Omar said in a message emailed to the media in November 2010.

Suicide bombings and roadside bombs, however, have continued to kill ordinary citizens along with NATO and Afghan forces. Taliban insurgents have assassinated hundreds of Afghan government officials and supporters in recent years, seeking to sap public confidence in President Hamid Karzai’s administration.

Farther south in Helmand province, an Afghan intelligence official in Nad Ali district and two of this bodyguards were killed Wednesday in an explosion, Ahmadi said. A remote-controlled bomb was detonated as the intelligence official, Wali Mohammad Khan, walked out of his house.

He was the third local government official to be assassinated this week in southern Afghanistan, the birthplace of the Taliban insurgency.

On Tuesday in neighboring Kandahar province, a member of the Dand district council was assassinated while praying in a mosque in Kandahar city, and a member of the district council in Panjwayi was killed by gunmen on a motorbike.

Separately, NATO is investigating reports that five civilians, including one woman and two children, were accidentally killed during a night raid earlier this week in northeastern Afghanistan.

Sayed Fazelullah Wahidi, governor of Kunar province, said coalition helicopters fired into a compound Monday night in Chawkay district, killing two militants and the five civilians.

Coalition troops and Afghan special forces have been carrying out regular nighttime kill-and-capture raids against suspected insurgents across Afghanistan. But the operations and allegations of civilian deaths have provoked anger over foreign meddling in Afghanistan.

Karzai has demanded an end to the raids, saying that Afghan citizens cannot feel secure if they think armed soldiers might burst into their houses in the middle of the night.

Meanwhile, Afghan security forces said they had killed nine armed insurgents and captured 23 suspects in a series of raids in the past 24 hours.

An Interior Ministry statement issued Wednesday morning said the operations in eight different provinces also uncovered caches of weapons, ammunition and explosives.

The Afghan Defense Ministry says a soldier was killed and four were wounded in clashes with insurgents on Tuesday.

Associated Press writer Mirwais Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Car Bomb at Afghanistan Air Base Kills 7 Civilians

January 19, 2012

Associated Press|by Mirwais Khan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A suicide attacker set off a vehicle laden with explosives Thursday outside a gate at a sprawling base for U.S. and NATO operations, killing seven civilians in a second suicide bombing in as many days in southern Afghanistan, officials said.

Separately, Afghan authorities reported Thursday that avalanches have killed at least 29 people in the country's mountainous northeast.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the afternoon attack at a crowded entrance to Kandahar Air Field, claiming they were targeting a NATO convoy.

Two witnesses told The Associated Press that they suspect the suicide car bomber was trying to hit U.S. forces because he detonated his explosives just as two pickup trucks, which they say are often used by American special forces, were leaving the base.

The coalition said no NATO troops were killed. It does not disclose information about injured troops.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef said that NATO forces open fire after the bombing, and that they killed three of the seven civilians who died.

The coalition denied this, saying there was no fighting after the blast.

"There was no follow-on attacks and no disruption to operations" at the base, the coalition said.

Earlier, officials reported that the suicide bomber was walking near the gate, but the Afghan Ministry of Interior later said the attacker was driving a Toyota Corolla.

Zalmai Ayubi, the spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor, said two children were among the seven civilians killed. He said eight other civilians, including two children and one woman, were injured in the explosion.

Gates to the larger U.S. bases in Afghanistan often are crowded with trucks waiting to deliver goods and and services, and local Afghans going to or coming back from jobs on the compounds.

Safiullah, a 40-year-old fuel tank driver from neighboring Zabul province, was waiting his turn to enter the base when the blast occurred.

"There was dust and smoke everywhere," said Safiullah, who uses just one name. "I got down on my knees. When the smoke lifted, I moved closer. I saw two children dead at the side of the road."

At the time of the explosion, two pickup trucks were leaving the base, he said. He said he remembered that because he and another man were conversing at the time about how U.S. special forces sometimes use that kind of truck.

The explosion shattered the window of a taxi driven by Sabiullah Khan, was at the gate waiting for customers.

"I put my head down in my car," he said. "For three or four minutes I was afraid. I was reciting the words of the Quran," the Muslim holy book. "When the smoke cleared and I knew I was OK, I started looking outside. People were shouting for help. I saw one vehicle on fire. The Afghan army were running and taking out the wounded."

He said that when he got out of his taxi, he also saw the two pickup trucks.

"Nobody was in them, but from the condition of the vehicle, I'm sure that if they were not killed, they were wounded," he said.

On Wednesday, 13 civilians, including three Afghan policemen were killed when a suicide attacker blew himself up in a bazaar in neighboring Helmand Province.

The Helmand governor's office said 22 others were wounded in the blast in Kajaki district.

The coalition said some international troops were killed and wounded in the attack, but did not disclose details.

Late Wednesday, NATO reported that one coalition trooper had been killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan, but would not say whether the service member died in the Kajaki bombing, or some other incident.

U.S. Gen. John Allen, the top commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, condemned the Kajaki attack, saying it was evidence that the Taliban insurgents had "declared outright war" on the Afghan people. He said that such violence "will only further isolate the Taliban from the process of peace negotiation."

The U.S. has been working to broker talks between the Taliban and President Hamid Karzai's government to end the 10-year war. The insurgents recently said they would open a political office in the Gulf state of Qatar to pursue negotiations but would also continue fighting.

In northern Afghanistan, 29 people have died in avalanches reported since Monday in Badakhshan province. according to the Afghan National Disaster Management Agency.

At least 40 more people have been injured and rescuers were struggling to reach areas of Afghanistan's mountainous northeast that have been cut off by heavy snows.

Roads outside the provincial capital of Faizabad were blocked by at least 6 feet (2 meters) of snow, the agency said.

Afghanistan's harsh winters and mountainous terrain in the north make avalanches a danger each year.

In February 2010, an avalanche killed at least 171 people near the Salang Pass, a major route through the Hindu Kush mountains that connects the capital of Kabul to the north of the country.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan helicopter crash kills six Nato service members

Cause of crash being investigated, though international force says there was no enemy activity in area

Agencies

guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 January 2012 03.40 GMT


A Nato helicopter has crashed in Afghanistan, killing all six on board, according to the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). Photograph: Abdul Khaleq/AP

A Nato helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing six members of Isaf, the international military force.

The coalition said there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the crash in southern Afghanistan.

The cause of the crash was being investigated. The coalition did not disclose the nationalities of those killed.

On the same day, seven civilians were killed outside a crowded gate at Kandahar air field, a base for US and Nato operations, when a suicide attacker set off a car bomb. The Taliban claimed responsibility, claiming they were targeting a Nato convoy.

It was the second suicide bombing in as many days in southern Afghanistan, officials said. Isaf said no Nato troops were killed. It does not disclose information about injured troops.

Separately, Afghan authorities reported on Thursday that avalanches had killed at least 29 people in the country's mountainous northeast.

Two witnesses told the Associated Press they suspected the suicide car bomber was trying to hit US forces because he detonated his explosives just as two pick-up trucks, which they say are often used by American special forces, were leaving the base.

Qari Yousef, a Taliban spokesman, said Nato forces opened fire after the bombing and killed three of the seven civilians who died. The coalition denied this, saying there was no fighting after the blast.

Earlier, officials reported that the suicide bomber was walking near the gate, but the Afghan interior ministry said the attacker had been driving a Toyota Corolla.

Zalmai Ayubi, the spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor, said two children were among the seven civilians killed. He said eight other civilians, including two children and one woman, were injured.

Gates to the larger US bases in Afghanistan are often crowded with trucks delivering goods and services, and Afghans going to or coming back from jobs inside.

On Wednesday, 13 people including three Afghan policemen were killed by a suicide bomber in a bazaar in neighbouring Helmand province. The Helmand governor's office said 22 others were wounded in the blast in Kajaki district.

The coalition said some international troops were killed and wounded in the attack but did not disclose details.

Late on Wednesday Nato reported that a coalition soldier had been killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan but would not say whether it was in the Kajaki bombing or elsewhere.

General John Allen, the top commander of American and Nato forces in Afghanistan, condemned the Kajaki attack, saying it was evidence that the Taliban insurgents had "declared outright war" on the Afghan people. He said that such violence "will only further isolate the Taliban from the process of peace negotiation".

In northern Afghanistan, 29 people have died in avalanches reported since Monday in Badakhshan province. according to the Afghan National Disaster Management Agency. At least 40 more people have been injured and rescuers have struggled to reach areas of Afghanistan's mountainous north-east that have been cut off by heavy snow.

[buglerbilly]

France halts training after Afghan soldier kills 4 French troops

By Edward Cody and Kevin Sieff, Updated: Friday, January 20, 9:26 PM

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that France was suspending training operations in Afghanistan after four French soldiers were killed and more than a dozen wounded by a renegade Afghan soldier who opened fire on his trainers.

In a separate incident in southern Afghanistan, six NATO troops were killed in a helicopter crash, and a senior U.S. defense official said all the victims were U.S. Marines, the Associated Press reported.

Sarkozy, addressing foreign ambassadors in a previously scheduled New Year’s ceremony, said the shooting also raises the question of whether France should accelerate the return of all its soldiers engaged in Afghanistan as part of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. Defense Minister Gerard Longuet was dispatched to Afghanistan, Sarkozy said, to demonstrate support for the 3,600-strong French contingent and assess its future role.

“The French Army is standing next to its allies, but we cannot accept that even one of our soldiers be killed or wounded by our allies,” said Sarkozy, according to the TF1 television station. “It is unacceptable. I will not accept it,” he said.

The attack occurred just hours after military officials reported that a helicopter had crashed in southern Afghanistan, killing six NATO service members. NATO said the cause of the crash was under investigation and that initial reports indicated there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the crash. Taliban officials claimed responsibility for the attack.

A defense official in Washington said there was no indication that the U.S. helicopter was hit by enemy fire before it crashed Thursday in Helmand province, killing six Marines, AP reported.

The shooting Friday marked the second time in less than a month that French soldiers have been killed by Afghans wearing army uniforms. Two French Foreign Legion troopers were shot and killed Dec. 29 in a mountainous area of Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul. That shooter was immediately gunned down by other French soldiers.

Since France dispatched soldiers to assist in the U.S.-led war, 82 French soldiers have been killed, according to the Defense Ministry. Last year was the most costly, with 26 French soldiers killed out of the total of 566 killed in NATO’s multinational force.

Although the French role in Afghanistan has often been criticized in public debate — particularly since Sarkozy relaxed earlier rules limiting exposure to combat — it has never been seriously brought into question in parliament or by the main opposition group, the Socialist Party.

Friday’s shooting occurred in the same general area as the earlier casualties. This time, however, the gunman was taken into custody. An Afghan intelligence officer told reporters in Kabul that he was a member of the Afghan armed forces.

The Defense Ministry said he was part of an Afghan army detachment stationed in Kapisa province that was about to depart on a joint training and patrol operation with French soldiers. Such operations have become the main role of the French military in Afghanistan, particularly since President Hamid Karzai in November transferred security responsibilities to the Afghan army in some regions of the country.

About 400 French soldiers were pulled out of Afghanistan in October, according to a gradual drawdown decided last year at the annual NATO summit. Foreign forces are scheduled to pull out entirely by the end of 2014.

Almost of all of the French troops in Afghanistan are based in Kapisa, a relatively peaceful province. Despite the lack of violence, it is considered strategically important because of its potential use as a staging area for attacks on the capital.

The French mission in Kapisa, like the war effort overall, has shifted increasingly to the training of Afghan troops, who will inherit the conflict when NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan.

Taliban infiltrators in the Afghan army remain a serious concern for NATO troops, dozens of whom have been targeted by their counterparts during training exercises and joint patrols.

Sieff reported from Kabul

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

France Suspends Afghan Training Mission After Soldiers Killed

Posted by Christina Mackenzie at 1/20/2012 8:32 AM CST

France has suspended its combat training mission for the Afghan army in the the wake of the assassination today of four French soldiers by one of their Afghan colleagues who also injured another 16. Two French legionnaires died in similar circumstances on December 29.

President Nicolas Sarkozy immediately decided to send Defense Minister Gérard Longuet and the joint chief of staff Admiral Edouard Guillaud to Afghanistan. He said that if the security conditions of French soldiers and recruitment conditions of Afghan soldiers were not made crystal clear and safe then “France would immediately draw the obvious conclusions.”

This latest round of killings will not improve relations between the two countries just a week before Afghan President Hamid Karzai is expected in Paris to sign a friendship treaty.

“We are friends with the Afghan people, we are allies of the Afghan people but I cannot accept a situation where Afghan soldiers fire on French soldiers. If more secure conditions are not clearly established then the question of an anticipated return of the French army will be posed,” Sarkozy told diplomats this morning. You can hear Sarkozy's comments here.

The French army had set 2014 as its deadline for pulling out of Afghanistan but Sarkozy said a question mark is now hanging over this date.

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Germany Begins Gradual Withdrawal From Afghanistan

Posted by Nicholas Fiorenza at 1/20/2012 9:23 AM CST

Germany will withdraw 100 soldiers from Afghanistan by the end of the month, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière told the DAPD press agency in an interview. This is part of a step-by-step reduction in German troops in the war-torn country over the next two years.


Thomas de Maizière on a recent visit to Afghanistan (photo: Bundeswehr/Schmidt)

On 26 January, the Bundestag, the German parliament, will vote on a new mandate for the Bundeswehr's participation in the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. For the first time since they were deployed to Afghanistan 10 years ago, the ceiling on German troops in the country will be reduced from 5,350 to 4,900 as a first step and in further steps to 4,400 by the end of January 2013 as long as the situation allows this and without endangering their safety or the sustainability of the handover process to the Afghan national security forces, according to the German Ministry of Defense.

De Maizière said the withdrawal must be coordinated with NATO allies and take into account the shift of ISAF's lines of communication, which are used not only for supplies but also for withdrawing troops, from Pakistan to northern Afghanistan due to Islamabad's continued blocking of the supply route through Pakistan.

[buglerbilly]

Report: Senior Al-Qaida Planner Killed in Drone Strike

January 20, 2012

UPI

A senior al-Qaida operations planner was among those killed in a recent drone strike in Pakistan, a U.S. official told CNN.

Aslam Awan, described as a key player with the terror group who was being tracked by the intelligence community, died Jan. 10 when a drone missile struck a compound near the town of Miranshah in Pakistan's North Waziristan, the official said.

At the time of his death, Awan was reported to have been planning attacks against the West.

"His death reduces al-Qaida's thinning bench of another operative devoted to plotting the death of innocent civilians," the official said.

The Jan. 10 incident was one of two suspected U.S. drone strikes this month, which came after an absence following the Nov. 26 NATO airstrike in a border region with Afghanistan which inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. The airstrike caused U.S.-Pakistan relations to deteriorate further.

There had been reports this month that one of the drone strikes may also have killed Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, but those reports were denied by a spokesman for the Mehsud group.

The spokesman was quoted as saying Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban called Tehrik-e-Taliban, or TTP, was alive and leading his fighters.

© Copyright 2012 UPI. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Costs Soar for New War Supply Routes

January 20, 2012

Associated Press|by Lolita C. Baldor and Robert Burns

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is paying six times as much to send war supplies to troops in Afghanistan through alternate routes after Pakistan's punitive decision in November to close border crossings to NATO convoys, the Associated Press has learned.

Islamabad shut down two key Pakistan border crossings after a U.S. airstrike killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers in late November, and it is unclear when the crossings might reopen.

Pentagon figures provided to the AP show it is now costing about $104 million per month to send the supplies through a longer northern route. That is $87 million more per month than when the cargo moved through Pakistan.

While U.S. officials have acknowledged that using alternate transportation routes for Afghan war supplies is more expensive and takes longer, the total costs had not been revealed until now. The Pentagon provided the cost figures to the AP on Thursday.

U.S. officials said Thursday the elevated costs are likely to continue for some time, as U.S.-Pakistan tensions remain high and Pakistan has not yet offered to restore the transport arrangement or to begin negotiations on the matter. Until the closure, the U.S. had relied on Pakistani routes to move about one-third of all war supplies for Afghanistan.

The U.S. has given Pakistan more than $20 billion in aid since 9/11, including civilian and military assistance. But over the past year, relations with Islamabad have been strained by a series of incidents, including the U.S. assault in Pakistan last May that killed Osama bin Laden.

Pakistani leaders have also complained about repeated U.S. drone strikes into their country. The strikes, largely by the CIA, target militants hiding along Pakistan's border who launch attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The final straw, however, was the Nov. 26 cross-border attack, which hit two Pakistani border posts, enraging the Pakistani government and further eroding already shaky relations.

The U.S. blamed the errant airstrikes on a series of communications and coordination errors on both sides. American officials expressed regret but have not apologized for the incident, insisting that Pakistan fired first. Pakistan denies that and has called it an unprovoked attack.

In addition to closing the border crossings, Pakistan ordered the U.S. to vacate Shamsi air base, which the U.S. was using to launch drone strikes at al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

Over the past year or so, the U.S. military has been shrinking its reliance on the Pakistani routes, which are used to transport fuel and other non-lethal supplies. U.S. officials say they could manage indefinitely without that access if Pakistan either makes the closure permanent or offers to reopen it under unacceptable conditions.

Officials said that moves by Pakistan to briefly close the supply routes on two previous occasions after disputes with the U.S. prompted the Pentagon to begin shifting more to the northern crossings. Officials also believe that even if Pakistan eventually opens the supply routes, that there will be additional fees charged, so the alternate routes would help avoid those extra costs.

On the other hand, sending NATO convoys through Pakistan is seen by Washington as a significant piece of the overall U.S.-Pakistani partnership. Failure to reinstate those routes would signal a more severe diplomatic breach between the two countries at a critical time in the Afghan war and the ongoing battle against insurgents who seek sanctuary on the Pakistan side of the border.

According to U.S. officials, 85 percent of fuel supplies for the war effort in Afghanistan are now going through the northern supply routes, along with 30 percent of the supplies that had routinely come through Pakistan.

The northern routes connect Baltic and Caspian Sea ports with Afghanistan through Russia and Central Asia and the Caucasus. And they combine sea, rail and truck transport.

There may be, however, some movement by Pakistan to allow certain civilian Afghan supplies through the closed routes.

Dependent on Pakistan for its imports, landlocked Afghanistan has asked authorities in Pakistan to release hundreds of vehicles stacked with goods and fuel that are being held up along with NATO supplies.

Pakistani officials say they are sorting through the thousands of stranded vehicles to push through supplies for Afghans. So far, the Pakistanis have given no indication of when they will open the border for NATO supplies to Afghanistan.

There has been limited contact between top U.S. and Pakistani officials.

Last week, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talked by phone with his Pakistani counterpart, Army Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, their first contact since Dec. 21. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has not spoken to Pakistani leaders since the incident.

-- Associated Press Writers Bradley Klapper in Washington and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US Has New Confidence in Peace Talks With Taliban

January 20, 2012

Associated Press|by Kimberly Dozier and Anne Gearan

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration expressed new confidence that talks with the Taliban next week offer the best chance yet to end the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan, despite warnings from the intelligence community that the Taliban is more interested in continuing fighting than making peace.

To guard against the Taliban using the talks to boost its standing, while delivering little in return, the U.S. this week will lay out confidence-building measures -- specific steps that the U.S. and the insurgents agree to take ahead of formal talks.

Those talks, if they ever take place, would include the United States, the Taliban and the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai, a senior U.S. official said.

Like others interviewed, the official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive diplomacy.

The diplomatic, military and intelligence branches of the U.S. government differ over the value of talks with the Taliban or whether now is the right time to so publicly shift focus away from the ongoing military campaign that primarily targets Taliban insurgents. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and some uniformed military leaders recently have sounded some of the strongest notes of caution, especially on when to grant Taliban requests for the transfer of several of its prisoners from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military and other U.S. officials said.

The latest Afghan National Intelligence Estimate warns that the Taliban will grow stronger, using the talks to gain credibility and run out the clock until U.S. troops depart Afghanistan, while continuing to fight for more territory, say U.S. officials who have read the classified document. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the roughly 100-page review, an amalgam of intelligence community's predictions of possible scenarios for the Afghan war through the planned end of U.S. combat in 2014.

It says the Afghan government largely has failed to prove itself to its people and likely will continue to weaken and find influence only in the cities. It predicts that the Taliban and warlords will largely control the countryside. The NIE did suggest that eliminating top Taliban leaders in the next two years and continuing to build the Afghan government could help offset that.

Meanwhile, Karzai is still uneasy with the pace and direction of talks. He worries that the United States will strike a deal with the Taliban and force that deal on his government, two Afghan officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.

U.S. officials close to the negotiations say that despite these warnings the Taliban high command is more ready for talks than in the past, at least with the United States if not the elected Afghan government it opposes.

One sign was the surprising public endorsement by the Taliban of the plan to open a negotiating office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. But U.S. officials also cite more subtle indications of a shift toward peace negotiations, including the recent participation in preliminary talks of more senior and influential Taliban representatives.

The senior U.S. official said negotiators are now confident they are talking to credible intermediaries for the main Taliban command based in Pakistan.

The administration's top negotiator, Marc Grossman, was building support for talks among regional allies such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia this week, to be followed by discussions with Taliban representatives, U.S. and other government officials said.

One topic was expected to be a U.S. offer to release two or three Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo to custody in Qatar, although two officials said that effort is moving more slowly than plans for the office. A waiting period would follow that transfer before any other Taliban transfers would be considered. U.S. officials said Congress would be consulted throughout.

The Taliban had sought both the office and the prisoner release as preconditions for real talks.

The senior U.S. official said the U.S. has set clear conditions for opening the office, including that the Taliban must agree not to use it for fundraising or propaganda, or to run insurgent operations. Larger conditions include assurances that the insurgents are truly interested in a political settlement and not using negotiations as a way to stall until U.S. forces leave.

The central political office confers instant, though controversial, legitimacy on the diffuse insurgency as a political movement and provides a site for formal talks. The idea is to give the Taliban room to negotiate in a location with less direct pressure from Pakistan, which has ties to some militant groups and houses parts of the Taliban leadership.

The U.S. intelligence assessment looks beyond the near horizon for talks.

It predicts the likely outcome of two strategies:

** Moderate engagement, in which the U.S. continues special operations raids against key Taliban leaders, and village outreach to strengthen local government, while conventional forces train Afghanistan's army and police force.

** Limited engagement, in which the U.S. would continue economic and political support, and some Afghan security training, but most troops would withdraw.

Both strategies can weaken the Taliban, the analysts say, but ultimately neither course of action is likely to stop the continued weakening of the Afghan state, the officials said.

In that way, the NIE's bleak predictions also give the White House reason to hasten the reconciliation process in order to pull U.S. troops out of what some analysts termed a hopeless stalemate.

-- Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann in Kabul and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Karzai Says he's met With Afghan Insurgent Faction

January 21, 2012

Associated Press|by Kay Johnson

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that he personally held peace talks recently with the insurgent faction Hizb-i-Islami, appearing to assert his own role in a U.S.-led bid for negotiations to end the country's decade-long war.

Karzai made the announcement hours before he was to meet with American special representative Marc Grossman to discuss progress and plans for bringing the Taliban insurgency into formal talks for the first time.

"Recently, we met with a delegation from Hizb-i-Islami ... and had negotiations," Karzai told a meeting of the Afghan parliament, adding, "We are hopeful that these negotiations for peace continue and we will have good results."

Hizb-i-Islami is a radical Islamist militia that controls territory in Afghanistan's northeast and launches attacks against U.S. forces from Pakistan. Its leader, powerful warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a former U.S. ally now listed as a terrorist by Washington.

The president has met before with representatives of Hekmatyar, whose political allies hold seats in the Afghan parliament and Cabinet, but Saturday's public announcement seemed intended to bolster Karzai's insistence on inclusion in the U.S.-led peace process.

Karzai's statement was also a reminder that any negotiations to end Afghanistan's war will be more complex than just talking to the Taliban's Pakistan-based leadership, headed by Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Hizb-i-Islami, also based over the Pakistan border, has ties to al-Qaida and has launched deadly attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Fighters loyal to Hekmatyar also have strongholds in Baghlan, Kunduz and Kunar provinces in the north and northeast Afghanistan.

There is also the feared Haqqani network, which maintains close ties to both al-Qaida and the Taliban and commands the loyalties of an estimated 10,000 fighters. The Haqqanis have been blamed for a series of spectacular attacks, including suicide bombings inside Kabul.

By showing he can bring at least one major faction to the negotiating table, Karzai may hope to increase his standing in a tentative peace process that has recently been dominated by Washington. The U.S. has repeatedly said that formal negotiations must be Afghan-led, but Karzai is reportedly uneasy with his government not being directly involved in recent preliminary talks with Taliban representatives.

"It should be mentioned that the Afghan nation is the owner of the peace process and negotiations," Karzai said. "No foreign country or organization can prevent (Afghans) from exercising this right."

U.S. representative Grossman recently stressed that any future negotiations would include Afghanistan's government, and said he would meet Karzai on Saturday.

"After our meeting with President Karzai, we will decide what to do next because we take his guidance and advice in an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led process," Grossman said Friday at a stop in India.

The Taliban have vowed to keep fighting as they explore a possible political resolution to the war.

A member of the NATO military force in Afghanistan was killed Saturday in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said. The statement gave no other details, nor the nationality of the casualty.

The attack comes a day after an Afghan soldier opened fire on French troops during a training exercise, killing four of them and prompting France to suspend its training programs.

Insurgents clashed Saturday with government forces in the town of Barmal in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan, said Maj. Abdul Rahman, who coordinates coalition and Afghan operations in the area.

Afghan security forces killed two of the attackers and recovered their guns and a rocket-propelled grenade, he said. Two other attackers wearing suicide bomb vests moved in, but their explosives detonated prematurely and both died at the scene. One civilian was wounded in the attack, he said.

The Paktika governor's office said four attackers were trying to enter the town's main bazaar and then move toward government offices and military bases nearby. Before they could, Afghan security forces engaged them in a one-hour gun battle and all four attackers were killed, it said.

Separately, four Afghan civilians were killed Saturday morning when their truck struck a roadside bomb near Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in the south, the Ministry of Interior said.

On Friday, insurgents attacked Afghan border policemen in the Gulran district of Herat province near the Iranian border in western Afghanistan, said Sulaiman Khan, commander of a border police rapid reaction unit in the area.

He said four border policemen were killed immediately when their vehicle was attacked by militants firing from several different directions, and a fifth died on Saturday

[buglerbilly]

Former Taliban officials find new role


POOL/REUTERS - Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai is meeting with ex-Taliban officials for advice ahead of peace talks.

By Kevin Sieff, Monday, January 23, 9:18 AM

KABUL — A Toyota Corolla full of former Taliban officials and armed guards stopped in front of Abdul Salam Zaeef’s home in western Kabul this month, awaiting the man who helped direct the Taliban from Pakistan before his capture and detention at Guantanamo Bay.

With Zaeef inside, the car sped off for President Hamid Karzai’s palace, where the once-fugitive Zaeef has lately become a frequent guest.


(ENRIC MARTI/ASSOCIATED PRESS) - Abdul Salam Zaeef once helped direct the Taliban from Pakistan before his capture and detention at Guantanamo Bay. He has seen an unlikely resurgence in his diplomatic career. This time, he’s trying to convince the government, and anyone else who will listen, that the Taliban is serious about peace if its preconditions can be met.

As Karzai weighs the prospect of talks with Taliban officials in Qatar, Afghanistan’s government has invited Zaeef and others with long-standing ties to the Taliban to offer guidance and help mediate.

Afghan leaders have been disappointed by their lack of access to Taliban negotiators who have been speaking directly to the United States. But they have found an alternative in former insurgents — many of them imprisoned and later reintegrated — who live only a few miles from the palace gates.

And so Zaeef — a broad-shouldered, bearded man who was once the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan — has seen an unlikely resurgence in his diplomatic career. This time, he’s trying to convince the government, and anyone else who will listen, that the Taliban is serious about peace if its preconditions can be met.

“They are ready to discuss peace,” he said in an interview. “They have received the message from their leadership, and they are ready.”

Attempting to bridge divide

Thousands of former Taliban members have put down their weapons in recent years. Most are low-level fighters whose peace deals with the government were unceremonious and of little political consequence. But a few, like Zaeef, were offered early release from prison if they agreed to work with the government rather than against it.

Members of this small group have been having occasional conversations with Karzai for several years. But with peace talks drawing closer, they are meeting with top Afghan officials much more often, according to the president’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi.

The meetings have been mostly informal, and officials are quick to point out that they are no substitute for negotiations with Taliban diplomats in Qatar. But given the obliqueness of the Taliban’s public demands, and concerns here that the United States is not adequately including the Afghan government, the former insurgents have come to play an important role.

“We’ve had ongoing talks . . . and we do consider some of these men, like Zaeef, to be speaking for some segment of the movement,” said Shaida M. Abdali, the deputy national security adviser. “But we're still waiting for officially appointed representatives.”

On Sunday, during a visit to Kabul, Marc Grossman, the special U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the Taliban must sever its connections to terrorists before opening a diplomatic office in Qatar.

Arsala Rahmani, a former education minister for the Taliban, said he has met with Karzai four times this month, attempting to bridge the divide between his “old colleagues” and the government that promised him refuge.

Mohammad Akhbar Agha, the former leader of the Taliban-affiliated Jaish al-Muslimeen group, said he talks to the Taliban as much as he does to the government, fielding 20 calls a day from both sides in recent weeks. He said he communicates the Taliban’s demands: a true Islamic government, the prompt removal of foreign troops and the release of key prisoners.

The intermediaries offer rhetoric more muted — and more likely to keep Karzai engaged — than the Taliban’s official pronouncements. But the men sometimes struggle to articulate their own political identities. Are they still part of the Taliban movement? Or have they become de facto members of the Karzai camp?

The government says they have been “reintegrated,” but some claim otherwise. The national security police camp outside of their homes 24 hours a day — both to protect them and to make sure they aren’t aiding the insurgency, Zaeef said.

“I was a Talib until I was detained, and I was released under the condition that I wouldn’t do anything with the Taliban. But I didn’t change. I am still a Talib,” he said.

“I have not been reintegrated,” said Agha. “I want to work for the Afghan government, but not this one.”

‘We know their mentality’

For years, Karzai has invited former Taliban officials to join his government. Several of them sit on the High Peace Council, the official body appointed by the president to pursue a political settlement with the insurgency. Those appointments were meant to send a message to the country’s armed groups — that the government was ready and willing to absorb its “angry brothers,” as Karzai called them.

“We know their mentality. We know how the organization works,” said Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, once the Taliban’s representative to the United Nations and now the deputy director of the High Peace Council. Mujahid boasts credentials of particular relevance: Several of the Taliban leaders thought to be in Qatar were once his employees.

Afghan officials note that the meetings are not simply conducted as preparation for official talks. They are also a symbolic gesture meant to convey to “the armed opposition that we are willing to sit down and talk with any Afghan,” said Faizi, the presidential spokesman.

The Karzai government, in an attempt in July to bolster the fledgling peace process, convinced the U.N. Security Council to remove 14 Taliban members from a sanctions list that since 1999 had prevented them from traveling or sending money abroad. Several of those men are among the group making regular visits to the palace. One of them, Maulvi Qalamuddin, led the movement’s religious police force, which beat men and women in the streets to enforce a strict interpretation of Islam.

In statements to the media, Taliban spokesmen have denied links between the current organization and former officials who now live in Kabul.

“They are under watch and are not speaking on our behalf. They may speak or give advice or suggestions to anyone as individual Afghans, but they do not represent us,” said Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid.

Nonetheless, Zaeef, Rahmani and Agha are struck by their newfound relevance, as the only public faces of a movement that for years has shunned public diplomacy. For Zaeef, it’s an opportunity to market his autobiography, now translated into 10 languages: “My Life with the Taliban.”

His large home holds the religious paraphernalia that he amassed as a Taliban leader, but there are hints of a new, secular life in the capital: an Adobe Photoshop user guide, files from his nascent real estate business and a newly purchased iPhone that, every once in a while, lights up with an incoming call from Karzai’s palace and blasts his ringtone, the Muslim call to prayer.

“I’m proud of what I did before,” he said before answering a recent call, “and I’m proud of what I’m doing now.”

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Afghan Army Getting New Quick Reaction Battalions

Posted by Paul McLeary at 1/23/2012 10:43 AM CST



By the end of this year, the United States will have spent over $50 billion on training and equipping the Afghan National Security Forces in an effort to hand over security duties once NATO departs in 2014. The past two years have seen almost half of that spending, with $11.6 billion having been spent in 2011, with another $11.2 billion on tap in 2012.
So, what’d we buy?

One of the most interesting recent outlays of cash for the Afghan Army revolves around the initiative to build and equip a new, brigade-size quick reaction force. Being touted as a “Mobile Strike Force,” it can deploy its heavily armored vehicles quickly around the country to meet threats as they occur. It’s the first of its kind for Afghan forces.

The Nato Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A), which oversees the training and equipping of Afghan forces has spent about $500 million on the unit so far, though it won’t begin to see action until August at the earliest. The Brigade will eventually consist of five Motorized Infantry Battalions (called Kandaks), outfitted with 352 Mobile Strike Force Vehicles, variants of Textron Marine & Land Systems’ M-1117 Armored Security Vehicle currently used by the U.S. Army.

In June 2011, Textron received a $125.5 million order for the vehicles, and started delivering them in November. Training the soldiers up on the new equipment and tactics was supposed to start in February 2012, but “delays contracting for life support and incomplete infrastructure” have pushed training back to the end of March, according to U.S. Navy Lt. Aaron Kakiel, spokesperson for NTM-A. Kakiel adds that two of the Kandaks are scheduled to be based in Kandahar, with the other three in Kabul. “There is likelihood these three will deploy for short periods of time to other areas as required,” he says.

But this brigade is only a small part of a larger acquisition surge. By the end of 2012, the ANSF will also be the proud owners of 41,000 Ford Ranger J97 light pick up cargo trucks, along with other vehicles like Navistar's 7000 series Medium Tactical Vehicle (MTVs), the Ford Everest Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV), and Blue Bird and Navistar Buses.

In 2011, American tax dollars also purchased 21 new Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters for about $400 million, with the bird becoming “the primary medium lift helicopter in Afghanistan” according to NTM-A. Those new helicopters obviously require new air crews, so the NTM-A is also conducting pilot training both in the United States, Europe and in Dubai, while funding the maintenance and spare parts packages required to keep the fleet in the air though American provided appropriations.

“It would be a conservative estimate to say at least $500 million was spent on creating this the overall Mi-17 Train and Equip effort,” Kakiel said, adding that “a considerable amount” of that money went to build and equip a training center at Shindand Air Base in western Afghanistan. Shindand also happens to be the place from which some sources say the RQ-170 “Beast of Kandahar” that crashed in Iran was operating.
Fiscal year 2011 also saw the United States finishing up its purchases of M16 rifles and M4 carbines for the Afghan National Army, with about 500,000 weapons purchased for the ANSF.

Getting the Afghans all this gear—and the spare parts to keep them working—is one thing. Giving them the capacity to actually keep these fleets humming past the 2014 NATO pullout is something else entirely. In June of last year, the DoD’s Inspector General issued a report (PDF) criticizing the $247 million Equipment Maintenance Apprenticeship and Services program contract, which oversees the maintenance of ANA equipment. Upon inspecting Afghan Army maintenance sites, the inspectors could not account for about $30 million worth of equipment, while finding that the Afghans were not being trained properly in maintenance procedures, all of which led to the contractor being suspended and the contract being overhauled.

The revisions included the removal of Afghan National Army (ANA) supply chain management as a contractor-provided function and instead turned that responsibility (PDF) over to the ANA Logistical Command with “contractor advisor-mentor support.” The contractor is also now required to “design a training program suited to the low literacy rates of ANA personnel and establish Mobile Training Teams to deploy to training sites as needed, instead of establishing apprentice programs at every site as required.”

Hope they’re working hard. They’ve only get two more years to get the ANA up to speed.

[buglerbilly]

France Rules Out 2012 Afghanistan Withdrawal

Jan. 24, 2012 - 11:53AM

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

PARIS — Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Jan. 24 that France would not give in to “panic” and pull its troops out of Afghanistan this year after four of its soldiers were killed there last week.

“When I hear talk of an immediate withdrawal, such as at the end of 2012, I am not sure that this has been thought through and studied,” he told the French parliament.

Juppe was responding to a call from Socialist former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius for French troops to be brought home by the end of the year.

“We must not give in to panic, we must not confuse an orderly withdrawal with a rushed withdrawal,” he said.

The four unarmed soldiers were killed on Jan. 20 at a base in eastern Afghanistan in an attack that left 15 other French troops wounded, eight of them seriously.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy reacted angrily and threatened to pull his forces out of Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 deadline for all U.S.-led coalition combat troops and dispatched Defense Minister Gerard Longuet to Kabul.

Longuet said in the Afghan capital that he was told the killer was a Taliban infiltrator in the ranks of the Afghan army.

But security sources say the man arrested for the shooting has confessed to interrogators that he did it because of a recent video showing U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters.

[buglerbilly]

NATO: ‘Remarkably Successful’ Year in Afghanistan

Jan. 24, 2012 - 11:51AM

By LAWRENCE BARTLETT, Agence France-Presse


NATO-led forces said 2011 was a "remarkable year" for gains in Afghanistan. Above, U.S. Marines partrol in Helmand province on Jan. 3. (Cpl. Tommy Bellegarde / Marine Corps)

KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO-led forces in Afghanistan on Jan. 24 gave themselves an upbeat report card for 2011, claiming successes on the battlefield, in the classroom and in preparing to hand over to Afghan forces.

In a “remarkably successful” year, Taliban insurgents had been forced onto the back foot in their southern stronghold, said International Security Assistance Force spokesman Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson.

“The success has been so great that insurgents have largely lost control of the area and now rely on IEDs (improvised explosive devices) as their primary method of attack,” he said.

And in the east, troops “significantly disrupted the Haqqani network through Operations Shamshir and Knife Edge, where coalition forces captured or eliminated over 500 insurgent leaders and fighters last fall,” he said.

The Taliban faction has been blamed for a series of high-profile attacks in Kabul, including a 19-hour siege on the U.S. embassy on Sept. 13.

The network is based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, which Jacobson said would remain a key focus for operations.

Kabul itself had “become a thriving commercial capital, able to absorb and respond to spectacular attempts to disrupt security with resolute response to insurgent attacks, leaving the insurgents largely in a state of failure,” he said.

Jacobson said Afghan forces were clearly in control of the city as part of a phased transition ahead of a pullout of NATO combat troops in 2014.

His remarks came in stark contrast to perceptions that security has worsened in the Afghan capital over the previous 12 months with a series of spectacular attacks on Western targets, such as the U.S. embassy siege.

The United Nations has also disagreed with NATO assessments and said in September that the number of security incidents was up 39 percent on the first eight months of 2010, while ISAF said they were down 2 percent.

But Jacobson said the Afghan army was now almost 180,000 strong, the police had nearly 144,000 men and women in uniform, and by spring 2012 more than 50 percent of Afghanistan would be under Afghan control.

Turning to social developments, he said that in 2011 there were more than 175,000 teachers in Afghanistan compared to 20,000 in 2002, with more than 8 million children in school compared to less than 1 million in 2002.

Last year was also “outstanding” in anti-narcotics operations, with more than 97,975 kilograms of opium, 8,823 kilograms of heroin, 61,168 of marijuana, and 148,875 of hashish seized.

In contrast to the successes of the foreign forces and the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai, the insurgents had “a tough year”, Jacobson said.

“They lost key ground and resources in 2011. They were not able to accomplish any of their stated goals for Afghanistan, whilst their leadership continues to hide across the border in Pakistan.”

But in the propaganda war, the Taliban made their own assessment of the past year some 10 days ago with what they called a “formal proclamation of victory.”

“Militarily successful resistance against a gigantic international alliance, full presence on the whole soil and overall perseverance” had forced “invading countries” to review their policies, the insurgents said in a statement.

This was a reference to Washington’s moves towards peace talks and plans for a Taliban political office in Qatar to facilitate negotiations, as well as the decision by the U.S.-led coalition to withdraw combat forces by 2014.

The coalition countries were “fed up militarily and logistically with this war and are planning for retreat,” the Taliban said.

[buglerbilly]

January 24, 2012

The Afghan War: Cause and Effect

By Mark Thompson

More than half of Americans want the U.S. to pull its remaining 90,000 troops out of Afghanistan “as soon as possible,” according to a Pew survey released Monday. That continues a sharp reversal that has existed since last summer. It’s interesting to compare the two lines in the Pew chart with the U.S. casualty toll detailed in a new Congressional Research Service report, also released Monday, by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy Project (you pay for them, but Congress won’t let you see them, so Aftergood gets them somehow and posts them for taxpayers).

Wars are a tough sell to any nation. Long wars are a tougher sell. Long wars in a democracy are tougher still. And long wars with rising casualties in a democracy are the toughest sell of all. After 30 years of paying attention to these hard-and-fast rules of human nature, Battlelandcontinues to be amazed at how few politicians factor such truths into their war-making schemes.

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/#ixzz1kR1BF8cK

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Offers Harsh Response to ISAF Attack on Post

Jan. 25, 2012 - 05:19PM

By USMAN ANSARI

ISLAMABAD — While the Pakistani military is in no mood to quietly return to full cooperation with NATO/ISAF forces in the aftermath of the Nov. 25-26 attacks on Pakistani border posts, a “restart” in the Pak-U.S relationship is still possible, experts said.

Brian Cloughley, former Australian defense attaché to Islamabad, said the Pakistani military — specifically the Army — does not want to settle for a low-key response from the U.S.

“The Army doesn’t want a ‘quiet’ acknowledgement. What it wants is a proper apology — publicly,” he said.

The Army is united in this opinion, and if a public apology is not forthcoming the considerable ill-will directed toward the U.S. will continue, “and there will be continuing lack of cooperation.”

The Pakistani response to the Jan. 23 NATO/ISAF report into the attacks, which killed 24 Pakistani troops, was predictable, he said.

The accompanying Inter Services Press Release (ISPR) statement says Pakistan disagrees with “several portions and findings” of the NATO/ISAF report, which are deemed to be “factually not correct.”

The basis of the NATO/ISAF report, “self defense” and “proportional use of force,” is rejected as “contrary to facts.”

The ISPR statement reiterates Pakistan contacted NATO/ISAF forces “within minutes of initiation of US/NATO fire,” and rejects attributing partial responsibility for the attacks to Pakistani forces as “unjustified and unacceptable.”

It also states, “The fundamental cause of the incident of 26th November 2011 was the failure of US/ISAF to share its near-border operation with Pakistan at any level.”

In addition, it lists “the complicated chain of command, complex command and control structure and unimaginative/intricate Rules of Engagement, as well as lack of unified military command in Afghanistan,” as further causes of the attacks.

It ends by stating NATO/ISAF forces “violated all mutually agreed procedures with Pakistan for near-border operations put in place to avert such uncalled for actions,” and reiterates the attacks were an “unprovoked engagement” that took place inside Pakistan and were therefore a violation of NATO/ISAF’s mandate.

Zafar Nawaz Jaspal, associate professor at the school of Politics and International Relations at Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University, said Pakistan’s response to the NATO/ISAF report has tried to prove what has already been stated by the Pakistani side, and that there “doesn’t seem to be a desire to let this go.”

It details that NATO/ISAF forces had carried out previous operations in the vicinity and were fully aware of the course of the border and location of Pakistani positions. It also says that some operations on the Afghan side of the border were undertaken by NATO/ISAF forces in support of Pakistani anti-Taliban operations on its side of the border.

Using photographs and aerial images to reinforce its assertions, the Pakistan statement also rejects claims NATO/ISAF forces were fired upon by the Pakistani posts. It specifically criticizes the NATO/ISAF report’s mandate, which did not include affixing direct responsibility for the attacks, and that it implied “Pakistan was considered in an adversarial role.”

Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, ISAF spokesman, was unable to comment on the Pakistani response and referred questions to CENTCOM as the investigative report into the attacks was carried out by CENTCOM, not ISAF.

He said ISAF was only able to comment on “the recommendations that CENTCOM made in the original report.”

“The recommendations in the CENTCOM report are designed to work toward building a positive relationship and constructive cross-border coordination measures to ensure this type of incident does not ever occur again. US and ISAF are taking these recommendations and are moving forward toward full implementation,” he said.

No response was forthcoming from CENTCOM, however, or from the defense section at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

Jaspal is optimistic there is a chance for the Pak-U.S. relationship to be “restarted,” but “not as it was previously” “There won’t be a ‘blank check’ as there was previously; there will restrictions,” he said.

The main factor is the ongoing block on NATO supplies transiting Pakistani territory.

“The Pakistan supply route will probably remain closed, and the northern routes will continue to be used and expanded, if possible,” said Cloughley. “There is already a mammoth increase in air supply. The costs are horrific.”

[buglerbilly]

Poland Spent $606M on Arms for Afghan Mission

Jan. 25, 2012 - 05:26PM

By JAROSLAW ADAMOWSKI

WARSAW — Poland spent 2.02 billion zloty ($606 million) on arms for its military mission in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2011, Jacek Sonta, the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, said in a statement.

Poland spent the most in 2010 at 925.6 million zloty for new gear, and the least in 2008, at 125.5 million zloty, the spokesman said.

Since April 2007, when the country increased its military presence in Afghanistan from 150 to 1,200 troops, the Polish Ministry of Defense has launched a series of arms procurement programs, dubbed “the Afghan package.”

The purchases include 8,400 assault rifles, radio communication systems, 10 Israeli-made UAVs, C4ISR systems, five Russian-built Mi-17 transport helicopters and a wide range of munitions.

A significant portion of Poland’s 380 Rosomak armored modular vehicles was also deployed to Afghanistan. The eight-wheel-drive Rosomak is made by Polish state-owned manufacturer Wojskowe Zaklady Mechaniczne Siemianowice under a license from Finland’s Patria.

In 2009, Poland’s military took over responsibility for the troubled Afghan province of Ghazni. A year later, the Polish force in Afghanistan was increased to 2,600 soldiers, making it the fifth-largest among NATO states present in the country.

Poland plans to withdraw all combat troops from Afghan soil by the end of 2014 along with the remaining NATO forces. Over the past five years, 37 Polish soldiers were killed while on duty in Afghanistan.

[buglerbilly]

Bomber targets NATO convoy in Afghanistan; 3 killed

By Sayed Salahuddin, Thursday, January 26, 5:31 PM

KABUL — Three Afghan civilians were killed Thursday when a suicide bomber targeted a convoy of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, according to officials.

A female civilian official from the coalition and 30 Afghan civilians were hurt in the attack, in which the bomber used a vehicle outside the governor’s compound in Lashkar Gah, Helmand’s provincial capital.

The incident is the latest in a spate of such attacks the militants have unleashed in recent weeks despite signaling a willingness to engage in talks with the United States, which leads the war in Afghanistan.

The rise in such attacks is sharply high this winter in comparison with many recent winters, when violence and fighting usually subside in Afghanistan.

“Several vehicles in the convoy were damaged. Three local civilians lost their lives and 31 others including a female non-combatant in the convoy were hurt,” Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand’s governor said by phone.

In Kabul, an official at the public affairs office for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, confirmed the incident, but had no further details. A spokesman for the Taliban-led insurgents said the strike was conducted by a member of the group.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Border Closure Leaves Trucks Stranded at Port

Jan. 26, 2012 - 10:59AM

By EMMANUEL DUPARCQ and RICHARD SARGENT, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

KARACHI, Pakistan — Two months into Pakistan’s blockade on NATO supplies crossing into Afghanistan, thousands of trucks are crowding the port in Karachi where drivers, fed up with waiting, are starting to desert.

For a month, directors of transport companies, drivers and their helpers hung around patiently, buoyed by rumors of an imminent reopening of the border, shut after U.S. air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on Nov. 26.

But the botched raids snowballed into the biggest disaster in Pakistani-U.S. relations since the 2001 American invasion began after the 9/11 attacks.

Two months on, Pakistan is still reviewing the relationship and no one knows when the border will reopen, through which passes 25 percent of the supplies needed by the 130,000 foreign troops under U.S. command in landlocked Afghanistan.

Fed up, running out of money and missing their families, many of the drivers have since abandoned their trucks and returned to their homes, often in Pakistan’s troubled northwestern areas near the Afghan border.

“They had no more money in the end so they left one helper with their vehicle for security and care, and went back to their families,” said Mohammed Saleh Afridi, vice chairman of the All Pakistan Oil Tankers Association.

He says more than 1,000 trucks are stranded in Karachi. In addition, there are containers and military vehicles — about 5,000, according to a count provided by the authorities in early January.

Since then, more have arrived by boat.

Hundreds of oil tankers are filling huge car parks by the sea.

“Most of the tankers are loaded with fuel, so helpers have to look after them to avoid looting,” Afridi said.

For years, drivers of NATO trucks and tankers have been frontline victims of the troubled Pakistani-U.S. relationship.

Seen as traitors by Islamist extremists, considered open game by bandits and now doing without their salaries because the relationship has taken a nose dive, the drivers have been the unwitting pawns trapped in the middle.

Gul Khan, who has eight oil tankers supplying NATO, confirms that drivers are leaving Karachi. “We’re worried, we can be attacked,” he said.

In 2008, attacks on trucks began to rise as Pakistani government forces became increasingly locked in trying to put down a Taliban insurgency and al-Qaida-linked militants went on bombing rampages across the country.

Are the attacks carried out by Taliban, bandits, rival trucking companies or simply as an insurance scam or as a means for the authorities to put pressure on NATO? The theories are endless, but the proof is lacking.

Working for NATO is also a serious handicap in a society fed up with the U.S. alliance that many blame for violence sweeping the country.

“Nobody wants to see us any more,” Khan said. “[Roadside] hotels and restaurants are afraid of attacks and don’t allow us to stop by anymore. Police are taking lots of bribes — it wasn’t like that before, three years ago for example — and tell us to stop working for NATO.”

And the trouble doesn’t stop at the border.

“In Afghanistan, we’re attacked very often and Afghan police insult us, they shout: ‘Shame on you, you’re working for American infidels!’ ”

Some drivers are happy about the blockade.

“If it closes down for good, that’s all right. It’s not a problem for us. At least we won’t get abused,” said Rozi Jan, parked near the port.

But like others, many of whom come from Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt, he will start working again when the border reopens.

“There are no jobs in our villages. Being a driver is the only solution to feed our families,” said Mohammed Ayub, 33.

A driver for NATO earn 30,000 rupees ($330) a month, then an additional 30,000 rupees per trip to Afghanistan, which they can do once or twice a month, far more than the average salary of 7,000 rupees in Pakistan.

When the war began in late 2001, the job was easy, but not anymore.

“You could make loads of money, so we borrowed money to buy trucks. But now everything is expensive and difficult,” said Khan, who is paying back at 15 percent a 2.5 million rupee ($27,700) debt.

In 10 years, 10 of Khan’s drivers have been killed and 12 of his trucks destroyed. He hopes one day to get out of the spiral of debt and get a new job.

“Every Pakistani who’s not involved in the business is against it,” he said.

[buglerbilly]

General David Richards: Afghan campaign was woeful

Britain's most senior military officer has said the military move into southern Afghanistan was “amateurish” and “verging on the complacent” and accused ministers of failing to learn lessons from Iraq.


Gen Sir David Richards, the Chief of the Defence Staff, described Britain's role in Afghanistan as amateurish Photo: REUTERS

By Con Coughlin

10:00PM GMT 27 Jan 2012

Gen Sir David Richards, the Chief of the Defence Staff, is also highly critical of Nato’s command structure in Afghanistan, describing it in a new book as “disorganised and unhelpful”.

His remarks highlight the infighting and political turmoil that surrounded Britain’s military deployment to Afghanistan in the summer of 2006. Whitehall was caught off guard by the seriousness of the situation in Helmand province, where British troops were deployed in Nato’s reconstruction programme.

Most Labour ministers supported the view of John Reid, the defence secretary at the time, that “we would be perfectly happy to leave in three years’ time without firing one shot because our mission is to protect the reconstruction”.

Intelligence assessments conducted in southern Afghanistan concluded that they would receive a hostile reception.

“It was the equivalent of moving another gang into the East End of London,” one officer reported to London. “They [the Taliban] weren’t going to like it.” A detailed account of the military and political infighting during the deployment is in a new book by Sandy Gall, the ITN presenter who also runs a charity to provide Afghan victims of roadside bombs with artificial limbs.

In Gall’s book, War Against the Taliban, Sir David says that the British military establishment was ill-prepared for the deployment of forces, despite its leading role in the overthrow of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein three years previously.

He criticises the Ministry of Defence for not providing “sufficient troops to dominate the physical and human terrain” and the failure of the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development to provide adequate resources for reconstruction. He also describes attempts by London and Washington to get the Taliban to engage in political reconciliation as “woeful”. Sir David also criticises the military establishment for being ill-prepared and with a “rather amateurish approach to high-level military operations verging on the complacent.” He also tempers his remarks by arguing that the war in Afghanistan can still be won and expresses his “clear faith” that “the British Armed Forces are now handsomely proving that they have the ability to reform and adapt”.

In 2006, Sir David had a major row with Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the then head of the Armed Forces, over the failure of British officers to co-operate fully with Nato’s command structure.

“I am not prepared to accept these command and control arrangements,” Sir David bluntly informed Sir Jock. “I am not having anything to do with it.” The dispute was resolved only when Sir Jock complied with his demands.

Sir David accuses the Government of not understanding “the practicalities of high command” by refusing to provide him with a helicopter, meaning he was unable to visit the troops under his command.

Sir David also recounts a heated argument between Brigadier Ed Butler, the first British commander in Helmand, and an US general who took exception to him. “I nearly punched that damn Limey’s [Butler’s] lights out, he was so arrogant,” the US general said.

[buglerbilly]

Widows are the 'forgotten ghosts of war' says wife of killed officer

The wife of Regimental Sergeant Major Darren Chant, the most senior non-commissioned officer to be killed in Afghanistan, has condemned the Government’s treatment of war widows claiming they are the 'forgotten ghosts of the war' who are condemned to live 'just above the breadline.'

By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent

10:00PM GMT 27 Jan 2012

Don't go thinking its any better in any other Western country, it isn't, its even worse in one or two.........appaling when you look at what certain senior Civil Servants get for retirement.........we have corrupted values in a lot of cases

Sheenie Chant, who was seven months pregnant when she was widowed, said she has been forced to “go cap in hand” to private school to ensure her son has a good education as there is no provision for young children.

She has also accused politicians of “gross insensitivity” in failing to apply the Military Covent to war widows when it comes to taxing and assessing their pensions.

Regimental Sergeant Major Darren Chant was among five unarmed soldiers killed by a rogue Afghan policeman in Helmand in November 2009.

Mrs Chant had just given birth to their son George when it was assessed her widow’s pension was worth £19,000. The family’s joint income had dropped from £65,000 after she left her £22,000 job as an accountant at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to bring up George.

RSM Chant, who was about to be commissioned as an officer, had served in the Army for 22 years accruing a pension worth £15,000 a year.

Mrs Chant argues that this has only been topped up by £4,000 and does not recognise his future earnings, his age or her loss of employment as well as compensation for his death.

She is the first widow to speak out about the financial difficulties but says a number of Service widows share her distress.

“Widows are the forgotten ghosts of war,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “They give us enough not be on the breadline but not enough to give us the options that would have been there had our husbands lived.

“There is feeling of uneasiness to speak of the financial implications of our husbands’ deaths but on a personal level I was completely shocked on how clumsy and blunt it all is.”

“Tax is deducted, which essentially is taxing a dead mans pension. This is all nothing short of disgraceful and a money saving scheme.”

As an officer RSM Chant, 40, would have served a further 15 years during which he would have been entitled to the Continuity of Education that pays up to two-thirds of school fees.

But although George receives a MoD grant of £3,000 a year his mother has been forced to seek a bursary which has been generously granted by a top public school.

“I’m afraid they have acted with dignity where others have not.

“Darren made the ultimate sacrifice for Queen and country. How is the Govenrment honouring that sacrifice?”

She was shopping in a Camberley supermarket when her father called to say two Army officers were at the house.

“There was a rush of emotions kept thinking he can’t be killed, he can’t be dead.”

“You’re pregnant but the lioness of motherhood kicks in immediately and the little man is protected.”

RSM Chant’s funeral was in the Guards Chapel, London, where he had married Sheenie only four months earlier.

Having survived tours of Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan Mrs Chant saw her husband as “indestructible”.

“The only way Darren could be killed was in an unfair fight.”

It is understood that Gulbuddin, the rogue policeman, has probably been killed since the attack.

“When he meets his Maker I’m sure Darren will be at the door waiting for him ready to have a quiet word,” Mrs Chat said.

Her husband was demonstrably brave. On one occasion in Helmand in 2007 he carried a limbless soldier a mile to a helicopter following a firefight.

Since his death the Grenadier Guards have been “loyal, decent and shown genuine love for me and George” but have been “mortified” by her financial situation.

“It’s never discussed, the aftermath of what happens to widow,” she said, speaking from her home in Camberley.

Mrs Chant, 35, has raised the issue with ministers from the previous government and has yet to receive a reply to a letter she sent to David Cameron.

“With the Military Covenant coming up where are we in all of this, war widows and children of fallen? We don’t want token gestures.”

“Ultimately Darren died protecting the very freedoms they enjoy sat in Whitehall but our issues are just white noise to them.”

[buglerbilly]

David Cameron and President Hamid Karzai to sign agreement on Afghanistan's future

David Cameron and President Hamid Karzai are to sign an agreement setting out how their two countries will work together after British troops withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.


Afghan President Hamid Karzai and David Cameron at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, on July 5, 2011 Photo: AFP

9:13AM GMT 28 Jan 2012

The talks come after France announced a decision to speed up the withdraw of its own troops from Afghanistan by a year earlier than planned.

Mr Cameron and President Karzai will discuss progress on the security situation in Afghanistan as well as the state of peace talks with the Taliban.

The Prime Minister is expected to sign an agreement that will include building an officer training college in Afghanistan, which will be based on the British Army's Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

Officials said the deal is intended to ensure an "enduring strategic partnership" by renewing a 2005 agreement setting out a shared vision of a "secure, stable and prosperous Afghanistan".

The agreement will also commit Britain to continue providing aid support for Afghanistan after British troops withdraw.

Some of that work is already under way, including the creation of new police stations, education schemes for women and a UK-funded Afghanistan Business Innovation Fund, according to Downing Street.

Mr Cameron is also keen to seek assurances that Afghan forces will be able to maintain security on their own to prevent the country from being used as a safe haven for international terrorists.

It follows the announcement by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday, following talks with President Karzai, that France will pull its troops out a year earlier than planned.

Mr Karzai said in Paris that Afghan troops would replace the French.

It also comes as the Ministry of Defence confirmed a British soldier from the 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment had been killed in Afghanistan.

It brings the total number of British military personnel killed in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001 to 397.

The soldier, who has not yet been named, was serving as part of Combined Force Nahr-e Saraj (North), and was taking part in an International Security Assistance Force foot patrol to disrupt insurgent activity when he received a fatal gunshot wound.

[buglerbilly]

JANUARY 28, 2012.

Emboldened Taliban Try to Sell Softer Image

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV


Guillermo Cervera
Girls' schools, once prohibited by the Taliban, are now encouraged. Above, young girls wait with their mothers outside a school in Kandahar.

KABUL—When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, Maulvi Qalamuddin headed the Committee to Protect Virtue and Prevent Vice, the religious police that shut down girls' schools, beat up men with insufficiently long beards and arrested those in possession of music or video tapes.

Nowadays, the 60-year-old Taliban cleric is on a different mission: He is overseeing a network of schools that teach reading, writing and math to thousands of girls in his home province of Logar, an insurgent hotbed just south of Kabul.

"Education for women is just as necessary as education for men," Mr. Qalamuddin thunders. "In Islam, men and women have the same duty to pray, to fast—and to seek learning."

The Taliban's restrictions on women and schooling, combined with support for al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, turned the group into an international pariah even before the September 2001 attacks on America. Now, as the U.S. pulls out its troops and tries to negotiate a peace settlement with the insurgents, the international community grapples with a crucial question: If returned to power, will the Taliban behave any more responsibly this time around?

In recent public statements, the Taliban have made an effort to appear a more moderate force, promising peaceful relations with neighboring countries and respect for human rights. The big unknown is whether this new rhetoric represents a meaningful transformation—or is merely designed to sugarcoat the Taliban's real aims.

"One might believe that they would change over time," says U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the day-to-day commander of the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. "You see some messages that they might open their thinking a bit about women, a woman's place in society. But I don't know that I would bet on it."

U.S. and Taliban representatives have met over the past several months, trying to establish a dialogue that could end America's longest foreign war. In a tangible sign of progress in early January, the Taliban dropped their insistence that all foreign troops must leave Afghanistan before any peace talks begin and agreed to set up a representative office in Qatar to facilitate future negotiations. To create trust in these talks, the U.S. is considering transferring to Qatari custody five senior Taliban officials incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Despite a new willingness to negotiate with the U.S., however, the Taliban's leadership still believes it can reach its war aim of seizing Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan after most foreign forces withdraw in 2014, American military commanders agree.



Such a future Taliban government would be gentler and wiser than its 1990s incarnation, insurgent officials insist. "As a movement gets older, it becomes more mature, and makes positive changes," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says. "During the past Taliban regime the government would make some hasty decisions, but now we are careful and deliberate."

A key difference would be an effort to include all of Afghanistan's tribes and ethnic communities, he adds. The old Taliban regime was dominated by Pashtun clerics from southern Kandahar province, and discriminated against the Shiite Hazara community and other minorities. This time around, "every group of the nation will be equally represented and privileged," Mr. Mujahid says.

The Taliban remain a mostly Pashtun movement, and deeply resents what it sees as disproportionate power enjoyed by smaller ethnic communities under President Hamid Karzai. But, in the post-2001 insurgency, the Afghan Taliban have largely shied away from the sectarian and ethnic violence that accompanied their rise to power in the 1990s, calling instead on all Afghans to unite against the foreign invaders.

In December, the Taliban leadership swiftly condemned the deadly bombing of Shiite shrines in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, attacks that Afghan officials have blamed on Pakistanis.

The Taliban now have some Uzbek and Tajik commanders, and the insurgency has spread even to the non-Pashtun regions that were outside Taliban control in 2001.

A future Taliban administration also would seek to establish "good coordination" with the international community in the fight against narcotics, Mr. Mujahid says. Since 2001, opium has become an increasingly important source of income for the Taliban insurgency, and for several power brokers and former warlords in Mr. Karzai's administration, according to Western government officials. The Taliban, diplomats say, are highly unlikely to get out of the drug business as long as the war goes on.


Guillermo Cervera
Young girls attend school in a Pashtun area with a heavy Taliban presence in Afghanistan's Badghis province. Many pro-Taliban villagers who were Initially reluctant to send their kids now say education is helping them.

Still, the only time in recent history when opium cultivation was nearly eradicated in Afghanistan was in 2001—when Taliban leader Mullah Omar imposed a ban on poppies, in an attempt to gain international recognition that collapsed after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Severing remaining Taliban links with al Qaeda remains a key demand of the U.S. and allies, and a concession that Western officials expect insurgents to make after the Taliban detainees are transferred to Qatar.

On the ground in Afghanistan, however, the few surviving al Qaeda fighters already have become irrelevant in the current insurgency, especially since bin Laden's killing last May, coalition officials say.

"The Taliban have a local agenda, and do not operate abroad. Al Qaeda is international, and that's the biggest difference," explains the pre-2001 Taliban government's foreign minister, Wakil Abdul Muttawakil. In any case, he notes, it's not the Taliban but the mujahedeen groups currently in Mr. Karzai's administration who invited bin Laden to Afghanistan in 1996, months before the Taliban captured Kabul. "They thought he'd asphalt all the roads in Afghanistan because he's a millionaire," Mr. Muttawakil chuckles. "Instead, he just brought war to Afghanistan."

The Taliban's traditional foes, especially among the former Northern Alliance of ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara militias, dismiss any talk of the Taliban's new moderation as insidious propaganda designed to weaken the West's resolve in the war.

They point out that today's Taliban fighters are, if anything, more radical than the older generation. For example, the suicide bombers, virtually unheard of in Afghanistan in the 1990s, are frequently deployed these days to assassinate Afghan government officials and attack U.S. troops. The Taliban's purported desire to reduce civilian casualties, too, hasn't translated into more careful behavior on the ground. Civilian casualties caused by insurgents were up 28% in the first half of last year, according to United Nations statistics.

"Wishful thinking has not taken anyone anywhere," warns former Northern Alliance leader Abdullah Abdullah, who served as President Karzai's foreign minister and then became his main rival in the 2009 presidential elections. "The Taliban's views are the same."

Yet, on at least one crucial issue—education, for girls and boys—Mr. Karzai's government and Western officials concede that significant change has already occurred. "I don't find them to be as hard as they used to be in the 1990s," Afghanistan's Education Minister Farooq Wardak says in an interview.

In the early years of the insurgency, the Taliban would routinely blow up schools across the country, especially those teaching girls, assassinating government-paid teachers. As a result, in many southern and eastern districts of the country's Pashtun heartland, an entire generation of children grew up not knowing how to read, write or count.

Over the years, this caused a backlash: Young men from the Pashtun villages have increasingly found themselves unable to compete for jobs with better-educated ethnic minorities, such as the Hazaras.

"Our communities have told the Taliban: 'Hey, guys, you're telling us you're trying to topple the government of Hamid Karzai and establish your own government. But when you have your own government, you'll still need doctors and engineers. So why are you not letting my kids go to school?' " Mr. Wardak says.


Guillermo Cervera
Female teachers at a girl's school in Kandahar.

The Taliban have heeded this message, according to the Afghan minister. Some 600 schools that had been shut down because of security concerns were reopened over the past three years, he says.

Education directors in more than a hundred of Afghanistan's 398 districts have reported to Kabul that they received assurances from local Taliban commanders that their schools would be protected. The Taliban, Mr. Wardak adds, frequently tell government-paid teachers: "You have to do your job. If your absenteeism is too much, we're going to fire you."

Not all the Taliban commanders are on board with this policy. Last year, there were 440 attacks and threats against schools, down from 500 in 2010, according to the U.N. These numbers include attacks on schools used by Afghan or coalitions forces, seen as legitimate targets by the Taliban. In addition, some of the attacks came from criminal gangs and non-Taliban militias.

Peter Crowley, the Afghanistan representative of the United Nations Children's Fund that's building up the country's education infrastructure, says he's encouraged by a "positive trend" in Taliban attitudes to education, including girls' schools.

"No military pressure is going to force them to accept education," he says. "This is a conclusion they are reaching on their own."

In the Taliban-controlled villages of Logar province, the classes organized by Mr. Qalamuddin, the former Taliban religious police chief, are held inside mosques. They don't use government textbooks to avoid any taint of being associated with Mr. Karzai's administration.

Considered a moderate by Afghan standards, Mr. Qalamuddin is no longer involved in the armed struggle and, after spending two years in prison, lives openly in Kabul. Last year, the United Nations removed his name from the list of Taliban officials barred from international travel.

His moderation is relative. The bearded cleric still praises Mullah Omar, who oversaw the regime's atrocities in the 1990s and refused to extradite bin Laden in 2001, as a "very honest and good man."

He also proudly stands by the comments endorsing the stoning of adulteresses that he made in a 1997 interview with an American newspaper.

But, greeting visitors in a room featuring a TV set, Mr. Qalamuddin readily concedes that the Taliban government to which he belonged until 2001 may have erred by focusing on "superficial" issues such as the length of men's beards and unnecessarily banned modern amenities like television.

The elementary schools, in the cleric's home district of Baraki Barak that is now under near-total Taliban control, are funded by a small German aid group named Ofarin that has worked on education in Afghanistan since before 2001. The group pays each of the 67 teachers in the area 2,400 afghanis ($53) a month, according to its coordinator and co-founder, Peter Schwittek.

Six times a week, thousands of local boys and girls—sometimes together, more often separately—gather in scores of village mosques across the district at the break of dawn, sitting through 90 minutes of math and Afghanistan's national languages of Pashtu and Dari. An additional 30 minutes a day are taken by Islamic studies, taught by the local mullahs following a textbook written by Mr. Qalamuddin and approved by the Afghan authorities.

In the hamlet of Hajji Musa Kala, villager Mohammad Idris is sending to one of these mosque schools his eight-year-old son and his six-year-old daughter. "If there were some girls' schools nearby, I would have sent my daughter there, but we don't have any," he says. "This is a favor for the people."

In recent years, as the Taliban took over Baraki Barak, Mr. Schwittek hasn't been able to visit the area. Even Mr. Qalamuddin himself hasn't been around for months, fearing more radical insurgent commanders opposed to his involvement in efforts to spur peace negotiations between the Taliban and Mr. Karzai's government.

But the teachers and parents in the district say they have been left undisturbed by the militants, who sometimes monitor the classes but don't otherwise interfere.

"It's nonsense that the Taliban are against women's education," the local insurgent commander, Maulvi Darwish, says in a phone interview. The red line, he explains, would be adding the language of infidel invaders to the local curriculum. "Learning English isn't a sin, but teaching a foreign language in the mosque would provoke people's sentiments," the Taliban commander says.

Matiullah Asim, a teacher in the district's Hajji Jan Nisar village, says new classes are likely to be established in neighboring villages in the spring.

"The people here are all Taliban sympathizers, or at least pretend to be pro-Taliban," he explains. Initially, many villagers were concerned that blackboards don't really belong in a mosque, and kept their girls and boys away. "Now, they've seen that this is something that helps their children. Everyone is sending their kids to get education."

—Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

British troops will leave when Afghans are ready to take over, says Cameron

Prime minister's comments follow France's announcement that it will withdraw its soldiers a year ahead of schedule

Conal Urquhart and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 28 January 2012 17.20 GMT


David Cameron met with Hamid Karzai at Chequers to discuss the planned withdrawal of British troops from the nation. Photograph: Carl Court/AP

British troops will only be withdrawn from Afghanistan when Afghan security forces are ready to take over their role, David Cameron said on Saturday.

Speaking with Afghan president Hamid Karzai at Chequers, he said "I don't want to see some sort of cliff edge in 2014 when all of the remaining troops come out at once but clearly, between now and 2014, the rate at which we can reduce our troops will depend on the transition to Afghan control in the different parts of Afghanistan and that should be the same for all of the members of Nato."

Cameron's comments follow the decision of France to withdraw its troops a year ahead of schedule after four French soldiers were killed by an Afghan soldier they were training. The move has been criticised in Afghanistan.

The prime minister said Britain "has paid a heavy price" for fighting insurgency but insisted progress was being made. He paid tribute to the latest British casualty in Afghanistan, a soldier from the 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment, and said his thoughts were with the man's family.

A total of 397 British forces or Ministry of Defence personnel have died while serving in Afghanistan since October 2001.

Cameron and Karzai signed a pledge setting out the next stage in relations between Britain and Afghanistan.

The "enduring strategic partnership" renews a 2005 agreement and sets out a shared vision of a secure, stable and prosperous Afghanistan able to maintain its own security and prevent the country from being used as a safe haven for international terrorists.

Cameron said the level of violence was down across the country, particularly in Helmand, and the building of the national army and police force were "on target".

"I think part of achieving that is not just what we are doing on the ground with all the Nato partners but also the need for what the president and I have often spoken about, for a political process that ensures all Afghans, if they give up violence, if they give up terror, can play a part in a strong democratic state for the future."

Karzai said Britain had been Afghanistan's "steadfast friend" over the last decade. The Afghan people "appreciate" the sacrifices that have been made, he added.

"May I convey to the people of Britain the gratitude of the Afghan people for all that Britain has offered Afghanistan, for having been ready to sacrifice, and having been ready to share, hard earned taxpayers' money with Afghanistan for the benefit of Afghan life."

[buglerbilly]

Husain Haqqani, former Pakistan envoy to U.S., allowed to travel abroad


AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES - Pakistan's former ambassador to U.S. Husain Haqqani, center, leaves The High Court Building in Islamabad, after recording his statement before the judicial commission probing a secret memo scandal in which Haqqani allegedly approached the Pentagon to prevent a possible coup d' etat by the powerful military after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

By Richard Leiby, Updated: Monday, January 30, 7:14 PM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States, was permitted to travel abroad Monday by the nation’s Supreme Court after two months of fending off treason allegations over his purported involvement in a mysterious memo that sought Washington’s help to neuter Pakistan’s powerful military.

The court ruling indicated that authorities seem to have lost interest in continuing to probe Haqqani’s role in the scandal, known here as Memogate, that at one point threatened to bring down the civilian leadership of this coup-prone country.

Haqqani, a confidant of President Asif Ali Zardari, was forced to resign, recalled to Islamabad and ordered not to travel abroad after a Pakistani American tycoon, Mansoor Ijaz, alleged that the diplomat engineered an unsigned missive to the Pentagon hoping to block a coup in the turbulent days after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Haqqani denied involvement and said Ijaz, a onetime acquaintance, cooked up the memo.

In an e-mail to Agence France-Presse, Haqqani said: “I am glad that the Supreme Court has restored my right to travel, which had been rescinded without any charges being filed against me.” He added that he planned to join his family in the United States.

Memogate prompted a showdown between the army and the civilian leadership, which technically oversees the military, and brought an already shaky government to the verge of collapse. The fissures between the two sides now seem to have been repaired, and the incessant political and media interest in the scandal has waned in recent days.

One reason seemed to be the dwindling credibility of Ijaz, who has yet to appear to testify about his role in the memo, saying he fears for his safety. The bulk of evidence has come from Ijaz, who released logs of what he says are BlackBerry message conversations between him and Haqqani.

Since his return to Islamabad, Haqqani has stayed within the walls of the official government residence, saying he feared for his life.

Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) issued a statement condemning the “harassment” of Haqqani, a former journalist and Boston University professor. They called him a “principled advocate” for Pakistan.

Despite allowing the erstwhile diplomat to travel, the Supreme Court did not drop the matter entirely: It granted a two-month extension to the judicial commission that is probing Memogate. And Haqqani's lawyer had to guarantee that the former envoy would appear before the court if called, on four days’ notice, according to media reports.

A separate parliamentary investigation is also underway.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Village Fight Illustrates More Lethal COIN Strategy

By David Axe

Published: January 30, 2012



MARZAK, Afghanistan -- In the middle of the night on July 23, U.S. Special Forces infiltrated a bowl-shaped valley in Paktika Province in remote eastern Afghanistan. Their target: a major Taliban encampment just outside this, which hadn't had a government presence in decades. Taliban fighters had been using Marzak as a rest stop on the long road between Pakistan and Afghanistan's major cities.

What followed was "one of the biggest fights of the year" in Afghanistan, according to U.S. Army Lt. Col. Curtis Taylor, commander of forces in western Paktika. When the sun rose on July 24, around 100 insurgents lay dead. One American had died.

July's Operation Marauder Rapids was a classic counter-terrorism operation, featuring fine-grain intelligence, swiftly-moving Special Forces ... and plenty of dead bad guys.

But what happened next read like a page from the Army's counter-insurgency manual. Starting in November, regular Army troops and their allies in the Afghan army and police flew into Marzak, built a new patrol base, forged ties with local elders and began recruiting and training local police.

This interplay between counter-terrorism (CT) and classic counter-insurgency (COIN) operations lies at the heart of a new, more forceful U.S. approach to defeating insurgencies that's taking hold in eastern Afghanistan in the waning years of the decade-old war.

The deaths of so many insurgents and their leaders outside Marzak had created a temporary vacuum -- one the Taliban realistically would not be able to fill until spring, when the mountain passes open and fresh fighters can move in from Pakistan. "We need to do something permanent about this place before the Taliban comes back," Taylor recalls thinking.

Today, the U.S. and Afghan military footprint in Marzak is steadily growing. Officers say the new government presence could result in a sea change in local attitudes and police capabilities, preventing another Taliban takeover even after most of the American soldiers depart this summer.

In Marzak, counter-terrorism operations cleared the way for counter-insurgency. If one influential retired Army general has his way, this "CT-as-COIN" strategy will become the new standard for the U.S. in eastern Afghanistan -- and could point the way forward as the Army cuts 80,000 troops and reconfigures for the post-Iraq and -Afghanistan era.

Rumors of COIN's Death

Listening to U.S. policymakers and defense analysts, it might seem counter-insurgency is already dead. With the Iraq war officially over (for the U.S.) and NATO forces drawing down in Afghanistan, the Pentagon is shifting its focus to global counter-terrorism and to the Pacific, where COIN is apparently useless and conventional naval and air power dominate.

But elements in the Army are determined to preserve, and even improve on, its hard-won COIN experience stretching back to the early days of the Iraq surge. The deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan is only two years away, but in the country's rugged east, the Army is still refining its methods for defeating insurgencies -- and the Afghan insurgency, in particular.

CT-as-COIN is the latest twist. Its main champion is none other than retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, who in his unofficial advisory role helped Gen. David Petraeus sell the Iraq surge to Pres. George Bush in 2006. Keane has visited eastern Afghanistan at least twice in the past year, most recently in early January, meeting with officers to promote his concept.

In short, the new approach to COIN focuses first on killing insurgents, therefore removing what some consider the main obstacle preventing many Afghan communities from aligning with the government in Kabul. Old-style COIN works in the opposite direction, by attempting to win the consent of communities in the hope that the communities will eject insurgents on their own. In the old way of thinking, killing insurgents is almost an after-thought.

CT-as-COIN won't work everywhere. It's tailored for seasonal, rural insurgencies dominated by foreign fighters -- in other words, Afghanistan, not Iraq.

In eastern Afghanistan, the hard-core insurgents are almost all foreigners: Pakistanis, Chechens, Arabs, etc. They are rarely welcome in Afghanistan's widely spread communities and so tend to build encampments in the countryside -- though close enough to settlements that they can exploit the villagers for food, supplies and guns-for-hire.

Most Afghans have little interest in fighting. That's certainly the case in Marzak. But the tiny, isolated village had become a virtual pitstop for Taliban fighters on their way from Pakistan to Kabul and Kandahar.

In the absence of a government presence, the Taliban dominated. At the peak, no fewer than five separate Taliban bands were encamped around the village, according to Ish Khan, a cultural adviser to Taylor's troops. The Talibs had banned dancing and forced some local men to fight alongside the hardcore insurgents. Two local men were killed in Operation Marauder Rapids.

In eastern Afghanistan, the insurgents are generally separate from civilians and out in the open. That means they can be aggressively targeted without major risk to innocent lives. In Operation Marauder Rapids, U.S. forces leveled heavy firepower on Marzak's insurgents. U.S. troops in Paktika who have also fought in Iraq say artillery and air strikes are far more common in the former.

In all, regular troops and Special Forces in Taylor's area of responsibility have killed or captured 17 insurgent leaders, plus hundreds of foot soldiers, in 19 major operations since August.

Those insurgents can be replaced. The Taliban and other insurgent groups can call on an essentially limitless source of new recruits in Pakistan and other foreign countries. "We're not going to win a war of attrition," Taylor tells AOL Defense.

But fresh fighters can enter the war zone only during the spring and summer months, when the mountain passes are free of snow. U.S. troops are not nearly as constrained by winter; air transport and industrial-scale logistics mean the Americans operate year-round. Areas the Americans clear during winter months will remain clear until spring, giving the Americans temporary freedom of action -- a key advantage.

Killing Your Way to Victory

In short, it's just barely possible to kill your way to victory in Afghanistan, though Taylor is more guarded in his characterization. "Killing is necessary, but it's a means to an end," he says.

That end is aligning the population with the government. In Paktika, the major tool for bringing communities under Kabul's umbrella is the new Afghan Local Police. The ALP program, launched last year, equips local volunteers with weapons, uniforms, basic training and monthly pay. The local cops fall under Ministry of Interior control but patrol only their home towns.

Taylor wanted to establish an ALP unit in Marzak. The deaths of 100 hardcore insurgents in Operation Marauder Rapids gave him the time and space to do so. "Most of the [insurgent] guys left in Paktika are low-level leaders or idiots," says Maj. Eric Butler, Taylor's intelligence chief.

"Because the leadership has been pushed out, we've been able to move in the ALP," Taylor says. After an initial foray in November, in early January a strong coalition force -- roughly a platoon each from the U.S. Army, Afghan army and Afghan police -- established a rotating presence in Marzak. Their main goal: to train local police.

More than 50 local men promptly volunteered. The first platoon of roughly 40 local cops graduated from basic training on Jan. 23 and took up positions at an abandoned girls' school converted into a patrol base. For the first time in memory, Marzak has a full-time government presence. U.S. troops plan on staying through the summer.

The eight months between Operation Marauder Rapids and the graduation of Marzak's first local cops represent a dramatic proof-of-concept for Keane's new, tougher CT-as-COIN approach to defeating insurgencies. With Keane's advocacy, the concept could spread across eastern Afghanistan, potentially helping cement security gains ahead of the planned 2014 withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Plus, CT-as-COIN will remain in the Army's intellectual arsenal even after U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. In an era in which traditional COIN seems increasingly discredited, the more lethal version might help preserve America's ability to defeat insurgencies.

At least, certain kinds of insurgencies.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Concedes Advantages to US Drone Strikes

January 31, 2012

Agence France-Presse

Pakistan on Tuesday acknowledged "tactical advantages" to U.S. drone strikes on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, but appeared to shrug off the unexpected confirmation by Washington of attacks on its soil.

The remarks from Pakistan's foreign ministry came as President Barack Obama confirmed for the first time that drone aircraft had targeted Islamist militants in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas on the Afghan border.

"Notwithstanding tactical advantages of drone strikes, we are of the firm view that these are unlawful, counterproductive and hence unacceptable," ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told AFP in a text message.

"Our view has always been very clear and position principled," he added.

U.S. diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks in late 2010 showed that Pakistan's civilian and military leaders privately supported U.S. drone attacks, despite public condemnation in a country where the U.S. alliance is hugely unpopular.

When asked about drones in a chat with web users on Google+ and YouTube, Obama said "a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA" -- Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Relations between the United States and Pakistan deteriorated sharply in 2011, over the covert American raid that killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in May and U.S. air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.

Islamabad is now reviewing its entire alliance with the United States and has kept its Afghan border closed to NATO supply convoys since November 26.

It ordered U.S. personnel to leave Shamsi air base in western Pakistan, widely believed to have been a hub for the CIA drone program, and is thought likely to only reopen the Afghan border by exacting taxes on convoys.

© Copyright 2012 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban Said to Reject Cease-Fire Demand

January 30, 2012

UPI

The Taliban have refused to agree to a U.S. demand for a cease-fire in Afghanistan before there can be a prisoner exchange, sources told NBC News.

"Our stance is the same. We will announce a cease-fire when the foreign forces start their withdrawal from Afghanistan," a Taliban source told the U.S. network.

Taliban sources said the Islamic militant group had set up an office in Qatar and hoped that doing so would help lead to a prisoner swap, particularly for the top five Taliban commanders held at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002.

The Taliban sources said they had been involved in talks with the United States in the past few years on the exchange, which they said would also result in the release of American soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by Taliban militants in June 2009 in Afghanistan's Paktika province.

NBC reported the Taliban sources said U.S. officials had promised to exchange prisoners and later begin peace talks.

But the sources said the Unites States insisted the Taliban announce a cease-fire in Afghanistan before any prisoner swap and the Taliban had refused to do so.

The Taliban are concerned about how field commanders and fighters would view announcing a cease-fire without having anything in exchange to show for it.

NBC said some of the 140 members of the Taliban delegation who went to Qatar had started leaving after the talks failed to produce an agreement.

The fundamentalist Taliban had ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001 before being overthrown and had previously refused to recognize the government of President Hamid Karzai, but now appear interested in third-party talks and locations, the BBC said.

The talks in Qatar were arranged mainly by the United States and Qatar, which angered Karzai, who alleged his government had been marginalized, The New York Times reported.

There has been widespread speculation the U.S. focus would be on negotiating the return of three of its citizens being held by the Taliban.

© Copyright 2012 UPI. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Sikh’s detention reveals flaws in Afghan justice, nation’s religious intolerance

By Ernesto Londoño, Tuesday, January 31, 4:38 AM

KABUL — Among the throngs of inmates in downtown Kabul’s prison trying to prove they are not thieves or insurgents is a soft-spoken Sikh man with piercing black eyes. He is being held on a highly unusual charge: falsely claiming Afghan citizenship.

Baljit Singh, 23, says he was born in Afghanistan but that his family fled religious persecution when he was 5. He returned to his native country on July 6, 2010, aboard a British chartered plane transporting Afghan deportees, and he has been locked up ever since by authorities who say he isn’t Afghan.


(Ernesto Londoño/The Washington Post) - Baljit Singh, 23, an Afghan Sikh, at the jail in downtown Kabul on Dec. 27. He has been detained for a year and a half because authorities say they can't prove that he is Afghan.

Singh’s ordeal offers a disturbing glimpse into the type of religious intolerance that has made Afghan Sikhs a vanishing segment of society. His case also casts a condemning light on a justice system that could take on significantly more responsibility as the United States transitions authority in Afghanistan to the government of President Hamid Karzai.

Promoting religious tolerance was one of the goals that the United States and its allies set in Afghanistan after the Taliban government was toppled a decade ago. But religious minorities, who make up about 1 percent of the population, are still routinely ostracized here.

“I’ll go anywhere,” Singh said in a recent interview at the crammed Kabul detention center. “Just not this country, where they can put innocent people in prison for a year and a half.”

Sikhs, who follow a monotheistic religion founded in the 15th century, once constituted a large, prosperous part of Afghan society. In recent decades, as the country has become more religiously conservative, they have been harassed and disparaged as statue-worshipping infidels. They have moved en masse to India and other countries, and community leaders say there are now no more than a few hundred or at best a few thousand Sikhs left in Afghanistan.

Life for Sikhs there has become especially hard in recent years, according to community leader Awtar Singh, a former lawmaker. Thousands had their property stolen during the civil wars of the 1990s. Job prospects are bleak outside of Sikh enclaves. And the government refuses to let Sikhs open cremation facilities, barring them from following an important religious tradition.

“The living conditions are getting hard for Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan,” said Awtar Singh, who is not related to the detainee. “The remaining people who can afford to do so want to go to India.”

A family in exile

Amid ferocious battles among various Afghan militant factions in the mid-1990s, Singh’s mother and stepfather left their home in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan, and moved to Pakistan. The family spent the first few years of exile in Pakistan, Bahrain and Egypt, he said.

When Singh was in his late teens, they were smuggled into Austria, where the family applied for asylum. Feeling restless because the claim was taking a long time to handle, Singh said he traveled to Britain, hoping that the asylum process there would be easier and quicker. He turned himself over to immigration officials hours after entering the country in January 2007, he said.


During the three years Singh spent in Britain waiting for his case to be processed, he worked menial jobs and became engaged to a British woman. He said lawyers who handled his asylum case made procedural mistakes that led to his deportation. A letter from the U.K. Border Agency informing Singh of his impending removal says his case was turned down because evidence supporting the claim had been submitted in a form that “did not comply with the instructions.”

When Singh arrived in Afghanistan in July 2010, along with dozens of other deportees, Afghan authorities took notice of the type of turban he was wearing — which is different from the ones worn by Afghan Muslims — and took him into custody. The other men were released.

Rahmatullah Nazari, a deputy attorney general, said investigators detained Singh because they were not convinced that he was Afghan.

“When people go overseas to get asylum, they are told to say they are Afghan just so they can get asylum quickly,” Nazari said in an interview. “We weren’t able to find anyone here who knows him.”

Nazari said the government plans to keep Singh in custody until the British government takes him back or another nation certifies that he is its citizen.

A spokesman for the British Embassy in Kabul said the government does not generally discuss specific cases, but he suggested that British officials do not doubt Singh is Afghan.

“Individuals are only returned to a country when there is substantial evidence that it is their country of origin,” the spokesman said in an e-mailed statement. “If it subsequently becomes apparent that it is not, we are committed to returning them to the U.K. or their correct country of origin.”

‘They started beating me up’

Kimberley Motley, an American lawyer who represents Singh, said the British government failed to get him an Afghan passport or other travel document that ascertained his nationality, as is customary in deportation cases.

Singh said he was mistreated almost immediately after his arrival in Afghanistan. One day, fellow inmates forcibly removed his turban and demanded that he convert to Islam by uttering a few phrases. Singh said he appealed to prison guards for help.

“They started beating me up,” he recalled in an interview. “I was so shocked. They were supposed to be protecting me, but instead they beat me.”

Under duress, Singh said, he nominally converted to Islam, which prompted fellow inmates to hoist him on their shoulders and parade him around the facility.

Nazari, the deputy attorney general, said he had seen no evidence to substantiate Singh’s allegations of mistreatment. He said non-Muslims in Afghan custody routinely convert to Islam, hoping to get leniency.

“These foreigners think if they convert to Islam, they will be forgiven,” he said.

Motley, the lawyer, said Singh’s best shot at freedom is finding a country that will accept him as a refugee, although so far none has stepped forward.

“Unless he has a plane ticket and someone willing to help him, the Afghans have made it clear they are not going to let him go,” Motley said.

Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban intact and getting Pakistan backing, Nato report reveals

The Taliban insurgency is intact, undefeated and receiving comprehensive support from Pakistan a classified Nato report says, sharply contradicting coalition claims the militants' momentum has been broken.


The Taliban insurgency is intact, undefeated and receiving comprehensive support from Pakistan a classified Nato report says Photo: EPA

By Ben Farmer, Kabul and Rob Crilly in Islamabad

9:03AM GMT 01 Feb 2012

Many Afghans are preparing for a return to power by the militant movement which is unbeaten despite ten years of foreign military intervention and a recent surge of troops and money into the conflict.

The stark analysis based on thousands of interrogations with Taliban prisoners stands at odds with upbeat public statements from coalition commanders that the movement has been hammered on the battlefield.

The report contains accusations Pakistan is playing a massive double game with the West as it publicly claims to seek a political solution to the Afghan conflict, while still supporting fighters who have killed thousands of international troops.

Barack Obama last week told America during his State of the Union address that "The Taliban's momentum has been broken".

However the report compiled for senior commanders instead found: "Though the Taliban suffered severely in 2011, its strength, motivation, funding and tactical proficiency remains intact."

Many of the reports most serious revelations concern the scale of support to the Taliban provided by Pakistan and the influence of its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.

"The Government of Pakistan remains intimately involved with the Taliban," says the report, which was leaked to The Times newspaper and the BBC.

The ISI is "thoroughly aware of Taliban activities and the whereabouts of all senior Taliban personnel", it claims. Senior Taliban leaders regularly meet with ISI officers "who advise on strategy and relay any pertinent concerns of the Government of Pakistan".

Nato headquaters in Kabul said the report was not an analysis of the state of the military campaign.

Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, spokesman, said the document "may provide some level of representative sampling of Taliban opinions and ideals but clearly should not be used as any interpretation of campaign progress."

The report was compiled using interrogation testimony from more than 4,000 Taliban and al Qaeda detainees held at the American-run prison at Bagram airbase, north of Kabul.

Prisoners told interrogators that Pakistan maintained comprehensive links with the Taliban to offer advice and expertise, though there was little evidence it was providing money or weapons.

The ISI remained "fundamentally opposed" to Mr Karzai's government because of its perceived support for India.

Prisoners appeared to deny it was only rogue elements of the ISI who had maintained their links with the Taliban.

The report said detainees "consistently dismiss the possibility that certain ISI elements or individuals could act independently of official Pakistani guidance".

The findings were disclosed as Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan's foreign minister, made her first visit to Kabul to discuss Pakistan's role in tentative peace contacts to be held in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

A Pakistan government official said the timing of the leak would undermine any prospect of progress in improving relations between the two countries.

"There's only one way to interpret this," he said.

A spokesman for the foreign ministry dismissed the allegations in the report as "frivolous" and said Pakistan had suffered enormously from instability in Afghanistan.

"We are committed to non-interference in Afghanistan and expect all other states to strictly adhere to this principle," he said.

The report makes grim reading for Western politicians who have spent billions of pounds in the past decade trying to prop up Mr Karzai's government and defeat the Taliban.

It says Afghans "frequently prefer Taliban governance over the Afghan government, usually as a result of government corruption".

The strategy of gradually handing over territory to the newly-built Afghan forces, which is the central plank of Nato strategy, seemed to be failing.

The report said that in areas where Nato had withdrawn, Taliban influence had increased, often with little or no resistance from government security forces.

[buglerbilly]

Report: UAV can’t fly in Afghanistan heat

By James K. Sanborn - Staff writer

Posted : Monday Jan 30, 2012 7:29:01 EST



The Marine Corps’ largest unmanned aircraft can’t handle the intense summer heat in Afghanistan, forcing units to rely instead on smaller drones for most daytime missions, according to an internal review of air operations in the war zone.

Published in October by the Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned, the findings raise significant questions about the service’s plan to weaponize its fleet of RQ-7 Shadows — although the report does not address that specifically. Marine field commanders have expressed an urgent need for drones that can strike time-sensitive targets, including insurgent teams caught burying roadside bombs. But if Shadows can’t fly on hot summer days, Marines will continue to depend on joint air assets and compete with other coalition units for this type of air support.

Marine and Navy aviation officials downplayed the report’s significance, saying the aircraft have functioned as expected. They are designed to operate in conditions up to 122 degrees, said Capt. Brian Block, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon. The problems outlined in the report occurred when the Shadow’s design parameters were exceeded, he said.

In Afghanistan’s Helmand province, peak summer runway temperatures can reach 135 degrees, according to the report, titled “Unmanned Aerial Systems Integrated Operations in Support of Regional Command Southwest.” RC-Southwest falls under the International Security Assistance Force and is led by Maj. Gen. John Toolan, who doubles as the head of II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward). Last summer, Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron 1, out of Twentynine Palms, Calif., was forced to ground the Shadow repeatedly due to excessive heat, the report states.

VMU-1 established a “hot weather schedule” during the summer because extreme temperatures could “cause the Shadow’s wings to swell and vent fuel,” the report states. When the Shadow was unusable, Marines employed the smaller ScanEagle for daytime reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition.

The report, which is unclassified and labeled “for official use only,” does not indicate whether VMU-1’s Marines were aware of the Shadow’s heat limitations before trying to operate it downrange last summer. The aircraft was designed and manufactured by AAI Corp., under an Army program. AAI deferred questions to the Marine Corps and Naval Air Systems Command, which provided Marine Corps Times with joint responses via Marine Corps headquarters.

The ScanEagle, meanwhile, showed no fuel-leak problems when used in extreme heat, according to the report. And despite reserving the Shadow for morning and evening sorties only, VMU-1 was able to “maintain coverage throughout the fly-day.”

Marines mitigated some heat-related problems by using solar shields and electrical fans, which they removed before flight, Block said. They also built a maintenance shelter to keep the Shadow and personnel out of the heat.

The report’s findings have no bearing on the Corps’ effort to arm the Shadow, Block said. A contract for the work was finalized in December and officials are pushing ahead with plans to conduct assessments downrange no later than July 2013.

Once fielded, the Shadow’s munitions will be among the lightest used, weighing less than 25 pounds. That’s expected to help maintain the aircraft’s range and endurance, officials told Marine Corps Times in October. By contrast, the Hellfire missiles carried by other unmanned aircraft, such as the Air Force’s larger MQ-9 Reaper, weigh about 100 pounds apiece. The Shadow’s bombs will drop with gravity and the UAV will “paint” the target with a laser for the bomb to hone in on.

Another option for the Corps could be to arm its smaller drones, such as the ScanEagle, said Peter Singer, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution who has written extensively about the military’s use of unmanned systems. Although there are no plans to do so, he said technology exists that would allow a 40mm grenade — which weighs about a half-pound — to be turned into a “little GPS-guided [Joint Direct Attack Munition].

Without their own armed unmanned aerial systems, Marines have depended on joint assets, and “competed with every other unit in [the war zone] to schedule armed UAS sorties,” according to the report. That drove Marine commanders to prioritize development of one.

Today, the Corps’ drones can identify targets, but a quick-reaction force or a traditional manned aircraft must be called in to attack them. In the time it takes a QRF or armed aircraft to arrive, the enemy can escape. During six months in 2009, for instance, there were 90 incidents in which the ability to immediately engage targets with the same unmanned aircraft that identified them would have “enabled effective engagement of enemy forces emplacing IEDs,” Block told Marine Corps Times in October.

Once armed Shadows are fielded, they will be able to strike targets at a moment’s notice. But the potential inability of an armed Shadow to operate during the day in the hottest summer months could leave the urgent-needs request partially unanswered. During those times, Marines would still have to compete with other services for armed aviation resources to strike targets quickly.

Despite this report, the Corps has no intention to deviate from Shadow procurement and fielding, Block said.

“The Marine Corps will continue to invest in the RQ-7 Shadow until it is replaced by a future Group 4 system,” he wrote, referring to a next-generation system scheduled to come online in 2016, according to the most recently available Marine Aviation Plan.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Condemns NATO Report; Denies Aiding Afghan Taliban

Feb. 1, 2012 - 01:47PM

By NASIR JAFFRY, Agence France-Presse

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan hit out angrily on Feb. 1 at a leaked NATO report accusing its spies of secretly aiding the Afghan Taliban, saying that pre-dawn air strikes killed at least 20 local Taliban fighters.

Pakistan’s alliance with the United States and NATO plummeted to an all-time low after U.S. air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on Nov. 26 and Islamabad has since shut its Afghan border to NATO supply convoys.

Relations with Afghanistan are also notoriously frosty over mutual blame for insurgencies plaguing both countries, but top-level talks in Kabul on Feb. 1 had been aimed at charting new cooperation.

But the leaked NATO document claims that Islamabad, via Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency, is “intimately involved” with the insurgency and that the Taliban assume victory is inevitable once Western troops leave in 2014.

The BBC said the report was based on material from 27,000 interrogations of more than 4,000 captured Taliban and al-Qaida operatives.

“Pakistan’s manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly,” the report was quoted as saying.

Taliban captives said Islamabad was using a web of intermediaries and spies to provide strategic advice to the Taliban on fighting U.S. and NATO troops.

“This is frivolous, to put it mildly. We are committed to non-interference in Afghanistan and expect all other states to strictly adhere to this principle,” Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told AFP.

A senior security official condemned the leak, as reported by the BBC, which also broadcast a documentary “Secret Pakistan” last year accusing parts of Pakistan’s intelligence service of complicity with Taliban militants.

“The report is not available, leaks not worth commenting,” he told AFP.

A meeting Feb. 1 between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was likely to be overshadowed by the NATO report, despite being billed as an effort to get relations back on track.

“We are also committed to an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned reconciliation process,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesman said.

The talks Feb. 1 follow reports that Islamabad and Kabul are keen to open peace talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia, separate to U.S. talks in Qatar.

Both countries are wary of being sidelined from American peace efforts, focused first on securing an exchange of prisoners with the Taliban.

Over the last week, Pakistan has stepped up fighting in its tribal badlands on the Afghan border, where Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, al-Qaida operatives and other Islamist militants have carved out strongholds.

Fourteen soldiers have been killed in a bid to restrict the Taliban in Orakzai and Kurram districts, en route to North Waziristan, Pakistan’s premier militant bastion where Islamabad has resisted U.S. pressure to wage an offensive.

Security officials told AFP that Pakistani warplanes carried out pre-dawn air strikes killing at least 20 Taliban insurgents on Feb. 1 and that there were reports that a key Pakistani Taliban commander was among the dead.

Independent confirmation of death tolls is largely impossible in the tribal belt, a Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold barred to journalists and aid workers.

The officials said jets bombed four hideouts in Orakzai belonging to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commanders Mulla Tufan and Moinuddin at around midnight (1900 GMT Jan. 31).

“Bases of TTP commanders Mulla Tufan and Moinuddin were destroyed.

Reportedly, commander Moinuddin, along with more than 20 terrorists, have been killed,” one of the officials told AFP.

The bombing comes in the wake of clashes between security forces and militants in neighboring Kurram in the Jogi mountains, where the military says 52 insurgents and 14 soldiers have been killed since Jan. 25.

[buglerbilly]

K-Max Operations in Afghanistan – Video

Posted on February 2, 2012 by The Editor



Uploaded by LockheedMartinVideos on Jan 27, 2012
Now operational in Afghanistan, the unmanned K-MAX is resupplying troops and augmenting Marine Corps ground and air logistics.

Lockheed Martin just posted this new video about the K-Max deployment to Afghanistan. Within 75 days of being shipped out it was undertaking its first resupply mission.

The company claims less than 2.5 maintenance man-hours are required per flight hour, and that the operating cost is less than $1,200 per hour.

Sources: Lockheed Martin, YouTube

[buglerbilly]

Quietly, NATO Hints It Could Leave Afghanistan Faster

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author February 1, 2012 | 1:09 pm


Updated 5:12 p.m.

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Officially speaking, NATO won’t deviate — yet — from its plan to end combat in Afghanistan by 2014. But as defense ministers prepare to meet here on Thursday, some NATO bureaucrats are whispering that it wouldn’t be so difficult to wrap the fighting up ahead of schedule.

In a background briefing for reporters, a NATO official I’m not allowed to name pointed to mid-2013 as the beginning of the final phase for its “transition” to Afghanistan control. By then, the “lead responsibility for the planning and conduct of operations” against the Taliban will fall to the Afghan soldiers and police (and militiamen) that NATO trains, the official said. In other words, the heavy lifting on the transition will basically be done by 2013, not 2014.

That may not seem like much of a difference, at first glance. But NATO is likely to reopen the inter-alliance debate about how fast to hand over Afghanistan to the Afghans when defense chiefs begin a mini-summit on Thursday. That’s because Afghan President Hamid Karzai and French President Nicolas Sarkozy abruptly decided last week to ask NATO to end combat a year earlier, in 2013.

If that isn’t enough to get wavering European allies, whose economically crunched populaces generally don’t support the war anyway, to rush to the exits, NATO flacks fended off question after question on Wednesday about a leaked U.S. military report assessing that the Taliban — even after the surge — considers its victory “inevitable.” Now at least some in NATO headquarters believe that if the alliance really wanted to leave early, it would be doable.

NATO’s public position is that it’s not budging on 2014. “That is the goal we stick to,” Oana Lungescu, the alliance’s press director told reporters on Wednesday. (She refused to comment on the leaked report.)

In any case, 2014 won’t bring the end of the war. Several NATO officials here are talking about an “enduring partnership” for some kind of “train, advise and assist” mission for the Afghan security forces “after 2014.” The details haven’t been worked out — those residual troops will probably live on joint bases with Afghans, U.S. officials have said — and NATO is unlikely to unveil any specific plan until its May summit in Chicago at the earliest. But it’s been clear for over a year that foreign military forces aren’t all leaving Afghanistan in 2014.

But even if the end of NATO combat isn’t the same as an end to the Afghanistan war, some in the alliance think it’s technically possible to move up the end of that combat. And the 2014 date arose after Karzai asked for it. If he’s now pressing for 2013 instead, it might provide cover for NATO to accelerate its timetable by a year. And to be cynical, that would give President Obama something dramatic to announce at the Chicago summit — where NATO leaders already plan to explain with some specificity how and when they’ll hand over the war to the Afghans — right as his reelection bid heats up.

Afghanistan is going to dominate the defense ministerial parley on Thursday and Friday, Lungescu said. There won’t be any announcement of a faster timetable. But now that one is considered feasible, the talks might represent an opening salvo of a decision that would bring NATO troops home faster.

Update, 5:12 p.m.: That was fast. Ahead of Thursday’s NATO defense ministerial, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has flat-out embraced the accelerated timetable for wrapping up combat in Afghanistan, telling reporters on his plane heading to Brussels that the U.S. and NATO will indeed turn the war over to Afghan control a year-plus early. 2013 is now the new 2014. But as Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post reports, that doesn’t necessarily mean substantial numbers of U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan earlier, since the Afghan forces remain “dependent on the United States military for airpower, troop movement, supplies and medical aid.” Still, never mind what I wrote above about how there “won’t be any announcement of a faster timetable,” as the faster timetable arrived faster than expected.

Photo: DVIDS

[buglerbilly]

In winding down war, a fundamentally different challenge in Afghanistan than in Iraq

By Greg Jaffe and Kevin Sieff, Friday, February 3, 10:12 AM

The narrative that the Obama administration has laid out for winding down the war in Afghanistan has a familiar feel: It is intended to evoke the gradual withdrawal from Iraq.

But the administration faces a fundamentally different challenge in Afghanistan and a host of problems that it did not have in the latter days of the Iraq war.

In Afghanistan, heavy fighting is likely to persist well into 2014, particularly in the provinces along Pakistan’s border, senior military officials said. In contrast with Iraq, the Afghan government and security forces will require billions of dollars annually in U.S. support for the foreseeable future. It seems unlikely that the insurgents’ haven in Pakistan will shrink.

“In Afghanistan, you will be fighting a much tougher war over the next few years compared with Iraq post-2008,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, who previously served as the top U.S. commander in Kabul.

Obama administration officials made the comparison to Iraq on Thursday as they scrambled to clarify Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s remarks that the United States hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by the middle of next year, more than a year earlier than scheduled, and shift to advising Afghan forces.

“Iraq is a helpful reference point in this,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney. Just as in Iraq, he said, American advisers would remain in the country and would “continue to participate in combat missions.”

But by mid-2010, when the Obama administration declared an end to the U.S. combat mission in Iraq, American forces had already pulled out of the country’s major cities, where the war’s fiercest and bloodiest battles took place. The 49,000 U.S. advisory troops that remained took casualties, but the vast majority of the fighting was carried out by Iraqi forces.

In Afghanistan, Taliban forces still control swaths of territory in the mountainous eastern regions along the border, where they continue to kill Afghan government forces and intimidate villagers.

“Are we ready to take over? In some places, we are,” said one Afghan commander, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But in others, we aren’t now, and we won’t be in a year.”

The Afghan commander’s concerns were echoed by senior U.S. military officials in Kabul who insisted that Panetta’s remarks did not signal a change in U.S. policy or even a planned diminution in combat operations for U.S. forces.

In many ways, the dust-up caused by Panetta’s remarks reflects a political divide within the Obama administration over how quickly the United States can and should turn over responsibility for security to an Afghan government that remains weak.

Senior military officials cautioned that the U.S. forces would still be in the lead in battles abutting havens in Pakistan, where commanders believe insurgents still receive assistance from that country’s intelligence service.

“We’re still going to be fighting,” said a senior military official in Kabul. “As time passes, we’ll become more distant to the [Afghan forces] as they become more self-sufficient and capable across 2014-2015.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to appear as though he was contradicting his civilian leadership.

In Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan officials have sought to build confidence among Afghan soldiers and civilians in the ability of the country’s institutions to maintain security. For the past six months, Afghan and U.S. officials have held formal ceremonies to celebrate the transition of cities, districts and provinces to Afghan control — early steps toward a post-NATO Afghanistan.

Billboards have been posted across the country with photos of U.S. soldiers handing their guns over to their Afghan counterparts. Afghan units have begun crafting their own missions and going on independent patrols.

Such measures, although sometimes dismissed as hollow symbols by officials in Kabul, have prompted Afghan officers to play a more active role in traditionally NATO-led military operations, Western military officials say.

Though more than a dozen formal transition ceremonies have been held since last summer, most have been in relatively peaceful provinces or in small patches of cities, sometimes only a few square miles.

Those handovers are a far stretch from the challenges to come. American officials planned to use early transition exercises as a litmus test for the broader shift to Afghan control.

Afghan commanders questioned whether the looming security handover is a testament to their own progress or a product of U.S. politics and war weariness. “For those who understand the reality, Panetta’s announcement sends a vague message. Many will argue, how can we trust the U.S. when they keep changing their words?” said Afghan Maj. Kosh Sadat.

Even among senior U.S. military commanders there has been a spirited debate over how quickly to press Afghan forces to take on more responsibility. This spring, American commanders will begin pairing up some of their small advisory teams with the more capable Afghan forces, U.S. officials said. The full complement of American advisory teams should be in place by early 2013.

Some U.S. military officials have pressed for giving Afghan units more responsibility sooner to test their ability to stand on their own as U.S. forces withdraw. “The time to figure out how good the Afghan forces are isn’t in 2014,” said Andrew Exum, a senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security. “It is now.”

In Kabul, military officials worry about losing ground gained from the insurgency during tough battles over the past two years.

“In 2013, we are moving to the decisive portion of the campaign where the Afghan forces will be in the lead but heavily advised, assisted and enabled” by NATO forces, one senior military official said.

The Karzai administration appeared unfazed by Panetta’s statement, with officials claiming that they are still confident the United States will remain a stabilizing force in Afghanistan.

“The international troops are focusing more on the strengthening, equipment and funding of Afghan forces, and this will make the Afghan forces self-sufficient and ready to take on this big responsibility,” said Hakim Asher, a government spokesman. He called the statement a “natural part of the process of transition.”

But to many in Washington, Panetta’s remarks were interpreted as the latest sign of the administration’s eagerness to bring the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan to an end.

“We have interests in Afghanistan, but they are limited, so people are groping around for a limited way of dealing with it,” said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “My worry is that we run the risk of backing into a situation where the investment we are making will not produce an adequate return.”

Sieff reported from Kabul.

[buglerbilly]

U.S., NATO seek to clarify Panetta comments on ending Afghan mission


Jacquelyn Martin/AP - Officials offer varying views following U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s Wednesday statement on ending combat in Afghanistan in 2013.

By Craig Whitlock, Friday, February 3, 2:03 AM

BRUSSELS — U.S. and NATO officials struggled Thursday to clarify how long their troops would remain engaged in combat in Afghanistan amid disagreements over when and how Afghan security forces would assume that role.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said there was a consensus among NATO leaders that the fledgling Afghan army “will be ready to take the combat lead in all of Afghanistan” next year, with U.S. and NATO forces shifting to an advisory and training mission. British and French officials said they backed that idea, but other NATO officials were less definitive.

At a news conference at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said “we don’t know yet” when newly trained but inexperienced Afghan forces — who now number more than 300,000 — will take charge of the combat mission in the war. He predicted that NATO would resolve the issue at its summit in Chicago in May.

Rasmussen said that NATO forces would remain actively engaged in combat until the end of 2014, when most allied troops are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan. “Let me stress,” he said, “we will conduct combat operations throughout that period.”

On Wednesday, while en route to Brussels, Panetta surprised some allies by saying that the Obama administration wanted to shift from “a combat role to a training, advise and assist role . . . hopefully by mid- to the latter part of 2013.”

That timeline would represent an acceleration in NATO’s plans.

On Wednesday, Panetta acknowledged that U.S. troops could still be involved in combat after 2013 but indicated that they would fight only to protect themselves.

On Thursday, however, he modified that characterization, saying U.S. forces would still regularly engage in combat but in a “support role.”

“It’s basically, the Afghans themselves will be in charge of combat operations,” he told reporters. “Again, we’ll be there for support; we’ll be there for guidance. But they’re the ones that are going to be in the lead and conduct the operations.”

It was unclear what those changes would mean on the battlefield.

Asked to elaborate on the difference between a “lead” combat role and a “supporting” role, a senior U.S. defense official said that American troops would perhaps remain embedded with Afghan forces. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the questions of who would issue orders and how tactical duties would be divided had not been resolved.

Another senior NATO official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said no decision had been reached about when the Afghans would take over combat duties. But the NATO official had difficulty squaring that with Panetta’s comments.

“He said the combat role will come to an end” in 2013, the official said of Panetta. “But he also said combat will continue. And that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Anthony H. Cordesman, an influential military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, criticized the Obama administration for lacking a clear plan for winding down the war.

“The practical problem is that [Panetta] did not define what he meant,” Cordesman wrote Thursday in an online commentary. “It is easy to talk about a transfer of responsibility to the Afghans, but as a similar statement in Iraq showed, this can be little more than cosmetic or be based on real Afghan capabilities.”

In Washington, exasperated officials insisted that Panetta’s comments had been misinterpreted and that there was no change in plans for Afghanistan.

CIA Director David H. Petraeus, a former Army general who commanded U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan until last summer, told a congressional panel that Panetta’s remarks had been “over-analyzed.”

Current NATO policy calls for Afghan security forces to gradually assume the lead role in combat actions before the withdrawal of all coalition combat troops by the end of 2014, officials said.

“That is the policy, and that has not changed,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.While U.S. and NATO combat troops will remain in Afghanistan for the next three years, in still unspecified numbers, Afghan troops have already taken the lead in some areas and could complete the transition, with ongoing coalition support, well before that, he said.

The end of that process “could be moved up to 2013,” Carney said, depending on conditions on the ground and consultations within NATO. Panetta, he said, “was not making an announcement about a decision that was made, but about consultations that will be taking place.”

Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

NATO Mulls Paying for Afghan Forces After 2014

February 03, 2012

Associated Press|by Slobodan Lekic and Robert Burns

BRUSSELS -- NATO defense ministers on Friday tackled the controversial issue of how to pay for Afghanistan's expanding security forces after they assume responsibility for the war in 2014.

Since Afghanistan -- one of the world's poorest nations -- cannot foot the estimated $6 billion ((EURO)4.6 billion) annual bill, NATO nations will have to pay the bulk of it. But austerity measures and budgetary cuts caused by the financial crisis in the United States and Europe are making it difficult to raise the money.

British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond said ministers would consider two critical questions: "What should be the long-term size of the Afghan security forces and how are we going to share the cost of supporting that between different members of the international community. Those are discussions we have started here and we will continue at Chicago," he said

The two-day meeting in Brussels of ministers from NATO's 28 nations and 22 other countries taking part in the war in Afghanistan is meant to pave the way for a NATO summit in May in Chicago.

The Afghan army and police are scheduled to grow to more than 350,000 members by 2014. But some have proposed that the force can be safely cut to about 250,000 in order to save on costs. The Taliban insurgents are estimated to have about 20,000 men under arms.

A related unresolved question that will also be taken up in Chicago is the number of U.S. and other foreign troops that might remain behind and what missions they would be assigned.

The debate on costs came after NATO allies agreed broadly on Thursday to step back from the lead combat role in Afghanistan and let local forces take their place as early as next year, a shortened timetable that startled officials and members of the U.S. Congress.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta caused a stir when he said Wednesday that he foresaw American and NATO forces switching from a combat role to a support role by mid- to late-2013. He said this was a natural transition in line with the NATO goal, announced in November 2010, of having every Afghan province placed in government control by the end of 2014.

Until that remark, however, it was widely assumed that NATO forces would remain in the lead until the end of 2014, when most foreign are schedule to be withdrawn.

Panetta said he explained to his NATO counterparts that he hoped Afghan forces would be ready to take the combat lead countrywide sometime in 2013, with international troops shifting to a support role after a decade of inconclusive combat. That means Afghans would bear the main burden of offensive action, with U.S. and other foreign troops assisting, he said.

His remark prompted some Republicans in Washington to complain that the Obama administration was unwisely telegraphing its intentions to the Taliban. And it led to a cascade of confusing statements seeking to illuminate Panetta's meaning.

Asked further about the matter after Thursday's NATO meetings, Panetta said U.S. forces, once in a support role, would have to remain "combat ready," prepared to defend themselves but focused on enabling the Afghans to carry the brunt of combat. He also noted that U.S. special operations forces would remain in Afghanistan to go after certain terrorist targets.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

NATO Hopes Afghan Forces Take Lead In 2013

Feb. 2, 2012 - 05:46PM

By MATHIEU RABECHAULT and LAURENT THOMET, Agence France-Presse


Clockwise from upper left: German Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere, Greek Defence Minister Dimitrios Avramopoulos U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stand during a group photo Feb. 2 at the NATO Defence ministers meeting in Brussels. (John Thys / AFP via Getty Images)

BRUSSELS — NATO allies voiced hope Feb. 2 that Afghan forces can take the lead across the country next year, with foreign troops in a backup role, as they seek to wind down a war that has dragged on for a decade.

At the same time, the alliance insisted that it was not changing plans to complete the security transition by the end of 2014 and that NATO troops would remain engaged in combat until then.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had caused a stir before arriving in Brussels for talks with NATO counterparts when he suggested that Washington wanted to shift from a combat role to a “train and advise and assist role” by the end of 2013.

Panetta, seeking to clear up any confusion, told reporters after the first day of talks that NATO troops “will have to be fully combat-ready” and will fight “as necessary” even as Afghan forces assume the security lead.

“We hope that the Afghan security forces will be ready to take the combat lead in all of Afghanistan some time in 2013,” the Pentagon chief said, adding that the final plan will be decided by NATO leaders at a Chicago summit in May.

The French defense minister, Gerard Longuet, was also compelled to clarify his country’s position after President Nicolas Sarkozy announced last week that France would end its combat role by the end of 2013.

Longuet said French troops, numbering 3,600 today, would switch from a combat role to a training mission some time in 2013. France will gradually draw down troops and expects to leave around 400-500 military trainers after2014.

“I was not criticized,” Longuet told reporters. “Every country is thinking because each country is confronted with the same problems (in Afghanistan).”

Sarkozy’s remarks had sparked concerns that a French withdrawal could encourage a rush to the exit, but a French official said Longuet told his counterparts that France was “committed to the Lisbon plan.”

U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy both face tough elections this year. War-weary voters could welcome a clear signal that U.S. and French forces are nearer to leaving the unpopular war.

Despite NATO assurances that insurgents are on the back foot, a leaked secret NATO document, based on thousands of detainee interrogations, showed the Taliban believe they can reconquer Afghanistan once Western forces are gone.

Citing progress in the transition, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said was a “broad expectation” that Afghans can take over the lead in all provinces in 2013, but that it would depend on the “security and realities on the ground.”

He insisted, however, that NATO was sticking to its 2014 calendar to withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan and that allies were committed to the principle of “in together, out together.”

British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said allies “all recognize that in 2013 there will be an evolution in the mission.”

“The Afghans will be having lead responsibility for security throughout the whole country, but we will remain there in a combat support role and we will continue to do so in our case until the end of 2014,” he added.

NATO has some 130,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 90,000 U.S. troops. By the end of September, the number of U.S. troops is due to drop to 68,000, following the scheduled withdrawal of a “surge force” that deployed in 2010.

Panetta said no decision has been made on the level of U.S. forces in 2013.

[buglerbilly]

Car bomb kills seven outside police headquarters in Kandahar

By Sayed Salahuddin, Updated: Sunday, February 5, 6:09 PM

KABUL — At least five Afghan police officers and two civilians were killed Sunday when a car bomb was detonated outside the main police headquarters in Kandahar, officials said.

Another 19 people, six of them police officers, were wounded in the blast, provincial officials said. Children were also among the victims.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but a spokesman for the governor blamed Taliban insurgents.

The southern Afghan city has been the scene of such attacks before, as violence grows in many parts of the country despite an influx of foreign troops.

In a separate incident, Afghan officials announced Sunday that an American soldier fatally shot an Afghan guard Friday night at a U.S. base in northern Afghanistan.

The guard was on duty at the gate of a base in Sar-i-Pul when the incident occurred. Provincial governor Sayed Anwar Rahmati said the U.S. soldier opened a door and saw the barrel of the guard’s gun. Feeling threatened, he shot.

“It was a mistaken act and happened due to the threat the soldier had felt from the guard,” Rahmati said by phone.

A spokesman for the NATO-led troops in Kabul said the coalition was aware of the report, but he refused to provide further details, saying an investigation was underway.

According to reports, a dozen foreign troops have been killed recently, some of them by rogue Afghan forces at joint operating bases.

In the worst incident in recent months, four unarmed French troops were killed by an Afghan soldier northeast of Kabul. The incident followed a similar attack against French troops by a man wearing an Afghan army uniform a few weeks prior.

After the deaths, French officials announced the country plans to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan by 2013, earlier than scheduled.

Some of the attacks have been blamed on personal, cultural and religious disputes, while others have been in retaliation for civilian casualties during foreign operations.

Taliban-led insurgents have also taken credit for some of the attacks, infiltrating the ranks of Afghan forces as they take on a greater security role in preparation for the withdrawal of international troops.

The attacks have caused distrust among international forces serving on joint duty or providing training for Afghan forces.

[buglerbilly]

In Afghanistan, a new approach to teaching history: Leave out the wars

By Kevin Sieff, Sunday, February 5, 9:05 AM

KABUL — In a country where the recent past has unfolded like a war epic, officials think they have found a way to teach Afghan history without widening the fractures between long-quarreling ethnic and political groups: leave out the past four decades.

A series of government-issued textbooks funded by the United States and several foreign aid organizations do just that, pausing history in 1973. There is no mention of the Soviet war, the mujaheddin, the Taliban or the U.S. military presence. In their efforts to promote a single national identity, Afghan leaders have deemed their own history too controversial.

“Our recent history tears us apart. We’ve created a curriculum based on the older history that brings us together, with figures universally recognized as being great,” said Farooq Wardak, Afghanistan’s education minister. “These are the first books in decades that are depoliticized and de-ethnicized.”

High school students across the country are expected to receive the textbooks in time for the school year this spring. The books are the only ones approved for use in public classrooms as part of the new “depoliticized curriculum.” Elementary and middle school textbooks, which also conclude history lessons in the early 1970s, have been distributed over the past several years.

As Western leaders look to wind down their part in the war, the inability of Afghans to agree on a basic historical record casts doubt on a much more complex exercise that is critical to the country’s future: the creation of a government that would unite Afghanistan’s disparate groups.

But Afghan officials insist that the new textbooks will be one of the government’s best state-building tools, offering a fresh perspective to a generation raised in the middle of a war but unencumbered by the biases of the past four decades. During much of that time, warring political and ethnic groups used their own course materials, imbued with their own ideologies and peppered with their own heroes and villains.

“That’s how we got our extremist ideas,” said Attaullah Wahidyar, director of publication and information for the Education Ministry. “Now, we’ve learned our lesson.”

Foreign powers only deepened divisions, distributing books to further their own political agendas and bringing the “New Great Game” in Central Asia into Afghan classrooms.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union printed books that stressed communism’s virtues and the importance of Marxist theory. During the last years of the Cold War, the United States spent millions on Afghan textbooks filled with violent images and talk of jihad, part of a covert effort to incite resistance to the Soviet occupation. During the Taliban’s reign in the 1990s, conservative Islamic texts were imported from Pakistan. In western Afghanistan, Iranian textbooks that openly praised Tehran-backed militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas were for years distributed in public schools.

‘A sensitive history’

When educators, scholars and politicians gathered to overhaul the curriculum, beginning in 2002, they were intent on undoing the politics of Afghan historiography. But they could not agree on how to address the country’s descent into civil war or its various insurgent groups. Even the mention of key figures — the Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud or the Taliban’s Mohammad Omar — would spark fierce loyalty or hostility, officials said, paralyzing any history lesson.

Educators suggested that the only solution would be to omit the period after King Mohammed Zahir Shah, whose ouster in 1973 ushered in an era of chronic political instability. Among those charged with crafting the new curriculum, there was near-universal agreement.

“We aren’t mature enough to come up with a way to teach such a sensitive history,” Wahidyar said.

Foreign donors reviewed the books to ensure there was no religious content and that materials were well designed, but they made no suggestions related to the omission of recent history, Afghan officials said.

The high school textbooks were funded by the U.S. military’s foreign aid arm, the Commander’s Emergency Response Program.

U.S. military cultural advisers “reviewed the social studies textbooks, grades 10-12, for ‘inappropriate’ material, such as inciting violence or religious discrimination. Content of these textbooks, such as events or dates, are the responsibility of the Ministry of Education,” said David Lakin, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. “There were no discussions between [U.S. military] officials and the Ministry of Education on the teaching of Afghan history.”

Despite the broad consensus, some Afghan scholars and educators have pushed back, claiming the new textbooks mark an abdication of the ministry’s academic responsibility.

“This will be the biggest treason against the people of Afghanistan. . . . It will be a hindrance to all of our spiritual and material gains over the last four decades,” said Mir Ahmad Kamawal, a history professor at Kabul University. “All these young people will be deprived of knowing what happened during this period.”

‘Community-building’

Afghan education officials have begun crisscrossing the country, trying to persuade 8.2 million students and their families that a fair curriculum will emanate from Kabul.

The new history lessons will be taught even in villages still controlled by insurgents. Officials say that if they detailed the atrocities committed during five years of Taliban rule, the textbooks would almost certainly be disputed and discarded.

“We’re talking about community-building through education, and that includes the insurgency,” said Wardak, the education minister. “This curriculum needs to appeal to all Afghans.”

Wardak recently spoke to groups of teachers and students in eastern Afghanistan, explaining that they should come to expect uniformity and accuracy in new public school lessons. If sources of tension can be avoided, he said, the Education Ministry might stand a better chance of recruiting the more than 4 million children currently out of school.

“The curriculum is a national one, based on Islamic principles. It’s not just for Pashtuns or Tajiks or Hazaras,” he said in front of a packed meeting hall in Nangahar province. “The curriculum will bring us all under one roof. It will encourage brotherhood and unity.”

Then he toured schools, hospitals and mosques. In one public building, portraits of Afghan leaders over the past 200 years lined the wall. Wardak pointed to a photo of Mohammed Daoud Khan, who assumed power in 1973.“That’s where the division started,” he said, “and that’s where our history books end.”

Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. to elevate Special Operations forces’ role in Afghanistan


David Furst/AFP/Getty Images - U.S. Army soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division and Afghan National Army soldiers land in hostile territory in Khost province in November 2009. Going forward, the U.S. military plans a greater role for Special Operations forces in Afghanistan as it shifts its emphasis to training Afghan forces and raids to kill insurgent leaders.

By Greg Jaffe, Monday, February 6, 6:10 AM

The U.S. military is planning to elevate the role of Special Operations forces in Afghanistan as it shifts away from a combat focus to a mission that places greater emphasis on advising Afghan forces and raids to kill top insurgent leaders, senior U.S. officials said.

Initial steps in that direction are likely to take place in the next few months, when the Pentagon is expected to create a new two-star command that would oversee the entire Special Operations effort in Afghanistan. The new command would be led by Maj. Gen. Tony Thomas, the deputy commander of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees the military’s elite counterterrorism forces around the world.

The new Special Operations command in Afghanistan could eventually take over responsibility for the day-to-day war effort as U.S. troop levels drop in the country and as the United States moves away from its traditional combat role to an effort focused primarily on training and advising Afghan forces.

The plan, which is still being considered, would mark a major change in the war effort, built around big American conventional units working alongside Afghan army and police forces to clear areas of insurgents and reestablish Afghan governance. In many aspects, it resembles a plan advocated by Vice President Biden in 2009 to focus U.S. efforts on training Afghan forces and killing high-level insurgent leaders.

Biden’s proposal was largely rejected because U.S. military commanders said they needed additional conventional troops to push the Taliban out of major population centers and reverse its momentum.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta referred in broad terms to some of the changes last week when he said that the United States hopes to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by the middle of next year, more than a year earlier than scheduled.

Although Thomas is expected to go to Afghanistan as early as this summer to lead the new Special Operations command, senior U.S. officials cautioned that there has not been a final decision to send him.

The next step in the plan, which involves consolidating all NATO military daily operations of the war under a command led by a Special Operations officer, is still the subject of broad debate in the Pentagon and White House, U.S. officials said.

“We are talking about a stair-step approach, and we haven’t even taken the first step in the process,” said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s planning.

The move to shift more of the war effort in Afghanistan to Special Operations units was first reported online Saturday by the New York Times.

There is still broad debate within the military and the White House over how quickly the United States can shift away from its combat mission and turn over primary responsibility for security to Afghan forces that are still weak.

Although Panetta said the United States hopes to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by mid-2013, in some parts of eastern Afghanistan, conventional U.S. units could still be involved in heavy combat through 2014 and even into 2015, according to senior military officials in Washington and Kabul.

In those areas, mountainous terrain and insurgent havens across the border in Pakistan have made it difficult for U.S. and Afghan units to push Taliban fighters out of remote valleys and hold on to gains once the enemy fighters are dislodged.

The Obama administration has said it will bring home about 22,000 troops by September, cutting the overall size of the American force to 68,000. There will be heavy pressure on military commanders to continue the troop reductions into 2013.

Currently, the Afghan forces partner with similarly sized U.S. units in areas where the fighting is heaviest. U.S. forces patrol regularly alongside Afghan units and take a leading role when insurgents launch attacks.

As American troop levels drop, U.S. commanders will by necessity have to rely more heavily on Afghan units to operate with minimal support from big, conventional Army and Marine units.

Senior military officials said they will begin pairing up small, U.S.-led advisory teams with the more capable Afghan forces this spring. The full complement of U.S. advisory teams should be in place by early 2013.

The new focus could rely on American Special Forces soldiers to fill out some of the advisory teams in the most violent areas of Afghanistan. The Special Forces troops would continue to advise and mentor elite Afghan units and the Afghan local police, a program in which villages form units to defend themselves. The primary mission of the Army’s Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, is to mentor, train and fight alongside indigenous forces. The Special Forces teams also have the ability to marshal firepower from American warplanes for Afghan forces.

Even with a heavy complement of Special Forces troops, the United States also would have to rely on significant numbers of conventional soldiers to fill out the advisory teams.

The new plans being weighed by the Pentagon and the Obama administration would also keep large numbers of elite U.S. counterterrorism troops in Afghanistan to hunt the remaining terrorist threats and keep heavy pressure on insurgent leaders.

Thomas, who is expected to lead the consolidated Special Operations effort in Afghanistan, has extensive experience overseeing counterterrorism operations around the world. He also served in Iraq as an assistant division commander in the Army’s 1st Armored Division and is well known in the regular Army.

[buglerbilly]

Obama administration’s Afghanistan endgame gets off to bumpy start


Jacquelyn Martin/AFP/Getty Images - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton amd Defense Secretary Leon Panetta attend the 48th Munich Security Conference to discuss the winding down of the NATO engagement in Afghanistan and other looming challenges.

By Karen DeYoung, Monday, February 6, 3:41 AM

With war fatigue growing and an election looming, the Obama administration has bumpily embarked on its endgame in Afghanistan.

In recent weeks, closed-door strategizing over Taliban peace talks, the pace of NATO’s combat handover and withdrawal, and the future of U.S. relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan have suddenly become part of the public and political debate.

But revelations about plans already in motion have emerged sooner than the administration has been prepared to explain them, complicating efforts to turn them into a coherent whole and build support.

“There are people at every piece of this — the Taliban, Islamabad, Kabul and Washington” — who object to or are trying to influence elements of the emerging strategy, a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk more candidly. “They use leaking as a tool.”

Last week, days after French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed transitioning combat responsibilities to Afghan forces a full year ahead of NATO’s schedule, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told reporters that the administration anticipated doing just that.

U.S. and Afghan military forces on the battlefield responded with open concern that they weren’t ready for an early turnover. At the White House, aides grumbled that only President Obama could announce a new timetable and that he wouldn’t be addressing the issue until a NATO summit in May.

Panetta’s comments also poured fuel on an ongoing debate within the administration’s national security team over the right balance between talking to the Taliban and fighting them, even as the troop-heavy counterinsurgency argument that won Obama’s approval two years ago has shifted in favor of those who advocated a sleeker counterterrorism force.

Some senior officials privately echoed Republican critics, who argue that an earlier end to the combat mission — or even public discussion of one — would weaken the administration’s hand as State Department and National Security Council officials prepare for another meeting with Taliban representatives this month in Qatar, and as the military girds for this summer’s fighting season.

With the election less than a year away, the administration has denied any domestic political calculus. Officials have said, however, that they think Americans are tired of the financial and human cost of the war and would welcome an exit strategy so long as they believed it ensured U.S. national security.

Opinion surveys show strong support for an early end to the Afghan war, and the GOP presidential field has failed to find a coherent message in opposition.

Nonetheless, the welter of revelations over talks with the Taliban has angered lawmakers on Capitol Hill. In appearances before Congress last week, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and CIA Director David H. Petraeus were pressed on the divergence between administration public claims of major battlefield progress, and classified intelligence assessments describing a stronger and more confident Taliban fighting force.

Senators from both parties expressed concern during a classified White House briefing Tuesday on the proposed transfer of five Taliban leaders detained at Guantanamo as part of a peace deal. The administration, which is required to give Congress 30 days’ notice before moving a prisoner, had previously classified all five as too dangerous to leave the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

“Given the fact that after the negotiations started, [the Taliban] were committing acts of political assassination to undermine all of the work, all of the sacrifice of the United States military and intelligence forces on the ground . . . some of us might get a little cranky about what we’re doing when we talk about reconciliation” with the insurgents, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told Petraeus at a Thursday hearing.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made clear Saturday she did not intend to clear up the confusion. “I am not going to go into any details about what we are or are not prepared to do, because we are just at the beginning of this process of exploration whether or not there is an opportunity to bring about an end to the conflict through a political solution,” Clinton told reporters in Munich, where she and Panetta were attending an international security conference.

“There will continue to be all kinds of speculation about what is or is not happening,” Clinton said.

Clinton, considered a relative hard-liner on the military side of the Afghan equation, has also been at the forefront in pushing for Taliban talks as part of a strategy she has called “fight, talk, build.” The White House plans to seek NATO agreement on a comprehensive way forward in May.

“We’re trying to meld the military and political sides into one policy,” said a second senior administration official. “There’s not less fighting; they’re fighting as much as possible. But the talking is happening at the same time.”

“On the political track, there’s a hugely realistic view that this thing has a 7 or 8 percent chance of succeeding. There’s no sense that we’re going to put all our eggs in this basket,” this official said of negotiations.

Since details of the talks emerged in December, critics and complications have far outnumbered supporters. A tentative deal to allow the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban umbrella organization headed by Mohammad Omar, to open a negotiating office in Qatar was set aside when President Hamid Karzai refused to endorse it.

Other elements of the agreement included the transfer of the five Guantanamo Bay prisoners to house arrest in Qatar. For their part, U.S. officials insisted the Taliban issue a statement renouncing international terrorism and endorsing the legitimacy of the Afghan government.

Karzai has since given his blessing to U.S. talks and the Taliban’s Qatar office. But presidential aides have continued to denounce the U.S.-Taliban meetings and said the administration was working behind Kabul’s back. U.S. officials said they were engaged only in developing “confidence-building measures” to prepare the ground for direct negotiations between Karzai's government and the Taliban.

U.S. and Afghan officials separately held meetings with Hezb-e-Islami, a separate Afghan insurgent group. The group’s leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, told the BBC last week that talks with the Taliban outside the country would fail unless all factions were included.

Karzai aides have said he was thinking of starting his own negotiations with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia. Despite their own strained bilateral relations, the Afghan and Pakistani governments found common cause in feeling cut out of the U.S. talks, and Islamabad announced high-level visits to both Kabul and Qatar.

Pakistani officials have said negotiations will fail unless “all groups” are included, referring to the Haqqani network of militants that is Islamabad’s favored faction.

The Taliban, which has surprised administration officials by publicly acknowledging the talks, angrily denied a report Friday that Omar wrote to President Obama last summer to complain about their slow pace. U.S. officials said the unsigned missive was handed to administration negotiators by Mohammed Tayeb al-Agha, Omar’s representative in the talks.

Last month, Marc Grossman, the administration’s diplomatic point man for Afghanistan and Pakistan, traveled to Kabul to ensure Karzai’s support and to issue public statements reiterating the terrorism denunciation that is the Taliban’s part of any initial bargain.

Karzai then embarked on a tour of European governments, while Grossman traveled to Qatar, where he met with Taliban representatives who have already set up residence there in anticipation of the office they hope to open. After the meeting, Grossman stopped in Rome to brief Karzai on the talks. Karzai flew to Paris and endorsed Sarkozy’s call for an early end to NATO combat operations.

The administration says no military decisions will be made before the NATO summit. On the negotiating front, it interprets the myriad moving parts as progress. “A year ago,” the first senior official said, “nobody was talking about a peace process. You have to say that today, lots of people are talking about an Afghan peace process. No one knows how all this will turn out.”

[buglerbilly]

UN: Taliban Has Caused 77% of Afghan Civilian Casualties

February 06, 2012

Mclatchy -Tribune News Service

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban and other insurgent groups were responsible for nearly 80 percent of the civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan last year, said a U.N. report released Saturday.

The report said the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan documented 3,021 civilian deaths in the conflict in 2011 - up 8 percent from 2010, which saw 2,790 deaths, and an increase of 25 percent from 2009, when 2,412 civilians were killed.

The U.N. said "anti-government elements" - shorthand for the Taliban and other insurgent groups - were responsible for 2,332, or 77 percent, of conflict-related deaths in 2011, up 14 percent from 2010.

The report said 410 civilian deaths, or 14 percent of the 2011 total, were caused by operations by "pro-government forces," or Afghan, U.S. and international security forces - a drop of 4 percent from 2010. A further 279 deaths, or 9 percent of civilian fatalities, could not be blamed on any side.

A leading Afghan politician and women's rights activist labeled Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar a hypocrite and called his followers terrorists in the wake of a U.N. report into civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

"Civilian casualties by any side are not acceptable," said Fawzia Kufi, a member of Parliament and head of the National Assembly's women's affairs committee. She said the Afghan government as well as U.S. and international forces had to accept responsibility for not doing enough to protect innocent Afghans in the conflict.

But the Taliban had made terrorism the centerpiece of their strategy in Afghanistan. "They go for terrorist attacks," said Kufi, "They are intentionally targeting civilians."

Kufi accused the Taliban and Omar of hypocrisy and dishonesty.

"Mullah Omar said during (last year's Muslim festival of) Eid that civilian casualties were unacceptable, and that deliberately killing civilians was a breach of human rights," but the insurgents were attacking more civilians than previously, she said.

The U.N. report said the record loss of life of Afghan children, women and men "resulted from changes in the tactics of anti-government elements and changes in the effects of tactics of parties to the conflict."

Insurgents "used improvised explosive devices more frequently and more widely across the country, conducted deadlier suicide attacks yielding greater numbers of victims, and increased the unlawful and targeted killing of civilians," the report said.

The Taliban were targeting civilians as an act of terror, said Kufi, because they were being defeated by U.S. and international forces, but "they cannot justify their actions."

Attempts Saturday to reach Taliban spokesmen for comment were not successful.

Abdul Hakim Mujahid, a member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, which is tasked with promoting negotiations with the insurgency, and formerly the Taliban ambassador to the U.N., told McClatchy on Saturday that he had not read the U.N. report. He described Kufi's criticism of the Taliban as "a media fight."

"I have absolutely no comment," said Mujahid.

U.S. Gen. John R. Allen, who commands U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, said they would continue to do everything possible to reduce Afghan civilian casualties.

Allen said the drop in deaths caused by US and international forces was promising, "but there is more work to be done." Civilian deaths from air attacks - conducted mostly by U.S. forces - rose in 2011, despite a drop in the number of those attacks.

Insurgent improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, were "the single largest killer of Afghan children, women and men in 2011," according to the U.N. report, claiming 967 civilians - 32 percent, or nearly one-in-three, of those killed.

The report also recorded a huge rise in civilians killed in suicide attacks, with 431 fatalities in 2011 - a jump of 80 percent from the previous year.

"While the number of suicide attacks did not increase over 2010, the nature of these attacks changed, becoming more complex, sometimes involving multiple suicide bombers, and designed to yield greater numbers of dead and injured civilians," the report said.

Mir Ahmad Joyenda, deputy director of the Kabul-based Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, and a former member of Parliament, said the rise in civilian deaths reported by the U.N. was a reminder that ordinary Afghans were at risk of violence "from morning to night."

"Nobody's safe, nobody's secure," said Joyenda. "Everyone is suffering."

The U.N. report urged the Afghan government and U.S. and international forces as well as insurgents to do more to protect civilians and minimize deaths and injury among non-combatants.

That would be a particular challenge with insurgents, said Joyenda, as there were many such groups and the Taliban had become more fragmented. He said even Taliban leader Omar seemed unable to limit the violence.

"Many times he has issued an edict that civilian casualties are to be avoided," said Joyenda, but the rising number of civilian deaths that the Taliban was responsible for "suggests that Mullah Omar has lost control over his army."

Pressure had to be put on Pakistan's military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, to convince the Taliban not to commit suicide attacks, Joyenda said.

The ISI has had strong ties with the Taliban since the Taliban rose to power in the 1990's, and is often accused by the Afghan government and the U.S.-led coalition of aiding the insurgents.

However, Kufi was not hopeful that insurgents would move away from targeting civilians.

She said the Taliban "cannot win on the battlefield," so they would focus on creating terror among the civilian population, both by suicide attacks and by targeting politicians and government officials.

U.S. and international forces also would be responsible for an increased rate of civilian deaths as the date for their withdrawal from Afghanistan drew closer, said Kufi.

Coalition forces would conduct more operations against insurgents, and that would lead to a rise in deaths of civilians caught up in the fighting.

"My assumption is that things will continue to get worse," she said.

© Copyright 2012 Mclatchy -Tribune News Service. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Some Truthful Insight into the War and about War and Ethics

(Source: Center for Defense Information; issued Feb. 6, 2012)

Circulating today in the New York Times and Armed Forces Journal is a remarkable exposure of what is occurring today in Afghanistan--a situation not accurately reported to the American public, and of course Congress. Col. Danny Davis (USA) is the officer making this exposure possible.

It will not surprise some, but it will also come as news to many, perhaps because they have consciously or unconsciously chosen to accept a more comforting view of the un-remedial situation in Afghanistan after 10 years of American conflict there. To Col. Davis we all owe a debt of thanks and support.

The exposure also involves subjects every bit as important as the insights about the war in Afghanistan. As you read Col. Davis' article in Armed Forces Journal, take note of what he says about the technology the Army has been pursuing for more than a decade. Note also that, as Col. Davis' insights make clear, it is the moral factors that decide wars, not the technological ones: a lesson that was all too vivid after the Vietnam War where America had a gigantic technological edge and lost because of the moral and ethical issues in both Vietnam and the United States.

It is remarkable how Afghanistan is unfolding the same way, especially regarding the hollow, corrupt husk of a government in Afghanistan and the misleading picture of the war created out of whole cloth in the US from the assertions of those whose political and bureaucratic careers are committed to it.

With Col. Davis' permission, I am distributing his letter to others (below): it provides an excellent introduction to what he is doing, why, and the content. His letter also links to today's New York Times article and the Armed Forces Journal article, which I especially urge you to read.


My Dearest Friends,

i haven't talked to many of you in a while, but so the rest of this makes sense, i was deployed to Afghanistan for a year between November 2010 and October 2011. i saw many things during that deployment - the fourth combat deployment of my career - that i found disturbing. eventually i felt morally obligated to do something about what i saw to such an extent that i was incapable of not acting. here's what i've done and things that are being done as a result:

Scott Shane from the New York Times will publish a story on the actions i've taken, and the Armed Forces Journal will simultaneously publish an article i've written explaining why i submitted a Department of Defense Inspector General complaint against select senior leaders of the Armed Forces for so being so deceptive to the US Congress and American people that the truth is no longer recognizable - and the biggest bill-payer for this deception has been the lives and bodies of America's service men and women.

Additionally i have briefed three members of the House (Jones, Garamendi, and McGovern), four Senators (Merkley, Bennet, Tom Udall, and Manchen) as well as 18 other Senate staffers representing numerous other offices. this briefing included a classified and unclassified portion (and the DoDIG complaint also included a classified and unclassified component), and was also submitted in the form of a request for Congress to investigate my allegations.

supposedly, the three House members are planning on going to the House floor on Tuesday with up to 10 other Members to speak on the matter and demand an investigation and hearings (or whatever they do on the floor!); the Senators suggested they are considering similar action.

part of my AFJ article includes a link to a web site i set up for the purpose of hanging the unclassified report for everyone to see (the AFJ article is only 2,400 words, while the unclass report is 86 pages; the classified report is 58 pages). however, there is a battle within the Army Public Affairs on releasing the document, which i submitted for review on 20 January - the same day i disclosed to the Army's senior leaders and my chain of command what was coming. officers from the Army Media Relations department tried to pry it loose on Friday because they believe it is the right thing to do, but someone - they didn't tell me who - overruled them and said it would take longer still...

in case you'd like to read the Armed Forces Journal article i wrote to see what exactly i witnessed, the article has just been posted on their web site at: http://armedforcesjournal.com/2012/02/8904030

the New York Times will publish the story on my actions in their Monday paper edition, but an online version has also just been published at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/asia/army-colonel-challenges-pentagons-afghanistan-claims.html?_r=1&hp

once i became aware of the truth on the ground, i could no longer rationalize inaction on my part. essentially, i would have had to keep my mouth shut and thus not risk running afoul of the Army's senior leaders - but turned a blind eye to the thousands of combat troops who continue risking their lives each and every day they go outside the wire while i lived comfortably in the safety and security of America. once i looked at it in those terms, i was compelled to act...

anyway, thought you'd like a little heads up!

--danny

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Khyber Club’s bartender had front-row seat to history in Pakistan

By Karin Brulliard, Updated: Tuesday, February 7, 7:30 PM

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — As U.S.-funded Afghan jihadists battled the Soviets in the late 1980s, the unassuming American-run bar in this ancient frontier city bulged with gossiping foreigners. Today, with another Afghan conflict winding down, the watering hole practically echoes with emptiness.

Through it all, Khan Afsar, the Khyber Club’s unlikely bartender, had a front-row seat.

But Afsar did not actually have a seat in his spot behind the bar, and all the standing recently became too much to bear. So Afsar has stepped down after nearly 25 years of six-day workweeks that he says left him with admiration for Americans, a rare sentiment in Peshawar and in Pakistan at large.

“They are good people” — not to mention good tippers, Afsar said. “They are helping us.”

As a recent Saturday evening shift began, a lone Canadian patron sipped beer at the bar and predicted that the crowd was unlikely to improve. The scene seemed a metaphor for U.S.-Pakistan relations, which boomed with cooperation during the Afghan resistance but now gape with mistrust.

Yet Afsar himself is a symbol of the ground-level relations between Americans and Pakistanis, which, despite the diplomatic tensions, are typically far more amiable than sour. Over the decades, Afsar — a devout Muslim who never tried alcohol — served as a steadfast and good-natured ambassador for Pakistan, building a trail of admirers now scattered around the globe.

“For a modest fellow from a mountain village . . . he supervised and served the foreign lunatics with kindness, merriment and unflappable aplomb,” Stephen Masty, who managed the bar in the early 1990s, wrote in an e-mail.

The club, then called the American Club, was launched in 1985 as a guesthouse for visiting U.S. officials. Peshawar swirled then with aid workers, missionaries, journalists, spies and diplomats working the sidelines of the Afghan war. One of the club’s neighbors was Osama bin Laden — a wealthy young Saudi who was funding mujaheddin fighters.

According to one American official there at the time, the club’s founders decided it needed a “discreet” bar, because then, as now, alcohol was mostly prohibited in Pakistan. Foreigners soon flocked to the club for drinks, cheeseburgers, music and aerobics on the terrace. But the big draws were tales from “inside,” as Afghanistan was known, said Robert D. Kaplan, a former patron who is now a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine.

Afsar donned his bartender’s waistcoat in 1987, after a few years waiting on Americans working at a dam project in northern Pakistan. It was a solid gig, he said, for a man whose growing family lived a few hours away near Abbottabad, the city where bin Laden would be killed by Navy SEALs 24 years later. For safety’s sake, though, Afsar told only relatives where he worked.

He memorized the ingredients for B-52s and Manhattans from a book, and as Afghan fighters downed Soviet aircraft with CIA-funded Stinger missiles, Afsar’s stinger cocktail — creme de menthe and brandy — became famous from western Pakistan to the Chinese border, Masty said. The man behind those missiles, the late U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, preferred Johnnie Walker on the rocks, Afsar said.

[buglerbilly]

Admiral: Spec Ops’ Afghan Role May Expand

February 07, 2012

Associated Press|by Kimberly Dozier

WASHINGTON - Adm. Bill McRaven said Tuesday that special operations forces in Afghanistan are preparing for a possible expanded role as overall U.S. forces begin to draw down after a decade of war.

McRaven, the special operations commander who led last year's Navy SEAL raid against Osama bin Laden, confirmed that special operations forces would be the last to leave under the Obama administration's current plan, and that the Pentagon is considering handing more of the Afghan war responsibility over to a senior special operations officer as part of that evolution.

McRaven said special operations would combine targeting and training operations this summer to prepare for a smaller overall U.S. presence, but he stressed that no final decisions had been made.

"I have no doubt that special operations will be the last to leave Afghanistan," McRaven told a Washington audience, though he said he did not expect their numbers to rise.

"As far as anything beyond that, we're exploring a lot of options," he said.

The White House is considering handing the entire Afghan campaign back to special operations forces - an evolution expected to stretch well past the drawdown of most conventional NATO troops in 2014, according to multiple officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the still-evolving plans.

Senior administration officials have described turning the mission over to special operations forces as a possible way to provide security with fewer U.S. troops, because of their ability to work in smaller numbers and with local forces on such missions as night raids or patrolling villages. Administration officials believe that smaller presence will be less offensive to the Afghans.

Afghan participation in the controversial night raids against insurgents has not stopped Afghan president Hamid Karzai from criticizing them and blaming the U.S. for unnecessary civilian casualties, but U.S. officials believe his criticism will be more muted as his forces take on a greater role.

The administration's emphasis on partnering with Afghan forces is driving McRaven's streamlining of special operations in Afghanistan, blending the village security operations with the elite Joint Special Operations Command's terrorist-hunting cell based at Bagram, which is working on degrading the Taliban militant network with focused raids.

"We feel like we have to become not only more effective but more efficient," McRaven said.

Under the current system, if the special operations terrorist hunters have five potential insurgents to hit in a given area, they will likely choose to strike a high-value target, instead of spending their time hunting lower level insurgents menacing a local village that fellow U.S. Army Green Berets are trying to secure, according to a U.S. military official.

With one commander in charge of all special operations, he could decide to clear out those lower level insurgents to secure the village, leaving the high value target for another night.

During McRaven's remarks at a Washington area hotel, there was an outburst from a retired special operations general who was angry at media coverage of special operations missions, such last year's Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, and the recent SEAL rescue of two western hostages in Somalia.

"Get the hell out of the media," retired Lt. Gen. James Vaught shouted at McRaven.

McRaven calmly responded that avoiding media coverage was impossible in the 24-hour news cycle, and that while he objected to revealing sensitive tactics, the media could be useful, especially when reporting operations gone wrong.

"Having those failures exposed in the media helps us do a better job," McRaven said. "So sometimes the spotlight on us makes us better."

The admiral said he was working hard to give his 66,000-person force more predictability on when and where they would be deployed - the key request he heard from families and troops, to help them cope with the unrelenting special-operations deployments.

He also stressed that he was working to break down the stigma of seeking help to deal with combat stress.

"If you have been engaged in this war for any length of time, you are fundamentally changed," from the emotional effects of combat, he said. But special operators' typically don't seek help for emotional problems, he said.

"I encourage them to come in. We're not going to pull their security clearances," McRaven said. "We're going to take care of them."

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US General to Visit Pakistan to Discuss Airstrikes

February 07, 2012

Associated Press|by Pauline Jelinek

WASHINGTON - A senior U.S. military commander will visit Pakistan this month in what could be an important step in healing the rift between the two nations, officials said Tuesday.

Gen. James Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command, will meet with Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani to talk about the U.S. investigation into airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a Nov. 26 exchange of fire at the border with Afghanistan.

Mattis would be the first high-ranking official to visit since the strikes that sent relations between Washington and Islamabad to a new low and prompted Pakistan to close its border to NATO war supplies headed for Afghanistan, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive matter publicly. News of the planned visit came as Pakistan's defense minister said Tuesday the country should reopen its Afghan border crossings to NATO troop supplies after negotiating a better deal with the coalition.

Without providing details, Pakistan Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar told the private Geo TV that the government should negotiate new "terms and conditions" with NATO, then reopen the border.

Mattis will be presenting the Central Command investigation that found a combination of mistrust and bad maps led to the airstrikes on two Pakistani outposts in the November incident. The Defense Department said the investigation found U.S. forces - given what information they had available to them at the time - reacted in self-defense and with appropriate force after being fired upon from the direction of the Pakistani border.

Pakistan refused to participate in the investigation and has rejected its conclusions. The U.S. expressed regret, but did not apologize, despite the embarrassing series of communications and coordination errors. The State Department is supporting a proposal circulating in the administration to issue a formal apology for the Pakistan soldiers' deaths, according to the New York Times, which first reported the planned Mattis visit in Tuesday editions.

Often difficult U.S.-Pakistani relations have taken a number of especially hard hits in the past year, including fallout from the U.S. military assault in Pakistan last May that killed Osama bin Laden. Pakistani leaders have also complained about repeated U.S. drone strikes in their country, largely by the CIA, that have targeted militants who launch attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan. But the final straw was the Nov. 26 cross-border attack.

Islamabad has said it is re-evaluating its relationship with Washington and the Pakistani parliament is working out new guidelines to define the U.S.-Pakistan alliance. The parliament is expected to vote on a revised framework for relations in mid-February. That could pave the way for the government to reopen the supply line.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said last week that she didn't think it would be much of a problem to reopen the route after the parliament vote. And the defense minister Tuesday echoed this view, saying "I think the people who are deciding, who are giving recommendations, will make the right decision."

For most of the 10-year war in Afghanistan, 90 percent of supplies shipped to coalition forces came through Pakistan, via the port of Karachi. But over the past three years, NATO has increased its road and rail shipments through an alternate route that runs through Russia and Central Asia. The northern route is longer and more expensive, but provided a hedge against the riskier Pakistan route.

Before the Nov. 26 airstrikes, about 30 percent of non-lethal supplies for U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan traveled through Pakistan. The U.S. has since increased the amount of supplies running through the north, but the cost is much greater. Pentagon figures provided to the AP show it is now costing about $104 million per month to send supplies. That is $87 million more per month than when the cargo moved through Pakistan.

---

Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad in Islamabad and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistani Minister Urges Reopening Border to NATO

February 07, 2012

Associated Press

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's defense minister says the country should reopen its Afghan border crossings to NATO troop supplies after negotiating a better deal with the coalition.

Pakistan closed the crossings over two months ago in response to American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar said on Tuesday that the government should negotiate new "terms and conditions" with NATO and then reopen the border.

He did not provide details. But other Pakistani officials have said the government should levy additional fees on NATO for using the route through the country.About 30 percent of non-lethal supplies for U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan traveled through Pakistan before the border closed.

Pakistan's army last month formally rejected a U.S. claim that American airstrikes that killed the Pakistani troops were justified as self-defense because they believed they were being attacked by Taliban fighters..

In a detailed report, the army said that Pakistani troops did not trigger the Nov. 26 incident at two posts along the Afghan border by firing at American and Afghan forces, as the U.S. has alleged. Pakistan's army said its troops shot at suspected militants who were nowhere near coalition troops.

"Trying to affix partial responsibility of the incident on Pakistan is, therefore, unjustified and unacceptable," said the report, which was issued in response to the U.S. investigation that concluded at the end of December.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

CIA digs in as Americans withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan


Alex Wong/Getty Images - U.S. officials say that the CIA’s massive stations in Kabul and Baghdad will likely remain the agency’s largest overseas outposts for years, even after U.S. military forces leave.

By Greg Miller, Wednesday, February 8, 8:13 AM

The CIA is expected to maintain a large clandestine presence in Iraq and Afghanistan long after the departure of conventional U.S. troops as part of a plan by the Obama administration to rely on a combination of spies and Special Operations forces to protect U.S. interests in the two longtime war zones, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials said that the CIA’s stations in Kabul and Baghdad will probably remain the agency’s largest overseas outposts for years, even if they shrink from record staffing levels set at the height of American efforts in those nations to fend off insurgencies and install capable governments.

The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in December has moved the CIA’s emphasis there toward more traditional espionage — monitoring developments in the increasingly antagonistic government, seeking to suppress al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the country and countering the influence of Iran.

In Afghanistan, the CIA is expected to have a more aggressively operational role. U.S. officials said the agency’s paramilitary capabilities are seen as tools for keeping the Taliban off balance, protecting the government in Kabul and preserving access to Afghan airstrips that enable armed CIA drones to hunt al-Qaeda remnants in Pakistan.

As President Obama seeks to end a decade of large-scale conflict, the emerging assignments for the CIA suggest it will play a significant part in the administration’s search for ways to exert U.S. power in more streamlined and surgical ways.

As a result, the CIA station in Kabul — which at one point had responsibility for as many as 1,000 agency employees in Afghanistan — is expected to expand its collaboration with Special Operations forces when the drawdown of conventional troops begins.

Navy Adm. William McRaven, the Special Operations commander who directed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year, signaled the transition during remarks Tuesday in Washington. “I have no doubt that Special Operations will be the last to leave Afghanistan,” McRaven said.

The CIA declined to comment. But current and former intelligence officials quibbled with the accuracy of McRaven’s assertion.

“I would say the agency will be the last to leave,” said a CIA veteran with extensive experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We were the first to get there” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the former official said.

Force size evolving

U.S. officials said the size of the agency’s presence in Afghanistan over the next several years has not been determined, and the CIA’s assignment is likely to be adjusted as the administration’s troop withdrawal plans evolve.

In some scenarios, teams of CIA and Special Operations troops could divide territory and lists of Taliban targets with Afghan forces, although officials said there will probably be extensive collaboration and overlap.

CIA paramilitary operatives were the first U.S. personnel to enter Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, linking up with Northern Alliance fighters weeks before U.S. military commandos arrived. More than a decade later, the CIA still has extensive paramilitary assets there.

“Like Special Forces, the intelligence community is used to doing a lot with a small footprint, using its agility to address a host of national security concerns,” said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The agency controls counterterrorism pursuit teams made up of dozens of Afghan fighters funded and trained by the CIA. The CIA has largely bankrolled and built the Afghan intelligence service. And the agency maintains a constellation of bases along the border with Pakistan.

Some of those sites are likely to be closed, current and former officials said. The 2010 death of seven CIA employees and contractors in a suicide bombing by a double agent at a CIA base in Khost province underscored the vulnerability of such remote outposts. As conventional forces depart, officials said, the agency will probably concentrate more of its remaining employees at compounds in Kabul and at the Bagram air base north of the capital.

As a result, more territory may be ceded to the Taliban. “We can lose the countryside, but I don’t think we’re going to lose Kabul and Bagram,” said the former senior CIA officer, who added that the agency could end up adding paramilitary personnel in Afghanistan as the size of the U.S. military deployment shrinks.

The Obama administration has said it plans to pull about 22,000 troops out of Afghanistan by September, reducing the overall U.S. force to 68,000. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta fanned speculation that the drawdown could be accelerated by saying last week that the United States hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by mid-2013.

If the agency is tapped to play an expanded role in Afghanistan and Iraq, the landscape will be familiar to many across the CIA’s senior ranks. Retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus commanded U.S. forces in both countries before taking over as director of the CIA. A senior CIA operative who twice served as station chief in Kabul now heads the agency’s Special Activities Division, its paramilitary branch.

Scaling back spending

The pressure to maintain a sizable presence in Kabul and Baghdad comes as the CIA and other intelligence agencies face spending cuts for the first time since their budgets began expanding after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The CIA’s annual budget is believed to be about $5.5 billion. In congressional testimony last week, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said, “We’re not going to do more with less and all these other cliches. . . . We will just simply have less capability.”

At their peak, the CIA’s stations in Kabul and Baghdad were the largest and second-largest in agency history, surpassing the size of the CIA’s station in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War. CIA veterans stressed that those totals included more security, support and analytic personnel than clandestine operatives.

At the high point of the U.S. military surge in Iraq, the CIA had as many as 700 employees in the country. Most worked in Baghdad’s Green Zone, but hundreds were also scattered across safe houses in population centers and regional U.S. military outposts.

The departure of U.S. forces in December has forced the agency to shutter many of those facilities, according to former CIA officials who said the agency’s presence has probably been reduced by half.

“We had bases all over the country, but that’s not the case anymore,” said a second former CIA officer who served in Iraq. The development is likely to hamper intelligence collection, the former officer said. “You can’t put hundreds of people in the embassy and expect that to be your platform in Iraq.”

Staff writer Julie Tate contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

General: Taliban Suicide Bombings Show U.S. ‘Progress’

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author February 8, 2012 | 3:15 pm



Here are some indications of U.S. success in the decade-long Afghanistan war: a recent rise in suicide attacks and homemade bombs.

Those were some unlikely examples Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the war’s day-to-day commander, cited to Pentagon reporters on Wednesday morning to support his claim that U.S. forces were making “steady progress throughout” Afghanistan. “We certainly have the momentum,” Scaparrotti said.

Except that the most recent United Nations report found that civilian casualties in Afghanistan are up eight percent — making 2011 the fifth consecutive year the war’s civilian death toll has risen, despite a U.S. strategy predicated on keeping Afghans safe from harm. The discrepancy between statistics like that and the sunny assessments made by officers like Scaparrotti prompted an Army lieutenant colonel who served two tours in Afghanistan, Daniel Davis, to blast his superiors for misleading the public in a recent Armed Forces Journal essay.

Scaparrotti, who said he accepted the U.N.’s statistics, pointed out that the vast majority of Afghan civilians — 77 percent — die because of insurgent actions. When Danger Room asked if the increase in total civilian deaths indicated that the insurgents still have a free hand to attack, Scaparrotti replied, “I’d say it’s actually reduced. It’s pushed them into a certain [set of tactics] which isn’t ideal.”

Namely: suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices. While Scaparrotti conceded there was a “freedom of action that they have, in some places,” he said the “freedom of action show today is increasingly in IEDs and suicide bombing. They don’t have the capability to take us on directly.”

The U.N. concluded that insurgent bombs are now the “single largest killer of Afghan children, women and men in 2011.” Suicide bombings have “dramatically” increased, and are now killing 80 percent more Afghans than in 2010.

Perhaps the Taliban might not be able to take on U.S. forces directly, but they’ve expanded their ability to plant low-level bombs and launch high-profile suicide attacks. “I don’t know that that’s an increased freedom of action,” Scaparrotti said.

Scaparrotti also dismissed Davis’ failing grade for Afghan soldiers and police, calling it “one person’s view of this.” Scaparrotti said his own classified intelligence showed a rosier picture of the Afghans’ performance — even though Davis asserted that classified data showed the opposite.

Thirty percent of U.S.-Afghan offensive operations are planned and run by Afghan forces, Scaparrotti said. But he conceded that only “about one percent” of Afghan battalions operate independently of U.S. forces. Well, sort of. Scaparrotti said the “top” category NATO uses to assess Afghan performance is called “Independent With Advisers,” so it appears that NATO doesn’t actually expect Afghan forces to operate totally on their own. Still, back in September, zero Afghan battalions operated (quasi) independently.

Scaparrotti’s priorities for the coming year in Afghanistan won’t just be to “maintain the momentum” of the war and “accelerate” the development of the Afghan forces. He said they included the imperative to “communicate visibile, tangible and recognizable progress.” So it’s possible the U.S. will continue to see the bright side of minimal Afghan independence, increased suicide attacks and proliferating homemade insurgent bombs.

[I]Photo: DVIDS

[buglerbilly]

British and Afghan troops take on insurgency in Gereshk

A Military Operations news article

7 Feb 12

Nearly 1,000 British and Afghan soldiers have taken part in a major operation to increase security around a vital town in Helmand province.


Afghan National Army soldiers on patrol during Operation ROZI ROSHAN
[Picture: Sergeant Mark Nesbit RLC, Crown Copyright/MOD 2012]

More than 280 British troops joined forces with 690 warriors from the Afghan National Army (ANA) and patrolmen from the Afghan National Police to clear insurgents from the area north of the bustling town of Gereshk in Nahr-e Saraj district.

Making this commercial hub secure is a priority for Afghan forces in the coming year and has become the main focus for current operations.

Nahr-e Saraj is one of the three districts in Helmand where British troops are deployed - and the last where Task Force Helmand retains the lead for security following the transition of Nad 'Ali and Lashkar Gah.

Operation ROZI ROSHAN, or 'Bright Day', was planned by Afghan National Army staff and led by Brigadier General Sherin Shah, Commander of the 3rd Brigade of 215 Corps.


A British soldier observes the controlled detonation of an improvised explosive device unearthed by Afghan National Army soldiers and destroyed by Afghan explosive ordnance disposal technicians
[Picture: Corporal Timothy L Solano, Crown Copyright/MOD 2012]

It is the third major ANA operation in three months and is part of a larger Nahr-e Saraj security plan called Operation SHAMALI KAMARBAND.

Troops from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) advised Afghan soldiers and headquarters staff throughout the operation, which saw Afghan engineers, advised by sappers from 35 and 38 Engineer Regiments, build six new checkpoints to protect a transit route between Gereshk and the town of Rahim Kalay.

The ANA's 3/215 Brigade is mentored by 2nd Battalion The Rifles (2 RIFLES), and Riflemen from 2 RIFLES joined their Afghan colleagues on the ground alongside troops from 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment, the Queen's Royal Hussars, the Royal Engineers, and the Danish Army, whose troops are responsible for security in the area.


Afghan National Army soldiers patrol the berm at Artillery Hill, a former firing position for British artillery units
[Picture: Corporal Timothy L Solano, Crown Copyright/MOD 2012]

The soldiers on the ground were also boosted by counter-improvised explosive device teams, search dogs and intelligence and surveillance capabilities.

Afghan warriors reported finding over 40 IEDs and component parts which were destroyed by the ANA's own bomb disposal specialists - the explosive ordnance disposal operators and explosive hazard reduction teams.

Captain Edward Willing, from 2 RIFLES, said:

"This operation was well-planned and executed and has expanded the security bubble north of Gereshk.

"This has, yet again, demonstrated the ANA's ability to conduct large and complex independent operations in conjunction with the Afghan Police with only limited support from ISAF."


Soldiers from 2nd Battalion The Rifles and the Danish Battle Group begin a long day of patrolling in Nahr-e Saraj district during Operation ROZI ROSHAN
[Picture: Corporal Timothy L Solano, Crown Copyright/MOD 2012]

Brigadier General Shah said:

"The ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] are ready to provide security for the people of this area.

"My message to those who are fighting against our government is to come and join the peace process, as this can be the only solution."

Brigadier Patrick Sanders, the Commander of the British-led Task Force Helmand, said the operation was a vital step towards providing security in the area. He said:

"This was the second major operation conceived, planned and led by Afghan forces in the space of a month and follows the success of Operation ZAMESTAANI PEEROZI.


An Afghan soldier observes the controlled detonation of an improvised explosive device
[Picture: Corporal Timothy L Solano, Crown Copyright/MOD 2012]

"Task Force Helmand personnel were deployed in a supporting and advisory role in each of these operations, which have both demonstrated the significant capabilities of the Afghan security forces.

"Afghan forces are applying significant pressure to the insurgents throughout the winter.

"The checkpoints built as a result of this operation will increase security in the local area and pave the way for Afghan forces to take on responsibility for security in the future."

[buglerbilly]

Friday, February 10, 2012, 09:49 AM

Pzh 2000 howitzer in Afghanistan will be equipped with mobile multispectral camouflage system.

The ISAF-employed (International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan) self-propelled howitzers of the type Pzh 2000 A2 will be equipped with a mobile multispectral camouflage system (“MMT”) as of April 2012. Apart from providing camouflage, the MMT equipment also relieves the stress on the AC system by reducing the solar heat load in the crew compartment.


PzH 2000 self-propelled howitzer equipped with a mobile multispectral camouflage system (“MMT”)

The verification procedure for the equipment was rounded off with a live firing test of the camouflaged PzH 2000 A2 on 24 January 2012. The MMT equipment “survived” a total of 74 rounds fired without taking a scratch. Following the successful trials of the prototype, the Bundeswehr Technical Centre for Protective and Special Technologies (WTD 52), which has been in charge of testing the equipment, can thus authorize the full release of the MMT. According to current plans, the PzH 2000 A2 howitzers used in Afghanistan will be fitted with the camouflage equipment in April 2012 with technical support from WTD 52.

In 2011 already, an experimental prototype of the PzH 2000-adapted MMT developed by the company Saab-Barracuda was tested for fit, durability and conformity with the Road Traffic Licensing Regulation on the occasion of several driving tests conducted by the Bundeswehr Technical Centre for Automotive and Armoured Vehicles (WTD 41) in Trier. Minor deficits revealed during these tests were remedied immediately. The enhanced MMT has proved its acceptability for service use on the occasion of comprehensive tests carried out by the Bundeswehr Artillery School in Idar-Oberstein from 16 to 20 January 2012.


Leopard 2 Tank equipped with Saab's Multispectral Mobile Camouflage System (MCS) and HeaT Reduction properties (HTR) incorporated

Tasks of MMT mobile multispectral camouflage system:

Hot surfaces along with large radar cross-sections make military vehicles highly exposed to sensors and target acquisition systems. Vehicles therefore require advanced signature management equipment in order to achieve sufficient protection against detection and identification.

MMT is intended primarily for protection of vehicles while moving and during combat. The Mobile Camouflage System is a flexible solution that can be applied in a number of configurations using different types of materials.

Principle of camouflage effect:

- visual region: three-dimensional assembly of the leaf structure
- infrared region: reduction of thermal contrast to a background using a material with low thermal capacity and efficient assembly of the cover textile.
- microwave region: absorption and scattering of an incident wave to a background level.

[ADMk2]

Does the Taliban make use of "advanced multi-spectral targetting systems"? Me thinks we're seeing a bit more "wartime advertising" here...

[buglerbilly]

BARRACUDA helps enormously with keeping the INTERNAL temperature of the armoured vehicle to survivable levels which is pretty necessary considering most of them have wank aircon IF they have any...............it's got little to do with external detection, thats just BS posing to excuse the aquisition even if its true.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Congressman Calls for Afghanistan Study Group

Feb. 10, 2012 - 04:58PM

By KATE BRANNEN

Citing a U.S. Army officer’s claims that there is no progress being made in Afghanistan, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., is urging Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to create an independent study group to review U.S. strategy there.

In a Feb. 10 letter, Wolf wrote he is deeply troubled by the conclusions reached by Lt. Col. Daniel Davis and asks Panetta to immediately create an Afghanistan/Pakistan Study Group.

In 2010 and 2011, Davis traveled to Afghanistan on assignment with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, an organization tasked with getting urgently needed equipment to soldiers in the field.

“What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground,” Davis wrote in an opinion piece titled “Truth, lies and Afghanistan,” published online Feb. 5 by Armed Forces Journal.

Rather than the gradual progress described by top U.S. officials, Davis wrote he saw, “the absence of success on virtually every level.”

During a yearlong deployment that began in late 2010, Davis wrote, his job sent him around the country to talk, travel and patrol with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces. It was his fourth combat deployment, and his second in Afghanistan.

Davis wrote a classified and unclassified report. He has not released either report publicly. On his website, he says he will publish the full unclassified version as soon as Army public affairs completes its review and grants permission for release.

On Feb. 10, Rolling Stone magazine published a copy of the unclassified version on its website.

Davis has provided the reports to members of Congress — both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members. He has also sent his reports to the Defense Department’s inspector general.

He declined to comment for this story.

The Pentagon maintains that the security environment in Afghanistan continues to improve.

During a briefing this week, Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, deputy commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, described steady progress in the country, from local and national government to the development of Afghan security forces. Responding to a question about Davis’ report, Scaparrotti said, “it’s one person’s view of this,” adding that he thought the Defense Department’s outlook is accurate.

Wolf has written similar letters to Panetta over the past several months.

The congressman is the author of the legislation that created the Iraq Study Group and has been pushing for the Obama administration to conduct a similar review of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Wolf was successful in adding a provision to the 2012 defense appropriations bill that sets aside $1 million to create an independent, bipartisan panel to review the U.S strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Through a series of letters, Wolf has urged Panetta, who served on the Iraq Study Group, to set up the new panel.

In January, he sent a letter following the release of the National Intelligence Estimate for Afghanistan, which Wolf said painted a “very bleak picture of the war.”

“The NIE’s assessment could lead to support for the war in Afghanistan eroding among the American people and I feel the same sentiment will soon permeate the halls of Congress,” Wolf wrote in his Jan. 17 letter.

Wolf has said that former congressmen Republican Duncan L. Hunter of California and Democrat Ike Skelton from Missouri would be good choices to serve on the panel. Both served as chairs of the House Armed Services Committee.

In a postscript to his Feb. 10 letter, Wolf wrote to Panetta, “I know you care deeply about our service members serving overseas and that you and your team are doing what you think is best for our country. But I believe any objective observer would agree we need fresh eyes on the target.”

Wolf attached Davis’ Armed Forces Journal op-ed to his letter.

[Raven22]

BARRACUDA helps enormously with keeping the INTERNAL temperature of the armoured vehicle to survivable levels which is pretty necessary considering most of them have wank aircon IF they have any...............it's got little to do with external detection, thats just BS posing to excuse the aquisition even if its true.

Afghanistan may be one of the few places that the BARRACUDA camouflage is worth it, since the vehicles will spend pretty much all there time away from trees. When Australia tested the system on the Abrams it kept getting ripped off when the vehicles were manoeuvreing between trees and scrub at high speeds. In the end it was decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Mind you, Australia does abuse armoured vehicles in the bush in a way no other Army does, so our experience may not hold for others.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Private Security Handover Looking Messy

February 10, 2012

Associated Press|by Heidi Vogt



KABUL, Afghanistan -- The push by Afghanistan's president to nationalize legions of private security guards before the end of March is encouraging corruption and jeopardizing multibillion-dollar aid projects, according to companies trying to make the switch.

President Hamid Karzai has railed for years against the large number of guns-for-hire in Afghanistan, saying private security companies skirt the law and risk becoming militias. He ordered them abolished in 2009 and eventually set March 20 of this year as the deadline for everyone except NATO and diplomatic missions to switch to government-provided security.

Afghan officials are rushing to meet the cutoff with the help of NATO advisers. But with fewer than six weeks to go, it's likely that many components will still be missing on March 20. And even once everything falls into place, higher costs and issues of authority over the government guards will remain.

The change imperils billions of dollars of aid flowing into Afghanistan, particularly from the United States. In a country beset by insurgent attacks and suicide bombings, the private development companies that implement most of the U.S. aid agency's programs employ private guards to protect compounds, serve as armed escorts and guard construction sites.

On March 21, approximately 11,000 guards now working for private security firms will become government employees as members of the Afghan Public Protection Force, or APPF. They will still be working in the same place with the same job. Except now they'll answer to the Interior Ministry.

"We don't want to have security gaps. This is really important to our customers and to us," said the head of the APPF, Deputy Minister Jamal Abdul Naser Sidiqi. It will happen, he says, because the presidential order says it has to.

Officially, everyone is optimistic.

"The APPF is now open for business," a U.S. embassy official said, speaking anonymously to discuss private agency contracts.

But many are still worried that the entire plan could fall apart. Development contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development told The Associated Press they were explicitly told not to discuss the changeover with reporters because media attention could endanger the delicate process. Everyone critical of APPF insisted on speaking anonymously for this article.

Last week the chairman of the House subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing concern that the APPF may not be ready to take over security for aid projects.

Even so, no one expects that there will be a visible problem on March 21.

"The guys who guard our gates today wear a certain baseball hat, and on the 21st of March they'll come wearing a different uniform. It should be pretty seamless," said Bill Haight, head of an infrastructure-building project run by Louis Berger Group and Black and Veach. He said his projects are nearly finished and so he doesn't expect many problems.

But companies with long-running projects are worried. New contracts and operating rules will probably still be in the works when the deadline hits.

The APPF has yet to sign a contract to provide security for any of the approximately 75 companies expected to switch over to government guards in March, according to Noorkhan Haidari, the APPF business manager.

And international firms that are expected to act as middlemen managing the guards are having trouble getting licensed. Though about 20 companies have said they plan to register as so-called Risk Management Companies, or RMCs, only one license has been issued - reportedly after a wait of about two months. Others trying to get licensed say the required documents change every day.

Meanwhile, the Afghan Foreign Ministry has also denied visas to foreign workers for at least three security companies that are trying to get registered as RMCs or are working on one of the exempt contracts, according to a security adviser for a major development contractor. These firms have been told they have to wait for new procedures under the new APPF system. But given that they don't have much time to get everything in line, they're increasingly looking at what bribes they can pay to make it happen, the same person said.

Firms don't have to hire RMCs, but they add a level of management and oversight that meets the standards of international organizations.

Companies have long hired private guards precisely because they don't trust the Afghan police to protect them in a crisis. The United Nations used Afghan police to guard its staff housing until an 2009 attack on a residential hotel in which Taliban assailants quickly made it past police guards and killed five U.N. staffers. The U.N. has since increased its security to include foreign guards.

Afghans working with APPF have gone so far as to urge the business licensing agency to "stop stalling the process," according to a letter sent to U.S. government officials by a development company and obtained by the AP.

"The painfully slow momentum of the various Afghan government entities may have scuppered the chances of a timely handover to the APPF," the letter argues.

Sidiqi said the complaints of delays were overblown, noting that there is a standard three-day licensing process. If there are delays, he said it is because the would-be RMCs are dragging it out.

"We need the RMCs," Sidiqi said. "They have the experience."

He dismissed the possibility of bribery. "This is a legal government organization, so corruption is not going to be possible," Sidiqi said.

But with so much undecided, some development organizations are opting to hunker down inside their compounds until the details are worked out.

A manager with one U.S. government development contractor said the company expects to delay visits to projects in dangerous places until all documents are finalized. The official spoke anonymously to avoid endangering contracts still being negotiated.

Going forward, the development company manager worried about recruiting for projects in places like the insurgent-heavy south. Some employees have already said they won't sign on to projects if their only security is going to be APPF guards.

But even once the RMCs are licensed and in-country, it is unclear that they will provide an easy transition.

These companies will not be able to directly control the guards that they manage. They can only give advice to an Afghan supervisor. If there's a dispute between the two, it will have to be taken to a government-run arbitration panel.

The issue has already caused problems on APPF-guarded projects before the mandatory switch. During the 2010 parliamentary elections, Afghan police pulled a group of APPF guards who were protecting a railroad construction project in the northern province of Balkh off their posts to guard polling stations, according to the former APPF commander.

"I told them it was a violation of the law but they said you have to do it. I was obliged," said Sayed Asghar Asgari. So he gave over 50 of his 462 guards. The guards were returned four days later, but the incident shows the potential for a blurring of lines between the Afghan security forces and guard units.

And as budgets for aid projects are decreasing, the APPF program is likely to increase security costs substantially.

An APPF guard will cost at least $770 a month, according to an AP analysis of official government figures, while private security providers contacted for this story say they usually charge $510-$630 a month per guard.

To avoid pay cuts for guards, individual companies will have to supplement salaries. And any costs for RMC managers will be on top of this. Once these expenses are figured in, security costs could easily double under the APPF.

It is still not clear what these changes will mean for existing USAID contracts. The aid agency has given no overarching guidance for how it will deal with delays or higher costs, though it has urged its partners to review their individual contracts to decide what their obligations and rights will be, the U.S. embassy official said.

Meanwhile, the Afghan government won't officially have all the APPF guards trained for more than a year. By March 20, about 1,840 of the existing guard force will have gone through the formal training program, which graduates about 220 people every three weeks, according to a NATO official who spoke anonymously to discuss an Afghan government program.

The hope is that on-the-job training will be enough in the near term, especially since most private security guards will probably agree to join the APPF. But like much with the APPF right now, it is just a hope.

"It is very complicated and very difficult, but we are trying our best," Sidiqi said.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

FEBRUARY 13, 2012.

The Taliban Five

Meet the men the U.S. might release as a goodwill gesture.

The Obama Administration is pursuing peace talks with the Taliban, and as a goodwill gesture it has been leaking the news that it may pre-emptively release five of their leaders held at Guantanamo. We thought you might like to meet them.

Their identities are an open secret, and last week the White House gave a restricted briefing to a few Members of Congress to win their support. The men are among the 46 out of 171 detainees left at Gitmo that an Administration review in 2010 deemed "too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution." Two years later, these detainees are evidently no longer too dangerous.

These upstanding citizens are:

• Mohammad Fazl, around age 45, was the senior-most Taliban commander in northern Afghanistan and their deputy defense minister when captured in November 2001. He was at the Qala-i-Jangi fortress, outside the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, when hundreds of Taliban prisoners revolted against their captors in the Northern Alliance. CIA operative Johnny Michael Spann died in the melee, becoming the first American casualty of the Afghan war. A confidential annex of the Administration's 2010 review suggests that Fazl may be responsible for Spann's death.

According to his secret 2008 Gitmo file, which was published by WikiLeaks, Fazl also commanded foreign fighters in Afghanistan and "possessed vast power and financial resources."

He was close to Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. Before 9/11, Fazl commanded troops in central Afghanistan who massacred hundreds of Hazaras, a Shiite Muslim ethnic minority. His Gitmo file also says the Iranian government suspects him of "being connected" to the killing of its diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998.

• Mullah Norullah Nori served with Fazl in northern Afghanistan and was with him at Qala-i-Jangi fortress. The U.S. suspects him of involvement in Spann's murder. He is an alleged war criminal for his role in the massacre of Shiite Afghans, which he has told his Gitmo interrogators were justified by the Taliban's desire to "establish their ideal state."

• Mohammed Nabi was "a senior Taliban official" who helped smuggle weapons to attack U.S. troops and finance the Taliban. He is one of a few leaders who was, according to his Gitmo file, "loyal" to the Haqqani network, a terrorist group based in western Pakistan and allied with the Taliban. He has a record of poor behavior while in custody at Guantanamo.

• Khairullah Khairkhwa, former Taliban governor of Herat province in western Afghanistan, was "directly associated" with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, his interrogators say. He met often with officials from Iran, which has tried to undermine post-Taliban Afghanistan. Khaikhwa says he's also a friend of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and his lawyers say he wasn't ideologically committed to the Taliban.

• Abdul Haq Wasiq, 40, was the deputy head of Taliban intelligence, which tortured and murdered civilians. His Gitmo interrogators say he has withheld what he knows about outside Islamist groups that the Taliban worked with to fight the U.S., and he may belong to al Qaeda. His release, says an intelligence source, would be "highly problematic."

The Administration's plan seems to be to turn these five over to the custody of the Qatar government. But once there the U.S. will have lost all leverage over their fate, and the likelihood is that they will eventually be released outright, be traded in a prisoner exchange, or escape. Some or all are likely to rejoin their terror trade.

Congress can't stop these transfers, but it can raise a fuss. At a minimum, Fazl and Nori ought to be properly investigated—and perhaps put on trial—for Spann's murder and war crimes committed in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The release of the confidential sections of the Gitmo review related to the Spann case would also inform a public debate and address widespread concerns on Capitol Hill about any transfers.

The bigger question is why the U.S. would trade anyone in exchange for nothing more than a Taliban promise to talk. As they see the U.S. heading for the Afghan exits in 2014, with military combat operations ending by 2013, the Taliban have little incentive to make any concessions. They know they merely have to wait.

One of the failures of the Afghan campaign is that we still haven't killed or captured Mullah Omar. By freeing the Taliban's senior figures from Guantanamo, President Obama will send another signal of weakness that will make them even less likely to negotiate in good faith.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page 11

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Drone Strikes ‘Counterproductive’: Pakistani PM

Feb. 12, 2012 - 03:06PM

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani says U.S. drone strikes targeting al-Qaida and Taliban militants were counterproductive and his country had not given permission for such attacks.

“We did not allow or give permission to fly drones from Pakistan,” Gilani told Al Jazeera television in an interview broadcast Feb. 12.

“Drones are counterproductive and we have discussed it thoroughly with the U.S. administration.”

Gilani said the “collateral damage” from drone attacks was counterproductive because it undermined his government’s efforts to separate tribes from militants, and also violated Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Gilani said Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf had “some understanding” on drone attacks with the United States.

U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in late 2010 showed Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders privately supported U.S. drone attacks, despite public condemnation in a country where the U.S. alliance is hugely unpopular.

The United States had until now refused to discuss the strikes publicly, but the program has dramatically increased as the Obama administration looks to withdraw all foreign combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Obama only confirmed the secret drone program in late January.

U.S. missiles on Feb. 9 killed the most senior Pakistani in al-Qaida and one of the main U.S. targets in the country.

Badar Mansoor, who reputedly sent fighters to Afghanistan and ran a training camp in North Waziristan, was killed in a drone strike near the Afghan border, Pakistani officials and a member of his group said.

According to an AFP tally, 45 U.S. missile strikes were reported in Pakistan’s tribal belt in 2009, 101 in 2010 and 64 in 2011.

Islamabad is reviewing its alliance with the United States and has kept its Afghan border closed to NATO supply convoys since a November air strike killed 24 soldiers.

When the route reopens, it is widely expected to tax NATO convoys carrying supplies shipped to its port in Karachi and trucked through its territory to landlocked Afghanistan.

The United States has made increasing use of alternative routes into Afghanistan through the north in order to mitigate against losses in Pakistan.

[buglerbilly]

U.S., Afghans Near Deal on Post-2014 Mission: Panetta

Feb. 14, 2012 - 01:51PM

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

WASHINGTON — U.S. and Afghan officials are weeks away from clinching a security pact allowing an American military mission to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Feb. 14.

The two sides still had to resolve disagreements over controversial night raids by U.S. troops, which Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials say have claimed too many civilian lives, and the transfer of U.S.-run prisons in the country, the Pentagon chief said.

“As you know, there are two areas that we still have difficulties with, one of which involves the transfer of detention facilities, the other involves night-time raids,” Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“And we continue to try to see if we can work out some kind of compromise on those issues,” he said.

But he said most of the elements of a security pact were in place.

“So I’m confident that hopefully, within the next few weeks, we’ll be able to reach some kind of agreement.”

Top Afghan officials and American commanders have suggested the United States will likely retain a military presence in Afghanistan after 2014, when Afghan army and police are due to take over security for the whole country.

But the precise size and role of a post-2014 mission have remained unclear.

Panetta told senators a post-2014 mission would likely include counter-terrorism operations against Al-Qaida and other militants along with providing U.S. air power, intelligence and logistical support for Afghan forces.

At the hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called for a U.S. force of about 15,000-20,000 troops after 2014.

Afghanistan last month forged strategic agreements with Britain, France and Italy to govern security ties after NATO combat troops exit by the end of 2014.

Nearly 90,000 U.S. troops are now deployed in Afghanistan amid plans for the force to decline to 68,000 by the end of September.

President Barack Obama, who sent a “surge” of reinforcements after entering office in 2009, is pursuing a gradual troop drawdown in Afghanistan, with the bulk of the American force expected to withdraw after Afghan army and police take the lead by the end of 2014.

But analysts have urged the administration to publicly commit to a long-term military presence to prevent the Taliban from seizing back power and to head off a possible civil war with proxies backed by neighboring countries.

[buglerbilly]

ISAF confirms 2011 Global Hawk crash

By: Zach Rosenberg Washington DC

14 hours ago

Source:

A military headquarters in Afghanistan has confirmed that a Northrop Grumman EQ-4B Global Hawk crashed in the southeast city of Jalalabad on 21 August 2011 in a still unexplained mishap for the high-altitude unmanned air system. The EQ-4 is an RQ-4 Global Hawk Block 20 modified to carry the Battlefield Airborne Communication Node (BACN). Only two RQ-4s have been modified into EQ-4s, with two more undergoing modifications.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a coalition military headquarters based in Kabul, told Flightglobal the crash occurred on 21 August, or one day later than an RQ-4 mishap recently posted on the website for the US Air Force's accident investigation board (AIB). Air Combat Command, which owns the Global Hawk aircraft, said they are processing an AIB report for an EQ-4 mishap from 20 August. "The aircraft was recovered without incident. We have no reporting of the aircraft returned to service," said ISAF.

The aircraft reportedly crashed well away from the airport in the Naranj Bagh district of Jalalabad, damaging two houses but causing no injuries. Pictures purportedly of the scene show signs of fire.

Initial reports from ISAF indicate mechanical problems were encountered during flight. While Jalalabad is home to a large and active ISAF airbase, no Global Hawks are known to be based there.

The USAF has yet to confirm details, but the AIB website classifies the mishap as a Class A event, which is reserved for incidents causing more than $2 million damage or a fatality. The category includes total airframe loss.


© Northrop Grumman

An ISAF press release from 21 August 2011 reports that an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) made a forced landing in Jalalabad. The type of aircraft was not identified, but no other incidents on that date are reported. A General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-1 Predator crash was recorded on 20 August at a different location.

Global Hawks have made emergency landings in Afghanistan on at least two prior occasions, according to sources with knowledge of the aircraft. At least two other Global Hawks have crashed flying operational missions in the Central Command area of operations, which includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and other locations where US UAVs have been noted.

Northrop declined to comment on the 21 August incident, referring all questions to the USAF.

The AIB investigation panel is due to release its report later in 2012.

[buglerbilly]

Army Makes Big Bets On Small Programs; Train, Advise Mission May Spread Beyond SOF

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

Published: February 14, 2012



THE PENTAGON: While multi-billion dollar programs dominate the defense debate, the U.S. Army is quietly placing a big bet on a very small part of the Pentagon budget.

The service's strategy? Leverage the administration's interest in rebuilding military-to-military relationships around the world – long overshadowed by the simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – by launching an ambitious but relatively cheap program of international wargames, advisor missions, officer exchanges, and other efforts to "build partnership capacity." As the Army seeks to redefine itself for the post-war era, the new strategy will mean more investment in Special Forces, which have always emphasized this mission. But the Army plans to go beyond this traditional mission for Special Forces and wants to enhance the ability of regular Army units to work with foreign troops around the globe.

"If we have to fight, we will fight with partners," said Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale said yesterday during his budget briefing, implicitly emphasizing the Obama Administration's break with George W. Bush's willingness to act unilaterally. "So we need strong alliances and are taking a number of steps – not large dollars, but large, I think, in importance." While Hale spent most of his Monday briefing on the 2013 budget talking about numbers in the billions and tens of billions, he also took time to talk about initiatives that look like rounding errors to most Pentagon programs:

• NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance, the alliance's program to buy its own flight of five reconnaissance drones in order to remedy deficiencies encountered during the airstrikes on Libya last summer: $200 million.

• The National Guard State Partnership Program, through which individual states send their Guard units abroad to train: $100 million.

• The COCOM Exercise & Engagement Program, through which the regional Combatant Commanders in Europe, the Pacific, and elsewhere fund joint training with allies: $800 billion.

• The Security Force Assistance Program, which builds up foreign militaries: $400 million.

Added together, those four programs total just over $1.4 billion, big money to most people but less than a quarter of one percent of the Pentagon's $613.9 billion total request for 2013. Yet Hale's focus wasn't a fluke. The administration took care to spotlight these same programs in its new Strategic Guidance on Defense. "Whenever possible," the guidance declares, "we will develop innovative, low-cost, and small-footprint approaches to achieve our security objectives, relying on exercises, rotational presence, and advisory capabilities."

"Low cost" and "small footprint" are the keywords that make this approach the opposite of the past decade. Instead of pouring resources into U.S.-dominated operations in just two countries, the Obama Administration wants to empower allies around the world to take the lead on their local and regional problems – take the lead, that is, with U.S. support and in ways that align with U.S. interests. Last year's Libya operation test-drove the new approach, when the U.S. "led from behind" by supporting the NATO allies who carried out most of the air strikes, which in turn supported the Libyan rebels who did all the fighting on the ground.

In some ways, this approach is going back to the future: wargaming with NATO allies or the Japanese was a high-profile priority of the pre-9/11 military, and even the initial invasion of Afghanistan relied on providing select infusions of airpower, bribe money, and Special Operations support to a local ally on the ground, the Northern Alliance. Now the Pentagon wants to revive these long-sidelined efforts and infuse them not only with cash but with 10 years of hard-won expertise from building up local forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Because U.S. troops are out of Iraq and coming out of Afghanistan, moreover, even a downsizing military will have more personnel to spare to work with partners elsewhere. In Europe, for example, two of the Army's eight combat brigades stationed on the continent are being disbanded, unnerving many in NATO. "Nevertheless," said Hale, "the Europeans will probably see more of us, not less because many of the units now stationed in Europe are deployed to Afghanistan. As we wind down the troops there, there will be more of those units back in Europe."

It's the U.S. Army that has embraced the "building partner capacity" mission most enthusiastically. The Army's Special Forces, the celebrated Green Berets, have always emphasized the advisor mission, but the sheer scale of effort required in Afghanistan and Iraq forced the rest of the Army to get in the act as well. Last fall, the Army announced that some units freed from the treadmill of repeated deployments to the war zone would become "regionally aligned brigades" dedicated to working with foreign forces in specified regions of the world, starting in 2013 with two brigades assigned to Africa Command. [The Marines have been pursuing a similar effort.] Just this month, the service devoted a week-long conference to the Army's role in building partner capacity.

"Ten years ago, I dare say this probably would not have reached the threshold of having [such an] event," Training and Doctrine Command chief Gen. Robert Cone said at the conference. "The culture of the Army has in fact changed," he said. "We cannot leave behind the experience of the last ten years." And, Cone added, after a decade of doing it the hard way – creating the Afghan and Iraq militaries from nothing in the middle of a raging conflict – Army soldiers can appreciate the new strategy's emphasis on finding foreign partners and building them up before the shooting starts.

How can the Army do this better? There were a host of hotly debated ideas from a mix of civilian foreign and American experts and military officers. There was wide agreement that the solutions of the last 10 years had been too improvised, inefficient, and ad hoc, but they did not reach consensus on how to institutionalize those lessons learned. Some participants emphasized creating a cadre of foreign-area experts in specialized organizations devoted to particular regions; others preferred spreading a lower level of expertise throughout the Army as a whole. "Do we form separate units to do this or is this a fundamental requirement of a U.S. Army brigade?" Cone asked. "There's a very rich discussion going on, [and] you have competing models."

One area of almost universal agreement, however, was the need for the Army as a whole to take on missions once reserved for the Special Forces, and for main-force units at all levels of command to work more closely with the special operators. "[For] soldiers who have done this over the last ten years, they realize that a conventional infantryman is conducting a meeting with a local governor and solving tribal problems. They understand this is part of our identity now, and where I think we'd really have problems is if we tried to walk away from that," Cone said. Nowadays and for the foreseeable future, he said, "this kind of interaction is a fundamental responsibility of our conventional forces."

[buglerbilly]

Karzai says Afghanistan joins Taliban peace talks with United States


CARL COURT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES - Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai told the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. and Afghan governments have begun secret three-way peace talks with the Taliban.

By Reuters, Thursday, February 16, 11:54 AM

The U.S. and Afghan governments have begun secret three-way talks with the Taliban, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the Wall Street Journal, in a move that could bolster U.S.-led efforts to convene fully fledged peace talks within months.

Karzai’s government had previously been excluded from early, exploratory contacts between the Taliban and the United States, with the insurgents seen as resisting the involvement of a administration they regard as a puppet of Washington.

But the Journal quoted Karzai on Thursday as saying that the Taliban were “definitively” interested in a peace settlement to end the 10-year war in Afghanistan and that all three sides were now involved in discussions.

“People in Afghanistan want peace, including the Taliban,” the Journal quoted Karzai as saying in an interview Wednesday in the Afghan capital. “They’re also people like we all are. They have families, they have relatives, they have children, they are suffering a tough time.”

“There have been contacts between the U.S. government and the Taliban, there have been contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and there have been some contacts that we have made, all of us together, including the Taliban,” he was quoted as saying.

The newspaper said Karzai had declined to specify the location of the talks or go into further detail, saying he feared that could damage the process.

Karzai’s comments were published as he prepares to meet the leaders of neighboring Pakistan and Iran in Islamabad on Thursday for a summit set to focus on security issues, including the Taliban insurgency and support for it from within Pakistan.

Washington wants to accelerate the fragile talks with the Taliban so it can announce serious peace negotiations at a NATO summit in May, officials say, in what would be a welcome bright spot in Western efforts to end the war in Afghanistan.

The United States hopes it can declare a start to authentic political negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban at the summit May 20 and 21 in Chicago, after a year of initial, uncertain contacts with militant representatives.

It would be a needed victory for the White House and its NATO partners in Afghanistan as they struggle to contain a resilient insurgency and train a local army while moving to bring their troops home over the next three years.

[buglerbilly]

Fearing infiltration, Afghan army gives soldiers with ties to Pakistan an ultimatum


Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images - Newly-graduated Afghan National Army soldiers march during their graduation ceremony at the in Kabul in January. The order that soldiers must either move their families to Afghanistan or leave the army could inflame ethnic tensions and aggravate relations with Pakistan.

By Kevin Sieff, Friday, February 17, 8:34 AM

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — In an effort to rid their army of Taliban infiltrators, Afghan officials have begun ordering soldiers with families in Pakistan to either move their relatives to Afghanistan or leave the military.

Afghan defense officials say the policy was crafted in response to a recent spate of incidents in which soldiers who were secretly working for the Taliban carried out attacks against NATO or Afghan troops. According to the army’s counterintelligence findings, those men often have ties to insurgent havens in Pakistan.

But the ultimatum could force painful choices for thousands of Afghan troops, and it is likely to stoke ethnic tensions just as the country’s leadership is seeking a negotiated end to the war. Purging members of the military with family in Pakistan also has the potential to aggravate long-troubled relations between Afghanistan and its eastern neighbor. Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited Islamabad on Thursday in a bid to enlist Pakistan’s help in winding down the conflict.

The policy has not yet received final approval from the Defense Ministry, and Afghan officials are still weighing whether to apply it nationwide, even as implementation begins in some areas. Mere consideration of the policy reflects the depth of anxiety in Afghanistan — both among Afghan officials and Western powers — over sleeper agents within the military.

U.S. officials have expressed concern about the Taliban’s ability to penetrate Afghan security forces but have not publicly proposed concrete remedies. Afghan commanders say that the connection between sleeper agents and time spent in Pakistan has been well documented and that there is consensus on the need to act.

“When they’re in Pakistan, they can be influenced and intimidated by the enemy,” said Lt. Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, the army chief of staff. “It’s a big concern, and it’s something we’re trying to change.”

Insurgent groups such as the Taliban are widely believed to operate from bases in Pakistan, and militants frequently travel back and forth across the border. Pakistan has denied long-standing allegations that it provides insurgents with support.

Afghan counterintelligence officials have already compiled lists of soldiers with ties to Pakistan. In some parts of the country, such as the battle-scarred south, soldiers on the list have been told: Move or leave the army.

“We’ve told them, ‘If you can’t move your families, you’ll be kicked out,’ ” said Col. Abdul Shokor, the top Afghan counterintelligence official in the Afghan army’s Kandahar-based 205th Corps.

On his desk, Shokor keeps a list of several hundred soldiers based in southern Afghanistan who visit Pakistan during their time off from the military. No deadline has yet been set for the families to move, he said.

If the new rule is implemented nationally, it could affect several thousand soldiers. Millions of Afghan refugees fled to Pakistan in recent decades to escape the fighting. About 1.7 million Afghans still live there, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Afghan soldiers often leave their families in Pakistan for security reasons.

The new policy would disproportionately affect Pashtuns, many of whom live in the border areas. The Taliban, which is predominantly Pashtun, has sought for years to argue that the Afghan government favors other ethnic groups, including Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Hostility among ethnic groups has been a key driver of war in Afghanistan for the past three decades, and it has the potential to become even more of a factor as Western forces withdraw.

Pashtuns have historically been underrepresented in the Afghan army, but Pashtun soldiers now make up 40 percent of it — roughly equal to their share of the overall population and a hard-won improvement from several years ago.

A closer look at recruits

Training the Afghan army has been a top U.S. priority, and the force stands at 170,000 troops. But after years of rapid growth, defense officials say it’s time to take a closer look at the quality and allegiance of soldiers rather than focusing on recruitment numbers.

“As we approach our ceiling, we’re able to be more selective about our soldiers,” Karimi said.

He insisted that the policy would not be meant as an affront to Pakistan, but as a means of strengthening the Afghan army.

After an infiltrator’s attack last month on French troops north of Kabul, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that his country’s troops would depart a year earlier than expected. The assailant had probably had contact with the Taliban in Pakistan, French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet told reporters.

Shortly after the incident, the Afghan Defense Ministry sent top Afghan military officials a memo titled “Keeping the Enemy Out of the Army.” The memo highlighted the urgency of the infiltration problem and the need to make changes.

Attacks on foreign troops have inflamed tensions between Western trainers and Afghan recruits just as NATO’s commitment to Afghanistan appears to be waning. A report commissioned by the U.S. military said at least 58 Western military personnel were killed in 26 attacks by Afghan soldiers or police between May 2007 and May 2011, when the report was finished.“Such fratricide is fast leading to a crisis of trust between the two forces, if it hasn’t reached this point already,” the report concluded.

In Kandahar alone, four rogue Afghan soldiers have killed three American and two Australian soldiers in the past year. Shokor said that in each of those cases, “upon investigation, we found a relationship with Pakistan.”

Afghan officials are quick to point out that infiltrators don’t target only Western troops. Dozens of Afghan soldiers, police officers and top military officials have been killed by Taliban infiltrators in recent years, they say. Several months ago, Brig. Gen. Abdul Hamid, the top commander in southern Afghanistan, found an unexploded bomb under his desk. Last spring, a man in an Afghan army uniform opened fire inside the fortified Defense Ministry complex, intending to kill Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak.

A senior Pentagon official played down the threat from Afghans with Pakistani relatives.

“Our strong sense is that the insider threat isn’t an organized effort. Insurgents are probably to blame in some cases, but sometimes it’s simply disaffected members of the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces]. And it’s worth noting that instances of Afghan-on-Afghan violence inside the ANSF are more frequent than ANSF-on-NATO attacks,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The Afghan army has ramped up its counterintelligence operations over the past year. While its traditional vetting process required enlistees to get letters of endorsement from village elders and district governors, the army now pays increased attention to soldiers after they have been admitted into the armed forces, particularly when they are on leave and subject to Taliban threats. “We now have a special reconnaissance group to investigate what soldiers do on leave,” Hamid said.

Afghan officials have for years been weighing possible solutions to the problem of infiltration. Three years ago the country’s parliament issued a recommendation to the Defense Ministry to root out soldiers with ties to Pakistan, including those with families who own property there. The recommendation was not acted upon at the time, but it reflects the widespread sense among Afghan officials that Pakistan is at the root of their troubles.

“It’s all linked to Pakistan,” said Shukriya Barakzai, a member of the parliament’s defense subcommittee and its former chairwoman. “It’s crystal clear.”

Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

FEBRUARY 18, 2012.

Afghan General Sounds Alarm

Defense Minister Says New U.S. Proposal to Cut Local Troop, Police Forces Risks Endangering Nation.

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV

KABUL—An American proposal to cut the size of Afghan security forces by more than one-third after 2014 could lead to a catastrophe, Afghanistan's defense minister told The Wall Street Journal, underlining his government's growing fears of being abandoned after most foreign troops withdraw.


Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Afghan policemen trained in Adraskan city recently. Coalition forces are debating how many police and troops they can afford

The minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, expressed his concerns after the U.S., which along with its allies funds Afghanistan's military and police forces, circulated a new proposal to cut troops to 230,000 after 2014, from 352,000 this year.

That proposed troop reduction, discussed at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ministerial meeting in Brussels, was confirmed in an interview by U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger, commander of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan that developed it.

The smaller Afghan force, estimated to cost some $4.1 billion a year, reflects "our assessment of what the international community will provide and what the Afghans can provide for themselves," Gen. Bolger said.

The Afghan government is still negotiating with the U.S. over what kind of American military presence, if any, will remain in the country after that deadline. With most of the U.S.-led coalition forces scheduled to leave Afghanistan by late 2014, a robust Afghan army and police will be needed to keep the Taliban insurgency at bay, Afghan leaders and some American lawmakers say.

"Nobody at this moment, based on any type of analysis, can predict what will be the security situation in 2014. That's unpredictable," Gen. Wardak said. "Going lower has to be based on realities on the ground. Otherwise it will be a disaster, it will be a catastrophe, putting at risk all that we have accomplished together with so much sacrifice in blood and treasure."

Many NATO allies have long opposed the American drive to ramp up the size of the Afghan army and police, saying that the Afghan economy simply cannot afford such an expensive professional military. The Afghan forces are expected to meet their target of 352,000 personnel, scheduled for October, months ahead of time.

The recent proposal to cut the force's size after 2014 has been produced by a "U.S.-only planning team," and does not yet reflect an agreed position of the allied governments, Gen. Bolger said.

The U.S. is now spending some $11.2 billion a year on Afghan security forces—well above the Afghan government's annual budget. The Obama administration's request for fiscal 2013 is $5.7 billion.



U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking to reporters before the Brussels meeting, said the size of the future Afghan force will largely depend on "the funds that are going to be put on the table." The U.S. is looking for additional contributions from countries outside NATO, such as Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and Arab Gulf monarchies.

America's European allies, gripped by economic problems at home, are particularly reluctant to meet U.S. requests to fund a significant part of the $4.1 billion price tag estimated for the years after 2014, with some pressing for an even leaner Afghan force.

"The Americans didn't ask our advice when they were building it up, and now all of a sudden they want us to pay up," one diplomat from a NATO country said.

U.S. officials stressed Friday that the number remains a subject of debate both among U.S. officials and between U.S. and NATO officials.

"There is an awful lot in play," said a U.S. military officer. "There are 10 American opinions, 10 German opinions, 10 French opinions.... You are hearing the normal give and take."

U.S. and Afghan officials say they expect the issue to be settled by a NATO summit in Chicago in May.

Gen. Wardak has long campaigned for an even larger force than that currently envisioned, saying that implementing a successful counter-insurgency strategy would require between 400,000 and 500,000 troops. He said he now realizes he won't get that number.

"We are becoming victim to a lot of issues—economic austerity, the war has been prolonged beyond the expectations… elections in countries where we are becoming hostage to local political agendas," Gen. Wardak said.

Afghan officials aren't just worried by the manpower levels. They also say the Afghan army badly needs the "enablers"—such as medevac, intelligence, surveillance and airlift assets—that are currently provided by NATO.

"At the moment these forces are built as lighter-than-light infantry," Gen. Wardak said. "They don't have all the capabilities that a modern army in any country has."

It is possible that a force of 230,000 would be sufficient if the security situation improves, the Taliban embrace the tentative peace process with Kabul, and Pakistan shuts down insurgent safe havens on its soil, Gen. Wardak said.

"If it happens the question of numbers will be less relevant," he said. "But if it doesn't then all that we are planning will be in danger. We have to leave some level of flexibility."

Gen. Bolger said that the U.S. and allies recognize Afghan concerns. "Three years is a long time. We'll want to look at the security situation in the country, we'll want to look at what arrangements Afghanistan has made with other countries," he said. "We haven't figured any of that out yet."

He added that NATO hasn't determined whether any planned drawdown of Afghan forces would start on Jan. 1, 2015, or on a different date.

Retired U.S. Lt. Gen. David Barno, a senior adviser at the Center for a New American Security think-tank and a former commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, cautioned about the need to weigh the fiscal constraints against the perils of cutting the Afghan forces too deeply. "The risk here is you are going to reduce funding for Afghan security forces in the midst of a robust insurgency," he said. "Leaders have to be careful they do not get seized with the affordability argument without understanding the military implications."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an influential voice on Afghanistan policy, said he believed that cutting the Afghan forces to 230,000 "does not seem wise."

"I would hate to be the senator who tried to end this on the cheap. … If we fail to deliver it will be a huge blunder that haunts our country," he said. "If the country goes back to Taliban control it will all be for nothing."

With attrition rates in the Afghan army running at 1.4% a month, the proposed drawdown could be achieved—at least in part—without the mandatory dismissals that could fuel the insurgency with an influx of resentful, trained ex-soldiers.

In Iraq in 2003, an American decision to disband the Iraqi army helped spark an insurgency that has yet to be extinguished.

"Immediate downsizing of 130,000 people in a country like Afghanistan, where these people are providing livelihood to at least a million people, will have very risky consequences," Gen. Wardak warned. "It has to be gradual," Gen. Bolger agreed.

Afghan leaders, many of them—like Gen. Wardak—drawn among U.S.-backed anti-Soviet mujahedeen commanders, still have painful memories of how the U.S. turned away from Afghanistan after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, a disengagement that plunged the country into a civil war and ultimately led to the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

"I do hope the international community has learned from their experience in the 1990s," Gen. Wardak said. "This country is located in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world, and there are lots of threats."

[I]—Julian E. Barnes, Adam Entous and Matt Murray contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

Pakistani border town hit by deadly suicide bomb inside market

Attack in north-western town of Parachinar near Afghan border kills or wound scores of Shia Muslims, say officials

Associated Press in Peshawar

The Guardian, Saturday 18 February 2012


Parachinar in Pakistan's north-west is a mostly Shia town. Photograph: Saeed Shah

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle has struck at a market in a Pakistani town close to the Afghan border, killing up to 32 Shia Muslims and wounding more than 60 others, according to officials.

Local government administrator Wajid Ali said the attacker detonated a device in the north-western town of Parachinar.

Many of the dead were shoppers or stallholders, he said.

After the attack, security forces fired at crowds protesting against the bombing, killing three people, said Ali.

A local Taliban commander, Fazal Saeed Haqqani, claimed responsibility for the attack in Parachinar, a mostly Shia town. He justified the attack by saying Shias had been attacking Sunnis.

Parachinar and the nearby region of Kurram have been plagued by sectarian violence for several years. Shia have been the overwhelming victims.

Pakistan has suffered hundreds of suicide attacks over the last five years, mostly by militants in the north-west close to the Afghan border who have given safe haven to al-Qaida operatives and insurgents fighting in Afghanistan. The army has responded with several offensives, but have had limited success in a country where extremists have significant support among the population.

[buglerbilly]

Fawzia Koofi targets Afghan presidency as fight for women's rights continues

Much has improved for women since the US-led invasion, and a female leader is no longer unthinkable, says Afghan MP

Lizzy Davies

guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 February 2012 17.36 GMT


Fawzia Koofi was elected as an MP in 2005 and became the Afghan parliament’s first female deputy speaker. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

The questions came thick and fast but the woman sitting on the podium in a pink headscarf and high heels took them all in her stride. The Taliban, the Northern Alliance, Hamid Karzai, women's rights: Fawzia Koofi answered fluently and politely, even to the London School of Economics student who wondered if the Taliban didn't after all bring a degree of stability to Afghanistan.

Then, just as the session was drawing to a close, a member of the audience asked, with a wry smile: "Some people in the west think it's natural that the president of Afghanistan be a Pashtun and a man. Please discuss." The room tittered. Koofi smiled.

The question was both playful and pertinent, for there is perhaps no one better placed to answer it than the small, quietly determined 36-year-old woman who found herself speaking on Friday at London's Chatham House.

Koofi, a former UN employee who studied, lobbied and fought her way to being elected as an MP in 2005 and, subsequently, the Afghan parliament's first female deputy speaker, now has her sights set on the ultimate political prize: the presidency.

And, as unlikely as a female leader in Afghanistan may seem, she is convinced that it is no longer unthinkable. A significant proportion of Afghan society, she said, was now ready for change.

"I think Afghanistan needs new leaders, because the same people have been ruling the country for centuries and decades. But the [ordinary] people have changed," she said, sitting in a London hotel room the night before her speech. "The silent majority of people want politicians that are committed, that are close to them, that are at their level."

All over the world, she said, people were discovering that the best examples of "politicians who deliver" were women. Afghanistan, however, presents female MPs with certain logistical challenges that their counterparts in most other countries do not have to face.

In her short career, Koofi has been subject to two attempts on her life, one in 2010, when gunmen thought to be Taliban riddled her car with bullets while she was cowering inside. The last threat, she said, came two months ago when the national security team warned that the Haqqani network was trying to assassinate her.

Koofi's memoir, The Favoured Daughter, is punctuated with letters to her two daughters urging them to be courageous in case, one day, she does not make it home. Yet she remains undeterred.

"My father was killed, my mother passed away, my brothers were killed," she said. "We paid a high price for being in politics and I may go for that. This is the way I choose to be; this is the road I choose to go. I knew the risk."

If she does not scare easily, it is perhaps because life has thrown just about everything it can at her already. The 19th of 23 children her father had with his seven wives, she was left out in the sun to die as a newborn baby because her mother could not bear the shame of having given birth to another girl.

She survived, her mother repenting, but her life has been a battle ever since. She looked on as her father beat her mother; she had to plead with her brother to let her go to school and to marry the man of her choice; and she watched her husband slowly die of tuberculosis contracted in a Taliban jail he was sent to because of his links with her political family.

In the 10 years since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, she said, much had improved for women and – as her remarkable rise shows – attitudes in some parts of society were softening.

But this is all relative. A poll released last year declared the country still to be the worst place in the world for women. On Friday, the New York Times reported the story of an eight-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten because her uncle had run off with a local strongman's wife.

Koofi, fighting to get a new law approved in parliament that would criminalise violence against women – from beatings to "honour" killings – has to face down critics who accuse her of championing a "western law", and describes it as the most challenging part of her political life to date.

What she is most worried about now is that, in its rush to withdraw from the Afghan quagmire and make a deal with the Taliban, the international community will abandon her people to an uncertain fate. At Chatham House, she did not hold back in her warning of what could emerge as a worst-case scenario in the event of an over-hasty withdrawal by the west. Civil war, she said, was a distinct possibility.

And it is for women that Koofi is most concerned. Any involvement of the Taliban in the political running of the country, she said, would affect women. "The fear I have, and the fear many women like me have, is to take the country back to where we started," she said.

It could not be more different from the hopes she, as a self-declared Muslim feminist, has for her country. "My vision for Afghanistan, for my daughters and all the girls and women of Afghanistan is a country where they are respected as a human being regardless of their sex, regardless of their ethnicity, regardless of their religion. Because this was something I was suffering – discrimination and injustice – the whole of my life, even today," she said.

"Every step you take forward, there are hundreds of steps you have to take back because you are a woman.

"I want my daughters to be respected as human beings; that's the country I'm fighting for."

[buglerbilly]

Military: Who Cares How Many Taliban Stop Fighting?

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author February 23, 2012 | 6:30 am


An Afghan speaks at a tribal meeting in Marja, Afghanistan, in 2010. Photo: U.S.M.C.

For years, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan has said that the war will conclude when insurgents decide they’d rather rejoin Afghan society than continue fighting. But now that insurgents have largely opted to continue fighting, the NATO military command has adopted a new line: It doesn’t really matter that only a relatively small number of insurgents have come in from the cold.

The new head of NATO’s support to Afghanistan’s so-called insurgent “reintegration” program lamented “too much of a fixation on the numbers” during a briefing to the Pentagon press corps on Wednesday. That’s rather convenient. British Maj. Gen. David Hook told reporters that 3,100 insurgents have opted to quit fighting — about 12 percent of an estimated 25,000 of them.

“The fact is, it’s about bringing in people to deliver peace, and those individuals going back to their local communities,” Hook said. “The trick that we’re trying to pull off is to understand the broader impact of those groups coming in, and it’s quite a difficult thing to measure.”

It wasn’t always so difficult. Hook’s predecessor and fellow Brit, Maj. Gen. Phil Jones, candidly told reporters in May that it would take “12 [or] 15,000 people running through the program” for reintegration to have a “strategic” impact on the war. Hook dodged Danger Room’s question about whether he echoed Jones’ assessment.

But Hook said that the raw numbers of insurgents entering the program, which began in earnest in 2010, was less significant than the “mid- to low-level leaders” who lay down their arms. He estimated their proportion at “20 to 25 percent” of the total enrolled in reintegration, meaning that at most, 775 tactical Taliban commanders decided to quit fighting. Hook didn’t estimate how many mid- to low-level leaders the Taliban actually have, making it difficult to independently judge his claims of “very powerful” results.

In fact, Hook eluded repeated questions about how many fighters the Taliban actually possesses. (Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. William Speaks said that 25,000 is a credible figure.) “The more important thing is taking away the grievances that these people are fighting for,” Hook said. “Many people are fighting for non-ideological reasons, they’re fighting because of grievances. If you can address their grievances, you not only remove the individual from the battlefield, but you also make it less likely that someone is going to [become an insurgent] behind him because of a grievance.”

But Afghan grievances appear to compile. Yesterday, Hook’s boss, Gen. John Allen, admitted that U.S. troops accidentally burned the Koran at the big Parwan prison complex on the outskirts of Bagram Air Field. Anti-American rioting is in its third day. Right after Hook finished his briefing, Allen’s chief spokesman, Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobsen, told Pentagon reporters that “a considerable amount of [religious] materials” were slated for destruction by U.S. forces at the detention center.

Hook may be right that the numbers of insurgents who’ve quit fighting don’t tell the whole story of reintegration. But here are some other numbers. Civilian casualties are up 8 percent from last year, the fifth consecutive annual rise. Suicide bombings killed 80 percent more Afghans in 2011 than 2010. And the war has entered its eleventh year, still without a clear strategy for convincing insurgents to sue for peace.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban Suicide Attacks Have Held Steady for Most of the War

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author February 24, 2012 | 11:53 am


U.S. military doctors at Bagram Air Field treat a boy wounded by a suicide bomber, 2007. Photo: U.S. Air Force

Since the Taliban became an insurgent movement to oust the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, it’s found a steady stream of recruits to blow themselves up in the hopes of killing others. A review of official NATO statistics finds that whatever tactics the U.S. and its allies have thrown at it throughout the course of the war, Taliban suicide attacks have largely remained constant, averaging about one every three days. And since the surge, those attacks have grown more deadly.

A study compiled by the Army (.PDF) for the U.S.-led NATO command in Afghanistan looked at suicide attacks throughout most of the war. The Taliban launched 119 suicide attacks in 2006, when there were about 30,000 U.S. troops fighting a newly resurgent guerrilla and terrorist force. By 2010, when U.S. forces peaked at roughly 100,000, there were 106 suicide attacks.

That was the same number of suicide attacks as in 2009, when U.S. focus returned to Afghanistan. During two of the Taliban’s peak years of resurgence, 2007 and 2008, the Taliban launched 132 and 116 attacks, respectively.

The methods of suicide bombing have remained relatively constant as well. For the five years the study focused on — the insurgency picked up force around 2005 — the Taliban split about evenly between strapping bombs to a person’s body and sending someone to drive a car packed with explosives. The split was literally even in 106, with 53 attacks of either kind. The greatest variance came in 2009, when car bombs outpaced body bombs, 59 to 47.

Determining the number of suicide attacks in 2011, a year the study doesn’t include, wasn’t possible. A spokeswoman for the NATO command, Australian Lt. L.M. Rago, told Danger Room, “It has been determined we can’t provide you with the level of detail you have requested.” But the United Nations reported in February that the number of suicide attacks last year “did not increase over 2010.”

That said, those attacks grew much deadlier for Afghans. The U.N. also reported that suicide bombings killed 431 civilians, an 80 percent increase from 2010.

The Army study was more concerned with their effect on NATO troops. And there, it found, those effects were marginal. “More than 3 suicide bombers are required to inflict a single casualty on the international forces,” it concluded.

And suicide bombing is hardly the insurgent tactic of choice. That would be the homemade bomb — which are on the upswing, despite the Obama administration’s troop surge.

But over the last year, the United Nations found, suicide bombing has grown “more complex, sometimes involving multiple suicide bombers, and designed to yield greater numbers of dead and injured civilians.”

The NATO command recently argued that the deadlier bomb attacks are a marker of progress. The “freedom of action [insurgents] show today is increasingly in [homemade bombs and suicide bombing," Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the day-to-day commander of the war, told Pentagon reporters earlier this month. "They don't have the capability to take us on directly." The troop surge, he said, has "pushed them into a certain [set of tactics] which isn’t ideal.”

Perhaps, but after ten years of war, Scaparrotti’s predecessors and colleagues have yet to figure out how to erode the Taliban’s ability to convince young men to kill people and die trying.

[buglerbilly]

General Calms Troops After Afghanistan Deaths

February 24, 2012

Associated Press|by Amir Shah and Patrick Quinn



KABUL, Afghanistan - The top U.S. commander told his troops that now is not the time to seek revenge for the death of two Americans who were gunned down by an Afghan soldier during a protest over the burning of Qurans at an American base, even as fresh violence on Friday claimed seven lives.

The new protests were evidence that President Barack Obama's apology has not calmed Afghans enraged by the incident at Bagram Air Field earlier this week. Protests sparked by the burnings have claimed 20 lives in four days.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, parliamentarians and some clerics have also called for an end to the protests until an investigation into the incident is concluded in coming days.

The governor's office in western Herat province said six died in three incidents there.

Muhiuddin Noori, a spokesman for the governor, said three people were killed when a truck full of ammunition exploded after protesters set it ablaze. Three others died in two separate incidents when armed men among the protesters exchanged gunfire with security forces. He said at least 65 people were injured in the three protests.

In northern Baghlan province, Governor Abdul Majid said another protester died when Afghan security forces fired in the air to prevent demonstrators from storming a Hungarian base.

"There was a peaceful protest, but when it ended about 200 irresponsible young people ran toward the base and tried to enter the gate. There was shooting from the Afghan police and the army from several places and one man died and three were wounded," he said.

The violence came as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan has told his troops that "now is not the time for revenge" for the deaths of two U.S. soldiers killed in Thursday's riots.

He told them Thursday to resist whatever urge they might have to strike back after an Afghan soldier killed the two American troops. His comments were released Friday.

"There will be moments like this when you're searching for the meaning of this loss. There will be moments like this, when your emotions are governed by anger and a desire to strike back," Allen said. "Now is not the time for revenge, now is not the time for vengeance, now is the time to look deep inside your souls, remember your mission, remember your discipline, remember who you are."

Afghan National Army Gen. Sher Mohammed Karimi, who traveled to the base with Allen, told the U.S. troops that their sacrifice is not wasted.

Karimi says the Americans and Afghans together are "fighting an enemy of humanity."

The unrest started Tuesday, when Afghan workers at the sprawling Bagram air base noticed that Qurans and other Islamic texts were in the trash that coalition troops dumped into a pit where garbage is burned. Some Afghan workers burned their fingers as they tried to salvage some of the books. Afghan government officials said initial reports indicated four Qurans were burned.

The materials had been taken from a library at Parwan Detention Facility, which adjoins the base, because they contained extremist messages or inscriptions. Writing inside a Quran is forbidden in the Islamic faith, although it was unclear whether the handwritten messages were found in the holy book or other reading materials.

A military official said it appeared that detainees at the prison were exchanging messages by making notations in the texts.

Obama apologized Thursday. In a letter to Karzai, Obama expressed "regret and apologies over the incident in which religious materials were unintentionally mishandled."

But that apology held little sway with Afghans upset at what they considered a serious violation of their religion.

"We don't care about Obama's apology," said Kamaluddin, a 25-year-old Kabul protester who uses only one name. "We have to protest to be responsible to our God. They are burning our Quran. An apology is not enough."

---

Associated Press photographer Rahmat Gul in Nangarhar contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Calls on Taliban to Hold Peace Talks

February 24, 2012

Associated Press|by Sebastian Abbot

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan made its first public appeal Friday for the Taliban to participate in peace talks with the Afghan government, a potentially significant move given Islamabad's perceived influence over the militants.

The Pakistani prime minister's call was welcomed by Afghanistan and will likely be by the United States as well. Both countries have long demanded Islamabad push Taliban leaders believed to be based in Pakistan, including chief Mullah Omar, to the negotiating table.

But it's unclear just how much sway Pakistan has over the militants and what steps the country's shadowy intelligence agency, which is closest to the Taliban, is prepared to take to move the peace process forward.

"It is now time to turn a new leaf and open a new chapter in the history of Afghanistan," said Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. "In this spirit, I would like to appeal to the Taliban leadership as well as to all other Afghan groups, including Hizb-i-Islami, to participate in an intra-Afghan process for national reconciliation and peace."

Hizb-i-Islami is led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan warlord whose ties to Pakistan date back to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Afghan presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi welcomed Gilani's statement, calling it positive first step.

"The second step is of course to move forward, to facilitate meetings and talks between the Afghan government and the armed opposition," said Faizi.

There are signs that momentum for peace talks has been growing, especially with the Taliban's move to set up a political office in the tiny Gulf state of Qatar. But the group has said it would prefer to negotiate with the United States, which has 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, rather than the Afghan government.

This sentiment has reportedly triggered concern both in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the two countries could be sidelined in the peace talks.

The process has also been hobbled by distrust between Islamabad and Kabul. The Afghan government has long accused Pakistan of providing sanctuary for the Taliban, which seized power in Afghanistan in the 1990s with Islamabad's help.

Pakistan has denied the allegations, but it is widely believed to have retained ties with the group because it could be a key ally in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw, especially in countering the influence of neighbor and archenemy India.

However, the Taliban have always been difficult to control and there is a significant amount of distrust of Pakistan within the group.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai traveled to Islamabad last week to discuss the peace process with Pakistan's senior civilian and military officials. He later issued a public statement saying it was "crucial" for Pakistan to support talks with the Taliban.

The Pakistani prime minister's comments Friday were made in response to Karzai's statement.

"We are mindful of the importance of ensuring that the processes of peace and reconciliation succeed and thus contribute to the welfare and well-being of the Afghan people," said Gilani.

However, tension between the two countries spilled into public view during Karzai's recent visit.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said it would be "preposterous" for Afghanistan to expect Islamabad to deliver the Taliban's leader for talks.

Meanwhile, Karzai said there were "impediments" to the peace process that needed to be removed - a possible reference to Pakistan's lack of support to date.

Pakistan has also been battling its own domestic Taliban insurgency.

Taliban suicide bombers armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked a large police station in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday, killing four officers and wounding six in an assault meant to avenge the death of a militant commander in a U.S. drone strike.

Peshawar has been a frequent target of militant attacks over the last few years, but most have been bomb blasts, not coordinated assaults in the center of the city such as Friday's attack.

City police chief Imtiaz Altaf said three militants entered the compound after attacking the main gate, then blew themselves up when police returned fire.

There were more than 370 policemen at the station at the time, said provincial Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain. The number of policemen was so high because authorities send graduates of the police training academy to the station for 18 months before stationing them at other posts.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told The Associated Press the attack was carried out by an affiliated group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigade.

Abu Zarar, a man who claimed to be a spokesman for the Abdullah Azzam Brigade, also told the AP that the group executed the attack. He said it was in response to the death of one of the group's commanders, Badar Mansoor, in a U.S. drone strike on Feb. 9.

Mansoor served as a key link between the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida. He led a group of over 200 Pakistani Taliban fighters in the North Waziristan tribal area, where he was killed.

---

Associated Press writers Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Secret U.S. cable warned about Pakistani havens

By Greg Jaffe and Greg Miller, Saturday, February 25, 7:37 AM

The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan sent a top-secret cable to Washington last month warning that the persistence of enemy havens in Pakistan was placing the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan in jeopardy, U.S. officials said.

The cable, written by Ryan C. Crocker, amounted to an admission that years of U.S. efforts to curtail insurgent activity in Pakistan by the lethal Haqqani network, a key Taliban ally, were failing. Because of the intended secrecy of that message, Crocker sent it through CIA channels rather than the usual State Department ones.

The cable, which was described by several officials familiar with its contents, could be used as ammunition by senior military officials who favor more aggressive action by the United States against the Haqqani havens in Pakistan. It also could buttress calls from senior military officials for a more gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan as the 2014 deadline for ending combat operations approaches.

These military officials have maintained for months that the strategy of targeting raids against Taliban leadership and building local Afghan governance is showing impressive results. But they warn that worsening conditions in Pakistan and the ability of insurgent groups to find haven there necessitates a larger American force than many in the Obama administration are advocating.

The United States is on course to reduce the size of its force in Afghanistan to about 68,000 troops by the end of this summer and shift from combat to more of an advisory role to Afghan forces by the middle of next year.

The coming drawdowns will put heavy pressure on the Afghan government in the east, where U.S. and Afghan forces have struggled to curb violence, in part because insurgents can flee across the border to Pakistan, U.S. officials said. The American frustration with insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan has long been a source of tension in the brittle relations between the two countries.

“The sanctuaries are a deal-killer for the [Afghan war] strategy,” said a senior defense official who is familiar with the ongoing debate and who, like several officials in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

In past years, U.S. military officials have argued that the best defense against insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan was a stronger Afghan army and government. But with U.S. drawdowns looming, the need to directly address the sanctuaries seems more urgent.

The Haqqani network is responsible for some of the larger and more dramatic attacks on Kabul, including one on the U.S. Embassy last year, U.S. officials said.

The group’s patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a major mujaheddin fighter in the CIA-backed effort to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. He has relinquished control to his son, Sirajuddin, who carries a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head and runs day-to-day operations from the network’s Pakistani base in Miran Shah.

The location has given the Haqqani leadership a measure of protection. The CIA has repeatedly refrained from launching missiles at known Haqqani targets, including a prominent religious school the network uses as a base of operations, out of concern for civilian casualties and the backlash that could ensue.

A stark message

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul declined to comment on Crocker’s cable. “As a policy, we don’t comment as to the existence or substance of top-secret cables,” an embassy spokesperson said.

The cable has drawn attention in Washington because of its stark message and because American ambassadors rarely argue that the U.S. government must take more forceful action in another country. Officials familiar with the cable declined to name its primary recipient.

Crocker previously served as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan during the George W. Bush administration and was brought out of retirement by President Obama. Crocker also built close ties to the military and to David H. Petraeus, now CIA director, when Crocker was the ambassador to Iraq and Petraeus was the top general there.

As commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus frequently voiced deep concern about the Haqqani group’s resilience.

The CIA has carried out dozens of drone strikes against Haqqani targets in Pakistan in recent years, while U.S. forces on the Afghan side of the border have killed or captured Haqqani fighters at a rapid pace — only to see the flow of militants subside temporarily and then resume.

“There’s no debate about the importance of going after Haqqani . . . and Taliban militants who launch attacks into Afghanistan,” one U.S. official said. “Support for this is universal.”

Repeated vows to escalate the U.S. campaign against the Haqqani network have produced seemingly fleeting results. A CIA drone strike in October was described at the time by Obama administration officials as the opening salvo in a more aggressive assault against the group’s leadership in Pakistan. The missile attack killed Janbaz Zadran, described by CIA analysts as the main organizer of attacks against coalition targets in Kabul and southeast Afghanistan.

But the timing of Crocker’s cable — sent more than two months after that CIA strike — suggests that U.S. officials in Kabul have yet to see a shift in momentum or measurable impact. The U.S. efforts have been hampered by the group’s populated sanctuary, its close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service, and diplomatic ruptures that caused pauses in the CIA drone campaign.

Unusual mode of delivery

The somewhat unusual mode of transmission for Crocker’s cable suggests that its contents were particularly sensitive, U.S. officials said.

American ambassadors typically send messages to Washington through State Department communications networks. But U.S. officials said cables containing references to intelligence sources or highly classified threat data can be sent across CIA networks, which are more secure. The CIA declined to comment on the cable.

Some current and former U.S. officials have questioned whether the Haqqani network presents an existential threat to the Afghan government.

The Haqqani network’s area of operation in Afghanistan is limited primarily to a handful of provinces in the east, along the border with Pakistan. Some U.S. officials have said the Afghan government’s corruption and its inability to provide services to its people pose a greater threat to the success of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan than the Haqqani network or even the Taliban.

Network seen as a proxy

CIA strikes in Pakistan were suspended for weeks last year after the arrest of an agency contractor on charges of killing two Pakistani men in Lahore and, later, after the U.S. strafing of a Pakistani border post in November that left two dozen of the country’s soldiers dead.

Pakistan has been unwilling to use its military against the Haqqani network, which is seen by many as a Pakistani proxy that is careful to avoid provoking its host, instead directing its attacks against American, Indian and Afghan targets.

Though secret, Crocker’s cable was the latest expression of American exasperation with the situation.

In September, Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vented publicly, testifying before Congress that the Haqqani network was a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

U.S. officials subsequently said Mullen’s characterization overstated the relationship, but many remain convinced that the network couldn’t operate without tacit support from Pakistan.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. delegation to Pakistan walks into uproar over congressman’s resolution


ARIF ALI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES - Pakistani protesters shout slogans during a demonstration against the U.S. in Lahore after a U.S. lawmaker introduced a resolution calling for self-determination in restive Baluchistan province.

By Richard Leiby, Published: February 24 | Updated: Saturday, February 25, 5:50 AM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The five visiting U.S. congressmen said their agenda could not have been more innocent: They came here this week simply to share their wisdom with Pakistani legislators on ways to strengthen democracy, right down to the nitty-gritty of committee oversight and constituent relations.

Instead, they walked straight into a buzz saw called Baluchistan.

The western province, Pakistan’s largest and poorest, blazed into the headlines here when, to the surprise of regional experts, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) introduced in the House a non-binding resolution advocating sovereignty for Baluchistan, where separatists have mounted several insurrections over the decades.

Pakistani leaders and the public exploded with anger, street protests and claims that the United States wants to dismember Pakistan. The resolution, though it had no force of law, stirred traumatic memories here of the 1971 secessionist uprising that led to the loss of East Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh.

It also stoked suspicions about why Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Rules Committee, Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.) and three other members of Congress came to Islamabad for meetings with top officials on Thursday and Friday.

“It will further harm the already strained ties,” an unnamed Pakistani official was quoted as telling the newspaper Pakistan Today.

The visit was part of an exchange program called the House Democracy Partnership, which brings together U.S. lawmakers and those from countries with less-established democratic traditions. As they met with their counterparts, the Americans realized that even senior Pakistani lawmakers had no clue that a resolution such as Rohrabacher’s did not equate to a law or in any way dictate U.S. foreign policy.

Initally the meetings “were very tense,” Dreier said Friday, but the anti-U.S. rhetoric moderated after the visitors swore they did not support a breakaway Baluchistan.

“I want to convey to the people, and the government of Pakistan, that the U.S. is committed to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan,” Dreier told the local media after the group met Thursday with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and offered him similar assurances.

Since Pakistan’s creation in 1948, Baluch nationalists have waged five insurgencies seeking greater autonomy and control over the province’s considerable natural resources, most significantly its natural gas. The latest rebellion, launched in 2003, has included fierce clashes between the Pakistani military and the underground Baluchistan Liberation Army.

Twice in seven days, Pakistan’s Foreign Office summoned Richard Hoagland, the U.S. charge d’affaires in Islamabad, to convey its strong protests over perceived U.S. support for Baluch separatists — first after a hearing held by Rohrabacher and then over last week’s resolution.

The measure has two co-sponsors — Republicans Louie Gohmert of Texas and Steve King of Iowa — and is among thousands of bills and resolutions introduced so far in the 212th Congress.

“Dana Rohrabacher, Louie Gohmert and Steve King — I don’t think they represent the intellectual mainstream of congressional thought,” Moran said.

Rohrabacher’s Feb. 8 subcommittee hearing included strong criticism of human rights abuses in Baluchistan, which government critics say has long been financially neglected and exploited by Islamabad. Human rights advocates have documented hundreds of gruesome deaths and thousands of forced disappearances there in recent years, allegedly carried out by the Pakistani military.

The army and its intelligence service deny complicity and stoke rumors that outside enemies are behind the violence. “U.S., Israel, India responsible for killings in Baluchistan,” read a recent headline in the Nation newspaper, which cited “military sources” for the claim.

Many in the restive province applaud Rohrabacher for bringing wider notice to the bloody crackdown there. “Earlier, the situation of Baluchistan was not being given any importance in Islamabad,” said Yar Muhammad Badini, editor in chief of Baluchistan Today in Quetta, the province’s capital. “All Baluch nationalist groups have welcomed this resolution and they have termed it a ray of hope for Baluchs.”

In an interview, Rohrabacher said he has no Baluch constituents and has never visited the province, but added, “I have a long history of supporting self-determination movements.”

A former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, Rohrabacher said he once ardently supported Pakistan, whose spy services helped train the jihadists who routed Soviet occupiers from Afghanistan. Reagan memorably called those Islamist insurgents “freedom fighters.”

“I probably wrote that for Reagan,” Rohrabacher said.

But now he views Pakistan as an enemy that harbors terrorists who kill U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

“If people are being oppressed by a government that is also committing hostile acts against your country, it is logical to point that out,” Rohrabacher said. “They are committing crimes against us and committing crimes against their own people.”

“Dana does his own thing,” Moran said of his colleague from California. The delegation faced a “very negative” reception, he said, but one lesson wasn’t lost on anyone: Vigorous debate is what democracy is all about.

“I think it’s great,” Dreier said.

[buglerbilly]

FEBRUARY 25, 2012, 6:51 P.M. ET.

U.S. Pulls Out Advisers After Two Killed in Kabul

By DION NISSENBAUM And HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL

KABUL—The U.S. commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan pulled scores of advisers from Afghan ministries after two high-ranking American military officers were gunned down Saturday at the nation's Interior Ministry headquarters.

U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen ordered the unprecedented move after an American colonel and major were both found shot in the head at the busy Interior Ministry compound that is the nerve center for the Afghan law enforcement, according to one Western official in Kabul.

"We are investigating the crime and we will pursue all leads to find the person responsible for this attack," Gen. Allen said in a statement. "The perpetrator of this attack is a coward whose actions will not go unanswered."

Afghan and American officials shut down the ministry compound in central Kabul as they launched an investigation into the killings in one of the most heavily guarded parts of the capital.

Top U.S. military officials said they were still trying to determine the identity of the attacker. But one Western official in Kabul said that the two Americans were shot by an Afghan police official who was upset about the burning of Qurans earlier this week at a U.S. military base.


European Pressphoto Agency
Afghan police guard the entrance to the Afghan Interior Ministry in Kabul on Saturday, where two U.S. officers were shot.

Hours after the shooting, the Taliban issued a statement claiming that the attacker was an insurgent infiltrator who killed the Americans in retaliation for the Quran burning. In the statement, the Taliban said the assailant called to inform the insurgent group that he had carried out the attack and was unharmed.

Details of the incident remained sketchy.

Coalition officials in Kabul dismissed claims by some Afghan officials that the two Americans were killed by a Western colleague.

Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the two American military officers were found dead in a secure office on the compound by one of their colleagues. It remained unclear who killed the pair, or how the attacker got inside the well-protected part of the ministry, he said.

But other Afghan, Western diplomatic and military officials said that initial reports indicated that the gunman was a member of the Afghan security forces.

In a separate incident Thursday, an Afghan soldier shot and killed two U.S. soldiers at a small military base in eastern Afghanistan. The attacker escaped through a crowd of anti-Quran burning demonstrators outside the base.

Saturday's killings have rung new alarms about the damaging impact of the Quran burning on the military mission in Afghanistan. They also raised new questions about the dangers faced by U.S. and coalition forces from their Afghan military partners.

More than 77 coalition troops have been killed by Afghan colleagues in the last five years. Three-quarters of those have taken place in the last two years.

Saturday's confrontation in Kabul came as thousands of demonstrators unsuccessfully tried to storm the United Nations compound in the northeastern city of Kunduz. At least five people were killed as protesters, some armed with guns, converged on the U.N offices, according to the provincial governor's office.

Though no demonstrations were reported Saturday in Kabul, elsewhere in the country fury over the attempt by coalition soldiers to incinerate a truckload of Islamic books, including copies of the Quran, at Bagram Airfield showed no signs of diminishing.

In a wave of unrest now in its fifth day, protesters are targeting Afghan government buildings and Western offices.

At least 30 people have been killed since Tuesday. Southern Afghanistan—the heartland of the Taliban insurgency—has been the only part of the country to avoid deadly confrontations so far.

American officials have tried to contain Afghan outrage by issuing repeated apologies and launching a swift investigation into the incident.

U.S. President Barack Obama apologized to Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a personal letter.

U.S. officials have called the Quran burning a serious mistake. Gen. Allen also called for all forces to undergo quick training on the proper way to handle Islamic religious books.

U.S. military officials have said the books were set aside for destruction because Afghan detainees at the Parwan military detention center at Bagram were using them to trade messages and share extremist writing.

But it remains unclear why the soldiers decided to burn copies of the Quran—a particularly incendiary affront to Muslims who view the book as the sacred word of God as relayed to the Prophet Muhammad.

Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

FEBRUARY 25, 2012, 4:38 P.M. ET.

Bin Laden's House Demolished by Pakistan Authorities

By TOM WRIGHT

Pakistan authorities on Saturday night demolished the three-story house in Abbottabad where Osama bin Laden lived for years and died last May during a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs in an apparent bid to stop it becoming a tourist site or shrine for al Qaeda supporters.

An Abbottabad resident said mechanized backhoes working under floodlight completed the demolition shortly before midnight.


Associated Press
Local residents and media are seen outside the house where Osama bin Laden was caught and killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011.

After the raid that killed bin Laden, Pakistan was left with a choice of whether to demolish the house or to manage it as a tourist attraction.

By deciding to demolish it, Pakistan authorities have followed a course taken by Germany, which for years did not mark Adolf Hitler's bunker after his death to avoid it attracting neo-Nazis.

Immediately after the midnight raid that killed bin Laden, hundreds of local tourists came to look at the house in Abbottabad, a pleasant town ringed by Himalayan foothills about 30 miles northeast of Islamabad, and to collect parts of the downed U.S. Black Hawk that crashed during the sortie.

But soon afterward, Pakistan's military intelligence posted operatives in the area around the clock to stop journalists and tourists from getting close to the house.

The compound, which was largely hidden behind a large perimeter wall, was an embarrassment for the Pakistan government. It was located in an area of similar houses, bounded by fields of rice and other crops, only a few miles from Pakistan's premier military academy and in a garrison town thick with retired military personnel.

The location of the house raised questions among U.S. officials about how bin Laden was able to live there for five years without raising suspicions. Until now, however, the U.S. has stated it has found no evidence that Pakistan's military or government helped shelter the former al Qaeda leader.

Pakistan's military was humiliated by the unilateral U.S. raid on its territory, of which it was given no forewarning. The army's leaders perhaps also saw the house as an unwanted reminder of an event which hurt its image with many Pakistanis.

Immediately after the raid, local officials were split on what to do with the house. Some local government officials said they hoped it would become a permanent attraction and help bring more tourists through the town, which relies largely on a large military presence to drive its economy. Other locals at the time said it should be destroyed to end any association between Abbottabad and bin Laden.

While opinion polls show most Pakistanis are now opposed to al Qaeda, which in recent years has launched a number of strikes against Pakistan government, military and civilian targets, some people in Pakistan still admire bin Laden for his role in fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s and for attacking the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.

In the end, the decision to demolish the house was likely taken by Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence directorate military spy agency.

The house legally belonged to a Pakistani man who worked as bin Laden's courier and was killed along with his brother in the raid.

Local land records showed a man believed to be the courier purchased land for the house from four sellers for a total of around $50,000 in 2004 and 2005.

Local property dealers valued the compound, which included a three-story whitewashed house with a garden and a large connected area for grazing animals, at around $300,000.

Perhaps in the future, Pakistan officials will mark the site of the house with a plaque so it is not lost to history.

For more than 60 years, German authorities kept the exact location of the bunker in Berlin where Hitler committed suicide in 1945 concealed from the public. But in 2006, before an influx of tourists for the soccer World Cup, authorities erected a plaque marking the spot of the bunker.

Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

U.S. drone crashes in Pakistan

By the CNN Wire Staff

February 25, 2012 -- Updated 1936 GMT (0336 HKT)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
A U.S. official confirms that a drone crashed in Pakistan
Pakistan officials have witnesses who saw the drone go down
The cause of the crash is under investigation

(CNN) -- A U.S. drone crashed Saturday in Pakistan's tribal region, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.

The cause of the crash was unknown, but a U.S. official denied reports that the drone had been shot down.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials told CNN that witnesses in North Waziristan reported the crash near the village of Machikhel. The Pakistanis had only these witness accounts to go by, and were working to verify the crash and its causes with its own sources, the officials said.

North Waziristan is one of seven districts in Pakistan's tribal region and widely believed to be a sanctuary for the Haqqani network and other militant groups that fuel the insurgency across the border in Afghanistan. Two drone strikes killed 12 suspected insurgents in the region on February 16.

The United States does not publicly acknowledge its drone program, although President Barack Obama commented on such strikes in January and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledged the use of CIA predator drones in the region last year.

The CIA did not comment on Saturday's incident.

[buglerbilly]

Crashed drone wreckage destroyed in missile strike

Malik Mumtaz Khan

Monday, February 27, 2012

MIRAMSHAH: Around 400 Pakistani soldiers and dozens of political administration officials in North Waziristan’s Mir Ali subdivision narrowly escaped a drone attack on Saturday night when a missile fired by a spy plane hit the wreckage of the US drone that had crashed in the area on Saturday.

“We were looking for the wreckage of the drone in Machikhel village, Mir Ali, and were almost close to the debris of the destroyed aircraft when one of the drones flying over the area fired a missile and hit two missiles lying on the ground,” a senior official of the local administration said.

He said that besides 400 Pakistan Army soldiers, there were dozens of personnel of the Frontier Corps (FC), Khassadars and Levies as well as officials of the political administration, all of them looking for the missing wreckage of the drone on ground at the time. He said they narrowly escaped as the missile fired by the drone landed at a short distance from them. “It would have caused heavy losses to security forces and others engaged in the search operation. They were lucky to survive,” the official said.

Another security official said they had lit the area with big lights to let the people and militants know that security forces were searching for the missing wreckage when five drones started flying over the area. “They decided not to get close to the area where the wreckage was supposed to be lying due to the fear of missile attack,” the official said. He said some of the people even remarked that one should expect anything from the US and suggested not to go beyond a certain position as it could be risky, especially when the drones were flying over their heads.

An official of the political administration said local militants were believed to have fired and shot down the spy plane and even reached there to get hold of some of its wreckage before the government officials could arrive in the village.

The tribal sources said the militants were congratulating one another for downing the CIA-operated spy plane. The North Waziristan Taliban, led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, last year made a claim that their fighters had shot down a US drone in the Dattakhel area and later rewarded the shooter with a car.

[buglerbilly]

Some U.S. Forces ‘Step Back’ From Afghan Training, Despite Pentagon Pledge

By Spencer Ackerman and David Axe Email Author February 27, 2012 | 2:51 pm


An Afghan policeman receives riot training. Photo: ISAF

The official line from the Pentagon is that U.S. forces will still work hand in glove with their Afghan counterparts, even after an Afghan Interior Minister employee murdered two American troops on Saturday. But some elite units are already reducing cooperation with the Afghans until anger over U.S. troops burning the Koran dies down, casting doubts on the Pentagon’s assurances that no change in U.S. strategy is necessary.

Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman on loan to the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that Gen. John Allen had ordered his commanders to take whatever force protection measures were necessary to avoid a rerun of Saturday’s deadly shooting at the Interior Ministry in Kabul.

“But we’re still out there in very kinetic operations with Afghan partners,” Kirby told Pentagon reporters via teleconference. While “clearly, everyone’s going to be a little more vigilant right now,” Kirby said that “partnered operations and training of ANSF [Afghan soldiers and police] continues today.”

Not in all cases. The violence prompted at least one Army Special Forces A Team operating in the eastern Laghman province to take “a couple steps back” from mentoring their Afghan partners, a Special Forces soldier tells Danger Room.


Gen. John Allen, commander of the NATO war effort, ordered hundreds of U.S. military advisers on Sunday to pull back from the Afghan ministries of defense and interior in Kabul. Kirby said nothing similar will happen amongst low-level military units around Afghanistan: “Operations must continue.”

Kirby claimed that the riots are largely limited to Kabul and already petering out — although the A-Team reported riots in Laghman province, and the Taliban said that a huge suicide bombing in Nangahar Province on Monday was retribution for the Koran burnings. But he conceded that “movement here is restricted” within the Afghan capitol, even for officials at NATO headquarters.

“I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say things are tense here in Kabul,” Kirby said.

Kirby’s Pentagon colleague, George Little, insisted that the violence, which has killed at least four Americans in a week, did not throw the Obama administration’s plans for winding down the war in doubt. That plan relies entirely on preparing Afghan forces to take control of the country by 2014.

“The fundamentals of the strategy remain sound,” Little said. “We’re not going to let the events of the past week, which are regrettable and unfortunate and tragic, influence the long-horizon view that we’re taking with respect to our partnership with Afghanistan and our enduring work there.”

Not everyone is convinced. Anthony Cordesman, a defense wonk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and often a weather vane for centrist Washington opinion, wrote on Monday that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan “has been a long time dying.”

“It is a ‘transition’ which is now all words and concepts and few plans and resources,” Cordesman wrote, “where pledges at conferences do not shape realities, and where growing war fatigue — mixed with a lack of credible options — threatens to make ‘exit’ the key focus of the ‘strategy.’”

[buglerbilly]

Cultural Cluelessness Threatens U.S. Commando Strategy

By David Axe Email Author February 27, 2012 | 4:20 pm


Afghan forces training in Laghman Province. Photo: David Axe

In one sense, the U.S.-led coalition has itself to blame for the riots and killings that have raged across Afghanistan in the wake of last week’s accidental burning of the Koran by American forces. Too many U.S. troops habitually disrespect their Afghan trainees, according to some of the elite forces who head up those training sessions. And those small, tactical acts of cultural stupidity can lead to a strategic moment, like the one we’re having now.

The ongoing disrespect can fuel smoldering resentment among Afghans that is compounded by the Afghans’ underlying discomfort with the decade-long foreign occupation of their country. The mishandling of the Koran was like a match on that explosive tinder.

According to members of a U.S. Special Forces “A Team” based in Laghman province, American trainers there inadvertently mistreat the Afghans with rough touching, mock insults and and a dearth of positive reinforcement. During my recent visit to Langhman, one Special Forces officer hurried to intervene when some Army National Guard soldiers wandered into an Afghan cemetery — another big no-no. “I’ve seen too many guys disrespecting their Afghans,” one Special Forces weapons sergeant says.

The accidental burning of the Koran represents was even more thoughtless … and reflects an almost willful ignorance of Afghan sensitivities. “How after 11 years here is there no system in place for properly disposing of religious [documents]?” asks one sergeant attached to a Special Forces unit based in Kabul. “It’s just fucking stupid.”

There have been nearly 40 incidents in which Afghan troops have turned their weapons on their international trainers — including four last week amid the ongoing riots. In the past, some of these attacks have been blamed on Taliban infiltration. But the Afghan government worker suspected in Saturday’s murder of two American officers inside the Ministry of Interior in Kabul did not have Taliban ties, ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said. And the Laghman commandos believe the most of the incidents were sparked by cultural misunderstandings. David Sedney, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, in a January Congressional testimony agreed, chalking up “the majority” of attacks by trainees to “personal motivation.”

The riots have hit hard in Laghman, though the province thankfully been spared the murders that occurred elsewhere. “They stormed Mehtar Lam and broke through the wire,” one Special Forces officer reported last week. “Eventually, they tired of their own anger and retreated. We’re expecting the same today: 2,000-3,000 people in total.”

At the behest of their commanders in Kabul, the Laghman A Team “took a couple steps back” from performing its mission, the officer said. The temporary suspension of training in Laghman echoes the temporary pull-out of all U.S. advisers from Afghan government ministries in Kabul following Saturday’s shooting deaths.

As long as the violence directed against the coalition continues, and as long as international trainers are at elevated risk of being murdered by their trainees, the commandos and other advisers will have deep trouble performing their vital mission preparing Afghans to secure their own country. The more widespread the anger, the less likely Afghans are to even want foreign assistance.

The coalition plans to withdraw its roughly 150,000 regular troops by the end 0f 2014, but that plan has always been contingent on Afghan troops being adequately trained. In any event, Special Forces have planned to remain behind after 2014 to continue working with the Afghan army and police. The rioting and murders cast that strategy into doubt.

Washington is urging patience. “I think we need to let things calm down, return to a more normal atmosphere, and then get on with business,” Ambassador Ryan Crocker told CNN. “This is not the time to decide that we are done here.” But moving forward at this late stage could require some major changes in the way the coalition approaches Afghans — and fast.

Mark Jacobson, the former NATO deputy senior civilian representative in Kabul, said he sees the writing on the wall. “If the trust, ability and willingness to partner falls apart, you are looking at the endgame here.”

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Vows No Change in Afghan War Strategy

Feb. 27, 2012 - 02:40PM

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military remains fully committed to its war strategy in Afghanistan and alliance with the Kabul government despite a week of deadly unrest over the burning of the Koran at an American base, the Pentagon said Feb. 27.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and top U.S. military officer Gen. Martin Dempsey both “believe that the fundamentals of our strategy remain sound,” spokesman George Little told reporters.

The United States has no plans to alter its planned troop drawdown and has an “unwavering” commitment to hand over to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014 as agreed by the NATO alliance, Little said.

Attacks on U.S. and coalition troops and seven days of protests had not jeopardized ties between U.S. and Afghan forces, he said.

“Our relationship with our Afghan partners remains strong.”

Another military spokesman, Capt. John Kirby, acknowledged tensions had flared over the burning of the Islamic holy book at the Bagram Air Base and after two U.S. officers were killed inside the interior ministry. But he said the scale of protests had begun to decline and that U.S. troops were still operating alongside Afghan forces.

“These events — they’re troubling, they’re worrisome, they’ve got everybody’s attention. And yes, tension is high here in Kabul right now,” Kirby said by video link from the Afghan capital. “But across the country writ large ... the mission continues and we’re seeing the protest activity decline.”

The United States has repeatedly apologized for the Koran burning at an incinerator and insisted it was a mistake and not intentional.

The incident has set off seven successive days of protest and violence, with the death toll estimated at about 40.

The United Nations announced that it was pulling its international staff out of their base in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz after it came under attack Feb. 25 by demonstrators.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force withdrew all its staff out of Afghan ministries at the weekend when two U.S. advisors were shot dead in the interior ministry, apparently by an Afghan colleague.

[buglerbilly]

Britain begins preparations for Afghanistan withdrawal

Britain has signalled the start of the withdrawal of its vast military infrastructure from Afghanistan with the signing of a crucial new defence pact which should ensure safe passage home for billions of pounds worth of vital equipment.

By Con Coughlin, Astana

6:59PM GMT 27 Feb 2012

Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, signed a new defence co-operation agreement with Kazakhstan which the British Government hopes will enable an estimated £4 billion of equipment – including tanks and armoured personnel carriers – to be shipped out of northern Afghanistan.

Britain and its Nato allies have been desperately seeking alternative routes following Pakistan's decision to close the vital supply route from Karachi to Afghanistan. Pakistan closed the border crossing after the Americans mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani troops last November.

Relations between Washington and Pakistan were already tense following last year's successful raid by U.S. Navy Seals to kill Osama bin Laden, which was carried out without Islamabad's knowledge.

While diplomats expect Pakistan to reopen the border at some point in the future, Britain has decided that it can no longer rely on Pakistan's co-operation as it begins the immensely complex operation of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, when all Nato combat operations are due to cease.

Mr Hammond now hopes to open a new supply route through Central Asia following the signing of the pact with Kazakhstan's defence ministry that guarantees Britain air transit rights over the massive Central Asian republic, a country which is equal in size to the whole of Western Europe.

The Defence Secretary hopes a "reverse transiting agreement" will result in Kazakhstan also providing permission for military equipment such as tanks and armoured personnel carriers to be carried by train on a 4,000-mile journey from northern Afghanistan to the Baltic, where they will then be shipped back to Britain.

On Tuesday he will be having talks in neighbouring Uzbekistan in the hope of agreeing similar transit rights. In addition Nick Harvey, the Armed Forces Minister, is travelling this week to Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan to explore the possibility of negotiating similar deals.

The Ministry of Defence estimates that Britain has a total of 3,000 armoured vehicles and 11,000 containers of equipment worth an estimated £4 billion based in Afghanistan that needs to be shipped home as the British Government signals the end of its military involvement in the long-running Afghan conflict.

These include Warrior armoured personnel carriers, as well as the new generation of protected vehicles such as Foxhound and Coyote, which have been acquired to replace the flawed Snatch Land Rover.

While it is possible some of the equipment may still be shipped through Pakistan, the MOD wants to set up a network of alternative routes to ensure the equipment returns safely to Britain and is not hijacked by Taliban militants.

"This is an enormous logistical challenge," Mr Hammond told the Daily Telegraph following talks at Kazakhstan's defence ministry in Astana yesterday. "The pressure on existing lines of communication is going to be very significant, which is why it is so important for us to open a new line of communication through the north."

Mr Hammond also denied recent reports that the MOD was planning to abandon billions of pounds worth of military equipment in Afghanistan because it was too expensive to bring it home.

"There has to be a cost-benefit analysis on every bit of kit, but the majority of armoured vehicles will be brought back," he said.

The cost of shipping the equipment home is estimated at more than £100 million. By shipping the equipment through Central Asia rather than Pakistan Mr Hammond believes it stands less chance of being attacked by Taliban militants, as often happens on the border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"The Taliban have made clear that their guidance to Taliban fighters is not to attack Nato convoys passing through the north," he said.

Military officials expect the operation to begin shipping the equipment back to Britain will commence in the summer and take two years. "We want to have a steady flow of equipment coming back to Britain rather than bring it all back in one mad rush," said a senior officer.

The need to find new supply routes has intensified following the Obama administration's decision to end combat operations from next year. The U.S. has an estimated 49,000 armoured vehicles and 100,000 shipping containers worth an estimated $49 billion that needs to be shipped back to the U.S. Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, has made two recent visits to Kazakhstan to negotiate separate transit agreements for Washington.

The urgency with which Britain and its allies are searching for alternative exit routes from Afghanistan will inevitably raise concerns that Nato is ending its military mission before the campaign against the Taliban has been completed, thereby allowing the Taliban to return to power once Nato has left.

But Mr Hammond rejected claims Nato was undertaking an undignified retreat from Afghanistan. "Nato is in this for the long haul, even after we finish combat operations," he said. "We are going to pass control to an enlarged and better trained Afghan force."

[buglerbilly]

Probe Sheds Light on Drone War's Death Toll

February 27, 2012

Associated Press|by Sebastian Abbot



ISLAMABAD - American drone strikes inside Pakistan are killing far fewer civilians than many in the country are led to believe, according to a rare on-the-ground investigation by The Associated Press of 10 of the deadliest attacks in the past 18 months.

The widespread perception in Pakistan that civilians, not militants, are the principal victims - a view that is fostered by leading right-wing politicians, clerics and the fighters themselves - fuels pervasive anti-American sentiment and, some argue, has swelled the ranks of al-Qaida and the Taliban.

But an AP reporter who spoke to about 80 villagers at the sites of the 10 attacks in North Waziristan, the main sanctuary for militants in Pakistan's northwest tribal region along the Afghan border, was told that a significant majority of the dead were combatants.

Indeed, the AP was told by the villagers that of at least 194 people killed in the attacks, about 70 percent - at least 138 - were militants. The remaining 56 were either civilians or tribal police, and 38 of them were killed in a single attack on March 17, 2011.

Excluding that strike, which inflicted one of the worst civilian death tolls since the drone program started in Pakistan, nearly 90 percent of the people killed were militants, villagers said.

But the civilian deaths in the covert CIA-run program raise legal and ethical concerns, especially given Washington's reluctance to speak openly about the strikes or compensate the families of innocent victims.

U.S. officials who were shown the AP's findings rejected the accounts of any civilian casualties but declined to be quoted by name or make their own information public.

The U.S. has carried out at least 280 attacks since 2004 in Pakistan's tribal region. The area is dangerous and off-limits to most reporters, and death tolls from the strikes usually rely on reports from Pakistani intelligence agents speaking on condition of anonymity.

The numbers gathered by the AP turned out to be very close to those given by Pakistani intelligence on the day of each strike, the main difference being that the officials often did not distinguish between militants and civilians.

Drone attacks began during the Bush administration. President Barack Obama has ramped them up significantly since he took office but slowed them down in recent months because of increased tension between the U.S. and Pakistan caused by American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.

Pakistan responded by kicking the U.S. out of a base used to service American drones, but the move is not expected to affect the program significantly.

The AP study paints a much different picture from that advanced by important Pakistani opinion-shapers.

Syed Munawar Hasan, head of the country's most powerful Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, recently claimed on TV that the strikes "are killing nearly 100 percent innocent people."

Imran Khan, a popular opposition politician close to some right-wing Islamic groups, addressed a cheering crowd last April and said: "Those who lie to the nation after every drone attack and say terrorists were killed should be ashamed."

He called for journalists and activists to go to the tribal region to see that the strikes were killing civilians, not militants.

Some analysts have been skeptical about carrying out on-the-ground investigations, assuming villagers would follow the militants' narrative of high civilian death tolls to avoid reprisals. But the AP study showed otherwise. While some villagers spoke on condition of anonymity saying they feared for their safety, others let their names be published.

Many knew the dead civilians personally. They also said one way to distinguish civilians from militants was by counting funerals, because the bodies of dead militants would usually be whisked away for burial elsewhere.

An attack near Miran Shah before dawn on Aug. 10, 2011, was one of six on the AP's list in which villagers said no civilians died.

A drone fired missiles at a large brick compound, killing at least 20 Afghan and Pakistani Taliban fighters, said Sajjad Ali, a local driver. The compound hit was known as a rest house for militants run by the Haqqani network, an Afghan group focused on fighting foreign troops in Afghanistan, he said.

The charred bodies were hastily buried in a graveyard more than a mile (2 kilometers) away, said Ali, who spoke to several people who attended the burial. Those who attended were not allowed to see the victims' faces, he said.

A second man who spoke to people who attended the burial confirmed Ali's account. He requested anonymity.

Before dawn on April 22, 2011, a drone fired missiles at the guest room of a large compound in Hasan Khel, a village in the mountains dominated by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a Pakistani militant commander fighting foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The strike killed 25 people, including 20 militants, three children and two women, said Mamrez Gul, who owns a shop near the site of the attack. The militants were staying in the guest room, and the civilians were sleeping in a nearby room that was also destroyed by the blasts. A funeral was held for the women and children, but the bodies of the militants were taken away, said Mamrez Gul.

He said the women and children were relatives of the compound's owner, Gul Sharif, a militant commander loyal to Bahadur. He survived the attack, said two villagers, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A U.S. counterterrorism official in Washington said no women and children were observed in the compound before the strike. But Mamrez Gul, taxi driver Noor Habib Wazir and farmer Gul Paenda Khan said they attended the funeral of the women and children.

A strike on August 14, 2010, on a compound in Issori Boikhel village also illustrated the danger to civilians who live close to militants. The attack killed seven Pakistani Taliban fighters and seven tribesmen, said Shera Deen, the owner of the compound that was hit. Safir Ullah, a student, corroborated the casualty count, as did a third villager who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Deen, who was not in the compound when it was attacked, said he lost two sons, a brother and three nephews, one of them 10 years old.

The seventh tribesman killed was 26-year-old Sohrab Khan, who was leading evening prayers for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan when the missiles struck, the villagers said. According to them, the Taliban fighters entered the compound to join the prayers, which would explain why they were bunched together with civilians.

The tribesmen were buried in a graveyard with a wooden headstone indicating they were victims of a drone attack, the villagers said. The Taliban fighters were buried in a different corner of the same graveyard in an unmarked grave, they said.

U.S. counterterrorism officials disputed the death tolls and other details of some of the strikes, including the exact locations. One said the U.S. "had no reliable evidence" that civilians were killed in any of the strikes examined and questioned the reliability of villagers' accounts.

The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because the drone program is classified.

Regarding the March 17, 2011, strike on Shiga village, the bloodiest attack investigated by the AP, U.S. officials familiar with drone operations said the group targeted was heavily armed, some of its members were connected to al-Qaida, and all "acted in a manner consistent with AQ (al-Qaida)-linked militants."

But villagers and Pakistani officials said the missiles hit a community meeting, or jirga, held to resolve a mining dispute, killing four Pakistani Taliban fighters and 38 civilians and tribal police.

The militants were there because they controlled the area and any decision made would need their approval, said Gul Ahmed, a farmer.

Citing the number visible in the monitoring before and during the attack, U.S. officials said the total of dead was roughly half what villagers reported. But Ahmed said there were 42 caskets lined up at the funeral, and he provided the victims' names.

Christopher Rogers, a lawyer who has studied civilian casualties in Pakistan from drone attacks and other military action, said that regardless of casualty tolls, the U.S. still needed to make the program more transparent to prove it is complying with international laws on who may be targeted and measures to minimize the loss of innocent lives.

"The percentage of militants killed is an important piece of this, but it is one piece of a larger picture," said Rogers, who works at Open Society Foundations, an advocacy group in New York City. "The bigger issue here is the covert nature of the program, the complete lack of any transparency and accountability and the lack of information about how the U.S. distinguishes a militant from a civilian."

The drone program is so secretive that only last month did Obama publicly acknowledge its existence. He said the strikes "have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties," but gave no details.

Rights organizations have been unable to verify the number of civilian casualties caused by drones because of the danger and difficulty of getting to sites.

One London-based group, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, has published drone casualty figures based on media reports, witness testimony and other information. It said strikes have killed between 2,383 and 3,109 people, of whom 464 to 815 were civilians. That implies the percentage of militants killed was roughly 70 to 80 percent. The group said an unidentified U.S. counterterrorism official insisted its civilian casualty figures were much too high.

A poll conducted in May 2011 by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center found that overwhelming majorities of Pakistanis who were aware of drone strikes said they were a bad thing and killed too many innocents. Pakistani officials regularly criticize the strikes as violations of the country's sovereignty, but there has long been some level of Pakistani acquiescence or help in the program.

Pakistani intelligence officials said a suspected U.S. drone crashed Saturday near Mir Ali, one of the main towns in North Waziristan, and caught fire after hitting the ground. The officials said the drone was believed to have crashed because of technical problems.

A U.S. official denied reports that the drone was shot down. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the classified program.

---

Associated Press writer Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

U.K. Discusses Central Asia Route To Withdraw Afghan Gear

Feb. 28, 2012 - 11:28AM

By ANDREW CHUTER

LONDON — Talks to allow the British military to withdraw equipment from Afghanistan through central Asia have taken a step forward during a visit to the region by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond.

Opening up a northern exit route through Central Asia is a key logistics goal of the British and other NATO members as they plan to withdraw combat troops and equipment from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Hammond signed an overflight access deal with Kazakhstan on Feb. 27, and the two sides agreed to start negotiations on a land transit arrangement. The British defense secretary is in neighboring Uzbekistan today for similar discussions on the land route north.

Nick Harvey, British armed forces minister, will visit Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan later this week for further discussions.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman here said, “Current exit routes from Afghanistan are by air only, following closure of the surface route through Pakistan in response to the cross-border incident in November 2011. The likely duration of the border closure is not yet clear. ... Planning is ongoing to utilize alternative routes should the Pakistani border remain closed in the longer term.

“Negotiations are also under way to establish surface and air exit routes through and over the Central Asian republics. In summary, there are a range of exit routes from Afghanistan which are subject to continuous review and development.”

Senior British officers visited several of the countries last year to lay the groundwork for a potential land transit deal using the rail network. Their visits predated the closure of the Pakistani border to NATO logistics trucks following last November’s mistaken killing of 24 Pakistani troops by the U.S. military.

The closure of the only land route into and out of Afghanistan available to NATO for lethal and other supplies has heightened concerns over the fragility of a withdrawal plan largely centered on heading south through Pakistan.

Britain and several other NATO members already have access to Afghanistan through a rail link into central Asia through Uzbekistan. The route also passes through Russia, having started for the British in Estonia — a trip that takes an average of nearly 60 days.

Britain, like a number of other NATO nations, has been funneling increasing amounts of stores to forces in Afghanistan through the European, Russian and Asian rail networks since mid-2010, due to fears about over-reliance on the route through Pakistan’s port city of Karachi and then overland by truck.

For the British, at least, the current rail route agreement only allows the transport of non-lethal equipment and goods. Part of the new negotiations involve the possibility of using the northern rail route to remove armored vehicles and other potentially lethal equipment.

Senior British officers in Afghanistan late last year told Defense News they would be happy to see some vehicles return to Europe via the northern rail route, but would be reluctant to see high-tech armored vehicles go that route.

Speaking in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, Hammond said it is vital that Britain secures its supply lines to get equipment home.

“We have a major logistical operation to undertake to get around 11,000 containers and around 3,000 armored vehicles back from Afghanistan, and we will need to work with our partners in the region to do so,” he said.

While British defense officials ramp up efforts to open up the land routes north, Royal Air Force planners are looking at additional assets they might need.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton revealed during an interview with Defense News, on the sidelines of the Singapore air show, that a number of options are being considered to ensure Britain has the required assets to maintain the air bridge. Dalton is the chief of the Air Staff.

These include the possible short-term lease of two Boeing C-17s. The government announced recently that Britain is buying its eighth C-17. The four-engine transport plane is due to be delivered later this year.

Dalton also said the RAF is considering postponing the taking out of service of at least some of its fleet of Tristar transport jets.

[buglerbilly]

Secret Army Bomb Jammers Stolen in Afghanistan

By David Axe Email Author March 1, 2012 | 2:14 pm


Jammer-equipped U.S. Army patrol in Iraq. Photo: David Axe

On Jan. 7, someone strolled into a supply room at Camp Eggers, a coalition base near the U.S. embassy in downtown Kabul, pocketed two sets of car keys and walked out undetected. Sometime over the next 24 hours, the thieves drove away with two black-painted, armored Toyota Land Cruisers belonging to the U.S. Army’s 26th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, a unit that escorts coalition personnel around Kabul.

The loss of the Land Cruisers is bad enough. But what’s really got the Army worried is what was inside the vehicles: two sets of top-secret Duke radio frequency jammers used to block the signals that detonate remote-controlled improvised explosive devices. In a notice posted to the website of the Army’s Criminal Investigative Command (and first noted by Military Times), investigators plead for anyone with knowledge of the theft to contact CID offices in and around Kabul.

If the Army suspects who might be responsible, it’s not saying. Equally, it’s not clear if the bandits were after the Duke equipment specifically, or if the Land Cruisers were the sole target and the jammers were simply bonuses.

Best case scenario: the thieves have no ties to insurgents and no appreciation of the jammers’ value … and the high-tech devices wind up in a scrap heap somewhere.

Worst case: the jammers wind up in the hands of insurgents who then reverse-engineer them to create some kind of counter-counter-measure, thus making already-deadly IEDs even more dangerous.

In either case, the loss is a major embarrassment for the Army, which otherwise has gone to great lengths to protect the secrets of its ultra-costy radio-jamming technology. I should know. I once got booted out of Iraq after writing about the secret devices. (At the time I didn’t realize the level of secrecy involved.)

The principle at work in the counter-bomb devices is simple: they emit a powerful radio signal that essentially drowns out other radio signals, including detonation commands. Early jammer models, such as the Warlock (pictured), had a tendency to wipe out everybody’s communications for hundreds of yards in all directions. They could even cause remote-controlled drones flying overhead to crash. Newer jammers including the “Duke” model are more selective in their jamming, although they can still kill your cell phone signal if you’re close enough. It’s the secrets of this selectivity that the Army probably values the most, and which are at risk in the Kabul theft.

That said, radio-command IEDs are not the major bomb threat in most parts of Afghanistan. Rather, most bombs are detonated by pressure-plate triggers or metal command wires, against which jammers are useless.

Moreover, the Duke is not the most modern jamming device; that honor belongs to the CVRJ — the CREW Vehicle Receiver/Jammer. The Duke itself gets updated every couple years. It’s now in its “V3″ edition.

Which is to say, even in the worst-case scenario, the Army’s multi-billion-dollar efforts to defeat IEDs is not entirely compromised by the jammer loss. But that doesn’t make the theft any less embarrassing for the world’s leading ground force.

[buglerbilly]

CASSIDIAN to support medical evacuation missions in Afghanistan

27 February 2012

• Mobile Support System enables sucessful operation of German Army MedEvac NH90s

• Standardized operations support of all German helicopter types


Integration of the EUA operations support system into containers ensures that it can be rapidly deployed during missions abroad. (c) Cassidian

Cassidian will support the Forward Air Medical Evacuation (FwdAirMedEvac) mission carried out with NH90 helicopters of the German Army in the evacuation of ill and injured persons. For this purpose, the German Federal Office of Defence Technology and Procurement (BWB) ordered a total of eight units of Cassidian’s mobile EUA (= Einsatz-Unterstützungsanlage) operations support system for mission control, preparation and planning.

From the end of 2012, German Army Aviation will be in charge of providing forward air medical evacuation in Afghanistan using their NH90 helicopters. The FwdAirMedEvac helicopters will provide a solid base for emergency medical care for German soldiers in crisis areas.

The EUA operations support system combines operational command and control with technical logistic support. Its current adaptation complements its extension ordered in May last year for the support helicopter Tiger ASGARD (Afghanistan Stabilisation German Army Rapid Deployment) which, from October 2012, will also be used to support the German mission in Afghanistan. The EUA operations support system, developed by Cassidian, integrates the capabilities of the German helicopters into the integrated military command, which is ensured via the German Army C3I System (FüInfoSys H), for both MedEvac and armed support missions.

The new generation of the EUA with an updated software configuration allows the system to be used for all helicopter types of the German Army and Air Force: the support helicopter (UH) Tiger, the tactical transport helicopter (TTH), the light transport helicopter (LTH) NH90 and the transport helicopter CH-53GA. In future, the German Armed Forces will operate their helicopter fleet using a standardised operations support system which not only enables operational readiness to be increased, but also permits operating costs to be reduced.

From the end of 2012, the EUA will also be used to support the missions of the HAD and HAP variants of the Spanish Tiger helicopters.

[buglerbilly]

US-Afghanistan deal in danger as Hamid Karzai holds firm on demands

Afghan president not prepared to compromise over control of jails and American night-time raids as Nato conference nears

Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 March 2012 15.12 GMT


Afghan president Hamid Karzai is adamant he will not give ground on his two main demands. Photograph: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images

Hopes that the US can fix conditions for a long-term military presence in Afghanistan before an unofficial May deadline are fading because Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is not prepared to compromise on two demands that have stalled negotiations for months.

Washington and its allies want to have the US-Afghan strategic partnership agreed before May, when a Nato conference in Chicago is expected to pledge long-term help to Kabul with finances and military training.

But negotiations have dragged on for over a year and Karzai is adamant he will not give ground on his two main demands – for Afghan control of jails and an end to night-time raids on Afghan homes.

Western officials say the first is not practical and the second would compromise the military effort.

"If they don't change their position there will be no strategic partnership before Chicago," said a senior Afghan official familiar with the negotiations. "We are not willing to compromise when it comes to sovereignty."

The strategic partnership deal would allow US forces to stay in some current large bases in Afghanistan, to help train Afghan soldiers and police. The bases could also be used for drone strikes on militant areas in Pakistan.

The deal would give western leaders a security rationale for spending money in Afghanistan after combat troops are withdrawn in 2014, and also aims to reassure Afghans the west will not cut and run.

A string of top diplomats and politicians have urged Karzai to sign.

"The Afghan government, especially the Afghan president, is under a lot of pressure from all sides – there are some indirect threats being made as well," said the Afghan official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

But Karzai has long said that for a deal to go ahead the US must hand over all jails on Afghan soil to his government's control and end controversial night-time hunts for insurgents and their supporters.

He repeated that position in a phone call earlier this week with the Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was urging Karzai to sign the deal ahead of the Chicago summit, according to the presidential palace.

"Before the US-Afghan strategic partnership document can be signed, the foreigners have to respect the national sovereignty of Afghanistan," a palace statement, released late on Wednesday, quoted Karzai telling Rasmussen.

"No Afghan [prisoners] should be in the hands of foreigners, and foreign troops should hand over all the jails they have now to the Afghan government, and stop the night raids."

US officials had suggested resolving the impasse by hiving off the two most controversial points into a separate document and agreeing to hash them out later, but Karzai has rejected that as a compromise of Afghan sovereignty.

"The US idea is not accepted at all, we have to reach an agreement on these two points before signing any strategic partnership document," the official said.

The US is reluctant to hand over jails in part because Afghanistan's judicial system does not currently have the capacity to run them.

Night raids are contentious because western military commanders consider them perhaps the most effective tool in their arsenal, saying they take out senior leaders with minimal risk to innocent civilians.

Afghan leaders say they are dangerous and intrusive, cause too many deaths of non-combatants and turn Afghans against the war.

Diplomatic manoeuvres that put Afghans officially in charge of prisons while leaving US forces organising day-to-day management, or gave US troops a role providing intelligence and support to Afghan-led night raids, could resolve some of the difficulties.

But western diplomats warn that Karzai may be badly misjudging the mood in an economically battered America, whose diplomats are also distracted by security concerns in other volatile areas from Syria and Yemen to Somalia.

"The Afghans still really believe that the Americans need to be here," said one senior Kabul diplomat who asked not to be named.

"I think they are underestimating how much things have changed, and US concerns are focused elsewhere – and they cannot manage without this support."

The World Bank forecasts Kabul will have a $7bn (£4.4bn) hole in its annual budget after 2014.

Mining projects may one day allow it to be self-sufficient, but they are in the very early stages of development, so foreign cash will be needed for years to pay the army.

While several other nations have signed their own long-term strategic deals – Britain has promised an officer training academy modelled on Sandhurst – all of them are unofficially contingent on a US deal; without an American lead, no one wants to stay.

The US embassy insists that there is no timeline for a deal, although repeated unofficial deadlines have passed without anything being pinned down.

"We are not going to comment on ongoing negotiations," said Gavin Sundwall, spokesman for the US embassy in Kabul.

"We want to get the right agreement, not necessarily a quick agreement, so there are no timelines."

[buglerbilly]

Imran Khan: the man who would be Pakistan's next prime minister

As he reaches 60, the Pashtun aristocrat who married into the height of British society says he is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the legacy of colonialism. The cricketer turned politician talks in Islamabad

Jason Burke

The Observer, Sunday 4 March 2012


'We need to be a friend of America, but not a hired gun. We will take no aid from them': Imran Khan at his home outside Islamabad. Photograph: Sam Phelps for the Observer

Imran Ahmad Khan Niazi, 59 years old, currently of Bani Gala village on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, is certain of many things. He is certain that "a huge change" is coming to his country. He is certain, too, that a "revolution" is on its way. And even if he does not state it explicitly, he is certain that he will, within eight months to a year, win a landslide victory in elections to become Pakistan's prime minister. "When we are in power", he says these days, not "if we were in power".

When I arrive, Khan is sitting alone at a table in the garden of the house where he has lived since 2005. It is mid-afternoon, but the sun is low and the light is already fading. The house, built as a family home when he was still married to Jemima Goldsmith, sits on the crest of a ridge and commands a view of the foothills of the Himalayas, a large shimmering lake and the city of Islamabad. He is dressed entirely in black, working his BlackBerry.

The house has become part of Khan's political persona. There is the short journey through the increasingly scruffy villages and then up to the beautiful hacienda-style house with the dogs, the lawns, the swimming pool and the view. There is the image of the politician who currently leads all polls in the country, looking down from his hilltop on the city and the power that he seems set to seize. The vision of the uncorrupt outsider eyeing the distant den of iniquity that he is set to purge is simply too neat to ignore.

Consciously or otherwise, Khan does nothing to undermine the impression. He leads me briskly down to the edge of his land, steps up on to a large boulder overhanging the steep slope and points out the park which he saved from illegal development, and the new houses scattered across the shores of the lakes that are getting closer and closer to where we are standing. "Look at it," he says angrily. "There is no planning, no planning at all." He flings an arm out towards the serrated ridge of hills along the horizon. For, along with the certainty, there is righteous anger. This is directed at a number of different targets: a "corrupt political elite" who "plunder" Pakistan; strikes by American missile-armed unmanned drones against suspected Islamic militants near the Afghan frontier; the local "liberals" who condone the strikes; the lack of electricity crippling the country's economy; imperialists of old and neo-imperialists of today; the war on terror and its attendant human-rights abuses; multinational lending organisations; Washington; rich Pakistanis who avoid tax while their countrymen live in "multi-dimensional deprivation".

In Pakistan today, certainty and anger make a potent mix. The country, chronically unstable if astonishingly resilient, is not only suffering ongoing extremist violence but also terrible economic problems which are steadily wiping out any gains in prosperity made in previous decades. Over recent months Khan has held a series of huge political rallies, with crowds numbering more than 100,000. In terms of popularity at least, Khan and the party he founded 15 years ago, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Union for Justice), have made a major breakthrough.

In the brutal world of south Asian politics – where dynasties, patronage and frequently sheer muscle count more than policies or public support – this is a genuine achievement. In 1999 I spent several days with Khan and his partyworkers on the campaign trail in eastern Pakistan. The headline on my pessimistic piece was: "No Khan Do". These days few would risk such glib assessments of Khan's electoral chances.

The late 1990s, when Khan was making his political debut, were a raw time. The political scene in Pakistan was dominated by Benazir Bhutto, one of the most celebrated female politicians in the world, and her local rival, Nawaz Sharif. In 1999 the army stepped in through a bloodless and broadly popular coup. I saw Khan on and off occasionally over the subsequent years, but there was little to indicate that my earlier analysis was wrong. He was a legend in sporting terms – one of the best all-rounders in cricketing history – and increasingly well-thought of as a philanthropist, without doubt, but not a serious politician. A column in a local English-language political magazine relentlessly satirised the ambitions of "Im the Dim", and few disagreed.

Now Bhutto is dead, assassinated on 27 December 2007 by Islamic militants, and the old guard of politicians who have survived her, including her husband Asif Ali Zardari, president since 2008, are detested. Khan says he could take over – democratically, of course – at any moment, but he is biding his time. "We have the power to go out and block the government on any issue. But we will only have one chance and we have to be completely prepared." Back in the late 1990s, he tells me, politics was "like facing a fast bowler without pads, gloves or a helmet". Not any longer, he says.

Khan was born on 25 November 1952 into a wealthy and well-connected family in Lahore, Pakistan's eastern city. Ethnically he is a Pashtun, or Pathan, as British imperialists called the peoples concentrated along what once was known as the North-West Frontier. Educated at Lahore's Aitchison College, one of the most exclusive schools in Pakistan, the Royal Grammar School in Worcester and Oxford University, his early years were typical of Pakistan's anglicised upper classes. Khan reminisces about how his family home, Zaman Park, was surrounded by fields and woodland where he used to hunt partridge. "Now everything is built up; it's like living next to a motorway," he says. "The air pollution, noise pollution… It is terrible."


Special delivery: playing at Lord’s in 1987. Khan made his Test debut against England in 1971 aged 18. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Getty Images

The shy teenager's precocious sporting talent took him rapidly into the national side: he made his Test debut against England in 1971, aged just 18. Eleven years later, after performances combining tenacity and flair, he was made captain of Pakistan. Khan's two autobiographies, All Round View (1992) and Pakistan: A Personal History (2010), both tell the story of his years as an international cricketer: the victories against the odds in front of the home crowd, the career-threatening injury overcome, the return from retirement at the age of 37, winning the World Cup – for the first and only time in Pakistan's sporting history – despite a ruined cartilage in his shoulder. It is only when in Pakistan, where the sport is a national passion, that the enormity of his sporting achievement is clear.

Neither book is forthcoming about his activities off the pitch, however. A string of rich, well-connected, beautiful women earned him a reputation as a playboy. Then in 1995 he married Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of the late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith. Aged only 21, she converted to Islam and moved to Pakistan. The couple soon had two sons.

"I had always wanted to marry a Pakistani, but I realised while I was playing cricket that sport at that level and marriage were not compatible," he says. "So I decided I'd only get married when I gave up sport." Khan twice announced his retirement: the first time, General Zia ul-Haq, then military dictator of Pakistan, persuaded him to reconsider, and the second time he returned to the team to help raise funds for Pakistan's first cancer hospital. His mother, to whom he wad been very close, had died of cancer in 1984 and in her memory he had decided to build a hospital which would offer free treatment to the poor. "The whole board [of the hospital] said I needed to keep playing so they could raise money. So I carried on until I was 39, and by then I was too old for an arranged marriage. I just could no longer trust someone else to find someone for me.

"So I found it very difficult," Khan continues. "The irony was I thought all the 25-year-olds were too young, and I was still looking when I met Jemima – and she was 21." The couple married in 1995 and divorced nine years later. "It would have had a greater chance of working if I hadn't been involved in politics or she had been Pakistani. Or if she could have got involved in the politics with me."

As one of his wife's grandfathers was Jewish, a noxious storm of abuse and conspiracy theories was unleashed. Pakistan is a country where antisemitism is so deep-rooted as to be remarkable only when absent. Local politicians targeted this "weak spot": spurious court cases, rabble-rousing editorials, underhand smears all contributed to make Pakistan a hostile environment for the young socialite heiress.

The construction of the cancer hospital and the leadership of his party consumed most of Khan's funds and time. "Because they attacked me and her, calling me part of the Jewish lobby, she couldn't get involved in politics and that was the beginning of it becoming more and more difficult. And she really gave it her best shot. I look back and think: could my marriage have worked? I think of the words of the prophet [Mohammed]: 'Don't fight destiny because destiny is God.' I believe the past is to learn from, not live in."


'She really gave it her best shot': with his ex-wife Jemima on their wedding day in 1995. Photograph: Nils Jorgenson/Rex Features

He still gets on well with her family – when in London he stays with his former mother-in-law Lady Annabel Goldsmith – and has a "fabulous relationship" with his sons. A day or so after we meet, he is flying to London for three days for half term. "It's very important to spend time together. Children really need a mother and a father. They have different roles, but both are very important. This idea of having two men as parents. It's a nonsense."

Religion became important to Khan relatively late. He grew up, he says, surrounded by faith. His mother read him stories from the life of the Prophet Mohammed and at seven he was taught to read the Koran in Arabic by a visiting scholar. But as a young man, he was not devout. The return to faith came following his mother's illness and a profound personal interrogation, he says, prompted by the furore after the publication of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Wanting to defend Islam from what he saw as ignorant attacks, Khan began to read more widely about the religion.

These days his identity as a conservative, but not fundamentalist, Muslim has become part of his political programme and, in a way not often understood in the west, his political persona in Pakistan. Liberals in the country dismiss him as a mullah, literally a low-level cleric but figuratively an ignorant extremist, just, they say, without the beard that is the mark of the pious Muslim man. This, predictably, irritates Khan. His faith, he says, has been influenced primarily by the Sufi strand of Islamic practice, which emphasises a believer's direct engagement with God without the intercession of a cleric or scholar. Another major influence is Allama Iqbal, a poet, political activist and philosopher who died in 1938 and is considered one of the spiritual fathers of Pakistan. "Iqbal, who is my great inspiration, clashes with the mullahs," says Khan. "The message of all religions is to be just and humane but it is often distorted by the clergy."

For all the talk of tolerance, Khan's party has been keeping some strange company recently, sharing a platform, for example, with the Difa-e-Pakistan or Pakistan Defence Council. This is a coalition of extremist groups which wants to end any Pakistani alliance with the USA and includes people who not only explicitly support the Afghan Taliban but who are associated with terrorist and sectarian violence. At one recent rally of the council in Islamabad, I met members of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, a Sunni group which has murdered thousands of Shias, while around me hundreds chanted: "Death to America." Lashkar-e-Toiba, the organisation responsible for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai in India in which 166 died, is also part of the coalition. Mian Mohammed Aslam, the head of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a mass Islamist party similar to the Muslim Brotherhood in the Islamic world and dedicated to a similarly hardline, conservative programme, spoke warmly of "close relations" with Khan, even going as far as raising the prospect of an electoral pact with Khan's Tehreek-e-Insaf in the coming elections, when I interviewed him.

Khan says that as a politician he and his party need to reach out to everybody, but that does not mean that he endorses the views of the Islamists. Undoubtedly a social conservative who is religious in outlook and rhetoric, he does not lapse into simplistic binary analyses of the west (secular or "Crusader Christian" against Islam) like many of his countrymen. He denies being anti-western at all. "How can I be anti-western? How can you be anti-western when [the west] is so varied, so different? It doesn't make sense."


Finger on the pulse: speaking at a rally in Lahore last month. 'We only have one chance and we have to be completely prepared,' he says. Photograph: Warrick Page/Getty Images

It is not religion driving Khan's anger but something else. Take, for example, his analysis of the violent insurgency in the western borders of his country. For most scholars, this is the result of a complex mix of factors: the breakdown of traditional society, war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the 2000s, the generalised radicalisation of the Islamic world since 2001, al-Qaeda's presence, the Pakistani army's operations in the area and the civilian casualties caused by drone strikes. The militants themselves, who behead supposed spies and drive out development workers or teachers, are increasingly unpopular. Yet Khan calls the violence a "fight for Pashtun solidarity against a foreign invader". He insists "there is not a threat to Pakistan from Taliban ideology".

For Khan this foreign invasion takes various forms. There is dress (he speaks admiringly of how the Pashtuns still shun western clothes) and there is TV (he mentions how his former mother-in-law thought one channel beamed in from India was in fact American, because of all its adverts for consumer goods). His charge against the "liberal elite" is implicitly a charge against the most westernised elements in the country. It is a defence of a vision of the local, the authentic, the familiar, against globalisation.

However, with his cultured public-school vowels, his half-British children, his British ex-wife, his success at a game the English invented, it becomes a very personal argument, too. Khan says he first became aware of the effects of colonialism as a teenager. "My first shock was going from Aitchison to play for Lahore. The boys from the Urdu [local language] schools laughed at me… Then in England we had been trained to be English public schoolboys, which we were not. Hence the inferiority complex. Because we were not and could never be the thing we were trying to be."

Even the memory agitates him. "I saw the elite [in Pakistan] who were superior because they were more westernised. I used to hear that colonialism was about building roads, railways etc… but that's all bullshit. It kills your self-esteem. The elite become a cheap imitation of the coloniser." He says that he recently read that after 200 years of Arab rule in Sicily, the court continued to speak Arabic and wear Arab clothes for 50 years after their former overlords had left.

His recent book is full of such references. P34: "Colonialism, for my mother and father, was the ultimate humiliation." P43: "The more a Pakistani aped the British the higher up the social ladder he was considered to be." P64: "In today's Lahore and Karachi rich women go to glitzy parties in western clothes chauffeured by men with entirely different customs and values" – and so on through the 350 pages.

This lays him open to charges of hypocrisy, inconsistency, of being a self-hating "brown sahib" himself, accusations frequently made by the "liberal elite" Khan so detests. Yet Khan's patriotism, faith and honesty are attractive to many in a chronically unstable country seen as an exporter of extremism and violence, as irremediably corrupt, as "the most dangerous place in the world".

So, what would Khan do in power? At the moment he is thick on aspiration and thin on practical policy. He would, he says, cut government expenditure and raise tax collection. He would turn the mansions and villas of senior officials – "these colonial symbols" – into libraries or even museums "like after the Iranian revolution" to show the people how the elite lived. He would solve the "energy and education emergencies" and he would "totally pull out of the war on terror", withdrawing the army from the western border zone and letting "our people in [these areas] deal with the militants themselves". Whether he could make the country's powerful military obey such directives – his critics allege he is unhealthily close to the army – is unsure.

As for relations with Washington, his position is clear: "We need to be a friend of American, but not a hired gun," he says. "We will take no aid from them. We will stand on our own feet, with a fully sovereign foreign policy and no terrorism from our soil."

Which political leaders does he admire? Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the moderate Islamist Turkish prime minister, he says; Brazil's Lula da Silva, who forced a better redistribution of his country's newly generated wealth; Mahathir Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew of Malaysia and Singapore, two authoritarians. But it doesn't really matter. If Khan does end up prime minister he will do things his way.

Khan is not "dim", as the elite who he detests contemptuously say, but is not an intellectual either. He is a politician riding a wave of public disaffection, and that wave might just carry him to power. What he does afterwards is not something he worries about. He will be 60 this autumn. This would only bother him, he says, if he "had nothing to look forward to". But he is convinced that he does. From his hilltop Khan looks down and says: "This country will go through its biggest change ever. A revolution is coming."

[buglerbilly]

Ambassador: US Won't Speed Afghanistan Pullout

March 03, 2012

Stars and Stripes|by Martin Kuz



KABUL -- America will not accelerate the removal of its troops from Afghanistan despite a series of attacks on U.S. soldiers by Afghan security personnel angered over the burning of Qurans at a coalition airfield, according to the top U.S. diplomat here.

Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, emphasized in an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul that the troop withdrawal would proceed as outlined last summer by President Barack Obama.

“We have not invested the billions of dollars we have and the lives of 1,900 Americans to see the Taliban retake this country and al-Qaida once again be able to restage here,” Crocker said.“That’s why we’re here — to be sure al-Qaida is defeated and that Afghanistan is never again a safe haven for forces that would seek to attack us on our own soil.”

There are 90,000 U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan. The number will be reduced to 68,000 by Sept. 30, and most of the remaining troops will leave by the end of 2014.

Crocker’s statements echoed those of Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta this week as top U.S. officials attempt to counter deepening suspicion between Afghans and coalition forces, and mounting criticism in America of a war more than a decade old.

Since Feb. 21, when reports surfaced that soldiers at Bagram Airfield had burned several copies of the Quran, Afghan security forces have shot and killed six U.S. servicemembers in three separate incidents.

The latest shooting occurred Thursday, when two Afghan soldiers and a literacy instructor opened fire at a base in Kandahar province, killing two U.S. soldiers and wounding a third. Coalition troops returned fire and killed the two Afghan soldiers.

The attack followed the shooting deaths of a pair of American soldiers by an Afghan counterpart at a base in Nangarhar province on Feb. 23.

Two days later, an Afghan police officer gunned down two U.S. military advisers at the Interior Ministry building in Kabul. The suspect remains at large.

The slayings at the ministry led U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, NATO’s commander in Afghanistan, to recall the hundreds of U.S. advisers who work in government buildings in the capital.

Some advisers have since returned to their offices. But the succession of what the military terms “green-on-blue” attacks could strain the relationship between Afghan security forces and the coalition troops charged with training them before departing in 2014.

Crocker, while describing the killings as “horrible incidents,” sought to place the attacks in the larger framework of the ongoing effort to build an Afghan military force of 350,000 troops.

“When you look at the number of international advisers out there every day with Afghan forces, both in training and in an operational context, you’re talking about a tragic but very, very tiny percentage of incidents,” he said.

Violence jolted Kabul and several provinces for a week as Afghans protested the burning of the Qurans. More than 30 people were killed and hundreds injured, with most of the casualties occurring as demonstrators clashed with Afghan security forces.

Considering that some protests drew upward of 4,000 people, Crocker said the bloodshed “could have been a lot worse.”

“One of the hardest things you can ask a police or military force to do is confront your own population,” he said. Crediting Afghan security forces for responding “with discipline and determination … and, under the circumstances, a minimum use of force,” Crocker appraised their actions as a “bright spot” amid the unrest.

“We’ve seen the future, in a sense, of Afghan forces able to operate independently — without coalition partners, without coalition embeds,” he said.

“The Taliban did their best to instigate a lot of these protests,” he added. “They can’t be too happy with how it turned out for them.”

Obama, Panetta and Allen offered apologies for the burning of the Qurans, eliciting criticism from some of the Republican candidates for president, including frontrunner Mitt Romney. Crocker defended the public show of contrition.

“We’re Americans, and one of our qualities is that when we make mistakes, we acknowledge them and we apologize for them,” he said.

“It was also important — although I didn’t think that was anyone’s initial motivation — in giving President (Hamid) Karzai the tool to say, ‘Look, they have acknowledged it was a mistake, they’ve apologized for it, everybody calm down.’”

A military investigation into the burning of the Qurans at Bagram could conclude as early as this weekend. Crocker and Allen have said the soldiers involved may face punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice but will not be turned over to the Afghan courts as requested by Karzai.

Crocker, 62, served a two-year stint as ambassador to Iraq that ended in 2009, and previously held the same post in Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon. The native of Spokane, Wash., helped reopen the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in 2002 after American forces ousted the Taliban from power.

“I’ve never seen such utter devastation and annihilation as I saw here …,” he said, recalling the aftermath of Afghanistan’s civil war. “Parts of the city — large parts of the city — looked like Berlin (in) 1945.”

He returned to Kabul as the U.S. ambassador last summer at Obama’s request, possessed of a “strategic patience” learned from his time in Iraq.

“If Iraq was hard, and it was, Afghanistan is harder,” said Crocker, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 by President George W. Bush.

“Iraq had a reasonably well-developed infrastructure, a proud military tradition, a skilled set of bureaucrats. … Afghanistan had none of those things after 30 years of conflict. Everything had to be built from the ground up.”

He contends the past decade has brought gains in educational opportunities for girls and women, wider access to health care and an expanded range of government services.

As for the democratic government maturing at a slower rate than Westerners might have hoped, he said, “You cannot have a total revolution in a country and then expect that overnight it’s going to transform itself into a modern liberal democracy. (America) didn’t do it. It’s a struggle.”

Looking beyond 2014 and the withdrawal of most U.S. troops, Crocker envisions an international presence staying in Afghanistan in an advisory role.

In the interim, he considers the elimination of Taliban safe havens in Pakistan near its border with Afghanistan vital to the prospects of peace.

“Ultimately, it’s going to take Pakistani action and the recognition that these insurgent groups are more dangerous to them than they are to Afghanistan,” Crocker said. “They have taken thousands of casualties in their military and paramilitary forces fighting insurgents on their own soil.”

Meanwhile, as speculation persists of discord within the Taliban-led insurgency about entering into peace talks with the Afghan government, Crocker regards that internal strife as an advantage for the coalition.

“A divided Taliban is not a bad thing at all,” he said. “You reconcile with those who are reconcilable, and then you figure out what the minimum number of irreconcilables are and you go after them. I mean, let’s face it, like in Iraq, there are some you simply have to kill because they’re not going to come across.”

[buglerbilly]

5 Soldiers Responsible in Afghan Quran Burnings

March 03, 2012

Knight Ridder/Tribune|by Nancy A. Youssef

WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon investigation has found five soldiers responsible for burning copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, which set off a spate of anti-American protests and violence across Afghanistan, two U.S. military officials said Friday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the findings hadn't been released publicly, didn't further identify the soldiers, and there was no indication that the investigation found that they violated military laws. However, the troops could face disciplinary action.

The Quran burnings have put the U.S. plan to withdraw from Afghanistan in jeopardy, triggering more deadly attacks by Afghan soldiers on their American counterparts and raising questions about the viability of the U.S.-led mission to work closely with Afghan forces and hand security responsibilities over to them.

Offering their fullest account to date of the incident, the U.S. officials said that enlisted soldiers were ordered last month to remove religious materials from a prison library at Bagram Air Base, outside of Kabul, in part because detainees were believed to be leaving messages to one another in them.

At first the materials were placed in storage, the officials said. But soldiers later took the materials, including Qurans, to a fire pit and started to burn them Feb. 21. Local laborers discovered the Qurans in the pit and removed them, sparking outrage across the country after Afghans were shown holding up copies of the charred books outside the base.

The officials said that the soldiers had misunderstood orders when they placed Qurans in the fire pit to be destroyed. They had just been ordered to remove them from the library, not burn them, they said.

The preliminary findings were first reported Friday by The New York Times.

Investigators on Friday briefed the commander of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen, on their findings, and Pentagon officials have said they would brief reporters next week. However, some worry that providing more details of the incident could reignite another round of protests. While the U.S. military has called the burnings an accident, Afghans remain dubious.

On Friday, a council of senior Afghan clerics demanded that the U.S. personnel responsible for the incident be tried and punished.

"The council strongly condemns this crime and inhumane, savage act by American troops by desecrating holy books of the Quran," they said, according to a statement released by the office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Shortly after U.S. officials admitted burning the Qurans, an Afghan soldier shot two U.S. troops inside the Afghan Interior Ministry building in Kabul, prompting Allen to recall all troops who were based inside ministries. On Thursday, just as some troops returned to the ministries, two more U.S. service members were killed by Afghan troops on a joint base in the southern province of Kandahar.

In all, Afghan security forces have fatally shot six U.S troops since Afghans learned of the burning. At least 30 Afghans have been killed in the related protests.

The incident also has ignited fears among U.S. troops, who privately say that Afghan attacks on international trainers could continue through the end of the war.

President Barack Obama apologized to Karzai, and top U.S. military commanders met with local leaders in an effort to quell the tensions. But many Afghans weren't appeased, saying that they couldn't believe the U.S. military could make such mistakes more than a decade into the war.

Afghan leaders were conducting their own investigation into their incident but it was unclear when they would release their findings.

© Copyright 2012 Knight Ridder/Tribune. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Acts of Afghan Betrayal are Poisoning US War Plan

March 03, 2012

Associated Press|by Robert Burns

WASHINGTON -- A trend of Afghan treachery that has taken the lives of six American troops over the past week is poisoning a key ingredient in the international coalition's formula for winding down the decade-long war: trust.

In the nerve-rattling setting of a conflict in which the enemy wears no uniform, it takes trust to work side by side with Afghans whose loyalties are hard to decipher and who sometimes turn out to be Taliban sympathizers.

It is difficult to gauge what it will take to rebuild a bond of trust after repeated instances of Afghan soldiers and civilians - or civilians posing as soldiers - turning their guns on American and other allied troops. At some point, it calls into question the viability of a military strategy that requires close teamwork with Afghan troops, although the Obama administration is adamant that it will stay the course in Afghanistan.

More U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan since Feb. 1 by their supposed Afghan allies - six - than in combat with the Taliban - just two - according to an Associated Press review of casualty data through Friday. Combat deaths typically are lower in the off-peak winter fighting season.

"There is something fundamentally wrong here," says Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who was Gen. David Petraeus' executive officer in Baghdad in 2007-08. He said Iraqi troops sometimes betrayed their U.S. partners but not nearly to the extent seen recently in Afghanistan.

Administration officials insist there will be no backing away from working hand in hand with Afghan forces.

"Let me make clear: We will not be intimidated by what the enemy does," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division while visiting Fort Campbell, Ky., on Friday. "We will not change the course we are on to achieve the mission in Afghanistan."

He was referring to an endgame strategy - first endorsed by Washington's NATO partners in November 2010 and expected to be reaffirmed in May at a NATO summit meeting in Chicago - that calls for gradually handing over responsibility for security to the Afghan army and police by the end of 2014. Panetta has said he hopes Afghans will assume the lead combat role across the country by mid-2013, with U.S. and other NATO troops remaining in smaller numbers to perform numerous support missions.

To get to that point successfully, U.S. and allied troops are not only continuing to train Afghan forces but also are increasingly partnering with them in the field - putting their lives in each other's hands.

This is where the trust factor counts the most.

Mark R. Jacobson, until last summer the deputy NATO senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, says he is optimistic that trust can be rebuilt and he believes the basic U.S. approach remains sound. But he is troubled by what he sees as the Taliban's successes in exploiting Afghan outrage over the U.S. military's mistaken burning of Qurans and by Taliban infiltration of Afghan security forces.

"They are deliberately seeking to make you mistrust that person standing next to you," Jacobson said in an interview. He is now a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank.

It's part of a calculated campaign by the Taliban, he said, to drive a "psychological wedge" between Afghan government forces and their foreign partners and thereby cripple a key element of the war strategy.

"If we can't train the Afghan national army appropriately, we're never going to be able to leave and we're never going to win," Jacobson said.

It's not just American troops who are getting killed by their supposed Afghan partners. Four French troops were gunned down by a rogue Afghan soldier on Jan. 20. Paris responded by immediately speeding up its planned withdrawal of combat troops. An Albanian soldier was killed in an attack by Afghan police on Feb. 20.

There has been no heightened clamor on Capitol Hill to withdraw from Afghanistan, but Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., has renewed his call for the White House to assemble a panel of outside experts to review U.S. strategy.

"Congress and the Obama administration need to wake up and realize that things are not going well in Afghanistan, and it has nothing to do with the capabilities of our troops," Wolf said on the House floor Thursday. It has to do with "Afghan security forces gunning down their American advisers," he said.

Wolf also is worried by the persistent problem of Taliban havens on the Pakistan side of the border.

Navy Adm. James Stavridis, the top NATO commander, said he sees no need to change course in Afghanistan.

"As I look at the broad sweep of our strategy there, I am convinced that we should continue with transitioning Afghanistan's security to the Afghans," he told a Senate panel Thursday. He called himself "cautiously optimistic" that the plan now in place with ultimately succeed in stabilizing the country.

In a separate appearance before Congress, Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff and former top U.S. commander in Iraq, framed the problem diplomatically by saying only a tiny fraction of Afghan security forces are targeting Americans. He applauded U.S. troops for their restraint in the face of treachery.

"I know it's very difficult for (U.S. soldiers) when we have somebody who is working hard, dedicating themselves to the mission in Afghanistan and somebody who they're helping comes behind and kills them," he said.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

CIA-Led Force may Speed Afghan Exit

March 04, 2012

Associated Press|by Kimberly Dozier



WASHINGTON - Top Pentagon officials are considering putting elite special operations troops under CIA control in Afghanistan after 2014, just as they were during last year's raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, sources told The Associated Press.

The plan is one of several possible scenarios being debated by Pentagon staffers. It has not yet been presented to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the White House or Congress, the sources said.

If the plan were adopted, the U.S. and Afghanistan could say there are no more U.S. troops on the ground in the war-torn country because once the SEALs, Rangers and other elite units are assigned to CIA control, even temporarily, they become spies.

No matter who's in charge, the special operations units still would target militants on joint raids with Afghans and keep training Afghan forces to do the job on their own.

The idea floated by a senior defense intelligence official comes as U.S. defense chiefs try to figure out how to draw down troops fast enough to meet the White House's 2014 deadline. Pentagon staffers already have put forward a plan to hand over much of the war-fighting to special operations troops. This idea would take that plan one step further, shrinking the U.S. presence to less than 20,000 troops after 2014, according to four current and two former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the program involves classified operatives.

Pentagon spokesman George Little denied the idea is being discussed. "Any suggestion that such a plan exists is simply wrong," Little said Saturday. "United States special operations forces continue to work closely with the intelligence community to confront a range of national security challenges across the world."

Reducing the U.S. presence faster would be a political boon for the White House and the Afghan government, with Afghan sentiment raw over incidents ranging from civilian casualties from U.S. strike operations to the recent burning of Qurans by U.S. troops.

But a CIA-run war would mean that the U.S. public would not be informed about funding or operations, as they are in a traditional war. Oversight would fall to the White House, top intelligence officials, and a few congressional committees. Embedding journalists would be out of the question.

Two senior defense officials said that neither the CIA nor Special Operations Command has put this plan forward officially to Panetta. The other officials who said they have been part of discussions about the plan say it would require the assent of the White House and congressional oversight committees, and would be contingent upon the approval of the Afghan government. The idea has not yet been presented at any of those levels, the sources said.

The CIA's intelligence and paramilitary elements regularly work alongside special operations units, both in the war zone and in areas where militants operate. On a case-by-case basis, elite special operations units are assigned to the CIA for missions when the U.S. wants total deniability, usually in areas where the U.S. is operating without the local government's permission, as in the bin Laden raid.

The notion of longer-term assignments to the CIA does not sit well with some senior special operations commanders, who want their units to remain autonomous in order to keep their troops under Defense Department legal parameters. If CIA-assigned troops are captured, for example, they are treated like spies, not protected by the Geneva Conventions, which govern the treatment of prisoners of war.

But putting special operations troops in the CIA's employ in Afghanistan could be attractive to the Afghan government because it would make the troops less visible and give Afghan President Hamid Karzai the added bonus of being able to say U.S. troops had withdrawn from his country. Technically, he would be right: Troops would have been rendered as spies by answering to the CIA's Kabul station chief instead of a U.S. military commander.

Such troops would presumably augment the CIA's current training and partnership with Afghanistan's own elite paramilitary intelligence forces, the Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams.

Afghan officials, and the general public in Afghanistan, express much warmer sentiments toward the CIA than to U.S. special operations troops, after a decade of occupation has built up anger and bitterness over civilian casualties from special operations night raids. The CIA as an institution seems to have escaped that collective Afghan resentment, with Afghan officials eager to tell visiting reporters that they regularly work with "OGA," or "Other Government Agency," the slang term for the CIA.

CIA Director David Petraeus, a former Afghanistan war commander, is grappling with a vast new global mission and far fewer troops than he is used to - or that he needs to carry it out, especially if the CIA ends up with the bulk of the mission after troops withdraw from Afghanistan, according to current and former officials familiar with internal CIA debates. The CIA's paramilitary Special Activities Division that both gathers intelligence and works with local intelligence and security forces numbers only a few hundred people, and the overall clandestine service has less than 5,000.

Petraeus took charge at the agency last year, while Libya was still convulsed by civil war and leader Moammar Gadhafi was on the loose. He ordered his top officials to "send all your available teams into Libya," only to be told they already had deployed all the manpower available, a single team, two former officials said.

To make up for such shortfalls, the agency normally hires extra people, often retired special operators with the requisite security clearance, military training and language ability. But the government mandate to slash contractor use has meant cutting contracts, according to two former officials familiar with the agency's current hiring practices. Special operations troops could fill that gap, officials said.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Officials: Talks for Deal With US Faltering

March 05, 2012

Associated Press|by Patrick Quinn and Deb Riechmann



KABUL, Afghanistan - Efforts to forge a deal that will govern the American military presence in Afghanistan beyond a planned U.S troop withdrawal in 2014 are faltering, current and former Afghan officials said on Monday.

They said obstacles include disputes over the transfer of American-run detention centers, night raids and quarrels within the Afghan president's inner circle that led one of his top advisers to threaten to resign.

The failure to make headway on a strategic partnership document reflects growing animosity between President Hamid Karzai and the United States, which reached its lowest level after the burning of Qurans and other Islamic texts at a U.S. military base on Feb. 20. That incident sparked six days of angry riots across Afghanistan that left 30 people dead, including six U.S. troops who were killed by Afghan security forces.

Karzai has been stubborn about his demands - apparently so much so that he is losing the backing of some of his own top aides. Although the president cannot be seen to be a pushover to the U.S. on sovereignty issues, many top Afghan officials believe that Afghanistan's government is too shaky to stand on its own. They sense that Washington is now pushing back against Karzai in the talks, and fear that the Americans may simply wash their hands of Karzai or perhaps the entire Afghan war.

Afghan officials stress that Afghanistan wants a deal, but that its sovereignty should be respected.

"Afghanistan is committed to have a long-term strategic partnership with the United States of America, who is our important international ally. But as we have mentioned repeatedly, the Afghan government wants to sign a strategic partnership with the U.S. for the long term, and the national sovereignty of Afghanistan should be respected in that strategic partnership," Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai told reporters on Monday.

The president can't afford not to make a deal with the United States, which provides Afghanistan with billions of dollars in development aid and funds most of the training for the country's army and police, which are to take control of the country's security at the end of 2014.

The U.S. spent $22 billion in the past two years for training and is expected to contribute the bulk of the approximately $4 billion a year that 260,000-strong force will need to operate in 2015 and beyond.

An Afghan government official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said that more than two months ago National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta submitted his resignation after disagreements erupted between him and Karzai over the strategic partnership document.

Spanta, who is spearheading the talks, wants Karzai to compromise on the two most contentious issues being negotiated - night raids and the U.S. transfer of detention facilities to Afghan government control.

Karzai did not accept Spanta's resignation, but kept the letter and did not destroy it or throw it out. Spanta verbally threatened to resign on two subsequent occasions, mostly recently in the past several days, the official said.

The official and Davood Moradian, who was an adviser to Spanta when he was foreign minister, said the strategic partnership deal might not be ready for a NATO summit in May.

Such a delay could torpedo the deal, as the United States has already been showing decreasing enthusiasm about it.

Spanta was on a trip to China and not available to comment, but Moradian said the resignation threat was part of an effort to pressure Karzai into a compromise.

"There is a possibility that if that tactic didn't work he would resign," said Moradian, assistant professor of political science at American University in Kabul. Moradian was the chief policy adviser to Spanta when he was foreign minister.

The strategic partnership document is critical to define the U.S. commitment to aid and development in Afghanistan after 2014, when most international combat forces are to leave. It is also considered a precursor to a status of forces agreement that will govern the presence and role of U.S. forces in the country after 2014. The U.S. is expected to keep about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan past 2014 in counterterrorism and training roles.

A U.S. embassy spokesman, Gavin Sundwall, said the Americans value an agreement, but not so much that they prefer a bad deal to no deal at all.

"We still are committed to a strategic partnership with the Afghan people, which we believe is in both our countries' interest to achieve our joint mission and ensure that Afghanistan cannot become a safe haven for terrorists again," Sundwall said.

"We have always said it is more important to get the right agreement than to get an agreement."

The comment was the first indication that the United States might be pushing back at what many consider to be Karzai's intransigence on the issue of detainees and night raids. Karzai has increasingly been hardening his position and pushing his agenda with incidents such as the Quran burnings.

"I think there is a growing understanding in Washington .... that they cannot sign the agreement with Karzai," Moradian said. "My assessment is that they are contemplating signing it with the next president of the country. At the moment that this poison atmosphere exists between Karzai and Washington, there a logic" to delay the signing until a new president is replaced.

Karzai was re-elected in 2009 and his five-year term expires in 2014. He is barred under Afghanistan's constitution from running for a third.

Karzai and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker were to meet late Monday to discuss a variety of issues, one of the Afghan officials said.

Karzai has demanded that the Parwan Detention Facility be handed over on March 9. Afghan officials say privately that a U.S. proposal to hand over the facility in six months would be acceptable to some in the Karzai government, but that the president had not yet embraced the idea.

"The United States has repeatedly made clear that it is committed to working with the Afghan government to complete a transition of detention operations in Afghanistan in a manner that is safe and orderly and in accordance with our international legal obligations," Sundwall said.

U.S. military officials have repeatedly said that the date for handing over the Parwan facility would be based on the ability of the Afghan government to run it.

The Americans have stood strong on the need for night raids, saying that the operations are one of its most effective tools for finding and capturing insurgents, especially with fewer conventional forces.

Karzai has said that Afghans should be the only ones doing night raids because the invasion of privacy from troops entering a families' home is compounded when the soldiers are Westerners. He has also said that too many of these night raids have resulted in civilian deaths or the detention of non-insurgents.

He said Karzai views having foreign forces in charge of Afghan detainees as a symbolic affront to Afghan sovereignty. Moradian said another reason might be that he thinks he can use detainees as leverage in any peace talks with the Taliban.

"When it comes to the peace negotiation, he would have some degree of control on the detainees," Moradian said.

Despite talks of peace, insurgents carried out a suicide attack near an American base outside Kabul, killing two civilians and injuring four, and another in the eastern city of Jalalabad that killed one civilian and injured 11.

---

Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

In Pakistan, gone but not forgotten


Michele Langevine Leiby/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST - Amina Masood Janjua is the leader of the missing persons protest in Islamabad.

By Michele Langevine Leiby, Tuesday, March 6, 8:04 AM

ISLAMABAD — They huddled in small groups under a bright orange tarpaulin, seated on rugs and prayer mats laid out end to end to protect against the chilly February ground. Some of the protesters were resting, some sharing a meal of lentil dahl and naan bread, others solemnly clutching homemade posters bearing the faces and neatly scripted names of their missing loved ones.

Infants and elderly, housewives and working professionals, entire families representing Pakistan’s so-called “missing persons” have set up a protest camp near the parliament here to demand answers on the whereabouts of their relatives. “People are pinning their hopes here,” said the group’s leader, Amina Masood Janjua. “We have no guns, no nuclear weapons. Our words and our grief is the power.”

Her husband, businessman Masood Ahmed Janjua, now 51, disappeared six years ago. She said he was last seen in Rawalpindi, a city just outside the capital, on his way to Peshawar.

Janjua is one of hundreds if not thousands who have been “disappeared” — seized in extrajudicial detentions allegedly conducted by Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, according to human rights officials. The missing are presumed by the agency to be terrorists and Islamist militants.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate is thought to be behind the seizures of the putative terrorists, because when those detained are allowed to go home, they say they were with the intelligence agencies, said Amina Janjua.

The ISI denies involvement with most of the cases and when it does concede involvement, the agency justifies the seizures as in the interest of stemming Islamist militancy.

Last month, the Supreme Court ordered ISI officials to produce seven of the disappeared detainees in court. The men had been tried and acquitted by the courts for attacks on military and ISI facilities but then were later allegedly reapprehended and detained by security forces. Their story was splashed across local media after the court appearance — the media even gave the group a catchy moniker, the Adiala 11 after Adiala jail where they were being held in Rawalpindi.

Photos of the men — emaciated, barely alive — gave the public a glimpse into the Islamabad courtroom where a macabre iteration of a habeas corpus proceeding played out. Only seven of the Adiala 11 appeared because four had died in detention.

It was the first time the men had been publicly seen in more than one-and-a-half years. One mother, overcome by the condition of her son, suffered a fatal heart attack the day after the hearing. Local media reported she died of a broken heart.

Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have called the indeterminate detention of the missing a violation of basic human rights. There are some uncomfortable but unmistakable parallels to the United States’ Guantanamo policy: Many of the men have been held for years. Scores have not been charged with any crime. But even more unsettling is the fact that they are unaccounted for — security forces in most cases do not even acknowledge holding the men.

“They go back to the old bundle of lies,” said Janjua. “’Oh, your husband was not abducted.’ ‘Oh, he was abducted by the Taliban.’”

Last week the National Assembly Standing Committee on Defense called for “zero tolerance” on human rights violations in Baluchistan, where a large number of forced disappearances are said to have occurred. Opposition leader Chaudhry Nisir Ali Khan declared that his party would move to impose a complete ban on the picking up of people illegally by the spy agency. Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry lambasted the spy agencies, telling them, “You are not above the law.”

Various politicians have visited the camp for ready-made media opportunities. “This is the problem in Pakistan,” said Janjua. “Too much lip service. We are being told that things will change and change is just around the corner. But it never comes.”

At the camp, a constant media presence provides some sense that Pakistan has not turned a blind eye. Two young girls sit on the ground comforting a fussy toddler. But when a reporter’s camera appears, the baby settles down and the girls, their faces plaintive but determined, take up their protest signs again, holding them high for the world to bear witness.

[buglerbilly]

March 6, 2012

Afghanistan: First Tragedy, Now Farce

By Mark Thompson


Christopher Bassford

If you follow the commentariat on Afghanistan, you can sense a growing sense of pessimism. Some handle it more deftly than others:


The most insidious objection to realism in the AfPak region comes from those ready to label it a “cut-and-run” strategy. This is the kind of logic that leads some folks to sleep with an unattractive date for fear of being labeled gay…Far from being horrified at America’s wanton abandonment of its faithful Afghan protegé, our real allies will heave a sigh of relief that their American protectors are capable of some common sense after all.

Our invasion of Afghanistan was fully justified and our experiment there has not necessarily failed. We simply need a longer perspective. Twenty or thirty years from now, a generation of Afghans will remember how much better life was when the Americans were there. At that point, they may seek to integrate themselves into the civilized world.

By the way, this no know-nothing blogger: it’s from the pen of Christopher Bassford, professor of strategy at the National War College in Washington, over at Small Wars Journal.

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/#ixzz1oLLCXznH

[buglerbilly]

Why One Tech-Savvy Aid Worker Had to Flee Afghanistan

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author March 6, 2012 | 6:30 am



Afghans walk through the Jalalabad streets that aid worker Jennifer Gold left after anti-U.S. riots swept the country. Photo: Flickr/Todd Huffman

Jennifer Gold had never felt afraid during her two years in Afghanistan. Not out in Jalalabad, where she helped get natal-care information to the cellphones of pregnant women. But as she waited in the Herat airport for the flight that would take her home from Afghanistan abruptly, the humanitarian aid worker and Army reservist nervously eyed her fellow passengers, fearing that one of them would try to kill her and her colleagues.

“I kept saying in my head that if two Army officers could be killed in the Ministry of Interior,” Gold remembers, “then you can bet three foreigners can easily be shot in the airport.”

Gold decamped to California. Like an increasing number of her fellow Western aid workers who came to Afghanistan in the hope of helping Afghans enjoy a better life, she doesn’t know when she’ll come back. Whatever the NATO command says about security improving in the country after a decade of American-led war, aid workers fear violent deaths, particularly after the violent protests of U.S. soldiers who accidentally burnt the Koran last month.

According to an overview compiled by the Institute for the Study of War, a hawkish Washington think tank with close ties to the U.S. military, at least 16,000 Afghans protested around the country, mostly concentrated in the east and north, between Feb. 21 and Feb. 27. Its director, Kimberly Kagan, argues that the impact of the post-Koran violence — which included the murder of two U.S. officers in the Interior Ministry — is overstated.

“The gravity and danger of the situation is less than meets the perceptive eye in Washington,” says Kagan.

But in Afghanistan, Gold found the danger unbearable.

Gold was at work in the western province of Herat when the news came out that soldiers at the detention center on the outskirts of Bagram Air Field had burned the Koran. “It was crazy reading the updates from Logar, Jalalabad, Khost, Kabul, Herat — the demonstrations and unrest spread so quickly,” she reflects. Worse, her travel plans took her to Kabul; now each day brought word of another violent protest, with hundreds or thousands on the streets.

Gold’s team was supposed to conduct a few days of interviews at three Kabul ministries. But then came the assassinations. “That really sealed the deal for us to get the heck out of dodge,” she says. “And rather than be holed up in an office in Herat, we decided to come back to the States and finish up some work that needed our attention.”

Gold, a lieutenant in the North Carolina National Guard who deployed to Iraq in 2009, didn’t think it would turn out this way. She and her friends had started a tech-heavy aid company, the International Synergy Group, that brought Gold to Afghanistan in May 2010. With some contract cash from the blue-sky researchers at Darpa, Gold sought to use mobile applications to get agriculture and health data into the hands of Afghans, particularly for pregnant women in need of natal-care facts, through the use of open-source software favored by aid workers like Ushahidi or FrontlineSMS.

Even though eastern Afghanistan is volatile, Gold and her two colleagues didn’t feel the need to hire security. They drove in local cars, dressed in the local style, and lived in a residential hotel favored by other western expats.

But even though the International Synergy Group felt secure in Jalalabad, other aid organizations didn’t feel the same way. Riots in Mazar-e-Sharif, a northern city considered safe, prompted by a Florida pastor burning the Koran in 2011, killed seven United Nations employees and sent shockwaves through the aid community. “In the east, where we’re working, there isn’t anyone working outside the wire,” Gold says, using a military term for going off-base. “A lot of the organizations that were there have already fled.”

Gold doesn’t want to stay in the United States. There’s too much work to do in Afghanistan, she says, too many people who need help, and too many Afghan friends who it would be unconscionable to abandon. But she also doesn’t know when it will be safe enough to return to Jalalabad — or how she might need to change her routine in order to stay safe. So she’s in California for the time being, working on a tele-medicine project, feeling like an expat in her home country.

Some of her colleagues weren’t willing to take the risk even before the Koran burning. Una Moore, a Danger Room friend who worked on election security in Afghanistan, wrote after the Mazar riots, “This is not the beginning of the end for the international community in Afghanistan. This is the end.”

Gold isn’t ready to go that far. There’s still a role for international development assistance, she thinks. But she feels that the Koran burnings do in fact mark the end of the U.S.’ hopes for a successful outcome to the Afghanistan war.

“The Koran burning shouldn’t have happened. It’s like we’re not learning from the mistakes we’ve made in the past or even from mistakes the Russians made before us,” Gold says. “I think that as soon as we leave, the country is just going to go back to where it was before. The Taliban will come back and it’s just going to be a complete mess.”

[buglerbilly]

Key commanders have their say on Afghanistan

By Walter Pincus, Thursday, March 8, 9:53 AM

Two senior American military commanders spent the past two days putting into context recent negative news about the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. At the same time, they tried to get members of the Senate and House Armed Services committees to realize that U.S. units will remain in that country long after combat troops depart in 2014.

A question asked on both days: “Should the U.S. modify its Afghan strategy in the wake of those six U.S. soldiers being killed by Afghan soldiers between Feb. 23 and March 1?”

“Treachery has existed as long as there’s been warfare, and there’s always been a few people that you couldn’t trust” was the way Marine Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, put it. On Tuesday, he told the Senate panel: “I’m one of those who has slept peacefully under Afghan boys guarding me back in 2001. No force is perfect.”

On Wednesday, Mattis told House members that the U.S. military relationship with Afghan troops “should not be defined by the occasional tragedies.” He went on to say, “More Afghan boys have died as a result of this sort of thing in a society that has been turned upside down by the Soviets some decades ago. . . . The Kalashnikov culture found its way inside that society and violence has become too often the norm. It’s one of the things we’re trying to turn back.”

But, he added, “in Afghanistan right now, it has not stopped us in our tracks.”

Adm. William McRaven, head the U.S. Special Operations Command, told the senators that his troops “have not had any what we refer to as ‘green-on-blue’ incidents [Afghan soldiers attacking U.S. or NATO personnel] with respect to our partner relationships.”

Another question that came up several times was President Hamid Karzai’s repeated objection to Special Forces night raids on Afghan villages in order to capture targeted, high-value Taliban leaders.

McRaven told the senators that the raids are “essential” and that the high-value individuals “generally bed down at night. They are much more targetable at night. And I think if you look at it tactically, what you find is the Afghans are actually much safer if we target an individual at night because there aren’t so many people out and about in the little villages.”

He also said that Karzai has been told that Afghan forces have taken the lead on night raids. “They are the ones that do the call-outs, asking the people to come out of the compounds. They are the first ones through the door. They are the ones that do all of the sensitive site exploitation,” McRaven explained.

On Wednesday, McRaven told House members that “sometimes for political reasons” Afghan politicians will object to night raids, but that for the most part people approve of them because they remove unwanted people. Mattis added that for Karzai, the raid issue “cuts to the heart of [the Afghans’] self image” and remains “one of the very difficult issues that we have to sort out between us.”

Mattis said that recruitment and training of Afghan security forces is progressing and that the goal of 352,000 will “be reached in 60 days,” ahead of earlier plans.

At both hearings, questions were raised about the burden being placed on Special Operations Forces as regular forces are reduced by 22,000 this year and leadership in fighting the Taliban is taken over by Afghan forces. Special Operations Forces make up 8 percent of the forces in Afghanistan and “may increase by some small amount” as 2014 approaches, McRaven said. He also made clear that Special Operations Forces will be in Afghanistan after 2014, working with the Afghans on counterterrorism and overseeing the training of security forces.

The Special Operations Forces that remain will need regular Army troops to clear routes of makeshift bombs and pilot helicopters for medical evacuation of the wounded. And some Air Force elements will be needed to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support.

A Special Operations Forces program that still has a way to go is the Village Stability Operations/Afghan Local Police initiative. With help from other coalition elements, about 11,000 local police have been recruited, vetted and trained with the overall goal of 30,000, McRaven told the committees. He said the stability operation is underway in 57 districts.

The work is being done in partnership with Afghan commando and special forces troops.

McRaven said that it takes 18 months to get a village from planning through funding of local police units, but as they are established, U.S. Special Operations Forces go on to the next site. U.S. and Afghan special forces then share oversight of the units.

New solicitations call for the construction of two Special Operations Forces facilities at Kandahar Airfield. One is for a Joint Operation Center, the other a Special Operations Forces command and control facility. Each could cost up to $10 million, be finished in mid- to late 2013 and support “operations in southern and western Afghanistan,” according to the Corps of Engineers solicitations.

One of the more interesting answers came Wednesday from Mattis, when he was asked whether the failure to eliminate Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan was a “showstopper” for U.S. operations in Afghanistan as many politicians and analysts have stated.

“It’s not,” Mattis said. He pointed to the progress that the Pakistani army had made in the past two years and how it has “thrown the Taliban back into the mountains.” He pointed out that the Pakistanis “continue to take casualties” and that havens in some areas exist “because the Pakistan army is stretched.”

But he concluded that, while the United States at times has a “problematic . . . relationship with Pakistan . . . there’s a lot of common ground around that we use — that we operate off of together.”

Too bad Democrats and Republicans don’t have the same kind of approach.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Air Force: Flying Drug Mules That Fuel Civil War

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author March 8, 2012 | 11:08 am


Afghan police unload cargo from a transport helicopter in Kunar Province. Photo: ISAF

They’re not just illiterates who occasionally kill their American mentors. Afghanistan’s military also ferries drugs across the country in its U.S.-purchased aircraft.

At a cost of nearly $2 billion for two years’ worth of building the Afghan Air Force, the U.S. inadvertently purchased a more convenient mechanism for trafficking opium and weapons than Afghanistan’s drug lords were previously using. But it actually gets worse than that. The aerial trade in guns and drugs through the Afghan Air Force appears to be financing the rearmament of private militias hedging against the country’s implosion after the U.S. leaves.

The Wall Street Journal reveals that the U.S. military and the Drug Enforcement Agency have investigations open into the Afghan Air Force, prompted by insider tips about the illegal cargo hauls. Some U.S. military advisers had independently picked up the scent after noticing helos disappearing without recording their flight plans. Kabul International Airport featured heavily in the drug-running scheme. At its Cargo Ramp No. 5, “unscheduled aircraft were landing late at night and cargo was being unloaded in a hurry,” the Journal reports.

The airport has a tragic significance for the U.S. military. In April 2011, a colonel in the Afghan Air Force shot and killed eight troops and a contractor from the U.S.-led coalition there. Among the troops killed was Air Force Lt. Col. Frank Bryant, who was conducting an own investigation into the drug-running charges against the Afghan Air Force.

It would be bad enough if the Afghan Air Force was involved in narcotics and small-arms trafficking out of pure greed. But its illicit activities have a potential strategic impact. They may be tied to Afghanistan’s unraveling.

The Defense and Interior Ministries are heavily salted with veterans of the Northern Alliance, the mostly non-Pashtun military coalition that battled the Taliban before 9/11 and worked with the U.S. to oust the Taliban during the war’s early days. Several of them were and are drug lords. And they’re deeply distrustful of peace talks with the Taliban.

So they’ve come up with a hedge. “American investigators say they believe some of these former commanders are now selling drugs again to buy weapons,” the Journal explains. “Their aim: to rearm loyal militias in northern Afghanistan in case civil war erupts after most foreign forces withdraw from the country in 2014.”

In other words, the drug running displays a miniaturized version of the wicked problem that Afghanistan presents. The major U.S. efforts at ending the decade-long war are to train Afghans capable of securing the country and to diplomatically persuade the Taliban to stop fighting. Both of those efforts might be inadvertently accelerating the unraveling of Afghanistan in a post-American era.

While the investigation unfolds, there appears to be little appetite within the NATO command to adjust its strategy. Even though the new U.S. defense budget slashes funding for the Afghan military, the Journal notes that the U.S. is increasing its aircraft purchases for the Afghans in a big way: by 2016, the Afghan Air Force will possess 145 cargo planes, transport helos and helicopter gunships, up from 86 now. Maybe the Pentagon can defray the costs by getting a percentage of the drug money.

[buglerbilly]

Updated March 7, 2012, 11:53 p.m. ET

Afghan Air Force Probed in Drug Running

By MARIA ABI-HABIB

KABUL—The U.S. is investigating allegations that some officials in the Afghan Air Force, which was established largely with American funds, have been using aircraft to ferry narcotics and illegal weapons around the country, American officials told The Wall Street Journal.

Two probes of the Afghan Air Force, or AAF, are under way—one led by the U.S. military coalition and another by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, officials said.

"The nature of the allegations is fairly dramatic and indicated that [AAF officials] were transporting drugs on aircraft and transported weapons not owned by the government of Afghanistan for the use of private groups," said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Daniel Bolger, commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Training Mission-Afghanistan, the command that is establishing and financing Afghan security forces, including the AAF.



Gen. Bolger cautioned that the investigation was still preliminary and the allegations couldn't be proved at this stage.

As part of the inquiry, the military also is looking into whether the alleged transporting of illegal drugs and weapons was linked to an April incident in which an AAF colonel gunned down eight U.S. Air Force officers at Kabul Airport. In a 436-page report released by the U.S. Air Force in January about the killings, several American officials are quoted as mentioning that the shooter, Col. Ahmed Gul, was likely involved in the transportation of illicit cargo and wanted to shut down a probe into it.

The April shooting, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, was the deadliest attack by Afghan troops on coalition personnel in the 10 years of war. The majority of the victims were involved in an early inquiry into the misuse of AAF aircraft. Col. Gul, the Afghan officer who killed them, coordinated AAF's cargo movement.

Lt. Col. John Dorrian, an Air Force spokesman said: "There are a number of factors that were turned up as a part of the investigation. To call any of them a definitive motive would be speculation at best."

An AAF spokesman, Lt. Col. Mohammed Bahadur, denied the allegations and said he was unaware of any investigations into the air force. Afghanistan's Minister of Defense, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, also said he hadn't been informed of any inquiry.

Western officials say preliminary findings of the investigation suggest certain senior officials in the AAF and other parts of the Afghan government may have been involved in the alleged drugs and weapons transporting, or have turned a blind eye to the activity.

The probe of alleged drugs and weapons transport is still in its early stages, and Afghan investigators aren't involved in it. The allegations have come from "credible" Afghan officers inside and outside the AAF, the investigators say, and from coalition personnel working with the AAF.

The NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan has provided roughly $20 billion, almost all of it from the U.S., this year and last to build up Afghan forces, with $1.9 billion going to the AAF. Future funding for the Afghan security forces is slated to be discussed at a NATO summit in Chicago in May.

The U.S. had hoped to reach by then a deal on long-term American military presence in Afghanistan. But the talks have stalled because of President Hamid Karzai's insistence that the coalition end night raids and transfer all its detainees to Afghan custody, U.S. and Afghan sources say.

Afghanistan accounts for some 90% of the world's illicit opium production, according to the United Nations. Before the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, opium revenue enabled commanders of the Northern Alliance—the anti-Taliban fighters who would later aid the U.S. in toppling the regime—to finance their war effort.


An Afghan soldier stands guard, in December, near an aircraft donated by U.S. to Afghan Air Force.

Many of these commanders now occupy senior positions in the Afghan security forces or government. American investigators say they believe some of these former commanders are now selling drugs again to buy weapons. Their aim: to rearm loyal militias in northern Afghanistan in case civil war erupts after most foreign forces withdraw from the country in 2014.

The U.S.-led coalition is looking at specific senior Afghan officials in its current investigation into the misuse of the air force.

The investigating officials say they haven't yet found any proof that Afghan officials met with international drug networks or any other hard proof of likely criminal activity.

"We found some circumstantial evidence and a few guys willing to give us statements," Gen. Bolger said.

The DEA said it couldn't confirm or deny its role in the investigation, and declined to comment further.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Frank Bryant, a coalition adviser at AAF, spearheaded an initial, informal, investigation after months of watching Afghan "helicopters just disappearing without flight plans," said an American military officer who worked closely with him.

Early last year, Col. Bryant decided to impose U.S. control over the scheduling of Afghan military flights and suggested cutting off fuel to the AAF until it improved transparency about flight destinations and cargo, according to interviews with officials and the U.S. Air Force report on the shooting in April at Kabul International Airport.

Of particular concern was cargo ramp No. 5 at the airport, where unscheduled aircraft were landing late at night and cargo was being unloaded in a hurry, several Western officials with knowledge of Col. Bryant's probe said.

The airport is a joint civilian-military facility. Unlike in most of the airport, the U.S.-led coalition has no oversight role at ramp No. 5. A Western official called that cargo-loading area the "Grand Central station of illicit activities" in Afghanistan.

That initial probe was cut short on April 27, when Col. Gul burst into a meeting room at the military side of Kabul airport and shot Col. Bryant, seven other U.S. service members and a U.S. contractor. Col. Gul killed himself later that day.

A U.S. Air Force investigation into the shooting, released in January, didn't establish a conclusive motive for the attack, but said Col. Gul, had "self-radicalized," possibly during a stay in Pakistan.

Now, senior American military officers in Kabul are pushing for that probe into the April killings to be reopened, saying Col. Gul may have been trying to derail the inquiry into a high-powered network of organized crime.

"These guys didn't die because of some nut job that radicalized overnight. They died because they took a stand to not let a criminality expand," one of the officials said. "It's not just Afghans profiting from Afghans but includes international mafias. In a landlocked country, moving goods by air is everything."

The U.S. Air Force investigation report quotes Col. Gul's friends and family as denying he had become religious, and as saying he had financial problems and a dispute with the U.S. mentors.

A U.S. sergeant major quoted in the report wrote that imposing U.S. control over scheduling flights, something Col. Bryant wanted, "could impact [Col. Gul's] income if he took payments for arranging flight and cargo movements."

Col. Gul likely paid for his colonel's position, and needed the illicit traffic to pay off his superiors, two Western officials told the Journal.

Family members had a different take on Col. Gul's actions. "He wasn't a radical or a terrorist," a family member of Col. Gul said. "He was stressed from financial problems," he said. The family member denied that Col. Gul was involved in any corrupt activity.

Another witness, a U.S. lieutenant colonel, was cited in the report as saying some senior Afghan officials see the AAF aircraft as a source of income.

They "want to continue these nefarious and profitable activities with the billions of dollars worth of aircraft we're buying them and the hundreds of millions we spend every year on maintenance and fuel," he told investigators.

In April, a coalition spokesman couldn't give a conclusive answer about why Col. Gul opened fire, but suggested it was because of a disagreement with coalition forces.

About half of all incidents where Afghan servicemen turn on their coalition counterparts are the result of personal disputes, NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan said shortly after the April shooting, challenging the Taliban claim of having planted Col. Gul.

The current probe into alleged drugs and weapons transport continues to look into ramp No. 5. Investigators are also looking into movements at other military airfields used by the AAF, especially those close to northern border areas.

Northern Afghanistan is a major route for the transport of opium and heroin to consumers in Russia and Western Europe. Opium is mostly grown in southern Afghanistan, and is smuggled to the north to be moved on to the rest of the world, Western officials say.

The AAF has 86 aircraft, including 16 C-27 cargo planes, 41 Russian-made Mi-17 transport helicopters and 11 Russian-made Mi-35 helicopter gunships.

Suspicions that some of these aircraft have been used to ferry money, weapons and drugs throughout the country first surfaced in late 2010, Western officials say. Deliveries by the U.S. and others are expected to bring the fleet to 145 aircraft by 2016.

—Yaroslav Trofimov, Habib Khan Totakhil, Ziaulhaq Sultani and Julian E. Barnes contributed to this article.
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com

[buglerbilly]

US Drone Kills Eight Militants in Pakistan

March 09, 2012

Agence France-Presse

A US drone killed at least eight militants Friday when it fired two missiles on a vehicle in Pakistan's tribal badlands near the Afghan border, security officials said.

The attack took place in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan, part of the tribal belt that Washington considers a global hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.

"A drone fired two missiles on a vehicle. At least eight militants were killed," a senior security official told AFP. "It is not immediately clear if some important target was hit in the missile strike."

Another security official based in Peshawar and an intelligence official based in South Waziristan confirmed the attack and death toll.

The area is a stronghold of militants belonging to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella militant group led by warlord Hakimullah Mehsud.

Local tribesmen said that after the missile strike militants immediately cordoned off the area and began pulling out their colleagues from the burning wreckage.

"The bodies of militants were badly burnt in the fire and I saw some of them putting small body parts in plastic bags," a resident told AFP, asking not to be named.

"Militants cordoned off the area and fired gunshots in air to keep the locals away," he added.

US officials say Pakistan's tribal belt is a sanctuary for Taliban fighting in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda groups plotting attacks on the West, Pakistani Taliban who routinely bomb Pakistan, and other foreign fighters.

The Obama administration is looking to withdraw all foreign combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

But the missile attacks fuel widespread anti-American resentment in Pakistan, which has been running especially high since US air strikes inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.

President Barack Obama in January confirmed for the first time that US drones target Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants on Pakistani soil, but American officials do not discuss details of the covert programme.

According to an AFP tally, 45 US missile strikes were reported in Pakistan's tribal belt in 2009, the year Obama took office, 101 in 2010 and 64 in 2011.

The New America Foundation think-tank in Washington says drone strikes have killed between 1,715 and 2,680 people in Pakistan in the past eight years.

US diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks in late 2010 showed that Pakistan's civilian and military leaders privately supported US drone attacks, despite public condemnation in a country where the US alliance is hugely unpopular.

But Pakistan is now reviewing its entire alliance with the United States in the wake of the November deaths and has kept its Afghan border closed to NATO supply convoys since then.

It ordered US personnel to leave the Shamsi air base in southwestern Pakistan, widely believed to have been a hub for the CIA drone programme, and is thought likely to impose taxes on convoys if it reopens the Afghan border.

© Copyright 2012 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

After a Decade, Afghan Forces Don't Trust Americans

March 09, 2012

Mclatchy -Tribune News Service|by Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi



KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan soldiers and police say the recent burning of Qurans by U.S. personnel has seriously undermined their trust in their American counterparts, suggesting that the decade-long campaign to win hearts and minds has not only failed but also threatens the Obama administration's exit strategy.

"We are tired of the Americans here," said Mohammad Aziz, 20, a Kabul police officer. "We don't want them to stay because they keep insulting our religion."

The crisis of confidence has called into question the viability of the U.S.-led mission to have international soldiers and advisers train Afghan forces and hand security responsibilities to them before the end of 2014. The Afghans' abilities to safeguard their country against Taliban and other threats remain uncertain, and international trainers already have been forced to restrict their contact with Afghans after the violent backlash from the Quran incident.

"It has created a gap between us and the Americans," said Col. Rozi Khan of the Afghan army's commando brigade. "There is no trust between us."

Interviews with more than two dozen Afghan security personnel in recent weeks suggest that mistrust and hostility between the supposed allies has been simmering for years - but boiled over after Feb. 20, when American personnel burned Qurans and other religious materials at the U.S.-run Bagram Air Base north of Kabul.

The incident sparked widespread fury in this conservative Muslim nation and led to public demonstrations and attacks on bases belonging to the U.S.-led coalition. At least 30 Afghans have been killed and more than 100 wounded in the unrest. A Pentagon investigation found five soldiers responsible, but it was unclear whether they would face disciplinary action. Afghan leaders have called for the perpetrators to be tried and punished.

The Quran burnings unleashed pent-up anger from many Afghan soldiers and police who perceive U.S. troops as insensitive to their culture and religion, indicating a relationship in which even relatively minor misunderstandings could cause serious problems. Coalition officials in Afghanistan ordered their forces to undergo additional training on the proper handling of Islamic religious materials.

Several Afghans interviewed voiced frustration at previous incidents of Americans desecrating the Quran. And while they didn't mention specific cases, the burning last year of a copy of the Muslim holy book by Florida pastor Terry Jones received wide attention in Afghanistan and sparked days of deadly protests nationwide.

"The Quran has been burned by the Americans on several occasions in the past," said Jamaluddin, a sergeant major interviewed in Kabul who, like many Afghans, uses only one name.

Six U.S. service members have been killed by their Afghan counterparts since the burnings - two at a joint U.S.-Afghan base in the eastern province of Nangarhar, two at a joint base in the southern province of Kandahar, and two at a high-security Ministry of Interior compound in Kabul.

The killings at the Ministry of Interior caused Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, to withdraw all of the force's advisers from Afghan ministries until security could be improved. When advisers do return, it's expected to be under tighter security restrictions, potentially limiting their interaction with Afghans.

U.S. political and military leaders have stressed that the violence won't derail the training mission. The coalition said this week that the suggestion that the mission was in serious jeopardy was "a gross exaggeration."

"It's business as usual. Nothing has changed," said a coalition spokeswoman, Lt. Lauren Rago. "We have hundreds of interactions with them every week. There definitely is a sound relationship there."

But at a news conference Tuesday, President Barack Obama appeared to suggest that the fallout from the Quran burning could lead the U.S. to accelerate its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"I think that it is an indication of the challenges in that environment, and it's an indication that now is the time for us to transition," Obama said.

Despite a partnership that's in its 11th year - and a training mission on which the Pentagon says it's spending more than $11 billion this year - U.S. troops and Afghans have long viewed each other with unease. The recent "green-on-blue" attacks by Afghan forces are the latest in a series that has claimed the lives of more than 70 American service members in 46 incidents since 2007. The violence has increased since Obama surged more U.S. troops into Afghanistan; half of the attacks have occurred since May 2009.

By comparison, during nearly nine years in Iraq, about six U.S. service members were killed by Iraqi security forces, according to Pentagon statistics.

For Afghans - some of whom have never accepted the presence of non-Muslim soldiers in their country - the burnings at Bagram caused deep offense, despite repeated assurances from American officials that the incident was a mistake. Some Afghan soldiers and police said they couldn't understand how U.S. personnel could make such a mistake after more than a decade in Afghanistan.

"Didn't ISAF know that the Quran is the holy book of Muslims, and that people will die for it?" asked Col. Mohammad Sharif, who's based at a U.S.-Afghan base in Paktika province, bordering Pakistan.

Muslims believe that the Quran contains the literal words of God, and every Afghan soldier or police officer that McClatchy Newspapers spoke with said they would not hesitate to intervene if they saw anyone desecrating it. Most said they were prepared to use violence.

"If an American burns the Quran in front of my eyes, I will kill him. I don't care whether I live afterwards or not," said Jandad, a soldier based at Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense in Kabul. "My life would be worthless if I saw such a thing and didn't take action."

All the Afghans interviewed condemned the killing of two U.S. officers at the Interior Ministry - which occurred inside a supposedly well-secured part of the complex, causing shock among U.S. officials - saying it was wrong to target innocent people in retaliation for the actions of others. But despite acknowledging a duty to uphold the law and maintain security, some Afghan soldiers admitted they would side with demonstrators if they decided the burnings had been deliberate.

"If we know that the Americans burned the Qurans by mistake, we will defend them," said Mohammad Rahim, a soldier. "But if we learn that they burned it intentionally, we will support those protesters who attack American bases."

"The Afghan police and army swear when they graduate that they will protect the faith of Islam," said a political analyst in Kabul, Wahid Mujda. "An Afghan soldier will fight to protect these values."

The anger that led to widespread protests appears to have subsided for the moment. Some Afghan soldiers said they wanted U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan and complete their training mission.

"They have come to help Afghanistan, and we have joined the army to serve our country. We need their assistance. We need them till the Afghan security forces stand on their feet," said Abdul Tariq Akhtarzada, 22, a soldier from Kapisa province who was undergoing training at the National Military Academy.

Some soldiers expressed determination not to allow attacks on their International Security Assistance Force counterparts.

"If I see a colleague who wants to kill foreign soldiers in my unit, I will stop him. I won't let him do it," said Rahmat Gul, a soldier who works at Kabul airport. "Our job is to maintain security - that's why we are wearing this uniform."

But even the more optimistic admitted the fallout from the Quran burnings could affect the U.S.-Afghan relationship for some time. Sharif said that the killing of U.S. personnel by Afghan security force members would lead to changes in training rules - perhaps restricting the number of Afghans with whom international trainers have direct contact.

"The Americans may decide to teach the Afghan instructors first, and these instructors will then teach the Afghan soldiers," said Sharif. "It is hard for Americans to trust Afghan forces. That lack of trust will continue until things cool off."

Even some Afghans who said they preferred non-U.S. ISAF forces to Americans said they were not happy with the presence of any Western soldiers in Afghanistan. Police officer Ghulam Hazrat, who is based in the northern province of Kunduz and was trained by Dutch and German forces, said they behaved with greater cultural and religious sensitivity than U.S. soldiers, but he added that "these foreigners are all the same."

"They are all infidels," Hazrat said.

© Copyright 2012 Mclatchy -Tribune News Service

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan, US Sign Deal on Handover of Prison

March 09, 2012

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A last-minute agreement has been reached on transfering the main U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan to the Kabul government, a major sticking point in negotiations over a long-term U.S.-Afghan partnership, Afghan and Western officials said Friday.

The issue - along with night raids by international forces in Afghan villages - has threatened to derail talks on formalizing a role for U.S. forces after NATO's scheduled transfer of security responsibility to the Afghan government by the end of 2014.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai set Friday as the deadline for handover of control of the Parwan detention facility, a U.S.-run prison that holds about 3,000 detainees, most of them Afghan citizens.

The deal comes as relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan have become more tense in recent weeks following the burning of Qurans and other religious materials at Bagram military base near the capital Kabul, sparking riots and attacks that killed some 30 people.

The U.S. has apologized and said the Qurans came from the Parwan detention center and were taken out because they had extremist messages written in them, but that they should not have been sent to be burned. Karzai said soon after the Quran burnings became public that these types of incidents would not occur if the Afghans were in charge of the detention facility.

Under the agreement, a three-star Afghan commander will be formally in charge of Parwan, and a joint U.S.-Afghan commission will be involved in running the prison, said a Western official familiar with the deal.

The U.S. will oversee the transfer process and be consulted on decisions, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the agreement had not yet been signed. It's still unclear how long it will take to transfer operational control to the Afghans.

Earlier, Afghan officials had indicated that some in the government in Kabul were ready to accept an American proposal to delay the transfer for six months in the framework of an agreement, but it was not clear if Karzai would go along with that.

Parwan is the largest of the facilities, located next to Bagram. The U.S. previously handed over responsibility for a few hundred detainees there and said the Afghan government was not ready to take over running the entire detention center.

Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak and U.S. Gen. John Allen, the commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, will sign a memorandum later Friday, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry did not say what the memorandum covered, but a Western official confirmed that it was about the transfer of detention facilities. The official said the exact wording of the agreement was still being discussed, but the major issues have been decided.

The official declined to give other details and spoke anonymously because the document was still being finalized.

An Afghan official confirmed separately that the agreement was about detention issues but declined to give more details. The official spoke anonymously to discuss the deal before it was made public.

U.S. and Afghan officials have said that they want a strategic partnership agreement signed by the time a NATO summit convenes in Chicago in May, but talks have stalled in recent months, partly because of the disagreement over the detention facilities.

Several other key issues remain unresolved.

Karzai has demanded an end to night raids in Afghan villages by coalition forces. The raids target insurgents, but Karzai has said civilians are too often rounded up or killed when raids turn violent. He insists that if there are night raids, Afghan troops should conduct them alone.

Afghan and U.S. officials said previously that both the detention and night raid issues might be handled separately from the partnership agreement, in order to push a deal through.

President Barack Obama and Karzai discussed the stalled security pact talks in a video conference on Thursday, the White House said.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said the two leaders noted progress toward completing an agreement "that reinforces Afghan sovereignty while addressing the practical requirements of transition."

The U.S.-Afghan pact is expected to provide for several thousand U.S. troops to stay and train Afghan forces and help with counterterrorism operations. It would outline the legal status of those forces, their operating rules and where they would be based.

The agreement is also seen as a means of assuring the Afghan people that the U.S. does not plan to abandon their country, even as it withdraws its combat forces.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall declined to comment on Friday's agreement.

The debate about the agreement has also caused rifts within Karzai's inner circle. Afghan officials have said that National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta tried to resign more than two months ago after disagreements erupted between him and Karzai over the strategic partnership document. Spanta argued for more flexibility from his government.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan names new spymaster


STRINGER/REUTERS - Lt. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam, at right, will lead Pakistan’s spy agency, replacing Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who had been in charge since 2008.

By Richard Leiby and Karen DeYoung, Saturday, March 10, 1:00 AM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, perhaps the most crucial but least trusted player in the U.S.-led battle against militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has a new spymaster.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced on Friday that Karachi-based Lt. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam will head Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), replacing Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who has led the agency since 2008 — and whose retirement may improve the troubled U.S.-Pakistan alliance against terrorism.

“Personal relationships with General Pasha have worn a bit thin,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It might be good to start afresh.”

Pasha’s term already had been extended — unusual in the top echelons of the Pakistani military — so the appointment of a new spy chief was anticipated. Pasha had also faced criticism in the ranks for his perceived failures surrounding the U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden last May.

The U.S. counterterrorism community relies to a certain degree on the ISI to identify al-Qaeda and other Islamic militant targets in Pakistan’s tribal regions, especially in the CIA’s long-running drone war. But the U.S. decision not to inform Pakistan about the impending raid on bin Laden’s compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad spoke volumes about the degree to which Washington mistrusted its supposed ally’s spy agency and military.

Pasha’s successor was appointed the top military commander in the southern port city of Karachi in October 2010 — a post perceived as one of the army’s most important. Islam is close to the nation’s armed forces chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani; both served in the infantry in the army’s Punjab regiment.

Islam had also served as deputy director general of the ISI, in charge of domestic intelligence-gathering, according to military officials here.

A U.S. official who also spoke on the condition of anonymity noted that many of Islam’s army assignments had been focused on India but that he also had ties to the United States. “During his career, Zaheer traveled to the U.S. to participate in U.S. military-sponsored training and international fellowship programs,” the official said.

Although U.S. officials have often harshly criticized the ISI, accusing it of sheltering militants in Pakistan and tolerating their attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan, the change of leadership brings an opportunity to reset the relationship.

“We would expect General Zaheer to continue cooperation with the United States in our mutual fight against terrorism,” the U.S. official said. “It would not be a surprise to see a brief transition period as the new head of ISI gets up to speed, but that shouldn’t have much impact on counterterrorism cooperation.”

Pakistanis often refer to general officers, even in a formal context, by their rank and first name.

Relations between the CIA and ISI have been consistently strained. Last fall Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly charged that the Haqqani network, the Pakistani-based militant organization U.S. forces in Afghanistan consider their most potent nemesis, was a “veritable arm” of the ISI. Although Pakistan has said it does not know the exact location of the network, U.S. intelligence officials maintain it has provided coordinates and photographs of Haqqani headquarters in the tribal region town of Miranshah, near a Pakistani military base and airstrip.

Despite the ruptured relationship, which snapped in November after Afghan-based U.S. aircraft inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border raid, Pasha has maintained cordial ties with the current CIA director, David H. Petraeus, and his predecessor, Leon E. Panetta. Even as Pakistani and U.S. diplomats and military commanders have remained at arm’s length since November, Pasha met secretly with Petraeus in a third country early last month.

Ties also neared a breaking point early last year when a CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, shot and killed two Pakistanis while driving through Lahore. Although the Pakistanis immediately labeled Davis an intelligence agent, the Obama administration insisted he was a diplomat working in the Lahore consulate and had diplomatic immunity. After two months of U.S. pressure, Pakistan allowed Davis to leave the country. The administration later acknowledged his CIA status.

Pakistan has charged the United States with placing numerous intelligence personnel inside the country without acknowledging their status, and has sporadically refused to issue visas to the CIA.

DeYoung reported from Washington. Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Our big mistake was to assume we had won, says British ambassador to Afghanistan

Sir William Patey, the British ambassador to Afghanistan, has spoken frankly about what he sees as the errors and failings in the country over the past decade.


Sir William Patey, who is to retire from Britain’s biggest embassy, said the West took 'our eye off the ball’ over Afghanistan Photo: JULIAN SIMMONDS

By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent, ni Kabul

9:00PM GMT 10 Mar 2012

With two weeks left of his diplomatic career, Sir William Patey could be forgiven for being discreet. Instead, as he sits in his office in Kabul, the British ambassador to Afghanistan is undiplomatically frank about what he sees as the errors and failings over the past decade.

Principal among them is the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, taken less than two years after Britain, America and an alliance including Australia and France went into Afghanistan to depose the Taliban.

Sir William told The Sunday Telegraph that both Washington and Downing Street wrongly assumed that the war was “won and the Taliban had run away”. But that led to a long-running problem: “years of missed opportunity” followed because the focus was on Iraq instead of Afghanistan.

The 58 year-old said the opportunity to train and equip the Afghan National Security Forces to fill the power vacuum was missed, allowing the Taliban to return. “We were too focused on Iraq and we took our eye off the ball. We thought we had won [in Afghanistan] and the Taliban had run away and we just sort of left it to the Afghans to get on with it and we very quickly switched our focus to Iraq. You don’t normally write history so quickly but I’m pretty clear that we won’t have to wait too long for history to make that judgment.”

Speaking the day before six British soldiers were killed in Kandahar, the ambassador also suggested that the presence of International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) had become a hindrance to the stability of the country.

Asked if foreign troops were now part of the problem, Sir William responded: “Could be”, adding: “Afghans have never been comfortable with foreigners and there comes a point — no matter how benign the intentions, and how much you explain that this [ISAF] is not an occupying force, that we are here under a UN mandate agreed with the Afghans — when you just outstay your welcome.”

But he said that ISAF now had a transition plan which, once complete in 2014, would mean the Afghans will be fully responsible for the security of Afghanistan.

He went on: “It will be very difficult for the Taliban to argue they are fighting a foreign invader when the people on the streets are their own police and army.”

The ambassador also said the role of British and ISAF troops had changed in the past few years and was less about killing the Taliban and more about “buying time”.

Sir William has risen to the top of the diplomatic service while shattering the stereotypical image of the Eton-educated diplomat.

He was born in Edinburgh, speaks with a thick Scottish accent, is grammar-school educated and went to Dundee University where he read history. His language is often colourful and his off-the-record assessments of certain public individuals are accompanied by howls of mischievous, throaty laughter.

For the next two weeks he will be in charge of Britain’s biggest embassy before retirement beckons. Despite his criticism of the Labour government’s past failings, he believes the country will have a bright future providing the West does not lose interest in Afghanistan’s development.

He added: “Afghanistan will be a mess for many years to come, but it will be an improving mess”, he says, smiling. “There is one end of the scale where we leave, the Afghans bicker amongst themselves, the Taliban don’t sign up to negotiations and there is internal strife. I don’t think that’s the most likely, but it is within the range of possibilities just as it is that the Afghans get everything right.”

Pointing to past failures when the Russians were in charge, he adds: “The reason why the Afghan National Army (ANA) fell apart in the 1990s was not because the Russians had left, but because they had stopped paying and that’s when the warlords came in and started fighting amongst themselves.

This latest plan has learnt the lessons of history. Under the Russians, the ANA was a large force but lacked quality, so what we have to do is concentrate on the quality because we have the numbers.

“You ask me what the biggest risk to the success of our strategy is? Well, it’s us. It is the West being diverted somewhere else or the international community not being prepared to ante up the money.”

But Sir William said that Afghanistan could not expect endless unconditional funding from the international community. “It is important that Afghanistan continues to make progress on reinforcing democratic institutions, having free and fair elections, and there is no regression in human rights.

"So it’s not just, 'Here’s a pile of money for 10 years’. We don’t expect Afghanistan to have eliminated corruption, but we do expect to see some improvements.”

He said the annual cost of running the Afghan security forces would be around £2.62 billion, the vast majority of which would have to be found by Western governments. Such decisions, he said, would be decided at the Nato summits in Chicago and Tokyo later this year when members of the international community disclose their future commitment to the development of the country.

But Sir William also believes the Taliban must play a part in the country’s future if peace is to stand any chance. He said: “Our preference is for the Taliban to reintegrate and reconcile. Nobody has objected to the Taliban becoming a political party, nobody has objected to the Taliban taking part in politics or holding government positions or district-level positions if that’s how it turns out.”

In two weeks’ time the Foreign Office will lose one of its most capable and influential diplomats. But the pipe and slippers will have to wait. “I hope to enter the private sector — I still have some time to give.” And the inevitable biography? “That will have to wait for about five years.”

[buglerbilly]

U.S. soldier detained after opening fire on Afghans

By Ernesto Londono and Javed Hamdard, Updated: Sunday, March 11, 5:46 PM

KABUL — A U.S. soldier was taken into custody in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, a few hours after he opened fire on Afghan civilians, killing 10, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

The shooting took place at approximately 3 a.m. as a lone soldier walked off a checkpoint in Kandahar Province’s Panjwai district and opened fire on civilians in two villages, Javed Faisal, the director of the provincial government’s media center, said in a phone interview.

Citing preliminary reports, Faisal said at least 10 people were killed and five were wounded. Provincial authorities said they were awaiting news from an investigative team sent to the villages before releasing a definitive death toll.

It is highly unusual for American soldiers to wander alone off base. Officials did not immediately say whether they know what prompted the shooting.

“We strongly condemn this incident,” Zaimai Ayoubi, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said. “We have sent a delegation to investigate the scene.”

The U.S. military said in a statement that an American service member was taken into custody for an incident that "resulted in Afghan casualties.”

"This is a deeply regrettable incident and we extend our thoughts and concerns to the families involved," the military said in a statement.

Maj. Jason Waggnor, a U.S. military spokesman, said several civilians wounded in the shooting are being treated at American medical facilities. He said there is no information yet on the shooter’s motive.

“He walked right off base, started shooting civilians, and returned to the base and turned himself in,” Waggnor said.

Panjwai, southwest of Kandahar City, has been one of the most challenging battlegrounds for international forces here. The area was the birthplace of the Taliban movement, and the militant group has fought hard to maintain control over villages.

The killings reportedly sparked a protest in the district, the U.S. embassy said in a message on Twitter, warning travelers to the province to “exercise caution.”

The shooting comes as anger over last month’s burning of Korans by U.S. soldiers has begun to subside. The act sparked a wave of angry riots and prompted Afghan security forces to open fire on U.S. soldiers.

[buglerbilly]

Obama and Cameron set to end troops' lead combat role in AfghanistanLeaders meeting to discuss plans for British and US military move to support and training role by middle of 2013

Nicholas Watt and Nick Hopkins The Guardian, Tuesday 13 March 2012

Obama and Cameron set to end troops' lead combat role in Afghanistan


Barack Obama and David Cameron are set to agree on US and UK troops taking on a support role in Afghanistan by mid-2013. Photograph: Paul Grover/AP

David Cameron and Barack Obama will on Wednesday agree tentative plans for British and US troops to end their "lead combat role" in Afghanistan by the middle of next year.

Their meeting comes amid growing anger in Afghanistan over the killing of 16 civilians on Sunday by a US soldier, and follows the funerals in Britain of six soldiers killed by a bomb earlier this month, taking the death toll of UK troops over the 400 mark.

Amid fears among Nato commanders in Afghanistan that the troop "draw down" may be moving too rapidly, the two leaders will discuss plans for British and US troops to move from "lead combat" to a support and training role by the middle of 2013. This could involve what is being described as a "support combat role", though all Nato troops except those involved in training Afghan forces are due to be withdrawn by the end of 2014.

Cameron and Obama will hold discussions at the Oval Office on Wednesday, the most substantive part of a three-day official visit by the prime minister to the US, which begins on Tuesday. The president will signal a rekindling of the "special relationship" by welcoming Cameron to the White House with a 19-gun salute and a state dinner.

They will say the relationship is essential to world stability and British and US troops have lived up to Winston Churchill's maxim that they should "keep up" the co-operation of the second world war.

In a joint article for the Washington Post, they write: "Our troops and citizens have long shown what can be achieved when British and Americans work together, heart and hand, and why this remains an essential relationship – to our nations and the world. So like generations before us, we're going to keep it up. Because with confidence in our cause and faith in each other, we still believe that there is hardly anything we cannot do."

The White House talks on Afghanistan come amid warnings from Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) that it would be wrong for a change in western military tactics to be accompanied by an accelerated withdrawal.

The Guardian has been told the head of Nato's mission, US General John Allen, has given "unequivocal advice" to the White House that he wants troop numbers to remain as high as possible until September of 2013, the end of that year's so-called fighting season.

The debate has been thrown into sharp relief by the killing of 16 Afghan civilians on Sunday by an American staff sergeant.

Allen and Obama expressed their condolences to relatives of the victims, who were killed in two villages near the soldier's base in Kandahar province.

Cameron described the killings as "an absolutely dreadful event" which should not change Nato's withdrawal plan.

Speaking in Downing Street, the prime minister said: "This really is an absolutely appalling thing that has taken place and, of course, it will have its impact. But we must do everything we can to make sure it doesn't in any way derail the very good work that American and British and other Isaf forces are doing in Afghanistan.

"We have a good plan. We have a plan which is about transitioning Afghanistan over to Afghan control. The most important thing is that we stick to that plan, we deliver that plan and then we can bring our troops home, having done a good job in giving Afghanistan at least a chance of stability and prosperity and growth for the future."

He will tell Obama that Britain remains in "lockstep" with the US on the plan to withdraw all combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014.

Last month, Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, said US troops would "hopefully" just be involved in a "training, advice and assist role" by the latter half of 2013.

Britain asked for what is politely being described as an explanation and was reassured that the US remained committed to the timetable agreed by Nato leaders at a summit in Lisbon in 2010. Security in more than half of Afghanistan is led by the country's own security forces. The aim is for the rest of the country to be handed over by 2013.

By the end of 2014 there will be a small number of British forces left in Afghanistan who are there solely to train and support Afghan forces.

Obama has pledged to bring home by this September the 30,000 extra US troops that he sent to Afghanistan as part of his "surge". Britain is bringing back an extra 500 troops.

Nato knows recent atrocities have affected the political will to stay the course. But Whitehall sources said military commanders in Kabul will continue to urge the US administration and Downing Street not to wilt under pressure or be bounced into hasty decisions.

Any indication that the US might be hurrying towards the exit would inevitably lead to a chaotic disintegration of the 48-nation coalition fighting the insurgency, they said. That could lead to more bloodshed, not less.

"The joint chiefs of staff and British commanders will fight strongly for delaying taking any decisions about further draw down until later this summer," said one source. "They will argue now is the time to hold your nerve and to remember the blood, sweat and treasure that has been lost in Afghanistan over the last 10 years. If President [Hamid] Karzai tells Isaf to get out, that's another matter. But that doesn't make sense either. He must know Afghan security forces need Nato's help for now."

Foreign secretary William Hague, visiting the UN in New York, denied that the killings were an indication that the allied strategy in Afghanistan was "unravelling".

Hague told ITV News: "We have done a great deal of damage to al-Qaida with what we're doing in Afghanistan and it's very important we see it through to success."

The military believes a summit on Afghanistan, due to be held in Chicago in May, remains key to Isaf's future strategy. Commanders are anxious that Obama is saving up a voter-pleasing announcement as he enters the last six months before the presidential election in November.

One crucial unresolved issue in Chicago will be the level of western support given to maintaining the Afghan security forces, which will soon be 350,000 strong. "The ANSF will top out at 350,000, but the west will not fund that number beyond 2014, it is not sustainable, and it may not be necessary" said a source. "What number it comes down to will be very important for the security of the country. The Afghan economy cannot support the ANSF at the moment. The ANSF needs to be able to contain the insurgency, and it needs to be able to defend Afghanistans borders. If it comes down too much, this cannot be achieved."

[buglerbilly]

Death penalty possible punishment for Afghan killingsLeon Panetta says death penalty a consideration as military moves to investigate and possibly put on trial a US soldier

Reuters guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 March 2012 02.58 GMT

Death penalty possible punishment for Afghan killings

This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 02.58 GMT on Tuesday 13 March 2012.


Leon Panetta said the death penalty could be sought over the killing of 16 villagers in Afghanistan Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the death penalty could be sought over the killing of 16 villagers in Afghanistan, which US officials said they believe was the work of a rogue American soldier.

The shootings in the southern province of Kandahar, which killed mostly women and children, has triggered angry calls from Afghans for an immediate American exit from the country, as Washington tries to negotiate a long-term presence to keep it from sliding into chaos again.

Panetta, however, attempted to portray the shooting as an isolated event that would not alter plans for a gradual, orderly withdrawal of American combat forces by the end of 2014.

"War is hell. These kinds of events and incidents are going to take place, they've taken place in any war. They're terrible events. And this is not the first of those events, and it probably won't be the last," the defence secretary told reporters on a flight to Kyrgyzstan.

"But we cannot allow these events to undermine our strategy or the mission that we're involved in."

Panetta, answering questions for the first time about the shooting rampage, said US officials were still uncertain about the motives behind it.

He said the goal was to try the case within the US military justice system.

Asked whether the death penalty could be considered in this case, Panetta replied: "My understanding is that in these instances that could be a consideration."

Panetta said of the soldier, whose name has not been made public: "He went out in the early morning and went to these homes and fired on these families. And then at some point after that, came back to the forward operating base and basically turned himself in, told individuals what had happened."

These were the preliminary findings of the investigation, he said.

Asked whether the soldier in fact confessed, Panetta said: "I suspect that that was the case."

While US officials rushed to draw a line between the rogue shooting and the ongoing efforts of a US force of around 90,000, the incident has infuriated Afghans already suspicious of a Western military presence now over a decade old.

Last month, the burning of copies of the Koran on a Nato military base triggered violent protests across the country and a spate of insider attacks against Western soldiers.

The string of incidents, which also included release of a video of Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters, appear to have raised questions about the US strategy of training Afghan security forces to take over as NATO troops depart.

But Panetta said, "I think when you look at that larger picture, it does make clear that these kinds of events are isolated and don't represent what's really happening in Afghanistan."

[buglerbilly]

Despite challenges in Afghanistan, U.S. determined to stick to exit strategy


An American service member was detained after opening fire on civilians in a remote southern village, officials said. The dead included women and children; at least five others were wounded in the attack. The soldier turned himself in, officials said.

By Karen DeYoung, Tuesday, March 13, 9:17 AM

The Obama administration’s hope for a smooth and successful ending to what it has always considered the “good war” in Afghanistan has become a determined, nose-to-the-grindstone effort to forge ahead toward the exit.

As challenges mount, the administration has concluded that the only viable course is to continue trying to implement the strategy it has already set in motion, with a date certain for combat withdrawal by the end of 2014.

“Our main objective is getting it right,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “We are assembling the pieces of the endgame.”

In political terms, it is a delicate balance. Polls indicate that the majority of Americans favor a quicker end to the war. But early retreat has its own drawbacks, both politically and for U.S. national security.

“On the merits, the strategic calculus of the war has not changed,” said Stephen D. Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who has advised the Defense Department. But there are “unrealistic assumptions” about the future, even if the endgame proceeds as planned, he said.

Administration officials were tentatively relieved Monday when the day ended without widespread anti-American demonstrations in Afghanistan after the shooting deaths of 16 Afghan civilians Sunday, apparently at the hands of a rogue U.S. soldier. Despite angry words from Kabul, U.S. officials expressed cautious confidence that the latest incident would not bring a repeat of last month’s lethal demonstrations after U.S. troops, in what officials deemed an accident, burned copies of the Koran.

The United States moved swiftly after Sunday’s shootings. President Obama made a condolence call to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and promised that justice would be served. Other top U.S. officials also expressed shock and remorse.

“Our point is that it was entirely an exception to any conduct by the U.S. military. . . . It’s a horrific tragedy, and we understand that the Afghan people are going to be outraged,” Rhodes said. “We want to deal with it appropriately, hold anybody accountable to the full extent of the law and continue our relationship with Afghanistan.”

The administration sees three pieces to the endgame there: transitioning security responsibility to Afghan forces, reaching a peace deal with the Taliban and negotiating a political agreement to allow for a long-term U.S. military presence after 2014.

At a NATO summit in May, the United States and its coalition partners expect to firm up plans for the pace of the transition, the timing of the coalition withdrawal and the size of the Afghan force they are willing to train and pay for. Karzai’s government has little ability to fund its own military force.

On the political front, reconciliation talks with the Taliban have reached a preliminary stage but are stalled, awaiting Karzai’s own reconciliation with the government of Qatar, where the talks are supposed to be held. Karzai called his ambassador home from the Persian Gulf state in December, accusing Qatar of interference in internal Afghan affairs.

Progress toward an agreement allowing some U.S. forces to remain in Afghanistan long-term was announced Friday, when Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, signed an accord to turn over U.S.-run prisons to the Karzai government.

But that was quickly overshadowed by Sunday’s shootings, and some analysts were less optimistic than the administration that Afghan outrage would dissipate quickly.

“We’re in a really ugly place,” said a former military official with long experience in Iraq and Afghanistan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. “Karzai is going to have zero room to make compromises.”

Rather than building their relationship with Afghan troops, U.S. and coalition forces are “going to be operating with one hand on their pistol and looking over their shoulders,” the former official said.

“The plan is to transition the Afghans by putting [U.S. and NATO] trainers among them. That’s now very questionable. It is to reinforce our presence by continuing to develop the Afghan Local Police, and that plank is now in question. And it’s to negotiate a residual force, now equally dubious. What are we left with?”

Biddle said that after 2014, once the ground-level counterinsurgency and development undertaken by U.S. and coalition troops throughout Afghanistan end, the Obama administration “seems to believe they can continue to do leadership strikes” on Taliban commanders, “with drones and raids in perpetuity.”

Calling it an “unreasonable projection,” he added: “Afghans hate that stuff — what does this approach offer them? We’re going to do everything we like, nothing they want.”

The other faulty assumption, Biddle said, is that Congress will continue to fund the Afghan security forces long after the withdrawal. “The war we’ll be handing off is going to be a stalemate,” he said. When the strategy was conceived, “the Taliban were on a slope to extinction. If that were so, [the administration] could go to Congress and say it was only a couple more years and it would be over. That’s not what we’re looking at now.”

The former defense official said that Obama’s initial description of the Iraq invasion orchestrated by President George W. Bush as a “dumb war,” and of Afghanistan as the place where the United States should make a major commitment of resources, “made him look smarter than Bush.”

“Now,” the former official said, “it doesn’t look so smart.”

[buglerbilly]

Military searches soldier’s records for clues in killings of Afghan civilians


An American service member was detained after opening fire on civilians in a remote southern village, officials said. The dead included women and children; at least five others were wounded in the attack. The soldier turned himself in, officials said.

By Craig Whitlock and Carol D. Leonnig, Tuesday, March 13, 9:26 AM

Military investigators were combing through a U.S. Army sergeant’s personnel and medical records Monday to determine what might have caused him to slip away from his base in southern Afghanistan and allegedly massacre 16 sleeping villagers, most of them women and children, in the black of night.

U.S. commanders said they think the shooter acted alone in Sunday’s rampage in the rural Panjwai district of Kandahar province. But they were struggling to deduce a motive for the attack, which has prompted outrage among Afghan officials and inflamed an already strained relationship between Washington and Kabul.

The suspect, a trained sniper, received a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury after sustaining a head injury in Iraq during a vehicle rollover in 2010, two U.S. military officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of the case. The soldier was subsequently declared fit for duty, the officials said.

Other U.S. military officials said they were working quickly to build a case against the suspect but declined to identify him until charges could be filed. They described him as a married, 38-year-old staff sergeant with two children who joined the Army 11 years ago. They said he had served three tours of duty in Iraq and deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in December.

“The evidence at this point, both in terms of observations and reports and interviews, leads us to believe that he acted as an individual,” Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told CNN. “We’re going to do a thorough investigation. We’re going to hold this individual accountable.”

U.S. officials said the soldier abruptly walked off a combat outpost about 3 a.m. Sunday local time. Allen said that an Afghan soldier standing watch reported the unauthorized departure but that others on the base could not mobilize quickly enough to track down the missing American before the attack, the deadliest on civilians by a U.S. service member during the decade-long Afghanistan war.

“There was a head count done amongst the American soldiers; [they] recognized that he was missing, unaccounted for,” Allen said. “We put together a search party right away, and it was as that search party was forming that we began to have indications of the outcome of his departure.”

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said the soldier returned to the base on his own, admitted what he had done and surrendered.

“He went out in the early morning and went to these homes and fired on these families,” Panetta told reporters. “And at some point after that came back to the [forward operating base] and basically turned himself in and told individuals what had happened.”

Asked whether the soldier had confessed to the killings, Panetta said he suspected “that was the case.”

U.S. military officials said the soldier was part of an Afghan police training program in villages in Kandahar province and had been assigned to support U.S. Special Operations forces in the area.

The officials said that it was highly likely that the suspect would be brought back to the United States to face charges and a possible court-martial, but that a final decision was pending. The probe is being led by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command.

PTSD controversy

The soldier’s unit, the 3rd Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, deployed to southern Afghanistan in December from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, an Army and Air Force installation near Tacoma, Wash.

The cornerstone base of the Pacific Northwest recently became a focus of public scrutiny after allegations that its military doctors had altered diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder for hundreds of soldiers.

A military probe of the base’s medical center is scrutinizing assertions by staff members and soldiers that, starting in 2007, diagnoses for at least 300 service members were downgraded to lesser conditions. Some patients have alleged that the diagnoses were changed so that the military would not be responsible for their treatment and long-term care.

The commander of Lewis-McChord’s Madigan Army Medical Center has been placed on leave during the investigation, and a leading forensic psychiatrist has resigned.

Some military support groups near Lewis-McChord have accused base officials of not allowing troops sufficient time to heal between deployments from a variety of injuries.

Jorge Gonzales, an antiwar activist and the director of a program that advocates for better treatment for traumatized military personnel, said the base’s medical center is understaffed and overwhelmed by troops suffering from traumatic and stress disorders.

“They’re just not ready for all these soldiers coming back with problems,” said Gonzales, a former soldier once posted at Lewis-McChord. “They want to get soldiers shipped out as fast as they can. . . . They have a quick-fix program — just get you medicated and send you back out.”

Last year, the base had a major spike in soldier suicides, with 12 confirmed cases.

Sheri Van Veldhouse, a military spouse who organizes a traumatic-brain-injury support group near the base, said redeploying a soldier with such a condition is especially risky. She helped launch the support group after her husband, a retired soldier, suffered a head injury when he was hit by a car.

“There’s no way in the world I’d want him out on a battlefield after a brain injury,” she said. “You’re handing them a gun. . . . The anger issues are there. They have flash responses to that anger. It’s not a good combination.”

The ‘most troubled’ base

Lewis-McChord has also attracted notoriety in the past for battlefield crimes committed by its soldiers.

Four members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division were convicted for their roles in the murders of three unarmed Afghan civilians in 2010. Military prosecutors said that members of the platoon formed a “kill team” to hunt down random Afghans for sport and that the ringleader hoarded their victims’ body parts as war trophies.

In January, a 24-year-old veteran of the Iraq war who had served at Lewis-McChord shot and killed a ranger at Mount Rainier National Park. The former soldier, whose body was later found in the wilderness, died of exposure.

Stars and Stripes, a taxpayer-funded publication that covers the armed services, recently labeled Lewis-McChord the most troubled military base in the country.

Maj. Chris Ophardt, an Army spokesman at the base, said the incidents occurred over several years and attracted outsize attention because of the large antiwar movement in the area and robust media coverage.

“We have more critics here, and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing,” Ophardt said. “There’ve been some high-profile incidents. We take them seriously, and we’re looking into them to see if there are any underlying problems we need to address.”

Staff writers Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Militants attack Afghan delegation at site of U.S. killings

By Ernesto Londoño, Updated: Tuesday, March 13, 5:40 PM

KABUL —An Afghan government delegation came under attack Tuesday while traveling to the villages where a U.S. soldier reportedly killed 16 civilians on Sunday.

The delegation included two brothers of President Hamid Karzai. A provincial spokesman said the delegation was safe, but provided no other details.

The gunfire killed an Afghan soldier who was providing security for the delegation in Balandi village, said Gen. Abdul Razaq, the police chief for Kandahar province where the visit took place. Another Afghan soldier and a military prosecutor were wounded in the attack, Razaq told the Associated Press.

The delegation was talking with families of the victims in the village when they heard shooting, Qayum Karzai, one of the president’s brothers, told AP.

An AP reporter accompanying the delegation said the gunfire came from two different directions.

Meanwhile, in the eastern city of Jalalabad, hundreds of students took to the streets to protest the killing, calling for the prosecution of the American solider in an Afghan court.

On Monday, some members of the Afghan parliament cast doubt on the U.S. account that a lone gunman was responsible for the killings.

“If the culprits are not punished, then people will be forced to take part in an uprising,” lawmaker Nazifa Zaki said.

The slayings were the latest in a cascade of missteps and blunders that have shaken Afghans’ confidence in the United States. And as ghastly details and images of the bodies were broadcast on Afghan television, even some Afghans with close ties to the United States said they feared that Sunday’s killings in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province could mark an irreversible turning point.

“I am concerned like never before,” said Waheed Omer, the Afghan president’s former spokesman, who spent years arguing that the relationship between Kabul and its Western patrons was thorny but solid and essential. “It seems we only have bad choices to make. The lines between friends and enemies are blurred like never before.”

“Afghan blood cannot be spilled in vain,” said Shukria Barakzai, a member of parliament who heads the defense committee and has had strong relationships with Western officials. Barakzai said the suspect should be tried in an Afghan court or by an international tribunal, rather than in a U.S. military court.

“We really need a proper, very official court for that guy,” she said. “We really, really need it.”

The Taliban vowed to avenge the killings, which fit into its narrative depicting foreign troops as callous killers waging a war on Islam. In its statement, the militant group anticipated that the United States would seek to portray the killings as the acts of a deranged soldier.

“If the perpetrators of this massacre were in fact mentally ill, then this testifies to yet another moral transgression by the American military because they are arming lunatics in Afghanistan who turn their weapons against defenseless Afghans,” the Taliban statement said.

To deflate anger over the killings, U.S. officials will need to act swiftly and sternly, said Davood Moradian, an assistant professor of political science at the American University of Afghanistan.

“There is a view here in Afghanistan that the U.S. treats its soldiers differently, that there is a sense of impunity,” he said. “The U.S. will need to show the Afghan people that it truly is a law-abiding nation.”

Much will also depend on how successful the Taliban is in portraying the killings as a symptom of a doomed mission, rather than an aberration. The timing could hardly be more worrisome for the U.S. military, which has lost hundreds of lives trying to restore Afghan control in the south and is now starting to thin out.

In the short term, the most immediate fallout could be the effect on Washington’s ability to negotiate a strategic-partnership agreement that would allow the United States to maintain troops here beyond 2014. In Iraq last year, a similar debate over accountability for civilian deaths doomed Washington’s goal of keeping a small contingent of U.S. troops in the country.

The calls to prosecute the suspect in an Afghan court — a highly unlikely prospect because American troops have immunity from prosecution in Afghanistan — echoed the debate about whether U.S. service members should remain shielded from prosecution in Iraqi courts.

In Iraq, the government began curbing the authority of U.S. troops as the American drawdown started in 2009, most notably by restricting their presence in urban areas. That stance was driven by a yearning for sovereignty after the violent years that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and by the widespread feeling among Iraqis that U.S. troops killed civilians wantonly.

Similar forces are driving the Afghan government’s insistence that the United States halt night raids on the homes of suspected insurgents, an issue that is holding up the security-cooperation pact.

Last week the United States agreed to start transferring legal custody of its inmates in Afghanistan to the Kabul government. But it has ceded little additional ground, as Afghanistan has sought to assert more control over the operations of coalition troops.

A Western official in Kabul, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer his assessment, said he was hopeful that the anger over the shooting rampage could be overcome. The burning of Korans by U.S. troops on Feb. 20 — which American officials said was accidental — unleashed a wave of violent protests and prompted Afghan security forces to open fire on U.S. military trainers, but the fury subsided after a few days.

“Everyone said the burning of the Korans was a turning point,” he said. “It came and it went. My best analysis is that everyone saw the abyss, and no one wanted to jump in.”

Barakzai, the lawmaker, was far less optimistic. Although she expressed worry about the turn the country could take if the foreign troop withdrawal accelerated, Barakzai said the relationship between Afghanistan and the United States is nearing a breaking point.

“If things keep going in this direction, we are really at the end of the road,” she said. “The trust between our governments is trashed on both sides.”

Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

What Role Did Accused Soldier’s Brain Injury Play in Afghan Massacre? (UPDATED)

By Katie Drummond Email Author March 13, 2012 | 6:30 am



The link between traumatic brain injuries and a tendency to commit violent acts, like that which occurred in Afghanistan earlier this week, is still being unraveled by scientists. Photo: U.S. Air Force

It’s incredibly difficult to surmise what might have pushed one American sergeant to allegedly massacre 16 Afghan civilians. But new details about the still-unnamed staff sergeant’s background suggest that brain damage, wrought by a traumatic brain injury during an earlier deployment, might have been a contributing factor.

It would be misleading, and downright reductionist, to suggest that TBI sufferers will commit murders. But scientists have linked brain trauma to some violent episodes.

In an interview with ABC News on Monday, an unnamed source claimed that the sergeant suffered a TBI sometime in a past deployment, either by “hitting his head on the hatch of a vehicle or in a car accident.” A subsequent story from Reuters reported that the TBI occurred as recently as 2010. The alleged shooter is said to have later undergone TBI-specific treatment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, before being cleared for duty and then redeployed. He also reportedly passed typical behavioral health assessments during his enlistment.

The sergeant is hardly alone in suffering from a brain injury while overseas. TBIs, along with post-traumatic stress disorder, are widely renowned as “the signature wounds” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. An estimated 200,000 soldiers have been diagnosed with a TBI since the wars started. That estimate is most likely a low-ball. And clearly the vast, vast, vast majority of those TBI sufferers have not turned homicidal.

The specifics of a link between TBI and subsequent violent behavior haven’t been entirely parsed out by scientists. And surely no one factor could possibly lead to the kind of rampage seen in Afghanistan on Sunday. But myriad studies have concluded that a connection between TBI and violence does seem to exist.

One report followed 850 young civilian adults over eight years, and found that those who’d suffered a TBI “reported more interpersonal violence” than their peers. Another, out of Sweden, tracked over 20,000 people for 35 years. That one, published earlier this year, noted that 9 percent of all TBI-afflicted study participants were implicated in a violent crime at some point after sustaining the injury. By comparison, only 3 percent of those without a brain injury ever committed a violent crime. The researchers concluded that TBI “significantly increased [the] risk” that an individual would behave violently.

A major 2009 study of Iraq war veterans suffering from TBIs published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that TBI sufferers experienced “significantly more” mental health problems in the years following their injury. In particular, the patients exhibited symptoms of PTSD, which can include depression and aggression, though the study doesn’t specify which PTSD symptoms were most severely exacerbated.

One older military study even suggests a connection that scientists are only now starting to unravel: the possibility that physical brain damage from a TBI actually “primes” the brain for PTSD. In 1996, a team writing in the journal Neurologist reported the findings of their study on 279 Vietnam-era veterans who’d suffered TBIs with varying degrees of severity during their deployment. That team found a strong link between TBIs and aggression, but noted that the presence of aggressive behavior seemed more strongly linked to the location of the brain damage, rather than how severe it was. In particular, veterans with damage to the brain’s frontal lobe were more likely to exhibit violent behaviors.

The frontal lobe is a realm quite familiar to scientists studying both TBI and PTSD. It’s the part of the brain responsible for higher functions, including impulse control, understanding right from wrong and anticipating the consequences of one’s actions. So it’s hardly surprising that the frontal lobe has been, time and time again, linked to PTSD, whose sufferers are much more likely to exhibit aggression and violence than their unaffected peers. It’s also a brain region particularly vulnerable to the head-rattling damage of a concussive injury.

Regardless of that potential connection, TBI still seems implicated in violent behavior on its own — regardless of a PTSD diagnosis. One 2003 study, for example, compared patients who’d suffered a TBI with those who’d experienced “multiple traumas” but no brain damage. Nearly 40 percent of TBI sufferers exhibited violent behavior, compared to a mere 11 percent of those without a brain injury.

Of course, it’s important to note that there’s no indication the soldier implicated in yesterday’s massacre had been diagnosed with PTSD. But the Pentagon brass and psychiatric experts have long acknowledged that one’s risk for developing the syndrome increases with repeat deployments. Research by the Army itself has already warned that a second deployment increases rates of acute combat stress — which is a significant precursor to long-term PTSD — characterized by anxiety attacks and disorientation, among other symptoms, by 50 percent. The alleged shooter was on his fourth combat deployment.

Surely, the myth of the loco, time-bomb-ticking vet is a stereotype that needs to be rejected once and for all. But the role that TBI plays in spurring violent behavior remains an open question. And determining why the awful violence in Panjwei happened at all, and whether brain damage or PTSD (or both) had anything to do with that or other frightening episodes of soldier violence, might take years for scientists to unravel.

And while they do, it’s likely that the military’s mental health resources — already widely criticized, far from fail-proof and bursting at the seams — will be called on to do even better by today’s troops.

UPDATED: Joint Base Lewis-McChord, where the accused soldier was treated for TBI before being deployed to Afghanistan, has recently been implicated in an investigation over misdiagnosed PTSD cases. Again, officials haven’t stated whether soldier in particular had been diagnosed with PTSD at any point during enlistment. But as reported in the Washington Post today, Army investigators are currently poring over thousands of cases to see whether soldiers with PTSD at Lewis-McChord were diagnosed with a lesser ailment (like personality disorder). Already, the medical diagnoses of 285 soldiers will be re-evaluated by doctors.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Urged to Cancel Russia Arms Deal Over Syria

Mar. 13, 2012 - 07:50PM | By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE | Comments

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators are urging the Pentagon to cancel a contract with a Russian company approaching $1 billion to buy helicopters for Afghanistan, voicing outrage over Moscow’s arming of Syria.

“U.S. taxpayers should not be put in a position where they are indirectly subsidizing the mass murder of Syrian civilians,” 17 senators across party lines wrote March 12 in a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

The United States plans to buy 21 Mi-17 helicopters for the Afghan military from Russia’s Rosoboronexport by 2016. The contract totals $375 million by 2016, with an option to buy $550 million worth more, according to the letter.

Russia has refused to stop arms shipments to Syria and has offered diplomatic support to President Bashar al-Assad as he puts down a year-long revolt that activists say has killed more than 8,500 people, mostly civilians.

The senators voiced alarm at reports that Rosoboronexport has shipped arms to Syria and that Syrian forces used Russian weapons in opposition stronghold Homs.

Activists recently said the throats of 47 women and children were slit in a massacre in Homs, following a month-long bombardment of the rebellious Baba Amr neighborhood where 700 people were said to have died.

“We urge you to use all available leverage to press Russia and Russian entities to end their support of the Assad regime, and that includes ending all (Department of Defense) business dealings with Rosoboronexport,” the senators wrote to Panetta.

The letter’s signatories included Dick Durbin, the No. 2 senator from President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, and Jon Kyl, the No. 2 senator from the rival Republican Party.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland did not take a position on the senators’ letter but said the contract would upgrade the Russian-made fleet that forms the backbone of Afghanistan’s fledgling military.

“We obviously share the intent, which is to persuade Russia to end its arms supply to Syria,” Nuland told reporters.

But she said if the contract were canceled, “it would seriously hurt our effort to get the Afghans increasingly into the lead of their own security.”

Obama hopes that Afghan forces can take care of their own security to allow U.S. forces to leave by the end of 2014, ending an increasingly unpopular war launched more than a decade ago after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The task has become even more urgent amid outrage over a U.S. soldier’s massacre of 16 Afghan villagers.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrives in Afghanistan; pledges no change in strategy


An American service member was detained after opening fire on civilians in a remote southern village, officials said. The dead included women and children; at least five others were wounded in the attack. The soldier turned himself in, officials said.

By Greg Jaffe, Updated: Wednesday, March 14, 3:20 PM

CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived Wednesday for his third trip to Afghanistan, pledging that a recent string of setbacks would not force the United States to alter its strategy in Afghanistan.

The killing on Sunday of as many as 16 innocent Afghans, mostly women and children, by a U.S. Army staff sergeant has heightened anger over the long U.S. war and occupation. That anger was also stoked in February by the burning of several Korans at a U.S. military base.

Panetta stressed that the high-profile tragedies told only part of the story in Afghanistan, and said the relationship between U.S. and Afghan officials remained solid.

“I understand that questions are going to be raised as a result of the events of the last few weeks,” Panetta told reporters en route to Afghanistan. “[But] it is very important for policy makers to keep their eye on the target.”

U.S. officials point to recent violence statistics to prove that the Taliban insurgency is weakening. Attacks against U.S. and Afghan troops are down 24 percent over the past 12 weeks compared to a similar period a year ago.

Even in the east, along the border with Pakistan, attacks have started to drop, after holding steady or rising most of last year. Attacks on U.S. and Afghan troops in that region fell by 36 percent over the same period, according to the latest U.S. military figures.

Some of the drop in violence can be attributed to an unusually harsh winter that has snowed in passes that insurgents rely on to move fighters and weapons in from Pakistan. But Pentagon officials tout the statistics as proof that the current approach is working.

Despite the drop in violence, Washington faces major hurdles in its effort to end U.S. military operations here by late 2014.

The war effort has been hampered by an Afghan government that remains deeply unpopular and growing anti-American sentiment among a population weary of a decade of occupation.

That frustration spilled over last month following the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran by U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield, which led to a week of violent protests. Six U.S. troops were killed by rogue Afghan troops from the army and police in the aftermath of the incident.

Panetta, however, has said repeatedly that the fundamentals of the U.S. approach remain sound. He is expected to carry that message to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other senior Afghan officials over the course of his two-day visit to the country.

U.S. officials are in the midst of sensitive negotiations with Afghan officials over continuing joint U.S.-Afghan night raids, which have been a key tactic for capturing and killing Taliban leadership, but are deeply unpopular in Afghanistan.

Panetta is also expected to discuss American plans to reduce the size of its force between today and 2014 and the U.S. and NATO’s plans to eventually shrink the size of Afghan security forces to 230,000 from the current target of about 350,000. The force, which is dependent on foreign nations for support, would be more affordable if it is smaller. But senior Afghan officials have expressed worry that a 230,000-person army and police force is too small to safeguard the country.

Panetta is expected to spend Wednesday meeting with troops, government leaders and tribal elders in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan shootings refocus attention at Fort Lewis-McChord base


Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State is one of the largest military installations around, spinning out troops for Iraq and Afghanistan. But the strain of multiple deployments may be pushing some there to commit violent acts.

By Peter Finn and Carol D. Leonnig,

LAKEWOOD, Wash. — At the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, which polices a large part of the area near Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Rick Bulman, the department chaplain, has started programs to train SWAT team members and other officers on how to recognize a combat veteran who might have post-traumatic stress disorder.

He said that he doesn’t want police shooting troops but that he fears the risk of such deadly encounters is growing.

“We are having more and more issues with the military — suicides, domestic violence, DUIs, malicious mischief,” Bulman said. “They are trying to deal with issues unsuccessfully, and so they end up getting into trouble. But the situation can escalate if they are not treated properly.”

Lewis-McChord, an Army and Air Force installation south of Tacoma, is the largest military base on the West Coast, and thousands of service members from here have been deployed, often repeatedly, to Iraq and Afghanistan. The consequences of those tours are being felt both on distant battlefields and in the communities that surround the base, according to activists who work with veterans.

Confrontations with the police and criminal activity off the base are on the rise, and the legacy of battle is to blame, they say.

PTSD “is a chronic problem, and it’s been growing for 10 years,” said Stephen Kubiszewski, who co-founded PTSD Anonymous, which meets at a chapel at Lewis-McChord.

The 38-year-old soldier who is alleged to have killed 16 civilians over the weekend in southern Afghanistan was based at Lewis-McChord. Officials have said he had a traumatic brain injury in 2010 while in Iraq but was deemed fit for duty.

It remains unclear what prompted the shootings or whether anything in the suspect’s medical history could have led to his alleged actions. But the disclosure this week that he was from Lewis-McChord has refocused attention on trouble at the base, where a string of high-profile incidents had already raised questions about the scale of the mental health problems here and how the military is responding.

Last year, four members of a platoon from the base’s 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division were convicted for their roles in a self-described “kill team” that murdered three unarmed Afghan civilians.

Two soldiers have been accused of waterboarding their children — one because the child couldn’t recite his ABCs and another because his foster son wet his bed. A 24-year-old Iraq war veteran fatally shot a ranger at Mount Rainier National Park. In April, David Stewart, 38, a decorated combat medic with two tours in Iraq, killed himself after leading police on a high-speed chase down Interstate 5 near Tumwater.

His wife, 38, who had been shot in the head, was found in the car beside him. Their 5-year-old son was found dead at their home.

And on Tuesday, a lieutenant colonel at the base was charged with felony harassment in connection with allegedly threatening to kill his wife, with whom he is going through a divorce, and his superior officer.

At least 12 suicides have been recorded in the past year among Lewis-McChord soldiers, and more than 60 since 2001, activists say.

“The problem of suicide is very severe,” said Rod Wittmier, program director of the National Alliance to End Veteran Suicide. “And we don’t understand the full dimensions of what is going on.”

The Madigan Army Medical Center at the base is under a wide-ranging investigation following allegations that a special psychiatric team altered staff clinicians’ diagnoses for hundreds of soldiers from PTSD to lesser conditions.

Fourteen soldiers who complained early this year that their PTSD diagnoses were unfairly changed were flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington for reevaluation. Last month, six of them had their PTSD diagnoses reinstated.

Soon after the reevaluations, Juliana Ellis-Billingsley, a leader of the forensic psychiatry unit that is accused, resigned.

“I find that I can no longer work in a system that requires me to sacrifice my professional and moral principles to political expediency,” Ellis-Billingsley wrote in her Feb. 23 resignation letter.

The Army’s preliminary review last month found that more than 280 additional soldiers evaluated at Madigan since 2007 had their diagnoses altered to less serious conditions, often adjustment disorders that receive fewer disability benefits.

Col. Dallas Homas, who heads the center, and William Keppler, a mental health chief at the hospital, were placed on administrative leave while the investigation continues.

The most dramatic evidence in the case, according to a congressional source who was briefed on it, is a PowerPoint presentation that Keppler offered to psychiatric and medical staff members. It emphasized that each soldier who receives a PTSD diagnosis costs the military $1.5 million over his or her lifetime in health benefits and pension payments.

Keppler referred calls about the case to military spokesmen, who referred questions to the Army surgeon general. Ellis-Billingsley did not respond to calls to her home seeking comment.

Nationwide, traumatic brain injuries among service members have been steadily rising each year since 2000, with 11,000 confirmed cases reported that year and 30,000 reported in 2011, according to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.

The Army surgeon general said that traumatic brain injury has been diagnosed in 135,000 soldiers from 2000 through 2011. But three-fourths of those injuries were classified as mild, and few troops suffer long-term symptoms.

“The overwhelming majority of military personnel who sustain a concussion/mild traumatic brain injury fully recover with proper rest and education with no residual symptoms,” surgeon general spokeswoman Maria Tolleson said in a statement. “Patients requiring ongoing treatment are not deployed to a combat zone or if in a combat zone, they are medically evacuated for further care.”

Tolleson said “a relatively small proportion of patients” suffer from symptoms that last more than six months after their concussion.

Ashley Hagemann, a Fort Lewis widow, said something is horribly wrong with the way the base handles traumatized soldiers who are shipped out for tour after tour without counseling for the deaths they have witnessed and the stress they have endured.

Hagemann’s husband had been with a unit stationed at Fort Lewis and committed suicide last year just before his eighth tour, which was to be to Libya, she said. Hagemann said her husband told her that God would never forgive him for what he had seen and done as a soldier.

Hagemann said she had a queasy feeling that the alleged gunman in the killings in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province was from her husband’s base.

“I already knew he had to be from Fort Lewis and had to have some sort of trauma,” she said. “I was angry knowing the military would deploy him, to not give him help he obviously needed.”

Leonnig reported from Washington. Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan support for U.S. pullout grows after shooting spree, attack on delegation

By Ernesto Londoño, Published: March 13

KABUL — A growing number of Afghans say they have come to see a quick U.S. pullout as the best of bad options, a shift in line with Americans’ increasing disapproval of the decade-long war.

The sentiment follows a shooting rampage Sunday, allegedly committed by a U.S. soldier, and an attack Tuesday in which an Afghan government delegation visiting the same village came under fire from suspected Taliban fighters.

“When the Americans first came, it was people like me who welcomed them,” said Abdul Jabar, 28, a truck driver from Kandahar. “Now they are killing our women and children.”

In the early years of the war, Jabar said, when slow-driving U.S. military convoys on the road between Kabul and Kandahar wouldn’t let him and other drivers pass, he was patient, seeing the inconveniences of a foreign military coalition as the price of security. That calculus shifted gradually over time but changed dramatically over the past few weeks, he said. The burning of Korans by U.S. soldiers last month and the deaths of 16 civilians in the shootings Sunday have left him craving vengeance.

Jabar said he wouldn’t be satisfied “if the American gets killed — even if 20 Americans get killed,” referring to the punishment he deemed appropriate to avenge the deaths of nine children and seven adults in Kandahar province.

Many educated, urban Afghans have worried that an abrupt pullout of U.S. troops could create an opening for the Taliban to return to power, plunging Afghanistan back into international isolation and abject poverty. The recent events, though, have led some of them to rethink the wisdom of a prolonged international military presence, even if an exit puts the country’s continued development and modernization on the line.

Farid Maqsudi, a prominent Afghan American businessman, said the burning of the Korans and Sunday’s shootings have convinced him that a swift withdrawal is the best course of action.

“The point of no return has been long overdue,” said Maqsudi, a founding member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Afghanistan who has had close personal and commercial ties to U.S. officials in Afghanistan over the past decade. “The sooner the responsibility shifts to the Afghans, the better it would be for all stakeholders.”

In the attack Tuesday, two brothers of President Hamid Karzai narrowly escaped the Taliban ambush as they were leaving a mosque in Balandi, a tiny village in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province where the rampage took place. An Afghan soldier protecting the government delegation was fatally shot, provincial officials said.

A few hundred Afghans took to the streets in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Tuesday to demand that the U.S. soldier held in the Sunday shootings be tried in an Afghan court. In Kandahar city, hundreds of students attended a memorial for the victims, and many called for the prompt prosecution of the soldier.

“He has to be punished,” said Hazrat Mir Totakhil, the dean of Kandahar University. “That was the demand of the students.”

The type of riots and protests that followed the burning of the Korans would be counterproductive in this case, Totakhil said, because “the enemy would take advantage of that.”

Seeking to capitalize on the anger at the shootings, the Taliban on Tuesday issued its third and most detailed statement on the incident, threatening to behead foreign “murderous sadistic troops in every corner of the country.” The statement said that residents of Kandahar have not reacted more viscerally and violently to the killings because local officials co-opted by the U.S. government have told them to stand down.

“They have banned the courageous people of Kandahar and the country from taking to the streets,” the statement said, calling that “rubbing salt on the victim’s wounds.”

The Koran burning triggered a week-long spate of riots and prompted members of the Afghan security forces to fatally shoot a handful of U.S. soldiers. The reaction to the killings Sunday has been more subdued because the desecration of Korans is seen as an affront to Muslims worldwide and because the loss of civilian life at the hands of foreign troops has become somewhat routine, Afghans said in interviews.

“The burning of the Korans was more important because it targeted the foundation of our religion,” said Mawlavi Qiyamuddin Kashaf, head of Afghanistan’s Ulema Council, an assembly of religious scholars.

The council condemned the killings in a statement Tuesday in which it called for an end to night raids by foreign troops on the homes of suspected insurgents.

“Those who consider themselves as the upholders of human rights in the 21st century once again committed a barbaric, inhumane, shameful deed,” said the council, which is seen as closely allied with Karzai’s government. “If this is repeated again, it will be difficult to control people’s sentiments and prevent a general uproar” against foreign troops.

Members of Afghanistan’s Senate echoed that sentiment. Instead of holding sessions inside parliament, lawmakers stood outside on the snow-covered pavement in silent protest of the killings.

“We don’t know anymore who is our friend,” Fazal Hadi Muslimyar, the Senate chairman, said later in an interview. “They are sending mad soldiers to our country and killing our people. Now we don’t see any difference between the Russian forces who killed our innocent people, the terrorists killing our women and children, and the Americans.”

Special correspondents Javed Hamdard and Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Spy Blimp Caught Rogue Soldier on Tape After Shooting Spree

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author March 14, 2012 | 3:55 pm


A soldier guards the U.S. base at Zangabad, Afghanistan, the scene of Sunday's massacre. Photo: U.S. Army

Above a small base in southern Afghanistan, a spy blimp captured video of the perpetrator of Sunday’s massacre surrendering to base forces. The question now becomes what other aspects of the killings, which left 16 Afghan civilians dead, are detailed in that video — or in any other footage that may have been shot by the U.S. military’s innumerable surveillance sensors in the region.

Reuters reports that video footage, “taken from a security camera mounted on a blimp above” the base, showed the perpetrator, allegedly a U.S. Army staff sergeant, surrendering after his fateful, early-morning trip off the Combat Outpost Belamby. “The footage showed the uniformed soldier with his weapon covered by a cloth,” Reuters adds, walking to the gates “and throwing his arms up in surrender.”

The existence of the video is a new and potentially major detail in a case that’s still under investigation. And it’s possible that the video shows much, much more than the surrender.

Navy Capt. John Kirby, a top Pentagon spokesman just back from Afghanistan, said he would not discuss “evidence into an ongoing investigation.”

The video wasn’t just snapped, it was preserved and distributed. Reuters says that it’s been shown to Afghans investigating the massacre, “to help dispel a widely held belief among Afghans, including many members of parliament” that there were multiple gunmen. If the video can establish a lone shooter, then it very likely displays the entire grisly incident. Even if the video can’t capture what happened inside houses, sequential muzzle flashes inside darkened buildings could tell the story of the massacre.

Several other U.S. wartime disasters have been captured on camera. WikiLeaks became famous after acquiring and distributing a video, “Collateral Murder,” purporting to show U.S. troops in Iraq killing civilians. Footage also exists of an airstrike in the western Afghan region of Garani, even though the military has yet to release it three years after swearing it would prove the strikes targeted Taliban positions. Such footage refuted Taliban propaganda that claimed the U.S. was responsible for a 2009 grenade attack in Kunar province that the insurgents perpetrated.

It’s possible that Reuters didn’t actually mean a “blimp.” Smaller military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan use tethered aerostats as relatively cheap platforms for hosting cameras, allowing troops a broader vantage and awareness of incoming threats. As of March 2011, there were 184 of the floating, chubby spies in Afghanistan. Many bases also have cameras affixed to heightened areas for the same reason. The most likely explanation for the video is that the cameras were either running 24-7 or the blimp/aerostat was an impromptu surveillance tool for the search party.

Still, even if it was tethered to the base, Danger Room’s sources indicate that Belamby — a small base hosting both special operations and conventional forces — is only a short distance from Zangabad, and very likely within camera range. While Belamby’s conventional forces might have had small drones on base, like Ravens, those are more likely to be used on missions than for force-protection efforts like recovering a soldier who went out at night on his own.

Most accounts of the shooting in the media say the suspect only left the base for a short amount of time before he turned himself in. It probably wouldn’t have taken long for the search party to have gotten approval from nearby Kandahar airfield, which is home to lots and lots of drones and manned spy aircraft. (The coalition flew 717 recon missions over Afghanistan in the last week alone, according to U.S. Air Force statistics.) There may also have been other eyes in the sky on separate missions that might have absorbed imagery of the assault. “I don’t know what ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] assets were available at the time, or were used at the time,” Kirby said.

The Washington Post notes that the reaction inside Afghanistan to the horror has been surprisingly muted. It’s possible that the lack of nationwide protests has to do with the routinization of U.S. special operations “night raids,” which many Afghans already believe are as bloody as the Zangabad massacre. But if videotape emerges, that relative calm may not hold.

[buglerbilly]

Russia to offer air base to US for Afghan transit


Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks at the State Duma, the lower parliament chamber, Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, March 14, 2012. Lavrov says Moscow is providing Syria with weapons to fend off external threats but has no intention to use military force to protect Syrian President Bashar Assad. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze)

By Vladimir Isachenkov

Associated Press / March 14, 2012

MOSCOW—A new deal allowing the United States and its NATO allies to use a Russian air base for transit of troops and military cargo to Afghanistan would help ensure Russia's own security, Russia's foreign minister said Wednesday.

Sergey Lavrov said a plan to permit the U.S. and other NATO nations to use the base in the city of Ulyanovsk on the Volga River will soon be considered by the Russian Cabinet. If approved, the deal could help repair Russian ties with the United States, which have become increasingly strained over Washington's missile defense plans in Europe and the Syrian crisis.

Moscow has provided the U.S. and other NATO member states with air corridors and railway routes for carrying supplies to and from Afghanistan. The new agreement would for the first time allow alliance members to set up a logistics facility for troops and cargo on Russian territory.

Lavrov strongly defended such a deal, saying the success of NATO's mission is essential for fending off the spread of terrorism and illegal drugs from Afghanistan into ex-Soviet Central Asian nations and Russia.

"It's in our interests that the coalition achieves a success before withdrawing and makes sure that the Afghans are capable of defending their country and ensuring an acceptable level of security," Lavrov told the lower house of Russia's legislature. Some lawmakers argued that the U.S. military's use of the Ulyanovsk facility could threaten Russia by allowing foreign troops on its soil.

"We want those who are fending off threats directed at Russia to efficiently fulfill their tasks," Lavrov said. "We are helping the coalition to proceed from our own interests."

In Belgium, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said boosting cooperation on the Afghan transit would benefit both the alliance and Russia.

"Clearly we welcome the cooperation we have with Russia already on transit from and to Afghanistan," she said. "We look forward to reinforcing that agreement because ... NATO and Russia have a joint interest in a stable and secure Afghanistan."

Lavrov said the deal to be considered by the Cabinet would allow the transit of NATO troops but that they wouldn't be allowed to stay there.

"They aren't going to live there. They will only be moving from one transportation means to another," Lavrov said. He sought to assuage the lawmakers' concern by saying that Russia would reserve the right to check the cargo, but provide specifics about the deal.

Earlier this week, Russia's daily Izvestia published excerpts from an official letter sent to parliament by Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, which said that the Ulyanovsk facility would be overseen by the civilian authorities and include customs control.

The proposal comes amid shrinking supply options to coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta met with Kyrgyzstan's leaders to stress that America needs the continued use of the U.S. air base there beyond the end of its contract in 2014, largely as a transit center to bring troops home from Afghanistan.

The supply routes across the former Soviet Union also have become vital after Pakistan shut down its ground supply routes following the U.S. airstrikes in November that killed a number of Pakistani troops. The high-speed rail route through Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan handles the bulk of the ground supplies.

Izvestia quoted Kremlin-linked analyst Vyacheslav Nikonov, who said the deal on the Russian air base would allow Russia to ask for U.S. favors in return.

"By providing a transit hub, Russia will get the chance to make its demands," Nikonov said. "It will be a very good foreign policy argument."

U.S.-Russian ties have been strained recently over Moscow's support of the Syrian regime and U.S. missile defense plans in Europe.

Washington said the missile shield is intended to fend off the Iranian missile threat, but the Kremlin has seen it as a threat to Russia's nuclear deterrent and urged Washington to provide security guarantees.

"If the U.S. doesn't want to change anything in its plans, it should provide reliable guarantees that their missile defense sites around Europe aren't directed against our strategic nuclear forces," Lavrov said Wednesday. "If our partners continue to ignore our legitimate interests, Russia will have to take retaliatory security measures."

--------

Associated Press writer Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Starts to Close Bases in Afghanistan

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author March 15, 2012 | 6:30 am


U.S. troops from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division build a base in Parwan Province, Afghanistan in 2010. Photo: U.S. Army

Here’s how you know the Afghan surge really is coming to an end: The U.S. Army is starting to pack up its stuff, close its bases and begin the arduous logistical work of downsizing in Afghanistan.

The move follows years of extensive construction all around Afghanistan before and during the surge. But as the transition to a downsized force heavily dependent on special operations troops continues — and effectively establishes the contours of a desired residual troop presence — that construction may not actually stop.

The Army wants to assemble what it calls “Base Closure Assistance Teams” to reduce the U.S.’ footprint in the country. The six- to 12-person teams will “facilitat[e] the retrograde process by coordinating the logistics and deconstruction of bases in the Combined/Joint Operations Area-Afghanistan,” according to a solicitation that will formally be released on Monday.

About 10,000 of the surge troops have either been reassigned to other areas of Afghanistan or sent out of the country since July 2011. (The remaining 23,000 augmentees are scheduled to leave by Oct. 1, leaving a force of 68,000.) Their facilities — the bases dotting Afghanistan, particularly in the south and east — have largely remained untouched until now. Representatives from the war command and the Pentagon could not recall a significant teardown of bases.

Tearing down bases isn’t necessarily an indicator of departure. Upon becoming the war’s commander in 2009, Gen. Stanley McChrystal actually closed bases in parts of eastern Afghanistan, far from population centers, in preparation for the 2010 surge. That was followed by a departure from the treacherous, bloody Korengal Valley in Konar province, immortalized in the classic war documentary Restrepo. In the midst of the surge, Maj. Gen. John Campbell, then the commander in eastern Afghanistan, shut down the combat outposts in the Pech Valley near Pakistan, where U.S. troops fought and bled for little strategic reason.

It’s unlikely that major bases will be affected by the closure. The giant Bagram air field, a central logistics hub about an hour’s drive from Kabul, has gotten supersized in recent years. As elite commandos become central to the U.S.’ strategy for a residual force, special operations forces are building a new Joint Operations Center at Kandahar air field in the south. Rumor has it that the ongoing negotiations with President Karzai on that residual presence will emphasize the U.S.’ desire to retain control of the bases at Bagram, Kandahar and Jalalabad — major hubs for drones in both Afghanistan and Pakistan — and perhaps a lesser-known but large base in Khost Province called Salerno.

Still, the base closure teams are among the first tangible signs that troop drawndowns in Afghanistan are about to go from rhetoric to reality. With the war seemingly careening from crisis to crisis to crisis, that probably can’t come soon enough for the 54 percent of Americans who want out faster than President Obama has ordered.

[buglerbilly]

Nobody Wants to Stay in Afghanistan Any More (Except a Few Generals)

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author March 15, 2012 | 11:11 am


Army Sgt. David Banks helps conduct a cordon and search operation in Pana, Afghanistan. Photo: U.S. Army

These are the emerging contours of the Afghanistan debate. Backing a quicker withdrawal: the White House; NATO; two out of three major Republican presidential candidates; Afghan President Hamid Karzai; and (um) the Taliban. Against a quicker withdrawal: the U.S. military and a handful of GOP legislators.

Widespread local protests may not have emerged after Sunday’s massacre of 16 Afghan civilians. But the shootings, the latest in a series of crises, have reopened a debate about the wisdom of sticking with President Obama’s 2014 timetable for bringing (most) troops home. And it’s occurring at an opportune moment: NATO and the White House are currently determining just how fast and how deep the withdrawals should be over the next two years.

The military wants to slow Obama’s roll. In his only interview since the massacre, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen, argued that the “solid” war plan “does not contemplate at this time, any form of accelerated drawdown.” After the surge troops leave in October, Allen, who will testify to Congress next week, reportedly wants to delay additional cuts to the 68,000-troop force until late 2013.

He has few allies for that argument.

President Hamid Karzai on Thursday called for Allen’s forces to turn over combat duties to Afghan soldiers and police next year. The U.S.’ NATO allies want that to happen: at NATO headquarters in Brussels, several alliance officials believe all the heavy lifting for the transition can be done by mid-2013. For its part, the Taliban announced on Thursday it’s suspending peace talks until the U.S. clarifies its positions on departing.

The White House publicly says that it’s content to stick with the plan to turn over combat to the Afghans in 2014. But several White House officials, led by Vice President Joe Biden, believe the large U.S. presence has become counterproductive and the residual tasks for Americans — training Afghans, counterterrorism strikes and raids — can be accomplished with fewer troops. Oh, and there’s a presidential election coming up in a climate where 54 percent of Americans want out of Afghanistan faster than Obama has proposed.

There’s an opportunity for Obama, NATO and Karzai to tweak the withdrawal. NATO will meet in Chicago — which just happens to be the nexus of Obama’s reelection campaign — in May. There, the alliance will decide how to structure the drawdown through 2014, and what a residual commitment to Afghanistan of troops and cash will look like afterward. The buzz is that the alliance is unlikely to announce its schedules for troop withdrawal. But look to see if NATO describes 2013 as the crucial year for the transition, which will herald a front-loaded withdrawal.

If so, NATO may have to look for a new commander. But Allen doesn’t have many allies outside of the military and the Pentagon to bolster his call for a slower withdrawal. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is one. On the Hill, he can rely on Rep. Buck McKeon, the GOP chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; McKeon’s Senate counterpart John McCain; and McCain’s ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, who told Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin, “If I gotta pick between Joe Biden and General Allen, I’m picking General Allen.”

Not many others will. The Democratic Party reluctantly embraced the Afghanistan war as a cudgel against President Bush and the Iraq war; both of which are memories now. The Republican Party never turned the Afghanistan war into an ideological issue, which helps explain why the two conservative alternatives to Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, feel free to envision a faster withdrawal.

Romney has little political choice but to oppose whatever Obama decides. But Romney doesn’t emphasize Afghanistan on the campaign trail, except to say that he wants “victory,” something that few in Washington have ever bothered to define during a decade of war.

The generals don’t actually embrace “victory.” At this late hour, all they want is to delay troop reductions — not reverse them, which would retain U.S. ownership of the war. All commanders want more troops to prosecute their campaigns. Allen just doesn’t want fewer, for as long as possible. That says a lot, barometrically, about the contours of the Afghanistan debate.

The military was able to rally a reluctant president to triple troop levels in 2009 and 2010. But judging from its paltry support, the brass may not be able to slow the drawdown.

[buglerbilly]

March 16, 2012, 7:53 a.m. ET.

Turkish Helicopter Crash Kills 14 in Afghanistan

By CHARLES LEVINSON, JOE PARKINSON and HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL

KABUL, Afghanistan—A Turkish military helicopter crashed into a residential neighborhood in the Afghan capital Friday, killing all 12 Turkish soldiers aboard and two young Afghan girls in their bedroom, according to officials and witnesses.

Friday's crash marks the deadliest day in Afghanistan for Turkey, a Muslim member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that oversees the coalition's regional command in charge of Kabul city.

The incident, which isn't believed to have been caused by hostile action, is likely to fuel debate within Turkey over whether to end the controversial deployment of 1,845 soldiers in Afghanistan. Before Friday's crash, just two Turkish soldiers had died in Afghanistan, in a car accident in 2009.


Associated Press
An Afghan policemen looks at the wreckage from a crashed Turkish helicopter on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Friday.

"Our presence in Afghanistan has always been controversial and this development will add to those question marks," said Atilla Yesilada, a political analyst at Global Source Partners, an Istanbul-based research group.

The death of two young Afghan girls, meanwhile, could further fuel Afghan popular anger with coalition military activities in the country. It comes five days after a lone U.S. soldier shot dead 16 innocent Afghan civilians in their homes in the southern Kandahar province.

In response to that killing, Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday stunned U.S. and other coalition officials by demanding that the coalition pull its forces from villages to large bases.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Istanbul that the cause of the crash wasn't known, but early evidence suggested that it could have been a technical failure. 


"It is a grave accident…We have tremendous pain," he said. 
Coalition military officials in Kabul said no enemy activity had been reported in the area around the time of the crash.

The helicopter crashed into the upper-middle class Husseinkhel neighborhood in eastern Kabul at around 10:25 a.m., according to witnesses and Turkish officials. The helicopter was flying unusually low, witnesses said, when it crashed into an empty three story home under construction. It then ricocheted into a second, occupied home.

The ensuing fireball incinerated the bodies of two young girls in their second-story bedroom and wounded two other family members, according to a relative. The helicopter's massive engine block remained in the girls' charred bedroom hours after the crash, the chopper's only visible remains.

Turkey's mission in Afghanistan is limited, and its troops don't take part in combat operations. Turkish officers are in command of operations of the greater Kabul area, one of six regional coalition commands in the country.


In October, Turkey extended the mandate of its 1,800 soldiers serving under the Kabul regional command by another year. But analysts stressed that Friday's death toll would likely fuel a gathering debate over whether Turkish forces should be serving in Afghanistan at all amid escalating foreign-policy challenges in the Middle East, especially neighboring Syria and Iran.

"There are very serious questions being asked about how far our reach should stretch," Mr. Yesilada said.

[buglerbilly]

The bloody saga of Robert Bales: a morality story for a nation at war for a decade

Philip Sherwell

March 18, 2012 - 11:11AM


Sgt Robert Bales and the home that his wife put up for sale because she was behind with mortgage payments. Photo: Reuters

Nobody "wins" in this sorry little saga, not the civilians who died, this guy himself nor his poor family who will have to live with the consequences...................very, very sad!

Robert Bales turned his back on civilian life as a financial adviser in Ohio and signed up for the military after the September 11 attacks on the US.

He was a popular combat veteran, twice injured in Iraq, described by a former platoon leader as "one of the best soldiers I ever worked with" and who prided himself on identifying "the bad guys from non-combatants".


A white van, believed to be transporting Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, leaves Kansas City International Airport on Friday. Photo: AP

Now, though, he has been identified as the US soldier accused of last Sunday's massacre of 16 Afghan villagers, nine of them children, in a pre-dawn shooting and stabbing rampage.

The atrocity has plunged US-Afghan relations to a new low, prompting "Death to America" protests in Afghanistan, and fresh calls for the timetable for the 2014 withdrawal of American and British forces to be accelerated.

As a commander and trained sniper in a frontline US infantry unit, Sgt Bales was no stranger to combat and the stress it can produce in those who wage it. He had witnessed the bloodiest of the fighting in Iraq in the years after the 2003 invasion, earning the praise of his superiors, and was decorated a dozen times during three tours of duty there.


Violunteered ... Sgt Robert Bales, right, rigned up after the Septe mber 11 attacks. Photo: AFP

Then in 2010, towards the end of his third deployment, he suffered a minor traumatic brain injury after the vehicle in which he was travelling rolled over. And last year to his disappointment he was passed over for promotion, adding to money worries back home.

But for Sgt Bales, 38, and his wife Karilyn, there seemed at least one reason for optimism on the horizon. They understood he had served his final tour in a warzone, and that they and their two young children would soon move to a non-combat posting. Instead, he was sent back to the front last December, this time to Afghanistan. The consequences were more dreadful than could have been imagined.

Grievances and pressures

What emerged this weekend is a morality story for a nation whose army has been at war for a decade, and at the centre of it is a soldier who, despite an impressive military record, also had a recent history of trauma, grievances and financial pressures.

Court records show another side to the character of a man who was described by stunned neighbours as a loving father and husband and "life of the party".

In 2002, he underwent an anger management assessment after he was charged with assault. And in 2008, witnesses said that he smelled of alcohol after crashing his car and running off into woods.

At home in Washington state, his wife was struggling with the finances as she raised Quincy, four, and Bobby, three. Only this month, they put their home up for sale as they had fallen behind with their mortgage payments.

Sgt Bales, 38, a member of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, was flown back on Friday evening to the military's highest-security prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where investigators will pore over his military evaluations, mental and physical health records and computer logs as they draw up charges against him.

Work stress anbd marital strains

An unnamed official briefed US media that Sgt Bales buckled under a combination of work stress, marital strains and alcohol, saying that he had been drinking in violation of military rules.

But the shocking incident raises alarming questions about his emotional and mental stability, and whether he had slipped through the net of care at one of America's biggest bases and the pressures of repeat deployments to combat zones.

John Browne, his lawyer, dismissed reports of domestic problems as "hogwash" but said Sgt Bales had experienced post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his deployments and his head injury in Iraq.

He also had seen one of his fellow soldiers lose his leg in an explosion hours before he allegedly committed the massacre.

Sgt Bales and his wife lived at Lake Tapps in Washington state, about a 20-minute drive east of his base at Lewis-McChord near Tacoma in the Pacific North West.

His home was a modest two-story beige wood-frame house with a small front porch beneath tall fir and cedar evergreens in a neighbourhood popular with military families. But three days before the shooting in Afghanistan, Mrs Bales contacted Philip Rodocker, an estate agent, to say that she wanted to sell their house.

Home 'behind in payments'

The property was listed for $229,000, about a $50,000 loss on what the family paid for it in 2005 and less than they owed the bank.

"She told me she was behind in payments," Mr. Rodocker said. "She said he was on his fourth tour and (the house) was getting kind of old and they needed to stabilise their finances."

The house "looked like it had been really, really neglected", he added.

Mrs Bales and her children were moved into accommodation on the army base last week, to protect her from the inevitable media scrutiny as well as the danger of revenge attacks. Boxes, toys, a sledge and a barbecue grill were piled on the front porch this weekend, collected by Mrs Bales as she prepared for the move.

"We are completely in shock," said Kassie Holland, 27, a neighbour.

"They seemed very happy, he was the life of the party and great with the kids. I can't see how this can have happened."

His commanders also evidently had no doubts about his capabilities. Staff sergeants are the backbone of a fighting unit, providing support to their officers and bolstering morale of the troops.

To qualify as a sniper - a position that all but guarantees a close acquaintance with killing - he underwent and passed routine psychological screening assessments.

Bales own insights

Sgt Bales offered his own insights on the war in Iraq after he fought in a battle in the city of Najaf in 2007 in which 250 enemy fighters died, in clashes described by some participants as "apocalyptic".

"I've never been more proud to be a part of this unit than that day," he said afterwards in a testimony collected for a military training college.

"We discriminated between the bad guys and the noncombatants and then afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us.

"I think that's the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy, someone who puts his family in harm's way like that."

Speaking of the intensity of the battle, he added that "the cool part about this was World War II-style. You dug in. Guys were out there digging a fighting position in the ground."

That vivid account is evidently one that the US military would prefer the public no longer to read. The link to the website that carried it was removed last week, but the article was still available in other archives.

Comrades have been quick to come to the support of the soldier they had known before Sunday.

Capt Chris Alexander, his platoon leader in Iraq, said in an interview on Friday that the sergeant "saved many a life" by never letting down his guard during patrols.

"Bales is still, hands down, one of the best soldiers I ever worked with," he said.

"There has to be very severe [post-traumatic stress disorder] involved in this. I just don't want him seen as some psychopath, because he is not."

Two brushes with the law

But public records show two brushes with the law after he moved to Washington. He was ordered by a judge in 2002 to undergo anger-management counselling for an assault case, but no further details of the incident were immediately available.

He was arrested in 2008 after he drove his car off a road and into a tree, then fled the scene. Witnesses told police that he was bleeding, disoriented and smelled of alcohol, but he was not charged with drunk driving.

He was deployed three times to Iraq: between 2003 and 2004 as anti-US resistance erupted; for 15 months between June 2006 and September 2007, at the height of the brutal civil war and the beginning of what became known as the surge; and for a year from August 2009. As well as the head injury in that final tour, his lawyer said that he had also lost part of his foot in a separate incident.

The massacre has focused attention on the care and vetting given to soldiers who have gone through multiple tours and, in Sgt Bales' case, suffered a brain injury on deployment.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord has come under scrutiny after a series of incidents.

Most notably, rogue soldiers from another Stryker brigade formed a "kill unit" and murdered three Afghan civilians in 2010, and the Army recently opened an investigation into complaints that diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder were being changed or dismissed by the base's medical centre.

Repeated deployment pressures

Some veteran groups have argued that the base, which is home to 40,000 soldiers, is unable to handle the pressures of repeated deployments.

In 2010, Sgt Bales was among 18,000 personnel who returned there from war zones over just a few weeks.

However, commanders insisted on Friday that facilities at Lewis-McChord were not overwhelmed.

Why Sgt Bales snapped in the early hours of last Sunday remain unclear for now; officials say he appears to have only vague recollections of the incident.

But as he stands suspected of perhaps the worst single atrocity committed by a US serviceman in the last decades of foreign wars, a recent US military press release about military's "hearts and minds" operations in an Afghan village has a chilling poignancy.

"How's the security affecting your family?" Sgt Bales asked a village elder relaxing outside of his home. "Much better than yesterday," the man replies.

The release goes on to state that Sgt Bales' company had successfully secured the village to rebuild relations with the local population.

In the words of his commander, "it represents the finest of everything the Army presents".

Nobody, it seems, envisaged that Sgt Bales might ever come to represent anything else.

The Sunday Telegraph, London

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-bloody-saga-of-robert-bales--a-morality-story-for-a-nation-at-war-for-a-decade-20120318-1vd1j.html#ixzz1pQKeejj5

[buglerbilly]

Afghan rampage suspect Robert Bales was a soldier strained by deployments

By Joby Warrick, Carol Morello and Krissah Thompson, Sunday, March 18, 9:00 AM

Three days before the shooting rampage, as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales marked his 1,192nd day of combat deployment, the Army sniper’s house in suburban Tacoma, Wash., was put up for a short sale in the local real-estate listings. Years of overseas duty on a sergeant’s salary had squeezed the family’s resources to the breaking point, and now Bales’s wooded property was in disrepair and more than $50,000 underwater.

The news, though not unexpected, was a fresh blow to the 38-year-old father of two who was then three months into an Afghanistan assignment he had hoped to avoid. Outwardly, friends say, Bales bore physical scars from injuries suffered during three previous tours in Iraq. But the inner wounds from his multiple deployments and his family’s deteriorating circumstances had largely escaped notice, until the evening Army officials say he picked up his rifle and walked alone into a sleeping village just outside his base near Kandahar.

In less than an hour, they say, Bales methodically executed 16 civilians, including four children about the same age as his own son and daughter. Then he set their bodies afire and walked back to his base to turn himself in.

Exactly what caused Bales to apparently commit such a horrific act March 11 may never be known with certainty. Hundreds of thousands of other U.S. service members have borne similar stresses during 10 years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, 24 hours after Bales’s identity was made public Friday, a portrait emerges of a soldier and a young family struggling under the cumulative physical and emotional strain of a decade of deployments in the country’s two wars.

By all accounts a devoted family man and an even-tempered soldier who received awards and accolades for his service, Bales appeared to have been transformed in a single day into an alleged mass murderer behind one of the worst atrocities since the start of the Afghan conflict. The slayings have thrown U.S.-Afghan relations into crisis as U.S. military planners search for ways to speed the U.S. exit from Afghanistan.

While the crimes of which Bales is accused are singularly brutal, advocates for military families say the pressures Bales faced are commonplace in a military stretched by the longest period of conflict in the country’s history. Michael Waddington, an attorney for service members accused of violent crimes, said the Pentagon lacks the resources to adequately screen and treat troops suffering from serious anxieties and stress.

“It’s surprising this kind of thing hasn’t happened before, given the amount of time we’ve been in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

The prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has been measured to be as high as 31 percent, and numerous studies have shown that repeated deployment is a risk factor. The relationship between PTSD, anger and violent behavior is less clear — and a subject of intensive research.

On fourth deployment

The man accused of the slayings is a former stockbroker from Ohio who joined the Army shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He witnessed combat during all of his four deployments, and on the day before the killings he saw a comrade lose his leg to a land mine. Bales himself had been wounded twice, including a concussive head injury suffered when his Humvee overturned in Iraq. Yet, the Army had certified him as fit for combat before deploying him for the fourth time — to Afghanistan — in December 2011.

Army comrades described him as a model soldier who was polite, professional and exceptionally cool under fire. A student of Middle Eastern history and customs, he often admonished younger GIs to treat noncombatants with courtesy and respect.

“Some guys had a pretty negative attitude, but Bales wasn’t like that at all,” said Capt. Chris Alexander, who served with Bales in Iraq. “He said there was no need to be a jerk. Be polite, be professional and have a plan to kill everyone you meet if you need to.”

Alexander said the stress of the combat was a constant presence during their time together, fighting in hostile provinces in Iraq, where friends and foes mingled together and where soldiers spent many hours in “mind-numbing boredom together waiting to get blown up.”

Yet, Bales, he said, “seemed far less stressed than I was. He just has that kind of personality.”

Neighbors and colleagues said Bales had exhibited signs of emotional strain in the months and years before the events. His home visits had included a few brushes with the law, including a drunken-driving arrest in 2005 and a hit-and-run accident in 2008. Friends say both Bales and his wife were surprised and deeply disappointed when he was ordered to Afghanistan. The family had been struggling during the long deployments to pay bills and raise two children, both born while Bales was overseas.

Hints of the financial stress faced by the Baleses were evident at a property Kari Bales bought before their marriage. They lived there briefly until they bought a house in late 2005.

The two-story duplex is on a small street in a development of modest houses behind a busy commercial strip in the Tacoma suburb of Auburn. The gray paint on the siding and the blue paint on the trim are peeling. A bright orange sign stuck on the door, dated November 2010, states that Auburn building officials had declared the home unfit for human occupancy. The only indicator of happier days is a small iron wind chime in the shape of a sun with a smiling face.

‘He just wanted to go back’

Tim Burgess, who lives in the adjoining half of the duplex, said he got to know Bales when he moved into the house before the couple were married. At the time, Bales limped because of a foot injury he suffered in his first deployment in Iraq, and he made routine visits to a rehabilitation center, Burgess said. But Bales spoke eagerly of returning to Iraq.

“He was looking forward to getting his health back and going back after his foot got better,” Burgess said. “He was trying to get back in shape. He wanted to be a soldier. That’s what he lived for. He just wanted to go back. That was his goal, to get healthy and go back.”

Burgess said he never saw any flashes of anger from Bales, but he was aware the couple were taking on a lot of financial obligations.

Last year, Bales was up for a promotion to sergeant first class, a move that would have improved the family’s financial prospects. When he failed to receive the higher rank, his wife spoke openly of the emotional toll of the rejection in a blog she kept at the time.

She wrote in March 2011 that she was “disappointed after all of the work Bob has done and all the sacrifices he has made for his love of his country, family and friends.” She said the family was hoping for an end to the long separations and hardships.

“We are hoping that if we are proactive and ask to go to a location that the Army will allow us to have some control over where we go next,” she wrote.

As a boy growing up in Ohio, Bales was the youngest of five sons in a close-knit family. “He was the glue that held the family together. He was the baby, the youngest of a very strong family,” said Michael Blevins, 35, a childhood friend who grew up across the street.

“I’m kind of dumbstruck,” Blevins said, looking over at the tall red-brick house where the Bales family lived until the late 1990s. “It seemed like he had so much love to give. I looked up to him. He was kind of a mentor when I was younger. He was just one of those guys: If you got around him, he had this radiance about him. He pulled you in. He was just a great guy.”

Even after Bales left Norwood in 1991 and began studying at Mount St. Joseph, he came back often to the old neighborhood, Blevins said. Bales studied physical therapy at the college and put what he was learning into practice by assisting a disabled neighbor. “He came down here and he would take him for a walk around the neighborhood,” Blevins said.

After Sept. 11, Blevins said, Bales told him he couldn’t keep working as a stockbroker. “He said joining the military was something he had to do,” Blevins recalled. “He couldn’t just keep making money.”

Bales’s father, Garfield, had also served in the Army, according to Blevins.

The last time Blevins saw Bales was in 2008, when Bales came to town for the funeral of Blevins’s father.

He last heard from Bales last month in a Facebook message. “He talked about his son’s third birthday,” Blevins said. “He has two kids and a great wife. Everything seemed to be going great for him.”

Bales was not a big drinker when they were growing up and showed no flashes of violence.

“That’s not Bobby. I’ve known him for 35 years. He couldn’t do that. He wasn’t a big drinker. Even when we were kids, he was usually the one that tried to keep everybody sober,” Blevins said. “There’s no way Bobby Bales could have done that. You can ask anyone in the entire city.”

In isolation

On Saturday, Bales was held in pretrial confinement at the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, a detention center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he is being kept in a private cell. His wife and two children are under federal protection amid threats by the Taliban of reprisal killings.

A statement issued Saturday by Bales’s legal team said the Bales family was “stunned in the face of this tragedy.”

“But they stand behind the man they know as a devoted husband, father and dedicated member of the armed services,” the statement read.

Morello reported from Tacoma and Thompson from Norwood. Staff writers Mary Pat Flaherty in Tacoma and Peter Finn, Julie Tate, Carol D. Leonnig and David Brown in Washington contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Secret Bases, ATVs, Awesome Beards: Inside a Special Forces Team in Afghanistan

By David Axe Email Author March 20, 2012 | 6:30 am


Stealth drones? Radar-evading helicopters? Nah. But the Special Forces did boast some impressive military-grade ATVs during Danger Room's recent visit. Photo: U.S. Army

Anutha "gee whiz!" arti-kool from Mon-sewer Axe.............

The secret base-within-the-base was the first sign that I was about to see something special.

It was early February at a snow-encrusted NATO compound on the outskirts of Kabul. I’d come at the invitation of a U.S. Army sergeant assigned to Special Forces Task Force 10. After reading one of my recent dispatches from the front lines of the more than decade-old Afghanistan War, the sergeant had extended me a rare invitation to visit and report on one of Task Force 10′s “A Teams” working to train up Afghan security forces out in the provinces.

I’d eagerly accepted. I could count on one hand the number of times, that I knew of, that reporters had been welcomed inside the secretive Special Forces during wartime. Moreover, commandos including the Army’s Special Forces, Delta Force and Rangers and the Navy’s SEALs were expected to maintain a significant advisory and strike force in Afghanistan for years after the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of NATO’s conventional troops. More and more, Special Forces are the story.

The Special Forces are an army within the Army, with their own unique training, gear, tactics and attitudes. There would be special rules for my reporting, as well. The first evidence of this was the wall inside the wall surrounding the Kabul compound. The Special Forces often rely on “Big Army” to provide security and logistics. But commandos and regular soldiers rarely mix, so in Afghanistan the Special Forces build their own compounds inside the main NATO compounds. You need a secret combination to get inside. Since no one trusted me with the combo, I had to be escorted by the sergeant every time I came or went.

Stepping into the secret mini-base marked the beginning of the eventful week I spent with Special Forces in Kabul and in neighboring Laghman province. In scores of conversations with a dozen or so commandos — some on the record, most off — I learned some surprising (and some not-so-surprising) things about America’s most elite warriors. Some of my preconceived notions were dashed. Others, reinforced.

Commandos hate love hate the media

Since their founding in the 1960s, Special Forces have operated behind a veil of secrecy. Where the regular Army routinely works alongside reporters, commandos do so only under special circumstances. Back in 2009 I spent a full year negotiating with the North Carolina-based 3rd Special Forces Group in hopes of visiting them in Afghanistan. Ultimately, I was disappointed.

Unexpectedly, the Germany-based 10th Group sought me out for coverage three years later. Within days I was on the inside. Why? Because, I was told, some senior officer somewhere was angling for a promotion and figured some carefully-controlled exposure would do him some good. But before I could conduct interviews, I had to agree to a long list of conditions on top of the standard Army media-embed rules: I would not show commandos’ faces in photos or videos, nor print their real names. Only the Task Force 10 commander, Lt. Col. Isaac Peltier, agreed to have his name published — but still no photos.

Everything went swimmingly until near the end. I’m told the Army hated — hated — a story I wrote after my embed, on the cultural cluelessness on some U.S. troops. The commandos dropped tentative plans to host me again this spring. It seems my days on the Special Forces beat began and ended with Task Force 10. Oh well. I had a good run.

Special Forces are scrawny nerds

Well, maybe not scrawny, exactly. But the Army commandos are not the hulked-out, ‘roid-enraged beasts that some seem to think they are. “People think we’re kicking down doors with our hair on fire,” one A Team weapons sergeant told me with a grin.

The reality is that Special Forces are primarily selected for their independence, leadership, language skills, overall intelligence and, most surprisingly, their cultural tolerance. Army commandos devote most of their time to training and advising foreign security forces in austere environments. It’s a task that requires the mindset of a high school teacher and the patience, calm and resourcefulness of a solitary backpacker hiking some remote, foreign land.

To that end, Special Forces tend to have the lean, wiry physical build of a long-distance hiker. “We’re the kinds of guys you can strap a 100-pound rucksack on and tell them to walk up that mountain and just keep going,” a Task Force 10 officer told me.

Gear? What gear?

The U.S. military is by far the world’s most technologically sophisticated. And some elite troops are even better-equipped than regular American forces. The SEAL raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan last year boasted satellite surveillance, a secret stealth drone and a previously-unknown model of radar-evading helicopter, for example. But the commandos assisting foreign armies are surprisingly low-tech, even impoverished.

The A Team in Laghman usually rode around in standard Army vehicles. For routine transportation between bases they had to wait in line for a helicopter just like everybody else. They ate in the dining facility of a co-located National Guard brigade and even counted on that brigade to protect their encampment. “It’s important we have good a relationship with the big, conventional Army force because they provide resources we need, from a Quick-Reaction Force to medevac to the dining facility we eat in,” Peltier said.

The only special equipment in evidence during my commando embed were a few military-grade ATVs, like the one pictured above. Which, granted, are pretty sweet.

Commandos ain’t killers

“Have I killed people?” one Special Forces sergeant asked rhetorically. He nodded. “But I’ll be happy if I never have to do it again.”

Most Army commandos spend their time training foreign troops. But there are commando detachments whose job is to conduct high-risk raids and, yes, kill people. Lots of people. Usually very dangerous or very important ones.

But in today’s complex insurgencies, you can’t kill your way to victory — and the Special Forces know that. “We killed high-value individual number one,” one commando officer pointed out, referring of course to Bin Laden. “And what the fuck changed?”

Which is why Special Forces are so focused on the training and advisory missions. The Laghman A Team’s biggest victory recently was the arrest, prosecution and conviction of a major weapons smuggler. Pulling off that high-profile mission required careful planning, extensive training of Afghan police, deft intervention in the Afghan legal process and lots of patience. What it did not require was any killing.

The beards really are a big deal

The thing you notice first about Special Forces in the field is their awesome, mountain-man-style beards, the most obvious facet of what they call their “relaxed grooming standards.”

The beards in part reflect the notorious independence of Special Forces teams — independence that can border on defiance at times. “I am given the autonomy to attack [a] problem as I see fit,” a commando officer told me. Looking, talking and thinking like the regular Army is not a priority.

But there’s a practical reason for the beards. The Special Forces team in Laghman works closely with an Afghan special police unit, more closely than regular Army units usually work with their own Afghan counterparts. Building friendships with the Afghan cops, respecting their culture so the Afghans give respect in return, is critical to the Special Forces mission. In the eyes of many Afghans, only manly men can be leaders. And all manly men have beards. Thus leadership starts with facial fair.

Plus, the beards look awesome.

[buglerbilly]

Updated March 19, 2012, 10:46 p.m. ET.

U.S. Offers Concessions on Afghan Night Raids

By ADAM ENTOUS


Associated Press
U.S. soldiers on a helicopter prepare for a night assault to support bomb clearance in Kandahar province in 2010.

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is offering to cede some control over nighttime missions into Afghan village homes, U.S. officials say, in a bid to ease tensions with Afghan President Hamid Karzai that took on new urgency with the deadly rampage in a Kandahar village last week.

The administration's most significant proposed concession on night raids would subject the operations to advance review by Afghan judges, U.S. military officials said. One option under discussion in U.S.-Afghan talks would require warrants to be issued before operations get the green light.

The so-called night raids by U.S. special-operations forces have long been a source of division between President Barack Obama and Mr. Karzai, and have been a stumbling block in negotiations on the role of the U.S. in Afghanistan after most troops pull out at the end of 2014.

The U.S. military says it considers night raids to be the most effective way of degrading the Taliban's command-and-control infrastructure, with minimal civilian casualties. There were nearly 2,500 such raids in the last year, military officials said.

Mr. Karzai has said repeatedly that the raids must stop, calling them an invasion of Afghan homes and a violation of taboos about Afghan women mingling with unrelated men. They also create a heightened risk of civilian casualties, he says.

U.S. officials say they don't know if the proposed concessions will satisfy Mr. Karzai, especially after the shooting rampage and other incidents in which U.S. service members urinated on Taliban corpses and burned Qurans, the Muslim holy book.

The massacre that killed 16 Afghan villagers on March 11 infuriated Afghans and led Mr. Karzai to call for new restrictions on Western military operations in the countryside.

"The threshold for agreements with Karzai may have gone way up," said a senior U.S. defense official.

Afghan officials in Kabul and the U.S. couldn't be reached for comment on Monday on the negotiations.

Reaching a deal on night raids became the top priority for U.S. negotiators after a March 9 agreement was announced to transfer the main U.S.-run detention facility to Afghan control over the next six months.

U.S. officials said the shooting rampage two days later set back the talks on a so-called strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan. The Obama administration wants such a strategic partnership in time for a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in May.

Mr. Obama and top military leaders have in the past rebuffed previous demands by Mr. Karzai to stop night raids. But with the U.S. now drawing down troops, a senior military official said "both sides understand the importance of finding a way ahead here that meets both sets of requirements."

Top commanders have sharply expanded the number of hunt-and-kill teams in recent years in a bid to take militant leaders off the battlefield and make it harder for the Taliban to mount attacks.

A senior U.S. military official said a shift to a warrant-based approach to the raids was meant to address Mr. Karzai's demands for the U.S. to respect Afghan sovereignty.

U.S. officials said they are talking to the Afghans about what type of legal panel could be set up to process these requests in a timely way.

A senior defense official said the options under discussion weren't in direct response to recent events that have soured relations. "Night operations have been of concern to certain Afghan officials, notably President Karzai, for some time," the official said.

Officials compared the proposed changes to the transition in Iraq, where in 2009 the U.S. agreed to seek legal approval before targeted raids.

"The idea is to start to transition not only to an Afghan lead, but to more of a law-enforcement approach," the official said. "It's very much in keeping with the rule of law that any sovereign nation ought to have."

U.S. officials have said they are working to have almost all night raids led by Afghan troops—part of a hand-over of security responsibility to the Afghans, now due to assume the combat lead in 2013. U.S. officials say the shift should be done gradually as Afghan personnel become better trained.

The U.S. wants Afghan commandos, not U.S. forces, to enter Afghan homes and compounds whenever possible, U.S. military and administration officials said.

The U.S. wants to preserve the authority to go after al Qaeda cells, preferably in partnership with Afghan forces but also unilaterally, if the terrorist group tries to make a comeback in Afghanistan after U.S. combat troops leave at the end of 2014, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. currently has the right to conduct military operations in Afghanistan whenever it wants. An agreement on night raids would amount to a pledge not to exercise that authority unilaterally.

U.S. officials cautioned that night-raid negotiations were particularly sensitive because of the recent tensions, and that a deal depended largely on whether Mr. Karzai can be persuaded to accept what the U.S. is offering.

American officials said they believed they were close to a deal on night raids before the alleged rampage by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.

The officials said they believed the terms of a proposed agreement on night raids has the support of Afghan military leaders, who have indicated to U.S. counterparts that they agree on the value of such operations in taking out mid- and high-level Taliban leaders and fighters.

Several officials said they remained cautiously optimistic that a binding memorandum of understanding on night raids would be reached with Mr. Karzai within weeks, clearing the way for the sides to complete the strategic partnership agreement.

"Both sides are negotiating in good faith despite this tragedy," a senior defense official said.

The biggest wild card may be Mr. Karzai, who has railed repeatedly in recent days against the U.S.

U.S. officials say Mr. Karzai has sought to use the strategic partnership talks to push through restrictions on what U.S. and NATO forces can do in Afghanistan between now and the end of 2014.

Earlier this month, the U.S. and Afghanistan agreed to transfer the main U.S.-run detention facility in the country to Afghan control over the next six months. The U.S. had initially sought more time to make the transition. Officials said the U.S. might have to make similar concessions on night raids.

Administration officials said the proposal to give Afghans greater say over night raids would fit with a broader transition that would see U.S. and NATO troops assume a support and advisory role next year before most of them leave the country at the end of 2014.

Afghan security forces already have the lead in providing security in large swaths of the country.

U.S. military officials dispute Mr. Karzai's contention that the raids kill too many civilians. In the nearly 2,500 nighttime operations conducted in the year ended in February, they said, 10 civilians were killed.

"These [nighttime operations] are enormously successful in terms of rolling up the kinds of people we need to be rolling up. And they work," a senior military official said. "But we want to Afghan-ize these types of operations."

—Julian E. Barnes
contributed to this article.

Write to Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

Updated March 20, 2012, 7:31 a.m. ET.

Pakistani Parliament Demands End to U.S. Drone Strikes

By TOM WRIGHT

A Pakistan parliamentary commission called Tuesday for the U.S. to end drone strikes on its territory and to formally apologize for killing 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.

The demands were made as part of a debate in Pakistan's parliament over how the country should pursue relations with the U.S. in the wake of public anger over the unintentional killing of the soldiers on the Afghan border by U.S. helicopters.

Pakistan retaliated last year by stopping the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from using its territory to provision troops in Afghanistan, forcing NATO to route more of its equipment and other supplies through Central Asia.


Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
A Predator unmanned drone armed with a missile stands on the tarmac of Kandahar military airport.

Islamabad said it wouldn't reopen the routes until its Parliament had a chance to re-evaluate the country's relations with the U.S. High-level military and civilian visits to Pakistan by U.S. officials also have been suspended in recent months until the parliament can conclude its debate, which has been delayed many times.

Although U.S. officials say much routine business, including civilian aid projects and lower-level military contacts, have continued unaffected, the tensions have destabilized bilateral relations at a time when the U.S. was hoping Pakistan could play a a role in helping develop peace talks with the Afghan Taliban.

The level of public anger in Pakistan toward the U.S. has been rising. Many Pakistanis oppose drone strikes against Taliban militants, which they believe kill large numbers of civilians. U.S. officials deny sizeable civilian casualties and Pakistan's military has shared intelligence on strike targets.

The NATO raid in November that killed Pakistani soldiers sent relations to a new low. The Obama administration's failure to apologize, despite calls from the U.S. State Department to do so, further aggravated the strained relationship.

Still, some Pakistani analysts say the country realizes it needs U.S. civilian and military aid and is unlikely to break ties despite the recent political theater.

"The normalization of the relationship will definitely happen and supplies will resume," said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a political analyst based in Lahore.

Expectations that NATO supply routes might reopen were raised earlier this month when Gen. James Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command, told Congress he would soon visit Pakistan to discuss the matter.

Delays in the parliamentary hearing appear to have set back that trip, which is now expected to take place soon, though it isn't formally scheduled, a U.S. official said.

Pakistani lawmakers are likely to vote on a resolution about ties with the U.S. next week, after which Pakistan's government and powerful military will decide how to proceed.

Pakistan's leaders are likely to push Washington for a formal apology as a prerequisite to re-engaging with senior U.S. officials and reopening NATO supply routes, Mr. Rizvi said.

The government, though, is unlikely to make a demand for the cessation of drone strikes a precondition to resumption of normal ties, he added.

[buglerbilly]

Months Before Any Decision on Afghan Drawdown: U.S.

Mar. 20, 2012 - 02:05PM

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

WASHINGTON — The U.S. commander in Afghanistan said March 20 that he would not issue a recommendation on the pace of troop drawdown for several months, despite calls in Washington to speed withdrawal after a series of damaging incidents in the war.

Gen. John Allen acknowledged the NATO-led mission faced a “trying” time but insisted the fight against Taliban insurgents was “on track” while avoiding a discussion on the possible timetable for a troop drawdown.

The U.S. force of nearly 90,000 is due to be scaled back to 68,000 by the end of September, coinciding with the close of the “fighting season” before the start of winter.

But President Barack Obama has yet to announce how many boots will stay on the ground next year amid a debate inside the White House on the war and growing pressure on the left in Congress for a faster exit.

Allen told the House Armed Services Committee that once American reinforcements were pulled out as planned at the end of September, he would assess what force levels would be needed in 2013 and 2014 and make his proposal for a troop drawdown schedule to the White House before the end of the year.

The general said “before the end of 2012 I intend to provide through my chain of command to the president a series of recommendations on the kind of combat power that I’ll need for 2013 and 2014.

“I don’t have a decision at this point.”

The bulk of U.S. and allied combat forces are due to withdraw by the end of 2014 when Afghan forces are supposed to take over security for the whole country.

The commander of U.S. and NATO troops also said he had not made up his mind whether he would recommend an offensive in eastern Afghanistan, which officials had long suggested would follow up operations in the south.

“I’ve not made a final decision at this point. We anticipate shifting resources to the east in any case because it remains there that the principal COIN (counterinsurgency) fight will ultimately be shaped in 2012,” he said.

Allen said the Taliban had been rolled back in its spiritual heartland in the mainly Pashtun southern provinces and that coalition forces would focus on consolidating those battlefield gains.

While the eastern region was important, Allen said “my number one goal will be to continue to deny the enemy access back into the key terrain of this insurgency which is the Pashtun population ... in the south.”

His comments are likely to fuel speculation about future troop levels, as a faster drawdown would preclude any push in the east

[buglerbilly]

U.K. to Save $3.8B on Afghan Mission With End of Combat

Mar. 21, 2012 - 01:20PM

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

LONDON — Britain will spend 2.4 billion pounds ($3.8 billion, 2.9 billion euros) less than planned on its mission in Afghanistan because combat operations will end in 2014, finance minister George Osborne said March 21.

Osborne told lawmakers as he gave his budget for the year ahead that the lower than expected spending on the already 10-year-old mission in Afghanistan would help Britain reduce its deficit.

“As the prime minister made clear with the U.S. president last week, U.K. forces will cease combat operations by the end of 2014,” Osborne said, referring to David Cameron’s meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama.

“As a consequence, I can tell the House that the cost of operations — which are funded by the government’s special reserve and entirely separate from the defense budget — are expected to be a total of 2.4 billion pounds lower than planned over the remainder of the parliament.”

The current parliament is set to end in 2015, when elections are due.

Osborne said some of the savings would go towards an extra 100 million pounds of improvements to the accommodation of service members’ families, while a grant paid to families while troops are deployed would be doubled.

Britain has 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, making it the second largest contributor of international troops there after the United States.

Along with other NATO countries, it plans to pull out all combat troops by the end of 2014, with further reductions in the number of soldiers there expected in 2012 and 2013.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan officials likely to press for veto power over night raids in formal talks


OMAR SOBHANI/REUTERS - Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a meeting with the family members of civilians killed by U.S. soldier in Kandahar last week at the presidential palace in Kabul.

By Karen DeYoung, Thursday, March 22, 9:05 AM

In formal negotiations set to begin Thursday, Afghan officials are expected to press their U.S. counterparts for veto power over controversial night raids on Afghan homes as well as warrants signed by a judge before the operations are carried out.

Despite substantive differences, officials on both sides expressed confidence that they are heading toward an understanding on the raids that will allow them to complete within two months a broader accord governing the long-term military relationship between the countries.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has long insisted on an end to the raids, which U.S. commanders consider one of their most effective tools against Taliban insurgents. Karzai repeated his demand in angry remarks last week after a March 11 shooting rampage, allegedly carried out by a U.S. soldier, that left 16 Afghan civilians dead.

“We saw his comments, but we’ve been reassured . . . since then,” a senior U.S. defense official said of Karzai. This official and others attributed the easing of tensions to a Friday telephone call and other recent conversations between Karzai and President Obama.

Both sides see the shooting and its aftermath as a watershed that has gotten them to move forward on the night-raid negotiations and other issues, although for different reasons.

From Afghanistan’s perspective, the incident gave the Americans a glimpse of the kinds of disasters that were increasingly likely if the two sides remained at loggerheads.

U.S. officials view it as evidence that the relationship is sturdy enough not to collapse even under the most trying circumstances. Although the administration does not characterize its evolving positions as concessions, its rhetoric on the night raids has softened.

The White House said this week that requiring judicial warrants was a “reasonable” Afghan expectation.

Whether U.S. negotiators in Kabul will determine that Afghan veto power over the raids is similarly reasonable is uncertain. Officials declined to discuss what one of them described as Afghanistan’s opening position in the talks.

Karzai has deemed the more than 2,000 night operations conducted by U.S. Special Operations forces last year as a violation of Afghan sovereignty and culture — and a cause of civilian casualties. U.S. commanders have said that all the raids are conducted in partnership with Afghan forces as part of the gradual transition to Afghan security control throughout the country, due to be completed next year.

In congressional testimony this month, Adm. William H. McRaven, head of the Special Operations Command, said, “Afghan special forces are in the lead on all of our night operations . . . surrounding a particular compound, trying to call out the specific individual — and the first forces through the door.”

Afghan officials say that they are “in the lead” in about 60 percent of the raids but that U.S. troops are effectively in control of all of them because they provide the intelligence on which targets are selected and which operations are planned, often without giving that information to Afghan partners in advance.

U.S. forces also provide the logistics, including specialized helicopters, that make the raids possible.

Without these capabilities, the Afghans say, the only way they can be in charge of the operations, with U.S. forces in a supporting role, is with full information that allows them to approve, or veto, the raids in advance.

Karzai also called for U.S. withdrawal from Afghan towns and villages where small Special Operations units are organizing local protection forces.

But in subsequent explanations, Afghan officials have said that they see this pullback as part of the ongoing transition process, in which U.S. troops would withdraw from villages as Afghan units grow capable of standing on their own.

Although opinion polls show that a majority of Americans now favor an early withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Afghans say they do not want to speed the overall departure of foreign troops.

Instead, they say, they want to accelerate the transition process so they can test their security wings while foreign troops remain to back them up.

This month, U.S. and Afghan officials signed a memorandum of understanding on a process to transfer detainees and American-run prisons to Afghanistan’s control. A similar agreement on night raids would remove the remaining stumbling block to the separate, long-term strategic partnership agreement.

Obama has said that he hopes the long-term accord can be signed before a NATO summit scheduled for May in Chicago. That agreement will set the terms for a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan beyond NATO’s planned withdrawal of all international combat troops by the end of 2014.

Pentagon officials are planning for a follow-on force, numbering 5,000 to 30,000 troops, including training, support and counterterrorism units that would be based inside military posts flying Afghan flags.

The agreement, assuming it is ready by mid-May, is unlikely to contain any troop numbers, officials said. Instead, it will commit the two sides to negotiating the details of a 10-year, renewable security arrangement before the December 2014 NATO deadline.

[Milne Bay]

Military helicopter crashes in Afghanistan

Updated March 23, 2012 10:05:53

The website Military.com has released dramatic video of a US Apache helicopter crash in Afghanistan that occurred in February.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-23/helicopter-crash/3908016

[buglerbilly]

Karzai: West to Pay Afghan Military $4B a Year

March 22, 2012

Agence France-Presse



The West will subsidize Afghan security forces by more than $4 billion a year after U.S.-led troops leave in 2014, President Hamid Karzai said Thursday, implicitly accepting a cut in the planned size of his military.

Western officials told AFP that no final agreements had been reached on funding or on the size of Afghanistan's security forces after combat troops in NATO's U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force withdraw.

But Karzai told a graduation ceremony at a military academy in Kabul: "It's set that post 2014, for the next 10 years until 2024, the international community, with the U.S. in the lead and followed by Europe and other countries, will pay Afghanistan security forces $4.1 billion annually."

It would cover both the army and "other armed forces," he said, adding: "We agree and thank them."

Karzai's Western allies in the war against Taliban insurgents want to avoid the country descending into civil war after they leave.

But while NATO officials have long projected future Afghan forces at 352,000 men, the United States recently circulated a proposal for a total strength of 230,000, and Western officials say the $4.1 billion cost is based on that figure.

It is a fraction of current Western spending on the war. The 10-year conflict has cost the United States, alone, more than $444 billion.

But Afghan defense officials have expressed concerns over whether security forces 230,000 strong would be adequate.

The defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, reportedly warned that if it was not based on "realities on the ground" it could be a "disaster," "putting at risk all that we have accomplished together with so much sacrifice in blood and treasure."

Following Karzai's speech, a Western official stressed that the numbers were part of a model being discussed in the run-up to the NATO summit in Chicago in May, nothing had been decided and "everything is conditions based."

"This is part of an ongoing discussion between coalition planners and our Afghan allies and will continue in Chicago and beyond," he said, adding that under the concept Kabul would contribute $500 million to the $4.1 billion.

"The number of Afghan forces will basically come to a peak later this year" and should then reduce, he said.

"In the best of all worlds in the out years, the insurgency will go down and as the insurgency goes down then fewer Afghan forces will be needed."

But a diplomat from another coalition country said the cut in numbers could "create a monster," alleging that the U.S. plan was driven by cost-cutting considerations rather than military effectiveness.

Even so, some coalition members were as yet unwilling to pay their projected share of the money, he added.

Questions remain over the funding deal, said Karzai, with Kabul wanting to be able to spend the money on requirements other than salaries, such as weapons purchases.

"Afghanistan will be able to pay the salaries itself one day ... but Afghanistan needs radar, air defense systems, warplanes, transport planes, helicopters and other equipment that improves the defense system," he said.

"If NATO or America will not give us planes, will they prevent us using this money to buy planes for our air force from other countries? If we were to buy planes from India or Russia or Iran or Pakistan or Ukraine, will our [forces'] salaries still be paid from the NATO money?"

Kabul and Washington have a frequently strained relationship, and are currently negotiating a long-term strategic partnership agreement to establish their relationship after 2014.

They are also in continuing talks over a memorandum of understanding on special operations, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said.

Karzai has long objected to night raids, which are unpopular among ordinary Afghans but which coalition military commanders argue are among their most effective tactics against the Taliban.

© Copyright 2012 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Allen Wants 'Combat Power' in 2013

March 22, 2012

Military.com|by Michael Hoffman

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan reinforced his commitment to keeping 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2013 after the surge force of 23,000 returns home.

“My opinion is that we will need significant combat power in 2013,” Marine Corps Gen. John Allen told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday.

Allen explained that after 2012 he would provide the president more analysis on future manning numbers for Afghanistan as the U.S. continues to draw down its force before it plans to leave by December 2014. Once the 23,000 U.S. troops return home, Allen will be left with 68,000 U.S. troops along with 40,000 coalition servicemembers.

“Sixty-eight thousand is a good going in number but I owe the president some analysis on that,” he said.

Pressure has mounted in the U.S. to bring U.S. troops home faster as polls show most Americans don’t think the war in Afghanistan is worth the resources put into it. The killing of 16 Afghan civilians, allegedly by a U.S. soldier, and riots caused by the mistaken burning of Korans by U.S. soldiers has put the Afghanistan mission in further doubt.

Allen said he stood by President Obama’s plan to keep 68,000 troops in Afghanistan in the face of stiff questioning from Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. McCain told Allen the U.S. needed to keep more troops to Afghanistan to get the job done and signal America’s commitment to not abandon the Afghan people.

McCain, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman and Sen. Lindsey Graham, published a column in the Washington Post Thursday instructing the president to keep 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond 2013. The column touted progress made by the coalition and the need for further commitment.

“To sustain this fragile progress, it is critical that President Obama resist the shortsighted calls for additional troop reductions, which would guarantee failure,” their column read. “At a minimum, there should be a pause after September to assess the impact of the drawdown. It would be much better to maintain the 68,000 forces through next year’s fighting season, possibly longer.”

Senators on the committee worried not only about U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan, but also the number of troops the Afghan National Security Force could sustain after the U.S. leaves in 2014. A study cited by Allen foresaw a reduction of forces for the ANSF from 352,000 to as low as 231,000.

Senators questioned how the ANSF could maintain security inside Afghanistan’s borders with such a smaller force. Allen and Jim Miller, the acting undersecretary of defense for policy, explained that those who conducted the study expected the ANSF to face less of a threat in the years following the U.S. pullout.

“For now there is an expectation that we will draw the [352,000] force down to a number that we think fits generally the security environment for post 2014,” Allen said. “Based on the studies and based on the intelligence scenarios at this point that [231,000] to [236,000] looks like the right number for army and police capabilities.”

McCain didn’t buy it.

“I sure would be interested in seeing those studies that bring you down to 231 and 236 because they would contradict every study that has been done in the past,” McCain said.

Miller told the committee that the lack of funds could force the Afghans to drawdown their force unless additional funding could come from outside sources.
This was Allen and Miller’s second hearing on Capitol Hill this week. Like their earlier appearance before the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, lawmakers asked few questions about the killing of Afghan civilians. Senators instead focused on Afghanistan future and the transition of military responsibilities.

Allen explained the negotiations between the U.S. and Afghanistan governments about the future of night raids and the potential need to receive warrants from Afghan judges before launching them. The Marine general told the senators that in 90 percent of the 2,400 night raids conducted last year, troops fire a shot, and less than one percent resulted in a civilian casualty.

As he did Tuesday, Allen said he couldn’t give too many details in a public setting to not disrupt the delicate negotiations. He, however, emphasized the importance of maintaining the night raids and improving the Afghan army and police capabilities to executive special operations raids themselves.

The topic of special operations raids is expected to be a key focus of the Chicago NATO Summit, which Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai will both attend.

© Copyright 2012 Military.com. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US Pak Supply Route Talks Looming

March 23, 2012

Associated Press|by Slobodan Lekic

The United States and Pakistan will resume talks about possibly reopening NATO and U.S. supply routes to Afghanistan once Pakistan concludes its debate about new terms of engagement with the U.S., an official said Friday.

The two nations' ties have been frozen since American air strikes accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at the Afghan border in November, complicating U.S. efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Afghanistan. Pakistan's cooperation is seen as vital in that endeavor.

The incident triggered an outpouring of anger at America and calls for the permanent severing of ties between Washington and Islamabad. But that was never likely given both countries dependence on each other.

On Monday, Pakistan's parliament will begin debating a new policy toward the U.S.

Marc Grossman, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in Brussels on Friday that he respects the work of a Pakistani parliamentary commission that recommended this week that Pakistan should demand an unconditional apology from the U.S. before the supply routes are reopened. It also called for an end to American drone attacks inside Pakistan.

The United States has expressed regret for the Nov. 26 border incident but avoided formally apologizing. U.S. officials were reportedly preparing to do that last month but postponed that after U.S. soldiers burned copies of the Quran in Afghanistan.

Once Pakistan's government concludes its work, "we'll then be in a conversation with the government of Pakistan about how to go forward," Grossman said in response to a question about the possible reopening of the supply routes.

The route from Pakistan's port of Karachi to landlocked Afghanistan has been NATO's main logistics link for its forces during most of the 11-year war. But over the last two years, the alliance has increasingly focused on the more secure routes from the north, through Russia and the Central Asian nations.

Today, almost all supplies are delivered overland through the so-called Northern Distribution Network. Last month, Moscow unexpectedly unveiled plans to permit the U.S. and other NATO nations to use a Russian air base in the city of Ulyanovsk as a hub for their air bridge to Afghanistan.

Grossman is on a tour of European capitals focused on securing funding for the Afghan security forces following the 2014 withdrawal of most U.S. and NATO forces. The allies estimate the government will need $4.1 billion annually to pay for the 350,000-strong army and police.

On Friday, Grossman briefed a meeting of NATO's governing body, the North Atlantic Council, which consists of the ambassadors of all 28 member states.

He said it's important that many countries share the cost of creating "a secure, stable and prosperous Afghanistan," a key issue to be discussed at a NATO summit in Chicago in May.

---

Associated Press writer Sebastian Abbot in Islamabad contributed to this report. Slobodan Lekic can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/slekich

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

'Chooks' a vital line to soldiers

Dylan Welch, National Security Correspondent, in Kandahar, Afghanistan

March 26, 2012 - 5:17PM


An air crewman from an Australian Army Chinook, based at Kandahar Airfield, uses a control to pick up an American vehicle slung under the aircraft, during a resupply mission to a forward operating base in Afghanistan. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Whumping through the thin air in the snow-capped mountains of southern Afghanistan, the Chinook hovers above the tiny US outpost, a military Humvee hanging from a cable attached to its undercarriage.

The Chinook's captain, Australian Army's Adrian Ludman, flicks a switch and the Humvee is dumped on to a small rocky field inside the base.

They may not be the prettiest of helicopters, but for the American and Australian soldiers eking out existences at remote outposts in Afghanistan's dusty vastness, the Chinooks, or "chooks", are a vital line to the outside world.


The artwork on the fuselage of one of the Australian Army Chinooks, "Rough 'n Reddy", based at Kandahar Airfield. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

This reporter spent a day aboard one of the Australian Chinooks, "Rough 'n Reddy", based at Kandahar Airfield.

" roads are so limited due to the IED threat, the helicopters are the primary means of movement in Afghanistan," said Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Nicholls, who commands the two Chinooks that make the Rotary Wing Group, which is Australia's only helicopter unit in Afghanistan.

Colonel Nicholls's 60-odd troops are from the army's Townsville-based 5th Aviation Regiment.


[I]An air crewman from an Australian Army Chinook, based at Kandahar Airfield, checks the aircraft after a resupply mission to a forward operating base, in Afghanistan. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Along with the American Chinook unit with which they are embedded, they provide supply services - "humping and dumping" - to the dozens of bases in Regional Command South, which covers the provinces of Kandahar, Uruzgan, Daykundi and Zabul.

Captain Ludman is on his sixth tour of Afghanistan. The first five were with Britain's Royal Air Force and the present one is with the Australian Army after he moved to Queensland with his wife and children.

He knows how important the Chinooks are to soldiers who can experience extreme privation at remote posts.


Chinooks on mission to 'hump and dump'
Air crewmen from an Australian Army chinook, based at Kandahar Airfield, man the side guns during a resupply mission to a forward operating base in Afghanistan. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

[B]More pics here: http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/world/chinooks-on-mission-to-hump-and-dump-20120326-1vu72.html?selectedImage=6

He recalled visiting a small base manned by a small group of British soldiers in western Kandahar province.

"They looked like they'd gone native. Big beards, shorts, covered in mud and dust. Just trying to exist in a really horrible place. We went back there the next day and we took a whole box of fruit, slabs of [soft drink] just to help them out."

After depositing the Humvee at the patrol base in the Uruzgan mountains the Chinook returns south, descending from about 9000 feet to the multinational base at Tarin Kowt and then on to Kandahar.

After refuelling, the Chinook heads west to a forward operating base so small a walk around its outside wall would take about three minutes.

There Captain Ludman and his crew drop off two American soldiers and a pallet of gear picked up during the swing through Kandahar.

They take on an electrical contractor keen to hitch a ride back to Kandahar before hurtling low over the roofs of a nearby mud-walled village.

As they leave the village, Captain Ludman's co-pilot pulls the helicopter up sharply, and climbs to almost 5000 feet, where they are safe from attack.

Minutes later, the Chinook is nestled safely in its bay at the end of an eight-hour shift, and three air crewmen begin to secure the helicopter for the night.

"Imagine humping body armour and gear in 50 degrees and then doing bags and loading," Captain Ludman said of his crew.

"They're on their knees in the dust, they're sweaty, dehydrated, and in the mountains it's bitterly cold."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/chooks-a-vital-line-to-soldiers-20120326-1vu3g.html#ixzz1qCcXwcwa

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Taliban Issues Warning Over NATO Supply Route

Mar. 25, 2012 - 11:35AM

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

PESHAWAR — The Pakistani Taliban on March 25 threatened to attack lawmakers if they voted in support of resuming supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan, a spokesman said.

Pakistan sealed its border with Afghanistan to NATO supply convoys after NATO air strikes in November killed 24 Pakistani soldiers near the border, triggering outrage in Islamabad.

The deadly incident heightened tensions in an already fragile relationship with Pakistani officials alleging deliberate U.S. targeting of their troops at border posts.

Beginning March 26, Pakistani lawmakers are to debate new parameters for getting the troubled relationship back on track, expected to see Pakistan eventually reopen its Afghan border to NATO convoys after a four-month closure.

“Everybody knows we are against restoration of NATO supplies and we will target each and every member of the parliament who will support the restoration,” Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.

“We are also advising the drivers of NATO supply trucks to quit this job otherwise they will be responsible for any consequences,” Ehsan said.

The recommendations for a re-crafted relationship — up for debate in Pakistan’s parliament — include a U.S. apology for the November killings, an end to drone strikes against militants on Pakistani soil and taxes on NATO convoys.

There are around 130,000 foreign troops in landlocked Afghanistan waging a 10-year battle against a Taliban-led insurgency who rely on fuel, food and equipment brought in from outside.

Nearly half of all cargo bound for foreign troops goes through Pakistan.

A NATO investigation into the Nov. 26 strike on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border concluded that both the international alliance and Pakistani forces made mistakes in the incident — findings rejected by Pakistan.

[buglerbilly]

Man in Afghan army uniform shoots 2 NATO troops in Afghanistan

By Ernesto Londoño, Updated: Monday, March 26, 6:10 PM

KABUL — A man wearing an Afghan army uniform killed two NATO troops in southern Afghanistan on Monday, military officials said, the latest in a string of shootings that have undermined trust between allies.

The gunman was killed by NATO troops shortly after he opened fire on a group of foreign troops, the military said in a statement. A military spokesman said officials were investigating whether the man was an Afghan soldier or an infiltrator wearing the uniform. No other details were released.

So-called "green on blue" shootings have become a rising threat this year, following a series of incidents that have created distrust between Afghan forces and their international coalition partners. The most significant was last month's burning of Korans by U.S. troops. The episode sparked violent riots and prompted the Taliban to call on Afghan security forces to open fire on foreign troops.

Since May 2007, at least 51 NATO troops have been killed by Afghan security forces, according to military press releases and statistics provided by the Department of Defense to Congress last month. Nine of those happened after the Koran burning.

In prepared testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, senior defense officials said "the insider threat is an issue of increasing concern," because "it creates distrust between our forces and their Afghan counterparts during a critical juncture in Afghanistan."

[buglerbilly]

Allen to Examine Afghanistan Force Package

(Source: US Department of Defense; issued March 24, 2012)

WASHINGTON --- The starting point of analysis for the U.S.-coalition fighting force in Afghanistan in 2013 will be the withdrawal of 23,000 surge troops after this year’s fighting season, the International Security Assistance Force commander said yesterday.

“After we recover the surge, I'm going to give the President some options, with respect to the kinds of combat power that we will need in 2013,” Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen said during an interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose.

“I have to evaluate the state of the insurgency and have to look at the operational environment in 2013,” he added. “And the combination of forces ultimately will be the distinguishing dimension of the recommendation that I'll give to the president.”

Allen emphasized there will be more than just a U.S. force presence in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of the 23,000 U.S. surge forces.

“It's not just about 68,000 U.S. forces. There will still be 40,000 ISAF forces as well so the recommendation will also go up to the NATO chain,” he noted. “But there will also be an increasingly capable and increasingly numerous ANSF as well, so it isn't just a recommendation about 68,000.

“I owe the president analysis of that,” the general continued, “and ... my views on the courses of action of how much combat power will be needed in 2013.”

Allen said he wouldn't speculate as to how many troops would be necessary.

“I don't know yet exactly how much force I'm going to need among the U.S. forces in 2013,” he said. “It isn't just a single number -- it’s a composite number and that's the key point. It's the U.S. force as a component of ISAF and in partnership with the ANSF. That is the key issue.”

Allen noted there will be international discussion between ISAF partners about the remaining presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

“We're constantly in conversation about the strategic partnership that's coming,” he said. “We're in conversation about the future and the role of U.S. forces today, and ISAF and NATO forces over the long term.”

Allen advised the Taliban to “listen closely” to conversations unfolding between the U.S., Afghanistan and international partners.

“First of all, in the Bonn Two Conference recently, there was a very clear determination by the international community to support Afghanistan well beyond the concept of transition which ends at the end of 2014,” he said.

“It means that the international community is interested in creating stability in Afghanistan and supporting Afghanistan with development and that process is beginning to unfold,” Allen said, adding that during a Chicago conference in May, the heads of state of ISAF nations will discuss a long-term security relationship with Afghanistan.

Allen said the idea is to support Afghanistan in a security mode for a period of time beyond 2014. It would be “faulty assumption,” he said, for the Taliban to believe December 31, 2014, was the end of the international presence in Afghanistan.

“There will be an international presence in Afghanistan for a very long time,” Allen said, noting there will be government, diplomatic and economic relationships.

“But there will also be, very importantly, a security relationship between the United States and Afghanistan [and] the broader international community as well,” the general said.

Allen reaffirmed his commitment to accomplishing President Barack Obama's goals in Afghanistan and he noted that the timeline for withdraw was not a hindrance.

“I believe we can achieve this mission,” he said. “The campaign as it is unfolding, the campaign as we have developed it, and as it is being resourced right now, is a campaign which I believe can accomplish this mission based on the concept of Lisbon-based transition. And, in the aftermath of that, an enduring presence.

“And that international force will be there to continue the development of the Afghan National Security Forces,” Allen added.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

War Chief: Afghans Will Take Combat Lead Next Year

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author March 26, 2012 | 1:04 pm


Gen. John Allen, right, meets with Afghan officials in Helmand Province, 2011. Photo: ISAF

The Afghanistan war might look like it’s jumped the rails. But its commander says that by the fall of next year, one major development will break in the U.S.’ favor: Afghan troops will take the lead for fighting the insurgency. Just don’t think most U.S. troops will come home then.

When NATO decided in 2010 to turn the war over to the Afghans in 2014, it broke down that transition into five sequential “tranches.” Four out of those five installments will be complete by “the latter part of the summer of 2013,” said Gen. John Allen, NATO’s commander in Afghanistan, who will start the final phase of transition in the early fall.

“And with that, technically, the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] moves into security lead, with that fifth tranche, across the entire country,” Allen told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday. “But that process will continue until we reach the end of 2014, where technically the ANSF is fully in the lead across the country.”

In other words, late summer 2013 marks the beginning of the end of U.S. combat in Afghanistan. The end won’t fully arrive until 2014. After that, the U.S. will probably mentor Afghan soldiers and cops through 2017; and the U.S. also wants a residual force in the country for years to come. And this is if things go well.

In January, NATO officials in Brussels quietly whispered that the real heavy lifting for the Afghanistan transition would occur in 2013. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta agreed, saying that the U.S. would move into a supporting role around much of the country then — a proclamation greeted incredulously by several U.S. senators.

Still, Allen said that despite the wave of attacks on U.S. troops by their Afghan counterparts, the U.S. was on track to meet the 2013 deadline. But U.S. forces are likely to experience more arduous combat before fully moving into a supporting role.

Afghanistan’s buck-wild east, abutting Pakistan, will be the last area U.S. troops hand off to the Afghans. “In the natural course of the campaign, which will emphasize this coming year consolidating our holds in the south while still conducting counterinsurgency operations in the east, we will see, eventually, a confluence of the movement of geography into the transition process and the campaign,” Allen said.

Allen wants to keep as many of the 68,000 troops he’ll have after this September for as long as possible. He said he wouldn’t reveal how many troops he’ll ultimately ask to keep in Afghanistan until he gives the White House an analysis. But Allen sounded like the last combat push he wants the U.S. to conduct will occur in the east — which used to be the central front of the war.

All this is predicated on the Afghans actually performing well as professional soldiers. That’s not the stablest of predicates. Since 2007, nearly 200 NATO troops have been killed and wounded by Afghan security forces; 75 percent of those fratricidal assaults have occurred in the past two years. Many of those who don’t attack U.S. troops are corrupt or illiterate or both.

“I’m not saying things are perfect,” Allen said. “But for every bribe accepted, for every insider threat or what is known as a ‘green on blue’ incident — and I think you’re aware that, tragically, we had one overnight as two young British soldiers were killed in Helmand province — for every Afghan soldier that doesn’t return from leave, I can cite hundreds of other examples where they do perform their duties.”

[buglerbilly]

British servicemen shot dead by rogue Afghan army officer

Two British servicemen have been shot dead by an Afghan army officer after an argument at the British headquarters in Helmand province.

By Ben Farmer, Kabul

4:30PM BST 26 Mar 2012

The unnamed Britons died when an Afghan lieutenant opened fire as they guarded a gate onto the British-run provincial reconstruction team (PRT) base in Lashkar Gah, Afghan officials said. Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, confirmed the incident in the Commons.

One was from the Royal Marines and the other from the Adjutant General’s Corps (Staff & Personnel Support).

Spokesman for Task Force Helmand Major Ian Lawrence said: "Sadly, I must report that a Royal Marine and a soldier from the Adjutant General's Corps were shot and killed by an Afghan National Army soldier at the main entrance to Lashkar Gah main operating base.

"The thoughts and condolences of everyone serving in the Task Force are with their families and friends."

Lt Gul Nazir had quarrelled with the servicemens on guard duty after they refused to allow him and several of his men onto the base to meet colleagues due to arrive on a flight.

A third Nato soldier was killed just hours later by an alleged Afghan police officer in the eastern part of the country. The third soldier's nationality is not yet known.

The deaths are the latest in a spate of “green on blue” killings where Afghan forces have turned their weapons on their Nato allies.

Commanders fear suspicion spread by the killings risks undermining efforts to train and advise the Afghan army and police in preparation for them to take charge of security duties by the end of 2014.

The incidents have increased in recent months. Six American soldiers were shot dead by Afghan personnel last month alone, in apparent retaliation for the burning of Korans at Bagram airfield, north of Kabul.

A total of 15 Nato troops have been shot dead by their Afghan allies in the first three months of 2012 – or one in six of all coalition dead.

Col Abdul Nabi Elham, provincial police chief, said Lt Nazir appeared to have become angered when the sentries had told him and his men to wait outside at around 11am.

He said: “These Afghan soldiers came from another district and they had come to meet friends arriving on a flight at the PRT. The British said it was not allowed and they just had to wait outside.” Two Britons were killed and another was critically wounded, he said.

Lt Nazir was also killed in the ensuing fire fight.

Ghulam Farooq Parwani, deputy commander of Afghan forces in Helmand, confirmed Lt Nazir had spent four years in the army and was from Achin district of Nangahar province in eastern Afghanistan.

The killings have raised fears of infiltration by insurgents, but investigators have found many of the killings had no apparent links to the Taliban and appeared driven by personal grievance, or resentment of the foreign presence.

Classified military research into the killings last year concluded there was often deep mistrust between the Nato-led and Afghan forces.

Afghans saw their Western comrades as arrogant, rude and aggressive.

In turn, the foreign forces often characterised their Afghan comrades as lazy, thieving and addicted to drugs.

Mistrust has deepened as the killings have continued and Nato and foreign embassies warned their staff to brace for further attacks as anti-Western sentiment was stirred by the Koran burnings and the massacre of 17 civilians by a rogue American soldier in Kandahar.

Hundreds of foreign aid advisers were temporarily removed from Afghan government ministries in Kabul last month after two American officers were shot dead in a joint command centre by an Afghan interior ministry driver who is still on the run.

Coalition troops are increasingly moving to closely-matched advisory and training roles rather than combat as they prepare to hand security duties to Kabul.

A statement from Nato headquarters in Kabul said: “An individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform turned his weapon against International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service members in southern Afghanistan today, killing two service members.

“The individual who opened fire was killed when coalition forces returned fire. A joint Afghan and ISAF team is investigating the incident.”

[buglerbilly]

NDIA Logistics 2012: Afghanistan logistics strategy to outweigh Iraq drawdown

27 March 2012 - 13:59 by Andrew White in Miami, US



The drawdown of US forces from Iraq was a 'significant accomplishment' but logistical requirements to pull out of Afghanistan will prove more problematic, a senior US Air Force official has warned.

Speaking at the NDIA Logistics conference in Miami, Lt Gen Brooks Bash, joint staff director for logistics described the planning efforts required for the proposed pull-out from Afghanistan in the next few years.

'In Afghanistan, we have to move 1,000 vehicles a month and 1,200 truck equivalents for the next 33 months to get everything out by transition in 2014,' he stated. NATO forces are expecting to hand over control of the country to Afghanistan National Security Forces in this timeframe.

'There are weather problems in northern Afghanistan; routes through to Pakistan are not open; there are no seaports, precious few airports and a medieval road system,' Bash continued.

Referring to current operations in the area, Bash pointed to the success story of air-dropped cargo with some 80 million tons of cargo delivered last year. 'The only event bigger than this was D-Day itself. [Air drop] changes the way we fight, allowing us to start cutting those logistics lines and start to get stuff to troops on the front line,' he added.

Looking ahead to plans for the US 'Joint Force 2020', Bash outlined significant challenges ahead but urged: 'Today, we have an opportunity to do what we think is better for the community and show where we want to go for Joint Force 2020. We have to be agile in the way we gain new equipment and capabilities.

'The logistics enterprise has never been better trained than today and the US is the only truly global capable combat force in the world, and that's due to logistics,' Bash exclaimed.

He also offered up a hit-list of priorities which need to be taken into account as the US moves towards a joint force which he said, would revolve around logistics. This included personnel; planning; readiness assessment; distribution; secure enterprise awareness; joint interoperability and independence; and industry co-operation.

'Planning needs to be more adaptive and agile so when we have an unexpected war, we can be more agile and reactive to it. It was easier to plan Iraq and Afghanistan as you had more time. We may not have that in the future,' Bash stressed.

Finally, Bash referred to the importance of distribution, explaining: 'If we can't get the stuff to the fight, there won't be a fight. This is much more than tankers and airlifters but airfield opening and recovery; sea port recovery; and air drop- we need to be more accurate and cheaper.'

[buglerbilly]

UK resists pressure to speed up exit from Afghanistan

1,500 troops likely to leave by September next year, with rapidly accelerated withdrawal starting in 2014

Nick Hopkins

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 March 2012 15.54 BST


Only 500 British troops will leave Afghanistan this year, leaving a total of 9,000 still in Helmand province at the start of next year. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The UK is preparing to pull 1,500 troops out of Afghanistan next year before rapidly accelerating its withdrawal at the beginning of 2014.

Ministers are expected to endorse plans that stick closely to advice from British commanders in Helmand, and from Nato headquarters in Kabul, when they come before the National Security Council (NSC). The strategy would leave the bulk of UK forces in place for most of next year, though there is also an option for a "fast-track" pullout by spring 2014.

Pressure to speed up the withdrawal has intensified because of recent atrocities against Afghan civilians, which provoked protests across the country, and left troops in Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) vulnerable to retribution.

A Royal Marine and a soldier from the Adjutant's General Corps were killed on Monday by a member of the Afghan security forces, raising further questions about the viability of the Nato mission.

But according to sources in Whitehall, ministers have been persuaded – so far – that a greater folly would be to leave Afghanistan before local forces are ready to lead the fight against the Taliban.

Only 500 British troops will leave Afghanistan this year, leaving 9,000 still in Helmand at the start of next year.

Under current plans, the force will be reduced in size again in September 2013, bringing the total down to 7,500. The military intends to speed up the withdrawal markedly after that, with planners drawing up two options.

The first – and preferred – scenario involves withdrawing another 6,000 troops before September 2014, leaving a rump of 1,500 in Afghanistan at the time of the formal handover to Afghan security forces at the end of that year. Most of them would leave the country in early 2015.

A more radical option involves withdrawing all but 1,500 troops from Afghanistan by April 2014. In practice, this would mean the British brigade withdrawing from Afghanistan in the spring being replaced by a much smaller force.

"The option we take depends on the US," said a Whitehall source. "If the Americans increase the size and speed of their withdrawal then we may have to consider a much quicker exit in early 2014."

During David Cameron's recent visit to the White House, both he and Barack Obama spoke about transferring security responsibility to the Afghans in 2013.

Officials say this was misinterpreted as a signal that more troops would return early, but that is not what the military wants.

"Even if more troops came home next year, we'd have to support the Afghans in different ways with more military advisers," said one.

"If you ask Afghans to take the lead before they are ready, then you still need to support them, so the overall numbers of British personnel in the country might not change..

"Transferring the lead on security to the Afghans early gives something to the Afghans, the French, and the American audiences, but it won't change much."

Obama is due to speak at the Chicago summit on Afghanistan in May, six months before he seeks re-election.

"We expect Obama to keep something up his sleeve in May," said a Nato commander.

"A lot will turn on what he says then, and what happens in November. But so far the British government is not saying anything to us to suggest they will not see this through."

The Ministry of Defence said no decision would be taken until the NSC reviewed and rubber-stamped the strategy.

"No decision has yet been taken about the drawdown of UK forces," said an MoD spokesman. "As the prime minister has already stated, ours will be a steady and measured drawdown leading up to 2014.

"Both he and President Obama confirmed in Washington recently that our transition plan is on track, realistic and achievable."

Last week Cameron told the Commons the UK would "not be in a combat role in Afghanistan after 2014, nor will we have anything like the number of troops that we have now".

He added: "What I discussed with President Obama in America is making sure that in 2013, if there are opportunities to change the nature of the mission and be more in support rather than a direct combat role, then that's something that I think everyone will want to see."

Giving evidence to MPs on Monday, the new national security adviser, Sir Kim Darroch, said that "at some point in the middle of 2013 all the different provinces of Afghanistan will transition to Afghan lead".

A poll in Tuesday's New York Times reflects how support for the US effort in Afghanistan is dropping sharply. US soldiers have been responsible for burning the Qur'an, and been filmed urinating on dead Afghans in recent weeks. A US staff sergeant, Robert Bales, shot 17 Afghan civilians earlier this month.

The poll of 1,000 showed 69% thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan, up 16 points from February.

[buglerbilly]

NDIA Logistics 2012: Northern options considered for Afghanistan drawdown

28 March 2012 - 14:46 by Andrew White in Miami, US



The US Department of Defense (DoD) is considering moving equipment out of Afghanistan through its northern borders with former Soviet states in response to the closed border with Pakistan, a senior government official has revealed.

According to Alan Estevez, Assistant Secretary of Defense, Logistics and Materiel Readiness told the NDIA Logistics conference today that permission had been granted to pursue drawdown options via a 'northern distribution network'. Such a strategy would require an element of co-operation with Russia and sources told Shephard that negotiations were being undertaken.

The news follows a breakdown in diplomatic relations with Pakistan which has seen its border with Afghanistan closed to US and NATO forces. However, Estevez remained positive, saying: 'With Pakistan closed, it is going to be problematic but the mathematics could work for a 2014 ride-out.'

Unable to comment in detail on the logistics trail, Estevez did admit that the US Transport Command was working 'proof of principles' to move equipment across Afghanistan's northern borders with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan although he conceded that nothing had yet been moved through that route. 'We need to work through those processes,' Estevez added.

The strategy could include crossing the newly constructed 'Friendship Bridge' (pictured) which crosses the Amu Darya River which connects Uzbekistan to Afghanistan.

'We are at a turning point. Afghanistan shall end hopefully in the medium term and obviously at the same time we have a budget crunch. Regardless whether there is a budget issue or not, it's time to re-look at our strategy. We need to regroup and think about what's next, who's out there and how do we sustain ourselves in the future.'

However, Estevez warned: 'There is risk involved but we think this is manageable even with drawdown [in the budget]. If [cuts] goes further, things will get tougher. If sequestration happens, bad things happen to our national security. Congress needs to do its job and have a budget plan that avoids this.'

Describing the ten-year campaign in Afghanistan, Estevez said the move would include 45,000 vehicles and 100,000 containers but stressed that the department would need to keep on top of equipment accounts. 'Our count isn't quite right and there is also contractor equipment we own that we need to keep account of,' he admitted.

Looking beyond the Afghanistan drawdown and what he described as a move towards more stability operations, Estevez said the requirement to reconstitute US forces would not end. As he explained, there is 'equipment reset, training and a whole slew of actions that need funding'.

In conclusion, Estevez stated that industry had 'stood up' to the DoD's needs to provide new capabilities to warfighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. 'There are still new things being introduced such as MRAP vehicle upgrades, new ISR assets and new underwear'.

'We are pretty good at pushing stuff as it comes off the line but haven't done as well getting those into the training base. Sometimes the first time someone sees new equipment is in the field,' he warned.

[buglerbilly]

U.K. To Spearhead Effort for Afghan ‘Sandhurst’

Mar. 29, 2012 - 01:56PM

By ANDREW CHUTER

LONDON — Britain will take the lead in setting up an officer training academy for the Afghan army, according to a statement of intent signed by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond and his Afghan counterpart, Gen Abdul Rahim Wardak, during a visit by the British minister to Kabul on March 29.

The Officer Academy for the Afghan National Army is planned to open next year in the Qargha district in Kabul. About 75 percent of the non-Afghan mentoring staff will be provided by the British.

A statement by the U.K. Ministry of Defence said the college would be modeled on the British Army’s Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in southern England.

The project has already been dubbed “Sandhurst in the sand.”

The British intention to lead coalition support for the training scheme was announced by Prime Minister David Cameron last summer.

Along with other NATO forces, the British are committed to withdrawing all combat troops by the end of 2014. The provision of mentors, along with financial support for the facilitym will continue beyond that date.

“As we look forward to 2014, our support to the Afghan forces will change to see the U.K. assisting in the delivery of high-quality training that meets their requirements to produce professional officers and leaders of their own,” Hammond said.

[buglerbilly]

PTSD Defense Won’t Save Accused Shooter in Afghan Massacre (UPDATED)

By Katie Drummond Email Author March 30, 2012 | 6:35 am


Staff Sgt. Bales is expected to face a court-martial in the alleged massacre of 17 Afghan civilians. Photo: U.S. Air Force

He’s alleged to have committed the most atrocious war crime of the Afghan conflict, arrested and charged with 17 murders. Now, the lawyers representing Staff Sgt. Robert Bales need to come up with a strategy to defend their client — currently being held at Fort Leavenworth — from a sentence that threatens to be as severe as the death penalty.

But according to lawyers with a background in military law, that defense team — led by civilian lawyer John Henry Browne — has very, very few options. Staff Sgt. Bales is quite likely facing several years behind bars. In the best-case scenario.

“You can’t argue self-defense, or combatant immunity, the way you might in other instances of soldier violence,” Morris Davis, a professor at Howard University Law School and formerly the chief prosecutor for the terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay, tells Danger Room. “I’d say that insanity is really the only card in their deck.”

Browne seems ready to play the cards of mental instability, combat-induced stress, and, perhaps, insanity. “[PTSD] is commonly used in military defense,” he told Reuters earlier this month, before being retained by Bales. Last week, referring to his client, Browne noted that “[Bales] has no memory,” of the night he allegedly committed the murders. And earlier this week, he told the AP that Bales “suffered tremendous depression” after enduring a traumatic brain injury (TBI) during his third deployment.

But PTSD — whose symptoms can include outbursts of rage, insomnia and emotional numbness — rarely, if ever, qualifies a soldier as insane. In fact, not a single service member accused of murder has ever been found not guilty by reason of insanity, according to a report from Stars and Stripes.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about Bales, his mental health, and the circumstances surrounding the night in question. It remains unclear whether or not he was, in fact, treated for PTSD or a Traumatic Brain Injury. There’s no reliable report yet on Bales’ mental state — before he went to war or after. Plus, questions persist about whether military medical staffers, or Bales’ own colleagues, missed key warning signs or were more involved in the massacre than it initially appears. Any new information could entirely transform how Bales’ defense strategy will play out.

If it does play out as Browne suggests, with an emphasis on Bales’ mental wellness, then legal experts are emphasizing that it’s an extremely difficult strategy — especially for defense teams working in military courts — to successfully cobble together.

In short, a defense team would need to prove that Bales was “so detached from reality that he didn’t know right from wrong,” Davis says, and therefore couldn’t appreciate — either before or after committing the alleged murders — the wrongfulness of those actions.

In a civilian court, that’s tough enough. For those tried by military court martial, as Bales will be, two key factors make that defense strategy even harder. First of all, military personnel typically live in close quarters and operate under a rigid hierarchical command — making it tough to sell a jury on the idea that someone with severe mental health problems went unnoticed. “Bales wasn’t out in the woods, letting things fester,” Davis says.

Second, military courts abide by a particularly rigid set of criteria to determine insanity. “A PTSD diagnosis by itself typically is not sufficient to create a defense based on insanity,” says Michael Navarre, a special council for the D.C.-based law firm Steptoe & Johnson and a former Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

The same appears true of traumatic brain injury (TBI), which Bales is reported to have suffered in 2010 and which has been linked to violent behavior in several studies.

The defense team’s likely goal in spotlighting Bales’ TBI and, possibly, his PTSD? It wouldn’t even be to get their client off the hook — it’d be to save him from death, by proving that while he may have slaughtered 17 people, he did it without premeditation because of a mental state weakened by brain injury and the rigors of four deployments.

“[Browne] is most likely making statements about PTSD and TBI that are part of an effort to negate the capacity for premeditation,” Navarre explains. “He’s trying to build a case that’d leave the death penalty off the table.”

Unfortunately for Bales, it’s starting to look like his own behavior — and comments made by his own loved ones — will compromise that strategy. Most important is that, as reported earlier this week, Bales may have walked off base to commit some of the murders, returned, and then gone back out to kill yet again. “That’s a big, big problem,” Navarre says, and it might hinder lawyers from crafting a narrative that portrays Bales as out-of-touch with his own intentions and actions.

And while uncertainty persists over whether Bales had ever been diagnosed with PTSD, the AP reported his own wife stating that “her husband showed no signs of PTSD before he deployed,” and “she feels he was mentally fit when he was deployed.” Of course, studies suggest that repeat deployments do increase one’s risk of PTSD, but a seeming dearth of any diagnosed, preexisting mental health condition will force Bales’ legal team to fight an even tougher battle.

Then there’s the question of who’s going to pay for Bales’ legal defense. Veterans groups are typically vital in helping fellow soldiers who find themselves in court. But with those groups already calling foul on Browne’s narrative — that Bales, scarred by the rigors of war, committed these atrocious acts — there’s a chance the veterans won’t shell out. “Obviously, the team thought about what strategy they were going to use,” Navarre says. “But by going hard on this angle, they’re definitely taking a risk of alienating veteran’s groups.”

Before any of the defense strategy plays out, Bales will likely undergo examination by a sanity board. Comprised of military psychiatric experts, that panel will help determine whether Bales is fit to stand trial, and might identify any “mitigating” issues (like PTSD or alcohol use, for example) that may have affected his behavior the night of the alleged crimes.

Even if Bales is fit to stand trial, it might be years before he does. The trial of alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, for example, still hasn’t even started, nearly 15 months after the deadly incident. “Bales’ case is so complicated, I would be very, very surprised,” Davis says, “if it’s wrapped up even within a few years.”

Update: This story has been tweaked to reflect an important distinction made by Michael Navarre in the 10th paragraph, which is that PTSD diagnoses have been used in civilian cases to convince a jury of an insanity defense. We apologize for the inaccuracy.

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan name three star general to take over Bagram prison from US

Afghanistan named a three star general to take over Bagram prison from the US military and with him, final say over which prisoners are released, an issue with the potential to open another rift in relations between Washington and Kabul.


The prison at Bagram, a military base north of Kabul, holds rebel fighters detained by US-led Nato forces in their 10-year war against the Taliban-led insurgency Photo: MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images

2:30PM BST 01 Apr 2012

The issue of the release of any of the 3,200 people held in the prison at the sprawling American base, north of Kabul, is sensitive to both countries as Afghanistan assumes full security responsibilities ahead of the departure of most Nato combat forces in 2014.

Washington fears the prisoners, most of whom it says are mid to high level members of the Taliban, might return to the battlefield as has happened in the past, citing the case of a Taliban commander transferred from Guantánamo Bay to Afghan custody in 2007 who ended up fighting coalition forces again.

"They (the United States) can have a consultative role, but not a veto," said Aimal Faizi, chief spokesman of President Hamid Karzai.

"What's the point of the transfer if we don't have full control," he said, in remarks that have become increasingly assertive following a string of incidents that have strained US-Afghan ties, notably the killing of 17 villagers blamed on a US soldier and the burning of Korans at the Bagram base.

Afghan General Ghulam Farooq Barekzai – formerly in charge of policy at the defence ministry – has been named to take over the Bagram detention centre, a palace statement on Saturday said.

It was the first step toward handing over control of the prison to Afghan authorities and another move to transferring complete security responsibility to the volatile country before the planned pullout of most Western forces.

Afghanistan, which has long sought control of Bagram prison, says no sovereign country can allow thousands of its people to be held indefinitely under foreign guard and that it alone has the powers to determine what to do with them.

The two sides reached an agreement in March to shift the prison to Afghan control after months of wrangling and a key element of the pact was that Afghanistan would consult with the United States before freeing any of the men incarcerated there.

"And if the United States provides its assessment that continued detention is necessary to prevent the detainee from engaging in or facilitating terrorist activity, Afghanistan is to consider favourably such assessment," the document said.

US officials have interpreted that to mean that the two sides at the very least would have to agree before any of the detainees, many held for years without any trial, could be freed.

Prisoners there will gradually be transferred to Afghan custody over six months, and US forces will provide "technical and logistical support" for a further six months.

About 50 non-Afghan detainees at the prison will remain in US custody, both sides have said.

Under the agreement, Afghanistan also has to provide the United States access to the transferred detainees to ensure that they are being treated in accordance with humanitarian laws.

They may also be able to interrogate them, which has long been a key US demand, US and Afghan officials said.

"This is something that Afghan commanders at the prison will decide," said an Afghan government official, who declined to go into any more detail because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Source: Reuters

[buglerbilly]

US Offers $10m Bounty for Pak Militant Chief

April 03, 2012

Associated Press|by Sebastian Abbot and Asif Shahzad



ISLAMABAD -- The United States has offered a $10 million bounty for the founder of the Pakistani militant group blamed for the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people, a move that could complicate U.S.-Pakistan relations at a tense time.

Hafiz Mohammad Saeed founded Lashkar-e-Taiba in the 1980s, allegedly with Pakistani support to pressure archenemy India over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Pakistan banned the group in 2002 under pressure from the U.S., but it operates with relative freedom - even doing charity work using government money.

The U.S. designated Lashkar-e-Taiba a foreign terrorist organization in December 2001.

But Saeed operates openly in Pakistan, giving public speeches and appearing on TV talk shows. The U.S. also offered up to $2 million for Lashkar-e-Taiba's deputy leader, Hafiz Abdul Rahman Makki, who is also Saeed's brother-in-law.

The reward for Saeed is one of the highest offered by the U.S. and is equal to the amount for Taliban chief Mullah Omar. Only Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida chief, fetches a higher, $25 million bounty.

The bounties were posted on the U.S. State Department Rewards for Justice website late Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said Tuesday.

The State Department website describes Saeed as a former professor of Arabic and engineering who heads an organization "dedicated to installing Islamist rule over parts of India and Pakistan." It also noted that six of the people killed in the 2008 Mumbai attacks were American citizens.

Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna welcomed the U.S. announcement, saying it would signal to Lashkar-e-Taiba and its patrons that the international community remains united in fighting terrorism.

"The decision reflects the commitment of India and the United States to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai terrorist attack to justice and continuing efforts to combat terrorism," he said.

The move comes at a particularly tense time in the troubled relationship with the U.S. and Pakistan. Pakistan's parliament is currently debating a revised framework for relations with the U.S. in the wake of American airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November at two posts along the Afghan border.

Pakistan retaliated by kicking the U.S. out of a base used by American drones and closing its border crossings to supplies meant for NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The U.S. hopes the parliamentary debate will result in Pakistan reopening the supply lines. The closure has been a headache for the U.S. because it has had to spend more money sending supplies through an alternate route that runs through Central Asia. It also needs the route to withdraw equipment as it seeks to pull most of its combat forces out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

But it's unclear whether the U.S. will be willing to meet Pakistan's demands, which include higher transit fees for the supplies and an unconditional apology for the airstrikes, which the U.S. has said were an accident. Pakistan has also demanded an end to American drone strikes in Pakistan, but it's unclear if that will be tied to the reopening of the supply line.

Saeed has been particularly high-profile over the last few months as part of the leadership of the Difa-e-Pakistan, or Defense of Pakistan Council, which has held a series of large demonstrations opposing the resumption of NATO supplies and reconciliation with India.

A close aide to Saeed, Yahya Mujahid, claimed the U.S. decision to announce a bounty was driven by these activities. "It is another attack on Islam and Muslims by the Americans," he said.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement in February expressing concern about Saeed's appearance at a Difa-e-Pakistan rally in the southern city of Karachi.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, which means Army of the Pure, belongs to the Salafi movement, an ultra-conservative branch of Islam similar to the Wahabi sect - the main Islamic branch in Saudi Arabia from which al-Qaida partly emerged. Lashkar-e-Taiba and al-Qaida operate separately but have been known to help each other when their paths intersect.

Analysts and terrorism experts agree that Pakistan's intelligence agency, known as the ISI, is still able to control Lashkar-e-Taiba, though the ISI denies it. Fears have spiked that pressure has been building within the group to become even more ferocious and attack targets outside India - possibly in the United States.

After it was banned by the Pakistani government in 2002, Lashkar-e-Taiba began operating under the name of Jamaat-ud-Dawwa, its social welfare wing.

It carries out charitable works in scores of villages - partially funded by the Punjab provincial government. It has used national disasters, such the devastating floods in 2010, as recruitment and fundraising opportunities.

The U.S. declared Jamaat-ud-Dawwa a foreign terrorist organization in 2008.

Pakistan's tolerance of Lashkar-e-Taiba is rooted in its fear of neighboring India, with which it has fought three wars in 65 years. Analysts believe Pakistan still sees the group as useful in pressuring India, especially over Kashmir.

There are also fears about what would happen if Pakistan tried to crack down on the group, as it did with some other groups under U.S. pressure in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. It lost control of some who turned against their former patrons, and found itself also dealing with homegrown extremists. Lashkar-e-Taiba has so far refused to turn against the government and attack inside Pakistan.

Associated Press writer Nirmala George contributed to this report from New Delhi.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan route critical to reset, retrograde in Afghanistan

March 30, 2012

By C. Todd Lopez


A convoy with members of Task Force 2-28, 172nd Infantry Brigade, and the Afghan National Army winds its way through a small valley on its way back to Forward Operating Base Orgun-E from Combat Outpost Zerok, Sept. 17, 2011.

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, March 29, 2012) -- The Army would like to see the route through Pakistan available again to get things out of Afghanistan when the time comes, said one Army senior leader.

Lt. Gen. Raymond V. Mason, deputy chief of staff, logistics, Army G-4, spoke March 28 in front of the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on readiness, to discuss Army materiel reset.

Right now, the Army is using the "northern distribution network", or NDN, which comes into Afghanistan through countries to the north, such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, to get things into the country. But the route is long, and three to four times more expensive than the Pakistan Ground Lines of Communication, or PAKGLOC, to the south. That route is important to the Army's planning efforts in Afghanistan.

"We need to continue to negotiate and get that back open," Mason said. "We need both methods to get out of Afghanistan." The PAKGLOC has been closed since November, the general told lawmakers.

Right now, the Army is using aircraft to get things home. "We fill aircraft as they depart, both Air Force aircraft and commercial aircraft," Mason said. "We're using every available aircraft to go back out again."

As an alternative, Mason said the Army is doing proofs of principle on an idea to use the northern distribution network or NDN to get things out of country, something it can't do regularly, due to diplomatic reasons.

In partnership with the U.S. Transportation Command, or USTRANSCOM, the Army is experimenting with something Mason called "back haul," where trucks that bring goods into the country do not leave empty as they have been doing.

"We have several hundred vehicles and containers that are moving back on the NDN working through the diplomatic clearances," Mason said. The effort is getting assistance from the Department of State, Central Command and USTRANSCOM.

"That's looking very good," Mason said. "Once we get that done, I think we'll be able to get the EXFLOW back out of the NDN."

Still, he said that will raise the cost for retrograde -- moving military equipment out of country and back home. Working on the NDN, he said, means multiple modes of transportation and requires moving equipment between those modes. That increases the costs, he said.

"The PAKGLOC is critical," he told legislators.

WHAT'S LEFT BEHIND

When the United States left Iraq, military equipment, supplies and material were left behind -- sold to the Iraqis or simply given to them because the cost of bringing some things home outweighed their value.

"We in fact did that significantly in Iraq to the tune of about $1 billion," Mason said.

But in Afghanistan, he said, things will be different.

"We're not going to have the same opportunity in Afghanistan, we don't think," he explained.

Certain equipment can be sold to the Afghans, or donated, Mason said. Old equipment can be divested through the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service. Some equipment can also be sold to countries near Afghanistan, Mason said.

But, he said, "I think the vast majority of what's in Afghanistan, because of the conditions there, we probably are going to have to move out of that country."

Some 50,000 vehicles, for instance, will be leaving the country.

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE FOR EQUIPMENT

Mason told lawmakers the status of equipment coming out of country, it's "health," has been affected by the Army's pre-emptive efforts in theater to maintain equipment on the ground.

"We put significant special repair activities in theater, that has infused health into our vehicles and our equipment coming back," Mason said. While not all the equipment is as good as it could be, he said, "some of this equipment is actually in better shape than we thought it was going to be."

That capability included special repair activities in theater, depot-like capability that came from organizations like the Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command and the Aviation and Missile Command. The capability provided by those agencies, he said, "really made a big difference."

THE MOVERS

What will also be forward in theater are about 2,000 personnel who will be dedicated to retrograde, so that Soldiers who are in Afghanistan to conduct combat operations can continue their efforts there, Mason said.

"We put teams as far forward in the battle space as possible to help those units," Mason said. "They're retrograding and we want them to focus on that, their main job is to conduct combat operations. So we're helping them with that. It was recently approved to put the Central Command materiel retrograde element force of about 2,000 people into theater and they'll focus purely, every day, on retrograde."

[B]COST OF RETROGRADE AND RESET

Mason told lawmakers the "worst-case" scenario for the cost of reset is somewhere between $15 and $16 billion. Reset means repairing the equipment that comes home. The actual numbers for that process though, he estimated to be "significantly less than that."

Force structure changes, and the eventual divestiture of equipment will change what needs to be reset, he said, and that affects cost.

"So we're not going to reset all the equipment, number one, because there won't be a requirement for it," he said. "Number two, some of that equipment will be un-repairable so we won't repair that particular equipment."

Mason did say that all helicopters will be kept.

"We need every one of those," he said. Also, most of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs, will be kept.

The real cost of reset from Afghanistan and Iraq will be decided based on what equipment looks like as it leaves theater.

"While we can do some inspection in theater, most of that equipment is out being used every day. So you really don't know until it gets back to the depot , until you get a full inspection on it."

Mason told lawmakers that during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army "rode our equipment hard." And reset for that equipment is "key and central" to the Army. The peak of reset operations, where most funding would be spent, he estimated, would be around 2015-2016.

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Gourmet Field Kitchen

Posted by Nicholas Fiorenza at 4/3/2012 10:39 AM CDT

The Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) contingent in Afghanistan was treated yesterday to a meal of carpaccio, scallops, duck with red beets and mushrooms, and chocolate cake with passion fruit mousse prepared by the chef of a one Michelin star restaurant.


RNLAF adjutant helps prepare 300 plates of carpaccio...

After discovering that the boyfriend of a waitress working at his Basiliek restaurant in Harderwijk, the Netherlands, served in Afghanistan, chef Rik Jansma said he would like to cook there and was invited by the Dutch Ministry of Defense to do so. Reinforced by RNLAF personnel with cooking experience, Jansma spent two days preparing the four-course meal. The Dutch Ministry of Defense reported that the meal was a welcome change after five months of German cooking the RNLAF contingent had to endure in Kunduz.


...which brought smiles to the faces of RNLAF personnel

I can't claim to have had a gourmet meal on press trips to Afghanistan, but I didn't eat only MREs. The German cooking in Kunduz didn't leave a lasting impression on me, but the three trips I took with US Marine Gen. James Jones when he was NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe always began with a barbeque at the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on the first evening. A British cook felt insulted before the first of these barbeques when I asked him if we would be eating any Afghan food and the closest I ever came to that was lamb on a spit when the Turks were in charge of ISAF.


Jansma helps serve the gourmet meals

I also remember eating fish and chips with the most fluorescent green mushy peas I've ever seen when ISAF was under British command and hamburgers which tasted the same as the ones I ate in a California elementary school when I was five or six. And I'm trying to remember if it was in Bosnia or Afghanistan or both where the French served wine in their field kitchens.

Dutch Ministry of Defense photos

[buglerbilly]

Suicide attack aimed at U.S. troops kills at least six Afghans

By Sayed Salahuddin, Wednesday, April 4, 5:53 PM

KABUL — A suicide bomber targeting U.S. soldiers killed at least six Afghan civilians in the northern Faryab province on Wednesday, the province’s governor said.

Three American military personnel and one of their translators were among the 20 wounded in the attack, which happened in a crowded part of Maimana, the provincial capital, Gov. Abdul Haq Shafaq said by phone.

Shafaq said the troops “were targeted by the suicide bomber, who was on foot.” But none of the troops were killed.

In another attack Wednesday, NATO said two of its servicemen were killed in an explosion in a northern part of the country. No further details were given.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

Lying near the border with Turkmenistan, Faryab is a relatively safe province in the northern part of Afghanistan, far different than the restive south and east, which have seen frequent violence since the removal of the Taliban in 2001.

Three NATO troops were killed in attacks in the east and south of the country on Tuesday, the coalition said.

[buglerbilly]

Allen: Summer Combat to be Heavy in Afghan East

April 05, 2012

Deutsche Presse-Agentur



KABUL -- The commander of NATO-led foreign forces and U.S. troops in Afghanistan said the war-torn country would see significant fighting in the east this summer.

"As I look to reduce the numbers of U.S. forces ... I will use significant combat power in the east, anticipating we are going to have some good bit of fighting in the east this year," U.S. General John Allen said Wednesday in an interview in Kabul with German media.

He said, however, that next year would be the most critical for the military alliance since the U.S.-led war started more than a decade ago because next year would be when Afghan forces take the lead in providing security to the Afghan people.

The general, who commands 130,000 NATO troops in the country, said that by the end of summer in 2013, the entire population of Afghanistan "will be protected by Afghan security forces in the lead."

The training of Afghan forces would not conclude until the end of 2014 when foreign troops are slated to stop all their combat operations, Allen said.

Last year, the United States withdrew 10,000 of its soldiers, leaving about 90,000 there. It is scheduled to pull out 23,000 more by the end of September.

The U.S. is currently negotiating a strategic partnership agreement with the Afghan government, which, among other things, is to determine what kind of American military presence, if any, would remain in Afghanistan after 2014.

One of the sticking points is night raids on Afghan homes conducted by U.S. special forces. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly demanded these operations be stopped.

NATO military officials claimed those raids remained one of the most successful strategies to weaken the Taliban insurgency.

Allen said all the night operations are now conducted in joint operations with Afghan commandos.

"So even though what had traditionally been U.S.-only night operations, now Afghans are on those operations in sufficient numbers that by and large only Afghans will clear an objective," Allen said.

The general said U.S. special forces provide security around the objective "but the most important thing for the Afghan citizens and for President Karzai has always been that if you must enter a compound or if you must enter a home, that it should be an Afghan."

"That is now the case in all of our operations," he said.

Allen also said foreign troops on about 89 to 90 per cent of all their military operations are partnered with Afghan national security forces (ANSF) and Afghans lead about 40 per cent of all conventional operations.

"We want the ANSF to be in the lead," Allen said. "We think that is the right thing to do. It is the ultimate symbol of sovereignty of Afghanistan."

Officials said the numbers of Afghan police and army forces would reach 352,000 in the next couple of months as part of a build-up plan by the West, but serious challenges lie ahead in maintaining experienced, reliable security forces with attrition, illiteracy, corruption and drugs the most acute worries.

Recent months have seen a wave of attacks by Afghan soldiers or police on foreign troops. Last month, Allen told the U.S. Congress that 52 U.S. troops have been killed and 68 injured in such attacks since 2007. This year, there has been a dozen such incidents with 17 fatalities.

"What I think our analysis is revealing is that something less than 50 per cent of those attack are actually Taliban attacks," Allen said in the interview.

The other half was due to "self-radicalization" and other reasons but there is an "aggressive counterintelligence effort" under way in the Afghan forces to spot, assess and report incidents of either insurgent infiltration or radicalization in the ranks, he said.

© Copyright 2012 Deutsche Presse-Agentur. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US soldiers among 10 killed in Afghan suicide bombing

Taliban claims responsibility for attack after motorcyclist detonates explosives at gate of Maimana park

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 April 2012 00.10 BST


At least ten people were killed, including three American soldiers, after a suicide bombing in northern Afghanistan. Photograph: EPA

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed at least 10 people, including three American soldiers, at a park in a relatively peaceful area of northern Afghanistan on Wednesday.

The Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack, are targeting Afghan and Nato security forces as they fight to assert their power and undermine US efforts to try to build up the Afghan military.

Shortly before noon, the bomber detonated his explosives at the gate of the park in Maimana, the capital of Faryab province, a police spokesman said. His target was unclear, but four of the 10 killed were Afghan police officers. At least 20 people were wounded.

In Kabul, Nato said three of its service members were killed. It provided no other details about the attack or the nationalities of the three.

However, a senior US defence official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed that there were three American troops killed in the Faryab bombing.

Video footage of the scene of the attack shows what appear to be dead Afghan civilians, police and foreign troops. In a statement on their website, the Taliban claimed killing 16 coalition troops and 12 Afghans in the attack.

A Taliban spokesman said a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt among coalition forces in Maimana as they were travelling to a park.

Faryab is relatively calm but is a stronghold of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, an al-Qaida affiliated group that has been most active in Afghanistan's northern provinces.

Militants have stepped up their attacks against international and Afghan troops nationwide in recent weeks.

Nine Afghan policemen were killed and 11 abducted across the nation in the past three days.

[buglerbilly]

Oruzgan handover to Afghans to begin this month

Dylan Welch

April 7, 2012


"A critical year." ... Major-General Stuart Smith, Commander of Australian Operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan knows consistent talks with Afghan Security Forces will be important in the lead up to the handover. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

THE general in charge of Australia's war in Afghanistan has given the strongest indication yet that Australians forces will begin to hand over security control to the Afghan army in Oruzgan later this month, and says the next 12 months will be ''critical'' and ''challenging''.

Another Australian general, who plans all operations for the multinational Coalition fighting the Taliban there, says there is ''no doubt'' parts of Oruzgan will begin to be transitioned to Afghan-led security this month.

Major-General Stuart Smith took over command of Australia's forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan at the beginning of this year and in his first interview in the job, at his headquarters at al Minhad air base outside of Dubai, he told the Herald: ''This is a critical year.''

''This is a year that, if the Afghan government asks us to, we will start the transition of handing over security responsibilities in Oruzgan to the Afghan Security Forces.

''Now that is going to be very challenging, we're going to have to be very patient, we're going to need to talk consistently with the Afghan leadership in Oruzgan.''

Later this month the Afghan government will announce the third tranche of provinces to be handed over to Afghan control, and it is widely expected that Oruzgan will be included.

Such a transition would see a reduction in the number of Australian troops who are mentoring Afghan soldiers and providing security in the province. The process would take between 12 and 18 months.

SAS and commandos will continue to chase Taliban leaders and those ISAF considers terrorists, but regular troops could finish their role in Afghanistan as early as May next year.

General Smith's view is supported by the Australian major-general planning operations for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Stephen Day, who also spoke to the Herald.

''There's no doubt in my mind that some of Oruzgan will definitely be in tranche three, I think the question is how much,'' he said.

General Day, who holds the same role now that retired major-general Jim Molan held in Afghanistan, said much of tranche three will be decided on a district-by-district, rather than a province-by-province basis.

Oruzgan has six districts, and if the decision is based solely on security, it is likely the safer areas of the Chora Valley, Deh Rawud and Tarin Kot will be those to be handed over.

Next week the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, will receive final advice from the ISAF about which provinces and districts it believes are ready to be transferred to Afghanistan National Security Forces control, but it remains Mr Karzai's decision alone.

General Day also discussed what role international special operations forces will play in Afghanistan post 2014, the self-imposed deadline for ISAF combat operations.

Both the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the US President, Barack Obama, have indicated that their elite military units will continue to play a role in the country after 2014. When asked what role such elite units will play General Day said:

''The answer to that is remembering why we are here - to ensure that Afghanistan is stable and is not open for business for the training of international terrorists, and that challenge will go on for a little while yet, beyond 2014.''

Dylan Welch travelled to Afghanistan with the Defence Department.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/oruzgan-handover-to-afghans-to-begin-this-month-20120406-1wgto.html#ixzz1rGnNw7Jw

[buglerbilly]

Himalayan avalanche buried 100 Pakistani troops, army says


AP/AP - In this May 2003 file photo, an army helicopter flies over the Siachen Glacier on Pakistan-India border. An avalanche smashed into a Pakistani army base on the Himalayan glacier close to India on Saturday, burying around 100 soldiers.

By Richard Leiby, Updated: Saturday, April 7, 4:00 PM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An avalanche buried around 100 Pakistani soldiers on a major army base on a Himalayan glacier close to India on Saturday, military officials said.

“It is a tragedy,” said Major Gen. Athar Abbas, a military spokesman in Islamabad.

The death toll was not immediately known. Officials said rescue efforts were underway with tracking dogs, helicopters and snowmobiles.

“It is feared that maybe it will become one of the major incidents” of weather-related disasters in the remote, frigid region, Abbas said.

That part of the disputed Kashmir region is often called the world’s highest battlefield. Hundreds of Pakistani and Indian troops are based at elevations of up to 22,000 feet.

Siachen, at about 18,000 feet, sits at northern tip of Kashmir, which both India and Pakistan claim as their territory.

More soldiers have died because of harsh weather at the Pakistani outpost than in combat.

India and Pakistan have fought intermittently at Siachen since 1984. Both countries maintain a permanent military presence there. A cease-fire went into effect in 2003.

Before then, more than 2,000 Pakistani and Indian troops died in the inhospitable terrain, mostly because of avalanches, frostbite and other weather hazards.

Together, the nations have about 150 manned outposts along the glacier, with some 3,000 troops each. Officials estimate that the cost of maintaining the outposts is $200 million for Pakistan and $300 million for India.

Correspondent Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this article.

[buglerbilly]

Unmanned aerial vehicle crashes in northern Afghanistan

2012-04-S-015-Correction

For Immediate Release

This is a correction to IJC release 2012-04-S-016 sent at 6:44 p.m. today. The original version of the release included a release date of Mar. 6. The correct release date is today, Apr. 6.

KABUL, Afghanistan (Apr. 6) — An International Security Assistance Force rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicle crashed in northern Afghanistan today.

The cause of the crash is currently being assessed, however initial reporting indicates there was no enemy activity in the area. The site has been secured and no injuries have been reported as a result of the incident.

[buglerbilly]

War file vetted to clear the shadow of a doubt

Tom Hyland

April 8, 2012


On alert … an Australian soldier's shadow looms large while on patrol with his Afghan National Army counterparts. Photo: Corporal Raymond Vance

Australian officials have rejected a report commissioned by the government agency AusAID that is critical of the security assessment in Afghanistan, insisting it be rewritten to match upbeat claims of dramatic progress.

The report, by independent consultants for the aid and development agency, stated that the Taliban, while weakened in Oruzgan province - where Australian troops operate - were far from defeated.

The assessment, born out by a resurgence of violence in the past two months, is at odds with the government's optimistic assertions about conditions in the province.

A Canberra source also said the report found local people thought Australian and US troops had become more assertive since Dutch forces left - a change that was welcomed by some and resented by others.

The Sun-Herald's sister newspaper, The Sunday Age has learnt AusAID pressed for the changes in the report, with some sections on security toned down and others cut entirely.

While AusAID denied trying to dictate the content of the report, a spokeswoman said the agency had sought corrections to ''factual inaccuracies'' and ''clarifications between fact, perception and analysis''. She confirmed AusAID ''suggested'' the consultants cut a chapter on Afghan views on Australian and US troops in Oruzgan, as this ''did not fit within the terms of reference''.

The Canberra source, who was briefed on the draft report, said pressure on the consultants appeared to be part of government efforts to ''accentuate the positive'' in Oruzgan where, despite improvements, security remains fragile, the Taliban are resilient, and the performance of the Afghan National Army is patchy at best.

The government insists Australian troops are on track to begin handing responsibility for security to the Afghan army by the end of this year, so the Australians can pull out by 2014.

Speaking at a community cabinet meeting last week, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said defence personnel could ''vividly'' outline progress in Oruzgan.

The Minister for Defence, Stephen Smith, gave a similarly upbeat account two weeks ago, when he said there had been ''substantial'' improvements in security and the performance of Afghan forces.

The consultants' report has been prepared by a respected non-government organisation, The Liaison Office, which focuses on peace building, research and human rights. It has about 200 staff across Afghanistan.

According to AusAID's annual report, The Liaison Office is contracted to provide ''conflict analysis'' in a project jointly funded with the Dutch government. Australia has set aside $US3.6 million for the project, running from 2010 to 2013.

Senior analysts with The Liaison Office declined to comment when contacted, citing the confidential nature of their relationship with AusAID.

The report, drawing on hundreds of interviews, assesses changes in Oruzgan in the 18 months since Dutch troops pulled out. It is understood to be guardedly optimistic, noting improved security. Even so, this was not positive enough for Australian officials, the Canberra source said.

'Doing the best they can'

A FORMER commander of Australian troops in the Middle East, John Cantwell, who left the army as a major-general in February, fears the Australian government will declare Afghan forces ready to operate alone, regardless, to meet a withdrawal timetable.

As for the long term, he says: ''It will be ugly. Afghanistan won't be a peaceful place. It will be violent and backward, riven by corruption and crime and tribal feuds and there will always be some bad guys out there.

''But our troops are doing the best they can do, given their mission and the resources they've been given by the government. The same is true of our aid effort. I admire what they do but it's pretty small beer compared to the problems the Afghans face. It would be disingenuous to say it's all good in Oruzgan province. It's not and it probably never will be.''

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/war-file-vetted-to-clear-the-shadow-of-a-doubt-20120407-1wict.html#ixzz1rPVH4Wde

[buglerbilly]

Updated April 8, 2012, 7:48 p.m. ET.

Afghans Take Control of Night Raids

Deal Ends U.S.-Led Operations, Puts Onus on Native Forces and Clears Way for Broader Partnership.

By DION NISSENBAUM

KABUL—Afghanistan and the U.S. on Sunday signed a breakthrough deal giving the Afghan government greater oversight of controversial night raids, setting the stage for sealing a long-term partnership agreement next month.

After months of difficult talks, the two nations agreed to give Afghan judges more power to regulate the raids, curtail U.S. military searches of Afghan homes and restrict the ability of American forces to directly interrogate detainees.


Reuters
A U.S. soldier entered data obtained from an Afghan man during a night raid last year.

The deal breaks a logjam for the two nations in talks meant to define what role the U.S. will play in Afghanistan after most foreign troops withdraw by 2014. It also marks the most significant attempt so far to hand critical military operations over to Afghans as they try to take the lead role in fighting the Taliban-led insurgency.

"This is a paradigm shift in the way special operations are being conducted in this country," said a U.S. military officer involved in the talks. "This is success. This is what the ten years of struggle have all been about."

Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, who signed the deal Sunday with U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the coalition forces commander, said: "This is another important step in strengthening the national sovereignty of Afghanistan. He also called it a "very important step in strengthening relations between Afghanistan and the United States."

The agreement brings some resolution to one of the most divisive issues in a decade of war in Afghanistan.

The U.S. contends that night raids—which fall under the rubric of "special operations"—are one of the most effective weapons against the Taliban-led insurgency, at times conducting hundreds of them per month.


Reuters
John Allen, the coalition forces commander, left, with Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak on Sunday.

But Afghans consider them to be a sign of disrespect and dishonor in a conservative Muslim culture that prides itself on privacy, especially for women and children.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has castigated the U.S.-led coalition over the practice and repeatedly called for it to be stopped, especially after operations that ended with the deaths of Afghan civilians. He renewed those calls after a U.S. soldier allegedly shot and killed 17 Afghan civilians on March 11 in southern Afghanistan.

Over time, the military enacted changes to minimize civilian deaths, but the raids were still deeply unpopular in Afghanistan.

Under Sunday's deal, Afghan and American officials said, U.S. Special Operations forces can only enter Afghan homes during raids if Afghan forces face an intense battle or ask for help.

"After today, only Afghan forces will be able to search residential places and houses," Mr. Wardak said.

Henceforth, a special panel of Afghan security and judicial officials must approve or reject most special operations before they proceed. In limited circumstances where military officials see a need to act immediately, the panel will be asked to approve operations within 48 hours of a raid to continue the detention of any suspects.

Before signing the agreement, Gen. Allen called the signing "a landmark day for rule of law" in Afghanistan.

In the last two years, the U.S.-led military has stepped up efforts to establish an Afghan special-operations force capable of taking over the job of carrying out night raids.

Afghan officials said that 40% of the raids are now carried out exclusively by Afghan forces and that 75% are organized and initiated by the Afghan military. American officials said that virtually all of the operations are now led by Afghan forces.

"These operations are just as critical today as they were last year," said the American military official involved in the negotiations. "The difference is that we now know today just how extraordinarily good the Afghan special operations units are, and how quickly they've come on-line."

The memorandum of understanding signed on Sunday will place new pressure on the new Afghan forces as they take on greater responsibility for targeting insurgents. The number of Afghan special forces is classified, but the country has more than 30,000 police and soldiers.

"This could help shed some light on the question of Karzai's seriousness about the war," said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Karzai will now have to choose between taking ownership of an unpopular, but militarily important mission, or sacrificing the mission. He can no longer have it both ways by allowing the raids, but complaining about them to distance himself from political responsibility for them."

Michael Cohen, a fellow at the Century Foundation, a think tank in New York, said the agreement was a "big deal politically" for Mr. Karzai.

"It gives him a lot of leverage politically," said Cohen. "It makes it look like he stood up to the Americans on the night raids and got this huge concession."

The agreement could also reap political benefits for the Americans by clearing the way for the U.S. and Afghanistan to sign a long-term deal that sends a signal to the Taliban that the international community is not going to abandon the country.

Mr. Cohen said the deal could also shift the dynamic when it comes to bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table.

"If the U.S. is staying past 2014, it makes it a little harder to wait out the Americans," he said. "And it might put a little more pressure on them to engage more robustly in talks."

Afghan officials said the deal will prevent American forces, including Central Intelligence Agency operatives in Afghanistan, from conducting U.S.-orchestrated operations. But American officials declined to discuss whether the agreement would cover CIA operations in the country.

Even with the restrictions, the U.S. military will still play a major role in the operations by providing intelligence, helicopter airlift to the raids and other critical support, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

Sunday's ceremony came after negotiators worked out a last-minute disagreement over who would be able to interrogate detainees captured in the operations. American officials had pressed for permission to question detainees, but Afghan leaders resisted the U.S. demands, officials on both sides said.

As a compromise, the deal will allow U.S. forces to interrogate detainees only when they get permission from their Afghan counterparts.

Sunday's deal clears away the last major obstacle preventing the two nations from signing a long-term strategic partnership in Chicago in May that would commit the U.S. to extended political, economic and limited military involvement in Afghanistan.

"It's a great day," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said after Sunday's ceremony. "We clearly have some critical momentum. Now the hard stuff is behind us."

A former senor U.S. official added, "Now where we are in the war, to have the Afghans accept responsibility is a natural evolution. "We should have started earlier do this. ... What we have to do is give this fight to President Karzai and his people. They have to own it."

Alongside the issue of the Bagram detention facility, resolved last month, the night raids were the main stumbling block to the partnership agreement that the U.S. and Afghanistan hope to conclude by next month's North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Chicago. The partnership agreement will outline what presence the U.S. will maintain in Afghanistan after most foreign forces leave in 2014.

—Nathan Hodge and Julian E. Barnes in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Commandos Can Raid Afghan Homes — And Ask Permission Later

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author April 9, 2012 | 5:26 pm


U.S. troops prepare to raid compounds in Maywand District, Afghanistan, Nov. 22. Photo: U.S. Army

Reports of the demise of the Afghanistan war’s signature tactic are premature. U.S. Special Operations Forces will still conduct “night raids” on Afghan homes — sometimes, without the prior approval of the Afghan government.

Over the weekend, the U.S. and Afghanistan signed an agreement placing restrictions on those raids, a longtime stated goal of President Hamid Karzai. The terms of the agreement seemed to put elite U.S. commandos in something of a holding pattern before the raids could go forward. In theory, the raids require an Afghan judicial panel to issue a warrant before a raid. No raid, no warrant.

Not exactly, say U.S. military officials.

First, the restrictions only apply to missions where there’s a reasonable chance of taking Afghans prisoner or “search[ing] a residential house or compound,” Navy Cmdr. John Kirby, a Kabul-based military spokesman, told reporters on Monday. No other special-operations mission, or mission using conventional forces, requires an Afghan warrant. So if special operations forces are targeting an insurgent as he travels, or planning to ambush a Taliban camp not suspected of being located inside a civilian’s home, no warrants are required.

But even raids on Afghan homes don’t always require an Afghan warrant ahead of time.

“Under the Afghan constitution, specifically in Article 38, it does allow for what they call warrantless search and detention of individuals that are deemed an immediately threat,” Kirby said. “Theoretically, these operations can still go forward without a warrant in advance. But it does have to be pursued as soon as practical afterward.”

In other words, the U.S. believes night raids can go forward before Afghan judges approve them. Those situations are supposed to be the exception, not the rule, Kirby said.

But Kirby declined to say if Special Operations Forces can still conduct a night raid if Afghan judges deny the warrant request. Nor did he say what the standard is for obtaining a warrant.

It’s clear, however, that night raids will continue in Afghanistan. Since December, there have been “more than 350″ night raids, Kirby said, all of them joint operations with Afghan commandos. To teams found their man in 75 percent of the missions, and only fired a shot during 31 night raids. (That works out to, conservatively, nearly three night raids every night since December, an index of how important the U.S. considers those operations.)

Kirby’s suggesting that there’s no daylight between how U.S. and Afghan forces perceive the importance of the night raids. It’s worth pointing out that the Afghans know who’s paying for their military, so perhaps they’ll approve those warrants. But it’s also worth pointing out that Karzai has long demanded an end to them — at least in public.

Still, even if Afghan judges start restricting the night raids, it’s clear the U.S. thinks there are work-arounds when necessary.

[buglerbilly]

Firescout flights suspended due to crash

By: Zach Rosenberg Washington DC

2 hours ago

Source:

After two incidents resulting in crashes, Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout operations are on an 'operational pause' for the indefinite future. One aircraft was damaged on 30 March after landing in the ocean. The second aircraft crashed in Afghanistan on 6 April, according to an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) press release.

The 30 March incident occurred at night off the coast of West Africa, when the aircraft was unable to lock on to the automated recovery beacon. Despite several attempted approaches, the aircraft was unable to pick up the signal.

"After multiple approaches and exhaustive troubleshooting at established minimum fuel limits, the aircraft was positioned a safe distance from the ship and terminated flight," says Navair, the navy's aircraft operations division. "Subsequently, USS Simpson performed a night time recovery of the aircraft which remained relatively intact."

Despite the damaging water landing, the aircraft was recovered intact and the navy does not consider the aircraft a full loss.



The 6 April incident occurred during an operational mission over northern Afghanistan, where three Fire Scouts are deployed for operations. While both the navy and Northrop declined to comment - or even confirm the aircraft's involvement - the ISAF press release cites the crash of a rotary-wing UAS in northern Afghanistan, where Fire Scout is the only rotary UAS is known to operate. An order grounding Fire Scout was released the same day.

Sources with knowledge confirmed the loss of a deployed Fire Scout, but declined to speculate on the cause or circumstances of the crash, except to say that enemy action was unlikely to be involved.

The grounding order applies to all Fire Scouts, including the two remaining in Afghanistan and the lone other aboard the Simpson. Workups for an anticipated summer deployment aboard the USS Klackring are interrupted by the grounding. No other aircraft, including two deployed Lockheed Martin/Kaman K-max deployed in southern Afghanistan, are affected by the order.

Navair deferred comment on the accident to ISAF, which did not immediately respond to requests for information.

[buglerbilly]

U.S., Afghan Forces Sign Special Operations Agreement

(Source: U.S Department of Defense; issued April 8, 2012)

KABUL, Afghanistan --- An agreement signed here today begins a process for Afghan national security forces to take the lead on special operations in Afghanistan.

Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen, commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan, and Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak signed a memorandum of understanding that means Afghan special operations units will lead the way in effectively targeting insurgents and ensures special operations will continue to be conducted with full respect for Afghanistan’s sovereignty, law and constitution, officials said.

Allen said the agreement marks a significant milestone in the transition process agreed upon at NATO’s November 2012 summit in Lisbon, Portugal. It continues advancement of sovereignty for the Afghan people and in the shared effort to formalize a long-term U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership, he added.

Along with an agreement signed last month that begins transitioning the Parwan detention facility to Afghan defense ministry control, today's memo “gives tangible expression” to the vision of a national community leaders council held in November and to the will of the Afghan people, Allen said.

"The Afghan special operations units have developed at extraordinary speed and are manned by courageous and capable operators," the general said. "In large measure, this MOU is a result of the professionalism of the national directorate of security and the Afghan national security forces. We also recognize the growing capacity of the Afghan judicial system, which will play a vital part not only in the implementation of this agreement, but also in the lives of Afghan citizens."

"Today, we are one important step closer to our shared goal of a secure and sovereign Afghanistan,” he continued. “Together, we will realize this vision."

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Bomb attacks in Afghanistan kill at least 18


AREF KARIMI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES - Afghan investigators inspect the site of a suicide bomb attack in Herat province on Tuesday.

By Sayed Salahuddin, Updated: Tuesday, April 10, 8:15 PM

KABUL — At least 18 people, including police and civilians, were killed in attacks in Afghanistan on Tuesday, a spate of violence that coincides with the start of the country’s traditional fighting season.

The first incident, a suicide blast, occurred during morning rush hour on a road near the airport in the western city of Herat, Police Chief Sayed Agha Saqib said. Eleven people were killed.

Hours later, three suicide bombers armed with guns stormed the main police station in Musa Qala, in southern Helmand province, said provincial spokesman Dawoud Ahmadi. Four police officers were killed in an initial round of gunfire at the entrance of the compound and by the blasts triggered by two bombers who managed to get inside, Ahmadi said. Five officers, including the district police chief, were wounded in the attack.

A fourth bomber, on a motorbike, killed three more officers by detonating his explosives near their car as they headed to help victims of the first bombings, Ahmadi said. Six people, three of them police, were injured in the latter blast.

In a statement posted on a Taliban Web site, the group claimed responsibility for the attacks in Musla Qala, but not the attack in Herat.

The insurgents have fought for more than a decade to drive foreign forces from Afghanistan and topple its government. After a pause during Afghanistan’s harsh winter, Taliban cells have unleashed a series of suicide attacks in various parts of the country in recent days.

In one such strike, three U.S. servicemen were killed in northern Faryab province last week. The head of the government-run peace council for eastern Kunar province, tasked to conduct negotiations with the insurgents, lost his life in a similar attack on Friday.

On Tuesday, in the Herat incident, two bombers — a woman wearing a burqa and her male driver — were seen traveling quickly in a vehicle on the airport road. Security forces tried to stop them but failed, Saqib said. The pair, wearing explosive vests and carrying extra explosives in the car, blew themselves up after another group of security forces down the road established a human chain in order to arrest them, Saqib said by phone from Herat.

“We do not know what the target was,” he said. “Eight civilians and three police were killed in the explosion, and 22 other people were wounded.”

The explosion happened near government buildings in the Guzara district, on a main road leading to Herat’s airport, where foreign troops are stationed. Herat is a relatively secure region, but Taliban bombers in the past have targeted foreign and Afghan forces in the province, mostly on the airport road.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan officials stress need for U.S. security presence beyond 2014 withdrawal


Life and war in Afghanistan: March 2012: Our continuing photo coverage shows Afghan life as coalition forces fight in the country.

By Karen DeYoung and Sayed Salahuddin, Wednesday, April 11, 9:00 AM

A long-term security partnership and the presence of U.S. forces beyond the end of 2014 will be needed to ensure Afghanistan’s stability and “give the right messages” to both its population and its enemies, Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said Tuesday.

“The number itself is not that much important,” Wardak said of the size of the U.S. force. “The strategic implications will be more important than the physical number of troops.”

In meetings at the Pentagon, Wardak and Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi said, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta assured them that the United States would continue to supply military training and support so that Afghanistan’s defense forces could improve and be sustained beyond the December 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces.

Formal negotiations on the framework for an ongoing troop presence, as well as other forms of long-term U.S. support, began in Kabul on Tuesday after agreement over the weekend on controversial “night raids” on Afghan homes by U.S. Special Operations troops.

The Obama administration anticipates completion of the framework document before a NATO summit in May that will bring together the members of the U.S.-led military coalition and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The summit is not expected to determine the pace at which coalition combat troops will be withdrawn over the next 19 months, or the size of a U.S. follow-on force, but rather to confirm that the coalition will move into a support role for Afghan forces sometime next year.

The growth and training of Afghanistan’s security forces is a key part of coalition withdrawal planning. The Afghan army and national police are expected to reach their combined target strength of 352,000 this summer, several months ahead of schedule.

As the expensive, decade-long Afghanistan war has become increasingly unpopular at home, the Obama administration has emphasized the deadline for ending its combat commitment and begun soliciting international contributions to defray costs beyond 2014.

One way to cut expenses is to reduce the size of the Afghanistan force, which is funded almost entirely by foreign contributions. Marine Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told Congress last month that internal military analysis has concluded it could be reduced in size by as much as one-third by 2017.

In remarks to reporters Tuesday, Wardak said that an Afghan force level of 230,000 had been agreed upon as a “conceptual model for planning purposes” but that the number was “subject to revision” and he stressed the need for “flexibility” depending on conditions on the ground. That number, he said, was “based on the assumption of a degrading threat” from the Taliban.

Mohammadi said that they had discussed the need for additional police equipment and training with Panetta and had “received assurances” that the gaps “will be filled, especially as we approach 2014.”

Meanwhile, at least 18 police officers and civilians were killed in attacks in Afghanistan on Tuesday in a spate of violence that coincided with the start of the traditional fighting season there.

A suicide blast killed 11 people during the morning rush hour on a road near the airport in the western city of Herat, according to a police chief, Sayed Agha Saqib.

Hours later, three suicide bombers armed with guns stormed the main police station in Musa Qala, in the southern province of Helmand, according to provincial spokesman Dawoud Ahmadi. Four police officers were killed in a round of gunfire at the entrance of the compound and by blasts triggered by the bombers. Three more officers heading to help them were killed by a fourth suicide bomber on a motorbike.

In a statement posted on a Taliban Web site, the group asserted responsibility for the Musa Qala attacks but not the Herat bombing.

The high-level U.S.-Afghan defense meeting in Washington was the third in a series, and Mohammadi said he and Wardak had “reiterated . . . our appreciation and heartfelt thanks to the people of the United States” for their assistance.

Originally scheduled in February, the meeting was postponed when riots broke out in Afghanistan after U.S. service members inadvertently disposed of and burned copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book. Mohammadi said 35 to 40 Afghans were killed in the upheaval, as well as two U.S. officers who were shot inside the Afghan Interior Ministry.

The Afghans said they had discussed with Panetta the “green on blue” violence by Afghan forces against U.S. troops, as well as the shooting deaths of 17 Afghan civilians, allegedly by a U.S. service member, last month.

The suspect in that shooting spree, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, was brought to the United States for possible military trial. Asked whether he would have preferred a trial in Afghanistan, as many Afghans demanded, Wardak said the U.S. Status of Forces agreement provides legal immunity to U.S. service members in Afghanistan.

Asked whether Afghanistan would seek that arrangement for U.S. troops in a new agreement, he said such matters would be negotiated as part of the long-term strategic partnership.

Following troop withdrawals from that Iraq last year, U.S. plans to leave a residual military force in the country fell through after the Iraqi government refused to grant legal immunity for U.S. forces there.

Salahuddin reported from Kabul.

[buglerbilly]

Contractors Beginning To See End of Afghan Mission

Apr. 11, 2012 - 03:31PM

By PAUL MCLEARY

As American and NATO forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the Pentagon is looking at ways to trim the size of its materiel commitment.

The U.S. Marine Corps and Army recently signed $31 million worth of logistics contracts with Honeywell to start refitting and shipping equipment back to the United States from several large bases in Afghanistan.

The Corps’ Prepositioning & Marine Corps Logistics Services (P&MCLS) effort entered into $24 million worth of agreements with the company to provide maritime prepositioning and logistics services to Camp Dwyer and Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan.

A Honeywell spokesman described the deal as involving “offloading various types of equipment from the Marines’ prepositioning ships, repairing those vehicles, repackaging and refreshing supplies such as medical, food, ammunition, spare parts, etc., and reloading that equipment on the ship for it to return to its prepositioned location in-theater.”

The Army’s 401st Integrated Logistics Support Services group also has contracted with Honeywell for a $7 million increase to an existing contract to supply labor and supervise Theater Provided Equipment Planner personnel, “as well as asset visibility services to the U.S. Forces Afghanistan J4 Supply and Services, Redistribution, Retrograde, Redeployment, Reset and Disposition organization,” according to a company statement.

The work on both contracts began April 1 and will run through September.

While not yet a major retrograde or refit action, the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is declining from its current level of 90,000 troops to 68,000 by October. The drawdown will bring troop levels back to what they were prior to the 2010 surge of 23,000 troops ordered by President Barack Obama.

The overall plan for the transition of security to Afghan forces is still being developed and is expected to be unveiled in May at the NATO summit in Chicago. But virtually all 130,000 U.S and NATO combat troops are expected to be out of the country by the end of 2014. A force of trainers, advisers and special forces likely will remain.

Honeywell’s logistics team “has been an integral part of the P&MCLS program for 25 years,” Carey Smith, president of Honeywell Technical Solutions, said in a statement. He added that the company is providing the Army with a “detailed analysis of equipment data, whether by geographic location or operational condition.”

The massive drawdown is hardly unprecedented. In Iraq, U.S. forces moved 3 million pieces of equipment out of the country between September 2010 and last December, and handed over another 4 million pieces of equipment to the Iraqis.

As the drawdown begins in earnest, Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi are in Washington this week for meetings with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other defense officials.

Earlier in the week, U.S. and Afghan officials signed an agreement that puts Afghans in charge of the controversial night raids conducted by U.S. and Afghan special forces, although it contains provisions that will allow U.S. forces to conduct raids while obtaining warrants from Afghan officials retroactively, according to Pentagon spokesmen.

[buglerbilly]

Attacks Kill 2 NATO Troops, Afghan Official

April 11, 2012

Associated Press|by Rahim Faiez

KABUL, Afghanistan - Two bomb explosions and an insurgent attack killed two NATO service members and a local Afghan government official on Wednesday in different parts of Afghanistan, authorities said.

The deaths come one day after Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 19 people across the country as they stepped up their fight against Afghan forces slowly taking the lead from U.S. and international troops.

NATO said both coalition service members were killed in the south - one in a roadside bombing and the other during an insurgent attack.

The coalition did not provide their nationalities nor disclose other details.

So far this year, 103 members of the U.S.-led coalition have been killed in Afghanistan.

Sarhadi Zewak, a spokesman for Laghman province in the east, said the head of Dawlat Shahi district was also killed on Wednesday when his motorcycle hit a roadside bomb.

He was on his way to his office along with a school headmaster who was injured in the explosion, Zewak said.

Separately, the office of the governor of the southern Helmand province said three local Afghan policemen were killed in Musa Qala district on Tuesday when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up near their vehicle.

The deaths bring the death toll from Tuesday's wave of bombings to 19.

The three were responding to an earlier bombing that killed four policemen at the district police headquarters building. Three suicide attackers wearing vests laden with explosives parked their car outside the police building and walked toward the entrance, said Daud Ahmadi, a provincial spokesman. Ahmadi said police killed one attacker and the other two blew themselves up inside the compound.

However, an Associated Press photographer at the scene Tuesday saw two suicide attackers who were fatally shot and the remains of a third who had blown himself up.

The first and deadliest of Tuesday's attacks took place in Herat, a relatively peaceful province whose capital and many districts are already under Afghan security control.

A sport utility vehicle packed with explosives blew up outside the gate of the Guzara district police office. The remains of two men and a woman wearing a burqa were found inside the vehicle, officials said. Three security officers and nine civilians were killed, and more than 50 people, including children, were wounded.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved

[buglerbilly]

Broke Afghans Will Cut Their Military — And Obama’s War Plan

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author April 11, 2012 | 12:38 pm


Afghan non-commissioned officers march at a graduation from Ghazi Military Training Center, Sept. 6, 2010. Photo: ISAF

First the U.S. and its allies super-sized Afghanistan’s Army and police to fight the Taliban. Then they decided that those Afghan troops were their exit strategy. Now they’ve got sticker shock for how much the huge Afghan security sector will cost after they turn over combat duties in 2014 — so the Afghans announced that they’ll cut their own forces, even while they’ll be the only ones fighting the insurgency.

This is nothing short of removing a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s entire Afghanistan strategy. It’s an unforced error, costing over $10 billion, and completely foreseeable. In fact, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld foresaw it.

Here’s the problem. Afghanistan is an economic ward of the international community: the World Bank estimated that before the explosion in U.S. financing during the surge, fully 47 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP came from foreign aid. The annual price tag for the Afghan National Army and Police, according to a former top officer in charge of training them, is $6 billion. You foot most of that bill.

That’s for 352,000 soldiers and cops — an “end-strength” that U.S. military officials have laboriously worked to reach. They will reach it, the Pentagon expects, by the summer. And soon afterward, the Afghans will start… downsizing. According to Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan defense minister who’s visiting Washington, as a “conceptual model for planning purposes,” the Afghans will cut the force to 230,000 soldiers and cops after 2014. One-third of the Afghan forces — many of whom can’t read and kill Americans — will be gone.

Consider: the Afghans are waiting until after the U.S. and its NATO allies draw down their troops and end their combat mission to cut their force. Not only will the U.S.-led coalition spend money on Afghan forces who will soon be let go, those troops will leave the rolls precisely when their chains of command will have the vast majority of responsibility for fighting the Taliban.

But this move isn’t about security. It’s about cash. A NATO official admitted as much to the New York Times: “If something is unsustainable, either you have to find the resources to sustain it or you have to reduce the size of the project.”

If that sounds like deja vu, it should. As Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld fretted that the Afghan security forces could break the bank. The largest those forces totaled under his tenure: 86,000 soldiers and police. While Rumsfeld spokesman Keith Urbahn later called Danger Room field marshall Noah Shachtman a “two-bit blogger” for citing a book claiming Rumsfeld kept the Afghan security sector small, Urbahn conceded “there were concerns about the sustainability of a large force in a relatively poor nation over the long-term — concerns that remain to this day.”

Obama brushed those concerns aside. Soon after taking office, he embarked on a plan to rapidly augment the 162,000-plus soldiers and cops on duty in Afghanistan. That number has only risen, and dramatically so, as commanders, Afghan officials and U.S. legislators have raised their assessments of how many Afghan security forces are necessary for fighting the Taliban.

By the summer, Obama will have more than doubled the size of the Afghan security sector, which stand, in the absence of fruitful peace talks with the Taliban, as the U.S.’ only way out of Afghanistan. And now he’s acquiescing to cutting them to the size they were at during the summer of 2010. That means the U.S. will have wasted about $12 billion paying for soldiers and cops the Afghans will fire.

The U.S. has already begun cutting cash for the Afghan forces. The Pentagon’s current budget request slashes money for the U.S.’ chosen exit strategy nearly in half, even before the Afghan drawdown. The U.S. will still provide some funding for the Afghans it will continue to train after 2014. But if the U.S. isn’t going to pay for a super-sized Afghan security force, then the cash-strapped NATO allies, who are even wearier of the Afghanistan war than the U.S. is, definitely won’t.

Wardak said that the cuts were “based on the assumption of a degrading threat” from the Taliban. But the Taliban insurgency has proven its resilience. If there was ever a time to cut the Afghan security forces, it would probably be while the U.S. is still in Afghanistan in large numbers, not afterward.

But the looming cuts pose a deeper question: why did the U.S. spend billions of dollars building the Afghan soldiers and cops to an unsustainable size?

[buglerbilly]

AFGHANISTAN: Combat Controller To Receive Highest Air Force Award

April 11, 2012 at 5:29 pm


Air Force Cross

A U.S. Air Force combat air controller is slated to receive the nation’s second highest commendation for valor at the Pentagon tomorrow (April 12) for calling in repeated air strikes and medical evacuations while under intense enemy fire in a remote Afghan village.

Capt. Barry F. Crawford Jr. was the air-ground-link for a 100-man patrol of Afghan commandos and U.S. Army Special Forces during a helicopter insertion into a Taliban-friendly village in Afghanistan’s Laghman Province on May 4, 2010. Crawford will receive the Air Force Cross, the highest valor award given by the Air Force — the equivalent of the Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross — and second only to the Medal of Honor for heroism under fire. He is the fifth airman to receive the Air Force Cross since the 9/11 attacks. Two of those medals were awarded posthumously.

Combat controllers are specially trained, FAA-certified air traffic controllers who parachute or helicopter into enemy territory with ground troops to coordinate close air support, establish assault zones or airfields and supply fire control and reconnaissance. They are also among the first on the ground at the scene of natural disasters like the 2010 Haitian earthquake to guide in relief flights when normal air traffic is disrupted.

Crawford told a defense bloggers’ roundtable today (April 11) that the operation was to let the Afghan commandos take the lead, search for weapons caches and interact with the locals as part of a spearhead into “a completely denied area” to friendly forces.

At sunup – an hour after helicopters dropped them off in the village – they began taking hostile fire which picked up in intensity and for the next 12-plus hours the Americans and Afghans were often pinned down by heavy fire. Two Afghan commandos were killed and three others were wounded.


Capt. Barry Crawford Jr. in Afghanistan in 2010. USAF photo

During the battle Crawford, 31, called in dozens of helicopter and fighter jet air strikes. The enemy fire was so intense his radio antenna was shot off close to his face. The 2003 Air Force Academy graduate also exposed himself to enemy fire several times to guide helicopters to wounded Afghan troops and to rescue the ground force commander “without regard for his own life,” according to the commendation.

Crawford was assigned to the 21st Special Tactics Squadron at the time of his deployment in Afghanistan. He is now with the 104th Fighter Squadron in the Maryland National Guard and is slated to begin pilot training in June. In about two years, he said, he will be flying A-10 Thunderbolt IIs , better known as Warthogs, with the Maryland Guard – a highly appropriate assignment for a man who knows first hand the importance of close air support.


An A-10 Thunderbolt II, known affectionately as the Warthog. (U.S. Air Force photo)

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Parliament Approves Guidelines to Ease Ties with U.S.

Apr. 12, 2012 - 02:00PM

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s parliament unanimously approved new guidelines on relations with the U.S. on April 12, information minister Firdous Ashiq Awan said, in a key step towards repairing troubled ties.

The recommendations backed by lawmakers include a call for an end to drone attacks in Pakistani territory and an unconditional apology for U.S. air strikes in November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

Those strikes prompted a furious Islamabad to shut NATO supply lines into Afghanistan and evict United States personnel from an airbase reportedly used as a hub in America’s drone war against Taliban and al-Qaida militants.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told parliament his government would implement the recommendations in “letter and spirit”.

“Our partnership cannot be at the cost of our sovereignty or territorial integrity,” he said.

“We want to proactively engage with our international partners. Our resolve to combat extremism and terrorism remains unshakeable.”

[buglerbilly]

Wraps Come off Spec Ops Afghan War Plan

April 12, 2012

Associated Press|by Kimberly Dozier

WASHINGTON -- Adm. Bill McRaven, the head of U.S. special operations, is mapping out a potential Afghanistan war plan that would replace thousands of U.S. troops with small special operations teams paired with Afghans to help an inexperienced Afghan force withstand a Taliban onslaught as U.S. troops withdraw.

While the overall campaign would still be led by conventional military, the handfuls of special operators would become the leading force to help Afghans secure the large tracts of territory won in more than a decade of U.S. combat. They would give the Afghans practical advice on how to repel attacks, intelligence to help spot the enemy and communications to help call for U.S. air support if overwhelmed by a superior force.

If approved by the administration, the pared-down structure could become the enduring force that Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak indicated Tuesday at the Pentagon that his country needs, possibly long after the U.S. drawdown date of 2014.

McRaven's proposal amounts to a slimmed-down counterinsurgency strategy aimed at protecting the Afghan population as well as hunting the Taliban and al-Qaida. It's not the counterterrorist plan advanced by Vice President Joe Biden, which would leave Afghan forces to fend for themselves while keeping U.S. special operators in protected bases from which they could hunt terrorists with minimum risk, according to a senior special operations official reached this week.

Thousands of U.S. troops could remain in harm's way well after the end of combat operations in 2014, tasked with helping Afghans protect territory won by U.S. forces.

The special operations proposal was sketched out at special operations headquarters in Tampa, Fla., in mid-February, with Central Command's Gen. James Mattis and overall Afghanistan war commander Gen. John Allen taking part, according to several high-level special operations officials and other U.S. officials involved in the war planning. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposal has not yet been presented to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta or the White House.

The Pentagon asked the top officials to draft proposals to present to the White House after NATO allies decide how large a force to keep in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official familiar with the administration's deliberations.

Leaders of NATO nations are to meet May 20-21 in Chicago to discuss the war, among other issues.

The Pentagon by September will draw down the 23,000 troops that remain from the surge of 33,000 troops sent to Afghanistan in 2010 to buy time for the Afghan military and government to build both the numbers and expertise necessary to defend and govern themselves. Plans for the remaining 68,000 troops in Afghanistan are not yet complete, but most U.S. troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Allen, the commander of forces in Afghanistan, has indicated he would like to keep as many troops on the ground for as long as possible. But with a solid majority of Americans now against the continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan and the sped-up departure of some of America's NATO allies from the war zone, the Obama administration is feeling some pressure toward a faster drawdown.

The McRaven plan could provide a way to shrink troop numbers quickly without leaving a security vacuum as U.S. troops depart, as has happened in Afghanistan before when NATO forces left an area.

"This is the least bad option," said retired Marine Col. T.X. Hammes, senior fellow at the National Defense University and longtime critic of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. "It's probably the smartest thing we could do to keep the Afghan government functioning long enough to safely withdraw."

In the back-of-the-envelope version of the strategy, a couple thousand special operators, like Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force, would keep working with Afghan special forces to raid terrorist targets, the senior special operations official explained.

U.S. commanders would seek to keep the same number of defense intelligence troops in country to feed data to the smaller force and would also rely heavily on the CIA for intelligence, while an as-yet-undetermined number of conventional forces would provide everything from air to logistical support to keep all the special operations teams running, officials said.

Some two-thirds of the roughly 6,000-strong special operations force would head to Afghanistan's rural towns and villages to advise inexperienced Afghan forces. This would include expanding the Village Stability Operations program in Afghan villages, in which special operators help what is essentially an Afghan government-backed armed neighborhood watch to keep the peace.

Reliance on the program already had forced it to grow so quickly, however, that U.S. commanders had put regular military forces into some of the sites. That is how Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, a regular soldier with no prior Afghanistan experience, ended up at one of the sites. He stands accused of killing 17 Afghan villagers in a shooting spree last month.

U.S. officials say they will take more care with selecting who gets deployed into such sensitive and remote posts in the future.

The commanders building the new team also would draw heavily from the group known as "Afghan Pakistan hands," the 700-plus force of troops and civilians given months of extra language training in Pashtu, Dari or Urdu, the three main languages of Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials say. Around 50 of the "hands" are deployed to the Village Stability Operations to serve as translators, both of language and culture, between special operations troops, Afghan government officials and local villagers.

The insider knowledge of both the "hands" group and the special operators with multiple Afghan tours is intended to minimize the chance of further antagonizing Afghans and driving them to support the Taliban.

U.S.-Afghan relations have been strained in the past year, exacerbated by the killings of at least 16 U.S. and NATO troops by their Afghan allies in recent months, the inadvertent burnings of Qurans by U.S. troops in January and the shootings of the 17 Afghan villagers. Afghan President Hamid Karzai initially asked that the U.S. retreat from rural areas.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Updated April 12, 2012, 1:21 p.m. ET.

Karzai Considers Early Afghan Election

By DION NISSENBAUM

KABUL—Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that he was considering calling early presidential elections next year in an effort to take advantage of the coalition military presence, a move that could raise the chances of securing the country's first peaceful transfer of power in modern history.

Mr. Karzai, who is set to end his second five-year term in 2014, said such an early polling would help the country avoid conducting a political campaign after the U.S.-led coalition forces transfer security responsibilities and head home. Many people are worried that security will deteriorate as the pullout reaches its end in 2014.

Under the constitution, Mr. Karzai is not eligible to run again.


Reuters
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, left, and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen

The president's statement raised questions over whether it was a political ploy to extend his influence and over how legally such an election could be held at all, given the country's constitutional limitations.

Mr. Karzai told reporters Thursday that he has discussed with his aides whether to hold the presidential election next year, or, alternatively, to ask the U.S.-led coalition to speed up the transition slated for 2014. Obama administration officials, too, have proposed such a quicker pullout.

"There are those favorable to both the ideas," Mr. Karzai said at a palace news conference with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the visiting secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. "I have not made the final decision yet—and it will not be soon. But I am thinking about this, and I will do what is good for this country in either case."

A peaceful transfer of power is considered by many in the international community to be one of the best benchmarks of success as coalition forces prepare to end their major military presence in Afghanistan.

Mr. Karzai's fraud-marred re-election in 2009 was widely viewed as a black mark for U.S.-led efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and establish a credible national government. Parliamentary elections the following year saw a record low turnout, and were also marked by allegations of widespread fraud.

Some politicians looking to succeed Mr. Karzai have voiced concerns that the Afghan president might use insurgent violence in 2014 as an excuse to cancel the election and hold on to power. Mr. Karzai has repeatedly said he intends to stand down once his term expires.

Mr. Karzai didn't explain how practically he could move up the election date. Short of changing the constitution, elections officials said, the only way he could call an early election would be to resign, a decision that would compel the country to call a special election within three months.

The constitution can only be changed by the so-called constitutional Loya Jirga, an assembly made up of national lawmakers and the heads of provincial and district councils. Elections to these district councils have not been held, in part because many of these districts are under insurgent control.

The prospect of a nationwide vote in 2013 was met with tentative support from some rivals of Mr. Karzai and electoral reform advocates who are willing to back the idea—if Mr. Karzai ensures that the process is fair and doesn't renege on his pledge to stand down.

"This government has systematically failed to meet the expectations of the nation," said Hanif Atmar, the former Afghan interior minister and possible presidential candidate who was forced from his post by Mr. Karzai in 2010. "We all want a change."

Nader Nadery, chairman of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, said a transparent election next year could bolster Mr. Karzai's achievements.

"If he genuinely wants to see a peaceful transfer of power, then this will be his greatest legacy," he said.

Despite his pledges, some fear that Mr. Karzai still might try to use electoral uncertainty to retain the presidency—or install his favored successor. Mr. Karzai has said he doesn't want his brother Qayyum, rumored as a likely presidential candidate, to run.

"I am a bit more cynical I guess," said one Western diplomat in Kabul. "It will not change anything. This regime will continue—with or without the present president—whether the election takes place in 2013 or 2014."

Earlier this year, Mr. Karzai replaced three of the five members of the country's election commission with some of his allies, a move that generated concerns that the president was trying to pack the body with cronies.

Moving up the election could prevent lawmakers from revising the laws to ensure more transparency in the process, said Fawzia Kofi, an Afghan lawmaker.

"It's all a game," she said. "I think Karzai or his candidate will have all the resources from all the structures of government."

The race to succeed Mr. Karzai is likely to be crowded. A large number of Afghan leaders are already exploring runs for president, including Mr. Atmar, Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister now overseeing the country's transition process, and Ali Jalali, another former interior minister.

Mr. Karzai's 2009 re-election campaign became a polarizing chapter that drove a serious wedge between the Afghan president and his international allies.

Mr. Karzai has repeatedly complained that the U.S. and the U.N. have tried to engineer his ouster in the election, a belief that poisoned his relationship with the Obama administration.

After the presidential election, Mr. Karzai moved to assert control over the Electoral Complaints Commission, a U.N.-run watchdog that threw out as fraudulent a million votes reported as cast for him in 2009.

He has also pledged to "Afghanize" the electoral process, reducing opportunities for international interference in the next vote.

Earlier this week, Jan Kubis, the new head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, vowed to be an "active partner" in the country's electoral process.

—Ziaulhaq Sultani in Kabul contributed to this article.
Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

Public left in dark over Afghanistan proposal

Dylan Welch

April 14, 2012


"The Australian Defence Minister said Australia is interested in forging a strategic partnership with Afghanistan" ... a statement from President Hamid Karzai's office. Above, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Defence Minister Stephen Smith. Photo: Penny Bradfield

AUSTRALIA is five weeks away from signing a crucial strategic agreement with Afghanistan that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and outline Australia's postwar role there, but the government has yet to inform the public of its existence.

The previously unrevealed pact, disclosed by the office of the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, this week, is a strategic agreement that will mean Canberra provides hundreds of millions of dollars in aid in the post-2014 decade.

The international community has set the end of 2014 as the deadline for all international combat operations in Afghanistan. After that time security will be the sole responsibility of the Afghan Army and the Afghan National Police.

Yesterday, the office of the Defence Minister, Stephen Smith, who visited Afghanistan this week and met Mr Karzai, said the document did not relate to his portfolio, and referred the Herald to the Foreign Affairs Minister.

However, a statement released from Mr Karzai's office on Wednesday after a meeting with Mr Smith appeared to contradict that view. It said: ''[The] Australian Defence Minister said Australia is interested in forging a strategic partnership with Afghanistan.''

The release went on to discuss a draft of the agreement, recently handed to the Afghan Foreign Ministry, and said it would be signed by both countries during a NATO summit in Chicago on May 20 and 21. ''Minister Smith … hoped that the draft be finalised as soon as possible by the governments of the two countries,'' the statement said.

Another statement on Wednesday, from Afghanistan's Australian embassy, also referred to the plan, saying it covered long-term co-operation involving ''security, development, trade and investment, cultural and people-to-people links and migration and humanitarian affairs''.

A spokesman for Mr Smith said his visit to Kabul had nothing to do with the agreement, which was a matter for the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and Bob Carr, the Foreign Affairs Minister.

The agreement was mentioned ''in passing'' during a conversation with Mr Karzai, the spokesman said, but ''did not concern either the content or detail''.

Despite that, it does not appear the Prime Minister, Mr Smith or Senator Carr have told the Australian public about the agreement.

Yesterday Mr Smith's office pointed to a speech by Ms Gillard to Parliament on November 21 as referring to the agreement. More than 20 minutes into a half-hour speech, Ms Gillard mentioned talks with Mr Karzai about a ''long-term framework agreement for the future of the Australia-Afghanistan partnership''.

''This kind of co-operative country-to-country approach is an important framework for our long-term plans,'' she said. ''We seek an enduring relationship with Afghanistan beyond 2014 as Afghanistan takes on responsibility for its own security and governance.''

That appears to be the only time she or anyone else in her government has discussed a bilateral plan with Afghanistan. No detail has been provided - then or since.

There has been an intense debate within the international community about what support will be provided to Mr Karzai's Afghan postwar state. The US has said at least $4.1 billion a year will be needed to support the Afghan military and police alone, but after years of huge spending on Afghanistan, some European countries are keen to scale back support.

The Australian agreement will complement a similar agreement between the US and Afghanistan.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/public-left-in-dark-over-afghanistan-proposal-20120413-1wyuz.html#ixzz1ryqKZQkM

[buglerbilly]

Lawmaker Presses Panetta on US-Afghan Pact

April 13, 2012

Associated Press|by Donna Cassata



Another grandstanding POS comment by the Republikans.............ferkin Politicians, a fester on the body of the Nation...............singualrly useless group of people. IF he'd bothered to do anything but pose like a ponce at a gathering of sailors, he'd be able to read many educated views that say little has changed in either the how or where...............

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee expressed serious concerns that the U.S.-Afghanistan deal giving Afghans authority over night raids could put Americans at greater risk and undercut intelligence gathering critical in the long war.

In a letter Thursday to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon questioned elements of the recent agreement, a major step toward finalizing a strategic partnership on how U.S. forces will operate in Afghanistan after combat troops leave in 2014. The Obama administration and Kabul are pushing to complete the partnership before the NATO summit in Chicago next month.

McKeon raised reservations about the establishment of a panel of Afghan security officials -- military, government and intelligence services -- and giving it the authority to review and approve what raids will take place.

The Republican said that while Afghan security forces have made progress in training, the administration must be careful about putting Americans in danger without an independent legal authority to hold an enemy combatant. McKeon also challenged the role of Afghans in planning operations.

"The new framework could also potentially compromise sensitive U.S. information since more Afghans will be involved in sensitive intelligence activities and operational planning," he wrote. "At best, targets may be tipped off before an operation; at worst, U.S. lives may be lost."

Reflecting the uncertainty about the agreement, McKeon also wondered whether the pact will constrain U.S. forces as they try to seek intelligence from captured suspects.

"Intelligence derived during detainee interrogations frequently assists in identifying the location and identities of other terrorists, provides information on the enemy's plans and assists with protecting U.S. forces," he wrote. "Such interrogations, along with the capture operations themselves, are extremely time sensitive."

According to the agreement, Afghan forces will conduct home searches and U.S. forces will be allowed to enter private compounds "only as required or requested." The Afghan government will immediately take custody of detainees and U.S. forces will only interrogate detainees if asked by the Afghans.

The U.S. military considers the night raids critical to operations in Afghanistan. Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. forces, recently told Congress that they have been effective in rounding up insurgents. But Afghan leaders have criticized the nighttime operations, arguing that they have caused too many civilian deaths and have pressed for greater Afghan control.

In a statement, Panetta spokesman George Little said, "We will, of course, respond to the chairman's letter. The secretary believes that the recently signed memoranda reflect the progress we and the Afghans have made together as the transition process in Afghanistan moves forward. We continue to pursue aggressive operations against our common enemies, and we share the goal of ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists."

Questioned about the agreement this week, Navy Capt. John Kirby dismissed suggestions that Afghans would have veto power over operations. He pointed out that since December, Afghans have commanded the raids.

"The Afghan special operations forces and U.S. special operations forces have been working as a team to develop and identify targets based on intelligence fusion on a combination of intelligence sources from both sides. ... There aren't and haven't been disputes or disagreements about whether or not to develop an operation," said Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

More than 350 raids have been conducted since December, with Afghan and U.S. forces capturing suspects in 270 raids. Shots were fired in 31 raids, Kirby said.

McKeon also expressed concern about the U.S.-Afghan agreement on the gradual transfer of control of the main U.S. prison in Afghanistan. That pact gives Americans six months to transfer Parwan's 3,000 Afghan detainees to Afghan control.

-- AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghans march in Kabul to demand justice for women

Young Women for Change say government is not serious about tackling suffering and fear return to Taliban era ignorance

Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 14 April 2012 16.19 BST


Afghan Young Women for Change hold placards saying 'Where is justice?'. Photograph: Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images

Young Afghans braved fears of violence to join a rare march on parliament to demand justice for the women who have been killed, beaten and abused this year – including one they said was beheaded by her own husband.

No politicians came out to meet them, underlining the group's claim that officials are not serious about tackling the suffering of women, despite a law that aims to end the abuse.

"In the last weeks we have had a lot of cases of violence against women," said 19 year-old student Kamila Ataee. "Just the women are dead, and the men who killed them are alive. We should raise our voices so everyone knows about it."

Around 30 young men and women joined the march, although organisers from Young Women for Change said they had expected a turnout of around 200. Several demonstrators said friends had been ordered to stay home or were afraid to come.

"A lot of things happen against women in Afghanistan, but no one can bring change without women themselves," said 16-year-old Zahira, who had slipped out to join the march without telling her parents in case they banned her for her own safety.

Demonstrations in Afghanistan frequently turn violent, and women's rights are still a controversial issue in a country where many men feel that women should be confined to domestic roles inside their homes, and subject to the authority of their husbands or male relatives.

The country's top clerics recently issued new guidelines saying women were subordinate to men, should not mix in work and education and must always have a male guardian when they travel – rules critics say are dangerously reminiscent of the Taliban era.

The demonstration was prompted by the murder of five women since the Afghan new year in late March, but also highlighted around a dozen other cases of recent violence. They included a 15-year-old who was viciously tortured by her in-laws for refusing to work as a prostitute, and a teacher who was stabbed to death by her brother for working outside the home.

Most of the perpetrators of the crimes are still free, the group said in a statement. They also called for an end to the "suffocating silence" from government agencies on violence against women.

The short stroll from a French bakery to the seat of Afghanistan's legislature was largely uneventful, with the young men and women carrying signs asking "where is justice" outnumbered by riot police and journalists.

They did cause traffic snarl-ups on the main road outside parliament as curious drivers stopped to stare at the young protestors. And the city's police chief, General Ayoub Salangi, also hopped down from his armoured car to offer a brief moment of impromptu support. "I think it's a very good idea," he told the Guardian.

[buglerbilly]

ISAF Attacks Insurgents in East

April 14, 2012

Associated Press|by Rahim Faiez

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan forces with air support from NATO combed through the country's mountainous northeast in their third day Saturday of a major offensive against militants in a province that serves as an insurgent supply route from Pakistan.

Mohammad Zareen, a spokesman for Nuristan province, said nearly 30 insurgents have been killed and at least 30 have been wounded in the operation that began Thursday night in Kamdesh district, a hotbed of the insurgency.

The offensive comes at the beginning of Afghanistan's spring fighting season. The government and the U.S.-led coalition are expected to step up their operations as temperatures warm across the nation.

"Kamdesh is an important and strategic place for insurgents in eastern Afghanistan," Zareen said. "It's the main way for insurgents to supply insurgents across eastern Afghanistan. Unfortunately, we have control of some parts of Kamdesh, but not all."

Afghan officials say that one policeman and a woman have been killed in the fighting, with another four Afghan soldiers and another woman wounded.

A unit of an unknown number of Afghan commandos and about 400 Afghan policemen are conducting the operation, and another 200 police are soon to join them.

"This time we're not going to just conduct a big operation and leave," Zareen said, adding that government-backed forces have now gained control of the main road through Kamdesh for the first time in years. "After clearing the area, we will set up extra checkpoints to help maintain peace for the people."

In a statement released Saturday, the Afghan Defense Ministry said it launched the operation because residents were complaining that insurgents were becoming more active in the area.

"The commandoes descended into the area by helicopters," the ministry said. "Other Afghan army units are on alert in nearby Nangarhar and Kunar provinces if there is any need for reinforcements."

---

Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Lawyer Says Bales Won't Do 'Sanity Board'

April 14, 2012

Associated Press|by Gene Johnson

The U.S. soldier charged in the shooting deaths of 17 Afghan villagers last month will not participate in an Army review aimed at determining his mental state, his attorney said Friday.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was expected to face what's called a "sanity board" examination by Army doctors from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, seeking to establish whether he's competent to stand trial and what his mental state was at the time of the March 11 pre-dawn massacre in two southern Afghanistan villages.

But his civilian lawyer, John Henry Browne, said Friday he instructed Bales to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent because the Army will not allow Bales to have an attorney at the sanity board review and will not allow the examination to be recorded. The Army also rejected his request to have a neuropsychologist on the board, Browne said.

"A member of the military does not give up constitutional rights by being in the military," Browne wrote in an email to reporters. "Since the defense will have no way to know questions asked or answers given, Sgt. Bales' civilian attorneys have instructed him to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and NOT participate in the sanity board process, particularly since his Sixth Amendment right to counsel has been denied during the board process."

Maj. Chris Ophardt, a spokesman at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle, said that typically, such examinations are not recorded and defendants do not have their lawyers present. Such proceedings are medical, not legal, he said.

"They want to make sure the board can ask the questions they need to ask to make a fair determination, without any outside influence," Ophardt said.

The sanity board had been expected to explore such issues as Bales' deployment history, including a concussion that Browne has said he suffered during one of his three prior deployments to Iraq, as well as any prescription medication he may have been taking and whether some sort of psychotic episode led to the shooting.

In most cases, the only information given to prosecutors following a sanity board review consists of a brief diagnosis and the answers to three yes-or-no questions: Was the defendant suffering from a mental disease at the time of the offense? Was the defendant able to appreciate the wrongness of his or her actions? Is the defendant currently suffering from a mental disease and thus unable to understand the legal proceedings?

The answers to those questions help prosecutors decide whether it's fair to have the defendant stand trial, Ophardt said. If the answers are mixed, investigating officers can seek more information about the defendant's mental state during a pretrial hearing or further psychiatric care for the defendant.

However, if a defendant raises a mental health-related defense, prosecutors can obtain more of the details of the sanity board review, including any clinical interviews with the defendant.

It wasn't immediately clear if the sanity board would proceed without Bales' cooperation.

Bales, 38, a father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., is accused of walking off the base where he was deployed in southern Afghanistan with a 9 mm pistol and M-4 rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher. Officials say he walked to two local villages, where he killed four men, four women, two boys and seven girls, and then burned some of their bodies.

Dan Conway, a former Marine who is now an experienced civilian military defense lawyer, said that while it may not be typical for the Army to record or allow a lawyer to attend sanity board reviews, it's "perfectly reasonable, especially in a case of this magnitude."

"You want to be very cautious in allowing a client to be subject to that sort of clinical interview," Conway said. "It's his client sitting alone with a bunch of doctors. You don't want the doctors taking on the role of investigators."

If Bales continues to refuse to participate in the sanity board, a judge could possibly bar him from relying on a mental-health defense at his court martial, Conway suggested.

Browne also said Friday that one of the Army lawyers assigned to the defense team, Maj. Thomas Hurley, stepped aside in what Browne described as a mutual decision. The pair had disagreed about certain aspects of the defense strategy, and, Browne said, Hurley ultimately leaked an email from Browne to a news agency.

The Army confirmed that Hurley was no longer on the defense team, but declined to say why. Capt. Anthony Osborne remains on the defense team.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. and Taliban fight for key Afghan highway


In Afghanistan, the battle for a road: Highway 1, a narrow, two-lane ribbon of blacktop, doesn’t look that important. But in a weak, chaotic country, the road linking the capital to Kandahar, the country’s second most important city, is seen as essential to holding Afghanistan together.

By Greg Jaffe, Sunday, April 15, 4:00 AM

SAYAD ABAD, Afghanistan — The Taliban fighter crouched in a muddy field about 100 yards from Highway 1. The mid-afternoon sun melted the last patches of winter’s snow as he waited for an American convoy to pass.

Three miles away, Lt. Col. Robert Horney and his soldiers pulled on body armor and climbed into their vehicles. The trucks were rolling when one of Horney’s junior commanders suggested that he delay the convoy until dark, when insurgents rarely attack vehicles with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

“We are the U.S. Army,” Horney thought to himself with some irritation. “We go where we want to go.”

The vehicles rumbled down a rutted dirt road, through a small village and toward a highway culvert where the Taliban had set about 40 pounds of explosives in a yellow plastic jug.

The Taliban fighter pressed a button, and a charge of electricity raced through copper wire. The highway exploded, shooting chunks of rock and dirt hundreds of feet in the air, nearly missing one of the American trucks. It shook and then lurched hard to the left.

“IED, IED, IED,” Horney’s soldiers yelled.

They called the name of the gunner, exposed in the turret. He did not respond, so they yanked on his pants. The gunner’s ears were still ringing from the blast when he ducked into the vehicle to say that he was all right.

The bomb tore a five-foot-deep hole in an already pockmarked highway that the U.S. government paid $230 million to pave and that Horney’s troops were supposed to protect. It showed that even as the U.S. military has pushed Taliban fighters from many strongholds, the enemy retains significant havens in this region only 40 miles from Kabul, the capital. And the near miss shook Horney’s confidence.

Horney, 41, broad-shouldered with brown hair shaved close to the scalp, climbed down from his truck. He suppressed a surge of anger. He was the commander of an 800-soldier battalion and needed to project an air of steadiness and calm. His troops fanned out in a defensive posture.

Horney noticed the hastily buried wire glinting in the sun and followed it until he reached the spot where the insurgent had been waiting. He approached a nearby farmer, gray-bearded and bent from a life in the fields.

Why didn’t he report the bomber to Afghan soldiers a short walk away? Horney asked.

The Taliban were everywhere, including the Afghan army, the farmer replied. “There is no one I can trust,” he insisted.

The two spoke for a few minutes about the man’s crops and his nine children. As Horney shook his hand and turned to leave, the farmer had a question. “Was anyone hurt?”

A vital highway

Horney grew up in Lebanon, Pa., where his father was a recruiter for the Army Reserve. He’s fit, with an open, friendly manner and a slight drawl — an accent best described as career Army. His twin brother is also a soldier.

The prospect of ceding any territory to the Taliban as U.S. troop numbers fall over the next year is painful to him. President Obama has mandated that the 30,000 additional troops that he ordered to Afghanistan in late 2009 return home by the end of September.

“We are being forced to prioritize by the reduction in troop levels,” he said. “My problem is that I am finding more places I want to go and not less.”

For most of the war the United States maintained a relatively light presence on Highway 1. Then, on a single day in August 2008, insurgents burned 60 trucks that were hauling supplies on the highway for NATO. They cut the road with massive IED explosions.

Highway 1 does not look especially important. It is just a narrow, two-lane ribbon of blacktop.

But in a country with a weak, corruption-plagued government, the road linking the capital to Kandahar, the country’s second most important city, was seen as essential to holding Afghanistan together. The chaos on a vital route so close to Kabul was contributing to a siege mentality in the capital. More than 3,000 U.S. troops were dispatched in 2009 to clean up the mess.

Today Horney has about half of his force protecting Highway 1. The other half holds down two outposts on a dirt road 15 miles to the west of the highway. Insurgents could use the rugged trail, known as “Shadow Highway 1,” to smuggle weapons into Kabul.

On a visit to one of the bullet-pocked outposts on Shadow 1, Col. Mark Landes, Horney’s commander, asked how many insurgents were in operating in the area around the shared Afghan-American base.

“A lot,” Horney said.

“I am so tired of words like ‘a lot,’ ” Landes prodded. “I don’t know what they mean.”

Within a year most of the American troops in Horney’s sector will be gone and the Afghans will be in control. What would happen if the United States left the outpost on the shadow highway? Landes asked.

“If we pull out, the Afghan army and the Taliban will find a way to live together,” Horney guessed.

‘My pride is hurt’

Three days after the near-miss bomb attack, insurgents crept up to Highway 1 and fired a volley of rocket-propelled grenades into two tankers hauling fuel for NATO.

The attack occurred directly in front of one of Horney’s outposts. American snipers, perched on the back wall of the base, shot at the attackers as they fled through a nearby village. Capt. Adrian J. Koss, the commander, and a team of U.S. soldiers pursued them.

By the time the Americans reached the village the locals had disappeared into their walled compounds. The insurgents were gone. Koss and his men returned to their base, passing by the village bazaar stocked with Pop-Tarts, PowerBars and energy drinks stolen from the supply convoys in past attacks.

The insurgents who launched the attack on the fuel tankers were not interested in looting. They wanted to send a message that the Americans could not even safeguard the stretch of highway directly in front of their outpost.

“My pride is hurt,” Koss admitted. “It is my task to secure that highway.”

The trucks burned outside the base for 36 hours — the black oily clouds visible for miles. Horney called Koss at his headquarters and told him to drag the trucks off the highway and out of sight as soon as possible.

“The enemy here feels very confident,” Horney said later, reflecting on the rocket-propelled grenade attack and the near-miss IED strike on his convoy. “There’s no fear of getting caught or killed. We’ve got to put more fear in the insurgents and get more confidence in the population.”

The Afghan commander

Horney’s best hope for securing Highway 1 is Lt. Col. Mohammed Allam, who commands the Afghan soldiers in southern Wardak province.

For months Horney has wanted Allam’s troops to accompany his men into the villages that border the road and offer the insurgents a haven from which they can attack. Allam’s soldiers preferred the relative safety of the highway, and Horney could not order the Afghan soldiers to accompany his men.

He needed Allam to write a patrol schedule.

“I have no idea why it is so hard,” said one of Horney’s company commanders.

In late March after months of encouragement from the Americans, Allam started to make plans for joint U.S.-Afghan patrols into the villages.

Horney invited Allam and his staff officers to the U.S. chow hall for a dinner celebrating the Afghan New Year. Allam, who is in his mid-50s, is tall with a ruddy face and stooped shoulders. As a young officer fighting alongside the Soviets, he took a bullet to the chest. The enemy round left a spidery scar a few inches from his heart.

The dinner was Horney’s way of showing his support. Allam and his staff officers — skinny, middle-aged men with gray-flecked beards — sat on one side of the table. Horney’s officers — clean-shaven and in their early 20s — filled out the other side. There was little conversation.

Horney dug through his supplies and found an unopened can of eggnog, which Allam had enjoyed at an earlier dinner.

“This is the last eggnog in all of Wardak province,” Horney announced.

They each delivered toasts praising their battalions’ partnership and lamenting the hardships that came with being away from home.

Two days later Allam produced the patrol schedule for the villages around the highway.

“This mission is important to us,” Allam told his officers. “We are trying to awaken our personnel from sleeping on the highway.”

Horney’s officers were skeptical that the Afghans would execute the village patrols without the Americans pulling them along. “If they don’t want to do anything, what do we do?” one of his company commanders asked.

It was up to Allam to inspire his men, Horney said. “Success isn’t you making them do it,” he told his officers. “You guys have to realize it is going to be Afghan-led here very soon.”

Suspicious activity

A week after the attack on Horney’s convoy, one of his soldiers spotted three Afghans on a grainy video surveillance feed digging at night in the exact spot where the earlier bomb had been set.

Capt. Ryan Harmon, one of Horney’s company commanders, dispatched a platoon of U.S. troops and a platoon of Afghans to the culvert. Two F-16 fighter jets, flying out of earshot at 18,000 feet, moved into position. Horney hovered behind his company commander.

The two officers stared at the shadowy figures on the video screen. Before they could clear the F-16s to shoot they had to be positive the men were putting in an IED. Some civilian trucks sped past the culvert.

“Look at them,” Horney said. “When the trucks rolled by, they laid down.”

“They are doing some suspicious [stuff],” Harmon agreed.

The video surveillance feed, which did not clearly show the men carrying weapons, was not definitive enough to call in an airstrike. The American ground troops were a 10-minute drive from the culvert. A platoon of Afghan soldiers manning an observation post on the road was closing in from the other direction. Because several of their vehicles weren’t working, they were walking. They were about 15 minutes away.

Harmon cursed. He worried the men would escape.

“What’s the plan?” Horney asked. “Are you going to roll up and drop ramp?”

“Yeah, just kick them in the face,” Harmon replied.

Horney’s commanders have been pressing the Afghans since August to shift more troops to this stretch of highway, from the relatively peaceful area to the north. So far it has not happened.

A successful strike was just the sort of operation that would put some much-needed fear into the insurgents and give the Afghans a boost of confidence as the U.S. mission in Afghanistan began its inevitable wind down.

Horney dashed out to take an unrelated call from one of his other company commanders who had received a tip that some insurgent leaders were hiding in a nearby mosque. The officer needed help persuading the Afghans to search the building. In the end the Afghans found nothing.

After about 15 minutes, Horney returned. Harmon had dropped to one knee and was hitting his forehead with his radio handset. The three figures had ducked into a dry riverbed and disappeared into a nearby village as the U.S. and Afghan troops approached. There were some fresh shovel marks in the culvert, but no IED material left behind.

“How is it going?” asked Horney.

“Escaped,” the younger officer replied.

[buglerbilly]

Updated April 15, 2012, 2:48 p.m. ET.

Afghan Insurgents Launch Brazen Spring Offensive

By DION NISSENBAUM And HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL

KABUL—Taliban insurgents staged a brazen series of attacks in the Afghan capital and across the country Sunday, launching the annual spring offensive and demonstrating their ability to strike the most secure of targets.

The attacks on foreign embassies, the Afghan parliament and military bases unfolded in rapid succession in Kabul as Afghans rushed for shelter and the U.S. Embassy's "duck and cover" alarm echoed through the diplomatic neighborhood that appeared to be the hardest hit.

Insurgents armed with suicide vests, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns commandeered high-rise construction sites in three locations across the capital to stage attacks that lasted for hours, with gunfire continuing after nightfall.

As the militants stormed the Kabul buildings, insurgents in three other provinces staged near simultaneous attacks on U.S. military bases and Afghan government compounds.

Considering the intensity of the assaults, the coordinated attacks caused relatively few casualties. At least 14 Afghan police officers and 27 Afghan civilians were injured by the gunfire and explosions, according to Afghan officials, but there were no immediate reports of civilian fatalities caused by the attack.

At least 19 insurgents were killed and at least a dozen other suspects were captured, according to Afghan officials.

"I am enormously proud of how quickly Afghan security forces responded to today's attacks in Kabul," said coalition commander U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen. "They were on scene immediately, well led and well coordinated. They integrated their efforts, helped protect their fellow citizens and largely kept the insurgents contained."

Not all Afghans, however, saw the Afghan response as a success, especially as much of the capital city remained paralyzed by the violence.

Wazhma Frogh, a women's activist and executive director of a new think tank called the Research Institute for Women, Peace and Security, said Afghan police recklessly fired over the heads of civilians to disperse people in the early minutes of the attack.

"I could feel the heat, the fire of the bullets whizzing over my head," said Ms. Frogh, who heard Afghan police officers at checkpoints joking about where to hide as the attack intensified. "Is this what transition is all about?" she asked.

While the Taliban took responsibility for Sunday's violence, Western officials in Kabul said that the coordinated strikes were most likely the work of the Haqqani network, an autonomous part of the Taliban movement that has been accused of staging the most devastating attacks on the Afghan capital in recent years.

"My guess, based on previous experience here is that this was [the] Haqqani-network operation out of North Waziristan and Pakistan tribal areas," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said on CNN.

The most serious attack in the capital targeted the city's diplomatic quarter where militants commandeered an unfinished, seven-story, high-rise overlooking U.S. military bases and a series of embassies.

From the building, cloaked in green screen sheeting providing perfect concealment, insurgents fired rockets that exploded outside the British and Canadian embassies. They kept Afghan officials at bay for hours by wounding the occasional police officer with well-placed sniper shots.

Abandoned strawberry and apple carts were left in the streets below the high-rise. Shattered cars and an SUV with its doors flung open sat on the road.

On the other side of town, insurgents stormed another construction site and started firing on the Afghan parliament compound and nearby the Russian Embassy.

At least two lawmakers, including the deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament, grabbed machine guns, climbed to the roof of the building as they tried to repel the attack.

"If they are attacking the house of the nation I have to fight them," said Lalai Hamidzai, one of the two lawmakers who fought off the attack. "We are representatives of the nation. It is the obligation of every Afghan to fight the war against terror."

By early evening, it remained unclear if the fighting was over. There were reports of continued gunfire near the parliament and on the outskirts of Kabul, where insurgents staged their third attack on the capital.

As the attack began in the early afternoon, one witness reported seeing six attackers enter a building under construction across from a military base, and then start firing into the compound from the building's upper floors. An Afghan army soldier reported seeing smoke rising from the base.

The attacks were the most serious acts violence in the Afghan capital since September, when insurgents also used a high-rise construction site to target the U.S. Embassy and U.S.-led military coalition headquarters in a 19-hour attack.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said that its staff were on lockdown as the attacks unfolded and that all of its personnel were accounted for and unhurt.

Afghan officials also reported attacks in at least three other cities: Jalalabad, the main city of eastern Afghanistan, and the capitals of Paktia and Logar provinces south of Kabul.

In Jalalabad, suicide bombers staged two attacks aimed at the U.S. military: In one, Afghan forces targeted an SUV with four suicide bombers near the military airport, detonating the vehicle before it could cause more serious damage. A second targeted Forward Operating Base Fenty, causing some coalition and Afghan casualties, according to a Western official in Kabul.

In Logar, officials said four suicide bombers hit a school and four more targeted a U.S. military base.

—David Kaelin and Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.
Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

Attacks in Afghan capital have subsided, say officials

Heavy fighting in Kabul has ended after 18 hours of gunfire, according to govenrment officials and police

Reuters in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 April 2012 05.38 BST


A Nato helicopter flies over the site of an attack in Jalalabad province, Kabul. Photograph: Parwiz/Reuters

Heavy street fighting between militants and security forces in the centre of the Afghan capital Kabul ended on Monday after 18 hours of intense gunfire, rocket attacks and explosions, police and government officials said.

Battles which broke out at midday on Sunday gripped the capital's central districts through the night, with explosions and gunfire lighting up alleys and surrounding streets.

"The latest information we have about the Afghan Parliament area is that the attack is over now and the only insurgent who was resisting has been killed," said the Kabul police chief's spokesman Hashmatullah Stanikzai.

The fighting at the parliament in the west of the city was the only pocket where militants were still resisting security forces. Earlier, at daybreak, security forces flushed out militants holed up near embassies in the heavily guarded diplomatic area.

Nato helicopters had launched strafing attack runs on gunmen hiding in a construction site overlooking the Nato headquarters and several embassies, including the British and German missions.

Elite soldiers scaled scaffolding to outflank the insurgents, who appeared to have dug them themselves in on the second floor from the top of the construction site. Bullets ricocheted off walls, sending up clouds of brick dust.

"I could not sleep because of all this gunfire now. It's been the whole night," said local resident Hamdullah.

The assault by the insurgents, which began with attacks on embassies, a supermarket, a hotel and the parliament, is one of the most serious on the capital since US-backed Afghan forces removed the Taliban from power in 2001.

The Taliban said in a statement that heavy gunbattles were continuing in Logar province.

The attacks highlighted the ability of militants to strike the diplomatic zone of the city even after more than 10 years of war.

The Ministry of Interior said 19 insurgents, including suicide bombers, had died in the attacks in Kabul and in at least three provinces and two were captured. Fourteen police officers and nine civilians were wounded.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks, but some officials said the Haqqanis, a network of tribal militants who live along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, were likely involved.

"My guess, based on previous experience here, is this is a set of Haqqani network operations out of north Waziristan and the Pakistani tribal areas," American Ambassador Ryan Crocker told CNN.

"Frankly I don't think the Taliban is good enough."

The attacks were another election-year setback in Afghanistan for US President Barack Obama, who wants to present the campaign against the Taliban as a success before the departure of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

"These attacks are the beginning of the spring offensive and we had planned them for months," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters.

He said the onslaught was revenge for a series of incidents involving American troops in Afghanistan - including the burning of Korans at a Nato base and the massacre of 17 civilians by a US soldier - and vowed that there would be more such attacks.

The Taliban said on Sunday the main targets were the German and British embassies and the headquarters of the Nato-led force. Several Afghan members of parliament joined security forces repelling attackers from a roof near the parliament.

The attacks in Kabul come a month before a Nato summit at which the United States and its allies are supposed to put finishing touches on plans for the transition to Afghan security control, and days before a meeting of defence and foreign ministers in Brussels to prepare for the alliance's summit in Chicago.

They also come in the run-up to Western forces leaving Afghanistan under a plan to hand over responsibilities to the Afghan forces by 2014.

Afghan security forces apparently failed to learn lessons from a similar operation in Kabul last September, when insurgents entered construction sites to use them as positions for rocket and gun attacks.

On Sunday, insurgents entered a multi-storey construction site overlooking the diplomatic triangle and behind a supermarket. There they unleashed rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire, protected from the view of security forces by green protective netting wrapped around the skeleton of the building.

Hours earlier in neighbouring Pakistan, dozens of Islamist militants had stormed a prison in the dead of night and freed nearly 400 inmates, including one on death row for trying to assassinate former President Pervez Musharraf.

[buglerbilly]

Kabul Attack May Spark US-Pakistan Tension

April 16, 2012

Associated Press|by Sebastian Abbot

ISLAMABAD -- A brazen, 18-hour attack allegedly carried out by Pakistan-based militants on targets in the Afghan capital, including the U.S. Embassy, could spark fresh tension between Washington and Islamabad just as they seemed to be patching up their vital but troubled relationship.

The attack, which ended early Monday, will likely re-ignite anger in Washington over Pakistan's unwillingness to crack down on militants using its territory as a base to target neighboring Afghanistan. But the Obama administration must weigh the impact any public criticism of Pakistan may have on the country's cooperation with it in other areas, including getting supplies to troops in Afghanistan and negotiating peace with insurgents there.

The potential flashpoint comes days after Pakistan's parliament finally approved new guidelines for the country in its relationship with the U.S., a decision that Washington hopes will pave the way for the reopening of supply lines to NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistan closed its border crossings to NATO supplies in November in retaliation for American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. It has taken the government months to navigate the delicate path of resuscitating ties with the U.S., a difficult process in a country where anti-American sentiment is rampant.

Afghan officials on Monday said a gunman arrested in the attacks told authorities the simultaneous strikes in Kabul and three other cities were carried out by the Haqqani network, a militant group allegedly linked to Pakistan's spy agency. The attacks killed 11 people -- eight members of the Afghan security forces and three civilians. Thirty-six insurgents were also killed.

The attacks were the most widespread in Kabul since an assault on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters last September also blamed on the Haqqani network. U.S. officials accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, of helping with that attack, sparking outrage in Islamabad.

An ISI official said Monday that claims the Haqqani network was behind the latest attacks were "nothing but accusations."

"We have no idea who carried out these attacks," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. "Whenever something happens, blame is always laid on our doorstep."

If the role of the Haqqani network is confirmed, it could place the Obama administration in a tricky position. It could face pressure from Congress and Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney to criticize Pakistan. But the U.S. wants Islamabad to reopen the NATO supply lines, and the country's help is seen as key to negotiating a peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The relationship is further complicated by Pakistani opposition to U.S. drone strikes targeting the Haqqani network and other militants along the border. Pakistan's parliament has demanded the attacks stop, but the U.S. has refused to comply.

Pakistan's army, which is considered the most powerful player in the country, has its own incentive to patch up ties: getting American military aid flowing to the country again. The U.S. has given Pakistan billions of dollars in military aid over the past decade, but flows have largely been frozen since the middle of last year after Osama bin Laden was found hiding in a Pakistani garrison town.

The U.S. has not found evidence that senior Pakistani officials knew the whereabouts of the slain al-Qaida chief, but his discovery fueled anger over Pakistan's alleged ties to Islamist militants.

Washington has long demanded that Pakistan target Taliban militants and their allies in the Haqqani network who are using Pakistani territory to launch cross-border attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.

Islamabad has refused, claiming its forces are stretched too thin fighting domestic militants seeking to topple the Pakistani government. But most analysts believe Pakistan is reluctant to crack down on groups with which it has long-standing ties because they could serve as key allies in Afghanistan after foreign troops withdraw, especially to counter the influence of its archenemy India.

The top U.S. military official at the time of last September's attack in Kabul, now-retired Adm. Mike Mullen, said the Haqqani network "acts as a veritable arm" of Pakistan's spy agency. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs accused Pakistan of supporting and encouraging the attack, which killed 16 Afghans, as well as a massive truck bombing that also occurred in September at a military base in Wardak, Afghanistan, that wounded 77 American soldiers.

Islamabad angrily denied the accusations.

The Pakistani government's ties to the Haqqani network date back to the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Pakistani and U.S. spy agencies supported the group's founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, in his fight against the Soviets. His group has since become the most feared militant faction battling U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

One of the militants arrested during the latest attacks in Kabul and three other cities has told authorities that the Haqqani network was behind the assaults, Afghan Interior Minister Besmillah Mohammadi said Monday.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid had previously claimed responsibility for the attacks, a common practice for assaults believed to be carried out by the Haqqani network. The groups are closely linked, and Haqqani militants pledge allegiance to Taliban chief Mullah Omar.

A spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, said they were still trying to determine who carried out the attacks.

"A Haqqani connection is a possibility, but still too early to determine for sure," Cummings said.

-- Associated Press writers Chris Brummitt in Islamabad and Rahim Faiez and Deb Riechmann contributed to this report from Kabul, Afghanistan.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban Attack Pakistan Prison, Free 380 Prisoners

April 16, 2012

Associated Press|by Ishtiaq Mahsud

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan -- Taliban militants armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades battled their way into a prison in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, freeing close to 400 prisoners, including at least 20 described by police as "very dangerous" insurgents, authorities and the militants said.

The raid by more than 100 fighters was a dramatic display of the strength of the insurgency gripping the nuclear-armed country. The escaped prisoners may now rejoin the fight, giving momentum and a propaganda boost to a movement that has killed thousands of Pakistani officials and ordinary citizens since 2007.

The attackers stormed the prison before dawn in the city of Bannu in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province close to the Afghan border, said police officer Shafique Khan. They used explosives and hand grenades to knock down the main gates and two walls, said Bannu prison superintendent Zahid Khan.

"They were carrying modern and heavy weapons," said Zahid Khan. "They fired rockets."

Once inside the building, the attackers headed straight to the area of the prison where death-row prisoners were being kept, he said. They fought with guards for around two hours, setting part of the prison on fire before freeing the 380 inmates, including at least 20 "very dangerous Taliban militants," said Shafique.

Provincial police chief Akbar Hoti said authorities suspected the militants may have had inside help from prison officials.

"I think the officials did not respond as they could have," Hoti told reporters. "It is also suspicious how the attackers could have exact information about their comrades."

The militants coordinated with each other using radio handsets as they freed their colleagues in different parts of the prison, said one of the prisoners who did not escape, Amanullah Khan.

"They had hammers to break the locks and doors," he said. "They shot at locks when they failed to break them open."

The militants shouted "God is great" and "Long live the Taliban" when they freed Adnan Rashid, who was on death row for his involvement in an assassination attempt against former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, said Amanullah Khan. They honored him by placing a turban on his head, he said.

The prison in Bannu housed 944 inmates. The government used the prison as the main facility to detain scores of Taliban militants arrested in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said provincial minister Bashir Bilour.

"They have previously been in separate prisons, but for some time they have been shifted to this prison," said Bilour.

He did not know exactly how many militants were released by the attackers.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Asimullah Mehsud claimed nearly 150 militants were freed and made it safely to Mir Ali, a town in the North Waziristan tribal area, the group's main sanctuary. Militants beat drums to welcome them when they arrived, he said.

Pakistan's military has launched a series of operations against the Pakistani Taliban, which has forged alliances with al-Qaida and other transnational militant movements based along the Afghan border. The movement is closely linked to the Afghan Taliban, which is battling U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Soldiers and police have killed or arrested hundreds of militants, but the insurgency has proved resilient. Insurgents have carried out suicide bombings and other attacks across the country in retaliation, raising doubts in some quarters over whether the county can survive. Prison breakouts like the one Sunday have been rare.

-- Associated Press writer Asif Shahzad contributed to this report from Islamabad.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Karzai Blames NATO Intel Failure for Afghan Attacks

April 16, 2012

Deutsche Presse-Agentur|by Subel Bhandari and Hares Kakar

KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday said the coordinated Taliban attacks in Kabul and three other cities were an intelligence failure for his government and the NATO forces.

At least 47 people including 36 suspected militants were killed in the assault by Taliban insurgents that ended early Monday, according to officials.

"This is an intelligence failure for us and especially for the NATO that need to be seriously investigated," Karzai was quoted as saying in a statement released by his palace.

The attacks left three civilians and eight troops dead, Interior Minister Bismillah Mohammadi told a press conference.

"Forty [members of the] security forces and 25 civilians were injured in the attacks," he added.

In Kabul, an estimated 16 rebel fighters took up positions in buildings under construction late Sunday after passing checkpoints to the city wearing burqas, concealing robes normally worn by women.

"We have their burqas in the cars they travelled in. They even put a bundle of flowers in their car to show that they are going to a ceremony," he said.

In the western part of the city, they fired at the parliament building. Some legislators participated in returning fire.

In eastern Kabul, a military training academy and Turkish army base came under attack.

In the city centre, the rebals launched an assault on the Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood, a highly secured diplomatic enclave that hosts several embassies including those of Germany, Britain, Turkey and Iran, along with the presidential palace and a US military camp.

Gunfire and explosions were heard throughout the night as the insurgents holed up, until the NATO-led coalition provided air support early Monday.

Simultaneously with the Kabul attacks, insurgents opened fire in Jalalabad in the eastern province of Nangarhar, the city of Gardez in Paktia province, 100 kilometres south of Kabul, and Logar, just south of the capital.

All attacks started with gunfire, followed by explosions and a gunbattle with security forces that lasted several hours.

No international troops were reported killed in the incidents, said Captain Justin Brockhoff, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Another ISAF official said some foreign soldiers had been injured in clashes outside Kabul.

On Sunday, shortly after the assault started, police said they found and detonated a vehicle full of explosives near the parliament building.

Intelligence agents also arrested two suspected suicide bombers and their coordinator just after the attacks began who admitted they were in Kabul to target Vice President Karim Khalili.

Another suspect arrested in Jalalabad told police he was from Pakistan, Interior Minister Mohammadi said.

"They got the training there and equipment. He said they were a part of the Haqqani network and has confessed," he said.

The Haqqani network, thought to be based in the tribal areas in Pakisan along the Afghan border, has launched high-profile attacks against Afghan officials and foreign targets.

Mohammadi accused the Taliban of trying to sabotage the handover of security responsibility from international to Afghan forces, and an upcoming NATO summit in Chicago.

At the summit, the United States and other countries involved in Afghanistan are to discuss the plan for supporting the country after 2014, the date set for the withdrawal of international troops.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the Chicago meeting would go ahead as planned, and condemned the violence. "The UN remains committed to support the efforts of the (Afghan) government to consolidate peace and democracy," he said in Brussels.

NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu praised the prompt and effective reaction by Afghan security forces.

"These attacks were planned, coordinated and they grabbed the headlines, (but) they did not cause mass casualties and we have the Afghan forces to thank for that," she said in Brussels.

Karzai said the Afghan troops have given the people "confidence that they can successfully defend their soil."

The Taliban said the attacks were the beginning of their spring offensive. A German Defence Ministry spokesman rejected the claim as "an empty propaganda phrase," calling the attacks as "limited terrorist operations."

Coordinated attacks of this magnitude have not taken place in Kabul since September, when Taliban insurgents targeted the highly fortified US embassy and NATO headquarters.

The ensuing gunbattles lasted more than 20 hours, and left at least 25 civilians dead.

© Copyright 2012 Deutsche Presse-Agentur. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

GIs Leery About Taliban Defectors Who Wanted Them Dead

April 16, 2012

Stars and Stripes|by Matt Millham



COMBAT OUTPOST MONTI, Afghanistan -- It's widely assumed by the soldiers of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, that Massoud killed two of their buddies.

But Capt. Michael Kolton, 29, the company's commander, won't ask the former insurgent leader about it.

"I don't want to know the answer."

Less than a week after a roadside bomb killed two of Kolton's men in July, Massoud showed up at his austere mountain base after dark and sat down for tea. The clandestine encounter, one of many Kolton says he had with militants in northern Kunar, set the ball rolling for Massoud's defection from the insurgency -- along with 100 of his fighters -- in February.

At first, the decision to look past Massoud's presumed transgressions and pave the way for his reconciliation with the Afghan government didn't go over well with the company's men.

"That's a hard thing for an individual soldier to forgive," said 1st Lt. Andrew Ferrara, 23, a platoon leader from Torrance, Calif., who has no doubts about the blood on Massoud's hands. "But that's what reconciliation is."

"You just sit back and realize that, hey, that guy could kill a whole lot more of our dudes, but now he wants to be on the side that he sees progress being made."

Amid firefights in the zigzag valleys and dizzying peaks of the Hindu Kush, Company B over the last year undertook a campaign of reconciliation to drain the local insurgency of personnel and render villages inhospitable to Pakistani militants crossing the border.

Those efforts, which can mean a free pass for fighters who killed or wounded U.S. troops, did almost as much to degrade the insurgency in this stretch of Kunar as did bombs and bullets, according to Kolton, whose unit redeployed from Kunar province two weeks ago.

While his company killed at least 300 fighters in last year's fighting season -- mostly foreign militants who trekked over high, rocky passes from nearby Pakistan -- it also brokered peace between scores of local militants and the Afghan government.

Along with the local fighters came their villages, former insurgent havens used to stage attacks and harbor foreign fighters.

Those developments have brought some peace of mind to Ferrara, whose feelings about the success or failure of the U.S. campaign here are deeply personal.

"One of my siblings was killed 10 miles from here. Literally 10 miles that way," he said, pointing over the snow-covered ridge looming over Monti to the west.

"I'm not angry about it. But it would make me angry to see no progress, to make me think that he died in vain."

Ferrara was a sophomore at West Point when his brother Matthew, also a first lieutenant, was killed in Aranas in neighboring Nuristan province in November 2007. Many believe Matthew was targeted in retaliation for his actions days earlier, when his platoon repelled a swarm of insurgents attacking their outpost, then tracked down their leader and killed him.

Ferrara admits he once harbored fantasies of finding the men who killed his brother, bringing the cycle of vengeance around another turn.

"But as I matured at the academy and understand a little bit more about the war, I understood that that's not a rational way to think, nor is it even an appropriate way."

Instead, he used his brother's death as a tool. If he suspected that militants were in a meeting, he went out of his way to mention it, he said, because many fight out of a sense of vengeance for the deaths of family members.

So he told them: "You guys have families, and you're upset when people get killed in your family. I'm upset also, but I'm here to continue to help."

Not everyone bought into that logic.

U.S. Special Forces and Afghan commandos raided the Dab Valley, a stony notch a few miles north of Combat Outpost Monti, in 2007, killing the entire family of one insurgent leader and most of another's, Kolton said.

Five years later, their hatred for Americans and the Afghan government still boils.

"How do you reconcile someone that has a personal hatred against everything that you stand for?"

He doesn't have the answer.

But his success with Massoud, and with two senior militants in Jalala, a former insurgent stronghold now home to an Afghan army outpost, makes him believe it's possible, and he continued reaching out to militants in the Dab until he left.

He admits, though, that his clandestine talks with insurgent leaders, usually done without Afghan forces or their government knowing, are not the only reason fighters in northern Kunar engaged in talks.

Four months before militants in Jalala began to turn, Company B took a nearby mountain in a violent assault that left as many as 200 insurgents dead. Local and out-of-area fighters used the mountaintop, now occupied by Afghan army forces, to command and control attacks up and down the Kunar River valley.

Staff Sgt. Anthony Fuentes, a 27-year-old platoon sergeant from Jackson, Calif., said the success of that operation drained support for the insurgency in this stretch of the upper Kunar Valley.

"They operate off of successes, so when they have a big success, it's easy to recruit people," he said. "But if you're constantly losing, it's hard to get good people to come work for you."

However, the flow of fighters continues from Pakistan, which supplies most of the men and materiel to the fight in the region. Despite gains with the local insurgency, heavy fighting is expected to resume here in spring.

"We know that there's significant numbers of Taliban all up and down the Pakistan border in this region," said Sgt. Jeffrey Mitchell, a 29-year-old fire support noncommissioned officer from Arlington, Wash.

"I don't think that we're going to break their numbers, because so long as they've got influence in those small villages, then they're still going to have a pool to draw from for their next group of guys to send out."

But last year's shelling of border villages by Pakistani army artillery created an opening for U.S. forces here to begin tamping down support for the insurgency, Kolton said.

After months of backdoor and public meetings, he called tribal elders from the border -- all members of the Mahmund tribe -- to talk at his outpost in February.

Two days later, Mahmund elders met Kolton again in private, suggesting they could meet his demand to enroll 150 fighters in the Afghan peace and reintegration program in return for development. That number is roughly half what the Americans suspect the tribe contributes to the insurgency in Kunar's Shegal and Dangam districts.

"The recipe for success here is not that difficult," Kolton said. "It just requires someone that gives a [expletive]."

He acknowledges the emotional toll that recipe can take on U.S. forces who have lost friends in combat, but if those feelings aren't checked, he said, the gunfights won't stop.

"If you're here to kill people that do bad things, then you're going to be sadly disappointed when you realize that there's no end to it."

Photo: Matt Millham/Stars and Stripes

[buglerbilly]

Officials: Attacks Show Haqqani's Growth

April 17, 2012

UPI

Military and intelligence officials said the sophistication of the coordinated attacks in Kabul, Afghanistan, show a troubling growth of the Haqqani network.

While praising Afghan security forces' response and downplaying Sunday's attacks on targets throughout Kabul, Western officials said privately they agreed with President Hamid Karzai's comments that the attacks were an "intelligence failure for us, and especially NATO," The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The officials said the operation raises two key questions: whether militants can now mount such bold assaults more frequently and whether the Afghan government would be able to thwart such plots after 2014 when Western troops withdrawal and access to allied intelligence assistance is limited.

"It certainly seems there's some kind of gap in intelligence collection or in sifting through the volume of what's collected," John Wood, an associate professor at the National Defense University, told the Times. Wood also was senior director for Afghanistan on the National Security Council in the Bush and Obama administrations.

The attacks by the Haqqani network demonstrated the Taliban offshoot can create a system of logistical support and planning necessary to mount actions below the radar of intelligence groups focused on it, officials told the Times.

While Afghan officials said they think Sunday's attacks originated in Pakistan, where Haqqani leaders hide, U.S. officials said they didn't trace the origin of the attack to Afghanistan's neighbor.

"Though the evidence leads us to believe that the Haqqani network was involved in this, it doesn't lead back into Pakistan at this time," Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Washington.

While Karzai blamed the failure to detect the operation mainly on NATO, Afghan lawmakers also directed blame at Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security.

"There is a big question mark: How did they manage to bring all these weapons and all this ammunition and rockets and keep it here in the vicinity of the sensitive installation of Afghan government and international community?" asked Fatima Aziz, a Kunduz lawmaker and internal security committee member.

© Copyright 2012 UPI. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Australian Troops to Exit Early From Afghanistan

April 17, 2012

Associated Press|by Kristen Gelineau

SYDNEY - Australia expects to pull most its troops out of Afghanistan nearly a year earlier than planned, the prime minister announced Tuesday, saying Australian soldiers have nearly completed their mission to transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces in the decade-long war.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard cited security improvements and the death of Osama bin Laden and many of al-Qaida's senior leaders among the reasons behind the accelerated withdrawal, which will likely see most troops home by the end of 2013. But one opposition lawmaker suggested the strategy was an attempt by Gillard to win over war-weary voters ahead of federal elections.

"This is a war with a purpose. This is a war with an end," Gillard said in a speech to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra. "We have a strategy, a mission and a timeframe for achieving it."

Australia has 1,550 troops in Afghanistan, the largest force provided by any country outside NATO. The soldiers' primary objective has been training an Afghan National Army brigade to take responsibility for security in Uruzgan province.

Australia had originally planned to withdraw its soldiers by the end of 2014, though Gillard had hinted at an early exit in November when she said the troops' mission could be finished before then. The U.S. plans to withdraw all of its combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Gillard said she expects Afghan President Hamid Karzai to announce in the next few months the transition of security responsibilities to Afghan forces in Uruzgan and other provinces. Once that process starts, it will take 12 to 18 months to complete. Based on that timeframe, most of Australia's troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2013.

Still, Gillard declined to give a specific date for the conclusion of the withdrawal, saying the start of the process is dependent upon Karzai's announcement.

"When this is complete, Australia's commitment in Afghanistan will look very different to that which we have today," Gillard said. "We will have completed our training and mentoring mission. ... And the majority of our troops will have returned home."

Australia will consider keeping some special forces soldiers in Afghanistan beyond 2014, and will help fund the ongoing costs of Afghan security forces, Gillard said. The prime minister said she and Karzai will sign a partnership agreement at a meeting of NATO nations' leaders in Chicago next month.

"Australia has an enduring national interest in ensuring that Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for terrorists," Gillard said.

Australia's military deployment in Afghanistan maintains bipartisan political support, but opinion polls show the popularity of the commitment among the Australian public has plummeted amid the rising the death toll. Thirty-two Australian soldiers have been killed in the conflict.

Australia's federal elections are due next year, and one of Gillard's political foes suggested the early withdrawal was an attempt by the prime minister to boost support for her unpopular Labor Party.

"It would be a shameful thing if, after nearly 12 years of deployment in Afghanistan and the loss of more than 30 Australian lives, this mission was foreshortened for reasons of domestic political convenience for the Labor Party rather than on the basis of the advice of the military commanders in the field," opposition Senator George Brandis told Sky News ahead of Gillard's announcement.

But opposition leader Tony Abbott signaled support for the early withdrawal, telling reporters in Melbourne he had no reason to believe "it shouldn't be possible to finish the job sooner rather than later."

Citing the deaths of Australian soldiers in the conflict Abbott said, "We want to make sure that sacrifice has been worthwhile and that will happen if our troops come home soon with their mission accomplished."

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press.

[Milne Bay]

Does anyone actually believe that the departure of foreign troops from Afghanistan, will see the Afghan Forces successfully securing the country?
Does anyone actually believe that:
".................................................. ...... Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for terrorists,"

What we do actually believe is that

Australia's federal elections are due next year ...........

Join the dots ....................

[Redcoat]

One word springs to mind VIETNAMISATION

[ARH v.3.1]

I don't see the Afghan government securing the country, but they will be able to provide a good enough job so that they will be largely the only ones affected by the situation. Ultimately all they have to do is not collaborate with the terrorists, like the Taliban did, and be a moderate pain in the arse for anyone looking to set up a safe haven in the country.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. assistance to Pakistan buys little goodwill


Khalid Tanveer/AP - In this May 9, 2011, photo, supporters of Pakistan's Muslim League burn a representation of the US flag during an anti American demonstration in Multan, Pakistan.

By Michele Langevine Leiby, Wednesday, April 18, 7:07 AM

ISLAMABAD — As American search-and-rescue experts headed to the punishing heights of a Himalayan glacier to help locate Pakistani soldiers missing after an avalanche near the India-Pakistan border, Pakistan’s Parliament readied new demands that America butt out of its affairs.

Last week Parliament approved guidelines on the “terms of engagement” between the allies, including calling for an end to CIA drone strikes, an apology for errant U.S. air attacks that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, a ban on intelligence operatives and an end to any other perceived incursions on Pakistan’s sovereignty.

In recent years, no matter how much money the United States gives Pakistan — and in fiscal 2010 it was the No. 2-ranked recipient of military and economic assistance behind Afghanistan — the average Pakistani eyes U.S. motivations with extreme skepticism.

“Any goodwill generated by U.S. aid is offset by widespread anti-American sentiment among the Pakistani people,” says a report released last week by the Congressional Research Service.

And Pakistanis are not the only ones exhibiting leeriness: After Osama bin Laden was discovered hiding in plain sight for years not far from Pakistan’s primary military academy, Americans questioned more harshly whether Pakistan was a reliable ally in the decade-old war on terror.

Yet U.S. assistance to Pakistan has continued. This was the case when a U.S. search team was deployed almost immediately to the Siachen Glacier where 135 Pakistani troops and civilians were buried in an avalanche this month in the remote, militarized border region in Kashmir, which both Pakistan and India claim.

The United States also has responded to other natural disasters in Pakistan, notably the 2005 earthquakes that displaced millions and the catastrophic flooding of 2010. It is historically the largest foreign donor to Pakistan, according to Shuja Nawaz, the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center director.

But there’s one problem: “Money can’t buy you love,” he said. “If you insist that people love you because you are helping them, you end up creating the opposite effect.”

“In the U.S. we need to stop looking at aid as a way of winning the hearts and minds in the short run,” said Nawaz, a Pakistani-born political and strategic analyst. “What the U.S. really needs to do is separate the assistance from its political goals.”

Successive Pakistani governments have used anti-Americanism to forward their own political agendas. It is now widely felt in Pakistan that U.S. policymakers believe the country should do America’s bidding in exchange for aid. Pakistani politicians sometimes invoke the image of their country holding out the beggar bowl, a posture that diminishes its autonomy.

It is large, visible aid projects — such as dams to generate power in a country plagued by daily electrical outages — that have the most positive impact on public perception, development experts say.

But even a huge outlay of humanitarian dollars may not help make America look good, says the new report to Congress: “Some evidence suggests that even Pakistanis who benefited from U.S.-funded aid organizations after the catastrophic mid-2010 floods did not change their views of the United States — an increasingly negative view has persisted even after the provision of more than $700 million in related humanitarian assistance.”

In 2011, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan began requiring that the American flag be added to the USAID logo so that recipients would know the source of assistance, the report notes. But aid workers objected, fearing that such branding could lead to militant attacks.

Anti-American sentiment related to “perceived gross sovereignty violations,” including the raid that killed bin Laden, has forced the U.S. to minimize its “footprint” when providing aid, particularly in the northwestern tribal region, according to the report.

“This has meant that some projects are conducted in ways similar to covert operations under the cover of Pakistani government agencies,” the report says, noting that “public diplomacy gains can be sacrificed when aid beneficiaries are unaware of the origin of the assistance they are receiving.”

Still, as both countries work to normalize their contentious relationship, there is no indication that the United States plans to change its approach to assistance to Pakistan.

“This isn’t about politics or policy. It’s about helping people in need,” said U.S. Embassy spokesman Mark Stroh. “That’s what Americans do, anywhere in the world, wherever we can.”

[buglerbilly]

April 20, 2012

Of Enemy Dead and Cameras

By Mark Thompson

The guys over at the Long War Journal have an interesting take on the latest batch of photos showing U.S. troops posing with dead insurgents in Afghanistan:


…if you’re an editor who is going to vault these pictures to the top of the news cycle, don’t dwell overlong on the failings of a few US soldiers – gratuitously show it all, the whole stench and panoply of devastation wreaked by war, including actions by an enemy not bound by any rules of engagement. Because when folks in the United States are shocked that the behavior in the photos exists, it means either that the media is falling down on the job, or that some folks simply aren’t paying attention. Probably both. Perhaps the occasional cable news cycle featuring a recoilless rifle round tearing up a bound Afghan policeman, or the mass execution of captured Pakistani policemen, would change that.

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/#ixzz1sdL5SZN5

[buglerbilly]

April 21, 2012, 1:46 p.m. ET.

Afghans Say They Stopped a Planned Terrorist Attack

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan—Afghan security forces have arrested five militants with 22,000 pounds of explosives that they smuggled in from Pakistan to carry out a massive attack in Kabul, as well as another three suspects allegedly planning to assassinate the vice president, an official said Saturday.

The reports of new planned attacks in the Afghan capital came a week after militants said to be part of the Pakistan-based Haqqani group launched coordinated assaults in the heart of Kabul and in three other cities.

U.S. officials say they have stepped up pressure on Islamabad to crack down on the Haqqanis, who specializes in high-profile strikes against well-protected targets.

Three of the five men arrested with the explosives were members of the Pakistani Taliban, while the other two belonged to the Afghan Taliban, National Director for Security spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiry told reporters. He said the men's orders came from militant leaders with ties to Pakistani intelligence. He didn't say when the arrests took place, nor what their intended target was.

Mr. Tahiry said the seized explosives were packed in 400 bags and hidden under potatoes loaded in a truck with Pakistani license plates.

The men confessed that they "had planned to carry out a terrorist attack in a key point in Kabul city," he said.

Mr. Tahiry provided a DVD showing images of the truck and the recorded confessions of the men, but didn't provide other proof to back up the claims.

He said that the three Pakistani members of the group picked up the explosives just outside the Pakistani city of Peshawar, and were under the orders of two local Taliban leaders named Noor Afzal and Mohammad Omar, who Tahiry said had ties with the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI.

Mr. Tahiry also said that security forces had foiled an assassination attempt by the Haqqani network against Afghan Vice President Mohammed Karim Khalili.

He said three Afghan men arrested on April 15, the day the Kabul attacks began, planned to kill Mr. Khalili at his home. They were equipped with suicide vests and small arms.

According to Mr. Tahiry, the order to kill Mr. Khalili was issued in Miram Shah by Haqqani network commander Badruddin Haqqani, the son of the group's founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani. Last May, the U.S. designated Mr. Badruddin a terrorist.

Afghan officials often blame Pakistan and the ISI for supporting militant groups—including the Haqqani network—in the country's lawless areas along the Afghan border. The Pakistani government has vehemently denied any such claims.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan and US agree on strategic partnership document

A spokesman for the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said a deal has been reached, subject to final consultation

Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 April 2012 13.19 BST


Hamid Karzai delivers a speech in Kabul, where he demanded that the US write a funding pledge for a stated amount into the agreement. Photograph: Ahmad Massoud/Xinhua Press/Corbis

Afghanistan and the United States have agreed the contents of a long-awaited deal to define their relationship after most foreign troops leave at the end of 2014, although the document sidesteps some of the thorniest questions about the US military presence.

Negotiations on the strategic partnership deal have dragged on for over a year, initially held up by two demands from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, that he said were critical to restoring national sovereignty: Afghan control of jails and an end to night raids on Afghan homes.

Western officials argued for months that the first demand was not practical and the second could undermine the military effort, but they eventually agreed compromises on both.

The main US prison is now in the middle of a six-month handover, and Afghan forces have taken control of night raids, under two separate agreements signed within a month of each other, paving the way for the strategic partnership deal.

"Today Afghanistan and the US initialled and locked the text of the strategic partnership agreement," said Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi. "This means the text is closed, and both sides will now review the document and do a final consultation. In the US it will go to the houses of Congress and the president; in Afghanistan the president will consult with national leaders plus both houses of parliament."

Both sides agreed to set aside difficult questions about long-term US access to military bases and the status of any US forces that do stay on in Afghanistan. These issues will be negotiated in a separate deal some time before 2014.

Washington and its allies wanted to have the US-Afghan strategic partnership agreed before May, when a Nato conference in Chicago is expected to pledge long-term help to Kabul with finances and military training.

By opening the way for a smaller but longer-term US presence in Afghanistan, the agreement would give western leaders a rationale for supporting Kabul after combat troops are withdrawn in 2014.

It also aims to reassure Afghans that the west will not cut and run, and is critical to Afghanistan's financial stability. The World Bank forecasts the country will have a $7bn (£4.4bn) hole in its annual budget after 2014.

"We are expecting the signature some time before Chicago, although there is no date yet," Faizi said.

Earlier this week it looked as if the pact might have been thrown back into question when Karzai demanded that the US write a pledge for funding of the Afghan security forces into the document.

"They are providing us with money, there is no doubt about that. But they say they will not mention the amount in the agreement. We say: give us less, but mention it in the agreement. Give us less, but write it down," Karzai was reported by the Associated Press to have said in a speech in the capital commemorating a revered Afghan writer.

The international community has informally agreed to spend around $4bn a year supporting the Afghan police and army, with the bulk of that coming from the US, some from European allies and around $500m a year from the Afghan budget.

Karzai said he wanted a written commitment of at least $2bn, rather than a verbal promise of a higher figure, but the deal does not contain any firm figures. The US government was not available for comment.

[buglerbilly]

Army Probes Drug Use By Soldiers In Afghanistan

April 21, 2012

Associated Press|by Lolita C. Baldor



I'm quietly astonished drugs are not a bigger problem for the for the Forces as in troop use being far more widespread............we are in a major drug-producing centre of the World...........

The U.S. Army has investigated 56 soldiers in Afghanistan on suspicion of using or distributing heroin, morphine or other opiates during 2010 and 2011, newly obtained data shows. Eight soldiers died of drug overdoses during that time.

While the cases represent just a slice of possible drug use by U.S. troops in Afghanistan, they provide a somber snapshot of the illicit trade in the war zone, including young Afghans peddling heroin, soldiers dying after mixing cocktails of opiates, troops stealing from medical bags and Afghan soldiers and police dealing drugs to their U.S. comrades.

In a country awash with poppy fields that provide up to 90 percent of the world's opium, the U.S. military struggles to keep an eye on its far-flung troops and monitor for substance abuse.

But U.S. Army officials say that while the presence of such readily available opium - the raw ingredient for heroin - is a concern, opiate abuse has not been a pervasive problem for troops in Afghanistan.

"We have seen sporadic cases of it, but we do not see it as a widespread problem, and we have the means to check," said Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman.

The data represents only the criminal investigations done by Army Criminal Investigation Command involving soldiers in Afghanistan during those two years. The cases, therefore, are just a piece of the broader drug use statistics released by the Army earlier this year reporting nearly 70,000 drug offenses by roughly 36,000 soldiers between 2006-2011. The number of offenses increased from about 9,400 in 2010 to about 11,200 in 2011.

The overdose totals for the two years, however, are double the number that the Defense Department has reported as drug-related deaths in Afghanistan for the last decade. Defense officials suggested that additional deaths may have been categorized as "other" or were still under investigation when the statistics were submitted.

The data was requested by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch and obtained by The Associated Press. The Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps have not yet responded to the request for similar information. The Army reports blacked out the names of the soldiers who were under investigation as well any resolution of their cases or punishments they may have received.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said the numbers signal the need for the military leadership to be more vigilant about watching and warning troops in Afghanistan about drug abuse. He said the worry is that "the danger, including the danger of dying, hasn't been fully acknowledged by the military and it needs to be."

Army officials say they do random drug testing through the service and the goal is that every soldier is tested at least once a year. Top Army leaders have said they have not met that goal, but have been working steadily to substantially increase the number of those tested each year.

The officials also say the Army's Criminal Investigative Division has quarterly drug statistics that show that drug use by troops in Afghanistan is not greater than that of troops in installations back in the United States and there is less of a variance in drugs used by troops in Afghanistan.

According to Army data, an average of 1.38 million urine samples have been tested annually over the past five years, while an annual average of 106,000 soldiers were not tested at all. Officials said that regular testing is even more difficult in the war zone because the testing facilities are often far away.

The cases reflect a broad range of incidents, describing accidental overdoses as well as soldiers buying drugs from Afghan troops, stealing morphine from medical aid bags or, in some cases, taking steroids, using drugs prescribed to someone else or taking medications long after their prescriptions had expired.

In one overdose case, a member of the Kentucky National Guard was found dead of "acute heroin toxicity" at his Afghanistan base after a soldier, also in the Kentucky Guard, bought heroin from a civilian contractor and used it with him. The report found that he also had morphine and codeine in his system.

Others more often involved soldiers who were found dead and were later determined to have taken a mix of prescription and other opiate drugs.

The nonlethal cases range from a soldier failing a random drug test to more organized abuse.

In one case, seven members of the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division were found to have smoked hashish and/or ingested heroin numerous times, including some bought from members of the Afghan Army and police. The investigation found that one other brigade soldier acted as a lookout while others used the drugs.

Opium is a key revenue source in Afghanistan, both for the farmers and the insurgency, which can make money selling, transporting or processing the drugs. According to a U.N. report, revenue from opium production in Afghanistan soared by 133 percent in 2011, to about $1.4 billion, or about one-tenth of the country's GDP.

--

Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistani militant Hafiz Mohammad Saeed seeks protection from bounty hunters


FAISAL MAHMOOD/REUTERS - Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, waves to the media after a news conference in Rawalpindi near Islamabad April 4, 2012.

By Richard Leiby,

LAHORE, Pakistan — The United States has tied him to terrorist plots from Northern Virginia to Mumbai and has offered $10 million for information leading to his conviction, but Hafiz Mohammad Saeed knows his rights and where to exercise them: in the Lahore High Court, an ornate red-brick remnant of British rule.

The fiery founder of the outlawed Lashkar-i-Taiba, or Army of the Pious, petitioned the justices last week to protect him from U.S.-inspired bounty hunters, saying that Pakistan’s constitution grants him “security of person.” Saeed, 61, also asked the court to bar the Pakistani government from handing him over to U.S. officials — which isn’t expected to happen, anyway.

For Saeed, the court is friendly territory. It cleared him in 2009 of charges that he masterminded the attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, the year before. He was also exonerated by Pakistan’s Supreme Court, which declared that “the India lobby” ginned up the charges.

Saeed’s ability to evade U.S. and Indian calls for his arrest for almost four years can be attributed, observers say, to the dysfunction of Pakistan’s civilian and judicial institutions, which are nominally independent but subject to strong-arming by the powerful military.

Now the bounty on Saeed is playing into negotiations by the United States to restore its relationship with Pakistan, whose cooperation Washington needs to prosecute the war in Afghanistan and withdraw its troops.

The bounty announcement intensified the passionate anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. Many Pakistanis — from members of conservative religious parties to mainstream politicians — joined Saeed in decrying the bounty as a sop to historical adversary India and another example of U.S. meddling in sovereign affairs.

“Saeed appears to have gotten a public boost from it,” said American University professor Stephen Tankel, author of “Storming the World Stage,” a book about Lashkar-i-Taiba.

Before he was designated a top-tier terrorist in the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program this month, Saeed had irritated the United States with his vociferous campaign against the reopening of NATO supply routes through Pakistani territory; the routes were closed after U.S. airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.

Parliament recently approved the convoys, which are expected to resume shortly. Now Saeed has called for mass civil disobedience in which followers would use their bodies to block the trucks and oil tankers.

Among Pakistanis, Saeed has built goodwill through his Lahore-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa, or Party of Truth, which operates schools, poverty-relief programs and health clinics.

The United States has also designated Jamaat-ud-Dawa as an international terrorist organization, but it is not banned in Pakistan. Saeed says it is a social welfare group that has nothing to do with Lashkar-i-Taiba.

Saeed enjoys the support of several pro-Taliban religious leaders and groups organized under the banner of the increasingly influential Defense of Pakistan Council, which serves as an outlet for Pakistani anger over CIA drone strikes in the country’s tribal territories and the war in Afghanistan.

“The mother of all evils is the U.S.-led NATO troop presence on Afghanistan’s soil,” Saeed told about 5,000 people at a council rally in Peshawar this month.

After Saeed openly ridiculed the United States for putting out a bounty on a man whose whereabouts were well known, the State Department clarified that the $10 million would be paid for information leading to Saeed’s prosecution, not about his location.

Saeed’s headquarters, which include a mosque, a bookstore, offices, classrooms and dormitories, occupy more than a city block in a teeming commercial district of Lahore. His group’s readily identifiable black-and-white flags festoon the campus buildings.

The awkward State Department clarification gave Saeed’s supporters another talking point: “By seeking evidence, they are acknowledging that they don’t have any evidence against him,” said Saeed’s brother, Hafiz Muhammed Masood, the information secretary of Jamaat-ud-Dawa. “After all these years, with all the intelligence they have and all the investigators, they are giving money for evidence?”

Terrorism experts who track Lashkar-i-Taiba say it has grown from an outfit that in the 1990s was focused mainly on training Islamic zealots to fight for the liberation of Indian-ruled Kashmir into a transnational threat to Western countries, with operations in Britain, Australia and the United States.

Saeed has not only called for the destruction of India, but he also preached in a sermon a few years ago, “The time is very near when you will see America in hundreds of pieces.”

In the mid-2000s, federal prosecutors won long prison terms for members of what they dubbed the “Virginia jihad network.” Officials said some of the members trained at Lashkar-i-Taiba camps and played paintball games in preparation for holy war against U.S. troops.

On April 13, a 24-year-old Woodbridge resident and native of Pakistan was sentenced to 12 years in prison for providing material support to Lashkar-i-Taiba. He had trained at a Lashkar camp and pleaded guilty to producing a violent jihadist video after communicating with Talha Saeed, Saeed’s son.

But cases against Lashkar-i-Taiba members in Pakistan drag on for years and have generally been unsuccessful. Some analysts attribute this to interference by the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, which U.S. officials say protects certain militant groups for its own ends, even as Pakistan’s army battles other insurgents trying to bring down the government.

ISI does not deny directing Lashkar-i-Taiba militants in operations in Kashmir but says it ended contact with the group after 2001 and has not been involved in directing its operations since.

In his book “Pakistan: A Hard Country,” researcher and analyst Anatol Lieven presents this case for why Saeed is a free man: “While the Pakistani authorities could do a great deal more to restrict and detain [Lashkar] activists and leaders, it is extremely difficult to put them on public trial — for the obvious reason that they would then reveal everything about the ISI’s previous backing for their organization.”

Although U.S. officials portray Saeed as a terrorist on a par with fugitive Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, who also has a $10 million price on his head, the sentiment is far different in the court of public opinion — especially in the dusty alleys where Jamaat-ud-Dawa dispenses charity.

The other day, in a Lahore storefront clinic with a tiny examination room made private with a worn brown curtain, neighborhood women received free antibiotics and fever remedies for their sick children from a pharmacy assistant named Abdul Majeed.

Majeed also checked the blood pressure of one of the regular patients, a mother of seven who suffers from hypertension and diabetes. The 34-year-old housewife, who gave her name only as Mrs. Khalil, said she knew nothing about the bounty but did know certain other things about Saeed’s group.

“They not only give treatment to people, but my own daughter is reciting the Holy Koran with them,” she said. “They cannot be terrorists.”

[buglerbilly]

One U.S-Afghan Security Pact, Two Very Different Missions

By Spencer Ackerman Email Author April 23, 2012 | 12:20 pm


Mechanics from the 1st Stryker Brigade combat team train to recover vehicles from the Kandahar mud. Photo: DVIDSHUB

The U.S. has finally completed an agreement pledging to protect Afghanistan for another decade, even after the vast majority of troops withdraw. (We hate to say we told you so.) But don’t misunderstand. This deal isn’t really about Afghanistan at all.

Or, to be more precise, it’s about way more than Afghanistan. It’s primarily about Pakistan — and the shadow war that the U.S.-Afghan accord will allow Washington to continue waging there.

Details of the pact have yet to be released. But over the past year, top generals and Pentagon officials have sketched — in congressional testimony, interviews and forum discussions — an outline of how the U.S. will operate after the accord takes effect, following the departure of most U.S. troops in 2014. U.S. and Afghan troops will live together on joint bases formally operated by the Afghans. The U.S. mission for training Afghan soldiers and police will continue until 2017 or so, although for financial reasons, the size of those Afghan troops under U.S. mentorship will shrink after 2014. Starting immediately, Afghans will have significant if incomplete influence over U.S. commando raids.

But these mentorship missions will not be the most important ones the U.S. executes in Afghanistan after 2014. They’re merely the visible ones. And they’re the cost of getting to the missions the U.S. considers most important.

To be blunt: Afghanistan is valuable to the United States because it’s the most logical place from which to conduct a war in Pakistan that’s primarily fought by armed drones and occasionally special operations forces. It’s not really valuable in and of itself. The U.S. interests in Afghanistan, as defined by the Obama administration, are to keep Afghanistan from internal collapse so al-Qaida doesn’t return. President Hamid Karzai’s government is corrupt? Yawn. Dealing with that is an expensive diversion from the core issue.

The core issue, as the Obama team sees it, is that there’s a residual al-Qaida presence next door, in the Pakistani tribal areas. Because Pakistan won’t let U.S. troops overtly operate on its territory, the U.S. basically needs to rent some nearby property. Afghanistan doesn’t have much to offer the rest of the world — minerals, maybe? — but it has a lot of land abutting Pakistan.

Rumors have circulated for months in defense circles that the U.S. wants to retain a few bases that can serve as a staging ground for drone warfare and overhead surveillance of suspected terrorist activity in those Pakistani tribal areas. They include Bagram airfield, a huge aerial hub near Kabul; the airfields at Kandahar in the south and Jalalabad in the east, places where armed drones heading for Pakistan already take off; and perhaps a brigade-sized base called Salerno in Khost Province, just barely west of the Pakistan border and Mazar-e-Sharif, a transit and resupply hub in the north.

To be clear, the U.S. military has not formally confirmed the desire to retain access to any of those bases. That’ll be the subject of follow-on negotiations with the Afghans, which will flesh out the accord reached on Sunday. “We simply aren’t there yet in terms of our thinking,” Navy Capt. John Kirby, a top Pentagon spokesman, recently told Danger Room.

None of this is to suggest the residual U.S. troop presence will simply munch down KBR-provided meals and pump iron at the on-base gyms if it looks like Afghanistan implodes after 2014. Its mentorship of Afghan troops, and continued presence, will allow Washington an emergency option should security descend into pure chaos. Additionally, special operations raids to hunt key Taliban and Haqqani Network insurgents or disrupt any al-Qaida supply chains are sure to remain on the U.S. agenda. But Washington wants to use those options as little as possible as it winds down the war and looks toward Asia and the Pacific as the centerpiece of U.S. security.

Notice, however, that all this gives Karzai a lot of leverage. He’ll be, in essence, a landlord for the U.S. military. And as long as the U.S. wants to wage its shadow war in Pakistan — a war it does not seem interested in ending — he can set his rent as high as he likes. According to the New York Times, he’s thinking about an annual rate of $2.7 billion to bankroll the Afghan security forces alone.

If all of this seems convoluted, it’s the result of a basic cloudiness that has hovered over the war for its entire 10-year existence. In Afghanistan, the U.S. does not fight the enemy, al-Qaida, that prompted the war in the first place. It concerns itself with the byproducts of that war: al-Qaida’s erstwhile Taliban allies; a network of other local insurgent groups; corruption; the cultivation of Afghan security forces; and so on. The 2014 drawdown plan and this new U.S.-Afghan accord that follows it won’t resolve this strategic murkiness. Washington merely hopes to recalibrate it, so that its troops focus more on Pakistan than Afghanistan.

But the U.S. has failed to emphasize the shadow war in Pakistan for the entirety of the Afghanistan War. And the longer it stays in Afghanistan, the deeper it gets sucked into addressing Afghanistan’s own concerns, which do not necessarily have much to do with U.S. security interests. The U.S. hopes to buck that trend, but there’s little evidence to date that it can. And if all this seems like a lingering morass rather than a clean break with a decade of conflict, that’s how the U.S. “ends” its wars in the 21st century.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. soldier’s gift to Afghan workers at her base underscores divide


Life and war in Afghanistan: April 2012: Our continuing photo coverage shows Afghan life as coalition forces fight in the country.

By Greg Jaffe,

COMBAT OUTPOST SAYED ABAD, AFGHANISTAN — In a big war, Army Spec. Cherry Maurice believed that one small gesture could make a difference.

Temperatures at her mountain base plunged to 20 degrees below zero in January, and snow covered the ground. Maurice noticed that the eight Afghan workers on the outpost were coming to work in rubber flip-flops. The 35-year-old soldier labored with the men in the outpost’s kitchen, which is not much bigger than a walk-in closet. She dug into her personal savings and spent $135 to buy them eight pairs of boots.

“They are humans like us,” Maurice said of the Afghans. “And friendship means a lot to them.”

Maurice, who stands a little over five feet tall and favors shiny pink lip gloss, is one of the lowest-ranking and lowest-paid soldiers at this base in Wardak province, south of Kabul. Her life is a glimpse into the American-Afghan partnership at the bottom rungs of the U.S. military, where even the simplest acts of kindness do not easily translate across a wide linguistic and cultural divide.

Before joining the Army, Maurice earned a college degree and spent seven years working for a real estate company in Southern California. The housing market and her two-year marriage collapsed at about the same time.

She sold beauty products to salons for a few years before joining the Army last year. “Everyone was shocked,” she said. “To go from the beauty business to the Army is a pretty big jump.”

Her father, who served in the Air Force during the Vietnam era, tried to talk her out of enlisting. He worried that Maurice, who is petite with fine black hair and delicate, doll-like features, wouldn’t be able to compete physically with younger, tougher soldiers.

She trained as a truck driver, hoping that she would get out on the road in Afghanistan and possibly see some combat. Instead, she was assigned to a headquarters job monitoring radios on the outpost. Desperate to see Afghanistan, she volunteered to serve on a Female Engagement Team, a four-woman unit that patrols alongside male combat troops and tries to win over rural Afghan women. “I begged and pleaded for two months for that job,” she said.

Because her team is used only once or twice a month, Maurice spends most of her days working in the outpost’s kitchen, a steamy, gray metal trailer that smells of dirt, diesel exhaust and reheated cafeteria fare.

“What’s for lunch?” she chirped recently as she arrived for work.

“Food,” replied Spec. Tavon Terry, the cook.

She shot him a mock angry look.

“The same food we eat every day,” he clarified.

Harsh conditions

The hours in the kitchen are long, and the work, heating up tubs of food delivered to the base in clear plastic bags, can be stultifying. “I want to be out there,” Maurice said, gesturing to the snow-capped mountains and dun-colored valleys beyond the base’s cement walls and razor wire. She hopes that her engagement team will be used more as the weather warms.

Life is much harsher for the Afghan kitchen workers, who earn about $200 a month and are able to visit home only a handful of times a year. In September, a few months before Maurice arrived in Sayed Abad, a suicide attacker blew up a truck bomb at the outpost’s main gate, leveling the kitchen workers’ living quarters. Several quit their jobs.

Those who remained moved into hovels fashioned out of Hesco barriers — essentially reinforced containers filled with dirt — with sheets of plywood stacked on top.

When Maurice arrived at the outpost in December, temperatures plunged so low that the sludge froze in the base’s Porta-Johns and some of the diesel-powered generators locked up and quit. The Afghan kitchen workers heated their makeshift shacks by burning wooden pallets in rickety metal stoves.

Eager to connect with her co-workers, Maurice asked Safiullah Azizi, one of the Afghan interpreters on base, to help her buy them boots.

Azizi queried the kitchen workers about their shoe sizes, collected the money from Maurice and went to the local bazaar just outside the base to buy them. Because he was worried that the Taliban might recognize him, he covered his face with a scarf and put on sunglasses. In his wallet, Azizi carries a thumb-size photo of his older brother, who was killed two years ago while patrolling with the Marines in Helmand province.

“I told [the merchant] in the bazaar, if you give me shoes too expensive, you will be in trouble,” he said.

U.S. soldiers are issued rugged leather boots with thick rubber soles. In Afghanistan, American troops are permitted to purchase warmer and sturdier hiking boots. Azizi bought eight pairs of black vinyl boots with imitation-fur lining and gave them to the Afghans. Maurice passed along extra pairs of donated tube socks that she picked up from the base chaplain.

In the days and weeks after Maurice’s gift, relations between U.S. troops and Afghan personnel countrywide came under intense strain. In January, a video of Marines urinating on Afghan corpses surfaced on the Internet.

A few weeks later, U.S. troops at Bagram air base, near Kabul, accidentally burned several Korans, setting off riots and reprisals in which Afghan soldiers killed at least six Americans. Last month, a U.S. soldier allegedly shot 17 Afghan villagers to death.

The Koran burnings, in particular, remain a sore spot for the Afghan laborers at the Sayed Abad outpost. “We all wanted to quit,” said Mohammed Aziz, a 37-year-old kitchen worker. “The Koran is from our God. We stayed because their government apologized and we needed the money.”

Tension and good will

The Americans have been on edge, as well. One of the Afghan kitchen workers was fired for brandishing a knife at some of the soldiers in the chow hall, said Staff Sgt. Tawana Roberts, who runs the kitchen.

Despite the tension, there have been genuine moments of wordless warmth. Before Aziz went home on leave, the outpost’s American medics gave the kitchen worker vitamins for his pregnant wife and six children.

About once a week, Mohammed Ashraf, who runs the small bakery on the outpost, will knock on Maurice’s trailer door and invite her and the other soldiers from the kitchen to eat fresh Afghan bread made with garlic, sugar or a sweet cheese.

Ashraf, 45, communicates with the Americans using a worn paperback book titled “30 Days English.”

“Share food?” he asks, his black beard dusted with flour after a long day’s work.

Even if Maurice has already eaten, she will gather her friends and walk over to his dimly lit shop, which doubles as his bedroom.

“They have so little, but they will give it to you,” Maurice said of the Afghans.

The boots that Maurice purchased in January for the Afghan kitchen workers have gradually disappeared from the base. Several of the workers quit their jobs over the winter, alleging that the subcontractor who hired them did not pay them on time. The Americans said they are trying to get to the bottom of the complaint.

The remaining Afghans said they did not realize that Maurice had paid for the boots. Azizi, the interpreter, did not clearly tell the kitchen workers that Maurice, who makes about $24,000 a year, dipped into her personal bank account to buy them. Although he is a full-time interpreter, his English is not strong.

Maurice did not rush to take credit for the gift. She worried that she might be taken advantage of for having money and said she was reluctant to boast about her good deed.

The result: A critical aspect of the small, kind act was lost. The Afghan kitchen workers on the base stopped wearing the boots earlier this spring when they started to come apart at the seams. Today, most assume that the wealthy American government bought them poorly made shoes.

“We are happy for the shoes,” said Sher Ali, a 27-year-old kitchen worker. “But they did not last.”

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Corruption Threatens 'Everything We've Gained'

By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

Published: April 23, 2012



WASHINGTON: With the Taliban reeling, it is the Afghan government's own corruption that is the biggest threat to US goals and the biggest reason to keep US advisors in place through 2014 and beyond. That's the verdict of Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan, who just finished a year commanding the international force called Regional Command Southwest, responsible for both Nimruz province and the former Taliban stronghold of Helmand.

"If we want to lose everything we've gained, then if we allow corruption to take root, it'll come crashing in," said Toolan, speaking at the Atlantic Council of the United States. Today, the Taliban are "completely on their back" in southern Helmand, "on their knees" in the center of the province, and "on their heels" in the north, Toolan argued. "Three years ago, before the surge," Toolan said, "the Taliban ran the local communities." Today they have to sneak across the border from Pakistan. "They're now the visiting team," said Toolan. "We are the home team."

"But if the Afghan security forces are allowed to prey on the public," Toolan warned, "we will lose [that] home team advantage...and this is why it's so important that we maintain the advisor-trainer role through 2014." The number of Marines in Regional Command Southwest is dropping from 17,500 today to 7,000, Toolan noted, although the British contingent there will remain at about 8,500; he's hoping for no further force reductions in the southwest or Afghanistan-wide before 2014, he told reporters, but that's a decision yet to be made.

Toolan does not expect the Afghan army and police to be self-sufficient by 2014, when US and coalition "combat forces" are supposed to draw down to a merely "advisory" presence, though the difference between the two types of presence is deliberately left vague. "Although 2014 looms out there as being the end of the counterinsurgency," said Toolan, "there will be things left after 2014 that will continue to support the Afghan security forces." The Afghans have tough infantry and excellent human intelligence, but they lack a host of technical capabilities, from unmanned drones to artillery to medical support, that the US or other technologically sophisticated foreigners will need to provide for years to come after 2014. The Afghan National Police in particular need training in the basics of criminal investigation and the rule of law, so they can move from a merely paramilitary security force to actual law enforcement.

"The police are still working through a history of corruption," admitted Toolan. "The local people, still, they're a little hesitant, so the army's playing a pretty strong role" in day-to-day policing. In the long term, though, the hope is to move the Afghan Army out of the populated areas and leave everyday security to the police. Today, "we dabble in criminal investigation and evidence collection," said Toolan. "We have to stop dabbling and bring in the experts" from First World law enforcement agencies to train the Afghans, "very similar to what we did in Bosnia."

Crooked cops are hardly Afghanistan's only corruption problem, Toolan acknowledged, citing one Afghan national legislator by name as a drug lord who uses his influence to get relatives appointed to local government posts. The fundamental problem, is that "[even] in the districts and local levels where there are elections," Toolan lamented, "the central government still doesn't trust the local leadership; they want to appoint their own people," a practice ripe for abuse. "What we really need to do is stop the central government's meddling in the local politics," he said. "The only way you're going to make a difference in Afghanistan is to allow the local districts and provinces to control their own fate."

Toolan's belief that the future of Afghanistan should be built from the bottom up reflects a profound faith in the local Afghan leaders, soldiers, and cops he and his Marines have fought alongside. "In Helmand province," he said, "the casualties for US forces have dropped dramatically, but the casualties on the Afghan side have increased dramatically. It shows the fact that, yes, the Afghans are now in the lead in many of the districts."

So despite all the problems of corruption and the highly publicized incidents of Afghan troops turning their guns on Americans and other foreign forces, "for every insider threat issue I can tell you there are a hundred events that have created a strong bond," Toolan said. "You would be amazed at the wonderful, strong relationships that everyone from PFC [private first class] up to colonel has built with the Afghan security forces. When I left, I would have thought I was leaving my family."

[buglerbilly]

'Shoot-Down Team' Probes Afghan Helo Crash

April 24, 2012

Stars and Stripes|by Heath Druzin



KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, Afghanistan -- The Black Hawk helicopter that crashed last week, killing all four U.S. soldiers aboard, was likely shot down by insurgents, according to sources with knowledge of the crash.

The armed UH-60L Black Hawk went down in Helmand province around 9:40 p.m. Thursday while supporting a medevac chopper on a mission to pick up Afghan policemen wounded by a bomb. There were thunderstorms and low visibility in the area of the crash that day and it’s unclear whether that bad weather also played a role.

The Taliban claimed to have used a "rocket," which they sometimes use as shorthand for a rocket propelled grenade. Such weapons have been used repeatedly against helicopters in Afghanistan.

In the wake of the crash, U.S. military officials said enemy fire was unlikely. On Sunday, the International Security Assistance Force’s press desk responded to a Stars and Stripes query by saying it was "considered very unlikely that the crash was the result of enemy activity."

But two sources with direct knowledge of the crash and the investigation have since told Stars and Stripes that it now looks more likely that the helicopter was shot down by enemy fire. The sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

When asked again Tuesday about the possibility of enemy fire, an ISAF Joint Command spokesman sounded a more cautious tone.

"Investigators are looking at all of the variables, but at this time it would be getting out in front of that to say more," Capt. Justin Brockhoff said.

Another ISAF official, Regional Command-South spokesman Lt. Col. David Connolly, confirmed that an "Aircraft Shoot Down Assessment Team," or ASDAT, was at the crash site as part of the investigation. But Connolly said that an ASDAT is routinely dispatched to aircraft crash sites in hostile fire zones and is intended to confirm or deny if enemy fire caused a crash. Investigators have not yet reached a conclusion about the cause of the crash, Connolly said.

Killed in the crash were: Chief Warrant Officer 2 Nicholas Johnson, 27, San Diego; Spc. Dean Shaffer, 23, Pekin, Ill.; Chief Warrant Officer 2 Don Viray, 25, Waipahu, Hawaii; and Spc. Chris Workman, 33, Boise, Idaho.

A memorial service was held Monday and it appeared many soldiers in the audience and giving public speeches about their friends were unaware of the possibility of enemy fire, mentioning weather conditions, instead.

There have been several high profile helicopter crashed in Afghanistan this year. In March, 12 Turkish soldiers and two Afghans on the ground were killed when a helicopter went down in Kabul. And in January six U.S. droops died when their CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter crashed in Helmand province.

In the deadliest day of the Afghan war, 30 Americans and eight Afghans were killed in August 2011 when insurgents shot down a CH-47 Chinook helicopter.

[buglerbilly]

In Afghanistan, underground girls school defies Taliban edict, threats


In Afghanistan, underground girls’ schools defy Taliban: In Spina, a mountain village in eastern Afghanistan, girls attend an informal school in a family’s living room, defying a Taliban edict. The country has many areas where formal efforts to educate women and girls have crumbled in the face of threats from insurgents.

By Kevin Sieff, Wednesday, April 25, 8:07 AM

SPINA, Afghanistan — Every morning in this mountain village in eastern Afghanistan, four dozen girls sneak through a square opening in a mud-baked wall, defying a Taliban edict.

A U.S.-funded girls school about a mile away was shuttered by insurgents in 2007, two years after it opened. They warned residents that despite a new government in Kabul and an international aid effort focused on female education, the daughters of Spina were to stay home. For a while, they all did.

Then two brothers, among the few literate men in the village, began quietly teaching math, reading and writing to their female relatives in a living room on the edge of town. They wanted to keep the classes small, they said, to stay off the Taliban’s radar. That turned out to be impossible.

The United States and its allies have spent millions of dollars on female education in the past decade, and Afghan and Western officials have pointed to the issue as one of the most hopeful changes of the post-Taliban era. Female enrollment in public schools has risen from 5,000 under the Taliban to 2.5 million, according to the Afghan Education Ministry.

But Afghanistan is rife with places like Spina, where formal efforts to educate women and girls have crumbled. About 2 million Afghan girls do not attend school.

Those who do sometimes face threats. Last week, suspected militants poisoned more than 100 schoolgirls in northern Afghanistan, according to Amanullah Iman, a spokesman for the Education Ministry, who said an investigation into the incident was ongoing. The girls are recovering.

Because of threats, several schools in eastern Afghanistan have been closed in the past few months, reversing what had been a positive trend, said Vidhya Ganesh, the deputy country representative for UNICEF.

The insurgency had already forced the closure of dozens of girls schools beginning in the middle of past decade, when insurgents started to return to Afghanistan. Many of the schools were built and funded by the United States, and many never reopened. In some villages, the schools have gone underground, hidden in living rooms and guesthouses, as they were during the Taliban’s reign.

“It’s risky for the teachers and it’s risky for the students, but these underground schools show the thirst people have for education under the Taliban,” said Shukriya Barakzai, a parliamentarian who ran her own underground school when the Taliban held power in Kabul in the 1990s.

“It doesn’t feel much different from those years,” said one of the brothers in insurgent-infested Spina. “We live in a community very far from democracy and freedom.”

‘Something from nothing’

When the insurgency arrived in this patch of Paktika province in 2005, it did so with great force and little resistance. The absence of Afghan or American security forces meant fighters could wield weapons freely and threaten residents without consequence. The warning to girls went unchallenged.

But word soon spread about the underground girls school — part of a shadow education system developed in places such as Spina to elude the Taliban. The full extent of the system is not known, but American and Afghan officials say such underground networks are not uncommon in places with a large insurgent presence.

First, young students — between 5 and 12 years old — would trickle into the home of the two brothers, who for security reasons insisted that their names not be published. Then, teenagers started arriving, the brothers said, a particularly rare and controversial development in eastern Afghanistan, where females are expected to remain home upon reaching adolescence.

The brothers could hardly believe the turnout, which at once worried and excited them. They named the school after their great uncle, Namizad, a religious scholar.

“The girls just kept coming.” one brother said. “They were so eager, like they were starving.”

When a U.S. army platoon made a rare visit to Spina this month, soldiers saw the school as an example of resilience in the face of a failed development project, a sign of hope in a dismal place. In recent months, according to U.S. officials, the Taliban in Paktika have robbed teachers of their salaries to buy an 82mm mortar and shells.

“I want to thank you for your courage,” U.S. Army Lt. Col. Curtis Taylor told the brothers and their students after ducking through the family’s living room doorway.

The girls at the Namizad School sit on carpets, beginning each class with a recitation from the Koran. A chalkboard rests on the floor. Less than half the class has textbooks, which have made their way from Kabul. As in the rest of Spina, there is no electricity.

“These students are learning something from nothing,” one of the brothers said.

The brothers have pleaded for more resources. They have prayed to remain outside the Taliban’s reach. But the district’s education director claimed he had no money for the education of girls, the brothers said, in an account confirmed by local officials. And the Taliban have crept ever closer.

A few months ago, insurgents posted a letter on the brothers’ door. “We will not allow the education of girls,” it read, calling the practice “un-Islamic.” The letter warned of a violent punishment.

The brothers talked about what to do. Should they end the classes? Should they leave Spina?

The two willowy men in their early 30s have bright eyes and long brown beards and wear flowing white salwar-kameez, the traditional dress here. Their backgrounds are strikingly similar to those of the insurgents who threaten them. Like the Talibs of western Paktika, the brothers were educated in Pakistani madrassas, or religious schools. They, too, were raised to believe in a strict adherence to the Koran, Islam’s holiest book.

“I was so close to joining the Taliban,” one said. “The men haunting us, they are men we know well.”

‘I want to learn everything’

The brothers tried to make the case to the Taliban that they would teach only religious material to their students. They warned their students of the risk of attending classes, and they were surprised again when the girls kept coming. There’s now a morning class for young children and an afternoon class for teenagers. The brothers beam when talking about recent graduates, eight of whom are now trained midwives.

“I liked the other school better. We had desks and books,” said Baranah, 11, who was in first grade when the Taliban closed the U.S.-funded school. “But this place is still good. We still learn here. I want to learn everything.”

The insurgency has not followed through with its threat. The brothers wonder if it ever will — if the Taliban’s recent silence signifies its tacit approval or is merely a prelude to violence.

In some cases, the Afghan government and international organizations have been able to reach compromises with insurgents to keep schools open.

“We’re beginning to find ways to negotiate with anti-government elements,” said UNICEF’s Ganesh.

Some here worry that women’s rights are being sidelined as the United States prepares to leave and the Afghan government attempts to satisfy a hard-line constituency. In March, top religious leaders on the country’s Ulema Council ruled that men are “fundamental” and women “secondary,” barring women from interacting with their male counterparts in schools or the workplace.

In Spina, only boys are educated in the U.S.-funded, one-story yellow building constructed five years ago to educate girls. Most of the windows are broken, and the paint is chipping.

“That place seemed perfect,” one brother said. “But we knew it wouldn’t last long.”

[buglerbilly]

Corporal who hit a Taliban cleared at court martial

A judge on Wednesday threw out a case against a special forces corporal who was being court-martialed for punching a Taliban suspect he believed was trying to escape.

3:14PM BST 25 Apr 2012

Judge Advocate Alistair McGrigor said the evidence against the soldier, referred to only as Corporal C, was “tenuous and weak”.

The hearing at the Portsmouth Naval Base court martial centre heard that Cpl C, a 31-year-old paratrooper from Glasgow who had since left the Armed Forces, had been ordered to question the suspect while working from a Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Babaji, Helmand, Afghanistan.

The corporal had been at a checkpoint when a motorcycle carrying two men was seen to drive past several times. One of the men was shot by a member of the Afghan Territorial Force after he pointed a pistol at the patrol group.

The other man, Ahmed Wali, was taken in for interrogation by Cpl C, who was trained in “tactical questioning”.

The two were left alone for about one minute when the interpreter and another soldier were called away. When the interpreter and soldier returned, they found Mr Wali, who was kept in plastic handcuffs, had a “swollen lip with blood coming from it” and bruising to his eye and nose.

Cpl C admitted that he punched the detainee but said it was in self-defence. “I thought he was going to hit me, or worst-case scenario he could have taken my weapon off me,” he told the military police.

“At that time I thought it was the correct decision.”

Mark Aldred, defending, said the action was “a proportionate response to a risk perceived by Cpl C”. The trial heard that a soldier did not need to wait to be hit to act in self-defence.

The prosecution had questioned Cpl C’s version of events and said he acted out of “anger and frustration”. They claimed he made no mention of an escape attempt until he was formally questioned more than two months after the incident.

But Mr Aldred said: “This is Afghanistan. In the context of what goes on there — the fact that a detainee made a brief attempt to escape and was being faced with minor force would barely register on the Richter scale.”

The decision to prosecute was last night branded a "scandalous waste of public money" by MP Patrick Mercer, who said is was "dreadful that a good soldier has had to live with the threat of this hanging over him for so long."

The ex-Army officer told the Daily Mail: "It seems political correctness has been put ahead of the welfare of our troops."

Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded British forces in Afghanistan, said the person who pressed for the paratrooper's case to be brought before court martial "really does need to have their very, very poor judgment questioned."

Major Charles Heyman, who edits the British Army Handbook, said the decision "all too familiar" due to "overzealous prosecutors."

"It is shocking that a solider who was doing his duty has been hauled before the courts on such flimsy evidence," he added.

[buglerbilly]

Man in Afghan Uniform Kills US Servicemember

April 26, 2012

Associated Press|by Heidi Vogt



KABUL, Afghanistan - A man wearing an Afghan army uniform fatally shot an American service member in southern Afghanistan, officials said Thursday, the latest in a string of attacks against American and other foreign forces by their Afghan partners or insurgents in disguise.

Since the beginning of the year, there have been at least 16 attacks against American and other foreign troops by Afghan security forces or militants dressed as Afghan troops. The shootings have put futher stain on ties between the U.S. and Afghanistan already suffering from a lack of trust following the Quran burnings at a U.S. base and the alleged killing spree by a U.S. soldier in the south in recent months.

The shooter turned his weapon on coalition troops late Wednesday and was killed when the international forces returned fire, the U.S. military said in a statement without providing further details. The incident was under investigation, it said.

A senior U.S. defense official said the person killed was an American. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release details.

It is also possible that the attacker was an insurgent disguised in an Afghan army uniform. Such uniforms are easily available in markets here and the Taliban have used the uniforms to mount previous attacks on international or Afghan military installations.

Since 2007, more than 80 NATO service members have been killed by Afghan security forces, according to an Associated Press tally, which is based on Pentagon figures released in February. More than 75 percent of the attacks have occurred in the past two years.

---

Associated Press writers Chris Blake in Kabul and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban closes dozens of Afghan schools

By Kevin Sieff, Friday, April 27, 2:28 AM

The Washington Post KABUL — The Taliban has shuttered or partially shuttered about 50 schools in southeastern Afghanistan this week, a bold display of the insurgency’s power in a part of the country now at the center of the U.S. war effort.

The closings apparently were in response to an Afghan government decision to ban motorcycles in the southern districts of Ghazni province. In the fall, officials in Ghazni outlawed the use of the vehicles after insurgents used unmarked bikes to carry out attacks on civilians and local authorities.

In Afghanistan, underground girls’ schools defy Taliban: In Spina, a mountain village in eastern Afghanistan, girls attend an informal school in a family’s living room, defying a Taliban edict. The country has many areas where formal efforts to educate women and girls have crumbled in the face of threats from insurgents.
Gallery

Life and war in Afghanistan: April 2012: Our continuing photo coverage shows Afghan life as coalition forces fight in the country.
.The ban, which is supported by the United States and its allies, has drastically restricted insurgents’ movements, according to Afghan security officials, and increased friction between the Taliban and the government.

Militants responded this week by warning educators and families to keep children at home, Afghan officials said. The message spread quickly through traditional social networks. Of the 36,000 students who usually attend schools in southern Ghazni, about half have yielded to the Taliban threat, officials said.

“In response to the motorcycle ban, they spread the message through elders and mosques saying children should not go to school,” said an official at the Afghan Education Ministry.

By Thursday, dozens of schools across southern Ghazni — for girls as well as boys — were either empty or sparsely attended, according to the ministry.

American officials consider Ghazni a linchpin for stability in central and eastern Afghanistan. For years, the province has been plagued by insurgents, who have regularly attacked U.S. convoys along Highway 1, the main road that connects Kandahar province to Kabul, slicing through Ghazni for 90 miles. As NATO troops continue to leave Afghanistan, Ghazni is the only province that will see a net gain in the number of foreign troops on the ground in the coming months.

Over the past few years, the Taliban has closed or suspended dozens of schools — particularly those attended by girls — in restive parts of the country. But the mass closure of Ghazni’s schools is one of the clearest signs to date of the insurgency’s ability not only to combat NATO and Afghan troops, but also to limit basic social services that Western donors have spent a decade trying to bolster.

Education officials in Kabul worry that they have little leverage to reopen Ghazni’s schools until the provincial government lifts its motorcycle ban. Discarding the policy would be seen by many as a victory for the Taliban — a concession that Afghan and U.S. officials are unlikely to accept.

“We banned the use of such motorcycles because people were being assassinated by those riding them,” said Mohammad Musa Akbarzada, Ghazni’s governor. “But that should have no link with any threat to close down schools.”

Ghazni officials say security in the province has improved since the motorcycle ban took effect. With more than 15,000 students now out of school, however, Afghan officials are struggling to reconcile their push for stability with the Taliban’s response.

“Neither religion nor logic accepts their decision,” Akbarzada said.

Local officials have begun talking with the Taliban about when the schools might be reopened, said Amanullah Iman, a spokesman for the Education Ministry. Afghan officials said they were not optimistic about a quick resolution.

A Taliban spokesman could not be reached for comment.

[buglerbilly]

500 troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, says defence secretary

Philip Hammond tells MPs that Afghan forces are now strong enough to allow 500 British combat troops to return home

Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 26 April 2012 18.11 BST


British soldiers from 2nd Battalion, The Rifles cross a waterway during a foot patrol in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photograph: Cpl. Timothy L. Solano/PA

The first details of the UK's long march out of Afghanistan were revealed on Thursday when the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, announced Afghan forces were now strong enough to allow 500 British combat troops to return home.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Hammond said 36 checkpoints and patrol bases in Helmand province had been handed over to the Afghan police and army over the last six months, and that two of the UK's satellite headquarters would be merged into one. However, he insisted the UK would still have combat troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2014, the date set for full transition of security from Nato to local forces.

Though ministers announced last year that the British contingent in Afghanistan would come down from 9,500 to 9,000 this year, the Ministry of Defence said the withdrawal would be conditions based.

Hammond told MPs the security situation in the three districts of central Helmand where the British are based was now "unrecognisable compared with the start of operations in 2006".

This has allowed the chief of the defence staff, General Sir David Richards, to recommend the withdrawal of 500 mostly combat troops as well as some logistical support.

Two hundred other troops will be moved from more frontline positions to "ground-holding" support roles.

Hammond said the insurgency still posed a genuine threat but claimed the Afghan forces were improving all the time. He said this had allowed some important construction work, including 30 extra schools and 29 health clinics.

"Prosperity will be a critical weapon in the battle against the insurgency," he said "In the last year alone, income levels in Helmand have increased by 20%."

Hammond said that in the biggest Afghan-led operation so far, an insurgent heartland within the Helmand river valley had been cleared.

"The Afghans cleared more than 200 compounds, made safe 44 improvised explosive devices, found seven bomb-making factories and confiscated over 145 kilograms of homemade explosives.

"The success of that operation further demonstrated their increasing professionalism and capability. The reality on the ground is that Afghan forces are increasingly taking the lead."

Earlier this week UK commanders just returned from Afghanistan said central Helmand had been insulated from the uproar in the rest of the country provoked by the behaviour of American forces.

The US has had to apologise for burning copies of the Koran, and for a film that showed US soldiers urinating on dead Afghans. An American staff sergeant, Robert Bales, is on trial for shooting 16 Afghan civilians in March.

Despite the progress in central Helmand, some British commanders remain privately concerned about how the Afghans will cope when 16,000 US Marines withdrawal from Helmand in the coming months - and whether that will lead to a rise in Taliban activity in areas the British have tried to secure.

[buglerbilly]

Safe Passage Considered for Afghan Taliban

April 27, 2012

Agence France-Presse

Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States agreed Friday to look at ways to provide safe passage to Afghan Taliban who are willing to join the peace process, officials said.

The US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman met Afghan deputy foreign minister Javed Ludin and Pakistani foreign secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani in Islamabad for the latest talks on the war-torn country's future.

They agreed to set up a group to look at how Taliban fighters who wanted to be part of the peace process could be included, Jilani told a news conference, saying it was an important achievement but without giving details.

Afghan deputy minister Ludin hailed the outcome, saying: "We need to bring those in the process who are willing to integrate in peaceful life in Afghanistan."

"We need to find them, encourage them and provide safe passage to them," he said.

The United States and allied countries fighting the insurgents view talks with the Taliban as crucial to bringing the war to an end, and no longer predict a decisive victory on the battlefield against the militants.

Kabul has said repeatedly that it is in negotiations with the Taliban, but the militia publicly refuses to deal with the government and last month said it had suspended contacts with the Americans in Qatar over a prisoner exchange.

Friday's talks came nearly two weeks after the Taliban launched spectacular coordinated attacks on Kabul -- the biggest on the capital in 10 years of war -- to mark the start of the Afghan "fighting season".

Grossman's visit was his first to Pakistan since relations plunged in November last year over a NATO air strike near the border with Afghanistan that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

The US special representative held talks with Pakistani officials Thursday as part of efforts to repair ties between the two "war on terror" allies.

© Copyright 2012 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Militants' quick training in Pakistan poses problem to intelligence agencies

'Fast turnaround' militants are able to stay below radar before returning home to launch attacks, analysts say

Jason Burke

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 April 2012 17.13 BST


Militants training in Pakistan's Waziristan area near the border with Afghanistan. Photograph: Saood Rehman/EPA

Western security officials are worried about a wave of so-called "fast turnaround" volunteers who travel to Pakistan and obtain training from militant groups so quickly that they escape detection before returning to their home countries to launch attacks.

Analysts say the unprecedented speed with which new militants are being accepted for training by groups such as al-Qaida poses major problems for intelligence services as such individuals are likely to stay "below the radar".

The fears have been reinforced by one recent episode when, security sources say, British volunteers arrived in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, found their way to a religious school that has a reputation as a gateway to militant groups and, though they appear to have had no references, were within days participating in a training course run by al-Qaida or a linked extremist organisation in the rugged tribal zone along the frontier with Afghanistan.

After only a short stay in Pakistan, the volunteers had returned to the UK. Previously volunteers would have had to travel with reliable references from individuals known and trusted by extremist groups in Pakistan and would spend weeks "in quarantine" before being accepted. Frequently they would be tested in combat or in other ways to ensure they were not spies.

Richard Barrett, head of the expert committee established by the UN security council to oversee sanctions against the Taliban and al-Qaida, said: "People are going in for a shorter time and so are much harder to spot. They are not seeing senior people, just lower-level trainers and maybe a middle-ranking leader, so security issues [for the extremist group] are less."

Barrett said some intelligence indicated that Mohammed Merah, the 23-year-old gunman who killed seven people in France in March, had spent possibly less than a day with a group known as Jund al-Khalifa in Pakistan.

One earlier plot cited by security officials as indicating the new "fast turnaround" trend is an al-Qaida bomb plot against the New York subway in 2009.

A US court has heard how three volunteers travelled to Pakistan from the US in August 2008, hoping to enter Afghanistan and join the Taliban. Turned back at the border, they were invited by al-Qaida operatives to a compound in Waziristan, where they spent about a week listening to lectures and watching videos of al-Qaida attacks. A second week was spent at another compound learning bomb-making techniques. They then were sent home.

European officials have also circulated a document found on two militants – an Austrian and a German of Turkish origin – detained in Germany last year on their return from the zones along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and tried earlier this year.

The document is thought to have been authored by a senior figure within al-Qaida and recommends that westerners who seek out the group should be trained quickly and sent back to their home countries as soon as possible.

Almost all the most serious plots in the UK have all involved the training of volunteers in Pakistan by al-Qaida. However, the flow of extremist volunteers from the UK to Pakistan has reduced substantially in recent years.

Other high-profile successful attacks in Europe, such as the Madrid bombing of 2004, have been by self-forming networks following the ideology of the group but not formally linked to it. Though the White House has said it has no "credible information" of a threat before the first anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden in a US special forces raid, high-profile events such as the London Olympics this summer remain a target, experts say.

A recent Home Office report spoke of "a high-level threat of AQ-inspired extremism from males aged between 20 and 38" to the Olympics. "The individuals of interest to the police are predominantly British-born second and third-generation migrants from south-east Asia. There is also interest from a number of Middle Eastern political movements and AQ-affiliated groups from north Africa," the report said.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. drone strikes resume in Pakistan; action may complicate vital negotiations

By Richard Leiby and Karen DeYoung, Monday, April 30, 2:22 AM

The Washington Post

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan— CIA drone missiles hit militant targets in Pakistan on Sunday for the first time in a month, as the United States ignored the Pakistani government’s insistence that such attacks end as a condition for normalized relations between the two perpetually uneasy allies.

The drone strikes, which have long infuriated the Pakistani public, killed four al-Qaeda-linked fighters in a girls’ school they had taken over in the North Waziristan tribal area, security officials there said.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks, the first since Parliament’s unanimous vote this month approving new guidelines for the country’s relationship with the United States. Some politicians said the drone strikes might set back already difficult negotiations over the reopening of vital NATO supply routes to Afghanistan that Pakistan blocked five months ago.

Last week, after two days of high-level talks in Islamabad, Pakistan told U.S. negotiators that it would not allow NATO convoys to cross its territory unless the United States unconditionally apologized for November airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border. Although the Obama administration has expressed regret for the killings, which it said were accidental, the Pentagon says both sides share blame.

Washington has made it clear that an apology will not be forthcoming, but officials from both governments say they are committed to ongoing talks. A Pentagon-led team of 10 negotiators, including State Department and White House officials, remains in Islamabad to focus on getting the NATO supply lines open.

“We haven't found a solution yet, but everybody wants to find one,” said one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the two nations have maintained a bargain: Pakistan gets billions in aid and the United States gets supply routes and a counterterrorism ally. Part of the negotiations for the reopening of the border crossings also focus on the United States releasing $1.1 billion in overdue coalition support funds — money Pakistan is owed to cover its outlays for the battle against militants. Pakistan says the unpaid funds, with no U.S. payments made since mid-2010, total three times that amount.

The supply convoy routes from Pakistani seaports into land-locked Afghanistan not only support the war against the Taliban but also are crucial for the exit of U.S. troops and equipment in the combat-force withdrawal that is scheduled for completion by the end of 2014.

U.S. commanders have relied on stockpiles and goods brought in across Central Asia to the north while the Pakistani crossings have been closed. But the military has concluded that the tens of thousands of heavy vehicles and other materiel amassed over a decade of warfare in Afghanistan cannot be carried over those routes without enormous expense and effort, or within existing agreements with countries to the north.

In a process triggered by the November U.S. airstrikes on the Pakistani border posts, Pakistan’s Parliament this month unanimously laid down foreign policy guidelines for future dealings with the United States, then passed them to the government of President Asif Ali Zardari for enforcement. The “terms of engagement” called for an immediate end to the CIA drone strikes, which Parliament had twice demanded in recent years, to no effect.

But this time, the civilian leaders acted with more authority than ever before in the nation’s 64-year history. The military, which conducted all previous Pakistani foreign relations, stood back to give the lawmakers and the government room to formulate key policies and negotiate with the United States.

The guidelines also said the government should seek an apology for “the condemnable and unprovoked” border attack by U.S. helicopters and fighter jets in November. At various times since November, the White House had considered making such an apology, but after militant attacks in Kabul on April 14 — blamed on the Pakistan-based Haqqani insurgent network — the United States ruled that out.

The resumption of the drone strikes — while not unexpected, given their efficiency and effectiveness — highlights a schism in the U.S. approach to Pakistan.

“When a duly elected democratic Parliament says three times not to do this, and the U.S. keeps doing it, it undermines democracy,” said a Pakistani government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to preserve diplomatic relationships. “These drone strikes may kill terrorists, but the net loser is freedom and democracy.”

Prominent politicians predicted that the new drone strikes, the first inside Pakistan since March 30, would provoke a backlash against further negotiations on the supply lines and stir outcries that the United States has no regard for Pakistan’s sovereignty.

“There will be repercussions whether in the government or in the public or in the Parliament,” said Aftab Khan Sherpao, a National Assembly member who sat on the committee that drafted the guidelines. “In no case would we allow the NATO supplies now.”

Others saw the drone attacks as a provocation that undermined any notion that the United States had engaged in sincere, meaningful talks last week.

“The CIA could have opted not to go for a drone strike at such a crucial time, when senior U.S. officials are trying hard to iron out differences with Pakistan,” said Sheik Waqas Akram, a member of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s cabinet. “It shows that it has no regard for the Pakistani Parliament’s resolution.”

The target of Sunday’s attack was in Miran Shah, the largest town in North Waziristan and a base of operations for extremist groups including al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network. A senior U.S. official said intelligence had indicated that operatives there were “preparing explosives for use in attacks in Afghanistan, like the high-profile attacks in Kabul” on April 14.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the CIA’s covert drone program.

“Only individuals working directly on the explosives were killed or injured in this action, which we know with certainty helped protect Afghan and American lives,” the official said.

DeYoung reported from Washington. Special correspondents Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.