Afghanistan and Pakistan [Archive] - Page 4

buglerbilly

04-08-10, 03:06 AM

NZ soldier killed in Afghanistan named

Updated 12:34 PM Wednesday Aug 4, 2010

Lieutenant Timothy O'Donnell had been in the Army for five years and was decorated for his actions in Timor Leste. Photo / NZDF

The New Zealand soldier killed in Afghanistan overnight was a decorated officer who had been in the army for five years.

Lieutenant Timothy Andrew O'Donnell, 28, died and two of his fellow soldiers were injured when their patrol was ambushed in the province of Bamyan. A local interpreter with the patrol was also injured during the attack.

Lt O'Donnell was part of the guard of honor at Sir Edmund Hillary's funeral.

He had also served as part of the peace keeping force in Timor Leste where he was awarded The New Zealand Distinguished Service Decoration for rescuing some 600 people from an ambush druing a political rally. Read the citation here.

Lt O'Donnell - New Zealand's first combat casualty in Afghanistan - was part of the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team and was based in Bamyan town in Bamyan Province.

Lt O'Donnell told TVNZ last month that the Afghanistan National Police needed more training.

"They still require a lot of work," he said.

"For police - they're not like the police back home. They don't go around really arresting people, they're basically security guards. But it's our job to build up their capacity and develop them so one day when we pull out, they'll be capable of taking over."

Chief of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) Lieutenant-General Jerry Mateparae described Lt O'Donnell as a "free spirit". He said he had spoken to the officer's family this morning and passed on his condolences.

Lt-Gen Mateparae told media Lt O'Donnell had been part of a routine patrol when a bomb went off under one of the vehicles at about 4am local time (12.30am NZT).

After the initial explosion the personnel were able to extricate themselves from the vehicles and take cover in a nearby building and consolidate their position. The attack lasted about 20-30 minutes Lt-Gen Mateparae said.

"Three New Zealand vehicles which made up the patrol came under a complex attack by as yet unknown assailants," he said.

"We believe that an improvised explosive device or IED was detonated and then the patrol came under fire from two positions with rocket-propelled grenades and other small arms fire."

He said it was not clear if the Lt O'Donnell had been killed by the IED or gunshots.

It took 11 hours to get the wounded back to base and Lt-Gen Mateparae praised the operation to get support to the soldiers after the attack.

"The tactics, techniques and processes have been very professional," he said.

Lt-Gen Mateparae said the patrol was backed up by Afghanistan National Police but helicopters could not get to the site because of bad weather.

He said the two soldiers were seriously hurt but that their injuries were not considered life-threatening.

One of the injured NZ soldiers had burns to 10 per cent of his body, as well as cuts and abrasions. The second had cuts and abrasions and a suspected broken foot, he said.

The injured men have not been named and it is expected that they will be evacuated to Germany to a military hospital for treatment.

Lt-Gen Mateparae said Defence Force was trying to get the body of Lt O'Donnell and the wounded soldiers back to New Zealand "as expeditiously as possible".

"On behalf of the New Zealand Defence Force we extend our sincere condolences to the family of this brave New Zealander."

Defence Minister Wayne Mapp said the attack showed "the dangers faced by our defence people everyday in Afghanistan".

"The Provincial Reconstruction Team has been been working to assist the people of Bamyan province but it remains a dangerous place especially in the place where this attack occurred on a New Zealand patrol in the north-east."

Mr Mapp said he sent his aroha to Lt O'Donnell's family and the two wounded.

He said it was unusual for a soldier of Lt O'Donnell's rank to receive the New Zealand Distinguished Service Decoration.

"The Government has the responsibility to deploy our young people overseas and serve our country. We all know, that in making these decisions, it is they who pay the price and in this instance it is Lt O'Donnell who has paid the ultimate price," Mr Mapp said.

In Vanuatu, Prime Minister John Key told media the attack involved 10 to 12 soldiers and three cars on patrol. He said it took place about half an hour after the soldiers had visited a neighbouring village.

The attack was in the north-eastern corner of Bamyan in an area where skirmishes were not uncommon and there had been heightened attacks and a "degree of anxiety".

"It wasn't possible to get air support services to give them cover because the weather was too bad at the time. We don't know exactly what's caused the death and injury and I wouldn't want to speculate until we had some better information."

Mr Key said he had been woken and informed of the attack about 1.30am.

Mr Key said he had spoken with Lt O'Donnell's mother and passed on his condolences to her.

He said he would not go into details of the conversation but the soldier's mother had asked to pass on her regards to the families of the injured soldiers.

"I think that shows extraordinary bravery and courage on her part and shows the strength of the wider military family."

Mr Key said the injured soldiers had primarily suffered burns and cuts and that one had a leg injury. They are receiving medical treatment in Afghanistan.

Mr Key said the military was reviewing its procedures, tactics and equipment for Bamyan but that he did not see the incident as a reason to withdraw from the province, or from Afghanistan.

In an earlier statement, Mr Key said Lt O'Donnell's death reinforced the danger New Zealand troops faced.

"This is New Zealand's first combat loss in Afghanistan and reinforces the danger faced daily by our forces as they work tirelessly to restore stability to the province," Mr Key said.

"It is with enormous sadness that I acknowledge that this soldier has paid a high price and my thoughts are with his family and the families of the injured."

Labour leader Phil Goff said Lt O'Donnell's death was a sad reminder that defence personnel put their lives at risk.

"Our thoughts and sympathy are with the family of the soldier who was killed and on behalf of the Labour Party I offer them our sincere condolences," Mr Goff said.

"I know that there will be deep sadness right across the New Zealand Defence Force at the loss of one of their own, and that the NZDF will also give every support they can to the families of those who have been affected," he said.

Mr Goff's nephew died in Afghanistan while serving with the US Army.

Green Party Defence Spokesman Keith Locke said he was saddened by the death and also sent his condolences to the families of the men and the NZDF.

"We are proud of the good peacekeeping and reconstruction work that our Provincial Reconstruction Team has done in Bamyan Province, and we mourn the loss of one of its members."

The New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team The New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team's (NZPRT) headquarters in the province is Kiwi Base. To the south is the airfield while the main township and bazaar are located to the north of the base.

The sixteenth rotation of the (NZPRT), commanded by Colonel John Boswell arrived in Afghanistan in April and were expected to remain in the country for about six months.

John Key visited Bamyan earlier this year, and the Government has announced that the NZPRT will extend their secondment until September 2011.

The force works on maintaining security in Bamyan Province, and carries out frequent patrols throughout the area.

It also supports the provincial and local government by providing advice and assistance to the Provincial Governor, the Afghan National Police and district sub-governors.

The NZPRT also identifies, prepares and provides project management for NZAID projects within the region.

It consists of four liaison (LNO) teams supported by infantry, engineers, staff officers, communications and logistic staff.

The first NZPRT deployment to Afghanistan departed in August 2003 on a four month rotation.

New Zealand also has a small number of Special Air Service personnel serving in Afghanistan. In total New Zealand has approximately 140 personnel in Bamyan and about 80 SAS soldiers in Kabul.

- NZPA, Derek Cheng, NZHERALD STAFF

Exsandgroper

04-08-10, 12:11 PM

Mark Dodd From: The Australian August 04, 2010 1:09PM

AUSTRALIANS have been given senior positions in a headquarters shake-up by NATO after the withdrawal from Afghanistan of the 2000-strong Dutch force.
A new “Combined Team-Uruzgan” will be commanded by US Army Colonel James Creighton after the US stepped in to fill the role left vacant by the departing Dutch.

Australia had been asked to take over the running of the strategic south-central province but declined citing logistical shortcomings.

The Australian component of the force includes the senior civilian coordinator Bernard Philip, a diplomat from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

An Australian officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jason Blain, will serve as deputy to Colonel Creighton.

Command of the base, largely an administrative position, will also be held by and Australian officer, who has yet to be named.

It will be the the first time an Australian has held that position.

The 1550 Australian Defence Force personnel in Afghanistan will remain under Australian, and not NATO, command.

The ADF will also retain command of a range of capabilities in support of the force including the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle detachment and the force communications unit, an ADF spokesman told The Australian.

While the majority of troops based in Oruzgan will be US and Australian, they will be supported by smaller numbers of specialists from Singapore, Slovakia and New Zealand.

At a handover ceremony on Sunday, Colonel Creighton praised the efforts of the Dutch and Australian forces in helping secure the province.

“The expansion of roads and bridges, the effectiveness of the Afghan National Security Forces, and enhanced security are examples of the improvements made by the hard work and efforts of Dutch and Australian personnel working with Oruzgan leaders and people,” Colonel Creighton said on Sunday during a handover ceremony.

Long overdue, Afghan Diggers are likely to get a potent new weapon system - a 40mm Automatic Grenade Launcher - although deliveries will not start until 2012.

Yesterday Defence confirmed a preferred contractor had been selected three years after tenders were closed.

Neither the type of launcher nor its supplier has been named by defence although its understood to be a German weapon system made by Heckler and Koch.

Under the $200 million program, the ADF will acquire 60 grenade launcher systems with an option for another 90.

The grenade launchers will be supplied to select infantry units, special forces and airfield defence guards.

Why has it taken three years to order this system and if it's an off the shelve order, why another 18 to 24 month wait.

Cheers

buglerbilly

05-08-10, 02:12 AM

Petraeus Stresses Troops' Right to Self-Defense

August 04, 2010

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - The commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan issued updated rules of battle Wednesday, repeating his predecessor's curbs on use of air power and heavy weapons when civilians are at risk but stressing the right of troops to defend themselves.

Also Wednesday, New Zealand announced it suffered its first combat death of the war during an ambush a day earlier in one of Afghanistan's most peaceful provinces. The Taliban claimed responsibility, raising concern that the insurgency is spreading beyond its strongholds even as U.S. and NATO forces are ramping up the war against the insurgents in the south.

The new guidance comes after widespread complaints from troops that rules laid down by former commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal were putting them in danger and handing the advantage to the Taliban.

There had been speculation that Gen. David Petraeus - who took over from McChrystal a month ago - might ease the rules. But Petraeus, like McChrystal, emphasized that protecting the Afghan people was the top priority in the war.

"We must continue - indeed, redouble - our efforts to reduce the loss of innocent civilian life to an absolute minimum," Petraeus wrote in the document released by the NATO command Wednesday. Some sections were not released for security reasons, the command said.

McChrystal stressed the need to reduce civilian casualties as a tool for winning the war - noting that every civilian killed the crossfire created a legion of family members with a grudge against NATO forces and motivation to join the Taliban.

Under this guidance, NATO forces drastically restricted the use of airstrikes, which had previously been called in without knowledge of who was inside a building. Troops were also instructed to only fire on people who were actively firing on them.

Though McChrystal's directive did frustrate many Soldiers in the field, it also led to a drop in civilian deaths attributed to NATO forces.

Petraeus said nothing in the guidance was meant to hinder the right to self-defense.

"We must employ all assets to ensure our troopers' safety, keeping in mind the importance of protecting the Afghan people as we do," Petraeus wrote.

A spokesman for NATO forces said the directive will help troops understand how to balance the two.

"We also have now an absolutely clear wording and language on the necessary balance between the right of self-defense, the protection of the people, and the assurance of moms and dads back home that their boys and girls absolutely do have the necessary means and measures to achieve mission and success," said NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz.

The new directive implied that some lower-level commanders had misinterpreted McChrystal's guidance and made rules in their areas more restrictive than needed.

"Subordinate commanders are not authorized to further restrict this guidance without my approval," Petraeus wrote in the document.

Petraeus said the rules were not aimed at slowing the war, but were essential to victory.

"We must continue to demonstrate our resolve to the enemy," Petraeus wrote. "We will do so through our relentless pursuit of the Taliban and others who mean Afghanistan harm, through our compassion for the Afghan people, and through the example we provide to our Afghan partners."

The battle to win over the civilian population is being waged on both sides. The Taliban issued a directive a little over a week ago that calls on their fighters to avoid killing civilians and forbids them from seizing weapons and money.

However, the 69-page Taliban booklet also declares that people working for international forces or the Afghan government are "supporters of the infidels" and can be killed.

Also Wednesday, a presidential delegation sent to investigate civilian casualties in southern Afghanistan reported that 39 civilians were killed and four others were injured in fighting last month in Sangin district of Helmand province. According to a statement issued by President Hamid Karzai's office, the delegation stayed in Sangin for six days, interviewing local officials and relatives of the victims.

"They found out that the Taliban entered the houses of civilians and they fired toward a joint force of Afghan and coalition troops, who returned fire," the statement said. "President Karzai once again emphasized that civilian casualties are not acceptable."

Earlier, the Afghan government said 52 civilians died when a NATO rocket struck the village of Rigi, one of the most violent areas of the country.

That report was disputed by the international coalition. NATO said investigators determined that alliance and Afghan troops came under attack about 6 miles (10 kilometers) south of the village and responded with helicopter-borne strikes. Coalition forces reported six insurgents killed, including a Taliban commander.

At least 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed in fighting last year - up 14 percent from 2008, according to the United Nations. The U.N. found that about two-thirds of the civilian deaths were a result of actions initiated by the insurgents, while the percentage of civilian deaths attributed to NATO and Afghan government forces had dropped.

In the days since the release of their code of conduct, insurgents have killed 43 Afghan civilians - most in bomb explosions, NATO said.

The nearly 9-year-old war is becoming increasingly deadly. July was the deadliest month for U.S. forces with 66 troops killed, and June was the deadliest month for the overall NATO force with 103 killed.

The attack against the New Zealanders occurred in Bamiyan province, a central area where most of the ethnic Hazara population opposes the insurgents. Two New Zealand soldiers and an Afghan translator were wounded, New Zealand Defense Force Chief Lt. Gen. Jerry Mateparae told reporters in Wellington.

He said the three-vehicle patrol was attacked with a roadside bomb, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire.

Provincial spokesman Abdul Rahman Ahmadi said the attack occurred about 5 p.m. in the Kohmard district of northern Bamiyan. Ahmadi said the insurgents were believed to have infiltrated from nearby Baghlan province, which has seen an increase in Taliban activity in recent weeks.

Insurgent activity has been spreading into areas beyond the militants' longtime bases in the south and east of the country, even as the U.S. and its allies are rushing thousands of reinforcements to try to turn back the Taliban. The focus of U.S. and NATO operations has been in the ethnic Pashtun south.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

05-08-10, 02:19 AM

Petraeus Leaves Intact Highly Restrictive Afghanistan ROE

After way too much speculation, Afghan commander Gen. David Petraeus has reaffirmed the tactical directive restricting the use of indirect fires and air strikes put in place by his predecessor, Stanley McChrystal. The restrictive rules of engagement, intended to limit Afghan civilian casualties, have caused considerable grief among American troops who fear their hands are tied when it comes to unleashing firepower across the Afghan landscape.

“We must continue – indeed, redouble – our efforts to reduce the loss of innocent civilian life to an absolute minimum. Every Afghan civilian death diminishes our cause,” Petraeus writes in the ‘updated” tactical directive. Portions of the directive were publicly released today with some parts deleted that addressed the specifics of when troops are free to engage for operational security reasons. “Subordinate commanders are not authorized to further restrict this guidance without my approval.”

“Prior to the use of fires, the commander approving the strike must determine that no civilians are present. If unable to assess the risk of civilian presence, fires are prohibited,” it reads. The highly specific exceptions to that rule are deleted; the military’s ROE is typically classified. “We must balance our pursuit of the enemy with our efforts to minimize the loss of innocent civilian life, and with our obligation to protect our troops.”

Petraeus’ directive also mandates that “every” U.S. and NATO operation and patrol include Afghan security forces. “If there are operational reasons why partnership is not possible for a particular operation, the CONP approval authority must be informed…” He says partnering will reduce the incidents of civilian casualties as an Afghan troop presence “will ensure greater situational awareness.”

In his Senate confirmation testimony, Petraeus said he would leave the restrictive ROE in place so this should come as no surprise. What is surprising, in my opinion, is that it’s controversial. Whenever I hear troops complain that they weren’t able to level a house with a 500 pound bomb because they were taking fire from it, it really makes me question the repeated claims by military officials that the Army and Marines have masterfully adapted to fighting counterinsurgency.

– Greg Grant

Read more: http://defensetech.org/2010/08/04/petraeus-leaves-intact-highly-restrictive-afghanistan-roe/#more-8543#ixzz0vgbUP68a
Defense.org

buglerbilly

05-08-10, 02:40 PM

Karzai calls for probe of U.S.-backed anti-corruption task force

By Joshua Partlow and Greg Miller
Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Otherwise known as "I'll fight corruption so long as I don't know the poeple nor can gain advantage from the people being corrupt."

MAIMANA, AFGHANISTAN -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called for an investigation into a U.S.-backed anti-corruption task force, following the arrest of several senior Afghan officials on graft charges.

The new probe centers on the Major Crimes Task Force, an investigative unit launched last year in which U.S. and British law enforcement officers oversee the work of Afghan police and intelligence officials. The unit played a key role in the arrest last week of Mohammad Zia Saleh, an official in the office of the national security adviser.

Saleh, one of the most senior officials targeted so far by the task force, was taken at night from his home for allegedly asking for a bribe, said Waheed Omar, Karzai's spokesman.

A U.S. law enforcement official said the arrest was based on wiretaps and other evidence that Saleh had been bribed to help block a corruption probe of New Ansari, a Kabul-based financial firm suspected of helping politically connected Afghans transfer millions of dollars out of the country.

Omar said Saleh's arrest alone had not triggered the investigation into the task force.

"This institution had actually been engaging in activities which go beyond the constitution and which does not adhere to Afghanistan's rules and regulations," he said.

Such remarks reflect a struggle between the Obama administration and Karzai's government over efforts to root out graft in a country that ranks as one of the most corrupt in the world.

What a sick joke! :jerkit

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, has made the fight against corruption a top priority. While Karzai has publicly pledged to combat the widespread theft and bribery in his administration, there has been little significant reform, and political pressure has hampered corruption investigations in the past.

Since it began in October 2009, the Major Crimes Task Force has become a rare bright spot, using wiretap technology provided by the United States and other means to build evidence against corrupt officials.

If Karzai comes out strongly against the task force's work, it could force U.S. officials into a difficult spot, caught between pushing hard to prosecute corruption cases and potentially damaging relations with Karzai. Already U.S. officials are concerned that members of the unit may be in danger.

Last week, Karzai convened a commission of top Afghan justice officials to review the work of the Major Crimes Task Force, and its members reported at a meeting Wednesday that human rights have not been respected in some cases, according to a statement issued by Karzai's office.

Omar said that Karzai's goal is to have the Major Crimes Task Force brought under the Afghan government structure and to establish a clear statutory basis for how investigations, arrests, trials and detentions are carried out in corruption cases.

The arrest of Saleh, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, was based largely on evidence obtained from a wiretapping system that was installed to target drug traffickers but has implicated influential Afghans in widespread graft.

The U.S. official said the court-approved wiretaps showed that associates of New Ansari had agreed to give a car valued at about $10,000 to Saleh's son "to get the investigation shut down."

U.S. officials have accused Karzai's government of routinely interfering in corruption probes and protecting politically connected Afghans from prosecution. The most high-profile case involved Afghanistan's former Islamic affairs minister, who was allowed to flee the country even while he was under investigation for allegedly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.

Karzai aides have denied the allegations and accused U.S. officials of exploiting the issue for political purposes and exerting improper influence in corruption probes.

Karzai's decision to order an investigation of the Major Crimes Task Force was seen by some as a political ploy, designed to demonstrate his loyalty to his inner circle more than to disrupt corruption cases.

"But the concern is if they use this as an excuse to cut back on the authority of the Major Crimes Task Force, then it really is a problem," the U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Omar said Saleh was released the day after his arrest.

The Major Crimes Task Force has worked on several other recent corruption cases that have led to arrests.

In June, Afghan authorities arrested Brig. Gen. Malham Pohanyar, the border police commander in the western province of Herat, on charges that he was collaborating with drug traffickers. On Tuesday, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Brig. Gen. Saifullah Hakim, a senior border police official from Kandahar, was arrested last year for allegedly collecting the salaries of nonexistent officers and stealing money from a "martyrs fund" for families of slain police officers. A border police official from Paktika province, Col. Ali Shah, has also been arrested, for allegedly stealing and reselling supplies and collecting taxes at illegal checkpoints.

Brig. Gen. Aziz Ahmad Wardak, the Paktia province police chief, was arrested this year on corruption charges and is awaiting trial, according to Afghan officials.

Miller reported from Washington.

buglerbilly

05-08-10, 02:42 PM

Assassination of key U.S. ally adds to Pakistan's crises

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, August 5, 2010

A Taliban suicide bomber assassinated a top-ranking Pakistani security official and key U.S. ally Wednesday, adding to a string of crises here that have raised alarm in recent days over whether the government can cope.

Severe flooding across the northwest, in particular, threatens to take Pakistani leaders' attention away from efforts to eliminate key al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries.

Pakistani officials insist that they are doing their best with limited resources to assist flood victims and that their efforts will not detract from the fight against extremist groups. But U.S. officials say they are concerned that the flood could become a major internal catastrophe if more is not done to help the victims.

With the government already facing political turmoil, such a crisis could be destabilizing for Pakistan, officials say, and would eliminate all hope of persuading the nation's military to step up efforts against insurgent groups that use Pakistan as a base from which to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Since last week, Pakistan has endured its worst air crash, its most devastating floods in living memory, its deadliest ethnic riots this year and now the killing of a commander known for his vigor in hunting insurgents.

While not all connected, the confluence of so many disasters -- both natural and man-made -- has appeared to overwhelm a government that has trouble performing basic services even during the best of times.

"It is all too much," said Javed Hussain, a security analyst and retired Pakistani general. "The problems are big, but the leaders are small."

Pakistan's northwest, where the flooding has been concentrated, is also the area where militant groups are most active. With at least 1,500 people dead and 3 million affected by the flooding, the vast scale of destruction has created needs that the government admits it is unable to meet. Anger has been rising all week in the northwest, where residents say they have seen little sign of a coordinated assistance program.

The United States has earned rare praise here for reacting swiftly to the floods, promising $10 million in aid, flying in six helicopters from Afghanistan and providing hundreds of thousands of ready-to-eat meals.

The response reflects U.S. recognition of both the peril if humanitarian needs continue to go unmet and the promise of a chance to rehabilitate the American brand in a country where U.S. policies are unpopular.

The Taliban may see opportunity in the floods. In the void left by the government, charities that are known fronts for Islamist militant groups have taken to the streets to distribute food, medicine and tents.

Analysts say, meanwhile, that Wednesday's suicide bombing may be the first in a series of attacks as the armed forces turn their focus to flood relief.

"The pressure on the Pakistani Taliban has been considerably released," Hussain said. "They are ruthless people, and they are going to exploit this."

Wednesday's attack came in one of the most heavily patrolled areas in the regional capital of Peshawar, outside the office of the Frontier Constabulary. The constabulatory's chief, Sifwat Ghayur, had just stepped into his car when a suicide bomber walked up to the vehicle and blew himself up, police said.

The Frontier Constabulary, along with the Frontier Corps, forms a central front for Pakistani security in the tribal lands along the border with Afghanistan. Unlike the Pakistani army, the Frontier forces are made up almost exclusively of ethnic Pashtuns native to the region.

The United States has bet heavily on efforts to professionalize the forces, pouring money into training and equipment programs in the hope that the Pashtun troops will take a more active role in confronting the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Ghayur had been Peshawar's top police official before he was promoted to run the Frontier Constabulary, and he was credited with helping to substantially reduce the militant threat in the frontier city. His antiterrorism efforts were considered unusually energetic, and he had earned the ire of the Taliban, which asserted responsibility for his death.

The northwest's problems seem to be spreading. In the southern port city of Karachi this week, at least 72 people have been killed in a cycle of revenge attacks unleashed by the assassination of a local politician.

Karachi, which with a population of 16 million is the nation's largest city, has long been a cauldron for ethnic and sectarian tension, but those problems have been exacerbated by what city officials say is an influx of militants fleeing army offensives in the northwest.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the assassination was carried out by a nexus of the Pakistani Taliban and anti-Shiite groups, which appear to be working together in Karachi to foment unrest.

President Asif Ali Zardari has been absent for much of the week's turmoil. He left on Sunday for a previously scheduled trip to Europe that included a visit to his family's French chateau. His decision to leave the country while millions suffered amid the floods has generated widespread criticism, as has his choice to go ahead with a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington and special correspondent Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

06-08-10, 02:14 AM

DoD Demands Return of Leaked War Documents

August 05, 2010

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is demanding that online whistle-blower WikiLeaks turn over its trove of tens of thousands of leaked U.S. government documents and delete them from its website and records.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell didn't say what efforts the Defense Department might be able to take to compel Wikileaks to comply. He told a Pentagon press conference that, at this point, the Pentagon is asking Wikileaks "to do the right thing."

"The Defense Department demands that Wikileaks return immediately to the U.S. government all versions of documents obtained directly or indirectly from the Department of Defense databases or records," Morrell said.

Wikileaks posted nearly 77,000 classified military and other documents, mostly raw intelligence reports from Afghanistan, on its website July 25. The website has reportedly withheld another 15,000 similar documents, and may publish them as well.

Publication of the first cache of documents has "already threatened the safety of our troops, our allies and Afghan citizens who are working with us to help bring about peace and stability in that part of the world," Morrell said.

"Public disclosure of additional Defense Department classified information can only make the damage worse," he said.

He said the Wikileaks' Web page "constitutes a brazen solicitation to U.S. government officials, including our military, to break the law" and that "Wikileaks' assertion that submitting confidential material to Wikileaks is safe, easy and protected by law is materially false and misleading."

So, he said, the Pentagon also "demands that Wikileaks discontinue any solicitation of this type."

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

06-08-10, 10:44 AM

U.S. worried by Karzai's attempt to assert control over corruption probes

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, August 6, 2010

Obama administration officials fear that a move by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to assert control over U.S.-backed corruption investigations might provoke the biggest crisis in U.S.-Afghan relations since last year's fraud-riddled election and could further threaten congressional approval of billions of dollars in pending aid.

The concerns were sparked by Karzai's decision this week to order a probe of two anti-corruption units that have been involved in the recent arrest of several senior government officials on graft and bribery allegations. Karzai said the investigators, who have been aided by U.S. law enforcement advisers and wiretap technology, were acting outside the Afghan constitution.

Afghanistan's attorney general said on Thursday that Karzai plans to issue a decree outlining new regulations for the bodies, the Major Crimes Task Force and Special Investigative Unit.

Officials in Washington have moved urgently to ensure that anti-corruption efforts are not derailed. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the most senior U.S. official to discuss the matter with Karzai this week, conveyed the message that "these two anti-corruption bodies represent important progress," a senior administration official said, "and any steps to undercut or remove powers or authorities from them would be a step backwards."

Just last week, Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told Congress that the successful task force operations were proof that Karzai is serious about fighting corruption.

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), whose House Appropriations subcommittee has cited concerns about corruption in withholding approval of an administration request for nearly $4 billion in non-military aid to Afghanistan for fiscal 2011, called Karzai's actions "extremely troubling." She said they were "more than just disconcerting; they put at jeopardy our mission."

"That money will not go forward until I get clearance that the promises and commitments that have been made by the Afghan government to work in good faith to stop corruption have taken place," Lowey said in a telephone interview. She noted that other funds already in the pipeline and a supplemental appropriation President Obama signed last week will allow civilian operations in Afghanistan to continue into the fall.

Affecting public support

But administration concerns extend far beyond the current funding request. There are growing worries that U.S. public support for the war, already dwindling in the face of rising combat casualties and the increasing costs of the conflict, will diminish further if voters continue to see Karzai's government as hopelessly corrupt.

Corruption has also been identified in internal U.S. analyses as the leading concern of Afghan citizens, above worries about security. "It's obviously an important component to send a message to the Afghan people that corruption is taken seriously," a senior administration official said.

Since early last year, Holbrooke told Lowey's subcommittee last week, the administration has known that "if corruption isn't dealt with, other things won't succeed. We had stated that it was a malignancy that could destroy everything else we were doing."

The administration established the task forces more than a year ago, sending scores of Treasury and Justice Department, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration officials to assist vetted Afghan investigators in corruption probes. Although the units' work has led to several dozen arrests, a number of high-profile cases have been derailed amid ongoing reports that Afghan officials are sending pallets of cash abroad and are building mansions in Kabul and in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

With U.S. analyses warning that increased U.S. spending in Afghanistan will probably promote even more corruption, the military has established its own task forces to investigate reports that money from defense contracts is being funneled to political power brokers, warlords and the Taliban.

The current crisis began with the arrest last week of Mohammad Zia Saleh, a senior presidential national security aide, on charges that he had solicited bribes, including an automobile, to help block a corruption probe of New Ansari, a Kabul-based financial firm. The firm is suspected of helping politically connected Afghans transfer millions of dollars out of the country.

The arrest, by Afghan law enforcement without direct U.S. participation, was based in large part on wiretaps and other evidence collected with U.S. assistance by the Major Crimes Task Force. Karzai's sharp reaction startled U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington, and has been the focus of a series of emergency, high-level meetings, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity about a situation he called the "most serious" crisis since Karzai's reelection in a fraud-riddled vote last year.

A statement issued by Karzai's office Wednesday said a special commission is being appointed to conduct a "case by case" review of "all activities" of the task forces. The statement said without elaboration that some of their actions had violated the constitution and Afghan human rights.

Administration attempts at clarification have not gotten far, officials said. In his conversation with Clinton, Karzai's principal response was to rail against Saleh's arrest by masked commandos he accused of "acting like the Russians," who occupied Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s.

'Watch and learn'

At a senior staff meeting of the U.S. and NATO command in Afghanistan on Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander, instructed officials to "watch and learn" over the next few days before drawing conclusions, a U.S. defense official in Kabul said. "It's not a red line right now. But it's an area of concern," he said.

The defense official speculated that Karzai's reference to "human rights" may refer to publication of Saleh's name, despite Afghan law barring such publication until conviction. "It's the dignity and shame part of it," he said.

But this official and others, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, expressed certainty that the real basis of Karzai's concern was the threat that corruption investigations posed to the government itself. Despite the task force successes, U.S. officials have cited repeated instances in recent months in which top government figures intervened to quash corruption investigations of politically connected Afghans.

"If I were in his shoes," the defense official said of Karzai, "I would also be concerned about it. Those high-profile arrests were done by Afghans, reviewed by Afghan judges. . . . They're finding things, and becoming more aggressive. There are people who are corrupt throughout the government who are upset about it. I think [Karzai's] feeling the pressure."

In his inauguration speech last fall, at an international conference in London in January and another in Kabul this summer, and at numerous meetings with senior administration officials, Karzai has said stemming corruption is among his highest priorities. In a communique issued with Obama during his visit here in May, Karzai "reaffirmed his inaugural pledge to bring to justice those involved in corrupt activities."

"Karzai says a lot of the right things," a congressional aide said Thursday. "But when push comes to shove, we don't see it."

At a news conference in Kabul on Thursday, senior Afghan officials sought to play down the notion that Karzai is soft on corruption. They said 54 people had been arrested on charges of corruption, drug trafficking and financial crimes.

Nasrullah Stanezkai, a legal adviser to Karzai, said the government wants to improve, but not disband, the task forces.

Correspondent Joshua Partlow in Maimana, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

06-08-10, 11:31 AM

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

PzH 2000 Supports U.S. troops in Afghanistan

Posted by Nicholas Fiorenza at 8/6/2010 1:19 AM CDT

German Panzerhaubitze 2000 (PzH 2000) 155 mm armored artillery supported U.S. troops in Afghanistan on 30 July, the Bundeswehr's operations command in Potsdam announced on 5 August.

Photo: soldatenglueck.de

The German artillery fired four illumination rounds each at 23:00 and 03:55, Afghan time, on 30 July as a show of presence in support of reinforcements coming to the aid of U.S. mine/improvised explosive device (IED) route clearance forces which came under small arms fire and IED attack earlier in the day 13 kilometers northwest of the German-led provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Kunduz. No damage was reported, according to the Bundeswehr's operations command.

The only other firing by a German PzH 2000 reported in Afghanistan was at the beginning of July, when two training and three high explosive rounds were fired in support of German forces dealing with IED attacks 12 kilometers west of Kunduz.

Germany deployed three PzH 2000s to Kunduz at short notice between the end of May and beginning of June. Another six PzH 2000s are being equipped for what the Bundeswehr refers to as "Afghan climatic conditions" and will be ready for deployment in the first half of 2011.

buglerbilly

07-08-10, 02:45 AM

Pentagon to Troops: Taliban Can Read WikiLeaks, You Can’t

By Noah Shachtman August 6, 2010 | 10:09 am

Any citizen, any foreign spy, any member of the Taliban, and any terrorist can go to the WikiLeaks website, and download detailed information about how the U.S. military waged war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2009. Members of that same military, however, are now banned from looking at those internal military documents. “Doing so would introduce potentially classified information on unclassified networks,” according to one directive issued by the armed forces.

That cry you hear? It’s common sense, writhing in pain.

There was a time, just a few months ago, when the Pentagon appeared to be growing comfortable with the emerging digital media landscape. Troops were free to blog and tweet, as long as they used their heads and didn’t disclose secrets. Thumb drives and DVDs could be employed, as long as they didn’t carry viruses or classified information. But the WikiLeaks disclosures — tens of thousands of classified documents — seem to have reversed that trajectory.

Now, the Marine Corps is telling troops and civilian employees in a memo:

[W]illingly accessing the WIKILEAKS website for the purpose of viewing the posted classified material [constitutes] the unauthorized processing, disclosure, viewing, and downloading of classified information onto an UNAUTHORIZED computer system not approved to store classified information. Meaning they have WILLINGLY committed a SECURITY VIOLATION.

The other branches of the armed services have put out similar notices. The memos were initially reported in the Washington Times. But the story has been removed from the paper’s website.

Sumit Agarwal, the former Google manager now serving as the Defense Department’s social media czar, explained the Pentagon’s logic in an e-mail to Danger Room.

“I think of it as being analogous to MP3s or a copyrighted novel online — widespread publication doesn’t strip away laws governing use of those,” he writes. ”If Avatar were suddenly available online, would be legal to download it? As a practical matter, many people would download it, but also as a practical matter, James Cameron would probably go after people who were found to be nodes who facilitated distribution. It would still be illegal for people to make Avatar available even if it were posted on a torrent site or the equivalent.”

“With minor changes to what is legal/illegal re: classified material vs a copyrighted movie, doesn’t the analogy hold?” Argawal asks. “One person making it available doesn’t change the laws re: classified material. Our position is simply that servicemembers ought not to use government computers to do something which is still completely illegal (traffic in classified material).”

But it’s an imperfect analogy, at best. Cameron might plausibly argue that each pirated version of Avatar reduces his customer base for legitimate versions of the movie (even if the opposite has proven to be true). Banning troops from reading the WikiLeaks war logs won’t in any way impact how potentially nefarious consumers of that information behave. This is the equivalent of Cameron banning his own staff from watching Avatar — even after it’s been posted online.

Meanwhile, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell demanded Thursday that WikiLeaks “return all versions of all of these documents to the U.S. government and permanently delete them from its website, computers and records.”

But he quickly added: “I don’t know that we’re very confident they’ll have a change of heart. They’ve shown no indication thus far that they appreciate the gravity, the seriousness of the situation they have caused, the lives they have endangered, the operations they have potentially undermined, the innocent people who have potentially been put in harm’s way as a result. So I don’t know that we have a high degree of confidence that this — that this request, this demand, unto itself, will prevail upon them.”

Every officer in the military — and many of the enlisted men, too — have a basic, “secret,” clearance. That’s hundreds of thousands of potential sources to WikiLeaks. Seems to me that the only plausible explanation for the Pentagon’s arm-waving is to remind troops not to spill secrets. The question is: Does clinging to military regulations at the expense of basic logic encourage people to respect classification policy — or only make the secrecy regime seem more absurd?

Update: “Take ‘wikileaks’ out of your headlines,” one Army contractor e-mails Danger Room. The web filter “has been updated to block anything with wikileaks in the URL.”

“So, yeah, common sense out the window,” the contractor adds.

Photo: USAF

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/pentagon-to-troops-taliban-can-read-wikileaks-you-cant/#more-29152#ixzz0vsOwk1ky

Deks

07-08-10, 04:11 AM

Idiots.

Milne Bay

08-08-10, 12:34 AM

Foreign medics shot dead in Afghanistan

Posted 10 hours 57 minutes ago

Eight foreign medical aid workers have been shot dead in the remote forests of north Afghanistan their charity said, as the Taliban claimed it killed them for being "Christian missionaries".

The bullet-riddled bodies of five men - all Americans - and three women: an American, a German and a Briton, were found in the north-eastern province of Badakhshan on Friday, said the provincial police chief.

Two Afghans were also killed and two survived. They were part of a 12-member team that included eye doctors, a dentist, a general doctor and nurses, returning from a camp in neighbouring Nuristan province said International Assistance Mission (IAM) director Dirk Frans.

Mr Frans said the group had been travelling in a four-wheel-drive vehicle through Badakhshan province, believing it to be safer.

"They were killed on their way back. They had no guns and no security because we come at the communities' invitation and they take care of us," Mr Frans said.

"The last call we had was on Wednesday evening.... There has never been any threats against us. If there were threats, we would not have gone," he said, adding that the organisation would continue its activities.

"We have been working under the king, the communists and the Taliban, and they know what we do," he said.

Head of Badakhshan provincial police, Aqa Noor Kintoz, said the group had been lined up and shot in dense forest, according to the testimony of an Afghan survivor. The Taliban later claimed responsibility.

"Yesterday at around 8:00 am, one of our patrols confronted a group of foreigners. They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all," said Zabihullah Mujahed, a spokesman for the Taliban.

Mr Frans denied the Taliban's claim that the group carried Bibles in the local language Dari.

He said the government and NATO's International Security Assistance Force were working to return the bodies, which are yet to be formally identified.

The US embassy said it still could not confirm the number of US fatalities but said it had reports of "several" Americans among them.

- AFP

buglerbilly

09-08-10, 04:00 AM

WikiLeaks to Publish New Documents

August 08, 2010

Associated Press

BERLIN - The online whistle-blower WikiLeaks said it will continue to publish more secret files from governments around the world despite U.S. demands to cancel plans to release classified military documents.

"I can assure you that we will keep publishing documents - that's what we do," a WikiLeaks spokesman, who says he goes by the name Daniel Schmitt in order to protect his identity, told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday.

Schmitt said he could not comment on any specific documents but asserted that the publication of classified documents about the Afghanistan war directly contributed to the public's understanding of the conflict.

"Knowledge about ongoing issues like the war in Afghanistan is the only way to help create something like safety," Schmitt said. "Hopefully with this understanding, public scrutiny will then influence governments to develop better politics."

He rejected allegations that the group's publication of leaked U.S. government documents was a threat to America's national security or put lives at risk.

"For this reason, we conveyed a request to the White House prior to the publication, asking that the International Security Assistance Force provide us with reviewers," Schmitt said. "That request remains open. However, the Pentagon has stated that it is not interested in 'harm minimization' and has not contacted us, directly, or indirectly to discuss this offer."

The NATO-led ISAF security force is mostly deployed in Afghanistan's less volatile north.

The Pentagon has maintained that the Defense Department had no direct contact with WikiLeaks about possible efforts to redact those documents to make them less of a security threat.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said late last month that it was "absolutely, unequivocally not true" that WikiLeaks had offered to let U.S. government officials go through the documents to make sure no innocent people were identified.

The Pentagon demanded on Thursday that WikiLeaks cancel any plan to publish more classified military documents and pull back tens of thousands of secret Afghan war logs already posted on the Internet.

The demand to stop publishing more classified documents, which the Pentagon has no independent power to enforce, is primarily aimed at preventing release of approximately 15,000 secret documents that the website WikiLeaks has said it is holding and possibly classified U.S. State Department cables.

The Pentagon also hopes to stop WikiLeaks from making public the contents of a mammoth encrypted file recently added to the site. Contents of that file remain a mystery and Schmitt did not want to comment specifically on the content of a file the group posted online with the label "Insurance" in recent days.

He only said that "we regularly distribute backups of documents that have not been published ... This one has just been placed on a very popular site right now to make sure that it has been distributed as widely as possible."

Schmitt said that the group is committed to the security concerns of the world's entire population - which may in some cases be opposed to the United States' national interests.

"WikiLeaks is a globally acting organization," he said. "In that respect we are responsible toward the people of the world and not the people or the specific interests of one particular nation."

WikiLeaks posted more than 76,900 classified military and other documents, mostly raw intelligence reports from Afghanistan, on its website July 25. The 15,000 additional documents are apparently related to that material.

The documents leaked so far illustrate the frustration of U.S. forces in fighting the protracted Afghan conflict and revived debate over the war's uncertain progress. The White House angrily denounced the leaks, saying they put the lives of Afghan informants and U.S. troops at risk.

An Army private, Bradley Manning, is jailed on suspicion of leaking classified material to WikiLeaks in a previous case. He is a "person of interest" in the latest release, the Pentagon has said.

Schmitt said that he, editor-in-chief Julian Assange and three more people work full-time for WikiLeaks, and between 800 and 1,000 volunteerwith tasks like verifying documents, programming software or legal defense.

The group publishes their material out of "three to four dozen countries" and has had numerous attacks on its website, he said.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

09-08-10, 04:28 AM

Taliban massacre big-hearted team devoted to helping Afghans

August 9, 2010 - 10:29AM

Murdered ...Tom Little and, inset top , Karen Woo, left, and Cheryl Beckett, and Glen Lapp, bottom left, and Thomas Grams.

This makes sense, murdering non-political people who provide free healthcare to the common peoples..........but the Taliban did it so it can't be murder now can it, and they're only scumbag Christians with one or two lackey Muslims, so hey lets shoot them! Makes perfect sense..................:jerkit

One gave up a lucrative practice to give free dental care to children who had never seen a toothbrush. Others had devoted decades to helping the Afghan people.

But their years of service ended in a hail of bullets in a remote valley of a land that members of the medical team had learned to love.

The bodies of the 10 slain volunteers - six Americans, two Afghans, a German and a Briton - were flown back to Kabul by helicopter on Sunday as friends and family bitterly rejected Taliban claims the group had tried to convert Afghans to Christianity.

Also flown to the capital was the lone survivor of the attack, an Afghan driver who said he was spared because he was a Muslim and recited Islamic holy verses as he begged for his life.

The International Assistance Mission, which organised the trip, said the driver had been a trusted employee with four years of service.

Police said they don't know if he is a witness or an accomplice in the killings, claimed by the Taliban.

"We are heartbroken by the loss of these heroic, generous people," US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Washington.

She condemned the Taliban for the deaths and what she called a "transparent attempt to justify the unjustifiable by making false accusations about their activities."

The group had spent two weeks treating villagers in a remote valley in northern Afghanistan for eye diseases and other ailments before being ambushed by extremists on their way back to Kabul.

Neither the Afghan government nor foreign embassies formally released the victims' names on Sunday.

Family and friends, however, came forward with words of praise and sorrow.

Team leader Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, New York, had been working in Afghanistan for more than 30 years.

He and his wife, Libby, reared three daughters in Kabul, sticking it out through the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, and the vicious civil war of the 1990s, when Afghan warlords rained rockets on the city.

They were briefly expelled with other Western aid workers in August 2001 but returned after the Taliban were ousted from power three months later.

Little supervised a string of hospitals and clinics offering treatment for eye diseases.

"He was part and parcel of that culture," said David Evans of the Loudonville Community Church, New York, who had worked with him to deliver aid.

Dan Terry, 64, was another long Afghan veteran.

A fluent Dari language speaker like his friend Little, Terry first came to Afghanistan in 1971 and returned to live here in 1980 with his wife, rearing three daughters while working with impoverished ethnic groups.

"He was a large, lumbering man - very simply a joyful man," said his longtime friend Michael Semple, a former European Union official in Kabul. "He had no pretensions, lots of humility."

In a web posting, a friend, Kate Clark, recalled that in 2000, Terry was hauled off to jail by the Taliban for overstaying a visa.

"He went off good-naturedly, seeing it as a rare chance to have the time to learn Pashto," Clark wrote on a website.

"He was released from prison after a couple of weeks and then re-arrested after the authorities decided he had not served enough days. He arrived back to the prison to cheers from his fellow inmates, who were now newly found friends."

Others had made financial sacrifices.

Dr Thomas Grams, 51, quit his dental practice in Durango, Colorado, four years ago to work full-time giving poor children free dental care in Afghanistan and Nepal, said Katy Shaw of Global Dental Relief, a group based in Denver that sends teams of dentists around the globe.

Grams' twin brother, Tim, said his brother wasn't trying to spread religious views.

"He knew the laws, he knew the religion. He respected them. He was not trying to convert anybody," Tim Grams said, holding back tears in a telephone call from Anchorage, Alaska.

"His goal was to provide dental care and help people."

Tim Grams said his brother started travelling with relief organisations to Afghanistan, Nepal, Guatemala and India in the early part of the decade. After he sold his practice, he started going several months at a time.

Khris Nedam, head of a charity called Kids 4 Afghan Kids that builds schools and wells, said Grams and the others were "serving the least for all the right reasons."

"The kids had never seen toothbrushes, and Tom brought thousands of them," Nedam said on Sunday.

"He trained them how to brush their teeth, and you should've seen the way they smiled after they learned to brush their teeth."

Nedam said the medical group had never talked of religion with Afghans.

"Their mission was humanitarian, and they went there to help people," said Nedam, a third-grade teacher from Livonia, Michigan.

Dr Karen Woo, 36, the lone Briton among the dead, gave up her job with a private clinic in London to work in Afghanistan. She was planning to leave in a few weeks to get married, friends said.

"Her motivation was purely humanitarian. She was a humanist and had no religious or political agenda," her family said in a statement.

Her fiance in Kabul said in a BBC interview she "grabbed life by the horns".

"She went to one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan just to help people. That was the sort of girl she was. She was focused and professional," said Mark Smith.

"It was one of those crazy relationships. Nothing is normal in Afghanistan, but when we met it just made sense. You know when something is right and this was just right."

Today he identified her body after it was flown back to Kabul, said "I just wanted to say goodbye to my baby bear", The Guardian reported.

"I just wanted to make sure that she hadn't been beaten or brutalised."

Woo had written on the charity's blog that she would be acting as the team doctor and running mother and child clinics.

"The expedition will require a lot of physical and mental resolve and will not be without risk but ultimately, I believe that the provision of medical treatment is of fundamental importance and that the effort is worth it in order to assist those that need it most," she said.

An active blogger, Woo also wrote in detail about her day-to-day experiences in the wartorn country on a personal blog.

Another victim, Glen Lapp, 40, a trained nurse from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had come to Afghanistan in 2008 for a limited assignment but decided to stay, serving as an executive assistant at IAM and manager of its provincial eye care program, according to the Mennonite Central Committee, a relief group based in Akron, Pennsylvania.

"Where I was, the main thing that expats can do is to be a presence in the country," Lapp wrote in a recent report to the Mennonite group. "... Treating people with respect and with love."

Another victim, Cheryl Beckett, the 32-year-old daughter of a Knoxville, Tennessee, pastor, had spent six years in Afghanistan and specialised in nutritional gardening and mother-child health, her family said.

Beckett, who was her high school valedictorian at a Cincinnati-area high school and held a biology degree, had also spent time doing work in Honduras, Mexico, Kenya and Zimbabwe.

"Cheryl ... denied herself many freedoms in order to abide by Afghan law and custom," her family said.

The group's attackers, her family said, "should feel the utter shame and disgust that humanity feels for them."

AP with AFP

buglerbilly

09-08-10, 04:36 AM

Killing of British doctor in Afghanistan 'a cowardly act' says William Hague

The killing of Dr Karen Woo in Afghanistan has been condemned as a "deplorable and cowardly act" by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary.

Published: 3:53PM BST 08 Aug 2010

Dr Karen Woo, killed in Afghanistan Karen Woo

Dr Karen Woo with dogs, California Photo: Facebook

Dr Woo, 36, was among eight foreign aid workers executed by Taliban gunmen in an ambush in Kuran Wa Munjan district of Badakhshan province.

Her family have refuted claims that she was preaching Christianity to Muslims and called her a ''true hero''.

"We can confirm the murder of a British female doctor in northern Afghanistan," said Mr Hague. "She was killed with a number of other health aid workers.

"This is a deplorable and cowardly act which is against the interests of the people of Afghanistan who depended on the services she was bravely helping to provide. Our thoughts are with her family and friends at this tragic time."

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the killings. A spokesman said they were killed because they were ''spying for the Americans'' and ''preaching Christianity''.

However, in a statement, Dr Woo's family said: ''Her motivation was purely humanitarian. She was a Humanist and had no religious or political agenda.''

They continued: "She wanted the world to know there was more than a war going on in Afghanistan, that people were not getting their basic needs met.

"She wanted the ordinary people of Afghanistan, especially the women and children, to be be able to receive healthcare.

"She undertook this trek as a medical doctor, accompanying medical supplies and to provide treatment to people who lived in an extremely remote region who had little to no healthcare available.

"Her commitment was to make whatever difference she could. She was a true hero. Whilst scared, she never let that prevent her from doing things she had to do."

Dr Woo's family said they were "so proud" of everything she had achieved.

The statement continued: "Karen, you were an inspiration to everyone you met. You combined brains and beauty, intelligence, drive and kookiness in equal measure.

"You led an intensely packed and rich life: dancer, model, stunt plane walker, doctor and aid worker. Whatever you set your mind on, you did so with passion.

"You were the embodiment of seizing the moment. You went through life always believing the best of everyone despite everything you've seen.

"I hope that the legacy you leave is to inspire others to give love and aid rather than perpetuate hate and violence."

Her fiance Paddy Smith told the BBC: "She was an extraordinary person. You don't find too many people like Karen Woo in this world unfortunately.

"She was a gregarious, loving, caring person. I will miss her love for life. Anybody that met her could not help but smile. She just made people happy.

"She would help people wherever she could, she always had time for people. She was someone you could rely on - she would never let you down."

buglerbilly

09-08-10, 01:04 PM

Devastated Christian aid group pledges to continue work in Afghanistan

By Joshua Partlow

Monday, August 9, 2010

KABUL -- During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Christian aid group International Assistance Mission was forced to stop working anywhere outside the capital.

Under the mujaheddin government that followed, the group's medical teams had to negotiate with separate warring factions for safe passage across rocket-strafed Kabul just to travel from their homes to the eye clinic. The Taliban, when it came to power, prohibited the organization's female staff members from working in the same office as men.

Last week, with the massacre of 10 members of an eye care team in the rugged mountains of northern Afghanistan, the group suffered its greatest tragedy. But its 44-year history in Afghanistan, as an openly Christian charity in a deeply conservative Muslim country, is one of enduring near-impossible circumstances.

"It's devastating for everybody," executive director Dirk Frans said of the killings. "Still, I don't think it's actually going to stop our work. We've been here all those years, and, God willing, we'll continue."

On Sunday, the bodies of the 10 slain aid workers -- six Americans, one German, one Briton and two Afghans -- were recovered and flown by Afghan helicopter from Badakhshan province to a military compound in Kabul. Along with them came the lone survivor of the attack, an Afghan driver for the team named Saifullah, who was taken to the Interior Ministry for questioning.

Among the dead were the team's leader, Tom Little, an optometrist from New York who had worked for decades in Afghanistan, and Karen Woo, a British surgeon who left her practice last year to volunteer in the war zone.

The Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack, accusing the medical volunteers of being foreign spies and trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, accusations the group denies. Police in Badakhshan province have not ruled out that thieves unaffiliated with the Taliban could be responsible, as the victims' belongings were ransacked after they were killed.

"We are heartbroken by the loss of these heroic, generous people," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement. "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this senseless act. We also condemn the Taliban's transparent attempt to justify the unjustifiable by making false accusations about their activities in Afghanistan."

To reach the remote Parun Valley of Nurestan province, the 12-member medical team had driven from Kabul in three Land Rovers and then left the vehicles to hike for days with pack mules through a towering mountain pass. Snow and rain on the return trip proved grueling -- one member had to be carried on horseback, Frans said -- but they had made it to the border with Badakhshan when they lost phone contact with their Kabul office Thursday.

'Not here to proselytize'

Frans said it was inconceivable that the medical team was handing out Bibles written in Dari, as the Taliban claimed. Nor was the trip reckless, he said, as the group plotted the safest route -- to an area it had visited six previous times since 1996 -- and had written permission from Nurestan's health directorate.

The team knew the trip was dangerous, but Little and another member had decades of experience in the country. "It's only because of them that we let a team go to a place like that," Frans said.

"We're not here to proselytize, hand out Bibles or whatever. That's not the way we witness," he said. "Our witness is in doing this work under extreme conditions, for people who otherwise have no chance for getting anything."

The group's 50 foreign volunteers and 500 Afghan staff members operate in seven Afghan provinces, with a program budget of $3.6 million in 2009, according to the annual report. The group runs a mental health education program in Herat, adult-education classes in Kandahar, an English school in Mazar-e Sharif and small hydroelectric projects in rural areas without electricity.

But eye care has long been central to its work. The group runs the National Organization for Ophthalmic Rehabilitation eye care project, which treated about 180,000 patients in 2009. Abdullah Abdullah, the runner-up in Afghanistan's presidential election last year, trained under the program as an ophthalmologist in Kabul. He met Little in 1983.

"They were Christian -- but were part of their activities to convert people into Christianity? No, nothing as such," Abdullah said. "It's reaching out to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people that could be blind in the future and prevent that blindness. With one cataract in Afghanistan, you're considered in the villages as being blind."

This focus on health care has allowed the International Assistance Mission to operate even under a Taliban government that was hostile to any Christian group, said Hans Ronnlund, an adviser to Frans who has worked with the group for 20 years in Afghanistan.

Before last week's massacre, four foreign workers for the aid group had been killed: a couple shot in a robbery, a woman shot while sitting by a Kabul lake and a victim of a mysterious car crash, aid group officials said. The killings in Badakhshan were the first time any of the group's Afghan staff members had been killed.

"Sometimes what happens with foreign agencies is they let the Afghans do the dirty work and the expatriates stay safely at home. Well, IAM cannot be accused of that," Frans said.

Survivor's story

Investigators and aid group officials hope the lone survivor of the attack, Saifullah, can shed light on what happened and who might be responsible. (The 12th member of the team, an Afghan, had earlier left the group to make his own way home).

According to an Afghan reporter who interviewed the driver by satellite phone Saturday and provided his notes to The Washington Post, Saifullah said the group was attacked by about 10 gunmen. Their bearded faces were covered, they carried Kalashnikov rifles and they said very little, communicating with hand gestures, he told the reporter. They lined up the frightened team and began to execute members of the group, who screamed and cried for mercy, he said.

When it was his turn, Saifullah said that he fell to his knees, shouted "God is great" and recited a verse from the Koran -- "There is no God but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God" -- and pleaded to be spared.

"I am a Muslim, I have small kids, I'm very poor, please do not kill me," Saifullah said he told the gunmen.

Saifullah said the gunmen then led him through a forest for about an hour to a place he described as a "jungle." He said he was beaten and forced to stay with the men overnight. He could not place all the men as Afghans -- some seemed to speak in code and others in Urdu or a language he did not understand. Other foreigners, including Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks and Pakistanis, sometimes fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

By sunrise the next morning, he said, he was free to go.

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

09-08-10, 01:23 PM

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Aviation Risks in Afghanistan

Posted by Robert Wall at 8/9/2010 4:28 AM CDT

A few days after the German military reported that one of its Transall C-160 airlifters came under fire in Afghanistan, it now says that a CH-53 heavy lift helo also was subjected to small arms fire. The helo was not damaged and completed its mission.

But the incidents may provide some insight into the debate over whether the Taliban have been using man-portable air defense systems to target NATO aircraft. The contention was made in the trove of Pentagon documents released by WikiLeaks. But U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has dismissed the notion enemies have access to Stingers in Afghanistan.

What is clear is that if the Taliban had large numbers of manpads, the attacks on fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters would have been more intense. There is no evidence that is the case, suggesting the presence of functioning manpads is limited, at best.

That is not to say that Afghanistan is a benign threat environment. After all, a well placed rocket propelled grenade or small arms fire can and has brought down helicopters. What’s more, these threats drive pilots to operate their aircraft in a manner to minimize exposure, often forcing them to operate close to their performance margins and, thereby, risking losses no directly linked to hostile fire.

On top of that, there are still more mundane risks, such as simple equipment failure. The Germany army witnessed that over the weekend, when one of its KZO reconnaissance unmanned aircraft crashed in the Kunduz province because of a fault.

buglerbilly

09-08-10, 01:36 PM

U.S. Supersizes Afghan Mega-Base as Withdrawal Date Looms

By Spencer Ackerman August 9, 2010 | 12:00 am

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Anyone who thinks the United States is really going to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 needs to come to this giant air base an hour away from Kabul. There’s construction everywhere. It’s exactly what you wouldn’t expect from a transient presence.

Step off a C-17 cargo plane, as I did very early Friday morning, and you see a flight line packed with planes. When I was last here two years ago, helicopters crowded the runways and fixed-wing aircraft were –- well, if not rare, still a notable sight. Today you’ve got C-17s, Predators, F-16s, F-15s, MC-12 passenger planes … I didn’t see any of the C-130 cargo ‘craft, but they’re here somewhere.

More notable than the overstuffed runways is the over-driven road. Disney Drive, the main thoroughfare that rings the 8-square-mile base, used to feature pedestrians with reflective sashes over their PT uniforms carrying Styrofoam boxes of leftovers out of the mess halls. And those guys are still there.

But now the western part of Disney is a two-lane parking lot of Humvees, flamboyant cargo big-rigs from Pakistan known as jingle trucks, yellow DHL shipping vans, contractor vehicles and mud-caked flatbeds. If the Navy could figure out a way to bring a littoral-combat ship to a landlocked country, it would idle on Disney.

Expect to wait an eternity if you want to pull out onto the road. Cross the street at your own risk.

Then there are all the new facilities. West Disney has a fresh coat of cement –- something that’s easy to come by, now that the Turkish firm Yukcel manufactures cement right inside Bagram’s walls.

There on the flightline: the skeletons of new hangars. New towers with particleboard for terraces. A skyline of cranes. The omnipresent plastic banner on a girder-and-cement seedling advertising a new project built by cut-rate labor paid by Inglett and Stubbs International.

I haven’t been able to learn yet how much it all cost, but Bagram is starting to feel like a dynamic exurb before the housing bubble burst. There was actually a traffic jam this afternoon on the southern side of the base, owing to construction-imposed bottlenecks, something I didn’t think possible in late summer 2008.

Perhaps the most conspicuous change of all: fresh concrete T-walls fortifying the northern and southern faces of the base. Insurgents have launched a number of futile attacks on the base recently, mostly inaccurate small-arms fire and the odd rocket-propelled grenade. They’ve mostly irritated their targets instead of killing them.

But a definite legacy is the abundance of huge barriers at the most-obvious access points to Bagram. Much of the eastern wing remains surrounded by chicken fencing topped with barbed wire, but the more sensitive points of entry are now hardened.

So, apparently, are the sentiments of local Afghans nearby. Troops here told me of shepherd boys scowling their way around Bagram’s outskirts, slingshotting off the occasional rock in hopes of braining an American. Again, something else I wouldn’t have believed two years ago.

By next year, the detention facility that’s spirited away on a far corner of Bagram is supposed to revert to Afghan control. And maybe someday the Afghan National Army will inherit the entire base.

But two years ago there were about 18,000 troops and contractors living here. Now that figure is north of 30,000, all for a logistics hub and command post that the United States didn’t ever imagine possessing before 9/11.

In 2011, the U.S. military probably won’t be thinking about turning over the keys to a new, huge base. It’ll be thinking about how it can finish up the construction contracts it signed months ago -– if not some it’s yet to ink.

More to come soon.

Photo: Spencer Ackerman

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/u-s-afghan-mega-base/#more-29169#ixzz0w6jtDN3y

buglerbilly

09-08-10, 06:40 PM

Kandahar Will Be Big Political Test for NATO, Sedwill Says

08:16 GMT, August 9, 2010 WASHINGTON | Progress in Kandahar is going to be the big political test for the NATO mission in Afghanistan, the NATO senior civilian representative to Afghanistan said recently.

Ambassador Mark Sedwill said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force must show progress by the alliance’s November summit in Lisbon, Portugal. Progress in Kandahar is a must.

“We’re not seeking to have transformational progress on the ground – that’s not going to happen – but we are seeking to have decisive progress,” Sedwill said in the Afghan capital of Kabul last week.

In other words, he said, NATO needs to have the momentum in Kandahar to be moving in the right direction. The former British ambassador to Afghanistan said that officials realize that progress will include setbacks, and that there will be ups and downs as the insurgents push back as ISAF and Afghan forces make progress. But the net effect, he said, will be that the people of the area will become confident in the outcome, and their own behavior will start to change.

“We’re seeing that in parts of Helmand [province] where we have been for more than a year,” Sedwill said. “We’re seeing this in Regional Command East, where the U.S. forces have been doing this with the right level of resources for two or three years.” He said the change is beginning in Marja, but it is too early to see the changes yet in Kandahar.

Sedwill said the new ISAF commander, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus hasn’t made major changes to the Kandahar plan. “It’s a deliberate effort there, and it always has been,” the ambassador said. “He will look at the details of course, to see if the tactics and the resources are right, but the broad plan … is basically the same one that [British Maj. Gen.] Nick Carter (proposed.” Carter commands ISAF forces in southern Afghanistan.

Petraeus’ style is very different from that of the former commander, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, Sedwill said, but the whole NATO effort in Afghanistan breathed a sigh of relief when President Barack Obama chose Petraeus for the job. Petraeus already has a strong relationship with Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani army’s chief of staff. He knows President Hamid Karzai and is building a better relationship with the Afghan leader.

“He is a very strategic thinker,” the ambassador said. “Those of us dealing in the political space know that we have to be at the top of our game, because he is very comfortable dealing there as well.”

This year is the decisive year in Afghanistan, Sedwill said. NATO must demonstrate the comprehensive plan the alliance has built upon the Obama strategy will work.

In 2009, the Taliban and its allies took the momentum. NATO leaders had to admit that “security had got worse year after year, governance had flat-lined and the only bright spot was the economy and social progress, because we’re good at that,” he said. By the end of the year, he added, he hopes to demonstrate that the deterioration is arrested and the security situation is beginning to improve.

“It was a fairly precipitous decline, so just arresting the decline and beginning to turn it around will be fairly decisive,” he said.

The alliance and the Afghan government need to work on improving the delivery of services to the population and they must do something to address government corruption, he said.

Politics is about momentum and perceptions, Sedwill said. “Look at Iraq. We’re nowhere near as bad as we were in Iraq in terms of violence, and yet because the momentum was headed the wrong way, people have started to lose confidence,” he said. “If we turn the momentum around, people will start to regain it.”

Perception will always lag reality, the ambassador said, but if the alliance leaders in Afghanistan can demonstrate to the NATO leaders in Lisbon that there is measurable progress, that will create a “psychological state among heads of state and foreign ministers” that will translate in turn to popular support, Sedwill said. That backing is crucial to continuing the mission to the ambitious 2014 deadline Karzai has for Afghan forces taking over the security mission in the country.

If leaders can show “a decent end state is in sight, if not within reach; there is less a chance for countries diving for the emergency exits,” he said.

----
Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

buglerbilly

10-08-10, 06:20 AM

New Afghan Air War? Don’t Count On It, General Says

By Spencer Ackerman August 9, 2010 | 8:00 pm

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Of all the controversial moves Gen. Stanley McChrystal made while he was in charge of the Afghanistan war, the most controversial was the directive that reined in air strikes — even when his troops were in mortal danger. Last week, new commander Gen. David Petraeus revised his predecessor’s much-criticized guidelines.

So how will Petraeus’ revised rules change the air war? The answer, according to one of the generals in charge of it: not much.

“I don’t know if there’s this shocking change,” Brig. Gen. Jack Briggs II, commander of the Bagram-based 455th Air Expeditionary Wing, tells Danger Room. As Briggs sees it, there’s more continuity than change between Petraeus’ directive and McChrystal’s. Both documents balance the need to protect NATO troops with the need to keep collateral damage to an absolute minimum.

Both documents say that civilian deaths can turn tactical victories into strategic setbacks. Both documents order troops to make sure no innocents are in the way when the bombs start falling.

“There are some more specifics about execution,” Briggs says. According to the Rolling Stone article that ended McChrystal’s career, unit commanders were adding all kinds of extra restrictions on firepower that the brass never intended. “One of the bold-faced statements right there at the beginning of the tactical directive really is the fact that subordinate commanders are not going to be more restrictive,” he says.

But shooting guns or dropping bombs — going “kinetic,” in mil-speak — remains the least-favored option. “If it comes to a point where [ground troops] cannot withdraw, if they cannot maneuver themselves out of a situation, that’s when air, and particularly our kinetic air [power], comes in and becomes sort of our choice of last resort,” Briggs says.

And that becomes most necessary as troops get closer to the porous border with the tribal areas of Pakistan. “Along the border is where we have –- I won’t say it’s more kinetic, but it’s where we have more troops in contact,” Briggs says, using the military term for forces in a firefight.

In those situations, “our No. 1 job really is to show presence over the battlefield. There are lots of times, when a troops-in-contact situation develops, we show up, we make noise over the battlefield, and the troops-in-contact situation goes away.” In other words: Buzz the village before you think about bombing it.

Notice that Briggs, an F-15E Strike Eagle pilot, isn’t talking about a return to the days of offensive bombing runs like in 2008, when NATO air power substituted for a lack of ground troops and infuriated locals. For all the frustration from infantrymen over the restrictions on air support, there’s a durable consensus among commanders that letting the bombs drop promiscuously is the quickest way to alienate Afghans -– and that alienating the Afghans is the quickest way to lose the war.

Briggs is a self-described Wired fan: That’s what he was reading as I walked in to his office, though surely for my benefit. He has squadrons of F-15E and F-16 fighter jets under his command, MC-12 spy planes, C-130 cargo planes and more.

His airmen provide everything from combat air support to intelligence support to airlift missions to protection for Bagram — both in the air and on the ground. But Briggs considers providing ground troops with a better picture of the battlefield to be among his top priorities. “We will take the information that the ground force commander’s providing us,” Briggs explained, a mixture of targeting information, civilian positioning information, appropriate firepower choices and ground commander’s intent, known as a 9-Line.

“The air crew takes the 9-Line “and we also apply our three-dimensional airmen’s perspective, because we can see over the next ridge, we might be able to see through that wadi or through the trees that there’s a building or there’s some civilians in that area. We’ll let the ground force commander know that before we go anywhere or do anything.”

It looks, in other words, like the air war in Afghanistan didn’t enter an interregnum under McChrystal. It began a new and enduring phase. “We have a moral imperative to protect civilians’ lives,” Briggs said, “and we have a moral imperative to protect the lives of our coalition partners, our Afghan security-force partners, and our American soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines that are on the ground.”

Photo: Spencer Ackerman

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/a-new-afghan-air-war-dont-count-on-it-general-says/#more-29185#ixzz0wAojNu23

buglerbilly

10-08-10, 07:17 AM

Small-arms fire downed Canadian helicopter: Forces

Bob Strong/Reuters

Canadian soldiers gather near a burning Canadian Forces CH-147 Chinook helicopter after it made a hard landing close to the village of Bazaar e Panjway, in the Panjway district west of Kandahar August 5, 2010.

Postmedia News · Saturday, Aug. 7, 2010

A Canadian Forces Chinook helicopter was struck by small arms fire, forcing it to make an emergency landing Thursday in dangerous Panjwaii district, west of Kandahar City, Canadian Forces confirmed on Saturday.

The helicopter was carrying five crew members and 16 passengers. It caught fire after making what military officials termed a "hard landing," 20 kilometres southwest of Kandahar City.

Eight people aboard sustained minor injuries, but the exact nature of the injuries has still not been disclosed.

The Chinook caught fire and was destroyed after it landed.

"Although a helicopter has been lost, this incident highlights the skills of Canadian aircrews deployed in Afghanistan," Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance, Commander of Task Force Kandahar, said in a statement. "The fact that no one was seriously harmed during the emergency landing speaks to the ability of our aircrews to perform under pressure."

Following the landing, a Taliban spokesman told reporters in Kandahar that the insurgent group downed the helicopter, and that there were casualties.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for an incident in 2007 the saw an American Chinook downed in Helmand province, a claim that was publicly dismissed by International Security Assistance Force.

In 2009, Canadian CH-147 helicopters — the type that went down Thursday — flew roughly 3,000 flying hours, transporting over 30,000 passengers and delivering over 1,000 metric tonnes of cargo, Canadian Forces said.

Canada's Chinooks in Kandahar ferry troops and supplies to volatile regions in the province and, like other low-flying aircraft, they can at times be exposed to enemy fire.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Small+arms+fire+downed+Canadian+helicopter+Forces/3372846/story.html#ixzz0wB39SXWt

buglerbilly

10-08-10, 11:37 AM

FBI will conduct autopsies on 6 American aid workers slain in Afghanistan

By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

KABUL -- The bodies of six American aid workers who were ambushed and killed along with four others in northern Afghanistan last week will be flown to the United States for autopsies, the head of the relief agency said Monday, though the families of several have asked that the bodies be buried here.

The autopsies will be conducted by the FBI as part of the investigation into the killings.

Dirk Frans, executive director of the International Assistance Mission, appeared at a news conference and confirmed the names of the 10 dead team members, whose mission to provide eye care for poor Afghans in dangerous and remote Badakhshan province ended in tragedy.

In addition to team leader Tom Little, an optometrist from New York who had worked for decades in Afghanistan, the other dead Americans were identified as: Dan Terry, 63, of Wisconsin, another longtime aid worker; interpreter Cheryl Beckett, 32, of Knoxville, Tenn.; videographer Brian Carderelli, 25, of Harrisonburg, Va.; dentist Thomas Grams, 51, of Durango, Colo.; and nurse Glen Lapp, 40, of Lancaster, Pa.

Also killed were Karen Woo, 36, a surgeon from Britain; Daniela Beyer, 35, from Germany, and two Afghans -- Mahram Ali, 50, and Jawed, 24, who went by only one name -- the group said.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday, alleging -- without evidence -- that members of the group were acting as spies and missionaries. But authorities in Badakhshan have not ruled out that unaffiliated thieves might have carried out the killings.

At the news conference, Frans repeatedly denied that the volunteers were proselytizing or working for the government.

"Our faith motivates and inspires us -- but we do not proselytize," he said.

Frans said his organization will continue to operate in the country but acknowledged that the loss of experienced staff members will set back some of the services the groups aims to provide in remote regions.

The families of five of the eight foreign workers have requested that the bodies be buried in Afghanistan because they had dedicated their life's work to that country, Frans said.

"That might not happen because the FBI is investigating and the bodies will be flown to the U.S. for autopsy," Frans said. "It might take a week or two weeks and could throw things in a bit of disarray."

Frans said he has made contact with two Afghan team members who survived the trip -- one, Jassim, who left the group before the ambush after complaining of kidney problems, and another, Safiullah, who reportedly was released by the attackers after pleading for his life. He said the Interior Ministry is holding Safiullah for questioning, but did not know if he was a suspect.

"I spoke briefly with him," Frans said. "He sounded okay. He is part of the investigation, and we'll leave that to authorities."

Meanwhile, military officials announced that two U.S. Marines were killed over the weekend in southern Afghanistan when a prisoner tried to escape during prayer time.

The prisoner acquired a rifle and shot and killed the Marines, who were trying to subdue him, officials said in a news release. He was later shot and killed, and authorities are investigating.

buglerbilly

10-08-10, 06:25 PM

Germany Pays $430,000 To Afghan Strike Families

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 10 Aug 2010 11:52

BERLIN - Germany said Aug. 10 it has paid out $430,000 to the 86 families of 102 Afghans killed or injured in an airstrike called in by a German commander on two hijacked fuel tankers last September.

"Every family affected received $5,000. This measure is however not about compensation in the legal sense but constitutes humanitarian assistance," according to a statement from the defense ministry in Berlin.

The Sept. 4, 2009, bombing by U.S. planes near the northern Afghan city of Kunduz on two fuel tankers stolen by insurgents prompted outrage in Germany, where polls suggest a majority of people are opposed to the Afghan mission.

The defense minister at the time resigned, while the armed forces chief of staff and another senior defense official quit after pressure from the minister's successor, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who called the strike "militarily inappropriate."

A report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) put the number at 91 killed and 11 injured, the ministry said. A spokesman told AFP it was not known how many of these were insurgents.

NATO said at first 142 people were killed, reportedly including dozens of civilians. The operation has also been the subject of a parliamentary inquiry in Germany.

Germany is the third-largest contributor of foreign troops in Afghanistan after the United States and Britain, with about 4,500 troops in the relatively peaceful north. Thirty-nine soldiers have died.

buglerbilly

11-08-10, 03:13 AM

German Military Lists Efforts To Improve Deficits

By ALBRECHT MÜLLER

Published: 10 Aug 2010 13:18

BONN - Stung by criticism, Germany's Federal Ministry of Defense has launched a campaign to describe what it's doing to improve the gear sent to troops in Afghanistan.

On Aug. 3, the ministry posted a list of related projects on its website, listing the expected deliveries of new and upgraded vehicles, a leased UAV and more.

The next day, the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper quoted a letter from Defense State Secretary Walther Otremba to the parliamentary budget and defense committees. In the letter, Otremba listed various past and planned purchases of vehicles and gear for deployed troops.

One opposition lawmaker on the committee, Omid Nouripour, said the letter proved that the criticism was valid - and showed that the ministry has yet to describe a clear path out of the problem.

"Things are only readjusted as needed, instead of clearly naming which equipment and how much is actually needed," Nouripour said.

One committee member from the ruling coalition, Joachim Spatz, said, "These projects are a step in the right direction."

The parliamentary commissioner of armed forces, Hellmut Königshaus (FDP), has criticized the lack of protected vehicles.

Königshaus declined to comment on the Defense Ministry's release of information.

The ministry's list says the last 65 of 134 Fuchs armored personnel carriers are being upgraded to the mine-protected 1A8 standard for delivery next year.

The list also says another 35 Marder mechanized infantry combat vehicles are to be adapted for Afghanistan by October 2011, receiving cooling systems and IED jammers.

A Defense Ministry spokesman said there are currently no plans to deploy the Marders, nor the six PzH 2000 self-propelled howitzers that should be mission-ready during the first half of 2011.

The list says other vehicles are being bought in large numbers, including an additional 150 Eagle IV protected command vehicles in 2010 and 2011; or improved for missions in Afghanistan, including the Fennek reconnaissance car, which is going to be outfitted with additional armor.

Another opposition committee member, Rainer Arnold, conceded that the shortfall of protected vehicles and communication gear would slowly diminish, but he said planned budget cuts would cause a lack of supplies.

Königshaus and others have recently said the German military has insufficient ammunition of certain types for mission and training. Among the reasons, he said: more G36 assault rifle rounds are being fired in combat because of their lower stopping power.

Do wot?!!! Only a politician would come up with this BS! :stfu

The list says more than 21 million 5.56mm and 7.62mm rifle rounds will be purchased as part of the so-called immediate requirement.

Troops will also get night-vision gear and more than 500 additional large-caliber hand weapons with more stopping power.

The military is awaiting the delivery of 40 Infanterist der Zukunft packages - Germany's future soldier project - each containing enough clothing, communication, weapons and night-vision gear to fit 10 soldiers.

The list also says Germany is leasing a third Heron UAV for reconnaissance in Afghanistan, more armament for protected vehicles, and 110 FLW 200 remotely controlled weapon stations that can carry a 12.7mm heavy machine gun or 40mm grenade machine weapon and be operated day and night.

buglerbilly

12-08-10, 05:22 AM

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Afghanistan: The Big Hurdle

Posted by John M. Doyle at 8/11/2010 10:34 AM CDT

New Afghan National Police (Defense Dept. photo by Tech. Sgt. Casey Martin, USAF)It will take about $6 billion a year to sustain Afghan National Security Forces when they hit their target force structure of 305,000 in October 2011. But here's the rub: the total Afghan gross domestic product is only $10 billion a year and the government in Kabul takes in just $1 billion a year in revenue.

So who's going to pay for Afghan security forces in the future? “It's going to have to be the international community that's going to have to fund that,” says U.S. Army Col. John Ferrari, deputy commander of programs at NATO's Training Mission-Afghanistan.

In an Aug. 4 blogger's roundtable, Ferrari did not address who in the international community would be willing to contribute to making up the shortfall or how much they might give. But his suggestion seems very optimistic given the number of NATO countries and other coalition members facing pressure at home to end their troop commitments in Afghanistan. Some partners – Canada and Poland for starters – have announced plans to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan as soon as next year. Last week the Dutch contingent began departing the country.

The colonel noted that the U.S. spends about $8 billion a month to maintain its force of 98,000 troops in Afghanistan – or $96 billion a year. If the training of the Afghan Army and National Police reaches a level where they can take over security from U.S. and coalition forces, “we get a 12 to 1 return on the investment … one month of savings [for what] the U.S. pays for the Afghan forces for an entire year,” Ferrari says.

In recent months, several high-ranking U.S. and NATO military and civilian officials from the training mission have discussed their efforts to increase the size of the Army and Police, as well as train, arm and equip them. In addition to the enormous monetary cost, they have conceded numerous other obstacles, including widespread corruption among the police, Afghans' distrust of the government in Kabul, the lack of infrastructure to manufacture and supply even the most basic equipment for the Army and Police, and the high rate of illiteracy throughout Afghanistan.

“It is a difficult enough challenge to train soldiers and policemen, but when they're also illiterate, you have to spend more time bringing their literacy levels up,” concedes Ferrari, who said NTM-A has instituted “a huge program” to teach tens of thousands of soldiers and policemen to read at a third-grade level. After that officials can begin efforts to train these new readers to become logisticians, communications officers and intelligence analysts.

Ferrari says it takes more than 60 hours of instruction to raise the illiterate to a level where they can read and write their name, read some basic sentences and read and write numbers.

Meanwhile, coalition forces and the Afghan government are building training academies near Kabul, with satellite facilities around the country to develop a professional officer corps and a force of non-commissioned officers that know how to lead and take care of their troops while respecting the rule of law and treating civilians properly.

Given all the hurdles to be surmounted, Ferrari says he doesn't know when Afghanistan will be able to take responsibility for its own security. “There's not going to be a moment where you turn on the light switch and the entire army and police force can operate independent of coalition forces,” the colonel says, although he believes there is room for optimism.

“There are signs today that the units that have been around for a while, that have been battle-tested, where the leadership is present, that they can take charge under certain conditions, for certain time lines,” he says.

But every time NTM-A addresses the progress Afghanistan security forces are making, they seem to have so much further to go.

buglerbilly

12-08-10, 10:51 AM

Kandahar mayor's claim to shopkeeper-occupied land dividing residents

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, August 12, 2010

To the north of this city, U.S. soldiers are in the throes of an arduous operation to clear insurgents from lush vineyards and pomegranate groves. To the east, other newly arrived U.S. units are preparing for another wave of clearing operations.

Not to be left out, Kandahar's feisty mayor has decided to do some clearing of his own: He recently ordered a bustling bazaar next to the governor's palace to be razed in the name of counterinsurgency.

His goal was not to rob insurgents of a sanctuary -- the 500 chockablock stalls were no more of a Taliban redoubt than any other place in the city -- but to build a new high school for boys. The merchants, he said, had been squatting on land that belongs to the government. A new school, he argued, would provide a valuable service to the population.

"This will be very good for the people of Kandahar," said the mayor, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, who spent 20 years working as an accountant in Fairfax County before returning three years ago to run his native city at the request of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

U.S. reconstruction advisers lauded his decision. It would, they believed, help show residents that their government can do more for them than the Taliban can -- a fundamental element of the U.S.-led counterinsurgency campaign.

But as often occurs in Afghanistan, when good intentions intersect with history and tradition, the result can be less of a clear-cut step forward than the Americans and their Afghan allies hope to achieve.

Some here believe that the land in question, now a detritus-strewn lot, had been bequeathed in the 1700s to the family that was entrusted with safeguarding a blue-domed shrine in the city that houses a shawl worn by the prophet Muhammad. In recent years, their descendants rented the property to merchants who wanted to build a bazaar.

Regardless of whatever deals may have been struck -- such arrangements were not documented on paper back then -- the mayor contends the parcel belongs to the city. A new school, he maintains, would be far more beneficial than another bazaar. The merchants, he says, can set up shop elsewhere. He even offered them money to relocate.

Among Kandaharis, opinions remain divided. Some laud the mayor for wanting to help improve education, but others think he ran roughshod over some simple shopkeepers.

The controversy spilled forth during a recent visit here by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he sat down with three tribal elders at the provincial reconstruction team's headquarters.

"The voice of ordinary people doesn't reach this government," one of the elders said. "The mayor doesn't listen to us. He's a mayor who destroys things."

As a consequence, he said, the shopkeepers will "either start stealing or they'll join the Taliban."

The elder's comments left State Department officials in Kandahar seething. They said the elder is part of the family that claims ownership of the land, and they were incensed that neither the mayor nor the governor were invited to counter the views of the three elders, all of whom were highly critical of U.S. military and reconstruction efforts in the area.

In the battle for this city, military commanders often note, the key terrain is not geographic but human. It involves getting residents to forsake the Taliban and side with the government and its international allies. But the elders' complaints, which involved far more than just the bazaar, revealed how far the Afghan government -- and all the Americans working here -- are from reaching that goal.

It is rare that a senior commander gets to hear such unvarnished grievances. When military leaders and members of Congress visit Afghanistan, their interactions with Afghans, if there are any, are usually limited to brief meetings with government officials. But Mullen insisted on seeing the elders during a day-long trip because he had promised, when he met them a year ago, that he would return to hear their views.

"Nothing has changed except one thing: We didn't want operations, but operations have started," said one of the other elders.

"Are you bringing security here or are you bringing violence?" asked the elder who criticized the mayor. Mullen's aides asked that the participants not be named because of concerns about retribution.

"We're bringing security," Mullen responded. Military operations are necessary, he said, "so that good governance can be put in place."

But the men appeared unconvinced. "The problem in this country is that there just isn't administration that's effective," the elder said.

He also complained that U.S. reconstruction aid, particularly support for farmers, is winding up in the wrong hands. "Ninety percent of your assistance is going to the Taliban," he said.

Mullen, who appeared grim-faced at moments, noted that in the past month, the Taliban killed 45 civilians, while coalition forces killed five. But once again, the elders were unmoved.

None of them would have been killed, the third elder said, "if you weren't here."

But in a demonstration of the contradictory impulses many Afghans feel toward the presence of foreign forces, the first elder told Mullen that "we're hearing your departure is imminent, and that worries us."

"We're not leaving," Mullen said. "We have left before. It didn't work."

After an hour, Mullen had to move on to his next meeting. None of the elders had been won over.

"I wish I could throw a switch and it would be over tomorrow. But I can't," he said. "This is about you and your people. It's not about us."

buglerbilly

12-08-10, 10:59 AM

U.S. builds goodwill with quick assistance in Pakistani flooding

Pakistan floods: Billions of dollars needed to recover from worst floods in its history
At least 1,500 are dead after monsoon rains bloated rivers, submerged villages and triggered landslides in Pakistan.

By Griff Witte
Thursday, August 12, 2010

In a country of 170 million people where anti-American sentiment burns brightly, the United States may have won 84 friends Wednesday by scooping them up in the belly of a Chinook helicopter and ferrying them away from this flooded mountain town.

The rescue effort represents the most visible element of a broader, $55 million U.S. assistance package following Pakistan's worst-ever natural disaster. While the ultimate impact on Pakistani public opinion is unknown, the United States has earned rare and almost universal praise here for acting quickly to speed aid to those hit hardest.

The Pakistanis rescued Wednesday were among more than 2,700 picked up over the past week by six U.S. choppers that have also delivered bags of flour and biscuits to stranded residents of the flood-ravaged Swat Valley, in the country's northwest. Nineteen larger helicopters will take over that effort, the U.S. Central Command announced Wednesday night.

"The American assistance has been considerable, it has been prompt, and it has been effective," said Tanvir Ahmad Khan, a former Pakistani foreign secretary and now chairman of the Islamabad-based Institute of Strategic Studies. "The sheer visibility of American personnel and helicopters working in the field gives a feeling of very welcome assistance from the United States."

Most analysts say that feeling is unlikely to translate into any immediate improvement in underlying Pakistani attitudes toward the United States. The two nations have been allies in fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but the relationship is marked by deep mistrust and a widespread belief among Pakistanis that the United States has ulterior motives for its war in neighboring Afghanistan. The word "America" is often pronounced here as an epithet and accompanied by a litany of decades-old grievances. In a survey released by the Pew Research Center last month, nearly six in 10 Pakistanis described the United States as an enemy.

Still, the floods have presented U.S. policymakers with an unusual chance to generate goodwill while providing a much-needed humanitarian service. The floods have affected 14 million people across Pakistan, and the United Nations said Wednesday that nearly half a billion dollars is urgently needed to keep the death toll from soaring past the current 1,600. International aid has so far been inadequate, it said, at less than $100 million.

The United States is not the only player here that sees an opportunity to enhance its image. Islamic charities -- some with links to banned militant groups -- also moved quickly to plug the gap left by the Pakistani government's inability to meet flood victims' basic needs. In traffic circles across northwestern Pakistan, a charity widely believed to be a front for the outlawed group Lashkar-i-Taiba has set up tents advertising the availability of food and shelter to anyone who needs them.

The Pakistani Taliban, too, has said that it will help victims -- on the condition that the Pakistani government stop accepting assistance from the United States.

Rather than shun U.S. aid, Pakistan has asked for more, requesting dozens of additional helicopters. The 19 new heavy-lift helicopters -- 12 CH-46E Sea Knights, four CH-53E Super Stallions and three MH-53E Sea Dragons -- are aboard the USS Peleliu, part of a Marine expeditionary unit that has been positioned off the Pakistani coast to aid the effort. The new choppers will relieve four Chinooks and two Black Hawks, based in Afghanistan, that were sent here along with 90 troops on an emergency basis last week.

The U.S. military deployed dozens of helicopters after the 2005 earthquake in the Pakistani region of Kashmir, and their presence earned the United States a temporary jump in popularity. This time, the damage reaches into every corner of the country and is expanding by the hour.

"Pakistan is our friend, an ally, and in their time of need, we are committed to partnering with their government and military to support their efforts to bring relief to the millions of Pakistanis impacted by these floods," Gen. James N. Mattis, the new Centcom commander, said as he announced the additional helicopters.

The initial helicopter missions have been focused in one small area, the Swat Valley, a strategically important region that also happens to be one of the hardest hit. Just over a year ago, Swat was controlled by Taliban militants, and it took a major offensive by the Pakistani army to drive them out. The government had begun to rebuild Swat after the heavy fighting, but the floods have set back those efforts by years, officials say.

Swat's hillsides are a dazzling emerald green, with terraced fields of wheat and fruit orchards adorning the peaks that have earned the area a reputation as the Switzerland of Asia. But on the valley floor, the muddy waters of the Swat River run wild, coursing through roads, towns and anything else in their path.

Thousands of Swat residents have been cut off for two weeks, and with food stocks running low, they are eager to get out.

When two Chinooks landed in an open field Wednesday, they were greeted by dozens of young men from Swat who ran to help unload the sacks of flour and boxes of nutritional biscuits. Next stop was the village of Kalam, where the Swat River surges through the central bazaar and where residents were lined up to board the helicopters.

The troops on the Chinooks wore combat fatigues, but they kept their sidearms holstered and did not carry assault rifles. Pakistani troops provided security, patting down people before they boarded.

Men dragged clothes and everything else they could carry in bundles of bedsheets; women guided anxious-looking young children by the hand as they climbed the metal plank and entered one of the Chinooks. Once the helicopter was airborne, U.S. troops tossed bags of Famous Amos peanut butter cookies, and the kids rose to claim them.

Haji Zarestan, 61, said his house was destroyed by the floods in late July and his family narrowly avoided being washed away as they climbed a hill to escape. Nearly two weeks later, they were airlifted out by the United States. "We would have been waiting much longer if the U.S. helicopters had not reached here," he said.

Even after they are rescued, the flood victims must rely on the kindness of relatives, friends or strangers to keep them sheltered and fed. Few official relief camps have been established, and some of those who had been evacuated Wednesday said they did not know where they would go. With their belongings slung over their shoulders, they boarded colorful Pakistani trucks and said they would hope for the best.

Still, at least they have options; in Kalam, they were stuck. "We couldn't go anywhere, and no one could come to us," said Noor Ali Shah, who flew out of Kalam with the United States on Wednesday. "The bridges are all destroyed, and the roads are too dangerous."

Officials in Kalam praised the Americans for saving so many residents. "The Americans are doing a great job for our people at our time of need," said Mohammed Roshan, a local official.

But, he shouted as the roar of the Chinook's dual rotor blades nearly drowned out his voice, there was a community farther up the valley where people were stranded, and no chopper had been seen.

Special correspondent Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar and staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

Exsandgroper

12-08-10, 11:55 AM

Afghans' welfare is worth the body count Chris Masters

From: The Daily Telegraph August 12, 2010 12:00AM

IF 2010 provides the tipping point for the almost decade-long funeral march that is the war in Afghanistan, then August could prove the crucial month.
With open supply lines from Pakistan and the end of the harvest freeing agricultural workers to pick up weapons for the Taliban, coalition forces have come to see the summer months as the fighting season.

And in Uruzgan province, the base of Australian troops, August brings the departure of the senior coalition partner, the Royal Netherlands Army.

The Dutch and Australians have fought together since 2006. Throughout Afghanistan 24 Dutch servicemen have been killed, with domestic political pressure now drawing their comrades home. In Holland the costs of deployment are much better known than the benefits.

In Australia the story is much the same. With 17 dead and up to 150 wounded, public opposition has also increased.

So what if anything is the upside? How much of a difference has the coalition made in this most alien corner of the planet?

And why is the soldier's view of the intervention so different to the view at home?

In the past months I interviewed hundreds of Australian service personnel with experience of Afghanistan. Not one thought they were fighting on the wrong side.

All saw they were making a difference. None wanted to be brought home.

Captain Clare O'Neill, a construction engineer, has been twice. She will never forget her first patrol in 2006 to Tarin Kowt. "There were bullet holes and bloodstains, deserted streets and no economic activity."

Escorted by Special Forces soldiers, O'Neill found her way to the Tarin Kowt hospital. The walls were mud brick. The roof had collapsed. Being female meant she was the first foreigner to be allowed into the women's quarters.

The head nurse pleaded for baby packs of powder, oil and clothing to encourage women to attend. To the gratitude of the nurse, the baby packs arrived and a start was made.

O'Neill thought it would take 10 years to make a visible difference. So her memory of returning in 2008 is equally vivid. Observing the town from the base at night she saw lights everywhere. The image was in contrast to the pitch black broken only by rockets or flares two years earlier.

By day she saw a "bustling Asian marketplace, cars and jingle trucks, flags and police and even females walking unaccompanied in the streets".

O'Neill witnessed improvement but from a very low base. While corrupt Government officials and warlords obstruct as effectively as the Taliban, there is good news too - and good people.

The young captain formed a bond with two of them, government engineer Hashim and the head of local medical services Dr Ahmad Noor.

The Australians learned to advance with caution, recognising that grand plans had a way of disappointing. They realised there was no use putting up buildings if there was no trained staff to occupy them, or fuel for the generators.

In June when I revisited the transformed Tarin Kowt hospital Dr Noor told me twice as many people in Uruzgan now access healthcare. Nearby is the new boys school. The Dutch Provincial Reconstruction Team head Jennes de Mol told me 50,000 more students now receive education.

Outside Tarin Kowt there is also progress. Colonel Stuart Yeaman commanded Reconstruction Task Force 4, which deployed in the summer of 2008. By then the coalition was shifting to a "population centric" approach, which meant excluding the Taliban by protecting communities.

The soldiers had come to term previous raids on the Taliban as like "Jim's Mowing". You go out there, cut them down, return to your base and they grow again. The reconstruction teams, now with a better balance of force protection, stayed on location, drilling wells, building clinics, schools, bazaars, bridges and interacting with the community.

The coalition could not control corruption but it found some ways to contain it. Yeaman sacked an interpreter for taking a bribe and educated contractors in competitive tendering. "They soon learned if you try to bribe us you won't get a look in," he says.

Projects grew and with them a skills base, employment and the reach of government, until this point of a minimal presence in valleys beyond Tarin Kowt.

Projects serving communities rather than clans were favoured, as giving to one tribe can alienate another. Hydro plants with small enough budgets to deter thieves generated goodwill and electricity.

On her second deployment, O'Neill was surprised to see unprotected Afghan engineers working 15km out of Tarin Kowt. In the valleys beyond there is not just a patchwork of tribes but also of peace and war.

Australian soldiers come to know the areas where they will likely draw fire.

But when the insurgents inflict casualties it is mostly through the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The current fighting season, the worst for Australia and the coalition, advances the proposition that the Taliban is gaining strength.

Australian soldiers have an opposite view. In earlier rotations special forces in particular experienced fighting "swarms" whereby insurgents attacked in numbers.

Now it is rare for the Taliban to assemble squads of fighters and when this occurs they take heavy losses.

In the Kandahar fighting that preceded the recent loss of three Australian commandos in a helicopter crash, as many as 70 insurgents were killed in a concentrated firefight.

There are few clear measures of success in counterinsurgency warfare, none of them in body counts. Yeaman believes it emerges more in finer details, such as creation of honest work.

And O'Neill is optimistic. "It might be small steps, but it is working," she says.

Lieutenant Colonel Shane Gabriel, who commanded Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force 1, says it is simple.

"Progress is when we have more population under direct influence of the Government than the Taliban," he says.

At the end of 2008 when Gabriel arrived, the coalition, now including Afghan government forces, had become a permanent presence in areas where formerly only special forces dared to tread. He saw the willingness of the Taliban to mass as diminished, but also recognised the more ground covered meant a greater exposure to IEDs. Despite the dangers and presumption they must wish to be brought home, the soldiers are eager to not just be there but get out on patrol.

Gabriel had trouble persuading them to take a break. And growing casualties made them keener to validate the sacrifice, as well as honour hard-won lessons.

Against the broader blood-flecked canvas of Afghanistan, Australians occupy a narrow front. Being positive about progress in Uruzgan can't translate as confident prediction of ultimate victory.

But Australians should know their soldiers don't pack it in because it is hard. They see their efforts are worthwhile. To them, protecting military investment in Afghanistan is far more than just emotional. There is sweat as well as blood on that ground.

Cheers

buglerbilly

12-08-10, 02:30 PM

Afghan Government MIA at American-Backed Farm

By Spencer Ackerman August 12, 2010 | 7:00 am

SHALIZAR, Afghanistan — The rows on the farm were neat and parallel, just as they should appear: red tomatoes that started out as Iranian seeds; bulbous watermelons ripening on the vine; even peanuts. Peanuts aren’t typically a crop grown in Afghanistan, but they’re cultivated here in almost 20 rows. It’s an apparent tribute to the peanut farmer and Virginia National Guard officer who’s sponsoring this Kapisa Province agricultural project.

Only one thing was missing: the Afghan government’s agricultural chief for the province, who was supposed to inspect the crops. And it’s for his benefit that the farm is around in the first place. Consider it another example of how America’s costly counterinsurgency formula lacks a central ingredient: an interested, functional host-nation government.

The farm is the project of the Agribusiness Development Team attached to Task Force Wolverine, the brigade-sized unit responsible for security in Bamiyan, Panjshir and Parwan provinces. The ADTs are a fairly recent initiative that bring around ten groups of National Guardsmen — in this case, 64 reservists, mostly from Kentucky — with farming experience to advise and mentor Afghan provincial officials in agricultural production techniques.

Wolverine doesn’t ordinarily operate in Kapisa. But the Kentucky ADT is here because its predecessor unit launched projects there, like this farm about five miles from Bagram Air Field, that require continuity.

Something else that Lieutenant Colonel Henry Goodrich inherited from his predecessors before arriving in Afghanistan in June: an intransigent Director of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, known as a DAIL, called Mr. Husiani. Goodrich, a southeast Virginia farmer in civilian life and commander of the ADT’s Kapisa team, is in Afghanistan to advise Afghan agricultural officials about best cultivation practices. He expressed respect for Kapisa’s farmers, who grow wheat, grapes, corn and other vegetables in the two northeastern districts where Goodrich works. (No poppy, in case you were wondering.) But Goodrich doesn’t work directly with individual farmers; he works with Mr. Husiani. That is, when Mr. Husaini feels like it, which is rarely. “The goal is to get him to take over this operation,” Goodrich says as we ride in his armored vehicle to get to the farm, but Mr. Husaini “doesn’t seem interested in much of anything.”

Mr. Husiani certainly wasn’t interested in inspecting the farm, even as his ostensible U.S. counterparts were. He opted not to show up, informing the ADT (officially known as Task Force Ironhorse) that he had to take a meeting in Kabul. According to Goodrich, it’s “not unusual for him not to be there” when the ADT checks in on its projects.

And the farm, a short drive from Bagram — in turn a short drive from Kabul — is supposed to be a top DAIL priority. Spread out over nearly ten acres under the protection of big, majestic mountains, the farm is intended to be a low-cost demonstration to the DAIL of how Afghans can grow new crops for their benefit. Over the last 60 days, Goodrich says he’s spent only $2500 on the farm, something he spends in half a day on his own crops back home. (It wasn’t clear how much the previous ADT spent on the farm.)

It’s as much a security operation as it is a development one: Kapisa is the most volatile of Ironhorse’s designated provinces, and while the ADT has only been attacked once — a rocket whizzed by the team in late June, hurting no one — it’s too dangerous for Ironhorse to expand its presence southward, where a French task force provides security. To Goodrich, someone who has a good farming job isn’t going to be interested in planting the roadside bombs that both kill people and hinder crops from getting to market.

Keeping the place running is Farid, a recent graduate of the school of agriculture at nearby Al Baroni University, home to a companion farm sponsored by the Americans. An enthusiastic guy with a trim beard and a pink shirt, Farid proudly walks Goodrich’s team through the farm, telling the ADT through a translator about the work he’s done maintaining it. Practically as soon as Farid finishes saying hello in broken English, Goodrich squats down joyfully and points to a leafy sprout. Peanuts. The lieutenant colonel can’t believe it: “Is that for me?” Apparently, after Goodrich brought Farid some peanuts to taste, the farmer bought some from Pakistan and figured he’d start planting.

“See how that’s starting to swell up?” Goodrich says, pointing with his knife at a tiny green bulb at the base of the plant. “That’s where the peanut will grow.” They walk through the field, inspecting tomatoes and watermelons, an irrigation ditch and even an easy-to-ire guard dog tethered to a shed in the middle of the farm. Goodrich praises Farid’s “outstanding work,” and pledges to get him what the farmer requests: some backpack pesticide sprayers and money for some more employees, particularly for security. A white tent marks where some locals are squatting in refuge after a weekend rocket attack nearby.

There’s just one snag: the DAIL. Every time it seems like Farid reports that the DAIL is finally offering some support, he walks it back under questioning. Mr. Husiani provided seeds for some carrots and other veggies? Well, actually, no: he just promised some seeds in the future. Did Farid just say that the DAIL gave him twenty pounds of fertilizer? Well, not really: a Guard major gave Farid money for the fertilizer and Farid bought it from the DAIL.

Goodrich can only tighten his jaw after hearing that Mr. Husseini isn’t helping. “I am putting pressure on the DAIL to do more work,” he tells Fareed. “I’m going to stop doing projects in this area that he wants if he doesn’t.” Going forward, he assures Fareed that the ADT will provide seed and fertilizer if the DAIL doesn’t do what “he’s supposed to do,” but encourages him anyway to keep making his resource requests through the DAIL. He sounds like countless U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan who’ve urged their local counterparts to use their ineffectual bureaucracies for their needs, despite negative experience to the contrary. No one wants to deepen the dependence on foreigners, even if the local government isn’t getting the job done.

The ADT makes one more stop before heading back to Bagram: the DAIL’s office in nearby Mahmud Raqi, the provincial capital. Within the manicured compound, the ADT is bankrolling a $90,000 construction of two greenhouses and a stone-based cold-storage facility. According to Major Fred Bates, the contracts chief for the ADT, the lack of electricity in Afghanistan means that farmers in the area typically sell their goods for the winter to Pakistani refrigeration facilities. Then the fridge men sell the farmers back their own crops at an inflated price. The construction is a bigger project than Goodrich typically prefers — “I’m really focused on the smaller stuff,” he says, possessing discretionary authority on projects up to $50,000 — but it’s another intended quick-demonstration effect, and clearly one that would bolster the DAIL’s prestige.

If he were there. As the ADT gets a project update from Kabeer, the English-speaking Kabul-based contractor who’s building the lockers and the greenhouses, the DAIL’s deputy for forestry, Samad, beckons Goodrich and his team in for a lunch of spicy kebabs and sweet melon. Part of the group heads into the absent Mr. Husiani’s elegantly carpeted office, which is capped by a desk with little on it besides a plastic inbox-outbox tray, which is nearly bereft of papers. The calendar on the wall, featuring a bear chewing contently on a branch full of leaves, is set to June.

But Samad tells Goodrich something encouraging. He wants to start getting agricultural projects going in the Nejrab Valley, near the center of the province. It’s not something Goodrich has ever heard before. Usually, he explains after lunch, the DAIL’s team doesn’t push for any projects beyond the 140 square kilometer, 100,000-person, mostly-Tajik, mostly-safe slice of Kapisa where the ADT works. Goodrich worries the expansion could backfire: “It needs to be a little more secure” before the team can go, he says.

“It’s no problem for us,” replies an aide to Samad who calls himself Ghyas. Goodrich says that he needs to coordinate with the French troops operating in the area, but he wants to move down into the area to start work.

Driving back to Bagram in the thickly-armored, blast-resistant vehicle, Goodrich is in a good mood, despite not seeing Mr. Husiani today. “This is the first time they’ve asked for anything outside this immediate area.” He’s happy to count that as progress. If the DAIL wants to expand its reach, maybe the team can get a virtuous circle of development and security going.

As for Mr. Husiani himself, Goodrich says, “He’s not as productive as I would like him to be. It’s a big issue.” Working with the Afghan government has taught him, he observes, about the value of working “at the district or village level.” Which is to say: working for the Afghan government in principle — but, in practice, despite it.

Photo: Spencer Ackerman

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/afghan-government-mia-at-american-backed-farm/#more-29278#ixzz0wOUwNC5c

buglerbilly

12-08-10, 05:45 PM

Nearly 120,000 Troops From 47 Countries Serve in ISAF

07:10 GMT, August 12, 2010 WASHINGTON

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan now has almost 120,000 troops from 47 different countries assigned to it, NATO officials said on Tuesday.

The United States provides 78,430 of that total, part of the roughly 100,000 American troops now based in the country. The top leadership is all American, with Army Gen. David H. Petraeus commanding ISAF and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. Army Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez commands the ISAF Joint Command, and Army Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell commands NATO Training Mission Afghanistan.

The largest regional command in Afghanistan is in the south, with 35,000 troops. The command is focused on Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city and the spiritual home of the Taliban. Regional Command South is under the command of British army Maj. Gen. Nick Carter.

Kandahar is the focus of counterinsurgency efforts now. The American presence in the region is significant, with U.S. troops around the city, in the Arghandab River valley and guarding the road network linking the city with the rest of the country. Canadians run the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar, Australians operate the team in Tarin Kowt, and the team in Qalat is American-run.

The next-largest regional command is in the east, with 32,000 personnel. Regional Command East is built around the 101st Airborne Division headquarters, with Army Maj. Gen. John Campbell commanding. In addition to the U.S. troops, a brigade of French troops and a Polish brigade also serve in the command. Ten of the 14 provincial reconstruction teams in the area are staffed by Americans. The Czech Republic mans the team in Logar, New Zealand operates the team in Bamyan, Turkey handles Wardak, and South Korea has troops at the team in Parwan.

Regional Command South West is the next-largest command, with 27,000 troops. The command covers Helmand and Nimroz provinces, with most of the troops in Helmand. Marines provide most of the American manpower in the region, and they work closely with British forces there. Denmark and Georgia also have forces in the area. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Mills commands from his headquarters in Lashkar Gah.

With 11,000 troops, Regional Command North is keeping watch on an area that is experiencing a growth in Taliban activity. Commanded by German army Maj. Gen. Hans-Werner Fritz in Mazar-e Sharif, the command has a smorgasbord of nationalities. The Germans work seamlessly with Norwegians, Swedes, Hungarians and Turks. U.S. forces are based in the area as part of the Afghan army and police training effort.

The Italians command Regional Command West, based in Herat. The 9,000 coalition troops cover an area stretching from the middle of the country to the border with Iran. Spanish, Lithuanian and American troops are the mainstays under the command of Italian Brig. Gen. Claudio Berto.

Finally, Regional Command Capital encompasses the area in and around the Afghan capital of Kabul. Turkish Brig. Gen. Levent Colak commands the 5,000-member command, which is basically Turkish and Spanish. The command has been turning over security responsibility to Afghan forces over the past couple of months, but the Afghans still work under the guidance and mentorship of the command.

After the United States, the country with the largest number of troops with ISAF is the United Kingdom with 9,500, followed by Germany with 4,590. France is next with 3,750, followed by Italy with 3,400, Canada with 2,830, Poland with 2,630, Romania with 1,760, Turkey with 1,740, Spain with 1,555, and Australia with 1,455.

----
Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

buglerbilly

12-08-10, 05:48 PM

Heavy Fighting Expected in Afghanistan

August 12, 2010

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The United States expects heavy fighting around the key Afghan city of Kandahar until late this year, a Pentagon official said Wednesday, dimming hopes for big gains in the war ahead of U.S. elections and a White House review of its war strategy.

Several NATO nations also are taking stock of their military commitments in Afghanistan, and the course of the war will be a major topic for leaders of the alliance at a summit in October.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the United States and its partners must show gains by year's end or risk losing public support at home.

Military leaders are increasingly suggesting that despite the imperative for progress, the American public should not expect fast results.

Gen. David Petraeus, on the job as war commander for only a few weeks, will begin arguing publicly this weekend for patience and flexibility. Petraeus will do a round of television interviews intended partly to reassure Americans that the war is worth fighting and to argue that President Obama's redrawn strategy is only beginning to take root.

Petraeus is not expected to ask for more troops, knowing there is little stomach for that in Washington, but he has begun a quiet campaign for more time.

Petraeus took the job from cashiered Gen. Stanley McChrystal with the understanding that some U.S. forces will come home by the middle of next year, as Obama has promised. Still, Petraeus, Gates and others are preparing the public for a small withdrawal at first.

Although Gates had predicted in June that Afghan forces could take control of security in some areas by the end of this year, diplomats in the United States and Europe say the first handover may not occur until early next year.

A NATO conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in October would decide which areas would be handed over first.

Kandahar was supposed to be a feather in the U.S. cap this year, with a military and civilian drive planned for early June that was expected to show results by the fall.

That schedule slipped, in part because of resistance among Kandahar's residents. Now, the U.S. strategy calls for essentially the same campaign to play out on a longer timeline.

Kandahar is considered a make-or-break test of the allied war strategy, which calls for protecting major population centers and building support for the Afghan central government.

The military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to outline coming operations, said commanders expect prolonged fighting in several volatile districts surrounding Kandahar.

An Afghan battalion will do what the military calls "clearing" operations alongside U.S. and some Canadian forces ringing the city, the official said. That means chasing insurgents out of populated areas, fighting those that remain and closing down sources of insurgent weapons or supplies.

Special operations forces, many with a mandate to hunt and kill specific insurgents, will play a major role, the official said.

Inside the city, a gradual increase of Afghan police will be coupled with expansion of electricity, the official said.

Lack of electrical power is one of Afghans' chief complaints against the central government in Kabul, so U.S. counterinsurgency specialists plan to deploy generators and reinforce the power grid as a demonstration of good will. Long-term improvement of electrical service would take new hydroelectric or other generating projects, which could take years.

The U.S. military official said commanders see small signs that support is growing for the counterinsurgency campaign among residents of the Taliban heartland of southern Afghanistan.

An independent survey of 552 men in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in June found that a majority said the coalition is winning the war. Nearly three-quarters said they wanted their children to grow up under an elected government rather than the Taliban.

The survey by the International Council on Security and Development also found deep resentment and mistrust of the international presence in Afghanistan.

Three-quarters of those interviewed said foreigners disrespect their religion and traditions, and working with foreign forces is wrong.

A large majority -- 70 percent -- said recent military actions in their area were bad for the Afghan people, and 59 percent opposed further operations in Kandahar.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

12-08-10, 05:55 PM

Al Qaeda Targeted in SE Afghanistan

August 11, 2010

Long War Journal|by Bill Roggio

A combined Afghan and Coalition force targeted al Qaeda and Pakistani fighters during raids in the southeastern province of Zabul. Twenty suspected Taliban fighters were detained during the operations.

The target of the two raids was an "al Qaeda foreign fighter facilitator" in the district of Shamulzai, which directly borders the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, a haven for the Taliban across the border.

Fifteen Taliban fighters were detained in the first raid, while five more were detained during a second raid that "pursued a group of suspected Pakistani foreign fighters who fled the targeted compound," the International Security Assistance Force stated in a press release.

Al Qaeda maintains a presence in Zabul province, according to an investigation by The Long War Journal. US military press releases document the presence of al Qaeda and "foreign fighter" cells in the districts of Shamulzai and Shah Joy; or two of Zabul's 11 districts. The US military uses the term "foreign fighters" to describe al Qaeda and allied terror groups from outside of Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda works directly with the Taliban, who are entrenched in Zabul. The Taliban have more than 2,000 fighters organized into 100 groups, and control the northern district of Kakar, according to a report in The Washington Post. The US military maintains a token presence in Zabul, while a battalion of about 800 Romanian troops and Jordanian and US special operations forces are also based in the province.

The US military has countered statements made by top US intelligence officials who have claimed that al Qaeda maintains only 50 to 100 operatives inside of Afghanistan. This claim has been made by CIA director Leon Panetta and Nation Counterterrorism Center Director Michal Leiter.

"Al Qaeda is very much involved in insurgent activities in Afghanistan," Colonel Rafael Torres, the director of the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command Combined Joint Operations Center, said in today's press release. "Foreign fighters bring nothing but violence and instability for Afghanistan."

Al Qaeda's extensive reach in Afghanistan is documented in the body of press releases issued in recent years by the International Security Assistance Force. Looking at press releases dating back to March 2007, The Long War Journal has been able to detect the presence of al Qaeda and affiliated groups such as the Islamic Jihad Union in 46 different districts in 16 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. These cells are not limited to areas in the south and east; cells have been detected in the Farah and Herat in the west, Kunduz in the north, and Kapisa in central Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda operates in conjunction with the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and the Hizb-i-Islami Guldbuddin network throughout Afghanistan. Al Qaeda operatives often serve as embedded military trainers for Taliban field units and impart tactics and bomb-making skills to these forces. Al Qaeda often supports the Taliban by funding operations and providing weapons and other aid, according to classified military memos released by Wikileaks.

© Copyright 2010 Long War Journal. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

13-08-10, 04:49 AM

Lockheed Martin Delivers TOPSCENE Tactical Terrain Visualization System to the United Kingdom

DALLAS,TX, August 12th, 2010 -- Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] recently delivered the TOPSCENE® Tactical Terrain Visualization System, a mission planning and rehearsal software package, to the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) in support of operations in Afghanistan.

U.K. helicopter forces based at RAF Odiham will use TOPSCENE® to perform mission rehearsal with greater realism than is possible with their existing system. TOPSCENE® also will enable greater interoperability with U.S. forces, which have been using TOPSCENE® for more than 20 years.

TOPSCENE® converts two-dimensional data from satellites and other sources into three-dimensional “fly through” and “walk through” battlefield visualisation scenarios.

“Using real-world images, Warfighters can plan and then repeatedly rehearse a mission, taking advantage of visually significant clues and aim points,” said John Metzger, senior program manager at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. “By knowing exactly what the terrain and built-up areas will look like during the real mission, the chance of a successful mission is greatly increased.”

TOPSCENE®, with its embedded ability to stop, scale, slew and rotate the image, enables the Warfighter at all echelons to study their mission-operating environment in depth before actually entering a hostile area. The system provides photo-based imagery, 3-D terrain and culture, and sensor simulation, which provide a high-fidelity situational awareness in the tactical mission operating environment over large terrain databases.

“Currently there are more than 3,500 TOPSCENE® systems deployed worldwide,” said Will Shores, Business Development director at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. “TOPSCENE® has a highly responsive operational support system and we are very proud that the U.K. MoD has decided to use this outstanding product in support of their Warfighters in Afghanistan.”

buglerbilly

13-08-10, 05:14 AM

Wikileaks Plans To Continue Releasing War Files

By Sam Reeves

Published: 12 Aug 2010 17:58

I'm glad to see that reason has prevailed with Wikileaks........NOT! The arrogance of this organisation knows no bounds in their pompous desire to gain noteriety in their self-proclaimed seeking of "Freedom of Speech"..............irrespective of how much damage this does! :jerkit

LONDON - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange insisted Aug. 12 the whistleblower website still planned to release its final batch of U.S. military files on the Afghan war, despite American demands it hold back.

Speaking via video link to an audience in London, Assange said the site was preparing to release the final 15,000 classified files, the remaining documents from a huge cache which were published last month.

"We are about 7,000 reports in," he said, without giving a date when the files would be released.

Asked whether the website would press ahead with the release, he responded: "Absolutely."

He added during the debate at the Frontline Club in the British capital that there had been "no assistance, despite repeated requests, from the White House or the Pentagon".

His comments came after the Pentagon last week demanded WikiLeaks "do the right thing" and return around 70,000 classified U.S. military documents on Afghanistan it released in late July.

It also urged the website to halt plans for any future releases.

The files contained a string of damaging claims, including allegations that Pakistani spies met directly with the Taliban and that deaths of innocent civilians at the hands of international forces were covered up.

The documents also included the names of some Afghan informants, prompting claims that the leaks have endangered lives.

Speaking last week, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the Defense Department demands that WikiLeaks give the U.S. government all versions of documents "obtained directly or indirectly" from Pentagon databases or records.

Morrell said there was other information in WikiLeaks' possession that "has not been pushed into the public domain yet."

"We hope this message will help convince them not to publish," he added.

Assange, 39, an Australian former hacker and computer programmer, has previously said he believed the publication would help focus public debate on the war in Afghanistan and on possible atrocities by U.S.-led forces.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, both said the publication had endangered locals providing information to U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon and the Federal Bureau of Investigation swiftly launched an investigation into the case when it came to light July 25.

Daniel Schmitt, a WikiLeaks spokesman in Germany, previously told U.S. news website The Daily Beast that the site wanted to open a line of communication with the Pentagon to review another 15,000 classified reports, in order to "make redactions so they can be safely published."

The Pentagon however has insisted it never received any such request from WikiLeaks.

The site, which styles itself as "the first intelligence agency of the people," was founded in December 2006 and invited would-be whistleblowers from around the world to make anonymous contributions.

WikiLeaks has never identified the source of the Afghan files but suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst under arrest for allegedly leaking video of a 2007 US Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad in which civilians died.

buglerbilly

13-08-10, 05:41 AM

US military to urge Barack Obama to slow down Afghanistan withdrawal

The US military is to urge Barack Obama to slow down the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, which is planned to start next year, it has emerged.

By Robert Winnett, Washington, UK Daily Telegraph

Published: 9:00PM BST 12 Aug 2010

General David Petraeus, the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan Photo: AP

General David Petraeus, who took command of the Afghan mission last month, is expected to use a series of interviews next week to say the military needs time to complete its work in the country.

The President and David Cameron have both said that troops will begin leaving Afghanistan in July next year ahead of a planned total military pullout by 2015.

US says 12,000 troops to leave Iraq by SeptemberMr Obama is expected to come under pressure in the run-up to the 2012 Presidential election for a rapid withdrawal of American troops.

A new opinion poll shows that the majority of Americans are unhappy with his handling of the war.

The military concerns over the strategy in Afghanistan have emerged after fears were also raised that the Americans are seeking to leave Iraq too quickly.

The US military will end combat operations in Iraq at the end of this month and troops will begin returning home. However, the head of the Iraqi army warned on Wednesday that the US army was needed in the country for another decade.

Gen Petraeus, who previously headed the US campaign in Iraq, took over in Afghanistan after his predecessor, Stanley McChrystal, was forced to leave after criticising the vice president in a magazine interview.

He is expected to begin speaking publicly about the mission this weekend, with his first television interview. It is understood he will say that the additional 30,000 troops ordered as part of a "surge" in the country will not all have arrived until later this month and that the strategy needs more time to succeed.

Counter-insurgency experts are reported to have warned that they have only begun making breakthroughs in the past 12 months – despite the US mission in Afghanistan beginning in 2001.

A senior Obama administration official told The New York Times: "Their argument is that while we've only been in Afghanistan for nine years, only in the past 12 months or so have we started doing this right, and we need to give it some time and think about what our long-term presence in Afghanistan should look like."

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, appeared to back the military's emerging view recently when he said that next year's withdrawal is likely to be "fairly limited".

Mr Obama has yet to disclose his plans for withdrawal. The President has ordered an official review of the Afghan war to be conducted in December, after which the White House is expected to detail its strategy.

However, senior Democrat politicians are pressuring the President to quickly remove tens of thousands of troops from Afghanistan.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker in the House of Representatives, said: "The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have come at tremendous cost to the America people. Members of Congress and the administration will have to assess whether the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, and the resources we must invest to continue these efforts, are the best way to protect our national security." Gerald Connolly, a Democrat Congressman who is a member of the House Foreign Affairs committee, added: "There's a lack of a clear end-game." During his first official visit to Washington last month, Mr Cameron reiterated that he supported a withdrawal of troops from next year.

The Prime Minister is also likely to face pressure for a rapid withdrawal as the British death toll continues to rapidly increase.

buglerbilly

13-08-10, 11:09 AM

Afghanistan Drives Pentagon Fuel Deals

Aug 12, 2010

By Michael Fabey

Fuel is proving to be a very volatile commodity for the Pentagon as operations heat up in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon spent about $4.8 billion on fuel and liquid propellants in 2009, making them the third-highest expense for the U.S. military last year, according to an Aerospace DAILY analysis of federal contracting data provided by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.

The 2009 fuel bill was about 55% more than the Pentagon’s 2008 fuel purchases, when those costs ranked as the fourth-highest Pentagon expense, the analysis shows.

About a quarter of all the 2009 fuel contracts and contract modifications for 2009 originated in Afghanistan, although those transactions represent only about 2.6% of the total fuel expense amounts.

Altogether, the Pentagon awarded 114 contracts or modifications originating in Afghanistan for fuel, at a total price of about $126.9 million.

The only country with more originating contracts is the United States, with 296. The next highest countries after Afghanistan are Germany and Japan, with six transactions each.

What the large number of relatively low-priced fuel transactions in Afghanistan shows, analysts say, is the need to buy fuel locally in Afghan regions because U.S. military supply lines are stretched thin and proving unreliable.

The analysis also highlights another trend in Pentagon fuel contracts in Afghanistan — a reliance on unidentified contractors for the work. Pentagon contracts — even classified ones — have long identified the names of contractors in publicly releasing the transactions. In 2008, though, the Defense Department started to withhold those names, simply referring to them as “not available.”

The Pentagon will not comment on the practice, but analysts say part of the reason for withholding the names is because the Defense Department has started to hire a large number of small companies that have sprung up in Iraq and Afghanistan to provide services like fuel and security.

The “not available” companies rank 10th among contractors with fuel contracts for 2009, tallying about $35 million in transactions. All of those deals originated in Afghanistan. (See chart p. 6.)

Recently, U.S. authorities reportedly started to investigate whether two companies that were part of a Pentagon Afghanistan fuel contract — Afghan-owned Guzar Mir Bacha Kot Transportation, known as GMT by U.S. officials, and subcontractor Suleiman & Sons — helped soldiers steal $1.6 million in fuel from the Logar province region military installation.

Neither company shows up as a named contractor for fuel contracts in 2009, according to the analysis.

Photo credit: U.S. Army

buglerbilly

13-08-10, 04:09 PM

Soldiers Try To Trade Tech Support For Afghan Intel

By Spencer Ackerman August 13, 2010 | 7:49 am

TOKCHI, Afghanistan – Captain Christian Balan shows up to the computer lab holding a spool of Cat-5 cable, eager to play tech support. If he can get the computers running in this relatively-prosperous town of 4000 people, he figures, it’ll pay dividends in goodwill. Maybe the platoon will get some tips about local insurgent activity.

His fellow soldiers are skeptical. You go to talk to the Afghans and you help them if you can, but all you typically get back is a laundry list of complaints and a Stop Snitching posture of silence when it comes giving up the bad guys.

So there’s some tension within this small unit, the 3rd Platoon of Alpha Company Sappers, 1-172 Cavalry, with whom Balan, the overall squadron’s communications chief, is riding along today to assist. The soldiers’ ultimate goal is to take down insurgents and stabilize the two districts of Parwan Province in which they operate. They understand that in a counterinsurgency campaign, that means listening to villagers’ gripes, shelling out for the odd development project and even sending out a makeshift geek squad every now and then. But here in Parwan, just outside Bagram Air Base, they’re not seeing enough return on their investment.

But then there’s Balan, a sunny Vermont National Guardsman who teaches digital forensics at Burlington’s Champlain College in civilian life. Since Tokchi requested computer help, he’s psyched that his techie skills may come in handy for 3rd platoon: “We finally get to do what we like to do!” If he wasn’t in Afghanistan, he tells me, he’d have gone to Def Con. Would’ve grown a beard and everything.

Now, Balan (pictured, above and left) is out in the baking heat, waving to kids who don’t wave back. He steps into the computer lab, a small cement box maintained by a social organization called the Bagram People Sultania Foundation. The room has nine black Dell desktops, looking maybe five years old. They’re running Windows XP Home Edition, got USB drives, optical mice – matter of fact, they wouldn’t be out of place in an American public school. Balan thought he’d be working on total dinosaurs. “I could teach off these!” he beams.

He takes off his helmet and armor and talks to an elderly man in the hope of finding out what’s wrong. His fellow geek, Specialist Steve Torrey, squats down and starts taking one of the towers apart to inspect. More good news: clean motherboards. As it turns out, the computers run fine; they just need power. The nearby generator that feeds the lab – something the U.S. helped provide — is out of juice. Balan and Torrey go back to the platoon’s trucks to get ten gallons of fuel.

Next door, Staff Sergeant Jon Bruce and Lieutenant Willie Spears are having more difficulty unlocking their problems. They’re parleying with the local leader, known as a malik, a leathery-faced guy in a white dishdasha named Abdul Habib. And it’s not going so well; the soldiers and the malik seem to be talking past each other. Bruce and Spears want information about insurgents in the area. Abdul Habib asks the troops to patrol more often, to keep the village safe. They remind him that they came by to fix the computers. Abdul Habib tells the soldiers that they promised to give him a second generator for the lab. “We didn’t promise that,” Bruce answers.

Bruce, a gruff 55-year old National Guardsman from Rutland, Vermont who reenlisted in 2007 after first serving in the Army in the late 70s and early 80s, knows these meetings are important. “You can’t just kick in doors and shoot people,” he says. And Bruce considers Abdul Habib one of his more trustworthy maliks. But in general, he doesn’t like these so-called “key leader engagements.” After serving in 2008 up north and in Helmand Province, he’s come to learn these chats are often frustrating wastes of time.

“You ask for intel,” Bruce says on the drive down, and what you typically hear back is, “‘There are no bad guys here. We do our own security.’ They clam right up. It’s like a broken record.’”

Recently, gunmen boarded a bus in the village shuttling locals to their jobs a few miles away at Bagram. The militants beat a bunch of them up and stole their gear. Bruce and Spears want to know what the malik knows. “We’re investigating,” is all Abdul Habib says at first. He’d rather discuss the wells that he wants dug.

Bruce’s team turns the subject back to the bus attack. “The issue is not actually there now. It’s for the elections,” the malik replies. Huh? They press further, even as Abdul Habib looks apprehensive. Finally, speaking in a code that the interpreter understands, the malik gives Bruce and Spears two names. One of the people he singles out is a candidate for parliament in next month’s elections. According to the malik, the would-be parliamentarian has 200 untrustworthy armed individuals under his command. “That’s a decent intel piece right there,” Bruce says, vowing to follow up. Abdul Habib adds another: last night, another guy loyal to the same candidate threw a hand grenade near the police station. “I’m concerned that this is escalating,” the malik says.

It could be what the platoon is after. But it’s also possible that Abdul Habib is trying to get the U.S. to rid him of a political rival. (I was asked not to name the candidate.) Bruce considers the malik trustworthy. Apparently it’s not the first time they’ve heard that this particular politician has been doing dirt. They’re ready to ride out.

A few miles down the road, in the smaller village of Dasht Opian, the next key leader engagement goes worse.

The platoon doesn’t just need tips about insurgents from the village – it needs remedial information, too. Its repository of data on Dasht Opian, Lieutenant Austin Barber, broke his hand in a gym accident a few weeks ago and had to be sent home. Spears is Barber’s replacement. Given his inexperience, the 42 year-old Illinois National Guardsman takes his cues from Sergeant Kenneth Whittington about what to ask the malik, a gold-toothed, even-tempered man named Abdul Raqeeb.

They ask Abdul Raqeeb apologetically to reiterate some basic information now that Barber is gone. Solicitously, Abdul Raqeeb replies that he’s the malik of five villages, one of three who represent a total of thirteen Parwan localities in the area. He gets up to excuse himself, heeding the platoon’s request to introduce a few of its female soldiers to his wife, the leader of a women’s shura.

Whittington considers it a positive sign, since the platoon hasn’t had the opportunity to speak with her before. But it leaves him and Spears in a room with random villagers who’ve streamed in to talk with and gawk at the soldiers. Out comes a Christmas list of demands. There’s no school in Dasht Opian, so local children go to nearby Charikar for their education. There aren’t any hospitals or clinics, either. One guy pipes up that the “biggest need is electricity,” pointing to the energy-efficient spiral light bulb on the malik’s ceiling. The village has two wells and one of them is nearly dry.

But if Whittington’s going to talk community development, he needs something in return. “Up the road, not long ago, we had a truck get rocketed,” he says. He’s referring to an ugly incident on July 24, when insurgents sent a rocket-propelled grenade through 2nd Platoon’s lead armored truck and sprayed the platoon with AK fire about two miles from the town, badly injuring six soldiers. Does anyone know anything about the attack?

A keyed-up farmer named Abdul Gafoor begins pawing at his brown shirt collar, trying to show off his neck. “I was shot a long time ago by the Taliban,” he says. “If I see anyone suspicious in my area, I will handle it. I’ll kick his ass before you know. But I’m not responsible for other villages.”

That’s not really what Spears and Whittington want to hear. They’d rather get information about the insurgents, not villagers vowing to take matters into their own hands. (Ironically, General David Petraeus might consider Abdul Gafoor a candidate for new effort to get villagers to provide their own security.) The team tries again, telling the men that if they give up intel on the Taliban, they can make some money.

“We will kill them with shotguns!” Abdul Gafoor proudly vows. And speaking of: could the Americans give him any guns?

Spears gestures to the interpreter. “Tell him his mouth and his phone are the biggest, best weapons he has.”

The malik returns, and team goes back and forth with him about maybe getting a job fair going in the area, followed by a long exchange in which Spears can’t quite get clear answers about which villages are under Abdul Raqeeb’s control. As everyone says their goodbyes, the unit’s interpreter – who’s been ribbed by the Tajik villagers for being half-Pashtun – concludes, “They’re not being honest. It’s pissing me off.”

As the team rides out, without much solid information about the insurgency, Bruce reflects that such treatment is pretty much par for the course. “We have some trustworthy maliks, but most are not. This is a land of illusions,” Bruce says. “I’ve got almost two years of my life invested in Afghanistan. The cultural ways, the moods out here are not comparable to the U.S. Most of the time, they’re not giving us the straight story.” Separating rumor from fact, he reflects, is “up to us.”

Balan, true to form, thinks it was a good day. He’s got big plans for the computer lab. He wants to network the computers so they can print to a single printer – maybe add some speakers, too; oh, and he’ll need printer cartridges – so he says he’ll write home to solicit donated equipment. After the platoon rolls back to Bagram, he hangs out in front of its office on some picnic benches and talks about the new software he wants to install. Maybe something about learning English. Or, hey: what about that Mavis Beacon program, the one that teaches you how to type?

Oh yeah, Bruce says – he remembers that program. Balan’s eyes indicate that he’s already musing about all the cool stuff he can introduce to the Tukhchi computer lab. Whether his tech upgrades will be useful as a counterinsurgency tool may require some more imagination.

Photo: Spencer Ackerman

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/soldiers-try-to-trade-tech-support-for-afghan-intel/#more-29340#ixzz0wUkZgQYz

buglerbilly

14-08-10, 03:22 AM

Digger killed in Afghanistan

The West Australian

August 14, 2010, 8:45 am

A 29-year-old soldier serving in the Special Air Service Regiment has been killed in Afghanistan.

Acting Defence Force chief Lieutenant General David Hurley named the soldier as Trooper Jason Brown, 29, a member of the Perth-based Special Air Service Regiment.

Lt-Gen. Hurley said Trooper Brown was shot overnight while assisting in a "disruption operation" in northern Kandahar.

Several insurgents engaged the coalition troops using small arms and Trooper Brown received multiple gunshot wounds.

He received immediate first aid and was evacuated by helicopter to Kandahar but later died.

Lt-Gen. Hurley expressed "deep regret" at Trooper Brown's death.

No other other Australian or Afghan troops were wounded.

Trooper Brown's family had been notified.

Lt-Gen. Hurley said Trooper Brown was an experienced soldier with just over 10 years service.

This was his first deployment to Afghanistan but he had deployed three times to East Timor.

"Australian troops are constantly engaged in this battle. They face significant threats every day and do so with professionalism and courage," he told reporters.

"It is these characteristics which make Australian service personnel so well regarded around the world.

"When a member of the ADF family dies in the service of our country, it hits us all very hard."

He said Trooper Brown was not married and had no children.

Lt-Gen. Hurley declined to comment further because the operation was ongoing and troops were still out in the field.

He said Defence would work to repatriate Trooper Brown's body within the week.

Trooper Brown is the 18th Australian killed in Afghanistan.

buglerbilly

14-08-10, 03:41 AM

Twenty Haqqani Killed in Afghan Raids

August 13, 2010

Long War Journal|by Bill Roggio

Afghan and Coalition forces killed more than 20 Haqqani Network fighters and detained several more during a raid on a district known to harbor al Qaeda and other foreign fighters in eastern Afghansitan.

The Haqqani Network fighters were killed "during an on-going clearing operation aimed at disrupting the Haqqani Network's freedom of movement" in the district of Zadran in Paktia province, the International Security Assistance Force reported in a press release.

The Haqqani Network fighters were killed as Afghan commandos backed by US forces were engaged by "dozens of insurgents occupied entrenched fighting positions throughout the mountainous area" with "machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons." The combined force called in airstrikes on the Haqqani Network positions, killing more than 20 fighters.

ISAF described the district of Zadran as a "known Haqqani Network safe haven" which is "used to stage attacks into Kabul and the Khost-Gardez pass."

Coalition and Afghan forces have been conducting special operations raids targeting the Haqqani Network and al Qaeda operatives in Paktia on a near-daily basis. Over the past several days the combined force captured a Haqqani Network sub-commander who facilitates the movement of weapons into Gardez district and a commander who led two cells in the district of Zurmat. Dozens more fighters have been killed or captured.

In mid-June, Afghan and Coalition forces killed "a large number" of Haqqani Network and foreign fighters during a major clash in the Jani Khel district in Paktia, and another 38 as they crossed the provincial border into Musa Khel in Khost. "Arabs, Uzbeks, Turks, and Chechens" were among those killed in the fight in Jani Khel in Paktia.

Al Qaeda maintains a presence in Paktia province, according to an investigation by The Long War Journal. US military press releases document the presence of al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad Union cells, as well as Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) cells, in the districts of Jani Khel, Zadran, and Zurmat; or three of Paktia's 11 districts.

The Long War Journal has been able to detect the presence of al Qaeda and affiliated groups such as the Islamic Jihad Union in 46 different districts in 16 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. These cells are not limited to areas in the south and east; cells have been detected in the provinces of Farah and Herat in the west, Kunduz in the north, and Kapisa in central Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda operates in conjunction with the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and the Hizb-i-Islami Guldbuddin network throughout Afghanistan. Al Qaeda operatives often serve as embedded military trainers for Taliban field units and impart tactics and bomb-making skills to these forces. Al Qaeda often supports the Taliban by funding operations and providing weapons and other aid, according to classified military memos released by Wikileaks.

© Copyright 2010 Long War Journal. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

14-08-10, 03:45 AM

Gates Blasts Congress Over Afghan Aid

August 13, 2010

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - Defense Secretary Robert Gates is calling for a "change in attitude" on Capitol Hill in getting more civilian help in Afghanistan.

Gates told an audience in San Francisco that resources given to the State Department for work in the war zone are "woefully inadequate" and that Congress is "part of the problem."

Gates noted that lawmakers approved the entire $550 billion budget he asked for this year, but shaved a few billion off the $50 billion Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had requested.

The Pentagon chief said there now are about 1,000 State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development workers in Afghanistan but it was "critically important" hat more attention be given the diplomatic part of the Afghan effort.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

14-08-10, 04:10 AM

Is Iran Supplying the Taliban With Missile Tech?

By Noah Shachtman August 13, 2010 | 1:02 pm

The Afghanistan war may get a whole lot dangerous for U.S. forces, if a report from Kabul’s internal intelligence agency is to be believed.

For years, older-model, shoulder-fired missiles have circulated among Afghanistan’s militant community. They’re the kind of weapons that have the ability to take down helicopters — a major problem for a counterinsurgency where helos are often the only way to travel. But those missiles have been of limited utility to the insurgents, because the batteries are mostly dead.

According to SpyTalk’s Jeff Stein, however, an Afghan domestic intelligence agency report “says that Iran has supplied fresh batteries for some three dozen shoulder-fired SA-7 missiles stockpiled by Taliban forces in Kandahar, in anticipation of a U.S. attack.”

U.S.-backed mujahideen famously used more advanced Stinger missiles against Soviet helicopters in the 1980s. America tried to buy back the weapons, but several hundred Stingers and other shoulder-fired missiles remained — presumably toothless, because of the battery lack.

Now, the issue of missile-armed militants is back. Last month, WikiLeaks released an internal U.S. military report describing a Taliban missile taking out an American Chinook helicopter. A military spokesman then, oddly, disputed the account. But in WikiLeaks’ trove of war logs are at least 11 references to insurgents with Chinese HN-5 surface-to-air missiles, and many more of SA-7s discovered in Taliban weapons caches.

There’s also a very open question these days about just how much Iran is backing Afghanistan’s militants, if at all. The American government insists that Tehran is now supporting the Taliban — despite decades-old enmity. (Remember, the Iranians tacitly supported the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and participated in the conference that installed Kabul’s current government.) Defense Secretary Bob Gates, for his part, has accused Iran of “playing a double game in Afghanistan, wanting a good relationship with the Afghan government and wanting to make our lives harder.” However, he added, “at this point the level of their effort, I think, is not a major problem for us… The level of their support for the Taliban, so far as best we can tell, has been pretty limited.”

A report by the Army’s Human Terrain System took a look an what the Iranians might be up to in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province — and didn’t find much. “There is little evidence that suggests any other kind of substantial Iranian activity in Bamiyan today,” according to the military social scientists.

A recent State Department report on state-sponsored terrorism paints a different picture. “Since at least 2006, Iran has arranged arms shipments to select Taliban members, including small arms and associated ammunition, rocket propelled grenades, mortar rounds, 107mm rockets, and plastic explosives,” the report notes. “Iran’s Qods Force provided training to the Taliban in Afghanistan on small unit tactics, small arms, explosives, and indirect fire weapons.”

There’s no mention of missiles, or batteries for those missiles, in the report. If the militants do have a fresh supply of batteries for the infrared-guided SA-7s, however, it doesn’t mean the Taliban can start popping off the weapons at will. The missiles — and those that shoot them — are easily tracked, once the missiles are launched. As a CIA paramilitary operator tells Stein: “We call it ‘fire and forget’ — for them it’s ‘fire and watch out,’ as we smoke the ground they were standing on.”

Photo: Defence.pk

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/is-iran-supplying-the-taliban-with-missile-tech/#more-29391#ixzz0wXgDlWCD

buglerbilly

14-08-10, 06:54 AM

A bit more on this sad event............

18th soldier killed in Afghanistan.

Max Blenkin and Cathy Alexander

August 14, 2010 - 2:04PM

An Australian special forces soldier has been killed in a clash with insurgents, taking the Afghanistan death toll to 18 since 2001 and seven so far this year alone.

Trooper Jason Thomas Brown, 29, a member of the Perth-based Special Air Service Regiment (SASR), died from multiple gunshot wounds when insurgents opened fire on his patrol.

That occurred early on Saturday morning in northern Kandahar province, a hotspot for fighting and the focus of recent operations by the Australian Special Operations Task Group.

Acting defence force chief Lieutenant General David Hurley said Trooper Brown was participating in an ongoing Australian and Afghan mission to disrupt insurgent activities.

He died despite receiving immediate first aid and being evacuated by helicopter to the coalition hospital at Kandahar. No other Australian or Afghan soldiers were wounded.

Lieutenant General Hurley said Trooper Brown, unmarried with no children, was an outstanding soldier with just over 10 years service in the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

Born in Sydney, he joined the army in 2001, serving with the 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR) and then with the commando battalion 4RAR. He joined the SASR in 2007.

This was his first deployment to Afghanistan but he had served three times in East Timor.

He leaves his parents and a sister.

Lieutenant General Hurley said Australian troops in Afghanistan faced significant threats every day and did so with professionalism and courage.

"When a member of the ADF family dies in the service of our country, it hits us all very hard," he told reporters.

Defence Minister John Faulkner said recent months had been a time of increasing danger in Afghanistan, but Australian soldiers continued to carry out their work with courage and professionalism in conditions of real hardship.

"I can assure Jason's family and friends that he, together with his mates, were striking at the heart of the Taliban insurgency as part of our mission in Afghanistan to make sure that extremists and international terrorist groups do not again find safe havens and training grounds in that country," he said.

Both Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition leader Tony Abbott briefly halted electioneering to express their condolences to Trooper Brown's family and friends.

In Wollongbar, northern NSW, Ms Gillard said she would contact Trooper Brown's family in due course.

She said Australia had lost a brave soldier and the nation would mourn his loss.

Ms Gillard said the government remained committed to the mission in Afghanistan, which was expected to take another two to four years.

"Our nation cannot see Afghanistan once again become a safe haven for terrorists ... who are trained, and trained to take the lives of Australians," she said.

In Perth, Mr Abbott said Afghanistan could never again become a safe haven for terrorism.

"It's important that Australia pull its weight in the world. The opposition continues to fully and strongly support the Australian commitment to Afghanistan," he said.

This is the first death of an Australian soldier during the campaign.

The death of Private Nathan Bewes came a little more than a week before the election was called.

The leaders of both major parties suspended their campaigns for a full day to attend Private Bewes' funeral in Murwillumbah on July 22.

Ms Gillard said they would do so again if Trooper Brown's funeral was held before election day.

© 2010 AAP

buglerbilly

14-08-10, 12:32 PM

Afghans blame civilian deaths on U.S. despite spike from insurgent violence

The war in Afghanistan: Civilians caught in the crossfire
Two security workers were killed in an attack on Hart Security in Kabul this week.

By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 14, 2010

KABUL -- During the first six months of the year, 1,271 Afghan civilians had been killed in an increasingly violent war. On Tuesday, Hafizullah Azizi, a handsome 22-year-old who financially supported his mother and five younger siblings, was added to the list.

Azizi, a driver for a British personal security firm, was returning to the company's fortified 16-room compound in central Kabul when armed masked men sprinted toward the house. The attackers shot Azizi and another driver with assault rifles and then engaged in a firefight with a guard, according to police and witnesses. Failing to breach the exterior wall, an attacker detonated an explosive device strapped to his waist, blowing out windows and rocking cars. The two Afghan drivers and two attackers lay dead.

The next day, Azizi's mother buried her son in the family graveyard near his father, an Afghan soldier who died in battle 17 years earlier.

Azizi is representative of an alarming spike in civilian deaths, up 21 percent this year largely because of an increase in insurgent violence, according to a U.N. report this week. (Add 1,997 injured, and the spike in overall civilian casualties is 31 percent.) Although NATO forces have largely made good on the pledge last year from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal to decrease civilian casualties caused by their actions, the Taliban have ramped up their aggression, killing 920 civilians this year through suicide bombings, targeted assassinations and improvised explosive devices.

U.S. and NATO officials have used the figures to denounce the Taliban to win popular support for an increased presence that aims to clear out Taliban strongholds this fall. But ordinary Afghans have largely rejected this good guy-bad guy narrative and continue blaming the civilian deaths on the international forces, said experts who have studied the issue.

"What we found was that regardless of the region, province, education level or political views, in many cases Afghans blamed international forces as much as the insurgents for the increase," said Erica Gaston, a human rights lawyer focusing on civilian casualties for the Open Society Institute who recently interviewed 250 Afghans.

Afghans contend that the troops are not doing enough to protect them; that foreigners are ensconced behind fortified walls and bulletproof vehicles while residents are out in the open; and that the presence of foreigners in their neighborhoods brings unwanted attention from insurgents.

"The [Afghan] government, NATO, the U.N., the American forces -- they make a big, big wall of cement and they are inside," said Zafar Khanbahar, 25, Azizi's cousin. "So the insurgents, to try to kill the troops, whenever they explode [a bomb], the people in the public are hit. I blame all of them, the government, NATO and the insurgents -- all."

This reaction from the public has vexed military officials, who issue several announcements weekly about civilians killed by insurgents. On the same day Azizi was killed, for example, NATO said that three civilians were killed by a roadside bomb in another province. "Insurgents continue to take innocent lives," said Col. James Dawkins, director of the ISAF Joint Command Combined Joint Operations Center. But often, it is the actions of U.S. forces that draw outrage. Last month, Afghans protested in Kabul after a U.S. contractors' SUV collided with another car, killing several civilians. Protesters set the SUV on fire and attacked the contractors when they returned for the vehicle.

Military officials said the forces' visibility makes it easier for aggrieved Afghans to find an outlet for their anger.

"A lot of Afghans will come to coalition forces alleging civilian casualties that we caused. This is to be expected. We are the only identifiable force. The insurgents aren't," said Lt. Campbell Spencer, who works with the military's Civilian Casualty Tracking Cell. "We provide medical services and compensation payments as well." Gaston said the military was taking the correct approach by fine-tuning aerial bombings and reducing night raids on homes. But by pushing deeper into Taliban-controlled areas, she said, international forces are causing more chaos. Spencer said that the Taliban has taken to holding Afghan civilians as hostages to make it more difficult for the forces to attack without killing innocent people.

"It's a great idea in theory, but in practice it is enormously risky to civilians," Gaston said.

It's not that locals don't blame the Taliban. But they insist that foreign forces are oblivious to their impact on neighborhoods.

Abdul Ahamad, 53, a shopkeeper who lives next to the Hart Security compound attacked by the suicide bombers, showed his damaged Toyota Corolla to a reporter. Its windows were blown out and the driver's side door was caved in. He said he had about $200 in savings and could not afford to fix the car.

"The attack was because of this security company. If they were not here, we would not be attacked," Ahamad said. "Why should they come and reside here? They should stay in a place far from civilians."

Jim Heycock, Hart's chief operating officer, said the Kabul office employs about 50 Britons and more than 400 Afghans, providing salaries to locals who work as drivers, translators and guards. He said all employees are insured and that Azizi's family will get money to cover funeral costs and other expenses.

But that's little solace to Azizi's family. Azizi, who earned $250 a month, helped cover the $500 monthly rent with brother-in-law Najeebullah Bahar, 29, who works for Hart as a translator. Bahar's family has implored him not to return to the company.

"My family now tells me, 'If you go work over there, maybe one day they will kill you also,' " Bahar said. "Now I tell to my family, 'If I don't go over there, how can I provide money for the house?' "

Special correspondent Qadratullah Andar contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

15-08-10, 03:36 AM

Lost Digger upheld our noble tradition

Heath Aston

August 15, 2010

Killed in Afghanistan ... Trooper Jason Brown.

TROOPER Jason Brown, the 18th Australian soldier to be killed in Afghanistan - and the seventh this year - was a third-generation Digger who served three tours in East Timor before realising his dream of joining the elite SAS regiment.

Yesterday Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott paid tribute to Trooper Brown, 29, but said his death at the hands of Taliban fighters would not alter Australia's commitment to staying the course in the nine-year war.

The shattered family of Trooper Brown were being supported by relatives and Defence Force staff at their home in Thornleigh, in Sydney's north, last night.

The former army commando with extensive experience in East Timor had been in action with the covert SAS for just 2½ months. He died of multiple gunshot wounds after a battle in Kandahar province.

Acting Australian Defence Force chief Lieutenant General David Hurley said Trooper Brown had been taken by helicopter from the scene of the firefight but he had died before reaching the military hospital in Kandahar early yesterday.

General Hurley said Trooper Brown had been involved in hunting down a group of Taliban insurgents when the firefight began. He said no other other Australian or assisting Afghan troops were wounded.

''When a member of the ADF family dies in the service of our country, it hits us all very hard,'' he said.

There is little hope that the rising tide of Australian deaths in Afghanistan will abate soon, with Ms Gillard conceding yesterday ''fighting season'' had begun in the troubled region. ''This is dangerous work; we see the consequences today,'' she said during a break in campaigning in Wollongong. But Ms Gillard said Afghanistan could not be allowed to go back to being a ''safe haven for terrorism''.

''As a nation we must stay determined to see the mission in Afghanistan through,'' she said.

''Our nation cannot see Afghanistan once again become a safe haven for terrorists … who are trained, and trained to take the lives of Australians.''

The Prime Minister said she would halt the election campaign to attend the funeral of Trooper Brown if it was held prior to election day on Saturday. Both Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott ceased campaigning to be at the funeral of Private Nathan Bewes - the nation's 17th casualty - three weeks ago.

Defence Minister John Faulkner said: ''I can assure Jason's family and friends that he, together with his mates, were striking at the heart of the Taliban insurgency as part of our mission in Afghanistan to make sure that extremists and international terrorist groups do not again find safe havens and training grounds in that country.''

Trooper Brown's cousin Eli said his parents and sister were devastated at the passing of their son and brother but proud of his 10 years of service to his country.

He said Trooper Brown's father, Graham, fought in Vietnam while his grandfather had served in World War II.

''He was a down-to-earth guy who loved his footy and was full of life,'' Eli said. ''It's just so sad that someone so brave has been struck down in the prime of his life.''

A Facebook site announcing the death had received a string of condolence messages last night. Fellow soldier Sherwin Vespasianus wrote: ''Rest in peace buddy. Your bravery and selfless sacrifice ensure the peace and stability of others.''

In a statement, the ADF said: ''Trooper Brown was an outstanding career soldier who always gave that little bit extra to his job and for his mates. He was highly regarded for his professionalism and commitment and will be sorely missed by all those who have served with him.''

buglerbilly

15-08-10, 03:50 AM

'Urgent’ new troop carriers get to war zone 6 months late

By Christopher Leake

Last updated at 12:01 AM on 15th August 2010

A fleet of life-saving armoured vehicles is to be sent to Afghanistan nearly six months late because their armour was not thick enough to protect soldiers against roadside bombs.

Gordon Brown promised the much-needed Warthogs would be on frontline duty with the Royal Dragoon Guards in Helmand Province by April.

But the all-terrain vehicles failed blast tests. Nine were blown up at the Armoured Trials and Development Unit at Bovington in Dorset. Experts decided the troop carriers needed an extra two tons of armour.

The MoD says the Warthogs are now ‘operationally fit’ and pass all tests required. The first of the vehicles will be in Afghanistan by September.

The last Government ordered 115 Warthogs two years ago from Singapore Technologies Kinetics in a £150 million deal, part of an Urgent Operational Requirement, when Treasury money is secured for new threats.

They replace the much-criticised, lighter Viking vehicles, which are vulnerable to the Taliban’s improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The 12-ton Viking Mark I vehicles are being withdrawn from service in Afghanistan after almost a quarter of the 108 there were blown up. A further 27 are too damaged to return to the front line.

Among nine British servicemen killed by bombs while in Vikings was Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards. He was the most senior British Army officer to die on the front line since the Falklands War.
More...Army to use 'Dirty Harry' bullet against the Taliban

Senior defence sources admit privately that Mr Brown should never have brought forward the Warthog deployment date because it was known the vehicles would require consider*able modification for Afghanistan.

With a 7.2-litre engine, the Warthogs can carry 12 soldiers and weighed 19 tons before the extra armour. Now the vehicles, which are supposed to be agile, weigh 21 tons. Such is the extra strain, say defence sources, gearboxes have burnt out in testing.

Shortly before the Election, Labour Defence Procurement Minister Quentin Davies, who kept a model Warthog in his MoD office, admitted the introduction of what he called the ‘armoured beast’ had suffered delays.

Military insiders say part of the problems result from the Warthog’s flat hull, which they say is less efficient at deflecting bomb blasts than a V-shape. An upgraded Viking Mark II with a V-shaped hull, bigger engine and heavier armour made by Britain’s BAE Systems failed to win the new contract against its Singapore rivals.

Yet the Royal Marines ordered 24 of them through the Navy budget. They are due to be in Afghanistan soon.

An MoD spokeswoman said last night: ‘The first troops to use Wart*hogs on operations have completed training. Hull shape is irrelevant as it has passed rigorous trials proving its ability to operate in demanding terrain and protect against threats in Afghanistan. The first Warthogs will be deployed in the next few months.’

Do wot?!!! Hull shape is irrelevant...........really? Stupid Cow comment...........:f-off

A soldier from 21 Engineer Regiment was killed in the Sangin District of Helmand yesterday. Sapper Darren Foster, 20, from Whitehaven, Cumbria, died of gunshot wounds.

Another soldier, from the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers, also serving with 21 Engineer Regiment, was shot dead in a firefight in Nad-e Ali District, Helmand. The UK death toll in Afghanistan since 2001 is now 331.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1303219/Urgent-new-troop-carriers-war-zone-6-months-late.html#ixzz0wdQzchQx

buglerbilly

15-08-10, 07:28 AM

Troops Pursue Haqqani Fighters

August 14, 2010

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - More than 20 insurgents including Arab, Chechen and Pakistani fighters have been killed by NATO and Afghan forces who are ramping up operations in the east against a Taliban faction linked to al-Qaida, the international coalition said Saturday.

Separately, three more NATO troops - an American, a Briton and an Australian - were killed in separate insurgent attacks in the volatile south, officials of the three countries said Saturday.

The joint force operation began Wednesday against dozens of insurgents holed up in a mountainous area of Zadran district of Paktia province. The operation focused on disrupting the Haqqani network's movement in an area used to stage attacks in the capital, Kabul, and along a highway that links Khost province and Gardez, the provincial capital of Paktia, NATO said.

More than 20 insurgents have been killed, the coalition said. Combined security forces also discovered and destroyed multiple explosive devices and bomb-making equipment, including trip wire and blasting caps, weapons and ammunition. A coalition airstrike destroyed an enemy ammunitions bunker, NATO said.

Three small children were killed and their mother was wounded when a civilian house was hit by an insurgent rocket in Khost city late Friday, provincial spokesman Mubarez Zadran said. He said the insurgents appeared to have been aiming at a coalition base but missed.

The U.S. considers the Haqqani group, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, as one of the most dangerous Taliban networks because of its links to al-Qaida. The group is suspected of playing a major role in the Dec. 30 bombing of a CIA base in Khost as well as a series of attacks in Kabul. It is based in the western border area of Pakistan, where U.S. forces cannot operate on the ground.

"The Haqqani network continually seeks to establish strongholds in the Khost-Gardez pass, disrupting the local government and facilitating the movement of foreign fighters, explosives and weapons into Afghanistan," said U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres, a NATO spokesman.

Two other operations in June resulted in the deaths of more than 50 Haqqani fighters. Afghan and coalition forces killed 17 fighters including a commander, Fazil Subhan, during a fierce firefight in Khost province June 9, NATO said.

A week later, in the Jani Khel district of Paktia province, Afghan and coalition forces killed at least 35 insurgents including several key leaders for both the Haqqani and Taliban networks. The security force killed Hamiddullah, a Haqqani commander for Sabari district in Khost province who had direct ties to Haqqani senior leadership based in Pakistan and was reportedly responsible for an ambush of an Afghan National Army unit in March, which killed three Afghan soldiers.

In the two-day offensive on the largest foreign fighter camp in the area, assault forces also killed Qari Ismail, a Taliban leader for Jani Khel district, and Maulvi Sadiq, who worked to bring foreign fighters into Afghanistan, NATO said.

Elsewhere, two private security guards and two militants were killed in a gunbattle late Friday in the Karukh district of Herat province, police spokesman Noor Khan Nekzad said. He said 12 other guards were wounded in the skirmish.

NATO officials had no further details about the death of the American service member Saturday. But the Australian military said a member of the country's elite Special Air Service Regiment was shot early Saturday while assisting in a "disruption operation" in the northern part of Kandahar province.

The British Ministry of Defense said Saturday that a British soldier serving with a mine-clearing unit died in a firefight the day before in the Nad-e-Ali district of Helmand province.

Four police were killed and four others were wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb Saturday in Gereshk district in Helmand province, provincial spokesman Daud Ahamdi said.

Also in the south, three Afghan civilians were killed and another was wounded by insurgents in three separate incidents in Kandahar province on Friday. Two of the civilians were killed when a rocket-propelled grenade hit their vehicle in Arghandab district. Another was fatally stabbed by insurgents near the governor's compound in Kandahar city.

In the north, NATO and coalition troops killed two insurgents Saturday after a patrol came under small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire in Kunduz province, NATO said.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

15-08-10, 11:05 AM

Taliban takes hold in once-peaceful northern Afghanistan

Taliban expands influence into northern Afghanistan
In the once-peaceful north, Taliban forces have infiltrated Afghan villages and seized control, making the task of peacekeeping and reform even more difficult for NATO and U.S. troops.

By Joshua Partlow
Sunday, August 15, 2010

QAYSAR, AFGHANISTAN -- In squads of roaring dirt bikes and armed to the teeth, Taliban fighters are spreading like a brush fire into remote and defenseless villages across northern Afghanistan.

The fighters swarm into town, assemble the villagers and announce Taliban control, often at night and without any resistance.

With most Afghan and NATO troops stationed in the country's south and east, villagers in the path of the Taliban advance into the once-peaceful north say they are powerless and terrified, confused by the government's inability to prevail -- and ready to side with the insurgents to save their own lives.

"How did the Taliban get into every village?" Israel Arbah asked from his mud hut in the Shah Qassim village of Faryab province. "They are everywhere. And they are moving very fast. To tell you honestly, I am really, really afraid."

In the past year, security in northern Afghanistan has deteriorated rapidly as insurgents have seized new territory in provinces such as Kunduz and Baghlan, and even infiltrated the scenic mountain oasis of Badakhshan, where 10 members of a Christian charity's medical team were massacred this month. Each new northern base is becoming a hive of activity, with fighters rotating in and out, daily planning meetings and announcements at the mosque.

For the first time this year, the U.S. military sent 3,000 troops to the north, based in Kunduz. A senior NATO official said that the soldiers have made progress in Kunduz and commanders are more confident than six months ago that they can halt growth in the north but that insurgents still find sanctuary in sparsely populated provinces where NATO and Afghan forces are undermanned.

The U.S. military does not believe the Taliban has made a strategic decision to target the north to avoid the bulk of NATO forces in the south, according to a U.S. military official. But a former senior Afghan intelligence official based in the north said that is "absolutely" what has happened.

One of those places is Faryab, a swath of rolling desert hills along the Turkmenistan border where a lone U.S. battalion of abut 800 soldiers arrived this spring. Starting in the Gormach district and moving through a belt of Pashtun villages that have tribal links to Kandahar and the south, insurgents have spread to nearly all the districts in the province, according to Afghan officials.

They move constantly on unmarked dirt roads outside the cities to ambush Afghan police and soldiers and to kidnap residents. They execute those affiliated with the government and shut down reconstruction projects. They plant homemade bombs, close girls' schools, and take by force a portion of farmers' crops and residents' salaries.

"This is the new policy of the Taliban: to shift their people from the south to the north, to show they exist everywhere," said Faryab Gov. Abdul Haq Shafaq. "They're using the desert, where there are no security forces at all."

Letter precedes invasion

Before the Taliban invades a village, its arrival is sometimes preceded by a letter.

"Hello. I hope you're healthy and doing very well," Mullah Abdullah Khalid, a Taliban deputy district shadow governor, wrote recently to four tribal elders in a Faryab village. "Whatever support you could provide, either financially or physically, we would really appreciate that.

"We hope that you will not deny us."

But this is just a formality, because the Taliban is coming anyway.

In early November, the villagers of Khwaji Kinti awoke to the rumble of motorcycles. The next morning, they discovered that 30 to 40 Taliban, armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled-grenades, had taken charge. Tribal elders pleaded with police to send help. None arrived.

The Taliban was welcomed by a sympathetic mullah and set to work quickly. From the shepherds, it expected "zakat," or charity: one sheep out of every 40; and it took "usher," an Islamic tax, from the wheat farmers: 10 percent of the harvest, according to villagers. Its members shut down the lone girls' school and demanded shelter and meals from different homes each night. Mohammad Hassan, a wheat farmer, said insurgents knocked on his door about once a week after the evening prayer, asking for food. "We're afraid of the Taliban and the government," he said. "We're caught in the middle -- we don't have any power."

Taliban members executed a man known as Sayid Arif, who they said worked for the Afghan government, by pulling him from his car and shooting him. They left him in the road with a note on his chest that said for whoever works with the government, "this is the punishment," said a tribal elder named Abdullah.

The Taliban began to settle disputes with arbitrary punishments -- which some consider its main public service. In one case, a dispute between a pair of brothers and another man escalated until the third man was shot. Without evidence, the Taliban chose one of the brothers, 22-year-old Mahadi, as the guilty party, villagers said. The Taliban assembled dozens of people, handed the wife of the victim a Kalashnikov and ordered her to shoot him, which she did.

"I stood there and watched that," one villager said.

Not everyone is unhappy with this. The headmaster of the boys' school in Khwaji Kinti, Agha Shejawuddin, said the Taliban is restoring order based on Islamic law. "The Koran says there should be public punishment," he said. "I think the situation under the Taliban will be better than this government."

On Aug. 5, members of the U.S. battalion, from the 10th Mountain Division, along with Afghan police and soldiers, fought the Taliban in Khwaji Kinti. This sparked an exodus, with hundreds of families fleeing town, villagers said. The U.S. soldiers decided to withdraw after three days "to prevent civilian property damage and loss of life and civilian disruption during the holy month of Ramadan," a military spokesman said.

That left the power balance unchanged, according to villagers reached by phone, and 200 to 400 Taliban members remain. The area "is still under complete Taliban control," one villager said.

Hostages at checkpoint

After a day of road building in January, two Chinese laborers and Saifullah, their 16-year-old driver, rolled up to a Taliban checkpoint on Highway 1.

They did not make it through.

The hostages -- including three other Afghans -- were taken to a village in Gormach, the most Taliban-infested district in Faryab.

"For five days, I had no news of my son," said Saifullah's father, Khairullah. "I decided to go and search for him. I told myself I would find him even if I got killed. I would go to that place."

No taxi driver would take him. He borrowed a car and went alone. In the village, he found a mosque and an adjacent house, with about 40 Afghan-assembled Pamir motorbikes outside. The buildings brimmed with gunmen.

"When I showed up, they were surprised. They said, 'Why did you come here?' " he recalled. "I told them, 'I want my son.' "

For four hours, he argued with the captors, explained his Islamic lineage and paid $1,300. He received his son, with a warning: "You must promise that your son will never work for the foreigners again."

This is the message the Taliban regularly preaches in mosque speeches and in letters distributed to villagers. One such letter, passed out on Taliban stationery in Faryab, told villagers that "you are the nation that defeated the British again and again. Once more we want your compassion."

"Come together as one hand to defeat the infidels of the world," it read. "And make Afghanistan a Jewish and Christian cemetery."

The two Chinese workers captured with Saifullah would not be released for months. In a video of them in captivity, obtained by police, the Taliban taunted them.

"There is no God but God," a Taliban fighter said in Pashto, reciting a Koranic verse known as the Kalima. "Say it. Say it. Loudly."

The Chinese men stared, not comprehending.

"Why are you not learning?" their captor said. "You're not intelligent. You haven't learned anything. We're going to kill you."

Swelling the ranks

One day, a young Taliban fighter rode up on a donkey. Nek Mohammad, 29, hadn't seen him in years but remembered him as a fellow refugee. They had both lived in Iran during the Taliban government, two Tajiks in search of work and peace.

They sat by the river to talk.

"How is your life?" Mohammad asked.

Since he'd joined the Taliban, the man said, he earned more than $400 a month. "They are paying me very well," he said. He asked Mohammad to join the insurgency.

The ranks of Taliban have swelled in Faryab because of such men: young and jobless, according to officials and residents.

They profess little allegiance to a government they view as irrelevant, at best, and exploitative, at worst. They trace the insecurity to the presence of NATO forces.

Afghan officials also see a rivalry between Pashtun tribes at play.

"If one tribe, like the Achekzai, creates 10 Taliban in their tribe, then the Tokhi says, we need 12 Taliban to defend ourselves," said Mohammad Sadiq Hamid Yar, the Qaysar district chief.

Extortion provides much of their funding, Afghan officials said, and Taliban leadership in Pakistan provides training, weapons, ammunition and additional income. Shafaq, the Faryab governor, estimated that at least 500 Taliban members are in his province, although others put the number far higher. The 1,800 police, he said, "are not enough," and the government hopes to form a 500-man militia to bolster them.

Although the new U.S. battalion has helped, Shafaq thinks that NATO troops need a more aggressive approach, including not being afraid to bomb motorcycle gangs as they crisscross the desert. If the Taliban forces have been allowed such freedom of movement, many residents reason, NATO must not be serious about fighting them. "Afghans are very familiar with this type of situation. We see which side of the scale is heavier, and we just roll to that side easily," Mohammad said. "Right now, the Taliban's scale is heavier."

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

16-08-10, 04:11 AM

Troops returning from Helmand pay for own flights

British troops returning from Afghanistan are paying for commercial flights back to the UK because the RAF's ageing transport aircraft keep breaking down.

Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent

Published: 9:00PM BST 15 Aug 2010

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Ridiculous situation! The same thing can happen in the Resources Industry BUT if it happens more than once in a Blue Moon someones guts get re-processed as garters...............the Tristars were an excellent buy originally BUT they are way past their use-by date having wracked up HUGE mileage to the Falklands, Iraq and now Afghanistan. One could suppose that the new Airbus Tankers will take over but the big question remains WHEN? I still think it would then it would behove the UK Govt to procure 2-3 cheap wide-bodies to act as pure personnel transport for the next 10 years, there are enough around to buy cheaply as I foresee the Tankers being shared with the French...........

Delays to "rest and recuperation" (R and R) flights are now almost routine because of the operational demands being imposed on the TriStar jets, former passenger airliners bought by the RAF in the early 1980s.

Some soldiers and marines have lost up to a quarter of their break as a result of flight disruption and troops are now warned not to book holidays during their time off from the front line, because of the chance of delays to their journey home.

Most flights on the "air bridge", which links Afghanistan to the UK, stop at Cyprus to refuel, and increasing numbers of troops are now opting to pay for commercial flights home from there, rather than take their chances on the TriStars.

Defences sources claim that at least 20 to 30 per cent of flights returning from Afghanistan are delayed at some stage during the journey due to mechanical failure.

In June, more than 200 soldiers returning to Britain on R and R were delayed in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan for several days after a military flight broke down at RAF Akrotiri, the main British base in Cyprus.

The delay also resulted in crucial military personnel, such as bomb disposal experts and medical teams, being stranded in the UK until another aircraft could be found to take them to Afghanistan.

After the R and R flight left Kandahar three days later, dozens of soldiers opted to buy easyJet flights back to the UK when the aircraft refuelled at Cyprus rather than risk further delays.

At the same time, hundreds of troops flying out to Kandahar were forced to spend four nights in transit accommodation in the British base in Cyprus, even though it had been contaminated with sewage following a flood.

Troops are only entitled to 14 days R and R during a six-month tour and no allowance is made for lost days caused by problems with the TriStar fleet.

The Ministry of Defence maintains that there is no reason why any serviceman should have to pay for flights home but it accepts that there have been problems with the RAF aircraft.

During periods of peak travel, such as the change over of troops at the end of tour – known as the relief in place (RIP) – the RAF charters civilian flights to cope with the extra number of passengers.

One RAF source said: "There are only three dedicated RAF TriStars which carry passengers. They are knackered. The engines are airworthy but they are constantly breaking down. The cabins haven't had an upgrade for 25-years – it's a disgrace.

"The air bridge is often pushed to breaking point during the RIP when the RAF can barely cope. You can't blame the soldiers for buying their own flights – most have just lost confidence in the RAF. Who wants to spend their R and R sitting in an airport lounge in Cyprus?"

The RAF TriStar fleet is composed of nine aircraft bought second-hand from the Pan Am and British Airways in the 1980s. Six of the aircraft are used for in-flight refuelling but can also carry passengers.

The role of the remaining three aircraft in the fleet is passenger transport and each of these aircraft can carry up to 266 personnel.

Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP for Newark and a former infantry commander, said: "R and R is absolutely precious to soldiers on operations. Anything which interferes with it will be a major blow to morale, not just for the troops but also for their families. The problem with RAF transport flights has gone on for too long."

The House of Commons Defence Select Committee has previously warned of the morale problems caused by troops returning from operations in Afghanistan. In a report in 2007, James Arbuthnot, chairman of the committee, said: "The UK needs to be able to transport troops, equipment and stores to trouble spots around the globe quickly.

"New transport aircraft, and tanker aircraft which can also carry service personnel, are expected to enter service early in the next decade, but as is often the case with the MoD, it is 'jam tomorrow, but never jam today'. It is not enough to give our troops the best training and the best equipment, if we cannot transport them to where they are needed and support them once deployed."

A spokesman for the MoD said: "TriStar is a hard working aircraft, operating in tough environments which, unfortunately, can sometimes lead to unavoidable delays. Acting upon the concerns of personnel who have experienced problems, the incoming Government has recently made significant changes to ensure they do not lose out on R and R as a result of disruptions to the airbridge.

"We are acutely aware of the inconvenience that this can cause to personnel and their families, as a result those affected are granted additional Post Operational Tour leave on a day for day basis."

buglerbilly

16-08-10, 09:08 AM

Russia to host Afghan, Pakistan leaders

August 16, 2010 - 3:59PM

Russia is to host Pakistan's embattled President Asif Ali Zardari and the Afghan leader Hamid Karzai for a summit on regional security this week, the Kremlin said on Monday.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will host the summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Wednesday, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Also taking part will be Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmon, it added.

The Pakistani presidency said last week that Zardari - under fire over his handling of the flood tragedy at home - would still take part in the meeting but had cut back his visit from two days to a few hours.

© 2010 AFP

buglerbilly

16-08-10, 01:14 PM

Gen. David Petraeus says Afghanistan war strategy 'fundamentally sound'

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post

Monday, August 16, 2010

KABUL -- In his first six weeks as the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus has seen insurgent attacks on coalition forces spike to record levels, violence metastasize to previously stable areas, and the country's president undercut anti-corruption units backed by Washington.

But after burrowing into operations here and traveling to the far reaches of this country, Petraeus has concluded that the U.S. strategy to win the nearly nine-year-old war is "fundamentally sound."

In a wide-ranging hour-long interview with The Washington Post, he said he sees incipient signs of progress in parts of the volatile south, in new initiatives to create community defense forces and in nascent steps to reintegrate low-level insurgents who want to stop fighting.

With public support for the war slipping and a White House review of the conflict due in December, Petraeus said he is pushing the forces under his command to proceed with alacrity. He remains supportive of President Obama's decision to begin withdrawing troops next July, but he said it is far too soon to determine the size of the drawdown.

"We are doing everything we can to achieve progress as rapidly as we can without rushing to failure," Petraeus said in his wood-paneled office at NATO headquarters in Kabul. "We're keenly aware that this has been ongoing for approaching nine years. We fully appreciate the impatience in some quarters."

But he warned against expecting quick results in a campaign that involves building Afghan government and security institutions from scratch, and persuading people to cast their lot with coalition forces after years of broken promises -- all in the face of Taliban intimidation and attacks.

"It's a gradual effort. It's a deliberate effort," he said. "There's no hill to take and flag to plant and proclamation of victory. Rather, it's just hard work."

Petraeus said he would provide his "best military advice" to Obama, who will make the decision on troop levels next year. But the general's presence in Kabul, as opposed to the U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, could make him a far more forceful voice for attenuating the drawdown if he chooses to make that case.

He said it is too early to ascertain when Afghan security forces can assume responsibility for various parts of the country. Officials from some NATO nations, where public support for the war is lower than it is in the United States, want to announce at a November meeting of alliance foreign ministers a list of provinces to be handed over. Some Obama administration officials also are pushing for a transition plan before the White House review. But some of the once-quiet provinces in the north and west, deemed likely targets a few months ago, are now wracked by spiking insurgent violence.

"We're still in the process of determining what is realistic," Petraeus said. That, he said, depends on the progress of security operations over the next several months. "It's a process, not an event. It's one that's to be conditions-based."

'Resilient' enemy

Petraeus's return to the battlefield from his perch as Central Command chief was the result of desperate circumstances -- Obama's decision to fire Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal for flippant comments he and his staff members made to a magazine reporter -- yet it has provided the United States and NATO with what almost certainly is the last and best chance to reverse a foundering war. Petraeus literally wrote the military's book on counterinsurgency strategy, and he engineered a dramatic turnaround in Iraq that many assumed impossible. But Afghanistan is in many ways a more daunting environment, and there is no guarantee that the same counterinsurgency tactics applied in Baghdad will work in Kandahar.

Asked whether he was certain that the counterinsurgency strategy, which emphasizes protecting the civilian population, can be effective in a country where many people regard the insurgents more as miscreant relatives than an existential threat, Petraeus refrained from an unequivocal endorsement.

"The enemy has shown himself to be resilient," he said. "The enemy does fight back. He is trying, in his assessment, to outlast us."

Although he is not tackling Afghanistan as he did Iraq, where he began overhauling the war plan upon arrival, he is seeking to duplicate some of the methods that served him well in Baghdad, foremost among them incessant engagement with the country's political leader. He meets with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about once a day -- far more often than the U.S. ambassador does -- in an effort to transform him and his government from weak links to essential partners in the counterinsurgency mission.

The principal changes Petraeus enacted over the past six weeks have largely been refinements or expansions to steps taken by McChrystal and his predecessors. McChrystal began the practice of frequent meetings with Karzai, and a tactical directive by Petraeus that restricts the use of airstrikes in an effort to minimize civilian casualties builds upon a document written by McChrystal.

Petraeus called all the adjustments he has made since taking over "nothing very dramatic." He did not conduct a top-to-bottom examination of the strategy, as he did when he went to Baghdad or as McChrystal did when he arrived in Kabul last year, largely because he played a key role in developing the current approach in Afghanistan.

But his decision not to call for a strategic reassessment means he effectively has no grace period. With more than 80 percent of the surge forces on the ground and the rest arriving later this month, the mission is at a stage where "what you have to do is to start turning inputs into output."

"I didn't sign up for a honeymoon," he said.

General sees momentum

Petraeus contends that the counterinsurgency strategy is showing momentum in Helmand province, where about 20,000 U.S. Marines and 10,000 British troops have sought to create inkblots of security in six key districts. Some areas, such as Marja, a former Taliban stronghold, have proved to be tougher to pacify -- insurgents are continuing an aggressive harassment campaign -- but other places, such as the districts of Nawa and Garmsir, are becoming more stable and may feature prominently in his year-end presentation to the White House.

He also said he is encouraged by developments in Arghandab district on Kandahar's northern fringe, where two U.S. Army battalions have been engaged in an arduous mission to clear insurgents from pomegranate orchards and vineyards seeded with makeshift but lethal anti-personnel mines.

"We got intelligence we gathered from the Taliban that said, 'Don't worry, fellows. The time has come now. Stop fighting, lay down your weapons and fade away, and just wait until they leave,' " he said. "Of course, in this case our forces are not leaving."

Other U.S. units will begin clearing operations in districts to the west of the city this fall. But already, Petraeus said, missions by U.S., NATO and Afghan special-forces teams to target Taliban leaders in the Kandahar area have tripled over the past four months.

Nationwide, those forces have killed or captured 365 insurgent leaders and about 2,400 rank-and-file members over the past three months, he said, providing the most detailed accounting of the increase in counter-terrorist operations this year.

The operations have led "some leaders of some elements" of the insurgency to begin reconciliation discussions with the Afghan government, Petraeus said. Some military officials have suggested that insurgent leaders are simply testing the waters because they perceive the Afghan government to be desperate, but Petraeus characterized the interactions as "meaningful," although he cautioned against raising "undue expectations."

Perhaps his most significant accomplishment since arriving in Kabul has been to get Karzai to endorse the creation of armed neighborhood-watch groups. The president initially expressed concern that the program could result in the creation of militias similar to those that ravaged the country in the 1990s and led to the Taliban's rise.

Petraeus insisted that those groups could play an important role in preventing insurgents from taking over areas where there are few security forces. The program, he said, "has real potential to create problems for the Taliban."

Afghan officials close to Karzai have expressed concern about Petraeus's willingness to heed the president's concerns.

"We had an excellent relationship with General McChrystal," one of them said. "We hope it will be the same with General Petraeus."

Petraeus called his relationship with Karzai "healthy," acknowledging "moments in which we have come at different issues from a different perspective." But he has refrained from criticizing Karzai in public, even after the president lashed out at the arrest of one his aides for allegedly soliciting a bribe to impede an investigation into a massive money-laundering scheme.

"We need to see what the outcome is," Petraeus said.

A new tone

At the headquarters here, the at-times freewheeling style of McChrystal's staff of Special Forces officers has given way to a more disciplined culture under Petraeus. At the daily morning meeting of senior commanders, generals used to tap e-mails on their secure laptops as they received briefings. These days, the computers are closed. Everyone is focused on the discussion at hand.

The meeting often involves more talk of the non-combat aspects of counterinsurgency. At a recent session, the briefings focused on the country's upcoming parliamentary elections, the floods in Pakistan and Iran's commercial interests in Afghanistan.

Petraeus maintains a rigorous schedule. Up at 5:30 a.m. to read his intelligence briefing book. Forty-five minutes of exercise. And then travel or meetings until late in the evening. But some of his aides say the routine is less grueling than his Centcom job, when he spent more than 300 days a year away from his base in Tampa. Here, they note, they at least get to sleep in the same bed most nights.

Although he has brought his personal staff from Central Command and a few other senior officers who helped him in Iraq -- including Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who leads an anti-corruption team, and Col. James Seaton, who runs his strategic planning group -- he is retaining McChrystal's three U.S. deputy commanders: Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn for intelligence, Maj. Gen. William C. Mayville for operations and Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith for communications.

One policy he has opted not to continue, however, is his predecessor's asceticism. He suggested that the fast-food restaurants McChrystal ordered closed on bases probably will reopen soon.

"With respect to Burger Kings, all options are on the table," he said.

buglerbilly

16-08-10, 01:55 PM

Fertiliser used to make roadside bombs seized in Afghanistan

Afghan police have seized enough explosive chemicals to make hundreds of homemade bombs after finding it hidden in paint and pickle boxes in the back of a lorry in southern Kandahar.

By Ben Farmer in Kabul

Published: 11:54AM BST 16 Aug 2010

Ammonium nitrate fertilizer was banned by Hamid Karzai earlier this year at the request of Nato troops because of its use in homemade explosives. Photo: ALAMY

The 17 tonnes of banned fertiliser, which is the main ingredient in Taliban bombs, was being smuggled in 10lb boxes in a lorry from Quetta in Pakistan according to officers.

Gen Mohammad Shafiq Fazli said the lorry had been tracked before being seized south of the city. Four people were arrested including two Pakistan nationals he said.

Hidden homemade bombs targeting patrols and convoys account for nearly two thirds of Nato casualties and also indiscriminately kill hundreds of Afghans.

The bombs hidden in tracks and walls which maim and kill British soldiers in Helmand often contain less than 50lbs of explosive, meaning the haul could have made hundreds of devices.

Ammonium nitrate fertilizer was banned by Hamid Karzai earlier this year at the request of Nato troops because of its use in homemade explosives.

Gen Fazli aid: "Our enemies use various techniques with the purpose of destroying our country, but our alert police have been defusing their plans, as you see from today's good example."

Kandahar is this summer the focus of Nato operations as they try to extend the writ of Hamid Karzai's government in a city seen as the birthplace of the Taliban.

buglerbilly

16-08-10, 03:00 PM

Petraeus: No Success Without Taliban Talks

August 16, 2010

Military.com|by Bryant Jordan

At a time when the bloodletting in Afghanistan is on the rise, the American commander there says success will mean sitting down and talking to Taliban fighters and others who have "American blood on their hands."

In an interview broadcast Sunday morning on NBC's Meet the Press, Army Gen. David Petraeus said the U.S. faces the same tough question in Afghanistan today as it did two years ago when it chose to fight the Iraqi insurgency with dialogue as well as bullets.

"That doesn't mean Mullah Omar is going to stroll down the main street of Kabul anytime soon and raise his hand and swear an oath on the constitution of Afghanistan," Petraeus said, referring to the spiritual head of the Taliban. "But there's every possibility of low- and midlevel [officials'] reintegration and indeed some fracturing of senior leadership that could be defined as reconciliation."

See coverage of Military.com's 2010 embed in Afghanistan

Petraeus succeeded Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan this summer after McChrystal's career ended over an embarrassing article in Rolling Stone magazine that evinced contempt and disrespect by the general and his senior staff for the U.S.' civilian leadership, including President Obama.

Petraeus, widely credited with the success of the surge in Iraq and viewed by political leaders on both sides of the aisle as a hero, left his job as commander of U.S. Central Command to take the reins in Afghanistan. The Meet the Press interview was part of a media blitz by an administration that's attempting to shore up support for the surge now underway in Afghanistan.

During the interview, Petraeus once again underscored that any troop withdrawals slated to begin in July 2011 will be contingent on the situation on the ground. Republicans have repeatedly criticized Obama for setting a deadline to begin withdrawal, arguing that it sends a message to both friend and foe in Afghanistan that the U.S. has no resolve.

But even as more hawkish elements in Congress criticize telegraphing a date to begin withdrawal, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll cited during the interview revealed nearly 70 percent of Americans lacked confidence that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is going to end successfully.

The disenchantment with what was widely thought in its first years as "the right war" because of the direct link to the 9/11 attacks comes as the U.S. nears its tenth year of combat operations there. American casualties have spiked, rising from 19 KIAs in April to 60 in July, the Associated Press reported.

Despite the toll, Petraeus acknowledged that the U.S. would likely talk to the Taliban in order to end the nearly decade-old war and keep al-Qaida out. "These are the kinds of questions people talk about when they talk about reconciliation … with more senior leaders of the Taliban and other elements," he said. "I think there is the prospect for reconciliation with some of the groups."

Petraeus added that some groups already have indicated to the Afghan government that they would consider accepting the Afghan constitution, laying down arms, and renouncing al-Qaida. "The way these kinds of endeavors typically end as with the case in Iraq," he said. "Ultimately, we had to face the question in Iraq: Will we sit down across the table with people who have American blood on their hands? The answer was 'yes,' " he said.

Since the worst days of the Iraq insurgency, he explained, violence there has dropped by better than 90 percent. The success of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and what that success will look like will have more to do with what Afghans want than what American forces can deliver, according to Petraeus. American arms and civil assistance are not going to turn Afghanistan into a Western-style democracy.

"At the end of the day, it's not about their embrace of us, it's not about us winning hearts and minds," Petraeus said. "It's about the Afghan government winning hearts and minds." Petraeus conceded that Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government has been hampered by corruption, but the general also said that the Afghan leader has taken steps to eliminate the problem. "This isn't to say that there's any kind of objective of turning Afghanistan into Switzerland in three to five years or less," Petraeus explained. "Afghan 'good enough' is good enough."

And that means keeping some of the warlords and local political alliances that have ruled Afghanistan's rural areas for centuries. Afghanistan must have "traditional social organizing structures as part of the ultimate solution, if you will, or tribal shura councils and so forth -- which are quite democratic by the way," Petraeus said. "They then connect at the district or province level about what goes up to Kabul and what comes out as well."

[I]© Copyright 2010 Military.com. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

17-08-10, 03:51 AM

US Strike Kills 'Dual-Hatted' Commander

August 16, 2010

Long War Journal|by Bill Roggio

A Coalition air weapons team killed an al Qaeda commander who also served as a Taliban leader in the volatile northern Afghan province of Kunduz.

Abu Baqir, who was described as "a dual-hatted Taliban sub-commander and al Qaeda group leader," was killed along with another Taliban operative after he and other members of his cell attacked the police station in the district of Alibad. Two other Taliban fighters were wounded in the airstrike, and were captured at a hospital while receiving treatment for their wounds.

ISAF first reported on the engagement that killed Baqir on Aug. 14. ISAF initially described Baqir as a sub-commander in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who was "known to conduct attacks on Afghan National Security Force checkpoints throughout the Gor Tapa area and to facilitate ammunition and mortars into the Chahar Darah District."

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is an al Qaeda affiliate that operates both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Its leader, Tahir Yuldashev, is thought to have been killed in a US Predator airstrike in South Waziristan in September 2009. Yuldashev sat on al Qaeda's top council, the Shura Majlis. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is active in the Afghan north and east.

Baqir is the second Taliban leader in the past month to have been described by ISAF as an al Qaeda commander. On July 20, ISAF described Qari Zia Rahman as "a Taliban leader and known member of Al Qaeda operating in Kunar Province."

According to today's statement from ISAF, Baqir was "reportedly housing four potential suicide bombers for upcoming attacks on the city of Kunduz."

Baqir was involved in the planning and execution of two recent suicide attacks in Kunduz, a US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal. The first attack, on July 2, consisted of a suicide assault on the headquarters of a company working for USAID in Kunduz. Two foreign contractors, an Afghan soldier, and a policeman were killed in the attack; the company shut down its operations in the aftermath. The second suicide attack, on Aug. 5, killed seven Afghan policemen in the district of Imam Sahib.

Kunduz province is a known haven for al Qaeda and allied terror groups. The presence of al Qaeda cells has been detected in the districts of Alibad, Chahar Darah, and Kunduz; or three of Kunduz's seven districts, according to an investigation by The Long War Journal.

Al Qaeda's extensive reach in Afghanistan is documented in the body of press releases issued in recent years by the International Security Assistance Force. Looking at press releases dating back to March 2007, The Long War Journal has been able to detect the presence of al Qaeda and affiliated groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in 48 different districts in 17 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces [see LWJ report, Al Qaeda maintains an extensive network in Afghanistan].

This picture is vastly different from the one painted by top Obama administration intelligence officials including CIA Director Leon Panetta and Nation Counterterrorism Center Director Michal Leiter, who claim that only 50 to 100 al Qaeda operatives are active in Afghansitan.

Al Qaeda operates in conjunction with the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and the Hizb-i-Islami Guldbuddin network throughout Afghanistan. Al Qaeda operatives often serve as embedded military trainers for Taliban field units and impart tactics and bomb-making skills to these forces. Al Qaeda often supports the Taliban by funding operations and providing weapons and other aid, according to classified military memos released by Wikileaks.

Background on the Taliban strongholds in the north

Over the past two years, the security situation in the northern provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan has deteriorated. The Taliban, Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), the Haqqani Network, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan all have a presence in the two provinces and have been attacking Coalition and Afghan forces as well as NATO supply lines from Tajikistan.

The Taliban and allied terror groups maintain safe havens in Baghlan and Kunduz, and control large portions of the provinces. Of the seven districts in Kunduz province, only two are considered under government control; the rest of the districts - Chahara Dara, Dashti Archi, Ali Abab, Khan Abad, and Iman Sahib - are considered contested or under Taliban control, according to a map produced by Afghanistan's Interior Ministry in the spring of 2009. Two districts in neighboring Baghlan province - Baghlan-i-Jadid and Burka - are under the control of the Taliban [see LWJ report, "Afghan forces and Taliban clash in Kunduz," and Threat Matrix report, "Afghanistan’s wild-wild North"].

Kunduz and Baghlan fall under ISAF's Regional Command North, which is led by the Germans. The Germans have been criticized by the Afghan government and Coalition partners for failing to aid in securing the north. German troops are restricted from actively engaging in major combat operations and have largely confined their forces to base.

ISAF and Afghan security forces have been targeting the Taliban's top leaders for the two northern provinces; several have been detained or killed this year. The Pakistanis reportedly detained the Taliban's shadow governors for Kunduz and Baghlan in February. In April, the Afghan military claimed that the newly-named, replacement shadow governor for Kunduz was killed along with three aides.

Earlier this year, Baghlan was the scene of a local internecine battle between the Taliban and allied HIG. Seventy HIG fighters and 50 Taliban fighters were killed in fighting in the Baghlan-e-Markazi district after disagreements arose over collecting taxes. Scores of HIG fighters defected to the government after being defeated. There is no indication, however, that the taxation dispute between the two groups that spiraled into fighting has spread beyond the Baghlan-e-Markazi district.

But despite the Taliban's losses in the north, the group remains in firm control of several districts. The Taliban have launched an assassination campaign and have also been accused of releasing poisonous gases in girls' schools in Kunduz. Scores of Afghan schoolgirls have been hospitalized over the past several months due to the gas attacks.

© Copyright 2010 Long War Journal. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

17-08-10, 03:52 PM

Spec Ops to Say Bye Bye to Beards (Again)…

by christian on August 17, 2010

The New York Daily News is reporting that the special ops command brass over in Afghanistan are — once again — ordering their snake eaters to ditch the whiskers.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/08/08/2010-08-08_decision_hanging_on_a_whisker.html#ixzz0w8mpQQi h

As many Kit Up! readers will remember, this is a seemingly perennial problem in the rugged battleground that attracts a similarly rugged persona. The bearded bubbas were rolling through the hills back in ’09-’10 sporting ZZ Top-like shags and biker bar caps with aplomb. Then the regular Army and Air Force moved in and Bagram became a salute base the the beards were banned.

Then the optics shifted to Iraq and the commandos went back to their off-the-grid ways.

But now with all the world watching The ‘Stan again, the brass are back at their game, blousing, shaving, tabbing and capping in full military regulation.

In Afghanistan’s rural areas were connecting with the population is so important, beards are essential for those troops who’s mission it is to live off the land and survive through repoire. I can see how some in the rear are feeling the sting from operators who take the look at little too far, but at the end of the day, it’s about trust and mission success, right?

Read more: http://kitup.military.com/#ixzz0ws46kTXO

buglerbilly

18-08-10, 03:04 AM

Afghanistan Focus Of Obama Summits With EU, NATO

By TANGI QUEMENER, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 17 Aug 2010 18:38

WASHINGTON - President Obama will travel to Lisbon in November for separate summits with European Union and NATO leaders, the White House said Aug. 17.

The summit of NATO heads of state, expected to focus on the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan and reforming the military alliance, had been penciled in for Lisbon on Nov. 19-20.

The European Union made it easier for Obama, who was accused of snubbing the 27-nation bloc when he pulled out of an earlier summit in May, by scheduling the EU-U.S. meeting in the Portuguese capital immediately afterward.

Obama is slated to meet EU president Herman Van Rompuy, commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and other European leaders on Nov. 20 for discussions bound to dwell on the flagging global economy.

Officials said the NATO summit will focus on progress in Afghanistan and ways to revitalize 28-member alliance.

The NATO talks come at a critical time for the unpopular U.S.-led military effort in Afghanistan, and it comes as Taliban-led violence worsens and U.S. forces suffered their worst loss of life and casualties.

There are currently more than 140,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops in Afghanistan aiming to flush out remnants of the Taliban, who went on the offensive after being toppled from government in the 2001 invasion.

Obama has seen support for the war dwindle at home, while a succession of countries that have supplied troops to the war effort - including the Netherlands, Canada, and Denmark - have announced they soon will bring their troops home.

The Netherlands has said all of its soldiers would return home by September, in the first significant drawdown of troops from the Afghan war.

NATO's request for an extension of the mission sparked a political row that led to the Dutch government's collapse in February, and the announced drawdown. The Dutch will be replaced by a U.S.-led coalition force including Australian, Slovak and Singaporean soldiers.

Britain and the U.S. have signaled that some troops will leave in 2011 with an overall aim to end combat operations in 2014.

Obama has vowed to begin removing U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan by July, but his plans have met with pushback from Republicans, some Democrats and even some of his top aides, including his top military commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. David Petraeus.

With the help of its Western backers, the Afghan government is trying to build up its army and police so that they can take responsibility for security from U.S.-led NATO forces by 2014.

Meanwhile, the White House said November's EU summit would focus on ways to "affirm our transatlantic agenda, and to advance our cooperation on issues of mutual concern.

"The United States has no stronger partner than Europe in advancing security and prosperity around the world," it said. "Our economic relationship is vital to global prosperity, and we are committed to cooperating to promote strong and sustained growth in our economies."

European leaders said in a statement they looked forward to the opportunity "to reaffirm the transatlantic agenda and advance EU-U.S. cooperation on issues of mutual concern."

The EU statement also noted the importance of the $4.28 trillion transatlantic trade relationship to the global economy.

The November meeting will be the first EU-U.S. summit since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which made Van Rompuy the European Union's first president.

The treaty, drawn up to replace the aborted EU constitution, was designed to boost the bloc's global standing and streamline the institutions which represent half a billion people.

Leaders from the United States and European Union traditionally meet once a year for wide-ranging political and economic talks.

The announcement that Obama will attend the Lisbon meetings comes after Obama ruffled feathers in Europe uin May by backing out of a European summit in Madrid.

Recently, U.S.-EU relations have been somewhat strained, as Europeans complained that transatlantic issues under the Obama administration at times have taken a backseat to U.S.-Pacific region affairs under the Hawaii-born Obama.

There were also rumblings of discontent after Obama failed to show up at observances in the German capital last year marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And even at an EU-U.S. summit in Washington last year, Obama spent no more than an hour and a half with his European guests before taking his leave, to the consternation of his transatlantic partners.

buglerbilly

18-08-10, 05:02 AM

Taliban commander condemns Karen Woo murder

Unnamed commander says execution of 10 medical workers including British doctor this month was a 'crime'

Jon Boone in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 August 2010 17.49 BST

Karen Woo was killed along with nine other aid workers in Badakhhsan province, Afghanistan. Photograph: AP

The execution of 10 medical workers, including the British doctor Karen Woo, has been condemned by a Taliban commander from the area of north-eastern Afghanistan where the murders took place.

In an extraordinary breach within the hardline movement, which claimed responsibility for the attack in Badakhshan province this month, the unnamed insurgent leader described the incident as a "crime".

"I offer my condolences for the families of the 10 people killed in Badakhshan," said a brief message delivered to the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a respected Kabul-based thinktank. "The killing of these people was a crime. I know that they were working for the health of poor people in our region," he said.

The commander did not want his name to be revealed, but in a post on its website AAN confirmed that he was a "commander of significant clout, politically and militarily, in the north-east".

AAN enjoys a solid reputation in Kabul and its members include some of the most respected foreign experts working on Afghanistan, including a number of longstanding former diplomats.

buglerbilly

18-08-10, 05:13 AM

Russia may sell helicopters to Afghanistan

Published: Aug. 17, 2010 at 4:25 PM

MOSCOW, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- In a bizarre reversal of the past, Russia is interested in selling helicopters to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's regime.

During the 1979-1988 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Soviet Army's helo force was its most effective aerial asset against the mujahedin resistance.

Russian presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko, addressing the upcoming meeting between Karzai and Russian President Dimitry Medvedev scheduled at the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Aug. 18, told journalists, "The Russian side is certainly interested in it. We have no restrictions (regarding such deliveries). Deliveries of Russian helicopters will be discussed if the Afghan side raises this issue," Interfax reported on Tuesday.

Afghanistan's charge d'affaires in Russia, Hafizullah Ebadi commented during an interview, "Afghanistan definitely needs powerful national armed forces for the purpose of protecting its national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Seeking to deflect possible U.S. criticism of the initiative, Ebadi added, "Afghanistan, as an independent state, has the right to turn to any country as it seeks to meet the needs of its armed forces."

Afghanistan's turn towards Moscow for advanced aerial weaponry is an ironic reversal of the country's history three decades ago, when helicopters were one of the Soviet air force's most potent weapons in its arsenal. A month after the December 1979 Soviet intervention there were 40,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan, facing mounting resistance. The U.S. government estimated that were about 85,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan by late 1980 and about 100,000 by the end of 1981. As in the early days of the occupation the Soviets limited combat to the minimum needed to maintain their hold on the major cities and towns of Afghanistan, and the Afghan army, approximately 25,000 in number, was a major obstacle to Soviet aims, the Soviets concluded that it needed to use advanced heavy weaponry.

In early 1980 the Soviets began to move toward decentralized support, ensuring that reinforced units had their own artillery, engineer and helicopter support. A major element of Soviet military doctrine in Afghanistan quickly became the use of air superiority to suppress the resistance, relying heavily on helicopter assaults.

The workhorse of the Red Army's Afghan operations quickly became the MiG 24 "Hind" gunship, which the Kremlin would eventually deploy 500 to 650. The Mi 24 could carry up to 192 unguided rockets along with its machine gun and cannon armament, along with eight-12 soldiers. The MiG 24 was used not only for search-and-destroy missions but also for close air support, assaults in conjunction with fixed wing aircraft and armed reconnaissance missions.

buglerbilly

18-08-10, 11:48 AM

Pakistani floods could further hurt unstable nation as military focuses on aid

Pakistan floods: 20 million affected, more aid needed, says U.N.
At least 1,500 are dead after monsoon rains bloated rivers, submerged villages and triggered landslides in Pakistan.

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Staggered by the scale of destruction from this summer's catastrophic floods, Pakistani officials have begun to acknowledge that the country's security could be gravely affected if more international aid does not arrive soon.

The floods have submerged an area roughly the size of Italy, displaced 12 percent of the population and destroyed billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and crops.

But with the government admittedly overwhelmed and foreign aid trickling in, the worst may be still to come, as Pakistan struggles to deal with food shortages, disease outbreaks and a mass migration of homeless families. All those factors have the potential to further destabilize a nation undermined by weak governance and a vicious insurgency even before the crisis.

"There are already signs that people are restive," said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a Pakistani military spokesman. "If not addressed, it could balloon and will create a security situation in the areas where the government has not taken care of people's needs."

The army has had to reorient itself in recent weeks, shifting its focus from counterinsurgency toward relief and recovery missions. A potential offensive in the militant haven of North Waziristan has been placed on indefinite hold, as has the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of refugees from last fall's battle in South Waziristan. Meanwhile, efforts to rebuild the Swat Valley, the scene of intense fighting last year, are back to square one after flooding from monsoon rains knocked out every bridge and many schools, health clinics and communication towers.

"The so-called war on terror has to be on hold," said Ayaz Amir, a security analyst and a member of Pakistan's Parliament. "As long as the nation, the government and the army are dealing with this flood situation, the war takes a back seat."

That is bad news for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where commanders seeking to turn around a flagging war effort are relying heavily on Pakistani cooperation. It could particularly affect plans in eastern Afghanistan, where the United States had been contemplating a fall offensive in areas across the border from North and South Waziristan.

So far, the Pakistani Taliban has not made any visible efforts to exploit the three-week-old crisis, although some Islamic charities linked to banned militant groups have distributed aid in certain areas. Abbas said there was no indication that the group was mobilizing for major attacks, and analysts said Taliban operations could have been hamstrung by the floods. The group might also be wary of alienating the public by carrying out strikes at a time of mass hardship.

"We can do with a lull on both sides," Amir said.

Fertile recruiting grounds

But it's not clear that the lull will last. The floods have inundated some of the poorest and least-accessible areas of Pakistan, many of which were already fertile recruiting grounds for militants. Some heavily affected areas of Swat can be reached only by helicopter, and residents are building wooden bridges by hand to reestablish links to the outside world.

Southern parts of Punjab province, too, have been heavily affected, exacerbating the threat from Taliban affiliates that have moved in recent years to expand their influence beyond Pakistan's northwest.

The center of militancy in Pakistan remains North Waziristan, and while it was not among the worst-hit parts of the country, the army's focus on the floods means any counterinsurgency operation there now is extremely unlikely.

"The government is face to face with massive problems from the flood. There are millions of displaced people. If they go for the operation in North Waziristan, there would be many more," said M. Kamran Khan, a member of Parliament representing North Waziristan. "It's not possible for the government to take care of more people."

Even before the floods hit, Pakistan had been reluctant to move into North Waziristan, despite months of intense U.S. pressure. Whereas South Waziristan was home to the Pakistani Taliban, militant groups in the north -- including al-Qaeda and the Haqqani faction of the Taliban -- have generally been friendlier toward the Pakistani government and have focused their attacks across the border in Afghanistan.

Abbas, the military spokesman, said the United States has stopped pressuring Pakistan to go into North Waziristan, recognizing that such a move could backfire if undertaken when the army is overstretched.

"They have a better understanding now of our concerns and our constraints," he said. "For the near future, there's too much on our plate. We're totally involved in responding to this disaster."

'A lot of breathing space'

Gains made in South Waziristan have also been put in jeopardy by the floods. The army declared victory there late last year after weeks of battling insurgents, but residents have yet to return, and the army says plans to escort them back have been delayed.

Out of Pakistan's 500,000-member army, about 60,000 troops are involved in flood-related rescue and relief work. So far, those troops have been called up from the reserves or from training and have not been pulled from active military operations. But with the flood response taking up critical resources, including helicopters, the army is clearly constrained.

"There is now a lot of breathing space for the Pakistani Taliban and their allies in the tribal areas," said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a political and defense analyst. "They know they will soon be able to cash in on the ammunition that develops as the people are alienated from the government."

That alienation is already apparent. The government says it is doing everything it can to provide flood victims with food, water and shelter, but it admits it does not have nearly enough resources to help the estimated 20 million people affected.

In recent days, Pakistanis rendered homeless by the floods in the southern province of Sindh have taken to the highway in protest, blocking traffic and setting fires. Across the country, fights have broken out among increasingly desperate aid recipients as they compete for every sack of flour and bottle of water.

The United Nations said Tuesday that money and provisions are in short supply and that only about a third of the $459 million in emergency funds it asked for last week had arrived.

The World Bank redirected $900 million worth of previously committed loans Tuesday to flood recovery, but aid groups continued to plead for money that can be used immediately to help those at risk.

The United States has provided $87 million in flood assistance, more than any other country. Meanwhile, even stalwart allies of Pakistan, such as China and Saudi Arabia, have been slow to provide money.

"We have a country which has endemic watery diarrhea, endemic cholera, endemic upper respiratory infections," Daniel Toole, UNICEF's regional director for South Asia, said Tuesday at a news conference in Islamabad. "We have the conditions for much, much expanded problems."

buglerbilly

18-08-10, 03:17 PM

Pentagon, Karzai Work to Disband Security Companies

(Source: U.S Department; issued August 17, 2010)

WASHINGTON --- Pentagon officials are working with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to disband private security contractors in Afghanistan, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said today.

“We share a common goal with President Karzai, and that is the elimination of the need for private security contractors in Afghanistan,” Whitman told reporters. “But while we share that goal, we also recognize that Afghanistan presents a daunting security challenge.”

Karzai issued a decree today in which he urged the disbanding of all international and national private security companies within four months.

But U.S. officials believe such a timeline is “very challenging,” Whitman said.

“With respect to a timeline of four months, obviously that’s a very aggressive timeline, and it’s one that our forces, our commanders, as well as the State Department and ambassador, will be working with the government of Afghanistan to achieve what we believe is a common goal,” he said.

Whitman said there’s strong desire among the international community for Afghanistan’s government to reach the point of managing security in its own country.

“Ultimately, we all look forward to the day that the security environment is such when you don’t need private security contractors, that the security of the country can be secured by the armed forces and police forces of Afghanistan,” he said.

Karzai’s decree targets the conduct and function of private contractors who guard embassies and investment companies. The contractors also provide training as well as escort services for travel through unsafe areas.

However, this is a role that may be taken on by Afghan forces because of the NATO initiative in training those forces, Whitman said.

“That’s why [NATO forces] have a very aggressive training program for both the police and the military, to march towards that day when private security contractors are not needed,” he added. “We are working with the government of Afghanistan to improve oversight and management as well as develop a plan to aggressively reduce them as the security conditions permit.”

-ends-

buglerbilly

18-08-10, 03:33 PM

Petraeus: Here’s My Afghan Redeployment Strategy

By Spencer Ackerman August 18, 2010 | 8:47 am

KABUL, Afghanistan – General David Petraeus isn’t planning to wake up one morning after July 2011 and order his troops out of Afghanistan’s provinces all at once. Instead, his idea is to slowly and deliberately remove small units, district by district, in an intricate process he describes as “thinning out.”

“You can reduce your forces. But you thin out,” Petraeus tells Danger Room in an interview from his professorial Kabul office. “You don’t just hand over. The whole unit doesn’t leave.” At least not in the early stages after the Obama administration’s announced date to start a withdrawal. And some of those troops won’t
come home right away: they’ll be “reinvested” at first in parts of the country where security remains dicey.

For months, Petraeus has been questioned about how quickly the U.S. will remove its troops from Afghanistan after July 2011. He’s heard lawmakers and pundits parse everything he says for the tiniest iota’s worth of difference with President Obama. It’s “premature” to speculate what will happen eleven months from now, Petraeus says. Once again, he declares support for the Obama policy of beginning a “conditions-based” drawdown next summer. But for perhaps the first time, Petraeus opens up, just a bit, about his thinking for how to send troops home, and in what size.

A few combat brigades of between 3000 and 5000 troops, like those Obama ordered to Afghanistan last winter, may indeed come back to America. But in keeping with the mantra – articulated by both Petraeus and, yes, the president – that withdrawals next year beyond the 30,000 troops of the surge will depend on how the security picture looks, Petraeus says that the recommendations will come from “those who know it best”: his subordinate commanders. They’ll assess how much sense it makes to move troops out of certain areas; whether there’s more that troops still need to achieve in battle; and whether Afghan troops and police are ready to hold terrain that Americans cleared. Much as Obama will consider Petraeus’ advice, Petraeus will consider theirs.

That focus will “start at the district,” he says, and then progress to the larger provinces. The idea is to ensure that U.S. troops don’t vacate a hard-captured area and abruptly turn it over to unprepared Afghans. “We’ve got a lot of months in this fighting season and a lot of work to do before July 2011,” he adds. “But in the tough areas, it’ll probably be district-level. More autonomous areas, it can be province-level.” (Brigade-sized Task Forces typically handle security in more than one Afghan province.)

Some units pulled out of stable districts might find themselves heading for more volatile ones. “You maybe take one company and send it somewhere else. Maybe send it home,” Petraeus explains. “We want to reinvest some of the transition.” It won’t necessarily be the case that a unit that “thins out” from a district heads directly home. “Some will, certainly,” Petraeus qualifies. “And this is all premature.”

In keeping with Petraeus’ admitted addiction to PowerPoint, the general passes on a briefing slide, titled “Transition,” to explain his thinking. The assessment for drawing down will be built around “Districts, Provinces, Functions [and] Institutions,” looking for what can be handed to Afghans with minimal disruptions in security. In our interview, he elaborates that “institutions” means U.S. functions like training the Afghan security forces — jobs that don’t have to remain American duties indefinitely. According to the slide, it’s a process that will draw on what security gains the U.S. command in charge of training Afghan security forces believes the Afghans can maintain; and the Afghan government itself.

Some of Petraeus’ division commanders are already looking toward drawing down their forces. In an interview with Danger Room, Maj. Gen. John Campbell, commander of U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, says that he’s considering turning over relatively secure provinces like Parwan, Panjshir and Bamiyan to the Afghans by the time his tour ends next summer.

But volatile areas aren’t off limits for possible troop reductions. Campbell says he’s taking a hard look at districts in the violent border province of Kunar that he might consider leaving, including the Pech Valley, where U.S. troops find themselves in a tough, mountainous battle. Campbell says that the provincial capital of Asadabad will need U.S. troops to secure it. But other parts of Kunar might bring the U.S. little but a violent fate, making it questionable to stay.

Campbell says he’ll review “the task and purpose” of what his troops are doing as he looks toward reducing their numbers in the east, asking if it “complement[s] the campaign strategy.”

That’s Petraeus’ focus, too. He’s got a lot to produce, both before and after July 2011: development of a competent Afghan security force. Protecting Afghan civilians from rising violence. Rolling back the insurgency’s momentum. Bolstering effective, transparent and legitimate Afghan governance. And balancing the need to prosecute the war with the U.S.’ disinterest in prolonging the longest war in its history.

It may be “premature” to speculate on what the U.S. troop presence will look like after the “conditions-based” drawdown begins next year. But Petraeus has formed the concepts to guide what he recommends to Obama about how fast U.S. troops should actually come home.

Editor’s note: Spencer Ackerman’s complete interview with Petraeus will be available online shortly.

Photo: Spc. Albert Kelley / CJTF-82

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/petraeus-afghan-strategy/#more-29552#ixzz0wxq2JnEo

buglerbilly

19-08-10, 02:10 AM

Coalition Forces Find Taliban Prison

August 18, 2010

UPI

Afghan and coalition forces found 27 Afghan men held prisoner illegally by the Taliban in a makeshift prison in Helmand province, coalition forces said.

The prisoners appeared to have been tortured and were taken to a base for a medical screening and debriefing, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a release issued Wednesday.

Officials also were trying to determine the men's identities, the coalition force said.

The targeted prison compound was associated with a Sangin area Taliban commander, NATO said. Insurgents began firing on Afghan and coalition forces as they arrived at the compound. The engagement left 13 insurgents dead when they refused to lay down their weapons, NATO officials said.

Besides finding the 27 prisoners in shackles, coalition forces said they discovered numerous weapons, including a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

NATO said no civilians were injured during the operation, which resulted from intelligence sources and tips from Afghan citizens.

© Copyright 2010 UPI. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

19-08-10, 02:12 AM

WikiLeaks: DoD Ready to Discuss Afghan Files

August 18, 2010

Associated Press

STOCKHOLM - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Wednesday the Pentagon has expressed willingness to discuss the online whistleblower's request for help in reviewing classified documents from the Afghan war and removing information that could harm civilians.

"This week we received contact through our lawyers that the General Counsel of the U.S. Army says now that they want to discuss the issue," Assange told The Associated Press by telephone. He later corrected himself to say he meant the general counsel of the Pentagon.

Assange added that the contacts have been brokered by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, or CID.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman denied any direct contacts between the Pentagon and WikiLeaks. He also said the Pentagon is not interested in cooperating with WikiLeaks, which has asked for help in reviewing the documents to purge the names of Afghan informants from the files.

"We are not interested in negotiating some sort of minimized or sanitized version of classified documents," he said.

"These documents are property of the United States government. The unauthorized release of them threatens the lives of coalition forces as well as Afghan nationals."

Asked if CID had brokered contact between defense lawyers and Wikileaks lawyers, Whitman said: "CID is conducting an investigation and I am not going to comment on their investigation."

Assange said Wednesday that "contact has been established" but added it was not clear whether and how the U.S. military would assist WikiLeaks.

"It is always positive for parties to talk to each other," Assange said. "We welcome their engagement."

He reiterated that WikiLeaks plans to release its second batch of secret Afghan war documents within "two weeks to a month."

The first files in its "Afghan War Diary" laid bare classified military documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The release angered U.S. officials, energized critics of the NATO-led campaign, and drew the attention of the Taliban, which has promised to use the material to track down people it considers traitors.

Non-governmental organizations, including the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, have criticized WikiLeaks as being irresponsible.

WikiLeaks describes itself as a public service organization for whistleblowers, journalists and activists.

"We encourage other media and human rights groups who have a genuine concern about reviewing the material to assist us with the difficult and very expensive task of getting a large historical archive into the public's record," Assange said.

The Australian was in Sweden in part to prepare an application for a publishing certificate that would allow WikiLeaks to take full advantage of the Scandinavian nation's press freedom laws.

That also means WikiLeaks would have to appoint a publisher that could be held legally responsible for the material. Assange said that person would be "either me or one of our Swedish people."

WikiLeaks routes its material through Sweden and Belgium because of the whistleblower protection offered by laws in those countries. But it also has backup servers in other countries to make sure the site is not shut down, Assange said.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

19-08-10, 02:33 AM

Drones Surge, Special Ops Strike in Petraeus Campaign Plan

By Spencer Ackerman August 18, 2010 | 8:15 pm

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ever since the Afghanistan war became a counterinsurgency fight, critics have charged that commanders’ cautions about using force only inhibit the fight against the Taliban. But in the shadows, NATO Special Operations Forces are engaged in an intensely lethal war of their own.

According to information provided to Danger Room by Gen. David Petraeus, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, in just the past 90 days these elite units have captured or killed 365 militant leaders, detained 1,335 insurgent foot soldiers and killed another 1,031 insurgents on top of that.

Yes, some units once engaged in armed coercion have de-emphasized taking direct action against insurgent bombers. But the rough stuff against the networks that create improvised explosive devices has been part of the special forces’ hot summer –- represented by green, blue and orange bursts on the map of Afghanistan that Petraeus compiled into a briefing slide.

“We’ve been taking a lot of kinetic activities against them, actually,” Petraeus says, using military jargon for violent operations. “I don’t know if there’s an incident a day, but certainly close to it, where our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets are detecting a group” planting IEDs, and U.S. forces go after that group.

“Maybe not all Task Force ODIN, by the way,” he clarifies, referring to one of two task forces charged with stopping the blasts. “There’s lots of others that are out there, lots of other elements detecting individuals planting IEDs and killing or capturing them.” That he certainly does not clarify. But he suggests that the pointy end of the counter-IED spear is now in the hands of Special Operations Forces.

“Certainly you want to protect the force by killing or capturing those at the point of planting the IED, but what you really want to do is go after the network,” Petraeus continued. ODIN and Task Force Paladin are doing that, focusing now on gathering intelligence to enable other units to break up the bombers’ supply chains. “That’s what we’ve sought to do, and that’s been very, very kinetic.” The slide implicitly refutes a May comment from Adm. Eric Olson, the head of Special Operations Command, who chided counterinsurgency in Afghanistan for not actually “countering the insurgents.”

‘As a commander, you devour intelligence all day every day.’But to what end? If the slide Petraeus hands me is to be believed, Special Operations Forces’ torrid pace of operations led to a “successful Kabul conference” last month in which the international community pledged sustained support to Afghanistan, weakening the Taliban in Kandahar, and degrading IED networks.

Except that IED attacks have been rising, not falling. Isn’t that a bad omen for the effort against the bombs and their networks? Not according to the general. That increase could be a counterintuitive measure of progress.

“We’re on the offensive. We’re taking away areas that matter to the enemy, safe havens and sanctuaries,” Petraeus says. “The way they counter this is they don’t want to take us on directly, as you know. They don’t want to get into a sustained firefight. What they do is employ the indirect approach and use, again, improvised explosive devices or hit-and-run attacks.”

But can’t that point be taken too far? Can’t wishful thinking make every metric that flashes a warning sign look like a light at the end of the tunnel? “That’s fair enough,” Petraeus allows, saying he tries to guard against such feedback loops by developing a “fingertip feel” for the war’s fortunes. “That’s what you’re constantly trying to achieve as a commander, so you devour intelligence, certainly, all day every day.”

What will give Petraeus that fingertip feel are even more spy planes, drones and intelligence tools -– which, he discloses, are going to keep flowing into Afghanistan. As head of Central Command in 2009, Petraeus began a program of moving military intelligence tools out of Iraq and the U.S. and into Afghanistan. That effort isn’t done, and it’s not going to finish any time soon.

Petraeus doesn’t want to get into specifics about his new intel gear, but there’s a lot of it. “Some of it’s unmanned, some of it’s manned, some of it is optics, optics on towers, some of it is optics on blimps, more blimps, more towers, more unmanned aircraft of various types, more manned aircraft of various types, more intelligence tools of various types, etc., etc. In all of the different disciplines of intelligence: imagery intelligence, signals intelligence, human intelligence.” As Petraeus tells it, the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance pipeline remains open to him, and assets will keep flowing to him as he directs the war.

The arrival of those assets will help guide the fight against IED networks and the insurgency more broadly: a grueling, bloody battle that won’t end anytime soon. And that illuminates how fallacious it is to presume –- as some critics charge — that counterinsurgency, Petraeus’ chosen approach to the last two wars he’s managed, is a softer form of war because of its simultaneous efforts at safeguarding civilian life and bolstering civilian governance, economics and legitimacy. Or, for that matter, to view counterinsurgency and counterterrorism as polar opposites.

“Targeted, intelligence-driven precision operations by those [Special Operations Forces] elements are absolutely part of a comprehensive, civil-military counterinsurgency campaign,” Petraeus says. “Counterterrorist force operations are a very important element in the overall approach, but so are population-centric security operations to clear, hold and build by conventional forces.”

But the question that remains unanswered as the war approaches its 10th anniversary is whether and when Petraeus’ strategy will bring stability to Afghanistan.

Photo: Senior Airman Brian Ybarbo/NATO Training Mission Afghanistan

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/petraeus-campaign-plan/#more-29588#ixzz0x0WG3e9v

buglerbilly

19-08-10, 02:42 AM

David Petraeus: The Danger Room Interview

By Spencer Ackerman August 18, 2010 | 8:17 pm

KABUL, Afghanistan -– My 45-minute interview Tuesday with Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was considerably less physically taxing than the last time we talked in person. While on a military base in Mosul, Iraq, in March 2007, I learned that Petraeus, then the commander of the Iraq war, was on his way there.

I put in for an interview request. The only time he had available was during early-morning physical training. Over two painful hours, I learned why Petraeus’ reputation as a fitness freak and champion runner is well deserved.

Once again, Petraeus is in charge of a controversial, faltering war. To learn how he intends to reverse U.S. fortunes in Afghanistan, I met Petraeus at his commanders’ compound, an elegant multistory building in a quiet, green spot of NATO headquarters in Kabul. From the way he discussed the challenges ahead — both before and after the July 2011 date to begin a “conditions-based” drawdown of U.S. forces — Petraeus’ endurance will be tested in a marathon-length sprint.

A (lightly) edited transcript of our interview follows.

Wired.com: You’ve been asked every which way about July 2011. My question is: After July 2011, should we expect to see new major operations launched?

Gen. David Petraeus: With respect, it’s just really premature to ask about what we might see after July 2011 — other than the initiation of a process that of transitioning of some tasks to some Afghan forces, at a pace that is based on conditions. President Obama has [called for] the beginning of a responsible drawdown of our surge forces [then].

Folks really need to be very cautious about overanalyzing or overparsing what I’ve said to this reporter or that reporter. I do support the [president's] policy. And obviously what we are doing is everything we humanly can do to achieve the conditions that will enable initiation of that transition with minimal risk.

Wired.com: Another thing that gets parsed a lot — do you find that it’s a false distinction between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism?

Petraeus: Well, in fact, operations by counterterrorist forces — in other words, by our special-mission-unit elements, which will remain nameless but which you know are absolutely part of a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign. Not only are those [operations] not at odds with counterinsurgency, they’re a very important element in the overall approach. So are population-centric security operations — to clear, hold, and build [areas with] conventional forces. So are, of course, similar operations in partnership with Afghan forces.

And now, [there's] the Afghan local police initiative, just signed by President Karzai yesterday. That will enable the establishment of village guard forces: local police, under the Ministry of Interior elements in that district. There have to be very careful safeguards to ensure that these are not militia nor warlord forces or anything like that.

But then, as you know, you cannot kill or capture your way out of a substantial insurgency. Clearly, politics are a huge part of that. So that is where reintegration of reconcilable elements of the insurgency comes in. And that is already ongoing.

Wired.com: Reintegration might be fine to launch first. But doesn’t there need to be some kind of top-level political commitment?

Petraeus: Well, there will be that top-level political commitment — in the form of the reconciliation-reintegration directive that President Karzai’s team is finalizing now for him. It will also have the national peace council that will be headed [by] individuals with significant stature, we believe –- and by no means all Pashtun.

‘Every civilian’s death diminishes us, collectively. So the measure is not who killed them, it’s the fact that innocent civilians were killed.’

Wired.com:When will the decree be signed?

Petraeus: You have to ask President Karzai’s staff. But because in fact they are having to deal with groups that are coming in from the cold. There are two reasonable groups in one northern province alone. One group of 40, I think it was, and then there’s another group of 80. And there are a number of groups in other locations as well that want to reintegrate.

There will be a support structure, there will be political commitments, there will be security guarantees. There will be a variety of programs for them, including, most likely, some job training, some literacy programs, and so forth. Then there is also the prospect of reconciliation — another component of politics, needless to say. And then, of course, there’s just governance, period. So that’s all part of the development of governance that achieves legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

Obviously, it is a central element to any host nation effort to, to again win the people over to their side. Because, remember, this is not about us winning Afghan hearts and minds, this is about Afghan government officials and institutions winning Afghan hearts and minds.

Wired.com: What I’ve been hearing from people, particularly down south, is simply a weariness of 30 years of war.

Petraeus: Well there is a weariness – by the insurgents as well. Certainly the people are weary or war, without question, and of course that .. those wars have done enormous damage to Afghanistan and to the developments to develop human capital and so forth.

Wired.com: It was reported on Adm. [Michael] Mullen’s recent trip down to Kandahar that he was starting to hear that the level of violence, even though the Taliban kill a lot more civilians than we do …

Petraeus: Vastly more.

Wired.com: … vastly more, as we’ve seen validated in UN reports. Nevertheless, the blame that the public starts to attribute [to NATO forces].

Petraeus: Well, I think its fair for the public to say that it’s the job of Afghan and coalition forces to improve our security.

You know, this is a little bit like a play on For Whom The Bell Tolls. Remember, it went something like, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee, every mans death diminisheth me.” And that’s the same here: Every civilian’s death diminishes us, collectively. So the measure is not who killed them, it’s the fact that innocent civilians were killed.

Now, obviously, we have worked very hard to reduce civilian casualties over the course of our operations. As the United Nations report [notes], numbers attributable to our operations and Afghan operations have gone down by some 30 percent over the course of the last year. Which is quite significant [since] we’ve tripled the number of forces on the ground. Afghan forces have expanded substantially, and we have launched a number of offensives in which normally the enemy fights back very hard, and there is the possibility of loss of innocent civilian life in [those] operations.

But there’s understandable impatience on the part of the Afghan people, just as there is understandable impatience on the part of the American people, and the citizens of all of the 47 contributing nations.

Wired.com: Where does the campaign lead to? Building Afghan forces, degrading the Taliban to the point where they’re not relevant to regular people’s lives? Or to the point where they simply feel the need to negotiate or enter more fulsomely into these reconciliation deals?

Petraeus: I think it’s all of the above. But, obviously, success in this country is an Afghanistan that can secure and govern itself, and doing that obvious requires security for the population, neutralizing the insurgent population by a variety of ways. Irreconcilables have to be killed captured or run off.

All those who can be reconciled, certainly there will be Afghan efforts to reintegrate them into society. [There will also be] the pursuit of reconciliation with those more senior leaders who accept the conditions that President Karzai has established.

Wired.com: When you look at those conditions, are there any that insufficiently coincide with US interests? Because we didn’t come here to build an Afghan government or to support a stable Afghanistan, we came here for clear counterterrorism goals.

‘The Taliban said, “Hide your weapons, melt away and wait until they leave.” But we are not leaving.’

Petraeus: The national security imperative for the United States and most [of] the troop-contributing nations is, of course, that Afghanistan does not once again become a sanctuary for transnational extremists, as it was before the 9/11 attacks.

Recall that they were planned in Kandahar and the initial training of the attackers was carried out in Afghan training camps, before they moved on to Germany and U.S. flight schools. But the only way to achieve that goal is to have an Afghanistan that can secure and govern itself.

Wired.com: But are there things that we can’t live within the three conditions that Karzai and the peace Jirga layed out? Would we be willing to accept provinces that had Taliban governance?

Petraeus: Those are clearly questions for President Karzai …

Wired.com: Even though they’re about American national interests?

Petraeus: Well, his conditions are quite clear: that they reject Al-Qaida, that they support the constitution, that they lay down their weapons, and they essentially become productive members of society.

Wired.com: Would we need some form of guarantor to make sure that happens? Because it’s one thing [for the Taliban] to say, “Yes, I reject Al-Qaida,” and another thing to see it in practice.

Petraeus: Again, I’ll leave that to Afghan officials and policymakers.

Wired.com: When looking at the campaign plan, you’ve said that we were in a phase of execution and not a phase of redesign or readjustment. Looking at the conditions in both the south and the east, is there a need to?

Petraeus: I don’t know if I supported that characterization necessarily. Let me back up and just start by reminding you that [there's] a great focus on Afghanistan, really for the first time in some years. It was an economy of force effort for some time, as you know. [Then came this] new administration, looking at it with fresh eyes.

What we have worked on for the last 18 months is to get the inputs right: to get the right organizational structures in place, the right people in position to develop the right concepts and approaches and then, of course, to deploy the resources necessary. Keep in mind … the U.S. is about 68,000 to 70,000 of that [force], somewhere around there. The rest is non-U.S.

By the end of August, really for the first time, we will have the inputs right. Meaning the structures, people, concepts and resources required to carry out a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign — which is what is required to achieve our security interests here in Afghanistan.

Now, General McChrystal’s strategy goes back almost a year, now. And the fact is that he was going to look at it and make some refinements. And, in fact, that’s what I have to sought to do in the first six or seven weeks that I’ve been in command.

And as you know, I published counterinsurgency guidance, I’ve got a copy here free of charge. There have been refinements made to the tactical directive, the most important of which was: No subordinate commander can further restrict it.

The real issue is that you can’t have each level of a chain of command further restricting [the use of force]. I’m not saying that that was the norm by any means. But it appears to have been the case in a couple of situations — less than a handful of them. And so the emphasis is fight hard, fight disciplined, fight in a disciplined manner, protect yourself and protect civilians.

We’ve got our inputs right. Now, obviously we have sought to achieve outputs along the way as we have had new forces. There has been progress in the central Helmand province – it’s not been without down-spurs. Counter-insurgency, as you know, is a roller-coaster affair. But the six central districts: You can walk in the market at Marja that was once controlled by the Taliban and the narcotics-industry bosses. They can’t do that.

There’s been progress. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still fighting back very hard. But, in the meantime, we’re pushing the security bubble out further. There’s an extension into Sangin district and up in the Musa Qala — again enemies fighting back, but that’s ongoing.

The shaping operations began in Kandahar about four months ago and these were the targeted operations, and more recently in the last several weeks. Up to 11 and 13 checkpoints are now established — and these are industrial-strength checkpoints. I mean these are big, robust, fully force-protect[ed] check points.

Operations have been ongoing in Arghandab to clear and hold in that district. Again, [it's] been a tough fight. The Afghan and U.S. forces there have taken tough casualties, but they have also cleared important areas, and they’re now holding them.

And we have had intelligence from various sources that the Taliban said, “Hide your weapons, melt away and wait until they leave. “ But we are not leaving. We’re clearing and holding.

Wired.com: When should we start to see outputs in Kandahar? It’s not a D-Day style operation. So how will we know when the “rising tide” of security has ridden? How do you measure that?

Petraeus: You’re looking at areas in which there has been a security bubble created. That is the case in portions of the Arghandab. It’s the case in some of the less difficult districts — certainly significant portions of the city, not all — and [in] areas just to the west of Kandahar.

But, clearly, further operations are required there. We’re not going to say when and where, um, for operational security reasons. Ultimately, over time we want to expand these oil spots and eventually link them up.

An area that I have given greater interest to is the Kabul oil spot – that security bubble. Of course the Afghans carried off impressive security [operations here].

It’s the Afghans who are in the lead for security in all but one of the districts. In fact, we went down to Wardak the other day to talk about ways in which the Afghan government can help the governor and security forces there extend the security bubble, particularly down along Route 1. Then well look at doing to same in Logar province.

Wired.com: Well, I actually wanted to ask about that because I had a chance to talk to [eastern regional commander Maj. Gen. John] Campbell last night. He described that you’re still seeing what he called the “rat lines” from the Torkham gate [crossing point with Pakistan].

It was striking to me, because I heard the exact same briefing two years ago. Do you think there’s sufficient emphasis on the east? Is there a realistic chance of closing those rat lines down? They seemed to lead to around Kabul, which was a bit worrying.

Petraeus: Touch wood, but security in Kabul has been really quite good. I mean, compare Kabul to Baghdad in March of 2007, when there were three car bombs going off on average every single day and killing dozens of Iraqis in each blast. Plus, 40, 50, 60 attacks in the city each day, I mean it was like being in a boxing ring and just sort of getting pummeled all day long.

I happened to be the commander of MNF-I at that time. It was a gruesome experience. I remember when we’d fly back and forth to the embassy. You’d know it was a good day if, as you were flying in, you didn’t see the plume of sort of oily gray smoke going up from a car bomb.

‘We’re on the offensive, we’re taking away areas that matter to the enemy — safe havens and sanctuaries.’You just don’t have that in Kabul. Yes, there are periodic sensational attacks. And yes, there’s a threat stream right now, and there has been really the whole time I’ve been here, although, a number of those have been disrupted or defeated. There’s no question that the Haqqani network wants to orchestrate attacks in the city. They tried to during the conduct of the Kabul conference and were unable to do so.

Wired.com: But do you think its possible to secure those roads, shut the rat lines down, or reduce the rat line’s influence?

Petraeus: Look, I don’t think we shut down rat lines in Arizona. What you do is you reduce, you disrupt. What you’re trying to get to a level of violence below a certain level.

At which, commerce can go on, people go about their daily lives without enormous intimidation. Basic services can improve, governments can develop, security forces –- particularly local police — can carry out their duties without the imminent fear of intimidation, assassination, family members being kidnapped and so forth.

I would argue that that’s the point we reached in Iraq, although clearly there’s been some violence in Iraq of late. But when we reduced the violence in Iraq by some 95 percent down to a level somewhere around 15 attacks per day on average, life flourished. Pipelines were repaired, electrical towers were re-erected, re-established, rebuilt and outside investment came in, schools were refurbished, medical clinics were expanded.

Wired.com: But Iraq started from a higher baseline of violence than existed in Afghanistan.

Petraeus: No question about it, sure. But it was on the verge of a civil war, if not right on the precipice of a civil war, if not already in it, in certain neighborhoods.

Wired.com: But if we can’t shut those rat lines down …

Petraeus: Well, you reduce them. In fact just the other day, Special Operations forces killed some 25 members of a Haqqani network at a training camp in the [Khost-Gardez Pass] area. Uh, and that’s the second such operation in the last six weeks.

So again, what you are seeking to do is obviously interdict the rat lines. There are going to be people for sometime who will want to try to carry out attacks in Kabul and certainly in other places in this country, and the task is to reduce the incidents of violence sufficiently, so that normal life can go on.

I’m sure you’ve driven around Kabul. We would go around Kabul the other night, and I mean the city was beyond bustling. I mean we could barely get through the traffic. The wedding halls are something out of Times Square or Las Vegas in their lights and garish decoration.

I mean we had to go through it, we went to see the speaker of the parliament, lower house -– Wolesi Jirga — and I think we were 30 minutes late because of the traffic, I mean it was that bad, reconnaissance had told us that we’d be able to make it on time. It was just so crowded, so packed with people in the markets and everything else.

Wired.com: We’re seeing IED incidents go way up since last year. I spent some time with [counter-IED units] Task Force ODIN and Task Force Paladin.

It struck me that their operations against IEDS are a lot less kinetic than when ODIN was in Iraq and what Paladin used to be. They’re talking about, particularly in Paladin’s case, taking the approach that when you have information about [a bomb], convene a jirga, talk to the elders. Do you think we’ve gone further away from kinetics than perhaps we should in this case?

Petraeus: I think we’ve taken a lot of kinetic activities against them, actually.

Wired.com: Can you talk about some of them?

Petraeus: I don’t know if there’s an incident a day, but certainly very close to it where our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets are detecting a [bombing] group. [It] maybe not Task Force ODIN, by the way. There are lots of others that are out there — lots of other elements … detecting individuals planting IEDs and killing or capturing them.

Certainly you want to protect the force by killing or capturing those at the point of planting the IED. But what you really want to do is go after the network, and that’s what we have sought to do, and that has been very very kinetic.

Wired.com: Then whey are we still seeing the incidents rising?

Petraeus: Well, again a variety of different reasons, we think. One is of course that we’re on the offensive, we’re taking away areas that matter to the enemy — safe havens and sanctuaries. We’ve discovered some safe havens that appear to have been in existence now for some six or perhaps even seven years.

Wired.com: Where are we seeing those?

Petraeus: There’s some in Kandahar province. And in Marja — it was very, very important. Obviously, Arghandab was important to them. The way they counter this is: They don’t want to us on directly. They don’t want to get in a sustained firefight. What they do is employ the indirect approach and use improvised explosive devices or hit-and-run attacks.

So that’s certainly one reason [for the escalation in IEDs] — that when you take away something that matters to the enemy, he fights back. And the same was the case, by the way, in Iraq, as you may recall, in the surge.

I mean, the highest level of violence in Iraq was June 2007, it was that late, and then it started to come down. And then the development of governance lags a bit, confidence lags a bit.

There are still, without question, sanctuaries from which they draw support, explosives. You may have seen an Afghan police element in Kandahar, yesterday I think it was, interdicted a massive amount of homemade explosives, and it clearly came from, it clearly came through [a] border crossing [with Pakistan].

Wired.com: So when do you expect the actual incidents to go down?

Petraeus: I don’t hazard predictions on that kind of thing.

Wired.com: It could become a little bit of an epistemic problem when you’re looking at the same measurements and say, “Well this just means were fighting back harder, so they have to fight back harder.”

Petraeus: That’s fair enough.

Wired.com: So how do you guard against that in your own thinking?

Petraeus: Well, you know I mean you’re just constantly trying to get at — I mean this is about the feel-you-know fingers — Fingerspitzengefühl — the German word for the “fingertip feel.” That’s what you’re constantly trying to achieve as a commander. And so you devour intelligence, all day every day. I mean, you start your day with an intelligence book that you pore over, and you go to an intelligence briefing, and you’re constantly trying to get that sense of why is something happening.

Wired.com: On that note, we just had an enormous transference of ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] assets from Iraq into Afghanistan.

Petraeus: I wouldn’t say we just had, I mean it’s been ongoing.

Wired.com: Over the past 18 months, let’s say.

Petraeus: There has been substantial increase to Afghanistan, some portion of which came from Iraq — but by no means all. Some is just an absolute increase.

Wired.com: Are you finding that you have the ISR capabilities you need in order to get the granularity and the “fingertip feel?”

Petraeus: There is not a military commander alive today who is genetically predisposed to say that he has enough ISR and assets, and particularly not in the Central Command theater. And actually there is more ISR coming.

‘We’ve got a lot of months of fighting, and a lot of work to do before July 2011."

Wired.com: What’s coming?

Petraeus: There’s more ISR coming, a fair amount more. Now, I mean some of it’s manned, some of it’s unmanned. Some of it’s optics — optics on towers, optics on blimps, more blimps, more towers, more unmanned aircraft of various types, more manned aircraft of various types, more intelligence tools of various types in all of the different disciplines of intelligence: imagery intelligence, signal intelligence, human intelligence.

Wired.com: When should we expect to see those flow in?

Petraeus: They have been flowing in, and they will continue to flow in. Again, there’s no commander in modern history who will ever concede that he has enough ISR. Ask Secretary [of Defense Robert] Gates about the insatiable appetite for his commanders –- particularly his combatant commanders’ – appetite for ISR.

Now, having said that, there has been a fairly significant increase here. Uh, and but keep in mind that it’s not about platforms, actually. It’s about the so called PED, which stands for processing, exploitation, and dissemination. So it’s about the 150 to 200 people who are needed in order to keep a Predator line up — one system full-time, and that means multiple platforms.

It’s not just the pilot, the payload operator, the ordnance specialist, the maintenance personnel. It’s also the people that do the downlinks, that may exploit whatever package [the Predator] has in terms of signals, imagery or other intelligence. And [the intel specialists] are all over the world, literally.

As you know, it’s all confederated. What’s actually seen might be on a big screen like that right there, but what’s underneath it will be another screen which has a chat room. And you have one of those for every [Predator], about 150 to 200 people do[ing] that full time — seven days a week, 24 hours a day -– do[ing] whatever is necessary to exploit and disseminate and analyze and operate and maintain those platforms.

Wired.com: You’ve been dealing with the Pakistanis a great deal. How have we regularized interactions with the Pakistani military? We go in hot pursuit, is there a hammer and an anvil?

Petraeus: All the way from the tactical level to the strategic level there are links. There are liaison procedures, there are border coordination centers. I’ve got a Pakistani liaison officer here.

There’s a trilateral group of the chief of army staff, chief of the general staff and myself who meet. We just met, in fact, last week, and those meetings are fairly regular.

Then General Campbell meets with his counterpart. They’re called border meetings.

So there’s a good deal of contact between commanders and staffs. And there is real-time communication as required to de-conflict if, for example, we’re shot at by indirect fire from across the border .

Wired.com: Is this in our muscle memory yet, and how low down does it go?

Petraeus: It goes all the way down to the level at which you would shoot back, having cleared.

Wired.com: So we’re talking platoon?

Petraeus: No, we’re talking company commander -– at that level. But again it is at tactical level that you can clear indirect fire back in the other direction: Just as if they received it from this side of the border, they can clear it coming this way.

Wired.com: Do they ever request of us, if they might be in pursuit? That we have something?

Petraeus: There have been coordinated operations, but I don’t want to go into more detail than that.

Wired.com: When it comes to transferring elements [out of and around Afghanistan], how granular to you get? Are you going down to the district level, or are you staying up at the province level?

Petraeus: That’s going to be done by those who know it best, and that is well below my level. Free of charge also you can have a copy of the transition process, and most importantly, the big ideas that will guide that process.

As you can see, it starts at the district, in most cases. There will be some provinces but most of it’s going to start at the district.

Wired.com: So we should we expect to see transfers started at the low level — organic, district centers — as opposed to entire provinces moving out.

Petraeus: You’ll see all of that. You’ll see both. [I'm being] careful not to project too far. We’ve got a lot of months of fighting, and a lot of work to do before July 2011.

But in the tough areas, it will probably be district-level. In the more autonomous areas, it can be province-level. We’ll transition institutions as well as geographic areas, because we have substantial forces helping Afghan institutions: training, equip, build.

Wired.com: Say a logistics element within an ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] unit?

Petraeus: Basic training. There’s typically somewhere approaching 30,000 Afghan security force members in training at a given time.

Wired.com: Is that what we mean by “thin out” in that case?

Petraeus: “Thin out” means that. Say there’s a battalion of you and there’s a battalion of them. They’re doing better, the situation is better, you can reduce your forces. But you thin out. You don’t just hand off. In other words, the whole unit doesn’t just leave. You take one company and send it somewhere else or maybe send it home. We want to reinvest some of the transition.

Wired.com: Meaning we should expect elements moved through theater, not necessarily all go home?

Petraeus: Not necessarily all go home, but again some of them certainly. But, again, this is really very premature.

Photo: Defense Department

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/petraeus-interview/all/1#ixzz0x0Wq5TZ7

buglerbilly

19-08-10, 02:13 PM

Pentagon Releases Letter Sent to Purported WikiLeaks Attorney

(Source: US Department of Defense; dated Aug. 18, 2010)

WASHINGTON --- Defense Department officials today released a letter the Pentagon’s top lawyer sent to a man purported to be an attorney for the WikiLeaks website, which published tens of thousands of classified documents last month and is threatening to release 15,000 more.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters this afternoon that Timothy J. Matusheski was a “no show” for a telephone call that was arranged last week when his name and purported status as a WikiLeaks attorney came up in an investigation of the document leak.

The following day, Whitman said, the Pentagon’s general counsel codified the Defense Department’s position in a letter and sent it to Matusheski.

Here is the text of the letter, dated Aug. 16 and signed by General Counsel Jeh C. Johnson. Words that were underlined in the original are presented here in all capital letters:

Dear Mr. Matusheski

I understand that you represent yourself to be an attorney for WikiLeaks and that you, on behalf of that organization, sought a conversation with someone in the United States Government to discuss “harm minimization” with respect to some 15,000 U.S. Government classified documents that WikiLeaks is holding and is threatening to make public. In response, I was prepared to speak with you yesterday at 10:00am EDT and convey the position of the Department of Defense. Despite your agreement to be available by telephone yesterday morning, we could not reach you at that time.

The position of the Department of Defense is clear, and it should be conveyed to your client in no uncertain terms:

WikiLeaks is holding the property of the U.S. Government, including classified documents and sensitive national security information that has not been authorized for release. Further, it is the view of the Department of Defense that WikiLeaks obtained this material in circumstances that constitute a violation of United States law, and that as long as WikiLeaks holds this material, the violation of the law is ongoing.

The Secretary of Defense has made clear the damage to our national security by the public release by WikiLeaks of some 76,000 classified documents several weeks ago, and the threat to the lives of coalition forces in Afghanistan and to the lives of local Afghan nationals as a result. As the Secretary has also stated, we know from various sources that our enemy is accessing the WikiLeaks website for the purpose of exploiting WikiLeaks’ illegal and irresponsible actions, to pursue their own terrorist aims.

The threatened release of additional classified documents by WikiLeaks will add to the damage. Among other sensitive items, we believe the classified documents contain, like the first batch of released documents, the names of Afghan nationals who are assisting coalition forces in our efforts to bring about peace and stability in that portion of the world.

Thus, the Department of Defense will NOT negotiate some “minimized” or “sanitized” version of a release by WikiLeaks of additional U.S. Government classified documents.

The Department demands that NOTHING further be released by WikiLeaks, that ALL of the U.S. Government classified documents that WikiLeaks has obtained be returned immediately, and that WikiLeaks remove and destroy all of these records from its databases.

(Signed)
Jeh Charles Johnson

-ends-

buglerbilly

20-08-10, 02:05 AM

A New Sniper Duel in Helmand

by christian on August 19, 2010

Reporting for the Wall Street Journal, Michael Phillips discloses that it seems we have an Afghan Zaitsev in Helmand.

According to his reports with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, a sniper has been plinking at Marines and Brits this month near Sangin, killing one Marine and one Brit and wounding another Marine. Two other Marines were hit and survived.

Somewhere in this dusty town, concealed among the cornfields, irrigation canals and mud-walled compounds, is a man the Marines particularly want to kill.

They don’t know what he looks like. But they know he is a very good shot with a long rifle, and, every day he remains alive, he is drawing Marine blood.

In the seven days since the men of Lima Company, Third Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment arrived in town, the Sangin sniper has persecuted them with methodical, well-aimed shots, fired one at a time.

And this guy seems pretty skilled. He killed two people on the same day with incredibly precise shooting…

A British army engineer—20-year-old Darren Foster from Carlisle, England—was in a guard post in front of the same patrol base. British troops have built a covered, bunkered pathway so the guards aren’t exposed to enemy fire as they walk down from the hilltop base. The post is protected by bulletproof glass, except for small gaps through which the guards fire their weapons. The sniper timed his single shot and killed the engineer as he walked past the opening.

So the Marine snipers went hunting. According to Phillips the Leatherneck sharpshooters don’t call their Taliban oponent a “sniper” – just a “marksman.” But it got me to wondering how counter-sniper operations have been adapted for Afghanistan where the sharpshooters are arguably more experienced and better trained than their Iraqi counterparts and use different types of cover under tighter ROE restrictions.

Just an FYI on this same subject, I’ll be heading on vacation for two weeks starting Monday and on that trip I’ll be reading my good friend and former colleague from Army Times Gina Cavallaro’s new book “Sniper: American Single-Shot Warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan” while I’m soaking up some rays and slinging flies at hungry trout. I’ll let you know how it read when I get back.

Read more: http://kitup.military.com/#ixzz0x6FeRbzl

buglerbilly

20-08-10, 02:07 AM

Taliban Intensify Assassination Program

August 19, 2010

Long War Journal|by Bill Roggio

The Taliban have intensified their assassination program in southern Afghanistan, killing two senior government officials in Kandahar and Zabul provinces.

Two days ago, a Taliban suicide bomber killed the chief of police for the district on Daman in Kandahar province. Three policemen and a civilian were also killed in the Aug.17 attack, which targeted the police chief as he drove toward Kandahar city. The suicide attack in Daman took place just two days after a combined Coalition and Afghan special operations force captured "a key Taliban weapons distributor" along with an undisclosed number of fighters in the district.

In the neighboring district of Dand, the Taliban killed six policemen by poisoning their food. The soldiers died from their meal after breaking the Ramadan fast. The cook who poisoned the food fled and rejoined the Taliban.

In Zabul province, the Taliban killed the provincial Border and Tribal Affairs chief and his wife and wounded his sister in an attack on his home. Zabul is a known haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda. On Aug. 11, Afghan and Coalition forces detained more than 20 suspected "insurgents" in Zabul while targeting an al Qaeda foreign fighter facilitator operating in the district of Shamulzai.

© Copyright 2010 Long War Journal. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

20-08-10, 02:09 AM

Helicopters Equipped With Acoustic Shot Detection Bound for Afghanistan

While missiles and RPGs have downed more helicopters in both Iraq and Afghanistan, insurgents shouldering the venerable AK-47 are a far more frequently encountered threat to helicopters in Afghanistan than shoulder fired missiles.

Army and Marine helicopters have been equipped with electronic detection and countermeasures to protect against shoulder fired and larger missiles for years. Yet, there are no systems to tell pilots when they’re coming under small arms fire. That’s about to change.

The military is sending four UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters to Afghanistan, each of which is rigged with 18 acoustical sensors able to detect the supersonic shock wave of a bullet in flight and then triangulate and pinpoint the gunmen. The program, known as Helicopter Alert and Threat Termination (HALTT) system, under development by DARPA, will see its first operational testing come October, Zachary Lemnios, director of Defense Research & Engineering, told reporters today.

HALTT borrows technology from the Boomerang acoustic gunshot detection system developed for ground vehicles. The helicopter equivalent is intended to warn pilots of where the shooter is located, in under a second, so they can either take evasive action or engage.

According to data compiled by a congressionally mandated study (see article pg. 9) on helicopter survivability, a total of 70 U.S. helicopters have been downed by hostile fire in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 through 2009. The report found that 375 helicopters in total have been lost; 305 of those classified as non-hostile and non-combat events. The study found that insurgents most often visually acquired their targets as 75 percent of helicopters were downed during daylight hours; the report does not say whether infra-red tracking missiles accounted for any night-time losses.

Small arms fire, including machine guns, have accounted for 31 percent of helicopter losses in Iraq and Afghanistan; the majority of losses came from enemy RPGs and MANPADS. The low loss rate to small arms fire actually represents a huge improvement over Vietnam, where some 2,000 helicopters were downed by enemy fire; 94 percent of those losses coming from small arms.

The study concluded that better tactics, flying at night with the aid of night visions and hardier aircraft design in today’s wars account for the dramatic difference. In the early Vietnam years, single engine designs, lack of night vision goggles, lack of critical system redundancy and non-crashworthy fuel systems resulted in high losses.

The study says there were no reported losses in Iraq or Afghanistan to radar-guided weapons.

– Greg Grant

Read more: http://defensetech.org/2010/08/19/helicopters-equipped-with-acoustic-shot-detection-bound-for-afghanistan/#more-8742#ixzz0x6GsACcV
Defense.org

buglerbilly

20-08-10, 03:07 AM

More on this so-called Sniper........starting to be an Urban Myth this one........600 meters is the normal effective range of the SVD is it not?

Taliban hire sniper to hit troops at 600yds: British soldier shot dead through 9in gap in glass shield

By Ian Drury

Last updated at 1:01 AM on 20th August 2010

The Taliban have hired a mercenary sniper to kill British soldiers, it was disclosed last night. The marksman has been blamed for the latest British casualty in Afghanistan.

He is said to have picked off Sapper Darren Foster from a distance of up to 600 metres through a gap in a protected lookout post just nine inches wide.

It is thought the Taliban have hired the sniper to target the Nato forces’ most highly specialised soldiers, including bombdisposal expert and their own snipers.

SAS troops have been deployed to take out the gunman, who is operating in the insurgent hotbed of Sangin in northern Helmand Province.

U.S. marines highlighted the sniper threat after they moved into the town - considered the deadliest place in Afghanistan - to relieve UK forces.

In the seven days since they arrived in the town he has killed two men and wounded another.

The other man to die was a U.S. marine who was gunned down while throwing away a bag of rubbish less than 100 yards from a fortified patrol base near the town.

Sapper Foster, 20, from Whitehaven, Cumbria, was killed while supporting the 40 Commando Royal Marines battle group.

He had been manning a lookout post outside a patrol base when he was shot shortly before 7am last Friday, the Ministry of Defence said.

Reports in the Wall Street Journal said that the post was protected by bulletproof glass except for small gaps which allow soldiers to fire their weapons.

Sapper Foster’s family said: ‘He was a loving son, grandson and brother who will be sorely missed for his crazy flamboyant lifestyle. His only aim was to serve in the Army, for which he made us all proud.' Lieutenant Colonel Bobby Walton- Knight, his commanding officer, described him as a 'young soldier with a great deal of promise' who was marked out by his ' motivation, professionalism and pride'.

The Ministry of Defence last night questioned the American claims, saying they still need to verify whether snipers had been employed by the Taliban.

UK military spokesman Major General Gordon Messenger said: ‘I view a sniper as someone who has an extremely high level of training, has specialist equipment and deals in significant distances at significant accuracy.

‘I don’t think there’s any evidence that we’re seeing anything like that.

‘We are definitely seeing the tactic whereby the single shot rather than the “spray and pray” type of thing is the initial point of engagement.’

Intelligence sources have told the Mail that at least three foreign snipers in Afghanistan, trained by either Iran or Al Qaeda in Pakistan, are being paid tens of thousands of pounds to help the insurgents.

Earlier this year, a senior UK Army source warned that a Taliban sniper had killed seven soldiers of the 3rd Battalion Rifles.

Details of the sniper attacks emerged as the bodies of Sapper Foster, who served with 21 Engineer Regiment, and Sapper Ishwor Gurung, 21, of the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers, were repatriated.

Sapper Gurung, whose body was brought home through Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, with his comrade, was shot dead helping to build a new sentry post in Nad-e Ali in Helmand.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1304596/Taliban-hire-sniper-hit-troops-600yds-British-soldier-shot-dead-9in-gap-glass-shield.html#ixzz0x6Uc2OhX

buglerbilly

20-08-10, 07:13 AM

Pakistan rebels find friends on Facebook, Twitter

Hasan Mansoor

August 20, 2010 - 2:05PM

Gee this is a surprise..........NOT! What did anyone expect, of course they are going to use such sites.........

Hardline groups in Pakistan are plugging into Western online favourites Facebook and Twitter in a bid to win friends and influence people.

Tweeting their view of a civilisation clash between the West and Islam, and posting comments that advocate violence against non-Muslims, groups that are officially banned in Pakistan have found a welter of freedom online.

There they have been allowed to operate without censorship from Pakistani authorities, who have instead restricted access to hundreds of Internet pages for "anti-Islamic content".

Amir Rana, an author and expert on the Taliban and militancy in Pakistan, said that extremists had found an easy outlet in social media.

"Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook give banned groups and other extremist groups a good forum for carrying forward their agenda. They are effective tools."

Groups with Facebook pages include Sipah Sahaba, a banned militant Sunni Islamic organisation accused of sectarian bombings, and Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is on the UN terror blacklist and linked by India to the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Pakistan has battled with Islamist militancy for decades but in recent times the number of violent incidents linked to extremist groups has risen sharply, with bombs killing more than 3,570 people across Pakistan in three years.

The authorities have been accused of double-dealing in their relations with hardline religious groups by speaking out against them while courting their followers for politically expedient reasons.

Facebook sparked a major backlash in the conservative country last May over a contest organised by an anonymous user calling on people to draw the Prophet Mohammed to promote "freedom of expression".

In the wake of the "Everyone Draw Mohammed Day" controversy, Pakistan blocked Facebook along with some 1,200 individual web pages and URLs to limit access to "blasphemous" material.

Islam strictly prohibits the depiction of any prophet as blasphemous.

Pakistan's information technology ministry said, however, that the aim was not to censor, but to keep the peace.

"If someone reports objectionable content on any website we will look into the matter," one official told AFP, defending the block on Facebook in May because it "created a law and order situation."

Abdul Ghaffar, who runs a page for sectarian outfit Khatm-e-Nabuwwat, says Facebook, which is again accessible, is useful for reaching media-savvy followers.

"It gives us space to counter the malicious anti-Islam propaganda. Facebook and Twitter are effective tools to inform people and involve them in the collective tasks."

Several fan pages have also been set up in praise of jihadi organisations and militant leaders, including Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the cleric killed in the 2007 military crackdown on the notorious Red Mosque in the Pakistani capital.

One recent Twitter post by banned global Islamic group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, urges Muslims in Pakistan to stop supply trucks travelling to Afghanistan to deliver provisions to NATO coalition troops fighting Taliban insurgents.

"These means give us space to approach the people and inform them about our programme," said Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Naveed Butt.

"We target the elite and educated through bulk SMS and our pages on social networking sites are gaining popularity," he added, accusing Facebook of twice deleting a Hizb-ut-Tahir fan page.

Last month, Singapore said it had detained a 20-year-old army trainee who planned to fight with Islamist militants in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq after being influenced by online posts.

Muhammad Fadil bin Abdul Hamid, who was serving his mandatory two-year military service, was "deeply radicalised by the lectures of radical ideologues such as Anwar al-Awlaki and Sheikh Feiz Muhammad," the government said.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim who holds dual US-Yemen citizenship, is known as the "Bin Laden of the Internet," as he has a blog and Facebook page and posts his lectures on popular video-sharing website YouTube.

© 2010 AFP
This story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage, along with foreign currency and measurement units.

buglerbilly

20-08-10, 02:04 PM

Activists Rally Around Suspected Leaker

August 20, 2010

Associated Press

WHY am I not surprised that this disillusioned, malicious little turd should now become the "darling" of the left-wing nut-jobs...........the little ferker should be put away for Life for what he did...........

HAGERSTOWN, Md. -- The Army private suspected in one of the largest unauthorized disclosures of classified information in U.S. history has become a hero to many anti-war activists who have joined an international effort to free him.

At demonstrations this month in New York, Oklahoma City and Quantico, Va., where Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is being held, dozens of supporters have shouted that "Blowing the whistle on war crimes is not a crime."

The same slogan appears beside Manning's smiling face on buttons and posters offered by Courage to Resist, an Oakland, Calif.-based support group for U.S. troops who refuse to fight. The group has raised about $45,000 from nearly 750 people in 18 countries to help pay for a civilian defense lawyer for Manning, project director Jeff Paterson said.

"I think we have an imperative to support those people who've seen the horrors of battle and want to share that reality with the American people," Paterson said.

Manning, 22, a former intelligence analyst in Baghdad, faces possible court-martial on charges that he illegally downloaded classified material. If tried and convicted, he could be sentenced to 52 years in prison.

The material he allegedly leaked included a 2007 video of a laughing U.S. Apache helicopter crew gunning down 11 men who were later found to include a Reuters news photographer and his driver. The Pentagon concluded the troops acted appropriately.

The video was posted in April on WikiLeaks, a self-professed whistleblower website, and labeled "Collateral Murder."

The Pentagon suspects Manning is also the source of 77,000 classified Afghan war reports that WikiLeaks posted in July and 15,000 more such documents that WikiLeaks says it intends to publish in coming weeks. U.S. officials say the disclosures have endangered innocent people or confidential informants.

Manning, a Crescent, Okla., native who lived in Potomac, Md., before joining the Army, has been assigned military lawyers who declined to comment on the charges. He has not yet retained a civilian attorney.

He was arrested in May after telling an online confidant, who later turned him in to authorities, that he had sent classified information to WikiLeaks.

Some consider Manning's alleged actions treasonous. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., has said that if Manning is charged and convicted of leaking the Afghan war documents, he should be executed for aiding the enemy.

But JoAnna Pease, 27, a graduate student in women's studies from Venice, Calif., said watching the Apache helicopter video made her want more unvarnished facts about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Somebody needed to stand up and provide this information," she said. "Regardless of who it is, they're really more an American hero than any sort of criminal."

Pease and 28-year-old Laraine Reitman, a San Diego writer, are steering committee members of the Bradley Manning Support Network, launched by Mike Gogulski, a U.S. citizen living in Bratislava, Slovakia. Neither woman considered herself an anti-war activist before seeing the helicopter video; now they find themselves plotting strategy alongside seasoned demonstrators such as Paterson and Gerry Condon, a Vietnam-era war protester who heads the Seattle branch of Veterans for Peace.

Some of the causes Manning embraced haven't embraced him. He told his online confidant, former computer hacker Adrian Lamo, "I want people to see the truth ... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public," according to their chat logs.

But open-records advocates don't necessarily support Manning. Steven Aftergood, who heads a project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said WikiLeaks has been indiscriminate in releasing the Afghan war logs -- and that Manning, if he is the source, would bear some responsibility for that.

A U.S. crackdown on WikiLeaks could hurt freedom-of-information reform efforts, he said.

"Any tools that are used against WikiLeaks are likely to be used against other organizations and media outlets, and that would do long-term damage to freedom of the press," Aftergood said.

Manning expressed support on his Facebook page for gay rights including Repeal the Ban, which seeks to end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuals serving in the military.

But the American Veterans For Equal Rights, which also opposes "don't ask, don't tell," says Manning is a traitor.

"The guy is disturbed and it's not because he's gay," said Denny Meyer, the group's national spokesman. "If he were sentenced to death, I'd volunteer to pull the trigger."

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

20-08-10, 02:06 PM

Afghan Insurgent Deputy Commander Caught

August 20, 2010

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A deputy commander in an al-Qaida-linked insurgent group was apprehended in an overnight operation in eastern Afghanistan that claimed the life of a woman, NATO said Friday.

Separately, the coalition reported that three more international soldiers -- including one American -- had been killed in the south. Nationalities of two of the victims were not released. They died in a roadside bombing Friday and the American was killed Thursday, officials said.

The latest deaths brought to at least 18 the number of American troops killed so far this month and 31 for the entire multinational force.

NATO said the deputy commander, who was captured by a joint Afghan and coalition force in Khost province, ran weapons for the Haqqani network and reported directly to the group's senior leaders across the border in Pakistan. U.S. officials have described the Haqqani network as the most potent threat to American forces in Afghanistan.

When the troops arrived at the scene, they saw two men running from the targeted compound to another nearby. They fired after seeing someone point a weapon out of a window. Inside the room, they found one woman dead and another with a minor injury. An AK-47 was next to the female victim and a rifle and another AK-47 also were found in the building, NATO said.

"Afghan and coalition forces do not intentionally target women and we take these incidents very seriously," said U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres, a spokesman for the coalition. "We are taking a step-by-step approach in investigating what happened during this operation."

Troops at the scene treated the injured woman, who was later evacuated along with two male relatives to a coalition forces medical facility.

While questioning the men at the scene, the security force identified and detained the deputy commander along with several suspected insurgents. In the compound where the commander was captured, the security force found an AK-47, a rifle, seven grenades, six magazines and an ammunition belt.

Also in the south, an assistant police chief was killed by a roadside bomb on Thursday and three other policemen were injured when insurgents attacked a police post in the Dihrawud district of Uruzgan province, according to Gulab Khan, the deputy provincial police chief. Three civilians were killed in the same district Thursday by a bomb that was meant for another police official, district chief Khalfa Sadat said.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

20-08-10, 02:10 PM

War Doesn’t Break for Islam’s Holy Month

August 20, 2010

Associated Press

FORWARD OPERATING BASE WILSON, Afghanistan -- "May you have a blessed Ramadan," reads a poster greeting U.S. troops outside a base mess tent. It refers to Islam's holiest month, a time of good deeds, prayer and purification of the spirit through sunrise-to-sunset fasting.

But on the western approaches to the strategic city of Kandahar, neither side is taking a spiritual time-out from the war.

Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division are attempting to root out Taliban fighters still entrenched in about a fifth of the Arghandab Valley.

The division's 502nd Infantry Regiment, preparing for a major assault in Taliban-controlled Zhari district, stages probes into villages and grape fields sown with booby traps and hidden bombs, which the military calls improvised explosive devices or IEDs. Along Highway 1, a lifeline connecting Kandahar to the capital, Kabul, the insurgents are launching daily attacks against supply convoys.

"Ramadan? Every time you step outside the wire, the war is real. We're surrounded," says Lt. Douglas Meyer, commanding a platoon at Ghundy Gar, a desolate, sun-seared hilltop outpost ringed by Zhari's deceptively bucolic landscape.

According to Islamic tradition, the gates of hell are closed and those who die stand a greater chance of entering heaven during Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar year when Muslims believe the holy book Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.

Radical Islamists believe that martyrdom during this time is a guaranteed ticket to paradise. They regard violence as a way of ridding the world of impurities, which include American troops in Afghanistan and other infidels.

Beginning with Muhammad's conquest of Mecca in 624, Ramadan has often witnessed bloodshed. Egypt and Syria began their 1973 war with Israel during the holy month, and violence in Iraq spiked almost every year since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Washington's decision not to interrupt its 2001 bombing in Afghanistan sparked harsh criticism among the world's 1 billion Muslims.

So far, and unlike some Ramadans past, the general level of violence has not escalated significantly since the month began Aug. 11, although military operations haven't slowed down either.

U.S. and other international deaths appear to have dropped this month from record levels in June -- when 60 Americans died -- and July, when 66 were killed. More than halfway through August, the U.S.-led command has reported 17 American deaths and 28 for the entire international force. At least seven Americans have been killed since Ramadan began.

Clearly, however, the month of fasting has an effect on the way Afghans fight -- be they Taliban or Afghan security forces.

"The jihadists tend to get more excited during Ramadan, but they're fasting so the sugar levels start to decline by noon. Most of the fighting is done in the morning," says Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the British commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan.

Patterns of fighting seem to change too.

"It's inconsistent. We've seen a surge one day and then they take one or two days off. Some of the Taliban leaders may have gone to Pakistan for Ramadan," says Lt. Col. Peter N. Benchoff, who commands the 2nd Battalion of the 502nd in Zhari. "But we have to watch `The Night of Power,' when they believe they have the best chance of getting straight to heaven."

That night, which falls during the last 10 days of Ramadan, commemorates the moments in a mountain cave when Allah's words first came down to Muhammad.

Benchoff says Ramadan does create problems as U.S. forces pursue one of their most urgent priorities -- training the Afghan National Army to a level where it could cope with the insurgency when the Americans begin withdrawing next summer. The Afghan soldiers can't eat or drink during daylight hours, when U.S. Soldiers must down bottle after bottle of water to counter the withering heat. As a result, the Americans must scale down the previously intense pace of training and reduce joint patrols.

"The Ramadan schedule is kicking us in the butt, but it's also significant for the motivation and morale of the Afghan soldiers," says Benchoff, who nightly joins his Afghan counterpart as he breaks fast with a meal of goat and rice. U.S. troops are told to minimize eating and drinking in front of the Afghans, who in turn have offered them instructions on Ramadan's meaning and practices.

Around the bases and remote combat outposts of Zhari, the Taliban appear to be following the same daily pattern as Afghan government troops -- dawn prayers, perhaps a morning attack and then rest during what are normally the most violent hours, between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.

"It's like squirrels gathering up nuts for the winter," says Meyer, of Baltimore, Md., looking out across a neat patchwork of green fields and grazing sheep from his hilltop post. "They've put the IEDs out there, and just sit back and wait."

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

20-08-10, 02:29 PM

German Military Drops Case Against Kunduz Airstrike Colonel

(Source: Deutsche Welle German radio; issued Aug. 19, 2010)

The German military is dropping all charges against a colonel who ordered an air raid that killed dozens of Afghan civilians. Investigators found no evidence that Klein had broken any rules.

No charges will be brought by the German military against the German colonel who ordered an airstrike that dozens of civilians in Afghanistan.

A preliminary investigation uncovered no evidence that a breach of discipline had taken place, the Defense Ministry in Berlin said Thursday, and the case was closed.

Colonel Georg Klein ordered NATO aircraft in to carry out the raid on two fuel trucks on September 4 last year, after the vehicles were hijacked by Taliban insurgents. He believed the insurgents posed a threat to his men.

The army investigation looked into whether Klein had violated any rules laid down by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF).

Klein could not have known about civilians

In April, German state prosecutors dropped proceedings against Klein, finding that neither he nor any of the other officers present were in a position to know that civilians were present at the time.

An initial report by ISAF said the attack killed or injured up to 142 people, including a large number of civilians. Earlier this month, Germany agreed to pay $5,000 (3,800 euros) to each family of over 90 people killed in the attack.

The incident led to a political storm in Germany, claiming the jobs of the former minister of defense, Franz Josef Jung, and Germany's top military officer, Wolfgang Schneiderhan.

-ends-

buglerbilly

21-08-10, 02:13 AM

US Targets Taliban-Allied Salafists

August 20, 2010

Long War Journal|by Bill Roggio

Afghan and Coalition forces killed three members of a little-known Salafist terror group during a raid in Afghanistan's northeastern province of Kunar yesterday.

The three members of the Taliban subgroup Jamaat ul Dawa al Quran were killed as the combined Afghan and Coalition force targeted "commanders responsible for planning and conducting attacks and propaganda campaigns in Kunar province," the International Security Assistance Force stated in a press release. ISAF confirmed that one of the commanders targeted, Sayed Shah, was killed in the attack. The raid took place in the village of Shamun in the district of Pech.

The Jamaat ul Dawa al Quran (JDQ) commanders are "directly linked to two rocket-propelled grenade attacks that killed two US service members and wounded several more, in addition to several other RPG and small arms fire attacks against Afghan and Coalition forces," ISAF stated.

ISAF denied that the JDQ was related to the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the front group for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, which conducts operations in Afghanistan, including in Kunar, Nuristan, and Nangarhar provinces. ISAF and Afghan forces targeted Lashkar-e-Taiba facilitators during raids in Nangarhar province in July.

"While they are both Ahl al Hadith Salafist groups ... they are not in any way the [Pakistan-based] Jamaat-ud-Dawa (LeT)," an ISAF spokesman told The Long War Journal. But JDQ may cooperate with Jamaat-ud-Dawa/Lashkar-e-Taiba inside Afghanistan.

"However, the groups may rely on each other to facilitate their movement and conduct attacks while operating in Afghanistan, namely in Kunar province," the ISAF spokesman told The Long War Journal.

JDQ also goes by the names Jamaat al Dawa ila al Sunnah, Jamaat ud Dawa il al Quran al Sunnah, and the Salafi Group. ISAF stated that "the group operates alongside the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan."

But JDQ is actually an official part of the Taliban. JDQ officially joined the Taliban in January 2010 and swore allegiance to Mullah Omar, the emir of the Taliban's shadow Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. On Jan. 9, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid released an official statement formally announcing JDQ's merger with the Taliban and named the group's leadership.

"The movement, Jamaat al Dawa ila al Sunnah of Afghanistan which has regularly carried out Jihad in the name of Salafi Taliban in Kunar province, has now allied itself with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," Mujahid said in a statement published on the Taliban's official website, Voice of Jihad.

"The Council, consisting of the Deputy leader of this group, honorable Haji Hayaatullah and other senior members of the council, known as respected Sheikh Shawali, respected Maulawi Rahmatullah Khan, respected Maulawi Kalajan Jan, respected Maulawi Inayatu Rahman and others, have officially proclaimed allegiance to his highness Amir-ul-Momineen [the leader of the faithful, Mullah Mohammed Omar]," the statement continued. "They declared cooperation and coordination with Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, vowing that all the Mujahideen of Kunar province will act in compliance with the Code of Conduct of the Islamic Emirate and follow its course of actions and that the Mujahideen of Kunar will carry out Jihad as per instructions of the Leadership of the Islamic Emirate in the same way as the other Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan."

Three members of the JDQ have been detained by the US at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba. Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, a "poet" and journalist who worked for pro-Taliban papers, was sent to Pakistan in 2005. In 2008, the Pakistani government freed Dost and handed him over to the Taliban as part of a deal to free Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan. Sahib Rohullah Wakil was a senior member of JDQ who had close connections to the Pakistani government and helped al Qaeda flee to Pakistan after the US invasion in late 2001. Sabar Lal Melma was a general in the Taliban's army and helped al Qaeda fighters flee the battle of Tora Bora and cross the border into Pakistan. Wakil and Melma were repatriated to Afghanistan and are in detention at the Pul-e-Charkhi prison outside of Kabul.

Kunar province is a known haven for al Qaeda and allied terror groups. The presence of al Qaeda cells has been detected in the districts of Pech, Shaikal Shate, Sarkani, Dangam, Asmar, and Asadabad; or six of Kunar's 12 districts, according to an investigation by The Long War Journal.

Al Qaeda's extensive reach in Afghanistan is documented in the body of press releases issued in recent years by the International Security Assistance Force. Looking at press releases dating back to March 2007, The Long War Journal has been able to detect the presence of al Qaeda and affiliated groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in 48 different districts in 17 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

© Copyright 2010 Long War Journal. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

21-08-10, 02:15 AM

Karzai: Anti-Corruption Units Will be Independent

August 20, 2010

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - After "tough" talks with U.S. Sen. John Kerry, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Friday he would make sure that two Western-backed anti-corruption units could pursue investigations free of outside interference or political meddling.

In meetings on Tueday and Friday, Kerry told Karzai that his efforts to battle corruption were crucial if he wanted to retain the support of U.S. taxpayers at a time when more American troops are dying in the war. U.S. lawmakers are expressing doubt that the military effort can succeed without a serious campaign against bribery and graft that have eroded the Afghan people's trust in their government.

Kerry, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters his meetings with the Afghan leader were marked by candor and sometimes "very tough conversation."

His visit follows the recent arrest of one of Karzai's top advisers, Mohammad Zia Salehi, for allegedly accepting a car in exchange for his help in exerting pressure on Afghan officials to ease off in another corruption case. U.S. officials see Salehi's arrest as a test case of Karzai's willingness to fight corruption.

Soon after Salehi's arrest, Karzai sought more oversight of the work done by the Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigative Unit. The two units, which are mentored by U.S. and British law enforcement officials, conduct corruption probes of high-level Afghan government officials and then feed cases to Afghan prosecutors.

After hearing from a panel he asked to review the work of the two units, Karzai released a statement early this month saying that all cases under investigation or completed should be reviewed by the panel and reported to the president. That sparked concern that Karzai was attempting to derail corruption probes of top officials in his government.

U.S. officials have been anxiously waiting since then to see if Karzai would rein in the anti-corruption investigators. While the Karzai government does intend to do more work to strengthen the statutory basis for the units' work, the president said in a statement that he and Kerry agreed that they "would always operate as independent sovereign Afghan entities, run by Afghans, allowed to pursue their mission of enhancing transparency and combating corruption free from foreign interference or political influence."

Kerry also said the two agreed on bolstering the legal foundation for the two units.

"This means ensuring that they always operate as independent entities, led by Afghans welcoming expert support and can fully pursue their mission of enhancing transparency and combating corruption," Kerry said. "The president and I agreed that the work of these entities must be allowed to continue free from outside interference or political influence, including with respect to ongoing cases."

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

21-08-10, 04:30 AM

Two Aussie soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Nadia Jamal

August 21, 2010 - 12:22PM

Two Australian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan after a device exploded near their vehicle while they were on patrol.

The families of the dead soldiers have been informed.

The soldiers are Private Grant Kirby, a 35-year-old father of two. He was on his first deployment to Afghanistan but had previously served in Iraq and East Timor. The second soldier killed was Private Thomas Dale, 21, who was on his first deployment to Afghanistan.

Both soldiers were on patrol and providing "over-watch" outside their Bushmaster vehicle when the explosive device was activated in the Baluchi Valley.

They were from the Brisbane-based 6th battalion Royal Australian Regiment and serving in the first mentoring taskforce.

Two other soldiers were wounded in the action, and have been evacuated to a hospital in Tarin Kowt. Their wounds are not believed to be life threatening.

The deaths come a week after 29-year-old SAS Trooper Jason Brown was killed in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said today that Australia had lost two very brave men.

She said Australian soldiers were involved in a "dangerous" mission and that Afghanistan was a safe haven for terrorists.

‘‘And there are families in this nation today that have lost two men they love very much," Ms Gillard said.

"As prime minister, on behalf of the nation, I express my condolences to the families of Thomas Dale and Grant Kirby.

‘‘They have received the worst news families could get.’’

Ms Gillard said Australian soldiers were involved in a "dangerous" mission and that Afghanistan was a safe haven for terrorists.

Australian troops would need to remain in Afghanistan for another two to four years.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has offered his condolences to the families of the soldiers.

‘‘Australia has lost two fine soldiers,’’ he said.

‘‘It’s a very tough fight, but it’s an important mission. It’s important that Australia sees that mission through.’’

The Acting Chief of Defence Force, Lieutenant General David Hurley, said the soldiers died at 10.30am Afghan time on Friday. It was not known what caused the device to explode, he said.

Lieutenant General Hurley said the attack had taken the soldiers "by surprise".

Defence Minister John Faulkner, speaking in Canberra, said the incident occurred yesterday when the "two fine" soldiers were lost. They are the 19th and 20th Australian soldiers to die in Afghanistan.

Senator Faulkner described improvised explosive devices as "awful weapons that kill indiscriminantly soliders and civilians alike".

The weapons and tactics of the Taliban insurgency are vicious and insidious, said Senator Faulkner.

He said his thoughts and sympathies were with the family and friends of the dead soldiers "at this terrible time".

Senator Faulkner said the work of Australian soldiers was vital for Australia's security, adding that he was "happy" with progress in training the Afghan army.

This year, nine Australians have died in Afghanistan.

The latest deaths come as as Australians head to the polls for the federal election.

Greens leader Bob Brown said the deaths had cast a pall over the election.

‘‘It’s a terrible pall over our election day here in Australia,’’ he said in Hobart.

‘‘I hope that by the next election day, our troops will be safely home in this country.’’

Senator Brown said the Australian parliament should have a debate about the continuing presence of soldiers in Afghanistan.

- with Tim Lester and AAP

buglerbilly

21-08-10, 04:34 AM

Afghan Mi-35's Begins Operations with NATO forces

Friday, 20 August 2010 17:14 1262

Petty Officer Second Class David Quillen, USN
NTM-A

The Mi-35 Hind E attack helicopter is the Afghan Air Force’s main gunship whose Afghan aircrews have been expertly trained by NATO forces from various countries including Hungary and the Czech Republic. The adage – crawl, walk, run – is a useful and universal way to describe military training and the Afghan Mi-35 crews are thoroughly in the walking phase as they build their capabilities and confidence to begin taking control of their skies. U.S. Army Apache helicopter personnel from the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade have begun to assist in combat operations with the Afghan aircrews in order to flesh out the Mi-35’s capabilities.

“The reason we are working together is to combine the capabilities of the Mi-35 with the capabilities of the Apache. We have trained together in the past, and it was time to start operating together” explains Maj. Caleb Nimmo, 438th Air Expeditionary Advisory Squadron, Combined Air Power Transition Force.

Nimmo, of the U.S. Air force, is the only American pilot trained to fly the Mi-35 and has been advising the Afghan Air Force since April.

On Aug. 18 the Afghan Mi-35 aircrews were able to put their training to good use during what would have been an armed patrol in the region of Ghazni, where 3rd CAB has engaged the enemy multiple times in the last month and is considered a hotbed for Improvised explosive device emplacements. The plan was to begin denying the region as a safe-haven for insurgents in the south.

En route to Ghazni Apaches from 3rd CAB received an urgent call that a convoy was being attacked along their designated route and so the combined patrol air unit re-directed the efforts in the hopes of directly engaging the enemy. Arriving on station the Apaches from 3rd CAB took the lead as directed from the pre mission brief, but the Afghan Mi-35’s helped add to the overwhelming and intimidating airpower, causing the insurgents to cease their attack and withdraw from the immediate area without the patrol firing a single shot. This would be a blessing as the area was full of civilians.

“We did not shoot any ordnance. There were too many civilians nearby and the collateral damage would have been too great” said Nimmo.

This was the first operational mission between the two squadrons and as such there will be some learning points added to the standard operating procedures, but overall the feeling after the mission was positive. Both sides recognized that they worked well together and actually complement each other in their respective aircraft's capabilities and individual pilot's skill sets. Currently the squadrons plan to fly together once a week until the end of Ramadan and then they will increase their activity in order to increase the pressure on the insurgency.

Nimmo is quick to point out that 3rd CAB has embraced the Afghan Air Force and the inclusion of the Afghan squadrons into their operations.

“They [3rd CAB] understand the importance of working with the Afghans to gain the support of the relevant Afghan population to counter the insurgency in Afghanistan. Hopefully other agencies in the International Security Assistance Force will proactively begin to include Afghans in their operations, so we can ultimately turn the country back over to the Afghan government”.

100729-N-6031Q-006 KABUL, Afghanistan - An Mi-35 Hind E attack helicopter in flight. (US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class David Quillen).

buglerbilly

21-08-10, 04:46 AM

30 Afghan security guards killed in Taliban clash

At least 30 security guards were killed and another 15 wounded in a clash with Taliban fighters, according to Afghan police.

Published: 7:06PM BST 20 Aug 2010

The number of American troops killed this month in Afghanistan is at least 18 Photo: REUTERS

The clashes took place in Helmand’s volatile Sangin district on Thursday when heavy gun battles broke out between insurgents and guards working for a road construction company, according to Helmand’s deupty police chief. The construction company is building a new road from Lashkar Gar to Sangin.

Following the clash, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan military kills 26 Taliban fighters in Swat ValleyHelmand, along with neighbouring Kandahar, is one of the most unstable regions of Afghanistan, where Taliban-linked insurgents have been fighting the Kabul government for almost nine years.

Abdul Mohammad, an employee of the road construction company, described the fighting as “fierce”

Nato also reported that three more international soldiers, including one American, had been killed in the south. The number of American troops killed this month in Afghanistan is at least 18, with 31 for the entire multinational force.

buglerbilly

23-08-10, 03:08 AM

Karzai defends disbanding security firms

August 23, 2010 - 10:54AM

President Hamid Karzai defended his decision to disband private security firms, saying they were undermining Afghanistan's police and army and contributing to corruption.

Karzai ordered Afghan and international security companies early last week to disband by the end of the year, despite US concerns the short deadline may endanger American development projects that private guards protect.

NATO uses private security to guard supply convoys bringing food, water, ammunition and other supplies to military bases throughout the country. Critics have said Afghanistan's own security forces are not ready to assume the burden.

But Karzai told ABC News' This Week with Christiane Amanpour the companies undermine the government's effort to recruit more police and soldiers because it can't compete with the private firms in salaries. He also repeated allegations that many companies are contributing to corruption by shaking down transport firms for money, some of which goes to warlords and the Taliban for protection.

Even before Karzai's order last week, US congressional investigators had been looking into allegations that Afghan security firms were extorting as much as $US4 million ($A4.51 million) a week from contractors paid with US tax dollars and then funnelling the money to warlords and the Taliban to avoid attacks against convoys. Allegations of widespread corruption have also been levied at the Afghan police.

"I am appealing to the US taxpayer not allow their hard-earned money to be wasted on groups that are not only providing lots of inconveniences to the Afghan people, but actually are, God knows, in contact with Mafia-like groups and perhaps also funding militants and insurgents and terrorists through those firms," Karzai said.

The Afghan Interior Ministry has licensed 52 security firms, but some older contracts are still being completed by unlicensed firms, according to the US military. About half of the companies are Afghan-owned.

About 37 companies are working with the US government, totalling about 26,000 armed security contractors. The majority of those work for the military, though some are employed by the State Department and the US Agency for International Development, according to the military.

Karzai said security companies were "running a parallel security structure to the Afghan government" as well as harassing Afghan civilians.

"They are wasting billions of dollars of resources and they are definitely an obstruction, an impediment in a most serious matter to the growth of Afghanistan's security institutions, the police and the army," he said.

During the interview, Karzai also he was willing to talk peace with Taliban figures who break with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups - a key US condition - and accept the Afghan constitution. He said there had already been "individual contacts with some Taliban elements" but not formal negotiations.

The president acknowledged fears among Afghan women's groups and ethnic minorities that their political, economic and social gains might be eroded under a future peace agreement with the Taliban, which banned women from most jobs and education during their years in power.

Those concerns were heightened last week when Taliban militants in northern Afghanistan stoned a young couple to death for adultery in the first confirmed use of the punishment here since the hard-line Islamist regime was ousted in the US-led invasion of 2001.

Karzai said he was in "deep, deep shock" over the stoning and would ensure that women's representation in peace talks would be "solid and meaningful."

He said the Afghan people must make sure the gains made by women "in political, social and economic walks of life" since the fall of the Taliban were not only protected "but are promoted and advanced further".

© 2010 AP

buglerbilly

23-08-10, 03:41 AM

Facing Afghan mistrust, Al-Qaeda fighters take limited role in insurgency

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, August 23, 2010

On Aug. 14, a U.S. airstrike in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz killed a Taliban commander known as Abu Baqir. In a country where insurgents are killed daily, this attack was notable for one unusual detail:

Abu Baqir, the military said afterward, was also a member of al-Qaeda.

Although U.S. officials have often said that al-Qaeda is a marginal player on the Afghan battlefield, an analysis of 76,000 classified U.S. military reports posted by the Web site WikiLeaks underscores the extent to which Osama bin Laden and his network have become an afterthought in the war.

The reports, which cover the escalation of the insurgency between 2004 and the end of 2009, mention al-Qaeda only a few dozen times and even then just in passing. Most are vague references to people with unspecified al-Qaeda contacts or sympathies, or as shorthand for an amorphous ideological enemy.

Bin Laden, thought to be hiding across the border in Pakistan, is scarcely mentioned in the reports. One recounts how his picture was found on the walls of a couple of houses near Khost, in eastern Afghanistan, in 2004.

A year later, U.S. forces also saw his likeness on a jihadist propaganda poster near the Pakistan border. In 2007, a district subgovernor in Nangarhar province informed U.S. officials that a local newspaper would print "names of personnel working for bin Laden."

Other al-Qaeda leaders are similarly invisible figures. One report describes a botched June 2007 attempt to capture or kill Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda military commander. U.S. Special Forces missed their target, instead accidentally killing seven children in a religious school in Paktika province.

There are also fleeting references to Abu Ikhlas al-Misri, the nom de guerre of an Egyptian who serves as an al-Qaeda commander in Kunar province. In 2008, an Afghan district official confirmed to U.S. officers that he had heard a rumor that Abu Ikhlas was suffering from a "sprained ankle." But otherwise, at least in the WikiLeaks reports, the Egyptian remains in the shadows.

Change in strategy

In June, CIA Director Leon Panetta estimated that, "at most," only 50 to 100 al-Qaeda operatives were present in Afghanistan. His assessment echoed those given by other senior U.S. officials. In October, national security adviser James L. Jones said the U.S. government's "maximum estimate" was that al-Qaeda had fewer than 100 members in Afghanistan, with no bases and "no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."

Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, al-Qaeda's leadership and fighters have largely sought refuge across the border in Pakistan. There they have been targeted by U.S. drone attacks from the skies as they try to remain beyond the reach of U.S. forces.

The evasion marks a departure from al-Qaeda's approach in previous conflicts. Bin Laden and other jihadist leaders recruited thousands of Arabs and other foreign fighters to combat the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Al-Qaeda also persuaded hundreds, if not thousands, of followers to travel to Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion, where they played a significant role in fueling the insurgency and sectarian violence.

This time, U.S. military officials and analysts say, al-Qaeda has changed its strategy, mostly limiting its role in the Taliban-led insurgency to assisting with training, intelligence and propaganda. Although the terrorist network still considers the "liberation" of Afghanistan its primary strategic objective, it is biding its time until the infidels lose patience and leave.

"The numbers aren't large, but their ability to help local forces punch above their weight acts as a multiplier," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and Georgetown University professor. "They've learned from their previous experiences, when their foreign fighters were front and center."

In Iraq, he noted, al-Qaeda figures from elsewhere alienated the locals by trying to hijack that insurgency.

U.S. military officials say al-Qaeda recognizes the same risk in Afghanistan. Taliban leaders often see al-Qaeda, their erstwhile ally, as "a handicap," according to an unclassified briefing presented in December by Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, the top U.S. military intelligence officer in Afghanistan.

Although Taliban commanders want support from al-Qaeda and jihadists around the world, according to Flynn, they are sensitive to the idea that ordinary Afghans might view it as foreign interference.

That balancing act has resulted in a limited, if steady, flow of foreign fighters. Most are Uzbeks and Chechens who join networks affiliated with, but not formally part of, al-Qaeda, U.S. military officials said. Less common are Arabs and European Muslims who answer al-Qaeda's direct call to join the jihad in Afghanistan.

One indicator of the presence of foreign fighters can be found at the U.S. military's new Parwan prison at Bagram Air Base.

Vice Admiral Robert S. Harward, commander of U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan, said fewer than 50 of the 950 prisoners come from outside the country. Of those, about three-quarters are Pakistanis. He said fighters from outside Central Asia are rare: "This is a very local fight."

Concentrated in the east

A review of the leaked U.S. military reports suggests that Arab fighters -- those most likely to be affiliated with al-Qaeda -- generally confine their activities to a handful of Afghan provinces along the Pakistan border. When they cross the line, the Arabs usually do so in small numbers and as part of larger Taliban units.

In June 2007, for example, a U.S. Army brigade combat team reported that it had received information about a band of 60 Taliban insurgents, including six Arabs and two Iranians, massing on a mountaintop in Khost province. Also that month, in Paktika province, one Arab and two Pakistan fighters were killed after a larger Taliban group attacked a U.S. outpost in Bermal district.

In November 2009, a patrol of Afghan soldiers and police led by U.S. forces reported an early evening ambush in Kunar province. A small group of insurgents planted a roadside bomb and attacked the patrol with small-arms fire. The patrol did not suffer casualties in the firefight, but they killed one of the enemy and recovered his cellphone. The patrol's report highlighted how their interpreter turned on the phone and found that "everything was in Arabic."

Analysts said other evidence confirms that al-Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan is concentrated in the east, just across the border from where the network's leadership is based in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Between 2005 and 2009, al-Qaeda's online propaganda arm produced a series called "Pyre for the Americans in the Land of Khurasan." (Khurasan is an ancient term referring to Afghanistan and other territory in Central Asia.) Of the 90 videos in the series, which contained purported scenes of Afghan battles and ambushes, 56 were filmed in three eastern provinces -- Kunar, Paktika and Khost -- that border the Pakistani tribal areas, according to Anne Stenersen, a researcher on Islamic radicalism for the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment.

The database of 76,000 reports posted by WikiLeaks covers the period from January 2004 to December 2009. Although extensive in number, they consist mostly of low-level military field reports, many of them unconfirmable, and are not a complete account of U.S. efforts to combat al-Qaeda. For example, the reports do not shed light on longstanding efforts to track or kill al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan.

Some reports, however, provide secondary glimpses of the secretive campaign by U.S. Special Operations forces and the CIA to hunt insurgent leaders in Afghanistan. The records reveal the existence of one such unit, Task Force 373, which searches for targets on the U.S. military's "kill or capture" list, known as the Joint Prioritized Effects List, or JPEL.

Based on its numbering system, more than 2,000 targets have been added to the list, the reports suggest. There are many accounts of attempts to capture Taliban commanders on the list, but only one is clearly identified as a leader of al-Qaeda: Abu Laith al-Libi, who evaded the botched June 2007 raid in Paktika province.

The Libyan al-Qaeda military commander did meet his end in another U.S. operation seven months later -- in next-door Pakistan.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

23-08-10, 10:37 AM

Veterans 'to receive free public transport'

Veterans are set to receive free public transport, better schools for their children and the opportunity to retrain as teachers under plans being drawn up by ministers to restore the military covenant.

By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor

Published: 8:00AM BST 23 Aug 2010

Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, is currently drawing up a package of new perks and benefits for those who have left the armed forces over the past 20 years Photo: JULIAN SIMMONDS

I have an Ex Wife and a current Ladyfriend who are both Head Teachers and/or Senior Teachers and to be honest neither would recommend Teaching to anyone.............I understand the reasoning behind this suggestion but its both naive and dumb in the belief Ex Soldiers are even going to want to do this job................

Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, is currently drawing up a package of new perks and benefits for those who have left the armed forces over the past 20 years following criticism of their treatment.

It is understood that plans being considered by Mr Fox include five years free bus and train travel, subsidised loans to buy homes and grants for university education.

The new military covenant plan is expected to be unveiled by David Cameron in October alongside details of the strategic defence review.

Gordon Brown and Labour ministers were accused by senior military figures of breaking the military covenant by failing to provide adequate equipment, housing and other support for members of the armed forces.

More than a quarter of those who served in Iraq are believed to suffer mental health problems and many have problems readjusting to civilian life with relatively high levels of homelessness and unemployment.

The Conservatives campaigned in opposition to provide lifelong support to veterans and are now drawing up firm proposals as to how this can be achieved. Those leaving the armed forces will be given access to a new mental-health screening service.

Ministers believe that veterans can play important roles in schools and hope to encourage former soldiers to retrain as teachers. Others will be offered funding to return to education and train for other careers.

There is also expected to be additional help for the families of those still serving on the front line.

Although the Ministry of Defence is facing major cutbacks under the Government’s austerity drive, it is thought that the package of help for veterans will receive spending increases.

Up to 70,000 soldiers who served on the front line since 1990 will benefit from the package. However, in return for the extra assistance, ministers will ask that retiring soldiers stay longer on the Service Register – the list of personnel who can be recalled for service.

Since the election, the Coalition has already announced some extra help for families of the armed forces. Schools teaching the children of those in the army will receive extra funding. The offspring of those who have died in recent conflicts will also benefit from free university education.

buglerbilly

23-08-10, 04:04 PM

East Afghan Plan: Choke the ‘Rat Lines,’ Secure the Roads

By Spencer Ackerman August 23, 2010 | 7:27 am

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Make the main roads safe. Stop commuting to the fight. Choke the insurgent “rat lines” that supply attacks on Kabul. Shut down bases where they’re not needed. And get ready to hand off more places to Afghan control.

That’s the gist of the campaign plan for securing eastern Afghanistan, designed by Major General John Campbell (pictured, left). His 101st Airborne Division is largely responsible for keeping the region secure. Which means Campbell and his troops carry a lot on their shoulders. The so-called “rat lines” carrying insurgent fighters, weapons and cash from the tribal areas of Pakistan up to Kabul remain open. And the U.S.’ overall strategy for Afghanistan focuses on southern provinces like Helmand and Kandahar; Campbell and his men have to make due without as much help from HQ.

To some degree, that focus — a shift in course from the first eight years of the war, when the east was the central front — resulted from the Obama administration and the military embracing counterinsurgency as the war’s organizational template. Counterinsurgency theory urges commanders to swarm troops into dense population centers in order to win crucial local support. But rural, mountainous eastern Afghanistan doesn’t have so many population-dense areas. How to wage a counterinsurgency there?

Campbell thinks he has an answer. He’s got six brigades under his command, consisting of between 3000 and 5000 U.S., Polish and French troops each. (A seventh, the 4th Brigade of the 101st, is arriving soon.) His instructions are to focus on the district centers, the relatively dense areas where governance and commerce are supposed to occur. The goal is to make the district centers “secure enough so the folks doing the governance can get to work,” Campbell explains to Danger Room from his Bagram office. He calls it “District Center Reinforcement.”

District Center Reinforcement borrows a key concept from the Iraq surge of 2007: don’t try to “commute to the fight” from big base; set up right in the heart of the action. “We’re going to move into where the people are going to be,” Campbell says. That means setting up smaller bases in the district centers for U.S. and Afghan forces. “It’s like a JSS,” the general says, referring to the Joint Security Stations that General David Petraeus established in Baghdad’s most chaotic neighborhoods. Does that mean he’ll continue shutting down bases in more remote and depopulated areas, as his predecessor, Major General Peter Scaparotti did? “I think we have to,” he says, though he doesn’t exactly specify where.

But here’s a clue. Campbell’s area of responsibility, known as Regional Command East, has 40 of the 83 “key terrain districts” – Pentagon parlance for areas critical to the Afghanistan war. And several of those districts cluster around two critical roads: Highway Seven, running east from Kabul to the Torkham Gate, an entranceway to Pakistan and a critical route for both Afghan commerce and NATO’s supply chain; and Highway One, running south in RC-East to Kandahar. “I’m going to focus around the roads,” Campbell says.

The idea is to control and hold the roads, one district center at a time. Then expand security (and local government and development) outwards, something known as an “ink spot” approach. But it’s not just to protect the people. It’s to disrupt the insurgent “rat lines.” The insurgents, after all, use the roads, too, in order to get to their objective: Kabul. (You can see that for yourself in this visual representation of insurgent activity based on the WikiLeaks disclosures.)

“If they want to show the government is not capable of protecting the people, they’ll attack Kabul,” Campbell assesses. They use Highways 1 and 7, as well as a route through Khost, Paktia and Paktika provinces up through Logar, in order to prepare for attacks that so far haven’t materialized. For its part, security in Kabul is largely under the control of Afghans. A series of police checkpoints have sprouted in the city, known as the “Ring of Steel.” But except for the city’s frustratingly snarled traffic, there is freedom of movement through the capitol.

While Petraeus was relatively upbeat about security in Kabul during an interview with Danger Room last week, Campbell is more cautious. The insurgents — led in the east by the Haqqani network, “some Taliban, [and] a small piece of al-Qaeda” – “want to attack it,” he says.

Cambell’s “rat lines” picture is almost the exact same security assessment I heard in Khost two years ago, despite the endless pledges of progress from the military and the Obama administration since. “I don’t think that’s changed over the years,” Campbell concedes, although “some areas have done better than others.” In order to make additional progress, Campbell has the 4th Brigade of the 101st on the way. It’s going to take responsibility for Paktika away from Task Force Rakkasans, which will retain Khost and Paktia provinces. It’s an intuitive choice: 4-101 was in all three provinces in 2008, so it should know the area.

But neither Campbell nor Petraeus believes that NATO can actually close the insurgent logistical spigot. “We’ll disrupt those ratlines,” Campbell says. “We’re not going to shut them down totally.” Adds Petraeus: “I don’t think we shut down rat lines in Arizona. What you do is you reduce, you disrupt.”

Campbell has almost as many troops under his command than were in all of Afghanistan before 2009. But he doesn’t have a lot of time to show results. So he’s looking to get out of areas where he doesn’t think he can secure and transition to effective Afghan governance. Asked if that means pulling troops out of the violent province of Kunar — as a recent Stars & Stripes piece hinted might be on the table — he replies, “We’re looking at that right now.” The provincial capitol of Asadabad might still need U.S. protection. But small combat outposts in remote Kunar areas like Blessing and Michigan might be the next candidates for U.S. pullback.

Campbell explains that the question he’ll ask is “Can we get to the next step” — meaning prepare an area for a sustainable transition to Afghan security control under a capable and legitimate government. If not, he’ll pull out. By the same token, he’s looking to transition more stable provinces like Bamiyan, Parwan and Panjshir to the Afghans by July 2011.

It’s an ambitious agenda. A pamphlet that Campbell issued to Afghans explaining his strategy begins, “The Afghan people in [the east] believe that supporting their government” will improve their lives. But one of the last brigade commanders in the violent eastern provinces of Nangahar, Nuristan, Kunar and Laghman found that the locals hate the government more than they hate the insurgents. Campbell has ten more months to show results in the district centers and on the roads. It’s not clear that time is on his side.

Photo: CJTF-101

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/plan-for-eastern-afghanistan-choke-the-rat-lines-secure-the-roads/#more-29671#ixzz0xRCYp2uK

buglerbilly

23-08-10, 07:19 PM

Afghan Police: Literacy and Trust

By Colin Clark Monday, August 23rd, 2010 1:12 pm

Next to counter-terror operations, perhaps no mission is more crucial to Afghanistan than is building its national police force. NATO brought in U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Bill Caldwell to lead the crucial mission of training the police and the army and this week he’s doing his first round of interviews since taking command. One of his “biggest challenges” can be described simply: recruiting enough people and getting them to stay. Right now, Caldwell said some units have an attrition rate of about 47 percent. That sounds horrific, but for perspective that is down from about 70 percent. Overall, the police’s annual attrition rate is about 14 percent, he said.

Among the key elements Caldwell and his colleagues are deploying to keep the people they train are literacy training, the equivalent of combat and long service pay. But we hear from sources in Afghanistan that the biggest single issue for improving the effectiveness of the Afghan police is to ensure that locals actually trust them. That means turning them into people with guns whom locals believe will actually protect and serve them. And, while it is somewhat circular logic, that requires retaining people, ensuring they are educated enough to communicate effectively and training them in the basics of police work, as well as the more exciting elements of counterterrorism. As Caldwell put it during his televised press briefing this morning: “If we are going to proofessionalize the force, they must be able to read.”

Forging that force will not be a quick endeavor. When Caldwell was asked just when the Afghan police and army will be ready to start taking over from coalition forces, he said it would not be before October of next year.

Read more: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2010/08/23/afghan-police-literacy-and-trust/#ixzz0xRzKItNC

buglerbilly

23-08-10, 07:26 PM

More on Caldwell's comments from Wired.com..................

If Afghan Troops Can’t Read ‘Cat in the Hat,’ This War is Screwed

By Noah Shachtman August 23, 2010 | 10:53 am

I don't think Cat-in-the-Hat is high on Afghan reading lists...........:shrug

By next October, if everything goes right in Afghanistan — like, almost perfectly — just about every local cop and soldier there should be able to read like a first grader.

The American-led strategy in Afghanistan relies on training enough local forces to let the Afghans take over their own security. Right now, only 18% of those 243,000 cops and grunts have more than a Kindergarten-level ability to read. Which means they’ve got major trouble doing everything from keeping track of their gear to following a battle plan to getting paid, the general in charge of the NATO training effort says. In other words: if these local troops can’t learn their ABCs, this war is stuck.

“Unless we take on literacy, we truly will never professionalize this force,” Lt. Gen William Caldwell tells reporters. “We’re not talking about making them high school graduates. We’re talking about giving them anywhere from between a first grade-level education to about a third grade-level education. For many back in America, that’s really hard to comprehend. And I understand that. It was for me, too.”

It’s one of a host of problems Caldwell faces, as he tries to meet an October 2011 deadline of adding another 56,000 local security forces to the Afghan ranks — while shaping up the rest. Even if he can get cops and troops to read Cat in the Hat, he’s still has to worry about rampant corruption with the ranks, a culture that tolerates getting high on the job, and a king-sized attrition rate. Caldwell figures he’ll need 141,000 recruits to get those 56,000 infantrymen and police officers; that’s how many drop out.

In a conference call with bloggers, Caldwell (pictured above, right) sounds an optimistic tone. He notes that both the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Police have already exceeded their 2010 goals. In a briefing slide, he points out that his training command is now 60% staffed (as opposed to just 25% before). But Caldwell admits that getting Afghan forces ready to fight hasn’t — and won’t — be easy. “We’re realistic about the challenges ahead,” he says.

When Caldwell first took the job last November, he didn’t expect to kickstart a remedial reading program. But it quickly became clear that without some basic ability to recognize letters and numbers, the difficult job of training ANA and ANP was going to be even harder.

Caldwell recalls a recent visit to a base in northern Afghanistan. 90 of the 100 local troops there claimed that they hadn’t been paid for months. Turned out the government was paying them by electronic funds transfer instead of cash, to keep corrupt officials from taking a cut. But the troops were “absolutely illiterate,” Caldwell says. So they couldn’t read their bank statements.

Illiteracy is also an equipment problem. If troops can’t read the serial numbers of their rifles, it’s harder to hold them accountable for their gear. Of course, anything beyond basic policework and military training requires some basic reading skills.

So now, literacy training, once optional, is mandatory. 28,000 local forces are currently enrolled. Caldwell hopes to have 100,000 in continuing education by next June.

Caldwell hopes the vast majority of those troops won’t be stoned. Traditionally, that’s been a serious issue for local forces. Caldwell recently launched a “personnel asset inventory” for almost every single cop and soldier that included a biometric scan and a drug test. But Caldwell stressed that this was a “one-time” event, and that smoking hashish or opium wouldn’t disqualify anyone from serving in the ranks of the military or the police. “What the is on focus right now is behavior modification,” Caldwell says. “We recognize that it’s something that has been culturally much more acceptable than it would be in our society.”

After all, Caldwell needs an absolutely staggering number of forces. So many local soldiers and cops walk off the job — or can’t make it through training — that Caldwell basically needs three recruits to find a single decent soldier. The 141,000 trainees he’s trying to find before next October? That’s basically as many as are in the Afghan National Army today.

And let’s just say Caldwell does hit his recruiting number. He’s only training infantrymen — no medics, no logisiticians, no transport specialists, none of the guys you need to make a military or a police force run on its own. “We’ve not yet built into the ANA and the ANP the capacity for them to be truly independent,” Caldwell says.

Right now, the focus is on elementary steps. Just like it is in first grade.

Photo: DoD

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/u-s-hopes-afghan-troops-can-pass-1st-grade-someday/#more-29696#ixzz0xS0uZhnr

Deks

23-08-10, 07:31 PM

He's right though. I hadn't realised the issue was that widespread, and it sounds like something that should be corrected on a country-wide level.

buglerbilly

23-08-10, 07:42 PM

He's right though. I hadn't realised the issue was that widespread, and it sounds like something that should be corrected on a country-wide level.

Of course he's right in principle and literacy is a fundamental requirement for a policeman, but the analogy to "Cat-in-the-Hat" is crass and stupid. It denigrates a people and the guys who choose the path of being a Cop in a society that views such people with hatred or distaste or apathy depending on who and where in the country.

TRAINING is the absolute number ONE important task in Afghanistan not just for the Police force..........and the Police force is made up of a number of different groups equivalent to para-military down the ordinary policemen. The para-mils are much better educated, whilst some of the district cops are borderline. NOT too surprising after years of War and Taliban dominance.

Like the Khmer Rouge previously, the Taliban view educated people as a threat, which they are, 'cos they clearly/more clearly understand the utter BS and lies the Taliban tries to perpetuate.

buglerbilly

24-08-10, 03:42 AM

Next US Target: Birthplace of the Taliban

August 23, 2010

Associated Press

HOWZ-E-MADAD, Afghanistan - As Lt. Col. Peter N. Benchoff prepares for an assault next month into the birthplace of the Taliban, he doesn't sugarcoat the hurdles his troops face in this crucial swath of southern Afghanistan.

"Security sucks. Development? Nothing substantial. Information campaign? Nobody believes us. Governance? We've had one, hour-long visit by a government official in the last 2 1/2 months," the battalion commander says. "Taliban is the home team here."

"Here" is 116 square miles of Zhari, a district just west of Kandahar through which the insurgents funnel fighters, drugs, explosives and stage attacks into the city.

It's also an iconic, psychologically significant spot for the Taliban. Just about two miles (three kilometers) south of the main U.S. base of Howz-e-Madad, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar ran an Islamic school, founded the movement in 1994, and nearby hung a warlord from the barrel of a tank after he raped two teenagers.

Senior commanders call the fight for Zhari the next step - Phase 3 - of a wider campaign to pacify Kandahar, the country's second largest city, and surrounding countryside. They argue success in Kandahar could lead to overall victory, given that the Taliban's power base is rooted in this region.

Zhari itself remains insurgent territory despite five major NATO operations in recent years. In September 2006, a Canadian-led force launched a major operation in Zhari and nearby Panjwai district, pushing out the Taliban but at a cost of 28 coalition lives. Months later, the Taliban were back.

Militarily, Benchoff will have to seize the village of Singesar, site of Mullah Omar's school now defended by fortified trenches, mortars and mines, and stop Taliban movements and ambushes along Highway 1 and a parallel dirt road dubbed Iron City. Getting the area's 10,000 inhabitants to sever their links to the Taliban may prove even harder.

With the opening salvo of the push already on the planning boards, perhaps the densest concentration of forces in Afghanistan today has been marshaled: some 1,000 U.S. and 400 Afghan troops, a superb, rarely realized ratio for counterinsurgency operations of one soldier for every 10 civilian residents.

"We are now poking the bear, trying to figure out how he will react and then developing ways to set him up to our advantage," says Benchoff, who commands the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. "We are taking our time to do it right. We don't want to charge in with shock and awe like in Marjah, and then come out scratching our heads and saying, `What happened here?'"

Marjah, a town in neighboring Helmand province, was captured in a highly heralded operation in February but has yet to see either solid security or effective government presence.

In Zhari, patrols are sent out daily, firefights erupt and Afghan commandos have staged some successful raids into Singesar. But Benchoff, a West Point graduate with 44 months in Afghanistan behind him, says his biggest priorities now are intensive training of a partner Afghan National Army battalion fresh out of basic training and understanding how to win over the local population via the circle of COIN, acronym for the Army's counterinsurgency doctrine.

Provide basic security to allow development. Tell the locals what you are doing for them and give them good governance, thereby ensuring more security. Spin the wheel fast enough, Benchoff says, and the Taliban won't be able to hold on.

"Will it work? I'm a guarded optimist. This is the last best way I know," the officer, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, says.

"This is an enemy-controlled area and people either support the Taliban actively or passively in order to survive," he says. "People want security but they are not fed up enough to turn to the government. We have grandfathers, fathers, uncles who are charter-founding members of the Taliban. It is going to take a long-term, dedicated, persistent effort to win."

Development and governance-wise, the area is starting from virtually zero.

The only medical facility is a small pharmacy in the ramshackle bazaar. The one school was closed more than two years ago and may be mined. The people have no connection with even local administration just up the road, where the new district governor, Karim Jan, remains a question mark.

A former police chief inexperienced in administration, NATO officials in Kandahar say they are still uncertain whether he represents a wide spectrum of the population or just his own tribe or circle of cronies.

To start setting things right, the U.S. military has more than half a million dollars to build a new bazaar, farmer's market, small dams and farm-to-market roads, with locals to be employed on the projects. To get the message out, a radio station will go on air. Help for the rural population, the plan goes, will follow right behind the front-line troops.

Those in Taliban-controlled areas, it is hoped, will see the benefits reaped by people within the "security bubble" and begin to distance themselves from the insurgents, who already restrict their movements, impose taxes, provide no education and commandeer family compounds for attack positions.

"Will we get all this done in a year? Probably not," says Benchoff. He notes while U.S. troops may begin pulling out of Afghanistan in July, they will remain in Zhari for at least 1 1/2 years with a replacement for his unit already alerted. "But I think we can do enough here to take the pressure off Kandahar and hope that the ANA can then continue to hold it."

Repeatedly, Benchoff and his officers point to the Afghan army as the linchpin for success - or failure.

"We are deeply embedded with them. `Shonna ba shonna,' shoulder to shoulder," says the commander who has paired off every U.S. soldier with an Afghan counterpart for both training and combat.

There are what Capt. David Yu, a company commander, calls "friction points" when two widely different cultures come together, and the U.S. Army's highly sophisticated systems and procedures try to mesh with troops who are often illiterate. But Yu, from Newport News, Virginia, concedes the Afghan soldiers are "a tremendous asset."

"They are essential. Before they came, we got nothing out of the locals. People wouldn't talk to us. Now we're starting to get tips, information," he says. "Maybe not a waterfall, but a steady trickle."

"The big test will come when the big push occurs and they start to take casualties," Benchoff says. "Will they have the skill and the will to fight?"

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

24-08-10, 05:02 AM

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

The Numbers Game in Afghanistan

Posted by Paul McLeary at 8/23/2010 1:53 PM CDT

U.S. and Afghan troops on patrol. Pic: Paul McLeary

When it comes to building a reliable and effective national security force, one of the critical questions to be answered is which is more important, quality or quantity? Up until late last year, says Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the American officer in charge of overseeing the recruitment and training of all Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), the focus was on quantity, and quality suffered. Speaking on a conference call earlier today, Caldwell said that his command is trying to bring the two a little closer together by growing the force while focusing on things like literacy, drug use, and professionalism. However, some of the numbers the General used to illustrate the difficulties ahead were less than encouraging.

Given the current attrition rates for both the army and the police, in order for the ANSF to hit its October 2011 goal of 305,000 personnel, an additional 56,000 cops and soldiers will need to be recruited, trained, equipped and fielded. But in order to do that, a staggering 141,000 soldiers and police will have to enter the pipeline to hit that 56,000 number. That means 85,000 of that 141,000 that NATO spends money on not only to recruit and train--but to issue paychecks--will simply vanish. “If I can put that into some context for you,” the general said, “in order to meet the 2011 goal, we will need to recruit and train, in the next 15 months, approximately the same number as the total strength of the Afghan National Army today.”

That is stunning. Let’s break that down. The Afghan army today has 134,000 soldiers. By next October, that number is slated to swell to 171,000--meaning 37,000 more soldiers need to be trained and fielded over the next 15 months. But in order for that to happen, Caldwell said, “we're going to have to recruit, train and assign 86,000 more people to the army in order to make that growth of 37,000.” That means 49,000 men will walk after receiving some form of training/pay/equipping.

And then there is the famously beleaguered, and just as famously corrupt, Afghan police. Their ranks number about 115,000 today, and by October 2011, the force is set to grow to 134,000. But to make that growth of 19,000, NATO is going to have to recruit, train and assign almost 56,000 men. That means 37,000 would-be cops are going to eat up money, resources, and the time of the already thinly-spread trainers, primarily U.S. armed forces personnel. Overall, NATO trainers--who are still only staffed up to about 60 percent of their intended capacity--will have spent time training 85,000 soldiers and cops over the next 15 months, with nothing to show for it.

buglerbilly

24-08-10, 05:20 AM

Commando Helicopter Force (CHF) begin operations with new gun

August 23, 2010

While supporting 16 Air Assault Brigade (16AAB) during their Final Training Exercise on Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA) in July, ahead of their deployment to Afghanistan in October, 846 Naval Air Squadron began training aircrew on their new FN Herstal M3M .50” NATO calibre door mounted weapon system.

CHF have been operating their Commando Sea King HC4+ helicopters in support of Operation Herrick since late 2007. Today, the aircraft can now be armed with either the 7.62mm General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG) or the M3M, the later only having recently been fully cleared for operational duties with CHF.

This now provides the Sea King HC4 with a defensive and offensive capability, helping to increase the Commando Sea King’s operational versatility and allowing CHF to undertake a wider range of support missions.

Lieutenant Commander Nigel Gates RN, CHF Command, Aviation Warfare Officer commented: 'The M3M is able to put down a higher rate of fire than the General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), and being 0.50 cal instead of 7.62 each round obviously has greater effect.

'The rounds have much greater energy so not only do they travel further but their flight path is affected much less by gravity; this means the gunner can lay down rounds accurately from a safe range or altitude. The Sea King is a good stable platform for the weapon and we are confident this will give us significant extra capability in support of ground units.'

The M3M is fitted into the Sea King using a specially adapted base-plate which allows the weapon to be stowed allowing the cabin door to be closed when not in use. A specially mounted canister holding 600 rounds is attached to the side of the cabin just aft of the main door.

CHF have their own Royal Marine, Air Door Gunner Instructors (ADGI) on both the GPMG and M3M. Aircrew undertake ground instruction followed by day and night shoots to become qualified on both weapon systems. These shoots cover a range of operational profiles depending on the mission. Aircrew operate both the M3M and GPMG using Night Vision Goggles.

The M3M is in use with a number of other air arms including the Royal Navy Lynx HMA-8 and Army Air Corps (AAC) AgustaWestland Lynx Mk9A which have recently been deployed to Afghanistan.

Source: Commando Helicopter Force

buglerbilly

24-08-10, 02:00 PM

Security concerns make Afghan elections dangerous for politicians, voters alike

By David Nakamura
Washington Post staff writer

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

KABUL -- On a recent campaign swing through Kandahar, Afghan parliamentary candidate Khalid Pashtoon brought the essentials: posters, leaflets and 15 bodyguards armed with pistols and rifles.

Pashtoon, who is up for reelection, figures he's a marked man -- a prime target for the Taliban insurgents, warlords and drug dealers aiming to create chaos during the Sept. 18 elections. Already, three parliamentary candidates have been assassinated, and on Saturday in Herat, insurgents ambushed another candidate's convoy, killing that man's brother.

It's not just Pashtoon who is nervous, but also his constituents. The 500-person banquets he organized for voters five years ago have been reduced to meetings with the few dozen tribal elders brave enough to see him, he said.

"I'm not afraid of a gunfight. We can defend ourselves," Pashtoon said in his home in relatively secure Kabul. "But the suicide attacks, that's what I'm afraid of."

Across Afghanistan, especially in the south and east, increasingly brazen attacks by anti-government groups have cowed many candidates for the 249 lower house seats as well as voters. Afghan election officials announced last week that 938 of the country's 6,835 polling centers will remain closed on election day because of security concerns, leaving 1.5 million of the country's 13 million registered voters unable to participate.

Officials said this disenfranchisement is a side effect of a strategy to limit the rampant fraud that plagued last year's presidential election, when Hamid Karzai was returned to office amid allegations of widespread ballot-stuffing and bribery.

"The lesson learned from the last elections is that where security does not exist, it creates an opportunity for those who want to make fraudulent activities," said Zekria Barakzai, deputy chief of the Independent Election Commission.

Barakzai pledged that the elections, which were postponed from last spring, will go forward next month despite calls from some candidates to delay them again. The commission has improved ballot security, increased background checks for employees and compiled a blacklist of 6,000 people involved in fraud last year who will not be allowed to participate, Barakzai said. His goal is 40 percent voter turnout, with fraudulent ballots limited to 10 percent.

International monitoring organizations praised the commission for publicizing the list of closed polling stations well before the elections. But they said the commission has not implemented other important safeguards, such as establishing an international oversight board to investigate reports of irregularities.

Ahmad Nader Nadery, chairman of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, said his organization has recorded a large increase in intimidation by the Taliban of voters and candidates, especially women, as well as threats from warlords who have propped up handpicked candidates against weaker rivals.

Compared with the presidential election last summer, Nadery said, "the coming elections will be much more challenging in terms of security, in terms of conditions on a very local level. Attempts to buy and persuade electoral employees favoring this and that candidate will be much more, but there are not many more prevention mechanisms."

Candidates speak of the Taliban warning men at mosques to stay away from the polls; of corrupt local officials selling voter identification cards in bulk to the highest-paying candidates; and of violent intimidation by insurgents.

Daoud Sultanzoy, running for reelection from the Ajristan area of the violent Ghazni province, said his cousin, who has six children, was dragged from his house and shot three times in the head because he was related to Sultanzoy.

Sultanzoy has spent just two days in his home district in the past three years, and he is too scared to campaign there.

"It is impossible. I'm sitting here," he said in his rented home in Kabul. "I haven't even printed my posters yet. How can I go there to put them up?"

In Ghazni, 107 of the 349 polling stations will be closed, election officials said. Sayed Ismail Jahangir, a spokesman for Musa Khan Akbarzada, the provincial governor, said candidates could request security guards from the Afghan police and army. On election day, he added, Polish and American troops have promised to help secure the province.

Told of Sultanzoy's fear, Jahangir suggested he avoid Ajristan (pop. 85,000) and campaign in safer areas.

"We have 82 people running for office and 13 are women," he said. "Their campaigns are going on every day in Ghazni province."

Despite security concerns, there is no shortage of candidates. All told, 2,556 people are running for the 249 lower house seats, including 406 female candidates competing for 68 seats reserved for women, according to the election commission. In Kabul alone, the ballot will span eight pages, officials said. Some observers have complained that many candidates are warlords, drug traffickers and other criminals.

Fereshta Afghan decided to run for office this year in Kandahar after being threatened three times by the Taliban to quit her job working for a Japanese development agency. She resigned and moved to Kabul but is working to win support from Kandahar's women, youth and disabled.

She said another candidate gave her some advice: "He said if I can't get a loan, I should sell all my jewelry and hire a security guard."

As for Pashtoon, he is resigned to limited voter participation in his power base.

"People ask themselves, 'Why should I kill myself just to put Khalid Pashtoon in office?' " he said. "I wouldn't do it."

Special correspondent Quadratullah Andar contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

24-08-10, 02:02 PM

Afghan officials challenge U.S. on aid contract abuses

By David Nakamura
Washington Post staff writer

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

KABUL -- A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai challenged the United States on Monday to clean up fraud and corruption within the hundreds of millions of dollars of aid contracts it distributes to Afghan companies each year, saying that abuse is far worse than any irregularities in the Karzai administration.

Waheed Omer used his weekly news conference to take the offensive in the ongoing political battle between the Karzai government and U.S. officials over the mismanagement of international money.

Of every $100 million of aid coming into the country, Omer said, 80 percent is controlled by the United States and NATO. Therefore, he said, it is up to international officials to enact safeguards and root out illegal practices.

"Corruption is widely affecting the multimillion-dollar contracts going to Afghans, who are becoming terribly rich out of those contracts," Omer said. "We want the international community to work with the government of Afghanistan to eliminate these sources of corruption and target the roots and sources of corruption. A major part are these international contracts."

Omer's remarks came just days after Karzai finished a series of meetings with Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who had flown to Kabul to push Karzai to crack down on corruption within his administration. Questions sent to Kerry through aides were not immediately answered.

Last month, Mohammad Zia Salehi, a high-level Karzai aide, was arrested by Afghanistan's Major Crimes Task Force after allegedly being overheard in a wire-tap soliciting a bribe of an automobile worth $10,000. Salehi was released from jail within hours after Karzai personally intervened, according to Afghan officials familiar with the case. Karzai has said he acted because Salehi's human rights were violated and the wire-tap was against Afghan rules.

The Washington Post reported last week that Salehi was also being investigated for doling out luxury automobiles and cash to Karzai allies and talking regularly with Taliban insurgents.

Asked to respond to those new allegations, Omer said: "In terms of the official information this office has received, this arrest was specifically for an alleged case of soliciting a bribe purported to be in the shape of a car. . . . All details of those other allegations are not part of this case as described to the government of Afghanistan."

Karzai has been particularly critical of the private security forces, which number more than 30,000 armed guards working primarily with western organizations, including the U.S. military.

"We will take steps to stop corruption, whether it be in customs or in services. But the government wants also to look into the wide-ranging corruption in the international forces contracts. One area is the private security companies, which are making billions of dollars and threaten the security," Omer said.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO's force in Afghanistan, has already established two task forces to examine corruption -- one on international contracts and another on private security firms.

"ISAF will soon issue comprehensive contracting guidance that will ensure our contracting dollars best serve the Afghan people as well as ISAF's mission," said a spokesman, Maj. Joel Harper.

Meanwhile, the federal Commission on Wartime Contracting announced Monday that it will undertake a week-long examination of U.S. construction contracts in Afghanistan. Co-Chairman Michael Thibault said in a statement that $4 billion was wasted on construction in Iraq, and similar problems could be found in Afghanistan.

buglerbilly

24-08-10, 02:07 PM

Billions of aid dollars buy U.S. little goodwill in Pakistan

Relief trickles in for victims of Pakistan flooding
The army and aid organizations are struggling to cope with the scope of a disaster that has killed over 1,600 people and displaced millions.

By Griff Witte, Washington Post
Tuesday, August 24, 2010

TARBELA, PAKISTAN -- Everyone here remembers the Americans.

They came with their blueprints, their engineering know-how and their money. By the time they left in the early 1970s, they had helped build a world-class dam that kept parts of Pakistan dry this month while vast stretches of the country drowned.

"This dam gives great benefit to the nation, and if not for the Americans it would never have been constructed," said Syed Naimat Shah, a local contractor.

But Shah hasn't seen any new assistance from the Americans in decades, and apparently many Pakistanis haven't, either. The U.S. government has provided about $18 billion in civilian and military aid to Pakistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made this country America's most essential, and vexing, ally. Yet according to a Pew Research Center survey released last month, half of Pakistanis believe the United States gives little to no assistance here.

For Obama administration officials, that's a source of deep anxiety -- and frustration. Pakistan is at the center of U.S. hopes to turn around the flagging Afghan war, but persistent anti-American feelings limit the extent of Pakistani cooperation. On her visit to Pakistan last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton mused that Americans must wonder "why we're sending money to a country that doesn't want it."

Pakistanis insist they are not ungrateful. They just don't see any tangible impact from the massive sums the United States spends. Unlike assistance from decades ago, the money from the post-Sept. 11 era, Pakistanis say, tends to vanish without a trace.

"Everyone here hates the American government," said Shah, a spirited 71-year-old with a stark white beard and a sharp tongue. "I haven't seen a penny of this U.S. assistance."

Analysts say there are many reasons: poor coordination with the Pakistani government, a lack of understanding of Pakistan's needs and a reluctance to produce iconic projects, lest they become targets for terrorists.

"American assistance is always of a nature that is not seen or felt," said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. "How many dams were built? How many highways? Can you touch anything that was built with U.S. assistance?"

U.S. officials say aid money is making a positive impact, if not always a widely noticed one. Since Sept. 11, Pakistan has ranked among the top five recipients of U.S. civilian and military aid, in a group with Israel, Egypt, Afghanistan and Iraq. But they acknowledge the overall criticism and say they are fundamentally changing the way they spend taxpayer dollars here.

The $7.5 billion Kerry-Lugar civilian aid package, passed by Congress late last year, is providing the first big test. Unlike in the past, the money will be routed directly through Pakistani agencies and institutions, and officials say the results will be far more visible.

But already, there have been delays that could keep the money from making an impact anytime soon.

"We're having trouble moving this money," said Robert J. Wilson, the USAID mission director here. "It's not easy to change the approach."

The Kerry-Lugar funds, which will be spread over five years, were intended to help erase the widespread perception that the United States cares only about supporting Pakistan's military.

Indeed, most U.S. assistance over the past nine years has paid for night-vision goggles, F-16 fighter jets, unmanned surveillance planes and other tools that help the army battle the Taliban, but has done little to convince Pakistanis that the United States cares about their well-being.

Still, the United States will have spent nearly $5 billion in civilian assistance by the end of the year, and that money is supposed to buy goodwill.

By almost all accounts, it hasn't. Although the United States has received praise here for its speedy response to the summer's catastrophic floods, Pakistanis remain suspicious of American motives. In the Pew poll, nearly six in 10 Pakistanis described the United States as an enemy; only one in 10 called it a partner.

Javed Ashraf Qazi, Pakistan's former education minister and onetime top spy, thinks he knows the reason.

When Qazi was appointed education minister in 2004 after retiring from the military, he expected that U.S. assistance would help him raise standards. There was much to do: Pakistan's public schools are in deplorable condition, with more than half lacking electricity and teachers earning as little as $50 a month.

But Qazi said he soon discovered that the United States did not even coordinate its programs with the education ministry. Most of the money seemed to go to U.S. consultants "who would carry out a study for something or other that we did not need."

One program was geared toward "setting up democratic schools in Pakistan," he said. "I was very curious to know what the hell is a democratic school."

Another, he said, involved spending millions to send Pakistani teachers to Washington for months of training. Qazi wondered why the United States had not just paid for training in Pakistan, which could have had many times the impact.

Invited to Washington himself, Qazi said he finally lost his patience at a meeting in a State Department office once used by Gen. George C. Marshall, architect of Europe's reconstruction.

"I said, 'You do the opposite of what Marshall did. You don't ask us what we want to do. You tell us what you want to do,' " he said.

The complaint is a familiar one here. A program to train female health workers, for instance, was duplicating the work of a similar Pakistani government program. A recently announced plan to put solar panels on the roofs of the elite and private Beaconhouse school system, meanwhile, has been widely derided as out of touch when many public schools lack even roofs.

Pakistani analysts say a system that relies largely on Beltway contractors to devise the plans and get the work done has yielded few results. Wilson, the USAID director, said his agency is transitioning away from that system and toward the Pakistanis themselves.

But doing so poses its own set of challenges. Pakistan's government is rated among the most corrupt in the world, and the United States has a lengthy process for certifying the accountability of its partners. As a result, very little of the Kerry-Lugar money has hit the ground nearly a year after the bill's passage.

When it does, Pakistani development officials worry that it will be spent without regard for the results, or for the limitations in Pakistan's capacity to absorb the funds.

"When the money comes in, there's a lot of pressure to spend it," said Mehnaz Aziz, chief executive of the Children's Global Network, a nongovernmental organization that has had small contracts with USAID. "I would never want to be in a position to spend $100 million in Pakistan."

All that money does not necessarily mean high-profile projects. Because anything in Pakistan that's associated with America is vulnerable to attack, the United States has shied away from projects that could make for alluring targets.

Qazi, the former education minister and spymaster, said the threat is overstated. He said that if the United States set up a technical training institute, no one would dare attack it. "Call it the American School of Technology. People are running to the U.S. for good technical education. So set it up over here," he said.

U.S. officials are not convinced. But they say the incoming money will have a tangible impact. Among the projects slated to begin is one in Tarbela, where American engineers worked decades ago with a consortium of international and Pakistani partners to build the dam.

For $16 million, USAID plans to upgrade the dam's turbines, which produce hydropower. The work is expected to significantly cut Pakistan's chronic energy deficit.

Word has begun to spread in Tarbela that the Americans are coming back, and former mayor Firdous Khan said he would welcome them.

He said he admired the American engineers who helped build the dam for their ability to get things done without delay, and without demanding a bribe.

But decades later, surveying his town's potholed streets, its archaic sewer system and its vast population of unemployed young men, Khan's mind turns to regret: "I just wish they had stayed."

buglerbilly

24-08-10, 03:37 PM

CIA man has key role with Karzai

August 24, 2010 - 11:14PM

The Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Afghanistan has assumed a key troubleshooting role in dealings with President Hamid Karzai, including tasks normally reserved for diplomatic and military officials, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

"Karzai needs constant reassurance," one former colleague of the US intelligence official told the daily, describing the CIA station chief as Karzai's "security blanket."

The daily wrote that the senior official, a former marine in his 50s who is known to some colleagues by the nickname "Spider," generally is called upon during critical times.

The Journal reported that when the Afghan leader lashed out against his Western partners, it was the station chief who was tapped by the White House to calm him.

"He's spent time with Karzai like no one else has," a former senior intelligence official told the daily.

Karzai this year unleashed a round of anti-Western invective, suggesting he might even join the Taliban in response to several grievances including what he deemed foreign meddling in the Afghan elections.

Besides his relationship with Karzai, the CIA station chief is said to also carry out the more traditional role of running the agency's operations in Afghanistan.

The CIA is expanding its presence in the country by between 20 and 25 per cent, in its largest surge since Vietnam.

The several hundred officers assigned to Afghanistan outnumber those in Iraq at the height of that war, the Journal reported.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration reportedly is still trying to get all of its leaders in Afghanistan on the same page, following the dismissal in June of General Stanley McChrystal and other upheavals that have put a strain on US-Afghan relations.

© 2010 AFP

buglerbilly

25-08-10, 01:06 AM

Troops Kill 40 Militants East of Kabul

August 24, 2010

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan and international forces have killed an estimated 40 Taliban fighters east of the Afghan capital Kabul as part of operations to provide security ahead of parliamentary elections next month, NATO said Tuesday.

Two coalition servicemen, including one American, were killed in fighting in the volatile south where the insurgency is most heavily entrenched, the coalition reported. The other soldier's nationality was not identified.

A total of 49 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan this month, including 31 Americans, according to a count by The Associated Press.

Fighting in Kabul province began Friday, involving Afghan, U.S. and French troops and both air and ground assaults, the coalition said. Eight Taliban leaders were captured and a large quantity of explosives and other weapons destroyed, it said.

Troops were taking the fight to the insurgents in an area where they "used to feel pretty secure operating in," Brig. Gen. Steve Townsend, the U.S. deputy commander in eastern Afghanistan, was quoted as saying in a news release.

No coalition casualties have been reported in the operation, NATO said.

Insurgents have attacked government workers and threatened voters to derail Afghanistan's electoral process. Despite heavy security for presidential polls last year, turnout was low and the result marred by allegations of widespread voter fraud.

Elections for 249 seats in the lower house of parliament are scheduled for Sept. 18.

Heavy fighting overnight was also reported in the southwestern provinces of Nimroz and Uruzgan, adjoining the insurgent strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces. Numerous Taliban were killed, but the Afghan police and army managed to avoid casualties, according to an army news release and Nimroz police chief Abdul Jabbar Pardali.

In Helmand's Nad Ali district, one policeman and one insurgent were killed in a gunbattle, local police reported.

Also Tuesday, NATO said it was investigating allegations that eight civilians were killed and 12 injured in a coalition raid on a remote mountain village in the northern province of Baghlan.

The chief of Baghlan's Tala Wabarfak district, Mohammad Ismail, said the deaths - six men, one woman, and one child - reportedly came in the early hours of Sunday morning in the village of Tergaran.

Villagers told him troops flown in aboard five or six helicopters also destroyed several houses during the five-hour operation, Ismail said. Two people were reportedly arrested and taken away he said, adding that Taliban have on occasion been active in the area, a 10-hour walk from the nearest town over which the government exercises little influence.

NATO said U.S. troops fired warning shots on Monday to disperse a protest near the main coalition air base in Afghanistan over the arrest of a religious leader suspected of a rocket attack.

The alliance said no civilian injuries were reported from the demonstration, but Gen. Faqir Ahmad, the deputy police chief of Parwan province, said one civilian was killed by gunfire from an unknown source.

NATO said about 300 people surrounded a patrol and attacked vehicles with rocks and iron bars outside Bagram air base, which is located in Parwan.

"After several attempts to stop the attack and disperse the crowd, coalition troops received small-arms fire directed at them," NATO said in a news release. Coalition forces then fired the warning shots.

Gen. Ahmad said the coalition firing enraged the crowd with some then using rocks and sticks to attack police and the head of the district government, Kabir Ahmad, who had tried to calm the situation. The deputy police chief said Ahmad and a police officer had serious but not life-threatening injuries.

The man arrested Monday by Afghan police was a Muslim teacher suspected of taking part in a rocket attack on a coalition patrol two weeks ago, Gen. Ahmad said. About 50 students from his religious school began the protest, which then attracted up to 2,000 villagers, he said.

Such protests among Afghan civilians often center on claims that U.S. or other international forces killed innocent civilians. NATO says some accusations are unfounded and accuses the Taliban and its sympathizers of inciting demonstrators.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

25-08-10, 01:08 AM

Conway Sees Long Afghan Stay for Marines

August 24, 2010

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - It will likely be a few years before Afghanistan is secure enough for the U.S. Marines to leave, Commandant Gen. James Conway said Tuesday, adding his voice to a growing chorus of military leaders warning of a long fight ahead.

Afghan war commander Gen. David Petraeus and other senior officers have recently said that progress is being made slowly and that considerable time will be needed before Afghan troops can take over the fight.

But Conway's blunt assessment was the first of its kind to come from a service chief since President Barack Obama announced that U.S. troops will begin leaving Afghanistan in July 2011. Last fall, Obama said that security conditions will determine how many forces can leave and how fast.

The Marines have been at the forefront of America's toughest fights in the Afghanistan war, including attempts to oust the Taliban from the farming hamlets of Marjah in Helmand province.

Conway, known for his candor, is planning to retire this fall after 40 years in the Marines.

"Though I certainly believe some American unit somewhere in Afghanistan will turn over responsibilities to Afghan security forces in 2011, I do not think they will be Marines," he told reporters in his opening remarks at a Pentagon press conference.

Noting that Helmand and Kandahar are considered the "birthplace" of the Taliban, Conway said "I honestly think it will be a few years before conditions on the ground are such that turnover will be possible for us."

Conway said he wanted to prepare Marines for the likelihood that the war will continue past the 2011 deadline. He recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan, where he said morale was high because Marines "can sense conditions are turning their direction."

Conway also said he believes that the Afghanistan government's effort to reconcile with low-level Taliban foot soldiers could be a "game changer" in the war.

But "when that will come remains to be seen," Conway said.

Conway said there was some intelligence that Taliban fighters were emboldened by the prospect of a U.S. exit next year.

But, he added, Taliban morale was likely to drop when "come the fall we're still there hammering them like we have been."

When asked about a proposal in Congress to lift the military's ban on openly gay service members, Conway said he still opposes such a move. He said that Marines in particular recruit "pretty macho" young Americans, many of whom have religious objections to sharing a room with a gay person.

But if the law changes, the Marine Corps will "deal" with it and not drag its feet, he said.

"We've got a war to fight," he said, "and we need to, if the law changes, implement (it) and get on with it."

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

25-08-10, 01:11 AM

Just announced from Canberra, another 6RAR soldier has been lost in action. The Family has been advised........

He was killed during a firefight in a Joint Patrol with the ANA..........he was an experienced 28-year old soldier on his second tour in Afghanistan, his fourth tour Overseas......it was intimated, in my listening, that he was an Overseas-born soldier(?)

Nobody else was killed or injured...........

More details to follow later today.

buglerbilly

25-08-10, 01:33 AM

Military Denies Having a Secret Afghan Torture Jail

By Spencer Ackerman August 24, 2010 | 4:13 pm

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Walking out of the new detention center and out into the dusty courtyard, I’ve got one final question for Gen. Mark Martins, one rooted in the U.S.’ post-9/11 history of detainee abuse: Is this all there is? Or, stripped to its subtext: Do you have any hidden torture chambers; and if so, can we pop in?

Martins, the Army one-star responsible for the day-to-day operations of the complex known as the Detention Facility In Parwan, drove from Kabul to escort me on a 90-minute tour of the place. His objective is plain: convince an American journalist that the abuse associated with the old detention site at Bagram is a relic of the past. Martins has moved me through Parwan briskly. But now he gets very deliberate.

Entering the back seat of the SUV that’ll take us back within Bagram’s main gates, Martins looks me in the eye. “You have looked at everything,” he says.

For nearly a year, human rights groups have had trouble believing him. Ever since the New York Times reported that Bagram has an off-the-books, closed-to-the-Red-Cross detention center, there’s been continued suspicions that the U.S.’s legacy of torture has survived President Obama’s January 2009 executive order banning undisclosed “Black Site” prisons. Those suspicions accelerated after the BBC claimed to have confirmed with the International Committee of the Red Cross in May that the new Parwan center has a “Black Jail.” Human Rights Watch speculated in June that the military now calls it a “transit facility” to throw reporters and humanitarian monitors off the scent.

But Martins is categorical. “There are no black sites,” he says. “There is not a ‘transit facility.’” There are, however, “field detention sites” to which U.S. troops bring Afghans shortly after immediate battlefield capture, holding them for “a small number of days” before either releasing detainees or sending them on to Parwan. But, he says, those adhere to the Geneva Conventions as much as Parwan does. And they’re not a surprise to anyone: “All [field detention centers] are known to the Afghan government. All field detention sites are known to the ICRC,” using the acronym for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The ICRC backs Martins. Red Cross Simon Schorno tells Danger Room that the group “is notified by the United States of persons arrested by its forces in the framework of the armed conflict in Afghanistan, regardless of the structures in which they are being held. This has been routine practice since August 2009 and helps us monitor the fate of persons detained until they leave U.S. custody.” That includes access “to detainees at U.S.-run field detention sites in Afghanistan,” which the ICRC has had “since the beginning of 2008,” though “the frequency of our visits to these sites varies.”

But even if there’s not a “Black Jail” at Parwan beyond the eyes of the Red Cross, that doesn’t resolve the question of detainee treatment at Parwan — or what it’ll be next year, after the Afghans take control.

Parwan opened its $60 million doors to detainees earlier this year, even as the U.S. announced plans to transition it to Afghan control in 2011. And despite the suspicions about continued detainee abuse in Afghanistan, the military wants to show Parwan off. (Within limits: I’m not permitted to photograph it.) Located within a square mile on the outskirts of Bagram, it centers around four large housing blocs, some of which are shaped like aircraft hangars, that currently hold slightly more than 1000 detainees. (Current Gitmo population: 176.) They stay at Parwan for an average of 22 months and they’re out of their cells an average of 27 hours a week. The majority of them live communally, though there’s a Special Housing Unit of 104 individual cells for the “uncooperative” ones.

The SHU, as it’s called, feels like lockdown. Within the solid metal doors of a cell, there’s a plexiglass ceiling with a camera in one corner for the guards, who monitor the facilities at all times. There’s a western-style toilet in the cell, as well as a prayer rug, an arrow pointing the way to Mecca and a mattress placed on the ground. Outside the cells are placards indicating what earned its resident a stay. COMMUNICATING A THREAT, one reads, with ASSAULT ON A STAFF MEMBER outside the next door.

Outside the SHU, in the Bravo bloc, is the darkened hallway of interrogation booths. It’s dark in order to prevent detainees from seeing through the one-way glass, even as tiny cameras allow analysts to discreetly peer in. A table and three folding chairs are the only furniture.

Martins emphasizes that all interrogations comply with the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, the Geneva Conventions and the updated 2006 Army field manual on interrogations (PDF) that’s supposed to prevent future Abu Ghraibs. But the 2006 manual has come under fire from human-rights critics and anti-torture military interrogators for embedding what they consider abuse into its pages. Its Appendix M authorizes a technique called “Separation,” in which a detainee gets removed from the general population “to keep him from learning counter-resistance techniques.”

Martins acknowledges that Separation occurs at Parwan on “a small fraction” of detainees. As he tells it, it’s an emergency technique that occurs within strict oversight. Separation needs to be “approved by a general officer,” with specifics about how long interrogators will apply it, and alongside “what other techniques.” Interrogators can use it for up to 30 days, but interrogation sessions employing separation occur “no more than a couple hours at a time,” he says. That’s intended to prevent Separation from shading into banned techniques like sensory deprivation or isolation. But it’s not clear to me how different Separation and isolation really are.

Just outside the blocs, there’s a big tent for hosting “reintegration” meetings with family and community leaders before a detainee is released. Near the entrance, there’s a small plastic jungle gym for their kids to romp around when they visit. Literacy programs and the presence of moderate religious leaders at Parwan help refute insurgents’ calls to violence couched in Islamic terms. It’s part of Martins’ efforts to win what he calls the “most important six inches of counterinsurgency — between the ears.”

He doesn’t have much time. Parwan isn’t supposed to stay a U.S. military facility for long. Sometime next year, the Afghan Ministry of Defense will take control — a bureaucratic placeholder until the Ministry of Justice runs the place in 2014. At that point, Parwan won’t be a detention center, where enemy fighters are held, according to the law of armed conflict, without charge. It’ll be a jail, where prisoners serve their time after being sentenced according to a court of law — or what passes for it in Afghanistan.

That gives human rights groups pause. “The Afghan police and intelligence services are notorious for not treating prisoners humanely,” says Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First — full disclosure: a former colleague of mine at the Washington Independent – in an email. “So how the U.S. government plans to turn people over to the Afghans… and also meet its obligations to not hand prisoners over to governments where they’d likely face abuse and torture, is a big question.”

The U.S. military’s answer? Training. Would-be Afghan guards get 21 weeks’ worth of instruction in “humane, effective, and legitimate detention operations that comply with Afghan and international law,” says Navy Captain Pamela Kunze, a spokeswoman for the detention facility, before they start training alongside U.S. guards. Over 700 guards are currently in the training pipeline, with more on the way.

Training is one thing, but there’s a higher-level policy decision that still awaits the U.S. and the Afghans: what to do about the acknowledged “less than 50” non-Afghans — mostly Pakistanis — caught up at Parwan, some of whom come from countries that torture their prisoners, complicating the U.S.’s ability to repatriate them under international law. All Martins says about them is that the U.S. is “committed to not having the Afghans deal with them alone.”

Another unsettled issue is what happens to the U.S.’ ability to detain Afghan insurgents once Parwan falls under Afghan control. “Soldiers must be given the opportunity to detain” during wartime, Martins says. But it remains to be seen how much of an impediment Afghan control of Parwan, operating under a law-enforcement framework, will present for the U.S.’s continuing ability to perform precisely those detention operations.

Those detention operations, by law and by policy, are supposed to be fully compliant with the Geneva Conventions. While the ICRC confirms that it has access to all detainees, it won’t publicly disclose anything about their treatment, in keeping with the group’s traditional bargain of trading access for confidentiality. “All our observations on conditions of detention and treatment of detainees are confidential and part of our ongoing confidential dialogue with the detaining authorities,” Schorno says.

Other humanitarian groups aren’t so sure. “We have not been allowed to interview the detainees,” says Human Rights Watch’s Andrea Prasow, who visited Parwan in June, “so it is impossible for us to fairly assess the prison and its conditions.”

As we drive back to the thin layer of Bagram gates separating the Parwan facility from the main air field — which will close for good after the Afghans control the detention center — Martins offers a bottom line. “We will continue to comply with the law,” Martins says, whether at the field detention sites or at Parwan. “If that’s ‘Black,’ I think that’s not a particularly helpful use of language.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/military-denies-having-a-secret-afghan-torture-prison/#more-29734#ixzz0xZMJDimh

Raven22

25-08-10, 09:20 AM

By all reports its on for young and old in Oruzgan right now. Every mentoring team in every valley is in daily contacts and IED strikes, and both special forces elements are whacking blokes all over the shop. The US dudes in Oruzgan are being hammered as well. The reason for the increase was being debated today at work. I suppose part of it is the US taking over from the Dutch, who have a far more kinetic approach, and a lot of it is, as the US commander said, the push in Kandahar is causing a lot of fighters to move elsewhere. The major part though is probably the change in role and increased responsibility of the MTF combined with the manning cap. The MTF currently has five mentoring teams, yet it has the same manning cap as when it only had one. As a result, a lot of tasks that 12 months ago were being done by 70-80 blokes are now only being done by 30-40, which of course has resulted in reduced force protection. The major political parties don't want to increase the commitment to Afghanistan for fear of casualties, yet increasing the manning would probably actually reduce casualties, as it would allow things to be done 'properly' again. Sending over our own M-777s, Tigers and maybe even FA-18s wouldn't hurt either, as their is a finite number of these resources in the South, and we will never be the main effort.

The choice of Australian officer to be the deputy commander in Oruzgan under the Yanks is interesting as well. He is by far the most aggressive commander I've ever worked for, so he'll probably have the Taliban surrendering during his first few weeks there. He used to scare me a bit, and I was on the same side.

buglerbilly

25-08-10, 06:01 PM

Even With Petraeus, No Afghan ‘Awakening’

By Colin Clark Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 10:41 am

When Gen. David Petraeus accepted his nation’s request that he step down in responsibility and take personal leadership of the fight in Afghanistan, many analysts hoped for an Iraq redux.

America’s most dynamic and creative commander in many years would take the hard lessons he learned in Iraq, do his school work in Afghanistan and come up with another impressive showing. We daren’t call it victory, but we could reach for the less inflammatory success. That may happen.

Petraeus is once again surrounding himself with many of the people who helped him make Iraq a success. Surge advocates Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and his wife Kim of the Institute for the Study of War are in Afghanistan. Army Brig. Gen H.R. McMaster has flown back under Petraeus wings from his perch at TRADOC.

But there won’t be, according to the head of Marine operations, anything like the Iraqi “Awakening” that brought the Sunnis onto the side of what we think of as the righteous and fundamentally reordered the country’s security situation and politics.

“That’s not going to happen here,” Brig. Gen. David Berger told me several days ago. There would not be a similar shift in Afghanistan because the country’s tribal politics are much more complex. It would be very, very difficult to get substantial numbers of Afghan elders to join NATO and the Afghan national government because Afghans don’t trust the concept of national government, Berger said. Say all you will about the evils of Saddam Hussein, but the fact remains that Iraq had a central government that was the’ preeminent power structure. And that made it easier to rebuild the state once the Sunnis pledged their loyalty to it once again.

Because of the small chance of a wholesale shift as happened in Iraq, the need for long-term commitment — probably well beyond the July 2011 withdrawal date — is becoming increasingly clear and the senior military leadership has stepped up its efforts to educate people and Washington of the likelihood. Petraeus made it pretty clear when he recently spoke of 2011 being the time when “the process begins” and is not the beginning of an American exodus.

Berger’s boss, Commandant James Conway, made his own pitch for flexibility during his Monday press briefing. Conway said “we know the president was talking to several audiences when he talked about 2011,” a clear nod to the left wing of the Democratic Party who have been clamoring for a smaller commitment in Afghanistan.

But Conway went further, saying that the U.S. has intercepted communications from the Taliban,“saying we only have to hold on for so long,” Conway said. He added that the 2011 pullout date is “probably giving this enemy sustenance.”

But he also said NATO forces have “momentum” and offered a different interpretation of the same information.

“Okay, if you accept what I offered earlier as true, that Marines will be there after 2011, okay, after the middle of 2011, what’s the enemy going to say then, you know?”

“What is he going to say to his foot troops, where you’ve got the leadership outside the country trying to direct operations within — because it’s too dangerous for them to be there — and the foot troops have been believing what he’s saying, that they’re all going to leave in the summer of next year, and come the fall, we’re still there hammering them like we have been? I think it could be very good for us in that context, in terms of the enemy’s psyche and what he has been, you know, posturing now for, really, the better part of a year.”

He said he’d spoken in Afghanistan with Adm. Bob Harward, who runs detention in Afghanistan for ISAF and heard that the enemy “is getting tired, too. They’re getting hammered, to a much greater degree than we are. And they’re asking themselves, ‘Hey is this all worth it?’

That may well be the question Americans, our NATO allies, the Taliban and their allies are asking come the summer of 2011. And someone will have their own awakening then.

Read more: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2010/08/25/even-with-petraeus-no-afghan-awakening/#ixzz0xdN5YQMH

buglerbilly

26-08-10, 03:32 AM

U.S. Scans Afghan Inmates for Biometric Database

By Spencer Ackerman August 25, 2010 | 12:37 pm

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Don’t think of the U.S. military’s new Detention Facility In Parwan as just a holding pen for suspected insurgents. It’s also an emerging datafarm, storing biometric information on its inmate population. In a country with a shaky commitment to the rule of law, those identifiers could become weapons.

Parwan, with its thousand-or-so detainee population, will become an Afghan-run detention complex next year. By 2014, it’ll become a major Afghan jail, run by the Ministry of Justice to incarcerate convicted criminals, not hold insurgents taken off the battlefield. But Army Brigadier General Mark Martins, who currently runs day-to-day operations at the detention center, explains that there’s a basic problem with Afghanistan’s criminal justice system: It doesn’t have a efficient information infrastructure to identify the people it holds. That’s where he comes in.

Every detainee who comes into Parwan leaves basic information with the Detainee Services Branch during in-processing: Name; father’s name; residence. A mark of any identifying scars, marks or tattoos. Residence of record. After a shower and a medical exam, the DSB scans their irises and collects prints from all of their fingers, rolling their thumbs for a 360-degree view. Its cameras snap five photographs of every detainee’s face. All of this information goes into a military database called the Automated Biometric Information System.

Troops in the field can access the system through a set of portable consoles that the DSB has on hand. The Biometrics Automated Toolset, or BAT, allows troops who detain insurgents on the battlefield to get a quick biometric identification of who they’ve captured, all through talking to the database. One clunky component of it, the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection System (HIIDE), which looks like a big black FunSaver, takes pictures of a captive’s irises, facial features and fingerprints. BATS and HIIDE were used in Iraq, where counterinsurgents like David Kilcullen praised the devices for allowing troops to quickly and positively identify known insurgents during the surge.

But any detective will tell you that a database is only as good as the data it contains. And after 30 years of war, Afghanistan isn’t really in the data-collection game. The U.S. military’s detentions command, known as Joint Task Force-435, is working with the Afghan Ministry of Interior to kick-start an up-to-date records program.

Martins says he and the ministry want “enrollments on 15 percent of fighting-age males,” Afghans between the ages of 14 and 49. Studies that he’s seen convince him that 15 percent represents a Gladwellian tipping point, allowing the U.S. and the Afghans to match exponentially more latent fingerprints off homemade bombs to Afghans in the system.

But that means biometric information about one million people. And the easiest way to get this information is by locking up a whole lot of Afghans and collecting it against their will, one of the reasons that human rights advocates are wary about the U.S.’s plans to turn over Parwan to the Afghans.

In Iraq, privacy advocates raised similar concerns about weaponizing the biometrics database — essentially, turning it into a military hit list. Afghanistan is filled with corruption, fraud and malicious police officers. Its commitment to the rule of law is, to be charitable, immature. In such a circumstance, a counterinsurgency tool like the biometric database just as easily become predatory, allowing its possessors to take out their political or ethnic rivals and reward their allies. If the WikiLeaks disclosures put Afghans in danger, imagine what iris scans and fingerprints could mean for people who don’t want to pay bribes to crooked cops.

“That’s a policy-significant issue,” Martins admits, “Who holds the data?” According to an October memorandum signed by the U.S. and Afghan governments, the Afghans will. The U.S. might see its collected records become the “biometric component of a national ID” Martins says, good for property ownership records, establishing credit lines and other economic behavior. But first, the biometrics database will be “MOI’s data,” in the hands of the security services — the legacy of ten years of U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan.

Credit: DoD Biometrics

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/military-prison-builds-big-afghan-biometric-database/#more-29818#ixzz0xfgsitYv

buglerbilly

26-08-10, 03:57 AM

France in Afghanistan 'As Long As Necessary'

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 25 Aug 2010 14:14

PARIS - President Nicolas Sarkozy declared on Aug. 25 that French forces will remain in Afghanistan for as long as they are needed there and enjoy the support of the Afghan people.

Two French soldiers were killed this week and Sarkozy faces mounting calls for France's 3,750 troops to begin withdrawing from a conflict that has cost 47 of them their lives and shows no sign of coming to an end.

"France will remain engaged in Afghanistan, with its allies, for as long as necessary and for as long as the Afghan people wish," he said, in his annual foreign policy address to France's ambassadors around the world.

"Our actions in the cause of peace can not be subject to artificial calendars and the mood of the media," he insisted.

France's contingent is part of the US-led NATO coalition army battling the Taliban and other rebel groups and training Afghan security forces to eventually take the lead.

U.S. President Barack Obama has said U.S. troop numbers will begin to come down from next year, but his commanders on the ground have cautioned that withdrawal will be slow and subject to conditions on the battlefield.

buglerbilly

26-08-10, 03:59 PM

Pakistan floods: Taliban vows to kidnap foreign aid workers

The Pakistan Taliban is planning to kidnap foreign aid workers delivering assistance in the aftermath of devastating floods, according to an American diplomatic official.

By Rob Crilly in Islamabad

Published: 9:31AM BST 26 Aug 2010

Pakistani flood survivors try to catch food bags from an army helicopter in Lal Pir Photo: AFP

"According to information available to the US government, [Pakistan militant group] Tehreek-e-Taliban plans to conduct attacks against foreigners participating in the ongoing flood relief operations in Pakistan," the official said.

"Tehreek-e-Taliban also may be making plans to attack federal and provincial ministers in Islamabad," the official told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.

Weeks of flooding have affected an estimated 17.2m people. At least eight million need emergency humanitarian aid and hundreds of thousands are still stranded and cut off from supplies.

Charities and United Nations agencies have fanned out across the region, and hundreds of relief workers are operating in the north-west of the country, where militants have bases along the border with Afghanistan.

Banned Islamist charities have also emerged at the forefront of aid efforts, using the emergency to win hearts and minds.

It has emerged that a senior American aid official had inadvertently visited a camp supplied by a charity with links to a militant group on a terrorist list.

Ravi Shah, the head of the US Agency for International Development toured a camp in Sukkur Falah-e-Insaniat, a charity with ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba and its humanitarian wing Jamaat-ud-Dawa, both blacklisted by the United Nations.

However, last night's warning is the first suggestion that relief efforts might be targeted by militants although the Pakistani Taliban has previously denounced all foreign aid for victims of the catastrophic flooding.

There are also concerns that the floods have choked off key supply routes to Nato forces in Afghanistan and allowed breathing space for militants in Pakistan as the military diverts helicopters and personnel to flood relief.

Marine Commandant General James Conway said Pakistan's powerful Army chief, Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, had warned him that the Army was preoccupied.

"Gen Kiyani cautioned me that the involvement of his Army in the flood relief will for a time detract from their efforts to secure the Pakistani frontier," he said during a Pentagon briefing after returning from a visit to flood-affected areas.

buglerbilly

27-08-10, 03:37 AM

Karzai Says Pullout Timeline Boosts Taliban

August 26, 2010

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai said that U.S. plans to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan next year had boosted the Taliban's spirits, while an insurgent attack killed eight Afghan police in the country's increasingly volatile north Thursday.

Speaking to a visiting U.S. congressional delegation, President Hamid Karzai said the July withdrawal date had provided "morale value" to the insurgency, the presidential office said.

Karzai also told the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. James Mattis, that terrorism could not be defeated without rooting out terrorist sanctuaries across the border - a likely reference to Pakistan, where the Taliban and other groups are believed to recruit fighters and base their leadership.

The increasingly outspoken Afghan leader's comments echo a common complaint among President Barack Obama's critics that the deadline gives the Taliban motivation to hold out until after next July and then make a new push for power. Obama himself has stressed that any troop withdrawals will be linked to the security situation, and American military leaders have recently been saying it could take much longer to train Afghan forces.

Violence has spiked around the country as the Taliban push back against a new security push by U.S.-led international force - bolstered by 30,000 U.S. troops in the insurgents' southern and eastern strongholds.

More than 10 militants attacked the police checkpoint outside the northern city of Kunduz, said provincial police chief Abdul Raziq Yaqoubi, adding they suspected the attackers were jihadists from Russia's restive Chechnya region who are active in the surrounding province, also called Kunduz.

He said two or three of the militants were wounded when the police fought back. The militants apparently hoped to steal the policemen's weapons but were beaten back before they could do so, he said.

Kunduz has seen an increasing number of attacks on Afghan and foreign coalition forces who rely on a supply line running south through the province from neighboring Tajikistan. Foreign fighters from Chechnya, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf infiltrate the region from the rugged mountainous border with Pakistan to the east.

Investigations, meanwhile, continued into Wednesday's attack on Spanish troops at a base in the northwestern province of Badghis used by members of Spain's paramilitary Civil Guard to train Afghan police.

Majid Khan Shakib, a member of parliament from Badghis, said the attacker's sister was married to the provincial Taliban commander and the shooting was engineered to incite an uprising against the Spanish. The shooter was killed at the scene by other Spanish police.

After word of the shooting spread, several hundred people protested and hurled stones at the Spanish compound. At least one vehicle was torched and 25 people were wounded by gunshots, although it was unclear who was shooting.

"The Taliban infiltrated the crowd yesterday and agitated everybody. They told people the Spanish were there to colonize the country," Shakib said.

Spain's Interior Ministry initially said the officers' driver opened fire on the men during a training exercise Wednesday. However, Spanish media and Afghan officials said Thursday the shooter was a driver with the Afghan police who occasionally also drove the Spanish officers. He carried an unregistered Kalashnikov rifle to a security checkpoint at the camp entrance and opened fire, provincial police chief Sayed Ahmad Sami said.

NATO spokesman James Appathurai said deliberate killings by Taliban infiltrators were "still very isolated," adding that training Afghan security forces would remain the foundation of a strategy to pass responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

"There are thousands of Afghan army and police being trained every day by NATO soldiers, and it works well. Unfortunately, there are still occasionally incidents like these," Appathurai said.

The string of attacks in the north shows the Taliban and their allies are capable of fomenting instability beyond their traditional strongholds in the east and south, which is the focus of U.S.-led military operations. Provinces in the north previously had been largely spared the violence that have affected provinces such Helmand and Kandahar in the south and Logar, Wardak, Kunar and Khost in the east.

Also Thursday, a candidate in next month's parliamentary elections said 10 of her campaign workers were kidnapped while traveling in the western province of Herat.

Fawzya Galani said she lost contact with the group at about 6 p.m. Wednesday. Villagers told her armed men had stopped the group and driven off in their two vehicles, Galani said.

Local district chief Nisar Ahmad Popal said it wasn't clear whether the kidnappers were political rivals or members of the Taliban, who are seeking to sabotage the Sept. 18 elections for 249 seats in the lower house of parliament.

Citing security concerns, Afghanistan's electoral commission has reduced the number of voting sites for the elections by almost 1,000 to 5,897. It said Thursday that number could drop further if voter safety could not be ensured.

Many Afghans say they plan not to vote, either because of insurgent threats or out of disgust with rampant corruption among government officials.

In eastern Ghazni province's Andar district, two Afghan guards working for a private security company were killed in a Taliban attack on a supply convoy, provincial police chief Zarawar Khan Zahid said.

Two attackers were killed, including a senior regional commander, Mullah Mohmmadi, Zahid said.

NATO has been stepping up operations ahead of the elections and said Thursday it had detained several insurgents in Khost province along the Pakistan border while pursuing senior members of the Haqqani network, an Islamist militant group with deep links to al-Qaida.

The alliance said Afghan and coalition forces captured two Haqqani and several Taliban leaders during 35 separate operations this week.

NATO also reported that three Afghan civilians were killed Wednesday by a homemade bomb in Kandahar's Arghandab district, a Taliban stronghold that has had a growing coalition presence.

Two Taliban commanders were also killed Wednesday in fighting with a joint Afghan-Taliban force in neighboring Uruzgan province, along with 12 regular insurgent fighters, the Afghan National Police reported.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.