Afghanistan and Pakistan

[buglerbilly]

U.S. officials believe al-Qaeda on brink of collapse

By Greg Miller, Wednesday, July 27, 10:01 AM

U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly convinced that the killing of Osama bin Laden and the toll of seven years of CIA drone strikes have pushed al*Qaeda to the brink of collapse.

The assessment reflects a widespread view at the CIA and other agencies that a relatively small number of additional blows could effectively extinguish the Pakistan-based organization that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — an outcome that was seen as a distant prospect for much of the past decade.

U.S. officials said that al-Qaeda might yet rally and that even its demise would not end the terrorist threat, which is increasingly driven by radicalized individuals as well as aggressive affiliates. Indeed, officials said that al*-Qaeda’s offshoot in Yemen is now seen as a greater counterterrorism challenge than the organization’s traditional base.

President Obama has steadily expanded the clandestine U.S. campaign against that Yemen group, most recently by approving the construction of a secret Persian Gulf airstrip for armed CIA drones. But recent setbacks, including a botched U.S. military airstrike on American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, underscore the difficulties that remain.

Nevertheless, the top U.S. national security officials now allude to a potential finish line in the fight against al-Qaeda, a notion they played down before bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in a May 2 raid in Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta declared during a recent visit to Afghanistan that “we’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda.” The comment was dismissed by skeptics as an attempt to energize troops while defending the administration’s decision to wind down a decade-old war.

But senior U.S. officials from the CIA, the National Counterterrorism Center and other agencies have expressed similar views in classified intelligence reports and closed-door briefings on Capitol Hill, officials said.

“There is a swagger within the community right now for good reason,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee.

“Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is nowhere near defeat,” Chambliss said, referring to the Yemen-based affiliate. “But when it comes to al-Qaeda [core leadership in Pakistan], we have made the kind of strides that we need to make to be in a position of thinking we can win.”

Even those who winced at Panetta’s word choice agree with his broader observation. “I’m not sure I would have chosen ‘strategic defeat,’ ” said a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, who cautioned that even if al-Qaeda is dismantled, its militant ideology has spread and will remain a long-term threat.

“But if you mean that we have rendered them largely incapable of catastrophic attacks against the homeland, then I think Panetta is exactly right,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. “We are within reach of rendering them to that point.”

A turning point

U.S. officials said that bin Laden’s death was a turning point, in part because he remained active in managing the network and keeping it focused on mounting attacks against the United States, but also because his charisma was key to al-Qaeda’s brand and the proliferation of franchises overseas.


Largely because of bin Laden’s death, “we can even see the end of al-Qaeda as the global, borderless, united jihad,” said another U.S. official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. “What that doesn’t mean is an end to terrorists and people targeting the United States.”

Officials also point to the cumulative effect of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. Missiles fired by the unmanned aircraft have killed at least 1,200 militants since 2004, including 224 this year, according to figures compiled by the New America Foundation. Many of the strikes have been aimed at al-Qaeda allies also accused of attacking American targets; those allies include the Haqqani network and the Pakistani Taliban.

Beyond bin Laden, “we have eliminated a number of generations of leaders,” said the senior U.S. counterterrorism official. “They have not had a successful operation in a long time. You at some point have to ask yourself, ‘What else do we have to do?’ ”

Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded bin Laden as leader of al-Qaeda, is among a handful of “high-value targets” left in Pakistan, U.S. officials said. Zawahiri is seen as a divisive figure who may struggle to prevent al-Qaeda from splintering into smaller, more regionally focused nodes.

AQAP, as the Yemen-based group is known, has emerged as the most dangerous of those affiliates. The group is responsible for recent plots, including the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009 and the attempt to mail parcels packed with explosives to U.S. addresses last year.

The U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, the elite military unit that carried out the bin Laden raid, has led the pursuit of AQAP with Special Operations advisers working alongside Yemeni forces, and both piloted and drone aircraft patrolling from above.

Just days after bin Laden was killed, JSOC was in position to deliver a follow-on blow to AQAP. At least three U.S. aircraft, including a drone, fired rockets at a pickup truck in which Aulaqi was traveling. Despite the barrage, the New Mexico native known for fiery online sermons was able to switch vehicles and escape.

U.S. officials described the miss as a major setback. “We missed the opportunity to do two quick kills of senior al-Qaeda guys,” said a senior U.S. military official familiar with JSOC operations.

CIA’s role in Yemen

In part because of such struggles, the Obama administration is bolstering the CIA’s role in Yemen, seeking to replicate its pursuit of al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The agency is expected to work closely with Saudi Arabia, exploiting the kingdom’s close ties to Yemen’s most influential tribes in an effort to develop new networks of sources on AQAP.

At the same time, the agency is building a desert airstrip so that it can begin flying armed drones over Yemen. The facility, which is scheduled to be completed in September, is designed to shield the CIA’s aircraft, and their sophisticated surveillance equipment, from observers at busier regional military hubs such as Djibouti, where the JSOC drones are based.

The Washington Post is withholding the specific location of the CIA facility at the administration’s request.

More broadly, U.S. officials warn that al-Qaeda’s influence is likely to outlast its status as a functioning network. “Terrorist organizations, even more than enemy armies, are capable of reconstituting,” the senior U.S. counterterrorism official said. “The thing we absolutely don’t want to do is hang out another ‘Mission Accomplished’ sign.”

[buglerbilly]

Kandahar mayor killed by suicide bomber with explosives in turban

Taliban suspected, though Karzai ally may have been victim of grudge over destruction of illegally built homes

Jon Boone in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 July 2011 14.34 BST


Ghulam Haidar Hamidi: his death raises concerns over whether US military gains will be undermined by the continuing killings of public figures. Photograph: Ahmad Nadeem/Reuters

Afghan insurgents appeared to continue their assassination campaign against key public figures on Wednesday with the killing of the mayor of Kandahar.

Ghulam Haider Hamidi was targeted by a suicide bomber who got into the municipality compound in Kandahar City with explosives concealed under his turban. The technique was first used earlier this month in a mosque in the city during a memorial service for Ahmed Wali Karzai, a regional strongman and half-brother of the president.

Abdul Manan, a municipality employee, said the mayor had emerged from his office into the garden, where he made a call on his mobile phone.

The assassin grabbed him and detonated the bomb.

"I rushed outside and saw the mayor was lying still on the ground," said Manan. "Another headless body was next to him and the mayor had deep wounds on his face and chest.''

The death of Hamidi will raise further concerns about whether military gains by the US military in the Kandahar region, particularly in districts adjoining the city, will be undermined by the remorseless killing of top public figures.

The death comes weeks after the killing in their homes of two powerful politicians in the south: Ahmed Wali Karzai and Jan Mohammad Khan, an ally of the Karzai family and a key figure in neighbouring Uruzgan province. In April, Kandahar's police chief was killed by a suicide bomber who entered police headquarters.

A recent UN report said "targeted killings" had increased in the first half of 2011 from an already high level. Assassination attempts had caused 43 injuries and 190 deaths – a 5% increase on the same period in 2010.

"Every death piles on top of the other and leads to a sense of demoralisation, that nobody is safe," said Martine van Bijlert, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

"Previously these attacks were carried out when the targets were on the move, either in their cars or on the way to the mosque or somewhere else where they were vulnerable. But now we have this recent development where assassins are able to enter secure areas and target people there."

Hamidi, an Afghan-American who worked as an accountant in the US for 20 years, was nowhere near as politically important as Ahmed Wali Karzai. Although Karzai held an elected position as the head of the provincial council, he was a powerbroker who wielded enormous power through his control of the war economy.

US strategy in the south has been to try to build the influence of formal institutions and government officials against such informal "malign actors". Hamidi held an official position but was also very much part of the Karzai family network in the south, to which he owed his job. It had been rumoured that he might take the lead role in the province after the killing of Ahmed Wali.

As well as being a target of insurgents attempting to weaken the government in any way possible, Hamidi had made plenty of enemies among businessmen and power brokers who felt excluded from war economy contracts, projects and other get-rich schemes that have largely benefited the extended Karzai family and its tribal allies.

The fact that the Taliban's spokesmen were relatively slow to claim credit for the assassination prompted speculation that his killing could be the result of a personal grudge.

Hamidi was attacked in some quarters over the Aino Minna development, a somewhat surreal US-style suburb on the edge of Kandahar City. In part developed by Mahmoud Karzai, one of the Afghan president's controversial brothers, the scheme has been criticised for being built on land once owned by the ministry of defence that was sold cheaply after intense lobbying, some from Hamidi.

At the time of his assassination Hamidi's office was surrounded by around 100 protesters, furious at the municipality's destruction of houses built illegally on government land in recent days in the Loy Wala area of Kandahar.

One protester, Hajji Lal Mohammad, said the mayor had sparked outrage in the community where the houses were destroyed, apparently killing two children.

"They destroyed 200 houses and two children were killed," he said. "When I saw the bulldozers I also wanted to kill the mayor."

The governor of Kandahar, Toryalai Wesa, warned the "land mafia" who illegally occupy land that "you might be happy that the mayor is gone but we will stand and we will destroy illegal houses".

Although a statement by the governor's office seemed to suggest that the land issue was the reason the mayor had been killed, the governor said it was too early to say who was responsible and that the killing was being investigated.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban attack Hamid Karzai ally in southern Afghanistan

Targeting of warlord Matiullah Khan is the Taliban's latest assault on leaders of the Afghan president's regional power base

Jon Boone in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 July 2011 13.38 BST


The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has seen his power base in southern Afghanistan steadily eroded with the killing of three key allies, including his brother. Photograph: S Sabawoon/EPA

An apparent campaign to eliminate Hamid Karzai's most important allies in southern Afghanistan has continued with an assault on the base of the powerful warlord Matiullah Khan.

At least 17 people were killed when half a dozen insurgents armed with machine guns and suicide bombs launched an assault on buildings in Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan, a province adjoining both Kandahar and Helmand.

Khan was unharmed in the attacks, which targeted the compound of his militia – regarded as a semi-official force – the local police headquarters and the provincial governor's house.

Khan told the Guardian that two members of his force were wounded and one policeman was killed. He said a reporter was killed when the office of the state broadcaster RTA was attacked.

"We have very good security here so they were not able to enter my battalion's camp, so they attacked the television station instead," Khan said.

He blamed the attack on Pakistan and Iran, saying they gave orders to the Taliban. "They want to kill all the elders and leading people in Afghanistan so that this country will become the slave of Pakistan," he said.

Mohammad Nabi, the head of the main hospital in Tirin Kot, said the attack began when a suicide car bomber drove into the front gate of the governor's compound, damaging the nearby women's hospital. He said one child had been killed, in addition to more than 20 people injured.

The attack, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility while it was still under way, will be embarrassing for the government and Nato, given Tirin Kot's size, importance and recent claims that security has improved there.

The attempt on Khan's life follows the recent assassinations of three crucial pillars of Karzai's power base in southern Afghanistan: Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president's brother; Jan Mohammad Khan, one of the leading figures in Uruzgan; and Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of Kandahar.

Ahmed Wali, Jan Mohammad and Matiullah Khan have much in common. All three had been condemned as troublemakers by Nato chiefs who said their monopolisation of the south's booming war economy and the exclusion of other tribal groupings from power and wealth helped fuel anti-government resentment and Taliban recruitment.

They also all represent rival centres of power to official government institutions that have struggled to develop in the shadow of such powerful warlords.

Despite concerns over the impact of what Nato calls "malign actors", it has been unable to dislodge them in part because they play a vital role in supporting military operations.

Matiullah Khan's 2,000-man militia, for example, effectively controls the vital highway linking Kandahar to Tirin Kot. Without him crucial supplies would not be able to reach the Dutch, Australian and US troops who have all operated in the province over recent years.

Securing convoys has earned him a fortune in fees of up to $1,700 (£1,050) per truck, which he collects from logistics companies. His militia also won him the respect and support of US special forces, who conduct joint operations with Matiullah's men despite some reports that he has also co-operated with insurgents and drug traffickers.

From the same Popolzai tribe as the Karzai family, Matiullah formed a close operational alliance with Ahmed Wali and other strongmen in the south. He is the nephew of Jan Mohammad Khan.

The loss of so many Karzai allies comes at a time when the president has become ever more isolated and unpopular. He is also engaged in a bitter dispute with parliament over last year's election results, prompting some MPs to call for him to be impeached.

[buglerbilly]

Costs of British military operations in Afghanistan estimated at £18bn

Official figures by Commons defence committee also estimates cost of Libyan no-fly zone and bombing at £260m

Richard Norton-Taylor

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 July 2011 13.42 BST


The parliamentary committee said it was 'disappointed' by the MoD's inability to provide information it asked for about some £12bn worth of write-offs as a result of scrapped equipment.

The cost of British military operations in Afghanistan is now officially estimated to amount to more than £18bn, figures released on Thursday show. The cost of imposing a no-fly zone and bombing targets in Libya is so far officially estimated at £260m.

The figures are contained in a report by the Commons defence committee which makes it clear the sums are no more than estimates. "The total cost of operations in Afghanistan is not known", it states. The Ministry of Defence told the committee: "It is too early accurately to forecast the cost of UK operations in Libya".

The defence committee reveals that the MoD estimates the cost of military operations in Afghanistan this year to be more than £4bn. It has said the cost until March this year amounted to about £14bn.

However, the sums for Afghanistan , and the £260m – more than half spent on bombs and missiles - estimated for Libya, are described as "additional costs" of operations to be paid for by the Treasury out its reserves.

The figures do not include what the defence committee describes as "additional costs in terms of training opportunities cancelled or deferred and equipment wear and tear that will eventually have to be met".

The committee adds that it is "disappointed" by the MoD's inability to provide information it asked for about some £12bn worth of "write-offs" as a result of equipment, including a fleet of Nimrod maritime reconnaissance aircraft, and the navy's type 22 frigates, scrapped as part of last year's strategic defence and security review. Asked for a breakdown, it received a reply "which left us little the wiser", the committee says.

And it expresses concern that the armed forces voluntary redundancy programme is over-subscribed and that applications, and even resignations, have been received from individuals who might have achieved "high command".

More than 900 officers and men have applied for redundancy, though the army has asked for just 500 volunteers. The army is also likely to lost a significant number of experienced NCOs.

The Commons defence committee has asked the MoD to show how it will ensure that the voluntary redundancy programme "does not impact on the future leadership capability and effectiveness of the armed services".

James Arbuthnot, the committee's chairman, said: "In some instances the department appears to be unable or unwilling to provide the kind of detailed information we ask for, notably in respect of the total cost of military operations and the detail of savings proposed. This prevents proper parliamentary scrutiny. We expect these gaps to be filled."

British troops in Afghanistan are to be issued with waterproof "bacteria-zapping socks" designed to help keep their feet dry when they are wading through ditches and streams, the MoD announced on Thursday.

And in a new addition to their "pelvic protection system", troops will be equipped with "ballistic knee-length shorts" for troops operating lead metal detectors in search for improvised explosive devices.

[buglerbilly]

Special Ops Chief Warns of al-Qaeda 2.0

July 28, 2011

Associated Press|by Kimberly Dozier



ASPEN, Colo. - The top commander of U.S. special operations forces said Wednesday that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida is bloodied and "nearing its end," but he warned the next generation of militants could keep special operations fighting for a decade to come.

Navy SEAL Adm. Eric T. Olson described the killing of bin Laden by a special operations raid on May 2 as a near-killing blow for what he called "al-Qaida 1.0," as created by bin Laden and led from his hideout in Pakistan.

Olson said the group had already lost steam because of the revolts of the Arab Spring, which proved the Muslim world did not need al-Qaida to bring down governments, from Tunisia to Egypt.

"I think the death of bin Laden was an uppercut to the jaw," Olson told a packed crowd, opening the Aspen Security Forum. "It just knocked them on their heels."

Olson echoed other administration officials who are predicting al-Qaida's demise if a few more key leaders can be eliminated.

But the four-star admiral warned of the fight to come against what he called al-Qaida 2.0, with new leaders like American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, who Olson said understands America better than Americans understand him.

"It will morph, it will disperse," he said of the movement. "It will become in some ways more westernized, (with) dual passport holders" and "fewer cave dwellers," he said.

Olson said others like al-Awlaki will probably refine their message to appeal to a wider audience, and seek ungoverned spaces to operate from, where they can smuggle in weapons and train their followers. He described how current offshoots like al-Awlaki's al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen are cooperating with militants in Somalia, describing what he called an "invisible bridge" between the two.

Nor did the admiral write off bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahri. He said al-Zawahri had not yet put his stamp on the original organization, so U.S. counterterrorist forces do not yet know what kind of threat his leadership will present.

Olson agreed with the White House's newly announced policy to strike terrorists through focused action rather than full-scale invasion, preferably by training and working with the host country's forces. He cautioned against thinking raids would solve all U.S. foreign policy problems.

"This idea of being able to wait over the horizon and spring over and chop off heads doesn't really work," he said, describing the "yin and yang" of special operations as including capture-and-kill raids as well as long-term engagement with host countries' militaries. The latter involves U.S. troops "developing long-term relationships, learning languages, meeting people, studying histories, learning black markets."

"If you don't know that, you won't be an effective counterterrorism force," Olson said.

Olson said the fight against all versions of al-Qaida could keep U.S. special operations troops deploying at the same pace for another decade, even as U.S. conventional forces draw down from places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The admiral said that will keep the pressure on his already frayed force, which is now seeing the departure of many mid-level troops who joined just after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and have gotten worn out by the pace of constant deployments. The Special Operations Command has nearly doubled in size since the attacks, from 32,000 to some 60,000, including units like SEALs, Army Special Forces Green Berets and Rangers, and Marine Special Operators. But Olson said nearly half that force is deployed at any one time, and that tempo is taking its toll on troops and their families, resulting in divorces or separations.

Currently the longest serving Navy SEAL, Olson is less than two weeks from retiring after 38 years of service. He'll be replaced by another Navy SEAL: Adm. Bill McRaven, the commander of the raid that got bin Laden.

(Photo: ABC News)

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Police Suffer Worst Losses of War

July 28, 2011

Associated Press|by Deb Reichmann and Ahmad Seir

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban were raining fire on his checkpoint when Afghan policeman Jan Agha heard the whooshing sound of an incoming rocket just as he was tying a tourniquet on his bloody hand ripped by a machine gun bullet.

He moved fast, but couldn't get far enough. Shrapnel from the rocket sprayed his legs, breaking both in several places.

"If I had been standing where I was, I would have been killed," the 26-year-old Agha said, lying in a hospital bed in Kabul.

Agha of Maidan Shahr in Wardak province lived to tell his story, but many of his comrades don't. Afghan policemen on the front line of the war suffer more deaths and injuries than Afghan soldiers or U.S.-led coalition forces. And the human toll on the 130,600-member police force is likely to rise as it increasingly takes over from foreign troops who are to end their combat mission in 2014.

There were 2,770 Afghan policemen killed during the two-year period that ended March 19, the last day of the most recent Afghan calendar year. That's more than twice the 1,052 Afghan soldiers or 1,256 U.S. and other foreign troops who died during the same period. Moreover, 4,785 Afghan policemen were wounded in the two-year period compared with 2,413 Afghan soldiers.

The statistics were obtained from the Afghan ministries of interior and defense and the U.S.-led coalition.

"For anyone to say `When will the Afghans start fighting and dying for their country?' I can tell you that they are doing that right now." Gen. David Petraeus, the former top commander in Afghanistan, recently testified in the U.S. Senate.

The Afghan National Police force has come under criticism for corruption, and many call it unprofessional and under equipped. Illiteracy is rife, despite six weeks of training and literacy lessons that recruits undergo. Still, questions remain about whether it will be able to handle the increased duties as foreign troops leave.

Police officials acknowledge the problems. But they also point to the risks that members of the force are constantly facing. While the troops of the more than 160,000-member Afghan National Army move in offensives against Taliban and insurgents, police are at the forefront trying to keep a longer-term hold on territory, patrolling their towns, stopping suicide bombers from slipping through checkpoints and trying to foil potential attacks.

"It is true that corruption is a liability in the police force, but (critics) tend to forget about the sacrifices and the hard work and the bravery of the Afghan police," said Hanif Atmar, who was interior minister from 2008 to 2010.

Police, for example, are the main force involved in eradication of poppy crops, making them the target of hatred from farmers, drug dealers and the fighters that profit from the drug trade, said Zemeri Bashary, a former ministry spokesman who now handles security for international organizations in Afghanistan.

"They are the first barrier against all the bad guys - whether they're terrorists, insurgents, drug dealers," Bashary said.

Interior Minister Bismullah Khan said in an interview on Wednesday that most police casualties are from roadside bombs. "Unfortunately, we are on the front line. Sometimes the casualties go up and sometimes they go down, but we are obliged to fight against the enemy," he said.

On average, between 1,200 and 1,400 policemen are killed every year, and up to three to four times that number are injured, said Atmar. Better intelligence networks would reduce that, he said, as would better equipment. Most police vehicles are unarmored, making them vulnerable to roadside blasts. "The police are expected to regularly patrol areas so they are easy targets," Atmar said.

Assassination is a danger. The police chief of southern Kandahar province and the top police commander in the north were killed in two suicide bombings this year. This month, insurgents hanged an 8-year-old boy in Helmand province because his father, a police officer, refused to give them a police vehicle.

In the hospital, Agha said his 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son sometimes try to stop him from going to work, fearing he won't come home.

When two of his close colleagues were killed two years ago by a mine, Agha said he was demoralized and thought about quitting. "But then I thought that if I leave and others leave too there will be no one left. That thought motivated me to stay and take revenge for my friends."

Casualties are one reason only about half the policemen re-enlist after their first tour of duty, police officials said. Still, police recruiting is strong. In June, 130,600 Afghans signed up, exceeding the target by more than 1,000, according to the U.S.-led coalition.

Some join for patriotic reasons. They want to see their homeland secured by Afghans not foreigners.

"Police are serving this nation," said Abdul Jabar, a 30-year-old policeman from Parwan province who is recovering from a bullet wound to his leg that he received in a Taliban ambush. "If I can still walk, I will go back to my duty."

For many others, it's a matter of money. A new patrolman makes about $165 a month, considered a decent salary.

"My brother many times tried to stop me from joining. He said `It's too dangerous. You will lose your leg,'" said Gul Mohammad, a 38-year-old father of five in Ghazni in eastern Afghanistan. "But I had to join to feed my family."

Last year, Mohammed's police vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. He lost his right leg in the explosion.

He now works as a street cobbler, making less money.

"I don't see a good future ahead for myself," he said. "When I look at other people now I get upset. I used to be like them. I used to have both of my legs. I could walk like them."

Currently, if a police officer is killed on duty, his family receives the equivalent of around $2,200. The families of slain lower-level patrolmen receive about $1,500. The ministry pays the cost of treating wounded policemen.

In Kabul, Hedayatullah Khan, a 25-year-old patrolman, stood with his AK-47 stopping vehicles at a checkpoint, looking for possible suicide bombers.

Amid the noise of engines and blaring horns, Khan and the other patrolmen closely watched the traffic - boys driving donkey carts, vendors pushing ice cream carts, coalition Humvees, armored vehicles, cars and overcrowded buses.

"In the morning when I come out of my house after praying, I know I am in danger of being attacked," Khan said. "Even when I go to sleep at night, I have the feeling that death is following me."

--

Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez and Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[Milne Bay]

Deadly Taliban onslaught near Australian base

Australian troops were called in to fight off a coordinated insurgent assault on key buildings in the southern Afghan city of Tarin Kowt.

Insurgents armed with automatic weapons and wearing vests strapped with explosives attacked the governor's office and the police chief's building in the city, which is less than 5 kilometres from the main Australian base in Afghanistan.

The attacks, which were immediately claimed by the Taliban, killed more than 20 people, including a local BBC reporter, and left dozens more wounded.

Two platoons of Australian soldiers were involved in the immediate response to the attacks on the town and helped to evacuate eight wounded US troops, but there were no Australian casualties.

The Australian base at Tarin Kowt is on heightened alert as a precaution.

"The base is safe and the base was safe earlier today," Colonel Bob Akam, the commander of Combined Task Force Uruzgan, said.

The assault was the deadliest insurgent attack in Afghanistan for several weeks and came after NATO-led forces symbolically handed over security control of seven areas of the war-torn country to Afghan troops.

And it flies in the face of assurances by the Australian Government that the situation in Uruzgan province is improving.

Gunmen and suicide bombers attacked several compounds, including the governor's base, and tried to push their way through the compound of the national television station and into the headquarters of a local militia leader Matiullah Khan.

One of the bombers blew himself up; another suicide bomber detonated his explosives when he was shot by Afghan troops.

The explosions were followed by exchanges of fire between insurgents and Afghan soldiers which lasted several hours, with Australian troops called in to help coordinate the coalition response to the assault.
Reporter killed

Omid Khpalwak Photo: Afghan reporter Omid Khpalwak was among those killed in the Tarin Kowt attacks. (AFP: Pajhwok News Agency)

The BBC confirmed one of its Afghan reporters, Omid Khpalwak, was among those killed.

Khpalwak had also worked for the ABC on programs including Four Corners and was a very courageous journalist who was well known to reporters in Uruzgan and Kabul.

High-profile militia leader Matiullah Khan, whose compound appeared to be one of the targets of the attack, was unharmed.

Matiullah Khan commands around 2,000 fighters protecting NATO convoys along the highway that runs from Uruzgan to Kandahar city further south.

His uncle Jan Mohammad Khan, the former governor of Uruzgan and a close ally of president Hamid Karzai, was killed in a gun attack on his Kabul home nearly two weeks ago, five days after the president's half-brother was shot dead in Kandahar.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said the attackers were from the insurgent group, but denied killing the reporter, saying the police were responsible for his death.

The latest southern unrest comes at a critical juncture in the nearly 10-year war on Taliban-led insurgents, as thousands of US surge troops prepare to go home and other Western nations announce limited withdrawals of soldiers.

All foreign combat forces are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and last week a first tranche of handovers from NATO to Afghan forces took place in seven parts of the country.

ABC/wires

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-28/suicide-attackers-hit-tarin-kowt/2815062

[Raven22]

The fuckers blew themselves up right outside a school and women's hospital and killed a bunch of children. A real bunch of heroes. At least all of them were sent to allah for their troubles.

[buglerbilly]

Mindless twats!

[buglerbilly]

British couple held in Afghanistan over suspected terror plot due home

Pair expected to return to UK on Saturday where they could be arrested or placed under surveillance

Richard Norton-Taylor

guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 July 2011 20.53 BST


Afghan special police forces on patrol in Herat, where the British couple suspected of plotting a terror attack were captured. Photograph: Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters

A British couple captured by special forces in Afghanistan and suspected of terrorist-related activities are expected to be returned to the UK on Saturday where they could be arrested or placed under surveillance.

The case remains highly sensitive because of the legal complexities involved. UK officials last night declined to comment.

The couple were seized by British special forces last week in the western Afghan city of Herat. They were transferred to what the Ministry of Defence called a "secure facility" in Kandahar where they have been held since.

Nato forces can hold suspects for up to four days before releasing them or handing them over to the Afghan authorities. However, the period can be extended "in exceptional circumstances". UK officials have made clear the man and the woman captured in a hotel in Herat constituted a special case.

The Foreign Office said at the time that suspects could be detained for more than 96 hours "in particular where it could provide information that could help protect our forces or the local population".

The couple were seized in what UK defence officials described as a joint operation with the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS). However, the Afghan authorities insisted the operation was "UK-led".

Officials familiar with the operation called it "terrorism-related". A key question will be the nature of any evidence against the couple obtained by the British security services.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan tour of duty could double to 12 months for some British army units

Commander of troops in Helmand province says ongoing Taliban threat necessitates longer deployment of certain units

Hannah Godfrey

The Guardian, Monday 1 August 2011


British troops in Helmand province. 'I suspect over time we’ll see changes and a larger percentage of people doing longer tours,’ said Brigadier Ed Davis. Photograph: Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images

A core of brigades serving in Afghanistan may see their tours of duty doubled from six to 12 months in the lead-up to the withdrawal of British combat forces by the end of 2014, according to the commander of British troops in the southern province of Helmand.

Brigadier Ed Davis, commander of Task Force Helmand, told the Independent that the continuing threat posed by the Taliban called for longer deployment of certain units, in particular those involved in "mentoring" Afghan forces.

He suggested that the work of the British army in Afghanistan would benefit from increased continuity: "The constant churn of people with whom you have really strong relationships is hard, so I think you need to reduce that by having people in theatre for longer.

"I suspect over time we'll see these changes and a larger percentage of people doing longer tours … We are looking at nine to 12 months."

An extension of the length of tours in Afghanistan would be likely to be hugely controversial at a time when the Ministry of Defence faces massive staffing cuts and is engaged in Libyan operations.

In response to the brigadier's comments, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said: "In order to provide operational continuity, a small number of specialist posts are designated as 'continuity posts' and are deployed for either nine- or 12-month tours. In Afghanistan these posts mainly relate to key appointments in headquarters and some senior command positions.

"The MoD is always examining how best to generate and sustain our armed forces, including by looking at the length of tours and the intervals between them, however, the vast majority of personnel serve six-month tours and there are no current plans to change this."

A suicide attack on a police station in Lashkar Gah, which killed 11 people on Sunday, underlines the need for a long-term commitment to training, senior British officers told the Independent. Control of Helmand's provincial capital was handed over to Afghan forces less than two weeks ago.

[buglerbilly]

Suicide bomber kills 11 in Lashkar Gar

A suicide bomber has blown himself up at the main gate of a provincial police headquarters in southern Afghanistan, killing at least 11 people in a city where Afghans have recently taken control of security.


Soldiers of the 2nd Bat, The Duke of Lancs on foot patrol in Shin Kalay, Lashkar Gar, Helmand, Afghanistan Photo: JULIAN SIMMONDS

7:00AM BST 01 Aug 2011

Separately, five international service members were killed on Sunday.

The suicide bombing in Lashkar Gah was the latest in a string of attacks in the south in recent weeks that have included assassinations of high-level government officials in neighbouring Kandahar and a coordinated attack against government buildings in Uruzgan province that killed 19 people last week.

The high-profile attacks have provoked a growing sense of insecurity in the very region where international military commanders say security has improved since the surge of US troops last year. Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, in particular has been touted as a success story from the offensive by international forces - one reason it was one of seven areas handed over to Afghan forces earlier this month.

The attack early on Sunday, which ripped a gaping hole in the station compound's wall, killed 10 police officers and a child, and wounded as least 12 people, said Helmand provincial spokesman Daoud Ahmadi.

People at the site said a police vehicle was on fire at the gate. Mr Ahmadi said a suicide bomber apparently drove a car between two police vehicles at the entrance and then detonated the explosives.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack.

It has been less than two weeks since Lashkar Gah was formally handed over to Afghan control in the first stage of a plan to have all of Afghanistan under the oversight of Afghan security forces by the end of 2014. It is the capital city of a province that has been a stronghold for the insurgency and where US Marines have massed over the past year to try to turn back the Taliban.

The attack comes as Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tours Afghanistan for a second day. He has been meeting with military commanders and troops in the south, a region that has been rocked by violence and suicide attacks in recent weeks.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Withdrawal Plan Ordered by Mid-October

August 01, 2011

Associated Press|by Lolita C. Baldor

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan has been ordered to submit a plan by mid-October for the initial withdrawal of American troops, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday. That plan may hinge in part on whether the latest surge in attacks continues through the holy month of Ramadan.

Commanders are hearing that Taliban leaders might leave their fighters in the country to try to regain lost ground during the Islamic holy period which begins Monday, rather than crossing the border to Pakistan, said Adm. Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman.

Mullen, who visited U.S. outposts along Afghanistan's eastern border on Sunday, also said U.S. troops are making progress in their renewed campaign against Taliban-allied Haqqani network insurgents in havens in Pakistan. And he issued another warning that Islamabad must step up its efforts to root out those militants.

Speaking to reporters traveling with him in Afghanistan, Mullen said Marine Gen. John Allen, who has just taken over as top U.S. commander here, needs time to evaluate the combat, training and other requirements before presenting a detailed withdrawal plan.

Mullen's comments for the first time laid out a deadline for Allen to structure the planned withdrawal of 10,000 U.S. troops by the end of the year, as announced by President Obama.

"The next month will be very telling," said Mullen, noting that often the Taliban leaders will travel back to Pakistan for Ramadan. It's unclear at this point what they will do, or if there will be any decline in the fighting.

U.S. military leaders have said they plan to shift resources and perhaps some troops to the eastern border in the coming months, and Mullen said commanders he met with along the eastern border said the strategy is working.

"The overall goal has been to make it much more difficult for the Haqqani network to penetrate directly in what has previously been called this jet stream between Pakistan, right through Khost into Kabul, and it is more difficult," Mullen said during a news conference shortly after he returned from the volatile border. "That will clearly continue to be the case."

At the same time, however, a senior NATO military official said coalition forces will likely never eliminate the havens. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said that instead the goal is to intensify U.S. efforts while building the Afghan forces so that they can take over the battle for their own security there.

U.S. officials have been pressing Pakistan to go after Haqqani militants and other fighters who routinely launch attacks into Afghanistan from Pakistan. But relations with Islamabad have frayed, particularly after the U.S. raid in May that killed al-Qaida terror network leader Osama bin Laden. In recent weeks, the Obama administration moved to delay $800 million in aid to Pakistan, to put further pressure on the government, which has been reluctant to push into North Waziristan and go after the Haqqani network.

Acknowledging the ongoing frustration with Islamabad, Mullen said Sunday that the U.S. will continue to push for action, "but I would be hard pressed to tell you when it's going to happen."

On Ramadan, one Western official said that while Taliban leaders have pushed for an increase in violence through the holy month, information suggests there will be some spikes but that they don't have the ability to carry off a sustained surge. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said some leaders and fighters had already left Afghanistan to cross the border into Pakistan, but it is too soon to tell how many may stay.

Mullen, who arrived Friday in Afghanistan, met Saturday with commanders in southern Afghanistan.

He said that so far commanders are saying they are seeing some signs of improved security, but his comments came amid a series of spectacular deadly attacks across the south, including a bombing Sunday outside the main gate of the police headquarters in the southern Afghan city of Lashkar Gah. The suicide bomber killed at least 11 people in a city where Afghans had only recently taken control of security.

That attack comes on the heels of bombings in the southern province of Uruzgan that killed at least 19 people, and the assassination of Kandahar's mayor.

The mayor was the third southern Afghan leader to be killed in the last three weeks.

There are nearly 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Under Obama's troop withdrawal plan, 10,000 U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of the year, and another 23,000 by the end of next summer.

A key to the withdrawal is the ongoing effort to train Afghan forces so they can take control of their own security. Mullen said that while training remains a top priority, and commanders would like to accelerate it, it's not clear how possible that will be over the coming months.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghans Arrest Taliban Leader, Army Turncoat

August 01, 2011

Associated Press|by Rahim Faiez

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A senior Defense Ministry official who allegedly leaked secrets that helped the Taliban stage suicide attacks in Kabul has been arrested by the Afghan Intelligence Service -- one of three high-profile arrests announced Saturday by the agency.

A spokesman said also arrested were a senior Taliban official accused of leading an insurgent propaganda campaign in eastern Afghanistan, and an insurgent who allegedly helped organize an April 1 attack against the U.N. headquarters in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif that killed 11 people, including seven foreign U.N. employees.

Infiltration has become a serious concern for Afghan forces and the U.S.-led military alliance that is training them -- often on bases they share. The Taliban have said the practice has become one of their main strategies in their war against the U.S.-led coalition and President Hamid Karzai's government.

Several attacks involving bombers wearing military uniforms have targeted foreign troops as well as official Afghan institutions, including an April suicide bombing by an attacker wearing an army uniform that killed three people at the Defense Ministry.

The intelligence service recently arrested Gul Mohammad, an army officer who was serving at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Kabul, the agency's spokesman Lutifullah Mashal said at a news conference.

Mohammad, who was an eight-year veteran of the army, was in charge of three checkpoints in the capital -- one near NATO headquarters and the presidential palace, and two others on a road where the coalition has many bases and training facilities.

Mashal said insurgents offered Mohammad 200,000 Pakistanis rupees ($2,300) to help organize suicide attacks in Kabul. Many of the suicide bombers operating inside Afghanistan are thought to be trained in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions, which border provinces such as Nuristan and Nangarhar.

Mashal did not give Mohammad's rank or provide any other details about his role at the ministry, but said he was from the Taliban-controlled Waygal district in northeastern Nuristan province. Mashal said Mohammad is also thought to have supplied insurgents in the area with information on Afghan army troop movements.

He said Maulvi Rahimullah, who was allegedly responsible for the media, publication department and Internet services for a Taliban shura, or council, based in Peshawar, Pakistan, had been detained. Rahimullah, who was from the Pachir Wagam district of eastern Nangarhar province, also was a member of that shura, Mashal said.

According to Mashal, he also went by the alias Azrat Bilal and was reportedly the Taliban deputy shadow governor of Nangarhar in charge of recruiting in four eastern Afghan provinces. The third man arrested was identified as a suspected weapons supplier named Maulvi Sabor who was arrested in Balkh province.

Mashal said all the arrests occurred in areas where the international military coalition has transferred responsibility for security to Afghan forces. Two provinces and five provincial capitals were turned over to government forces earlier this month, part of a gradual handover of responsibility that will lead to full Afghan control by the end of 2014, when foreign combat troops are to leave the country.

"This is a good achievement for Afghan forces in these area, and a loss for the enemies who are trying to attack in those places where the transition of forces is taking place," Mashal said.

But violence continued around the country unabated.

Insurgents killed seven Afghan soldiers and a translator alongside two NATO service members in a bombing and ambush Friday in eastern Paktia province, according to the deputy provincial governor Abdul Rahman Mangal. He said the group was on patrol in the Zurmat district.

Police acting on tips in Kunar province also intercepted six would-be suicide bombers who local residents said were on their way to conduct an attack in the provincial capital of Asadabad, said Wasifullah Wasify. The provincial spokesman said one attacker blew himself up outside the vehicle on a road in Khas Kunar district, injuring one policeman. Police shot and killed two attackers and arrested two others, but one escaped, he said.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Governor: NATO Airstrike Kills 4 Police

August 01, 2011

Associated Press|by Amir Shah

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The governor of a province in northeastern Afghanistan said Monday a NATO airstrike killed four police officers at a checkpoint in the remote and mountainous region.

Jamaluddin Badar said coalition forces also detained 12 police officers after the airstrike. He strongly condemned the attack and arrests, which he said occurred late Sunday in the Wama district of the largely lawless Nuristan province bordering Pakistan.

"As a result of this airstrike, four police were killed and two were wounded. After the airstrike, coalition forces took 12 police with them from the checkpoint, while the flag of Afghanistan flew from the checkpoint and all police were in uniform," Badar said in a statement.

The international military coalition said it was "aware of a statement from Afghan officials in Nuristan province alleging a friendly fire incident in eastern Afghanistan." It said it is investigating the report.

Nuristan is a sparsely populated province where the Taliban and other insurgent groups control large swaths of territory. Al-Qaida is also thought to have a presence in the area. Fighting has intensified in eastern Afghanistan, especially in the provinces that run along Pakistan's tribal areas, where insurgents retain safe havens from which they train and organize attacks against Afghan and coalition forces across the border.

Mistaken airstrikes and night-raids are the leading cause of tension between the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government. President Hamid Karzai has demanded that the coalition take steps to ensure that airstrikes do not cause accidental deaths. The United Nations said in its midyear report that airstrikes conducted by the U.S.-led coalition remained the leading cause of civilian deaths by pro-government forces.

In the first six months of the year, 79 civilian deaths were attributed to airstrikes -- up 14 percent from the same period last year. These include all attacks or airstrikes from military aircraft, including munitions dropped or fired from airplanes, helicopters and drones, the U.N. report said.

"The repetition of such mistakes will have bad effect on the police ranks in the province," Badar said in a statement. It is unclear how many forces the U.S.-led coalition has in the province, where security is provided largely by a small force of Afghan police.

The U.S.-led coalition has said it will intensify its efforts to fight insurgents in the east after focusing its efforts for the past year on southern Afghanistan -- especially in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. The coalition has claimed significant security gains in the south, but violence has been escalation around the country in the months following the start of a Taliban offensive in April.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Commandos Raid Pakistan All the Time

By Noah Shachtman August 1, 2011 | 11:02 am



It’s not just the drones. In recent years, U.S. special operations forces have regularly and “surreptitiously” slipped into Pakistan, raiding suspected terrorist hideouts on Pakistani soil. The team that killed Osama bin Laden — those guys alone had conducted “ten to twelve” of those missions before they hit that infamous compound in Abbottabad.

In a remarkable story for this week’s New Yorker, Nicholas Schmidle puts together the most detailed picture so far of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. But the most combustible component of the explosive article might be the disclosure that U.S. commandos sneak into Pakistan on the regular.

Over the last week, current and one-time top officials have debated the wisdom of the U.S. launching unilateral strikes in places like Pakistan. Former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told a gathering of security professionals in Aspen that the attacks weren’t worth the local antipathy they generated. Retired Gen. Doug Lute, who oversees Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy at the White House, admitted that there was a major “humiliation factor.” But he told the conference that now was the time to “double down” on the raids, with al-Qaida in disarray. “We need to go for the knockout punch.”

Most people in the audience assumed Lute was talking about additional drone attacks. Perhaps Navy SEALs would deliver the hit, instead.

In many minds, that decisive blow landed last May, when Navy SEALs took out the world’s most wanted terrorist. Schmidle’s piece confirms much of what we already knew about the bin Laden raid: yes, they used a stealthy spy drone and a radar-evading Black Hawk and a particularly ferocious dog; yes, bin Laden was unarmed; yes, the SEALs found his porn.

But Schmidle reveals tons of new details, too. One SEAL bear-hugged bin Laden’s wives, to keep them from detonating suicide vests (an unnecessary precaution, it turns out). The commandos considered tunneling into the compound — until overhead imagery showed that the water table would prevent any digging. At least three of the SEALs were part of the operation that rescued Maersk Alabama captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates.

Since the bin Laden raid, the government of Pakistan claimed it was kicking dozens of U.S. military trainers out of the country. Islamabad made noises about shutting down a base from which U.S. drones took off. Generally, relations between the two countries have gone into the toilet.

But the drone attacks haven’t let up. Will the special operations raids continue, as well? Or was the bin Laden operation the final mission?

–

One side note: at last week’s Aspen Security Forum, Special Operations Command chief Adm. Eric Olson refused again and again to answer questions about the bin Laden raid. Too much had been disclosed already. “For the special operations community, the 15 minutes of fame lasted about 14 minutes too long,” Olson said. But the admiral – who oversaw the mission, is responsible for all special operations forces, and almost certainly approved Schmidle’s access to his troops – did offer one thought: the raid was routine. A “dozenish” of these kill-or-capture missions were launched every night, mostly in Afghanistan. “Eleven went left,” Olson noted, “one went right.”

Interestingly, a senior Defense Department official talking to Schmidle used almost identical language. “Most of the missions take off and go left,” he said. “This one took off and went right.” Perhaps it’s not so bad if those 15 minutes last another second or two longer.

Photo: U.S. Army

[buglerbilly]

Mullen Warns of Afghan Transition Corruption

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 1 Aug 2011 08:01

KABUL, Afghanistan - The United States' top military officer warned July 31 that some Afghan institutions central to the transition of power from foreign to local forces are corrupt.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was speaking after a two-day trip to Afghanistan, much of which was spent visiting troops, shortly before he is due to step down in October.

During a press conference in Kabul, he highlighted a lack of good governance in many parts of Afghanistan.

He also spoke specifically about Afghan institutions involved in the transition of power from international to Afghan troops and officials. All foreign combat forces are scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Some countries, including the U.S., have already started troop withdrawals as part of the transition process.

"I think it's fair to say that in the main, Afghan government officials must work on becoming more responsive to the needs and the aspirations of their people," Mullen said.

"We know that some agencies and institutions vital to transition are infiltrated and subverted by criminal patronage networks."

He added: "We must end impunity for criminals who are subverting the state and victimizing the Afghan people."

As well as the security handover to the Afghan police and army, the transition process also includes a wide range of local and national government bodies taking on new responsibilities from foreign officials.

Mullen acknowledged that U.S. "inattention" had contributed to the problem.

The U.S. government has spent $51.8 billion on aid to Afghanistan since 2002, though much of those funds go through contractors.

Experts say corruption is an endemic problem among many officials in Afghanistan and that the government and foreign powers must do more to combat it.

[buglerbilly]

Gurkhas forge relationships in Afghanistan

A Military Operations news article

1 Aug 11

The top and bottom one are great pics!

Three months into their current Helmand deployment, soldiers from 2nd Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles (2 RGR) are using their language skills to build relationships with their partners in the Afghan National Security Forces and Afghan locals.


Sergeant Basanta Rai swaps his helmet for the cap of a local child in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan
[Picture: Captain Charlie Walsh, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

For many of the Gurkhas, this is their fourth or fifth tour of Afghanistan. This experience, added to the shared language they have with Afghans have made them excellent assets to ISAF in Helmand province.

The Gurkhas speak Urdu, widely spoken as a a second or third language in Afghanistan.

There are numerous benefits of this: better relationships can be formed, ones not based around small talk, but proper conversations about home, politics and, of course, sharing jokes.

There is almost always an Urdu speaker amongst the Afghan Uniformed Police (AUP) in a checkpoint (CP) and when a Gurkha unit visits an AUP CP, the young riflemen are able to exchange more than mere pleasantries; chatting with their patrolman counterparts, gaining a real understanding of the AUP, and getting the truth about any issues they may have. The AUP can often mistake some of the Gurkhas as interpreters due to their excellent language abilities.

Having heard the Gurkhas reputation of being fierce fighters, at the start of the tour locals in the Nahr-e Saraj area had been afraid. However, once the riflemen from 2 RGR's A Company were out and engaging with the local population, these fears were soon allayed.


Members of the Police Advisory Team (PAT) from 2nd Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles on patrol in southern Nad 'Ali, Helmand province
[Picture: Corporal Andy Reddy, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Police Advisory Team (PAT) commander Sergeant Basanta Rai says the affinity between the two cultures, based on similar lifestyles and the ability to converse in Urdu, allow close relationships to be formed between that Afghans and Gurkhas:

"'Sangeya, kaisay ho yaar?' - a mixture of Pashto and Hindu greeting with a smile and a firm handshake starts my daily engagement with the Afghan National Police of Nad 'Ali South," he said.

"I won't lie in saying that my Pashto is getting any better, but our handshakes have already converted to 'cheek-banging' greetings and Afghani embraces during our every encounter. Over time we have become close, and the word 'andiwal' (friend) is used to prefix our names."

Captain James Arney, a 2 RGR officer commanding the PAT, based in Babaji, has noticed the benefits of having his team of Gurkhas as mentors:

"Culturally, Nepal and Afghanistan is not so dissimilar. Eating is a shared activity; a time to bond and show generosity. Just like the Gurkhas share their seemingly endless supply of 'maccha' (food), the AUP, despite having little, share their naan [a traditional bread] and cucumbers over lunch. They cook together and eat together just like the Gurkhas 'khaida' of messing.


A soldier of B Company, 2nd Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles, poses for a photograph with Afghan children in southern Nad 'Ali district, Helmand province, southern Afghanistan
[Picture: Leading Airman (Photographer) Andy Laidlaw, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

"The AUP, like the Gurkhas, wash their hands in an almost ceremonial fashion before and after eating, and the focal point is the area around the carpet, or in the Gurkha case, the 'chautari'.

"The body language between the two is similar," he continues. "Telling a story with hand actions, and shrugging the head to one side when reluctantly agreeing to something. It is proven that people relate better to people who resemble themselves, and [this] is demonstrated by the relationships I witness daily with the AUP, locals and the Gurkhas."

Corporal Tilak earned a Mention in Dispatches for his gallant actions alongside the AUP in Chah-e Anjir in the summer of 2009. Now working again out of the Babaji Police headquarters, many AUP commanders were delighted to see his return, and they call him wherever the Gurkhas go. See Related News.

Likewise, Capt Kajiman Limbu MC and Sgt Dilli Rai were mentors for the AUP on Op HERRICK 9. Since their return, they have been reunited with many old friends. Wherever the PATs go, the AUP give a 'thumbs-up' whilst calling out "Nepali good!"

Gurkhas are renowned for their patience, largely due to their rural upbringing and the knowledge that everything takes time: waiting for the crops to grow, collecting water or travelling for days to see a doctor. Patience is crucial when in a mentoring role. Gurkhas apply the correct method: smile, laugh it off, and try again the next day.

[buglerbilly]

Warthogs cover distance of around world in 80 days on Helmand operations

A Military Operations news article

1 Aug 11

After 80 days in Afghanistan, the Operation HERRICK 14 Warthog Group has travelled a distance equivalent to circumnavigating the world.


Members of the Delta Squadron Warthog Group man personnel and vehicle checkpoints at Main Operating Base Price, Helmand province
[Picture: Corporal Andy Reddy, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards' (SCOTS DG) Delta Squadron Warthog Group has been in Afghanistan for 80 days, covering, in that time, 41,000 km (or 25,625 miles) with their all-terrain vehicles; the equivalent of circumnavigating the globe, or making the journey overland from Camp Bastion to Edinburgh five-and-a-half times.

Warthog entered operational service with Badger Squadron, The 2nd Royal Tank Regiment (2 RTR), in December 2010, and D Sqn SCOTS DG will be the first squadron to complete a full tour of Afghanistan with the new vehicle.

Each individual Warthog in the Group has covered an average distance of 850 miles (1,368 km), or the distance, by road, from Land's End to John O'Groats.

Corporal David Toughill, Warthog Vehicle Commander, said:

"Phileas Fogg did it in 80 days using loads of different modes of transport, we've done it in one. There have been a few hairy moments, but so far a good tour. The vehicles are very agile and can carry a lot, which means we can stay in the desert for weeks – it's a bit like camping at times."

The Warthog Group is constantly in demand, and every day is different for them – this is because their vehicles are multi-terrain and can operate anywhere, from the dense vegetation of the Green Zone to the arid plains of the Afghan desert - where the Group recently spent over six weeks on one operation.

The vehicle's mobility allows Task Force Helmand to reach previously inaccessible areas of enemy activity and deny insurgents safe havens from which to regroup and launch operations.


[I]Members of the Warthog Group await tasking at Main Operating Base Price, Helmand province
[Picture: Corporal Andy Reddy, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Corporal Steven McCuaig, Warthog Vehicle Commander, said:

"Every day is different, which can be great as it keeps you on your toes but also frustrating as you never know when the plans are going to change. Working with the Afghan National Army (ANA) has been really interesting. We work closely with them, offering support and advice, and conducting partnered operations."

D Sqn is made up of 119 officers, soldiers and interpreters from the SCOTS DG, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), The Royal Artillery, The Royal Corps of Signals, The Royal Yeomanry, the Royal Navy and the Task Force Helmand Labour Support Unit.

Working independently as an armoured Squadron, but also closely with the Brigade Reconnaissance Force (BRF), the Warthog Group was likened, by Commander 16 Air Assault Brigade, to the Long Range Desert Group, operating for prolonged periods in the middle of some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth.

Captain Rob Durling, a Forward Air Controller serving with 29 Commando Royal Artillery, attached to the Warthog Group, said:

"As the Warthog Group we are used for far-reaching patrols into the desert, and are different to other units because we can live off our vehicles for weeks.


Captain Rob Durling, 29 Commando Royal Artillery
[Picture: Sergeant Paul Randall, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

"We've had really good interaction with the local people and relationships are good. It's small steps here, but the ongoing development projects and improving security situation are all reasons to be positive."

From seeking out insurgents in their secret hide-outs, to providing security for protected communities, the Warthog Group continues to build and extend security in support of the Afghan National Security Forces. Much of their time is spent mentoring and advising the Afghan Army to build up their own capabilities.

REME Recovery Mechanic Corporal Brett Wade said:

"I was working out of Camp Bastion before I got attached to the Warthog Group. It's far more interesting out here because I get to work alongside Afghans. I've picked up a few words now, so can communicate on a basic level.

"I've had a really enjoyable tour, the Warthog is a new vehicle to me but I've got round it quickly. It's enjoyable to command and drive and we certainly see a lot of the country".

Major Jonnie Williamson, Officer Commanding the Warthog Group, added:

"We use Warthog exactly as we would Challenger 2 tank or Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) or CVR(T). Firepower, mobility, and protection allow us to close with the enemy in areas where he previously moved with impunity.


British Army Warthog vehicles in action in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan (stock image)
[Picture: Crown Copyright/MOD 2010]

"We're also able to spend weeks at a time out and about living out of our vehicles and reassuring local people and deterring insurgents. These are tasks traditionally delegated to Challenger 2 regiments and tasks with which we are very comfortable."

The Warthog vehicle is manufactured by Singapore Technology Kinetics and used by the Singaporean Armed Forces as BRONCO. It boasts unrivalled protection against small arms, Rocket-Propelled Grenades (RPGs) and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

D Squadron first saw the Warthog vehicle in Bovington when they conducted driver, operator and maintainer courses prior to live firing exercises in Castlemartin and the final pre-deployment training on Salisbury Plain early in 2011.

The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, Scotland's senior regiment and only regular cavalry, is based in Fallingbostel, northern Germany, and forms part of 7th Armoured Brigade, The Desert Rats.

The SCOTS DG has been attached to 3 Commando Brigade since early 2011 and D Squadron will return to Germany in mid-November where, following a period of post-tour leave, they will return to training on their familiar Challenger 2 main battle tanks.

[buglerbilly]

British couple released after Afghan 'terror plot' arrest

Man and woman captured in UK-led counter-terror operation in Herat are freed after lawyers threatened to take case to court

Richard Norton-Taylor

guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 August 2011 18.20 BST


Afghan special police forces in Herat, where the couple were captured prior to being moved to Kandahar. Photograph: Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters

I always thought that these two should have been "met with a fatal accident............."

A British couple seized by special forces in Afghanistan on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack have been released, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has disclosed.

They were due to be extradited at the end of last week to Britain, where they faced the prospect of being held in custody or subjected to control orders.

The couple's release came after their lawyer threatened to challenge their continuing detention in the British courts. British officials indicated there was insufficient evidence against the couple to convince a UK court that there was a substantial case against them.

However, British government officials said their release, in southern Afghanistan, did not mean the end of the matter. "It's not over," said one.

The MoD said only that two individuals had been released from detention in Kandahar "in accordance with UK detention policy".

The man and the woman were seized by British special forces in the western Afghan city of Herat more than a week ago, then were transferred to what was described as a "secure facility" in Kandahar.

The operation was sensitive and potentially a legal minefield, officials made clear at the time. The two are known to British security services and may have gone to Afghanistan to contact militant groups there.

British officials said the capture of the couple was a "counter-terrorist" operation. British special forces, of which there are about 500 in Afghanistan, work closely with the security and intelligence services there.

Afghan authorities insisted that, although their troops were involved in the capture of the couple, the operation was "UK-led". British officials said on Monday that the man and woman would remain under surveillance.

They were due to be flown back to the UK, but their lawyers let it be known they would immediately seek an application for habeas corpus – in essence, for the couple to be either charged or released – in the British courts.

Clive Stafford-Smith, director of the legal charity Reprieve, wrote last week to the Foreign Office to ask for clarification of the Britons' legal position. He said: "We are extremely concerned: if they were to be transferred to Afghan custody, they would not only face the death penalty, but also would face serious torture as well."

The MoD said at the time: "All detention operations in Afghanistan carried out under the remit of the UN-mandated ISAF [International Security Assistance Force], which includes those conducted by British forces, are conducted in accordance with international law and strict policy frameworks."

Nato forces can hold suspects for up to four days before releasing them or handing them over to the Afghan authorities. However, the period can be extended.

The Foreign Office said last week: "The UK has a national policy of detaining beyond 96 hours in exceptional circumstances, in particular where it could provide information that could help protect our forces or the local population."

[buglerbilly]

Timing of US Drone Strike Questioned

August 02, 2011

Associated Press|by Sebastian Abbot, Kathy Gannon and Kimberly Dozier

ISLAMABAD - The American ambassador to Islamabad phoned Washington with an urgent plea: Stop an imminent CIA drone strike against militants on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border.

He feared the timing of the attack would further damage ties with Islamabad, coming only a day after the government grudgingly freed a CIA contractor held for weeks for killing two Pakistanis.

Ambassador Cameron Munter's rare request - disclosed to The Associated Press by several U.S. officials - was forwarded to the head of the CIA, who dismissed it. U.S. officials said Leon Panetta's decision was driven by anger at Pakistan for imprisoning Raymond Davis for so long and a belief that the militants being targeted were too important to pass up.

The deadly March 17 attack helped send the U.S.-Pakistan relationship into a tailspin from which it has not recovered. The timing of the strike - and others that followed - outraged Pakistani officials, complicating U.S. efforts to win Pakistani cooperation on the Afghan war and retain support for the drone program.

Newly revealed details of the drone raids were provided by U.S. and Pakistani officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the program.

Among them were attacks that followed an April visit by Pakistan's spy chief to Washington as well as trips here by Sen. John Kerry and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton after the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani military town in May.

Seven years into a secret program that has killed scores of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, there are increasing questions over whether it is worth the diplomatic backlash in Pakistan. President Barack Obama has dramatically ramped up the program, unleashing more than 200 strikes since he took office compared to fewer than 50 during the Bush administration.

The Pakistani government is widely believed to have supported the program in the past and even allowed the drones to take off from bases inside Pakistan, but that support has waned as relations between the two countries have soured.

The attacks have also strained the relationship between the U.S. State Department and the CIA, where officials argue that killing militants who threaten U.S. interests should take priority over political considerations, said U.S. officials.

That tension was clearly visible between Ambassador Munter and the CIA station chief in Islamabad, who recently left his post because of illness, said a senior Western official in the region.

"When the doors are closed they are shouting at each other, but once the doors are open they are congenial in front of the embassy staff," said the official.

The hard-charging station chief also clashed with the head of Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the ISI, over drone strikes, said a Pakistani official.

The CIA does not comment on the drone program.

A U.S. official familiar with the issue played down the tension.

"It is very, very rare for the chief of mission to express concern about any particular operation," the official said, referring to the ambassador. "When concerns are raised, they're always given close consideration."

Munter must sign off on every planned drone attack in Pakistan, although he rarely voices an objection, said a former aide to the ambassador. If Munter disagrees with a planned strike, the CIA director can appeal to him, said two U.S. officials, providing the most detailed description of the process to date.

Clinton can also weigh in, and has done so at least once, one U.S. official said.

On March 17, Munter used the embassy's secure line in an attempt to stop an imminent drone strike. His concern was that the strike - a day after the release of the CIA contractor Davis - would set back Washington's already shaky relations with Islamabad, said the former aide and a senior U.S. official.

The Davis case had left bad feelings on both sides. On Jan. 27 in Lahore, Davis shot to death two Pakistanis who he said were trying to rob him, enraging many people in a country where anti-American sentiment is high. The U.S. insisted Davis had immunity from prosecution, but he was not released until March 16 under a deal that compensated the victims' families. Pakistan's security agencies came under intense domestic criticism for freeing him.

Munter's request went to the State Department and was forwarded to then-CIA director Panetta, now secretary of defense, who insisted on going ahead, said the officials. It is unclear whether Clinton was involved in the decision.

The former aide said the strike reflected the CIA's anger at the ISI, which it blamed for keeping Davis in prison for seven weeks.

"It was in retaliation for Davis," the aide said. "The CIA was angry."

The CIA also believed it was vital to kill the militants targeted in the strike in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan, said the senior U.S. official. But other U.S. officials agreed with Munter that it wasn't worth the political blowback, the official said.

Two pairs of missiles were fired three minutes apart, hitting several dozen tribesmen meeting in the open in Shiga village near the Afghan border.

Pakistani officials and local tribesmen said four Taliban fighters and 38 innocent people were killed.

The CIA claimed they were all militants, but villagers and Pakistani officials said the group was holding a community meeting, or jirga, to resolve a local mining dispute.

A tribal elder, Malik Dawood, had purchased rights to cut down and sell a large tract of oak trees, said 40-year-old farmer Gul Ahmed. But he subsequently realized the land contained chromite and argued with the landowner about whether he could mine it, he said.

Four Pakistani Taliban militants were attending the jirga to guarantee any decision made because of their control over the area, said the villagers and Pakistani officials.

U.S. officials said the CIA tracked the militants driving to the meeting and decided rather than targeting just the car, they would wait to get the entire assembled party.

The strike killed the militants, along with six tribal policemen and 32 other tribesmen, according to Ahmed, who provided the names of the dead and attended their mass funeral. A senior official in the area confirmed the death toll.

In a rare public statement, Pakistan's powerful army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said the jirga "was carelessly and callously targeted with complete disregard to human life."

U.S. intelligence officials brusquely dismissed the Pakistani claims.

"There's every indication that this was a group of terrorists, not a charity car wash in the Pakistani hinterlands," said one official at the time.

ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha took the strike as a personal insult because he had stepped in to get Davis released, Pakistani officials said.

The strike hampered counterterrorism cooperation between the CIA and the ISI, and the Pakistani government started sending U.S. military trainers home - a process that accelerated after the raid that killed bin Laden.

Pasha made a personal trip to Washington in April in an attempt to repair relations. The ISI chief said he would work to let in more CIA operatives if the U.S. would consider including Pakistan in the process of drone strike targeting, said U.S. officials at the time.

But before Pasha had returned home, two U.S. missile strikes killed six suspected Taliban fighters in the South Waziristan tribal area. Pakistani officials said the attacks were seen as another slap to Pasha and made it impossible for him to raise the CIA's requests with the army or the government.

This pattern continued after the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad on May 2. The operation outraged the Pakistani government because it was not told about it beforehand.

Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, visited in mid-May trying to salvage the relationship.

He made some progress but just as he left on May 16, the CIA launched a missile strike in North Waziristan, killing seven suspected militants. In response, Pakistani army chief Kayani and President Asif Ali Zardari sent Kerry angry messages that he received when he touched down in Dubai, said Kerry's spokeswoman Jennifer Berlin, confirming details that first appeared in The New York Times Magazine.

State Department officials were also angry about three missile strikes that followed Clinton's visit to Pakistan at the end of May, said a U.S. official familiar with the events.

The prevailing view at the State Department and the White House is that CIA strikes are motivated by a drive to kill as many militants as possible in what the U.S. sees as a window of opportunity that might soon close, rather than a deliberate attempt to torpedo diplomacy, said the official.

White House adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan Douglas Lute suggested as much during remarks last weekend at the Aspen Security Forum when he said al-Qaida was on its heels after the death of bin Laden.

Referring to the drone campaign only obliquely, as a "covert action program," Lute said, "I would not adjust programs today that are designed to go for the knockout punch when we've got this opportunity."

However, former U.S. intelligence chief Dennis Blair said the U.S. should stop its drone campaign in Pakistan because the strikes damage the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and are more of a nuisance than a real threat to al-Qaida.

"I just see us with that strategy walking out on a thinner and thinner ledge," Blair said at the forum, "and if even we get to the far end of it, we are not going to lower the fundamental threat to the U.S. any lower than we have it now."

---

AP Intelligence Writer Dozier reported from Washington. AP National Security Editor Anne Gearan in Washington and AP writers Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Rasool Dawar in Miran Shah, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistani troops deployed after 34 killed in Karachi

Authorities called in paramilitary soldiers and police to quell political and criminal violence in Pakistan's largest city on Tuesday after 34 people were killed here in less that two days, officials said.


A policeman patrols the troubled area of Karachi today Photo: AFP/GETTY

6:49PM BST 02 Aug 2011

Violence in Karachi, a sprawling port city of 18 million, has added to the political instability in the nuclear-armed, U.S.-allied nation and provided another distraction for the government as it fights a Taliban-led insurgent movement. It also undercuts Pakistan's struggling economy, because Karachi serves as the country's main commercial hub.

Police have found bodies scattered across different parts of the city since Monday morning, some riddled with bullets and others that showed signs of torture and were tied up in gunny sacks, said Sharufuddin Memon, the security adviser to the chief minister of Sindh province.

Karachi, which is the capital of Sindh, has a long history of political, ethnic and sectarian violence, and much of the fighting is blamed on gangs allegedly affiliated with the city's main political parties.

"There are political rivalries in the city, but criminal elements like drug and land mafias capitalise on the situation, making the things worse," Memon said.

He said that 11 people were gunned down on Tuesday, and 23 were killed the day before. The killings fit into a broader pattern of violence in Karachi that claimed the lives of more than 300 people in July, he said.

In an attempt to contain the violence, authorities have called in 1,000 paramilitary troops from the Frontier Corps and also police from the Frontier Constabulary, Memon said.

The recent bout of violence followed a decision in late June by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the city's most powerful political party, to leave the federal coalition led by the Pakistan People's Party and join the opposition.

Fighting intensified in mid-July after Zulfiqar Mirza, a senior member of the People's Party, lashed out at the head of the MQM. Mirza called Altaf Hussain a murderer and an extortionist and also maligned the city's Urdu-speaking community that makes up the party's base – although he later apologised.

A large number of MQM's supporters are Urdu-speaking descendants of those people who came to Karachi from India soon after the birth of Pakistan in 1947. The party dominates politics in urban areas of Sindh, including Karachi, but over time it has seen challenges to its power from the People's Party and the Awami National Party, a Pashtun nationalist party.

There were at least 490 political, ethnic and sectarian killings in Karachi during the first half of the year, and more than 1,100 killings of all kinds, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Also on Tuesday, a suspected U.S. drone fired two missiles at a car near the Afghan border, killing four alleged militants, said Pakistani intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.

The strike took place in Kutab Khel village near Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal area, the officials said. The area has a mix of both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban fighters, as well as other foreign militants, they said.

The U.S. refuses to acknowledge the covert CIA drone program in Pakistan publicly, but officials have said privately that the strikes have killed senior Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders.

Also in the northwest, a roadside bomb killed two Pakistani soldiers near Ladha town in the South Waziristan tribal area, said intelligence officials on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.

South Waziristan was the main sanctuary for the Pakistani Taliban before the army launched a large ground offensive in 2009. Thousands of soldiers are still based in the area, and violence still occurs frequently.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Doubles Down on Afghan Air War; 650 Strikes in July

By Noah Shachtman August 3, 2011 | 1:00 pm



In July of 2010, when Gen. Stanley McChrsytal handed over command of the war in Afghanistan to Gen. David Petraeus, air strikes had become a tool of absolute last resort. NATO planes were only making about 10 attack runs a day — in the middle of Afghanistan’s fighting season, and with an influx of tens of thousands of new allied troops colliding with dug-in militants.

In July of 2011, Petraeus passed the baton to Gen. John Allen. But it’s a whole new — and much more ferocious — air war. Allied jets and bombers are unloading their weapons on more than 20 sorties a day, according to U.S. military statistics, for a total of 652 attack runs.

It’s part of a war effort that has grown more aggressive in nearly every way. Special operations forces now launch a dozen “kill/capture” raids a night, and have taken 3,775 insurgents off the battlefield in the last year. Massive surface-to-surface missiles have been used to clear the Taliban out of Kandahar; tanks have been sent to Helmand province to help crush opponents; civilian homes taken over by insurgents have been leveled without apology.

American officials are quick to point out that a combination of better intelligence and more accurate weapons have allowed the air campaign to be ratcheted up, without a corresponding rise in civilian casualties. The strikes from the sky may have doubled, but innocent deaths caused by those attacks only rose by 14 percent, to 79 people so far this year, according to figures compiled by the United Nations. (And that U.N. number includes those killed by helicopters; the military doesn’t include such strikes in its statistics.)

But, after a decade of war, Afghan tolerance for a continued air campaign appears to have grown thin. In the last month, NATO bombs and missiles were accused by Afghan authorities of killing innocents in Nuristan province, Khost province, and in Logar province.

In late May, Afghan president Hamid Karzai announced that he was banning airstrikes on Afghan homes after U.S. munitions killed at least nine civilians during an attack on two family compounds in the Salaam Bazaar area in the Now Zad district. If NATO didn’t heed his call, Karzai said, “then their presence will change from a force that is fighting against terrorism to a force that is fighting against the people of Afghanistan… And in that case, history shows what Afghans do with trespassers and with occupiers.”

Since then, NATO forces have launched approximately 1,200 air strikes.

Photo: USAF

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan naval officers face court martial over Karachi airbase attack

Trial over 'Pakistani Taliban' assault on PNS Mehran seen as rare sign of accountability in country's military establishment

Reuters in Karachi

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 August 2011 09.33 BST


Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the Karachi naval airbase, which came three weeks after US navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden. Photograph: Shakil Adil/AP

Three senior Pakistani naval officers are facing court martial over an attack on a naval airbase in Karachi in May.

The assault on the PNS Mehran base embarrassed the military and raised doubts about its ability to protect its facilities after a similar raid on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009.

"We had set up a board of inquiry, and after its report, court martial proceedings have been initiated against three officers," a senior navy official told Reuters.

The officers being tried include Commodore Raja Tahir, the commander of the Mehran base who was relieved of his command two days after the attack. At that time, the navy had insisted that it was a "routine and scheduled" transfer.

However, the naval official said that the trial – a rare sign of public accountability within Pakistan's powerful military establishment – does not mean that the officers were in some way connected with the attack. "They are being tried because they were at a responsible position, and were responsible for the security and other affairs of the base," he said.

Pakistani security officials had earlier detained a former navy commando and his brother in connection with the raid. A naval spokesman in Islamabad could not be immediately reached for comment.

The Mehran base attack came nearly three weeks after US navy Seals killed al-Qaida chief, Osama bin Laden, in a secret raid in the northwestern Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad on 2 May.

Pakistani Taliban, allied with al-Qaida, have vowed revenge for Bin Laden's death.

As few as six militants infiltrated the Mehran base, the headquarters of the navy's air wing, killing 10 security forces and wounding 20.

The militants, who besieged the military facility for 16 hours, also destroyed two US-made P-3C Orion aircraft, crucial to Pakistan's maritime surveillance capabilities.

The daring raid was another humiliation for the military, which had already been unable to explain how Bin Laden hid in the country for years or how the Americans could launch the attack deep inside their territory.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the Mehran base, but many analysts believe they had inside help.

Pakistan has faced a wave of assaults over the last few years, many of them claimed by the Pakistani Taliban and other al-Qaida-linked militant groups.

In October 2009, a small group of militants attacked the army's general headquarters in Rawalpindi, taking 42 people hostage, including several officers. By the end of the day-long siege, nine gunmen, 11 soldiers and three hostages were dead.

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan car bomb kills intelligence official

Member of Afghan security service in northern Kunduz province assassinated, say local police

Reuters in Kunduz

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 August 2011 06.53 BST


The assassination of the Afghan intelligence official follows Tuesday's suicide bombing of a guesthouse, above, in Kunduz province. Photograph: Wahdat Afghan/Reuters

A car bomb killed an intelligence official from Afghanistan's northern Kunduz city on Thursday morning, a spokesman for the local police chief said.

Three children were also wounded by the blast from the device planted in the car of Payenda Khan, head of a security district in Kunduz city, Sayed Sarwar Husaini said.

Husaini had earlier said Khan was head of the entire national directorate of security in Kunduz province, but later said he was given incorrect information by officials at the site of the explosion.

The official's death comes after three suicide bombers on Tuesday attacked a guesthouse in Kunduz, killing four Afghan security guards employed by a German company.

The once peaceful north of the country has seen a series of high-profile attacks and assassinations in recent years, as insurgents seek to demonstrate their reach beyond their traditional southern heartland in Kandahar.

[buglerbilly]

NATO says man in Afghan police uniform kills 1 coalition soldier; insurgents kill another

By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, August 4, 6:08 PM

KABUL, Afghanistan — A man in an Afghan police uniform on Thursday shot dead a NATO service member in the east of the country, the second such killing in less than a month, the alliance said.

Separately, another NATO service member died following an insurgent attack, also Thursday in eastern Afghanistan, the volatile second front of the nearly decade-long war in this country. Most of the fighting takes place in southern Afghanistan.

NATO did not provide details or nationalities of the two deceased, pending notification of their relatives.

The international coalition said the first killing occurred “when an individual wearing an Afghan National Police uniform turned his weapon against” the NATO soldier. NATO said it was assessing the incident.

It did not say if the man was a police officer or someone disguised as one.

Since March 2009, at least 40 coalition troops have been killed in more than 20 shootings by members of the Afghan security forces or assailants wearing Afghan uniforms.

In about half the cases, attackers impersonated Afghan policemen or soldiers, coalition officials have said.

Afghan uniforms are easily obtained at stores in the capital of Kabul, despite efforts to crack down on such illegal sales. The other half of the shootings have been attributed to combat stress or unknown reasons.

Last week, the Interior Ministry said it raided an unlicensed factory in Kabul that was making uniforms and other military accessories. Kabul police denied reports that it was manufacturing uniforms for the Taliban, but did say the products were being sold at bazaars around the city.

Thursday’s deaths raised the number of foreign troops killed this year to 330. Last year, 404 died in the first seven months of the year.

On Wednesday, three members of the U.S.-led military coalition were killed. Two died in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan where foreign forces are trying to hold the ground they seized from Taliban insurgents in major offensives over the past year, NATO said. The third soldier died in a noncombat-related incident in east Afghanistan.

Insurgents have often worn uniforms of Afghan security forces as disguises to get inside heavily guarded military bases and target international and government forces. Enlisted Afghan soldiers and police also have turned on their NATO and Afghan colleagues — sometimes because arguments have inflamed tensions or because of an alliance or sympathy with the Taliban.

On July 16, a British soldier was shot and killed by an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform when he turned his weapon against him in Gereshk district in Helmand province. The Taliban said the assailant, who escaped, was a sleeper agent who had infiltrated the Afghan military.

In May, two U.S. service members were killed by an Afghan policeman in Helmand province. The two were mentoring an Afghan National Civil Order brigade and were shot and killed inside the police compound as they sat down to eat lunch.

Since March 2009, at least 40 coalition troops have been killed in more than 20 shootings by members of the Afghan security forces or assailants wearing Afghan uniforms.

In other violence, an employee with the Afghan national intelligence service was killed Thursday when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in northern Kunduz province, according to provincial spokesman Mubobullah Sayedi. Local police said three children were wounded in the blast just outside Kunduz city and that one of them died on the way to hospital.

And in the eastern Logar province, insurgents used rocket propelled grenades to blow up three tankers loaded with fuel for coalition forces, said provincial police chief Gullam Sakhi Roowgh Lawanai. No one was injured in the attack.

___

Associated Press Writer Patrick Quinn contributed to this report from Kabul.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

3 Marines, Military Dog Killed in Afghan Blaze

August 04, 2011

Jacksonville Daily News

The Department of Defense announced Wednesday the deaths in Afghanistan of three Camp Lejeune-based Marines assigned to Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.

Staff Sgt. Patrick R. Dolphin, 29, of Moscow, Pa.; Sgt. Dennis E. Kancler, 26, of Brecksville, Ohio; and Sgt. Christopher M. Wrinkle, 29, of Dallastown, Pa., died July 31 in Herat Province, Afghanistan, according to DoD reports.

Dolphin, Kancler and Wrinkle were assigned to 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion, Marine Special Operations Regiment, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.

According to MarSOC officials, the deaths were a result of a non-combat related incident that also left one Marine and one Soldier injured. Marine Corps Times reported that the three Marines and a military dog were killed when their living quarters caught fire in Afghanistan.

The incident is under investigation, officials said, and more information will not be released until the investigation is complete. The names of the injured troops have been withheld.

© Copyright 2011 Jacksonville Daily News. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US Goes Back in to Contest Pech Valley

August 04, 2011

Stars and Stripes|by Martin Kuz

NANGALAM, Afghanistan -- The Chinook had descended within 200 feet of the ground when a rocket-propelled grenade rose from the night-cloaked mountains and stabbed its belly fast and deep.

The 15 U.S. soldiers and crew members on board heard only a faint thump above the helicopter's pounding. Yet nothing muffled the attack's underlying message.

Welcome back to the Pech, America -- the insurgents have been waiting.

Less than six months after mostly abandoning the deadly Pech Valley in what U.S. military officials dubbed a "realignment" of forces in eastern Afghanistan, the Army has begun rebuilding its presence in the heart of Kunar province. Since the start of the Afghan war, more than 100 American troops have been killed in mountainous terrain so treacherous that previous U.S. commanders openly questioned the need to secure such a remote region.

But in late July, the first wave of troops from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division arrived at Nangalam Base, formerly known as Forward Operating Base Blessing and once the hub of U.S. military operations in the valley.

By September, a company of soldiers from the division's 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment will occupy the post, which was renamed after the U.S. turned it over to Afghan control in February. They will join an Afghanistan National Army battalion stationed at the base in the village of Nangalam, about 25 miles west of Asadabad, Kunar's capital.

Lt. Col. Colin Tuley, commander of the 2-35th, offered a reason for re-entering the Pech that echoed the rationale given by Army leaders since the U.S. first pushed into the valley in 2003.

"We're coming here to set the conditions for a transition that will support the Afghan army and Afghan police in providing security," he said.

The latest attempt to shore up Afghan forces in the Pech, a vital east-west trade route in Kunar and a haven for the Taliban-led insurgency, will involve fewer U.S. troops than past efforts.

The 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment last occupied Blessing before the Army withdrew from the base earlier this year. Military officials said at the time that the resources devoted to the fight in the valley exceeded the remote region's strategic and political importance.

So far, insurgents appear undeterred by the return of U.S. forces, as the downing of the Chinook on July 25 revealed with a fiery flourish.

The rocket strike in the pre-dawn hours caused the helicopter to crash outside Nangalam Base in a graveyard of nameless headstones. Two soldiers suffered minor shrapnel wounds as flames consumed the aircraft and ignited thousands of rounds of ammunition loaded in its fuselage.

"In a way, (the attack) wasn't surprising," said Capt. Derek Price, 23, of Medina, Ohio, who walked away from the wreck. "We're in the Pech."

---------------

The mountains that squeeze the Pech Valley jut above 8,000 feet with ridge lines contoured like the edge of a broken beer bottle. Some of the war's fiercest fighting has erupted in this winding seam and its so-called capillary valleys, including the Korengal, Shuryak and Waygal.

The U.S. has absorbed heavy losses in the area since showing up eight years ago; 19 soldiers died in a single operation in 2005. The estimated number of enemy combatants killed runs into the low thousands.

The chronic unrest in central Kunar influenced the decision of U.S. military officials to hand off Blessing to the Afghan army, along with a nearby combat outpost and a loose necklace of observation points strung above the Pech River.

The Army demolished another combat outpost at the mouth of the Korengal, COP Michigan, leaving COP Honaker Miracle, 10 miles west of Asadabad and now manned by the 2-35th's D Company, as its lone base in the Pech.

U.S. forces have continued to carry out missions in the region despite the Army's diminished presence. More than 100 insurgents and three U.S. soldiers were killed during an operation in June to expel militants from the Watahpur Valley near the Pech's eastern edge.

Yet last week's helicopter attack sharpened doubts among soldiers in the 2-35th about the wisdom of the Army reoccupying the valley's interior. The move coincides with an apparent shift of U.S. military emphasis to eastern Afghanistan.

"We're getting out of this country in a couple of years, but now we're going back into the Pech?" asked Sgt. Altaf Swati, 27, of Houston, a team leader with the Headquarters and Headquarters Company. "I don't see where that makes sense."

Two days after downing the Chinook, insurgents launched a mortar round into Nangalam Base, punching a hole in the roof of a building full of U.S. soldiers. The crude skylight, about the size of a bike tire, let in the afternoon sun without brightening the mood, even as the men had escaped injury.

"I don't think the people want us here," said Cpl. Daniel Schwab, 24, of Fort Myers, Fla., a D Company team leader. Chunks of brick and wood from the ceiling had pelted him when the shell hit 10 minutes earlier.

"If we wanted to be in this valley," he added, "we probably should have stayed. Coming back in, it's going to be tough."

---------------

The soldiers had traveled to the base as part of a 10-day mission to shepherd a convoy delivering 100 tons of food from Asadabad to the villages of Wama and Parun in neighboring Nuristan province.

Hundreds of U.S. and Afghan troops took part in the operation to safeguard the convoy's passage on Route Rhode Island, the primary road across Kunar's midsection. The route parallels the Pech River, cutting west of Nangalam before curling upward into Nuristan, where the U.S. last stationed troops in 2009.

The Taliban has exploited the shrunken U.S. profile in the Pech Valley to seize control of trade along the route. Tuley, the 2-35th commander, sought to support Afghan forces in re-establishing more than a dozen traffic checkpoints they deserted soon after the U.S. pulled back in February.

"We're not going to allow the enemy to say that no one can travel Route Rhode Island," said Tuley, 40, of Atchison, Kan.

Behind him stood a row of M113 armored personnel carriers of the sort the U.S. used in Vietnam and later sold off to other nations. Soldiers from an Afghan battalion based in Kabul had driven the box-shaped, green-camouflaged vehicles to Nangalam for the operation.

"If we can help the Afghans keep the route secure after this mission," he said, "it becomes a turning point for the entire region."

One checkpoint stood a short distance from the northern end of the Korengal, perhaps the most violent pocket of eastern Afghanistan during this war, and during the Soviet invasion that ended in 1989. U.S. and Afghan soldiers guarding the position took fire throughout the operation, as insurgents targeted them with automatic rifles and RPGs.

U.S. fighter jets responded by dropping 500- and 1,000-pound bombs day after day on the enemy's position along a ridge line. Each bomb gave rise to a brilliant orange bloom that wilted moments later inside a miasma of dun-colored smoke.

Silence followed. A few hours later, the guns on the ridge again began to chatter. The pattern repeated as if unbreakable.

Maj. Rahmdel Haivarzay, commander of the Afghan battalion at Nangalam Base, tried to explain the stubborn reaction of Korengalis to coalition forces and, by extension, the country's fledgling democratic government.

"There are people in the Korengal Valley who don't know what a paved road looks like," he said. "They don't want to be part of the government. They think, ‘We're better off being here and being left alone.'"

The troops amassed for the operation far surpassed the number that the 2-35th and the Afghan military will station at Nangalam Base. Still, the insurgents fought, dropping numerous mortar rounds on the post and firing at troops on Route Rhode Island.

The intensity of their resistance provoked questions among U.S. soldiers about whether the 2-35th will have the resources to prevail in the Pech. One high-ranking officer, talking on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals from superiors, wondered aloud whether returning to the valley would succeed only in inflaming enemy forces.

"Is there an insurgency if we're not here? It's a valid question," he said. "There's a reason we left before."

Defiance of authority is a birthright in the Pech, with fathers bequeathing blood feuds to their sons. Tuley nonetheless talked with upbeat resolve about the coming months.

"It's tough terrain, it's a tough enemy," he said, staring at the distant peaks shielding the Korengal. "But I believe we can create the time and space for the Afghan government to build up their presence in the area."

---------------

Much of the burden will fall on Tuley's soldiers moving to Nangalam Base. They will work with Afghan troops in what he calls a "permanent embedded partnership" to nurture the self-reliance of Afghan forces.

The U.S. military has struggled to fulfill that ambition across Afghanistan. In the Pech, where fear of the insurgency runs deep among Afghan military and police, progress will come slowly, if at all.

The departure of U.S. troops from Blessing earlier this year unnerved top officers of the Afghan battalion stationed here. Convinced that enemy fighters would overrun the post, the unit commander and more than a dozen members of his staff fled within a month. (They were replaced in April.)

The base's physical decline happened almost as fast and remained evident last week amid an ongoing cleanup. Several buildings that had served as U.S. living quarters and offices appeared uninhabitable.

Detritus littered the floors: food wrappers and water bottles, wiring strips and foam insulation, shards of glass and scraps of wood, brick and metal. Flies swarmed piles of human feces. A scrawny gray cat scurried between buildings.

Other interiors were conspicuous by what they lacked. A trauma station that U.S. medics had stocked with supplies for their Afghan counterparts sat barren. In a vehicle maintenance garage, most of the tools and equipment donated by the Army had vanished.

The conditions startled U.S. soldiers who had arrived for the convoy operation.

"It's trashed," said Spc. Kasey DeRaad, 23, of Menominee, Wis. "It's hard to believe our guys were here only a few months ago."

For some soldiers, the conditions on base fanned skepticism about the ability of Afghan security forces to one day assume the larger task of patrolling the Pech.

"We've been here for 10 years and they still rely on us a lot," said Spc. Anthony Malanga, 22, of Newburn, N.C. "You'd like to see them step up."

U.S. officers counseled Afghan commanders on matters small and large as the mission unfolded, providing a glimpse of how much hand-holding lies ahead.

Maj. Guillermo Guillen, 38, of Moreno Valley, Calif., heads Team Nangalam, the group that will run the base's U.S. operations. One morning last week, he stood with a pair of Afghan officers in their corner of the tactical operations center beside a whiteboard.

He asked why they kept a faded diagram on the board instead of filling the space with updated mission details. One officer, dressed in a green T-shirt bearing the words "Afghan Commandoes" that traced the soft bulge of his paunch, replied that the diagram was "important."

Guillen sighed.

"It's a whiteboard," he said. "It's designed to be used continuously." He suggested they copy the diagram onto a piece of paper.

In the evening, Tuley huddled with Haivarzay, the Afghan commander, and another officer to discuss the traffic checkpoints on Route Rhode Island. Afghan soldiers had strayed from two of the positions, reportedly after receiving gunfire.

"We have to make sure they stay at the positions," Tuley said. "That's a big part of what we need to do out here."

Haivarzay nodded and reassured Tuley that the soldiers would return.

Later, the Afghan commander spoke of his gratitude that the U.S. had come back to the Pech.

"It is very important to us that we have support until we build our own capabilities," he said. "We want to do this as quickly as we can, but it is something that requires time."

The insurgents will be waiting.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. aid plan for Pakistan becomes new flash point in ties


(Karin Brulliard/THE WASHINGTON POST) - Mohammed Naudar Khan stands next to an irrigation canal in Jangi village that was partially funded by USAID after floods last year.

By Karin Brulliard, Friday, August 5, 8:39 AM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In 2009, Congress passed with fanfare a five-year, $7.5 billion aid plan intended to prove Washington’s long-term commitment to Pakistan’s weak civilian government. Both countries touted the package as a way to reset relations long centered on military ties.

But two years later, only $500 million has been spent as the program has run into bureaucratic delays, disagreements over priorities and fears about corruption. Now the remainder of the funding is under scrutiny in the Republican-led House, where two panels have approved broad cuts in foreign aid and stringent conditions on assistance to a number of countries, including Pakistan.

Although the Obama administration is fighting the cuts, U.S. officials say they expect lawmakers to shrink the aid package while requiring greater evidence that Pakistan is fighting terrorism and that the funding is reaping benefits.

The debate over civilian aid has transformed it from a potential tool for healing the deep rift between the United States and Pakistan to yet another flash point in a relationship that has reached new lows in the three months since U.S. Navy SEALs killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

Pakistanis decry slow pace

In Pakistan, the slow start for the aid program — and the likelihood that the total amount delivered will be less than originally pledged — is reinforcing impressions of the United States as an unreliable ally, officials here said. Many Pakistanis still resent the United States for cutting aid after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, and the Obama administration’s recent decision to withhold $800 million in military aid and reimbursement is being cited as a new example of American fickleness.

“You’re not going to get hearts and minds if aid’s given in dribs and drabs,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. Additional cuts, even those resulting from belt-tightening in Congress, she said, “will be seen as punitive.”

U.S. officials say that the aid program — also known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman package for its three top congressional backers — has recently gained momentum and that their task is to increase the pace while tempering expectations.

“It’s not about money, but we’ve made it about money. Instead, we should make it about things and people, so Pakistanis see clearly the impact of our aid,” a U.S. official said.

But in Pakistan, the focus has been on the dollars spent. In an interview, a senior Finance Ministry official said lower-than-expected disbursements had contributed to an increase in the Pakistani budget deficit.

Officials with the U.S. Agency for International Development say that they did not receive funding for the program until September 2010 and that, including previously unused funds, the agency has spent more than $2 billion on civilian aid in Pakistan since late 2009.

Moreover, U.S. officials said, the slow pace is necessary to ensure funds do not get siphoned off because of fraud or waste. The Obama administration pledged to channel about half the new money through the Pakistani government and local organizations, rather than international contractors. But identifying Pakistani agencies that have clean records and are competent has required months of audits and reviews, U.S. officials said.

“There’s a danger that if we spend too fast, we’re going to spend irresponsibly,” said Andrew B. Sisson, the USAID mission director in Pakistan.

U.S. officials say the aid package was designed to stabilize Pakistan by improving its power supply, schools and economy — not to win favor among the Pakistani public, which surveys show is strongly anti-American. But the plan has been subject to political pulls in both countries from the start.

Frustration on both sides

After Congress passed the aid package in 2009, the powerful Pakistani military lashed out at some of the terms, including a requirement that the U.S. secretary of state certify that the civilian Pakistani government exercises control over the armed forces. American lawmakers are likely to impose more such conditions this year, U.S. officials said.

The United States also pledged to fund “signature” projects, particularly in the energy sector, to serve as symbols of American friendship. The Pakistani finance official, however, said that Pakistan is seeking even more “visible projects,” including $500 million for a dam in the north.

In Washington, lawmakers frequently complain that Pakistanis seem ungrateful for U.S. assistance. “It’s time for us to take a look at the money we’re giving away to Pakistan,” said Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.) during a House hearing last week. “The billions of dollars that we give them, what do we have to show for it?”

But efforts to win greater recognition for U.S.-funded projects — and with it, greater affection for the United States — have frequently fallen flat.

Security threats mean American officials often cannot visit project sites. Spending has been poorly explained to the public, according to a report by the D.C.-based Center for Global Development, which cited a “mystifying lack of information on what has been done.” And new requirements that aid recipients “brand” assistance with U.S. logos have prompted some organizations to decline funding.

“We wouldn’t want a grenade thrown into our office,” said Samina Khan, the chairperson of a Pakistani humanitarian network, explaining why she considered it too risky for her own organization, the Sungi Development Foundation, to seek U.S. assistance.

American officials say the program has sped up since a strategy was formalized this spring. U.S.-backed dam improvements will help add 500 megawatts of electricity to Pakistan’s failing grid, and education programs are helping to bring schooling to 900,000 students, they say.

“We’ve sharpened the focus,” Sisson said. “We acknowledge some delays, but we’re also very proud of our achievements.”

Signs of appreciation

Criticism aside, some Pakistani officials say that the U.S. aid plan is making strides and that money must keep flowing. Simi Kamal of the Aurat Foundation, a women’s rights organization, said USAID auditors rated her group as “high risk” when it first sought funding. To win a $40 million grant, Aurat undertook reforms — including investing in an expensive computer-based accounting system and hiring more qualified staff members — that she said were “tough” but helpful.

“You’ve got to let it run two to three years,” Kamal said of the decision to funnel more assistance through Pakistani institutions. “It was a step in the right direction.”

And in at least some corners, there are signs of appreciation. Last summer, USAID used $500 million to help Pakistan cope with ruinous floods. More than $60 million went toward seed and fertilizer for farmers whose crops were flooded out in villages such as Jangi, in the northwest, where anger pulsates over CIA drone strikes in the nearby tribal belt.

On a recent day, farmers in the village said they had expected to lose this spring’s wheat harvest. Instead, there was a bumper crop, and they attributed the success to U.S.-funded seeds and canals.

“Earlier, it was our perception that the United States was only for destruction,” said Noor Nabi, a community leader in the village. “But in that critical time, it helped us.”

Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban helicopter attack kills 31 US special forces troops

A Nato Chinook helicopter has been shot down by Taliban insurgents, killing 31 American special forces soldiers in one of the worst single incidents in Afghanistan.


Nato troops in Afghanistan Photo: Getty

By Ben Farmer, in Kabul

10:46AM BST 06 Aug 2011

The aircraft was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and crashed in the Tangi valley of Wardak province, west of the Afghan capital, Kabul.

A condolence statement from Hamid Karzai said 31 Americans had been killed and seven Afghans, making it the bloodiest incident for the United States and the coalition in the decade-long campaign.

Coalition head quarters in Kabul confirmed a helicopter had crashed in eastern Afghanistan, but a spokesman would not comment on casualty figures.

Sources said the release of more information was being delayed by the difficulties in informing the next of kin.

The spokesman said: “A [coalition] helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan today, and recovery operations are under way.

“[The coalition] is still in the process of assessing the circumstances to determine the facts of the incident, reporting indicates there was enemy activity in the area.

“Additional details will be released as appropriate.”

Mr Karzai’s statement said: “The president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai expressed condolences over a Nato helicopter crash and the deaths of 31 members of US special forces."

Wardak is viewed as a strategically critical province guarding the western “gate” to Kabul and has seen heavy Taliban infiltration for several years.

Local reports said the helicopter had been taking part in a night raid targeting insurgent commanders. At least eight insurgents were killed.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujaheed, told the New York Times insurgents shot down the helicopter around 11pm on Friday local time and that eight militants were killed in the fight that continued after the helicopter fell.

“The fresh reports from the site tells us that there are still Americans doing search operations for the bodies and pieces of the helicopter are on the ground,” Mr. Mujaheed said.

[buglerbilly]

AUGUST 6, 2011, 9:10 P.M. ET.

Chopper Attack Kills 38, Including 30 U.S. Troops

By DION NISSENBAUM, HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL and ADAM ENTOUS

Mansour Majab, a resident of the area, said insurgents had taken control of the area in recent months after U.S. and Afghan forces moved out.

Mr. Majab said he saw four to six helicopters in the village around 2 a.m. Saturday morning, as he rose for a pre-dawn meal before beginning his dawn-to-dusk fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

An hour later, Mr. Majab said, he "heard a rocket shot" and went up to his roof to see what was happening. "We saw a helicopter was shot down and it was set on fire," he said.

As dawn approached, Mr. Majab said, a dozen more helicopters converged on the crash site to help with the rescue operation. Mobile-phone communications, meanwhile, were jammed in the area.

Poorly armed insurgents have rarely had success in shooting down U.S. helicopters in Afghanistan.

Until now, the most deadly such attack took place in 2005, when an insurgent fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the open hatch of a Chinook, killing 16 American special operations forces dispatched on a mission to rescue a small SEAL team trapped in an insurgent-held area of Kunar province.

That same year, 17 Spanish soldiers were killed when their helicopter crashed in western Afghanistan near Herat. Though the military said at the time that the crash was accidental, witnesses said the helicopter took fire before it hit the ground.

But Saturday's attack marked the second time in two weeks that insurgents shot down a helicopter in Afghanistan. Two people were injured on July 25 in Kunar when insurgents used a rocket-propelled grenade to bring down another Chinook.

The ability to bring down foreign air power is a potent psychological weapon for the insurgency.

In the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency provided Afghan anti-Soviet forces with deadly Stinger surface-to-air missiles that were widely credited with helping to force the Russians out of Afghanistan.

The U.S. has increasingly relied on special-operations night raids to root out the Taliban, a tactic that has been criticized by President Hamid Karzai's administration.

U.S.-led forces conduct scores of night raids each month, and military officials say the vast majority end without shots being fired.

In the first six months of this year, night raids killed 30 civilians—a 15% drop from the first six months of 2010, according to the United Nations.

—Matthew Rosenberg contributed to this article.

[buglerbilly]

22 Navy SEALs among 30 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan as NATO helicopter is shot down

By Kevin Sieff and Greg Jaffe, Published: August 6

KABUL — U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered the deadliest day of the decade-long war Saturday when insurgents shot down an American helicopter, killing 30 U.S. servicemen and eight Afghans in the latest of a series of setbacks for coalition forces whose numbers are set to decline over the coming months.

As U.S. troops have pushed the Taliban from havens in the south, the insurgents have retaliated in recent weeks with high-profile attacks and assassinations of Afghan officials. The incidents have challenged U.S. assertions that the military is making steady progress in preparation for turning control of the country over to its Afghan partners. Insurgents have also stepped up attacks in the mountainous east, the site of Saturday’s incident.

The dead in Saturday’s attack included 22 Navy SEALs, most of them members of SEAL Team 6, the counterterrorism unit that carried out the mission to find Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials said. They added that none of the commandos who died Saturday were involved in the cross-border mission that killed the al-Qaeda leader.

In a statement, President Obama expressed his condolences to the families of those who were killed, saying their deaths were a “reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices” made by U.S. troops over the past decade.

He also vowed that U.S. troops would press ahead with the war. “We will draw inspiration from their lives, and continue the work of securing our country and standing up for the values that they embodied.”

The SEALs killed Saturday were on a nighttime mission to kill or capture two high-level insurgents known for organizing devastating roadside bomb attacks on American convoys, officials said.

The attack on the Chinook helicopter near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan underscored a dilemma for the Obama administration as it seeks to reduce the American presence: Even as U.S. and Afghan forces have weakened the Taliban in its southern heartland, the insurgents have been able to hold on to and expand some of their havens in the east.

U.S. forces flew into the Tangi Valley, in a remote part of Wardak province, about 2 a.m. Saturday, following a months-long intelligence-gathering effort, said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations. U.S. troops had recently turned over the sole combat outpost in the valley to Afghans.

Early accounts of the crash suggested that the helicopter was near the target location when an insurgent fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Chinook and it went down, killing all of the passengers.

The Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack and the deaths of the 30 U.S. service members and eight Afghans on board. In addition to the 22 SEALs, there were eight U.S. troops from the Army and the Air Force.

U.S. officials confirmed that there was enemy activity in the area at the time of the crash, but cautioned that it could take weeks before investigators would be able to say definitively what brought the helicopter down.

Shortly after the crash, troops from a second helicopter managed to land safely nearby, engaging the insurgents in a firefight and killing about eight of them, a U.S. official said. The men then attempted to recover the bodies of the Americans and the Afghans, as well as the remnants of the Chinook. Several hours later, they left the scene, the charred Chinook slung below the undamaged helicopter as it flew away.

SEAL Team 6, which has about 250 to 300 operators, is known formally as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. Senior U.S. military officials said the loss of the SEALs would have little impact on the U.S. military’s ability to conduct strikes on senior and mid-level Taliban officials, which have become increasingly effective and lethal over the past 12 months, according to military officials.

“This will hurt more emotionally than operationally,” said one former official, who has worked closely with special operations forces and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But these are tough people and strong units.”

A larger concern to U.S. officials was the potential impact of the attack on the American public, which has grown increasingly wary about the costs of the war at a time of soaring national debt.

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor called the crash a “tragic incident” but warned not to “overread” its significance in terms of administration strategy in Afghanistan.

Saying that “the tide of war is receding,” Obama announced in June that by next summer, all 33,000 troops sent to Afghanistan during the “surge” that began last year would be withdrawn, beginning with 10,000 this year.

U.S. commanders have repeatedly said they are making significant progress as they attempt to transfer control to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014. In addition to the political imperatives of winding down the war, deficit-reduction agreements depend on major cuts in military spending. Some of those savings will have to come from U.S. troop reductions in Afghanistan, which will help lower the $120 billion annual cost of the war.

In seeking to bring down U.S. troop levels, Obama has pursued a middle ground between officials within his own administration who favored a more rapid withdrawal and generals who argued for higher troop levels through one more fighting season. But events on the ground have complicated his strategy.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vowed in a statement after the crash Saturday that U.S. troops in Afghanistan would “keep fighting.”

“I am certain that is what our fallen would have wanted, and it is certainly what we are going to do,” he said.

The remote Tangi Valley, which sits near the border between Wardak and Logar provinces, has long been a problem area for U.S. troops and the Afghan government. U.S. forces had for years kept a small presence in those provinces, but in 2009 troops surged into the area in response to a spike in violence along Highway 1, a key route into Kabul.

The additional American forces helped drive down violence initially, but in recent months insurgents have begun to step up attacks in the area. The steep mountains and heavy insurgent activity in the valley have made it one of the most difficult places for U.S. troops to operate.

Afghan officials from the area said Saturday that insurgent activity spiked after NATO troops withdrew from a remote outpost in the area.

“The Americans left because they were getting casualties with each operation . . . and since then, the insurgents have increased their activity,” said Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the Wardak governor.

On Saturday, residents of Sayedabad district in Wardak who were awake for an early-morning Ramadan prayer reported hearing a rocket-propelled grenade being fired and then a loud explosion. Flames lit the night sky, they said.

“Then American forces began searching houses and blocked the roads of the village,” said Sana Gal, 35, a resident of Tangi, a village a few hundred yards from the crash site.

Although deadly helicopter crashes have not been common in Afghanistan, they have constituted some of the bloodiest incidents in the war’s history. Before Saturday’s crash, 96 coalition troops had been killed in eight separate crashes since 2005 — products of both mechanical problems and insurgent attacks.

Chinook helicopters are vulnerable to attack from rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns when taking off and landing.

In the most dangerous areas, the U.S. military typically flies helicopters only at night and only when there is little or no illumination from the moon. This has long been true in eastern Afghanistan, where the steep mountains along the border with Pakistan limit where the helicopters can fly and allow insurgents to lie in wait.

Prior to Saturday’s attack, the deadliest helicopter crash involving U.S. troops in Afghanistan occurred in June 2005, when insurgents shot down a Chinook in Konar province, near the Korengal Valley. Sixteen U.S. 16 troops, most of them Army Rangers, died. The Rangers were flying into the valley to rescue a small team of Navy SEALs who had come under fire.

The crash Saturday brings the total number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year to 274.

Overall, the summer fighting season has been less deadly this year for American troops than last year. Last month, 37 U.S. service members were killed, compared with 65 in July 2010, according to iCasualties, which tracks fatalities. In June, 47 were killed, compared with 60 in June 2010.

“No words describe the sorrow we feel in the wake of this tragic loss,” Gen. John R. Allen, the top general in Afghanistan, said in the aftermath of Saturday’s deaths. “All of those killed in this operation were true heroes who had already given so much in the defense of freedom.”

Jaffe reported from Washington. Staff writers Jason Ukman and Karen DeYoung and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report from Washington. Special correspondents Javed Hamdard and Sayed Salahuddin contributed from Kabul.

[buglerbilly]

ST6 Loses Nearly 10 Percent in Afghan Crash

by Christian on August 6, 2011



The horrible loss of 22 SEALs from the elite SEAL Team 6, as reported by the Associated Press, would mean that the secretive unit lost nearly 10 percent of its force of an estimated 300 operators. That’s a crushing blow to the Teams and a horrible loss to the Navy and the American people if accurate.

Let’s also not forget the loss of a reported three Air Force Combat Controllers, the baddest assed close air support experts in the world. Our prayers go out to the Afghan commandos who accompanied these assualters on their mission. You know that if there were some ANA troopers on this one, they were some of the best Afghanistan had.

It just reminds me of the time Ward and I went on an air assault with our boys from the 101st. Those guys hated flying into an objective on a Chinook, morosely joking that one RPG and the jig was up. My heart was in my throat the entire time on the daylight raid til we were on the ground.

The fact that this was the 160th and it was a night raid where this happens means the objective was hotter than hot. And if you’re sending SEAL Team 6 in on an objective, then you know it’s an very “H” HVT.

On the other hand, Kit Up! contributor Jack Murphy is skeptical that these were ST6-ers.


My shotgun analysis is that this wasn’t a DevGru team but a standard 16-man SEAL platoon plus attachments, in this case a half dozen Afghan commandos, dog handler, interpreter, flight crew, and pilots. It is highly unlikely that DevGru was working with indigenous soldiers, you hardly ever see Tier One units doing that. That sort of work goes to Special Forces and SEALs. Keep an eye out to see if it was a MH-47 or a CH-47 that went down, that may give you some indication.

Still a horrible loss regardless.

We’re pulsing the grid for any RUMINT that could shed more light on this. It’s in the initial stages of reporting and media outlets are scrambling for details. We’ll bring them to you as soon as we can. And be sure to use the Tip Line if you have any gouge. Remember to keep our fallen comrades’ families in your thoughts…

Read more: http://kitup.military.com/#ixzz1UP1JbyXW
Kit Up!

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Official: Helo Shootdown Was a Taliban Trap

August 08, 2011

Agence France-Presse

The Taliban lured U.S. forces into an elaborate trap to shoot down their helicopter, killing 30 American troops in the deadliest such incident of the war, an Afghan official said Monday.

A total of 38 people -- 30 U.S. troops, many of them special forces, plus seven Afghan commandos and an interpreter -- were killed when their Chinook came down during an anti-Taliban operation late Friday.

The crash marked the biggest single loss of life for American and NATO forces since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban in late 2001, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The senior government official told AFP on condition of anonymity that a Taliban commander, Qari Tahir, lured U.S. forces to the scene by tipping them off that a Taliban meeting was taking place.

He also said four Pakistanis helped Tahir carry out the strike.

"Now it's confirmed that the helicopter was shot down and it was a trap that was set by a Taliban commander," said the official, citing intelligence gathered from the area.

"The Taliban knew which route the helicopter would take," he added.

"That's the only route, so they took position on the either side of the valley on mountains and as the helicopter approached, they attacked it with rockets and other modern weapons. It was brought down by multiple shots."

The official also said that President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government "thinks this was a retaliation attack for the killing of Osama Bin Laden."

The Taliban themselves did not make such an assertion on claiming responsibility for the attack, which took place in the Taliban-infested Sayd Abad district of Wardak province, just southwest of Kabul.

U.S. media has reported that the dead included members of the Navy's SEAL Team Six, the secretive unit behind the daring raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan in May.

U.S. administration sources interviewed by AFP said the casualties did not include anyone who took part in the bin Laden raid on May 2.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan said it was still investigating the exact circumstances of the crash when asked about the claims that it was a Taliban trap.

He said the bodies had been recovered from the site.

Afghan officials said an insurgent rocket downed the helicopter, which was said to have broken into several parts after being hit.

In eastern Afghanistan on Monday, another helicopter made a "hard landing" in Paktya province, although no one was injured, ISAF said.

"What caused the aircraft to make the hard landing is under investigation -- however initial reporting indicates there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the incident," it added in a statement.

President Obama and his Afghan counterpart Karzai reaffirmed their commitment to the war on Sunday in a telephone call following Friday's crash, the White House said.

Karzai expressed his condolences for the "tragic loss" and Obama noted the "extraordinary service" of the Americans who died and expressed his condolences for the Afghans who died serving by their side," the White House said.

Karzai and Obama then "reaffirmed their commitment to the mission in Afghanistan, which is critical to the security of both our countries."

There are currently around 140,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, including about 100,000 U.S. troops.

All international combat troops are due to leave by the end of 2014, but intense violence in recent months, including a series of assassinations in the volatile south, has raised questions about the capability of Afghan forces.

Some foreign troop withdrawals have already begun as part of a transition that has seen local soldiers and police take control of a handful of safer areas this summer.

© Copyright 2011 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Did a New Taliban Weapon Kill a Chopper Full of Navy SEALs?

By David Axe August 8, 2011 | 6:38 am

Updated 8:36 am EDT.



The passengers and crew of the twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook helicopter probably never saw the rocket hurtling towards them. The explosion and fiery crash in Wardak province in eastern Afghanistan early on Saturday morning killed all 38 people aboard the lumbering chopper.

For U.S. forces, it was the bloodiest single incident of the 10-year-old Afghanistan war — and possibly a sign of the insurgency’s continued ability to introduce new weaponry. The attack is also a chilling reminder of the vulnerability of the U.S.-lead coalition’s indispensable helicopters. “Shock and disbelief,” is how one official characterized the reaction inside the military.

The dead include: five Army crew members, 19 U.S. Navy SEALs and their three support troops, an Afghan interpreter and seven Afghan commandos plus three Air Force controllers and one military working dog. “Their deaths are a reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices made by the men and women of our military and their families,” President Barack Obama said.

Details of the shootdown are slowly emerging. “There will be multiple investigations,” a Special Operations Command official said.

Sometime late Friday, it appears, a team of U.S. Army Rangers got pinned down by insurgent fighters during a patrol in Wardak, a province just south of Kabul that, along with neighboring Logar province, is a major staging area for the Taliban and other insurgent groups.

The Rangers called in their “Immediate Reaction Force,” a helicopter-borne mobile reserve that orbits nearby during risky patrols. That day, IRF duty had fallen to the Navy SEALs and their attachments, part of the 10,000-strong Afghanistan-based Joint Special Operations Command task force that, in addition to killing Osama bin Laden in May, also conducts as many as 70 raids per day in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2,800 raids between April and July, JSOC captured around 2,900 insurgents and killed more than 800, military sources said. That’s twice as many raids compared to the same period a year ago.

Normally, JSOC commandos ride in tricked-out helicopters — including stealth models — belonging to the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. But this weekend the SEALs hitched a ride in what was apparently a run-of-the-mill Army National Guard chopper.

With the SEALs’ help, the Rangers fought back against their ambushers. Eight insurgents died in the fighting, according to a Taliban spokesman. Believing the battle over, around 3:00 in the morning, local time, the SEALs and their allies climbed back into their CH-47 for the ride home. That’s when all Hell broke loose.

“The Taliban knew which route the helicopter would take,” one unnamed Afghan official tells AFP. “That’s the only route, so they took position[s] on the either side of the valley on mountains and as the helicopter approached, they attacked it with rockets and other modern weapons.”

“It was a trap that was set by a Taliban commander,” the official added.

The aircraft fell to the ground in flames.


Uploaded by davidaxe on Apr 14, 2011
Fox Co., 2-506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, air assaults into northern Bermel district, Paktika province, eastern Afghanistan, on a reconnaissance mission on April 4 and 5, 2011. David Axe reports.

Chopper-Killer

The cause of the CH-47 crash is still under investigation, according to the coalition. Which weapon — or weapons — were responsible is not yet known. Several publications claim an insurgent Rocket-Propelled Grenade struck the helicopter. One Army insider who spoke to Danger Room went a step further, saying the rocket may have been a special improvised model. A chopper-killer, if you will.

The so-called “Improvised Rocket-Assisted Mortar” made its debut in Iraq in 2008, although not in attacks on aircraft. IRAMs combine traditional tube mortars with rocket boosters and, in many cases, remote triggers, allowing insurgents to fire them from a distance.

IRAMs have killed several U.S. troops in Iraq over the years; in June, the weapons killed six Americans. but haven’t factored heavily in the Afghanistan fighting. The weapon’s appearance in Wardak, if confirmed, could be proof of Afghan insurgents’ continued ability to adapt and innovate despite mounting losses.

Improvised rockets are notoriously inaccurate. But with bigger warheads than shoulder-fired RPGs, IRAMs are potentially much more destructive when they do hit.

Not that it takes much to bring down a helicopter. Complex, slow and low-flying, choppers have always been vulnerable to attack from the ground. The coalition has lost hundreds of helicopters in Afghanistan over the last decade.

That the SEALs in Wardak were flying in a National Guard CH-47 probably didn’t make any difference. “Nothing about the aircraft would really make it more susceptible to ground fire than, say, a regular Army aircraft or a Special Ops bird,” the Army insider said.

Though enhanced Special Operations helicopters boast better navigation systems and, in some cases, even stealthy outer shells, they’re no more able to absorb an unguided rocket than any other copter. And for helicopters, there’s no effective countermeasure for unguided attacks besides aggressive flying, which isn’t really possible while the aircraft is close to the ground and full of troops.

But in mountainous Afghanistan, a country with few roads, the coalition has little choice but to rely on defenseless helicopters for even routine transportation — to say nothing of combat ops like the SEALs’ doomed weekend rescue.

That places huge demands on the aircraft and their operators. This is one subject of my forthcoming book From A to B. “My biggest headache is vertical lift,” Army Lt. Col. Thomas Gukeisen, in 2009 the commander of a combined U.S. and Czech force in Logar, told me for the book. “Vertical lift” is Army jargon for choppers.

The IRAM’s possible appearance in Afghanistan could make helicopters more vulnerable than they already are. At the same time, nothing short of a Herculean road-building effort — or a sudden, massive troop reduction — can quickly reduce the huge demand for rotorcraft.

In comments to reporters, NATO spokesman Brigadier General Carsten Jacobsen appeared to swat away the possibility that an IRAM was employed in the Wardak attack.

“We’re not seeing any specific new types of weapons on the battlefield,” he said.

Whether or not an IRAM counts as something “new” to Jacobsen is unclear; we’re following up to find out. But even subtracting the IRAM, the result of that awful arithmetic is more crashed choppers and more dead coalition troops, on a regular basis until the war ends. Saturday’s shootdown was an unusually bloody copter tragedy, but it’s hardly the first for the Afghan war. And it won’t be the last.

Photo and video: David Axe

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Helo Crash Details Emerge

by Christian on August 8, 2011



First of all, a big thanks to Kit Up! readers for their support of the site and specifically for checking out and “liking” Brandon’s post on the SEAL Foundation. They’re going to need our support more than ever in this very difficult time and we want to encourage our dedicated readers to help.

As the investigations ramp up, details are beginning to emerge about the tragic crash which help illuminate the event and also raise some serious questions.

Our readers have helped to pull out two details:

1.) The combat controller (and two PJs) were from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron which supports Tier 1 units like DevGru and Delta.

2.) It was an Army Guard CH-47, though it’s unclear whether it spooled up from Jalalabad or was on scene or nearby. But there seems to be consensus that it was a CH-47, not an MH-47.

My former colleague at Army Times, Sean Naylor, got some good details on the incident from a Naval Special Warfare “source.”His sources are good and his stories unimpeachable — he would never allow any details to the published if he were not sure they were accurate, or at least believed to be accurate at the time. According to Sean’s story:

1.) The mission was an “immediate reaction force” not a “quick reaction force,” meaning the helo was already in the air or spooled up nearby to respond. This undercuts our Jalalabad argument since that’s not as close to the raid as, say, Bagram. But this still raises the question, why not 160th? If it was in the plan, why not use the better armed, better equipped, better trained 160th pilots?

2.) The SEALs were a mix of 6-ers and frogmen from a standard, West Coast-based team.

3.) The ST6 SEALs were from Gold Squadron.

I’m a bit flummoxed by this whole thing and I’ll wait to hear what’s the real deal as more information emerges. We’ll also be hitting the FOIA button as we seek out the investigation reports, but that will take at least a few months.

But I wonder why it was a CH-47 from a Guard Unit (if that turns out to be true). Like our commenter, I have nothing at all against Guard units and pilots — they’re every bit as badass as any line pilot. But they don’t have near the nighttime and hot LZ training that 160th pilots have.

Why use such a specialized force for an IRF? Aside from the personal tragedy, there was a lot of training, equipment cost and expertise lost in what seems to have been a pretty run of the mill mission. Again, not trying to be callous, just clinical. We lost an entire troop from Gold Squadron in the crash not on the way to kill Zawahiri, but to help out some Rangers who came under attack during a raid to kill a Haqqani crook. All life is precious, but was this the right use of this resource?

I’m also wondering whether there was another helo filled with troops like the one that went down. There most certainly had to have been. Who was in that? And where were the escorts? Chinooks on something like this never travel without Apaches in tow to prep the battlefield and kill anyone moving to shoot at the Chinooks.

We’re going to keep on top of this. Please be sure to check out Defense Tech and DoD Buzz for other angles to the story. And you can always keep up to date on the latest news on the incident at Military.com.

Read more: http://kitup.military.com/2011/08/afghan-helo-crash-details-emerge.html#ixzz1UU3sAzOO
Kit Up!

[buglerbilly]

RAF airman's blog from Afghanistan is big hit

A People In Defence news article

8 Aug 11

An RAF airman's blog about his current deployment in Afghanistan has notched up 80,000 hits, and had an article written about it on the BBC news website.


Sergeant Alex Ford RAF with Afghan children
[Picture: Sergeant Alex Ford RAF, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Sergeant Alex Ford is an avionics technician, usually based at RAF Benson near Oxford. In March 2011, he deployed to Afghanistan as part of the Military Stabilisation Support Team who work with the Task Force Helmand Battle Group to assist the local population with recovery and reconstruction.

He has been updating his blog, which is officially sponsored by the MOD and promoted on its social media pages, every few days since he has been in Helmand, and as well as being read by thousands it has now come to the attention of the BBC, with a story by journalist Andy McFarlane about the blog published today.

Suggesting why Sergeant Ford's blog has become so popular, Mr McFarlane writes:

"The 41-year-old [Sergeant Ford] mines a rich vein of anecdotes through his work as an intermediary between British forces and the Afghan people. The results are often comical, such as his description of a farmer bursting into his office to complain that UK forces had 'stolen mud' from a field they were leasing as a place to burn off waste.

"But the blog also explains the psychological pressures of war with a brutal honesty that is hard to come by elsewhere."

Mr McFarlane cites this particular entry from the blog as one such example:

"On my first patrol I was bricking it. I was filled with the thoughts of IEDs everywhere and that the bad guys were going to be watching us... lying in a ditch with their fingers on the trigger of a command wire ready to blow us - me - to kingdom come."

Explaining on his blog why he blogs and tweets, Sergeant Ford writes:

"I love technology and gadgets, and I love the communication aspects that they bring. And I am a people person. I think we are all looking for connections in life, and the more we have the richer our lives are. I like to learn about people and what they do, and what makes them tick.


[I]Sergeant Ford and his colleagues lower their profile by going down on one knee during a pause in their patrol
[Picture: Sergeant Alex Ford RAF, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

"I was an avid Twitterer from very early on (when there were very few people tweeting!) and often tweeted what I was doing from there. I decided to close my 'own' account and open the 'RAF' one simply because people were interested in Service life and I found there were huge gaps in people's knowledge of what members of the Armed Forces actually do.

"There is an idea that we spend all day either doing nothing or else marching up and down all day; our lives are much more varied and richer than that - our jobs are often like what 'normal' people do, but in slightly different ways.

"I'm also dreadfully proud of being in the RAF. And I enjoy the amazing lifestyle it has given me over the years. I know that people are interested and so I decided to combine all the things I've talked about in a Twitter account."

He also explains that while the blog is sponsored by the MOD it is not an official blog:

"It is sponsored by the MOD and I get help and assistance as to some of the stories and ideas I have on here, but all the ideas and opinions expressed in this blog (as well as on Twitter) are my own and should not be taken as either RAF or MOD policy.

"In every way, this is an unofficial web-page that I intend to post my own thoughts and opinions [on]. But, and there's always a but, I'll be doing it in line with the MOD's Online Engagement Guidelines, which may mean that there are times when I must, and will, say 'I can't comment on that'."

Indeed Service personnel are encouraged by the MOD to operate sponsored online presences to communicate their work. These sponsored blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts are grouped together on the Defence Social Media Hub page. See Related Links.

And as long as the Department's social media guidance is followed and personnel take care about their online security, the MOD is also encouraging generally of the use of social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter.


Sergeant Alex Ford RAF and his colleagues take a break at Checkpoint Shin in the Nad 'Ali district of Helmand province
[Picture: Sergeant Alex Ford RAF, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

At the launch of an online security awareness campaign in June, Major General John Lorimer, the Chief of the Defence Staff's then Strategic Communications Officer, said:

"Social media has enabled our personnel to stay in touch with their families and their friends no matter where they are in the world. We want our men and women to embrace the use of sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, but also want them to be aware of the risks that sharing too much information may pose. You don't always know who else is watching in cyberspace.

"The MOD Headquarters has its own Facebook, YouTube and Twitter feeds and we see no reason to stop our personnel from tweeting or posting on their own walls. But the MOD has a responsibility to warn personnel of the risks they could be exposing themselves to, hence the launch of this new campaign."

Explaining further his own reasons for blogging from the front line in Helmand, Sergeant Ford said:

"This war is more than just people coming home dead and injured. It's about how people carry on living and working in often very harsh conditions.

"People at home want to know how their troops are living, what they do on a day-to-day basis. The news media often doesn't have the time to tell the good stories - so someone has to."

http://www.twitter.com/RAFairman

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rafairman/sets/

http://www.youtube.com/user/RAFairman

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14292137

[buglerbilly]

Pentagon to Reconsider Landing Chinooks in Battle Zones

August 09, 2011

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services|by Nancy A. Youssef and Jonathan S. Landay



KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two Pentagon officials told McClatchy Newspapers on Monday that an investigation into the helicopter crash that killed 30 American troops would probe whether it's a mistake to send the large, lumbering Chinook helicopter into a Taliban firefight, where it's a target for insurgents.

As the remains of the 30 troops killed in the military's deadliest incident of the Afghan war were being flown back to the United States, U.S. commanders confirmed that the servicemen were flying to the aid of American troops embroiled in a firefight when an insurgent shot down their helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.

The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan offered the first detailed account of the tragedy since the pre-dawn crash in the Tangi Valley, a Taliban-infested area of Wardak province, about 60 miles southwest of Kabul, the capital.

"The helicopter was reportedly fired on by an insurgent rocket-propelled grenade while transporting the U.S. servicemembers and commandos to the scene of an ongoing engagement," said a statement released by the International Security Assistance Force.

The Pentagon announced that the return of the servicemen's remains, in flag-draped coffins, to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware possibly as early as Tuesday won't be open to the news media, although family members will be allowed to attend. The ceremony will be closed to the public because there were "no identifiable remains," said Marine Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.

Separately, two Defense Department officials told McClatchy that a military investigation into the crash would ask whether dropping a Chinook into the middle of a battle is too dangerous now. Before the incident, the Taliban rarely had shot down a Chinook, bolstering commanders' confidence that the military could use the aircraft, which can carry more people than the Black Hawk helicopter, under such circumstances.

But just two weeks earlier, on July 25, the Taliban used a rocket-propelled grenade to shoot down a Chinook in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province, injuring two U.S. servicemembers. That Chinook was struck in the bottom and was forced to make a hard landing, defense officials said.

On Saturday, officials said, the grenade struck the middle of the helicopter, essentially splitting it in midair, killing everyone on board.

Area residents told McClatchy by phone that the ground forces and the Taliban were in the midst of a firefight less than a mile from the crash site.

President Obama said that the incident, while tragic, wouldn't deter American forces from the fight in Afghanistan, now in its 10th year. U.S. forces have begun to withdraw 33,000 "surge" troops from the country, a drawdown that's expected to be completed in September 2012.

"We will press on and we will succeed," Obama said. "Our troops will continue the hard work of transitioning to a stronger Afghan government and ensuring that Afghanistan is not a safe haven for terrorists."

Gen. John Allen, the commander of the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan, said: "We will continue to relentlessly pressure the enemy and we will continue to develop the Afghan National Security Forces so that on their strong, broad shoulders they can defeat this insurgency and bring lasting and enduring peace to this historic land and this great people."

According to the coalition statement, Saturday's incident began when U.S. ground troops became engulfed in a battle with Taliban forces armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47s. The troops were flying to the aid of other U.S. servicemembers who'd gone into the Tangi Valley in search of an unidentified Taliban leader who oversaw "insurgent operations" in the remote area, the ISAF statement said.

"After commencing the search, the initial security force on the ground observed several insurgents, armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47 assault rifles, moving through the area," the statement said. "The security force and the insurgents exchanged small-arms fire, resulting in several enemies killed."

The Soldiers asked for backup, and 33 people -- Navy SEALs, Airmen and Afghan special forces -- climbed into a Chinook and headed to battle, led by five crewmen.

When a Chinook lands, it descends slowly to the ground, and on Saturday it did so into a remote area where there was no surrounding base to offer protection. Even under the best of circumstances, military officials say, the landing is most vulnerable part of the flight. In Afghanistan, amid fierce fighting, it's the best chance the Taliban have of killing dozens of troops at one time.

Those killed aboard the twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook included "five aircrew and 25 personnel from the U.S. Special Operations Command," said the statement, which withheld the identities of the victims and their units.

Many of the dead reportedly were from the same Navy SEAL contingent from which was drawn the unit that killed Osama bin Laden in the al-Qaida leader's hideout in Pakistan in May.

Also killed were an Afghan interpreter and seven Afghan commandos.

After the crash, the unit on the ground "broke contact" with the insurgents, moved to the crash site, secured it and searched for survivors, the ISAF said.

The investigation to determine the "exact cause" of the crash was ongoing, the statement said. It was the deadliest incident the U.S. military had suffered in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

© Copyright 2011 McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

[buglerbilly]

Combined force in Kandahar kills insurgents, detains suspects

August 9, 2011

By International Security Assistance Force Joint Command


Cpl. Kyle Slinker, a military police officer with 561st Military Police Company, attached to 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, pulls guard at Police Sub Station 9 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, July 30, 2011.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8, 2011 -- A combined Afghan and International Security Assistance Force patrol killed several insurgents and detained numerous others in the Mya Neshin district of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province yesterday, military officials reported.

The insurgent leader targeted in the operation facilitates attacks against Afghan and coalition forces, officials said.

Today in Kandahar province’s Panjwai district, coalition forces found and destroyed 705 pounds of homemade explosives.

Also today, a coalition patrol approached a group of Afghan civilians who had found a cache of munitions. The Afghans turned the cache over to coalition forces without incident. The cache consisted of nine artillery shells, a hand grenade and 40 fuses.

In operations around Afghanistan yesterday:

-- A combined vehicle interdiction operation in Nimroz province’s Khash Rod district resulted in the seizure and destruction of 353 pounds of opium, 88 pounds of precursor chemicals and some drug-making equipment.

-- A combined patrol found and destroyed 331 pounds of opium, small-arms ammunition and bomb components in Nangahar province’s Achin district.

-- In Kapisa province’s Tagab district, a combined patrol seized three rockets, three hand grenades, an assault rifle, seven assault-rifle magazines and 710 7.62mm rounds.

-- A combined force in Khost province’s Gurbuz district seized three rockets, three rocket-propelled grenade launchers and an anti-tank mine.

-- A combined force killed two insurgents in Ghazni province’s Wali Muhammad Shahid Khugyani district. The security force was searching for a Taliban facilitator when they were attacked by multiple insurgents. The security force returned fire, killing two insurgents.

During the search, one of the insurgents tried to use a child as a human shield. The force was able to safeguard the child. Following the engagement, numerous suspected insurgents were detained for questioning. The force confiscated blasting caps used for roadside bombs, grenades, assault rifles and chest racks.

-- In Kandahar province’s Panjwai district, a combined force detained several suspected insurgents while searching for a Taliban facilitator responsible for receiving and distributing supplies for insurgents in the district.

-- A combined Afghan and coalition security force in Paktia province’s Zurmat district killed numerous Taliban insurgents during a search for a Taliban leader who directs key facilitators, plans attacks, coordinates operations and has been implicated in a July 5 attack resulting in the deaths of three U.S. soldiers. Several insurgents, who earlier in the day had forced their way into the home of a local resident, fired at the security force using machine guns and assault rifles. The force returned fire, killing the insurgents.

-- Also in Paktia province, a combined force detained several suspected Haqqani terrorist network insurgents in the Zurmat district. The target of this operation was a Haqqani leader who coordinates roadside-bomb attacks and provides support to Haqqani fighters.

In other news, a combined patrol in Helmand province’s Lashkar Gah district detained several insurgents Aug. 6 while searching for an insurgent leader responsible for multiple attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban fighters plotting 'spectacular' attack on British troops

A hard core of Taliban fighters are plotting a "very spectacular" attack in Helmand, the British commander in Afghanistan has disclosed.


The Taliban are plotting a 'spectacular' attack on British forces, according to an Army commander. Photo: REUTERS

By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent

9:30PM BST 09 Aug 2011

Despite killing or capturing hundreds in the last year the insurgent leaders who have survived remain elusive and highly dangerous "evolving" their tactics.

Brig Ed Davis, the Royal Marine commander of British forces in Helmand, admitted that despite taking out 16 commanders in the last 12 weeks a high level Taliban team was keeping one step ahead of his troops.

"A hard core are left that are hard to kill or capture and sophisticated in their targeting

"They will look at more spectacular attacks and high profile attacks targeting ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) and Afghan commanders.

"It's a case of trying to find them. We know who they are."

He added: "They are very competent, they have been doing this for a long time and their tactics techniques and procedures have evolved like ours."

There were now very advanced intelligence methods of listening into the Taliban commanders but some were still difficult to track down.

"We are getting better at it but so are they," the officer said.

The insurgents wanted to go into the winter having "convinced people they are winning," said the officer briefing journalists in London via a videolink.

His words follow the deaths of 30 US Navy Seal special forces soldiers killed after their Chinook was shot down this week and after Ahmad Wali Karzai, the Afghan president's influential brother, was murdered in his home city of Kandahar last month.

Brig Davis said the "very spectacular" operations would try and get inside the communities protected by security forces and would be "more obvious to the media".

"We are redoubling our efforts to try and get ahead of this."

He added that the Taliban was still "a long way off from being defeated" and the significant gains made in Helmand "are still reversible".

The Taliban managed to infiltrate a suicide bomber outside the police station in the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah last month killing 19 people shortly after British handed over control to Afghan forces.

But British forces were still making considerable strides forward defeating the wider Taliban.

"We have a very broad and deep understanding of insurgent networks allowing us to interdict them in community and at range."

Since April troops from 3 Commando Brigade have seized 2.5 tons of home made explosive, the equivalent to two months supply or 300 IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices)

While the population has become "tired of the fighting" they were still informing British and Afghan forces where bombs were hidden, providing 40 of IED finds.

The insurgents were now "struggling to get lethal aid through," Brig Davis said.

This year's summer 'fighting season' had seen considerably less violence than previous seasons with incidents down 43 per cent over last year which meant 70 fewer attacks each week.

In the three months to July British forces suffered 13 dead compared to 44 in the same period last year, albeit they were still deployed in the volatile town of Sangin in 2010. With the start of fasting month of Ramadan the level of violence is also expected to drop off for the next month.

British forces, who will remain at their current size of around 9,500 for the next year, hope to hand over all of Helmand to Afghan control before they leave at the end of 2014.

Before then there was "a lot of hard dangerous work still to be done", Brig Davis said.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan president issues decree that courts cannot change election results

By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, August 10, 6:14 PM

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s president issued a decree Wednesday stating that the country’s courts do not have the power to alter election results, a move appeared aimed at ending months of uncertainty over the parliament’s legitimacy.

The Afghan parliament has been in limbo after a special court in June called for the removal of 62 sitting lawmakers, saying they won their seats through fraud.

In his decree, President Hamid Karzai said that the Independent Election Commission — which organized the vote — holds the final authority on deciding vote counts and results. Presidential spokesman Siamak Herawi said the commission will evaluate the court’s findings and will decide if any candidates should be removed.

“Based on the national interest of the country, Karzai has said that all those documents and evidence will be passed to the IEC. He gave the IEC authority to make a final decision,” Herawi said.

Many international observers have claimed that Karzai was using the court to pack the legislature with his supporters, and the country’s Western allies have argued that the court’s call for the lawmaker’s removal was unconstitutional. Under Afghan law, only the IEC and a vote-fraud monitoring body are empowered to change the results.

Afghanistan’s September 2010 ballot was plagued by irregularities and voter intimidation. The fraud monitors discarded 1.3 million ballots — nearly a quarter of the total — for fraud, and disqualified 19 winning candidates for cheating.

While the decree is aimed at finally ending the debate over who has final say on the election results, its wording appeared contradictory.

The decree states: “The legal findings of the appeals court should be finalized as soon as possible by the election commission.”

But Herawi said this meant that the commission should make the final decision, not it was being ordered by Karzai to implement the court’s findings.

The chief electoral officer for the commission said this was the decision for which they had been hoping.

“This is mainly a decree to finalize, or put an end, to this issue,” Abdullah Ahmadzai said. He said that the commission hopes to finish making rulings within the next week.

The election commission will be evaluating decisions made by a fraud-monitoring watchdog that has already finished its term. Ahmadzai said it was his understanding that the IEC has the authority to examine these decisions since it is the only electoral body currently active. According to the decree, the special court work has been completed.

The debate over the final election results started when the attorney general’s office launched a separate investigation into allegations of ballot manipulation — a move that eventually led to the establishment of the special tribunal.

In January, the 249-member body was inaugurated after a standoff with Karzai, who had threatened to delay convening parliament until the court cases were concluded.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Insists: We Killed The Guy That Shot Down Our SEALs

By Noah Shachtman August 10, 2011 | 3:36 pm

Updated 6:54 p.m. EDT



The U.S. military says they know who shot down a helicopter filled with 38 American and Afghan troops, including 19 Navy SEALs. That man is now dead, killed by a “precision airstrike” from an F-16, according to statement from the American-led coalition in Kabul.

But the military won’t say how they’re so sure that this particular militant was the one responsible for the deadliest incident so far in the Afghan war. The Chinook helicopter took “fire from several insurgent locations on its approach,” the statement notes, and it “has not been determined if enemy fire was the sole reason for the helicopter crash.”

In a talk with reporters, coalition forces commander Gen. John Allen said he believed that a single rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) was likely responsible, but “we don’t know with any certainty what hit the aircraft.” (Some military insiders previously suspected that an improvised rocket was to blame.) Allen added that he wouldn’t know for sure until a full investigation was complete.

On Friday night, U.S. forces — including several Army Rangers — were sent into the Tangi valley, about 50 miles southwest of Kabul, to capture a local Taliban leader.

As the American team moved through the valley, Reuters reports, “they soon saw insurgents armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.” A firefight erupted, as the team assaulted what they believed to be the leader’s compound. Some of the insurgents “soon broke away from the main group.” That’s when the team called for reinforcements. In flew the Chinook, loaded with eight Afghans and 30 Americans.

"We committed a force to contain that element from getting out. And of course, in the process of that, the aircraft was struck by an RPG and crashed,” Allen said.

The shooter, along with killed Taliban captain Mullah Mohibullah, “was located after receiving multiple intelligence leads and tips from local citizens. The two men were attempting to flee the country in order to avoid capture,” the coalition said in its statement. A “security force located and followed the insurgents to a wooded area in Chak district. After ensuring no civilians were in the area, the force called for the airstrike which resulted in the deaths of the Mullah Mohibullah, the shooter, and several of their Taliban associates.”

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, told Reuters that the coalition got the wrong guy. “The person who shot down the helicopter is alive,” he claimed.

Allen said that was nonsense. “We tracked them, as we would in the aftermath of any operation, and we dealt with them with a kinetic strike,” he told reporters. “And in the aftermath of that, we have achieved certainty that they in fact were killed in that strike.”

But Allen admitted that the target of the original raid remains at large: “Did we get the leader that we were going after in the initial operation? No, we did not.” Of that, Allen said, he was sure.

Photo: U.S. Army

[buglerbilly]

Secret peace talks between US and Taliban collapse over leaks

Secret exploratory peace talks between the United States and the Taliban leadership have broken down after details of the negotiations were leaked, Western diplomats have told The Daily Telegraph.


Washington Post and Der Spiegel news magazine named Tayeb Agha as the key Taliban negotiator Photo: EPA

By Dean Nelson, Ben Farmer in Kabul

9:00PM BST 10 Aug 2011

The breakdown in the talks at such an early stage has led to recriminations and claims that the details of the meetings and the identity of the Taliban's chief negotiator were deliberately leaked by 'paranoid' Afghan government figures.

Absolute confidentiality had been a key condition for the meetings which were held in Germany and Qatar earlier this year between Tayeb Agha, Taliban leader Mullah Omar's former private secretary, and senior officials from the US State Department and Central Intelligence Agency. The meetings were chaired by Michael Steiner, Germany's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The talks were described as a preliminary exercise aimed at agreeing a series of confidence-building measures to persuade the Taliban that the United States and its allies are serious about a negotiated settlement, sources close to the talks told The Daily Telegraph.

They said Taliban leaders were extremely nervous about entering talks because of widespread scepticism among their own commanders who believed the Americans were only seeking dialogue to divide their movement and fears that any discussions would damage their own credibility.

But after only three sessions details of two meetings in Germany and one in Qatar – held in March and April - were leaked to the Washington Post and Der Spiegel news magazine which named Tayeb Agha as the key Taliban negotiator.

According to diplomatic sources and others close to the talks, Tayeb Agha has not been seen since and American officials have not been able to contact him through intermediaries in Quetta and Peshawar in Pakistan, where he is believed to live.

"The talks were a big deal, the real thing. I hope people will learn the lesson on the importance of confidentiality in the early stages. People in the US are horrified about what has happened," said one source close to the talks.

Sources in Kabul confirmed the talks appeared to have been "blown out of the water" by the publicity.

After years of the Taliban rejecting Hamid Karzai's overtures, news of contact with a senior aide to Mullah Omar had kindled cautious hope in Kabul.

Abdul Hakim Mujahid, the Taliban's former envoy to the United Nations and now a member of Mr Karzai's High Peace Council, told the Daily Telegraph in June that the contacts were "helpful".

He said: "[Tayeb Agha] is still very close to Mullah Mohammad Omar, it's a good sign. Not only close to Mullah Omar, but also close to Pakistan."

American officials had understood the need for complete confidentiality but decided President Hamid Karzai's government had to be kept informed of developments.

Michael Semple, the former deputy European Union representative in Kabul and a leading expert on Taliban thinking, said the disclosure of the talks and the identification of Tayeb Agha was regarded as damaging by the insurgents.

"The Taliban have long claimed that they will drive the foreigners out by force before contemplating talks. They need a period of confidential contact to satisfy themselves that there is something serious on offer to warrant them taking the big step of acknowledging that negotiations have to start now and not after things have been settled on the battlefield," he said.

"When the fact that talks had taken place and the identity of the Taliban envoy were leaked the Taliban shifted into their version of damage control. The leadership put it about that the contacts were nothing out of the ordinary. They were just routine discussions about prisoner releases, which a movement at war has to undertake periodically.

"It is hardly surprising that the Taliban chose to downplay the significance of Tayyab Agha's mission. In terms of progress towards negotiations which might end the war, it has proved a case of one step forward and two steps back," he added.

[buglerbilly]

Insurgents who downed helicopter killed in airstrike; 5 NATO troops killed by roadside bomb

By Associated Press, Published: August 10 | Updated: Thursday, August 11, 5:30 PM

KABUL, Afghanistan — A roadside bomb killed five NATO troops in southern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led coalition said Thursday, a day after the alliance reported it killed the Taliban insurgents responsible for shooting down one of its helicopters, killing 38 Americans and Afghans.

The latest deaths, which raised to 374 the number of international forces killed so far this year, underscored the tenuous nature of the decade-old war. The Taliban continues to strike hard even as the international forces press the militants while readying their Afghan counterparts to take over securing the country by the end of 2014 when the international combat mission is to end.

On Wednesday, another coalition service member died in a road bombing, the coalition said. Also, five Afghan policemen were killed Wednesday when their checkpoint was attacked by Taliban insurgents in Gereshk district of Helmand province, police chief Abdul Hakeem said.

The attacks came as the coalition said Wednesday that an airstrike killed the insurgents responsible for Saturday’s downing of a U.S. helicopter in which 30 U.S. troops, seven Afghan soldiers and an interpreter died.

F-16 fighter jets killed the insurgents responsible on Monday, according to the top American commander in Afghanistan, Marine Corps Gen. John Allen.

The military provided few details to back up the claim, but Allen said he was confident the airstrike killed fewer than 10 insurgents involved in the attack on the U.S. Chinook helicopter.

“All of these operations generate intelligence,” Allen said, including about those who fled the site of the crash.

“We tracked them as we would in the aftermath of any operation, and we dealt with them with a kinetic strike, and in the aftermath of that we have achieved certainty that they, in fact, were killed in that strike,” Allen said. He spoke by video from his Kabul headquarters.

In a separate statement, the military said the strike killed a Taliban leader and the insurgent who fired the rocket-propelled grenade at the helicopter. That statement also cited intelligence gathered on the ground. It did not provide further details.

“This does not ease our loss, but we must and we will continue to relentlessly pursue the enemy,” Allen said. The crash was the deadliest single loss for U.S. forces in the nearly 10-year Afghan war.

The military is still seeking the top insurgent leader that troops were going after in Saturday’s mission, Allen said.

According to officials, the team included 17 SEALs, five Navy special operations troops who support the SEALs, three Air Force airmen, a five-member Army air crew and a military dog, along with seven Afghan commandos and an Afghan interpreter.

Allen agreed that as U.S. troops begin to pull out of Afghanistan, such counterterrorism missions — often by special operations forces — will increase and become prominent.

It is generally expected that there will also be special operations forces in Afghanistan well after 2014, when NATO hopes to hand off responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

Afghanistan has more U.S. special operations troops, about 10,000, than any other theater of war. From April to July this year, 2,832 special operations raids captured 2,941 insurgents and killed 834, twice as many as during the same time period last year, according to NATO.

Allen said that after the beginning of the year, he will likely begin shifting more forces to the east, where coalition troops are facing a stubborn insurgency. Until then, he said, the military will continue in the south.

But the fight is getting more complicated as international troops try to shift more control over Afghan forces. Operations often seem to be “Afghan-led” in name only and international troops have repeatedly clashed with their Afghan partners. There have been a host of turncoat shootings by Afghan soldiers of international troops this year.

Coalition forces have finished their investigation at the helicopter crash site in Wardak province and have all left the area. Some of the helicopter parts and wreckage were taken away by aircraft and others were taken away on trucks, the coalition said.

While officials believe the helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade, Allen said the military’s investigation into the crash will also review whether small arms fire or other causes contributed to the crash.

___

Baldor reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier and Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report from Washington.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[buglerbilly]

Burka-clad female suicide bomber detonates in Pakistan

A woman enveloped in a burka detonated a suicide vest in North-West Pakistan on Thursday morning as police guarded the scene of an earlier bombing, killing at least seven people in the twin-pronged attack.


An injured boy is carried to a local hospital after the bombing in Peshawar Photo: AP/Mohammad Sajjad

By Rob Crilly, Islamabad

11:28AM BST 11 Aug 2011

Militant activity has intensified since Osama bin Laden was shot dead by US Navy Seals but the latest incident is only the third time police have confirmed the role of a female suicide bomber.

She hurled a grenade at a police checkpoint close to the scene of an earlier remote-controlled bombing in the city of Peshawar, a frequent target of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters arrayed along the nearby Pakistan-Afghan border, before detonating her explosives.

Police officials said a second female suicide bomber was also killed in the blast before she could activate her vest.

"This was a female suicide bomber aged around 17 or 18 who threw a hand grenade on the police checkpost, 20 metres away from the site of the first blast, and then blew herself up," Shafqat Malik, a local police officer, told the AFP news agency.

"Her vest did not explode completely. She was killed and another woman was also killed and three policemen were injured." Terrorists are increasingly using women and children in school uniform in order to evade checkpoints in Pakistan's cities.

Four officers and a child were killed in the first explosion, when a bomb hidden in a handcart at the roadside tore through a passing police van carrying 20 constables about to start the day shift.

The bombings come a day after a US missile strike in the North Waziristan tribal region killed 21 militants believed linked to the Haqqani network, an al-Qaeda linked group fighting in Afghanistan.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan 'paid' to protect bin Laden

Islamabad

August 12, 2011 .

OSAMA bin Laden was protected by elements of Pakistan's security apparatus in return for millions of dollars of Saudi cash, according to an account of the operation to kill the world's most wanted man.

Raelynn Hillhouse, an American security analyst, claimed that bin Laden's whereabouts were revealed when a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to claim the long-standing $US25 million ($A24.2 million) bounty on the al-Qaeda leader's head.

Her version, based on information from ''intelligence community'' sources, contradicts the official account that bin Laden was tracked down through surveillance of his courier.

Pakistani officials have always denied that bin Laden was sheltered in the country, or that Islamabad had any prior knowledge of the secret mission in which he was killed. ''The officer came forward to claim the substantial reward and to broker US citizenship for his family,'' she writes on her intelligence blog, The Spy Who Billed Me.

''My sources tell me that the informant claimed that the Saudis were paying off the Pakistani military and intelligence to essentially shelter and keep bin Laden under house arrest in Abbottabad.''

[I]TELEGRAPH

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/pakistan-paid-to-protect-bin-laden-20110811-1ioq1.html#ixzz1UjL1aRX6

[McFriday]

If true, a real confidence booster for informants. Get $25m then get outed and die, a shortened but rich life.
Great work, hope she sleeps well.

Mac

[buglerbilly]

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

Where Are The Special Forces Helicopters?

Posted by Paul McLeary at 8/11/2011 12:22 PM CDT



The weapon that killed thirty American Special Operators and regular Army troops, along with eight Afghan commandos aboard an CH-47 Chinook helicopter on August 6 in Wardak, Afghanistan was hardly the pinnacle of military technology. It was a simple shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenade (RPG), a weapon used for decades by militants around the globe, though usually not to such devastating effect.

While the Pentagon continues to investigate the incident, it’s worth nothing that even though there were twenty-five Special Forces (SOF) operators aboard the bird, the Chinook came from the regular Army—meaning it wasn’t a Special Forces-modified MH-47G. Just this past March, Boeing delivered the 61st and final refitted MH-47G to the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), as part of a multi-year service life extension program that updated the 50 year old aircraft from its “D” and “E” models. SOAR is scheduled to receive eight more “new build” G’s by fiscal 2015, according to current plans. Boeing says that the upgrades increase the platform’s life through the 2030’s—by which time the birds would be about 70 years old.

While there are no indications that even a SOF-modified Chinook would have been able to survive the hit that the helo took on Friday, the incident does beg the question of why so many SOF are riding around in helicopters they don’t own? At a SOF technology conference in Tampa, Fla., this summer, commanders from the U.S. Special Forces Command (USSOCOM) said that they were looking for more money from the services to invest in new rotary-wing aircraft. “We’re going to hopefully guide the services into giving us something that is useful for us,” said Army Col. Doug Rombough, program executive officer for rotary wing at USSOCOM. “We certainly don’t have the budget or funding to guide a whole new generation of aircraft,” he added.

Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming USSOCOM honcho, wrote in testimony to Senate Armed Services Committee in June that USSOCOM’s “current operations will pressure development and limit required modernization and recapitalization efforts” of its rotary fleets, and that the “lack of vertical lift capability to train SOF ground forces and aircrew proficiency” was hurting the overall health and readiness of the SOF force.

The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review said that the Pentagon is seeking to continue growing the SOF force structure, in particular rotary and fixed-wing aircraft. With budget cuts coming, and with all indications being that we’re going to rely on Special Forces more than ever in places like Afghanistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and Iraq for years to come, watching the slice of the budget that SOF receives will show just how serious those recommendations were.

[buglerbilly]

If true, a real confidence booster for informants. Get $25m then get outed and die, a shortened but rich life.
Great work, hope she sleeps well.

Mac

Why would she give a shit, its only a Paki...................:stfu2

[buglerbilly]

A rare window into a closed world

By Philip Ewing Thursday, August 11th, 2011 2:00 pm



Everyone wants to know: Who are America’s most elite special operators? The Pentagon provided some clues on Thursday when it released the names of the service members who were killed in Saturday’s CH-47 Chinook crash in Afghanistan. And although we keep being told to wait until the investigations are complete before deciding what to think about the tragedy, Thursday’s grim roll at least provides a glimpse of the men who take some of the most dangerous missions in the world.

The Pentagon identified the members of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group as sailors assigned to an “East Coast-based Naval Special Warfare unit” — no doubt a concession to Special Operations Command — and Thursday’s announcement makes clear how unusual DevGru is: Its members are much more experienced than a typical unit, either first-class petty officers, chiefs or senior chiefs, and included one master chief SEAL. Also, they’re not all SEALs.

Sailors are unique among service members in that they wear their military occupational specialties on their sleeves — literally. If all you hear about a soldier is that he’s a “sergeant,” you can’t tell whether he’s an artilleryman or a file clerk, but sailors’ ratings are part of their titles, so you know a logistics specialist 3rd class has a very different job from someone who’s a machinist’s mate 2nd class. The SEALs who were aboard Saturday’s helo belonged to “special warfare operator” rating, but five of the sailors with the DevGru operators didn’t:

Two were explosive ordnance disposal technicians — no doubt assigned to help defuse or even set bombs during the missions. One was an information systems technician — a computer and network specialist, perhaps along to help exploit enemy laptops or other electronic intelligence. One was a cryptologic technician, specializing in codes and communication, also likely along to help with exploiting intel. One was a master-at-arms, the Navy’s version of military police, usually assigned to keep order on ships or bases — his job may have been to handle the team’s working dog, or even perhaps to help deal with potential prisoners or interrogations.

Unlike the sailors, the three airmen who were aboard don’t have job designators as part of their titles, though we know they were combat controllers from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, based at Pope Field, N.C. — they may have been along to help direct air support for the SEALs or the Army Rangers who were already on the ground.

Thursday’s list of victims is the first time the Pentagon has identified the units of the Army crew members who were flying the Chinook, and it confirms that they and their aircraft did not belong to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), which often, but not always, flies special operators in combat. The Chinook’s Army crewmen were from the 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment (General Support Aviation Battalion); and the 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment (General Support Aviation Battalion).

The announcement also paints a larger picture of the special operations community: It’s dominated by senior enlisted troops; there was only one officer aboard the Chinook, a Navy lieutenant commander who was presumably in charge of the mission, and the two Army chief warrant officers who piloted the helicopter. The fact that most of the men aboard were E-6es or above, clearly some of the saltiest veterans in a highly select and very dangerous line of work, reinforces the magnitude of this loss to the special warfare community.

The head of Naval Special Warfare Command, Rear Adm. Sean A. Pybus, issued this statement on Thursday:


“Early Saturday morning, Aug. 6, Naval Special Warfare suffered a tremendous loss of 22 men while conducting critical special operations combat in Afghanistan. They cannot be replaced. We will honor their service and sacrifice, and embrace their families as our own, in this time of immeasurable grief. The outpouring of support and sympathy from the armed services, the government, communities and the public is well beyond my ability to properly thank. The Naval Special Warfare Community is deeply humbled and appreciative.

“Our NSW men were in company with U.S. Army aircrew, U.S. Air Force para-rescue and combat controllers, and an Afghan security element. We grieve for all of them, and admire their teamwork, commitment and courage. I have great hope for the future knowing that extraordinary men dedicate themselves completely to the idea and the actions of freedom and security, not only for ourselves but for others. We are truly blessed that such men answer a call to military service at the highest levels of professionalism and capability, but also deeply saddened by their loss. In the days and weeks ahead, I would ask for your thoughts, prayers and support for NSW, our families, the special operations community, and all of our armed forces.”

Read more: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/08/11/a-rare-window-into-a-closed-world/#ixzz1UmLayhnI
DoDBuzz.com

[buglerbilly]

No surrender, no regrets for Taliban turncoat

Ben Doherty and Momoon Durani

August 13, 2011.


Mullah Noor-ul-Aziz ... ''I beg God to stop Afghan bloodshed. We have shed enough.'' Photo: Momoon Durani

Mullah Noor-ul-Aziz smokes as he sits cross-legged on the floor of his spartan front room, his eyes and his answers occasionally lost in a pall of blue smoke. But one reply is unambiguous: he has killed foreign soldiers. ''I shot them by 82 [millimetre rounds]. They were avoiding to drive on our mines, so we fired at them. I saw two killed.''

He smiles. ''My whole life is full of significant memories but one would be - we'd planted some mines in Nad Ali. At this time a helicopter came, troops came, they were very close, there was an explosion. They had stepped on our mines … we were very happy that our mines had achieved such a great goal.''

Aziz stops short, wary of going into too much detail about exactly who he killed and when, but his stories ring true. ''My other good memory would be - I brought down a NATO helicopter. I was very happy. Every day was a memory, there were times that we'd destroyed seven to eight tanks.''

For more than a decade, Noor-ul-Aziz was one of the Taliban's most senior military commanders and spiritual leaders. A dedicated jihadi, originally from Kandahar, he fought all across the country, rising through the movement's ranks to become ''shadow governor'' of the northern province of Kunduz. But today, back in Kandahar, he is an ally of the very soldiers he spent a decade trying to kill - on the payroll of the armies he tried to defeat.

Aziz is one of the highest-profile Taliban to ''come over'', as he puts it, joining a reintegration program designed to bring Taliban fighters back into the mainstream of Afghan society.

In his first international interview, he says his decision to swap sides was not an easy one. ''It was trouble for me, I wasn't sure what would happen.'' But, Aziz says, he was tired of fighting, and saw hope in the Afghan government's attempts to broker a peace.

Afghanistan's first program to ''reintegrate'' Taliban, known as Takhim-e-Solh Dari for Strengthening Peace, was an expensive disaster. Agence France-Presse reported it was damned by a UN report as ''financially and morally corrupt''. Those who laid down their arms were not kept safe from reprisal attacks, several were killed and many went back to fighting against NATO after a few months when promises of jobs and housing were not delivered.

Others proved ''seasonal recruits'', taking the West's money in the winter and rejoining the insurgency in spring and summer, or were not Taliban at all, just farmers with guns who saw money to be made.

But NATO has a new program, the Afghan Peace and Reintegration Program. In its first 10 months it ''signed up'' 1740 fighters. But it cost more than $US140 million, and the numbers are still only a fraction of the 20,000 to 40,000 active Taliban fighters across the country.

For Aziz, laying down his weapons has brought reward, but also risk. He now has a high-paying and influential government job as director of haj and religious affairs for the province of Kandahar. He is living again with his family - two wives, four daughters and four sons - after years of separation. Their fortified compound in the upmarket Kandahar suburb of Shari Naw is paid for by the government. But so, too, is the monstrous 24-hour security detail he needs.

Aziz has less freedom than he did as an outlaw. Six watchtowers surround the house, which is at the end of a street blocked to traffic by high concrete walls. When he travels, three armoured vehicles full of guards move with him.

Critics of the program say too few of the recruits have been senior Taliban, commanders able to bring other fighters with them, and that the program is weak in the east and south where the insurgency is strongest. But it is more rigorous than its predecessor, and Aziz, a cleric, is keen to preach its virtues.

''The war is not the solution. The government needs to intensify the peace process. It must talk to the Taliban, ease the fighting, release the Taliban prisoners and inshallah [God willing], peace will be achieved in Afghanistan. This is my message to my brothers : come over.''

The program requires potential recruits to spend three months in a safe house on ''parole'' while the sincerity of their decision to quit the war is assessed. They are photographed and biometrically scanned, before being given a short-term stipend, typically $US120 a month for a fighter, $US150 for a commander. Longer-term, their communities are rewarded with development projects and aid grants.

But many in NATO remain sceptical that hearts and minds hardened by 10 years of fighting can be won over by inducements from an occupying army, particularly one that has promised to leave in three years. Three registered former fighters were part of a mob that stormed a UN compound in Mazar-i-Sharif in April and killed eight foreign aid workers. ''It's a crap shoot,'' said one intelligence officer in Helmand on condition of anonymity. ''We go to shoot them and they shout 'reintegration'. They're using it so we can't target them.''

But the program's head, a British major-general, Phil Jones, says the future of reintegration is promising. ''People realise that this program is a benefit to entire communities, not just individuals. It is not a 'guns-for-peace' program but a way for former fighters to lead peaceful and productive lives for their own benefit as well as for the benefit of their communities.''

Analysts say there is little choice but to work with the Taliban. A decade of war has proven them indomitable.

''Contacting them, talking to them, and hopefully at some point, seriously negotiating with them, is a must,'' Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, says. ''It will still take time, and a lot more people will be killed, unfortunately, but it has to be done, because the Taliban are too big to be destroyed militarily.''

Making allies of former senior Taliban also offers the West a greater insight into those they are fighting. Aziz insists that any brokered peace will have to involve power shared with the Taliban, whom he still believes had right on their side.

''We rose legitimately,'' he says. ''I can convince you and, inshallah, the world that we were right. We took up arms against bandits, thieves and militias … against foreign forces raiding us … and Afghan officials.''

Noor-ul-Aziz has a small garden in his new house, ringed by high fences of barbed wire. He rarely travels much farther these days, and the nearby mountains he called home for years he can likely never visit again. But he does not regret and sees no inconsistency in his decision to change sides.

''I don't consider this a surrender. I've rather joined my brother [Afghans]. I will serve the people of Afghanistan with great honesty. I have served with honesty on [the] Taliban side, and will do so here, too. I beg God to stop Afghan bloodshed. We have shed enough.''

[I]Momoon Durani reported from Kandahar.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/no-surrender-no-regrets-for-taliban-turncoat-20110812-1iqsa.html#ixzz1Uq4LTWtD

[buglerbilly]

Helicopter crews prepare for Afghanistan

A Training and Adventure news article

12 Aug 11

Troops from the Joint Helicopter Command (JHC) have taken over part of Salisbury Plain to take part in Exercise Pashtun Jaguar prior to deployment to Afghanistan next year. Report by Leigh Hamilton.


A Husky vehicle makes its way past a Chinook helicopter and a contingent of Royal Marines during an exercise on Salisbury Plain (stock image)
[Picture: Leading Airman (Photographer) Si Ethell, Crown Copyright/MOD 2010]

To prepare the personnel as well as possible for their upcoming deployment to Afghanistan, Exercise Pashtun Jaguar is physically laid out to exactly replicate the facilities they will have at Camp Bastion, so that they will hit the ground running when they arrive.

Members of all three Services are involved in the training which is supporting 20 Armoured Brigade's Exercise Pashtun Dawn which is running simultaneously.

To ensure a good working relationship between ground control and those in the air, many different scenarios have been developed so that, when it comes to the real deal, all involved will have worked closely together and be able to clearly cope with the situation.

Colonel Neil Sexton, Assistant Director Operations JHC, said:


A Sea King Mk4 from the Royal Navy's Commando Helicopter Force is exercised during Pashtun Jaguar on Salisbury Plain (stock image)
[Picture: Leading Airman (Photographer) Gary Weatherston, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

"One reason for this exercise is to make sure that the Joint Helicopter Force (Afghanistan), and its different detachments of helicopters, are prepared to go out over the next six months.

"We're preparing the headquarters staff in the Joint Operations Centre and then we're training the flying detachments of all the different helicopter types to work in different scenarios to make sure that they have all the right tactics, techniques and procedures, and to allow the ground troops to plan and prepare with them to use the helicopters properly."

Cross-pollination of information from all those involved is key to getting the most out of Exercise Pashtun Jaguar, as Colonel Sexton explained:

"We have done some really good training alongside the battle groups who are bringing all their company commanders in to do briefings for helicopter detachments, to make sure that we get this intellectual understanding between the blokes on the ground and the crews who are going to be operating the aircraft.


The crew of a British Army Apache helicopter of 663 Squadron, 3 Regiment Army Air Corps, taxi into their slot on the helicopter operating area at Camp Bastion in Helmand province (stock image)
[Picture: Corporal Steve Bain RAF, Crown Copyright/MOD 2009]

"It's actually quite easy flying an aircraft on Salisbury Plain. What you've got to do is link it in properly with the training that the chaps on the ground are doing to make sure they're receiving the support they need.

"Whether that's simulated Apache fires, casualty evacuation using the Chinooks, air assault or trooping drills using any of the lift platforms, or, with the Lynx, some kind of surveillance capability."

Lieutenant Colonel James Anderson heads up the Joint Operations Centre on Exercise Pashtun Jaguar. He explained the rationale behind creating an exact layout of Camp Bastion:

"The key point is that the training has to be extremely robust to replicate what we will find in Afghanistan," he said, "because as soon as we get there we've got to hit the ground running and you've got to be very much aware of what the current mood is in theatre and how things have changed.


A pilot of the Joint Helicopter Force carries out lifesaving work providing transport to a Medical Emergency Response Team in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan (stock image)
[Picture: Sergeant Alison Baskerville, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

"Those people who have been out there 12 months ago will notice a significant change to what's actually happening now. Everyone's really looking forward to it."

As well as regular Service personnel, many reservists attended the exercise, including TA soldier Captain Katie McLeman, Flight Commander for 655 Squadron, who normally works as a Business Analyst Portfolio Manager. She explained how the layout of the camp provides an extra touch of realism to the training:

"Because the way it's been set out replicates exactly what's in Bastion, it gives everybody the ability to really practise what they're supposed to be doing, so when they turn up in theatre they know what to expect. They've replicated it even down to where we're currently living, where we eat, the whole lot is set out the same."

RAF Auxiliary Flying Officer Adam Thornhill's civilian job is as a forecaster with the Met Office based at RAF Brize Norton.


The Sea King Airborne Surveillance and Control Mk7 at work in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan (stock image)
[Picture: Leading Airman (Photographer) Alex Cave, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

With his transferable skills, he is relishing the opportunity to work with the JHC:

"My usual day job is working with the transport fleet so coming down and working with the JHC is totally different," he said. "The helicopters are interested in low-level conditions and they have different limitations on the aircraft, obviously they're trying to do something much more localised than what we do at Brize Norton.

"It's very useful to get face time with the Colonel who I'm going to be serving in Afghanistan with, certainly the aircrews; if they know you personally and have experienced your forecasting before, they have a lot more faith in what you're forecasting and that's important when it comes to operations out in theatre."

The joint exercise runs from 24 July until 22 August 2011.

[buglerbilly]

US Troops Return to Deadly Afghan Valley

August 12, 2011

Associated Press|by Deb Riechmann



KABUL, Afghanistan - Just months after pulling out of a remote slice of eastern Afghanistan dubbed the "Valley of Death," U.S. troops are back reinforcing their once-abandoned bases in the area - a hotbed of the insurgency and a dangerous second front in the decade-old war.

Stationing U.S. troops again in the isolated, sparsely populated Pech Valley will boost the coalition's presence and firepower in the area near the Pakistan border just as the focus of the war shifts back to that region where infiltrating insurgents closest to al-Qaida and other militants hold sway.

"The decision to send U.S. forces back to the Pech may also reflect a recognition that insurgent safe havens can cause us more harm than had been anticipated when we withdrew U.S. forces," said Mark Moyar, research director of the U.S.-based counterinsurgency consultancy Orbis Operations.

"Insurgencies thrive on such safe havens and use them to stage operations elsewhere," he said.

The U.S. military downplayed the decision to station troops again in Pech. The coalition, along with the Afghan National Army, always maintained a presence in the region, said Lt. Col. Chad Carroll, a spokesman for the coalition's eastern command.

"It's just a matter of where they laid their heads at night," he said.

Carroll would not say how many U.S. troops are now stationed there or how many more would be sent.

The Pech Valley in Kunar province, with bucolic green farmland surrounded by sweeping mountain ridges, was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the war and claimed the lives of more than 100 U.S. soldiers by some estimates.

In May, the U.S.-led coalition pulled out of the valley, saying it wanted to reposition its forces in areas where more Afghans live as part of strategy to protect large population centers and provide the Afghan government with an opportunity to extend its reach from Kabul and provide services to its citizens with the help of donor nations.

The former eastern commander Maj. Gen. John Campbell told The Associated Press at the time that he did not want his forces stuck in static positions. He said he wanted them to be mobile and more able to chase insurgents sneaking in from hideouts in Pakistan.

For years, eastern Afghanistan has been a far more dangerous place for terrorism than the south. Osama bin Laden's headquarters was in Kunar when he was fighting the Soviets. After the U.S. invaded Afghanistan 10 years ago, bin Laden sought refuge in Kunar and other eastern provinces. The caves of Tora Bora are in eastern Nangarhar province, bordering Kunar. And Nuristan, a lawless province where the Taliban and others control wide swathes of territory, is just north of the Pech Valley.

Until last week's Chinook helicopter crash in eastern Wardak province's Tangi Valley that killed 38 U.S. troops and Afghans, the deadliest single incident of the war was a helicopter that was shot down in Kunar province. Sixteen special operations troops died in the June 28, 2005 crash.

Just as in Pech, U.S. forces had left their remote base in Tangi, ostensibly to reinforce population centers and highways.

"Although special operations raids have given the insurgents some black eyes in the Tangi and other valleys abandoned by U.S. forces, they have not disrupted enemy operations to the degree that had been hoped," Moyar wrote in a recent editorial.

"Shortly before the crash in the Tangi Valley, recognition of the dangers posed by insurgents have led to a momentous, if largely unnoticed, decision to reinsert a permanent U.S. troops presence in the Pech Valley," he wrote.

American troops did not get a welcome mat on their return to the area in the last week of July.

Insurgents fired at a coalition helicopter on July 25, injuring a few troops. A few days later, insurgents fired a mortar into a building at a base in Nangalam where U.S. troops were deployed. No deaths were reported.

The new top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, said the U.S. presence again in Pech was part of the coalition's efforts to partner with Afghan security forces.

"Frankly, there was a leadership challenge in the (Afghan Army) kandak (battalion) and when they replaced the leader that was there ... he did not take them forward as an independent force so we're going back in to restore that capacity," Allyn told the Long War Journal in an interview published this week.

Allyn's comment seemed to indicate that the Afghan security forces were having trouble doing the job without their coalition partners, but the coalition denied this was the case.

"Absolutely and unequivocally no," Carroll said. "During the last two weeks, the Afghan security forces delivered 200 tons of humanitarian assistance - complete with security - to the people of Nuristan. They were exceptionally well received by the Afghan people in that area. We had a very limited role in all of this."

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

American aid worker Warren Weinstein kidnapped in Pakistan

An American aid worker has been kidnapped from his home in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore.


Police and security officials gather outside the residence of an American citizen after he was kidnapped in Lahore Photo: REUTERS/Mohsin Raza

10:13AM BST 13 Aug 2011

The man, identified by the US embassy as Warren Weinstein, works for the consulting firm J.E. Austin Associates, and was working on a development project in the country's lawless tribal areas, where Pakistani troops have been battling Islamist insurgents for years.

"Some six to eight people broke into his house at around 3.30am, when security guards on duty were making preparation for fasting," said police official Tajamal Hussain, referring to the Ramadan fast observed by Muslims.

"Two of the assailants came from the front gate while about six others used the backdoor. They tortured the guards and then took the American with them."

A security official said the gunmen forced the man's driver to knock on his bedroom door. When the man opened it, they took him.

Mr Hussain said Mr Weinstein, 63, had been living in Pakistan five to six years. He mostly lived in Islamabad but had been travelling to Lahore.

According to J.E. Austin Associates website, Mr Weinstein is a recognized expert in international development with 25 years experience, proficient in six foreign languages and has a PhD in International Law & Economics. He currently head of a program that was seeking to strengthening the competitiveness of Pakistani industries.

There has been no claim of responsibility.

Kidnap for ransom is relatively common in Pakistan, though foreigners are not often targets. Militants also occasionally take foreigners hostage.

Pakistani Taliban, linked to al Qaeda, have claimed responsibility for kidnapping a Swiss couple in July in the volatile southwestern province of Baluchistan.

They said the couple could be freed in exchange for a Pakistani woman serving a jail term in the United States for shooting FBI agents and US soldiers in Afghanistan.

Eight Pakistani employees of a US-based aid organisation, American Refugee Committee (ARC), were kidnapped in Baluchistan last month.

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan's former spy chief: 'Never trust the Taliban'

Amrullah Saleh, the urbane former head of Afghanistan's spy agency, tells Ben Farmer why it is wrong to talk to the Taliban.


Amrolah Saleh has formed an influential new opposition group that has denounced the plans of President Hamid Karzai and the West for a political settlement with the Taliban. Photo: MAJID SAEEDI

By Ben Farmer, Kabul

9:00PM BST 13 Aug 2011

He may no longer be Afghanistan's spymaster general, but in the new career he has moved into, Amrullah Saleh must retain many of the trappings from his former job.

Visitors to the Kabul home of the intelligence boss-turned-politician encounter checkpoints from at least a block away, while outside his villa, lean, purposeful guards from his native Panjshir Valley eye approaching strangers warily.

Like any official who spent six years at the sharp end of one of the most ruthless intelligence wars in the world, the 39-year-old former head of the Afghan domestic intelligence service has gained his fair share of enemies.

But since quitting his post last year, he now has even more reason to fear – after forming an influential new opposition group that has denounced the plans of President Hamid Karzai and the West for a political settlement with the Taliban.

"Very simply, the Taliban are our killers, they are not our brothers," Mr Saleh told The Sunday Telegraph last week.

As head of national directorate of security the until last summer, he ran an apparatus of agents, paramilitaries, secret prisons and informants that was considered one of the few effective, if sometimes brutal, arms of the Kabul government.

It was his job to understand the Taliban and know more about the shadowy army of ruthless fighters and their fundamentalist conservative creed than anyone else inside the Afghan government – and he did not like what he found.

Now he is using every opportunity to proclaim his view that unless they become a purely political force and lay down their weapons for good, an almost impossibly remote prospect, the Taliban are not to be trusted.

"The Taliban say they have a licence from God to kill, to torture, to marginalise women," he warned.

"That we don't accept. No Taliban will say my licence comes from Mullah Omar, their leader: they say my licence comes from God. Settlement with that type of group is a disaster for Afghanistan."

His view is highly inconvenient for the West, as Nato hastens to find a plausible political strategy that will permit it to exit from Afghanistan with some dignity attached over the next few years.

His warning comes in a bloody month for the coalition and a week after the Taliban shot down a Chinook helicopter killing 38 in Nato's single deadliest incident.

While it was disclosed last week that secret exploratory talks between a senior Taliban aide and the Americans had stalled when details were leaked, London and Washington remain convinced negotiations are the answer to ending the violent quagmire.

Mr Saleh was one of the West's most trusted allies, and his colleagues in the CIA and MI6 viewed him as one of their most reliable partners.

In particular, he was considered a cleaner pair of hands than many of Afghanistan's other pro-Western strongmen, such as President Karzai's half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was dogged by claims of involvement in drug-trafficking and murdered in Kandahar last month.

Mr Saleh was forced to resign along with his ally, the former interior minister Hanif Atmar, after the Taliban attacked a peace conference last summer – but while the official reason was because of the failure to prevent the assault, behind the scenes there had been growing tensions with Mr Karzai himself, whom Mr Saleh accuses of being not just corrupt, but also beholden to neighbouring Pakistan, the Taliban's chief sponsor.

Now free to speak his mind, the intervening months have seen him instead emerge as an outspoken opposition figure.

He is attempting to forge an anti-Taliban "grand coalition" of Afghans who fear their former allies in the West may end up handing power to the Taliban in their rush to leave Afghanistan.

Clean-shaven and wearing Italian-style loafers and a designer polo shirt, Mr Saleh looks surprisingly Western for a man steeped in the violent world of Afghan power politics, and has a reputation as an intellectual, rather than a bruiser.

Fluent in English, he could have walked into safe, well-paid employment in consultancy or academia after his last job, but has forsaken comfortable options for the "hard life" of Afghan politics.

"I could have opted for a very soft, very luxurious, very low-profile life occasionally talking to this think tank or that," he said.

"But I feel indebted to this country."

The coalition he is trying to forge with other opposition figures stands on twin platforms of government reform and a refusal to see concessions to the Taliban in the rush for an end to the war.

Fears that President Hamid Karzai was seeking a secret peace deal with the Taliban meant swathes of northern Afghanistan were "preparing for the worst" and beginning to rearm in anticipation of possible civil war, he warned.

Mr Karzai's overtures to his fellow ethnic Pashtuns, who dominate southern Afghanistan and have traditionally made up the bulk of the Taliban's ranks, have horrified the ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras of the north, who fought them during the 1990s.

They fear peace negotiations would only herald a murky deal between the presidential palace and their former foes, allowing the Taliban to recreate their Islamic emirate across southern Afghanistan.

The High Peace Council established by the president to pursue a transparent peace process was a sham, Mr Saleh alleged, with all genuine attempts at talks instead carried out privately by the palace.

"Mr Karzai is not representing Afghanistan in these talks," Mr Saleh said. "The mechanism he has established is operating in darkness."

Such a backdoor deal would "push us into civil strife" he added.

Both Britain and America are openly seeking a political settlement to the war, but Mr Saleh's comments underline the concerns of many Afghans who fear they will be sold out to speed a Nato exit.

The increasingly hard stance taken by communities in the north has hardened further with the Taliban assassination of several of their civil war-era leaders this year.

It has also raised the dreadful spectre of a return to the ethnic violence which ruined the country in the 1990s, with reports that some northern groups are already rearming as a contingency.

Mr Saleh worked as an aide to anti-Taliban Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, but denies his bloc is in effect the remnants of the Northern Alliance warlords who swept the Taliban from power with US support in 2001.

However, the bloc is strongest in the Alliance's northern and north eastern heartlands and has little obvious support in the Pashtun south.

Central among his coalition's fears is the role of Pakistan in trying to secure power in the south for the Taliban.

Mr Saleh was a vociferous critic of Pakistan's interference during his spying job, and some thought he was pushed to the margins of power and then forced to resign because of pressure from Islamabad.

He said he and his allies were preparing for a worst-case scenario where the Taliban were allowed to keep southern provinces with "weapons and structure intact" after agreeing to a ceasefire with Mr Karzai.

"That will mean fragmentation of authority within Afghanistan, emergence of another state. In that situation we will rise," he declared. "It will only be a matter of time before Taliban jump into other areas."

He also has an unflattering analysis of the continuing Nato campaign and the efficacy of the "surge" of troops sent to Afghanistan by Barack Obama.

The Taliban were neither undefeated nor marginalised, and had retained everything they needed to continue their insurgency, he claimed.

Their leadership was safe, they had access to cash and they were being sheltered in Pakistan where they could plan attacks, operate hospitals and run training camps.

While American tactics of "clear, hold and build" had successfully cleared parts of Helmand and Kandahar, the later stages had failed. Mr Karzai's government had not filled the gap and the writ of the government had not been extended.

"What has been effectively disrupted is their third-tier Taliban, that is their fighting force. Taking into consideration the recruitment base of the Taliban and the size of the population from which they take their fighters, they can afford it."

Critics of Mr Saleh portray him as embittered at his loss of power and question his credibility in condemning the regime as corrupt when he spent years inside it. They also point out that his coalition seems weak and disorganised compared to other Afghan blocs.

But he claims that says more about Afghan politics than it does about his own appeal.

"We are not dominating the space, that is true," he concedes.

"You know why? I go to a district to mobilise the people: the governor is against us, the smugglers are against us, the Taliban are against us and we have no access to cash. The space for clean opposition politics is very little."

[buglerbilly]

Suicide gunmen storm house of Afghan governor

Gunmen wearing suicide vests stormed the house of an Afghan provincial governor just north of the capital, killing 19 and wounding more than 30 after setting off at least five explosions.

9:55AM BST 14 Aug 2011

An Afghan interior ministry spokesman said 14 civilians and five police had been killed, with 37 people, mostly civilians, injured.

Governor Abdul Basir Salangi earlier told Tolo television station that he was inside the compound that houses his office and other administrators in Parwan province, about 30 miles north of Kabul.

"The enemy entered the southern gate. One detonated himself and five others attacked inside the governor's house. So far there have been five blasts," he said, adding that there was a standoff between the attackers and the guards.

"There are some people injured. I saw some people injured there," he added.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for an earlier attack in the Parwan capital of Charikar. The surrounding farming plains are also home to Bagram, the biggest US military base in Afghanistan.

"The fighting is ongoing," Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed said without giving further details. He said suicide bombers were involved.

The Taliban are waging a 10-year insurgency against the Western-backed government and around 140,000 US-led foreign troops. One of their main tactics is suicide bombings.

In recent years, the rebels have honed the technique of coordinated attacks in which multiple gunmen and suicide bombers fight their way into government buildings and security facilities before setting off their bombs.

In Sunday's attack, one suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of the highly secured governor's house, allowing his comrades to storm inside the compound, according to the governor.

[Milne Bay]

Pakistan let China see downed US chopper: report

Updated August 15, 2011 08:35:12

Pakistan gave China access to the previously unknown "stealth" helicopter that crashed during the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May, despite explicit requests from the CIA not to, according to a British newspaper.

The revelation, if confirmed, is likely to further shake the United States-Pakistan relationship, which has been improving slightly after hitting its lowest point in decades following the May 2 bin Laden raid.

During the raid, one of two modified Blackhawk helicopters, believed to employ unknown stealth capability, malfunctioned and crashed, forcing the commandos to abandon it.

"The US now has information that Pakistan, particularly the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate), gave access to the Chinese military to the downed helicopter in Abbottabad," London's Financial Times newspaper quoted a person "in intelligence circles" as saying.

Pakistan, which enjoys a close relationship with China, allowed Chinese intelligence officials to take pictures of the crashed chopper as well as take samples of its special "skin" that allowed the American raid to evade Pakistani radar, the newspaper reported.

No one from the Pakistani army was available for comment, but the ISI, Pakistan's top spy agency, denied the report. The paper said Pakistan's top general, chief of army staff Ashfaq Kayani, denied that China had been given access.

The surviving tail section, photos of which were widely distributed on the internet, was returned to the US following a trip by US senator John Kerry in May, a spokesman for the US said.

Shortly after the raid, Pakistan hinted that it might give China access to the downed chopper, given its fury over the raid, which it considers a grievous violation of its sovereignty.

"We had explicitly asked the Pakistanis in the immediate aftermath of the raid not to let anyone have access to the damaged remains of the helicopter," the Financial Times quoted the source as saying.

In an incident such as the helicopter crash, it is standard American procedure to destroy sophisticated technology such as encrypted communications and navigation computers.

Pakistan is a strategic ally to the US but the relationship has been on a downward spiral since the killing of the al Qaeda leader in the raid by US forces.

Islamabad was not informed in advance and responded by cutting back on US trainers in the country and placing limits on CIA activities there.

The fact that the al Qaeda chief lived for years near the Pakistani army's main academy in the north-western garrison town of Abbottabad reinforced suspicions in Washington about Islamabad's reliability in the war against militant Islamists.

There are also growing frustrations with Pakistan over its reluctance to mount offensives against militant factions who are fighting US-led foreign forces across the border in Afghanistan.

In a show of displeasure over Pakistan's cutback in US trainers, its limits on visas for US personnel and other bilateral irritants, the United States recently suspended about a third of its $US2.7 billion ($2.6 million) annual defence aid to Pakistan.

Despite this, both sides have tried to prevent a breakdown of relations.

The head of Pakistan's powerful ISI, Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, visited the US last month for talks with US government and intelligence officials, which both sides said went well.

Despite the billions in aid, Pakistan still considers China a more reliable ally than the US. China is a major investor in predominantly Muslim Pakistan areas such as telecommunications, ports and infrastructure. The countries are linked by a Chinese-built road pushed through Pakistan's northern mountains.

Trade with Pakistan is worth almost $US9 billion a year for Pakistan, and China is its top arms supplier.

In the wake of attacks that left 11 people dead in the China's western region of Xinjiang in late July, Pakistan quickly dispatched Lieutenant-General Pasha to Beijing.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-15/china-saw-downed-stealth-chopper/2839276

[buglerbilly]

A regurgitation of what was already talked about by other sources weeks ago.............

[buglerbilly]

Afghan governor shoots at attacker in Taliban raid on government compound

Provincial governor takes gun from bodyguard and fires as last surviving attacker approached after 18 people killed in raid

Jon Boone in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 August 2011 17.02 BST


Abdul Basir Salangi talks to the media after a suicide attack on his compound in Charikar. Photograph: Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images

A machine gun-wielding provincial governor took part in tackling a team of Taliban suicide bombers on Sunday when insurgents launched another brazen attack on a government facility in Afghanistan.

Officials said 18 people were killed, including three policemen and 10 local government workers, and 35 were wounded, some badly enough that they had to be transported to Kabul for treatment. A Taliban spokesman claimed credit for the violence in Charikar, a city where they had made barely any inroads in the last 10 years.

Abdul Basir Salangi, governor of Parwan, had been in his office holding a meeting with the province's police chief and Nato foreign advisers when the six-man insurgent squad drove up to the compound in a Toyota Corolla.

Various witnesses said one insurgent detonated a suicide device at a secured gate, allowing the rest of the group to enter the compound firing guns.

Other members of the squad were killed inside the compound, but a final survivor got close to the governor. Salangi, a former guerrilla commander who fought as an insurgent himself back in the 1980s, took a weapon from his bodyguard and fired at the attacker.

"The second attacker was shot in the corridor of the office by a policeman, and then three more were also killed inside the building," said Sher Ahmad Malatbani, the police chief. He said the final attacker was 15 metres away when he was shot before he could detonate his explosives.

Salangi, a close ally of Hamid Karzai, survived another assassination attempt earlier this month. The Afghan president condemned the latest attack and scolded "the enemies of Afghanistan" for killing civilians "even in the holy month of Ramadan".

There has been little support for the insurgency in the agricultural plains north of Kabul but the Taliban and allied groups have much to gain from sowing fear there. Charikar straddles a vital road that links Afghanistan to its Central Asian neighbours.

Engineer Zalmai, a local elder whose hand was damaged by bomb shrapnel, said the authorities must find out quickly whether the insurgents had received any local support and, if so, why.

"There are two problems that anger people: the joblessness and the fact that officials here are all appointed because whoever is appointed to the local administration only hires people who are their friends or relatives," he said.

The Taliban is waging a concerted effort to kill many leading Afghan officials, including some of Karzai's most important allies. In recent months suicide gunmen and suicide attackers have killed Ahmed Wali Karzai, a brother of the president, and other powerbrokers who have a vital for controlling the south of the country. In May General Daud Daud, one of the more effective regional police bosses, was killed by a suicide bomber in northern Afghanistan.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan widows form community on Kabul hill

By Joshua Partlow, Monday, August 15, 8:40 AM

In KABUL — The hills of this capital stand as monuments to men in battle, topped by crumbling forts and rusted tanks, ancient ramparts and gleaming tombs of kings. One is different but no less a testament to war. It is known as Tapaye Zanabad — the hill that women built.

For the past decade, war widows have converged here and built by hand their mud hovels on a slope above a cemetery in an eastern neighborhood of the Afghan capital. They came at first because the land was free and they were poor. Police would fine or beat men for raising a settlement on government land, but the widows found that they could build if they were clever.

Hundreds of widows came, aid workers said, and they now number perhaps more than 1,000 on the hill and its surroundings. The first squatter homes have since morphed into a crowded community that has a private drinking water supply and spotty electricity. Most of the women have not been able to escape from wretched poverty, but they have preserved something far more unusual in a country dominated by men.

“Most of the widows didn’t have anything when they came here,” said Aneesa, an elderly widow who has lived on the hill for eight years. “Once we got to know each other, we felt like we were sisters.”

More than three decades of uninterrupted war in Afghanistan has mass-produced widows. The United Nations estimates that nearly half of the children in Kabul have lost a parent. The overall number of widows is not known, but it is thought to range from several hundred thousand to 2 million.

Sometimes the widows are painfully visible — Kabul is filled with burqa-clad beggars panhandling in traffic. More often, Afghan widows are shrouded from view, ordered by male relatives in extended families to stay at home.

For those without relatives to take them in, there are few options. It remains difficult for Afghan women from religiously conservative backgrounds to work, and neither the Afghan government nor its foreign donors have built a substantive safety net for women who must get by after the family breadwinner is gone.

But in Tapaye Zanabad, the women have found what they need.

Aneesa came to the hill after the Taliban government fell in 2001. Her husband, a soldier, had been killed years earlier during the civil war. In a culture with little to offer a penniless widow who had few relatives, she had been squatting in homes abandoned by those who fled the fighting. But she never felt comfortable, and as refugees returned to their homes during the early days of President Hamid Karzai’s administration, she decided she needed to move.

“Once you become a widow and live alone, people are strange toward you. They say a lot of bad things,” she said of her time before moving to Tapaye Zanabad. “Other women get worried you might try to marry their husbands. They talk behind your back. It’s Afghanistan; it’s full of negativity. We feel more comfortable when we’re around other widows.”

Aneesa found her way to Zanabad when it had more feral dogs than homes. With her nephew — “I’m allowed to live with him,” she said — she set to work with a pick and a shovel, cracking stones and fashioning mud walls. She learned the trade by necessity and under duress.

To avoid police detection, she would build by moonlight, then throw blankets over the walls to disguise her progress.

“Police would come and collapse the walls and destroy them,” Aneesa recalled. “As soon as they left, we’d rebuild it.”

“I would have rather died than lose this place,” she said.

Aneesa, like many Afghans, goes by one name.

Several widows in Zanabad, which is predominantly composed of ethnic Tajiks, have refused to remarry. After Fareeba’s husband died in a car crash on the treacherous road to the city of Jalalabad two years ago, the young widow moved into a house on the hill that she shared with her brother-in-law and his family.

He has a wife and two children but nearly each day demands that she marry him, too, Fareeba said. “If he says I can never leave the house or never allow someone to come in, I will do that,” she said. “But I will never accept to marry him.”

Up the hill, Bibi Amenah, an older widow, has found peace in her daily work. Her husband, a grocer, died in a rocket attack during the pre-Taliban civil war, one of 20 members of her Tajik family killed in the conflict. She has tried tailoring, selling jewelry and weaving prayer rugs. She now fashions mud bricks for other widows to build houses.

“I really want to work,” she said. “There was a time when for three or four nights we didn’t have food, but I never went out to beg. I don’t like begging at all.”

In Zanabad, there is a widows association that has held meetings from time to time, and the widows try to informally cooperate with one another. But the hill ultimately offers little refuge. Aid workers talk of prostitution and persistent attempts by the city to level the illegal dwellings. The government offers meager help: a $130 annual payment to each widow, and a ration card for rice and oil.

When Miro Gul’s husband, Atiq, died in a suicide bombing three years ago, the family was just scraping by on his day-labor wages. The couple’s 15-year-old daughter, Rhuksar, tried to cover the lost income by washing cars, but it wasn’t enough.

In Zanabad, the family found an acquaintance who housed them in exchange for cooking and cleaning.

Outside Gul’s door, barefoot kids with day jobs selling plastic bags or hailing taxis scale the narrow and steep alleys. The 54-year-old diabetic has trouble walking up these trails and rarely ventures out, but she is forced to do so occasionally to visit a public medical clinic. It is a long march to the nearest paved road and a long bus ride from there. When she recently needed wheat, she asked Rhuksar to carry 45 pounds on her head back from the thresher. A man called out that she should be easier on her daughter. “I had to do that,” Gul recalled, near tears.

Her husband, who was 10 years younger, “loved me from the core of his heart,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe it. When I was walking barefoot, he would stop and kiss the soles of my feet.”

“Now my daughter says, ‘Mom, you’re going to keep me here until I’m old.’ She wants to get married,” Gul said.

Rhuksar was invited to a wedding party the other day, some rare entertainment off the hill. She does not own shoes, however, and so she stayed home. “If I want something and can’t have it, I don’t mind anymore; I’m too old,” Gul said. “But my daughter, when she wishes for something and I can’t get it for her, that really kills me inside.”

She finds little solace on the hill that women built: “It’s better to die than become a widow in this country.”

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

'My Whole Squad Is Gone' – IED Victims ID'D

August 15, 2011

Stars and Stripes|by Laura Rauch



COMBAT OUTPOST NALGHAM, Afghanistan -- A quiet solemnity has settled in here, and a profound sadness hangs like a fog. The gym that usually blasts with music and clangs with the sound of weights is silent. A painful emptiness pervades the post.

For those in Company C, 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Thursday was the worst of days. Five of its Soldiers, all from 3rd Platoon’s 1st Squad, were killed when their Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All Terrain Vehicle rolled over an improvised explosive device on a desolate road in southern Kandahar province.

“It’s like your family just got ripped out of your heart,” Pfc. Thadius Deloatch said.

On Sunday, the Department of Defense identified those killed in the explosion: Sgt. Edward J. Frank II, 26, of Yonkers, N.Y.; Spc. Jameel T. Freeman, 26, of Baltimore, Md.; Spc. Patrick L. Lay II, 21, of Fletcher, N.C.; Spc. Jordan M. Morris, 23, of Stillwater, Okla.; Pfc. Rueben J. Lopez, 27, of Williams, Calif.

After the explosion Thursday, the battalion chaplain couldn’t get here soon enough. A line of Soldiers needing him waited late into the night, and early the next morning. For many, the tears pushed out in waves. For others, solace came in the form of a quiet stoicism.

“I don’t know what to do right now. My whole squad is gone,” Pfc. Jeremy Urzua said. His squad leader, Frank, was among the Soldiers killed in the blast and had given him a rare day off Thursday.

“I didn’t see it at first, but he just saved my life,” said Urzua, who was back at COP when the attack occurred that morning.

According to Company C Commander Capt. Dennis Call, the IED was triggered by a detonator and was buried in a powdery layer of soil Soldiers call “moon dust.” From fighting positions nearby, Soldiers watched as the catastrophic explosion sent a plume of white smoke nearly 200 feet in the air. When they arrived at the blast site moments later, they found the doors and turret blown from the vehicle.

The extreme nature of the blast, which breached the hull of the armored vehicle and pushed the engine into the cab, remains under investigation, but Soldiers here speculate that military-grade explosives were used.

Members of the 1st Squad, who were posted at one of the fighting positions, were on a breakfast run when they drove over the IED planted in the road nicknamed “Montreal bypass.” It was built recently by 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, in an effort to cut off the enemy line of approach and to link Company C to Company A to the west.

“This was probably harder fought for than any of the other territory,” said 1st Lt. Corey Walker about the Montreal bypass. The company, which is pushing south to the Arghandab River, is attacked nearly every day. They’ve suffered multiple IED blasts, and more than 20 Soldiers have been injured.

“When you’ve sacrificed lives for a piece of ground, it becomes more than a piece of tactical terrain. The war for us is this 800 meter stretch of road,” Walker said.

Third Platoon knows about sacrifice. Since deploying, all seven of the Soldiers the company has lost have come from 3rd Platoon. Along with the five deaths on Thursday, Spc. Preston Dennis was killed in April in an IED strike and Pfc. Corey Johnson was killed in May when his vehicle was ambushed in a recoilless rifle attack.

The Soldiers of Company C have forged an alliance known only to the infantry Soldier. They share the misery of extreme suffering, the filth and the physical and emotional scars earned together.

Since the attack, Soldiers have been remembering the best of those who were killed Thursday.

“They’re what the infantry is all about. They were just willing to do anything for you, for each other,” Urzua said.

Frank, the squad leader, was a family man and the father figure whom so many looked up to. Lay was the athlete and the fast learner who could figure anything out. Morris was a college boy who could take it as well as he could give it, and though he deployed late, he fit right in. Freeman was the martial artist who could do a hilarious Bill Cosby impression. Lopez, the nicest Soldier anybody ever met, was always the first to help out. His smile never left his face, soldiers said.

As Soldiers look to get on with their mission, they know they have each other but worry about the families back at Fort Drum, N.Y., and wish they could be there for them. Some wonder if they’re becoming part of a forgotten war.

“People back home don’t even know we still got people dying out here,” 3rd Platoon’s Spc. Jordan McDaniel said.

The five Soldiers from Company C were among seven NATO servicemembers killed in Afghanistan on Thursday, and their deaths follow the crash of a Chinook helicopter in Wardak province, where 30 U.S. servicemembers were killed.

But Company C is nothing if not resilient.

“It’s terrifying getting back in a vehicle after you’ve seen what can happen,” Eric Gregory, staff sergeant and 3rd Platoon senior squad leader, said. “Every day, we’re faced with a choice to take the hard right over the easy wrong. This platoon will not give up. They’re kicking.”

Insurgent attacks will not force them out, Gregory said.

“They want to crush our hopes. They want to demoralize us. It’s not working. Those are their tactics, but we’re still here, every day. Until we accomplish the mission, we’re not going anywhere.”

[buglerbilly]

Inside Camp Bastion

It is home to 30,000 people, has its own airport, fire station and police force – and in six years has grown to a city the size of Reading. Nick Hopkins visits Britain's vast military base in the Afghanistan desert

Nick Hopkins

guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 August 2011 20.00 BST


British army soldiers play rugby at Camp Bastion, in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/PA Archive/Press Association Images

The planes tend to arrive at night, and if the sky is clear, the moon bathes the airport with an ethereal, ghostly light. A film of dust and sand covers the tarmac and shimmers silver in the dark, conjuring familiar images of lunar walks made by astronauts a generation ago.

This place, though, is not some other world, but Afghanistan. And the surroundings are not beautiful or charismatic. It is Camp Bastion: a brutal, functional, military city built from nothing in the desert, from which the UK has orchestrated its conflict against the Taliban for the past six years.

There is probably no place like it on earth. It has grown so much that the perimeter wall is now almost 40km long – making it roughly the size of Reading; and its airport is busier than any other in the UK, apart from Gatwick and Heathrow.

The Afghans will inherit it one day, should they wish. Otherwise it could turn into a vast, derelict Atlantis in the desert – no better monument, perhaps, to the west's invasion of a country that has been an enduring battleground over the past 30 years.

Nobody ever imagined this eight years ago when the British started looking for a safe place to fly supplies for the troops who were to be sent to the southern province of Helmand. The British didn't want to set up camp too close to any fighting, and they wanted somewhere flat, to build a landing strip for aircraft. They chose a place in the plains of north-west Helmand, where the Soviets had once had a small base, and dug a trench. The Soviets had recognised the area's strategic importance.

"It used to be a trading crossroads. And we can see everything around us," says Commodore Clive Walker, the Royal Navy officer who is currently in charge of the entire camp.

Though the land is arid, it also has boreholes filled with fresh water that has taken years to flow hundreds of miles from the peaks of the Hindu Kush to the underground aquifers in the middle of the desert.

The British decided to call the new camp Bastion – a reference to the huge earth-filled bags that have been used to define its boundaries. The bomb-proof bags are made by a UK company called Hesco Bastion, which was set up by a British inventor, Jimi Heselden. Heselden, who died last year, made a fortune selling his invention to the British military, and thousands of the bags now line the roads around this camp, and almost every other in the country.

The other ubiquitous building block of the city is the Iso freight container, the sort you see on lorries or the decks of ships at ports around the world. There are now 10,000 Iso containers at Bastion, almost all of them brought in by road through Pakistan, after being shipped from Europe or America to Karachi. By some estimates, it would take a decade to remove them all from Helmand, though many of them are likely to stay put.

Rather than bringing in water supplies from elsewhere, the British set up a water-bottling plant on site, drawing the water from the two existing boreholes. The plastic bottles are made at the plant, which provides one million litres a week for Bastion, as well as many of the other smaller bases and checkpoints across the province.

Most of the fresh food is flown in, with the rest coming by road. There is a central warehouse where most of it is stored – it is thought to be the second-biggest building in the whole of Afghanistan. With between 20,000 and 30,000 people on the base at any one time, the quantities needed to feed them are vast; 27 tonnes of salad and fruit come in every week alone. Convoys of lorries, with armoured support, thunder out of the camp most days to supply other bases, often leaving in the middle of the night to minimise the disruption to the villages and towns that they rumble through.

The base has become so big that it has eight incinerators and a burn pit to get rid of the rubbish. The camp also has its own bus service, fire station and police force. There are on-site laws and regulations too. One of them is the speed limit – 24kph (15mph). It is enforced by officers with speed cameras, who can leap out from behind containers, or from inside ditches, to catch anyone flouting the rules. Anyone caught speeding more than three times is banned from driving on the base. Though the limit is quite low, many of the military vehicles are so big, and the dust they churn up so blinding, that it is dangerous for them to be going any faster.

There aren't any pavements at Bastion, or street lights, so walking around at night can be perilous without a torch. The airport is busy day and night. It dealt with 2,980,000 pieces of freight in June alone, including 73,000 pallets of mail.

There isn't much in the way of nightlife – but there is a Pizza Hut takeaway restaurant that trades from inside a converted Iso. Customers can sit outside on pub-style benches. There is also a bar next door called Heroes, which has giant TV screens showing news channels from the UK.

For thousands of staff here, their lives revolve around huge air-conditioned gymnasiums. Bodybuilding has become a near obsession for many of the soldiers who live on site, who have little else to do once they have finished work. The gyms are busy from 5am. There are no weekends at Camp Bastion.

While the airport is the hub for flights in and out of the country, the heliport is busier. Every day, RAF Chinook, Sea King and Merlin helicopters run like buses, ferrying troops to and from the base. They are responsible for the bulk of the 600 movements undertaken across Helmand every day.

"We can take things by road, fly them in by helicopter, or throw it out of a back of a plane," says Commodore Walker. "It all depends what is being transported and where it is going. We used to have 60 or 70 vehicles leave the camp in convoys. But that was not good for relations with the local population. We try to go out first thing in the morning so the convoys don't disrupt the bazaars. We try to time them carefully."

Above all else, though, the camp is a military base. The US Marines, and the Afghan security forces, have their own areas now, but the core of the base remains – and is run by – the British. Soldiers arriving from the UK for a six-month tour will stay at the camp for about a week before being deployed elsewhere. In that time, they will spend five days acclimatising to the heat or the cold. In summer the temperatures reach up to 55C. In winter, it will freeze.

One of the most surreal sights in the city is its Afghan village, a replica built by the British. It even has a small number of local residents who tend to a bread oven, riding motorbikes and selling food at a market. It is supposed to give the soldiers a better feel for what to expect when they go on patrol. There is also a training area designed to help them identify the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that have been used to such deadly effect by insurgents. There are tell-tale clues the soldiers need to learn; they can be taught about the different techniques used by the insurgents for planting IEDs, and how the villagers might be trying to warn them of their whereabouts. If an Afghan has stopped using a bridge to cross a stream or a river, there is often a reason.

Elsewhere in the camp, there is a kennel for the dozens of dogs that are used on patrols, and for sniffing out drugs and explosive material. One of them is called Charm – a german shepherd so big that he rarely has to raise growl to deter potential troublemakers.

The medical facilities at Camp Bastion rely on a taskforce of helicopters, which are controlled by Colonel Peter Eadie, the commander of the UK joint aviation group. In the past, patients were brought into the trauma unit at Bastion before major surgery could begin. Now, consultants fly out in specially adapted Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters to any emergency, so they can start work on the injured as soon as they set eyes on them.

"The system is one that has evolved over the years," says Eadie. "Countless lives have probably been saved this way. We take the hospital to the patient."

He can hope to get a helicopter from Bastion to an injured soldier in less than 19 minutes. And the most serious cases can be back in the UK in less than 24 hours.

All of this is beyond the capabilities of the Afghan security forces, and that situation is unlikely to change before the end of 2014, when Nato forces will have ended all frontline combat operations against the Taliban.

"The Afghans are starting to get themselves into a position to support their own troops but they cannot leap up to our level of technology overnight," says Walker.

How much of this remains when the British and Americans leave has yet to be decided. Even though the drawdown of British forces will be modest this year and next, Walker is already thinking about what equipment will be left in the desert, and what will be carted back home, to be put in storage.

"It took us eight years to get to this stage and now we have to start thinking about what to bring back," he says.

The huge canvas tents in which most people live will be repaired, folded up and returned to warehouses in the UK. Some of them sleep up to 32 people on bunk beds. Only VIPs and some of the pilots have better "tier 2" accommodation, which means they sleep in a prefabricated metal pod with has a hard roof rather than a soft one.

"The tents can be refurbished and put back on the shelf in the UK for the next time," he says.

How many of the 3,000 British military vehicles will return is less clear. Though bomb-damaged trucks and armoured cars can be entirely rebuilt at the workshops in Bastion, some of them are likely to remain in Helmand – they will have taken too much punishment to be of value again.

Walker is trying to look ahead without losing grip on the day to day, which remains the priority. Providing British forces with the right equipment, food, and first aid is a juggling act he performs every day. "If I don't get it right, we're in a bad place. We can't fail."


Members of the Joint Helicopter Support Unit prepare to attach another load of supplies to an 18 Squadron Chinook for a resupply run to Sangin


British medics assess injuries at the joint forces field hospital


General view of Camp Bastion British military hospital


Pizza Hut at Camp BastionPhotograph: Nick Hopkins for the Guardian


Driver training with the new Wolfhound vehiclePhotograph: MOD/PA


Aerial view of Camp Bastion

[buglerbilly]

In Helmand, local leaders wield levers of a fragile Afghan government for 1st time

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, August 16, 6:51 PM

SIRAQULA, Afghanistan — The local Afghan leader’s community meeting was off to an unpromising start.

Hours after the meeting, called a shura, was supposed to begin, only seven old men waited at the gate of U.S. Marine Patrol Base Salaam Bazaar in the northern part of Helmand province.

Frustrated, Naw Zad District Chief Said Murad Sadtak chastised an Afghan army commander.

“Why did you not invite more people?” he demanded. “It was your task to tell the people and make sure that they come to see us so we can discuss their problems. It’s kind of a waste that I am here.”

The army commander had invited locals to the small fortified camp, but sometimes those invitations were extended during gunfights when soldiers and U.S. Marines were using private Afghan homes and farmers’ poppy fields for cover.

Sadtak continued to complain and his American mentor, U.S. Marine Maj. Aniela Szymanski, moved to the old man’s side.

“Maybe we should welcome those who have come to see you,” she said gently.

In Helmand, unpracticed local leaders are wielding the levers of a fragile government for the first time.

They urge local communities to support the government and reject the Taliban, often in places where the insurgency is more conspicuous than the new Afghan state.

But many local Afghan leaders still lack skills and resources to address severe problems facing Helmand communities, including drought, joblessness and the chaos of living between two determined combat forces. Others are cut off from their constituents by insecurity. Some are corrupt.

This is the challenge for the international coalition: create a cadre of Afghan leaders and institutions robust enough to resist the Taliban’s advances after NATO withdraws combat forces by the end of 2014.

Filling government positions remains difficult due to illiteracy and insecurity. Provincial officials are under constant threat of assassination, so they live within Western military installations and must be escorted outside by U.S. military convoys and helicopters.

The week Sadtak met with tribal elders in Siraqula, the mayor of Kandahar’s provincial seat was assassinated by a suicide attacker who detonated a bomb hidden in his turban. A few days later, a dozen policemen were killed by a suicide bomber in Helmand’s provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

Lashkar Gah was one of five provincial capitals and two provinces chosen to start the transition from NATO to Afghan control. The coalition hopes to use the security zone around the provincial capital and the central Helmand River Valley as a foothold to push Afghan governance into outlying areas like Kajaki.

“My son was blown up,” a village elder told Kajaki District Chief Mohammad Salim Khan Rodi during a recent meeting at his compound inside a Marine camp. “Can you compensate me? I am just a poor man. My oldest son was my right hand. Without him we have nothing.”

Rodi offered his condolences, but no funds.

There were 20 local elders at the meeting in Kajaki, a good showing at a small, mine-encircled Marine camp. Rodi has hosted four other shuras in the last six months; none of them drew more than 24 men. The old men told him that drought is withering their crops and that they need more electricity from the Kajaki Hydroelectric Power Station to run irrigation pumps on their wells. And they demanded the Marines stop night raids in nearby villages.

Rodi offered his visitors no promises. Electrical power is low because the Taliban illegally tap the power lines, he said, and insurgent checkpoints and bomb threats are delaying a long overdue upgrade to the power plant.

“You yell at me to turn the power on,” Rodi told them. “But go tell the Taliban to let you have more electricity and see what they say.”

And night raids would cease when residents stand up to the Taliban, the district chief said.

“The government is here to serve the people, but you have to tell the Taliban to stop planting IEDs,” Rodi said. “The other day, two policemen who protect me — they are as close to me as my own sons — were hurt because they stepped on an IED.”

The villagers said they were afraid of mines too, but had to defer to the Taliban in the absence of a government security presence outside of Kajaki’s district center. About 90 Afghan policemen are in Kajaki, but they remain within the Marines’ perimeter. Namatullah, 55, a village elder who voiced many of the delegation’s concerns, said he got permission from the Taliban to visit the district chief.

“In this situation, if we stand on our feet, they will cut them out from under us,” Namatullah said. “If they kill 800 men or one man, no one cares, no one will help us.”

There are no functioning government schools or medical clinics in Kajaki district. Marines in Kajaki are in a defensive position around the dam. In the area, the insurgency prevents Afghan governance from taking hold, Rodi said.

“I’m so isolated from the people,” Rodi said in an interview after the shura. “And I’m not able to offer them my help the way I’d like to.”

In many of Afghanistan’s most insecure areas, Western diplomats and military commanders provide key links between local Afghan officials and provincial and national institutions. Western advisers organize travel and payment transfers for Afghan officials. Advisers also hold daily meetings with their Afghan counterparts to impart their best political counsel.

Bryan Jalbert, a political officer for the State Department, meets every afternoon with the Musa Qala district chief at his office at the Marines’ battalion headquarters.

They discuss joint coalition and Afghan projects that will lend credibility to the local government. Sometimes they share pictures and stories about their families.

Jalbert says he walks a fine line between teaching Afghans officials how to serve their own people and reinforcing a culture of dependency on transient foreigners.

“I had an Afghan official come to me and he wanted to show me the rashes on his legs from the heat. He wanted me to find him a new air conditioner,” said Jalbert. “I don’t do that. If he wants an air conditioner, he can get it through their process.”

Whenever possible, Jalbert said he runs funding and planning of projects through provincial institutions to develop Afghan independence and to help the state win the allegiance of the local population.

The most prominent project of this sort in Musa Qala is a British-funded $970,000 grand mosque. It will replace another mosque that NATO bombed after the Taliban used it as an armory.

The district chief, Naimatullah, who goes by one name, is managing the project and Afghan contractors are providing local labor. Apart from funding, the coalition takes a low profile on the mosque project. Jalbert is monitoring the construction, but discretely.

“I fly high cover on that one,” he said. “You have to keep in mind, you’re an adviser. This is not your country.”

Despite the progress in Musa Qala, less than a third of provincial staff positions were filled.

“This has a very negative effect on my administration,” Naimatullah said. “I do not have a judge or criminal investigator. I do not have any legal or irrigation officials. So the government cannot solve problems related to these matters, like legal or water disputes.”

And Naimatullah is worried that his Western partners are counting the days before their departure. His district government would not last long without the coalition, he said.

“If America left now,” he said, “it would be a kind of betrayal.”

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

AUGUST 17, 2011.

U.S. Says Drone, Cargo Plane Collide Over Afghanistan

By NATHAN HODGE

An Air Force cargo plane collided with a drone in Afghanistan, a potentially serious mishap that could give ammunition to critics wary of allowing pilotless aircraft to operate in civilian airspace.

Air Force Capt. Justin Brockhoff, a spokesman for the military in Afghanistan, confirmed that a C-130 cargo plane made an emergency landing Monday at a base in eastern Afghanistan after colliding with an RQ-7 Shadow, an unmanned aerial vehicle that is usually operated by the Army and the Marine Corps.


Reuters
A U.S. Predator unmanned drone armed with a missile stands on the tarmac of Kandahar military airport in Afghanistan in this June 2010 file photo.

"The C-130 received light damage during the incident and the aircrew was unharmed," Capt. Brockhoff said.

The drone, which was on a surveillance mission, wasn't carrying any weapons, he said. "We have no reports at this time to indicate any injuries or damages were caused when it [the Shadow] impacted the ground," Capt. Brockhoff said.

The Shadow, usually employed by a brigade, is about 12 feet long with a 20-foot wingspan, and is typically unarmed. Launched by a catapult, it can stay aloft for more than five hours and has a range of about 30 miles. An Army official said controllers on the ground apparently didn't lose contact with the Shadow aircraft until it collided with the C-130. "We were in complete control up until the collision," the official said.

Over the past decade, the U.S. military has built a large fleet of remotely piloted aircraft, including armed Predators that can fire antitank missiles and Global Hawks that take detailed pictures from high altitudes. Even so, collisions between manned aircraft and pilotless spy planes have been rare.

Drones—sometimes referred to in military-speak asUAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles—don't have specialized equipment on board to sense and avoid other aircraft, a point that has gained relevance as manufacturers envision civilian applications such as law enforcement and aerial photography.

The military, companies and local governments have pressed the Federal Aviation Administration to clarify the use of small unmanned aircraft in U.S. civilian airspace. But the FAA has been wary about revising its rules to allow unmanned aircraft to operate more freely in civilian airspace.

"One of the things that limits their use in civilian airspace is that there is no reliable technology right now that allows UAV operators to independently see and avoid other aircraft," said an aviation official.

The U.S. military trains with remotely piloted aircraft within U.S. restricted military airspace but also negotiates with the FAA to open up areas of civilian airspace for drone operations. It also uses certain procedures—establishing temporary restrictions and route clearances—to avoid midair collisions. In some instances, FAA rules may require ground observers or a "chase plane" to keep visual contact with a drone.

Speaking at a robotics conference in Washington on Tuesday, Army Col. Robert Sova said the military uses the same general collision-prevention procedures in Afghanistan as in the U.S.

"We have used that methodology for years and years," he said, adding that the challenges are greater in a war theater given the density of aircraft there.

Tim Owings, an Army project manager for unmanned aerial systems, said the military is studying various kinds of "sense and avoid" technologies for unmanned aircraft, including ground-based tracking radars that would direct pilotless aircraft away from other planes. Eventually, he said, drones may incorporate their own collision-avoidance sensors.

Still, working with civilian aviation authorities has caused some friction with the military. Maj. Gen. Tim Crosby, the Army's program executive officer for aviation, said dealing with FAA clearances was at times a "frustrating process" for unmanned crafts' operators.

"It's much easier to do it in theater," he said. "It's very difficult back home, as we think about now taking these systems and incorporating them and flying them in our FAA airspace."

[buglerbilly]

Haqqani Network Commander Declared a Terrorist

August 16, 2011

Associated Press|by Bradley Klapper

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration designated a key insurgent commander in southeastern Afghanistan as a terrorist Tuesday, freezing any assets he has in the United States and barring Americans from doing business with him.

The State Department said Mullah Sangeen Zadran is the shadow governor of Paktika province in southeastern Afghanistan and a commander in the Haqqani network.

A statement said Sangeen leads fighters in attacks and has helped hundreds of foreign fighters enter Afghanistan. It also linked him to bombings and kidnappings of Afghans and foreigners in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sangeen was also designated a terrorist by the U.N., meaning he should be subject to a global travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo. The Haqqani network has ties to both al-Qaida and the Taliban and has emerged as one of the biggest threats to stability in Afghanistan.

"These actions will help stem the flow of financial and other assistance to this dangerous individual," the State Department said.

Sangeen appears to be the same individual whom U.S.-led forces claimed to have killed in an operation in 2007. The coalition said at the time that Sangeen was second-in-command to Siraj Haqqani and that he was responsible for roadside bombings and other attacks.

The Treasury Department designated four other individuals Tuesday as terrorists subject to U.S. sanctions.

They include Umar Patek, a key suspect in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. Patek was captured six months ago in the same northwestern Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was killed, and was escorted home to Indonesia last week under tight security to stand trial.

Patek, 41, an al-Qaida-linked Indonesian militant, had a $1 million bounty on his head when authorities caught up with him in Abbottabad - just a few miles from where U.S. commandos killed al-Qaida chief bin Laden in a raid four months later.

The other individuals designated are Muhammad Jibril Abdul Rahman and Abdul Rahim Ba-asyir of Indonesia, and Mumtaz Dughmush, a Palestinian.

Dughmush was targeted for leading the Gaza-based "Army of Islam," a shadowy extremist Muslim group that draws inspiration from al-Qaida though it is not believed to have operational links.

The U.S. declared the Army a terrorist organization in May. Under Dughmush's leadership, the organization has shot rockets at Israel, kidnapped an American and British journalist, and killed Egyptian civilians in 2009 attacks on Cairo and Heliopolis, the State Department said.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved

[buglerbilly]

$360M Lost to Insurgents in Afghanistan

August 17, 2011

Associated Press|by Richard Lardner And Deb Riechmann

WASHINGTON - After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both.

The losses underscore the challenges the U.S. and its international partners face in overcoming corruption in Afghanistan. A central part of the Obama administration's strategy has been to award U.S.-financed contracts to Afghan businesses to help improve quality of life and stoke the country's economy.

But until a special task force assembled by Gen. David Petraeus began its investigation last year, the coalition had little insight into the connections many Afghan companies and their vast network of subcontractors had with insurgents and criminals - groups military officials call "malign actors."

In a murky process known as "reverse money laundering," payments from the U.S. pass through companies hired by the military for transportation, construction, power projects, fuel and other services to businesses and individuals with ties to the insurgency or criminal networks, according to interviews and task force documents obtained by the AP.

"Funds begin as clean monies," according to one document, then "either through direct payments or through the flow of funds in the subcontractor network, the monies become tainted."

The conclusions by Task Force 2010 represent the most definitive assessment of how U.S. military spending and aid to Afghanistan has been diverted to the enemy or stolen. Only a small percentage of the $360 million has been garnered by the Taliban and insurgent groups, said a senior U.S. military official in Kabul. The bulk of the money was lost to profiteering, bribery and extortion by criminals and power brokers, said the official, who declined to provide a specific breakdown.

The official requested anonymity to discuss the task force's ongoing investigation into the movement of U.S. contract money in Afghanistan. The documents obtained by The Associated Press were prepared earlier this year and provide an overview of the task force's work.

Overall, the $360 million represents a fraction of the $31 billion in active U.S. contracts that the task force reviewed. But insurgents rely on crude weaponry and require little money to operate. And the illicit gains buttress what the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, referred to in a June report as a "nexus between criminal enterprises, insurgent networks and corrupt political elites" in Afghanistan.

More than half the losses flowed through a large transportation contract called Host Nation Trucking, the official said. Eight companies served as prime contractors and hired a web of nearly three dozen subcontractors for vehicles and convoy security to ship huge amounts of food, water, fuel and ammunition to American troops stationed at bases across Afghanistan.

The Defense Department announced Monday that it had selected 20 separate contractors for a new transportation contract potentially worth $983.5 million to replace Host Nation Trucking. Officials said the new arrangement will reduce the reliance on subcontractors and diminish the risk of money being lost. Under the new National Afghan Trucking Services contract, the military will be able to choose from a deeper pool of companies competing against one another to offer the best price to move supplies. The new arrangement also gives the U.S. more flexibility in determining whether security is needed for supply convoys and who should provide it, according to a description of the contract.

The Pentagon did not provide the names of the 20 companies picked due to worries that larger contractors who weren't selected might try to coerce them into a takeover, the senior defense official said. None of the eight prime contractors affiliated with the Host Nation Trucking contract are part of the new arrangement, the official added.

HEB International Logistics of Dubai, a Host Nation Trucking prime contractor, "made payments directly to malign actors," one of the task force documents reads. In 2009 and 2010, an HEB subcontractor identified in the document only as "Rohullah" received $1.7 million in payments. A congressional report issued last year said Rohullah - whose name is spelled Ruhallah in that report - is a warlord who controlled the convoy security business along the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, the two largest cities in Afghanistan.

David Zimmerman, an HEB manager in Kabul, said the company would have no comment until it is able to review the task force's findings.

The congressional report said Rohullah's hundreds of heavily armed guards operated a protection racket, charging contractors moving U.S. military supplies along the highway as much as $1,500 a vehicle. Failure to pay virtually guaranteed a convoy would be attacked by Rohullah's forces, said the report, "Warlord Inc." Rohullah's guards regularly fought with the Taliban, but investigators believe Rohullah moved money to the Taliban when it was in his interest to do so.

Both Rohullah and the security company he was affiliated with, Watan Risk Management, denied ever making payments to the insurgents, according to the report. But in December, the U.S. placed Watan in "proposed debarment status," which prevented it from signing new contracts or renewing existing contracts. Watan challenged the decision in federal court. Two weeks ago, Watan and U.S. officials signed an agreement that states the company may not bid on any mobile security contracts for the next three years. The ban does not affect other companies controlled by Watan's owners.

The task force also said contractors engaged in profiteering by forming dummy companies. A task force document shows three tiers of subcontractors below Guzar Mirbacha Kot Transportation, an Afghan-owned trucking company known as GMT. Four of the subcontractors appear on the first and second tiers, collecting $14.2 million in payments.

Basir Mujahid, a GMT representative in Kabul, said top company officials were in Dubai and could not be reached for immediate comment.

Power brokers - a term widely used in Afghanistan - refers to Afghans who leverage their political and business connections to advance their own interests.

Another task force document details the case of a power broker who owned a private security company and was known to supply weapons to the Taliban. The power broker, who is not named in the document, received payments from a contractor doing business with the U.S. Over more than two years, the power broker funneled $8.5 million to the owners of an unlicensed money exchange service used by insurgents, according to the document.

Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., former chairman of the House oversight panel that investigated the wayward payments, said that the U.S. must stop the diversion of taxpayer dollars to the enemy. "When war becomes good business for the insurgents, it is all the more difficult to convince them to lay down their arms," Tierney said.

U.S. authorities in Afghanistan are screening contractors more carefully to be sure they can handle the work and also are trustworthy, the senior military official said. Authorities also are being more aggressive in barring companies if they violate contract terms or are found to be involved in illicit activities. Since the task force was created last year, the number of debarred Afghan, U.S. and international companies and individuals associated with contracting in Afghanistan has more than doubled - from 31 to 78, the official said.

Petraeus, who recently relinquished command in Afghanistan to become CIA director, told his commanders in a September 2010 memo to keep close watch over contracting dollars and "know those with whom we are contracting." Failing to do so could "unintentionally fuel corruption, finance insurgent organizations, strengthen criminal patronage networks, and undermine our efforts in Afghanistan," he wrote.

Tierney, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform national security subcommittee, said the new trucking contract announced Monday is a welcome step. But he said he is still worried the military still lacks sufficient visibility and accountability over payments. The subcommittee has scheduled a hearing next month to examine the contract and the risks of outsourcing security in a combat zone.

---

Deb Riechmann reported from Kabul.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

These are the pics related to post 2064 above........

Midair Collision Between a C-130 and a UAV



Well, it finally happened. Something some pilots operating in Iraq and Afghanistan have told me they worry about more than enemy surface-to-air fire; a midair collision with a UAV.

A small RQ-7 Shadow UAV apparently collided with what looks like it might be an Air Force Special Operations Command MC-130 in the skies over Afghanistan. The collision apparently ruptured the wing fuel tank and may have done damage to the spar and wing box. Still, this could have been much worse. Good job to the pilots for bringing the Herk home safely.

It will be interesting to see how this changes protocols for operating UAVs in congested airspace. Maybe this was a fluke incident that no amount of UAV sense and avoid technology could have stopped or maybe the collision is a prime example of why this technology must be implemented ASAP.





Via sUAS News.

Read more: http://defensetech.org/#ixzz1VL4tQZGB
Defense.org

[buglerbilly]

AUGUST 18, 2011.

In Praise of Drones

The case for using armed unmanned aerial vehicles in Pakistan is stronger than ever..

By SADANAND DHUME

Like a late night rerun of a once popular TV show, the debate about the U.S. use of armed drones in Pakistan's tribal areas refuses to fade away.

Last week, the London-based not-for-profit Bureau of Investigative Journalism published a series of articles accusing the U.S. of covering up numerous civilian casualties over the past year. And in a New York Times op-ed on Sunday, retired Admiral Dennis Blair, President Barack Obama's former director of national intelligence, declared that America's drone campaign "is eroding our influence and damaging our ability to work with Pakistan to achieve other important security objectives like eliminating Taliban sanctuaries, encouraging Indian-Pakistani dialogue, and making Pakistan's nuclear arsenal more secure."

Critics of the officially secret program have been wrong since its inception in 2004. Drones represent the most discerning—and therefore most moral—form of aerial warfare in human history. In Pakistan, they keep terrorists on the run. They also give policy makers in Washington a handy stick to wield against an ostensible ally that has repeatedly shown that it doesn't respond to carrots alone.

But first the criticism: According to the Bureau's journalists, the drone campaign has killed at least 45 civilians in Pakistan over the past year. This flatly contradicts a claim in a June speech by top Obama counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan of drones not causing "a single collateral death" since last August. For some critics, Predator and Reaper drones—the two most common varieties—conjure up images of sinister remote-controlled robots let loose to spread mayhem. Others equate drone strikes with illegal assassinations.

Then there's the realpolitik argument. Drones allegedly create day-to-day friction in U.S.-Pakistan relations that get in the way of Washington pursuing broader economic and political objectives in the country. Without the bad blood they cause, as Adm. Blair suggests, ties between Washington and Islamabad would be free to flourish.

To be fair, neither argument can be casually dismissed. The claim of zero collateral deaths in a land where militants often live with their families, or cheek-by-jowl with other civilians, appears implausible on the face of it. The strikes—53 so far this year—tend to draw street protests and harsh criticism from the Pakistani press. Both Pakistan's parliament and the provincial assembly in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province have passed resolutions calling for their end.


AFP/Getty Images
Pakistani tribesmen at the site of a suspected drone attack in 2008.

On closer examination, however, this case collapses. According to U.S. government officials quoted in the Times, the Bureau's reportage is unreliable. To begin with, Pakistani authorities, and the local reporters they hold sway over, have an incentive to fabricate or exaggerate casualty figures. That the reports rely, at least in part, on information provided by a Pakistani lawyer who publicly outed the CIA's undercover station chief last year doesn't help their credibility either.

Though even a single civilian casualty ought not to be taken lightly, the focus on alleged collateral damage distorts the essence of the drone program. In reality, technology allows highly trained operators to observe targets on the ground for as much as 72 hours in advance. Software engineers typically model the blast radius for a missile or bomb strike. Lawyers weigh in on which laws apply and entire categories of potential targets—including mosques, hospitals and schools—are almost always off bounds.

All these procedures serve one overriding purpose: to protect innocent civilian life. The New America Foundation's database of strikes shows it's working. This year civilians made up only about 8% of the 440 (at most) people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan down from about 30% two years ago. As for affecting U.S. popularity on the ground, according to the Pew Global Attitudes survey, the U.S. favorability rating—long battered by conspiracy theories and an anti-American media—hovers at about 12%, almost exactly where it stood before the program's advent seven years ago.

At the same time, the program also serves a larger purpose. One of Washington's most pressing objectives in Pakistan is to end the use of its territory for attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan. Another is to wean the country off its historic support for terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, India and beyond. It cannot achieve either without the help of the Pakistani army and its notorious spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.

But, riddled with jihadist sympathizers, and with a two-decade old belief in its mission to dominate Afghanistan and bleed India, the Pakistani army has so far shown little inclination to do much more than the bare minimum. The violently anti-American Haqqani network remains comfortably ensconced in North Waziristan near the Afghan border. And terrorists such as Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, whose group was behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, including six Americans, routinely give inflammatory speeches to adoring crowds.

Against this backdrop, drones offer a practical way to eliminate some terrorists (such as al Qaeda's Ilyas Kashmiri, killed in a strike in June) and keep others on the move. They also raise the incentives for the Pakistani military to crackdown on terrorism on its soil, or else deal with the social unrest unleashed by the strikes. Indeed, instead of cutting back on drones, the U.S. should threaten to ratchet up their use should the army and ISI fail to crack down on anti-NATO forces in Afghanistan. Upward of $20 billion in aid over the past decade has not done enough to alter Islamabad's behavior. A carefully calibrated drone strategy, backed by resolve to stay the course in Afghanistan, may produce better results.

Mr. Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, and a columnist for WSJ.com. Follow him on Twitter @dhume01

[buglerbilly]

Royal Navy Helicopters “Bag” Afghan Drugs

(Source: UK Ministry of Defence; issued Aug. 17, 2011)


Developed to protect Royal Navy aircraft carriers, the Sea King Mk. 7 now uses its retractable radar to track suspicious movements on the ground in Afghanistan. (UK MoD photo)

The Royal Navy’s airborne surveillance helicopters in Afghanistan have been instrumental in the seizure and destruction of over 5 tons of Taliban drugs with a ‘street value’ in excess of £6 million.

In recent months the Navy crews of 854 and 857 Naval Air Squadrons have contributed to the capture of 15 suspected insurgents, the recovery of over 6 tons of explosives, hundreds of weapons and radios and, significantly, the seizure and destruction of large amounts of drugs.

Affectionately known as the “Baggers”, the Sea King Mk7 Airborne Surveillance and Control (SKASaC) crews utilise the aircraft’s cutting-edge surveillance radar to track suspicious activity on the ground and feed this vital information other aircraft and a wide range of ground units.

Thanks to information supplied by the Navy helicopters, insurgents in Helmand province suffered a blow to their finance network most recently, following the seizure of 500 kg of wet opium and 40 kg of dry opium, and the arrest and detention of 2 insurgents. The regular interception of narcotics traffic has a real effect on the insurgents, by denying both a source of income and the freedom to move around the area, all of which helps towards improving the safety and security of the Afghan population.

The Commanding Officer of 854 Naval Air Squadron, Lieutenant Commander Paul Harrison, highlighted the demand for the “Baggers”. He said,

“Both the US Marine Corps and British Forces continue to demand our capabilities to strangle insurgent supply routes. The SKASaC continues to surprise everyone, including the most experienced operators, with its long range detections providing surveillance over massive areas of Afghanistan.”

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Violence in Pakistani city kills 39 in 2 days; many victims tortured, shot, stuffed in sacks

By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, August 18, 9:10 PM

KARACHI, Pakistan — Suspected gang members killed 39 people in two days in Pakistan’s largest city, with many of the victims tortured, shot and stuffed in sacks that were dumped on the streets, officials said Thursday.

The gangs are allegedly affiliated with the city’s main political parties and have been blamed for a surge in killings in recent months. The government has been unable to stop the violence, as it also grapples with a faltering economy and a raging Islamist insurgency.

The unrest illustrates the precarious state of Pakistan’s stability at a time when the U.S. wants the nuclear-armed country to step up its fight against Taliban militants who stage cross-border attacks against foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Seventeen people were killed in Karachi on Wednesday and another 22 on Thursday, said Saud Mirza, police chief in the teeming metropolis of some 18 million people. Many of the victims were tortured, shot in the head and stuffed in burlap sacks, he said.

A resident in one of the neighborhoods that has experienced much of the violence said people were afraid to leave their homes. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared being targeted.

The latest round of violence seemed to be driven by a mix of political and criminal motivations, said Sharfuddin Memon, the security adviser to the government in Sindh province, where Karachi is the capital.

“Gangs operating in the city are involved in the fresh killing,” Memon said. “They are kidnapping people for different reasons, torturing and killing.”

A senior leader of the most powerful political party in Karachi, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, blamed some members of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party for the recent violence. Raza Haroon claimed the killings were being carried out by a committee set up by the Pakistan People’s Party to control violence in Lyari Town, a poor area and ruling party stronghold.

“Now the gangs have so much courage that they have started killing Urdu-speaking people ruthlessly,” Haroon said in a press conference.

A large number of Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s supporters are Urdu-speaking descendants of people who came to Karachi from India soon after the birth of Pakistan in 1947.

“We demand the government stop this horrible genocide of Urdu-speaking people,” Haroon said.

Sharjeel Memon, Sindh’s information minister and a senior member of Pakistan People’s Party, declined to respond to the allegations. He said the chief minister of the province will hold a press conference later Thursday.

Supporters of the Pakistan People’s Party have been targeted by the violence as well.

A former national lawmaker from the ruling party, Waja Kareem Dad, was gunned down Wednesday evening, according to Sharfuddin Memon, the security adviser.

Karachi has a long history of political, ethnic and sectarian violence, but the recent wave is high by historical standards. More than 300 people were killed in July alone.

The recent bout of violence followed a decision in late June by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement to leave the federal coalition led by the Pakistan People’s Party and join the opposition.

There were at least 490 political, ethnic and sectarian killings in Karachi during the first half of the year, among more than 1,100 killings overall in that time period, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
___

Associated Press writer Zarar Khan contributed to this report from Islamabad.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Says It Can Bring Haqqani to Peace Talks

August 18, 2011

Associated Press|by Kathy Gannon

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan's military says it can bring the notorious Haqqani militant network, considered one of the most lethal threats against U.S.-led coalition troops in Afghanistan, to the negotiation table.

Instead, Washington is pushing Pakistan to carry out military assaults against Haqqani hideouts in the tribal regions.

The network is affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida and blamed for most of the major attacks in Afghanistan, particularly the often brazen assaults on the capital Kabul. It has been described as the glue that binds together the militant groups operating in Pakistan's tribal North Waziristan.

"The Haqqani network has been more important to the development and sustainment of al-Qaida and the global jihad than any other single actor or group," a study released earlier this month by West Point's Combatting Terrorism Center said.

A senior Pakistani military officer now says that Pakistan can deliver the Haqqani network to the negotiation table. Pakistan has kept open communication lines with Jalaluddin Haqqani, the elderly leader of the al-Qaida aligned network. The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

The officer denied U.S. and Afghan allegations that Islamabad is aiding and arming the network.

But delivering the Haqqanis would guarantee the Pakistanis a major role in negotiations to end the war and shore up their influence in Afghanistan after the Americans have gone.

Pakistan's offer to bring the recalcitrant Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, the network's military chief, to the peace table comes amid accelerated efforts to find a negotiated end to the protracted Afghan war ahead of the 2014 U.S. military pullout.

But Washington wants Pakistan to go after the Haqqanis because they are threatening coalition forces in Afghanistan.

During a visit to Afghanistan earlier this month, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen bristled at Pakistan's reluctance to clear out safe havens on its territory.

"There has been frustration with the speed with which that [safe havens] has been addressed ... because in particular, the Haqqani network, which continues to be central to this, not exclusive, but central, in feeding this fight in Afghanistan," he said. "At some point, that has got to stop. We continue to engage on that, to bring pressure on that, but I would be hard pressed to be able to tell you time and place when it is going to happen, but it needs to happen."

The senior Pakistani officer said a military assault on Haqqani hideouts would quickly engulf the entire tribal region in a war that the Pakistan army can't win.

For years, the dilemma of how to deal with the Haqqani network has bedeviled Pakistan's relationship with both the United States and Afghanistan.

Pakistan sees the Haqqanis as allies in a postwar Afghanistan. Deep links were found by the West Point study between the Haqqani network and Pakistan's intelligence agency, known as ISI.

Maj. Gen. Daniel Allyn, the coalition's commander for eastern Afghanistan, recently called the Haqqani network "enemy Number One", ahead of the Taliban's one-eyed leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

On Tuesday, the U.S. designated Mullah Sangeen Zadran, a commander in the Haqqani network, as a terrorist, freezing any assets he has in the United States and barring Americans from doing business with him.

Skeptical of Haqqani's willingness to negotiate, Allyn also complained about safe havens in Pakistan.

"From what I've seen from Haqqani so far, their ruthless tactics and the way they have senselessly murdered by the hundreds Afghan citizens, it's hard for me to imagine that [reconciliation] is very high on their list right now, particularly as long as they have the safe haven they enjoy in Miram Shah," Allyn told the online Long War Journal in an Aug. 9 interview.

Miram Shah, North Waziristan's capital, has been the target of numerous U.S. drone assaults, as have nearby areas suspected of concealing insurgent hideouts.

Haqqani's religious school, or madrassa, has been hit several times and several insurgents have been killed.

Yet people in the area say dozens of militants still roam the area with relative ease, including Arab Al-Qaida fighters and members of the Uzbek-dominated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

U.S. demands for Pakistan to launch military operations against Haqqani havens have escalated as the U.S. and NATO prepare to deploy more troops to the eastern border regions, analysts and Western officials say.

Ahead of his departure last month as head of Afghanistan's military operation, Gen. David Patraeus announced that the thrust of the war would be redirected against Taliban hideouts in the east of Afghanistan, where Haqqani's Afghan headquarters is located.

Yet at least two Western officials in the region say Haqqani's network cannot be defeated militarily. Speaking on condition of anonymity to allow them to speak candidly, the two officials, both of whom have Western military experience, said Pakistan's soldiers are poorly trained and equipped. A military operation in North Waziristan's Miram Shah would temporarily disrupt Haqqani's operation but not defeat it, they said.

They also said the calls for attacks on Haqqani safe havens in Miram Shah are part of the larger U.S. strategy that uses military pressure to bring insurgents to the negotiation table.

Pakistan has 140,000 soldiers deployed in its tribal regions. Battles with Pakistani insurgents there have resulted in the deaths of more than 3,000 Pakistani soldiers, more than the U.S. and NATO combined.

According to the Pakistani military officer, an all-out war with the Haqqani network would result in numerous military deaths and leave Pakistan, battered by relentless suicide bombings, vulnerable to more militant attacks.

Insisting Pakistan can bring the Haqqanis to the table without a military operation, the Pakistani senior military official says it's still not clear what the Haqqanis could be offered if they agree to open talks.

Mohammed Ismai Qasemyar, a representative of Afghanistan's High Peace Council tasked with finding a peaceful end to the 10-year war, said: "We won't make any deals with Haqqani." The only promises on offer so far are personal security guarantees and "every rights granted all Afghan citizens."

On their part, Haqqanis would have to denounce al-Qaida, he said.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Suicide Bomber Kills 2 at Coalition Base in Afghanistan

August 18, 2011

Associated Press|by Amir Shah

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber detonated a small truck laden with explosives Thursday at the entrance to a U.S.-led coalition compound in eastern Afghanistan, killing two Afghan security guards, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack at a provincial reconstruction team base that Americans operate near Gardez, the capital of Gardez province. There are more than 20 so-called PRTs across Afghanistan where international civilian and military workers train Afghan government officials and help with local development projects.

Abdul Ihay Atrafi, an Afghan Border Police commander for several provinces in southeast Afghanistan, said the bomber hid the explosives in a truck loaded with wood. The bomber sped through an outer gate, then blew up the vehicle when he came under fire at a second gate, Atrafi said.

He said several people also were wounded in the explosion, which occurred shortly before 7 a.m. local time at the base 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of the capital Kabul.

"It was a very powerful explosion because it was a truck," Atrafi said, adding that the blast caused extensive damage and shattered windows nearby.

Army Master Sgt. Nicholas Conner, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said two Afghan security guards died in the explosion. There were no NATO causalities, he said.

In a statement emailed to the media, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the attack was carried out by a 70-year-old suicide bomber from Nuristan province in eastern Afghanistan along the Pakistan border. He said the truck contained 7 tons of explosives and that the explosion killed and wounded more than 60 U.S. Soldiers.

The Taliban often exaggerate casualties and other details of their attacks.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved

[buglerbilly]

Defence supply chain could fail British forces, say MPs

MoD supply chain to frontline in Afghanistyan and Libya at critical risk of failure, public acccounts committee finds

Polly Curtis, Whitehall correspondent

The Guardian, Friday 19 August 2011


Troops from the Royal Engineers and Royal Logistics Corp rest in their quarters at Shawqat, Afghanistan. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

The government is today warned that its supply chain of equipment to forces on the frontline in Afghanistan and Libya is at "critical risk of failure" and could result in shortages of essential items within a month.

The system that tracks the supply of equipment is beset by delays and is causing the military to waste money by stockpiling items just to make sure they do not run out, according to a damning report by MPs that accuses the government of failing to improve the supply chain from Whitehall to forces abroad.

The report, from the Commons public accounts committee, reveals that in the six months to November 2010 more than 40% of deliveries were a month or more overdue, leaving the government facing the choice of either stockpiling items or deploying costly last-minute air freight to ensure the armed forces don't run out of equipment.

"The risk of failure of these warehouse inventory systems is extremely high and was recently rated as 'critical' by the Defence Logistics Board," the report says. "If these systems fail, then the result could be shortages at the frontline within as little as 30 days."

The report finds that the government spent £347m on commercial freight and could not say how much more it had spent on military supply flights in 2010-11. Some 130,300 individual deliveries were made to Afghanistan alone in that year. The government does not know the full costs of supplying troops abroad, so cannot work out how to make savings, the MPs conclude.

The Tories in opposition promised to improve equipment for troops, after accusations that Labour under Gordon Brown had left some exposed through lack of protective items.

Margaret Hodge, the Labour chair of the committee, said: "For 25 years the department has promised this committee that it would resolve the longstanding problems associated with its supply chain: late deliveries, missed targets and inadequate cost information. Yet these problems persist."

Jim Murphy MP, shadow defence secretary, said: "People will be concerned that the government appears not to have answers to some of the big issues surrounding defence procurement. An important first step for ministers would be to tell the country how they will plug the financial gap left by their rushed defence review."

Peter Luff, the minister responsible for defence equipment, said that supplies to troops were a top priority and there were no shortages. He criticised the report for accusing the government of stockpiling and risking shortages.

"The complexity of supplying a conflict zone should not be underestimated and we have successfully kept our troops supplied, overcoming major challenges like the Icelandic ash cloud and disruption to overland supply routes in Afghanistan," he said. "We have recently more than halved the time it takes to deliver the most urgent items from the UK to the frontline."

"We are placing greater demands on industry to hit delivery schedules and more broadly we are pushing through radical reform across the MoD to instigate a new emphasis on financial rigour and cost control."

[buglerbilly]

Taliban storm British compound in Kabul; 6 killed


Dar Yasin/AP - Afghan security forces carry a wounded British man at the site of a suicide attack outside the British Council in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Aug. 19, 2011. Two suicide bombers attacked the British compound in the Afghan capital on Friday.

By Joshua Partlow, Updated: Friday, August 19, 3:29 PM

KABUL — Taliban insurgents blew up a truck outside the British cultural center in Kabul, then stormed the compound and holed up inside, setting off a sporadic gun battle over several hours to roust them out.

The violence left at least 6 people dead and 12 wounded, including several Afghan policemen, officials said, and it came on the anniversary of Afghanistan’s independence from Britain. More than five hours after it began the situation was still unresolved as hundreds of Afghan police and soldiers, along with British, American and French troops, surrounded the gray concerte-walled British Council as smoke billowed from its smoking ruins.

The first explosion occurred at 6:00 a.m. in the Kart-e-Parwan neighborhood of the Afghan capital. A second, smaller blast from a suicide bomber followed soon after, and other insurgents entered the compound. A gas station attendant working across the divided highway from the British Council, where British employees work alongside Nepalese guards known as Gurkhas, said he saw the first Afghan police truck arrive and then saw two of the policemen get shot and fall to the ground.

Over the next several hours, there were many bursts of gunfire and at least two more explosions as Afghan police commandos attempted to clear the building of insurgents. It was not immediately clear how British Council staff, or how many insurgents, remained inside. Afghan officials said those inside were throwing hand grenades.

The Taliban quickly took credit for the attack on the British Council, claiming through a spokesman that both Afghans and foreigners were among the casualties.

At least four times authorities carried out wounded or slain people and put them on stretchers and hauled them to ambulances. One of them was a Nepalese guard wearing a British embassy guard force hat. He appeared to have burns on his face.

Two NATO attack helicopters circled low over the compound as white smoke rose from inside and armored vehicles stretched far down the highway as the standoff dragged on.

“The good news is that the British nationals that were in the compound made it to the safe room and they are alive and well in it,” said a U.S. military official who was at the scene advising the Afghan national police. “The Gurkhas put up a good fight and they were able to push the attack back.”

The U.S. military official said that they were concerned about further violence. “We got word that a Taliban commander is coordinating the effort from somewhere in the vicinity so we are expecting a secondary hit,” he said.

“That’s why everybody is a little bit jumpy right now.”

The U.S. military official said that a team of Afghan police commandos were attempting to clear the building along with a French bomb team and British soldiers.

The blasts took place along a main divided highway of the city, near the houses of prominent Afghan officials such as Vice President Mohammad Qasim Fahim as well as former presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah. A row of two-story buildings selling car parts were damaged in the explosions and shattered glass was scattered on the street. The remains of what appeared to be a car bomb stood about 30 feet from the compound.

On Thursday, 22 Afghan civilians were killed in Herat when a minibus drove over an improvised explosive device, according to Mohyuddin Noori, a spokesman for the province’s governor.

Noori also said that another vehicle hit another roadside bomb on Thursday morning in the same district, seriously wounding six civilians and killing one.

Both Kabul and Herat — considered to be two of the country’s safest provinces — were among the areas formally handed over to Afghan forces this summer.

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard and staff writer Kevin Sieff contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Official says bomb blast in Pakistani mosque kills 40, wounds 85 during Friday prayers

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, August 19, 6:42 PM

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A bomb exploded in a mosque in a Pakistani tribal region as hundreds were gathered for prayers Friday, killing at least 40 people and wounding 85 others in the first major attack in the country during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The attack came despite a period of relative calm in Pakistan, which has suffered numerous Taliban-led insurgent attacks in recent years. No group immediately claimed responsibility, but the Taliban and other Islamist militants have previously attacked mosques.

The bomb went off in Ghundi, a village in the Khyber tribal region, a part of Pakistan’s tribal belt. Khyber has long been a base for Islamist militants, and the Pakistani army has waged multiple operations aimed at pacifying the region but with limited success.

Khyber also is a key region for the U.S. and NATO, because a large portion of non-lethal supplies heading to U.S. forces in Afghanistan passes through it.

Some 300 people had gathered for prayers Friday afternoon in the Sunni mosque, and many were on their way out when the bomb exploded, local administrator Iqbal Khan said. Officials said there was some evidence a suicide attacker was involved.

Saleem Khan, 21, said people panicked after the blast, and that amid the smoke, cries and blood, several ran over him when he fell.

“Whoever did it in the holy month of Ramadan cannot be a Muslim,” he said from a hospital bed in the main northwest city of Peshawar. “It is the cruelest thing any Muslim would do.”

TV footage from the scene showed a heavily damaged building. Prayer caps, shoes and green prayer mats were scattered across a blood-splattered floor, while ceiling fans were twisted and walls blackened. Men comforted a young boy who wept as he held his hand to his heart.

At least 40 people were killed, and 85 wounded, local administrator Fazal Khan said.

Islamist militants such as the Pakistani Taliban have targeted mosques before, especially if they believe alleged enemies — such as army soldiers — are using the facility.

The Pakistani Taliban and affiliated groups are staging attacks in Pakistan because they oppose Islamabad’s alliance with the United States.

Also Friday, two U.S. missiles struck a house in a tribal region that was once a Pakistani Taliban stronghold, killing four people, intelligence officials said.

The missile strike came as Pakistani-U.S. relations are seriously strained after the unilateral American raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in northwest Pakistan. The continued missile strikes, which Pakistan officially opposes, suggests Washington considers the tactic too valuable to give up.

Though Pakistan objects to the covert, CIA-run missile program, it is believed to have aided it in the past. The U.S. rarely acknowledges the program.

The two missiles hit a house Friday in Sheen Warsak village in the South Waziristan tribal area, according to two Pakistani intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

The identities of the dead were not immediately clear. Although U.S. officials insist the vast majority of victims in the strikes are militants, Pakistanis and some human rights activists have said civilians are often caught up in the attacks.

South Waziristan is a lawless stretch of rugged territory that was largely under the control of the Pakistani Taliban until October 2009, when the country’s army launched an operation against the insurgents. However, militant activity is still occasionally reported in the region.

It is nearly impossible to independently verify the information from the region because access is heavily restricted.
__
Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad and Rasool Dawar contributed to this report from Islamabad.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[buglerbilly]

SAS soldier killed in Kabul attack

12:30 AM Saturday Aug 20, 2011


British forces take position near the British Council compound in Kabul. Photo / APA
[They don't look like Brits more like Yanks..............]

New Zealand special forces soldier is dead after a Taliban attack on the British Council cultural centre in Afghanistan.

A New Zealand Defence Force spokesman confirmed that a New Zealand SAS soldier was among those killed in the suicide attack earlier today.

Taliban suicide bombers infiltrated the compound prompting gun battles which raged for more than eight hours, in an attack marking Afghanistan's 1919 independence from British rule.

The Defence Force said Special Air Service troops were involved in the incident but would not confirm reports a solider had been killed.

Journalists were ordered to stop taking photographs when what appeared to be a seriously wounded New Zealand special forces soldier was stretchered out of the building and loaded on to a medevac helicopter, The Guardian newspaper reported.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he spoke with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and thanked him for the troops' role in ending the raid, in which 10 people were thought to have been killed.

"It's obviously a tragic but cowardly act that has been undertaken but it won't succeed and it won't deflect us from the vital work we are doing in Afghanistan," Mr Cameron said.

The attack started with one suicide bomber detonating an explosives-laden car outside the British Council while another suicide bomber struck inside the compound, according to Afghan police.

Afghan security forces dispatched to the scene said that at least three insurgents fought from a secure bunker inside the compound with rifles and rocket propelled grenades.

An Afghan policeman named Azizullah said that the insurgents wrestled weapons and ammunition from the guards at the compound.

The dead included eight Afghan policemen, a security guard whose nationality was not immediately known and an Afghan municipal worker, according to Kabul police official Farooq Asas.

Two of four people wounded in the blasts were not Afghans, he said.

The British Council is an official organisation part-funded by the British government that promotes cultural relations in offices around the world.

- NZPA

[buglerbilly]

Taliban launches bomb and gun attack on British Council's Kabul compound

At least 12 killed amid invasion of base used for education and helping Afghanistan's civil society groups

Jon Boone in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 August 2011 19.41 BST

With its fortified double set of walls, "airlock" entry system and expensive guards hired from the ranks of retired Gurkhas, the occupants of the British Council compound in Kabul could be forgiven for feeling at times more like prisoners than teachers and cultural ambassadors. The compound, which in happier times hosted top diplomats and Afghan government ministers for the Queen's official birthday party, typifies how the rise and rise of the Taliban-led insurgency has forced foreign officials to effectively cut themselves off from the country they work in.

At daybreak on Friday these multi-million pound precautions were not enough to stop the war crashing right into the heart of an organisation which, after years of having a low profile in Afghanistan, had recently received additional funds to greatly expand its work on education, cultural exchanges and helping Afghan civil society groups.

At 5.40am two vehicles laden with explosives and detonating in quick succession made short work of the walls and booms that are meant to keep the outside world away. A handful of heavily-armed suicide attackers then came running from nearby side streets, shouting and firing into the air.

Even before they had got into the compound through the now wrecked front gate the assault had claimed several lives.

"The explosions destroyed my windows and threw me against the wall," said Shah Agha, whose house overlooks the British Council. "When the dust cleared I could see dead municipality workers on the ground and the body of a policeman without a head."

Details of exactly what happened inside the compound have not yet emerged, but the sound of gunfire and explosions suggested the militants followed the gory new pattern of such attacks: they moved methodically around and tried to kill everyone they found, engaging in fire fights with the team employed by G4S, the British private security company.

As the Gurkhas and Afghans fought back, the two female British Council teachers, one a UK citizen, the other South African, were rushed to a "safe room" by a British G4S bodyguard.

The room is essentially a windowless bunker sealed with a massive metal door, designed to withstand any attack for enough time for outside help to arrive.

On the other side of town, at the British embassy, the ambassador and senior staff scrambled to a control room where they monitored the situation as it unfolded.

A communication link allowed the ambassador, William Patey, to remain in constant touch with the British Council staff hiding in the safe room.

Speaking after they had been safely "extracted" and taken to the British Embassy, he said they were "obviously shaken but well, uninjured".

The Afghan commando unit charged with responding to such incidents has gained considerable experience dealing with the sort of exceptionally difficult situations that would tax the world's best Swat teams.

In June they were involved in a battle to regain control of the hilltop Intercontinental Hotel which was assaulted in similar fashion by a squad of suicide fighters. But despite being among the best trained members of Afghanistan's security forces it appeared they remain heavily reliant on their foreign mentors, members of New Zealand's Special Air Service.

With so many soldiers on the ground, including British troops who manned a cordon, the relatively upmarket west Kabul neighbourhood that is home to leading members of the Afghan establishment, including one of the vice-presidents, soon resembled a war zone in southern Afghanistan.

Amid sporadic bursts of gunfire and explosions, low-flying Apache helicopters circled above, occasionally firing off flares – an automatic counter-measure against surface to air missiles.

Some journalists wore flak jackets and Kevlar helmets to report from the streets of the relatively secure Afghan capital, while the tell tale "whizzing" noise indicates bullets are passing nearby at one point sent reporters piling into drainage ditches for cover.

At midday a pair of Blackhawk helicopters picked up a seriously wounded soldier to take him to a Nato trauma hospital. The New Zealand Defence Force later confirmed that an SAS member had died en route to hospital after being shot in the chest, the first death the regiment has suffered in Afghanistan.

Nine people were killed in the fighting and 22 injured. G4S said three of its Afghan employees were also killed, while three Gurkhas and three Afghans were injured. Considering the length of the fighting, many feared a bigger death toll. The Taliban's public relations team was quick to exploit the attack, grossly inflating the number killed to 40 foreigners and Afghan police, as is their habit.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman reached by phone, said it was a symbolic act timed to coincide with the annual celebration of the day in 1919 when Afghanistan won the right to run a foreign policy independent of Britain.

"We attacked the buildings because we want to remind the British that we won our independence from them before and we will do it again," he said.

Even as fighting raged at a compound a few hundred metres from the once grand campus that used to house the British embassy in the heyday of empire, over at the presidential palace Hamid Karzai and senior Afghans and foreign diplomats marked the anniversary with a small ceremony.

It was not until 2pm that the British ambassador declared the operation to retake control of the British Council was over and every insurgent killed.

But bursts of automatic gunfire could still be heard from inside the compound nine hours after the siege began, although the shots were almost certainly not due to firefights with insurgents.

On the street outside soldiers, including a member of Britain's special forces with his face hidden a scarf, angrily tried to get journalists to move away.

Shortly afterwards Afghan officials invited the media forward to photograph the grisly remains of one of the attackers which they laid out for the scrum of reporters. For good measure one of the policemen spat on the corpse.

[buglerbilly]

Suicide bomber hits Pakistan mosque; scores killed

By Richard Leiby, Published: August 19 | Updated: Sunday, August 21, 8:35 AM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber killed 48 worshipers Friday at a mosque in a northwestern Pakistani tribal region long scarred by militant attacks and sectarian clashes, officials reported.

The bombing in the Khyber region near the Afghan border highlighted the persistence of violence in this majority-Muslim nation despite the observance of Ramadan, a month-long period of spiritual introspection. The Sunni mosque in the village of Ghundi was packed with worshipers for Friday prayers, eyewitnesses said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Eyewitness and media reports said a boy dressed in black who appeared to be 15 or 16 years old entered the mosque through a window as services were ending and exploded a suicide vest packed with ball bearings. Local and hospital officials said that at least 100 people were injured and that the death toll could rise.

“Whoever did it in the holy month of Ramadan cannot be a Muslim,” Saleem Khan, a survivor, told the Associated Press from a hospital bed in Peshawar, the major northwestern city, to which many of the injured were taken. “It is the cruelest thing any Muslim would do.”

An estimated 300 worshipers were inside the mosque when the explosion destroyed the building’s doors and walls, but early reports of a roof collapse appeared to be unfounded

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the bombing.

“The slaughter of worshippers as they gathered at a mosque for Ramadan’s Friday prayers underscores the brutality of those who would target civilians during a time of celebration and reflection for Muslims throughout the world,” she said in a statement.

The Khyber tribal area is strategically important because military supplies pass through it en route to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Militants have mounted numerous attacks on oil tanker trucks and other supply vehicles in recent years.

The region also has been the scene of deadly fighting between two Sunni sects, the conservative Deobandi and more moderate Berelvi.

Investigators said they were exploring various motives for the attack, including a feud between the Pakistani Taliban and a local tribe. Several outraged and bereaved villagers said the people at the mosque were not involved in any such disputes.

“There are various militant and sectarian outfits in the region, but we are neutral and abstain from the ongoing rifts,” a village elder, Malik Khani Jan, said by telephone. “This is a condemnable act on the poor and innocent worshipers in the holy month of fasting.”

In the past year, scores of people have died in religiously motivated attacks at shrines and mosques throughout the country.

Friday’s suicide bombing comes at a time when violence is also raging in Karachi, Pakistan’s financial center and its largest city. In recent days, an estimated 40 people have been killed in fighting among ethnic and political groups and criminal gangs — clashes marked by torture, kidnappings and execution-style shootings.

Special correspondent Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Militant attacks kill 2 soldiers, wound over a dozen in northwest Pakistan

By Associated Press, Updated: Sunday, August 21, 5:10 PM

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Militants carried out a series of attacks against soldiers in Pakistan’s rugged tribal region along the Afghan border Sunday, killing two troops and wounding more than a dozen others, intelligence officials said.

The attacks took place in the North and South Waziristan tribal areas, both of which are strongholds for Pakistani Taliban fighters who have waged a deadly war against the government. The region is also home to militants who stage cross-border attacks against U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

A group of militants attacked an army checkpoint early Sunday in the town of Ladha in South Waziristan, killing one soldier and wounding another, said intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

A second soldier was killed when troops engaged militants in a gunbattle in the Pasht Ziarat area on the border of North and South Waziristan, the officials said. Three militants were killed during the fight. Six soldiers and seven militants were also wounded.

A roadside bomb struck an army convoy near Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, wounding five soldiers, said the officials.

South Waziristan was the main stronghold for the Pakistani Taliban until the military launched a major offensive in the fall of 2009. Periodic attacks still occur in the area, and many of the militants fled to North Waziristan.

The U.S. has urged Pakistan to conduct a similar offensive in North Waziristan, but the military has declined, saying its troops are stretched too thin by operations in other parts of the tribal region.

Many analysts believe Pakistan is reluctant to target Afghan Taliban militants based in North Waziristan with whom it has historical ties and who could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Aussie killed by IED in Afghanistan

Tim Lester National Bureau Chief

August 22, 2011 - 7:15PM.

The Taliban’s weapon of choice – the improvised explosive device – has claimed another Australian life in Afghanistan.

The soldier, from the Townsville based 2nd battalion was on a night foot patrol with Afghan Army soldiers 85 kilometres north east of Tarin Kowt, when the device exploded at 8am (AEST).

His colleagues in Australia’s third Mentoring Task Force treated the soldier before he was evacuated by air to Tarin Kowt.

He died soon after.

Defence Force Chief General David Hurley has withheld personal details at his family’s request, but says the soldier has previously served in East Timor and had deployed for the first time to Afghanistan in June.

The soldier was a "respected member" of the Townsville-based 2nd Battalion.

"The soldier's colleagues describe him as a man who excelled at any task he was assigned and a soldier who was proud to serve his country," General Hurley said.

Eight Australian soldiers have died this year.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith says the death is "a terrible blow for an Australian family."

General Hurley reassured the family that they "will not face these difficult days alone."

In an early evening press conference at Defence headquarters, Mr. Smith told reporters "we are on track to achieve our mission in Afghanistan … transition to Afghan led security responsibility by 2014."

Another soldier, from an unnamed Coalition country, was wounded in the blast.

He is in a serious but stable condition and receiving treatment in Tarin Kowt.

An investigation into the incident is under way.

with AAP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/aussie-killed-by-ied-in-afghanistan-20110822-1j6i5.html#ixzz1VkrBcSh9

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Police lead their first air assault in Helmand

A Military Operations news article

22 Aug 11


The Afghan Uniform Police (AUP) has taken part in its first helicopter assault operation in Helmand province, alongside soldiers from 1st Battalion The Rifles (1 RIFLES).


British soldiers from A Company, 1st Battalion The Rifles, and patrolmen of the Afghan Uniform Police on the ground following their helicopter insertion into the area of operations
[Picture: Sergeant Alison Baskerville, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

The operation, codenamed ZANGAL HAF (Zangal Hope) after the village close to where the operation would take place, was aimed at disrupting insurgents in the Nahr-e Saraj district, where the 1 RIFLES Battle Group is based.

Early on the morning of the operation, soldiers from A Company (A Coy), 1 RIFLES, and the AUP patrolmen boarded Chinook helicopters in Camp Bastion and flew deep into the Green Zone, behind enemy lines.

With the AUP in the lead, the combined force of soldiers and policemen moved towards their intended target.

With temperatures rising fast under the Helmand sun, mud-clogged fields underfoot, and endless rows of seven-foot-high (2.1m), densely packed maize and corn 'jungles', progress was slow and draining.

The operation took place during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast between sunrise and sunset. Their religion means that the AUP are unable to eat or drink during the day and that can prevent them from taking part in operations.

However, with permission from Lieutenant Colonel Masloom, who works in Nahidullah, the patrolmen opted to break their fast so they could play a key role in securing the area.


Members of the Afghan Uniform Police and soldiers of A Company, 1st Battalion The Rifles, inside a Chinook helicopter
[Picture: Sergeant Alison Baskerville, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Major Mirza Khan, the AUP Commander, said:

"We are responsible for the safety of the people. If we do not work during Ramadan, the people will not be safe. The insurgent does not respect Ramadan and so we must work to stop him."

While moving through the tough terrain, the focus for the AUP was to check and clear compounds, searching for evidence of insurgent activity. As the patrol pushed forward, the lack of people was noticeable and it was also eerily quiet - often a sure sign of insurgent presence.

The AUP led the searches of a number of compounds that were suspected of being Taliban safe houses which they use as bomb factories and for hiding themselves and their weapons. During this dangerous part of the operation soldiers from 1 RIFLES were in close support and provided a secure cordon to allow the searches to be carried out as safely as possible.

As they searched one of the compounds, there was a massive explosion.

One of the patrolmen had triggered an improvised explosive device which had been hidden in a building. Immediately, his AUP colleagues and soldiers from A Coy went to his aid, being careful not to set off any secondary devices that might be lying in wait.


A Chinook helicopter carrying a Medical Emergency Response Team extracts a member of the Afghan Uniform Police after he accidentally triggered an improvised explosive device
[Picture: Sergeant Alison Baskerville, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

After being treated at the scene by the medics, the patrolman was airlifted to hospital in Camp Bastion by the Medical Emergency Response Team. Sadly though, despite treatment, he died of his injuries.

Despite the loss of one of their comrades, the AUP's resolve remained strong and the patrolmen continued their mission to clear compounds for the remainder of the day.

Major Karl Boswell, the Officer Commanding A Coy, said:

"I take my hat off to them, they are phenomenal and they are still going at it despite having taken a casualty."

As the operation continued the AUP found a small amount of homemade explosive (HME). Significantly the HME discovered was an ammonium nitrate mix rather than an aluminium nitrate mix. This is a sub-standard explosive and indicates further that the good work of the Afghan security forces and ISAF is disrupting the supply of high grade explosive material to the Taliban.

As the operation moved into the closing phase and the patrol was less than a kilometre from Patrol Base 4, where the AUP and A Company are based, the enemy launched an ambush and the patrol came under sustained fire.


Rifleman Daniel Meally looks anxiously over a wall as his patrol, from A Company, 1st Battalion The Rifles, comes under heavy fire
[Picture: Sergeant Alison Baskerville, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Rifleman James Clark, one of those caught up in the fire fight, said:

"The rounds were coming in close, they were landing at our feet and flying just over our heads. We managed to get into some cover but then we were shot at from the rear too.

"There are all sorts of emotions going through your mind," he continued. "I wouldn't say I was scared, but you are anxious as to whether or not the rounds are coming near you."

For 45 minutes, the patrol was pinned down by the enemy fire. Throughout, the AUP took the lead, giving directions on how to manoeuvre to counter the attack. A Coy called in support from their colleagues back at base, who put a sniper team in place to target the insurgents. Eventually, the AUP and Riflemen were able to extract back to the safety of Patrol Base 4.

Ten hours after they had lifted off from Camp Bastion, the patrol reflected on the events of the day and the loss of one of their colleagues.

Rifleman Clark said:

"When the shooting started, everyone did their drills perfectly and everyone took a knee and didn't fire until they had identified the firing point. Everyone held it together really well and there was no panic or anything like that, it was just like they were on an exercise really."


Lance Corporal Jamie Thorne of A Company, 1st Battalion The Rifles, recovers after engaging in an intense, 45-minute contact with insurgents
[Picture: Sergeant Alison Baskerville, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Major Karl Boswell said he was impressed by the way the AUP handled themselves during the operation:

"Given this was their first helicopter assault, the AUP were professional and robust, leading throughout. They are making real progress and they have performed outstandingly. This has been a massive step forward for them"

Major Khan said:

"ISAF helped us, they are our brothers and we work well together. We did not catch the Taliban today but that does not matter because he knows we are after him and we must not give him space to breathe and be near the people.

"My men did very well today despite our casualty and we will get better soon with more ISAF training so that we are ready when ISAF go home."

[buglerbilly]

Canadian Afghanistan air wing ends operations

August 22, 2011



No mention of what is happening with the Chinooks and whether they've on-sold them to other NATO members?

The Canada Joint Task Afghanistan Air Wing officially ended its operations from Kandahar airfield on 19 August.

The disbandment of the air wing, which includes personnel and aircraft from the Canadian helicopter community, comes on the heels of the end of the Canadian Force's combat mission in the country in July.

The air wing, called Task Force Silver Dart, is made of up three components: TF Erebus flying the Heron UAVs; TF Canuck flying the CC-130 Hercules transport aircraft; and TF Freedom, the Canadian Helicopter Force Afghanistan (CHFA), flying the CH-146 Griffon and the CH-147 Chinooks purchased under the Interim Medium-Lift Capability (IMLC).

'This is a significant day, as we close down the Joint Task Force Afghanistan Air Wing after 32 months of first-class support to combat operations,’ said air wing commander, Col Al Meinzinger.

'Everyone who served with the Air Wing displayed great flexibility and agility in working with our many mission partners. Over the last five months, all three units of the Air Wing surged to unprecedented levels to support operations.

The JTF-Afg Air Wing stood up at Kandahar Airfield on December 6, 2008 with 200 personnel and quickly grew to its final operating strength of 450 personnel. The CC-130 Hercules deployed in Kandahar Province will continue to fly in support of the MTTF until the end of 2011.

Over the three years of operations, the JTF-Afg Air Wing achieved the following milestones:

CH-146 Griffon: 2,294 passengers | 16,343 hours flown | 20,615 lb cargo

CH-147 Chinook: 89,314 passengers | 7,085 hours flown | 7,090,889 lb cargo

CH-146 and CH-147 (combined): 91,608 passengers | 23,428 hours flown | 7,111,504 lb cargo

Mi-8 chartered cargo helicopter: 11,000 hours flown | 16,000,000 lb cargo

You can read more about the operations of the Canadian Helicopter Force Afghanistan (CHFA) by reading the latest edition of Defence Helicopter magazine, by clicking HERE

http://www.subscription.co.uk/cc/ccirc1.asp?card=D5DH

Tony Osborne, London

[buglerbilly]

Afghans Try to Revive Key Projects Hit by Attacks

August 22, 2011

Associated Press|by Heidi Vogt And Rahim Faiez

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's president ordered increased security Monday for workers building roads, dams, electricity lines and telecommunications systems in an attempt to revive key projects stalled by insurgent attacks that have killed or kidnapped dozens of laborers.

The U.S. and other international allies have poured billions into Afghanistan for infrastructure projects that also include mining and irrigation. The projects are one of the pillars of the counterinsurgency strategy and are aimed at sapping support for the Taliban.

The attacks have halted many of the projects for months or even years, and the Cabinet met Monday to discuss ways to restart them.

President Hamid Karzai said in the meeting that he was ordering more security. It's a difficult task, given that Afghan forces are already stretched to meet the demands of fighting the insurgency.

A government statement released after the meeting said insurgents have killed 53 road construction workers and kidnapped 110 since 2005.

Attacks on irrigation and dam projects have killed 30 workers in recent years; another four have been kidnapped. Insurgents have also killed nine telecommunications workers and kidnapped nine others.

As a result, a road construction project in eastern Wardak province has been delayed for 13 months, the government said.

Work has stopped on a road planned from the capital city of Kabul to the key eastern city of Jalalabad because militants burned 13 vehicles needed for construction, the statement said.

Dam projects, including Salma dam in Herat province, have been suspended indefinitely as has a project to extend electricity lines from Naghlo dam in Kabul province farther east.

"The road to Salma dam is blocked by the enemy and there are lots of problems supplying the projects," the statement said.

And a plan to improve telecommunications in the southeast of the country has been interrupted because of security threats.

In the volatile south, meanwhile, a bomb hidden in a scrap metal shop in a market exploded Monday, killing two civilians, officials said.

The early morning blast in the town of Gereshk killed the shopkeeper and a child sitting in a car parked outside the store, said the deputy police chief for Helmand province, Kamaluddin Sherzad. Four people were wounded.

The attack is the second in as many days in Gereshk. On Sunday, gunmen killed community council member Jan Mohammad Khan in the town's market, the Helmand governor's office said in a statement.

On the outskirts of the nearby provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, police killed a Taliban deputy commander on Sunday, the governor's office said.

Lashkar Gah is one of the first seven areas of the country where Afghan authorities have taken over control of security from international forces. The city is still frequently targeted by insurgents and the areas around Lashkar Gah remain dangerous.

Also Monday, an Australian soldier was killed in a bomb attack while on patrol in southern Uruzgan province, Australian officials said. At least 29 Australian service members have been killed in the Afghan conflict. Australia has 1,550 troops in Afghanistan.

At least 68 international service members have died so far this month in Afghanistan, including the latest death. The vast majority of the dead were Americans.

---

Associated Press writer Mirwais Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Private Lambert, 26, becomes eighth Digger to die this year

Dan Oakes

August 23, 2011 .


Private Matthew Lambert ... killed at the age of 26.

A 26-year-old Australian soldier killed by a roadside bomb while on an early morning patrol in Afghanistan has been identified as Private Matthew Lambert.

Private Lambert was a member of the Mentoring Task Force - Three and was from the 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR) based in Townsville, North Queensland.

He was the eighth soldier to die this year and the 29th of the decade-long war.

The Defence department said Private Lambert, who was married, was born in Kogarah, NSW, and enlisted in the 9th Battalion, Royal Queensland Regiment in August 2005, transferring to the Australian Regular Army in February 2007. he was posted to 2RAR in Townsville.

He was described as a well-respected soldier who excelled in any task he was assigned, and was looking forward to serving his country in Afghanistan.

Private Lambert has been awarded the following honours and awards: Australian Active Service Medal with clasp International Coalition Against Terror, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Australian Service Medal with clasp Timor - Leste, Australian Defence Medal and the Timor – Leste Solidarity Medal.

The chief of the Defence Force, David Hurley, said last night that Private Lambert was patrolling in Oruzgan province with Afghan soldiers at 2.30am when what is believed to be an improvised explosive device went off.

He was evacuated to the main Australian base at Tarin Kowt but died shortly afterwards.

The incident took place in a district called Khas Uruzgan, which is about 85 kilometres from Tarin Kowt and one of the most violent districts in the province.

Another coalition soldier was wounded at the same time, but General Hurley would not disclose his nationality.

The dead soldier was stationed at a base called Anaconda, which was a United States special forces base.

General Hurley said the Australian soldier was a ''respected member'' of the Townsville-based 2nd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment who was on his first deployment to Afghanistan but had served previously in East Timor.

''The soldier's colleagues described him as a man who excelled at any tasks he was assigned and a soldier who was proud to serve his country,'' General Hurley said.

''On behalf of the Australian Defence Force I offer the soldier's family and friends my deepest sympathy.''

The Defence Minister, Stephen Smith, said that while the death was tragic he believed Australian forces were making progress in Afghanistan and that they were on track to hand control of the province over to Afghan security forces by 2014.

''We believe what we are doing in Afghanistan is in our national security interests and also in the international community's interests, helping to stare down, as it does, international terrorism,'' Mr Smith said.

The last Australian soldier to die was Sergeant Todd Langley, a decorated member of the Sydney-based 2nd Commando Regiment, who was killed early last month in a firefight with insurgents while uncovering a weapons cache.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/private-lambert-26-becomes-eighth-digger-to-die-this-year-20110823-1j7ud.html#ixzz1VpKeZsOU

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Friendly Fire Statistics Revealed

(Source: British Forces Broadcasting Service; issued August 22, 2011)

Afghan forces accidentally fired on British troops in Helmand Province at least 19 times over a three-and-a-half year period, military incident logs reveal.

Four of the "friendly fire" incidents resulted in casualties, although extracts from official files released by the Ministry of Defence do not record any UK personnel being killed or seriously injured.

There were also at least 10 cases between January 2008 and June this year where British forces mistakenly fired at Afghan soldiers, police and security service officials, resulting in seven deaths.

In the worst incident, in the Lashkar Gah district of Helmand in October 2008, three Afghan National Police (ANP) officers were killed and one very seriously injured when UK troops opened fire on them.

The log notes: "Acting on a specific threat warning and in the belief that no Afghan or Isaf (Nato) forces were in the area, UK forces fired at individuals assessed to be preparing an attack.

"The individuals were subsequently identified as ANP officers preparing an ambush against insurgent forces."

In another incident a British night patrol in Sangin in northern Helmand in August last year fired on a motorcycle that failed to stop despite warnings.

One of the riders was shot in the head and died, and the other was injured. It later turned out they were both ANP officers.

UK troops also killed a member of Afghan intelligence in Sangin in September 2008, an Afghan soldier in Nad-e-Ali in October 2008 and an Afghan border police officer in Garmsir in April 2009.

Not all the incidents ended in tragedy. A joint British and US patrol came under attack from an Afghan National Army (ANA) compound near Camp Bastion, the main UK base in Helmand in July 2009.

The log observes: "When the ANA forces realised they had been firing on friendly forces they invited the patrol in for tea."

Details of the friendly fire incidents were released by the military's Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) based at Northwood in Middlesex in response to a Freedom of Information request.

Eight date from 2008, 11 from 2009, 10 from 2010, and none were recorded in the first half of this year.

They are taken from PJHQ's central database of "significant incident reports" sent back by the UK's Task Force Helmand very soon after events to give military planners a picture of what is happening on the ground.

PJHQ stressed that the information released was incomplete, saying: "It includes only those events which were raised by the UK task force as significant incidents and categorised correctly.

"And it is based on the initial reporting of the incidents it relates to. It is entirely possible that the detail reported may subsequently have been subject to change or clarification, or that additional incidents will have occurred which have not been captured here."

The logs do not include the death of Kingsman Sean Dawson, 19, who was mistakenly shot by Afghan soldiers on February 14 last year after a breakdown in communication led to a gunfight between British and Afghan forces.

Meanwhile, 21 Afghan interpreters, working with British forces, have been killed and more than 90 injured over the past five years, official figures show.

So far this year alone, three have died and 19 been wounded in the course of their duties, although their deaths are generally not announced by the Ministry of Defence.

Interpreters face the same risks of improvised explosive devices and insurgent ambushes as the troops they translate for when they go out on patrols in some of the deadliest parts of Helmand province.

Many have received death threats from the Taliban because of their work with the UK military and fear for the future once Nato forces pull out of Afghanistan.

But there are no plans to introduce a scheme to allow them to settle in Britain, along the lines of a now-closed programme for Iraqis who were employed by the UK Government for a year or more.

British forces in Afghanistan employed 650 local interpreters in mid-July, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in response to a Freedom of Information request.

The deadliest year for Afghan interpreters working with UK troops was 2009 (when seven were killed and 23 injured), followed by 2010 (four killed and 33 injured), 2007 (four killed and 14 injured), 2011 to date (three killed and 19 injured), 2008 (two killed and three injured) and 2006 (one killed and none injured).

The MoD was not able to provide figures for the number of interpreters killed in Iraq.

Afghan interpreters receive a good salary for their work with UK forces but pay a high price in terms of the danger they face.

Many wear scarves over their faces when they go out on the ground with British troops in an attempt to stop insurgent spies from identifying them.

One 29-year-old interpreter working in the Nahr-e-Saraj district of Helmand spoke of his fears after the Taliban threatened him.

He said: "They told me: 'If we find you we will cut your tongue off and then we will slit your throat'.

"It's a very dangerous situation. If they find me they will kill me but I have a big family and many responsibilities."

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Base makes room for more rotary wing aircraft in Afghanistan

August 24, 2011

Shindand Air Base, Afghanistan, increased its capacity recently when officials opened a new rotary wing apron with a goal of increasing capability to stage rotary wing aircraft.

Approximately 112,000 meters in size, the apron has the ability to park 18 UH-60 Blackhawks, 14 CH-47 Chinooks and 10 AH-64 Apache helicopters.

The apron will be used as a staging and servicing area for units belonging to Task Force Spearhead, which also operate out of Shindand.

The project started in September and was completed four months ahead of schedule, officials said.

"The opening of the apron is just one of many construction projects taking place here at Shindand," said Col. John Hokaj, the commander of the 838th Air Expeditionary Advisory Group. "It is a critical milestone in moving forces to the Far East Expansion and the building of a new training runway."

Agencies contributing to the project included the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Tetra Tech Incorporated, Yuksel Incorporated and members of the 838th AEAG. The private contractors employed more than 230 employees to help finish the project early.

Although the apron is not currently slated to be a staging area for medical evacuations, it will eventually be handed over to the Afghan air force for their use in facilitation of operational missions.

"We continue to work hard in developing Shindand with a goal of the base becoming the crown jewel of the Afghan air force," Hokaj said. "This project is the culmination of a lot of hard work and effort put forth by different organizations, and I'm glad to be associated with the outcome."

In July, construction projects expanded Shindand to nearly three times its original size, making it the second largest airfield throughout Afghanistan. The ultimate goal of the expansion is to make room for a new 1.3-mile NATO training runway; construction is scheduled to begin early 2012.

By Capt. Jamie Humphries - 438th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

[buglerbilly]

Three ISAF Unmanned Aircraft Down in Afghanistan

Posted on August 24, 2011 by The Editor

A unmanned aircraft of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has com down in southern Afghanistan due to a technical failure, the alliance said on Saturday.

“We can confirm that a small ISAF remotely-piloted aircraft did crash in Ghazni as a result of a mechanical issue,” the ISAF media office said in response to an email from Pajhwok Afghan News.

The multinational force said it had no operational reports to indicate that any civilians were harmed or property damaged as a result of the crash in the Taliban-infested Andar district. Meanwhile, rebel spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the Taliban shot down the plane during a fight with ISAF troops in the area late on Friday. He gave no more details.

Another UAS went down in the suburbs of the Afghan city of Balkh, located 324 kilometers (201 miles) north of the capital Kabul on Monday, provincial officials told Press TV. The Swedish Armed Forces web site reports that a Swedish-operated Shadow had engine failure and was forced to make an emergency landing near the town of Balkh at six o’clock, local time, on Sunday morning. The aircraft was damaged and has been transported back to the Swedish camp in Mazar-e-Sharif, where the majority of the Swedish workforce is located.

Taliban militants claimed on Sunday that they had shot down a third unmanned US reconnaissance aircraft in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.

Sources: Press TV, Pajhwok Afghan News, Swedish Armed Forces

[buglerbilly]

Karzai Denounces Use of Child Suicide Bombers

August 24, 2011

Associated Press|by Amir Shah

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday denounced the use of child suicide bombers, saying that militants who recruit them to wage terror are "oppressors of Islam" and "oppressors of children."

The Taliban and other militants are accused of soliciting children to carry out suicide bombings, which often kill other innocent Afghans and Muslims.

Karzai sat in a sunny courtyard at the presidential palace with about 20 young Afghans who had either surrendered to Afghan authorities or had been arrested across the nation in connection with planned suicide bombings. After a brief chat, he ordered aides to help the young men, ages 10 through 16, find homes, education or be released to their parents.

"This is cruelty to this country. This is cruelty to Islam," Karzai said.

"It is cruelty to Islam that they put explosives around a child's body and tell him that when he carries out the attack he will not get killed, only others will get killed."

Earlier this year, the Afghan intelligence service paraded five alleged suicide bombers - all boys in adolescence or even younger - before reporters, photographers and cameramen in an effort to turn public opinion against the Taliban.

Afghan intelligence officials say the Taliban turns to young boys because they are easier to recruit than adults and tend to believe what recruiters tell them. Confirmed cases are rare, and it's difficult to identify the bodies of bombers who blow themselves up, but intelligence officials say there has been a recent increase in the use of children.

On May 1, police said a 12-year-old blew himself up in a bazaar in the Barmal district of Paktika province in the east, killing four civilians and wounding 12 others. On April 13, a 13-year-old suicide bomber detonated his explosives vest in Asmar district of Kunar province. The blast, also in the east, killed 10 people, including five schoolboys and an influential tribal elder, Malik Zareen, who was a former military commander who supported the Afghan government.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a local government official was assassinated on Tuesday evening in the south - the third official killed in Helmand province in a week, officials said.

The governor's office in Helmand said two gunmen on a motorcycle fired at a member of the Nawa district council in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. The councilman was rushed to a hospital but died of his wounds.

Insurgents have responded to heavy pressure from U.S. and NATO coalition forces by targeting officials and others aligned with the Afghan government.

In two attacks Sunday, militants killed a councilman and chief prosecutor from Gereskh district.

Also in the south, a NATO service member was killed in an insurgent attack on Wednesday, the coalition said. So far this month, 70 NATO service members have died in the war, including at least 60 Americans.

In eastern Afghanistan, four rockets fell Wednesday afternoon in Zurmat district of Paktia province, said Gulab Shah, the top government official in the district. He said one rocket hit a vegetable market and killed three civilians and wounded eight others.

On Tuesday, two Afghan policemen died when their vehicle hit a roadside mine in Chimtal district of Balkh province, said Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, a spokesman for the Afghan National Police in northern Afghanistan said Wednesday. Three other policemen were wounded.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Kabul police's turf war with Afghan troops risked British Council rescue

Insurgent attack on British Council workers thwarted by special forces, but New Zealand SAS commando dies during rescue

Jon Boone in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 August 2011 22.10 BST


When the British Council compound in Kabul was attacked on Friday by insurgents city police sent away Afghan commandos. A New Zealand SAS soldier died during the rescue of two council teachers. Photograph: Jalil Rezayee/EPA

A turf war between Kabul's police and SAS-trained Afghan commandos caused a potentially life-threatening delay to the operation to rescue two British Council workers penned in by suicide bombers, according to the rescue team.

The standoff last Friday between the city's police and the Crisis Response Unit (CRU), which lasted for more than four hours, gave the attackers time not just to overwhelm the fortress-like compound, but also to launch a terrifying assault on the reinforced door of the cramped safe room where the two employees of the British Council had taken refuge.

According to Ghulam Daoud, leader of the commando team, the insurgents used several hand grenades in their unsuccessful attempts to blast open the door, located in a narrow area under a flight of stairs, where the two teachers had taken refugee with a security guard from the private British company G4S.

"They were very well informed, they knew exactly where the strong points were and where the safe room was," said General Sayed Abdul Ghafar, director of Afghan special forces.

The two women, one British and the other South African, have not yet been named although diplomatic sources said one of them had only arrived in Afghanistan 48 hours earlier to work on the British Council's educational and cultural programmes.

They were rushed to the tiny safe room, in a building in the centre of the compound, at 5.40am under covering fire from private guards on the roof of the compound after a vehicle packed with explosives ripped through the front gate.

It destroyed the double-layered "airlock" of concrete walls, metal gates and other defensive measures.

A second group of terrorists, armed with bombs and guns, stormed into the compound, overwhelming the guard force of Gurkhas and Afghans employed by G4S, the giant British security company.

In total 12 people, excluding the attackers, died during six hours of fierce fighting. One of the fatalities included Douglas Grant, 41, a New Zealand SAS commando who was part of the rescue team.

Photographs of the devastated compound in the relatively upmarket neighbourhood of western Kabul show that the safe room had just enough space for a mattress, some cushions and bits of equipment.

While the two teachers and guard were trapped inside, waiting for rescue, they were able to talk to embassy officials by mobile phone. They also had time to pin Union flags to their chests, to identify themselves clearly when the Afghan commandos arrived.

But that took far longer than anyone would have hoped because of an argument over jurisdiction between different arms of the Afghan security forces.

Ghafar, the special forces chief, got to the scene within 20 minutes but his team was sent away by Kabul's police chief, General Mohammad Ayub Salangi.

"We finally called back at 9.45 but in all that time the stupid policemen did not do anything," said Ghafar.

One international official said Salangi had handled the situation like an "idiot". However, the police chief insisted that he was simply "following procedures" and claimed not to have ordered the CRU away.

New Zealand SAS team

At 10am, more than four hours after the attack began, the CRU team of 20 commandos, joined by five soldiers of the New Zealand SAS who rushed to the scene from their base on the other side of the city, began their assault on the compound.

But their initial attempt to drive through the blasted, wrecked main gate in an armoured Humvee was repulsed by an hail of bullets that even broke the vehicle's armoured windows. One CRU commando died there.

The rescuers' work was made even more difficult by the British Council's own elaborate defences – including bulletproof glass on all the windows – giving insurgents strong fighting positions to hold back the rescue party.

"The enemy had time to occupy all the bulletproof checkpoints [inside the compound] that we could not attack," said Daoud, leading the CRU unit. The frontal assault strategy was abandoned.

Meanwhile, the New Zealand SAS team turned their attention to the back of the compound, blowing a hole in a rear wall, and allowing the CRU commandos to storm in from a neighbouring building.

Daoud confirmed that, while the CRU is a highly regarded special forces team, it does not yet have engineers trained to break through walls.

When they finally got into the compound the telltale smell of "cooked kebab" showed suicide bombers had already exploded themselves, he said.

New Zealand and Afghan snipers occupying positions in overlooking buildings were able to provide some cover to their colleagues from insurgents firing from their heavily defended positions on the upper floor of the guesthouse where British Council staff were hiding.

But that was not enough to save Corporal Grant, a New Zealand SAS member who was shot and mortally wounded as he ran along the edge of the compound.

The Afghan commandos also revealed that the three non-Afghans were removed from the building long before all the insurgents inside had been killed.

There remained at least one suicide bomber still fighting upstairs, and a fire was spreading in the building, so the rescue party decided not to wait.

Sniper teams were ordered to train all their fire on the area where the insurgent was still holed up, allowing three other British Council workers to move to a nearby gym, which had been made from a metal sea container. The New Zealand commandos blew up another section of wall and they escaped.

The fire in the building also forced a Gurkha, who had been on the roof since the start of the siege, down from his position in the roof.

But even though the foreigners were safe, the fighting still raged for control of the building with troops occasionally so close to attackers that they could punch them, said Ghafar. At one point an attacker, after being shot, managed to detonate his vest, injuring but not killing five CRU commandos.

Despite the heat, fighting for several hours in the summer sun, none of the commandos was subsequently able to eat or drink because it is the fasting month of Ramadan.

At the end of the operation the team went to a nearby carwash and hosed themselves down with water.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan police chief retracts earlier statement that kidnapped American has been freed

By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, August 25, 5:58 PM

LAHORE, Pakistan — A Pakistani police chief claimed Thursday that officers had freed a kidnapped American development expert but then he swiftly retracted the statement. The U.S. also said it could not confirm that Warren Weinstein, 70, had been released.

Weinstein was kidnapped almost two weeks ago from the eastern city of Lahore.

Lahore police chief Malik Ahmed Raza Tahir said police traced Weinstein to the city of Khushab, 125 miles (200 kilometers) northwest of Lahore, and freed him early Thursday. Tahir backtracked about an hour later and said he could not confirm or deny Weinstein was free.

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad also said it has no evidence the American was recovered.

“We have no information that would confirm recovery of Warren Weinstein, but we are hoping for a positive outcome,” the U.S. embassy said on Twitter.

Weinstein was abducted before dawn on August 13 after gunmen tricked his guards and broke into his home. He is the country director in Pakistan for J.E. Austin Associates, a U.S.-based firm that advises a range of Pakistani business and government sectors.

Police have arrested three people suspected of belonging to the gang that kidnapped Weinstein, Tahir, the police chief, said Wednesday. Their arrests were made after officers tracked cell phone numbers, he said.

Police have also released a black-and-white sketch of a possible suspect in the kidnapping. It’s unclear if the young man is one of the three people who have been arrested.

Kidnappings are common in Pakistan, and foreigners are occasional targets. Criminal gangs are suspected in most abductions, but militants are also believed to use the tactic to raise money through ransoms.

Weinstein, who has a home in Rockville, Maryland, worked in Pakistan for several years and spoke Urdu.

J.E. Austin Associates has stressed Weinstein’s commitment to Pakistan’s economic development and said he worked with a wide range of Pakistani government agencies, including the Pakistan Furniture Development Company and the Pakistan Dairy Development Company.

The company has also said Weinstein is in poor health and provided a detailed list of medications, many of them for heart problems. It implored the kidnappers to give their victim medicine.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Defence Force checks delayed SAS mission claims

By Hayden Donnell and and NZPA

6:43 PM Thursday Aug 25, 2011


A new report claims Afghan officials caused dangerous delays to a rescue mission where a New Zealand SAS soldier was killed. Photo / AFP

The Chief of Defence has asked the commander of New Zealand special forces troops in Afghanistan to confirm whether media reports there were delays in deploying troops, including the SAS, during the attack in which Linton trooper Corporal Doug Grant was killed, are accurate.

"We have no information to believe this is the case but we have asked for confirmation and a report from theatre,'' said Lieutenant-General Rhys Jones.

"This was a complex attack from a well-prepared insurgent group who had clearly identified their intent to establish themselves in strong defensive positions,'' Lt Gen Jones said today.

"As the situation developed it became clear that the initial response capabilities of Afghan national security forces and international security assistance force units were insufficient to deal with the situation,'' he said.

Afghan crisis response unit (CRU) troops, supported by members of New Zealand's SAS "were therefore required to deploy forward to reinforce the initial response and efforts to resolve the situation,'' he said.

A new report has claimed that bickering Afghan officials caused dangerous delays to a rescue mission where a New Zealand SAS soldier was killed by Taleban insurgents.

Corporal Doug Grant, 41, was shot dead last week during an operation to rescue hostages at the British Council cultural centre in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, which was being attacked by the Taleban.

Eight policemen and three Afghan guards were also killed in the raid.

The Scotsman newspaper today reported the response had been delayed more than four hours as officials debated who would be in charge.

It claimed Kabul police chief General Mohammad Ayub Salangi refused to let commandos take over the mission at 5:40am (local time).

Afghanistan's elite Crisis Response Unit (CRU) and their New Zealand SAS force mentors were only called back from a barracks on the other side of the city at about 10am, it reported.

It took the commandos five hours to clear the building and kill the insurgents.

During the operation, an insurgent bullet hit a gap in Corporal Grant's body armour under his armpit and passed through his heart.

Although he clung to life for some time and was resuscitated at least once, he died of his injuries as he was being evacuated to Bagram Military Hospital.

Director of Afghanistan's Special Forces, General Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada reportedly said his squad of commandos arrived on the scene at the British Council Building abotu 20 minutes after a first explosion.

He was turned back after a conversation with the police chief.

"The situation got worse because of the police chief. All the most dangerous positions were occupied by the terrorists," he said.

The paper also revealed New Zealand SAS forces had been used to blast a way into the compound amid intense machine gun fire.

Afghan and New Zealand forces then "attacked from all sides" until they could rescue two female teachers and a bodyguard who were sheltering in a panic room.

Corporal Grant left behind a wife and two young children - a 7-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son - and his death is the first SAS fatality in Afghanistan in four deployments since 2001.

He was farewelled in a private service in Auckland today. A military funeral will be held in Palmerston North on Monday.

[buglerbilly]

East Afghanistan’s War Shifts (Back) To The Border

By Spencer Ackerman August 25, 2011 | 11:53 am



Once upon a time, the Afghanistan war centered around the country’s east, near the border with Pakistan. There, U.S. troops harassed Taliban insurgents and their smattering of al-Qaida allies who crossed from their Pakistani safe havens back into Afghanistan. But as security deteriorated, the war literally went south — refocusing, with new troops and spy gear, on the Taliban’s southern Afghanistan strongholds. Commanders in the east, no longer central to the war effort, talked about shutting down insurgent logistics routes and securing key roads and towns.

Welcome back to the future.

Maj. Gen. Daniel Allyn is only 100 days into his command in eastern Afghanistan. But he told Pentagon reporters on Thursday that his “current focus” is on expanding the security bubble around Kabul eastward to “interdict insurgent infiltration along the 450 kilometer Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”

It’s a mission with delicate politics. The Obama administration doesn’t want to see big new counterinsurgency operations in the east, preferring commanders to use drones, air assaults and Afghan forces against Taliban and Haqqani network targets instead of an explosion of new U.S. ground troops.

Allyn insisted he’s not waging what the military calls an “economy of force” mission, with insufficient troop levels — though he added a big caveat. “I have the forces that I need to accomplish the mission that I’ve been given,” Allyn said. “Obviously, if there’s a desire to accelerate progress, then that creates conditions that might cause me to adjust that estimate.”

What he doesn’t yet have is the full cooperation of the Pakistani military. Allyn called his relationship with his counterparts on the Pakistani side of the border a “work in progress.” Liaison officers assigned to each other’s staffs help smooth over the rough patches — and there have been several, as the Pakistanis briefly went radio silent to the U.S. in an apparent protest with the unilateral raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

“We hope to regain some of the momentum that General Campbell was able to build up during the time frame prior to the Osama bin Laden raid,” Allyn said, referring to his predecessor.

Not many experts believe that eastern Afghanistan has enough U.S. troops to stanch its descent into instability. Insurgent attacks in the east rose 20 percent last year. As the administration’s troop drawdown proceeds, Allyn’s bosses will have to shortchange a different part of the country if Allyn ultimately requests more U.S. troops to help hold the east. Allyn conceded that locals have expressed “some anxiety about the departure of coalition troops.”

But to make up the numbers, Allyn’s got Afghan forces, whom he credited with stopping a big cross-border shipment of ammonium nitrate, the signature component of Afghanistan’s homemade bombs. He’s got special operations missions on a “nightly basis,” holding a steady pace even after the horrific crash that killed a Chinook full of SEALs.

And he said he’s starting to see results, with insurgents crossing the Pakistan border in “much smaller groups, because of the efforts of Afghan security forces and coalition forces to deny infiltration.” It remains to be seen if that’s more than a tactical shift. But the test of Allyn’s efforts will be found back where the war used to center — the border.

Photo: Flickr/ISAF

[buglerbilly]

Canada’s helicopters fly together for the last time in Afghanistan

August 26, 2011



One after another, three CH-147 Chinook transport helicopters and five CH-146 Griffon tactical helicopters from Task Force Freedom (also known as the Canadian Helicopter Force Afghanistan or CFHA) touched down and completed their final mission in Afghanistan.

This final flight, conducted July 27, 2011, was both an operational mission in support of the consolidation of personnel and material and a training mission as crew members took advantage of the last time the Canadian Chinooks and Griffons would fly together in Afghanistan. The air crew are expected to leave Kandahar Airfield in early August as the Joint Task Force Afghanistan (JTF-Afg) Air Wing commences its final drawdown.

“It’s the last time that we’ll fly three Chinooks at the same time, and it has been the only time on this tour that we’ve actually flown the three Chinooks in tactical formation,” said Major Colin Coakwell, who commands the Chinook squadron.

In January 2009, a CH-147 Chinook made its debut flight in theatre shortly after Canada received the aircraft from the U.S. Army. With the CH-147D Chinook, the JTF-Afg Air Wing gained one of the world’s most powerful workhorse helicopters for moving troops and supplies in theatre.

A twin-engine medium-to-heavy-lift helicopter capable of carrying large quantities of cargo and soldiers, the CH-147 Chinook allowed the Air Wing to conduct missions that included troop movements and the transportation of equipment and supplies.

The CH-146 Griffon utility tactical transport helicopter provided the larger Chinook with escort and overwatch support. The Griffon also provided ground forces in the area of operations with command and liaison, reconnaissance and surveillance, and armed overwatch.

“Tremendous assets, both the Griffon and the Chinook, but the Chinook was particularly valuable in moving personnel and cargo and minimizing troops traveling on the road,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Derry, commanding officer of Task Force Freedom. Together, they increased the protection available to troops travelling both by transport helicopter and in road convoys.

The in-theatre air capacity of Task Force Freedom helped save the lives of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops and Afghan soldiers and police by reducing their exposure to ambushes, landmines and improvised explosive devices when travelling on the ground. By decreasing the risk to troops, the helicopters also reduced the danger level for Afghan civilians.

After disembarking from one of the freshly landed Griffon helicopters, LCol Derry explained, “We’re taking the opportunity to refine a lot of our tactics, techniques and procedures before we leave theatre because, after we leave here, we won’t have an opportunity to fly with Chinooks for probably a number of years.”

“The completion of the last operational mission for CFHA marks the end of an incredible 30-month journey for Canadian tactical aviation in Afghanistan,” said Colonel Al Meinzinger, commander of the Joint Task Force Afghanistan Air Wing. “I am proud of their accomplishments. They have supported combat operations with professionalism and purpose.”

By: Captain Susan Magill - Canadian Armed Forces

[buglerbilly]

Police say gunmen have kidnapped son of Pakistani governor killed by militant in January

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, August 26, 7:03 PM

LAHORE, Pakistan — Gunmen abducted the son of a liberal Pakistani politician who was murdered by an Islamist extremist earlier this year, police said Friday. The victim’s brother said he suspected extremists were behind the kidnapping.

Shahbaz Taseer was taken from his car in the city of Lahore Friday, said police officer Abdur Razzaq Cheema. Shaheryar Taseer, Shahbaz’s brother, said the family had been receiving threats from militants.

“It seems they are behind it,” he said.

Their father, Punjab governor Salman Taseer, was gunned down by one of his guards in January. The guard confessed and said he carried out the killing because of Taseer’s opposition to laws that carry the death penalty for blaspheming Islam. Members of the Taseer family have continued to speak out against extremism since Salman Taseer’s death.

Pakistani TV showed Shahbaz Taseer’s luxury car abandoned in the road of an upmarket Lahore district.

Punjab Governor Latif Khosa said the kidnappers were riding motorbikes and a jeep. “Many people saw the kidnappers,” he said. “They were not wearing masks.”

The government had provided guards to Taseer’s family, including to Shahbaz, but on Friday he was traveling in his private car without security, said Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah.

It was the second prominent kidnapping in Lahore in less than two weeks. On Aug. 15, gunmen seized a 70-year-old American aid expert from his house. The man, Warren Weinstein, is still missing, and police have declined to speculate on who may be holding him.

The death of Salman Taseer, and the fact that many Pakistanis did not loudly condemn it, was taken a sign that the country was buckling under intolerance and extremism. Pakistan’s wealthy liberal elite were particularly alarmed, sensing their lifestyle was threatened like never before.

“This family has suffered too much already, and given the security threats directed toward them in the aftermath of Governor Taseer’s death this kidnapping underscores the failing writ of the state and its inability to provide security even to those known to be at high risk,” said Human Rights Watch in a statement.

Islamist extremists behind more than four years of near daily violence in Pakistan have kidnapped scores of people, often exchanging them for ransom or using them as bargaining chips to try and get the release of imprisoned militants. Criminal gangs are also heavily involved in kidnapping.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

American Unmanned Surveillance Aircraft Crashes inside Pakistan/Afghanistan Border

Posted on August 26, 2011 by The Editor



An American unmanned surveillance aircraft crashed in south-western Pakistan on Thursday evening, near a paramilitary base close to the Afghan border.

“It was an American surveillance unmanned aircraft. It crashed on this side of the border,” a security official in the area told AFP. He said that it had come down — apparently due to a technical fault — 300 meters inside Pakistani territory in Chaman town in insurgency-hit Baluchistan province, but had caused no damage. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the wreckage of the aircraft had been recovered.

An official from Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps in Quetta, the province’s main town, confirmed the incident. “Some spare parts and a camera were also found with it,” that official said. “It crashed near a Frontier Corps fort in Chaman but caused no damage.”

The Pakistani army said it was investigating but did not make the results of that probe public.

In September 2008 tribesmen in the country’s South Waziristan tribal district claimed to have shot down a US surveillance drone in Jalal village near the Afghan border.

Sources: AFP, The Pakistan Tribune

[buglerbilly]

Inside Afghanistan’s Deadly Copter War

By Bill Ardolino August 26, 2011 | 6:30 am



FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan — Chief Warrant Officers Keith Lacy and David Fleckenstein were hunting an insurgent mortar team from the sky when news came over the radio: troops under fire.

Two men, posing as maintenance workers for a mountaintop cell tower outside the Afghan village of Musa Khel, had shaken hands and shared a meal with the First Platoon of Charlie Company, 1/26th Infantry. But as the soldiers began winding their way downhill the night of Aug. 1, the repairmen started tossing grenades down the mountain after them. At least four troops were wounded. One U.S. staff sergeant, Lani Abalama, was riddled with shrapnel in one arm and both his legs. The Americans were pinned to the side of a ridge with a bad angle for return fire. They needed air support. Now.

Lacy and Fleckenstein, flying a pair of OH-58 Kiowa Warriors, small armed-reconnaissance helicopters, raced to the site of the attack. It wasn’t hard to find — they already had a nearby observation post mapped out, and the tower was “isolated on a hilltop,” explained Lacy. “There are no other villages or qalats [residential compounds] around it, and we would have been able to [see] anybody else outside that compound really easily.”

Fleckenstein quickly shot two rockets at the south side of the cellphone tower to suppress the insurgents. The platoon on the ground was “danger close” to the helicopter’s fire. The soldiers were hunkered down on the north side of the ridge, only about 150 feet down the slope and another 50 feet to the side of the crest.

This proximity called for especially careful aim from the pilots. But the soldiers were being pelted with grenades. Fleckenstein had to attack.

“I was a little bit nervous,” explained Fleckenstein, a youthful-looking 28-year-old with a sober demeanor. “But the strobes [markers visible with night-vision gear] that we had them put down immediately to identify their position helped, as well as having been in that area numerous times and just knowing the aircraft, knowing where you can put rounds.”

Lacy called back to his headquarters at Forward Operating Base Salerno, about 15 miles to the southeast, in the heart of Khost province: time to “spool up” medevac helicopters for the wounded. After Fleckenstein’s rocket pass, Lacy swooped in from the north side of the ridge, unleashing a spray of bullets from his .50-caliber machine gun.

With their night-vision goggles, pilots could see ghostly green infrared-targeting beams — emanating from the weapons of the soldiers on the ground — crisscross the structure, as well as the spark and twinkle of bullets bouncing off of the cellphone tower’s walls.

The pair of helicopters took turns shooting at the insurgents. One aircraft would fire as the other maneuvered for a weapons run on opposite direction of approach to the ridge.

When Fleckenstein was out of position for a rocket shot, his “left seater,” Bravo Troop commander Capt. Joshua Simpson, fired his M-4 rifle out of the open side of the aircraft to maintain suppression. As soon as they cleared the target, Lacy swooped in and fired more .50-caliber machine-gun rounds, followed by another two rockets from Fleckenstein.

The flurry of explosions and bullets had the intended effect. First Platoon was no longer taking contact from the two insurgents, and the medevac helicopters had some breathing room to fly in and get the wounded.

The recent downing of a Chinook helicopter in Wardak province that killed 38 Afghan and American troops, including 19 Navy SEALs, has refocused attention on the danger of flying helicopters in Afghanistan. Recently, I got a chance to see those dangers close-up: not just the Taliban, but eastern Afghanistan’s unforgiving climate and terrain, which many pilots argue are their greatest opponents.

I also got to experience firsthand just how crucial the copters are to the war effort here. The helo crews of Task Force Tigershark didn’t just come to the rescue of those wounded soldiers on that mountaintop outside of Musa Khel. A few days later, they saved my neck, too.



‘The Most God-Awful Environment I’ve Ever Seen’

Ten years ago, the average U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter was flying roughly 160 hours per year, per aircraft. In contrast, each Apache with Task Force Tigershark is flying more than a thousand hours annually, on airframes that are a decade older, in the harshest rotary-aviation environment in the world. This has created unprecedented maintenance demands — in terms of human capital, replacement parts and technological innovation — to keep aircraft operating at this blistering pace.

Compounding the challenge is the fact that many of the helicopters are ancient. One of the task force’s Chinook heavy lift helicopters served in President Gerald Ford’s air detail in 1974, and possesses an airframe manufactured in 1961.

All of which would create problems, even if Tigershark were flying back in the United States. But this is Afghanistan: “The most God-awful environment I’ve ever seen helicopters placed,” said Lt. Col. David Kramer, commander of Task Force Tigershark.

Afghanistan’s environmental challenges to flight are based on the maxim of “hot, high and heavy.” It’s shorthand for how elevation and temperature interact to impact an aircraft’s power and lift at a given weight.

As altitude and temperature increase, the density of the semi-tangible bed of molecules pushing off of the rotors and airframe lessens, causing the engines to generate less and less lift from larger and larger amounts of power. Inversely, colder temperatures and lower altitude enable greater power efficiency and overall lift.

As pilots transit the mountainous, thin air of Afghanistan, they constantly monitor two metrics: “density altitude” is the aircraft’s effective altitude when factoring in the temperature. For example, while the aircraft may be physically at 5,000 feet above sea level, the density altitude may be 7,000 feet when factoring in a hot temperature.

The other metric is “tab data,” a measure that calculates what the helicopter’s maximum power is at any given combination of altitude and temperature. When this max power is cross-referenced against the weight of the aircraft at the time, pilots can determine whether they have enough lift to sustain a given flight maneuver or mission in a given area. That helps them avoid an unplanned landing or crash. But even with due diligence, Afghanistan presents unique challenges.

“Afghanistan is weird,” explains Black Hawk pilot Chief Warrant Officer 2 Steve Atencio. “Temperature change doesn’t occur the same as it does back home, for some reason. There is usually a standard lapse rate . You gain or lose 2 degrees [as you descend or ascend a certain altitude], but for some reason here, it’s more dramatic. We’re continually looking at that tab data to ensure you won’t have a mishap.”

The danger of thin air was starkly illustrated a couple of weeks ago, when a Tigershark Apache helicopter crash-landed at about 11,000 feet. Though the incident is still under investigation, early reports suggest the pilot banked too hard for the thin air, and lost sufficient lift under the rotors. He successfully crash landed on a mild slope –- no easy feat among the jagged ridges in the area of the crash –- but the aircraft was eventually destroyed after several failed attempts to airlift it out of the mountains with twin rotor Chinooks.

And if the ad hoc calculations regarding heat and thin air weren’t complicated enough, helicopter pilots must also pay attention to Afghanistan’s fickle mountain winds. When an aircraft flies into a head wind, it loses speed but gains performance; the rushing wind acts as an air foil that grants the helicopter maneuverability. If the pilot makes a sudden turn perpendicular to or opposite the wind, the aircraft quickly loses this extra performance, and a pilot’s failure to compensate — for example, starting to pull up from a dive too late — could precipitate a crash into a mountainside.

Eastern Afghanistan’s sudden onsets of harsh weather present a real danger to aviators.

“It’s not just high, hot and heavy mountain flying, it’s the weather that you throw on top of it,” said Kramer. “This is like living in a prairie storm half the time over here. You can’t put airframes out in this stuff. Am I afraid of enemy fire? Sure I am, like everybody. But I’m most afraid of the weather and how it will sneak up on you, and consume you.”



Sitting Ducks

The threats from the human enemy include small-arms fire, ubiquitous rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, very rare leftover Russian antiaircraft guns like the Zsu-23-4 and guided shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, or SAMs. The latter weapons system had been used to great effect by the mujahedeen in their war with the Soviet Union 30 years ago, and the insurgents’ ability to shoot down helicopters decisively impacted the course of the Afghan rebels’ war against a foreign force.

Western aviators have so far avoided significant contact with guided missiles in Afghanistan. According to documents released by Wikileaks, there have been approximately 10 suspected guided missile shots by insurgents, with only one successful downing of an aircraft, the ill-fated “Flipper 75.” The U.S. Army Chinook was hit in the left engine by a probable first-generation Man-portable air-defense system, or ManPad, in Helmand province, downing the aircraft and killing seven NATO personnel.

A far more common threat is the unguided Rocket-Propelled Grenade-7, the weapon system that is believed responsible for shooting down the Chinook carrying special operations forces two weeks ago. It’s difficult for insurgents to take out a helicopter with an RPG, but by no means impossible.

Many NATO aircraft are hardy targets, with redundant flight systems that force insurgents to hit very specific spots in order to be effective. But the real key to an aircraft’s security is fast movement. It is extremely hard to hit a moving target with the unguided rockets commonly possessed by insurgents.

Unfortunately, that advantage disintegrates when a helicopter hovers.

“We don’t hover. It just makes us a target,” explained Lacy, whose Kiowa had made a series of looping passes over the insurgent position on the night of Aug. 1.

“Sitting ducks,” added another Kiowa pilot.

Black Hawk pilots responsible for medevac’ing the wounded don’t always have the option to keep moving, however.

The casualties from the firefight in Musa Khel were “urgent litter patients” requiring a “hoist mission.” There was no landing zone among the jagged ridges in mountains 6,500 feet above sea level. The Black Hawks would have to hover over the soldiers and lift the wounded off the steep hillside by cable, on a “red illum” (no moon, starlit) night. They would be targets.



Mr. Mustache and Top Model

Pilots with Task Force Tigershark typically work a hectic schedule of nine days on for missions, one day off. Flying time can also fluctuate significantly on a given day –- as little as 15 minutes, or as much as nine hours.

Pilots do more than just fly: All personnel also conduct administrative tasks, like planning operations, writing up awards, setting schedules, even public affairs.

But beyond that, there is time to kill. Some play video games. Others chat with their families back home. (Black Hawk platoon leader Capt/ Jen Bales’ preferred hobby: downloading episodes of America’s Next Top Model. “Sometimes I need a little girl time, you know?”) The Task Force has a basketball game every Friday, though after watching them play, I can say that they’re far better at flying than they are at hoops.

And much like every class of soldier, blowing off steam involves countless hours of hatching inventive ways to insult each other.

“A good thing about being so close is you know what can aggravate people,” explained Fleckenstein. ”If you don’t have thick skin, you’re probably not in the right place, and if you do anything subpar, you’re going to get destroyed for it. And they know exactly what’s going to irritate you. A lot of guys will say, ‘You can talk about my family, you can talk about my dog, you can talk about anything, just don’t talk about my flying.’”

The medevac pilots have zeroed in on Chief Warrant Officer Steve Atencio’s thick black “deployment mustache,” which they claim he can grow in “about four hours.” Insults include “Mr. Mustache,” “Mr. Pringles” and comparisons of the facial hair to some sort of “mutant woolly worm” perched atop his lip. The 32-year-old Wyoming native is unfazed.

“They’re just jealous they can’t grow one like this,” he shrugged.

Even for this tightknit group, Fleckenstein and the other pilots of “Bounty Hunter,” the Kiowa attack-reconnaissance element of the task force, are unusually close. Maybe that’s because they’ve been unusually hard-hit. Three of the pilots hail from the same home town of Huntsville, Alabama. One man used to be an Air Force pilot, another jumped ship from the Navy. Seven used to be “11-Bravos” (ground-pounders, infantry), two of them in the same squad, before learning to fly, and one man was even a Florida real estate agent little more than a year ago.

Chief Warrant Officer John Guffey, one of the former infantryman, remembers the exact moment he decided he would become a pilot. In 2002, he was a passenger in a Chinook transport helicopter that crashed in the Central Valley of Afghanistan, just north of Kandahar. His platoon had taken casualties, and they had been assigned to guard the downed aircraft while waiting for evacuation.

“I’m sitting there, and this Apache [attack helicopter] comes over, and he’s flying real slow,” recalls Guffey. “It’s 120 degrees. My commander walks over and says, ‘I bet you wish you were flying that thing. That’s the only aircraft in the Army inventory that has an air conditioner. It’s probably 70 degrees inside that cockpit.’ I looked up at the Apache pilot and flipped him off … and he puts his arms around himself like he’s cold. Right then, I decided I was gonna be a pilot one day.”

Guffey hasn’t regretted the decision, despite the fact that his unit has taken some of the heaviest casualties of any helicopter troop in America’s two major wars. Six pilots, one-fifth of his Kiowa troop out of Fort Drum, New York, have been killed during the unit’s most recent deployments.

On Jan. 25, 2009, two Kiowas crashed into each other after taking heavy ground fire south of Kirkuk, Iraq. All four pilots — Chief Warrant Officers Phil Windorski, Josh Tillery, Matt Kelley and Ben Todd — were killed. And just recently, on June 5, a Kiowa failed to pull out of a dive through Afghanistan’s thin air while engaging the enemy, and crashed in Sabari district, killing Chief Warrant Officers Ken White and Brad Gaudet. These losses, plus the fact that the troop has been together for four years straight, have created an unusual closeness among the soldiers.

Guffey is a short, stocky 29-year-old with a thick Alabaman drawl. Fleckenstein is a tall, wiry Ohioan. But the two swear they are brothers.

“Dave and I spend every day together, finish each others’ sentences,” explains Guffey. ” I know his favorite foods, he knows mine, our wives and families hang out together. We’ve been together four years straight, and after this deployment, we’re all splitting up. I have absolutely no idea how we’re going to handle that.”

“We’ve been away from our families the last two out of three years, so the guys around here become your family,” added Fleckenstein. “Having gone through losses of six aviators in the troop alone … you can’t get any closer than that, I think.”



Rescue by Rope

The wounded soldiers on that mountaintop outside Musa Khel were waiting. A pair of UH-60 Lima Black Hawks lifted off from Salerno base’s pitch-black airfield at about 8 p.m.

“Dust Off One-Five” led the way as the incongruously named “chase bird,” responsible for scouting the path and managing all radio communications. “Dust Off One-Six” was the “medical bird,” responsible for both deploying a ground medic and evacuating the priority casualties. One-Six was piloted by “Mr. Mustache” Atencio and Justin Study. They carried crew chief Spc. Philip Buettner and two flight medics: Sfc. John Kowlok and Staff Sgt. Russell Graham.

Graham, a lean blond with a calm demeanor, would be the man who roped down to the stricken platoon and prepared the patients for evacuation. Atencio eased the medical bird to a hover about 70 feet above the “point of injury.”

He held the aircraft steady as Graham, sitting with his legs hanging out of the door, hooked a cable to the front of his extraction vest. Crew chief Buettner, also sitting with his legs dangling in the air, then extended the long boom of the aircraft’s Goodrich external hoist and rapidly lowered the flight medic down to the ground at a pace of about 4 feet per second.

The pitch black descent was “creepy” for Graham, who slipped into the darkness toward a 5½-foot-wide footpath sandwiched between the unforgiving rock face of the ridge and a sheer drop off to the valley below. The landing was “difficult.” Graham flipped in the air and impacted the rocky pathway on his belly, burying his goggles and helmet into gravel before picking himself up and unhooking the cable.

The flight medic hurried to the infantrymen, assessed the patients and prepped them for one of two carriages he’d carried down to the ground: the “sked,” a compact litter that unwraps, to full size before rewrapping the patient into a protective “human burrito,” and a “jungle penetrator,” a seated harness attached to the cable that pulls the patient up into the helicopter.

Staff Sgt. Lani Abalama – the guy who caught shrapnel in three of his four limbs — was the clearly most seriously injured man. Graham prepped him for a sked, while Abalama screamed. Despite having been administered morphine, Abalama shouted at the flight medic, “Stay off my legs!” Jolts of pain wracked the injured man as he was stuffed into the sked.

Graham looked over the wounded soldiers. Three more needed to be evacuated, including one man with shrapnel injuries to the groin, who didn’t seem all that hurt earlier in the evening. But that was before the adrenaline wore off and before Graham could take a closer look.

All told, the flight medic used a sked for two patients and the jungle penetrator for two others, one of the latter by necessity after a sked came loose from the hoist and spun into the darkness at the bottom of the ravine. During each extraction, Graham tightly gripped a “tag line,” a 250-foot strand of rope tangentially attached to the extraction cable. The flight medic’s pull on the rope applied stabilizing torsion that prevented the patients from spinning in rapid circles as they were hoisted to the bird.

Three patients were plucked into Dust-Off One-Five and the fourth into Dust-Off One-Six. Total time for triage, medical stabilization, packaging and hoist of all patients: about 45 minutes. Total hovers lasting between one and five minutes: six (four wounded, two trips for the medic). Pilots and crew mentally compartmentalize these moments of extreme vulnerability as just another step in their routine.

“It’s in the back of your mind,” said Graham. “You go through ways you can use terrain to your advantage, try and put mountains between you and the enemy, or use trees to conceal you. Because of the Geneva Convention, [medical helicopters] don’t fly with significant armament anyway, so we try and do things smarter instead of with weapons.”

While the Black Hawks pulled up the wounded, the Kiowas readied themselves for more gun and rocket runs on the cellphone tower.

Fleckenstein maintained position to the north, eyes wide. “Any movement at that point would have been an immediate ‘call the medevac off and start engaging again,’” he said.

The evacuation was completed without incident, however. All patients are expected to make a full recovery, though Abalama underwent immediate surgery to remove shrapnel from his joints, and will have to undergo “six months to a year” of rehabilitation before he reacquires full strength and motion.

After the helicopters left, the remainder of the infantry platoon returned up the hill and captured one of the insurgents. One of their Afghan army partners spotted the attacker hiding in some bushes. The insurgent was apparently so frightened by the barrage of fire from the Kiowas that he hadn’t moved for hours.



Hissing Grenades

Soon after interviewing Sergeant Abalama and the pilots who saved him, I came to appreciate the value of air support on an entirely different level. On Aug. 15, I was embedded with infantrymen who were patrolling the village of Majiles in volatile Sabari district.

The soldiers were searching for a recoilless-rifle team that had participated in an attack on Combat Outpost Sabari earlier that day. About five hours into the mission, near sunset, the American and Afghan soldiers had found nothing and decided to pack it in. It was time to head back to base.

As we moved to leave a qalat — a walled compound of narrow stone alleys linking closely packed residences — a pair of grenades hissed over a high wall, landing in the middle of eight Americans walking through a courtyard.

Two quick, successive explosions sprayed a cloud of shrapnel at the mass of diving men, followed by long bursts of machine-gun fire from American and Afghan soldiers shooting at a copse of trees that was the source of the grenades.

The Americans took cover in a commandeered residence off a narrow stone alley to assess and treat the wounded. When the gunfire and explosions ceased, the platoon’s leader took stock of a grim situation: Six Americans were injured, two seriously enough to require immediate treatment and three requiring subsequent medevac.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The Afghan soldiers who comprised half the patrol’s strength had fled to their vehicles. They’d left only a squad of American soldiers — half of them wounded — stranded in the qalat. With barely enough men to post security and not enough soldiers to carry the slow-moving injured, the squad was trapped and vulnerable to more grenades. We needed air support, quickly.

At about that time, two Bounty Hunter Kiowas had been fruitlessly searching for an insurgent mortar team in a neighboring district to the west. A call came over the radio:

[I]Troops in contact. Sabari district. Viper AO. Zanar area.

One of the pilots, Chief Warrant Office Michael Maj immediately turned his Kiowa toward Sabari as he began calculating the route. With troops in contact, it was always best to fly to the site directly. Unfortunately, a straight shot would have the Kiowas fighting a strong headwind and force them to traverse a 10,000 foot mountain range.

When the helicopters crested the summit in the exceptionally thin air, Maj and the other pilot, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Adam Rickert, would have to monitor their tab data and balance competing power requirements. Too much throttle and there wouldn’t be enough resources to cool the engine, resulting in a meltdown. Too little throttle and the Kiowa wouldn’t get there in time.

Maj knew he would have to slow the bird down to about 70 painstaking knots over the mountains (max cruising speed is about 100 to 110) in order to get there in one piece. The trip would take 20 minutes, which is close to forever when troops are in contact. They began their ascent.

For the 33-year-old former infantryman, it was one of the worst feelings in the world. The flight felt like it took “forever,” he said.

“As you balance your temperature and pressure limits trying to get there as fast as possible,” explained Maj. “You know you’re their lifeline and when you’re fighting the winds, you can’t get enough airspeed, you can’t get there fast enough … it’s really emotionally wrecking.”

The Bounty Hunter Kiowas carefully navigated over the mountain range as the platoon nervously held its position in the qalat. Armored vehicles with crew-served weapons had moved as close as 300 feet from our position, but we would have to cross open ground to get to them. With two men hobbled by shrapnel, it was prudent to wait for air cover before making the attempt.

Adding an edge of fear to the situation was the fact that we had insufficient men to set wide security. If the insurgents realized which home we were in, they could throw more grenades into the residence’s open courtyard, almost certainly killing some of the men, and conceivably injuring everyone in the small space. The wait was tense.



Loud, Mean … and Beautiful

Once the Kiowas had made it over the mountain, Maj and Rickert dropped altitude and opened the throttle, screaming over the countryside at about 110 knots. Within a few minutes, they spotted the vehicles, and the dismounted troops soon after.

Finally on scene, the Kiowas leapt into a carefully rehearsed pattern of close air support. Rickert’s lead scout ship immediately descended to make tight circular passes maybe 50 feet over the friendly troops.

The purpose was to both deter and draw ground fire: The looming bird would give any insurgents a more interesting target, or cow them into retreat. Meanwhile, Maj’s trail ship slipped into a counter-circular pattern 250 to 500 feet above the lower helicopter, effectively covering its rear as well as commanding a better view of the countryside around the troops on the ground.

As the jagged buzz of Kiowa rotors began to echo through the stone walls of the qalat, I wanted to cheer. We weren’t alone. And the insurgents wouldn’t dare take a shot with a Bell helicopter and Hydra rockets hanging over their heads.

Two of the most seriously wounded soldiers were stood up and leaned against others for the slow hobble to the vehicles. Other soldiers knelt and pointed their weapons down open alleys to guard their limping progress, as the lead Kiowa cut angry circles through the air. I could see the tilt of the pilot’s head and the left-seater hanging out of the door with his M-4 rifle, searching for targets. The 100-meter [330-foot] movement seemed to take forever, but the reassuring hum of rotor blades was always there.

The insurgents wouldn’t dare take a shot with Hydra rockets hanging over their heads.
After we made it to the vehicles, the drivers floored the gas. One Kiowa followed in a high, circular orbit, while the other bird led the way, scanning the road for IEDs with both thermal optics and the naked eye.

Once the route was deemed clear, the birds positioned themselves for a show of force: The pilots would make a series of passes with rockets and .50-caliber machine guns aimed into the countryside to further intimidate any potential attackers.

“What we try and do is get rockets out there and show that we’re not afraid to shoot,” said Maj. “Tricky part is finding a target area that best serves the purpose with sound effects, but gives you no collateral damage, no human bodies, no hurt flocks of sheep and total containment of shrapnel.”

As the MRAP armored vehicles bounced their way along the hilly roads home, the Kiowa pilots chose to shoot at a mountainside framed by a half-mile gap between the third and fourth armored vehicles in our convoy. From the inside of a MaxxPro MRAP, we heard a pair of loud wooshes, followed by crackling explosions.

Some of the soldiers in the back shouted that we were being engaged with RPGs, until one of the men in the front seat explained that it was merely “a show of force” by air support. Fear and confidence switched places again.

After a few rockets and belching runs from the .50-caliber machine gun, the helicopters settled into a seesaw pattern over the convoy while “popping the rotor blades:” distorting the movement of the rotor so it makes the loudest, meanest sound possible. Barely five minutes from the base, with fuel reserves running low, the Kiowas finally pulled off station. They’d given us air cover, sure. But there was something more.

To this reporter, on that August evening, the angry thrum of popping rotors was simply the most beautiful sound in the world.

Photos: Bill Ardolino, Task Force Tigershark, U.S. Air Force

[buglerbilly]

News: Sea Stallions’ first forward refueling takes fight farther south

2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward)

Story by Cpl. Brian Adam Jones


Photo by Lance Cpl. Robert Carrasco
The CH-53D, one of the oldest aircraft in the Marine Corps, recently added a new trick to its arsenal in support of operations in Afghanistan, Aug. 17. The aircraft, from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 463, conducted rapid ground refueling of AH-1W Super Cobras, allowing the smaller attack helicopters to allow them to fly farther and longer on combat operations.

PATROL BASE WOLFPACK, Helmand province, Afghanistan -- From this remote desert outpost just miles from the Pakistani border, two Marine Corps attack helicopters were heard before they were seen.

“Four miles out,” shouted Capt. Orion Jones over the growing percussion of their blades. Jones’ Marines emptied out of their waiting heavy-lift helicopter, running with a fuel hose in tow toward a nearby landing pad.

The AH-1W Super Cobras were soon seen on the horizon speeding toward the outpost.

Marines with Heavy Helicopter Squadron 463 conducted rapid ground refueling of the smaller attack helicopters from a CH-53D Sea Stallion, Aug. 17.

Though a hallmark of Marine Corps aviation since the 1960s, this marked the first time the CH-53D had been used to rapidly refuel helicopters in a combat environment, said Jones, a Sea Stallion pilot who served as the officer in charge of the forward arming and refueling point.

The Super Cobras came to the ground in a cloud of dust. Marines affixed the hose, giving the helicopters fuel from the Sea Stallion’s own tanks.

As heavy lift helicopters, Sea Stallions fill a variety of missions for the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward). The Marines of HMH-463 seemed to relish the chance to add rapid ground refueling to an already formidable list of capabilities that include heavy-lifting, aerial resupply, and troop movement.

“It’s a pretty simple system and it’s something we train to do,” said Sgt. Benjamin R. Schlicht, crew chief with HMH-463 and native of La Crescent, Minn. “Essentially, we use the same mechanism we use to dump fuel, but now we divert it into the hose for refueling. We can carry an awful lot of fuel.”

Patrol Base Wolfpack marked the southernmost point in Afghanistan the CH-53 D Sea Stallions had ever traveled, according to Staff Sgt. James H. Crimmins, a maintenance chief and aerial observer with HMH-463, and a native of Sullivan, Mo.

“This aircraft has performed amazingly in every conflict since Vietnam, and Afghanistan is no exception,” Crimmins said.

Jones explained the many advantages of the refueling system.

“It’s all about projecting firepower,” Jones said. “We’re putting [the attack helicopters] in a position to better conduct deep airstrikes and deep air support. Additionally, by not having to set up a permanent refueling point, we don’t have to drive trucks and risk roadside bombs, and we can get down here quickly.”

In just a few minutes, the attack helicopters were back in the sky.

“At the end of the day, what we want to do is extend the reach of the Marine air-ground task force and help the people here build a safe country,” Jones said.

[buglerbilly]

Hundreds of militants attack Pakistani border

Hundreds of militants crossed the Afghan border on Saturday and attacked three security checkpoints in northwestern Pakistan, killing 26 paramilitary soldiers and police.


A soldier watches over the border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan Photo: GETTY

1:47PM BST 27 Aug 2011

It was the latest of a series of attacks that Pakistani officials say have been launched from an area of eastern Afghanistan where the US has largely pulled out its troops.

The raids have increased tension between Pakistan, Afghanistanand the US.

Armed with heavy weapons, the militants seized control of a local village after attacking the security checkpoints in Chitral district, said local police official Nizam Khan. Pakistani forces responded to the raid and killed nine insurgents, he said.

Pakistani troops called in helicopter gunships to drive the militants back across the border.

The militants chanted "God is great!" and "Long live jihad!" as they fought.

Chitral is located across the border from the Afghan districts of Nuristan and Kunar, both of which house significant numbers of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban fighters. The US largely pulled out of the area about a year ago but has recently added additional troops.

Pakistan complained earlier this summer that militants coming from Afghanistan killed at least 55 members of the security forces and tribal police in a spate of attacks, and demanded that U.S. and Afghan forces do more to stem the flow of fighters.

Kabul and Washington have long accused Pakistan of not doing enough to stop militants from crossing into Afghanistan to stage attacks.

Afghanistan has also complained that Pakistan fired more than 750 rockets into eastern Afghanistan earlier this summer that killed at least 40 people.

The Pakistan army denied it intentionally fired rockets into Afghanistan, but acknowledged that several rounds fired at militants conducting cross-border attacks may have landed over the border.

While the border attacks continued, inside Afghanistan a car bomb exploded outside a bank in Lashkar Gah, killing four people.

The bomb went off as soldiers and police officers were lined up to collect their salaries at the bank in the city, the capital of Helmand province. More than 20 people were wounded in the blast, including 10 soldiers and six police officers.

Less than three hours later, two explosions also hit the south's largest city – Kandahar.

The first blast in Kandahar was a car bomb outside the city's main hospital that wounded seven people, said Kandahar police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq.

Soon after, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle near a police compound in the city, killing one civilian and wounding more than 20 people.

[buglerbilly]

US official says al-Qaida’s second-ranking leader has been killed in Pakistan

By Associated Press, Updated: Sunday, August 28, 2:05 AM

WASHINGTON — Al-Qaida’s second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been killed in Pakistan, delivering another big blow to a terrorist group that the U.S. believes to be on the verge of defeat, U.S. officials said Saturday.

The Libyan national had been the network’s operational leader before rising to al-Qaida’s No. 2 spot after the U.S. killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden during a raid on his Pakistan compound in May.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last month that al-Qaida’s defeat was within reach if the U.S. could mount a string of successful attacks on the group’s weakened leadership.

“Now is the moment, following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them,” Panetta said, “because I do believe that if we continue this effort we can really cripple al-Qaida as a major threat.”

Since bin Laden’s death, al-Qaida’s structure has been unsettled and U.S. officials have hoped to capitalize on that. The more uncertain the leadership, the harder it is for al-Qaida to operate covertly and plan attacks.

Bin Laden’s longtime deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is running the group but is considered a divisive figure who lacks the founder’s charisma and ability to galvanize al-Qaida’s disparate franchises.

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to summarize the government’s intelligence on al-Rahman, said al-Rahman’s death will make it harder for Zawahiri to oversee what is considered an increasingly weakened organization.

“Zawahiri needed Atiyah’s experience and connections to help manage al-Qaida,” the official said.

Al-Rahman was killed Aug. 22 in the lawless Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan, according to a senior administration who also insisted on anonymity to discuss intelligence issues.

The official would not say how al-Rahman was killed. But his death came on the same day that a CIA drone strike was reported in Waziristan. Such strikes by unmanned aircraft are Washington’s weapon of choice for killing terrorists in the mountainous, hard-to-reach area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Rahman has been thought to be dead before. Last year, there were reports that Rahman was killed in a drone strike but neither senior U.S. administration officials nor al-Qaida ever confirmed them.

Al-Rahman, believed to be in his mid-30s, was a close confidant of bin Laden and once served as bin Laden’s emissary to Iran.

Al-Rahman was allowed to move freely in and out of Iran as part of that arrangement and has been operating out of Waziristan for some time, officials have said.

Born in Libya, al-Rahman joined bin Laden as a teenager in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union.

After Navy SEALs killed bin Laden, they found evidence of al-Rahman’s role as operational chief, U.S. officials have said.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

AP EXCLUSIVE: Afghans furious US held secret talks with Taliban, leak identity, scuttle talks

By Associated Press, Published: August 29 | Updated: Tuesday, August 30, 4:30 AM

KABUL, Afghanistan — Infuriated that Washington met secretly at least three times with a personal emissary of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Afghan government intentionally leaked details of the clandestine meetings, scuttling the talks and sending the Taliban intermediary into hiding, The Associated Press has learned.

In a series of interviews with diplomats, current and former Taliban, Afghan government officials and a close childhood friend of the intermediary, Tayyab Aga, the AP learned Aga is hiding in Europe, and is afraid to return to Pakistan because of fears of reprisals. The United States has had no direct contact with him for months.

A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the talks imploded because of the leak and that Aga, while alive, had disappeared. The United States will continue to pursue talks, the official said. Current and former U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the talks.

The United States acknowledged the talks after Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who apparently fears being sidelined by U.S.-Taliban talks, confirmed published accounts about them in June, but has never publicly detailed the content, format or participants. The first was held in late 2010 followed by at least two other meetings in early spring of this year, the former U.S. official said. The sessions were held in Germany and Qatar, he said.

A childhood friend of Aga’s who spoke to the AP on condition he not be identified because he feared retaliation, said Aga was in Germany. A diplomat in the region said Aga fled to a European country after his contacts with the United States were revealed.

Collapse of the direct talks between Aga and U.S. officials probably spoiled the best chance yet at reaching Omar, considered the linchpin to ending the Taliban fight against the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan. The contacts were preliminary but had begun to bear fruit, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

Perhaps most importantly they offered the tantalizing prospect of a brokered agreement between the United States and the Taliban — one that would allow the larger reconciliation of the Taliban into Afghanistan political life to move forward. The United States has not committed to any such deal, but the Taliban wants security assurances from the United States.

The talks were deliberately revealed by someone within the presidential palace, where Karzai’s office is located, said a Western and an Afghan official. The reason for the leak was Karzai’s animosity toward the U.S. and fear that any agreement Washington brokered would undermine his authority, they said.

The AP sought comment from Karzai’s office but was referred to palace press department spokesman Hamid Elmi, who did not answer his phone during repeated calls.

Pakistan had also been kept in the dark about the talks, people knowledgeable about them said. An Afghan official with contacts with the Taliban said the insurgents decided not to tell Pakistan about the meetings with the United States.

At the time of the leak, Washington had already offered small concessions that the U.S. intended as “confidence-building measures,” a former senior U.S. official said. They were aimed at developing a rapport and moving talks forward, said a current U.S. official on condition he not be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic.

The concessions included treating the Taliban and al-Qaida differently under international sanctions. The Taliban argued that while al-Qaida is focused on worldwide jihad against the West, Taliban militants have focused on Afghanistan and have shown little interest in attacking targets abroad.

Other goodwill gestures that were not made public included Aga’s safe passage to Germany, U.S. officials said. The U.S. also offered assurances that it would not block the Taliban from opening an office in a third country, the official said.

Aga slowly established his bona fides with the U.S. officials, who had initial doubts both about his identity and his level of contact and influence with Omar, a former and current U.S. official with knowledge of the discussion said. For example, a coded reference to the talks appeared on a Taliban-affiliated website following one meeting, just as Aga said it would, one official said.

The whereabouts and eventual release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl of Hailey, Idaho, who was captured more than two years ago in eastern Afghanistan, featured prominently in the talks, according to Aga’s childhood friend and a senior Western diplomat in the region. The U.S. negotiators asked Aga what could be done to gain Bergdahl’s release.

Aga sought the freedom of Taliban fighters in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Air Field, north of the Afghan capital where an estimated 600 Afghans are being held. Still at Guantanamo Bay is former Taliban Defense Ministry Chief of Staff Mullah Mohammed Fazil, Taliban intelligence official Abdul Haq Wasiq and former Herat governor Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa. Afghanistan’s High Peace Council tasked by Karzai with the job of finding a negotiated settlement with insurgents has requested Khairkhwa’s release.

A former U.S. official familiar with the talks said the loss of the Aga contact dismayed and angered the U.S. side, and further eroded thin trust in Karzai. There is a difference of opinion among U.S. diplomats, military officials and others about how directly Karzai should be blamed, but several officials agreed that the leak was an attempt to torpedo a diplomatic channel that Karzai and his inner circle worried would sideline and undercut the Afghan leader.

As the Afghan war slides into its 10th year and Washington plans to withdraw its combat forces by the end of 2014, a negotiated settlement between the Karzai government and the Taliban has become a stated goal for the United States. It is the centerpiece of efforts by Marc Grossman, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Karzai has launched a separate peace outreach, with the High Peace Council representing numerous political factions.

A member of that High Peace Council, who asked not to be identified by name so he could talk candidly, told the AP that the leaking of the talks reveals the level of mistrust and the lack of coordination among the key players in any eventual peace deal.

He said all the key players — the United States, Afghan government, Afghan National Security Council and the High Peace Council — are holding separate and secret talks with their own contacts within the insurgency.

The United States, for example, has also held secret talks with Ibrahim Haqqani, the brother of Jalaluddin Haqqani, who heads the notorious Haqqani network considered by U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan to be their biggest threat. That contact was confirmed by officials from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the U.S.

Karzai met with representatives of wanted rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is seeking greater involvement at the peace table and direct talks with the United States, said diplomats in the region.

The flurry of meetings the United States is holding with the various factions in the Afghan conflict has also extended to Pakistan, where the most powerful insurgents have found safe havens.

A month ago, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. John Kerry and Pakistan’s Army chief of staff Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani met for a marathon eight hours in a Gulf country. Peace negotiations with Afghanistan’s insurgents featured prominently, said both Pakistani and U.S. officials who would not be identified by name because of the secret nature of the meeting.

A U.S. official familiar with the talks said Kayani made a pitch during his marathon meeting with Kerry that Pakistan take on a far larger role in Afghanistan peacemaking. The United States considers Pakistan an essential part of an eventual deal, but neither the U.S. nor Pakistan trusts the other’s motives in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, an unexpected consequence of attempts to find peace with the Taliban has been the rearming of the so-called Northern Alliance, that represents Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities and who were partnered with the coalition at the outset of Operation Enduring Freedom to topple the Taliban regime.

For the warlords that make up the Northern Alliance, Martine van Bijlert, co-director and co-founder of the Afghan Analyst Network in the capital, Kabul, talk of peace threatens their survival.

Warlords-cum-government ministers and vice presidents are watching attempts at finding a peaceful end to the war with trepidation, each wondering “what if it unravels, who is going to come after me? Will I be the weakest in the room? They are feeling very vulnerable.”
___

Gearan, AP National Security Writer, reported from Washington. Kathy Gannon is AP Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan. She can be followed on www.twitter.com/kathygannon

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[buglerbilly]

Commandos Want Mercenaries to Guard (Another) Afghan Base

By Spencer Ackerman August 29, 2011 | 2:05 pm



The military’s elite warriors aren’t exactly the kind of people you’d think require protection from hired Afghan hands. But U.S. Special Operations Command wants to put the safety of one of its remote Afghanistan outposts in their hands. Again.

A solicitation released Monday from the U.S. Special Operations Command seeks a contractor to patrol and protect the perimeter of a Special Operations “village security platform” — i.e., base — in the southern Uruzgan province village of Gizab. Three-quarters of the hired guard force have to come from within 50 kilometers [31 miles] of the base. Their job: make sure no one who’s not authorized gets inside a location housing some of the troops who go on nightly raids to take down Taliban leaders.

It’s part of a recent trend in site security for special-ops bases. In March, the command put out solicitations for sell-sword guards at 10 such bases around Afghanistan. (Among the prohibitions the guards will face: no torture or corpse mutilation on any captured Afghans.) And recently, the command has been hot to use mercenaries down at the village-security-platform, or VSP, level, bases manned by just a few commandos — places where a large guard force can be uncomfortably conspicuous.

Chances are, that recent trend is borne out of necessity. Special Operations Forces are on a breakneck pace in Afghanistan. From June 2010 to June 2011, they launched a staggering 1,700 raids in Afghanistan just during nighttime, designed to put extreme pressure on the Taliban. With such heavy demand for raiding, there aren’t that many commandos free to perform sentry duty.

Alas, hiring guards to protect U.S. bases in Afghanistan doesn’t exactly have a great track record. A Senate inquiry last year found rival warlords and Taliban sympathizers littered amongst the guards protecting several large bases housing conventional forces. Not exactly the kind of guys you’d want watching the backs of troops tasked to perform some of the Afghanistan war’s most crucial missions.

Photo: U.S. Special Operations Command

[buglerbilly]

Militants Assail NATO Base in Afghanistan

August 29, 2011

Associated Press

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber and three gunmen assaulted a NATO base in southern Afghanistan on Sunday but failed to breach its defenses, officials said.

The bomber detonated his explosives outside the gate of a base in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province, said Salim Ahsas, the southern regional head of the Afghan police. The gunmen then started shoot toward the base. One was killed, another was captured and the third escaped, Ahsas said.

No one else was killed, he said. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that three civilians were wounded - one woman and two children.

The attack occurred on the same day that a government health worker and his driver were killed in a roadside bomb blast in the north.

Dr. Ahmad Jawed Karim and his driver hit an explosive as they were driving in Takhar province's Dahana Sangi district, the health ministry said in a statement.

In the south meanwhile, two international service members were killed - one in an insurgent attack and the other in a bomb blast.

NATO forces said the service members died Sunday but did not provide further detail.

NATO typically waits for national authorities to identify their dead and provide details of fatal incidents.

The latest military death makes 78 international troops killed so far this month.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US support for Pakistan dam could help stem flow of bad blood

Washington weighs up backing huge Daimer Bhasha project as a means of improving battered relations with Pakistan

Saeed Shah in Islamabad

guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 August 2011 21.05 BST


The proposed Daimer Basha dam would be built on the Indus River in northern Pakistan, above. Photograph: Christophe Boisvieux/Corbis

The US is considering financial support for a $12bn dam in Pakistan in an attempt to improve its battered image in the country.

The Daimer Bhasha dam would provide enough electricity to end Pakistan's crippling shortages. It is said its reservoir would hold so much water it could have averted last year's devastating floods.

Washington has not yet made a final decision on partial funding of the dam, but US money would be crucial in securing other international finance, especially from the Asian Development Bank.

"Getting involved in a long-term project like this is very compelling for us," said a senior US official. "This is the project we're spending our time assessing.

"This would demonstrate that Pakistan is the kind of country where you can do large, complex infrastructure projects. It's not all flood relief and sacks of flour."

At the end of last week, President Asif Ali Zardari met a team from the Asian Development Bank "to start the process of financing Daimer Bhasha dam as the project has been approved at all internal fora of the country", according to a statement from his office.

Although Washington is Pakistan's biggest international donor by far, the support has done little to improve perceptions of the US, which is seen as the enemy by many Pakistanis – a view exacerbated by continuing drone attacks in tribal areas and the killing of Osama bin Laden earlier this year. The dam, which harks back to similar projects supported by Washington in the 1960s and 1970s, could help reset relations between the two countries.

India is likely to object to US support for the dam, as it is located in the disputed Kashmir region. Opposition may also come from critics in the US Congress, who have called for all aid to be cut off after Bin Laden was found hiding in Pakistan.

The dam, on the Indus river, would provide 4,500MW of cheap, green energy, making up for a shortfall causing up to 12 hours of power cuts a day across Pakistan. The reservoir would be 50 miles long.

Shakil Durrani, chairman of the water and power development authority, said Islamabad had approved the dam project and he was confident of US backing.

"If we had a reservoir the size of Daimer Bhasha the floods last summer would not have occurred," he said. "This would be the largest project ever undertaken in Pakistan. It is our top priority."

Analyst Mosharraf Zaidi agreed the dam could boost relations. "The overwhelming aid transfers from the US have been to the military and whatever little has come for the civilian sector has not developed as far as the rhetoric has," he said.

"Daimer Bhasha would be tremendously good for Pakistan and would show that the US is invested in a long-term relationship with Pakistan, no matter how bad things look today."

US aid to Pakistan increased to $1.5bn a year under the Obama administration, but has been widely dismissed in the country as going mostly to consultants and lacking focus. It remains unclear how much of this cash has actually arrived in Pakistan since the new aid programme began in 2009.

"US aid is neither visible nor tangible," said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. "Unless the people of Pakistan can identify large, visible projects that make a difference to people's lives, the US is not going to get the kind of appreciation that it believes it deserves."

The US official said Washington had spent $2bn on civilian assistance since October 2009, including $550m on flood relief last year, though that came from a separate fund.

Daimer Bhasha would take around eight years to build. Pakistani authorities plan to shortlist contractors later this year.

The Indian embassy in Islamabad pointed to a statement issued by the Indian government in 2006, after the project was first proposed, which insisted that the dam was "in territory that is part of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, which is an integral part of India by virtue of its accession to it in 1947".

Relations between the US and Pakistan have been plagued by accusations in Washington that Islamabad is playing a "double game" by supporting Afghan insurgents, while Pakistan believes it has been bullied into acting against its own interests.

The unilateral US raid that killed Bin Laden in May humiliated Pakistan's powerful military, all but halting anti-terrorism co-operation between the two countries.

[buglerbilly]

USACE, Army divers team up for solutions at Kajaki, Dahla dams in Afghanistan

August 29, 2011

By Karla Marshall, USACE







KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 29, 2011 -- U.S. Army divers, at the request of the Afghanistan Engineer District-South, arrived at the district's headquarters at Kandahar Airfield in early August to help inspect both the Kajaki and Dahla dams. Their plan was to use a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to collect data and images of the gate structures, release valves, inlet tunnels and trash racks.

The team intended to obtain data, such as sediment buildup, structural integrity and concrete cavitations and provide it to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or USACE, engineers and project managers working to analyze and improve the dams' integrity.

"When we first decided we needed to look below the surface, we didn't know who to call," recalled Noori Nader, project manager for the Kajaki Dam. "After spending several months contacting everyone I could think of, Sue Fox (the South District's safety manager) had the solution."

"I have a long work history with the Army dive teams," said Fox. "As the deputy diving coordinator in the (USACE) Portland District, I worked with them every year at our dams in Portland. I also worked with an Army dive team in Iraq in the past and knew they would be perfect for this mission. Once we got the go ahead from our command, I coordinated with the team to get them here. It actually happened quite quickly."

THE DIVE TEAM

The four-Soldier dive team deployed from the 7th Engineer Dive Team, 65th Engineer Battalion, 130th Engineer Brigade, 8th Theater Sustainment Command at Fort Shafter, Hawaii, to Kuwait in February. The team -- 1st Sgt. William "Scott" Baumgartner, Staff Sgt. Sean Rowley, Sgt. John Hoover and Sgt. Britton Hall -- support military operations in the U.S. Central Command's area of operations from their base in Kuwait, but this was their first mission in Afghanistan.

"We work throughout CENTCOM's (U.S. Central Command's) AOR (area of responsibility) and have done a lot of diving in Iraq to support bridging operations primarily. However, we perform a full spectrum of dive operations as well," said Baumgartner, a master diver and the team lead for this mission.

In addition to bridging operations, during its one-year deployment, the team may be called upon to perform body recovery, obstacle removal, port opening, underwater surveying and demolition, salvaging, vessel security and inspections, and force protection missions.

"We are a dive team," said Baumgartner. "But this mission required no diving at all."

The team did its entire fact finding through surface observation and the ROV.

The ROV findings will help the district's engineers determine the best way to repair the various components of the Kajaki Dam and its irrigation tunnel. At the Dahla Dam, the data collected will help engineers determine the extent of sediment buildup at the reservoir and the conditions at the entrance to the outlet tunnel.

MISSION ONE -- KAJAKI DAM

The Kajaki Dam was constructed in the 1950s by an American construction company as part of the Helmand Arghandab Valley Authority Project. The project was an ambitious undertaking by the Afghan and U.S. governments and was designed to store water for downstream irrigation.

In the 1970s, U.S. Agency for International Development funded the hydro power plant construction at the dam which included two 16.5-megawatt generators.

Years of neglect, however, have taken a toll on the dam and its ability to perform as designed. Work is ongoing to improve power generation as well, but this reconnaissance mission was solely to evaluate the irrigation component of the dam.

The original construction of the irrigation intake structure includes a trash rack that prevents debris from entering the tunnel and causing damage to the downstream valves and a 98-ton concrete maintenance bulkhead gate. The gate has a steel wheel which is supposed to open and close with a crane. The operational weight capacity of the crane is only 75 tons and therefore, it cannot raise and lower the gate.

"The crane failed, leaving the gates stuck in a fully open position," said Noori. "So, no maintenance can be performed on the structure and we didn't know its condition."

"As a result of the permanently opened concrete gate, the next component of the irrigation system, the downstream intake tower, relies on a set of roto valves for emergency closure and a set of jet valves for a regulated release of irrigation water from the reservoir," Noori continued.

Neither of the valve systems was designed to function in the capacity, so South District engineers are concerned that their condition has deteriorated over the years.

"Without a functioning maintenance bulkhead gate, there is no way to take the valves off-line for preventative maintenance or to assess the reliability of the system," said Noori. "Should the valves fail, there is the potential for an uncontrolled release of water into the irrigation system."

Uncontrolled release means flooding for the Helmand River valley. If water from the reservoir is allowed to freely flow downstream, potentially there would be loss of property. Additionally, the hydroelectric power station at the Kajaki Dam would be rendered inoperable, effectively cutting off renewable power to Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

As a result of the potentially tenuous condition of the valves and maintenance gate, there is risk of failure.

"The repair of the intake structure is essential to the longevity of the irrigation and hydroelectric systems," said Noori. "This mission is the first step to determining the scope of repairs required to make the dam structures function as intended.

"I will use these findings and the ROV video to develop a specific contract, and pass these findings on to the contractor. They will now be able to 'see' the condition of the structure underwater," continued Noori. "Having the information will make a big difference in defining the potential repair project."

INSPECTION

The dive team and Fox made their way to the Kajaki Dam area via helicopter to Fforward Operating Base, or FOB, Zeebrugge, located adjacent to Kajaki Reservoir.

Basing out of Zeebrugge, the team rose early to arrive at the dam by 5:30 a.m. each of the five days they were there. After a short briefing from the U.S. Marines about the security situation in the area, the team learned that not just insurgents were nearby. Jackals, scorpions, hornets and cobras were also real and present threats.

"We saw scorpions and hornets, and we heard the jackals every night," said Fox.

Like all missions in Afghanistan, the dive team encountered a few issues they were not expecting. Although they anticipated deploying the ROV from their Zodiac boats, extremely low water levels prevented them. As a result, the team had to deploy the ROV from the intake tower, some 150 feet above the water surface.

Almost immediately, the deployment of the ROV became problematic. The 150 feet of cable tangled with the chain used to deploy the trash racks. Before the mission could continue, the ROV had to be freed so that it could continue its descent into the reservoir.

An additional challenge was the scarcity of fuel for the ROV. Low-quality, contaminated fuel was all that could be found and the ROV's function was impaired as a result.

"We spent about 1.5 hours the second day we were at the dam just repairing the ROV. We had to disassemble it, clean it and then reassemble before we could continue the recon mission," said Baumgartner.

Despite the frustration of the first day, what the ROV encountered under the water gave the USACE team some much needed optimism.

FINDING

"We expected a significant amount of sediment to collect at the intake gate," said Noori. "What the ROV video showed, though, was a sediment level of less than 1/8 inch. We didn't know what to expect with respect to the condition of the intake structure. But what the ROV found was that the gates were in good condition as were the intake openings."

There was a small leak that requires repair, but according to Noori, the fix is not complex.

Next, the ROV inspected the trash racks. Those were all in good condition, but trees and boulders were caught in the racks and must be removed. A guiderail was twisted and bent which will require repair. Nevertheless, Baumgartner said the trash racks were fairly clean and there was good flow.

At the irrigation tunnel outfall, the ROV was focused on the concrete walls and tunnel floor. Some scouring has occurred over time, exposing the rebar which will require repair, and some unidentified piping under the valves will require evaluation.

"We are pleased with what the ROV found and the dive team's efforts," said Noori. "With this data we can develop a comprehensive plan to repair the irrigation structure at Kajaki."

MISSION TWO -- DAHLA DAM

After nearly a week at Kajaki Dam, the dive team split up. Rowley and Hall returned to Kandahar Airfield to plan the dive team's return to Kuwait. Baumgartner, Hoover, Fox and Steve Bredthauer, South District's project manager for the Dahla Dam, continued on to FOB Frontenac, their base of operations for the dam inspection.

"Delta Troop, 5-1st Cavalry were our hosts for the Dahla Dam inspection," said Baumgartner. "We met with them the night before our mission to get the mission plan and threat brief."

The following morning, the team departed FOB Frontenac in a mine-resistant, ambush-protected, or MRAP, vehicle convoy to Dahla Dam. After a 20-minute ride, the team arrived and began its inspection.

"The mission here was much different than the mission at Kajaki,' said Fox. "We weren't able to perform an underwater inspection because August is the peak of irrigation season and the dam could not be shut down."

Baumgartner and Hoover instead measured the intake tower and determined the elevation measurements at the tower and its base. They took elevation measurements of the outfall structure and roughly estimated the total footprint of the reservoir.

"The goal was to get a general idea of shape of the reservoir because it's a dynamic body of water," said Baumgartner. "We also needed to see if there was any unexploded ordnance, trees or boulders that would impede navigation for our next trip out here."

The dive team will be returning in the fall to conduct a hydrographic survey and contour of the bottom of the reservoir to determine the maximum pool depth, which equates to how much water can be stored for future years. USACE will use that data and compare it to similar data obtained in the 1970s to determine how much sediment accumulates during the spring floods.

"This mission was successful all the way around and it feels good to be involved in such an important project," said Fox. "We had some frustrating moments, but the information gained will help the projects progress and will make the next trip out here easier."

"One of our big concerns is weather and its potential impact on our follow-on mission," Baumgartner explained. "There are no docks or boat ramps, so the marshy and muddy banks of the reservoir may be difficult to navigate and launch from. Having that information in advance will help us plan more effectively."

Noori looks forward to the team's return.

"They have other capabilities that we could use in the future, such as surveying and measuring the level of accumulated sedimentation in the reservoir. I look forward to the team coming back and helping us with that task," Noori concluded.

[buglerbilly]

New satellite improves communications in Afghanistan

An Equipment and Logistics news article

30 Aug 11

UK troops in Afghanistan have begun operating a satellite secured from NATO at no extra cost to the MOD which is providing extra communications channels for commanders on the front line.


Captain Rob Durling, 79 (Kirkee) Battery, 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, utilises satellite technology to establish out-of-line-of-sight communications to request air support in his role as a Forward Air Controller attached to D Squadron, The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
[Picture: Corporal Andy Reddy RLC, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

The NATO satellite will be used to provide two extra Ultra High Frequency (UHF) tactical communications channels that can be used in Afghanistan. This additional satellite adds to the MOD's three existing Skynet 5 series satellites which provide a worldwide satellite communications service.

Satellite technology gives commanders on the ground an efficient and secure means of communication, including with operations centres that co-ordinate vital air support, as well as with other units.

Flight Lieutenant Damien Handley is a Joint Tactical Air Controller in Afghanistan. He uses satellite communications on the front line in his role co-ordinating air support for ground troops. He said:

"I can use these satellite communications to talk from Afghanistan directly to operations centres and headquarters around the world. They are vital in the fight against insurgents, particularly to task aircraft in support of our front line troops. In the thick of battle we rely on good communications and more satellite channels will be a great boost."


A tactical satellite communications handset and aerial
[Picture: Corporal Andy Reddy RLC, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Following an agreement with NATO, the MOD's Defence Equipment and Support organisation secured ownership of the satellite earlier this year at no extra cost to the MOD. Control of the satellite and running of the two UHF channels has been incorporated into the MOD's Skynet 5 Private Finance Initiative contract and is managed by communications company Paradigm.

Commander Andy Titcomb, from the MOD's Defence Equipment and Support organisation, explained:

"Ultra High Frequency satellite communications are a valuable resource and when it became known that NATO was about to fire this satellite into a graveyard orbit, we jumped at the chance to see whether we could take ownership of this valuable asset and use it to support our troops in Afghanistan."

He concluded:

"This is an example of MOD personnel identifying and seizing an opportunity to deliver an additional vital resource to our troops on the ground at zero capital cost."

[buglerbilly]

Military Logistics: The $37 Billion (Non)Competition

By Sharon Weinberger August 30, 2011 | 11:00 am



When U.S. forces moved into Afghanistan in 2001, there was little, if any, infrastructure to support and house U.S. troops. The military needed someone to do everything from quartering troops to rebuilding airfields. The solution was a contract called the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LogCap, a type of umbrella contract the Army had been using to support its military bases overseas.

In late 2001, the Army, after a competition, awarded LogCap III, the newest (hence, “III”) comprehensive base-services contract, to KBR, which already had substantial experience with such work. Under LogCap III, the Houston engineering firm, once a subsidiary of Halliburton, began providing base services in Afghanistan, everything from showers to dining halls.

Strictly speaking, LogCap isn’t a sole-source contract. But it can result in a wide and diverse array of work being awarded without subsequent competition. “It’s the government’s way of saying ‘We don’t know what we want, and we don’t know how much it costs,’” said Laura Peterson, a senior policy analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group. “Instead they say, ‘We’ll put you on retainer and tell you later what we want and when we want it, and you just bill us.’ You become the government’s concierge, and it’s like a gigantic monopoly.”

That’s the way LogCap III operated for almost a decade. And while KBR had to compete with other companies to win the umbrella contract in December 2001, it didn’t have to compete for any of the subsequent work, which totaled over $37 billion by the end of July 2011.

As an ongoing series by the Center for Public Integrity shows, Pentagon dollars flowing into no-bid contracting has exploded over the past 10 years of war. But KBR’s LogCap contract shows that sole-source contracts aren’t the Pentagon’s only way of limiting competition. There’s also umbrella-type contracts, like LogCap, that allow the government to buy unspecified goods and services over long periods of time.

On paper, LogCap is competitive, because it was initially open for multiple bids. So when the Pentagon says it competitively awards more than 60 percent of its contracting dollars, that includes money spent on LogCap.

But contracts like LogCap likely hide a much worse picture, according to Charles Tiefer, a commissioner on the congressionally mandated Wartime Contracting Commission. KBR did win the initial contract competitively, he said, but “for the next 10 years, there were task orders without further competition that went to KBR.”

When the U.S. moved into Iraq in 2003, KBR came along, too. It eventually provided modern dining facilities for military and State Department personnel, featuring everything from made-to-order Caesar salads to a dessert station featuring more than a dozen types of pie and cakes.

Though KBR was limited to charging $20 per per person, a State Department inspector general investigation in 2010 found government personnel were being encouraged to scan their IDs at meals and snacks as many times as possible to justify the expenses. A notice in an embassy newsletter read, “more scans = more goodies” — which, the inspector general found, was hiding the true costs of meals. “One person scanned his card 25 times in two days,” the report states.

A later Defense Contract Audit Agency report confirmed those findings, saying that headcount inflation could be as high as 36 percent. In other words, for every 100 people eating meals, 136 people were being counted.

As LogCap expanded in Iraq, adding more and more work, KBR came under increasing scrutiny, particularly when the Army tried to extend the contract into new areas. Pentagon audits and government reports accused KBR of overbilling.

At one Wartime Contracting Commission hearing, April Stephenson, then head of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, confirmed that the LogCap III contract had generated $553 million in questionable billing and 32 fraud referrals for investigation. “I have to say in the history of DCAA,” Stephenson testified, “I do not think we are aware of a program, a contract or a contractor that has had this number of suspensions or referrals.”

Some criminal charges have already resulted regarding the LogCap contract, including a former employee who pleaded guilty to receiving kickbacks on a subcontract to a Kuwaiti company.

The U.S. government is also now in the middle of a $100 million lawsuit against KBR, alleging breach of contract and false claims related to providing private security under the LogCap contract. A federal judge in August rejected the company’s bid to have the suit thrown out.

Facing mounting criticism of the LogCap contract, the Army eventually held a new competition, and in 2007 awarded contracts to three companies — KBR, DynCorp and Fluor Corporation — under what was called LogCap IV. Unlike the previous LogCap III, the three companies under LogCap IV would compete for specific work, creating an incentive for lower prices and better services, and quelling the major criticism of the previous contract structure.

In 2010, however, the Army announced that rather than moving to the competitively awarded LogCap IV for base services, it would extend the LogCap III for work in Iraq.

“Theater commanders have raised concerns that a transition from LogCap III to LogCap IV would strain logistics and transportation assets in Iraq at the same time that a massive withdrawal of U.S. forces, weapons and equipment is under way,” according to an Army release about the decision.

As of July 2011, just $5.7 billion had been spent on LogCap IV — a trickle compared to over $37 billion pumped into LogCap III to date.

The LogCap III contract has its defenders. Doug Brooks, president of the International Stability Operations Association, a trade association that represents more than 50 Defense Department services contractors (KBR is not a member of IPOA), argues that most of the scandals revolving around LogCap III are related to poor planning or client errors — waste rather than fraud.

“Because of LogCap III, we have the best supported and supplied military operations in history,” said Brooks, who defends the LogCap concept. But Brooks also points out that the government lacked the contracting personnel to ensure sufficient oversight and management of a contract the size of LogCap III.

But the real problem may simply boil down to competition — or lack thereof. Tiefer said that during commission hearings, it came out that contracts that use so-called indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity task orders — like LogCap — were counted as “competitive” in federal data figures, even though the tens of billions of work under it wasn’t up for competition.

“It’s not at all an obscure example,” Tiefer said. “It shows that the rate of real competition may be less than the claimed rate of competition.”

Photo: U.S. Army

[buglerbilly]

Mullah Omar Says The Taliban Are Ready To Talk

By Spencer Ackerman August 30, 2011 | 1:30 pm



For years, the Taliban’s position about negotiating an end to the decade-long war with Hamid Karzai’s government or the United States has been straightforward: U.S. troops have to leave Afghanistan first. While analysts have long speculated that the Taliban isn’t really as rigid behind closed doors, its leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, now leaves no doubt. The Taliban is already negotiating with the U.S., Omar confirmed.

The confirmation comes in a long statement Omar released on Monday and translated by Evan Kohlmann’s Flashpoint Partners crew. Omar doesn’t back away from his demands for a full U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He boasts that the Taliban grows more familiar with U.S. military tactics “with the passage of each day,” and claims that his forces are “gaining access to hardware which is instrumental in causing greater losses to the enemy” (.PDF) — probably a reference to the downing of the Navy SEAL’s Chinook earlier this month.

But despite Omar’s flashes of rhetorical belligerence, his message is notable for how it seeds the bed for negotiations that could finally end the war in Afghanistan.

Most significantly, Omar confirms that his lieutenants have already started negotiating with the United States. He refers to “contacts which have been made with some parties for the release of prisoners,” a stark contrast with the Taliban’s consistent and frequent denials that secretive talks with their adversaries are under way. Omar downplays the prisoner discussions as short of a “comprehensive negotiation,” but also signals that the Taliban of 2011, if returned to power, won’t be the old Taliban of the 1990s that “monopolize[d]” political power. Conspicuously, Omar doesn’t claim that the U.S. has to stop fighting before additional negotiations can proceed.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who’s covered the Taliban since its inception, considers the statement something of a watershed. “By acknowledging that there have been contacts with the Americans, Mullah Omar is sending a clear message to his fighters that future political talks are a possibility,” Rashid writes,”while signaling to the Americans that he may eventually be prepared to broaden the scope of the dialogue and those already participating in it.”

Seen in that light, Omar’s boasts of Taliban military success could be a rhetorical gambit allowing him a face-saving way to negotiate: having fought to an advantageous position — after all, the Taliban were routed between 2001 and 2005 — the Taliban now seek to consolidate their gains through diplomacy, ending a long, bloody war on favorable terms. It’s worth noting that President Obama cited a similar rationale in June for his drawdown of U.S. troops and openness to peace talks.

Whatever Omar’s motivations, the Taliban have managed to sustain a high level of violence in Afghanistan despite the U.S. troop surge. Violence rose 51 percent from spring 2010 to spring 2011 — putting the Taliban in a position where it might credibly claim its military strategy successful in advance of diplomacy.

At the same time, though, the Taliban are responsible for some 90 percent of civilian deaths, according to the United Nations. The backlash from that carelessness might explain why Omar urges his Taliban fighters to “always have a conduct of kindness and tenderness with the common man” in his statement.

As Rashid sees it, “this message seems a hopeful sign that talks and a negotiated settlement to end the war are a possibility.” Omar’s made his opening. Now it’s up to Obama, who still hasn’t explain how his military strategy in Afghanistan supports a political settlement to the conflict. And he’s got to convince Karzai that Taliban negotiations are in the Afghan president’s interest, too: according to the Associated Press, Karzai’s government, shut out of a U.S.-Taliban parley, leaked word of the talks, promptly scuttling them. Negotiating with Omar might be difficult — tactically, geopolitically and emotionally — but it’s hard to see an alternative to ending the U.S.’ longest war.

Photo: U.S. Marine Corps

[buglerbilly]

This is in addition to the original report published a day or two ago............see above

Drones Kill Another ‘Irreplaceable’ al-Qaida Leader

By Adam Rawnsley August 30, 2011 | 3:30 pm



Just months after killing Osama bin Laden, the U.S. may have just taken out al-Qaida’s newly anointed second in command — a terrorist that experts consider “irreplaceable” to the organization.

U.S. officials are confident that a drone strike in Pakistan last week killed Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the new deputy to al-Qaida leader Ayman Zawahiri. Unlike some terror leaders felled by the drone program, observers consider the loss of Atiyah — a prominent mouthpiece, ideologue and operations chief for al-Qaida — to represent a major blow to the terrorist group.

“Atiyah is irreplaceable because he combined the skills of a diplomat, an operator, and a strategist–a rare combination in any organization,” Will McCants, an al-Qaida expert at the Center for Naval Analysis, told Danger Room. “For that reason, he was one of Bin Laden’s closest confidants at the end of his life, even though he was less popular in the wider jihadi community than some of his more bellicose colleagues.”

A veteran of Afghanistan’s anti-Soviet resistance, Atiyah, a Libyan, joined the global jihad in his teens during the 1980s. He eventually rose to become al-Qaida’s “overall commander in Pakistan’s tribal areas,” taking charge of the group’s Waziristan operations in 2010, according to the Treasury Department.

Records seized from Bin Laden’s Abbottabad lair show that Atiyah enjoyed the trust of the former al-Qaida leader. Bin Laden corresponded with Aityah relatively frequently and entrusted him with the group’s operations against the west.

As the New America Foundation’s Brian Fishman notes, Atiyah’s significance can be seen in his role as a messenger for the group. He penned a 2006 letter to Abu Musab Zarqawi urging the Iraq-based terrorist to stop killing so many civilians, and he was a go-between to al-Qaida’s Algerian affiliate. The Treasury Department states he once acted as “al-Qa’ida’s emissary in Iran,” given free roam in the country by the Iranian government.

Atiyah’s operational significance and proximity to the highest ranks of al-Qaida made him a tempting target to the U.S. intelligence community. (And a January centerfold in the National Counterterrorism Center’s 2011 calendar). Abu Dujannah al-Khorasani, the triple agent who killed seven CIA employees in an suicide attack in Afghanistan’s Khost Province in December 2009, is reported to have used footage of himself next to Atiyah as bait to cement his credentials as an al-Qaida infiltrator, piquing the interest of his ill-fated American handlers.

But it’s worth taking reports of Atiyah’s death with a grain of salt. Al-Qaida hasn’t released any statements or videos on jihadi forums confirming his death, as is customary when senior leaders die. News of his demise thus far comes from anonymous senior officials — a group whose record of confirming the ranks of the dearly departed is less than perfect. At times, senior jihadis like Ilyas Kashmiri have been known to surface among the living after being declared dead.

If confirmed, though, Atiyah’s icing deprives al-Qaida of a longtime trusted member at a time of serious organizational flux. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta boasted in July that the U.S. was merely 10 or 20 dead terrorists away from defeating al-Qaida — a claim that seemed overblown. But with Atiyah’s apparent death, not everyone’s so quick to dismiss Panetta.

“With the death of Bin Laden, Kashmiri, and Atiyah in rapid succession,” McCants said, “al-Qaida Central is more vulnerable to collapse than at any point in its history.”

Photo: Dvidshub

[buglerbilly]

Minister inadvertently displays sensitive Afghanistan documents

International development secretary Andrew Mitchell leaves No 10 with briefing papers on display

Allegra Stratton, political correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 30 August 2011 19.33 BST


Andrew Mitchell leaves Downing Street holding his briefing notes. Photograph: Steve Back

Ooops.......!!! :doh

The international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, has been caught leaving Downing Street with "protected" government documents on display. The documents revealed government concern that funding to Afghanistan must resume or the country could be destabilised.

After expressing concern about the banking sector in Afghanistan wasting funding from the international community, Mitchell's briefing document reads: "The World Bank have told us that the suspension of UK and other donor funds to the Afghan government will soon begin to destabilise activities essential for transition."

Falling victim to an indiscretion that has caught out a number of public figures before – to career-ending effect in the case of counter-terrorism officer Bob Quick – Mitchell left No 10 on Tuesday with his briefing papers on display. Mitchell is unlikely to suffer Quick's fate because he is well regarded by David Cameron and had the documents been highly sensitive they would have been marked "restricted". On finding out he had been "papped", Mitchell is said to have told an aide he was not that bothered.

The dossier – marked "Protect" – makes clear government attitudes towards the impending departure of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and towards criticism of the Afghan banking system by the IMF.

Confirming the government is pleased Karzai is intending to stand down after two terms in office in 2014, the document reads: "This is very important. It improves Afghanistan's political prospects very significantly. We should welcome Karzai's announcement in public and in private."

The document also details government concerns – highlighted repeatedly by international organisations in recent months – that foreign aid to Afghanistan is sent to a finance ministry and banking sector of questionable standing. Funds have been suspended, but the document says the IMF will send a new inspection team in the autumn.

Mitchell's document reads: "We are hopeful that the government will have demonstrated sufficient progress towards credible reforms of the financial sector, and actions to address the Kabul bank fraud so that a new programme can be agreed over the autumn." Mitchell's department said: "The papers were of a routine nature. They would have had a national security level marking of 'restricted' or 'confidential' if they contained anything of significant sensitivity."

[buglerbilly]

Russian Firm Got No-Bid Pentagon Contract After Selling Arms to Iran

By Sharon Weinberger August 31, 2011 | 6:30 am



Last time I checked nobody outside of Russia, and some of its close accolyte countries, make Mi-8/17 helicopters and they have been chosen for two vital reasons, Iraq AND Afghanistan have experience and knowledge of this type plus there are residual support personnel that are qualified and experienced. Nothing produced by Boeing or Sikorsky or anyone else in the West is widely known in Afghanistan in particular. Who the f#*k do they think can competitively bid this type? The order to ARINC is the only one I would run a microscope over...............

For two years, the United States regarded Rosoboronexport, Russia’s official weapons exporter, as an international pariah for selling arms to Iran and Syria. Then, in 2010, the U.S. suddenly lifted sanctions against it. By June of this year, the reversal was complete: the Pentagon awarded the company a no-bid contract worth upwards of $1 billion.

How exactly did the United States end up spending taxpayer dollars on Russian equipment with no competition?

The Russian deal may be a small part of the nearly $140 billion in no-bid contracts the Pentagon awarded last year, but it is also in some ways typical, according to an ongoing series by the Center for Public Integrity. If military operations in the early years of Iraq and Afghanistan justified the use of sole-sourcing contracting for support services, then the drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan created a new justification for steering contracts to a single bidder: the need to quickly equip the military forces there so that the United States could eventually ship out.

This rush was the Pentagon’s stated justification for sole-source procurements for a host of weapons and equipment, particularly for what’s called “non-standard” equipment — in this case, Russian helicopters. The local military forces that the U.S. built in Iraq and Afghanistan were more familiar with Russian equipment than with U.S. gear, the argument went. Even in Afghanistan, a country which fought off a Soviet occupation in the 1980s, U.S. officials argued that the Northern Alliance and Afghan pilots were used to flying Russian helicopters, which are regarded as rugged and reliable.

Today, U.S. contracts for Russian equipment, used primarily to buy Russian-built Mi-17 helicopters for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, have topped $1 billion. They’ve almost all been sole-source or non-competitive contracts given to a variety of middle men companies. Rosoboronexport included.

Here are where the contracts landed:

• a non-competed $89 million contract awarded to General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems to buy three VIP Russian helicopters for Afghanistan’s president;

• a $322 million sole-source deal given to ARINC, a U.S. engineering firm, to buy 22 helicopters for Iraq; and

• most recently, another sole-source contract, which could be worth almost $900 million, to Rosoboronexport, to supply Russian helicopters for Afghanistan.

In 2009, the Navy eventually held a rare competition to buy four Russian Mi-17 helicopters for Afghanistan and opened it up for bidders, ultimately awarding the $43.5 million contract to Huntsville-based Defense Technology Inc. The Navy was preparing to hold another competition for 21 Mi-17s in 2011. But the Pentagon decided, after months of deliberation, to hand the responsibility to a newly created Army office, which canceled the competition. It began sole-source negotiations with Rosoboronexport, the state arms agency, which acts as the official arms dealer for the Russian government.

Rosoboronexport, whose annual revenues have grown to nearly $9 billion, had only recently been removed from the list of companies sanctioned by the U.S. State Department for violating U.S. laws prohibiting the sale of weapons to Iran and Syria. Among the suspected sales were surface-to-air missiles to Iran. But after sanctions were lifted, the Army went full steam ahead with plans to sole-source a $375 million contract to the Russian arms agency, now arguing that it was the only legitimate vendor of Russian armaments.

Ironically, less than a year earlier, the Pentagon had argued in briefings that buying from the Russian arms agency was unnecessary.

A number of American companies lodged protests against the award, including Sikorsky, which argued that the U.S. should have considered American aircraft, and ARINC, which, after having won its own sole source contract for Russian helicopters, now argued it was being disadvantaged because the contract required working with Rosoboronexport. The Government Accountability Office, however, dismissed the protests.

According to a copy of the contract provided to iWatch News, the $375 million contract includes an option for another $550 million for additional helicopters, which would bring the total contract to nearly $1 billion. The Pentagon confirmed that, to date, the Army office in charge of Russian helicopters has not yet held any open competitions, although there are plans for one next year, according to the Pentagon.

The Pentagon defends its decision to sole source the contract to Rosoboronexport, and denied reports, made by Cornische Aviation, a firm based in the United Arab Emirates, that the Russian arms agency was charging the U.S. government twice what it paid for the choppers. “We have no information concerning the nature of the alleged reports” about price inflation by Cornische Aviation, a Pentagon spokesperson told Danger Room on condition of anonymity. “The contracting office determined that the costs were fair and reasonable.”

There is, however, an ongoing Pentagon inspector general investigation looking at Russian helicopter procurement, examining “whether [Defense Department] officials properly and effectively managed the acquisition and support of Non-Standard Rotary Wing Aircraft, such as the Russian Mi-17.”

It’s unclear what impact, if any, that investigation could have the current sole-source contract. But in the meantime, business is good for Rosoboronexport — which announced this month that it will continue to sell arms to Syria.

Photo: U.S. Army

[buglerbilly]

India Deploys Herons along Border in Indian-held Kashmir

Posted on August 31, 2011 by The Editor

Indian Army has deployed Herons in Northern part of Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) to track the movement of Kashmiris. 16 Herons were originally supplied to the Indian Army in 2007 by IAI – 8 of which are thought to be operated out of several bases including Mansbal.

“The UAS are fitted with human movement detection sensors. These fly from army’s aviation base located at Mansbal in north Kashmir every evening. The UAS move in different directions in Kupwara and Bandipore districts to keep a watchful eye on the Line of Control.” a Srinagar-based daily newspaper quoting Indian defence sources reported.

While confirming the deployment of UAS, Indian Defence spokesman Lt Col J S Brar talking to media men in Srinagar said, “Yes, UAS are being used. In fact, UAS and other surveillance devices, including thermal devices, hand held thermal imagers, night vision devices and night vision goggles are being used by army along the Line of Control.” The report said that the UAS were used for the first time by Indian army in 2010 on experimental basis.

[buglerbilly]

'Kiwi Camp' a CIA base - Hager

By John Armstrong 9:15 AM Thursday Sep 1, 2011

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10748724

A new book on the war in Afghanistan reveals that the base which has long housed New Zealand soldiers carrying out reconstruction and aid work is also home to covert operatives from America's Central Intelligence Agency.

Other People's Wars - authored by investigative writer Nicky Hager - says the Defence Force has deliberately kept the public in the dark about the presence of United States intelligence staff at the headquarters of New Zealand's provincial reconstruction team in the Bamiyan province.

Hager says "Kiwi Camp" has been doubling as a secret CIA base - one of several across Afghanistan charged with gathering "actionable intelligence" for use in special forces operations and aerial attacks on insurgents.

The book quotes unidentified former soldiers who have served in Bamiyan during New Zealand's eight-year deployment as saying half a dozen plain clothes American intelligence officers live on the base full-time and are privy to intelligence gathered by New Zealand troops when they go out on patrol across the region.

The book includes a photograph taken last year in Bamiyan of one American intelligence chief with gun and holster.

Under the deal with Washington by which New Zealand took over the base, the CIA operatives receive protection, meals, medical assistance and logistical support courtesy of the Defence Force.

Hager says the camp has also been used by America's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping on electronic communications worldwide.

He also claims that under a secret agreement with the United States, New Zealand intelligence personnel have worked out of Bamiyan following training by the National Security Agency.

Hager - best known for his expose in The Hollow Men of the inner workings of the Don Brash-led National Party - points to what he sees as a glaring gap between the official picture of the provincial reconstruction team's work in Bamiyan and the reality of a deployment long "entangled" with the American military's strategy for countering the Taliban.

New Zealand has had a provincial reconstruction team of up to 140 personnel in Bamiyan since 2003. According to the Defence Force, the team is tasked with maintaining security, providing advice and assistance to the provincial governor and the Afghan National Police, and managing New Zealand aid projects in the region.

Hager, however, accuses the Defence Force of running a continuing public relations campaign concentrated on producing "rosy stories" showing friendly New Zealand soldiers building schools, sinking wells and handing out gifts to smiling children.
He obtained copies of confidential reports which reveal the Defence Force has sought to "generate and maintain public support" for the deployment through a "continuous flow" of positive commentary.

This "pro-active strategy" was considered necessary to assure the New Zealand public that Defence Force personnel were "not going to war", that the focus of the mission was reconstruction and that Kiwi Camp was very much a New Zealand operation.

The book, however, questions just how much successful aid and reconstruction work has been carried out by New Zealand soldiers in Bamiyan, quoting one Army commander as saying there was no long-term view of what the provincial reconstruction team was trying to achieve.

Hager also claims that some of New Zealand's SAS soldiers were privately unhappy about being deployed by the current Government in frontline operations in Kabul against suicide bombers and that being used as a signal of National's "pro-American loyalties".

Hager's latest book, which chronicles New Zealand's near-decade long involvement in Afghanistan as part of the post-September 11 "war on terror" and examines the last Labour Government's struggle to stay out of the Iraq war, is the result of interviews with military officers, defence and foreign affairs officials, Beehive-based political staff, intelligence operatives and other insiders. He also obtained thousands of pages of classified documents from a variety of sources.

The book was delivered to retailers this morning without any prior publicity for fear that authorities might seek a court-imposed injunction to block its sale because of security sensitivities surrounding its contents.

While it is expected that attempts will be made to discredit the book and its author, the veracity of the findings of Hager's previous investigations, which include a landmark expose of New Zealand's security and intelligence organisations in the 1990s, has never come under serious challenge.

His Seeds of Distrust, which covered Labour's political management of the vexed issue of genetic engineering, had a major bearing on the 2002 election campaign.

While both Labour and National may be embarrassed by Hager's findings, Other People's Wars is unlikely to have the same impact on this year's election. The work is instead highly critical of New Zealand's defence and foreign affairs bureaucracy for crossing the line into politics in its desire to see a resumption of the strong security ties the military enjoyed with the United States and Britain prior to New Zealand's adoption of the anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s.

Other notable features of the book include:

* Defence Force staff responsible for the deployment of Orion aircraft and Anzac frigates to the Gulf in the "war against terror" ignored instructions from then prime minister Helen Clark to keep their operations separate from those being conducted by the United States against Iraq. The book quotes unidentified officials and former diplomats as agreeing that Clark - lacking a strong defence minister - fought a lone battle against neverending efforts by the Defence and Foreign Affairs ministries to rewrite Government policy and buy military equipment which would enable New Zealand to build bridges with the United States.

* a New Zealand Defence Force signals intelligence officer
working alongside the Americans at Afghanistan's Bagram air base tracked Taliban insurgents in Pakistan which were later the targets of attacks.

* another New Zealand intelligence officer seconded to Bagram joked on his Facebook page about not finding Osama bin Laden but added he had "widowed a few wives, though".

* New Zealand SAS soldiers deployed to Afghanistan in the early stages of the "war on terror" got fed up with the gung-ho "killing terrorists" mentality of the Americans and their treatment of captured or suspected insurgents.

* the Ministry of Foreign Affairs drafted a letter on behalf of the Kabul-based government and got it signed by the Afghan president to maintain the pretence that New Zealand's provincial reconstruction team had been "invited" to come to Afghanistan.

* New Zealand diplomats resorted to underhand tricks when they did not get their way with the last Labour Government. For example, when Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials did not like a particular Government policy decision, New Zealand's ambassadors in Washington and Canberra were told to sound out the views of the local bureaucrats. The ministry would then tell Government ministers that the Americans and Australians had made it known they were very concerned and there could be "relationship implications".

* senior officers spent hundreds of thousands of dollars using the Air Force's 757's to fly themselves to international air shows and take part in international study tours.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Wants ROE Agreement With US

September 01, 2011

Associated Press|by Adam Goldman and Kathy Gannon

ISLAMABAD - In the aftermath of the secret U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden, Pakistani officials want a detailed agreement spelling out U.S. rules of engagement inside Pakistan, officials in both countries say, but Washington's refusal to sign a binding document threatens to create another point of friction in the long-troubled relationship.

Pakistan military officials want the U.S. to sign what is called a "memorandum of understanding," an agreement they want to include such details as the number of CIA operatives working in Pakistan, notification before U.S. drone strikes, intelligence gathered and a written promise about Pakistan's role if al-Qaida's new leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, is found in Pakistan.

"There can be no more gray areas," said a senior Pakistani military official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to speak publicly about diplomatic negotiations.

The surge in trouble this year between Pakistan and the U.S. began with the February killing of two Pakistanis by Raymond Davis, a CIA-contracted American spy working without Pakistan's knowledge. Davis pleaded self-defense but it took weeks of wrangling before he was released in exchange for so-called "blood money" paid to the dead men's relatives.

The bin Laden raid further infuriated the Pakistani military, which saw it as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty, and it now feels it needs the agreement to ensure it would be involved in - or be able to stop - any similar U.S. attacks in the future. The agreement would also allay fears in Islamabad that the CIA is operating behind Pakistan's back, and shore up the military's reputation, which was badly battered when the U.S. helicopters slipped into Pakistan air space undetected for the bin Laden attack.

But former and current American officials say the U.S. will not commit any specifics to paper because it could limit the flexibility of its operations. Instead, the U.S. is preparing a broad statement of principles that could be completed in the coming weeks.

"There will not be a (memorandum of understanding) covering all aspects of the relationship with annexes spelling out permitted behaviors," said a senior U.S. official. "There is, however, the possibility of a brief bilateral statement of principles that would identify common interests and goals."

Another senior U.S. official said that while Pakistan would not get all the information it wants about U.S. intelligence operations, it gets much more than Washington gives most other countries.

Similar negotiations are taking place between the U.S. and Afghanistan, with Afghan officials seeking detailed guarantees on the future of U.S. troops and aid, but Americans insisting on a vague agreement.

In Pakistan, the U.S. is negotiating with the civilian government, it's not clear whether the country's powerful military establishment would veto a broad statement of principles.

John Brennan, President Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, said the U.S. wants to "work as closely as possible with the Pakistanis...and we're doing that on a regular basis."

He downplayed reports of friction.

"There's a lot of things that come out in certain places that, I think, overstate the extent of displeasure in certain areas," he told The Associated Press in an interview. "I'll leave it at that."

Relations between Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI, which falls under the military command, and the CIA hit rock bottom after the bin Laden raid. Pakistanis were particularly angered by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta's stinging comments the ISI was either incompetent or complicit in not finding bin Laden, who was hiding not far from Islamabad. Two senior Pakistani officials, including a former security officer, said Panetta sought to assuage Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani with an apology following those statements.

Yet Panetta's words continue to reverberate. Pakistani officials fret that there were will be repeat of the bin Laden raid if al-Zawahri is found in Pakistan. They also worry about the new director of the CIA, David Petraeus, who Pakistani officials say has a frosty relationship with Kayani.

Petraeus wanted the ability to take the fight into Pakistan while serving as military commander in Afghanistan, according to a Pakistani official says and a former senior U.S. official. Now that he has the authority to run covert operations at the CIA, the Pakistani official says his government fears he might decide to ramp up unilateral operations in Pakistan.

Without an agreement, Pakistani officials say there were will only be an atmosphere of distrust.

But U.S. officials counter that while relations have sunk very low, the CIA and the ISI have never stopped sharing intelligence, with one saying the relationship is getting "incrementally better." They point to information sharing with the FBI from local law enforcement after the Aug. 13 kidnapping of an American in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

And on important fronts like securing Pakistan's nuclear weapons, the U.S. and Pakistan continue to cooperate.

---

AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this story from Washington, D.C.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Russian president calls for regional solutions in Afghanistan and neighboring nations

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, September 2, 8:21 PM

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that the fate of Afghanistan and surrounding nations should be decided by regional powers, an apparent call for reduced U.S. engagement.

The remarks appear to mark a new effort by Moscow to make strategic and economic inroads in Afghanistan at the expense of the United States, whose relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai have become strained.

“What is happening in Afghanistan in the security sphere ultimately lies on our shoulders, so we need to strengthen cooperation within regional organizations” Medvedev said.

In a sign of Russia’s effort to exert influence in the region, Medvedev announced that a deal will be signed early next year with Afghanistan’s northern neighbor, Tajikistan, to extend the presence of Russian troops in the country by 49 more years.

Medvedev and Karzai met at a four-nation summit in the capital of Tajikistan that also included Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, whose countries both share porous borders with Afghanistan.

Medvedev singled out the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Collective Security Treaty Organization, two Russia-dominated security blocs comprising mainly former Soviet Central Asian members, as being key to preserving stability.

The United States controls a strategically valuable military air transit base in Kyrgyzstan some 1,000 kilometers (650 miles) north of Kabul that is used to ferry troops in and out of the region. It also provides military assistance to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Central Asian nations along Afghanistan’s northern border have grown increasingly nervous about the prospect of regional unrest following the planned pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2014.

Meanwhile, Russia has frequently criticized what it perceives to be NATO’s failure to quash Afghanistan’s multibillion dollar heroin trade. Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, much of which makes its way to the Russian market through Central Asia.

While the governments of Russia and Central Asian nations have spoken frequently about the need for a coordinated military approach to deal with these challenges, progress has been hampered by diverging views on the specific responsibilities of the fledging security alliances.

By securing a deal to maintain its military presence in Tajikistan for half a century, Russia ensures it will remain a stakeholder in Central Asian security for the foreseeable future. Under the existing arrangement, the base agreement was to expire in 2014.

The 201st Motorized Rifle Division deployed in Tajikistan numbers 7,500 servicemen and is the largest current deployment of Russian troops abroad. It is based in three garrisons — near Dushanbe and in the southern cities of Kulyab and Kurgan-Tube.

Russia’s military presence proved instrumental in negotiating an end to the civil war that ravaged Tajikistan in the 1990s.

Moscow has been strongly pressuring Tajikistan to allow it to revive a 1990s-era arrangement whereby Russian border troops were posted on the Tajik-Afghan border. Rakhmon’s government has resisted those overtures, however, amid concerns that it could undermine the country’s sovereignty.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are looking to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, both mountainous countries with a largely untapped potential for hydropower production, as a major future source of electricity.

One project, known as CASA-1000, envisions the creation of a 750-kilometer electricity line to transmit surplus electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Medvedev said the Russian government was willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the project, which is estimated will cost around $500 million to complete.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghans Anxious About Troops Departures

September 02, 2011

Associated Press|by Deb Reichmann

KABUL, Afghanistan - It's been a tough summer in Afghanistan: Foreign troops started leaving. The Afghan president's half brother was assassinated. Suicide bombers keep killing government officials. The Taliban shot down a helicopter, killing 30 Americans. Civilian casualties are up and many Afghans fear their nation will plunge into civil war once the foreign forces go home.

Every chance they get, U.S. officials try to reassure the Afghan people that America is not abandoning Afghanistan. "There will be no rush for the exits," America's new ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, said when he arrived in Kabul just weeks ago.

Yet President Barack Obama's decision to pull out 10,000 troops before December and another 23,000 next year has stoked fear among Afghans convinced that the international community's commitment is coming to a close. Afghans don't share the U.S.-led coalition's confidence that Afghan police and soldiers are ready to secure the nation by 2014, and others worry the Afghan economy will collapse if foreign troops go home and donors get stingy with aid.

Those fears exist despite widespread public fatigue with the war and with the thousands of international troops forces, whose presence offends the Afghans' sense of pride and nationalism.

"Even people who have senior positions in the government or own large businesses in Afghanistan are either leaving the country or transferring assets abroad," said Ahmad Khalid Majidyar, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington who instructs U.S. military officers about terrorism and Afghan culture and politics.

It didn't help that Obama's troop withdrawal announcement came just as warmer weather was triggering a spike in fighting between the Taliban and coalition and Afghan forces, he said. The details of Obama's pullout plan also were released just as Afghan security forces started taking responsibility for security in seven areas - the beginning of the transition that is making the Afghan public so uneasy.

Syed Salahuddin Agha, a 64-year-old former teacher in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, said the foreign forces never should have interfered in Afghanistan.

"All the people who wanted them here will now be in grave danger from the Taliban because the Taliban have grown stronger than ever. Now, we will all have to face the aftermath," he said. "Mostly, people feel betrayed and used by the foreigners."

Many Afghans don't believe their nation's forces are ready to take the lead. Others worry that once foreign combat troops leave or move into support roles by the end of 2014, civil war will erupt and the Afghan army and police forces will splinter along ethnic lines.

"There are lots of disputes among the people and all those disputes will rise up and everybody will take revenge and kill each other. Basically a civil war will start," said Hayatullah Tawhidy, a 38-year-old shopkeeper in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

"We are not happy with American forces in our country," he added. "But we don't know what will happen when they leave."

History, they worry here, could be about to repeat itself.

Many Afghans felt abandoned by the U.S. after 1989, when the Soviet army withdrew from Afghanistan. U.S. support to mujahedeen fighters battling the Soviets dried up quickly and Afghanistan sank into civil war. That was followed by the rise of the Taliban and the Sept. 11 attacks by al-Qaida, which used Afghanistan as a sanctuary.

"If America leaves our country, the situation will get worse," said Khaidad Mahmand, a 28-year-old mobile phone seller in Jalalabad. "The Taliban are strong and if the Americans leave, they will get stronger. In a very short period of time, the Taliban will come in and take over the government. Unfortunately, our Afghan forces don't have the capability to handle the situation."

Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, who is in charge of training Afghan security forces, says the army and police are performing better than the Afghan people think. He insists that the Afghan security forces will meet President Hamid Karzai's goal of taking the lead from coalition forces by the end of 2014.

"People's perception of the Afghan forces is two years old," he said.

But positive progress reports from the U.S.-led coalition have done little to curb the fear.

People smile when they are asked about their future plans because so many Afghans, long accustomed to danger and uncertainty, have learned to live for the day.

"Future personal plans? That's funny," said Abdul Hakim Jan, a 34-year-old businessman in Kandahar. "We stopped making plans related to anything years ago. ... We all are just confused right now."

A barrage of negative summer headlines makes it hard to hold onto hope, ranging from "Afghan leader's half brother gunned down in south," to "United Nations: Afghan civilian death toll up 15 percent."

A recent report by the International Crisis Group says the international community must shoulder some blame for the continued turmoil.

"Despite billions of dollars in aid, state institutions remain fragile and unable to provide good governance, deliver basic services to the majority of the population or guarantee human security," the report said.

U.S. officials, though, are quick to list their accomplishments.

In Helmand province in the south, where tens of thousands of coalition and Afghan forces routed insurgents from their strongholds, security has improved enough so that justice centers could be set up in three districts, said Alisa Stack, deputy chief of staff for stability operations at the U.S.-lead coalition headquarters in Kabul.

She said the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission just held an outreach meeting in Helmand and a nonprofit organization called Women for Afghan Women, based in Kabul, has contracted to provide civil law, women's rights and family counseling training throughout the province. Moreover, the first stage of construction on a new Helmand business park is more than half done and already has attracted more than a dozen businesses.

"Throughout Afghanistan at all levels - the central government, provincial government, district governments and even to some extent in village or small community efforts - the capability, the capacity is growing in leaps and bounds," Stack says. "Wherever we see security improve, we see the capacity improve."

The nation, however, cannot become self-sufficient unless it can wean itself from foreign troops and foreign aid. According to the World Bank, about 97 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product is derived from spending linked to foreign forces and the donor community.

"Afghanistan could suffer a severe economic depression when foreign troops leave in 2014 unless the proper planning begins now," Ashraf Ghani, head of a commission overseeing the transition to Afghan-led security, wrote in a policy memo he sent to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"For Rent" signs have already popped up in Kabul on large houses once occupied by international workers who have finished their work and left, said Mohammad Qurban Haqjo, chief executive officer of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries. The gradual withdrawal of foreign combat troops by 2014 also has spawned fears among investors inside and outside the country, he said.

"When I am encouraging Afghan investors to come invest in Afghanistan, they say `Let's see what will happen after 2014,'" Haqjo said.

---
Associated Press writers Mirwais Khan in Kandahar and Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban Take Pakistani Children Hostage

September 02, 2011

Deutsche Presse-Agentur

ISLAMABAD - Taliban militants in Afghanistan have taken hostage about 20 Pakistani children who mistakenly crossed the border, Pakistani officials said Friday.

The children from the tribal district of Bajaur were visiting the Ghaki Pass area, a hill resort, on the border Thursday during the Eid al-Fitr holiday when they crossed into the Afghan province of Kunnar.

"Terrorists on the other side of the border took the children as hostages," said Islam Zaif Khan, the top official in Bajaur. An official at his office later said the militants had released 10 boys under 10 on the same day.

Khan did not say whether the militants were of Afghan origin or Pakistani Taliban who have fled military operations and taken shelter in Afghanistan.

All the children were from the Mamoond tribe, which has formed a tribal militia to fight Taliban militants alongside government forces.

The Mamoond tribe dispatched a group of elders, or jirga, to Afghanistan for negotiations with the Taliban. "Hopefully the jirga will return by this evening, and then we will know the demands of the Taliban," a local tribal elder said Friday.

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik contacted the Afghan government and requested it take measures to secure the release of the children, Express Television reported.

Hundreds of militants have fled from Pakistan's north-western region into Afghanistan after Pakistani security operations, particularly in the Bajaur and Swat districts in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

They have conducted several raids on security posts and attacked pro-government tribesmen in border villages.

Last week, hundreds of Taliban from the Afghan province of Nouristan attacked seven Pakistani border posts in the Chitral district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, killing 36 Pakistani soldiers and policemen.

© Copyright 2011 Deutsche Presse-Agentur. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

SEPTEMBER 3, 2011.

At Afghan Military Hospital, Graft and Deadly Neglect

By MARIA ABI-HABIB

KABUL—American officers deployed as mentors in Afghanistan's main military hospital discovered a shocking secret last year: Injured soldiers were routinely dying of simple infections and even starving to death as some corrupt doctors and nurses demanded bribes for food and the most basic of care.


U.S. Air Force
U.S. Gen. William Caldwell IV pinned a medal on a soldier last year at an Afghan military hospital where patient neglect was found to be common.

The discovery, which hasn't previously been reported, added new details to longstanding evidence of gross mismanagement at Dawood National Military Hospital, where most salaries and supplies are paid for by American taxpayers.

Yet the patient neglect continued for months after U.S. officials discovered it, as Afghan officials rebuffed American pressure to take action, multiple documents and testimonies viewed by The Wall Street Journal show.

The way senior Afghan officials tolerated such deadly graft shows just how deeply rooted corruption has become in President Hamid Karzai's administration, as well as the limits of Washington's ability to rein it in. American advisers have since forced an improvement in conditions at the hospital.

Afghan policeman Ali Noor Hazrat had been admitted to Dawood hospital after being injured in a Taliban rocket attack on a police convoy last fall. Initially patched up by American doctors, he spent his last days starving there while his brother Sher sold off what little land the poor farming family had in order to bribe nurses and doctors for care and food, the brother said in an interview. In photos, Ali's flesh hangs off his frail, boney frame, his eyes heavy with pain. He died on Dec. 27, Afghan government documents show.


U.S. Military Officials
An emaciated Afghan soldier

"Malnourished/starvation," said an internal coalition slide showing Mr. Hazrat, dated Nov. 5, prepared by American mentors at the hospital to document abuse cases. "Willful neglect," another bullet point said.

Sher Hazrat is determined that none of his relatives in the eastern Nangarhar province will consider joining Afghan security forces after what happened at Dawood. "If there's no service for us," he says, "why should we serve our country?"

Such sentiments have raised questions about how the fledgling Afghan military would fare against Taliban insurgents once most U.S. troops depart in 2014.

Dawood is the premier hospital of the Afghan security forces, akin to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the U.S.

As early as 2006, American officers noted evidence of severe dysfunction at the hospital, including patients who appeared to be malnourished, a U.S. military mentor who served there at the time says. He adds that the findings were reported to the Afghan Ministry of Defense, but no action was taken to improve conditions.

In 2008, doctors complained to hospital administrators that patients were being given defective morphine, according to internal documents produced by the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, or NTM-A. Later testing revealed the presence of counterfeit morphine, suggesting that U.S.-procured medicine had been diverted.


Joel van Houdt for The Wall Street Journal
U.S. mentors found mistreatment at Dawood National Military Hospital.

The NTM-A command, headed since November 2009 by U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, is spending $11.6 billion this year alone, more than 90% of it funded by U.S. taxpayers, on building up the Afghan army and police.

The biggest problem, American officials dealing with the hospital concluded by the middle of last year, was the Afghan army's politically connected surgeon general, Gen. Ahmed Zia Yaftali. As early as May 2010, U.S. officials say they confronted Gen. Yaftali about missing pharmaceuticals at the hospital and asked him to investigate. They ultimately came to suspect that he himself was profiting from graft, according to mentors and senior NTM-A commanders. The alleged theft of pharmaceuticals in the hospital has previously been reported by the Associated Press.

In an email to Gen. Caldwell dated August 25, 2010, U.S. Army Col. Gerald Carozza, a senior legal mentor at the Afghan defense ministry, complained that corruption was "deep and wide" within the senior leadership of the Afghan defense ministry and army and urged him to pressure the defense minister to allow various internal investigations to proceed. He said in the email that the Afghan army chief of staff's legal team was developing a case against Gen. Yaftali involving "a $20 million (US) theft from [the defense ministry] and pilfering $153 million (US) worth of medical supplies."

Gen. Yaftali denied all allegations of impropriety in a phone interview and declined to discuss them further, saying he would "only answer" to the Afghan defense ministry.

In his reply to Col. Carozza, Gen. Caldwell argued that the Afghan government needed to take responsibility for combatting corruption in the military. "We're not going to be able to solve this for them. Keep encouraging them to do the right thing," he wrote.

The U.S. government in general has been trying to build Afghan institutions that can solve their own problems, in preparation for an eventual U.S. withdrawal.

"We can build the greatest army, we can build the greatest police force," Gen. Caldwell said in an interview. "But if we don't have the rule of law being implemented...then we were not going to have legitimacy in this government."


Sher Hazrat
Afghan policeman Ali Noor Hazrat starved at Dawood hospital.

In a Sept. 14 visit to the hospital to show America's appreciation to wounded Afghan soldiers, Gen. Caldwell was accompanied by the Afghan army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Sher Mohammed Karimi. There, the two stopped by the bed of an emaciated Afghan soldier. Gen. Caldwell thanked him for his service and let Gen. Karimi pin a U.S. Army achievement medal to the Afghan soldier's bedsheets.

Gen. Caldwell said he was emotionally moved when he saw the patient's condition, but wasn't yet aware that neglect at the hospital was systemic.

Minutes after the American general left, the Afghan soldier—who hadn't been fed by the hospital in weeks—threw out his medal, people present in the hospital say.

A beefed-up group of at least two dozen U.S. military mentors had arrived at the hospital in August 2010 as part of the "surge" of American forces in Afghanistan. They began to deploy throughout the wards, replacing an earlier group that had less direct contact with patients.

By the following month, the new mentors began to document what they describe as horrific conditions. Maggots fed off patients' open wounds. Nurses and doctors refused to help amputees to the bathroom, and they soiled their beds for days.

Several patients died of simple infections because their bandages would go unchanged for weeks, while at least four died of complications related to malnourishment, according to mentors and internal documents.

In late September, Gen. Karimi was invited to attend an Afghan shura, a traditional meeting, at the hospital with Canadian Brigadier Gen. David Neasmith, the assistant commander for army development at the NTM-A. NATO officials pressed Gen. Karimi to address the problem of staff absenteeism and missing medicine, a U.S. mentor who was present says. But Afghan hospital and army officials who attended the meeting steered the conversation away from such issues and asked for raises and promotions, the mentor says.

As weeks passed without progress, the mentors say they assembled more evidence of neglect, including detailed medical charts and photos showing emaciated patients and bedsores a foot long and so deep that bones protruded from them.

In an Oct. 4 document emailed by the mentors to Gen. Neasmith, they complained about the hospital's intensive-care unit, among other issues: "The most dynamic and ill affected is the ICU, whereby favoritism, ambivalence, incompetence coupled with understaffing lead to the untimely deaths of patients daily, occasionally several times per day."

That month, Gen. Caldwell visited the Afghan defense minister, Gen. Abdulrahim Wardak, and persuaded him to launch a new investigation into Gen. Yaftali, according to two U.S. officers. Gen. Wardak and the Afghan defense ministry spokesman didn't reply to repeated requests for comment for this article except to say that Gen. Yaftali is still under investigation.

Gen. Wardak warned that prosecuting Gen. Yaftali would be difficult, saying the surgeon general was too politically connected, according to U.S. officials involved in the issue. Gen. Yaftali fought against the Taliban in the 1990s alongside other ethnic Tajiks who have since became prominent government figures.

In late October, with the Afghan investigation going nowhere and Gen. Yaftali keeping his job, Col. Carozza, NTM-A Inspector General Army Col. Mark Fassl and U.S. Air Force Col. Schuyler Geller, the chief mentor to the hospital, filed a request that the U.S. Defense Department inspector general assist in investigating the hospital.

The coalition declined to make Col. Geller available for an in-person interview. The Canadian military declined to make available Gen. Neasmith, who has since returned to Canada.

According to a November 2010 NTM-A memo titled "Leadership Failure," prepared to assist with the Defense Department investigation, soldiers were going to the operating table without morphine or even sedatives. When one patient demanded medicine, an orderly punched him in the face.

"In addition," the memo went on, "there have been incidents of nurses and orderlies demanding payment for patient treatment and care," including one in which "a patient was left unattended after soiling his bed because the patient or his family could not pay to have the bed cleaned."

A separate presentation, prepared the same month, documented a "loss of 50 pounds" for a policeman named Tajudin after 40 days in the hospital, accompanied by photos showing the patient's wasted frame.

That month, the mentors prepared a patient bill of rights to enforce medical standards at the hospital, informing patients that all medical care should be free and ordering the staff to perform routine checkups. Within days of the bill's being printed and pasted on hospital walls in December, the Afghan staff tore the posters down, according to U.S. officials.

Gen. Caldwell visited the hospital again in December. When he inquired about the soldier to whom he'd awarded a medal, he was shown a healthier-looking patient, according to a person present. On his way out, a tearful American captain told the general that this was an impostor. The real Afghan war hero had died.

By mid-December, Gen. Yaftali, the Afghan army's surgeon-general, was moved out of his job without explanation—after the coalition's commander at the time, Gen. David Petraeus, personally raised the problems at the hospital during a meeting with President Karzai, people familiar with the matter said.

The hospital has seen major improvements since then. A surge of coalition military mentors is helping ensure that Afghan nurses and doctors conduct regular checkups of patients and provide routine feedings and dressing changes. There haven't been any documented cases of starvation since February, American mentors say. In March, Gen. Petraeus brought up the Dawood hospital in a conversation with reporters, citing it as a success story of American efforts against Afghan corruption.

There is no public word about where the investigation into Gen. Yaftali stands, and one U.S. official said record-keeping at the hospital was so poor it may be difficult to sort out how much was actually stolen. Gen. Yaftali, who still receives a monthly army salary heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, said in an interview he expects to be promoted to three-star general.

—Ziaulhaq Sultani and Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com

[buglerbilly]

NATO Kills Ex-Gitmo Detainee in Afghanistan

September 03, 2011

Associated Press|by Rahim Faiez

KABUL, Afghanistan - NATO and Afghan forces killed a former Guantanamo detainee who had become a key al-Qaida affiliate after returning to Afghanistan, officials said Saturday.

Sabar Lal Melma, who was released from Guantanamo in 2007 after five years of detention, had been organizing attacks in eastern Kunar province and funding insurgent operations, NATO spokesman Capt. Justin Brockhoff said.

A NATO statement described Melma as a "key affiliate of the al-Qaida network" who was in contact with senior al-Qaida members in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Troops surrounded Melma's house in Jalalabad city on Friday night and shot him dead when he emerged from the building holding an AK-47 assault rifle. Several other people were detained.

A guard at the house, Mohammad Gul, said a group of American soldiers scaled the walls of the compound around 11 p.m. and stormed the house, shooting Melma in the assault. Three others were detained, Gul said.

Melma had been detained for about five days in August, Gul said.

Melma is not the first former detainee to rejoin the insurgency. In 2009, the Pentagon said 61 detainees, or approximately 11 percent, released from Guantanamo had rejoined the fight. Experts have questioned the validity of that number.

About 520 Guantanamo detainees have been released from custody or transferred to prisons elsewhere in the world.

After the fall of the Taliban, Melma, 49, was given the rank of brigadier general and placed in charge of approximately 600 border security troops in Konar province, according to his military file made public by WikiLeaks.

He was captured in August 2002 while attending a meeting with U.S. military officials in Asadabad and transferred to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in October that same year. He was suspected of helping carry out rocket attacks against U.S. troops.

While imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. determined he was a "probable facilitator for Al-Qaida members" and was also thought to have links to Pakistan's intelligence service.

He was sent back to Afghanistan in September 2007.

NATO said in a statement that coalition forces have captured or killed more than 40 al-Qaida insurgents in eastern Afghanistan this year.

In June 2010, then CIA Director Leon Panetta said only 50 to 100 al-Qaida operatives continued to operate inside Afghanistan. It's not clear if Panetta was referring to commanders or foot soldiers.

In Kabul, meanwhile, a political standoff over the makeup of the legislature continued as police escorted a handful of new lawmakers into parliament despite protests from sitting parliamentarians that the new group is illegitimate.

Afghan election officials ruled last month that nine sitting parliamentarians should be replaced following a review of vote fraud allegations from last year's election.

More than 1,000 police were stationed around the parliament building Saturday in anticipation of violence, but the new lawmakers took their seats without incident, officials said. Saturday was the first day back at work after the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr and many lawmakers had not yet returned from their home provinces.

The nine ousted parliamentarians were blocked from entering and vowed to continue to fight for their seats.

"This is a coup against the Afghan parliament and against democracy," said Mohammad Rafiq Shaher from Herat province, one of the ousted lawmakers.

And in the southern city of Kandahar, officials said NATO forces killed a child and a shopkeeper who were caught up in a firefight between a military patrol and a gunman. The attacker started shooting at the NATO troops and they returned fire, killing the two, said Sher Shah Yosufzai, the deputy police chief of Kandahar province.

He said he had reports that a NATO service member had also been killed in the fighting.

NATO said in a statement that one of its service members was killed in an insurgent attack on Saturday in southern Afghanistan but did not say if it was the same incident and did not provide any further details.

----
Associated Press writers Heidi Vogt and Adam Goldman contributed to this report from Kabul.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Revealed: Australians at the console of Kill TV, when drone strikes take out Afghan targets

Rafael Epstein

September 5, 2011.


File photo: Aerial drones are launched from the flight deck of the guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens. Photo: US Navy

These are TARGET drones thats why they are painted Red/pink

Special forces are involved in this silent and deadly form of 21st century warfare, their commander confirms to Rafael Epstein.

Australia's special forces commander has defended his troops' use of US drones to kill insurgent leaders in southern Afghanistan, a deadly military tactic that gives the enemy no chance to surrender.

Major-General Peter ''Gus'' Gilmore confirmed his senior officers have used missiles, fired from unmanned US aircraft, and defended the tactics and intelligence used when his soldiers go out on missions to ''capture or kill'' Taliban fighters.

''Sometimes it will be an aerial strike, sometimes it will be committing a ground force, sometimes it will be to be patient and wait,'' he said in an interview with the Herald.


An Australian soldier on the ground in Tarin Kowt. Photo: Chris Moore

The targets have no chance to surrender, and the Afghan government has raised concerns.

The drone strikes are dubbed ''Kill TV'' or ''Taliban TV'' because soldiers watch live video feeds of bombs and missiles detonating, with one source admitting it is uncomfortable viewing: ''You can see everything.''

General Gilmore commands soldiers from the secretive Commando and SAS regiments who take part in the NATO-led campaign targeting insurgency leaders. Coalition special forces - including Australians - have tripled their activities, with 1879 missions and 916 ''targets'' killed or captured this year. In 2009 there were 675 missions with 306 killed or captured, according to figures recently released.


Reaper ... drops 225kg laser-guided bombs.

No you plick, its firing a Hellfire missile...........FMD!

One Australian soldier told the Herald what goes through his mind when he has an Afghan suspect fixed in the sights of his weapon. "We're the good guys, they're the bad guys," he said. ''The reality is this isn't worth any [Australian] life and if I think there is a clear moral case, then I ask myself, 'Where is that sword?' "

Another soldier said their tactics were working. "Sometimes you pull the trigger because it's a small price to pay," he says. ''If he gets back, people are gonna die."

In a review of one disputed US drone strike, Kate Clark from the Afghanistan Analysts Network said there were ''systemic concerns'' over the intelligence used and inquiries into casualties did not give ''due attention to existing alternative accounts'' from locals.


[I]Predator ... missiles can destroy targets 12km away.

The ABC's Four Corners says it has documented several incidents in which Australian soldiers targeted the wrong people and civilians were killed. General Gilmore has not seen the ABC report, to be aired tonight, but has backed his soldiers.

"When they are on the ground, by themselves, and they have to make that split-second decision, cascading through their mind is this long line of training," he said. "[And] I don't worry because I have huge trust in our training and the judgment of the guys."

Critics of the ADF and NATO want more details on the soldiers rules of engagement and intelligence processes.


Remote control ... how the console operator flies a drone aircraft.

''If the ADF Special Forces believe that they are in full compliance with international law, the onus is on them to demonstrate that fact,'' said the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killing, Philip Alston. ''And the risks that follow from such a carte blanche [secrecy] are not hard to see.''

Every night, dozens of elite troops from Australia, the US, Britain and Afghanistan knock down doors, fly to local domestic compounds and pounce on suspect four-wheel-drives. They act on an array of intelligence that is compiled and filtered to decide which Afghans the soldiers should detain or kill because they are suspected insurgency leaders, fighters or financiers. Military lawyers are also part of the process.

''We don't do assassinations,'' said another special forces source, ''but we won't risk the lives of our soldiers, it's not about capture at all costs.''

The Herald has been told the details of one drone strike, which has not been referenced on the ADF's website.

In 2008, an Australian special forces commanding officer ordered a strike on an insurgent leader and four armed men, seen planting a home-made bomb 20 to 30 kilometres from the Australian base in Oruzgan province. Permission from NATO command in Kandahar was rescinded several times as the insurgents' vehicles passed hamlets and small compounds, where the risk to civilians was considered too great.

The strike was finally authorised when the Afghans stopped moving - ''they were having a smoko,'' according to one source.

Australian soldiers watched as the first weapon appeared to kill four of the men. The fifth man was killed with a second strike, after he was seen injured by the initial attack. A warplane from another country was also involved, but did not fire any weapons.

"The angst we go through with every single activity that may involve targeting or death, it is unprecedented," said one soldier.

The US can have more than 50 such aircraft in the skies above Afghanistan at any one time. The Predator and more advanced Reaper drones can drop as many as two 225-kilogram laser-guided bombs and fire up to four Hellfire missiles from 12 kilometres away. The $28 million aircraft fly for up to 18 hours without refuelling, controlled by pilots on the US mainland. They are maintained in Afghanistan by private contractors.

Sources say the technology helps the military avoid civilian casualties, with vision from the drones analysed for hours and sometimes days to confirm the target. Afterwards, video of locals rushing to the blast site is analysed, and phone calls and emails are intercepted to assess who was killed.

The ADF won't release detailed rules of engagement, methods used to compile target lists, or details of drone strikes, but says its operations comply with international law.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/revealed-australians-at-the-console-of-kill-tv-when-drone-strikes-take-out-afghan-targets-20110904-1jslm.html#ixzz1Wzrt0T9O

[buglerbilly]

Pakistani elders in talks with Taliban over kidnappings

Terrorist group in Afghanistan has captured some 40 Bajaur teenage boys as punishment for tribe's support of military

Reuters in Islamabad

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 September 2011 17.10 BST


A border police official guards a checkpoint at the Ghaki pass on the border between Pakistan's Bajaur region and Afghanistan's Kunar province where the abducted teenagers were on an outing. Photograph: Hanifullah Khan/EPA

Pakistani tribal elders are holding talks with Taliban militants in Afghanistan for the release of scores of young tribesmen kidnapped during an outing along the border, officials have said.

The teenagers from Pakistan's north-western Bajaur region were abducted by the militants on Thursday while on an outing in Afghanistan's border province of Kunar on the Muslim festival of Eid.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, many of whom have fled into Afghanistan in the face of military offensives in Bajaur, on Saturday claimed responsibility for the kidnapping as punishment against the tribe for supporting the military.

"A tribal jirga [council] from Bajaur is currently holding talks with the terrorists," Pakistan military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said. "The future course of action will be decided by tribal elders from both sides of the border."

Pakistani government officials had initially said around 60 boys from the ethnic Pashtun Mamoun tribe took part in the outing. But about 20 under 10 years old were allowed to return, while up to 40 others aged between 12 and 14 years old were held.

Abbas said in total 40 young tribesmen were abducted. He said 10 of the boys were released while 30 were still in custody.

Under centuries-old customs, tribesmen living along the frontier can freely move across the border.

The Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said they had a plan of mass kidnappings and expected people in large numbers to visit the border region on Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

Sultan Zeb, a tribal elder in Bajaur, said militants loyal to Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, the top Taliban commander in Bajaur who Pakistani authorities say has also fled to Afghanistan, were involved in the kidnapping.

"We have established contact with the Taliban through their relatives and friends and we hope they will release the abducted people very soon. The kidnappers have not made demand for ransom or any other demand for the release," he told Reuters.

The Mamoun tribe is opposed to al-Qaida and the Taliban, and has raised militias to fight them, angering militants who often hit back with bombings and shooting attacks.

Bajaur, which lies opposite to Kunar, has long been an infiltration route for militants entering Afghanistan to fight US-led forces there.

But Pakistani officials say many of the Pakistani militants who have fled to Afghanistan have established sanctuaries there.

Pakistan last month lodged a protest with the Afghan government after officials said hundreds of militants from Afghanistan launched a raid on Pakistani border posts in the north-western Chitral district, killing up to 36 people – most of them soldiers.

Twenty-seven Pakistani servicemen and 45 militants died in clashes in July when some 600 militants from Afghanistan attacked Pakistani border villages.

[buglerbilly]

Senior al-Qaeda leader arrested in Pakistan

A senior al Qaeda leader responsible for plotting attacks in Europe and America has been arrested in south west Pakistan, army officials said.


Younis al-Mauritani focused on hitting economically important targets in America, Europe and Australia according to a statement from Pakistan’s military Photo: AP/ALAMY

By Ben Farmer, Kabul

5:05PM BST 05 Sep 2011

Younis al-Mauritani was seized in Quetta along with two colleagues in the latest blow to the terrorist network which has seen a string of leaders killed since Osama bin Laden was shot dead in May.

Al-Mauritani was a senior figure in the network’s external operations wing and focused on hitting economically important targets in America, Europe and Australia according to a statement from Pakistan’s military.

“He was planning to target United States economic interests including gas/oil pipelines, power generating dams and strike ships/oil tankers through explosive-laden speed boats in international waters,” the statement said.

The army named the two other arrested operatives as Abdul Ghaffar al-Shami and Messara al-Shami.

A Western intelligence source said the arrest was “a good catch,” if confirmed.

Al-Mauritani was last year implicated in a plot to launch terror attacks in Germany when it was disclosed militants from Hamburg had travelled to Pakistan to discuss their plans with him.

Since Osama bin Laden was killed in a United States special forces raid in Abbottabad, a string of al Qaeda leaders have been killed.

Leon Panetta, America’s new defence secretary, predicted in July that defeat of the network was within reach.

Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who led the external operations wing, was killed last week in the Waziristan border region, American officials said.

Relations between Washington and Islamabad plummeted after the raid against bin Laden, with Pakistan’s government furious America had acted on its own deep inside their territory.

The capture of Al-Mauritani was a joint operation with Pakistan’s military spy agency, however, the statement said.

“This operation was planned and conducted with technical assistance of United State Intelligence Agencies with whom Inter Services Intelligence has a strong, historic intelligence relationship,” the military said.

[buglerbilly]

German hikers missing in Afghanistan found dead

Police say bodies of two men found in sacks under rocks near Salang Pass in Hindu Kush mountains

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 September 2011 12.10 BST


Afghan officials stand at the Salang Pass where the bodies of two Germans have been found. Photograph: Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images

The bodies of two Germans who went missing while hiking in the Hindu Kush mountains nearly three weeks ago were found in sacks under a boulder in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, local officials said.

Abdul Basir Salangi, the governor of Parwan province, said the men were found under a large boulder about 2.5 miles (4km) from the south end of the Salang Pass, where they began their hike on 19 August.

Police General Rajab said the two bodies were inside cloth sacks. He did not know how the victims had died.

The deputy provincial police chief, Ziaul Rahman, said the bodies were very high up on the mountain and he had requested a helicopter to get them down.

The region where the two men disappeared is not controlled by the Taliban. Last month, Afghan police said they believed the Germans were lost or may have become victims of crime. The agency they were working for has not been named.

The German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, had previously said German and Afghan officials were searching for the pair and could not rule out kidnapping.

In Berlin on Monday, the German foreign ministry spokesman, Andreas Peschka, said his office was aware of the reports, but was unable to confirm that the Germans had been killed or give further details.

"I can only say that we are pursuing all angles to clarify the situation as swiftly as possible," he said.

The two men travelled to the south end of the Salang Pass, north of Kabul, at around 8am on the day they went missing, and told their driver they were going into the mountains.

They promised to return at 4pm. The driver waited until 6pm before contacting the authorities.

The Salang Pass is a major route through the Hindu Kush mountains and connects the Afghan capital, Kabul, with the northern part of the country.

Germany has been a major contributor to the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, and currently has 5,200 troops stationed in the country, mostly in the north.

[Milne Bay]

Afghanistan's front line

Posted September 06, 2011 23:33:00

Afghanistan correspondent Sally Sara takes 7.30 to a combat outpost in the country's east for an exclusive look at the dangerous and relentless fight against insurgents.

An interesting short video from one of the eastern provices:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-06/afghanistans-front-line/2874190

[buglerbilly]

Thales’s Hermes 450 exceeds 50,000 flight hours

September 06, 2011



Thales UK’s Hermes 450 unmanned air system (UAS) fleet has reached a major milestone, having now flown more than 50,000 operational flying hours in support of UK operations. After more than 4,000 sorties, the Hermes 450 system continues to deliver crucial battle-winning capability, providing the lion’s share of airborne ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance) in Afghanistan.

Thales’s innovative ISTAR service-provision contract began in June 2007 in response to an urgent operational requirement (UOR) issued by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). The ISTAR service is delivered by Thales UK, working closely with the Thales / Elbit joint venture, U-TacS, and the UK MoD operational team, particularly 32 and 47 regiments of the Royal Artillery. The Hermes 450 system continues to relay real-time electro optical / infrared (EO / IR) imagery to the ground control stations and remote viewing terminals, providing key intelligence for commanders. The operational experience of the Hermes 450 system as a key ISTAR asset within the battlespace has paved the way for the future Watchkeeper system soon to enter service with the UK MoD as the new generation tactical UAS.

Watchkeeper will provide a dual payload, enhanced image and exploitation capability, including EO / IR imaging, and synthetic aperture radar / ground moving target indicator (SAR / GMTI) capabilities. Flight and systems trials continue in the UK, at Parc Aberporth in West Wales, with collective training to start at Boscombe Down flying over Salisbury plain.

Colonel Mark Thornhill, Commander of 1st Artillery Brigade, the organisation responsible for providing the people from 32 and 47 Regiments and their equipment to operations, says: "We have now achieved 50,000 operational hours of Hermes 450, helping to meet the significant number of intelligence requirements that TFH [Task Force Helmand] generates each day.

"The capability has been absolutely key to many of the TFH operations. The Hermes 450 system is flown from and maintained in Afghanistan. This enables close liaison between flight crews and the end-user that they support."

He adds: “This major milestone in the life of Hermes 450 has been possible as a result of an unrelenting determination by many personnel, both military and civilian, including from the UAS team in the MoD’s Defence Equipment & Support organisation, contractor Thales UK and the soldiers of 1st Artillery Brigade.”

Victor Chavez, Chief Executive of Thales UK, says: “The Hermes 450 UAS fleet has proved to be a vital ISTAR capability to the British Armed Forces in Afghanistan, undoubtedly saving lives in the course of its missions. Building on lessons learnt on current operations, Watchkeeper will also soon be an invaluable asset for commanders on the ground.”

Thales UK is the prime contractor for the MoD’s two tactical UAS programmes: the Hermes 450 fleet, which Thales UK owns and leases to the MoD under an innovative ‘ISTAR-by-thehour’ contract; and the more capable Watchkeeper system that will be MoD owned and operated.

Source: Thales

[buglerbilly]

Civilian With Military Killed in Afghanistan

September 06, 2011

Associated Press|by Rahim Faiez

KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday that an American civilian employee was killed in Kabul province, the second announcement of an international civilian death in two days.

J.D. Hardesty, a spokesman for the corps in Kabul, declined to give further details because the death was being investigated. NATO has previously said that the civilian was killed Monday but had not given any other details.

About 60 miles (100 kilometers) to the north of the capital, meanwhile, Afghan police retrieved the bodies of two Germans found Monday on a remote mountain after they disappeared while hiking in Parwan province nearly three weeks ago.

While the area of eastern Afghanistan in and around the capital is relatively safe, the city of Kabul is a target for Taliban attacks and criminal kidnappings are common throughout the region.

In Parwan, officials abandoned a plan to use helicopters to bring the bodies out because of the difficulty of flying in the high-altitude region of the Hindu Kush mountains where the bodies were found. Instead, police hiked to the site and back over more than eight hours and carried the bodies down, said Parwan province Police Chief Gen. Sher Ahmad Maladani.

The police handed the bodies over to U.S. soldiers, who loaded them into vehicles. A soldier at the site, Staff Sgt. Ashley Waruch, said that the bodies would be flown back to their families.

Their bodies were badly decomposed making it difficult for officials to determine the cause of death. Initial reports indicated they had been shot but Salamg district police chief Quddus Khan said on closer inspection the Germans might have died from blunt trauma. It was unclear when they died.

A spokesman for the Afghan agriculture ministry said the two worked for a German development and assistance organization, GIZ. Majeed Qarar, the spokesman, said they were advisers to the agriculture ministry and that they regularly went hiking in the mountains in Parwan.

A spokesman for GIZ declined to comment, referring all queries to the German foreign ministry.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle confirmed that two bodies were found in Parwan province but refused to give any further details until they had been identified beyond doubt.

The region where the Germans disappeared is not a Taliban area. Last month Afghan police speculated the two men could have gotten lost in the high mountains or may have been the victims of a crime.

The day they disappeared, the two traveled to the south end of the Salang Pass, north of Kabul, around 8 a.m. and told their driver they were going into the mountains. They promised to return at 4 p.m. The driver waited until 6 p.m. before contacting local authorities, and the search began.

The Salang Pass is a major route through the Hindu Kush mountains that connects the Afghan capital, Kabul, with the northern part of the nation.

Germany has been a major contributor to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan and currently has some 5,200 troops stationed in the country, largely in the north.

In eastern Afghanistan, meanwhile, a district government head and three of his bodyguards were killed in a roadside bomb blast, said Ahmadzia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the government of Nangarhar province.

The official, Asel Ahmad Khogyani, was driving in Sherzad district on Tuesday afternoon when a remotely detonated bomb went off, killing everyone in the vehicle, Abdulzai said.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[Milne Bay]

Diggers survive multiple bomb blasts

Updated September 07, 2011 10:54:23


Two Australian soldiers have survived four separate bomb attacks on their armoured vehicle in five weeks in Afghanistan.

The Mentoring Task Force Three soldiers were treated for mild brain injuries after four improvised explosive device (IED) strikes on their Bushmaster between July 19 and August 24.

"Certain wounds that result from an IED strike don't always present immediately in some individuals exposed to a blast event," Joint Operations Command health director Group Captain Karen Leshinskas in a Defence statement.

"These soldiers have been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury as a result of the multiple IED blasts.

"The two MTF-3 soldiers underwent further assessment by specialists at the mild Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic at Kandahar."

Both soldiers are in a satisfactory condition and one has now returned to full duty.

In a separate incident, an Australian special forces soldier sustained minor wounds while taking part in a search mission targeting IEDs in Tarin Kot on August 23.

He received medical treatment and has since returned to duty.

The number of Australian soldiers wounded in action in Afghanistan this year now stands at 26.

One-hundred-and-ninety-one soldiers have been wounded in Afghanistan since 2001.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-07/diggers-wounded-in-afghan-operations/2874824

[buglerbilly]

Nato stops sending prisoners to Afghan jails over torture fears

General said to have ordered suspension of transfers ahead of UN report expected to tell of beatings and electric shocks

Jeremy Kelly in Kabul and Richard Norton-Taylor

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 September 2011 18.30 BST


Afghan police, who are the focus of criticism in a forthcoming UN report, attend a graduation ceremony in Herat. Photograph: Jalil Rezayee/EPA

Nato has suspended the transfer of detainees to some Afghan jails after fears they were being subjected to systematic torture, British defence officials have said.

The directive, issued this week, comes ahead of the imminent release of a UN report into detainees that is expected to be highly critical of the Afghan police, who process many of the detainees through the fledgling justice system.

The report is understood to outline how prisoners are routinely beaten, given electric shocks and subjected to other human rights violations, some within private jails run by police commanders.

The order from the head of the Nato-led mission, General John Allen, is understood to have directed with immediate effect that prisoners not be transferred to nine locations, including one in Kabul, where the abuse was reportedly the worst.

"With appropriate caution, ISAF [Nato's International Security Assistant Force] has taken the prudent measure to suspend detainee transfer to certain facilities," a Nato official said.

However, the defence officials said the warnings did not apply to Helmand province, where most British troops are based. The province's northern neighbour, Uruzgan, is thought to be where abuse is most common.

An Uruzgan tribal elder has provided the Guardian with mobile phone footage of a man being stripped naked in front of a few dozen other men who, amid laughter from the onlookers, is then briefly chased with a stick that they threaten to sodomise him with.

The elder, Mohammad Dawood Khan, said the perpetrators were all Uruzgan police and while none were wearing uniforms, a police truck is parked next to the group.

Separate research by human rights observers has uncovered medieval-like torture systems, including a stretching rack, and reports of a juvenile detention centre head who together with his son raped teenage inmates.

It appears money is often the motivation for the mistreatment of detainees. A former district governor in Uruzgan, Haji Salari, explained how it was usually perpetrated. "When the police arrest someone from the villages or the bazaar, as soon as they take them inside the jail they ask the prisoner for 2000 rupees or afghanis (£28)," he said. This was considered an "entry fee" for the prison, which equates to about 20% of a regular policeman's monthly salary.

"Inside the prison they put pressure on the prisoners by beating them. There's no power for electric shocks so they use wood on the soles of the feet and on the ass."

After the prisoner had been abused, Haji Salari said, they would be allowed to have family members visit. "When the visitors come, the prisoner will explain the situation to his family and plead with them to get them out. Then they have to find money to give to the police chief, or police officer [for their release]."

The head of the Uruzgan Ulema Council, Maulawi Hamidullah Akhund, said he had continually warned authorities of torture inside the province's jails. "Many, many times I have heard from prisoners that they have been beaten in the jail," he said.

He claimed he convinced the Ministry of Justice to send a delegation to Uruzgan eight months ago but after their visit, nothing changed.

The high court in London last year imposed strict conditions on the transfer by British forces of suspected insurgents to Afghan detention centres, after hearing evidence of "horrible abuse" in breach of international law.

However the court said then that the transfer of suspects to National Directorate of Security (NDS) prisons in Kandahar and Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand, should be allowed provided existing safeguards were "strengthened by observance of specified conditions". The court insisted that safeguards must include the right of British monitors to get regular access to the detainees.

A researcher for Human Rights Watch Afghanistan, Heather Barr, said she had not seen the UN report but its contents were not surprising: "But we are glad to see ISAF responding to it even through it's overdue. We hope it's not temporary until the bad press passes."

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan suicide bombs kill 19: police

September 7, 2011 - 5:04PM .

Twin suicide bombs targeting security forces have killed 19 people and wounded 44 others in southwest Pakistan, police say.

Police said they were investigating whether the attacks, which happened in the city of Quetta on Wednesday, were revenge for the recent arrests of three top al-Qaeda suspects suspected of planning attacks on Australia, the United States and Europe.

One attacker detonated his bomb-laden car outside the residence of the deputy chief of the Frontier Corps, before a second attacker blew himself up inside the house, said senior police official Hamid Shakil.

"At least 19 people have been killed and 44 were wounded, the death toll may still rise," he said, adding that the deputy chief had been injured and his wife was killed in the attack, while two children were also among the dead.

He said that seven troops from the Frontier Corps including an army officer had also been killed.

The residence of the deputy inspector general is close to other government buildings and official residencies in the city of Quetta, the main town of Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

The Frontier Corps is Pakistan's paramilitary force. On Monday the army announced the corps had arrested a senior al-Qaeda leader, Younis al-Mauritani, who was picked up in the suburbs of Quetta along with two other high-ranking operatives after US and Pakistani spy agencies joined forces.

The arrests were disclosed on Monday in an army statement that stressed the involvement of America's Central Intelligence Agency in the operation, a possible sign of an upswing in the two countries' often troubled relationship.

The Frontier Corps took part in the operation, the army statement said.

"This attack was maybe in reaction to the recent arrests, but we are investigating," police officer Hamid Shakil said about Wednesday's blasts.

AFP/AP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/pakistan-suicide-bombs-kill-19-police-20110907-1jxft.html#ixzz1XFTEfz00

[buglerbilly]

Panetta Questions Afghan Government's Capabilities

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 7 Sep 2011 09:08

U.S.-led troops have undercut the Taliban, but the Afghan government's performance remains a cause for concern, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in an interview Sept. 7.

"We have, in fact, seriously weakened the Taliban," said Panetta, according to a transcript of his interview on the "Charlie Rose Show" on PBS.

"We expected a greater offensive this year than took place," he added. "The reason it didn't take place is because of our operations. Because of the increased security, we have reduced the influence of the Taliban."

Afghan security forces also have expanded and are increasingly fighting alongside NATO-led troops, he said.

"We're on target. And they are doing the job," he said, adding that he was "feeling much better" about turning over greater security responsibility to local forces.

But he said the performance of the Afghan government was "a larger question mark."

He expressed concern about "the ability of Afghanistan to be able to exert the kind of governing that they have to do in order to provide stability for the future."

But he added that President Hamid Karzai was "trying" to address pervasive corruption and other challenges facing his government.

Relations have been strained between Karzai and the U.S. administration, with the Afghan president sometimes lashing out publicly against Washington.

August was the deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces, with at least 69 troops killed.

About 100,000 troops are deployed in Afghanistan, with 33,000 forces due to leave by mid-2012.

This year is on track to be the bloodiest yet for civilians, with casualties up 15 percent in the first six months, according to UN figures.

Eighty percent of the deaths are blamed on insurgents.

[buglerbilly]

Soldier wounded in insurgent blast

September 8, 2011 - 12:22PM .

An Australian soldier has been wounded by an insurgent improvised explosive device (IED) in Afghanistan.

Defence said the incident occurred on Tuesday afternoon Afghanistan time as the soldier, a member of the Mentoring Task Force (MTF-3), was travelling in a Bushmaster armoured vehicle that struck the IED.

The soldier has been assessed as being stable and in a satisfactory condition and his family have been notified.

Colonel David Smith, deputy commander of Combined Team - Oruzgan, said the soldier was participating in a patrol of Australian and Afghan soldiers in the Char Chineh District in western Oruzgan Province.

"The MTF-3 and Afghan National Army soldiers were coming under fire from insurgents when an IED detonated, with the blast striking one of the patrol's protected mobility vehicles," he said in a statement.

"The patrol took action to secure the area while the wounded soldier received immediate first aid."

The soldier was evacuated by helicopter to the medical facility at the Australian base at Tarin Kowt and subsequently moved to Kandahar for specialist review and further treatment.

Twenty-seven soldiers have been wounded in action in Afghanistan this year; 192 since 2001.

AAP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/soldier-wounded-in-insurgent-blast-20110908-1jyqq.html#ixzz1XKQUFYDb

[buglerbilly]

Two NATO Troops, Five Afghan Police Killed

September 08, 2011

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - Roadside bombs killed eight people around Afghanistan in the past two days as security forces braced for a possible spike in violence ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States, NATO and Afghan officials said Thursday.

NATO said two of its service members were killed in the south and officials said a Turkish engineer and five Afghan soldiers were killed in separate incidents in the country's west and east. NATO did not provide any further details about the attack and did not prove their nationalities. The NATO deaths bring the total in September for international forces to seven. A total of 330 members of the international military coalition have died do far this year.

The police chief for Afghanistan's western regions, Zia Uddin Mahmoodi, said the Turkish engineer working on road construction projects in western Herat province's Adraskan district when his vehicle hit a bomb. Two of his bodyguards were wounded.

In Kabul, the Defense Ministry announced that a roadside bomb in eastern Khost province killed five Afghan soldiers on Wednesday. The ministry gave no other details.

Afghan security forces have been placed on alert and many international aid organizations and embassies have advised foreigners living and working in Afghanistan to limit their movements over the weekend starting Friday - which marks the 10th anniversary of the death of legendary Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massood. He was killed in a suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11 attacks, and his forces later helped the United States rout the Taliban after the Oct. 7 invasion of Afghanistan.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US, Afghans Still Split on Long-Term Bases

September 08, 2011

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Senior U.S. and Afghan officials are holding two days of talks in Washington to continue work on an agreement that would govern relations between the countries after U.S. forces pull out. The two sides remain split over terms for U.S. use of bases in Afghanistan after 2014.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Afghanistan's national security adviser meet Thursday, and lower-level officials are gathering at the White House and State Department.

The aim is to produce a strategic partnership document that will lay out the scope and scale of long-term cooperation. The State Department says the framework will reaffirm shared values and a commitment to a stable, independent Afghanistan that is not a haven for extremists.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011.

Taliban Need 'Pain' to Talk, Envoy Says

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV And MARIA ABI-HABIB

KABUL—Peace negotiations with the Taliban are unlikely to bear results until additional military pressure is brought on the insurgents, the new American ambassador to Kabul said, playing down expectations of progress in the efforts to end the 10-year-old war.


Associated Press
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, center, shakes hand with the new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker in July 2011.

"The Taliban needs to feel more pain before you get to a real readiness to reconcile," Ambassador Ryan Crocker, a veteran diplomat who took over the American Embassy in Kabul in July, cautioned in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

U.S. and Afghan officials have been trying for more than a year to open negotiations with the insurgents, even as U.S. surge troops deployed since early last year advanced into Taliban strongholds, killing or capturing scores of insurgent commanders. That surge is now beginning to wind down, with the U.S.-led coalition aiming to bring most combat troops home by the end of 2014.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has made a peace settlement his key priority, establishing a special High Peace Council entrusted with pursuing a political solution to the intensifying conflict. So far, these contacts with insurgent representatives, carried out in Afghanistan and abroad, have failed to produce any concrete results.

"They are still just kind of feeling each other out at this stage," Mr. Crocker said.

A key stumbling block, a person familiar with these outreach attempts said, is that Afghan and U.S. officials are still trying to establish whether their interlocutors have the authority to speak for the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

The Taliban until recently publicly rejected the idea of peace negotiations, saying all foreign forces must leave Afghanistan before any such talks begin. Last month, however, Mullah Omar appeared to soften that position, admitting for the first time that some contacts have already taken place.

In an Aug. 28 message for the Islamic Eid al-Fitr holiday, Mullah Omar said "every legitimate option can be considered" in order to reach the Taliban's goal of establishing "an independent Islamic regime" in Afghanistan. He added, however, that "the contacts which have been made with some parties for the release of prisoners can't be called a comprehensive negotiation for the solution of the current imbroglio of the country."

Mullah Omar's statement, which also promised to establish a "peace-loving and responsible regime" that would encompass all Afghan ethnicities and encourage businessmen and professionals, in recent days elicited cautious optimism among some U.S. and Afghan officials.

Mr. Crocker said he disagreed with such upbeat assessments.

"Mullah Omar's Eid message, read as positive in some quarters, did not infuse me with any optimism," the ambassador said. "He acknowledged the talks but said they are purely tactical. He did not indicate a readiness to make any concessions at all on the side of the Taliban," he said.

Mr. Crocker called it "the kind of statement that one would expect from a governmental leader in waiting. I think he's going to be disappointed."

If there was anything encouraging in Mullah Omar's new approach, he added, it was the indication that the Taliban may be feeling the effect of the coalition's offensives.

"They have been hurt militarily and they are therefore broadening the array of tools that they are prepared to deploy, like talks, visits, so forth," he said.

Until recently, some Afghan and Western officials had hoped that military pressure—combined with the peace outreach—would persuade the Taliban to send representatives to the international conference on Afghanistan that is scheduled for December in Bonn.

That isn't likely to happen, in part because of obstacles thrown up by Pakistan, where Mullah Omar and other key Afghan Taliban leaders reside, a Western diplomat said.

The Pakistani government, eager to maintain its leverage, hasn't yielded to Afghan requests to publicly call on the Taliban to open peace talks. Pakistan also declined to provide safe-passage guarantees that would allow Pakistan-based Taliban leaders to travel for any such negotiations.

"Implicit in that is, 'Yeah, you can try to get to Afghanistan. I hope your family is going to be OK!' " the Western diplomat quipped. Mullah Omar said in the Eid message that this year's Bonn conference will be no different from the one that created Afghanistan's post-Taliban government headed by Mr. Karzai 10 years earlier because "neither true representatives of the Afghan people have participation in it, nor attention is paid to the comprehensive and real solution of the problems of Afghanistan."

The deputy chairman of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, Abdul Hakim Mujahid—who served as the Taliban regime's unofficial envoy to the U.S. and the United Nations before 2001—said it is unrealistic to expect the Taliban to "come out of their caves" as long as the international community doesn't accept them as "a real force" in Afghanistan.

"There is a great ocean of a lack of confidence," Mr. Mujahid said.

In the absence of progress in high-level contacts with the Taliban, the U.S. and Afghan officials are concentrating on the so-called reintegration program that aims to woo Taliban foot soldiers and midlevel commanders from the battlefield with offers of amnesty and jobs.

"We've seen several thousand move forward in this process," Mr. Crocker said. "If this were to increase exponentially you could kind of see commanders without an army—and that could really change the dynamic."

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com

[buglerbilly]

How Special Ops Copied al-Qaida to Kill It

By Spencer Ackerman September 9, 2011 | 6:30 am


A helicopter takes Gen. Stanley McChrystal to Garmsir District, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Photo: ISAF

One of the greatest ironies of the 9/11 Era: while politicians, generals and journalists lined up to denounce al-Qaida as a brutal band of fanatics, one commander thought its organizational structure was kind of brilliant. He set to work rebuilding an obscure military entity into a lethal, agile, secretive and highly networked command — essentially, the U.S.’ very own al-Qaida. It became the most potent weapon the U.S. has against another terrorist attack.

That was the work of Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal is best known as the general who lost his command in Afghanistan after his staff shit-talked the Obama administration to Rolling Stone. Inescapable as that public profile may be, it doesn’t begin to capture the impact he made on the military. McChrystal’s fingerprints are all over the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite force that eventually killed Osama bin Laden. As the war on terrorism evolves into a series of global shadow wars, JSOC and its partners — the network McChrystal painstakingly constructed — are the ones who wage it.

These days, McChrystal travels around the country to talk about his leadership style. His insights reveal a lot about how the JSOC became the Obama team’s go-to counterterrorism group. “In bitter, bloody fights in both Afghanistan and Iraq,” McChrystal has written, “it became clear to me and to many others that to defeat a networked enemy we had to become a network ourselves.”

McChrystal’s career also reveals a second irony: at the moment of his greatest ascension, to overall command in Afghanistan, McChrystal couldn’t take his own advice.

McChrystal declined to speak for this article. He’s working on a book, due out in 2012, that will probably shed some light on his tenure at JSOC. This piece is drawn from his speeches, interviews I’ve conducted over the years with special operations and intelligence veterans — usually off the record — as well as two insightful new books: Counterstrike by Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt and Top Secret America by Dana Priest and William Arkin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/books/excerpt-counterstrike-by-randall-kennedy.html

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/

[buglerbilly]

Marines and Taliban Fight Battle of Perceptions

September 09, 2011

Associated Press|by Christopher Torchia



FORWARD OPERATING BASE JACKSON, Afghanistan - The jarring blast near the American base sent up a mushroom cloud of smoke that drifted silently in the breeze. "Not good," a U.S. Marine said. Minutes later, vehicles raced through the gates with the wounded, three Marines and half a dozen Afghans.

Some lay bloodied on stretchers as medics worked on them. Soon, a pair of helicopters swept in and scooped up the injured, including a bomb sniffer dog, for delivery to a military hospital.

Word spread. A suicide bomber in a car packed with explosives had attacked security forces in the Sangin district center, next to the Marine battalion headquarters in an area of southern Afghanistan that has seen some of the war's hardest fighting. Three Afghan police and four civilians were killed.

Marines at Forward Operating Base Jackson called Thursday's attack part of a battle of perceptions with Taliban insurgents nearly a decade after the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Islamic militia's regime.

The Taliban need to remind residents they are capable of inflicting damage on any opponent. The Marines must convince the Afghans that they have weakened the Taliban so much that they could never pose a threat - even as the U.S. and its allies transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.

The Taliban aim to push the Marines onto the defensive with high-profile bombings, forcing them to conduct fewer patrols and hole up in their bases in a sign that their own security is more important than that of the Afghans. U.S. forces, in turn, are trying to expand operations outward from population centers to keep insurgents away from civilians who will ultimately decide the fate of their nation.

By targeting the seat of local government Thursday, insurgents in Sangin apparently sought to show they can dictate the tempo of the conflict, despite heavy pressure since last year by successive Marine battalions. The U.S. military describes such acts as a sign of desperation by an enemy that has lost sway over communities it once controlled.

The challenge of breaking the Taliban grip is especially formidable in Sangin, which lies in the traditional Taliban stronghold of Helmand province. The district acts as a regional transit hub and is a conduit to a major dam that provides electricity.

Here, insurgents oversee opium-bearing harvests of poppy with the profits filling fill their war chests.

Sangin also has one of the highest concentrations of concealed bombs in Afghanistan. More than 100 British troops died there during several years of operations.

The Marines pushed aggressively into Sangin in larger numbers than the British had, forcing the Taliban onto the defensive, often at heavy cost. They tried to lend legitimacy to newly appointed Afghan officials by bankrolling bridge construction and other public works projects in their name.

Fighting ebbed during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which ended more than a week ago, and American troops are poised for any upswing.

"We're kind of waiting for what the next step is," said Lt. Col. Thomas Savage, commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, which occupies Jackson, a former British camp. "We've got enough of a lid on it that they're not going to be able to come back hard."

Savage spoke days before Thursday's bombing in a key town that has become relatively secure. There was a time when the Taliban's white flags ringed the Jackson base, the commander said, and insurgent snipers fired on Marines on the perimeter walls. Many Afghan civilians have since returned, and Marines patrolling in armored vehicles drive past merchants manning their kiosks.

After the explosion, Afghan soldiers at Jackson leaped into pickup trucks to collect the wounded. Back at a base clinic, they used a blanket to haul one injured Afghan whose eyes darted wildly. Other men lay inert. A U.S. medic turned one over to check his back for unseen wounds.

The shrapnel wounds of two Marines were described as minor. A third Marine lay on a stretcher with his eyes closed, his face pale, his trouser legs cut away to aid treatment. His life was not in danger.

One of the wounded was a dog used by U.S. Marines to detect crudely made but lethal bombs. His hindquarters were soaked in blood.

"This is Drak. Drak got hit as well," a servicemen said to three dog handlers who put a muzzle on the animal and hoisted him onto a stretcher. "He's got a puncture wound on his hip. I don't know if he's got anything under his tail, but he's dripping pretty bad."

The battle for Sangin, which has a population of about 100,000, plays out most days in a slower, more subtle fashion. The Marine battalion aims to unify a patchwork of tribes, some with long-standing rivalries, and empower Afghans who can represent fractured communities and may be targets for assassination.

"There are no cookie-cutter solutions here," said Marine Capt. Casey Brock of Charlie Company. As an example, Brock, of Bend, Oregon, cited his operational area. It encompasses a fertile belt along the Helmand river with a relatively stable tradition of landownership and, on the other side of a paved highway, an arid zone known as the "Fish Tank" where a fluctuating population leases land and has little to unite it.

Savage, a veteran of three tours in Iraq, said there were a "million little problems" in Sangin and that an overarching solution, such as the U.S.-backed marshaling of Sunni militias that turned against al-Qaida in Iraq, could not work in the territory under his command.

"You can't do what we did in Iraq," he said. "You don't get an entire bloc to flip."

He said Sangin's population was tilting toward the Marines, but acknowledged there are "fence-sitters" whose long-term loyalties are unclear. This summer, when President Barack Obama announced plans for a troop drawdown in Afghanistan, Savage cast U.S. policy in stark terms in his conversations with tribal leaders: Support coalition forces and allow stability to take root, or endure more combat, with all its devastating fallout, before the Americans leave.

Even the Taliban cells in Sangin appear to operate independently, often without signs of coordination. Marines say their leadership in neighboring Pakistan provides broad direction.

On patrol one day, Lance Cpl. Patrick Hawco of Tivoli, New York, described the conflict as a "small unit leader fight" where troops of lower rank make spur-of-the-moment decisions that, drawn together, have a wider impact on the course of the war. In the Marines' case, a decision to walk down one alleyway instead of another, or to stop for tea with a tribal elder, is a matter of instinct and experience.

At this time of year, the corn harvest is approaching. The stalks rise green and strong up to 12 feet, towering over the Marines as they zigzag on paths through the dense fields, their body armor soaked in sweat. Marines can't use their high-tech optics in the corn, but sometimes they move into it to set ambushes.

"We have to make sure the enemy fears the corn, and not the other way around," Brock said. In this battle of perceptions, he said, the goal is to sow doubt in the opponent.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

NATO Admits Killing Afghan Journalist

September 09, 2011

Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Kabul - NATO-led international forces in Afghanistan admitted Friday that an Afghan journalist originally thought to have been killed by insurgents in Uruzgan province had in fact been killed by an international soldier in a case of mistaken identity.

"Mr Khpalwak was shot by an ISAF member who believed he was an insurgent that posed a threat and was about to detonate a suicide-vest IED," NATO said in a statement late Thursday.

"Afghan forces removed the body from the building; it was that of Ahmad Omid Khpalwak. He was unarmed. No weapon was found nearby," the statement added.

Ahmad Omid Khpalwak had been working as a freelance journalist for a local Pajhwok Afghan News agency and the BBC since 2008.

He was killed during a July 28 attack by insurgents on government buildings in Tarin Kot, in the southern province of Uruzgan, while hiding inside an office of the Radio Television of Afghanistan.

Khpalwak is the third Pajhwok journalist to have been killed since 2008, the agency said.

Ahmad Jawid Khpalwak, a brother of the slain journalist, said Friday he was "very upset," describing his brother as an innocent victim and his closest friend.

"He sent us a text message saying death has come and pray for me if I die. I couldn't have guessed that he would be martyred so soon," Jawid Khpalwak told the German Press Agency dpa.

"ISAF, the Afghan authorities, and nobody said they were sorry. They only expressed their condolences but that is not going to bring him back."

He said the officials had visited their house and described the situation. "But they did not give us anything nor promised us to give anything. They just came to our home, described the entire incident, and condoled us," he added.

Reacting to the NATO statement, the BBC director of Global News, Peter Horrocks, said: "The death further highlights the great dangers facing journalists who put their lives on the line to provide vital news from around the world."

The Committee to Protect Journalists says 23 journalists have been killed in Afghanistan since 1992. It ranks Afghanistan the 10th most dangerous country for journalists.

In a reminder of the danger, a bomb explosion in the southern province of Helmand killed three policemen and four civilians Thursday night.

The incident took place in the Singin district of the volatile southern province, the Helmand governor's office said Friday in a statement.

Elsewhere, an ISAF soldiers was killed Friday in a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, the coalition military said without giving details on the deceased.

© Copyright 2011 Deutsche Presse-Agentur. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Despite Gains, Pakistan Still Haven for al-Qaida

September 10, 2011

Knight Ridder/Tribune|by Saeed Shah

ISLAMABAD -- A decade after the 9/11 attacks, most international terrorist plots against the West have links to Pakistan, the country that became al-Qaida's most important sanctuary after the United States chased the terrorist group from Afghanistan.

Pakistan wasn't considered an international terrorist haven before December 2001, when Osama bin Laden crossed the White Mountains from Tora Bora, his last redoubt in Afghanistan, into Pakistan's tribal area.

In the nearly 10 years since, however, the country has become al-Qaida's global headquarters, infecting Pakistan's Islamic extremist groups with a new nihilistic ideology and transforming the country's tribal area near the border with Afghanistan into the epicenter of global jihad, a violent sanctuary where the traditional population is terrorized and al-Qaida and other terrorists plot attacks not just against the West and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan but also against the Pakistani government itself.

Analysts say that U.S. officials, distracted by the war in Iraq, didn't recognize until 2008 the danger that was developing in Pakistan, after which they began hugely ramping up their campaign of pilotless drone airstrikes in the tribal area.

U.S. officials now claim that al-Qaida is close to what Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calls "strategic defeat." But while there have been no successful al-Qaida attacks in the West since the London transit system was bombed on July 7, 2005, Islamic extremist attacks are frequent and deadly in Pakistan, a failing nuclear-armed country of 180 million people.

Earlier this week, at least 25 people were killed in a twin suicide bombing in the western city of Quetta that targeted the local deputy commander of Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps. It was the latest in some 260 suicide bombings that have struck Pakistan since 2001.

Al-Qaida has developed a crucial relationship with Pakistan's most ferocious local terrorist group, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, often known as the Pakistani Taliban, which is based in the tribal areas, where federal authority traditionally has been limited. Without this group, al-Qaida might not survive.

"For al-Qaida to survive, can it afford to lose Pakistan? Of course not," said Noman Benotman, a former Libyan jihadist who once worked with the al-Qaida leadership. "The problem now is that the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida work very closely together."

"The Pakistani Taliban is like the sea and al-Qaida is like fish. To swim, they need the sea," said Benotman, who's now a senior analyst at the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based anti-extremist campaigning organization.

Al-Qaida "central" has been badly weakened in Pakistan. American drone strikes have killed 24 mid- and senior-level commanders of the core organization since January 2008, including two men then considered to be No. 3 in the leadership, Abu Laith al-Libi in 2008 and Mustafa Abu al-Yazid last year, according to a tally kept by New America Foundation, an independent research organization in Washington. Last month, a drone strike killed al-Qaida's new deputy chief, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman.

Pakistani authorities, often working with the CIA, have arrested a host of al-Qaida commanders, including the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, captured from the northwest city of Rawalpindi in 2003, another third in command, Abu Faraj al-Libi, from Rawalpindi in 2005, and this year Umar Patek, an Indonesian militant said to be behind the 2002 Bali bombing.

This week, Pakistani security forces arrested the group's international chief, Younis al-Mauritania, in Quetta, which may have prompted the suicide attack on the Frontier Corps commander. Information from Mauritania's interrogation also may have prompted the terrorism alert that U.S. officials declared Thursday.

Pakistani officials claim to have arrested more than 450 al-Qaida operatives since 2001, easily the highest number detained anywhere.

Even with U.S. drone aircraft constantly buzzing over Waziristan - the part of the tribal area most important to extremists - and an American spy network on the ground, as well as the presence of more than 100,000 Pakistani security personnel, the tribal area still appears to be al-Qaida's most important haven. Apart from al-Rahman, two other senior commanders reportedly were killed in drone strikes this year in the tribal area: Pakistani extremist Ilyas Kashmiri and Abu Zaid al-Iraqi, an al-Qaida financier.

According to Panetta, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's successor, is somewhere in the tribal area. Of the 20 or so key al-Qaida leaders still at large, most are very likely in Pakistan, including Saif al-Adel, al-Qaida's long-term military commander, whom the Iranian government reportedly held for years but released last year in exchange for a diplomat who'd been kidnapped in Pakistan.

Others most likely operating from Pakistan include Abu Yahya al-Libi, a leading al-Qaida ideologue, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, an American said to run al-Qaida's media arm, and Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah, who grew up in the U.S. and whom some consider the organization's operations chief.

Pakistan, in particular the tribal area, continues to be where would-be terrorist recruits make contact with al-Qaida and other extremist groups, and get training and financing. This week's 9/11 anniversary terrorism alert for New York and Washington was over a plot said to have originated in the tribal area.

Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American who was arrested in 2009 on suspicion of plotting to bomb the New York subway, attended a weapons and explosives training camp in Pakistan the previous year and had met with Shukrijumah.

Last year, Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad was arrested after a failed car bombing in Times Square. It later emerged that he'd met with the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal area and received bomb-making training there.

A study for the New America Foundation found that of 21 "serious" terrorist plots against targets in the West in the six-year period since 2004, more than half either were directed by al-Qaida or its allies in Pakistan or the plotters had been trained in Pakistan.

Perhaps as serious as the presence of terrorists, however, is the impact that al-Qaida and Islamic extremists have had on the perception of the U.S. and the West in Pakistan.

Anti-Western propaganda, which blames the United States and Europe for all ills, has become mainstream opinion in Pakistan, where surveys show that many don't believe that the 9/11 attacks happened, or think that America staged them.

"You can defeat an enemy in numbers, but you can't defeat an ideology," said Imtiaz Gul, the author of the book "The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan's Lawless Frontier." "In Pakistan, lots of people sympathize with al-Qaida. This is a very poorly governed country with porous borders, and it's plagued by the politics of expediency. There are plenty of places for extremists to hide."

© Copyright 2011 Knight Ridder/Tribune. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Official: Talks on Track for Longterm Pact

September 10, 2011

Associated Press|by Anne Gearan

WASHINGTON -- A senior Afghan official predicted Friday that the United States and Afghanistan will soon sign a broad deal for U.S. use of Afghan soil for counter-terrorism missions and U.S. obligations to the fledgling democracy it has sponsored since toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan weeks after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The two nations remain divided over terms for their relationship after most U.S. forces leave the country following two days of negotiation over a framework for long-term U.S. military and economic support for the country.

Afghan national security adviser and former Afghan foreign minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta said two days of talks closed some gaps over sticking points such as who will control detention of suspected militants and leadership of counterterrorism raids that Afghans generally despise as intrusive and indiscriminate.

He told The Associated Press the overarching goal of the agreement is to establish Afghan sovereignty over its national security and external affairs, a position potentially at odds with U.S. contingency plans to pursue terrorists or militants who threaten the United States.

"Afghanistan will never allow the use of Afghan soil against Afghanistan's neighbors or other third countries," Spanta said after the close of talks Friday evening.

A U.S. military official said large gaps remain over enforceability of the eventual pact, which the U.S. has insisted will not hold the legally binding force of a treaty. Instead, it will be a statement, presumably signed by President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, that stops short of a treaty.

The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe ongoing negotiations, said Afghanistan is also seeking assurances of guaranteed U.S. military and development spending in that country, something U.S. negotiators have said is impossible to quantify in a time of huge deficits and budget constraints. Divisions over who has authority over detentions and so-called counterterrorism "'night raids" are likely to be papered over in the final agreement, two U.S. officials said.

Spanta led an Afghan delegation that concluded two days of negotiations over a pact that will govern U.S. military activity and economic and other commitment to Afghanistan after the formal U.S. combat role in the country ends in 2014. The U.S., NATO and Afghanistan agreed last year that combat forces would leave by the end of 2014, and that Afghan forces would take over. Afghanistan is seeking the pact, but two previous rounds of talks have dragged on longer than U.S. officials wanted.

"I am leaving extremely satisfied," Spanta said, following talks with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and lower-level officials at the White House.

Spanta said the goal is to have a deal ready before an international conference on Afghanistan's future in December, but that there is no set deadline. Afghanistan plans to submit the deal to its parliament and probably to an informal council of elders known as a loya jirga that would lend legitimacy across the country's disparate ethnic and tribal factions. U.S. officials have said there are no plans to submit the pact to Congress, since it will not be a treaty requiring Senate confirmation.

For the United States, the chief goal of the agreement is to reassure Afghanistan that the U.S. will not turn its back on Afghanistan once the bulk of combat forces leave, while framing terms for the continuing hunt for al-Qaida and other militants who may use Afghanistan as home turf.

The agreement, now in draft form, would give the U.S. use of Afghan-run or jointly run bases after 2014. U.S. officials stress that U.S. military presence will be at Afghanistan's invitation. A State Department notice about the talks said the U.S. would respect Afghan sovereignty and noted that there were no plans for permanent American military bases in Afghanistan or "a presence that would be a threat to any of Afghanistan's neighbors."

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Two killed as truck bomb explodes at US base in Afghanistan

Nearly 80 American soldiers were wounded and two Afghan civilians were killed when a Taliban truck bomb struck an American base in eastern Afghanistan on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks against the United States, NATO said Sunday.

10:30AM BST 11 Sep 2011

Saturday's blast shaved the facades from shops outside the Combat Outpost Sayed Abad in Wardak province and broke windows in government offices nearby, said Roshana Wardak, a former parliamentarian who runs a clinic in the nearby town of the same name. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Eight wounded civilians were brought to Wardak's clinic, two of them with wounds serious enough that they were sent to Kabul. She said one three-year-old girl died of her wounds on the way to the clinic.

The attack was carried out by a Taliban suicide bomber who detonated a large bomb inside a truck carrying firewood, NATO said.

"Most of the force of the explosion was absorbed by the protective barrier at the outpost entrance," NATO said, adding that the damage was repairable and that operations were continuing.

Fewer than 25 Afghan civilians were also wounded, NATO said, adding that none of the 77 injuries sustained by the Americans were life-threatening. Spokesman Major Russell Fox said that all the international troops at the combat outpost are American.

The truck bombing came hours after the Taliban vowed to keep fighting US forces in Afghanistan until all American troops leave the country and stressed that their movement had no role in the September 11 attacks.

On Sunday, the US Embassy in Kabul held a memorial service to mark the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. A military band played as American troops raised an American flag in front of about 300 assembled US and Afghan officials.

Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan urged those assembled to honor the memory of those who died.

"On that day we lost mothers and fathers, sons and daughters we lost people of many nations and many religions, today we remember, we honor them all," he said.

The Afghan Foreign Minister said the attacks bound Afghans and Americans together in a "shared struggle."

In a statement emailed to media, the Taliban accused the United States of using the September 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and said the international community was responsible for killing thousands of Afghans during the invasion and ensuing occupation.

"Each year, 9/11 reminds the Afghans of an event in which they had no role whatsoever," the Taliban said. "American colonialism has shed the blood of tens of thousands of miserable and innocent Afghans."

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, after the Taliban, who then ruled the country, refused to hand over Osama bin Laden.

The late al-Qaida leader was at the time living in Afghanistan, where the terror network had training camps from which it planned attacks against the US and other countries.

"The Afghans have an endless stamina for a long war," the statement said. "Through a countrywide uprising, the Afghans will send the Americans to the dustbin of history like they sent other empires of the past."

The statement was issued by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the official title used by the Taliban when they ruled the country.

The insurgent group continues to launch regular attacks and orchestrate assassination campaigns against those allied with the government. In addition to the attack in Wardak on Saturday, 10 Afghan civilians were killed in two separate roadside bombings.

Although the Taliban were swiftly driven from power by the U.S.-led coalition, they managed to use the years of the Iraq war - when America focused its military strength on the conflict against Saddam Hussein - to regroup, rearm and reorganize.

They began winning back ground lost to the international military coalition until President Barack Obama decided to send in 30,000 more troops last year to help.

Although the coalition has made some gains in the Taliban's traditional southern strongholds, violence has not abated around the country.

The US has begun withdrawing some of its 100,000 troops and will send home 33,000 by the end of next year. The international military coalition has already begun transferring security responsibilities to newly trained Afghan forces with the aim of removing all their soldiers by the end of 2014.

Bin Laden was killed in May in a raid on his house in northwestern Pakistan by helicopter-borne US Navy SEALs.

[buglerbilly]

US must stay in Afghanistan for 'long haul', says ambassador

America must remain in Afghanistan “for the long haul”, a decade after the 9/11 attacks triggered the United States’ longest ever war, its ambassador has said.


America must remain in Afghanistan “for the long haul”, its ambassador has said. Photo: HEATHCLIFF O'MALLEY

By Ben Farmer, in Kabul

10:52AM BST 11 Sep 2011

Ryan Crocker told a ceremony marking the anniversary of the attacks that America’s presence had kept al-Qaeda from re-establishing itself in Afghanistan.

His comments came as polls show deep US disillusionment with the lengthy, costly campaign and as a surge of reinforcements ordered to the country two years ago by Barack Obama has begun to leave.

Hamid Karzai’s Afghan forces will take charge of nationwide security by the end of 2014, but are still expected to need significant support, training and money to prop them up afterwards.

Kabul and Washington are currently in negotiation over how many troops and advisers will stay and how much funding America will provide after the 2014 deadline.

Mr Croker told the ceremony on the Kabul embassy’s front lawn: “Some back home have asked why we are still here. It’s been a long fight and people are tired. The reason is simple. Al-Qaeda is not here in Afghanistan and that’s because we are. We are here so that there is never again a 9/11 coming from Afghan soil.”

He continued: “We are in this for the long haul. We are transitioning security responsibility to Afghan forces, but transition does not mean disengagement.”

Recent opinion polls have shown most Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan and want troops brought home quickly.

America currently has about 95,000 troops in Afghanistan and has lost 1,762 dead in the past decade according to the icasualties website.

Mr Croker said he had flown into New York on the morning of 11 September 2001 as the attacks unfolded. He watched both World Trade Centre towers collapse.

He reopened America’s Kabul embassy in 2002 and went on to be ambassador to Iraq. He has come out of retirement to be Washington’s man in Kabul again.

He said: “For me the last ten years have always been about 9/11. I keep in my office in a small frame the boarding pass I have from that flight.

“I will never forget what happened on that day and I will never give up on my commitment to do everything I can to ensure 9/11 never happens again.”

Gen John Allen, senior Nato and US commander in Afghanistan, said al Qaeda had been put under “immense and unrelenting pressure”, but remained a threat “if the job is not completed”.

He said: “We will find al-Qaeda wherever it is and we will deal with it. Those who would shelter it would do well not to underestimate America’s resolve.

Gen Allen said the Taliban, who had played host to Osama bin Laden as his network planned 9/11, had been “ripped” from their strongholds and were “on their heels”.

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan remain at a record level and much of the country remains beyond the grip of a still weak Kabul regime.

Mr Obama has struggled to reassure Americans they are not trapped in a military quagmire, while at the same time telling Afghans and the Taliban that the United States will not abandon the country.

[buglerbilly]

More clarity on this huge explosion and the casualties suffered..............

SEPTEMBER 11, 2011, 5:14 P.M. ET.

Bomb in Afghanistan Kills 5, Injures 77

By Maria Abi-Habib And HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL

KABUL—The Taliban marked the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by detonating a powerful truck bomb that ripped through a major military base in eastern Afghanistan near the capital Kabul, killing five Afghan civilians and injuring 77 American troops.


Associated Press
Debris is seen outside the gates of Combat Outpost Sayed Abad in eastern Wardak province of Afghanistan on Sunday.

The blast was so mighty that it shattered windows two miles away and leveled buildings within 300 yards of the truck, pulling down an observation aerostat. Casualties included a woman killed by shrapnel that flew about half a mile from Combat Outpost Sayedabad, in Wardak province, local Afghans said.

Many of the injured U.S. service members were evacuated to hospitals. The military said the majority of those injured will return to duties shortly. The blast occurred at the outer checkpoint of the base, something that prevented potentially far more serious casualties.

"It was a very heavy explosion that ruined everything. The buildings inside the base are completely destroyed [including] our district building and police headquarters," said Zmaray, the police chief of Sayedabad district, who like many Afghans goes by one name.

The attack took place in the same district of Wardak province as last month's downing of a U.S. Chinook helicopter, in which 30 American service members—most of them members of the elite Navy SEALs—lost their lives. Wardak, on the southern approaches to Kabul, has increasingly become an insurgency hotspot. A coalition statement said the base remains operational.

The Taliban took responsibility for the blast. The insurgents' ability to exact such devastation served as a grim reminder that despite 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan, with over 100,000 American troops currently spread throughout the country, the enemy remains far from defeated.

At least 429 coalition troops have died so far this year, 316 of them American, according to icasualties.org, an independent monitoring site.

The Taliban said in a statement this weekend that, "each year, 9/11 reminds the Afghans of an event in which they had no role whatsoever" and that prompted "the American colonialism to shed blood of tens of thousands of miserable and innocent Afghans." The insurgents pledged that the Afghans will consign the American invaders "to the dustbin of the history like they did send other empires of the past."

The Sept. 11 attacks were planned in Afghanistan by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was given protection by Mullah Mohammed Omar's Taliban regime. While bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan in May, Mullah Omar remains the Taliban's supreme leader.

At the sprawling U.S. Embassy in Kabul, U.S. and Afghan officials gathered on Sunday morning to commemorate the anniversary, unveiling a memorial cut from the steel of the Twin Towers.

Some U.S. Embassy staff, many dressed in black, wiped tears from their eyes as an American military brass band played mournful songs. Michele Flournoy, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, had flown in from Washington, D.C. to attend.

"Some back home have asked why we are still here. It's been a long fight and people are tired. The reason is simple: Al Qaeda is not here in Afghanistan, and that is because we are," the new U.S. Ambassador to Kabul Ryan Crocker said in a speech. "We're here so that there is never again another 9/11 coming from Afghan soil…much has been done; many challenges remain."

The ceremony served not only as a memorial for the Americans who died during the attacks 10 years ago, but as a way for U.S. government and military officials to renew their commitment to Afghanistan which they emphasized was crucial to fighting the war on terrorism.

The U.S. and its international allies are preparing Afghanistan's government and security forces to take responsibility for their country in a step-by-step transition to power to be completed in 2014, when most combat troops are scheduled to leave.

Many in the Afghan government, however, are unconvinced that they have the ability to secure their country without the massive international military and financial aid they currently enjoy.

The U.S. and Afghanistan are negotiating a strategic partnership agreement outlining the support Afghanistan will receive beyond 2014.

"We are transitioning security responsibility to Afghan forces, but transition does not mean disengagement," Mr. Crocker said.

[buglerbilly]

US-backed Afghan militias accused of human rights abuses

Human Rights Watch report catalogues groups acting with impunity, undermining key plank in Nato troop reduction plans

Jeremy Kelly in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 September 2011 08.53 BST


David Petraeus, now director of the CIA, introduced the Afghan Local Police scheme when he was commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

US-backed Afghan militias are committing murder, rape, torture and extortion, risking increasing support for the insurgent groups they were designed to fight against, a prominent human rights group has said.

Militias including the Afghan Local Police (ALP) – seen as a key plank in Nato's troop reduction plans – suffer from poor oversight and no accountability, and are prone to act with impunity, Human Rights Watch said.

The ALP programme was introduced by the former commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, despite opposition from a sceptical President Hamid Karzai, who had it "forced down his throat like a foie gras goose", a military official told the Guardian.

One of Petraeus's predecessors, General Dan McNeill, had rebuffed British attempts to arm militias after warning in 2008 that "there has been some good work here to get those things back in the box".

The year-old ALP scheme is the latest attempt by the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan to create local militias in areas where the country's security forces are lacking. According to Petraeus, it was "arguably the most critical element in our effort to help Afghanistan develop the capability to secure itself".

It is supported by US special forces and overseen by the Afghan ministry of the interior, and is being expanded after initial success in some areas where the local militias beat back insurgents.

But Human Rights Watch's 102-page report, Just Don't Call it a Militia, details how the US-funded "high-risk" and "quick-fix" solution has been plagued by poor design, a lack of oversight and insufficient vetting of the 7,000 recruits, some of whom are criminals or insurgents.

The US has approved funding for a further 23,000 ALP recruits. Human Rights Watch says the ALP has improved security in some areas, but it has uncovered multiple examples of human rights abuses that threaten to undermine its worth.

In one of the worst examples of brutality, ALP militiamen detained two teenage boys on suspicion of planting roadside bombs in the district of Shindand, in Herat province.

An elder told Human Rights Watch: "Other elders and I went to the ALP base to collect [one of the boys]. He had been beaten and nails had been hammered into his feet."

The most serious cases of abuse involve the killing and gang rape of child suspects, beatings, land grabs and the forcible collection of ushr, an informal tax.

None of the cases have resulted in any action against the perpetrators, often because of the ALP's links to powerful figures, the report says.

"Patronage links to senior officials in the local security forces and the central government allow supposedly pro-government militias to terrorise local communities and operate with impunity," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The report details the expansion of Afghan government-backed militias, which are known as arbakai, in the northern province of Kunduz in order to "prevent a Taliban takeover".

The district governor of Khanabad, Nizamuddin Nashir, told Human Rights Watch the groups were operating lawlessly. "They collect [taxes], take the daughters of the people, they do things against the wives of the people, they take their horses, sheep, anything," he said.

Human Rights Watch called for the disbandment of such irregular armed groups and for the US and Afghan governments to tighten vetting procedures and provide better oversight of the ALP. It also wants to ensure that allegations of abuse are investigated in accordance with the Leahy law, which forbids US military assistance to any foreign security force involved in human rights abuses for which it is not held accountable.

"While there is a need for more security at the village level, the Afghan and US governments should be very careful not to repeat the mistakes of militias past," Adams said. "If quick corrections are not made, the ALP could end up being just another militia that causes more problems than it cures."

A spokeswoman from the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force said the report "potentially provides a way ahead in refining and improving areas" where the programme was deficient. Isaf would work with the Afghan government in investigating the allegations of abuse and mistreatment noted in the report, the spokeswoman added.

[buglerbilly]

U.S. Prepares to Talk to Taliban It Wanted to ‘Destroy’

By Spencer Ackerman September 12, 2011 | 3:10 pm



Chronicles of a wartime reversal: ten years ago, the U.S. secretly sent a message to Mullah Omar that it was about to erase his Taliban from the face of the earth. Now it’s acquiescing to a plan for the insurgent Taliban to open an embassy far from Afghanistan, a prelude to peace talks.

On the eve of the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Secretary of State Colin Powell instructed his ambassador in Islamabad, Wendy Chamberlin, to get a message to Omar through Pakistani intermediaries. It was neither a lengthy nor complicated communication. Nor was it an invitation to further dialogue.

“It is in your interest and in the interest of your survival to hand over all al-Qaida leaders, to close the terrorists’ camps and allow the U.S. access to terrorist facilities,” reads Powell’s message, prompted by suspicions of a 9/11 follow-up attack and unearthed by the National Security Archive. “We will hold leaders of the Taliban personally responsible for any such actions. Every pillar of the Taliban regime will be destroyed.”

It didn’t exactly go Powell’s way. Omar didn’t turn over bin Laden and company. The U.S. crushed the Taliban and ran them out into Pakistan. It took about four years for an insurgency to begin in earnest and then gather in force. The U.S. has been fighting ever since, and the violence has crested at a high point. Omar, however, has outlived even Osama bin Laden, and his political career may make a comeback.

Because now there’s a new U.S. message: negotiations. About two weeks ago, Omar put out a message gesturing toward negotiating an end to the war with the United States, which happens to be the position embraced by President Obama. Now, with the approval of Washington, the Taliban is opening a quasi-embassy in Qatar, so the talks have an address.

The Times of London — whose website is annoying — reports that by the end of the year, the Taliban will have a “political headquarters” open in Doha to conduct its affairs. That’s a big deal: the Taliban are under United Nations sanctions, a remnant of the post-9/11 solidarity with the U.S., obligating member-states to freeze their assets and harass their leadership. (Never mind Pakistan’s sponsorship of the Taliban.) The Doha office appears to be a workaround.

The idea is for the Taliban to have a place to work outside of the pressures of the war — and far from Pakistani influence. The way U.S. diplos think about it, it wouldn’t be a new safe haven to fundraise or plot more insurgent attacks. (Enforced, uh, how?) And don’t call it an “embassy,” even though that’s what it sounds like, says a “Western diplomat” quoted by the Times. It’s a “residence where they can be treated like a political party.”

Whatever. Ten years of war have proven that the Taliban don’t stay vanquished, no matter how tough the U.S. talks, leaving a negotiated settlement as perhaps the only possible end to the war. And another newly-disclosed memo from the Bush administration from the immediate aftermath of 9/11 may help explain why.

“The U.S. should not commit to any post-Taliban military involvement,” reads a Pentagon strategy memo from October 30, 2001, (.PDF) “since the U.S. will be heavily engaged in the anti-terrorism effort world wide.” As it turned out, the U.S. kept a rump force of around 20,000 troops in Afghanistan after the downfall of the Taliban, badly coordinated with NATO forces out of an ideological distaste for “peacekeeping” missions. The end result: a lot of time and space for the “pillars of the Taliban regime” to pull off a violent second act.

Photo: ISAF

[buglerbilly]

Bomb at US Base Reminder of Raging Afghan War

September 12, 2011

Associated Press|by Patrick Quinn and Rahim Faiez



KABUL, Afghanistan -- A powerful Taliban truck bomb that wounded 77 American Soldiers and killed five Afghans outside a combat outpost served as a reminder that 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, nearly 100,000 U.S. troops are still fighting a war that shows no signs of slowing down.

No U.S. troops were killed when the massive bomb loaded on a truck filled with firewood exploded Saturday night just outside the gates of Combat Outpost Sayed Abad in eastern Wardak province. NATO said a protective barrier at the entrance absorbed most of the force of the blast, although the area outside the base was hit hard.

Officials said Sunday that the Afghans killed included a policeman and four civilians, including a 3-year-old girl. Another 17 Afghans -- 14 civilians and three policemen -- were wounded. The provincial governor said the blast was so powerful it damaged about 100 shops in the nearby Sayed Abad bazaar.

Although Saturday's truck bombing occurred outside the base, the numbers of injuries it caused was significant. Combat outposts usually house about 200 troops.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Earlier, they had issued a statement vowing to fight until all foreign troops leave. The radical Islamic movement, which gave shelter to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida when it ruled Afghanistan, also stressed that it had no role in the Sept. 11 attacks, and it accused the U.S. of using them as a pretext to invade the country.

"The Afghans have an endless stamina for a long war," the statement said. "Through a countrywide uprising, the Afghans will send the Americans to the dustbin of history like they sent other empires of the past."

The attack occurred just over 40 miles (70 kilometers), or about an hour's drive, from Kabul in an increasingly lawless district in a key province that controls a strategic approach to the capital.

Sayed Abad is seven miles (12 kilometers) east of the Tangi Valley, where the Taliban on Aug. 6 shot down a U.S. military helicopter, killing 30 Americans. Many of the dead belonged to the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team 6 -- the same elite unit that killed bin Laden during a May 2 cross-border raid into Pakistan, where al-Qaida's leadership was driven. It was the deadliest single loss for American forces in the decade-old war.

"Some back home have asked why we are still here," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Sunday at a 9/11 memorial at the embassy in Kabul. "It's been a long fight and people are tired. The reason is simple. Al-Qaida is not here in Afghanistan, and that is because we are. "

"We're here so that there is never again another 9/11 coming from Afghan soil. We, with our Afghan partners, figured out that the best way to ensure that is to work together and with the international community for a stable, secure, democratic Afghanistan."

The Taliban continue to launch regular attacks and orchestrate assassination campaigns against those allied with the government. In addition to the attack in Wardak on Saturday, 10 Afghan civilians were killed in two separate roadside bombings.

Two Afghan security guards were also killed late Saturday when an insurgent rocket slammed into a part of the sprawling U.S. base at Bagram air field outside Kabul, the U.S. military said. Two NATO servicemembers and two Afghans were slightly wounded.

NATO also said Sunday that one of its servicemembers was killed in an insurgent attack a day earlier in eastern Afghanistan. That brought the death toll to 13 this month -- and 417 this year -- for coalition forces. At least 307 of the dead were Americans, and despite U.S. reports of progress on the battlefield the number of troops dying this year is at about the same level as 2010.

While the overall international death toll dropped by 14 percent in the first half of the year, the number of Americans who died remained virtually unchanged, 197 this year compared with 195 in the first six months of last year, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

In a midyear report last July, the U.N. said 1,462 Afghan civilians also lost their lives in the first six months of this year in the crossfire of the battle between Taliban insurgents and Afghan, U.S. and NATO forces. During the first half of last year, 1,271 Afghan civilians were killed.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, after the Taliban, who then ruled the country, refused to hand over Osama bin Laden.

The late al-Qaida leader was at the time living in Afghanistan, where the terror network had training camps from which it planned attacks against the U.S. and other countries.

Although the Taliban were swiftly driven from power by the U.S.-led coalition, they managed to use the years of the Iraq war -- when America focused its military strength on the conflict against Saddam Hussein -- to regroup, rearm and reorganize.

They began winning back ground lost to the international military coalition until President Obama decided to send in 30,000 more troops last year to help.

The U.S. has begun withdrawing some of its 100,000 troops from Afghanistan and will send home 33,000 by the end of next year. The international military coalition has already begun transferring security responsibilities to newly trained Afghan forces with the aim of removing all their soldiers by the end of 2014.

"We are and will remain committed to Afghanistan and the region," Crocker said. "We are in this for the long haul. We are transitioning security responsibility to Afghan forces, but transition does not mean disengagement."

Commemoration ceremonies were held at many U.S. and NATO military bases around the country.

Although the coalition has made some gains in the Taliban's traditional southern strongholds, violence has not abated around the country.

The battle against al-Qaida also has spread across the border with Pakistan, where a suspected U.S. missile strike on a house Sunday killed three people in an al-Qaida and Taliban safe haven along the frontier, Pakistani intelligence officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with reporters.

The United States has fired scores of missiles into northwest Pakistan since 2008, trying to keep al-Qaida operatives there on the run.

-- Associated Press writers Heidi Vogt in Kabul and Rasool Dawar in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban claim ongoing fighting in Kabul

September 13, 2011 - 7:52PM .

Explosions and a gun battle have broken out close to the US embassy in central Kabul.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the ongoing suicide attack on Tuesday.

A string of loud blasts have been heard, and police have confirmed one explosion and a gunfight close to the heavily-guarded embassy compound.

"Today at one o'clock at Kabul's Abdul Haq roundabout a massive suicide attack on local and foreign intelligence facilities is ongoing," said a spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, in a text message to Agence France-Presse.

One eyewitness reported that attackers had taken up position in a tall building under construction and were exchanging fire with security forces.

An Afghan National Army installation was nearby, as was a Marriott hotel building site, the witness said.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the attack.

"There is an ongoing attack in the centre of Kabul," he said.

The US Embassy did not immediately have further information.

AFP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/taliban-claim-ongoing-fighting-in-kabul-20110913-1k7o6.html#ixzz1XpjQ68z5

[buglerbilly]

The map above shows the areas and buildings under attack.



Smoke rises from buildings during an on-going attack in Kabul city centre. Photograph: Daud Yardost/AFP/Getty Images

Militants attack government and Nato buildings in Kabul

Explosions rock Afghan capital as militants strike at government buildings, US embassy and Nato military base

Jeremy Kelly in Kabul

Guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011 11.30 BST


The US embassy in Kabul. Nearby roads were blocked after the explosions. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

Explosions and gunfire rattled Kabul this morning after militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and suicide vests attacked government buildings, the US embassy, and Nato's main military base in the Afghan capital.

Witnesses said that some of the attackers were firing from positions in a tall, half-complete building behind the embassy.

A series of explosions could be heard in the affluent Wazir Akbar Khan area, where many embassies and foreign aid agencies reside.

A Taliban spokesman said several attackers with rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s and suicide vests had taken up positions to attack government buildings.

"The primary targets of the attackers are the intelligence agency building and a ministry," Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by phone.

At least six loud explosions were heard, and the headquarters of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force was also reported to have come under attack.

Television pictures from near the attack showed a burned out minivan, a bicycle lying in the middle of the street and people running away.

Police and other security officials blocked roads around the US embassy and other diplomatic missions. "There are several armed attackers in Abdul Haq Square," Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's Crime Investigation Unit told the Associated Press.

At least four civilians have been wounded, according to Nadira Hayat Burhani, the deputy head of the health ministry. BBC correspondent Quentin Somerville tweeted that a rocket had landed 100 metres from the BBC office in Wazir Akbar Khan that could have been shot over the embassy.

He said US marines were on the roof of the embassy and sirens could be heard coming from ISAF.

The city has been on a heightened security alert in recent weeks following a series of attacks including one on the British Council last month.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since US-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban government in late 2001, with high levels of foreign troop deaths and record civilian casualties.

[buglerbilly]

Video: Troops Fend Off Kabul Attack, Launch P.R. Counterstrike

By Spencer Ackerman September 13, 2011 | 2:14 pm


Uploaded by NATOCOMMUNITY on Sep 13, 2011
Video of ISAF soldiers inside ISAF Headquarters - Kabul, Afghanistan fighting back against an attack on the US Embassy compound and ISAF HQ - 13th September 2011

As a complex, coordinated Taliban attack unleashed gunfire, mortars and suicide bombers onto the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Tuesday morning, NATO’s military command didn’t just respond to the threat militarily. It got its videocameras rolling in an attempt to deny the Taliban a propaganda victory.

In this just-released, four-minute video, American, Afghan and allied troops jump from stacked metal connexes to defensible positions and direct fire at Taliban insurgents below the walls of the giant compound. Sirens from ambulances are audible, as are the pops of rifle rounds. Black smoke billows from an area of the compound hit by the Taliban.

The Taliban clearly want a propaganda boost from the five-hour attack. They started calling reporters to take credit for it even as their offensive was underway. The assault came days U.S. Amb. Ryan Crocker boasted to a Washington Post columnist that Kabul’s biggest problem was “traffic.” The security-analysis group Stratfor assesses that since the Taliban’s use of small arms can’t damage the embassy, “this attack was intended really to send a message, to be more symbolic in nature.”

The video appears designed to undermine that propaganda effort. Soldiers, Marines and their Afghan and foreign counterparts work calmly — but fiercely in tandem to direct rifle fire against the insurgents. Message: We got this — even if the Taliban just shattered the sense that NATO and the Afghan government at least had the capitol locked down.

At least six people are dead and 19 wounded, mostly Afghans, in a fight that subsided mere hours ago. We’re unaware of any previous effort from the U.S. military that got video out to social media nearly as quickly.

H/T: Jeff Schogol of Stars & Stripes

[buglerbilly]

Al-Qaeda could lose ‘operational capabilities’ within 2 years, U.S. official says

By Craig Whitlock and Greg Miller,

The nation’s top intelligence officials said Tuesday that al-Qaeda’s affiliates have eclipsed the terrorist network’s core as national security threats and that, within two years, continued pressure could render al-Qaeda remnants in Pakistan incapable of carrying out attacks.

Michael G. Vickers, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said at a defense conference that if the current pace of U.S. operations continues, “within 18 to 24 months, core al-Qaeda’s cohesion and operational capabilities could be degraded to the point that the group could fragment.”

Vickers’s remark represents the first time that a senior U.S. official has offered a time frame for achieving the collapse of the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. His comments were consistent with assessments delivered to Congress on Tuesday by the nation’s top two intelligence officials.

In his first public testimony as CIA director, David H. Petraeus said that the killing of Osama bin Laden and subsequent operations have opened “an important window of vulnerability for the core al-Qaeda organization in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

Petraeus and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. stressed that al-Qaeda continues to plot attacks, and that its regional affiliates in Yemen and elsewhere have emerged as a lethal new threat to the United States.

Petraeus described al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the affiliates, as “the most dangerous regional node in the global jihad” and said that the CIA has seen new signs of “al-Qaeda’s efforts to carry out relatively small attacks that would . . . generate fear and create the need for costly security improvements.”

Their testimony came during a rare joint hearing by the House and Senate intelligence committees that was meant to serve as a status report on al-Qaeda and U.S. counterterrorism efforts on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The last time the two committees held a joint session was in 2002, when they collaborated on the first major investigation of the intelligence failures related to the attacks.

Vickers, a former CIA officer who rarely speaks publicly, appeared separately at a conference at the National Defense University at Fort McNair.

Overall, officials said, the United States is better protected from terrorist strikes by strengthened security measures and a sweeping overhaul of the intelligence community, including the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, during the past decade.

“Are we safer today? The answer, I believe, is an unqualified yes,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Feinstein said that counterterrorism efforts appear to be gaining momentum and that U.S. operations against al-Qaeda in recent months have meant “more killed in rapid succession than at any time since Sept. 11.”

Clapper said U.S. spy agencies have dramatically improved their ability to share information and coordinate operations against terrorist groups. But he stressed the need for further changes at a time when the agencies are facing budget cuts after years of massive spending increases.

“I view this as a litmus test for this office — to preside over the difficult cuts we’re going to have to make,” Clapper said.

His testimony came as insurgents mounted an assault on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Tuesday and as al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri issued an audio message asserting that the Sept. 11 attacks helped set the stage for the toppling of autocrats in the Middle East this year.

Petraeus said that pressure on al-Qaeda and Taliban elements in Pakistan — driven mainly by the CIA drone campaign — may lead some mid-level al-Qaeda members to “seek safe haven across the border in Afghanistan or decide to leave South Asia.”

Critics have questioned whether Petraeus, who recently retired from the U.S. military after leading the war effort in Afghanistan, could offer impartial analysis of that conflict. His remark raised the possibility that al-Qaeda may seek to return to the country it fled when the war began.

Separately, Petraeus also disclosed that the CIA’s inspector general has opened an investigation into the agency’s relationship with the New York Police Department. The agency’s work with the department was the subject of a recent investigative report by the Associated Press.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan militants dressed as women to smuggle weapons for Kabul attack

By Ernesto Londoño and Javed Hamdard, Published: September 13 | Updated: Wednesday, September 14, 4:24 PM

KABUL — Shortly after security forces gunned down the last assailant involved in a brazen attack in Kabul Wednesday morning, officials said they believe the attackers were dressed as women to smuggle a huge stockpile of weapons into a building overlooking the U.S. Embassy and the NATO headquarters.

The last of six assailants who launched rockets and sprayed the heavily secured compound with rifles for hours was gunned down at 8:30 a.m., police spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said. The attack, which exposed the vulnerability of the Afghan capital as U.S. forces begin to withdraw, began at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and involved at least three suicide bombers who detonated explosives elsewhere in the city.

Sediqqi said authorities found burqas — the blue garments worn by many Afghan woman that drapes them from head to toe — inside the van the assailants used to transport weapons into the building.

“We strongly believe they used burqas to reach this place,” Sediqqi said, speaking outside the building as reporters took photos of the six bodies of the assailants. “The police respect the women too much.”

Sediqqi said the siege ended only after Afghan and NATO special forces stormed the building Wednesday morning as NATO attack helicopters provided backup.

NATO said six coalition “personnel” were wounded in the attack. A NATO spokesman, Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, said three of the troops were wounded Tuesday in a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on the base. The other three were wounded while clearing the building overnight, he added.

U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said Wednesday that the attack was likely carried out by the Haqanni network, a Taliban offshoot group that has been linked to some of the boldest attacks in the capital.The Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attack Tuesday.

Crocker downplayed the significance of Tuesday’s attack, which kept the capital under seige for nearly 20 hours.

“These were five guys that rumbled into town with RPGs under their car seats,” Crocker said. “This is not a very big deal, a hard day for the embassy and my staff, who behaved with enormous courage and dedication. But look, you know a dozen RPG rounds from 800 meters away — that isn’t [the] Tet [offensive], that’s harassment.”

Crocker said between six and seven rounds landed inside the embassy compound. He said he was heartened by the Afghan government’s response to the attack and by what he described as a lately inconsequential attack.

“If this is the best they can do, I find their lack of ability and capacity and the ability of Afghan forces to respond to it, actually encouraging,” he said.

Transition of responsibility for security from NATO to Afghan security forces “will proceed on pace,” he added.

Crocker spoke to a Wall Street Journal reporter Tuesday morning who was asked by the embassy to share a transcript of the interview with the rest of the Kabul press corps.

Residents watched in horror as lightly armed police officers wearing no body armor fought assailants who fired rockets into diplomatic and military enclaves while holed up in an unoccupied building in what is perhaps the most secure part of the capital.

The NATO headquarters and the embassy went on high alert after the initial blasts rang out Tuesday afternoon, with diplomats barricading themselves in bunkers. American attack helicopters had joined the fight, diving down to strike at the assailants.

Kabul has seen its share of high-profile, chilling attacks this year, including recent strikes on the Intercontinental Hotel and the British Council. But the attack Tuesday was rich in symbolism in an impoverished country, scarred by years of war, where the United States has spent billions of dollars over the past decade in an elusive attempt to bring stability.

To gain access to the unoccupied 15-story building that overlooks the sprawling diplomatic and military compounds, the assailants drove into the basement, then climbed to one of the top floors and took up positions behind cement pillars, Afghan authorities said. The building is under construction.

The prolonged fighting around NATO’s nerve center in Kabul, the headquarters for top U.S. commanders, exposed serious shortcomings in security and intelligence. Early reports suggested that at least seven Afghans were killed in the attack.

A Taliban spokesman said the attack was intended to remind Afghanistan’s government and the United States about the power the insurgents still wield. “We have not run out of patience, and we want to fight to end their occupation,” said the spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid. “We have the ability to strike when we want.”

The Afghan government took formal control of security in a number of districts around Kabul this summer as part of a plan to gradually transfer responsibility from foreign to Afghan forces over the next three years. The first phase is seen as a key test of the competence of the U.S.-funded-and-trained Afghan forces, which the Obama administration hopes will be able to secure Afghanistan with little foreign help by the end of 2014. Kabul has effectively been under Afghan security control for several years.

Afghan President Hamid Kar*zai condemned the attack and vowed that it would “embolden people’s determination in taking the responsibility for their country’s own affairs.” To many Afghans, such condemnations have begun to ring hollow as the Afghanistan war nears its 10th year, with levels of violence rising and the prospect of a negotiated settlement appearing increasingly distant.

“The government is too weak to protect us,” said Ismail Agha, 38, who lives near the tall building from which the assailants launched the attack. “They should let us go after the terrorists and fight them ourselves.”

The attack Tuesday jolted expatriates, who have grown accustomed to sporadic violence in Kabul.

Hamid M. Khan, a rule-of-law adviser in the Kabul office of the U.S. Institute of Peace, said he and his colleagues spent hours huddled in a safe room at their compound as blasts and gunshots thundered nearby at the site of the main attack.

“The entire staff is hunkered down,” he said, using BlackBerry Messenger to communicate. “We’re very tense and alarmed by how close the rocket attacks and gunshots keep coming.”

At the World Bank office, a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy, more than 35 staffers were holed up in a basement bunker that had no bathroom or provisions.

Elsewhere, as the clashes unfolded, Noorullah Mehirjoy, 60, a government worker, spent hours trying to find his young daughter, Zorah.

She had been at a graduation ceremony, where Karzai was supposed to have awarded diplomas. But a security adviser approached the president soon after the first explosions were heard and whispered in his ear, Mehirjoy said.

“Karzai left the hall without saying goodbye,” he said.

In an interview last week, the new U.S. ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, said he was pleasantly surprised by the situation in Kabul, having last been there in 2002.

“The biggest problem in Kabul is traffic,” said Crocker, who has noted that Afghanistan’s problems are serious and will take a long time to solve.

Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Kabul attacks 'not a big deal' says US ambassador

Ryan Crocker says attacks were a statement of militants' weakness, after security forces kill last insurgents

Jeremy Kelly in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 September 2011 12.25 BST


Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, said the Kabul attacks illustrated the good work done by Afghan security. Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool / Pool/EPA

The American ambassador to Afghanistan has described a 20-hour assault on the heart of Kabul's diplomatic and military quarter as "not a very big deal", after security forces finally killed the last of a small team of insurgents that had paralysed the city.

About six Taliban fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons took over a half-completed building on Tuesday, from where they rained down fire on the nearby US embassy and Nato compounds. Meanwhile, suicide bombers targeted police buildings in other parts of the city.

Afghan security forces backed by Nato and Afghan attack helicopters were forced to fight floor by floor before the last insurgent was killed on Wednesday, putting an end to the longest sustained attack in the capital since the US-led invasion in 2001. At least nine Afghans, including four police officers were killed, and 23 people including civilians were wounded.

The city's streets were far quieter than normal: local staff of non-governmental agencies were told to come in late and many expatriate employees were locked down in their well-defended compounds. Afghans were again left questioning how such a complex attack could take place under the noses of international troops and their Afghan counterparts, who are due to take over security responsibilities in 2014.

The US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, said the attack needed to be put into perspective. "These were five guys that rumbled into town with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] under their car seats," he said.

"They got into a building and did some harassment fire on us and Isaf. This really is not a very big deal, a hard day for the embassy and my staff, who behaved with enormous courage and dedication, but half a dozen RPG rounds from 800 metres away – that isn't Tet, that's harassment," he said in reference to the Tet offensive in Vietnam.

"If that's the best they can do, I think it's actually a statement of their weakness and more importantly since Kabul is in the hands of Afghan security it's a real credit to the Afghan national security forces."

Crocker said six or seven RPGs landed inside the compound. Isaf reported that six of its personnel were wounded.

The ambassador blamed the attack on the Haqqani network, a terrorist organisation based in Pakistan that has long been accused of receiving support from the Inter Services Intelligence agency. The group has also been blamed for this week's truck bomb outside an isolated US base that wounded 77 soldiers.

The Haqqani network has been responsible for Kabul's most spectacular and deadly attacks including last month's assault on the British Council, the bombing of the Indian Embassy and a Mumbai-style attack in the city's central business district.

"It's tough when you're trying to fight an insurgency that has a lot of support outside the national borders," Crocker said. "And the information available to us is that these attackers, like those who carried out the bombing in Wardak, are part of the Haqqani network, they enjoy safe haven in [the Pakistani region of] Northern Waziristan.

The Isaf commander general, John Allen, praised the Afghan security forces. "The insurgency has again failed," he said of the attack.

But for ordinary Afghans there was anger at the security forces' inability to prevent the attack. Hundreds of people gathered in Abdul Haq Square for a glimpse of the bullet-ridden bodies of the six attackers being brought out of the building after it was finally cleared.

"For Afghans, this is a strong attack and very sad for us," said Malek Tose. "Afghans are dying but for America it is nothing because they are fighting all over the world," he said.

Mohammad Bashir Suleiman Khil, a shopkeeper, said people were increasingly scared, even in Kabul, considered to be the most secure city in the country. "Every 10 days there are attacks in Kabul. Afghanistan will not be quiet again. There is no work, there is no business. People are not coming out of their homes today. We don't have any hope here."

The bodies of four insurgents lay on a concrete floor strewn with bullet casings. One had a bullet wound between his eyes. Crime scene investigators took the fingerprints of the dead and when they picked up a body to place it on a stretcher, a live grenade was found underneath him.

At least one of the attackers had held out nearly 20 hours inside the building before he was eventually overcome by police commandos using stun grenades. The attackers appeared to have used metal barrels to climb floors inside the building to avoid the external and exposed stairwells.

[buglerbilly]

Army gets first 6 craft in MD Helicopters deal

Copters built in Mesa will be used to train Afghan pilots

by Art Thomason - Sept. 14, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

In a ceremony punctuated with patriotic themes and commitments to save American jobs, the Army on Tuesday took the keys to six helicopters to train Afghan pilots just days after they were manufactured in Mesa.

The helicopters are the first built by MD Helicopters Inc. as part of a defense contract to produce up to 54 aircraft at a cost of $186 million for training missions described as critical in development of the Afghan military.

The deal sweetens the rebound of a helicopter company that was in financial chaos six years ago and allows the Army to dramatically upgrade helicopter-pilot training with modern rotorcraft and technologies.

The Department of Defense was criticized by members of Congress last year after the Pentagon spent $648 million to buy or refurbish 31 Russian Mi-17 transport helicopters for the Afghan National Army Air Corps.

Pentagon officials said that the deal was struck because Afghan airmen had trained on the Russian helicopters for years and that the rotorcraft were designed for Afghanistan's desert and mountainous terrain.

But this year, the Defense Department bought American. MD Helicopters landed the contract and is delivering the rotorcraft to the Army 45 days ahead of schedule.

Army officials didn't lose sight of the unexpectedly early completion, praising it as an example of the enterprise and work ethic that will keep America strong.

"You are the underpinning and the enablers to train them (pilots)," Maj. Gen. Tim Crosby, the Army's program executive officer for aviation, told company employees, Army officials and others who gathered near the MD plant's production lines for the ceremony.

"Those soldiers over there don't know who you are, but they know there are workers in Mesa, Arizona, who are helping them. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and for every soldier over there."

MD owner Lynn Tilton, who rescued the company from near-liquidation when she and her $6 billion private-equity firm, Patriarch Partners, acquired it in 2005, said the helicopter production for the Army is more than business.

"It's love of country, but not love of money," she said.

"I can say today that I'm very proud. I get up each day to create jobs in America and to sustain jobs in America. . . . This is what it takes to rebuild America. We are manufacturers. Until we respect and honor those who stand together and turn the wrenches, we will not change."

Mesa Mayor Scott Smith said, "MD Helicopters has persisted through a very difficult environment. It's no small feat to beat a production deadline on a tight six-month schedule, and they're doing it right here in Mesa."

Tilton said the Army pact could lead to additional defense contracts for the company, which is located at Falcon Field Airport.

Crosby said that "there have been some inquiries" about eventually arming the helicopters with weapons.

Although MD is known for its line of commercial helicopters, it has manufactured helicopters for military use.

The company also is continuing discussions with the Boeing Co. as part of a contract to collaborate on production of the Boeing AH-6i light-attack/reconnaissance helicopter for the global market.

Boeing builds its Apache helicopters at facilities just northwest of Falcon Field.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/09/14/20110914army-gets-6-craft-md-helicopters-deal.html#ixzz1XyemiQgs

[buglerbilly]

Afghan ambush heroics go unrecognized

By Dan Lamothe - Staff writer

Posted : Tuesday Sep 13, 2011 5:45:09 EDT


Jonathan S. Landay / McClatchy Tribune
Army Capt. William Swenson calls for air support on his radio as troops take cover while Afghan security forces and their U.S. military trainers were ambushed on Sept. 8, 2009.

In a rocky mountainside trench, a Marine and a soldier worked in tandem under an avalanche of enemy fire to retrieve the bodies of a four-man training team killed in eastern Afghanistan.

Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer and Army Capt. William Swenson already had braved enemy fire repeatedly during the Sept. 8, 2009, ambush in Ganjgal, an insurgent-held village in Kunar province’s Sarkani district. On a last, urgent dash into the village, Meyer charged through enemy fire alone and on foot to find the missing service members, and Swenson joined him in the chaos to load their bloody bodies and gear onto a Humvee and take them home.

On Thursday, Meyer is expected to receive the Medal of Honor during a White House ceremony. He will become the first living Marine in 38 years to receive the nation’s highest combat award, and at least the ninth member of Marine Embedded Training Team 2-8 to receive at least a Bronze Star with ‘V’ device for heroism in Ganjgal. Two other Marines — Capt. Ademola Fabayo and Staff Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez — each received a Navy Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor.

Swenson has received nothing. The lack of recognition raises questions whether Swenson’s angry criticism of Army officers, who repeatedly refused to send fire support that day, is the reason he has not been decorated.

It is “ridiculous” that Swenson hasn’t yet been recognized for his heroism, Meyer said. Swenson also repeatedly braved fire in the battle, working with the Marines to engage enemy fighters and evacuate U.S. and Afghan casualties from a kill zone, the Medal of Honor nominee said.

“I’ll put it this way,” Meyer said. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be alive today.”

Swenson, who left the Army in February, could not be reached for comment. During an investigation into what went wrong in Ganjgal, he blasted officers who failed to send the fire support he repeatedly requested on the battlefield, according to interview transcripts.

An Army source with knowledge of the awards process said Swenson is “up for some kind of valor award,” but he did not say whether it could be a Medal of Honor or Distinguished Service Cross. By policy, the military does not discuss pending military awards, said Bill Costello, a spokesman with Army Human Resources Command, out of Fort Knox, Ky.

Meyer, now a sergeant in the Individual Ready Reserve, worked with Swenson and other service members to save pinned-down forces after a group of 13 U.S. military trainers, 60 Afghan soldiers and 20 Afghan border police were caught in a devastating U-shaped ambush in the Ganjgal Valley, near the Pakistan border.

Coalition forces engaged in a six-hour firefight in which fire support was repeatedly denied by Army officers at nearby Forward Operating Base Joyce. The officers — with Task Force Chosin, a unit comprising soldiers from 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, out of Fort Drum, N.Y. — were later cited following a military investigation for “negligent” leadership leading “directly to the loss of life” on the battlefield.

What Swenson did

Swenson — then a member of 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, out of Fort Riley, Kan. — was deployed to oversee the training of Afghan border police in Sarkani. A Ranger School graduate with previous deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, he had participated in the planning of the mission, and was assured fire support would be available if things turned ugly.

U.S. forces left Joyce early that morning to meet tribal leaders in Ganjgal. As the lead element of the unit approached the mountainside village, the troops could see all of the lights in it flicker off. At least 50 insurgent fighters opened fire with small arms, rockets and rocket-propelled grenades shortly after dawn, Meyer said.

The four-man team of Marine trainers in the front of the element was quickly pinned down in the village with Afghan soldiers. First Lt. Michael Johnson, Gunnery Sgt. Edwin “Wayne” Johnson, Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick and Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class James Layton successfully fought to free up some of the Afghan forces, but could not break loose themselves.

“We’re surrounded!” Gunny Johnson yelled into his radio, according to witness statements from survivors. “They’re moving in on us!”

The team pleaded for fire support, a military investigation later found, but was denied because officers at Joyce’s tactical operations center underestimated how bad the ambush was and were concerned about killing civilians or U.S. service members with artillery rounds. After the Marine team stopped responding to their radio, other U.S. forces reported them missing and began a frantic search to find them, uncertain whether they had been killed.

Swenson and other U.S. forces were farther from the village, but still faced a torrent of enemy fire. He began requesting fire support shortly after the shooting started, the investigation found, but after a few early artillery shells arrived, he and other troops on the ground were denied additional rounds.

Pinned down on a hillside with several wounded U.S. forces, Swenson and Fabayo defended the group from advancing Taliban fighters, who dressed in Afghan National Army uniforms and helmets, according to military documents outlining the battle. Swenson killed at least two of them with a grenade at close range, while Fabayo engaged them with his M4 carbine.

Fabayo, then a first lieutenant, and Swenson also worked together to evacuate more casualties under fire in an unarmored Ford Ranger pickup truck used by Afghan forces. They cared for three U.S. service members who were wounded in the battle, including Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Westbrook, Swenson’s top noncommissioned officer. Westbrook sustained a gunshot wound to the face and neck, and died the following month at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Army awarded him a Bronze Star, without V, posthumously.

On the last push into the village, Swenson sat in the front passenger seat of a Humvee. Rodriguez-Chavez drove, Fabayo manned a 7.62mm M240 machine gun turret and Meyer sat in the back with Fazel, an Afghan interpreter. They were unaware at the time that the Marine team already was dead.

Meyer found them shot to death and stripped of their radios and weapons in a hillside trench that had been marked with a smoke canister tossed from a helicopter. The gunfire was too fierce for the Air Force’s elite pararescue jumpers to help, but Meyer and Swenson faced it to load the bodies.

Why the delay?

Two years later, family members of those killed at Ganjgal and survivors wonder why Swenson has never been decorated for his actions that day — particularly because Swenson was irate about repeatedly being denied fire support during the battle. Even Meyer’s Medal of Honor has been approved, they point out.

“He has received nothing at all,” Westbrook’s widow, Charlene, said of Swenson. “I don’t understand how the Army isn’t awarding him something that he clearly, clearly deserves. For it to drag on this long is totally, totally sad. Sad!”

Interviewed for the investigation, Swenson unloaded on the rules of engagement used in Afghanistan, the leadership of officers who didn’t send help and the second-guessing he experienced while requesting fire support, according to military documents. His name is redacted, but Marine Corps Times determined which statements he made based on the actions and roles described in interview transcripts.

“When I’m being second-guessed by higher or somebody that’s sitting in an air-conditioned TOC, why [the] hell am I even out there in the first place?” Swenson told investigators. “Let’s sit back and play Nintendo. I am the ground commander I want that f---er, and I am willing to accept the consequences of that f---er.”

Swenson added that he had been second-guessed on previous occasions, and was frustrated by a complicated process to clear fires, even under duress.

“I always get these crazy messages saying that, ‘Hey, brigade is saying that you can’t see the target,’ ” Swenson told investigators. “Brigade, you’re in Jalalabad. F--- you, you know? I am staring at the target. ... I just get the craziest things on the radio sometimes. Just people second guessing. If I am willing to put my initials on it, I understand the importance of making sure the rounds hit where they are supposed to hit. I understand the consequences of civilian casualties.”

Swenson left active-duty service in February, Costello said. Charlene Westbrook said she remains in contact with her husband’s former commander. He lives a private life in Washington state, and is still disenchanted with the Army, she said.

“He, in my opinion, is real humble. He has not said anything one way or the other about being pissed or mad about it.” But he is deserving of recognition, she added. “He’s just an awesome guy.”

[buglerbilly]

The War in Afghanistan: The Real Lessons of the Attack in Kabul

07:41 GMT, September 15, 2011 There is a growing tendency to cover the war in Afghanistan by chasing the headlines from event to event. The kind of coverage turns a tragic helicopter crash into a crisis, and does the same for a largely symbolic attack on the ISAF and Embassy compound in Kabul. At the same time, it is fueled by a lack of honest ISAF and US official reporting, and the almost inevitable media reaction to spin and good reporting from the US government that increasingly is taking on the character of the daily press follies in Vietnam. Official briefings that merit nothing but distrust earn distrust.

Unfortunately, there has been a steady decline in the quality and transparency of the reporting in the war, and this makes it hard to bring the war into perspective. Some things do, however, seem clear:

ISAF, THE US, AND ANSF ARE MAKING TACTICAL PROGRESS

ISAF, the US and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) are making important military gains in Southern Afghanistan and in attacking the leadership and key cadres of the insurgents:

• The surge in US forces, and buildup of the Afghan Army has led to far more intense fighting. This produces more US, ISAF, ANSF and insurgent casualties, makes it harder to limit civilian casualties, and collateral damage, and raises the number of security incidents caused by ISAF. It also, however, is scoring major tactical gains in the south.

• ISAF is able to hold help the Afghan government and forces build up the ability to secure many areas in the south formally dominated by the Taliban. In the areas, the Afghan government is more popular, ISAF military action has more popular acceptance, and there are better prospects for transition to meaningful Afghan control and the hold and build phase that secure the civilian populace.

• The number of Taliban, Haqqani, Hekmatyer, and other insurgent initiated attacks is down. Large numbers of insurgent arms caches have been seized, many as the result of tip from the local Afghan populace.

• Afghan security forces continue to grow significantly in numbers, have better training and equipment, have better pay with less corruption in the payment process, and have better trained leadership cadres.

• A combination of US special forces, CIA, military, and UCAV attacks has hit hard at the leadership and key cadres of Al Qaida, the Taliban, Haqqani, Hekmatyer, and other insurgent groups. They may reach the point of fragmenting the leadership of Al Qaeda in Pakistan, making AQAP. AQIM, and Al Qaeda in the Maghreb the key centers of Al Qaeda activity.

• No combination of intelligence and security forces can ever prevent a limited number of attacks from occurring in a city or in rural areas where normal freedom of movement occurs. As long as there is an organized insurgent or terrorist presence in the country or area – and sanctuaries in Pakistan -- they will always find ways to carry out bombings, attacks from a distance, infiltrate some attackers, carry out assassinations, and intimidate and coerce local populations.

Taking every major burst of casualties, and new attack of any kind, out of this broader context may grab headlines or airtime, but it fails to put the war in perspective. It can also lead to an almost constant stream of such stories over the next 12-18 months even if the war is successful. The current campaign plan calls for intense fighting through at least the end of 2012, and where ISAF and the ANSF still have to show they can fully secure Kandahar and move forces into the East and defeat the insurgents there.

BUT, THIS TACTICAL PROGRESS REALLY IS FRAGILE AND UNCERTAIN

In fairness to the media, however, every action by a public affairs officer follows the laws of Newtonian physic: It produces an equal and opposition reaction. ISAF, the US Embassy, the Departments of State and Defense, and the White House are spinning far too much of the war and providing far too little data and balanced perspective. The level of realism that took place in official reporting during the initial period when the new strategy was adopted has been replaced by Vietnam era business as usual.
• No combination of intelligence and security forces can ever prevent a limited number of attacks from occurring in a city or in rural areas where normal freedom of movement occurs. As long as there is an organized insurgent or terrorist presence in the country or area – and sanctuaries in Pakistan -- they will always find ways to carry out bombings, attacks from a distance, infiltrate some attackers, carry out assassinations, and intimidate and coerce local populations.

• It is unclear that ISAF and the ANSFR can scale up their current victories in the South or hold on to those victories and move east. The surge in US forces, and buildup of the Afghan Army, does not offer a clear capability to exercise the campaign plan issued early this year. US and allied troop cuts will now take place at a rate this sharply increases the risks in establishing the planned levels of security in the East and the rest of Afghanistan by 2014.

• ISAF and the US have deliberately ignored this risk and have not provided any public set of goals for establishing security and going from the clear and hold to the hold and build phases. They have failed to show that the current level of tactical successes can credibly be scaled up and sustained on the basis required secure and transfer even the 81 critical districts, and 41 other districts, that are the focus of the campaign plan. It is all too clear from the past, however, that any local power vacuum --or corrupt, ineffective local government – opens up areas in which the Taliban and other insurgents can exert influence or control.

• The Taliban and other insurgents are adapting. They are moving to other areas, making more use of sanctuaries in Pakistan. They are avoiding conflict with ISAF and the ANSF, and focusing on assassinations and intimidation to prevent or undermined Afghan government control. They are focusing on high profile attacks designed to show ISAF countries the war is not won or winnable, undermine support for the Afghan government, and possibly push the Afghan government and ISAF into the kind of political settlement and accommodation that will split the country or give the Taliban the ability to gradually take control of the government.

• While the leadership and key cadres of Al Qaida, the Taliban, Haqqani, Hekmatyer, and other insurgent groups have suffered, it is far from clear that even Al Qaeda will really be defeated on a lasting basis, and the Afghan groups may well be able to outwait the US and ISAF in Pakistan. Reporting that some cadres are “tired” does not mean that the Taliban perceives itself as being defeated on a political and strategic level.

• Afghan security forces are getting larger and are improving, but it is far from clear that the Army is creating sustainable and affordable forces, or forces of the quality, that that will permit transition. There are serious problems with ethnic factions, attrition, and ties to powerbrokers in creating the new capabilities necessary for a force that must operate independently and sustain itself. The key training command – NTM-A is being rushed into far quicker force development plans as a result of the new speed of transition that must take place by 2014, and is being pressed hard to make massive cuts in projected aid funding. Negative data on the operational capabilities of actual units in the field is largely unreported.

• The police continue to present massive problems in quality, corruption, leadership, divided loyalties, attrition, and ties to power brokers and narcotrafficers that are not addressed in official reporting or readiness issues. Their inability to function properly in the many areas where the Afghan government does not provide services or a meaningful presence, where the formal justice system does not really operate, and where jails and detention centers either do not exist or are centers of human rights abuses are not meaningfully addressed in official reporting.

• The slow progress in creating anything like the originally planned levels of Afghan governance and government services in the field seems to have led to deleting many of these details from official reporting. Similarly, 10 years into the war, there still is no credible reporting on the effectiveness of aid activity as distinguished from spending data and broad – often unverifiable or statistically incredible –claims of success. The uncertain ability to scale tactical success in the “clear and hold” phase is compounded by a much broader uncertainty about the ability to carry out “hold and build” and transition areas and district to meaningful Afghan government control.

• No one seems to want to address the lack of capability in many aspects of the Afghan civil government, the lack of a functioning relationship between the President and the Legislature, and the complications holding yet another Presidential election in 2014 – the year of military transition and a probably deep financial crisis.

• There is no accepted transition plan for funding and advising the ANF, and where will not be one, until the US and its allies can reach critical budget and manpower decisions that will probably be deferred in the US until Congress acts on the current budget crisis and the plans that are finally funded in the FY2013 budget – which could easily be late 2012.

• This applies to civil aid and the governance and economic phases of transition as well. ISAF, US, and Allied officials can use the word transition, and talk about transition plans, but they lack the basis for planning and managing this key aspect of the war. And, ultimate acceptance, decision-making and implementation of any transition effort must come from the Afghan government.

• The US, allies, and groups like the World Bank are only beginning to address the economic impact of the massive cuts in military and aid spending that will occur in 2012-2014, and beyond. There is no public reporting on the estimates of just how serious cutting outside spending will be a country where it currently is well over 25 times the government’s total internal revenues, and where the poverty and un and underemployment levels probably already exceed 30%. So far, such studies do not address the massive impact of narcotic trafficker, and related criminal networks, on the Afghan economy.

• Discussion about the formal transfer of responsibility to the Afghan government border on the ludicrous. Exactly the same pattern was followed in Iraq as an exercise in political symbolism and at a time the government lacked to capability and forces to really carry out the mission. Such transfers were tried in Basra, for example, but leadership there was so weak and poorly tied to the central government that the Iraqi government forces – with massive US support – had to effectively invade the province several months later. Meaningful transfer will take years of continued aid, US and ISAF back up, and major further improvements in Afghan forces and governance.

• As Iraq illustrates all too clearly, even more real world transfer of responsibility can be unstable and involve a serious level of continuing violence. Effective host country control of the security efforts does not mean there will not be continuing bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations indefinitely into the future. Similarly, Iraq shows that ethnic and sectarian conflicts and tensions remain a risk after such transfer. In the Afghan case, no one seems to want to address the risk of a split between Pashtuns and other ethnic groups.

• No one ties transition and progress in Afghanistan to the lack of progress in Pakistan, and the slow growth of instability in that country. The future of a major nuclear and military power, which is the scene of key sanctuaries in the Afghan War and intelligence ties to key Afghan insurgent groups, is only analyzed in public at a token level.

TACTICAL VICTORY AND STRATEGIC FAILURE

This list of risks and challenges does not mean the US, ISAF, or Afghan government will lose the war. It does, however, illustrate the need for far more convincing reporting on the war, on transition, and on the risks that even sustained tactical success could lead to strategic failure if the Taliban and other insurgent groups simply outwait the coming cuts in US and allied forces and spending.

It is also all too clear that this prospect will become a reality if the US government cannot do a far better job of winning back American public support for the war, carrying out realistic transition planning as distinguish from finding a cover for an exit, and get Congressional support for the continued funding and manpower necessary to make transition work. Even success in these areas also cannot address the problem of Pakistan, which is strategically far more important than Afghanistan.

These are the areas that the Administration, the Congress, the public and the media should concentrate on, and not symbolic attacks in Kabul or a single tragic downing of a helicopter.

----
By Anthony H. Cordesman
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
____
* Anthony H. Cordesman is the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

[buglerbilly]

SAS had key role in Kabul firefight - report

By Derek Cheng 6:34 PM Thursday Sep 15, 2011


A soldier, part of the coalition forces, holds his weapon during a gun battle with Taliban militants in a building in Kabul. Photo / AP

New Zealand SAS troops in Kabul reportedly played a key role in ending this week's 20-hour gunfight that left 27 people dead, including 11 insurgents.

This appears to contradict the Government's line that the SAS soldiers provided operational advice, but did not directly engage with the insurgents, who were believed to be from the Pakistan-based Haqqani network.

The attack began on Tuesday after the militants - disguised in burqas - took control of a half-finished building, having spent the past few weeks smuggling ammunition, grenades and weapons past police checkpoints and into the building.

The building was strategically chosen despite its location in a high security area, because it overlooked the Nato headquarters, the US Embassy and other high-profile targets.

As three suicide bombers struck in other parts of the city, dozens of explosions brought the city to a standstill as first Nato and then Afghan helicopters fired on the building from the skies.

The London Independent's Kabul correspondent Julius Cavendish reported that insurgents held off police for eight hours, and were only quelled when the SAS, along with the Afghan Crisis Response Unit, seized control of the 13-storey building floor by floor.

"A team of New Zealand special forces and an Afghan counter-terrorism squad had to fight their way through the maze of lift shafts and annexes on each floor."

A report in the London Telegraph also suggested the SAS were engaging with the insurgents. Both Afghan and Nato soldiers "could be seen taking positions near the top of the open concrete block, which was pocked with hundreds of bulletholes".

Defence Minister Wayne Mapp confirmed the Afghan Crisis Response Unit (CRU) and SAS took control of the building.

"My understanding is that the CRU did that [with] the SAS providing advice ... supporting them, giving them operational advice so they can undertake operations.

"They are mentors for them so they are there in a supportive role, but they are not directly engaged."

He said he had no advice the SAS had fired shots.

A Defence Force source said the SAS suffered no injuries.

The Haqqani fighters were also responsible for last month's attack on the British Council, which claimed the life of SAS soldier Corporal Douglas Grant.

US diplomat Ryan Crocker has downplayed the latest raid as nothing serious, but the sophisticated planning of the attack and the length it lasted are seen as signs that local forces are not ready to stand on their own feet.

Dr Mapp did not want to comment on Afghan police capability, but said the SAS's work with the CRU was paying dividends.

"You can actually see progress by the Afghan authorities over a range of incidents over the last few months. The [CRU's] capability is clearly improving."

He said it was still the Government's intention to bring home the SAS soldiers when their rotation finishes in March.

[buglerbilly]

Spurned Soldier May Get MoH After All

September 15, 2011

Military.com|by Bryant Jordan



See Post #2152 two above for more details...........a guy that fully deserves the MOH.............

A former Army captain who repeatedly braved enemy fire to help save ambushed U.S. and Afghan troops two years ago is reportedly being nominated for the Medal of Honor.

Then-Capt. William Swenson took part in the same rescue mission that resulted in former Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer today receiving the Medal of Honor for his own heroic actions.

The Army could not confirm a report published overnight by the Wall Street Journal that Swenson has been nominated for the award by Marine Gen. John Allen, the senior U.S. military commander in Afghanistan.

A spokeswoman said it is not Army policy to comment on award nominations, but if a nomination is approved "an appropriate announcement will be made at that time."

If true, the nomination comes after some two years of silence on the Army's part over whether Swenson was actually being nominated for a valor award. Meyer, who has since separated from the active-duty Marine Corps, reportedly has said he owes his life to Swenson's valor.

After Marines and U.S. and Afghan soldiers were ambushed approaching a Ganjgal Province village in Afghanistan in early September 2009, Meyer raced into the firefight to help rescue those pinned down by enemy fire. He was then joined by Swenson, and all three are credited with saving most of the U.S. and Afghan troops.

Meyer and Swenson also worked under fire to get the bodies of three Marines and a Navy corpsman – members of Meyer's embedded training team – into the Humvee and back to base.

Some have maintained that Swenson's blistering criticism of the Army's rules of engagement during an investigation into the failure of a 10th Mountain Division unit to deliver rocket fire on the enemy position that day may have heretofore stymied his chances of being nominated for an award.

A reporter with the McClatchy news service who was present during the ambush quoted Swenson as being very critical of the lack of helicopter and artillery fire support from brigade commanders during the deadly ambush.

Two other Marines involved in combat that day were awarded the Navy Cross for their actions, the second highest award for valor.

© Copyright 2011 Military.com. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

First Living Marine Since Vietnam Given MoH

September 15, 2011

Military.com|by Bryant Jordan



And this is the Marine from the same incident getting his MOH................he's a strong supporter of Swenson getting his.........

A former Marine who disregarded orders to stay out of a firefight to rescue fellow leathernecks received the Medal of Honor today from President Barack Obama before a packed East Room at the White House.

"We are extraordinarily proud of Sgt. Dakota Meyer," Obama said. The president recounted some of the six-hour battle where Meyer rushed in to find and rescue his team members. Five times Meyer and fellow Marine Staff Sgt. Juan J. Rodriguez-Chavez rolled into harm's way in a Humvee, pulling out wounded Afghan troops and then going back for more.

Finally, on foot and running through a hail of enemy fire, Meyer found his own teammates -- three Marines and a Navy corpsman -- already dead. Meyer, Rodriguez-Chavez and Army Capt. William Swenson recovered the bodies, all while taking fire during an ambush in the village of Ganjgal in September 2009.

"I didn't think I was gonna die. I knew I was gonna die," Obama quoted Meyer as having said later.

Meyer is the first living Marine since the Vietnam War to be awarded the Medal of Honor. Obama noted that he is also among the youngest. Now 23, he was only 21 at the time of the firefight on Sept. 8, 2009.

In conducting the rescue, Obama said, Meyer and Rodriguez-Chavez "were disobeying an order but doing what they thought was right." Rodriguez-Chavez was later awarded the Navy Cross, the second highest award for valor.

The President told those in attendance, including some members of Meyer's former unit of advisors to the Afghan army, that Meyer was "one of the most down-to-earth guys you'll ever meet."

Obama said that when the White House called to tell Meyer he would be getting the Medal of Honor, Meyer couldn't take the call because he was working his construction job. "And if I don't work I don't get paid," Meyer said.

So they called back during his lunch hour.

"Dakota is the kind of guy who gets the job done," Obama said, then turned to Meyer, who was standing nearby in his Marine uniform. "I do appreciate, Dakota, you taking my call."

© Copyright 2011 Military.com. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Slams US Criticism in Kabul Attack

September 15, 2011

Associated Press|by Zarar Khan

ISLAMABAD - American criticism of Islamabad's failure to pursue the Haqqani militant network blamed for this week's attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul risks damaging anti-terror cooperation between the two countries, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry warned Thursday.

Washington wants to degrade the insurgency in Afghanistan before handing over security responsibilities to Afghan forces and pulling out. Pakistan's reluctance to attack the Haqqani group, which U.S. officials say has safe havens in Pakistan and is behind much of the violence in Afghanistan, is a major source of tension.

On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other U.S. officials said the Haqqani group was behind the 20-hour assault on the embassy in Kabul. Panetta expressed frustration with Pakistan and issued what was construed in Pakistan as a veiled warning that Washington may take unilateral action against the militants.

Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua said Thursday that Panetta's remarks were "out of line with the cooperation that exists between the two countries in the war against terrorism." Pakistan's army, which controls defense and foreign policy, declined comment on his remarks.

Islamabad has resisted attacking the Haqqanis because they do not pose a direct threat to Pakistan. The army is engaged in a bloody fight with other militant groups. It fears that making enemies of the Haqqanis now could tip the country into even greater chaos.

The army also believes it will be able to use the group, with which it has ties going back to the U.S.-backed resistance against Soviet rule in Afghanistan, to ensure its arch-enemy India does not gain a foothold there once the American troops leave.

Panetta said it was unacceptable that the Haqqanis are able to launch attacks and then flee to safe havens across the border in Pakistan. "The message they (the Pakistanis) need to know is: we're going to do everything we can to defend our forces," Panetta told reporters.

U.S. and Afghan officials say the Haqqanis are behind many of the high-profile attacks in the Afghan capital in recent years, including a 2009 assault on the Indian embassy. The two nations have alleged that the group is assisted by Pakistan's powerful spy agency, a charge Pakistan denies.

The United States has fired scores of missiles at Haqqani fighters in North Waziristan since 2008, killing many low and midlevel fighters. Those attacks were initially tolerated by Pakistani authorities but have developed into another irritant in ties.

In recent months, Pakistani officials have alleged that militants are crossing over from Afghanistan and attacking Pakistani troops and civilians, leading them to complain of "safe havens" in Afghanistan. Janjua raised this issue, saying NATO and the U.S. should also address it.

Washington has given Islamabad $20 billion in aid since 2001, most of it to the military, to try to secure its cooperation. It can't send ground troops across the border to attack the Haqqanis because that would likely cause a nationalist backlash that could destabilize Pakistan and create divisions in the army, where many soldiers do not support the top brass' alliance with Washington.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Officials: Al-Qaida Ops Chief Killed By CIA

September 15, 2011

Associated Press|by Kimberly Dozier

WASHINGTON - A top al-Qaida operative was killed earlier this week in Pakistan's tribal areas, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Thursday. The death landed another blow against the besieged terrorist network.

The man killed was Abu Hafs al-Shahri, whom two U.S. officials describe as al-Qaida's chief of operations in Pakistan.

Though his name is little known beyond intelligence circles, Al-Shahri is described as dangerous by both the Pakistani and U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe classified counterterrorist operations.

He was apparently killed by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, though officials would not describe the method since the program is classified. A drone strike was reported by locals on Sunday night.

The officials say al-Shahri worked closely with the Pakistani Taliban to carry out attacks inside Pakistan, and was also a contender to assume some duties of al-Qaida's second in command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman. Al-Rahman was killed by a CIA drone strike in late August.

U.S. officials believe they can cripple the core al-Qaida organization if they take out the top four or five figures, following the killing in May of al-Qaida chief Osama by Laden by Navy SEALs. Eight of the network's top 20 leaders were killed this year alone, according to the Pentagon's undersecretary for defense intelligence, Michael Vickers, in remarks this week. Vickers predicted that with sustained counterterrorist operations, "within 18-24 months, core al-Qaida's cohesion and operational capabilities could be degraded to the point that the group could fragment and exist mostly as a propaganda arm."

But Vickers and CIA director David Petraeus said al-Qaida's offshoots will remain a serious threat to the U.S.

A Pakistani intelligence official says Pakistani operations chief al-Shahri was a Saudi national, who had lived in the tribal regions of Pakistan, bordering eastern Afghanistan, since 2002.

One of the U.S. officials said the same individual is No. 11 on Saudi Arabia's top-85 most wanted terror suspects, where his full name is listed as Osama Hamoud Gharman Al-Shihri. The official said the same person is No. 68 on Interpol's most wanted list, where his name was spelled "Al-Shehri" and his birthdate was listed as Sept. 17, 1981.

Al-Shahri engaged in liaison mainly with Pakistan's Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan to conduct coordinated attacks against targets inside Pakistan, one of the U.S. officials said. But al-Qaida also inspired the Pakistani Taliban to undertake its first known overseas attack, when a U.S. based operative tried and failed to detonate a car bomb in Times Square last year.

Al-Shahri's killing was first reported by NBC News.

Al-Qaida's senior planner of global terror operations, Adnan Shukrijumah, remains at large.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Lawmaker Hits DoD Over Afghan Fraud Fight

September 15, 2011

Associated Press|by Richard Lardner

WASHINGTON -- An Afghan-owned security company accused of operating an illicit protection racket received "a slap on the wrist" from the Defense Department despite ample evidence of wrongdoing, according to a senior House Democrat critical of the military's efforts to combat corruption in Afghanistan.

The complaint from Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., detailed in a Sept. 13 letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, sets the stage for a contentious congressional hearing scheduled for Thursday on how aggressively the Pentagon is holding contractors working in war zones accountable for fraud and bribery.

In the letter, Tierney summarizes the findings of "Warlord, Inc.," an investigation he led last year which concluded that Ahmad and Rashid Popal, the owners of the Watan Group, and Haji Ruhullah, a former assistant manager for the company, bribed local Afghan officials and used heavy weapons prohibited by the $2.16 billion Army transportation contract they were working under. They all denied funneling money to the Taliban, Tierney said, but evidence gathered by his staff "raised doubts about those claims."

Based on the findings of Warlord Inc., Army officials in December proposed barring Watan's security arm, Watan Risk Management, and Ruhullah from doing business with the U.S. government. Armed with American attorneys, the Popals and Ruhullah separately challenged the actions. Ruhullah won. The Army cited his status as a subordinate at Watan and said his inability to speak English meant he could not understand the terms of the contract or the investigators from Tierney's staff who interviewed him.

Gerald Posner, Ruhullah's lawyer, responded by sending a 14-page letter to Panetta on Wednesday in which he calls the congressman's letter "factually inaccurate." Posner said Ruhullah cooperated fully with Army officials. Ruhullah told them he never personally paid a bribe or a payoff to anyone and never knowingly violated weapons restrictions.

Posner also said Tierney's investigative staff did not provide a professional and unbiased translator when they met with Ruhullah and the Popals in Dubai in May 2010. During one session, Rashid Popal did the translating. But relations between Ruhullah and the Popals were strained at the time due to Ruhullah's plans to leave the company, he said. As a result, Ruhullah's statements were "erroneously translated" and then became "the basis for flawed conclusions" in Tierney's investigation, Posner wrote.

Watan did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tierney's letter. But the company, represented by the Washington law firm Venable, challenged its proposed debarment in federal court. A judge dismissed the suit. In court filings, Watan said the Army was well aware of the steps the company needed to take to ensure trucking convoys bound for U.S. bases arrived without being attacked.

In a separate document submitted to the Army in January, Watan's attorneys said the "so-called bribes" referred to in Warlord, Inc. were actually "facilitation payments" necessary for police protection and security when transporting cargo throughout Afghanistan.

The Army decided not to debar Watan, opting instead for an administrative agreement that says the company may not bid on any convoy security contracts paid for with U.S. tax dollars for the next three years. However, the ban does not affect the other companies owned by the Popals, which include oil, gas, steel, construction and telecom businesses, according to the terms of the agreement signed in early August.

Tierney said Watan had already made a decision to exit the mobile security business in Afghanistan, making the penalty insignificant. He added that the proposed debarment of Watan and Ruhullah was initially hailed by U.S. officials as a sign of how serious they were about stemming corruption in U.S. contracting.

"This summer, in a stunning reversal of course, Army officials inexplicably stopped the debarment proceedings and settled with Watan Risk Management and Commander Ruhullah for nothing more than a slap on the wrist," he told Panetta.

But Uldric Fiore, the Army official who decided to end debarment proceedings against Watan and Ruhullah, defended the moves. In an interview, Fiore said the suspension and debarment actions are intended to protect U.S. interests, not to punish contractors. Agreements such as the one Watan signed require companies to make specific improvements so they become assets to the government, he said.

"It's the court's job to punish," Fiore said. "The purpose is to have responsible contractors, the more the merrier."

The Associated Press reported in August that a special U.S. task force in Afghanistan estimated $360 million in U.S. contracting dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both.

More than half of the losses flowed through the Army transportation contract, known as Host Nation Trucking. Eight companies served as prime contractors and hired a web of nearly three dozen subcontractors for vehicles and convoy security to ship huge amounts of food, water, fuel and ammunition to American troops stationed at bases across Afghanistan. That contract has been replaced with a new arrangement for moving supplies that will reduce the risk of money being lost.

A senior U.S. military official in Kabul said debarment decisions do not preclude authorities in Afghanistan from continuing to investigate allegations of corruption and fraud in U.S. contracting. They pass information about profiteering, bribery and extortion on to the U.S. Justice and Treasury Departments for action, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the investigation into the movement of U.S. contract money in Afghanistan.

But Pentagon witnesses scheduled to appear Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform national security subcommittee will likely encounter lawmakers clamoring for swifter action.

The independent Commission on Wartime Contracting said in its final report released late last month that as much as $60 billion has been lost to waste and fraud over the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq. The commission said the government has become too reliant on the private sector for battlefield support and said U.S. agencies need to better manage and oversee work being done by contractors.

Tierney chaired the national security subcommittee when the Democrats controlled the House. He is now the panel's top Democrat. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, is now the subcommittee's chairman.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Young Afghan fighters eager to rejoin Taliban

By Kevin Sieff, Friday, September 16, 5:57 AM

KABUL — The teenage insurgents spend their days learning to make shoes and bookshelves, listening to religious leaders denounce the radical interpretation of Islam they learned as children.

But when they return to their cells at Kabul’s juvenile rehabilitation center, the boys with wispy beards and cracking voices talk only of the holy war from which they were plucked and their plans to resume fighting for the Taliban.

“They bring us here to change us,” said Nane Asha, in his late teens. “But this is our way. We cannot be changed.”

As the Taliban presses its efforts to recruit teenage fighters, Afghan officials and their international backers have crafted a program to reintegrate the country’s youngest insurgents into mainstream society. But that ambition is coming up against the intransigence of the teens, who say they would rather be on the battlefield.

“We’ll fight against America for a thousand years if we have to,” said Ali Ahmad, 17, sitting at a desk that has hearts and Koran verses scratched in the wood. “Jihad is the duty of every Muslim.”

Before joining the insurgency in their early teens, the fighters were students, part-time shopkeepers and farmhands, mostly living in the Pashtun-dominated regions of southern and eastern Afghanistan. Some say their parents supported the decision to take up arms. Others left home without warning, disregarding the wishes of relatives and heeding what they call a religious and moral obligation.

Here at the detention center, they live alongside a large group of teens found guilty of crimes unrelated to terrorism. Often, young Taliban members are described as desperate rather than ideological, but the 30 teenage fighters here appear undeterred and unrepentant, and they vow strict adherence to the group’s creed.

“We tell them, ‘You could be a mullah or a tailor or a carpenter.’ But they come here with a misinterpretation of the Holy Koran stuck in their mind. It can be hard to erase that,” said Shah Abbas Bashardost, who works with the boys.

“If we can’t get through to the kids, who can we rehabilitate?” Bashardost said.

Reintegration is at the heart of U.S. and Afghan government strategies to wind down the war, with schooling and employment being offered to coax fighters away from the insurgency. Juvenile offenders seemed a sensible starting point in that campaign, because many assumed they would be easier to win over than adults who have spent years, or even decades, waging war.

In the next few years, reintegration programs such as the one at the Kabul juvenile center — which is run by Afghans but bolstered by foreign supporters, including the United States — are expected to take shape at prisons across the country. But the disappointing results at the Kabul facility reflect the challenges facing the campaign.

The experience of boys such as Asha and Ahmad suggests that after years of religious schooling and combat, the draw of war might be too strong to overcome.

An early start

The Taliban visited Asha’s school when he was about 13, preaching the evils of American interlopers and the value of violent jihad. Asha approached the speaker after the sermon ended. “How can I join you?” he asked.

Within a few weeks, Asha was enrolled in a six-month training course, learning how to fire a Kalashnikov and to connect a nest of wires and explosives that could take out a U.S. tank. He studied the material obsessively.

“I would be on my motorbike, but I’d be going over the information in my head: how to make the bomb work, how to connect all the parts,” he said.

At the end of the Taliban course, Asha, like most of the other young fighters at the rehabilitation center, was tested on his knowledge. He placed first in his class of 37.

“My parents were very proud,” he said.

Then Asha put his new skills to work, scurrying across Helmand province to lay a variety of explosives in areas where foreign troops were likely to travel and watching from a distance as his handiwork sent plumes of smoke, dust and shrapnel into the air.

Sometimes, he said, he fired on the troops who emerged to tend to the wounded. Sometimes, he got too close, and pieces of hot metal punctured his skin, leaving scars.

Asha was rising through the Taliban ranks, accruing subordinates and ammunition, when Afghan police stopped him in Kandahar last year, recognizing his face from a photo of suspects.

Bone scans of inmates

Asha told interrogators that he was 16, even though he thinks he is several years older, because sentences are halved for juveniles. Rather than serve time in conventional prisons, teenage insurgents are sent to minimally secured rehabilitation facilities, which look more like high schools than jails. Afghan authorities have taken to performing bone scans of young inmates to ascertain their ages, knowing that many lie.

In May, the country’s intelligence agency paraded five boys ages 11 to 17 in front of reporters, photographers and cameramen in Kabul. The boys were among 400 juvenile fighters arrested by the intelligence agency in the past two years; many more have died in battle.

On stage, the boys told reporters that they wanted to divorce themselves from religious extremists and return to their families. They seemed ripe for exactly the kind of services offered by the rehabilitation program.

But at the Kabul center, detainees call Taliban members on borrowed cellphones to reassure them that their commitment to jihad has not weakened. Taliban commanders promise to reward the boys for serving prison sentences, the detainees said.

Religious officials handpicked by the government visit several times per week, charged with teaching the children a more moderate interpretation of Islam. Three social workers aim to dull the luster of the insurgency, promoting alternative careers.

In July, the Italian Embassy inaugurated a gym and computer lab at the facility. The United States assigns its military officials as “mentors” to advocate for some of the inmates and provide mattresses and school supplies to the facility.

Over the next four years, the United States has said, it will “support de-radicalization teams, reintegration efforts, and rehabilitation programming for prisoners,” particularly in the south and east, according to a plan released this year by the U.S. Embassy. American officials acknowledge the rehabilitation center’s shortcomings and say they plan to increase training for the facility’s employees and provide additional vocational instruction for inmates.

Grand ambitions

For now, the juvenile center’s practices do not always match its lofty ambitions. Several days a week, when religious officials are unable to teach Koran classes, Asha leads the group instead. While a group of boys told an American reporter that their ultimate goal was “to kill you people,” a social worker within earshot appeared unfazed, saying nothing.

“How much progress are these centers really making?” said Latifullah Mashal, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s intelligence service.

Meanwhile, officials at the juvenile center are looking for reasons to be hopeful — or, short of that, to explain their lack of success.

“We are concerned about whether they will go back to the Taliban,” said Aziza Adalatkhwah, the center’s director. “But, ultimately, it depends on the child and on how much they love their county.”

[buglerbilly]

Saab’s Multi-Mission Radar Giraffe AMB Protects the Australian Army

(Source: Saab AB; issued Sept. 15, 2011)

Saab’s multi-mission radar Giraffe AMB is in operational service with the Australian Army protecting the troops on deployment in Afghanistan. The system provides early detection of attacks from insurgent rockets, artillery and mortars keeping the troops safe.
As the vital part of the Australian Defence Force’s Counter-Rocket Artillery and Mortar system (C-RAM) the Giraffe AMB has continued to prove its force protection capabilities. The early warning provided greatly enhances the survivability of Australian and other ISAF forces, providing increased warning of an imminent attack to enable them to take appropriate shelter.

“We are providing our troops with the equipment they need. That includes the CRAM Counter-rocket radar system. There has been some great work done by Saab to deliver this capability – on budget and five months ahead of schedule. And I congratulate them for it. It has been operating at Tarin Kot since December and has already been activated 10 times, providing an early warning against rocket and mortar attacks," stated the Minister for Defence Materiel, The Hon Jason Clare, on 29 June 2011.

A later incident was a night attack when three rockets were fired at the Tarin Kot base on 19 July. Deputy Commander Colonel David Smith praised the fact that there were no casualties.

“C-RAM proved effective in providing personnel with an early warning of the incoming threat, giving those outside suitable time to take cover.”

Furthermore, the C-RAM project which delivered the Giraffe AMB to the Australian Army has won a prestigious award from the Australian Institute of Project Management which encourages excellence through professionalism in project management. The C-RAM project won the defence and aerospace category and also the project of the year in the state of Victoria.

Giraffe AMB is a flexible series of modular surveillance systems. Fully fitted, the system includes capabilities for simultaneous air defence, air and sea surveillance, air/land integration, military air traffic control and rocket, artillery and mortar alert.

The system is part of Saab's continuously evolving radar program and provides the highest performance for critical targets and proven reliability. Giraffe has become the radar of choice for armed forces worldwide, whether part of vital point protection or area air defence solutions.

The Giraffe is in current production and in use with the armed forces of Sweden, France, Estonia and the UK amongst others.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011.

U.S. Suspects Pakistan Link in Attack

In Sign of Unraveling Ties, Officials Seek Signs of Spy Agency Role in Kabul Siege.

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG And SIOBHAN GORMAN

WASHINGTON—U.S. officials say they are looking for evidence that directly links elements of Pakistan's powerful spy agency to this week's assault on the U.S. Embassy and coalition headquarters in Kabul, a sign of just how rancorous relations have become between the two allies in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The American suspicions are being partly fueled by growing concerns that deteriorating bilateral relations, and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, may be pushing elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency to more closely embrace the Haqqani network, the Taliban faction blamed for this week's violence and a spate of attacks in and around Kabul.

Neither the ISI nor the Pakistani military, of which the spy agency is part, immediately responded to the U.S. suspicions. Pakistani government officials dismissed the suspicions as insulting and unfair.


Reuters
Afghan policemen inspect a building in Kabul this week after a battle with insurgents near the U.S. Embassy.

Top U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, have already blamed the violence in Kabul on the Haqqani network, an Afghan insurgent faction whose history is intertwined with the ISI. The Pakistani spy agency has aided Haqqani network attacks in Kabul in past years, officials say.

The U.S. has warned the Pakistanis of stronger action if the group wasn't reined in.

Afghan officials say mobile phones found on the slain attackers in this week's commando-style raid in Kabul indicate they were in contact with people from "outside Afghanistan"—a typical Afghan way of indirectly pointing to Pakistan. Taliban and allies have for a decade found refuge in the mountainous areas along the two countries' border.

Even so, U.S and Afghan officials have stopped short of publicly linking the attack to the ISI, as they did after past attacks in Kabul, such as the 2008 and 2009 bombings of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

In those and other cases, U.S. officials said that communications intercepts and other intelligence directly linked the ISI to the attacks. Yet it took months to reach that conclusion and publicize it.

What is different this time is the speed with which some U.S. officials publicly said they were exploring ISI links, a sign of the growing frustration of U.S. officials who in recent months have become more public in their finger-pointing at Pakistan for its coordination with Islamist militant groups.

The possibility of ISI involvement was already being considered within hours of the attack's conclusion when President Barack Obama's National Security Council met Wednesday, said a U.S. official.

A senior U.S. defense official said there is currently no "actionable intelligence" linking Pakistan's spy service to this week's attack. "But we're looking for it—closely," the defense official said shortly after the violence ended.

The official added that given the ISI's history of supporting and sheltering the Haqqanis, it was "almost reflexive" to see if the spy agency had any role in the latest Kabul violence.

That illustrates the deep vein of mistrust now running through the relationship between Washington and Islamabad.

"The level of patience has just gone out the window," said Seth Jones, a political scientist at the Rand Corp., who has spent much of the past two years working with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. "People aren't keeping it inside anymore and containing it in a circle that, for a while, was just private."

Pakistan, for its part, says the ISI long ago severed ties with the Haqqanis. Government officials in Islamabad bristled at the suggestion their country had any role in the attack or that its territory was used to orchestrate the violence.

A spokeswoman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, Tehmina Janjua, said in a statement Thursday that Mr. Panetta's remarks about the Haqqani network were "out of line with the cooperation that exists between the two countries in the war against terrorism."

U.S. officials acknowledge that in some areas the cooperation remains solid, such as the fight against al Qaeda. Despite criticism of the unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May, Pakistan is still viewed by many in Washington as committed to that fight. Its aid was essential in the killings of a pair of senior al Qaeda leaders in recent weeks in Pakistan, the officials said.

What frustrates some Americans is that while Pakistan at times acts as an indispensable ally, it also hedges its bets by remaining close to militant groups long seen by Pakistan's national security establishment as effective tools of foreign policy.

Pakistan has used groups such as the Haqqanis, the Taliban and others to secure its interests in Afghanistan, officials say, and keep regional rival India, with a far larger conventional military, at bay.

This week's, attacks, however, targeted the U.S. The fighting started Tuesday afternoon when militants began firing rocket-propelled grenades at the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy, the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition and other targets.

At least a half dozen RPGs landed inside the embassy; 11 Afghan civilians and five police were killed before the fighting ended Wednesday morning.

A direct attack on an American embassy "isn't something we can treat as business-as-usual," said the U.S. defense official. Even if no ISI link is found, the Pakistani relationship with the Haqqanis is "long past unacceptable," the official said.

Missteps by both the U.S. and Pakistan this year have led to a sharp deterioration in relations, which may also be prompting Islamabad to more closely embrace militant groups from which it has sought to publicly distance itself in recent years, according to U.S. officials and Mr. Jones of Rand.

"There's a question that goes beyond the Haqqanis—about whether there is an increased amount of support to a range of groups fighting in Afghanistan," said Mr. Jones, who is writing a book about al Qaeda. Among the other groups that ISI may seek to forge stronger relations in Afghanistan, he said, is Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was responsible for the 2008 commando-style attack in Mumbai.

Lashkar-e-Taiba was nurtured by Pakistan throughout the 1990s to fight Indian rule in the divided region of Kashmir, and U.S. and Western official believe it still maintains close links with elements of the ISI and Pakistani military.

Trail of Terror

Attacks in Kabul attributed to the Haqqani network, which the U.S. believes has links to Pakistani intelligence

• July 2008: A suicide bomber drives into the Indian Embassy, killing 54.

• October 2009: A car bomb is detonated near the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing at least 17 people.

• February 2010: Gunmen and suicide bombers detonate a bombladen minivan, killing at least 17 people at a hotel and two guest houses.

• June 2011: Militant attack on Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel leaves 22 people dead, including 9 attackers, 2 police and 11 civilians.

• September 2011: U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters come under attack by militants firing from a construction site, killing five police and 11 civilians.

—Tom Wright in Islamabad and Habib Khan Totakhil in Kabul contributed to this article.
Write to Matthew Rosenberg at matthew.rosenberg@wsj.com and Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011.

Parliament Is Frozen, A Year Past Afghan Poll

By MARIA ABI-HABIB

KABUL—A face-off between Afghan lawmakers and President Hamid Karzai has prevented the allocation of development spending and other key legislation, spreading disillusion among voters who risked Taliban intimidation to cast their ballots one year ago.

A group of more than 70 lawmakers, known as the Support for the Law coalition, has been holding mock parliamentary sessions for the past two weeks, denying the legislature a quorum needed to pass laws.

The friction stretches back to Mr. Karzai's effort to change the makeup of the legislature in the months after the parliamentary election on Sept. 18, 2010.

Mr. Karzai delayed the inauguration until January, saying that massive fraud had tainted the polls. Then, a special Supreme Court tribunal backed by Mr. Karzai sought the ouster of 62 lawmakers from the 249-seat house on allegations of electoral fraud. The tribunal came under intense international pressure; ultimately nine lawmakers were disqualified last month.

Mr. Karzai's efforts angered his opponents in parliament, who say the president ignores legislators and is dictatorial in his governance.

"The Afghan parliament is facing problems because our president doesn't respect our constitution," said Ustaad Mohammed Aref Rahmani, a parliamentarian from eastern Ghazni province and a member of the Support for the Law coalition. "We want to do our work in parliament but it is the government that is trying to change who sits in the house."

One of parliament's most pressing duties is deciding how to spend a development budget of about $1.5 billion. The money is intended to build roads, schools and other infrastructure seen as crucial to convincing Afghans that the government can provide amenities and build institutions that the Taliban can't.

Only 10% of that budget has been spent six months into the fiscal year that started March 21. Usually more than half of those funds is spent before the severely cold months of the Afghan winter, as the fund provides aid to the country's overwhelmingly poor population.

Mr. Karzai's advisers say now that nine lawmakers have been removed, the parliament should do its job and start passing laws. "The crisis is over. Parliamentarians now need to go back to their seats and avoid political clashes and do their jobs," said presidential spokesman Siamak Herawi. "President Karzai is not interfering."

Lawmakers counter that they will refuse to meet until Mr. Karzai grants their nine ousted colleagues key government posts, such as provincial governorships. A meeting between a group of lawmakers and Mr. Karzai on Thursday failed to end the impasse.

The protesting parliamentarians risk consigning themselves to obscurity if they continue their boycott.

"Parliament will become irrelevant in a very short time if the stalemate continues," says Fabrizio Foschini, a researcher at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent think tank in Kabul.

Some lawmakers, even while supporting the coalition against Mr. Karzai, agree that they need to return to work.

"As we fight, Karzai can do whatever he wants. As elected members, it's not just our responsibility to get votes but to implement laws. We need to take our seats and soon," says Fawzia Kofi, a lawmaker from northern Badakshan province.

Many of the voters who risked their lives against Taliban threats to cast their ballots one year ago are becoming fed up and are questioning the value of democracy, increasingly seen here as a Western-imposed construct.

"We have no hope for parliament anymore, we don't trust those parliamentarians. They only work for themselves and are not at the service of the nation," said Khwaja Basir, a Kabul resident who voted last year and said he is doubtful he will cast a ballot in future elections.

—Habib Khan Totakhil and Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.

[buglerbilly]

Brennan Maps out bin Laden Raid Doctrine

September 17, 2011

Associated Press|by Kimberly Dozier

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. will keep targeting al-Qaida anywhere in the world, including in countries unable or unwilling to do it themselves, the top U.S. counterterror official said Friday.

White House counterterror chief John Brennan laid out what could be called the Osama bin Laden raid doctrine, in remarks at Harvard Law School. He says under international law, the U.S. can protect itself with pre-emptive action against suspects the U.S. believes present an imminent threat, wherever they are.

That amounts to a legal defense of the unilateral Navy SEAL raid into Pakistan that killed al-Qaida mastermind bin Laden in May, angering Pakistan. It also explains the thinking behind other covert counterterrorist action, like the CIA's armed drone campaign that only this week killed a top al-Qaida operative in Pakistan's tribal areas. The Obama administration has quadrupled drone strikes against al-Qaida targets since taking office.

The Obama administration has more recently expanded drone strikes and the occasional special-operations raid into areas like Somalia, where the government may be willing to fight al-Qaida, but lacks the resources. Navy SEALs targeted al-Qaida operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in Somalia in 2009, by helicopter. The SEALs then landed to pick up his body and bury it at sea, just as bin Laden was later interred.

"We reserve the right to take unilateral action if or when other governments are unwilling or unable to take the necessary actions themselves," Brennan said.

Yet Brennan followed that by saying that does not mean the U.S. can use military force "whenever we want, wherever we want. International legal principles, including respect for a state's sovereignty and the laws of war, impose important constraints on our ability to act unilaterally."

Brennan did not explain how that constraint applied, when the U.S. Navy SEALs entered Pakistani territory to go after Bin Laden, without Pakistani government knowledge or permission.

He said the U.S. prefers to work with countries where the targets hide, as it does in Yemen. The U.S. has expanded counterterrorist cooperation with the Yemeni government, which allows the U.S. to fly armed drones, and other types of surveillance, pairing U.S. special operations forces with its own troops, and even conducting the occasional air strike, fired from a ship offshore, or dropped from a jet.

The senior counterterrorist official said the U.S. prefers to capture rather than kill terror suspects whenever possible, an apparent answer to critics who allege the administration has authorized the killing of terrorists as it has no place to hold them, with the status of the Guantanamo detention facility still in limbo.

"It is the unqualified preference of the Administration to take custody of that individual so we can obtain information," he said.

Brennan reiterated the admin's commitment to prosecuting terror suspects in federal courts, but reserved the right to try them by military commissions - a position that offends both the Obama administration's left wing base, which wanted military commissions ended, and many top Republican officials who don't want to grant terror suspects the same rights as U.S. citizens, by trying them inside the U.S.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan fights to seize crashed US drone from Taliban

Taliban takes control of debris from unmanned US aircraft after it crashes near Jangara village in tribal South Waziristan region

Associated Press

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 September 2011 12.14 BST


A Pakistani soldier in South Waziristan, where a US drone is said to have crashed. Photograph: Declan Walsh

Pakistani soldiers have fought Taliban militants to seize precious debris from a suspected US drone that crashed in a rugged tribal area near the Afghan border, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The unmanned aircraft crashed on Saturday night near Jangara village in the South Waziristan tribal area, said the officials, who were speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media. The village is near the border with North Waziristan.

The officials said they learned of the crash by intercepting Taliban radio communications but do not know what caused it. Both North and South Waziristan are home to many Taliban fighters, though it is unclear whether they shot down the aircraft or if it crashed because of technical problems.

The debris was first seized by the Taliban. Several hours after the crash, the Pakistani army sent soldiers in to wrest it out of militant hands, sparking a fight with the Taliban in which three militants were killed, said the officials. Three militants and two soldiers were also wounded in the clash, they said.

Nawab Khan, a government official in South Waziristan, confirmed the drone crash and the subsequent clash between militants and army troops. But he did not know whether the army had successfully seized the debris.

Neither the Pakistani army nor the US embassy responded to requests for comment.

The US normally does not acknowledge the covert CIA-run drone programme in Pakistan, but US officials have said privately that the attacks have killed many high-level militants, most recently al-Qaida's second in command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, and its chief of operations in Pakistan, Abu Hafs al-Shahri.

The US president, Barack Obama, has dramatically increased the number of drone attacks against militants in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal region since taking office in 2009, partly in response to Pakistan's failure to target militants who stage attacks against US troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials regularly denounce the drone attacks as violations of the country's sovereignty, but the government is widely believed to have supported the strikes in the past and even allowed the aircraft to take off from bases within Pakistan.

That support has come under strain in recent months, especially in the wake of the US commando raid that killed the al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town on 2 May. Pakistan was outraged that the US did not tell it about the operation beforehand.

Elsewhere in Pakistan's tribal region, militants attacked a security checkpoint, killing a police officer and two members of an anti-Taliban militia, said Farooq Khan, a local government administrator.

The attack took place late on Saturday night in the Aka Khel area of the Khyber tribal region, said Khan. The checkpoint is located on a key route that Nato uses to transport supplies to forces in neighbouring Afghanistan. Security forces and local tribesmen fought back against the militants, killing 10 of them, said Khan.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. But the Pakistani Taliban have staged frequent attacks against security forces and tribesmen who have opposed them.

[buglerbilly]

LAVs saved Kiwi lives in Afghan attack - Key

By Amelia Romanos Updated 6:01 PM Monday Sep 19, 2011


Kiwi troops on patrol in LAVs came under RPG attack in Bamyan province, Afghanistan today. Photo / file

Special vehicles sent to Afghanistan saved New Zealand lives in an attack in Bamiyan today, Prime Minister John Key says.

New Zealand troops from the provincial reconstruction team were doing a routine patrol in three light armoured vehicles (LAVs) when they were attacked shortly after midnight (8am NZT).

Mr Key described the attack as "two-pronged'', with a roadside bomb followed by rocket-propelled grenade fire.

None of the soldiers were injured, although one vehicle was damaged when it hit a bank as they retreated.

The Defence Force replaced its armoured Humvees in the northeast of Bamiyan province with LAVs this year, partly in response to the death of Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell, who was killed when the Humvee he was travelling in was hit by a roadside bomb last year.

Mr Key said today's attack showed the success of the Lavs.

"What it shows is that the CDF (Defence Force chief) made absolutely the right call in deploying the LAVs to Afghanistan, his actions in doing that have saved the lives of New Zealanders without doubt.''

Commander Joint Forces Major General Dave Gawn said attacks by insurgents were not uncommon in the area, and the threat level at this time of year was particularly high.

"We will continue to monitor the threat levels to ensure we apply the appropriate measures,'' Major General Gawn said.

[buglerbilly]

German Defense Minister Visits Afghanistan

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 18 Sep 2011 11:43

BERLIN, Sept 18, 2011 (AFP) - German Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere arrived in the Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif on Sept. 18 for a visit aimed at preparing his country's gradual troop pullout.

"The most important thing of course is to talk with our soldiers to get an idea of how they see the situation on the ground," he told reporters on the plane taking him to Afghanistan.

The minister is expected to discuss the phased pullout of Germany's troops from Afghanistan, which is expected to be completed by 2014.

He is also expected to hold talks with U.S. officials and other members of the International Security Assistance Force deployed in Afghanistan.

With more than 5,000 troops deployed in the comparatively quiet north of the country, Germany is the third-largest contributor of troops in coalition operations, behind the United States and Britain.

Germany plans to pull its first soldiers by the end of the year but Thomas de Maiziere would not provide specific numbers.

[buglerbilly]

Study: NATO night raids cause Afghan backlash

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 19 Sep 2011 09:09

NOT sure how biased these two groups are that prepared the report, so I'll treat with reserve what is said and the conclusions derived...............

KABUL, Afghanistan - A surge in the number of controversial NATO night raids in Afghanistan has caused a "tremendous backlash" among Afghans and is endangering civilian lives, a new study said Sept. 19.

The U.S.-led coalition force carries out raids under cover of dark to pick off insurgents alongside a counter-insurgency campaign aimed at coaxing the population away from supporting the Taliban.

But any gains made by night raids come "at a high cost," said the study by billionaire philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Foundations and Afghan non-governmental organization The Liaison Office.

"Touted gains have come at a high cost. The escalation in raids has taken the battlefield more directly into Afghan homes, sparking tremendous backlash among the Afghan population," the 38-page report said.

A lack of transparency and accountability had also "reinforced Afghan perceptions that international military use night raids to kill, harass and intimidate civilians with impunity," it said.

The report said the number of night raids had increased fivefold between February 2009 and December 2010, with an average of 19 raids per night across the country as foreign combat troops aim to leave by the end of 2014.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) defended the raids as a tactical success but said the report's findings would be studied and recommendations implemented "that may improve the effectiveness of our operations in Afghanistan."

"Night operations are an effective method of maintaining the pressure on the enemy while minimizing risk to innocent civilians," said ISAF spokesman Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has led public criticism of the raids for causing civilian casualties, a thorny issue in the 10-year war that began when U.S.-led troops brought down the Taliban regime in 2001, sparking the insurgency.

But "Eighty-five percent of night operations are conducted without a shot being fired and account for less than one percent of civilian casualties", Cummings added.

The report acknowledged that NATO directives and operational guidance had significantly reduced civilian casualties, but said that "many of these improvements have been undermined or overshadowed by the surge in night raids."

"In many cases, non-combatants appear to be subjected to night raids due to their proximity to insurgent activities, or incidental information about insurgent groups, rather than due to their actual conduct or status," it added.

There are about 140,000 foreign, mainly American troops, serving in Afghanistan to help Karzai's Western-backed government defeat the Taliban.

[buglerbilly]

Relatives Want Stronger Inquiry Into MoH Battle

September 19, 2011

Associated Press



WASHINGTON -- Relatives of several U.S. troops killed during a 2009 Afghanistan battle that led to a Medal of Honor award last week are questioning whether some Army officers got off too easy for mistakes that led to the deaths of five American military personnel.

In interviews for CBS' TV news magazine "60 Minutes" on Sunday, the mother of a Marine and the wife of an Army sergeant killed in the September 2009 firefight in the Ganjgal Valley said reprimands given to two Army officers in an internal inquiry were not enough punishment. The inquiry concluded that poor pre-mission planning led to delays in adequate support fire against Taliban forces that had U.S. units pinned down.

Last week, President Obama awarded former Marine Dakota Meyer the nation's top military honor for saving 36 lives with repeated charges into Taliban gunfire during the battle.

Susan Price, the mother of Marine Gunnery Sgt. Aaron Kenefick, who died during the firefight, told CBS she was unhappy with official reprimands that followed a 2010 military inquiry into U.S. planning and decisions during the battle.

Charlene Westbrook, widow of Army Sgt. Kenneth Westbrook, who died from his wounds after the firefight, said mistakes made during the battle were caused by negligence. She also criticized the military's follow-up.

"These letters of reprimand are just clearly slaps on the wrist," Westbrook said. "These officers need to be court-martialed."

In February 2010, a Joint Task Force of the Afghanistan International Security Assistance Force released findings and recommendations from an investigation into the Ganjgal Valley firefight. During the battle, 100 Afghan security troops and U.S. advisers fought off a force of 100 to 150 Taliban militants. Along with the five U.S. dead -- three Marines, the Army sergeant and a Navy corpsman -- eight Afghan soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were killed.

The inquiry revealed that "appropriate personnel were not involved with the critical pre-mission planning of fire and air support. This, coupled with the severity of the situation, resulted in a delay in receiving timely support."

During the six-hour battle, Meyer ignored orders to stay put and drove repeatedly into the line of fire, firing from a Humvee along with another Marine who was awarded the Navy Cross. Meyer was wounded, but he killed at least eight Taliban insurgents, according to accounts of the firefight.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Reintegration builds confidence in Afghanistan

September 19, 2011

By Lisa Daniel, American Forces Press Service


U.S. Army sniper Spc. James Wanser, 66th Armor Regiment, Task Force 228, 172nd Infantry Brigade, keeps watch in the early morning hours of Sept. 8, 2011, while his battle buddy catches a few precious minutes of sleep. Task Force 228 was on a joint mission with the Afghan National Army and the Afghan Border Patrol in the mountains near the Pakistan border.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2011 -- The program coalition forces helped to create in Afghanistan last year to turn young men away from the insurgency and reintegrate them back to their communities is going a long way in building trust and confidence there, a military official said today.

Afghan and coalition leaders faced "huge challenges" when the reintegration program began last fall, Maj. Gen. Phil Jones of the British army told reporters during a NATO news conference. Jones is the director of the International Security Assistance Force's Force Reintegration Cell in Kabul.

"They have overcome incredible skepticism and doubt that a social peace program could emerge in the middle of this conflict," Jones said in a video link to NATO headquarters in Brussels from the Afghan capital of Kabul.

Afghan leaders' vision of the program is "to build trust and confidence among people who have been fighting each other and their government for many years," Jones said, noting that Afghans have endured war and conflict for more than 30 years.

Through the outreach of Afghanistan's social, political and religious leaders, Jones said, "peace is built village by village, if necessary."

As security improves and areas stabilize, "fighters are brought home to reintegrate into the community," he said. "This means that fighters return to peace as consequence of peace building, not as result of material or financial [need]."

The general urged coalition forces to be patient with the Afghan pace of change.

"It's incredibly important to understand and respect the necessity of the courageous, patient, confidence-building conflict-resolution work" being done across the country, he said.

"Coming to peace after a lifetime of fighting is a tough process, and we have to recognize that," the general said. "The Afghans see peace building as a very, very long-term program. It's about starting a wider social movement of peace that increasingly binds the Afghan people."

Reintegration is based on grievance resolution and Afghan notions of forgiveness, Jones said.

Under the program, fighters "can step out of the fight -- this is not surrender," Jones said. "They can rejoin society with their honor and dignity intact and, where possible, we will work with their community on security," he added.

A year ago, a thousand former fighters were enrolled in the reintegration program, which was planned for eight provinces, Jones said. Today, reintegration is happening in 34 provinces and officially includes 2,436 men "who are no longer shooting at ISAF Soldiers, and no longer laying [roadside bombs] that kill innocent women and children," he said.

Jones said he believes many more former fighters are "simply going home and silently reintegrating into their communities."

It is impossible to know the number of insurgent fighters, which changes season to season, the general said, but ISAF officials believe it's in the realm of 25,000.

"Building peace out of war is a tough human process," he said. "After 30 years of conflict, people will be cautious and wary, [and] skepticism and doubt remains widespread. It requires huge energy to overcome the nature of war, and great persistence to build confidence and trust and momentum."

[buglerbilly]

Aussie soldiers wounded in drug lab raid

September 20, 2011 - 3:52PM .

Two Australian soldiers have been wounded during a raid on a narcotics laboratory in Afghanistan.

The raid uncovered materials to make drugs with a claimed value of $147 million, making it the biggest drug bust by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.

The Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) commanding officer, a lieutenant who cannot be named, said it was one of the largest heroin-producing laboratories destroyed in Afghanistan in five years. Profits from the drug lab helped finance insurgent attacks against coalition and Afghan troops, he said.

The raid by the Australian and Afghan troops on the lab in the Baghran District in the north of Helmand Province, close to the border of Oruzgan Province, took place on Saturday.

Two SOTG members, an Afghan National Interdiction Unit officer and an Afghan interpreter were wounded when guards at the lab opened fire.

Three of the more seriously wounded, including one Australian, were flown out and then transferred to a hospital at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province for specialist care.

The Australian soldier is reported to be in a stable condition.

The other digger sustained a superficial wound and remained with the patrol to complete the mission.

Weapons, ammunition and a large quantity of narcotics-manufacturing equipment and chemicals were destroyed during the mission.

The raid would weaken the insurgents' finances, the lieutenant said.

"That amount of money not going into the insurgency campaign will no doubt have a significant effect on narcotics networks and insurgent activities in the province," he said.

An unspecified number of insurgents were killed. Others were detained and taken to the Australian base at Tarin Kowt.

The number of Australian soldiers wounded in action this year is now 29, with a total of 194 wounded since 2001.

AAP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/aussie-soldiers-wounded-in-drug-lab-raid-20110920-1kj64.html#ixzz1YTEgRUls

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan Peace Council chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani 'killed in Kabul blast'

Afghanistan's former president Burhannuddin Rabbani has reportedly been killed in an explosion at his home in Kabul, officials have said.

3:17PM BST 20 Sep 2011

Multiple senior police sources and officials have claimed Mr Rabbani, the ousted former president and one of the warlord leaders of the Northern Alliance, had died in the blast.

Two of his close political allies wept as they spoke of his death to the AFP news agency.

The BBC claimed Mr Rabbani was meeting with two members of the Taliban in his home at the time of the blast.

A senior advisor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai was seriously wounded in the attack, a senior police source said.

"Masoom Stanekzai is alive but badly wounded," the police source told Reuters.

An ambulance had arrived at the scene in Kabul's diplomatic zone and surrounding roads were blocked off.

"There was an explosion in front of Burhanuddin Rabbani's home, but I have no information about casualties," police spokesman Hashmatullah Stanikzai said.

Mr Stanikzai said it was "probably" a suicide attack, but he could not confirm it.

"Rabbani has been martyred," Mohammed Zahir, head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Kabul Police, told Reuters. He had no further details.

No official statement confirming the assassination has yet been made.

Mr Rabbani was head of the country's High Peace Council, which was set up by the Afghan government to work toward a political solution.

However, despite the council being hailed by Afghan president Hamid Karzai as the country's greatest hope, it had made little headway since it was formed a year ago.

Mr Rabbani was president of the Afghan government that preceded the Taliban from 1992 until he was driven from Kabul in 1996.

After he was ousted by the Taliban, he became the nominal head of the Northern Alliance, mostly minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, who swept to power in Kabul after the Taliban's fall.

Mr Rabbani is an ethnic Tajik.

The blast on Tuesday evening comes just days after a six militants armed with heavy weapons took over an unfinished high-rise that overlooks the US Embassy in Kabul and the headquarters of the US-led coalition headquarters about 300 meters away and carried out an attack.

They then held out against a 20-hour barrage by hundreds of Afghan and foreign forces.

By the time the fighting ended at 9:30 am Wednesday, the insurgents had killed 16 Afghans - five police officers and 11 civilians. Six or seven rockets hit inside the embassy compound, but no embassy or Nato staff members were hurt.

An investigation of the Tuesday explosion at Mr Rabbani's home was under way.

[buglerbilly]

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

Afghanistan peace process in tatters after murder of key negotiator

Suicide bomber with hidden explosives has killed Hamid Karzai's chief peace envoy in the heart of Kabul

Jon Boone in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 September 2011 20.59 BST


The assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani looks set to tip Afghanistan into a deeper crisis. Photograph: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images

Hopes for a peaceful end to the 10-year war in Afghanistan were in tatters after a suicide bomber with explosives concealed in his turban killed Hamid Karzai's chief peace envoy.

The assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani by men posing as leading Taliban envoys looked certain to tip the country even deeper into crisis. Rabbani was a former president of Afghanistan, respected religious scholar and chairman of the country's high peace council.

The explosion in the heart of Kabul's diplomatic district kills off a peace process that was already on life support. It also deprives President Karzai of an important ally who had flown into Kabul specifically to meet the men claiming to be Taliban envoys and emboldens his enemies who are implacably opposed to the idea of powersharing with armed insurgents.

"This absolutely shows that peace with the Taliban is dead," said Ahmed Wali Massoud, the brother of a famous anti-Taliban guerrilla leader who was killed by suicide bombers days before the terrorist attacks of September 11. "It doesn't work, it won't work," he added.

The high peace council, a body set up last year by Karzai, has been trying to get talks off the ground against an increasingly inauspicious background.

Insurgent groups have stepped up their attacks, not least launching spectacular assaults in the Afghan capital and assassinating key Karzai allies. And a set of secret talks mediated by the German government with a senior Taliban official has already collapsed.

Last week Rabbani led a conference of provincial governors and officials in the southern city of Kandahar to develop policies for reintegrating insurgents who want to give up the fight.

Not surprisingly a meeting with two men claiming to be senior Taliban officials was the first thing on Rabbani's agenda after flying back to Kabul from a subsequent trip to Dubai.

According to an aide to Rabbani they said they represented the Quetta Shura, the Taliban's governing body, and had an important message to deliver.

Not only were the visitors deemed too important to search thoroughly, inspecting a turban is still generally seen as disrespectful, even though there have been three other cases this year of the headgear used to conceal bombs.

The aide said that when Rabbani entered the room one of them approached him, hugging him tight and placing his head on his victim's chest.

Shopkeepers nearby heard a muffled bang from inside the building, which was still loud enough to set off the "duck and cover" alarms at the US embassy a short distance away.

The former president was killed instantly while four others in the room were injured, including Masoom Stanekzai, a highly-regarded technocrat who runs the day-to-day operations of the peace council and had brought the men to Rabbani's house. The second man was also seriously injured. His turban was burning when he was found, according to an official from the country's interior ministry. He was taken to hospital, where strenuous efforts were made to keep him alive in the hope he would help investigators with their enquiries.

On hearing the news Karzai scrapped plans to participate at the United Nations general assembly and announced that he would immediately return from New York to Kabul.

Rabbani's killing is also looks set to exacerbate already acute ethnic tensions in the country. A Tajik and former warlord from northern Afghanistan who fought against the Taliban, Rabbani was a controversial choice as a point man on reconciliation issues.

But although many observers argued that the Taliban would never take a man with his background seriously, his appointment was also designed to appease northern, non-Pashtun Afghans who were deeply suspicious of any peace deals.

Haroun Mir, a political analyst with a background in northern mujahideen groups, said the death would "increase the ethnic and geographic divide" in Afghanistan.

"There were voices in the north that were critical of the peace process, but because of Rabbani's involvement, and because he was so respected, they kept quiet. These more critical voices will not now remain quiet."

Abdullah Abdullah, the country's leading opposition figure, said the death of Rabbani showed the insurgents were trying to wipe out the political figures who ruled the country before the emergence of the Taliban in the 1990s.

"We should recognise and know our enemy from lower ranks up to the top officials of the country because by any means, by any way, they are trying to kill us and eliminate all high ranking officials and jihadi leaders."

Former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, a northerner who has warned in the past that the north might be forced to rearm if a Karzai cut a "deal" with the Taliban, once again warned of the risk of "civil unrest".

"The killing of Rabbani who had devoted his life to serving Afghanistan and to peace once again reminds us that reconciliation cannot be possible from a position of weakness but strength only," he said.

"It is time for us to unite for change and for defeat of the Taliban."

[buglerbilly]

U.S. sharpens warning to Pakistan

By Karen DeYoung, Wednesday, September 21, 9:12 AM

The Obama administration has sharply warned Pakistan that it must cut ties with a leading Taliban group based in the tribal region along the Afghan border and help eliminate its leaders, according to officials from both countries.

In what amounts to an ultimatum, administration officials have indicated that the United States will act unilaterally if Pakistan does not comply.

The message, delivered in high-level meetings and public statements over the past several days, reflects the belief of a growing number of senior administration officials that a years-long strategy of using persuasion and military assistance to influence Pakistani behavior has been ineffective.

White House officials and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta are said to be adamant in their determination to change the approach, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about internal administration deliberations.

Although he declined to provide details, Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday that “we are going to take whatever steps are necessary to protect our forces” in Afghanistan from attacks by the Haqqani network, which has had a long relationship with Pakistan’s intelligence service.

“We’ve continued to state that this cannot happen,” Panetta said of the Haqqani network strikes, including a Sept. 13 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

As Panetta spoke, new CIA Director David H. Petraeus was holding an unpublicized private meeting in Washington with his Pakistani counterpart, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who met with Pakistan’s army chief in Madrid on Friday, said that the “proxy connection” between Pakistani intelligence and the Haqqani network was the focus of those discussions.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is among a minority of administration officials still willing to express public sympathy for Pakistan’s weak civilian leaders as they face a growing threat from domestic terrorism and the politically powerful military.

But during a 31 / 2-hour meeting in New York on Sunday with her Pakistani counterpart, she warned that Pakistan is fast losing friends in Washington, according to one official deeply familiar with the session.

Clinton left the meeting with Pakistan’s assurance that “they recognize that these people are threats to Pakistan as well, and that no one should think that their relationship with the Haqqanis was more important than their relationship with the United States,” a senior administration official said.

But another administration official emphasized the severity of the U.S. officials’ warning. “We are expressing the firm conviction that things have to change . . . in Miranshah and in Islamabad, as well,” this official said. Miranshah is the main population center in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region, where the Haqqani leadership is based. CIA drone attacks elsewhere in the region have avoided the city for fear of civilian casualties.

“It’s a reality that they’re not living in tents in the open,” the official acknowledged. But with Pakistani cooperation, “we know that there are ways to get at extremist leaders anywhere,” the official said, citing the past capture of senior al-Qaeda leaders during joint intelligence operations in the far larger cities of Karachi and Quetta.

As U.S. commanders have claimed progress against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, the allied Haqqani group has stepped up its efforts in the eastern part of the country and is now considered the principal threat to U.S. forces.

The organization was formed by Jalaluddin Haqqani as one of the resistance groups fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, with U.S. and Pakistani assistance. In the Afghan civil war that followed, Haqqani sided with the Taliban forces that took power in Kabul in 1996. His fighters fled after the Taliban overthrow in late 2001 to Pakistan, where U.S. intelligence officials think they are in close coordination with al-Qaeda forces.

Pakistani intelligence maintained close connections to the network, now operationally led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, the founder’s son, as a hedge against the future in Afghanistan.

Two years ago, President Obama, in a letter to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, warned that Pakistan’s intelligence ties to extremist groups, including the Haqqanis, could “not continue.” At the time, Obama promised an expanded strategic relationship with Pakistan in exchange for action.

Since then, U.S. military and civilian aid to Pakistan has increased significantly, and the administration has repeatedly described Pakistan as a crucial partner in the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. U.S. diplomats have tried to foster working relationships between the often-estranged Afghan and Pakistani governments, as well as between Pakistan and India, its historical adversary.

Intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation between the two governments has ebbed and flowed over that period, reaching a low point this year with several events, including the shooting death of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor in January and the unilateral U.S. military raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his suburban Pakistani hideout in May.

Several months of open estrangement were followed by a slow climb back to cooperation — although not against the Haqqanis — by late August. CIA officials noted some improvement in the intelligence relationship, although Pakistan has continued to refuse entreaties for long-term, multiple-entry CIA visas. Even as they have traded public barbs, U.S. and Pakistani military officials reached a tentative agreement this week to return at least 100 of about 200 U.S. military trainers whom Pakistan expelled earlier in the year.

But recent attacks attributed to the Haqqani network in eastern Afghanistan, culminating in the embassy assault last week, appear to have abruptly changed attitudes within the senior levels of the administration.

On Saturday, in a message approved at senior levels in Washington, Cameron Munter, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, told a radio interviewer in Islamabad that the United States had evidence “linking the Haqqani network to the Pakistan government.”

Although U.S. officials said they are continuing to look for a way forward with Pakistan, at least two factors are likely to narrow the administration’s options. As the conflict continues, Pakistan has fewer friends in Congress, where budget-cutting zeal increasingly coincides with pressure to stop funding assistance to Pakistan.

At the same time, the administration has grown increasingly determined to ease its way out of the Afghanistan conflict, and has diminishing patience for what it views as Pakistani impediments.

“What’s different is that we have begun a transition” in Afghanistan, one administration official said. “We’ve got a credible program to build an effective Afghan security force, and transition is happening, whether people like it or not.”

“For those who are wedded to the past — past relationships, past support structures — and for those who would destabilize Afghanistan,” the official said, “they’ve got to take account of the fact that things are different.”

[buglerbilly]

Hundreds gather in Kabul to mourn assassination of Burhannuddin Rabbani

Hundreds of Afghans marched in Kabul Wednesday to mourn Burhanuddin Rabbani, whose assassination threatens to plunge the country into fresh turmoil.


Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani emerges from the Pul-e-Khishti mosque after Friday prayers Photo: AP

9:49AM BST 21 Sep 2011

Professor Rabbani, president during Afghanistan's 1992-96 civil war and a warlord with a chequered human rights record, was killed at home Tuesday by a bomber thought to be a trusted emissary bringing a special message from the Taliban.

Although there has been no official word from the Taliban, his killing deals a heavy blow to already remote hopes of an imminent end to 10 years of fighting between Islamist insurgents and the Afghan government backed by Western troops.

President Hamid Karzai rushed back to Kabul from a visit to the United States and chaired an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss plans to give Rabbani an official funeral in the coming days, officials said.

"It will be tomorrow (Thursday) or likely the day after," Sataar Murad, a spokesman for Prof Rabbani's Jamiat-i-Islami party, told AFP. "He will be buried in Kabul but an exact location has not been chosen yet."

Prof Rabbani's killing was the most high-profile political assassination since the 2001 US-led invasion dislodged the Taliban.

That it happened in Kabul's supposedly secure diplomatic zone, close to last week's 19-hour siege which targeted the US embassy, again highlights a sharp rise in spectacular Taliban attacks in Afghanistan.

Under heightened security on Wednesday, several hundred mourners marched to Prof Rabbani's home carrying giant pictures of him and wearing black headbands.

Supporters recited verses from the Koran while a string of government officials arrived to pay their respects.

Police, who blamed the Taliban for the killing, stepped up security in the area, preventing cars from entering and searching many pedestrians.

Prof Rabbani led the High Peace Council which Mr Karzai established last year and charged with establishing contacts with insurgents.

But his efforts so far appeared to come to little despite growing international interest in a settlement.

Mr Karzai, whose relations with the West have soured drastically since his fraud-tained re-election in 2009, insisted Prof Rabbani's assassination "will not deter us from continuing down the path we have started".

US President Barack Obama, who has said American combat troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, said Afghans must be allowed to live "in freedom, safety, security and prosperity".

Nato's Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who heads up the alliance leading the foreign military effort to reverse Taliban momentum, said those behind the killing "will not prevail".

Members of Prof Rabbani's entourage said the attacker and an accomplice were invited to his high-security villa as emissaries bringing "special messages" from the Taliban.

One source close to Prof Rabbani said the pair were not searched as a sign of trust.

The bomber detonated his explosives as he hugged Prof Rabbani in greeting.

Mohammad Ismail Qasemyar, the international relations adviser for Prof Rabbani's peace council, said on Wednesday that the bomber had approached several council officials, telling them that he was an important figure in the Taliban insurgency and would only speak directly with Prof Rabbani.

He waited in Kabul several days to meet with Prof Rabbani.

Although there were conflicting reports of who brought in the bombers, the source said they arrived with Mohammad Massom Stanikzai, one of Prof Rabbani's deputies, who was one of four people wounded in the attack.

He added that Prof Rabbani had just returned from Iran especially to meet the two, believing they were important Taliban figures.

Peace Council member Fazel Karim Aymaq said the two visitors claimed to have "special messages" from the Taliban and were thought to be "very trusted".

The High Peace Council put out a message Wednesday eulogising Prof Rabbani as a "great leader of jihad" as well as its chairman.

"His martyrdom is an expression of his ultimate sacrifice to restore harmony in this country," the statement said.

According to Human Rights Watch, Prof Rabbani was among prominent Afghans implicated in war crimes during the brutal fighting that killed or displaced hundreds of thousands of Afghans in the early 1990s.

As a Tajik, Prof Rabbani's killing may also further upset the delicate and at times increasingly fraught relations between Afghanistan's different minority ethnic groups and the dominant Pashtun community.

[buglerbilly]

Obama and Karzai Vow Undeterred Effort in Afghanistan

08:44 GMT, September 21, 2011 WASHINGTON | President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday vowed that despite the assassination of the chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council, progress toward a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan will continue undeterred.

The two presidents spoke briefly with reporters before a meeting in New York.

Two suicide bombers detonated themselves at the home of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed the council responsible for the Afghan government’s efforts to bring former insurgents back into Afghan society. Rabbani was killed, and the council’s secretary, Mohammad Massoom Stanekzai, was wounded. The bombers had feigned interest in conducting reconciliation talks, officials said.

“He was a man who cared deeply about Afghanistan and had been a valued advisor to President Karzai, and was an enormous contributor to rebuilding the country, so it is a tragic loss,” Obama said to Karzai. “We want to extend our heartfelt condolences to you and to his family, and the people of Afghanistan.

“But, Mr. President, I think we both believe that despite this incident, we will not be deterred from creating a path whereby Afghans can live in freedom and safety and security and prosperity,” he added,“and that it is going to be important to continue the efforts to bring all elements of Afghan society together to end what has been a senseless cycle of violence.”

Calling Rabbani’s death “a terrible loss,” Karzai hailed the slain leader as a patriot.

“The mission that he had undertaken was vital … for the Afghan people and for the security of our country and for peace in our country,” he said. “We will miss him very, very much. … But as you rightly say, this will not deter us from continuing on the path that we have, and we'll definitely succeed.”

NATO military leaders condemned the assassination.

Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis, the alliance’s supreme allied commander for Europe, called the attack “an attempt to silence all those working on the peace initiative for Afghanistan.”

"This assassination is only another cowardly act of violence,” he added,“but it will not deter the important work of reconciliation.”

Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen, commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, said the attack proves the Taliban’s intentions.

“This is another outrageous indicator that, regardless of what Taliban leadership outside the country say, they do not want peace, but rather war,” he said. “Their only goal with this completely immoral act is to turn the clock back to the darkness synonymous with the Taliban movement.

“Our condolences go out to the families of Professor Rabbani and Minister Stanekzai,” he continued. “We will continue to work closely with our Afghan partners in our march toward peace, and to hold those responsible for this heinous act accountable for their crimes against the people of Afghanistan."

----
John D. Banusiewicz
American Forces Press Service

[buglerbilly]

After Afghan slaying, a sense of helplessness

By Ernesto Londoño,

KABUL — As they mourned the slain Afghan leader who had been tasked with reconciling with the Taliban, close friends and associates of Burhanuddin Rabbani expressed anger and hopelessness Wednesday about peace talks they say were doomed from the start.

“We cannot continue to have wishful thinking,” former presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, who was close to Rabbani, said as he drove to the former president’s house to pay his last respects. “We must deal with them forcefully.”

Abdullah called President Hamid Karzai’s attempts to get Taliban leaders to lay down their arms and join the government naive.

“These are the people President Karzai calls ‘dear brothers,’ ” Abdullah said of Karzai’s conciliatory approach to the militants. “The ones who have killed thousands of people.”

Afghan officials said they were all but certain that the Taliban’s leadership or a faction of the group carried out Tuesday’s assassination, the latest high-profile killing in Afghanistan this year — and arguably the one most detrimental to efforts to end the 10-year-old war.

As of Wednesday night, no group had asserted responsibility for the attack. Taliban spokesmen on Wednesday were uncharacteristically hard to reach. A Twitter account that purports to be linked to the Taliban’s media operation posted messages Wednesday saying the group is not ready to weigh in on the killing.

“Since we have not yet completed our investigation into the matter, therefore our stance is that of not elaborating on the issue any further,” the message said.

Abdullah and other Afghan officials said the man who detonated explosives hidden inside a turban as he greeted Rabbani used the name Esmatullah.

Kabul was awash with rumors and speculation about the motive.

Some Afghans said it sent an unmistakable signal that insurgent leaders saw no benefit
to negotiating with Karzai’s U.S.-backed government. Others saw a narrower motive, saying that whoever carried out the attack perhaps felt that Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik who led the fight against the Taliban during the civil war in the 1990s, was the wrong man to broker a deal with the Pashtun militant group.

Senior figures of the High Peace Council that Rabbani led hosted the assailant for several days at a guesthouse in Kabul used by the peacemaking body, Afghan officials said.

An account provided by Amanullah Paiman, a former aide to Rabbani, described a sense of optimism about the envoy’s visit.

He said Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, a senior member of the council, had been told by the envoy that he had an important message for Rabanni from the leadership of the extremist group’s leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura. In several phone calls, Stanekzai pressed Rabbani, who was traveling in Iran and Dubai, to head back to Kabul, said Ismail Qasimayar, a member of the peace council.

Afghans close to Rabbani said it was hard to believe that the assailants could have carried out the attack without help from members of Rabbani’s inner circle.

“I am sure that without inside and outside help this incident would not have happened,” Paiman said. “This man was kept in the guesthouse for a week, and nobody paid attention to his movement, turban and acts.”

On Wednesday morning, police closed off a prominent road in downtown Kabul that runs near Rabbani’s street to all but the throng of warlords and politicians who traveled to his residence in sport-utility vehicles with large posses of bodyguards to offer condolences to relatives.

As edgy guards armed with AK-47 assault rifles scanned the crowd, elderly bearded men embraced solemnly. Posters of the slain former president, who led the country from 1992 to 1996, were plastered around the neighborhood.

Ahmad Zaeem, a former assistant to Rabbani, looked ashen as he spoke outside Rabbani’s house.

“There is no place left for people to negotiate,” he said. “They attacked the foundation of peace in the country. There is no room for negotiation.”

While stunned by the audacity of the attack, some Afghans said they deemed the death inconsequential.

“Since the High Peace Council was established, there has been no achievement,” said Bizmillah, an army officer who provided only his first name. “They’re in it for the money.”

Ahmad Wali Massoud, a close friend and political ally of Rabbani’s, said the former president had dim hopes that Karzai’s peace plan could work.

“He made his own effort,” said Massoud, a brother of the renowned commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, who helped drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan and was killed a decade ago in a strikingly similar attack. “But I’m sure he did not believe this could work.”

Massoud said the prospect of a negotiated settlement appears dead.

“I don’t think the enemy is that strong,” said Massoud, who served as ambassador in London during Karzai’s first term in office. “The problem is that the government under Karzai is so weak, so fragile, so corrupt that the terrorists now have the upper hand.”

Special correspondents Sayed Salahuddin and Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Taliban linked to US chopper crash dead, says Nato

The NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan said on Thursday it had killed a Taliban commander who was the target of an operation in which 30 US troops died when their helicopter crashed last month.


An ISAF spokesman identified the aircraft as a US Chinook helicopter Photo: PA

12:44PM BST 22 Sep 2011

Qari Tahir was killed by an air strike on Tuesday in Wardak province, central Afghanistan, the military said.

The US said last month it had killed those behind the helicopter's downing, but a senior Afghan government official said it was Tahir who had lured US forces to the scene by tipping them off about a Taliban meeting.

"A precision air strike killed Taliban leader Qari Tahir after the security force located Tahir and an associate in a dry riverbed in Sayd Abad district," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

"Tahir was the Taliban's top leader in Tangi Valley and was the target of a previous combined operation on Aug. 5, 2011, that resulted in the loss of the CH-47 Chinook last month.

"He led a group of insurgent fighters throughout the valley and was known to use roadside bombs and rockets to intimidate the local populace."

The US helicopter crash killed 38 people including 30 US troops, 25 of whom were special forces.

It was the biggest single loss of life for international forces since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban 10 years ago.

The Afghan official said the helicopter was shot down and Tahir had set a trap to lure it to the scene.

Days after the crash, General John Allen, the US commander of foreign troops in Afghanistan, said those who shot the helicopter down had been hunted down and killed in a bombing raid by an F-16 fighter jet.

"This does not ease our loss but we must and we will continue to relentlessly pursue the enemy," Allen said at the time.

He said that the fatal operation had been targeting the leadership of an "enemy network" within the remote and hostile Tangi Valley in Wardak, southwest of the capital Kabul.

There are around 140,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, about 100,000 of them from the United States, fighting a Taliban-led insurgency.

All foreign combat forces are due to leave in staged withdrawals leading up to a deadline at the end of 2014, at which point Afghan security forces will assume responsibility for their country.

A string of recent spectacular attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul has highlighted the strength of the insurgency.

These include Tuesday's assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former president tasked with leading Afghan government efforts to talk peace with the Taliban, by a turban bomber in his home.

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan-U.S. Deal Aims at Haqqani Network

By USMAN ANSARI

Published: 22 Sep 2011 16:03

ISLAMABAD - U.S. and Pakistani officials appear to have sealed a wide-ranging counterterrorism agreement, including clauses aimed at the Haqqani network and its safe havens in North Waziristan.


U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shakes hands with Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar before their meeting on Sept. 18. (Stan Honda / AFP via Getty Images)

But much remains unclear about the specifics.

The deal appears to have been a major topic of conversation when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabani Khar met Sept. 18.

The following day, U.S Ambassador Cameron Munter called the deal a "substantial agreement," according to a report by the Associated Press of Pakistan.

A senior State Department official said the Pakistanis understand "the threat that the Haqqanis pose to them, and I think they recognize it's time for them to take action."

Yet the day after that, Khar played down the notion that Pakistan had been pressured to act against the network. The APP quoted her as saying the "stakes were very high in Afghanistan, and Pakistan was aware that it will have to deal with the baggage when the conflict was over."

She was alluding to the long-standing Pakistani fear that turmoil will follow a Western withdrawal from Afghanistan, as happened after the Soviets left.

Just what action, if any, Pakistan will take against the network is therefore uncertain.

Brian Cloughley, a former Australian defense attaché to Islamabad, said he does not believe a full-scale military campaign to clear North Waziristan is possible in the near term, not least because the Army has its hands full.

"At the moment, in the [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] and its surrounds, there are over 100,000 army troops," Cloughley said. "They cannot be redeployed from what they are currently doing, which is conducting operations and maintaining stability in the region."

He said the Army had hoped to at least hand over the Swat region to civil administration, "but there is no competent civil administration, and it will take another year at least for one to achieve even a semblance of capability in running affairs; same with Orakzai and other agencies."

He said if such an operation took two years, it would involve about 60,000 men, of which 1,000 could probably expect to be killed and 3,000 wounded, and he questioned whether Pakistan is willing to pay such a price.

Previous shortages of key equipment such as gunship and transport helicopters remain, as are mine-resistant, ambush protected vehicles such as the indigenous HIT Burraq.

However, analyst Haris Khan of the Pakistan Military Consortium think tank, said the military, having retrained and re-equipped, is now far better placed to mount an operation than it was.

He said the military is now much more experienced in fighting in the difficult terrain. Moreover, it has added helicopters, taken delivery of better Air Force munitions, linked the Navy's P-3 Orions' signals intelligence collection to Army ISAR assets, and improved coordination between the Army and the Air Force.

But Waqas Sajad, who directs the Institute of Strategic Studies here, said he believes other factors are staying Pakistan's hand. He said the Haqqani network had forged a "quid quo pro" with the Pakistani authorities. Moreover, it was well financed. Finally, it has people distributed all over Pakistan. Whether these operatives number in the hundreds, or potentially into the thousands, is unknown, but the possibility that they could open a "new front" all over the country is real, he said.

Sajad said there was, therefore, a limit to what Pakistan could do, but this did not mean it would do nothing. He said that although the "high command" of the network may now be in Afghanistan, the Pakistani military had the option of targeting an associated peripheral group.

He also said Pakistan should push to have the network included in negotiations to secure peace in Afghanistan, more so than groups and individuals who may perhaps have previously been influential but who do not hold much sway now.

[buglerbilly]

Lawmakers Want Answers on Pakistan

September 22, 2011

Associated Press|by Robert Burns

WASHINGTON - As the U.S. military marches warily toward the exits in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration is on an increasingly uncertain path in Pakistan. Islamabad's suspected ties to Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants risk drawing the U.S. deeper into conflict in that nuclear-armed nation.

The Pakistan problem is certain to surface Thursday when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Adm. Mike Mullen, the soon-to-retire chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testify at a Senate hearing billed as an examination of administration exit strategies for Iraq and Afghanistan. They also are expected to be asked about the implications of deep cuts in defense spending, potentially approaching $1 trillion over 10 years.

The testimony is Panetta's first since he took office July 1. And it will be Mullen's last. He will retire next week, ending a 43-year Navy career.

In recent days administration officials have taken a harsher tone toward Pakistan, accusing Islamabad of maintaining links with the Haqqani network, a band of Islamist fighters that the U.S. says are behind attacks in Afghanistan, including last week's attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Mullen, who has met frequently with his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, over the past few years, said in prepared remarks for the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the Haqqanis have "long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani government" and are "in many ways a strategic arm" of Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. He said the Haqqanis were behind several recent major attacks in Afghanistan, including the embassy attack and a Sept. 10 truck bomb attack that killed five Afghans and injured 77 U.S. soldiers.

Mullen said the Pakistani government also is supporting the Afghan Taliban, whose leaders are based in Quetta, Pakistan.

"The actions by the Pakistani government to support them - actively and passively - represent a growing problem that is undermining U.S. interests and may violate international norms, potentially warranting sanction," Mullen said in his prepared remarks. A copy of his remarks was provided in advance to The Associated Press.

Mullen said earlier this week there is a "proxy connection" between Pakistani intelligence services and the Haqqanis, meaning the militants are secretly doing the Pakistanis' bidding.

"The Haqqani piece of this has got to be reversed - period," he told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Mullen said he delivered that message to Kayani last week during a meeting in Spain.

The increasingly tough U.S. rhetoric - particularly the accusation of a proxy relationship - reflects a U.S. belief that Pakistani intelligence in recent months has more aggressively facilitated attacks by the Haqqanis on Afghan and American targets inside Afghanistan, one senior military official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said it's unclear whether Pakistani leaders intend to heed U.S. warnings.

Late last week, Panetta asserted that the U.S. will do whatever necessary to stop the Haqqani network attacks on U.S. forces. He would not say whether that means that the U.S. will take new military action, but there already has been an increase in U.S. drone strikes into Pakistan's border regions.

Panetta's remarks were interpreted as a veiled warning that the U.S. may resort again to unilateral action against the insurgents. Such public warnings, however, may only damage anti-terror cooperation between the two nations, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Tehmina Janjua said.

After the U.S. raided Osama bin Laden's secret compound inside Pakistan in May - without alerting Pakistani authorities in advance - relations deteriorated further. Pakistan suspended a program under which U.S. special operations forces helped train Pakistani forces in counterterrorist tactics, although U.S. officials on Wednesday disclosed a compromise deal to slash the number of U.S. military personnel allowed in Pakistan to between 100 and 150, about half of what it had been. The number of special operations trainers would fall from 140 to fewer than 10.

The Haqqani connection in Pakistan, and the haven that Pakistan provides for other Islamic extremist groups, including the Taliban, are major impediments to U.S. success in Afghanistan. Another major worry is corruption inside the Afghan government, as the U.S. and its NATO allies proceed with a plan to hand over full responsibility for security and other functions to the Afghans by the end of 2014. By that date, all U.S. combat forces are to have been withdrawn.

In his prepared remarks for Thursday's hearing, Mullen offered a notably stark assessment of the risks that Afghan official corruption poses for the fate of the American-led effort to stabilize that country.

"If we continue to draw down forces apace while such public and systemic corruption is left unchecked, we will risk leaving behind a government in which we cannot reasonably expect Afghans to have faith," he said. "At best this would lead to continued localized conflicts as neighborhood strongmen angle for their cut and the people for their survival; at worst it could lead to government collapse and civil war."

The military pullout from Iraq is more advanced, yet major questions remain about whether it will be completed this year as scheduled. The two sides say they are discussing whether some number of U.S. troops - perhaps several thousand - should remain next year to continue training Iraqi forces.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, has reacted critically to reports that the administration wants to limit the potential number of remnant forces to 3,000 to 5,000. McCain argues that this is woefully inadequate to meet Iraq's security needs.

The committee's chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., considers 3,000 to be more than enough. McCain and some others say at least 10,000 will be required. In an interview Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he thinks the right number is between 10,000 and 15,000. Graham said the Iraqis need a sizeable U.S. military presence to help not only with counterterrorism but also with potential threats from Iran.

"The good news for us as a nation is we went from almost losing Iraq to being inside the 10-year line," Graham said. "Let's just don't fumble."

At present the U.S. has about 44,500 troops in Iraq.

---
Associated Press writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Panetta Says Kabul Defenses Must Improve

September 22, 2011

Associated Press|by Robert Burns

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is telling a Senate committee that U.S. and Afghan forces are searching for ways to better defend against spectacular attacks by insurgents, like the assault on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul last week.

In his first congressional testimony since taking office, Panetta said Thursday that it is important to limit insurgents' ability to create the perception that security in the Afghan capital is deteriorating.

Overall, he said, the U.S. and NATO effort to stabilize Afghanistan is "headed in the right direction."

Panetta is testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, alongside Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

As the U.S. military marches warily toward the exits in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration is on an increasingly uncertain path in Pakistan. Islamabad's suspected ties to Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants risk drawing the U.S. deeper into conflict in that nuclear-armed nation.

The Pakistan problem is certain to surface Thursday when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Adm. Mike Mullen, the soon-to-retire chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testify at a Senate hearing billed as an examination of administration exit strategies for Iraq and Afghanistan. They also are expected to be asked about the implications of deep cuts in defense spending, potentially approaching $1 trillion over 10 years.

The testimony is Panetta's first since he took office July 1. And it will be Mullen's last. He will retire next week, ending a 43-year Navy career.

In recent days administration officials have taken a harsher tone toward Pakistan, accusing Islamabad of maintaining links with the Haqqani network, a band of Islamist fighters that the U.S. says are behind attacks in Afghanistan, including last week's attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Mullen, who has met frequently with his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, over the past few years, said in prepared remarks for the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the Haqqanis have "long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani government" and are "in many ways a strategic arm" of Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. He said the Haqqanis were behind several recent major attacks in Afghanistan, including the embassy attack and a Sept. 10 truck bomb attack that killed five Afghans and injured 77 U.S. soldiers.

Mullen said the Pakistani government also is supporting the Afghan Taliban, whose leaders are based in Quetta, Pakistan.

"The actions by the Pakistani government to support them - actively and passively - represent a growing problem that is undermining U.S. interests and may violate international norms, potentially warranting sanction," Mullen said in his prepared remarks. A copy of his remarks was provided in advance to The Associated Press.

Mullen said earlier this week there is a "proxy connection" between Pakistani intelligence services and the Haqqanis, meaning the militants are secretly doing the Pakistanis' bidding.

"The Haqqani piece of this has got to be reversed - period," he told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Mullen said he delivered that message to Kayani last week during a meeting in Spain.

The increasingly tough U.S. rhetoric - particularly the accusation of a proxy relationship - reflects a U.S. belief that Pakistani intelligence in recent months has more aggressively facilitated attacks by the Haqqanis on Afghan and American targets inside Afghanistan, one senior military official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said it's unclear whether Pakistani leaders intend to heed U.S. warnings.

Late last week, Panetta asserted that the U.S. will do whatever necessary to stop the Haqqani network attacks on U.S. forces. He would not say whether that means that the U.S. will take new military action, but there already has been an increase in U.S. drone strikes into Pakistan's border regions.

Panetta's remarks were interpreted as a veiled warning that the U.S. may resort again to unilateral action against the insurgents. Such public warnings, however, may only damage anti-terror cooperation between the two nations, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Tehmina Janjua said.

After the U.S. raided Osama bin Laden's secret compound inside Pakistan in May - without alerting Pakistani authorities in advance - relations deteriorated further. Pakistan suspended a program under which U.S. special operations forces helped train Pakistani forces in counterterrorist tactics, although U.S. officials on Wednesday disclosed a compromise deal to slash the number of U.S. military personnel allowed in Pakistan to between 100 and 150, about half of what it had been. The number of special operations trainers would fall from 140 to fewer than 10.

The Haqqani connection in Pakistan, and the haven that Pakistan provides for other Islamic extremist groups, including the Taliban, are major impediments to U.S. success in Afghanistan. Another major worry is corruption inside the Afghan government, as the U.S. and its NATO allies proceed with a plan to hand over full responsibility for security and other functions to the Afghans by the end of 2014. By that date, all U.S. combat forces are to have been withdrawn.

In his prepared remarks for Thursday's hearing, Mullen offered a notably stark assessment of the risks that Afghan official corruption poses for the fate of the American-led effort to stabilize that country.

"If we continue to draw down forces apace while such public and systemic corruption is left unchecked, we will risk leaving behind a government in which we cannot reasonably expect Afghans to have faith," he said. "At best this would lead to continued localized conflicts as neighborhood strongmen angle for their cut and the people for their survival; at worst it could lead to government collapse and civil war."

The military pullout from Iraq is more advanced, yet major questions remain about whether it will be completed this year as scheduled. The two sides say they are discussing whether some number of U.S. troops - perhaps several thousand - should remain next year to continue training Iraqi forces.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, has reacted critically to reports that the administration wants to limit the potential number of remnant forces to 3,000 to 5,000. McCain argues that this is woefully inadequate to meet Iraq's security needs.

The committee's chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., considers 3,000 to be more than enough. McCain and some others say at least 10,000 will be required. In an interview Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he thinks the right number is between 10,000 and 15,000. Graham said the Iraqis need a sizeable U.S. military presence to help not only with counterterrorism but also with potential threats from Iran.

"The good news for us as a nation is we went from almost losing Iraq to being inside the 10-year line," Graham said. "Let's just don't fumble."

At present the U.S. has about 44,500 troops in Iraq.

---

Associated Press writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US bomb warning to Pakistan ignored

American commander asked Pakistan's army chief to halt truck bomb two days before an explosion wounded 77 near Kabul

Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Jon Boone in Kabul

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 September 2011 22.32 BST


Pakistan intelligence accused of ignoring warnings about a truck bomb that wounded 77 and killed five. Photograph: Mohammad Naser/AP

The American commander of Nato in Afghanistan personally asked Pakistan's army chief to halt an insurgent truck bomb that was heading for his troops, during a meeting in Islamabad two days before a huge explosion that wounded 77 US soldiers at a base near Kabul.

In reply General Ashfaq Kayani offered to "make a phone call" to stop the assault on the US base in Wardak province. But his failure to use the American intelligence to prevent the attack has fuelled a blazing row between the US and Pakistan.

Furious American officials blame the Taliban-inspired group the Haqqanis – and, by extension, Pakistani intelligence – for the 10 September bombing and an even more audacious guerrilla assault on the Kabul US embassy three days later that killed 20 people and lasted more than 20 hours.

On Thursday the US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqanis as "a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency". He earlier accused the ISI of fighting a "proxy war" in Afghanistan through the group.

Pakistan's defence minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, rejected the American accusations of Haqqani patronage as "baseless". "No one can threaten Pakistan as we are an independent state," he said.

The angry accusations lift the veil on sensitive conversations that have heretofore largely taken place behind closed doors. On 8 September, General John Allen, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, raised intelligence reports of the impending truck bomb at a meeting with Kayani during a visit to Islamabad.

Kayani promised Allen he would "make a phone call" to try to stop the attack, according to a western official with close knowledge of the meeting. "The offer raised eyebrows," the official said.

But two days later, just after Allen's return to Kabul, a truck rigged with explosives ploughed into the gates of the US base in Wardak, 50 miles south-west of Kabul, injuring 77 US soldiers and killing two Afghan civilians.

Afterwards the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, blamed the Haqqanis. "They enjoy safe havens in North Waziristan," he said, referring to the Haqqani main base in the tribal belt.

Allen's spokesman said Nato "routinely shares intelligence with the Pakistanis regarding insurgent activities" but he refused to confirm the details of the conversation with Kayani.

The Pakistani military spokesman, General Athar Abbas, said: "Let's suppose it was the case. The main question is how did this truck travel to Wardak and explode without being checked by Nato? This is just a blame game."

US allegations of ISI links to Haqqani attacks stretch back to July 2008, when the CIA deputy director, Stephen Kappes, flew to Islamabad with intercept evidence that linked the ISI to an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.

But American disquiet has never been so uncompromisingly expressed as in recent days. The issue dominated three hours of talks between the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar.

On Tuesday Mullen said he had asked Kayani to "disconnect" the ISI from the Haqqanis. In Washington the CIA chief, David Petraeus, delivered a similar message in private to the ISI chief, General Shuja Pasha. Even the soft-spoken US ambassador to Islamabad, Cameron Munter, has joined the chorus of condemnation, delivering a hard-hitting message through an interview on Pakistani state radio.

"We've changed our message in private too," one US official said. "Before, we used to make polite demands about the Haqqanis. Now we are saying 'this has to stop'."

The new mood is driven by a combination of climbing casualties and brazen attacks. The Haqqanis were also blamed for a recent assault on the InterContinental Hotel, while August was the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan, with 71 deaths.

Nato is now investigating whether the Haqqanis had a hand in Tuesday's assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, President Hamid Karzai's peace envoy to the Taliban. Rabbani was killed at his home by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives-packed turban. A bloodstained four-page letter he was carrying at the time of the attack, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, insisted that "Pakistan is not our boss".

American officials have vowed to act unilaterally if Pakistan fails to comply with their demands over the Haqqanis. But it remains unclear how far they are willing to go against Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country that still provides vital counter-terrorism support.

There was some hope of resuscitating fragile relations between the Pakistani and American intelligence services, which were buffeted by the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden on 2 May. Officials from both countries hailed a joint operation on 28 August to arrest Younis al-Mauritani, a senior al-Qaida operative, in the western city of Quetta. On 5 September the Pakistani military issued a press release that highlighted Pakistani-American co-operation; some viewed the raid as a possible turning point in relations.

But the flurry of Haqqani attacks over the past two weeks seems to have washed away whatever goodwill was generated by the arrest.

US officials say debate is raging inside US policy circles about what to do next. The defence secretary, Leon Panetta, is said to have privately advocated US military incursions into the Haqqani stronghold in Waziristan – a risky gambit other officials reject as dangerous folly, citing the historical record of failure of western armies in the tribal belt.

Other US officials say Washington could slash non-military aid such as the $7.5bn five-year Kerry-Lugar-Berman package, which was approved in 2009.

There is also debate about the exact nature of the ISI's relationship with the Haqqanis. One western official said it was not a puppetmaster scenario. "It's not like they have a chain of command, with the Pakistanis handing down XOs [executive orders]," he said. Neither are the Pakistanis necessarily providing logistical support, he added: "It's murkier than that."

But, the official added, the US believes Pakistan is "actively tolerating" the Haqqanis. And the ISI could, if it wanted to, seriously disrupt their activities.

He warned that Pakistan was heading towards international isolation. "If it keeps going like this, it could end up like Syria – before the Arab spring."

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Denies Role in Embassy Attack

September 23, 2011

Associated Press|by Chris Brummitt

ISLAMABAD --- Pakistan's army chief dismissed U.S. allegations that his spy agency had helped Afghan militants attack the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, saying Friday the charges were baseless and part of a public "blame game" detrimental to peace in Afghanistan.

Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani's terse statement suggested Islamabad had no immediate intention of acting on renewed American demands that it attack the Haqqani militant faction in their main base in northwest Pakistan. It also ramped up a dispute between the two nominally allied nations that has exposed their increasingly deteriorating relationship.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday accused the army's Inter-Services Intelligence agency of supporting Haqqani insurgents in planning and executing a 22-hour assault on the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan last week and a truck bomb that wounded 77 American soldiers days earlier.

Kayani said in a statement that the allegations were "very unfortunate and not based on facts."

The claims were the most serious yet by an American official against nuclear-armed Pakistan, which Washington has given billions in civilian and military aid over the last 10 years to try to secure its cooperation inside Afghanistan and against al-Qaida.

Kayani's statement appeared to imply that Pakistan's contacts with the Haqqani network were part of efforts to bring it to the negotiating table. The United States, Kabul and European countries all agree that a peace deal will be needed to end the war, though not all agree on whether the Haqqanis, which have links to al-Qaida, should be included.

The statement said that "on the specific question of contacts with Haqqanis ... Admiral Mullen knows fully well which ... countries are in contact with the Haqqanis. Singling out Pakistan is neither fair nor productive."

Kayani, regarded as the most powerful man in Pakistan, said the "blame game" between it and the U.S. should give way to constructive dialogue over the future of a peaceful Afghanistan.

The Haqqani insurgent network is widely believed to be based in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area along the Afghan border. The group has historical ties to Pakistani intelligence, dating back to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Mullen's words marked the first time an American official had tied Pakistan's intelligence agency directly to the attacks and signaled a significant shift in the U.S. approach to Islamabad. In the past, U.S. criticism of Pakistan largely had been relayed in private conversations with the countries' leaders while American officials publicly offered encouraging words for Islamabad's participation in the terror fight.

Kayani said Mullen's allegations were "especially disturbing in view of a rather constructive meeting" he had with Mullen in Spain last week.

Mullen did not provide specific evidence backing up his accusations or indicate what the U.S. would do if Pakistan refuses to cut ties to the Haqqani network. The U.S. has repeatedly demanded that Pakistan attack the insurgents and prevent them from using the country's territory.

Earlier, Pakistan's prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, alluded to both countries' mutual need for each other - Pakistan's for U.S. financial assistance and international support, and Washington's need for Islamabad's cooperation in the anti-terror fight and in helping negotiate a peace deal in Afghanistan.

"They can't live with us. They can't live without us," Gilani told reporters. "So, I would say to them that if they can't live without us, they should increase contacts with us to remove misunderstandings."

Pakistani officials Friday reiterated claims that the United States was seeking to make Pakistan a scapegoat for its failings in Afghanistan. They have also complained recently that militants chased out of Pakistan by the army are now using Afghan soil to attack targets inside the country.

The relationship between the two countries has never been smooth, but it took one of its hardest hits when U.S. commandos sneaked into Pakistan on May 2 and killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in a garrison town not far from Islamabad.

The covert raid outraged the Pakistani government because it was not told about it beforehand, while bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad raised further suspicions among U.S. officials about the country's duplicity in the anti-terror fight.<div

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

For new commanders in Afghanistan, a fine balance


Kevin Sieff/WASHINGTON POST - Americans share a small observation post with Afghan soldiers in a rugged stretch of Paktika province. U.S. officers are wrestling with separate directives to win key strategic areas and prepare for the impending troop withdrawal.

By Kevin Sieff, Published: September 22 | Updated: Saturday, September 24, 10:30 AM

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHARANA, Afghanistan —Col. Edward Bohnemann leaned over the rocky bluff at the edge of his brigade’s most remote outpost, staring into a valley near the Pakistan border that is peppered with mud-baked huts and is home to a sea of insurgents.

Bohnemann’s subordinate officers pointed to mountain ridges in the distance, outlining a strategy to vanquish the insurgents by expanding the U.S. presence in the area. But as an incoming commander during the last years of America’s 10-year-old war, Bohnemann wasn’t convinced.

“The question is not, can we build these outposts?” Bohnemann said. “The question is, can they be sustained by Afghan forces?”

When President Obama told Americans in July that the “tide of war is receding” in Afghanistan, 3,100 soldiers from the 172nd brigade were just beginning to arrive in this rugged swath of the country — their first Afghan deployment coinciding almost exactly with the war’s ebb.

The timing leaves Bohnemann to balance two separate directives that are often at odds with each other: to do all he can to defeat insurgents, while also preparing for an American departure by the end of 2014. Last month, during his first visit to the outpost, called Twins, the tension between those priorities played out on the battlefield.

Soldiers in this strategic foothold want to expand upon the work of their predecessors. But many top U.S. officers worry that doing so while the foreign role in the war effort is carefully dismantled might be counterproductive. Americans are already preparing to hand over bases, outposts and checkpoints to Afghans.

Like the rest of Bohnemann’s domain in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province, Twins is in a rugged, sparsely populated part of the country, where insurgents come from seven militant networks, crisscrossing the Pakistani border and settling into local villages for weeks or months at a time. The Taliban is a concern, but it’s not public enemy number one.

Bohnemann walked from tent to tent at 10,400 feet, where exhausted U.S. soldiers, who have taken indirect fire every day since they arrived, greeted him.

“I saw these mountains for the first time,” one said, “and my mouth dropped.”

Bohnemann’s men suggested building a series of outposts along nearby ridges, which would provide support to police checkpoints within local villages. Past efforts to establish such checkpoints without mountain outposts have backfired, with insurgents swiftly toppling them.

The larger strategy is to keep insurgents in the east away from what’s often referred to as the “Kabul security zone” — an effort to protect the country’s capital and encourage the central government’s growth. The difficulty of that mission has been underscored over the past two weeks, with an attack last week on the U.S. Embassy and the assassination on Tuesday of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani in his Kabul home.

“Owning the high ground allows us to dominate the terrain and to establish a government presence in the area,” Lt. Col. John V. Meyer told Bohnemann. “We’re going to clean out this entire bowl,” he said, referring to the valley below Twins.

Bohnemann, an affable leader with an easy smile, knew that Meyer’s suggestion would work in the short term, but at this stage of the war, that wasn’t enough to win him over. Although Afghan forces are growing in number and capacity, officials here worry that the United States runs the risk of overbuilding on the eve of its withdrawal, leaving Afghans with bases they cannot man.

“Whatever we do must be Afghan-sustainable,” said Gen. Daniel Allyn, the top U.S. military official in eastern Afghanistan. “If we place an outpost on top of a mountain that’s only accessible by air, we have to make sure they can continue to operate there, given the limitations of their air force.”

Top Afghan commanders are usually candid about their own troops’ limitations in fulfilling a U.S.-designed mission.

“We are a capable force, but without artillery, heavy weaponry and air support, there are many things we cannot do,” said Lt. Col. Mohammad Kazimi, an Afghan battalion commander in Paktika.

The Afghan army’s capacity has increased over the past year, “making my job a lot easier,” Bohnemann said. But other members of the brigade, also known as Task Force Blackhawk, have expressed more skepticism about the ability and loyalty of Afghan soldiers.

Of course, those perceptions could change; they have only recently arrived. Although the U.S. role in Afghanistan is approaching its 11th year, from the perspective of many troops on the ground, the war has just begun. Soldiers inherit this conflict for about 12 months at a time before handing over bases, outposts and intelligence to another crop of servicemen.

Evidence of that recent transition was still visible in Paktika as of last month — signs that still read Task Force Currahee instead of Task Force Blackhawk, soldiers who still got lost on the expansive forward operating base, young infantrymen jumping at the chance to go on their first patrol.

Then there’s the larger question of how a brigade crafts its own mission, makes its own imprint.

Seemingly prosaic dilemmas related to that goal — to build an outpost or not; to expand or cede ground — speak volumes about the state of the war.

“It’s a fine line,” Bohnemann said. “We don’t want to build something today that can’t be used tomorrow.”

[buglerbilly]

Ruthless Afghan crime clan stays beyond US reach

Mark Mazzetti, Scott Shane, Allissa Rubin

September 26, 2011.


Talks ... Afghan elders in Kunar province. Photo: AFP

WASHINGTON: They are the Sopranos of the Afghanistan war, a ruthless crime family that built an empire out of kidnapping, extortion, smuggling, and trucking. They have trafficked in precious gems, stolen timber and demanded protection money from businesses building roads and schools with American reconstruction funds.

They safeguard their mountainous territory by planting roadside bombs and shelling remote US military bases. And US officials accuse them of being guns for hire: a proxy force used by the Pakistani intelligence service to carry out grisly, high-profile attacks in Kabul, and throughout Afghanistan.

US intelligence and military officials describe the crime clan known as the Haqqani network - named after Jalaluddin Haqqani, a militant who over the years has allied himself with the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Arabia's spy service and Osama bin Laden - the most deadly insurgent group in Afghanistan. In the latest of a series of ever-bolder strikes, the group staged an assault on the US embassy in Kabul.

But even as the Americans vow revenge against the Haqqanis, there is a growing belief that it could be too late.

Military officers, who for years have urged Washington to take action against the Haqqanis, are angry that the Obama administration has not added the group to the State Department's list of terrorist organisations out of concern that this would scuttle any chances of the clan making peace with the Afghan government. ''Whoever is in power in Kabul will have to make a deal with the Haqqanis,'' Marc Sageman, a former CIA officer who served in Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan war, said.

''It won't be us. We're going to leave, and those guys know it.''

The Haqqanis - estimated at up to 15,000 fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan - have extended their reach and numbers as the US has unsuccessfully tried to persuade Pakistan to cut ties with the group.

One former US intelligence officer, who worked with the clan in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, said he would not be surprised if the US again found itself relying on the group. ''We always said about them, 'best friend, worst enemy'.''

With a combination of guns and muscle, the Haqqani network has built a sprawling enterprise on both sides of the almost non-existent border.

The Haqqanis are Afghan members of the Zadran tribe, but it is in the town of Miranshah in Pakistan's tribal areas where they have set up a mini-state with courts, tax offices and radical madrassa schools producing a ready supply of fighters. They run a network of front companies throughout Pakistan selling cars and real estate and have been linked to at least two factories churning out the ammonium nitrate used to build roadside bombs in Afghanistan.

But the group is not just a two-bit Mafia enriching itself with shakedown schemes. It is an organised militia using high-profile terrorist attacks on hotels, embassies and other targets to advance its agenda to become a powerbroker in a future political settlement.

Another senior American military official said cross-border attacks by the Haqqanis into Afghanistan have increased more than fivefold this year over the same period a year ago, while roadside bomb attacks are up 20 per cent.

Twenty-five years ago the Haqqani fighters were not the targets of CIA missiles. They were the ones shooting CIA-supplied missiles, the shoulder-fired Stingers that devastated Soviet air power in Afghanistan.

Jalaluddin Haqqani was a US ally against their mutual adversary, the Soviet Union. The clan's ruthlessness and fervent Islamism were seen then as marks of courage and faith on the part of men US president Ronald Reagan called freedom fighters.

Jalaluddin Haqqani's fierce character is matched by his devotion to the laws of Islam. On one occasion he was shot in the knee during the daytime fast of Ramadan. He had medics dig the bullet out without anaesthesia rather than violate a religious tenet by swallowing pain medication during the day.

But it is no surprise to Americans who worked with the clan in the 1980s that the Haqqanis are now fighting their former US allies. The Russians were the foreign occupiers before; now the Americans are.

''The Haqqanis have always been the warlords in that part of the country,'' said Mr Sageman, the former CIA officer. ''They always will be.''

The New York Times

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/ruthless-afghan-crime-clan-stays-beyond-us-reach-20110925-1krnl.html#ixzz1Z0k4h8Rq

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan's generals meet as relations with US hit new low

Pakistani military join scramble to tackle crisis as tensions with US escalate, raising likelihood of more drone strikes

Declan Walsh in Islamabad

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 September 2011 20.44 BST


Protesters burn a mock US flag during a protest in Hyderabad, Pakistan. Photograph: Nadeem Khawer/EPA

Pakistan's army chief has gathered his generals to discuss the escalating war of words with the US over the Haqqani insurgent network amid a deep sense of foreboding across the country.

The military refused to comment on the meeting chaired by General Ashfaq Kayani other than to say it was to discuss the "prevailing security situation". Media reports said the generals considered retaliatory action in the event of US military strikes in the northwestern tribal belt.

Meanwhile the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, recalled his foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who has strongly defended the military, from the United Nations in New York.

The political and military scrambling reflected the gravity of a crisis triggered by a 20-hour Haqqani assault on the US embassy in Kabul on 13 September, and subsequent US allegations that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency was behind the attack.

Last week the outgoing US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqani network as a "veritable arm" of the ISI that were being used to fight a "proxy war" in Afghanistan.

The bare-knuckles criticism of Pakistan's military, unprecedented since 2001, has plunged already troubled relations between the two countries to a new low and led to widespread anxiety in Pakistan about what is coming next.

US actions will also be driven by domestic political pressure. In a taste of rising impatience with Pakistan, one senior Republican said the US was "going to have to put all options on the table, including defending our troops".

"We need to put Pakistan on notice," Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the armed services committee, told Fox News.

Analysts say the US will have to take action, but there is little indication what it will be. "They have to do something; they can't leave it hanging like this," said regional analyst Michael Semple.

Speculation is rife. One option would be air strikes or a special forces raid into the Haqqani safehaven of North Waziristan in the tribal belt. But most analysts believe such a scenario is unlikely, at least for now, given the risks of triggering upheaval that could destabilise the Pakistani government, and even lead to a military takeover.

Instead there are suggestions that the US could increase the tempo of CIA-directed drone strikes against the Haqqanis, including on populated urban areas that the CIA has previously avoided.

One likely target would be Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, where US officials complain the Haqqani leadership lives in close proximity to a major Pakistani base.

Pakistan's military admits it has contacts with the Haqqanis but insists they are for the purposes of gathering intelligence, not for priming attacks on US forces in Afghanistan.

"Any intelligence agency would like to maintain contact with whatever opposition group, whatever terrorist organisation … for some positive outcome," military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told CNN.

President Asif Ali Zardari's government, meanwhile, finds itself hamstrung by a foreign policy it does not control. Paradoxically, this lack of power could insulate the civilians from a military takeover, said defence analyst Dr Hasan Askari-Rizvi.

"I don't think there will be a coup. The civilian government doesn't get in the military's way, so they have no need to knock them out," he said.

Meanwhile other tensions are bubbling along the northeastern part of the Afghan border, away from Waziristan. The Afghan defence ministry has accused Pakistan of firing over 300 artillery shells and rockets into Kunar and Nuristan provinces since Wednesday.

Pakistan says that Pakistani Taliban militants are using the same Afghan territory – recently vacated by US forces - to mount raids into Pakistan.

Behind the angry rhetoric between the US and Pakistan, there is a strong sense that both sides need each other – at least for now. Amid the firestorm of allegations a senior US officer, General James Mattis, paid General Kayani a visit on Saturday.

Prime minister Gilani perhaps put it most succinctly: "They can't live with us. They can't live without us."

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan warns Pakistan about border firing

By Rahim Faiez - The Associated Press

Posted : Sunday Sep 25, 2011 13:43:53 EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan defense officials warned Pakistan on Sunday to stop firing rockets and heavy artillery into the northeast of the country or the military will respond with force. Pakistan denied it was responsible.

Separately, a U.S. official confirmed an attack on a facility used by American officials in Kabul.

“The situation is fluid, and the investigation is ongoing,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Afghan authorities said gunfire was heard in the evening near a building that has been used by the CIA in Kabul. It was unclear whether anyone was killed or hurt. The authorities said that shots were heard around the former Ariana Hotel just blocks from the Afghan presidential palace. The CIA occupied the heavily secured building in late 2001 after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose any information.

Officials at the U.S.-led coalition headquarters nearby said they heard the gunfire, but did not have details about the incident.

In its strongest condemnation to date, the Afghan Defense Ministry accused the Pakistani army of firing more than 300 artillery rounds and rockets into Kunar and Nuristan provinces during the past five days.

The area is a haven for hardcore insurgent groups fighting in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. U.S.-led coalition forces have a light footprint in the area and the cross-border fighting highlights NATO’s struggles to pacify the remote region. It also underscores the lack of cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan against their common foes.

The ministry said an unknown number of Afghan civilians have been killed by the shelling coming from Pakistani territory. Several houses and mosques have been destroyed and hundreds of people have been displaced from their homes, the ministry said.

“Once again, the Pakistani army started firing heavy artillery and rockets over innocent Afghan people from the other side of the Durand Line,” the statement said, referring to the disputed 19th century demarcation between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said he had asked security officials in the area of the reported shelling about the allegations and was waiting for a reply. He said those officials were surprised by the accusations since no activity had been reported in the area.

“I assume this is not correct news,” said Abbas, in reference to the Afghan reports.

Pakistan complained earlier this summer that militants coming from Afghanistan killed at least 55 members of its security forces and tribal police and demanded that U.S. and Afghan forces do more to stem the flow of fighters.

Afghan defense officials said that according to their forces on the ground, more than 100 rockets or mortars rained down on the two provinces Saturday night.

“It’s a clear attack on civilian residential areas,” the ministry statement said.

“The Afghan Defense Ministry is strongly condemning the attack and is giving strong warnings that such violations (of sovereignty) will have their effect on the brotherly, friendly relations of two neighboring countries,” the statement said. “There is no reason for continuing such attacks. The Pakistan government should know that Afghan National Army, with the support of the Afghan people, is ready to respond if such attacks continues.”

Pakistan is also under heavy criticism from the United States.

The top U.S. military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, last week accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency of supporting insurgents in planning and executing a 22-hour assault on the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan on Sept. 13 as well as a truck bomb days earlier that wounded 77 American troops.

The insurgents, from the Haqqani network, are affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida. The group primarily operates in eastern Afghanistan and is often blamed for attacks in Kabul.

Senior Pakistani officials have lashed out against the allegations of support for the Haqqani network, accusing the U.S. of trying to make Pakistan a scapegoat for its troubled war in Afghanistan. The public confrontation has plunged the already troubled U.S.-Pakistan alliance to new lows.

Pakistan’s leaders have shown no indication that they plan to act on renewed American demands to attack the Haqqani network in its main base in Pakistan, even at the risk of further conflict with Washington. The U.S. has given Pakistan billions of dollars in military and economic aid, but the relationship has been riven by mistrust.

Also in the east of Afghanistan, the U.S.-led coalition said two NATO service members were killed Sunday in separate roadside bombings, and a suicide bomber on a motorbike detonated explosives at a local police headquarters building, killing four people in Paktika province.

In the south, Afghan police shot and killed two men wearing explosives vests, foiling a planned suicide attack on a government building in Zabul province.

The deaths of two NATO service members raised to 442 the number of international troops killed in Afghanistan so far this year. The coalition did not disclose further details about their deaths.

In the capital, Kabul, President Hamid Karzai met with his national security team and appointed a panel of high-ranking officials, led by Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, to investigate the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed the nation’s peace council.

Karzai said Rabbani’s death was a “big loss” and that greater security measures should be taken to protect top Afghan figures, including religious clerics and tribal leaders. Intelligence officials at the meeting said one person had been arrested in connection with the assassination and that authorities were close to ascertaining the details of the killing.

———

Associated Press report Adam Goldman contributed to this report from Washington D.C.

[buglerbilly]

Afghan employed by U.S. kills American inside Kabul CIA station

By Ernesto Londono, Updated: Monday, September 26, 5:19 PM

KABUL — An Afghan man employed by the U.S. government opened fire Sunday night inside the CIA station in Kabul, killing one American, a government employee, and wounding a second, officials said Monday.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin A. Sundwall identified the building where the attack took place only as an embassy annex compound, but Afghan officials and Western security officials said it is used by the CIA.

Sundwall said investigators believe the gunman acted alone. They have not yet determined what the motive may have been, he said.

“We mourn the loss of life in the incident as we mourn the loss of all life,” Sundwall said.

The shooting comes two weeks after a 20-hour attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul by a team of gunmen who sprayed Kabul’s heavily guarded diplomatic compound with grenades, rockets and small-arms fire. No Americans were killed or wounded in that attack.

That attack, and the recent slaying of a prominent Afghan official tasked with brokering a peace deal with the Taliban, have stoked concerns about the ease with which militants have carried out attacks in the heart of a capital once regarded as relatively secure.

Sundwall said the wounded American was being treated at a military hospital for wounds that are not life-threatening.

The Afghan gunman was killed in the incident, he said, and “the embassy has resumed business operation.”

Afghan officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ,said the shooting occurred at the building that formerly housed the Arianna Hotel. The compound was taken over by the CIA in 2002, according to Afghan officials and Western private security experts.

An official briefed on the investigation said the Americans who were shot appear to have been “at the wrong place at the wrong time,” and not specifically targeted. The official spoke on condition of anonymity given the preliminary nature of the findings.

The official added that the incident was over quickly, but said it took security personnel several hours to clear the rest of the compound to make sure there were no other threats.

U.S. military officials have grown increasingly worried about the threat posed by militants who have infiltrated Afghan security forces to launch attacks on NATO personnel.

Sunday’s shooting appeared to mark the first time an Afghan employed by a civilian entity of the U.S. government in Afghanistan turned on his American colleagues.

In 2009, a suicide bomber posing as an informant penetrated the CIA base near Khost, Afghanistan and detonated his explosives, killing the station chief and six other agency employees. It was the most lethal attack against the agency in decades.

[buglerbilly]

Not A Single Afghan Battalion Fights Without U.S. Help

By Spencer Ackerman September 26, 2011 | 12:50 pm



Ten years of war. Two years of an accelerated effort to train Afghans to take over that fight, at an annual cost of $6 billion. And not a single Afghan army battalion can operate without assistance from U.S. or allied units.

That was the assessment made by the officer responsible for training those Afghan soldiers, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell. Out of approximately 180 Afghan National Army battalions, only two operate “independently.” Except that “independently,” in Caldwell’s National Training Mission-Afghanistan command, means something different than “independently” does in the States.

Those two “independent” battalions still require U.S. support for their maintenance, logistics and medical systems,” Caldwell admitted when Pentagon reporters pressed him on Monday morning.

“Today, we haven’t developed their systems to enable them to do that yet,” Caldwell said.

Building up foreign armies isn’t easy. During 2008’s battle for Basra, Iraqi forces relied heavily on U.S. and British support — and still saw more than a thousand desertions. That was four years after then Maj. Gen. David Petraeus took over the training of the Iraqi military.

For the past two years, Caldwell’s overseen a big push to expand, professionalize and train Afghan soldiers and cops. Caldwell has gotten bodies into uniforms: the Afghan army and police total 305,516 today, up from 196,508 last December, and they’re “on track,” Caldwell says, to reach 352,000 by November 2012.

Caldwell praised Afghan police officers during the Taliban’s audacious attack on Kabul earlier this month. Two separate cops “literally did a bear hug” on separate suicide bombers in different places around the city, sacrificing themselves in the process. “Policemen were doing heroic deeds,” Caldwell said.

But most of Afghanistan’s men in uniform can’t read at a kindergarten level, much less understand the instrument panels on a helicopter or the serial numbers on their rifles.

That’s one reason why it’ll be years before the U.S. takes its training wheels off the Afghan soldiers’ bikes. Although the Obama administration plans to turn the war over to forces Caldwell trains by 2014, Caldwell told Danger Room in June that the Afghans will need U.S. training until as late as 2017.

That is, if attrition doesn’t get in the way. Caldwell expressed alarm that 1.4 percent of Afghan cops and 2.3 percent of Afghan soldiers walk off the job every month, saying that if “left unchecked [attrition] could undo much of the progress made to date.” Yet last week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified that attrition rates are “as much as three percent per month.

Asked by Danger Room about the increase, Caldwell simply said that the “goal we’ve set” is a 1.4 monthly attrition level across both forces. In the Afghan National Army, attrition “has been steady over the last year. We have not seen the decline,” Caldwell said.

Then there’s the nagging issue of human rights. “U.S. officials have for years been aware of credible allegations that newly-installed Kandahar police chief [Brigadier General Abdul] Raziq and his men participated in a cold-blooded massacre of civilians,” writes Matthieu Aikins, in a gut-wrenching new expose for The Atlantic. Yet Raziq has been showered with cash and official praises from the highest level of the American-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Caldwell has instituted an additional 18 hours of training on respecting Afghans’ rights into the eight-week course that the typical would-be Afghan cop takes. But Caldwell doesn’t train every Afghan cop. Members of a program called the Afghan Local Police — founded in 2010 by Petraeus to recruit auxiliaries against the Taliban — has been implicated in “killings, rape, arbitrary detention, abductions, forcible land grabs, and illegal raids by irregular armed groups,” according to a Human Rights Watch report issued this month.

Special Operations Forces are responsible for turning these groups into respectable units. When Danger Room asked if it was time for Caldwell to take over that training, Caldwell said, “We’ve not been asked to at this point… If there is a request for us to help and become engaged in that, we obviously would. But at this point, I think the special forces element that has the responsibility for that clearly sees and understands what that report says. We all take that very seriously.”

With insurgents assassinating the man in charge of negotiating a peace deal, the Afghan security forces are the backbone of the U.S.’ long-term plan for Afghan security. During his Senate testimony on Thursday, Panetta called their development “one of the most notable successes” of the war.

Yet not only can no Afghan army battalion operate without U.S. aid, the U.S. has been purchasing them a lot of creature comforts. Caldwell said that his command recently stopped buying air conditioning units for Afghan barracks, replacing them with fans instead — part of an effort to pare down the $6 billion that it costs to keep the Afghan security forces going. Caldwell said he expects that number to drop — in part because someday Afghanistan won’t be ravaged by insurgency (maybe, hopefully) — but he doesn’t know how much it’ll drop by, or by when.

“I’m still very realistic about the challenges out there,” Caldwell said.

Update: I misheard Caldwell during today’s Pentagon briefing when he discussed the goal he’s set for monthly attrition rates. Thanks to his public-affairs officer, Lt. Col. Shawn Stroud, for alerting me to my mistake.

Photo: Flickr/DVIDSHUB

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan Punting on Haqqani Network

September 26, 2011

AFP

Pakistan's army chief on Monday scrapped a visit to London as Islamabad refused to bow to mounting US demands for action against Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani extremists holed up in the country's northwest.

The alliance between Pakistan and the United States in the 10-year war in Afghanistan and against Al-Qaeda hit rock bottom this year in the wake of the unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad on May 2.

In a series of escalating rows, Washington accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency of involvement in the September 13 attack on its embassy in Kabul and a September 11 attack on a NATO base in central Afghanistan.

The White House has since demanded that Pakistan "break any link they have" with the Haqqani network, which was founded by former CIA asset Jalaluddin Haqqani and is run by his son Sirajuddin -- based in North Waziristan.

The British Ministry of Defence said Pakistan's army chief of staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, cancelled a visit to London where he had been expected to meet British Defence Secretary Liam Fox.

A ministry spokesman told AFP that the meeting was cancelled "due to diary commitments". Pakistani army spokesman General Athar Abbas said the visit had been "postponed indefinitely" but would be re-scheduled in the future.

Abbas put the decision down to "the current situation at home" but refused to elaborate further.

Kayani, who faced huge internal pressures over the bin Laden raid, on Sunday called his top generals for an extraordinary meeting about the stinging US rebukes blaming the Haqqanis and Pakistani intelligence for recent attacks.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has called a rare cross-party conference for Thursday, although he dismissed the American allegations as little more than finding a scapegoat for US "disarray" in Afghanistan.

Shares on the Karachi Stock Exchange's benchmark KSE-100 index shed three percent to close at 11,265.03 on Monday with 70.61 million shares traded, a slump that dealers put down to agitation over the US-Pakistani tensions.

"I don't think the indicators are as such," a senior Pakistani security official told AFP when asked if the army was going to launch an operation in North Waziristan, part of the country's semi-autonomous tribal belt.

Instead, he said, the military needs to "consolidate gains" made against local militants who pose a security threat elsewhere in the tribal region that Washington has branded an Al-Qaeda headquarters.

Pakistan has around 140,000 troops based along its northwest that borders Afghanistan and says more than 3,000 soldiers have been killed since 2001 -- more than the 2,735 Western soldiers who have died in Afghanistan.

General James Mattis, commander of the US Central Command which oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, on Sunday became the most senior US commander to hold talks with Pakistani generals in Islamabad since last week's public US accusations of Pakistani involvement with the Haqqanis.

In a curt statement after the talks, the Pakistani military said it was committed to achieving "enduring peace in the region" -- something it said was only possible "through mutual trust and cooperation".

But the Pakistani official told AFP that troops were too busy countering cross-border attacks from Afghanistan and local Pakistani militants in other parts of the tribal belt to take on the Haqqanis.

"These are kind of more pressing issues that we have to tackle," the security official said.

Last week, the outgoing top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, bluntly accused Pakistan of "exporting" violent extremism to Afghanistan through proxies and warned of possible action to protect US troops.

The Pakistani official who spoke to AFP confirmed there were "indirect contacts" with the Haqqanis but denied that the intelligence services provided support or endorsed their attacks.

Some in Pakistan interpret the accusations as a search for a scapegoat for US failings in Afghanistan, where the Taliban insurgency is deadlier than ever and from where Washington plans to recall all combat troops by 2014.

Analysts say Pakistan lacks the capacity to take on the Haqqanis and that the Americans can only respond by stepping up an already active drone war against militants in the tribal belt or through economic sanctions.

Washington has already decided to withhold almost a third of its annual $2.7 billion security assistance to Islamabad.

© Copyright 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Top Chinese Security Official Visits Pakistan

September 26, 2011

Associated Press|by Chris Brummit

ISLAMABAD - China's top security official visited Pakistan Monday in an effort to strengthen ties with a country whose relationship with the United States is growing more tenuous by the day.

Pakistani officials and commentators have been talking up their country's relationship with Beijing, with some suggesting it could one day replace the United States as Islamabad's main foreign benefactor.

China's Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu was met by his Pakistani counterpart, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who brushed aside questions on the timing of the visit.

"Lets not talk USA here. I am here with my friend China," he told reporters. "China is always there for us in the most difficult moments."

His remarks echo an often-heard line here about Beijing's attitude toward Islamabad, one that stands in contrast with what officials perceive is a fickle relationship with Washington.

Beijing provides Pakistan with aid and direct foreign investment, while Pakistan offers Beijing important diplomatic backing in the face of Muslim-majority nations who might otherwise criticize China's handling of its Muslim Uighur population.

Beijing is concerned that Uighur militants are living in northwest Pakistan alongside al-Qaida-linked extremists. Pakistan says it has killed or extradited several of those militants over the past few years, but acknowledged that a small number remain at-large in the area.

Meng said he would discuss ways to "contribute to national security and regional stability" with Pakistani leaders.

Cooperation against Uighur Chinese militants would be discussed, said Pakistan's interior minister prior to his meeting with the Chinese official.

China and Pakistan have long had good ties, in large part due to their mutual distrust of India.

China fought India in a brief but bloody 1962 border war, and Pakistan has fought its neighbor three times since 1947.

In contrast, relations between Washington and Islamabad hit near crisis-point after high-level U.S. security officials alleged last week that Pakistani intelligence forces had backed insurgents who attacked the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan and, separately, wounded 77 American soldiers in a truck bomb this month.

Washington is demanding that Pakistan launch an attack against those insurgents, whose leadership is believed to be based in northwest Pakistan close to the Afghan border. Officials in Islamabad dismissed the U.S. allegations and are not showing any signs that they plan to act on the renewed American demand.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Senator: Consider Military Action Against Pakistan

September 26, 2011

Associated Press



Politician sound bites, sounds good, don't mean jackshit!

WASHINGTON -- A Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that the U.S. should consider military action against Pakistan if it continues to support terrorist attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.

"The sovereign nation of Pakistan is engaging in hostile acts against the United States and our ally Afghanistan that must cease, Sen. Lindsey Graham told "Fox News Sunday."

He said if experts decided that the U.S. needs to "elevate its response," he was confident there would be strong bipartisan support in Congress for such action.

Graham did not call for military action but said "all options" should be considered. He said assistance to Pakistan should be reconfigured and that the U.S. should no longer designate an amount of aid for Pakistan but have a more "transactional relationship" with the country.

"They're killing American Soldiers," he said. "If they continue to embrace terrorism as a part of their national strategy, we're going to have to put all options on the table, including defending our troops."

In testimony last week to Graham's committee, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency had backed extremists in planning and executing the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan and a truck bomb attack that wounded 77 American Soldiers. Both occurred this month.

Mullen contended that the Haqqani insurgent network "acts as a veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency as it undermined U.S.-Pakistan relations, already tenuous because of the war in Afghanistan. Pakistan exports violence, Mullen said, and threatens any success in the 10-year-old war.

Graham said Pakistan does cooperate with the U.S. in actions against al-Qaida. But he said the Pakistani military feels threatened by a democracy in Afghanistan and is betting that the Taliban will come back there.

"The best solution is for Pakistan to fight all forms of terrorism, embrace working with us so that we can deal with terrorism along their border, because it is the biggest threat to stability," he said. "But Pakistan is terrorism itself. They have made a tremendous miscalculation."

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Shaken by increase in attacks since 2001, many Pakistanis fault U.S.


Mohammad Sajjad/AP - An injured boy is carried to a local hospital after a female suicide bomber detonated her explosives in Peshawar on Aug. 11, 2011. Since 2001, there have been 335 suicide bombings in Pakistan.

By Karin Brulliard, Tuesday, September 27, 7:42 AM



ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Muhammad Irfan Malik is a banker, and he relies on numbers to tell the story of his daughter’s death.

She was 17 years and 2 months old, a college student who had scored 800 out of 850 on high school graduation exams. On Oct. 20, 2009, she was with classmates in her university cafeteria when a suicide bomber detonated explosives that launched 46 ball bearings into her body. She died 43 days later, leaving her family to suffer incalculable grief.

But when casting blame, Malik turns to an equation that is common here — one that Pakistani officials often cite to explain why their country remains reluctant to fully confront Islamist militants despite acute pressure from the United States. Since 2001, when Islamabad partnered with Washington to combat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, there have been 335 suicide bombings in Pakistan. Before 2001, there was one.

If Pakistan had never allied with the United States, Malik surmised, bombings such as the one that killed his daughter might never have occurred.

“The government is siding with the United States,” Malik said, his eyes damp. “The people are not.”

Aqsa Malik was among more than 10,000 Pakistani civilians killed in a decade-long spiral of armed conflict, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies. The bloodshed has traumatized the national psyche, spawning chains of security checkpoints and robbing families of breadwinners and children.

To Washington, which provides Pakistan with billions of dollars in aid, the carnage should be enough to turn the country’s public and its power structure firmly against Islamist militancy. But to ordinary as well as influential Pakistanis, the view is far less clear.

“I have become so unsafe that sometimes I think I should have my family leave Pakistan,” said Hamid Mir, a popular television host, explaining the view of many Pakistanis. “Why is that? It is because of the American policies in Pakistan.”

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that a large majority of Pakistanis consider suicide bombings unjustifiable. But majorities also view the United States, with its campaign of frequent drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, as an enemy.

The 2009 suicide attack at the International Islamic University, which involved two assailants who killed at least nine people, was just one bombing among hundreds and hardly the deadliest. But discussions with survivors and relatives of those killed reveal much about the ambivalence among Pakistanis toward a war they have never claimed as their own.

Few targets have been as perplexing as the International Islamic University. The school is a conservative, gender-segregated institution that draws middle-class Pakistanis and other Muslims from around the world.

The first bomber struck the women’s cafeteria, where Aqsa Malik sat. Minutes later, translation major Waqar Khalid spotted an unfamiliar man in the hallway of the men’s law building, then felt a rush of heat. Khalid, 26, awoke on the floor, wondering whether his head was still connected to his body.

The Pakistani Taliban, which was waging a bombing spree in retaliation for a military offensive in the northwest, asserted responsibility, but questions persisted. Why would Muslims strike a Muslim university? The school’s rector, Fateh Mohammed Malik, said he thought it was clear: The Taliban didn’t approve of women’s education or the way sharia, or Islamic law, was being taught there.

But students staged a demonstration, carrying signs that betrayed confusion. “American/Indian/Taliban I don’t care!! My friends were martyred,” one read.

Among those killed was Amna Batool, 20, an English student and theater enthusiast who asked her father how she looked before leaving for school that morning. Syed Zubair Ashraf, 58, next saw her at the hospital, her skull ravaged by what he describes as “ball bearings and nails and other dirty materials.” Her death four days later left Ashraf, an editor of an Urdu research journal, without the will to write.

Ashraf has watched in recent years as blast walls and metal detectors sprouted across Islamabad, a sleepy capital city that once seemed immune from violence. Now, Ashraf said, it feels besieged by spies, and he cannot help but think that the U.S. presence in the region is fueling the attacks, not stopping them.

“I have read that Americans are peace-loving. But their government has interfered in every country. Why?” Ashraf said.

Many Pakistani analysts say it is too simplistic to blame the increase in attacks on the United States. Pakistan’s secular government has done little to reverse the Islamist ideology seeded throughout society by then-military dictator Mohammed Zia ul-Haq. To this day, the military battles some insurgent factions while avoiding others.

U.S. officials say Pakistan’s top intelligence agency still nurtures certain anti-India militant and Taliban groups; on Thursday, the top U.S. military official, Adm. Mike Mullen, said Pakistani spies actively support the Haqqani militant faction as a proxy for influence in Afghanistan, including by aiding its deadly attacks on American targets there.

While Islamist militants maintain a steady narrative — that the United States and, by extension, its allies are enemies of Islam — Pakistani leaders’ denunciations of extremism are often wavering and tepid, said Husnul Amin, an assistant professor of international relations at the International Islamic University.

“Society is in shock,” Amin said. “They know that something has happened to us, but they can’t analyze what and how. There is a gray area in which even an educated person is confused.”

The university attack left Khalid, the translation student, badly burned, and two of his friends dead. Today, he has a gentle smile and clear confidence. But he says being in crowds agitates him, and his pessimism about Pakistan has deepened. He said that young men have few job prospects and that his father, a policeman, struggles to make ends meet.

Meanwhile, Khalid said, the United States gives aid dollars to a Pakistani government that is widely viewed as corrupt and does little to help civilian victims of terrorism.

“What is the mistake of these families?” asked Khalid, who has formed a victims support group.

Muhammad Irfan Malik said his family remains “broken” two years after the bombing. He requested a transfer to a busier bank branch, to help distract him from his grief. His wife does not discuss Aqsa’s death at home, nor does she touch her late daughter’s belongings. Their three surviving children wanted to go to a park for the recent Muslim holiday of Eid, but Malik said such an activity is not safe in present-day Pakistan.

The family applied for compensation from the government, Malik said, but received no response. He never expected answers from the police.

“We feel that her martyrdom was in vain,” he said of Aqsa. “On the other hand, where can we go? At whose door can we seek justice?”

Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

800 additional U.S. military trainers to be sent to Afghanistan by March

By Walter Pincus, Tuesday, September 27, 8:26 AM

Eight hundred more U.S. military trainers will be sent to Afghanistan by March to help with logistics, maintenance, medical care and other areas in which the Afghan army is short on skills, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, commander of NATO’s training mission there, said Monday.

“That will better help us start getting at some of these specialty skills,” he told reporters in a teleconference from Kabul.

Caldwell said training in these areas was needed to enable Afghan army units to be better prepared to operate without U.S. support by 2014, when American combat troops are scheduled to leave.

Caldwell said that only two of 126 Afghan army battalions are currently operating “by themselves.” But he later said that even those two needed logistics, maintenance, medical and intelligence support. Other battalions operated “very effectively with minimal coalition support,” he said.

He said that training programs once were led by contractors but that Afghans increasingly are taking control. About 3,100 Afghans are assigned to training instruction, and half of those “have been certified through a very deliberate process,” he said.

Caldwell said Afghan police played a key role in protecting civilians during the attack on the U.S. Embassy on Sept. 13.

In another attack that day that was not as well-publicized, a group of students at a high school were saved when an Afghan police officer “did a bear hug around a suicide bomber when he blew himself up and there in the process obviously killed himself,” Caldwell said.

He told of another senior police officer who also ran up to a bomber who got close to Afghan National Civil Order Police headquarters, again giving the assailant a hug as the bomb went off, killing himself but saving the lives of nearby officers.

Caldwell also said that attrition rates within the Afghan military, though higher than desirable, have not kept Afghanistan’s security forces from growing. They are on track to reach 352,000 personnel by 2012.

Literacy remains a problem. But the recruitment of about 3,000 Afghan literacy teachers has eased it somewhat. Caldwell said that about half of all Afghan army and police personnel have gone through the literacy program. Only 18 percent of those currently serving were literate when they joined, he said.

The Afghan security forces program overall costs about $6 billion a year for a country whose government income is estimated at just over $1 billion. Caldwell refused to predict how long it will take for the spending to decrease. He said he is looking for “sources from the international community to help pay for it in the long term,” as well as contributions from the U.S. and Afghan governments.

Caldwell said some savings are already being realized through the purchase of local products. Boots once bought for the Afghan army at $170 a pair from the United States are now bought for less from Afghan factories. A similar approach is being taken when buying uniforms, sheets and pillowcases. The overall savings amount to $168 million a year.

[buglerbilly]

Second SAS NZ death in Afghanistan

By NZ Herald staff 2:03 PM Wednesday Sep 28, 2011


Lieutenant General Rhys Jones, Defence Force Chief detailing the attack which has killed another SAS soldier. Photo / TV3

A second New Zealand SAS soldier has died after being shot in the head in an ongoing assault on a group of insurgents in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister John Key announced the death of the as-yet-unnamed soldier in a press conference just after 1:30pm this afternoon.

He said the soldier's death was "devastating for our SAS, the New Zealand Defence Force and for all New Zealanders".

New Zealand's Chief of Defence Force, Lieutenant-General Rhys Jones, said the soldier was killed while supporting an assault on insurgents in the province of Warduk, near the Afghan capital Kabul.

The group opened fire after they detected the 15-strong SAS team who were supporting the Afghan Crisis Response Unit in the assault.

"Our soldier was killed by rifle fire in the early stages of that conflict," Mr Jones said.

The New Zealand contingent "seemed to hit on a group that was willing to fight back", said Defence Force Chief Lieutenant General Rhys Jones.

Mr Jones said the operation had been going since 9am NZ time and was still being carried out.

He said the shot soldier had been treated by a top military neurosurgeon, but had died on the operating table.
He said Victoria Cross-winning SAS soldier Willie Apiata was not the soldier killed.

A young child and a "fighting age man" has also been injured in the conflict.

Prime Minister John Key said he regretted the loss of another soldier but did not regret the decision to commit to troops to Afghanistan.

Mr Key said the death was a reminder of the volatile and dangerous conditions SAS forces were facing amid rising conflict in Afghanistan.

"This soldier has paid the highest price for his service to this country, and we mourn his loss with heavy hearts," Mr Key said.

"My heart goes out to the family and those who are serving New Zealand but we are doing the right thing."

The Prime Minister, Defence Minister Wayne Mapp and Lieutenant General Jones all expressed condolences to the family.

New Zealand forces will remain in Afghanistan until 2014, while SAS troops will continue their operations until next March. Today's incident did not change those plans, Mr Key said.

He said the SAS were playing a vital role in combating global terrorism.

About 70 members of the 1st Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry regiment and support units returned from deployment in Bamyan on Monday.

SAS soldier Corporal Doug Grant, 41, was shot dead last month during an operation to rescue hostages at the British Council cultural centre in Kabul, which was being attacked by the Taleban.

Corporate Grant was the first SAS fatality in Afghanistan in four deployments since 2001.

By NZ Herald staff

[buglerbilly]

Pakistan's foreign minister defends country's record on fighting terror

Hina Rabbani Khar calls for unity in combating terrorism in wake of US claims Islamabad is supporting Afghan insurgents

Chris McGreal in Washington

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 September 2011 22.29 BST


Hina Rabbani Khar said: 'If I began recounting Pakistan's sacrifices and Pakistan's suffering, I would keep you here until next September.' Photograph: David Karp/AP

Pakistan's foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, has robustly defended Islamabad's record in fighting terrorism in the wake of US allegations that the Pakistani intelligence service is closely linked to Afghan extremists and has facilitated attacks on American forces.

Khar made only passing references to the US in an address to the UN general assembly. But her calls for unity in fighting terrorism, and for there to be no recriminations, was prompted by deepening suspicion in Washington at what are seen as double dealings by the Pakistani intelligence service and military in Afghanistan, particularly since Osama bin Laden was found to be hiding in Pakistan.

"Given the volatility of the situation, it is perhaps understandable that there is a high level of anxiety and emotion. But we must not lose sight of the goals," said Khar.

"We must work closely and as responsible partners together in a cooperative manner and not rush to judgements or question each others intentions."

There is deep scepticism in Washington that the Pakistani military and intelligence service did not know Bin Laden's whereabouts for years while he lived in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where he was killed in an American raid in May.

Last week, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told Congress that the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction responsible for numerous attacks on American and Nato targets in Afghanistan, is a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service.

He accused Pakistan of providing support for the group attack on the US embassy in Kabul two weeks ago that killed 16 Afghans, and for the bombing of a Nato post earlier this month that killed five people and wounded 77 coalition soldiers.

"With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy," Mullen told the armed services committee.

Khar defended the ISI's record, saying it had been instrumental in the capture of members of the Taliban and al-Qaida, sometimes in co-operation with the CIA.

Khar said Pakistan has paid a high price in blood fighting terrorism.
"Thirty thousand innocent Pakistanis have been killed: men, women and children. The ever-ready Pakistani armed forces have defended Pakistan and the rest of the world at the highest cost," she said.

"Numerous politicians have lost sons, brothers and fathers at the hands of terrorists. Our streets are filled with armed police. Terrorists have attacked our military installations, attacked the grave sites of our spiritual leaders, attacked our minorities and attacked the very idea of Pakistan. If I began recounting Pakistan's sacrifices and Pakistan's suffering I would keep you here until next September.

"We do not take terrorism lightly. We cannot afford to take terrorism lightly. We have suffered far too much at its hands."

Khar said that Pakistan has an "irrevocable commitment to fighting terror" and will not permit its territory to be used by "militants and terrorists".

"We must demonstrate complete unity in ranks, avoid any recrimination, build greater trust," she said. "Otherwise, I'm afraid, the terrorists are the only ones who are going to win."

[Gubler, A.]

Most of this wouldn't be new to people on this forum but well worth a re-cap:

10 myths about Afghanistan

In 1988, the Soviet army left Afghanistan after a concerted campaign by the western-backed mujahideen. But since then, many enduring myths have grown up about the war-torn country. In his new book, Jonathan Steele sorts the fact from the fiction

Jonathan Steele guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 September 2011 19.59 BST

1. Afghans have always beaten foreign armies, from Alexander the Great to modern times

Afghan history is certainly littered with occasions when foreign invaders were humiliated. But there have also been many cases when foreign armies penetrated the country and inflicted major defeats. In 330BC, Alexander the Great marched through the area of central Asia that is now Afghanistan, meeting little opposition. More than a millennium later, the Mongol leader Genghis Khan also brushed resistance aside.

Ghosts of Afghanistan: Hard Truths and Foreign Myths
by Jonathan Steele
Buy it from the Guardian bookshopSearch the Guardian bookshop
Since Afghanistan emerged as a modern state, there have been three wars with Britain. The British invasion of 1839 produced initial victory for the intruders followed by stunning defeat followed by a second victory. In 1878, the British invaded again. Though they suffered a major defeat at Maiwand, their main army beat the Afghans. The British then re-drew the frontier of British India up to the Khyber Pass, and Afghanistan had to cede various frontier areas. In the Third Anglo-Afghan war, the fighting was launched by the Afghans. Amanullah Khan sent troops into British India in 1919. Within a month they were forced to retreat, in part because British planes bombed Kabul in one of the first displays of airpower in central Asia. The war ended in tactical victory for the British but their troop losses were twice those of the Afghans, suggesting the war was a strategic defeat. The British abandoned control of Afghan foreign policy at last.

The results of the three Anglo-Afghan wars undermine the claim that Afghans always defeat foreigners. What is true is that foreigners have always had a hard time occupying the country for long. The British came to understand that. From bitter experience they kept their interventions short, preferring domination over foreign affairs to the option of colonisation that they adopted in India.


2. The Soviet invasion led to a civil war and western aid for the Afghan resistance

Armed opposition to the government in Kabul long pre-dated the arrival of Soviet troops in December 1979. Every one of the Pakistan-based Afghan mujahideen leaders who became famous during the 1980s as the Peshawar Seven and were helped by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China had gone into exile and taken up arms before December 1979, many of them years earlier. As Islamists, they opposed the secular and modernising tendencies of Daoud Khan, [the Afghan PM] who toppled his cousin, King Zahir Shah, in 1973.

Western backing for these rebels had also begun before Soviet troops arrived. It served western propaganda to say the Russians had no justification for entering Afghanistan in what the west called an aggressive land grab. In fact, US officials saw an advantage in the mujahedin rebellion which grew after a pro-Moscow government toppled Daoud in April 1978. In his memoirs, Robert Gates, then a CIA official and later defence secretary under Presidents Bush and Obama, recounts a staff meeting in March 1979 where CIA officials asked whether they should keep the mujahideen going, thereby "sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire". The meeting agreed to fund them to buy weapons.


3. The USSR suffered a massive military defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the mujahideen

This is one of the most persistent myths of Afghan history. It has been trumpeted by every former mujahideen leader, from Osama bin Laden and Taliban commanders to the warlords in the current Afghan government. It is also accepted unthinkingly as part of the western narrative of the war. Some western politicians go so far as to say that the alleged Soviet defeat in Afghanistan helped to cause the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. On this they agree with Bin Laden and al-Qaida's other leaders, who claim they destroyed one superpower and are on their way to destroying another.

The reality is the Afghan mujahideen did not defeat the Soviets on the battlefield. They won some important encounters, notably in the Panjshir valley, but lost others. In sum, neither side defeated the other. The Soviets could have remained in Afghanistan for several more years but they decided to leave when Gorbachev calculated that the war had become a stalemate and was no longer worth the high price in men, money and international prestige. In private, US officials came to the same conclusion about Soviet strength, although they only admitted it publicly later. Morton Abramowitz, who directed the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the time, said in 1997: "In 1985, there was a real concern that the [mujahideen] were losing, that they were sort of being diminished, falling apart. Losses were high and their impact on the Soviets was not great."



4. The CIA's supply of Stinger missiles to the mujahideen forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan

This myth of the 1980s was given new life by George Crile's 2003 book Charlie Wilson's War and the 2007 film of the same name, starring Tom Hanks as the loud-mouthed congressman from Texas. Both book and movie claim that Wilson turned the tide of the war by persuading Ronald Reagan to supply the mujahideen with shoulder-fired missiles that could shoot down helicopters. The Stingers certainly forced a shift in Soviet tactics. Helicopter crews switched their operations to night raids since the mujahideen had no night-vision equipment. Pilots made bombing runs at greater height, thereby diminishing the accuracy of the attacks, but the rate of Soviet and Afghan aircraft losses did not change significantly from what it was in the first six years of the war.

The Soviet decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was made in October 1985, several months before Stinger missiles entered Afghanistan in significant quantities in the autumn of 1986. None of the secret Politburo discussions that have since been declassified mentioned the Stingers or any other shift in mujahideen equipment as the reason for the policy change from indefinite occupation to preparations for retreat.


5. After the Soviets withdrew, the west walked away

One of the most common promises western politicians made after they toppled the Taliban in 2001 was that "this time" the west would not walk away, "as we did after the Russians pulled out". Afghans were surprised to hear these promises. They remembered history in rather a different way. Far from forgetting about Afghanistan in February 1989, the US showed no let-up in its close involvement with the mujahideen. Washington blocked the Soviet-installed President Mohammad Najibullah's offers of concessions and negotiations and continued to arm the rebels and jihadis in the hope they would quickly overthrow his Moscow-backed regime.

This was one of the most damaging periods in recent Afghan history when the west and Pakistan, along with mujahideen intransigence, undermined the best chance of ending the country's civil war. The overall effect of these policies was to prolong and deepen Afghanistan's destruction, as Charles Cogan, CIA director of operations for the Middle East and south Asia, 1979–1984, later recognised. "I question whether we should have continued on this momentum, this inertia of aiding the mujahideen after the Soviets had left. I think that was probably, in retrospect, a mistake," he said.


6. The mujahideen overthrew Kabul's regime and won a major victory over Moscow

The key factor that undermined Najibullah was an announcement made in Moscow in September 1991, shortly after a coup mounted against Gorbachev by Soviet hard-liners collapsed. His longtime rival, Boris Yeltsin, who headed the Russian government, emerged in a dominant position. Yeltsin was determined to cut back on the country's international commitments and his government announced that from 1 January 1992, no more arms would be delivered to Kabul. Supplies of petrol, food and all other aid would also cease.

The decision was catastrophic for the morale of Najibullah's supporters. The regime had survived the departure of Soviet troops for more than two years but now would truly be alone. So, in one of the great ironies of history, it was Moscow that toppled the Afghan government that Moscow had sacrificed so many lives to keep in place.

The dramatic policy switch became evident when Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of one of the mujahideen groups, was invited to Moscow in November 1991. In a statement after the meeting, Boris Pankin, the Soviet foreign minister, "confirmed the necessity for a complete transfer of state power to an interim Islamic government". In today's context, the announcement could be compared to an invitation by Hillary Clinton to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to come to Washington and a declaration the US wanted power transferred from Karzai to the Taliban.

The move led to a wave of defections as several of Najibullah's army commanders and political allies switched sides and joined the mujahideen. Najibullah's army was not defeated. It just melted away.


7. The Taliban invited Osama bin Laden to use Afghanistan as a safe haven

Osama bin Laden got to know the mujahideen leaders during the anti-Soviet jihad after traveling to Peshawar in 1980. Two years later, his construction company built tunnels in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan that the CIA helped him to finance and which he was later to use to escape US bombing after 9/11.

He returned to Saudi Arabia, disillusioned with the Saudi royal family for collaborating with the US in the Gulf war against Saddam Hussein in 1990–1991. In Afghanistan, there was cause for disappointment too. The mujahideen's incompetence was preventing them from toppling Najibullah. Bin Laden turned his attention to jihad against the west and moved to Sudan in 1992. After Sudan came under pressure to deport him in 1996, Bin Laden had to find somewhere else to live. Najibullah had finally lost power in Afghanistan, and Bin Laden decided it might be the best place after all.

His return in May 1996 was prompted less by a revival of interest in Afghan politics than by his need for a safe haven. His return was sponsored by the mujahideen leaders with whom he had become friendly during the anti-Soviet struggle. He flew to Jalalabad on a plane chartered by Rabbani's government that also carried scores of Arab fighters.

It was only after the Taliban captured Jalalabad from the mujahideen that he was obliged to switch his allegiance or leave Afghanistan again. He chose the first option.


8. The Taliban were by far the worst government Afghanistan has ever had

A year after the Taliban seized power, I interviewed UN staff, foreign aid workers and Afghans in Kabul. The Taliban had softened their ban on girls' education and were turning a blind eye to the expansion of informal "home schools" in which thousands of girls were being taught in private flats. The medical faculty was about to re-open for women to teach midwives, nurses, and doctors since women patients could not be treated by men. The ban on women working outside the home was also lifted for war widows and other needy women.

Afghans recalled the first curbs on liberty were imposed by the mujahideen before the Taliban. From 1992, cinemas were closed and TV films were shortened so as to remove any scene in which women and men walked or talked together, let alone touched each other. Women announcers were banned from TV.

The burqa was not compulsory, as it was to become under the Taliban, but all women had to wear the head-scarf, or hijab, unlike in the years of Soviet occupation and the Najibullah regime that followed. The mujahideen refused to allow women to attend the UN's fourth world conference on women in Beijing in 1995. Crime was met with the harshest punishment. A wooden gallows was erected in a park near the main bazaar in Kabul where convicts were hanged in public. Above all, Afghans liked the security provided by the Taliban in contrast to the chaos between 1992 and 1996 when mujahideen groups fought over the capital, launching shells and rockets indiscriminately. Some 50,000 Kabulis were killed.


9. The Taliban are uniquely harsh oppressors of Afghan women

Afghanistan has a long history of honour killings and honour mutilation, going back before the Taliban period and continuing until today. They occur in every part of the country and are not confined to the culture of the Pashtun, the ethnic group from which most Taliban come.

Women are brutalised by a tribal custom for settling disputes known as baad, which treats young girls as voiceless commodities. They are offered in compensation to another family, often to an elderly man, for unpaid debts or if a member of that family has been killed by a relative of the girl.

On the wider issue of gender rights, the Taliban are rightly accused of relegating Afghan women to second-class citizenship. But to single the Taliban out as uniquely oppressive is not accurate. Violence against women has a long pedigree in all communities in Afghanistan, among the Shia Hazara and the northern Tajiks, as well as the Sunni Pashtun.

Underage marriage is common across Afghanistan, and among all ethnic groups. According to Unifem (the United Nations Development Fund for Women) and the Afghan independent human rights commission, 57% of Afghan marriages are child marriages – where one partner is under the age of 16. In a study of 200 underage wives, 40% had been married between the ages of 10 and 13, 32.5% at 14, and 27.5% at 15. In many communities, women are banned from leaving the house or family compound. This leads to a host of other disabilities. Women are not allowed to take jobs. Girls are prevented from going to school. In the minds of western politicians and the media, these prohibitions are often associated exclusively with the Taliban. Yet the forced isolation of women by keeping them confined is a deep-seated part of Afghan rural culture. It is also found in poorer parts of the major cities.


10. The Taliban have little popular support

In 2009, Britain's Department for International Development commissioned an Afghan NGO to conduct surveys on how people compared the Taliban to the Afghan government. The results suggested Nato's campaign to demonise the Taliban was no more effective than the Soviet effort to demonise the mujahedin.

One survey reported on Helmandis' attitudes to justice systems. More than half the male respondents called the Taliban "completely trustworthy and fair". The Taliban took money through taxes on farm crops and road tolls but did not demand bribes. According to the survey, "Most ordinary people associate the [national] government with practices and behaviours they dislike: the inability to provide security, dependence on foreign military, eradication of a basic livelihood crop (poppy), and as having a history of partisanship (the perceived preferential treatment of Northerners)."

Does the US understand why Afghans join the Taliban? Do Afghans understand why the US is in their country? Without clear answers, no counter-insurgency strategy can succeed. A 2009 survey commissioned by DFID in three key provinces asked what led people to join the Taliban. Out of 192 who responded, only 10 supported the government. The rest saw it as corrupt and partisan. Most supported the Taliban, at least what they called the "good Taliban", defined as those who showed religious piety, attacked foreign forces but not Afghans and delivered justice quickly and fairly. They did not like Pakistani Taliban and Taliban linked to narcotics. Afghans did not like al-Qaida, but did not equate the Taliban with this Arab-led movement.

[buglerbilly]

Adm. Mullen’s words on Pakistan come under scrutiny


Khalid Tanveer/AP - A Pakistani protester shout slogans at an anti-American rally last week spurred by Adm. Mike Mullen’s coments.

By Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung,

Adm. Mike Mullen’s assertion last week that an anti-American insurgent group in Afghanistan is a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy service was overstated and contributed to overheated reactions in Pakistan and misperceptions in Washington, according to American officials involved in U.S. policy in the region.

The internal criticism by the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to challenge Mullen openly, reflects concern over the accuracy of Mullen’s characterizations at a time when Obama administration officials have been frustrated in their efforts to persuade Pakistan to break its ties to Afghan insurgent groups.

The administration has long sought to pressure Pakistan, but to do so in a nuanced way that does not sever the U.S. relationship with a country that American officials see as crucial to winning the war in Afghanistan and maintaining long-term stability in the region.

Mullen’s testimony to a Senate committee was widely interpreted as an accusation by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Pakistan’s military and espionage agencies sanction and direct bloody attacks against U.S. troops and targets in Afghanistan. Such interpretations prompted new levels of indignation among senior officials in both the United States and Pakistan.

Mullen’s language “overstates the case,” said a senior Pentagon official with access to classified intelligence files on Pakistan, because there is scant evidence of direction or control. If anything, the official said, the intelligence indicates that Pakistan treads a delicate if duplicitous line, providing support to insurgent groups including the Haqqani network but avoiding actions that would provoke a U.S. response.

“The Pakistani government has been dealing with Haqqani for a long time and still sees strategic value in guiding Haqqani and using them for their purposes,” the Pentagon official said. But “it’s not in their interest to inflame us in a way that an attack on a [U.S.] compound would do.”

U.S. officials stressed that there is broad agreement in the military and intelligence community that the Haqqani network has mounted some of the most audacious attacks of the Afghanistan war, including a 20-hour siege by gunmen this month on the U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul.

A senior aide to Mullen defended the chairman’s testimony, which was designed to prod the Pakistanis to sever ties to the Haqqani group if not contain it by force. “I don’t think the Pakistani reaction was unexpected,” said Capt. John Kirby. “The chairman stands by every word of his testimony.”

But Mullen’s pointed message and the difficulty in matching his words to the underlying intelligence underscore the suspicion and distrust that have plagued the United States and Pakistan since they were pushed together as counterterrorism partners after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

U.S. military officials said that Mullen’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee has been misinterpreted, and that his remark that the Haqqani network had carried out recent truck-bomb and embassy attacks “with ISI support” was meant to imply broad assistance, but not necessarily direction by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

U.S. officials have long accused Pakistan of providing support to the Haqqani network and allowing it to operate along the Afghanistan border with relative impunity, a charge that Pakistani officials reject.

But Mullen seemed to take the allegation an additional step, saying that the Haqqani network “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency,” a phrase that implies ISI involvement and control.

That interpretation might be valid “if we were judging by Western standards,” said a senior U.S. military official who defended Mullen’s testimony. But the Pakistanis “use extremist groups — not only the Haqqanis — as proxies and hedges” to maintain influence in Afghanistan.

“This is not new,” the official said. “Can they control them like a military unit? We don’t think so. Do they encourage them? Yes. Do they provide some finance for them? Yes. Do they provide safe havens? Yes.”

That nuance escaped many in Congress and even some in the Obama administration, who voiced concern that the escalation in rhetoric had inflamed anti-American sentiment in Pakistan.

U.S. officials said that even evidence that has surfaced since Mullen’s testimony is open to differences in interpretation, including cellphones recovered from gunmen who were killed during the assault on the U.S. Embassy.

One official said the phones were used to make repeated calls to numbers associated with the Haqqani network, as well as presumed “ISI operatives.” But the official declined to explain the basis for that conclusion.

The senior Pentagon official treated the assertion with skepticism, saying the term “operatives” covers a wide range of supposed associates of the ISI. “Does it mean the same Haqqani numbers [also found in the phones], or is it actually uniformed officers” of Pakistan’s spy service?

U.S. officials said Mullen was unaware of the cellphones until after he testified.

Pakistani officials acknowledge that they have ongoing contact with the Haqqani network, a group founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, who was one of the CIA-backed mujaheddin commanders who helped drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Now in poor health, Haqqani has yielded day-to-day control of the network to his son, Sirajuddin.

U.S. officials see indications that their Pakistani counterparts can exert influence on the Haqqani group in some cases, if not exert control.

Last year, at the United States’ behest, the ISI appealed to the Haqqani group not to attack polling stations during Afghan elections, a request that appears to have been honored. The senior Pentagon official declined to say how U.S. intelligence knows that the request was made, except to say, “We were aware of it.”

Mullen’s testimony was prepared at a time of intense frustration with Pakistan, in the aftermath of the embassy attack and other incidents. His remarks were striking in part because Mullen has long been sympathetic to Pakistan, traveling frequently to Islamabad and meeting more than two dozen times with its army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.

But with his term as Joint Chiefs chairman about to expire, Mullen has become increasingly frustrated with the failure to get Pakistan to cut ties with Haqqani, and instructed his staff to compose testimony for last week’s hearing that would convey a message of exasperation.

In Pakistan, a military official emerged from a meeting of corps commanders Sunday saying they would make no move against Haqqani in the North Waziristan tribal region and warning that a unilateral U.S. action would have “disastrous consequences.”

The reaction in the Pakistani press to Mullen’s message has been more severe. A column this week by retired air vice marshal Shahzad Chaudry asked, “What could be the possible motives for America’s recent diatribes?” It concluded that the United States was intentionally sowing chaos in the region to weaken Pakistan.

In Washington, a senior Obama administration official said that “no one has any interest in walking back” what Mullen said, even while voicing concern over the comments’ impact on the fragile relationship with Pakistan.

“If the Pakistanis are finally scared about this, great,” the administration official said. “But we don’t want to walk [the relationship] over a cliff.”

Correspondent Karin Brulliard in Islamabad and special correspondents Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

8 Afghan Policemen Killed at Checkpoint

September 28, 2011

Associated Press|by Rahim Faiez

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Eight policemen were killed in an attack early Wednesday near a southern city that is seen as a pioneer in transition from NATO to Afghan control over security, an Afghan police commander said.

Gen. Nabi Jan Mullahkhail, deputy regional commander in the south, said the pre-dawn attack targeted a police checkpoint near Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, where the insurgency has strongholds. Three police were wounded in the attack.

Mullahkhail said another policeman who was part of the group manning the checkpoint was missing, and that authorities were investigating whether he might have been involved in the attack.

On Tuesday, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed vehicle into a police truck in Lashkar Gah, killing two civilians. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack.

Lashkar Gah was one of five provincial capitals and two provinces chosen to start the transition from NATO to Afghan control this summer. The international coalition hopes to use the security zone around the provincial capital and the central Helmand River Valley as a foothold to push Afghan governance into outlying areas. NATO plans to withdraw combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Also Wednesday, a New Zealand special forces soldier was killed during a gunbattle with suspected insurgents in a compound near Afghanistan's capital.

Lt. Gen. Rhys Jones, the chief of New Zealand's defense force, said the soldier was shot in the head and died soon after at a medical facility. Jones said the soldier was part of a team of 15 supporting about 50 Afghan police trying to serve arrest and search warrants on a group suspected of planning an attack on Kabul.

Jones said a man and a child in the compound were injured during the battle, which was still ongoing Wednesday morning.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Breaking: Nobody Knows What to Do About Pakistan

By Spencer Ackerman September 28, 2011 | 11:41 am



As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen tried everything he could to rehab America’s tenuous alliance with its frenemy, Pakistan. So when he testified last week that Pakistani intelligence sponsors the brutal Haqqani Network of Afghan insurgents, it represented two middle fingers raised at Islamabad. But the diplomatic furor that resulted has been all kabuki. Not a single aspect of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship will change.

You wouldn’t know it from listening to Pakistani politicians. They’ve lined up to denounce their old friend Mullen. Pakistani generals have done everything but scramble their jets to demonstrate their outrage.

What’s the result? Yet another U.S. drone strike launched into Pakistan’s tribal areas. And those drone strikes occur with the full complicity of the Pakistani military, down to the use of its Shamsi air base, even if the Pakistanis threaten to deny the U.S. future access to the base.

Get set for many, many more U.S. strikes, all while Islamabad publicly whines — and quietly helps. Sure, Pakistan could scramble its F-16s to protest the continued U.S. shadow war on its soil. But that would just remind everyone that it gets its jets from Washington.

Speaking of Washington, Mullen’s candor is bringing out the crazy. Anonymous officials are clucking to the Washington Post that Mullen “overstated” the connections between Pakistani intelligence and the Haqqanis. Notice they’re not saying he’s wrong, because Pakistani sponsorship of the Haqqanis (and the Taliban) is one of those open secrets that everyone can discuss except for senior government officials. They’re just saying that it was inconvenient for Mullen to be, y’know, truthful.

Why’s it inconvenient? Because the Obama administration has done everything it can think of to coax Pakistan out of its sponsorship of insurgents, and nothing’s worked. Massive military help to deal with last year’s floods? Nothing. A multi-billion dollar civilian aid package? Nothing. Military equipment running the gamut from night-vision goggles to C-130 cargo planes to anti-armor missiles? Nothing. Unilateral raids that kill Osama bin Laden? Worse than nothing.

You can’t blame U.S. politicians for feeling frustrated. But you can blame them for throwing temper tantrums in response. That’s what Sen. Lindsay Graham did. “If they continue to embrace terrorism as a part of their national strategy,” Graham said of the Pakistanis, “we’re going to have to put all options on the table, including defending our troops.”

So now, instead of hitting targets on Pakistani soil, we’d actually attack Pakistan itself — a nuclear-armed country that receives billions of dollars in aid annually, and which has arguably more influence over the Afghanistan War than we do. Thanks, President Graham!

Graham can issue such irresponsible statements because he’s aware of a basic truth in U.S.-Pakistani relations. Neither country can live without the other. As long as the U.S. believes it has to wage a war in Afghanistan and attrit a terrorist haven in Pakistan, it has no choice but to work with the Pakistani government. And as long as Pakistan wants its failing economy and wheezing military to be propped up, it has no choice but to accept Washington’s patronage. That makes inflammatory rhetoric cost-free. Cue Lady Gaga.

There is a strategy that might — might — result in a massive and positive payoff: defusing tensions between Pakistan and its arch-rival, India. (No, sporadic diplomatic engagement aimed at keeping the peace in Kashmir doesn’t count.) Pakistan maintains its ties to terrorist groups to supplement its relative weakness against arch-enemy India. So maybe Washington could try sponsoring peace talks between India and Pakistan. Not that it’s worked out well between, say, Israel and the Palestinians. But it’s a better strategy than constant feuding, mutual subterfuge and sub rosa military cooperation. And if it works, it’s a game-changer.

More likely, nothing will change. Pakistan will continue to sponsor insurgents. The U.S. will continue drone strikes. And the aid will keep flowing between Washington and Islamabad. There will be the occasional violent accident. No one will be pleased and everyone will act like hypocrites. Mullen might be done playing the game. But in Washington and Islamabad, only the players change.

Photo: Flickr/Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

[buglerbilly]

Aid agency withdrew Pakistan staff after CIA fake vaccination scheme

Save the Children, which was not linked to the scheme, flew workers out of the country after US warnings about their safety

Declan Walsh in Islamabad

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 September 2011 16.50 BST


The compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was killed after the CIA ran a fake vaccination programme in the town. Photograph: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters

Fears that a fake CIA vaccination scheme created to hunt Osama bin Laden has compromised the operations of aid agencies in Pakistan have intensified after it emerged that a major NGO was forced to evacuate its staff following warnings about their security.

Save the Children flew eight expatriate aid workers out of Pakistan in late July after receiving a warning from US officials at the Peshawar consulate. Two senior local staff were moved into five-star hotels in Islamabad.

Western and Pakistani officials say there were fears that Save the Children staff could be picked up by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) over alleged links to Dr Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor at the heart of the covert CIA vaccination scheme that helped locate Bin Laden.

Save the Children vehemently denies any links to the CIA scheme, which the Guardian first reported in July, and said it was the victim of a broader crackdown on aid agencies in Pakistan caused by CIA tactics.

"Dr Afridi never worked for Save the Children and his alleged activities were not in any way connected with us. We did not have a vaccination programme in Abbottabad," said a spokeswoman, Ishbel Matheson, in London.

The charity did have a passing connection with Afridi, however, which may explain the ISI scrutiny of its activities. Afridi participated in two health-worker training courses run by Save the Children in 2008 and 2010, Matheson confirmed. Pakistan's ministry of health nominated him for participation, she added.

The training courses were part of a US-funded child health programme in the tribal belt along the Afghan border that Save the Children has been running since 2007.

ISI suspicions were also stoked by Afridi himself. A senior western official said Afridi told his wife he was working for Save the Children when he was in fact running the fake CIA programme. The allegation emerged during interrogation.

A senior aid worker corroborated that account, saying Afridi may have mentioned Save the Children "during the early stages of his interrogation". Save the Children said it was horrified that Afridi had abused its name.

"We are shocked by the allegations that our name has been falsely used in this way. Save the Children's work in Pakistan is helping the most vulnerable children and their families," said Matheson.

Furious aid workers say the CIA's reckless use of aid work as a cover by spy agencies has threatened the safety of genuine aid workers and endangered multimillion-pound programmes to help Pakistan's poor.

Save the Children has 2,000 employees in Pakistan and assisted 7 million people in 2010, half of whom where caught in massive floods while the remainder benefited from long-term development programmes.

After the security threat in late July, those activities slowed or juddered to a halt. Staff were temporarily transferred out of sensitive areas, such as the Swat valley. British and American diplomats interceded with the authorities, offering assurances of the charity's bona fides.

Two weeks later in mid-August, after receiving a green light from the ISI, Save the Children sent a handful of expatriate staff who had been staying in Bangkok back to Pakistan. The two local employees, who had been staying at the Serena hotel, returned home.

The ISI learned of the CIA vaccination scheme after US Navy Seals burst into the house on 2 May, killing Bin Laden. Immediately afterwards, the spy agency began an intensive drive to understand how the CIA had operated in the town – and whether any western aid workers had helped it.

Three weeks later Afridi was arrested on the outskirts of Peshawar. Western aid agencies, especially those with American employees or US government funding, started to come under sharp intelligence scrutiny.

A young American aid worker with Catholic Relief Services was put on trial for visa irregularities in the southern city of Sukkur before being deported. Other aid workers were also forced to leave. Since then charities have experienced long delays in obtaining visas, and say shipments of relief goods have suffered inexplicable delays at Karachi port.

Others complain of regular visits to their offices from intelligence officials seeking detailed information about their staff. One intelligence document, inadvertently left behind at one aid agency and seen by the Guardian, directs operatives to investigate the "covert funding" and "covert operations" of international NGOs.

In July the departing director of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Pascal Cuttat, said Pakistan was becoming increasingly difficult to work in. "We are consistently facing suspicion of any foreigner working in the country," he told a press conference in Geneva. "To live and work and get permission to do anything has become more difficult. Everyone is struggling with the bureaucracy." The ICRC is still awaiting permission to bring a new country director into Pakistan.

Aid agencies in Pakistan are currently battling massive floods in the southern Sindh province that have affected more than 5 million people. Few aid workers would speak on the record, fearing further recrimination, though some directed their anger at the CIA. InterAction, an alliance of 190 US-based NGOs, has called on the spy agency to stop using humanitarian work as a cover for counter-terrorism.

"Such unethical behaviour endangers not only local populations but also the lives of legitimate humanitarian workers," said the InterAction president, Samuel Worthington.

Afridi, meanwhile, is in the custody of Pakistan's intelligence agencies. A government commission investigating the Bin Laden affair has banned him from leaving Pakistan.

The US wants to resettle the Pashtun doctor in America but Pakistani officials say he may be charged with espionage or treason.

Meanwhile, Bin Laden's former house stands empty. On 20 September the press watchdog Reporters Without Borders complained that the government had banned the foreign press from visiting the site, stating that Abbottabad had been placed under "what is in effect a state of emergency".

The CIA did not respond to requests for comment on the vaccination programme or its impact.

[buglerbilly]

SAS 'contributing to instability'

By Amelia Romanos, Hayden Donnell and Herald Online Updated 4:14 PM Thursday Sep 29, 2011

Lance Corporal Leon Smith, 33, was shot in the head this week during an operation in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul, at a compound suspected of housing Taleban bomb-makers preparing for an attack in the capital.

It was revealed today that Lance Corporal Smith was also the first person to come to the aid of Corporal Doug Grant when he was fatally injured last month.

Defence Force Chief Lieutenant General Rhys Jones said Lance Corporal Smith was climbing a ladder to get in to an observation position when he was shot in the head.

He was flown to a medical base about 10 minutes away where a neurosurgeon was available, but died on the operating table.

Former Afghan foreign minister Najibullah Lafraie said the latest death showed that SAS troops were not needed in the region.

In a live chat on nzherald.co.nz, Dr Lafraie said the SAS were contributing to instability in Afghanistan by carrying out violent military action.

He rejected an statement from Prime Minister John Key that pulling the SAS out of Afghanistan would put New Zealanders in danger of becoming victims of global terrorism.

"They don't make any positive contribution.

"I don't think there is a military solution to the problem in Afghanistan. I believe NATO forces have become part of the problem and cannot be part of the solution."

He said reports of the operation where Mr Smith was killed were "disturbing".

"The team seem to have been engaged in a night raid, similar to the ones carried out by the Americans, and focused upon in the past two years. Hundreds of innocent people have been killed or detained in such operations."

Dr Lafraie was involved in the resistence movement against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

After the collapse of the Afghan communist regime in 1992, he was elevated to the role of Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in the Islamic State of Afghanistan.

He served in that position until 1996, when the Taleban captured Kabul.

Dr Lafraie spent 12 months in hiding from the Taleban regime. His brother was placed in a Taleban jail.

Despite that, he called for the US and NATO to involve the Taleban in a compromise political solution to conflict in Afghansitan.

"Unfortunately there cannot be a political solution without the participation of the Taliban. They seem to have learned from their past mistakes, and hopefully won't be as rigid as they were before. "

Details of latest death revealed

In a media conference this afternoon, Defence Force Lieutenant General Rhys Jones revealed Mr Smith was employed as a medic.

He had been the first to treat Corporal Grant when he was shot through the heart during an insurgent attack in Kabul last month. Corporal Grant, 41, was killed in an attack by the Taliban at the British Council offices in Kabul.

Lance Corporal Smith was one of 15 Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers who responded to information about a planned attack in the Afghan capital.

The SAS team, which was supporting the Afghan Crisis Response Unit, was attacked as it tried to cordon off a compound in Wardak province near Kabul, where the insurgents behind the planned attack were believed to be.

Lt Gen Jones denied media reports that the operation was a response to a family dispute, but had been planned over several days in response to information that the compound was housing a suicide bomber.

He said one insurgent was killed in the assault and another was arrested. Both were named as people of interest in the arrest warrant that was issued.

A girl who was injured by shrapnel in the firefight was recovering.

Lance Corporal Smith enlisted in 1999 and first served in Afghanistan in 2010.

He was single with no children but left his mother, grandmother and two brothers in Wellington, and his father and grandparents in Tauranga.

A family statement read: "Leon was loved by his family. He was also loved by his friends and his comrades. He was a wonderful grandson, son, brother and friend to many. He was sincere and genuine.

"Leon was proud to serve in the NZ SAS. He believed in what he was doing, and we supported him in what he did.

"We are grieving the loss of Leon. We ask for our privacy to be respected at this very difficult time. Rest in peace Leon.''

Prime Minister John Key yesterday said Lance Corporal Smith had "paid the highest price for his service to this country and we will mourn his death".

"His death, however, does not alter our commitment to helping Afghanistan. It continues to be the Government's intention to keep the SAS in Afghanistan until March as planned."

The PM said he deeply regretted Lance Corporal Smith's death, "but I don't regret the decision that we made to commit the SAS to Afghanistan".

"I think they are playing their critical part to free the world from global terrorism."

The SAS is on its fourth deployment to Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban stalks outskirts of calm Afghan city


Majid Saeedi/GETTY IMAGES - Afghan Army soldiers attend a security transition ceremony in July in Mazar-e-Sharif, the provincial capital of Balkh province, Afghanistan.

By Joshua Partlow, Thursday, September 29, 6:48 AM

MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan — On the outskirts of one of Afghanistan’s safest cities, the Taliban commander stepped from a copse of plane trees, skirted a cotton field and slipped into the back seat of a car parked on a dirt road. He glanced as a man swathed in white robes drove by slowly on a motorcycle.

“Did you see that man? He is one of my people. He is maintaining security in this area,” said the commander, Mawlavi Hejran. “These gardens are our havens.”

NATO this summer transferred to the Afghan government responsibility for securing Mazar-e Sharif, the northern city known as a bastion of relative calm. But just outside the city, in surrounding Balkh province, the Taliban persists doggedly, exerting what some believe is a tightening grip on life in the area’s farmlands and villages. The situation is similar across much of northern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is not so much surging into new territory but stubbornly refusing to go away.

“The foreign troops think they can suppress the Taliban,” said Hejran, who claims to command 200 men, having inherited the reins last month when his brother was killed by a U.S. airstrike. “But as long as the foreigners are here, the guerrilla war will continue.”

The war in Balkh, far from the Taliban strongholds of Afghanistan’s south and east, offers an explanation for the intractability of this conflict. Insurgents here do not mass to fight the Afghan, U.S. or German troops in the region. Among the ethnic Tajiks and Hazaras who predominate here, the largely Pashtun Taliban has found little support.

But the insurgents evade and calculate, picking targets for assassinations and suicide bombings. Life in bustling Mazar-e Sharif appears normal until suddenly it is not, punctuated by a blast or, in the case of the assault on the local United Nations compound in April that left seven employees dead, a mob whipped up by the Taliban.

Outside the city, insurgents have posted directives in mosques, using Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan stationery, ordering residents to give them 10 percent of their crops. The insurgents make late-night house calls to enforce the demand. “They give you two or three days, then they beat you,” said one resident, who gave his share. Other fliers, bearing images of a sword, pistol and noose, warn Afghans not to send their daughters to school.

“When the sun goes down, they don’t care about the government,” said the resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety. “They are ruling the districts and villages.”

In recent months, Afghan forces working with U.S. Special Operations troops have conducted night raids, capturing or killing at least 10 Taliban leaders in the province, according to a senior Afghan intelligence official. But Taliban members and Afghan officials agree that a core group of about 300 to 400 insurgents, who retreat to Pakistan for training and winter refuge, still circulates in Balkh.

“If we didn’t do these operations, the enemy would definitely be trying more commando-style attacks,” said the intelligence official, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “But no matter how much pressure they’re under, how big their losses, they still fight.”

Insurgents’ grievances

Three Taliban members interviewed separately here offered consistent explanations for why they fight. They said they consider the Afghan government corrupt and rapacious. The U.S. and NATO troops, they said, are occupiers waging a war against Islam. The three Taliban members are all Pashtuns, a minority group in Balkh, and they described feeling discriminated against by the locally powerful Tajiks.

“How can it be that the other ethnic groups are human but Pashtuns are not human?” asked Saleh Mohammad, who was secretary to the provincial governor during the Taliban’s 1996-2001 reign. He said that he stayed with the Taliban because he was imprisoned after the group was ousted and that Pashtuns have been excluded from the economic spoils by the current governor, Attah Mohammed Noor, a Tajik.

Mohammad described a vibrant underground support network for the insurgency in Balkh, with residents, including powerful businessmen, funneling them money, motorcycles, weapons and food. But he acknowledged the Taliban’s relative weakness in the north compared with other areas.

“The process of Talibanization is new in Balkh. We are at the stage of propaganda: inspiring people, inviting them to jihad, preaching in mosques,” he said. “Nowadays everyone is praying against the Americans.”

‘Target of terror’

The Taliban’s expanded use of assassinations as a tactic nationwide has exacted its most obvious toll in Kandahar province — where President Hamid Karzai’s half brother and the mayor of Kandahar city were fatally shot — but it has also destabilized the north. Noor, the Balkh governor, is under constant threat of attack and lives amid elaborate security. The top police official in the north, Gen. Daud Daud, was killed this year in a bombing. The police chief of Kunduz was killed in March, five months after the province’s governor died in a mosque bombing.

Those still working have taken note. As of late summer, Kunduz Gov. Mohammad Anwar Jegdalek had not visited the province in more than a month and spends most of his time in Kabul, according to officials who work with him.

“A phenomenon that was confined to Kandahar and the south is becoming countrywide. The political elite now is a target of terror,” said Ashraf Ghani, a top adviser to Karzai. “Now there’s a very heavy northern, as well as southern, focus.”

Hejran, the 35-year-old Taliban commander, was harvesting watermelons last month when he learned that his brother had been killed in a U.S. airstrike. One of his fighters, Sayed Khan, had tipped off Naseem’s location, Hejran said.

“We captured him and slit his throat,” he said in an interview with a reporter that was arranged through intermediaries. “It became a lesson to the others.”

After his brother’s death, Hejran traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan, to meet the Taliban leadership council there. “The leaders said, ‘You are responsible in place of your brother. You are the commander,’ ” he recalled. “They fully equipped me.”

He said he returned and took up a roving existence, traveling with his fighters between deserts and villages, sleeping under trees and in the homes of Taliban sympathizers. A network of informants, including Afghan police officers, tells Hejran’s men about the location of NATO troops, he said. “Without people’s support, we could not do this fight,” he said. “People cooperate with us because they know that [foreign troops] are the enemies of Islam.”

He acknowledged that the pressure from NATO operations has grown but insisted it remains insignificant.

“We are trying to compel the foreigners to leave,” he said. “When they do, we will reconcile with each other.”

[buglerbilly]

Accidents top cause of helicopter crashes in Afghanistan

By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

Reprints & PermissionsAccidents are the major cause of helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, despite the recent shootdown of a Chinook that killed 30 U.S. servicemembers, according to records obtained by USA TODAY.

Twenty-nine helicopters have crashed in Afghanistan since January 2009 through mid-September, the records show. Insurgents shot down six helicopters, including one other Chinook, a hulking aircraft that can hold nearly 40 servicemembers.

Human error, bad weather and mechanical problems are among the other causes of crashes, according to the Army.

"It's just a fact of life that helicopters are accident prone," said John Pike, executive director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense policy group.

Afghanistan is also "hot, high and dusty," he said. Hot air is thin and can starve engines of power, Pike said. Altitude poses similar challenges. Dust can damage a helicopter's components and obscure a pilot's vision when it's stirred up.

The crashes have taken a toll. Eighteen U.S. servicemembers and one civilian died in the accidental crashes. Thirty-four servicemembers died in the shootdowns, including the 30 men who perished in the Chinook crash Aug. 5.

Helicopters are vital to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan as travel by vehicle can be difficult, even impossible in some areas. There are few paved roads in the country, which has wide-open stretches of desert and rugged mountains.

Insurgents often seed roads with bombs. The U.S. military relies on helicopters to ferry troops to root out insurgents, and to rescue the wounded for fast transport to hospitals.

In all, helicopter pilots fly about 50,000 missions per year in Afghanistan, said Lt. Col. Christopher Kasker, an Army spokesman.

Among helicopters, the two-crewmember Kiowas had the most accidental crashes. Insurgents shot down three of them, the most in that category along with Chinooks.

Kiowas are used for scouting missions and to support servicemembers in combat with their missile launchers. They also have a .50-caliber machine gun.

Insurgents' machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades are among the main threats in Afghanistan, Pike said. Helicopter pilots in Iraq countered similar threats by flying more night missions and at higher altitudes, and by varying their routes.

"Helicopters have got ballistic protection," Pike said, "but you can't armor the whole thing, or it would never take off."

Shoulder-fired missiles are the greatest threat to helicopters, but the threat seems lessened by defenses such as flares that thwart heat-seeking guidance systems, Pike said.

U.S.-supplied missiles helped Afghan insurgents bring down Russian helicopters in the 1980s, hastening the Soviet withdrawal.

Today, U.S. helicopter pilots benefit from better equipment, training and intelligence on insurgent activity. This allows helicopter pilots in many cases to avoid "getting bushwhacked" by insurgents, Pike said.

"We have a solid decade of combat experience with helicopters," Pike said. "They help give Americans a freedom of maneuver that the Soviets did not have.

"Air mobility does not mean you won't get your butt shot off in a fight, but it does seek to get you into that close fight unhindered."

[buglerbilly]

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011.

Afghans Drop Three-Way Peace Bid

By DION NISSENBAUM And MARIA ABI-HABIB

KABUL—Afghanistan plans to suspend an effort to work with Pakistan and the U.S. to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table, Afghan officials said, taking a tougher line with Pakistan after last week's assassination of Kabul's top peace negotiator.

Senior U.S., Pakistani and Afghan officials had been set to meet in Kabul on Oct. 8 to discuss ways to get insurgents into peace talks and end the 10-year-old conflict. Afghanistan has now decided to cancel the meeting, deputy national-security adviser Shaida Mohammad Abdali said on Thursday.

Afghanistan also dropped plans for Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to attend a meeting in Kabul at the end of October of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Joint Commission for Reconciliation and Peace in Afghanistan, a three-month-old bilateral initiative intended to galvanize the peace process.


Associated Press
President Hamid Karzai received condolences at a memorial service for Burhanuddin Rabbani on Saturday.

Pakistani officials couldn't be reached to comment on the shift by Afghanistan.

Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul declined to comment on Afghanistan's moves. The U.S. still plans to send Marc Grossman, the State Department's special representative for the region, to Kabul for talks next week that were meant to include the trilateral meeting, said Gavin Sundwall, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy.

The decision to scuttle the meeting could complicate U.S.-led efforts to cultivate a regional dialogue that would make it easier to withdraw most coalition forces as planned by late 2014.

Kabul hasn't abandoned its push for a negotiated end to the war, though it faced a significant setback with the assassination on Sept. 20 of the man who led those efforts, former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Afghan leaders have been trying to compel Pakistan to openly facilitate talks between Afghanistan and Taliban leaders. Officials in President Hamid Karzai's government say they are convinced Pakistan is intent on disrupting its attempts to engage the Taliban without interference from Islamabad.

Pakistani officials have publicly supported peace efforts, while asserting that Pakistan has a right to take part.

Though Afghan officials have criticized Pakistan before, the cancellations signal a change in strategy. "From now on Afghanistan will follow 'trust but verify' approach toward Pakistan, in particular with regard to our peace effort," said Mr. Abdali, suggesting that Kabul would, as a policy, not readily accept Pakistan's offers of help.

Afghan and U.S. relations with Islamabad have deteriorated in recent weeks following the Sept. 13 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the assassination of Mr. Rabbani a week later.

Last week, departing U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, of sponsoring the Haqqani network, the militant group blamed by the U.S. for the embassy attack.

Afghan officials have accused the ISI of organizing the plot that allowed a purported Taliban emissary to kill Mr. Rabbani. Mr. Rabbani was the head of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, which was responsible for attempts to broker a peace deal with the Taliban's top leaders, who are believed to be based in Quetta, Pakistan.

"This was a turning point," Mr. Abdali said of the assassination. "Definitely it goes back to the same place: Pakistan. The phone calls go all the way from here to Quetta." Mr. Abdali said the plot to kill Mr. Rabbani was too complicated to have been carried out by insurgents alone.

Pakistani officials have rejected the charges. "ISI isn't exporting any kind of terrorism to Afghanistan or aiding the Haqqani network," ISI chief Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha told a meeting of politicians and military leaders on Thursday, according to politicians who attended.

—Matthew Rosenberg and Owais Tohid contributed to this article.
Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com and Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com

[buglerbilly]

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011.

China Pullout Deals Blow to Pakistan

Mining Company Abandons $19 Billion Pact; Move Is Setback to Islamabad's Effort to Establish Beijing as Foil to U.S.

By TOM WRIGHT in New Delhi and JEREMY PAGE in Beijing


Reuters

A Chinese mining company pulled out of what was to be Pakistan's largest foreign-investment deal because of security concerns, complicating Islamabad's effort to position its giant neighbor as an alternative to the U.S. as its main ally.

An official at China Kingho Group, one of China's largest private coal miners, said on Thursday it had backed out in August from a $19 billion deal in southern Sindh province because of concerns for its personnel after recent bombings in Pakistan's major cities.


Agence France Presse/Getty Images

Zubair Motiwala, chairman of the Sindh Board of Investment, acknowledged the cancellation of plans to build a coal mine, power and chemical plants over 20 years. But he said he was hopeful Kingho would reconsider.

Pakistan began playing up its friendship with China after the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May sent relations between Islamabad and Washington into a tailspin.

But China's response has been lukewarm so far, suggesting that Islamabad may remain dependent on billions of dollars in military and civilian aid from Washington for some time to come.

Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani used a visit this week from Meng Jianzhu, China's minister of public security, to promote the friendship, which Mr. Gilani said was "higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey."

Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani thanked Mr. Meng, who pledged $1.2 million in aid for Pakistani law-enforcement agencies, for his country's "unwavering support."

The gushing compliments contrasted recent U.S.-Pakistani rhetoric. Islamabad warned last week that the alliance could be in jeopardy because of U.S. accusations of Pakistani support for militants.

China has backed Pakistan, its largest export market for armaments, for many years as a strategic counterweight to India in the Indian Ocean region. The countries have developed military hardware together, such as the JF-17 fighter jet, and China is helping Pakistan build civilian nuclear reactors.


European Pressphoto Agency
China's Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu met with Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani Tuesday to discuss issues of mutual interest and regional security.

Beijing constructed and financed Pakistan's Gwadar port, opened in 2007, as part of plans to develop a road and rail transport corridor from China's northwest to the Arabian Sea.

In many cases, though, China's support has stopped short of what Pakistan had hoped, while Islamabad, in Beijing's eyes, has failed to live up to its promises, including to ensure security for investments. A number of Chinese workers have been killed in Pakistan in the past decade, some of them in troubled Baluchistan province, where armed separatist insurgents have opposed Chinese investments.

Pakistan's army has been lobbying for a formal defense pact with China in the wake of the bin Laden raid, a Pakistani government official said. Such a pact would draw China into any conflict involving their ally and likely anger the U.S. and India, Pakistan's regional rival.

China hasn't commented on the matter. A spokesman for Pakistan's military declined to comment.

"The Chinese wouldn't go in for that. It's too much to put on their plate when they can't ensure how much they can control their own ally," says Pakistani military analyst Aisha Siddiqa.

Beijing is also keen to balance its support for Islamabad with a renewed push to improve relations with India, a growing trade partner. And China is eager to avoid tensions with the U.S. that could disrupt a first official visit to Washington early next year by Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to take over as Communist Party chief in 2012 and president in 2013, diplomats and analysts say.

The U.S., meanwhile, wants China to engage in a dialogue on Pakistan as Washington looks for ways to press Islamabad over its ties with militants. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the request directly to China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in New York on Monday, according to a senior State Department official.

Han Hua, an expert on South Asia at Peking University, said China viewed Pakistan as an increasingly important strategic partner given the imminent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. "That doesn't mean China wants to replace the U.S. in the role it played. It's not a zero sum game," she said.

Some deals are going ahead. Pakistan last week signed a preliminary agreement with another smaller Chinese company, Global Mining Co., to invest $3 billion in a mine and power project close to the one that Kingho canceled, Mr. Motiwala said.

Pakistan's navy recently agreed to buy two Chinese-made Azmat-class attack boats and, in August, China launched a Pakistani telecommunications satellite.

Other Pakistani requests for China to increase funding of infrastructure projects haven't progressed.

In May, Pakistan's defense minister said China had agreed to take over operation of Gwadar, which is doing little business as a commercial port, and that Islamabad has asked China to build a base there for Pakistan's navy.

China has remained silent on the issue. Pakistani officials involved in Gwadar's operations say there is no sign China will take over. The officials say they have been frustrated by China's failure to finance and build a road network to connect the port to the rest of the country.

Some Chinese experts say Gwadar's cut-off location in Baluchistan makes it less attractive as a military base or as a transit point for China's oil imports, given the high cost and security risk of piping them across some of Pakistan's least stable regions.

Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com and Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

Brave firefight heroes earn awards

By Elizabeth Binning and Anna Leask 5:30 AM Saturday Oct 1, 2011


The late Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell (left), Lance Corporal Allister Baker and Corporal Matthew Ball. Photo / Supplied

Lance Corporal Allister Baker thought he'd been in a car crash, but seconds later was fighting for his life as he and two other Kiwi troops came under heavy gunfire in Afghanistan.

For the first time Lance Corporal Baker has spoken publicly about his efforts to rescue a fallen colleague, unarmed and with a broken ankle. Today he will be rewarded at the New Zealand Gallantry Awards.

On August 3, 2010, Lance Corporal Baker, a turret gunner, was travelling in a Humvee with Corporal Matthew Ball and Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell in the remote and mountainous region of Bamyan province when they came under attack. Insurgents launched rockets at the vehicle - one exploded against the driver's door and another against the bonnet.

"Initially for me it felt like a car accident, that was my first thought. I thought we'd rolled or something like that. I just remember getting thrown around in the vehicle," Lance Corporal Baker told the Weekend Herald. "And then once I came to I realised there were rounds flying past my head and realised what was actually going on. From there the training kicked in and I reacted. I looked for my weapon system ... and realised that had blown clean off the turret with the explosion."

His second weapon was too damaged to use.

"I went for my third weapon, which was there just in case something like this happened. But unfortunately I realised the vehicle was on fire and I couldn't get to that weapon either.

"I decided I had to react and get out of that vehicle, there were still rounds flying past my head and I was basically a target with no way of fighting back. I manoeuvred myself out of the vehicle, I felt pain in my foot then but I let that pass and carry on, there wasn't much I could do about it at the time. I just rolled out of the vehicle, looking for my comrades to see where they were."

He saw Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell, in his seat but unresponsive, and Corporal Matthew Ball was unconscious.

"Matty had his head down, I was thinking 'they're dead'. I yelled out to Matty in the hope that he would respond. Luckily he did, he popped his head up. I yelled to him to come around to my side of the vehicle and from there we basically worked together as hard as we could to try and get Tim out of that vehicle."

Corporal Ball, 25, had to pull his impaled leg free and climb out of the burning Humvee in full view of the enemy, who continued to shoot at him from only 45m away.

For five minutes, under continuous fire, they took turns to try and recover Lieutenant O'Donnell's body which was trapped in the front passenger seat.

"You've got to have a little bit of courage and commitment to get in and do something like that. You've got to have a bit of bravery I guess," Lance Corporal Baker, who was a private at the time, said.

Injured, the men crawled across open ground and in full view of the insurgent forces, to a dry creek bed about 40m away and called in help.

That help came in the form of 27-year-old Corporal Albert Moore, who is also receiving an award today.

He had been travelling in the rear vehicle of a New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team patrol when the front one was hit by an explosive device near the town of Chartok.

As commander of the rear vehicle he ordered the driver to pull back.

He then co-ordinated suppressing fire in order to help those in two other trapped vehicles, one of which was able to reach the base. The other was immobilised by small arms fire about 30m away.

At one stage he was hit in the shoulder by shrapnel.

After receiving word from Corporal Ball and Private Baker he drove to where they were and took them back to the patrol's base.

Lance Corporal Baker said he was shocked when told he would receive a Gallantry Award.

"In a way I might have expected it but I wasn't really ready for it," he said. "At the end of the day, when it all happened, it was just me doing my job - doing what I had to do. I didn't really expect any award for it or anything, but it is an honour."

Courage in wartime

* Corporal Albert Moore: NZ Gallantry Star for acts of outstanding gallantry in situations of danger.

* Corporal Matthew Ball: NZ Gallantry Decoration for acts of outstanding gallantry in situations of danger.

* Lance Corporal (then with the rank of Private) Allister Baker: NZ Gallantry Decoration for acts of outstanding gallantry in situations of danger.

* Warrant Officer Class Two Denis Wanihi: NZ Gallantry Medal for acts of gallantry.

[buglerbilly]

Suicide Attacks Bleeding Afghan Police

September 30, 2011

Knight Ridder/Tribune

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A United Nations report released on September 28, said incidents of violence in Afghanistan have increased by nearly 40 per cent in the past eight months. Complex suicide attacks made up a greater portion of the violence, the report said.

The disguise remains the same, but the tactics have changed: they pick their targets precisely, arrive armed to the teeth, and fight until the last bullet. Only then do they blow themselves to pieces. The rapid evolution of such attacks has made the war increasingly more asymmetric, as the Afghan police -- ill-equipped for fighting an enemy determined to die -- struggle to contain the phenomenon.

This new spate of enhanced suicide attacks has received the obvious criticism by security officials, labelling it an act of great cowardice, however this is not the consensus view.

Reflecting the viewpoint of certain sectors of society, the attacks are seen as a legitimate guerilla tactic. A according to a former Taliban official "One side ties one or two kilos of explosives to its body, the other side drops tonnes of explosive from sky ... These attacks are the only thing that has brought some fear to the foreigners." Pressed on the devastating impact of such attacks on civilians, he said, "This war is amongst the people. American's say Taliban hide between civilians. Taliban claim the same."

Whatever the interpretation, the attacks are devastating, with many civilians losing their lives.

On June 18, three gunmen wearing army uniforms, walked into the District One police department, located in one of the city's most crowded markets, the mandawai. They shot the police officer on duty outside the gate and barged in. As a fierce gun battle broke out, fuelled by fear, the market was emptied in seconds as customers and vendors alike ran for their lives.

Inside the compound, "We spotted the attackers and shot one in the eye," said Lt Colonel Sultan Jan Shinwary, commander of the District One police department. The second attacker, he said, was also gunned down a few steps further in. But a third one resisted, hiding in one of the buildings where he took several civilians hostage.

The police in the department engaged him for about an hour from outside the building, before he detonated and killed himself and five civilians.

"He was armed for a long fight, but we did not give him time, we engaged him and shelled him, so he blew himself up," Shinwary said. "There was help ready outside, but we told them to wait, we had the situation under control." Among the nine dead in the attack, Shinwary lost two men. Both were between the ages of 22-25, each leaving behind a young family.

The gun-fight was brief, the operation considered successful -- as it was contained locally by the police force without the aid of NATO or Afghan Commandos. However, the phenomenon has since developed into an almost unmanageable crisis.

Since June, Afghan police in the capital have faced three other similar attacks for which the Taliban have taken responsibility.

Most recently, on September 13, six gunmen took-over a building near the city's diplomatic quarter, shelling rocket-propelled grenades at the US embassy and NATO headquarters nearby.

That night, Kabul went to sleep under a heavy rain of precipitation and gunfire, with loud explosions being heard in the city's most affluent neighbourhood. At least three police officers were killed during the attack, including one who wrestled a suicide-bomber to prevent him from entering a crowded area.

"Ten years ago, there was no such a thing in the country as the police, everything was gone" said Kabul police chief, General Ayub Salangi. "Every day, we make progress, every day our capacity increases."

It's the constant adaptation and determined nature of the enemy that makes policing them extremely difficult.

"These are modern guerrilla tactics, employed by terrorist groups such as Haqqani and others," says Javed Kohistani, a Kabul-based security analyst.

"In the past, there were claims that the suicide bombers were drug addicts and that they blew themselves up in random places. But now, in most of the cases, they chose their targets with precision. They come armed and determined to fight to their last drop of blood."

But Kabul's chief of police views the phenomenon differently.

"I believe one hundred per cent that suicide attacks have turned into a mafia, hundred per cent," Salangi said in an interview at his office. Tribute posters to the fallen policemen were scattered throughout the hallway.

"They take advantage of some poor people in the borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are using such poor people to advance their goals."

Such a theory may hold true in the South of the country, where the drug trade and tribal rivalries are rife. For example, six separate "suicide attacks on a provincial level anti-narcotics officer" were carried out in a span of two years, according to an intelligence officer.

But in urban areas such as Kabul, even positing the theory according to Kohistani is simply an attempt to shirk responsibility.

"The important question that security officials need to answer is this: how did the fighters manage to bring in so many weapons into the most protected area of the city, where there are checkpoints in every corner?"

For an average salary of $200 a month, in the past 16 months at least 1,800 policemen have lost their lives across the country, according to statistics provided to Al Jazeera by the country's ministry of interior. That's close to four policemen a day.

Many of the casualties have been due to roadside bombs and firefights, but suicide attacks have also played large part.

"The police has lost more casualties than any other government force in this war," says General Salangi. "It is because they are so spread out, everywhere -- as the society demands."

The police's task, says a General Hadi Khaled, a veteran security official and a former deputy minister of interior, should not be fighting a counterinsurgency, something they are currently doing.

"We need to prevent such attacks by stepping up our intelligence and acting upon such intelligence," said the General.

"It is not for the police to chase down terrorists, they are meant for supporting the judiciary and law and order."

And even for the purpose of law and order, the police are under resourced, without adequate training and appropriate technology. Last August, a US audit found DynCorps International, the firm contracted to provide training for the Afghan police, fell 60 per cent short of their commitments.

Take Kabul's District One, for example, where the police have 18 checkpoints. The entire department has a staff of 320 policemen and officers for an area with 192,000 residents. In addition to the residents, "At least a million people go in and out of this market daily," lamented Shinwary.

"Our [number of] personnel is small, but we cover a large area" he said. Ideally, they need at least double the numbers to secure such a large, crowded area. "At night, when I go to check on some posts, I see my guys tired and sleepy. I feel for them, because I understand they are doing shifts longer than they should be." In the previous month, Shinwary said, he had gone home to his family for only two nights, that too after 10pm.

General Salangi laments the lack of adequate technology, a situation that has left his charges prone to further attacks.

"How many large vehicles enter the city gates in day? At least 2,000. We have got about 50 police at every city gate. Do you think they have the ability to unload every truck and search thoroughly to make sure there are not explosives or weapons?

"We need technology. We need equipment. We need to search them by X-rays, and so far we don't have that."

On August 19, Afghanistan's independence day, the police battled fighters holed up in the British Council for almost eight hours. "One of my boys got a bullet in the head. But another jumped up to take his place, and then another and another," said General Salangi, who was present at the scene.

Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai and his senior ministers arrived at the Defense Ministry to lay a wreath at the monument of Amanullah Khan, the king who led Afghanistan to independence.

In his brief statement, the president did not make a mention of the police engaged in a fierce fight just a couple miles away. Instead, he once again extended a hand of peace to the Taliban.

"There is a difference of opinion between the top leadership of the government and those in the lower ranks about who the enemy is," says analyst Kohistani.

At the lower ranks, he says, there is a feeling of fighting against the "Taliban and groups sponsored by the Pakistani military intelligence". But at the top leadership, there's a policy of trying to get closer to them.

"The fact there is no clear definition of the enemy-our forces don't know who is friend and who is foe--has huge psychological impact on them."

© Copyright 2011 Knight Ridder/Tribune. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Pro-Taliban leader captured in Afghanistan

Senior commander of the Haqqani network, which has pledged allegiance to the Taliban, is seized in Paktia province

Staff and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 1 October 2011 13.31 BST


Afghan soldiers in Kabul during a clash with insurgents thought to belong to the Haqqani network. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters

A senior leader of a major pro-Taliban network has been captured in Afghanistan, the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) has announced.

Haji Mali Khan, the senior commander of the Haqqani network in Afghanistan, was detained during an operation in eastern Paktia province earlier this week.

Khan is "one of the highest ranking members of the Haqqani network and a revered elder of the Haqqani clan", Isaf said.

Khan had managed bases and operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and moved forces across the border for attacks, as well as transferring funds and sourcing supplies, Isaf added in a statement.

He was captured on Tuesday in Jani Khel district of Paktia province along with his deputy and bodyguard, in an operation by Afghan and foreign forces, Nato said. He was heavily armed but "submitted … without incident or resistance".

Khan is the uncle of Siraj, or Sirajuddin, Haqqani and his brother, Badruddin – sons of veteran Afghan militant commander Jalaluddin Haqqani.

The Taliban, to whom the Haqqani network has pledged allegiance, denied that Khan had been captured.

"I have just spoken with Haji Mali Khan, he is fine and is somewhere else and hasn't been detained," a Taliban spokesman told Reuters. "This is a baseless news and it has been released in order to weaken mujahideen's morale."

Nato said it had arrested 1,300 suspected Haqqani insurgents and 300 insurgent leaders in 500 operations this year.


Members of the Haqqani network told Reuters that Khan was not a senior commander but his relatives are involved in the militant group's fight against Nato forces in Afghanistan.

But a Pakistani intelligence official said Khan was closely involved in the Haqqani network and managed their links with other militant organisations in Pakistan's northwestern Pashtun tribal areas.

"This is a blow for the Haqqanis," said the official.

[buglerbilly]

OCTOBER 1, 2011, 1:17 P.M. ET.

Afghanistan Gives Up on Taliban Talks

By DION NISSENBAUM And MARIA ABI-HABIB

KABUL—Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his top aides said they are abandoning efforts at peace talks with the Taliban after concluding that the Pakistan-based insurgent leaders aren't serious about negotiations.

"The peace process which we began is dead," Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Mr. Karzai's national security adviser, said in an interview Saturday. "It's a joke."


Associated Press
Afghan President Hamid Karzai reacts during a Sept. 22 press conference honoring former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, killed two days earlier by a suicide bomber who claimed to be a peace emissary from the insurgents.

The move comes less than two weeks after a purported Taliban envoy killed Afghanistan's top peace negotiator, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, in his Kabul home.

Mr. Karzai and his aides have decided to focus their efforts on putting pressure on Pakistan, which has provided aid and sanctuary to Afghan insurgents who have kept the United States and its allies embroiled in a decade of war.

"I do not have any other answer other than saying that the other side of the talks is Pakistan," Mr. Karzai said in remarks he made to religious leaders on Friday that were released on Saturday. "This is because we cannot find Mullah Mohammad Omar. Where is he? We cannot find the Taliban council. Where is it?"

The decision effectively sidelines the work of the High Peace Council, a year-old body created by Mr. Karzai to explore the prospects for opening direct peace talks with the Taliban and its insurgent allies. Mr. Rabbani was the council's chairman.

Mr. Rabbani's death was the latest in a string of high-profile assassinations that have undercut the Afghan government as America and its allies are scaling back their military forces and preparing to end major combat operations by late 2014.

Afghan officials say they have strong evidence that the assassination of Mr. Rabbani was organized by the Taliban leadership based in Quetta, Pakistan, with the help of that nation's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, spy agency.

"We know that a high-level member of the Quetta Shura was involved in the preparation of this assassination," said Mr. Spanta. "But it's not possible without the know-how, without the operative support of the ISI."

Pakistani officials have denied their involvement in Mr. Rabbani's death.

The Taliban, meanwhile, have remained conspicuously silent on their role in the assassination, refusing to confirm or deny their responsibility, something that Mr. Karzai said was unacceptable.

"A messenger comes disguised as a Taliban council member and kills, and they neither confirm nor reject it," Mr. Karzai said. "Therefore we cannot talk to anyone but to Pakistan."

In the wake of the assassination, American and Afghan leaders have accused Pakistan of actively working to undermine U.S.-interests in the region.

Afghan officials have unilaterally cancelled plans to host a trilateral meeting on Oct. 8 with Pakistan and the United States. Instead, a special Afghan delegation will present Pakistani leaders with evidence about the killing of Mr. Rabbani, although Afghan officials aren't optimistic that Pakistan will take their demands for an investigation seriously, officials in Kabul said.

Afghanistan also plans to actively oppose attempts by the Taliban to open a political office in a neutral country, a move that was once seen as a chance to advance peace talks.

Mr. Karzai is expected to outline his new strategy early next week in a televised address to his nation.

The political moves came as the U.S.-led military in Afghanistan announced that it had captured a top leader of the Haqqani network, a particularly ruthless part of the insurgency.

The military described Haji Mali Khan as one of the highest-ranking members of the group and as an uncle of its de-facto commander, Sirajuddin Haqqani. The Taliban denied that Mr. Khan had been captured.

—Ziaulhaq Sultani and Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com

[buglerbilly]

OCTOBER 1, 2011, 5:16 A.M. ET.

Pakistani Gets Death Sentence in Governor's Murder

Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—A Pakistani court on Saturday convicted and sentenced a police officer to death for the killing of a liberal governor earlier this year, a murder that led to fears the country was buckling under the weight of extremism.

The January murder in broad daylight of Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer by one of his police guards was alarming in itself, but what came afterward perhaps even more so: lawyers showered his killer, Mumtaz Qadri, with flowers, thousands demonstrated in his defense and mainstream politician failed to publicly condemn the killing.

Mr. Qadri has told his trial that Mr. Taseer deserved to die because of his criticism of Pakistani laws that mandate the death sentence for insulting Islam. Mr. Taseer, a member of the country's ruling party, wanted amendments in the law and had defended a Christian woman sentenced to death under it.

Mr. Qadri was convicted and sentenced in an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi close to the capital Islamabad, said three officials at the jail who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. The trial, which began a month after the killing, was held in a prison and was closed to the media.

Under Pakistan law, Mr. Qadri can appeal. Death sentences have been rarely carried out in Pakistan in recent years.

Mr. Qadri's main defense argument was that Mr. Taseer, a Muslim, had brought on his own killing because of his opposition to the so-called "blasphemy laws."

One of Mr. Qadri's lawyers, Raja Shuja-ur-Rehman, said the defense would appeal the verdict.

"We are not satisfied with this ruling, and we will file an appeal against it," he said.

As the news broke, more than 100 people protested outside the jail.

"We will free you! We will die for you!" shouted 20-year-old Mohamemd Aslam. Others yelled: "Long live Qadri, long live Qadri!"

Pakistan, whose 180 million people are almost 95% Muslim, has seen an alarming spread in violent Islamist extremism since 2007. It has been especially hard to counter because some of the groups—and the extremist ideology they spread—once enjoyed or continue to have state backing or sanction.

The security forces have fought back, but thousands of government officials, Christians, Shiites and scores of police and soldiers have been killed in assassinations and suicide bombings. The wave of terror has alarmed the West, which is also concerned about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Mr. Taseer was a wealthy, polarizing figure, but one of few Pakistani officials to consistently oppose extremism. Two weeks after he was killed, the only Christian government minister in the country was gunned down, also in Islamabad and also because of his criticism of the blasphemy laws.

The laws are held dear by Pakistan's powerful Islamist clergy and political parties, which fiercely oppose any efforts to change them. But they are also frequently abused to target Christians caught up in business and other disputes with Pakistani Muslims.

Police do not need evidence to arrest someone under the laws, meaning people are frequently locked up for months or years on the basis of a single accusation.

Since the Taseer killing, the government has dropped any talk of modifying the laws.

Members of Mr. Taseer's family have continued speaking out against militancy, and in August, his adult son was abducted from his car in the eastern city of Lahore. The son's fate remains unknown and militants are considered likely suspects in that abduction.

[buglerbilly]

Captain posthumously awarded Silver Star

Scott Fontaine - Staff writer

Posted : Saturday Oct 1, 2011 9:07:32 EDT


Air Force Capt. Nathan Nylander was killed in the April attack on U.S. troops at Kabul International Airport.

An officer who traded gunfire with a rampaging Afghan pilot earlier this year and was killed during the shootout was posthumously awarded the Silver Star.

Miriam Nylander accepted the honor on behalf of her husband, Capt. Nathan Nylander, who was killed during an attack that claimed the lives of eight other Americans. Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz presented the medal Sept. 24 at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., where Nylander served as a meteorologist with the 25th Operational Weather Squadron.

Nylander was deployed as an adviser with the NATO Air Training Command-Afghanistan on April 27, when an Afghan Air Force pilot entered the air command and control center at Kabul International Airport and opened fire. Seven airmen and one American contractor were hit. Nylander was one of 12 people in an adjoining conference room; when he heard the gunshots, he moved to the door connecting the two rooms and helped evacuate everyone inside.

The officer had an opportunity to run to safety but chose to help his fellow airmen. He and another officer took up a firing position and shot at the gunman when he exited the air command and control center. The Afghan pilot was shot once and possibly twice, according to the narration that accompanied the Silver Star presentation.

Nylander stayed behind as the other airman left. Nylander and the gunman exchanged fire; the American was shot in the left thigh and received a grazing wound to his right thigh. He began bleeding heavily but continued to fire at the gunman.

Nylander’s 9mm pistol jammed. He managed to clear two rounds in his weapon, and the pistol’s final round was found jammed in the chamber. He tried to flee the building but was fatally shot.

“Of his own volition, Capt. Nylander chose to return to an extremely dangerous and unknown tactical situation and engage an attacker who had taken the lives of eight fellow Americans,” the narration reads. “After an initial exchange of gunfire, Capt. Nylander again chose to stay, with the likely intent of aiding the fallen. Capt. Nylander’s brave actions degraded the gunman’s capability and likely prevented further loss of life, including that of other U.S. personnel who remained in the AAF Headquarters.”

[buglerbilly]

Afghan Interpreters Race for Visas

October 01, 2011

AFP

They feel lucky to be alive after countless risky missions with US troops, but Afghan interpreters are sure of their fate if they stay put after American forces leave in 2014.

"The Taliban will kill me and my family. I can't stay in Afghanistan," 30-year-old Mohammad Yousaf told AFP.

Yousaf is one of thousands of young Afghan men who learned English from watching American movies and now act as vital intermediaries between international troops and locals in the decade-long war.

They work as interpreters, or "terps" as they are known to foreign troops, in the hope of securing an American visa after at least one year of service.

But they fear that when US and combat troops from other NATO allies withdraw in 2014, they will be targeted by the Taliban.

Many are now racing to get visas and move to the United States before then, although a backlog of paperwork at the American embassy in Kabul threatens to delay applications.

At US Combat Outpost Monti in mountainous Kunar province near the Pakistani border where he lives and works, Yousaf said he was considered an "infidel" by the Taliban and its sympathisers.

"They say the people who work with the Americans should be killed," he said.

As he and his fellow interpreters shared their stories over an Afghan feast of lamb korma, chicken pilau rice and round, flat bread, the risks they take became clear.

"I'm not happy in Afghanistan, it's a dangerous place. Everybody knows that," said Mohammad Islam, a 23-year-old with gelled, spiky hair who wore a tight T-shirt and spoke English peppered with slang.

Another interpreter, Salim Shah, 35, quit his carpet business to work as a translator and now dreams of one day setting up a rug shop in New York.

"If I didn't become an interpreter, it (would be) too difficult to go to foreign countries," he said.

The United States admitted it is grappling with a surge of visa applications from interpreters and other Afghans.

A US government official speaking on condition of anonymity said 850 Afghan interpreters who worked with the US armed forces or the embassy in Kabul had received special immigration visas as of mid-July, the latest figures available.

But under the Afghan Allies Protection Act, passed in 2009 to boost the number of visas for Afghans who have come under serious threat for working for the US government, no visas had been issued and 2,297 cases were pending.

The official said the process was "time intensive" but that efforts were being made to streamline applications.

He confirmed the US embassy in Kabul had received petitions to speed up procedures.

"We recognise that we have a special responsibility to Afghans who have worked for us," he told AFP.

"At the same time we're committed to ensuring that Afghan recipients of special immigration visas, like all those who enter the United States, do not pose a threat to the security of the United States."

He added: "We urge applicants with immediate security concerns to raise such concerns with security personnel where they work."

Yousaf has nearly finished his paperwork but remains unconvinced he will escape Afghanistan within three years.

"Right now there are so many interpreters in Afghanistan trying to get a visa. It's very hard," he shrugged. "It's up to the US government."

He and his colleagues have seen numerous interpreter friends killed or wounded and had plenty of their own close shaves.

During an operation in Kunar last year, the Humvee truck behind Yousaf's vehicle was destroyed by a roadside bomb, killing five US troops inside.

"God saved me," he said.

US troops pay tribute to their courage and competence. One soldier who works with them, Private First Class Joshua MacIntyre, said they had earned the right to a visa. "I trust them," he said. "It's very easy to work with them."

But it is not only out on missions that interpreters feel unsafe.

Although his wife and five children live in the same province, Yousaf said it was too dangerous to go alone by car when he goes home on leave, preferring to fly or travel with the Afghan army.

"Maybe they will kill me or ambush me," he said of the insurgents. He fears even going to the local bazaar close to the outpost, instead asking Afghan labourers on the base to pick up his groceries and favourite chewing tobacco.

The Taliban regularly carry out threats to kill Afghans working with coalition forces, but the interpreters hope their troubles will be worth the risk.

Yousaf likes the sound of California, but has no fixed plans beyond reaching the "golden state."

"America is the land of opportunity, I will find something there," he said.

© Copyright 2011 AFP. All rights reserved

[buglerbilly]

In Pakistan, a pattern of disappearances

By Karin Brulliard, Monday, October 3, 7:37 AM

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — In between hearings on an employment dispute and a property crime, a lawyer stood in Courtroom 3 on a recent morning to recount what seemed a terrifying offense. Fourteen months ago, he said, civil servant Adil Shah was buying vegetables when he was detained by about 10 men in military and police uniforms, and his family had not seen or heard from him since.

The judge barely blinked. There was no gasp from the wooden benches of the gallery. So routine are the grim cases of enforced disappearances in Pakistan — referred to here as missing persons — that they are now discussed like other chronic woes, such as power cuts and inflation. This northwestern city’s High Court hears five cases a day.

The disappearances are growing, according to international and Pakistani human rights organizations, which estimate that thousands of people have been kidnapped and detained incommunicado in secret prisons in the past decade. Some have been killed, they say. Exact numbers are unknown, in part because many people are afraid to report the abductions, according to Human Rights Watch.

Most of the disappeared are believed to be suspected of ties to Islamist militants or separatist movements viewed as threats by Pakistan’s potent security establishment, in particular the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, rights advocates and Pakistani officials said.

The open secret of disappearances illustrates the grip the military establishment retains over Pakistani society, including its dysfunctional justice system and feeble civilian government, which has repeatedly vowed to stop the problem. A government commission has traced several dozen missing people and publicly said Pakistani intelligence agencies are involved, but it has held no one accountable. President Asif Ali Zardari recently approved regulations that lawyers say gave the military expanded latitude to detain and try suspected militants.

Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas strongly denied a military role in disappearances. Many missing people are hiding in Karachi, Dubai or Afghanistan, he said, or are victims of militant infighting.

Privately, however, Pakistani officials say security forces hold many suspects because they believe the nation’s substandard police and courts would otherwise release them.

In its 2010 human rights report, the U.S. State Department referred to disappearances, extrajudicial killings and torture as Pakistan’s major human rights problems but said a “culture of impunity” surrounded crimes involving security forces.

“We urge appropriate Pakistani civilian and military authorities to investigate all credible allegations of human rights abuses and hold accountable those proven to be responsible for such violations,” said Mark Stroh, the U.S. embassy spokesman. “We have discussed allegations of human rights abuses with Pakistani officials frequently and continue to monitor the situation closely.”

But the issue is awkward for the United States, which over the past decade has provided billions of dollars in aid to support Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts and has frequently urged Pakistani officials to be aggressive in rounding up al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf wrote in his memoirs of earning millions of reward dollars by handing terrorism suspects over to U.S. custody.

Reported disappearances have swelled as Pakistan has battled a persistent Taliban insurgency in the northwest. But many reports of missing people, which run regularly in the Pakistani media, originate far from the battlefield. Human rights organizations say Pakistan has swept up an array of suspected opponents, particularly in Baluchistan province, where there is a simmering nationalist insurgency waged by the Baluch ethnic minority.

Futile questions

On the docket in Peshawar recently was the case of a man who, two years ago, was blindfolded by security officials in a Peshawar bank and taken away. A court clerk’s father-in-law — a cleric — has also disappeared, said Iqbal Khan Mohmand, the deputy attorney general, who represents the government but said he has little power beyond asking military authorities where a missing person is and reporting their answer to the court.

According to his relatives, Shah, 28, was a newly married junior clerk at the University of Peshawar law school, a job that required a criminal background check. Days after he disappeared, a team of uniformed officers led by an ISI agent searched the family home and said only that Shah was being held in an investigation. The family believes he is being held by the military in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, said their lawyer, whose court filing described Shah’s wife as “deprived from the happiness and joy of marriage.”

“Why are you not transferring him into police custody?” the judge asked Mohmand, noting that Pakistan’s constitution requires police to conduct criminal investigations. “This person may be an enemy, but the police know how to deal with criminals.”

Outside the courtroom, Shah’s sister, Ismat Ara, 30, said the family had no idea why he was taken.

“One year, and we are still waiting for him,” she said from behind an embroidered white veil that revealed only worried eyes.

Mohmand, a jolly man who chats up missing people’s relatives and intelligence agents lurking in the court lobby, said he did not know why Shah — or any other disappeared person — was rounded up. He handles 1,000 disappearance cases each year, he said, about one-fifth of which result in a detainee’s quiet release. But that follows months of futilely asking intelligence and military units where the person is, Mohmand said with frustration.

“As legal men, we conclude that the fundamental right has been violated,” Mohmand said. But, he added: “Most of the people, they are guilty. They are involved in some way or another.”

Two government prosecutors, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they believe they are lying when they tell judges that the military has no knowledge of a detainee’s location. One of the prosecutors said intelligence agencies keep detainees in houses in residential neighborhoods as well as in military camps, accounts human rights organizations say are corroborated by released detainees.

Denial followed by delay

Some people are never found, or only their corpses are. Those released are usually terrified to speak about their ordeal, said lawyer Arif Jan, a fixture at the Peshawar High Court who said he has taken on about 100 disappearance cases.

“The modus operandi is, they release the detainee at night, with many threats,” Jan said.

Disappearances first gained attention in 2005, after Rawalpindi housewife Amina Janjua’s businessman husband vanished as he traveled to Peshawar. Janjua, stunned, said she quickly learned such cases were not unusual, and she said she now believes they are fueled by the Pakistani army’s thirst for U.S. military aid.

She has since led protests in front of Parliament, camped outside the Supreme Court and traveled the world to bring attention to disappearances. She has been to more than 30 court hearings, but her husband is still missing. The government has said he was probably killed by al-Qaeda.

If he is released, Janjua said, she will forgive. But she said she would keep pressing to stop disappearances — or, as she put it, to “try to break rocks with eggs.”

In Peshawar, families file into the courthouse quietly. On a recent morning, brothers of Barakat Ali, a court employee who was rounded up in August by men dressed in black uniforms, stood meekly as their lawyer thrust his finger in the air, calling it a “bitter fact” that Ali was in military intelligence custody.

As has become standard, Mohmand presented a denial from the ISI. The judge delayed the case. Ali’s brothers said they would be back.

Special correspondent Haq Nawaz Khan contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Pentagon Hails Canada's 'Tremendous' Afghan Work

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 1 Oct 2011 11:28

WASHINGTON - U.S. defense chief Leon Panetta paid tribute Sept. 30 to Canada's "tremendous work" in Afghanistan, acknowledging the sacrifices made by America's northern neighbor in the 10-year war.

Canada, which once had about 3,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, officially ended its combat mission there in July, after losing 157 lives and spending more than $11 billion since 2002.

The war also killed one of its diplomats, two aid workers and a journalist.

A separate Canadian training mission involving 950 troops is working in northern Afghanistan to help build the fragile Afghan security forces. Canada will also continue to give aid to Afghanistan, with its overall involvement between now and the end of 2014 expected to cost around $700 million a year.

"In Afghanistan, the Canadians are doing tremendous work, providing trainers, they have a presence in Kandahar," Panetta said after meeting at the Pentagon with his Canadian counterpart Peter MacKay for an hour.

"Canada is one of the NATO countries that suffered the most in terms of those who lost their life. And we pay tremendous respect to Canada for the sacrifice that they've made."

He also saluted Ottawa's partnership with the United States in Libya as part of a NATO campaign against the regime of long-time leader Moammar Gadhafi.

"Canada and the United States have in my view the best relationship on the planet that really sets a gold standard for other countries around the globe," said MacKay, stressing the "special relationship" between the neighbors.

He repeated Canada's request to purchase American F-35 jet fighters, whose development costs are proving far higher than initially anticipated.

[buglerbilly]

Who will take the Pakistan baton?

By Philip Ewing Monday, October 3rd, 2011 12:26 pm



In addition to all the photos and office bric-a-brac that Adm. Mike Mullen packed away with him after leaving as Joint Chiefs chairman, he took something else that he believed was of great value: His relationship with the chief of Pakistan’s military.

In trip after trip and meeting after meeting, Mullen built close ties with his counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, which, as he told Congress and reporters, went a long way toward keeping things together even as the rocky relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan strained almost to the breaking point.

It may not have looked like it from the outside, but it’s possible that Mullen and Kayani’s relationship may have been key to the smooth operation of the things we don’t see in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, including drone strikes, intelligence sharing and special operations. (Then again, it’s also possible their vaunted “relationship” was itself a smokescreen to try to make it appear that the two sides were getting on better than they actually were.)

So no matter what it was worth, who’s taking up the mantle now? Well, no one in particular. Still, a top DoD spokesman said the military relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan has been improving since May’s raid against Osama bin Laden, and a number of other top officials also are making an effort to bridge the gap Mullen left. Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. John Kirby said Monday that CentCom commander Gen. James Mattis visited Kayani only a few days after Mullen’s now-infamous testimony.

“I’m sure he is going to continue to engage, as is Gen. [John] Allen.” So will there be a uniformed leader who will be the main point of contact with Pakistan? “I’m sure that will occur across the chain of command,” Kirby said, “But I don’t know about a single point of contact. We’re going to approach this across the board.”

There is every reason to expect that Mullen’s successor, Gen. Martin Dempsey, will log just as many air miles on the way to Pakistan as Mullen did, partly to follow his example and partly of pure necessity: As the top brass keeps saying, the U.S. simply has no option but to keep up close military ties with Pakistan, even though, as Mullen made clear, the Pakistanis are effectively waging a proxy war against America at the same time they function as a key ally.

But that will take time — Monday is Dempsey’s first day on the job, and he may need a little time to get his bearings in Washington before he makes a trip to Islamabad or anywhere else.

[I]Read more: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/10/03/who-will-take-the-pakistan-baton/#ixzz1Zlmj2F00
DoDBuzz.com

[buglerbilly]

Haqqani: US Wants Him to Join Afghan Government

October 03, 2011

Associated Press

LONDON - A BBC report quoted Afghan insurgent leader Siraj Haqqani on Monday as saying he's been approached by the United States to join the Afghan government and denying that his militant group was behind the killing of the top Afghan peace envoy.

The Pakistan-based Haqqani network is affiliated with both the Taliban and al-Qaida and has been described by U.S. and other Western nations as the top security threat in Afghanistan. The group has been blamed for hundreds of attacks, including a 20-hour siege of the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters last month. The group is led by Jalaludin Haqqani, but the ailing leader has relinquished most operational control to one of his sons, Siraj.

Last week, U.S. officials accused Pakistan's spy agency of supporting the Haqqanis in attacks on Western targets in Afghanistan - the most serious allegation yet of Pakistani duplicity in the 10-year war.

The United States and other members of the international community have in the past blamed Pakistan for allowing the Taliban, and the Haqqanis in particular, to retain safe havens in the country's tribal areas along the Afghan border - particularly in North Waziristan.

The outgoing chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has also claimed that Pakistan's military spy agency helped the group.

However, Haqqani told the BBC Pashtu service that while the group had contacts with a number of spy agencies, including that of Pakistan, during the Soviet invasion, there are now "no such links that could be beneficial."

"Right from the first day of American arrival till this day not only Pakistani but other Islamic and other non-Islamic countries including America, contacted us and they (are) still doing so. They are asking us to leave the ranks of Islamic Emirates," he said referring to the Taliban leadership.

He said that the outsiders have promised an "important role in the government of Afghanistan," as well as negotiations.

Haqqani also denied that his group took part in the Sept. 20 assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani. He headed the country's High Peace Council, set up by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to work toward a political solution to the decade-long war.

"We haven't killed Burhanuddin Rabbani and this has been said many times by the spokespersons of Islamic Emirate," he said.

Karzai's office has said a special commission investigating Rabbani's death had concluded the attack was planned in Quetta, the Pakistani city where key Taliban leaders are based. The delegation also said the primary assailant was a Pakistani citizen.

The BBC said it did not interview Siraj Haqqani directly. Working through an intermediary, the BBC drew a list of questions and received in return an audio file which it was able to verify as being him.

In Brussels, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he did not have information on who killed Rabbini, but that nevertheless "it's obvious that the Haqqani network constitutes a threat both to the Afghan people and to our troops in Afghanistan."

"We encourage the Pakistani government and military to deal with the safe havens in border regions. It's obvious that there is cross-border traffic by Haqqani network and other terrorist groups there," he said.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

82nd Airborne begins mission in Southern Afghanistan

October 3, 2011

By Sgt. 1st Class Lyndon Miller, 319th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment


Sgt. 1st Class Ubaid Ullah of 3rd Kandak, 2nd Brigade, 205th Corps of the Afghan National Army speaks with a shepherd during a combined patrol with Paratroopers from Company A, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division Sept. 30, 2009, in Shajoy, Zabul province, Afghanistan during the 82nd Airborne Division's previous deployment to Afghanistan. The 82nd took over the mission in Regional Command-South from the 10th Mountain Division Oct. 1, 2011.

KANDAHAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan, Oct. 1, 2011 -- Maj. Gen. James L. Terry, outgoing commander of Regional Command South, cased the 10th Mountain Division colors and officially handed over command to Maj. Gen. James L. Huggins Jr., 82nd Airborne Division and new RC(S) commander, during a transition of authority ceremony Saturday on Kandahar Airfield.

Lt. Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, commander, International Security Assistance Force Joint Command and reviewing officer for the ceremony, addressed the multi-national audience first, emphasizing the partnership of Afghanistan and coalition forces and the positive effect of their efforts.

Our forces, working shoulder to shoulder, "shanah ba shanah," Scaparrotti said using the Afghan phrase, "train, fight, die and win along-side each other. Together, we are creating a better future for the people of Afghanistan," he said.

Following Scaparrotti's remarks, Terry welcomed the audience and offered his parting thoughts.

"Salam Alaikum," he said, "and peace be upon you," citing the traditional Muslim greeting.

Referring to the overall purpose here, Terry said, "this is not about coalition forces, this is about the Afghan security forces increasingly taking the lead."

Terry went on to say that collectively Afghan National Security Forces, or ANSF, have reason to be proud and stand tall. In the four provinces of Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul, and Daykundi, they have "thwarted hundreds of attacks and beaten back a weakening but still very violent enemy."

An increase in economic activity in the RC-(S) region, Terry said, is evidence of stability and progress, that "melons and pomegranates" have been shipped through Kandahar Airfield to global markets.

Once Terry's remarks were complete, Huggins walked up to the platform and spoke.

"Our task will be to continue to build on the progress of our ANSF and coalition partners, that the Afghans can take full control of their future in the lead, in their country," Huggins said.

Afghans will achieve sustainable economic development which will result in the peaceful, prosperous and independent future of their country, he said.

Huggins also said that two key factors for success over the next year will be working to develop governance and security and building local inclusive governments, "an area where I've already seen much progress."

"It is the Afghan people, themselves," Huggins continued, "who will achieve the form of government that is accountable to the people, a government they deserve."

[buglerbilly]

Karzai: Taliban talks are over, we will negotiate with Pakistan now

President Hamid Karzai has reassessed his approach to peace and will no longer hold talks with the Taliban. He will instead negotiate with Pakistan, he said on Monday.


Afghan president Hamid Karzai will no longer negotiate with the Taliban Photo: REUTERS

By Lianne Gutcher

12:27AM BST 04 Oct 2011

"The peace process is now between countries," President Karzai said in a pre-recorded speech that was broadcast on local Afghan TV channels on Monday evening. "We have to speak to those with the authority."

President Karzai has in the past accused Pakistan of harbouring militants in safe havens in its tribal border regions. Over the weekend, Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security said it had evidence that the plot to assassinate the High Peace Council chief Burhanuddin Rabbani had been hatched in the outskirts of Quetta. Interior minister Bismillah Mohammadi said Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI, was involved in the assassination.

Pakistan has refuted this.

President Karzai praised Mr Rabbani's peace efforts but said that they were "one sided" and that the "enemies of peace" – the Taliban and other insurgents – were "under the influence of foreign intelligence services."

He said: "We have used all of our resources in order to reach for peace or to bring peace to the country but the Taliban's response was just to kill people. It was one-sided."

Mr Karzai also accused Pakistan of having a "two-faced policy" against Afghanistan and of failing to provide any support for the peace process.

"Over the past five years, we have made efforts to have good relations with Pakistan. I personally made efforts to have good relations with Pakistan.

These efforts have been unprecedented but unfortunately Pakistan has not supported us in peace efforts. They have done nothing."

Pakistan should support peace efforts, and should consider the interests of its population because peace will benefit them, he said.

In his speech, Mr Karzai said that 2011 will be a vital year for Afghanistan because of the Bonn Conference, which will discuss long-term options for the country, and because it marked the start of the transition of responsibility for security from international to Afghan troops .

Mr Karzai said that talks are under way with the US about a long-term strategic partnership and that if the conditions set down by Afghanistan are met then the two nations will sign the document after it is approved by a Loya Jirga, or Grand Council.

Appealing to the country at large, the president called on Afghans to come together as a nation.

"Now is the time to observe national unity [and] to defend our country for the sake of our country's integrity.

Many members of the Northern Alliance have been slain in recent months – including Mr Rabbani and northern police chief General Daud Daud – causing mounting resentment among its members against the Pashtuns from which Taliban members come. The growing resentment has also stoked fears among the public and observers that the country may once again be sliding towards civil war.

[buglerbilly]

Karzai accuses Pakistan of supporting terrorists

By Joshua Partlow, Tuesday, October 4, 2:30 AM

KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai escalated his criticism of Pakistan on Monday night, charging in a speech that the country is not a sincere partner for peace and is essentially using the Taliban to fight a proxy war in his country.

“Pakistan has pursued a double game toward Afghanistan, and using terrorism as a means continues,” Karzai said in an address from the presidential palace.

Such sentiments are common among Afghans, but Karzai and other senior members of his government have grown increasingly blunt in their accusations. Karzai has staked out a new position in recent remarks, saying that peace talks with the Taliban are futile unless they involve the Pakistani authorities who he argues exert control over the insurgents. Pakistan denies such involvement with the Taliban.

Karzai in recent years has called the Taliban “brothers” and regularly encouraged the insurgents to reconcile with the Afghan government. But after a string of political assassinations and attacks in Kabul, he has taken a more belligerent line.

“Seeking one-sided peace will not bring peace,” he said Monday before a scheduled trip to India, Pakistan’s historical enemy. “Therefore, the government of Afghanistan has the responsibility to decisively fight against the enemies of independence and peace in Afghanistan.”

The acrimony between the neighbors has risen to new heights since the killing last month of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, the government’s chief peace envoy, by a Taliban emissary who visited Rabbani under the guise of seeking negotiations. Afghan officials said that the assassination was plotted in the Pakistani city of Quetta and that Pakistan’s intelligence agency was involved.

Over the weekend, Pakistan rejected those claims, calling them “baseless allegations.” The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement Sunday that the alleged mastermind was an Afghan who had been “roaming around in Kandahar and Kabul for quite some time.”

“Instead of making such irresponsible statements, those in positions of authority in Kabul should seriously deliberate as to why all those Afghans who are favorably disposed towards peace and towards Pakistan are systematically being removed from the scene and killed,” the statement said. “There is a need to take stock of the direction taken by Afghan intelligence and security agencies.”

The leader of a Taliban-allied insurgent group blamed for many attacks in Kabul, and accused by U.S. officials of working with Pakistan’s intelligence agency, also denied that his group was involved in Rabbani’s killing. Sirajuddin Haqqani, whose father leads the group known as the Haqqani network, told the BBC that the group is not supported by Pakistani intelligence.

He also said his group has been approached by U.S. foreign intelligence officials as well as officials from other countries “asking us to leave the sacred jihad and take an important part in the current government.”

“We know that their aim is not peace,” he added. “They want to create tension among” the insurgent groups.

Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan Ten Years On

(Source: British Forces Broadcasting Service; issued Oct. 3, 2011)

Britain has the "resources and resolve" to succeed in Afghanistan, the Government has insisted after 10 years of war in the country.

This week marks a decade since the US and UK launched the campaign known as Operation Enduring Freedom in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. And the British administration is offering a cautiously optimistic assessment, while acknowledging that mistakes have been made.

A Foreign Office (FCO) spokesman said: "Progress over 10 years has been uneven. At times, the international community lacked a cohesive plan and adequate resources to respond to an insurgency more resilient and adaptable than anticipated.

"Development of effective Afghan security and governance capabilities was slow, with a lack of investment by the international community.

But despite the setbacks and misjudgments, advances have been made, the Government stresses, albeit from an "extremely low base".

The FCO spokesman said: "The strategy is now focused, the coalition strong, our Afghan partners fully engaged and we have the resources and resolve to succeed.

"Afghanistan today is unrecognisable from the Afghanistan of 2001, but addressing the damage caused by thirty years of civil war and the misrule of the Taliban will take time."

This judgment has been borne out in the weeks leading up to this Friday's anniversary, with a string of high-profile attacks serving as a reminder of the uphill struggle still ahead.

Chief among these was the suicide mission that killed Afghanistan's former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, on September 20, demonstrating what US Ambassador Ryan Crocker called "the utter disregard that the terrorists have for Afghans and the future of this country".

President Hamid Karzai insisted it would not deter his government, but some thought his words rang hollow against a backdrop of escalating violence.

Kabul, notably, has witnessed a series of deadly assaults in the past few weeks - the CIA's office has come under attack and one of its contractors been killed; the Taliban has targeted the US Embassy, Nato headquarters and other buildings in the heart of the city; and Taliban suicide bombers have stormed a British compound, killing eight people during an eight-hour firefight.

The southern city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province has also been suffering, with eight Afghan policemen killed in an attack on September 28, just a day after two civilians died when a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed vehicle into a police truck.

The UK is set to withdraw its combat troops from the country in 2014, but in some quarters fears remain that the current strategy is flawed.

Conservative MP Adam Holloway, a former Grenadier Guards officer, warned against pinning all hopes on an unpopular Afghan central government.

"The current strategy, it's not just that it won't work," he said. "It can't work. We have to allow the Afghans to come up with their own local political fixes and not impose a central government."

Negotiating a peace settlement with the Taliban was also unlikely to produce results, he cautioned.

"We have this idea that we can make a deal with the Taliban," he said. "But I wouldn't have thought there's any danger of the Taliban wanting to make a deal."

His outlook on the road ahead was stark. "The task is to undo the damage of the last 10 years," he said.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has spoken meanwhile of "a confusion and policy disarray within the US establishment on the way forward in Afghanistan".

And the most pessimistic commentators are touting civil war as a distinct possibility. Even if this is avoided, the warring sides could still face stalemate at best, many people fear.

Mr Crocker told the Wall Street Journal last month: "The Taliban needs to feel more pain before you get to a real readiness to reconcile."

But others are scathing about the US belief that the Taliban can be fought to the negotiating table - and events of the past 10 years would appear to confirm their doubts.

It was a decade that began with US-led air strikes on Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, with the first official deployment of British forces the following month, when Royal Marines helped secure Bagram airfield.

Several thousand more troops followed but the human cost remained relatively low until Britain sent a taskforce to Helmand in spring 2006.

By the time the British military death toll in Iraq reached 100 in January 2006, there had only been five fatalities in Afghanistan.

Three months later the then defence secretary, John Reid, said he would be "perfectly happy" if UK troops left Helmand three years later "without firing a shot".

Instead, a redoubtable insurgency drew the military into some of the fiercest fighting British forces had experienced since the Second World War.

At a time of economic retrenchment, the conflict is estimated to still be costing the Government billions each year and the 10-year mark may prompt a bout of soul-searching over what this is achieving.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

OCTOBER 5, 2011.

Karzai Sets Closer Ties With India on Visit

By TOM WRIGHT And MARGHERITA STANCATI

NEW DELHI—India and Afghanistan signed a strategic-partnership agreement under which New Delhi will increase its training of Afghan army and other security personnel, a move likely to increase tensions with Pakistan.


EPA
India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, right, exchanges files with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai after signing a strategic partnership agreement. partnership.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed the agreement in the Indian capital on Tuesday, the first day of Mr. Karzai's two-day visit to India, a trip meant to showcase an increasingly close relationship between the two nations at a time of increased strain in Kabul's ties with Pakistan, India's neighbor and historical rival.

Mr. Karzai told reporters that regional powers, and India in particular, are key to helping his country pursue peace. He praised India as a "steadfast friend and supporter" of his country.

Mr. Singh said India would "stand by the people of Afghanistan as they prepare to assume the responsibility for their governance and security after the withdrawal of international forces."

India has pledged to train and equip Afghan's army and police force, according to a copy of the partnership agreement, expanding on limited training it conducted for the army in India four years ago.

Mr. Singh also urged neighboring countries to do more to help Afghanistan reach its goals of greater peace and stability. "All countries of the region must work to facilitate this outcome," he said.

The U.S. is eager to see India and other countries help train Afghan's security forces to beef up their capacity to fight Taliban insurgents ahead of the withdrawal of U.S. forces, scheduled for completion in 2014. But the greater involvement of India in this training role is likely to anger Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as within its sphere of influence.

Afghanistan's relationship with Pakistan has deteriorated after Mr. Karzai said last week he was calling off nascent peace talks with Taliban militants and would focus instead on reaching out to Pakistan, which Afghan officials say support the Taliban. U.S. officials also have blamed Pakistan's military for supporting Taliban attacks against U.S. and Afghan government targets inside Afghanistan, a charge Pakistani officials say is untrue.

The policy shift follows last month's assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president and lead negotiator with the Taliban. Mr. Rabbani was killed outside his house by a purported Taliban peace envoy who Afghan government officials allege was a Pakistani citizen supported by the country's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. On Tuesday, Mr. Singh expressed his condolences for the death of Mr. Rabbani.

An official with the ISI denied the charges made against it by U.S. and Afghan officials and said both countries are unfairly blaming Pakistan for their failure to make progress in peace talks, from which Pakistan has so far been excluded.

India has poured more than $1 billion in aid money into Afghanistan in the past decade, mainly for infrastructure projects. Those projects have caused anger in Pakistan, especially when Indian paramilitary forces were deployed to guard Indian road-construction workers in Afghanistan. Islamabad also has complained about the opening of Indian consulates in Afghanistan.

India trained Afghanistan's army in 2007, when two platoon-sized infantry units took sessions in India, said Ashok Mehta, a retired Indian general and defense analyst. India has been careful never to send army units to Afghanistan, because it realizes that it also needs to avoid antagonizing Pakistan to the point of conflict, instead only conducting these limited training sessions at home on Afghan request, he added.

"India realizes it would unnecessarily aggravate the situation in Afghanistan if it made an open-ended declaration about security assistance," Mr. Mehta said.

Mr. Mehta said Afghanistan had requested for 150 army officers to receive training at Indian defense and military academies and that appears likely to happen soon. India also is expected to soon begin hosting training sessions for Afghan police officers.

India and Afghanistan on Tuesday also agreed to strengthen trade and economic ties, announcing two agreements to cooperate in mining and hydrocarbons. The state-run Steel Authority of India is among bidders for the right to mine iron ore at the Hajigak mine in Afghanistan's central Bamiyan province. If the Indian bid is successful, the company plans to build steel plants in Afghanistan and possibly even rail lines to improve access to the mines.

Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

Australian admits taking bribe

October 5, 2011 - 4:02PM .

Australian Neil Campbell has pleaded guilty to accepting bribes for steering US-funded contracts in Afghanistan, the US Department of Justice says.

Campbell, 61, from Mooloolaba on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Washington, DC, to one count of accepting a $US10,000 ($10,500) bribe as an agent of an organisation receiving federal funds, the Justice Department said in a statement on Tuesday.

Campbell worked in Afghanistan in 2009-2010 as an agent for the International Organisation on Migration (IOM), a group that has received more than $US260 million in US funds since 2002 to build hospitals, schools and other facilities.

Campbell admitted "that in July 2010, while in Afghanistan, he solicited a one-time cash payment of $US190,000 from a subcontractor ... as a reward for funnelling more than $US15 million in reconstruction projects to that subcontractor", the statement read.

The following month an undercover US agent posing as the subcontractor's representative paid Campbell $US10,000 cash, and promised to pay the remainder in India.

But when Campbell flew to New Delhi, agents of India's Central Bureau of Investigation arrested him.

Campbell was charged in August 2010 and extradited from India to stand trial in February.

"This conviction ... shows the seriousness of our commitment to protecting the American taxpayer," US Attorney Ronald Machen said.

"There is zero tolerance for such abuse of federal funds," added US Agency for International Development Inspector General Donald Gambatesa.

Campbell faces up to 10 years in prison and a $US250,000 fine when he is sentenced on December 14.

He has also agreed to return the $US10,000 from the bribe he received.

AFP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/australian-admits-taking--bribe-20111005-1l952.html#ixzz1Zu9n9QR5

[buglerbilly]

Reading Pakistan: What if US-Pak Ties Break?



07:59 GMT, October 5, 2011 A bill has already been introduced in the US Congress to cut aid to Pakistan, following the accusation that the Haqqani network has been functioning as a ‘veritable arm’ of the ISI in Afghanistan. Pakistan has retorted that such accusations will lead to the US losing Islamabad as an ally. What then if the alliance breaks up? What are the possible scenarios for US and Pakistan?

QUESTION 1: Will Pakistan manage itself politically?

What would the break-up of US-Pakistan mean for Pakistan politically? Both the polity and the military have invested heavily in the US since 2001. Ever since Pakistan made a U-turn almost ten years ago (read Gen Musharraf’s memoirs), the present leadership has made substantial investments in US-Pakistan relations. While Nawaz Sharif and the leaders of religious political parties have opposed the US, the PPP initially led by Benazir Bhutto and now her husband Zardari have leaned completely towards the US.

If the US-Pakistan relationship breaks now, it will be a disaster for the PPP in particular. Facing the next general elections shortly, both the PML-N and the religious parties will target the PPP for taking Pakistan down a suicidal path along with the US. Given the prevalent anti-American sentiments in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan and the religious political parties should have a field day.

Will the PPP also join the bandwagon and sloganeer about being back-stabbed by the US? Perhaps. It would be a better strategy for the PPP to use the back-stabbing slogan than trying to defend its actions for going along with the US.

QUESTION 2: Will the military shift the blame on the civilian government?

Pakistan’s military will be the worst hit if there is a break-up in US-Pakistan relations. Traditionally, the military derived its external support from the Pentagon and the White House, which was used by Rawalpindi to keep the political leadership inside Pakistan under its thumb. Today, this traditional support by the Pentagon and White House is fast evaporating. In fact, they are likely to be the primary reasons for the break-up.

The killing of Osama bin Laden and the anti-terrorist efforts by the Pakistani military has made many within Pakistan unhappy. The daring American raid well in Abbottabad, well within Pakistani territory, has made Pakistan’s military the most vulnerable in terms of public opinion. If there is complete public anger against the US within Pakistan, a substantial segment is angry against their own military as well, for colluding with the Americans and not protecting their own interests.

The military may well shift the blame on political leadership, and perhaps make Zardari and Gilani into scapegoats.

QUESTION 3: Will Pakistan lean towards China?

While China may not want a failed Pakistan, it may not want to back its ally beyond a certain level either. Sino-US and Sino-Indian relations will certainly play a crucial role in determining the extent of Chinese support to Pakistan. Besides, the Chinese are also apprehensive of growing jihadi threats in the region, centered in Af-Pak.

While a section strongly believes China will come to Pakistan’s rescue, this sentiment needs to be probed. In what ways will the Chinese come to help Pakistan, and for what objectives? One, Sino-Pak nuclear relations may continue as Indo-US relations grow further, especially in the nuclear field. The growing Sino-Indian economic relations may perhaps dent the above collusion. On the economic side, Sino-Pak relations are unlikely to grow beyond a certain level. Bilateral trade between the two countries is insignificant. While China has invested substantially in Pakistan’s infrastructural projects, there is not much aid in hard cash. If Pakistan’s economy dovetails, how much Chinese support will keep it afloat? At the international level, the Chinese support to Pakistan may be issue-based.

QUESTION 4: If cornered, will Pakistan turn against India?

If the US support is declining, along with that of the rest of the international community, and if Pakistan is facing increasing internal instability, will the strategic community blow up the Indian threat to keep the country united and revive global interest?

What will the non-state actors – of the Taliban and Lashkar varieties, do if Pakistan is unstable? Will the TTP see it as an opportunity and step up its attacks? Will the Lashkar get more space and revive its terror activities against India?

QUESTION 5: Will the US place its boots on Pakistani soil?

If Pakistan becomes unstable or if there is a threat to regional stability (for Afghanistan and the American security forces from groups with bases east of the Durand) what will the US do? While the US has on many occasions threatened to send troops across into Pakistani soil, it is unlikely to be an easy option.

However the bigger question is what the US will do if there are dangers of Pakistan’s nuclear assets falling into the wrong hands, in the event of an unstable Pakistan. For precisely this reason, the US can be expected to muddle through.

----
By Suba Chandran
Director, IPCS Studies & Visiting Professor, Pakistan Studies Programme, Jamia Millia Islamia
Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS)

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan: Karzai Assassination Plot Foiled

October 05, 2011

Associated Press|by Amir Shah



KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan intelligence officials said Wednesday that they had broken up a cell that plotted to kill President Hamid Karzai, arresting six people in Kabul whom they claimed were affiliated with al-Qaida and the Haqqani militant group.

Intelligence service spokesman Latifullah Mashal said that that the cell included one of Karzai's bodyguards, as well as a professor at Kabul university and three college students.

Mashal described the cell as the "most sophisticated and educated group in Kabul", and said that it had assisted Pakistani militants sent to the Afghan capital to carry out terror attacks. He did not say when they were arrested.

He said the group, which also allegedly planned attacks in Kabul, the United States and Europe, was recruited by an Egyptian and a Bangladeshi based in Pakistan.

Afghan officials have been increasingly vocal in publicly accusing Pakistan and its ISI intelligence agency of maintaining ties with militants, including the Haqqani group. On Tuesday, they claimed that Pakistani officials had advance knowledge of the Sept. 20 assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Pakistan has denied the charges, but the accusations have further strained relations between the two nations that share a 1,500-mile (2,430-kilometer) border.

The Haqqani militant group, a lethal threat to U.S.-led coalition forces, has been blamed by U.S. intelligence officials and others for a number of high-profile attacks in Kabul in recent years, including hotel bombings and the September 12 assault on the American Embassy.

Mashal identified the two recruiters as an Egyptian named Sayifullah and a man from Bangladesh named Abdullah, who were based in Miram Shah, the capital of Pakistan's North Waziristan region, where the Haqqani group and other militants operate with relative freedom.

Mashal said that the six Afghans were recruited "to carry out suicide attacks in Kabul, plan and coordinate bigger international attacks in the U.S. and parts of Europe and a luxury hotel in Kabul."

"They also were responsible for recruiting one of the key security guards of President Karzai's protective services. They had a plan to assassinate President Karzai maybe during his travels or trips to the provinces," the Afghan intelligence spokesman said.

He did not disclose details about attacks the cell reportedly planned in the United States or Europe.

Those arrested were:

- Dr. Emal Habib Asadullah, a medical professor and director of microbiology at Kabul University.

- Mubullah Ahmadi, who is from Karzai's hometown of Karz in southern Afghanistan. Ahmadi worked as a guard at the presidential palace.

- Rahmatullah Ramin, a fourth year medical student at Kabul University.

- Parwez, identified by only one name, who was studying at a private university in Kabul.

- Abdul Hamid Mashal, a university student.

- Abdul Bashir, a man from Kapisa province in eastern Afghanistan, who was living in Kabul.

Several of the individuals received explosives and weapons training in Peshawar, Pakistan, Mashal said.

The group had access to $150,000 in a bank account in Kabul, he said, as well as access to computers and high-tech equipment. With its university ties, the cell was also well positioned to win more recruits, he said.

"The main purpose of the group was to kill high-ranking Afghan figures and identify guest houses used by foreigners or other potential targets in Kabul," he said.

Karzai has escaped at least four attempts on his life since he took power in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

In April 2008, militants opened fire with automatic weapons and rockets on a ceremony in Kabul. Karzai, Cabinet ministers and ambassadors scrambled for cover and escape unharmed. Three people were killed, including a lawmaker.

In June 2007, Taliban militants fired six rockets that landed near a school yard where Karzai was meeting with local leaders and residents in Ghazni province. No one was hurt.

In September 2004, militants fired rockets at an American helicopter taking Karzai to the eastern city of Gardez in Paktia province. The rockets missed the chopper as it approached a landing zone.

In September 2002, a former Taliban fighter dressed in an Afghan army uniform fired at Karzai as he traveled in a motorcade in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Karzai was not hurt, but the governor of Kandahar province was wounded. The attacker was killed by Karzai's bodyguards.

Separately, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said Wednesday that a senior leader of the Haqqani network had been killed in an airstrike in the eastern part of the country.

The coalition said the militant leader, identified only as Dilawar, was killed on Tuesday in the Musa Khel district of Khost province.

Dilawar operated along the border between Khost and Paktika provinces, running weapons, moving foreign fighters and coordinating attacks on Afghan forces, the coalition said.

Afghan and NATO forces have conducted more than 530 operations this year to try to disrupt the Haqqani network, which has ties to both the Taliban and al-Qaida.

So far this year, more than 20 Haqqani leaders have been killed and more than 1,400 suspected Haqqani insurgents have been captured, the coalition said.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Plot to kill Afghan President Karzai foiled, officials say

By Joshua Partlow and Javed Hamdard, Thursday, October 6, 1:12 AM

KABUL — A microbiology professor at Kabul University, a fourth-year medical student and a security guard at the presidential palace were among six people arrested in a plot to assassinate President Hamid Karzai, Afghan officials said Wednesday.

The spokesman for Afghanistan’s intelligence agency said at a news conference that the plotters had confessed to working with two men, an Egyptian and a Bangladeshi operating out of Pakistan’s tribal region, who were allied with al-Qaeda and an insurgent group linked to the Taliban. Lutfullah Mashal said the “dangerous and educated group” planned to have the security guard kill Karzai on one of his trips to the provinces.

The arrests drew attention again to the danger facing top government officials here. In recent months, assassins have killed several key figures, including the president’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council and a regional power broker; leading police officials; and the mayor of Kandahar city. Last month, a man with a bomb in his turban killed former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading the government’s efforts at peace talks.

The head of the alleged six-man cell was identified as Emal Habib, the chairman of the microbiology department at Kabul University’s medical school. Afghan authorities said Habib worked with three university students who lived in Kabul, as well as with Mohibullah Ahmady, a guard with the palace administrative department, who was from Karzai’s home village of Karz, on the outskirts of Kandahar. They did not give details about the sixth man arrested.

The plot allegedly began a year ago when Habib made contact with people in Pakistan affiliated with terrorist groups. Afghan authorities said Habib and others visited the northwestern city of Peshawar and later the nearby tribal region of South Waziristan, where they met with two men, identified as Egyptian and Bangladeshi, who were affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, an insurgent group active in Afghanistan that has ties with Pakistan’s intelligence service. The group spent a week living in a mosque and learned how to fire guns and make bombs, according to Afghan officials, who added that $150,000 was paid into Habib’s Kabul Bank account by unspecified international organizations.

Karzai has survived assassination attempts in the past. In 2002, a gunman in an army uniform opened fire, but missed, while the president was traveling in Kandahar city. In 2008, insurgents attacked while Karzai was attending a military parade in Kabul. He has also had close calls from rocket attacks.

The persistent threat has prevented Karzai from traveling widely in the country, and he lives surrounded by guards, checkpoints and towering walls. The presidential security force includes more than 1,000 people, many of them loyalists from Karzai’s Pashtun tribe and home town. But his advisers worry that no security measure can prevent one of his guards from turning on him.

Mashal did not say when the six men were arrested, but a colleague of Habib’s said he had been absent from the university for about two weeks.

The dean of Kabul University’s medical school, Shirin Agha Zareef, said Habib had worked in the department for seven or eight years, spoke fluent English and “was very intelligent and very punctual in his classes.” The one development that captured Zareef’s attention was that Habib grew a long black beard and began to disregard the faculty’s Western-style dress code in favor of the traditional Afghan baggy pants and tunic.

When he confronted Habib, he said, he was told: “Mr. Dean, I have a pain at my waist. That’s why I can’t fasten a belt.”

“There are 260 professors,” Zareef said. “It’s difficult to know each one well.”

Hamdard is a special correspondent.

[Gubler, A.]

This introduction to Maj.Gen. Molan's (Ret.) latest article on Afghanistan has to be one of the most elegant and succient desciptions of our leadership approach to the entire military.

We can still win the Afghan war but we are being led by donkeys

by: Jim Molan
From:The Australian
October 07, 201112:00AM

IT is 10 years today since Operation Enduring Freedom began in Afghanistan. Hugh White of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University tells us that our involvement represents serious policy failure.

This is, he argues, because the policy objectives that we have set for ourselves (the kind of country that we want Afghanistan to be, the future role of the Taliban and the removal of a safe haven for terror) will not be achieved. Therefore, he asks, why should Australia stay and take more casualties?

Australia's commitment to Afghanistan has always been bad policy. Not the part that put Australia and the coalition into Afghanistan. That can be justified, but that is the easy part. As pink batts proved, anyone can come up with a policy, it is not hard, but successful implementation takes real ability.

The real failure is to run a war incompetently once you are committed. Australia's military leadership, advising governments that don't have a clue how to run a war, has long held a minimalist view on any operational commitment, having not learned from failure after failure, starting with Vietnam. Governments that are incapable of holding a view on operational matters, as they should, hear our military advice that participation is victory for Australia, and go meekly along, reverse engineering a strategy from this tactic of doing as little as we can get away with. Or even worse, they do not listen to the military.

As a result, our Afghanistan commitment makes pink batts and border policy look positively slick. The commentariat spends 99 per cent of its time debating how we got into these wars, but is incapable of debating how they should be run.

The last 1 per cent of effort is dissipated by breathless reporters who are appalled to discover that war involves killing, and convey the propaganda events of the enemy to our living rooms without any perspective. And without the government contradicting such reports - and a lack of government leadership has been a feature of both the Iraq and Afghanistan war - the population accepts that the war is lost and could never have been won.

The most basic lesson out of Iraq and Afghanistan is never enter a conflict unless you know what winning is and your strategy to win is aligned with your tactics.

Rest of article at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/we-can-still-win-the-afghan-war-but-we-are-being-led-by-donkeys/story-e6frg6zo-1226160619934

[buglerbilly]

Excellent commentary and article that will garner zero response from the Government or the Opposition.

[buglerbilly]

OCTOBER 7, 2011.

An Afghan Alliance Takes Unexpected Turn

Tribe Picked by U.S. to Fight Taliban Gets Tied Up in Its Own Feud; 'If They Take Our Land, We'll Kill Them All'.

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS

ACHIN, Afghanistan—In an area where the U.S. once tried to enlist tribal leaders in the war against the Taliban, clan fighting—some with weapons given by the U.S. to battle insurgents—is now undermining the effort.

The clash between two clans from the Shinwari tribe over a patch of desert land in Nangarhar province has tied down Afghan security forces for six months, slowing the campaign against insurgents and drug traffickers along this rugged section of the Pakistan border, U.S. and Afghan commanders say.


Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal
Cavalry Capt. Adam McCombs, center, meets with the Ali Sher Khel clan about their dispute with the Sepai.

Achin is witness daily to absurd scenes of government impotence. Clan fighters fire grenades and heavy machine guns at each other across the main road, lobbing rounds over the heads of 300 Afghan soldiers and police camped out in between. Boys skip school when it is their turn to stand guard, watching for boys from the enemy clan.

The disputed land is 2,500 acres of parched desert scrub near the road, with no water or known mineral wealth. The government claims it for its own, but forbids its troops from firing at either side in the clan conflict.

"If they take our land, we'll kill them all," Farook, an 18-year-old student from the Sepai clan, said of the rival Ali Sher Khel clan. "They're our brothers, but they're making trouble."

The dispute highlights the difficulty the U.S. has had finding alternative partners to the Kabul government, which is seen by many Afghans as corrupt and incompetent. Over 10 years of war, the U.S. has wooed village elders, flirted with warlords and created armed neighborhood-watch forces in its search for ways to make up for government shortcomings.

Last year, the Shinwari tribe seemed like a feasible partner. The tribe, which belongs to the Pashtun people, the foundation of the insurgency, agreed with the U.S. to embrace the Afghan government en masse, in exchange for $1 million in U.S. aid.

Afghan authorities, however, objected to being left out of the deal, and the pact collapsed—after the U.S. had already delivered weapons.

Today, the Americans worry the lack of security in Achin will spread, at a time when the U.S. is beginning to reduce its footprint in Nangarhar province as part of its troop drawdown.

"Right now if you're a citizen in…Achin, your government doesn't look very good," said Lt. Col. Jerry Turner, commander of 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment.

The short-lived pact thrust the U.S. into a Hatfield-McCoy world it didn't anticipate. Sparring over the land broke out within a few months, but was suspended under a one-year cease-fire. Fighting renewed this year, and weapons that were meant to be trained on the Taliban are instead being used in internecine warfare.

"It's not about good guys and bad guys," said Col. Turner. "I don't think we fully understand it, and I'm as versed in this as anyone."

The simplest explanation for the conflict is that the Shinwari population is growing, creating competition for land.


Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal
Sepai farmer Mohamed Wali

The Americans and some Afghans suspect clan chieftains, known as maliks, want to keep the dispute alive to distract the army and police from targeting their drug operations. In the spring, the district is alive with pink and purple opium poppies; these days the same fields are thick with chest-high marijuana plants.

Likewise, the Taliban are apparently supplying weapons to both sides to tie down government forces, U.S. and Afghan officers say. "They're keeping us busy over there so we can't conduct our regular security operations," said Col. Mohammed Kamaludin, commander of the Afghan army battalion in the area.

Casualty estimates vary. Col. Kamaludin said about 10 people have been killed or wounded this year, split evenly between the Sepai and Ali Sher Khel. The Ali Sher Khel say they have lost 20 dead and dozens wounded.

Though the U.S. military tries to maintain strict neutrality, the Ali Sher Khel accuse them of favoring the Sepai. When Cavalry Capt. Adam McCombs passed through an Ali Sher Khel neighborhood recently, he was accosted by shopkeeper Mohamed Amin, who demanded that the U.S. supply his clan with a heavy machine gun for every one the coalition gave to the Sepai last year. Capt. McCombs declined.

The Ali Sher Khel also complain the provincial governor and power broker, Gul Agha Shirzai, is biased against them, and his advisers have had to quell Ali Sher Khel rumors that he married the daughter of a Sepai malik. "He already has four wives; he can't marry a fifth," said the governor's political adviser.

The government, in a recent peace effort, managed to persuade the clans to allow civilian traffic to pass through no-man's land. Most schools reopened, although one headmaster says hundreds of students have switched to single-clan schools out of fear of violence. Markets, once completely shut, are now about 90% closed.

Gov. Shirzai's political adviser, Abdul Ahad, said he is confident peace talks sponsored by President Hamid Karzai will soon secure a cease-fire. Once the fighting stops, he said, the government will divide the land between the two clans. That seems far off for now.

"They're Afghans," sighed Army Maj. Mohamed Aizam, sitting in an abandoned gas station in no-man's land recently, as clan machine-gun rounds crisscrossed overhead. "It's Pashtun honor. If they were arguing over 10 afghani, they'd spend 500 afghani fighting over it."

Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com

[buglerbilly]

OCTOBER 7, 2011.

Lawless Pakistan

Sunni radicals are attacking Shiites, and could provoke a civil war..

Sunni extremists stopped a bus full of Shiites belonging to the Hazara ethnic group who were headed to work in southwestern Pakistan Tuesday. The gunmen forced everybody off the bus, stood them in a line and sprayed them with bullets, killing 13. This was the second attack in just a month against the Hazaras, the last claiming the lives of 26 pilgrims.

More than 2,200 Pakistani civilians have died so far this year in terrorist attacks. It is especially deadly for journalists, who are subject to threats and intimidation. Small minority groups like Christians and Ahmadis, a heterodox Muslim sect, find themselves routinely under attack.

The brazen strikes against the Hazara follow on the heels of the bombing of a Shiite mosque and a suicide attack on a Shiite procession in recent months. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni sectarian group allied with the Taliban, is thought to be involved in some of them.

Though the rivalry between Sunni and Shiites rests on a centuries-old theological debate within Islam, the Sunni majority has historically lived in peace with Pakistan's 30 million Shiites. As columnist Sadanand Dhume wrote on these pages last month, some of the country's most prominent leaders since 1947 have hailed from Shiite communities. Yet Sunni fundamentalists who find Shiite practices and observances heretical have these communities suddenly scared.

Pakistan's Sunni radicals are the real minority in Pakistan. But they have managed to terrorize the rest of the country because of the culture of lawlessness and impunity. Police promised a crackdown on Sunni militants Wednesday. But with the writ of the state eroding, Pakistanis are skeptical. This week, the judge who passed a death sentence on the assassin of liberal politician Salman Taseer went on an indefinite leave. He reportedly received death threats.

Unless Pakistan's government takes stronger steps to protect its Shiite citizens, they'll have little choice but to try to defend themselves. Pakistan's existing insurgency could descend into a civil war.

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan is losing time for a peaceful solution – and the Taliban know it

Headlines of the past decade in Afghanistan have been about the bloodshed, but behind them lies political failure at every level

Declan Walsh

The Guardian, Friday 7 October 2011


Ten years after they were hounded across the border into Pakistan and were ready to surrender, Taliban insurgents have regrouped to become a formidable force once more. Photograph: Véronique de Viguerie

Ten years ago, as the first American bombs fell on Afghanistan, a Pashtun tribal leader slipped across the Pakistani border riding a motorbike. He wore a loosely tied turban, was accompanied by three companions and carried a CIA-donated satellite phone. His name was Hamid Karzai.

US-backed militias were sweeping towards Kabul from the north; Karzai's job was to help rout the Taliban in the south. Using his CIA phone he called in a team of US special forces soldiers, who swooped in by helicopter with weapons for another 300 fighters. Together, they pushed towards the Taliban's spiritual home of Kandahar. Victory was at hand. But first, a momentous meeting.

On the morning of 5 December, Karzai received a Taliban delegation in Shah Wali Kot, 20 miles north of Kandahar. Things were moving fast. Hours earlier, Afghan tribal elders gathered in Bonn, Germany, had anointed Karzai as the country's interim leader; the UN signed off on the arrangement. In Kandahar, the reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar dispatched his second in command and defence minister, Mullah Obaidullah, to meet Karzai.

Recognising defeat, the Taliban wanted to talk peace: a formal surrender, the transfer of vehicles and weapons, an end to fighting in Kandahar, all in return for assurances their leaders could be able to return to their villages. That night Obaidullah sent bread for Karzai, in a gesture of conciliation.

In retrospect, it was a tantalising opportunity for a smooth post-Taliban transition and, perhaps, a novel political dispensation. But it wasn't to be. Furious after the 9/11 attacks, the US war machine pursued the Taliban hard. Karzai, the new leader, acquiesced. And the Taliban leadership slunk across the border into Pakistan to lick their wounds and plan the resurgence that is racking the country today.

The exact circumstances of that meeting are still debated among historians. But the irony is lost on few that, today, President Karzai wants to get back into that room with the bearded Talibs in Shah Wali Kot. After 10 years of steadily rising conflict and with the prospect of a major American withdrawal by the end of 2014, Karzai knows that his political future – and perhaps that of his country – could hinge on a negotiated settlement to the conflict. The question is whether there's enough time left to achieve it.

The headlines of the past decade in Afghanistan have been written in blood – about 17,000 civilians and 2,750 foreign soldiers killed, countless suicide bombings and, in recent years, guerrilla spectaculars such as the recent 20-hour assault on the US embassy. But if war has dominated the news, the greatest failings have been political.

At first, it seemed anything was possible. As the Talibs fled in late 2001, reporters filed stories about jubilant women casting off their burqas; kites, banned under the Taliban, fluttered in the skies. Then came more substantial gestures: promises of money, development and democracy. That mood of hope peaked in 2004, with the first presidential poll. Some 70% of voters participated and Karzai scooped a 55% majority, with support from every ethnic group. Designer Tom Ford hailed him as the "chicest man on the planet" for his flowing cape and wool hat.

An airy sense of confidence gripped Kabul, which expressed itself in small ways – young lovers who defied convention and eloped in "love marriages"; palatial wedding halls modelled on mirrored-glass skyscrapers from Dubai; flourishing body-building and sports clubs. On the edge of the city, I visited the Kabul golf club, which had shut under the Taliban, now open after the putting greens had been swept for mines. The course pro, recently returned from exile, told me the Taliban had flogged him with a steel cable. Now a gentrified warlord was financing the renovations. "Attack the course," urged the scorecard.

The joke was not seen as bad taste. The Taliban insurgency was distant, largely confined to the southern provinces, more nuisance than serious threat. A Swiss Red Cross worker had been killed in Kandahar in March 2003, but western military officials had started to speak of the Taliban as a declining force. At Bagram airbase, north of Kabul, American soldiers took pedicures and massages in a beauty parlour. "You can't fight if you have sore muscles," one young officer told me.

Yet this brave democracy had perilously fragile foundations. The US invasion had toppled the Taliban but, many Afghans complained, left behind the force they hated equally: the warlords who had plundered the country for decades. Instead of being banished, many of the old faces were back. Some stood for election, such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, the US-allied warlord accused of suffocating up to 2,000 Taliban fighters in shipping containers. In 2005 Karzai made him chief of staff to the military.

The president protested he had little choice but to accommodate such bullies – the Americans wanted nation building on the cheap. He had a point. The Bush administration, preoccupied with the war in Iraq, had only 8,000 soldiers in Afghanistan at the time of the 2004 election. Commanders, intelligence assets, military equipment – all were being re-routed to Baghdad.

Meanwhile, across the border in Pakistan, the Taliban leadership were plotting a comeback. There was clearly no place in a political process – American leaders bundled them in the same basket as al-Qaida fugitives, which was a mistake. Then, in 2005, they made a dramatic reappearance. Violent incidents soared to more than 4,000, from 1,500 the year before. Coalition deaths doubled from 60 to 131.

Pakistan denied the insurgents were using its territory but Nato officers spoke of the "Quetta Shura" – the Taliban ruling council headquartered in western Pakistan. More worrying proof was available. In 2006 I attended a funeral north of Quetta for a fallen Taliban fighter; the homily was read by a mullah who was also the provincial minister of health.

It was a perfect storm for the British deployment to Helmand. Few took seriously the statement by the then defence secretary, John Reid, in mid 2006 that "not a single shot" might be fired. But British officers did promise to do things differently from the Americans. Criss-crossing the desert in nimble – but hugely exposed – open-top jeeps, officers said there would be no kicking down people's doors. They talked confidently about the lessons of Northern Ireland; young soldiers strolled the bazaars, playing football with local kids.

None of that lasted long. By June, British troops had been sucked into a vicious fight in Sangin, a village deep in Helmand's heroin country that threatened to become a British Alamo. Insurgents streamed across the desert from Pakistan; the death toll inched upwards. British commanders turned to pulverising air strikes and helicopter gunships that killed hundreds of Taliban fighters. But the more the British killed, the more fighters seemed to spring up.

The violence spread like a virus. Nato launched Operation Medusa in neighbouring Kandahar in summer 2006 – the alliance's first land operation. It was a success, of sorts. Canadian soldiers started the fight and Americans finished it, driving the Taliban back over the border towards Quetta. I toured the battlefield with Colonel Stephen Williams, a flamboyant American who played heavy metal music as his artillery pounded Taliban-held compounds. "Rock'n'roll, man," he said.

But the Taliban were also adapting. The insurgency melted out of sight, instead attacking western and Afghan forces with roadside bombs and suicide attacks. Casualties of western troops mounted, touching a high of 711 last year. Some 2,700 civilians also perished. The main problem was that the Afghan government seemed incapable of holding captured ground. In Kabul, western officials scrambled to come up with solutions.

Every season brought a new initiative – counter-narcotics, building the justice system, rooting out corruption. At first western forces demobilised Afghan militias, then they started to arm them. Diplomats attended fundraising events in Tokyo, Berlin and London, trying to maintain flagging interest. The term "Afghanisation" – putting Afghan soldiers, civil servants or policemen up front – became an article of shaky faith.

But no amount of money or soldiers seemed capable of patching up the deeply dysfunctional relationship at the heart of the affair. Anger and frustration turned to resentment and deep mistrust on both sides. Diplomatic cables from 2009 released through WikiLeaks showed the US ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, describing Karzai as a "paranoid and weak individual unfamiliar with the basics of nation building". Another cable noted that Karzai's deputy, Ahmad Zia Massoud, had been questioned after arriving in Dubai with $52m in cash – raising questions about financial propriety at the highest levels of government.

The Obama "surge" of two years ago, bringing the US contingent to more than 100,000 troops, was supposed to rescue the situation. It succeeded in part. Western troops now control a greater swath of southern Afghanistan than they have for years; Taliban violence there is receding. Yet the fight has simply shifted to the mountainous east, along the border with Pakistan's tribal belt.

The area is controlled by the notorious Haqqani network – the tribal jihadi clan based out of north Waziristan, and recently the subject of friction between the US and the Pakistani military. The US accuses Pakistan's ISI intelligence service of supporting the Haqqanis, who carried out the daring 13 September attack on the US embassy. The Pakistanis say they don't know what the US wants – to make peace with the insurgents, or to fight them.

Amid the confusion, the one sure thing is that, by the end of 2014, the US and Britain will have withdrawn most of their troops. Talk of an "endgame" may be premature: informed officials say that between 10,000 and 20,000 US soldiers will remain behind to support Karzai's government.

But will it survive? The prospect of talks with the Taliban has already resurrected old ethnic tensions; grave talk of civil war runs quietly in the corridors of diplomacy. Karzai periodically says he would like to sit down with the Taliban leaders, as he once did 10 years ago. The question now is whether that would solve Afghanistan's conflict, or propel it into a new phase.

[buglerbilly]

Twelve women soldiers ordered home from Afghanistan after finding out they are pregnant

By Ian Drury

Last updated at 1:26 AM on 7th October 2011

Twelve British servicewomen on operations in Afghanistan have been sent home this year after becoming pregnant.

They were evacuated under military rules that ban mothers-to-be from serving in a war zone.

The women were flown back to the UK between January and August this year. It takes the total number of female troops removed from Afghanistan due to pregnancy since 2003 to 64, according to official figures.


There has been a rise in the number of women finding out they are pregnant while at war

The women all discovered they were pregnant on the front line. It is not known how many of the babies were conceived in Afghanistan and how many in the UK. The Armed Forces do not have a set-in-stone ‘no-touching’ rule for troops in the war zone.

But all 700 women and 8,500 men serving there are warned that the Ministry of Defence does not approve of sexual relations between troops and that any inappropriate behaviour would breach standards guidelines.

Those caught having sex usually face a rebuke from their commanding officer or more serious disciplinary action, depending on the rank and position of those involved.

An Army source said: ‘Life at base comes with both boredom and fear. And emotions are heightened because anyone could get hurt tomorrow. The ratio is many men to a single girl. It’s little surprise there are hook-ups.’

An MOD insider said: ‘People can be at war for a long time so they have sex with their partner before they go and then they don’t know they’re pregnant until they get out there.’

Servicemen and women get three weeks off before they deploy to Afghanistan and two weeks rest and recuperation during their tour of duty, which can be as long as six months.

Having significant numbers of women serving alongside men is a recent phenomenon. Around 10 per cent of members of the forces are women.

In February, the Daily Mail told how Private Kayla Donnelly, then 21, served on the front line in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province while seven months pregnant. She had conceived before going to the war zone.

Pte Donnelly, from Penrith, Cumbria, who serves with 12 Logistic Support Regiment, put the changes to her body and weight gain down to high-calorie army rations and the stress of war. She only realised she was expecting two weeks after she returned home and gave birth to son Josh.

At least 102 British servicewomen posted to Iraq were sent home after it was found they were pregnant.

An MOD spokesman said: ‘The small numbers of personnel who discover that they are pregnant on operations (or at sea) are returned at the first convenient opportunity. The MOD does not encourage or condone sexual relationships in theatre.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046027/Twelve-women-soldiers-sent-home-Afghanistan-finding-pregnant.html#ixzz1a3gBvekB

[buglerbilly]

With Afghan drawdown looming, U.S. scales back ambitions

By Greg Jaffe and Joshua Partlow, Friday, October 7, 8:26 AM

The war in Afghanistan began as the good war. Today it is the good-enough war.

In Kabul and Washington, the push is on to wind down a fight that on Friday will mark its 10th anniversary. U.S. officials, who are facing a future of fewer troops and less money for reconstruction, are narrowing their goals for the country. The constrained ambitions come amid pressure from the Obama administration to scale back the U.S. commitment at a time of flagging public support.

In southern Afghanistan, American commanders are focused on holding territory taken from the Taliban over the past two fighting seasons. In the Afghan capital, U.S. officials are working to restart peace and reconciliation talks that appear to be going nowhere. And in the east, where violence is up slightly over last year and plans for U.S. reinforcements were scuttled this spring, military commanders are pressing new offensives before troop levels begin to fall. That is where American commanders face their most daunting challenge.

“Our sense of urgency is driven by time and a recognition that we will never have more forces on the ground than we do right now,” said Maj. Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, the U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan.

U.S. troop levels, which are at their peak of about 98,000, will shrink by about 30,000 by summer. The coming cuts have led senior military officials to press forward with large-scale operations designed to take on key insurgent strongholds before troop levels decline, U.S. military officials said.

Many of those assaults have focused on shoring up security along the southern approaches to Kabul, where the Haqqani network has sought to expand its presence. The insurgent group has been responsible for many high-profile attacks in the capital.

The military had plans this year to shift some combat forces from the south to the east to help in the battle against Haqqani strongholds, but those plans were shelved because commanders were worried that if they thinned out forces in the south too quickly, they would give up hard-won gains there. “You’ve ended up with about two-thirds of the planned-for uses of the surge,” said a U.S. official in Afghanistan, one of several who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the state of the war candidly.

The inability to increase the size of the U.S. force in the east, currently about 30,000 troops, has compelled commanders to make tough choices. They have identified 45 of 160 districts as “key terrain districts” where security and governance must take hold. To further focus limited resources, they have designated 21 of the 45 as “priority” districts.

“If we stabilize the 45 key terrain districts, that directly affects 80 percent of the 7.5 million people in regional command east,” Allyn said.

The focus has meant forgoing some plans that may have made sense a few years earlier. In Paktika province, long a stronghold of the Haqqani network, military commanders recently held off building a string of outposts to help Afghan police forces hold an area where they had crumbled in the past.

U.S. officials focusing on reconstruction are also scaling back goals and expectations. In Konar province, a restive area along the Pakistani border, money that went toward paying Afghan elders $120 monthly stipends to sit on district councils, known as shuras, was eliminated. About half of the elders are expected to stay with the quasi-official bodies, which play key roles in areas such as local dispute resolution.

“It remains to be seen if they will continue to be effective,” said a U.S. official in eastern Afghanistan who follows the program. “We have dramatically reduced expectations of what we can accomplish here.”

Despite the problems, U.S. commanders point to signs of progress. There are new indications that the Taliban is having a harder time recruiting fighters locally. In two districts of Ghazni province where U.S. forces have fought tough battles, as many as 55 percent of insurgents who were captured or killed had come from outside the region to fight. Many of the fighters were drawn from the “vast Pashtun sea” that straddles both sides of the border with Pakistan, a senior U.S. military official said.

Some commanders point to the influx of foreign fighters as a sign that Afghans are ready to seek peace. “What we can definitively state is that the population is tired of the fighting,” said Allyn, the top commander in the east.

Others worry that the supply of young fighters from Pakistan could be inexhaustible. “They are like bees,” one U.S. official said. “How many do you have to kill to get them all?”

Dissatisfaction with Kabul

U.S. and Afghan forces have made their biggest gains over the past year in southern Afghanistan. Violence levels have fallen dramatically in the wake of advances by U.S. troops, and the Afghan army and police have performed better than expected in many of these areas.

“Their efforts have seized the initiative from the Taliban, and they will not regain it,” Lt. Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the No. 2 commander in Afghanistan, said at a ceremony in Kandahar province last week.

The concern, even in the south, is that the military gains against the Taliban have not led to widespread improvements in the performance of the Kabul government or a reduction in the sort of corruption that drives Afghans to support the insurgency.

“If we continue to draw down forces at pace while such public and systemic corruption is left unchecked . . . we risk leaving behind a government in which we cannot reasonably expect Afghans to have faith,” Adm. Mike Mullen said late last month before stepping down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In recent months, U.S. efforts to confront Afghan corruption have stumbled or been scaled back. A turning point came in the spring, when Afghan investigators, working with Western advisers, arrested an aide to President Hamid Karzai on allegations of bribery. Karzai intervened to spring the aide from prison on the day of the arrest, and the political firestorm led to a deep discord in U.S.-Afghan relations. Karzai later compared the American advisers’ actions to detentions carried out during the Soviet occupation.

Since then, prosecutions of corrupt officials have been almost nonexistent. “How many major cases brought to the attorney general have been resolved? It is a fairly depressing number,” the senior military official said.

Kabul’s unwillingness to weed out incompetent leaders also has disappointed U.S. officials. In one key eastern province, the Americans have been pressing for almost a year to replace the governor, U.S. officials said.

“Karzai has not supported state institution building and instead tried to balance power brokers, creating his own [power] base,” one former U.S. official said.

In areas where there are strong provincial and district governors, such as Helmand province, U.S. officials said, the Taliban losses have been most sweeping and the gains seem most certain to hold. Another bright spot has been an effort, led by U.S. Special Forces troops, to work with elders to build village police forces. About 7,500 Afghans participate in the program, and Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has said that he hopes to double the size of the program to 15,000.

Setbacks to peace talks

The Americans’ best hope for a resolution to the conflict, a peace deal with one or more of the key insurgent groups, has been plagued by setbacks in recent months. The outreach sometimes has ended in calamity and sometimes in farce. Last fall, a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta embarrassed the government by passing himself off as one of the Taliban’s most senior commanders. The imposter was flown to Kabul on a NATO jet and ushered into the presidential palace to meet Karzai.

Earlier this year, a representative of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, Tayyab Agha, met with State Department officials in Germany and Qatar but pulled out when news of those liaisons was made public. Last month, another promising Taliban contact deceived his hosts and blew himself up while hugging former Afghan president and peace negotiator Burhannudin Rabbani, killing him.

“That was the last nail in the coffin for peace with the Taliban,” said Ahmed Wali Massoud, an opposition leader from northern Afghanistan who is against negotiating with insurgents. “The policy has failed.”

Both American and Afghan officials still acknowledge the need to jump-start serious discussions about peace. They now suggest that they must engage Pakistan’s government more directly, in the hope that Islamabad can persuade insurgents to come to the bargaining table. But others worry that the United States’ desire to extricate itself makes it more likely that the Pakistanis will stand pat.

“At the end of the day, there is going to have to be some political resolution of the insurgency,” said another senior U.S. official in Afghanistan. “We’re not anywhere near that now. But we can’t give up the effort.”

Partlow reported from Kabul. Staff writer Kevin Sieff contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Former US Commander in Afghanistan Says US Lacked Understanding of the Country from Day 1 (excerpt)

(Source: Washington Post; published Oct. 7, 2011)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. began the war in Afghanistan with a “frighteningly simplistic” view of the country, and even 10 years later lacks knowledge that could help bring the conflict to a successful end, a former top commander said Thursday.

Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations that the U.S. and its NATO allies are only “a little better than” 50 percent of the way to reaching their war goals.

Of the remaining tasks to be accomplished, he said the most difficult may be creating a legitimate government that ordinary Afghans can believe in and that can serve as a counterweight to the Taliban.

McChrystal, who commanded coalition forces in 2009-10 and was forced to resign in a flap over a magazine article, said the U.S. entered Afghanistan in October 2001 with too little knowledge of Afghan culture.

“We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough,” he said. “Most of us — me included — had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.”

(end of excerpt)

Click here for the full story, on the Washington Post website.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-us-commander-in-afghanistan-says-us-lacked-understanding-of-the-country-from-day-1/2011/10/06/gIQAK5wARL_story.html

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan Operational Air Update

(Source: UK Ministry of Defence; issued Oct. 6, 2011)

RAF and Royal Navy personnel conducted numerous missions across southern Afghanistan in the week of 26 September to 2 October 2011. Here follows an operational update.

Attack

The Kandahar-based Reapers of 39 Squadron were engaged in operations that again necessitated Hellfire missile strikes. Displaying considerable tactical restraint, the Reaper crews successfully countered the insurgents' best efforts to seek cover among civilians and along tree lines.

In addition, they provided almost 300 hours of detailed video imagery and other reconnaissance, all contributing to the improving security situation and protecting the populace in the area.

Air mobility and lift

The VC10 aircraft of 101 Squadron, detached to 902 Expeditionary Air Wing (EAW), continue to provide direct support to an array of coalition fast jets, with their twin-hose configuration being used to great effect to deliver 120 tonnes of fuel.

This takes the total fuel delivered for September 2011 to 386 tonnes, a capability which enabled coalition fast jets to remain on task for extended periods.

On one mission, two pairs of coalition aircraft took turns to receive fuel while the other provided close air support, thereby ensuring that the troops engaged by insurgents had the best cover possible.

Intelligence and situational awareness

The Tornado GR4s of 31 Squadron, operating alongside 903 EAW at Kandahar Airfield, continue to provide a highly influential presence in Afghanistan.

They conducted ten shows of force across the breadth of southern Afghanistan from Regional Command [RC] (West) to RC (East), not only in support of UK troops but also coalition partners, including American and Italian units.

The imagery capabilities provided by the GR4's RAPTOR and Litening III pods continue to be used to survey patrol routes and helicopter landing sites in the south west of the country.

And the Royal Navy's Sea King Mk7 Airborne Surveillance and Control (SKASaC) helicopters, operating from 903 EAW's base at Camp Bastion, have been pivotal in the successful detention of key insurgents in Helmand province.

Whilst supporting the US Marines of the 2nd Light Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion (2nd LAR), one SKASaC helicopter crew detected and tracked a suspicious vehicle using their cutting-edge ground moving target indication radar.

By sharing their information with other coalition reconnaissance aircraft, 2nd LAR were able to intercept and capture two experienced insurgent bomb-makers.

-ends-

[buglerbilly]

Obama: Pakistan Hedges Bets With Militant Ties

October 07, 2011

Associated Press|by Bradley Klapper

WASHINGTON -- President Obama said Pakistan is "hedging its bets" by maintaining ties to militant groups that are trying to undermine the government in neighboring Afghanistan, and acknowledged Thursday that the United States has been unable to convince Pakistan that the U.S. goals of a stable Afghanistan poses no threat to its neighbor.

Obama did not echo the harsh assessment of his former chief military adviser that Pakistan had contributed directly to a militant attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

The president said the U.S. would "constantly evaluate" its relationship with Pakistan to see whether it was advancing American interests. Having given Pakistan more than $20 billion in aid since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Americans are increasingly questioning the value of assistance that has yet to yield a more willing partner in the fight against Islamic extremist groups fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

"I think that they have hedged their bets, in terms of what Afghanistan would look like. And part of hedging their bets is having interactions with some of the unsavory characters who they think might end up regaining power in Afghanistan after coalition forces have left," Obama said.

A few days before leaving his job last month, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen called the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani insurgent network a "veritable arm" of the Pakistani intelligence agency and alleged direct support for militants who had mounted a 20-hour rocket attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul the week before.

The United States wants to "transition out of Afghanistan and leave a stable government behind, one that is independent, one that is respectful of human rights, one that is democratic," Obama told a news conference. The reference was to a plan to withdraw U.S. and other international forces by 2015. He added: "Pakistan, I think, has been more ambivalent about some of our goals there."

The president's assessment in many ways reflected long-standing U.S. worries about perceived Pakistani duplicity in the fight against terrorists and Taliban-linked insurgents. After more than a decade of inconsistent counterterror cooperation, and the revelation that Osama bin Laden was living unmolested in a military town near Islamabad, Washington's suspicions have grown deeper.

"There is no doubt that there's some connections that the Pakistani military and intelligence services have with certain individuals that we find troublesome," Obama said

He said the U.S. was trying to bring the two neighbors closer together, "but we've still got more work to do."

While the U.S. has suspended some military assistance to Pakistan, Obama rejected the idea that the U.S. would withhold humanitarian aid for disasters such as floods "because of poor decisions by their intelligence services."

He conceded that Americans are "not going to feel comfortable with a long-term strategic relationship with Pakistan if we don't think that they're mindful of our interests as well," but he stressed that his administration has made great strides in its No. 1 job in Pakistan: fighting al-Qaida.

In elaborating his argument, he avoided any mention of the U.S. operation that killed bin Laden in May, and the Pakistani anger it has prompted, saying only that American successes in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan could not have been possible without Pakistani support.

"On a whole range of issues, they have been an effective partner with us," Obama noted.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Karzai: Taliban Can't Move Finger Without Pakistan

October 07, 2011

Associated Press|by Deb Riechmann

KABUL, Afghanistan - As the war in Afghanistan hit the 10-year mark Friday, President Hamid Karzai claimed the Taliban are being propped up by neighboring Pakistan, saying the militants can't lift a finger without the Pakistanis.

The war will only end when something is done to rout insurgents from their sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan, Karzai said in an interview with the BBC that aired on Friday, exactly 10 years after the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001.

The invasion was aimed at toppling the hard-line Taliban regime and punishing it for giving safe harbor to al-Qaida, which orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Over the years, the U.S.-led coalition became mired in a battle against insurgents who have been weakened by international troops yet continue to plant bombs and stage suicide attacks and assassinations of top Afghan figures.

"Definitely, the Taliban will not be able to move a finger without Pakistani support," Karzai said. "The fact is the Taliban were and are stationed, in terms of their political headquarters and operational headquarters, in Pakistan. We all know that. The Pakistanis know that. We know that."

Militant sanctuaries in Pakistan won't go away unless the government of Pakistan cooperates with Afghanistan and the international community finds an effective way to remove the hide-outs, he said.

"We're not saying this in a manner of accusation and reprimand," Karzai added, trying not to inflame already strained relations between the two nations. "We are saying this in a manner of a statement intended towards a solution of the problem."

Pakistan maintains it cut off ties to the Taliban and other militants following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, but Washington and Kabul say otherwise.

President Barack Obama said Thursday that Pakistan was "hedging its bets" by maintaining ties to militant groups trying to undermine the Afghan government. Obama also acknowledged that the United States has not been able to persuade Pakistan that the U.S. goals of a stable Afghanistan pose no threat to Pakistan.

Just-retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen went further, recently calling the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani insurgent network a "veritable arm" of the Pakistani intelligence agency. Mullen also alleged that Pakistani intelligence supported militants who mounted a recent 20-hour rocket attack on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in the capital, Kabul.

In the wide-ranging interview, Karzai candidly said the Afghan government and international allies have failed to provide security for the Afghan people. He also said that his government wants to talk to the Taliban, but doesn't know where to contact legitimate representatives of the insurgency.

Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading the government's U.S.-backed effort to talk peace with the Taliban, was killed Sept. 20 by an assassin who claimed to be an emissary from the Taliban. Upon meeting Rabbani, the killer detonated explosives he had tucked into his turban - a deadly blast that dealt a major setback to efforts to find a political resolution to the war.

The Afghan government with support from its international allies has been making peace overtures to the Taliban for years. But after Rabbani's death, Karzai shifted his policy, saying he was giving up trying to talk to alleged Taliban envoys. He said Pakistan holds the only key to making peace with insurgents and must do more to support reconciliation.

"We have not said we will not talk to them (the Taliban)," Karzai said. "We've said we don't know who to talk to.

"We're not dealing with an identifiable individual as a representative of the Taliban, or a place that we can knock on and say, 'Well, here we are. We want to talk to you.'"

"Until that place emerges - an address and a representative - we will not be able to talk to the Taliban because we don't know where to find them," he said.

The Taliban have not claimed responsibility for Rabbani's death.

Asked what needs to be improved in Afghanistan, Karzai acknowledged, "We've done terribly badly in providing security to the Afghan people and this is the greatest shortcoming of our government and of our international partners. What we should do is provide better and a more predictable environment of security to the Afghan citizens and in that, the international community and the Afghan government definitely have failed."

Violence continued Friday with attacks on at least three coalition posts in Paktika province near the Pakistan border.

A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives near the entrance to Combat Outpost Margah, which had also been hit with 22 rockets, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. Combat Forward Operating Base Tillman was hit with a half-dozen rockets and Forward Operating Base Boris was struck with two.

No deaths were reported among NATO service members.

Separately, the U.S.-led coalition said Friday that it is conducting an investigation to determine how a NATO service member died in southern Afghanistan. NATO did not disclose any other details about what led to the service member's death on Thursday.

So far this year, 458 NATO troops have been killed in Afghanistan. The death is the fourth so far this month.

In the capital, former Afghan Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabet went missing Thursday afternoon after he was attacked by two gunman, said Mohammad Zahir, the chief of criminal investigation for the Kabul police.
---
Associated Press Writers Amir Shah in Kabul and Matt Ford in Paktika contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Panetta Spills a Little on Secret CIA Drones

October 07, 2011

Associated Press|by Lolita C. Baldor



NAVAL AIR STATION SIGONELLA, Italy - There was a time when U.S. officials wouldn't breathe a word about the CIA's clandestine use of Predator drones.

Now it seems that the veil is lifting, at least a bit.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta - a former CIA director - is occasionally weaving the CIA's unmanned aircraft into his remarks.

On Friday, he joked to an auditorium full of troops at a base in Naples, Italy, that "obviously I have a helluva lot more weapons available to me in this job than I had at the CIA." Then he added, as an aside, "Although the Predators aren't that bad."

And at a stop at Sigonella air station a short time later, he was ticking off the attributes of the coalition forces there who have been participating in the Libya operation.

Standing in front of a Global Hawk surveillance drone, he observed that the troops have used the unarmed aircraft in missions over Libya, as well as the armed Predators. And then he added that the Predators were "something I was very familiar with in my last job."

During Panetta's tenure at the CIA, the use of armed drones to target insurgents, particularly inside the borders of Pakistan, escalated and expanded. And just last week, a CIA Predator was used in a strike in Yemen to kill U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a key al-Qaida figure in the Arabian Peninsula.

The CIA's use of drones to strike militants in Pakistan - largely those who are involved in launching attacks against U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan - has drawn sharp criticism from Islamabad and cries that the missions violate the country's sovereignty.

At no time did Panetta mention any of the countries or CIA operations where the drones were used - saying only that he finds them to be a key weapon.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan civil war a significant risk, 'cold-eyed' British review to warn

On 10th anniversary of start of war, patchy progress brings fears civil war or Taliban takeover could follow Nato's 2014 withdrawal

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor

guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 October 2011 15.19 BST


British troops come under fire while on patrol in the Babaji district of Helmand province, southern Afghanistan. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

A British government review of the Afghan conflict is to warn that there are "significant risks" of civil war or a Taliban takeover of the south and east of the country after Nato withdraws its combat troops at the end of the 2014.

On the 10th anniversary of the start of the war, military progress is patchy with fighting still intense in the east and in parts of Helmand province. Over the past few days, British troops have been sent in to the thick of a bloody, drawn-out struggle along the Helmand river valley, taking over a fiercely contested area from US marines a few miles south of Sangin town, the site of the UK's heaviest losses since its forces moved into the province in 2006.

With three years to go until Afghan security forces are supposed to fight the insurgency without the help of foreign combat troops, the Afghanistan review will portray a country in turmoil. Last year's 30,000-strong US troop surge and new counterinsurgency tactics have pushed the Taliban out of much of the territory it controlled a year ago, but with the widespread use of improvised mines and roadside bombs, as well as a campaign of assassinations, the insurgents have sought to paralyse the Kabul government and hinder western-backed development.

Retired General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), said the force was only "50% of the way" to achieving its goals in the country.

President Hamid Karzai's administration remains weak and corrupt, reliant on a loose coalition of warlords. The country's biggest bank has been crippled by rampant embezzlement, and there have been a string of assassinations of high-profile Karzai allies, culminating last month in the killing of the government top peace envoy, Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The government review, ordered by David Cameron in the summer and due to be delivered in mid-November, will warn of significant risks of the recent, hard-won progress unravelling and the very real threat of a multi-dimensional civil war between insurgent factions, regional and tribal groups, fuelled by neighbouring powers jockeying for position.

Another possible outcome is referred to as the "Talibanisation of the Pashtun belt", in which the Pashtun areas on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border slip permanently under the control of ultra-conservative militants, further destabilising Pakistan, an already fragile state armed with nuclear weapons.

The report, as described by officials, will make clear that these remain worst-case scenarios which can be avoided. But even the outcome judged by the report to be most likely after the 2014 transition, a precarious Afghan state with pockets of chronic violence, would leave the terrorist threat to the UK from the region as potent as it is today.

A senior British diplomat would not comment on the specifics of the review as it is classified and has yet to be finalised, but confirmed that "those sorts of scenarios are being studied".

"It is going to be a cold-eyed realistic appraisal," the diplomat said.

The 20 September killing of Rabbani by a suicide bomber with explosives concealed in his turban, has set back hopes of a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. While senior Nato officials believe the evidence leads back to the Taliban's Pakistan haven in Quetta, they do not think the assassination was specifically ordered by the top leadership, but rather was the work of an over-zealous second-tier commander. That leaves open the possibility that informal US contacts, begun last year, could resume.

But levels of distrust, both between Nato and the Taliban, and between Rabbani's northern kinsmen and rebel Pashtun tribes in the south, are now higher than ever.

"Anyone who is following the situation in Afghanistan is worried. A civil war is a real possibility," said Martine van Bijlert of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network.

"There is a real feeling of instability, that the future is unsure. People don't know who are their friends and enemies. So they try to make themselves ready for any eventuality, positioning themselves politically and worrying about how strong they are. People are falling back on old networks and old loyalties."

In Helmand, last year's influx of 11,000 of US marines has suppressed the insurgency in several districts and reduced the pressure on British troops garrisoned in the province. But Barack Obama is now drawing down the surge, and the troops are going home or redploying to the eastern provinces to counter the threat of splinter jihadist groups based in the Pakistani tribal areas.

Three hundred soldiers from 2nd battalion the Mercian Regiment are currently being deployed with Afghan troops along a particularly volatile stretch of the Helmand river south of Sangin, replacing a US marine battalion that was unable to make progress against the local insurgents and found itself under daily attack, suffering five deaths over six months and more than 80 wounded.

Danish forces stationed further south towards the town of Gereshk were forced to withdraw earlier this year from a forward base known as Armadillo as a result of an insurgent onslaught, dismantling the fortifications stone by stone and shipping part of it back to a military museum in Denmark.

The newly-arrived British troops and their Afghan counterparts will be patrolling an area known as Qal Yeh Gaz, just eight miles south of Sangin town. One of the departing US marines, Captain Andrew Terrell told the BBC that "not a lot has changed" since he was was deployed nearby with Royal Marine 40 Commando four years ago.

"The situation is no better. The people here are not fed up with the fighting, they've not reached the limit of what they're willing to accept from the Taliban," Terrell said. "It's easier for them to move out of the area and hope it settles down, but they don't look much further than tomorrow."

A coalition of Afghan and western aid agencies has published research suggesting that despite the influx of $57bn in foreign aid since 2001, progress in health, education and a public sense of security has been patchy and tenuous.

Farhana Faruqi Stocker, the director of Afghanaid said: "Investments have been made where there is the greatest insurgency rather than where there is the greatest need. Impoverished regions have been ignored because they are 'secure'."

She added: "Afghan lives have improved but the gains are fragile and reversible."

[buglerbilly]

Afghan government seeks Pakistan’s help in stalled peace process

By Joshua Partlow and Karin Brulliard, Sunday, October 9, 4:25 AM

KABUL — With prospects for peace talks at a new low, the Afghan government is attempting to resuscitate negotiations with a seemingly contradictory approach: publicly bashing the Pakistanis for supporting the Taliban while at the same time asking for their help.

In a series of recent speeches and interviews, President Hamid Karzai has sought to balance inflammatory remarks that Pakistan is fighting a proxy war in Afghanistan with conciliatory appeals for greater cooperation among neighbors.

Last week, for example, Karzai signed a strategic partnership agreement with India, Pakistan’s arch-rival, but on the same trip he called Pakistan a “twin brother” and the key to long-term peace. After years of failed efforts to talk directly with the Taliban, Karzai has decided he must talk through Pakistan to make progress.

“When President Karzai says we want to talk to Pakistan, it doesn’t mean we are at war with Pakistan,” Mohammed Umer Daudzai, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, said in an interview. “It means all the other contacts didn’t work. We want to go through Pakistan for any dialogue with the Taliban.”

Afghanistan’s new position in some ways mirrors the Obama administration’s own dilemma with Pakistan. Many U.S. officials are convinced that Pakistan’s intelligence agency is helping insurgents fight in Afghanistan, but the Americans want to avoid ruining what cooperation remains.

But Pakistan’s firm denials that it is supporting the Taliban and its anger at the Afghan and U.S. accusations suggest it might have little inclination to change course.

Tension rose again Saturday when Afghan officials accused Pakistan of launching rockets over the border into Konar province. Janan Musazai, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry, said the government had summoned Pakistan’s ambassador in Kabul for an explanation.

The governor of Konar, Fazilullah Wahedi, said 30 rockets, fired from a Pakistani military base in Dir, landed in two districts of the province and wounded four people. Pakistani officials denied such a shelling took place. In the past, Pakistan has said some firing at insurgents has strayed across the border.

‘Easy punching bag’

Karzai has been vague about how he wants to engage with Pakistan to further peace talks. Afghan officials said the first step is to convene a meeting of a joint peace commission, established in June, that includes Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the heads of the army and intelligence services, and their Afghan counterparts.

U.S. officials support Karzai’s call for engaging the Taliban through Pakistani government officials. Their own efforts to meet with insurgents have at times mirrored the Afghan approach — a reported meeting between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani insurgent network was brokered by Pakistani intelligence.

Instead of dealing with “shadow intermediaries,” Karzai wants to pursue reconciliation “in a way that’s more focused with established interlocutors, which the government of Pakistan would be one. We welcome that,” said a senior U.S. official in Afghanistan, speaking on the condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol.

But Pakistan is angry that it has been made the world’s scapegoat for the decade-long war in Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have said that they would help with negotiations but that the United States must decide whether it wants to continue fighting in Afghanistan or make peace.

“As long as there are coalition forces in Afghanistan, the relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan will never really attain their full potential. There will always be a problem,” said Rustam Shah Mohmand, former Pakistani ambassador to Kabul.

Some noted that Karzai’s more aggressive tone — he told the BBC on Friday that the Taliban couldn’t “move a finger” without Pakistani support — followed remarks last month by Adm. Mike Mullen, the recently retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who called the Haqqani network a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s intelligence service.

“Pakistan is an easy punching bag,” said Pakistani Sen. Salim Saifullah Khan, an opposition lawmaker who chairs the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.

“There is still a lot of sympathy” in Pakistan toward the Taliban, Khan said, “but to say that the state is involved, I think that’s unfair.”

Karzai’s new stance has been months in the making. With the killings this summer of his half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who carried out the president’s agenda in Kandahar, and another top ally, former governor Jan Mohammad Khan, the president’s influence over his base in southern Afghanistan was dealt a powerful blow.

‘Pakistanis will react’

Karzai has become more vulnerable to criticism from his rivals from the north, primarily the ethnic Tajiks, who disagree with what they consider his policy of “appeasement” by inviting the Taliban to talk peace.

When a suicide bomber last month killed peace envoy and former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, a Tajik leader who helped buffer Karzai from other northern opponents, Karzai’s position deteriorated even further. Afghan and U.S. officials said Karzai was forced to concede some ground to this emboldened opposition. Laying the blame on Pakistan and stepping back from direct talks with the Taliban was one way to do that.

But at a meeting in Kabul after Rabbani’s death, Vice President Mohammed Fahim, Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi and other leaders discussed how negotiating with the Taliban had failed and that Pakistani intelligence was behind this killing, one participant said.

Some at the meeting thought that “as long as Karzai is in this country, there is no hope,” the participant said. An aide to Fahim confirmed that the meeting took place but denied that the criticism of Karzai was so stark.

Parliament member Yonus Qanooni said in an interview that blaming Pakistan was a “positive step” but that Karzai’s decision to keep pursuing negotiations was “a huge mistake.”

Pressure was also growing on Karzai among his supporters. In early August, a delegation of southern tribal elders and politicians told Karzai that his “lenient style” toward the Taliban was counterproductive and that “Pakistan was the main player and we have to start talks with them,” said Aman Mohammad Hotak, the head of Uruzgan’s provincial council.

Blaming Pakistan publicly, particularly when seeking its help, risks undermining peace talks before they start.

“If Karzai continues with anger, he will get it back,” said Rasul Baksh Rais, a political science professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. “I think the Pakistanis will react. They won’t stay as cautious as they have been.”

Brulliard reported from Islamabad. Special correspondents Sayed Salahuddin and Javed Hamdard in Kabul contributed to this report.

[buglerbilly]

Spec Ops, CIA First in, Last out of Afghanistan

October 09, 2011

Associated Press|by Kimberly Dozier



FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- They were the first Americans into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks and will probably be the last U.S. forces to leave.

As most American troops prepare to withdraw in 2014, the CIA and military special operations forces to be left behind are girding for the next great pivot of the campaign, one that could stretch their war up to another decade.

The war's 10th anniversary Friday recalled the beginnings of a conflict that drove the Taliban from power and lasted far longer than was imagined.

"We put the CIA guys in first," scant weeks after the towers in New York fell, said Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, then a colonel with U.S. special operations forces, in charge of the military side of the operation. U.S. Special Forces Green Berets, together with CIA officers, helped coordinate anti-Taliban forces on the ground with U.S. firepower from the air, to topple the Taliban and close in on al-Qaida.

Recent remarks from the White House suggest the CIA and special operations forces will be hunting al-Qaida and working with local forces long after most U.S. troops have left.

When Afghan troops take the lead in 2014, "the U.S. remaining force will be basically an enduring presence force focused on counterterrorism," said National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, in remarks in Washington in mid-September. That will be augmented by teams that will continue to train Afghan forces, added White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.

The White House insists this does not mean abandoning the strategy of counterinsurgency, in which large numbers of troops are needed to keep the population safe. It simply means replacing the surge of 33,000 U.S. troops, as it withdraws over the next year, with newly trained Afghan ones, according to senior White House Afghan war adviser Doug Lute

It also means U.S. special operators and CIA officers will be there for the next turn in the campaign. That's the moment when Afghans will either prove themselves able to withstand a promised Taliban resurgence, or find themselves overwhelmed by seasoned Taliban fighters.

"We're moving toward an increased special operations role," together with U.S. intelligence, Mulholland said, "whether it's counterterrorism-centric, or counterterrorism blended with counterinsurgency."

As out-going head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Mulholland has been in charge of feeding a steady stream of troops to commanders in the field. He knows they need as many special operations troops as he can produce and send. Those special operations forces under his command include U.S. Army Rangers, known for their raiding operations against militant targets, and U.S. Special Forces Green Berets, whose stock in trade is teaching local forces to fight a common enemy so the U.S. doesn't have to.

A foundation for special-operations-style counterinsurgency is already under way - staffed primarily by the Green Berets - with the establishment of hundreds of sites in remote Afghan villages where the U.S. troops are paired with Afghan local tribesmen trained by the Americans, Mulholland explained.

The program has been so successful in the eyes of NATO commanders that they've assigned other special operators like Navy SEALs to the mission, and even paired elite troops with conventional forces to stretch the numbers and cover more territory.

Senior U.S. officials have spoken of keeping a mix of 10,000 of both raiding and training special operations forces in Afghanistan, and drawing down to between 20,000 and 30,000 conventional forces to provide logistics and support. But at this point, the figures are as fuzzy as the future strategy.

Whatever happens with U.S. troops, intelligence officers know they will be a key component.

A senior U.S. official tasked with mapping out their role envisioned a possible future in which Afghan forces are able to hold Kabul and other urban areas, but the Taliban comes back in remote valleys or even whole provinces.

In that event, the official said, CIA and special operations forces would continue to hunt al-Qaida in Taliban areas the Afghan forces can't secure. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss planning for sensitive operations.

"If the CIA built an intelligence network that could provide special operations forces with targets, we could do the job," said Maj. Gen. Bennet S. Sacolick, who runs the U.S. Army's Special Warfare Center and School.

The only question will be which organization is in charge, and that will depend on the Afghan government, the senior U.S. official said. If Afghan authorities are comfortable with U.S. raiders continuing to operate openly, the special operations forces can lead, the official said. If they want a more covert presence, the CIA would lead, with special operation raiders working through them.

The other branch of special operations - the Green Berets and others Mulholland mentioned who specialize in training - would continue to support the Afghans in remote locations, trying to keep the Taliban from spreading.

The notion of a pared down U.S. fighting force, consisting of a latticework of intelligence and special operators, plus the far-flung units in the field, has spurred some criticism on Capitol Hill.

"You cannot protect the United States' safety with counterterrorism waged from afar," said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's emerging threats panel. His concern is that the White House has paid too little attention to how special operations and intelligence will keep the Taliban from overwhelming Afghanistan's remote terrain.

"I would like to know how many special operations forces they need, and how many conventional troops they propose to support them," he said, "and a rough time line."

The smaller special operations footprint could work, if it's part of a larger tapestry of counterinsurgency efforts, said retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former commander of the Afghan campaign.

"I believe direct action operations are only effective when part of a holistic strategy," McChrystal said in an interview. "That does not necessarily imply large U.S. forces or responsibility, but it must include a spectrum of efforts that addresses root causes, partners with indigenous governments and efforts, and approaches the causes as well as the symptoms on extremism and-or terrorism."

In other words, diplomats and aid groups would have to replace the current military efforts at building Afghan government and services - and do it without a large footprint of U.S. forces to provide them security.

The smaller numbers would also put the U.S. troops left behind at greater risk, officials concede, with fewer support troops to rush to the rescue.

That's the mission a group of elite special operators was on in August, flying into a remote valley to aid another group of U.S. raiders on the ground, when the Taliban shot down their Chinook helicopter, killing 38 U.S. and Afghan forces on board.

Asked if it could happen again, Mulholland stopped and bowed his head, taking a long pause to think back to how it started.

"From the beginning, we accepted that risk," Mulholland said, remembering the early days when he sent load after load of special operations forces into Afghanistan, with no sure way to get them out.

He paused again. "We still do."

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Banned Pak Islamists Rally in Islamabad

October 08, 2011

Mclatchy -Tribune News Service|by Saeed Shah

ISLAMABAD -- A large crowd of Islamic militants rallied this week in the heart of Islamabad to voice support for Pakistan's army and to condemn the United States in another sign of a growing tide of extremism sweeping the country.

The rally on Oct. 6 by Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, a violent group considered close to al-Qaida that has been banned by Pakistani authorities, was followed Friday by protests in several Pakistani cities against the death sentence handed down a week ago to an extremist who earlier this year gunned down a senior Pakistani official whom he'd accused of blasphemy.

The new evidence of rising Islamic extremism comes as the United States and Afghanistan accuse Pakistan's military and its main spy agency of supporting jihadist groups - even as extremist violence besieges Pakistan.

Pakistani police patrolled the rally, which was held in a field hockey stadium and attended by between 5,000 and 10,000 people, according to witnesses, but made no effort to break it up. The group was using its new name, Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat, but did little to hide its true identity, plastering the stadium with Sipah-e-Sahaba posters while speakers paid homage to the group's former leaders.

Addressing the gathering, Ahmed Ludhianvi, who's considered the head of Sipah-e-Sahaba, pledged to back Pakistan's military and its chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani.

"Because of threats from America and conspiracies against Pakistan, I promise to give Gen. Ashfaq Kayani 100,000 of our followers as fighters," he said.

The event was held in the Aabpara commercial district in central Islamabad, just about half a mile from the headquarters of the country's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate spy agency.

Last month, Adm. Mike Mullen, the outgoing chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed that a deadly Afghan insurgent group, the Haqqani network, was a "veritable arm" of the ISI, which is part of the military. Pakistan vehemently denies patronizing Haqqani or other jihadist groups.

The resolutions agreed to at the rally, written copies of which were handed out, included expelling the U.S. ambassador and ending Pakistani military operations against extremists in its northwest. There were also many resolutions against Pakistan's Shiite minority and Iran, along with chants of "Shiites are infidels."

Sipah-e-Sahaba started out as a murderous anti-Shiite group in the 1980s, when the military was supporting hard-line Sunni Muslim organizations in reaction to the revolution in Shiite Iran. But the group now has a broader extremist agenda, including links with the Pakistani Taliban. Its offshoot, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, is considered one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the country.

Militant groups regularly change their names to escape bans, a remarkably easy ploy.

An Islamabad city official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that because Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat was not a banned group, it could not be stopped from holding the rally.

Separately, after the weekly prayers Friday, demonstrations were held in several cities, including Rawalpindi, where Pakistan's military is headquartered, and Lahore, against the death sentence handed down by a court last weekend to Mumtaz Qadri, a police commando who in January shot dead Salman Taseer, who was governor of Punjab province.

Taseer had spoken out against the country's blasphemy law, which has been used to prosecute Christians and members of other religions for alleged insults to Islam.

© Copyright 2011 Mclatchy -Tribune News Service.

[buglerbilly]

Brown Study Examines Costs of War on Terror

October 08, 2011

Providence Journal|by Bryan Rourke

PROVIDENCE -- The war on terror continues; so do the costs and the chronicling.

"You can't make informed decisions without this information," said Catherine Lutz of Brown University.

Lutz is co-director of the Eisenhower Project at Brown's Watson Institute for International Studies, where he has been overseeing a "Costs of War" study that has attracted worldwide attention since June. Internet visitors from about 170 countries have viewed the study since its release in June. Visit costsofwar.org.

Friday was the 10th anniversary of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. The day before, "Costs of War" was presented in Washington to a congressional panel on the war in Afghanistan.

http://costsofwar.org/

The report's cost calculations aren't finished because the war isn't finished.

"We're still following the numbers," Lutz said.

The numbers, Lutz said, are "stunning": 225,000 killed, and up to $4 trillion spent, factoring in future medical care for disabled veterans.

The 22 report researchers, will offer another report next fall, Lutz said, offering bigger costs for the United States, and for its allies, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, Lutz said, the follow-up will chronicle the profits of war.

In 2008, Lutz said, the Pentagon paid military contractor Lockheed Martin $30 billion.

"Lockheed received nearly more money from the government than the EPA, the Department of Labor and the Department of Transportation combined," Lutz said.

Now, months after the release of "Costs of War," Lutz reflects on the response to it.

"Some people say, 'Wow, those are huge numbers -- the dollar figure, people killed and refugees. This means the war has been misbegotten.' Some people say, 'You can't put a price on what the war has accomplished.' People's political view tends to inoculate them against the information changing their point of view."

The "Costs of War" was reported in media in North America, South America, Europe and Asia.

"The foreign reporters tend to ask questions about whether this has been a burden on us and if it is putting gasoline on the fire of America's decline. The American reporters have been very interested in the veterans' stories."

Lutz is also interested in the veterans' stories. She wonders how many stories involve post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and suicide.

"The U.S. government should be more forthcoming with data," Lutz said.

The number of disability claims from the war, Lutz said, exceeds 600,000. Much of the information veterans organizations have from the government, Lutz said, is a result of Freedom of Information Act requests.

"The craft of governance has become the craft of public relations and information control," Lutz said. "That is not the way a democratic government should operate."

A goal of the report, Lutz said, is to look at the complete cost of the war.

"People have done the body counts for a variety of wars. But the financial, social and political costs, I'm not sure."

Another goal of the report, Lutz said, is to look at war as a means to tame terrorism.

"Were there other ways this could have been done with less loss of life? The historical record suggests there are."

"Costs of War" cites a Rand study of 268 terrorist groups, 1968 to 2006. In 83 percent of cases, Lutz said, resolution was reached through political accommodation, intelligence and policing. Military might succeeded in 7 percent of cases.

The ultimate goal of "Costs of War," Lutz said, is to learn the complete costs of war: on Soldiers and civilians, on budgets and taxpayers. And, she said, we must remember what we learn.

"This says let's not engage in a kind of historical amnesia."

© Copyright 2011 Providence Journal. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban Captors Release Afghan Aid Workers

October 11, 2011

Associated Press|by Amir Shah

KABUL, Afghanistan - Militants on Tuesday released four Afghans working for a French development organization that had been abducted a day earlier after local elders intervened, an official with the organization said.

Ziggy Garewal, the country director for the French organization ACTED, said that the captors were members of the Taliban, but she did not have additional information about why members of her staff in northern Faryab province were abducted or what the captors' demands were. She said no money had been paid for the release of the staffers.

Abdul Satar Barez, the northern province's deputy governor, also said the captors were Taliban militants.

NATO and Afghan military strikes in the south have made it more difficult for Taliban militants to operate from their traditional regional bases there, pushing many to flee north where violence has increased in recent years. While attacks in Faryab are not as common as elsewhere in Afghanistan, the abduction of the four Afghans reflects the complex security issues facing the country.

Garewel said that ACTED, with about 350 employees in Faryab, is reviewing its ability to continue work in the area, which has long been a dangerous location for their employees. The French organization works on health and education issues.

However, she credited the release of the four Afghans to efforts by locals who appeared to have met with the Taliban captors.

"It was thanks to local elders mediating," Garewel said.

The team was driving back from a training session in Faryab on Monday when they were ambushed by a man on a motorcycle, Barez said, adding that multiple people were involved in seizing the group.

The three trainers and a driver were coming back from conducting hygiene training at a mosque when they were kidnapped, Garewal said.

Although Barez said that the group could have taken more security precautions by alerting the government to their movements, Garewal said that the provincial government is well aware of where her organization works in the province.

Elsewhere, in the capital Kabul, former parliamentarian Simeen Barakzai continued a hunger strike in protest to her removal from office. The lawmaker from Herat has abstained from food and drink for 10 days. She has vowed to continue fasting until the government reopens investigations into allegations of vote fraud against the woman who took her seat.

The dispute over the Afghan parliamentary elections, which took place more than a year ago, has made it difficult for the legislature to do any substantial work at a time when it is considered one of the few potential counterweights to the powerful president.

Afghan election officials said Tuesday that they stand by their decision to remove Barakzai and eight other lawmakers from office after a review of election results, and are willing to make public to anyone who asks how they arrived to their decision.

"Whoever is interested, any relevant institutions interested in the issue, and whatever information is needed from our office, we are ready to cooperate regarding Ms. Barakzai's case," said Fazel Ahmad Manawi, the head of the Afghan election commission.

Meanwhile, in eastern Wardak province, three family members were killed Monday when they walked on an explosive laid in their path. A statement from the Wardak province governor's office said that the dead included two women and one man.

----

Rahim Faiez and Heidi Vogt contributed to this report from Kabul.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Afghanistan Obstructs Graft Probes

October 11, 2011

Associated Press|by Adam Goldman and Heidi Vogt

KABUL, Afghanistan - A major investigation into an influential Afghan governor accused of taking bribes has been shut down and its top prosecutor transferred to a unit that doesn't handle corruption cases, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

The closing of the investigation into the former governor of Kapisa province, Ghulam Qawis Abu Bakr, comes on the heels of a grim, unpublicized assessment by U.S. officials that no substantive corruption prosecutions were taking place in Afghanistan despite President Hamid Karzai's pledge to root out graft.

The Abu Bakr investigation raises troubling questions yet again about how much U.S. taxpayer money is lining the pockets of powerful Afghan officials, and whether the U.S. is doing all it can to persuade Karzai to crack down on corruption. It also suggests that the lax prosecution of corruption has pervaded all levels of government.

U.S. officials had hoped the case would be the first conviction of a relatively significant person in Afghan government. While most of Abu Bakr's influence is in Kapisa province, he is also connected to the Hizb-e-Islami political party, which the government has been trying to court in hopes of getting the group to cut its ties with militants.

Abu Bakr was suspended as governor after CIA Director David Petraeus, then the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, presented Karzai with documentation showing that he was colluding with the Taliban, according to an Afghan official in Kabul with direct knowledge of the incident.

In the two years since Karzai unveiled a new anti-corruption task force, powerful government figures have been accused of corruption and even investigated, but seldom brought to court. It appears that Abu Bakr will be no exception.

Most of the approximately 2,000 cases investigated by the anti-corruption unit since its birth in 2009 have stalled, said a NATO official familiar with the unit, who spoke anonymously to discuss sensitive matters. The 28 convictions so far have all been of minor players. The attorney general's office has been infiltrated by power brokers, ranging from lawmakers to warlords, who are systematically blocking cases, the NATO official said.

In general, little has come of Karzai's promises after a fraud-marred 2009 election that he would make rooting out graft a priority. In fact, a corruption scandal in the interim involving the country's largest private bank has incriminated a number of Karzai allies, including relatives.

The first evidence that corruption was not being taken seriously in the attorney general's office came in the summer of 2010, when a Karzai aide was arrested on charges of accepting a car in exchange for his help in thwarting a corruption case. Karzai ordered the release of the aide, Mohammad Zia Salehi.

Because of the onslaught of negative publicity, Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko ordered his prosecutors not to discuss details of their cases with the U.S. officials advising them, saying that if they did, they would be considered U.S. spies, said an Afghan official who worked in the anti-corruption unit.

Both the attorney general and Abu Bakr declined to comment. The current head of the anti-corruption unit at the attorney general's office said the case was ongoing.

"The case against Gov. Ghulam Qawis Abu Bakr has not closed. Our unit is still working on that case. They are trying to collect evidence and complete the case and get it ready to send it to the courts," said Gen. Abu Baker Rafiyee. "When the case will go to court is not clear. It will be whenever it is ready for the court."

Several months ago, U.S. Embassy personnel in Kabul concluded no substantive corruption prosecutions were taking place in Afghanistan, according to a former senior U.S. familiar with the briefing - which occurred before the Abu Bakr case was halted. The former official was told during the briefing the drive to crack down on graft by the Afghan government had come to a halt more than a year ago.

Current and former U.S. officials said the American administration was trying to downplay their anti-corruption work in its Afghanistan policy because it was such a failure.

The case against Abu Bakr opened last year after allegations surface d he had received a $200,000 bribe in exchange for the contract to build a cell tower, an Afghan official said.

Abu Bakr lives in Mahmud-i-Raqi, the capital of Kapisa province, in a large house. He has three other houses in Kabul, all built, according to the original witness statements, with stone and gravel paid for by foreign donations intended for roads, schools and clinics.

About 20 witnesses said the governor forced local construction companies to give him truckloads of gravel and stone for his expensive homes, according to the officials. The witnesses reportedly said the governor threatened to halt their construction projects if he didn't get what he wanted.

However, when prosecutors traveled to Kapisa in late June to get more evidence, the witnesses were no longer willing to cooperate.

"They changed their story," the Afghan official said. Prosecutors also met with Abu Bakr, who denied everything.

Only one witness was still willing to testify, a man named Shah Agha who said Abu Bakr shut down his rock-crushing plant after he refused to donate 100 trucks of gravel - worth about $10,500 - for the construction of one of his houses. Agha said within an hour of giving his statement in Kabul, his phone started ringing.

"It was people, friends, asking me why I had talked against Abu Bakr," Agha told the AP. He said his testimony could only have gotten out so quickly if someone inside the attorney general's office was tipping people off.

Four months ago, the Abu Bakr case was abruptly closed, despite pleas from the prosecutor for more time to gather evidence, according to officials. In July, the top prosecutor was demoted, and sent to oversee conditions in Afghan prisons, according to an Afghan government document obtained by The Associated Press. Her pay was cut by $50 a month, or about a fourth of her monthly salary.

At least three prosecutors who have persisted in sensitive investigations - two of them involving Abu Bakr - have been removed or transferred, either to other departments or to remote provinces, according to a senior U.S. official.

Almost everyone in the Abu Bakr case would only speak anonymously, especially in Mahmud-i-Raqi, for fear of recrimination and of angering a man still considered more powerful than the current governor. One provincial official described speaking to construction companies who acknowledged paying off Abu Bakr in exchange for contracts, including one that involved U.S. funds to pave a road. The official said Abu Bakr demanded the company raise the price of its bid to include a $150,000 kickback.

----

Rahim Faiez and Amir Shah contributed to this report from Kabul. Desmond Butler contributed from Washington.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

OCTOBER 12, 2011.

Afghan Opium Output Surges

By DION NISSENBAUM

KABUL—Opium production surged 61% this year in Afghanistan, as rising demand and worsening security helped the reversal of three years of progress in antidrug efforts, the United Nations reported.


Getty Images
An increase in opium production came despite a renewed eradication effort by Afghan authorities.

One year after a blight ravaged the country's opium crops and raised hopes that farmers would turn their backs on opium cultivation, the farm-gate value of this year's harvest more than doubled to $1.4 billion, the U.N. said. The street value, which includes profits made by Taliban intermediaries, heroin refiners and drug cartels, was much higher.

The increases also marked the first time since 2007 that the U.N. has documented an increase in the territory used for opium poppy cultivation—which climbed 7% this year, to nearly double the area under cultivation in 2002.

The spike in production and cultivation came despite a renewed eradication effort by Afghan authorities, which reported a 65% increase in the area where they have destroyed poppy crops.

Half of the drug revenues may be going directly to insurgents fighting the U.S.-led coalition and its Afghan government allies, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime in Kabul.


Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
An Afghan policeman prepares a pile of narcotics this year before the drugs are burned in Herat province.

"We cannot afford to ignore the record profits for non-farmers, such as traders and insurgents, which in turn fuel corruption, criminality and instability," he said. "This is a distressing situation."

Afghanistan has long been the world's largest source of opium. While southern Afghanistan remained the country's major opium producing center, the drug trade has begun to expand into northern and western Afghanistan as the insurgency has gained ground there, the report found.

The country's drug industry isn't the exclusive realm of the insurgency. A network of Afghan power brokers, warlords, military commanders and politicians also conspire to keep the profitable business alive, according to analysts.

In Afghanistan's current system, "the drug economy guarantees power and profit," German researcher Citha D. Maass wrote in a recent research paper for the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

The U.S. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on programs to encourage Afghan farmers to embrace alternative crops, such as wheat and saffron, to replace their poppy fields.

That initiative was hampered last year by lower wheat prices, combined with a new surge in the sale price of opium, according to the U.N. report.

Beefing up counternarcotics efforts has become a priority for U.S. Gen. John Allen, the new commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, according to U.S. officials in Kabul.



"Certainly our major concern is that the illicit financing coming from the narco-trafficking is not only financing the insurgency, but it is also undermining the integrity of the government," said a senior U.S. official.

The U.S.-led military coalition seized $350 million worth of heroin last month in one of the biggest drug busts since the start of the war a decade ago.

The coalition has been reluctant to join Afghan government efforts to eradicate illicit crops. Military commanders argue that such eradication efforts punish ordinary farmers, many of whom have borrowed money to plant opium. Destroying the crops, they say, gives these farmers and their families no choice but to join the insurgency.

Instead, coalition troops are targeting the middlemen, the smugglers, and the heroin labs.

Russia, through which much of Afghanistan's opium flows to European markets, this week expressed its anger with this policy. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that the U.S. reluctance to eradicate Afghan poppy crops is enabling the spread of the AIDS virus in his country.

"This issue is crucial to the fight against the drug threat and, consequently, the spread of HIV-AIDS," Mr. Lavrov said.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban Have ‘Utterly Failed’ to Regain Ground, General Says

06:19 GMT, October 12, 2011 WASHINGTON | The Taliban have failed to deliver on their promises to recapture population centers secured by NATO forces in Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command's chief planner told Pentagon reporters Oct. 11.

“I’ve seen it as a bit of a contest or struggle … for the key population areas here in Afghanistan, especially Kabul, Kandahar, [and the] central Helmand River valley,” said Maj. Gen. Michael Krause of the Australian army, ISAF Joint Command’s deputy chief of staff.

“I’d probably also include in the north and west, Herat and Mazar-e Sharif and the Kunduz-Baghlan corridor,” he added.

ISAF has every intention of retaining the areas it has secured, with a specific emphasis on the south, Krause said.

“We [wanted to] ensure that the insurgents did not re-occupy these areas, or push the Afghan security forces out,” he said. “The insurgents, particularly the Afghan Taliban, for their part, said they would … retake those cities.”

Krause evaluated the outcome of a Taliban offensive in those areas.

“We still hold all of those population centers, and we’ve done so since we secured them,” he said. “The Taliban have not been successful.”

Improvements in security in those key areas have been “really quite remarkable,” Krause said, with attacks down 80 percent. ISAF troops recently intercepted a transmission from the Taliban that admitted that their offensive to regain territory had “‘utterly failed,’” he said.

“This is pretty significant,” he said. “We’ve seen the insurgency cede the initiative to us. We know this because enemy-initiated attacks are down in every region now, except Regional Command East.”

Although insurgents’ fighting season may seem to be coming to a close, Krause said, ISAF will continue its operations.

“We fight all year round,” he said. “And over this winter, we will remain on the offensive and drive home our initiative. We will continue to retain what we've fought so hard to hold, and we'll expand in some places.”

Afghan security forces, currently 305,000 strong, will continue developing their capabilities, he said.

“Our intent is that if there is the traditional cyclic pattern, a return of the insurgency next year, that they will face not the coalition, but the Afghan security force in the lead, who will be able to demonstrate their ability to retain key centers and expand their influence,” Krause said.

Despite many successes, the general envisions critical times ahead as operations continue and Afghan security forces continue their transition into the lead.

“Now, I expect that there'll be tough days ahead, and I don't think we can be complacent, nor are we complacent, or think that we're near the end,” he said. “This was never going to be easy, and I expect that there will be setbacks and some bad days ahead.”

But the trends still are positive, the general said.

“I work on a daily basis with the Afghans and their planners,” he said. “I have the opportunity to get out and see the country.
I'm sensing that the Afghan people sense that they have the initiative. They do have confidence in the future.

“Now, they are born skeptics,” he added. “They've been let down before. But their children are going to school. They are healthier, and they have a brighter future.”

----
Army Sgt. 1st Class Tyrone C. Marshall Jr.
American Forces Press Service

[buglerbilly]

Panetta: US 'Fighting A War' in Pakistan

October 12, 2011

Agence France-Presse



Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday the United States is waging "war" in Pakistan against militants, referring to a covert campaign the CIA steadfastly refuses to publicly confirm.

It was Panetta's latest comment acknowledging drone bombing raids in Pakistan, an open secret that the US government declines to discuss publicly.

Speaking to an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, the former CIA director pointed to a "complicated relationship" between Washington and Islamabad.

"And admittedly, there are a lot of reasons for that. We are fighting a war in their country," Panetta said.

"They have in fact given us cooperation in the operations of trying to confront Al-Qaeda in (tribal areas)... And they continue to work with us."

But he said the two countries had sharp disagreements over "the relations they maintain with some of the militant groups in that country," a reference to Washington's demand that Islamabad crack down on the Haqqani network.

During a visit to US bases in Italy last week, Panetta made two casual references to the CIA's use of armed drones.

"Having moved from the CIA to the Pentagon, obviously I have a hell of a lot more weapons available to me in this job than I did at CIA -- although Predators aren't bad," Panetta told an audience of sailors at the US Navy's Sixth Fleet headquarters in Naples.

Bombing raids by robotic unmanned US aircraft dramatically increased under President Barack Obama, with the CIA operation focusing on Al-Qaeda and Taliban figures in northwest Pakistan.

About 30 drone strikes have been reported in Pakistan since elite US Special Operations Forces killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in May near the country's main military academy in Abbottabad, close to the capital.

US officials did not notify Pakistan in advance of the raid, and Panetta -- the CIA chief at the time -- subsequently said the US government feared that bin Laden would be tipped off about the operation beforehand.

An American drone is also believed to have killed US-born Al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi in Yemen last month.

© Copyright 2011 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

Taliban Raising Funds Through Street Crime

October 12, 2011

Associated Press|by Ishtiaq Mehsud and Chris Brummitt

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - Police caught up with the four Taliban militants about 15 minutes after they robbed the bank, shooting them dead on a bridge as they attempted to drive their loot to the safety of the border regions with Afghanistan.

The rare triumph against the insurgency in this dangerous part of Pakistan was short-lived - 10 days later, the Taliban dispatched a husband-and-wife suicide unit to avenge the deaths, devastating the local police station and killing nine officers.

The daylight raid on the bank and the bombing in June were carried out by the "Black Night" group, a unit of the Pakistani Taliban dedicated to raising funds through robberies, kidnappings and extortion, according to a member of the group and intelligence officers.

The group's emergence highlights a shift in militant funding inside Pakistan, with al-Qaida, the Taliban and associated groups relying less on cash from abroad and more on crime to get money for equipment, weapons and the expenses associated with running an insurgency.

The development is partly a result of Pakistani and American successes in targeting Islamist extremists.

Greater scrutiny on money transfers means it is harder to send funds around the world, while American missile strikes and Pakistani army offensives have killed or sidelined many mid-to-top-level commanders who had links to Middle Eastern funding networks, said a counterterrorism official.

As a result, "the militants have issued an internal order telling followers to look for funds from internal sources," said the counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Iraq, another country riven by Islamist insurgency, has seen a jump in crime in recent years, according to U.S and Iraqi officials. Militants there use profits from crime to finance operations, but former insurgents are also believed to have drifted into crime.

The Pakistani Taliban draws on a network of militants and for-hire criminals that stretches from the country's northwestern towns, through its Punjab heartland to the commercial capital, Karachi, home to some 4 million Pashtun migrants, the ethnic group that makes up the Taliban.

The crime wave also adds to the militants' goal of destabilizing the country by underscoring a growing feeling among Pakistanis that the U.S.-backed government is unable to provide enough security for its 180 million, mostly impoverished, citizens.

Allied with al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban across the border, the Pakistani Taliban mostly focus on terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, but are also committed to attacking American targets in Afghanistan and the United States. The group trained the Pakistani-American who carried out a failed car bombing in New York's Times Square in 2010.

There are few reliable statistics, but the most common ways of raising funds are kidnappings and extortion, according to Amir Rana, an expert on Pakistani militancy. Ransom demands range from about $150,000 and to $1 million.

The Taliban are currently holding in the border region a Swiss couple seized in July.

The same group is suspected in the August kidnapping in the city of Lahore of Shahbaz Taseer, the son of a liberal provincial governor who was killed by militants, according to intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. They say Taseer is being held in Waziristan close to the Afghan border. Weeks before Taseer's kidnapping, American development expert Warren Weinstein was taken from his house in Lahore. His fate is unknown.

The "Black Night" group works under the command of Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman Mehsud, the top leaders in the Pakistani Taliban, according to a member of the group who spoke to an Associated Press reporter by phone from an undisclosed location.

He said the group would continue to target wealthy Pakistanis, government officials and foreigners from non-Muslim countries for kidnappings. Banks were hit because they charged interest and therefore violated Islamic law, he said.

In Karachi, four bank robberies this year have netted $2.3 million, according to a community police organization. The Taliban are suspected in three of them.

"We are not fighting on that front line against the Pakistani army or NATO forces in Afghanistan, but we are contributing to the jihad through this way," the militant said on condition that his real name not be used.

Police are not allowed to travel to the tribal-administered areas where the Pakistani Taliban and other militants are based. This status, dating back to British colonial times, means the area has long been attractive to criminals on the run or for those running criminal enterprises.

The robbers who raided the bank in Dera Ismail Khan were smartly dressed and appeared relaxed, striking just after midday. Waving guns, they bundled the employees and anyone on the street into the bathroom, then took $138,000 from the safe, stuffed it into bags and drove off.

Local police chief Zulfiqar Ali blamed the "Black Night" brigade for the robbery and subsequent attack on the police station, but insisted "morale was high" at the force.

"Even with very few resources we are prepared to give militants a tit-for-tat response," he said.

More than 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) away in Karachi, the Taliban didn't bring guns when they came knocking at the offices of a wealthy Pashtun property developer, but their intent was clear. The man, who didn't give his name, said they demanded about $20,000.

"I couldn't escape this situation. As a last resort, I asked them to decrease the amount they were demanding," he said. "They didn't bring any weapons when they came to my office the first time, but they can easily harm me and my business."

Another wealthy Pashtun related how two men on a motorbike seized his 7-year-old child as he left school.

It took 17 days for the kidnappers to contact him with a demand of $140,000. He said the phone calls came from numbers in the Punjab and large towns in Waziristan, and that the kidnappers appeared to know which government agencies he had discussed the case with. After four months, they settled for about $80,000.

Mohammed Yusuf, a member of the Pakistani Taliban who met an AP reporter in Karachi, said two groups - the al-Mansoor and al-Mukhtar - handle much of the fundraising for the movement in the city. He said they also arrange for supplies to be sent to Waziristan and look after fighters when they come to Karachi.

One of the most lucrative businesses was extorting money from the trucking companies that deliver food, oil and other non-lethal supplies to American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Many of the companies are based in Karachi because the supplies land at the city's Arabian sea port.

"We can do this because our scholars have decreed that it is quite permissible for us to snatch from those who are siding with our enemies in jihad," Yusuf said.
---
Brummitt reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writer Ashraf Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[buglerbilly]

US inquiry: No disciplinary action in deadly copter crash

Investigation shows mission followed standard procedures, Pentagon officials tell NBC

By Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube
NBC News

updated 10/12/2011 6:46:44 PM ET

WASHINGTON — A military investigation into the downing of a Chinook helicopter that killed 30 U.S. service members in Afghanistan found that the mission followed standard operating procedures, Pentagon officials told NBC News on Wednesday.

The investigation found no cause for disciplinary action against any commanders involved in the mission.

The Army Chinook CH-47 helicopter carrying the 30 Americans, including 22 Navy SEALs, was responding to a distress call from a unit of Army Rangers when it was shot down by enemy forces Aug. 6.

The investigation by Central Command found that as the helicopter was attempting to land, a rocket-propelled grenade struck the rear rotor and one of the rotor blades, resulting in a catastrophic explosion. "There was no evidence of a pre-planned ambush," according to a Pentagon press release on an executive summary of the report released late Wednesday.

According to one military official, "It was a standard mission profile, and a bad guy got lucky."

It was the single deadliest incident for coalition forces during the decade-long war. Eight Afghans also were killed in the crash in a remote valley southwest of Kabul.

Military and Defense Department officials also told NBC News that there was nothing unusual about Navy SEALs acting as a quick reaction force to back up the Rangers. "All forces have become interchangeable", according to one source who explained that SEALs will back up Rangers on one mission, Rangers back up SEALs on another.

The results of the investigation are being given to Army and Navy SEAL commands, members of Congress, and family members of those killed. The results are expected to be released later this week.