Moby Media Updates Archives 2008 MMU: U.S. and NATO strikes exact heavy toll in Afghanistan, 21 July 2008
| MMU: U.S. and NATO strikes exact heavy toll in Afghanistan, 21 July 2008 |
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U.S. and NATO strikes exact heavy toll in Afghanistan
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FEATURE STORY
International Herald Tribune, France U.S. and NATO missile strikes continued to exact a heavy toll in Afghanistan, with at least 13 Afghans killed in two incidents over the weekend that Afghan officials said were mistakes. One NATO soldier was also killed in the eastern province of Khost. Although NATO did not give the nationality of the soldier, U.S. forces are deployed in Khost. Nine Afghan policemen were killed and five others wounded in a case of friendly fire in western Afghanistan when a joint convoy of Afghan and U.S. forces called in airstrikes on a group they thought to be militants. Separately, at least four people were killed when two mortars fired by the NATO-led force in Afghanistan went astray. The U.S. military announced it was beginning an investigation into the first incident. The joint Afghan and U.S. force came under attack in the province of Farah from an unknown force while conducting nighttime operations in Ana Dara District, a statement issued from Bagram Air Base said. Coalition forces returned fire and then called in airstrikes on the group firing at them. The presidential spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, said the strikes had been a case of friendly fire. Among those wounded was the police chief of the district, the deputy provincial governor said, according to Reuters. A NATO statement said that at least four civilians had been accidentally killed, and four other civilians wounded, in mortar strikes by the NATO-led force, ISAF, in the eastern province of Paktika. The incident took place Saturday night at Barmal, on the border with Pakistan in an area where militants frequently cross from Pakistan's tribal regions. The wounded civilians were brought to a NATO base and were evacuated by helicopter to a medical facility, the alliance said. "ISAF deeply regrets this accident, and an investigation as to the exact circumstances of this tragic event is now under way," NATO said in its statement. The latest casualties came as Senator Barack Obama was on his first visit to Afghanistan with a congressional delegation. The British humanitarian organization, Oxfam, used the opportunity to warn against the growing human cost of the war in Afghanistan. "The security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated, with an alarming increase in civilian casualties," Oxfam said. "All parties to the conflict must do everything possible to avoid causing harm to civilians." "Unless the next American president, whether it is Senator Obama or Senator McCain, builds on the existing commitments to help lift the Afghan people out of extreme poverty and protect civilians, it will be impossible for the country to achieve lasting peace," it said. The organization also urged the U.S. government to stop spending assistance funds on expensive foreign contractors and instead find more creative and sustainable ways to assist the people directly, especially in rural development. Meanwhile, a group of American lawyers who are in Kabul to work on cases of Afghans detained in the American base at Bagram called on the U.S. government to end the legal "black hole" in which hundreds of detainees are held. The lawyers from the International Justice Network raised the case of Jawed Ahmad, an Afghan journalist detained for nearly nine months at Bagram along with some 650 other Afghan detainees. None of the detainees has been charged and none is allowed lawyers, according to Tina Foster, the director of the organization, and Barbara Olshansky, a human rights professor from Stanford University.
BUSINESS Road mine in Helmand kills 3 children
Written by http://www.quqnoos.com/ & foreign news disk A mini-bus in Helmand province hits road mine killing 3 children and wounding 4 others (Xinhua) -- One mini-bus carrying locals from villages to the Greshk district, capital of south Afghanistan's Helmand province, hit roadside mines early Sunday morning, leaving three children dead and four others wounded, an official said. Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, the provincial police chief told Xinhua that the mini-bus loaded with civilians was struck by roadside mines planted by "the enemy of Afghanistan" en route to a main bazaar of Greshk district. "Two adults and two more children under 10 years-old were injured," he added. In another incident happened in the same district Saturday night, police engaged with Taliban insurgents who attempted an assault on the district checkpoints. "Three Taliban rebels were killed and two others were injured in exchanging fire," Andiwal said. "There was no casualties on police. Security in a number of southern and eastern provinces in Afghanistan, including Helmand, has been deteriorating in the last 6 months despite the presence of international troops. Barack Obama meets Afghan President Hamid Karzai
The Washington Times - Politics Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged steadfast aid to Afghanistan in talks Sunday with its Western-backed leader and vowed to pursue the war on terror "with vigor" if elected, an Afghan official said. On the second day of an international tour designed to burnish his foreign policy credentials, Illinois Sen. Obama and a pair of colleagues held two hours of talks with President Hamid Karzai at his palace in the capital. Obama has chided Karzai for not doing more to build confidence in his government, which remains weak after the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. He made no public comment after the meeting, but said in a written statement that his main purpose was to see U.S troops, thank them for their "extraordinary service" and let them know the United States is proud of them. Obama said he and his colleagues were talking to military and diplomatic leaders, and Afghanistan's leaders about whether the U.S. has the right strategy and resources to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida. "Our message to the Afghan government is this: We want a strong partnership based on 'more for more' _ more resources from the United States and NATO, and more action from the Afghan government to improve the lives of the Afghan people," Obama and Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a joint statement. "We need a sense of urgency and determination. "We need urgency because the threat from the Taliban and al-Qaida is growing and we must act; we need determination because it will take time to prevail," they said. "But with the right strategy and the resources to back it up, we will get the job done." The Afghan presidency said Obama's message was positive. "Sen. Obama conveyed that he is committed to supporting Afghanistan and to continue the war against terrorism with vigor," said Humayun Hamidzada, Karzai's spokesman. He said Democrats and Republicans "are friends of Afghanistan and no matter who wins the U.S. elections, Afghanistan will have a very strong partner in the United States." The three U.S. senators traveled later Sunday to Kuwait City, where they met with Kuwait's emir, Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, and other senior officials, the Kuwait News Agency reported. The delegation was then moving on to Baghdad for meetings with commanders of the U.S. war in Iraq. Obama has made Afghanistan a centerpiece of his proposed strategy for dealing with terrorism threats. The Illinois senator has said the war in Afghanistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants are resurgent, deserves more troops and more attention as opposed to the conflict in Iraq. Both Obama and his Republican rival for the presidency, Sen. John McCain, advocate sending more forces to the country. In an interview broadcast Sunday in the United States, Obama described the situation here as "precarious" and "urgent," and said the U.S. should not wait to begin the planning that would be needed to send in more troops. As troops sent to Iraq as part of the buildup of forces there begin to leave, Obama says one to two brigades should be redirected to Afghanistan to bolster the efforts here. "The situation is precarious and urgent here in Afghanistan and I believe this has to be our central focus, the central front in our battle against terrorists," Obama told CBS News. "If we wait until the next administration it could be a year before we get those troops on the ground." While officially part of a congressional delegation on a fact-finding tour, Obama traveled in Afghanistan amid the security accorded a likely Democratic nominee for president rather than a senator from Illinois. Media access to him was limited, and his itinerary was closely guarded. Earlier Sunday, he praised U.S. troops during breakfast with soldiers at Camp Eggers, a heavily fortified military base in the city. "To see young people like this who are doing such excellent work, with so much dedication ... it makes you feel good about the country," Obama said. "I want to make sure that everybody back home understands how much pride people take in their work here and how much sacrifice people are making. It is outstanding," he said in footage filmed by the military and obtained by The Associated Press. On Saturday, the delegation received briefings from U.S. commanders and a former Afghan warlord who is now the governor of Nangarhar, a province in eastern Afghanistan where militant attacks are spiraling. The trip is Obama's first overseas since he secured the Democratic nomination last month. He is scheduled to travel through Europe this week and give a speech on the U.S.-German partnership and trans-Atlantic relations in front of the gold-topped Victory Column, or Siegessaeule, in downtown Berlin. Obama advocates ending the U.S. combat role in Iraq by withdrawing troops at the rate of one to two brigades a month while increasing the military commitment to Afghanistan. Obama has proposed sending two more combat brigades _ about 7,000 troops _ to Afghanistan. McCain, who has criticized Obama for not spending more time in the region, also advocates sending more forces to the war-battered country. U.S. military officials say the number of attacks in eastern Afghanistan, where most of the U.S. forces in the country operate, has increased by 40 percent so far this year compared to the same period last year. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told The Associated Press on Saturday that after intense U.S. assaults there, al-Qaida may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan, where American casualties are recently running higher than in Iraq. Obama also has expressed weariness with efforts by Afghanistan's neighbor, Pakistan, to go after militants in its territory. That frustration may strike a chord with Karzai, who has accused Pakistan's intelligence service of supporting the Taliban insurgency _ a claim Pakistan denies. But Obama also has chided Karzai and his government, saying it had "not gotten out of the bunker" and helped to organize the country or its political and security institutions.
Obama Urges Sending More U.S. Troops to Afghanistan
Bloomberg Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said today that U.S. combat troops should be shifted to Afghanistan from Iraq. ``This has to be our central focus, the central front of our battle against terrorism,'' Obama said on CBS's ``Face the Nation'' program. ``One of the biggest mistakes we've made strategically after 9/11 was to fail to finish the job here, focus our attention here.'' Obama, who opposed the war with Iraq, said that conflict distracted the U.S. from the task of capturing al-Qaeda leaders and rebuilding Afghanistan after the militant Islamic Taliban regime was ousted. ``We made a strategic error, and it's one that we're going to pay for, and unfortunately the people of Afghanistan have paid for as well,'' the Illinois senator said. ``But we now have an opportunity to correct that problem.'' Obama, 46, was interviewed in Afghanistan, where he arrived yesterday. He is on a six-day tour that also will include stops in Iraq, Israel and Western Europe. He spent last night at Bagram Air Force Base outside Kabul. Obama and U.S. Senators Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed spent an hour and 45 minutes today with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his top aides in the presidential palace in Kabul, including a working lunch of traditional Afghan rice, lamb and chicken, spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told reporters. Obama left Afghanistan after the meeting without making any public comment. Combat Troops Obama previously said he would remove U.S. combat troops from Iraq by mid-2010, shifting some brigades to Afghanistan. The Illinois senator's trip to Iraq will be his first visit since 2006 as part of an overseas trip aimed at countering criticism from Republican rival John McCain that he lacks national-security experience. Senator McCain of Arizona opposes Obama's timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. McCain, who was critical of President George W. Bush's early management of the Iraq War, supported an increase in U.S. troops there ordered by Bush more than a year ago. Obama opposed putting more troops into the country. ``The surge -- which John McCain courageously fought for, taking on the president of his own party, popular opinion, risking his campaign, and which Senator Obama opposed -- worked,'' Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent and a McCain supporter, said on ``Fox News Sunday.'' Iraq Withdrawal An improving situation in Iraq may allow President George W. Bush to withdraw more troops from Iraq, said Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ``I can't tell you for sure that we will be able to get more troops out before the end of the year,'' Mullen said on Fox, ``But certainly there are assumptions which you could make which would make that possible.'' Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has endorsed a ``general vision'' of withdrawal, though not any specific plan, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in an e-mailed statement in Baghdad today. Al-Dabbagh refuted reports that al-Maliki had endorsed Obama's proposal, saying comments the prime minister made to Germany's Der Spiegel magazine were ``misunderstood and mistranslated'' and were not ``conveyed accurately.'' There were about 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, though that number was higher than usual because of overlapping rotations, and around 36,000 troops in Afghanistan as of July 14, according to Lieutenant Colonel Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman. Obama said the opportunity to help Afghanistan will come from setting a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and redeploy them. He also called for more aid to rebuild the war- torn the country, such as money for roads and an electrical network. Foreign Aid Such foreign aid should also flow to Pakistan, tied to a request that the country becomes more aggressive in destroying the terrorist bases within its borders, Obama said. ``We're going to expect that Pakistan takes much more seriously going after al-Qaeda and Taliban-based camps on their side of the borders,'' he said. ``I will push Pakistan very hard to make sure that we go after those training camps.'' Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, interviewed on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program, agreed that the government of Pakistan needs to do more about terrorists in tribal areas that border Afghanistan. ``It's very clear that more has to be done to stabilize that border between Afghanistan and Pakistan,'' she said. ``More has to be done.'' To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . 9 Taliban killed 7 wounded in Zabul
Written by http://www.quqnoos.com/ Zabul police claim to have killed 9 Taliban and wounded 7 on Saturday The NDS in Zabul province have claimed that during an operation in Khar Joy area in Qalat city, 9 Taliban were killed and 7 wounded. According to NDS chief in Zabul province, this incident occurred on Saturday when Taliban attacked an Afghan National Army check point. The NDS chief stated that some weapons and ammunition were also captured in the operation. No one was killed from the ANA in this incident, according to the NDS chief. Taliban have not commented about this incident. Obama, Afghan President Discuss War on Terror, Corruption Text of report by Afghan independent Tolo TV, on 20 July [Presenter] US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama had a meeting with President Karzai on the second day of his visit to Afghanistan today. The campaign against administrative corruption and the war on terror were the main topics of discussion in the meeting between Hamed Karzai and Barack Obama. My colleague Parwez Shamal has more:. [Correspondent] US Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Obama had lunch with President Karzai today. Karzai and Obama reiterated the need for further cooperation in the war on terror. [Homayun Hamidzada, government spokesman] Issues related to problems that we face in fighting corruption, narcotics, and challenges that terrorism and fundamentalism poses to the peoples of Afghanistan, the region, and the world, were discussed at the meeting. [Correspondent] Obama's Afghanistan visit follows the suspension, by the government of Afghanistan, of its meetings and negotiations with the government of Pakistan. Barack Obama is a critic of the US military policy in Afghanistan. He stresses that the roots of terrorist groups should be sought and eliminated in Pakistani tribal areas. [Wahid Mozhda, political analyst] In spite of Mr Obama's criticisms [of Karzai's government], Obama and the government of Afghanistan share at least one idea. They both are of the opinion that terrorist centres should be targeted in Pakistan. On his visit to Afghanistan, Mr Obama wants to closely look into these issues. There is no doubt that he has had talks with [US] military commanders to discuss this issue. [Correspondent] Amid criticisms of increasing insecurity in Afghanistan, and amid growing possibility of US military engagement in Pakistani tribal areas, the Pakistani prime minister, in a television statement, strongly rejected any operation by foreign troops in the Pakistani soil. [Pakistan Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gillani] No foreign troops will be allowed to carry out operations on Pakistani soil. We take decisions and do everything ourselves inside our country. [Correspondent] A large number of US troops are said to have been stationed near Afghan-Pakistani borders. The US army has so far not confirmed the launch of operations in Pakistani tribal areas, but the US Department of Defence has said the deployment of more troops to the areas will affect the process of infiltration of insurgents to Afghanistan from Pakistan. Originally published by Tolo TV, Kabul, in Dari 1330 20 Jul 08. (c) 2008 BBC Monitoring Newsfile. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved. Story Source: BBC Monitoring Newsfile
Gulf Today US presidential hopeful Barack Obama, visiting Afghanistan as part of an overseas tour, on Sunday called the situation there "precarious and urgent" and urged that more American troops be deployed there soon. The Democratic US senator from Illinois met Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, the second day of a trip meant to bolster his foreign policy credentials. "We have to understand that the situation is precarious and urgent and I believe this has to be the central focus, the central front, in the battle against terrorism," Obama said in an interview with the CBS program "Face the Nation. Obama said he believed US troop levels need to increase and that the United States should start planning now for a shift of American soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan." Agencies Pak should do more to stabilise Afghanistan border: Rice
Times of India, India The new Pakistani government has to do "more" to stabilise the border with Afghanistan not only because of concern to the United States but also to address the threat posed to Islamabad, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said. "It's very clear that more has to be done to stabilise that border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. More has to be done," Rice said on the Late Edition of CNN aired on Sunday. Asked if Islamabad is not doing enough the top State Department official once again said "more has to be done". "But more has to be done, not just because of Afghanistan's security, not just because of concerns about threats to American interests, but because of threats to Pakistan. We're talking about a place in which militants have killed Benazir Bhutto." "They've carried out attacks near the Red Mosque. They've carried out attacks on Pakistani soldiers and so Pakistan has a very strong stake in dealing with the places militants are able to gather, train and carry out their activities," Rice said. The Secretary of State was also asked to comment on a comment by presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama that he will send at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan and use this commitment to see great contributions and fewer restrictions from NATO allies. Coalition forces clash with Farah police
Written by http://www.quqnoos.com/ & Foreign disck Lack of communication results in coalition forces fighting local police in Farah An Afghan official says foreign troops called in airstrikes during an apparently mistaken clash with Afghan police, killing nine police officers and wounding five in the country's west. Younus Rasuli, the deputy governor of Farah province, said a convoy of foreign forces - possibly NATO or those from the U.S.-led coalition - showed up at Anar Derah district, near the Iranian border. He says the foreign troops had not informed local Afghan officials they were coming, and the police thought they were enemy fighters. Rasuli says the two sides fought from around midnight till 4 a.m. Sunday, and the foreign forces used airstrikes during the battle. Both NATO and U.S. coalition officials said they were looking into the reports. In another incident in the Barmal district of Paktika, an ISAF unit on a fire mission accidentally killed four civilians, with an unconfirmed further three deaths. Four civilians were also wounded and are now under treatment by ISAF forces according to an ISAF statement. The incident was caused by ISAF firing two mortar rounds, which landed nearly 1 kilometre away from the intended target. Shortly afterwards wounded civilians presented themselves for treatment at an ISAF base, and a helicopter medical evacuation mission was immediately launched to assist. In a written statement, ISAF has said that it deeply regrets this accident, and an investigation as to the exact circumstances of this tragic event is now underway. Quqnoos.com was not able to obtain any official response from the Paktika provincial government about this incident at the time of this report.
New York Times Magazine Last summer, I was at the end of a really lousy month in Kabul. It was my third visit in three years. One of the freelance-writing assignments that took me to Afghanistan this time had fallen through. The person I knew best there had unexpectedly left the country, canceling all our plans for trips outside the city. And though a vacationing couple had offered me use of their very nice home, with an attention-lavishing houseman, staying in an otherwise empty house was much less pleasant than I imagined. Still, I'd made some new friends during my stay: in a place like Kabul, people of like mind and temperament form instant bonds. These friends included some remarkable Americans who grew up in Kabul during the 1960s and '70s and had returned, after the Taliban left, to what felt like their homeland. This merry little band took me to places experienced by few foreigners. To a lake where thousands of Kabulis escaped the city's heat and dust on weekends. To an Afghan restaurant where we danced with celebrating local college students. While other foreigners remained cloistered in their compounds - some wistfully so, restricted by the rigid precautions of their employers - my new friends didn't find Afghanistan intrinsically scary. They were dismayed by the increased wreckage, poverty and violence, but not afraid of the people. One night, when it seemed that every man in the city was on the dusty streets to shop the brightly lighted stalls, we had a flat tire. The tire blew out next to a stand selling watermelons, the hacked-open fruit red and glistening in the headlights. Crowds of curious men stopped to stare. I was certain we'd meet our death that night. My friends were just as certain that it was no big deal. Later there were two terrible bombings, including one of a bus filled with young police recruits that killed at least 24 people. Some of the dead were civilians, but many were brave young men willing to defend the public order for the princely sum of about $70 per month. It was after that bombing that I decided to cut my visit short and made plans to go home. On my last day in Kabul, my hosts' houseman and his cousin drove me around town so that I could take care of some final details. I asked them to alert me when we approached the site of the bus bombing. I wanted to cover my eyes; I was afraid the trees in that area might bear strange fruit, body parts or pieces of clothing from the murdered policemen. I had offered to buy my houseman and his cousin a farewell lunch, but when we arrived at a kebab shop, I was in a grim mood. As we entered the crowded restaurant, I tightened my head scarf and braced myself for the inevitable stare. The faces in the room were the kind that always accompany dismal news reports about Afghanistan - men with turbans, men with prayer caps, men with the biscuit-shaped hat known as a pakool famously worn by the anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud. I was accustomed to all those faces turning my way whenever I appeared in places where women rarely ventured - especially places like this, in a neighborhood far from the restaurants and coffee shops and guest houses that catered to foreigners. But as we settled ourselves at a table, only a few men glanced over. From grizzled graybeards to gleeful schoolboys, everyone had an eye on the one other woman in the room. She filled up a TV screen against the wall. She wore lots of makeup and no head scarf. Her clothes were modest by the standards of my Cleveland neighborhood but not by Kabul's. This woman on TV was crying. Her lover's car had plunged to the bottom of a river, where he was shown dreamily reliving scenes from his past. Then she was laughing and dancing on a mountaintop and kissing him, because he was miraculously restored. Or something like that. The show wasn't in English, the only language I understand. I wasn't sure if it was a Bollywood movie or one of the Indian soap operas that are so popular in Afghanistan - and that are now under attack by conservatives who say they're anti-Islamic. Actually, I didn't pay that much attention at first. I was trying to be polite to my two companions, one of whom was telling me some story or other in the magnificently gestured language he'd developed for foreigners who didn't speak Dari. But after I ate my fill, while my companions continued to tear into the remaining mounds of rice, I began watching the woman on the television. I looked around to see all the men in the room watching her too - watching her and her sodden, silly, resuscitated beau. Watching, smiling, shaking their heads. We were all caught up together in this trifling story about romance and family squabbles, the drama of ordinary lives that rocks households but doesn't blow buildings or buses apart. Kristin Ohlson is the author of a memoir, "Stalking the Divine," and author, with Deborah Rodriguez, of "Kabul Beauty School." Obama pledges to focus on Afghanistan
Financial Times, UK Barack Obama yesterday warned that the situation in Afghanistan was "precarious and urgent" and said the country would be the central focus of the US "war on terror" if he became president. The presumptive Democratic candidate was speaking in Afghanistan at the start of a week-long international tour designed to bolster his foreign policy credentials. Mr Obama is expected in Iraq today but his decision to spend the first two days of his trip in Afghanistan shows how the country has returned to the centre of the US political debate as violence climbs. "We have to understand that the situation is precarious and urgent, and I believe this has to be the central focus, the central front, in the battle against terrorism," he told CBS News. Coalition deaths in Afghanistan have exceeded US fatalities in Iraq for the past two months, culminating in the death of nine soldiers last week in the deadliest insurgent attack for three years. The deteriorating situation has left Mr Obama and John McCain, his Republican rival, scrambling to refocus attention on a conflict once dubbed the "forgotten war". Both candidates pledged last week to send two or three additional combat brigades - between 7,000 and 10,000 troops - to Afghanistan if elected. But while there is growing consensus on the need for reinforcements, the candidates are sharply at odds over what lessons should be drawn from the resurgence by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. For Mr Obama, it underscores his argument that the US must extricate itself from an unnecessary war in Iraq and refocus on the original battleground in the "war on terror". For Mr McCain, it highlights the importance of having a resolute and experienced leader in the Oval Office who can turn around Afghanistan just as the "surge" strategy has reduced violence in Iraq. David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, said at the weekend the diverging levels of violence in the two war zones could signal a shift in focus by al-Qaeda back to its original home in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said there were signs that foreign fighters recruited by al-Qaeda to do battle in Iraq were being diverted to the largely ungoverned areas in Pakistan from which fighters can cross into Afghanistan. Attacks by militant groups against the US-led coalition in Afghanistan have risen by 40 per cent this year, compared with 2007, according to the US military. The worsening outlook in Afghanistan is increasing pressure on the US to accelerate its troop drawdown in Iraq to free up more forces for Afghanistan. The administration agreed on Friday to set a "time horizon" for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, marking a break from its refusal to consider timelines for ending the war. In a radio address over the weekend, Mr McCain mocked his opponent for reiterating his plans to withdraw from Iraq even before departing for his fact-finding mission. "Apparently, he's confident enough that he won't find any facts that might change his opinion or alter his strategy," he said. Mr Obama visited two US military bases and met President Hamid Karzai during his two-day stop in Afghanistan, accompanied by his Senate colleagues Jack Reed, a Democrat, and Chuck Hagel, a moderate Republican and fierce critic of the war in Iraq. Both travelling companions have been mentioned as potential running mates for Mr Obama. Before leaving Washington, Mr Obama stressed that he was travelling to Afghanistan and Iraq as a senator before switching back to campaign mode during his planned visits to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and the UK later this week. "I'm more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking," he said. "And I think it is very important to recognise that I'm going over there as a US senator. We have one president at a time." Few details of his meeting with Mr Karzai were provided. The latter's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said the pair agreed on a wide range of issues. Mr Obama has previously criticised Mr Karzai and his government for failing to "get out of the bunker" to clamp down on insurgents. His visit came amid mounting public anger in Afghanistan about recent civilian deaths in US and coalition military operations. Four Afghan police and five civilians were killed in air strikes yesterday, described as a case of "mistaken identity". In another incident, Nato troops opened mortar fire in the southern province of Paktika, killing four civilians. The past two weeks have seen some of the worst "friendly-fire" incidents of the war against Afghan civilians, with one air strike resulting in the death of 50 people in Nangarhar. A good reason to withdraw troops from Iraq
Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom Whether or not he intended it, the Iraqi Prime Minister has given an immense boost to Barack Obama - and, by extension, to Gordon Brown. Both men say they will withdraw their forces from Iraq: Mr Obama within 16 months, Mr Brown by early next year. Both men, being of the Left, had felt sensitive to accusations of cutting and running. But the statement by their Iraqi ally, Nouri al-Maliki, that he favours an early evacuation, transforms the parameters of the debate. advertisementAs long as the elected Iraqi government was calling on the West for assistance, there was a moral obligation to answer. Now, that argument has gone. This newspaper supported the overthrow of the Ba'athist tyranny, and was dismissive of demands for an immediate pull-out. But the occupation was never intended to be permanent. Two years ago, we noted that the balance was shifting, that allied troops were not so much containing the civil war as exacerbating it by their presence. Since then, we have been calling for a timetable for withdrawal. As long as the Iraqi regime was maintained by foreign garrisons, its legitimacy was compromised, its security forces shielded and its politicians indulged: that is to say, its squabbling parties felt under little pressure to reach an accommodation. News: Obama wants troops redeployed to Afghanistan We don't deny that the American surge worked, in the sense that the violence fell off appreciably. But surges pass. We hear their "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar", look at the shingle they leave behind, and hope that full independence brings responsibility. Both Mr Brown and Mr Obama are shifting their focus to Iran and Afghanistan. This, too, is to be welcomed. Dealing with the ayatollahs, without renouncing the possibility of force, is an inescapable responsibility for the Western powers. And, as Senator Obama puts it: "If another attack on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned. And yet today, we have five times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan." In Afghanistan, the English-speaking nations and their allies can point to unequivocal successes: fallow land is under cultivation, clinics are being built, girls are in school, free votes are being cast. But there, too, we should be wary of taking on an open-ended commitment. We went in with a specific goal, namely to destroy terrorist bases. That goal will eventually require a settlement with the southern tribes, something that should not be caricatured as "dealing with the Taliban". Mr Brown and Mr Obama would be wrong to overcompensate, to use Afghanistan as a way to demonstrate their toughness. There, too, we need a definition of victory, and an eventual way home. "Telegraph view" is written by our team of leader writers and commentators. This team includes David Hughes, Philip Johnston, Simon Heffer, Janet Daley, Con Coughlin, Robert Colvile, Iain Martin and Alex Singleton. 18 Afghans released from US controlled Bagram prison
http://www.quqnoos.com/ NRC helps release further Afghans from US custody, bringing total released from all jails to 739 KABUL National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) on Monday helped release of 18 Afghan prisoners who served from two to four years jail terms in the heavily guarded US cells in Bagram airfield. Speaking at a ceremony here, Said Sharif Yousufi an official in the National Reconciliation Commission said most of the freed afghan nationals, arrested for alleged involvement in disruptive activities and links with terrorist, were residents of Uruzgan, Ghazni, Helmand, Kandahar, Kunar and Laghman provinces. The commission was trying to help release all the Afghan political prisoners in Bagram, Pul-i-Charkhi and Guantanamo jails, Yousufi added, the commission had managed to release 739 inmates from the mentioned jails. The freed would be issued certificates to help them be safe and receive no harms from local and foreign security forces in Afghanistan, he added. He urged the released to help the security and peace in the country and reconstruction efforts in their regions. Among the released Abdul Rauf a resident of Tirinkot claimed he was arrested for no crime and spent two years in jail without any specific crime he lamented. "I run a shop in my village the US forces came and took me out of my shop by the name of Talib and carried me to Bagram jail." He claimed. By the same token Zafar Jan a resident of Kunar claimed he spent two years in jail for having committed no crime, he added, US forces took him out of his house. The US forces were treating the inmates better than pervious years, the freed prisoners concluded. Obama targets Taliban, al-Qaida
Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri - News Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said Sunday that the United States, NATO and Afghanistan must do more to combat the Taliban and al-Qaida, and he urged stronger steps to prod Pakistan into eliminating cross-border terrorist training camps. "Our message to the Afghan government is this: We want a strong partnership based on 'more for more' - more resources from the United States and NATO, and more action from the Afghan government to improve the lives of the Afghan people," Obama and Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a written statement after leaving Afghanistan. Separately, in a broadcast interview, Obama suggested that the United States link continued military aid to Pakistan to the government's willingness to combat terrorists in a lawless region astride its border with Afghanistan. "I think that the U.S. government provides an awful lot of aid to Pakistan, provides a lot of military support to Pakistan. And to send a clear message to Pakistan that this is important, to them as well as to us," he said. "I think that message has not been sent." Security problems in Afghanistan cannot be solved, he said, "without engaging the Pakistan government." Obama made his comments while on a campaign-season trip to two war zones, in addition to the Middle East and Europe. The Illinois senator is due to accept his party's presidential nomination next month, and his campaign has turned the journey into a high-profile debut on the international stage. Obama, Hagel and Reed have called for an end to the U.S. combat role in Iraq. In their statement, they emphasized that Afghanistan is "the central front in the war on terrorism. "Those who actually attacked us on 9/11 reside in the badlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have regrouped and they are getting stronger, as we saw yesterday with attacks throughout Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of a NATO soldier and several members of the Afghan police," they said. Obama has suggested adding two or three brigades to the U.S. deployment to Afghanistan. A brigade is roughly 3,500 troops. Although he has called Iraq a distraction in the fight against terrorism, Obama also has said recently that the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has "not gotten out of the bunker" to improve the lives of ordinary residents. ISI and Taliban hit Kabul mission
The Statesman, India
THE ISSUE:
Afghanistan has a long historical legacy of chaos, exacerbated since the fundamentalist Taliban engaged themselves in protracted guerrilla warfare against President Hamid Karzai's government and the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force. Taliban insurgents are mostly Pashtuns from southern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. They get training and arms from the Pakistan government, mainly the ISI.
Protect Indians
India must act
Unflinching support
Usual suspects Taliban attack districts in Logar and Paktia
Written by http://www.quqnoos.com/ Taliban claim to have attacked and burnt buildings in districts in two provinces, government says damage minor The Taliban have claimed to have captured and burnt buildings in districts in Logar and Paktia provinces. However government sources in the two provinces say that while there was damage to buildings, no one was injured. The Taliban spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid said on Saturday that the Taliban had captured Charkh district in Logar province and then burnt the district building. In the process he claimed that three policemen were killed and two injured. He also said that in the Garda Seri district in Paktia province, Taliban burnt the district building and killed 12 policemen and took another 3 hostage. He claims that the Taliban also took weapons in this siege. The police chief in Logar province, Ghullam Mostafa Mohseni confirmed that while Charkh district was under attack from about 11pm on Friday for about 20 minutes. However he says that the attack only caused damage to one room in a building and no one was hurt. Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Paktia provincial government, Rohullah Samon, says that during a two hour clash between Taliban and the police, 4 police officers were wounded and two vehicles were damaged. Mr Samon also said that in a counter attack by police, some Taliban were killed although he did not indicate precise figures. However a source that did not wish to be identified has said that the Taliban burnt the district building and also took some weapons.
The New York Times - Editorials & Opinion To the Editor: In "My Plan for Iraq" (Op-Ed, July 14), Senator Barack Obama correctly points out that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are resurgent and daily launch cross-border terrorist attacks in Afghanistan from safe sanctuaries in Pakistan. The threat facing Afghanistan and global security is constant and dynamic. Taliban and Qaeda terrorists have increasingly become sophisticated in carrying out attacks against civilian and military targets, killing more than 30 American soldiers alone since early June. To stem these deadly attacks, both an increase in NATO troops and a regional approach to the problem of terrorism are required, as Senator Obama notes. An additional three well-equipped brigades of roughly 10,000 troops would greatly increase the coalition's capacity to fight cross-border terrorism in Afghanistan. Additionally, to expand the reach and effectiveness of counterinsurgency, it is imperative to accelerate the process of training and equipping the Afghan security forces so that they can conduct independent operations deep into the Taliban's territory. Meanwhile, Pakistan should support these efforts by pursuing a two-pronged strategy to subvert the Qaeda and Taliban leadership and to dismantle their operational infrastructure in the country's well-known urban and tribal hideouts. Backed by Afghanistan and its other allies, Pakistan has the military and intelligence capabilities to achieve this strategic objective for peace at home and security in Afghanistan and the region.
M. Ashraf Haidari The Obama candidacy and the new consensus on Afghanistan
World Socialist Web Site The statements made by Barack Obama during his visit to Afghanistan over the weekend verify that his campaign for president is the mouthpiece for a significant section of the American ruling elite that is insisting on a shift in US policy in the Middle East and Central Asia. Far from proposing any retreat from militarism, Obama is arguing for a faster drawdown of troop numbers in Iraq and a reduction in tensions with Iran, only in order to facilitate a major escalation of US military operations in Afghanistan, potentially extending them into Pakistan. In a lengthy interview with CBS's Lara Logan yesterday, Obama said the situation in Afghanistan was "precarious and urgent". Global terrorist networks, he alleged, had "sanctuary" in the region and were financing themselves with the drug trade. He declared: "I don't think there is any doubt that we were distracted [by the invasion of Iraq] from our efforts to hunt down Al Qaeda and the Taliban..." Obama told Logan: "There's starting to be a broad consensus that it's time for us to withdraw some of our combat troops out of Iraq, [and] deploy them here in Afghanistan. And I think we have to seize that opportunity. Now's the time to do it... If we wait until the next administration, it could be a year before we get those additional troops on the ground here in Afghanistan. And I think that would be a mistake. I think the situation is getting urgent enough that we've got to start doing something now." Obama repeated his calls for a build-up of forces in Afghanistan and for greater intervention inside Pakistan against anti-US militants. "What I've said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value Al Qaeda targets, and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go after those targets, that we should," he stated. While declaring he would provide increased aid and "push Pakistan very hard" to go after insurgent camps with its own military, his remarks make clear that he is prepared to unilaterally launch attacks over the border. In regards to Iraq, the Illinois senator again highlighted the statement of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that the Iraqi government wanted a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces to be included in the agreement being worked out to govern the presence of American troops after December. Obama declared: "[T]his is the perfect time for us to say ‘We are going to shift our resources. We are going to get a couple more brigades here into Afghanistan. We're going to be willing to increase our foreign aid to Pakistan.'" Obama's comments underscore the utter fraud of attempts to portray him as an "antiwar" candidate. Rather, he speaks for a layer in the US political and military establishment that considers the Iraq war to have been a costly strategic blunder. It has tied down a large proportion of the armed forces and cost vast resources, as well as provoking tremendous social divisions at home and mass hostility to US militarism around the world. In February, the WSWS commented on the backing for Obama by major corporate figures such as billionaire Warren Buffett and former Federal Reserve head Paul Volcker in an article entitled "The two faces of Barack Obama". We noted: "No doubt, they believe Obama, who would be America's first African-American president, is best suited to confront the dangers posed by continuing economic crisis and rising social tensions. Who better to demand even greater sacrifices from the working class, all in the name of national unity and ‘change?' At the same time, he would present a fresh face to the world, which they hope would help extricate US imperialism from the foreign policy debacles and growing global isolation that are the legacy of the Bush administration." This is precisely the content of Obama's prescriptions for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While a large proportion of the US war machine has been bogged down occupying Iraq, US economic and strategic ambitions in Afghanistan and Central Asia have suffered serious setbacks. Insurgents among the Pashtun tribesmen of southern Afghanistan and the frontier provinces of Pakistan are conducting a large-scale guerilla war against not only US/NATO troops and the pro-occupation government of President Hamid Karzai, but also against the Pakistani government, which has long been a crucial US ally in the region. Pakistan has effectively lost control of its border areas. Indicating the concerns in US ruling circles, the current issue of Time magazine has a cover with the headline: "Afghanistan-the Right War". It features the call for additional troops by both Obama and his Republican rival, John McCain. The military situation in Afghanistan sharply deteriorated this summer. The number of attacks launched against the occupation forces has jumped by over 40 percent, and casualties have risen sharply. A measure of the intensified fighting, and the desperation among US and NATO military commanders, is the number of bombs dropped by US aircraft. In June, 646 bombs were dropped-the second highest total for any month in the near seven-year war. In the first half of 2008, 1,853 bombs and missiles were used, 40 percent more than the same period last year. Analysts openly speak of the Afghan war as continuing for 10 to 20 years. US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen has stated that as many as three additional combat brigades are needed in Afghanistan, but has admitted that he does not have them to send, due to the number of troops in the Middle East. US allies in Europe have continued to baulk at US calls for them to deploy greater military forces to Afghanistan. A major factor is the fear of European governments of the widespread hostility that exists toward the Bush administration as a result of the illegal and murderous invasion of Iraq. With Obama embarking this week on visits to France, Germany and Britain, there is no question that he will attempt to exploit the illusions and false hopes in his campaign to try to overcome this hostility with populist demagogy about the legitimacy of the war in Afghanistan. Under conditions where the military situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating, the calls by elements in and around the Bush administration for US or Israeli military strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran are viewed in the Obama camp and more widely as a recipe for a complete catastrophe. Open concerns have been expressed in the military that a war with Iran would undermine efforts to stabilise the US occupation of Iraq and any redeployment of forces to Afghanistan. Despite US accusations of Iranian aid for the insurgents, Tehran has repeatedly intervened to shore up the US-backed government in Baghdad against more radical elements in the majority Shiite population. Iranian pressure was a critical factor this year in the ability of the Maliki government and US forces to largely destroy the anti-occupation Mahdi Army militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Moreover, leading US commanders have questioned their ability to wage a full-scale war with Iran. Admiral Mullen told Fox News. "I worry about it a lot I've said when I've been asked this before, right now I'm fighting two wars and I don't need a third one... Not that we don't have the reserve to do it in the US. We do. I worry about the instability in that part of the world the possible unintended consequences of a strike like that in fact having an impact throughout the region that would be difficult to predict exactly what it would be and then the actions that we would have to take to contain it." One obvious consequence of recent talk of US or Israeli aggression against Iran is its contribution to the sharp rise in oil prices and global inflationary pressures. Already faced with the most severe financial crisis since the 1930s, the American business elite has no desire to see oil soar to over $200 a barrel as a result of a war with Iran. The Bush administration is clearly adapting to the reorientation being advocated by Obama and his backers. Tensions with Iran have been eased somewhat and renewed stress laid on diplomacy to achieve the US demands that Tehran shut down its nuclear fuel enrichment facilities. Senior US diplomat William Burns took part in a weekend meeting between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, and Iran over the nuclear issue-the first time the US has participated in such talks. On Iraq, the White House announced on Friday that it was prepared to agree to Maliki's call for "a general time horizon" for "the further reduction in US combat forces from Iraq". The US commander General David Petraeus is reportedly assessing the possibility of pulling out three brigades by September to free up troops for a "surge" to Afghanistan before the end of the year. Implicit in the agreement being formulated is that a US force numbering in the tens of thousands will remain in Iraq indefinitely, occupying the major bases that the US military has constructed in Iraq over the past five years. This follows announcements by the Iraqi government that oil contracts will be handed over to major US and other energy conglomerates. A reduction in forces in Iraq, in other words, follows signs that one of the main aims of invasion-seizing control of the country's vast energy resources-is in the process of being realised. The Obama candidacy, whether he is ultimately successful or not, is thus being used to effect a shift in foreign policy. During the primary elections and caucuses, millions of people were mobilised on the pretext that Obama was the leader of a grass roots movement against the status quo. As soon as Obama captured the nomination, he began a lurch to the right, embracing policies of the Republican right. Now it is clear that whoever wins the presidency, the wars will continue. Once again, the US elections are being engineered to deprive the American people of any say over or ability to end the militarist policies of the government. The decisions to escalate the neo-colonial war in Afghanistan have already been made, justified with more propaganda about the "terrorist threat". The consequences will be the loss of thousands more lives and the squandering of billions more in resources. Taliban Leaders Said To Meet In Pakistan
The Post Chronicle Fifty commanders of a Taliban chapter in Pakistan spent two days going over their strategy to combat the government, a spokesman said. Muslim Khan told the English-language Pakistani newspaper Dawn the military leaders of the Swat district of Pakistnof Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan met at an undisclosed location Friday and Saturday to discuss their war strategy should government security forces launch an operation in the northwest district. Local Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah presided over the conclave, Khan said in a telephone interview. The Taliban official rejected the provincial government's claim that a would-be suicide bomber had been arrested in Swat. He said the detainee was a mentally retarded youth who has nothing to do with (the) Taliban movement. (c) UPI Stronger steps needed to pressurise Pakistan: Obama
PakTribune.Com - Afghanistan News Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Sunday the United States, Nato and Afghanistan must do more to combat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and he urged stronger steps to prod Pakistan into eliminating cross-border terrorist training camps. "Our message to the Afghan government is this: We want a strong partnership based on `more for more` -- more resources from the United States and Nato, and more action from the Afghan government to improve the lives of the Afghan people," Obama and Sens Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, and Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said in a written statement after departing Afghanistan. Separately, in a broadcast interview, Obama suggested the US link continued military aid to Pakistan to the government`s willingness to combat terrorists in a lawless region astride its border with Afghanistan. "I think that the US government provides an awful lot of aid to Pakistan, provides a lot of military support to Pakistan. And to send a clear message to Pakistan that this is important, to them as well as to us," he said. "I think that message has not been sent." Security problems in Afghanistan cannot be solved, he said, "without engaging the Pakistan government". Obama made his comments while on campaign-season trip to two war zones, in addition to the Middle East and Europe. The Illinois senator is due to accept his party`s presidential nomination next month, and his campaign has turned the journey into a high-profile debut on the international stage. He departed Afghanistan shortly after the interview, which aired on CBS` "Face the Nation", although details of his trips to Iraq were withheld for security reasons. Obama, Hagel and Reed have called for an end to the US combat role in Iraq. In their statement, they emphasized that Afghanistan is "the central front in the war on terrorism. "Those who actually attacked us on 9/11 reside in the badlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have regrouped and they are getting stronger, as we saw yesterday with attacks throughout Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of a NATO soldier and several members of the Afghan police," they said. Obama has suggested adding two or three brigades to the US deployment to Afghanistan. A brigade is roughly 3,500 troops. While he has called Iraq a distraction in the fight against terrorism, Obama also has said recently the government of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has "not gotten out of the bunker" to improve the lives of ordinary residents. Obama, Hagel and Reed met with Karzai while in Afghanistan. Earlier, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama raised his international profile on Sunday by holding talks with Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, a target in his criticism of the US-led effort to stabilise Afghanistan. A Karzai aide said Obama, on the first leg of a foreign tour expected to include stopovers in Iraq as well as European capitals, vowed to inject "vigour" into the nearly seven-year war. After briefings from military commanders and breakfast with ordinary soldiers, Obama met for about two hours with Karzai at his presidential palace in the Afghan capital. Obama has chided Karzai and his government for not getting "out of the bunker" and doing more to build confidence in Afghan institutions. US embassy spokesman Mark Stroh said the senator had discussed with Karzai the reconstruction effort as well as issues including corruption and governance, areas where Karzai, who is expected to seek re-election himself next year, has faced stiff criticism. The Afghan presidency relayed only positives from Obama`s remarks. "Sen Obama conveyed that he is committed to supporting Afghanistan and to continue the war against terrorism with vigour," said Humayun Hamidzada, Karzai`s spokesman. Both Democrats and Republicans "are friends of Afghanistan and no matter who wins the US elections, Afghanistan will have a very strong partner in the United States," Hamidzada said. Asked about Obama`s criticism of Karzai`s leadership, Hamidzada said Afghanistan was held back by the need to fight terrorism "imposed" on it from outside, an apparent reference to Pakistan, which Karzai accuses of backing the Taliban. "Our hope is that with international support we will be able to minimise the threat of terrorism so that we can focus most of our energy on development and reconstruction," he said. In an interview broadcast on Sunday in the United States, Obama described the situation in Afghanistan as "precarious" and said the US should not wait to begin the planning that would be needed to send in more troops. Obama said "one of the biggest mistakes we made strategically after 9/11 was to fail to finish the job here. We got distracted by Iraq." Oil tanker attacked, killing seven in Afghanistan
Zee News, India Gunmen attacked an oil tanker in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, causing a fire that killed the vehicle's driver and six people in a minivan passing by, a provincial official said. The tanker was travelling from Jalalabad to Kabul when it was attacked, Laghman provincial spokesman Abdul Wakil Atak told media. The driver died when the tanker burst into flames, which also engulfed the minivan, killing all 6 people on board, the spokesman said, blaming the attack on extremist Taliban leading a growing insurgency in the war-ravaged nation. Taliban and other militants are regularly blamed for attacking vehicles transporting oil and other supplies to international soldiers in Afghanistan via Pakistan. The insurgency was launched in Afghanistan after the Taliban were removed from government in late 2001 in a US-led invasion. The number of international troops fighting the insurgency has since risen to nearly 70,000 -- about half of them US nationals. The unrest has grown, too, with some of the bloodiest incidents occurring in recent months, including an attack on a remote outpost last month in which nine US soldiers were killed and 15 wounded. Bureau Report 15 die in Pakistani Taliban infighting
Mathaba.Net - Asia At least 15 people, including chief of a Pakistani Taliban group, have been killed in fighting between two factions of Pakistani Taliban in a tribal region, spokesman for a Taliban group said. Shah Khalid group is considered "Ahli Hadith' group while Omar Kahlid group belongs to Deobandi school of thought. State TV reported that Khalid had surrendered to the Baitullah group but even then he was killed. Asad said that fighters of his group had captured 20 supporters of the rival faction and occupied basis. He told reporters that the rival faction was creating problems for Taliban on the behest of others. Baitullah Mehsood group is led by Omar Khalid in Mohmand agency, which had been involved in tension with the rival Shah Khalid group for few weeks. Asad said that his supporters have seized huge weapons and vehicles of the rival group. Local correspondents said that Omar Khalid group captured chief, deputy chief and over 100 of his men besides two bases of the rival group. Sources said that Shah group is involved in Afghanistan also and the other was not interfering in the local affairs. --IRNA Petraeus: Al Qaeda will divert to Afghanistan
The Daily Illini, Illinois - News After intense U.S. assaults, al-Qaeda may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan, where American casualties are running higher than in Iraq, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Saturday. "We do think that there is some assessment ongoing as to the continued viability of al-Qaeda's fight in Iraq," Gen. David Petraeus told The Associated Press in an interview at his office at the U.S. Embassy. Whatever the result, Petraeus said no one should expect al-Qaeda to give up entirely in Iraq. "They're not going to abandon Iraq. They're not going to write it off. None of that," he said. "But what they certainly may do is start to provide some of those resources that would have come to Iraq to Pakistan, possibly Afghanistan." He said there are signs that foreign fighters recruited by al-Qaeda to do battle in Iraq are being diverted to the largely ungoverned areas in Pakistan from which the fighters can cross into Afghanistan. U.S. officials have pressed Pakistan for more than a year to halt the cross-border infiltration. It remains a major worry not only for the war in Afghanistan but also for Pakistan's stability. Discussing al-Qaeda in cautious terms, Petraeus said he is not certain of the reliability of the intelligence information about the terrorist network's latest thinking. He was adamant, however, that until now al-Qaeda has seen Iraq as its best opportunity for establishing a militant Islamic state closer to the Persian Gulf. "That could be under review," Petraeus said. "We do think they are considering what should be the main effort." He offered a mostly upbeat assessment of conditions in Iraq just weeks before he is to make a recommendation on whether to further reduce U.S. troop levels. Petraeus said the country is showing fresh signs of promise not only on the security front, where insurgent attacks are down sharply, but also politically. He applauded the latest evidence of movement toward reconciliation by Sunnis and Shiites - the announcement Saturday that Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political bloc had ended a nearly yearlong boycott of the Shiite-led government. "It's a very important step forward," Petraeus said after an aide interrupted the AP interview to deliver the news. The general flashed a wide smile and instructed the aide to pass along his congratulations to top government officials, who have come under enormous pressure from U.S. officials to reconcile. Petraeus declined to say what he might recommend to President Bush regarding further U.S. troops reductions. The assessment, he said, is based on a range of factors, including the prospects for Iraqi government approval of legislation required before provincial elections can be held this fall. He would not talk about specific troop levels later this year. But the enthusiasm of Petraeus's description of security, political and even economic progress in 2008 gave the impression he may be inclined to tell Bush that fewer than the current 15 combat brigades will be needed by year's end. Petraeus said he was encouraged at the possibility of al-Qaeda reconsidering Iraq as its highest priority war front. "There is some intelligence that has picked this up," he said, adding, "It's not solid gold intelligence." Bush Failures May Force McCain, Obama to Make Like FDR in 2009
Bloomberg When George W. Bush became president in 2001, his main goals included restoring ``honor and dignity to the White House'' after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, raising school-test scores and figuring out how to spend a record budget surplus. The next White House occupant will inherit the deepest housing recession in a generation, growing fears of bank failures, a sinking dollar, $4 gasoline and an economy bleeding jobs. He'll confront wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, mounting tensions with Iran and the U.S.'s flagging international reputation. Historians say the economic and foreign policy crises in Bush's wake will present either Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain with the biggest challenges to a new president since Herbert Hoover left office during the Great Depression. ``What a burden the next president is going to confront,'' says Robert Dallek, a presidential historian and biographer of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. ``It'll be like Franklin Roosevelt coming in, in 1933.'' The list of problems facing the nation means that campaign promises -- Obama's universal health care, middle-class tax cut and immigration overhaul, or McCain's corporate and individual tax reductions and energy-independence plan -- will likely be put on hold while the president focuses on more immediate concerns, especially the economy. Waking Up Quickly The next president is ``going to wake up very quickly to the fact that the economy so overwhelms everything else,'' says Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In 2000, the last time no incumbent was running, consumer confidence was at record levels and the economy had created 1.3 million jobs in the year's first six months. In August 2000, 89 percent of Americans said the economy was doing well, according to a Los Angeles Times poll. With the expansion then in its 10th year, the contest between Bush and Vice President Al Gore centered on topics like education, prescription-drug coverage for the elderly and --with President Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern fresh in voters' minds -- morality in the Oval Office. The Times survey showed that, after education, the issues that concerned Americans most were Social Security and health care, as the nation debated how to use a $5.6 trillion surplus the Congressional Budget Office projected the government would generate over the next decade. During the campaign, Bush promised to return the surplus to taxpayers through broad-based tax cuts; when the nation entered a recession in 2001, he shifted gears and said the reductions would stimulate the economy. Wiped-Out Surplus After that recession, some $2 trillion in tax cuts and military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, the government has produced only deficits since 2002. Bush's budgets have added $1.7 trillion to the national debt. The CBO, which estimates this year's shortfall will reach $396 billion, projects the red ink will flow through at least 2011. Today, 82 percent of Americans say the economy is doing badly, and voters consider it the most important issue, followed by the Iraq War, health care, terrorism and illegal immigration. Education ranks sixth. ``People tend to ignore the economy when it's doing well and pay a lot of attention to it when it's not,'' says Arthur Miller, a political science professor at the University of Iowa and author of a research paper on issues in the 2000 election. Job Losses In June, employers cut jobs for a sixth straight month and the unemployment rate stood at 5.5 percent, a four-year high. Home prices in 20 cities dropped 15.3 percent in April from a year earlier, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index. Oil prices have set records due to global demand and tensions in the Middle East. That's pushed gasoline prices up 92 percent since January 2007 and increased the cost of filling the tank of a Chevrolet Suburban by $62, to $131. Consumer confidence has fallen to its lowest level since 1992. Many economists expect a recession to begin later this year and continue into the first quarter of 2009, when the next president takes office. The top economists on both presidential campaigns agree the economy is the priority, and each seek to affix their domestic agendas to that goal. McCain's top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, touts the Republican candidate's energy-independence plan, the ``Lexington Project,'' as one key to jumpstarting growth. Obama adviser Jason Furman says his candidate's energy, health and tax plans represent a pro-growth blueprint: ``If you can bring down the cost of health care, that can help the economy. If you bring fairness back to the tax system, that can be expansionary.'' Fannie and Freddie An early issue facing the next president will be what to do about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-created mortgage-financing companies that together buy or back half the U.S.'s $12 trillion in home loans. While Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has floated a plan to shore up the two, fundamental change isn't likely under Bush, says Chris Mayer, director of the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate at Columbia University in New York. ``Democrats in Congress are worried about giving Bush a blank check to fix this,'' he says. The next administration will also have to deal with a host of foreign-policy issues that were largely absent in 2000. Eight years ago, after a decade in which the country enjoyed the benefits of a ``peace dividend'' -- U.S. military cutbacks after the collapse of the Soviet Union -- the biggest concerns were forging peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the emergence of China as a strategic rival and whether the U.S. should engage in ``nation-building,'' as it was doing in places such as Bosnia and Haiti. Bush entered office pledging to pursue a ``humble'' foreign policy. Wars and Weapons Come January, the new president will face the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran's efforts to obtain nuclear power, and the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program. U.S. casualties in Iraq have declined this year, taking some of the edge off public opposition to the war. Still, Bush has yet to set a timeline for withdrawing the 150,000 American troops, leaving it to his successor to decide whether to pull out and how fast. Violence has risen in Afghanistan, and more troops may be needed. Attacks by extremists made June the deadliest month for the U.S. and its allies since the conflict began in 2001. In Iran, the U.S. is trying to convince the country to suspend uranium enrichment, and impose penalties if it doesn't. Even so, tension has increased, with Iran test-firing long-range missiles and Israel conducting a drill of its warplanes in what some military analysts saw as a rehearsal for a strike on Iran. Road Map And in North Korea, the U.S., China and three other nations are trying to establish a ``road map'' to outline how the Stalinist regime will abandon its nuclear weapons programs. Obama, 46, an Illinois senator, or McCain, 71, of Arizona certainly won't be the first president to be sworn in amid simultaneous financial and foreign-policy turbulence. Kennedy began his term in 1961 nine months into a recession and with an invasion of Cuba already being planned; Ronald Reagan took office six months after the end of an economic slump and a little over a year after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. The current problems may pose an even bigger challenge as anger at income inequality and ``greedy'' corporations threatens to undermine Americans' confidence in the system, says Dartmouth College political science professor Linda Fowler. ``The country is facing a crisis in capitalism,'' she says. To contact the reporters on this story: Matthew Benjamin in Washington at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Heidi Przybyla in Detroit at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . US plays for high stakes on Afghan border
Dawn Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may not have been shy about projecting US military power, but even he didn't dare send American troops into Pakistan's tribal lands to snatch or kill Al Qaeda leaders. But now Pakistanis fear the US presidential campaign has heated up the foreign policy debate over how to handle the Taliban and Al Qaeda threat to a point where American leaders could throw caution to the wind by taking unilateral action. "If this was a possibility in the past, it's a high possibility now," said a senior security official here, shuddering at the statements coming from the United States. In 2005, Rumsfeld reportedly aborted a mission to eliminate Ayman Al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda's second-in-command, because it involved too many troops, chances of success were too uncertain, and the danger of riling the situation in Pakistan was too great. The risks today may be even greater, with Pakistan going through a precarious transition to civilian-led democracy and tribesmen across the northwest reaching for their guns. "If Americans hit the Pakistani side, they will make more enemies for themselves," Ayaz Wazir, a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan, said. Taliban protection Mounting casualties among western troops across the border in Afghanistan have fuelled alarm, as have intelligence assessments that Al Qaeda could organise strikes on western soil having regrouped in the tribal areas under Taliban protection. The United States is now piling resources into Afghanistan, where the Taliban insurgency is stronger than ever, six years after US-backed invading forces drove the Afghan militia and its Al Qaeda guests into the mountains on the Pakistan border. With Western forces pressing into areas where the militants had ranged, there have been more encounters, more casualties, and more talk of ordering ‘hot pursuit' into Pakistani territory. Talat Masood, a former general turned political analyst, said US Congressional hearings, the media and think-tanks were generating the kind of hype that could persuade President George W. Bush to authorise an intensification of air strikes and even limited ground operations in the tribal belt. "Pakistan must have to take action on its own. It is left with no other option," Masood told Reuters. An American incursion would be a call to arms for tribesmen who had hitherto shunned the insurgency based in the Pashtun tribal belt straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and undermine the fledgling civilian, coalition government led by Pakistan People's Party. Trust running low In past week US impatience has been very evident. There is a perception that the Pakistan army reduced pressure on Taliban groups in the border areas as the new government tried to get tribal elders to persuade the militants to end their war. US-installed Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also cast accusations that members of Pakistan's security apparatus are playing a double-game by helping the Taliban insurgency in order to preserve leverage in southern Afghanistan for the day when western governments pull their forces out. Bush has said he was "troubled" by Al Qaeda's presence in Pakistan and would discuss the matter with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani during their meeting in Washington on July 28. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke of greater numbers of insurgents and foreign fighters crossing from Pakistan, "unmolested and unhindered", and warned: "This movement has to stop." Rumsfeld's successor, Defence Secretary Robert Gates repeated that US troops were "ready, willing and able" to help if the Pakistani government asked, but there was "a real need to do something on the Pakistani side of the border". Analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi doubted whether the United States would act too rashly. "If at all they decide to take action, it will be very, very limited but quite effective action." But the sense of trepidation in Pakistan that the United States might dispense with diplomatic niceties was reinforced by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's remarks. "We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president, I won't," Obama said in a major foreign policy speech. "We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high level terrorist targets like Bin Laden if we have them in our sights."-Reuters Afghanistan at tipping point, says US expert
The Dominion Post, New Zealand The war in Afghanistan is at a critical point, with the Taleban now in control of more than half the country, says a visiting United States terrorism expert. "It could very much go either way - the Taleban has clearly regrouped and taken over 60 per cent of the country," said Christopher Heffelfinger, a researcher at the West Point Military Academy Combating Terrorism Centre. "Whoever can provide security to the country and the Afghan people will rule Afghanistan. So we need to be the ones to provide security, not the Taleban," said Mr Heffelfinger, who was in New Zealand last week on a US State Department-funded speaking tour. Mr Heffelfinger said the New Zealand provincial reconstruction team in Bamian province could be a target, with the Taleban prepared to attack any foreigner it perceived as an enemy. He said a renewed focus on Afghanistan was needed. "We need to convince the world - not to prevent another 9/11 - we need to secure Afghanistan so that is not producing 90 per cent of the world's heroin." Mr Heffelfinger was critical of the US invasion of Iraq and its "misnamed" war on terrorism after the September 11 attacks. Terrorism was a tactic - "this is not a war against a tactic, it is a war against a political and social movement we don't have a name for". Mr Heffelfinger said terrorists were a very small segment of the Muslim community and countries that harboured them should have been targeted earlier. "We should have dealt with Pakistan before we dealt with Iraq. We should have dealt with Saudi Arabia a long time ago and not believed they were our ally in a war in which they're our enemy," he said, referring to its funding and fomenting of Islamic terrorists - including those involved in the September 11 attacks. "There is no doubt that they have a lot of responsibility for furthering this ideology globally. "That's not to say members of the Saudi royal family were directly involved but they need to be responsible for the people in their country." Pakistan should have been isolated for its role in nuclear proliferation and for its support of al Qaeda, he said. U.S.-led Coalition forces rebuffs airstrike inflicting civilian casualties in W Afghanistan
Xinhua The U.S.-led Coalition forces in a statement rebuffed reportedly civilian casualties resulted by Coalition airstrike in western Afghan province of Farah on Sunday. Afghan National Security and Coalition forces used precision airstrikes to eliminate several militants in Farah province early Sunday morning, the statement said. "The air strike was called while the militants were in an open area to prevent harm to non-combatants and civilian structures thus no civilians or Coalition forces were harmed in the engagement," it said. Earlier, police officer Najibullah Popal told Xinhua that air raids carried out by international troops over Saturday night had left policemen dead and injured in Farah province. "It was late last night when air crafts of international troops mistakenly targeted a police checkpoint in Anardara district killing and wounding a number of our policemen," a senior police officer in the province Najibullah Popal told Xinhua. Andardara is a district close to Iran border where Taliban militants also several times in the past one year targeted government interests in parts of Farah province. However, locals of the area put the number of the casualties as high as nine. Meanwhile, one soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed during fighting in eastern Afghan province of Khost on Sunday, said an ISAF statement. It is ISAF policy to not release the nationality of any casualty prior to the relevant national authority doing so. NATO have recently enhanced its military strength in the eastern bordering provinces to curb the surge of militancy and violence there. Militancy and conflicts have left more than 2,300 people including over 700 civilians dead since January this year in Afghanistan. Pakistan's top Taliban commander dies in road accident
Mathaba.Net - Asia A top Pakistani Taliban commander was killed in a road accident in the country's tribal region early Saturday, officials in the region said. Metha Khan was patrolling in South Waziristan along with other Taliban colleagues when their vehicles plunged into a deep ravine in a mountainous region. Another Taliban was also killed and four others injured in the accident, who were taken to a private hospital. The accident happened at Jarney area, some 15 kilometers east of Wana, the headquarters of South Waziristan at 2 a.m, when the vehicle of Taliban commander was overturned. Metha Khan belonged to Mulla Nazeer group of Taliban, which is rival faction of Baitullah Mehsood group in South Waziristan. Metha Khan had played important role in expelling Uzbek militants from South Waziristan when a traditional tribal 'lashkar' or army was formed under Mulla Nazeer last year in March. He was seriously injured in an attack in Wana bazaar earlier this year. He had lost one eye in the attack. Metha Khan's death is a great loss for Mulla Nazeer group of Taliban, who are involved in rivalry with Baitullah Mehsood since last year. --IRNA
Times of India, India It became evident that our communist parties are determined to conduct foreign policy as though it was a comical soap opera when a luminary representing an avowedly atheist party landed up in Lucknow in a gathering full of Shia clerics, to pledge support for the Islamic Republic of Iran - a country, where his fellow communists, from the Tudeh Party, have been either incarcerated, or summarily executed. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh thereafter justified India's growing ties with Iran on the grounds that India, like Iran, has a large Shia population. It is now argued that while we should reject the Indo-US nuclear deal designed to end global nuclear energy sanctions against India, because Indian Muslims allegedly oppose it, we should move ahead with the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline. Then, there are controversies on whether Iran is an adversary or a "strategic partner". Crass communalisation of foreign and national security policies has now unfortunately become an integral part of our politics. Those opposing close ties with Iran refer to its hostile policies on Jammu and Kashmir, where it has combined rather extreme rhetoric, with support for anti-Indian resolutions in Islamic forums like the OIC. Eyebrows have been raised about Iran's clandestine nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, at a time when it vociferously advocates that nuclear sanctions should not be ended against countries like India, which have not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. On the economic side, there are complaints about Iran being an unreliable partner. Unlike Qatar, which has scrupulously adhered to the terms of a long-term contract for supplying LNG, Iran unilaterally repudiated a $22 billion agreement it signed with India in August 2006, for supplying five million tons of LNG annually, demanding that higher prices should be paid. There is also the case of Iran not abiding by earlier commitments to buy iron ore from Kudremukh in Karnataka. Thus, commercial deals with Iran have to be carefully negotiated to ensure that it does not wriggle out of its commitments. Despite these misgivings, India-Iran ties have immense strategic importance. Both countries have a common interest in opposing Taliban-style Wahhabi extremism in Afghanistan. For years, the two countries, together with Russia, backed the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. They have extended extensive economic assistance to the Karzai government. Iran extended support, including promises of rescue help, to the America-led ouster of the Taliban and thereafter at the Bonn Conference, which led to the installation of Hamid Karzai as Afghanistan's president. Iran will remain a crucial ally for India, should the NATO forces in Afghanistan choose to withdraw. The most important symbol of this strategic partnership is the Zaranj-Delaram highway that India is building in Afghanistan, which will link that landlocked country to the Iranian port of Chahbahar. When completed, this project will erode Pakistan's ability to deny Indian exports access to Afghanistan and end Pakistan's ability to blackmail its landlocked northern neighbour. Iran similarly remains important strategically, for our access to the markets of Central Asia and to Russia's Caspian ports. The 2,700-kilometre IPI pipeline designed to supply 32 billion cubic metres of gas annually to India has been the subject of much controversy. India, like the European Union, should not be deterred by concerns of possible American sanctions, in proceeding with this project. But, the Manmohan Singh government has, like in the case of a proposed gas pipeline from Myanmar, bungled negotiations on the project, by getting involved in unnecessary negotiations with Pakistan, instead of insisting that it is entirely Iran's responsibility to deliver the gas at India's borders, with strict penalty clauses for non-fulfilment of contractual obligations. This appears to have now been set right. But, it is imperative that a major energy giant like Russia's GAZPROM be brought in with an equity stake in the project, as an additional guarantee of assured supplies, especially as western oil companies are unlikely to participate in the project. India's relations with Iran are inevitably influenced by the controversies Iran is embroiled in, because of its nuclear enrichment programme. Both the US and Israel have made no secret of their determination to strike, if Iran comes close to developing nuclear weapons. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's provocative statements to "wipe out" Israel from the map have only escalated tensions in the region. Iran's neighbours like Saudi Arabia are also nervous about Iran's nuclear ambitions. With IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei proclaiming that Iran had cleared virtually all doubts about its nuclear programme and a US National Intelligence Estimate (representing the consensus view of 16 US intelligence agencies) declaring with "high confidence" that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, while keeping its weapons option open, a serious dialogue has now begun between Iran and the permanent members of the UN Security Council, together with Germany and the EU, to find a way out of the nuclear impasse. The western powers would be well advised to remember that national pride is an integral element of Iranian foreign policies. Mercifully, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has cautioned its mercurial president against "provocative and illogical sloganeering". India would do well to encourage and even facilitate moves for reconciliation between Iran on the one hand and the US and Israel on the other. (The writer is a former Indian high commissioner to Karachi) 100 disadvantaged women find opportunity in Zabul
Source: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) The Women's Centre in Zabul province is a bustling place. More than 100 women fill its classrooms and workshops. Their expectations are high. With the training they are receiving in literacy, tailoring, carpet weaving and poultry raising, these women will be able to significantly increase their families' monthly income. For some women it is the difference between malnourishment and prosperity for their children. The director of Women's Affairs for Zabul province is responsible for creating, managing and staffing all of the courses run from the Women's Centre. She looks proud as she explains the courses, which are currently under way, but she is quick to add that more needs to be done. In the future she plans to expand the women's training projects into other villages. These expanding the projects ‘will make it easier for women to access the training and then earn more money for their families,' she said. The Zabul Women's Centre is an example of the possibilities that exist for Afghans, men and women, when they have strong leadership and work together to accomplish a common aim. Training centres like this one are the key to a prosperous future for all Afghans. Contact Information ISAF Public Affairs Office Tel: +93 (0)79 51 1155 - Mobile: 0093 (0) 799 55 8291 This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it - www.nato.int/isaf/
AlterNet.org After six years of ignoring Afghanistan, things have gotten bad enough to force American officials to pay attention. After six years of ignoring Afghanistan, things have gotten bad enough to force American officials to pay attention. For the past two months, U.S. casualties in Afghanistan have been higher than in Iraq. And on July 13, Afghanistan definitely got everybody's attention when nine U.S. troops were killed in what Wikipedia is now officially calling "The Battle of Wanat." Three days after the battle, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the U.S.-dominated military force running the country, announced it's abandoning Wanat completely. Let's start with a close-up of the battle, then zoom out to the overall situation in Afghanistan. Wanat is in Kunar Province, along the border with Pakistan. It looks a lot like Northern Wyoming: mountain country, steep slopes with pine forests running down to fast, cold rivers. Some of the photos I've seen from Kunar seem like stills from "The Sound of Music" or "Heidi," only some prankster has Photoshopped in a platoon of soldiers in desert camouflage. The outpost that the United States had just set up in Wanat was supposed to disrupt Taliban supply lines from Pakistan. Instead, it became a tempting target for the local guerrillas, just like hundreds of other remote forward bases in other rural guerrilla wars from Southeast Asia to Algeria. Guerrillas usually avoid open combat with conventional forces, but when they do attack in force it's usually against the smaller, more vulnerable forward bases. The Wanat base was a very tempting target because it was still under construction. It's not so easy to be sure what actually happened in the battle there on July 13. A big Taliban force -- big by guerrilla-war standards, meaning several hundred -- was able to mass outside the base without being detected. They attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and rifle fire, managed to take part of the base, and then either withdrew or were forced back into the town of Wanat, where the fighting continued in the ruins. The NATO troops had massive air support, and faced with that, the guerrillas dispersed into the hills. Then, three days later, the U.S. forces, who have de facto command of southeastern Afghanistan, also withdrew. Officially Wanat is now in the hands of the Afghan police, but that's a joke. You can tell how ridiculous that claim is by looking carefully at the casualties from the battle. This is a good example of how to read war news carefully, how to read between the lines of standard press coverage. It's almost like a story-problem for war nerds. Here are the figures: There were 70 defenders in that base, 45 U.S. troops and 25 ANA (Afghan National Army) troops. That's about a 60/40 split. So if both groups fought equally effectively, you'd expect more than a third of the casualties to be from the ANA. But that's not the story the casualty figures tell you. Every defender who died was American; no Afghan troops died. Three-quarters of the wounded were also American, only four out of 19 were Afghan. What that tells you is that the ANA didn't fight. They left it to the Americans. That's a pattern you often see in guerrilla wars: The locals fight very hard against the occupiers, but not very well for them. So in Vietnam, the Viet Cong fought like demons and the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) barely fought at all, even though they were from the same ethnic background. There are a lot of very familiar patterns in this story. If you zoom out from Wanat and look at the bigger situation in southern Afghanistan, you've got the classic ingredients for a long, bloody guerrilla war: a big ethnic group on both sides of an artificial border, difficult terrain, and dirt-poor peasants with a long tradition of fighting just about everyone who comes along, from Alexander the Great to the 19th century British. The Pakistani/Afghan border is 1,500 miles long, and the people living on both sides of it are Pashtun, the biggest ethnic group in Afghanistan and the support base of the Taliban. The Taliban started as a Pashtun resistance to the Northern Alliance warlords, mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks, who took power after the Soviet pullout in 1989, and the Taliban is still mostly Pashtun. The reason you don't hear so much about the ethnic angle is simple: Neither side wants to push that angle in its propaganda. The Taliban would like to claim to be defending Islam, and the Americans are happy to go along with that, so they can say we're fighting Islamic terror. But the fact is that the Taliban stands for old-school Pashtun tradition more than for Islam. And the Taliban is divided even further, with complicated loyalties to local warlords and tribal chiefs. There are three main factions right now, and the one that runs Kunar Province is run by an old friend of the CIA's from the 1980s, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar was always a tough guy to handle, for the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, and when the foreign troops finally withdraw, it's a safe bet that his faction of the Taliban will just switch to fighting the other two. But for now, the three factions seem pretty solidly united against the ISAF, the American-dominated occupying force. When the U.S. Air Force started bombing Afghanistan in October 2001, the Taliban had beaten the Uzbek/Tajik Northern Alliance and controlled most of the country. Not all of it; the Taliban never had the strength to control all of Afghanistan. In fact, it was overstretched, with small garrisons scattered through hostile tribes' territory. The Taliban had also managed to make itself hated by just about all the non-Pashtun population of the country by pushing its backwoods Pashtun rules on everyone else, and shooting or hanging anybody who complained. What's scary now, for the ISAF's chances of holding on to the country, is that the Taliban seems to have learned its lesson. It never had a reputation for sophistication, and its hillbilly Pashtun ways weren't exactly calculated to win hearts and minds. The Pashtun have always been a little strange. They have probably the most anti-women attitude of any tribe on earth. Here are a couple of Pushtun proverbs that give you the general idea: "Women belong either in the house or in the grave," and "Even one's own mother and sister are disgusting." They don't even claim to find women attractive; for the typical Pashtun warrior, the sexiest thing around is a little boy. But, like the old saying goes, "pain is the best teacher," and the pain the Talibs suffered when they were crushed in 2001-2002 seems to have made them a little more humble and flexible. This is something you see in a lot of guerrilla wars: After a defeat, the guerrillas come back much smarter and more patient, because the enemy has been acting like a sped-up Darwin, pruning the movement by killing off the hotheads, the sadists and the crazies, until only the smarter guerrillas, who had the sense to lie low, are left. At any rate, the new Taliban has been a lot more patient and sophisticated than the pre-invasion model. So Afghanistan hasn't been quiet in a good way these past few years; it's been quiet like the old line in Westerns: "It's quiet -- too quiet." The new Taliban has learned to tap into the poor peasants' grudges. And Lord knows the Afghan peasantry is poor, and getting poorer, with 70 percent unemployment. Even USA Today, always ready to put a smiley face on total misery, admits that the average yearly income in Afghanistan is only $300. So overall, Afghanistan has rotten living conditions -- not a promising market if you're selling the new iPhone, but perfect conditions, lab-level perfect, for selling rebellion. In the early stages, successful rural insurgencies don't even worry about combat much. They focus on quietly setting up a local government that replaces the occupiers' puppet government. If you've read much about how the Viet Cong worked in South Vietnam, you'll recognize the pattern: The puppet government runs around looking busy in the daytime, but when the sun goes down the guerrillas go into action, collecting taxes and settling local disputes, even holding court proceedings in caves, barns or somebody's hut. The idea is to keep the locals from contacting the occupiers, denying them basic intelligence about what's going on in the villages, and at the same time making your group indispensable by helping to handle the local feuds, even helping them in the fields. The Taliban has spent the last six years doing all that, to the point that most of Afghanistan now has Sharia-based Taliban courts settling criminal cases. Against this sort of insurgency, the only effective countermeasure is good, sophisticated local intelligence. And we haven't exactly won any prizes in that department, in Iraq or Afghanistan. If you'll recall, the first American casualty was a CIA interrogator named Johnny Spann, who got mobbed by Taliban prisoners he was trying to interrogate at Mazar-i-Sharif. Spann was the first to interrogate the infamous John Walker Lindh, our own Marin County-raised Talib, and what he asked Lindh -- up there in northern Afghanistan, in a crowd of flat-hatted, sullen Talibs who were just about to rush him -- was, "Are you a member of the IRA?" (I wish I knew what Lindh said back, in that Marin County stoner drawl: "Nooo, deewd, but I was in the Tamalpais High Jazz Band.") To make up for the big gaping hole where our military intelligence should be, we've been using William Westmoreland's failed formula: massive firepower. Donald Rumsfeld's doctrine of doing counterinsurgency warfare on the cheap, with very few troops and lots of air strikes, means that the ISAF has very little local intelligence and has to depend on air power, which worked well enough in the initial defeat of the Taliban in 2002, but just plain doesn't work in counterinsurgency warfare, because that kind of warfare is about not firing until you know exactly who you're shooting at. To gain that sort of local knowledge, you need troops settling in to the villages, getting to know people. What you don't need is F-18s orbiting at medium altitude looking for targets. Unfortunately, that's what we've been using to suppress the Taliban. Those fighter jets can't tell the difference between a wedding party carrying the bride to her husband's village and a Taliban column moving to the attack. And when in doubt, they tend to assume all large groups on the move are Taliban. For six years, ISAF warplanes have been bombing Pashtun wedding parties and processions. It seems to happen over and over again. I'm not sure why. Maybe weddings are the only time that Pashtuns get together in big numbers, big enough to draw fighter pilots' attention. Maybe it's their habit of firing rifles to celebrate. But for whatever reason, we have bombed and strafed enough wedding parties to rouse centuries of hatred from the Pashtuns. And it's no coincidence that one of the worst of these wedding attacks happened a few miles from Wanat, exactly one week before the Taliban attacked there. On July 7, U.S. Air Force planes killed 47 civilians in a wedding party in Nangarhar. Apparently they mistook a column of relatives taking the bride to her new village for a Taliban force on the march. That's the kind of mistake that makes guerrillas very happy. If you're a Taliban commander, you couldn't wish for a better scenario than a U.S. air strike on a wedding party to rile the people up against the foreign occupier. The guerrillas don't lose a single fighter in an operation like that. In fact, they gain huge numbers of recruits because everyone who hears about the air strike wants to volunteer to avenge the dead. By trying to do Afghanistan on the cheap, following the Rumsfeld Doctrine that air power can do everything, we've played right into the hands of the new and improved Taliban. Police say 2 kidnapped Turks, their driver released in Afghanistan a week after disappearing
Orlando Sentinel, Florida - Nation/World Police say two Turkish nationals kidnapped in western Afghanistan have been released along with their Afghan driver. Raouf Ahmadi, police spokesman for the western zone of Afghanistan, says the release happened Sunday in Herat province. Ahmadi confirmed a ransom was paid but said police are trying to get details about it. Turkish state media said the Turks were engineers and were expected to return to Turkey on Monday. Authorities said the two worked for a road construction company. They had disappeared for a week. There have been a number of kidnappings in Herat recently, mainly targeting Afghans. Most cases are of a criminal nature and not linked to the Taliban insurgency.
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