# The Sandbox and Area Reports Thread October 2013



## The Bread Guy (1 Oct 2013)

*The Sandbox and Area Reports Thread October 2013  *               

*News only - commentary elsewhere, please.
Thanks for helping this "news only" thread system work!*


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## GAP (6 Oct 2013)

*Articles found Oct 6, 2013*

 Brother arrested over kidnapped female Afghan MP
Published October 02, 2013 AFP
Article Link

Kabul (AFP) –  A female Afghan lawmaker kidnapped by Taliban militants was the victim of a plot hatched by her brother, the country's intelligence agency said on Wednesday.

Fariba Ahmadi Kakar, one of 69 female MPs in the 249-seat lower house, was taken at gunpoint in August and held for three weeks before being released, reportedly in exchange for six Taliban prisoners.

The National Directorate of Security (NDS) said that her brother, Noor Ahmad, had been arrested on charges of being a key accomplice behind the kidnapping, which attracted global headlines.

"The NDS investigation concluded that two people including Noor Ahmad, brother of MP Kakar, had plotted the kidnapping with a Taliban commander," the spy agency said in a statement.

It also released a video of Kakar's brother making a tearful confession.
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 Brave staff, grim outlook after Afghan hospital attack
Article Link
By Edouard GUIHAIRE Published October 01, 2013 AFP

Maidan Shar (Afghanistan) (AFP) –  A Taliban attack wrecked the operating theatre and left 160 staff and patients wounded, but the Maidan Shar hospital has never stopped serving the people of one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan.

During the attack, which targeted a nearby office of the intelligence services, a series of explosions broke nearly every window in the hospital, smashed down doors and destroyed medical equipment.

"There were three of us here in my office having lunch," said doctor Abdul Samad Hakimi, the hospital director, remembering the horrors of the attack last month.

"We heard a loud noise, then another, and the windows exploding. We went out into the hallway. There were shards of glass everywhere and gunshots outside."

Miraculously the flying glass did not kill anyone, but 80 hospital staff and 80 patients sustained minor injuries in 45 minutes of mayhem.

"The hospital was full of pieces of broken glasses and smoke, and all the patients came to hide in the corridor," said Hakimi. "Wounded people were treating other wounded people."
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## GAP (10 Oct 2013)

*Articles found Oct 10, 2013*

 New details emerge about how four U.S. military members died in Afghanistan
Article Link
By Jennifer Griffin, October 09, 2013 FoxNews.com

As the coffins of four U.S. service members returned to Dover, Del. Wednesday amid outrage over the government’s inability to pay their families death benefits or travel expenses, Fox News has learned new details about the attack  in which they died Sunday in Afghanistan.

The incident, which occurred in Panjwai district 25 miles west of Kandahar, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, is currently under investigation by the U.S. military.

Fox News has learned that 13 other service members were also severely injured in the assault.

 The injured began arriving at Walter Reed National Army Medical Center earlier this week although some were not yet stable enough to move from Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Senior U.S. military sources describe the attack as “complex”.

A Ranger regiment that included 36 troops and a canine unit were attempting to capture a high value target in Panjwai in southern Afghanistan. When the troops arrived at the home, U.S. military officials said, the unit did a typical “call out” asking for those inside to come out.

One man appeared. Reports from the battlefield suggest he dropped to his knees and lifted his shirt to show the U.S. forces that he was not wearing a suicide bomb vest.

As several members of the Ranger unit moved toward the man to begin questioning him, a woman wearing a suicide vest emerged from the house and blew herself up, killing several members of the unit instantly, along with the dog, and injuring others.

Another Afghan male tried to escape from the compound.

As U.S. army medics, explosives specialists and others in the unit moved in to help the wounded, 13 improvised explosive devices went off, killing and injuring more U.S. forces.

They were the last casualties before the Afghan war entered its 13th year Monday.
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 In Afghanistan, villagers and government battle over blame for coal mine collapse
Article Link
By Kevin Sieff, Published: October 7

IN ABKHORAK, Afghanistan — Two weeks after this village’s coal mine collapsed, killing 23 men, Sejuddin crept back into the hole in the earth where his son, Merajuddin, had been buried alive. The body had been recovered, but Sejuddin wanted to gather his son’s clothes and helmet — any reminders of his 18-year-old boy, no matter how tattered or charred.

Afghanistan’s mining industry was supposed to lift this remote village from poverty. Instead, the mine disaster has left dozens of families devastated and led to a bitter dispute over who is to blame. The government claims the Taliban blew up the mine. Locals say it collapsed because of government incompetence.
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## GAP (24 Oct 2013)

*Articles found Oct 24, 2013*

 Despite billions in foreign aid, most Afghans can't find full-time jobs

By: Kathy Gannon, The Associated Press  10/24/2013 
Article Link

KABUL - Hundreds of men, some on crutches, all wearing tattered clothing, gather shortly before dawn at major intersections throughout Kabul and other Afghan cities. Displaying primitive tools such as a level or a trowel, they seek labour that is often backbreaking, always temporary and will earn just a few dollars for a day's work.

Employers circle the intersections, eyeing the crowds. Usually they are looking for one or two workers for minor construction tasks. Before they even stop, dozens of men swarm their vehicle, fighting with each other to get one of perhaps five or six jobs available that morning.

Despite billions of dollars from abroad to develop this impoverished country since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime in 2001, roughly 12 million people, or eight out of every 10 working-age Afghan are unskilled day labourers, according to an International Labor Organization report. Most land only temporary jobs.

In rural areas, work is also temporary — but it's also seasonal and often illegal, the report said. Some of the biggest employers, opium-producing poppy farmers, provide tens of thousands of short-term jobs.

But almost everywhere, the pay is meagre. Afghans with jobs, whether part-time or full-time, earn on average $410 per year — or about $1 per day, according to the World Bank.

Mir Afghan, a day labourer standing on line one recent morning at a Kabul intersection, says he hasn't worked in 13 days and is $1,260 in debt. He said neighbours occasionally help him out and local stores give him food on credit. One neighbour recently loaned him $9 to buy medicine for one of his six children.

At Mir Afghan's home in a congested neighbourhood on the edge of Kabul, his wife, Sabar Gul, started crying when asked about the family's meals. Cradling her coughing and feverish infant son in her arms, she said she has enough food to cook only one meal each day and they rarely can afford to eat meat.

The International Labor Organization report, released last year, offered several grim statistics: nearly half of Afghans don't have enough to eat; 18 per cent of children under 15 years old are working; and 82 per cent of Afghans are illiterate.

Most businesses are not registered and thus do not pay taxes. That means the government, riddled with corrupt officials, is heavily dependent on international aid as well as on the black market — most often linked to the country's flourishing drug trade.
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 Afghan fury as US seizes 'spy at top of Taliban’
American forces’ dramatic capture of Times Square bomb plot suspect prompts Karzai rebuke and raises fears over withdrawal deal 
Article Link
 By Damien McElroy, and Rob Crilly in Islamabad 12 Oct 2013

 He is second-in-command of one of the world’s deadliest terror groups, wanted by America for masterminding the 2010 Times Square bomb plot.

Eight days ago, US special forces got their man, seizing Latif Mehsud, of Pakistan’s Tehrek-e-Taliban (TTP) while he was travelling in a convoy on a remote mountain highway in Afghanistan.

The dramatic raid however, the details of which have only emerged now, was all the more daring because Mehsud was forcibly abducted while heading to a secret rendezvous with America’s allies in Afghanistan’s top spy network, the National Intelligence Directorate.

If briefings from Kabul turn out to be true, Latif Mehsud was a prized asset for Afghanistan’s beleaguered spies. 
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 Graeme Smith: Amongst the Nomads
Graeme Smith, Special to National Post | 16/10/13
Article Link

Every night I rigged up my satellite, checked my newspaper’s website and discovered that my bulletins were appearing on the front page. Soldiers peered over my shoulder to read the stories about themselves. The media in Europe and North America were generally supportive of the war at the time, and my dispatches often ran alongside editorials or columns praising the troops and their actions. The headline across the top of my newspaper’s front page on September 4, 2006, announcing the death of four Canadian soldiers, was “Bloodied, but unbowed.”

I made friends with the soldiers, too, adopted into a platoon that called itself the Nomads. I felt proud when they gave me a “Nomads” patch for my flak jacket. The soldiers were brave, generous and devoted to their friends. I was basically an excited kid, recording what felt in some ways like a climactic battle between the forces of barbarism and civilization — but my notes include scraps of information that I should have investigated more carefully.

My translators called me with reports of civilian casualties, and I documented some of them, but forgot about many others. I wrote down the name of a man rumoured to have lost his entire family in an air strike (“perhaps five sons, two daughters, one wife killed”) but I never found him. Such professional failures would haunt me later when I ranted about the lack of media resources to track events in southern Afghanistan. Some of that anger would be secretly aimed at myself for allowing stories to slip away.
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## GAP (27 Oct 2013)

*Articles found Oct 27, 2013*

 Bomb apparently targeting soldiers kills civilian in Afghan capital
Published October 27, 2013 Associated Press
Article Link

KABUL, Afghanistan –  An Afghan official and witnesses say a bomb apparently targeting a group of soldiers has killed a civilian in a market in the capital Kabul.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, who is spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said the bomb went off Sunday as military personnel waited for a vehicle to take them to work. He said five soldiers were wounded.

A man who identified himself as Ziaudin said his 10-year-old daughter was killed. A witness, Hashmatullah, said four civilians were wounded in addition to the soldiers. He believed the bomb was placed under vegetables in a shop.

Like many Afghans, they only used one name.
end

Apache pilot thought marines accused of murder were going to man's aid
Court martial of three British soldiers hears that marine said he had 'broken the Geneva convention' after Afghan's death
Steven Morris	 theguardian.com, Thursday 24 October 2013 
Article Link

The Apache helicopter pilot fired 139 rounds of 30mm ammunition at the fleeing suspected insurgent in September 2011. Photograph: Reuters

A British Apache helicopter pilot has told the court martial of a group of Royal Marines accused of the execution-style killing of an Afghan man that he believed the group was carrying the wounded man away to give him first aid.

The marines, none of whom can be identified, are accused of murdering the Afghan man, believed to be an insurgent, after the attack helicopter pilot had left the scene in Septermber 2011.

It is claimed that one of the marines, identified only as marine A, shot the injured man in the chest and told him: "There you are, shuffle off this mortal coil, you cunt. It's nothing you wouldn't do to us."

A few moments later A allegedly told colleagues: "Obviously this doesn't go anywhere fellas. I've just broken the Geneva convention."

The prosecution alleges two other marines, B and C, "encouraged and assisted" A. All three deny murder.

On the second day of the hearing the Apache pilot, who was also granted anonymity, described how he had been told to track an insurgent thought to have been involved in an attack on a British patrol base in Helmand.

The pilot said a ground commander had given him the authority to "engage" the man, who was in an open field. The court martial heard that 139 rounds of 30mm ammunition were fired at the man.
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## GAP (29 Oct 2013)

*Articles found Oct 29, 2013*

 Afghan villagers stone to death alleged bomber
Article Link

A man was killed by Afghan villagers because they believed he set off a bomb that killed 18 people on their way to a wedding on Sunday, officials have said.

The governor of Ghazni province, Musa Khan Akbarzadah, said locals in Ander district stoned the man to death. His body was then riddled with bullets.

The villages claimed the man had admitted responsibility for Sunday's attack and planted a second bomb.

The Taliban have denied involvement, blaming government-allied militiamen.

Afghan civilians are often hit by roadside bombs planted by the group to kill government officials.
Minibus destroyed

Mr Akbarzadah said the suspected bomber was found by the villagers hiding near his home in Ander, a poor and deeply traditional Pashtun area in the east of the province.

Deputy Governor Mohammed Ali Ahmadi said a crowd of more than 100 people dragged him out of his hiding place, beat him with sticks and shovels, and then stoned him until he died.

"They [then] fired about 200 bullets at his body," he told the AFP news agency.

Locals said the man had admitted carrying out Sunday's bombing and given information about a second device planted nearby, according to AFP.

But a local councillor in Ghazni, Abdul Jami Jami, disputed that version of events. He told BBC Pashto that the man was killed when he was about to plant a second bomb, which went off unexpectedly.

In Sunday's attack, a roadside bomb exploded beside a minibus packed with people on their way to a wedding.

Eighteen people, including at least 14 women and one child, were killed, deputy provincial police chief Col Asadullah Ensafi said. 

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