# The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread September 2011



## GAP (1 Sep 2011)

*The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread September 2011  *               

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


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## GAP (1 Sep 2011)

*Articles found September 1, 2011*

 Afghan campaign leaves air force in good position: commander
  Article Link 
By Robert Hiltz, Postmedia News August 30, 2011

OTTAWA — Canada's last air wing commander at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan says the Royal Canadian Air Force is well positioned for future missions abroad.

Col. Al Meinzinger told Postmedia News his time in Afghanistan, in one of the country's busiest airbases, showed him the versatility and professionalism of the air force.

"The air force is positioned very well based on its most recent experiences to be employed in whatever area the government seeks to use us," Meinzinger said. "I think the future is exceptionally bright for the RCAF."

Meinzinger said Afghanistan was "the most challenging and difficult (operation) that one would find on the planet." High temperatures and an abundance of dust added to the pressures of operating within a combat zone.

"As I look to the future, I see us as being capable of being deployed in the full gamut of campaigns," Meinzinger said. "I think it's that expeditionary mindset that is the legacy of Afghanistan. We've proven we can operate under a very austere, difficult, harsh environment."
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 Afghanistan election panel expels 9 lawmakers from parliament
Article Link
The response by Afghanistan's election commission to allegations of widespread vote fraud is an apparent attempt to end persistent turmoil over last September's balloting. 

By Alex Rodriguez and Aimal Yaqubi, Los Angeles Times
August 22, 2011 Islamabad, Pakistan, and Kabul,—

Afghanistan's election commission on Sunday announced the expulsion of nine lawmakers because of allegations of vote fraud, an apparent attempt to bring an end to months of turmoil over last year's fraud-tainted parliamentary elections.

The controversy had severely hampered the Afghan government's operations at a time when the international community was looking to President Hamid Karzai's administration to shoulder more responsibility for governance of the country.

The September vote was marred by a raft of allegations of voter intimidation and fraud. Initially, election officials had set aside a quarter of the cast ballots and disqualified 19 winning candidates.
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 British minister's gaffe reveals position on Afghanistan
By CNN Staff August 31, 2011
Article Link

A senior British Cabinet Minister risked an embarrassing diplomatic row Tuesday after accidentally revealing confidential documents that appeared to welcome the departure of Afghanistan's president.

International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell was photographed leaving the prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street with what appeared to be briefing notes on Afghanistan and its president, Hamid Karzai, who will finish his second term in 2014. The top of the page carried the header "Protect-Policy."

One paragraph falling under "points to make," and which Mitchell's finger points to, reads: "Note that Karzai has publicly stated his intention to step down at the end of his second term -- as per the constitution. This is very important. It improves Afghanistan's political prospects very significantly. We should welcome Karzai's announcement in private and in public."

The following paragraph read: "Afghan perceptions of violence are very important for their confidence in the future, and for their readiness to work for the Afghan Government. Have we got the strategic communications on levels of violence right?
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 UK Memo Welcomes Karzai Plan to Step Down in 2014
By REUTERS Published: August 30, 2011 at 2:45 PM ET
Article Link

LONDON (Reuters) - British officials believe Afghan President Hamid Karzai's decision to step down at the end of his second term in 2014 greatly improves his country's political prospects, a confidential memo accidentally disclosed by a minister showed.

The memo, held by British International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell as he left a high-level meeting on Tuesday and caught by a photographer, also expressed hope that talks between Afghanistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which broke down in June, will get back on track soon.

The revelation of the views of Britain's international aid department on Karzai is embarrassing for the British government.

Britain, which has about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan battling Taliban insurgents and is a major aid donor, strongly supports Karzai in public. But Karzai has often had difficult relations with the United States and other Western backers.

"Karzai has publicly stated his intention to step down at the end of his second term (in 2014) as per the constitution. This is very important. It improves Afghanistan's political prospects very significantly. We should welcome Karzai's announcement in private and in public," the memo said. 
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## The Bread Guy (3 Sep 2011)

At Afghan Military Hospital, Graft and Deadly Neglect
Article link
MARIA ABI-HABIB, _Wall Street Journal_, 3 Sept 11

American officers deployed as mentors in Afghanistan's main military hospital discovered a shocking secret last year: Injured soldiers were routinely dying of simple infections and even starving to death as some corrupt doctors and nurses demanded bribes for food and the most basic of care.

The discovery, which hasn't previously been reported, added new details to longstanding evidence of gross mismanagement at Dawood National Military Hospital, where most salaries and supplies are paid for by American taxpayers.

Yet the patient neglect continued for months after U.S. officials discovered it, as Afghan officials rebuffed American pressure to take action, multiple documents and testimonies viewed by _The Wall Street Journal_ show.

(....)

(Afghan army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Sher Mohammed) Karimi was invited to attend an Afghan shura, a traditional meeting, at the hospital with Canadian Brigadier Gen. David Neasmith, the assistant commander for army development at the NTM-A. NATO officials pressed Gen. Karimi to address the problem of staff absenteeism and missing medicine, a U.S. mentor who was present says. But Afghan hospital and army officials who attended the meeting steered the conversation away from such issues and asked for raises and promotions, the mentor says. As weeks passed without progress, the mentors say they assembled more evidence of neglect, including detailed medical charts and photos showing emaciated patients and bedsores a foot long and so deep that bones protruded from them. 

In an Oct. 4 document emailed by the mentors to Gen. Neasmith, they complained about the hospital's intensive-care unit, among other issues: "The most dynamic and ill affected is the ICU, whereby favoritism, ambivalence, incompetence coupled with understaffing lead to the untimely deaths of patients daily, occasionally several times per day."

(....)

By mid-December (2010), Gen. Yaftali, the Afghan army's surgeon-general, was moved out of his job without explanation—after the coalition's commander at the time, Gen. David Petraeus, personally raised the problems at the hospital during a meeting with President Karzai, people familiar with the matter said. The hospital has seen major improvements since then ....
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## The Bread Guy (4 Sep 2011)

More Afghan soldiers deserting the army, NATO statistics show _(includes quote from Canadian General)_
Article link
Joshua Partlow, Washington Post, 3 Sept 11

At least one in seven Afghan soldiers walked off the job during the first six months of this year, according to statistics compiled by NATO that show an increase in desertion.

Between January and June, more than 24,000 soldiers walked off the job, more than twice as many as in the same period last year, according to the NATO statistics. In June alone, more than 5,000 soldiers deserted, nearly 3 percent of the 170,000-strong force.

Some Afghan officials say the figures point to the vulnerability of a long-standing Afghan policy that prohibits punishment of deserters. The rule, issued under a decree by President Hamid Karzai, was aimed to encourage recruiting and allow for some flexibility during harvest time, when the number of desertions spikes.

(....)

At one point this summer, the pace of desertions climbed to an annualized rate of 35 percent, though it has since declined.

NATO’s training command has developed an extensive plan to attempt to lower attrition further, saying an acceptable goal would be 1.4 percent per month — or about 17 percent a year. July’s attrition rate was 2.2 percent.

“If we’re in the same situation in 3.5 years” — when Afghans are scheduled to be in charge of their security — “then we have a problem,” said Canadian Maj. Gen. D. Michael Day, a deputy commander in NATO’s training mission in Kabul.
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## GAP (12 Sep 2011)

*Articles found September 12, 2011*

 Transport Canada knew Canadian UAE base was in doubt: Documents
  Article Link 
By Lee Berthiaume, Postmedia News September 9, 2011

OTTAWA — Seven months before the military was forced to close its secret airbase in the United Arab Emirates and was sent scrambling to find a replacement, Transport Canada officials knew Camp Mirage's days likely were numbered.

"The UAE government has escalated its pressure to increase the number of flights its airlines (Emirates and Etihad Airways) may operate to Canada," reads a Transport Canada briefing note dated March 5, 2010 and released through Access to Information.

"The Department of National Defence's use of facilities in the UAE may no longer be permitted if Canada fails to grant increased frequencies to UAE air carriers."

The note goes on to state: "Historically, Canada does not link the negotiation of air transport rights to unrelated issues."

Camp Mirage was quietly established outside Dubai in the aftermath of 9/11 as a logistics base to support Canadian military operations in Afghanistan.
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 Truck bomb kills 4 Afghans, wounds 77 U.S. troops
By Emma Graham-Harrison, Reuters 
Article Link

A suicide bomber driving a truck of firewood attacked a NATO base in central Afghanistan, killing four civilians and injuring 77 U.S. troops on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks, NATO and Afghan officials said on Sunday.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for Saturday’s bombing, which created one of the highest injury tolls of the decade-long war and came just hours after the insurgent group slammed the United States for dragging Afghanistan into war.

An 8-year-old boy was among those killed in the bombing at a combat outpost in Wardak province, about 50 km (30 miles) south of the capital Kabul, the governor’s office said in a statement. Fourteen civilians were also wounded.

None of the injuries to the U.S. troops was life-threatening, and the base remained operational although its perimeter fence was damaged, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

“Seventy-seven people is a large number, when you come to casualty figures, but the majority of them could very quickly be treated, there was nobody who was in danger of losing his life, and a high number of them returned to duty,” said spokesman General Carsten Jacobson.

In a statement emailed to media, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the truck used in the attack was packed with nine tonnes of explosives and more than 100 foreign troops were killed or wounded.

Doctor Muslim, the governor of Sayed Abad district, said the blast had also badly damaged the buildings that house the district government, and his cook was among the dead. 
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## GAP (19 Sep 2011)

*Articles found September 19, 2011*
 
Welcome our Afghan interpreters
Article Link
 Peter Worthington September 16th, 2011

ORONTO - Every day there seem to be reminders that we, the country, must do well by the soldiers returning from Afghanistan.

It is one of the issues on which most Canadians agree, and certainly all political parties pay homage to the theme that veterans be treated well.

There is general awareness that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a valid "war wound," even though it manifests itself in uncertain ways.

The "unconventional" war in Afghanistan - a war of roadside bombs, ambushes and an ill-defined enemy that blends with the population - increases the stress on soldiers more than a conventional war or hand-to-hand combat might.

That said, there is still criticism that we don't do enough for our soldiers, who are citizens, and who chose to serve their country by doing a dangerous job. What this means is that they are not forgotten, not ignored, but many may slip through the cracks, as they say.

If the country is legitimately concerned about those who return from the war in Afghanistan, why is the country less concerned about Afghan individuals who served with Canadians as interpreters, all at risk to their and their families' lives, and who want to come to Canada?
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 Canada to loan Australia armored vehicles
Published: Sept. 16, 2011
Article Link

CANBERRA, Australia, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- Canada will loan Australia three armored vehicles for use by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan for additional protection against improvised explosive devices.

The vehicles are two Husky protected mobility vehicles fitted with ground-penetrating radar and one Buffalo mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle fitted with an interrogation arm and mast-mounted Gyrocam Systems camera.

The vehicles will be used by Australian army engineers, who are creating safe pathways for troops as they patrol Uruzgan province in Afghanistan.

The vehicles will be on loan for around 12 months from 2012. Work is under way to assess the possible acquisition of a permanent system.

Canadian soldiers in Kandahar have been using the vehicles, which will be handed over following their drawdown to be completed by the end of the year.

The arrangement was announced by Australian Minister for Defense Stephen Smith during a news conference in Canberra with Canadian Minister of National Defense Peter MacKay.

The Huskys' radar can detect explosive hazard threats from within the armored vehicle and can detect IEDs that other detection equipment might not be able to find, especially devices with low or no metal content.
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 Afghan schoolgirl Roya Shams becomes hunting target for Taliban after father is killed
Published On Sun Sep 18 2011
Article Link

Roya Shams was just gaining strength from Canadian donors in her struggle against the Taliban when they killed the schoolgirl’s biggest ally, a father who died defending her right to learn.

Just 17 years old, she is devastated by the loss of the man who inspired her to fight to make life better for Afghan girls and women.

He always taught Roya that she must never give in to intimidation. So as she cries, she refuses to bow down.

Despite more death threats, Roya is trying to find a safe way back to school.

She is determined to honour the man who preferred death over surrender, and the faith of Toronto Star readers who donated thousands of dollars to back her courageous stand for education.
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 How Paranoia Kills Children
September 16, 2011
Article Link

 In Pakistan, the government is threatening to arrest parents who do not allow their children to receive the polio vaccine. Those refusing families that are Afghan, will be forced to return to Afghanistan. For years, Islamic radicals, including some clergy, urged parents to refuse vaccination, as the radicals believed the vaccination was a Western plot to poison Moslem children. This particular fantasy has been rattling around for nearly a decade, and has prevented the UN from wiping out polio. Like smallpox (which was wiped out in the 1970s), once there are no people with polio, the disease is gone for good (it can only survive in a human host). The Islamic clerics urging parents not to vaccinate their children against polio, are providing the disease with hosts, and keeping it going. Last year, 17,000 children were not vaccinated in northern Pakistan because of this paranoid fantasy. Thus radical Islam continues to kill people in places, and ways, you never hear of.

In Afghanistan, it used to be even worse. Four years ago, 125,000 children were denied vaccination by Taliban terrorists (who also attacked the vaccination teams). But the government, and hostile public opinion, convinced the Taliban to halt their anti-vaccination campaign. As a result, there were fewer cases of polio in Afghanistan this year (less than 20) than in Pakistan (about 80). The four countries where polio still exists are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and India. In Nigeria, the reason is the same Islamic paranoia that has been a problem in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But in India, the problem is a large rural population, spread over a vast area. Nigeria is now the biggest problem, producing the largest number of new polio cases each year.

The polio victims (usually children) either die, or are crippled for life. When confronted by angry parents, the radical clerics say that it's "God's will" that the kid is dead or crippled from polio. Most Moslem parents accept that, because Islam means, literally, "submission," although this process is often helped along by a bearded guy with a gun.

While the UN lends its name to the polio eradication process, most of the actual work, including finding people who can convince the misguided clerics to back off, is done by a coalition of charitable organization. The lead outfit in all this is Rotary International (the Rotarians), which not only raises most of the money, but provides many of the volunteers, and skilled negotiators to deal with the government, and religious, officials that get in the way of eradicating polio.

Not all of the problems are religious. There are still remote parts of the world where getting the polio vaccine to all the children in an area is very difficult. But it should be noted that sometimes the vaccination is refused because the medical personnel administering it are from another ethnic group, or tribe. Then there is corruption, with some of the local medical personnel taking the money, and not distributing all their vaccine. Despite all these problems, the eradication program creeps closer to success. Most Western nations have been declared polio-free. All of Europe achieved that status in 2002. This inspires many of those working on the vaccination program, for they know they are fighting battle to eradicate a disease that has killed and crippled children for thousands of years. 
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## GAP (20 Sep 2011)

*Articles found September 20, 2011*

 Herald reporter, diplomat to be added to memorial mural
  Article Link
Portraits of Honour created to recognize sacrifice
 By Valerie Fortney, Calgary Herald September 19, 2011

CALGARY - They were volunteers to the Afghan mission: he in pursuit of peace, she relying on her pen and reporter’s pad to help foster knowledge and understanding.

So it only makes sense to Dave Sopha that the faces of Canadian career diplomat Glyn Berry and award-winning Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang be added to the Portraits of Honour, his loving tribute to the 157 members of our country’s military who died in Afghanistan.

“They put their lives on the line to help our soldiers and our country,” Sopha tells me moments after his official announcement Monday, about the decision to add the portraits of the two.

“Where better than in Michelle’s town to tell Canadians that her portrait will be added?”
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 Fighting is cultural, criminal for Afghan policewomen
By Lianne Gutcher, Special for USA TODAY
Article Link

QALAT, Afghanistan – Asked about the rigors of being a female cop in this sparsely populated Afghan province, Fatima Tajik is blunt.

"We want to leave our jobs," Tajik tells her NATO mentor, U.S. Army Maj. Maria Rodriguez. "We are risking our lives for little money: $220 per month. We also have families to take care of. All the women in Zabul hate us. Everyone hates us."

The women in this town where strict Islamic customs pervade all aspects of daily life call the policewomen "whores" for working alongside Americans and men to whom they are not married, she says. The women get phone calls telling them they will be beheaded if they don't quit the force.

Rodriguez, Female Engagement Team leader and provost marshal of the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, acknowledges the death threats and that a bomb had been placed in a teacher's home. But she asks the women to persevere.

"We don't want you to quit," Rodriguez says, promising to talk to her commander about what could be done to help the women feel safer.
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 Snakes, hunger stalk Pakistan flood victims
Article Link

BADIN, Pakistan (AP) – Flood victims camped out near inundated fields and crowded hospitals on Monday as authorities and international aid groups struggled to respond to Pakistan's second major bout of flooding in just over a year.

Monsoon rains since early August have killed more than 220 people, damaged or destroyed some 665,000 homes and displaced more than 1.8 million people in the southern Sindh province, according to the government and the United Nations, which Sunday made an emergency appeal for funding.

"First it started to rain, then water gathered here and there and later the floods came," said Mohammad Hashim, who was sitting by the side of a main road in Badin district. "We did not get any relief. We are helpless, with nothing left to eat. Where do we go?"

The road is the highest stretch of land in the area, and on either side the floods stretch for kilometers (miles).
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## GAP (21 Sep 2011)

*Articles found September 21, 2011*

 Death of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani shows Taliban staying power: Expert
  Article Link
 By Amy Chung and Derek Abma, Postmedia News September 20, 2011

OTTAWA — A Canadian expert on international affairs says the latest high-profile political assassination in Afghanistan is another example of how powerful the Taliban remains in that country, even as international military operations there wind down.

Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was heading a council tasked with trying to negotiate a political end to the war, was killed by a suicide bomber outside his home on Tuesday.

Rabbani was president of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996 before his government was overthrown by the Taliban.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack.
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 Combat, first-aid training prepare troops for Afghanistan
  Article Link
 By Mariam Ibrahim, Edmonton Journal September 19, 2011

About a dozen soldiers, weapons at the ready, cautiously walk down a narrow gravel alley, between rows of nondescript modular buildings.

Suddenly a loud bang cuts through their hushed voices and a plume of smoke extends from a doorway.

The air is quickly filled with a flurry of loud, urgent instructions, and soldiers take off in every direction, securing the area as casualties are assessed.

A few soldiers apply immediate, life-saving care to the injured before they are moved to a safer location for a more thorough assessment.

"I need a stretcher. Get me a stretcher," shouts one soldier.

Another soldier radios in a description of the injuries - an unconscious man with both his legs amputated in the blast and a second man with severe leg wounds. Both these people are carried to an open area where they'll be flown away by a helicopter for treatment.

The incident was part of a combat first-aid training exercise Sunday for members of the Canadian Army, Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force at CFB Edmonton.
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Afghans gather to mourn Burhanuddin Rabbani 
Article Link
 21 September 2011 Last updated at 09:54 ET

The BBC's David Loyn in Kabul: "There is almost a funeral atmosphere outside Rabbani's house"
Continue reading the main story

Hundreds of Afghans have gathered in Kabul to mourn High Peace Council chief Burhanuddin Rabbani and protest at his killing by a suicide bomber on Tuesday.

Kabul was gridlocked as streets were sealed off around Rabbani's home, where ex-colleagues arrived to pay respects.

Rabbani, head of the council charged with talking to the Taliban, was killed by a bomb hidden in a turban.

President Hamid Karzai has cut short his visit to the UN in New York to return to Afghanistan.
'Resistance leader'

The BBC's David Loyn in Kabul says black awnings were draped over the streets close to Rabbani's home as a mullah's chants carried through the air.

Former warlords were among those paying respects, he says, arriving in cars with blackened windows.
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## GAP (22 Sep 2011)

*Articles found September 22, 2011*

 Ex-Afghan Leader's Assassin Waited Days to See Him
Article Link
Published September 21, 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan –  The suicide bomber who assassinated former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani insisted on meeting face-to-face with the ex-president and waited in Kabul for days to talk with him about brokering peace with the Taliban, an associate of Rabbani's said Wednesday.

Rabbani -- who headed a government council seeking a political settlement with the insurgents -- was killed Tuesday evening by a man who had claimed he was a Taliban leader wanting to reconcile with the Afghan government.

The assassination dashed hopes for reconciling with the Taliban and raised fears about deteriorating security in Afghanistan just as foreign combat troops are starting to pull out. Some U.S. and Canadian troops have left in recent months and all foreign combat forces are to go home or move into support roles by the end of 2014 when Afghan forces are to be in charge of protecting and defending the nation.

Mohammad Ismail Qasemyar, the international relations adviser for the peace council, said the bomber, identified as Esmatullah, had approached several council officials, telling them that he was an important figure in the Taliban insurgency and would only speak directly with Rabbani.

"He wanted to talk about peace with Professor Rabbani," Qasemyar said.
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## GAP (27 Sep 2011)

*Articles found September 27, 2011*

 The Afghan Shuffle
September 26, 2011
Article Link

 In the last ten years, the GDP of Afghanistan has more than quadrupled (from $4 billion to $18 billion.) A lot of that has to do with new roads and an unprecedented security force of 300,000 soldiers and police (mostly soldiers.) The problem is that the vastly larger government is expensive, and costs $14 billion a year to run. With a GDP of only $18 billion, the Afghans obviously can't afford it. In fact, Afghanistan only pays for about ten percent of their government budget. Most (62 percent) comes from the United States, with other Western nations providing the rest. It gets worse, as some of the government benefits are anything but.

For example, most Afghans regard their police as a foreign institution. As implemented in Afghanistan, the national police are a threat to the people, not a force that "protects and serves." Too many of the current police see themselves as bandits with a badge. All this goes back to the fact that Afghanistan has never been a country in the modern sense, but rather a tribal confederation dominated by the Pushtuns. Before the 18th century, what is now Afghanistan was part of various empires (Indian, Iranian, Mongol, Greek). But in the 18th century, with the profitable trade routes from China made obsolete by Western ships, the Pushtuns got organized, and sought to establish an empire. After much effort, they failed. By the 19th century, the advancing Russian and British empires had reduced Afghanistan to its present borders. The Pushtuns were still in charge, although they were now a minority. The king was traditionally a Pushtun, and his main job was to deal with outsiders and arbitrate disputes among the tribes. Law and order, such as it was, depended on tribal customs and local militias or warlords. This did not stop tribal feuds, and wars. Even the king knew when to step back and let the tribes settle their own disputes violently. An "Afghan Army" was a feudal levy of tribal militias, which appeared whenever there was an outsider that threatened many of the tribes. There was usually no police at all. Before the 21st century, the only efforts to create police forces were local, usually in cities and major towns. But in the countryside, where most Afghans still live, the tribe provides whatever police functions they can, and it usually isn't much. 
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 The landscape of war
Article Link
 26 September 2011 Phil Coomes Article 

It's a country that has been the setting for many modern confrontations, from the Afghan-Anglo Wars of the 19th Century through to invasion by the Soviet Union in 1979, with many in-between; each has left its mark on the landscape.

It is these traces, or marks of war, many of which overspill from their own time zones, that drew photographer Donovan Wylie to the country.

As part of a collaboration between the National Media Museum and the Imperial War Museum Donovan was embedded with the Canadian contingent of the International Security Forces (ISAF) towards the end of 2010 in Kandahar Province, and in doing so became the first Imperial War Museum official photographer to work in a war zone since the end of World War I.

His pictures are sublime studies of the landscape littered with military outposts, and mix the notion of the observers and the observed, something much of his previous work in Northern Ireland has addressed.

Indeed, many of the bases in Afghanistan now occupy the same spot on which military camps from previous conflicts once stood.
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 Afghan assessments clash
Canadian general has rosy view, U.S., not so much
By MURRAY BREWSTER The Canadian Press Fri, Sep 23 
Article Link

OTTAWA — A senior member of the military says the Afghan army is well on the road to self-sufficiency, thanks in part to Canada’s newly established training mission in Kabul.

But the upbeat assessment from Brig.-Gen. Craig King stands in contrast to a warning from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which said in a report earlier this week that allied nations have no plan in place to sustain Afghan troops and cops once they’re trained.

King, who sits on the military’s strategic joint staff, appeared before a House of Commons committee Thursday, where he faced a number of questions about how sustainable both the military and political situations are in Afghanistan.

"We have made some real, significant, systemic institutional progress to get them to the point where (Afghan security forces) will be self-sufficient," said King, who served nine months at

NATO’s southern Afghan headquarters in Kandahar
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 The Indian Menace
September 22, 2011
Article Link

 Currently, the most newsworthy events have been terror attacks aimed at capturing media attention, while not achieving any military objective. This includes failed attacks on a U.S. base and the U.S. embassy in Kabul, as well as the assassination of a much respected (by the Taliban) peace negotiator. These attacks have been tracked back to Pakistani, the ISI (Pakistani intelligence) and the Haqqani Network (an Afghan terror group in Pakistan long protected and subsidized by ISI.) Many senior officials in the Pakistani government see peace and prosperity in Afghanistan as a plot by India to surround Pakistan. Afghanistan has accepted Indian economic aid, and been generally friendly with India. This angers the Pakistanis, who feel they must respond, covertly, to this Indian gambit. What India is trying to do is ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a sanctuary for Islamic terrorists (many of whom consider largely Hindu India a prime target.)

For a long time, the most carefully planned and heavily funded terror attacks were suicide bombings directed at senior government officials (especially those in the military, police and intelligence). A lot of these attacks were carried out by the Haqqani Network, which has been hiding in Pakistan since the 1980s fight with the Russians. Most of the Taliban terror violence is directed at much less well protected targets (tribal and village leaders, staff and students at schools for girls). 
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## GAP (29 Sep 2011)

*Articles found September 29, 2011*

 When trainers become targets
Published On Wed Sep 28 2011
Article Link

Canadian “trainers” were involved in a firefight in Afghanistan earlier this month, according to Brig.-Gen. Craig King. The battle occurred when insurgents attacked the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing 16 people.

During the general’s testimony before a parliamentary committee last week, he also revealed that Canadian trainers are spread over a dozen locations in Kabul — a city that he described as an “extremely violent” environment.

It is hard to believe that just 10 months ago, then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was asking: “Can the Prime Minister guarantee that this (new engagement) is not going to involve combat, that it is going to be out of Kandahar and that the training will occur in safe conditions in Kabul?”

“The answer is yes to all those questions,” Stephen Harper replied. “As the minister of national defence, the minister of foreign affairs and others have said, we are looking at a noncombat mission that will occur. It will be a training mission that will occur in classrooms, behind the wire, in bases.”
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 Afghanistan Less Deadly Than Iraq
September 27, 2011
Article Link

 The war in Afghanistan is far less deadly than the one in Iraq. In Afghanistan, war related deaths are still running at the rate of 40 per 100,000 Afghans (about 12,000 dead a year). At its peak, four years ago, that rate in Iraq was three times that and most of the dead were civilians killed by Iraqi terrorists. Fewer of the Afghan dead are innocent civilians. About sixty percent of the dead have been Taliban. About a 16 percent were civilians (80 percent of them killed by the Taliban), and the remaining 24 percent security forces. Afghan casualties are unchanged, if you leave out Taliban losses, over the last few years. The NATO effort to keep civilian losses down has had an impact here. The economy continues to grow, as does the number of Afghan refugees returning from Pakistan. This is partly because of the growing violence across the border, as the Pakistani Army goes after their local Taliban. Some Pakistani Taliban groups have set up bases in Afghanistan, in territory of tribesmen they are related to in southeastern Afghanistan.
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