Articles found August 23, 2009
Afghanistan is not Anbar
Joe Klein Sunday, August 23, 2009 Helmand province
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The latest news coming out of Afghanistan is not good. There is likely to be a second round of voting in the presidential race, which will keep the government in flux and U.S. troops preoccupied for at least another month--and the results of any election will be questioned because of the semi-successful Taliban suppression of the vote in the Pashtun-majority south.
Then, there is the military situation. This report details the problems the US Marines are having in crucial Helmand province:
Frustrated, Governor Massoud said his “government is weak and cannot provide agricultural officials, school officials, prosecutors and judges.”
He said he was promised 120 police officers, but only 50 showed up. He said many were untrustworthy and poorly trained men who stole from the people, a description many of the Americans agree with. No more than 10 percent appear to have attended a police academy, they say. “Many are just men from the streets,” the governor said.
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Red Cross to Get Data on Prisoners Held in Secret at U.S. Camps
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 23, 2009
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The U.S. military has agreed for the first time to provide information to the International Committee of the Red Cross about prisoners held in secret at detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it will continue to deny the ICRC access to them, military officials said Saturday.
The facilities are "short-term places" operated by U.S. Special Forces for newly captured alleged insurgents considered to have valuable information or to be serious threats, according to an official familiar with the subject, who was not authorized to discuss it on the record. It is usually in "the early hours" of detention that interrogators "are able to gain the freshest and most valuable intelligence," the official said.
The military's agreement early this month to provide the ICRC with at least the names of detainees in the Iraq and Afghanistan camps was first reported Saturday on the New York Times's Web site.
The Red Cross has long requested information about, and access to, such prisoners held at the U.S. military base at Bagram, Afghanistan, and in Balad, Iraq. Only a few dozen detainees are believed to be at each location at any time, usually for several weeks until they are transferred to longer-term prisons.
In Afghanistan, that normally means the main prison at Bagram, where the military holds about 600 detainees. Although the ICRC has access to that facility, prisoners there have protested their continuing detention by refusing since last month to see Red Cross workers or participate in videoconference visits with their families.
Unlike the large U.S. military prisons that once operated in Iraq -- where military panels reviewed individual cases for release or transfer to Iraqi-run facilities -- there is no review or adjudication process at Bagram. The military has delayed establishing one because Afghanistan lacks a functioning judicial system.
ICRC spokesman Bernard Barrett declined to comment Saturday.
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The war for Afghanistan's women
It's not worth risking U.S. lives unless we raise the status of Afghan women.
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By Malcolm Potts August 23, 2009
There are two wars going on in Afghanistan. One is to defeat the Taliban, and that war is not going well. The other is to liberate women, and that war has hardly begun. If the first war is won but the second is lost, Afghanistan will turn into a failed state -- a caldron of violence and misery, home to extremism and totally outside the Western orbit of influence.
Last week's election, however imperfect, is welcome, but it means little as long as women remain enslaved in this patriarchal, tradition-bound culture. In most of the country, a woman needs her husband's permission to leave her home. Domestic violence is tragically common. Indeed, the government elected in 2004 passed, and President Hamid Karzai signed into law, legislation legalizing marital rape. Older men use their wealth and power to marry young women. In April, according to news reports, when a teenage Afghan girl called Gulsima eloped with a boy her own age instead of marrying an older man, she and the boyfriend were shot to death in front of the mosque in the southwest province of Nimrod.
Currently, Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman, and -- as is the case everywhere women's rights are nonexistent or in decline -- the birthrate is high. Afghan women have an average of about seven children, and the population has been doubling about every 20 years. Today it is 34 million. According to U.N. estimates, by 2050 it could reach a staggering 90 million. That rapid population growth and the demographics that go with it drive most of Afghanistan's worst problems.
All too often, demography is overlooked in developing countries, as I experienced in 2002 when I wrote the budgets for a U.N. agency working to rebuild Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Part of our job was to write a 10-year financial plan. As my colleague from the World Bank was closing his computer, I said, "You do realize in 10 years' time there will be almost 50% more people needing healthcare?" He hadn't. After an expletive and some more hitting of computer keys, the budget totals rose considerably.
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Words from the front line: the bloody truth of Helmand-by a combat soldier
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The past eight weeks have been the army's worst time in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion eight years ago. Here, in his brutally frank diaries of life on the front line, a serving soldier records the bitter toll of death, and his anger and frustration at the lack of military and political support
It is called Operation Minimise, an order from brigade headquarters in southern Afghanistan to restrict communications. British troops in Helmand province dread Op Minimise. They know commanders will be phoning the UK, a call that will lead to a family being told that their son or daughter is dead.
Over the past eight weeks in Helmand province, British forces have requested Op Minimise 37 times, more than once every day-and-a-half. Yet, despite this being the bloodiest period for British troops in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion eight years ago, few first-hand accounts from Helmand's front line have emerged.
Now the Observer can publish the diaries of a serving combat soldier engaged in the fiercest fighting of recent weeks. He tells how his unit was embroiled in up to six "contacts" a day, sometimes against Chechnyan snipers, on other occasions highly trained Pakistani militia. The author himself is credited with killing more than 30 Taliban.
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Canadian pilots train for desert dust
2009-08-21 14:45:34
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One man's desert is another man's training ground.
About 70 personnel with the Royal Canadian Air Force's (RCAF) No. 408 Tactical Helicopter Squadron were at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma this month to train in desert conditions to prepare them for a trip to Afghanistan in the fall.
The group practiced landing in brownout conditions, or when the helicopter kicks up dust while landing, said Lt. Col. Jeff Smyth, commanding officer with 408. They arrived Aug. 9.
"I think it really gets the guys a little more comfortable with what they're going to face overseas for nine months," he said.
Smyth said the helicopters blow a lot of air around, and when they're landing in dusty conditions such as Afghanistan, it can be dangerous and prevent the pilots from seeing.
"(The helicopter) is blowing 11,000 pounds of air, it stirs up a lot of dust," Smyth said. "It takes a fair amount of training to do that without crashing, essentially."
With the squadron's upcoming deployment to support NATO's International Security Assistance Force, it's essential that they practice in similar conditions.
"Afghanistan is very, very dusty," Smyth said.
In Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where the squadron is based, it's not.
"At home, we don't have the dusty desert conditions that exist down here, so we come to give the crew some practice landing in the dust," he said.
The group brought four helicopters to Yuma and also got exposure to another element the area is known for: heat.
Getting used to the heat "takes a bit of an adjustment," Smyth said, but it gives the squadron a good idea of what to expect.
Personnel also had an opportunity to train at night and practice gunning.
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Afghanistan's future uncertain if Karzai wins
Posted By MICHAEL DEN TANDT Posted 2 days ago
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Is it too little? Is it too late?
Whatever the outcome of the presidential election in Afghanistan, Canadians and especially Canadian soldiers and their families will ask themselves hard questions as they contemplate another grinding year overseas. Hamid Karzai, widely expected to win either in a first round or a run-off, is out of time. And he deserves to be.
For seven years now NATO, led by the United States, has poured money and troops into Afghanistan. The donations and sacrifices continue apace. Some $20 billion US over five years were promised in 2008.
U. S. troop levels are now near 60,000 and will rise to 68,000 by year end.
Other NATO countries combined have an additional 30,000 troops in the country.
In addition to providing security and battling the Taliban, NATO is working flat out to train up the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police. Earlier this year U. S. President Barack Obama set a goal of training 134,000 Afghan soldiers and 82,000 police by 2011.
Despite the enormous outlay of men and materiel, the economic and human cost, the Afghan mission is failing.
Last year was the deadliest for foreign soldiers since the U. S. invasion in 2001. NATO recorded more than 3,000 IED (improvised explosive device) attacks across the country, an increase of more than 40% from 2007.
As of this month 700 U. S. soldiers have died in the Afghan war. The British have lost 204, Canada 127. Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy combined have lost 152.
In response to all this, Karzai simply says, give us more. But that no longer washes. According to some reports, he has been quietly given a deadline of six months.
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Afghanistan Contractors Outnumber Troops
Despite Surge in U.S. Deployments, More Civilians Are Posted in War Zone;
By AUGUST COLE AUGUST 22, 2009
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Even as U.S. troops surge to new highs in Afghanistan they are outnumbered by military contractors working alongside them, according to a Defense Department census due to be distributed to Congress -- illustrating how hard it is for the U.S. to wean itself from the large numbers of war-zone contractors that proved controversial in Iraq.
The number of military contractors in Afghanistan rose to almost 74,000 by June 30, far outnumbering the roughly 58,000 U.S. soldiers on the ground at that point. As the military force in Afghanistan grows further, to a planned 68,000 by the end of the year, the Defense Department expects the ranks of contractors to increase more.
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Associated Press The ranks of military contractors in Afghanistan have been growing along with the surge in troops. Above, contractor barracks at the Kandahar airfield.
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The military requires contractors for essential functions ranging from supplying food and laundry services to guarding convoys and even military bases -- functions that were once performed by military personnel but have been outsourced so a slimmed-down military can focus more on battle-related tasks.
The Obama administration has sought to reduce its reliance on military contractors, worried that the Pentagon was ceding too much power to outside companies, failing to rein in costs and not achieving desired results.
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