The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread January 2012

[GAP]

Articles found January 24, 2012

Officials say demolition video was of ammunition cache not Afghan home
CAMPBELL CLARK  AND GRAEME SMITH OTTAWA AND ISTANBUL
Published Monday, Jan. 23, 2012
Article Link

An internet video showing Canadian soldiers laughing as they blow up an Afghan house is an intentional twisting of the truth, the army says: In fact, it shows the demolition of an ammunition cache.

The circulation of the video, posted on YouTube and some other websites, shows the delicate nature of efforts to win the “hearts and minds” of the people caught in a long-running war where Western troops have wielded heavy firepower.

he video appears on YouTube alongside comments like, “Who is watching the so-called protectors?” An Iranian state-media site asserted it shows Canadians “blowing up the house of an Afghan villager only to entertain themselves.”

That, according to Lieutenant-Colonel Christian Lemay, a spokesman for the Canadian Forces, is a deliberate misrepresentation. The size of the blast when the mud building explodes shows it’s the demolition of an ammunition cache, not an ordinary home, he said.
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Afghan soldiers schooled
Sergeant Will Kelsey Op Attention / NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan
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Candidates of the Afghan National Army Basic Warrior Training course begin their days taking literacy classes at the Kabul Military Training Centre (KMTC). More than 200 Canadian Forces advisors and support staff serve at KMTC as part of the Canadian Fo
Photo by Photo by MCpl Chris Ward, Canadian Forces

As you read this article, you probably don't stop to consider when and how you learned to read. Reading is second nature to you, and you can barely remember when it wasn't.

But what if you had to learn to read and write now?

Learning to read and write as an adult is a challenge that the vast majority of Afghan National Army (ANA) recruits face.

Thirty-five recruits sit quietly in a tent at the Kabul Military Training Centre (KMTC), a vast military base and training area located in the eastern fringes of Afghanistan's capital city. With keen interest, the recruits track every move of the man at the front of the tent, an Afghan civilian teacher � proud and skilled in his craft � who methodically works through the day's lesson.

Today, the recruits are learning the first letters in the alphabet.

There are 39 other tents just like this one, all lined up in neat rows as you would expect in an army camp, accommodating 1,400 more ANA army recruits in different phases of their literacy training. Nearly 9,000 ANA recruits are enrolled in basic training at KMTC, and almost all of them begin with learning to read, write, count and calculate.
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Why They Fight
Article Link
January 23, 2012

There has been an increase in Taliban groups surrendering. Local groups, numbering up to several dozen men, complete with weapons and their leader, will give up and accept amnesty benefits. In the middle of Winter and with the threat of NATO raids, this is a good move. Come Spring, the Taliban will be hiring again, as the drug gangs had a good year and have a lot of cash to arm and pay anyone who will help keep the police and soldiers away from heroin production and smuggling. Nevertheless, in the last two years, life has become more difficult for the drug gangs and especially their hired guns (who are often Taliban members). There are a lot more police and army checkpoints on the few roads. These guys will sometimes refuse a bribe, or demand more than you can pay. The foreign troops can't be bribed at all. Then there are the damn UAVs and jet fighters whose pilots can see everything on the ground. And if they do see a bunch of guys with guns, the next thing you know, there's a convoy of foreign troops coming into your valley, or a helicopter delivering a couple dozen soldiers on a nearby ridge. Or maybe just a smart bomb, which is the worst outcome. You can't surrender to a smart bomb. Fortunately, arrest, not smart bombs, seems to be the favorite NATO tactic this last year. The foreign troops are supposed to be gone in two years, but some days it seems like the average Taliban gunman won’t be around to enjoy that happy day. 
Last year, over 30,000 Afghans applied for asylum worldwide. That does not include the illegal migrants who did not reveal themselves. The number of legal asylum seekers was up 25 percent over 2010. The Afghans getting to foreign countries are those with money. It costs over $10,000 per person to get smuggled to a Western nation. A lot more than 30,000 Afghans a year would like to leave, but you have to be one of the few with a way to make a lot of money. That explains why so many Afghans are always hustling, willing to do anything for a buck. Get your hands on enough cash, and you can get out. A lot of Afghans are not fighting to save Afghanistan, but to get out of Afghanistan. It's increasingly been that way over the last half century as more Afghans became aware of the outside world. At first they were incredulous. After centuries of just getting by in mountain valleys, you are suddenly confronted with movies, and then videos (now available on cell phones) showing a better life, a life that is not available in violent, tribal Afghanistan. That is followed by stories from Afghans who have made it to the West, where economic opportunity and peace are abundant. It's not just the foreign troops who are fed up with Afghanistan.
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[GAP]

Articles found January 26, 2012

Kidnapped US aid contractor reportedly held by militants in Pakistan
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Some five months after Warren Weinstein was kidnapped, the US aid contractor is reported to be in the custody of a Pakistani Al Qaeda affiliate, McClatchy Newspapers reports.

By Tom Hussain, McClatchy Newspapers / January 25, 2012

A kidnapped American aid contractor is alive and in good health, being held by a Pakistani Al Qaeda affiliate that's likely to use him as a bargaining chip, according to militants, security officials, and analysts.

Warren Weinstein, who was kidnapped in August from his home in Lahore, Pakistan, is in the custody of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants in North Waziristan, a ranking Pakistani militant told McClatchy. The militant said he'd seen Mr. Weinstein last month and at that point "his health was fine."

"He is being provided all available medical treatment, including regular checkups by a doctor and the medicines prescribed for him before he was plucked," the militant, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said last week in an interview.

Little has been revealed publicly about Weinstein's status since December, when Ayman al Zawahiri, the head of Al Qaeda, said in a video that the terrorist network was holding him.
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Fears Lurk in a Post-Transition Afghanistan
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
Article Link

Over the mountains from frigid Kabul, Mihtarlam is one place where American-led forces have transferred authority to the Afghans.

Out here in post-transition Afghanistan, among the orange groves, fear lurks. American soldiers are still in position, but the Afghan Army is taking the lead. And Afghan officials – from the provincial governor to the mayor to the police — assert confidently that security is under control.

But not everyone is convinced — and some are really nervous.

“They say the security is going well, but that is not the reality,” said a judge in the provincial court whose name is being withheld because he has received Taliban death threats.

He added, “Whenever I am working on a case and send someone to jail, I am concerned that the family of the criminal will do something to me.”

The judge is a precise, quiet man with a trimmed beard, who was dressed one recent morning in a brown jacket over a neat white tunic.

Like most people in Afghanistan, he said he was anxious about what would happen when the Americans and their allies leave. What will remain of the economy, the security, the civil society constructed so delicately since the Taliban’s ouster?

“I have been threatened by the Taliban on my cellphone,” he said. “They are telling me to quit this job otherwise we will kill you.”
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The next few articles are from earlier posts/articles, but are interesting in regards to Afghanistan.....

A Firsthand Look at Firefights in Marja
By C.J. CHIVERS Af-Pak
Article Link
April 19, 2010
During the initial American-led assault earlier this year into Marja, the last large Taliban-dominated population center in Helmand Province, Marines in several companies encountered something unusual in the American experience of the Afghan war – insurgent snipers.

For several days, and in several places, competent and deliberate marksmen fired on Marine patrols. A video today presents one such event, a firefight between the Marines of Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, and Taliban fighters, including at least one Taliban gunman the Marines considered to be a sniper. The footage shows the effects of incoming gunfire that is much different from the normal experience of Afghan shooting.

The Ineffectiveness of Taliban Riflery

Now and then over the years, there have been reports of well-trained Taliban marksmen in different parts of the country. But credible reports have been few. Taliban rifle fire, in the main, has been largely ineffective.

How ineffective? Through April 3, the number of American troops killed by gunshot wounds in the entire war in Afghanistan, according to the casualty summaries compiled by the Defense Manpower Data Center, had reached 188. That includes wounds caused not just by rifle fire, but also by the more powerful PK machine guns and any other firearm present in the war.
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The Weakness of Taliban Marksmanship
By C.J. CHIVERS  April 2, 2010
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Last week, At War opened a conversation about Afghan marksmanship by publishing rough data from several dozen recent firefights between the Taliban and three Marine rifle companies in and near Marja, the location of the recent offensive in Helmand Province. The data showed that while the Taliban can be canny and brave in combat their rifle fire is often remarkably ineffective.

We plan more posts about the nature of the fighting in Afghanistan, and how this influences the experience of the war. Today this blog discusses visible factors that, individually and together, predict poor shooting results when Taliban gunmen get behind their rifles.

It’s worth noting that many survivors of multiple small-arms engagements in Afghanistan have had experiences similar to those described last week. After emerging unscathed from ambushes, including ambushes within ranges at which the Taliban’s AK-47 knock-offs should have been effective, they wonder: how did so much Taliban fire miss?
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Arming Both Sides: The Perils of Ammunition Leakage in the Afghan War
By C.J. CHIVERS  February 22, 2010
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In a previous post, and an article last year, The New York Times examined the question of how Taliban fighters obtain their small-arms ammunition. The limited data available – gleaned from captured Taliban weapons and magazines, or from spent casings collected from Taliban firing positions after firefights – pointed to Afghan security forces as a significant source.

A newly captured PK machine gun, seized on Feb. 18 by the Marines of Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, further supports this view.

The weapon was picked up by the company’s First Platoon after a  firefight of several hours, during which the Marines and Taliban fighters fired at each other across agricultural fields, ditches and irrigation canals. Both sides were bounding between small mud-walled compounds. After Taliban fighters were contained in a compound, a Reaper drone fired a Hellfire guided missile into its northern wall.

The Marines entered the grounds and found the mangled remains of an Afghan man wrapped around a machine gun, which had been heavily damaged by shrapnel and the blast. They carried the weapon and its ammunition back to the company outpost.
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[GAP]

Articles found January 27, 2012

Afghanistan women: 'Give us a seat at the peace table'
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Given the Taliban's history, women say it's critical that they're at the table to make sure concessions aren't made at their expense.
By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent / January 26, 2012

Kabul, Afghanistan

During the past year, the US and its NATO allies have placed increasing emphasis on bringing an end to the war in Afghanistan through negotiations. With the Taliban on the verge of getting a political office in Qatar, substantive talks now appear closer than ever before.

Women have taken on an increasingly active role in Afghan society in recent years – holding elected offices, working outside the house, and sometimes running their own organizations. But many Afghan women see a potential peace deal with the Taliban as representing anything but a ray of hope. Current negotiation efforts have mostly excluded women, and without a voice at the table many women worry how well the Afghan government can protect women’s rights if the Taliban is reincorporated into the political system.
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Fears Lurk in a Post-Transition Afghanistan
By GRAHAM BOWLEY  January 25, 2012
Article Link

Over the mountains from frigid Kabul, Mihtarlam is one place where American-led forces have transferred authority to the Afghans.

Out here in post-transition Afghanistan, among the orange groves, fear lurks. American soldiers are still in position, but the Afghan Army is taking the lead. And Afghan officials – from the provincial governor to the mayor to the police — assert confidently that security is under control.

But not everyone is convinced — and some are really nervous.

“They say the security is going well, but that is not the reality,” said a judge in the provincial court whose name is being withheld because he has received Taliban death threats.

He added, “Whenever I am working on a case and send someone to jail, I am concerned that the family of the criminal will do something to me.”

The judge is a precise, quiet man with a trimmed beard, who was dressed one recent morning in a brown jacket over a neat white tunic.

Like most people in Afghanistan, he said he was anxious about what would happen when the Americans and their allies leave. What will remain of the economy, the security, the civil society constructed so delicately since the Taliban’s ouster?

“I have been threatened by the Taliban on my cellphone,” he said. “They are telling me to quit this job otherwise we will kill you.”
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Iran border guards 'kill six Pakistanis'
Article Link
7 January 2012

t least six Pakistanis have been shot dead and two others wounded by Iranian border guards after they crossed the border, Pakistani officials say.

Officials say the incident occurred on Thursday on the Iranian side of the border close to Pakistan's south-western Balochistan province.

The wounded men and the corpses of the six others are yet to be handed over to the Pakistani authorities.

Reports say the men were livestock traders.

"Six of them were killed in firing by Iranian border forces and two others were wounded," local police official, Mujeebur Rehman, in the port town of Gwadar told the AFP news agency.

Earlier this month, Pakistani police detained three Iranian border guards after they allegedly crossed the border, and opened fire, killing one Pakistani man in a car they had been chasing.
end

The Other Guy's Endgame - Part I
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Intro: At Peace with War?

If countries were books, then airports would be their covers. Till the tarmac, Kabul's airport compares in size and dreariness levels with Quetta's. But once inside the terminal, elements of the decade-long war machine begin to glint and grind. The premise of Afghanistan's long conflict and the promise of a lingering peace reveal themselves simultaneously. At war with itself and others, Afghanistan greets its visitors not as an uncomplicated country.

Unclear is whether the Afghans are perfectly comfortable with perpetual bellicosity or seething under occupation. One sees the hoarding for a hotel that promises blast-resistant windows and doors - always a good sign of adaptable hospitality, or hospitable adaptability. Also lurking is the prodigal son, a returned-from-Dubai immigrant lugging two flat-screen TVs, trimmed by his snazzy sunglasses and white imitation-snakeskin shoes. Most of the other passengers on the Safi Air flight are NGO types, but there are a few soldier/spy variants, though in civvies but still sporting their West Point and Annapolis rings. The police guards are randomly placed, shabbily uniformed and ill tempered. The transport C-130 spin-offs on the tarmac have their own coterie of better looking and fear inspiring protectors: armed contractors with blond manes, desert tans tans and angry tattoos that match their weaponry. The immigration officer is not amused by my Pakistani passport, but he's not interested to investigate much. Outside, kids are exchanging dollars and dinars out of hand-carried display cases. Some US Army, in battle fatigues but not wearing armour, are hanging by a Humvee smoking as they wait for a pick up, probably a buddy from their unit. I'm trying to capture everything, suppressing the panic of my lost luggage that a Safi staffer, in fractured Urdu, has promised will be on the next flight, when I make first contact.
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[GAP]

Articles found January 28, 2012

Leon Panetta concern over Bin Laden 'informer' Shikal Afridi
Article Link
28 January 2012

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said he is "very concerned" about a Pakistani doctor arrested for providing intelligence for the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden last year.

Dr Shikal Afridi is accused of running a CIA-run programme in Abbottabad where Bin Laden was killed. A Pakistan panel says he should be tried for treason.

Mr Panetta told the CBS TV network the arrest had been "a real mistake".

Dr Afridi provided "very helpful" information for the raid, he added.

He was arrested shortly after the operation, carried out by US special forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad on 2 May last year.

Pakistan was deeply embarrassed by the raid, and condemned it as a violation of sovereignty.

'Phoney programme'
In an interview with the CBS programme 60 Minutes to be aired on Sunday, Mr Panetta said: "I'm very concerned about what the Pakistanis did with this individual."

He added that his action "was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan".

"As a matter of fact Pakistan and the United States have a common cause here against terrorism and for them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part," Mr Panetta said.

Last October, a Pakistani commission investigating the raid recommended that Dr Afridi should be tried for high treason.

In the aftermath of the operation, reports emerged that the CIA had recruited the doctor to organise a phoney vaccination programme in Abbottabad.

The aim of the programme was allegedly to confirm Bin Laden's presence in the city by obtaining a DNA sample from residents.
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Rebuffed Afghan combat interpreter wrongly accused of taking story to the media
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By Paul Watson
Star Columnist

EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to a technical error, an earlier version of this story was published erroneously.

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN—A Canadian Army commander and senior diplomat decided a highly praised Afghan combat interpreter didn’t need safe refuge in Canada, faulting him for complaining publicly about delays, an internal document shows.

The former head of Canada’s elite special forces, and our deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, turned down Sayed Shah Sharifi’s visa application last fall, just weeks after he spoke to the Toronto Star in July.

They didn’t believe Sharifi’s claims that the Taliban want to kill him for aiding Canadian combat troops, an essential qualification for a visa under a special program.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced in 2009 that he wanted to protect Afghans who could show “individual risk” because they had worked with Canadians in Kandahar province, the Taliban heartland.

Canadian Army Colonel J.P. Davis, a former special forces commander in Afghanistan, and Shelley Whiting, Canada’s deputy ambassador in Kabul, signed the immigration form rejecting Sharifi’s application on October 5, 2011.

The form tersely declares Sharifi: “Ineligible.”
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[GAP]

Articles found January 29, 2012

Changes in Kabul Classrooms
By JAALA A. THIBAULT
Article Link
January 27, 2012, 12:57 PM

Eleven years ago, if you walked into a classroom in Kabul, this is what you might have seen: all boys; Korans resting on every desk; men leading prayers and study; only religious subjects being taught at every school and university in the country; students wearing uniforms of payraan tumbaan (long shirts over baggy pants) and turbans; empty chairs pushed to the back of the classrooms where girls once sat.

And if you closed your eyes, you heard only the low drone of the boys’ voices raised in unison, repeating Koranic verses over and over again.

You would not have seen women teaching or girls attending lessons. Women were secretly teaching girls in hidden basements, only to be punished severely when discovered. During that time, women were barred from schools and universities, their places in society cemented in their homes. They had no choice but to teach and learn incognito.

In 2001, in a classroom in Kabul, you wouldn’t have heard the voices of women and girls giggling, laughing and teasing one another. You would have squinted in the darkness of a mud-brick building, glancing at the silhouettes of empty chairs in the back of the room, wondering where the pupils had gone.

Though I did not see these things with my own eyes, I might as well have had. Through photographs, books and the stories I have heard from friends, colleagues and students, these images are now so clear I almost feel like I was there.

Eleven years ago, I was definitely not squinting in the darkness of a classroom in Kabul; I was standing at the head of a bright, clean classroom full of sixth graders in the United States, teaching for the first time.

Though I always knew I’d become a teacher, I never planned to use my ability to educate as a tool for building nations.

But then the attacks of Sept. 11 happened – and just as they changed many lives, they changed my life, too.
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Photographing Afghan Girls
By ADAM FERGUSON
Article Link  January 14, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — As the light splashed through the windows and down the corridors, I paused in my viewfinder. It’s not often as a male photographer in Afghanistan that one is granted the opportunity to peer into a female world, and here I was standing amid streams of young girls, their faces peering from white head scarves, as they ducked from one room to another collecting exam results and sharing them with friends.

There were constant but fleeting glances that exchanged both excitement and disappointment, and some huddled in groups studying for exams that were still to come. The students were so absorbed in the crowd and nervous buzz of exam time that — apart from a few smiles and hellos that allowed the girls to practice their English — I went barely noticed and was left uninterrupted to explore with my camera.

I dived into the flow of the crowd and began moving with it, making exposures, following a group of girls through cathedral-like light, watching faces be illuminated and then dropped into shadow. It was one of those moments as a photographer in Afghanistan when there was no man to tell me I couldn’t photograph the girls, no gatekeeper, and in their numbers the girls seemed to be free of taboos.

The Marefat High School in Dasht-i-Barchi has approximately 2,500 students who are predominantly Hazara, one of Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities that now make up more than a quarter of Kabul’s population. Predominantly Shiite, many Hazara are less conservative than Afghanistan’s Pashtun population, which constitutes the majority of Afghanistan’s insurgency. Even so, Hazara women in Kabul mostly wear burqas, and young girls are reserved, ducking through doorways or covering their faces, especially with a foreign man present.

On the first floor of the building, girls were taking an exam in rows of wooden chairs that stretched for 80 meters, the entire length along a rubble-strewn floor. The building was not finished, the stairwells had no rails, the walls were unpainted, and windowpanes still wore concrete splashes from the construction. Despite the rugged nature of the building, school went on, and there was a concentrated silence and studiousness.

From the girls’ section I walked 50 meters down the muddy alley to the boys’ section. Boys lined up and were strip-searched before entering a classroom an exam. Not for security reasons, I was told, but to make sure no one had material to cheat. In the exam room an array of historical figures hung on the wall. There was the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, Lincoln, Einstein and Rosa Parks, civil rights activist.

The Hazara share a background of oppression; under the Taliban they were massacred, and in Kabul today many of the low-ranking jobs such as cart-pulling and garbage collection are done by Hazara people. Ms. Parks symbolized both struggle and redemption in the minds of these schoolchildren. The more I thought about it, the more her portrait made sense.
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No Refuge From Fear in Afghanistan, Even at Prayer
By SHARIFULLAH SAHAK
Article Link
February 16, 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan — People of Afghanistan are very religious, but nowadays a lot of them are afraid of their own mosques and religious leaders.

On Feb. 3, the authorities announced that they had found more than 24 bombs inside a mosque in the Taimani neighborhood of Kabul, and arrested Mullah Abdul Rahman. That was not the only case. In January, Mullah Kamal Nasir was arrested in his mosque in eastern Kabul for consorting with terrorists and keeping the suicide bombers in his house. And this month, the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, arrested two young suicide bombers who said they were recruited while attending madrassas, the Muslim religious schools.

“Enemies of peace and stability are now using holy places such as mosques and madrassas for their terrorist activities, hiding their explosive materials and for planning their attacks,” said Lutfullah Mashal, a spokesman for the security agency.

Like most Muslims in Afghanistan, I don’t believe it is right to use our mosques and other holy places for carrying out attacks or hiding weapons. These are places to practice our religion and not to use for terrorist attacks or military purposes. They did this in Takhar Province, when a suicide bomber killed at least 14 people including the governor of Kunduz Province, Muhammad Omar, while he was offering Friday Prayers. In Khost in 2010, a parliamentary candidate was killed at a mosque as he was kneeling to pray. Many times, insurgents have also entered mosques to use as a place of cover during fighting, which makes these holy places a target. And then the people protest against the damage to the mosque.

Many of the bombers who were arrested alive, or whose identities were established after the fact, turned out to have been teenage boys who had been studying in mosques and madrassas under the guidance of mullahs, who should be offering prayer five times a day and teaching religion to the young, but instead some of the religious leaders are acting as recruiters for insurgents and terrorists.
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Armed forces 'on the brink' warn former military top brass
7 July 2011 | UK
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The Government is being warned by armed services chiefs that the armed forces could be "on the brink" because of planned reforms and “morally indefensible" redundancies.

Four former chiefs of the defence staff and one former head of the army all criticised the Government as peers gave an unopposed second reading to the Armed Forces Bill, which enshrines the principles of the military covenant into law.

Former Army general Lord Walker of Aldringham, Chief of the Defence Staff from 2003 to 2006, described redundancies for people who had been on active service in Afghanistan as "morally indefensible".

The former head of the Army Lord Dannatt, who advised David Cameron when he was leader of the opposition, said many people thought the forces were "on the brink" and there was a risk they could go into "freefall" and he also hit out at the "stultifying bureaucracy" of the Ministry of Defence.

Admiral Lord Boyce, Chief of the Defence Staff from 2001 to 2003, said a report on how the Government was meeting the current expectations of the armed forces would make "pretty depressing reading".

And fellow ex-forces heads Air Chief Marshal Lord Stirrup and Marshal of the RAF Lord Craig of Radley called for the Government to toughen up its plans on the covenant.

Lord Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff from 2006 to 2009, said the military covenant had always existed in un-written form, but warned of the dangers of breaking it.

"It is that hitherto unspoken and unspecified balance, on the one hand between the legitimate work demanded of the armed forces by the elected government of the day on behalf of the nation and on the other hand the nation's ability through the government of the day to look after and meet the legitimate individual needs of our sailors, soldiers, airmen and marines, their families and our veterans."
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[GAP]

Articles found January 30, 2012

Canadian Forces Officer To Face Court Martial For Accidental Discharge in Kabul
January 30, 2012  Article Link

ANDREW DUFFY of the Ottawa Citizen has the latest on this court martial:

A Canadian Forces lieutenant-colonel will face a court martial in Gatineau next month in connection with the accidental firing of a rifle at Kabul International Airport.
Lt.-Col. Gilles Fortin is the second senior officer to be charged with mishandling a firearm while in Afghanistan.

In March 2010, then Brig.-Gen. Daniel Ménard accidentally fired his C8 assault rifle twice into the ground as he was about to board a Blackhawk helicopter at Kandahar Airfield with his boss, Gen. Walt Natynczyk, chief of the defence staff.

Ménard was commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan at the time of the incident, which occurred as he was loading his carbine.

Ménard — he later resigned from the military after being recalled from Afghanistan due to a sex scandal — was fined $3,500 for the negligent handling of his weapon.

It was the largest fine ever imposed on a soldier for such an offence.

Lt.-Col. Fortin, a signals officer, was in Kabul last September as part of his work with NATO’s Joint Warfare Centre. A member of the centre’s joint training division, Fortin helped prepare incoming staff officers to take over jobs at ISAF headquarters in Kabul.
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Deportation to Afghanistan likely once jail sentences are served
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BY ROB TRIPP, SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE JANUARY 30, 2012 9:06 AM

KINGSTON, Ont. - Once the Shafias, who are permanent residents and not Canadian citizens, complete their prison sentences, they are likely to be deported to Afghanistan, according to a lawyer and former Canadian immigration officer.

Raj Sharma, who practises in a large Calgary law firm that specializes in immigration cases, said the Canadian government temporarily suspends removals to some countries where there are natural disasters or war that put people at risk, but those provisions don't apply to the Shafias.

"They would be removed to Afghanistan," Sharma said, in a telephone interview from Calgary. "The temporary suspension of removals doesn't help them."
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Doubts raised about future of Afghan army funding
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The Canadian Press Date: Sunday Jan. 29, 2012 5:27 PM ET

OTTAWA — The commander of the Canadian army says he doubts the international community will have the cash or the political stomach after 2014 to sustain the sprawling Afghan security force being trained by NATO allies.

Lt.-Gen. Peter Devlin, the chief of land staff, recently returned from Kabul where roughly 950 Canadians have settled in for a three-year stint under the newly-established training mission.

Some of the questions on his mind during a round of meetings with NATO commanders involved whether the Afghan government will have the means of paying for an army and a police force that is expected to top out at 352,000 members. Devlin also wondered if the perceived threat from Taliban insurgents required building a force of that size.

Current estimates from the country's defence minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, see the Afghans spending over $6.2 billion a year to pay and equip their forces. That's in a country where the budget of the entire federal treasury is $4 billion much of that foreign aid.

Devlin, who commanded NATO's multi-national brigade in Kabul in 2003-04, said the shortfall needs to be recognized.

"Is the international community willing to pay for that?" he asked, rhetorically, in a recent interview with The Canadian Press. "And I'm unsure they will be able to pay for that ... It's my sense.
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Afghan woman is killed 'for giving birth to a girl'
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Kabul 30 January 2012
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A woman in north-eastern Afghanistan has been arrested for allegedly strangling her daughter-in-law for giving birth to a third daughter.

The murdered woman's husband, a member of a local militia, is also suspected of involvement but he has since fled.

The murder took place two days ago in Kunduz province. The baby girl, who is now two months old, was not hurt.

The birth of a boy is usually a cause for celebration in Afghanistan but girls are generally seen as a burden.

Some women in Afghanistan are abused if they fail to give birth to boys. And this is just the latest in a series of high-profile crimes against women in the country.

Late last year a horrifying video emerged of the injuries suffered by a 15-year-old child bride who was locked up and tortured by her husband.
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