- Reaction score
- 34
- Points
- 560
The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread (March 2008)
- Thread starter GAP
- Start date
- Status
Articles found March 14, 2008
Canada Votes to Extend Afghan Mission
By ROB GILLIES
Article Link
TORONTO (AP) — Parliament voted Thursday to extend Canada's mission in Afghanistan to 2011, provided NATO supplies more troops and equipment to back up its forces in the volatile south.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has been under growing pressure to withdraw Canada's 2,500 troops as the death toll has mounted, now at 80 Canadian soldiers and a diplomat. The mission was set to expire in February 2009.
But the minority Conservative government and opposition Liberals agreed last month to vote together on the motion, which passed 198-77. Liberals backed the extension after Harper promised the mission would increase its focus on training and reconstruction.
Conservatives had declared the motion a confidence vote, which would have triggered early elections if it failed.
U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins applauded the vote and said the NATO ultimatum is appropriate.
The extension of the mission is conditional on NATO providing 1,000 troops, helicopters and unmanned surveillance aircraft to back up forces in southern Kandahar province, a former Taliban stronghold.
More on link
Soldiers from Atlantic Canada to get medal of valour for Afghanistan deeds
The Cape Breton Post
Article Link
SAINT JOHN, N.B. (CP) — Two soldiers from Atlantic Canada will receive the medal for military valour for saving the life of a comrade whose military vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive in Afghanistan.
Cpl. Dave Gionet of Pigeon Hill, N.B., and Pte. Shane Aaron Bradley Dolmovic of Cottlesville, N.L., will be presented with medals from Gov.-Gen. Michaelle Jean.
The April 11 blast in Nalgham flipped a Coyote military vehicle carrying members of the Royal Canadian Dragoons from CFB Petawawa.
Gionet and Dolmovic pulled Cpl. Matthew Dicks of Newfoundland to safety. However, Master Cpl. Allan Stewart, 30, from Miramichi, N.B., and Trooper Patrick James Pentland, 23, from Geary, N.B., died.
More on link
Afghan ruling was the right one
March 14, 2008 THE RECORD
Article Link
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not stretch all the way from Canada to countries where Canadians are toiling -- in particular to Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.
Justice Anne Mactavish of the Federal Court made this point clearly this week when she ruled that the charter does not apply to prisoners captured in Afghanistan by Canadian troops. Canadian courts do not have the power to set rules on the treatment of Afghan prisoners.
Mactavish's ruling disappointed Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which brought the case to the court's attention. The two groups argued that the charter should protect Afghan prisoners.
It is one thing for a country to have a fundamental set of rules that the courts within that country interpret. It is quite another to expect those rules to cross international borders. The role of Canadian courts is to interpret the law within Canada.
This does not mean prisoners captured by Canadian troops in Afghanistan, or elsewhere for that matter, should be subject to torture or mistreatment. They should not be. They should be treated as well as Canadians would want a Canadian soldier to be treated if that person became a prisoner.
More on link
Coordination sought for success in Afghanistan
By Masood Haider
Article Link
UNITED NATIONS, March 13: Pakistan has said that the key to success in Afghanistan imbroglio lies in pursuing a comprehensive approach with emphasis on building the country’s capacity to assume greater control and ownership on security, governance and development issues.
Addressing the UN Security Council meeting on Afghanistan, Pakistans Ambassador to the United Nations Munir Akram said: “Pakistan has a direct and vital stake in the success of the international community’s efforts in Afghanistan and hopes for a closer coordination and consensus on a strategy for success in Afghanistan.”
Appreciating the secretary general’s latest report on Afghanistan, he observed that “what is most needed is better implementation, enhanced coordination and fulfilment of reciprocal commitments by Afghanistan and its international partners”.
He said that “putting security as a pre-requisite for development and assistance can prove to be counter-productive” and it was important to pursue the development track while the security issue was being addressed.
“We are trying to help reconciliation through the Peace Jirga, whose next meeting will be held in Pakistan.” Mr Akram pointed out that Pakistan was a major contributor in Afghanistans reconstruction and economic development.
Earlier, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General for Peace-keeping Operations, told the council that the insurgency was “more ruthless than we ever imagined,” and that “a massive illegal drug economy thrives in the vacuum of state authority”.
More on link
3 Taliban Killed in Afghanistan Clash
By NOOR KHAN
Article Link
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan and foreign troops clashed with Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan on Friday, leaving three suspected militants dead and two wounded, an official said.
Militants ambushed the security forces in Zabul province before troops returned fire, said district chief Mohammad Younus Akhunzada. No troops were hurt but a police vehicle was damaged.
There has been little let up in fighting by supporters of the former Taliban regime. In the first three months of 2007, some 769 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence, including 502 militants, according to figures from Afghan and Western officials tallied by The Associated Press.
More on link
Afghanistan clerics upset as woman makes final of 'Pop Idol'
By Jason Straziuso in Kabul, Afghanistan
Article Link
IN A first for post-Taleban Afghanistan, a woman has made it to the final three in the country's version of Pop Idol.
Lima Sahar, from the conservative Pashtun belt, is up against two male contestants tonight for a place in the final sing-off on Afghan Star, which has become one of the nation's most popular television shows.
Conservatives decry the fact that a woman has found success singing on TV, while others – younger Afghans – say the show is helping women progress.
Under the Taleban regime that was overthrown in 2001, women were not even allowed out of their homes unaccompanied, while music and television were banned.
With her hair tucked under a headscarf, Lima brushes off her critics, saying there can be no progress for women without upsetting the status quo. "No pain, no gain," she told reporters.
More on link
Canada Votes to Extend Afghan Mission
By ROB GILLIES
Article Link
TORONTO (AP) — Parliament voted Thursday to extend Canada's mission in Afghanistan to 2011, provided NATO supplies more troops and equipment to back up its forces in the volatile south.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has been under growing pressure to withdraw Canada's 2,500 troops as the death toll has mounted, now at 80 Canadian soldiers and a diplomat. The mission was set to expire in February 2009.
But the minority Conservative government and opposition Liberals agreed last month to vote together on the motion, which passed 198-77. Liberals backed the extension after Harper promised the mission would increase its focus on training and reconstruction.
Conservatives had declared the motion a confidence vote, which would have triggered early elections if it failed.
U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins applauded the vote and said the NATO ultimatum is appropriate.
The extension of the mission is conditional on NATO providing 1,000 troops, helicopters and unmanned surveillance aircraft to back up forces in southern Kandahar province, a former Taliban stronghold.
More on link
Soldiers from Atlantic Canada to get medal of valour for Afghanistan deeds
The Cape Breton Post
Article Link
SAINT JOHN, N.B. (CP) — Two soldiers from Atlantic Canada will receive the medal for military valour for saving the life of a comrade whose military vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive in Afghanistan.
Cpl. Dave Gionet of Pigeon Hill, N.B., and Pte. Shane Aaron Bradley Dolmovic of Cottlesville, N.L., will be presented with medals from Gov.-Gen. Michaelle Jean.
The April 11 blast in Nalgham flipped a Coyote military vehicle carrying members of the Royal Canadian Dragoons from CFB Petawawa.
Gionet and Dolmovic pulled Cpl. Matthew Dicks of Newfoundland to safety. However, Master Cpl. Allan Stewart, 30, from Miramichi, N.B., and Trooper Patrick James Pentland, 23, from Geary, N.B., died.
More on link
Afghan ruling was the right one
March 14, 2008 THE RECORD
Article Link
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not stretch all the way from Canada to countries where Canadians are toiling -- in particular to Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.
Justice Anne Mactavish of the Federal Court made this point clearly this week when she ruled that the charter does not apply to prisoners captured in Afghanistan by Canadian troops. Canadian courts do not have the power to set rules on the treatment of Afghan prisoners.
Mactavish's ruling disappointed Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which brought the case to the court's attention. The two groups argued that the charter should protect Afghan prisoners.
It is one thing for a country to have a fundamental set of rules that the courts within that country interpret. It is quite another to expect those rules to cross international borders. The role of Canadian courts is to interpret the law within Canada.
This does not mean prisoners captured by Canadian troops in Afghanistan, or elsewhere for that matter, should be subject to torture or mistreatment. They should not be. They should be treated as well as Canadians would want a Canadian soldier to be treated if that person became a prisoner.
More on link
Coordination sought for success in Afghanistan
By Masood Haider
Article Link
UNITED NATIONS, March 13: Pakistan has said that the key to success in Afghanistan imbroglio lies in pursuing a comprehensive approach with emphasis on building the country’s capacity to assume greater control and ownership on security, governance and development issues.
Addressing the UN Security Council meeting on Afghanistan, Pakistans Ambassador to the United Nations Munir Akram said: “Pakistan has a direct and vital stake in the success of the international community’s efforts in Afghanistan and hopes for a closer coordination and consensus on a strategy for success in Afghanistan.”
Appreciating the secretary general’s latest report on Afghanistan, he observed that “what is most needed is better implementation, enhanced coordination and fulfilment of reciprocal commitments by Afghanistan and its international partners”.
He said that “putting security as a pre-requisite for development and assistance can prove to be counter-productive” and it was important to pursue the development track while the security issue was being addressed.
“We are trying to help reconciliation through the Peace Jirga, whose next meeting will be held in Pakistan.” Mr Akram pointed out that Pakistan was a major contributor in Afghanistans reconstruction and economic development.
Earlier, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General for Peace-keeping Operations, told the council that the insurgency was “more ruthless than we ever imagined,” and that “a massive illegal drug economy thrives in the vacuum of state authority”.
More on link
3 Taliban Killed in Afghanistan Clash
By NOOR KHAN
Article Link
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan and foreign troops clashed with Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan on Friday, leaving three suspected militants dead and two wounded, an official said.
Militants ambushed the security forces in Zabul province before troops returned fire, said district chief Mohammad Younus Akhunzada. No troops were hurt but a police vehicle was damaged.
There has been little let up in fighting by supporters of the former Taliban regime. In the first three months of 2007, some 769 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence, including 502 militants, according to figures from Afghan and Western officials tallied by The Associated Press.
More on link
Afghanistan clerics upset as woman makes final of 'Pop Idol'
By Jason Straziuso in Kabul, Afghanistan
Article Link
IN A first for post-Taleban Afghanistan, a woman has made it to the final three in the country's version of Pop Idol.
Lima Sahar, from the conservative Pashtun belt, is up against two male contestants tonight for a place in the final sing-off on Afghan Star, which has become one of the nation's most popular television shows.
Conservatives decry the fact that a woman has found success singing on TV, while others – younger Afghans – say the show is helping women progress.
Under the Taleban regime that was overthrown in 2001, women were not even allowed out of their homes unaccompanied, while music and television were banned.
With her hair tucked under a headscarf, Lima brushes off her critics, saying there can be no progress for women without upsetting the status quo. "No pain, no gain," she told reporters.
More on link
- Reaction score
- 66
- Points
- 530
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/03/army_afghanistan_deploy_031408w/
Hood brigade tapped for Afghanistan
By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Mar 14, 2008 12:33:00 EDT
The Pentagon has tapped 3,500 1st Infantry Division soldiers to deploy to Afghanistan late this summer as part of the next combat rotation.
The 1st ID’s 3rd Brigade which is based in Fort Hood, Texas, will replace one of the two active brigade combat teams operating in the eastern part of the country, according to a Defense Department press release Friday.
There are currently about 28,000 American troops in Afghanistan. That number will grow to 31,400 by this spring as the Pentagon is in the process of deploying 3,400 Marines to boost combat power in the south, where most of the international coalition is located and where the Taliban have begun regaining strength.
Combined Joint Task Force 82, which is under the headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division, makes up most of the combat power on the ground in Afghanistan. It includes the 82nd Airborne’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team and several brigade- and battalion-level aviation, logistics and support task forces, provincial reconstruction teams, Special Forces teams and one Polish battle group.
The task force area of operations is more than 30,000 square miles — about the size of South Carolina — 1,507 miles of which are along the border with Pakistan. The population in their area is 10 million, and there are 32 forward operating bases, 27 combat outposts and 29 observation posts.
The DoD rotation announcement also maintained that “Afghan security forces continue to develop capability and assume responsibility for security, and this U.S. force rotation may be tailored based upon changes in the security situation.”
Hood brigade tapped for Afghanistan
By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Mar 14, 2008 12:33:00 EDT
The Pentagon has tapped 3,500 1st Infantry Division soldiers to deploy to Afghanistan late this summer as part of the next combat rotation.
The 1st ID’s 3rd Brigade which is based in Fort Hood, Texas, will replace one of the two active brigade combat teams operating in the eastern part of the country, according to a Defense Department press release Friday.
There are currently about 28,000 American troops in Afghanistan. That number will grow to 31,400 by this spring as the Pentagon is in the process of deploying 3,400 Marines to boost combat power in the south, where most of the international coalition is located and where the Taliban have begun regaining strength.
Combined Joint Task Force 82, which is under the headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division, makes up most of the combat power on the ground in Afghanistan. It includes the 82nd Airborne’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team and several brigade- and battalion-level aviation, logistics and support task forces, provincial reconstruction teams, Special Forces teams and one Polish battle group.
The task force area of operations is more than 30,000 square miles — about the size of South Carolina — 1,507 miles of which are along the border with Pakistan. The population in their area is 10 million, and there are 32 forward operating bases, 27 combat outposts and 29 observation posts.
The DoD rotation announcement also maintained that “Afghan security forces continue to develop capability and assume responsibility for security, and this U.S. force rotation may be tailored based upon changes in the security situation.”
- Reaction score
- 147
- Points
- 710
ARTICLES FOUND MARCH 17
Extending Afghan mission the right choice, troops say
National Post, March 17
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=380212&p=1
NATO allies press France on Afghan deployment
Toronto Star, March 17
http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/346744
Mark
Ottawa
Extending Afghan mission the right choice, troops say
National Post, March 17
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=380212&p=1
NATO allies press France on Afghan deployment
Toronto Star, March 17
http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/346744
Mark
Ottawa
Articles found March 18, 2008
Expectations high as marines pour into Kandahar
Commander of U.S. troops points out history of co-operation with Canadians, says he's ready to share idle equipment
OLIVER MOORE March 18, 2008
Article Link
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- There was no obvious place to put them on this bursting base, so the arriving U.S. Marines claimed a desolate spot on the far side of the runway and started to build at break-neck pace.
In only weeks, the vacant stretch of rock and dirt has been transformed by the sudden appearance of aircraft hangers, vehicle compounds and seemingly endless rows of communal sleeping tents, so new they haven't yet been coated by the swirls of ever-present dust.
A visit yesterday to North Side, as the unnamed encampment has been dubbed, turned up frantic activity. Helicopters were being assembled and empty steel shipping containers stacked into a long row. Boisterous young men milled about and several, already closely shorn, waited their turn for an even more severe shave.
The speed at which these men work is in keeping with the traditions of the United States Marines Corps, a force known for its ability to respond quickly anywhere in the world, and there is an expectation among many on this base that the thousands of marines pouring in will make as fast an impression in the rugged terrain outside the wire.
More on link
Afghan mission extension right choice: troops
Matthew Fisher, National Post Published: Monday, March 17, 2008
Article Link
The decision to extend Canada's Afghan mission until sometime in 2011 was met with neither joy nor sorrow by the men and women that Parliament expects to fulfill this new mandate.
There was almost universal agreement among those Canadians serving here that the decision was the right one. The news was received quietly, perhaps because victory or defeat still seems very far off.
The political act of extending the mission was the easy part. Sustaining the current high tempo represents a monumental challenge.
Parliament's new chosen end date was as artificial as the one that had Canada leaving Afghanistan next year. Mindful of what needs to be done and the hugely expensive semipermanent infrastructure that Canada is still building in Kandahar, few on the ground here believe that Canada will leave Afghanistan in 2011.
It is impossible to divine the compisiton of the force in 2011 at this point. And not only because three years is a long time to plan ahead in a war against an elusive quarry that appears unbowed by horrendous casualties and regards it as a great victory to simply be able to hang on.
More on link
NATO to offer 1,000 new troops for Afghanistan: Danish minister
Article Link
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Danish Defense Minister Soren Gade said Friday that NATO members could offer more than 1,000 new troops for Afghanistan at the alliance's April 2-4 summit in Bucharest.
"I think there will be more NATO soldiers in Afghanistan after the summit," Gade told reporters following meetings in Washington with US defense chief Robert Gates and other officials.
"It might be a raise of a thousand-plus," he said.
But Gade called on NATO and the European Union to put up more troops, funds and other support for Afghanistan's security and reconstruction, saying that Europe had forgotten the reason for intervention in Afghanistan -- the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.
"People have forgotten 9/11, at least in Europe," he said.
More on link
Afghanistan suicide car bomber killed two Danish and one Czech NATO soldiers
17 March, 2008
Article Link
Suicide bomb kills seven in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, March 17 (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber killed two Danish and one Czech NATO soldiers, an interpreter and three civilians in an attack on a convoy from the NATO-led ISAF near the village of Girishk in Helmand province, an ISAF spokesman
More on link
Poland to send more soldiers to Afghanistan in autumn
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-18 07:19:27
Article Link
WARSAW, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Poland will send more troops to Afghanistan in the autumn, Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said on Monday.
Poland's ISAF force currently numbers about 1,200 troops. Their number will go up to 1,600, according to Polish news agency PAP.
ISAF's key military tasks include assisting the Afghan government in extending its authority across the country, conducting stability and security operations in coordination with the Afghan national security forces, mentoring and supporting the Afghan national army, and supporting Afghan government programs to disarm illegally armed groups
End
Afghan Woman Voted Off 'Idol' Show
By JASON STRAZIUSO
Article Link
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan woman who sang her way to the top three of Afghanistan's version of "American Idol" has been voted out.
Lima Sahar was the first Afghan woman to make it to the top three of the country's popular "Afghan Star" television show, which is now in its third year. Conservative critics had taken aim at the 20-year-old woman for singing in public in the conservative Muslim country.
Sahar, who comes from Afghanistan's most conservative tribe — the Pashtuns, thanked everyone who had voted for her. She also reminded the audience that there had been very little music in Afghanistan in the last two decades, which have been mostly consumed with war.
Under the Taliban regime that was overthrown in 2001, women were not even allowed out of their homes unaccompanied, while music and television were banned.
"I am very happy to have come in third place," Sahar said on the show broadcast Friday night. "This is an honor for me that the people voted for me. I really thank them and I also congratulate them."
More on link
Militants destroy another mobile telecom signal tower in Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-15 21:09:19
Article Link
KABUL, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Taliban insurgents fighting the Afghan government have destroyed another mobile phone tower in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province, a local official said Saturday.
"The enemies of the country raided the room of guards of a mobile phone antenna late Friday night in Daman district of Kandahar and set on fire the switch board of the antenna, power generator and items inside the room," Mohammad Rasoul, police chief of the district, told Xinhua via phone.
He said that the militants tied the hands of the guards and abandoned them without harming in the area.
It is the 10th mobile phone tower that has been destroyed by the Taliban since the outfit gave ultimatum for mobile telecommunication companies to stop nighttime signals in southern Afghanistan's Taliban-held areas late last month.
More on link
Sweden to send more troops to Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-15 22:39:30
Article Link
STOCKHOLM, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Sweden will send more soldiers to reinforce its troops in Afghanistan, a senior defense official said Saturday.
The Swedish military force in the war-torn Afghanistan is expected to be increased from 350 soldiers to 500 within a year, said lieutenant general Anders Lindstroem, who is currently inspecting the Swedish garrison in Afghanistan.
The Swedish government has not yet approved the reinforcements, but Lindstroem is counting on them doing so, the Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Radio (SR) reported.
Lindstroem hoped that the Swedish forces would stay in Afghanistan for a period of five to 15 years as some European countries usually stationed their troops in the Balkan region for 10-15 years.
More on link
Expectations high as marines pour into Kandahar
Commander of U.S. troops points out history of co-operation with Canadians, says he's ready to share idle equipment
OLIVER MOORE March 18, 2008
Article Link
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- There was no obvious place to put them on this bursting base, so the arriving U.S. Marines claimed a desolate spot on the far side of the runway and started to build at break-neck pace.
In only weeks, the vacant stretch of rock and dirt has been transformed by the sudden appearance of aircraft hangers, vehicle compounds and seemingly endless rows of communal sleeping tents, so new they haven't yet been coated by the swirls of ever-present dust.
A visit yesterday to North Side, as the unnamed encampment has been dubbed, turned up frantic activity. Helicopters were being assembled and empty steel shipping containers stacked into a long row. Boisterous young men milled about and several, already closely shorn, waited their turn for an even more severe shave.
The speed at which these men work is in keeping with the traditions of the United States Marines Corps, a force known for its ability to respond quickly anywhere in the world, and there is an expectation among many on this base that the thousands of marines pouring in will make as fast an impression in the rugged terrain outside the wire.
More on link
Afghan mission extension right choice: troops
Matthew Fisher, National Post Published: Monday, March 17, 2008
Article Link
The decision to extend Canada's Afghan mission until sometime in 2011 was met with neither joy nor sorrow by the men and women that Parliament expects to fulfill this new mandate.
There was almost universal agreement among those Canadians serving here that the decision was the right one. The news was received quietly, perhaps because victory or defeat still seems very far off.
The political act of extending the mission was the easy part. Sustaining the current high tempo represents a monumental challenge.
Parliament's new chosen end date was as artificial as the one that had Canada leaving Afghanistan next year. Mindful of what needs to be done and the hugely expensive semipermanent infrastructure that Canada is still building in Kandahar, few on the ground here believe that Canada will leave Afghanistan in 2011.
It is impossible to divine the compisiton of the force in 2011 at this point. And not only because three years is a long time to plan ahead in a war against an elusive quarry that appears unbowed by horrendous casualties and regards it as a great victory to simply be able to hang on.
More on link
NATO to offer 1,000 new troops for Afghanistan: Danish minister
Article Link
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Danish Defense Minister Soren Gade said Friday that NATO members could offer more than 1,000 new troops for Afghanistan at the alliance's April 2-4 summit in Bucharest.
"I think there will be more NATO soldiers in Afghanistan after the summit," Gade told reporters following meetings in Washington with US defense chief Robert Gates and other officials.
"It might be a raise of a thousand-plus," he said.
But Gade called on NATO and the European Union to put up more troops, funds and other support for Afghanistan's security and reconstruction, saying that Europe had forgotten the reason for intervention in Afghanistan -- the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.
"People have forgotten 9/11, at least in Europe," he said.
More on link
Afghanistan suicide car bomber killed two Danish and one Czech NATO soldiers
17 March, 2008
Article Link
Suicide bomb kills seven in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, March 17 (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber killed two Danish and one Czech NATO soldiers, an interpreter and three civilians in an attack on a convoy from the NATO-led ISAF near the village of Girishk in Helmand province, an ISAF spokesman
More on link
Poland to send more soldiers to Afghanistan in autumn
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-18 07:19:27
Article Link
WARSAW, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Poland will send more troops to Afghanistan in the autumn, Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said on Monday.
Poland's ISAF force currently numbers about 1,200 troops. Their number will go up to 1,600, according to Polish news agency PAP.
ISAF's key military tasks include assisting the Afghan government in extending its authority across the country, conducting stability and security operations in coordination with the Afghan national security forces, mentoring and supporting the Afghan national army, and supporting Afghan government programs to disarm illegally armed groups
End
Afghan Woman Voted Off 'Idol' Show
By JASON STRAZIUSO
Article Link
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan woman who sang her way to the top three of Afghanistan's version of "American Idol" has been voted out.
Lima Sahar was the first Afghan woman to make it to the top three of the country's popular "Afghan Star" television show, which is now in its third year. Conservative critics had taken aim at the 20-year-old woman for singing in public in the conservative Muslim country.
Sahar, who comes from Afghanistan's most conservative tribe — the Pashtuns, thanked everyone who had voted for her. She also reminded the audience that there had been very little music in Afghanistan in the last two decades, which have been mostly consumed with war.
Under the Taliban regime that was overthrown in 2001, women were not even allowed out of their homes unaccompanied, while music and television were banned.
"I am very happy to have come in third place," Sahar said on the show broadcast Friday night. "This is an honor for me that the people voted for me. I really thank them and I also congratulate them."
More on link
Militants destroy another mobile telecom signal tower in Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-15 21:09:19
Article Link
KABUL, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Taliban insurgents fighting the Afghan government have destroyed another mobile phone tower in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province, a local official said Saturday.
"The enemies of the country raided the room of guards of a mobile phone antenna late Friday night in Daman district of Kandahar and set on fire the switch board of the antenna, power generator and items inside the room," Mohammad Rasoul, police chief of the district, told Xinhua via phone.
He said that the militants tied the hands of the guards and abandoned them without harming in the area.
It is the 10th mobile phone tower that has been destroyed by the Taliban since the outfit gave ultimatum for mobile telecommunication companies to stop nighttime signals in southern Afghanistan's Taliban-held areas late last month.
More on link
Sweden to send more troops to Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-15 22:39:30
Article Link
STOCKHOLM, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Sweden will send more soldiers to reinforce its troops in Afghanistan, a senior defense official said Saturday.
The Swedish military force in the war-torn Afghanistan is expected to be increased from 350 soldiers to 500 within a year, said lieutenant general Anders Lindstroem, who is currently inspecting the Swedish garrison in Afghanistan.
The Swedish government has not yet approved the reinforcements, but Lindstroem is counting on them doing so, the Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Radio (SR) reported.
Lindstroem hoped that the Swedish forces would stay in Afghanistan for a period of five to 15 years as some European countries usually stationed their troops in the Balkan region for 10-15 years.
More on link
Articles found March 19, 2008
Team Canada in Kandahar for ball-hockey rematch
Updated Wed. Mar. 19 2008 8:47 AM ET The Canadian Press
Article Link
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A group of NHL hockey heroes arrived Wednesday in Afghanistan to give Canadian soldiers a battle of a different sort.
Skating stalwarts like Mark Napier, Chris Nilan and Bob Probert touched down in Kandahar -- some of them for the second time in less than a year -- in hopes of boosting military morale.
Also on the ground at Kandahar Airfield were country-rock crooners Blue Rodeo, Montreal rocker Jonas Tomalty and Gen. Rick Hillier, Canada's chief of defence staff.
But the true guest of honour, making its second appearance in Afghanistan, was hockey's Holy Grail -- the Stanley Cup.
"For Canadians, I mean, this symbolizes something that every young boy or girl grows up dreaming about -- playing for the Stanley Cup,'' said Defence Minister Peter MacKay, whose departure after a top-secret three-day visit to Afghanistan coincided with the team's arrival.
More on link
NATO Says Afghanistan Air Strike Killed Insurgents, Not Civilians
By VOA News 18 March 2008
Article Link
NATO is rejecting claims by Afghan residents that several civilians were killed during an air raid in southern Helmand province.
In a statement Tuesday, NATO said it killed an estimated 12 insurgents in an isolated area of Helmand's Sangin district Monday. NATO said it attacked after militants riding in three vehicles fired on coalition forces.
NATO said there was no evidence of civilian casualties.
Local lawmakers and Sangin residents said at least 50 people were killed when NATO jets bombed an area where people were playing games.
They said at least half the victims were civilians.
U.S., NATO and Afghan forces are struggling to contain a bloody Taliban insurgency in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan.
More on link
Afghan Medium-Lift – Searching for Available NATO Mil Helicopters
Stephen Priestley, Researcher, Canadian American Strategic Review (CASR)
Article Link
As was widely reported, Poland has promised Canada access to two of its four Mi-17 Hip H medium-lift transport helicopters which are soon to deploy to Kandahar. This is a generous offer by Poland and Canada is fortunate to have access to these two refurbished helicopters (along with the non-exclusive use of the helicopters of other allies in southern Afghanistan – Chinooks from Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and the US, plus Dutch Cougars and US Black Hawks). However, the planned Canadian Chinooks will probably not arrive until 2012. In the meantime, Canada will need still more help from its friends in that medium-lift category.
Attempts by DND and the Minister of National Defence to secure access to the Chinooks of our Western European NATO allies have failed. Germany offered to lease surplus CH-53 Sea Stallions but this was declined – these older helicopters would need upgrades to operate in Afghanistan. That leaves Canada to contemplate the availablity of Mil Mi-8/17 helicopters in Eastern Europe. The Poles have already stepped up. What of our other Eastern NATO allies?
More on link
Canada rejects interim helicopter fix for Afghanistan
David ******** , Canwest News Service Published: Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Article Link
The Defence Department has turned down an offer of six U.S. Blackhawk helicopters for its operations in Kandahar in the hope it can still acquire larger choppers for the Afghanistan mission.
U.S. helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky offered the six Blackhawks, noting that it would be able to deliver the choppers to Kandahar this year.
The Blackhawk, one of the U.S. army's main frontline aircraft, can carry 11 combat troops or haul a 105-mm howitzer plus ammunition. It is currently being used in Afghanistan.
More on link
Father of soldier killed in Afghanistan 'will sue MoD for damages'
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent Last Updated: 2:45am GMT 19/03/2008
Article Link
The father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan vowed last night to take legal action against the Ministry of Defence, demanding that it accepts liability for his son's death.
Tony Philippson announced his plans to sue for damages after a fraught meeting with Bob Ainsworth, the Armed Forces minister, who told him that he refused to accept a coroner's verdict on the death of Capt Jim Philippson.
More on link
Team Canada in Kandahar for ball-hockey rematch
Updated Wed. Mar. 19 2008 8:47 AM ET The Canadian Press
Article Link
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A group of NHL hockey heroes arrived Wednesday in Afghanistan to give Canadian soldiers a battle of a different sort.
Skating stalwarts like Mark Napier, Chris Nilan and Bob Probert touched down in Kandahar -- some of them for the second time in less than a year -- in hopes of boosting military morale.
Also on the ground at Kandahar Airfield were country-rock crooners Blue Rodeo, Montreal rocker Jonas Tomalty and Gen. Rick Hillier, Canada's chief of defence staff.
But the true guest of honour, making its second appearance in Afghanistan, was hockey's Holy Grail -- the Stanley Cup.
"For Canadians, I mean, this symbolizes something that every young boy or girl grows up dreaming about -- playing for the Stanley Cup,'' said Defence Minister Peter MacKay, whose departure after a top-secret three-day visit to Afghanistan coincided with the team's arrival.
More on link
NATO Says Afghanistan Air Strike Killed Insurgents, Not Civilians
By VOA News 18 March 2008
Article Link
NATO is rejecting claims by Afghan residents that several civilians were killed during an air raid in southern Helmand province.
In a statement Tuesday, NATO said it killed an estimated 12 insurgents in an isolated area of Helmand's Sangin district Monday. NATO said it attacked after militants riding in three vehicles fired on coalition forces.
NATO said there was no evidence of civilian casualties.
Local lawmakers and Sangin residents said at least 50 people were killed when NATO jets bombed an area where people were playing games.
They said at least half the victims were civilians.
U.S., NATO and Afghan forces are struggling to contain a bloody Taliban insurgency in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan.
More on link
Afghan Medium-Lift – Searching for Available NATO Mil Helicopters
Stephen Priestley, Researcher, Canadian American Strategic Review (CASR)
Article Link
As was widely reported, Poland has promised Canada access to two of its four Mi-17 Hip H medium-lift transport helicopters which are soon to deploy to Kandahar. This is a generous offer by Poland and Canada is fortunate to have access to these two refurbished helicopters (along with the non-exclusive use of the helicopters of other allies in southern Afghanistan – Chinooks from Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and the US, plus Dutch Cougars and US Black Hawks). However, the planned Canadian Chinooks will probably not arrive until 2012. In the meantime, Canada will need still more help from its friends in that medium-lift category.
Attempts by DND and the Minister of National Defence to secure access to the Chinooks of our Western European NATO allies have failed. Germany offered to lease surplus CH-53 Sea Stallions but this was declined – these older helicopters would need upgrades to operate in Afghanistan. That leaves Canada to contemplate the availablity of Mil Mi-8/17 helicopters in Eastern Europe. The Poles have already stepped up. What of our other Eastern NATO allies?
More on link
Canada rejects interim helicopter fix for Afghanistan
David ******** , Canwest News Service Published: Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Article Link
The Defence Department has turned down an offer of six U.S. Blackhawk helicopters for its operations in Kandahar in the hope it can still acquire larger choppers for the Afghanistan mission.
U.S. helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky offered the six Blackhawks, noting that it would be able to deliver the choppers to Kandahar this year.
The Blackhawk, one of the U.S. army's main frontline aircraft, can carry 11 combat troops or haul a 105-mm howitzer plus ammunition. It is currently being used in Afghanistan.
More on link
Father of soldier killed in Afghanistan 'will sue MoD for damages'
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent Last Updated: 2:45am GMT 19/03/2008
Article Link
The father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan vowed last night to take legal action against the Ministry of Defence, demanding that it accepts liability for his son's death.
Tony Philippson announced his plans to sue for damages after a fraught meeting with Bob Ainsworth, the Armed Forces minister, who told him that he refused to accept a coroner's verdict on the death of Capt Jim Philippson.
More on link
- Reaction score
- 147
- Points
- 710
ARTICLES FOUND MARCH 20
Europe commits to send more trainers into Afghanistan
Stars and Stripes, March 20
http://www.stripes.com/articleprint.asp?section=104&article=53425
Council gives U.N. bigger role in Afghanistan
Reuters, March 20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/20/AR2008032001702.html
Mark
Ottawa
Europe commits to send more trainers into Afghanistan
Stars and Stripes, March 20
http://www.stripes.com/articleprint.asp?section=104&article=53425
Council gives U.N. bigger role in Afghanistan
Reuters, March 20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/20/AR2008032001702.html
Mark
Ottawa
- Reaction score
- 147
- Points
- 710
Cheney: Afghanistan Needs NATO Help
AP, March 20
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gvsKHCj_jjvCkYgE9lKl3x9xkEvAD8VHCF2G0
Mark
Ottawa
AP, March 20
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gvsKHCj_jjvCkYgE9lKl3x9xkEvAD8VHCF2G0
Mark
Ottawa
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 210
Nicolas Sarkozy to bolster force in Afghanistan with 1,000 extra troops
Times Online, March 22
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3599552.ece
Times Online, March 22
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3599552.ece
Articles found March 22, 2008
Hillier says no move to extend deployments to Afghanistan
Matthew Fisher, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, March 20, 2008
Article Link
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - Canada's chief of the defence staff says there are no plans afoot to extend the six-month tours of duty that most of his troops now spend in Afghanistan.
"We've made no decisions to change where we are at this time," Gen. Rick Hillier said, adding that such issues are constantly examined by military planners. Some U.S. army units spend as much as 15 months in Afghanistan. The Dutch and Germans are deployed for as little as four months here, while the British generally are deployed for six months.
More on link
Treason shocker: Harper sells military to Pentagon, boots and all
Posted: March 21, 2008, 6:00 AM by Kelly McParland
Article Link
Liberals in on it too
Beware. The Conservative government, stooge of the Bush administration that it is, is not just plotting to hand our water, oil and sovereignty to the U.S. government, but our military too.
It’s true. It’s right here in The Canadian, “Canada’s new socially progressive and cross-cultural national newspaper.”
There’s a photo of Pierre Trudeau on the masthead and plenty of Liberal red splashed all over the page. So it all must be true.
Which is disconcerting. Here’s the current main story, grammar problems and all:
“The Stephen Harper government has endorsed a military Agreement with the U.S. Bush administration, which destroys the independence of Canada’s military. Why do you think that Canada’s armed forces has been forced to fight alongside the U.S. military, in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan? This is no coincidence. Canada’s military in no longer substantively independent from the U.S. military command structure, thanks to the Stephen Harper government and their confederates. This Agreement also obliges Canada to provide financial and military personnel support to the U.S. in Iraq.”
Holy smack. How come nobody told us this before? Does Hillier know? But wait, there’s more:
“The U.S. Bush administration has accomplished a goal that has alluded U.S. military planners since the War of 1812 that was lost to the Canadians: the military take-over of Canada. This is exactly the kind of process of colonial assimilation, that anti-Free Trade advocates had predicted back in the 1988 Canadian Federal Election.”
This is serious. How did it allude us for so long?
More on link
Windsor soldiers make a difference in Afghanistan
Don Lajoie and Dalson Chen, Windsor Star Published: Friday, March 21, 2008
Article Link
When asked about his most recent deployment to Afghanistan, Cpl. Colin Mio's silences speak more eloquently than his words.
"Is it worthwhile?" the 32-year-old Windsor native repeats the question, pausing several seconds to consider his response before continuing. "Yes... and no.... More yes. But when you see friends die... In your head, it makes you think ... is it worth it?
"But if we don't ... then who else will do it? It makes you think about your buddies still over there."
More on link
Troops dazzle visiting NHLers
By LANCE HORNBY
Article Link
KANDAHAR -- This was the ultimate road trip for NHLers Dave Hutchison, Bob Probert and Mark Napier.
The trio joined Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd. executive vice-president and COO Tom Anselmi to experience a night "outside the wire" of Kandahar Airfield in that part of Afghanistan where Taliban activity is much higher.
Accompanied by Canadian Forces personnel, they travelled by helicopter to visit several forward operating bases near the hot spots of Taliban activity.
"Absolutely wild," Hutchison said. "The troops are about as old as my kids, but you can't believe how little our troops have to exist on out there. Our tent had an inch of dust on the ground, yet it was considered the penthouse suite. And all these soldiers came up to us to thank us for coming when it's us who should be thanking them."
The Taliban scatter whenever the multinational task force brings out its big weaponry, but it's still able to launch crude missles, usually old Soviet ordnance on timed fuses that land harmlessly around KAF.
More on link
Canada reluctant to support Afghan Islamic schools
Article Link
OTTAWA — Canada plans to build as many as 50 schools in Kandahar province over the next few years, but is hedging on whether it supports a controversial Afghan program to construct a handful of madrassas - schools of Islamic education.
Canadian officials on the ground - both civilian and military - have been quietly pushing Ottawa over the last year to encourage the development of moderate madrassas as long-term strategy to fight extremism.
However Arif Lalani, the Canadian ambassador in Kabul, would only say that the bulk of Ottawa's $60 million contribution toward building the Afghan education system will go to secular, public schools.
"What we will be focusing on in terms of our funding and our programing is going to be the building of the community schools, the type of which we just started building in Kandahar," Lalani said Thursday in a teleconference from Kabul.
Last year, Afghanistan's Education Ministry drew up plans for a $890,000 pilot program for a 16-classroom madrassa, with a dormitory for 300 students, to be located in the vicinity of Kandahar.
Unlike madrassas in northern Pakistan, which Western countries see as breeding grounds for fire-breathing extremism, the Afghan model is based on Hanafi, a less fundamentalist form of Islam.
President Hamid Karzai's government wants to establish as many as four regional religious schools. One of the schools - in the eastern portion of the war-torn country - opened last fall to mixed reviews and some skepticism among Afghans, who questioned whether the instruction was strict enough and could compete with what's offered just across the border.
The country's education minister, Hanif Atmar, is committed to the madrassa program and was quoted recently as saying the marginalization of religious schools in recent decades allowed extremism to flourish.
More on link
A new girls school in Afghanistan part of NATO strategy to be both warriors and well diggers
The Associated PressPublished: March 21, 2008
Article Link
DEH HASSAN, Afghanistan: The little girl flashed a shy smile from under her white headscarf and stepped to the front of the class when the headmaster asked who could find Afghanistan on their new map of the world.
After a little hesitation, 11-year-old Pashtun pointed to her homeland, making a successful start to her first day at school.
Pashtun and her classmates, clearly delighted as the new school opened on Tuesday, are the face of Afghanistan that NATO would like the world to see after months of headlines dominated by the upsurge in violence that made last year the bloodiest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Thanks to German and Scandinavian troops providing security, German aid workers could move in with funds to build the freshly painted yellow-and-white schoolhouse where 600 girls from Deh Hassan and the surrounding villages can finally get a proper education, seven years after the fall of the Taliban regime, which made it a crime to teach females.
The pursuit of such development projects alongside combat and security operations remains a key task for NATO forces and will likely be part of the discussion at a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, April 2-4.
More on link
Afghanistan: New Helmand Governor Confirms Desire For Talks With Taliban
Article Link
The new governor of an embattled province in southern Afghanistan has confirmed his intention to negotiate with "second- and third-tier" Taliban to achieve greater security.
In an interview with RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, Helmand Province Governor Golab Mangal insisted that his call for talks enjoy the support of President Hamid Karzai.
"From the authority point of view, I can say that I'm the representative of President Karzai in the province and the highest-ranking official," Mangal said. "What I do in Helmand is always according to the guidance of President Karzai and the independent regional organ. Under the law, there is no problem regarding [my] authority [to conduct such talks]."
The central government in Kabul has at times struggled to reconcile its stated desire to rehabilitate militants who disavow armed resistance with its effort to counter terrorism and deliver stability to beleaguered regions.
Mangal stressed that the invitation to talks excludes what he called top-tier Taliban, whom he described as "foreign-affiliated" and Al-Qaeda militants.
Helmand is among the country's most violent provinces, and lies in what is frequently referred to as a "poppy belt" that contributes to Afghanistan's massive opium trade.
More on link
Hillier says no move to extend deployments to Afghanistan
Matthew Fisher, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, March 20, 2008
Article Link
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - Canada's chief of the defence staff says there are no plans afoot to extend the six-month tours of duty that most of his troops now spend in Afghanistan.
"We've made no decisions to change where we are at this time," Gen. Rick Hillier said, adding that such issues are constantly examined by military planners. Some U.S. army units spend as much as 15 months in Afghanistan. The Dutch and Germans are deployed for as little as four months here, while the British generally are deployed for six months.
More on link
Treason shocker: Harper sells military to Pentagon, boots and all
Posted: March 21, 2008, 6:00 AM by Kelly McParland
Article Link
Liberals in on it too
Beware. The Conservative government, stooge of the Bush administration that it is, is not just plotting to hand our water, oil and sovereignty to the U.S. government, but our military too.
It’s true. It’s right here in The Canadian, “Canada’s new socially progressive and cross-cultural national newspaper.”
There’s a photo of Pierre Trudeau on the masthead and plenty of Liberal red splashed all over the page. So it all must be true.
Which is disconcerting. Here’s the current main story, grammar problems and all:
“The Stephen Harper government has endorsed a military Agreement with the U.S. Bush administration, which destroys the independence of Canada’s military. Why do you think that Canada’s armed forces has been forced to fight alongside the U.S. military, in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan? This is no coincidence. Canada’s military in no longer substantively independent from the U.S. military command structure, thanks to the Stephen Harper government and their confederates. This Agreement also obliges Canada to provide financial and military personnel support to the U.S. in Iraq.”
Holy smack. How come nobody told us this before? Does Hillier know? But wait, there’s more:
“The U.S. Bush administration has accomplished a goal that has alluded U.S. military planners since the War of 1812 that was lost to the Canadians: the military take-over of Canada. This is exactly the kind of process of colonial assimilation, that anti-Free Trade advocates had predicted back in the 1988 Canadian Federal Election.”
This is serious. How did it allude us for so long?
More on link
Windsor soldiers make a difference in Afghanistan
Don Lajoie and Dalson Chen, Windsor Star Published: Friday, March 21, 2008
Article Link
When asked about his most recent deployment to Afghanistan, Cpl. Colin Mio's silences speak more eloquently than his words.
"Is it worthwhile?" the 32-year-old Windsor native repeats the question, pausing several seconds to consider his response before continuing. "Yes... and no.... More yes. But when you see friends die... In your head, it makes you think ... is it worth it?
"But if we don't ... then who else will do it? It makes you think about your buddies still over there."
More on link
Troops dazzle visiting NHLers
By LANCE HORNBY
Article Link
KANDAHAR -- This was the ultimate road trip for NHLers Dave Hutchison, Bob Probert and Mark Napier.
The trio joined Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd. executive vice-president and COO Tom Anselmi to experience a night "outside the wire" of Kandahar Airfield in that part of Afghanistan where Taliban activity is much higher.
Accompanied by Canadian Forces personnel, they travelled by helicopter to visit several forward operating bases near the hot spots of Taliban activity.
"Absolutely wild," Hutchison said. "The troops are about as old as my kids, but you can't believe how little our troops have to exist on out there. Our tent had an inch of dust on the ground, yet it was considered the penthouse suite. And all these soldiers came up to us to thank us for coming when it's us who should be thanking them."
The Taliban scatter whenever the multinational task force brings out its big weaponry, but it's still able to launch crude missles, usually old Soviet ordnance on timed fuses that land harmlessly around KAF.
More on link
Canada reluctant to support Afghan Islamic schools
Article Link
OTTAWA — Canada plans to build as many as 50 schools in Kandahar province over the next few years, but is hedging on whether it supports a controversial Afghan program to construct a handful of madrassas - schools of Islamic education.
Canadian officials on the ground - both civilian and military - have been quietly pushing Ottawa over the last year to encourage the development of moderate madrassas as long-term strategy to fight extremism.
However Arif Lalani, the Canadian ambassador in Kabul, would only say that the bulk of Ottawa's $60 million contribution toward building the Afghan education system will go to secular, public schools.
"What we will be focusing on in terms of our funding and our programing is going to be the building of the community schools, the type of which we just started building in Kandahar," Lalani said Thursday in a teleconference from Kabul.
Last year, Afghanistan's Education Ministry drew up plans for a $890,000 pilot program for a 16-classroom madrassa, with a dormitory for 300 students, to be located in the vicinity of Kandahar.
Unlike madrassas in northern Pakistan, which Western countries see as breeding grounds for fire-breathing extremism, the Afghan model is based on Hanafi, a less fundamentalist form of Islam.
President Hamid Karzai's government wants to establish as many as four regional religious schools. One of the schools - in the eastern portion of the war-torn country - opened last fall to mixed reviews and some skepticism among Afghans, who questioned whether the instruction was strict enough and could compete with what's offered just across the border.
The country's education minister, Hanif Atmar, is committed to the madrassa program and was quoted recently as saying the marginalization of religious schools in recent decades allowed extremism to flourish.
More on link
A new girls school in Afghanistan part of NATO strategy to be both warriors and well diggers
The Associated PressPublished: March 21, 2008
Article Link
DEH HASSAN, Afghanistan: The little girl flashed a shy smile from under her white headscarf and stepped to the front of the class when the headmaster asked who could find Afghanistan on their new map of the world.
After a little hesitation, 11-year-old Pashtun pointed to her homeland, making a successful start to her first day at school.
Pashtun and her classmates, clearly delighted as the new school opened on Tuesday, are the face of Afghanistan that NATO would like the world to see after months of headlines dominated by the upsurge in violence that made last year the bloodiest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Thanks to German and Scandinavian troops providing security, German aid workers could move in with funds to build the freshly painted yellow-and-white schoolhouse where 600 girls from Deh Hassan and the surrounding villages can finally get a proper education, seven years after the fall of the Taliban regime, which made it a crime to teach females.
The pursuit of such development projects alongside combat and security operations remains a key task for NATO forces and will likely be part of the discussion at a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, April 2-4.
More on link
Afghanistan: New Helmand Governor Confirms Desire For Talks With Taliban
Article Link
The new governor of an embattled province in southern Afghanistan has confirmed his intention to negotiate with "second- and third-tier" Taliban to achieve greater security.
In an interview with RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, Helmand Province Governor Golab Mangal insisted that his call for talks enjoy the support of President Hamid Karzai.
"From the authority point of view, I can say that I'm the representative of President Karzai in the province and the highest-ranking official," Mangal said. "What I do in Helmand is always according to the guidance of President Karzai and the independent regional organ. Under the law, there is no problem regarding [my] authority [to conduct such talks]."
The central government in Kabul has at times struggled to reconcile its stated desire to rehabilitate militants who disavow armed resistance with its effort to counter terrorism and deliver stability to beleaguered regions.
Mangal stressed that the invitation to talks excludes what he called top-tier Taliban, whom he described as "foreign-affiliated" and Al-Qaeda militants.
Helmand is among the country's most violent provinces, and lies in what is frequently referred to as a "poppy belt" that contributes to Afghanistan's massive opium trade.
More on link
- Reaction score
- 147
- Points
- 710
Pakistan to Talk With Militants, New Leaders Say
NY Times, March 22
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/world/asia/22pstan.html?ref=todayspaper
Mark
Ottawa
NY Times, March 22
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/world/asia/22pstan.html?ref=todayspaper
Mark
Ottawa
- Reaction score
- 147
- Points
- 710
Afghan Pop Idol winner declared
BBC, March 21
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7309029.stm
Afghanistan's Pop Idol breaks barriers
BBC, Feb. 25
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7262967.stm
Mark
Ottawa
BBC, March 21
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7309029.stm
Afghanistan's Pop Idol breaks barriers
BBC, Feb. 25
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7262967.stm
Mark
Ottawa
- Reaction score
- 147
- Points
- 710
Tories knew 1,000 French troops were pledged before Manley recommended them, MP asserts
Globe and Mail, March 24
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080324.AFGHANCANADA24//TPStory/Front
AFGHANISTAN: BETWEEN HOPE AND FEAR
CBC Documentary, March 23
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/afghanistan/index.html
Video of the segments is here:
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/afghanistan/video.html
Canadian Forces advisory team adopts Kabul orphanage
Montreal Gazette, March 23
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=36778fe2-c65b-4edc-9755-d36138c2fea2&k=51098
Mark
Ottawa
Globe and Mail, March 24
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080324.AFGHANCANADA24//TPStory/Front
AFGHANISTAN: BETWEEN HOPE AND FEAR
CBC Documentary, March 23
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/afghanistan/index.html
Video of the segments is here:
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/afghanistan/video.html
Canadian Forces advisory team adopts Kabul orphanage
Montreal Gazette, March 23
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=36778fe2-c65b-4edc-9755-d36138c2fea2&k=51098
Mark
Ottawa
Articles found March 25, 2008
Fuel Trucks for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan Destroyed
Article Link
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Twenty-five trucks carrying fuel to American-led forces in Afghanistan were destroyed Sunday in a possible bombing on the Pakistani border, local government officials said.
Dozens of people were injured, they said.
Muhammad Sadiq Khan, a local government official, said that the explosions occurred late Sunday on the Pakistani side of border near the customs checkpoint at Torkham. At least 50 people were injured, eight of them seriously, officials said.
Fida Muhammad, the commander of a paramilitary force that helps provide security at the border crossing, said authorities suspected that the blasts were caused by bombs, but he said that an investigation was under way.
Fuel tankers headed for American and NATO bases in Afghanistan have been repeatedly singled out by militants close to the Pakistani border
More on link
Strike Eagles Help Prince Harry in Afghanistan
By KENNETH FINE News-Argus of Goldsboro Posted: Mar. 23, 2008 Updated: Mar. 24 10:49 a.m.
Article Link
Goldsboro, N.C. — A call comes in from somewhere in the desert. A joint tactical air controller on the ground in Afghanistan's Helmand province needs air support. He and his comrades are taking fire from a trench line.
Hundreds of miles away, Capt. Ben Donberg can hear the gunshots in his earphones. He is the command pilot on the other end of that call. His F-15E Strike Eagle and another, both assets of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base's 4th Fighter Wing, are on their way very, very fast.
Back on the ground, WIDOW 67 waits. He is talking to the Air Force captain. His voice is muffled only by the sound of insurgent fire. Just another JTAC in need of some assistance, Donberg assumes.
"It was just a standard troops-in-contact call, and we checked in with him," he said. "He's got a British accent, but that wasn't at all unusual because we were working with the British a lot over there."
Donberg had no idea that the man behind the call sign WIDOW 76 was third in line to the British throne.
More on link
Younger leadership for Taliban in Afghanistan
Last Updated: 1:57am GMT 25/03/2008
Article Link
The Taliban leadership in southern Afghanistan is passing into the hands of younger, more extreme insurgents as the relentless targeting of traditional commanders by British forces takes its toll.
'Hamid Karzai's diplomat expulsion move halted efforts to split Taliban'
In a week spent in Helmand province, The Daily Telegraph has found widespread evidence that special forces operations are degrading the Taliban's leadership and its ability to co-ordinate operations.
But there are also indications of increasing radicalisation within the Taliban as more extreme fighters, many of them al-Qa'eda-linked foreign militants, fill the gaps left when experienced Taliban leaders are killed.
Western military officials say privately that approximately 200 medium and high-level Taliban commanders were killed countrywide in targeted bombings or assassinations by American and British special forces last year, and a further 100 captured
More on link
Afghanistan to privatise national telephone firm
23 Mar, 2008, 1830 hrs IST, AGENCIES
Article Link
KABUL: Afghanistan said Sunday it planned to sell up to 80 percent of its telecommunications arm in one of the most ambitious parts of the country's ongoing privatisation programme.
Bidders must register their interest in purchasing part of Afghan Telecom by April 4 and the tender process was expected to be completed in three months, Telecommunications Minister Amirzai Sangin told reporters.
The fixed line and wireless system had about 100,000 clients, he said. This compares to about five million for the booming mobile phone sector, which includes four providers and had investment of nearly one billion dollars, Sangin said.
Afghan Telecom would be worth about 190 million dollars after a network of fibre optic cables is put in place, an improvement which is due by year's end, his ministry said.
The sell-off is one of "the most ambitious privatisation projects in Afghanistan to date," it said in a statement on its website.
Asked about Taliban attacks on mobile phone towers, Sangin dismissed the insurgents' claims that cell phones were being used by the military to pinpoint their hideouts.
The Taliban extremist movement warned nearly a month ago it would target mobile antennae that were not switched off at night because they were being used to trace their bases.
About a dozen have been attacked since then, most of them in the volatile south where the insurgency is most active.
More on link
New Zealand wants new multi-prong Afghanistan strategy
The Associated PressPublished: March 25, 2008
Article Link
WELLINGTON, New Zealand: New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said Tuesday she wants NATO to implement a "multi-pronged strategy" in Afghanistan to end violence and upgrade development in the war-torn nation.
Clark, who will attend next week's high-level meeting of representatives of the 26 NATO countries in Bucharest, said a military strategy alone is not enough.
New Zealand wants "to ensure that the NATO strategy is a multi-pronged one, because a military strategy on its own doesn't make the difference for Afghanistan," Clark told reporters. "That has to be supplemented by a development strategy."
"You need a strong element of reconciliation as well, which can bring more people into the political process," she said, without elaborating
New Zealand, which is not a NATO member, has 120 troops serving in central Afghanistan as a provincial reconstruction team.
More on link
Nicolas Sarkozy to offer troops in Nato job deal
By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 1:57am GMT 25/03/2008
Article Link
Nicolas Sarkozy will seek Britain's backing for a Frenchman to take one of Nato's top jobs in return for sending 1,000 extra French troops to Afghanistan, aides have revealed on the eve of his state visit to the UK.
Your view: What should Brown say to Sarkozy?
Mr Sarkozy, who will be accompanied by his new wife Carla on the two-day visit, will seek Gordon Brown's help in his drive to win the command of Allied Forces South Europe, based in Naples.
The post has always been filled by a US four-star Flag or General Officer, with an Italian deputy and a British chief-of-staff.
Negotiating the post is part of Mr Sarkozy's drive to rejoin the integrated military structure of the alliance, which Charles de Gaulle left in 1966.
In return, he wants the US to lift its objections to the development of an EU defence policy linked to Nato, and to rethink its overall strategy.
More on link
Army begins using $150,000 artillery shells in Afghanistan
Article Link
OTTAWA — Canadian army gunners in Afghanistan are now cleared to fire GPS-guided artillery shells at Taliban militants - at the cost of $150,000 a round.
The Excalibur shell could very well be the most expensive conventional ammunition ever fired by the military.
Supporters argue that the weapon, which has the ability to correct itself in flight, has pinpoint accuracy. They predict that will cut down on the mounting civilian death toll from air strikes in a war-torn region, where insurgents often hide among the population.
"It lands exactly where you want it to land," said Lt.-Col. Jim Willis, a senior officer in charge of acquiring the munitions.
"It provides more safety."
About 18 months ago, the army announced its intention to buy a handful of the experimental shells to go along with its brand new 155-millimetre M-777 howitzers.
Introducing the weapon to the army's arsenal has been slower than expected because of concerns related to the shell's performance in cold weather and precautions to make sure the GPS signals can't be jammed or scrambled by insurgents.
Willis said battery guns supporting Canada's battle group in Kandahar recently test fired the shell in the desert and the new weapon performed flawlessly. He wouldn't say how many shells were fired.
A U.S. army unit in eastern Afghanistan conducted its own tests late last month and has also cleared the Excalibur for action.
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Five members of mine-removal team are killed in Afghanistan
By Carlotta Gall Published: March 24, 2008
Article Link
KABUL: In one of the bloodiest attacks in months on a nongovernmental organization in Afghanistan, gunmen killed five members of a mine-clearing team and wounded seven more in a relatively peaceful northern province, officials said Monday.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack Sunday, but it was a sign of the continuing lawlessness that plagues the country, including shootings, bombings and kidnappings.
The attackers may have been criminals or supporters of the Taliban. Taliban supporters have attacked nongovernmental organizations in the past to try to deter reconstruction efforts, U.S. and Afghan officials said.
Two members of another mine-removal team were killed in a separate shooting Monday in another northern province, said Dan McNorton, a spokesman at the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, which assailed the attacks. He said the shootings took place in a section of northern Afghanistan where the Taliban is not prevalent.
Meanwhile, officials increased the toll of an attack Sunday. Nearly 40 trucks carrying fuel to U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan were destroyed in two bomb blasts on the Pakistani border. About 100 people were wounded, a local official said.
More on link
Portrait of the enemy
They're ignorant about the outside world, indifferent to who will lead their country but zealously committed to one objective: ensuring Islamism prevails in Afghanistan. Meet the foot soldiers of the insurgency
GRAEME SMITH [email protected] March 22, 2008
Article Link
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- e looks like an ordinary Afghan in ragged clothes. He says he's young, 24 or 25 years old, but his eyes seem older. Somebody he knows, or loves, was killed by a bomb dropped from the sky, he says. The government tried to destroy his farm. His tribe has feuded with the government in recent years, and he feels pushed to the edge of a society that ranks among the poorest in the world.
So he lives by the gun. He cradles the weapon in his arms, saying he will follow the tradition of his ancestors who battled foreign armies. He is not only a Taliban foot soldier, he says. He belongs to the mujahedeen, the holy warriors, who fight any infidel who tries to invade Afghanistan.
He does not care where the foreigners come from. Maybe he knows the word Canada, but he cannot point to the country on a map. When he squints down his rifle at Canadian soldiers, he cannot imagine the faraway land that gave birth to those helmeted figures. He only wants to drive them away. He fervently believes that expelling the foreigners will set things right in his troubled country.
This portrait of an average Taliban fighter emerges from groundbreaking research by The Globe and Mail in Kandahar. The newspaper's staff, working with a freelance researcher, gained unprecedented access to insurgent groups in five districts of Kandahar province, and finished the dangerous assignment with 42 video recordings of fighters answering a standardized list of questions.
More on link
British adventurer rescued by Canadian Forces
Jim Farrell, edmontonjournal.com Published: Sunday, March 23
Article Link
EDMONTON - A Canadian Forces rescue helicopter plucked an injured British adventurer off the Arctic ice at 7 a.m. this morning, ending Hannah McKeand's attempt to be the first woman to ski solo to the North Pole.
McKeand left Ward Hunt Island at the north tip of Ellesmere Island earlier this month pulling a sled loaded with 120 kg. of supplies but on Thursday she tumbled off an ice ridge into a crevasse. The tumble wrenched her left leg, hurt her back and injured her left shoulder. After hauling herself out of the hole she used her satellite phone to call her operations manager in England. Steve Jones advised her to set up camp on the ice and see how she felt in the morning.
Come morning she felt even worse so Jones contacted Canadian Emergency Measures.
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Fuel Trucks for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan Destroyed
Article Link
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Twenty-five trucks carrying fuel to American-led forces in Afghanistan were destroyed Sunday in a possible bombing on the Pakistani border, local government officials said.
Dozens of people were injured, they said.
Muhammad Sadiq Khan, a local government official, said that the explosions occurred late Sunday on the Pakistani side of border near the customs checkpoint at Torkham. At least 50 people were injured, eight of them seriously, officials said.
Fida Muhammad, the commander of a paramilitary force that helps provide security at the border crossing, said authorities suspected that the blasts were caused by bombs, but he said that an investigation was under way.
Fuel tankers headed for American and NATO bases in Afghanistan have been repeatedly singled out by militants close to the Pakistani border
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Strike Eagles Help Prince Harry in Afghanistan
By KENNETH FINE News-Argus of Goldsboro Posted: Mar. 23, 2008 Updated: Mar. 24 10:49 a.m.
Article Link
Goldsboro, N.C. — A call comes in from somewhere in the desert. A joint tactical air controller on the ground in Afghanistan's Helmand province needs air support. He and his comrades are taking fire from a trench line.
Hundreds of miles away, Capt. Ben Donberg can hear the gunshots in his earphones. He is the command pilot on the other end of that call. His F-15E Strike Eagle and another, both assets of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base's 4th Fighter Wing, are on their way very, very fast.
Back on the ground, WIDOW 67 waits. He is talking to the Air Force captain. His voice is muffled only by the sound of insurgent fire. Just another JTAC in need of some assistance, Donberg assumes.
"It was just a standard troops-in-contact call, and we checked in with him," he said. "He's got a British accent, but that wasn't at all unusual because we were working with the British a lot over there."
Donberg had no idea that the man behind the call sign WIDOW 76 was third in line to the British throne.
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Younger leadership for Taliban in Afghanistan
Last Updated: 1:57am GMT 25/03/2008
Article Link
The Taliban leadership in southern Afghanistan is passing into the hands of younger, more extreme insurgents as the relentless targeting of traditional commanders by British forces takes its toll.
'Hamid Karzai's diplomat expulsion move halted efforts to split Taliban'
In a week spent in Helmand province, The Daily Telegraph has found widespread evidence that special forces operations are degrading the Taliban's leadership and its ability to co-ordinate operations.
But there are also indications of increasing radicalisation within the Taliban as more extreme fighters, many of them al-Qa'eda-linked foreign militants, fill the gaps left when experienced Taliban leaders are killed.
Western military officials say privately that approximately 200 medium and high-level Taliban commanders were killed countrywide in targeted bombings or assassinations by American and British special forces last year, and a further 100 captured
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Afghanistan to privatise national telephone firm
23 Mar, 2008, 1830 hrs IST, AGENCIES
Article Link
KABUL: Afghanistan said Sunday it planned to sell up to 80 percent of its telecommunications arm in one of the most ambitious parts of the country's ongoing privatisation programme.
Bidders must register their interest in purchasing part of Afghan Telecom by April 4 and the tender process was expected to be completed in three months, Telecommunications Minister Amirzai Sangin told reporters.
The fixed line and wireless system had about 100,000 clients, he said. This compares to about five million for the booming mobile phone sector, which includes four providers and had investment of nearly one billion dollars, Sangin said.
Afghan Telecom would be worth about 190 million dollars after a network of fibre optic cables is put in place, an improvement which is due by year's end, his ministry said.
The sell-off is one of "the most ambitious privatisation projects in Afghanistan to date," it said in a statement on its website.
Asked about Taliban attacks on mobile phone towers, Sangin dismissed the insurgents' claims that cell phones were being used by the military to pinpoint their hideouts.
The Taliban extremist movement warned nearly a month ago it would target mobile antennae that were not switched off at night because they were being used to trace their bases.
About a dozen have been attacked since then, most of them in the volatile south where the insurgency is most active.
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New Zealand wants new multi-prong Afghanistan strategy
The Associated PressPublished: March 25, 2008
Article Link
WELLINGTON, New Zealand: New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said Tuesday she wants NATO to implement a "multi-pronged strategy" in Afghanistan to end violence and upgrade development in the war-torn nation.
Clark, who will attend next week's high-level meeting of representatives of the 26 NATO countries in Bucharest, said a military strategy alone is not enough.
New Zealand wants "to ensure that the NATO strategy is a multi-pronged one, because a military strategy on its own doesn't make the difference for Afghanistan," Clark told reporters. "That has to be supplemented by a development strategy."
"You need a strong element of reconciliation as well, which can bring more people into the political process," she said, without elaborating
New Zealand, which is not a NATO member, has 120 troops serving in central Afghanistan as a provincial reconstruction team.
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Nicolas Sarkozy to offer troops in Nato job deal
By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 1:57am GMT 25/03/2008
Article Link
Nicolas Sarkozy will seek Britain's backing for a Frenchman to take one of Nato's top jobs in return for sending 1,000 extra French troops to Afghanistan, aides have revealed on the eve of his state visit to the UK.
Your view: What should Brown say to Sarkozy?
Mr Sarkozy, who will be accompanied by his new wife Carla on the two-day visit, will seek Gordon Brown's help in his drive to win the command of Allied Forces South Europe, based in Naples.
The post has always been filled by a US four-star Flag or General Officer, with an Italian deputy and a British chief-of-staff.
Negotiating the post is part of Mr Sarkozy's drive to rejoin the integrated military structure of the alliance, which Charles de Gaulle left in 1966.
In return, he wants the US to lift its objections to the development of an EU defence policy linked to Nato, and to rethink its overall strategy.
More on link
Army begins using $150,000 artillery shells in Afghanistan
Article Link
OTTAWA — Canadian army gunners in Afghanistan are now cleared to fire GPS-guided artillery shells at Taliban militants - at the cost of $150,000 a round.
The Excalibur shell could very well be the most expensive conventional ammunition ever fired by the military.
Supporters argue that the weapon, which has the ability to correct itself in flight, has pinpoint accuracy. They predict that will cut down on the mounting civilian death toll from air strikes in a war-torn region, where insurgents often hide among the population.
"It lands exactly where you want it to land," said Lt.-Col. Jim Willis, a senior officer in charge of acquiring the munitions.
"It provides more safety."
About 18 months ago, the army announced its intention to buy a handful of the experimental shells to go along with its brand new 155-millimetre M-777 howitzers.
Introducing the weapon to the army's arsenal has been slower than expected because of concerns related to the shell's performance in cold weather and precautions to make sure the GPS signals can't be jammed or scrambled by insurgents.
Willis said battery guns supporting Canada's battle group in Kandahar recently test fired the shell in the desert and the new weapon performed flawlessly. He wouldn't say how many shells were fired.
A U.S. army unit in eastern Afghanistan conducted its own tests late last month and has also cleared the Excalibur for action.
More on link
Five members of mine-removal team are killed in Afghanistan
By Carlotta Gall Published: March 24, 2008
Article Link
KABUL: In one of the bloodiest attacks in months on a nongovernmental organization in Afghanistan, gunmen killed five members of a mine-clearing team and wounded seven more in a relatively peaceful northern province, officials said Monday.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack Sunday, but it was a sign of the continuing lawlessness that plagues the country, including shootings, bombings and kidnappings.
The attackers may have been criminals or supporters of the Taliban. Taliban supporters have attacked nongovernmental organizations in the past to try to deter reconstruction efforts, U.S. and Afghan officials said.
Two members of another mine-removal team were killed in a separate shooting Monday in another northern province, said Dan McNorton, a spokesman at the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, which assailed the attacks. He said the shootings took place in a section of northern Afghanistan where the Taliban is not prevalent.
Meanwhile, officials increased the toll of an attack Sunday. Nearly 40 trucks carrying fuel to U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan were destroyed in two bomb blasts on the Pakistani border. About 100 people were wounded, a local official said.
More on link
Portrait of the enemy
They're ignorant about the outside world, indifferent to who will lead their country but zealously committed to one objective: ensuring Islamism prevails in Afghanistan. Meet the foot soldiers of the insurgency
GRAEME SMITH [email protected] March 22, 2008
Article Link
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- e looks like an ordinary Afghan in ragged clothes. He says he's young, 24 or 25 years old, but his eyes seem older. Somebody he knows, or loves, was killed by a bomb dropped from the sky, he says. The government tried to destroy his farm. His tribe has feuded with the government in recent years, and he feels pushed to the edge of a society that ranks among the poorest in the world.
So he lives by the gun. He cradles the weapon in his arms, saying he will follow the tradition of his ancestors who battled foreign armies. He is not only a Taliban foot soldier, he says. He belongs to the mujahedeen, the holy warriors, who fight any infidel who tries to invade Afghanistan.
He does not care where the foreigners come from. Maybe he knows the word Canada, but he cannot point to the country on a map. When he squints down his rifle at Canadian soldiers, he cannot imagine the faraway land that gave birth to those helmeted figures. He only wants to drive them away. He fervently believes that expelling the foreigners will set things right in his troubled country.
This portrait of an average Taliban fighter emerges from groundbreaking research by The Globe and Mail in Kandahar. The newspaper's staff, working with a freelance researcher, gained unprecedented access to insurgent groups in five districts of Kandahar province, and finished the dangerous assignment with 42 video recordings of fighters answering a standardized list of questions.
More on link
British adventurer rescued by Canadian Forces
Jim Farrell, edmontonjournal.com Published: Sunday, March 23
Article Link
EDMONTON - A Canadian Forces rescue helicopter plucked an injured British adventurer off the Arctic ice at 7 a.m. this morning, ending Hannah McKeand's attempt to be the first woman to ski solo to the North Pole.
McKeand left Ward Hunt Island at the north tip of Ellesmere Island earlier this month pulling a sled loaded with 120 kg. of supplies but on Thursday she tumbled off an ice ridge into a crevasse. The tumble wrenched her left leg, hurt her back and injured her left shoulder. After hauling herself out of the hole she used her satellite phone to call her operations manager in England. Steve Jones advised her to set up camp on the ice and see how she felt in the morning.
Come morning she felt even worse so Jones contacted Canadian Emergency Measures.
More on link
- Reaction score
- 147
- Points
- 710
ARTICLES FOUND MARCH 26
'Germany Can Do More'
Spiegel Online, March 26
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,543480,00.html
France pledges Afghanistan troops
BBC, March 26
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7315294.stm
Sarkozy seeks Nato strategy
Financial Times, March 26
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26fe545e-fad6-11dc-aa46-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
U.S. praises Canucks for securing Kandahar
Winnipeg Free Press, March 26
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/story/4148549p-4738373c.html
Mark
Ottawa
'Germany Can Do More'
Spiegel Online, March 26
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,543480,00.html
France pledges Afghanistan troops
BBC, March 26
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7315294.stm
Sarkozy seeks Nato strategy
Financial Times, March 26
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26fe545e-fad6-11dc-aa46-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
U.S. praises Canucks for securing Kandahar
Winnipeg Free Press, March 26
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/story/4148549p-4738373c.html
Mark
Ottawa
- Reaction score
- 147
- Points
- 710
Taliban attacks zap Afghan cellphone service
AP, March 26
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/2008/03/26/pf-5110571.html
Mark
Ottawa
AP, March 26
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/2008/03/26/pf-5110571.html
Mark
Ottawa
Articles found March 27, 2008
Taliban foot soldiers deeply ignorant of the world
Survey reveals Kandahar fighters know next to nothing about Canada or U.S., contradicting view Taliban are sophisticated terrorists
GRAEME SMITH [email protected] March 27, 2008
Article Link
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- The typical Taliban foot soldier battling Canadian troops and their allies in Kandahar is not a global jihadist who dreams of some day waging war on Canadian soil. In fact, he would have trouble finding Canada on a map.
A survey of 42 insurgents in Kandahar province posed a series of questions about the fighters' view of the world, and the results contradicted the oft-repeated perception of the Taliban as sophisticated terrorists who pose a direct threat to Western countries.
Faced with a multiple-choice question about Canada's location, only one of 42 fighters correctly guessed that Canada is located to the north of the United States, meaning the insurgents performed worse than randomly.
None of them could identify Stephen Harper as the Prime Minister of Canada, and they often repeated the syllables of his name - "Stepheh Napper," "Sehn Hahn," "Steng Peng Beng," "Gra Pla Pla" - that reflected their puzzlement over a name they had never heard.
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NATO's unhappy warriors
While the U.S. has been prodding the alliance's first-tier members, newcomers have stepped up in Afghanistan.
By A. Wess Mitchell March 27, 2008
Article Link
At next week's NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, history will be made when an American president, cowboy hat in hand, literally begs Europe for help in Afghanistan. For weeks, high-ranking U.S. officials have traversed the "old" continent, beseeching its capitals for anything in lace-up boots and camouflage. Spare a tank, Germany? How about a mothballed helicopter, Italy? Say no, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has warned, and NATO will be "effectively destroyed," its members forever consigned to two tiers -- a fighting first and a lazy second.
Fortunately for everyone, Washington will get its reinforcements and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will survive another year. When the conference-room doors close, the pledges will flow in: a battalion here, a commando squad there. With the probable exception of France, however, the new forces are likely to come not from NATO's harassed second-stringers, but from members of its overworked, underappreciated "first" tier, most of whom already have troops at the war's hottest fronts.
Three of the countries in this group are already well known. For years, the British, Canadians and Dutch have held the line in Afghanistan's casualty-prone southern and eastern provinces. But they are not alone. Alongside them are some of NATO's newest members, the former communist countries of Central Europe. Though rarely mentioned in the media, these nations -- many small, few wealthy -- have often answered NATO calls for help when many larger Western militaries demurred. In the east of Afghanistan, Polish combat teams patrol the Al Qaeda-infested Pakistani border. In the south, Estonian light infantry, Romanian mountain troops and Lithuanian, Polish and Czech special forces have helped repulse Taliban offensives.
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2012 earliest end to Afghan commitment, U.S. commander says
Training Afghan army and police the key to Canada's exit
Mike Blanchfield, Canwest News Service Published: Wednesday, March 26
Article Link
KABUL - International soldiers will be needed in Afghanistan until at least 2012, but troop levels could start dropping by then, the commander of coalition forces here said Wednesday.
Gen. Dan McNeill offered that timeline in an exclusive interview with Canwest News Service, as he expressed optimism that as more Afghan soldiers and policemen are competently trained, it would be fair to begin debating the merits of reducing the number of international troops here.
"I would say, at the rate the Afghan National Army is going, if the police can catch up with that rate, maybe it wouldn't take five years," he said. "But again, all I do is make my best military recommendations and leave it to the policy makers."
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Final goodbye for Manitoba-based soldier killed in Afghanistan
Article Link
CFB Shilo, Man. — One week after his body was returned to Canada from Afghanistan Sgt. Jason Boyes was remembered by friends and family as a natural leader with a warrior spirit.
Hundreds of soldiers in their dress uniforms packed a facility at CFB Shilo on Wednesday for the private funeral.
The veteran soldier was killed on Mar. 16 while on patrol in the volatile Panjwaii district of Kandahar province, just days into his third tour of duty in the war-torn country.
Boyes, a section leader in 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, spent most of his nine-year career at the Manitoba military base.
He previously served in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2006.
Boyes, who was born in Napanee, Ont., is survived by his widow Alison and their two-year-old daughter Mackenzie.
During a January interview, Boyes gushed about his daughter. She was only a few months old when he went to Kandahar in 2006 and he watched her grow through e-mailed pictures.
There was a special bond between father and daughter: they shared the same birth date
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Soldiers humbled by medals of valour for Afghanistan service
Article Link
OTTAWA — Facing Taliban militants amid a rain of rockets may have been uncomfortable, but standing in Rideau Hall was downright nerve-racking for some Canadian soldiers who accepted bravery awards Wednesday.
Standing before Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean in their dress uniforms, under the watchful eye of Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff, wasn't the problem.
It was all the praise.
The suggestion he was a hero rattled Sgt. Gerald Killam, who received the Military Medal of Valour for leading his platoon safely out of a Taliban ambush last May.
"I have my heroes and my heroes, they don't come home," said Killam, a native of Cole Harbour, N.S., who had friends among the 81 Canadian soldiers who've given their lives in Afghanistan.
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Afghanistan: Army Reaches 70,000 Mark, As Taliban Vows New Offensive
By Ron Synovitz
Article Link
Officials in Kabul say the Afghan National Army soon will number 70,000 combat-ready soldiers -- the strongest the force has been since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001.
The buildup has come amid urgent calls within NATO for more combat troops to be sent to assist counterterror and stabilization efforts in that country. But the Afghan government says it will be years before Afghan forces are able to provide security throughout the country by themselves -- and the Taliban says it's not worried about the growth of the army.
In early 2002, just weeks after the collapse of the Taliban regime, the transitional government in Kabul announced a bold schedule to build the Afghan National Army from scratch. That schedule called for the recruitment and training of 70,000 Afghan soldiers before the presidential election in the fall of 2004.
But that target proved to be overly optimistic. Until this year, desertions were so high among the fully trained Afghan soldiers that Kabul had difficulty maintaining a force of 30,000 troops.
Now, six years after the 70,000-soldier announcement, the goal is finally within reach.
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Poland prolongs mission in Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-27 03:20:08
Article Link
WARSAW, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Polish President Lech Kaczynski has signed a decision prolonging the stay of Polish forces in Afghanistan, Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said on Wednesday.
"As far as I know, the president has signed the decision. In view of this one of the provinces in Afghanistan will become a zone for which we will become responsible," Minister Klich told TVN 24 tv news channel.
At present Polish soldiers are located in several military bases, but in the fall they are to move to one region. Unofficially Poles are to take over the responsibility for Ghanzi province.
Recently the Polish government decided to increase the number of Polish soldiers from 1,200 to 1,600. Poland is also to send to Afghanistan its own helicopters.
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Danish soldier killed in Afghanistan firefight: ISAF
Article Link
KABUL (AFP) — A Danish soldier was killed and another wounded in a firefight with Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Thursday.
The Danes were on patrol Wednesday in Helmand province, a hotbed of Taliban activity, when they came under fire in the Gereshk area, said an ISAF spokesman in the province, British Lieutenant Colonel Simon Miller.
"Regrettably as a result of the firefight one Danish soldier was killed and another was wounded," Miller said.
Including the latest death, Denmark has lost 13 soldiers in Afghanistan. Two other Danes were killed March 17 in an attack on an ISAF convoy.
More than 30 international soldiers have been killed this year, most of them in hostile action.
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Pakistan's brutal beneficiaries betray their refuge
Globe survey finds Taliban have only harsh words for nation that allegedly supports them, claiming large parts of it belong to them
GRAEME SMITH [email protected] March 26, 2008
Article Link
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Despite a long history of using Pakistan as a safe haven, Taliban on the front lines of the insurgency say they have no loyalty to their neighbouring country.
A survey of 42 insurgents in Kandahar found most were critical about Pakistan, where they are reported to have headquarters and supply lines, and most were critical of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, often using the harshest language to describe him.
Some insurgents claimed they want to fight for the seizure of vast swaths of Pakistan's territory in the name of expanding Afghanistan to include the major cities of Quetta and Peshawar. Every fighter asked said those two cities belong inside Afghanistan, and all of them rejected the existing border as a legitimate boundary between the countries.
The Globe and Mail's modest sample of Taliban opinion may only reflect an effort by the insurgents to hide their sources of support in Pakistan, analysts say, or it may point to something more troubling: the growing indications that parts of the insurgency are no longer controlled by anybody.
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Taliban foot soldiers deeply ignorant of the world
Survey reveals Kandahar fighters know next to nothing about Canada or U.S., contradicting view Taliban are sophisticated terrorists
GRAEME SMITH [email protected] March 27, 2008
Article Link
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- The typical Taliban foot soldier battling Canadian troops and their allies in Kandahar is not a global jihadist who dreams of some day waging war on Canadian soil. In fact, he would have trouble finding Canada on a map.
A survey of 42 insurgents in Kandahar province posed a series of questions about the fighters' view of the world, and the results contradicted the oft-repeated perception of the Taliban as sophisticated terrorists who pose a direct threat to Western countries.
Faced with a multiple-choice question about Canada's location, only one of 42 fighters correctly guessed that Canada is located to the north of the United States, meaning the insurgents performed worse than randomly.
None of them could identify Stephen Harper as the Prime Minister of Canada, and they often repeated the syllables of his name - "Stepheh Napper," "Sehn Hahn," "Steng Peng Beng," "Gra Pla Pla" - that reflected their puzzlement over a name they had never heard.
More on link
NATO's unhappy warriors
While the U.S. has been prodding the alliance's first-tier members, newcomers have stepped up in Afghanistan.
By A. Wess Mitchell March 27, 2008
Article Link
At next week's NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, history will be made when an American president, cowboy hat in hand, literally begs Europe for help in Afghanistan. For weeks, high-ranking U.S. officials have traversed the "old" continent, beseeching its capitals for anything in lace-up boots and camouflage. Spare a tank, Germany? How about a mothballed helicopter, Italy? Say no, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has warned, and NATO will be "effectively destroyed," its members forever consigned to two tiers -- a fighting first and a lazy second.
Fortunately for everyone, Washington will get its reinforcements and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will survive another year. When the conference-room doors close, the pledges will flow in: a battalion here, a commando squad there. With the probable exception of France, however, the new forces are likely to come not from NATO's harassed second-stringers, but from members of its overworked, underappreciated "first" tier, most of whom already have troops at the war's hottest fronts.
Three of the countries in this group are already well known. For years, the British, Canadians and Dutch have held the line in Afghanistan's casualty-prone southern and eastern provinces. But they are not alone. Alongside them are some of NATO's newest members, the former communist countries of Central Europe. Though rarely mentioned in the media, these nations -- many small, few wealthy -- have often answered NATO calls for help when many larger Western militaries demurred. In the east of Afghanistan, Polish combat teams patrol the Al Qaeda-infested Pakistani border. In the south, Estonian light infantry, Romanian mountain troops and Lithuanian, Polish and Czech special forces have helped repulse Taliban offensives.
More on link
2012 earliest end to Afghan commitment, U.S. commander says
Training Afghan army and police the key to Canada's exit
Mike Blanchfield, Canwest News Service Published: Wednesday, March 26
Article Link
KABUL - International soldiers will be needed in Afghanistan until at least 2012, but troop levels could start dropping by then, the commander of coalition forces here said Wednesday.
Gen. Dan McNeill offered that timeline in an exclusive interview with Canwest News Service, as he expressed optimism that as more Afghan soldiers and policemen are competently trained, it would be fair to begin debating the merits of reducing the number of international troops here.
"I would say, at the rate the Afghan National Army is going, if the police can catch up with that rate, maybe it wouldn't take five years," he said. "But again, all I do is make my best military recommendations and leave it to the policy makers."
More on link
Final goodbye for Manitoba-based soldier killed in Afghanistan
Article Link
CFB Shilo, Man. — One week after his body was returned to Canada from Afghanistan Sgt. Jason Boyes was remembered by friends and family as a natural leader with a warrior spirit.
Hundreds of soldiers in their dress uniforms packed a facility at CFB Shilo on Wednesday for the private funeral.
The veteran soldier was killed on Mar. 16 while on patrol in the volatile Panjwaii district of Kandahar province, just days into his third tour of duty in the war-torn country.
Boyes, a section leader in 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, spent most of his nine-year career at the Manitoba military base.
He previously served in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2006.
Boyes, who was born in Napanee, Ont., is survived by his widow Alison and their two-year-old daughter Mackenzie.
During a January interview, Boyes gushed about his daughter. She was only a few months old when he went to Kandahar in 2006 and he watched her grow through e-mailed pictures.
There was a special bond between father and daughter: they shared the same birth date
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Soldiers humbled by medals of valour for Afghanistan service
Article Link
OTTAWA — Facing Taliban militants amid a rain of rockets may have been uncomfortable, but standing in Rideau Hall was downright nerve-racking for some Canadian soldiers who accepted bravery awards Wednesday.
Standing before Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean in their dress uniforms, under the watchful eye of Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff, wasn't the problem.
It was all the praise.
The suggestion he was a hero rattled Sgt. Gerald Killam, who received the Military Medal of Valour for leading his platoon safely out of a Taliban ambush last May.
"I have my heroes and my heroes, they don't come home," said Killam, a native of Cole Harbour, N.S., who had friends among the 81 Canadian soldiers who've given their lives in Afghanistan.
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Afghanistan: Army Reaches 70,000 Mark, As Taliban Vows New Offensive
By Ron Synovitz
Article Link
Officials in Kabul say the Afghan National Army soon will number 70,000 combat-ready soldiers -- the strongest the force has been since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001.
The buildup has come amid urgent calls within NATO for more combat troops to be sent to assist counterterror and stabilization efforts in that country. But the Afghan government says it will be years before Afghan forces are able to provide security throughout the country by themselves -- and the Taliban says it's not worried about the growth of the army.
In early 2002, just weeks after the collapse of the Taliban regime, the transitional government in Kabul announced a bold schedule to build the Afghan National Army from scratch. That schedule called for the recruitment and training of 70,000 Afghan soldiers before the presidential election in the fall of 2004.
But that target proved to be overly optimistic. Until this year, desertions were so high among the fully trained Afghan soldiers that Kabul had difficulty maintaining a force of 30,000 troops.
Now, six years after the 70,000-soldier announcement, the goal is finally within reach.
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Poland prolongs mission in Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-27 03:20:08
Article Link
WARSAW, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Polish President Lech Kaczynski has signed a decision prolonging the stay of Polish forces in Afghanistan, Defense Minister Bogdan Klich said on Wednesday.
"As far as I know, the president has signed the decision. In view of this one of the provinces in Afghanistan will become a zone for which we will become responsible," Minister Klich told TVN 24 tv news channel.
At present Polish soldiers are located in several military bases, but in the fall they are to move to one region. Unofficially Poles are to take over the responsibility for Ghanzi province.
Recently the Polish government decided to increase the number of Polish soldiers from 1,200 to 1,600. Poland is also to send to Afghanistan its own helicopters.
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Danish soldier killed in Afghanistan firefight: ISAF
Article Link
KABUL (AFP) — A Danish soldier was killed and another wounded in a firefight with Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Thursday.
The Danes were on patrol Wednesday in Helmand province, a hotbed of Taliban activity, when they came under fire in the Gereshk area, said an ISAF spokesman in the province, British Lieutenant Colonel Simon Miller.
"Regrettably as a result of the firefight one Danish soldier was killed and another was wounded," Miller said.
Including the latest death, Denmark has lost 13 soldiers in Afghanistan. Two other Danes were killed March 17 in an attack on an ISAF convoy.
More than 30 international soldiers have been killed this year, most of them in hostile action.
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Pakistan's brutal beneficiaries betray their refuge
Globe survey finds Taliban have only harsh words for nation that allegedly supports them, claiming large parts of it belong to them
GRAEME SMITH [email protected] March 26, 2008
Article Link
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Despite a long history of using Pakistan as a safe haven, Taliban on the front lines of the insurgency say they have no loyalty to their neighbouring country.
A survey of 42 insurgents in Kandahar found most were critical about Pakistan, where they are reported to have headquarters and supply lines, and most were critical of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, often using the harshest language to describe him.
Some insurgents claimed they want to fight for the seizure of vast swaths of Pakistan's territory in the name of expanding Afghanistan to include the major cities of Quetta and Peshawar. Every fighter asked said those two cities belong inside Afghanistan, and all of them rejected the existing border as a legitimate boundary between the countries.
The Globe and Mail's modest sample of Taliban opinion may only reflect an effort by the insurgents to hide their sources of support in Pakistan, analysts say, or it may point to something more troubling: the growing indications that parts of the insurgency are no longer controlled by anybody.
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- Reaction score
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/world/asia/27ammo.html?ex=1364356800&en=746cb3668f576d31&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Supplier Under Scrutiny on Aging Arms for Afghans
New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS
March 27, 2008
This article was reported by C. J. Chivers, Eric Schmitt and Nicholas Wood and written by Mr. Chivers.
Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.
With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.
Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.
In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.
Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company’s president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company’s purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.
This week, after repeated inquiries about AEY’s performance by The Times, the Army suspended the company from any future federal contracting, citing shipments of Chinese ammunition and claiming that Mr. Diveroli misled the Army by saying the munitions were Hungarian.
Mr. Diveroli, reached by telephone, said he was unaware of the action. The Army planned to notify his company by certified mail on Thursday, according to internal correspondence provided by a military official.
But problems with the ammunition were evident last fall in places like Nawa, Afghanistan, an outpost near the Pakistani border, where an Afghan lieutenant colonel surveyed the rifle cartridges on his police station’s dirty floor. Soon after arriving there, the cardboard boxes had split open and their contents spilled out, revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966.
“This is what they give us for the fighting,” said the colonel, Amanuddin, who like many Afghans has only one name. “It makes us worried, because too much of it is junk.” Ammunition as it ages over decades often becomes less powerful, reliable and accurate.
AEY is one of many previously unknown defense companies to have thrived since 2003, when the Pentagon began dispensing billions of dollars to train and equip indigenous forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its rise from obscurity once seemed to make it a successful example of the Bush administration’s promotion of private contractors as integral elements of war-fighting strategy.
But an examination of AEY’s background, through interviews in several countries, reviews of confidential government documents and the examination of some of the ammunition, suggests that Army contracting officials, under pressure to arm Afghan troops, allowed an immature company to enter the murky world of international arms dealing on the Pentagon’s behalf — and did so with minimal vetting and through a vaguely written contract with few restrictions.
In addition to this week’s suspension, AEY is under investigation by the Department of Defense’s inspector general and by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prompted by complaints about the quality and origins of ammunition it provided, and allegations of corruption.
Mr. Diveroli, in a brief telephone interview late last year, denied any wrongdoing. “I know that my company does everything 100 percent on the up and up, and that’s all I’m concerned about,” he said.
He also suggested that his activities should be shielded from public view. “AEY is working on a moderately classified Department of Defense project,” he said. “I really don’t want to talk about the details.”
He referred questions to a lawyer, Hy Shapiro, who offered a single statement by e-mail. “While AEY continues to work very hard to fulfill its obligations under its contract with the U.S. Army, its representatives are not prepared at this time to sit and discuss the details,” he wrote.
As part of the suspension, neither Mr. Diveroli nor his company can bid on any further federal work until the Army’s allegations are resolved. But he will be allowed to provide ammunition already on order under the Afghan contract, according to internal military correspondence.
In January, American officers in Kabul, concerned about munitions from AEY, had contacted the Army’s Rock Island Arsenal, in Illinois, and raised the possibility of terminating the contract. And officials at the Army Sustainment Command, the contracting authority at the arsenal, after meeting with AEY in late February, said they were tightening the packaging standards for munitions shipped to the war.
And yet after that meeting, AEY sent another shipment of nearly one million cartridges to Afghanistan that the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan regarded as substandard. Lt. Col. David G. Johnson, the command spokesman, said that while there were no reports of ammunition misfiring, some of it was in such poor condition that the military had decided not to issue it. “Our honest answer is that the ammunition is of a quality that is less than desirable; the munitions do not appear to meet the standards that many of us are used to,” Colonel Johnson said. “We are not pleased with the way it was delivered.”
Several officials said the problems would have been avoided if the Army had written contracts and examined bidders more carefully.
Public records show that AEY’s contracts since 2004 have potentially been worth more than a third of a billion dollars. Mr. Diveroli set the value higher: he claimed to do $200 million in business each year.
Several military officers and government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the investigations, questioned how Mr. Diveroli, and a small group of men principally in their 20s and without extensive military or procurement experiences, landed so much vital government work.
“A lot of us are asking the question,” said a senior State Department official. “How did this guy get all this business?”
An Ambitious Company
The intensity of the Afghan insurgency alarmed the Pentagon in 2006, and the American unit that trains and equips Afghan forces placed a huge munitions order through an Army logistics command.
The order sought 52 types of ammunition: rifle, pistol and machine-gun cartridges, hand grenades, rockets, shotgun slugs, mortar rounds, tank ammunition and more. In all, it covered hundreds of millions of rounds. Afghan forces primarily use weapons developed in the Soviet Union. This meant that most munitions on the list could be bought only overseas.
AEY was one of 10 companies to bid by the September 2006 deadline.
Michael Diveroli, Efraim’s father, had incorporated the company in 1999, when Efraim was 13. For several years, a period when the company appeared to have limited activity, Michael Diveroli, who now operates a police supply company down the street from AEY’s office, was listed as the company’s sole executive.
In 2004, AEY listed Efraim Diveroli, then 18, as an officer with a 1 percent ownership stake.
The younger Diveroli’s munitions experience appeared to be limited to a short-lived job in Los Angeles for Botach Tactical, a military and police supply company owned by his uncle, Bar-Kochba Botach.
Mr. Diveroli cut off an interview when asked about Botach Tactical. Mr. Botach, reached by telephone, said that both Michael and Efraim Diveroli had briefly worked for him, but that after seeing the rush of federal contracts available after the wars began, they had struck out on their own.
“They just left me and took my customer base with them,” he said. “They basically said: ‘Why should we work for Botach? Let’s do it on our own.’ ”
As Efraim Diveroli arrived in Miami Beach, AEY was transforming itself by aggressively seeking security-related contracts.
It won a $126,000 award for ammunition for the Special Forces; AEY also provided ammunition or equipment in 2004 to the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Transportation Security Administration and the State Department.
By 2005, when Mr. Diveroli became AEY’s president at age 19, the company was bidding across a spectrum of government agencies and providing paramilitary equipment — weapons, helmets, ballistic vests, bomb suits, batteries and chargers for X-ray machines — for American aid to Pakistan, Bolivia and elsewhere.
It was also providing supplies to the American military in Iraq, where its business included a $5.7 million contract for rifles for Iraqi forces.
Two federal officials involved in contracting in Baghdad said AEY quickly developed a bad reputation. “They weren’t reliable, or if they did come through, they did after many excuses,” said one of them, who asked that his name be withheld because he was not authorized to speak with reporters.
By this time, pressures were emerging in Efraim Diveroli’s life. In November 2005, a young woman sought an order of protection from him in the domestic violence division of Dade County Circuit Court.
The woman eventually did not appear in court, and her allegations were never ruled on. But in court papers, the woman said that after her relationship with Mr. Diveroli ended, he stalked her and left threatening messages.
Once, according to the file, his behavior included “shoving her to the ground and refusing to allow her to leave during a verbal dispute.” Other times, she reported, Mr. Diveroli arrived at her home unannounced and intoxicated “going about the exterior, banging on windows and doors.”
The woman worried that she could not ignore him, court records said, because his behavior frightened her.
Mr. Diveroli sought court delays on national security grounds. “I am the President and only official employee of my business,” he wrote to the judge on Dec. 8, 2005. “My business is currently of great importance to the country as I am licensed Defense Contractor to the United States Government in the fight against terrorism in Iraq and I am doing my very best to provide our troops with all their equipment needs on pending critical contracts.”
As AEY’s bid for its largest government contract was being considered, Mr. Diveroli’s personal difficulties continued. On Nov. 26, 2006, the Miami Beach police were called to his condominium during an argument between him and another girlfriend. According to the police report, he had thrown her “clothes out in the hallway and told her to get out.”
A witness told the police Mr. Diveroli had dragged her back into the apartment. The police found the woman crying; she said she had not been dragged. Mr. Diveroli was not charged.
On Dec. 21, 2006, the police were called back to the condominium. Mr. Diveroli and AEY’s vice president, David M. Packouz, had just been in a fight with the valet parking attendant.
The fight began, the police said, after the attendant refused to give Mr. Diveroli his keys and Mr. Diveroli entered the garage to get them himself. A witness said Mr. Diveroli and Mr. Packouz both beat the man; police photographs showed bruises and scrapes on his face and back.
When the police searched Mr. Diveroli, they found he had a forged driver’s license that added four years to his age and made him appear old enough to buy alcohol as a minor. His birthday had been the day before.
“I don’t even need that any more,” he told the police, the report said. “I’m 21 years old.”
Mr. Diveroli was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor, and felony possession of a stolen or forged document.
The second charge placed his business in jeopardy. Mr. Diveroli had a federal firearms license, which was required for his work. With a felony conviction, the license would be nullified.
(Mr. Packouz was charged with battery and the charge was later dropped; he declined to be interviewed. To avoid a conviction on his record, Mr. Diveroli entered a six-month diversion program for first offenders in May 2007 that spared him from standing trial.)
A relative paid Mr. Diveroli’s $1,000 bail as his bid for the Afghan contract was in its final review.
To be accepted, the company had to be, in Army parlance, “a responsible contractor,” which required an examination of its financial soundness, transport capabilities, past performance and compliance with the law and government contracting regulations.
The week after a relative paid his bail, the Banc of America Investment Services in Miami provided Mr. Diveroli a letter certifying that his company had cash on hand to begin buying munitions on a large scale. It said AEY had $5,469,668.95 in an account.
AEY was awarded the contract in January 2007. Asked why it chose AEY, the Army Sustainment Command answered in writing: “AEY’s proposal represented the best value to the government.”
Eastern Bloc Arsenals
Both the Army and AEY have treated the sources of the ammunition the company purchases as confidential matters, declining to say how and where the company obtained it, the prices paid or the quantities delivered.
But records provided by an official concerned about the company’s performance, a whistle-blower in the Balkans and an arms-trafficking researcher in Europe, as well as interviews with several people who work in state arsenals in Europe, show that AEY shopped from stocks in the old Eastern bloc, including Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Romania and Slovakia.
These stockpiles range from temperature-controlled bunkers to unheated warehouses packed with exposed, decaying ammunition. Some arsenals contain ammunition regarded in munitions circles as high quality. Others are scrap heaps of abandoned Soviet arms.
The Army’s contract did little to distinguish between the two.
When the United States or NATO buys munitions for themselves, the process is regulated by quality-assurance standards that cover manufacturing, packaging, storage, testing and transport.
The standards exist in part because munitions are perishable. As they age, propellants and explosives degrade, and casings are susceptible to weathering. Environmental conditions — humidity, vibration, temperature shifts — accelerate decay, making munitions less reliable.
NATO rules require ammunition to be tested methodically over its life; samples are fired through braced weapons, and muzzle velocities and accuracy are recorded.
For rifle cartridges, testing begins at age 10 years, according to Peter Courtney-Green, chief of the Ammunition Support Office of NATO’s Maintenance and Supply Agency.
The Soviet Union, which designed the ammunition that AEY bought, developed similar tests, which are still in use. But when the Army wrote its Afghan contract, it did not enforce either NATO or Russian standards. It told bidders only that the munitions must be “serviceable and issuable to all units without qualification.”
What this meant was not defined. An official at the Army Sustainment Command said that because the ammunition was for foreign weapons, and considered “nonstandard,” it only had to fit in weapons it was intended for.
“There is no specific testing request, and there is no age limit,” said Michael Hutchison, the command’s deputy director for acquisition. “As the ammunition is not standard to the U.S. inventory, the Army doesn’t possess packaging or quality standards for that ammo.”
When purchasing such munitions, Mr. Hutchison said, the Army Sustainment Command relies on standards from the “customer” — meaning the Army units in Afghanistan. And the customer, he said, did not set age or testing requirements.
With the vague standards in hand, AEY canvassed the field. One stop was Albania, a fortress state during Soviet times now trying to join NATO. Albania has huge stocks of armaments, much if it provided by China in the 1960s and 1970s.
The quality of these stockpiles vary widely, said William D. G. Hunt, a retired British ammunition technical officer who assessed the entire stock for Albania’s Ministry of Defense from 1998 to 2002. He said a military planning to use the munitions had reason to worry: at least 90 percent of the stockpile was more than 40 years old.
“If there was any procurement made for combat purposes from that stockpile, I would be very dubious about it,” he said. “I am not suggesting that all the ammunition would fail. But its performance would tail off rather dramatically. It is substandard, for sure.”
Problems with Albania’s decaying munitions were apparent earlier this month, when a depot outside Tirana, Albania’s capital, erupted in a chain of explosions, killing at least 22 people, injuring at least 300 others and destroying hundreds of homes.
Before the Army’s contractors began shopping from such depots, the West’s assessment of Albanian munitions was evident in programs it sponsored to destroy them. Through 2007, the United States had contributed $2 million to destroy excess small-caliber weapons and 2,000 tons of ammunition in Albania, according to the State Department.
A NATO program that ended last year involved 16 Western nations contributing about $10 million to destroy 8,700 tons of obsolete ammunition. The United States contributed $500,000. Among the items destroyed were 104 million 7.62 millimeter cartridges — exactly the ammunition AEY sought from the Albanian state arms export agency.
Albania offered to sell tens of millions of cartridges manufactured as long ago as 1950. For tests, a 25-year-old AEY representative was given 1,000 cartridges to fire, according to Ylli Pinari, the director of the arms export agency at the time of the sale.
No ballistic performance was recorded, he said. The rounds were fired by hand.
On that basis, AEY bought more than 100 million cartridges for the Pentagon’s order. The cartridges, according to packing lists, dated to the 1960s.
Supplier Under Scrutiny on Aging Arms for Afghans
New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS
March 27, 2008
This article was reported by C. J. Chivers, Eric Schmitt and Nicholas Wood and written by Mr. Chivers.
Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.
With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.
Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.
In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.
Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company’s president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company’s purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.
This week, after repeated inquiries about AEY’s performance by The Times, the Army suspended the company from any future federal contracting, citing shipments of Chinese ammunition and claiming that Mr. Diveroli misled the Army by saying the munitions were Hungarian.
Mr. Diveroli, reached by telephone, said he was unaware of the action. The Army planned to notify his company by certified mail on Thursday, according to internal correspondence provided by a military official.
But problems with the ammunition were evident last fall in places like Nawa, Afghanistan, an outpost near the Pakistani border, where an Afghan lieutenant colonel surveyed the rifle cartridges on his police station’s dirty floor. Soon after arriving there, the cardboard boxes had split open and their contents spilled out, revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966.
“This is what they give us for the fighting,” said the colonel, Amanuddin, who like many Afghans has only one name. “It makes us worried, because too much of it is junk.” Ammunition as it ages over decades often becomes less powerful, reliable and accurate.
AEY is one of many previously unknown defense companies to have thrived since 2003, when the Pentagon began dispensing billions of dollars to train and equip indigenous forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its rise from obscurity once seemed to make it a successful example of the Bush administration’s promotion of private contractors as integral elements of war-fighting strategy.
But an examination of AEY’s background, through interviews in several countries, reviews of confidential government documents and the examination of some of the ammunition, suggests that Army contracting officials, under pressure to arm Afghan troops, allowed an immature company to enter the murky world of international arms dealing on the Pentagon’s behalf — and did so with minimal vetting and through a vaguely written contract with few restrictions.
In addition to this week’s suspension, AEY is under investigation by the Department of Defense’s inspector general and by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prompted by complaints about the quality and origins of ammunition it provided, and allegations of corruption.
Mr. Diveroli, in a brief telephone interview late last year, denied any wrongdoing. “I know that my company does everything 100 percent on the up and up, and that’s all I’m concerned about,” he said.
He also suggested that his activities should be shielded from public view. “AEY is working on a moderately classified Department of Defense project,” he said. “I really don’t want to talk about the details.”
He referred questions to a lawyer, Hy Shapiro, who offered a single statement by e-mail. “While AEY continues to work very hard to fulfill its obligations under its contract with the U.S. Army, its representatives are not prepared at this time to sit and discuss the details,” he wrote.
As part of the suspension, neither Mr. Diveroli nor his company can bid on any further federal work until the Army’s allegations are resolved. But he will be allowed to provide ammunition already on order under the Afghan contract, according to internal military correspondence.
In January, American officers in Kabul, concerned about munitions from AEY, had contacted the Army’s Rock Island Arsenal, in Illinois, and raised the possibility of terminating the contract. And officials at the Army Sustainment Command, the contracting authority at the arsenal, after meeting with AEY in late February, said they were tightening the packaging standards for munitions shipped to the war.
And yet after that meeting, AEY sent another shipment of nearly one million cartridges to Afghanistan that the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan regarded as substandard. Lt. Col. David G. Johnson, the command spokesman, said that while there were no reports of ammunition misfiring, some of it was in such poor condition that the military had decided not to issue it. “Our honest answer is that the ammunition is of a quality that is less than desirable; the munitions do not appear to meet the standards that many of us are used to,” Colonel Johnson said. “We are not pleased with the way it was delivered.”
Several officials said the problems would have been avoided if the Army had written contracts and examined bidders more carefully.
Public records show that AEY’s contracts since 2004 have potentially been worth more than a third of a billion dollars. Mr. Diveroli set the value higher: he claimed to do $200 million in business each year.
Several military officers and government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the investigations, questioned how Mr. Diveroli, and a small group of men principally in their 20s and without extensive military or procurement experiences, landed so much vital government work.
“A lot of us are asking the question,” said a senior State Department official. “How did this guy get all this business?”
An Ambitious Company
The intensity of the Afghan insurgency alarmed the Pentagon in 2006, and the American unit that trains and equips Afghan forces placed a huge munitions order through an Army logistics command.
The order sought 52 types of ammunition: rifle, pistol and machine-gun cartridges, hand grenades, rockets, shotgun slugs, mortar rounds, tank ammunition and more. In all, it covered hundreds of millions of rounds. Afghan forces primarily use weapons developed in the Soviet Union. This meant that most munitions on the list could be bought only overseas.
AEY was one of 10 companies to bid by the September 2006 deadline.
Michael Diveroli, Efraim’s father, had incorporated the company in 1999, when Efraim was 13. For several years, a period when the company appeared to have limited activity, Michael Diveroli, who now operates a police supply company down the street from AEY’s office, was listed as the company’s sole executive.
In 2004, AEY listed Efraim Diveroli, then 18, as an officer with a 1 percent ownership stake.
The younger Diveroli’s munitions experience appeared to be limited to a short-lived job in Los Angeles for Botach Tactical, a military and police supply company owned by his uncle, Bar-Kochba Botach.
Mr. Diveroli cut off an interview when asked about Botach Tactical. Mr. Botach, reached by telephone, said that both Michael and Efraim Diveroli had briefly worked for him, but that after seeing the rush of federal contracts available after the wars began, they had struck out on their own.
“They just left me and took my customer base with them,” he said. “They basically said: ‘Why should we work for Botach? Let’s do it on our own.’ ”
As Efraim Diveroli arrived in Miami Beach, AEY was transforming itself by aggressively seeking security-related contracts.
It won a $126,000 award for ammunition for the Special Forces; AEY also provided ammunition or equipment in 2004 to the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Transportation Security Administration and the State Department.
By 2005, when Mr. Diveroli became AEY’s president at age 19, the company was bidding across a spectrum of government agencies and providing paramilitary equipment — weapons, helmets, ballistic vests, bomb suits, batteries and chargers for X-ray machines — for American aid to Pakistan, Bolivia and elsewhere.
It was also providing supplies to the American military in Iraq, where its business included a $5.7 million contract for rifles for Iraqi forces.
Two federal officials involved in contracting in Baghdad said AEY quickly developed a bad reputation. “They weren’t reliable, or if they did come through, they did after many excuses,” said one of them, who asked that his name be withheld because he was not authorized to speak with reporters.
By this time, pressures were emerging in Efraim Diveroli’s life. In November 2005, a young woman sought an order of protection from him in the domestic violence division of Dade County Circuit Court.
The woman eventually did not appear in court, and her allegations were never ruled on. But in court papers, the woman said that after her relationship with Mr. Diveroli ended, he stalked her and left threatening messages.
Once, according to the file, his behavior included “shoving her to the ground and refusing to allow her to leave during a verbal dispute.” Other times, she reported, Mr. Diveroli arrived at her home unannounced and intoxicated “going about the exterior, banging on windows and doors.”
The woman worried that she could not ignore him, court records said, because his behavior frightened her.
Mr. Diveroli sought court delays on national security grounds. “I am the President and only official employee of my business,” he wrote to the judge on Dec. 8, 2005. “My business is currently of great importance to the country as I am licensed Defense Contractor to the United States Government in the fight against terrorism in Iraq and I am doing my very best to provide our troops with all their equipment needs on pending critical contracts.”
As AEY’s bid for its largest government contract was being considered, Mr. Diveroli’s personal difficulties continued. On Nov. 26, 2006, the Miami Beach police were called to his condominium during an argument between him and another girlfriend. According to the police report, he had thrown her “clothes out in the hallway and told her to get out.”
A witness told the police Mr. Diveroli had dragged her back into the apartment. The police found the woman crying; she said she had not been dragged. Mr. Diveroli was not charged.
On Dec. 21, 2006, the police were called back to the condominium. Mr. Diveroli and AEY’s vice president, David M. Packouz, had just been in a fight with the valet parking attendant.
The fight began, the police said, after the attendant refused to give Mr. Diveroli his keys and Mr. Diveroli entered the garage to get them himself. A witness said Mr. Diveroli and Mr. Packouz both beat the man; police photographs showed bruises and scrapes on his face and back.
When the police searched Mr. Diveroli, they found he had a forged driver’s license that added four years to his age and made him appear old enough to buy alcohol as a minor. His birthday had been the day before.
“I don’t even need that any more,” he told the police, the report said. “I’m 21 years old.”
Mr. Diveroli was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor, and felony possession of a stolen or forged document.
The second charge placed his business in jeopardy. Mr. Diveroli had a federal firearms license, which was required for his work. With a felony conviction, the license would be nullified.
(Mr. Packouz was charged with battery and the charge was later dropped; he declined to be interviewed. To avoid a conviction on his record, Mr. Diveroli entered a six-month diversion program for first offenders in May 2007 that spared him from standing trial.)
A relative paid Mr. Diveroli’s $1,000 bail as his bid for the Afghan contract was in its final review.
To be accepted, the company had to be, in Army parlance, “a responsible contractor,” which required an examination of its financial soundness, transport capabilities, past performance and compliance with the law and government contracting regulations.
The week after a relative paid his bail, the Banc of America Investment Services in Miami provided Mr. Diveroli a letter certifying that his company had cash on hand to begin buying munitions on a large scale. It said AEY had $5,469,668.95 in an account.
AEY was awarded the contract in January 2007. Asked why it chose AEY, the Army Sustainment Command answered in writing: “AEY’s proposal represented the best value to the government.”
Eastern Bloc Arsenals
Both the Army and AEY have treated the sources of the ammunition the company purchases as confidential matters, declining to say how and where the company obtained it, the prices paid or the quantities delivered.
But records provided by an official concerned about the company’s performance, a whistle-blower in the Balkans and an arms-trafficking researcher in Europe, as well as interviews with several people who work in state arsenals in Europe, show that AEY shopped from stocks in the old Eastern bloc, including Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Romania and Slovakia.
These stockpiles range from temperature-controlled bunkers to unheated warehouses packed with exposed, decaying ammunition. Some arsenals contain ammunition regarded in munitions circles as high quality. Others are scrap heaps of abandoned Soviet arms.
The Army’s contract did little to distinguish between the two.
When the United States or NATO buys munitions for themselves, the process is regulated by quality-assurance standards that cover manufacturing, packaging, storage, testing and transport.
The standards exist in part because munitions are perishable. As they age, propellants and explosives degrade, and casings are susceptible to weathering. Environmental conditions — humidity, vibration, temperature shifts — accelerate decay, making munitions less reliable.
NATO rules require ammunition to be tested methodically over its life; samples are fired through braced weapons, and muzzle velocities and accuracy are recorded.
For rifle cartridges, testing begins at age 10 years, according to Peter Courtney-Green, chief of the Ammunition Support Office of NATO’s Maintenance and Supply Agency.
The Soviet Union, which designed the ammunition that AEY bought, developed similar tests, which are still in use. But when the Army wrote its Afghan contract, it did not enforce either NATO or Russian standards. It told bidders only that the munitions must be “serviceable and issuable to all units without qualification.”
What this meant was not defined. An official at the Army Sustainment Command said that because the ammunition was for foreign weapons, and considered “nonstandard,” it only had to fit in weapons it was intended for.
“There is no specific testing request, and there is no age limit,” said Michael Hutchison, the command’s deputy director for acquisition. “As the ammunition is not standard to the U.S. inventory, the Army doesn’t possess packaging or quality standards for that ammo.”
When purchasing such munitions, Mr. Hutchison said, the Army Sustainment Command relies on standards from the “customer” — meaning the Army units in Afghanistan. And the customer, he said, did not set age or testing requirements.
With the vague standards in hand, AEY canvassed the field. One stop was Albania, a fortress state during Soviet times now trying to join NATO. Albania has huge stocks of armaments, much if it provided by China in the 1960s and 1970s.
The quality of these stockpiles vary widely, said William D. G. Hunt, a retired British ammunition technical officer who assessed the entire stock for Albania’s Ministry of Defense from 1998 to 2002. He said a military planning to use the munitions had reason to worry: at least 90 percent of the stockpile was more than 40 years old.
“If there was any procurement made for combat purposes from that stockpile, I would be very dubious about it,” he said. “I am not suggesting that all the ammunition would fail. But its performance would tail off rather dramatically. It is substandard, for sure.”
Problems with Albania’s decaying munitions were apparent earlier this month, when a depot outside Tirana, Albania’s capital, erupted in a chain of explosions, killing at least 22 people, injuring at least 300 others and destroying hundreds of homes.
Before the Army’s contractors began shopping from such depots, the West’s assessment of Albanian munitions was evident in programs it sponsored to destroy them. Through 2007, the United States had contributed $2 million to destroy excess small-caliber weapons and 2,000 tons of ammunition in Albania, according to the State Department.
A NATO program that ended last year involved 16 Western nations contributing about $10 million to destroy 8,700 tons of obsolete ammunition. The United States contributed $500,000. Among the items destroyed were 104 million 7.62 millimeter cartridges — exactly the ammunition AEY sought from the Albanian state arms export agency.
Albania offered to sell tens of millions of cartridges manufactured as long ago as 1950. For tests, a 25-year-old AEY representative was given 1,000 cartridges to fire, according to Ylli Pinari, the director of the arms export agency at the time of the sale.
No ballistic performance was recorded, he said. The rounds were fired by hand.
On that basis, AEY bought more than 100 million cartridges for the Pentagon’s order. The cartridges, according to packing lists, dated to the 1960s.
- Reaction score
- 147
- Points
- 710
U.S. Steps Up Unilateral Strikes in Pakistan
Officials Fear Support From Islamabad Will Wane
Washington Post, March 27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/27/AR2008032700007.html
Mark
Ottawa
Officials Fear Support From Islamabad Will Wane
Washington Post, March 27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/27/AR2008032700007.html
Mark
Ottawa
- Reaction score
- 147
- Points
- 710
Equal Alliance, Unequal Roles
NY Times, March 27, by Robert D. Kaplan
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/opinion/27kaplan.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper
Mark
Ottawa
NY Times, March 27, by Robert D. Kaplan
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/opinion/27kaplan.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper
Mark
Ottawa
- Status
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