The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread November 2008

[Edward Campbell]

The CLS (bottom centre) and families attend the Remembrance Day services in Afghanistan.

Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081111.wafghanremember1111/BNStory/International

Families of 6 slain soldiers join Afghan ceremony

The Canadian Press

November 11, 2008 at 6:18 AM EST

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — The families of six Canadian soldiers completed a pilgrimage of sorts on Tuesday, taking part in a Remembrance Day ceremony in the barren and dangerous country where their loved ones lost their lives in the war against the Taliban.

The cenotaph inside the Canadian compound at Kandahar Air Field contains the names and portraits of the 97 Canadian soldiers who have lost their lives since the mission in Afghanistan began six years ago.

Albert Graham, whose son Mark was killed over two years ago, came looking for answers but says one fact remains.

He says he is proud of his son and he will “always be my baby.”

Elizabeth Levesque lost her son Private Michel Levesque a year ago and says she came to take his spirit home to Canada.

The families laid fresh green wreaths, with the words “Fallen Soldier” on the cenotaph.

 

[geo]

Afghanistan’s Untold Story

e-Ariana
By M. Ashraf Haidari
11/11/2008

In “Not my grandfather’s country” (International Herald Tribune, opinion, October 31), Fatima Ayub recycles the repeatedly told story of Afghanistan’s downward spiral, but she says nothing about how her grandfather’s least developed country has changed for the better in more fundamental ways in just seven years which decades had not accomplished before.

Afghanistan of 35 years ago never had as many health clinics across the country as today; as many primary, secondary, and tertiary roads as today; as many schools, vocational facilities, and universities as today; as many five-star hotels and wedding halls as today; as many private TVs, radios, and daily & weekly papers as today. Our isolated rural population under the best of the country’s times is connected with the outside world for the first time thanks to international assistance and our shared achievements over the past few years. Suicide attacks have hit London , Madrid , and New York , and Kabul has been no exception. On the whole, however, Kabul and other provincial cities of Afghanistan in the west, north, northeast, and center of the country are far safer than many major cities of the developed countries.

Today’s Afghanistan is in a unique situation with a unique set of challenges and opportunities that fundamentally differ from 35 years ago. With international support, it is the responsibility of Afghans in and outside the country to define our future with a sense of optimism, vision, and firm determination to do our part now.

M. Ashraf Haidari is the Political Counselor of the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, DC. His e-mail is [email protected]


Polar opposites - Canada/US relations and Afghanistan

The Fourth Down
Posted by Steve Woodhead
Monday November 10, 2008

I don’t know how frequently Filibuster Soup readers have a glance at the major Canadian dailies like the National Post or the Globe and Mail, but in the last month an astonishing thing has happened between my Canadian homeland and the U.S.

Canada is now the right-wing country, and America the left.

American lefties no longer have a place where they can threaten to move to when the the liberal chips are down! Canada a socialist haven? No more. Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada (gotta love how they wear their designation on their sleeves up here - the official opposition is named the Liberal Party) seized a second minority government in the Oct. 14 general election, simultaneously leaving the other three (left-of-center) options in the political hinterland.

It’s tricky territory, however. All but the most staunch Canadian right-wingers will sheepishly admit that much of the Conservative Party’s success is due, at least in part, to vote splitting. Not long ago it was the conservative vote that was lost to bickering and in-fighting among two different options (the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party) while the Liberals enjoyed strong majorities with only intermittent failures. Canadians, by and large, identify as more liberal than their southerly neighbours. Spend any time around Canadian youth, academic circles (as I do, being a university student), or Liberal strongholds like Toronto, and you’ll find that there was some immense support for Barack Obama up here. It’s no exaggeration to tell you that my campus bar was far busier on Nov. 4 than it was a few weeks ago when the Canadian election was held.

It begs the question - how will Stephen Harper and his more powerful Conservatives encounter the Democratic juggernaut that is the American government? At helm is the world’s most popular man, and that point is surely not lost on Harper.

I’ve heard some conjecture that an Obama presidency might be good for Harper. Any attempts to make nice with the Obama administration will be VERY public in Canada, and will do much to dispel the smirking nickname that Harper (unfairly) earned as George Bush Jr. It will allay fears of some secret right-wing Conservative agenda, and nobody can deny that Obama’s shine can lend remarkable goodwill from our European brethren.

The most important way that Harper can utilize the Obama administration is this: it will allow him to be seen negotiating, deal-making, but ultimately sticking to his guns with made-in-Canada policies. Never, EVER underestimate the power that “made-in-Canada” phrase has up north. Canadians, spurned on especially by the Canadian media, have a massive inferiority complex that stems from being the US’s closest neighbour. I have a feeling that even a Conservative mandate, one that disagrees with an Obama mandate, might be supported by the Canadian left if it can be marketed as a home-grown promise.

This bring us to my delayed point - a recent opinion piece from the National Post that expresses concern over whether or not Harper will be able to stick to the promise he made in the general election, to remove Canada from Afghanistan by 2011 and thus bringing our presence there to a full decade, in the face of Obama’s campaign promise of increasing American focus on that troubled region.

Stephen Harper and Barack Obama, ideological opposites though they may seem (and probably are), have one thing in common: both suffer from the accusation of being austere, intensely private, and generally successful at keeping their personal lives and motivations a mystery to the public at large. How Obama pulled off that trick in the midst of the media circus that was the 2008 election is beyond me - it was either a miracle of prudence, or some would have us believe it to be willful blindness on the part of the American media.

Stephen Harper’s key to success has always been chalked up to his rumoured bullish temperament when provoked, and the control he has exerted over the members of his Conservative Party. Nobody is in doubt as to whom to credit with the Conservative’s success. It has, and always likely will be, attributed to Stephen Harper and his firm grip over the party and its players. Argue for or against it, but there is no denying that it was exactly what the party needed, and it has served them well so far.

It’s that same temperament that will serve Harper well in the face of the world’s most popular man, the candidate for Hope and Change. I’ll take off my hat as a scary Conservative war-monger and say this - there is nothing to be gained by bending to the will of an Obama administration. Afghanistan is a testy issue and many Canadians want out (Canadians not having the stomach any more for pretty much military engagement of ANY description). Harper’s willingness to face down the request of an extended Middle East campaign, one that I have no doubt will eventually come, is the key to his longevity as Prime Minister. He can market it as the perfect “made-in-Canada” solution and achieve three absolutely KEY goals for any Canadian government: maintain Canadian autonomy even under the influence of American pressure (a sore spot for hordes of Canadian lefties), keep his campaign promise, and shockingly, satisfy the Canadian left by lessening Canada’s military activity.

There is one smaller detail for you to mull over: with Obama’s promise of a more isolationist USA following years of unpopular involvement overseas, now may be the chance for Harper to drag Canada kicking and screaming back to the world stage. Make some noise about our humanitarian involvements, renew the image of the Canadian military force, and make sure we reach a strong finish in Afghanistan. Harper has dedicated millions to finding an AIDS vaccine for disease-stricken countries around the world - this is also part of the new image of Canada.

It’s funny, but one could have easily imagined the tables to be turned in a scenario like this - a Republican government urging a soft Liberal or NDP government in Canada into increased military activity.

Strange days indeed.

 

[GAP]

Articles found November 11, 2008

Pakistan: Three killed in stadium suicide attack
Article Link

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- A suicide bomber struck outside a stadium in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday evening, killing three people and wounding 11 others, the provincial information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, said.

The blast occurred outside Qayyum Stadium's front gate, where a closing ceremony for the Inter-Provincial Games was being held, police said.

The ceremony for the sports tournament was just ending when the blast went off, North West Frontier Province police Inspector General Malik Naveed said.

Most people had already left the stadium at the time of the attack, he said.

In addition to the three dead, the bomber was also killed, police said.

Qayyum Stadium is in the heart of Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province on the country's border with Afghanistan. The region is rife with Islamic extremists.

Earlier Tuesday, officials reported that Pakistan-based militants had launched back-to-back assaults on convoys carrying food and military supplies in a mountain pass in northwest Pakistan.

The Monday morning attacks took place about 30 minutes apart in the Khyber Pass, a mountain pass that links Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is located in Khyber, one of seven semiautonomous tribal agencies along the Afghan border.

Around 60 to 70 armed militants seized 13 trucks -- 12 carrying wheat into Afghanistan as part of a World Food Programme convoy, and one transporting Humvees to the U.S.-led coalition, Khyber Agency officials said.

Authorities dispatched two helicopter gunships, which fired on the raiding militants. The firing killed one person and wounded another, but could not foil the hijacking, officials said.

Local tribal leaders are now expected to hold talks with the militants to try and secure the return of the trucks and their supplies.

Because Afghanistan is landlocked, many supplies for NATO-led troops fighting Islamic militants there have to be trucked in from Pakistan. Officials said militants aligned with the Taliban and al Qaeda have carried out similar attacks in the past in the Khyber Pass region.

The Pakistani central government has little control in the area, and it is believed to be a haven for militants
More on link

Canadian engineers teach demolition basics to new Afghan National Army unit
Article Link

CAMP HERO, Afghanistan — In a country where danger constantly lurks underfoot and around every corner, members of the Afghan National Army are getting a crash course from Canadian soldiers in the delicate art of handling high explosives.

Warrant Officer Wade Osmond makes crude hand gestures to a young Afghan recruit who's learning the basics of the trade at Camp Hero, the Afghan National Army base just beyond the confines of Kandahar Airfield.

"Tell him to prepare his M-16 igniter. Just tell him - remember, you can squeeze this together to make it easier to come apart," Osmond, of 2 Combat Engineer Regiment, based in Petawawa, Ont., says to an interpreter.

"This soldier has done it once before already, so this is reconfirmation of his training so he already understands exactly what I'm saying to him. You're going to pull - remember, on the word 'fire,' it's 1, 2, 3 on fire."

Three recruits at a time learn how to set a charge on a half-kilogram of C-4 plastic explosive, all under the watchful tutelage of their Canadian trainers, including Osmond and Chief Warrant Officer Craig Grant.
More on link

U.S. building bases in Afghanistan to aid drones
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
Article Link

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is building a series of air bases in eastern Afghanistan as part of its massive expansion of a system that uses drone aircraft to spy on and attack Taliban insurgents, according to interviews and documents.
In Afghanistan, harsh winters and a lack of airstrips near the fighting can hinder drone flights. It can take as long as three hours for a drone to reach battlefields, particularly in the rugged mountain area near the border with Pakistan. That area has seen some of the toughest fighting for U.S. troops. By contrast, it can take as little as 10 minutes for a drone to reach hot spots in Baghdad because the Iraqi capital has more air bases, said Dyke Weatherington, deputy director of the Pentagon's unmanned aerial systems task force.

"What the (Pentagon) is trying to do is go in and develop bases closer to those areas that we know we're going to have a sustained presence after a long period of time," Weatherington said. "In fact, recently we set up a couple of additional bases closer to the Pakistan border that cut down those transit times."

Col. Greg Julian, a military spokesman in Afghanistan, said in an e-mail that the military is adding more bases to accommodate drones and additional troops.

The military is developing drones with better deicing systems to help deal with the Afghan winters, he said.
More on link

Taliban say hostage was theirs
Insurgents and bandits waged deadly battle over kidnapped CBC journalist, who says she was chained and blindfolded in a small cave
GRAEME SMITH From Monday's Globe and Mail November 10, 2008 at 12:41 AM EST
Article Link

A violent tug-of-war between insurgents and criminals broke out in lawless districts of Afghanistan as armed factions struggled for control of a Canadian journalist during her kidnapping ordeal, according to Taliban sources.

Mellissa Fung, 35, a reporter for CBC television, was released unharmed on Saturday, and details are starting to emerge about the men responsible for keeping her chained and blindfolded in a cave.

A Taliban spokesman denied the insurgents held her and Afghan intelligence officials hinted that her captors were criminals. But insurgents from Wardak province, west of Kabul, said their band of Taliban fighters was among the groups that staked a claim to the valuable hostage. She changed hands at least twice, they said, and at least one Taliban fighter was killed in the squabbling over her fate.

Kidnapped foreigners in Afghanistan have previously been ransomed for up to $3-million, sometimes with an exchange of prisoners. Canadian authorities have denied any ransom was paid for Ms. Fung, but The Globe and Mail has learned that at one point her captors demanded $5-million.
More on link

2 Spanish soldiers killed in Afghanistan
Article Link

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden van into a Spanish military convoy in Afghanistan on Sunday, killing two Spanish soldiers and wounding several others, Spanish Defense Minister Carme Chacon said.

Four people were wounded, one of them seriously, CNN partner station CNN+ reported, citing Defense Ministry sources.

The victims died instantly in the explosion, and the wounded were initially taken to Spain's nearby base at Herat in western Afghanistan, Chacon said in a televised address.

Spain has about 800 troops in Afghanistan, with the bulk stationed at Herat, as part of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Spanish officials have recently told CNN.

More than 20 Spanish troops have died in Afghanistan, including two in an explosion in September 2007 and 17 in a helicopter crash in August 2005.

In May 2003, 62 Spanish peacekeeping troops returning from Afghanistan and other nearby countries died when their plane crashed in Turkey.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero offered condolences to the latest victims at the start of his speech to Socialist Party members in Spain's Canary Islands, and said Spanish troops were
More on link

 

[MarkOttawa]

Obama to Explore New Approach in Afghanistan War
Washington Post, Nov. 11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/10/AR2008111002897.html

The incoming Obama administration plans to explore a more regional strategy to the war in Afghanistan -- including possible talks with Iran -- and looks favorably on the nascent dialogue between the Afghan government and "reconcilable" elements of the Taliban, according to Obama national security advisers.

President-elect Barack Obama also intends to renew the U.S. commitment to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a priority the president-elect believes President Bush has played down after years of failing to apprehend the al-Qaeda leader. Critical of Bush during the campaign for what he said was the president's extreme focus on Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan, Obama also intends to move ahead with a planned deployment of thousands of additional U.S. troops there...

Pakistanis Mired in Brutal Battle to Oust Taliban
NY Times, Nov. 10
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/world/asia/11pstan.html?ref=todayspaper

LOE SAM, Pakistan — When Pakistan’s army retook this strategic stronghold from the Taliban last month, it discovered how deeply Islamic militants had encroached on — and literally dug into — Pakistani territory.

Behind mud-walled family compounds in the Bajaur area, a vital corridor to Afghanistan through Pakistan’s tribal belt, Taliban insurgents created a network of tunnels to store arms and move about undetected.

Some tunnels stretched for more than half a mile and were equipped with ventilation systems so that fighters could withstand a long siege. In some places, it took barrages of 500-pound bombs to break the tunnels apart.

“These were not for ordinary battle,” said Gen. Tariq Khan, the commander of the Pakistan Frontier Corps, who led the army’s campaign against the Taliban in the area.

After three months of sometimes fierce fighting, the Pakistani Army controls a small slice of Bajaur. But what was initially portrayed as a paramilitary action to restore order in the area has become the most sustained military campaign by the Pakistani Army against the Taliban and its backers in Al Qaeda since Pakistan allied itself with the United States in 2001...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

Articles found November 12, 2008

Six dead as tanker bomb rocks Afghanistan's Kandahar
7 hours ago
Article Link

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) — A bomb-filled tanker exploded outside the office of the provincial council in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar Wednesday, killing six people and wounding 42, a governor said.

Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai and head of the council, was in the building at the time but was unharmed. "I am fine and safe," he told reporters later.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Taliban insurgents have carried out a series of bombings in the city.

The explosives-filled tanker dug a crater about four metres (13 feet) deep and eight metres wide into the road, an AFP reporter said.

"Six people were killed including an intelligence employee, two intelligence guards and three passers-by including a woman," Kandahar province governor Rahmatullah Raufi told a press conference.

"Forty-two others are wounded including two female provincial council members. Most of the wounded have superficial injuries and they will be discharged from hospital."

The bulk of the casualties were civilians from surrounding houses or who had come to the council for business, Raufi said.
More on link

Bomb kills three people in Afghanistan
Updated November 12, 2008 22:50:29
Article Link

suspected bomb blast in Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar has killed at least three people and wounded 39 others.

A doctor from Kandahar's Mirwais hospital says the wounded have superficial injuries.

The AFP newsagency reports authorities could not be reached to immediately confirm the cause of the blast.

The explosion occurred in the centre of the city between Kandahar's main intelligence office and a compound used by the provincial government council.
End

70 Talibs and 2 Leaders of Taliban Movement Detained in  Afghanistan
12.11.08 12:27
Article Link

Afghanistan, Kabul, 12 November/ Trend News, corr. A.Hakimi /Seventy Talibs and two leaders of Taliban movement – Hayatullah and Mohammad Davud, were detained in the result of operation held in Afghanistan two days ago.

An armament was revealed during the operation in Kandahar province.

The Taliban is a radical Islamic movement, which appeared in Afghanistan in 1994.The movement ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001 (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) and Waziristan in the north of Pakistan (Islamic State of Waziristan) from 2004.

Taliban representatives demand the withdrawal of foreign troops from the territory of Afghanistan, and call on the Afghan population to unite and peace under Islam and carry out subversive activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
End

 

[MarkOttawa]

Britain to NATO members: help more in Afghanistan
AP, Nov. 11
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5htW0bU7hfNxqefVbiW_njQOI1JggD94D1JQG0

British and U.S. officials urged other NATO members Tuesday to send more troops to Afghanistan, saying the alliance's success there required a more equal sharing of the war burden.

For months NATO has called for boosting its 50,000-troop mission to quell rising violence in Afghanistan, and has grown frustrated with the reluctance of some European members to either increase their contribution or deploy to more dangerous regions.

"Of course we are ready to consider what is necessary, but it must be part of a burden-sharing exercise where different countries play their part," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told reporters.

NATO's force in Afghanistan includes about 20,000 troops from the United States and 8,000 from Britain — the two highest contributors. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has said he plans to add about 7,000 or 8,000 troops to the NATO mission.

In addition, there are some 12,000 U.S. troops in the country operating outside NATO's command.

Germany in September approved an increase of 1,000 troops for Afghanistan, for a maximum of 4,500 German troops in the country. However, politicians have kept German soldiers from deploying to Afghanistan's volatile southern reaches, where mainly U.S. forces are locked in a tough fight against al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

Canada, Italy and France each contribute around 2,500 troops to the NATO mission, and the Netherlands 1,700. Australia and Poland each sent around 1,000, and dozens of other nations provide smaller numbers.

On Monday, after two Spanish troops were killed in a weekend suicide attack in western Afghanistan, Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said his country had no plans to withdraw its 800-troop deployment but also would not increase it.

Britain's defense secretary, John Hutton, reiterated Brown's call on Tuesday for other alliance members to step up and suggested more UK troops were unlikely.

"No one can say that we are not pulling our weight in the international coalition. We expect others to as well," Hutton said in a keynote speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Meanwhile in Berlin, the visiting U.S. ambassador to NATO also said that winning the Afghan war would require a revamped military strategy and a commitment from NATO members to more equally share the burden.

"When you look at what all of the NATO allies are doing, it's not enough for the challenge that's there," the U.S. ambassador, Kurt Volker, said.

NATO has also said it needs more instructors to train the Afghan army that is expected to grow to 134,000 by 2014 [emphasis added]...

Taliban hijacking threatens key NATO supply route
Militants in Pakistan seized 13 Afghanistan-bound trucks – one carrying two Humvees – without firing a single shot.
CS Monitor, Nov. 12
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1112/p25s05-wosc.htm

Pakistani Taliban militants hijacked a convoy carrying wheat and military vehicles headed for Afghanistan Monday, underscoring for NATO forces the vulnerability of their only practical supply route into landlocked Afghanistan.

In a brazen attack in Jamrud, near the capital of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, 60 masked militants held up a convoy of 13 trucks, according to official reports. The trucks, 12 of which were carrying wheat and one carrying two Humvees for Western forces in Afghanistan, were hijacked without the militants having to fire a single shot.

The highway on which the incident took place connects Peshawar, the largest city in northwestern Pakistan, to Jalalabad and Kabul in Afghanistan. Coalition forces receive their food and weapons from the nearest warm-water port in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, over 1,000 miles away, through this route.

"This is the most traditional, most used land route to connect Afghanistan and Pakistan," says Talat Masood, a security expert and retired general of the Pakistani Army. The same supply route was used to support the mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet Union, he says.

At least two other routes connect the two countries. One in the south connects Quetta to the Afghan city of Kandahar, but it makes little sense for supplying NATO forces in and around Kabul, the capital. This route would be an extra few hundred miles, and it passes through even less secure territory. Another route, which passes through the Pakistani town of Parachinar, is ill-suited to large trucks and convoys.

The hijacking was claimed by fighters for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, who posed for photographs with black-and-white banners of the umbrella Taliban organization draped over the Humvees.

According to local press reports, a military operation followed the hijackings involving gunship helicopters. But local residents said Tuesday evening that most of the wheat and the hijacked trucks had been sold off in markets and that one abandoned Humvee had been recovered.

Though hijackings along this route are not unheard of, "it might just be the most flagrant hijacking of a supply convoy yet," says Mr. Masood...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

ARTICLES FOUND NOV. 13

The new Kabul
National Post, Nov. 13, by Terry Glavin
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=954424

From the headlines leaping off the front pages of newspapers around the world these days, you'd think this city was Phnom Penh in the days before the Khmer Rouge rolled in, or Saigon in the hours before the fall. Given the London Telegraph's declaration that Kabul is "as dangerous as Baghdad at its worst," you'd expect to find Taliban armies already at the city gates, and nothing left to do but cut a deal and get out.

This is exactly what the Taliban's canny propagandists want the world to think about Kabul, and for variously sinister and conflicting reasons, this is the same picture of the city that diplomats from London to Riyadh have been painting lately. What all this drama obscures, however, is the reality of a city that is boisterous and booming and yet burdened by a wholly different sort of dread.

Among Kabul's human rights activists, student leaders and women's rights groups, the big fear isn't the spectre of Taliban militias rolling back into Kabul. The much greater threat comes from places like Washington, Tehran and Islamabad. It's the clamour for a backroom deal with the Taliban (with President Hamid Karzai's signature on it for the sake of appearances). The stink of a looming betrayal is everywhere, and Kabulis, betrayed so many times before, can smell it a mile away.

Even Karzai's closest supporters are starting to get sick of it. Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Spanta recently uttered a blistering rebuke to "so-called peacemakers" after the Saudis quietly brought together some Taliban-connected characters in Mecca and the President's businessman brother, Qayyum Karzai. Spanta says he's had quite enough of schemes to "surrender this land to the enemy."..

In the heavily guarded districts that cosset the city's foreign diplomats, UN technocrats, senior aid-agency officials and celebrity journalists, you'd think Kabul was the Paris Commune just before the Versailles Army moved in and massacred everybody. At night on the balconies, when the power has failed again and the only light comes from a dusty moon peering over the peaks of the Hindu Kush, the talk is all about the day's assassinations and kidnap-pings. At daybreak, with helicopter gunships thudding across the city skyline, it's hard to get the opening bars of The Doors' The End out of your head.

But there is also the new, real-world Kabul, out in the streets, where the bazaars are bursting with life and commerce, and raucous laughter erupts from back alleys where men sit around TV sets watching Afghan talk shows. This is the Kabul the Taliban hates so bitterly. Every morning, the streets are filled with schoolchildren. Even in the dingiest parts of this bomb-blasted metropolis, among the rickety vendors' stalls that sell cow heads and sheep guts, you can't turn a corner without coming upon another newly opened computer school, or a long line of unveiled women waiting for their literacy classes to open for the day.

There is cruel and savage poverty here, but also much happiness, and Kabulis aren't for turning back. But the corrosive defeatism that is now so fashionable in polite society is forcing a fatal feedback loop into play all over the city, and in this way the "Spiral of Doom" headlines mutate into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The spiral entraps even the bravest Kabulis, because if it's all coming to an end, there's no point in sticking one's neck out in this country's long war for a transparent, accountable democracy. It pulls into itself even the "corruption" that has come to characterize the Karzai regime: If this isn't going to last, the thinking goes, then you might as well get what you can while the getting's good...

3,300 More U.S. Troops Sought to Train Afghans
Washington Post, Nov. 13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/12/AR2008111202681.html

U.S. commanders in Afghanistan are requesting 3,300 more troops to accelerate the training of new Afghan army and police forces, a job seen as critical to defeating Afghanistan's growing insurgency.

Maj. Gen. Robert Cone, who heads the U.S. command in Kabul that trains Afghan forces, said yesterday he has asked for 60 additional training teams -- a total of about 1,000 troops -- to help speed the expansion of the Afghan army.

Cone said the latest request, currently in NATO and U.S. military channels, is in addition to his prior request to fill a shortfall of 2,300 trainers. Still, with NATO struggling to meet even the lower goal for trainers, it is not clear where the new teams will come from.,,

The goal for the total strength of the Afghan army expanded from 70,000 to 80,000 last year, and then to 134,000 this fall. The larger force will cost $2 billion to $2.5 billion a year -- three times the size of Afghanistan's annual budget of $700 million -- therefore requiring substantial investments from the United States and other nations.

While some analysts have argued that such an expensive army is not sustainable in an impoverished country such as Afghanistan, senior military officials have made the dire prediction that without a more robust Afghan army, the country will have no future.

Other hurdles to building up the Afghan army include a shortage of skilled individuals from which to draw noncommissioned officers following decades of warfare, Cone said. Another problem is corruption, as well as the logistical difficulties of equipping and training the force, he said.

"You have to scratch something literally out of the desert to build a training center for the Afghans," Cone said.

Both the Bush administration and the team of President-elect Barack Obama have called for significant increases in the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan next year. U.S. commanders want three more combat brigades and thousands of support troops, for a total of about 20,000 additional troops, as well as helicopters and unmanned drones, but such increases depend on continuing troop reductions in Iraq.

Other NATO countries such as Britain are also considering shifting resources from Iraq to Afghanistan as conditions permit, and are likely to follow the U.S. lead, officials said.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new leader of U.S. Central Command, discussed the possibility of more British contributions in an unplanned meeting Sunday in London with British Secretary of Defense John Hutton and Chief of Defense Staff Jock Stirrup [emphasis added]. Petraeus, who previously set up the command in Iraq that trains the country's forces, has also supported expanding the size of the Afghan army.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Young Afghan democracy facing its first major test
Country nervously prepares for '09 elections
Vancouver Sun, Nov. 13, by Terry Glavin
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=fd31d1a3-a59d-4e1b-b9e4-233466268f16

KABUL -- The most ambitious undertaking in the history of the United Nations has reached a critical crossroads at an unlikely, desolate place on the outskirts of this war-battered city. It's on the Jalalabad Road, just beyond the Hodkheal district, a slum notorious for its gangs of murderers and thieves.

From the outside, the headquarters of Afghanistan's Independent Elections Commission (IEC) looks just like a maximum-security prison. Inside, a grim collection of Quonset huts houses the command centre of the first major test of Afghanistan's embryonic democracy.

The forces massing to scuttle the upcoming Afghan elections are not just the illiterate jihadists terrorizing the Afghan countryside, or the suicide bombers that haunt the Jalalabad Road. Foreign diplomats in Kabul have been especially busy lately, whispering their intrigues to western journalists.

The upcoming elections should be cancelled or postponed, they say. Afghanistan could be further destabilized. Better the devil you know, the security challenges are too great, and so on. Not a few of Afghanistan's warlord parliamentarians are quietly counselling the same course.

"Yes, we have had some logistical problems," Marzia Siddiqi, the IEC's harried external relations officer, told me. Voter-registration workers have been kidnapped in Wardak. Stacks of registration forms have been set ablaze in bonfires. A registration office in Nuristan was hit by a Taliban rocket, and in Faryab, women working for the IEC are getting death threats.

But since early October, out of an estimated 17 million voting-age Afghans, the IEC has already registered more than 900,000 people to vote in next year's presidential and provincial elections, and the parliamentary and district elections in 2010. There were only about 12 million eligible voters in 2004, when Hamid Karzai was elected president in Afghanistan's first direct polls. But since then, refugees have been flooding back into the country.

More than 12,000 temporary IEC workers are now fanning out across the country for the voter drive, and the IEC has its registration offices up and running in 14 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. More than 100 political parties are now registered, reflecting the broad spectrum of Afghan politics, from ultra-conservative Islamist groupings to liberal, secular and leftist coalitions.

All the talk about scrapping the elections or putting them off has only served to further entrench the deep sense of disillusionment [emphasis added] that has been slowly crippling Afghan society following the euphoria that erupted with the collapse of Taliban rule...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

Articles found November , 2008

Winter looms amid drought, insecurity in Afghanistan
At least 8.4 million people may go hungry, CARE says
12 Nov 2008
Article Link

The approaching winter will likely worsen the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, CARE officials warn, as dangerous conditions hamstring efforts to combat drought-driven food shortages.

"Attacks against U.N. staff and international aid workers have jumped sharply this year," says Lex Kassenberg, country director for CARE in Afghanistan. From January to September alone, 29 nongovernmental organizations workers were killed and 78 kidnapped. "Access to communities continues to be seriously hampered by widespread insecurity. More and more it's getting increasingly difficult to reach communities with the supplies they need."

Today roughly 8.4 million people, or one-fourth of the Afghan population, are considered food insecure. According to aid workers on the ground there, drought, insecurity and rising food prices in northern Afghanistan may drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes this winter.

In response, CARE has launched cash-for-work projects in the northern province of Balkh, providing income opportunities for an initial 2,400 families. CARE also will begin supplying seed, fertilizer and other agricultural materials to help farmers rebuild livelihoods lost. CARE's ongoing work in Afghanistan includes programs to educate girls in rural areas and make widows self-sufficient in Kabul.

Adds Kassenberg: "CARE applauds the U.N.'s decision to establish an independent office for coordinating humanitarian affairs in Afghanistan but calls on donors to make sure it receives adequate funding." Fighting along the Pakistani border has already complicated the situation, sending around 20,000 refugees into the country from Pakistan.
More on link

US-Led Forces in Afghanistan Kill 4 Suspected Militants Linked to Al-Qaida
By VOA News 14 November 2008
  Article Link

U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan say troops have killed four militants linked to al-Qaida in the country's eastern region.

The U.S. military says the suspected militants were killed during a raid Thursday in the Zurmat district of Paktia Province, near the border with Pakistan.

The statement says the operation was targeting a network of militants who, with the help of local Taliban leaders, were bringing Arab and other foreign fighters into Afghanistan.

On Thursday, Taliban militants claimed responsibility for a car bombing in eastern Afghanistan that killed at least 11 people, including a U.S. soldier. Seventy-four others were wounded.

Local authorities say the suicide bomber rammed his car into a U.S.-led military convoy as it was passing through a livestock market near the capital of Nangarhar province, Jalalabad.
More on link

Three Afghan builders gunned down as Taliban claim suicide attack
6 hours ago Article Link

KABUL (AFP) — Three Afghan construction workers were gunned down by militants while a suicide attack wounded three policemen Friday in new insurgency-linked violence, officials said.

The three men were shot dead by attackers in a passing vehicle in the eastern province of Khost as they had left their lodgings and headed to work, Ismail Khail district governor Dawlat Khan Qayomi told AFP.

The official blamed the attack on the "enemies of Afghanistan", a term often used by Afghan authorities to refer to Taliban insurgents who target Afghan and foreign troops as well as officials or people helping with reconstruction.

In the same province, a suicide attacker detonated an explosives-filled car near a police vehicle just outside of Khost city. Three policemen were wounded, one of them seriously, provincial governor Arsala Jamal told AFP.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said his group had carried out the attack.

The US-led force in Afghanistan announced meanwhile its troops had killed four Al-Qaeda-linked militants Thursday in an operation aimed at a network helping to move Arab and other foreign fighters into the country
More on link

Ottawa moves to block detainee-transfer hearings
Review of policy decisions by government officials falls outside complaints commission's mandate, court filing argues
PAUL KORING November 14, 2008
Article Link

More than 20 months after it first promised full co-operation, the Harper government has moved to block public hearings into whether it ordered Canadian soldiers to transfer prisoners to Afghan security forces knowing the detainees would likely be tortured.

Only weeks before the long-delayed hearings were to begin, government lawyers want the Federal Court to outlaw them, saying the independent Military Police Complaints Commission can investigate only specific and individual instances of tortured prisoners, not whether all prisoners faced the risk of torture.

Commission chairman Peter Tinsley ordered the public hearings last spring, saying he was left with no other choice. "Ordering a public interest hearing is necessary to ensure a full investigation of the grave allegations," Mr. Tinsley said. Since then, he has rolled multiple allegations covering different time periods into a single public-interest investigation.

Hearings were to start Dec. 4.
More on link

CBC probes detainment of Afghan employees in Fung kidnapping
Brothers 'held in high regard' by journalists are being detained as 'witness suspects': publisher
Last Updated: Thursday, November 13, 2008 | 11:14 AM ET CBC News
Article Link

The CBC has formally asked Afghan authorities for more details on the detainment of two Afghan employees who were working with journalist Mellissa Fung when she was abducted last month, CBC News publisher John Cruickshank said Thursday.

Shakoor Firoz, a translator and "fixer" who has for some time assisted CBC journalists in Afghanistan, and his brother Qaim Firoz, a driver, were taken into custody shortly after informing the CBC that Fung was kidnapped on Oct. 12 at a refugee camp outside Kabul.

Fung, 35, was released on Saturday after spending 28 days in captivity by what she described as a "family business" of kidnappers eager to "finish her case" and get paid a ransom.

The two brothers accompanying her were overpowered during the abduction, but not taken.

Men appear in good spirits, Canadian officials say
The CBC understands that the brothers are being held as "witness suspects" while two other people are in custody as suspects and may face charges soon, Cruickshank said in a statement.

He said Canadian officials in Afghanistan and family members visited the brothers as recently as two days ago and they appear to be in good spirits.

"We continue to press Afghan authorities to affirm that Shakoor and Qaim are receiving and will continue to receive humane treatment and due legal process," he said.

"Both men are trusted and held in high regard by those at CBC News who have worked with them. Their current status is a matter of continuing and serious concern for us."

The CBC will continue to work closely with Canada's Foreign Affairs Department, the Canadian Embassy, the RCMP and local authorities, he added.

"In addition to maintaining the salaries of both men, we have offered to provide support for their legal representation," Cruickshank said.

The CBC has given Afghan authorities letters of support for the men. One of the letters is from Fung, who on Wednesday said she believes there is "no way" her colleagues were involved in her abduction.
More on link

 

[MarkOttawa]

ARTICLES FOUND NOV. 16

Pakistan truck halt threatens NATO supplies lines
AP, Nov. 16
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081116.wafgansupplyline1116/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

PESHAWAR, Pakistan  — Pakistan temporarily barred oil tankers and container trucks from a key passageway to Afghanistan, threatening a critical supply route for U.S. and NATO troops on Sunday and raising more fears about security in the militant-plagued border region.

The suspension came as U.S.-led coalition troops reported killing 30 insurgents in fighting in southern Afghanistan and detaining two militant leaders — both in provinces near Pakistan's lawless border.

Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are behind much of the escalating violence along the lengthy, porous Afghan-Pakistan border, and both nations have traded accusations that the other was not doing enough to keep militants out from its side.

The tensions come as violence in Afghanistan has reached its highest level since the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime in 2001, and as a surge in U.S. missile strikes on the Pakistani side of the border has prompted protests from Pakistan government leaders.

Last Monday, a band of militants hijacked around a dozen trucks whose load included Humvees headed to the foreign forces in Afghanistan. Renewed security concerns prompted officials to impose the temporary ban on tankers and trucks carrying sealed containers late Saturday, government official Bakhtiar Khan said. He said it could be lifted as early as Monday.

Lt.-Cmdr. Walter Matthews, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, acknowledged only that “the appropriate authorities are co-ordinating security procedures.”

“The convoys will continue flowing. We will not discuss when, or where, or what,” he said.

Denied entry to the route, dozens of the trucks and oil tankers were parked along a main road near Peshawar, the regional capital...

Pakistan and U.S. Have Tacit Deal On Airstrikes
Washington Post, Nov. 16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/15/AR2008111502656.html

The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the U.S. drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an average rate of once every four or five days.

The officials described the deal as one in which the U.S. government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan's government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes.

The arrangement coincided with a suspension of ground assaults into Pakistan by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview last week that he was aware of no ground attacks since one on Sept. 3 that his government vigorously protested.

Officials described the attacks, using new technology and improved intelligence, as a significant improvement in the fight against Pakistan-based al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. Officials confirmed the deaths of at least three senior al-Qaeda figures in strikes last month...

On the front line in war on Pakistan's Taliban
The Observer, Nov. 16
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/16/pakistan-afghanistan-taliban

High in the mountainous north west provinces of Pakistan, government forces are waging a bitter war against Taliban militants who have made the region a stronghold. As US predator drones criss-cross the sky overhead, troops on the ground endure a daily confrontation with suicide bomber attacks, mortar fire and the piercing cold

...the Pakistani Army still views the battles it is fighting against extremists very differently from Western strategists and policy-makers. Scores of private conversations with soldiers of all ranks reveal that few see themselves as fighting in a 'war on terror' that many of them abhor.

Many believe that India, Pakistan's long-term regional rival, and Afghanistan are manipulating the militants fighting in Pakistan. In a mirror image of the Western analysis that attributes the success of the Taliban in Afghanistan to their bases in Pakistan, the Pakistani officers blame the war in Afghanistan for their troubles at home.

Privately few have much good to say about the West either. Anti-American sentiment is widespread. Many - both on the front line and at senior levels - doubt that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11. Instead the officers and men interviewed by The Observer see their fight as a necessary struggle to purge their own nation of an internal threat. 'It is our war, not anyone else's,' said Colonel Nauman...

One other key development being eagerly watched in Bajaur is the activity of local tribesmen who have formed so-called lashkars, traditional informal armed tribal militias that deal with specific problems, to force the militants out of their areas. 'The tribesmen have risen against the militants. It could be the turning point in our fight against militancy,' said Owais Ghani, the governor of the North-West Frontier Province.

Few doubt the eventual winner of the battle of Bajaur.  Even senior militants are already melting away [emphasis added]. The Observer found one in a slum area in Karachi, 1,000 miles to the south, earlier this month. But the question is what happens next. The key, analysts and soldiers agree, will be the political follow-through.

'The solutions to this conflict will not be military alone. The military can open up space for the administration of justice, political activity and development, said Major-General Tariq Khan. 'If we don't go down that road we will be in a vacuum, but I am sure these efforts are in train.'..

War on Taliban sparks refugee crisis
Sunday Times, Nov. 16
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5162347.ece

Hundreds of thousands of once prosperous [emphasis added] Pakistani villagers are stranded in freezing tented refugee camps after being compelled to leave home by their own forces in a ferocious battle against the Taliban along the Afghan border.

Yesterday 300,000 Pakistani men, women and children, many of them driven from farms in the Bajaur region, were sheltering in eight makeshift camps on the outskirts of their nearest city, Peshawar.

In one of the camps, Sheikh Yassin, home to 13,000 newly displaced Pakistanis, five children died of hypothermia on one night last week. They had been weakened by diarrhoea rife among children in the camp, which has no sanitation.

Aid officials had hoped to transfer some refugees to Jalozai, an area near Peshawar that was once an Afghan refugee camp, but on Friday they had to abandon their plans because of security concerns.

“The level of displacement is unprecedented in Pakistan,” said Mohammed Adar, the beleaguered head of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Peshawar...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

ARTICLES FOUND NOV. 17

Karzai Makes Offer to Taliban
Afghan Promises To Protect Leader If He Negotiates
Washington Post, Nov. 16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/16/AR2008111600899.htmln

As international pressure mounts for negotiations with insurgents, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that he would guarantee the security of Taliban chief Mohammad Omar if he decides to enter into talks.

Striking a defiant tone, Karzai said during a news conference in the Afghan capital that if the Taliban leader agreed to negotiate a peace settlement with Karzai's government, he would resist demands from the international community to hand over Omar to U.S. authorities.

"As for Mullah Omar and his associates, if I hear from him that he is willing to come to Afghanistan or to negotiate for peace and for liberty so that our children will not be killed anymore, I as the president of Afghanistan will go to any length to provide him security," Karzai said.

"If I say I want protection for Mullah Omar, the international community has two choices: Remove me or leave," he added.

Karzai delivered his remarks after weeks of speculation that negotiations are already underway between the Afghan government and insurgent leaders. In September, several representatives from Karzai's government met with former Taliban leaders in Saudi Arabia. That meeting was widely viewed as the potential first step on what could be a long road to a negotiated settlement to end the decades-long conflict in Afghanistan...

Afghan Taliban Leader Rejects Karzai's Safety Vow
Reuters, Nov. 17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/17/AR2008111700640.html?hpid=moreheadlines

A Taliban militant leader rejected Monday an offer from Afghan President Hamid Karzai of safe passage for insurgent leaders who wanted to talk peace.

Karzai, back from a trip to Britain and the United States, said Sunday he would guarantee the safety of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar if he was prepared to negotiate.

With the Taliban insurgency intensifying seven years after the hardline Islamists were forced from power, the possibility of talks with more moderate Taliban leaders is increasingly being considered, both in Afghanistan and among its allies.

The Afghan government says it is willing to talk to anyone who recognizes the constitution.

The Taliban have ruled out any talks as long as foreign troops remain in Afghanistan. Karzai said Sunday that condition was unacceptable.

Mullah Brother, deputy leader of the Taliban, rejected Karzai's offer of safe passage and again said foreign troops had to leave before negotiations could start.

"As long as foreign occupiers remain in Afghanistan, we aren't ready for talks because they hold the power and talks won't bear fruit ... The problems in Afghanistan are because of them," Brother said.

"We are safe in Afghanistan and we have no need for Hamid Karzai's offer of safety," he told Reuters by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location, adding that the Taliban jihad, or holy war, would go on...

Why hasn't the U.S. gone after Mullah Omar in Pakistan? (long piece, worth reading)
McClatchy Newspapers, Nov. 16
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/55947.html

For seven years, the Bush administration has pursued al Qaida but done almost nothing to hunt down the Afghan Taliban leadership in its sanctuaries in Pakistan, and that's left Mullah Mohammad Omar and his deputies free to direct an escalating war against the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

The administration's decision, U.S. and NATO officials said, has allowed the Taliban to regroup, rearm and recruit at bases in southwestern Pakistan. Since the puritanical Islamic movement's resurgence began in early 2005, it's killed at least 626 U.S.-led NATO troops, 301 of them Americans, along with thousands of Afghans, and handed President-elect Barack Obama a growing guerrilla war with no end in sight.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its highest levels since 2001; the Taliban and other al Qaida-allied groups control large swaths of the south and east; NATO governments are reluctant to send more troops; and Afghan President Hamid Karzai faces an uncertain future amid fears that elections set for next year may have to be postponed.

Nevertheless, a U.S. defense official told McClatchy: "We have not seen any pressure on the Pakistanis" to crack down on Omar and his deputies and close their arms and recruiting networks. Like seven other U.S. and NATO officials who discussed the issue, he requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

"There has never been convergence on a campaign plan against Mullah Omar," said a U.S. military official. The Bush administration, he said, miscalculated by hoping that Omar and his deputies would embrace an Afghan government-run reconciliation effort or "wither away" as their insurgency was destroyed.

Many U.S. and NATO officials, in fact, are convinced that while Pakistan is officially a U.S. ally in the war against Islamic extremism, sympathetic Pakistani army and intelligence officers bent on returning a pro-Pakistan Islamic regime to Kabul are protecting and aiding the Taliban leadership, dubbed the Quetta shura, or council, after its sanctuary in the Baluchistan provincial capital of Quetta.

Wounded Taliban fighters are treated in Pakistani military hospitals in Baluchistan, and guerrillas who run out of ammunition have been monitored dashing across the frontier of sweeping desert and rolling hills to restock at caches on the Pakistani side, the U.S. and NATO officials said.

"They have free rein down there," said a senior NATO official.

Omar, the one-eyed founder of the Taliban movement that imposed puritanical Islamic rule on Afghanistan with Pakistani and al Qaida support during the 1990s, and bin Laden fled to Pakistan after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Bin Laden and his followers crossed into the Federally Administered Tribal Area, which borders eastern Afghanistan. Omar and his lieutenants crossed into Baluchistan, which abuts the southern Afghan provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, the heartland of the Taliban insurrection, U.S. officials said.

From Baluchistan, Omar and his council are believed to direct the Taliban's broad military and political strategies and to arrange arms and other supplies for their fighters in southern Afghanistan [emphasis added], U.S. officials said.

They preside over military, intelligence, political, and religious committees, and also oversee a fund-raising operation in the Pakistani port city of Karachi that raises money across the Muslim world, said a Pentagon adviser on the region, who asked not to be further identified.

Baluchistan also is a major corridor through which Afghan opium, which is refined into heroin, is smuggled to the outside world, providing the Taliban with $60-$80 million a year.

The Bush administration, however, has focused virtually all of its attention, funds and energy on routing al Qaida in the FATA because it considers bin Laden and his organization the main terrorist threat to the United States and its allies [emphasis added], U.S. officials said...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Why Is This Ritual Performance "News"?
Terry Glavin,
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-is-this-ritual-performance-news.html

How often does Karzai have to engage in this predictable routine, performed solely to demonstrate that he is not merely another belligerent in Afghanistan's bandit wars or a "puppet" of the foreigners, before it's just not newsworthy anymore?

November, 16, 2008: President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has offered to provide security for the Taleban's reclusive leader, Mullah Omar, if he agrees to peace talks. Mr. Karzai made the offer despite the multi-million dollar bounty offered for the militant leader's capture by the United States...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

Articles found November 19, 2008

Canadian troops to lease civilian choppers
By BILL GRAVELAND, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Article Link

PASAB, Afghanistan -- Until they get their own helicopters next year, Canadian troops in Afghanistan will have access to six civilian choppers to lessen the risk of coming under insurgent attack while moving along the country's notoriously dangerous roads.

The Mi-8 helicopters are being contracted from Toronto-based Sky Link as a stopgap measure. The first flight of the aircraft took place at Kandahar Airfield yesterday.

"As a task force, it allows us to transport with the Mi-8's cargo and with the Chinook's personnel, with a view to try and get Canadians off the roads here in Afghanistan where they are exposed to all the dangers of this country -- ambushes and IEDs and the other things that all Canadians are aware of," said Col. Christopher Coates, air wing commander of Joint Task Force Afghanistan.

The decision to contract the Mi-8s, which will be flown by civilian pilots, is the result of a recommendation from the Manley report last spring that Canada should have some air capabilities for its operations in Afghanistan.

The Mi-8 is a medium twin-turbine transport helicopter that is one of the world's most-produced choppers.

It is used by more than 50 countries.
More on link

U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan won't rest for winter
Forces will continue pursuing extremists in the east despite the brutal weather, says Gen. David McKiernan.
By Julian E. Barnes  November 19, 2008
Article Link

Reporting from Washington -- U.S. troops in Afghanistan will continue pursuing extremists in the eastern part of the country over the brutal winter months, but lack the forces in southern areas to mount the same offensive, the top U.S. commander there said Tuesday.

U.S. efforts in eastern Afghanistan could be helped by pressure on extremist groups from Pakistan, said Gen. David D. McKiernan, the U.S. and NATO commander. But U.S. and allied commanders in the south must await the arrival of extra troops sought by McKiernan. Southern Afghanistan includes Helmand province and the city of Kandahar, traditional areas of greater Taliban strength.


In an address to the Atlantic Council of the United States think tank in Washington, McKiernan said that his standing request for about 20,000 additional troops would be approved -- "hopefully quickly" -- by U.S. officials. McKiernan is seeking combat brigades, aviation support and logistics specialists. One brigade already approved is scheduled to arrive by February.
More on link

Six soldiers, 10 rebels killed in Afghanistan
Article Link

HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) — Six Afghan soldiers were killed, one of them beheaded, in a battle with Taliban insurgents, authorities said Tuesday, also reporting at least 10 militants had died in fighting.

Five of the soldiers were killed in a gunfight that erupted after Taliban militants ambushed an army patrol late Monday in the Bala Buluk district of Farah province, military corps commander for western Afghanistan Fazal Ahmad Sayar told AFP.

"Five soldiers were killed and five were wounded. The militants beheaded one of the wounded soldiers," he said.

Sayar said around 100 Taliban had mounted the large-scale attack, but was unable to immediately give the number of militant casualties.

But according to western Afghanistan police spokesman Abdul Raof Ahmadi, police and NATO-led forces who were sent to the area killed five Taliban.

There was no comment from the insurgent militia.

The Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001, have previously beheaded people they accuse of spying for the government.
More on link

Canadian air wing takes flight in Afghanistan
Six leased Russian helicopters and six Chinooks will carry cargo and personnel so troops won't have to rely on dangerous road convoys
GRAEME SMITH  November 18, 2008
Article Link

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Two rented helicopters lifted into the orange sky over Kandahar at dawn yesterday, their flight marking the first time Canadian troops have received support on the front lines from their own aircraft.

The helicopters are among six leased Russian Mi-8s that started work for the Canadians yesterday, part of a new Canadian air wing in Afghanistan that will also include six used Chinooks.

Canada's battle group moved into southern Afghanistan in 2006 without any helicopters, unlike the British, U.S., and Dutch forces. The lack of air assets forced the Canadians to rely more heavily on road convoys, which the Canadian commanders described at the time as an advantage because it would give the troops more familiarity with the Afghan people and terrain.

But regular traffic of military vehicles on Afghan roads has proven deadly for Canadian soldiers as the rising insurgency targets supply convoys. The problem was highlighted by John Manley's commission on Afghanistan, which set a deadline of February, 2009, for obtaining medium-lift helicopters.
More on link

 

[MarkOttawa]

U.S. Seeks New Supply Routes Into Afghanistan
Washington Post, Nov. 19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/18/AR2008111803940.html

TORKHAM, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 -- A rise in Taliban attacks along the length of a vital NATO supply route that runs through this border town in the shadow of the Khyber Pass has U.S. officials seeking alternatives, including the prospect of beginning deliveries by a tortuous overland journey from Europe.

Supplying troops in landlocked Afghanistan has long been the Achilles' heel of foreign armies here, most recently the Soviets, whose forces were nearly crippled by Islamist insurgent attacks on vulnerable supply lines.

About 75 percent of NATO and U.S. supplies bound for Afghanistan -- including gas, food and military equipment -- are transported over land through Pakistan. The journey begins in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi and continues north through Pakistan's volatile North-West Frontier Province and tribal areas before supplies arrive at the Afghan border. The convoys then press forward along mountain hairpin turns through areas of Afghanistan that are known as havens for insurgents...

The growing danger has forced the Pentagon to seek far longer, but possibly safer, alternate routes through Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, according to Defense Department documents. A notice to potential contractors by the U.S. Transportation Command in September said that "strikes, border delays, accidents and pilferage" in Pakistan and the risk of "attacks and armed hijackings" in Afghanistan posed "a significant risk" to supplies for Western forces in Afghanistan.

A reliable supply route is considered vital to sustaining the approximately 67,000 foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan, including 32,000 Americans. Nearly half of U.S. forces operate under NATO command. Attacks on convoys have also been a problem in Iraq, where the United States has improvised effective but costly ways to keep supplies flowing.

A week ago, a bold Taliban raid on a NATO supply convoy on the Pakistani side of the pass forced authorities to temporarily close traffic through Torkham. For days after the attack on the 23-truck convoy, many of the hundreds of truckers who regularly traverse this treacherous route were stranded, forced to watch their profits dwindle. Pakistani authorities reopened the NATO supply route through Torkham on Monday after assigning extra security to the convoys.

But on Tuesday [Nov. 18], a day after the reopening, dozens of truck drivers seemed far from certain that their troubles were over. The attack in the Khyber tribal area on the Pakistani side of the border last week was one in a series in recent months that has cost NATO suppliers millions in losses this year. In March, insurgents set fire to 40 to 50 NATO oil tankers near Torkham. A month later, Taliban raiders made off with military helicopter engines valued at about $13 million.

NATO and U.S. military officials have said raids on the supply line from Pakistan to Afghanistan have not significantly affected their operations. "This is nothing new," said Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, a U.S. military spokeswoman in Afghanistan. "Bandits and insurgents have long proclaimed that they will attack our supply lines, though nothing they have done has caused any real impact to the military operations here."

Yet the scramble to find new routes appears to indicate the attacks have had some effect. The United States has already begun negotiations with countries along what the Pentagon has called a new northern route. An agreement with Georgia has been reached and talks are ongoing with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, according to an Oct. 31 Pentagon document. "We do not expect transit agreements with Iran or Uzbekistan," the Transportation Command told potential contractors...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Afghanistan, Pakistan and intl security
Conference of Defence Associations media round-up, Nov. 19
http://www.cdaforumcad.ca/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1227122247

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Taliban Regains Power, Influence in Afghanistan
Sets Up Courts, Local Governments in Southern Regions
Wall St. Journal, Nov. 20
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122713845685342447.html

The Taliban are setting up courts and other local-government institutions across southern Afghanistan, challenging U.S. efforts to pacify the country and bolster the authority of the central government in Kabul.

Senior American military officials said the Taliban run roughly two dozen law courts in southern Afghanistan, one of the armed Islamist group's main strongholds. Drawing on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law, the courts work to resolve conflicts over property, grazing rights and inheritances, the officials said.

The Taliban have also appointed unofficial governors and mayors to exercise day-to-day control over remote areas, amounting to a parallel government independent of Kabul, according to the U.S. officials.

"I do see the attempts in many areas by the Taliban to exert intimidation and exert control," Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said in remarks Tuesday at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. "They do try to have shadow governors or court systems."

The Taliban have regained control in these pockets despite seven years of American attacks and the presence of more than 50,000 U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops. There are thousands of U.S. and British troops in southern Afghanistan, but American commanders say they don't have enough forces to prevent the Taliban from controlling territory there.

Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., Said Tayeb Jawad, said in an interview that the Taliban is expanding its reach into Afghans' daily lives.

"It is a disgrace that seven years after the beginning of the military operations in Afghanistan we are seeing a U-turn back to how the situation was before Sept. 11," he said.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Monday [Nov. 17] that Taliban activity at the local-government level appears to be rising [emphasis added].

The first indications that the Taliban were taking on government functions appeared more than a year ago and picked up this summer, said Henry Crumpton, a former senior CIA and State Department counterterrorism official. He said the functions include running courts and collecting taxes.

Two senior U.S. military officials in Afghanistan said the Taliban created their courts by abolishing the tribal judicial systems that have long settled disputes in poor, conservative regions.

The Taliban used a similar approach in the 1990s, when they rose to power by using force to bring a measure of order to unstable regions of the country...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

ARTICLES FOUND NOV. 22 (too many stories to do separately here)

US Marines, National Guard in Afstan/Future US strength increases
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2008/11/us-marines-national-guard-in-afstan.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

ARTICLES FOUND NOV. 23

Canada plans to exploit Taliban's winter weakness
CP, Nov. 23
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/542097

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan–Canadian and international troops plan on a continued campaign of harassing the Taliban in southern Afghanistan during what traditionally have been the slow winter months.

The Taliban generally use the winter to reload for the busy fighting season which begins in the spring.

Their fighters are ill-equipped to handle Afghanistan's harsh winter climate and often members of the leadership return home to their families in the larger cities or in Pakistan.

But that will not be the case this year.

Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson, commander of Task Force Kandahar, is taking the approach that the best defence is a good offence.

There have been a number of operations, both big and small in the volatile Zhari, Panjwaii and Arbhandab districts in the regions surrounding Kandahar city in recent months.

The latest Canadian-led operation in the Zhari district involved a battalion of British Royal Commandos, a mechanized brigade from the Royal Canadian Regiment and troops from the 22 Infantry from the United States.

[Actually 2-2 "Ramrods:
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2008/08/that-us-army-battalion-for-kandahar-has.html]

"They went into an area where the insurgents typically enjoy partial or full freedom of movement. The method in which we deployed forces in the area essentially overwhelmed the insurgency too," explained Canadian Maj. Fraser Auld, the operations officer for Task Force Kandahar.

"We know it took them by surprise and we know the insurgents were unable to cope with the synchronized approach in this operation."

The operation yielded an IED factory (improvised explosive device), 24 barrels of home made explosives, numerous anti-personnel mines, a motorcycle rigged with explosives, several 107 mm rockets, small arms, weapons and ammunition and 500 kilograms of hashish.

"This was for Gen. Thompson and his merry men," said Lt. Col. Charles Stickland, commander of 42 Royal Marine Commandos.

"The winter campaign which Gen. Thompson is seeking to fight actually means anywhere he goes he can reach out and touch the insurgents. Each time we do this we make the Taliban understand that there aren't any safe havens," he added..

"They went into an area where the insurgents typically enjoy partial or full freedom of movement. The method in which we deployed forces in the area essentially overwhelmed the insurgency too," explained Canadian Maj. Fraser Auld, the operations officer for Task Force Kandahar.

"We know it took them by surprise and we know the insurgents were unable to cope with the synchronized approach in this operation."

The operation yielded an IED factory (improvised explosive device), 24 barrels of home made explosives, numerous anti-personnel mines, a motorcycle rigged with explosives, several 107 mm rockets, small arms, weapons and ammunition and 500 kilograms of hashish.

"This was for Gen. Thompson and his merry men," said Lt. Col. Charles Stickland, commander of 42 Royal Marine Commandos.

"The winter campaign which Gen. Thompson is seeking to fight actually means anywhere he goes he can reach out and touch the insurgents. Each time we do this we make the Taliban understand that there aren't any safe havens," he added...

Militants and military brace for a winter of war in Afghanistan
Normally the fighting slows when the harsh weather sets in, but this year it is likely to be different.
LA Times, Nov. 23
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-winterwar23-2008nov23,0,3582857.story

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan -- In recent years, the first snow falling on the jagged mountain peaks of Afghanistan has ushered in a seasonal slowdown in fighting between insurgents and the Western forces that overthrew the Taliban in 2001.

This winter looks to be different. Snow and icy terrain aside, both sides have made it clear that they plan to keep fighting, each contending that the harsh conditions favor them more than their enemy.

"We'll be pursuing them, and pursuing them aggressively, whatever the conditions, and they know this," said Canadian Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette, chief spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force [emphasis added], a vow amplified by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, in a speech in Washington on Tuesday.

The militants say they are more than ready. In restive Kandahar province, a mid-level Taliban field commander noted that winter weather had little effect on their weapons of choice: suicide attackers and roadside bombs, also known as improvised explosive devices.

"We have all the IEDs we need at the ready, stored in places they cannot find them," the commander said by phone from an undisclosed location. "And we have so, so many martyrs-in-waiting" -- suicide bombers, whose attacks are felt somewhere in Afghanistan almost daily.

As the temperature drops, both sides are factoring winter conditions into their tactical thinking. Western strategists say snow and extreme cold make it far more difficult for Taliban fighters to use infiltration routes through high mountain passes between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The flow of insurgents from Pakistan's tribal areas has been a crucial battlefield factor in recent months, particularly in Afghanistan's east, where most of the more than 30,000 U.S. troops are deployed.

But if winter storms hamper the militants' movements, they also erode some of the coalition's key advantages, particularly airstrikes and aerial surveillance. To an unprecedented degree, the coalition is relying on air power to turn the tables when Western troops are ambushed by militants in the hinterlands.

Without close air support, many little-reported skirmishes could have had very different outcomes, as when a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was shot down last month in Wardak province, not far from Kabul, the capital. Swift airstrikes against militants who were rapidly closing in allowed the crew to escape and the sophisticated craft to be recovered the next day.

Commanders quietly acknowledge that when air power is compromised by bad weather, small patrols and remote outposts are more vulnerable. And in winter, living conditions for troops in small, lightly manned bases in the rugged mountains, already primitive, will become even more difficult....

Early this month, militants killed two Spanish soldiers in western Afghanistan, a relatively peaceful part of the country. It was a little-noticed event in the United States but generated huge headlines in Spain. The newspaper El Pais reported on the hotly revived debate over whether Spain should keep its 700-troop presence here [emphasis added]...

Denmark to double contribution to Afghanistan
Xinhua, Nov. 22
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/22/content_10397571.htm

KABUL, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The visiting Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller on Saturday announced furthering financial and military support to Afghanistan.

"We will double the amount of money which goes to the reconstruction and development. We also send more troops to Afghanistan," Moller told reporters here after meeting his Afghan counterpart Rangin Dadfar Spanta.

However, Moller did not specify the number of troops which will be sent to the war-torn country in January 2009, but added his country's parliament is passing a "new strategy for support of Afghanistan."

Denmark has contributed 249 million U.S. dollars to the war-battered Afghanistan since 2002.

Some 780 Danish troops have been serving in Afghanistan [at Helmand with the Brits] mostly in the shape of the civilian-military units of Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) within the framework of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The Danish Foreign Minister also asserted that the royal European state would continue to help Afghanistan in the field of education, health and giving training to Afghan police forces.

Ringed by Foes, Pakistanis Fear the U.S., Too
NY Times, Nov. 22
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/world/asia/23pstan.html?ref=todayspaper

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A redrawn map of South Asia has been making the rounds among Pakistani elites. It shows their country truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west.

That the map was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some American neoconservative circles matters little here. It has fueled a belief among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the United States really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.

“One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan,” said a senior Pakistani government official involved in strategic planning, who insisted on anonymity as per diplomatic custom. “Some people feel the United States is colluding in this.”

That notion may strike Americans as strange coming from an ally of 50 years. But as the incoming Obama administration tries to coax greater cooperation from Pakistan in the fight against militancy, it can hardly be ignored.

This is a country where years of weak governance have left ample room for conspiracy theories of every kind. But like much such thinking anywhere, what is said frequently reveals the tender spots of a nation’s psyche. Educated Pakistanis sometimes say that they are paranoid, but add that they believe they have good reason...

...Several times in his campaign, he [Mr Obama] laid out the crux of his thinking. Reducing tensions between Pakistan and India would allow Pakistan to focus on the real threat — the Qaeda and Taliban militants who are tearing at the very fabric of the country.

“If Pakistan can look towards the east with confidence, it will be less likely to believe its interests are best advanced through cooperation with the Taliban,” Mr. Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last year.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html

But such an approach faces sizable obstacles, the biggest being the conflict over Kashmir. The Himalayan border area has been disputed since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and remains divided between them...

...distrust has been exacerbated by what Pakistanis see as the Bush administration’s tilt toward India.

Exhibit A for the Pakistanis is India’s nuclear deal with the United States, which allows India to engage in nuclear trade even though it never joined the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Pakistan, with its recent history of spreading nuclear technology, received no comparable bargain.

The nuclear deal was devised in Washington to position India as a strategic counterbalance to China. That is how it is seen in Pakistan, too, but with no enthusiasm.

“The United States has changed the whole nuclear order by this deal, and in doing so is containing China, the only friend Pakistan has in the region,” said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani Army general.

Further, Pakistan is upset about the advances India is making in Afghanistan, with no checks from the United States, Mr. Masood said...

The commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, got a taste of the challenge this month, when he visited Islamabad and sat down with a group of about 70 members of Pakistan’s Parliament at the residence of the United States ambassador, Anne W. Patterson. Their attitude showed an almost total incomprehension of the reasons for American behavior in the region after Sept. 11, 2001.

“A couple of the questions I got were, ‘Why did you Americans come to Afghanistan when it was so peaceful, before you got there?’ ” General McKiernan recalled during an appearance at the Atlantic Council in Washington last week.

“Another one,” he said, “was, ‘We understand that you’ve invited a thousand Indian soldiers to serve in Afghanistan by Christmas.’ ”

There was no truth to the claim, he told the Pakistanis. “We have a lot of work to do,” he told his audience in Washington...

Recently, in the officer’s mess in Bajaur, the northern tribal region where the Pakistani Army is tied down fighting the militants, one officer offered his own theory: Osama bin Laden did not exist, he told a visiting journalist.

Rather, he was a creation of the Americans, who needed an excuse to invade Afghanistan and encroach on Pakistan [emphasis added].

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

Articles found November 24, 2008

Pakistan dissolving military spy agency's political wing
Reuters Monday, November 24, 2008
Article Link

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has disbanded the political wing of the military intelligence agency, the foreign minister said Sunday.

The cooperation of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, directorate is regarded as vital to the West in fighting the threat of Al Qaeda globally and defeating the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

But critics call it a "state within a state." Pakistan's eight-month-old civilian government has regularly accused the ISI's political wing of involvement in the overthrow of their governments. Neighboring Afghanistan and India view the ISI with great distrust.

The Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, described the disbanding of the ISI's political wing as a "positive development."

"ISI is a precious national institution, and it wants to focus fully on counter-terrorism activities," the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan quoted him as saying.

The report did not say when the decision was made.

The army has ruled Pakistan for more than half its history since 1947. Consequently, issues related to the military are closely watched in the region as well as by Western allies of the nuclear-armed nation.
More on link

MacKay hints at post-Kandahar role for Canadian troops
Mike Blanchfield ,  Canwest News Service Published: Sunday, November 23, 2008
Article Link

OTTAWA -- The Canadian Forces will continue to play an active role in world hot spots even after troops are withdrawn from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in 2011, Defence Minister Peter MacKay says.

In an interview with the Canwest News Service, MacKay hinted that Canadian troops might still have a role to play in Afghanistan after 2011 - the deadline set by Parliament for the end of the current combat mission - and if they do not, the Forces will likely be called to duty elsewhere.

"There are many ways in which we can make contributions beyond 2011. What we've said is the current combat mission, the current configuration, will end in 2011. That's a firm date, confirmed by Parliament and respectful of Parliament," MacKay said.

After 2011, I suspect, and I don't want to speculate, there's always going to be a call for Canada to participate where we're needed, when we're needed. We've never shied away from that. We've always stepped up."

MacKay also brushed aside any suggestion that if Canada ends its high-profile combat mission in Afghanistan it might diminish the enhanced reputation the Forces have benefited from in recent years.

"I hope that we have elevated in the hearts and minds of people in our own country just how important having a robust military is. That includes peacekeeping but it also includes to do the business when called upon, whether it's been in Afghanistan, or as it has been in past conflicts in Korea or Yugoslavia or in places around the world like Haiti."

Canada has been criticized for focusing all of its military efforts on Afghanistan at the expense of other world crises zones, particularly in Africa, where ongoing violence in the Darfur region of the Sudan and in the eastern Congo has demanded attention. A Canadian withdrawal from Afghanistan or a dramatic scaling back of the 2,500 troops now in Kandahar could also open the door to a greater focus on Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest and most unstable country.
More on link

Australia blasts UN for delays in Afghanistan
Cynthia Banham and Jonathan Pearlman November 24, 2008
Article Link

THE Minister for Defence, Joel Fitzgibbon, has lashed out at the United Nations for hampering the rebuilding of Afghanistan amid concerns that internal wrangling and bureaucracy are obstructing efforts to help the country.

Mr Fitzgibbon expressed his anger at a meeting of defence ministers from the war's southern command and rallied Australia's coalition partners to individually and jointly protest to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.

He was especially angry that an offer by Australia to send a one-star general to help the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, with the reconstruction effort had fallen on deaf ears.

"[The envoy] is unable to work effectively across the country," Mr Fitzgibbon said.
More on link

Pakistan says militants pushed back from Peshawar
By RIAZ KHAN – 4 hours ago
Article Link

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A two-week operation to secure the frontier city of Peshawar, which sits on a key supply route for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, killed 25 suspected militants, a Pakistani official said Monday.

Security forces backed by warplanes and artillery swept through an area between the city and Pakistan's wild tribal belt, where Taliban and al-Qaida militants have found refuge.

Zafrullah Khan, commander of paramilitary Frontier Constabulary troops in the area, said his force and police have taken control of 22 of 25 targeted villages and would clear the others within a week.

"The militants in these areas have been a big threat to the writ of the government," Khan said. "They have been a main source and origin of the crimes in Peshawar and other cities of the province."

Some 25 suspects have been killed and another 35 arrested during the operation, he said. He said those detained included foreigners, but provided no details.

Four suicide jackets and weapons, including guns, rockets and grenades were seized, he said.
More on link

French FM airs doubt about Obama's Afghan plan
17 hours ago
Article Link

PARIS (AP) — The French foreign minister says he has doubts about U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's plans to fight Islamic militants in Afghanistan.

Bernard Kouchner says plans that increase troop numbers would only work "in precise areas with a precise task." Kouchner says France believes military power alone won't stabilize the situation in Afghanistan.

Kouchner told France's TV5 television Sunday that international troops should help the Afghan people "take matters into their own hands."

Obama wants to step up the U.S. fight against terrorism in Afghanistan.
More on link

Enlisting Tribes Against Militants In Afghanistan Carries Risks
November 23, 2008 By Abubakar Siddique
Article Link

General David McKiernan, the top commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has recommended giving more power to local councils to stem violence in the country.

Speaking to the Washington-based Atlantic Council of the United States on November 21, the general said achieving "reconciliation at the local level" has the potential to be " a very, very powerful metric." McKiernan emphasized that he understands the unique challenges faced in Afghanistan. But he also stressed that his plan would borrow from the Iraq model, which takes a "bottom up" approach that taps and organizes local communities tired of the harsh rules and lack of security associated with radical militants.

"What I do think has great merit -- great potential -- is a community outreach program that takes an area, say a district, in Afghanistan and brings together the leaders of that district," McKiernan said. "Whether they are tribal elders; whether they are maliks; whether they are religious scholars; mullahs; whatever, in a shura; [it] allows them to select a committee to represent that community."

McKiernan added that such an approach would have multiple benefits. It would allow the Afghan government in Kabul to empower these committees so they can provide local security and oversight. At the same time, it would also allow the central government to benefit from the insight community leaders.

But local leaders are taking a cautious approach, noting the harsh realities on the ground and warning of the risks involved.
More on link

 

[MarkOttawa]

Marines drafting plan to send more troops to Afghanistan
Top officers have met repeatedly to consider deploying 15,000 Marines to join the 30,000 U.S. troops already there to fight the Taliban and other insurgents.
LA Times, Nov. 24
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan24-2008nov24,0,5733953.story

Reporting from Marine Headquarters At Al Asad, Iraq -- Marine Corps leaders are devising a plan to send thousands of additional combat troops to Afghanistan to wage aggressive warfare against the Taliban that they expect could take years.

The Marines would like to deploy more than 15,000 troops if Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, newly named head of the U.S. Central Command, approve. About 2,300 Marines have already been sent to Afghanistan to replace units from Twentynine Palms, Calif., and Camp Lejeune, N.C., that are returning home after eight months...

The Marine proposal was sharpened during a series of meetings in Afghanistan, Iraq and Bahrain in the last week involving generals and other top officers. Marine Commandant Gen. James T. Conway was in contact with a group headed by Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, commanding general of the Marine Force Central Command, traveling from base to base.

"Treat every day as a combat mission," Helland wrote in a battle plan for one of his commanders. "Have a plan to kill the enemy hiding among the innocent."

The Marines have long made no secret of their desire to depart from Iraq and redeploy to Afghanistan, where they were the first conventional U.S. troops in 2001 to invade the country to assist local forces in toppling the Taliban regime.

Finding troops will not be easy unless there is a significant drawdown in Iraq, where Marines have been deployed to Anbar province, west of Baghdad, since 2004. The Marines have about 22,000 troops in the sprawling province, assigned mostly to back up Iraqi security forces if the Sunni Arab insurgency attempts to rebound.

Maj. Gen. John Kelly, the top Marine in Iraq, who met with Helland last week, said there could be a "significant" reduction in Anbar within months without endangering progress made toward routing the insurgency and strengthening the Iraqi economy, political structure and security forces.

Kelly, in an interview, said his views were not prompted by the Marine Corps' desire to redeploy to Afghanistan.

"All my recommendations and decisions have nothing to do with Afghanistan," said Kelly, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward). "I'm absolutely focused on Iraq. I work 20-hour days. I don't have time to read about Afghanistan."..

Sending a large force into landlocked Afghanistan presents significant challenges for the Marine Corps, a sea service that operates best when it can be linked to a ship-based resupply system.

One plan being discussed by Marine brass would be to use Russian air cargo contractors flying aged aircraft. The U.S. already uses such contractors to bring mine-resistant armored vehicles into Iraq and Afghanistan [emphasis added].

If upper officers are keen on going to Afghanistan, so are many of the young Marines in Iraq. As Helland met with corporals and sergeants there, several offered to reenlist if they could be assured of going to Afghanistan, where they face a much higher probability of engaging in combat...

Germany to use Russian land to resupply troops
Quqnoos.com, Nov. 23
http://quqnoos.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2095&Itemid=48

RUSSIA has agreed to let the German military use Russian territory to transport supplies to its troops in Afghanistan.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the agreement was a sign of increased co-operation between the two countries in the fight against terror in Afghanistan.

This is the first time the Russian government has allowed a foreign country to use its territory to transport military equipment to Afghanistan.

The agreement was signed in Germany during a visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in October 2007, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said.

Before the agreement, Germany used the Termez airbase in Uzbekistan to ship supplies to German troops in Afghanistan.

The NATO-led force also uses the Khyber Pass route from Pakistan to get supplies such as fuel and food to its troops.

The NATO supply convoys have come under attack in recent weeks, forcing the Pakistani government to close the pass for two days last week... 

Mark
Ottawa