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Afghan senators call for govt control over foreign troops
August 12, 2008
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan senators demanded Tuesday that international troops operating in Afghanistan be brought under the country's law to make them accountable for mounting civilian casualties.
NATO force denies Afghan civilian casualty report
August 12, 2008
KABUL (Reuters) - The NATO-led force in Afghanistan has denied reports it killed more than a dozen civilians in an air strike to the northeast of the capital.
Taliban claims bombing in Pakistan; up to 14 dead
By RIAZ KHAN Associated Press August 12, 2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A roadside bomb destroyed an air force truck on a bridge Tuesday in Pakistan's volatile northwest and killed up to 14 people. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack
Taliban ambush Afghan governor's convoy, 2 wounded
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban militants attacked the convoy of an Afghan governor Tuesday, wounding two of the official's guards, the governor's spokesman said.
British soldier, four civilians die after Afghan attack
KABUL (AFP) - A British soldier and four civilians have died after being wounded in a suicide attack in Kabul, NATO and British forces said Tuesday, a day after the blast killed three Afghans outright.
Senior al Qaeda leader killed in Pakistan
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Senior Al Qaeda commander Abu Saeed al-Masri has been killed in recent clashes with Pakistani forces in a Pakistani region near the Afghan border, a security official said on Tuesday.
Canada Afghan troop deaths mount
Tuesday, 12 August 2008 BBC News
A Canadian soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, the 90th soldier to die since Canada's mission there began in 2002, the Canadian military says.
Stronger U.S. role likely in Afghanistan
The Pentagon wants more control over NATO there in light of Taliban resurgence.
Christian Science Monitor, MA By Gordon Lubold Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor August 12, 2008
Washington-The Pentagon will send a one-star general to Afghanistan this fall as part of a politically parlous but determined effort by the US to assume greater control in the country's troubled southern sector.
MPs attack deputies for passport delay
www.quqnoos.com Written by Noorullah Rahmani Monday, 11 August 2008
Deputy Finance Minister takes the rap for delay in computerised passports
PARLIAMENT has summoned the deputy ministers of defence and finance to face allegations that the passport department is ridden with corruption.
Afghan security contractors called into question following soldier's death
The Canadian Press / August 12, 2008
OTTAWA — They are often a ragtag band of locally hired guns.
The long, hard slog against scrappy Taliban fighters
Boston Globe - Editors By H.D.S. Greenway August 12, 2008
'RAGTAG TALIBAN Show Tenacity in Afghanistan," read the headline last week. Washington and NATO capitals were reportedly "soul-searching" over how a disheveled insurgency had managed to
New al-Qaeda focus on NATO supplies
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / August 12, 2008
KARACHI - The Taliban and al-Qaeda have with some success squeezed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's)supply lines that run through Pakistan into Afghanistan, especially goods in transit in Khyber Agency on the border.
Rape allegations force Afghan gov't crackdown
By HEIDI VOGT Associated Press Mon Aug 11, 1:15 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Ali Khan braved death threats and public scorn to out the powerful men he accuses of gang-raping his 12-year-old niece.
AFGHANISTAN: ICRC assists thousands of displaced people
KABUL, 12 August 2008 (IRIN) - Over 9,500 people displaced from their homes by conflict in southern and central Afghanistan have received food and non-food assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Geneva-based organisation said.
October concert for late tenor Pavarotti to benefit Afghans
By Mohammed Nadir Farhad In Kabul, Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan, August 12 (UNHCR) – A year after his death, a charity concert and memorial ceremony will be held in honour of the late Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti at the renowned historical site of Petra, Jordan in mid-October.
Top US Marine commander visits Afghanistan
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFP) - The United States' top Marine commander flew into Afghanistan Monday to meet troops in the field, at a time when the Pentagon increasingly turns its attention to fighting the Taliban.
Insurgents attack outpost in Panjwaii killing 90th Canadian soldier
Tobi Cohen, THE CANADIAN PRESS - mytelus.com August 11, 2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A burly "mountain of a man" nicknamed the Friendly Giant became the second Canadian combat death in three days when insurgents attacked a remote outpost in the Panjwaii
India Frustrated by a Rudderless Pakistan
New York Times, United States By SOMINI SENGUPTA August 11, 2008
NEW DELHI-Usually, when two rival nations try to work toward peace, their governments talk to each other.
What happened to 'one for all, all for one'?
Globe and Mail, Canada LEWIS MACKENZIE From Monday's Globe and Mail August 11, 2008
So, Canada has worked out a way to provide our troops with medium-lift helicopters in southern Afghanistan: a one-year lease for six Russian-made helicopters that will cover us until we can purchase six used
What's the Word for 'University' in Afghanistan? Parliament Can't Decide
Chronicle of Higher Education (USA) August 11, 2008
Afghanistan’s lawmakers spent today’s session of parliament debating the contentious issue of which word to use for “university,” the Reuters news agency reported.
DynCorp gets $40M Navy pact for Afghanistan work
Monday August 11, 10:43 am ET
DynCorp gets $40 million Navy contract to construct home base for Afghan National Army brigade
Insecurity threatens Herat investors
Written by www.quqnoos.com Monday, 11 August 2008
Unions calls on 'weak' government to clamp down on criminal gangs
(PAN) Investors have set up about 45 companies in the western province of Herat over the last six years.
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Afghan senators call for govt control over foreign troops
August 12, 2008
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan senators demanded Tuesday that international troops operating in Afghanistan be brought under the country's law to make them accountable for mounting civilian casualties.
Parliament's upper house, or Meshrano Jirga (House of Elders), said it would draw up legislation to cover the operations of the US-led and NATO-led troops helping the government fight a Taliban-led insurgency.
The demand came during a heated debate over the number of civilians being killed in international military action against insurgents, mainly air strikes, with a series of deadly incidents in the past weeks.
"It was decided that the presence of foreign forces must be legalised under a law," a secretary to the house, Aminuddin Muzafari, told reporters afterwards.
"There should be a programme, a law, under which these forces conduct their activities. We will make that law," he said.
Any proposed law would have to have the approval of both houses of parliament as well as President Hamid Karzai.
There are already various UN and bilateral accords governing the role of the international soldiers who started deploying in late 2001 after an invasion that toppled the hardline Taliban government.
The senators also demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of the soldiers, now numbering around 70,000. The forces have said they would leave when the government is able to take care of security itself.
The upper house debate centred on an incident in which Afghan police accused troops with NATO's UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force of killing civilians in the province of Kapisa near Kabul at the weekend.
ISAF has rejected the claim, saying a thorough investigation had shown that only militants were killed. Karzai has appointed a commission to investigate.
Other presidential investigations have found that more than 60 civilians were killed in two separate incidents early last month.
"Every time they have killed civilians we have condemned it," said another member of the upper house, Baqir Sharifi, after the debate.
"But this is not enough. They must be brought under laws and their activities must be controlled."
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NATO force denies Afghan civilian casualty report
August 12, 2008
KABUL (Reuters) - The NATO-led force in Afghanistan has denied reports it killed more than a dozen civilians in an air strike to the northeast of the capital.
Twelve civilians were killed and 18 wounded when NATO-led forces carried out an airstrike on suspected Taliban militants in Kapisa province on Saturday, according to provincial officials.
President Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation.
The issue of civilian casualties has led to a rift between Afghanistan and its Western allies, with President Hamid Karzai saying on Sunday that foreign airstrikes had only succeeded in killing ordinary Afghans and would not defeat the insurgency.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) says it has conducted an investigation and maintains those killed were insurgents.
"Following recent media reports of significant civilian casualties ... ISAF has now concluded a thorough investigation of the claim and has evidence that those killed were insurgents," ISAF said in a statement late on Monday.
Insurgents fired on ISAF soldiers in Tagab district in Kapisa province on Saturday but withdrew after two of their soldiers were wounded, ISAF said.
A surveillance aircraft later observed the men hiding their weapons and changing into civilian clothes, it said.
"Still under observation, they then moved to an open field where they were attacked and killed by shots from an ISAF aircraft," ISAF said.
"No innocent civilians were injured or killed."
About 1,000 civilians have been killed during the first six months of this year, aid agencies say. While most are believed to have died during insurgent attacks, many Afghans feel foreign forces don't take enough care in avoiding civilian casualties.
Violence has escalated in Afghanistan since 2006 when the Taliban, ousted from power in 2001, relaunched their insurgency against the government and foreign forces.
Taliban insurgents ambushed the convoy on Tuesday of the governor of Ghazni, which lies to the southwest of Kabul. Governor Mohammad Osman Osmani survived the attack which happened on a highway leading to Kabul, his spokesman said, adding two of Osmani's guards were wounded.
A clash broke out after the ambush which lasted for an hour and the insurgents suffered casualties, the spokesman said, without giving any figure.
The defense ministry said on Tuesday that six insurgents were killed in an operation in the southeastern province of Paktika.
Elsewhere, an improvised explosive device killed a Latvian soldier and wounded two more on Monday, ISAF said in a separate statement. Thirteen civilians were also wounded in the attack, it said.
(Writing by Jonathon Burch; Editing by David Fogarty and Jerry Norton)
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Taliban claims bombing in Pakistan; up to 14 dead
By RIAZ KHAN Associated Press August 12, 2008
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A roadside bomb destroyed an air force truck on a bridge Tuesday in Pakistan's volatile northwest and killed up to 14 people. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it "an open war" and retaliation for recent military operations in the region.
The escalation in violence raised new doubt about the government's controversial policy of negotiating for peace with Islamic militants. Western officials say it has given Taliban and al-Qaida time to regroup and more freedom to operate.
Tuesday's powerful blast tore a large hole in the bridge and reduced the truck to a smoldering wreck, and the site was littered with debris and blood. A crowd of bystanders gathered at the scene as victims were ferried away in ambulances. Firefighters hosed down the blackened carcass of the truck, and air force investigators gathered evidence.
An AP Television News cameraman at the scene said he saw at least 12 dead bodies and about a dozen wounded people. He said the victims included civilians.
Provincial government spokesman Mian Iftikhar Hussain said 14 people were killed in all, mostly air force personnel, and more than 12 people were wounded. Jehangir Khan, another police officer, said the dead included seven air force personnel.
A 5-year-old girl in a nearby vehicle was among the dead civilians, said Nisar Khan, a Peshawar police officer. He said police were trying to trace relatives of the girl.
A bomb disposal officer at the scene, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said it was planted under the bridge and contained between 66 and 88 pounds of explosives.
Taliban spokesman Maulvi Umar said the attack in Peshawar was retaliation for recent military operations in the border region near Afghanistan. "It is an open war between us and them," he told The Associated Press.
"We have done it in reaction to the government operations in Swat and Bajur," Umar said. "If this kind of operations continue against us in Swat and in the tribal areas, we will continue this."
There is increasing pressure from the West on Pakistan's government to act against Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds in its frontier region with Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials have sought peace agreements in the border region in hopes of curbing Islamic extremists who have been blamed for a wave of suicide attacks across the country in the past year.
NATO contends the cease-fire deals have allowed militants based in the frontier region to step up attacks in Afghanistan, while U.S. officials warn that al-Qaida leaders hiding along the border could be plotting another Sept. 11-style attack on the West.
Also Tuesday, a senior Interior Ministry official confirmed that authorities were probing the identity of a suspected militant reported killed this week in clashes in Bajur tribal region, where the army has pounded militant positions.
A senior intelligence official identified the militant as an Egyptian known as Abu Saeed and said he was believed to be a close aide of al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri. Authorities had intelligence the militant had died but did not have the body, the official said.
A top al-Qaida commander in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed, who had appeared in videos issued by the terror group, is also known by the alias Abu Saeed al-Masri.
The ministry official said Pakistani authorities were trying to confirm whether the Abu Saeed reported killed was the same man. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Two Taliban spokesmen contacted by The Associated Press in Afghanistan, Qari Yousef Ahmadi and Zabiullah Mujahid, said Tuesday that they had no information about it.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said the fighting in Bajur had killed at least 150 militants in the past week. Officials have reported at least nine paramilitary troops died. Independent confirmation of the toll has not been possible. Thousands of residents have reportedly fled the area.
In late July, an al-Qaida explosives and poison expert, Abu Khabab al-Masri, died in a suspected U.S. missile strike in the Pakistani border region of South Waziristan.
___
Associated Press writers Habib Khan in Khar and Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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Taliban ambush Afghan governor's convoy, 2 wounded
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban militants attacked the convoy of an Afghan governor Tuesday, wounding two of the official's guards, the governor's spokesman said.
Britain's defense ministry on Tuesday, meanwhile, said a British soldier died from wounds suffered in a suicide attack in the eastern outskirts of Kabul on Monday.
The Taliban militants attacked the 10-vehicle convoy carrying the governor of the central province of Ghazni, said spokesman Sayed Ismail Jahangir. The attack took place in Wardak province, about 70 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the Afghan capital, Kabul.
Two security guards were wounded in the attack, Jahangir said. The governor was not hurt and the convoy continued on its way to Kabul.
Attacks by militants on Afghanistan's main roads have been on the rise, prompting the government to deploy army troops to secure vulnerable spots.
More than 3,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Western and Afghan officials.
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British soldier, four civilians die after Afghan attack
KABUL (AFP) - A British soldier and four civilians have died after being wounded in a suicide attack in Kabul, NATO and British forces said Tuesday, a day after the blast killed three Afghans outright.
A suicide attacker slammed a car bomb into a patrol of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on a busy road in the capital on Monday. The insurgent Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing.
"It is with deep regret that we must announce that a soldier from 16 Signal Regiment has died and two more from the same regiment were wounded in a suicide attack on a vehicle patrol in Kabul," the British Ministry of Defence said.
"The three British soldiers were evacuated to a military hospital where one of them sadly died from his wounds," it said.
ISAF said in a statement that one of its soldiers and four civilians had died from wounds after the bomb attack.
The 40-nation force does not release the nationalities of its casualties, leaving this to the victims' home nation.
"In addition, two ISAF soldiers and eight civilians were wounded in this suicide attack that targeted an ISAF convoy," it said.
Police and military sources had initially reported the deaths of three civilians, with 15 people injured.
The soldier's death brings to 115 the number of British forces personnel to have died in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001, according to a Ministry of Defence toll.
So far this year 158 international soldiers have died in the country, most of them in attacks.
Monday's blast was the second of the day in the Afghan capital. Earlier that day, a police officer was killed and two others were injured in a roadside bomb explosion on the southeastern outskirts of the city.
Two foreign soldiers -- a Canadian and a Latvian -- were killed in other incidents Monday already announced by their countries.
The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001 and are waging an insurgency against the new Western-backed administration of President Hamid Karzai.
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Senior al Qaeda leader killed in Pakistan
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Senior Al Qaeda commander Abu Saeed al-Masri has been killed in recent clashes with Pakistani forces in a Pakistani region near the Afghan border, a security official said on Tuesday.
"He was believed to be among the top leadership of al Qaeda," the senior security official said on condition of anonymity.
Al-Masri, which means Egyptian, was the senior most al Qaeda operative to have been killed in Pakistan's tribal belt since the death of his compatriot, Abu Khabab al-Masri, an Qaeda chemical and biological weapons expert, last month. (Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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Canada Afghan troop deaths mount
Tuesday, 12 August 2008 BBC News
A Canadian soldier has been killed in Afghanistan, the 90th soldier to die since Canada's mission there began in 2002, the Canadian military says.
Master Cpl Erin Doyle died when militants attacked a post in the Panjwayi district in the southern province of Kandahar, officials said.
He was the second Canadian to be killed in Afghanistan in the past three days.
Canada has 2,500 troops deployed in Afghanistan as part of Nato-led forces battling Taleban and other militants.
MCpl Doyle died when his combat outpost came under attack on Monday, Canadian military officials said.
Another soldier was seriously injured.
The Canadians returned fire and called in air support from the Kandahar air field.
Investigation
At the weekend, another Canadian soldier named as MCpl Josh Roberts died during a firefight in the Zhari district in Kandahar.
Canadian media reports said he may have been shot by members of a private security group operating in the same area.
The Canadian military has opened an investigation into his death, the AFP news agency reports.
Since 2002 when Canada began its mission in Afghanistan as part of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) 90 soldiers and a diplomat have died.
In March, Canada's parliament voted to extend the country's military mission in Afghanistan to 2011, dependent on its allies sending reinforcements.
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Stronger U.S. role likely in Afghanistan
The Pentagon wants more control over NATO there in light of Taliban resurgence.
Christian Science Monitor, MA By Gordon Lubold Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor August 12, 2008
Washington-The Pentagon will send a one-star general to Afghanistan this fall as part of a politically parlous but determined effort by the US to assume greater control in the country's troubled southern sector.
It's a small change to the complex command structure blamed for an ineffective counterinsurgency strategy that allowed the Taliban to stage a comeback.
But the deployment of the commander may pave the way for the US to slowly begin taking over the southern sector's military efforts as NATO's role there diminishes over time.
"I really think this will be a precursor of a larger American role," says one retired senior officer familiar with the move.
With his recent promotion to brigadier general, John "Mick" Nicholson likely will become a deputy commander of what's known as Regional Command South, making him the "go-to" American contact to coordinate US efforts within the snarl of US and NATO commands. The retired senior officer describes General Nicholson as "a tremendous talent." "Putting Nicholson in there is recognition that we've got to get more US engagement in the headquarters," he says.
The deployment of Nicholson and a small American staff comes after reports last week that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will approve a $17 billion funding program to increase the size of the Afghan National Army by almost 100 percent to 120,000 soldiers.
Mr. Gates, who for months appeared unenthusiastic about making changes to the convoluted command structure in Afghanistan, will also approve changes in which the current NATO commander, Gen. David McKiernan – an American – will also report directly to US Central Command in Tampa. Fla. Currently General McKiernan reports through a NATO chain of command, which has stymied the American efforts to focus combat operations in the south.
"They are laying the necessary groundwork so that the really painful but necessary decisions will fall to the next administration – including the US taking over in a significant way," says one Republican aide on Capitol Hill.
Initially a symbol of what an American-led coalition could do in the days after the attacks in September 2001, the mission in Afghanistan began to falter a couple years ago as the Taliban exploited the ineffectiveness of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission there.
Now, American and some allied nations recognize the need for a definitive combat role in the southern sector, including Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where the violence is some of the worst. But the effort to right the approach has been hamstrung by a lack of troops and a bifurcated command structure in which, unlike the mission in Iraq, no single commander is really in charge.
In Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus is the sole commander and thusly can "shape the battlefield" using his own counterinsurgency strategy.
In Afghanistan, the senior NATO commander owns only about half the troops, the rest of which are American and fall outside the NATO chain of command. Additionally, each regional command, led by a different country's military, takes a different approach.
Violence, while limited to about 10 of the 365 districts across Afghanistan, is on the increase. And much of it stems from insurgents and other terrorist groups who cross the border into Afghanistan to conduct attacks and then retreat back across the border into the tribal region of Pakistan where they are essentially out of reach of coalition forces.
The US has had to stand back and rely on the fledgling efforts of Pakistani military and the Frontier Corps, which operates in much of the Pakistani border region, to go after these insurgents. That has unfolded with limited success thus far.
Changes are afoot, but they will be gradual as the sensitivities of doing anything that could be perceived as American heavy-handedness is a political thorn bush for the US.
Nicholson's deployment is "still being worked," says another military official, in part because of the political sensitivities of sending an American there. But the significance of the deployment of Nicholson and his small staff to the Regional Command South sector is that he will be able to help direct US military operations in the south.
Currently, for example, the contingent of US Marines working in the south fall under a NATO subordinate command that is shared by the Canadians, the Dutch, and the British. But in that particular case, the Marine efforts can be hampered by working under a foreign commander whose approach is not always as aggressive as that of the Americans.
The rotation of command in the southern sector is currently held by the Canadians. This fall, the Dutch will lead Regional Command South for 12 months, followed by the British for another year. It is likely the US in 2010 will then take over command of the south altogether, and retain it indefinitely, sources say.
An ultimate takeover, at least in some form, of the southern sector by the US is not ideal but would be welcome, says Carter Malkasian, director of the Stability and Development Program at the Center for Naval Analyses, a think tank in Washington.
"I think it would be better if we had allies stepping in to do it," he says. "But if they are not going to do it, in the end [US control] is a good thing because it will help improve the security situation."
But any push to remake the strategy in Afghanistan must take a regional approach, say experts such as the retired senior officer and others. For example, sources say McKiernan may also be given a more formal authority over the senior military official in the US Embassy in Pakistan, Rear Adm. Michael LeFevre.
There has been much focus on amping up the number of troops in Afghanistan. But most analysts who study the problem in Afghanistan, as well as many military commanders, recognize that more troops will not be the cure-all. Most important, they say, is a well-defined counterinsurgency strategy to support not only combat activities but also reconstruction and stability initiatives that typically make up the lion's share of any counterinsurgency strategy.
Nonetheless, the US seems poised to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan with perhaps as many as 3,500 or so leaving before the end of this year, says Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.
"They are actively involved in determining whether or not additional forces can be sent to Afghanistan, perhaps as soon as this year," says Mr. Morrell.
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MPs attack deputies for passport delay
www.quqnoos.com Written by Noorullah Rahmani Monday, 11 August 2008
Deputy Finance Minister takes the rap for delay in computerised passports
PARLIAMENT has summoned the deputy ministers of defence and finance to face allegations that the passport department is ridden with corruption.
Members of Parliament’s Internal Security Commission lashed out at the way passports are delivered, departmental corruption and the delayed conversion to computerised passports.
The commission summoned Deputy Finance Minister Abdul Razaaq Samadi, the deputy defence minister and the head of the consular affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) to answer questions about negligence and inefficiency in their departments.
Kandahar Member of Parliament, Kahlid Pashtoon, said: "For six years, three ministries have worked towards computerising passport details, but still you say that these passports will arrive in October."
Kabul MP Jamil Karzai said: "Nowadays a large number of young people are trying to escape from Afghanistan due to the increase in insecurity and other problems in the country.
"If you go to the embassies of Iran and Pakistan, then you will understand how bad the situation is."
Finance Minister Abdul Razaaq Samadi said his ministry had ordered a foreign NGO to make one million computerised passports. Only 244,000 of these have been made so far.
Samadi admitted that the government was to blame for the delay.
"We have done our best to do this work as soon as possible, and these passports will arrive to the country by the end of October," he said.
The head of the MoFA’s consular section said non-computerised passports will not be accepted in any part of the world by 2010.
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Afghan security contractors called into question following soldier's death
The Canadian Press / August 12, 2008
OTTAWA — They are often a ragtag band of locally hired guns.
Many are known to have a drug problem. The vast majority of them are illiterate and slap on a uniform after receiving what can only charitably be described as cursory instruction in military tactics and the handling of an assault rifle.
In Afghanistan, they are called private security contractors, and their possible role in the death of Canadian soldier last weekend was under increasing scrutiny Monday with experts accusing the federal government of not heeding warnings raised last fall.
"In a lot of instances we have this picture of private security as Blackwater-types, ex-navy SEALS, but a lot of the contracts in Afghanistan, as I understand them, are with local Afghan companies," said Dave Perry, a defence researcher at Dalhousie University's Centre for Foreign Policy Studies in Halifax.
The Canadian army is investigating whether shots from an Afghan private security contractor led to the death of Master Cpl. Josh Roberts in a confused firefight in the volatile Zhari district over the weekend.
Details of what happened are unclear.
But the U.S. publication Stars and Stripes reported Monday that a convoy, which included groups from two different security companies - Compass Integrated Security Solutions and USPI - was traveling the main highway west of Kandahar when it passed a group of Canadian soldiers engaged in a firefight with Taliban fighters in the Spin Beer region.
It has been suggested members of the Compass team saw Taliban fighters and, not realizing a battle was being waged between insurgents and coalition forces, fired into the fray.
The Canadian troops on the ground suddenly realized they were being shot at from both directions.
Roberts was mortally wounded in the confusion .
When questioned later by American and Canadian soldiers, the Afghan contactors admitted to firing at who they thought were Taliban fighters, but when told a Canadian had been killed the guards changed their story, the U.S. report said.
If true, it's exactly the kind of nightmare scenario that defence experts warned Ottawa about almost a year ago in the aftermath of a shooting in Iraq, which involved the U.S. security firm Blackwater. The incident left 11 civilians dead.
Regardless of whether they fired the fatal shot in Roberts' death, Perry says the account of the incident raises serious questions about the training of Afghan contractors.
Canada and its NATO partners rely on a host of locally hired guns to guard diplomats, bases and construction and development projects throughout Afghanistan.
National Defence and the Foreign Affairs Department separately hire their own private security in Kandahar and Kabul. The Canadian International Development Agency has apparently done the same thing.
There is no oversight by Public Works Canada, the federal government's principal contract manager.
Defence sources say there have even been times when the Canadian army was not notified about security contractors hired by other departments.
Unlike the United States, which was burned by a series of scandals involving the trigger-happy antics of private security firms in Iraq, there is no one federal department or agency overseeing the movements and activities of paramilitary contractors hired by the Canadian government.
That disturbs Perry.
"What you're really concerned about here is, who's got guns and where they are," he said in an interview.
"DND should have a single point to co-ordinate all of the DND-let contracts, and it should probably be the same person who is co-ordinating all Government of Canada-let contracts in Afghanistan."
Similarly, he says NATO should be keeping closer tabs on privately-hired gunmen working for alliance members.
Interview requests directed to both the Defence Department and Foreign Affairs were declined Monday.
An email statement issued by a defence official emphasized that "private security contractors are used for defensive roles primarily (such as) perimeter security at designated sites."
The contracts also "clearly state that any use of force must be in accordance with applicable law," said the note from Jillian Van Acker, a communications officer.
Contractors are not "used to conduct offensive operations."
Much of what gets done by the security firms - both Afghan and international - remains clouded in secrecy.
Documents released last year under federal access to information laws show Saladin Afghanistan Security Ltd. was paid $456,000 to provide a quick-reaction force for Canada's embassy in Kabul in 2006-07.
Compass has been involved in other friendly-fire incidents with the Canadian military in Afghanistan.
Last April, one person was killed and three others were injured when a Canadian military convoy opened fire on a Compass vehicle that failed to stop when demanded.
A vehicle belonging to Compass also came under Canadian fire in a separate incident last October, an incident where seven Afghans were injured.
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The long, hard slog against scrappy Taliban fighters
Boston Globe - Editors By H.D.S. Greenway August 12, 2008
'RAGTAG TALIBAN Show Tenacity in Afghanistan," read the headline last week. Washington and NATO capitals were reportedly "soul-searching" over how a disheveled insurgency had managed to "keep the world's most powerful armies at bay." This should hardly have come as a surprise.
There is a certain irony for those of us who were up on the North-West Frontier in the 1980s interviewing Islamic fighters who, from their safe bases in Pakistan, were making life miserable for the Soviets in Afghanistan. I once visited a training camp just over the border where insurgents were being trained in guerrilla tactics and in making bombs to be smuggled into Kabul. I guess you would have to say they were terrorists, but they were our terrorists so we called them freedom fighters. As for the Russians, they were always being taken by surprise at the tenacity of their ragtag opponents.
The Afghan insurgents were masters of terrain. They knew how to flatten themselves on hillsides, their bodies covered by long cloaks with not even their fingernails showing lest they reflect light to passing helicopters overhead.
The Soviets tried to overwhelm the guerrillas with firepower, bombing villages into dust, causing more and more young men to join the resistance. The Afghans who had thrown their lot in with the Russians seemed evermore isolated in their cities while the insurgents roamed the countryside.
Today's insurgents, again from their safe havens in Pakistan, are making life miserable for foreigners in Afghanistan, only this time the foreigners are Americans and their allies.
Allah has always held a mighty hold over the Pashtuns of the frontier. During the Raj, the British fought endless campaigns against this or that jihad-driven uprising, right up until World War II drew Britain's attention elsewhere.
One such dust-up came when a Muslim captured a Hindu girl and forced her to convert. She was rescued, but the tribesmen were furious that the girl had been taken away from the embrace of Islam, and the voice of jihad was heard in the land.
A Mullah Omar of his time was the Faqir of Ipi, who right up into the 1950s bedeviled the British and then the Pakistanis trying to carve out an independent Pashtun state out of the frontier on both sides of the border.
When the British left they bequeathed to Pakistan the same old problem of tribal areas that were not fully absorbed into the state. And on the frontier soldiers from the Punjab are almost as foreign as Englishmen.
Listen to the quandary the British faced fighting on the frontier, as described by the writer John Masters, who served with the Prince of Wales's Own Gurkha Rifles in the 1935 Waziristan campaign. "The core of our problem was to force battle on an elusive and mobile enemy (who) tried to avoid battle, and instead fight us with pinpricking hit-and-run tactics." Only when the tribesmen tried to hold territory were they "pulverized." When they "sniped, rushed, and ran away we felt as if we were using a crowbar to swat wasps." America and NATO face the same problems today.
Long ago in Vietnam, Americans were constantly being surprised at the resilience of their ragtag enemies. The United States unleashed unimaginable firepower, tried to win hearts and minds, and reinvented counterinsurgency tactics that were learned in the Philippines in the 19th century but forgotten. Today the country is reinventing antiguerrilla tactics it knew in the 20th century but forgot.
The story of the fight for Afghanistan is filled with what-ifs. What if the United States had concentrated on Afghanistan when the Soviets left? What if resources and attention had not been pulled from Afghanistan instead of invading Iraq? What if Omar and Osama bin Laden had not slipped through America's fingers to escape into the frontier territories?
The Taliban recognize no border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they know all the passes from which we watched a previous generation of insurgents slip through to fight the Soviets. The fighters know, too, that to win all they have to do is not lose, and eventually the foreigners will leave. The fate of Afghanistan will then be up to the Afghans. This is how it has always been.
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.
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New al-Qaeda focus on NATO supplies
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / August 12, 2008
KARACHI - The Taliban and al-Qaeda have with some success squeezed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's)supply lines that run through Pakistan into Afghanistan, especially goods in transit in Khyber Agency on the border.
Now, according to Asia Times Online contacts, the target area is being shifted to the southern port city of Karachi, where almost 90% of NATO's shipments land, including vital oil. From this teeming financial center, 80% of the goods go to Torkham in Khyber Agency on their way to the Afghan capital of Kabul. About 10% go to Chaman, then on to the northern Afghan city of Kandahar. The remaining NATO supplies arrive in Afghanistan by air and other routes.
An al-Qaeda member told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, "The single strategy of severing NATO's supply lines from Pakistan is the key to success. If the blockage is successfully implemented in 2008, the Western coalition will be forced to leave Afghanistan in 2009, and if implemented next year, the exit is certain by 2010."
Several al-Qaeda cells have apparently been activated in Karachi to monitor the movement of NATO supply convoys.
This focus on Karachi coincides with two major events. First, the Pakistani armed forces are heavily engaged in fighting against militants in Bajaur Agency and in the Swat Valley in the tribal areas along the Afghan border.
At the same time, the coalition government in Islamabad is preparing to impeach Washington's point man in the region, President Pervez Musharraf, mainly over his implementation of a state of emergency and dismissal of the judiciary last year when he headed a military administration.
The unpopular military operations and the political crisis, which could see Musharraf respond by using his constitutional powers to dissolve parliament, play into al-Qaeda's hands as the government's ability to counter new threats is considerably reduced.
NATO is understandably acutely concerned over protecting its supply lines into land-locked Afghanistan. When routes in Khyber Agency came under attack this year, NATO reached an agreement with Russia for some goods to transit through Russian territory. This alternative is costly, though, given the distances involved, and can only be used in emergencies.
Washington tried to get Iran to permit the passage of goods from its seaports into neighboring Afghanistan, but Tehran refused point-blank.
So NATO is stuck with Pakistan as a transshipment point, along with its political instability.
The latest crisis has it roots in elections in February, following Musharraf stepping down as chief of army staff. The national elections that followed resulted in a coalition civilian government headed by the pro-American liberal and secular Pakistan People's Party and Nawaz Sharif's conservative right-wing Pakistan Muslim League, whose political constituency is traditional and religious segments of society. The Pashtun sub-nationalist Awami National Party and the traditional religious Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam are another mismatch in the coalition.
As a result, from the beginning the coalition was pulled in various directions, with little consensus on key matters such as the "war on terror". Only recently did the parties agree to move ahead on trying to impeach Musharraf.
Pakistan is the strategic backyard for NATO as well as for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. If Musharraf does go, it would be a huge victory for the militants to see off the US ally through whose office millions of dollars of aid are channeled in the "war on terror".
If he stays, debilitating political turmoil is inevitable, and al-Qaeda's sights are already set on the boatloads of containers that carry fuel, armored personnel vehicles, guns, aircraft spares and other military supplies to Afghanistan.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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Rape allegations force Afghan gov't crackdown
By HEIDI VOGT Associated Press Mon Aug 11, 1:15 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Ali Khan braved death threats and public scorn to out the powerful men he accuses of gang-raping his 12-year-old niece.
Now he says it is up to Afghanistan's president to prove he can prosecute her assailants and their warlord protectors in the country's north, where President Hamid Karzai's government holds little sway.
Rape — a crime long hidden in Afghanistan by victims fearing a life of scorn — is getting a public airing in this conservative Islamic country. In recent weeks, several outraged families have appeared on nightly news shows, demanding justice while sharing heartbreaking stories of sexual assaults on teenage daughters.
Government officials say at least five rapes have been reported in the past four months, though they and women's rights groups say any reported statistics likely fall far short of reality.
The Interior Ministry has announced a crackdown on sexual assault, one of the first times the government has acknowledged a problem long dealt with as privately as possible. On Sunday, President Hamid Karzai called for rapists to face "the country's most severe punishment."
After families appeared on TV, Karzai met with Khan and another man whose daughter was raped in Sari Pul. The president promised punishment as he "hugged my niece and said she was also his daughter and cried," Khan said.
But it could prove a formidable task for Karzai, whose government has little influence outside the capital. In northern provinces like Sari Pul, warlords command private armies and well-connected criminals regularly bribe their way out of prison.
"Some of them (criminals) are taken to the jails, but because they belong to the commanders, they pay money and are set free," said Parween Hakim of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.
One of the men accused of attacking Khan's niece was convicted of rape a month ago and sentenced to nearly 20 years in jail. But Hakim said she has never seen an assailant serve more than six months.
Still, there are signs of progress. The government fired five top police officials in Sari Pul for negligence in the two cases.
Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said officials are taking action because the five rape reports must mean other assaults are being committed. But he calls the few public cases a hopeful sign.
"Families are trusting the security forces and reporting these incidents," Bashary said.
Khan said his niece was raped when five men broke into the family home two months ago. They beat his sister and her husband and forced themselves on the girl. The father remains hospitalized.
Khan says he's received death threats since going public, and his sister and niece have not left a guarded Kabul hotel room — provided as a safe house by the government — for two weeks.
The girl's mother recognized two of their attackers as associates of a provincial lawmaker, Khan said.
The lawmaker's son is one of those accused of involvement in the rape of Sayed Noorullah Jafery's 13-year-old daughter in Sari Pul in February.
Both Khan and Jafery say they can identify the girls' attackers, but that the powerful family is shielding the men.
Calls to numbers held by Paunda Khan, the lawmaker accused of protecting the attackers, went unanswered. The head of Sari Pul provincial council, Abdul Ghani, said Paunda Khan had done nothing to obstruct justice.
In both cases, police initially refused to take down the families' accusations — a situation the U.N.'s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, said is typical in a region where police are more likely to answer to warlords than to Kabul.
"It's because of the impunity given to these warlords for such a long period of time," Coomaraswamy said.
If the rapists continue to escape punishment, it could push a region to reconsider the liberties given to women since the fall of the Taliban regime. Even Khan suggested that the easing of Taliban-era restrictions that kept women at home might be making girls easier prey.
"These days all these young girls are going to school, and coming out of their houses. These criminals chase after them," he said. "When these criminals come, they commit rape as well."
Jafery says he's lost confidence in the system because while the lawmaker's son has been arrested, he is being tried as a juvenile after producing papers showing his age as 16. Jafery says the man is in his early 20s.
Another family that went public with a rape last year has since been shamed into fleeing the country, according to Hakim of the women's rights group. And in another northern province, Kunduz, police say a man arrested for allegedly raping a 9-year-old girl escaped last week after three days in jail. He had not been tried.
But Khan says he will wait for Karzai. He had to talk his sister's family out of collective suicide, persuading them to travel to Kabul to demand government action.
"This is like a revolt against the warlords by my family," he said.
___
Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.
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AFGHANISTAN: ICRC assists thousands of displaced people
KABUL, 12 August 2008 (IRIN) - Over 9,500 people displaced from their homes by conflict in southern and central Afghanistan have received food and non-food assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Geneva-based organisation said.
"During the month of July only 1,372 households displaced due to the conflict received ICRC essential food and non-food assistance," the organisation said in a statement on 12 August. [http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/KLMT-7HF9AD?OpenDocument]
The 170 metric tonnes of emergency food aid contained rice, beans, ghee, salt, sugar and tea, and the non-food aid package included tarpaulins, blankets, jerry cans, kitchen sets and soap.
The clashes forced 338 families out of their homes in Panjwaee District and 176 families out of their homes in Arghandab District of Kandahar Province in June and July. About 260 households were also displaced in Wardak Province, central Afghanistan, according to the ICRC.
Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced mostly in southern areas due to insurgency-related violence over the past two years, aid agencies say.
The ICRC said it had assisted over 5,000 battle-displaced families (about 35,000 individuals) in Kandahar, Uruzgan and Helmand provinces since January 2008. The UN and humanitarian aid organisations have also responded to conflict-related displacements with food and non-food aid.
Medical assistance
Over 1,000 civilians have been killed since January, many non-governmental organisations reported in August. The number of wounded has also been high.
The ICRC said it was working to ensure that "every war-wounded" person - combatant or civilian - had access to medical assistance.
In the past eight months over 170,000 people affected by the conflict have received medical care at hospitals and health clinics supported by the ICRC. The ICRC has preformed 11,579 medical operations in the same period, according to a factsheet released by the Red Cross.
In a bid to provide pre-hospital medical assistance to war-wounded persons, the ICRC has provided 525 emergency consignments of first aid kits in remote areas where health facilities are unavailable.
The ICRC has also pre-positioned "a war-wounded kit" usable by up to 50 persons at the Ministry of Public Health in Kabul "for emergency events, such as the Indian Embassy incident [when a bomb killed some 50 people in July]," it said.
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October concert for late tenor Pavarotti to benefit Afghans
By Mohammed Nadir Farhad In Kabul, Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan, August 12 (UNHCR) – A year after his death, a charity concert and memorial ceremony will be held in honour of the late Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti at the renowned historical site of Petra, Jordan in mid-October.
Top artists from the world of classical and popular music will perform on Pavarotti's birthday (October 12) in remembrance of his great talent. Key humanitarian figures will also be present at the memorial ceremony the night before, bearing witness to his dedication to humanitarian work, especially as a United Nations Messenger of Peace.
The tribute is the brainchild of Nicoletta Mantovani, Pavarotti's widow and HRH Princess Haya, a fellow UN Messenger of Peace and daughter of Jordan's late King Hussein. "A concert in Petra was a dream once shared by the late King Hussein of Jordan and Luciano," said Mantovani. "I am so grateful to Her Royal Highness Princess Haya, for making it possible to turn this dream into a reality."
The proceeds of the concert will support joint projects in Afghanistan by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP). A local charity supporting disabled children in Petra will also benefit from the concert.
Most of the proceeds from the concert's ticket sales will be spent on a range of projects in eastern Afghanistan, which hosts a high concentration of returning refugees. The vast majority – approximately 80 percent – of this year's repatriation has been to eastern provinces such as Nangarhar, Laghman and Kunar. The total number of return to the eastern provinces since 2002 is over 1 million returnees.
Projects include health improvement and hygiene education to benefit thousands of families particularly women and children; the building of four kindergartens which will allow 400 children to have better education; skills and literacy training for disabled people as well as the rehabilitation of roads, the creation of micro-hydro power and irrigation canals to bring electricity and improve agriculture production for 700 families. In addition, there will be food-for-work projects to address the immediate food insecurity of the most vulnerable individuals.
Since the start of UNHCR's voluntary repatriation operation in 2002, some 4.2 million Afghans have returned home with the agency's assistance. Another 1 million Afghan have repatriated on their own.
In June 2001, Maestro Pavarotti was awarded the Nansen Refugee Award – the top global award for services to refugees – in recognition of his support and concern for refugees.
The upcoming charity and memorial concert will bring top artists who performed with the late Italian tenor at the "Pavarotti & Friends" charity concerts in his hometown of Modena. The line up of performers will be announced at a press conference in early September 2008. The concert in Petra will be produced by world-renowned impresario Harvey Goldsmith CBE.
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Top US Marine commander visits Afghanistan
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFP) - The United States' top Marine commander flew into Afghanistan Monday to meet troops in the field, at a time when the Pentagon increasingly turns its attention to fighting the Taliban.
Marine Commandant General James Conway flew into the US military base at Bagram north of Kabul and was to spend the next few days visiting some of the 3,400 troops at Marine Corps bases in the region, an AFP reporter travelling with him said.
The Marines are among nearly 70,000 international troops in Afghanistan helping the country to fight the resurgent Taliban whom officials say are being assisted on the battlefield by a growing number of non-Afghan fighters.
The soldiers are also involved in training the Afghan security forces which are expected to be able to take over from their international counterparts in the coming years.
While the Corps' top officer periodically visits troops in the field, this trip is significant in its focus on Afghanistan.
Conway is expected to spend more time at Marine bases in the country in comparison to previous visits, despite the fact the bulk of the Corps' deployed resources are in Iraq.
The Pentagon this month extended the deployment of 1,250 of the Marines, who are training Afghan police in the southern and western parts of the country, for 30 days until November.
It had previously extended to November the deployment of a 2,200-member Marine expeditionary unit that is fighting in the south.
Conway's trip comes as the Pentagon leadership is increasingly turning its attention to the fight against the Taliban.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said he wants to beef up the 34,000-strong US force in Afghanistan and has endorsed a 17-billion-dollar plan to double the size of the Afghan army over five years.
Conway's visit comes after it was announced that US-led troops killed eight Afghan civilians held by Taliban insurgents during an air strike that also left 25 rebels dead.
The strike came after coalition soldiers were ambushed in southern Uruzgan province on Sunday, a coalition statement said.
It was also announced that a Latvian soldier with the NATO force was killed taking to 156 the number of international troops killed Afghanistan since the beginning of the year.
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Insurgents attack outpost in Panjwaii killing 90th Canadian soldier
Tobi Cohen, THE CANADIAN PRESS - mytelus.com August 11, 2008
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A burly "mountain of a man" nicknamed the Friendly Giant became the second Canadian combat death in three days when insurgents attacked a remote outpost in the Panjwaii district of Kandahar province Monday.
Master Cpl. Erin Doyle was the 90th Canadian soldier to die since the Afghan mission began in 2002.
Chief Warrant Officer Chris White, who knew Doyle for five years, described the 200-pound man as a "barrel-chested kind of guy, the kind you'd "like to sit down and have a beer with."
A second soldier was seriously injured in Monday's attack and taken to the multinational hospital at Kandahar Airfield for treatment.
As many as 10 insurgents targeted the small base just before 6 a.m. local time, task force commander Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson said.
Canadian soldiers returned fire and called for artillery and air support, he said, adding several of them were killed, others were injured, however, none was detained.
"Master Cpl. Doyle was killed while he was protecting his position and his fellow soldiers," he said.
"The combat outpost was engaged in a classic sort of scoot-and-shoot fashion and unfortunately Master Cpl. Doyle was killed by a direct hit on the outpost."
Thompson said the outpost is strategically located in the heart of Taliban country and its soldiers engage insurgents daily.
It serves an important role, Thompson said. "Largely to do what we can to increase the people's confidence that the government is delivering services for them," he said.
Just last month, an attack on a remote outpost in the mountainous northeastern province Kunar left nine U.S. soldiers dead and 15 wounded - the deadliest assault on U.S. forces in Afghanistan in three years. It was believed to be an attempt to overrun the small, newly built base.
But Thompson described Monday's attack in Panjwaii differently. "What they tend to do is fire a few harassing rounds and then they'll disappear into the woodwork," he said of the insurgents.
Although it can be one of the more perilous jobs for soldiers in Afghanistan, Thompson said leaving the base would be "surrendering it and the people to the Taliban."
Doyle was a member of the 3rd battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based out of Edmonton.
This was his third tour in Afghanistan. "Erin was a big, tough, mountain of a man who enjoyed the outdoors," Thompson said. "He was a true warrior and just the person you would want beside you in a firefight."
He leaves behind his wife Nicole and daughter Zarine. Doyle grew up in Kamloops, B.C., and was a former reservist with the Rocky Mountain Rangers, the Kamloops Daily News newspaper reported.
His stepfather, Bob Mitchell said: "It is devastating. It is pretty devastating."
Mitchell said the family had their fingers crossed Doyle would return safe from this tour as he had the previous two. "They were supposed to be over there as peacekeepers but it didn't turn out that way," he said.
Mitchell said Doyle's body is enroute back to Canada. Doyle was the youngest of five children.
Tyler Guthrie, a high school friend of Doyle's in Kamloops, said his buddy was the sort who thought respect was a two-way street. He said sometimes put Doyle on a collision course with some of his teachers but he says his friend felt at home in the army.
"He was always a bit of a rebel, I guess you could say, in terms of bucking authority sometimes. But I think he felt the army was the authority he did like," Guthrie said.
Guthrie said the two never talked about why Doyle joined the army but says he wasn't very surprised when he did. He said Doyle was always patriotic and had an adventurous spirit.
"I would say it sometimes takes a bit of a crazy person to join the army or to want to be in the army," Guthrie said. "He was always willing to try something at least once whether it was a good thing or a bad thing."
Mitchell said Doyle met his wife in the reserves and the couple moved to Edmonton and became full-time soldiers. Doyle did one tour in Bosnia prior to his deployment to Afghanistan.
Kamloops MP Betty Hinton presented him with a Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal for community service in 2002. In 2000, Doyle delivered 14 backpacks loaded with school supplies to a small village in central Bosnia.
White, the Warrant Officer, said Doyle's experience having been to Afghanistan previously was invaluable to fellow non-commissioned officers.
"He'd been in contact before with the enemy so he knows what to expect," he said. "He knows how to get through it and that sort of experience is very valuable for young NCOs."
Calling him a loyal, dedicated soldier and real professional, White said Doyle wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere other than the front line.
White said he'll never forget the time Doyle volunteered to dress up as Santa Claus at a children's Christmas party.
"Unfortunately he seemed to scare more kids than he cheered up, but he's a great guy. (He's got) a real sense of humour."
A statement from Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Doyle will be "remembered with the utmost gratitude and respect of this nation."
"He was an exceptional Canadian and courageous soldier who died while bravely serving his country," Harper said in the statement.
Monday's attack happened just two days after Master Cpl. Josh Roberts was killed in a firefight in neighbouring Zhari district.
Roberts, a crew commander with 9th platoon, C Company, was sitting in the turret of his LAV III when he was shot during a skirmish with insurgents early Saturday.
The circumstances surrounding the shooting death, however, are under investigation.
While Canadian and Afghan security forces were engaging a group of some 15 insurgents during an operation, it's believed a passing convoy guarded by private security may have also opened fire, accidentally killing Roberts.
But while the Canadian Forces remain tight-lipped about the incident now under investigation, U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes is shedding some light on what happened on that rugged tract of farmland Saturday.
The report suggests the convoy involved two different security companies, including Compass Security and U.S. Protection and Investigations.
As they passed the firefight between Canadians, Afghan forces and insurgents, they too thought they were being attacked and fired back, the newspaper reported, quoting Maj. Corey Frederickson, part of a Canadian advisory team that trains and mentors the Afghan army in nearby Maywand district.
"Their normal contact drill is that as soon as they get hit with something, then it's 360, open up on anything that moves," Frederickson said. "We think that's probably what happened."
The convoy allegedly continued onwards before it was stopped by Canadian and U.S. military officers in Maywand. Several Afghan security guards allegedly admitted opening fire on what they believed were Taliban but their stories changed when they were told a Canadian was hurt.
According to the report, they were threatened with arrest for lying but in the end there was little anyone could do but take down their contact information.
This was not the first incident involving private security and Canadian Forces personnel. Canadian troops fired on a private security vehicle in Kandahar City in April, killing one employee and injuring three others.
The shooting happened as a convoy from the Canadian-run Provincial Reconstruction Team was departing Kandahar Airfield and spotted a vehicle moving at high speed. Fearing a possible attack, soldiers issued several warnings to stop in accordance with standard procedure but the driver failed to pull over.
The incident involved a company called Compass Security. Soldiers also opened fire on a Compass vehicle in October 2007, injuring seven Afghans and prompting a review of Canadian convoy protocols.
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India Frustrated by a Rudderless Pakistan
New York Times, United States By SOMINI SENGUPTA August 11, 2008
NEW DELHI-Usually, when two rival nations try to work toward peace, their governments talk to each other.
And at least in an official capacity, that is still happening between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, even as the peace between them lies tattered. But the problem, the Indian side contends, is that by talking to the new civilian government of Pakistan, it is no longer negotiating with those who have the power to decide between war and peace.
“The real power,” said one Indian official, “is so far away from the structures the world deals with.”
For India, argued the official, that distance has become all the more vast in recent months, since it is negotiating with an elected Pakistani government that has little influence over the country’s more powerful army and spy agency.
India has openly blamed the spy agency and indirectly blamed the army for spoiling the peace that it was negotiating with Pakistan’s former army chief, President Pervez Musharraf, before his party was drubbed in parliamentary elections in February.
“You’re talking at two or three removes from the real power,” added the Indian official. “They have to talk to the people who do control this.”
The official and other Indian and American officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
India’s predicament hints at a gnawing problem inside Pakistan, which has been under military rule for half of its nearly 62-year existence. Even when civilians govern, they are forced to tread lightly around the country’s army and intelligence agency.
The stakes could hardly be higher now, as India-Pakistan relations fall to a perilous new low. The Indian Army has reported a spike in cease-fire violations on the disputed frontier in Kashmir, prompting direct skirmishes between the two militaries.
There have been a series of terrorist attacks in the last several months, which India says have been conducted by militant groups aided or trained by Pakistanis.
In early July came what the Indians saw as the crossing of a dangerous threshold: A suicide bomber attacked India’s embassy in Kabul, killing dozens of people, including two of its diplomats.
Indian and American officials said they had received advance intelligence that the embassy was under threat. Officials in India and the United States, along with Afghanistan, blamed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, for helping plan the strike. Pakistan has denied the charge and has pressed India to furnish proof.
The attack signaled how India-Pakistan relations had become additionally complicated by India’s expanding presence in Afghanistan. India helped topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and has committed more than $1.1 billion for the reconstruction of that country.
Its biggest project is the construction of a strategic road to link landlocked Afghanistan to a port in neighboring Iran. India is also training teachers and civil servants in Afghanistan, giving scholarships for Afghan students in India and erecting a new Afghan Parliament building.
That engagement has taken its toll on the roughly 4,000 Indian workers inside Afghanistan over the past couple of years. An Indian driver was found decapitated, an engineer was abducted and murdered, and seven members of the paramilitary force guarding Indian reconstruction crews were killed. Last year, the Indian road crew faced 30 rocket attacks.
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, on a recent visit here to the Indian capital, openly blamed Pakistan for instigating terrorist attacks inside his country, including the suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy.
“There are elements within the establishment in Pakistan who do not see things the way we see them,” he said on a nationally broadcast interview last week. “India knows what is going on. Afghanistan knows what is going on. Our allies know what is going on.”
In Washington, American intelligence officials hinted at a new shared worry for India and Afghanistan. Militant groups that had been operating inside Indian-controlled Kashmir have been carrying out attacks inside Afghanistan lately. They include, according to American officials, Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group dominated by ethnic Punjabis from Pakistan that New Delhi blames for several terrorist attacks inside India.
“The foreign-fighter problem in Afghanistan and Pakistan is growing, and we consider non-Pashtun Pakistanis, such as elements of formerly Kashmiri groups, a part of that growing problem,” said a United States Defense Department official.
American officials cautioned that while Pakistan’s ISI was likely to be working with some of these extremists, many of the militants were operating independently and benefited from ties to groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on Pakistan’s lawless western frontier.
Remarkably, the bombing of the Indian Embassy did not halt the India-Pakistan peace talks, though it radically altered their tenor and substance. “We have made it clear we cannot stop talking, but it won’t be the same peace process,” the Indian official said. “You cannot go on saying, ‘We will sign peace deals with you,’ if you cannot control this. These are not things approved at the lower levels. It is too big.”
About three weeks after the attack, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, met with his Pakistani counterpart, Yousaf Raza Gilani, on the sidelines of a South Asian summit meeting in Sri Lanka.
India’s vulnerability, officials and analysts here say, is largely a function of a Pakistan in flux. President Musharraf faces impeachment proceedings. Pakistan’s two leading politicians, Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, have no official posts. And the army and the ISI can operate with little accountability to a rudderless civilian administration led by Mr. Gilani.
“When India dealt with General Musharraf, it was dealing with real power,” said Gopalaswami Parthasarathy, a retired Indian diplomat who served as the ambassador in Pakistan when Mr. Musharraf seized power in a bloodless 1999 coup. “When a civilian government comes to power in these circumstances, where the army controls the real levers of power and the civilian government is the face we interact with, we get nowhere.”
Salman Haidar, another retired Indian diplomat, said India always tended to see civilian governments across the border as “inherently feeble,” and the army as the “usurper.”
“Beneath rationality and ordinary decision making, there is mistrust that two generations since independence have not got rid of,” he said in an e-mail message. “The original sin of partition.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
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What happened to 'one for all, all for one'?
Globe and Mail, Canada LEWIS MACKENZIE From Monday's Globe and Mail August 11, 2008
So, Canada has worked out a way to provide our troops with medium-lift helicopters in southern Afghanistan: a one-year lease for six Russian-made helicopters that will cover us until we can purchase six used Chinooks from the U.S government next year. Total cost? More than $300-million.
This simple but telling example is, in my mind, the final nail in NATO's coffin.
The Atlantic Alliance was a successful bulwark against the Soviet Union from 1949 until the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War, but in today's more complex world, it's time for it to "rest in peace."
There are more than 3,000 medium-lift helicopters sitting safely on the ground far, far away from Afghanistan, at airbases located in NATO's 26 member countries. Three thousand, and Canada is stuck with providing helicopter support, not just for its own troops, but for all the other national contingents in Region South.
For you civilian readers, let's talk numbers. The soldiers we have fighting the Taliban outside the wire in Afghanistan are categorized in military lingo as a battle group. Figure around 1,000 soldiers, although with leave programs and other requirements plucking individuals out for various reasons, somewhere between 600 and 800 fighters are usually available for front-line duty. Battle groups don't rate their own medium-lift helicopter support. Think, instead, the next higher level of command that we military types call a brigade - more like 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers. The headquarters of such an organization assigns centralized resources, such as logistics support, unmanned aerial vehicles, intelligence, artillery support and yes, medium-lift helicopters, in accordance with each battle group's needs as required. There are usually three battle groups in each brigade and demands will vary in priority as the battle unfolds.
In Afghanistan, the brigade level of command has been renamed Region South, and that is where the Canadian leased and/or purchased used helicopters will be controlled. Other national contingents, such as the British and the Dutch fighting the Taliban in Region South, would quite properly receive support from our "Canadian" helicopters.
Any NATO member that is counting on its fellow 25 members to rush over the horizon and rescue it from annihilation in the event of an attack should closely observe what is happening in Afghanistan today. This war has demonstrated, yet again, that the immortal words of the Three Musketeers, "One for all, all for one!" - enshrined in the NATO charter in much more eloquent language - counts for absolutely nothing.
In NATO's first and only mission involving real risk - bombing the former Yugoslavia, including Kosovo, from 10,000 feet and encountering no opposition, where no one in NATO scratched a finger, can't be classified as risky - few member countries have lived up to the obligations inherent in the charter.
It's one thing to hesitate to put your soldiers in danger when the chances of casualties are extremely high, but to hesitate, nay, refuse to dispatch medium-lift helicopters to an operational theatre to assist in the delivery of soldiers and logistical support over a dangerous battlefield is reprehensible. If you don't agree with the mission, and are too cowardly to participate, then resign from the alliance.
Granted, during the Cold War, Canada was found wanting on occasion. In the mid-1970s, prime minister Pierre Trudeau arbitrarily cut our NATO commitment in Europe by 50 per cent, leaving our contribution to opposing any Soviet attack to be measured in minutes, not days. However, after 9/11, when our national resilience to painful sacrifice was put to the test, our soldiers and public proved equal to the challenge, joining an all-too-small number of NATO countries of similar determination.
There is no doubt the Canadian Forces need medium-lift helicopters for any number of tasks at home and abroad. However, the responsibility to provide them in a NATO operational theatre -- the alliance's first -- is not Canada's. It's time to check around to see who our real friends are. Three thousand helicopters in NATO -- and all we asked for was six. Go figure.
Lewis MacKenzie is a retired major-general and first commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo
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What's the Word for 'University' in Afghanistan? Parliament Can't Decide
Chronicle of Higher Education (USA) August 11, 2008
Afghanistan’s lawmakers spent today’s session of parliament debating the contentious issue of which word to use for “university,” the Reuters news agency reported.
Afghanistan boasts just seven universities, according to the Europa World of Learning, but how to refer to this handful of institutions has stymied parliamentarians. Pashtu speakers, who are mainly from the south and east, and Dari-speaking Tajiks, from the north and west, are at odds over which words to use for terms like “university” and “student,” and for academic titles, Reuters reported.
One parliamentarian, Ahmad Ali Jebrayeli, told the news agency that some of the lawmakers favored “the use of Dari expressions by Dari speakers and Pashtu words for those who speak Pashtu,” but others preferred “the old-style Pashtu words, because some of the expressions used by Dari speakers are actually Iranian Farsi.”
The linguistic nuances are controversial enough that a journalist for a state newspaper was recently fined “for using the Persian word for university in a report,” the Reuters article noted.
Parliament failed to agree on a resolution and decided instead to form a committee to look into the problem, Mr. Jebrayeli told Reuters. —Aisha Labi
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DynCorp gets $40M Navy pact for Afghanistan work
Monday August 11, 10:43 am ET
DynCorp gets $40 million Navy contract to construct home base for Afghan National Army brigade
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Government contractor DynCorp International Inc. recently received a $40 million contract to construct the Afghanistan National Army Gamberi Brigade's home base, the Pentagon said late Friday.
Shares of Falls Church, Va.-based DynCorp fell 20 cents to $16.45 in morning trading Monday.
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Insecurity threatens Herat investors
Written by www.quqnoos.com Monday, 11 August 2008
Unions calls on 'weak' government to clamp down on criminal gangs
(PAN) Investors have set up about 45 companies in the western province of Herat over the last six years.
Electricity, partial security and an increasing demand for Afghan products are the main reasons for the injection of foreign money in the province, the head of Afghanistan’s investment support agency (AISA) in Herat, Ahmad Tamim Kakar, said.
Kakar said the value of foreign investment is more than $23 million.
Both direct and joint Afghan-foreign investors from nine countries have invested in industry, construction, agriculture and the service sectors.
Iran has invested the most in the province, with Iranian companies building businesses worth $17 million in the region.
Turkey ranks second, with three construction companies worth $3 million, and the United States ranks third, with three services companies worth $2 million.
According to AISA, investors from Germany, Holland, Uzbekistan, Uganda, China and Pakistan have also pumped money into Herat’s business sector.
Since 2002, more than one billion dollars has been spent on road construction and industrial capacity in the province, mainly by the private sector.
More than 250 factories have been set up over the same time period, churning out everything from motorcycles and tractors to detergents and refrigerators.
However, investors and merchants in Herat recently protested over a spike in insecurity and the murder of the head of the province’s money exchangers.
They threatened to pull investment from the region unless the government clamped down on criminal gangs.
Deputy of the artisans’ union in Herat, Toryalai Ghausi, said the government has responded weakly to the investor’s demands, forcing many to flee the country.
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