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U.S.-led air raid kills 22 Afghan civilians
July 4, 2008
ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Twenty-two civilians, including women and children, were killed in an air strike by U.S.-led forces on Friday in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nuristan, an official said.
Attacks, bombs kill 14 in Afghanistan
Fri Jul 4, 4:05 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Bomb blasts and attacks killed 11 policemen and three civilians in separate incidents in insurgency-hit Afghanistan, officials said Friday.
FACTBOX - Security developments in Afghanistan
July 4, 2008
(Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan reported until 2:30 p.m. on Friday:
Pentagon extends tour of Marines in Afghanistan
By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press / July 4, 2008
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has extended the tour of 2,200 Marines in Afghanistan, after insisting for months the unit would come home on time.
Afghan insurgency challenging but can be tackled-UN
Thu Jul 3, 2008 8:46am EDT - By Robert Birsel
ISLAMABAD, July 3 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's insurgency can be overcome, not only by military means but by building up the state and getting the economy going, the United Nations envoy to Afghanistan said on Thursday.
Fired Kandahar police chief says Canadians let him down
GRAEME SMITH - From Friday's Globe and Mail July 3, 2008
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Stripped of his uniform and placed under investigation after last month's spectacular jailbreak, Kandahar's former police chief lashed out Thursday at what he described as Canada's failure to help capture
Former Kandahar military adviser blasts Canada's Afghan diplomacy
The Canadian Press, 07/02/2008
OTTAWA — Military efforts in Afghanistan are being stalled by the perceived weakness of Canada's diplomatic and aid agencies, says the former cultural adviser to Canada's top soldier in Kandahar.
Big Oil pumps up the ugly Afghan and Iraqi mix
LAWRENCE MARTIN - July 3, 2008, Globe and Mail
In the war zones, the oil deals are coming on stream. Afghanistan recently signed a major agreement to build an American-backed pipeline. It will traverse the Kandahar region where Canadian forces are fighting. If they're still there
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U.S.-led air raid kills 22 Afghan civilians
July 4, 2008
ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Twenty-two civilians, including women and children, were killed in an air strike by U.S.-led forces on Friday in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nuristan, an official said.
The attack happened on a road in Want district while the noncombatants were traveling in two vehicles, the district chief, Zia-Ul Rahman, told reporters.
"The civilians were evacuating the district as they were told by the U.S.-led troops to do so because they wanted to launch an operation against the Taliban," he said.
"The civilians were in two vehicles when killed by the air raid," he added.
The U.S. military confirmed the mission, but said there was no report of civilian injuries. It said the strike was in response to an attack by militants against NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops.
"An ISAF RC-East combat outpost in Nuristan province received indirect fire from militants today. Coalition helicopter support was used to locate the militants," it said in a statement.
"The militants were moving in two vehicles when Coalition attack helicopters were used to destroy (them) killing the combatants. No reports of noncombatant injuries" were received, it added.
The incident comes amid an upsurge of violence in Afghanistan in the past two years, the bloodiest period since the overthrow of Taliban's government in 2001.
The issue of civilians killed by foreign troops is a sensitive one in Afghanistan as it undermines public support for the presence of around 71,000 international troops in the country and the government of President Hamid Karzai.
In the first six months of this year, 698 civilians were killed, 255 of them by Afghan government and foreign forces. In the same period last year, a total of 430 civilians were killed, the United Nations said last week.
(Reporting by Rohullah Anwari; Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Jerry Norton)
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Attacks, bombs kill 14 in Afghanistan
Fri Jul 4, 4:05 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Bomb blasts and attacks killed 11 policemen and three civilians in separate incidents in insurgency-hit Afghanistan, officials said Friday.
In the deadliest incident, attackers tossed a grenade into a police post in Panjwayi district of troubled southern Kandahar province and then opened fire into the building, killing eight policemen, the provincial police chief told AFP.
Another two policemen were missing after the midnight attack and two were wounded, General Mutihullah Khan said.
"A hand grenade was thrown into a police post in Panjwayi district near the district centre followed by a small-arms fire attack on the post. Eight police have been killed, two police are wounded and two are still missing," Khan said.
The area has been a hotbed of Taliban insurgents but it was not clear if the militants were responsible.
"At this stage we cannot say if the two missing police are taken by Taliban or they had links with Taliban or if there was some problem among policemen in the post and they had fought and killed each other," he said.
Separately three policemen were killed and two were wounded Friday in the central province of Ghazni when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb, provincial government spokesman Ismail Jahangir told AFP.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, said his group was responsible for the attack in the district of Rashidan.
Another roadside bomb hit a civilian vehicle in the neighbouring province of Wardak, killing three civilians and wounding two, said the provincial police chief, General Muzafarudin, who uses one name.
He blamed the attack on "enemies of peace in Afghanistan", a term used by Afghan authorities to refer to the Taliban insurgents who have waged a bloody insurgency since their ouster from power in late 2001.
The hardliners were in government between 1996 and 2001 and were toppled by a US-led invasion. Their insurgency has cost thousands of lives.
There are nearly 70,000 international soldiers in Afghanistan to help the government fight the insurgency.
June was the deadliest for foreign soldiers since the start of the war that ousted the Taliban weeks after the September 11 attacks by their Al-Qaeda allies on the United States, with 49 killed in combat or in accidents.
The US-led coalition reported that another soldier had died Friday of "non-combat" injuries. It did not give details, including the nationality of the soldier or details of what had happened.
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FACTBOX - Security developments in Afghanistan
July 4, 2008
(Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan reported until 2:30 p.m. on Friday:
NURISTAN - An air strike by U.S.-led troops killed 22 civilians, including women and children, on Friday in the eastern province of Nuristan, a provincial official said. The U.S. military confirmed a strike, but said those killed were militants.
KANDAHAR - Taliban militants threw a hand grenade at a police post and killed eight policemen on Thursday in the southern province of Kandahar, an official said, in one of the deadliest attacks in weeks.
FARAH - Six civilians, three women and three men, were killed in an air strike by foreign troops late on Thursday in the western province of Farah, several residents said. The provincial police chief confirmed the attack by U.S.-led troops in the area but could not give details of the target or casualties. U.S. military spokesmen were not available for comment.
GHAZNI - Three policemen died on Friday when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle in Ghazni province, which lies to the southwest of Kabul, an official said.
(Compiled by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Jerry Norton)
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Pentagon extends tour of Marines in Afghanistan
By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press / July 4, 2008
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has extended the tour of 2,200 Marines in Afghanistan, after insisting for months the unit would come home on time.
The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is doing combat operations in the volatile south, will stay an extra 30 days and come home in early November rather than October, Marine Col. David Lapan confirmed Thursday.
Military leaders as recently as Wednesday stressed the need for additional troops in Afghanistan. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has often praised the work of the 24th MEU in fighting Taliban militants in Helmand Province.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, however, has repeatedly said he did not intend to extend or replace the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, calling their deployment there an extraordinary, one-time effort to help tamp down the increasing violence in the south.
Asked about the possibility of an extension in early May, Gates said he would "be loathe to do that." He added that "no one has suggested even the possibility of extending that rotation."
Lapan said Thursday that commanders in Afghanistan asked that the Marines stay longer.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the longer tour does not open the door to an extension beyond the 30 days, nor to the possibility of replacing them with other U.S. troops when they come out in November. "This is a slight addition to this tour and nothing more," he said.
He added that commanders in Afghanistan "asked for 30 more days to milk the fighting season to the bitter end and cement the gains they have made in the south."
The Pentagon announced in January that the Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., was being ordered to Afghanistan, largely because efforts to press other NATO nations to increase their troop levels at the time had failed.
At the same time, about 1,000 members of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, which is based at Twentynine Palms, Calif., was ordered to deploy also. That unit has been used to train Afghan security forces. As a result of the MEU's extended deployment, Marines from both units are now expected to return home at about the same time.
Commanders faced with increasing violence have said they need at least 7,500 more troops in Afghanistan. And President Bush and defense officials have said they hope to identify additional units by the end of the year that could go to Afghanistan early next year.
The Pentagon has said that more U.S. forces cannot be sent to the Afghan fight until decisions are made to further reduce troop levels in Iraq. In the last two months, violence in Afghanistan has led to more U.S. and coalition casualties there than in Iraq, and June was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the war began.
"The Taliban and their supporters have, without question, grown more effective and more aggressive in recent weeks ... as the casualty figures clearly demonstrate," Mullen told a Pentagon press conference Wednesday.
The heavy fighting has claimed the lives of a dozen members of the Marine units. One other Marine's death was not related to combat.
"It's a very complex problem, and it's tied to the drug trade, a faltering economy and, as I've said many times, the porous border region with Pakistan," said Mullen. "There's no easy solution, and there will be no quick fix."
There are 32,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan, including 14,000 serving with the NATO-led coalition and another 18,000 conducting training and counterinsurgency.
The NATO force includes more than 52,000 troops from as many as 40 countries.
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On the Net:
Marine Corps: http://www.usmc.mil
24th MEU: http://www.iimefpublic.usmc.mil/24meu
NATO Coalition: http://www.nato.int/isaf/index.html
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Afghan insurgency challenging but can be tackled-UN
Thu Jul 3, 2008 8:46am EDT - By Robert Birsel
ISLAMABAD, July 3 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's insurgency can be overcome, not only by military means but by building up the state and getting the economy going, the United Nations envoy to Afghanistan said on Thursday.
June was the deadliest month for foreign forces in Afghanistan since the end of Taliban rule in 2001, with 42 foreign soldiers killed in combat, according to a Reuters tally.
"We've seen a fighting season which demonstrates how challenging the security situation is," U.N. envoy Kai Eide told Reuters in the Pakistani capital, referring to the summer when fighting traditionally picks up.
The Pentagon said last week the Taliban had regrouped and coalesced into a "resilient insurgency" and they were likely to maintain or even increase the scope and pace of attacks.
"I do not want to deny that the security situation is very challenging but I believe that we can tackle it," Eide said.
"We can tackle it not only by doing things on the military side. I am concerned about what we do with regard to development and what we do with regard to political processes ... building state institutions, get the economy going," he said. Such steps had to be put in place for success, he said.
"I've always said I do not believe in the military solution, I believe in the political solution," he said. Kai was in Pakistan for talks with government leaders after relations between the neighbours, both vital U.S. security allies, were strained by a flurry of Afghan complaints over Taliban infiltration.
The Pentagon said last week the greatest challenge to long-term Afghan security was insurgent sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border.
A frustrated Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said on June 15 he might send troops to fight the Taliban in Pakistan. Pakistan acknowledges the Taliban get some help from militant allies on its side of the rugged border but says it is doing all it can to stop infiltration.
Eide said the insurgency, drugs and refugees were difficult problems between the neighbours but he had received positive signals from leaders in both Kabul and Islamabad.
"What is now really important is to ensure that leaders in Kabul and Islamabad get into a political dialogue and discuss these issues and move forward," he said.
Eide, a Norwegian diplomat, arrived in Kabul in March aiming to improve the coordination of international civilian and military activities and cooperation with the Afghan government.
Eide rejected the possibility that the casualty toll among foreign soldiers might erode support for the mission in their home countries and said there was very strong commitment to Afghanistan from countries with forces there. (Editing by Alex Richardson)
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Fired Kandahar police chief says Canadians let him down
GRAEME SMITH - From Friday's Globe and Mail July 3, 2008
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Stripped of his uniform and placed under investigation after last month's spectacular jailbreak, Kandahar's former police chief lashed out Thursday at what he described as Canada's failure to help capture the hundreds of prisoners who escaped the shattered prison.
Sayed Agha Saqib, dining on a lavish meal of lamb and chicken at his home in Kandahar city last night, asked why Canadian soldiers did not chase the fugitives running away from Sarpoza prison on June 13.
“My police didn't have modern weapons, and they didn't have night-vision goggles,” Mr. Saqib said. “So why did you want us to go into those fields? It was the responsibility of NATO and the ANA [Afghan National Army].”
A Canadian commander has said it was not his troops' responsibility to round up the confused mix of Taliban and criminals who straggled through the fields south of the prison in the hours after the jailbreak. The Canadians gave information about the fugitives' location to Mr. Saqib that night, saying it was a police matter.
When daylight broke the next morning, Mr. Saqib said, his police searched the area near the prison but found no escapers.
Afghan commandos also landed helicopters near a cluster of villages roughly 15 kilometres south of Sarpoza later in the day and conducted a sweep. But only three of about 400 Taliban suspects have been recaptured, two weeks after the jailbreak.
More broadly, Mr. Saqib described the prison break as a military failure in the districts around Kandahar city. The raiding party of insurgents, which he estimated at 100 to 200 fighters, should never have been allowed to reach the city limits, he said.
“Who came to release the prisoners?” he asked. “It was the Taliban. What is NATO doing here in Afghanistan? They are fighting the Taliban. So why didn't NATO and the ANA keep the Taliban away from the city?”
Looking tired and wearing a few days grey stubble, the former career officer said he's finished with police work. Mr. Saqib said his government has “victimized” him and left him hunting for a job, unlike his predecessor, who was shuffled off to a less-prominent posting last year. His best option might be opening a private business in his home city of Jalalabad, he said.
He also remains under investigation for his role in the jailbreak, along with two other senior security officials in Kandahar who were fired last week. A fourth official, prison warden Colonel Abdul Qadir, has been arrested.
Mr. Saqib said the warden has strong links with tribal and political figures, and will likely escape prosecution. “He will use his connections and get free,” he said.
The former police chief blames Col. Qadir for slowing his response to the jailbreak. The first explosion was so loud that Mr. Saqib initially thought it was a bombing in the centre of the city, and he climbed to the roof of police headquarters to see whether any fires were burning nearby. He saw nothing but started getting reports from his outposts of a blast on the western edge of the city, near the jail.
He immediately phoned Col. Qadir to ask about the situation, he said, but the warden told him he'd checked with the prison guards and everything was fine. Insurgents had attacked a fuel tanker on the highway near the jail, the warden told the police chief, but the prison was not damaged.
“This was all part of a premeditated plan,” the former chief says, hinting darkly at others officials' deals with the insurgents while denying any complicity himself.
He paused to wash his hands after the evening meal, and talked about how such disasters might be avoided in future. The Afghan police need training, equipment and mentoring of the kind received by the national army, he said.
He recommended rotating police units from dangerous areas to safer districts in the same way that Afghan army soldiers are moved around the country, and paying a premium for serving in combat zones.
The foreign troops must also stop relying on local militias for security, he added. Irregular forces and untrained local police are often tolerated as a stop-gap measure in places where the uniformed police aren't strong enough to maintain security by themselves, but Mr. Saqib said they undermine the police organization.
“If the police have family in the village and the Taliban come from the same village, what can the police do? They know where you live.”
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Former Kandahar military adviser blasts Canada's Afghan diplomacy
The Canadian Press, 07/02/2008
OTTAWA — Military efforts in Afghanistan are being stalled by the perceived weakness of Canada's diplomatic and aid agencies, says the former cultural adviser to Canada's top soldier in Kandahar.
Despite having spent six years in the country, Canada still hasn't mastered the intricacies of dealing with Afghanistan's tribal culture and it's having a negative impact on the mission as a whole, said Malgarai, the Afghan-Canadian man who spent 13 months with the military in Kandahar.
Malgarai asked that only his first name be used to protect his family. "The channel of communication is very weak," he told The Canadian Press in an exclusive interview at the weekend.
"You know communication co-ordination exists, you know that everybody is working together but in reality it doesn't work that way."
Malgarai was known as "Pasha" to the soldiers and Afghans he worked with as a language and cultural adviser to Brig-Gen. Guy Laroche, the former commanding officer of Canada's military effort in Kandahar, whose term ended in May.
While local Afghans are used as interpreters for soldiers, there are an undisclosed number of Afghan-Canadians who also work with the military to help translate and advise on culture matters in Kandahar.
Earlier this year, several Afghan elders petitioned both the Canadian and Afghan governments to have Malgarai installed as governor of the province.
"Neither the (Canadian) government neither the military had anything to do with it," Malgarai said of the petition.
"It was purely and solely an Afghan initiative. The tribal leaders of Kandahar, and the shura of Kandahar who asked the task force of Kandahar for my support and they spoke to (Afghan President Hamid Karzai)."
Instead, his contract with the military was not renewed and he left Afghanistan in late June.
The former Ottawa civil servant, whose family fled Afghanistan in 1994, said while the military has made some headway in training soldiers on the cultural realities of working in Kandahar, the aid and diplomatic sides of Canada's mission are falling short.
The appointment of Elissa Golberg as the representative of Canada in Kandahar is but one example, he said.
She assumed the position of Canada's top diplomat in Kandahar in February 2008, following her job as executive director of the Manley Panel, a task force appointed by the Conservative government to look into the current mission.
Among the panel's recommendations was the need for better co-ordination of the three branches of the mission.
Though Malgarai said he respected her intelligence and ability, she was a liability and not an asset when it comes to dealing with Afghans.
"The nature of work where we work, there are some traditional forces, cultural forces, which she may not be as effective, or any other Foreign Affairs representative in Kandahar as effective, as a male and this is again because of the society," he said.
"The thing is knowing Afghan culture, Afghan people, the people are not taking her seriously."
Too much money is being spent on so-called "Afghan experts" who have merely read some essays or taken a few classes, Malgarai said, whether they are aid workers, cultural advisers to the military or police trainers.
"Afghanistan is not a jungle that somebody just walked into and then they start trying to rebuild a country," he said.
"We had a government before, we had infrastructure, we had a system in place before, those people are around they used to train the Afghans. The infrastructure is still there and the people must be there too."
Malgarai said from his vantage point, the weakness in Canada's current efforts in Kandahar also comes from aid and political officials not adequately backing up military efforts.
"The military are on the forefront, they go see the villages, they see them in need of wells, electricity, things that will people live and support their own government," he said.
"But then the military is forced to put in a proposal and what comes back is bureaucracy, not help."
In turn, villagers feel they can't trust Canadians, Malgarai said, and have no incentive not to let insurgents use their land as staging ground for attacks.
The majority of Canada's aid to Afghanistan is spent through non-governmental organizations and bodies like the United Nations, who then parcel out the money to Afghan government ministries".
But Malgarai said with corruption rampant in the Afghan government, that policy needs to stop.
"Give the money to the military and let them spend it where they see fit and where they need to build stuff until we get a responsible government authority where they can be accountable and be trusted," he said.
Canada's efforts, he said, are also butting up against the current governor, Asadullah Khalid.
He said the Afghan people as well have rejected the governor and his near-continuous absence from Kandahar in the past few months is proof he has lost control of the province.
Khalid was rumoured to be days away from being replaced in April when then-foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier told reporters he asked Karzai to turf him because of persistent allegations of corruption.
The comments were understood to have quashed Karzai's efforts to replace Khalid, because he could not be seen to making a political move at the behest of western officials.
But the search for a new governor for Kandahar has not ended. Among the potential new candidates is Gul Agha Shirzai, who was governor of the province in the early 1990s and again after the fall of the Taliban.
Malgarai said he hasn't ruled out a return to Kandahar in a political position, if Karzai will have him. He has asked the president for a meeting.
"I am an Afghan and I wouldn't want somebody else to talk to the president of my country, where I was born to say 'OK, please put Pasha as a governor,' " he said.
"If the president sees me fit for that position, good, but if the president doesn't see me fit for it, OK. My purpose is to help the Kandahar people and to help save the lives of Canadians."
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Big Oil pumps up the ugly Afghan and Iraqi mix
LAWRENCE MARTIN - July 3, 2008, Globe and Mail
In the war zones, the oil deals are coming on stream. Afghanistan recently signed a major agreement to build an American-backed pipeline. It will traverse the Kandahar region where Canadian forces are fighting. If they're still there, Canadians could well be called on to be a pipeline protection force.
In Iraq this week, the giant oil fields were opened to foreign bidders. U.S. conglomerates such as Exxon Mobil are about to sign no-bid contracts to move in. Big Oil, already brimming with profits, will have a fine Fourth of July.
The new Baghdad deals will trigger more wrangling over the real motivation for the Iraq invasion. There was a time when it was mainly just conspiracy theorists and other assorted weedy types who claimed the aggression was chiefly about oil. But along came Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, who wrote last year in his book The Age of Turbulence, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil." This week's entry of Big Oil in Iraq will only buttress this view.
The Afghan war wasn't all about oil. But that has certainly been among Washington's motivations and now, with the pipeline deal, it will be front and centre. As for Canada, oil wasn't on the radar screen in our war debate. Liberal governments didn't discuss it. "Never once heard mention of it from 2002 to 2006," said Eugene Lang, who worked closely on the Afghan file with two Liberal defence ministers.
In the late 1990s, an American-led oil consortium held talks with the Taliban about building a pipeline from Central Asia - where oil and gas reserves are gigantic - through Afghanistan to Pakistan, from where it could be shipped westward. The talks broke down in mid-2001. Washington was furious, leading to speculation it might take out the Taliban. After 9/11, the Taliban, with good reason, were removed - and pipeline planning continued with the Karzai government. U.S. forces installed bases near Kandahar, where the pipeline was to run. A key motivation for the pipeline was to block a competing bid involving Iran, a charter member of the "axis of evil."
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said recently that Washington has a "fundamental strategic interest" in Afghanistan that extends well beyond ensuring it is not used as a base for terrorism. In Ottawa, energy economist John Foster recently released a report on the pipeline. "Government efforts to convince Canadians to stay in Afghanistan have been enormous," he wrote, "but the impact of the proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline in areas of Afghanistan under Canadian purview has never been seriously debated."
In November of 2006, the Conservatives seemed to take a stand. At a little-noticed meeting in New Delhi, they agreed to help Kabul become an energy bridge through the building of the pipeline.
With the Afghan war not going well, the likelihood is the $7.6-billion project might not proceed for a few years. Canadian soldiers could well be gone by then, though we could extend our deadline one more time. The Americans would certainly like us to help them defend the pipeline route.
What should also be considered is that Afghanistan stands to reap a windfall in transit fees if the pipeline goes ahead. Such a pipeline also would help the U.S. in its energy needs - needs that its entry into Iraq's oil fields would help replenish too.
But the plan should be to get off dependence on foreign oil. The Bush administration has utterly failed to move the ball forward on energy independence. Some war boosters predicted that a successful Iraq war would bring oil down to $20 a barrel. It is now about seven times that price. The war, which cut Iraqi production, contributed to the massive U.S. debt and the plunge in the greenback's value, a significant factor in the prices we now pay at the pump.
Both the American infiltration of Iraq's oil fields and the Afghan project might serve to increase the flow and eventually help stabilize prices to some degree.
War for oil is hardly a savoury option. But get ready. With the signing of the pipeline plan in Kabul, it will soon be part of the debate in this country.
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