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Afghans turn to Taliban in fear of own police
By Peter Graff – Sun Jul 12, 9:57 am ET
PANKELA, Afghanistan (Reuters) – As British troops moved into the village newly freed from Taliban control, they heard one message from the anxious locals: for God's sake do not bring back the Afghan police.
Obama says Taliban pushed back in Afghanistan
July 12, 2009
LONDON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama said US and NATO-led troops had pushed back the Taliban in Afghanistan but he warned that there was still a long, hard campaign ahead.
Attack kills 12 Taliban in southern Afghanistan
By Noor Khan, Associated Press Writer – Sun Jul 12, 4:40 am ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – International troops and Afghan police killed 12 Taliban insurgents in a gunbattle in southern Afghanistan, police said Sunday.
AFGHAN SLAUGHTER GOES ON WITH PAKISTAN ARMY BACKING
By Arthur Kent, skyreporter.com
July 12, 2009 - As frontline forces of the American-led coalition suffer record losses in Afghanistan, their political masters continue to duck responsibility for failing to put pressure on the leadership of the Afghan Taliban where
Gordon Brown plans troops surge in Afghanistan
• 2,000 more soldiers for Helmand
• Review comes after bloodiest day
Mark Townsend, Toby Helm, Peter Beaumont and Gaby Hinsliff The Observer, Sunday 12 July 2009
Thousands more troops could be sent to Afghanistan within months under an emergency review of the UK mission being carried out by the Ministry of Defence.
Brown says Britain defeating Taliban
July 12, 2009 at 7:57 AM
LONDON, July 12 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says the Taliban must be defeated in Afghanistan to avoid more terrorist acts on the streets of his country.
Afghan insurgents in 'disarray' as coalition advances, says Canadian general
By Colin Perkel The Canadian Press July 12, 2009
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Mounting casualties and unprecedented numbers of roadside bomb attacks are more a reflection of increased activity by the international coalition than a sign of a strengthening insurgency, Canada's top soldier in Afghanistan says.
2 US Marines killed in Afghan bomb blasts
By Jason Straziuso Associated Press July 12, 2009
KABUL – A bomb blast killed two U.S. Marines in Afghanistan's dangerous south, where thousands of American troops have deployed in a massive operation to oust Taliban fighters from the country's opium poppy region, officials said Sunday.
Up to 200 rebels dead in Afghan offensive: govt
Sun Jul 12, 8:36 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – Mainly British and Afghan troops have killed up to 200 insurgents in a major assault on Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan launched three weeks ago, the Afghan interior ministry said Sunday.
Isolated US convoys in Afghanistan ambush targets
by Ben Sheppard – Sun Jul 12, 12:06 am ET
KOSHTAY, Afghanistan (AFP) – Stranded for three days on a single stretch of road in southern Afghanistan, the US Marines wondered why they had not been ambushed by the Taliban -- and then finally the attack came.
UK hospital in Afghanistan copes with bloodiest day
12 Jul 2009 15:53:36 GMT By Peter Graff
CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan, July 12 (Reuters) - More than 30 wounded British soldiers were flown into Camp Bastion off the battlefield in Afghanistan and the operating theatre went through more than 100 pints
New peril for British troops in Afghanistan: Taliban have learned modern warfare
Imagination, greater firepower and strengthening of Taliban's ideological bond leaves coalition facing higher casualty rates
Jason Burke The Guardian, Saturday 11 July 2009
For many months, military planners in Afghanistan have been readying themselves – and trying to prepare domestic public opinion – for a bloody summer. In spring, a number of officers – from the then commander of coalition forces
Security developments in Afghanistan
July 12 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan at 0700 GMT on Sunday.
Afghan base construction continues
By Drew Brown, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Sunday, July 12, 2009
TARIN KOWT, Afghanistan — The first wave of construction at more than a half-dozen bases across southern Afghanistan designed to accommodate the Obama administration’s buildup of U.S. forces
We must rediscover our purpose in Afghanistan
Editorial The Observer, Sunday 12 July 2009
One advantage that Afghan insurgents have over Nato forces is that they know what victory would look like. For those who despise the mere presence of foreign soldiers, the relentless killing has a simple purpose - to end the occupation.
Cruel human toll of fight to win Afghan peace
The death toll of British troops in southern Afghanistan rose to 184 last week as a switch of military strategy brought more bloodshed. But as it grows more difficult to distinguish friend from foe, many soldiers and their families question if victory is even possible. Jason Burke reports
Jason Burke The Observer, Sunday 12 July 2009
Sangin is little more than a small town on a remote river running down to the desert plains of southern Afghanistan. It is a scatter of battered concrete administrative buildings, a scruffy bazaar and narrow lanes
Osama is in Afghanistan, says Pak interior minister
PTI July 12, 2009
LONDON: Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other top operatives of the terrorist network are hiding in Afghanistan, probably in Kunar area,
In Remote Afghanistan, Searching For A Young Survivor
July 12, 2009 By Sharafuodin Stanakzai Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Nine-year-old Zahra was orphaned after coalition forces bombed her village in a remote area of western Afghanistan last year. The attack killed 90 people, 60 of them children. Two days after the bombing
Karzai’s Campaign Office Bombed in Panjshir
Written by Anisa Shahid Quqnoos July 12, 2009
A bomb blast near incumbent Karzai’s campaign office in Panjshir province damaged the building, an official said
Shabana Azmi addresses global summit on women's abuse in Afghanistan
July 11, 2009
Mumbai (IANS): Ignoring her family's concern for her safety, Bollywood actor Shabana Azmi visited Afghanistan this week on an invitation by the UN to be the main speaker at a global summit to address the issue of violence against women.
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Afghans turn to Taliban in fear of own police
By Peter Graff – Sun Jul 12, 9:57 am ET
PANKELA, Afghanistan (Reuters) – As British troops moved into the village newly freed from Taliban control, they heard one message from the anxious locals: for God's sake do not bring back the Afghan police.
U.S. and British troops have launched a campaign to seize control of Helmand province, about half of which was in Taliban hands, and restore Afghan government institutions.
But as they advance, they are learning uncomfortable facts about their local allies: villagers say the government's police force was so brutal and corrupt that they welcomed the Taliban as liberators.
"The police would stop people driving on motorcycles, beat them and take their money," said Mohammad Gul, an elder in the village of Pankela, which British troops have been securing for the past three days after flying in by helicopter.
He pointed to two compounds of neighbors where pre-teen children had been abducted by police to be used for the local practice of "bachabazi," or sex with pre-pubescent boys.
"If the boys were out in the fields, the police would come and rape them," he said. "You can go to any police base and you will see these boys. They hold them until they are finished with them and then let the child go."
The Interior Ministry in Kabul said it would contact police commanders in the area before responding in detail.
When the Taliban arrived in the village 10 months ago and drove the police out, local people rejoiced, said Mohammad Rasul, a toothless elderly farmer who keeps a few cows and chickens in a neatly tended orchard of pomegranate trees, figs and grape vines.
Although his own son was killed by a Taliban roadside bomb five years ago, Rasul said the fighters earned their welcome in the village by treating people with respect.
"We were happy (after the Taliban arrived). The Taliban never bothered us," he said.
Before the Taliban arrived, the police had come to his house with a powerful landlord he called a "tyrant," who put a rifle in his face, searched through his compound and demanded money.
"If (the British) bring these people back, we can't live here. If they come back, I am sure they will burn everything," Rasul said.
MINES, SNIPERS
The British effort, Operation Panther's Claw, has focused on the Babaji district north of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, an area of lush fields, vineyards and orchards, watered by carefully tended streams and canals fed by the Helmand river.
Taliban fighters have sown the area with homemade mines and sniper nests, inflicting the worst casualties of the war. At least 15 British soldiers have been killed in the past 12 days.
Further south, some 4,000 U.S. Marines have met less resistance after seizing three districts of the lower Helmand River valley in an air and ground assault.
The aim is to impose Afghan government control over most of the province in time for an August 20 presidential poll.
But commanders say holding the area for the longer term will depend on bringing in credible local security forces.
The United States has spent lavishly in the past eight years to build up the Afghan National Army (ANA).
But it left training the Afghan National Police (ANP) to Germany, which spent a fraction as much, sending a small number of civilian instructors.
The result is a police force that is widely acknowledged to be unprepared for work in a combat zone: the ANP suffered three times as many deaths as the ANA last year.
Washington is rushing to make up the gap, sending 4,000 military trainers to Afghanistan this year to focus mainly on professionalizing the police.
Entire police forces are being removed from districts and sent to remote locations for intensive eight-week training.
Major Al Steele, commander of Bravo Company of 3 SCOTS, the Black Watch, who met elders in Pankela, acknowledged their concerns but said foreign forces were working on it.
"We have heard a lot of complaints about the ANP, but the Coalition Forces and the ANA are working together well, and the ANP are getting better," he told Gul Mohammad, squatting outside the elder's mud-walled compound.
The elder shrugged and flipped his prayer beads.
"Every time we heard that new ANP would come. But the old ANP would come back and it would be just like in the past."
"The people here trust the Taliban," he said. "If the police come back and behave the same way, we will support the Taliban to drive them out."
(Editing by Paul Tait and Myra MacDonald)
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Obama says Taliban pushed back in Afghanistan
July 12, 2009
LONDON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama said US and NATO-led troops had pushed back the Taliban in Afghanistan but he warned that there was still a long, hard campaign ahead.
"We knew that this summer was going to be tough fighting, that there was an interest in the Taliban exerting control. They have, I think, been pushed back but we still have a long way to go. We've got to get through elections.
"We've got a serious fight on our hands and we've got to deal with it smartly but we've got to deal with it effectively," Obama said in an interview with Britain's Sky News on Saturday during his visit to Ghana.
Fifteen British soldiers have been killed this month in southern Afghanistan, where US and British forces are battling Taliban insurgents ahead of the presidential and provincial council elections on August 20.
The surge in casualties has raised the British death toll in Afghanistan above the number of dead in the Iraq campaign and raised questions in Britain about tactics and strategy.
Obama said the contribution of the British military was "critical" and establishing peace and stability in Afghanistan was essential to prevent it again becoming a launch pad for terror attacks on the West.
"This is not an American mission. The mission in Afghanistan is one that the Europeans have as much, if not more, of a stake in than we do... The likelihood of a terrorist attack in London is at least as high, if not higher, than it is in the United States.
"And that's the reason why (former and current British prime ministers) Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and others have made this commitment."
Obama said he wanted a new push after the election to train Afghanistan's army and police so Afghans could take greater responsibility for controlling their own security.
"I think we need to start directing our attention to how do we create an Afghan army, an Afghan police, how do we work with the Pakistanis effectively, so that they are the ones who are really at the forefront at controlling their own countries.
"All of us are going to have to do an evaluation after the Afghan election to see what more we can do.
"It may not be on the military side, it might be on the development side providing Afghan farmers alternatives to poppy crops, making sure that we are effectively training a judiciary system and a rule of law in Afghanistan that people trust."
Brown defended Britain's strategy for Afghanistan on Saturday, saying it was "the right one" and he insisted the western allies were winning the battle against Taliban insurgents in their heartlands of Helmand Province.
The prime minister said it was vital that the country not become an "incubator for terrorism" where the Taliban could provide a safe haven for Al-Qaeda.
Fatalities have risen since British forces launched Operation Panther's Claw, an assault on the Taliban in Helmand Province which is designed to create safe conditions for Afghans to vote in next month's elections.
The Afghan interior ministry said Sunday that British and Afghan troops had killed up to 200 insurgents in the operation.
The United States has said it is sending up to 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan this year as the Taliban -- ousted from power by the US-led invasion in 2001 -- has regrouped.
Thousands of the additional US troops have been deployed in Helmand, where most British troops are based.
But defence minister Bob Ainsworth rejected angrily to accusations from a British political rival that British troops had been "bailed out" by the US forces.
"This is not an American takeover, I think it is quite disgraceful for people to suggest," he told Sky News.
British forces organised "coordinated operations" with the US forces as soon as they arrived in Helmand, Ainsworth said, and troops were working as a coalition.
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Attack kills 12 Taliban in southern Afghanistan
By Noor Khan, Associated Press Writer – Sun Jul 12, 4:40 am ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – International troops and Afghan police killed 12 Taliban insurgents in a gunbattle in southern Afghanistan, police said Sunday.
The joint force attacked a compound north of the capital of Uruzgan province where the militants were hiding Saturday evening, sparking the fighting, police spokesman Mohammad Musa said. He said no Afghan police or international troops were killed.
In eastern Kunar province, meanwhile, one civilian was killed and five wounded when shelling from a gunbattle between insurgents and Afghan and international forces hit a house.
Provincial Police Chief Gen. Abdul Jalal Jalal said everyone in the house initially survived Saturday's blast, but one man died from his injuries after being rushed to a hospital. Jalal said it was unclear which side fired the shots that hit the house.
Also Saturday, at least six police officers were killed by roadside bombs — two in southern Helmand province and at least four south of Kabul in Logar province, officials said.
In Logar, the officers were driving in a private car in Charkh district when the explosion hit, said provincial police chief Gen. Mustafa Mosseini.
NATO forces, who secured the site and treated one wounded officer, said in a statement that four police were killed. Mosseini said five officers died.
The bombing in Helmand took place Saturday night in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, killing two police and wounding three, said Dawood Ahmadi, the governor's spokesman.
Police officers are regular targets of Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan. Mosseini said the officers had been traveling in a civilian car in order to avoid drawing the attention of potential attackers.
In another gunbattle in eastern Paktia province between insurgents and Afghan police, two militants and one police officer were killed, said Rahullah Samon, a spokesman for the governor.
___
Associated Press writer Amir Shah contributed to this report from Kabul.
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AFGHAN SLAUGHTER GOES ON WITH PAKISTAN ARMY BACKING
By Arthur Kent, skyreporter.com
July 12, 2009 - As frontline forces of the American-led coalition suffer record losses in Afghanistan, their political masters continue to duck responsibility for failing to put pressure on the leadership of the Afghan Taliban where it matters most, their safe havens in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, bordering the battlefields of Helmand and Kandahar.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has spoken of a “patriotic duty” to defend the U.K. from terrorism, despite the killing by Taliban forces of 15 British soldiers in ten days. But he and other Western leaders shrink from addressing the greatest perversity of the war, namely that the Afghan Taliban’s haunts in Baluchistan seem immune from assault, by either political or military means.
As more and more British, Canadian and U.S. soldiers lay down their lives, their enemy’s stronghold just across the Pakistani border is a comparative oasis of calm and security – at least for the Taliban leadership.
Further to the north and east, the C.I.A.’s drones rain Hellfire missiles on Pakistan’s home-grown Talib militants and their al Qaeda allies, who the Pakistan government has declared fair game in its own domestic war against terrorism.
It’s a different story for the Afghan Taliban leadership council – the Quetta shura led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, so named for its headquarters in and around Baluchistan’s capital city.
All available evidence shows that Omar’s council, the head of the Taliban snake, continues to enjoy sanctuary and support from elements of the Pakistan Army. In return, Omar is reportedly aiding Pakistan’s ruthless crackdown on Baluch nationalists.
The extent of this clandestine alliance is such that neither missiles nor political missives from the U.S.-led coalition have put so much as a dent in the Afghan Taliban’s war effort. To date, the coalition’s covert and conventional forces have been constrained by their political masters from mounting a single offensive action against Omar’s shura, or his fighters’ training camps, weapons dumps and transit points in Baluchistan.
Pakistan is determined, as has been the case since the early 1990’s, to maintain Mullah Omar’s guerrillas as a proxy force in Afghanistan, a tool to destabilize a potential regional competitor and ally of the dreaded arch-enemy, India.
The West’s disgraceful record in countering this tendency condemns coalition forces to a cruel attrition. For eight years, Gordon Brown and his predecessor, Tony Blair, together with other NATO leaders, stood by while the Bush administration pumped $2 billion per year into the Pakistan Army’s coffers.
This failed attempt to purchase Pakistan’s support against the Taliban was grossly counter-productive, as evidenced by the mounting intensity of the insurgencies in both countries.
Absurdly, Brown and his foreign minister have this weekend appealed to the British public to support the critically-flawed Afghan mission as a means to prevent further terrorist outrages in Britain, such as the July 7, 2005 attack on London's tube and buses. That the 7/7 bombings had roots in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, goes unmentioned.
Equally dubious is the notion, now being floated through Whitehall, that another 2,000 British troops should be dispatched to the fray in Helmand. Clearly, as was the case in the parliamentary expenses melodrama, London's leading suits are hard pressed to do the math.
History records the tough numbers of the Great Game. The Soviet Army, as it was coming undone in Afghanistan twenty years ago, had 30,000 troops manning the posts, batteries and fire bases that formed Kabul province's three concentric security rings.
With fewer than half that deployment, U.S.-led NATO forces are trying to penetrate and secure the entire Helmand river valley, an area at least ten times the size of the Red Army’s safety zone around the Afghan capital.
The West’s politicians and generals can protest all they wish about “real progress” in the Afghan campaign. In reality, it is delusion, deception and death that stalk the tortured landscape, foreshadowing defeat.
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Gordon Brown plans troops surge in Afghanistan
• 2,000 more soldiers for Helmand
• Review comes after bloodiest day
Mark Townsend, Toby Helm, Peter Beaumont and Gaby Hinsliff The Observer, Sunday 12 July 2009
Thousands more troops could be sent to Afghanistan within months under an emergency review of the UK mission being carried out by the Ministry of Defence.
The news of a possible troop surge comes after eight British soldiers were killed within 24 hours, leading to fresh calls from senior military and political figures for urgent reinforcements - and an end to Treasury constraints on spending on the Afghan war. Fifteen British soldiers have died during the first 11 days of July, with the total of 184 deaths surpassing the 179 killed in Iraq. Two of the soldiers who died on Thursday have been named as Daniel Hume, 22, from 4th Bn, The Rifles, and John Brackpool of the Prince of Wales's Company, 1st Bn Welsh Guards, who would have celebrated his 28th birthday yesterday.
Private Brackpool, a father-of-one, died from a gunshot wound following a battle near Lashkar Gah with insurgents who attacked a compound seized as part of Operation Panther's Claw, a major offensive against the Taliban. He was described by his platoon commander, Lieutenant Dave Harris, as a "genuine, compassionate and likeable man" who had given his life protecting his comrades. The parents of Rifleman Hume, killed in an explosion while on foot patrol near Nad-e-Ali in Helmand province, last night said that their son had "found his place in the world." "Daniel passed out of Catterick as top recruit and since joining the army he was the happiest we had known him," said Adrian and Wendy Hume. "He believed in what the British army was trying to achieve and was confident. He was proud to serve his country and was planning to move battalion when he returned, so that he could guarantee a speedy return to Afghanistan. We have lost a son and a best friend. His death has left a huge void in our lives. We are fiercely proud of him."
Last night, Barack Obama said his heart went out to the families of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan. In an interview to be broadcast on Sky News today he said: "Great Britain has played an extraordinary role in this coalition, understanding that we cannot allow either Afghanistan or Pakistan to be a safe haven for al-Qaida, those who with impunity blow up train stations in London or buildings in New York. We knew this summer was going to be tough fighting ... we still have a long way to go."
The emotive images of the soldiers' coffins being repatriated have intensified pressure on ministers to show the loss of life is for a cause that can be won.
There is also growing sensitivity in Whitehall to charges that lives are being put at risk because of attempts in the Treasury to rein in spending.
An MoD source confirmed that ministers were "re-examining" troop numbers in Helmand following the bloodiest day for UK ground troops since the start of current operations. "Troop levels are under review. They could go up, depending on events on the ground," said a defence spokesman. It is believed that the maximum extra deployment would be 2,000.
Last month, military chiefs were dismayed to learn their requests for 2,000 more troops had been turned down because of a Treasury spending cap.
An extra 700 service personnel were recently sent to Helmand province on a temporary basis to provide security ahead of Afghanistan's presidential elections next month. This takes the total British force to nearly 9,000.
In his Sky News interview, Obama said: "The likelihood of a terrorist attack in London is just as high, if not higher, than it is in the US, that's why Tony Blair and now Gordon Brown have made this commitment. It is not because they wish to put their young men and women in harm's way."
In a letter released to Commons select committee chairmen before an appearance before parliament's liaison committee this week, Brown said the past few days had been "extraordinarily difficult", but also made clear that troop numbers could be raised to build on successes against the Taliban. "We will, of course, continue to review our force levels, based on the advice of our commanders and discussions with allies," he wrote.
The apparent willingness to consider sending more troops will be seen as a sign of Brown's determination to show real progress in Afghanistan before the general election. Obama is also known to have told commanders he wants demonstrable results within a year.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Tory foreign secretary, said Brown had no option but to order the MoD to loosen financial controls: "The needs of combat operations are always additional to normal MoD funding. We did not defeat Hitler by deciding what we could afford."
Leftwing Labour MP Jon Cruddas today calls on ministers to scrap plans for the new multibillion-pound Trident missile system and to switch resources to "protect soldiers on the frontline".
Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said that patience with the Afghanistan mission was limited: "The public will understand us making sacrifices if there is a sense of progress, but if there is no sign of it soon they will become impatient."
Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said: "The price of failure is too great to contemplate. But we must give our armed forces the equipment they need. The decision to cut the helicopter budget in 2004 was disastrous"
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Brown says Britain defeating Taliban
July 12, 2009 at 7:57 AM
LONDON, July 12 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says the Taliban must be defeated in Afghanistan to avoid more terrorist acts on the streets of his country.
"There is a line of terror -- what you might call a chain of terror -- that links what's happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of Britain," Brown said Saturday.
Brown sought to shore up support for the war after the death of 15 British soldiers so far this month in Afghanistan, the BBC reported Sunday. Under Operation Panther's Claw, British troops are trying to drive the Taliban from central Helmand province.
"I think the operation we are engaged with is showing signs of success," Brown said. "Our troops are making progress as they attempt to make the area safe."
Critics of Britain's war strategy contend the country's 9,000 troops in Afghanistan urgently need more helicopters and heavily armored vehicles, The Sunday Telegraph reported.
Brown has defended the government's overall strategy and its record on providing equipment.
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Afghan insurgents in 'disarray' as coalition advances, says Canadian general
By Colin Perkel The Canadian Press July 12, 2009
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Mounting casualties and unprecedented numbers of roadside bomb attacks are more a reflection of increased activity by the international coalition than a sign of a strengthening insurgency, Canada's top soldier in Afghanistan says.
In fact, Brig.-Gen. Jonathan Vance says, the Taliban-led insurgency is in "disarray."
"Yes, there are times when we take killed or wounded in action, but it pales in comparison to the killed and wounded that the insurgency has taken when facing us," said Vance, commander of Canada's joint task force Kandahar.
"Part of the reason for their disarray is that much of their leadership has been eradicated," Vance said in a weekend interview with The Canadian Press.
Based on polls and informal feedback, Vance said, the security situation in Kandahar province has improved since February 2008.
Both the Afghan army and national police force are showing an increased ability to function effectively on their own, while some areas - such as the largely peaceful Dand district just south of Kandahar city - are rendering the insurgency irrelevant, Vance said.
The comments come against a backdrop of an increasingly bloody confrontation between the uniformed soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force and insurgents.
Effective roadside bomb attacks on coalition forces - those that kill or injure - have more than tripled over the past two years and have set monthly records for the past four months, according to the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization.
Last month, 23 coalition troops were killed - among them two Canadians - while a third Canadian died this month of injuries sustained in a June explosion. More British soldiers have now died in Afghanistan than have in Iraq.
Several other Canadian soldiers were wounded in June, although the Canadian military refuses to provide statistics.
Vance, a 45-year-old married father of a five-year-old, said the higher casualty figures reflect the fact that coalition forces are taking the battle into Taliban strongholds in unprecedented numbers.
"They are going to places where the insurgency hasn't been attacked in force before and in the process of doing that, your soldiers get hurt and killed - at a rate far lower, I might add, than the Taliban."
Overall, the total number of incidents involving roadside bombs reached 736 in June, up from 234 in June 2007. Incidents include attacks that kill or wound coalition troops, ineffective attacks as well as improvised explosive devices that are found and neutralized.
"IEDs are dangerous," Vance said. "I'm not downplaying the fact that the insurgency has used them to effect against us. I hate IEDs. But it's not going to stop us."
The general, who visits his troops in the field, has had close and personal encounters with the roadside bombs himself - including one that killed one of his bodyguards a few weeks ago.
Vance said the often grim news surrounding casualties makes it more difficult to see the gains that have been made by the coalition.
However, he did concede the allied forces have yet to break the back of the insurgency. "Words like stalemate or standoff are near reflective," he said.
At this stage, he said, it is critical for the international community, particularly the Americans, to focus heavily on Afghanistan. The current number of soldiers on the ground isn't enough to speed up the gradual progress that is being made.
The general said Canadians have to remember progress in the war cannot be measured by the number of soldiers killed, because the purpose of the mission is to protect Afghans and help the country onto its feet.
That, he said, would be an enormous challenge even without the insurgency.
"It's a shattered place - physically, morally, broken - but has shown in the past the ability to rebound," he said.
"I see the ability to rebound present, and the potential, everywhere I go."
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2 US Marines killed in Afghan bomb blasts
By Jason Straziuso Associated Press July 12, 2009
KABUL – A bomb blast killed two U.S. Marines in Afghanistan's dangerous south, where thousands of American troops have deployed in a massive operation to oust Taliban fighters from the country's opium poppy region, officials said Sunday.
Some 4,000 Marines moved into Helmand province this month, the largest Marine operation in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S. invasion. They have met little head-on resistance but remain vulnerable to guerrilla tactics like suicide and roadside bombs.
"These terrorist attacks are hard to prevent, can be carried out by a few individuals, and do not require a military force capable of confronting the Marines," said Arturo Munoz, an expert on the tribal environment in Helmand province with the Washington-based RAND Corp.
"I would expect the Taliban to avoid pitched battles with the Marines in order to avoid a large number of casualties," he said. "This does not mean they will avoid violence."
The two Marines were killed Saturday in Helmand. Military officials did not release any other details nor give a specific location. The military initially reported four Marines had died but later corrected the figure, saying the deaths were mistakenly double-counted.
The American casualties come after eight British deaths in Helmand in a 24-hour period ending Friday, triggering debate in Britain about its role in Afghanistan. Britain has now lost more troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
In an interview broadcast Sunday, President Barack Obama called Britain's contribution critically important and said U.S. and British troops face a difficult summer ahead of elections in Afghanistan late next month.
"We've got to get through elections," Obama told Sky News. "The most important thing we can do is to combine our military efforts with effective diplomacy and development, so that Afghans feel a greater stake and have a greater capacity to secure their country."
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan will help keep extremist groups from launching attacks inside Britain. And he told Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a telephone call Sunday that Britain would stand "shoulder-to-shoulder with the people of Afghanistan for the long haul," according to a statement by the Afghan presidency.
But in an editorial Sunday, The Observer newspaper predicted the British public will soon decide the war is not worth the casualties.
"Lives saved by bringing soldiers home will seem a surer benefit than the unproven hypothesis of preventing terrorism with a war thousands of miles away," the newspaper said.
Another American service member died Friday in the U.S. of wounds suffered in Afghanistan in June, said Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, who confirmed the deaths of the two Marines.
The three deaths bring to 104 the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year, a record pace. Last year 151 U.S. troops died in the country. Overall, 193 international troops have died in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press count based on official announcements.
Obama ordered 21,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan earlier this year to help put down an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency. Some 10,000 Marines and 4,000 soldiers from the Stryker Brigade — the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division based in Fort Lewis, Wash. — are deploying in the south, the Taliban's spiritual birthplace and stronghold.
The troops will help provide security for the Aug. 20 election, when Afghans will choose a president and provincial councils, and help train army and police units that the U.S. hopes one day can provide security for the country. By fall, a record 68,000 U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan.
Violence flared elsewhere around the country over the weekend, illustrating again that security is deteriorating. At least 22 people were killed, including seven police officers, officials reported on Sunday.
• In southern Uruzgan province, international troops and Afghan police killed 12 militants in a gunbattle Saturday, police spokesman Mohammad Musa said.
• In Logar, four policemen died when a roadside bomb hit their car in Charkh district Saturday, said provincial police chief Gen. Mustafa Mosseini.
• In Helmand, two police were killed in a roadside bombing in the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah late Saturday, said Dawood Ahmadi, the governor's spokesman.
• In a gunbattle in eastern Paktia province between insurgents and Afghan police, two militants and one police officer were killed, said Rahullah Samon, a spokesman for the governor.
• In eastern Kunar province, one civilian was killed and five wounded when shells from a gunbattle between insurgents and Afghan and coalition forces hit a house. Provincial Police Chief Gen. Abdul Jalal Jalal said it was unclear which side fired the shots that hit the house.
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Associated Press writers Amir Shah in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
(This version CORRECTS Corrects number of Marines deaths to 2 sted 4; military says deaths were double-counted)
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Up to 200 rebels dead in Afghan offensive: govt
Sun Jul 12, 8:36 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – Mainly British and Afghan troops have killed up to 200 insurgents in a major assault on Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan launched three weeks ago, the Afghan interior ministry said Sunday.
Thousands of NATO-led US Marines, British troops and Afghan security forces have been fighting their way into some of the most dangerous insurgent strongholds in the southern province of Helmand for weeks.
The operations are designed to clean out areas of rebels to allow Afghans to vote in presidential and provincial council elections due on August 20.
"We have killed around 150 to 200 enemy fighters" as part of the British-led Operation Panther's Claw, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told reporters.
"This is not a final death toll as the operations continue," the spokesman said.
It was the first official figure issued for insurgent casualties in the operation. Authorities have not said how many have been killed in a US Marines operation launched further south in Helmand on July 2.
A US Marine was killed by hostile fire on the first day of Operation Khanjar (dagger), one of the biggest anti-militant operations since 2001, while 15 British soldiers have died in 10 days as Panther's Claw pushes on.
The Taliban were in power between 1996 and 2001 before they were toppled in a US-led offensive following the 9/11 attacks on US cities.
Since being ousted the remnants of the militia have been waging an insurgency aimed at regaining power.
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Isolated US convoys in Afghanistan ambush targets
by Ben Sheppard – Sun Jul 12, 12:06 am ET
KOSHTAY, Afghanistan (AFP) – Stranded for three days on a single stretch of road in southern Afghanistan, the US Marines wondered why they had not been ambushed by the Taliban -- and then finally the attack came.
Rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small-arms fire were directed at the convoy, which responded with shoulder-launched missiles, grenades and machinegun fire, an AFP reporter travelling with the Marines witnessed.
The strike at the troops late Friday came from a mud-walled compound 150 metres from the dirt road on which the US vehicles were stuck by IEDs (improvised explosive devices) planted both in front and behind them.
The 1st Combat Engineer Battalion were trying to open up the route into the south of Helmand province as part of President Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy, but they had been halted by a series of IED blasts since Wednesday.
IED damage to two vehicles left the convoy unable to advance and the Marines spent long days and nights either on guard or crammed into their armour-plated trucks, waiting for a Taliban ambush.
They observed all local residents through their gun sights, and fired flares to warn off approaching vehicles. An interpreter shouted at curious children to return to their homes.
The insurgents' attack started with small arms fire, followed by mortars and then two rockets that narrowly missed one of the convoy's trucks.
"We took contact from the compound," said Staff Sergeant Earl Hewett, covered in sweat and dust after the fight.
"One of their rockets landed near a truck and destroyed its tyre, but that was the only thing that was hit.
"We fired four rockets in all and several hundred grenade and machinegun rounds. It shows how thick the compound's walls must be as the building is still standing."
Marines took up positions on the ground around the vehicles as illumination flares were fired overhead from a nearby US base.
Shots from the compound triggered a barrage of return fire from gunners mounted on the trucks' roofs and from other soldiers on foot.
Huge explosions rocked the convoy and red tracer bullets flew through the air. One US rocket destroyed a wall of the compound, and Marines said they saw men pulling belongings out of the rubble.
The exchange of fire lasted about one hour, with the attackers then falling silent under the heavy US onslaught.
On Saturday morning, troops searched the sprawling mud compound but found little evidence of those involved in the battle beyond marks from mortar base plates.
"We had been expecting an attack and were asking ourselves why it hadn't happened," said Lieutenant Dan Jernigan, who heads the 30-man route clearance platoon.
"Women and children left the area just before dusk and we knew that we would soon come under fire, which is what happened. It is impossible to say if any Taliban were killed.
"These roads need to be opened for the people of Afghanistan and we will press on to achieve that."
The US's efforts to stabilise the Afghan government and defeat the Taliban rely on controlling Helmand, where much of the opium that funds the insurgency is grown and through which Taliban fighters travel to safe havens in Pakistan.
Obama launched a major operation in the province at the start of the month, sending 4,000 Marines into areas where British troops from the international coalition had failed to quell the Taliban.
British troops last month kicked off their own major operation further north in Helmand, suffering heavy casualties there and elsewhere in the province mostly from IEDs.
Eight British soldiers were killed within 24 hours on Friday, taking the British military death toll in the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan higher than that for the conflict in Iraq.
The Afghan Islamist hardliners were ousted by the coalition and a local alliance in 2001 for refusing to hand over Al-Qaeda militants behind the September 11 attacks.
No Marines were injured in Friday's fighting near Koshtay, though one man was concussed in Wednesday's IED blast and evacuated by helicopter.
The battle started after two Marines using hand-held mine detectors moved a few hundred yards (metres) up the road ahead of the parked convoy.
An IED, apparently set off by a trigger man activating a command wire, exploded near them.
Other Marines charged into nearby woods and trees in search of the man, and the ambush began soon after they had returned to the convoy.
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UK hospital in Afghanistan copes with bloodiest day
12 Jul 2009 15:53:36 GMT By Peter Graff
CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan, July 12 (Reuters) - More than 30 wounded British soldiers were flown into Camp Bastion off the battlefield in Afghanistan and the operating theatre went through more than 100 pints of blood products over the weekend.
In the bloodiest day in the history of the British war effort in Afghanistan, eight soldiers were killed on Friday.
Doctors, nurses and staff at the field hospital at Britain's Camp Bastion worked round the clock, sometimes 15-16 staff tending to a single badly injured patient.
The 33-bed hospital was already almost full when the carnage began, but never overflowed. Almost as quickly as helicopters arrived from the battlefield, planes and other aircraft took stabilised casualties to Kabul or Birmingham in Britain.
"We've had some very badly injured young people go back to Birmingham, and go back to Birmingham in very good shape. And I think there's no question that the hospital system has saved lives," said Colonel Peter Mahoney, the hospital's director, a professor of anaesthesiology and airborne soldier.
The battlefield casualties -- the most a British military hospital has coped with in a single day since the 1982 Falklands War -- has led to questions back home about a war that has had lukewarm public support.
But commanders say they expected a surge of casualties this summer, part of what they aim to be a decisive push to take advantage of U.S. reinforcements and seize Taliban-held territory ahead of an Afghan presidential election next month.
Taliban casualty figures were not immediately available.
Britain and the United States have launched simultaneous operations this month in Afghanistan's most violent province, Helmand, nearly half of which was under Taliban control until this month.
The British "Operation Panther's Claw" has met tough resistance from Taliban home-made bombs and sniper positions. Fighters have also struck back elsewhere in the province.
KILLED INSTANTLY
A Taliban homemade bomb struck a British foot patrol before dawn on Friday, killing one soldier instantly and wounding several others. When troops attempted to evacuate, they were hit by another bomb, killing a stretcher bearer and one of the wounded casualties.
Another bomb planted in a field prevented a medivac helicopter from landing, so troops had to bring the wounded back to base to fly them out. Two more soldiers later died of wounds. Five others and an interpreter were injured.
Two other roadside bombs killed another three soldiers in other parts of the province.
Captain Jac Solghan, a nurse from the U.S. Air Force working at the British hospital, said he worked 32 hours straight from 2:00 a.m. on Saturday, looking after patient arrivals from the battlefield and their evacuations to hospitals further on.
"We'd just stay and keep working and working," he said. "That morning the hospital had not quite full capacity. By the time we ended the day, the hospital was still full and we were still pushing patients out."
Mahoney said the hospital had been warned in advance that a big operation was being planned, and had mobilised additional staff in expectation of a surge in casualties.
"There's no doubt it has been wearing. But none of the staff have ever complained and said they hadn't wanted to do it. Everybody's risen up to the occasion," Mahoney said.
(Editing by Paul Tait)
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New peril for British troops in Afghanistan: Taliban have learned modern warfare
Imagination, greater firepower and strengthening of Taliban's ideological bond leaves coalition facing higher casualty rates
Jason Burke The Guardian, Saturday 11 July 2009
For many months, military planners in Afghanistan have been readying themselves – and trying to prepare domestic public opinion – for a bloody summer. In spring, a number of officers – from the then commander of coalition forces, David McKiernan, to commanders patrolling sullen villages – said significant casualties were inevitable in the traditional "fighting season" of July and August.
Nor were casualties likely to be due to greater numbers of troops coming into the country and venturing into new areas. "The Taliban are much, much more stood up. They are much tighter, much more professional, much more together," one intelligence officer in Kabul told the Guardian earlier this year.
A lot has been made of the Taliban's increasing use of "asymmetric tactics", such as booby traps, roadside bombs and suicide attacks. A few hours on an operation with US troops, supported by helicopters, jets and unmanned armed drones, makes it clear why: if the insurgents do not stay out of the way, they will be killed, as thousands have been.
But once coalition troops establish a presence, they become vulnerable. They need supplies, they need to patrol; they are perfect targets for the hit and run tactics of the Taliban. Those tactics have been particularly honed in ambushes.
Soldiers fighting the insurgents say they now show vastly improved ability to co-ordinate fire. So volleys of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) now rain down during engagements. The Taliban have also learned to focus fire on their opponents' heavy weapons or radios .
Pre-prepared fighting positions in karez irrigation ditches are now used, often as part of defensive posts with carefully calculated fields of fire designed to interlock and to trap any counterattack.Nato officers say the Taliban's command has also been improved to co-ordinate fighting with foot soldiers and to allow rapid engagement or disengagement. According to American soldiers who served in Iraq, Afghan fighters compared favourably to the disorganised militants they had faced before.
They say they are often more imaginative, too. In one engagement in Kunar province last year, insurgents got close enough to American positions to throw stones among them, hoping the US troops would mistake them for grenades, panic and expose themselves.
Yet the work done by the Taliban high command – based mainly in Pakistan – goes way beyond tactics. Through the winter, Nato intelligence officers say, the insurgents worked at stiffening internal discipline, weeding out those who were felt to be insufficiently attached, ideologically speaking, to the movement.
According to several Afghan members of parliament interviewed earlier this year, the shadow governors appointed by the Taliban in every province were reshuffled to break up emerging bureaucratic fiefdoms and re-energise the movement.
Junior frontline commanders, many of whom had become more autonomous in last year's fighting and challenged their leadership, were brought in line. Teams organising the bombs that have caused so many of the casualties were trained in new techniques. Spies and double agents were killed.
There was even discussion of reigning in drug dealers whose wealth and weaponry was beginning to beseen as a potential threat by some Taliban leaders.
The tactics of the coalition forces have been studied closely. One preoccupation is air power. As with the conflict with the Soviets, airpower is what insurgents fear most. Helicopters have not yet been attacked successfully in a systematic way.
The insurgents only have a few old Chinese-made missiles and rocket propelled grenades. The latter, fired into rotor blades, are effective only from very close range, and imply almost certain death for the attacker.
However, if the Taliban do find a means to target coalition aircraft, this will not simply change tactics but geopolitics – as it did for the Soviets. Within three years of the Afghan mujahideen receiving effective surface-to-air missiles, the Soviets had pulled out.
Jason Burke is the author of On the Road to Kandahar: Travels Through Conflict in the Islamic World
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Security developments in Afghanistan
July 12 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan at 0700 GMT on Sunday.
* denotes new or updated items.
* LOGAR - A roadside bomb killed four Afghan police and wounded one in the Charkh district of Logar province, south of Kabul, on Saturday, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said.
* URUZGAN - Afghan and foreign troops killed 12 Taliban insurgents in southern Uruzgan province overnight in an offensive that included air support, a provincial official said.
NURISTAN - Afghan security forces regained control of a district headquarters in eastern Nuristan province overnight, the provincial governor said. Taliban fighters had taken over the building after several days of fighting last week. Foreign troops were also involved in the operation, the governor said, but there were no details about casualties.
* HELMAND - A roadside bomb killed a police commander and one of his bodyguards in southern Helmand province on Saturday, a provincial spokesman said.
GHAZNI - The governor of southeastern Ghazni province survived a roadside bomb attack against his convoy on Saturday, a provincial official said. Two of his bodyguards were wounded.
BAGHLAN - Afghan police killed four Taliban fighters in a clash in northern Baghlan province on Saturday, an official said.
(Compiled by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Paul Tait)
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Afghan base construction continues
By Drew Brown, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Sunday, July 12, 2009
TARIN KOWT, Afghanistan — The first wave of construction at more than a half-dozen bases across southern Afghanistan designed to accommodate the Obama administration’s buildup of U.S. forces in the region will be finished by the end of July, according to senior U.S. officers involved in the effort.
More than 2,700 civilian contractors and 2,100 Army, Navy and Air Force engineers have been working to either expand existing bases or build new ones from scratch at eight locations in Farah, Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul provinces, they said.
Work at the eight camps is in various stages of completion, with some locations further along than others. More than 10,000 Marines have already deployed to one of the new bases — Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province — where they kicked off a major offensive July 2 against Taliban insurgents in the heart of Afghanistan’s largest opium-producing region.
Planning for the $500 million construction blitz across the parched deserts of southern Afghanistan began last fall, with construction starting earlier this year, said Army Col. Randy LeCompte, assistant deputy director of logistical civil augmentation program in southern Afghanistan, and Navy Capt. Jeff Borowy, who commands all military engineers in the region.
Troops began moving to the bases in May; bases that are still in the initial phases of construction will be ready to receive forces by the end of July, they said.
The Marine offensive is the first major test for the Obama administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan. The goal of the new approach is to clear rural areas of the Taliban and other militants, hold the line against further incursions and allow the Afghan government to establish a lasting presence where insurgents have previously held sway.
A second major test will come next month as Afghan voters head to the polls in the country’s second presidential election since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in 2001.
President Barack Obama ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan earlier this year, most of which are being posted to the south. Most of those troops have already arrived. But two brigades, or about 7,000 troops, have yet to deploy fully.
The 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, from Fort Lewis, Wash., is currently flowing into Kandahar Airfield, the main NATO airbase in southern Afghanistan, but has yet to push out to several bases in eastern Kandahar and Zabul provinces that are currently being expanded.
About 3,500 paratroops from the 4th Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, are supposed to deploy in the coming weeks and take over the training of Afghan police forces in southern and western Afghanistan.
LeCompte and Borowy spoke to Stripes earlier this week during a helicopter tour of several of the new camps in Uruzgan and Zabul provinces. They described a laborious process involving weeks of grading sites, creating earthen security perimeters, building airfields and refueling points, followed by the construction of various structures — plywood buildings, mini trailers for troop housing, mess halls, showers and latrines — just to get ready for "initial occupancy." Wells have to be dug to ensure reliable supplies of water. Further refinements such as gyms, recreation centers and gravel roads will come much later.
"Everything you see here has been either trucked in or flown in," said Col. Paul Bricker, commander of the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, whose soldiers and helicopters have been flying around the clock in support of the buildup.
The scale of the undertaking is massive. Military engineers have put up more than 522,000 feet of protective berms alone, and have laid another 1.4 million feet of special mats that are used to create a sturdy base for airfield construction, Borowy said.
"We could run a berm from Washington, D.C., to Richmond, Va.," he said. Engineers have also put down enough of the airfield matting to cover an area two football fields wide, stretching from the steps of the U.S. Capitol building to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Borowy added.
At Tarin Kowt, in Uruzgan province, about 280 soldiers from the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade’s 1st Attack Reconnaissance Battalion have been working since early June to get their helicopters flying and to finish up their new camp, which sits next to an existing Dutch base and a small special operations compound.
The soldiers have been running 24-hour air operations since mid-June, but are still working to get their camp ready so an additional 100 soldiers can move into place.
"We took everybody from their primary [military occupational specialty], and they became construction workers," Command Sgt. Maj. Wayne Fausz said. "Right now, we’re running 24-hour ops, but we’re still limited on manpower."
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We must rediscover our purpose in Afghanistan
Editorial The Observer, Sunday 12 July 2009
One advantage that Afghan insurgents have over Nato forces is that they know what victory would look like. For those who despise the mere presence of foreign soldiers, the relentless killing has a simple purpose - to end the occupation.
That murderous zeal gives some clarity of purpose in turn to the young men and women who are its target. They must survive. They must fight back. But then what? That is the awful question that hangs over British policy. Fifteen troops have been killed in the last 11 days. To what end?
The answer seems to vary according to how much pressure British forces come under from enemy fire. When there are lulls, politicians indulge in the rhetoric of nation building and human rights. The Taliban, we are reminded, subscribe to a doctrine that hates freedom, subjugates women, murders dissent. Their defeat should be our moral purpose.
But when, as in the last week, the insurgency proves itself an effective military adversary, the goal becomes more bluntly strategic. We are fighting, foreign secretary David Miliband said yesterday, so that Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for al-Qaida and a launch pad for international terrorism.
On a theoretical level, the moral and strategic goals are joined. A democratic Afghanistan would be less likely to incubate terrorism. If there were no Taliban, there would be no need for the occupation.
But that scenario is not available. The fact of occupation is itself partly a spur to insurgency. Meanwhile, upholding the government of President Hamid Karzai means collusion with tribal leaders who are scarcely more enlightened than the Taliban.
The ideal Afghanistan is a figment. So the challenge facing British politicians is to present a plan that engages convincingly with the real Afghanistan. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg took a step in that direction last week by explicitly questioning the current strategy. Soldiers' lives, he said, were being "thrown away" for want of political will to break the current stalemate.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, limit their interventions to complaints about resources. But this is a diversion. Of course British soldiers would appreciate more vehicles. But providing the best equipment to do the job follows on from clarity about the job itself. If there was a limitless supply of helicopters, would the Tories sanction indefinite occupation?
Besides, as the Conservatives constantly remind us, spending is due for a painful squeeze. Last year, the war in Afghanistan cost £2.6bn over and above the annual Ministry of Defence budget. That sum was included in a statement last week by Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, announcing plans for a strategic defence review. The implication is clear: if Britain wants to continue fighting in Afghanistan, it will have to make brutal cutbacks elsewhere.
The sudden upsurge in casualties, combined with a dawning realisation of fiscal constraint, will send Afghanistan rapidly up the political agenda in an election year. Why, each candidate will be asked, are we there?
Gordon Brown's explanation last week was simply a restatement of the original casus belli: "There is a chain of terror that runs from the mountains of Afghanistan to the streets of Britain." In other words, we are fighting out of crude national self-interest, following a cold utilitarian logic: the war makes an al-Qaida atrocity less likely; the sacrifice in British lives abroad is worth the added security at home; 184 dead soldiers weighed up against the losses in an imagined 9/11-style attack.
But much as the government might like to dress this up as strategy, it is simply a gamble. Unless there is a dramatic change in circumstances, the public will decide the stakes are too high. Lives saved by bringing soldiers home will seem a surer benefit than the unproven hypothesis of preventing terrorism with a war thousands of miles away.
The government must prepare for that moment. The old justifications for intervention in Afghanistan are spent. If there are no others, the troops must come home.
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Cruel human toll of fight to win Afghan peace
The death toll of British troops in southern Afghanistan rose to 184 last week as a switch of military strategy brought more bloodshed. But as it grows more difficult to distinguish friend from foe, many soldiers and their families question if victory is even possible. Jason Burke reports
Jason Burke The Observer, Sunday 12 July 2009
Sangin is little more than a small town on a remote river running down to the desert plains of southern Afghanistan. It is a scatter of battered concrete administrative buildings, a scruffy bazaar and narrow lanes between mud-walled compounds under a burning sun. Three years ago it was one of the first objectives of the new British deployment into Afghanistan's Helmand province. It is fast becoming the symbol of all that is going wrong there.
On Friday morning five British troops died in double blasts as they patrolled south of the town. The tactic that killed them is simple: a first bomb to immobilise the target, a second to destroy them. Perfected in Iraq by al-Qaida, the Taliban are now making it their own. The insurgents know better than to fight the massive power deployed for set-piece operations like that under way a hundred or so miles to the south of Sangin, with its hundreds of helicopters and thousands of US marines. They wait, weeks and months, and then strike. Time, after all, is on their side.
Three other British soldiers were killed on Thursday and Friday, bringing the total to 15 in 10 days. One of the first to die in the latest spasm of violence was 20-year-old Christopher Whiteside of the Light Dragoons, killed last Tuesday night, also by a hidden roadside bomb. Pictures filmed by the BBC a day or so before his death showed him grinning sheepishly, sitting in the dirt, his rifle beside him, as his comrades made fun of him and the cameraman. Forty-eight hours later came the bang, the spatter of metal shards, the shock, the shouting, the pain and, for Whiteside, the end.
The total of British dead in Afghanistan is now 184, more than were lost in Iraq. The Americans have lost 103 this year and 657 in all. With the wounded included in the count, the last six weeks have been by far the bloodiest period for the coalition forces in Afghanistan since 2001 and the almost bloodless intervention to depose the Taliban and eliminate the terrorist camps where those responsible for the 9/11 attacks trained eight years ago.
Back then no one thought the west would still be fighting in Afghanistan nearly a decade later. Now, senior officers and planners privately admit, if we are not still fighting in five years' time it will be because we have lost, and left.
In the short term the degree of violence this summer was not unexpected. Back in the late spring western intelligence officers spoke of a "casualty surge" to match the "troop surge" ordered by President Barack Obama in a bid to break the stalemate in the battle against the Taliban. Not only were there going to be thousands more troops pushing into areas where they had never been before but the enemy was more formidable than ever.
"They are very much more stood up this year. They have got their tactics sorted out, their logistics and their discipline," said one western intelligence source in Kabul in April. "It is going to be a long, tough summer," the then overall commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, told the Observer. Last week the prime minister, defence secretary and others all warned the British public to expect further losses.
The strategy that the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul are putting into action has been meditated and worked on for at least four years, since senior American soldiers began to understand their failures in Iraq. Individuals like David Kilcullen, a former Australian infantry officer with a degree in political anthropology, joined the Pentagon's best and brightest to thrash out new ideas. The result was radical change. Instead of the primary aim of coalition soldiers being to track and eliminate hostile enemy fighters, effectively raiding the countryside from heavily defended bases, it became protecting the population from the insurgents, Kilcullen explained to the Observer last month.
It needed more troops, more money and, sceptics say, a lot of luck, but in Iraq the approach was credited with ending a violent downward spiral. The election of Barack Obama meant new impetus to try the strategy in Afghanistan. Most of the 15 British soldiers killed in the past fortnight died trying to implement it: out on patrols aimed at reassuring the locals, by showing them that the coalition, not the Taliban, was best placed to assure their security, and win their trust and the elusive 'hearts and minds'.
Along with the new troops needed to push back the insurgents from zones where government authority was non-existent, known as "clearing" the environment, the strategy places a new emphasis on "holding" the new territory, primarily using the fledgling Afghan National Army. To the east of Kabul, an empty, dusty plain has been converted into a vast training camp for the forces which, it is now hoped, will reach 130,000 men, or even 300,000 eventually as some suggest. A sign outside the $92m centre reads: "Unity starts here." "Spread the good news about these fine soldiers," said Colonel Brian Redman, the American officer in charge of training. Elsewhere there are police being prepared, too - though in smaller numbers and with less resources. The police are "the face of the Afghan government" and thus "the strategic hope", British senior officers say.
Finally comes the third part of the strategy: "build". The new security should allow a "development surge" with hundreds of civilian advisers and much more money available to finally get the schools, clinics, roads and police stations promised to the population built. With the insurgents at bay, it is hoped that voting can go ahead smoothly for the presidential elections, giving a vital boost to the flagging project of building a functioning democracy in Afghanistan.
"The elections are very, very important to turn around the mood and re-energise the process started [eight years ago]," said Fernando Gentilini, the Nato senior civilian representative.
Then there is a political track, looking at restructuring the distribution of power within Afghanistan and possible deals with "moderate Taliban". And finally there is a regional diplomatic initiative with a host of new "special representatives" appointed to try to bring Afghanistan's neighbours on board, to mitigate the harmful effects of neighbouring Pakistan's internal instability and to end its security establishment's apparent support for the insurgents. But, though this new comprehensive approach sounds very plausible, especially on a Powerpoint slide at the headquarters in Kabul, making it work is something else - as the soldiers at the sharp end in Helmand are finding out.
The first problem is with the objective of protecting the population. Though western politicians have long described the war in Afghanistan as being fought to defend the Afghan people against the Taliban, the tougher truth is that the Taliban, almost exclusively composed of members of the Pashtun tribes who comprise at least 40% of the country's population, are an integral part of the Afghan people. There are some foreigners among them, but most of those that come from Pakistan are often the children of Afghan refugees or simply Afghans studying in Pakistan's religious schools. In part, the Taliban represent the conservative, rural, religious Pashtun Afghanistan; in contrast, the more modern, cosmopolitan, urban Afghanistan of Kabul, the current government and its power base among the country's non-Pashtun ethnic minorities, are the people who stand most to profit from the success of the western-run "modernisation" of the country.
On the ground certainly, at least in Helmand and across much of the south and east, the Taliban are almost impossible to distinguish from the population. In April, the Observer watched as an American infantry officer in Logar province moved at the head of 120 heavily armed troops through a sullen, silent village. Knocking on one door, he was greeted with salaams, smiles and an invite to tea. The house was that of the senior Taliban commander in the area who was, predictably, away.
Elsewhere, locals habitually use Taliban judges because they are more honest and much quicker than their corrupt government counterparts. Some Taliban are local criminals - though less so, following recent purges ordered by the leadership. Often the insurgency attracts teenagers with little else to do. One Afghan MP told the Observer that she had been approached by many parents in her constituency worried about their children's exam results. "Their sons have been out at night firing rocket-propelled grenades and not studying," she said. "They can tell because the kids are half deaf."
Development, it is hoped, will drain the reservoir of unemployed Afghans who might join the insurgents. "Give a guy a spade and he won't pick up an AK47," said Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Osterholzer of the 10th Mountain Division. But though popular programmes such as the successful village-based National Solidarity Programme can consolidate government authority where it already exists, it may not actually cut the violence where it does not.
Though some fight for cash, interviews with captured and active Taliban reveal the insurgents to be less motivated by economics than many think. Power, politics, culture, feuds, ethnicity, tribal vendettas and Afghan history also play a big part. Often the western coalition is unwittingly deepening longstanding divisions in an Afghan society fragmented by decades of conflict and competition for scarce resources. The new National Army should bind the country closer together. But its upper ranks are dominated by former communist officers who fought with the Russians against the fathers of many of the new Taliban commanders in the 1980s.
Worse, there is a serious ethnic and geographic imbalance. "There are almost no recruits from the south," admitted General Ali Ahmed, the commander of the training centre and himself a veteran of the war in the 1980s, during which he fought in the auxiliary army created and armed by Moscow. Adding to the image of the national troops as an "army of occupation" in the restive south and east are their new weapons: American-supplied M16s.
Then there are the police who, every one agrees, are key. But they are rarely paid and are often violent and corrupt. "It is difficult sometimes when we have so little money," shrugged a policeman in Wardak province. Local power-brokers do their best to make sure their men are recruited. Again, the ethnic and tribal mosaic of Afghanistan stymies western efforts. If police are local, they are corrupt; if they are from far away, they are seen as an enemy. Add to this a regional picture which most analysts expect to get worse before it gets better. The political track is blocked because the Taliban want to negotiate while they think they are winning and because concessions that might win them over are politically impossible given the western governments' loud commitment to gender equality, human rights and religious moderation. In sum, there appears little reason to hope for any kind of negotiated breakthrough in the near future.
In Kabul - and in Washington and in London - all this is well-known. "No one is saying this is easy ... it isn't," a senior United Nations official said. For the strategy to have even a slim chance of success, what is needed is a lot of money, a lot of men and a lot of time.
"[It will take] ten to fifteen years, including at least two years of significant combat up front," said Kilcullen, the senior Pentagon adviser. The "tipping point is in three to five years," according to a Kabul-based British staff officer. The average successful counter-insurgency campaign takes 14 years, he pointed out, adding ruefully that "the unsuccessful ones are over quicker".
But the problem is that time is not on the side of the coalition. The war in Afghanistan has been unpopular in continental Europe for a long time. Since ten soldiers died in an ambush last year, French troops travel in heavily armoured vehicles, making friendly relations with locals difficult. German troops cannot move at night. In the UK, once solid support is slipping fast. The complaints about equipment are genuine but mask a deeper anxiety. One Whitehall official points out that support would come back fast if there was some good news, but there is none for the moment. In the US, time is short. "We have two or three years ... If there is no serious progress then, it's over," one US senate staff adviser told the Observer last week.
Those running the war are thus caught in a vicious circle. The more western domestic populations waver, the stronger the Taliban are. Village elders side with those who are going to be around longest and, having seen the Russians leave in haste, they prefer the devil they know will always be around to the devil they think is going to leave. But the stronger the Taliban are, the more unsure western publics are. In a bid to assuage the public and find an exit, politicians are now frantically "relooking objectives" in Afghanistan, as one Whitehall official put it. All that is not directly related to security is being jettisoned.
But that is just contributing to the confusion and depression. Having been told that the troops are there to build a better future for tens of millions of people and to liberate Afghan women as well as stamp out the runaway narcotics industry and catch Osama bin Laden, the sudden shift in rhetoric grates. No one seems very sure what "victory" actually looks like any longer. Winning, an ISAF officer says, "means a viable Afghan governance capacity at provincial or district level" which is hardly what the dead soldiers' families thought that they were fighting for.
In the middle, of course, are the ordinary Afghans. Tomorrow Hamesha Gul, 45, a farmer in Logar province, will head out into his fields as he has done every day of his life. Long years of conflict have taught him to be wary. "The Taliban come when it's dark," he said. "I do not know where they come from. We do not go out at night. It is too dangerous. We lock the doors and stay quiet."
Sending more troops will be seen as a sign of Brown's determination to show real progress in Afghanistan before the general election. Barack Obama is also known to have told commanders he wants demonstrable results within a year.
The change of thinking comes as the new US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, is preparing to publish a major review of operations within the coming weeks.
Former Tory foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said Brown had no option but to order the MoD to loosen financial controls: "The needs of combat operations are always additional to normal MoD funding. We did not defeat Hitler by deciding what we could afford."
Left-wing Labour MP Jon Cruddas today calls on ministers to scrap plans for the multi-billion-pound new Trident missile system and to switch resources to "protect soldiers on the front line".
Lib Dem defence spokesman Nick Harvey said public patience with the Afghanistan mission was limited. "The public will understand us making sacrifices if there is a sense of progress, but if there is no sign of it soon they will become impatient."
Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said: "The price of failure in Afghanistan is too great to contemplate. But we must give our armed forces the equipment they need. The decision to cut the helicopter budget in 2004 was disastrous"
Anti-war campaigners announced yesterday that they will stage an emergency protest outside Downing Street tomorrow calling for British troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan.
An increase in the number of British troops will please President Obama, who increased the US deployment in Afghanistan by 17,000 to 55,000 in February.
Obama has repeatedly stated his commitment to win in Afghanistan, citing the spectre of an Islamist takeover of Pakistan's nuclear bomb as a prospect that could not countenanced.
Diplomatic sources say that a change in the wider Nato strategy - including still more US forces - will be outlined in a new Civil-Military Plan, presently at a draft stage. It represents the recognition by McChrystal and his advisers that the mission in Afghanistan has been blighted by historic errors, not least the decision to split responsibilities for five key post-conflict roles to five different nations - including rebuilding the police, counter-narcotics and reconstruction - which is blamed for creating a sense of muddle. "We are going to see a connectivity in efforts that we have not seen before in Afghanistan when McChrystal signs off on this," said a military source.
The MoD's projected figures for the coming year, given to parliament last week, suggest the annual bill for the Afghan war will rise by more than £1bn compared with last year, a jump of more than a third, swallowing almost all the savings made by withdrawing from Iraq and raising questions about how long it can be maintained.
So far, much of the cost of the operation has been met from Treasury reserves rather than from within the defence budget itself. A recent paper by Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute estimated that defence budgets may already have to be cut by between 10% and 15% over the six years from 2010 as part of government attempts to bring down the deficit.
This year's rise was triggered by additional security costs around the Afghan elections, as well as a 200-strong expert team brought in to counter roadside bombs, and urgent operational requirements such as modifications to helicopters, Tornado aircraft and other force protection measures.
Although Gordon Brown told the Commons only three months ago that the war was expected to cost about £3bn this year, the figures show that is already out of date, with up to £3.4bn projected for this year.
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Osama is in Afghanistan, says Pak interior minister
PTI July 12, 2009
LONDON: Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other top operatives of the terrorist network are hiding in Afghanistan, probably in Kunar area,
Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik has said, describing as futile US drone attacks within his country as no "big fish" was present there.
"If Osama was in Pakistan we would know, with all the thousands of troops we have sent into the tribal areas in recent months.
"If he and all these four or five top people were in our areas they would have been caught, the way we are searching," Malik told 'The Sunday Times', adding that US missile attacks against them in Pakistan are futile.
According to information available with Pakistani officials, Osama is in Afghanistan, probably Kunar, as most of the activities against Pakistan are being directed from Kunar, he said.
Pakistani officials say that the US has carried out more than 40 drone attacks inside Pakistani territory in the past 10 months, killing hundreds of people.
CIA officials claim these attacks have been highly effective in disrupting al-Qaeda's ability to operate. However, Malik insisted they are a waste of time because the al-Qaida leadership is on the other side of the border in eastern Afghanistan.
"They're getting mid-level people not big fish", he said.
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In Remote Afghanistan, Searching For A Young Survivor
July 12, 2009 By Sharafuodin Stanakzai Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Nine-year-old Zahra was orphaned after coalition forces bombed her village in a remote area of western Afghanistan last year. The attack killed 90 people, 60 of them children. Two days after the bombing, Sharafuodin Stanakzai, a correspondent for RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, noticed a little girl dancing among the dead and decided to interview her.
Zahra sobbed into the microphone, and her voice so moved a listener in Afghanistan that he called in to a question-and-answer session with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ask about the little girl's fate. No one knew what had become of Zahra, so Stanakzai decided to travel to Afghanistan's hinterlands and track her down.
The prospect of trying to find a small child living in the remote, Taliban-dominated regions of Afghanistan terrified me. Security in the region had deteriorated. What if something happened? How would I explain what I was doing there?
I don't normally take such risks, but this little girl -- something about her had gotten to me. Her voice was stuck in my head; I kept wondering what had become of her. Still, it was risky. After wrestling with myself for a while, I finally decided to go.
My first move was to contact a village elder from Zahra's area. After talking with him and a few other people, I figured out a way to reach her village.
It was too dangerous to enter the region as a journalist, so I wore traditional clothing in order to blend in with the other travelers. The only way to reach remote regions of Afghanistan is by van or bus, and the one going to the right province left my area at 3 a.m. -- a risky time to travel. So a few hours before dawn, I climbed on board, greeted the 20-30 passengers traveling with me, tried to calm my nerves, and tried to act normal.
It took a day and a night to reach the province. After we made a quick stop, I let the car leave without me and told the villagers that I'd been accidently left behind. I knew they would help a stranger and guessed -- correctly -- that they would direct me to Zahra's village.
When I reached the village, it was exactly the same as it was a year ago. Nothing had changed. It was still destroyed.
I searched the whole village and couldn't find Zahra. I knew she had to be somewhere in the area, though, because she was too poor to leave. Finally I stumbled on a little place outside the village -- can I call it a house? I'm not sure. It didn't have a proper door, or windows -- just four walls.
Zahra was living there with her grandmother, who was in her seventies or eighties. I spoke with her grandmother and tried to engage Zahra, but she just looked at me, shy and scared, with empty eyes. All I could do was observe her, and I noticed how much she'd changed in only a year.
She was so much more aware -- when I first interviewed her she was still in shock over her family's death. I don't think it had become real to her yet. Now, it was clear, she understood what had happened and was in terrible shape. It's agonizing to witness that much despair in such a small child.
After a while, she started to open up. She peppered me with questions about what to do, how to survive when she and her grandmother have nothing. This was her number one priority: survival. She kept asking: what can I eat, where can I stay?
I watched her cry as she listed her dead relatives. She was crying a lot; she knew that her father, mother, and brother were gone. When I looked at her in that nothing of a house, her face contorted with fear, naming her parents and little sisters and brothers, I could barely hold myself together.
I used my cell phone to record her and take pictures. I asked her if she knew that Hillary Clinton had been asking about her and planning to help her, but she had no idea. She didn't understand anything. I asked her about school, but she didn't even know the word "school."
Her grandmother was aware that the U.S. secretary of state had been asking about Zahra, though. So I asked her what people wanted from Clinton. She said they wanted their homes rebuilt, as well as blankets, shelter, and food.
When I first set eyes on Zahra in her house that wasn't a house, her clothing surprised me too. She was wearing the dress of a young woman -- it was too long and awkwardly hung off her tiny body.
She just stared at me, in the house with no doors and windows, wearing a dress that was way too long and shoes that were way too big.
She had lived through more tragedy than most adults, but she remained a child, unprepared to understand or cope with what had happened.
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Karzai’s Campaign Office Bombed in Panjshir
Written by Anisa Shahid Quqnoos July 12, 2009
A bomb blast near incumbent Karzai’s campaign office in Panjshir province damaged the building, an official said
A spokesman for Hamid Karzai’s campaign centre, Wahid Omar said, the blast occurred Saturday midnight in Rukha district of the most secure Afghan province of Panjshir, 80km north of Kabul.
“No casualties caused by the bomb that went off overnight,” provincial police chief, Gen Abdul Saboor told Quqnoos.
The spokesman for President Karzai who is seeking a second term in office, dismissed any militants involvements in the incident, highlighting political means behind the bombing.
It was a sudden blast caused by an explosive device near the campaign building for President Karzai, Panjshir Police Chief further said, denying the involvements of anyone behind its detonation.
This is the first campaign offices for an Afghan elections hopeful that is damaged in an explosion so far.
Afghan presidential and provincial council elections are slated for August 20 this autumn, where 41 hopefuls, including President Karzai, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and ex-finance minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai are running for a victory.
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Shabana Azmi addresses global summit on women's abuse in Afghanistan
July 11, 2009
Mumbai (IANS): Ignoring her family's concern for her safety, Bollywood actor Shabana Azmi visited Afghanistan this week on an invitation by the UN to be the main speaker at a global summit to address the issue of violence against women.
Shabana left for Kabul on Tuesday night although her family, including husband Javed Akhtar, expressed fear for her safety in the war ravaged country.
"Danger is fun," the actor said before departing.
A champion of women's rights, Shabana has represented India on several international platforms but she felt this honour in a country known to repress women was of special importance.
"The subject was 'Silence Is Violence - End The Abuse Of Women In Afghanistan'. It was supported by a report by the Human Rights wing of the UN and the Human Rights Commission in Kabul," the actor said.
"The conference discussed the findings on how women are treated in Afghanistan. We talked about ways to strengthen law enforcement and judicial institutions to curb violence against women," she added.
Recalling an earlier trip to Kabul, Shabana said: "I had gone to Kabul as part of a Bollywood delegation headed by Sunil Dutt Saab during president Najibullah's regime. He hosted a dinner for us where he sang the Mukesh number 'Mujhhe tumse kuch bhi na chahiye'. Jadoo (Javed Akhtar) joked with him and asked whether he was singing it for the Russians!"
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