 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving you since 1998 | ||||||||||||
|
|
No rift between Afghan president, NATO commander: NATO spokesman
KABUL, July 11 (Xinhua) -- The spokesman of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Sunday utterly rejected media reports that there had been differences between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus on the issue of assisting Afghan villagers to fight Taliban insurgents.
Why Afghanistan's September elections ought to be postponed
The Washington Post By Candace Rondeaux Sunday, July 11, 2010
This summer, about 2,500 Afghan men and women will spend millions of dollars and hundreds of hours traveling some of the world's most dangerous roads campaigning for seats in the 249-member lower house of parliament. Along the way to the Sept. 18 elections, many
MOI Backs Karzai’s Stance against US Plan
Quqnoos July 11, 2010
The Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs (MOI) backed Karzai’s opposition on a US plan recruiting villagers
10 militants killed in southern Afghanistan
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Clashes left 10 Taliban militants dead and two others captured in southern Afghanistan's Ghazni province on Sunday, officials said.
Keeping sane in Sangin: life and death in Afghanistan's most perilous military posting
More British troops have been killed in Sangin than anywhere else in Afghanistan. Thomas Harding visits a base where marines eat, rest, sleep, fight - and sometimes die.
Telegraph.co.uk By Thomas Harding in Sangin 10 Jul 2010
Flanked by deep green orchards on one side and by a gently curving hill on another, the British patrol base looks innocuous enough at first sight – its thick, mud-brick walls much like any traditional building on the outskirts of the troubled town of Sangin.
Afghans Protest Rising Civilian Deaths
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 11, 2010
Hundreds of Afghans have protested in Mazar-i-Sharif against rising civilian deaths.
Protesters chanted slogans against foreign forces and Afghan President Hamid Karzai after U.S. troops killed two civilians in a pre-dawn raid on July 7 in the northern city's outskirts.
Hekmatyar Denies Supplying Intelligence to Afghan Government
Quqnoos July 11, 2010
Afghanistan Islamic Party (Hezb-i-Islami) has denied reports about supplying Taliban intelligence to the Afghan government, according to a statement
First Afghan Air Force Born Non-Commissioned Officers
Source: NATO July 11, 2010 By Capt. Rob Leese
The Pohantoon-e-Hawayee (PeH), the Afghan Air Force training school, graduated its first Team Leader Course on Jul. 11, 2010. The Team Leader Course is a six week Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) building leadership course that takes soldiers that have completed the 9th grade and Basic Warrior
Afghanistan air drops provide life support to troops
By Caroline Wyatt Defence correspondent, BBC News, Helmand July 11, 2010
With the roads in southern Afghanistan fraught with danger for land convoys, some vital supplies are now being air-dropped into the coalition troops' more remote forward operating bases by the RAF.
Greens urge to pull Australian troops from Afghanistan
CANBERRA, July 11 (Xinhua) -- A growing number of Australians want their troops out of Afghanistan, Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said on Sunday.
Severed Trees in Orchards Mirror Afghan History
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN July 10, 2010
BATI KOT DISTRICT, Afghanistan - The main road into Afghanistan from the east traverses a flat, parched countryside, past flimsy roadside bazaars and squalid villages. Then, the terrain abruptly changes: arid land gives way to vast olive groves that spread for miles, as if a giant dropped a Mediterranean island into Central Asia.
Republicans might turn against war
It started when the head of the national Republican party, Michael Steele, was surreptitiously caught on video sounding like one of the peaceniks at Colgan's weekly anti-war rallies.
Seattle Times Danny Westneat, Seattle Times staff columnist July 10, 2010
Joe Colgan has been protesting America's wars so long he thought he'd heard it all.
Back to Top
No rift between Afghan president, NATO commander: NATO spokesman
KABUL, July 11 (Xinhua) -- The spokesman of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Sunday utterly rejected media reports that there had been differences between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus on the issue of assisting Afghan villagers to fight Taliban insurgents.
"General Petraeus has met President Karzai several times since he came to Kabul," ISAF spokesman General Josef Blotz told a joint press conference with NATO senior civilian representative's spokesman Dominic Medley here.
The four-star general Petraeus, who formally assumed the command of 130,000-strong NATO-led forces in Afghanistan on July 4, according to reports, is planing to recruit villagers to fight Taliban militants but president Karzai has opposed.
"There is a normal permanent exchanges of views during meetings and the working atmosphere is very open, it's very constructive and very cordial," Blotz said.
The spokesman of NATO-led forces also said that in one of the meetings with Gen. Petraeus a couple of days ago President Karzai himself raised the issue of forming Public Protection Police -- an idea proposed by Afghan Interior Ministry.
"Actually this is an Afghan project, it's an Afghan Ministry of Interior project," he said.
"So there is no rift, there is no contradiction at all between President Karzai and Gen. Petraeus," he said, adding "I want to reiterate that the alleged rift reported by Washington Post is wrong."
The NATO senior civilian representative's spokesman at the same press conference said that NATO is one of some 80 delegations invited to the Kabul Conference, set for July 20, which is hosted by the government of Afghanistan and co-chaired by United Nations.
The Kabul Conference is a follow-up of London Conference on Afghanistan held in January in London, where the participants renewed their support to the reconstruction process of the war- battered country.
In Kabul Conference, Dominic Medley said that the government of Afghanistan will present an Afghan-led plan for improving security, development and good governance.
"The international community and donors are expected to support these plans and programs and to adjust their aid efforts to assist Afghan government to deliver services," Medley added.
He said that NATO actively supports the conference and its outcomes and the conference should be considered as part of a larger transition to Afghan-led and responsibility.
Hours earlier, Afghan Minister for Mines in a press conference also said that the Afghan government will present its plan in three big topics -- security, governance and economic and social development.
The Kabul Conference is the first international forum held on Afghanistan inside the war-torn country amid tight security.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Why Afghanistan's September elections ought to be postponed
The Washington Post By Candace Rondeaux Sunday, July 11, 2010
This summer, about 2,500 Afghan men and women will spend millions of dollars and hundreds of hours traveling some of the world's most dangerous roads campaigning for seats in the 249-member lower house of parliament. Along the way to the Sept. 18 elections, many -- most of them women -- will probably drop out. Several are likely to be violently attacked, possibly killed.
Almost every candidate will wonder whether the risk was worth it. If the massive fraud and unparalleled violence during last year's presidential and provincial council elections are any guide, the answer is no. Another failure by the international community to confront the electoral system's flaws will deliver a death blow to Afghanistan's fragile state institutions and substantially reduce the possibility of making any kind of progress.
The recent firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal should serve as a stark warning to those who would discount the destructive power of hubris in a time of crisis. Although the Obama administration has said that it will stick to the counterinsurgency strategy McChrystal launched last year, Washington urgently needs to assess whether Afghanistan can afford another blow to its stability. With parliamentary elections two months away and security at an all-time low, it is time to admit that the policy of political expediency that allowed President Hamid Karzai to steal his reelection last year is no longer workable.
In the absence of substantial electoral reform and greater transparency, postponing this year's parliamentary elections is the best strategy.
Security has deteriorated significantly since Afghan voters braved threats of violence to turn up at the polls last August. The government has ground to a halt amid a bitter feud between the president and the parliament. Despite the rampant ballot stuffing that led Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission to throw out more than 1 million fraudulent votes for Karzai last fall, few necessary reforms have been adopted. The voter registry is still fatally flawed. Many of the officials who abetted the fraud remain in place. The international community has surrendered its veto power on the complaints commission, leaving it to officials handpicked by Karzai to influence the final outcome of the vote.
Most disturbing, vetting processes designed to keep known criminals off the ballot have broken down under pressure from Afghan power brokers. Complaints were initially raised, at the behest of high-ranking Afghans, about more than 300 candidate-nominees suspected of leading or participating in illegal armed groups, but the final list of those to be excluded because of links to violent, armed groups was initially pared to 13 by the government's vetting commission in a process the Electoral Complaints Commission has called "dubious." Ultimately, after a prolonged game of political ping-pong between Afghanistan's electoral bodies, only 31 candidates were excluded on the basis of their links to armed groups, leaving many warlords on the ballot. Without vocal international intervention and decisive action, this kind of interference from on high in the presidential palace is likely to continue. And that means violence will continue to escalate. It also ensures that only candidates prepared to bully or bribe will win.
The international community seems to have resigned itself to failure. When Karzai issued a decree in the spring stripping the Electoral Complaints Commission of most of its powers and giving himself authority to appoint all its members, the public outcry from diplomats in Kabul was minimal. Fortunately, Afghanistan's parliament balked at this move. But the willingness of other countries to accept a repetition of last year's fraud and mistakes has resulted in an eerie sense of déjà vu.
If the Electoral Complaints Commission fails to publicly articulate its plan for confronting fraud and adjudicating complaints about the polls, it's quite possible that the September voting will result in nothing short of disaster. Similarly, if the United States and its coalition partners are unable to push back against the Afghan government's unrealistic insistence that Afghan security forces are prepared to secure some 6,800 polling centers, a significant spike in violence is assured on Election Day and afterward. Although the estimated cost of the September elections, $120 million, is only about half the price of last August's voting, the impact of another failed election will have much greater political costs for the overall counterinsurgency strategy.
Many Afghans have grown deeply skeptical of democratic processes. Polling and our own research have found that most agree, however, that having some choice in how they are governed and who governs them is better than having no choice at all. They also recognize that members of parliament are more vital to preserving their day-to-day interests than the president or politically toothless provincial councils. If the international community is not prepared to ensure the elections aren't rigged, then the voting scheduled for September should be postponed until reforms can be established. Otherwise, the whole process risks delivering another easy win for Afghanistan's insurgents.
The writer is senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Afghanistan.
Back to Top
Back to Top
MOI Backs Karzai’s Stance against US Plan
Quqnoos July 11, 2010
The Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs (MOI) backed Karzai’s opposition on a US plan recruiting villagers
The Afghan President in a conference with top US officials opposed the new US commander’s initiative recruiting villagers into local defense program.
"The Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs as a member in the Afghan cabinet supports all the decisions taken by the Afghan President," said a spokesperson for the MOI, Zemarai Bashari.
"We will strictly implement any decisions taken by the Afghan President." The idea of recruiting villagers into local defense program is a key part of the US military strategy in Afghanistan, and Karzai’s stance poses an early challenge to Petraeus as he tries to build a collaborative relationship with the Afghan leader.
The US would like to expand the program to about two dozen sites across Afghanistan and we are hoping to overcome Karzai's concerns, Senior US officials said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
10 militants killed in southern Afghanistan
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Clashes left 10 Taliban militants dead and two others captured in southern Afghanistan's Ghazni province on Sunday, officials said.
"Eight Taliban rebels were killed as gun battle erupted between police and militants in Khawja Omari district this morning and lasted for several hours," provincial police chief Khayalbaz Shirzai told Xinhua.
Three police sustained injuries during the clash, he said.
Furthermore, two Taliban insurgents were killed and two others were captured in Andar district of Ghazni province early this morning, another official Abdul Rasoul said.
Taliban militants have yet to make comment.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Keeping sane in Sangin: life and death in Afghanistan's most perilous military posting
More British troops have been killed in Sangin than anywhere else in Afghanistan. Thomas Harding visits a base where marines eat, rest, sleep, fight - and sometimes die.
Telegraph.co.uk By Thomas Harding in Sangin 10 Jul 2010
Flanked by deep green orchards on one side and by a gently curving hill on another, the British patrol base looks innocuous enough at first sight – its thick, mud-brick walls much like any traditional building on the outskirts of the troubled town of Sangin.
Yet inside it, behind sand-bagged guard posts and sheltering from the fierce sun beneath mud and straw roofs, live a few dozen men of Recce Troop, 40 Commando, Royal Marines.
For the past three months, their entire existence has been confined to this dusty half-acre compound and the few hundred yards beyond it where heavily-armed patrols can venture with a reasonable prospect of making a safe return.
Their mission is to help secure a stretch of Route 611, the key artery that links Sangin to Gereshk, Helmand's economic hub – their base is one of many originally Afghan-built British forts around this fractious town to ensure that the road is free of limb-taking Taliban bombs.
Outside the base, hidden explosives may be planted anywhere, while sharpshooters hide in the trees and orchards to the west, or aim their rifles through slim "murder holes", chiselled slits in the walls of neighbouring compounds that overlook the patrol base.
The terrifying reality for the men is that, of those who first arrived there three months ago, one is now a triple amputee, another was evacuated with three gunshot wounds, a third has been lacerated by a teenage suicide bomber, and a fourth, lucky man survived being shot by a sniper.
"Austere" is the official military term for their desperately uncomfortable life in this corner of Afghanistan, which earns those serving there a few extra pounds a day. Yet the constant risk of death and mutilation helps bind the troops together, forging friendships and loyalties through experiences which they will never forget.
Inside the base, despite the ever-present threat of a grenade being lobbed over the wall, there are unexpected and sometimes incongruous sights: the marine sunbathing on a camp bed while his comrade sits cleaning a gun; the makeshift gym, where marines lift weights made of iron bars and stone-filled ammunition boxes; the young man in shorts and pink Crocs, grinning with pleasure as he makes his weekly 30-minute satellite telephone call home.
"I'm sweating through my eyeballs," says Marine Tim Jones as he pounds the dusty courtyard before unleashing a series of boxing punches into the pads held by a comrade.
"It's pretty relaxed here, to be honest – apart from the obvious. Everyone is on first-name terms, we all know each other inside out and because everyone in Recce Troop is that much older, there are no real dramas; we all pull together." As he finishes the boxing work-out, he chats to another marine and arranges a darts match for 7pm the following day, the only time they both have a break between guard duty and patrolling.
The daily routine begins around 6.30am, an hour or more after the sun rises over the ridge they have named Cemetery Hill, as those not on guard duty drift into the kitchen area known, in naval tradition, as the galley.
Breakfast might be muesli with sterilised UHT milk, or a boil-in-the-bag ration of sausage, beans, bacon and scrambled egg.
The marine will patrol for up to four hours at least once each day, and must prepare for this by checking weapons, attending a briefing and then putting on their hot and heavy body armour that can weigh 100lbs.
Outside, they can proceed only painfully slowly: it takes 15 minutes to cover just 100 yards as they check for hidden explosives and guard against ambush, tense at all times against the danger of a sniper.
In the distance, both to the north and south, you can make out the sandbagged guard posts and flags of bigger British and Afghan bases, but for the troops of this particular Patrol Base in Sangin they might be 100 miles away. The white pennants of the Taliban flutter contemptuously nearby, almost certainly booby-trapped.
It is a relief finally to return through the corrugated iron gates of the compound, throw off helmets and armour and attempt to cool off from the searing heat – which could prove overwhelming were it not for the miracle of icy cold water, hand-pumped from a well driven 160 feet into the ground.
Sinking their burning heads into buckets of chilled water or hosing each other down if there is water to spare is the closest to bliss that these marines can get.
Life inside is a strange combination of liberation – from the fear outside – and incarceration. The gym is the fulcrum of life on the base: perhaps, as in a jail, enabling the men to release the stress, aggravation and anger that can build during days when, within the four walls of the compound, the war can feel futile.
"It's a joke," says one marine over the clatter of dominoes in a nearby room. "Everyone just wants to get out with their legs intact. The population hates us around here." In another room, a game of darts is under way. Strangely, as if not satisfied with the real life combat, many of the troops seem to enjoy gritty war films, perhaps as a fix for the off days when there's no "contact" with the Taliban.
Outside in the compound, in the relative cool of morning or evening, men in shorts train by running in an absurdly small circuit within the walls, where a lap takes barely a minute to complete.
Being so far from the rear, where formality rules, all of those inside the patrol base are on first-name terms, whatever their rank, and any of them may take a turn at the preparing and cooking of food – though if someone is regarded as a good cook, like Corporal Jim White when The Sunday Telegraph visited, they are likely to take turns more often than others.
There is little in the way of fresh food, and an occasional box of apples delivered from a larger base is regarded as a luxury. Lunch and dinner might be pasta with tuna and sweetcorn, spaghetti, or rice with tinned tomatoes.
Once in a while, a few cases of soft drinks might arrive – though it is hard, with just one refrigerator on the base, to get these cold enough to be truly refreshing.
"When the fridge breaks we are sometimes drinking water as hot as tea," says Dutchy, a wiry marine. "The scran [food] can be pretty repetitive and you do get fed up with some of the rations, but they are a vast improvement on what we had before." Recently, Dutchy purchased two egg-laying hens that enable the men to enjoy an occasional omelette – though one vanished in the night, apparently taken by a jackal.
Guard duty, behind sandbags on the four corners of the base, is a regular two-hour chore for the marines – vital if the compound is to be kept safe.
Tiredness can be a problem that they have to combat, for sleep is difficult to achieve with much satisfaction. A handful of occasions when a grenade was tossed into the base by an unseen Taliban fighter outside have put paid to the luxury of sleeping outside under the stars, where a cooling wind would ripple through the mosquito net.
Instead, the troops have been forced back inside the rooms of the compound – and whereas the thick walls soak up the worst of the daytime heat, at night, they release it again, making it too hot for sleep to come easily. Few manage more than three or four hours, so by day they will often snatch an hour when the opportunity comes.
Even urinating can be hazardous – principally because the plastic piping hammered at an angle into the ground that is gracefully nicknamed a "Desert Rose" is close to the spot where grenades have occasionally landed.
Thankfully, there are no longer stinking lavatory pits, but instead a system of "wag bags" in which waste is sealed with a zip lock before being burned.
There is some recompense for the conditions: an extra £2.50 a day for unpleasant living allowance, £3 for wearing body armour for more than four hours or the jackpot of the up to £11-a-day "unpleasant working allowance" for dealing with human waste or worse.
At around 7pm, as the sun begins to go down, the marines eat dinner, their most communal meal of the day, before holding a regular 8pm round-up of the day's events on and around the base. There is little news from outside unless someone has made a call home.
Diesel generators provide some power, but white lights are forbidden at night and by 10pm many are turning in – a few perhaps watching a film on their laptops, taken from the base's small selection of DVDs.
But some are assigned to guard duty or night patrol. Venturing out for a "lurk" at night is a nerve-racking business, but necessary if the marines are to catch the Taliban bombers who use darkness to lay their deadly explosive devices. Lying on the roof deep into the night hours, half lit by moonlight, I was with marines waiting for the shifting shadow that would reveal a Taliban bomb planter. For the third night in a row, he did not appear, but to give up on trying to catch him would be tantamount to admitting defeat.
"We will catch them one of these days," says the marine corporal.
"Bastards." He grips his weapon as he speaks, and it's clear that from him there would be no mercy if a bomber strayed into his sights. Or could there be? Could he pull the trigger on a 10-year-old child that the insurgents use to plant one in five IEDs? It's a question you don't ask.
It is impossible to spend time with such men without being impressed by their courage, their fortitude and their discipline. By the end of their tour in Sangin, they will have endured six months in danger and be desperate for some of the ingredients of normal life – a full night's sleep, an evening of live television, the company of family, wives or girlfriends, or just a cold beer.
They now know that they will be the last British troops to serve in Sangin before the American military takes their place, but they wish that nobody had to.
Ross Wilson, the base's avuncular 38-year-old colour sergeant, who demonstrably holds the seams of the team together, says: "Sometimes, I feel like shouting at the local nationals that their lives would be so much better if they only got off the fence and picked a side.
"Then we could all get on with it, and get away."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghans Protest Rising Civilian Deaths
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 11, 2010
Hundreds of Afghans have protested in Mazar-i-Sharif against rising civilian deaths.
Protesters chanted slogans against foreign forces and Afghan President Hamid Karzai after U.S. troops killed two civilians in a pre-dawn raid on July 7 in the northern city's outskirts.
NATO also admitted killing six people with stray artillery on July 8, a day after an airstrike accidentally killed five Afghan soldiers.
Meanwhile, a wave of attacks has killed six U.S. troops and at least a dozen civilians in Afghanistan's volatile south and east.
In the eastern border province of Paktia, unidentified gunmen killed 11 Pakistanis who had crossed into Afghanistan to buy supplies.
compiled from agency reports
Back to Top
Back to Top
Hekmatyar Denies Supplying Intelligence to Afghan Government
Quqnoos July 11, 2010
Afghanistan Islamic Party (Hezb-i-Islami) has denied reports about supplying Taliban intelligence to the Afghan government, according to a statement
Members of Hezb-e-Islami party have supplied information about the whereabouts of Taliban to the Afghan security forces in Afghanistan’s northern region, said commander of 209 Shaheen military corps, General Murad Ali Murad.
Afghanistan Islamic Party led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has also denied reports about their disagreements with the Taliban.
The party has also warned the media in the press release not to publish such reports.
"Hezb-e-Islami considers such reports baseless and incorrect, calls it a devilish plot of Afghanistan’s enemies, and believes that the occupying forces and the puppet regime in Kabul are trying to delay their defeat by publishing such reports," the press release adds.
A key government official, on condition of anonymity, confirmed these reports and said the Afghan government had received all the reports from the party in return for money.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is one of the foremost and most divisive figures in recent Afghan history.
After leading the largest anti-Soviet resistance faction during the 1980s, with hundreds of millions of dollars of US support channeled through the government of Pakistan, his faction was renowned for its brutality in the brutal civil war following the Soviet withdrawal.
He escaped from the Taliban to Iran, but returned to take up arm against Hamid Karzai in 2002.
Back to Top
Back to Top
First Afghan Air Force Born Non-Commissioned Officers
Source: NATO July 11, 2010 By Capt. Rob Leese
The Pohantoon-e-Hawayee (PeH), the Afghan Air Force training school, graduated its first Team Leader Course on Jul. 11, 2010. The Team Leader Course is a six week Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) building leadership course that takes soldiers that have completed the 9th grade and Basic Warrior Training and it gives them the tools and skills necessary to be effective NCOs.
The first class of 49 students was taught by two AAF PeH instructors and two CAPTF advisors, Tech. Sgt. Moore and Tech. Sgt. Price. They will be joined by four additional instructors as they complete their training at Kabul Military Training Center.
The classes consist of four weeks of Air Orientation with two weeks of NCO specific instruction to include general orders, chain of command, customs and courtesies, uniform regulations, hygiene, role of a NCO, hazing, Enlisted Force Structure, personal conduct, uniform code of military justice, sexual harassment, AAF history, religious and cultural affairs, and equal opportunity.
The NCOs are living in separate dorms and under stricter condition. They are expected to inspect their soldier’s dormitories, lead them in physical training and assist current NCO out at PeH.
All of them are literate; however, one of the challenges is that many of the students understand better in Pashtu, yet the course is formally taught in Dari. It did make the class unique. They have just started doing open ranks uniform inspections within the Air Force.
Tech. Sgt. Rob Moore explained, “They just left the soldiers dorm and now they are waking them up and leading them in physical training. There have been challenges getting the soldiers to listen to these new NCO-in-training.”
There is a short fall of NCO in the AAF and this allows them to accession rough 60 NCOs per month to fill the gap and take the best the AAF has to offer and make them the backbone of the Afghan Air Force.
After graduation, they will be assigned to their follow-on job training and will return to their units as a NCO. They will continue to assist out at PeH until they are finished with their training.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan air drops provide life support to troops
By Caroline Wyatt Defence correspondent, BBC News, Helmand July 11, 2010
With the roads in southern Afghanistan fraught with danger for land convoys, some vital supplies are now being air-dropped into the coalition troops' more remote forward operating bases by the RAF.
The airfield at Kandahar airbase works night and day, seven days a week, transporting troops and equipment into this landlocked country.
In the blazing afternoon sun, a heat-haze rises from the tarmac as soldiers from 47 Air Despatch Squadron load up huge pallets of water and rations into the back of a Hercules C-130 aircraft.
It is a method dating back to the air drops of World War II, when British troops operating in France were re-supplied by air.
Today, air drops are being used for the smaller Nato patrol bases and checkpoints scattered across Helmand province - still one of the most hostile areas of Afghanistan.
'Life support'
Sqn Ldr Andy Wood, the officer commanding the Hercules detachment in Kandahar, said: "We do it when a convoy is having problems getting to the patrol bases because of the IED (improvised explosive device) threat, or if there is a high threat to helicopters or they are too busy, and we have the ability to drop stores, water, rations and ammunition."
"The despatch system has been around for a long time, going back to the Dakota times in the Second World War and it's a bit of a mixture between science and Heath Robinson.
But it works, and it's accurate and it delivers the goods that the guys really need."
The aircraft can drop loads of up to 16 tons, offering life support to forces on the ground.
But the supplies must be loaded with precision so that the weight is evenly distributed, and the parachutes on top of each pallet can open without hindrance when the moment comes.
Mistakes can be lethal, whether for civilians below or for the troops who collect the supplies. The dropping of Nato leaflets was suspended after a carton dropped by air killed an Afghan civilian below a few months ago.
Once darkness has fallen, the Hercules takes off for its flight over hostile territory.
The pilots are focused on their mission, but seem relaxed as the plane flies over Helmand, most of the land below us dark, apart from the few spots of light visible from the bigger towns.
Parachutes
Above us, an RAF Tornado fighter jet is flying in armed "overwatch", to ensure the Hercules is safe, while in the back of the plane the load-master and air despatchers prepare for the drop with split-second timing.
When it nears the drop zone, the Hercules banks sharply upwards to allow gravity to help shift the heavy load.
When the plane is over the right spot a green light comes on and the load is unleashed. The pallets drop rapidly out of the back, their parachutes flying open as they descend.
It is a textbook drop.
Hercules pilot Sqn Ldr Al Whinton said: "It's a pretty good feeling to be able to resupply these guys as sometimes they're out in the field hanging on their bootlegs almost, hanging on for rations."
"We have the ability to resupply them, so they get what they need and we are pleased to do that."
On the ground, still under cover of darkness, the troops pick up these vital rations.
Patrolling and fighting in the 45-50C (113-122F) heat of a Helmand summer, the pallets of water will soon be finished, but for now the water and rations should be enough to keep the soldiers on this part of the front line going until it's time for the next re-supply from the skies.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Greens urge to pull Australian troops from Afghanistan
CANBERRA, July 11 (Xinhua) -- A growing number of Australians want their troops out of Afghanistan, Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said on Sunday.
Senator Brown offered his condolences to the family of Private Nathan Bewes, the latest Australian casualty in the conflict.
"It's a terrible war, these soldiers are there at the nation's behest and we think they should be brought safely back to Australia," Senator Brown told the Nine Network on Sunday.
"Because this war is not going the way it should, it was bungled from the outset by (former U.S.) President (George W.) Bush."
A growing majority of Australians thought troops should be brought home, Senator Brown said.
"We will go to the election fighting very strongly to have our troops brought safely home from Afghanistan," he said.
Australia's involvement in Afghanistan should be the focus of a parliamentary debate, Senator Brown said.
"We owe that to our troops, every member of parliament should be on her or his feet saying what they think their electorate thinks in a full debate on our involvement in Afghanistan..."
Senator Brown said he would raise the need for a debate with the prime minister.
The Australian toll from the almost decade-long war now stands at 17, with 143 soldiers injured.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Severed Trees in Orchards Mirror Afghan History
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN July 10, 2010
BATI KOT DISTRICT, Afghanistan - The main road into Afghanistan from the east traverses a flat, parched countryside, past flimsy roadside bazaars and squalid villages. Then, the terrain abruptly changes: arid land gives way to vast olive groves that spread for miles, as if a giant dropped a Mediterranean island into Central Asia.
Gul Abbas, 66, a white-bearded farmer, walked recently among the rows of olive trees, occasionally reaching up to pat a branch as if it were an old friend, and spoke like someone lost in a dream: “We used to have visitors; people came from India, from Pakistan, from Bangladesh, to see our farms.”
He grew up with the trees and spent his life nurturing them. The farm’s history is his history, and the country’s as well. The olive trees, he explained, were not only trees, but also a promise, not so long ago, that in this troubled and impoverished country anything could happen, even peace and plenty. Such hopes are almost, but not quite, gone.
Mr. Abbas started working on the farm nearly 50 years ago as a teenager, even before the trees were planted. “We were illiterate people,” he said. “Those who had a skill could work in the towns, but I studied these trees my whole life, and growing became my profession.”
At the time, Afghanistan was fast becoming a beacon in the region and the groves, like much of the country’s progress in that period, were the brainchild of a forward-looking king, Mohammad Zahir Shah. In search of employment for the citizens of his water-starved country, he turned to two great farming powers that had turned their deserts green: the Soviets and the Americans.
In a modern version of the 19th-century competition between Britain and Russia for dominance in Afghanistan, the two powers each started irrigation projects: the United States in Helmand Province in the now insurgent-afflicted area around Marja, and the Soviet Union here, near Jalalabad.
The Soviet goal was to reclaim about 224,000 acres of scrub, turning it into as many as six fertile farms, channeling the snowmelt from the Hindu Kush mountains and water from the Kabul River into irrigation canals, according to Nancy Dupree, an Afghan expert who wrote about the project when it was in its heyday. The farms today cover about 55,000 acres.
The original purpose was to grow olives and oranges, Mr. Abbas said, but the plan took off and the Soviets built a model farm cooperative — with housing for workers, schools and much more. It took 15 years to complete, enough time for the trees to produce fruit. Orange trees take 4 years to become productive in this soil, he said, and olive trees do not yield their harvest for at least 12.
Because there was no custom of eating olives among Afghans, almost the entire crop, 2,600 tons a year, was shipped to Russia in the late 1970s, along with 7,000 tons of oranges, according to an engineer named Hakim who now leads the Nangarhar Valley Development Authority, which has responsibility for the farms. There were so many olives that the Russians built a factory with Italian machinery to turn some of the harvest into oil.
Mr. Hakim, who is 51 and like many Afghans has only one name, witnessed the farms’ growth as a college student here and was inspired, but never imagined that he would have the chance to direct the farms. The orchards and modern farms seemed to him a kind of utopian dream that had come to life in the rocky Afghan soil.
“I went to visit a relative living on the farm; it had its own houses, schools, theater, cinema, hospital, it had well-organized parks and a bakery, and the dairy produced cream and yogurt,” he said. “It was one of the projects that changed people’s lives.”
Then, in the early 1980s, disaster struck. The mujahedeen movement to oust the Soviets, who by then were controlling the government, started in neighboring Kunar Province, and the regiment of Afghan troops guarding the farms was sent to fight the Afghan rebels.
Security deteriorated and vandals began to maraud at night, stealing farm equipment and even the steel rods used to stabilize the cooperatives’ concrete buildings, said Hajji Hanifullah Khan, the manager of one of the farms that is only now beginning to work again.
When mujahedeen and displaced people began to camp on the land, they chopped down the young orange trees and hacked at the olive groves. “The citrus are like children, they are very fragile, very thin and they need lots of attention and effort,” Mr. Khan said. “But the olive tree is a tough thing, it survives by its own strength.”
As the communist government of Mohammed Najibullah fell in 1992, the remaining farm workers fled to Pakistan. Mr. Abbas, the farmer, who had never been more than five miles from the farms he tended, fled as well.
Even before Western forces ousted the Taliban in 2001, Mr. Abbas, returned and found a ravaged land. Of the thousands of orange trees, not a single one was left. The olive trees had grown tall and wild and stopped producing fruit.
“It was like a forest,” he said, shaking his head.
Mr. Hakim, the head of the Nangarhar Valley Development Authority, longing to see the farms flourish again, turned to the American-run provincial reconstruction team in Jalalabad. He told it that rehabilitating the farms would put young men to work and keep them from turning to radical ways. The reconstruction team gave him $1.8 million to reconstruct the irrigation canals, as well as money to start replanting the olive and orange groves, he said.
Today, large stretches of the farms have yet to be reclaimed and some olive trees still grow with abandon. However, the reconstruction money has allowed the Afghans to begin to rehabilitate about 500 acres of olive groves, plant new citrus trees and employ at least 1,050 people full time, according to Mr. Hakim. While that was barely 10 percent of the work force when the farms were fully functioning in the 1970s, it is 10 times the number who were here under the Taliban.
Mr. Hakim estimates that he will need foreign support for at least five more years to get the farms on track to be fully productive again. The Agriculture Ministry has begun sending modest amounts of money, but is expected to increase the budget as millions of dollars in foreign donor funds become available.
As Mr. Abbas walked through the groves in the pale spring sun, he pointed to one tree infested with whitefly, another whose lower branches had been hacked off. A third tree had been uprooted; all that remained was a hole in the ground.
“Thieves,” he said shaking his fist at the invisible intruders. “I know each tree. I look at each branch. They dig up the new saplings and plant them on their own lands. We are here only during working hours; after that there is no government, there is only the word ‘government.’ ”
Mr. Hakim was more resigned: “In the past 30 years of war, people were isolated and became used to living in a lawless way.”
“People don’t understand how difficult it is to plant a tree, to make it grow and produce fruit. All they know is how to cut it down in five minutes and burn it for warmth.”
Back to Top
Back to Top
Republicans might turn against war
It started when the head of the national Republican party, Michael Steele, was surreptitiously caught on video sounding like one of the peaceniks at Colgan's weekly anti-war rallies.
Seattle Times Danny Westneat, Seattle Times staff columnist July 10, 2010
Joe Colgan has been protesting America's wars so long he thought he'd heard it all.
But even he's been startled by what's happened these last few weeks. Suddenly anti-war talk is coming from the unlikeliest place — from the right wing of politics.
"I don't know whether to be happy that some on the right are finally coming to their senses, or completely mistrustful of them," says Colgan, an Army vet and peace activist from Kent whose son Ben was killed in Iraq in 2003. "I guess I don't trust them. But I have been allowing myself to hope."
It started when the head of the national Republican party, Michael Steele, was surreptitiously caught on video sounding like one of the peaceniks at Colgan's weekly anti-war rallies.
"If he (President Obama) is such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that's the one thing you don't do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?" Steele said. "Because everyone who's tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan without committing more troops ... "
Steele botched the rest of his spiel — claiming it was "Obama's war of choice" even though Obama was an unknown state senator when we invaded. But the unpardonable sin was that a Republican was saying an American military operation was, essentially, doomed.
A hue and cry went up for him to resign. But he didn't. And now Ann Coulter, of all people, has come to his defense.
The arch-conservative pundit agreed Afghanistan has become a quagmire (she naturally blamed wussy liberals for this). But more interestingly, she wondered: Why is it considered conservative to give knee-jerk and limitless support to wars, anyway?
"I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government and a strong national defense, but I guess permanent war is on the platter now, too," she wrote.
Throw in that our top general in Afghanistan was recently fired for giving the impression the war was a lost cause, and you wonder: Are we at some sort of tipping point?
I have written here before that these wars won't end until both Democrats and Republicans begin to turn on them. Admitting a war is not winnable, plus the difficulty of getting the troops out, is all too politically damaging for any one party to suffer alone.
Locally there's not much evidence of GOP anti-war sentiment. Even a candidate who says the wars are illegal — GOP Senate hopeful Clint Didier — ends by saying we should keep fighting anyway, as long as it takes to win.
Others say it's all a plot.
"These new Republican critiques of the war are cynical and unprincipled," says Howard Gale, a Seattle psychologist and longtime anti-war activist. "Their motivation is to try to blame anything and everything on Obama."
Maybe so. Still, much of what Steele said echoed what we've been hearing lately from the military itself. Such as Gen. Stanley McChrystal's chief of operations, who told Rolling Stone magazine that victory in Afghanistan is "not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win — this is going to end in an argument."
Colgan says something may have shifted when the economy crashed in 2008.
"I do hear a different tone now," he says. "A lot of people are saying: We can't afford the wars. They're saying we've got to come home, not because the war is wrong, but because it's bankrupting us."
That appears to be why nine congressional Republicans voted July 1 along with 153 Democrats to begin getting troops out of Afghanistan. It wasn't enough — the measure lost 162 to 260. But it was the biggest show yet of cross-party political unrest about that war since it began nearly nine years ago.
Steele went on to retract his comments. He shouldn't have — he had it mostly right. Maybe he was just a Republican a bit ahead of his time.
Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.
Back to Top
Disclaimer:
This news site is mostly a compilation of publicly accessible articles
on the Web in the form of a link or saved news item. The news articles
and commentaries/editorials are protected under international copyright
laws. All credit goes to the original respective source(s).