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Afghan Minister Says Chinese-Built Hospital To Open
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 16, 2010
KABUL -- Afghanistan's acting health minister has said a Chinese-built hospital will soon open in Kabul, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Afghanistan: rogue soldier who killed British troops says he acted alone
A man claiming to be the rogue Afghan soldier who killed three British troops has said he acted alone after being angered by the conduct of British troops.
Telegraph.co.uk - Defence 16 Jul 2010
The man – who said he was Taleb Hossein – contacted the BBC bureau in Kabul, insisting he had not spoken to the Taliban before the killings.
Suicide attack rocks western Afghan province, kills policeman
HERAT, Afghanistan, July 16 (Xinhua) -- A suicide bomber attacked police in Herat province west of Afghanistan on Friday, killing at least one policeman and wounding two others, police said.
France defense minister hopes Afghanistan to secure themselves in 2011
PARIS, July 15 (Xinhua) -- French Defense Minister Herve Morin said Thursday that he hoped Afghan authorities could take over the responsibility to secure their own country in 2011.
Afghanistan Pushes at UN to Encourage Taliban Reconciliation
Bloomberg July 15, 2010
Afghanistan’s government, encouraging reconciliation with the Taliban, is seeking the removal of 10 militants from a United Nations blacklist and welcoming the naming of a Canadian judge to review cases.
Domestic Doubts Shadow Clinton Trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan
Bloomberg July 15, 2010
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travels to South Asia this weekend amid criticism at home that the war in Afghanistan is foundering and doubts that Pakistan shares U.S. goals in the conflict.
Afghan Health Workers Kidnapped in Kandahar
VOA News July 15, 2010
Afghan officials say gunmen have kidnapped a group of health ministry employees in southern Afghanistan. The Afghan Ministry of Health is calling for the release of the employees who were abducted in Kandahar province on Thursday.
In targeting Taliban stronghold, U.S. depends on Afghans' reluctant support
By Karin Brulliard Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, July 16, 2010
ZHARI DISTRICT, AFGHANISTAN - The battle for this rural Taliban stronghold is not about killing insurgents, U.S. military officials say. It is about getting the new district governor to stop the grenades.
Lattes and Hot Showers in Afghanistan
New York Times (blog) By MARK LARSON July 15, 2010
A popular fake motivational poster here in Afghanistan is one that shows two pictures side by side: one of soldiers in full gear out on patrol covered in dust; the other of two soldiers holding trays of fast food with clean uniforms and big smiles. The caption below reads “Afghanistan: individual experiences may vary.”
In Afghanistan, the U.S. Goes Local to Fight the Taliban
TIME - World By Mark Thompson Friday, Jul. 16, 2010
Washington - The good news is that the U.S. government is on the verge of creating thousands of jobs. The bad news is that they're in Afghanistan. But General David Petraeus is hoping that hiring up to 10,000 Afghans and arming them to keep the Taliban out of their villages will help turn things
Mills: Afghans are beginning to reject Taliban
San Diego Union-Tribune, California By Gretel C. Kovach, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER Thursday, July 15, 2010
CAMP PENDLELTON, Calif. - Maj. Gen. Richard P. Mills, the Marine commander in charge of NATO troops in the southwestern region of Afghanistan, said Thursday that he is a "strong supporter" of a recently announced program to hire villagers for local security.
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Afghan Minister Says Chinese-Built Hospital To Open
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty July 16, 2010
KABUL -- Afghanistan's acting health minister has said a Chinese-built hospital will soon open in Kabul, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Minister Soraya Dalil made the announcement while urging that more funds be given for the country's health-care services when an international donor conference is held in Kabul on July 20-21.
The multistory Jamhuriat Hospital, located in the center of Kabul, will be one of the city's largest hospitals and will be equipped with the latest technology.
The total spending by China on the hospital is estimated to be around $26 million.
Equipment for the hospital will also be paid for by the World Bank, the United States, and Turkey.
In addition to its financial support, Chinese businesses were also involved in the construction of the hospital.
In 2004, a portion of the unfinished hospital collapsed and killed several people.
China has become a major investor in Afghanistan. In one venture alone, the Aynak copper mine, China has invested $4 billion.
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Afghanistan: rogue soldier who killed British troops says he acted alone
A man claiming to be the rogue Afghan soldier who killed three British troops has said he acted alone after being angered by the conduct of British troops.
Telegraph.co.uk - Defence 16 Jul 2010
The man – who said he was Taleb Hossein – contacted the BBC bureau in Kabul, insisting he had not spoken to the Taliban before the killings.
The Ministry of Defence said it was aware of the call – but added ''care must be taken not to accept their accounts at face value''.
Major James Joshua Bowman, Lieutenant Neal Turkington and Corporal Arjun Purja Pun, all of 1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles, were killed in the attack on a base in Helmand Province on Monday.
There was no transcript of the reported conversation immediately available but journalist Dawood Azami, of the BBC's Pashto service, wrote: ''He said the shooting of British soldiers was his own idea, and that he had had no contact with the Taliban, Iran or Pakistan beforehand. It was only after the shooting that he had joined the Taliban.
"We cannot be certain that the man was Taleb Hossein but I questioned him about his name, age, ethnicity, home village and the duration of his military service.''
Mr Azami said he called the man after the Taliban contacted his bureau with a mobile phone.
He said: ''An intermediary then passed the phone to a man, who said he was 21-year-old Taleb Hossein from the central Ghazni province of Afghanistan.
''During the interview, which lasted about 10 minutes, he told me he was angry at the conduct of British troops in Helmand province. He accused them of killing civilians including children.
''When I challenged him that civilians have been killed in Taliban attacks too, he said that the Taliban were Mujahideen fighting for their own country.
''He also said that British soldiers were not there to secure and reconstruct Afghanistan.
''The man told me that he belonged to the Hazara ethnic group and had spent a couple of years in Iran. He told me that soon after returning to Afghanistan a year ago, he had joined the Afghan army.''
Responding to the claims in a statement, the MoD said: ''We are aware that an individual has contacted the media claiming responsibility for the killing of three British soldiers on Tuesday morning in Helmand Province.
''Whilst we cannot comment on the legitimacy of this individual's claims to be the suspect responsible for this cowardly attack, it is ridiculous to suggest that we are engaged in suicide attacks or are deliberately killing civilians.
''Insurgents and those who are against the coalition mission in Afghanistan routinely make false and exaggerated claims and so care must be taken not to accept their accounts at face value.''
UK special forces are reportedly involved in a massive manhunt for Hossein, following the attack which the Ministry of Defence suspects was premeditated.
Hossein, 23, shot Maj Bowman, 34, from Salisbury, Wiltshire, dead in his sleeping quarters in Patrol Base 3 in Nahr-e Saraj district, near Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah, at about 2am local time.
He also fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the base's command centre, killing Lt Turkington, 26, from Craigavon, Northern Ireland, and Corporal Pun, 33, from Nepal and wounding four other UK soldiers.
Hossein was in the army for about eight or nine months, spending most of his time in Helmand, and was thought to have a hashish habit, the Afghan authorities said.
Maj Bowman was the most senior member of British forces to die in Afghanistan since Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, was killed by a roadside bomb last July.
In a statement his family said: ''He was the best possible son and brother who will be sadly missed by his family and many friends. He loved the Army and was very proud of the selfless work that he and his Company were doing.''
The commander of British forces in Helmand Province, Brigadier Richard Felton, insisted the murders would not affect the strong relationship between Nato and Afghan troops.
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Suicide attack rocks western Afghan province, kills policeman
HERAT, Afghanistan, July 16 (Xinhua) -- A suicide bomber attacked police in Herat province west of Afghanistan on Friday, killing at least one policeman and wounding two others, police said.
"A terrorist riding an explosive-laden car blew it up next to the convoy of police in Gazara district at 8 a.m., leaving one police constable dead and two others dead," deputy to provincial police chief Dilawar Shah Dilawar told Xinhua.
Close to the incident was NATO-led forces base but it caused no damage to the alliance, Dilawar further said.
The suicide bomber was also killed in the blast, he said.
He also blamed the "enemies of peace," a term used against Taliban militants but the outfit has yet to make comment.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have vowed to speed up activities this year in Afghanistan.
More than 80 people, including over 30 NATO soldiers, have been killed in Taliban-linked activities, mostly in roadside bombings and suicide attacks, so far in July in the militancy-plagued Afghanistan.
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France defense minister hopes Afghanistan to secure themselves in 2011
PARIS, July 15 (Xinhua) -- French Defense Minister Herve Morin said Thursday that he hoped Afghan authorities could take over the responsibility to secure their own country in 2011.
In an interview with local television LCI, Morin said he expected "at least" to start guard mission take-over to local security force in the course of 2011.
If not a total transfer, he suggested a potential take-over in Surobi, eastern of Afghanistan, "where is calm and stable and the development is taking place."
The improvement and fruits resulted from French army's years of effort in the war zone would be in doubt, if nothing changes in 2011, the minister added.
According to a survey by pollster Ifop ealier this week, only 29 percent of French people favored French military presence in Afghanistan, while 70 percent said they preferred a French withdrawal from the zone.
France now has 3,500 troops deployed in Afghanistan, and so far recorded a toll of 45 French soldiers since U.S.-led allies force intruded the country.
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Afghanistan Pushes at UN to Encourage Taliban Reconciliation
Bloomberg July 15, 2010
Afghanistan’s government, encouraging reconciliation with the Taliban, is seeking the removal of 10 militants from a United Nations blacklist and welcoming the naming of a Canadian judge to review cases.
Zahir Tanin, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the UN, said the 10 names were given last week to the Security Council committee that implements sanctions imposed in 1999 on the Taliban and al- Qaeda. He said Judge Kimberly Prost’s appointment to the new position of committee “ombudsperson” should facilitate the unanimity needed to remove names.
“Any help for all members of the Security Council to have less dispute and more unity is welcome,” Tanin said in an interview. “A psychological and political obstacle to reconciliation is removed any time you delist people who are ready to join the peace process.”
U.S., Afghan and allied forces are trying to degrade the Taliban militia in its southern Afghanistan stronghold while building up the central government’s ability to secure the country. Tanin said a “political solution” was essential to ending the conflict, which began in 2001 when the U.S. toppled the Taliban regime.
A consensus was reached last month among delegates to a gathering in Kabul of more than 1,600 tribal elders and local leaders that the names of Taliban officials should be removed from the UN and U.S. blacklists. A total of 137 Taliban loyalists are barred by the UN from traveling or accessing financial assets abroad.
UN Review
The UN Security Council is reviewing all of the 488 names on the sanctions list, which includes suspected al-Qaeda figures, because some are dead, already part of the Afghan government, or qualified for removal by renouncing violence and pledging allegiance to the country’s constitution. The process, including consideration of the 10 Taliban members submitted last week, is scheduled to be finished by July 31.
Prost, who has served as a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia since 2006, said she will analyze appeals submitted by persons on the list. Her assessment will “clearly weigh a great deal” with the committee, Ambassador Thomas Mayr-Harting of Austria, chairman of the panel, told reporters.
Tanin and Mayr-Harting declined to identify the 10 individuals that Afghanistan seeks to delete from the terror list.
“Our review coincides with important political developments within Afghanistan,” Mayr-Harting said.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, issued a statement saying Prost’s appointment was an “important step to improve the transparency” of the committee and “make it an even stronger and more effective counter-terrorism tool.”
Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, told reporters in Washington on July 14 that the Obama administration has agreed to delist Taliban and al-Qaeda on “case-by-case basis.”
--Editors: Edward DeMarco, Don Frederick
To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva in Washington at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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Domestic Doubts Shadow Clinton Trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan
Bloomberg July 15, 2010
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travels to South Asia this weekend amid criticism at home that the war in Afghanistan is foundering and doubts that Pakistan shares U.S. goals in the conflict.
“Our progress is decidedly mixed,” Senator John Kerry, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said July 14. It is “time to assess how our strategy fits the realities on the ground,” said the Massachusetts Democrat, who also expressed concerns that Pakistan isn’t doing all it could to weaken Taliban insurgents on its border.
Clinton will attend the Kabul Conference, where Afghan President Hamid Karzai will present plans for strengthening governance and economic development to about 70 donor nations. The U.S. has reconciled with Karzai after he said the West was responsible for Afghan election fraud and threatened to join the Taliban, comments the White House called “troubling.”
The Afghanistan stop is part of a nine-day trip that includes Pakistan, South Korea and Vietnam. In Kabul, Clinton will focus on civilian development work to build up Karzai’s government, according to her envoy.
“Afghanistan cannot go forward unless the international community led by its greatest nation, the United States, continues to fulfill its commitments in the area beyond combat troops,” Ambassador Richard Holbrooke told senators this week who complained that U.S. war objectives are difficult to grasp.
More than 1,000 American military personnel have died in Afghanistan since 2001 and almost 7,000 have been wounded, according to Defense Department figures.
Withstand Terrorists
Amid congressional doubts about the development effort and the shift in the war command to General David Petraeus, Clinton said June 25 that the U.S. is determined to “strengthen Afghanistan and Pakistan to be able to withstand the pressures from these extremist terrorist networks.”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said this week that CIA air strikes in Pakistan should target a Taliban safe haven and a network of militants responsible for attacks across the border in Afghanistan. Levin said he is pressing the State Department to add the Haqqani network to a list of terror groups subject to sanctions.
Pakistan Factor
In its war strategy, the administration has made Pakistan integral. “You cannot succeed in Afghanistan without Pakistan’s involvement,” Holbrooke told senators.
One of Clinton’s tasks in Pakistan will be “to make sure that we are on the same page on Afghanistan,” said Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former U.S. diplomat in South Asia.
The prime U.S. objective is to eliminate al-Qaeda connections and stabilize Afghanistan, Schaffer said. Pakistan’s aim is minimizing the influence of its rival India, she said.
While Pakistanis will say they share the U.S. goal, “that’s a way, way lower priority for them and they’re willing to put up with a lot” from groups like the Taliban to keep India out, Schaffer said.
In Clinton’s talks with Karzai, corruption will be a major topic, Holbrooke said. Representative Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, has put a hold on about $3.9 billion in Afghanistan funding until improved accountability measures are put in place.
Spending Plan
The Obama administration asked Congress for $4.4 billion in fiscal year 2010 for civilian programs in Afghanistan and another $3.9 billion for the following year.
A survey released this month by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a non-profit watchdog group in the country, estimated that “bribery has doubled since 2007” there.
Holbrooke said the U.S. has assembled a team that includes the Central Intelligence Agency and Treasury Department to work on the issue. Karzai has also committed to upgrade his anti- corruption efforts, Holbrooke said.
Karzai, Women
Clinton will remind Karzai that his plan to bring Taliban members into the government requires them to accept the Afghan constitution and its defense of women’s rights, Holbrooke said.
In 2009, Karzai signed into law a bill targeting Shiite Muslims that required women to have sex with their husbands. It also barred women from working, studying or leaving home without spousal approval. The United Nations said the law legalized marital rape.
‘He’s willing to make accommodations with Islamic fundamentalists,” said Arturo Munoz, a former CIA officer and analyst at the RAND Corp. research group in Arlington, Virginia. “Therefore we can expect if he’s negotiating with the Taliban who are the most extreme, for whom these issues are important, that in exchange for peace, he may give in.”
In Pakistan, Clinton and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi will follow up on a strategic dialogue in March and discuss projects ranging from energy to security.
Continuing on to East Asia, Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will spend time in Seoul to discuss North Korea and commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Korean War. In Hanoi, Clinton will confer with Vietnamese leaders and attend an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting.
--Editors: Edward DeMarco, Mark Silva
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington at ngaouette@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva msilva34@bloomberg.net
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Afghan Health Workers Kidnapped in Kandahar
VOA News July 15, 2010
Afghan officials say gunmen have kidnapped a group of health ministry employees in southern Afghanistan. The Afghan Ministry of Health is calling for the release of the employees who were abducted in Kandahar province on Thursday.
Insurgent kidnappings, assassinations and bombings have increased in recent months as NATO and Afghan forces work to clear Kandahar of Taliban militants.
In neighboring Uruzgan province, NATO says insurgents shot and killed a district leader at a make-shift checkpoint on Tuesday.
The alliance said Saleh Mohammad, a member of the local tribal council in Khaz Uruzgan district, was on a list of Afghan officials whom Taliban leader Mullah Omar wants killed.
On Wednesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai approved a controversial U.S. plan for a new local defense force to help fight the Taliban insurgency. The local police units, similar to a tribal militia, will operate in villages in key areas to supplement efforts by the regular army and police.
Mr. Karzai said the force will be under the supervision of the Interior Ministry. The Afghan leader had long resisted pressure from Washington to create the defense units, expressing concern that local militias could undermine the central government.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.
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In targeting Taliban stronghold, U.S. depends on Afghans' reluctant support
By Karin Brulliard Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, July 16, 2010
ZHARI DISTRICT, AFGHANISTAN - The battle for this rural Taliban stronghold is not about killing insurgents, U.S. military officials say. It is about getting the new district governor to stop the grenades.
Soon after Karim Jan assumed the post in June, the explosives began sailing over mud walls and onto U.S. troops patrolling the labyrinth of Senjaray, the biggest town in a district that U.S. officials say is under near-complete Taliban control. Two weeks later, five soldiers had been wounded in a half-dozen strikes. The attacks amounted to a test: Would Senjaray's elders side with Jan or the Taliban?
"All I need you to do is to protect your village," Jan, 35, told 80 weathered men who gathered at his office. "I'm begging you."
As thousands of new U.S. troops push into Kandahar city and nearby villages, their focus is on propping up inexperienced local leaders such as Jan. The aim is to persuade the population to defy the Taliban and back the weak Afghan government at its lowest levels -- a mission sure to be watched closely for signs of progress during the Obama administration's war review in December.
"It's a trial, and the people are the jury," said Army Capt. Nick Stout, 27, a commander of the 101st Airborne company that has patrolled Senjaray out of a sun-scorched hilltop outpost for two months. "Whoever presents the best case . . . they're going to side with."
One new approach in prosecuting the case against the Taliban moved forward this week when the Afghan government approved a U.S.-backed plan to create local defense forces in rural areas.
But that plan and the accompanying effort to bolster local governments are hampered by villagers' conflicted loyalties, the Taliban's stranglehold on the population and Afghans' anger at the U.S. military presence. NATO officials say nowhere could it be more difficult to promote governance than in Zhari, a tribal patchwork west of Kandahar that was the birthplace of the Taliban movement. Coalition forces there have never been large enough to implement real change.
For now, Jan is the government of Zhari, a lush agricultural belt the Taliban uses as a key command and supply center. Jan's 20 or so district cabinet positions remain unfilled because the provincial government is slow to approve candidates, and most are too afraid to take the jobs anyway, U.S. officials said.
Jan, the former police chief in Senjaray, won his job after his predecessor resigned to run for parliament. A 60-man council of Zhari elders quickly appointed Jan, a member of the district's largest tribe, and he vowed to be fair to all.
For U.S., cautious hope
U.S. officials express cautious hope that Jan will stick to that pledge. Lt. Col. Johnny K. Davis, the battalion commander who oversees much of the infantry in Zhari, said he thinks Jan probably communicates with insurgents -- perhaps as a survival tactic -- but is at least "80 percent with the coalition."
Since taking the job, Jan has negotiated property disputes and a blood feud. A jovial fellow with a thick mustache, he says he wants to open a cinema showing James Bond and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies to show constituents how advanced the West is.
But given the level of Taliban activity here, that is a fantasy, as is the mere notion of Jan's traveling much beyond his office adjoined to a U.S. base.
Soldiers at small combat outposts, who for the time being serve as the government's primary ambassadors, face regular rocket attacks and ambushes. The elders of villages in the district's western reaches, where Taliban rule is unquestioned and government representatives have not stepped foot for years, live full time in Kandahar.
On a recent day in Khadakalay, a town off the main highway, farmer Rozi Khan said he knew Jan's name but had no intention of turning to him.
"If we had any connection with the district government, it would be so bad for us," said Khan, a man with a salt-and-pepper beard. "If we even talked with the police at the checkpoint on the highway, the Taliban would cut off our heads."
Jan's counterpart in neighboring Arghandab district was assassinated last month, and Jan's armored convoy has already been ambushed and bombed. In an interview in his blue-curtained office, he said he has "accepted that I will die at the point of the gun of the enemy."
If Jan holds sway anywhere in Zhari, it is in Senjaray, a town of 10,000 people that is the district's main population center. But even though he insisted people there are weary of the Taliban, U.S. soldiers say Senjaray leaders sit squarely on the fence.
From their expanding perch on the hill, the troops have a view of their narrow cat-and-mouse game. On one patch of town sits an inert, American-built school that has been repeatedly attacked and is now a "strong point" for U.S. and Afghan forces. Not far away is a large mosque that is a Taliban hub.
In between are the mud-brick compounds that U.S. soldiers visit in hopes of making inroads with influential elders. Recently, though, the structures became launching pads for grenades, some tossed by children. It is a new tactic that sows fear, Stout said.
"You throw a grenade in there, it's going to hit something," he said, peering down on the town.
After the fifth attack, Jan accompanied the patrol and threatened to burn down collaborators' houses, U.S. soldiers said. Days later, another patrol pursuing a suspect in the previous attack was targeted by a grenade.
Meeting the elders
It did not detonate, but Stout was outraged. Jan quickly organized the meeting, or shura, of Senjaray elders, at which he counseled that only by helping coalition forces secure the town would they get hospitals and schools and fertilizer. Davis, the battalion commander, praised Islam, then condemned the Taliban for endangering children.
"My unit has come here to support the district governor. To help strengthen and train your army. To help train the Afghan police," Davis said. "And I ask you to help."
Elders fingering prayer beads shouted comments, most of which revolved around one theme: U.S. forces should leave.
"I'm not going to let the enemy or you in my village. I'm going to take care of security myself," said Haji Jalat, the most vocal of the elders.
"I'm sure they had a little shura with the Taliban before coming here," Davis whispered as he watched Jan work the room.
Finally, the elders came up with a solution that made the U.S. soldiers' eyes light up. They would nominate a group among them to join the patrols.
Three days later, however, Jan said he had heard nothing more about that idea. "They could have been intimidated by the Taliban," he surmised.
The next day, there was another grenade attack. Two days later, another. As of Thursday, nine U.S. soldiers had been wounded in the strikes, four seriously enough to be sent to the United States to recover. The elders never presented nominees for patrol duty.
"When it came time to decide, everyone stepped back," Stout, the company commander, said in an e-mail on Thursday. "Karim Jan is continuing to pressure the elders of Senjaray to take action, but we have yet to witness this in the town."
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Lattes and Hot Showers in Afghanistan
New York Times (blog) By MARK LARSON July 15, 2010
A popular fake motivational poster here in Afghanistan is one that shows two pictures side by side: one of soldiers in full gear out on patrol covered in dust; the other of two soldiers holding trays of fast food with clean uniforms and big smiles. The caption below reads “Afghanistan: individual experiences may vary.”
This dichotomy is all too true for many soldiers around the country. As a new infantry lieutenant fresh out of Airborne and Ranger School, I arrived at the 10th Mountain Division expecting my experience to be much like the picture on the right. We had all seen images and video of firefights at remote outposts in the Hindu Kush, or house-to-house battles in Kandahar and Helmand Provinces.
With my training and the fact that I was deploying with a light infantry unit as part of the first wave of President Obama’s “Afghan surge” I assumed I would find myself in similar situations. Or so I hoped. My Afghan experience has thus far turned out to be much more like the picture on the left.
Upon my arrival at Fort Drum I was informed that my battalion was the only active duty United States Army battalion whose sole mission was to train the Afghan National Army, a critical but unenviable task. It is in the DNA of an infantry battalion to seek out the fight, to take the initiative and be aggressive. While counterinsurgency operations often limit the ability to indulge this impulse, a training mission is an entirely different animal requiring endless patience and cultural sensitivity — not necessarily an infantryman’s natural inclination.
In order to fulfill our training mission, the battalion was scattered across the country: one company in the south, a company in Mazar-i-Sharif, a detached platoon in the east. My company’s little slice of Afghanistan happened to be on the outskirts of Kabul at Camp Blackhorse, where we were tasked with fielding and training new Afghan National Army units.
The majority of news sources restrict their coverage to major offensives or strategic areas. Training the A.N.A. around Kabul doesn’t often get much time in the spotlight, and consequently I wasn’t sure what to expect once I got to my Forward Operating Base. As an infantryman anticipating — and maybe even hoping for — austerity, what I found came as bit of a shock: a forward operating base equipped with a large, clean dining facility offering very good quality and selection; permanent barracks with round-the-clock hot showers; and a recreation area with daily access to phone and Internet. I half expected to stumble upon a multiplex and an Applebee’s.
Yet my F.O.B. wasn’t even the plushest in Kabul. Camp Phoenix is known for its large PX and barbecue tent that serves everything from steak to ribs daily on a very nice outdoor patio. And after dinner soldiers can wash down their meal with a smoothie at Green Beans Coffee or relieve some stress at the massage parlor.
Thus I began my career in the infantry as a P.O.G. (personnel other than grunt) living the life of the other half of the Army: the side that carries the logistical weight; whose efforts are rarely credited; and whose comforts are many, at least when viewed from an infantry perspective.
Most people have preconceptions about what going to war will be like; in most cases these turn out to be far off the mark. But for someone who was anticipating the worst, it’s not easy reconciling war with chai mocha lattes and back rubs.
This column was submitted by First Lt. Mark Larson, who is on his first deployment to Afghanistan. He is serving with the 10th Mountain Division in Kabul and blogs at www.handfulofdust.net. The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense or the United States government. If you are an active-duty service member and would like to submit a post, please e-mail us at AtWar@nytimes.com.
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In Afghanistan, the U.S. Goes Local to Fight the Taliban
TIME - World By Mark Thompson Friday, Jul. 16, 2010
Washington - The good news is that the U.S. government is on the verge of creating thousands of jobs. The bad news is that they're in Afghanistan. But General David Petraeus is hoping that hiring up to 10,000 Afghans and arming them to keep the Taliban out of their villages will help turn things around in the nine-year-old war. Petraeus won the tepid backing of Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the plan, nurtured by his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal, after just two weeks in command of allied forces in Afghanistan. It requires a delicate balancing act — the creation of local forces strong enough to shut the Taliban out of areas where neither Afghan nor NATO troops operate, but not so strong as to undermine the authority of Karzai's central government.
While progress is slow in fielding Afghan national security forces to fight the Taliban, U.S. officials believe that a growing number of Afghans are receptive to this more localized initiative. Marine Major General Richard Mills, running operations in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province, said Thursday he is seeing locals growing increasingly anti-Taliban. "We have strong anecdotal evidence that as Taliban tax collectors enter Marjah at night and enter other parts of this province, that they are repulsed and sent away by the people," he told reporters at the Pentagon in a teleconference. Taliban recruiters also are "being rejected and told to disappear," Mills added. "We're beginning to see the emergence of the people wanting to defend themselves."
Petraeus won Karzai's backing for the plan by giving the Afghan Interior Ministry control of the new localized police forces, which will supplement the 130,000-strong Afghan army and the 100,000 members of the Afghan national police. While their role is supposed to be defensive, that may be easier to promise than deliver in a country run by warlords and their local militias for the past 30 years. Some fear that the new rental cops could be easily turned into militias. "These would be local community policing units," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell insisted Wednesday. "They would not be militias."
Petraeus' calendar for showing progress is another challenge. A major review of the U.S. war strategy for Afghanistan is less than six months away, and President Obama wants to begin reducing U.S. troops there a year from now. Building even rudimentary security forces takes time, giving this latest initiative just a whiff of desperation as the clock ticks down. It's "a temporary solution to a very real, near-term problem," Morrell said, adding that the force shouldn't take long to train. "This is about putting locals to work so that they can be on watch in their communities for people who shouldn't be there," he said. "And then work with the established security organizations — the army, the police, the coalition — to make sure they don't menace their communities."
But the local police forces won't always be operating solo, Petraeus explained at his Senate confirmation hearing last month. Some of them will be "working around our great special-forces A teams who are out there very courageously in villages, and helping to empower and to support local elements that want to resist the Taliban." Petraeus performed a similar, if not identical, magic trick when he and 30,000 additional U.S. troops surged into Iraq in 2007. Many credited that surge with turning Iraq around. But many U.S. military officers say a more important factor was the willingness of the so-called Awakening movement — Sunnis in western Iraq, many of them former insurgents — to fight al-Qaeda. Ultimately, about 100,000 Iraqis ended up on the U.S. payroll through the Awakening movement. But in Afghanistan, any "awakening" is to begin — and remain — under the control of the government.
Similar units have recently been created in different regions of Afghanistan, largely in the east and south, with mixed results. Such homegrown security forces tend to work better than those imported as part of a central army. "It encourages neighborhood responsibility for their own security," Mills said. It gives locals "an opportunity for them to defend their own territory, in which they have, of course, a very, very vested interest." Not only are locals intimately familiar with the topography, they also know the local bad guys better than any outsider does. But the challenge for Petraeus and Karzai will be to keep local bad guys off the police payroll.
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Mills: Afghans are beginning to reject Taliban
San Diego Union-Tribune, California By Gretel C. Kovach, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER Thursday, July 15, 2010
CAMP PENDLELTON, Calif. - Maj. Gen. Richard P. Mills, the Marine commander in charge of NATO troops in the southwestern region of Afghanistan, said Thursday that he is a "strong supporter" of a recently announced program to hire villagers for local security. The new security initiative is being organized as average Afghans who seek to defend their communities are beginning to reject the Taliban in the insurgents’ traditional stronghold of Helmand Province, Mills said during a news conference broadcast Thursday from Afghanistan.
“What the local security initiatives give the people of Marjah, and the people throughout Helmand Province, is the opportunity to defend their own territory,” said Mills, who also leads Camp Pendleton's 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward.). “It encourages neighborhoods to be responsible for their own security.”
Marine Corps commanders successfully applied a similar program in the Anbar province of western Iraq in 2006, when Sunni leaders paid to defend their communities eventually turned against Al Qaeda-linked terrorist and insurgent groups, leading to a major quelling of violence.
In Afghanistan the local security forces will be ordinary villagers and townspeople, not insurgent leaders, paid like other police by the Afghan Interior Ministry, according to early details announced about the program Wednesday evening.
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai had resisted the program pushed by the new NATO commander in Afghanistan, counterinsurgency expert and Army Gen. David Petraeus, because of concerns that the program would fuel militias and threaten the central government. But Mills said the U.S. military worked to allay those concerns by negotiating through several iterations of the program.
During his talk with Pentagon reporters Thursday, which was cut short because of technical difficulties, Mills linked the plan to hire local security to “strong anecdotal” evidence that villagers and townspeople are turning against the Taliban by repulsing insurgent “tax collectors,” reporting locations of roadside bombs through call-in tip lines, and notifying authorities of strangers who don’t belong in their area.
The general also spoke of “steady progress” in Marjah since a major Marine Corps operation in February ousted Taliban leaders, and progress training Afghan National Army soldiers who successfully plan and execute their own security operations in some areas.
Top U.S. commanders have said efforts to secure Marjah proceeded more slowly than expected, and two battalions of Marines are engaged in regular fighting in the area. But Mills noted that bazaars in the area are busy once again with hundreds of merchants, schools are open for learning, and local government and security institutions are becoming more efficient.
“Are there still insurgents in that area? Of course there are,” Mills said. But their tactics are becoming desperate, he added. “They are being forced to give it up.”
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