 |
||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving you since 1998 | ||||||||||||
|
|
Report slams Pakistan for meddling in Afghanistan
Reuters By Jonathon Burch 13/06/2010
KABUL - Pakistani military intelligence not only funds and trains Taliban fighters in Afghanistan but is officially represented on the movement's leadership council, giving in significant influence over operations, a report said.
Pakistani agents 'funding and training Afghan Taliban'
June 13, 2010 BBC News
Pakistani intelligence gives funding, training and sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban on a scale much larger than previously thought, a report says.
Pakistan puppet masters guide the Taliban killers
The Sunday Times Miles Amoore, Kabul June 13, 2010
THE Taliban commander waited at the ramshackle border crossing while Pakistani police wielding assault rifles stopped and searched the line of cars and trucks travelling into Afghanistan.
West Adopts Taliban Lunacy To Help Secure Leaders Photo-Op
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
June 12, 2010 -- It was one of the most ludicrous laws proclaimed by Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime.
Afghan president visits Taliban spiritual home
Sun Jun 13, 10:02 am ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited the Taliban's spiritual home on Sunday, launching a campaign that promises better governance and development alongside a security push by foreign forces.
Afghan President Appeals for Support in Southern Afghanistan
June 13, 2010 VOA News
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has appealed to hundreds of tribal and religious leaders in Kandahar to support a major military operation in their southern province to bolster security in the Taliban stronghold.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, an ally and obstacle to the U.S. military in Afghanistan
By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, June 13, 2010
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - On March 8, at NATO headquarters in Kabul, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal presided over a classified briefing that some military officials hoped would lead to the ouster of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghanistan's president and the most powerful figure in southern Afghanistan.
Afghanistan: beginning of the end
David Cameron will today set out a hard-headed new approach to Afghanistan that will raise hopes that British troop numbers in the country will be reduced in little more than a year.
Telegraph.co.uk By James Kirkup and Thomas Harding 13 Jun 2010
The Prime Minister will tell MPs that the Government was trying to accelerate the process that will allow forces to start coming home.
Government insiders said Mr Cameron was keen to start winding down a war he inherited from Labour.
Head of British armed forces to retire early over Afghan war
LONDON, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The professional head of Britain's three armed services will retire early, a leading figure in the new coalition government confirmed on Sunday, in a move which heralds significant long-term changes in military policy.
Afghan insurgency upsurges as over 140 killed in one week
By Farid Behbud
KABUL, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Taliban-linked insurgency and conflicts have got new impetus in militancy-hit Afghanistan as more than 140 people with majority of whom civilians have been killed over the past one week.
Afghanistan, Second In Mother’s Mortality Rate
June 13, 2010 Quqnoos
More than 19,000 Afghan women die in childbirth every year
The Ministry of Health cites lack of health facilities among the most serious challenges causing the high mortality rates in the country.
As Afghan Fighting Expands, U.S. Medics Plunge In
New York Times By C. J. CHIVERS June 12, 2010
MARJA, Afghanistan - The Marine had been shot in the skull. He was up ahead, at the edge of a field, where the rest of his patrol was fighting. A Black Hawk medevac helicopter flew above treetops toward him, banked and hovered dangerously before landing nearby.
Back to Top
Report slams Pakistan for meddling in Afghanistan
Reuters By Jonathon Burch 13/06/2010
KABUL - Pakistani military intelligence not only funds and trains Taliban fighters in Afghanistan but is officially represented on the movement's leadership council, giving in significant influence over operations, a report said.
The report, published by the London School of Economics, a leading British institution, on Sunday, said research strongly suggested support for the Taliban was the "official policy" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).
Although links between the ISI and Islamist militants have been widely suspected for a long time, the report's findings, which it said were corroborated by two senior Western security officials, could raise more concerns in the West over Pakistan's commitment to help end the war in Afghanistan.
The report also said Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was reported to have visited senior Taliban prisoners in Pakistan earlier this year, where he is believed to have promised their release and help for militant operations, suggesting support for the Taliban "is approved at the highest level of Pakistan's civilian government."
A Pakistani diplomatic source described that report as "naive," and also said any talks with the Taliban were up to the Afghan government.
"Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude," said the report, based on interviews with Taliban commanders and former senior Taliban ministers as well as Western and Afghan security officials.
"DUPLICITY"
In March 2009, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said they had indications elements in the ISI supported the Taliban and al Qaeda and said the agency must end such activities.
Nevertheless, senior Western officials have been reluctant to talk publicly on the subject for fear of damaging possible cooperation from Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state Washington has propped up with billions of dollars in military and economic aid.
"The Pakistan government's apparent duplicity -- and awareness of it among the American public and political establishment -- could have enormous geo-political implications," said the report's author, Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University.
"Without a change in Pakistani behavior it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," Waldman said in the report.
The report comes at the end of one of the bloodiest weeks for foreign troops in Afghanistan -- more than 21 have been killed this week -- and at a time when the insurgency is at its most violent.
More than 1,800 foreign troops, including some 1,100 Americans, have died in Afghanistan since U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001. The war has already cost the United States around $300 billion and now costs more than $70 billion a year, the report said, citing 2009 U.S. Congressional research figures.
VIOLENT REGIONS
The report said interviews with Taliban commanders in some of the most violent regions in Afghanistan "suggest that Pakistan continues to give extensive support to the insurgency in terms of funding, munitions and supplies."
"These accounts were corroborated by former Taliban ministers, a Western analyst and a senior U.N. official based in Kabul, who said the Taliban largely depend on funding from the ISI and groups in Gulf countries," the report said.
Almost all of the Taliban commanders interviewed in the report also believed the ISI was represented on the Quetta Shura, the Taliban's supreme leadership council based in Pakistan.
"Interviews strongly suggest that the ISI has representatives on the (Quetta) Shura, either as participants or observers, and the agency is thus involved at the highest level of the movement," the report said.
The report also stated that Pakistani President Zardari, along with a senior ISI official, allegedly visited some 50 senior Taliban prisoners at a secret location in Pakistan where he told them they had been arrested only because he was under pressure from the United States.
"(This) suggests that the policy is approved at the highest level of Pakistan's civilian government," the report said.
Afghanistan has also been highly critical of Pakistan's ISI involvement in the conflict in Afghanistan. Last week, the former director of Afghanistan's intelligence service, Amrullah Saleh, resigned saying he had become an obstacle to President Hamid Karzai's plans to negotiate with the insurgents.
In an exclusive interview with Reuters at his home a day after he resigned, Saleh said the ISI was "part of the landscape of destruction in this country."
"It will be a waste of time to provide evidence of ISI involvement. They are a part of it. The Pakistani army of which ISI is a part, they know where the Taliban leaders are -- in their safe houses," he told Reuters.
(Editing by David Fox and Alex Richardson)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pakistani agents 'funding and training Afghan Taliban'
June 13, 2010 BBC News
Pakistani intelligence gives funding, training and sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban on a scale much larger than previously thought, a report says.
Taliban field commanders interviewed for the report suggested that ISI intelligence agents even attend Taliban supreme council meetings.
Support for the Afghan Taliban was "official ISI policy", the London School of Economics (LSE) authors suggest.
Pakistan's military denied the claims.
A spokesman said the allegations were "rubbish" and part of a malicious campaign against the country's military and security agencies.
The LSE report comes at the end of one of the deadliest weeks for Nato troops in Afghanistan, with more than 30 soldiers killed.
'Double game'
Links between the Taliban and Pakistan's intelligence service have long been suspected, but the report's author - Harvard analyst Matt Waldman - says there is real evidence of extensive co-operation between the two.
"This goes far beyond just limited, or occasional support," he said. "This is very significant levels of support being provided by the ISI.
"We're also saying this is official policy of that agency, and we're saying that it is very extensive. It is both at an operational level, and at a strategic level, right at the senior leadership of the Taliban movement."
Mr Waldman spoke to nine Taliban field commanders in Afghanistan earlier this year.
Some alleged that ISI agents had even attended meetings of the Taliban's top leadership council, the so-called Quetta shura. They claim that by backing the insurgents Pakistan's security service is trying to undermine Indian influence in Afghanistan.
"These accounts were corroborated by former Taliban ministers, a Western analyst and a senior UN official based in Kabul, who said the Taliban largely depend on funding from the ISI and groups in Gulf countries," the report said.
With US troops due to begin leaving next year, Pakistan and other regional players are increasingly seeking ways to assert their influence in Afghanistan, analysts say.
Pakistan has long been accused of using the Taliban to further its foreign policy interests in the country. The ISI first became involved in funding and training militants in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979.
Since 2001, however, it has been a key US ally, receiving billions of dollars in aid in return for helping fight al-Qaeda
"Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude," the report says.
'No proof'
But Islamabad says it is working with its international partners in hunting down the Taliban.
And the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, says there is no proof of a link between the ISI and the Afghan Taliban.
"I have no proof that Pakistan is supporting the Taliban," he told the BBC, "or that the ISI is providing money to them... or other support to provide weapons."
Even so, Pakistan's role in Afghanistan is viewed as critical.
Last week Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh resigned, saying he had become an obstacle to plans to talk to the Taliban.
Mr Saleh told Reuters news agency a day after quitting that the ISI was "part of the landscape of destruction" in Afghanistan and accused Pakistan of sheltering Taliban leaders in safe houses.
Pakistan has always denied such claims and points to arrests and military offensives against the militants on its side of the border. Nevertheless, parts of the tribal north-west of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan remain strongholds for the militants.
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says there is a growing understanding that military action alone will not be enough to bring peace in Afghanistan.
"Without a change in Pakistani behaviour it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," the report concludes.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Pakistan puppet masters guide the Taliban killers
The Sunday Times Miles Amoore, Kabul June 13, 2010
THE Taliban commander waited at the ramshackle border crossing while Pakistani police wielding assault rifles stopped and searched the line of cars and trucks travelling into Afghanistan.
Some of the trucks carried smuggled goods — DVD players, car stereos, television sets, generators, children’s toys. But the load smuggled by Taliban fighter Qari Rasoul, a thickset Pashtun from Afghanistan’s Wardak province, was altogether more sinister.
Rasoul’s boot was full of remote-control triggers used to detonate the home-made bombs responsible for the vast majority of Nato casualties in Afghanistan. The three passengers sitting in his white Toyota estate were suicide bombers.
The policemen flagged down Rasoul’s car and began to search it. They soon found the triggers, hidden beneath a bundle of clothes in the back of the estate. They asked him who he was and who the triggers belonged to. “I’m a Taliban commander. They belong to me,” he told them.
Two policemen took Rasoul into their office in Chaman, a small town that borders Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, and sat him down on a wooden chair.
Instead of arresting him, the elder policeman rubbed his thumb and index finger together and, smiling, said: “Try to understand.”
Rasoul phoned a Pakistani friend. Two hours later he was released, having paid the policemen 5,000 Pakistani rupees, the equivalent of about £40, each.
“That was the only time I ever faced problems crossing the border with Pakistan,” said Rasoul, who is responsible for delivering suicide bombers trained in Pakistani camps to targets in Afghanistan.
Pakistani support for the Taliban in Afghanistan runs far deeper than a few corrupt police officers, however. The Sunday Times can reveal that it is officially sanctioned at the highest levels of Pakistan’s government.
Pakistan’s own intelligence agency, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), is said to be represented on the Taliban’s war council — the Quetta shura. Up to seven of the 15-man shura are believed to be ISI agents.
The former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, Amrullah Saleh, who resigned last week, said: “The ISI is part of the landscape of destruction in this country, no doubt, so it will be a waste of time to provide evidence of ISI involvement. They are a part of it.”
Testimony by western and Afghan security officials, Taliban commanders, former Taliban ministers and a senior Taliban emissary show the extent to which the ISI manipulates the Taliban’s strategy in Afghanistan.
Pakistani support for the Taliban is prolonging a conflict that has cost the West billions of dollars and hundreds of lives. Last week 32 Nato soldiers were killed.
According to a report published today by the London School of Economics, which backs up months of research by this newspaper, “Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude” in Afghanistan.
The report’s author, Matt Waldman, a Harvard analyst, argues that previous studies significantly underestimated the influence that Pakistan’s ISI exerts over the Taliban. Far from being the work of rogue elements, interviews suggest this “support is official ISI policy”, he says.
The LSE report, based on dozens of interviews and corroborated by two senior western security officials, states: “As the provider of sanctuary and substantial financial, military and logistical support to the insurgency, the ISI appears to have strong strategic and operational influence — reinforced by coercion. There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign.”
The report also alleges that Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan, recently met captured Taliban leaders to assure them that the Taliban had his government’s full support. This was vigorously denied by Zardari’s spokesman. Pakistani troops have launched offensives against militants in North and South Waziristan.
However, a senior Taliban source in regular contact with members of the Quetta shura told The Sunday Times that in early April, Zardari and a senior ISI official met 50 high-ranking Taliban members at a prison in Pakistan.
According to a Taliban leader in the jail at the time, five days before the meeting prison officials were told to prepare for the impending presidential call. Prison guards wearing dark glasses served the Taliban captives traditional Afghan meals three times a day.
“They wanted to make the prisoners feel like they were important and respected,” the source said.
Hours before Zardari’s visit, the head warder told the Taliban inmates to impress upon the president how well they had been looked after during their time in captivity.
Zardari spoke to them for half an hour. He allegedly explained that he had arrested them because his government was under increasing American pressure to end the sanctuary enjoyed by the Taliban in Pakistan and to round up their ringleaders.
“You are our people, we are friends, and after your release we will of course support you to do your operations,” he said, according to the source.
He vowed to release the less well-known commanders in the near future and said that the “famous” Taliban leaders would be freed at a later date.
Five days after Zardari’s visit, a handful of Taliban prisoners, including The Sunday Times’s source, were driven into Quetta and set free, in line with the president’s pledge.
“This report is consistent with Pakistan’s political history in which civilian leaders actively backed jihadi groups that operate in Afghanistan and Kashmir,” Waldman said.
According to the source, during his visit to the prison Zardari also met Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s former second in command, who was arrested by the ISI earlier this year with seven other Taliban leaders.
Baradar, who is from the same tribe as Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, had allegedly approached the Afghan government to discuss the prospect of a peace settlement between the two sides.
Baradar’s arrest is seen in both diplomatic and Taliban circles as an ISI plot to manipulate the Taliban’s political hierarchy and also to block negotiations between the Kabul government and the Taliban leadership.
Shortly after Baradar’s arrest the ISI arrested two other Taliban members — Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir and his close associate and friend Mullah Abdul Rauf. Both men were released after just two nights in custody.
Following his release, Zakir, who spent years in custody in Guantanamo Bay, assumed command of the Taliban’s military wing, replacing Baradar. Rauf, also a former Guantanamo inmate, was immediately appointed chairman of the Quetta shura.
“To say the least, this is compelling evidence of significant ISI influence over the movement and it is highly likely that the release was on ISI terms or at least on the basis of a mutual understanding,” the LSE report states.
The promotions of Zakir and Rauf will give Pakistan greater leverage over future peace talks, Taliban and western officials said.
To ensure that the Pakistani government retains its influence over the Taliban’s leadership, the ISI has placed its own representatives on the Quetta shura, according to these officials.
Up to seven of the Afghan Taliban leaders who sit on the 15-man shura are believed to be ISI agents. However, some sources maintain that every member of the shura has ISI links.
“It is impossible to be a member of the Quetta shura without membership of the ISI,” said a senior Taliban intermediary who liaises with the Afghan government and Taliban leaders.
The LSE report states: “Interviews strongly suggest that the ISI has representatives on the shura, either as participants or observers, and the agency is thus involved at the highest levels of the movement.”
The two shura members who receive the strongest support from the ISI are Taib Agha, former spokesman for Mullah Omar, the Taliban supreme leader, and Mullah Hasan Rahmani, the former Taliban governor of Kandahar, according to the Taliban intermediary and western officials.
Strategies that the ISI encourages, according to Taliban commanders, include: cutting Nato’s supply lines by bombing bridges and roads; attacking key infrastructure projects; assassinating progovernment tribal elders; murdering doctors and teachers; closing schools and attacking schoolgirls.
ISI agents hand chits to Taliban commanders who use them to buy weapons at arms dumps in North Waziristan.
The Taliban’s “plastic bombs” — the low metal content improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that kill the majority of British soldiers who die in Afghanistan — were introduced to the Taliban by Pakistani officials, according to Taliban commanders, the Taliban intermediary and western officials. The materials allow Taliban sappers to plant bombs that can evade Nato mine detectors.
Rasoul, the Taliban commander from Wardak province, also alleged that the ISI pays 200,000 Pakistani rupees (£1,600) in compensation to the families of suicide bombers who launch attacks on targets in Afghanistan.
“They need vehicles, fuel and food. They need ammunition. They need money and guns. They need clinics and medicine. So who is providing these things to the Taliban if it’s not Pakistan?” a former Kabul police chief said.
In the eastern province of Khost, one commander described how Pakistani military trucks picked his men up from training camps in Pakistan and ferried them to the Afghan border at night.
Once at the border, Pakistanis dressed in military uniform gave the commander a list of targets inside Afghanistan. Taliban fighters then ferried the weapons and ammunition into Afghanistan using cars, donkeys, horses and camels.
“We post our men along our supply routes to protect the convoys once they are on Afghan turf,” said the Khost commander. “The [US] drones sometimes bomb our convoys and many times they have bombed our ammo stores.”
Camps within Pakistan train Taliban fighters in three different sets of skills: suicide bombing, bomb-making and infantry tactics. Each camp focuses on a different skill.
Pakistan’s support for the Taliban has sparked friction between the home-grown Taliban groups and those who are bankrolled to a greater extent by the ISI.
Many lower-level commanders in Afghanistan are angered by the degree to which the ISI dictates their operations.
“The ISI-backed Taliban are destroying the country. Their suicide bombings are the ones that kill innocent civilians. They are undoing the infrastructure with their attacks,” said a Taliban commander from Kandahar province.
Most commanders said they resented their comrades who received the largest slice of ISI support. They also said they knew about the ISI’s influence over their senior leadership. “There is already mistrust among the low-level fighters and commanders,” the Taliban intermediary said. “But they don’t really know the extent of it. They don’t believe that our leaders are ISI spies.”
Major-General Athar Abbas, Pakistan’s senior military spokesman, called the claim that the ISI has representatives on the Quetta shura “ridiculous”. He said: “The allegations are absolutely baseless.”
Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for the Pakistani president, said: “There’s no such thing as President Zardari meeting Taliban leaders. This never happened.”
To see the full London School of Economics report, go to thesundaytimes.co.uk/world
The key player
Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) became enmeshed in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979. The CIA used it to channel covert funds and weapons to Afghan mujaheddin groups fighting the Soviet army during the 10-year conflict.
A decisive factor in the Soviet defeat was the CIA’s decision to provide surface- to-air Stinger missiles.
Saudi Arabia, which, from the mid-1980s matched American funding for the insurgency dollar for dollar, also used the ISI to channel funds to the mujaheddin.
The American effort was promoted and supported by the late Texas congressman Charles Wilson, who fought to raise awareness and cash for the Afghan cause in the United States. His role was portrayed by Tom Hanks in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War.
The ISI continued to support groups of Afghan fighters long after the Russian withdrawal in 1989, often providing backing for brutal warlords in an attempt to install a pro-Pakistani government in Kabul.
The ISI backed the Taliban during their rise to power between 1994 and 1996. Pakistan’s prime minister at the time, Benazir Bhutto, believed the Taliban could stabilise Afghanistan.
Back to Top
Back to Top
West Adopts Taliban Lunacy To Help Secure Leaders Photo-Op
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
June 12, 2010 -- It was one of the most ludicrous laws proclaimed by Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime.
Now the same ban is being imposed for the leaders of the world’s richest nations, who once prided themselves on forcing the Taliban’s medieval religious police from power.
So hide your balsa wood and string, kids: the flying of kites has been outlawed anywhere near the fortified precincts of the G8 and G20 summits in Toronto and region later this month.
Evidently unaware of the searing irony of reviving the most laughable of the Taliban’s cruel proscriptions in the “civilized” West, Canada’s big-spending Harper government, the summit host, has pegged kites onto its long list of activities forbidden in the conference zones of downtown Toronto and leafy Huntsville.
There’s to be no rocket launching, no crop dusting and no aerobatic flying – and no kites.
Presumably the Harper government’s concern stems from the advent of suicide-kite technology, whereas the Taliban feared kite flying as a distraction from Islamic piety.
With the cost of the G-leaders’ gold-plated photo ops, lunches and dinners estimated at two billion dollars, it’s fair to ask whether Stephen Harper’s security mavens might economize by plagiarizing the Taliban regime’s kite-bashing lingo:
“The kite shops in the city of Kabul will be abolished and the flying of kites is prohibited. In case of violation the head of the family will be arrested and punished. By Order of the Religious Police.”
There’s no word yet whether the Prime Minister’s Office, arguably the most rigid message-controlling leadership in the G20, will go one better and ban fun from the normally law-abiding neighbourhoods now ringed by a $5.5 million security fence.
Banning fun was another Taliban specialty:
“In shops, hotels, vehicles and rickshaws, cassettes and music are prohibited. Music and dances are abolished at wedding parties. By Order of the Religious Police.”
What is certain is that the Harper government has outdone all previous G8 and G20 hosts in lavishing scarce tax dollars on the events.
The three days of summitry will cost more than three times the $600 million haemorrhaged by Japan in hosting the 2008 G8. That five-star confab famously isolated Harper and his foreign tablemates from the reality of the Afghan war (see “Platinum Club World Leaders Ignore Afghan Carnage” posted July 14, 2008 on page 13 of Recent Stories).
While Kabul burned, world leaders dined in splendour.
This time around, the war is raging through a 32nd consecutive year of chaos and bloodshed. And as Harper preens for the cameras, his staffers and generals will be quietly preparing for next year's retreat of Canadian Forces from Afghanistan.
Coincidentally, the undoing of Canada’s military and diplomatic missions provided a grim counterpoint, this past week, to the Prime Minister’s costly grandstanding.
First came revelations by enterprising reporters at the Canadian Press detailing the Harper government’s shameless misrepresentation of Canada’s Afghan mission.
Rather than supporting Canadian troops by tackling corruption in the Karzai regime and countering Pakistan’s support for the Afghan Taliban, Harper and his ministers were obsessed with convincing voters that their country’s role in Afghanistan was simply that of a well-intentioned peace mission.
Front and centre in this P.R. exercise was Harper’s former ambassador to Kabul, Arif Lalani. Lalani’s exploits were first uncovered here at skyreporter three years ago (see “West’s Political Double-Talk” posted October 8, 2007 on page 16 of Recent Stories, and from November 24, 2009: “As Kabul Fell Diplomat Took Tainted Karzai’s Keepsakes” on page four.)
Next came a Toronto Star exposé of the hijacking of the Canadian sponsored Dahla Dam project north of Kandahar by the militia-cum-security-firm named Watan, whose gunmen take orders from none other than Wali Karzai.
Harper and his ministers shrugged off the alarming implications of the story, busy as they are setting out the silverware for their globetrotting guests.
Canadian troops have sacrificed their lives to secure the dam and its reconstruction, but the country’s political leaders dare not whisper about the project’s seizure by force of arms other than the Taliban's. That the Afghan president’s crooked brothers Wali, Mahmoud and Qayoom will take the spoils seems of no consequence to Harper.
And so, like kites, the grim realities of the Afghan debacle will be shunned during the G8 and G20 festivities.
The Prime MInister and his minions will be too busy pulling other strings, all at the taxpayer’s expense.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan president visits Taliban spiritual home
Sun Jun 13, 10:02 am ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited the Taliban's spiritual home on Sunday, launching a campaign that promises better governance and development alongside a security push by foreign forces.
Accompanied by the commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, Karzai pleaded for support from a gathering of several hundred elders in Kandahar, the city that launched the Taliban and the capital of the province where their insurgency is at its strongest.
"Right now the life of Kandahar is a very bad life," he said at a conference hall in the city. "Step by step, we can go forward."
In recent years Karzai has rarely ventured to Kandahar, where he survived an assassination attempt in 2005. He has strong family roots there, however. His brother chairs the provincial assembly and has been accused of corruption, charges he denies.
Washington's strategy to end the nine-year-old war involves a surge of troops to improve security accompanied by development schemes that provide jobs and an improvement in government services.
Karzai's administration has been accused in the past of not keeping its side of the bargain, but McChrystal said he believed the government was taking action now.
"I thought I saw extraordinary ownership on the part of a national leader," he said.
Foreign troop deployment is expected to peak at 150,000 before U.S. President Barack Obama's planned withdrawal starts in July 2011. Visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron made clear last week he wanted his troops out as soon as possible.
This month alone some 37 foreign service members have died in Afghanistan.
Asked what changes the residents of Kandahar would notice after this operation -- military officials are keen not to use the word "offensive" -- McChrystal said:
"I think it won't look shockingly different than it does now. ... I think it may feel very different."
"There will be more ANP (police). I think more mothers will feel comfortable with their husbands going to the mosque to pray. I think there will be fewer killings. I think there will be a sense that some of the constricting or menacing pressure on the part of the insurgency has been released.
And I hope it is also matched by improvements in governance."
Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzi, said the Kandahar operation was welcomed by locals. But some remained skeptical.
"In Afghanistan, people first see and then believe," said Ghulam Jilani Popal, head of the Afghan Independent Directorate of Local Government.
(Writing by David Fox from pool notes; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan President Appeals for Support in Southern Afghanistan
June 13, 2010 VOA News
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has appealed to hundreds of tribal and religious leaders in Kandahar to support a major military operation in their southern province to bolster security in the Taliban stronghold.
The president's request Sunday for the leaders' help was largely well received. Most of the audience stood and raised their hands when President Karzai asked for their support in ending nearly nine years of war.
Mr. Karzai was seeking to alleviate any misgivings the local leaders might have about the troop build-up in Kandahar, the center of the Taliban insurgency.
The Afghan president was accompanied by NATO commander U.S. General Stanley McChrystal. He was quoted by the Associated Press after the meeting as expressing pleasure that Mr. Karzai made such a "strong, clear call" for unity.
Violence has spiked in southern Afghanistan as Taliban militants step up attacks ahead of the military operation.
U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan this year to defeat the growing Taliban insurgency. He has vowed to begin withdrawing them beginning in mid-July 2011.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Ahmed Wali Karzai, an ally and obstacle to the U.S. military in Afghanistan
By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, June 13, 2010
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - On March 8, at NATO headquarters in Kabul, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal presided over a classified briefing that some military officials hoped would lead to the ouster of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghanistan's president and the most powerful figure in southern Afghanistan.
But what has emerged instead appears to have left Karzai stronger than ever. A summertime U.S. military offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar has now been delayed, in what American officials said was an acknowledgment of opposition among local officials, without singling out Karzai by name.
The fact that the younger Karzai continues to hold sway in Kandahar says much about how difficult it has been for the American military to assert its will in Afghanistan. The 48-year-old powerbroker is regarded by some U.S. intelligence officials as indispensable, but he has long been viewed with mistrust by American military officers, who describe him as an obstacle in their efforts to fight corruption and bolster the rule of law.
The briefing given to McChrystal in March was intended by American officers to be a "cards on the table moment,'' according to a senior NATO official. It outlined a dossier of intelligence information that the critics of Ahmed Wali Karzai hoped might ultimately persuade Hamid Karzai, the president, to remove his brother from power.
Instead, NATO and American officials say the presentation was so unpersuasive that McChrystal directed his subordinates to "stop saying bad stuff about AWK" and instead to work with him.
With the offensive delayed until at least September, American officials say there is time for Ahmed Wali Karzai to prove more supportive. "I believe he wants to be on the right side of history,'' said Brig. Gen. Frederick Hodges, a top U.S. commander in southern Afghanistan. "We want to help him be constructive, not destructive.''
Some NATO officials say the best they can hope for is that Karzai, who heads a provincial council, will stand aside and let Kandahar's governor, Tooryalai Wesa, become a bigger player in the province's bare-knuckled politics. But some American officials say it is naive to think that Ahmed Wali Karzai will loosen his grip on Kandahar, where Afghan police commanders live in fear of crossing him. Of the 900 new policemen headed to the city this summer, Karzai recently claimed 250 of them for the provincial council, and 110 of these as personal bodyguards, a senior U.S. official said.
Karzai certainly has influence. He wields his power in cellphone calls and endless meetings with everyone from cabinet ministers to American generals to peasants. Since he returned to Afghanistan in 1992, after 10 years in the United States, he has demonstrated an ability to get results where others in the Afghan government fail.
"I know how to talk to the people," Karzai said humbly. "I know how to deal with these tribes. I know what their needs are. I know how to address their needs. This is the skill I have learned."
Power and perception
Ahmed Wali Karzai has long been a source of friction within the U.S. government. He has long-standing ties to the CIA and has reportedly been paid by the agency for providing security forces and safe houses in and around Kandahar.
"He's a key tribal leader," a U.S. official said earlier this year. "If you take out Karzai, you don't have good governance, you have no governance. He's done very good things for the United States. He's effective."
Karzai's critics within the American military acknowledge that there is little conclusive evidence against the powerbroker, as the weakness of the March briefing demonstrated. The fact that Karzai remains in power means that anything related to him is politically sensitive, and U.S. officials would speak about him only on the condition of anonymity.
The critics say they have little doubt that Karzai is involved in the opium trade, and some estimate that he receives millions of dollars a year in illicit income. The widespread perception in Afghanistan is that Karzai is complicit in the kind of industrial-strength corruption that has left Afghan people furious with their government.
Karzai, who is married and has four children, was born in Kandahar City and moved to the United States in 1982, where he lived in Maryland and Virginia before moving to Chicago to run an Afghan restaurant.
Called "agha mama," or "father uncle," by his guards, Karzai now lives in a relatively modest house with a marble facade on a barricaded street manned by police in downtown Kandahar City. On a typical day, supplicants by the dozens file upstairs to where he sits, barefoot, in a carpeted room ringed with tan couches and hung with rose-print drapes.
One recent morning, he greeted 73 people in two hours. Some knelt before him. Some kissed his hand. One handed him a note that he read and then tore into shreds.
The first meeting was with two women from Zabul province who wanted his blessing to run for parliament. He agreed, with a condition. "Please do not mention my name," he said. "There are many people who want my support."
One group of villagers came to ask for a police checkpoint, followed by another group that requested their checkpoint be removed. Nine tribal elders needed his approval for the guest list of an important assembly. A young truck driver begged for a job recommendation -- "if you'll just sign this letter" -- while an old man pleaded for his son's release from American custody.
"Is he in the Taliban?" Karzai asked, thumbing yellow prayer beads in his left hand.
"Yes," the old man said.
"I cannot do anything now," Karzai said. "Come on Saturday and we will talk."
In these meetings, Karzai made an effort to refer those seeking help to others -- to the governor, the police chief, the intelligence service. But he was not always successful. "You're the only real man in the government," one man told him. "You have the power. I'll always keep coming to you."
Fingers pointed at him
This month, Karzai shut down the 15-member provincial council in a fit of pique after the Afghan army accused him of seizing government land. He's also widely thought to control the selection of district leaders and police chiefs in the province. An outgoing U.S. battalion commander, Lt. Col. Reik Andersen, said he believed that Karzai helped oust a district governor, Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi, because the governor took a stand against corruption.
Karzai lumps all these allegations into what he sees as a smear campaign by his family's political enemies. After nine years of accusations, he said wearily, he's detected a pattern. Whatever the issue of the day -- drug trafficking, corruption, private security companies, NATO contracts -- the finger is pointed at him. He reads all his press clippings.
"It's ridiculous," he said. "It's all our Afghan internal problem, internal politics.'' Karzai looked at his watch. It was noon. He stood up, hurried out of the room and slipped into the back seat of a white armored Land Cruiser. Two Kalashnikovs rested by his side. After several assassination attempts, he does not like to make appointments or telegraph his movements.
Three minutes later, his four-truck convoy pulled up at Mandigak palace, where the provincial council holds its meetings. The attorney general agreed to lead an investigation into the land confiscation issue. This satisfied Karzai, who was convinced the inquiry would clear his name.
"In front of the media, I want to say that if I have ever confiscated one handful of land, I am ready to be brought to justice," Karzai said, addressing the television cameras. "The authorities should treat me like an ordinary Afghan."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan: beginning of the end
David Cameron will today set out a hard-headed new approach to Afghanistan that will raise hopes that British troop numbers in the country will be reduced in little more than a year.
Telegraph.co.uk By James Kirkup and Thomas Harding 13 Jun 2010
The Prime Minister will tell MPs that the Government was trying to accelerate the process that will allow forces to start coming home.
Government insiders said Mr Cameron was keen to start winding down a war he inherited from Labour.
His Commons statement today comes after ministers removed Britain’s most senior military commander from his post amid frustrations at the way the war was being conducted. The early departure of Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, allows Mr Cameron to choose a new chief to oversee his strategy.
Sir Jock’s early retirement later this year was announced yesterday by Dr Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, who said it would allow ministers to put the “appropriate” commander into the top military post.
Sir Bill Jeffrey, the senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, will also step down.
Ministers are risking a row with Whitehall chiefs by considering replacing him with Bernard Gray, a procurement expert from outside the civil service. Jeremy Haywood, a senior Downing Street official, is also a contender.
The candidates to replace Sir Jock are Gen Sir David Richards, the head of the Army, and Gen Sir Nick Houghton, Sir Jock’s deputy. The successor will have a two-year term to oversee a shift in the approach to Afghanistan.
The new “national security-driven” approach includes:
* Increased Government efforts to persuade voters that the Afghan mission is succeeding and showing that Afghan government forces can secure the country.
* Lowering the criteria for success from a fully stable country to “some stability”.
* A clear commitment to a US-led review of the Afghan war that assumes troop withdrawals from next July.
Underlining the changing mood, Dr Fox said yesterday that ministers “don’t want to be in Afghanistan for a day longer than necessary”.
Rhetoric over Afghanistan has changed in recent days. Sir David last week said Britain was engaged in a “war”. Mr Cameron followed that up by referring to “a war of necessity, not a war of choice”. The previous government had referred to it as a conflict.
Mr Cameron will today tell MPs that he will not set an “artificial timetable” for troops to return from Afghanistan.
But he will make clear that Britain is fully committed to an American-led process that will reassess the Afghan mission later this year and start a reduction in troop numbers from July 2011.
Britain has 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. A total of 295 British soldiers have died there since they entered in 2001.
Ministers are braced for fresh public unease over the Afghan mission when the British death toll passes 300 in the coming weeks.
That grim milestone may put new pressure on the coalition, since the Liberal Democrats have been strong critics of the mission.
Mr Cameron has admitted that public support for the conflict will drain away if there is not “real progress” within the next 12 months.
To help prepare the ground for any eventual withdrawal, Mr Cameron has ordered new information to be supplied to voters about the progress being made in Afghanistan.
Regular statements to Parliament and other public announcements about conditions will be used to promote the idea that the mission is succeeding, creating the conditions for troop reductions.
President Barack Obama has ordered a “surge” in US troop numbers this year. But he assured American voters he would start bringing soldiers home next year.
He has told Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, to work to a timetable of reducing troop numbers as early as 2011. Nato allies including Canada are also committed to withdrawal in 2011. Mr Cameron will today insist that all Afghan decisions will be based on national security.
He will also make clear that the coalition is looking to reduce troop levels in line with the Americans.
A senior Government source said: “Over the next 12 months, we have to show people the progress we are making and then start looking at how many people we have [in Afghanistan] and the jobs they are doing.”
British military chiefs have suggested that some UK forces will be required in Afghanistan for at least five years.
But overall British numbers could fall sharply. The role of the remaining forces could also change, from front-line combat operations to mentoring and supporting Afghan security forces.
Sir Richard Dannatt, the former Army chief now advising the Tories, yesterday spoke of an “exit strategy”. He said: “The future of the country must be in Afghan hands.”
Mr Cameron last week visited Afghanistan as part of his review of the British mission.
He has also consulted critics of the existing strategy, including Lord Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader.
Winding down the mission could also relieve the pressure on the defence budget. Dr Fox said the number of Britain’s front-line military personnel could be cut as ministers try to reduce the deficit.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Head of British armed forces to retire early over Afghan war
LONDON, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The professional head of Britain's three armed services will retire early, a leading figure in the new coalition government confirmed on Sunday, in a move which heralds significant long-term changes in military policy.
The new defense secretary, Dr Liam Fox, said that the services' professional head, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, had not been sacked, but he would be replaced early, leaving his post in the autumn some months earlier than his retirement in the spring of next year.
Stirrup, who began his military career as a jet fighter pilot, has been criticized for his handling of the war in Afghanistan, which has seen an expensive and bloody escalation over the past few years.
A lack of troops on the ground and helicopters to move them around dogged the early years of a major additional deployment of the British army in Helmand Province in Afghanistan from 2006 onwards.
Sir Bill Jeffrey, the top civil servant at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), will also leave his job in the autumn.
The British government is committed to a far-reaching Strategic Defense Review (SDR), which began at the beginning of this year.
Fox said in an interview with the Sunday Times newspaper, "We have to be able to maintain full stability and the full confidence of the people who work for us, not least because we're in a very dangerous armed conflict."
Fox added that Stirrup and Jeffrey would stay in post until the SDR was completed. "I've been discussing with them and other senior staff how we transition to the new structures," he said.
"We've talked about the best time to be replacing our senior staff, probably the end of the SDR in the autumn."
Stirrup had been the chief of the defense staff, professional head of the three armed services, since 2006. His term in office was extended by former prime minister Gordon Brown, in a move seen by many to stop the then head of the army, who had been critical of government policy and spending on the war in Afghanistan, from moving into the job.
The SDR will be a fundamental review of Britain's military forces, and will look closely at how military policy can reflect foreign policy. It will set the priorities of military spending for the next 10 to 15 years.
In the wake of the global financial crisis and with the new government committed to cutting the record public sector deficit of 156 billion pounds (about 250 billion U.S. dollars), military spending is an area where cuts are certain to be made.
Military spending for the current year is protected from any government cuts, but after April 2011 savage cuts are expected and the capabilities of the three military services are likely to change radically.
A public debate between the three service chiefs -- from the navy, the army and the air force -- has seen all of them attempting to present their service as essential to future defense and foreign policy.
But several expensive and prestigious programs are likely to be ended or radically changed.
Areas under review include new armored vehicles for the army, the air force's fast jet fleet, and the navy's two planned new aircraft carriers which are currently under construction.
However, the current format of Britain's strategic nuclear weapons force, which is based around a fleet of four nuclear-powered submarines, is likely to remain the same.
Dr Fox said in a TV interview on Sunday, "It may be the case that there are some functions we need less of and some we need more of, so it's very unlikely that any of the services will look exactly the same after the review.
"If you have a review, you don't simply say 'I am going to rule X, Y or Z out in advance'. The exception to that has been the nuclear deterrent because we believe the threat is so great that we can't drop the deterrent.
"I am not saying that I have got any pre-conceived idea about the size and shape of the forces. We can't surely be saying that we keep the shape and size of our armed forces exactly the same forever. We have to change in the light of the threats the country faces."
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan insurgency upsurges as over 140 killed in one week
By Farid Behbud
KABUL, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Taliban-linked insurgency and conflicts have got new impetus in militancy-hit Afghanistan as more than 140 people with majority of whom civilians have been killed over the past one week.
Majority of violent incidents have been registered in Kandahar, the birthplace and former stronghold of Taliban militants in the restive southern region.
The bloodiest one is a suicide attack against a wedding party in Arghandab district on Wednesday night, which left 84 civilians including women and children dead and 92 others injured.
The latest one occurred in the northern Kunduz province Sunday morning that injured two NATO soldiers.
Furthermore, a bomb planted in a push-cart went off in Kandahar city, the capital of the same name Kandahar province, Saturday night injured 10 people with majority of them innocent non- combatants, spokesman for the provincial administration Zalmay Ayubi said.
Hours earlier on the same day Saturday, Afghan forces backed by NATO's airpower eliminated nine Taliban insurgents in Kandahar's Shah Walikot district, the provincial police chief Sardar Mohammad Zazai confirmed.
Kandaharis also experienced third violent incident on Saturday as a roadside bomb struck a police van in Khakriz district leaving three policemen killed and another injured, governor of Khakriz district Hajji Abdul Qayum said.
Elsewhere in the southern and eastern provinces, according to the Interior Ministry, two more policemen were killed and five others sustained injuries.
A day earlier on Friday nine civilians including women and children were killed and eight others injured as a passenger bus ran over a mine on the highway linking Kandahar to the neighboring Helmand province, Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The incident occurred on the same day as a suicide bomber targeted a NATO convoy in Kandahar's neighboring Zabul province, killing two civilians and injuring 14 others, all of them civilians, provincial government's spokesman Mohammad Jan told Xinhua.
Furthermore, over 60 Taliban insurgents, according to officials, have been killed during joint Afghan and NATO-led forces operations across the country over the past week.
Only 39 militants, according to the Interior Ministry, had been killed in the southern Uruzgan province on Friday.
"Afghan National Police backed by international troops launched an operation in Chanarto and Behzak areas of Uruzgan province on Friday as a result 39 militants were killed," the Interior Ministry said in a statement released on Sunday.
Twenty three Taliban fighters, according to officials, were killed in the northwest Badghis province on Tuesday.
Taliban militants have not made comment.
Two separate roadside bombings in Helmand province, the stronghold of Taliban, on Monday the first day of the week - killed three civilians and injured 13 others, spokesman for provincial administration Daud Ahmadi told Xinhua.
On the same day Monday, the hard-liner militia also launched coordinated suicide attacks on a police training center outside Kandahar city, killing a foreign trainer and his Afghan colleague, according to media reports.
Three suicide bombers were also killed in the attack, Afghan officials stressed.
Spiraling militancy and conflicts have also claimed the lives of over two dozen NATO soldiers, according to media reports in the conflict-ridden Afghanistan since the beginning of June.
Taliban militants whose regime was removed from power by the U. S.-led military campaign in late 2001 have vowed to resist over 125,000-strong NATO-led troops stationed in the post-Taliban Afghanistan.
The hard-line militants in a statement released to media earlier in May announced spring offensive coded Al-Faath or victory against Afghan and NATO-led troops and the operations would be carried out largely in the shape of the deadly suicide attacks and roadside bombings.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghanistan, Second In Mother’s Mortality Rate
June 13, 2010 Quqnoos
More than 19,000 Afghan women die in childbirth every year
The Ministry of Health cites lack of health facilities among the most serious challenges causing the high mortality rates in the country.
Afghanistan has the second highest mortality rate of mothers the world, according to figures provided by the Afghan Health Ministry.
"The death of a mother causes the collapse of a whole family and brings severe and irrecoverable consequences in society," said the acting Minister of Public Heath, Soraya Dalil.
"Afghanistan, with 20,000 mortality rates annually, is among the ten countries with the highest deaths of mothers in the world," said a representative of UNICEF to Afghanistan, Peter Croly.
The acting Minister of Health said the Afghan government is planning to take effective measures in order to decrease mothers’ mortality rates in the country.
Back to Top
Back to Top
As Afghan Fighting Expands, U.S. Medics Plunge In
New York Times By C. J. CHIVERS June 12, 2010
MARJA, Afghanistan - The Marine had been shot in the skull. He was up ahead, at the edge of a field, where the rest of his patrol was fighting. A Black Hawk medevac helicopter flew above treetops toward him, banked and hovered dangerously before landing nearby.
Several Marines carried the man aboard. His head was bandaged, his body limp. Sgt. Ian J. Bugh, the flight medic, began the rhythms of CPR as the helicopter lifted over gunfire and zigzagged away. Could this man be saved?
Nearly nine years into the Afghan war, with the number of troops here climbing toward 100,000, the pace for air crews that retrieve the wounded has become pitched.
In each month this year, more American troops in Afghanistan have been killed than in any of the same months of any previous year. Many of those fighting on the ground, facing ambushes and powerful hidden bombs, say that as the Obama administration’s military buildup pushes more troops into Taliban strongholds, the losses could soon rival those during the worst periods in Iraq.
Under NATO guidance, all seriously wounded troops are expected to arrive at a trauma center within 60 minutes of their unit’s calling for help. In Helmand Province, Afghanistan’s most dangerous ground, most of them do.
These results can make the job seem far simpler than it is. Last week, a Black Hawk on a medevac mission in the province was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade, and four members of its crew were killed. And the experiences in May and early June of one Army air crew, from Company C, Sixth Battalion, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, showed the challenges of distance, sandstorms and Taliban fighters waiting near landing zones.
It also showed crews confronting sorrows as old as combat. In a guerrilla war that is turning more violent, young men in nameless places suffer wounds that, no matter a crew’s speed or skill, can quickly sap away life.
For Company C’s detachment in Helmand Province, the recent duty had been harried.
Over several days the crews had retrieved a Marine who had lost both legs and an arm to a bomb explosion; the medic had kept that man alive. They had picked up two Marines bitten by their unit’s bomb-sniffing dog. They landed for a corporal whose back had been injured in a vehicle accident.
And day after day they had scrambled to evacuate Afghans or Marines struck by bullets or blasted by bombs, including a mission that nearly took them to a landing zone where the Taliban had planted a second bomb, with hopes that an aircraft might land on it. The Marines had found the trap and directed the pilots to a safer spot.
A few days before the Marine was shot in the skull, after sandstorms had grounded aircraft, another call had come in. A bomb had exploded beside a patrol along the Helmand River. Two Marines were wounded. One was dying.
For hours the airspace had been closed; supervisors deemed the conditions too dangerous to fly. The crews wanted to evacuate the Marines. “I’ll go,” said Sgt. Jason T. Norris, a crew chief. “I’ll walk.”
A crew was given permission to try. Ordinarily, medevac flights take off with an older, experienced pilot in command and a younger aviator as co-pilot. The two take turns on the controls.
From Kandahar, the brigade commander, Col. William K. Gayler, ordered a change. This flight demanded experience. Chief Warrant Officer Joseph N. Callaway, who had nearly 3,000 flight hours, would replace a younger pilot and fly with Chief Warrant Officer Deric G. Sempsrott, who had nearly 2,000 hours.
Afghan sandstorms take many forms. Some drift by in vertical sheets of dust. Others spiral into spinning towers of grit. Many lash along the ground, obscuring vision. Powdered sand accumulates like snow.
This storm had another form: an airborne layer of dirt from 100 to 4,000 feet above the ground. It left a low-elevation slot through which the pilots might try to fly.
The Black Hawk lifted off in dimming evening light. It flew at 130 knots 30 to 40 feet above the ground, so low it created a bizarre sensation, as if the helicopter were not an aircraft, but a deafening high-speed train.
Ten minutes out, the radio updated the crew. One of the Marines had died. The crew chief, Sgt. Grayson Colby, sagged. He reached for a body bag. Then he slipped on rubber gloves and sat upright. There was still a man to save.
Just before a hill beside the river, Mr. Callaway banked the Black Hawk right, then abruptly turned left and circled. The helicopter leaned hard over. He looked down. A smoke grenade’s red plume rose, marking the patrol.
The Black Hawk landed beside dunes. Sergeant Bugh and Sergeant Colby leapt out.
A corporal, Brett Sayre, had been hit in the face by the bomb’s blast wave and debris. He staggered forward, guided by other Marines.
Sergeant Bugh examined him inside the Black Hawk. Corporal Sayre’s eyes were packed with dirt. He was large and lean, a fit young man sitting upright, trying not to choke on blood clotting and flowing from his mouth.
The sergeant asked him to lie down. The corporal waved his arm.
“You’re a Marine,” the sergeant said. “Be strong. We’ll get you out of here.”
Corporal Sayre rested stiffly on his right side.
Sergeant Colby climbed aboard. He had helped escort the dead Marine to the other aircraft. The Black Hawk took off, weaving through the air 25 feet off the ground, accelerating into haze.
The corporal was calm as Sergeant Colby cut away his uniform, looking for more wounds. Sergeant Bugh suctioned blood from his mouth. He knew this man would live. But he looked into his dirtied eyes. “Can you see?” he asked.
“No,” the corporal said.
At the trauma center later, the corporal’s eyes reacted to light.
A Race to Treatment
Now the crew was in the air again, this time with the Marine shot in the skull. Sergeant Colby performed CPR. The man had no pulse.
Kneeling beside the man, encased in the roaring whine of the Black Hawk’s dual engines, the sergeants took turns at CPR. Mr. Sempsrott flew at 150 knots — as fast as the aircraft would go.
The helicopter came to a rolling landing at Camp Dwyer. Litter bearers ran the Marine inside.
The flight’s young co-pilot, First Lt. Matthew E. Stewart, loitered in the sudden quiet. He was calmly self-critical. It had been a nerve-racking landing zone, a high-speed approach to evacuate a dying man and a descent into a firefight. He said he had made a new pilot’s mistake.
He had not rolled the aircraft into a steep enough bank as he turned. Then the helicopter’s nose had pitched up. The aircraft had risen, climbing to more than 200 feet from 70 feet and almost floating above a gunfight, exposed.
Mr. Sempsrott had taken the controls and completed the landing. “I was going way too fast for my experience level,” the lieutenant said, humbly.
No one blamed him; this, the crew said, was how young pilots learned. And everyone involved understood the need to move quickly. It was necessary to evade ground fire and to improve a dying patient’s odds.
Beside the helicopter, inside a tent, doctors kept working on the Marine.
Sergeant Colby sat, red-eyed. He had seen the man’s wound. Soon, he knew, the Marine would be moved to the morgue. Morning had not yet come to the United States. In a few hours, the news would reach home.
“A family’s life has been completely changed,” the lieutenant said. “And they don’t even know it yet.”
Barreling Into a Firefight
A few days later, the crew was barreling into Marja again. Another Marine had been shot.
The pilots passed the landing zone, banked and looked down. An Afghan in uniform crawled though dirt. Marines huddled along a ditch. A firefight raged around the green smoke grenade.
The Black Hawk completed its turn, this time low to the ground, and descended. Gunfire could be heard all around. The casualty was not in sight.
“Where is he?” Mr. Sempsrott asked over the radio.
The sergeants dashed for the trees, where a Marine, Cpl. Zachary K. Kruger, was being tended to by his squad. He had been shot in the thigh, near his groin. He could not walk. The patrol had no stretcher.
A hundred yards separated the group from the aircraft, a sprint to be made across the open, on soft soil, under Taliban fire. Sergeant Bugh ran back. Sergeant Colby began firing his M-4 carbine toward the Taliban.
Inside the shuddering aircraft, the pilots tried to radiate calm. They were motionless, vulnerable, sitting upright in plain view.
The Taliban, they knew, had offered a bounty for destroyed American aircraft. Bullets cracked past. The pilots saw their medic return, grab a stretcher, run again for the trees.
They looked this way, then that. Their escort aircraft buzzed low-elevation circles around the zone, gunners leaning out. Bullets kept coming. “Taking fire from the east,” Mr. Sempsrott said.
These are the moments when time slows.
At the airfield, the crews had talked about what propelled them. Some of them mentioned a luxury: They did not wonder, as some soldiers do, if their efforts mattered, if this patrol or that meeting with Afghans or this convoy affected anything in a lasting way.
Their work could be measured, life by life. They spoke of the infantry, living without comforts in outposts, patrolling in the sweltering heat over ground spiced with hidden bombs and watched over by Afghans preparing complex ambushes. When the Marines called, the air crews said, they needed help.
Now the bullets whipped by.
A Hot Landing Zone
Cobra attack helicopters were en route. Mr. Sempsrott and Lieutenant Stewart had the option of taking off and circling back after the gunships arrived. It would mean leaving their crew on the ground, and delaying the patient’s ride, if only for minutes.
At the tents, Mr. Sempsrott had discussed the choices in a hot landing zone. The discussion ended like this: “I don’t leave people behind.”
More rounds snapped past. “Taking fire from the southeast,” he said.
He looked out. Four minutes, headed to five.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. It was exclamation, not complaint.
His crew broke from the tree line. The Marines and Sergeant Bugh were carrying Corporal Kruger, who craned his neck as they bounced across the field. They fell, found their feet, ran again, fell and reached the Black Hawk and shoved the stretcher in.
A Marine leaned through the open cargo door. He gripped the corporal in a fierce handshake. “We love you, buddy!” he shouted, ducked, and ran back toward the firefight.
Six and a half minutes after landing, the Black Hawk lifted, tilted forward and cleared the vegetation, gaining speed.
Corporal Kruger had questions as his blood pooled beneath him.
Where are we going? Camp Dwyer. How long to get there? Ten minutes.
Can I have some water? Sergeant Colby produced a bottle.
After leaving behind Marja, the aircraft climbed to 200 feet and flew level over the open desert, where Taliban fighters cannot hide. The bullet had caromed up and inside the corporal. He needed surgery.
The crew had reached him in time. As the Black Hawk touched down, he sensed he would live.
“Thank you, guys,” he shouted.
“Thank you,” he shouted, and the litter bearers ran him to the medical tent.
The pilots shut the Black Hawk down. Another crew rinsed away the blood. Before inspecting the aircraft for bullet holes, Sergeant Bugh and Sergeant Colby removed their helmets, slipped out of their body armor and gripped each other in a brief, silent hug.
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).