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Death toll in Kandahar suicide attack upped to four, 8 wounded
By David Ariosto, CNN August 16, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan authorities on Tuesday raised the number of those killed by a suicide attack at a fuel depot near Kandahar International Airport to four people.
US firm fell short on Afghan police trainers: audit
AFP
US-based DynCorps International failed to provide nearly 60 percent of the instructors needed to train Afghan police under a contract with the US government, according to an audit issued Monday.
U.S. military awards contracts in Afghanistan to get money away from insurgents
Washington Post By Karen DeYoung Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The U.S. military has moved to stem the flow of contract money to Afghan insurgents, awarding at least 20 companies new contracts worth about $1 billion for military supply transport and suspending seven current contractors it found lacking in “integrity and business ethics.”
A golden decade for defense companies is ending
By JONATHAN FAHEY, AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, Osama bin Laden is dead, and the federal government is deeply in debt. This spells the end of what was a golden decade for the defense industry.
No Legal Solution to Resolve Election Standoff: FEFA
TOLOnews.com Monday, 15 August 2011
There is no legal solution to bring an end to election turmoil, except if the Independent Election Commission makes a decision that could convince protesting candidates, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) said on Monday.
One Taliban local leader killed in N Afghanistan
KABUL, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban local leader was killed when Afghan and NATO-led forces carried out a security operation in country's northern Baghlan province, the NATO said on Tuesday.
Female Afghan Government Worker Gunned Down in South
VOA News August 16, 2011
Afghan officials say a female provincial government worker has been gunned down outside her home in the southern city of Kandahar.
12 insurgents killed, 28 captured in Afghanistan
KABUL, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police, backed by army and NATO-led forces, have eliminated 12 insurgents and detained 28 others around the country over the past 24 hours, Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.
Five Afghan Taliban including group commander captured
QALAT, Afghanistan, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces backed by NATO-led troops detained five Taliban fighters including their commander in Shahjoi district of Zabul province, 340 km west of capital city Kabul, an official said Tuesday.
Supplies to NATO forces suspended after attacks in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- Supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan through Pakistan were suspended on Tuesday a day after nearly 10 NATO oil tankers were attacked and torched, local media reported.
S Korea sees spike in refugee claims
SEOUL, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- South Korea experiences a spike in the number of applicants for refugee status this year, raising the possibility of setting a record high, a South Korean refugee organization said Tuesday.
Afghan girl injured in Aussie raid
ABC News August 16, 2011, 2:03 pm
A young Afghan girl suffered minor injuries during a firefight involving Australian troops last month, the Defence Department says.
A Rain That Could Stop a Platoon
By JACK HEALY August 15, 2011, The New York Times
Kuni Takahashi for The New York TimesSoldiers clean their pistols at the Combat Outpost in Khost after a heavy rainstorm hit the region on Aug. 11.
True cost of Afghan, Iraq wars is anyone's guess
McClatchy Newspapers By Nancy A. Youssef Monday, August 15, 2011
WASHINGTON - When congressional cost-cutters meet later this year to decide on trimming the federal budget, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could represent juicy targets. But how much do the wars actually cost the U.S. taxpayer?
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Death toll in Kandahar suicide attack upped to four, 8 wounded
By David Ariosto, CNN August 16, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan authorities on Tuesday raised the number of those killed by a suicide attack at a fuel depot near Kandahar International Airport to four people.
Eight people were also wounded in an attack carried out by three militants at a compound run by an international contractor called Supreme Group, according to a provincial government spokesman.
Zalmai Ayubi said all those killed and injured were Supreme Group security personnel. CNN cannot independently confirm that account.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
Wearing vests packed with explosives, the militants stormed the compound Monday evening, Ayubi said.
One man drove a minibus toward the facility and detonated himself as he approached the main security gate, clearing the way for the other militants to enter the compound and engage in a firefight with security personnel, according to Ayubi.
The militants were later killed in a subsequent gun battle with police and security guards.
NATO, meanwhile, was not involved in the fight but had been monitoring the situation, as coalition forces encourage local and national forces to take on more prominent security roles throughout the country, said Maj. Jason Waggoner, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
The airport is located southeast of Kandahar City, long considered a hotbed of insurgent activity, and is used for both military and civilian fights.
A similar quick-strike tactic was employed by insurgents Sunday in the country's northeastern Parwan province, where six militants -- also wearing bomb-laden vests -- stormed the provincial governor's compound in an attack that left 25 people dead, including themselves.
The governor managed to escape that attack, which the Taliban later took responsibility for.
Suicide strikes -- along with roadside bomb attacks -- have become a hallmark of Taliban-style tactics.
CNN's Matiullah Mati contributed to this report
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US firm fell short on Afghan police trainers: audit
AFP
US-based DynCorps International failed to provide nearly 60 percent of the instructors needed to train Afghan police under a contract with the US government, according to an audit issued Monday.
The Defense Department and DynCorps signed a two-year contract in December 2010 worth more than $1 billion to train police forces in Afghanistan, requiring the firm to have instructors in place within a 120-day deadline.
Defense officials "reported that the incoming contractor did not have 428 of the 728 required personnel in place within the 120-day transition period," said the audit by inspectors general from the Defense and State departments.
The shortage "placed the overall mission at risk by not providing the mentoring essential for developing the Afghan Government and Police Force," it said.
The audit, which focused on the transfer of the Afghan police training program from the State Department to the Pentagon, criticized both for failing to create a clear plan to oversee and monitor the transition.
State and Defense "officials relied on independently developed contractor plans, some of which were not feasible and did not address inherently governmental tasks," it said.
The audit comes amid a major push to train and expand Afghan security forces to pave the way for the eventual exit of NATO-led troops after nearly ten years of war.
The effort has faced persistent shortages of foreign trainers, with US officials complaining that some NATO members have failed to contribute enough instructors to the project.
The NATO-led mission in Afghanistan aims to train a 134,000-strong police force by October as part of a build-up of Afghan security forces, which are due to take over security responsibility by the end of 2014.
A Pentagon report to Congress earlier this year found that none of the 203 Afghan police units were considered capable of operating without assistance from foreign forces.
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U.S. military awards contracts in Afghanistan to get money away from insurgents
Washington Post By Karen DeYoung Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The U.S. military has moved to stem the flow of contract money to Afghan insurgents, awarding at least 20 companies new contracts worth about $1 billion for military supply transport and suspending seven current contractors it found lacking in “integrity and business ethics.”
The new contracts, which were finalized Monday and will take effect next month, aim to eliminate layers of brokers and middlemen who allegedly skimmed money, and to allow more transparency in a complex web of Afghan subcontractors paid to provide security for the supply truck convoys.
“I think we’ve finally got our arms around this thing,” said a senior military officer who was authorized to discuss the matter only on the condition of anonymity. The new contracts, the official said, were the result of a year’s worth of “intelligence work and asking the right questions. We’re now starting to take action.”
Congressional investigators determined last year that much of the transport and security money went to the Taliban and Afghan warlords as part of a protection racket to ensure the safe arrival of the convoys, conclusions that were confirmed this spring by military and intelligence inquiries.
House and Senate committees have said that the military has long been aware of the problem but has been reluctant to disrupt the system and risk interrupting a supply chain that provides virtually all fuel, food and weapons for U.S. troops across Afghanistan. Some lawmakers have criticized the length of time it has taken the military to act and wonder whether the new system will change much.
“I appreciate that the Department of Defense has taken steps to reform its Afghan trucking contracts, but I am concerned that they still lack sufficient visibility and accountability to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not getting into the hands of the enemy,” said Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), whose House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee investigated the contract last year.
The panel has scheduled a hearing for Sept. 15.
While the Obama administration has touted significant progress against insurgents this year, U.S., NATO and Afghan military forces still control only scattered pockets of territory and thousands of trucks travel each week over vast unsecured areas.
U.S. commanders have argued that outsourcing the transport and security frees up the U.S. warfighters to handle more important missions. The only alternative, said a senior congressional staff member speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss information not yet released, is “to reduce the [U.S.] footprint in Afghanistan.”
Policymakers and the public need to understand, he said, that “the cost of doing business is that we have to pay, effectively, our enemy for the right to be there.”
Details of the new system are to be released next week, but military officials said that principle changes include direct contracts with truckers, improvements in convoy monitoring and increased vetting of Afghan private security subcontractors. The initial contract is for one year, with an option for a second.
Despite the 2010 congressional investigations and subsequent military findings that at least half of the eight firms participating in the Host Nation Trucking contract were involved in “a criminal enterprise or support to the enemy,” that contract was extended for six months in March.
Six of the companies are Afghan-owned or joint Afghan-international ventures. Two are described as U.S.-owned, including the Washington-based Sandi Group and NCL Holdings, whose founder and president, Hamed Wardak, is the son of Afghanistan’s defense minister. All served as brokers who subcontracted with Afghan trucking companies, and all used private Afghan security firms to guard the convoys.
The senior military official said that he could not discuss whether the companies would be barred from future U.S. contracts — a process that often involves lengthy legal proceedings — or whether any would be prosecuted by the Justice Department.
One of the eight firms was told in June that it had been barred from the new contract for reasons that could not be determined. Several of the others were actively bidding on the new contract before being informed last week that they were not eligible.
Letters sent to the firms said that their new bids were technically acceptable and competitively priced. But the letters went on to say that they had been “excluded” from the competition under federal regulations requiring “a satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics.”
Executives at several of the suspended companies expressed anger and disbelief about their suspension and said the new systems would do little to eliminate the problems of security or payoffs. The new contractors were largely the same truckers that the original firms had subcontracted, said John Christopher Turner, a principal in MG-EMA, a U.S.-Afghan venture that is one of the eight. “They have no clue,” Turner said of the military. “They’re not in the field at all.”
Said the head of another company who agreed to discuss the issue on the condition of anonymity: “Our prices were competitive, we were completely comfortable we were going to win this.”
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A golden decade for defense companies is ending
By JONATHAN FAHEY, AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, Osama bin Laden is dead, and the federal government is deeply in debt. This spells the end of what was a golden decade for the defense industry.
In the decade since the Sept. 11 attacks, the annual defense budget has more than doubled to $700 billion and annual defense industry profits have nearly quadrupled, approaching $25 billion last year.
Now defense spending is poised to retreat, and so are industry profits. "We're about to go into the downhill side of the roller coaster here," said David Berteau, a defense industry analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Congress agreed last month to cut military spending by $350 billion over the next 10 years. The defense budget will automatically be cut by another $500 billion over that period if lawmakers fail to reach a deficit-cutting deal by November.
Defense industry stocks have already begun to suffer; they are lagging the S&P 500 in recent months. During the last defense spending downturn, which lasted from 1985 to 1997, defense stocks underperformed the broader market by 33 percent, according to an analysis by RBC Capital Markets.
The Sept. 11 attacks forced the world's biggest and best-funded military to quickly retool itself. It needed to develop technologies, weapons and strategies to find and fight an elusive network of terrorists that seemed more sophisticated and dangerous than ever imagined.
The U.S. spent $1.3 trillion in the ten years following the attacks chasing al-Qaida and fighting two wars. That was on top of baseline military spending in excess of $4 trillion.
"After 9/11 the floodgates opened," says Eric Hugel, a defense industry analyst at Stephens Inc.
The defense budget grew from $316 billion in 2001 to $708 billion in 2011. Federal spending on homeland security, which includes everything from airport security to border control, also rose dramatically. Last year dozens of federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, spent $70 billion on such programs, according to the Office of Management and Budget. That's up from $37 billion in 2003, the first year after DHS was formed.
All that spending was reflected in the soaring performance of the defense industry, led by the top five defense contractors: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon.
In 2001, revenues for U.S.-based defense contractors totaled $217 billion, according to data compiled by the analytics firm Capital IQ. By 2010 revenues had grown to $386 billion. Profits grew more than twice as fast over the same time period, from $6.7 billion to $24.8 billion. Contractors based abroad, such as BAE Systems, also flourished. BAE was the sixth biggest defense contractor in 2010, with $7.2 billion in U.S. military contracts.
Stock prices of defense companies in the S&P 500 index have risen 67 percent since September 11. The index as a whole climbed 8 percent in that period.
Military spending typically rises during wartime and falls during peacetime. But after Sept. 11, and as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan evolved, it became clear the country needed to spend money on very different military technologies and strategies.
Fighter jets, missile defenses and other Cold War-era systems designed to deal with the perceived threats of nation-states were less useful. The U.S. military had to increase its ability to find, recognize and track enemies that were scattered in many countries and dispersed among the civilian population.
During the war in Iraq the military realized that it couldn't protect troops from a low-tech, but potent threat: jerry-rigged road side bombs. In Afghanistan, commanders needed ways to find and root out insurgents that had tucked themselves in caves in hard-to-reach mountains.
These challenges led to new hardware. Among the most important:
— Transport trucks that protect troops and supplies from roadside bombs. Mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs, quickly became crucial equipment for the Army. Oshkosh Corp., a maker of these trucks, was the 9th biggest military contractor last year. Before 9/11, it wasn't in the top 20.
— Identification tools. Soldiers now carry small portable devices that identify a person by scanning fingerprints, irises and faces. These devices, made by L-1 Identity Solutions, which was recently acquired by Safran, can weigh as little as 3 pounds, transmit data by several different wireless methods and remember 1 million identities.
— Unmanned aircraft. General Atomics' Predators, drones that can fire missiles, have killed several al-Qaida commanders. Lockheed Martin's RQ-170 Sentinel reportedly kept watch on Osama bin Laden's compound as the raid that killed him was taking place.
Another type of company surged in importance in the last decade: Companies that provide services and support to military operations.
As of March, the Defense Department had more contractor personnel in Afghanistan in Iraq than uniformed personnel, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service. Afghanistan has the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel than any other U.S. war.
This has boosted companies like KBR, once a division of Halliburton. KBR, which builds and maintains military bases and other facilities, had $4.7 billion in military contracts in 2010, up from $860 million a decade earlier.
Analysts say the heavy reliance on contractors should allow the military to wind down spending more quickly, because it is easier to terminate a contract than to reduce uniformed troop levels. Also, the government isn't responsible for pensions, health care and other benefits for contract workers, which should save money.
Equipment spending is already being scaled back. In 2009, funding for the F-22 fighter jet, a $65 billion program, was discontinued. Spending on the F-35 fighter jet is in danger of being cut back. An advanced warship called the DDG1000 has been canceled, and an upgrade to the Bradley tank called the Ground Combat Vehicle may also be scaled back or canceled.
Over the past six months, defense company stocks in the S&P 500 index have fallen 16 percent. That compares with an 11 percent decline for the entire index.
During wartime, when dollars are flowing, the new equipment developed to battle new enemies is used together with the equipment that had been developed for earlier wars. But as budgets shrink this time, some of the technologies that were developed during the past decade, such as the unmanned aircraft, will have to replace older systems entirely.
"The era of manned airplanes should be seen as over," says Michael O'Hanlon, a defense policy expert at the Brookings Institution. "The problem is nobody wants to give up the previously agreed on platform."
Jonathan Fahey can be reached at http://www.facebook.com/Fahey.Jonathan
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No Legal Solution to Resolve Election Standoff: FEFA
TOLOnews.com Monday, 15 August 2011
There is no legal solution to bring an end to election turmoil, except if the Independent Election Commission makes a decision that could convince protesting candidates, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) said on Monday.
Afghanistan Civil Society Forum and FEFA said that Afghanistan is presently in an exceptional situation that requires all organisations to work in collaboration to come up with a solution.
The election impasse has caused widespread concerns and there is no legal base that could suggest the way out of this standoff, Afghanistan Civil Society Forum said.
Head of Afghanistan Civil Society Forum Aziz Rafii said: "Undoubtedly there has been violation of justice."
The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan has welcomed the move of President Hamid Karzai who assigned the IEC to make the final decision about the elections.
"We are in an exceptional situation. We should all make efforts to soften our stances, because this is not a normal situation," Executive Director of FEFA Jandad Spinghar said.
A senior official in Attorney General's Office said that cases of 60 candidates who were announced winners by the special tribunal have been sent to the Independent Election Commission (IEC).
But the IEC denies having received any cases related to protesting candidates.
"We haven't received any new cases, but we have a copy from the first primary court and based on that we will begin our studies," IEC Chief Fazl Ahmad Manawi said.
Meanwhile, Deputy House Speaker, Ahmad Behzad, accused the government of plotting against the House of Representatives behind closed doors.
The government is trying to impose the decision of justice organisations on the House of Representatives, Mr Behzad said.
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One Taliban local leader killed in N Afghanistan
KABUL, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban local leader was killed when Afghan and NATO-led forces carried out a security operation in country's northern Baghlan province, the NATO said on Tuesday.
"A combined Afghan and coalition security force killed a Taliban leader and detained one suspected insurgent during a security operation in Pul-e Khumri district, Baghlan province, yesterday," said a press release issued by NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) here on Tuesday.
The deceased Taliban leader, namely Zalmi, was directed a cell of fighters who conducted roadside bomb attacks against the local Afghan civilians and Afghan National Security Forces, the press release further said.
"Following the engagement, one of Zalmi's associates was detained for further questioning."the release said.
Taliban insurgents, as a major anti-government group, have yet to make comments.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced to launch spring offensive from May 1 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.
A total of 19 people including five policemen were killed when Taliban carried out multiple suicide attacks in Charikar, the provincial capital of Parwan province 55 km north of capital Kabul on Sunday.
Six suicide attackers were also killed while 37 more people with majority of them civilians sustained injuries in the suicide blasts and gun fighting that took place in Parwan's governor office building on Sunday.
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Female Afghan Government Worker Gunned Down in South
VOA News August 16, 2011
Afghan officials say a female provincial government worker has been gunned down outside her home in the southern city of Kandahar.
A government spokesman says the woman, Rabia Sadat, was shot and killed by a gunman on a motorcycle as she walked to her car on Tuesday morning. Her driver was wounded in the attack.
Sadat worked for the government's social affairs program in Kandahar province. No group has yet claimed responsibility, and officials are not sure why the woman was targeted.
The attack comes a day after militants attacked a supply depot outside the main international military base in southern Kandahar province, killing four private security guards. Six other guards were wounded.
Provincial spokesman Zalmai Ayubi said insurgents armed with explosives Monday stormed the compound operated by Netherlands-based Supreme Group, which supplies fuel to the military. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban and the main city in southern Afghanistan.
Militants have carried out several high-profile killings in the southern city in recent weeks. Last month, a suicide bomber, with explosives hidden inside his turban, assassinated the mayor of Kandahar.
Also last month, a trusted bodyguard shot and killed President Hamid Karzai's half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai.
Meanwhile provincial officials in eastern Afghanistan say 12 civilians were wounded by mortars fired during an overnight clash between NATO forces and insurgents in Kunar province.
Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001, with international troop and Afghan civilian deaths reaching record levels.
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12 insurgents killed, 28 captured in Afghanistan
KABUL, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- Afghan police, backed by army and NATO-led forces, have eliminated 12 insurgents and detained 28 others around the country over the past 24 hours, Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan National Army (ANA) and Coalition Forces launched 10 joint operations over the past 24 hours in surrounding areas of the Kabul, Kunar, Kapisa, Helmand, Paktia, Zabul, Logar, Ghazni, Kandahar and Khost provinces," said a statement issued by Interior Ministry here.
"As a result of these operations, 12 armed insurgents were killed and 28 other armed insurgents were arrested," the statement said.
Numerous light and heavy weapons and ammunitions were also seized during the operations, it further said.
ANP, during separate operations, also discovered and seized two rounds of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), four AK-47 guns, four rounds of artillery shells, 19 rounds of mortar mines, three rocket launchers (RP-G) and 80 rounds of RP-G bullets in the same timeframe in Kunar, Kapisa, Baghlan, Kandahar, Ghazni and Khost provinces, according to statement.
Taliban outfit as the major anti-government group fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops in Afghanistan has yet to make comment.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced to launch spring offensive from May 1 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.
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Five Afghan Taliban including group commander captured
QALAT, Afghanistan, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces backed by NATO-led troops detained five Taliban fighters including their commander in Shahjoi district of Zabul province, 340 km west of capital city Kabul, an official said Tuesday.
Afghan and international forces raided a Taliban hideout in Shahjoi district late Monday night and captured Taliban commander Mullah Lutfullah along with his four comrades," deputy to Zabul provincial governor Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar told Xinhua.
He also stated that the detained Taliban commander, Lutfullah, was responsible for organizing suicide attacks and roadside bombings against Afghan and NATO-led troops and his arrest would strengthen security in the area.
Taliban outfit fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops has yet to make comment.
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Supplies to NATO forces suspended after attacks in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- Supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan through Pakistan were suspended on Tuesday a day after nearly 10 NATO oil tankers were attacked and torched, local media reported.
Nine tankers, carrying oil for NATO troops in Afghanistan, were attacked in Khyber tribal region near the Afghan border.
Four oil tankers, a container and a taxicab were completely gutted when a powerful bomb blast caused a huge fire in one of the vehicles near Landi Kotal Bazaar in Khyber Agency on Monday evening. No one was hurt as the drivers were breaking fast at a nearby hotel.
It was the second attack on NATO lorries in the northwest in three days. Earlier more than a dozen NATO tankers had caught fire following a blast in a container terminal in Peshawar on Saturday.
Also gunmen opened fire on NATO tankers in Punjab province late Monday night, police said. Gunmen opened fire on the tanker at Muzzafar Garh as they were passing through a square, they said. No one was hurt. Attacks on NATO trucks in Punjab are rare.
Geo television said that supplies for NATO troops were temporarily suspended over security concerns.
No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Taliban suspects routinely claim responsibility for such attacks.
Some 70 percent of the supplies for around 150,000 U.S.-led NATO troops is transported through Pakistan, the shortest supply route.
The United States has struck deal with Russia and few central Asian states for alternate supply routes.
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S Korea sees spike in refugee claims
SEOUL, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- South Korea experiences a spike in the number of applicants for refugee status this year, raising the possibility of setting a record high, a South Korean refugee organization said Tuesday.
In the first six months of this year, South Korea received 386 claims for refugee status compared to 423 in all of 2010, according to NANCEN, or Center for Refugee Rights.
The center expects the country to receive a record number of applicants for refugee status this year if the current trend continues into the second half of the year.
While a total of 3,301 people have applied for refugee status in South Korea since 1994, only 250 have been recognized as refugees, the center said.
The center explained that the rise in the number of refugee claims can be attributed to Taliban attacks that have expanded into Pakistan beyond Afghanistan, conflicts and political turbulence in Central Asia.
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Afghan girl injured in Aussie raid
ABC News August 16, 2011, 2:03 pm
A young Afghan girl suffered minor injuries during a firefight involving Australian troops last month, the Defence Department says.
Defence says the girl was probably struck by a piece of debris from a mud brick wall that was hit by fire from Australian soldiers.
It says the troops did not see any civilians before they engaged the insurgents.
Chief of Joint Operations Lieutenant General Ash Power says the Australian Defence Force deeply regrets any injuries to Afghan civilians and worked hard to limit their occurrence.
"Unfortunately the insurgents continue to disregard the safety and wellbeing of the Afghan population - launching attacks from within civilian structures and population centres," he said.
"Their decision to attempt an attack on ADF personnel from a built-up area directly led to this unfortunate incident."
The girl received treatment from an Australian soldier trained in combat first aid. The soldier then determined she did not require additional medical treatment.
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A Rain That Could Stop a Platoon
By JACK HEALY August 15, 2011, The New York Times
Kuni Takahashi for The New York TimesSoldiers clean their pistols at the Combat Outpost in Khost after a heavy rainstorm hit the region on Aug. 11.
COMBAT OUTPOST SABARI, Afghanistan — Just about anything can knock an American platoon’s operations off-course. Enemy fire. A cracked axle. Unusually loquacious tribal elders. New orders from a commander. For one company here in mountainous eastern Afghanistan, it was the rain.
Thunderclouds were already flocking in the mountains west of Combat Outpost Sabari on Thursday when news of an emergency crackled through the base: A nearby unit visiting a village a few miles away had been attacked. Children had been throwing rocks at their armored trucks, and when soldiers lowered the rear gate to climb out, someone tossed a grenade at them, spraying shrapnel into the vehicle. Moments later, gunfire erupted from a tree-covered ridge in the distance. Four American soldiers were hurt, and an Afghan child was mortally wounded. So a platoon here threw on their body armor, grabbed their black assault rifles and rolled out for the village of Chinah to search homes near the attack and look for traces of the gunmen who might still be lurking in the hills.
What drove them back to base was not enemy fire or a roadside bomb. It was the sky opening up with all it had.
Not just rain: torrents, waterfalls, coming sudden and furious. Enough rain to make you forget that Afghanistan is a drought-plagued country of dessicated riverbeds, bare mountains and parched farms, a place where people hose down the streets just to subdue the dust for a few hours.
For soldiers from the Viper team of the First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, the storm added one more layer of complication to the mechanics of war. It hid mountains behind a gray, wind-whipped scrim of water and threw hailstones chattering to the earth. It flooded the gravel yards of this hillside combat outpost and transformed dry arroyos into foaming freeways of chocolate-colored water.
On a remote mountaintop, other members of the company were huddled atop an 11,000-foot peak as the storm scraped across the countryside, babysitting a busted helicopter that had been incapacitated after landing hard several days earlier.
Inside Camp Sabari, the tempest knocked out the electricity and turned plywood dormitories into dark, flooded caves, soaking body armor and wrecking bags full of electronics. Soaked soldiers stood miserably inside guard towers, and others scrambled to heave sandbags in front of doorways to hold back the invading water.
In the base’s operations center, television screens reported that the weather had “gone red,” meaning that the skies were unsafe for flying. With helicopters heading back to their bases, the platoon that had rumbled out to investigate the grenade attack was left on its own, with waters rising and dirt roads turning into mud baths.
“If you get hit, you don’t have a medevac,” said Lt. Chris Scrupps, who led the unit to the village. “We’re basically out there all alone.”
Flash floods have stranded their 14-ton, mine-resistant vehicles in the sucking, sodden ground for hours, so Lieutenant Scrupps knew his guys had to go. Now. Their convoy chugged through the flooded wadis — gravelly riverbeds — as water surged around them, nearly burying a green Humvee driven by Afghan troops. By the time they made it back to the base, the rains had parted and soldiers were emerging to survey the damage of the fiercest storm they’d witnessed since arriving last winter.
“At least the COP will have a new smell,” said Capt. Aaron Tapalman, using the shorthand for combat outpost. “Mildew.”
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True cost of Afghan, Iraq wars is anyone's guess
McClatchy Newspapers By Nancy A. Youssef Monday, August 15, 2011
WASHINGTON - When congressional cost-cutters meet later this year to decide on trimming the federal budget, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could represent juicy targets. But how much do the wars actually cost the U.S. taxpayer?
Nobody really knows.
Yes, Congress has allotted $1.3 trillion for war spending through fiscal year 2011 just to the Defense Department. There are long Pentagon spreadsheets that outline how much of that was spent on personnel, transportation, fuel and other costs. In a recent speech, President Barack Obama assigned the wars a $1 trillion price tag.
But all those numbers are incomplete. Besides what Congress appropriated, the Pentagon spent an additional unknown amount from its $5.2 trillion base budget over that same period. According to a recent Brown University study, the wars and their ripple effects have cost the United States $3.7 trillion, or more than $12,000 per American.
Lawmakers remain sharply divided over the wisdom of slashing the military budget, even with the United States winding down two long conflicts, but there's also a more fundamental problem: It's almost impossible to pin down just what the U.S. military spends on war.
To be sure, the costs are staggering.
According to Defense Department figures, by the end of April the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — including everything from personnel and equipment to training Iraqi and Afghan security forces and deploying intelligence-gathering drones — had cost an average of $9.7 billion a month, with roughly two-thirds going to Afghanistan. That total is roughly the entire annual budget for the Environmental Protection Agency.
To compare, it would take the State Department — with its annual budget of $27.4 billion — more than four months to spend that amount. NASA could have launched its final shuttle mission in July, which cost $1.5 billion, six times for what the Pentagon is allotted to spend each month in those two wars.
What about Medicare Part D, President George W. Bush's 2003 expansion of prescription drug benefits for seniors, which cost a Congressional Budget Office-estimated $385 billion over 10 years? The Pentagon spends that in Iraq and Afghanistan in about 40 months.
Because of the complex and often ambiguous Pentagon budgeting process, it's nearly impossible to get an accurate breakdown of every operating cost. Some funding comes out of the base budget; other money comes from supplemental appropriations.
But the estimates can be eye-popping, especially considering the logistical challenges to getting even the most basic equipment and comforts to troops in extremely forbidding terrain.
In Afghanistan, for example, the U.S. military spent $1.5 billion to purchase 329.8 million gallons of fuel for vehicles, aircraft and generators from October 2010 to May 2011. That's a not-unheard-of $4.55 per gallon, but it doesn't include the cost of getting the fuel to combat zones and the human cost of transporting it through hostile areas, which can hike the cost to hundreds of dollars a gallon.
Just getting air-conditioning to troops in Afghanistan, including transport and maintenance, costs $20 billion per year, retired Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson told National Public Radio recently. That's half the amount that the federal government has spent on Amtrak over 40 years.
War spending falls behind tax cuts and prescription drug benefits for seniors as contributors to the $14.3 trillion federal debt. The Pentagon's base budget has grown every year for the past 14 years, marking the longest sustained growth period in U.S. history, but it seems clear that that era is ending.
Since the U.S. government issued war bonds to help finance World War II, Washington has asked taxpayers to shoulder less and less of a burden in times of conflict. In the early 1950s Congress raised taxes by 4 percent of the gross domestic product to pay for the Korean War; in 1968, during the Vietnam War, a tax was imposed to raise revenue by about 1 percent of GDP.
No such mechanism was imposed for Iraq or Afghanistan, and in the early years of the wars Congress didn't even demand a true accounting of war spending, giving the military whatever it needed. Now, at a time of fiscal woes and with the American public weary of the wars, the question has become how much the nation's largest bureaucracy should cut.
"The debt crisis has been a game changer in terms of defense spending," said Laura Peterson, a national security analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog.
"It used to be that asking how much the wars cost was unpatriotic. The attitude going into the war is you spend whatever you cost. Now maybe asking is more patriotic."
Still, deep cuts to the Pentagon remain unpalatable to many lawmakers. The debt limit deal that Congress passed earlier this month calls for $350 billion in "defense and security" spending cuts through 2024, but that's expected to be spread across several government agencies, sparing the Pentagon much of the blow.
However, if the 12-member bipartisan "super-committee" of lawmakers can't agree on further federal budget cuts later this year, the law mandates across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion over 10 years, with half of that coming from the Pentagon. The prospect of such deep defense cuts is thought to provide a strong incentive for deficit hawks to compromise and spread the pain more broadly.
Politics aside, finding defense savings is complex, even with the Obama administration trying to wind down two wars. For one thing, reducing troop levels doesn't necessarily yield commensurate cost reductions, given the huge amount of infrastructure the military still maintains in each country.
In Afghanistan, the cost per service member climbed from $507,000 in fiscal year 2009 to $667,000 the following year, according to the Congressional Research Service. Fiscal year 2011 costs are expected to reach $694,000 per service member, even as the U.S. military begins drawing down 33,000 of the 99,000 troops there.
In Iraq, even with the overall costs of the war declining and the U.S. military scheduled to withdraw its remaining 46,000 troops by the end of this year, the cost per service member spiked from $510,000 in 2007 to $802,000 this year.
In fiscal year 2011, Congress authorized $113 billion for the war in Afghanistan and $46 billion for Iraq. The Pentagon's 2012 budget request is lower: $107 billion for Afghanistan and $11 billion for Iraq.
In the more austere fiscal climate, the Pentagon has tried to be proactive, proposing cuts to some major military programs such as the controversial and hugely expensive F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called the national debt the biggest threat to U.S. national security. Before leaving office last month as defense secretary, Robert Gates ordered his department to find ways to cut $400 billion from the defense budget over 12 years, under Obama's orders.
Among the challenges of determining the costs of war is defining what to include. Rising health care costs for veterans? The damage done to Iraqi and Afghan families, cities and institutions? Holding tens of thousands of detainees at U.S. military prisons in those two countries and others around the world? The massive interest on war-related debt, which some experts say could reach $1 trillion by 2020?
"The ripple effects on the U.S. economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases, and those effects have been underappreciated," wrote a team of Brown University experts who authored a June report called "Costs of War."
Critics of the defense budget process note that the U.S. already has paid a heavy cost for the wars, spending billions to wind up with older equipment and troops receiving less training.
Winslow Wheeler, who worked on national security issues on Capitol Hill for 30 years, said the Navy and Air Force fleets were smaller after a decade of war. The Army has been left with run-down, overworked vehicles and equipment.
"The danger of that is that as we blithely go on not paying attention, things happen that we don't notice, like the older, less trained forces," Wheeler said. Because the cost of replacing equipment has risen dramatically over the past decade, "what we are paying is a higher cost for a smaller force." He likened it to replacing a Lamborghini with a Volkswagen.
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