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Taliban hits Kabul, other Afghanistan cities in rare coordinated attack
By Kevin Sieff, Javed Hamdard and Sayed Salahuddin, The Washington Post
KABUL — Insurgents attacked cities across eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, including three prominent targets in Kabul, in a rare coordinated attack spanning some of the country’s most important urban centers. The Taliban called the effort the beginning of its spring offensive.
Afghanistan says it's beaten back wave of attacks
By Mitra Mobasherat and Mohammed Jamjoom, CNN April 15, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan insurgents launched a wave of assaults on Kabul and three other provinces Sunday, but Afghan security forces repulsed the attacks and inflicted losses in return, a government spokesman said.
Insurgents' RPGs hit Japanese Embassy in Kabul
Kyodo
KABUL — The Japanese Embassy in Kabul on Sunday evacuated all staff to a nearby air-raid shelter after at least three rocket-propelled grenades landed in the compound when insurgents launched an attack on the Afghan capital's diplomatic quarters.
Pakistani Taliban Assault Prison, Freeing Almost 400
By ISMAIL KHAN and DECLAN WALSH The New York Times April 15, 2012
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — In what is being called the biggest jail-break in Pakistani history, Taliban fighters stormed a prison in the northwestern town of Bannu early Sunday, freeing almost 400 prisoners, including a militant commander who tried to assassinate the former president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
U.S. Ambassador: Early Afghanistan Withdrawal Would 'Set the Stage for Another 9/11'
By Alexandra Jaffe | National Journal
U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said that Sunday's attacks on Western embassies in Afghanistan are evidence that the U.S. should continue its mission there and not withdraw early, despite growing public aversion to the war.
U.S. and Taliban fight for key Afghan highway
By Greg Jaffe, Sunday, April 15, 12:30 AM The Washington Post
SAYAD ABAD, Afghanistan — The Taliban fighter crouched in a muddy field about 100 yards from Highway 1. The mid-afternoon sun melted the last patches of winter’s snow as he waited for an American convoy to pass.
100 rebels put out of action in one day: Afghan govt
AFP via Yahoo! News - Apr 14 11:22pm
Afghan authorities said that almost 100 Taliban-linked rebels were taken out of action -- killed, captured or wounded -- in a day of operations by Afghan forces helped by their NATO allies.
How Much Does It Cost to Field an Afghan Cop? More Than You Think
By Yochi J. Dreazen | National Journal – Sat, Apr 14, 2012
The Obama administration hopes to wind down the long Afghan war by shifting responsibility for securing the country to Afghanistan’s nascent army and national police. One thing’s for certain: It won’t be cheap.
Confusion reigned in aftermath of Afghanistan massacre, even as spin had begun
By Jon Stephenson / McClatchy Washington Bureau | Sunday, April 15, 2012
NAJIBAN, Afghanistan - One month after Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly went on a killing spree here in southern Afghanistan, the saying that "the first casualty of war is truth" continues to hold true in the deaths of eight adults and nine children in the villages of Najiban and Alkozai.
Analysts: India-Pakistan Cooperation Key to Success in Afghanistan
Voice of America By Sharon Behn April 14, 2012
Pakistan and the United States are working to get their relations back on solid footing as Washington prepares for a military drawdown in neighboring Afghanistan. But some experts believe the more critical factor for peace in the region lies in ties between Pakistan and India.
Drone Crashes in Ghazni as US Refuses to Halt Attacks in Pakistan
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 14 April 2012
An unmanned US aircraft crashed in Ghazni province on Saturday morning because of a mechanical failure, according to an Isaf spokesperson.
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Taliban hits Kabul, other Afghanistan cities in rare coordinated attack
By Kevin Sieff, Javed Hamdard and Sayed Salahuddin, The Washington Post
KABUL — Insurgents attacked cities across eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, including three prominent targets in Kabul, in a rare coordinated attack spanning some of the country’s most important urban centers. The Taliban called the effort the beginning of its spring offensive.
By evening, as the attacks were still ongoing, at least 14 police officers and nine civilians had been wounded, according to the Interior Ministry.
“This is a message that our spring offensive has begun,” said Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, who said the primary targets were western military and diplomatic installations.
In central Kabul, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and rifles from an unfinished eight-story commercial building. From their perch, at least four men fired in the direction of the German Embassy and NATO’s military headquarters, both of which were just a few hundred yards from the attackers.
Less than an hour after the attack began, Afghan commandos and their NATO trainers entered the building that the insurgents were firing from. There were two large blast holes visible in the facade of the Kabul Star Hotel, frequented by westerners and wealthy Afghans, located just across the street from where the insurgents were firing. Seven hours later, after sunset, gunfire was still being exchanged.
A few miles away, another group of insurgents occupied a building across from the Afghan parliament, as well as another unfinished construction site, from which they targeted nearby Western military installations.
“Armed insurgents, including some suicide bombers, have taken control of buildings in these areas,” said Sediq Sediqi, an Interior Ministry spokesman.
At least one lawmaker, Mohammad Hamid Lalai Hamidzai of Kandahar, fired back at insurgents from the roof of the parliament building.
“I have four of my armed bodyguards. We are using my personal guns and we have exchanged fire with the attackers,” he said.
What made Sunday’s attack particularly brazen was the apparent coordination between insurgents in Kabul and beyond. Although the Taliban has successfully executed spectacular attacks in the capital before — including the protracted attack on the U.S. Embassy in September — insurgents have never attacked so many disparate targets simultaneously. In addition to the three Kabul targets, there were at least three other attacks in large cities across eastern Afghanistan.
Insurgents targeted a NATO base in Jalalabad, as well as Afghan installations, including a public university, in the capitals of Logar and Paktia provinces, according to officials.
In a statement released Sunday night, NATO played down the significance of the incidents, calling them “largely ineffective.”
“Afghan Crisis Response Units along with Afghan police and Army forces were deployed to repel the attacks that resulted in light casualties,” the statement said, “while killing or capturing many of the suicide attackers in a matter of hours.”
By early evening, Sediqi said, Afghan police had killed 19 insurgents. The National Directorate of Security, the country’s intelligence branch, said two would-be suicide bombers were detained before they were able to reach their targets.
Still, crowds remained near the unfinished eight-story building, including workers who fled the construction site when the violence began. Some of them had colleagues and relatives still stuck in the building and adjoining shops. One of those workers, Ali Jan, had been communicating by phone with his brother, who had been stuck in the building for seven hours. Shortly after sunset, the phone went dead.
“I’m worried,” Jan said, “but my brother told me he was in a safe room. He told me he would be okay.”
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Afghanistan says it's beaten back wave of attacks
By Mitra Mobasherat and Mohammed Jamjoom, CNN April 15, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan insurgents launched a wave of assaults on Kabul and three other provinces Sunday, but Afghan security forces repulsed the attacks and inflicted losses in return, a government spokesman said.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force said as many as seven locations were attacked, including Afghanistan's parliament building and the American, German and Russian embassies. In addition, an airbase used by U.S. troops in the eastern city of Jalalabad came under attack by suicide bombers, the NATO command in Kabul reported.
"They came today with more than 20 insurgents and suicide bombers and attacked four provinces," Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Seddiqi told CNN. "As a result, they got nothing, and 19 of them were killed."
Seddiqi said two civilians were killed across the country, and 15 Afghan police officers were wounded.
The Taliban militia that once ruled most of Afghanistan claimed responsibility for the attacks. Kabul's police chief said in a statement that three captured fighters confessed to being members of the Haqqani network, a separate insurgent group that sometimes allies itself with the Taliban.
The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, issued a statement praising the Afghans for beating back the attacks without allied assistance.
"They were on scene immediately, well-led and well-coordinated," Allen said. "They integrated their efforts, helped protect their fellow citizens and largely kept the insurgents contained."
Allen said the attacks were meant to signal "that legitimate governance and Afghan sovereignty are in peril," but the Afghan response "is proof enough of that folly."
In Kabul, police headed off some attacks, arresting two potential suicide bombers and their handler, and destroying a vehicle full of explosives, Kabul police said. Another 15 would-be attackers were arrested in Kunduz province plotting similar strikes, said Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, a spokesman for the chief of police for north and northeast Afghanistan.
In all, Seddiqi said 15 of the 19 suicide bombers were stopped before they could blow themselves up, with most of them killed by Afghan security forces. The fighting was still going on in Kabul, but had ended in the provinces of Nangarhar, Paktia and Logar by Sunday evening, he said.
The Taliban, the Islamist militia that once ruled most of Afghanistan, said the attacks were in retaliation for the killing of 17 Afghan civilians in Kandahar province last month. A U.S. Army staff sergeant, Robert Bales, has been charged with those killings.
CNN journalists heard gunfire, explosions and rocket-propelled grenade fire lasting more than an hour in central Kabul on Sunday morning. Small-arms fire continued for at least three hours. But ISAF spokesman Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings described himself as "underwhelmed" by the attacks.
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker expressed similar sentiments, telling CNN: "The Taliban are very good at issuing statements, less good at fighting." He suggested the attacks may be the work of the Haqqani network, rather than the Taliban, saying the Taliban did not have the capacity to carry them out.
Crocker said no Americans had been injured, but that a number of Afghans had been killed or wounded.
"Our hearts go out to them," he told Candy Crowley on CNN's "State of the Union."
The U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall said he could not confirm that the embassy itself was the target of the attacks, but said gunfire had been heard in the vicinity. Meanwhile, Britain's Foreign Office said there was an "ongoing incident in the diplomatic area of Kabul. We are in close contact with Embassy staff, all staff are accounted for."
India also said it had no reports of its nationals being wounded.
A local police official said attackers took over a central Kabul hotel close to the presidential palace, United Nations office and many foreign embassies, but both Seddiqi and staff at the hotel denied it had been attacked.
A western official in Kabul later said the hotel had been taken over by insurgents, but was then taken back by Afghan national security forces.
Meanwhile, in the east of the country, four suicide bombers wearing women's burqas tried to attack the Jalalabad airfield where United States troops are based, airfield commander Jahangir Azimi said.
At least three of the attackers were killed, ISAF said in a statement about the incident.
Separately, a group of suicide bombers attacked the police training center in the city of Gardez in Paktia province. At least eight civilians were wounded, a police official at the center said. The official is not authorized to speak to the media and asked not to be named.
The heavily guarded area of Kabul where the attacks took place is frequented by foreigners and is rarely the scene of violence.
ISAF spokesman Cummings denied the capital's "Green Zone" had been breached, saying the insurgents took over buildings on the outskirts of the area and fired into it.
CNN's Masoud Popalzai and Bharati Naik and Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr contributed to this report.
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Insurgents' RPGs hit Japanese Embassy in Kabul
Kyodo
KABUL — The Japanese Embassy in Kabul on Sunday evacuated all staff to a nearby air-raid shelter after at least three rocket-propelled grenades landed in the compound when insurgents launched an attack on the Afghan capital's diplomatic quarters.
No one was apparently injured, the embassy said.
According to witnesses, the insurgents holed up in a building that was under construction and fired rocket-propelled grenades toward an area populated by several Western embassies, initiating firefights with security forces.
In a text message to the Associated Press, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that a group of suicide bombers has launched an attack on NATO's local headquarters, Parliament and diplomatic residences in Kabul.
The first of the dozens of explosions rocked the central Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, which is home to a number of embassies and a NATO base.
The havoc sent bystanders fleeing indoors, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
According to local media, three of Afghanistan's other eastern cities came under attack at about the same time.
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Pakistani Taliban Assault Prison, Freeing Almost 400
By ISMAIL KHAN and DECLAN WALSH The New York Times April 15, 2012
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — In what is being called the biggest jail-break in Pakistani history, Taliban fighters stormed a prison in the northwestern town of Bannu early Sunday, freeing almost 400 prisoners, including a militant commander who tried to assassinate the former president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
The assault started at 1.30 a.m. Sunday when at least 100 militants driving pick-up trucks and armed with grenades and small arms attacked the main gate of the prison, which housed 900 inmates, provincial government officials said.
After blasting their way into the prison, the attackers broke open cell doors and set free 384 inmates, including several who had been condemned to death, said the home minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Mohammad Azam Khan.
A senior security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said prison guards had offered little resistance to the Taliban, who were in “total control” of the facility for over two hours. “The militants asked them to get aside and leave,” he said.
The fierce, disciplined raid represented an operational boost and a propaganda coup for the Pakistani Taliban, which wasted little time in claiming responsibility.
“We have released our men without losing a single man,” said Ihsanullah Ihsan, a spokesman for the group, speaking from an undisclosed location. “We had been planning this blessed operation for months.”
The authorities launched a search operation in Bannu and the towns of Lakki Marwat and Kohat, shutting down mobile phone networks and arresting 11 prisoners by evening. Another 20 voluntarily returned to the prison, said Mr. Khan, the provincial home minister.
But the most likely destination for many of the fugitives was North Waziristan, a lawless tribal area adjoining Bannu that is rife with militants from Al Qaeda, the Haqqani Taliban network and other militant groups, many operating on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. North Waziristan has born the brunt of the C.I.A.’s drone strike campaign, which the Pakistani parliament last week demanded should end immediately.
“This is the largest jailbreak in Pakistan’s history,” said Malik Naveed Khan, a former police chief of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “It’s a very serious failure. Such a large number of people barging into a jail in the middle of the night raises serious questions.”
Mr. Khan noted that the Taliban’s ability to attack in Pakistani cities had been eroded in the past year, but that the jailbreak would “give them a major boost to their morale.”
While the provincial police had received extra money, training and weapons, the prisons service remains woefully under-resourced, he added. “Our jails are not equipped to handle these kinds of military assaults.”
The scale and discipline of the Taliban jailbreak was in stark contrast to the disorganized response of Pakistani security forces. During the raid, militants kept the police at bay by blockading all roads leading to the prison. The police reach the prison only after two hours, by which time the militants had fled.
Television footage from the scene showed the destroyed prison gate, empty cells and bullet cases scattered across the ground.
It was not clear how many of the escapees were militants. But the provincial information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, described at least 20 as “very dangerous,” and confirmed that one of them was Adnan Rashid, a junior air force officer who had been sentenced to death for his part in an attempt to assassinate General Musharraf on December 14, 2003.
Mr. Rashid was one of six Pakistani Air Force soldiers convicted for their part in the plot, five of whom have been sentenced to death. General Musharraf lives in self-imposed exile in London, although he has repeatedly promised to return to Pakistan to re-launch his political career.
Provincial officials admitted that the assault was an indictment of the security forces and their ability to protest the most sensitive installations.
“There has been an intelligence failure and there has been a security failure,” the security official acknowledged. “There was no preemption and there was no response while shooting and bombing continued for more than two hours. It seems as though there was no real effort to stop the militants.”
Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting from Islamabad.
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U.S. Ambassador: Early Afghanistan Withdrawal Would 'Set the Stage for Another 9/11'
By Alexandra Jaffe | National Journal
U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said that Sunday's attacks on Western embassies in Afghanistan are evidence that the U.S. should continue its mission there and not withdraw early, despite growing public aversion to the war.
"Attacks like this demonstrate why we need to be here," he said on CNN's State of the Union. "To get out before the Afghans have a full grip on security, which is a couple of years out, would be to invite the Taliban and Al Qaeda back in and set the stage for another 9/11 and that, I think, is an unacceptable risk."
The Taliban attacked seven different sites in Kabul on Sunday, including NATO bases, the parliament and western embassies, the Associated Press reports. Similar attacks occurred simultaneously in three other cities. The U.S. embassy is currently under lockdown, but Crocker said that the lockdown will soon be lifted because the Afghan security forces "pretty much have the situation under control now."
Crocker praised the Afghan security forces, saying they're making "progress."
"We've seen a very professional performance by Afghan security forces. They are able to deal with events like this on their own -- a clear sign of progress," he said.
Though the Taliban claims this is the beginning of a larger series of attacks, Crocker dismissed such a possibility, saying that the Taliban is likely not "good enough" to carry out a wider series of attacks.
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U.S. and Taliban fight for key Afghan highway
By Greg Jaffe, Sunday, April 15, 12:30 AM The Washington Post
SAYAD ABAD, Afghanistan — The Taliban fighter crouched in a muddy field about 100 yards from Highway 1. The mid-afternoon sun melted the last patches of winter’s snow as he waited for an American convoy to pass.
Three miles away, Lt. Col. Robert Horney and his soldiers pulled on body armor and climbed into their vehicles. The trucks were rolling when one of Horney’s junior commanders suggested that he delay the convoy until dark, when insurgents rarely attack vehicles with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
“We are the U.S. Army,” Horney thought to himself with some irritation. “We go where we want to go.”
The vehicles rumbled down a rutted dirt road, through a small village and toward a highway culvert where the Taliban had set about 40 pounds of explosives in a yellow plastic jug.
The Taliban fighter pressed a button, and a charge of electricity raced through copper wire. The highway exploded, shooting chunks of rock and dirt hundreds of feet in the air, nearly missing one of the American trucks. It shook and then lurched hard to the left.
“IED, IED, IED,” Horney’s soldiers yelled.
They called the name of the gunner, exposed in the turret. He did not respond, so they yanked on his pants. The gunner’s ears were still ringing from the blast when he ducked into the vehicle to say that he was all right.
The bomb tore a five-foot-deep hole in an already pockmarked highway that the U.S. government paid $230 million to pave and that Horney’s troops were supposed to protect. It showed that even as the U.S. military has pushed Taliban fighters from many strongholds, the enemy retains significant havens in this region only 40 miles from Kabul, the capital. And the near miss shook Horney’s confidence.
Horney, 41, broad-shouldered with brown hair shaved close to the scalp, climbed down from his truck. He suppressed a surge of anger. He was the commander of an 800-soldier battalion and needed to project an air of steadiness and calm. His troops fanned out in a defensive posture.
Horney noticed the hastily buried wire glinting in the sun and followed it until he reached the spot where the insurgent had been waiting. He approached a nearby farmer, gray-bearded and bent from a life in the fields.
Why didn’t he report the bomber to Afghan soldiers a short walk away? Horney asked.
The Taliban were everywhere, including the Afghan army, the farmer replied. “There is no one I can trust,” he insisted.
The two spoke for a few minutes about the man’s crops and his nine children. As Horney shook his hand and turned to leave, the farmer had a question. “Was anyone hurt?”
A vital highway
Horney grew up in Lebanon, Pa., where his father was a recruiter for the Army Reserve. He’s fit, with an open, friendly manner and a slight drawl — an accent best described as career Army. His twin brother is also a soldier.
The prospect of ceding any territory to the Taliban as U.S. troop numbers fall over the next year is painful to him. President Obama has mandated that the 30,000 additional troops that he ordered to Afghanistan in late 2009 return home by the end of September.
“We are being forced to prioritize by the reduction in troop levels,” he said. “My problem is that I am finding more places I want to go and not less.”
For most of the war the United States maintained a relatively light presence on Highway 1. Then, on a single day in August 2008, insurgents burned 60 trucks that were hauling supplies on the highway for NATO. They cut the road with massive IED explosions.
Highway 1 does not look especially important. It is just a narrow, two-lane ribbon of blacktop.
But in a country with a weak, corruption-plagued government, the road linking the capital to Kandahar, the country’s second most important city, was seen as essential to holding Afghanistan together. The chaos on a vital route so close to Kabul was contributing to a siege mentality in the capital. More than 3,000 U.S. troops were dispatched in 2009 to clean up the mess.
Today Horney has about half of his force protecting Highway 1. The other half holds down two outposts on a dirt road 15 miles to the west of the highway. Insurgents could use the rugged trail, known as “Shadow Highway 1,” to smuggle weapons into Kabul.
On a visit to one of the bullet-pocked outposts on Shadow 1, Col. Mark Landes, Horney’s commander, asked how many insurgents were in operating in the area around the shared Afghan-American base.
“A lot,” Horney said.
“I am so tired of words like ‘a lot,’ ” Landes prodded. “I don’t know what they mean.”
Within a year most of the American troops in Horney’s sector will be gone and the Afghans will be in control. What would happen if the United States left the outpost on the shadow highway? Landes asked.
“If we pull out, the Afghan army and the Taliban will find a way to live together,” Horney guessed.
‘My pride is hurt’
Three days after the near-miss bomb attack, insurgents crept up to Highway 1 and fired a volley of rocket-propelled grenades into two tankers hauling fuel for NATO.
The attack occurred directly in front of one of Horney’s outposts. American snipers, perched on the back wall of the base, shot at the attackers as they fled through a nearby village. Capt. Adrian J. Koss, the commander, and a team of U.S. soldiers pursued them.
By the time the Americans reached the village the locals had disappeared into their walled compounds. The insurgents were gone. Koss and his men returned to their base, passing by the village bazaar stocked with Pop-Tarts, PowerBars and energy drinks stolen from the supply convoys in past attacks.
The insurgents who launched the attack on the fuel tankers were not interested in looting. They wanted to send a message that the Americans could not even safeguard the stretch of highway directly in front of their outpost.
“My pride is hurt,” Koss admitted. “It is my task to secure that highway.”
The trucks burned outside the base for 36 hours — the black oily clouds visible for miles. Horney called Koss at his headquarters and told him to drag the trucks off the highway and out of sight as soon as possible.
“The enemy here feels very confident,” Horney said later, reflecting on the rocket-propelled grenade attack and the near-miss IED strike on his convoy. “There’s no fear of getting caught or killed. We’ve got to put more fear in the insurgents and get more confidence in the population.”
The Afghan commander
Horney’s best hope for securing Highway 1 is Lt. Col. Mohammed Allam, who commands the Afghan soldiers in southern Wardak province.
For months Horney has wanted Allam’s troops to accompany his men into the villages that border the road and offer the insurgents a haven from which they can attack. Allam’s soldiers preferred the relative safety of the highway, and Horney could not order the Afghan soldiers to accompany his men.
He needed Allam to write a patrol schedule.
“I have no idea why it is so hard,” said one of Horney’s company commanders.
In late March after months of encouragement from the Americans, Allam started to make plans for joint U.S.-Afghan patrols into the villages.
Horney invited Allam and his staff officers to the U.S. chow hall for a dinner celebrating the Afghan New Year. Allam, who is in his mid-50s, is tall with a ruddy face and stooped shoulders. As a young officer fighting alongside the Soviets, he took a bullet to the chest. The enemy round left a spidery scar a few inches from his heart.
The dinner was Horney’s way of showing his support. Allam and his staff officers — skinny, middle-aged men with gray-flecked beards — sat on one side of the table. Horney’s officers — clean-shaven and in their early 20s — filled out the other side. There was little conversation.
Horney dug through his supplies and found an unopened can of eggnog, which Allam had enjoyed at an earlier dinner.
“This is the last eggnog in all of Wardak province,” Horney announced.
They each delivered toasts praising their battalions’ partnership and lamenting the hardships that came with being away from home.
Two days later Allam produced the patrol schedule for the villages around the highway.
“This mission is important to us,” Allam told his officers. “We are trying to awaken our personnel from sleeping on the highway.”
Horney’s officers were skeptical that the Afghans would execute the village patrols without the Americans pulling them along. “If they don’t want to do anything, what do we do?” one of his company commanders asked.
It was up to Allam to inspire his men, Horney said. “Success isn’t you making them do it,” he told his officers. “You guys have to realize it is going to be Afghan-led here very soon.”
Suspicious activity
A week after the attack on Horney’s convoy, one of his soldiers spotted three Afghans on a grainy video surveillance feed digging at night in the exact spot where the earlier bomb had been set.
Capt. Ryan Harmon, one of Horney’s company commanders, dispatched a platoon of U.S. troops and a platoon of Afghans to the culvert. Two F-16 fighter jets, flying out of earshot at 18,000 feet, moved into position. Horney hovered behind his company commander.
The two officers stared at the shadowy figures on the video screen. Before they could clear the F-16s to shoot they had to be positive the men were putting in an IED. Some civilian trucks sped past the culvert.
“Look at them,” Horney said. “When the trucks rolled by, they laid down.”
“They are doing some suspicious [stuff],” Harmon agreed.
The video surveillance feed, which did not clearly show the men carrying weapons, was not definitive enough to call in an airstrike. The American ground troops were a 10-minute drive from the culvert. A platoon of Afghan soldiers manning an observation post on the road was closing in from the other direction. Because several of their vehicles weren’t working, they were walking. They were about 15 minutes away.
Harmon cursed. He worried the men would escape.
“What’s the plan?” Horney asked. “Are you going to roll up and drop ramp?”
“Yeah, just kick them in the face,” Harmon replied.
Horney’s commanders have been pressing the Afghans since August to shift more troops to this stretch of highway, from the relatively peaceful area to the north. So far it has not happened.
A successful strike was just the sort of operation that would put some much-needed fear into the insurgents and give the Afghans a boost of confidence as the U.S. mission in Afghanistan began its inevitable wind down.
Horney dashed out to take an unrelated call from one of his other company commanders who had received a tip that some insurgent leaders were hiding in a nearby mosque. The officer needed help persuading the Afghans to search the building. In the end the Afghans found nothing.
After about 15 minutes, Horney returned. Harmon had dropped to one knee and was hitting his forehead with his radio handset. The three figures had ducked into a dry riverbed and disappeared into a nearby village as the U.S. and Afghan troops approached. There were some fresh shovel marks in the culvert, but no IED material left behind.
“How is it going?” asked Horney.
“Escaped,” the younger officer replied.
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100 rebels put out of action in one day: Afghan govt
AFP via Yahoo! News - Apr 14 11:22pm
Afghan authorities said that almost 100 Taliban-linked rebels were taken out of action -- killed, captured or wounded -- in a day of operations by Afghan forces helped by their NATO allies.
The casualties were inflicted in multiple operations across the troubled country at the weekend, said the interior ministry, which controls the police and leads anti-Taliban forces along with the defence ministry.
The operations, mostly in the Taliban-infested south and east, came as the Islamist Taliban militants increased attacks as part of their annual spring offensive, which heralds what is called the "fighting season".
"As the season changes we will have more fighting than in winter," Defence Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi warned last week.
Violence picks up in the warmer spring and summer months as snow melts in mountainous passages along the Pakistan border where Afghan authorities and NATO forces say most Taliban leaders are hiding.
The rebels were taken out of action in 11 operations, including one in the capital Kabul, with a total of 47 killed, 31 wounded and 21 captured, the ministry said in a statement, without giving further details.
"Also, during these operations, Afghan National Police discovered and confiscated amounts of light and heavy weapons," the statement added.
NATO has some 130,000 troops supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai against the Taliban insurgency, but they will pull out by the end of 2014, handing control of security to Afghan forces.
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How Much Does It Cost to Field an Afghan Cop? More Than You Think
By Yochi J. Dreazen | National Journal – Sat, Apr 14, 2012
The Obama administration hopes to wind down the long Afghan war by shifting responsibility for securing the country to Afghanistan’s nascent army and national police. One thing’s for certain: It won’t be cheap.
The overall U.S. mission in Afghanistan is already shifting from direct combat to training and mentoring the Afghan forces, which are slated to grow to 352,000 by the end of 2012. Boosting the numbers of capable Afghan forces would carry both human and financial benefits for the U.S, reducing the likelihood of American battlefield casualties and allowing the withdrawal of U.S. troops costing a whopping $1 million each per year to station there.
Still, a close look at U.S. military statistics shows that Afghan soldiers and police officers are far more expensive than you’d expect. They are paid an average of just $1,872 a year, but the overall cost of training and fielding a police officer is roughly $30,000 per year, while the cost of each soldier is nearly $46,000 per year. the United States bears virtually all of those costs, adding up to more than $3.5 billion a year.
The financial breakdown is a different way of looking at the training push, which usually makes the news solely because of the rising numbers of so-called “green on blue” incidents of Afghan troops killing their U.S. or NATO counterparts.
A leaked report prepared last year for the NATO command in Kabul said that Afghan soldiers and police officers attacked Western troops at least 26 times between May 2007 and May 2011, killing approximately 58 U.S. and NATO troops. The pace of such attacks has been steadily increasing since 2009, the report found. So far this year, at least 17 more NATO troops have died at the hands of Afghan security personnel, making those attacks the second leading cause of coalition fatalities in 2012.
U.S. officials hope that stepping up their efforts to vet and monitor Afghan security personnel will gradually weed out troops with extremist tendencies or affinities for the Taliban.
The surprisingly high costs of supporting the overall Afghan security force, by contrast, won’t be coming down any time soon. What accounts for those expenses, which exceed by amount of money actually paid to the Afghan troops by 30-to-1 and 45-to-1.
Military statistics show that many of the Afghans' expenses mirror costs incurred by the U.S. and its NATO allies: building new bases, maintaining existing ones, and moving gas, fuel and other supplies across a large country with few paved or safe roads.
Consider the Afghan army, many of whose 170,000 soldiers make roughly $156 per month. The Afghan government – mostly using funds from the U.S. - spends $2,437,200,000 per year equipping its overall force, or $14,336 per soldier. Those expenses alone – which go toward purchasing aircraft, vehicles, weapons, body armor and other equipment – are eight times as high as the total yearly salary of the average soldier.
NATO has to expend similarly large sums for equipping its own forces, but other expenses reflect the unique challenges of training and educating a largely illiterate force of young Afghans, many of whom have rarely traveled beyond their home village. The Afghan government devotes $844,000,000 to training its army, or $4,965 per soldier. That is more than double each soldier’s salary.
To be fair, Afghan troops are paying other, grimmer costs that far exceed those of their U.S. allies. At least 5,681 Afghan soldiers and police officers have been killed in the line of duty between 2007 and 2011, according to data collected by the Brookings Institution. That is more than double the 2,325 NATO troops killed over the same time period and more than triple the number of U.S. war dead during those years.
Those casualties – and the financial costs of supporting the Afghan troops doing the fighting and dying – are nevertheless crucial to U.S. hopes of gradually withdrawing from the country. A report last year by the Center for a New American Security concluded that the war “may ultimately be won or lost by the ability of [Afghan security forces] to assume leadership in this counterinsurgency fight.”
Washington is planning to reduce the overall size of the Afghan forces to about 230,000 after U.S. and NATO forces depart the country at the end of 2014. That would cut NATO’s out-of-pocket expenses for the Afghan forces from roughly $7 billion to roughly $4.1 billion annaully. The U.S. is likely to pay about $2.5 billion of those costs for the indefinite future.
Those ongoing expenses reinforce a point that American policymakers and the war-weary public have long known about the Afghan war: No aspect of it, in either human or financial terms, comes cheap.
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Confusion reigned in aftermath of Afghanistan massacre, even as spin had begun
By Jon Stephenson / McClatchy Washington Bureau | Sunday, April 15, 2012
NAJIBAN, Afghanistan - One month after Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly went on a killing spree here in southern Afghanistan, the saying that "the first casualty of war is truth" continues to hold true in the deaths of eight adults and nine children in the villages of Najiban and Alkozai.
In the days following the attack, in the Panjway district of Kandahar province, confusion reigned as villagers, local officials and officials from the U.S.-led coalition sorted through the grim details of the killings. The conflicting accounts of what happened in the early hours of March 11 are still being pieced together as Bales - whom U.S. officials have called the sole suspect - sits in a U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., awaiting his first court appearance.
What’s clear, however, is that the narrative in Afghanistan of the most devastating civilian massacre of the decade-long U.S.-led war was shaped by several Afghan leaders who tried to exploit the massacre for political purposes. It’s also clear that a severe trust deficit mars the presence of U.S. forces in an area that American officials not long ago described as under control, and which they view as crucial to Afghanistan’s long-term stability.
Many local and international journalists faced challenges in their search for the truth behind the killings. In the fog of information - and with Afghan leaders including President Hamid Karzai under public pressure to respond to the tragedy - there was not just confusion but spin, disinformation and outright lies.
For reporters in Kandahar, news about the killings started trickling in shortly after sunrise that day. "Come quickly," they were told. "There’s been a massacre." They grabbed their notebooks and cameras, scrambled for their cars, and headed for Panjway.
Near the district center, a convoy carrying two senior Afghan officials - Haji Agha Lalai, the head of Kandahar’s provincial council, and Asadullah Khalid, Afghanistan’s minister of tribal and border affairs and formerly governor of Kandahar province - linked up with reporters. Their vehicles roared along a paved road that winds its way past fields and farms, flanked in places by hills and mountains. Soldiers and policemen stood to attention outside the many checkpoints and bases that punctuate the landscape.
Turning onto a dusty road, they came to the small but heavily fortified joint U.S.-Afghan base known as Camp Belambay. A crowd of local villagers sat nearby while Afghan soldiers stood guard at the main gate, nervously cradling their assault rifles.
The officials were ushered inside along with Afghan journalists who’d reached the scene. The dead, who had been shot and in some cases stabbed, lay shrouded in blankets just outside the base.
Khalid and Agha Lalai were shown the bodies. "They were really angry," said one Afghan journalist, who asked not to be identified to protect his job. "They were very upset because the bodies were burnt, the children were burnt. It was a horrible scene."
Khalid called President Karzai to report the news. "Are the media there?" Karzai asked him, according to two Afghan journalists who witnessed the phone call. "Make sure the media know. Make sure they see everything."
A few journalists were taken the short distance to a nearby house at Najiban, where at least 11 of the victims were shot and stabbed. The mood inside was tense. On the way they passed a massive hole in the road. Villagers and Afghan officials have told reporters that this was the site of a homemade bomb blast that struck a U.S. armored vehicle a day or two prior to the slaughter.
They have also said that, prior to the killings, U.S. military personnel had threatened Najiban residents with retaliation for the bomb attack. U.S. officials later said they had no record of either incident.
"We don’t have any indication that ... the attack that’s being described occurred, and certainly no evidence that there were any threats of retaliation by U.S. soldiers," said a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. John Kirby.
The discrepancy between the villagers’ claim and the response of the U.S. military is just one of many examples of confusion and disagreement that surround the killings.
According to the Afghan journalist, who works for an international news agency, Kandahar’s governor, Tooryalai Wesa, originally told local journalists that there were no casualties. Just as inaccurate was a Taliban spokesman’s claim that 50 villagers had been killed.
Meanwhile, Afghan government officials in Kandahar warned local journalists against reporting a high number of casualties.
"Sometimes (Afghan) officials downplay incidents," the journalist said, "but we still report the truth."
By the morning of Day Two, the numbers had settled at 16 killed and five wounded - U.S. officials would later charge Bales with 17 murders - but the motive behind the attack was far from clear.
"Why did this happen?" an elder from Panjway asked Agha Lalai in a meeting with villagers at his sprawling Kandahar compound. Agha Lalai couldn’t furnish a compelling answer.
"He was drunk," an Afghan army colonel said of the killer. Few looked convinced.
As elders took turns to speak that morning there were varying accounts of the shooting spree. Some said they’d been told only one attacker was involved. Others said they’d heard that there were multiple attackers. One suggested that the shooter was a Republican trying to damage President Barack Obama’s re-election chances.
There was silence.
Earlier that day, Shah Wali Karzai - one of President Karzai’s brothers and a prominent local figure - seemed distressed but philosophical about the attack.
"You know, there are extremists in every country," Shah Wali, a soft-spoken man who once lived in the U.S., told McClatchy Newspapers at his home. "There are also Afghans who are killing foreign troops in Afghanistan."
He added: "We have to look at the bigger picture - fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. It would be a tragedy if the foreign forces left."
On Day Three, it was obvious not everyone agreed with this sentiment. In Najiban, Shah Wali Karzai, his brother Qayum, Agha Lalai and Khalid led an official delegation to a memorial service for the victims. After prayers for the deceased, the delegation members rose one by one to speak in the courtyard of a mosque. Villagers who had gathered interrupted them frequently and vociferously.
"We don’t want these Americans here," said one local, as U.S. helicopters thundered nearby and jets roared overhead. "We don’t want this base."
Moments later, as the dignitaries left the mosque, gunfire and explosions erupted. "Taliban?" asked one reporter, as villagers and security men scrambled for cover. "Yes," said a soldier. "Taliban."
Some of the villagers have insisted that no Taliban are present in the area, and in January Maj. Gen. James Terry, then the commander of coalition forces in the area, told reporters that after intense operations against the Taliban, "we now control the decisive terrain that the insurgents have owned up until this point," including Panjway.
But those claims seemed to evaporate in the lengthy firefight that ensued after the memorial ceremony. One Afghan soldier was killed and four others wounded.
Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of the massacre was the claims by some villagers that a large number of U.S. soldiers took part in the killings. Some have claimed - without evidence - that more than 15 servicemen were involved.
Dutch journalist Bette Dam, who spent a week in Kandahar investigating the killings, told McClatchy that "most of these accounts were coming from people who weren’t actually there or from people who were in the area but didn’t actually see the attack."
One of the people Dam spoke to who said he’d witnessed the attack admitted his mind was "confused." Another, a woman from Najiban who said her husband was murdered in front of her by a single U.S. soldier, claimed also to have seen a group of Americans outside the house in the dark.
Dam said she did not believe the people she spoke to were intentionally misleading her or had been pressured to give false accounts. Instead, she thinks the locals genuinely believe that there were multiple attackers because they’re so accustomed to night raids on their homes by groups of soldiers.
"One villager told me that every house in that area has been searched (by groups of soldiers) more than once," said Dam.
Such is the antagonism and distrust toward U.S. forces that an Afghan soldier based at Belambay who reportedly told investigators he’d seen only one U.S. soldier leave the base that night was described as "brainwashed" by some local members of Parliament who backed the theory of multiple attackers.
A high-ranking Afghan army officer told McClatchy that Afghan investigators have seen a U.S. surveillance video that shows a single soldier leaving and returning to the base alone on the night of the killings. But skeptical Afghans have claimed the video could have been faked.
Given that level of distrust, perhaps no amount of evidence could have convinced skeptics that there was only one attacker.
Some Afghan officials appeared to be guided by political considerations in allowing the "multiple attacker" theory to gain traction. Meeting in the presidential palace with relatives of the victims five days after the killings, Karzai openly questioned the U.S. account of a lone gunman. Pointing to one relative, he said: "In his family, in four rooms people were killed - children and women were killed - and then they were all brought together in one room and then set on fire. That, one man cannot do."
Yet the testimony Karzai relied on was from the same Panjway residents whom McClatchy and others had interviewed - people who had lost relatives but not witnessed the killings firsthand.
An even more incendiary allegation came from a delegation of Afghan parliamentarians who conducted their own inquiry. They said they had found that not only 15 to 20 U.S. soldiers had been involved, but that some of the deceased women had been sexually assaulted.
A group of relatives of the dead issued a press statement vehemently denying the claim and accusing the lawmakers of making it up for political advantage. The lawmakers subsequently appeared to drop the claim.
Karzai’s chief investigator, Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, the Afghan army chief - who had previously told an Australian TV news program that he believed the killer had one or two accomplices - told McClatchy that he had heard testimony from survivors that only one man was involved. Karimi said that this testimony was clear and consistent, and he conceded that a highly trained soldier could have committed the murders alone.
The people of Najiban and Alkozai may never accept this. They’ve told politicians and reporters that they have years of negative experiences with the U.S. military. They say that repeated night raids in particular have left them alienated, angry and afraid.
Karimi said that even if Bales is convicted as the lone attacker when he faces a court-martial in the U.S., the relatives of the Panjway victims might still suspect a cover-up.
"And even if he’s executed, people will say, ’No, the U.S. is lying, they’re cheating us. He should be tried here (in Afghanistan).’ So, you cannot please (these) people."
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Analysts: India-Pakistan Cooperation Key to Success in Afghanistan
Voice of America By Sharon Behn April 14, 2012
Pakistan and the United States are working to get their relations back on solid footing as Washington prepares for a military drawdown in neighboring Afghanistan. But some experts believe the more critical factor for peace in the region lies in ties between Pakistan and India.
Analysts in Washington say the relationship between Pakistan and India may turn out to be the most important factor in Afghanistan's future, and that Washington could play a greater role in encouraging the two nuclear-armed rivals to cooperate.
Hassan Abass is a professor of International Security at Washington's National Defense University. Abass said he thinks the area will be in for a difficult time if the United States pulls its military forces out of a politically and economically weak Afghanistan in 2014 without any strong regional consensus. "Leaving Afghanistan in this situation, without a regional or international understanding, means more war, more violence, at least it means continued instability," he said.
The key, Abass says, is collaboration between India and Pakistan. But Abass says despite recent improved ties, the two sides continue to try to influence the outcome in Afghanistan through different proxies.
Islamabad accuses New Delhi of conducting intelligence operations in the region, and India accuses Pakistan of turning a blind eye to armed militants operating out of its territory.
Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, says there is no simple solution. He says that while it makes sense for Pakistan to change its laws so that it can move against these groups inside Pakistan, politically it is a very difficult task for Islamabad. "Until now, they have had an extremely weak legal system and even weaker resolve to move against these groups for various political reasons," he said.
But the recent spillover of various insurgencies and militants' activity into Pakistan, Nawaz says, could force Pakistan's government to focus inward. "The realization, I hope, will grow not just within the government and the military establishment, but also in Pakistan society as a whole that this is a much more serious and immediate threat to Pakistan’s stability and that it does Pakistan no good to allow the export of such activities either with or without the knowledge of the government," he said.
Moeed Yusuf, of the United States Institute of Peace, says persuading India and Pakistan to play a greater cooperative role could take on more importance for Washington, as a long-term US-Pakistan partnership, beyond that of counter-terrorism, may not work out. "I don't think the strategic interests match to the point where these two sides could become principle allies in South Asia," he said.
Relations between Islamabad and Washington have been rocky for years, and anti-terrorism cooperation between the two came to a halt over a NATO cross-border strike in November that killed 24 Pakistani military personnel.
While both sides have been working to restore positive ties, the United States has reacted coolly to conditions set out by Pakistan's parliament to reset relations and reopen NATO supply routes to Afghanistan.
The conditions include a stop to drone strikes in Pakistan and that Pakistani territory not be used for the transport of arms or ammunition into Afghanistan. Washington did not say whether it would abide by those recommendations, but said it would discuss the policy points with Islamabad.
Yusuf insists that peace and stability lie in the normalization of ties between India and Pakistan. "Afghanistan is important, but Pakistan-India is the key element to this," he said.
He says the more Washington can do to bring those two sides together, the better the outcome will be in neighboring Afghanistan.
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Drone Crashes in Ghazni as US Refuses to Halt Attacks in Pakistan
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 14 April 2012
An unmanned US aircraft crashed in Ghazni province on Saturday morning because of a mechanical failure, according to an Isaf spokesperson.
Isaf confirmed via phone Saturday that a drone had crashed in "eastern Afghanistan" without anybody being harmed, with initial reports indicating that there had been a mechanical failure.
"There was no enemy activity in the area at the time," the Isaf spokesman said.
Afghanistan National Directorate of Security provincial intelligence chief Syed Amirshah Sadat told TOLOnews on Saturday morning that the crash had occurred in Ghazni, although he said it happened Friday night.
Meanwhile, US officials told the Associated Press on Friday that the White House has no intentions of ending CIA drone strikes against militant targets on Pakistani soil, amid fresh calls from the country for the strikes to end.
On Thursday, Pakistan's parliament unanimously approved new guidelines for ties with the US. One condition of the new guidelines was for the US to end assassination drone strikes on its territory.
It is not the first time Pakistan has demanded an end to the strikes, with the Pakistani parliament passing a resolution with this demand in 2008.
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