ENB-Iraq / Central Asia

ENB-TENN:தமிழீழச் செய்தியகம்: நேற்றோ நிறுவிய நவீன காலனிய பொம்மை அரசை எதிர்த்து ல...

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ENB-TENN:தமிழீழச் செய்தியகம்: NTC- LIBYA

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2011-10-20T17:51:00.000-07:00

ENB-TENN:தமிழீழச் செய்தியகம்: ஏகாதிபத்திய வாதிகளின் நவீன காலனியாதிக்க உலக மறுபங்...: ஒபாமா, கமெரன்,சாவோக்சி பயங்கரவாதிகளால் லிபியத் தளபதி கடாபி கோரக்கொலை!

Aghanistan no better for ten years of war

2011-10-15T02:35:00.000-07:00

Aghanistan no better for ten years of war

China and Russia veto UN resolution on Syria - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

2011-10-04T15:56:00.000-07:00

China and Russia veto UN resolution on Syria - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Full transcript of Abbas speech at UN Assembly

2011-09-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

Full transcript of Abbas speech at UN General Assembly
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addresses UN General Assembly, September 23, 2011.

Photo by: AP
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addresses UN General Assembly after submitting application for recognition to UN Chief Ban Ki-moon.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addresses UN General Assembly after submitting application

for recognition to UN Chief Ban Ki-moon.

Mr. President of the General Assembly of the United Nations,

Mr. Secretary-General of the United Nations,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

At the outset, I wish to extend my congratulations to H.E. Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser on his assumption of the Presidency of the Assembly for this session, and wish him all success.

I reaffirm today my sincere congratulations, on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian people, to the government and people of South Sudan for its deservedadmission as a full member of the United Nations, wishing them progress and prosperity.

I also congratulate the Secretary-General, H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, on his election for a new term at the helm of the United Nations. This renewal of confidence reflects the world’s appreciation for his efforts, which have strengthened the role of the United Nations.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Question Palestine is intricately linked with the United Nations via the resolutions adopted by its various organs and agencies and via the essential and lauded role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - UNRWA - which embodies the international responsibility towards the plight of Palestine refugees, who are the victims of Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) that occurred in 1948. We aspire for and seek a greater and more

effective role for the United Nations in working to achieve a just and comprehensive peace in our region that ensures the inalienable, legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people as defined by the resolutions of international legitimacy of the United Nations.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A year ago, at this same time, distinguished leaders in this hall addressed the stalled peace efforts in our region. Everyone had high hopes for a new round of final status negotiations, which had begun in early September in Washington under the direct auspices of President Barack Obama and with participation of the Quartet, and with Egyptian and Jordanian participation, to reach a peace agreement within one year. We entered those negotiations with open hearts and attentive ears and sincere intentions, and we were ready with our documents, papers and proposals. But the negotiations broke down just weeks after their launch.

After this, we did not give up and did not cease our efforts for initiatives and contacts. Over the past year we did not leave a door to be knocked or channel to be tested or path to be taken and we did not ignore any formal or informal party of influence and stature to be addressed. We positively considered the various ideas and proposals and initiatives presented from many countries and parties. But all of these sincere efforts and endeavors undertaken by international parties were repeatedly wrecked by the positions of the Israeli government, which quickly dashed the hopes raised by the launch of negotiations last September.

The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine.

Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination against our people that this policy entails. This policy,which constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions, is the primary cause for the

failure of the peace process, the collapse of dozens of opportunities, and the burial of the great hopes that arose from the signing of the Declaration of Principles in 1993 between the

Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel to achieve a just peace that would begin a new era for our region.

The reports of United Nations missions as well as by several Israeli institutions and civil societies convey a horrific picture about the size of the settlement campaign, which the Israeli government does not hesitate to boast about and which it continues to execute through the systematic confiscation of the Palestinian lands and the construction of thousands of new

settlement units in various areas of the West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem, and accelerated construction of the annexation Wall that is eating up large tracts of our land,

dividing it into separate and isolated islands and cantons, destroying family life and communities and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of families. The occupying Power also

continues to refuse permits for our people to build in Occupied East Jerusalem, at the same time that it intensifies its decades-long campaign of demolition and confiscation of homes,

displacing Palestinian owners and residents under a multi-pronged policy of ethnic cleansing aimed at pushing them away from their ancestral homeland. In addition, orders have been issued to deport elected representatives from the city of Jerusalem. The occupying Power also continues to undertake excavations that threaten our holy places, and its military checkpoints prevent our citizens from getting access to their mosques and churches, and it continues to besiege the Holy

City with a ring of settlements imposed to separate the Holy City from the rest of the Palestinian cities.

The occupation is racing against time to redraw the borders on our land according to what it wants and to impose a fait accompli on the ground that changes the realities and that is

undermining the realistic potential for the existence of the State of Palestine.

At the same time, the occupying Power continues to impose its blockade on the Gaza Strip and to target Palestinian civilians by assassinations, air strikes and artillery shelling, persisting with its war of aggression of three years ago on Gaza, which resulted in massive destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques, and the thousands of martyrs and wounded.

The occupying Power also continues its incursions in areas of the Palestinian National Authority through raids, arrests and killings at the checkpoints. In recent years, the criminal actions of armed settler militias, who enjoy the special protection of the occupation army, has intensified

with the perpetration of frequent attacks against our people, targeting their homes, schools, universities, mosques, fields, crops and trees. Despite our repeated warnings, the occupying

Power has not acted to curb these attacks and we hold them fully responsible for the crimes of the settlers.

These are just a few examples of the policy of the Israeli colonial settlement occupation, and this policy is responsible for the continued failure of the successive international attempts to salvage the peace process.

This policy will destroy the chances of achieving a two-State solution upon which there is an international consensus, and here I caution aloud: This settlement policy threatens to also

undermine the structure of the Palestinian National Authority and even end its existence.

In addition, we now face the imposition new conditions not previously raised, conditions that will transform the raging conflict in our inflamed region into a religious conflict and a threat to the future of a million and a half Christian and Muslim Palestinians, citizens of Israel, a matter which we reject and which is impossible for us to accept being dragged into.

All of these actions taken by Israel in our country are unilateral actions and are not based on any earlier agreements. Indeed, what we witness is a selective application of the agreements aimed at perpetuating the occupation. Israel reoccupied the cities of the West Bank by a unilateral action, and reestablished the civil and military occupation by a unilateral action, and it is the one that determines whether or not a Palestinian citizen has the right to reside in any part of the Palestinian Territory. And it is confiscating our land and our water and obstructing our movement as well as the movement of goods. And it is the one obstructing our whole destiny. All of this is unilateral.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In 1974, our deceased leader Yasser Arafat came to this hall and assured the Members of the General Assembly of our affirmative pursuit for peace, urging the United Nations to realize the

inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people, stating: “Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand”.

In 1988, President Arafat again addressed the General Assembly, which convened in Geneva to hear him, where he submitted the Palestinian peace program adopted by the Palestine National Council at its session held that year in Algeria.

When we adopted this program, we were taking a painful and very difficult step for all of us, especially those, including myself, who were forced to leave their homes and their towns and

villages, carrying only some of our belongings and our grief and our memories and the keys of our homes to the camps of exile and the Diaspora in the 1948 Al-Nakba, one of the worst operations of uprooting, destruction and removal of a vibrant and cohesive society that had been contributing in a pioneering and leading way in the cultural, educational and economic renaissance of the Arab Middle East.

Yet, because we believe in peace and because of our conviction in international legitimacy, and because we had the courage to make difficult decisions for our people, and in the absence of

absolute justice, we decided to adopt the path of relative justice - justice that is possible and could correct part of the grave historical injustice committed against our people. Thus, we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine - on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967.

We, by taking that historic step, which was welcomed by the States of the world, made a major concession in order to achieve a historic compromise that would allow peace to be made in the

land of peace.

In the years that followed - from the Madrid Conference and the Washington negotiations leading to the Oslo agreement, which was signed 18 years ago in the garden of the White House and was

linked with the letters of mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel, we persevered and dealt positively and responsibly with all efforts aimed at the achievement of a lasting peace

agreement. Yet, as we said earlier, every initiative and every conference and every new round of negotiations and every movement was shattered on the rock of the Israeli settlement expansion project.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I confirm, on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, which will remain so until the end of the conflict in

all its aspects and until the resolution of all final status issues, the following:

1. The goal of the Palestinian people is the realization of their inalienable national rights in their independent State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on all the land of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the June 1967 war, in conformity with the resolutions of international legitimacy and with the achievement of a just and agreed upon solution to the Palestine refugee issue in accordance with resolution 194, as stipulated in the Arab Peace Initiative which presented the consensus Arab vision to resolve the core the Arab-Israeli conflict and to achieve a just and comprehensive peace. To this we adhere and this is what we are working to achieve. Achieving this desired peace also requires the release of political prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons without delay.

2. The PLO and the Palestinian people adhere to the renouncement of violence and rejection and condemning of terrorism in all its forms, especially State terrorism, and adhere to all

agreements signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.

3. We adhere to the option of negotiating a lasting solution to the conflict in accordance with resolutions of international legitimacy. Here, I declare that the Palestine Liberation

Organization is ready to return immediately to the negotiating table on the basis of the adopted terms of reference based on international legitimacy and a complete cessation of settlement

activities.

4. Our people will continue their popular peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation and its settlement and apartheid policies and its construction of the racist annexation Wall, and they receive support for their resistance, which is consistent with international humanitarian law and international conventions and has the support of peace activists from Israel and around the world, reflecting an impressive, inspiring and courageous example of the strength of this defenseless people, armed only with their dreams, courage, hope and slogans in the face of bullets, tanks, tear gas and bulldozers.

5. When we bring our plight and our case to this international podium, it is a confirmation of our reliance on the political and diplomatic option and is a confirmation that we do not

undertake unilateral steps. Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or de-legitimizing it; rather we want to gain legitimacy for the cause of the people of Palestine. We only aim to de-legitimize the settlement activities and the occupation and apartheid and the logic of ruthless force, and we believe that all the countries of the world stand with us in this regard.

I am here to say on behalf of the Palestinian people and the Palestine Liberation Organization:

We extend our hands to the Israeli government and the Israeli people for peace-making. I say to them: Let us urgently build together a future for our children where they can enjoy freedom, security and prosperity. Let us build the bridges of dialogue instead of checkpoints and walls of separation, and build cooperative relations based on parity and equity between two neighboring States - Palestine and Israel - instead of policies of occupation, settlement, war and eliminating the other.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Despite the unquestionable right of our people to self-determination and to the independence of our State as stipulated in international resolutions, we have accepted in the past few years to engage in what appeared to be a test of our worthiness, entitlement and eligibility. During the

last two years our national authority has implemented a program to build our State institutions.

Despite the extraordinary situation and the Israeli obstacles imposed, a serious extensive project was launched that has included the implementation of plans to enhance and advance the

judiciary and the apparatus for maintenance of order and security, to develop the administrative, financial, and oversight systems, to upgrade the performance of institutions,

and to enhance self-reliance to reduce the need for foreign aid. With the thankful support of Arab countries and donors from friendly countries, a number of large infrastructure projects have been implemented, focused on various aspects of service, with special attention to rural and marginalized areas.

In the midst of this massive national project, we have been strengthening what we seeking to be the features of our State: from the preservation of security for the citizen and public order; to the promotion of judicial authority and rule of law; to strengthening the role of women via legislation, laws and participation; to ensuring the protection of public freedoms and strengthening the role of civil society institutions; to institutionalizing rules and regulations for ensuring accountability and transparency in the work of our Ministries and departments; to entrenching the pillars of democracy as the basis for the Palestinian political life.

When division struck the unity of our homeland, people and institutions, we were determined to adopt dialogue for restoration of our unity. We succeeded months ago in achieving national reconciliation and we hope that its implementation will be accelerated in the coming weeks. The core pillar of this reconciliation was to turn to the people through legislative and presidential elections within a year, because the State we want will be a State characterized by the rule of law, democratic exercise and protection of the freedoms and equality of all citizens without any discrimination and the transfer of power through the ballot box.

The reports issued recently by the United Nations, the World Bank, the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC) and the International Monetary Fund confirm and laud what has been accomplished,

considering it a remarkable and unprecedented model. The consensus conclusion by the AHLC a few days ago here described what has been accomplished as a “remarkable international success story” and confirmed the readiness of the Palestinian people and their institutions for the immediate independence of the State of Palestine.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is no longer possible to redress the issue of the blockage of the horizon of the peace talks with the same means and methods that have been repeatedly tried and proven unsuccessful over the past years. The crisis is far too deep to beneglected, and what is more dangerous are attempts to simply circumvent it or postpone its explosion.

It is neither possible, nor practical, nor acceptable to return to conducting business as usual, as if everything is fine. It is futile to go into negotiations without clear parameters and in the absence of credibility and a specific timetable. Negotiations will be meaningless as long as the occupation army on the ground continues to entrench its occupation, instead of rolling it back, and continues to change the demography of our country in order to create a new basis on which to alter the borders.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a moment of truth and my people are waiting to hear the answer of the world. Will it allow Israel to continue its occupation, the only occupation in the world? Will it allow Israel to remain a State above the law and accountability? Will it allow Israel to continue rejecting the resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice and the positions of the overwhelming majority of countries in the world?

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people in the homeland and in the the Diaspora, to say, after 63 years of suffering of the ongoing Nakba: Enough. It is time for the Palestinian people to gain their freedom and independence.

The time has come to end the suffering and the plight of millions of Palestine refugees in the homeland and the Diaspora, to end their displacement and to realize their rights, some of them forced to take refuge more than once in different places of the world.

At a time when the Arab peoples affirm their quest for democracy - the Arab Spring - the time is now for the Palestinian Spring, the time for independence.

The time has come for our men, women and children to live normal lives, for them to be able to sleep without waiting for the worst that the next day will bring; for mothers to be assured that their children will return home without fear of suffering killing, arrest or humiliation; for students to be able to go to their schools and universities without checkpoints obstructing them. The time has come for sick people to be able to reach hospitals normally, and for our farmers to be able to take care of their good land without fear of the occupation seizing the land and its water, which the wall prevents access to, or fear of the settlers, for whom

settlements are being built on our land and who are uprooting and burning the olive trees that have existed for hundreds of years. The time has come for the thousands of prisoners to be

released from the prisons to return to their families and their children to become a part of building their homeland, for the freedom of which they have sacrificed.

My people desire to exercise their right to enjoy a normal life like the rest of humanity. They believe what the great poet Mahmoud Darwish said: Standing here, staying here, permanent here, eternal here, and we have one goal, one, one: to be.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We profoundly appreciate and value the positions of all States that have supported our struggle and our rights and recognized the State of Palestine following the Declaration ofIndependence

in 1988, as well as the countries that have recently recognized the State of Palestine and those that have upgraded the level of Palestine’s representation in their capitals. I also salute the Secretary-General, who said a few days ago that the Palestinian State should have been established years ago.

Be assured that this support for our people is more valuable to them than you can imagine, for it makes them feel that someone is listening to their narrative and that their tragedy and the

horrors of Al-Nakba and the occupation, from which they have so suffered, are not being ignored.

And, it reinforces their hope that stems from the belief that justice is possible in this world. The loss of hope is the most ferocious enemy of peace and despair is the strongest

ally of extremism.

I say: The time has come for my courageous and proud people, after decades of displacement and colonial occupation and ceaseless suffering, to live like other peoples of the earth, free in a sovereign and independent homeland.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to inform you that, before delivering this statement, I submitted, in my capacity as the President of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, an application for the admission of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, as a full member of the United Nations.

I call upon Mr. Secretary-General to expedite transmittal of our request to the Security Council, and I call upon the distinguished members of the Security Council to vote in favor of our full membership. I also call upon the States that did not recognized the State of Palestine as yet to do so.

Excellencies,Ladies and Gentlemen,

The support of the countries of the world for our endeavor is a victory for truth,freedom, justice, law and international legitimacy, and it provides tremendous support for the peace

option and enhances the chances of success of the negotiations.

Excellencies,Ladies and Gentlemen,

Your support for the establishment of the State of Palestine and for its admission to the United Nations as a full member is the greatest contribution to peacemaking in the Holy Land.

I thank you.

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http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/full-transcript-of-abbas-speech-at-un-general-assembly-1.386385
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ENB-TENN:தமிழீழச் செய்தியகம்: Biden to meet with Putin on second day of Moscow v...: "Biden to meet with Putin on second day of Moscow visit Published: 10 March, 2011, 08:35 Edited: 10 March, 2011, 10:12 Russia Today US Vi..."

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

2011-03-07T14:23:00.000-08:00

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

http://arabiasummit.com/

2011-03-07T12:53:00.000-08:00

http://arabiasummit.com/

How Egypt's protesters will change US ties

2011-03-05T03:35:00.000-08:00

How Egypt's protesters will change US ties

Britain and Libya: a very embarrassing friendship | News & Politics | News & Comment | The First Post

2011-03-04T02:33:00.000-08:00

Britain and Libya: a very embarrassing friendship News & Politics News & Comment The First Post

Defiant Gaddafi confined to Tripoli - Africa - Al Jazeera English

2011-02-27T23:02:00.001-08:00

Defiant Gaddafi confined to Tripoli - Africa - Al Jazeera English

2011-02-27T23:02:00.000-08:00

Defiant Gaddafi confined to Tripoli - Africa - Al Jazeera English

கடாபியின் யுத்தப் பிரகடனம்

2011-02-22T15:56:00.000-08:00

Gaddafi's son talks of conspiracy - Africa - Al Jazeera English

2011-02-20T15:48:00.000-08:00

Gaddafi's son talks of conspiracy - Africa - Al Jazeera English

Bahrain - 15 Feb 2011, Massive Demonstrations at Pearl Roundabout in Man...

2011-02-18T05:23:00.000-08:00

Bahrain Crackdown: Riot police storm protest camp on Manama Pearl Square

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Libya Protest Uprising February 17 2011 Salute Libya

2011-02-18T04:55:00.000-08:00

Why Global Food Prices Are Rising: CFR's Laurie Garrett Explains

2011-02-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

Bahrain protesters hold ground - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

2011-02-16T10:58:00.000-08:00

Bahrain protesters hold ground - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

قمع مسيرة سلمية في البحرين - الديه يوم الغضب 14 فبراير 2011

2011-02-15T02:30:00.000-08:00

Young boy leads chants at Feb. 5, 2011 solidarity rally for democracy in...

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Algeria protesters push for change - Africa - Al Jazeera English

2011-02-12T20:27:00.000-08:00

Algeria protesters push for change - Africa - Al Jazeera English

A silent military coup behind Hosni Mubarak's exit - Hindustan Times

2011-02-12T03:28:00.000-08:00

A silent military coup behind Hosni Mubarak's exit - Hindustan Times

Seeman - 2011 - 01 - 16 - Speech - TMMK, Muslims, Islam, History of Babr...

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Hosni Mubarak resigns as president - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

2011-02-11T09:34:00.000-08:00

Hosni Mubarak resigns as president - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Wael Ghonim's Dream Interview - Part 2

2011-02-08T10:51:00.000-08:00

Conquering Liberation

2011-02-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

Re: Free Gaza Song Contest

2011-02-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

We will not go down (Song for Gaza) - by Michael Heart

2011-02-07T07:33:00.000-08:00

وينك يا صدام

2011-02-07T05:18:00.000-08:00

SADDAM'S STATUE TOPPLES

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Julia Boutros Ahibaii Videoclip

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Mubarak's day of departure?

2011-02-04T02:21:00.000-08:00

EGYPT: Why the Army Won’t Shoot Protesters - IPS ipsnews.net

2011-02-03T07:02:00.000-08:00

EGYPT: Why the Army Won’t Shoot Protesters - IPS ipsnews.net

PFLP stands beside the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions as great Arab popular movements

2011-02-03T00:56:00.000-08:00

Comrade Jamal: The Front stands beside the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions as great Arab popular movements

Comrade Jamal: The Front stands beside the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions as great Arab popular movements

Comrade Hussein al-Jamal, member of the Central Committee of the Gaza branch of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said on February 2, 2011 that "the Front will never stand aside or claim neutrality toward popular revolution or the national liberation movements in the Arab world. Our Front stands beside all of the Arab people, and especially the peoples of Egypt and Tunisia at this time of their great revolutions."

In an interview with Gaza-based Voice of the People radio, Comrade Jamal said that the "clock of the Arab world will not go backwards, but instead forwards toward freedom and emancipation from oppression," adding that the victory of the Arab revolutions would deal a severe blow to Israel and the Zionist movement.

He noted that Israel is currently confused and carefully watching events in Egypt, and warned of attempts by the state meant to subvert the popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Comrade Jamal said further that the common factor of these revolutions is their popular base and origin, and have a fundamentally progressive and leftist character.

Comrade Jamal related the revolutionary Arab movements to the Palestinian cause, saying that the Arab masses are raising slogans against Zionist occupation and normalization with the Israeli enemy as part of the national, patriotic, progressive direction of the popular uprising. He said that the basis for the revolution are the popular classes, seeking freedom from oppression, social justice, rights and dignity. He recalled the call for national dignity inspired by Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who burned himself alive in protest, sparking the Tunisian revolution, alongside the call of the Egyptian people for national dignity, and recalling the involvement of Palestinian workers in 1987 in demanding their dignity that sparked the Intifada.

Comrade Jamal warned against any attempt to suppress or divert the popular Intifada in Egypt and Tunisia in order to serve U.S. interests in the region. It has been clear from the beginning that the U.S. and Israel have been put on edge and greatly alarmed by the demonstrations, he said, as they represent mass rejection of U.S.-imposed, Israel-accommodating dictators.

He especially praised the involvement of Egyptian youth in the revolution, including the young leadership of the April 6 movement, pointing to the role of youth in a revolutionary moment, representing the present and the future.

In Lebanon, Comrade Marwan Abdel-Al, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP spoke at a mass meeting in solidarity with the people of Egypt and Tunisia in Sidon. The hall filled with crowds of citizens, trade union activists, Palestinian organizations, and Lebanese progressive groups. Comrade Abdel-Al praised the revolutionary movements and said that Egypt's youth today are breaking the chains of the future and of history, and also lifting the restraints placed upon the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause.

He added that today in Tahrir Square the voice of Egypt is being heard and the spirit of Gamal Abdel Nasser appearing once more. He recalled Nasser's words that "what was taken by force can only be restored by force," as a seed-word of resistance planted in the generations that have come since and endured so much injustice through the years of dictatorship and defeat. He said that it was clear that through all these years, the people of Egypt have never accepted injustice, and that the limits of the revolution do not end at ending dictatorship and corruption. Comrade Abdel-Al noted that the Egyptian people and popular movements have always rejected normalization with Israel despite all attempts to force it upon them through trade and politics.

Furthermore, he praised the Egyptian and Tunisian activists who long stood against the regimes, enduring exile, deportation, torture and imprisonment, saying that their

long years of work are bearing fruit today; he noted that the Arab regimes had rejected all calls for political social and economic reform and are now facing a people committed to change and true justice. He noted that "regime change" had been attempted to be imposed by the U.S., forcing separation and division upon the Arab people, which had always been rejected, but an entirely new type of regime change was being created today by the popular masses in the streets of Egypt and Tunisia, who were establishing new levels of unity in ridding themselves of their U.S.-sponsored dictatorships.

Dr. Osama Sa'ad, president of the Nazareth Popular Organization, also spoke at the event, saluting the Arab people and noting that this will lead to the collapse of regimes based on dependency, corruption and exploitation. Corrupt regimes, he said, will not survive in the face of the will for change among the Arab revolutionary people. He noted that victory in Egypt will change the face of the Arab world, prompting terror and alarm in Washington and Tel Aviv, and warned against all attempts and conspiracies to end the Intifada early and push people to accept superficial change while retaining the existing character of the regime.

===========================================================

Egyptian Unrest: Dynasty, Devolution, or Revolution?

Harlan Ullman
February 02, 2011

Is what is happening in Egypt today, and Tunisia earlier, the harbinger of viral unrest with consequences akin to the French Revolution of 1789 or the Russian Revolution of 1917 but in real time?

Or, is this unrest a localized protest over the continuing absence of jobs, food and political inclusion that so far lacks an ideological motivation and is unlikely to spread throughout the region?

Will these protests lead to devolution of power in some meaningful form including President Hosni Mubarak's resignation or to a real Egyptian revolution? And will greater "democratization" actually address the basic economic and political causes of these protests and revolts in Egypt?

So far, the answers are in the category of what former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called "unknown unknowns."

Before drawing grand conclusions about what this unrest may mean, context is important. First, suppose Mubarak had moved for real reforms years ago with a more open government. Would economic conditions such as poverty and lack of jobs been better, worse or about the same?

Second, of the external powers, only the United States has visibly and publicly interjected itself into Egyptian politics. The Obama administration has been walking a fine line between supporting an old ally and democratic forces that could become hijacked by well-organized radicals. But how much influence can America exert and what is its track record in fashioning outcomes favorable to its interests and policies in similar circumstances of public protest?

Third, history matters. Unlike the West, neither the Middle East nor its majority Islamic religion has a democratic tradition. Dynasties, not ballot boxes, have ruled. And unlike Christianity, Islam hasn't undergone either a Martin Luther reformation or a Renaissance. Will these differences count in the 21st century? And, more recently, we cannot recreate the mistakes following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in early 2003 and the failure to plan for the post-war. What happens in Egypt for the long term will matter more than simply Mubarak stepping down.

Regarding the economic and political forces that have precipitated this wave of Egyptian protests, it isn't self-evident that democratic rule in Egypt would have sufficiently improved living standards to quell public reaction. Egypt remains a poor and in many places an overpopulated country. Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Persian Gulf states have the resources. Yet, revolutionary democratic change given the specter of radical Islam is a potential nightmare.

America's record in affecting potentially revolutionary events, since winning its own, has generally been poor. During the Cold War, America supported autocratic anti-Communist leaders not democrats. King Farouk of Egypt, the Shah of Iran and Fernando Marcos among others were exhibits A as well as Vietnam.

The implosion of the Soviet Union that led to a Europe whole and free (with a few exceptions) allowed long-established democratic roots to take hold. That isn't true in the Middle East where there is no democratic tradition and dynasties have ruled for centuries.

Egyptians' access to food, jobs, enfranchisement and a say in government are driving the opposition's protests -- as intolerable treatment and denial of basic rights of Englishmen drove America's revolutionaries in 1775. Ideology is largely missing in Egyptian protests -- remarkable because Egypt has been the font for much of Islamic radicalism and for personalities who have advanced and are advancing this case for revolution.

Mubarak has been obstinate and, unlike the Shah but like Iran's ruling "mullahocracy" today, has and will use some level of force to contain public demonstrations and protests or to allow chaos to sap public outrage. Moral suasion won't work. And U.S. President Barack Obama cannot persuade Mubarak with brilliant argument or awe him into submission by personal intimidation.

Indeed, aggressive pursuit of human rights demands by this administration will almost certainly backfire in Egypt. And Mubarak's fallback position will be to relinquish power to his supporters in the new government that will hardly guarantee greater democracy or to elections that will assure reform.

As in Afghanistan, the United States has no good options in Egypt. The one fragile tool the United States has is economic leverage through the $1.5 billion sent to Egypt annually since the Camp David peace accords with Israel in 1979. And that leverage is weak.

America's political debate over what to or not to do isn't relevant because we lack the tools to alter outcomes and haven't found the means to create a countervailing or leveraging strategy that will influence events in Egypt.

For one of the few times in its capacity as a superpower, the United States must keep its own counsel. Domestic reaction from left and right will be intense and it was domestic politics that no doubt persuaded Obama to inform the public on nationwide television of his conversation with Mubarak just minutes before.

Maybe it's time to speak more softly whether or not we have a big or any stick while conjuring up contingency plans from B to Z with great haste because what comes post-Mubarak will determine ultimately success or failure for Egypt.

Harlan Ullman is Senior Advisor at the Atlantic Council, Chairman of the Killowen Group that advises leaders of government and business, and a frequent advisor to NATO. This article was syndicated by UPI.

Clashes break out in Tahrir Square - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

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Clashes break out in Tahrir Square - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

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In Pictures: Revolt on the Nile

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In Pictures: Revolt on the Nile

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Protesters flood Egypt streets - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

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BEAUTIFUL video of Egypt's protests!

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Egypt protests continue into second day despite ban and police.

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The "napkin map" revealed - The Palestine Papers - Al Jazeera English

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ENB: The Afghan War Diary

2010-07-27T04:50:00.000-07:00

The Afghan War Diary

2004-2010

Wiki Leaks Vs White House

=============================

* ''Our goal in disclosing secret documents is to reveal “unethical behavior” by governments and corporations.''

: WikiLeaks.org

* ''WikiLeaks’s action a breach of federal law''

: White House

========================================

The War Logs ' : An archive of classified military documents offers an unvarnished view of the war in Afghanistan. WikiLeaks.org, the online organization that posted tens of thousands of classified military field reports about the Afghan war on Sunday, says its goal in disclosing secret documents is to reveal “unethical behavior” by governments and corporations. The war logs reveal civilian killings by coalition forces, secret efforts to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, and discuss the involvement of Iran and Pakistan in supporting insurgents. A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

==============================

The HINDU

News » International Published: July 27, 2010 08:38 IST Updated: July 27, 2010 10:10 IST Washington, July 27, 2010

WikiLeaks’s action a breach of federal law: White House

PTI
A Pentagon investigation into the leaked documents was under way, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
WikiLeaks’s decision to post on its website more than 92,000 classified documents related to war in Afghanistan is a breach of federal law and an investigation is on the leak of secretive Pentagon documents, the White House said today.
“They constitute a potentially national security concern,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs today said as he informed reporters that he and others in the Obama Administration were informed about the upcoming release of such a document by the news outlets that were given pre-release access to these documents by Wikileaks.
“I remember talking to the (U.S.) President sometime last week after discussions with news organisations that these stories were coming,” he said in response to a question.
“I think our reaction to this type of material, a breach of federal law, is always the same, and that is, whenever you have the potential for names and for operations and for programs to be out there in the public domain, that it, besides being against the law, has the potential to be very harmful to those that are in our military, those that are cooperating with our military, and those that are working to keep us safe,” Mr. Gibbs said.
There is an ongoing investigation into the leak of classified documents, he said, but refrained from going into details.
“I think there is no doubt that this is a concerning development in operational security. It poses a very real and potential threat to those that are working hard every day to keep us safe,” Mr. Gibbs said.
Noting that these documents being made public harm national security, Mr. Gibbs said it’s not the content as much as it is there are names, there are operations, there’s logistics, there’s sources.
“All of that information out in a public way has the potential to do harm. If somebody is cooperating with the federal government and their name is listed in an action report, I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that that could potentially put a group or an individual at great personal risk,” he argued.
Mr. Gibbs said they were shown the documents by Wikileaks.
“Nobody in this government was afforded the opportunity to see what they do or don’t have. I don’t know that this question is relevant for me as much as it is for him,” he said, adding the White House did notify the relevant committees on Capitol Hill that these documents were about to go online.
The spokesperson said through The New York Times, he passed a message to the head of Wikileaks that that could harm personnel or threaten operations or security.

=========================

July 25, 2010

View Is Bleaker Than Official Portrayal of War in Afghanistan

This article was written and reported by C. J. Chivers, Carlotta Gall, Andrew W. Lehren, Mark Mazzetti, Jane Perlez, and Eric Schmitt, with contributions from Jacob Harris and Alan McLean. The New York Times

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html

A six-year archive of classified military documents made public on Sunday offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.
The secret documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year.
The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday.
The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.
As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.
The material comes to light as Congress and the public grow increasingly skeptical of the deepening involvement in Afghanistan and its chances for success as next year’s deadline to begin withdrawing troops looms.
The archive is a vivid reminder that the Afghan conflict until recently was a second-class war, with money, troops and attention lavished on Iraq while soldiers and Marines lamented that the Afghans they were training were not being paid.
The reports — usually spare summaries but sometimes detailed narratives — shed light on some elements of the war that have been largely hidden from the public eye:
• The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
• Secret commando units like Task Force 373 — a classified group of Army and Navy special operatives — work from a “capture/kill list” of about 70 top insurgent commanders. These missions, which have been stepped up under the Obama administration, claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment.
• The military employs more and more drone aircraft to survey the battlefield and strike targets in Afghanistan, although their performance is less impressive than officially portrayed. Some crash or collide, forcing American troops to undertake risky retrieval missions before the Taliban can claim the drone’s weaponry.
• The Central Intelligence Agency has expanded paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan. The units launch ambushes, order airstrikes and conduct night raids. From 2001 to 2008, the C.I.A. paid the budget of Afghanistan’s spy agency and ran it as a virtual subsidiary.
Over all, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war. But in some cases the documents show that the American military made misleading public statements — attributing the downing of a
helicopter to conventional weapons instead of heat-seeking missiles or giving Afghans credit for missions carried out by Special Operations commandos.
White House officials vigorously denied that the Obama administration had presented a misleading portrait of the war in Afghanistan.
“On Dec. 1, 2009, President Obama announced a new strategy with a substantial increase in resources for Afghanistan, and increased focus on Al Qaeda and Taliban safe-havens in Pakistan, precisely because of the grave situation that had developed over several years,” said Gen. James L. Jones, White House national security adviser, in a statement released Sunday.
“We know that serious challenges lie ahead, but if Afghanistan is permitted to slide backwards, we will again face a threat from violent extremist groups like Al Qaeda who will have more space to plot and train,” the statement said.
General Jones also decried the decision by WikiLeaks to make the documents public, saying that the United States "strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security."”
“WikiLeaks made no effort to contact us about these documents – the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted,” General Jones said.
The archive is clearly an incomplete record of the war. It is missing many references to seminal events and does not include more highly classified information. The documents also do not cover events in 2010, when the influx of more troops into Afghanistan began and a new counterinsurgency strategy took hold.
They suggest that the military’s internal assessments of the prospects for winning over the Afghan public, especially in the early days, were often optimistic, even naïve.
There are fleeting — even taunting — reminders of how the war began in the occasional references to the elusive Osama bin Laden. In some reports he is said to be attending meetings in Quetta, Pakistan. His money man is said to be flying from Iran to North Korea to buy weapons. Mr. bin Laden has supposedly ordered a suicide attack against the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. These reports all seem secondhand at best.
The reports portray a resilient, canny insurgency that has bled American forces through a war of small cuts. The insurgents set the war’s pace, usually fighting on ground of their own choosing and then slipping away.
Sabotage and trickery have been weapons every bit as potent as small arms, mortars or suicide bombers. So has Taliban intimidation of Afghan officials and civilians — applied with pinpoint pressure through threats, charm, violence, money, religious fervor and populist appeals.

FEB. 19, 2008 ZABUL PROVINCE Intelligence Summary: Officer Threatened
An Afghan National Army brigade commander working in southern Afghanistan received a phone call from a Taliban mullah named Ezat, one brief report said. “Mullah Ezat told the ANA CDR to surrender
and offered him $100,000(US) to quit working for the Afghan Army,” the report said. “Ezat also stated that he knows where the ANA CDR is from and knows his family.” Read the Document » (n/a) Link n/a in this blog.

MAY 9, 2009 KUNAR PROVINCE Intelligence Summary: Taliban Recruiter
A Taliban commander, Mullah Juma Khan, delivered a eulogy at the funeral of a slain insurgent. He played on the crowd’s emotions, according to the report: “Juma cried while telling the people an unnamed woman and her baby were killed while the woman was nursing the baby.” Finally he made his pitch: “Juma then told the people they needed to be angry at CF [Coalition Force] and ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] for causing this tragedy” and “invited everyone who wants to fight to join the fighters who traveled with him.” Read the Document » (n/a)

The insurgents use a network of spies, double agents, collaborators and informers — anything to undercut coalition forces and the effort to build a credible and effective Afghan government capable of delivering security and services.
The reports repeatedly describe instances when the insurgents have been seen wearing government uniforms, and other times when they have roamed the country or appeared for battle in the very Ford Ranger pickup trucks that the United States had provided the Afghan Army and police force.

NOV. 20, 2006 KABUL Incident Report: Insurgent Subterfuge
After capturing four pickup trucks from the Afghan National Army, the Taliban took them to Kabul to be used in suicide bombings. “They intend to use the pick-up trucks to target ANA compounds, ISAF and GOA convoys, as well as ranking GOA and ISAF officials,” said a report, referring to coalition forces and the government of Afghanistan. “The four trucks were also accompanied by an unknown quantity of ANA uniforms to facilitate carrying out the attacks.” Read the Document » (n/a)

The Taliban’s use of heat-seeking missiles has not been publicly disclosed — indeed, the military has issued statements that these internal records contradict.
In the form known as a Stinger, such weapons were provided to a previous generation of Afghan insurgents by the United States, and helped drive out the Soviets. The reports suggest that the Taliban’s use of these missiles has been neither common nor especially effective; usually the missiles missed.

MAY 30, 2007 HELMAND PROVINCE Incident Report: Downed Helicopter
An American CH-47 transport helicopter was struck by what witnesses described as a portable heat-seeking surface-to-air missile after taking off from a landing zone.
The helicopter, the initial report said, “was engaged and struck with a Missile ... shortly after crossing over the Helmand River. The missile struck the aircraft in the left engine. The impact of the missile projected the aft end of the aircraft up as it burst into flames followed immediately by a nose dive into the crash site with no survivors.”
The crash killed seven soldiers: five Americans, a Briton and a Canadian.
Multiple witnesses saw a smoke trail behind the missile as it rushed toward the helicopter. The smoke trail was an important indicator. Rocket-propelled grenades do not leave them. Heat-seeking missiles do.
The crew of other helicopters reported the downing as a surface-to-air missile strike. But that was not what a NATO spokesman told Reuters.
“Clearly, there were enemy fighters in the area,” said the spokesman, Maj. John Thomas. “It’s not impossible for small-arms fire to bring down a helicopter.”
The reports paint a disheartening picture of the Afghan police and soldiers at the center of the American exit strategy.
The Pentagon is spending billions to train the Afghan forces to secure the country. But the police have proved to be an especially risky investment and are often described as distrusted, even loathed, by Afghan civilians. The reports recount episodes of police brutality, corruption petty and large, extortion and kidnapping. Some police officers defect to the Taliban. Others are accused of collaborating with insurgents, arms smugglers and highway bandits. Afghan police officers defect with trucks or weapons, items captured during successful ambushes or raids.

MARCH 10, 2008 PAKTIA PROVINCE Investigation Report: Extortion by the Police
This report captured the circular and frustrating effort by an American investigator to stop Afghan police officers at a checkpoint from extorting payments from motorists. After a line of drivers described how they were pressed to pay bribes, the American investigator and the local police detained the accused checkpoint police officers.
“While waiting,” the investigator wrote, “I asked the seven patrolmen we detained to sit and relax while we sorted through a problem without ever mentioning why they were being detained. Three of the patrolmen responded by saying that they had only taken money from the truck drivers to buy fuel for their generator.”
Two days later when the American followed up, he was told by police officers that the case had been dropped because the witness reports had all been lost. Read the Document » (n/a)

One report documented the detention of a military base worker trying to leave the base with GPS units hidden under his clothes and taped to his leg. Another described the case of a police chief in Zurmat, in Paktia Province, who was accused of falsely reporting that his officers had been in a firefight so he could receive thousands of rounds of new ammunition, which he sold in a bazaar.
Coalition trainers report that episodes of cruelty by the Afghan police undermine the effort to build a credible security force to take over when the allies leave.

OCT. 11, 2009 BALKH PROVINCE Incident Report: Brutal Police Chief
This report began with an account of Afghan soldiers and police officers harassing and beating local civilians for refusing to cooperate in a search. It then related the story of a district police commander who forced himself on a 16-year-old girl. When a civilian complained, the report continued, “The district commander ordered his bodyguard to open fire on the AC [Afghan civilian]. The bodyguard refused, at which time the district commander shot [the bodyguard] in front of the AC.”
Rivalries and friction between the largest Afghan security services — the police and the army — are evident in a number of reports. Sometimes the tensions erupted in outright clashes, as was recorded in the following report from last December that was described as an “enemy action.” The “enemy” in this case was the Afghan National Security Force.

DEC. 4, 2009 ORUZGAN PROVINCE Incident Report: Police and Army Rivalry
A Car accident turned deadly when an argument broke out between the police and the Afghan National Army. “The argument escalated and ANA & ANP started to shoot at each other,” a report said.
An Afghan soldier and three Afghan police officers were wounded in the shootout. One civilian was killed and six others were wounded by gunfire. Read the Document » (n/a)

One sign of the weakness of the police is that in places they have been replaced by tribal warlords who are charged — informally but surely — with providing the security the government cannot. Often the warlords operate above the law.

NOV. 22, 2009 KANDAHAR PROVINCE Incident Report: Illegal Checkpoint
A private security convoy, ferrying fuel from Kandahar to Oruzgan, was stopped by what was thought to be 100 insurgents armed with assault rifles and PK machine guns, a report said.
It turned out the convoy had been halted by “the local Chief of Police,” who was “demanding $2000-$3000 per truck” as a kind of toll. The chief, said the report, from NATO headquarters in Southern Afghanistan, “states he needs the money to run his operation.”
The chief was not actually a police chief. He was Matiullah Khan, a warlord and an American-backed ally of President Karzai who was arguably Oruzgan’s most powerful man. He had a contract, the Ministry of Interior said, to protect the road so NATO’s supply convoys could drive on it, but he had apparently decided to extort money from the convoys himself.
Late in the day, Mr. Matiullah, after many interventions, changed his mind. The report said that friendly forces “report that the COMPASS convoy is moving again and did not pay the fee required.”
The documents show how the best intentions of Americans to help rebuild Afghanistan through provincial reconstruction teams ran up against a bewildering array of problems — from corruption to cultural misunderstandings — as they tried to win over the public by helping repair dams and bridges, build schools and train local authorities.
A series of reports from 2005 to 2008 chart the frustrations of one of the first such teams, assigned to Gardez, in Paktia Province.

NOV. 28, 2006 PAKTIA PROVINCE Civil Affairs Report: Orphanage Opens
An American civil affairs officer could barely contain her enthusiasm as she spoke at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new orphanage, built with money from the American military.
The officer said a friend had given her a leather jacket to present to “someone special,” the report noted. She chose the orphanage’s director. “The commander stated that she could think of no one more deserving then someone who cared for orphans,” it said.
The civil affairs team handed out blankets, coats, scarves and toys. The governor even gave money from his own pocket. “All speeches were very positive,” the report concluded. Read the Document » (n/a)

DEC. 20, 2006 PAKTIA PROVINCE Civil Affairs Report: Not Many Orphans
The team dropped by to check on the orphanage. “We found very few orphans living there and could not find most of the HA [humanitarian assistance] we had given them,” the report noted.
The team raised the issue with the governor of Paktia, who said he was also concerned and suspected that the money he had donated had not reached the children. He visited the orphanage himself. Only 30 children were there; the director had claimed to have 102. Read the Document » (n/a)

OCT. 16, 2007 PAKTIA PROVINCE Civil Affairs Report: An Empty Orphanage
Nearly a year after the opening of the orphanage, the Americans returned for a visit. “There are currently no orphans at the facility due to the Holiday. (Note: orphans are defined as having no father, but may still have mother and a family structure that will have them home for holidays.)” Read the Document » (n/a)

FEB. 25, 2007 PAKTIA PROVINCE District Report: Lack of Resources
As the Taliban insurgency strengthened, the lack of a government presence in the more remote districts — and the government’s inability to provide security or resources even to its own officials — is evident in the reports.
An official from Dand Wa Patan, a small sliver of a district along the border with Pakistan, so urgently wanted to talk to the members of the American team that he traveled three and a half hours by taxi — he had no car — to meet them.
“He explained that the enemy had changed their tactics in the area and were no longer fighting from the mountains, no longer sending rockets toward his compound and other areas,” the report noted. “He stated that the enemy focus was on direct action and that his family was a primary target.”
Ten days earlier the Taliban crept up to the wall of his family compound and blew up one of the security towers, the report said. His son lost his legs in the explosion.
He pleaded for more police officers, weapons and ammunition. He also wanted a car so he could drive around the district he was supposed to oversee.
But the Americans’ situation was not much better. For months the reports show how a third — or even a half — of the team’s vehicles were out of service, awaiting spare parts.

NOV. 15, 2006 PAKTIA PROVINCE Civil Affairs Report: Local Corruption
For a while the civil affairs team worked closely with the provincial governor, described as “very charismatic.” Yet both he and the team are hampered by corrupt, negligent and antagonistic officials.
The provincial chief of police is described in one report as “the axel of corruption.”
“He makes every effort to openly and blatantly take money from the ANP troopers and the officers,” one sympathetic officer told the Americans.
Other officers are more clever. One forged rosters, to collect pay for imaginary police officers. A second set up illegal checkpoints to collects tolls around Gardez. Still another stole food and uniforms, leaving his soldiers underfed and ill equipped for the winter.
The governor, meanwhile, was all but trapped. Such animosity developed between him and a senior security official that the governor could not leave his office for weeks at a time, fearing for his life. Finally, the corrupt officials were replaced. But it took months.

SEPT. 24, 2007 PAKTIA PROVINCE Civil Affairs Report: The Cost of Corruption
Their meetings with Afghan district officials gave the American civil affairs officers unique insights into local opinions. Sometimes, the Afghan officials were brutally honest in their assessments.
In one case, provincial council officials visited the Americans at their base in Gardez to report threats — the Taliban had tossed a grenade into their office compound and were prowling the hills. Then the officials began a tirade.
“The people of Afghanistan keep loosing their trust in the government because of the high amount of corrupted government officials,” the report quoted them as saying. “The general view of the Afghans is that the current government is worst than the Taliban.”
“The corrupted government officials are a new concept brought to Afghanistan by the AMERICANS,” the oldest member of the group told the civil affairs team.
In conclusion, the civil affairs officer who wrote the report warned, “The people will support the Anti-Coalition forces and the security condition will degenerate.” He recommended a public information program to educate Afghans about democracy. Read the Document »
The reports also evoke the rivalries and tensions that swirl within the presidential palace between President Karzai’s circle and the warlords.

OCT. 16, 2006 KABUL Intelligence Summary: Political Intrigue
In a short but heated meeting at the presidential palace, the Kabul police chief, Brig. Gen. Mir Amanullah Gozar, angrily refuted accusations made publicly by Jamil Karzai that he was corrupt and lacked professional experience. The report of the meeting identified Jamil Karzai as the president’s brother; he is in fact a cousin.
General Gozar “said that if Jamil were not the president’s Brother he would kidnap, torture, and kill him,” the report said. He added that he was aware of plans by the American-led coalition to remove him from his post.
He threatened the president, saying that if he were replaced he would reveal “allegations about Karzai having been a drug trader and supporter of the Pakistan-led insurgency in Afghanistan,” presumably a reference to Mr. Karzai’s former links with the Taliban.
Incident by incident, the reports resemble a police blotter of the myriad ways Afghan civilians were killed — not just in airstrikes but in ones and twos — in shootings on the roads or in the villages, in misunderstandings or in a cross-fire, or in chaotic moments when Afghan drivers ventured too close to convoys and checkpoints.
The dead, the reports repeatedly indicate, were not suicide bombers or insurgents, and many of the cases were not reported to the public at the time. The toll of the war — reflected in mounting civilian casualties — left the Americans seeking cooperation and support from an Afghan population that grew steadily more exhausted, resentful, fearful and alienated.
From the war’s outset, airstrikes that killed civilians in large numbers seized international attention, including the aerial bombardment of a convoy on its way to attend President Karzai’s inauguration in 2001.
An airstrike in Azizabad, in western Afghanistan, killed as many as 92 people in August 2008. In May 2009, another strike killed 147 Afghan civilians.

SEPT. 3, 2009 KUNDUZ PROVINCE Incident Report: Mistaken Airstrike
This report, filed about the activities of a Joint Terminal Attack Controller team, which is responsible for communication from the ground and guiding pilots during surveillance missions and airstrikes, offers a glimpse into one of the bloodiest mistakes in 2009.
It began with a report from the police command saying that “2X FUEL TRUCKS WERE STOLEN BY UNK NUMBER OF INS” and that the insurgents planned to cross the Kunduz River with their prizes.
It was nighttime, and the river crossing was not illuminated. Soon, the report noted, the “JTAC OBSERVED KDZ RIVER AND REPORTED THAT IT DISCOVERED THE TRUCKS AS WELL AS UP
TO 70 INS” at “THE FORD ON THE RIVER. THE TRUCKS WERE STUCK IN THE MUD.” How the JTAC team was observing the trucks was not clear, but many aircraft have infrared video cameras
that can send a live feed to a computer monitor on the ground.
According to the report, a German commander of the provincial reconstruction team “LINKED UP WITH JTAC AND, AFTER ENSURING THAT NO CIVILIANS WERE IN THE VICINITY,” he
“AUTHORIZED AN AIRSTRIKE.” An F-15 then dropped two 500-pound guided bombs. The initial report said that “56X INS KIA [insurgents killed in action] (CONFIRMED) AND 14X INS
FLEEING IN NE DIRECTION. THE 2X FUEL TRUCKS WERE ALSO DESTROYED.”
The initial report was wrong. The trucks had been abandoned, and a crowd of civilians milled around them, removing fuel. How the commander and the JTAC had ensured “that no civilians were in the area,” as the report said, was not explained.
The first sign of the mistake documented in the initial report appeared the next day, when another report said that at “0900 hrs International Media reported that US airstrike had killed 60 civilians in Kunduz.
The media are reporting that Taliban did steal the trucks and had invited civilians in the area to take fuel.” Read the Document » (n/a)
The reports show that the smaller incidents were just as insidious and alienating, turning Afghans who had once welcomed Americans as liberators against the war.

MARCH 5, 2007 GHAZNI PROVINCE Incident Report: Checkpoint Danger
Afghan police officers shot a local driver who tried to speed through their checkpoint on a country road in Ghazni Province south of Kabul. The police had set up a temporary checkpoint on the highway just outside the main town in the district of Ab Band.
“A car approached the check point at a high rate of speed,” the report said. All the police officers fled the checkpoint except one. As the car passed the checkpoint it knocked down the lone policeman. He fired at the vehicle, apparently thinking that it was a suicide car bomber.
“The driver of the vehicle was killed,” the report said. “No IED [improvised explosive device] was found and vehicle was destroyed.”
The police officer was detained in the provincial capital, Ghazni, and questioned. He was then released. The American mentoring the police concluded in his assessment that the policeman’s use of force was appropriate. Rather than acknowledging the public hostility such episodes often engender, the report found a benefit: it suggested that the shooting would make Afghans take greater care at checkpoints in the future.
“Effects on the populace clearly identify the importance of stopping at checkpoints,” the report concluded. Read the Document » (n/a)

MARCH 21, 2007 PAKTIKA PROVINCE Incident Report: A Deaf Man Is Shot
Members of a C.I.A. paramilitary unit moved into the village of Malekshay in Paktika Province close to the border with Pakistan when they saw an Afghan running away at the sight of their convoy, one report recounted. Members of the unit shot him in the ankle, and medics treated him at the scene. The unit had followed military procedure — first shouting at the man, then firing warning shots and only after that shooting to wound, the report said.
Yet elders in the village told the unit that the man, Shum Khan, was deaf and mute and that he had fled from the convoy out of nervousness. Mr. Khan was “unable to hear the warnings or warning shots. Ran out of fear and confusion,” the report concludes. The unit handed over supplies in compensation. Read the Document »
The reports reveal several instances of allied forces accidentally firing on one another or on Afghan forces in the fog of war, often with tragic consequences.

APRIL 6, 2006 HELMAND PROVINCE Incident Report: Friendly Fire
A British Army convoy driving at night in southern Afghanistan suddenly came under small-arms fire. One of the British trucks rolled over. The British troops split into two groups, pulled back from the clash and called in airstrikes from American A-10 attack planes. After several confusing minutes, commanders realized that the Afghan police had attacked the British troops, mistaking them for Taliban fighters. One Afghan police officer was killed and 12 others were wounded.
The shifting tactics of the Americans can be seen as well in the reports, as the war strategy veered from freely using force to trying to minimize civilian casualties. But as the documents make clear, each approach has its frustrations for the American effort.
Strict new rules of engagement, imposed in 2009, minimized the use of airstrikes after some had killed civilians and turned Afghans against the war. But the rules also prompted anger from American troops and their families. The troops felt that their lives were not sufficiently valued because they had to justify every request for air or artillery support, making it easier for the Taliban to fight.

OCT. 1, 2008 KUNAR PROVINCE Incident Report: Barrage
In the days when field commanders had a freer hand, an infantry company commander observed an Afghan with a two-way radio who was monitoring the company’s activities. Warning of “IMMINENT THREAT,” the commander said he would “destroy” the man and his equipment — in other words, kill him. A short while later, a 155-millimeter artillery piece at a forward operating base in the nearby Pech Valley began firing high-explosive rounds — 24 in all.

NOV. 13, 2009 HELMAND PROVINCE Incident Report: Escalation of Force
As the rules tightened, the reports picked up a tone that at times seemed lawyerly. Many make reference, even in pitched fights, to troops using weapons in accordance with “ROE Card A” — which guides actions of self-defense rather than attacks or offensive acts. This report described an Apache helicopter firing warning shots after coming under fire. Its reaction was described as “an escalation of force.”
The helicopter pilots reported that insurgents “engaged with SAF [surface-to-air fire]”and that “INTEL suggested they were going to be fired upon again during their extraction.”
The helicopters “fired 40x 30mm warning shots to deter any further engagement.”
The report included the information that now is common to incident reports in which Western forces fire. “The terrain was considered rurally open and there were no CIV PID IVO [civilians positively identified in the vicinity of ] the target within reasonable certainty. There was no damage to infrastructure. BDA [battle damage assessment] recording conducted by AH-64 Gun Tape. No follow up required.
The next higher command was consulted. The enemy engaged presented, in the opinion of the ground forces, an imminent threat. Engagement is under ROE Card A. Higher HQ have been informed.” Read the Document » (n/a)

The reports show in previously unknown detail the omnipresence of drones in Afghanistan, the Air Force’s missile-toting Predators and Reapers that hunt militants. The military’s use of drones in Afghanistan has rapidly expanded in the past few years; the United States Air Force now flies about 20 Predator and Reaper aircraft a day — nearly twice as many as a year ago — over vast stretches of hostile Afghan territory. Allies like Britain and Germany fly their own fleets.
The incident reports chronicle the wide variety of missions these aircraft carry out: taking photographs, scooping up electronic transmissions, relaying images of running battles to field headquarters, attacking militants with bombs and missiles. And they also reveal the extent that armed drones are being used to support American Special Operations missions.
Documents in the Afghan archive capture the strange nature of the drone war in Afghanistan: missile-firing robots killing shovel-wielding insurgents, a remote-controlled war against a low-tech but resilient insurgency.

DEC. 9, 2008 KANDAHAR PROVINCE Incident Report: Predator Attack
Early one winter evening in southern Afghanistan, an Air Force Predator drone spotted a group of insurgents suspected of planting roadside bombs along a roadway less than two miles from Forward Operating Base Hutal, an American outpost.
Unlike the drones the C.I.A. operated covertly across the border in Pakistan, this aircraft was one of nearly a dozen military drones patrolling vast stretches of hostile Afghan territory on any given day.
Within minutes after identifying the militants, the Predator unleashed a Hellfire missile, all but evaporating one of the figures digging in the dark.
When ground troops reached the crater caused by the missile, costing $60,000, all that was left was a shovel and a crowbar. Read the Document » (n/a)

SEPT. 13, 2009 BADAKHSHAN PROVINCE Incident Report: A Lost Drone
Flying over southern Afghanistan on a combat mission, one of the Air Force’s premier armed drones, a Reaper, went rogue.
Equipped with advanced radar and sophisticated cameras, as well as Hellfire missiles and 500-pound bombs, the Reaper had lost its satellite link to a pilot who was remotely steering the drone from a base in the United States.
Again and again, the pilot struggled to regain control of the drone. Again and again, no response. The reports reveal that the military in Afghanistan lost many of the tiny five-pound surveillance drones with names like Raven and Desert Hawk that troops tossed out like model airplanes to peer around the next hill. But they had never before lost one of the Reapers, with its 66-foot wingspan.
As a last resort, commanders ordered an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet to shoot down the $13 million aircraft before it soared unguided into neighboring Tajikistan.
Ground controllers picked an unpopulated area over northern Afghanistan and the jet fired a Sidewinder missile, destroying the Reaper’s turbo-prop engine. Suddenly, the satellite link was restored, but it was too late to salvage the flight. At 5:30 a.m., controllers steered it into a remote mountainside for a final fiery landing. Read the Document » (n/a)
As the Afghanistan war took priority under the Obama administration, more Special Operations forces were shifted from Iraq to conduct secret missions. The C.I.A.’s own paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan grew in tandem — as did the agency’s close collaboration with Afghanistan’s own spy agency.
Usually, such teams conducted night operations aimed at top Taliban commanders and militants on the “capture/kill” list. While individual commandos have displayed great courage, the missions can end in calamity as well as success. The expanding special operations have stoked particular resentment among Afghans — for their lack of coordination with local forces, the civilian casualties they frequently inflicted and the lack of accountability.

JUNE 17, 2007 PAKTIKA PROVINCE INCIDENT REPORT: Botched Night Raid
Shortly after five American rockets destroyed a compound in Paktika Province, helicopter-borne commandos from Task Force 373 — a classified Special Operations unit of Army Delta Force operatives and members of the Navy Seals — arrived to finish the job.
The mission was to capture or kill Abu Laith al-Libi, a top commander for Al Qaeda, who was believed to be hiding at the scene of the strike.
But Mr. Libi was not there. Instead, the Special Operations troops found a group of men suspected of being militants and their children. Seven of the children had been killed by the rocket attack.
Some of the men tried to flee the Americans, and six were quickly killed by encircling helicopters. After the rest were taken as detainees, the commandos found one child still alive in the rubble, and performed CPR for 20 minutes.
Word of the attack spread a wave of anger across the region, forcing the local governor to meet with village elders to defuse the situation.
American military officials drew up a list of “talking points” for the governor, pointing out that the target had been a senior Qaeda commander, that there had been no indications that women and children would be present and that a nearby mosque had not been damaged.
After the meeting, the governor reported that local residents were in shock, but that he had “pressed the Talking Points.” He even “added a few of his own that followed in line with our current story.”
The attack was caused by the “presence of hoodlums,” the governor told the people. It was a tragedy that children had been killed, he said, but “it could have been prevented had the people exposed the presence of insurgents in the area.”
He promised that the families would be compensated for their loss.
Mr. Libi was killed the following year by a C.I.A. drone strike. Read the Document » (n/a)

APRIL 6, 2008 NURISTAN PROVINCE Incident Report: A Raging Firefight
As they scrambled up the rocks toward a cluster of mud compounds perched high over the remote Shok Valley, a small group of American Green Berets and Afghan troops, known as Task Force Bushmaster, were confronted with a hail of gunfire from inside the insurgent stronghold.
They were there to capture senior members of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin militant group, part of a mission that the military had dubbed Operation Commando Wrath.
But what they soon discovered on that remote, snowy hilltop was that they were vastly outnumbered by a militant force of hundreds of fighters. Reinforcements were hours away.
A firefight raged for nearly seven hours, with sniper fire pinning down the Green Berets on a 60-foot rock ledge for much of that time.
Casualties mounted. By midmorning, nearly half of the Americans were wounded, but the militants directed their gunfire on the arriving medevac helicopters, preventing them from landing.
“TF Bushmaster reports they are combat ineffective and request reinforcement at this time.”
For a time, radio contact was lost.
Air Force jets arrived at the scene and began pummeling the compounds with 2,000-pound bombs, but the militants continued to advance down the mountain toward the pinned-down group.
The task force reported that there were “ 50-100 insurgents moving to reinforce against Bushmaster elements from the SW.”
Carrying wounded Americans shot in the pelvis, arm and legs — as well as two dead Afghans — the group made its way down toward the valley floor. Eventually, the helicopters were able to arrive to evacuate the dead and wounded.
Ten members of the Green Berets would receive Silver Stars for their actions during the battle, the highest number given to Special Forces soldiers for a single battle since the Vietnam War. By Army estimates, 150 to 200 militants were killed in the battle. Read the Document » (n/a)

MARCH 8, 2008 BAGRAM AIR BASE Meeting Report: A Plea for Help
Toward the end of a long meeting with top American military commanders, during which he delivered a briefing about the security situation in eastern Afghanistan, corruption in the government and Pakistan’s fecklessness in hunting down militants, Afghanistan’s top spy laid out his problem.
Amrullah Saleh, then director of the National Directorate of Security, told the Americans that the C.I.A. would no longer be handling his spy service’s budget. For years, the C.I.A. had essentially run the N.D.S. as a subsidiary, but by 2009 the Afghan government was preparing to take charge of the agency’s budget.
Mr. Saleh estimated that with the C.I.A. no longer bankrolling the Afghan spies, he could be facing a budget cut of 30 percent.
So he made a request. With the budget squeeze coming, Mr. Saleh asked the Americans for any AK-47s and ammunition they could spare.
If they had any spare boots, he would also take those, he said.

=======================
Document Leak May Hurt Efforts to Build War Support

By ERIC SCHMITT and HELENE COOPER

The New York Times WASHINGTON — The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.
The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties
in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.
In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure. A Senate panel is also set to hold a hearing on Tuesday on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.
Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
“We don’t know how to react,” one frustrated administration official said on Monday. “This obviously puts Congress and the public in a bad mood.”
Mr. Obama is facing a tough choice: he must either figure out a way to convince Congress and the American people that his war strategy remains on track and is seeing fruit — a harder sell given that the war is lagging — or move more quickly to a far more limited American presence.
As the debate over the war begins anew, administration officials have been striking tones similar to the Bush administration’s to argue for continuing the current Afghanistan strategy, which calls for a significant troop buildup. Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the Afghan war effort came down to a matter of American national security, in testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee two weeks ago.
The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, struck a similar note on Monday in responding to the documents, which WikiLeaks made accessible to The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel.
“We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,” Mr. Gibbs said. “Ensuring that there is not a safe haven in Afghanistan by which attacks against this country and countries around the world can be planned. That’s why we’re there, and that’s why we’re going to continue to make progress on this relationship.”
Several administration officials privately expressed hope that they might be able to use the leaks, and their description of a sometimes duplicitous Pakistani ally, to pressure the government of Pakistan to cooperate more fully with the United States on counterterrorism. The documents seem to lay out rich new details of connections between the Taliban and other militant groups and Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
Three administration officials separately expressed hope that they might be able to use the documents to gain leverage in efforts to get more help from Pakistan. Two of them raised the possibility of warning the Pakistanis that Congressional anger might threaten American aid.
“This is now out in the open,” a senior administration official said. “It’s reality now. In some ways, it makes it easier for us to tell the Pakistanis that they have to help us.”
But much of the pushback from the White House over the past two days has been to stress that the connection between the ISI and the Taliban was well known.
“I don’t think that what is being reported hasn’t in many ways been publicly discussed, either by you all or by representatives of the U.S. government, for quite some time,” Mr. Gibbs said during a briefing on Monday.
While agreeing that the disclosures were not altogether new, some leading Democrats said that the new details underscored deep suspicions they have harbored toward the ISI.
“Some of these documents reinforce a longstanding concern of mine about the supporting role of some Pakistani officials in the Afghan insurgency,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee. During a visit to Pakistan this month, Mr. Levin, who has largely supported the war, said he confronted senior Pakistani leaders about the ISI’s continuing ties to the militant groups.
And others said that the documents should serve as an impetus to correct deficiencies in strategy.
“Those policies are at a critical stage, and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent,” said Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and has been an influential supporter of the war.
The White House appeared to be focusing some of its ire toward Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, the Web site that provided access to about 92,000 secret military reports spanning the period from January 2004 through December 2009.
White House officials e-mailed reporters select transcripts of an interview Mr. Assange conducted with Der Spiegel, underlining the quotations the White House apparently found most offensive. Among them was Mr. Assange’s assertion, “I enjoy crushing bastards.”
At a news conference in London on Monday, Mr. Assange defended the release of the documents. “I’d like to see this material taken seriously and investigated, and new policies, if not prosecutions, result from it,” he said.
The Times and the two other news organizations agreed not to disclose anything that was likely to put lives at risk or jeopardize military or antiterrorist operations, and The Times redacted the names of Afghan informants and other delicate information from the documents it published. WikiLeaks said it withheld posting about 15,000 documents for the same reason.
Pakistan strongly denied suggestions that its military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency.
A senior ISI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under standard practice, sharply condemned the reports as “part of the malicious campaign to malign the spy organization” and said the ISI would “continue to eradicate the menace of terrorism with or without the help of the West.”
Farhatullah Babar, the spokesman for President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, dismissed the reports and said that Pakistan remained “a part of a strategic alliance of the United States in the fight against terrorism.”
While Pakistani officials protested, a spokesman for the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said that Mr. Karzai was not upset by the documents and did not believe the picture they painted was unfair.
Speaking after a news conference in Kabul, Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omar, was asked whether there was anything in the leaked documents that angered Mr. Karzai or that he thought unfair. “No, I don’t think so,” Mr. Omar said.
Reporting was contributed by Adam B. Ellick and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan; Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Kabul, Afghanistan; and Caroline Crampton from London.
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WikiLeaks

July 25, 2010

In Disclosing Secret Documents, WikiLeaks Seeks ‘Transparency’

By ERIC SCHMITT The New York TimesWikiLeaks.org, the online organization that posted tens of thousands of classified military field reports about the Afghan war on Sunday, says its goal in disclosing secret documents is to reveal “unethical behavior” by governments and corporations.
Since it was founded in December 2006, WikiLeaks has exposed internal memos about the dumping of toxic material off the African coast, the membership rolls of a racist British party, and the American military’s manual for operating its prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
“We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies,” the organization’s Web site says. “All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information.”
The trove of war reports posted Sunday dwarfs the scope and volume of documents that the organization has made public in the past.
In a telephone interview from London, the organization’s founder, Julian Assange, said the documents would reveal broader and more pervasive levels of violence in Afghanistan than the military or the news media had previously reported. “It shows not only the severe incidents but the general squalor of war, from the death of individual children to major operations that kill hundreds,” he said.
WikiLeaks withheld some 15,000 documents from release until its technicians could redact names of individuals in the reports whose safety could be jeopardized.
WikiLeaks’ critics range from the military, which says it jeopardizes operations, to some open government advocates who say the organization is endangering the privacy rights of others in favor of self promotion.
Steven Aftergood, head of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, in his blog posting on June 28 accused WikiLeaks of “information vandalism” with no regard for privacy or social usefulness. “WikiLeaks must be counted among the enemies of open society because it does not respect the rule of law nor does it honor the rights of individuals,” he wrote.
The release of the data comes nearly three weeks after new charges were filed against an American soldier in Iraq who had been arrested on charges of leaking a video of a deadly American helicopter attack in Baghdad in 2007 that killed 12 people, including a reporter and photographer from the news agency Reuters. He was also charged with downloading more than 150,000 highly classified diplomatic cables.
WikiLeaks made public a 38-minute video of the helicopter attack as well as a 17-minute edited version that it called “Collateral Murder.” The abridged version drew criticism for failing to make clear that the attacks happened during clashes in a Baghdad neighborhood and that one of the men fired on by the helicopter was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade.
WikiLeaks has also made public a cable entitled “Reykjavik13,” about the banking crisis in Iceland, which was cited in the criminal charges against the soldier, Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, 22, an Army intelligence analyst. In keeping with its policy to protect the anonymity of its sources, WikiLeaks has not acknowledged receiving the cables or video from Private Manning. In the telephone interview, Mr. Assange, an Australian activist, refused to say whether the war reports came from Private Manning. But Mr. Assange said that WikiLeaks had offered to help pay for Private Manning’s legal counsel or provide lawyers to defend him.
Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker who earlier this year traded instant messages with Private Manning, said the soldier claimed he had leaked the cables and video to WikiLeaks. Mr. Lamo, who in 2004
pleaded guilty to hacking into the internal computer system of The New York Times, said he turned in Private Manning to the authorities for national security reasons. Private Manning, who served with the Second Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, based at Contingency Operating Station Hammer east of Baghdad, was arrested in May after the military authorities said that he had revealed his activities in online chats with Mr. Lamo.
Investigators now believe that Private Manning exploited a loophole in Defense Department security to copy thousands of files onto compact discs over a six-month period.
WikiLeaks has a core group of about half a dozen full-time volunteers, and there are 800 to 1,000 people whom the group can call on for expertise in areas like encryption, programming and writing news releases.
Mr. Assange, 39, said the site operated from servers in several countries, including Sweden and Belgium, where laws provided more protection for its disclosures.
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WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.

WikiLeaksSunday, July 26 5pm EST.
The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.
The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but the archive reveals the locations and the key events behind each most of these deaths. We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course.
Most entries have been written by soldiers and intelligence officers listening to reports radioed in from front line deployments. However the reports also contain related information from Marines intelligence, US Embassies, and reports about corruption and development activity across Afghanistan.
Each report consists of the time and precise geographic location of an event that the US Army considers significant. It includes several additional standardized fields: The broad type of the event (combat, non- combat, propaganda, etc.); the category of the event as classified by US Forces, how many were detained, wounded, and killed from civilian, allied, host nation, and enemy forces; the name of the reporting unit and a number of other fields, the most significant of which is the summary - an English language description of the events that are covered in the report.
The Diary is available on the web and can be viewed in chronological order and by by over 100 categories assigned by the US Forces such as: "escalation of force", "friendly-fire", "development meeting", etc.
The reports can also be viewed by our "severity" measure-the total number of people killed, injured or detained. All incidents have been placed onto a map of Afghanistan and can be viewed on Google Earth limited to a particular window of time or place. In this way the unfolding of the last six years of war may be seen.
The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.
The reports come from US Army with the exception most Special Forces activities. The reports do not generally cover top-secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations. However when a combined operation involving regular Army units occurs, details of Army partners are often revealed. For example a number of bloody operations carried out by Task Force 373, a secret US Special Forces assassination unit, are exposed in the Diary -- including a raid that lead to the death of seven children.
This archive shows the vast range of small tragedies that are almost never reported by the press but which account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries.
We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.
Additional information from our media partners:

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•Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html

•The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs

•The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html

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Afghan War Diary - Reading guide http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid69900095001?bctid=248232315001

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The Afghan War Diary (AWD for short) consists of messages from several important US military communications systems. The messaging systems have changed over time; as such reporting standards and message format have changed as well. This reading guide tries to provide some helpful hints on interpretation and understanding of the messages contained in the AWD.
Most of the messages follow a pre-set structure that is designed to make automated processing of the contents easier. It is best to think of the messages in the terms of an overall collective logbook of the Afghan war. The AWD contains the relevant events, occurrences and intelligence experiences of the military, shared among many recipients. The basic idea is that all the messages taken together should provide a full picture of a days important events, intelligence, warnings, and other statistics. Each unit, outpost, convoy, or other military action generates report about relevant daily events. The range of topics is rather wide: Improvised Explosives Devices encountered, offensive operations, taking enemy fire, engagement with possible hostile forces, talking with village elders, numbers of wounded, dead, and detained, kidnappings, broader intelligence information and explicit threat warnings from intercepted radio communications, local informers or the afghan police. It also includes day to day complaints about lack of equipment and supplies.
The description of events in the messages is often rather short and terse. To grasp the reporting style, it is helpful to understand the conditions under which the messages are composed and sent. Often they come from field units who have been under fire or under other stressful conditions all day and see the report-writing as nasty paperwork, that needs to be completed with little apparent benefit to expect. So the reporting is kept to the necessary minimum, with as little type-work as possible. The field units also need to expect questions from higher up or disciplinary measures for events recorded in the messages, so they will tend to gloss over violations of rules of engagement and other problematic behavior; the reports are often detailed when discussing actions or interactions by enemy forces. Once it is in the AWD
messages, it is officially part of the record - it is subject to analysis and scrutiny. The truthfulness and completeness especially of descriptions of events must always be carefully considered. Circumstances that completely change the meaning of an reported event may have been omitted.
The reports need to answer the critical questions: Who, When, Where, What, With whom, by what Means and Why. The AWD messages are not addressed to individuals but to groups of recipients that are fulfilling certain functions, such as duty officers in a certain region. The systems where the messages originate perform distribution based on criteria like region, classification level and other information. The goal of distribution is to provide those with access and the need to know, all of the information that relevant to their duties. In practice, this seems to be working imperfectly. The messages contain geo-location
information in the forms of latitude-longitude, military grid coordinates and region.
The messages contain a large number of abbreviations that are essential to understanding its contents. When browsing through the messages, underlined abbreviations pop up an little explanation, when the mouse is hovering over it. The meanings and use of some shorthands have changed over time, others are sometimes ambiguous or have several meanings that are used depending on context, region or reporting unit. If you discover the meaning of a so far unresolved acronym or abbreviations, or if you have corrections, please submit them to wl-office@sunshinepress.org.
An especially helpful reference to names of military units and task-forces and their respective responsibilities can be found at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/enduring-freedom.htm
The site also contains a list of bases, airfields http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/afghanistan.htm Location names are also often shortened to three-character acronyms.
Messages may contain date and time information. Dates are mostly presented in either US numeric form (Year-Month-Day, e.g. 2009-09-04) or various Euro-style shorthands (Day-Month-Year, e.g. 2 Jan 04 or 02-Jan-04 or 2jan04 etc.).
Times are frequently noted with a time-zone identifier behind the time, e.g. "09:32Z". Most common are Z (Zulu Time, aka. UTC time zone), D (Delta Time, aka. UTC + 4 hours) and B (Bravo Time, aka UTC + 2 hours). A full list off time zones can be found here: http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/military/
Other times are noted without any time zone identifier at all. The Afghanistan time zone is AFT (UTC + 4:30), which may complicate things further if you are looking up messages based on local time.
Finding messages relating to known events may be complicated by date and time zone shifting; if the event is in the night or early morning, it may cause a report to appear to be be misfiled. It is advisable to always look through messages before and on the proceeding day for any event.
David Leigh, the Guardian's investigations editor, explains the online tools they have created to help you understand the secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/video/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-video-tutorial
Understanding the structure of the report
•The message starts with a unique ReportKey; it may be used to find messages and also to reference them.•The next field is DateOccurred; this provides the date and time of the event or message. See Time and Date formats for details on the used formats.•Type contains typically a broad classification of the type of event, like Friendly Action, Enemy Action, Non-Combat Event. It can be used to filter for messages of a certain type.•Category further describes what kind of event the message is about. There are a lot of categories, from propaganda, weapons cache finds to various types of combat activities.•TrackingNumber Is an internal tracking number.•Title contains the title of the message.•Summary is the actual description of the event. Usually it contains the bulk of the message content.•Region contains the broader region of the event.•AttackOn contains the information who was attacked during an event.•ComplexAttack is a flag that signifies that an attack was a larger operation that required more planning, coordination and preparation. This is used as a quick filter criterion to detect events that were out of the ordinary in terms of enemy capabilities.•ReportingUnit, UnitName, TypeOfUnit contains the information on the military unit that authored the report.•Wounded and death are listed as numeric values, sorted by affiliation. WIA is the abbreviation for Wounded In Action. KIA is the abbreviation for Killed In Action. The numbers are recorded in the fields
FriendlyWIA,FriendlyKIA,HostNationWIA,HostNationKIA,CivilianWIA,CivilianKIA,EnemyWIA,EnemyKIA•Captured enemies are numbered in the field EnemyDetained.•The location of events are recorded in the fields MGRS (Military Grid Reference System), Latitude, Longitude.•The next group of fields contains information on the overall military unit, like ISAF Headquarter, that a message originated from or was updated by. Updates frequently occur when an analysis group, like one
that investigated an incident or looked into the makeup of an Improvised Explosive Device added its results to a message.•OriginatorGroup, UpdatedByGroup•CCIR Commander's Critical Information Requirements•If an activity that is reported is deemed "significant", this is noted in the field Sigact. Significant activities are analyzed and evaluated by a special group in the command structure.•Affiliation describes if the event was of friendly or enemy nature.•DColor controls the display color of the message in the messaging system and map views. Messages relating to enemy activity have the color Red, those relating to friendly activity are colored Blue.•Classification contains the classification level of the message, e.g. Secret

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http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid69900095001?bctid=248232315001

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The Guardian UK

Afghanistan war logs:

*Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

• Hundreds of civilians killed by coalition troops

• Covert unit hunts leaders for 'kill or capture'

• Steep rise in Taliban bomb attacks on Nato

( Read the Guardian's full war logs investigation)

The war logs reveal civilian killings by coalition forces, secret efforts to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, and discuss the involvement of Iran and Pakistan in supporting insurgents.

A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.
The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history.
The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 US troops.
Their publication comes amid mounting concern that Barack Obama's "surge" strategy is failing and as coalition troops hunt for two US naval personnel captured by the Taliban south of Kabul on Friday.
The war logs also detail:
• How a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial.
• How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles. • How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.
• How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.
In a statement, the White House said the chaotic picture painted by the logs was the result of "under-resourcing" under Obama's predecessor, saying: "It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009."
The White House also criticised the publication of the files by Wikileaks: "We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact the US government about these documents, which may contain information that endanger the lives of Americans, our partners, and local populations who co-operate with us."
The logs detail, in sometimes harrowing vignettes, the toll on civilians exacted by coalition forces: events termed "blue on white" in military jargon. The logs reveal 144 such incidents.
Some of these casualties come from the controversial air strikes that have led to Afghan government protests, but a large number of previously unknown incidents also appear to be the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists out of a determination to protect themselves from suicide bombers.
At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in total, but this is likely to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.
Bloody errors at civilians' expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.
Questionable shootings of civilians by UK troops also figure. The US compilers detail an unusual cluster of four British shootings in Kabul in the space of barely a month, in October/November 2007, culminating in the death of the son of an Afghan general. Of one shooting, they wrote: "Investigation controlled by the British. We are not able to get [sic] complete story."
A second cluster of similar shootings, all involving Royal Marine commandos in Helmand province, took place in a six-month period at the end of 2008, according to the log entries. Asked by the Guardian about these allegations, the Ministry of Defence said: "We have been unable to corroborate these claims in the short time available and it would be inappropriate to speculate on specific cases without further verification of the alleged actions."
Rachel Reid, who investigates civilian casualty incidents in Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said: "These files bring to light what's been a consistent trend by US and Nato forces: the concealment of civilian casualties. Despite numerous tactical directives ordering transparent investigations when civilians are killed, there have been incidents I've investigated in recent months where this is still not happening.
Accountability is not just something you do when you are caught. It should be part of the way the US and Nato do business in Afghanistan every time they kill or harm civilians." The reports, many of which the Guardian is publishing in full online, present an unvarnished and often compelling account of the reality of modern war.
Most of the material, though classified "secret" at the time, is no longer militarily sensitive. A small amount of information has been withheld from publication because it might endanger local informants or give away genuine military secrets. Wikileaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, obtained the material in circumstances he will not discuss, said it would redact harmful material before posting the bulk of the data on its "uncensorable" servers.
Wikileaks published in April this year a previously suppressed classified video of US Apache helicopters killing two Reuters cameramen on the streets of Baghdad, which gained international attention. A 22- year-old intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, was arrested in Iraq and charged with leaking the video, but not with leaking the latest material. The Pentagon's criminal investigations department continues to try to trace the leaks and recently unsuccessfully asked Assange, he says, to meet them outside the US to help them. Assange allowed the Guardian to examine the logs at our request. No fee was involved and Wikileaks was not involved in the preparation of the Guardian's articles.

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The New York Times

Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports

AssertBy MARK MAZZETTI, JANE PERLEZ, ERIC SCHMITT and ANDREW W. LEHRENAmericans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public Sunday.
The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.
Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.
Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.
But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.
While current and former American officials interviewed could not corroborate individual reports, they said that the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.
Some of the reports describe Pakistani intelligence working alongside Al Qaeda to plan attacks. Experts cautioned that although Pakistan’s militant groups and Al Qaeda work together, directly linking the Pakistani spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with Al Qaeda is difficult.
The records also contain firsthand accounts of American anger at Pakistan’s unwillingness to confront insurgents whos frontier, and retreated to Pakistani territory for safety.
--------aunched attacks near Pakistani border posts, moved openly by the truckload across the
The behind-the-scenes frustrations of soldiers on the ground and glimpses of what appear to be Pakistani skullduggery contrast sharply with the frequently rosy public pronouncements of Pakistan as an ally by American officials, looking to sustain a drone campaign over parts of Pakistani territory to strike at Qaeda havens. Administration officials also want to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan on their side to safeguard NATO supplies flowing on routes that cross Pakistan to Afghanistan.
This month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in one of the frequent visits by American officials to Islamabad, announced $500 million in assistance and called the United States and Pakistan “partners joined in common cause.”
The reports suggest, however, that the Pakistani military has acted as both ally and enemy, as its spy agency runs what American officials have long suspected is a double game — appeasing certain American demands for cooperation while angling to exert influence in Afghanistan through many of the same insurgent networks that the Americans are fighting to eliminate.
Behind the scenes, both Bush and Obama administration officials as well as top American commanders have confronted top Pakistani military officers with accusations of ISI complicity in attacks in Afghanistan, and even presented top Pakistani officials with lists of ISI and military operatives believed to be working with militants.
Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said that Pakistan had been an important ally in the battle against militant groups, and that Pakistani soldiers and intelligence officials had worked alongside the United States to capture or kill Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
Still, he said that the “status quo is not acceptable,” and that the havens for militants in Pakistan “pose an intolerable threat” that Pakistan must do more to address.
“The Pakistani government — and Pakistan’s military and intelligence services — must continue their strategic shift against violent extremist groups within their borders,” he said. American military support to Pakistan would continue, he said.
Several Congressional officials said that despite repeated requests over the years for information about Pakistani support for militant groups, they usually receive vague and inconclusive briefings from the Pentagon and C.I.A.
Nonetheless, senior lawmakers say they have no doubt that Pakistan is aiding insurgent groups. “The burden of proof is on the government of Pakistan and the ISI to show they don’t have ongoing contacts,”
said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who visited Pakistan this month and said he and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee chairman, confronted Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, yet again over the allegations.
Such accusations are usually met with angry denials, particularly by the Pakistani military, which insists that the ISI severed its remaining ties to the groups years ago. An ISI spokesman in Islamabad said Sunday that the agency would have no comment until it saw the documents. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said, “The documents circulated by WikiLeaks do not reflect the current on-ground realities.”
The man the United States has depended on for cooperation in fighting the militants and who holds most power in Pakistan, the head of the army, Gen. Parvez Ashfaq Kayani, ran the ISI from 2004 to 2007, a period from which many of the reports are drawn. American officials have frequently praised General Kayani for what they say are his efforts to purge the military of officers with ties to militants.
American officials have described Pakistan’s spy service as a rigidly hierarchical organization that has little tolerance for “rogue” activity. But Pakistani military officials give the spy service’s “S Wing” — which runs external operations against the Afghan government and India — broad autonomy, a buffer that allows top military officials deniability.
American officials have rarely uncovered definitive evidence of direct ISI involvement in a major attack. But in July 2008, the C.I.A.’s deputy director, Stephen R. Kappes, confronted Pakistani officials with evidence that the ISI helped plan the deadly suicide bombing of India’s Embassy in Kabul.
From the current trove, one report shows that Polish intelligence warned of a complex attack against the Indian Embassy a week before that bombing, though the attackers and their methods differed. The ISI
was not named in the report warning of the attack.
Another, dated August 2008, identifies a colonel in the ISI plotting with a Taliban official to assassinate President Hamid Karzai. The report says there was no information about how or when this would be carried out. The account could not be verified.
General Linked to Militants
Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul ran the ISI from 1987 to 1989, a time when Pakistani spies and the C.I.A. joined forces to run guns and money to Afghan militias who were battling Soviet troops in Afghanistan. After the fighting stopped, he maintained his contacts with the former mujahedeen, who would eventually transform themselves into the Taliban.
And more than two decades later, it appears that General Gul is still at work. The documents indicate that he has worked tirelessly to reactivate his old networks, employing familiar allies like Jaluluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose networks of thousands of fighters are responsible for waves of violence in Afghanistan.
General Gul is mentioned so many times in the reports, if they are to be believed, that it seems unlikely that Pakistan’s current military and intelligence officials could not know of at least some of his wide- ranging activities.
For example, one intelligence report describes him meeting with a group of militants in Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, in January 2009. There, he met with three senior Afghan insurgent commanders and three “older” Arab men, presumably representatives of Al Qaeda, who the report suggests were important “because they had a large security contingent with them.”
The gathering was designed to hatch a plan to avenge the death of “Zamarai,” the nom de guerre of Osama al-Kini, who had been killed days earlier by a C.I.A. drone attack. Mr. Kini had directed Qaeda operations in Pakistan and had spearheaded some of the group’s most devastating attacks.
The plot hatched in Wana that day, according to the report, involved driving a dark blue Mazda truck rigged with explosives from South Waziristan to Afghanistan’s Paktika Province, a route well known to be used by the insurgents to move weapons, suicide bombers and fighters from Pakistan.
In a show of strength, the Taliban leaders approved a plan to send 50 Arab and 50 Waziri fighters to Ghazni Province in Afghanistan, the report said.
General Gul urged the Taliban commanders to focus their operations inside Afghanistan in exchange for Pakistan turning “a blind eye” to their presence in Pakistan’s tribal areas. It was unclear whether the attack was ever executed.
The United States has pushed the United Nations to put General Gul on a list of international terrorists, and top American officials said they believed he was an important link between active-duty Pakistani officers and militant groups.
General Gul, who says he is retired and lives on his pension, dismissed the allegations as “absolute nonsense,” speaking by telephone from his home in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani Army keeps its headquarters. “I have had no hand in it.” He added, “American intelligence is pulling cotton wool over your eyes.”
Senior Pakistani officials consistently deny that General Gul still works at the ISI’s behest, though several years ago, after mounting American complaints, Pakistan’s president at the time, Pervez Musharraf, was forced publicly to acknowledge the possibility that former ISI officials were assisting the Afghan insurgency. Despite his denials, General Gul keeps close ties to his former employers. When a reporter
visited General Gul this spring for an interview at his home, the former spy master canceled the appointment. According to his son, he had to attend meetings at army headquarters.
Suicide Bomber Network
The reports also chronicle efforts by ISI officers to run the networks of suicide bombers that emerged as a sudden, terrible force in Afghanistan in 2006.
The detailed reports indicate that American officials had a relatively clear understanding of how the suicide networks presumably functioned, even if some of the threats did not materialize. It is impossible to know why the attacks never came off — either they were thwarted, the attackers shifted targets, or the reports were deliberately planted as Taliban disinformation.
One report, from Dec. 18, 2006, describes a cyclical process to develop the suicide bombers. First, the suicide attacker is recruited and trained in Pakistan. Then, reconnaissance and operational planning gets under way, including scouting to find a place for “hosting” the suicide bomber near the target before carrying out the attack. The network, it says, receives help from the Afghan police and the Ministry of Interior.
In many cases, the reports are complete with names and ages of bombers, as well as license plate numbers, but the Americans gathering the intelligence struggle to accurately portray many other details, introducing sometimes comical renderings of places and Taliban commanders.
In one case, a report rated by the American military as credible states that a gray Toyota Corolla had been loaded with explosives between the Afghan border and Landik Hotel, in Pakistan, apparently a mangled reference to Landi Kotal, in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The target of the plot, however, is a real hotel in downtown Kabul, the Ariana.
“It is likely that ISI may be involved as supporter of this attack,” reads a comment in the report.
Several of the reports describe current and former ISI operatives, including General Gul, visiting madrasas near the city of Peshawar, a gateway to the tribal areas, to recruit new fodder for suicide bombings.
One report, labeled a “real threat warning” because of its detail and the reliability of its source, described how commanders of Mr. Hekmatyar’s insurgent group, Hezb-i-Islami, ordered the delivery of a suicide bomber from the Hashimiye madrasa, run by Afghans.
The boy was to be used in an attack on American or NATO vehicles in Kabul during the Muslim Festival of Sacrifices that opened Dec. 31, 2006. According to the report, the boy was taken to the Afghan city of Jalalabad to buy a car for the bombing, and was later brought to Kabul. It was unclear whether the attack took place.
The documents indicate that these types of activities continued throughout last year. From July to October 2009, nine threat reports detailed movements by suicide bombers from Pakistan into populated areas of Afghanistan, including Kandahar, Kunduz and Kabul.
Some of the bombers were sent to disrupt Afghanistan’s presidential elections, held last August. In other instances, American intelligence learned that the Haqqani network sent bombers at the ISI’s behest to strike Indian officials, development workers and engineers in Afghanistan. Other plots were aimed at the Afghan government.
Sometimes the intelligence documents twin seemingly credible detail with plots that seem fantastical or utterly implausible assertions. For instance, one report describes an ISI plan to use a remote-controlled bomb disguised as a golden Koran to assassinate Afghan government officials. Another report documents an alleged plot by the ISI and Taliban to ship poisoned alcoholic beverages to Afghanistan to kill American troops.
But the reports also charge that the ISI directly helped organize Taliban offensives at key junctures of the war. On June 19, 2006, ISI operatives allegedly met with the Taliban leaders in Quetta, the city in southern Pakistan where American and other Western officials have long believed top Taliban leaders have been given refuge by the Pakistani authorities. At the meeting, according to the report, they pressed the Taliban to mount attacks on Maruf, a district of Kandahar that lies along the Pakistani border.
The planned offensive would be carried out primarily by Arabs and Pakistanis, the report said, and a Taliban commander, “Akhtar Mansoor,” warned that the men should be prepared for heavy losses. “The foreigners agreed to this operation and have assembled 20 4x4 trucks to carry the fighters into areas in question,” it said.
While the specifics about the foreign fighters and the ISI are difficult to verify, the Taliban did indeed mount an offensive to seize control in Maruf in 2006.
Afghan government officials and Taliban fighters have widely acknowledged that the offensive was led by the Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, who was then the Taliban shadow governor of Kandahar.
Mullah Mansour tried to claw out a base for himself inside Afghanistan, but just as the report quotes him predicting, the Taliban suffered heavy losses and eventually pulled back.
Another report goes on to describe detailed plans for a large-scale assault, timed for September 2007, aimed at the American forward operating base in Managi, in Kunar Province.
“It will be a five-pronged attack consisting of 83-millimeter artillery, rockets, foot soldiers, and multiple suicide bombers,” it says.
It is not clear that the attack ever came off, but its planning foreshadowed another, seminal attack that came months later, in July 2008. At that time, about 200 Taliban insurgents nearly overran an American base in Wanat, in Nuristan, killing nine American soldiers. For the Americans, it was one of the highest single-day tolls of the war.
Tensions With Pakistan
The flood of reports of Pakistani complicity in the insurgency has at times led to barely disguised tensions between American and Pakistani officers on the ground.
Meetings at border outposts set up to develop common strategies to seal the frontier and disrupt Taliban movements reveal deep distrust among the Americans of their Pakistani counterparts.
On Feb. 7, 2007, American officers met with Pakistani troops on a dry riverbed to discuss the borderlands surrounding Afghanistan’s Khost Province.
According to notes from the meeting, the Pakistanis portrayed their soldiers as conducting around-the-clock patrols. Asked if he expected a violent spring, a man identified in the report as Lt. Col. Bilal, the Pakistani officer in charge, said no. His troops were in firm control.
The Americans were incredulous. Their record noted that there had been a 300 percent increase in militant activity in Khost before the meeting.
“This comment alone shows how disconnected this particular group of leadership is from what is going on in reality,” the notes said.
The Pakistanis told the Americans to contact them if they spotted insurgent activity along the border. “I doubt this would do any good,” the American author of the report wrote, “because PAKMIL/ISI is likely involved with the border crossings.” “PAKMIL” refers to the Pakistani military.
A year earlier, the Americans became so frustrated at the increase in roadside bombs in Afghanistan that they hand-delivered folders with names, locations, aerial photographs and map coordinates to help the Pakistani military hunt down the militants the Americans believed were responsible.
Nothing happened, wrote Col. Barry Shapiro, an American military liaison officer with experience in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, after an Oct. 13, 2006, meeting. “Despite the number of reports and information detailing the concerns,” Colonel Shapiro wrote, “we continue to see no change in the cross-border activity and continue to see little to no initiative along the PAK border” by Pakistan troops. The Pakistani Army “will only react when asked to do so by U.S. forces,” he concluded.
Carlotta Gall contributed reporting.

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SPIEGEL ONLINE

07/25/2010 11:12 PM

The Afghanistan Protocol Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It

By Matthias Gebauer, John Goetz, Hans Hoyng, Susanne Koelbl, Marcel Rosenbach and Gregor Peter Schmitz
In an unprecedented development, close to 92,000 classified documents pertaining to the war in Afghanistan have been leaked. SPIEGEL, the New York Times and the Guardian have analyzed the raft of mostly classified documents. The war logs expose the true scale of the Western military deployment -- and the problems beleaguering Germany's Bundeswehr in the Hindu Kush.
A total of 91,731 reports from United States military databanks relating to the war in Afghanistan are to be made publicly available on the Internet. Never before has it been possible to compare the reality on the battlefield in such a detailed manner with what the US Army propaganda machinery is propagating. WikiLeaks plans to post the documents, most of which are classified, on its website.
Britain's Guardian newspaper, the New York Times and SPIEGEL have all vetted the material and compared the data with independent reports. All three media sources have concluded that the documents are authentic and provide an unvarnished image of the war in Afghanistan -- from the perspective of the soldiers who are fighting it.
The reports, from troops engaged in the ongoing combat, were tersely summarized and quickly dispatched. For the most part, they originate from sergeants -- but some have been penned by the occasional lieutenant at a command post or ranking analysts with the military intelligence service.
The documents' release comes at a time when calls for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan are growing -- even in America. Last week, representatives from more than 70 nations and organizations met in Kabul for the Afghanistan conference. They assured President Hamid Karzai that his country would be in a position by 2014 to guarantee security using its own soldiers and police.
A Gloomy Picture
But such shows of optimism seem cynical in light of the descriptions of the situation in Afghanistan provided in the classified documents. Nearly nine years after the start of the war, they paint a gloomy picture.
They portray Afghan security forces as the hapless victims of Taliban attacks. They also offer a conflicting impression of the deployment of drones, noting that America's miracle weapons are also entirely vulnerable.
And they show that the war in northern Afghanistan, where German troops are stationed, is becoming increasingly perilous. The number of warnings about possible Taliban attacks in the region -- fuelled by support from Pakistan -- has increased dramatically in the past year.
The documents offer a window into the war in the Hindu Kush -- one which promises to change the way we think about the ongoing violence in Afghanistan. They will also be indispensible for anyone seeking to inform themselves about the war in the future.
Despite repeated requests, the White House refused to provide any comment in time for the deadline of the printed edition of SPIEGEL. On Saturday evening, however, a White House official finally provided written answers to select questions about the content of the reports obtained, but refused to grant an interview.
Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for communications, said: "Since taking office, President Obama has been very clear and candid with the American people about the challenges that we face in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The president and senior officials in his administration have spoken openly and repeatedly about the safe havens that exist in Pakistan, the security and governance challenges in Afghanistan, and the difficulties that lie ahead. ... It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009. The war in Afghanistan was under-resourced for many years. ... On Dec. 1, 2009, President Obama announced a new strategy and new resources for Afghanistan and Pakistan precisely because of the grave situation there."
Responding to the intention of WikiLeaks to make the classified military documents available online, Rhodes said: "We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations that put the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security." He said that WikiLeaks made "no effort to contact the United States government about these documents,
which may contain information that endanger the lives of Americans, our partners and local populations who cooperate with us."
The editors in chief of SPIEGEL, the New York Times and the Guardian have agreed that they would not publish especially sensitive information in the classified material -- like the names of the US military's Afghan informants or information that could create additional security risks for soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. The publishers were unanimous in their belief that there is a justified public interest in the material because it provides a more thorough understanding of a war that continues today after almost nine years.
SPIEGEL ONLINE has summarized a selection of the most important findings in the data.
The members of Task Force 373, a troop of US elite soldiers that includes Navy Seals and members of the Delta Force, receive their orders directly from the Pentagon and are independent of the chain of command of the international ISAF Afghanistan security forces. Their mission is to deactivate top Taliban and terrorists by either killing or capturing them.
For years, a major effort was made to keep a lid on the details of their deployment. With the leaking of the war logs on Sunday, however, their work is an open secret.
The mission reports also offer considerable information about the coalition troops' classified list of enemies. The "Joint Prioritized Effects List" (JPEL), as it is soberly referred to in military circles, contains the names of Taliban, drug barons, bombmakers and al-Qaida members -- each with a processing number and a priority level. The decision on whether or not to arrest or kill the targeted person is often left to the hunters themselves.
A total of 84 reports about JPEL actions can be found in the thousands of pieces of data. Experts consider it a fact that targeted killings are taking place in the war in Afghanistan. But no top military officials are willing to discuss the issue. The newly released data now show what command units like Task Force 373 are up to each night -- and how things can also go terribly wrong.
A report on June 17, 2007, for example, includes a warning in the second sentence that this operation of the TF 373 must be "kept protected." Details about the mission could not be provided to other countries contributing to the ISAF forces.
The aim was to kill prominent al-Qaida functionary Abu Laith al-Libi. The special forces suspected that the top terrorist and several of his followers were present at a Koran school the soldiers had been staking out for a number of days.
But after the impact of five American rockets, instead of finding al-Libi, the ground forces discovered six dead children in the rubble of the school. A further seriously injured child was also found but could not be saved.
The newly emerged documents do not contain any information suggesting that German troops were involved in any excesses of violence against the civilian population or in any illegal clandestine operations.
Nevertheless, they convey an image of Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr, that is still devastating because they depict a German military that stumbled into the conflict with great naiveté.
The Germans thought that the northern provinces where their soldiers are stationed would be more peaceful compared to other provinces and that the situation would remain that way.
They were wrong. As far back as the end of 2005, resistance against the international troop presence began to grow -- locals were either threatened by the Taliban and powerful warlords or their support was bought. Warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, for example, spurred the fighting by offering 100,000 to 500,000 afghanis ($2,000 to $10,000) to the leader of any insurgency group. Hekmatyar's appeals and cash donations are carefully documented in the reports.
At the start of the deployment, some Bundeswehr soldiers jokingly called the small city of Kunduz "Bad Kunduz," the word "Bad" being the German word officially bestowed on spa towns. But peaceful days in Kunduz, where a large number of German troops are stationed, have long been a thing of the past. At the very latest, the quiet ended on May 19, 2007. That day, three German soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber as they tried to buy refrigerators at a local market. Eight Afghan civilians also died in the first deadly attack deliberately targeted at Germans in the region.
In a "threat report" dated May 31, 2007, German troops based in Kunduz reported on the general situation following another suicide attack. "Contrary to all expectations of the Regional Command North, the attacks of the insurgents in Kunduz are going on as foreseen by the Provincial Reconstruction Team Kunduz and mentioned before several times," the German document states, adding that more attacks, particularly against ISAF troops, "are strongly expected."
The soldiers appear to have been correct to have felt they were under a state of siege. The documents that have been obtained are comprised primarily of so-called "threat reports," thousands of danger scenarios and concrete warnings about planned attacks. These reports provide a clearer picture of the deterioration of the security situation in northern Afghanistan than the information provided by the German government or the federal parliament, the Bundestag, which must provide a legal mandate for the Bundeswehr's deployments abroad. Police checkpoints are constantly attacked or come under fire, patrols are targeted in deadly ambushes and roadside bombs explode.
They also show how close northern Afghanistan has slid toward a new civil war and how little the Germans have achieved during their deployment in the Hindu Kush.
The classified situation report from the "RC East" region in eastern Afghanistan at first reads like a routine transcript: "Oct. 17, 2009: At approximately 1300 ANA (Afghan National Army) received intelligence that approximately 20 insurgents were moving south of their position in the wadi (dried-out river bed). At approximately 1400 the Raven was launched, and flew directly to FB. We observed no enemy in the wadi." But problems were then experienced with the flight of the Raven, a US military reconnaissance drone. "While making the U turn, approximately 300M from FB (Fire Base) -- the bird suddenly lost altitude and crashed," the report states.
Then the situation grew hectic: "Immediately we attempted to secure a dismounted patrol from FB to secure the bird, and prepared a patrol of 6 US (soldiers) 40 ANA (Afghan soldiers) ... and requested immediate CCA (air cover) to over watch the crash site and try to get eyes on the raven. While preparing to SP (conduct a search patrol) the ANA got cold feet and decided they did not want to do the dismounted patrol."
In the end the soldiers did set out to search for the crashed drone, but they had to turn back because insurgents were reportedy already waiting for the opportunity to ambush the soldiers as they attempted to salvage the drone.
System Failures, Computer Glitches and Human Error
Indeed, the secret memos reveal the drawbacks of a weapon that has been lauded by the US military as a panacea, a view shared by the president. In his short time in office, Barack Obama has unleashed double the number of drone missions ordered by his seemingly trigger-happy predecessor, George W. Bush.
The unmanned assassin can fly for more than 20 hours and kill at lightning speed. But they are not always reliable. According to official reports, 38 Predator and Reaper drones have crashed while on combat missions in both Afghanistan and Iraq, while a further nine have crashed during test flights on military bases in the US. Each crash costs the government between $3.7 million (€2.8 million) and $5 million.
The US Department of Defense accident reports show that system failures, computer glitches and human errors are common occurrences during drone missions. It seems that serious problems were ignored because of the need for the drones to be deployed as quickly as possible. The new weapon was urgently in demand following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and the hasty start of the invasion of Afghanistan.
"The drones were not ready for going into combat," says Travis Burdine, manager of the Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems Task Force. "We had no time to iron out the problems." Burdine's statement is backed up by reports in the war logs. Indeed, the quiet killers seem to have a lot of defects.
It is not just the costs incurred by these crashes that worry the US military. Even the smaller reconnaissance drones are packed with complicated computer technology -- advances the military doesn't want to fall into enemy hands. Both Reapers and Predators have a so-called "zero out" function, which allows data to be deleted remotely. Unfortunately, this feature sometimes fails. And out of fear that important information could fall into the hands of the Taliban, each drone crash necessitates elaborate -- and dangerous -- salvage operations.
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's secret service, originally helped to build up and deploy the Taliban after Afghanistan descended into a bitter and fratricidal civil war between the mujahedeen who had prevailed over the Soviets and forced their withdrawal. Despite all of the reassurances from Pakistani politicians that the old ties are cut, the country is still pursuing an ambiguous policy in the region -- at once serving as both an ally to the US and as a helper to its enemy.
There is plenty of new evidence to support this thesis. The documents clearly show that the Pakistani intelligence agency is the most important accomplice the Taliban has outside of Afghanistan. The war against the Afghan security forces, the Americans and their ISAF allies is still being conducted from Pakistan.
The country is an important safe haven for enemy forces -- and serves as a base for issuing their deployment. New recruits to the Taliban stream across the Pakistan-Afghan border, including feared foreign fighters -- among them Arabs, Chechnyans, Uzbekis, Uighurs and even European Islamists.
According to the war logs, the ISI envoys are present when insurgent commanders hold war councils -- and even give specific orders to carry out murders. These include orders to try to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai. For example, a threat report dated August 21, 2008 warned: "Colonel Mohammad Yusuf from the ISI had directed Taliban official Maulawi Izzatullah to see that Karzai was assassinated."
Former Pakistan intelligence chief General Hamid Gul plays a prominent role in the ISI documents. After he left office, Gul came across in the Western media as a kind of propagandist for the Taliban. In the documents, Gul is depicted as an important source of aid to the Taliban and even, in one report, as "a leader" of the insurgents. One threat report from Jan. 14, 2008 claims that he coordinated the planned kidnapping of United Nations employees on Highway 1 between Kabul and Jalalabad.
The memos state that Gul ordered suicide attacks, and they also describe the former intelligence chief as one of the most important suppliers of weaponry to the Taliban. One report mentions a convoy of 65 trucks carrying munitions that Gul allegedly organized for the Taliban. Another claims the ISI delivered 1,000 motorcycles to the Haqqanis, a warlord family led by Sirajuddin Haqqani who -- together with the Taliban and Hekmatyar -- are among the three greatest opponents of Western forces in Afghanistan. Another mentions 7,000 weapons that were sent to the border province of Kunar, including Kalashnikovs, mortars and Strella rockets.
Still, even those who drew up the reports are uncertain of their veracity. This kind of uncertainty creeps up often in the documents. They reveal the great weakness of the US communications strategy.
Addressing the facets about Pakistan, White House official Rhodes responded: "The status quo is not acceptable, which is precisely why the United States had focused so much on this challenge. Pakistan is moving in the right direction, but more must be done. The safe havens for violent extremist groups within Pakistan continue to pose an intolerable threat to the United States, to Afghanistan and to the Pakistani people who have suffered greatly from terrorism. The Pakistani government -- and Pakistan's military and intelligence services -- must continue their strategic shift against violent extremist groups within their borders and stay on the offensive against them."
America's intelligence agencies are drowning in a sea of data. Fearful of repeating the intelligence mistakes that occurred prior to 9/11, analysts seem to be blindly reporting every single thing.
Security experts have been complaining for some time that these countless reports concentrate too heavily on the opinions and the movements of the enemy -- in this case on the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Far too many analysts and too many reconnaissance flights seem to be concerned with sketching out the hierarchy of the insurgents' networks and creating lists of enemies who should be killed or captured.
Intelligence agents are constantly gathering statements from local informants, whose eagerness to please the Americans often surpasses their reliability.
Yet the most serious issues are too often overlooked: The protection of the Afghan civilians, the analysis of the political environment and the search for solution to this endless conflict.
One thing, however, is certain. These thousands of secret documents indicate that, after almost nine years of war, a victory in Hindu Kush looks farther away than ever.
REPORTED BY MATTHIAS GEBAUER, JOHN GOETZ, HANS HOYNG, SUSANNE KOELBL, MARCEL ROSENBACH AND GREGOR PETER SCHMITZ
URL:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html

FORUM:Can the War in Afghanistan Still Be Won?

http://forum-international.spiegel.de/showthread.php?t=848&goto=newpost

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US classified Afghan War document leaks underscore deep suspicions about ISI role

Afghanistan Sun Tuesday 27th July, 2010 (ANI)
Some leading Democrats have warned that the disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents by the WikiLeaks.org website underscores deep suspicions that they have harbored towards Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
"Some of these documents reinforce a longstanding concern of mine about the supporting role of some Pakistani officials in the Afghan insurgency," said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee.
During a visit to Pakistan this month, Senator Levin, who has largely supported the war, said he confronted senior Pakistani leaders about the ISI's continuing ties to militant groups.
According to the New York Times, several administration officials have privately expressed hope that they might be able to use the leaks, and their description of a sometimes duplicitous Pakistani ally, to pressure Pakistan to cooperate more fully with the United States on counter-terrorism.
The documents seem to reveal rich new details of connections between the Taliban and other militant groups and the ISI.
"This is now out in the open. It's reality now. In some ways, it makes it easier for us to tell the Pakistanis that they have to help us," an Obama administration official was quoted, as saying.ut much of the pushback from the White House over the past two days has been to stress that the connection between the ISI and the Taliban was well known.
"I don't think that what is being reported hasn't in many ways been publicly discussed, either by you all or by representatives of the U.S. government, for quite some time," said President Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs during a briefing on Monday.
Gibbs was speaking as the White House sought to reassert control over the public debate on the Afghanistan war on Monday.
Massachusetts Democrat Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry said: "Those policies are at a critical stage, and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent."
Administration officials have acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Obama to win both public and Congressional support for his ongoing war effort in Afghanistan.
"We don't know how to react. This obviously puts Congress and the public in a bad mood," the NYT quoted a frustrated administration official, as saying.
WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange has defended the release of the documents.
"I'd like to see this material taken seriously and investigated, and new policies, if not prosecutions, result from it," he said.
A senior ISI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, sharply condemned the reports as "part of the malicious campaign to malign the spy organization" and said the ISI would "continue to eradicate the menace of terrorism with or without the help of the West."
Farhatullah Babar, the spokesman for President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, dismissed the reports and said that Pakistan remained "a part of a strategic alliance of the United States in the fight against
terrorism." (ANI)

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US needs few days to assess Afghanistan war leak papers

Afghanistan Sun Tuesday 27th July, 2010 (ANI)
The United States military has said that it could take few days to assess the impact of the leak of over 90,000 of its classified records on the war in Afghanistan.
"It could take days, if not weeks to go through the leaked documents," the BBC quoted Pentagon spokesman Col Dave Lapan, as saying.
Lapan has called the release of these documents a "criminal act", and said that the US officials are reviewing it to determine "whether they have revealed sources and methods," which might endanger the US and coalition personnel.
Meanwhile, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has said the leak did not reveal anything new about the nature of the war in Afghanistan, but the details revealed could be damaging.
"It has a potential to be very harmful to those that are in our military, those that are co-operating with our military and those that are working to keep us safe," he said.
However, the founder of 'Wikileaks', Julian Assange responded by saying that he has no reason to doubt the reliability of the reports and the release of the material can be compared to the archives of the Stasi, the East German Secret Police.
"Wikileaks has tried hard to make sure that this material does not put innocents at harm, and had held back about 15,000 reports at the request of the source," she said.
The White House has condemned the leak calling it a possible threat to national security. (ANI)===============The END ? ==================

‘The Runaway General’ – The Full Text

2010-06-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

The Runaway General
Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House
By Michael Hastings
July 22, 2010
‘How’d I get screwed into going to this dinner?” demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It’s a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all US and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He’s in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany’s president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him.

“The dinner comes with the position, sir,” says his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Flynn. McChrystal turns sharply in his chair. “Hey, Charlie,” he asks, “does this come with the position?” McChrystal gives him the middle finger. The general stands and looks around the suite that his traveling staff of 10 has converted into a full-scale operations center. The tables are crowded with silver Panasonic Toughbooks, and blue cables crisscross the hotel’s thick carpet, hooked up to satellite dishes to provide encrypted phone and email communications. Dressed in off the rack civilian casual – blue tie, button-down shirt, dress slacks – McChrystal is way out of his comfort zone. Paris, as one of his advisers says, is the “most anti-McChrystal city you can imagine. ”

The general hates fancy restaurants, rejecting any place with candles on the tables as too “Gucci.” He prefers Bud Light Lime (his favorite beer) to Bordeaux, Talladega Nights (his favorite movie) to Jean-Luc Godard. Besides, the public eye has never been a place where McChrystal felt comfortable: Before President Obama put him in charge of the war in Afghanistan, he spent five years running the Pentagon’s most secretive black ops. “What’s the update on the Kandahar bombing?” McChrystal asks Flynn. The city has been rocked by two massive car bombs in the past day alone, calling into question the general’s assurances that he can wrest it from the Taliban.

Writer Michael Hastings has reported from Iraq and Afghanistan for two years. This is his first story for RS. “We have two KIAs, but that hasn’t been confirmed,” Flynn says. McChrystal takes a final look around the suite. At 55, he is gaunt and lean, not unlike an older version of Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn. His slate blue eyes have the unsettling ability to drill down when they lock on you. If you’ve fucked up or disappointed him, they can destroy your soul without the need for him to raise his voice. “I’d rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner,” McChrystal says. He pauses a beat. “Unfortunately,” he adds, “no one in this room could do it. ”With that, he’s out the door. “Who’s he going to dinner with?” I ask one of his aides. “Some French minister,” the aide tells me. “It’s fucking gay.”

The next morning, McChrystal and his team gather to prepare for a speech he is giving at the École Militaire, a French military academy. The general prides himself on being sharper and ballsier than anyone else, but his brashness comes with a price: Although McChrystal has been in charge of the war for only a year, in that short time he has managed to piss off almost everyone with a stake in the conflict. Last fall, during the question and answer session following a speech he gave in London, McChrystal dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as “shortsighted,” saying it would lead to a state of “Chaosistan. ” The remarks earned him a smackdown from the president himself, who summoned the general to a terse private meeting aboard Air Force One. The message to McChrystal seemed clear: Shut the fuck up, and keep a lower profile.

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. “I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem,” he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner. “Are you asking about Vice President Biden?”

McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite Me?”
When Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, he immediately set out to deliver on his most important campaign promise on foreign policy: to refocus the war in Afghanistan on what led us to invade in the first place. “I want the American people to understand,” he announced in March 2009. “We have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” He ordered another 21,000 troops to Kabul, the largest increase since the war began in 2001. Taking the advice of both the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he also fired Gen. David McKiernan – then the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan – and replaced him with a man he didn’t know and had met only briefly: Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It was the first time a top general had been relieved from duty during wartime in more than 50 years, since Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War.

Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the roomful of military brass. Their first one- on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn’t go much better. “It was a 10 minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”

From the start, McChrystal was determined to place his personal stamp on Afghanistan, to use it as a laboratory for a controversial military strategy known as counterinsurgency. COIN, as the theory is known, is the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military’s preference for high tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation’s government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve.

The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps. In 2006, after Gen. David Petraeus beta-tested the theory during his “surge” in Iraq, it quickly gained a hardcore following of think-tankers, journalists, military officers and civilian officials. Nicknamed “COIN-dinistas” for their cultish zeal, this influential cadre believed the doctrine would be the perfect solution for Afghanistan. All they needed was a general with enough charisma and political savvy to implement it. As McChrystal

leaned on Obama to ramp up the war, he did it with the same fearlessness he used to track down terrorists in Iraq: Figure out how your enemy operates, be faster and more ruthless than everybody else, then take the fuckers out.

After arriving in Afghanistan last June, the general conducted his own policy review, ordered up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The now infamous report was leaked to the press, and its conclusion was dire: If we didn’t send another 40,000 troops – swelling the number of US forces in Afghanistan by nearly half – we were in danger of “mission failure. ” The White House was furious. McChrystal, they felt, was trying to bully Obama, opening him up to charges of being weak on national security unless he did what the general wanted. It was Obama versus the Pentagon, and the Pentagon was determined to kick the president’s ass. Last fall, with his top general calling for more troops, Obama launched a three month review to reevaluate the strategy in Afghanistan. “I found that time painful,” McChrystal tells me in one
of several lengthy interviews. “I was selling an unsellable position.”

For the general, it was a crash course in Beltway politics – a battle that pitted him against experienced Washington insiders like Vice President Biden, who argued that a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan would plunge America into a military quagmire without weakening international terrorist networks. “The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people,” says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counter-insurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. “The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.” In the end, however, McChrystal got almost exactly what he wanted.

On December 1st, in a speech at West Point, the president laid out all the reasons why fighting the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea: It’s expensive; we’re in an economic crisis; a decade-long commitment

would sap American power; Al Qaeda has shifted its base of operations to Pakistan. Then, without ever using the words “victory” or “win,” Obama announced that he would send an additional 30,000 troops

to Afghanistan, almost as many as McChrystal had requested. The president had thrown his weight, however hesitantly, behind the counter-insurgency crowd.

Today, as McChrystal gears up for an offensive in southern Afghanistan, the prospects for any kind of success look bleak. In June, the death toll for US troops passed 1,000, and the number of IEDs has

doubled. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the fifth poorest country on earth has failed to win over the civilian population, whose attitude toward US troops ranges from intensely wary to openly

hostile. The biggest military operation of the year – a ferocious offensive that began in February to retake the southern town of Marja – continues to drag on, prompting McChrystal himself to refer to it as a

“bleeding ulcer.”

In June, Afghanistan officially outpaced Vietnam as the longest war in American history – and Obama has quietly begun to back away from the deadline he set for withdrawing US troops in July of next year.

The president finds himself stuck in something even more insane than a quagmire: a quagmire he knowingly walked into, even though it’s precisely the kind of gigantic, mind-numbing, multigenerational nation-

building project he explicitly said he didn’t want. Even those who support McChrystal and his strategy of counterinsurgency know that whatever the general manages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it’s going to

look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm. “It’s not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win,” says Maj. Gen. Bill Mayville, who serves as chief of operations for McChrystal. “This is going

to end in an argument.”

The night after his speech in Paris, McChrystal and his staff head to Kitty O’Shea’s, an Irish pub catering to tourists, around the corner from the hotel. His wife, Annie, has joined him for a rare visit: Since the

Iraq War began in 2003, she has seen her husband less than 30 days a year. Though it is his and Annie’s 33rd wedding anniversary, McChrystal has invited his inner circle along for dinner and drinks at the

“least Gucci” place his staff could find. His wife isn’t surprised. “He once took me to a Jack in the Box when I was dressed in formalwear,” she says with a laugh. The general’s staff is a handpicked collection

of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs. There’s a former head of British Special Forces, two Navy Seals, an Afghan Special Forces commando, a lawyer, two fighter pilots

and at least two dozen combat veterans and counterinsurgency experts. They jokingly refer to themselves as Team America, taking the name from the South Park-esque send-up of military cluelessness, and

they pride themselves on their can-do attitude and their disdain for authority.

After arriving in Kabul last summer, Team America set about changing the culture of the International Security Assistance Force, as the NATO led mission is known. (US soldiers had taken to deriding ISAF

as short for “I Suck at Fighting” or “In Sandals and Flip Flops.”) McChrystal banned alcohol on base, kicked out Burger King and other symbols of American excess, expanded the morning briefing to include

thousands of officers and refashioned the command center into a Situational Awareness Room, a free-flowing information hub modeled after Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s offices in New York. He also set a

manic pace for his staff, becoming legendary for sleeping four hours a night, running seven miles each morning, and eating one meal a day. (In the month I spend around the general, I witness him eating only

once. ) It’s a kind of superhuman narrative that has built up around him, a staple in almost every media profile, as if the ability to go without sleep and food translates into the possibility of a man single handedly

winning the war.

By midnight at Kitty O’Shea’s, much of Team America is completely shitfaced. Two officers do an Irish jig mixed with steps from a traditional Afghan wedding dance, while McChrystal’s top advisers lock

arms and sing a slurred song of their own invention. “Afghanistan!” they bellow. “Afghanistan!” They call it their Afghanistan song. McChrystal steps away from the circle, observing his team. “All these men,”

he tells me. “I’d die for them. And they’d die for me. ”The assembled men may look and sound like a bunch of combat veterans letting off steam, but in fact this tight knit group represents the most powerful

force shaping US policy in Afghanistan.

While McChrystal and his men are in indisputable command of all military aspects of the war, there is no equivalent position on the diplomatic or political side. Instead, an assortment of administration players

compete over the Afghan portfolio: US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Special Representative to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,

not to mention 40 or so other coalition ambassadors and a host of talking heads who try to insert themselves into the mess, from John Kerry to John McCain. This diplomatic incoherence has effectively

allowed McChrystal’s team to call the shots and hampered efforts to build a stable and credible government in Afghanistan.

“It jeopardizes the mission,” says Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who supports McChrystal. “The military cannot by itself create governance reform. ” Part of the problem is

structural: The Defense Department budget exceeds $600 billion a year, while the State Department receives only $50 billion. But part of the problem is personal: In private, Team McChrystal likes to talk shit

about many of Obama’s top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four star general and veteran of the Cold War, a “clown” who remains “stuck in 1985. ” Politicians like McCain

and Kerry, says another aide, “turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it’s not very helpful. ” Only Hillary Clinton

receives good reviews from McChrystal’s inner circle. “Hillary had Stan’s back during the strategic review,” says an adviser. “She said, ‘If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.’ ”

McChrystal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. “The Boss says he’s like a wounded animal,” says a member of the general’s team. “Holbrooke keeps

hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous. He’s a brilliant guy, but he just comes in, pulls on a lever, whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and you can’t just have

someone yanking on shit. ” At one point on his trip to Paris, McChrystal checks his BlackBerry. “Oh, not another email from Holbrooke,” he groans. “I don’t even want to open it. ” He clicks on the message

and reads the salutation out loud, then stuffs the BlackBerry back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal his annoyance. “Make sure you don’t get any of that on your leg,” an aide jokes, referring to the email.

By far the most crucial – and strained – relationship is between McChrystal and Eikenberry, the US ambassador. According to those close to the two men, Eikenberry – a retired three star general who served

in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2005 – can’t stand that his former subordinate is now calling the shots. He’s also furious that McChrystal, backed by NATO’s allies, refused to put Eikenberry in the pivotal role of

viceroy in Afghanistan, which would have made him the diplomatic equivalent of the general. The job instead went to British Ambassador Mark Sedwill – a move that effectively increased McChrystal’s

influence over diplomacy by shutting out a powerful rival. “In reality, that position needs to be filled by an American for it to have weight,” says a US official familiar with the negotiations.

The relationship was further strained in January, when a classified cable that Eikenberry wrote was leaked to The New York Times. The cable was as scathing as it was prescient. The ambassador offered a

brutal critique of McChrystal’s strategy, dismissed President Hamid Karzai as “not an adequate strategic partner,” and cast doubt on whether the counter-insurgency plan would be “sufficient” to deal with Al

Qaeda. “We will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves,” Eikenberry warned, “short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos.” McChrystal and his

team were blindsided by the cable. “I like Karl, I’ve known him for years, but they’d never said anything like that to us before,” says McChrystal, who adds that he felt “betrayed” by the leak. “Here’s one that

covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

The most striking example of McChrystal’s usurpation of diplomatic policy is his handling of Karzai. It is McChrystal, not diplomats like Eikenberry or Holbrooke, who enjoys the best relationship with the man

America is relying on to lead Afghanistan. The doctrine of counter-insurgency requires a credible government, and since Karzai is not considered credible by his own people, McChrystal has worked hard to

make him so. Over the past few months, he has accompanied the president on more than 10 trips around the country, standing beside him at political meetings, or shuras, in Kandahar. In February, the day

before the doomed offensive in Marja, McChrystal even drove over to the president’s palace to get him to sign off on what would be the largest military operation of the year. Karzai’s staff, however, insisted

that the president was sleeping off a cold and could not be disturbed. After several hours of haggling, McChrystal finally enlisted the aid of Afghanistan’s defense minister, who persuaded Karzai’s people to

wake the president from his nap.

This is one of the central flaws with McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy: The need to build a credible government puts us at the mercy of whatever tinpot leader we’ve backed – a danger that Eikenberry

explicitly warned about in his cable. Even Team McChrystal privately acknowledges that Karzai is a less than ideal partner. “He’s been locked up in his palace the past year,” laments one of the general’s top

advisers. At times, Karzai himself has actively undermined McChrystal’s desire to put him in charge. During a recent visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Karzai met three US soldiers who had been

wounded in Uruzgan province. “General,” he called out to McChrystal, “I didn’t even know we were fighting in Uruzgan!”

Growing up as a military brat, McChrystal exhibited the mixture of brilliance and cockiness that would follow him throughout his career. His father fought in Korea and Vietnam, retiring as a two star general,

and his four brothers all joined the armed services. Moving around to different bases, McChrystal took solace in baseball, a sport in which he made no pretense of hiding his superiority: In Little League, he

would call out strikes to the crowd before whipping a fastball down the middle. McChrystal entered West Point in 1972, when the US military was close to its all-time low in popularity. His class was the last

to graduate before the academy started to admit women.

The “Prison on the Hudson,” as it was known then, was a potent mix of testosterone, hooliganism and reactionary patriotism. Cadets repeatedly trashed the mess hall in food fights, and birthdays were

celebrated with a tradition called “rat fucking,” which often left the birthday boy outside in the snow or mud, covered in shaving cream. “It was pretty out of control,” says Lt. Gen. David Barno, a classmate

who went on to serve as the top commander in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. The class, filled with what Barno calls “huge talent” and “wild-eyed teenagers with a strong sense of idealism,” also produced

Gen. Ray Odierno, the current commander of US forces in Iraq.

The son of a general, McChrystal was also a ringleader of the campus dissidents – a dual role that taught him how to thrive in a rigid, top-down environment while thumbing his nose at authority every chance

he got. He accumulated more than 100 hours of demerits for drinking, partying and insubordination – a record that his classmates boasted made him a “century man.” One classmate, who asked not to be

named, recalls finding McChrystal passed out in the shower after downing a case of beer he had hidden under the sink. The troublemaking almost got him kicked out, and he spent hours subjected to forced

marches in the Area, a paved courtyard where unruly cadets were disciplined. “I’d come visit, and I’d end up spending most of my time in the library, while Stan was in the Area,” recalls Annie, who began

dating McChrystal in 1973. McChrystal wound up ranking 298 out of a class of 855, a serious underachievement for a man widely regarded as brilliant.

His most compelling work was extracurricular: As managing editor of The Pointer, the West Point literary magazine, McChrystal wrote seven short stories that eerily foreshadow many of the issues he would

confront in his career. In one tale, a fictional officer complains about the difficulty of training foreign troops to fight; in another, a 19-year old soldier kills a boy he mistakes for a terrorist. In “Brinkman’s Note,”

a piece of suspense fiction, the unnamed narrator appears to be trying to stop a plot to assassinate the president. It turns out, however, that the narrator himself is the assassin, and he’s able to infiltrate the

White House: “The President strode in smiling. From the right coat pocket of the raincoat I carried, I slowly drew forth my 32caliber pistol. In Brinkman’s failure, I had succeeded.”

After graduation, 2nd Lt. Stanley McChrystal entered an Army that was all but broken in the wake of Vietnam. “We really felt we were a peacetime generation,” he recalls. “There was the Gulf War, but even

that didn’t feel like that big of a deal.” So McChrystal spent his career where the action was: He enrolled in Special Forces school and became a regimental commander of the 3rd Ranger Battalion in 1986. It

was a dangerous position, even in peacetime – nearly two dozen Rangers were killed in training accidents during the Eighties. It was also an unorthodox career path: Most soldiers who want to climb the ranks

to general don’t go into the Rangers. Displaying a penchant for transforming systems he considers outdated, McChrystal set out to revolutionize the training regime for the Rangers. He introduced mixed martial

arts, required every soldier to qualify with night-vision goggles on the rife range and forced troops to build up their endurance with weekly marches involving heavy backpacks.

In the late 1990s, McChrystal shrewdly improved his inside game, spending a year at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and then at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he coauthored a treatise

on the merits and drawbacks of humanitarian interventionism. But as he moved up through the ranks, McChrystal relied on the skills he had learned as a troublemaking kid at West Point: knowing precisely

how far he could go in a rigid military hierarchy without getting tossed out. Being a highly intelligent badass, he discovered, could take you far – especially in the political chaos that followed September 11th.

“He was very focused,” says Annie. “Even as a young officer he seemed to know what he wanted to do. I don’t think his personality has changed in all these years.”

By some accounts, McChrystal’s career should have been over at least two times by now. As Pentagon spokesman during the invasion of Iraq, the general seemed more like a White House mouthpiece than

an up and coming commander with a reputation for speaking his mind. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his infamous “stuff happens” remark during the looting of Baghdad, McChrystal backed

him up. A few days later, he echoed the president’s Mission Accomplished gaff by insisting that major combat operations in Iraq were over. But it was during his next stint – overseeing the military’s most elite

units, including the Rangers, Navy Seals and Delta Force – that McChrystal took part in a cover-up that would have destroyed the career of a lesser man.

After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former NFL star turned Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had

died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn’t read the

recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laser-like attention to minute details. ) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning

that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman’s death. “If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public,” he wrote, it could cause “public embarrassment” for the president.

McChrystal may have sold Obama on his strategy, but his own troops aren’t buying it. “The false narrative, which McChrystal clearly helped construct, diminished Pat’s true actions,” wrote Tillman’s mother,

Mary, in her book Boots on the Ground by Dusk. McChrystal got away with it, she added, because he was the “golden boy” of Rumsfeld and Bush, who loved his willingness to get things done, even if it

included bending the rules or skipping the chain of command. Nine days after Tillman’s death, McChrystal was promoted to major general.

Two years later, in 2006, McChrystal was tainted by a scandal involving detainee abuse and torture at Camp Nama in Iraq. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, prisoners at the camp were

subjected to a now familiar litany of abuse: stress positions, being dragged naked through the mud. McChrystal was not disciplined in the scandal, even though an interrogator at the camp reported seeing him

inspect the prison multiple times. But the experience was so unsettling to McChrystal that he tried to prevent detainee operations from being placed under his command in Afghanistan, viewing them as a

“political swamp,” according to a US official. In May 2009, as McChrystal prepared for his confirmation hearings, his staff prepared him for hard questions about Camp Nama and the Tillman cover-up. But

the scandals barely made a ripple in Congress, and McChrystal was soon on his way back to Kabul to run the war in Afghanistan. The media, to a large extent, have also given McChrystal a pass on both

controversies.

Where Gen. Petraeus is kind of a dweeb, a teacher’s pet with a Ranger’s tab, McChrystal is a snake-eating rebel, a “Jedi” commander, as Newsweek called him. He didn’t care when his teenage son came

home with blue hair and a mohawk. He speaks his mind with a candor rare for a high ranking official. He asks for opinions, and seems genuinely interested in the response. He gets briefings on his iPod and

listens to books on tape. He carries a custom made set of nunchucks in his convoy engraved with his name and four stars, and his itinerary often bears a fresh quote from Bruce Lee. (“There are no limits.

There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”) He went out on dozens of nighttime raids during his time in Iraq, unprecedented for a top commander, and turned up on

missions unannounced, with almost no entourage.

“The fucking lads love Stan McChrystal,” says a British officer who serves in Kabul. “You’d be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone would take a knee beside you, and a corporal would be like ‘Who the

fuck is that?’ And it’s fucking Stan McChrystal. ”It doesn’t hurt that McChrystal was also extremely successful as head of the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite forces that carry out the

government’s darkest ops. During the Iraq surge, his team killed and captured thousands of insurgents, including Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. “JSOC was a killing machine,” says

Maj. Gen. Mayville, his chief of operations. McChrystal was also open to new ways of killing. He systematically mapped out terrorist networks, targeting specific insurgents and hunting them down – often with

the help of cyber freaks traditionally shunned by the military. “The Boss would find the 24-year old kid with a nose ring, with some fucking brilliant degree from MIT, sitting in the corner with 16 computer

monitors humming,” says a Special Forces commando who worked with McChrystal in Iraq and now serves on his staff in Kabul. “He’d say, ‘Hey – you fucking muscle heads couldn’t find lunch without help.

You got to work together with these guys.’ ”

Even in his new role as America’s leading evangelist for counterinsurgency, McChrystal retains the deep seated instincts of a terrorist hunter. To put pressure on the Taliban, he has upped the number of

Special Forces units in Afghanistan from four to 19. “You better be out there hitting four or five targets tonight,” McChrystal will tell a Navy Seal he sees in the hallway at headquarters. Then he’ll add, “I’m

going to have to scold you in the morning for it, though.” In fact, the general frequently finds himself apologizing for the disastrous consequences of counter-insurgency. In the first four months of this year,

NATO forces killed some 90 civilians, up 76 percent from the same period in 2009 – a record that has created tremendous resentment among the very population that COIN theory is intent on winning over.

In February, a Special Forces night raid ended in the deaths of two pregnant Afghan women and allegations of a cover-up, and in April, protests erupted in Kandahar after US forces accidentally shot up a

bus, killing five Afghans. “We’ve shot an amazing number of people,” McChrystal recently conceded.

Despite the tragedies and miscues, McChrystal has issued some of the strictest directives to avoid civilian casualties that the US military has ever encountered in a warzone. It’s “insurgent math” as he calls it –

for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies. He has ordered convoys to curtail their reckless driving, put restrictions on the use of air power and severely limited night raids. He regularly

apologizes to Hamid Karzai when civilians are killed, and berates commanders responsible for civilian deaths. “For a while,” says one US official, “the most dangerous place to be in Afghanistan was in front of

McChrystal after a ‘civ cas’ incident.” The ISAF command has even discussed ways to make not killing into something you can win an award for: There’s talk of creating a new medal for “courageous

restraint,” a buzzword that’s unlikely to gain much traction in the gung ho culture of the US military.

But however strategic they may be, McChrystal’s new marching orders have caused an intense backlash among his own troops. Being told to hold their fire, soldiers complain, puts them in greater danger.

“Bottom line?” says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put soldiers’ lives in even greater

danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing.”

In March, McChrystal traveled to Combat Outpost JFM – a small encampment on the outskirts of Kandahar – to confront such accusations from the troops directly. It was a typically bold move by the

general. Only two days earlier, he had received an email from Israel Arroyo, a 25-year old staff sergeant who asked McChrystal to go on a mission with his unit. “I am writing because it was said you don’t

care about the troops and have made it harder to defend ourselves,” Arroyo wrote. Within hours, McChrystal responded personally: “I’m saddened by the accusation that I don’t care about soldiers, as it is

something I suspect any soldier takes both personally and professionally – at least I do. But I know perceptions depend upon your perspective at the time, and I respect that every soldier’s view is his own.”

Then he showed up at Arroyo’s outpost and went on a foot patrol with the troops – not some bullshit photo-op stroll through a market, but a real live operation in a dangerous war zone.

Six weeks later, just before McChrystal returned from Paris, the general received another email from Arroyo. A 23-year old corporal named Michael Ingram – one of the soldiers McChrystal had gone on

patrol with – had been killed by an IED a day earlier. It was the third man the 25-member platoon had lost in a year, and Arroyo was writing to see if the general would attend Ingram’s memorial service. “He

started to look up to you,” Arroyo wrote. McChrystal said he would try to make it down to pay his respects as soon as possible. The night before the general is scheduled to visit Sgt. Arroyo’s platoon for the

memorial, I arrive at Combat Outpost JFM to speak with the soldiers he had gone on patrol with. JFM is a small encampment, ringed by high blast walls and guard towers. Almost all of the soldiers here have

been on repeated combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and have seen some of the worst fighting of both wars. But they are especially angered by Ingram’s death. His commanders had repeatedly

requested permission to tear down the house where Ingram was killed, noting that it was often used as a combat position by the Taliban. But due to McChrystal’s new restrictions to avoid upsetting civilians,

the request had been denied. “These were abandoned houses,” fumes Staff Sgt. Kennith Hicks. “Nobody was coming back to live in them.”

One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card

reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fght, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any fucking

sense?” asks Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a fucking bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?” The rules handed out here are not what McChrystal intended – they’

ve been distorted as they passed through the chain of command – but knowing that does nothing to lessen the anger of troops on the ground. “Fuck, when I came over here and heard that McChrystal was in

charge, I thought we would get our fucking gun on,” says Hicks, who has served three tours of combat. “I get COIN. I get all that. McChrystal comes here, explains it, it makes sense. But then he goes away

on his bird, and by the time his directives get passed down to us through Big Army, they’re all fucked up – either because somebody is trying to cover their ass, or because they just don’t understand it

themselves. But we’re fucking losing this thing.”

McChrystal and his team show up the next day. Underneath a tent, the general has a 45minute discussion with some two dozen soldiers. The atmosphere is tense. “I ask you what’s going on in your world, and

I think it’s important for you all to understand the big picture as well,” McChrystal begins. “How’s the company doing? You guys feeling sorry for yourselves? Anybody? Anybody feel like you’re losing?”

McChrystal says. “Sir, some of the guys here, sir, think we’re losing, sir,” says Hicks. McChrystal nods. “Strength is leading when you just don’t want to lead,” he tells the men. “You’re leading by example.

That’s what we do. Particularly when it’s really, really hard, and it hurts inside. ” Then he spends 20 minutes talking about counter-insurgency, diagramming his concepts and principles on a whiteboard. He

makes COIN seem like common sense, but he’s careful not to bullshit the men. “We are knee deep in the decisive year,” he tells them. The Taliban, he insists, no longer has the initiative – “but I don’t think we

do, either.” It’s similar to the talk he gave in Paris, but it’s not winning any hearts and minds among the soldiers. “This is the philosophical part that works with think tanks,” McChrystal tries to joke. “But it

doesn’t get the same reception from infantry companies.”

During the question and answer period, the frustration boils over. The soldiers complain about not being allowed to use lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of evidence. They

want to be able to fight – like they did in Iraq, like they had in Afghanistan before McChrystal. “We aren’t putting fear into the Taliban,” one soldier says. “Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded

thing,” McChrystal says, citing an oft-repeated maxim that you can’t kill your way out of Afghanistan. “The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn’t work.” “I’m not saying go out and kill everybody,

sir,” the soldier persists. “You say we’ve stopped the momentum of the insurgency. I don’t believe that’s true in this area. The more we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, the stronger it’s getting.” “I

agree with you,” McChrystal says. “In this area, we’ve not made progress, probably. You have to show strength here, you have to use fire. What I’m telling you is, fire costs you. What do you want to do?

You want to wipe the population out here and resettle it?”

A soldier complains that under the rules, any insurgent who doesn’t have a weapon is immediately assumed to be a civilian. “That’s the way this game is,” McChrystal says. “It’s complex. I can’t just decide:

It’s shirts and skins, and we’ll kill all the shirts. ”As the discussion ends, McChrystal seems to sense that he hasn’t succeeded at easing the men’s anger. He makes one last ditch effort to reach them,

acknowledging the death of Cpl. Ingram. “There’s no way I can make that easier,” he tells them. “No way I can pretend it won’t hurt. No way I can tell you not to feel that. . . . I will tell you, you’re doing a

great job. Don’t let the frustration get to you. ” The session ends with no clapping, and no real resolution. McChrystal may have sold President Obama on counterinsurgency, but many of his own men aren’t

buying it.

When it comes to Afghanistan, history is not on McChrystal’s side. The only foreign invader to have any success here was Genghis Khan – and he wasn’t hampered by things like human rights, economic

development and press scrutiny. The COIN doctrine, bizarrely, draws inspiration from some of the biggest Western military embarrassments in recent memory: France’s nasty war in Algeria (lost in 1962) and

the American misadventure in Vietnam (lost in 1975). McChrystal, like other advocates of COIN, readily acknowledges that counterinsurgency campaigns are inherently messy, expensive and easy to lose.

“Even Afghans are confused by Afghanistan,” he says. But even if he somehow manages to succeed, after years of bloody fighting with Afghan kids who pose no threat to the US homeland, the war will do

little to shut down Al Qaeda, which has shifted its operations to Pakistan. Dispatching 150,000 troops to build new schools, roads, mosques and water treatment facilities around Kandahar is like trying to stop

the drug war in Mexico by occupying Arkansas and building Baptist churches in Little Rock.

“It’s all very cynical, politically,” says Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer who has extensive experience in the region. “Afghanistan is not in our vital interest – there’s nothing for us there. ” In mid-May,

two weeks after visiting the troops in Kandahar, McChrystal travels to the White House for a high level visit by Hamid Karzai. It is a triumphant moment for the general, one that demonstrates he is very much

in command – both in Kabul and in Washington. In the East Room, which is packed with journalists and dignitaries, President Obama sings the praises of Karzai. The two leaders talk about how great their

relationship is, about the pain they feel over civilian casualties. They mention the word “progress” 16 times in under an hour. But there is no mention of victory. Still, the session represents the most forceful

commitment that Obama has made to McChrystal’s strategy in months. “There is no denying the progress that the Afghan people have made in recent years – in education, in health care and economic

development,” the president says. “As I saw in the lights across Kabul when I landed – lights that would not have been visible just a few years earlier.”

It is a disconcerting observation for Obama to make. During the worst years in Iraq, when the Bush administration had no real progress to point to, officials used to offer up the exact same evidence of success.

“It was one of our first impressions,” one GOP official said in 2006, after landing in Baghdad at the height of the sectarian violence. “So many lights shining brightly. ” So it is to the language of the Iraq War that

the Obama administration has turned – talk of progress, of city lights, of metrics like health care and education. Rhetoric that just a few years ago they would have mocked. “They are trying to manipulate

perceptions because there is no definition of victory – because victory is not even defined or recognizable,” says Celeste Ward, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation who served as a political

adviser to US commanders in Iraq in 2006. “That’s the game we’re in right now. What we need, for strategic purposes, is to create the perception that we didn’t get run of. The facts on the ground are not

great, and are not going to become great in the near future.”

But facts on the ground, as history has proven, offer little deterrent to a military determined to stay the course. Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn’t begin

to reflect how deeply fucked up things are in Afghanistan. “If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular,” a senior adviser to McChrystal says. Such

realism, however, doesn’t prevent advocates of counterinsurgency from dreaming big: Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its

counterinsurgency campaign even further. “There’s a possibility we could ask for another surge of US forces next summer if we see success here,” a senior military official in Kabul tells me.

Back in Afghanistan, less than a month after the White House meeting with Karzai and all the talk of “progress,” McChrystal is hit by the biggest blow to his vision of counterinsurgency. Since last year, the

Pentagon had been planning to launch a major military operation this summer in Kandahar, the country’s second largest city and the Taliban’s original home base. It was supposed to be a decisive turning point

in the war – the primary reason for the troop surge that McChrystal wrested from Obama late last year. But on June 10th, acknowledging that the military still needs to lay more groundwork, the general

announced that he is postponing the offensive until the fall. Rather than one big battle, like Fallujah or Ramadi, US troops will implement what McChrystal calls a “rising tide of security.” The Afghan police and

army will enter Kandahar to attempt to seize control of neighborhoods, while the US pours $90 million of aid into the city to win over the civilian population.

Even proponents of counterinsurgency are hard pressed to explain the new plan. “This isn’t a classic operation,” says a US military official. “It’s not going to be Black Hawk Down. There aren’t going to be

doors kicked in.” Other US officials insist that doors are going to be kicked in, but that it’s going to be a kinder, gentler offensive than the disaster in Marja. “The Taliban have a jackboot on the city,” says a

military official. “We have to remove them, but we have to do it in a way that doesn’t alienate the population.” When Vice President Biden was briefed on the new plan in the Oval Office, insiders say he was

shocked to see how much it mirrored the more gradual plan of counter-terrorism that he advocated last fall. “This looks like CT-plus!” he said, according to US officials familiar with the meeting.

Whatever the nature of the new plan, the delay underscores the fundamental flaws of counterinsurgency. After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the US military to openly

attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid

championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse.

“Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem,” says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. “A tsunami of cash fuels corruption,

delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we’re picking winners and losers” – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counter-insurgency has

succeeded only in creating a never ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word “victory” when he

talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.

PFLP condemns the murderous crimes of the Israeli pirates and salutes the heroes of the Freedom Flotilla

2010-06-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine condemns the latest Israeli massacre on the high seas, in international waters, the brutal assault on the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza on May 31, 2010.
The Israeli state terror pirates, said the Front, attacked the humanitarian aid and international solidarity ships with firearms and commandos; the Front said that this is the latest crime against humanity committed by the occupation state, illustrating its blatant disregard for international law.
The Front saluted all of the members of the Freedom Flotilla, particularly the martyrs and wounded, saying that these are martyrs of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause, and of the struggle of people everywhere for liberation, justice and freedom, and will be immortal in our struggle, and that the Flotilla's prisoners are with the prisoners of our Palestinian Arab nation, prisoners of freedom in the hands of a terror occupation state.

It called upon the Palstinian movement in Palestine and in exile and all progressive forces around the world to continue and escalate their actions at Israeli embassies and consulates around the world, including emulating the example of the Turkish people in occupying the Israeli embassy in Anakara, and demanded an immediate end to any so-called indirect or direct negotiations with the murderous regime.

The Front demanded that all Arab nations end their relations with the occupation state and cut off diplomatic ties, demanding serious international action at an official level to bring the criminal leaders of the occupation state to justice in international courts and severely punish them for their crimes. Furthermore, the Front said that the United States government and all silent and complicit governments bear responsibility for this latest crime as well as all of the ongoing crimes of this occupation state against the Palestinian Arab people.

The Front pledged to hold fast to the examples of these activists, the latest martyrs of the great struggle of people for liberation and return and for justice in the face of an occupier and invader. They shall live on, the PFLP pledged, in the determination and resistance of the Palestinian people to see justice and freedom and end the crimes of the terror state.

PFLP salutes Freedom Flotilla to Gaza and demands safe passage
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine issued a statement on May 29, 2010 condemning the threats, psychological warfare and attacks by the occupation military and political leadership and security services against the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza seeking to intimidate its organizers and prevent it from continuing its progress to break the siege on the Palestinian Gaza Strip.
The PFLP saluted the passengers and organizers of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, including activists, human rights groups and parliamentarians from around the world, saying that such actions are a great support for Palestinian steadfastness in Gaza and a popular counterpoint to official international complicity and silence with Israeli crimes against the people of Gaza and the Palestinian people as a whole.
The Front said that the occupation is besieging a million and a half Palestinians in Gaza, seeking to intimidate and silence the voice of freedom, justice and honor. However, the human conscience refuses to bow to racist, bloody occupation and its war machine, said the Front; internationally, people are joining with Palestinians to break the siege, expose the brutal occupation, uncover its crimes against humanity and its genocide against the Palestinian people.

The PFLP demanded that all international institutions, particularly the United Nations, and all forces for freedom and peace and human rights to take actions in various forms in their own countries and at the international level to protect the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza and the international activists aboard who represent the conscience of the world that refuses silence and submission to Israeli crimes and United States and European Union official silence, complicity and participation. It saluted the Flotilla, and called for all progressive forces to continue actions like this to break the siege and unite with our people against the occupation's crimes.

Israel Holds Hundreds Seized During Raid on Flotilla
By ISABEL KERSHNER and ALAN COWELL
Published: June 1, 2010
JERUSALEM — A day after Israeli commandoes raided an aid flotilla seeking to breach the blockade of Gaza, Israel held hundreds of activists seized aboard the convoy on Tuesday as news reports said activists may be planning a fresh attempt to ferry supplies to the Hamas-run enclave.
At the same time, the Israeli military said troops clashed with two militants who infiltrated from Gaza, killing them both. While such occurrences are almost routine along the volatile border between Israel and Gaza, the incident underscored the tensions seizing the region after Monday’s confrontation at sea, which strained relations between Israel and the United States just as American-sponsored proximity talks involving Palestinians and Israelis were getting under way.
The developments in Israel and Gaza came hours after the United Nations Security Council condemned “acts” leading to the loss of life in Israel’s operation in international waters on Monday that claimed the lives of nine civilians, many of them Turks. After hours of late-night negotiations, the Security Council urged an impartial inquiry — a call echoed in a separate forum by Russia and the European Union on Tuesday at a meeting of senior officials in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
For its part, Turkey, once seen as Israel’s most important friend in the Muslim world, recalled its ambassador and canceled planned military exercises with Israel as the countries’ already tense relations soured even further. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was flying home after canceling a Tuesday meeting with President Obama.

Mr. Netanyahu defended the Israeli military’s actions, saying the commandos, enforcing what Israel says is a legal blockade, were set upon by passengers on the Turkish ship they boarded and fired only in self-defense. The military released a video of the early moments of the raid to support that claim.
Israel said the violence was instigated by pro-Palestinian activists who presented themselves as humanitarians but had come ready for a fight. Organizers of the flotilla accused the Israeli forces of opening fire as soon as they landed on the deck, and released videos to support their case. Israel released video taken from one of its vessels to supports its own account of events.
On Tuesday, activists promised more confrontation. Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement that organized the flotilla said that another cargo boat was heading to Gaza from the coast of Italy while a second boat carrying some 35 passengers was expected to join it, The Associated Press reported.
“This initiative is not going to stop,” Ms. Berlin said from the group’s base in Cyprus. “We think eventually Israel will get some kind of common sense. They’re going to have to stop the blockade of Gaza, and one of the ways to do this is for us to continue to send the boats.”
Reuters reported that Israel was holding hundreds of activists incommunicado in and around the port city of Ashdod, refusing to permit journalists access to witnesses who might contradict Israel’s version of events. Around 50 of the passengers had volunteered to be deported but over 600 were refusing to be repatriated.
While the Israeli public seemed largely to support the navy, policy experts questioned preparations for the military operation, whether there had been an intelligence failure and whether the Israeli insistence on stopping the flotilla had been counterproductive. Some commentators were calling for the resignation of Ehud Barak, the defense minister.

“The government failed the test of results; blaming the organizers of the flotilla for causing the deaths by ignoring Israel’s orders to turn back is inadequate,” wrote Aluf Benn, a columnist for Haaretz, on the newspaper’s Web site on Monday, calling for a national committee of inquiry. “Decisions taken by the responsible authorities must be probed.”
The flotilla of six cargo ships and passenger boats was carrying 10,000 tons of aid for Gaza, where the Islamic militant group Hamas holds sway. But the raid and its deadly consequences have thrown Israel’s policy of blockading Gaza into the international limelight. The statement by the United Nations Security Council early on Tuesday stressed “the need for sustained and regular flow of goods and people to Gaza.”

Israel had vowed not to let the flotilla reach the shores of Gaza, where Hamas, an organization sworn to Israel’s destruction, took over by force in 2007.

Named the Freedom Flotilla, and led by the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement and a Turkish organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi, the convoy had converged at sea near Cyprus and set out on the final leg of its journey on Sunday afternoon. Israel warned the vessels to abort their mission, describing it as a provocation.
The confrontation began shortly before midnight on Sunday when Israeli warships intercepted the aid flotilla, according to a person on one boat. The Israeli military warned the vessels that they were entering a hostile area and that the Gaza shore was under blockade.
The vessels refused the military’s request to dock at the Israeli port of Ashdod, north of Gaza, and continued toward their destination.
Around 4 a.m. on Monday, naval commandos came aboard the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, having been lowered by ropes from helicopters onto the decks.
At that point, the operation seems to have gone badly wrong.
Israeli officials say that the soldiers were dropped into an ambush and were attacked with clubs, metal rods and knives.
An Israeli official said that the navy was planning to stop five of the six vessels of the flotilla with large nets that interfere with propellers, but that the sixth was too large for that. The official said there was clearly an intelligence failure in that the commandos were expecting to face passive resistance, and not an angry, violent reaction.
The Israelis had planned to commandeer the vessels and steer them to Ashdod, where their cargo would be unloaded and, the authorities said, transferred overland to Gaza after proper inspection.
The military said in a statement that two activists were later found with pistols taken from Israeli commandos. It accused the activists of opening fire, “as evident by the empty pistol magazines.”
Another soldier said the orders were to neutralize the passengers, not to kill them.
But the forces “had to open fire in order to defend themselves,” the navy commander, Vice Adm. Eliezer Marom, said at a news conference in Tel Aviv, adding, “Their lives were at risk.”
At least seven soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously. The military said that some suffered gunshot wounds; at least one had been stabbed. Einat Wilf, a Labor Party member of Parliament who sits on the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that she had warned Mr. Barak and others well in advance that the flotilla was a public relations issue and should not be dealt with by military means.
The fatalities all occurred aboard the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish passenger vessel that was carrying about 600 activists under the auspices of Insani Yardim Vakfi, an organization also known as I.H.H. Israeli officials have characterized it as a dangerous Islamic organization with terrorist links.

Yet the organization, founded in 1992 to collect aid for the Bosnians, is now active in 120 countries and has been present at recent disaster areas like Haiti and New Orleans.
“Our volunteers were not trained military personnel,” said Yavuz Dede, deputy director of the organization. “They were civilians trying to get aid to Gaza. There were artists, intellectuals and journalists among them. Such an offensive cannot be explained by any terms.”
There were no immediate accounts available from the passengers of the Turkish ship, which arrived at the naval base in Ashdod on Monday evening, where nearly three dozen were arrested, many for not giving their names. The base was off limits to the news media and declared a closed military zone.

The Free Gaza Movement has organized several aid voyages since the summer of 2008, usually consisting of one or two vessels. The earliest ones were allowed to reach Gaza. Others have been intercepted and forced back, and one, last June, was commandeered by the Israeli Navy and towed to Ashdod. This six-boat fleet was the most ambitious attempt yet to break the blockade.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Alan Cowell from London. Reporting was contributed by Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul, Dina Kraft from Tel Aviv, Rina Castelnuovo from Ashdod, Fares Akram from Gaza and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

Note: Photos Agencies attached ENB.

ENB - Afghan update 23-02-2010

2010-02-23T06:59:00.000-08:00

NATO airstrike kills 33 Afghan civilians
Afghanistan Sun Monday 22nd February, 2010
(IANS)
A NATO airstrike in Afghanistan killed 33 civilians, including women and children, and wounded 12, the president's office said Monday.
The incident took place Sunday in Dai Kundi province when three vehicles carrying the civilians were targeted from the air, provincial Governor Sultan Ali Uruzgani told DPA.
The cabinet of ministers chaired by President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack 'in strongest terms possible', it said.
The ministers urged 'the NATO forces to closely coordinate and exercise maximum care before conducting any military operation,' the statement said.
The governor had earlier said that 27 people were killed in the air raid, but Karzai's office later put the death toll to 33 and said that 12 others were injured.
The civilians were coming from the Kejran district of Dai Kundi, and the attack occurred in Zerma, a village near the border with the neighboring province of Uruzgan, he said. The vehicles were en route to the southern province of Kandahar.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said its forces used airborne weapons to target a group of suspected insurgents 'believed to be en route to attack a joint Afghan-ISAF unit,' resulting in 'a number of individuals killed and wounded'.

'After the joint ground force arrived at the scene and found women and children, they transported the wounded to medical treatment facilities,' ISAF said in a statement.
A joint investigation was underway, it said.
The incident happened a day after Karzai appealed to NATO troops to avoid civilian casualties.
'We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives,' US General Stanley McChrystal, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, said in the statement Monday.
'I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We will re-double our efforts to regain that trust,' he said.

The statement also said that McChrystal apologised to Karzai Sunday night.
Civilian casualties have become the main source of tension between the Afghan government and international military forces. Afghan officials have repeatedly said that such deaths have sapped public support for more than 113,000 foreign troops and the central government.

The palace statement Monday said that such 'mistakes' have been 'a major obstacle for an effective counter-terrorism effort'.

McChrystal has said protecting civilians was a key element of his war efforts against the Taliban, and he ordered NATO troops to restrict the use of airstrikes.

In the southern province of Helmand, Operation Mushtarak, the largest NATO offensive since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001 entered its second week with continued Taliban resistance.

From The Times February 22, 2010
Dutch confirm Afghan troop pullout sparking fears of domino effect

A Dutch platoon commander speaking to a village elder in Uruzgan David Charter, The Hague, and Tom Coghlan Nato was left in fear of further troop withdrawals from Afghanistan yesterday after the Dutch Prime Minister conceded that he could not prevent his forces being pulled out this year after the collapse of the Government in The Hague.
Jan Peter Balkenende lost the argument over extending the deployment at a 16-hour Cabinet session, in the first big reversal for the recently appointed Nato leader, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who had publicly requested a continued Dutch commitment.

“Our task as the lead nation [in Uruzgan province] ends in August,” Mr Balkenende said. After a three-month draw-down, the Dutch will be completely out of Afghanistan by the end of the year.
There are concerns that other countries where public opinion is turning against the Afghan campaign could follow, notably Canada, which has had the biggest proportional casualty rate and is committed to withdrawing its 2,800 troops by the end of next year. Another concern is the continued presence of 1,000 Australian troops. The Canberra Government has repeatedly refused to take over the lead role in Uruzgan if Holland leaves, demanding that a big Nato power provide the main share of troop numbers.

Just as important is the impression that European countries are struggling to find their share of the 10,000 extra troops requested by US General Stanley McChrystal to join 30,000 extra US troops in Afghanistan, with France ruling out more forces and a fierce debate in Germany.

The Times understands that the Dutch forces in Uruzgan will be replaced by US troops, diverting them from the surge operation against the Taleban.

Asadullah Hamdam, governor of Uruzgan, said that peace and reconstruction efforts would suffer, telling the BBC that the Dutch played a key role in building roads, training Afghan police and providing security for civilians. “If they withdraw and leave these projects incomplete, they will leave a big vacuum,” he said.

A British security source said: “This is a big setback because the Dutch are very highly rated. It is also a psychological blow, because as soon as one country leaves it starts making the public in other countries worried.”

Although the Dutch endured some sniping from bigger Nato powers about their perceived lack of aggression after they deployed to Uruzgan in 2006, their “population centric” strategy was a precursor of “The McChrystal Doctrine” adopted by British and American forces.

Mr Balkenende faces a general election in May after his main coalition partners, PvdA, the Labour party, walked out rather than break a promise to withdraw the 1,950 Dutch troops this year. Wouter Bos, the Labour leader, said: “A plan was agreed to when our soldiers went to Afghanistan. Our partners in the government did not want to stick to that plan, and on the basis of their refusal we have decided to resign.”
Mr Balkenende’s Christian Democrats and Labour are forecast to lose seats in the 150-member parliament. The two big gainers are forecast to be the ultra-liberals D66 and the right-wing Party of Freedom of the anti-Islamist MP Geert Wilders. Both oppose the Afghan mission.
A recent poll put support for keeping Dutch troops in Uruzgan at 35 per cent compared with 58 per cent for withdrawal, after 21 Dutch deaths.
The Dutch mission in Afghanistan was due to end in 2008, but the Government extended it until August 2010 — a decision made while the head of Nato was Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a former Dutch defence minister.
In October Mr Rasmussen said: “I would regret a Dutch withdrawal. We are at a critical juncture, where there should be no doubt about our firm commitment. Any doubts will simply play into the hands of those who want us to fail.” This month he issued a letter to The Hague requesting that Dutch troops stay for another year in a reduced training role, a gesture that may have been designed to be helpful by ending their frontline role, but which ended up dividing the Cabinet.

February 22, 2010
Dutch Pull-Out From War Expected After Government Collapse
By NICHOLAS KULISH
BERLIN — A day after his government collapsed, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Sunday that he expected Dutch troops to come home from Afghanistan before the end of the year.

A last-ditch effort by Mr. Balkenende to keep Dutch soldiers in the dangerous southern Afghan province of Oruzgan instead saw the Labor Party quit the government in the Netherlands early Saturday, immediately raising fears that the Western military coalition fighting the war was increasingly at risk.

Even as the allied offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Marja continued, it appeared almost certain that most of the 2,000 Dutch troops would be gone from Afghanistan by the end of the year. The question plaguing military planners was whether a Dutch departure would embolden the war’s critics in other allied countries, where debate over deployment is continuing, and hasten the withdrawal of their troops as well.

“The moment the Netherlands says as sole and first country we will no longer have activities at the end of 2010, it will raise questions in other countries and this really pains me,” Mr. Balkenende told the Dutch television program “Buitenhof” in an interview on Sunday, according to Reuters.

The collapse of the Dutch government comes as the Obama administration continues to struggle to get European allies to commit more troops to Afghanistan to bolster its attempts to win back the country from a resurgent Taliban. President Obama has made the Afghan war a cornerstone of his foreign policy and, after months of debate, committed tens of thousands more American troops to the effort.

“If the Dutch go, which is the implication of all this, that could open the floodgates for other Europeans to say, ‘The Dutch are going, we can go, too,’ ” said Julian Lindley-French, professor of defense strategy at the Netherlands Defense Academy in Breda. “The implications are that the U.S. and the British are going to take on more of the load.”

Dutch leaders had promised voters to bring most of the country’s troops home this year. But after entreaties from the United States, Mr. Balkenende tried to find a compromise to extend the Dutch presence, at least on a scaled-back basis. Instead, the Labor Party pulled out of the government after an acrimonious 16-hour cabinet meeting that ran into the early hours of Saturday.

Mr. Balkenende told Dutch television on Sunday that he now expected Dutch troops to leave Afghanistan as planned. "If nothing else will take its place, then it ends," he said, according to Reuters.

The Dutch troops have been important to the war effort, despite their small numbers, because about 1,500 of them were posted in Oruzgan.

Analysts said that new elections in the Netherlands, as well as the departure of the Dutch troops, now appeared inevitable.

The war in Afghanistan has been increasingly unpopular among voters in the Netherlands, as in many other parts of Europe, creating strains between governments trying to please the United States and their own people.

But the tension in the Netherlands also reveals how deep the fissures over the war have grown within the NATO alliance.

As the number of Dutch military casualties has increased — 21 soldiers have died — the public back home has grown increasingly resentful at the refusal of some other allies, in particular the Germans, to join the intense fighting in the south.

The probable loss of the Dutch contingent and the continuing resistance to significant increases in manpower by other allies demonstrate the extent to which the dividend expected from the departure of President George W. Bush, who was so unpopular in capitals across the Atlantic, has not materialized, despite Mr. Obama’s popularity in Europe.

“The support for Obama was always double-faced,” said Stefan Kornelius, foreign editor of the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. “It was never really heartfelt. People loved what they heard, but they never felt obliged to support Obama beyond what they were already doing.”

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has been pressing the non-American members of the coalition to increase their contribution, seeking up to 10,000 additional troops. While NATO has pledged around 7,000 troops, critics of the alliance’s efforts accuse it of fuzzy math: counting up to 2,000 soldiers who were already in Afghanistan but had been scheduled to leave after the recent election.

And even the 7,000 figure was notional; NATO is holding a “force generation conference” this week at which time official pledges will be made, and there are questions about whether it will reach that number.

The Dutch contingent is part of the roughly 40,000 troops from 43 countries who are aiding the United States in Afghanistan, most of those from NATO. The United States is fielding about 75,000 troops, but that number is expected to rise to about 98,000 by the end of the summer.

The Dutch troops were deployed to Oruzgan in 2006 and were originally supposed to stay for two years; that mandate already had been extended another two years to August 2010.

Analysts in the Netherlands said they expected the Dutch troops to leave on time because any deal to keep them there appeared all but impossible in the tumult following the government’s collapse.

“I don’t think there’s room, with a government falling and waiting for elections, for there to be a decision,” said Edwin Bakker, who runs the security and conflict program at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations.

Although American officials are concerned that an exodus by the Dutch could prompt other allies to follow suit, a sudden rush to exit seemed unlikely.

“There is a groundswell of distress in Europe, of feeling this isn’t working, but does that translate into electorates saying we’re going to vote you down? I don’t see that,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.

But the collapse of the Dutch government reinforced the difficulty of holding together an alliance made up of a multitude of countries, each with its own fractious domestic politics.

On Saturday, Mr. Balkenende informed Queen Beatrix, the country’s head of state, of the government’s resignation. According to the Dutch media, she was vacationing in Austria, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs said a decision about whether to hold new elections would probably be made in the next several days. By law the election would have to be held within 83 days of the queen’s decision.

The question of retaining troops in Afghanistan was far from the only issue pulling apart the parties in the governing coalition in the Netherlands; the parties were also divided over a controversial decision to increase the retirement age and the impending need for deep budget cuts. But the dispute over the troops brought relations to the breaking point.

“The majority of the Dutch people say, ‘Go, we’ve done enough. Let other countries do it now.’ That’s a big majority and also the majority in the Parliament,” said Nicoline van den Broek-Laman Trip, a former senator from the Liberal Party, who said she supported the Dutch mission but also believed that it was time to pull back most of the troops, leaving F-16s and perhaps trainers for local Afghan troops.

“They’ve got a small military,” said Mr. Lindley-French of the Netherlands Defense Academy. “The force has suffered a great deal of wear and tear. The Dutch have hung in there.

“The real failing is the ability of NATO partners and allies to rotate through the south and the east of the country, where the real center of the struggle exists.”

Dexter Filkins contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, Scott Sayare from Paris, and Thom Shanker from Washington.

Arrest of crucial Taliban figures reflects mysterious

shift in Islamabad's policy: NYT
Afghanistan Sun
Tuesday 23rd February, 2010
(ANI)
Islamabad, Feb. 23 : While Pakistan's motive behind the recent arrests of top Taliban leaders Mullah Kabir and Mullah Baradar remains unclear, the shift in Islamabad's policy towards the Taliban is apparent, US military experts have said.

"This indicates Baradar was not a one off or an accident but a turning point in Pakistan's policy toward the Taliban," the New York Times quoted Bruce Riedel, a researcher at Brookings Institution and a former C.I.A. official, as saying.

"We still need to see how far it goes, but for Obama and NATO this is the best possible news. If the safe haven is closing then the Taliban are in trouble," he added.

Kabir, who is a member of the Quetta Shura, was detained a few days ago from Nawshera in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province.

For years, Pakistani military and intelligence leaders have supported the Taliban, even as Pakistan's leaders claimed to be allies of the United States.

The Pakistani interest in the Taliban has always been as a means to influence events inside Afghanistan, particularly if the Americans leave.

Meanwhile, Hajji Zaman Ghamsharik, who was accused of helping Osama bin Laden escape from the Americans at Tora Bora, was assassinated in a suicide bomber attack on Monday.

"He was a warlord, and he was fighting since 1980. He was bitterly disliked by very many people. And then there were business interests, too," Mirwais Yasini, a member of the Afghan Parliament from Nangarhar, said of Hajji Zaman.

When the Taliban regime collapsed, President Hamid Karzai appointed him military commander of Jalalabad and a large part of eastern Afghanistan, including Tora Bora.

UN's Afghan rep challenges Obama's surge, calls for talks with Taliban's Mullah Omar
Afghanistan Sun
Tuesday 23rd February, 2010
(ANI)
London, Feb.23 : Kai Eide, the United Nation's representative in Afghanistan has challenged US President Barack Obama's "carrot and stick" strategy of a military surge while offering jobs, retraining, resettlement and protection to Taliban figures who break away from Mullah Omar's insurgency, and demanded instead that talks be held with Omar.

Eide, who will demit office next month, said Obama's strategy could actually strengthen the insurgency, as the West has underestimated the number of Taliban fighters driven by conviction rather than simply money.
He warned that attempting to bribe them may actually backfire.
"Often, such motivation stems from a conviction that the [Afghan] government is corrupt and unable to provide law and order combined with a sense of foreign invasion - not only in military terms, but in terms of disrespect for Afghanistan's culture, values and religion," he told the Daily Telegraph.

The "Reintegration Trust Fund" announced at last month's London Conference would only help if offered alongside talks with the Taliban's political leadership, he said.

The fund was not a "game changer" but could help if combined with talks with those ideologically driven Taliban and "if at some point that process involves the political structures of the insurgency. If you want relevant and sustainable results, you will have to involve relevant people with authority in an appropriate way," he said.

He has proposed a series of confidence-building measures to improve the atmosphere for talks, including a pledge by Mullah Omar's Taliban to stop attacking schools and hospitals, freeing some Taliban figures from the American Bagram Detention Centre and removing Taliban leaders from the UN's sanctions list.

Last month US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there was no place in the reintegration scheme for Mullah Omar or his Taliban leadership.

Eide's challenge to the current strategy in Afghanistan follows dramatic developments in Pakistan in the last two weeks where the Taliban's military leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was captured in Karachi along with four other senior leaders.

The raids marked a new understanding on greater co-operation between Washington and the Taliban's former allies in Islamabad.

Michael Semple, a leading authority on the Taliban and a former European Union diplomat, welcomed Eide's comments but questioned whether the Karzai government was ready to talk about peace.

"Kai Eide's political process would specifically engage the Taliban who are committed to their movement and consider it a moral force. The political process to solve this conflict will have to be protected from spoilers on all sides including from those on the Kabul government side who so far have been content for the conflict to drag on, while the bulk of the military and fiscal burden is borne by the United States," he said.

Snipers Imperil U.S. Troops in Offensive in Afghanistan

2010-02-18T02:57:00.000-08:00

Snipers Imperil U.S. Troops in Offensive in Afghanistan
Photos Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: February 17, 2010
MARJA, Afghanistan — In five days of fighting, the Taliban have shown a side not often seen in nearly a decade of American military action in Afghanistan: the use of snipers, both working alone and integrated into guerrilla-style ambushes.
Taliban Snipers Bedevil Troops in Marja Five Marines and two Afghan soldiers have been struck here in recent days by bullets fired at long range. That includes one Marine fatally shot and two others wounded in the opening hour of a four-hour clash on Wednesday, when a platoon with Company K of the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, was ambushed while moving on foot across a barren expanse of flat ground between the clusters of low-slung mud buildings.
Almost every American and Afghan infantryman present has had frightening close calls. Some of the shooting has apparently been from Kalashnikov machine guns, the Marines say, mixed with sniper fire.
The near misses have included lone bullets striking doorjambs beside their faces as Marines peeked around corners, single rounds cracking by just overhead as Marines looked over mud walls, and bullets slamming into the dirt beside them as they ran across the many unavoidable open spaces in the area they have been assigned to clear.
On Wednesday, firing came from primitive compounds, irrigation canals and agricultural fields as the bloody struggle between the Marines and the Taliban for control of the northern portion of this Taliban enclave continued for a fifth day.
In return, Company K used mortars, artillery, helicopter attack gunships and an airstrike in a long afternoon of fighting, which ended, as has been the pattern for nearly a week, with the waning evening light.
The fight to push the Taliban from this small area of Marja, a rural belt of dense poppy cultivation with few roads and almost no services, has relented only briefly since Company K landed by helicopters in the blackness early on Saturday morning. It has been a grinding series of skirmishes triggered by the company’s advances to seize sections of villages, a bridge and a bazaar where it has established an outpost and patrol bases.
Over all, most Taliban small-arms fire has been haphazard and ineffective, an unimpressive display of ill discipline or poor skill. But this more familiar brand of Taliban shooting has been punctuated by the work of what would seem to be several well-trained marksmen.

On Monday, a sniper struck an Afghan soldier in the neck at a range of roughly 500 to 700 yards. The Afghan was walking across an open area when the single shot hit him. He died.
The experience of First Platoon on Wednesday was the latest chilling example. The platoon, laden with its backpacks, was moving west toward the company’s main outpost after several days of operating in the eastern portion of the company’s area.
Marines here often stay within the small clusters of buildings as they walk, seeking the relative protection of mud walls. But it is impossible to move far without venturing into the open to cross to new villages. As First Platoon moved into the last wide expanse before reaching the command post, the Taliban began a complex ambush.
First bullets came from a Kalashnikov firing from the south, said First Lt. Jarrod D. Neff, the platoon commander. The attack had a logic: to the south, a deep irrigation canal separates the insurgents from anyone walking on the north side, where the company’s forces are concentrated. Vegetation is also thicker there, providing ample concealment.
There have been several ambushes in this same spot since the long-planned Afghan and American operation to evict the Taliban and establish a government presence in Marja began. Each time, the Marines and their Afghan counterparts have run through the open by turns, some of them sprinting while others provided suppressive fire.
The routine had been a long and risky maneuver by dashing and dropping, without a hint of cover, as bursts of machine-gun bullets and single sniper shots zipped past or thumped in the soil, kicking up a fine white powder that coats the land. At the end of each ambush, each man was slicked in sweat and winded. Ears rang from the near deafening sound of the Marines and Afghan soldiers returning fire.
As First Platoon made the crossing under machine-gun fire, at least one sniper was also waiting, according to the Marines who crossed. After the Taliban gunmen occupied the platoon’s attention to the south, a sniper opened fire from the north, Marines in the ambush said.
The Marine who was killed was struck in the chest as he ran, just above the bulletproof plate on his body armor, the Marines said. The others were struck in a hand or arm. (The names of the three wounded men have been withheld pending government notification of their families.)
All three were evacuated by an Army Black Hawk helicopter that landed under crackling fire.
Whoever was firing remained hidden, even from the Marines’ rifle scopes. “I was looking and I couldn’t see them,” said Staff Sgt. Jay C. Padilla, an intelligence specialist who made the crossing with First Platoon. “But they were shooting the dirt right next to us.” The sniper also focused, two Marines said, on trying to hit a black Labrador retriever, Jaeger, who has been trained for sniffing out munitions and hidden bombs. The dog was not hit.
The platoon was just outside the company outpost when the ambush began. A squad from Third Platoon rushed out and bounded across the canal, trying to flank the Taliban and chase them away, or to draw their fire so that First Platoon might continue its crossing. The squad came under precise sniper fire, too, while the company coordinated fire support.
First the company fired its 60-millimeter mortars, but the Taliban kept firing. Company K escalated after the Third Platoon commander reported by radio that several insurgents had moved into a compound near the canal.
The forward air controller traveling with Company K, Capt. Akil R. Bacchus, arranged for an airstrike.
About a minute later, a 250-pound GPS-guided bomb whooshed past overhead and slammed into the compound with a thunderous explosion.
“Good hit!” said Capt. Joshua P. Biggers, the company commander. “Good hit.”

After the airstrike, two pairs of attack helicopters were cleared to strafe a set of bunkers and canals that the Taliban fighters had been firing from.
They climbed high over the canal and bore down toward a tree line, guns and rockets firing. Explosions tossed soil and made the ground shudder. First Platoon pushed toward the outpost.
For all the intensity of the fighting in this small area of Marja, and in spite of the hardships and difficulties of the past several days, both Captain Biggers and the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, suggested Wednesday that the seesaw contest would soon shift.
Company K had been isolated for several days, and by daylight was almost constantly challenged by the Taliban. But on Wednesday morning, before the latest ambush, the battalion had cleared the roads to its outposts, allowing more forces to flow into the area, significantly increasing the company’s strength.
By evening, as Cobra gunships still circled, the results were visible to the Marines and insurgents watching the outpost alike. The company had more supplies, and its contingent of several mine-resistant, ambush-protected troop carriers, called MRAPs — each outfitted with either a heavy machine gun or automatic grenade launcher — had reached the outpost.
Colonel Christmas looked over the outpost’s southern wall at the vegetated terrain beyond the canal. “We’ll be getting in there and clearing that out,” he said.

Operation Mushtarak update 15-02-2010

2010-02-18T02:19:00.000-08:00

Operation Mushtarak update 15-02-2010
The Continuing Assault
Heavy fighting in and around Marja carried into its third day. Most of the fighting appears to be confined to two areas, one at the northern end of the district and one in the center, an agricultural area criss-crossed by irrigation canals.
February 15, 2010
Taking a Key Bridge
Four platoons of U.S. Marines have engaged in near constant skirmishing with the Taliban in and around Marja since Saturday. Company K had been ordered to seize a bridge and a nearby local bazaar about 2 kilometers from where they had landed by helicopter early Saturday morning. A running firefight lasting three days ended in the successful capture of the position

February 13-14, 2010
Establishing Positions
Coalition ground forces engaged in scattered firefights on Sunday with Taliban insurgents, searching for weapons and carrying out controlled explosions of captured explosives, according to a spokesperson for the International Security Assistance Force in the area. At least 10 Afghan civilians were reported killed when a rocket directed against Taliban insurgents went astray hitting a house in the area

About 6,000 American, British and Afghan troops descended on Marja in Saturday's invasion, carrying out an air and ground assault. Troops that came by air carried portable foot bridges to cross the irrigation canals that lace Marja. Ground forces were led by huge armored vehicles designed to clear bombs from the roads.

February 12, 2010
The Battle Begins
Thousands of American and Afghan troops encircled and descended on the town of Marja for a major military offensive. The initial attack was from air, with Hellfire missiles and Apache helicopters. Cordons were set up to capture fleeing Taliban fighters, and Marines stormed a central bazaar.

By Joe Burgess, C.J. Chivers, Dexter Filkins and Rod Nordland
Sources: International Security Assistance Force; Institute for the Study of War; Afghanistan Information Management Services; satellite image by Nasa
Source: The New York Times Note: Related articles not attached here.ENB admin.

Operation Mushtarak

2010-02-14T20:46:00.000-08:00

15,000-NATO-Afghan troops / 100,000 people / 2,000Taliban fighters / Hundreds of Helicopters
* American soldiers said Saturday that firefights with the Taliban began sporadically but grew more frequent and more intense as the day went on.
> Late in the afternoon, insurgents and a company of Marines fought a two-hour gun battle at Marja’s northern edge.
> It ended when the Marines dropped a 500-pound bomb on the Taliban’s position.
* A local Taliban commander named Hashemi, said. “We are strong and we won’t give up. We will fight to death.”
* NATO troops in Marjah had been warning civilians by leaflets that they should try to find a safe place and stay indoors, in order to escape the worst of the battle and to minimise casualties.
* NATO forces had set up 11 outposts across Marja and two in the neighboring town of Nad Ali.
* From those posts, Marines and soldiers began to go on patrols, searching door to door for weapons and fighters.
* “I don’t have any information on the Taliban, neither where they are nor where they have gone,” said Palawan, a farmer in Marja
* “Our main goal in this joint operation is not to kill insurgents,” Defense Minister Mr. Wardak said. “In fact, our primary goal is to expand the government’s influence and protect the civilian population.”
* Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, a top Marine commander in the south, predicted it could take 30 days to clear Marjah because of all the hidden explosives.

27 killed as NATO's Afghan offensive enters day two
Afghanistan Sun Sunday 14th February, 2010 (IANS)
NATO's most ambitious offensive against Taliban strongholds in Helmand province entered its second day Sunday, with officials claiming 27 insurgents killed.
Thousands of US Marines, Afghan and British forces were inserted by dozens of helicopters and armoured vehicles into Marjah and Nad Ali districts in the southern province Saturday.
The military operation is the largest since the ouster of Taliban regime by a US-led invasion in late 2001.
NATO officials claimed early success as troops cleared 13 targeted locations in the two districts, strategically important bastions in the country's main opium-producing region.
'The operation is going on successfully,' Daoud Ahmadi, spokesman for Helmand's provincial governor, said. He said seven insurgents were killed since Saturday night, bringing the total Taliban death toll to 27.
He said the combined forces also discovered and destroyed more than 2,500 kg of explosives.
Two NATO soldiers, one British soldier and a US marine were also killed in the first day of the operation, Ahmadi said. The British Defence Ministry also confirmed in a statement posted on its website that a soldier from 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards was killed by an explosion in Nad Ali district.
General Abdul Rahim Wardak, Afghan defence minister, said in Kabul Saturday that there had been some injuries among Afghan forces.
Wardak said several hundred Taliban fighters were still in the area, while a large number of the insurgents had fled before the start of the operation, which was announced weeks prior. Other NATO and Afghan officials estimated that from 600 to 1,000 Taliban were entrenched in the two targeted districts.
A total of 15,000 troops, including US, Afghan, British, Canadian, Danish and Estonian personnel were mobilised for the operation.
The operation, dubbed Mushtarak or 'together', is centred on Marjah, inhabited by about 80,000 people, where Taliban-protect traffickers had set up the biggest drug market in the country.
Hundreds of local residents of Marjah and neighbouring Nad Ali have fled to provincial capital Lashkargah, but many others remained amid assurances by NATO officials that measures would be put in place to avoid civilian casualties.
Officials said roadside bombs had slowed the advance of combined forces moving through Marjah town.
Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousif Ahmadi, speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, said Sunday that their fighters had not retreated.
The combined forces held meetings with groups of Afghan local elders in the area, a NATO military statement said Sunday. 'More shuras (local councils) are anticipated in the coming days'. The offensive, a first test of new US strategy to turn the tide of the eight-year-war, aims to extend the Afghan government's authority in the Taliban-controlled areas and begin reconstruction to win the hearts and minds of civilians.
US President Barack Obama increased the US troop commitment by another 30,000 troops, bringing the US presence to 98,000 soldiers. The US and NATO together have around 113,000 troops currently in the country, and some NATO countries have pledged to send up to 7,000 more troops by this summer.

Service members and civilians caught in Afghan crossfire
Afghanistan Sun Sunday 14th February, 2010
NATO officials have announced the deaths of Afghan civilians during the allied offensive against the Taliban in Helmand Province.
Two rockets, fired by NATO soldiers missed their intended Taliban target and instead struck a house in Marjah, killing twelve civilians.
The rockets landed about 300 metres from their intended target, hitting the civilians.
Ten of those killed were believed to be from the same family.
NATO's commander Gen Stanley McChrystal said his soldiers had been trying to increase their gains in routing the Taliban from the area when the accident happened.
In the massive coalition attack rockets and artillery flew in first big test of US President Barack Obama's new surge strategy for Afghanistan.
Rocket system suspended
NATO troops in Marjah had been warning civilians by leaflets that they should try to find a safe place and stay indoors, in order to escape the worst of the battle and to minimise casualties.
US Marines and British troops are trying to clear Marjah and Nad Ali district of booby traps planted by insurgents.
Many of the booby-traps have been pointed out to the troops by local civilians.
After the operation, NATO intends building a joint base with Afghan forces and police to patrol the area.

5February 15, 2010
Afghan Civilians Killed in Offensive on Taliban
By ROD NORDLAND
KABUL, Afghanistan — The top United States commander in Afghanistan confirmed that a rocket went astray during operations in the Marja area of Helmand province, killing 12 civilians, according to a statement issued by the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan Ministry of Defense.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ISAF commander, ordered the withdrawal of the type of rocket launcher used in the incident, a high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS), from operations “until a thorough review of this incident has been conducted,” the statement said.
The American commander, who has made reducing civilian casualties a cornerstone of his policy in Afghanistan, apologized to President Hamid Karzai for the incident. “We deeply regret this tragic loss of life,” General McChrystal said. “The current operation in central Helmand is aimed at restoring security and stability to this vital area of Afghanistan. It’s regrettable that, in the course of our joint efforts, innocent lives were lost.”
President Karzai, who has been critical of civilian casualties in the past, warned at the start of the operation to take the city of Marja back from the Taliban that coalition forces should make “every effort” to avoid civilian casualties.
The ISAF statement said the incident took place in Nad Ali district, where Marja is located, when coalition forces were responding to an attack on them from a compound where “insurgents were delivering accurate, direct fire on an Afghan-ISAF joint team.” They responded with the HIMARS but missed their target by 300 meters, ISAF said.
A total of 15,000 Afghan and foreign forces are involved in the Marja operation, which began Saturday, about half of them in Marja itself. The foreign forces include American Marines, who are leading the offensive, along with United States Army and British, Canadian, Danish and Estonian troops.
On the second day of Operation Moshtarak, which means “joint operation” in Dari, the troops continued searches of the area using both mounted and dismounted patrols, according to British Royal Air Force Flight Lt. Wendy Wheadon, a spokeswoman for ISAF.

The troops were looking for weapons and carrying out controlled explosions of caches of ammunition, Lieutenant Wheadon said, adding that there were scattered firefights throughout the day. “There have been combined forces who suffered injuries as a result.” She declined to be more specific on casualties.
Separately, ISAF issued a press release indicating that a non-American service member was killed Sunday by an improvised explosives device in southern Afghanistan, but did not specify whether that was as a result of the Marja offensive.
Two soldiers were killed in the first day of fighting in Marja, one American and one British.

Afghan officials put the death toll in the rocket incident at 10. “We just know that a rocket hit a civilian house and 10 people were killed,” said Daoud Ahmadi, spokesman for the governor of Helmand province, by telephone. “We are investigating to find out the details of how they were killed. We don’t even know if the rocket was from our side or the enemy. It was not an air strike for sure, it was a rocket that hit a civilian house in Marja.”
ISAF said one Afghan national army soldier and one ISAF service member were injured by the insurgents in the incident leading to the rocket attack.
Although NATO officers have said they were refraining from air strikes except where necessary, residents in nearby communities said they saw numerous incidents of air raids on the first day of the action, but not on Sunday. ISAF said there has been no flight of residents from Marja as a result of the operation; previously Afghan government and ISAF officials had urged residents to remain in their homes.
So far, 25 Taliban insurgents had been killed in the fighting, according to Gen. Sher Mohammed Zazai, commander of the Afghan army’s 205th corps, which has five brigades of Afghan soldiers in the operation, with national police units attached to them. General Zazai said no Afghan soldiers or police had been killed so far. In the offensive, which began Saturday, American, Afghan and British troops seized crucial positions across the Taliban stronghold, encountering intense but sporadic fighting as they began the treacherous ordeal of house-to-house searches.

More than 6,000 American, Afghan and British troops came in fast early on Saturday, overwhelming most immediate resistance. But as the troops began to fan out on searches, fighting with Taliban insurgents grew in frequency and intensity across a wide area; the searches and fighting continued on Sunday.
The pattern suggested that the hardest fighting lay in the days to come.
American commanders said the troops had achieved every first-day objective. That included advancing into the city itself and seizing intersections, government buildings and one of the city’s main bazaars in the center of town.
Some Marines held meetings with local Afghans almost immediately to reassure them and to ask for help in finding Taliban and hidden bombs.
Mohammed Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand Province’s governor, said Afghan and NATO forces had set up 11 outposts across Marja and two in the neighboring town of Nad Ali. “We now occupy all the strategic points in the area,” he said on Saturday.
From those posts, Marines and soldiers began to go on patrols, searching door to door for weapons and fighters. This phase of the operation, considered the most dangerous, was expected to last at least five days. The biggest concern was bombs and booby-traps, of which there were believed to be hundreds, in roads, houses and footpaths.
The invasion of Marja is the largest military operation of its kind here since the American-backed war began eight years ago. The area, about 80 square miles of farmland, villages and irrigation canals, is believed to be the largest Taliban sanctuary inside Afghanistan. Afghan and American commanders believe there are also a number of opium factories that the insurgents control to finance their war.
On the first full day of operations, much of the expected resistance failed to materialize. Certainly there was none of the eyeball-to-eyeball fighting that typified the battle for Falluja in Iraq in 2004, to which the invasion of Marja had been compared.

“Actually, the resistance is not there,” Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan defense minister, said in a news conference Saturday in Kabul. “Based on our intelligence reports, some of the Taliban have left the area. But we still expected there to be several hundred. Just yesterday, we received reports that reinforcements had arrived from neighboring provinces.”
Dozens if not hundreds of insurgents probably fled Marja in the days leading up to the assault, according to military officers and local residents. American and Afghan commanders hoped to achieve just that result when they took the unusual step of broadcasting their intention to invade Marja days ahead of time.
But it seemed likely that many Taliban were still in Marja, lying in wait. One resident interviewed by telephone said that many insurgents had stayed behind.
“I don’t have any information on the Taliban, neither where they are nor where they have gone,” said Palawan, a farmer in Marja who goes by one name. “I don’t think they have gone anywhere, because Marja has been surrounded by Afghan and foreign forces on every side.”

What has been advertised as the most important, and novel, aspect of the Marja operation got under way on Saturday. After clearing Marja, American and Afghan officials say, they intend to import an entire Afghan civil administration, along with nearly 2,000 Afghan police officers, to help keep the Taliban from coming back in. The first of those, about 1,000 Afghan paramilitary police, were scheduled to begin arriving within 24 hours.
In some parts of the town, American and Afghan troops began holding meetings with residents, trying to win the Afghans’ support. Previous operations to clear the Taliban from towns and cities have failed across Afghanistan, in large part because the Americans and Afghans have rarely left behind competent Afghan government or security forces to hold the places. That has meant that the Taliban have not stayed away for long. This time, in Marja, things are supposed to be different.
“Our main goal in this joint operation is not to kill insurgents,” Mr. Wardak said. “In fact, our primary goal is to expand the government’s influence and protect the civilian population.”
Afghans in Marja itself stayed mostly indoors in the first hours of the invasion. “Nobody can go out of his house,” said Mr. Palawan, the local farmer. “The government and the Taliban have told us to stay in our house. But there has been fighting in the area all morning.”
A local Taliban commander named Hashemi, also reached by telephone, said his men had fought through much of day, shooting at least six foreign soldiers. That claim could not be verified. Mr. Hashemi said that six of his own men had been killed. “The Taliban are still resisting,” Mr. Hashemi said. “We are strong and we won’t give up. We will fight to death.”
American soldiers said Saturday that firefights with the Taliban began sporadically but grew more frequent and more intense as the day went on. Late in the afternoon, insurgents and a company of Marines fought a two-hour gun battle at Marja’s northern edge. It ended when the Marines dropped a 500-pound bomb on the Taliban’s position.
C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from Marja, Dexter Filkins from Kabul, and an Afghan employee of The New York Times from Helmand Province.

Marines spearhead major Afghanistan offensive
MARJAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Marines spearheaded one of NATO's biggest offensives against the Taliban in Afghanistan on Saturday, in an early test of President Barack Obama's troop surge policy.
World
Marines in helicopters landed in Marjah district, the last big Taliban stronghold in Helmand province, in the first hours of a NATO campaign to impose government control on rebel-held areas before U.S. forces start a planned 2011 drawdown.
They fired at least four rockets at militants who attacked from compounds near the bazaar in Marjah town. Hours later, the area was still gripped by the firefight.
There was one Marine casualty in the unit in which a Reuters correspondent was embedded. In their house nearby, a family huddled in one room, laundry flapping on the line outside.
"We are currently moving to seize our objective. We have been in contact for five hours from the southwest, north and east and we are moving to push to finish securing the areas of insurgents still," Lieutenant Mark Greenlief told Reuters.
The Marines' first objective was to take over the town center, a large cluster of dwellings, and they called in two Harrier jets which flew over a Taliban position at the edge of the town center and fired on the militants with machineguns.
Like civilians in the district of up to 100,000 people, the U.S., British and Afghan troops risk being blown up by booby traps the Taliban are believed to have rigged in the hundreds to try to slow the advance.
A local Taliban commander, Qari Fazluddin, told Reuters earlier about 2,000 fighters were ready to fight.
Also in southern Afghanistan, five NATO troops, including three Americans, died after roadside bomb strikes, and a shooting in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, NATO said in a statement.
It was not clear whether they were killed during the offensive but the violence illustrated how vulnerable they still were after eight years of fighting the Taliban.
Helmand task force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel David Wakefield said a British solider was killed in an explosion while on vehicle patrol during the operation. It was not clear whether the solider was one of the five.
15,000 TROOPS IN OPERATION
NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal's counter-insurgency strategy emphasizes seizing population centers and avoiding combat in built-up areas whenever possible.
McChrystal has stressed precautions to avoid killing civilians, and the number of civilians killed by NATO troops has declined since he took command in mid-2009.
Heavy casualties may ruin the government's chance of gaining more support from Afghans. NATO forces advised civilians not to leave their homes. Some have already fled Marjah.
"The international forces must adopt certain procedures and mechanisms during operation in Marjah to protect civilians," Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in a statement.
In Marjah, resident Abdel Aziz, 16, told the Marines through a translator, "All the walls between the streets and houses are surrounded by bombs. Most people have gone to Lashkar Gah. That's where we want to go today." An elderly neighbor emerged from her house and asked Marines not to fire at it. "This is just my house," she said.

HEAVILY BOOBY-TRAPPED
After helicopters began ferrying U.S. Marines into Marjah, British troops flew into the northern part of Nad Ali district, and tanks and combat engineering units followed.
"The first phase of the operation is proceeding very successfully. The Taliban have heavily booby-trapped the area, but there has not been any fierce fighting yet," Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal told a news conference.
"We have seized 11 key locations in the district and the resistance from the insurgents has been subdued."
The 15,000-troop operation was named Mushtarak, or "together," perhaps to highlight that NATO and Afghan forces were determined to work closely to restore stability to Afghanistan.
Whether the apparent early success can translate into a more permanent end to the insurgency may depend on the government's ability to ensure long-term political and economic stability.
"Our aim is not the elimination of the insurgents, the goal is developing the influence of central government, safeguarding the civilians and providing long-term security and stability," Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told reporters in Kabul.
Marjah has long been a breeding ground for insurgents and lucrative opium poppy cultivation, which Western countries say funds the insurgency.
Even if NATO deals a heavy blow to the Taliban in Helmand, militants on the U.S. hit list operate from other sanctuaries inside Pakistan or close to the border.
U.S.-allied Pakistan is reluctant to pursue them as it sees these groups as assets to counter the influence of rival India in Afghanistan.
Decades ago, the Marjah area was home to an Afghan-U.S. development project. Its canals, which criss-cross lush farmland, were built by the Americans.
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; Writing by Michael Georgy and Bryson Hull; Editing by Louise Ireland)

AFGHANISTAN: LONDON CONFERENCE 2010 A STRATEGIC FAILURE

2010-02-02T20:01:00.000-08:00

Paper no. 3643 02-Feb-2010
AFGHANISTAN: LONDON CONFERENCE 2010 A STRATEGIC FAILURE
By Dr. Subhash Kapila
Introductory Observations
Afghanistan, the hapless Muslim nation, brutalized for a decade by the medieval fundamentalist Islamic regime of the Taliban which was superimposed by Pakistan, is inextricably enmeshed in the conflicting strategic interests of the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China.

The London Conference held on January 28, 2010 on Afghanistan flaunted by the United Kingdom as finding a ‘new roadmap’ for peace and stability in Afghanistan is foredoomed to failure as it has significantly deviated from US original war aims which prompted its military intervention in Afghanistan post-9/11.

Afghanistan is a strategic imbroglio whose solution primarily rests on strategic underpinnings. The most significant flaw of the London Conference was that it was a ‘political conference’ being held against the backdrop of the forthcoming British General Elections in which the British exit from Afghanistan is a major election plank. Political expediency rather than realistic strategic imperatives seem to have determined the outcome. Domestic political compulsions in other NATO countries have similarly determined lack of full support to the United States war effort in Afghanistan leading to resurgence of the Taliban, courtesy Pakistan.

The United States as the major determinant in the solution of Afghanistan’s turbulence was not the moving force behind the London Conference. The prime movers were the United Kingdom and Pakistan with United Nations and the Afghan Government providing the umbrella as hosts of the Conference, originally scheduled to be held in Kabul.

Afghanistan after nearly two decades of strife generated by Pakistan’s proxies, the Al Qaeda and Taliban, and induced by Pakistan’s strategic imperial pretensions in Afghanistan, required a strategic blueprint to emerge at the London Conference to “surgically disconnect” Pakistan from interference in Afghanistan and assist emergence of Afghanistan as a moderate, democratic Islamic nation. Contrastingly, the London Conference’s most significant outcome has been the West and NATO sanctifying the Taliban as part of the solution in Afghanistan. Inherent in such a detestable formulation is the pre-ordained strategic failure of the London Conference.

Strategically, still more shocking is the reported co-opting into the proposed power- sharing to follow in Kabul of Afghan war lords close to the Afghan Taliban Shura. These are the outfits which have consistently waged war on US & NATO Forces in Afghanistan for the last ten years as part of Pakistan Army’s Grand strategy of inducing strategic fatigue in the United States and prompting its exit.

Guarantees given by Pakistan or its terrorist affiliates are not even worth the paper they are written on. In this connection, this Author would like to draw attention to General Musharraf’s address to the nation soon after he succumbed to US pressures to be co-opted in the US war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. General Musharraf asserted that in the Holy Teachings of his faith, words to the effect, that temporizing with one’s enemy wars permissible and pledges so made could be reneged later on at an opportune time.

The London Conference while proclaiming lofty goals of transferring full power and authority for security to the Afghan Government is at the same time facilitating a ‘back-door entry” of the Taliban in the governing structure of Afghanistan. How will the United States and NATO prevent the reneging on the pledges made by the so-called “good Taliban” once they are ensconced in power-sharing in Kabul, courtesy the Western Powers.

The overall nagging question that hovers in the review of the London Conference 2010 is as to what was its necessity when the new US President Barak Obama had unveiled his much publicized “Af-Pak Strategy” on Afghanistan only ten months back? And there have been many other NATO Conferences in 2009 on this issue. Has NATO given up on the US crafted Af-Pak Strategy?

India as South Asia’s regional power, of which Afghanistan is a part, and with significant and legitimate interests in Afghanistan stood sidelined at the London Conference. The sponsors of the Conference allowed Pakistan to get away with its strategy in side-lining India on the Afghanistan issue. Induction of the Taliban in power-sharing in Kabul as envisaged by the London Conference carries political and strategic implications for India which it can ill ignore. This aspect is being touched in brief in this Paper although it merits a separate Paper for discussion.

This Paper intends to examine the following strategic aspects which necessarily flow from the doubts raised by the London 2010 Conference:

The Af-Pak Strategic Blueprint and the London Conference End Aims: Differing Emphasis.
Al Qaeda Reference Missing From London Conference: The Mystery.
Regional Approach to Afghanistan Stability Discarded in Favor of Islamic Nations Coalition Approach.
The Taliban Appeasement: UK, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States
The Taliban are Not Part of Afghanistan’s Political Fabric.
The London Conference: The Seeds of Strategic Failure.
India’s Afghanistan Policy: Political and Strategic Implications Arising from the London Conference
The Af-Pak Strategic Blueprint and the London Conference End Aims: Differing Emphasis.

Dispensing with a detailed recount f the objectives of the Af-Pak Strategic Blueprint and the London Conference 2010 Roadmap, comments on the differing emphasis in the two are briefly stated as under:

Af-Pak Strategic Blueprint implied that Afghanistan and Pakistan were strategically joined at the hip in terms of security and stability. Hence in US strategic planning an integrated view and operational planning would be required to liquidate the Af-Pak region of the Al Qaeda and Taliban menace to Afghanistan.
The London Conference 2010 communiqué implies focus on Afghanistan taking over control of Afghan security and stability without any reference as to how Pakistan’s destabilization of Afghanistan through the Taliban affiliates would be neutralized. No references have been made to Pakistan’s growing instability and possible disintegration which would seriously impact the end aims of the London Conference.
More regrettably, the London Conference changes the entire complexion of Afghanistan’s strategic challenges. No references are made to the aim of liquidating the Al Qaeda threat. Further, within 10 months from unveiling of Af-Pak Strategy Blueprint by the US President, the Taliban as a strategic threat to Afghanistan and NATO Forces are sanctified as politically worthy of inclusion in power-sharing in Kabul in Western perceptions.
The Af-Pak Strategy Blueprint only hinted at some time-lines for Western pull-back from Afghanistan. The London Conference spells out specific time-lines in a graduated manner for the next five years, facilitating a possible exit.
The Af-Pak Strategy Blueprint was a statement of strategic intent of the United States on Afghanistan as the predominant power. The London Conference seems more of a ‘political broth’ prepared by too many cooks with different political flavors of political expediency.
On analysis, two major strategic considerations strike one’s mind and these are:

London Conference reflects the NATO’s allies of USA unwillingness to shoulder further military burden in Afghanistan. It was a cosmetic exercise to allay domestic political discontent over the Afghanistan involvement.
The United States in its strategic contingency planning may now have to be prepared to a strategic “go-it-alone” military blueprint in Afghanistan.
With US troop’s involvement in Iraq declining, it should not be difficult for the United States to strategically handle Afghanistan alone. Nor should one doubt United States dogged determination to ‘go-it- alone’ strategy in crisis situations. Parallels with Vietnam War are unjustified.

Al Qaeda Reference Missing from London Conference: The Mystery.

The strange missing of a reference to the liquidation strategy of the Al Qaeda threat to the Af-Pak region and whose liquidation was the predominant component of the US Af-Pak Strategy is mysterious. It is more curious when viewed in the context of the Taliban boasts of its strong linkages to the Al Qaeda.

Is it a Western ploy to make things easier for the Afghan Taliban to join power-sharing in Kabul? Is it a ploy to remove the heat on Pakistan whose Army still continues to have intelligence and other linkages with Al Qaeda and Taliban? Or what is it?

The fact is that neither the United States nor NATO HQ have asserted that their Forces have liquidated Al Qaeda from the region.

Pakistan on the other hand has assiduously cultivated the impression with US military commanders that the Al Qaeda are mixed-up and sheltered by the Pakistan Taliban only and that the Afghan Taliban Shura is not so linked and that Mullah Omer may be persuaded not to shelter Al Qaeda in Afghanistan on return to power in Kabul.

Incidents in the coming weeks may throw up some more definite indicators to this mystery.

Regional Approach to Afghanistan Stability Discarded in Favor of Islamic Nations Coalition

In US President’s Af-Pak Strategy Blueprint, it was envisaged that the key to long term security and stability in Afghanistan required a concerted regional approach of regional powers in the region. The reference was to Russia, China, India and Iran, besides grudgingly to Pakistan.

With British connivance, Pakistan has managed to derail the US-envisaged regional powers approach to solution of Afghanistan conflict and hijacked the approach to one of an Islamic Nations Coalition comprising Pakistan. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and a handful of Central Asian Republics bordering Afghanistan. Pakistan’s aim was to deny India a strategic role and presence in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s plea was that only nations with geographical contiguity with Afghanistan should be part of a regional powers council solution. If that be so, how can the United States and the British explain the role of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They do not have geographical contiguity with Afghanistan.

Iran did no attend the London Conference even on invitation. Russia and China while keeping an interested watch are still reticent. The British, Pakistan and the UN sidelined India at the London Conference. Russia, Iran and India can hardly have any strategic convergence with those who espouse Taliban power-sharing in Kabul with the Karzai Government.

A coalition of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, all of whom today have a “strategic trust deficit” with the United States can hardly contribute to long term stability of Afghanistan.

The Taliban Appeasement: UK, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Nations

The striking keynotes of the London Conference 2010 have been

Luring the Afghan war- lords close to the Afghan Taliban into power-sharing in Kabul with the Karzai Government.
Lure Taliban foot soldiers by money inducements and with this bribery hoping to divide the Taliban politically
What has come into play here are the traditional divide- and -rule strategies of the British, so ably repeated over the years by Pakistan on its frontier regions and Saudi Arabia elsewhere.

Such strategies have led to disastrous results in South Asia and in the Middle East. Such a strategy as the building block of the London Conference will also lead to strategic failure.

In this sordid appeasement of the Taliban what is painful is that a respectable body like the United Nations has been drawn into such games affecting its non-partisan international credibility.

To facilitate the easing in of prominent Taliban figures into Kabul’s power-sharing as per London Conference plans the United Nations has removed five top Taliban leaders from its sanctions list of ‘international terrorists’. So much for political expediency and discard of principles to achieve questionable strategic ends

The Taliban are Not Part of Afghanistan’s Political Fabric.

This classic assertion was made by US Secretary of Defense, Gates, some time back. It is a travesty of the political realities of Afghanistan on the following grounds:

The Afghan Taliban was a Pakistani imposition in the vacuum that followed after US disengagement and Russia withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban was not a grass-roots insurgency that originated from the soil of Afghanistan. They were mercenaries paid by Pakistan Army.
They bulk of the Taliban in Afghanistan were Pakistanis from the Pakistani madrassas.
The Pakistan Army officered, financed and did the operational planning for the Taliban take-over of Afghanistan as Pakistan’s proxy clients. Has the United States forgotten its airlift of hundreds of Pakistan Army officers and their Taliban affiliates from Konduz on Musharraf's pleas to save them from the vengeance of the Northern Alliance which was spearheading the US drive to Kabul to displace the Taliban regimer?
However, attractive this assertion may be made at the moment on grounds of political expediency, it is a travesty of truth in that the Afghan people never welcomed the Taliban. On the contrary the Afghan people were subjected to brutal medieval suppression by Islamist fundamentalist Taliban protégés of the Pakistan Army.

More importantly today, the majority of the Afghan people dread the return of the Taliban to power-sharing in Kabul by permissiveness of the United States induced by its strategic obsession with Pakistan Army and its sensitivities.

The London Conference: The Seeds of Strategic Failure

The London Conference 2010 to acquire lofty and noble contours has laid a lot of emphasis on the transference of security responsibilities, governance and economic development to the Afghan Government in the coming years.

Regrettably, with the same stroke of the pen, the London Conference undermines the political legitimacy of the elected Karzai Government by incorporating in its road-map the inclusion of the Taliban in power-sharing in Kabul.

The London Conference 2010 roadmap therefore inherently carries in itself the seeds of strategic failure due to the following reasons mentioned briefly:

NATO imposition of Taliban in power-sharing in Kabul at the instance of the British and Pakistan is against the wishes and predominantly anti- Taliban sentiments in Afghanistan.
Such a NATO imposition of Taliban in Kabul and Afghan political processes could spark a civil war in Afghanistan and fragmentation of Afghanistan.
The Afghan people have already been hapless victims of joint Saudi Arabia- Pakistan power- play in the past. This nexus is not acceptable to the majority of the Afghan people in any solution of the Afghan Conflict,
Stability in Afghanistan cannot be achieved in Afghanistan by exclusion of Russia, India and Iran from regional participatory processes.
Pakistan’s increasing instability and dangers of its nuclear weapons arsenal safety hardly qualify Pakistan as a stable stakeholder in Afghanistan’s security and stability.
Afghanistan has territorial disputes with Pakistan and a gaping “trust deficit” in Pakistan’s integrity as a well-wisher of Afghanistan’s stability. This foredooms the success of the London Conference prognostications
India’s Afghanistan Policy: Political and Strategic Implications Arising from the London Conference

India’s sidelining at the London Conference 2010 has basically arisen from India’s reluctance to add robust contours to its Afghanistan policies in political and strategic terms. This was an imperative dictated by the contextual moves of Pakistan’s objectives to sideline India from playing an important role in Afghanistan as the regional power.

Politically India has no options but to continue its reconstruction aid to Pakistan until US and NATO Forces exit from Afghanistan or with a Taliban re-takeover of Afghanistan becoming a reality, courtesy of the London Conference. In the latter eventuality, India would have no choice but to quit its reconstruction role in Afghanistan.

India’s reported response following the Conference through its Foreign Minister that India could give a try to Taliban power-sharing in Kabul was a defeatist statement. India’s national security imperatives do not permit such a sufferance.

India is not without political cards in Afghanistan. It should immediately re-activate its linkages with Northern Alliance leaders and the Pashtun elements opposed to Pakistan and in concert with them, plan contingency plans to deal with the return of Talibanization of Afghanistan

India should embark on active diplomacy to forge a joint Russia-India-Iran regional grouping initiative on solution of the Afghan Conflict as has been repeatedly espoused by this Author in his Papers

India must learn the art of political signaling so essential in the exercise of regional power.

In terms of strategic implications, the exit of the United States or the return of the Taliban to power in Kabul or the phase of uncertainty induced by faltering US& NATO intentions to stay embedded in Afghanistan generate serious security turbulence and threats to India. While India has shied away from a military involvement in Afghanistan till date and there is no likelihood of it occurring in future, India must in all seriousness undertake military contingency planning for “The Day After”. This Author’s Paper No 3576 dated 29 December 2009 entitled “AFGHANISTAN: INDIA’S CONTINGENCY PLANS FOR “THE DAY AFTER” refers.

Should India’s policy establishment once again shies away from ‘hard decisions’ then India might as well give up all its pretensions to being a regional power in South Asia and be doomed to political and strategic sidelines in South Asia.

Concluding Observations

The United States military intervention in Afghanistan in December 2001 took place with the strategic aims of liquidating the Al Qaeda and Taliban from Afghanistan post-9/11. This strategic aim was reiterated by President Obama as late as March 2009 in the Af-Pak Strategy Blueprint.

In January 2010 the prime US strategic aims still remain unachieved. They stand unachieved primarily because US military planners have been reluctant to ‘Surgically Disconnect” Pakistan from interferences in Afghanistan’s stability – a fact now acknowledged growingly in US policy making circles.

If after such an acknowledgement at the highest US military levels, the United States becomes a partner to the diabolical British- Pakistan joint plan to rehabilitate the Taliban in power-sharing in Kabul which would lead to an eventual Taliban regime in Afghanistan, then the United States strategic vision on Afghanistan even after a decade of military involvement there, can at best be termed as strategically myopic.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have been the major instigators of Afghanistan’s instability historically. Both were instrumental in the installation of Al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan. How can then in United States perceptions can they now emerge as saviors of Afghanistan?

The London Conference 2010 Roadmap on Afghanistan is doomed to strategic failure due to the seeds of failure inherent in its misplaced strategic vision on Pakistan’s strategic utility to the West and the West’s willingness to accommodate the Taliban in power-sharing in Kabul at Pakistan’s behest.

(The author is an International Relations and Strategic Affairs analyst. He is the Consultant, Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. Email: drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com)

LIVE: Clare Short at Iraq inquiry - contains video

2010-02-02T05:04:00.000-08:00

LIVE: Clare Short at Iraq inquiry - contains video

Tony Blair "You are a liar," "And a murderer".

2010-01-30T09:55:00.003-08:00

Tony Blair '' You are a lier'' ''Murderer''

January 30, 2010
Citing 9/11, Blair Defends Legacy at Iraq Inquiry
By JOHN F. BURNS and ALAN COWELL New York Times
LONDON — Almost seven years after he ordered British troops to join the American-led invasion of Iraq, former Prime Minister Tony Blair mounted an unwavering defense of his actions on Friday, saying he would take the same steps again to counter what he depicted as a threat from Saddam Hussein that had assumed far greater dimensions after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In an appearance before an official inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq conflict, Mr. Blair sought to reshape the unflattering legacy molded since he left office in 2007 by his many critics in Britain. He has been accused, often bitterly, of pliantly following former President George W. Bush’s lead into an illegal and unpopular war, and of misleading his countrymen about his reasons for doing so.

For Mr. Blair, a grueling six hours of broadcast testimony provided a rare return to the public spotlight at home after 30 months of frenetic travel as a Middle East peace negotiator, and as the beneficiary of lucrative public-speaking engagements and consultancy deals, many of them in the United States.

Taken together, popular opprobrium over Iraq and the sense that he has used the stature derived from 10 years in office to amass a fortune — said by British newspapers to be worth at least $30 million — have made the 56-year-old former prime minister, once popular enough to win three general elections, into something approaching a pariah at home.

Concern for his safety led the police to mount a huge security cordon around the conference center in central London where the inquiry has been taking testimony, and to usher Mr. Blair’s limousine in and out of the building through a heavily guarded underground parking garage. The protests largely fizzled, however, with fewer than 300 demonstrators mounting a noisy vigil outside the conference center in a drizzling rain.

But whether Mr. Blair’s standing was enhanced or diminished by his testimony was uncertain, particularly after a jarring exchange at the end of his testimony, when he was asked by the inquiry’s chairman, Sir John Chilcot, if he had any regrets. After Mr. Blair said he accepted “responsibility” and regretted the divisions the war had caused in Britain, but did not feel “regret for removing Saddam Hussein,” decorum in the hearing room briefly collapsed.

“No regret, come on, man!” shouted James Sadri, a young man in the public gallery, prompting the startled inquiry chairman to demand silence. But that was followed by the sounds of sobbing from women in the gallery whose soldier sons had died in Iraq.

“You are a liar!” one woman cried, followed by another saying, “You are a murderer!” As Mr. Blair left the room, he passed close to the two women as they were comforted by others in the gallery.

A third of the seats in the gallery were assigned to relatives of the 179 British servicemen and women killed in Iraq in the six years of conflict that ended for Britain with the withdrawal of its last units in July last year. Many of the family members told reporters afterward that they were bitterly disappointed not to have heard the former prime minister express some contrition over the conflict, or at least over the deaths of British troops.

The inquiry offered Mr. Blair a prominent platform to map out his version of a history that has brought much vilification in his own land. He defended his close relationship with Mr. Bush, depicted by Mr. Blair’s adversaries — and by some of his former aides in their testimony before the inquiry — as having involved a covert plan by Mr. Blair to circumvent hostile opinion both in Britain and at the United Nations.

“This isn’t about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception,” Mr. Blair said. “It’s a decision. And the decision I had to take was, given Saddam’s history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking U.N. resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons program or is that a risk it is responsible to take?”

Taut and ill at ease at the outset of his testimony, Mr. Blair quickly caught his rhythm, and rode out a series of impatient thrusts by members of the inquiry panel, effectively dominating the hearing. He offered no apology for joining President Bush in toppling Mr. Hussein, saying repeatedly he thought it was in the best interests of Britain and the world.

“The decision I took — and frankly would take again — was: if there was any possibility that he could develop weapons of mass destruction, we would stop him. It was my view then and that is my view now,” he said.

The former prime minister said the attacks of Sept. 11 had hardened his resolve on the need to curb the threat that he said Mr. Hussein posed with his years of defiance of United Nations resolutions demanding that he abandon efforts to develop biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

“The crucial thing after Sept. 11 is that the calculus of risk changed,” Mr. Blair said. “The point about this terrorist act was that over 3,000 people had been killed on the streets of New York, and this is what changed my perception of risk: if these people inspired by this religious fanaticism could have killed 30,000, they would have.”

Some of the most probing questioning turned on Mr. Blair’s confidential meetings with Mr. Bush, starting with an encounter at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Tex., in April 2002, where Mr. Blair has been accused by critics of secretly committing Britain to war. “What I said to George Bush was that we are going to be with you” in countering the perceived threat from Mr. Hussein, he said, but he said he had made it clear that Britain would join in military action only after all diplomatic options had been exhausted.

On several occasions, Mr. Blair urged the inquiry to shift from its focus on what led Britain to war to the “2010 question” of what the situation would have been without the invasion. If the United States and Britain had not toppled Mr. Hussein, he said, “we would be facing a situation where Iraq would be competing with Iran on nuclear weapons capability and in support of terrorist groups.”

John F. Burns reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

Tony Blair "You are a liar," "And a murderer".
I've no regrets says defiant Blair
Friday, January 29 06:11 pm ITN
A defiant Tony Blair has mounted a vigorous defence of the invasion of Iraq, insisting he had no regrets over removing Saddam Hussein and would do the same again. Skip related content
Related photos / videos Blair has no regrets about going to war in Iraq Play video Blair has no regrets about going to war in Iraq Play video Blair wanted UK to be 'at the centre' of Iraq war Play video I've no regrets says defiant Blair

In his long-awaited appearance before the Iraq Inquiry, the former prime minister denied he had taken the country to war on the basis of a "lie" over Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

He suggested the world could now be faced with the threat of a nuclear-armed Iraq if he and President George Bush had not taken action to confront the Iraqi dictator.

Asked at the end of six hours of testimony by inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, whether he had any regrets, he said: "Responsibility, but not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein.

"I think that he was a monster. I believe he threatened not just the region but the world. And in the circumstances that we faced then, but I think even if you look back now, it was better to deal with this threat, to remove him from office."

One member of the audience shouted out: "What, no regrets? Come on". Then as he left, another audience member heckled: "You are a liar," while another added, "And a murderer".

His voice apparently beginning to fade, after what had been a largely assured and fluent performance, he insisted that Britain - and in particular the armed forces - should feel an "immense sense of pride" for the role they had played.

"I had to take this decision as prime minister. It was a huge responsibility and there is not a single day that passes by that I don't reflect and think about that responsibility and so I should," he said.

"But I genuinely believe that if we had left Saddam in power, even with what we know now, we would still have had to have dealt with him, possibly in circumstances where the threat was worse.

"In the end it was divisive and I am sorry about that and I did my level best to bring people back together again but if I am asked whether I believe we are safer more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better, with Saddam and his two sons out of office and out of power, I believe indeed we are."
===========
Tony Blair accused of putting war with Iran on the electoral agenda
Former prime minister slammed for trying to shift focus onto threat from Tehran during appearance at Chilcot inquiry
David Batty guardian.co.uk, Saturday 30 January 2010 13.01 GMT
Tony Blair has been accused of warmongering spin for claiming that western powers might be forced to invade Iran because it poses as serious a threat as Saddam Hussein.
Sir Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Iran, accused Blair of trying to make confrontation with Iran an electoral issue after the former prime minister repeatedly singled out its Islamic regime as a global threat in his evidence to the Iraq war inquiry yesterday.
Blair said many of the arguments that led him to confront the "profoundly wicked, almost psychopathic" Saddam Hussein seven years ago now applied to the regime in Tehran.
"We face the same problem about Iran today," he told the Chilcot inquiry.
Dalton, the UK ambassador to Iran from 2002 until 2006, said it was essential that all the political parties made clear in the run-up to the general election that there would be no repeat of Blair's actions in respect of Iran.
"One result of Tony Blair's intervention on Iran – he mentioned Iran 58 times – is to put the question of confronting Iran into play in the election," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
"We need to be much clearer, as voters, with our politicians and with our candidates that we expect a different behaviour and a greater integrity in our democracy next time."

Blair warned that the international community must be prepared to take a "very hard, tough line" with Iran, a country "linked up with terrorist groups", to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.
He said that if action had not been taken in 2003 to topple Saddam, Iraq could be locked in a nuclear arms race with Iran with potentially devastating consequences for the region and the wider world.
The former prime minister attacked the Islamic regime for fomenting the insurgency that followed the invasion of Iraq by US and UK forces.
He claimed that Iran, which follows Shia Islam, had supported al-Qaida, despite it following the rival Sunni branch of the faith, because they both had a common interest in destabilising Iraq.
Dalton dismissed as a "piece of spin" Blair's claim that the Iranians almost caused the failure of the coalition mission in Iraq through their support for the insurgency.
"To say that Iran was the principal reason seemed to me to be part of a broader argument which he was trying to make, namely that it makes what he did in Iraq look better if he extends it to the future and says the policies then might have to be applied. But Iran is a completely different situation," Dalton said
=========
Blair attacked over Iran stance
By Gavin Cordon, Press Association
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Tony Blair was strongly criticised today after he warned that the international community must be prepared to take a "very hard, tough line" with Iran over its banned nuclear programme.
In his evidence yesterday to the Iraq Inquiry, the former prime minister said that many of the arguments which led him to confront Saddam Hussein now applied to the regime in Tehran
He attacked the Iranians for fomenting the insurgency which followed the invasion of Iraq by British and US forces, and he said that they must not now be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
He said that if action had not been taken in 2003 to topple Saddam, Iraq could now be locked in a nuclear arms race with Iran with potential devastating consequences for the region and the wider world.
However his claim that the Iranians almost caused the failure of the coalition mission in Iraq through their support for the insurgency was dismissed as a "piece of spin" by a former British ambassador to Tehran, Sir Richard Dalton.
"To say that Iran was the principal reason seemed to me to be part of a broader argument which he was trying to make, namely that it makes what he did in Iraq look better if he extends it to the future and says the policies then might have to be applied. But Iran is a completely different situation," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Sir Richard said that it was now essential that all the political parties made clear in the run up to the general election that there would be no repeat of Mr Blair's actions in respect of Iran.
"One result of Tony Blair's intervention on Iran - he mentioned Iran 58 times - is to put the question of confronting Iran into play in the election," he said.
"We need to be much clearer, as voters, with our politicians and with our candidates that we expect a different behaviour and a greater integrity in our democracy next time."
=========
Unrepentant, unforgiven, Blair says: ‘I’d do it again’
From The Times January 30, 2010
Tony Blair was branded a murderer and liar last night after he ended his historic appearance before the Iraq inquiry with a blank refusal to voice regrets over toppling Saddam Hussein.

After six hours in which the Chilcot inquiry team had largely failed to breach his defences, the former Prime Minister brought trouble on himself by failing to show the contrition that his critics wanted.

Mr Blair, who gave a fluent, assured performance, refused to apologise for going to war, said that he would do the same again, and then warned that today’s leaders might have to take similar action to disarm Iran.

He went as far as telling the inquiry that it should pose the “2010 question” and ask what would have happened if America and Britain had lost their nerve and allowed Saddam to go on and build nuclear weapons.
Last night declassified documents released by Downing Street revealed that Mr Blair had already indicated Britain’s support for regime change in Iraq six months before the 9/11 attacks. The memo is from Sir John Sawers, foreign policy adviser to Mr Blair at the time and now head of MI6, to a senior diplomat. Dated March 7, 2001, it said that Britain would support the US in toppling Saddam “when the circumstances were right”.

The Iraq inquiry audience stayed silent through most of yesterday’s testimony but cracked when Sir John Chilcot, the chairman, offered Mr Blair two chances to voice regret. To the first he replied: “Responsibility but not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein. I think he was a monster. I think he threatened not just a region but the world.” There was a cry of “What, no regrets?”; then shouts of “You are a murderer”, “and a liar”.

There were also sobs from relatives of some of the 179 British service personnel killed in the conflict. Mr Blair said: “It was divisive and I’m sorry about that but I tried my level best to bring people back together again.”

Earlier the former Prime Minister said that many of the arguments used to justify overthrowing Saddam’s regime now applied to Iran. He said that Iran was now a greater risk to Britain than Iraq was at the time that he ordered the invasion in March 2003.

His voice apparently beginning to fade, he insisted that Britain — and in particular the Armed Forces — should feel an “immense sense of pride” for the role that had been played.

“I had to take this decision as Prime Minister. It was a huge responsibility and there is not a single day that passes by that I don’t reflect and think about that responsibility, and so I should,” Mr Blair said. “But I genuinely believe that if we had left Saddam in power, even with what we know now, we would still have had to have dealt with him, possibly in circumstances where the threat was worse.”

PFLP: Arab and international pressure to return to negotiations plays into the hands of the Zionist enemy

2010-01-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

PFLP: Arab and international pressure to return to negotiations plays into the hands of the Zionist enemy
Comrade Jamil Mizher, member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, called for a total rejection of Arab and international pressure to return to negotiations, saying that such negotiations only play into the hands of the Zionist enemy.

Comrade Mizher, speaking with Aljazeera.net on January 4, 2009, said that a return to the futile and harmful negotiations that even the Palestinian Authority leadership itself have recognized are unsuccessful would only serve Israeli interests. He said further that relying on the U.S. administration, which is fully aligned with the occupation, is betting on mirage and illusion. Comrade Mizher called upon Arab countries to support restoration of Palestinian national unity and put pressure on the occupation, not pressure Palestinians to serve the interests of Israel.

The PFLP further condemned these attempts to push Palestinians into negotiations with the occupier, responding to the occupation authorities' decision to build a new colony in the Mount of Olives overlooking Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock and the Old City. The PFLP statement said that this action represents the strategic plan of the occupier to intensify settlements and Judaize Jerusalem and impose transfer upon Palestinians by forcing Palestinians into isolated, impoverished areas in an attempt to impose the so-called unified capital of the state of occupation and racism upon Jerusalem.

The statement said that merely ending negotiations is not sufficient to confront the occupation power, emphasizing the utter disregard for international law on the part of the occupier and saying that Arab regimes and the international community are silent and complicit in the face of the occupation crimes while pushing negotiations, while the United States and the Quartet directly push the occupation agenda.

The Front emphasized that a complete rejection of the "peace process" and a comprehensive review of the entire Oslo process, including an end to the so-called "transitional phase" and security cooperation is necessary. Furthermore, the PFLP emphasized the need to develop a united national strategy and unify the Palestinian house on the basis of democracy, comprehensive national dialogue, and rebuilding the PLO on the basis of national principles, protecting the inalienable rights of our people to freedom, self-determination and return.

The PFLP denounced the pressures designed to push Palestinians into the endless maze of negotiations, saying that any such process is a pursuit of a deceptive, misleading American and Israeli mirage. It demanded instead that the parties engaged in this pressure instead put pressure on the occupier to lift the siege on Gaza, rescue people trapped by disease, poverty and hunger, who lack the most basic elements of life, and to free thousands of Palestinian prisoners, and to bring occupation war criminals to trial before criminal courts.

Iraqis outraged as Blackwater case thrown out

2010-01-06T19:56:00.000-08:00

Iraqis outraged as Blackwater case thrown out
By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press Writer Rebecca Santana, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 2, 4:02 am ET
BAGHDAD – Iraqis seeking justice for 17 people shot dead at a Baghdad intersection responded with bitterness and outrage Friday at a U.S. judge's decision to throw out a case against a Blackwater security team accused in the killings.

The Iraqi government vowed to pursue the case, which became a source of contention between the U.S. and the Iraqi government. Many Iraqis also held up the judge's decision as proof of what they'd long believed: U.S. security contractors were above the law.

"There is no justice," said Bura Sadoun Ismael, who was wounded by two bullets and shrapnel during the shooting. "I expected the American court would side with the Blackwater security guards who committed a massacre in Nisoor Square."

What happened on Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007, raised Iraqi concerns about their sovereignty because Iraqi officials were powerless to do anything to the Blackwater employees who had immunity from local prosecution. The shootings also highlighted the degree to which the U.S. relied on private contractors during the Iraq conflict.

Blackwater had been hired by the State Department to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The guards said they were ambushed at a busy intersection in western Baghdad, but U.S. prosecutors and many Iraqis said the Blackwater guards let loose an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.

"Investigations conducted by specialized Iraqi authorities confirmed unequivocally that the guards of Blackwater committed the crime of murder and broke the rules by using arms without the existence of any threat obliging them to use force," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement Friday.

He did not elaborate on what steps the government planned to take to pursue the case.

The shootings led the Iraqi government to strip the North Carolina-based company of its license to work in the country, and Blackwater replaced its management and changed its name to Xe Services.

Five guards from the company were charged in the case with manslaughter and weapons violations. The charges carried mandatory 30-year prison terms, but a federal judge Friday dismissed all the charges.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina cited repeated government missteps in the investigation, saying that prosecutors built their case on sworn statements that the guards had given with the idea that they would be immune from prosecution.

That explanation held little sway with Iraqis outraged over the case.

Dr. Haitham Ahmed's wife and son were both killed in their car during the shooting.

"The rights of our victims and the rights of the innocent people should not be wasted," he said.

Iraqis have followed the case closely and said the judge's decision demonstrated that the Americans were considered above the law.

"I was not astonished by the verdict because the trial was unreal. They are using double standards and talking about human rights, but they are the first to violate these rights. They are killing innocents deliberately," said Ahmed Jassim, a civil engineer in the southern city of Najaf.

Dozens of Iraqis have filed a separate lawsuit alleging that Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings and beatings. That civil case was not affected by Urbina's decision and is still before a Virginia court.

Mohammed al-Kinani, whose son was killed, said he had been invited once to the U.S. by the Justice Department as a witness but said he went two more times after that to follow the case.

"I will not despair," he said.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the commanding general in Iraq, said he understood that people would be upset with the decision.

"Of course people are not going to like it, because they believe that these individuals conducted some violence and should be punished for it, but the bottom line is, using the rule of law, the evidence is not

there," he said. "I worry about it because clearly there were innocent people killed in this attack."

Of all the private security companies that mushroomed in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion, Blackwater was the most well-known and vilified.

Their employees were at the center of what is considered one of the key moments of the war. A vehicle with four Blackwater employees driving through the western city of Fallujah, a center of the Sunni

insurgency, was hit by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in March 2004. Their charred, mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates river.

The bloody incident was one of the key reasons the U.S. military attacked Fallujah in April 2004.

Another Blackwater guard, Andrew Moonen, was accused by the family of a guard for an Iraqi vice president of shooting and killing the guard without provocation on Christmas Eve of 2006 after Moonen got

drunk at a party in the Green Zone and then got lost. Moonen's lawyer has described the incident as self-defense.

An October 2007 report by a House of Representatives committee called Blackwater an out-of-control outfit indifferent to Iraqi civilian casualties. Blackwater chairman Erik Prince told the committee that the company acted appropriately at all times.

Were the incident to happen again today, the legal outcome might be much different. The U.S.-Iraqi security pact that took effect Jan. 1, 2009, lifted the immunity that foreign contractors had in Iraq. A British security contractor accused of shooting two colleagues is currently being held in Iraq and could be the first Westerner to face an Iraqi court since the immunity was lifted.
___
Associated Press Writers Katharine Houreld, Saad Abdul-Kadir and Bushra Juhi contributed to this report.
===========
7 CIA workers and five Canadians killed in Afghanistan
Afghanistan Sun
Wednesday 30th December, 2009
Seven CIA officers have been killed in a bomb attack on a military base in Afghanistan's south-eastern Khost province.
Six others were wounded in the raid on the CIA's post after a bomber walked into the base after an invitation for him to become a CIA informant.
It was the first time that the man had been taken inside the compound, which is where he detonated his bomb-laden vest.
After the bombing, CIA Director Leon Panetta sent a message to agency staff to say that the casualties sustained in Wednesday's strike at Forward Operating Base Chapman were the result of a terrorist attack.

Initial reports had indicated that eight American civilians had been killed and it was some time before the CIA corrected the accuracy of the event.

Anonymous former CIA officials later said the female agent who ran the agency's base in Khost was among those killed by the attacker.

In another incident five Canadians, four soldiers and a journalist, died when a vehicle in which they were travelling struck an improvised explosive device.

The roadside bombing which killed the five Canadians took place in southern Kandahar province, four kilometres (2.5 miles) from Kandahar.

Michelle Lang, 34, of the Canwest News Service was the journalist killed in the attack.

Two journalists from France meantime were kidnapped by militants northeast of Kabul on Wednesday.

Attacks in Afghanistan this year have spiraled to their highest levels since the Taliban were overthrown by US backed Afghan forces in late 2001.

Civilian and military casualty tolls have reached record levels this year, with suicide attackers even targeting United Nations employees.