NATO's Deadliest Days In Afghanistan

[ejaz007]

Taliban seize key district in Afghan east
Updated at: 1530 PST, Sunday, July 25, 2010

KABUL: Taliban guerrillas have captured a strategic district from the Afghan government after days of clashes in eastern Nuristan province, officials said on Sunday.

Separately, the Afghan government said it was checking reports by locals saying some 40 Afghan civilians were killed in a raid by foreign forces in Sangin district of southern Helmand province on Friday.

In Nuristan's Barg-e Matal, dozens of Taliban fighters and up to six Afghan police were killed during days of clashes before the district fell to the Taliban overnight.

Barg-e-Matal is important for the government and militants because of its location and has regularly changed hands.

Lying near the border with Pakistan, the rugged district has been used as a supply route for arms and fighters for the Taliban in three provinces, most importantly for Badakhshan where the Taliban have mounted a series of deadly attacks recently.

Afghan police forces withdrew from Barg-e-Matal to avoid high casualties and in the face of sustained Taliban pressure after days of skirmishes, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told reporters.

"Right now the police forces in Nuristan are working to recapture it," he said.

The Taliban have yet to comment about the fall of the district and the reported losses in their ranks.

In Helmand province, where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, Bashary said provincial authorities were checking reports by residents that dozens of civilians were killed in a raid by foreign forces on Friday.

Further details were not immediately available.

Taliban seize key district in Afghan east

 

[Ahmad]

This is the same district that was taken in a joint operation between Pakisani Taliban and Afghani Taliban a month ago. The gov took it back and now they took it again.

 

[GUNNER]

NATO Kills 52 Afghan Civilians


KABUL, July 26, 2010 (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday that NATO troops had fired a rocket that killed 52 "innocent" villagers in southern Afghanistan, as leaked documents laid bare the civilian toll of the US-led war.

An investigation by the National Directorate of Security found that a house in Helmand province's Sangin district was hit on Friday "by a rocket launched by NATO/ISAF troops, leaving 52 civilians dead, including women and children," a statement from Karzai's office said.

"The president condoled via phone with the mourning families and called on NATO troops to put into practice every possible measure to avoid harming civilians during military operations," it said.

Karzai's statement came three days after Friday's attack on Regey village, and followed repeated denials by officials of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that their forces were involved in the incident.

The statement said Karzai was "deeply saddened by the heartbreaking incident, which is both morally and humanly unacceptable".

"The president and cabinet of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan condemned on Monday in the strongest possible terms the rocket attack on a village in Helmand province that killed up to 52 innocent civilians," it said.

Reports surfaced on Saturday that a helicopter gunship fired on villagers who had been told by insurgents to leave their homes as a firefight with ISAF troops was imminent.

According to witness accounts, men, women and children fled to Regey village and were fired on by helicopter gunships as they took cover.

Abdul Ghafar, 45, told AFP he lost "two daughters and one son and two sisters" in the attack.

He and six other families fled to Regey, about 500 metres (550 yards) from their village of Ishaqzai, after being warned about an imminent battle, he said.

Men and women took shelter in separate compounds, he said, ahead of an expected firefight between Taliban and NATO troops around 4:30 pm (1200 GMT).

"Helicopters started firing on the compound killing almost everyone inside," he said, speaking at the Mirwais hospital in Kandahar city.

"We rushed to the house and there were eight children wounded and around 40 to 50 others killed," he said.

He took three girls and four boys to the Kandahar hospital, he said, adding: "Three of the wounded are my nephews and one is my son. One of the wounded children is four years old and has lost both parents."

The BBC said it sent an Afghan reporter to Regey to interview residents, who described the attack and said they buried 39 people.

ISAF spokesman Colonel Wayne Shanks said the location of the reported deaths was "several kilometres away from where we had engaged enemy fighters".

ISAF forces had fought a battle with insurgents, he said, but a NATO investigation team dispatched after the casualty reports emerged "had accounted for all the rounds that were shot at the enemy", Shanks said.

"We found no evidence of civilian casualties," he said.

 

[GUNNER]

LONDON, Aug 2, 2010 (AFP) - Taliban forces shot dead one British soldier and killed another in a bomb attack in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province over the weekend, the defence ministry said on Monday.

One of the soldiers, from the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, was killed by small arms fire in Lashkar Gah district while the second died when an improvised explosive device went off in the Sangin region while he was on a foot patrol on Sunday, according to a statement.

Their deaths bring the overall number of British troops who have been killed since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to 327.

Neither were taking part in a major new British offensive called Operation Tor Shezada, or "Black Prince", which began last Friday and is centred around Sayedebad, also in Helmand.

Around 9,500 British troops are currently in Afghanistan, making them the second largest contingent of the 150,000-strong international force battling an insurgency by the Taliban militia.

Around 30,000 international troops are deployed in the southern Taliban heartlands of Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

 

[nightcrawler]

American women should stop taking contraceptive pills to compensate for their soldier loss; because taliban won't

 

[ejaz007]

World losing war against Taliban, says Zardari

* President says coalition forces underestimated situation on the ground in Afghanistan
* Says Taliban have no chance of regaining power, but their grip is strengthening

PARIS: Coalition forces are losing the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview published in France on Tuesday.

“The international community, to which Pakistan belongs, is losing the war against the Taliban. This is above all because we have lost the battle to win hearts and minds,” he said, in comments published in French by Le Monde.

Zardari said the US and NATO-led coalition forces had “under-estimated the situation on the ground” in Afghanistan. He said long-term help was needed, and military reinforcements were only a small part of the solution.

“I think they have no chance of regaining power, but their grip is strengthening,” Zardari said referring to the Afghan Taliban.

Referring to last week’s remarks by British Prime Minister David Cameron that Pakistan was exporting terrorism, Zardari said he would tackle the allegations head-on when he meets Cameron.

“The war against terrorism must unite us and not oppose us,” Zardari said. “I will explain face to face that it is my country that is paying the highest price in (terms of) human life for this war,” he said.

Zardari told French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy it was “unfortunate if some people continued to express doubts and misgivings about our will and determination to fight the militants to the finish”.

Zardari said he would not allow Cameron’s allegations to sour Pakistan’s relations with Britain. agencies

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[GUNNER]

KABUL, Aug 4, 2010 (AFP) - General David Petraeus, commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan on Wednesday issued fresh guidelines to nearly 150,000 foreign troops, emphasising the need to avoid civilian casualties.

Civilian deaths during Western operations are hugely controversial in the nearly nine-year Afghan war. Reducing the number of such incidents is seen as crucial to a US-led counter-insurgency strategy designed to end the conflict.

Petraeus took command of US-led NATO troops in Afghanistan on July 4 with the conflict at its deadliest when US President Barack Obama sacked his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal for insubordination.

"We must continue -- indeed redouble -- our efforts to reduce the loss of innocent civilian life to an absolute minimum. Every Afghan civilian death diminishes our cause," Petraeus said.

"If we use excessive force or operate contrary to our counter-insurgency principles, tactical victories may prove to be strategic setbacks," said the direction, which was published by NATO.

Before using force, commanders must make sure that no civilians are present, according to the new rules, except in cases of self-defence.

Petraeus also emphasised the need to partner at all times with Afghan troops, whose training and development is seen as crucial to Western troops being able to hand over security responsibility and draw down their presence.

Widely credited with turning around the conflict in Iraq, Petraeus is easily the most celebrated general and now bears responsibility for trying to rescue the faltering war in Afghanistan.

NATO in its statement said the guidelines ensured "that some areas that may have led to misperceptions are clarified."

"The directive firmly places the presence of civilians at the centre of every decision involving the use of force," NATO said.

The conflict is killing record numbers of NATO soldiers and July became the deadliest month of the war for American forces with 66 US troops killed.

The Afghan war has become increasingly unpopular amid a rising death toll and a lack of confidence in Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

NATO and the United States have close to 150,000 troops in the country, with 30,000 deployed to the southern Taliban heartland in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in a bid to reverse Taliban momentum.

The leak of 92,000 US government documents on the war has provided more ammunition to opponents of the mission, who point to files alleging Pakistan -- a US ally -- has cultivated links with Islamist insurgents in Afghanistan.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview aired Sunday that there were encouraging signs in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, with security improving and advances on the economic front.

 

[GUNNER]

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Aug 5, 2010 (AFP) - A NATO strike in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar killed at least 12 civilians, an official told AFP, as President Hamid Karzai ordered a probe into the incident.

"Coalition forces had an operation last night. In one place, Nakrkhail village, they hit one vehicle and killed 12 civilians," said Mohammad Hassan, district chief of Khogyani district in Nangarhar.

"In another place, Hashimkhail village, they launched an operation on some houses and 14 people were killed. It's not clear how many of them are civilians or Taliban. There are some civilians among them," Hassan said.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said it had operated in the area on Wednesday and was "aware of civilian casualty allegations as a result of these operations and is conducting an investigation.

 

[Ahmad]

Damn it, civilians again.

 

[muse]

Afghanistan Oversight Failures

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 10:42 AM PDT

The questions go back and forth between the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry, who was once the military commander in Afghanistan; and Special Envoy for "AFPAK" Richard C. Holbrooke, usually airborne; Deputy Secretaries of State James B. Steinberg and Jacob J. Lew; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also frequently airborne; and Eikenberry's four deputies, who also hold the rank of ambassador. A lot of cooks have produced a thin diplomatic and economic gruel. CYA appears to be the operative words that hold it all together.

With the Kabul embassy soon to be the largest in the world, displacing Baghdad, with a staff of more than 1,000 diplomats and officials seconded from a dozen U.S. government agencies and a security detail of another thousand, economic planning for a country in the midst of a guerrilla war is difficult under the best of circumstances. Defeated Germany and Japan in 1945 were tabula rasa. In Afghanistan, there is no clean slate. And a plethora of players with different agendas has coaxed Eikenberry into a defensive crouch.

On July 22, the three-star Afghan war commander turned ambassador peppered his superiors in Washington with a barrage of questions to which he knows there is no consensus among the powers that be.

"We would like to begin a discussion with Washington," said Eikenberry's e-mail message, "designed to refine our thinking about the current status of our civilian uplift, our ability to sustain civilian presence in Afghanistan, and our vision for the coming years. Changes on the ground will demand flexibility on the part of both Washington and the field and even greater attention to integrated CIV-MIL operations." And this in the ninth year of the Afghan war.

Eikenberry kicked the can of "civilian uplift" down the rutted Afghan highway one more time when he said, "we believe it would be useful to re-examine as close as we could come to the entire stock of questions or issues that have been raised in Washington, Kabul, and the field …"

Meanwhile, the "civilian uplift" personnel buildup continues to mount. By last July 10, 1,146 American civilians had been deployed. But Eikenberry then asked, "What is the right number for our mission and do we have in place the right kind of metrics to self-evaluate and course correct?"

If he doesn't know, maybe someone on Holbrooke's staff of 60-plus in Foggy Bottom can come up with an educated guesstimate.

Among the 12 pages of questions, a bobbing and weaving Eikenberry conveyed the impression -- presumably inadvertently -- that he didn't have any answers for the questions he posed: "Are we doing an adequate job of identifying personnel who are not able to accomplish their civilian tasks due to deteriorating security environments and are we able to identify adroitly new temporary duties for such officers?"

Passing the buck was the common thread of scores of questions that normally should have been followed with suggested answers for the interagency meetings in Washington, to wit, "If we have to pull teams back from the field to Kabul in the event of prolonged security threats in the months ahead can we house them and put them to work here or should they be redeployed to Washington or elsewhere?"

If they volunteered for dangerous duty in Afghanistan, why would they want to be shipped home because of a prolonged security threat? Should there be a distinction between more dangerous to less dangerous field posts, with commensurate differences in incentives?

Eikenberry presumably knows that what is less dangerous one week can be more dangerous the following week.

The most urgent civilian problem is the billions salted away by contractors who get paid for work not done or abandoned half done. During the past three years, almost $20 billion in aid was delivered to Afghanistan but the government only had control over $1 billion in return for total transparency. But as Omar Zakhilwal, the finance minister pointed out in a letter to U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., "full transparency and effectiveness principles" aren't applied to the aid directly spent by donors and their contractors.

Lowey held up $4 billion in aid to Afghanistan pending a thorough investigation of corruption on all sides -- Afghan, U.S. and individual NATO countries.

Vast amounts of money exit Kabul airport on several daily flights to Dubai and Abu Dhabi -- all legally declared and authorized. During the last 3 1/2 years, Zakhilwal said $4.2 billion has been transferred in cash on outward bound flights.

One strategically placed U.S. official confided privately, "The U.S. does not have the ability to manage the oversight needed to coordinate the efforts of over 1,000 civilian 'generalists' and 'specialists' with either the NATO forces or the Afghan government. Nor can we oversee the 100,000 plus contractors running around the country eating our lunch."

The Taliban's strongest weapon is corruption on the government side. Holbrooke describes it as a "malignancy" that could destroy everything the United States and its allies are trying to achieve but have little to show for it after nine years. U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus says inadequate governance, corruption and abuse of power are the Taliban's best recruiters.

After spending $345 billion, said this same American official, "we still do not have an Afghan government that can sustain itself." Each new strategy is given a catchy acronym. The latest is Civilian Uplift and Surge Taskforce for Economic Rehab -- CUSTER!

Arnaud de Borchgrave, a member of the Atlantic Council, is a senior fellow at CSIS and Editor-at-Large at UPI.

 

[GUNNER]

KABUL, Aug 8, 2010 (AFP) - Five NATO troops have been killed in Afghanistan's insurgency-hit south, the coalition force said Sunday.

One soldier was killed by a homemade bomb and two others died following an insurgent attack on Saturday, said a statement from NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) without giving further details.

Two Danish soldiers were also killed Saturday when their tank hit a roadside bomb while on patrol in restive Helmand province. The explosion left three other soldiers injured, two of them seriously, the Danish military said.

Improvised explosive devices are the weapons of choice for Taliban fighting an increasingly deadly insurgency in their southern heartlands of Helmand and Kandahar provinces, where around 30,000 international troops are deployed.

The deaths bring the overall number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan this year to 422, according to an AFP tally based on that kept by the independent icasualties.org website.

 

[noname]

Two Danish soldiers were also killed Saturday when their tank hit a roadside bomb while on patrol in restive Helmand province.

It was a CV9035, infantry fighting vehicle. The IED was so powerfull the 32 ton vehicle was turned upside down.

 

[GUNNER]

KABUL, Aug 9, 2010 (AFP) - A prisoner killed two US Marines in southern Afghanistan after escaping a prayer room and grabbing a rifle, NATO said Monday.

The alliance said the gunman was later shot dead and that the incident, on Saturday, was under investigation.

"The prisoner escaped a room where he was observing prayer time, acquired a rifle and subsequently engaged Afghan and coalition forces. The Marines were killed while trying to subdue the prisoner," said NATO in a statement.

Another NATO soldier was killed by a bomb in the south on Monday, adding to a toll of victims of explosives laid by insurgents which is rising almost daily.

Eight foreign troops were killed over the weekend, two by the prisoner and six by bombs -- the Taliban's choice weapon in their southern heartlands of Helmand and Kandahar provinces, where 30,000 international troops are deployed.

The latest death brings the overall number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan this year to 426, compared to 520 for all of 2009, according to an AFP tally based on that kept by the independent icasualties.org website.

In the southeast, clashes broke out when insurgents attacked three NATO combat posts, the coalition force said.

The troops came under attack in the rural province of Paktika, which shares a long, porous border with Pakistani areas troubled by Taliban militancy. NATO has bases in a few locations in the province close to the border.

"US and Afghan forces are thwarting insurgent attacks on three combat operation posts in... Paktika province today," said NATO.

The alliance said fighting was continuing and that it could not give further details on any casualties.

NATO rarely releases statements about insurgent attacks on their bases unless the raids are significant or cause casualties.

 

[GUNNER]

BERLIN, Aug 10, 2010 (AFP) - Germany said Tuesday it has paid out 430,000 dollars to the families of 102 Afghans killed or injured in an air strike called in by a German commander on two hijacked fuel tankers last September.

"Every family affected received 5,000 dollars. This measure is however not about compensation in the legal sense but constitutes humanitarian assistance," the defence ministry in Berlin said in a statement.

The September 4, 2009 bombing by US planes near the northern Afghan city of Kunduz on two fuel tankers stolen by insurgents prompted outrage in Germany, where polls suggest a majority of people are opposed to the Afghan mission.

The defence minister at the time resigned, while armed forces chief of staff and another senior defence official quit after pressure from the minister's successor, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who called the strike "militarily inappropriate."

A report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) put the number at 102 killed or injured, the ministry said, reportedly including 91 dead. It did not say how many non-insurgents were among the casualties.

NATO said at first 142 people were killed, reportedly including dozens of civilians. The operation has also been the subject of a parliamentary enquiry in Germany.

Germany is the third-largest contributor of foreign troops in Afghanistan after the United States and Britain, with around 4,500 soldiers in the relatively peaceful north. Thirty-nine soldiers have died.

 

[GUNNER]

KABUL, Aug 13, 2010 (AFP) - A NATO soldier was killed fighting militants in southern Afghanistan on Friday, the alliance said, amid increased insurgent violence in the troubled country.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAf) did not give further details, specifying neither the soldier's nationality nor the exact location of what it called "an insurgent attack".

Friday's death took to 429 the number of foreign troops killed this year in the Afghan war, compared to 520 for all of 2009, according to an AFP tally based on that kept by the independent icasualties.org website.