Full Version: Afghanistan
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War is peace?
QUOTE(davisął @ Sep 25 2006, 07:59 AM) [snapback]243550[/snapback]
War is peace?
I guess if you think Islam is a religion of peace.
Onward Christian soldier, marching as to war...
Monday September 25, 7:16 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/060924/1/43mle.html
US spy agency CIA paid Pakistan for al-Qaeda suspects: Musharraf
The US Central Intelligence Agency paid Pakistan millions of dollars for handing over more than 350 suspected al-Qaeda terrorists to the United States, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has reportedly said.
The assertions come in the military ruler's upcoming memoir "In the Line of Fire," serialized in The Times newspaper.
Musharraf does not reveal how much Pakistan was paid for the 369 Al-Qaeda suspects he ordered should be handed over to the United States, the newspaper said, noting, however, that such payments are banned by the US government.
The newspaper does not, however, print or quote the excerpts which make the allegations.
In response a US Department of Justice official was quoted as saying: "We didn't know about this. It should not happen. These bounty payments are for private individuals who help to trace terrorists on the FBI's most wanted list, not foreign governments."
The Pakistani's leader's claims come after he said last week that former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage had threatened to bomb Pakistan if it did not back the United States in the so-called "war on terror" in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, described by Musharraf as "what has to be the most undiplomatic statement ever made."
"Our relationships with international leaders is not something we are prepared to talk about," a CIA official told The Times.
Musharraf also writes that he was so angered by American demands in the wake of the September 11 attacks, which he calls "ludicrous," that he "war-gamed the United States as an adversary."
"There would be a violent and angry reaction if we didn't support the United States," an excerpt from his book reads.
"The question was: if we do not join them, can we confront them and withstand the onslaught? The answer was no."
He said that two days after the attacks, the US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain brought to him a set of seven demands including "blanket overflight and landing rights" and "use of Pakistan's naval ports, air bases, and strategic locations on borders."
Musharraf said Pakistan gave no "blanket permission" for anything.
The military leader also says that he decided to make the revelations to counter claims that Pakistan had not done enough to combat Al-Qaeda in the war on terror."
Your tax dollars at work.
His book should be good reading.
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/060924/1/43mle.html
US spy agency CIA paid Pakistan for al-Qaeda suspects: Musharraf
The US Central Intelligence Agency paid Pakistan millions of dollars for handing over more than 350 suspected al-Qaeda terrorists to the United States, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has reportedly said.
The assertions come in the military ruler's upcoming memoir "In the Line of Fire," serialized in The Times newspaper.
Musharraf does not reveal how much Pakistan was paid for the 369 Al-Qaeda suspects he ordered should be handed over to the United States, the newspaper said, noting, however, that such payments are banned by the US government.
The newspaper does not, however, print or quote the excerpts which make the allegations.
In response a US Department of Justice official was quoted as saying: "We didn't know about this. It should not happen. These bounty payments are for private individuals who help to trace terrorists on the FBI's most wanted list, not foreign governments."
The Pakistani's leader's claims come after he said last week that former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage had threatened to bomb Pakistan if it did not back the United States in the so-called "war on terror" in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, described by Musharraf as "what has to be the most undiplomatic statement ever made."
"Our relationships with international leaders is not something we are prepared to talk about," a CIA official told The Times.
Musharraf also writes that he was so angered by American demands in the wake of the September 11 attacks, which he calls "ludicrous," that he "war-gamed the United States as an adversary."
"There would be a violent and angry reaction if we didn't support the United States," an excerpt from his book reads.
"The question was: if we do not join them, can we confront them and withstand the onslaught? The answer was no."
He said that two days after the attacks, the US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain brought to him a set of seven demands including "blanket overflight and landing rights" and "use of Pakistan's naval ports, air bases, and strategic locations on borders."
Musharraf said Pakistan gave no "blanket permission" for anything.
The military leader also says that he decided to make the revelations to counter claims that Pakistan had not done enough to combat Al-Qaeda in the war on terror."
Your tax dollars at work.
His book should be good reading.
QUOTE(SherryB @ Sep 25 2006, 12:28 PM) [snapback]243610[/snapback]
Monday September 25, 7:16 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/060924/1/43mle.html
US spy agency CIA paid Pakistan for al-Qaeda suspects: Musharraf
The US Central Intelligence Agency paid Pakistan millions of dollars for handing over more than 350 suspected al-Qaeda terrorists to the United States, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has reportedly said.
The assertions come in the military ruler's upcoming memoir "In the Line of Fire," serialized in The Times newspaper.
Musharraf does not reveal how much Pakistan was paid for the 369 Al-Qaeda suspects he ordered should be handed over to the United States, the newspaper said, noting, however, that such payments are banned by the US government.
The newspaper does not, however, print or quote the excerpts which make the allegations.
In response a US Department of Justice official was quoted as saying: "We didn't know about this. It should not happen. These bounty payments are for private individuals who help to trace terrorists on the FBI's most wanted list, not foreign governments."
The Pakistani's leader's claims come after he said last week that former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage had threatened to bomb Pakistan if it did not back the United States in the so-called "war on terror" in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, described by Musharraf as "what has to be the most undiplomatic statement ever made."
"Our relationships with international leaders is not something we are prepared to talk about," a CIA official told The Times.
Musharraf also writes that he was so angered by American demands in the wake of the September 11 attacks, which he calls "ludicrous," that he "war-gamed the United States as an adversary."
"There would be a violent and angry reaction if we didn't support the United States," an excerpt from his book reads.
"The question was: if we do not join them, can we confront them and withstand the onslaught? The answer was no."
He said that two days after the attacks, the US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain brought to him a set of seven demands including "blanket overflight and landing rights" and "use of Pakistan's naval ports, air bases, and strategic locations on borders."
Musharraf said Pakistan gave no "blanket permission" for anything.
The military leader also says that he decided to make the revelations to counter claims that Pakistan had not done enough to combat Al-Qaeda in the war on terror."
Your tax dollars at work.
His book should be good reading.How novel. What a great idea. I bet nobody ever thought of something like that before.
Brave brave woman:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/world/as...artner=homepage
QUOTE
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Sept. 25 — A senior Afghan official specializing in women’s rights was gunned down here on her way to work Monday morning by suspected Taliban gunmen. It was the highest-level assassination of a woman in Afghanistan in the five years since the Taliban were ousted from power.
Safia Amajan, 65, had served as chief of the Woman’s Affairs department in Kandahar for five years, working to improve women’s rights and opportunities for education and vocational training. A former teacher and high school principal, she was well known and much liked in Kandahar.
“It is a very tragic loss,” said Sonja Bachmann, a United Nations political officer who knew Ms. Amajan well. “She did a good job, she worked in a very low-key way and worked hard to raise awareness about women’s issues.”
A spokesman claiming to speak for the Taliban took responsibility for the killing in a telephone call, Reuters reported.
Hundreds of women gathered at the main Shiite mosque in the town, where her body lay wrapped in a white shroud decorated with golden Koranic script, to mourn her loss. “There is no security for anyone now in Kandahar,” one woman said, sobbing through her veil.
Ms. Amajan was shot as she was walking from her house up a narrow street to the main road shortly after 7 a.m. local time, shopkeepers along the road said. A gunman shot her four times with a pistol, said Muhammad Haidar, an official who worked in her office.
Her nephew, Muhammad Asif, 45, said no one reported seeing the gunmen. “A carpenter was close to the scene and heard the shots and he called people,” he said. Her husband also heard the shooting and came out of their house and found her lying in the street, Mr. Asif said.
The police were looking for two men, who escaped by motorcycle, said the provincial governor, Asadullah Khaled, who went to the crime scene himself. The police found tracks of the motorcycle driving away from the scene, he said....
Safia Amajan, 65, had served as chief of the Woman’s Affairs department in Kandahar for five years, working to improve women’s rights and opportunities for education and vocational training. A former teacher and high school principal, she was well known and much liked in Kandahar.
“It is a very tragic loss,” said Sonja Bachmann, a United Nations political officer who knew Ms. Amajan well. “She did a good job, she worked in a very low-key way and worked hard to raise awareness about women’s issues.”
A spokesman claiming to speak for the Taliban took responsibility for the killing in a telephone call, Reuters reported.
Hundreds of women gathered at the main Shiite mosque in the town, where her body lay wrapped in a white shroud decorated with golden Koranic script, to mourn her loss. “There is no security for anyone now in Kandahar,” one woman said, sobbing through her veil.
Ms. Amajan was shot as she was walking from her house up a narrow street to the main road shortly after 7 a.m. local time, shopkeepers along the road said. A gunman shot her four times with a pistol, said Muhammad Haidar, an official who worked in her office.
Her nephew, Muhammad Asif, 45, said no one reported seeing the gunmen. “A carpenter was close to the scene and heard the shots and he called people,” he said. Her husband also heard the shooting and came out of their house and found her lying in the street, Mr. Asif said.
The police were looking for two men, who escaped by motorcycle, said the provincial governor, Asadullah Khaled, who went to the crime scene himself. The police found tracks of the motorcycle driving away from the scene, he said....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/world/as...artner=homepage
QUOTE
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — A Taliban suicide bomber killed 18 people outside a provincial governor's compound Tuesday, including several Muslim pilgrims set to travel to Mecca _ another in a series of attacks directed at senior figures in President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government.
The blast at the doorstep of Helmand Gov. Mohammed Daoud Safi's compound came on the same day a bombing against a NATO patrol in the Kabul area killed an Italian soldier and a child, and two weeks after militants assassinated a governor in eastern Afghanistan who had been a Karzai confidant.
Safi was inside the compound in Lashkar Gah but was not injured. Karzai was in Washington on Tuesday, meeting with President Bush.
Afghan soldiers stopped the bomber at the compound's security gate, where he detonated his explosives, said the governor's spokesman, Ghulam Muhiddin. The attacker had been walking toward a vehicle of the private military contractors who provide security for Safi, said Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, a NATO spokesman.
Nine Afghan soldiers and nine civilians were killed, said Rahmatullah Mohammdi, director of the hospital in Lashkar Gah. Seventeen people were wounded, he said.
Among the civilians waiting outside the compound were pilgrims seeking permission to travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Muhiddin said. The main mosque in Lashkar Gah is across from the compound....
The blast at the doorstep of Helmand Gov. Mohammed Daoud Safi's compound came on the same day a bombing against a NATO patrol in the Kabul area killed an Italian soldier and a child, and two weeks after militants assassinated a governor in eastern Afghanistan who had been a Karzai confidant.
Safi was inside the compound in Lashkar Gah but was not injured. Karzai was in Washington on Tuesday, meeting with President Bush.
Afghan soldiers stopped the bomber at the compound's security gate, where he detonated his explosives, said the governor's spokesman, Ghulam Muhiddin. The attacker had been walking toward a vehicle of the private military contractors who provide security for Safi, said Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, a NATO spokesman.
Nine Afghan soldiers and nine civilians were killed, said Rahmatullah Mohammdi, director of the hospital in Lashkar Gah. Seventeen people were wounded, he said.
Among the civilians waiting outside the compound were pilgrims seeking permission to travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Muhiddin said. The main mosque in Lashkar Gah is across from the compound....
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4216602.html
KARZAI: Thank you very much, Mr. President.
It's a great honor to be in your very beautiful country once again, especially during fall, with all the lovely leaves around.
And thank you very much for the great hospitality that you and the first lady are always giving to a guest, especially to me.
And thanks also for your visit to Afghanistan and for seeing us in our country, and for seeing from close as to who we are and how we make it to a better future.
I'm very grateful, Mr. President, to you and the American people for all that you have done for Afghanistan for the last four-and-a-half years, from roads to education to democracy to parliament to good governance effort to health and to all other good things that are happening in Afghanistan.
Mr. President, I was the day before yesterday in the Walter Reed hospital. There I met wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there also I met a woman surgeon with six boys, from 7 to 21, that she had left behind in America in order to build us a road in the mountainous part of the country in Afghanistan.
KARZAI: There's nothing more that any nation can do for another country _ to send a woman with children to Afghanistan to help. We are very grateful. I'm glad I came to know that story. And I'll be repeating it to the Afghan people once I go back to Afghanistan.
We discussed today all matters that concern the two countries: the question of the reconstruction of Afghanistan, improvement for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, the equipping of the Afghan army, the training of the Afghan army, the police in Afghanistan, in all other aspects of reconstruction.
We also discussed the region around us; discussed our relations with Pakistan and the question of the joint fight that we have together against terrorism.
And I'm glad that, Mr. President, that you are, tomorrow, hosting a dinner for me and President Musharraf. And I'm sure we will come out of that meeting with a lot more to talk about to our nations in a very positive way for a better future.
Mr. President, we, the Afghan people, are grateful to you and the American people for all that you have done.
I had things in mind to speak about, and you did that. So I will stop short and let the questions come to us.
BUSH: We'll have two questions a side.
Q: Thank you, sir.
Even after hearing that one of the major conclusions of the national intelligence estimate in April was that the Iraq war has fueled terror growth around the world, why have you continued to say that the Iraq war has made this country safer?
And to President Karzai, if I might: What do you think of President Musharraf's comments, that you need to get to know your own country better when you're talking about where terror threats and the Taliban threat is coming from?
BUSH: You want to start?
KARZAI: Go ahead, please.
BUSH: I, of course, read the key judgments on the NIE. I agree with their conclusion that, because of our successes against the leadership of al-Qaida, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent.
I'm not surprised the enemy is exploiting the situation in Iraq and using it as a propaganda tool to try to recruit more people to their murderous ways.
Some people have, you know, guessed what's in the report and have concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree. I think it's naive. I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe.
The terrorists fight us in Iraq for a reason; they want to try to stop a young democracy from developing, just like they're trying to fight this young democracy in Afghanistan.
And they use it as a recruitment tool because they understand the stakes. They understand what will happen to them when we defeat them in Iraq.
You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq we would see a rosier scenario, with fewer extremists joining the radical movement, requires us to ignore 20 years of experience.
We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993.
KARZAI: Yes, sir.
BUSH: We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole.
KARZAI: Yes, sir.
BUSH: We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions. They kill in order to achieve their objectives.
You know, in the past, Osama bin Laden used Somalia as an excuse for people to join his jihadist movement.
In the past, they used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was a convenient way to try to recruit people to their jihadist movement.
They've used all kinds of excuses.
This government is going to do whatever it takes to protect this homeland. We're not going to let their excuses stop us from staying on the offense.
The best way to protect America is to defeat these killers overseas so we do not have to face them here at home.
We're not going to let lies and propaganda by the enemy dictate how we win this war.
Now, you know what's interesting about the NIE? It was an intelligence report done last April. As I understand, the conclusions _ the evidence on the conclusions reached was stopped being gathered on February _ at the end of February.
And here we are coming down the stretch in an election campaign and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody's taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.
I talked to John Negroponte today, the DNI. You know, I think it's a bad habit for our government to declassify every time there's a leak, because it means it's going to be hard to get good product out of our analysts. Those of you who've been around here long enough know what I'm talking about.
But once again there's a leak out of our government, coming right down the stretch in this campaign in order to create confusion in the minds of the American people.
In my judgment, that's why they leaked it.
And so we're going to _ I told the DNI to declassify this document. You can read it for yourself. It will stop all the speculation, all the politics about somebody saying something about Iraq; you know, somebody trying to confuse the American people about the nature of this enemy.
And so John Negroponte, the DNI, is going to declassify the document as quickly as possible _ declassify the key judgments for you to read yourself.
And he'll do so in such a way that we'll be able to protect sources and methods of _ that our intelligence community uses.
And then everybody can draw their own conclusions about what the report says.
Thank you.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2600676_pf.html
It's a great honor to be in your very beautiful country once again, especially during fall, with all the lovely leaves around.
And thank you very much for the great hospitality that you and the first lady are always giving to a guest, especially to me.
And thanks also for your visit to Afghanistan and for seeing us in our country, and for seeing from close as to who we are and how we make it to a better future.
I'm very grateful, Mr. President, to you and the American people for all that you have done for Afghanistan for the last four-and-a-half years, from roads to education to democracy to parliament to good governance effort to health and to all other good things that are happening in Afghanistan.
Mr. President, I was the day before yesterday in the Walter Reed hospital. There I met wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there also I met a woman surgeon with six boys, from 7 to 21, that she had left behind in America in order to build us a road in the mountainous part of the country in Afghanistan.
KARZAI: There's nothing more that any nation can do for another country _ to send a woman with children to Afghanistan to help. We are very grateful. I'm glad I came to know that story. And I'll be repeating it to the Afghan people once I go back to Afghanistan.
We discussed today all matters that concern the two countries: the question of the reconstruction of Afghanistan, improvement for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, the equipping of the Afghan army, the training of the Afghan army, the police in Afghanistan, in all other aspects of reconstruction.
We also discussed the region around us; discussed our relations with Pakistan and the question of the joint fight that we have together against terrorism.
And I'm glad that, Mr. President, that you are, tomorrow, hosting a dinner for me and President Musharraf. And I'm sure we will come out of that meeting with a lot more to talk about to our nations in a very positive way for a better future.
Mr. President, we, the Afghan people, are grateful to you and the American people for all that you have done.
I had things in mind to speak about, and you did that. So I will stop short and let the questions come to us.
BUSH: We'll have two questions a side.
Q: Thank you, sir.
Even after hearing that one of the major conclusions of the national intelligence estimate in April was that the Iraq war has fueled terror growth around the world, why have you continued to say that the Iraq war has made this country safer?
And to President Karzai, if I might: What do you think of President Musharraf's comments, that you need to get to know your own country better when you're talking about where terror threats and the Taliban threat is coming from?
BUSH: You want to start?
KARZAI: Go ahead, please.
BUSH: I, of course, read the key judgments on the NIE. I agree with their conclusion that, because of our successes against the leadership of al-Qaida, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent.
I'm not surprised the enemy is exploiting the situation in Iraq and using it as a propaganda tool to try to recruit more people to their murderous ways.
Some people have, you know, guessed what's in the report and have concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree. I think it's naive. I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe.
The terrorists fight us in Iraq for a reason; they want to try to stop a young democracy from developing, just like they're trying to fight this young democracy in Afghanistan.
And they use it as a recruitment tool because they understand the stakes. They understand what will happen to them when we defeat them in Iraq.
You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq we would see a rosier scenario, with fewer extremists joining the radical movement, requires us to ignore 20 years of experience.
We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993.
KARZAI: Yes, sir.
BUSH: We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole.
KARZAI: Yes, sir.
BUSH: We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions. They kill in order to achieve their objectives.
You know, in the past, Osama bin Laden used Somalia as an excuse for people to join his jihadist movement.
In the past, they used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was a convenient way to try to recruit people to their jihadist movement.
They've used all kinds of excuses.
This government is going to do whatever it takes to protect this homeland. We're not going to let their excuses stop us from staying on the offense.
The best way to protect America is to defeat these killers overseas so we do not have to face them here at home.
We're not going to let lies and propaganda by the enemy dictate how we win this war.
Now, you know what's interesting about the NIE? It was an intelligence report done last April. As I understand, the conclusions _ the evidence on the conclusions reached was stopped being gathered on February _ at the end of February.
And here we are coming down the stretch in an election campaign and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody's taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.
I talked to John Negroponte today, the DNI. You know, I think it's a bad habit for our government to declassify every time there's a leak, because it means it's going to be hard to get good product out of our analysts. Those of you who've been around here long enough know what I'm talking about.
But once again there's a leak out of our government, coming right down the stretch in this campaign in order to create confusion in the minds of the American people.
In my judgment, that's why they leaked it.
And so we're going to _ I told the DNI to declassify this document. You can read it for yourself. It will stop all the speculation, all the politics about somebody saying something about Iraq; you know, somebody trying to confuse the American people about the nature of this enemy.
And so John Negroponte, the DNI, is going to declassify the document as quickly as possible _ declassify the key judgments for you to read yourself.
And he'll do so in such a way that we'll be able to protect sources and methods of _ that our intelligence community uses.
And then everybody can draw their own conclusions about what the report says.
Thank you.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2600676_pf.html
QUOTE
And here we are coming down the stretch in an election campaign and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody's taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.
Good lord woman. The Bush administration leaks for political purposes all the time. Look at the Plame case. God damned brainless zealots. What a hypocrite.
The wages of spin
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
September 26, 2006
Here
..........Mr. Armitage's interlocutor Sept. 13, 2001, was Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, the pro-Taliban chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. At the time of September 11, ISI had 1,500 agents distributed throughout Afghanistan. The Taliban regime was entirely dependent on the Pakistani lifeline.
At all times, Gen. Ahmad knew exactly where Osama bin Laden was located. His agents tracked his every move. ISI was also aware of the planning for September 11. Gen. Ahmad was even accused of authorizing British-born Pakistaniterrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to make a $100,000 transfer to Mohamed Atta, the operational chief of the September 11 conspiracy, a charge that met vehement denials.
"Sheikh Omar," as he became known, was tried and sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in 2002. But his ISI links spared him the gallows. There was little doubt some elements of ISI knew the outlines of the aerial plot against the U.S. and the evidence was turned over to the September 11 Commission three days after its report had gone to press. It was never made public.
Gen. Ahmad arranged to be in Washington the week of al Qaeda's big terrorist attack, presumably to take the Bush administration's pulse and gauge probable reactions. After seeing Mr. Armitage, he called his boss Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad and translated the either-you're-with-us-against-the-terrorists-or-against-us-with-the-terrorists threat to mean Mr. Bush planned to "bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age" unless Mr. Musharraf complied with Washington's wishes.
Afghanistan was in Mr. Bush's gunsights before day's end on September 11 and the U.S. wanted immediate access to Pakistan's air space. Also sought was permission to use air bases for fighter-bombers and transport aircraft, and to support Special Forces. By distorting Mr. Armitage's warning, Gen. Ahmad was clearly hoping his chief would refuse to buckle to U.S. demands, as he did not believe the U.S. would invade another nuclear power whose population was anti-American and pro-Taliban.
ISI's Gen. Ahmad clearly miscalculated. Not only did Mr. Musharraf acquiesce to U.S. demands, but also dispatched Gen. Ahmad to Kandahar with orders to get Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, to cough up bin Laden. Gen. Ahmad's delegation was made up of six religious leaders and six ISI officers. His gambling instincts failed him yet again. He ignored Mr. Musharraf's orders and advised Mullah Omar to hang tough and refuse to surrender bin Laden. Gen. Ahmad reported back to Mr. Musharraf Oct. 6, 2001 that his mission had failed to persuade the Taliban. The U.S. invasion began the next day, Oct. 7.............
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
September 26, 2006
Here
..........Mr. Armitage's interlocutor Sept. 13, 2001, was Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, the pro-Taliban chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. At the time of September 11, ISI had 1,500 agents distributed throughout Afghanistan. The Taliban regime was entirely dependent on the Pakistani lifeline.
At all times, Gen. Ahmad knew exactly where Osama bin Laden was located. His agents tracked his every move. ISI was also aware of the planning for September 11. Gen. Ahmad was even accused of authorizing British-born Pakistaniterrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to make a $100,000 transfer to Mohamed Atta, the operational chief of the September 11 conspiracy, a charge that met vehement denials.
"Sheikh Omar," as he became known, was tried and sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in 2002. But his ISI links spared him the gallows. There was little doubt some elements of ISI knew the outlines of the aerial plot against the U.S. and the evidence was turned over to the September 11 Commission three days after its report had gone to press. It was never made public.
Gen. Ahmad arranged to be in Washington the week of al Qaeda's big terrorist attack, presumably to take the Bush administration's pulse and gauge probable reactions. After seeing Mr. Armitage, he called his boss Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad and translated the either-you're-with-us-against-the-terrorists-or-against-us-with-the-terrorists threat to mean Mr. Bush planned to "bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age" unless Mr. Musharraf complied with Washington's wishes.
Afghanistan was in Mr. Bush's gunsights before day's end on September 11 and the U.S. wanted immediate access to Pakistan's air space. Also sought was permission to use air bases for fighter-bombers and transport aircraft, and to support Special Forces. By distorting Mr. Armitage's warning, Gen. Ahmad was clearly hoping his chief would refuse to buckle to U.S. demands, as he did not believe the U.S. would invade another nuclear power whose population was anti-American and pro-Taliban.
ISI's Gen. Ahmad clearly miscalculated. Not only did Mr. Musharraf acquiesce to U.S. demands, but also dispatched Gen. Ahmad to Kandahar with orders to get Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, to cough up bin Laden. Gen. Ahmad's delegation was made up of six religious leaders and six ISI officers. His gambling instincts failed him yet again. He ignored Mr. Musharraf's orders and advised Mullah Omar to hang tough and refuse to surrender bin Laden. Gen. Ahmad reported back to Mr. Musharraf Oct. 6, 2001 that his mission had failed to persuade the Taliban. The U.S. invasion began the next day, Oct. 7.............
QUOTE
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- A U.S. military official said Wednesday that American troops on Afghanistan's eastern border have seen a threefold increase in attacks since a recent truce between Pakistani troops and pro-Taliban tribesmen that was supposed to have stopped cross-border raids by the militants.
The peace agreement, which followed a June 25 cease-fire, also has contributed to the Taliban's resurgence, the U.S. official said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Since the truce, ethnic Pashtun rebels are no longer fighting Pakistani troops but are using the North Waziristan border region as a control hub for launching attacks in Afghanistan, the official told The Associated Press.
Also Wednesday, Afghan security forces killed 25 suspected insurgents during a clash in the country's south, while a suicide bombing targeting a NATO convoy wounded one civilian, officials said.
Insurgents attacked a police checkpoint in southern Helmand province's Garmser district, the NATO-led force said. In the ensuing clash, ''at least 25 insurgents'' were killed, according to the alliance.
The suicide attack in neighboring Kandahar province wounded a civilian and damaged a military vehicle, police official Abdul Ali Khan said.
An explosive also hit a military vehicle in western Herat province, wounding three Italian soldiers with the NATO force and their Afghan translator, the Italian Defense Ministry said....
Pakistani tribal elders brokered the truce between Pakistan's government and militants and an accord was signed Sept. 5, ending years of unrest in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
Under the deal, the militants agreed to halt attacks on Pakistani forces in semiautonomous North Waziristan and to stop crossing into nearby eastern Afghanistan to attack U.S. and Afghan forces, who are hunting al-Qaida and Taliban forces there.
But the agreement appears to have empowered Taliban infiltrators rather than slowing the incursions, with the number of attacks in eastern Afghan provinces rising threefold since July 31, the U.S. official said....
The peace agreement, which followed a June 25 cease-fire, also has contributed to the Taliban's resurgence, the U.S. official said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Since the truce, ethnic Pashtun rebels are no longer fighting Pakistani troops but are using the North Waziristan border region as a control hub for launching attacks in Afghanistan, the official told The Associated Press.
Also Wednesday, Afghan security forces killed 25 suspected insurgents during a clash in the country's south, while a suicide bombing targeting a NATO convoy wounded one civilian, officials said.
Insurgents attacked a police checkpoint in southern Helmand province's Garmser district, the NATO-led force said. In the ensuing clash, ''at least 25 insurgents'' were killed, according to the alliance.
The suicide attack in neighboring Kandahar province wounded a civilian and damaged a military vehicle, police official Abdul Ali Khan said.
An explosive also hit a military vehicle in western Herat province, wounding three Italian soldiers with the NATO force and their Afghan translator, the Italian Defense Ministry said....
Pakistani tribal elders brokered the truce between Pakistan's government and militants and an accord was signed Sept. 5, ending years of unrest in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
Under the deal, the militants agreed to halt attacks on Pakistani forces in semiautonomous North Waziristan and to stop crossing into nearby eastern Afghanistan to attack U.S. and Afghan forces, who are hunting al-Qaida and Taliban forces there.
But the agreement appears to have empowered Taliban infiltrators rather than slowing the incursions, with the number of attacks in eastern Afghan provinces rising threefold since July 31, the U.S. official said....
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-A...amp;oref=slogin
NATO set for early takeover of Afghan peacekeeping
Reuters, by Mark John and Kristin Roberts
9/28/2006 12:56:07 PM
PORTOROZ, Slovenia- NATO defense chiefs were set on Thursday to agree to assume command of peacekeeping across all of insurgency-hit Afghanistan next month despite some allies' concerns over tactics and troop shortfalls. The move into eastern Afghanistan could take effect quickly because it would largely involve placing under NATO command some 10,000 mostly U.S. forces already in the region, giving NATO commanders a greater pool of troops and equipment.
Reuters, by Mark John and Kristin Roberts
9/28/2006 12:56:07 PM
PORTOROZ, Slovenia- NATO defense chiefs were set on Thursday to agree to assume command of peacekeeping across all of insurgency-hit Afghanistan next month despite some allies' concerns over tactics and troop shortfalls. The move into eastern Afghanistan could take effect quickly because it would largely involve placing under NATO command some 10,000 mostly U.S. forces already in the region, giving NATO commanders a greater pool of troops and equipment.
QUOTE
....Rumsfeld was attending a NATO defense ministers meeting here. During the meeting, the ministers approved extending NATO's control of military operations across all of Afghanistan -- a move that Rumsfeld hailed as a ''bold step forward'' for the alliance.
Under the new arrangements, as many as 12,000 additional American troops will be put under foreign battlefield command, a number that U.S. officials said could be the most since World War II.
Under the new arrangements, as many as 12,000 additional American troops will be put under foreign battlefield command, a number that U.S. officials said could be the most since World War II.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Rums...amp;oref=slogin
I'm amazed NATO is taking the hot potato. Good luck to them.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2047643.cms
QUOTE
PORTOROZ (SLOVENIA): Nato decided on Thursday to take control of military operations across all of Afghanistan a move that US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld hailed as a "bold step forward" for the alliance.
Under the new arrangements, as many as 12,000 additional American troops will be put under foreign battlefield command, a number that US officials said could be the most since World War II. The move is expected to take place in the next few weeks, Nato spokesman James Appathurai said.
The largest number of US troops ever put under the control of foreign battlefield commanders was about 300,000 during WWI, said military officials travelling with Rumsfeld to the Nato meeting.
It was not clear how many troops were under foreign command during WWII. A US officer is in charge of the overall Nato force Gen James L Jones, but the agreement would put the US troops under foreign commanders on the battlefield.
The ministers also agreed to provide substantial amounts of military equipment for the Afghan army. "There were in rough numbers thousands of weapons offered up, and I believe probably millions of rounds of ammunition," Rumsfeld said. ...
Under the new arrangements, as many as 12,000 additional American troops will be put under foreign battlefield command, a number that US officials said could be the most since World War II. The move is expected to take place in the next few weeks, Nato spokesman James Appathurai said.
The largest number of US troops ever put under the control of foreign battlefield commanders was about 300,000 during WWI, said military officials travelling with Rumsfeld to the Nato meeting.
It was not clear how many troops were under foreign command during WWII. A US officer is in charge of the overall Nato force Gen James L Jones, but the agreement would put the US troops under foreign commanders on the battlefield.
The ministers also agreed to provide substantial amounts of military equipment for the Afghan army. "There were in rough numbers thousands of weapons offered up, and I believe probably millions of rounds of ammunition," Rumsfeld said. ...
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2047643.cms
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/09/29/s...fghanistan.html
Canadian soldier killed by blast in Afghanistan
Last Updated: Friday, September 29, 2006 | 1:39 PM ET
CBC News
A soldier from an Ontario-based regiment was killed Friday by an explosive device while on foot patrol west of Kandahar.
The member of the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, which is based at CFB Petawawa in northeastern Ontario, died after triggering an explosive device on a road in Afghanistan's Panjwaii district around 1 p.m. local time.
Military officials have not released his name, hometown or age. His remains were flown to Kandahar airfield.
The military said at least one other soldier was slightly injured in the incident.
Col. Fred Lewis said the soldier was on patrol on a combat road created by a bulldozer for Operation Medusa, the large-scale offensive aimed at driving Taliban fighters from their strongholds in southern Afghanistan.
He said an improvised explosive device (IED) or a landmine was planted in the road and one of the soldiers set it off.
"The use of IEDs by insurgents indicates their callous lack of regard for people in the region," Lewis said.
"It could have just as easily been a bunch of children playing in the area."
Militants frequently use IEDs, or homemade bombs, to target foreign soldiers on patrol.
Lewis said it appeared unlikely the device had been set off by remote control.
The news comes the same day funerals were scheduled for three of four Canadian soldiers killed earlier this month. They died when a suicide bomber on a bicycle detonated a device near the Canadians, who were on foot patrol.
Speaking from Kabul, NATO spokesman Mark Laity told CBC Newsworld soldiers know it is dangerous to get out of the armoured vehicles, but believe it is necessary if they want to win the "hearts and minds" of Afghans.
"These are soldiers. They understand they have to take these risks," he said.
More than 2,000 Canadians are serving in Afghanistan's volatile southern region. With the latest death, 37 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died since the mission started four years ago.
With files from the Canadian Press
Canadian soldier killed by blast in Afghanistan
Last Updated: Friday, September 29, 2006 | 1:39 PM ET
CBC News
A soldier from an Ontario-based regiment was killed Friday by an explosive device while on foot patrol west of Kandahar.
The member of the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, which is based at CFB Petawawa in northeastern Ontario, died after triggering an explosive device on a road in Afghanistan's Panjwaii district around 1 p.m. local time.
Military officials have not released his name, hometown or age. His remains were flown to Kandahar airfield.
The military said at least one other soldier was slightly injured in the incident.
Col. Fred Lewis said the soldier was on patrol on a combat road created by a bulldozer for Operation Medusa, the large-scale offensive aimed at driving Taliban fighters from their strongholds in southern Afghanistan.
He said an improvised explosive device (IED) or a landmine was planted in the road and one of the soldiers set it off.
"The use of IEDs by insurgents indicates their callous lack of regard for people in the region," Lewis said.
"It could have just as easily been a bunch of children playing in the area."
Militants frequently use IEDs, or homemade bombs, to target foreign soldiers on patrol.
Lewis said it appeared unlikely the device had been set off by remote control.
The news comes the same day funerals were scheduled for three of four Canadian soldiers killed earlier this month. They died when a suicide bomber on a bicycle detonated a device near the Canadians, who were on foot patrol.
Speaking from Kabul, NATO spokesman Mark Laity told CBC Newsworld soldiers know it is dangerous to get out of the armoured vehicles, but believe it is necessary if they want to win the "hearts and minds" of Afghans.
"These are soldiers. They understand they have to take these risks," he said.
More than 2,000 Canadians are serving in Afghanistan's volatile southern region. With the latest death, 37 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died since the mission started four years ago.
With files from the Canadian Press
QUOTE(Pravda @ Sep 29 2006, 09:52 PM) [snapback]245196[/snapback]
Militants frequently use IEDs, or homemade bombs, to target foreign soldiers on patrol.
Didn't used to. New thang.
Learned from the Iraq theater likely.
QUOTE(hunin @ Sep 29 2006, 10:12 PM) [snapback]245206[/snapback]
Didn't used to. New thang.
New ways to do the same old bad thang.
We all need to find a new way to do a new thang.
That would be sweet. Good luck to us.
~~~~
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-A...amp;oref=slogin
~~~~
QUOTE
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a busy pedestrian alley next to Afghanistan's Interior Ministry on Saturday, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 40, officials said.
The blast was the second major suicide attack in Kabul this month, underscoring the rising danger in the once-calm capital as militants step up attacks across the country.
The Interior Ministry spokesman, Zemeri Bashary, said 12 people were killed, including two women and a child, and that 42 were injured.
Dr. Salam Jalali, a Public Health Ministry official, said 54 had been injured. He said the wounded had been taken to six different hospitals in Kabul, complicating officials' efforts to keep track of the casualties.
The explosion went off just before 8 a.m. on an Afghan work day, near a narrow dirt road where employees and civilians pass through a security gate. Shops, street photographers, and men who fill out Interior Ministry paperwork for illiterate Afghans make the area a busy cross-section of commerce and government....
The blast was the second major suicide attack in Kabul this month, underscoring the rising danger in the once-calm capital as militants step up attacks across the country.
The Interior Ministry spokesman, Zemeri Bashary, said 12 people were killed, including two women and a child, and that 42 were injured.
Dr. Salam Jalali, a Public Health Ministry official, said 54 had been injured. He said the wounded had been taken to six different hospitals in Kabul, complicating officials' efforts to keep track of the casualties.
The explosion went off just before 8 a.m. on an Afghan work day, near a narrow dirt road where employees and civilians pass through a security gate. Shops, street photographers, and men who fill out Interior Ministry paperwork for illiterate Afghans make the area a busy cross-section of commerce and government....
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-A...amp;oref=slogin
Not so new actually...
Soviet IED Experience In Afghanistan
QUOTE
Afghanistan
Mines are used differently in guerrilla wars than in conventional wars. Whereas the Soviet 40th Army used millions of land mines in Afghanistan to protect communist installations and deny the Mujahideen use of their lines of communication (LOC), the Mujahideen used their limited number of mines more selectively and probably more effectively. The Mujahideen antitank mines ranged from homemade to a variety of foreign-designed and manufactured mines. These designs included the Soviet TM-46, the Italian TC-2.5 and TC-6.1, the U.S. M19, the British Mark 5 and Mark 7, and the Belgian H55 and M3 antitank mines. Their antipersonnel mine inventory was primarily Soviet PMN, POMZ-2, and MON-50 mines but also included the Italian TS-50, the U.S. M18A1, and the British P5 MK1. Many of these mines were manufactured in Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, and China.(3)
Soviet Wounded
Of the 620,000 Soviet personnel who served in Afghanistan, 14,453 were killed or died from wounds, accidents, or disease. That is 2.33 percent of those who served. An additional 53,753 (8.67 percent) were wounded or injured.(7) In the early part of the war, twice as many Soviet soldiers were wounded by bullets as by shrapnel, but by the end of the war, 2.5 times as many were wounded by shrapnel as by bullets. The percentage of multiple and combination wounds increased about four times over the course of the war, while the percentage of serious and critical wounds increased two times. Land mines were the primary reason for the increase in serious and critical wounds. The number of soldiers wounded by land mines increased 25-30 percent over the course of the war
Mines are used differently in guerrilla wars than in conventional wars. Whereas the Soviet 40th Army used millions of land mines in Afghanistan to protect communist installations and deny the Mujahideen use of their lines of communication (LOC), the Mujahideen used their limited number of mines more selectively and probably more effectively. The Mujahideen antitank mines ranged from homemade to a variety of foreign-designed and manufactured mines. These designs included the Soviet TM-46, the Italian TC-2.5 and TC-6.1, the U.S. M19, the British Mark 5 and Mark 7, and the Belgian H55 and M3 antitank mines. Their antipersonnel mine inventory was primarily Soviet PMN, POMZ-2, and MON-50 mines but also included the Italian TS-50, the U.S. M18A1, and the British P5 MK1. Many of these mines were manufactured in Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, and China.(3)
Soviet Wounded
Of the 620,000 Soviet personnel who served in Afghanistan, 14,453 were killed or died from wounds, accidents, or disease. That is 2.33 percent of those who served. An additional 53,753 (8.67 percent) were wounded or injured.(7) In the early part of the war, twice as many Soviet soldiers were wounded by bullets as by shrapnel, but by the end of the war, 2.5 times as many were wounded by shrapnel as by bullets. The percentage of multiple and combination wounds increased about four times over the course of the war, while the percentage of serious and critical wounds increased two times. Land mines were the primary reason for the increase in serious and critical wounds. The number of soldiers wounded by land mines increased 25-30 percent over the course of the war
Soviet IED Experience In Afghanistan
QUOTEThe date recorded on this section of the video is January 8, 2000.
Who was President? Hint: Not Bush.
No wonder Clinton is acting crazy. He has blood on his hands. Billy Bubba, meet Macbeth.
An amazing article. Should be a 'Must Read'.
This section stands out ~~ 'By June 1998, much to the disappointment of the field officers responsible for devising the plan, nobody at a senior level within the CIA seemed willing to support it. Nor was there any support within the White House.' ~~
Why isn't this type of information being heralded by OUR press?
Oh, forgot, cuz it was Clinton in the White House!
The Sunday Times
October 01, 2006
The Sunday Times UK
Focus: Chilling message of the 9/11 pilots
A video shows two of the world’s most infamous terrorists joking and laughing while filming their ‘death wills’ at Osama Bin Laden’s lair in Afghanistan.
The journalist and author Yosri Fouda explains the terrible significance of the new find
Watch the video: Osama Bin Laden's HQ
Two bearded young men laugh and joke for the camera. They appear relaxed, well groomed, intelligent; they might be high-achieving students quietly celebrating an exam success. They look at a piece of paper and laugh some more.
What is so funny? Certainly not the piece of paper. There is Arabic script on it. Easily decipherable is the word “al wasiyyah”. This means “the will”.
It is the handwritten last testament of Ziad Jarrah, the lighter-haired and better-looking of the two young men. A well educated, middle-class Lebanese, he has been studying in Germany. So has his dark-haired companion, Mohammed Atta, also middle class and university educated, but born in Egypt. Atta has his will, too. Unsmiling, both men read them to camera.
These images are part of a videotape, nearly an hour long, that was filmed at Osama Bin Laden’s lair in Afghanistan 6˝ years ago. They are revealed today for the first time, and they are a missing chapter in the searing story of the attacks on America on September 11, 2001.
Atta led the team of 19 suicide attackers and flew American Airlines flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Jarrah piloted United Airlines flight 93. His assigned target was Capitol Hill, but the plane crashed.
ATTA and Jarrah have never been pictured together before. Indeed, a key element of their tradecraft was that they steered clear of each other. They were leading figures in the September 11 story, not only because they flew the planes but also because they apparently had everything to live for. Unlike most of the other hijackers, who were mainly provincial Saudi fundamentalists, Atta and Jarrah fitted easily into western society.
To the Germans who knew them in Hamburg they seemed entirely normal. The tape explains this mistake. It would be hard to look less homicidal — until the camera pulls back and reveals that Atta is sitting next to an AK-47.
So the tape not only fills a gap in the story of September 11 but also provides chilling proof of the difficulty of fighting Islamic terrorism: these two “normal”, happy, unthreatening individuals turned out to have an explosive effect on the history of the 21st century.
The unedited video was passed to The Sunday Times through a previously tested channel. On condition of anonymity, sources from both Al-Qaeda and the United States have confirmed its authenticity. It has no sound — and lip-readers have failed to decipher it, according to a US source — but the images speak loudly for themselves.
The tape not only features Atta and Jarrah. It also gives a rare and intriguing sight of Bin Laden with his inner court.
It opens with 100 or so Al-Qaeda hardcore members sitting on the ground in the open air, obviously expecting something to happen. Among them are several children.
A very tall man surrounded by three armed bodyguards arrives in a sedate, presidential manner. It is Bin Laden, dressed in white from head to toe with an all-enveloping, light brown robe. He looks serene as he makes his way to a makeshift podium and beings to speak into a microphone.
The date recorded on this section of the video is January 8, 2000. That makes the occasion Eid al Fitr, the end of Ramadan.
There are a few recognisable faces among the audience, including Ramzi Binalshibh, Atta’s Hamburg flatmate who was later to become the co-ordinator of the September 11 attacks. And among the bodyguards is Abu Jandal, who was the only one with the authority to put two bullets in Bin Laden’s head if he was about to fall into enemy hands.
In the background are the tall mud-red walls of an impressive compound. It is clear that the location is part of a complex of about 80 buildings called Tarnak Farm in the desert near Kandahar airport. It was Bin Laden’s clan base during his Afghan sojourn — where he lived with his family and the inner core of Al-Qaeda.
American intelligence knew all about Tarnak Farm. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, “CIA officers were able to map the entire site, identifying the houses that belonged to Bin Laden’s wives and the one where he himself was most likely to sleep”.
Less than two years before the video was recorded, the CIA had a plan to work closely with some of the local tribes to grab Bin Laden as he slept. It was a clear-cut, well rehearsed “perfect operation”, according to Michael Scheuer, who ran the CIA Bin Laden unit at the time. But it was never executed and there is still controversy in America about who cancelled it.
TEN days after Bin Laden’s Eid speech, according to the date on the film, Atta and Jarrah read their martyrdom wills to the camera. This proof of their presence in Afghanistan at that time is just about the final main piece of the jigsaw: Atta, the man who decided zero hour on September 11 is for the first time on video, getting ready to record his “martyrdom” will.
Investigators have pieced together most of Atta’s life from his childhood as the son of a lawyer in Giza, northern Egypt, to the moment he boarded flight 11 — except for an unexplained absence from Hamburg in early 2000. The date on the tape perfectly corresponds with this.
Those who have been closely following the story had little doubt where Atta had been. Binalshibh told me, “Afghanistan, what else?” when I asked him during a secret meeting four years ago. But in their painstaking efforts to find the proof that connected the dots, US investigators and, especially, their German counterparts, have struggled with little more than circumstantial evidence and presumed facts.
This played nicely into the hands of conspiracy theorists, both in the Muslim world and in the West. Now the investigators have the proof, and only the flakiest of anti-American fantasists can go on claiming that Bin Laden, Atta, Jarrah and co had no hand in September 11.
We can now even reveal Atta’s itinerary. On November 29, 1999 he boarded Turkish Airlines flight TK1662 from Hamburg to Istanbul, Turkey, where he changed to flight TK1056 bound for Karachi, Pakistan. From there he would have crossed into Afghanistan by road, most probably through Quetta. On the return journey, he left Karachi on February 24, 2000 by flight TK1057 to Istanbul where he changed to flight TK1661 to Hamburg. Five months later he entered the United States to start flight training.
Unedited, the extraordinary footage also gives us a glimpse into the superficially ordinary character of the man who would later spearhead the devastating terrorist attack.
Wearing western clothes — black trousers and a dark brown, zip-collared sweater with zigzag stripes — Atta appears uncomfortable putting on a typical Pashtun hat.
He gives a how-do-I-look glance at the camera. The hat goes off, on, off and he throws it away with wry smile. Ready now. He crosses his legs and picks up his handwritten will.
Cool, gathered and deliberate, Atta reads to camera for 10 minutes before the tape cuts to a collector’s item: Atta and Jarrah together for the first time on camera.
With his stylish glasses, the handsome Lebanese is wearing a white, Saudi-style robe but appears to have western clothes on underneath.
Smiling, laughing and exchanging remarks, they discuss Jarrah’s will as he holds it — a superb set-up shot. Jarrah then gets his seven-minute exclusive appearance to tell the camera his last words.
THE significance of even a single frame of any of the September 11 pilots in Afghanistan could not be overestimated, let alone the sudden appearance of nearly 6,000 frames of the two most important and most puzzling hijackers.
Distinctively the black sheep of the whole lot — plotters and hijackers — Atta and Jarrah came from the two most liberal Arab countries, both from the heart of their respective communities, both from middle-class families, both intelligent, pleasant and trusted wherever they went, and both with impressive educational track records. Jarrah went to a Christian school in Beirut; Atta advanced his English at The American University in Cairo.
Then they both had ambitions beyond what they thought their countries could offer. They both went to Germany; Atta in 1992 to end up preparing a masters degree in city planning; and Jarrah in 1996 to end up preparing his in aeronautical engineering.
Again, they both could not cease to impress. So much so that Professor Dittmar Machule, who taught Atta at the Technical University in Harburg, a quiet suburb of Hamburg, still cannot understand what happened to the brilliant student he used to pick to fill in for him in seminars whenever he was busy.
While they lived in Hamburg, Atta and Jarrah were never meant to be seen together in one place at the same time, almost certainly on instructions.
Atta lived with other members of the Hamburg cell in a small flat while Jarrah was kept apart in a nicer part of Hamburg, living with a girlfriend and drinking alcohol. Yet in Afghanistan they appear at ease in each other’s company.
When in mid-2000 they travelled to Florida, they were separate once again — even though they enrolled at flying schools that stood virtually next to each other.
If the appearance of this video solves one mystery, the big question about both Atta and Jarrah is still with us: how on earth did such impressive young men with everything to live for develop such a mindset? Neither was mad and neither was brainwashed. If anything at all they were both the antithesis of such naive and easy explanations.
One would confidently argue that someone of the calibre of Mohammed Atta would have been incapable of being brainwashed.
When Atta taped his will, he was not yet the leader of the hijackers. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the organiser of the plot, had earmarked two other men — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar — as his spearhead and had sent them to flight school in California. But he quickly changed his mind.
His protégés failed to live up to his expectations. One flight instructor actually called them “dumb and dumber”.
Much more importantly, Atta’s exceptional abilities had just been discovered.
The perfect soldier was here and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed could not have asked for more. I would even argue that had not Atta accidentally appeared on Khalid’s radar, the “aeroplanes operation”, as it is known to Al-Qaeda, may never have stood a chance of success.
Yosri Fouda is the chief investigative reporter for Al-Jazeera Television Pictures: The Sunday Times Tarnak Farm, near Kandahar, where Mohammed Atta’s video was shot, has a special place in the history of Al-Qaeda: it was once Osama Bin Laden’s personal kingdom within Afghanistan.
Exclusively Arab, it was home for Bin Laden’s wives and children, as well as for the elite fighters being trained for special operations. And, as we now know, for a few weeks in early 2000 it was home to Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers.
The farm, which covered about 100 acres, lay on a patch of desert about three miles south of Kandahar airport. It had originally been constructed by the Afghan government as an agricultural co-operative.
A mud-brick wall was built 10ft high to create a compound; inside there were about 80 one and two-storey buildings, including dormitories, storehouses, a small mosque and a building that Bin Laden converted into a medical clinic for his family and followers.
US intelligence knew Bin Laden, already a wanted terrorist, used Tarnak as his base, and in spring 1998 the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center began working on a plan to capture him at the compound, partly with the help of Afghan tribal fighters.
Afghans scouted and mapped the farm, and the CIA photographed it from space. The plan called for about 30 fighters to assemble at a staging post before driving to a second position a few miles from Tarnak.
From there the main raiding party would walk to the farm, arriving at 2am and avoiding minefields by crawling through drainage ditches. A second group would make its way towards the front gate, taking out the two guards as the main party attacked the group of huts where Bin Laden’s wives slept.
The plan was to bundle Bin Laden into a Toyota Land Cruiser and drive him to to a cave complex 30 miles away already stocked with food and water.
However, getting the plan accepted at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, was not straightforward. It was known that dozens of women and children lived in the compound, and security chiefs feared there would be many casualties.
By June 1998, much to the disappointment of the field officers responsible for devising the plan, nobody at a senior level within the CIA seemed willing to support it. Nor was there any support within the White House.
The plan was called off shortly afterwards. CIA abandoned plan to snatch Bin Laden from Afghan farm
Atta's journey to mass murder
September 1, 1968 Born in Kafr el-Sheikh in the Nile delta, Egypt
October 1986 Joined Cairo University to study town planning; graduated in 1990
July 24, 1992 Arrived in Germany on a cultural exchange programme
November 23, 1992 Registered for a master’s degree in urban planning at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg
End 1997 Thought to have travelled to Afghanistan for the first time, staying close to the compound of Osama Bin Laden near Kandahar
November 1, 1998 Moved into an apartment in Germany with other members of what later became known as the Hamburg cell. Many Al-Qaeda members lived in this apartment at various times; the September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed visited repeatedly. Ziad Jarrah, the flight 93 pilot with whom Atta is pictured above, moved close by at about the same time
November 29, 1999 Atta flew from Istanbul to Pakistan. From there he travelled to Afghanistan
January 2000 At Bin Laden’s Tarnak Farm he is filmed laughing and joking with Jarrah while filming his last will and testament
March 2000 From Germany, Atta contacted 31 US flight schools to discuss pilot training
June 3, 2000 Entered US for the first time
July 2000 Atta enrolled at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida. Jarrah trains at a flight school nearby
November 2000 Both earned their instrument certificates from the FAA
December 29, 2000 Atta practised on a Boeing 727 simulator in Miami
January 4, 2001 Atta flew to Spain to co-ordinate with Ramzi Binalshibh, a key Al-Qaeda planner, returning to America a week later
April 11 2001 Atta rented an apartment in Coral Springs, Florida, and assisted with the arrival of other hijackers
July-September 2001 Atta made eight or nine flights around America, some to meet other hijackers, some to carry out reconnaissance
August 28, 2001 Atta and other hijackers buy flight tickets for September 11
The other hijackers
Nineteen men hijacked four planes. They acted in teams of five, except on United Airlines 93, which had four hijackers led by Jarrah
Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates. Atta came from Egypt, while Jarrah came from Lebanon. Only Atta and Jarrah were highly educated
Four weeks before the attacks Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, had been arrested, ostensibly on immigration charges, after the FBI became suspicious about his pilot training
He later denied knowing about the September 11 attacks, but did plead guilty to conspiring to hijack planes. He is serving life in a US prison
It is thought that 18 of the 19 terrorists recorded video wills. Before this weekend only five had come to light and none from the four pilots
The attacks and the toll
United Airlines flight 175 and American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center towers on the morning of September 11, 2001. A total of 2,602 people died in the towers and on the ground
American Airlines flight 77, carrying 64 people, crashed into the Pentagon shortly afterwards: 125 people died on the ground
United Airlines flight 93 is thought to have been heading for Capitol Hill. But it crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. Forty crew and passengers died
There were no survivors from any of the planes, which were carrying 265 people. In total, the September 11 attacks are thought to have killed 2,973 people, although some others are still listed as missing
QUOTE
Clinton added (twice), "But I got closer to getting him than anyone else has."
I'll say, BJ. Seven times.
The Sudanese offered to hand him to you, you got really really close, then said no thanks.
The Afghans offered to assassinate him, you got really really close, then said better not.
So, your Special Forces said they would take him in Afghanistan -- you got really really close to saying yes, then said naahhhh.
Three separate occasions on-the-ground Intel located him -- you were DANG close -- but said, nope. All three times.
When you got close to bombing him at the aspirin factory -- you made sure the Pakistanis tipped him off. But you were close!
(info found on pg 133, of Reckless Disregard, Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson)
I'll say, BJ. Seven times.
The Sudanese offered to hand him to you, you got really really close, then said no thanks.
The Afghans offered to assassinate him, you got really really close, then said better not.
So, your Special Forces said they would take him in Afghanistan -- you got really really close to saying yes, then said naahhhh.
Three separate occasions on-the-ground Intel located him -- you were DANG close -- but said, nope. All three times.
When you got close to bombing him at the aspirin factory -- you made sure the Pakistanis tipped him off. But you were close!
(info found on pg 133, of Reckless Disregard, Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson)
QUOTE
American intelligence knew all about Tarnak Farm. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, “CIA officers were able to map the entire site, identifying the houses that belonged to Bin Laden’s wives and the one where he himself was most likely to sleep”.
Yet Bill 'Ah trahd' Clinton failed to eliminate this viper's nest from the face of the earth.
QUOTE
Yet Bill 'Ah trahd' Clinton failed to eliminate this viper's nest from the face of the earth.
HEY ASS HOLE! Stick to the script!
COPPERHEADS!!!! (not vipers)
QUOTE
QUOTE
As a companion to this piece, I urge everyone with HBO to watch The Hamburg Cell which coincidentally airs tonight at 900 pm EDT. I've seen it before and it is exceptionally well done and chilling to the bone. I intend to watch again, with the add'l insight provided by this videotape. Check HBO.com for additional October showings.
[SNIP from IMDB.com review] [The Hamburg Cell] is really the story of two men - Ziad Jarrah, a Westernised Muslim who falls under the influence of terrorist mastermind Mohammed Atta, and Jarrah's absorption into fundamentalism, culminating in the events of September 11th 2001.
...I've searched for some kind of artistic deficiency in what Bird has done, and there doesn't seem to be one. Above all else, the film is pacy and almost indecently gripping. Within the first fifteen minutes, I could hardly bear to look away from the screen, throughout the final forty minutes I was shaking.
[SNIP from IMDB.com review] [The Hamburg Cell] is really the story of two men - Ziad Jarrah, a Westernised Muslim who falls under the influence of terrorist mastermind Mohammed Atta, and Jarrah's absorption into fundamentalism, culminating in the events of September 11th 2001.
...I've searched for some kind of artistic deficiency in what Bird has done, and there doesn't seem to be one. Above all else, the film is pacy and almost indecently gripping. Within the first fifteen minutes, I could hardly bear to look away from the screen, throughout the final forty minutes I was shaking.
QUOTE
Lib Alert!! I sense a Karl Rove conspiracy in the timing of the release of this video, one month before the election. /s off
QUOTE
I'm SURE the Democrats, and especially Chris Matthews, are tearing their hair out right now. They're screaming NOT NOW! Not when Woodward's Book is supposed to be THE Topic on ALL Cable Stations, 24/7/ leading up to Nov. 7th. The 9/11 story, once again, is going to make Woodward's fantasy irrelevant!
Frist: Taliban Should Be in Afghan Gov't
By JIM KRANE , 10.02.2006, 04:01 PM
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Islamic militia and its supporters into the Afghan government.
The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.
"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."
Afghanistan is suffering its heaviest insurgent attacks since a U.S.-led military force toppled the Taliban in late 2001 for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
According to an Associated Press count, based on reports from U.S., NATO and Afghan officials, at least 2,800 people have been killed nationwide so far this year. The count, which includes militants and civilians, is about 1,300 more than the toll for all of 2005.
The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, told Pentagon reporters last month that while the Taliban enemy in Afghanistan is not extremely strong, their numbers and influence have grown in some southern sections of the country.
President Bush has been criticized for his handling of the war and is trying to contain the damage ahead of midterm elections this fall. On Friday, Bush acknowledged setbacks in the training of Afghan police to fight against the Taliban resurgence but predicted eventual victory.
Frist said asking the Taliban to join the government was a decision to be made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Karzai's spokesmen were not immediately able to be reached for comment.
Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida accompanying Frist on his trip, said negotiating with the Taliban was not "out of the question" but that fighters who refused to join the political process would have to be defeated.
"A political solution is how it's all going to be solved," he said.
Frist said he had hoped the U.S. would be able to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan soon. But he said the 20,000 U.S. troops in the country are still needed to support the NATO alliance, which will assume direct control over most military operations here.
"We're going to need to stay here a long time," Frist said.
The senator said he was warned to expect attacks to increase. There appears to be an "unlimited flow" of Afghans and foreigners "willing to pick up arms and integrate themselves with the Taliban," he said.
He said the only way to win in places like the volatile southern part of the country is to "assimilate people who call themselves Taliban into a larger, more representative government."
"Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer," Frist said. "Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn't sound like it can be won. It sounds to me ... that the Taliban is everywhere."
Frist and Martinez flew to this dust-blown mountain city 220 miles south of Kabul during a one-day stop in Afghanistan on a regional tour that includes stops in Pakistan and Iraq.
The pair had intended to visit a new $6.5 million hospital built by the United Arab Emirates, but a group of wounded Taliban fighters were recuperating there, including a midlevel commander, and U.S. commander Lt. Col. Kevin McGlaughlin canceled the visit because of security concerns.
In violence Monday, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a NATO convoy in the capital Kabul, wounding three foreign soldiers and three civilians, while a roadside bomb in the eastern Paktia province killed three Afghan soldiers and wounded three others, officials said.
Maj. Luke Knittig, a military spokesman, said he could not disclose the nationalities of the NATO soldiers who were wounded. The attack came two days after another suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded more than 40 outside Afghanistan's Interior Ministry.
In the southern province of Helmand, five civilians were killed when their vehicle hit a mine on a road usually used by NATO and Afghan forces, said Ghulam Muhiddin, the governor's spokesman.
Suspected Taliban on a motorbike, meanwhile, killed two policemen and wounded two others in Gereshk district, he said. NATO-led troops killed three militants in Nawzad district.
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/.../ap3060506.html
Does anyone else find it odd that the people who materially suported Al Queda, who were actually responsible for 9/11, are now being considered by Frist as legitimate members of the Afghan government yet Batthists were purged in Iraq?
Welcome to the morning moron show.
Frist Says Afghan War Can't Be Won
From the Associated Press
October 3, 2006
QALAT, Afghanistan — U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said Monday that the war against Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan could never be won militarily, and he urged support for efforts to bring "people who call themselves Taliban" into the government.
Frist said he learned from military briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.
"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," he said during a visit to a military base in the Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."
Afghanistan is suffering its heaviest insurgent attacks since U.S.-led forces ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime in late 2001 for harboring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The U.S. military said today that two American troops and one Afghan soldier were killed in fighting in Kunar province.
Frist said that asking the Taliban to join the government was a decision to be made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Spokesmen for Karzai could not be reached for comment.
Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), accompanying Frist, said that negotiating with the Taliban was not "out of the question," but that fighters who refused to join the political process would have to be defeated.
"A political solution is how it's all going to be solved," he said.
Frist said there appeared to be an "unlimited flow" of Afghans and foreigners "willing to pick up arms and integrate themselves with the Taliban."
He said the only way to win was to "assimilate people who call themselves Taliban into a larger, more representative government."
"Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer," Frist said. "Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn't sound like it can be won. It sounds to me … that the Taliban is everywhere."
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/a...-news-a_section
Cut and run? Cut and run? Cut and run? Cut and run! CUT and RUN! CUT AND RUN!!!!!!!
"ONLY COWARDS CUT AND RUN."
From the Associated Press
October 3, 2006
QALAT, Afghanistan — U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said Monday that the war against Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan could never be won militarily, and he urged support for efforts to bring "people who call themselves Taliban" into the government.
Frist said he learned from military briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.
"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," he said during a visit to a military base in the Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."
Afghanistan is suffering its heaviest insurgent attacks since U.S.-led forces ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime in late 2001 for harboring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The U.S. military said today that two American troops and one Afghan soldier were killed in fighting in Kunar province.
Frist said that asking the Taliban to join the government was a decision to be made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Spokesmen for Karzai could not be reached for comment.
Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), accompanying Frist, said that negotiating with the Taliban was not "out of the question," but that fighters who refused to join the political process would have to be defeated.
"A political solution is how it's all going to be solved," he said.
Frist said there appeared to be an "unlimited flow" of Afghans and foreigners "willing to pick up arms and integrate themselves with the Taliban."
He said the only way to win was to "assimilate people who call themselves Taliban into a larger, more representative government."
"Approaching counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds will ultimately be the answer," Frist said. "Military versus insurgency one-to-one doesn't sound like it can be won. It sounds to me … that the Taliban is everywhere."
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/a...-news-a_section
Cut and run? Cut and run? Cut and run? Cut and run! CUT and RUN! CUT AND RUN!!!!!!!
"ONLY COWARDS CUT AND RUN."
Message control problems.
Sure, bring them into the government. There's always a need for good executioners in Islam.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/afghanistan/canada.html
INDEPTH: AFGHANISTAN
Canada in Afghanistan
CBC News Online | September 18, 2006
Canada has steadily increased its involvement in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in the fall of 2001.
In the spring of 2006, Canada began a major role in the southern part of the country, with a battle group of more than 2,000 soldiers called Task Force Afghanistan, based around Kandahar. Canada also currently commands one of the main military forces in the area, called Multi National Brigade for Command South. In September 2006, the government said it would send additional troops, bringing the total deployment to 2,500.
There is more to Canada's commitment in southern Afghanistan. It is what Foreign Affairs calls "a whole of government approach." While the mission is largely military, the "Provincial Reconstruction Team" (PRT) also has personnel from Foreign Affairs, the Canadian International Development Agency and the RCMP. The PRT has a double aim, providing military security while at the same time working with local leaders in reconstruction efforts.
Canada had provided some limited humanitarian aid, usually about $10 million a year, to Afghanistan even prior to 2001. Canada re-established formal diplomatic relations with the new Afghan government on Jan. 25, 2002, and reopened the embassy in Kabul in September 2003.
At a conference on Afghanistan in Tokyo in January 2002, Canada made a major commitment to assist in the reconstruction of the war-torn country. Foreign Affairs says Afghanistan is now "the single largest recipient of Canadian bilateral aid." So far, according to Foreign Affairs, Canada has allocated a total of $616.5 million to Afghanistan, covering 2001 to 2009.
Canada's military mission to Afghanistan began soon after the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. A naval task force was deployed to the Persian Gulf in October of that year.
In February 2002, a battle group from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was sent to Kandahar for six months and assisted the United States and other forces in Operation Enduring Freedom in their offensive against elements of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the rugged southern regions.
From August 2003 to December 2005, Canada's military commitment was largely Operation Athena, based in the capital, Kabul, as part of the International Assistance Force, which had the aim of providing intelligence and security to allow "rebuilding the democratic process," something which eventually saw elections in the fall of 2005.
On July 31, 2006, NATO troops assumed command of all military operations in southern Afghanistan. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) already had troops elsewhere in Afghanistan, including the capital Kabul, and in the north and the west of the country.
Lt.-Gen. David Richards, a British general, was put in charge of the NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. He announced the deployment of 8,000 NATO soldiers - including 2,200 Canadians - and Afghan units to six southern provinces by mid-September 2006. That deployment was increased to 2,500 in early September.
Other Canadian missions in Afghanistan included:
Heavy weapons cantonment: Helping the Afghan government collect, store and decommission 10,000 heavy weapons left over from decades of war, including artillery, tanks and rocket launchers.
Demining: Foreign Affairs says Canada has helped clear about one third of the estimated 10 million to 15 million mines in Afghanistan.
Microloans: Money from Canada has been used to provide microloans to more than 140,000 people in Afghanistan, 89 per cent of the clients are women.
Training: Canada also has a role in training the Afghan police and army. A group of Canadian Forces instructors were in Kabul to train members of the Afghan National Army. That unit remained in Kabul while the rest of the Canadian contingent moved south to Kandahar. Canadian troops are also training Afghan soldiers in Kandahar and the RCMP has a commitment to train Afghan police officers.
The Department of National Defence has also admitted that Canada's secret special forces, Joint Task Force Two, has been operating alongside the American and other special forces units in Afghanistan but no details have ever been released.
In May 2006, members of Parliament voted to keep Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan for two years longer than previously planned, amid rumours that Canada could take over leadership of the NATO mission there in 2008.
INDEPTH: AFGHANISTAN
Canada in Afghanistan
CBC News Online | September 18, 2006
Canada has steadily increased its involvement in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in the fall of 2001.
In the spring of 2006, Canada began a major role in the southern part of the country, with a battle group of more than 2,000 soldiers called Task Force Afghanistan, based around Kandahar. Canada also currently commands one of the main military forces in the area, called Multi National Brigade for Command South. In September 2006, the government said it would send additional troops, bringing the total deployment to 2,500.
There is more to Canada's commitment in southern Afghanistan. It is what Foreign Affairs calls "a whole of government approach." While the mission is largely military, the "Provincial Reconstruction Team" (PRT) also has personnel from Foreign Affairs, the Canadian International Development Agency and the RCMP. The PRT has a double aim, providing military security while at the same time working with local leaders in reconstruction efforts.
Canada had provided some limited humanitarian aid, usually about $10 million a year, to Afghanistan even prior to 2001. Canada re-established formal diplomatic relations with the new Afghan government on Jan. 25, 2002, and reopened the embassy in Kabul in September 2003.
At a conference on Afghanistan in Tokyo in January 2002, Canada made a major commitment to assist in the reconstruction of the war-torn country. Foreign Affairs says Afghanistan is now "the single largest recipient of Canadian bilateral aid." So far, according to Foreign Affairs, Canada has allocated a total of $616.5 million to Afghanistan, covering 2001 to 2009.
Canada's military mission to Afghanistan began soon after the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. A naval task force was deployed to the Persian Gulf in October of that year.
In February 2002, a battle group from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was sent to Kandahar for six months and assisted the United States and other forces in Operation Enduring Freedom in their offensive against elements of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the rugged southern regions.
From August 2003 to December 2005, Canada's military commitment was largely Operation Athena, based in the capital, Kabul, as part of the International Assistance Force, which had the aim of providing intelligence and security to allow "rebuilding the democratic process," something which eventually saw elections in the fall of 2005.
On July 31, 2006, NATO troops assumed command of all military operations in southern Afghanistan. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) already had troops elsewhere in Afghanistan, including the capital Kabul, and in the north and the west of the country.
Lt.-Gen. David Richards, a British general, was put in charge of the NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. He announced the deployment of 8,000 NATO soldiers - including 2,200 Canadians - and Afghan units to six southern provinces by mid-September 2006. That deployment was increased to 2,500 in early September.
Other Canadian missions in Afghanistan included:
Heavy weapons cantonment: Helping the Afghan government collect, store and decommission 10,000 heavy weapons left over from decades of war, including artillery, tanks and rocket launchers.
Demining: Foreign Affairs says Canada has helped clear about one third of the estimated 10 million to 15 million mines in Afghanistan.
Microloans: Money from Canada has been used to provide microloans to more than 140,000 people in Afghanistan, 89 per cent of the clients are women.
Training: Canada also has a role in training the Afghan police and army. A group of Canadian Forces instructors were in Kabul to train members of the Afghan National Army. That unit remained in Kabul while the rest of the Canadian contingent moved south to Kandahar. Canadian troops are also training Afghan soldiers in Kandahar and the RCMP has a commitment to train Afghan police officers.
The Department of National Defence has also admitted that Canada's secret special forces, Joint Task Force Two, has been operating alongside the American and other special forces units in Afghanistan but no details have ever been released.
In May 2006, members of Parliament voted to keep Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan for two years longer than previously planned, amid rumours that Canada could take over leadership of the NATO mission there in 2008.
QUOTE(davisął @ Oct 3 2006, 08:20 AM) [snapback]246124[/snapback]
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Islamic militia and its supporters into the Afghan government.
The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.
"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."
Translation. The neocons are have a bit of a problem with their nation building plans - the same nation building that King George bashed the Clinton administration on right before the 2000 election.
Afghanistan should have been turned into a smoking hole after 9-11 and as soon as the Taliban said they refused to turn over bin Ladin and the other Al Qada. Don't even bother to clean up the mess afterwards.
QUOTE(Samuel Adams @ Oct 4 2006, 12:46 PM) [snapback]246725[/snapback]
Afghanistan should have been turned into a smoking hole after 9-11 and as soon as the Taliban said they refused to turn over bin Ladin and the other Al Qada. Don't even bother to clean up the mess afterwards.
Roger that.
Mizman
word
'Osama is not in Pakistan'
Sarah Chayes
October 06, 2006
When Sarah Chayes entered Afghanistan in October 2001, she was a reporter for the respected US radio station, National Public Radio, on assignment to cover the last stand of the Taliban from their stronghold of Kandahar.
But as her understanding of Afghanistan and its people and the US military occupation grew, she was drawn more deeply into the unfolding drama to rebuild the devastated nation.
So overwhelming was her commitment that when her NPR stint ended in 2002, she laid down her microphone for good and accepted a position in a nonprofit agency called Afghans for Civil Society, founded by Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother. Being based in Kandahar, she had tremendous access to key players in the postwar government and forged not only unparalleled relationships with the Karzai family, but also with tribal leaders in the erstwhile Taliban heartland, the US military and diplomatic brass, and with leading figures in local government.
The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban is her gripping and dramatic account of history in the making with all of the perverse turn of events of the US government and armed forces aiding and abetting the return to power of corrupt militia commanders and warlords, and the resurgence of the Taliban supported once again by Pakistan.
In an exclusive interview on the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, Sarah Chayes told Rediff India Abroad Managing Editor Aziz Haniffa that Pakistan's support for the Taliban never stopped, and describes Washington as pretty naive to have assumed that it would. The first of a five-part interview:
In your book, you strongly criticise the United States for not coming down hard on Pakistan, which you say continues to actively support the Taliban. Are you convinced that Pakistan has gone back to arming and sponsoring the Taliban?
It never stopped. And, it was pretty naive of the American government to assume that it would stop. This has been their national policy for the last 30 years to exploit an extreme religion to advance a regional, tactical agenda.
I don't believe Pakistan is behind 9/11, but I do think that for 30 years they have been using religious extremism in one form or another in their kind of power game in the region, and I don't think they ever stopped.
Even though there seems to be an appreciation in the Bush administration and the US Congress that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf seems to be running with the hares and hunting with the hounds, officials seem to imply that they can only go so far in trying to come down hard on him because Musharraf is the only game in town. I believe he is playing a very clever game in that regard and that's exactly how he wants them to feel.
I live in Afghanistan and I am not the Pakistan person in the US State Department. But if I were in the American government, I would work very hard on developing an alternative. It's not that I would remove Musharraf or bomb Pakistan. That's not what I mean. I don't believe in violent regime change every time you get into an argument with somebody.
But I would really seriously staff up -- it's the American expression and it means, you put your staff to work for coming up with a new policy. I would deeply research how if we decided to be tough on Pakistan rather than roll over basically, what it would look like? What would the likely response be? How would we counter that likely response? Who else inside Pakistan has something interesting to say about the direction their country might move forward in? I would like to see the American government do that and I haven't seen it.
This is the answer I have always received, that, well, who else is there? So that means they are not working on alternative types of policy. It doesn't mean that you support somebody else instead of Musharraf, but what would it look like if we started tying benefits that we are offering to Pakistan to really concrete results, not just on the Al Qaeda front, but on the Taliban front. Because that is how they (Pakistan) are buying the United States off. It is by turning over Al Qaeda operatives.
While he visited Washington, (Pakistan President) Pervez Musharraf explained his agreement with tribal leaders in North Waziristan and said that President Bush is on board with it. What do you make of this agreement that has left a lot of people concerned that he seems to have cut a deal with people who might be sheltering Osama bin Laden, other Al Qaeda leaders and also the leadership of the Taliban?
We say, from a distance, tribal leaders, but what does that mean? Which ones? Who? In Kandahar, I would understand what an agreement like that would mean, but for Waziristan, I don't. The real problem in Afghanistan is not in Waziristan. Nobody who is doing anything bad to Afghanistan is sitting around in Waziristan. It has never been real. There have never been any major Taliban figures in North Waziristan.
I don't think Osama bin Laden is up there either. I believe what is happening in North Waziristan has everything to do with Pakistan. His little genie has gotten out of the bottle there and so there actually are extremist or jihadis up there who are a menace to Pakistan.
I don't think Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan. I think all of that is a smokescreen -- but that's my own opinion -- and the people who are troublesome to Afghanistan are in Quetta. They are not in caves. They are sitting around in apartments and driving cars that are often licensed with ISI plates in Quetta. So Waziristan is like a red herring.
http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/oct/06inter1.htm
Sarah Chayes
October 06, 2006
When Sarah Chayes entered Afghanistan in October 2001, she was a reporter for the respected US radio station, National Public Radio, on assignment to cover the last stand of the Taliban from their stronghold of Kandahar.
But as her understanding of Afghanistan and its people and the US military occupation grew, she was drawn more deeply into the unfolding drama to rebuild the devastated nation.
So overwhelming was her commitment that when her NPR stint ended in 2002, she laid down her microphone for good and accepted a position in a nonprofit agency called Afghans for Civil Society, founded by Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother. Being based in Kandahar, she had tremendous access to key players in the postwar government and forged not only unparalleled relationships with the Karzai family, but also with tribal leaders in the erstwhile Taliban heartland, the US military and diplomatic brass, and with leading figures in local government.
The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban is her gripping and dramatic account of history in the making with all of the perverse turn of events of the US government and armed forces aiding and abetting the return to power of corrupt militia commanders and warlords, and the resurgence of the Taliban supported once again by Pakistan.
In an exclusive interview on the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, Sarah Chayes told Rediff India Abroad Managing Editor Aziz Haniffa that Pakistan's support for the Taliban never stopped, and describes Washington as pretty naive to have assumed that it would. The first of a five-part interview:
In your book, you strongly criticise the United States for not coming down hard on Pakistan, which you say continues to actively support the Taliban. Are you convinced that Pakistan has gone back to arming and sponsoring the Taliban?
It never stopped. And, it was pretty naive of the American government to assume that it would stop. This has been their national policy for the last 30 years to exploit an extreme religion to advance a regional, tactical agenda.
I don't believe Pakistan is behind 9/11, but I do think that for 30 years they have been using religious extremism in one form or another in their kind of power game in the region, and I don't think they ever stopped.
Even though there seems to be an appreciation in the Bush administration and the US Congress that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf seems to be running with the hares and hunting with the hounds, officials seem to imply that they can only go so far in trying to come down hard on him because Musharraf is the only game in town. I believe he is playing a very clever game in that regard and that's exactly how he wants them to feel.
I live in Afghanistan and I am not the Pakistan person in the US State Department. But if I were in the American government, I would work very hard on developing an alternative. It's not that I would remove Musharraf or bomb Pakistan. That's not what I mean. I don't believe in violent regime change every time you get into an argument with somebody.
But I would really seriously staff up -- it's the American expression and it means, you put your staff to work for coming up with a new policy. I would deeply research how if we decided to be tough on Pakistan rather than roll over basically, what it would look like? What would the likely response be? How would we counter that likely response? Who else inside Pakistan has something interesting to say about the direction their country might move forward in? I would like to see the American government do that and I haven't seen it.
This is the answer I have always received, that, well, who else is there? So that means they are not working on alternative types of policy. It doesn't mean that you support somebody else instead of Musharraf, but what would it look like if we started tying benefits that we are offering to Pakistan to really concrete results, not just on the Al Qaeda front, but on the Taliban front. Because that is how they (Pakistan) are buying the United States off. It is by turning over Al Qaeda operatives.
While he visited Washington, (Pakistan President) Pervez Musharraf explained his agreement with tribal leaders in North Waziristan and said that President Bush is on board with it. What do you make of this agreement that has left a lot of people concerned that he seems to have cut a deal with people who might be sheltering Osama bin Laden, other Al Qaeda leaders and also the leadership of the Taliban?
We say, from a distance, tribal leaders, but what does that mean? Which ones? Who? In Kandahar, I would understand what an agreement like that would mean, but for Waziristan, I don't. The real problem in Afghanistan is not in Waziristan. Nobody who is doing anything bad to Afghanistan is sitting around in Waziristan. It has never been real. There have never been any major Taliban figures in North Waziristan.
I don't think Osama bin Laden is up there either. I believe what is happening in North Waziristan has everything to do with Pakistan. His little genie has gotten out of the bottle there and so there actually are extremist or jihadis up there who are a menace to Pakistan.
I don't think Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan. I think all of that is a smokescreen -- but that's my own opinion -- and the people who are troublesome to Afghanistan are in Quetta. They are not in caves. They are sitting around in apartments and driving cars that are often licensed with ISI plates in Quetta. So Waziristan is like a red herring.
http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/oct/06inter1.htm
Rummy shares his sunny optimism about Afghanistan:
QUOTE
Afghanistan: Five Years Later
By Donald H. Rumsfeld
Saturday, October 7, 2006; Page A23
On Oct. 7, 2001, President Bush spoke from the Treaty Room of the White House to announce the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, a mission designed to disrupt and destroy al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and the regime that had harbored and supported Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
It was never going to be an easy mission. Afghanistan was among the world's poorest nations, with little political or economic infrastructure. Nearly three decades of war, drought and a Soviet occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops had yielded a broken, lawless nation.
Yet from halfway around the world -- with but a few weeks' notice -- coalition forces were charged with securing a landlocked, mountainous country that history had dubbed the "graveyard" of great powers.
Given the circumstances, it is not surprising that military experts and columnists raised the specter of Vietnam and "quagmires" -- both before and during combat operations. They cited the forbidding terrain, brutal weather and the Soviet Union's total failure.
Within weeks of our launching combat operations, however, the Taliban regime had been defeated, consigning yet another cruel regime to the dustbin of history. Coalition forces took control of Kabul, and since then the Afghan people have fashioned a new constitution and successfully held the first democratic presidential election in their long history.
Now, five years after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, another signpost has been marked on Afghanistan's long, difficult road to stability: NATO took control of security operations for the entire country on Thursday, as well as the 24 Provincial Reconstruction Teams that are strengthening infrastructure across the nation.
This is an unprecedented moment for the NATO alliance. In 2001 NATO forces were for the first time deployed beyond their traditional European borders. Today the number of troops in Afghanistan from nations besides the United States has reached more than 20,000 -- to add to the approximately 21,000 American troops serving there.
Not all the news about Afghanistan is encouraging. There is, for example, the legitimate worry that increased poppy production could be a destabilizing factor. And rising violence in southern Afghanistan is real.
President Hamid Karzai, speaking with President Bush recently at the White House, acknowledged the difficulties: "Afghanistan is a country that is emerging out of so many years of war and destruction. . . . We lost almost two generations to the lack of education. . . . We know our problems. We have difficulties. But Afghanistan also knows where the problem is."
The problem, he said, is poverty and extremism. Success requires a strong and capable Afghan government that can provide services and opportunities for all its people.
During the active combat or conventional phase of any war, there are clear signs of progress: battles won, key strategic points taken, enemy forces captured or killed. In the post-battle phase, however, the measure of progress is not as clear -- especially in a war such as the Global War on Terror, which relies so heavily on the development of civic institutions in places that have known little more than war and destitution.
And yet, for all of the challenges the Afghan people face, there are many promising indicators. Among them:
· Security: The Afghan National Army has grown to more than 30,000, with approximately 1,000 soldiers added each month. The Afghan National Police now number more than 46,000. Afghan forces were successful in providing security for the two national elections held since 2004.
· Economy: The size of Afghanistan's economy has tripled in the past five years and is projected to increase another 20 percent next year. Between 2003 and 2004, government revenue increased 70 percent, to $300 million. Coca-Cola recently opened a $25 million bottling plant in Kabul, and other large multinational companies are considering opportunities in Afghanistan.
· Education: In the past five years, more than 42 million school textbooks have been printed and distributed, and some 50,000 Afghan teachers have been trained. Almost 600 schools have been built, and now more than 5 million children attend school, a 500 percent increase from 2001.
· Health care: In 2001 only 8 percent of Afghans had access to at least basic health care; at least 80 percent do today. Some 5 million Afghan children have been vaccinated.
· Infrastructure: Thousands of kilometers of roads have been built or improved since the Taliban fell. Since 2004, 25 provincial courthouses have been built and hundreds of judges trained.
Building a new nation is never a straight, steady climb upward. Today can sometimes look worse than yesterday -- or even two months ago. What matters is the overall trajectory: Where do things stand today when compared to what they were five years ago?
In Afghanistan, the trajectory is a hopeful and promising one.
By Donald H. Rumsfeld
Saturday, October 7, 2006; Page A23
On Oct. 7, 2001, President Bush spoke from the Treaty Room of the White House to announce the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, a mission designed to disrupt and destroy al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and the regime that had harbored and supported Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
It was never going to be an easy mission. Afghanistan was among the world's poorest nations, with little political or economic infrastructure. Nearly three decades of war, drought and a Soviet occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops had yielded a broken, lawless nation.
Yet from halfway around the world -- with but a few weeks' notice -- coalition forces were charged with securing a landlocked, mountainous country that history had dubbed the "graveyard" of great powers.
Given the circumstances, it is not surprising that military experts and columnists raised the specter of Vietnam and "quagmires" -- both before and during combat operations. They cited the forbidding terrain, brutal weather and the Soviet Union's total failure.
Within weeks of our launching combat operations, however, the Taliban regime had been defeated, consigning yet another cruel regime to the dustbin of history. Coalition forces took control of Kabul, and since then the Afghan people have fashioned a new constitution and successfully held the first democratic presidential election in their long history.
Now, five years after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, another signpost has been marked on Afghanistan's long, difficult road to stability: NATO took control of security operations for the entire country on Thursday, as well as the 24 Provincial Reconstruction Teams that are strengthening infrastructure across the nation.
This is an unprecedented moment for the NATO alliance. In 2001 NATO forces were for the first time deployed beyond their traditional European borders. Today the number of troops in Afghanistan from nations besides the United States has reached more than 20,000 -- to add to the approximately 21,000 American troops serving there.
Not all the news about Afghanistan is encouraging. There is, for example, the legitimate worry that increased poppy production could be a destabilizing factor. And rising violence in southern Afghanistan is real.
President Hamid Karzai, speaking with President Bush recently at the White House, acknowledged the difficulties: "Afghanistan is a country that is emerging out of so many years of war and destruction. . . . We lost almost two generations to the lack of education. . . . We know our problems. We have difficulties. But Afghanistan also knows where the problem is."
The problem, he said, is poverty and extremism. Success requires a strong and capable Afghan government that can provide services and opportunities for all its people.
During the active combat or conventional phase of any war, there are clear signs of progress: battles won, key strategic points taken, enemy forces captured or killed. In the post-battle phase, however, the measure of progress is not as clear -- especially in a war such as the Global War on Terror, which relies so heavily on the development of civic institutions in places that have known little more than war and destitution.
And yet, for all of the challenges the Afghan people face, there are many promising indicators. Among them:
· Security: The Afghan National Army has grown to more than 30,000, with approximately 1,000 soldiers added each month. The Afghan National Police now number more than 46,000. Afghan forces were successful in providing security for the two national elections held since 2004.
· Economy: The size of Afghanistan's economy has tripled in the past five years and is projected to increase another 20 percent next year. Between 2003 and 2004, government revenue increased 70 percent, to $300 million. Coca-Cola recently opened a $25 million bottling plant in Kabul, and other large multinational companies are considering opportunities in Afghanistan.
· Education: In the past five years, more than 42 million school textbooks have been printed and distributed, and some 50,000 Afghan teachers have been trained. Almost 600 schools have been built, and now more than 5 million children attend school, a 500 percent increase from 2001.
· Health care: In 2001 only 8 percent of Afghans had access to at least basic health care; at least 80 percent do today. Some 5 million Afghan children have been vaccinated.
· Infrastructure: Thousands of kilometers of roads have been built or improved since the Taliban fell. Since 2004, 25 provincial courthouses have been built and hundreds of judges trained.
Building a new nation is never a straight, steady climb upward. Today can sometimes look worse than yesterday -- or even two months ago. What matters is the overall trajectory: Where do things stand today when compared to what they were five years ago?
In Afghanistan, the trajectory is a hopeful and promising one.
Columbia in the 80s. Really successful. I wonder how many Pablo Escobars there are and how much poison is on the streets because of it.
QUOTE(davisął @ Oct 3 2006, 08:13 AM) [snapback]246137[/snapback]
Does anyone else find it odd that the people who materially suported Al Queda, who were actually responsible for 9/11, are now being considered by Frist as legitimate members of the Afghan government yet Batthists were purged in Iraq?
Yes, yes I do.
~~~~
QUOTE
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A sweating man wanders into a crowd and blows himself up, leaving a dozen bodies lifeless on the street. A few blocks away, a car bomb pulverizes an armored Humvee, killing two U.S. soldiers and 14 civilians. The kind of anonymous insurgent violence that is convulsing Iraq has migrated 1,500 miles east to plague Afghanistan five years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime.
The prospect of a second downward spiral -- though so far Afghanistan isn't nearly as violent as Iraq -- has experts worried that Western militaries don't have an effective strategy for these irregular wars.
''One Iraq is bad enough,'' said Bruce Hoffman, a counterinsurgency expert at Georgetown University. ''Given that our two main theaters of operations aren't going well, one has to question how well the U.S. understands counterinsurgency.''
The reborn Taliban acknowledges that it has adopted the suicide bombings, beheadings and remote-controlled bombs of the Iraqi insurgent movement. Nearly 200 civilians have been killed in suicide attacks this year that look all too much like the wave of bombings sweeping Iraq.
''We're getting stronger in every province and in every district and every village,'' said Qari Mohammed Yusuf Ahmadi, who calls himself the Taliban's spokesman for southern Afghanistan. ''We don't have helicopters and jet fighters. But we're giving America and its allies a tough time with roadside bombs, suicide attacks and ambushes. Our Muslim brothers in Iraq are using the same tactics.''
Resemblances to Iraq don't stop there. Taliban public relations teams videotape attacks and post them online, an uncharacteristic venture into modern technology for a Muslim fundamentalist group that once banned cameras and computers.
The West's military strategy in Afghanistan also resembles that in Iraq.
Just as critics say Washington did not send enough troops to Iraq before the insurgency took root, analysts fault the U.S. for failing to press its advantage in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 when the Taliban were all but vanquished.
Meanwhile, Afghan observers say the same harsh U.S. tactics, decried in Iraq for causing civilian casualties, have helped the Taliban recruit new fighters.
But unlike Iraq's insurgents, the Taliban has ready sanctuary and support just outside their battle zone, in the border areas of Pakistan....
The Afghan war is still far smaller, occupying just 40,000 allied troops -- a quarter of those in Iraq -- and suffering a fraction of the casualties. But for individual soldiers serving in mountainous Taliban lands like Zabul province, the dangers feel the same.
''I know Iraq grabs a lot of headlines. But there's still a war going on over here,'' said Lt. Col. Steve Jarrard, 46, of Johnson City, Tenn., based in the hard-bitten southern town of Qalat. ''I really hope we're doing the right thing over here.''...
The prospect of a second downward spiral -- though so far Afghanistan isn't nearly as violent as Iraq -- has experts worried that Western militaries don't have an effective strategy for these irregular wars.
''One Iraq is bad enough,'' said Bruce Hoffman, a counterinsurgency expert at Georgetown University. ''Given that our two main theaters of operations aren't going well, one has to question how well the U.S. understands counterinsurgency.''
The reborn Taliban acknowledges that it has adopted the suicide bombings, beheadings and remote-controlled bombs of the Iraqi insurgent movement. Nearly 200 civilians have been killed in suicide attacks this year that look all too much like the wave of bombings sweeping Iraq.
''We're getting stronger in every province and in every district and every village,'' said Qari Mohammed Yusuf Ahmadi, who calls himself the Taliban's spokesman for southern Afghanistan. ''We don't have helicopters and jet fighters. But we're giving America and its allies a tough time with roadside bombs, suicide attacks and ambushes. Our Muslim brothers in Iraq are using the same tactics.''
Resemblances to Iraq don't stop there. Taliban public relations teams videotape attacks and post them online, an uncharacteristic venture into modern technology for a Muslim fundamentalist group that once banned cameras and computers.
The West's military strategy in Afghanistan also resembles that in Iraq.
Just as critics say Washington did not send enough troops to Iraq before the insurgency took root, analysts fault the U.S. for failing to press its advantage in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 when the Taliban were all but vanquished.
Meanwhile, Afghan observers say the same harsh U.S. tactics, decried in Iraq for causing civilian casualties, have helped the Taliban recruit new fighters.
But unlike Iraq's insurgents, the Taliban has ready sanctuary and support just outside their battle zone, in the border areas of Pakistan....
The Afghan war is still far smaller, occupying just 40,000 allied troops -- a quarter of those in Iraq -- and suffering a fraction of the casualties. But for individual soldiers serving in mountainous Taliban lands like Zabul province, the dangers feel the same.
''I know Iraq grabs a lot of headlines. But there's still a war going on over here,'' said Lt. Col. Steve Jarrard, 46, of Johnson City, Tenn., based in the hard-bitten southern town of Qalat. ''I really hope we're doing the right thing over here.''...
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-A...other-Iraq.html
QUOTE
DASHTAK, Afghanistan — The village of Dashtak sits on a bumpy, washed-out specter of a road, an hour's drive off the main highway between Kabul and Afghanistan's lawless southeast.
It has 16 new wells financed by an aid agency. But the village men who gather around a visiting journalist offer a litany of complaints: no paved roads, no running water, no electricity, and the closest health clinic is two hours away by donkey.
Their frustration boils over when talk turns to 10 villagers recently arrested on suspicion of aiding insurgents.
"I swear to you, I have not seen a single dollar bill. I do not know its size or color," said Shah Mahmood, 55. "We are dying from lack of food and water — and they call us al-Qaida or Taliban."
Five years into the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the country is far from won over, or even safely on the path to stability and democracy.
The hard-line Islamic Taliban that appeared down and out has returned, taking control of large swaths of countryside. Widespread poverty has smoothed its way, shaking what little confidence Afghans have in their democratically elected government.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in rising violence this year. Suicide bombers are targeting ordinary Afghans and Western troops. Militants are assassinating key political figures, burning down schools and using roadside bombs to deadly effect.
The 40,000 U.S. and NATO troops appear further from bringing stability than they did three years ago when their number was 2 ˝ times smaller. And Osama bin Laden, whose presence here was a trigger for the U.S.-led attack, is still at large, possibly hiding in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border....
Of the 280 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001, 69 have died in nine months this year. NATO countries Britain and Canada are reeling from recent losses, including 10 Canadians killed last month.
The war's cost for U.S. taxpayers: $97 billion, and Congress just appropriated $70 billion more for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Unlike Iraq, where the United States makes up the overwhelming majority of the international force, Afghanistan has a broad coalition. The world's most powerful nations continue to work side by side in pursuit of the same aim: stabilizing the country and bolstering economic recovery.
But Richard Norland, the U.S. deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, said that the "sense of progress has kind of abated lately."
"You have these villagers in the remote part of distant provinces who are in between the promise of government showing up and providing services and development on the one hand, and Taliban guys with guns on the other," Norland said. "If they do not believe that the government is really coming, they will go to the Taliban, and we are seeing that in some cases on a small scale. But it needs to be stopped. It's a dangerous trend."...
RAND analyst Jones said insurgencies are defeated slowly, an average of 14 years in previous conflicts.
That's a long time for a desperate country.
Most of Afghanistan's 30 million people lead difficult lives. The poverty rate is estimated at 50 percent, unemployment at 40 percent. Clean water, electricity and advanced medical care are luxuries. Drought is a chronic problem. The average life expectancy is 43 years....
It has 16 new wells financed by an aid agency. But the village men who gather around a visiting journalist offer a litany of complaints: no paved roads, no running water, no electricity, and the closest health clinic is two hours away by donkey.
Their frustration boils over when talk turns to 10 villagers recently arrested on suspicion of aiding insurgents.
"I swear to you, I have not seen a single dollar bill. I do not know its size or color," said Shah Mahmood, 55. "We are dying from lack of food and water — and they call us al-Qaida or Taliban."
Five years into the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the country is far from won over, or even safely on the path to stability and democracy.
The hard-line Islamic Taliban that appeared down and out has returned, taking control of large swaths of countryside. Widespread poverty has smoothed its way, shaking what little confidence Afghans have in their democratically elected government.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in rising violence this year. Suicide bombers are targeting ordinary Afghans and Western troops. Militants are assassinating key political figures, burning down schools and using roadside bombs to deadly effect.
The 40,000 U.S. and NATO troops appear further from bringing stability than they did three years ago when their number was 2 ˝ times smaller. And Osama bin Laden, whose presence here was a trigger for the U.S.-led attack, is still at large, possibly hiding in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border....
Of the 280 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001, 69 have died in nine months this year. NATO countries Britain and Canada are reeling from recent losses, including 10 Canadians killed last month.
The war's cost for U.S. taxpayers: $97 billion, and Congress just appropriated $70 billion more for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Unlike Iraq, where the United States makes up the overwhelming majority of the international force, Afghanistan has a broad coalition. The world's most powerful nations continue to work side by side in pursuit of the same aim: stabilizing the country and bolstering economic recovery.
But Richard Norland, the U.S. deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, said that the "sense of progress has kind of abated lately."
"You have these villagers in the remote part of distant provinces who are in between the promise of government showing up and providing services and development on the one hand, and Taliban guys with guns on the other," Norland said. "If they do not believe that the government is really coming, they will go to the Taliban, and we are seeing that in some cases on a small scale. But it needs to be stopped. It's a dangerous trend."...
RAND analyst Jones said insurgencies are defeated slowly, an average of 14 years in previous conflicts.
That's a long time for a desperate country.
Most of Afghanistan's 30 million people lead difficult lives. The poverty rate is estimated at 50 percent, unemployment at 40 percent. Clean water, electricity and advanced medical care are luxuries. Drought is a chronic problem. The average life expectancy is 43 years....
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nati...5_afghan07.html
NATO chief warns of Afghan tipping point
By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press Writers Sun Oct 8, 2:41 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan -
NATO's top commander in
Afghanistan said Sunday the country was at a tipping point and warned Afghans would likely switch their allegiance to resurgent Taliban militants if there are no visible improvements in people's lives in the next six months.
Gen. David Richards, a British officer who commands NATO's 32,000 troops here, warned in an interview with The Associated Press that if life doesn't get better over the winter, most Afghans could switch sides.
"They will say, 'We do not want the Taliban but then we would rather have that austere and unpleasant life that that might involve than another five years of fighting,'" Richards said.
Afghanistan is going through its worst bout of violence since the U.S.-led invasion removed the former Taliban regime from power five years ago. The Taliban has made a comeback in the south and east of the country and is seriously threatening Western attempts to stabilize the country after almost three decades of war.
"If we collectively ... do not exploit this winter to start achieving concrete and visible improvement," then some 70 percent of Afghans could switch sides, Richards told The Associated Press.
Richards will command NATO's troops in Afghanistan, including 12,000 U.S. forces, until February, when U.S. Gen. Dan K. McNeil will take command.
The British general said he'd like to have about 2,500 additional troops to form a reserve battalion to help speed up reconstruction and development efforts.
The south of the country, where NATO troops have fought their most intense battles this year, has been "broadly stabilized," Richards said.
"We have created an opportunity," following the intense fighting that left over 500 militants dead in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, he said. "If we do not take advantage of this, then you can pour an additional 10,000 troops next year and we would not succeed because we would have lost by then the consent of the people."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061008/ap_on_...s/afghanistan_4
By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press Writers Sun Oct 8, 2:41 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan -
NATO's top commander in
Afghanistan said Sunday the country was at a tipping point and warned Afghans would likely switch their allegiance to resurgent Taliban militants if there are no visible improvements in people's lives in the next six months.
Gen. David Richards, a British officer who commands NATO's 32,000 troops here, warned in an interview with The Associated Press that if life doesn't get better over the winter, most Afghans could switch sides.
"They will say, 'We do not want the Taliban but then we would rather have that austere and unpleasant life that that might involve than another five years of fighting,'" Richards said.
Afghanistan is going through its worst bout of violence since the U.S.-led invasion removed the former Taliban regime from power five years ago. The Taliban has made a comeback in the south and east of the country and is seriously threatening Western attempts to stabilize the country after almost three decades of war.
"If we collectively ... do not exploit this winter to start achieving concrete and visible improvement," then some 70 percent of Afghans could switch sides, Richards told The Associated Press.
Richards will command NATO's troops in Afghanistan, including 12,000 U.S. forces, until February, when U.S. Gen. Dan K. McNeil will take command.
The British general said he'd like to have about 2,500 additional troops to form a reserve battalion to help speed up reconstruction and development efforts.
The south of the country, where NATO troops have fought their most intense battles this year, has been "broadly stabilized," Richards said.
"We have created an opportunity," following the intense fighting that left over 500 militants dead in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, he said. "If we do not take advantage of this, then you can pour an additional 10,000 troops next year and we would not succeed because we would have lost by then the consent of the people."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061008/ap_on_...s/afghanistan_4
File under "Humor in Uniform"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061013/od_nm/...tP1yE7MHHCs0NUE
10 feet? I gotta get Joel to sent me some of those seeds!
QUOTE
Troops battle 10-foot marijuana plants
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy -- almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet-high marijuana plants.
General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said on Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.
"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.
"We tried burning them with white phosphorous -- it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel -- it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now ... that we simply couldn't burn them," he said.
Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.
"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hillier said dryly.
One soldier told him later: "Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I'd say 'That damn marijuana'."
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy -- almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet-high marijuana plants.
General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said on Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.
"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.
"We tried burning them with white phosphorous -- it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel -- it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now ... that we simply couldn't burn them," he said.
Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.
"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hillier said dryly.
One soldier told him later: "Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I'd say 'That damn marijuana'."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061013/od_nm/...tP1yE7MHHCs0NUE
10 feet? I gotta get Joel to sent me some of those seeds!
Forests? My dad worked at a hemp factory in the 40s. Perhaps those forests are the fiber variety?
QUOTE
NATO backs Pakistan deal with Taliban
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent
14oct06
A CONTROVERSIAL peace agreement with Taliban-supporting militants in the rugged frontier region of Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding, emerged yesterday as the blueprint for a possible accord with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Following this week's visit to Islamabad by General David Richards, NATO's commander of coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan, it appeared the US and Britain had authorised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to attempt to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban.
Before going to Islamabad, it had been suggested General Richards was preparing for a showdown with President Musharraf over alleged Pakistani double-dealing with the Taliban and al-Qa'ida through its top spy agency, the ISI.
It had even been reported he would take with him the address in the Baluchistan capital of Quetta where Taliban leader Mullah Omar is living, and demand Pakistani forces arrest him.
But far from criticising General Musharraf, it appears the Pakistani leader's deal with Taliban-supporting tribal militants in the North Waziristan district of the North West Frontier Province could form the basis of an accord aimed at ending the insurgency and bringing the Taliban into the Government in Kabul.
From General Musharraf down, senior Pakistani officials are insisting that NATO is now supporting Islamabad's bid to reach a peace accord with the Taliban. Reports in New Delhi quoted General Richards as supporting the agreement with the Taliban in North Waziristan, saying it could set an example of how best to deal with such problems - dashing Indian hopes that NATO would not endorse Pakistan's strategy.
Reports said General Musharraf claimed that General Richards "absolutely agrees with the environment and my analysis, and he is asking for our help to do the same thing and we will proceed on the same course".
General Musharraf maintained that the North Waziristan strategy was "worth a try because there is no other way (than to reach an accommodation with the Taliban), and if we don't do anything, if we think that military will succeed, we are sadly mistaken. We will suffer".
The key elements of the North Waziristan deal have been strongly criticised by the Western media, but are now apparently accepted by Britain, the US and other governments that have contributed forces to the coalition fighting in Afghanistan.
South Asian strategists in New Delhi said it appeared that Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been opposing efforts to bring the Taliban into his Government, had clearly not won the battle with General Musharraf on the issue.
Many of the elements of the North Waziristan accord, signed on September 5, could form the basis for a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Under the North Waziristan arrangement, the Pakistan Government has agreed to stop air and ground attacks on tribal militants linked to the Taliban, withdraw the Pakistan army from key points, release captured militants and pay compensation for property damage and deaths of innocent civilians in the region.
NATO has 31,000 international troops fighting in Afghanistan, coming from 37 countries, including Australia.
Indian reports yesterday said that the US and Britain had "clearly bought General Musharraf's 'if you can't beat them, join them' argument by sanctioning a peace strategy".
The reports are significant because they suggest that winning against the Taliban amid the tribal culture of Afghanistan would be extremely difficult, even for a force as powerful and sophisticated as NATO's.
Down the years, all foreign armies that have sought to assert themselves in Afghanistan have left defeated. Strategists are apprehensive that NATO's effort could go the same way.
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent
14oct06
A CONTROVERSIAL peace agreement with Taliban-supporting militants in the rugged frontier region of Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding, emerged yesterday as the blueprint for a possible accord with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Following this week's visit to Islamabad by General David Richards, NATO's commander of coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan, it appeared the US and Britain had authorised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to attempt to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban.
Before going to Islamabad, it had been suggested General Richards was preparing for a showdown with President Musharraf over alleged Pakistani double-dealing with the Taliban and al-Qa'ida through its top spy agency, the ISI.
It had even been reported he would take with him the address in the Baluchistan capital of Quetta where Taliban leader Mullah Omar is living, and demand Pakistani forces arrest him.
But far from criticising General Musharraf, it appears the Pakistani leader's deal with Taliban-supporting tribal militants in the North Waziristan district of the North West Frontier Province could form the basis of an accord aimed at ending the insurgency and bringing the Taliban into the Government in Kabul.
From General Musharraf down, senior Pakistani officials are insisting that NATO is now supporting Islamabad's bid to reach a peace accord with the Taliban. Reports in New Delhi quoted General Richards as supporting the agreement with the Taliban in North Waziristan, saying it could set an example of how best to deal with such problems - dashing Indian hopes that NATO would not endorse Pakistan's strategy.
Reports said General Musharraf claimed that General Richards "absolutely agrees with the environment and my analysis, and he is asking for our help to do the same thing and we will proceed on the same course".
General Musharraf maintained that the North Waziristan strategy was "worth a try because there is no other way (than to reach an accommodation with the Taliban), and if we don't do anything, if we think that military will succeed, we are sadly mistaken. We will suffer".
The key elements of the North Waziristan deal have been strongly criticised by the Western media, but are now apparently accepted by Britain, the US and other governments that have contributed forces to the coalition fighting in Afghanistan.
South Asian strategists in New Delhi said it appeared that Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been opposing efforts to bring the Taliban into his Government, had clearly not won the battle with General Musharraf on the issue.
Many of the elements of the North Waziristan accord, signed on September 5, could form the basis for a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Under the North Waziristan arrangement, the Pakistan Government has agreed to stop air and ground attacks on tribal militants linked to the Taliban, withdraw the Pakistan army from key points, release captured militants and pay compensation for property damage and deaths of innocent civilians in the region.
NATO has 31,000 international troops fighting in Afghanistan, coming from 37 countries, including Australia.
Indian reports yesterday said that the US and Britain had "clearly bought General Musharraf's 'if you can't beat them, join them' argument by sanctioning a peace strategy".
The reports are significant because they suggest that winning against the Taliban amid the tribal culture of Afghanistan would be extremely difficult, even for a force as powerful and sophisticated as NATO's.
Down the years, all foreign armies that have sought to assert themselves in Afghanistan have left defeated. Strategists are apprehensive that NATO's effort could go the same way.
(all) http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/print...0578507,00.html
New reality being introduced here.
That sucks.
Perhaps we should side with the Tribal Leaders no matter how despicable they might be since that seems to be where the real power lies in Afghanistan and in the long run may be cheaper to just buy their poppy harvest every year. I think someone suggested that here before and perhaps we can figure out some new drugs to make from it...
QUOTE(arebuntz @ Oct 14 2006, 02:46 PM) [snapback]250421[/snapback]
Perhaps we should side with the Tribal Leaders no matter how despicable they might be since that seems to be where the real power lies in Afghanistan and in the long run may be cheaper to just buy their poppy harvest every year. I think someone suggested that here before and perhaps we can figure out some new drugs to make from it...
Pharmaceutical-grade heroin will cut into big pharma's synthetic opioids profits. Can't have that.
NATO takes control of Afghan security
By JIM KRANE,
Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 5, 3:31 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - NATO extended its security mission Thursday to all of Afghanistan nearly five years after the West began its war to defeat the Taliban, taking command of 12,000 U.S. troops in the war-battered country's east.
The handover diminishes the Pentagon's role in Afghanistan and gives the Europe-based military alliance its biggest test yet.
The transfer of command "illustrates the enduring commitment of NATO and its international partners to the future of this great country," said British Gen. David Richards. He was promoted to the military's top rank hours before a handover ceremony at the NATO compound in Kabul attended by President Hamid Karzai and U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry.
The takeover caps an already historic expansion for the military alliance that was created as a Cold War bulwark against the Soviet Union. The mission in Afghanistan is the biggest ground combat operation in NATO history, and gives Richards command of the largest number of U.S. troops fighting under a foreign commander since World War II........
By JIM KRANE,
Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 5, 3:31 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - NATO extended its security mission Thursday to all of Afghanistan nearly five years after the West began its war to defeat the Taliban, taking command of 12,000 U.S. troops in the war-battered country's east.
The handover diminishes the Pentagon's role in Afghanistan and gives the Europe-based military alliance its biggest test yet.
The transfer of command "illustrates the enduring commitment of NATO and its international partners to the future of this great country," said British Gen. David Richards. He was promoted to the military's top rank hours before a handover ceremony at the NATO compound in Kabul attended by President Hamid Karzai and U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry.
The takeover caps an already historic expansion for the military alliance that was created as a Cold War bulwark against the Soviet Union. The mission in Afghanistan is the biggest ground combat operation in NATO history, and gives Richards command of the largest number of U.S. troops fighting under a foreign commander since World War II........
QUOTE(SpaceCowboy @ Oct 14 2006, 12:37 PM) [snapback]250331[/snapback]
(all) http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/print...0578507,00.html
New reality being introduced here.
Such as it is.
~~~
QUOTE
An insurgent ambush has killed two Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and wounded two others.
Col. Fred Lewis, deputy commander of Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan, told reporters on Saturday that the wounded soldiers were in serious condition in hospital at the Kandahar Airfield.
The names and hometowns of the soldiers have yet to be released.
"The soldiers were near Pashmul, which is about 25 kilometres west of Kandahar," CTV News' Paul Workman told Newsnet on Saturday.
"It's been the site of a number of attacks in the last week or so. In fact, about six Canadian soldiers have been killed in that very place."
The soldiers were helping to develop a road meant to serve as a safer liaison between the volatile Panjwaii district and Kandahar-bound Highway 1 when militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and firearms attacked them.
The RPG attacks came as two of the soldiers were outside their armoured vehicles, Workman said.
The ensuing firefight lasted about 3.5 hours. Air support was brought in to help the Canadian soldiers.
"After the first 15 minutes or so, we were the ones doing most of the shooting," Lewis told reporters. He wouldn't discuss insurgent casualties.
Soldiers refer to a particular stretch of Highway 1 as "Ambush Alley."
Workman said the new road link to Panjwaii "has become a magnet for Taliban attacks."
The Panjwaii is Taliban heartland, and the Canadian military feels the road is significant because it will end the area's isolation, which accounts for the Taliban's resistance.
"If they put in the road, it shows that they are, in a sense, stronger than the Taliban."...
Col. Fred Lewis, deputy commander of Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan, told reporters on Saturday that the wounded soldiers were in serious condition in hospital at the Kandahar Airfield.
The names and hometowns of the soldiers have yet to be released.
"The soldiers were near Pashmul, which is about 25 kilometres west of Kandahar," CTV News' Paul Workman told Newsnet on Saturday.
"It's been the site of a number of attacks in the last week or so. In fact, about six Canadian soldiers have been killed in that very place."
The soldiers were helping to develop a road meant to serve as a safer liaison between the volatile Panjwaii district and Kandahar-bound Highway 1 when militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and firearms attacked them.
The RPG attacks came as two of the soldiers were outside their armoured vehicles, Workman said.
The ensuing firefight lasted about 3.5 hours. Air support was brought in to help the Canadian soldiers.
"After the first 15 minutes or so, we were the ones doing most of the shooting," Lewis told reporters. He wouldn't discuss insurgent casualties.
Soldiers refer to a particular stretch of Highway 1 as "Ambush Alley."
Workman said the new road link to Panjwaii "has become a magnet for Taliban attacks."
The Panjwaii is Taliban heartland, and the Canadian military feels the road is significant because it will end the area's isolation, which accounts for the Taliban's resistance.
"If they put in the road, it shows that they are, in a sense, stronger than the Taliban."...
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor...hub=CTVNewsAt11
QUOTE(davisął @ Oct 13 2006, 04:05 PM) [snapback]249903[/snapback]
Forests? My dad worked at a hemp factory in the 40s. Perhaps those forests are the fiber variety?
Yeah, probably ditch weed.
QUOTE
LONDON (Reuters) - The international community must deliver quickly on its promises to provide reconstruction and development in Afghanistan or lose the support of the Afghan public, NATO's commander in the country said on Sunday.
British Lieutenant-General David Richards insisted, however, that his forces were still wanted on the ground, where they have been fighting Taliban guerrillas, largely in the volatile south.
"The issue is how long do we take to succeed, because constant, frustrated aspirations and failed delivery on promises will slowly turn the population against us," Richards told Sky News in an interview.
"Building on some very brave fighting -- tremendously brave fighting by British troops amongst others -- we do have an opportunity to deliver those other things," he said, referring to the delivery of reconstruction and development.
"If we don't, then over time this could be a difficult and more dangerous situation still."...
British Lieutenant-General David Richards insisted, however, that his forces were still wanted on the ground, where they have been fighting Taliban guerrillas, largely in the volatile south.
"The issue is how long do we take to succeed, because constant, frustrated aspirations and failed delivery on promises will slowly turn the population against us," Richards told Sky News in an interview.
"Building on some very brave fighting -- tremendously brave fighting by British troops amongst others -- we do have an opportunity to deliver those other things," he said, referring to the delivery of reconstruction and development.
"If we don't, then over time this could be a difficult and more dangerous situation still."...
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArtic...;archived=False
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