For two weeks this January, 18 Afghan women escaped the worries of daily life at home and concentrated on what they love best: playing football.

The visit to Stuttgart by the national football players, aged between 16 and 23, was part of an ongoing project financed by the German government to develop football in Afghanistan. Since 2004, the project, organized by the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), has also included the women's game.

The German football trainer Klaus Stärk has been working with the men's and women's teams in Afghanistan for almost four years. From Jan. 21 until Feb. 1, the women national players trained in Stuttgart, the home town of German footballing legend Jürgen Klinsmann, giving them the first opportunity to play on proper football fields and to display their skills in public. They also found time to do some shopping in downtown Stuttgart.
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sheesh this all seems to be too convenient and another reason to question any reports that the US has killed a high ranking member of Al Qaida. They only stay dead til it is convenient for them to be alive..... Shall we start taking bets on when we obliterate the tribal areas of Pakistan?

Al Qaeda said to focus on WMDs

A key operative and chemical engineer who was reported to have been slain is alive and leading the effort, officials say.

By Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 3, 2008

WASHINGTON -- After a U.S. airstrike leveled a small compound in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions in January 2006, President Pervez Musharraf and his intelligence officials announced that several senior Al Qaeda operatives had been killed, and that the top prize was an elusive Egyptian who was believed to be a chemical weapons expert.

But current and former U.S. intelligence officials now believe that the Egyptian, Abu Khabab Masri, is alive and well -- and in charge of resurrecting Al Qaeda's program to develop or obtain weapons of mass destruction.

Given the problems with previous U.S. intelligence assessments of weapons of mass destruction, officials are careful not to overstate Al Qaeda's capabilities, and they emphasize that there is much they don't know because of the difficulty in getting information out of the mountainous area of northwest Pakistan where the network has reestablished itself.

But they say Al Qaeda has regenerated at least some of the robust research and development effort that it lost when the U.S. military bombed its Afghanistan headquarters and training camps in late 2001, and they believe it is once again trying to develop or obtain chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons to use in attacks on the United States and other enemies.

For now, the intelligence officials believe, that effort is largely focused on developing and using cyanide, chlorine and other poisons that are unlikely to cause the kind of mass-casualty attack that is usually associated with weapons of mass destruction.

Intelligence officials say they base their current assessments on anecdotal evidence gleaned from electronic intercepts, information provided by informants and captured Al Qaeda members and the tracking of money flows and militant websites. One international counter-terrorism official said there were indications that some operatives had received immunizations to protect themselves against biological agents.

Abu Khabab, whose real name is Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, is believed to have set up rudimentary labs with at least a handful of aides, and to have provided a stable environment in which scientists and researchers can experiment with chemicals and other compounds, said several former intelligence officials familiar with Al Qaeda's weapons program.

Recent intelligence shows that Abu Khabab, 54, is training Western recruits for chemical attacks in Europe and perhaps the United States, just as he did when he ran the "Khabab Camp" at Al Qaeda's sprawling Darunta training complex in Afghanistan's Tora Bora region before the Sept. 11 attacks, according to one senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the CIA's intelligence is classified.

Some experts questioned how far Al Qaeda could get in reconstituting a weapons program in the mountains of Pakistan.

"They are hemmed in in a way that makes it hard to do," said John V. Parachini, a senior analyst on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction at Rand Corp. "It's hard to get the industrial infrastructure together to do these things, and it's hard to get people that have the expertise to fashion these materials into weapons of mass destruction."

Several international counter-terrorism officials concurred with the U.S. intelligence assessment of Al Qaeda's weapons' effort. Raphael Perl, who heads the Action Against Terrorism Unit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said it is widely assumed that Al Qaeda developed chemical weapons years ago, and that if it doesn't have biological capabilities already, "they are certainly not far from it."

Given that Abu Khabab "has the technical knowledge," he said, "it's very, very clear that they are working both in the chemical and biological fields."

Pakistani Information Minister Nisar Memon refused to comment on Abu Khabab and Al Qaeda's weapons program, but security officials from three Pakistani intelligence agencies, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that he is alive.

The senior U.S. intelligence official described Al Qaeda's effort as "a very small, very compartmented program, and not nearly on the scale of what they had going on in Afghanistan, because you don't have the size, the security, you don't have the ease of movement" that the Taliban government provided.

Chris Quillen, a former CIA analyst specializing in Al Qaeda's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, said the network's program in Pakistan could have made significant progress without authorities knowing about it by operating in small compounds, as it did in Afghanistan.

"I am not saying the programs are great and ready for an attack tomorrow," said Quillen, who left the agency in August 2006 and is now a U.S. government intelligence contractor. "But whatever they lost in the 2001 invasion, they are back to that level at this point."

That is a source of major frustration at the CIA, which a few years back identified at least 40 people that it wanted to kill, capture or question about their suspected involvement in Al Qaeda's weapons program, Quillen and others said. They said at least half of those suspects remain at large.

Abu Khabab's ties to terrorism date to at least the mid-1980s, when he was a prominent member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization led by Ayman Zawahiri, who merged the group with Al Qaeda. Over the years he has trained hundreds of fighters at Al Qaeda's camps on how to use explosives, poisons and rudimentary chemical weapons, according to FBI documents.

Educated in Egypt as a chemical engineer, Abu Khabab has no formal training in biological or nuclear weapons, intelligence officials say. But he has ended up in charge of the weapons program at least in part because some operatives believed to be more knowledgeable about biological and nuclear weapons have been captured or killed.

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is now on the outs in Afghanistan. Cry me a river. Dostum per WIKI. Close friend of the US and Karzai, he was, until recently, Karzai's Deputy Defense Minister and Afghan army Chief of Staff. This bad actor characterizes the duplicity that has, imo, been the stock and trade of Afghanistan for centuries. Maybe somebody might remember to ask him how much money he made from organizing the massacre of thousands at his Sheberghan stronghold, reportedly including serveral journalists, and for handing over America's forgotten "Taliban", John Walker Lindh to US Special Forces. What a very tangled web. Also see BBC Bio for more on Dostum and UK Guardian Archives for more on the "wrong time, wrong place" case against Lindh.

Fall back, men, Afghanistan is a nasty war we can never win

Britain’s commanders ignored every warning that the Taliban were the toughest fighters on earth
Simon Jenkins
times online

The American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, flies to Britain this week to meet a crisis entirely of London and Washington’s creation. They have no strategy for the continuing occupation of Afghanistan. They are hanging on for dear life and praying for something to turn up. Britain is repeating the experience of Gordon in Khartoum, of the Dardanelles, Singapore and Crete, of politicians who no longer read history expecting others to die for their dreams of glory.

Every independent report on the Nato-led operation in Afghanistan cries the same message: watch out, disaster beckons. Last week America’s Afghanistan Study Group, led by generals and diplomats of impeccable credentials, reported on “a weakening international resolve and a growing lack of confidence”. An Atlantic Council report was more curt: “Make no mistake, Nato is not winning in Afghanistan.” The country was in imminent danger of becoming a failed state.

A clearly exasperated Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, has broken ranks with the official optimism and committed an extra 3,000 marines to the field, while sending an “unusually stern” note to Germany demanding that its 3,200 troops meet enemy fire. Germany, like France, has rejected that plea. Yet it is urgent since the Canadians have threatened to withdraw from the south if not relieved. An equally desperate Britain is proposing to send half-trained territorials to the front, after its commanders ignored every warning that the Taliban were the toughest fighters on earth.

Meanwhile Nato is doing what it does best, squabbling. Gates has criticised Britain for not taking the war against the insurgents with sufficient vigour. Britain is furious at America’s obsession with spraying the Helmand poppy crop and thus destroying all hope of winning hearts and minds. Most of the 37,000 soldiers wandering round Kabul were sent on the understanding that they would do no fighting. No army was ever assembled on so daft a premise.

Nato’s much-vaunted 2006 strategy has not worked. It boasted that its forces would only be guarding reconstruction and training the Afghan police. There would be no more counterproductive airstrikes against Pashtun villages. The Taliban would be countered by American special forces, with the Pakistan army attacking their rear. Two years ago anyone expressing scepticism towards this rosy scenario was greeted at Nato headquarters in Kabul with guffaws of laughter. Today that laughter must be music in Taliban ears.

Kabul is like Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. It swarms with refugees and corruption while an upper crust of well-heeled contractors, consultants and NGO groupies careers from party to party in bullet-proof Land Cruisers. Spin doctors fighting a daily battle with the truth have resorted to enemy kill-rates to imply victory, General Westmoreland’s ploy in Vietnam.

This is a far cry from Britain’s 2001 pledges of opium eradication, gender-awareness and civic-governance classes. After 87 deaths and two years of operations in Helmand, the British Army cannot even secure one dam. Aid successes such as a few new schools and roads in the north look ever more tenuous as the country detaches itself from Kabul and tribal elders struggle to make terms with Taliban commanders.

There is plainly no way 6,000 British troops are ever going to secure, let alone pacify, the south. More soldiers will simply evince more insurgency. More American raids across the Pakistan border merely offer propaganda to Al-Qaeda in its radicalisation of the tribal areas. It was just such brutalism that preceded the Soviet escalation of the counterinsurgency war in the 1980s, and the rise of the (American-backed) precursors of the Taliban.

The best news out of Kabul is the increased disenchantment of the wily Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Last week he vetoed the West’s offering of a former leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, Lord Ashdown, to co-ordinate operations in Kabul, whatever that might mean. Liberal democracy is not high on Karzai’s priority list.

He attacked the British for drawing the Taliban into his unregulated domain. When outside agents were thought to be negotiating with Taliban elements behind his back, he instantly expelled them from the country.

Meanwhile he has taken to making his own choice of provincial governors and commanders, often warlords enmeshed in the booming drugs trade. That trade offers Afghanistan its one staple income.

While the international community in Kabul wails that Karzai is too close to the druglords, the warlords and various sinister Taliban go-betweens, they are at least his warlords and his go-betweens. When Britain sacked the ruthless tribal chief, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, as governor of Helmand, Karzai was furious and rightly predicted it would lead to a surge in Taliban aggression.

For all his faults, Karzai is both an elected leader and a canny one. He is a virtual prisoner of the Nato garrison in Kabul but Afghanistan remains his country and if he thinks he can cut deals across its political heartlands, let him. If he wants Nato to stop bombing Taliban bases in Pashtun villages and killing Pashtun tribal leaders, then it should stop.

Withdraw the opium eradication teams from Helmand. Let Karzai barter money for power and power for peace. The foreign “governance” pundits in Kabul might dream of Afghanistan as a latterday Sweden, but they are never going to bring Pashtuns, Baluchis, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks into a stable federation.

Only an Afghan stands any chance of doing that, and the one Afghan on offer is Karzai.

Common sense advocates a demilitarisation of the occupation, with a withdrawal of western troops to Kabul where they can try to protect the capital and the northern trade routes. In provinces to the south and east, Karzai’s money, weapons and negotiating skills must deliver what results they can. The West cannot possibly police Afghanistan with anything remotely like the resources it has available.

Behind such a policy shift should lie an even more crucial one. For the past two decades intelligence lore has held that nothing happens along the Afghan/Pakistan frontier without agencies of the Pakistan army being involved. The latter’s pro-Taliban strategy through the 1990s was based on its obsession with “defence in depth” against India. Pakistan wanted Afghanistan stable, friendly and medieval. The security of the Punjab rested on the containment of the Pashtun tribal lands straddling the Pakistan/ Afghanistan border.

George W Bush’s reckless elevation of Al-Qaeda after 2001 promoted a small group of alien Arab guests into global warriors for Islam. It also destroyed Islamabad’s hold over the Taliban. America bribed the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf with $1 billion a year to declare a U-turn and fight his former allies.

Musharraf duly broke his non-intervention treaty with the Pashtun and sent his army against them. The Taliban’s influence increases with every attack and with every American bombing of villages. The Pakistan army is suffering greater losses in this war than either the British or the Americans.

Wise heads in Islamabad know that they must withdraw from the border and restore respect for tribal autonomy. Nothing else will incline the Pashtun and other tribes to reject Al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies. The alternative is a growing insurgency that must destabilise whatever democratic regime might emerge from this month’s Pakistan elections. That prospect is far worse than whatever fate might befall Afghanistan.

There is no sensible alternative to ending military operations against the Pashtun, flying under whatever flag. Like Iraq’s Kurdistan, Pashtunistan is a country without a state. It has been cursed by history, but it returns that curse with interest when attacked. Fate has now handed it a starring role in Britain’s nastiest war in decades, and offered it the power to wreck an emergent democracy of vital interest to the West.

To have set one of the world’s most ancient and ferocious people on the warpath against both Kabul and Islamabad takes some doing. But western diplomacy has done it. Now must begin the agonising process of escaping that appalling mistake.

In Iraq, Three Wars Engage U.S.
Shiite Extremists Pose Greatest Challenge, Military Officials Say

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 3, 2008; A19

CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq-- Three separate but related wars are being waged in this country now, and the third one, against Shiite extremists, is the most worrisome, according to the commander and senior staff of the U.S. Army division patrolling Baghdad.

The first, against al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group that U.S. officials believe is foreign-led, is going well despite occasional spikes in violence, such as Friday's dual bombings of Baghdad marketplaces. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is "frustrated" but "not defeated," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey W. Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, said in an interview last week.

The second fight, against the domestic Sunni insurgency, has become dormant in many places in the past year, as about 80,000 armed men, many of them former insurgents, switched sides and came onto the U.S. payroll with groups that officers here call "Concerned Local Citizens."

The third conflict, and perhaps the most vexing for U.S. commanders, is with Shiite extremist militias. More than two-thirds of U.S. casualties are caused by roadside bombs, particularly by high-tech anti-armor devices, planted by those groups.

Overall, senior U.S. officers find the state of the wars unexpectedly good, and are allowing themselves to begin speaking optimistically. "A year ago, I didn't see any way it was going to work out to our advantage," said Col. James Rainey, the 4th Infantry Division's director of operations, who is on his third tour of duty in Iraq. The difference now, he said, is "remarkable."

A major reason for the change, he said, is the increased effectiveness of the Iraqi army and police, to which the U.S. military refers collectively as Iraqi security forces, or ISF. "The ISF, when I was over here last time, couldn't do anything," Rainey said. Now, he continued, they frequently show tactical competence. That's crucial for future security here, because as U.S. troop numbers drop by about 25,000 between now and midsummer, to roughly 130,000, Iraqi forces will be handed a greater share of the burden.

huuh

.....snip and more positive stuff

Attacks using those bombs were a near-daily occurrence in mid-2007 as the groups reacted to the U.S. military counteroffensive known as "the surge." From April through October, detonations of the powerful weapons happened nearly every day, on average, with a peak of 36 in July.

The U.S. military's ability to find the bombs has not notably improved. In January 2007, before the surge began, 31 such bombs were planted. U.S. troops found 14 before they were detonated; the other 17 went off. Last month's numbers were similar: The same number were planted, and U.S. troops detected 16, with 15 exploding.

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Leak on Cross-Border Chases From Iraq

NYT

By ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: February 4, 2008

WASHINGTON — American military forces in Iraq were authorized to pursue former members of Saddam Hussein’s government and terrorists across Iraq’s borders into Iran and Syria, according to a classified 2005 document that has been made public by an independent Web site.

The document, which was disclosed by the organization Wikileaks and which American officials said appeared authentic, outlined the rules of engagement for the American division that was based in Baghdad and central Iraq that year.

It also provided instructions for how to deal with the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr: his status as a hostile foe was “suspended,” and he and his key associates were not to be attacked except in self-defense.

Wikileaks, a Web site that encourages posting of leaked materials, says its goal in disclosing secret documents is to reveal “unethical behavior” by governments and corporations. It has previously posted the United States military’s manual for operating its prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; a military assessment of a 2004 attack in Falluja; and lists of American military equipment in Iraq.

The American military command in Baghdad on Sunday sharply criticized the group’s decision to post the document.

“While we will not comment on whether this is, in fact, an official document, we do consider the deliberate release of what Wikileaks believes to be a classified document is irresponsible and, if valid, could put U.S. military personnel at risk,” said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, a spokesman for the command.

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Poland offers helicopters, political support for Canada's Afghan demands

Mike Blanchfield
Canwest News Service

Monday, February 04, 2008

OTTAWA - Some NATO countries are "free riding" in Afghanistan, Poland's foreign minister said Monday as he volunteered the use of two helicopters for Canada's military contingent in Kandahar.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Canada had a solid ally in its quest to prod NATO to find an additional 1,000 troops for southern Afghanistan as well as some much needed equipment.

Sikorski's blunt talk plunged him directly into the heart of the controversy facing NATO as the alliance's defence ministers prepare to meet later this week in Vilnius, Lithuania, prior to the NATO leaders summit in Bucharest, Romania, in early April.

NATO is trying hard to play down growing public divisions that are pitting countries doing the bulk of the front-line fighting in southern Afghanistan, notably Canada, Britain, the U.S. and the Netherlands - and more so lately, Poland - against countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain, whose troops are based in less-volatile parts of Afghanistan.

Sikorski highlighted the fact that Poland has twice answered NATO's call for reinforcements in the last 18 months, bolstering its contribution to 1,600 troops and eight helicopters in southern and eastern Afghanistan - all without caveats, the restrictions that keep some countries from moving their forces out of their proscribed areas of responsibility.

"I hope it's a good beginning. I hope that we're showing that not only are Canada's contribution and sacrifices appreciated also that Canada's voice is being heard," Sikorski said after a speech to a diplomatic and military audience.

"We will certainly with Canada be arguing very forcefully in the run-up to the Bucharest summit that more needs to be done, burdens need to be shared more fairly and that there's not room for free riding in this most important operation."

When pressed, Sikorski would not name the so-called free riders, but repeated his mantra that countries that give their troops without caveats "give twice."

"We should not be criticizing allies; we should be motivating them to do more," he added

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Revealed: British plan to build training camp for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan

By Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Monday, 4 February 2008

The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

The British insist President Karzai's office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.

The row was the first in a series of spectacular diplomatic spats which has seen Anglo-Afghan relations sink to a new low. Since December, President Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to the top UN job in Kabul and he has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand.

It has also soured relations between Kabul and Washington, where State Department officials were instrumental in pushing Lord Ashdown for the UN role.

President Karzai's political mentor, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, endorsed a death sentence for blasphemy on the student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh last week, and two British contractors have been arrested in Kabul on, it is claimed, trumped up weapons charges. The developments are seen as a deliberate defiance of the British.

An Afghan government source said the training camp was part of a British plan to use bands of reconciled Taliban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents. "The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders," he said.

The computer memory stick at the centre of the row was impounded by officers from Afghanistan's KGB-trained National Directorate of Security after they moved against a party of international diplomats who were visiting Helmand.

A ministry insider said: "When they were arrested, the British said the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Council knew about it, but no one knew anything. That's why the President was so angry."

Details of how much President Karzai was told remain murky. Some analysts believe Afghan officials were briefed about the plan, but that it later evolved.

The camp was due to be built outside Musa Qala, in Helmand. It was part of a package of reconstruction and development incentives designed to win trust and support in the aftermath of the British-led battle to retake the stronghold last year.

But the Afghans feared the British were training a militia with no loyalty to the central government. Intercepted Taliban communications suggested they thought the British were trying to help them, the Afghan official said.

The Western delegates, Michael Semple and Mervyn Patterson, were given 48 hours to leave the country. Their Afghan colleagues, including a former army general, were jailed. The expulsions coincided with a row within the Taliban's ranks which saw a senior commander, Mansoor Dadullah, sacked for talking to British spies. One official claimed the camp was planned for Mansoor and his men.

The computer stick contained a three-stage plan, called the European Union Peace Building Programme. The third stage covered military training.

Curiously, the European Union says the programme did not exist and there were no EU funds to run it.

Afghan government officials insist it was bankrolled by the British. UK diplomats, the UN, Western officials and senior Afghan officials have all confirmed the outline of the plan, which they agree is entirely British-led, but all refused to talk about it on the record. President Karzai's office claimed it was "a matter of national security".

The memory stick revealed that $125,000 (£64,000) had been spent on preparing the camp and a further $200,000 was earmarked to run it in 2008, an Afghan official said. The figures sparked allegations that British agents were paying the Taliban.

President Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, accused Mr Semple and Mr Patterson of being "involved in some activities that were not their jobs."

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related: Talking to the wrong people ~ Jan 19/Asia Times

The people in the Amu Darya region in northern Afghanistan would vouchsafe that General Rashid Dostum's behavior can be depended on as an unfailing barometer of their country's political climate. The tough Uzbek leader from Shibirghan keenly reacts when tensions begin to mount in his country. The brief three-year spell between 1998 and 2001 was an exception when the Taliban regime forced him into exile in Ankara, Turkey. But no sooner had the September 11, 2001, attacks taken place, Dostum found his way back to Afghanistan.

On Sunday night, Dostum appeared on the roof of his villa in the upmarket Kabul district of Wazir Akbar Khan and showered invectives at a detachment of 100 Afghan police officers who surrounded his compound with assault rifles and machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks. (The police later lifted the siege after receiving orders "to hand the case over to the judiciary for investigation".)

The "case" involved an incident earlier in the evening when Dostum, accompanied by 50 heavily armed men, entered the house of his estranged former political aide Akbar Bay and allegedly assaulted and kidnapped him. The police later rescued Bay and had him hospitalized. Two of Bay's bodyguards were shot. Dostum's associates later alleged that the Afghan government was plotting against their leader. They warned, "If General Dostum is surrounded and anyone touches even one hair on Dostum's head, they must know that seven or eight northern provinces will turn against the [Kabul] government."

They feigned indignation, "Certainly, we were not expecting that from the security forces - particularly from the Interior Ministry - to surround the house of General Dostum in Kabul, [he] holds a higher position than the Interior minister." Dostum, who leads the political party Junbish-i-Milli and holds the symbolic post of chief of staff to the commander in chief, has an uncanny knack for appearing on the center stage whenever Afghan politics is at a crossroads. Of course, the most famous instance was in 1990.

That was also in Kabul in another extraordinary tension-filled time when the blame game had already begun, the Soviet Union was on the wane as a superpower, Mohammad Najibullah's regime was on its last legs and the Afghan mujahideen forces were stealthily advancing on their capital city - like the Taliban today. In the summer of that fateful year, Dostum, who was the Praetorian Guard of Najibullah's regime, began negotiating with Ahmad Shah Massoud, blurring enemy lines, possibly with Soviet encouragement, and paved the way for the mujahideen takeover in Kabul. The rest, as they say, is history.
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· Record deployment of paratroopers
· Country may be sliding to civil war

A fresh British force with extra firepower is to be sent to Afghanistan as the US intensifies pressure on other European allies in an increasingly urgent attempt to prevent the country from collapsing into civil war. In what is being described as a "critical week" for Nato's role in Afghanistan, the British move, due to be announced today, shows that the government is prepared to maintain a significant military presence there despite severe pressure on its already overstretched army.

All three regular battalions of the Parachute Regiment will provide the backbone of 16 Air Assault Brigade when it takes over from the existing UK infantry brigade based in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, in April, defence officials said. It is believed to be the first time so many paras have been sent on a joint combat mission since the second world war, though the total number of UK troops there will remain at about 7,700.
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Really? Another War On Drugs. How's the first one going?

American soldiers kill 3 Iraqis in raid

What's the real story here? Why would a young Concerned Local Citizen and his father decide to turn insurgent, and then open fire on American soldiers from their own house, putting their family at risk? There's a good possibility that someone decided to settle a grudge with this family, and fed the American forces a false tip so the Americans would do the dirty work for them.

Why British-Afghan ties have hit a low
By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Kabul

Relations between Britain and Afghanistan are at rock bottom despite the $3bn of aid money the UK has pumped into the country, the 87 servicemen who have died here and the 7,800 troops on active duty.

In October, President Hamid Karzai went on a "wonderful" walk with Prince Charles in Scotland.

But by Christmas Day the British ambassador to Kabul was called to the presidential palace to explain why a man working with the British was talking to the Taleban.

And by last week, President Karzai told journalists British troops had actually made things worse in Helmand, and then he blocked Lord Paddy Ashdown from taking up a role that was designed to give international efforts here a new direction.

Bloody history

So where did it all go wrong? Anglo-Afghan relations are always on a knife-edge, and perhaps history is the first place to look for the explanation.

The British have a long and bloody history in Afghanistan - both of killing and of being killed.

And it's not only the Taleban who invoke memories of the great British defeats of the 19th Century as propaganda.

Afghans know the stories of subterfuge and betrayal that accompanied this "Great Game" as British and Russian empires fought for influence in Afghanistan.

And the mistrust of the past is not lost on the present ¿ this is a place where rumour, conspiracy theory and paranoia make a heady cocktail.

Some mothers still tell their children "be good or the British will get you" in the same way the "bogey man" might, and Pashtuns often use the same word for "Satan" as they do for "Briton". Then there's a mistrust about Britain's dealings with Pakistan.

With the threat of "home-grown terror", the UK sees maintaining good links with the Pakistani intelligence services as vital - even if some suspect them of playing a double game by supporting the Taleban or at the least not doing enough to the stop cross-border insurgency.

But amid all the baggage is a president preparing for an election scheduled for next year, who does not want to be seen as a puppet of the west and who is under increasing pressure from both Pashtun and Northern Alliance politicians inside his government.

'Viceroy' fears

Afghanistan is a sovereign country, President Karzai was democratically elected, but he relies on 40,000 troops and billions of dollars of aid to survive.

It's not surprising then that he is so sensitive about public opinion and does read a lot of newspapers - particularly the British press.

more at BBC

Planned troop withdrawals won't bring much relief to U.S. military

By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Wednesday, February 6, 2008

WASHINGTON — Top Defense Department officials testified Wednesday that the Bush administration's plan to withdraw some 20,000 U.S. troops from Iraq this summer will do little to relieve the stress on the Army and Marine Corps.

Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the military was exhausted by the repeated deployments to Iraq.

Finding a way to reduce the amount of time troops are deployed to Iraq is critical, he said. Currently, soldiers are sent to Iraq for 15-month tours, and Marines serve seven-month stints, followed by seven months at home.

"The well is deep, but it is not infinite," Mullen said. "We must get Army deployments down to 12 months as soon as possible. People are tired."

Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appeared before the committee to discuss the administration's request for $588.3 billion in defense spending for the 2009 budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

President Bush announced last year that the U.S. would reduce the number of American troops in Iraq by five combat brigades — about 20,000 people — during the first half of this year. U.S. troop strength in Iraq has hovered above 160,000 since June, when the military completed the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops as part of the so-called surge, which was intended to restore calm to Baghdad.

But security conditions will determine whether troop strength can be further reduced, officials have warned. Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, is expected to report this spring whether there can be more troop reductions.

Mullen said he favored reducing the number of troops in Iraq "sooner rather than later" so that Iraq deployments could return to 12 months. But he said that decision hasn't been made.

Others at the Pentagon doubt that the U.S. will be able to reduce troop strength in Iraq to 100,000 for some time.

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from Eric at Newshoggers:

Don't Fence Me In

As Cernig added in an update below, the Bush administration announced that the long-term bilateral agreement that it will try to reach with the Iraqi government will not include a security guarantee to defend the Iraqi government from external and internal threats. The Bush administration put forth a rationale for dropping the security guarantee provision that is based on a respect for checks, balances and the constitutional separation of powers. So it should raise an eyebrow or two.

The administration has maintained that the agreement would not rise to the level of a treaty. The "security guarantee" statement appeared in the announcement because Iraqis wanted it on the table, the administration official said. But, he said, the United States does not believe it to be necessary. "We say, look, if you want a security guarantee, that will be a treaty, and a treaty will have to go to our Senate," endangering the whole agreement, he said.

much more w/links at Newshoggers

PM Harper should stop quit acting foolish by begging, threatening and generally being obstreperous with the other, smarter NATO arms dealers who see no further need for their sons to travel half way around the world to kill Afghans and smash their stuff. What do we need with those silly NATO chaps, now that we have our very own warlord. NOt only that but he and his gang are cheap, too, and not only that but we probably don't have to house and feed them or provide dental. Here's an old story that slid through the cracks somehow. National Post

Canadian Forces hire former Afghan warlord to defend operating base

CanWest News Service Published: Thursday, November 22, 2007

The Canadian Forces have hired a former Afghan warlord to provide private security guards at one of Canada's remote forward operating bases deep in the heart of Taliban country, CanWest News Service has learned. Military officials say the government employs private security contractors, but they refuse to identify them or the bases they protect. However, an analysis of publicly available records, obtained under the Access to Information Act, shows one of the contractors is General Gulalai, pictured, a former warlord aligned with Afghan President Hamid Karzai who helped drive the Taliban from their Kandahar stronghold in 2001. In January, the Defence Department awarded a $168,150 contract to a vendor identified as "General Gulalai."

Shia call on Mehdi Army to take up arms again in Iraq

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Thursday, 7 February 2008

In the alleys of the ancient district of al-Salaikh in Baghdad, a Shia family fought a fierce gun battle with Sunni militiamen who tried to stop them reoccupying their house from which they had been forced to flee months earlier.

The Shia family got the worst of the fighting and, after suffering seven dead, sent a desperate message asking for help to the Mehdi Army, the powerful Shia militia of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that once would have rushed to defend them. On this occasion, however, the local Mehdi Army commander turned them down, saying: "We can do nothing because we are under orders not to break the ceasefire."

It is this six-month ceasefire, declared on 29 August last year by Mr Sadr, which American commanders say is responsible for cutting much of the violence in Iraq. But the ceasefire will expire in the next few weeks and political and military leaders loyal to Mr Sadr are advising him not to renew it.

They complain that state security organs, in effect controlled by their Shia rivals in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), are using the truce to attack them, particularly in and around the southern city of Diwaniya from which 300 Sadrist families have been expelled. The Sadrists also complain that US troops and the Iraqi army are targeting Mehdi Army leaders and al-Qa'ida has once again started bombing Shia civilians as they did last Friday when two bird markets in Shia districts were attacked, killing 99 people.

Salah al-Ubaidi, the spokesman for Mr Sadr, said a committee of Sadrist legislators said: "They don't want the ceasefire to remain. They want it lifted because of oppressive acts by security forces in Diwaniya".

Mohammed, the head of a Sadrist district office in Baghdad, said that in Diwaniya the security forces "have started arresting the wives and daughters of our men who have fled. There is low morale there as we do not help them because of the ceasefire".

The Sadrist movement is the only real mass movement in Iraq and is the voice of the poor Shia, who make up much of the Iraqi population. It was created by Mr Sadr's revered father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr – assassinated with two of his sons on the orders of Saddam Hussein in 1999 – and revived by Muqtada in 2003.

Mr Sadr surprised his followers by calling a total ceasefire in August last year after clashes with ISCI-backed security forces in Kerbala. He said he wanted to purge his movement of criminal gangs and anti-Sunni death squads. "Muqtada wanted the Mehdi Army to have a good reputation," said Mohammed. "We vet people now in a way we didn't before. Police come to us and say, 'this criminal says he works for you' and sometimes we say 'yes' and sometimes 'no'."

The Sadrist ability to enforce the ceasefire is impressive given the movement's previous reputation for being so decentralised that it was out of control. "Sadr's followers are strong, patient and stick to their work," said Mohammed. "But we are militarily weak because of the freeze on action."

This claim of weakness is a little exaggerated. The Sadrists probably still control about half of Baghdad and 80 per cent of Shia areas. Often they can get what they want because nobody wants them as an enemy. When 12 Mehdi Army men with weapons, and without papers giving them the right to carry them, were arrested by Interior Ministry officials in Palestine Street, the local Sadrist leader Sheikh Abbas Rubaie called the ministry and said: "Release them by six or you know what we will do." Minutes later they were back on the streets.

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Rice: Afghanistan Has Come Long Way

By ANNE GEARAN
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 7, 2008; 5:57 PM

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she has seen progress in Afghanistan during the past few years, despite a determined Taliban insurgency that has disrupted security and prompted concerns that the NATO-led military campaign is faltering.

And Defense Secretary Robert Gates, seeking more military contributions from NATO members, said he's disappointed that some countries haven't sent combat troops to Afghanistan. But he also said he doesn't think the alliance is at a point of risking failure in the country.

"I don't think that there's a crisis, that there's a risk of failure," Gates said during a news conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, after meeting with NATO defense ministers. He said, however, that strengthening the fighting force there would help speed the defeat of the Taliban militants. "My view is that it represents potentially the opportunity to make further progress faster in Afghanistan if we had more forces there."

Gates noted that despite security setbacks, the country has made gains on the civil side of things, improving the daily lives of Afghans.

Rice made the same point from Afghanistan, saying it's tough to fight militants who have waged a battle for control for many years.

"If you look at the Afghanistan of 2001 and the Afghanistan of now there is a remarkable difference for the better," she said.

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Mullen: Army must return to 12-month tours

By Anne Flaherty - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Feb 7, 2008 22:10:07 EST

WASHINGTON — The top uniformed military officer on Wednesday described a tired U.S. military force, worn thin by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and unlikely to come home in large numbers anytime soon.

The assessment comes as President Bush decides whether to continue troop reductions in Iraq — possibly endangering fragile security gains made in recent months — or not, and risk straining ground forces further.

“The well is deep, but it is not infinite,” Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We must get Army deployments down to 12 months as soon as possible. People are tired.”

Mullen’s stern warning swiftly became political fodder for anti-war Democrats, who want legislation requiring that troops start coming home from Iraq immediately. Democrats also want legislation that would require soldiers and Marines spend more time at home between combat tours. The Pentagon objects to both proposals, contending it would tie the hands of military commanders.

The leader of the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, said Mullen’s testimony “confirms our warning that the war in Iraq has seriously undermined our nation’s military strength and readiness, and therefore our national security.”

“We need a new direction in our Iraq policy, one that will bring our troops home honorably, safely, and soon,” Pelosi added.

Mullen was testifying with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the administration’s half-trillion dollar defense budget for 2009. Bush is asking for $588.3 billion for the Defense Department, only $70 billion of which would go toward the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war money is expected to last until early 2009, when the next president takes over.

If the current rate of war spending is a guide, the additional request for 2009 is likely to exceed $100 billion, Gates said. But, he added that he has no confidence in that number, in part because he does not know how many troops will be in Iraq this fall. Also uncertain is whether Congress will approve the $102.5 billion still needed in this budget year, he said.

In his testimony, Gates said a long-term agreement being negotiated with Iraq on the presence of U.S. forces will not contain a commitment to defend Baghdad against external threats.

Democrats are expected to oppose any agreement with Iraq that provides such a guarantee, as well as efforts to halt further troop reductions.

“It is long past time that the Iraqi leaders hear a clear simple message: We can’t save them from themselves,” said Sen. Carl Levin, the Democratic panel chairman. “It’s in their hands, not ours, to create a nation by making the political compromises needed to end the conflict.”

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Here's what Jolie told CNN about the situation:

"There's lots of goodwill and lots of discussion, but there seems to be just a lot of talk at the moment," Jolie said. "What happens in Iraq and how Iraq settles in the years to come is going to effect the entire Middle East, and a big part of what it's going to effect, how it settles, is how these people are returned and settled into their homes and their community and brought back together and whether they can live together and what their communities look like."

Well there you go Angelina Jolie said it. Iraq is very important to the future of the Middle East, people need to stop talking and start fixing.
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Truthdig

Posted on Feb 5, 2008

By Scott Ritter

Any analysis of the current state of the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq that relied solely on the U.S. government, the major candidates for president or the major media outlets in the United States for information would be hard pressed to find any bad news. In a State of the Union address which had everything except a “Mission Accomplished” banner flying in the background, President Bush all but declared victory over the insurgency in Iraq. His recertification of the success of the so-called surge has prompted the Republican candidates to assume a cocky swagger when discussing Iraq. They embrace the occupation and speak, without shame or apparent fear of retribution, of an ongoing presence in that war-torn nation. Their Democratic counterparts have been less than enthusiastic in their criticism of the escalation. And the media, for the most part, continue their macabre role as cheerleaders of death, hiding the reality of Iraq deep inside stories that build upon approving headlines derived from nothing more than political rhetoric. The war in Iraq, we’re told, is virtually over. We only need “stay the course” for 10 more years.

This situation is troublesome in the extreme. The collective refusal of any constituent in this complicated mix of political players to confront Bush on Iraq virtually guarantees that it will be the Bush administration, and not its successor, that will dictate the first year (or more) of policy in Iraq for the next president. It also ensures that the debacle that is the Bush administration’s overarching Middle East policy of regional transformation and regime change in not only Iraq but Iran and Syria will continue to go unchallenged. If the president is free to pursue his policies, it could lead to direct military intervention in Iran by the United States prior to President Bush’s departure from office or, failing that, place his successor on the path toward military confrontation. At a time when every data point available certifies (and recertifies) the administration’s actions in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere (including Afghanistan) as an abject failure, America collectively has fallen into a hypnotic trance, distracted by domestic economic problems and incapable, due to our collective ignorance of the world we live in, of deciphering the reality on the ground in the Middle East.

Rather than offering a word-for-word renouncement of the president’s rosy assertions concerning Iraq, I will instead initiate a process of debunking the myth of American success by doing that which no politician, current or aspiring, would dare do: predict the failure of American policy in Iraq. With the ink on the newspapers parroting the president’s words barely dry, evidence of his misrepresentation of reality begins to build with the announcement by the Pentagon that troop levels in Iraq will not be dropping, as had been projected in view of the “success” of the “surge,” but rather holding at current levels with the possibility of increasing in the future. This reversal of course concerning troop deployments into Iraq highlights the reality that the statistical justification of “surge success,” namely the reduction in the level of violence, was illusory, a temporary lull brought about more by smoke and mirrors than any genuine change of fortune on the ground. Even the word surge is inappropriate for what is now undeniably an escalation. Iraq, far from being a nation on the rebound, remains a mortally wounded shell, the equivalent of a human suffering from a sucking chest wound, its lungs collapsed and its life blood spilling unchecked onto the ground. The “surge” never addressed the underlying reasons for Iraq’s post-Saddam suffering, and as such never sought to heal that which was killing Iraq. Instead, the “surge” offered little more than a cosmetic gesture, covering the wounds of Iraq with a bandage which shielded the true extent of the damage from outside view while doing nothing to save the victim.

Iraq is dying; soon Iraq will be dead. True, there will be a plot of land in the Middle East which people will refer to as Iraq. But any hope of a resurrected homogeneous Iraqi nation populated by a diverse people capable of coexisting in peace and harmony is soon to be swept away forever. Any hope of a way out for the people of Iraq and their neighbors is about to become a victim of the “successes” of the “surge” and the denial of reality. The destruction of Iraq has already begun. The myth of Kurdish stability—born artificially out of the U.S.-enforced “no-fly zones” of the 1990s, sustained through the largess of the Oil-for-Food program (and U.S.-approved sanctions sidestepped by the various Kurdish groups in Iraq) and given a Frankenstein-like lease on life in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion and occupation—is rapidly unraveling. Like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, present-day Iraqi Kurdistan has been exposed as an amalgam of parts incompatible not only with each other but the region as a whole.

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I did inhale.

MUNICH — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that many Europeans were confused about NATO’s security mission in Afghanistan, and that they did not support the alliance effort because they opposed the American-led invasion of Iraq.

“I worry that for many Europeans the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are confused,” Mr. Gates said as he flew here to deliver an address at an international security conference.

“I think that they combine the two,” he added. “Many of them, I think, have a problem with our involvement in Iraq and project that to Afghanistan, and do not understand the very different — for them — the very different kind of threat.”

The comments were the first in which Mr. Gates had explicitly linked European antipathy to American policy in Iraq with the reason large segments of the public here do not support the NATO operation in Afghanistan.

Mr. Gates’s assessment was an unusually candid acknowledgment from a senior member of President Bush’s cabinet that the war in Iraq had exacted a direct and significant political cost, even among Washington’s closest allies.

Over recent weeks, Mr. Gates has made public and private efforts to persuade NATO governments to offer more combat troops and military and police trainers for the Afghan mission. At the conclusion of a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers in Lithuania on Friday morning, Mr. Gates expressed confidence that “a number of the allies are considering what more they might be able to do.”

Mr. Gates said that his recent public comments, as well his keynote speech here on Sunday, are meant to “focus on why Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and failure in Afghanistan would be a security problem for Europe.”
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Did the US Military withdraw military from Germany and Japan and Italy after WWII?
Did they withdraw from Korea after the Korean War 55 years ago?
Did they withdraw from Panama after the invasion of 1998?

US Military: 5 Soldiers Killed in Iraq

Saturday February 9, 2008 3:01 AM

NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. military said five soldiers were killed Friday in two separate incidents in Iraq.

Four soldiers died when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device while the troops were on a combat patrol northwest of Baghdad, the military said.

In violence near Tikrit, another soldier and killed and three others wounded in an explosion near their vehicle as thy carried out operations in Tamim province, the military said in a statement.

U.S. raids Iraq psychiatric hospital over attacks
10 Feb 2008 16:33:19 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Michael Holden

BAGHDAD, Feb 10 (Reuters) - U.S. troops raided a psychiatric hospital in Baghdad on Sunday and arrested a man suspected of involvement in two recent bombings blamed on mentally impaired women, the U.S. military said.

Ten days ago, explosives carried by two women, said by Iraqi and U.S. officials to be mentally handicapped teenagers and unwitting suicide bombers, blew up in two popular pet markets in central Baghdad, killing 99 people and wounding more than 150.

The attacks, which the U.S. military blamed on al Qaeda, were the deadliest bombings in the city since last April.

"We did conduct an operation at the al-Rashad hospital," Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Stover, a spokesman for U.S. troops in Baghdad, told Reuters.

"We detained an individual that we believe was linked to al Qaeda in Iraq and suicide bombers."

He confirmed the man was suspected of being involved in the recent deadly attacks but declined to give any further details. The man had not yet been charged, he added.

An Iraqi Health Ministry official said the acting director of the al-Rashad hospital, which cares for mentally ill patients in southeastern Baghdad, had been taken into custody.

Another senior health official in charge of hospitals in the area identified the same man and said U.S. and Iraqi forces spent three hours searching the building.

"They arrested the acting director, accusing him of working with al Qaeda and recruiting mentally ill women and using them in suicide bombing operations," the hospital official said, adding that patient files and computers had been seized.

Neither U.S. nor Iraqi officials have produced definitive evidence that the market bombers suffered any mental impairment but both sides have said there was strong evidence to indicate the women suffered from Down syndrome.

They have also said it was likely the women were unwitting bombers duped by al Qaeda and their condition was possibly a reason why the women were able to avoid being searched.

Norway closes Kabul embassy after terrorist threat

Feb 10, 2008, 13:11 GMT
M&C

Norway's government closed its embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul Sunday following a terrorist threat, a spokeswoman for the Norwegian Foreign Ministry in Oslo said.

The spokeswoman gave no further details, but said the government was taking the threat seriously and was looking into it.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store survived a bomb attack on the Hotel Serena in Kabul in mid-January in which seven people died.

Norway has 500 soldiers in Afghanistan, including a rapid reaction force that will be replaced by German troops on July 1.

US sniper jailed for Iraqi murder

A US army sniper has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for murder without premeditation after he killed an Iraqi civilian and planted evidence on him.

In May 2007, Sgt Evan Vela shot Genei Nasir al-Janabi, after the man saw him and other US snipers hiding near the town of Iskandariya, south of Baghdad.

After the killing Vela planted an AK-47 on the Iraqi's body.

Vela had admitted to killing Mr Janabi, but tried to say it was an accident, blaming sleep deprivation.

His defence argued that Vela had shot the man because he was acutely sleep deprived, having slept for less than five hours in three days whilst out in hostile terrain.

And that he had lied about the incident afterwards partly because he had been suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

U.S. Ties Europe’s Safety to Afghanistan

MUNICH — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a stark warning on Sunday to Europeans, saying that their safety from terrorist attack by Islamic extremists was directly linked to NATO’s success in stabilizing Afghanistan.

After weeks of calling on NATO governments to send more combat troops and trainers to Afghanistan, Mr. Gates made his case directly to Europe’s inhabitants in a keynote address to an international security conference here. Mr. Gates summoned the memory of Sept. 11, 2001, to say that Europe was at risk of becoming victim to attacks of the same enormity.

“I am concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the magnitude of the direct threat to European security,” Mr. Gates said. “For the United States, Sept. 11 was a galvanizing event, one that opened the American public’s eyes to dangers from distant lands.”

In a hall filled with government officials, lawmakers and policy analysts from around the world, Mr. Gates added: “So now I would like to add my voice to those of many allied leaders on the Continent and speak directly to the people of Europe. The threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real, and it is not going to go away.”

Mr. Gates listed terrorist attacks in Madrid, London, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Paris and Glasgow and said other terrorist plots, some complex, had been disrupted before they could be carried out in Belgium, Germany and Denmark and in airliners over the Atlantic.
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Two CBS journalists missing in Iraq

11 Feb 2008 19:33:37 GMT
Source: Reuters

NEW YORK, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Two journalists working for CBS News have gone missing in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, the company said in a statement.

"All efforts are under way to find them and until we learn more details, CBS News requests that others do not speculate on the identities of those involved. CBS News has been in touch with the families and asks that their privacy be respected," CBS News said in a statement.

Iraq has become extremely hazardous for journalists, raising concerns about the diminished amount of information about the war that is available to the public.