... deadlier than in Iraq. Not surprising actually; what with high intensity drone attacks and all. One more example of diving into a culture we understand nothing about. It isn't we can't bomb them back to the stone age; because we can't; they've never really altogether left it. There are too many tribes; too many differences; and never enough commonality for any form of community in the sense we understand it. If we leave; the Afghanis will do as they've always done; they will settle their differences and live as they have for thousands of years; together. All we'll do is further fuck it up. It's all we know how to do.

Where i saw it, but i did see a news video focusing on Afghan National Army and Police trainees defecting. The video made it seem like the sort of problem that's larger than the US/NATO/ISAF would like to admit. Of course, they defect after receiving paramilitary training from the likes of Xe(Blackwater)...and one even had the id badge to prove it...and a weapon.

bbc

Two soldiers are missing in western Afghanistan after failing to return from a routine resupply mission two days ago, Nato officials have said.

"Exhaustive" search and rescue operations were being carried out to try and locate the soldiers, Nato said.

In a statement, Nato did not give the soldiers' nationalities or say which province they had been in when they went missing.

Military officials said the families of the two soldiers had been informed.

McClatchy, By Jonathan S. Landay, November 5

WASHINGTON — Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan have devised ways to cripple and even destroy the expensive armored vehicles that offer U.S. forces the best protection against roadside bombs by using increasingly large explosive charges and rocket-propelled grenades, according to U.S. soldiers and defense officials.

At least eight American troops have been killed this year in attacks on so-called Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, and 40 more have been wounded, said a senior U.S. military official who, like others interviewed on the issue, declined to be further identified because of the issue's sensitivity.

The insurgents' success in attacking the hulking machines, which can cost as much as $1 million each, underscores their ability to counter the advanced hardware that the U.S. military and its allies are deploying in their struggle to gain the upper hand in the war, which entered its ninth year last month.

The attacks also raise questions about how vulnerable a new, lighter MRAP, the M-ATV, which is now being shipped to Afghanistan, are to the massive explosive charges that Taliban-led insurgents have been using against its bigger cousin.

Afghanistan hits back at UN and foreign criticism

07 Nov 2009 11:40:38 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Kabul strongly criticises U.N.'s Eide
* Karzai under pressure to root out corruption
* Statement defends anti-corruption efforts

(KABUL, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Afghanistan accused the United Nations on Saturday of intervening in the formation of President Hamid Karzai's next cabinet, less than a week into his new term.

Since being re-elected in a controversial poll in which a fraud investigation rejected more than a million of his votes, Karzai has been under intense pressure from his Western backers to introduce swift anti-corruption reforms.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that comments made by the top U.N. envoy in Kabul at a news conference on Thursday had "exceeded international norms and his authority".

Kai Eide had said then that "warlords and power-brokers" should not decide the shape of the next government and warned Afghanistan it should not assume that its strategic importance guaranteed it continued international support.

The Foreign Ministry statement said instructions by "some political and diplomatic circles and propaganda agencies of certain foreign countries" had "violated respect for Afghanistan's national sovereignty".

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yano every time Karzai opens his mouth it makes me want to say fuck it and support pulling everyone put of Afghanistan

US National Security Adviser James L. Jones talks to SPIEGEL about his skepticism regarding calls for more US troops to be sent to Afghanistan, the chances of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands and President Barack Obama's leadership style.

Spiegel

something stinks here:

General aims to foil Taliban plan to make Afghanistan a British election issue

By Ray Whitaker and Jane Merrick
Sunday, 8 November 2009

Barack Obama's top general in Afghanistan is considering a radical realignment of Britain's role in the country amid fears that the Taliban will target UK troops in the run-up to next May's general election.

General Stanley McChrystal, Nato commander in Kabul, believes Britain's continued involvement would be politically more palatable at home if its 9,000 soldiers were moved out of "harm's way" from the frontline in Helmand.

Senior defence strategists fear that the death toll of British soldiers, currently 230, could be as high as 400 by the time of the election in six months, as Taliban fighters try to exploit UK public concerns about the war.

The McChrystal plan would be welcomed by those arguing for a phased withdrawal in the face of rising British casualties. But it could be seen as a humiliating downgrading of Britain's status. A senior military source said: "Given the risks of a UK strategic withdrawal prompted by the high casualty rate over the summer, McChrystal feels the need to keep Britain 'in the fight' by withdrawing British forces from harm's way, by firstly pulling them back into a smaller area of operations commensurate with their resources; and secondly by transferring them to a 'capacity-building' rather than a 'frontline mission'."

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Guardian (Editorial) -
The dimensions of the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan are becoming bigger and more daunting by the day. Once-staunch defenders of the "good war" are starting to break ranks.

Kim Howells, a former Foreign Office minister with responsibility for Afghanistan and current chairman of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, questions in our newspaper today the central tenet of the government's case for fighting in Afghanistan: that it is the frontline of a war that would otherwise be conducted on British streets. Mr Howells said counter-terrorism would be better served by bringing the majority of servicemen home. Better, he argues, to concentrate on protecting our borders and gathering intelligence at home and abroad.

He is saying publicly what many in government must be thinking privately: that troops are dying needlessly in a war that is unwinnable, with a strategy that is unworkable, and that we should be thinking of the alternative now. We do not agree with everything Mr Howells says, but at least he is saying it, which puts him in a class above most other politicians. Mr Howells may have cast the first stone, but the current consensus is wearing so thin that it would not take much to shatter. more

_{I feel the American worker has been sacrificed to the capitalist idols in the ancient Mayan fashion. - Sue Lamb, NYT reader}

'Cronies and warlords' wait in the wings

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pulled no punches in saying that "cronies and warlords" should have no place in the future of a democratic Afghanistan. But the point is, cabinet and provincial governor appointments are a part of a complex political contract in Kabul and it is extremely doubtful that Karzai is in a position to oblige Britain, or any other country, even if he wanted to. - M K Bhadrakumar (Nov 9, '09)

It's payback time in Kabul

In return for their pledges to guarantee huge majorities for Hamid Karzai in the August 20 election, the Afghan president had to make promises to a number of power brokers and warlords in the provinces of key ministries in the next government. Now Karzai has to deliver. - Gareth Porter (Nov 9, '09)

November 11, 2009
By MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Four former Blackwater executives said in interviews that Gary Jackson, who was then the company’s president, had approved the bribes, and the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where Blackwater maintains an operations hub, to a top manager in Iraq. The executives, though, said they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi officials or the identities of the potential recipients.

Blackwater’s strategy of buying off the government officials, which would have been illegal under American law, created a deep rift inside the company, according to the former executives. They said that Cofer Black, who was then the company’s vice chairman and a former top C.I.A. and State Department official, learned of the plan from another Blackwater manager while he was in Baghdad discussing compensation for families of the shooting victims with United States Embassy officials.

Alarmed about the secret payments, Mr. Black cut short his talks and left Iraq. Soon after returning to the United States, he confronted Erik Prince, the company’s chairman and founder, who did not dispute that there was a bribery plan, according to a former Blackwater executive familiar with the meeting. Mr. Black resigned the following year.

Stacy DeLuke, a company spokeswoman, dismissed the allegations as “baseless” and said the company would not comment about former employees. Mr. Black did not respond to telephone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment.

Reached by phone, Mr. Jackson, who resigned as president of Blackwater early this year, criticized The New York Times and said, “I don’t care what you write.”

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Obama’s Top Advisers Lean Toward Plan for 30,000 More Troops for Afghanistan

New York Times, By Elisabeth Bumiller & David E. Sanger, November 10

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are coalescing around a proposal to send 30,000 or more additional American troops to Afghanistan, but President Obama remains unsatisfied with answers he has gotten about how vigorously the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan would help execute a new strategy, administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama is to consider four final options in a meeting with his national security team on Wednesday, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters. The options outline different troop levels, other officials said, but they also assume different goals — including how much of Afghanistan the troops would seek to control — and different time frames and expectations for the training of Afghan security forces.

Three of the options call for specific levels of additional troops. The low-end option would add 20,000 to 25,000 troops, a middle option calls for about 30,000, and another embraces Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for roughly 40,000 more troops. Administration officials said that a fourth option was added only in the past few days. They declined to identify any troop level attached to it.

Washington Post, by Joshua Partlow, November 11

KABUL -- As violence rises in Afghanistan, the power balance between insurgent groups has shifted, with a weakened al-Qaeda relying increasingly on the emboldened Taliban for protection and the manpower to carry out deadly attacks, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials.

The ascendancy of the Taliban and the relative decline of al-Qaeda have broad implications for the Obama administration as it seeks to define its enemy in Afghanistan and debates deploying tens of thousands of additional troops there.

Although the war in Afghanistan began as a response to al-Qaeda terrorism, there are perhaps fewer than 100 members of the group left in the country, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence official in Kabul who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The official estimated that there are 300 al-Qaeda members in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where the group is based, compared with tens of thousands of Taliban insurgents on either side of the border.

Asia Times, By Dahr Jamail & Sarah Lazare, November 10

As the Barack Obama administration debates whether to send tens of thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, an already overstretched military is increasingly struggling to meet its deployment numbers. Surprisingly, one place it seems to be targeting is military personnel who go absent without leave (AWOL) and then are caught or turn themselves in.

Hidden behind the gates of military bases across the United States troops facing AWOL and desertion charges regularly find themselves in the hands of a military that metes out informal, open-ended punishments by forcing them to wait months - sometimes more than a year - to face military justice. In the meantime, some of these soldiers are offered a free pass out of this legal limbo as long as they agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq - even if they have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Telegraph(UK) - The Prime Minister said that British forces would hand over two districts of Helmand Province to Afghan control by the middle of next year. "We will transfer authority district by district," he said.

One of the first districts to be handed over is understood to be Lashkagar, the capital of Helmand.

Downing Street said that the transfers would “not necessarily” mean a reduction in British troop numbers. Officials said British forces would still have to oversee the transferred territories.

Yet amid mounting public unease about the Afghan mission, Mr Brown’s spokesman made clear that handing responsibility to the Afghans is the start of the process that will allow Britain to leave Afghanistan.

“Our exit strategy is a function of Afghanisation,” said the spokesman. “Transferring authority is an important part of Afghanisation.”

_{I feel the American worker has been sacrificed to the capitalist idols in the ancient Mayan fashion. - Sue Lamb, NYT reader}

Informed Comment - Afghan insurgent and former prime minister Gulbadin Hikmatyar has told Aljazeera that Usama Bin Laden is alive and well.

Hikmatyar, once the recipient of 20 percent of all the funds disbursed by US intelligence for fighting the Soviets, is now fighting US troops in eastern Afghanistan.

He condemned bombings against the Pakistani military, saying that only foreign, non-Muslim troops should be targeted. He also said his group refuses to coordinate with the Haqqani Network, a rival fundamentalist militia. He said that US troops could be given safe passage to leave Afghanistan if they would agree to go.

Online News reports of Hikmatyar: "he said that Taliban government came to end in Afghanistan due to the wrong strategy of Al-Qaeeda."
_{I feel the American worker has been sacrificed to the capitalist idols in the ancient Mayan fashion. - Sue Lamb, NYT reader}

New York Times, By Dexter Filkins, November 10

KABUL — With fertilizer bombs now the most lethal weapons used against American and NATO soldiers in southern Afghanistan, the bomb-making operation in Kandahar was something close to astonishing.

In a pair of raids on Sunday, Afghan police officers and American soldiers discovered a half-million pounds of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that is used in the overwhelming majority of homemade bombs here. About 2,000 bomb-making devices like timers and triggers were also found, and 15 Afghans were detained.

With a typical homemade bomb weighing no more than 60 pounds, the seizure of that much fertilizer — more than 10 tractor-trailer loads — removed potentially thousands of bombs from the streets and trails of southern Afghanistan, officials said.

“You can turn a bag of ammonium nitrate into a bomb in a matter of hours,” said Col. Mark Lee, who leads NATO’s effort to stop the bomb makers in southern Afghanistan. “This is a great first step.”

November 11, 2009

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are coalescing around a proposal to send 30,000 or more additional American troops to Afghanistan, but President Obama remains unsatisfied with answers he has gotten about how vigorously the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan would help execute a new strategy, administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama is to consider four final options in a meeting with his national security team on Wednesday, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters. The options outline different troop levels, other officials said, but they also assume different goals — including how much of Afghanistan the troops would seek to control — and different time frames and expectations for the training of Afghan security forces.

Three of the options call for specific levels of additional troops. The low-end option would add 20,000 to 25,000 troops, a middle option calls for about 30,000, and another embraces Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for roughly 40,000 more troops. Administration officials said that a fourth option was added only in the past few days. They declined to identify any troop level attached to it.

Mr. Gates, a Republican who served as President George W. Bush’s last defense secretary, and who commands considerable respect from the president, is expected to be pivotal in Mr. Obama’s decision. But administration officials cautioned that Mr. Obama had not yet made up his mind, and that other top advisers, among them Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, remained skeptical of the value of a buildup.

In the Situation Room meetings and other sessions, some officials have expressed deep reservations about President Hamid Karzai, who emerged the victor of a disputed Afghan election. They said there was no evidence that Mr. Karzai would carry through on promises to crack down on corruption or the drug trade or that his government was capable of training enough reliable Afghan troops and police officers for Mr. Obama to describe a credible exit strategy.

Officials said that although the president had no doubt about what large numbers of United States troops could achieve on their own in Afghanistan, he repeatedly asked questions during recent meetings on Afghanistan about whether a sizable American force might undercut the urgency of the preparations of the Afghan forces who are learning to stand up on their own.

“He’s simply not convinced yet that you can do a lasting counterinsurgency strategy if there is no one to hand it off to,” one participant said.

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Iraq approves deal on British navy trainers

BAGHDAD, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Iraq's presidency council approved a deal on Wednesday allowing up to 100 British navy trainers to return to the country.

British forces had withdrawn from southern Iraq to Kuwait after Iraq's parliament failed to pass the deal. After months of delay, lawmakers finally inked the agreement in October, but it needed the council's approval before becoming law.

"The presidency council has approved in its session the law ratifying the agreement of training and navy support for Iraqi forces," the council said in a statement on its website.

AT

Bogged down at Bagram
Nowhere has the building boom been more apparent than Bagram Air Base, a key military site used by the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. In its American incarnation, the base has significantly expanded from its old Soviet days and, in just the last two years, the population of the more than 5,000-acre (2,023-hectare) compound has doubled to 20,000 troops, in addition to thousands of coalition forces and civilian contractors.

newsobserver.com

RALEIGH The biggest long-term threat to U.S. national security might not be terrorists or weapons of mass destruction. According to a group of military leaders, it's homegrown obesity, ignorance and criminality, which together make seven of 10 target-age recruits ineligible to serve in the American armed forces.

"It's not just disturbing. It's a call to action," James A. Kelly, former deputy assistant secretary of defense, said Thursday during a telephone news conference from Washington.

Kelly is one of nearly 100 former and current military leaders who came together last year to form an organization called Mission: Readiness to draw attention to the status of potential recruits. In a study it calls "Ready, Willing and Unable to Serve," the group says Pentagon analysts have concluded that 75 percent of people ages 17 to 24 could not qualify for military service because they are obese or have some other health problem, lack a high school diploma or have a serious criminal history.

In a year when a down economy has helped the all-volunteer military meet all its recruiting and retention goals, it may seem odd to focus on who can't get in.

But Mission: Readiness worries about the future and says this is the time to invest in programs to help improve young people's chances at success in life, including a career in the military. At its news conference, speakers urged the U.S. House to pass an education bill that would include $8 billion for the Early Learning Challenge Fund, which would give states money to support preschool education programs. The bill has been approved by the Senate.

Mission: Readiness cites studies saying early childhood education, especially for poor and minority kids, improves high school graduation rates and reduces involvement in crime.

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