[+]Nato strike a mistake: French minister
Sunday, September 06, 2009
STOCKHOLM: A Nato bombing in Afghanistan that killed scores of people was a major mistake, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Saturday as Germany defended the strike which its troops instigated. “This was a big mistake,” Kouchner told reporters as he arrived for a second day of talks with his EU counterparts in Stockholm. “We have to enquire and to denounce those responsible.” Afghan officials said the dead were mostly insurgents, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai said any targeting of civilians was unacceptable. His office said 90 people were killed and hurt. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Friday called for an urgent investigation into the Nato air strike.
(Courtesy Daily The News, Pakistan)
[+]US embassy in Kabul fires guards for lewd acts
Saturday, September 05, 2009
KABUL: The US embassy in Afghanistan said Friday that it had fired security guards, who were photographed engaging in lewd acts at alcohol-fuelled parties. In a letter this week to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a group called the Project on Government Oversight said private guards from security firm ArmorGroup North America were staging abusive hazing rituals, jeopardising diplomats’ safety. “Ten guards seen in the offensive photos are leaving the country today; eight were terminated and two resigned,” the embassy said in a statement. “The entire senior management team of ArmorGroup in Kabul is being replaced immediately. The embassy security office continues its interviews of every one of the ArmorGroup guards”.
(Courtesy Daily The News, Pakistan)
[+]Impatience growing with Afghan war: Gates
Saturday, September 05, 2009
WASHINGTON: Defence Secretary Robert Gates is taking issue with any notion that the war in Afghanistan “is slipping through the administration’s fingers”. Gates acknowledged during a meeting with reporters at the Pentagon that impatience was growing with the war. But, he said, that must be expected, given that the US has had a presence there for eight years. He said he believed “it is important for us to be able to show over the months to come” that Obama’s strategyfor both Afghanistan and Pakistan is succeeding.
(Courtesy Daily The News, Pakistan)
[+]Nato air strike kills 90 in Afghanistan
Saturday, September 05, 2009
KABUL: An airstrike in northern Afghanistan that killed up to 90 people on Friday hit at the heart of plans for a tactical change in the Western military strategy against Taliban-linked insurgents.
The issue of civilian casualties in the Nato-backed war to rout militants from Afghanistan is a thorn in the relationship between the Kabul government and its Western backers — and a simmering source of anger among Afghan people.
Nato launched an airstrike early on Friday against the Taliban militants who had hijacked two fuel tankers ferrying supplies for international troops, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. According to ISAF, insurgents were attempting to take the tankers across the Kunduz river, near the Tajik border, when one stalled and they called on villagers to help themselves to the fuel. Witnesses said as civilians were siphoning off fuel, the airstrike ignited a fireball that killed dozens and caused horrific injuries to many others. Officials have said 55 to 90 people were killed, including a large number of militants, though exact figures are unclear. Investigations are under way into the cause and the breakdown of militant versus civilian deaths.
“It (the Kunduz strike) couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Western powers trying to justify their presence in this country,” said a foreign consultant in Kabul. “On the other hand, the timing is perfect for showing what international troops are up against,” he said on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended Britain’s military presence in Afghanistan on Friday — a major policy speech that came as a defence aide quit over the mission’s strategy and a soldier was court-martialled for refusing to return to the war-torn country.
Brown said insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan still presented major terrorist threats. “Each time I have to ask myself if we are doing the right thing by being in Afghanistan. Each time I have to ask myself if we can justify sending our young men and women to fight for this cause,” Brown said in a keynote speech to the think tank Institute of Strategic Studies.
(Courtesy Daily The News, Pakistan)
[+]Air strike hits fuel truck, casualties reported
Friday, September 04, 2009
KUNDUZ: An air strike carried out by the NATO force in Afghanistan targeted a fuel tanker hijacked by Taliban insurgents causing dozens of casualties on Friday, officials and witnesses said.
"Last night, the Taliban tried to take a fuel tanker that they hijacked on the highway to Angorbagh village," said Baryalai Basharyar Parwani, police chief of the Ali Abad district in northern Kunduz province.
"The fuel tanker got stuck in the river. There were local civilians with them as well. The Taliban were bombed. More than 60 people have been killed and injured," he said.
A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) under NATO told foreign news agency: "It was an ISAF air strike."
"Last night, the Taliban tried to take a fuel tanker that they hijacked on the highway to Angorbagh village," said Baryalai Basharyar Parwani, police chief of the Ali Abad district in northern Kunduz province.
"The fuel tanker got stuck in the river. There were local civilians with them as well. The Taliban were bombed. More than 60 people have been killed and injured," he said.
A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) under NATO told foreign news agency: "It was an ISAF air strike."
(Courtesy Daily The News, Pakistan)
[+] 60 killed in Afghanistan air strike
Friday, September 04, 2009
KABUL: Afghan officials say NATO air strike on hijacked fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan kills 60 people.
(Courtesy Daily The News, Pakistan)
[+] US consensus on Afghanistan begins to crumble
Friday, September 04, 2009
Friday, September 04, 2009 WASHINGTON: Weeks from President Barack Obama’s expected move to send more troops to Afghanistan, the consensus behind the US commitment there is crumbling as some raise the specter of a new Vietnam.
A growing number of experts doubt that the war can be won, while even Obama, who has already dispatched an additional 21,000 reinforcements there, contemplates a further troop increase and completes a strategic review.
On the campaign trail last year, Obama portrayed the war in Afghanistan as the only useful conflict in the war against terrorism. As president, he has called it a “war of necessity.”
In March, the Obama administration redefined the war’s goals, focusing on fighting al-Qaeda and its supporters while demonstrating willingness to boost its military effort against a growing insurgency.
On the ground, the situation continues to deteriorate, with August the deadliest month for US forces since the war began in October 2001.
“It’s a new strategy. It’s the first one — and I recognise we’ve been there over eight years,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen told NBC television in August. “But I also want to say that this is the first time we’ve really resourced a strategy on both the civilian and military side. So in certain ways, we are starting anew.”
Mullen, the top US military officer, has been calling for fighting the “culture of poverty” deemed to favor the Taliban. “But that (fight against poverty) took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx,” countered George Will, a conservative columnist writing in The Washington Post who has called for the United States to “get out” of Afghanistan.
Wesley Clark, the former commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, worried about the course of the conflict.
“The similarities to Vietnam are ominous,” Clark wrote in the New York Daily News.
“There, too, an insurgency was led and supported from outside the borders of the state in which our troops were fighting. There, too, sanctuaries across international borders stymied US military efforts,” the retired general said. “There, too, broader political-strategic considerations weighed against military expansion of the conflict and forecast further struggles in the region.”
Michael O’Hanlon, an expert who favours Obama’s offensive strategy in Afghanistan, said critics need to better understand the strategy and developments on the ground.
“All they hear now is word of casualties, of our added troops making no difference so far, of (incumbent President Hamid) Karzai trying to steal the election, et cetera,” O’Hanlon said.
“In Vietnam, we lost 5,000 or more Americans a year and the Vietnamese lost hundreds of thousands. In Afghanistan, we are losing 200 to 300 a year and the Afghans are losing a few thousand,” the Brookings Institution analyst told AFP. “However there is one disturbing parallel: the corruption in the respective indigenous governments and their general weakness.”
In his commentary, Wesley Clark also drew a dire comparison. As in Vietnam, “American public support slid away over time as our engagement ratcheted up and casualties mounted,” Clark said. Nearly six in 10 Americans are opposed to the Afghanistan war, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released this week.
A new front awaits Obama over the next few weeks in Congress, where dissonant voices are heard among fellow majority Democrats.
Obama, for now, enjoys support from a wide array of lawmakers, military officers and commentators. But all agree that the US task in Afghanistan is not only immense, but also immensely uncertain.
A growing number of experts doubt that the war can be won, while even Obama, who has already dispatched an additional 21,000 reinforcements there, contemplates a further troop increase and completes a strategic review.
On the campaign trail last year, Obama portrayed the war in Afghanistan as the only useful conflict in the war against terrorism. As president, he has called it a “war of necessity.”
In March, the Obama administration redefined the war’s goals, focusing on fighting al-Qaeda and its supporters while demonstrating willingness to boost its military effort against a growing insurgency.
On the ground, the situation continues to deteriorate, with August the deadliest month for US forces since the war began in October 2001.
“It’s a new strategy. It’s the first one — and I recognise we’ve been there over eight years,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen told NBC television in August. “But I also want to say that this is the first time we’ve really resourced a strategy on both the civilian and military side. So in certain ways, we are starting anew.”
Mullen, the top US military officer, has been calling for fighting the “culture of poverty” deemed to favor the Taliban. “But that (fight against poverty) took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx,” countered George Will, a conservative columnist writing in The Washington Post who has called for the United States to “get out” of Afghanistan.
Wesley Clark, the former commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, worried about the course of the conflict.
“The similarities to Vietnam are ominous,” Clark wrote in the New York Daily News.
“There, too, an insurgency was led and supported from outside the borders of the state in which our troops were fighting. There, too, sanctuaries across international borders stymied US military efforts,” the retired general said. “There, too, broader political-strategic considerations weighed against military expansion of the conflict and forecast further struggles in the region.”
Michael O’Hanlon, an expert who favours Obama’s offensive strategy in Afghanistan, said critics need to better understand the strategy and developments on the ground.
“All they hear now is word of casualties, of our added troops making no difference so far, of (incumbent President Hamid) Karzai trying to steal the election, et cetera,” O’Hanlon said.
“In Vietnam, we lost 5,000 or more Americans a year and the Vietnamese lost hundreds of thousands. In Afghanistan, we are losing 200 to 300 a year and the Afghans are losing a few thousand,” the Brookings Institution analyst told AFP. “However there is one disturbing parallel: the corruption in the respective indigenous governments and their general weakness.”
In his commentary, Wesley Clark also drew a dire comparison. As in Vietnam, “American public support slid away over time as our engagement ratcheted up and casualties mounted,” Clark said. Nearly six in 10 Americans are opposed to the Afghanistan war, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released this week.
A new front awaits Obama over the next few weeks in Congress, where dissonant voices are heard among fellow majority Democrats.
Obama, for now, enjoys support from a wide array of lawmakers, military officers and commentators. But all agree that the US task in Afghanistan is not only immense, but also immensely uncertain.
(Courtesy Daily The News, Pakistan)
[+]A Bomb Kills Six Cops in Northern Afghanistan
Monday, August 24, 2009
KABUL: A bomb in usually peaceful northern Afghanistan killed six police, two days after a coordinated militant ambush disrupted voting during elections in the same province, the government said Sunday. The roadside bomb killed the commander of the Baghlan provincial rapid reaction police force and five other police in the area of Kook Chinar near Baghlan town on Saturday, the interior ministry said. On Thursday, suspected Taliban militants stormed Baghlan town, launching a multi-pronged assault that left up to 30 militants and two police dead, and stopped voting during Afghanistan’s second presidential election. “We had to tell our people to save your (ballot) boxes and save yourselves,” the head of the election commission, Azizullah Lodin, said at the time. Baghlan province straddles the main road linking the Afghan capital Kabul with the north. Kunduz province, further north, has become increasingly dangerous and the main road running to the south from Kabul is another flashpoint. On Saturday an Afghan army officer driving back to Kabul from leave in Kandahar, the old Taliban capital in the south, was killed when gunmen opened fire around Shash Gaw in central Afghanistan, the defence ministry said. During a US-backed Afghan army operation, four militants were killed and six others arrested in Kandahar province on Saturday, the ministry added. Observers highlighted cases of fraud in Afghanistan’s elections last week and said voting was not universally free due to violence and intimidation. The Taliban-led insurgency plaguing the country eight years after the 2001 US-led invasion ousted their extremist regime and implanted a Western-backed administration is now at its deadliest.
(Courtesy Daily The News, Pakistan)
[+]Pakistan roots for Karzai in Afghanistan
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is rooting for incumbent President Hamid Karzai to win Afghan elections, hoping the polls foster stability as a fierce Taliban insurgency spills between both nations, analysts say. The analysts say Karzai is perceived as more sympathetic to Pakistan than many of his challengers in the August 20 presidential election. “Karzai is most likely to be re-elected and it is good for Pakistan, because the civilian leadership here has developed a good rapport with him,” said Ishtiaq Ahmed, a professor at the Quaid-i-Azam University here. “Relationships between Pakistan and Afghanistan have significantly improved and will be further boosted with Karzai’s re-election. There is a US-backed process, under which the two leaders have been interacting in third countries.” There is also shared resolve built over time that both countries must work together to try and quell the Taliban insurgency that knows no borders. “Karzai has understood there is also insurgency in Pakistan and has stopped accusing Pakistan of not doing enough to stem the Taliban,” said former ambassador to Afghanistan Rustam Shah Mohmand. Afghanistan’s relationship with India, however, remains a rumbling source of fear for some in Pakistan. A Western diplomat based in Islamabad said that while the civilian government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, had built good relations with Karzai, suspicion lingered in military and intelligence circles. “At this level, the relationships are more suspicious towards Karzai, and his relations with India,” the diplomat said, citing New Delhi’s heavy investment in development and construction in Afghanistan.
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