KOLK, Afghanistan When the improvised bomb exploded in a mud-walled compound about 300 yards from a new traffic checkpoint, the six Afghan police officers at the post just looked at one another.
Another violent day on Afghanistan's Highway 1 had begun.
"Tell them to send three guys and go check it out to make sure no locals were hurt," U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Hans Beutel told a translator. "Tell them not to get too close, but go take a look."
Then Beutel, a 23-year-old from Huntersville, and the rest of his team from the 4th Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division drove off to a half-finished nearby base to grab a quick lunch. When they returned to the police checkpoint in the early afternoon, they found it deserted.
It was another lost afternoon in the frustrating effort to train Afghanistan's ill-paid police, who have a well-deserved reputation for stealing and extorting bribes. Staff Sgt. Tony Locklear, 44, from Robeson County, who had spent the morning coaching the officers on running a checkpoint, cursed when he saw they were gone.
Training the Afghan national and local police, who function as a paramilitary force, is essential to the Obama administration's efforts to find an exit from Afghanistan. If the Afghan government is ever to take control of the country, it will need a less corrupt and more professional police force. I suggest a page from the British, "divide and conquer". Invite a bunch of big Sikhs from India to run the show! An added bonus is that would put the Paki's panties in a twist, big time.
Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander, has called for boosting the police force to 160,000 from its strength of 84,000; McChrystal also wants the Afghan army to double in size, to 240,000.
Eight years after the U.S.-led invasion, the police appear to be years away from functioning independently. U.S. trainers say they must tell the Afghans repeatedly to do the simplest things, such as separating passengers they've searched from ones they haven't when they stop a vehicle.
The police suffer from a range of problems besides corruption, their U.S. trainers say. Illiteracy is the norm - Beutel thinks that only about 10 percent of the police officers he works with can read - and drug abuse is common.
Fuel is often in short supply. The central police headquarters in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, provides the district police with whom Beutel works one tank of diesel fuel a month per truck. That often means that when Beutel wants to mount a mission, he has to carry American fuel in jerrycans for the Afghan vehicles.
Still, the police staffing vulnerable traffic checkpoints routinely suffer casualties at a rate two or three times that of any other force on the coalition side, and American trainers say that many are fearless under fire.
This area along Highway 1 about 25 miles west of Kandahar illustrates the challenge the police face. Down a dusty side road about 700 yards from the police checkpoint, two white flags flapped in the breeze one recent morning.
"A few days after we started showing up here, the Taliban put up those flags," said Beutel. "Pretty much everything past that is theirs."
After nearly two dozen assaults into Taliban turf in the past three months, Beutel and the soldiers he commands describe a nightmarish place in which the Taliban control the villages even in daylight, and the roads and paths are larded with bombs and mines.
Explosive booby traps are set into walls, and the insurgents have dug fighting positions with "spider holes," bunkers, camouflaged trenches and even tunnels reminiscent of the Vietnam War.
Beutel said he'd like to clean it all out and set up checkpoints outside the villages to prevent the Taliban from slipping back. That, however, would take perhaps twice as many police and a police district commander who could persuade village elders into a working relationship.
For now, all the local police and Afghan National Army units can do is try to keep the highway safe along the 12 miles that Beutel's police are supposed to patrol.
Beutel's soldiers work with the officers on a range of skills, from how to patrol to how to act professionally. He talks with the police battalion commander, Bismullah Jan, almost daily, the young American officer sitting with the grizzled policeman on a rug in the district offices on the Canadian military base where Beutel's troops live. They sip tea and discuss what went well that day and what could improve.
Before the police disappeared from the checkpoint, Beutel had been feeling good about the last 25 days. His soldiers had worked with the police to beef up several checkpoints. The plan had been to monitor who was entering and leaving villages and to keep the Taliban away from the highway.
The operation had been a success: The number of bombs planted on the road had fallen by 70 to 80 percent, Beutel said. The mission couldn't last indefinitely, however, because it required too many police officers, and its last day would underscore the security challenges.
The explosion at the nearby compound was only the first of a series of incidents.
Next, a U.S. Army truck filled with soldiers from another unit hit a mine, which blew off one wheel.
Then the attack that many had been expecting came just after Beutel's paratroopers drove off for lunch at the U.S. base.
This time, the insurgents struck an Afghan army convoy about 1,000 yards east with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms. Beutel's troops, hearing the attack just as they were beginning to eat, jumped in their armored trucks and raced out through the gate.
Beutel got on the radio with the pilots of two U.S. helicopters overhead. The pilots fired rockets at yet another taunting white flag south of the highway, near where Beutel told them the insurgents had been seen last, but they didn't flush any. Locklear's men have found networks of trenches near the villages.
"We've even seen them shoot at helicopters, slide down awhile when the choppers fire rockets at them, then pop up and shoot again," he said.
Beutel asked through a translator why the six policemen had abandoned the checkpoint.
"Did the Taliban shoot at them?" he asked Hamayun, a battalion officer.
Hamayun drew himself up.
"We wouldn't put on these uniforms if we were afraid of the Taliban," he said. "They left because the Americans never came back."
Most of the police are brave, Beutel said, and others aren't much good. Regardless, making them into a force that can fight the Taliban is a long haul.
"Somehow we've got to empower the locals to trust" the police, Beutel said. "Right now, though, the guys with legitimacy in those villages are the ones who can bust through your door with an AK-47."
#1
It appears there are few good options in Afghanistan. 'Twould have been nice if the US had launched a major campaign after 9/11 to promote (and reward) competence in the languages spoken there, but that didn't happen, and is still not happening. Empowering the locals to trust anyone is a lot more difficult when you can't even speak to them.
#2
Pick a local tribe, any tribe. Go with that tribe and put the rest to the sword, declare victory, and GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE! It's the only language they understand.
If you've got three or four hundred years to work with them, hundreds of thousands of trainers, and gazillions of dollars...., well that may prove to be yet another solution.
#3
A lot of the children of Afghanistan are raised as almost brutal animals.
Long ago, the communists realized that if you want to completely change the character of society, you have to start with its children. Unfortunately, they took children and raised them to be thugs and brutes, which accomplished little.
What American should have done at the outset was to create a very large system of military protected western style orphanage and boarding schools. To take the unwanted orphans of Afghanistan and raise them to western standards, while they were critically observing, but not participating in, Afghan culture.
After just a few years, when these kids started to graduate, they would be given preferential treatment by being moved into positions of authority and high pay.
Then, when the prosperous Afghans saw this, there would be a rush to get their children into those schools as well, they being a "proven" path to success.
The final stage would be to extend that school system slowly outward, eventually making public school mandatory in the other cities, and even busing students from rural areas to attend school away from their parents and villages for most of the year.
The US and NATO have been in Afghanistan since 2001. Had we begun with this program then, the 10 year olds by now would be graduating as sophisticated, 18 year olds capable of rapidly ascending the corridors of power and business.
#4
What you're talking about is really colonization.
Afghanistan is a mess as is most of the world. The US government cannot change that except by example. And conquering countries to impose our culture is not the example we should be setting. We should protect those who have served us, by asylum if necessary, then get out and leave civilizing and nation building to NGOs and missionaries if the Afghans want them. They're much better at it than DOD, CIA, or AID.
#5
'Moose, I like your thinking, but you're presupposing language & cultural competence on the US side. The remedy also smacks of colonialism. It's probably the only thing that would have worked.
#7
People get the government they deserve. If the people of Somalia live in a Hobbesian state, it's not the responsibility of the US government to change that, it's primarily the responsibility of the Somalian people. If the NGOs and missionaries can't operate in Somalia the DOD, CIA and AID won't be able to either without being in a war.
The Somalis are not worth the blood and treasure of America. If they threaten the US, we should act to remove the threat. And once we've removed it, we should let them return to whatever state of nature they wish. Just as we should have left Afghanistan as soon after Tora Bora as possible.
Then the French should have stayed out of the American War of Independence. Which means we would have most likely remained British subjects.
Civilization is not based upon a balance sheet.
In its original condition, much of the trans-Appalachian region wasn't worth the lives that it took to bring it from what it was to what it is, if you didn't have an idea of what it could be. You could never accurately define what that was till you were there. Ever wonder what the world today would look like if the resources and population of that region beyond Appalachia had never materialized in time to face the threats of the 20th century. It certainly wouldn't be a kinder gentler world.
#12
That's why the Afghans built East Point, flash91, on the West Point model... and initially staffed mostly by West Pointers on sabbatical. The first class should graduate this year, I think.
#13
Yes there are a lot of illiterates in the Afghan police.
Yes there are a lot of slackers and thieves in the Afghan police.
But that doesn't mean the solution is education.
There is a good chance that the crooks are, on the average, actually more educated than the non crooks.
One solution, would be to take some crooks and execute them publicly, however, all we are able to do is put them in temp custody. This is better than no punishment but not by enough to act as a deterrent.
Posted by: lord garth ||
11/30/2009 13:45 Comments ||
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#14
Pick a local tribe, any tribe. Go with that tribe and put the rest to the sword, declare victory, and GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE!
[Al Arabiya Latest] About 30 Taliban insurgents were killed in a NATO-led air strike in eastern Afghanistan after they attacked an Afghan police post, a police official and the alliance said on Sunday.
Afghan border police commander Sayed Nabi Mullahkhil said a police checkpoint in eastern Khost province, which shares a border with Pakistan, was attacked by militants overnight.
The privately owned Tolo TV station said 26 insurgents were killed, including one fighter from Chechnya.
A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul confirmed an air strike was carried out by foreign troops in Khost late on Saturday after Afghan police called for their assistance.
"Afghan forces came under attack and asked for assistance and we provided it in the form of air support," the spokesman said, declining to give any details of casualties.
General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has identified Khost province, the power base of insurgents loyal to the Haqqani family, as a battlefront, along with the neighboring provinces of Paktia and Paktika.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2009 00:00 ||
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A Spanish fishing boat thwarted an attack by pirates in the Indian Ocean in the early hours of Sunday morning, Spain's defence ministry said.
The pirates fired at and threw a grenade at the Spanish-flagged Ortube Berria, before being fought off by the ship's onboard private security guards, the ministry said in a statement.
The Somalis have a legitimate beef with European fishing fleets, particularly the Spanish and French boats, who along with the Taiwanese have been fishing the East African seas well beyond their capacity. One generally doesn't express disagreements with hand grenades, but perhaps I'm just being culturally insensitive.
The attack happened at 04:37 GMT some 230 nautical miles (426km) south west of the Seychelles.
"No injuries or damage to equipment have been recorded," the ministry said.
Around 50 private security contractors were sent from Spain in mid-November to protect Spanish fishing trawlers from piracy attacks.
Pirates seized another Spanish trawler, the Alakrana, on October 2 when it was over 300 nautical miles from the Somali coast. They eventually released the vessel along with its 36 crew on November 17, claiming to have been paid $4m as a ransom.
The Spanish government has refused to follow France's lead in deploying its army to protect ships in Somali waters, preferring instead to use private security firms.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
ION FREEREPUBLIC > seems the ROYAL NAVY routinely releases Somali Pirates even when the latter are captured or caught in the act, for fear of Pirates attempting to request formal asylum iff "detained" in Britain???
"GITMO IN BRITAIN" > IOW, the Somali Pirates are Britain's GITMO-style AFPAK Islamist Militants???
KHAR: A key anti-Taliban leader was assassinated in a bomb attack in Bajaur Agencys Mamoond tehsil on Friday. According to local sources, three Taliban were injured in the bomb attack.
Sources and political administration officials said Malik Shahpur, who was leading the Mamoond tribe anti-Taliban lashkar, was killed in the remote-controlled bomb attack in Badan area of the tehsil. Mamoond Assistant Political Agent Mohammad Jamil told reporters that the attack was carried out near a mosque.
Easier to transport the explosive device if you store it nearby.
The locals said Malik was meeting people following Friday prayers when the bomb went off. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/30/2009 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] Troops in Pakistan's northwest tribal areas killed eight insurgents Sunday, officials said, as the military pursues an ambitious offensive in the Taliban's mountain strongholds.
Four militants were killed during a search operation in Bara town in Khyber district, which lies between Peshawar and Afghanistan.
'Four militants were killed and several others were wounded in search operations in different parts of Bara,' a senior military official told AFP, requesting anonymity.
Ground troops and attack helicopters last week launched a fresh operation against militants in Khyber, which is on the main route for Nato supplies heading to foreign troops in Afghanistan.
Also Sunday, four militants were killed in Wana, the capital of South Waziristan where the military launched a massive ground and air offensive against the Taliban on October 17.
'Troops retaliated after militants fired rockets at their camp in Wana. Four militants were killed and two were arrested,' a local military spokesman said.
Military and intelligence officials confirmed the deaths in both districts, but such tolls cannot be independently verified as the area is out of bounds to journalists and most aid workers.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
...I'm glad and grateful to all of those who worked so hard to get CAPT Speicher home, but there was just simply a whole lot of flat-out fail every step of the way, because no one wanted to be accused of letting anyone remain behind...and covering their own behinds.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
11/30/2009 13:09 Comments ||
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When he stopped his car at a traffic light in Basra, Bassam Rady noticed the motorbike with two riders on it inch past him. Suddenly the bike swung round and Mr Rady, sensing danger, tried to drive off. Before he could, a man on the back of the bike pulled a gun from his jacket and fired.
The bullet went through the windscreen and just missed him. As he sped away another shot was fired, but missed the car.
Mr Rady is a former interpreter for British forces in Iraq. As such, his life is in danger from the militia that once terrorised the Iraqi city and is now returning.
More than a year ago Iraqi soldiers, backed by US forces, brought peace and stability to Basra by driving militants over the Iranian border in an operation called Charge of the Knights.
According to local estimates, however, about half have returned. Although they have not become as active as before, the militants are targeting Iraqi citizens who co-operated with British forces. Most at risk are translators such as Mr Rady.
The 31-year-old father accompanied soldiers on dangerous missions but was refused resettlement in Britain at the end of his employment.
He worked with nine translators. Seven of them have been killed.
"I'm like a cancer patient -- now that the militia are back my family is just waiting for me to die," Mr Rady said. "I see reports in the media that Basra is safe but it's not true. I know these militia people. I went to school with some of them. I didn't see them for a year but now they are around again. They have told me, 'your day will come soon'."
He takes security precautions and never follows a routine. This means that he cannot work because that would give the militants a better chance of success.
Militiamen belonging to the alMahdi Army, which is loyal to the radical Shia cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr,
Were that my first name I'd go by the middle one, too.
took control of Basra between 2004 and 2007 with other Shia fighters and thugs. They enforced strict Islamic rules at the same time as running criminal rackets. British troops were unable or unwilling to fight back and eventually withdrew to their base at the airport.
In March last year, however, Basra's brutal lawlessness triggered a counteroffensive by about 40,000 Iraqi troops under the command of the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki and supported by American aircraft, artillery, special forces and intelligence. They regained control of the city after a week of fighting in which more than 1,000 people were killed. This was followed by a ceasefire that allowed many of the militants to slip away to Iran.
The Basra police and army units, who can now be seen at checkpoints throughout the city, deny that they have a problem with returning militants. At the Basra mortuary, however, officials told The Times that they were seeing the bodies of victims from political killings every week. Naeem Hassan, a hearse driver, said: "I just drove the bodies of two Iraqis back to their home in Baghdad. They were working here for a foreign company with a foreign engineer. He was kidnapped and the two Iraqis were killed."
Few such killings are reported in the local media, which has complained about official intimidation in the past. "Don't believe it when you hear from the police that Basra is safe," Mr Rady said. "Parts of the police are, and always were, part of the militia. They are infiltrated through and through."
Signs of renewed militant activity can be seen. Two alcohol stores in Watan Street were attacked. Shots were fired at the shop front and a day later a bomb destroyed the inside. In another case, military engineers were able to dismantle a bomb before it exploded. Army units have stepped up patrols.
Awath al-Abdan, a local politician, said: "Some militia members have come back and once they are settled in they are ready to rise up when given the order."
Leaders of ethnic and sectarian minorities in Basra have reported attacks on members of their communities and pressure to follow strict religious practices. A growing number of violent crimes committed by, or with the consent of, some elements in the police has also been reported.
Although Basra has not reached the anarchy of its worst years, its residents fear that the slide has begun.
This makes survival for residents who worked with the British increasingly difficult. Mr Rady was supposed to have been given residency in Britain after he finished his job.
He said that he worked for British forces for 14 months, putting him in the 12-month requirement for resettlement. His official work record is incomplete however and shows a period of employment six days short of a year. For that reason, he said, his application to emigrate was turned down.
*sigh* About what we expected, and would have been tried no matter how long we stayed, when we finally pulled out. I'm reading a history of Cincinnati, and it took us a while to professionalize the police here, too.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC ||
11/30/2009 04:44 ||
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#1
I suspect the hand of Iran in this. Remember that only after they had been burned in Basra did they back off. But now with the heat off, and things having settled down, they are restarting their program.
Sounds like a job for the Iraqi Interior Department. Round up and disappear a bunch of these thugs.
#2
...Sadly, a result of two completely different points of view:
Iran - "We are prepared to work for a thousand years to insure our victory. We are prepared to sacrifice the flower of our youth. We are prepared to die as a nation. Nothing can change our minds."
The West - "We are prepared to work for a thousand years to - OOOH, A CELEBRITY SCANDAL!!!"
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
11/30/2009 9:00 Comments ||
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#3
Iran - "We are prepared to work for a thousand years to insure our victory. We are prepared to sacrifice the flower of our youth. We are prepared to die as a nation. Nothing can change our minds."
And yet, Iran gave up waging war to conquer Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Such rhetoric from Muslim countries is as meaningful in the long term as the wind that passes from their nether ends. They give it up when the cost is too high and the effect not romantic. What has Hizb'allah done in the direction of Israel since they last "won"?
Suspected Islamic terrorists separatists shot dead three men on Monday morning in the latest bout of violence in Thailand's restive south, local police said.
Gunmen killed a Muslim villager in his house in Pattani province, while two Buddhist truck drivers were shot dead as they travelled to Narathiwat province with a goods delivery, the police told AFP. The terrorists militants then torched both men's bodies and their truck, they added.
#1
ION WMF > FORGET SINO-INDIAN WAR OVER TIBET AND PAKISTAN: THE SILENT CHINESE, INDIAN MIL BUILDUP AND COMING CONFRONTATION OVER MYANMAR. THREE REASONS WHY INDIA MAY ATTACK CHINA BEFORE 2012!
To wit,
* INDIA antcipates that, come 2012, CHINA will demand recognition andor declare its formal status as a US-STYLE GLOBAL MIL-ECON SUPERPOWER, while also overtly declaring its national = geopol preference on keeping a low-key political, diplomatic model.
* USA can longer handle or resolve the AFPAK Militancies-Crisis on its own, given its economic problems and China's control of US$15.0TRILYUHN in US Debt.
* USA is no longer the PRIMARY = PREMIER POWER between it + CHINA [so-called "G-2" Model], a change in geopol dynamic which INDIA believes will alos evens occur between India + CHINA. The USA won the "COLD WAR" agz the USSR-Soviet Union > INDIA BELIEVES THAT CHINA WILL SIMIL PREVAIL AGZ BOTH THE USA + INDIA.
Iran's parliament passed a law on Sunday earmarking $20 million to support terrorist groups opposing the West and investigate alleged US and British plots against the Islamic Republic.
The legislation is widely seen as a response to Western criticism of Iran's violent crackdown against protesters following the disputed June presidential election. Lawmakers started debating the outline of the bill in August when Iran's hardline leaders were fending off allegations that security forces had tortured opposition activists detained during the demonstrations.
The text of the legislation says the money is to "support progressive currents that resist illegal activities by the governments of the US and Britain." Iranian officials often use such terms to describe militant groups.
It was not immediately clear which groups would receive funding from Iran, but Teheran already backs the Islamic terrorists Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The bill also taps funds to "confront plots and unjust restrictions" by the Washington and London against Teheran and to disclose "human rights abuses by the two countries."
A committee with representatives from Iran's intelligence services, the elite Revolutionary Guards, as well as the Foreign Ministry and the communication and culture ministries will manage the funds.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2009 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
WMF > US WARNS CHINA NOT TO BE "LAISSEZ-FAIRE" ON IRAN, JAPAN MAY FOLLOW IRAN'S EXAMPLE AND ACQUIRE NUCLEAR WEAPONS { + Saudi Arabia, TUrkey, + Egypt, etc.}.
#3
The only thing new is that Iran's government has created a law to fund terrorism legally. They have been funding terrorists and terrorism [made-made disasters according to Janet Napolitano] all along.
Iran approved plans Sunday to build 10 new uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion in defiance of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, days after it demanded Tehran stop construction on one plant and halt all enrichment activities.
Iran's defiance will likely heighten tensions with the West, which has signaled it is running out of patience with Iran's continuing enrichment and its balking at a U.N. deal aimed at ensuring Tehran cannot build a nuclear weapon in the near-term future. The U.S. and its allies have hinted at new U.N. sanctions if Iran does not respond.
The White House said the move "would be yet another serious violation of Iran's clear obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself."
"Time is running out for Iran to address the international community's growing concerns about its nuclear program," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
On Friday, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency issued a strong rebuke of Iran over enrichment, infuriating Tehran. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani threatened on Sunday to reduce cooperation with the IAEA.
"Should the West continue to pressure us, the legislature can reconsider the level of Iran's cooperation with the IAEA," Larijani told parliament in a speech carried live on state radio.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
ION WMF > US EXCLAIMED: CHINA'S DESIGNATED RISE AS A GLOBAL POWER BEGINS ECONOMICALLY IN SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Al Arabiya Latest] About 30 Taliban insurgents were killed in a NATO-led air strike in eastern Afghanistan after they attacked an Afghan police post, a police official and the alliance said on Sunday.
A Spanish fishing boat thwarted an attack by pirates in the Indian Ocean in the early hours of Sunday morning, Spain's defence ministry said.
[Dawn] Troops in Pakistan's northwest tribal areas killed eight insurgents Sunday, officials said, as the military pursues an ambitious offensive in the Taliban's mountain strongholds.
