A pair of Canadian helicopters circled low over a vineyard, watching two insurgents try to slip away, waiting for permission to shoot.
The chopper crew and soldiers on the ground were confident they had a good kill in their sights, with little risk of harming innocent bystanders if the Griffon's door gunner pulled the trigger.
But the crew needed permission from high up the chain of command, an often frustrating hierarchy that soldiers call "the kill chain."
For months now, Canadian and other NATO troops fighting in southern Afghanistan have complained that restrictive rules of engagement, written to win Afghans away from insurgents by limiting civilian casualties, have handed the momentum to the enemy.
Not this time.
The Griffons had been flying just hundreds of feet above two insurgents for some 20 minutes on the morning of July 5. Soldiers at a nearby outpost, dripping sweat in the scorching morning heat, barely looked up.
They're used to nothing coming of it.
The insurgents were holed up in a small building the size of a shack, with thick, mud brick walls, where farmers normally dry grapes. When they tried to escape, and commanders had no doubt the men were combatants, their war was over.
The grinding noise of a chopper's motorized machine gun, capable of mincing a target with at least 2,000 bullets a minute, echoed across the desert plain. It sounded like a wood chipper dicing up tree limbs.
"Oh ya, baby!" one soldier shouted up at the sky as the airborne gatling gun spewed repeated bursts. Whoops and cheers rippled across the dust-blown camp.
In a war where the enemy hides in villages, and fights mainly with homemade bombs hidden in cooking pots, water jugs, farmer's fields and trees, it's not often Canadian soldiers get to fight back.
Oscar Company was savouring some payback, a sweet taste they've been enjoying more often in recent days.
Since Brigadier-General Jon Vance returned to take command in early June, the kill chain has been cut shorter, and Canadian troops on the battlefields of eastern Panjwai district say it's getting easier to take the fight to the insurgents.
Major Steve Brown, commander of Oscar Company, in the 1st Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment battle group, called Vance "a no-nonsense kind of guy" whose personality has helped reshape battlefield operations.
#2
Do away with PID (Pos ID), the costly law enforcement investigative TTP, pentagon and Obama hearts and minds "kill chain" and you'll see Marines and soldiers kicking TB ass once again.
#3
i'm sorry but if I was a troop in sfghanistan the chain of command ona kill would go out the window before they would get a chance too light me or one of my bros up. They would be dead and I would dare them too prosecute after I made it very public what I did.Did vietnam not teach these morons that you can't fight a war from 5000 miles away?
Posted by: chris ||
07/17/2010 23:14 Comments ||
Top||
Shi'ite rebels denied on Friday Yemeni government accusations that the rebels killed 11 people, including three policemen, in an attack on a convoy carrying food supplies for government forces in the north of the country. The attack was one of the worst recent breaches of a six-month truce agreed in February by the government and the rebels, called Houthis after the clan name of their leaders. The Interior Ministry website said eight of those killed were pro-government tribesmen helping transport supplies to the centre of the mountainous Saada province, a stronghold of the rebels who have fought the government in a sporadic war that has displaced 350,000 people since 2004. The rebels said on their website (almenpar.com) that the accusations "pure slander", arguing that there was no ambush of a convoy but rather a tribal clash between rivals in a neighbouring village and the government allied tribesmen. "The government is exploiting this incident," the spokesman said. Houthi rebels, who complain of religious and socioeconomic discrimination, often trade accusations with the government over inciting violence that threatens their fragile truce.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/17/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
A clash between villagers and the government? How did those Houthis know who killed them if they were involved? Just on a stroll through the village when it happened, perhaps?
Posted by: American Delight ||
07/17/2010 18:49 Comments ||
Top||
[Bangla Daily Star] A Satkhira court yesterday sent 14 Jamaat men including its district Ameer Mohaddes Abdul khaleque and secretary Nurul Huda to jail in a case filed with Sadar police station for plotting subversive activities in the city Thursday night.
The chief judicial magistrate passed the order after the accused were produced before the court.
Officer-in-Charge (OC) of the police station Shah Jahan Khan filed the case accusing 89 Jamaat activists.
Sources said police arrested 14 Jamaat men while the rest are on the run.
The OC said arrests were made following information from the village people.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/17/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Jamaat-e-Islami
SEDENA just announced the revised toll to nine gang members and two civilians dead.
Nine dead armed suspects, two civilians and one dead Mexican soldier are the toll in firefights between Mexican security forces and apparent members of the criminal gang Los Zetas in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas Thursday, according to Mexican press and other reports.
Reports are that Friday armed suspects hijacked heavy vehicles and placed blockades in various parts of the city, and that the blocks remain at the current time.
Thursday afternoon, a Mexican Army patrol, part of the 8th Milittary Zone, was fired on by armed suspects in the Villa de San Miguel district of Nuevo Laredo. The resulting exchange totalled four dead unidentified gang members and one dead soldier. The Army reported the seizure of a vehicle and several weapons and munitions.
Mexican Federal agents chased a Mercury sedan Thursday travelling along the Anahuac-Nuevo Laredo in the El Campanario district. The vehicle crashed and two suspects were arrested, Agents seized a fragmentary grenade, a package of marijuana and munitions.
On Friday, news released by the US Consulate in Nuevo Laredo and others through Twitter was several avenues in Nuevo Laredo were blocked by hijacked vehicles and that Mexican Federal authorities were refusing to approach the blockades.
The blockades were initiated by Los Zetas in an apparent successful effort to cover their escape from the city.
Reports released by state authorities say that a total of 21 civilians have been hurt in the violence.
#1
Detailed help for the Mexican government can be found in Hitler's Bandit Hunters: (Blood, Philip; The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe; Potomac Books [Assoc.of the U.S.Army], 400 pg., 2008):)) BTW: a great read...
#4
They're not smuggling the cars into Mexico, 'moose. They steal 'em from wherever they can, and drive them to Mexico. My niece's husband works for a maintenance shop up in Loveland. They get all the stolen car reports, so they can be on the lookout for someone trying to do something shady. The cars are usually stolen in Denver or the surrounding area, then driven south on I-25 to El Paso. From there, they either cross the Rio Grande along some deserted stretch, or across the desert and across the border. The stolen vehicles are usually in Mexico within 24 hours, sometimes in as little as twelve. Similar thefts take place in Albuquerque, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Tucson, and southern California. Apparently it's a $10 million a year problem.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/17/2010 17:02 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Nearly every vehicle seized in the various busts in northern Mexico are stolen. It's big business as far as I can tell.
My two preferred dailies for monitoring drug and criminal gang news, La Polaka and Tiempo don't have a very large night shift, and so when something does happen, it usually keeps until the morning.
A car bomb exploded in the middle of a busy section of Juarez Thursday night killing three including a Mexican Federal agent. Initial reports which hit the Mexican wire did not do so until almost 2230 hrs, and the news the attack was a car bomb wasn't even mentioned until well after 2300 hrs.
The attack took place at about 2000 hrs directly following a collision with Mexican Federal police vehicles. Reports were the explosions were fragmentary hand grenades, but later it became clear the attack was a car bomb, the first ever in Mexico, certainly for the drug and criminal gang wars.
The vehicle used was a Ford Focus driven by a man witnesses say was dressed as a Juarez municipal police officer. The commander of the Mexican army, General de Division Eduardo Zarate with commander of the Fifth Military Zone said the explosives used was about 10 kilograms of C4 and was detonated remotely, probably with a cell phone. The explosion caused the vehicle to split in two
Apparently the driver of the car bomb deliberately crashed into a two vehicle Mexican Federal police convoy close to a drivers license office, then walked away from the scene. When paramedics and police arrived, the bomb was detonated.
The bomb was intended for Mexican Federal police. The victims include an unidentified Mexican Federal agent, a musician and an unidentified paramedic.
The element of the Juarez drug cartel, La Linea, is claiming responsibility for the attack. La Linea leader Jesus Armando Acosta Guerrero was captured last February. A message scrawled on a wall in Juarez warned that more car bombs are on the way if Guerrero was not released.
The report said that Guerrero was allegedly responsible for extortion kidnapping and drug distribution in Juarez in various nightclubs in the city as well as weapons acquisition and distribution.
According to the report Guerrero oversaw the campaign against Murderers Artists (AA), the service of the Sinaloa cartel and their associates in Juarez.
#2
Reading comments on a Mexican blog last night it turns out that this car bomb wasn't the first to be used in Mexico.
Apparently in the 70s when there was a lowlevel civil war in Mexico, leftists used car bombs. It's not part of recorded history; Mexican press is much more free now than they were during the reign of the PRI during the 1970s.
#4
The nice thing about bombs, as it were, is that one needn't be there personally to execute the ...execution. (Sorry!) It's been the sign that the war is getting serious for about a century, I believe, whether between gangs or against the government. The anarchists were awfully fond of bombs, as I recall.
Turkish police detained 29 people with suspected links to the al Qaeda network in a pre-dawn swoop Friday in three provinces, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Most of the suspects were rounded up in the southern province of Adana, while the others were detained in the country's biggest city Istanbul, Antalya on the Mediterranean coast and the western province of Canakkale, the agency said.
Police were still looking for two other suspects, it added. The Adana police and local prosecutors were to question the detainees before releasing them or sending them to court to be charged.
Last week, police detained 28 al Qaeda suspects in a separate operation. The Turkish police regularly target suspected al Qaeda supporters since two sets of twin suicide bombings hit Istanbul five days apart in November 2003. A Turkish cell of al Qaeda was held responsible for the attacks, in which explosive-laden trucks first targeted two synagogues, and then the British consulate and a British bank, killing a total of 63 people, including the British consul.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/17/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Turkey
Suspected Maoist rebels planted a landmine that killed five policemen and wounded four others in eastern India on Friday, a police spokesman said.
The device was planted under a bridge in Latehar, a district in Jharkhand state.
It exploded when the officers' vehicle drove over it, killing five police instantly, said VH Deshmukh. Two of the injured were in critical condition.
Inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, the rebels have fought the government in several parts of India for more than four decades, demanding land and jobs for landless farmers and the poor.
The insurgents -- who often target police, soldiers and government officials who they see as representatives of the state -- have tapped into anger among the rural poor over being left out of the country's economic gains.
They are now present in 20 of India's 28 states and have an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 fighters, according to the Home Ministry. It announced plans this week to pump an additional $400 million toward the fight against the rebels.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/17/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
he Taliban executed two men by strapping explosives to their bodies after accusing them of spying for the US in North Waziristan on Friday, security officials said. The public execution took place in a village near Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, after the men were accused of spying for the US. "Taliban terrorists strapped explosive material to their bodies and blew them up publicly," a local administrative official in Miranshah told AFP asking to remain anonymous.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/17/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
#2
The stone people accused of adultery, but blow up spies. Apparently treason isn't the worst crime for these people as is considered by some Western cultures.
#4
We need to catch one of these despicable crimes, and target it with napalm and cluster bombs from a dozen BUFFS. I'm sure we could find any surviving attendees by the brown trails they leave behind.
One of these days, the US is going to realize that the only way to win the "hearts and minds" of these people is to prove that we can do more damage in 15 minutes than they do in a year, and we can do it repeatedly, as long as necessary. They'll keep fighting as long as they think they can win. One good, heavy ARCLIGHT strike would change a few thousand minds on that, and make the locals fearful enough they would run the rest out of their land. Unfortunately, we have lawyers running this war, not generals.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/17/2010 17:12 Comments ||
Top||
#5
grab a man by his balls and the heart and mind are sure to follow.
Posted by: abu do you love ||
07/17/2010 22:53 Comments ||
Top||
Ten people, including children, were killed and 14 others injured when a bomb planted inside a shop went off in a market in Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency on Friday, administration officials and residents said. "Ten people have been killed, including three children. Fourteen people were wounded in the blast," senior district official Shafeerullah Khan said.
Intelligence officials also confirmed the toll, saying three shops and four cars were destroyed. The commander of Lashkar-e-Islam was among those killed in the explosion, the residents said, adding that six people among those injured belonged to the same group."The timed device appeared to have been planted by a rival militia," the residents told Daily Times by phone. Meanwhile, in Hangu district, a remote-controlled bomb targeted a police vehicle, injuring four policemen and five civilians, District Police Officer Abdur Rashid Khan told reporters. He said the blast took place near Baghto Chowk on Tall Road.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/17/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Lashkar-e-Islami
The Pakistan government should investigate reports of summary executions, torture, and mistreatment during counterterrorism operations in Swat, according to a Human Rights Watch report on Friday.
"The Pakistani military has yet to understand that a bullet in the back of the head is simply not the way to win hearts and minds in Swat."
Since September 2009, the HRW has received credible reports of extra-judicial executions, allegedly by soldiers in Swat or police, acting at the behest of the military. The HRW has since February researched alleged human rights violations in Swat, based on an initial list of 238 suspicious killings provided by local sources and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
None of the killings were falsely reported in the cases examined, suggesting that the total number of killings is as high as or greater than this. To date, the military has not held any of the perpetrators accountable.
"The Pakistani military has yet to understand that a bullet in the back of the head is simply not the way to win hearts and minds in Swat," said Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher at HRW. "Killing suspects and their relatives is vicious, illegal, and constitutes an appallingly bad counterterrorism practice that just creates more enemies."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/17/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Curious... how did HRW learn more than the Pakistani military about Swat?
DIALA / Aswat al-Iraq: The no. 2 man of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in Diala was arrested in a military operation carried out northeast of Baaquba city on Saturday, according to the al-Saadiya district chief.
An Iraqi army 2nd Brigade force conducted an operation in Saadiya, Khanaqin district, (45 km) northeast of Baaquba, and managed to arrest Zaid Hameed Ali, a senior member of the AQI in the province, Ahmed al-Zarkushi told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
Ali is the AQIs man in charge of the armed groups eastern areas in Diala, which includes the Hamrin hills, where the AQI is active, he said.
Zarkushi added that the arrested person is involved in the murder of dozens of people and several bombing attacks that targeted civilians and government organizations in Diala.
Baaquba, the capital city of the violence-ridden province of Diala, lies 57 km northeast of Baghdad.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/17/2010 22:02 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Three civilians were killed and two more were wounded by a roadside bomb blast in western Baghdad, a police source said Friday.
The bomb exploded while a civilian car was passing carrying five persons near Hamid Shihab village in Abu Ghrieb region, western Baghdad, killing three and injuring two and damaging the car, the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/17/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
KIRKUK / Aswat al-Iraq: Kirkuk's Kurdish forces asayesh seized an explosive vehicle ready for detonating in a house in the southwestern part of the city and arrested three of the culprits, according to the asayesh information chief on Friday.
"The forces captured three who had prepared a Toyota car bomb for attacks in the city's neighborhoods as shown by initial investigations with them," Firhad Mohammed told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
"The vehicle contained 20 kg of highly explosive TNT," he added.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/17/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Wiki (cough) paints Asayish/Asayesh as a kind of MI5 for the Kurdish region.
'Amnesty' says nasty things about them, which means that they are doing a good job.
A 52-year-old Buddhist rubber tapper was killed Friday by a recently planted landmine in one of Thailand's troubled Muslim-majority southern provinces, police said. Two police officers were also seriously injured after they went to investigate the incident in Than To district of Yala province and triggered another landmine.
The use of landmines appears to mark a new tactic by suspected Islamic separatists in three southern Thai provinces near the border with Malaysia where a raging insurgency has left more than 4,100 people dead in six years.
[Al Arabiya Latest] The death toll from twin suicide bombings at a Shiite mosque in heavily Sunni southeast Iran has risen to 26, a local lawmaker told IRNA news agency on Friday.
Hossein Ali Shahriari, parliamentarian from the city of Zahedan where the twin attacks occurred on Thursday, put the number of wounded at more than 300.
"This explosion has left 26 people killed and more than 300 wounded. The toll may increase further," Shahriari was quoted as saying by IRNA.
Among those killed were a members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, Iran's deputy Interior Minister in charge of security Ali Abdollahi said.
IRNA said the second attack was so strong that "body parts were scattered around the Grand Mosque."
The Sunni Muslim rebel group Jundollah said it was behind the attacks, telling Al Arabiya TV in an e-mail that it had carried them out in retaliation for Iran's execution in June of the group's leader, Abdolmalek Rigi.
Rigi was hanged after being convicted of carrying out other deadly attacks. Jundollah says it is fighting for the rights of Iran's Sunni Muslim minority.
The suicide bombings took place near Zahedan's Grand Mosque, and Jundollah said they were carried out by relatives of Rigi and were aimed at a Revolutionary Guards gathering.
The group said the suicide attacks were carried out by Abdolbaset Rigi and Mohammad Rigi ... and warned of more operations to come.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/17/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Jundullah
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.
A pair of Canadian helicopters circled low over a vineyard, watching two insurgents try to slip away, waiting for permission to shoot.
[Bangla Daily Star] A Satkhira court yesterday sent 14 Jamaat men including its district Ameer Mohaddes Abdul khaleque and secretary Nurul Huda to jail in a case filed with Sadar police station for plotting subversive activities in the city Thursday night.
Turkish police detained 29 people with suspected links to the al Qaeda network in a pre-dawn swoop Friday in three provinces, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Suspected Maoist rebels planted a landmine that killed five policemen and wounded four others in eastern India on Friday, a police spokesman said.
Ten people, including children, were killed and 14 others injured when a bomb planted inside a shop went off in a market in Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency on Friday, administration officials and residents said. "Ten people have been killed, including three children. Fourteen people were wounded in the blast," senior district official Shafeerullah Khan said. 
KIRKUK / Aswat al-Iraq: Kirkuk's Kurdish forces asayesh seized an explosive vehicle ready for detonating in a house in the southwestern part of the city and arrested three of the culprits, according to the asayesh information chief on Friday.
A 52-year-old Buddhist rubber tapper was killed Friday by a recently planted landmine in one of Thailand's troubled Muslim-majority southern provinces, police said. Two police officers were also seriously injured after they went to investigate the incident in Than To district of Yala province and triggered another landmine.
