Why the US is losing in Afghanistan - updates on the Pashtun insurgency

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Gunfire as Taliban Fight Marines in Marjah

Sunday , February 14, 2010

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585803,00.html


MARJAH, Afghanistan —

It could take weeks to reclaim the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, a top Marine commander said Sunday as thousands of U.S. troops and Afghan soldiers fought for a second day in NATO's most ambitious effort yet to break the militants' grip on Afghanistan's dangerous south.

"That doesn't necessarily mean an intense gun battle, but it probably will be 30 days of clearing," Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson said. "I am more than cautiously optimistic that we will get it done before that."

Squads of Marines and Afghan soldiers occupied a majority of Marjah, but gunfire continued as pockets of militants dug in and fought. Sniper fire forced Nicholson to duck behind an earthen bank in the northern part of the city where he toured the tip of the Marines' front line held by Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines.

"The fire we just took reflects how I think this will go — small pockets of sporadic fighting by small groups of very mobile individuals," he said.

Explosions from controlled detonations of bombs and other explosives were being heard about every 10 minutes in the area.

"There's really a massive amount of improvised explosive devices," Nicholson said. "We thought there would be a lot, but we are finding even more than expected."

The second day of NATO's largest offensive since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan also was marked by painstaking house searches.

Using metal detectors and sniffer dogs, U.S. forces found caches of explosives rigged to blow as they went from compound to compound down streets riddled with thousands of homemade bombs and mines. Shots continued to ring out in some neighborhoods.

They also discovered several sniper positions, freshly abandoned and booby-trapped with grenades.

The troops also found two large caches of ammonium nitrate — a common ingredient in explosives — totaling about 8,800 pounds, said Lt. Josh Diddams, a Marine spokesman.

"We're in the majority of the city at this point," Diddams said. He said the nature of the resistance has changed from the initial assault, with insurgents now holding ground in some neighborhoods.

"We're starting to come across areas where the insurgents have actually taken up defensive positions," he said. "Initially it was more hit and run."

NATO said it hoped to secure Marjah, the largest town under Taliban control and a key opium smuggling hub, within days, set up a local government and rush in development aid in a first test of the new U.S. strategy for turning the tide of the 8-year-old war.

At least two shuras, or meetings, have been held with local Afghan residents — one in the northern district of Nad Ali and the other in Marjah itself, NATO said in a statement. Discussions have been "good," and more shuras are planned in coming days as part of a larger strategy to enlist community support for the NATO mission, it said.

Afghan officials said Sunday that at least 27 insurgents had been killed in the operation.

Most of the Taliban appeared to have scattered in the face of overwhelming force, possibly waiting to regroup and stage attacks later to foil the alliance's plan to stabilize the area and expand Afghan government control in the volatile south.

Two NATO soldiers were killed on the first day of the operation — one American and one Briton — according to military officials in their countries. At least seven civilians had been wounded, but there were no reports of deaths, Helmand provincial spokesman Daoud Ahmadi said.

More than 30 transport helicopters ferried troops into the heart of Marjah before dawn Saturday, while British, Afghan and U.S. troops fanned out across the Nad Ali district to the north of the mud-brick town, long a stronghold of the Taliban.

Maj. Gen. Gordon Messenger told reporters in London that British forces "have successfully secured the area militarily" with only sporadic resistance from Taliban forces. A Taliban spokesman insisted their fighters still controlled the town.

President Barack Obama was keeping a close watch on combat operations, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

Vietor said Defense Secretary Robert Gates would have the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, brief Obama on Sunday.

In Marjah, most of the Marines said they would have preferred a straight-up gunbattle to the "death at every corner" crawl they faced.

"Basically, if you hear the boom, it's good. It means you're still alive after the thing goes off," said Lance Corp. Justin Hennes, 22, of Lakeland, Florida.

Local Marjah residents crept out from hiding after dawn Sunday, some reaching out to Afghan troops partnered with Marine platoons.

"Could you please take the mines out?" Mohammad Kazeem, a local pharmacist, asked the Marines through an interpreter. The entrance to his shop had been completely booby-trapped, without any way for him to re-enter his home, he said.

The bridge over the canal into Marjah from the north was rigged with so many explosives that Marines erected temporary bridges to cross into the town.

"It's just got to be a very slow and deliberate process," said Capt. Joshua Winfrey of Stillwater, Oklahoma, a Marine company commander.

Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, said U.S. troops fought gunbattles in at least four areas of the town and faced "some intense fighting."

To the east, the battalion's Kilo Company was inserted into the town by helicopter without meeting resistance but was then "significantly engaged" as the Marines fanned out from the landing zone, Christmas said.

Marine commanders had said they expected between 400 and 1,000 insurgents — including more than 100 foreign fighters — to be holed up in Marjah, a town of 80,000 people that is the linchpin of the militants' logistical and opium-smuggling network in the south.

The offensive, code-named "Moshtarak," or "Together," was described as the biggest joint operation of the Afghan war, with 15,000 troops involved, including some 7,500 in Marjah itself. The government says Afghan soldiers make up at least half of the offensive's force.

Once Marjah is secured, NATO hopes to quickly deliver aid and provide public services in a bid to win support among the estimated 125,000 people who live in the town and surrounding villages. The Afghans' ability to restore those services is crucial to the success of the operation and in preventing the Taliban from returning.

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Marjah Offensive: Five foreign soldiers killed in southern Afghanistan

Ennaharonline

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63244&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 13, 2010

KABUL (Afghanistan) - Two foreign soldiers were killed Saturday in southern Afghanistan in addition to the three Americans who had died that morning in a bomb blast, said the NATO force, without specifying whether it was during the Marjah offensive.

"A member of the International Force for Security Assistance (ISAF) was killed in the explosion of a missile in the south today and another died in a firefight with light weapons" also in the south, we read in a terse statement from the NATO force that does not specify their nationalities. "Three U.S. soldiers of ISAF were killed after the detonation of a missile in the south,"had indicated a previous text of the ISAF, without elaborating either.

Neither text did not specify whether these soldiers were killed in the Marjah offensive, where 15,000 soldiers of international and Afghan forces - Americans in the lead - launched in the night, a major offensive against the Taliban stronghold in Helmand province.

In the afternoon, a captain of the Afghan army had told AFP that a U.S. soldier of ISAF was killed and three others wounded in a suicide attack against their convoy on the outskirts of Kandahar, 200 km west of Marjah.

With these five deaths, the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the start of the year is 71, according to an AFP count. The Taliban insurgency, which has increased considerably over the past two years has caused 520 deaths in the ranks of international forces in 2009, by far the highest record in eight years of war.






 

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Surging Into the Savage Past in Afghanistan

by Chris Floyd
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63255&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 13, 2010

I.
The current Nobel Peace laureate is continuing his noble and inspiring work of war this week in the latest PR blitz in Afghanistan: "Operation Moshtarak," the much-ballyhooed, extravagantly telegraphed "attack" on the city of Marja. Is it even worth discussing this monstrous sham? The perpetrators of the attack know full well that there will be no "battle." Even the American commanders cannot be so sealed in their arrogant ignorance that they do not know their insurgent opponents will do what every guerrilla army does when facing concentrations of conventional military force: disperse into the countryside, and into the urban populace, biding their time until the occupiers draw down their forces -- and in the meantime launching small ambushes with sniper fire and roadside bombs aimed at the sitting-duck cannon fodder placed in harm's way by their publicity-driven commanders.

And yet, the Western media has fully bought into the hackneyed, transparently false narrative of "the largest military operation of its kind since the American-backed war began eight years ago," with a plucky band of Marines and their faithful Afghan allies facing down "hundreds" of hardened fighters in the "largest Taliban sanctuary inside Afghanistan." The embedded media tracked the countdown to the attack as if they were hunkered down in the landing craft on their way to Omaha Beach. Except, of course, when one is genuinely planning an actual major attack on a strong, entrenched enemy -- as at Omaha Beach -- one does not normally advertise it around the clock for weeks on end beforehand.

If, however, one is attempting to galvanize public support for a long, grinding, bloody war of domination and occupation that has no discernible purpose (none that can be stated in public, anyway), why then, a nice set-piece "battle" which will end in a guaranteed, low-cost "victory" is just the ticket. It will demonstrate that the "new and improved" strategy of your "new and improved" president is "working," and that we are "winning" -- so we can't quit now!

This is of course the same message conveyed many years -- and many thousands of lives -- ago by the fall of Kabul, the "conquest" of Kandahar, and other great triumphs that "cleaned out" the various "largest Taliban sanctuar[ies] inside Afghanistan." But as any ad man can tell you, a commercial brand needs to be refreshed periodically in order to keep pulling in the profits. And the Afghan War brand has been a veritable bonanza, a cornucopia of contracts, corruption, profiteering and political pull for all of the interested parties involved: the various militaries and security apparats (and their contractors), the political elites, the many insurgent factions (loosely and falsely given the single rubric "Taliban"), the warlords, the druglords, organized crime, violent religious extremists -- in short, all those who traffic in hate, death, conflict and fear.

Or as "retired American military officer working in security in Afghanistan" put it to Nir Rosen in Mother Jones:



"Every time our boys face them, we win," he told me grimly. "We're winning every day. Are we going to keep winning for 20 years?"


Yes, mister retired American military officer, that is indeed the plan -- if they can swing it:



PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb. 17, 2017 -- President David Petraeus' "New Way Forward" in the Af-Pak War got off to a rousing start today as a combined force of U.S. Marines and Frontier paramilitaries launched a new 'warfighter/nationbuilder' offensive against this stonghold of Taliban insurgency. The attack is seen as a vital test of what the president has called his "Counterinsurgency 2.0" strategy, an updating of the highly successful approach that President Petraeus implemented in Iraq, where the 75,000 remaining U.S. advisors and trainers recently marked the 10th anniversary of his victorious surge.....


II.
The true context of the present operation, and the many that preceded it, and the many that will follow it, was put in stark relief by Scott Horton at Harper's last week, when he did us the great service of posting an excerpt from the correspondence between Lev Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi. The exchanges between the young Hindu lawyer and the aging Russian writer burn with a moral fervor and compassion that in our day seem to have come from another planet, not just another century. Here is an excerpt from that excerpt, taken from a letter that Tolstoy wrote (in his strong if imperfect English) just weeks before his death in 1910:



The longer I live – especially now when I clearly feel the approach of death – the more I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else, and what in my opinion is of immense importance, namely, what we call the renunciation of all opposition by force, which really simply means the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries. ... 

This law was announced by all the philosophies – Indian as well as Chinese, and Jewish, Greek and Roman. Most clearly, I think, was it announced by Christ, who said explicitly that on it hang all the Law and the Prophets. More than that, foreseeing the distortion that has hindered its recognition and may always hinder it, he specially indicated the danger of a misrepresentation that presents itself to men living by worldly interests – namely, that they may claim a right to defend their interests by force or, as he expressed it, to repay blow by blow and recover stolen property by force, etc., etc. He knew, as all reasonable men must do, that any employment of force is incompatible with love as the highest law of life, and that as soon as the use of force appears permissible even in a single case, the law itself is immediately negatived.

The whole of Christian civilization, outwardly so splendid, has grown up on this strange and flagrant–partly intentional but chiefly unconscious–misunderstanding and contradiction. At bottom, however, the law of love is, and can be, no longer valid if defence by force is set up beside it. And if once the law of love is not valid, then there remains no law except the right of might. In that state Christendom has lived for 1,900 years. Certainly men have always let themselves be guided by force as the main principle of their social order. ...


The clear-eyed idealism -- the belief in constant, relentless, non-violent resistance to evil -- that drove Tolstoy, Gandhi and their many spiritual descendants, such as Martin Luther King Jr., are now openly mocked, or else condescendingly discarded as quaint relics, unsuitable for our own tough, savvy times. We saw a prime example of this derision only a few months ago, when Barack Obama, the loudly self-proclaimed Christian, accepted his Nobel Peace Prize with a ringing endorsement of state violence on a massive, savage, overwhelming scale, and an explicit renunciation of non-violence. (For more, see "Miraculous Organ: Blair, Obama and the Narcissists' Defense")

How far we have travelled in the wretched century since Tolstoy's last letter to Gandhi -- a journey into the past, back to the caves, back to the dark forests, where "there remains no law except the right of might."
 

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Jordan: Journalists Jailed for Comment on CIA Suicide Bombing


by Kawther Salam

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63277&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 13, 2010

Jordanian-Spy- Funeral

The Jordanian security authorities arrested two journalists, Mowafaq Mahadin and  Sufian Al-Tal, for criticizing the cooperation of the Royal Jordanian Intelligence Services officer Captain Al-Sharif Ali bin Zaid with the illegal occupation of the United States in Afghanistan.

The public prosecutor of the State Security Court ordered the detention of Mahadin and al-Tal after a group of retired army personnel filed a lawsuit accusing them of "offending the armed forces and betraying their blood."



The journalists were arrested after they made statements during television talk shows aired separately by two stations, whereby the two men questioned the legality of Jordan’s collaboration with the US intelligence services in Afghanistan. The debate addressed the issue of the Jordanian suicide bomber, Homam Balawi, who blew himself up at a US forward base in Khost, Afghanistan, on last December 30, killing seven CIA agents and his Jordanian handler.

Until now the regime-controlled media in Jordan is characterizing the presence of their intelligence operatives in Afghanistan as a "humanitarian mission", and forbids the family of Dr. Khalil bin Hammam bin Mellal Balawi from mourning their son.



 

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Published on Sunday, February 14, 2010 by Reuters

Civilians Die in Afghan Offensive

NATO has confirmed that two rockets fired at militants during its offensive in Helmand, south Afghanistan, missed their target and killed 12 civilians.

by Golnar Motevalli

MARJAH - NATO rockets killed 12 Afghan civilians on Sunday, missing Taliban militants attacking NATO and Afghan troops as they press ahead with a major offensive that must win over the local population to succeed.

Afghans attend a meeting with U.S. soldiers of Alpha Battery, 4th Brigade combat team, 1-508, 82nd parachute infantry regiment, near the town of Shah joy in Zabul province, southern Afghanistan, February 14, 2010. (Credit: REUTERS/Baz Ratner)

"It's regrettable that in the course of our joint efforts, innocent lives were lost. We extend our heartfelt sympathies and will ensure we do all we can to avoid future incidents," NATO commander U.S. General Stanley McChrystal said in a statement.

The offensive, one of NATO's biggest against the Taliban since the Afghan war began in 2001, comes at the start of a campaign to impose government control on rebel-held areas before U.S. forces start a planned 2011 withdrawal.

U.S. Marines came under intense fire on Sunday after taking over a building in the heart of the last major Taliban bastion in Helmand province.

Taliban fighters unleashed automatic gunfire at NATO helicopters flying in and out of the town of Marjah, and fired on Marines during a ceremony to raise the Afghan flag over the compound to mark progress in the offensive.

Captain Ryan Sparks compared the intensity of the fighting to the U.S.-led offensive against militants in the Iraqi town of Fallujah in 2004.

"In Fallujah, it was just as intense. But there, we started from the north and worked down to the south. In Marjah, we're coming in from different locations and working toward the center, so we're taking fire from all angles," Sparks said.

INVESTIGATION INTO DEATHS

NATO forces had advised civilians not to leave their homes, although they have said they do not know whether the assault will lead to heavy fighting.

Heavy civilian casualties could put them under pressure from human rights groups, who say that since NATO has encouraged people to stay, it bears an additional legal and moral responsibility to avoid heavy fighting that would harm them.

Most of the population of the area, estimated at up to 100,000, has stayed put.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed sadness at the incident. He said a family was killed.

"Upon hearing the news, Hamid Karzai immediately ordered an investigation as he had previously ordered that the operation should be carefully done to prevent innocent civilians being killed," a statement from the president's office said.

Unlike Fallujah, where massive U.S. firepower demolished the city and left great bitterness against the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, the Marjah assault aims to eliminate militants while building goodwill for Afghan forces who will take over the area.

McChrystal has strongly emphasized precautions to avoid killing civilians, and the number of civilians killed by NATO troops has declined since he took command in mid-2009.

At the same time, U.S. commanders are under pressure to achieve decisive military gains this year to turn the tide in the war, before troops begin to withdraw.

As the flag incident demonstrated, it will not be easy.

"I have always dreamed of raising the Afghanistan flag over Marjah," said 22-year-old Afghan soldier Almast Khan, before Marines protecting the building started coming under fire.

MILITANTS KILLED

U.S. forces fired mortar rounds against a Taliban position, and the militants fired a round back which landed in the Marines' compound but failed to explode. The Marines responded by firing rockets at the suspected militant position.

Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said on the group's website it had launched direct attacks on NATO-led troops in several parts of Marjah and had surrounded some in one area.

Marjah has long been a breeding ground for insurgents and lucrative opium poppy cultivation, which Western countries say funds the insurgency. The scale of the problem was glaring at the compound taken over by the Marines.

Bags of drugs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars had been discovered, as were sacks of chemicals capable of producing 100 pounds of explosives, said Tim Coderre, a civilian adviser to Marine officials.

NATO commanders flagged the operation well before it kicked off, hoping to persuade the Taliban to flee and thereby avoid a prolonged and destructive fight that could anger residents.

But it gave militants time to lay mines, booby-traps and improvised explosives. NATO said troops had recovered 250 kg of ammonium nitrate, used for making explosive, detonation cord and various other bomb-making ingredients during searches.

The 15,000-troop NATO operation is named Mushtarak, or "together," suggesting that NATO and Afghan forces are determined to work closely to restore stability to Afghanistan.

(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Ismail Sameem in Kandahar; Writing by Michael Georgy [1]; Editing by Louise Ireland [2]Bryson Hull [3])

© 2010 Reuters

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Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/14-4

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Published on Saturday, February 13, 2010 by The Independent/UK


Obama's Secret Prisons in Afghanistan Endanger Us All

He was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he's dragging us further in.


by Johann Hari

Osama bin Laden's favourite son, Omar, recently abandoned his father's cave in favour of spending his time dancing and drooling in the nightclubs of Damascus. The tang of freedom almost always trumps Islamist fanaticism in the end: three million people abandoned the Puritan hell of Taliban Afghanistan for freer countries, while only a few thousand faith-addled fanatics ever travelled the other way. Osama's vision can't even inspire his own kids. But Omar bin Laden says his father is banking on one thing to shore up his flailing, failing cause - and we are giving it to him.

Obama was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he's dragging us further in. Whenever Obama acts like Bush, listen carefully - you will hear the distant, delighted chuckle of Osama bin Laden, and the needless stomp of fresh recruits heading his way. (CHRIS COADY/ NB ILLUSTRATIONS)

The day George W Bush was elected, Omar says, "my father was so happy. This is the kind of president he needs - one who will attack and spend money and break [his own] country". Osama wanted the US and Europe to make his story about the world ring true in every mosque and every mountain-top and every souq. He said our countries were bent on looting Muslim countries of their resources, and any talk of civil liberties or democracy was a hypocritical facade. The jihadis I have interviewed - from London to Gaza to Syria - said their ranks swelled with each new whiff of Bushism as more and more were persuaded. It was like trying to extinguish fire with a blowtorch.

The revelations this week about how the CIA and British authorities handed over a suspected jihadi to torturers in Pakistan may sound at first glance like a hangover from the Bush years. Barack Obama was elected, in part, to drag us out of this trap - but in practice he is dragging us further in. He is escalating the war in Afghanistan, and has taken the war to another Muslim country. The CIA and hired mercenaries are now operating on Obama's orders inside Pakistan, where they are sending unarmed drones to drop bombs and sending secret agents to snatch suspects. The casualties are overwhelmingly civilians. We may not have noticed, but the Muslim world has: check out Al Jazeera any night.

Obama ran on an inspiring promise to shut down Bush's network of kidnappings and secret prisons. He said bluntly: "I do not want to hear this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that... but as a parent I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence." He said it made the US "less safe" because any gain in safety by Gitmo-ing one suspected jihadi - along with dozens of innocents - is wiped out by the huge number of young men tipped over into the vile madness of jihadism by seeing their brothers disappear into a vast military machine where they may never be heard from again. Indeed, following the failed attack in Detroit, Obama pointed out the wannabe-murderer named Guantanamo as the reason he signed up for the jihad.

Yet a string of recent exposes has shown that Obama is in fact maintaining a battery of secret prisons where people are held without charge indefinitely - and he is even expanding them. The Kabul-based journalist Anand Gopal has written a remarkable expose for The Nation magazine. His story begins in the Afghan village of Zaiwalat at 3.15am on the night of November 19th 2009. A platoon of US soldiers blasted their way into a house in search of Habib ur-Rahman, a young computer programmer and government employee who they had been told by someone, somewhere was a secret Talibanist. His two cousins came out to see what the noise was - and they were shot to death. As the children of the house screamed, Habib was bundled into a helicopter and whisked away. He has never been seen since. His family do not know if he is alive or dead.

This is not an unusual event in Afghanistan today. In this small village of 300 people, some 16 men have been "disappeared" by the US and 10 killed in night raids in the past two years. The locals believe people are simply settling old clan feuds by telling the Americans their rivals are jihadists. Habib's cousin Qarar, who works for the Afghan government, says: "I used to go on TV and argue that people should support the government and the foreigners. But I was wrong. Why should anyone do so?"

Where are all these men vanishing to? Obama ordered the closing of the CIA's secret prisons, but not those run by Joint Special Operations. They maintain a Bermuda Triangle of jails with the notorious Bagram Air Base at its centre. One of the few outsiders has been into this ex-Soviet air-hangar is the military prosecutor Stuart Couch. He says: "In my view, having visited Guantanamo several times, the Bagram facility made Guantanamo look like a nice hotel. The men did not appear to be able to move around at will, they mostly sat in rows on the floor. It smelled like the monkey house at the zoo."

We know that at least two innocent young men were tortured to death in Bagram. Der Spiegel has documented how some "inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". The accounts of released prisoners suggest the very worst abuses stopped in the last few years of the Bush administration, and Obama is supposed to have forbidden torture, but it's hard to tell. We do know Obama has permitted the use of solitary confinement lasting for years - a process that often drives people insane. The International Red Cross has been allowed to visit some of them, but in highly restricted circumstances, and their reports remain confidential. In this darkness, abuse becomes far more likely.

The Obama administration is appealing against US court rulings insisting the detainees have the right to make a legal case against their arbitrary imprisonment. And the White House is insisting they can forcibly snatch anyone they suspect from anywhere in the world - with no legal process - and take them there. Yes: Obama is fighting for the principles behind Guantanamo Bay. The frenzied debate about whether the actual camp in Cuba is closed is a distraction, since he is proposing to simply relocate it to less sunny climes.

Once you vanish into this system, you have no way to get yourself out. The New York lawyer Tina Foster represents three men who were kidnapped by US forces in Thailand, Pakistan and Dubai and bundled to Bagram, where they have been held without charge for seven years now. She tells me there have been "shockingly few improvements" under Obama. "The Bush administration rubbed our faces in it, while Obama's much smoother. But the reality is still indefinite detention without charge for people who are judged guilty simply by association. It's contrary to everything we stand for as a country... I know there are children [in there] from personal experience. I have interviewed dozens of children who were detained in Bagram, some as young as 10."

Today, Bagram is being given a $60m expansion, allowing it to hold five times as many prisoners as Guantanamo Bay currently does. Gopal reports that the abuse is leaking out to other, more secretive sites across Afghanistan. They are so underground they are known only by the names given to them by released inmates - the Salt Pit, the Prison of Darkness. Obama also asserts his right to hand over the prisoners to countries that commit torture, provided they give a written "assurance" they won't be "abused" - assurances that have proved worthless in the past. The British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith estimates there are 18,000 people trapped in these "legal black holes" by the US.

As Obama warned in the distant days of the election campaign, these policies place us all in greater danger. Matthew Alexander, the senior interrogator in Iraq who tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says: "I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight... We have lost hundreds if not thousands of American lives because of our policy." The increased risk bleeds out onto the London Underground and the nightclubs of Bali. I oppose these policies precisely because I want to be safe, and I loathe jihadism.

President Obama has been tossing aside the calm jihad-draining insights of candidate Obama for a year now. Whenever Obama acts like Bush, listen carefully - you will hear the distant, delighted chuckle of Osama bin Laden, and the needless stomp of fresh recruits heading his way.

© 2010 The Independent

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URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/13-1

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U.S. Marines say make steady progress in Afghan assault

by Golnar Motevalli
MARJAH, Afghanistan
Mon Feb 15, 2010 5:41am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61B1ZJ20100215?feedType=nl&feedName=usmorningdigest



MARJAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S. Marines are making steady progress in one of the biggest NATO offensives in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001, but areas infested with roadside bombs are bogging them down, a spokesman said on Monday.

The assault is the first test of U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to send 30,000 more troops to seize insurgent-held areas ahead of a planned 2011 troop drawdown.

"We are making steady progress but being very methodical about detecting and clearing routes in an area heavily saturated with IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices)," Marine Capt. Abraham Sipe told Reuters in response to an email, adding counts of militants killed of captured would not be provided.

Afghan officials said on Sunday that as many as 35 militants had been killed in the first two days of the offensive.

"In many parts of Marjah, we have seen very little opposition. There are areas where Marines have met with stiff resistance, but they are making steady progress throughout the area," Sipe said.

Afghan officials said there had been some fighting.

"There was fighting last night and some sporadic clashes are still going on in Marjah. The enemy has suffered casualties," said Ghulam Mahaiuddin Ghori, a senior Afghan army general in Helmand.

EARLY PROGRESS

Much of the success of the operation in Helmand province depends on whether the new administration wins the trust of the local population and Afghan troops must be effective enough to keep the Taliban from returning.

NATO and the Afghan government's credibility rests on limiting civilian casualties, especially since NATO commanders told Marjah residents to stay home during the offensive which could last weeks.

Highlighting the dangers of fighting a resilient and unpredictable enemy, Helmand Province Governor Gulab Mangal said three would-be suicide bombers were gunned down on Sunday while trying to blow themselves up among troops.

"The situation moment by moment is going the way the government had expected. The forces are extending their advances from points they have captured and the operation is going on successfully," he told a news conference.

NATO rockets killed 12 Afghan civilians on Sunday on the second day of an offensive designed to impose Afghan authority on one of the last big Taliban strongholds in the country's most violent province.

The offensive has been flagged for weeks to persuade Taliban fighters to leave so the area can be recaptured with minimal damage or loss of civilian life, in the hope that the roughly 100,000 people there will welcome the Afghan administration.

U.S. commanders are under pressure to deliver results on the battlefield in time for the start of the troop drawdown due in 2011.

Marjah has long been a breeding ground for insurgents and lucrative opium poppy cultivation, which Western countries say funds the insurgency.

The United States' top military officer on Sunday said the assault on Marjah had got "off to a good start".

"It's actually very difficult to predict (the end)," Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters during a visit to Israel. "We have from a planning standpoint talked about a few weeks, but I don't know that."

The attack started on Saturday with waves of helicopters ferrying troops into Marjah and the nearby Nad Ali district. The next day, U.S. Marines came under intense fire.

(Additional reporting by Abdul Malek in Lashkar Gah and Sayed Salahuddin and Michael Georgy in KABUL; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Bryson Hull and Ron Popeski)

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Monday, February 15, 2010
14:19 Mecca time, 11:19 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201021594154869248.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Nato 'regrets' civilian deaths  
 

Some 15,000 troops, including US, Afghan, UK, Danish and Estonian forces have been mobilised [EPA]
 

Nato has expressed its "deep regret" over the loss of civilian lives in its offensive against the Taliban in the town of Marjah in southern Afghanistan.

Despite the deaths of 12 civilians, officials appeared pleased with the Marjah campaign's progress, with Afghan officials saying on Monday that almost total control of the area had been wrested from the Taliban.

"Marjah has been almost cleared and our forces are in control," General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the Afghan defence ministry spokesman, said.

"There are some small-scale, sporadic firefights. We are mostly busy with clearing the area of IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices]. The operation is nearing its end."

General Aminullah Patiani, the senior Afghan commander in the operation, echoed that "all of the areas of Marjah and Nad Ali have been taken by combined forces".

'Regrettable' deaths

James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul, said: "Much of Marjah is safe enough for dignitaries to visit. Forces have set up a cordon of three kilometres around the town and they are trying to extend that cordon."


In depth :
  Operation Moshtarak at a glance 
  Gallery: Operation Moshtarak
  Video: Forces 'positive' on Afghan assault
  Video: Afghanistan's influential elders
  Video: Afghanistan's displaced face harsh winter
  Focus: To win over Afghans, US must listen
  Timeline: Afghanistan in crisis

 

But the offensive, known as Operation Moshtarak, was overshadowed on Sunday by the death of 12 Afghan civilians killed when two rockets missed their target and landed on homes in Nad Ali district, where Marjah is located. Nato acknowledged responsibility for the deaths.

General Stanley McChrystal, the head of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, called the loss of life "regrettable" and said the operation was being conducted with "the protection of Afghan people in mind".

"We extend our heartfelt sympathies and will ensure we do all we can to avoid future incidents," he said in a statement on Sunday.

Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera that "General McChrystal has gone out of his way to minimise civilian deaths".

Speaking to Al Jazeera while on a trip to Qatar, Holbrooke said: "The objective here is to protect the people and help the government provide services to the people of Afghanistan, even in the most difficult areas."

"Government-in-a-box"

Operation Moshtarak, is the first major test of the strategy of Barack Obama, the US president, to reverse the Taliban insurgency and end the eight-year conflict with one of the biggest offensives since the 2001 US-led invasion.

US marines were leading a force of 15,000 US, Nato and Afghan troops in the ground and air operation designed to clear the Taliban from the Marjah region of the southern province of Helmand and make way for Western-backed authorities.


 
 
Two Nato soldiers have been killed during Operation Moshtarak and another five Nato soldiers died elsewhere in southern Afghanistan since the assault began on Saturday.

Separately, Mohamed Hanif Atmar, Afghanistan's interior minister, told a press conference on Monday that the Taliban should end its fight and accept the government's proposals for reintegration.

"Today our message to them [the Taliban] is that their best option is to take advantage of the peace and reconciliation programme. There is no way you can win, the Afghan people are determined to win," he said.

"If they choose to take advantage of this programme, we will definitely respond positively."

Afghan officials say they have a "government-in-a-box" ready to sweep in and set up institutional services and security that will ensure the Taliban do not return to areas captured by US-led forces.

Obama has ordered the deployment of over 50,000 American troops to Afghanistan since taking office in January 2009, with the final reinforcements due to bring to 150,000 the total number of US and Nato-led troops in the country by August.
 
 

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Taliban Sniper Teams Attack U.S., Afghan Troops

Monday , February 15, 2010
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585888,00.html

Feb. 14: A U.S. Marine from Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines runs during a heavy gun battle in the town of Marjah, Afghanistan.

MARJAH, Afghanistan — Sniper teams attacked U.S. Marines and Afghan troops across the Taliban haven of Marjah, as several gun battles erupted Monday on the third day of a major offensive to seize the extremists' southern heartland.

Multiple firefights in different locations taxed the ability of coalition forces to provide enough air support as NATO forces forged deeper into the town, moving through suspected insurgent neighborhoods, the U.S. Marines said.

SLIDESHOW: U.S.-Led Attack in Helmand Province
http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/world/2010/02/13/afghan-forces-storm-taliban-stronghold

Michael Yon reports from Afghanistan
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

In northern Marjah, an armored column came under fire from at least three separate sniper teams, slowing its progress. One of the teams came within 155 feet and started firing.

Troops braced for the estimated 2.5-mile march to link up with U.S. and Afghan troops who had been airdropped into the town. Small squads of Taliban snipers initiated firefights throughout the day in an attempt to draw coalition forces into a larger ambush.

The massive offensive involving some 15,000 U.S., Afghan and British troops is the biggest joint operation since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

On Monday, Afghan military officials gave a more optimistic view of the progress being made, with Brig. Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai saying Afghan and NATO forces have largely contained the insurgents and succeeded in gaining trust from residents, who have pointed out mine locations.

"Today there is no major movement of the enemy. South of Marjah they are very weak. There has been low resistance. Soon we will have Marjah cleared of enemies," Zazai said at a briefing in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand province. He added that only three Afghan troops had been injured.

However, the mission faced a setback on Sunday when two U.S. rockets slammed into a home outside Marjah, killing 12 civilians. NATO said Monday that the rockets missed their target by about 600 meters, or about a third of a mile. NATO had earlier said the rockets missed their target by just 300 meters.

The civilian deaths were a major blow to NATO and Afghan efforts to win the support of residents in the Marjah area, a Taliban logistical center and a base for the lucrative opium trade that finances the insurgency. Before the offensive began Saturday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai had pleaded for the Afghan and foreign commanders to be "seriously careful for the safety of civilians."

Karzai has called for a thorough investigation into the airstrike. Differing accounts have emerged about the details.

On Monday, Afghan Interior Minister Atmar said at the briefing in Lashkar Gah that nine civilians and two or three insurgents were among those killed, suggesting that insurgents were firing at troops from a civilian home.

"The reality is this ... the enemy did capture some civilians in their house and they were firing at our forces from this house. Unfortunately our forces didn't know that civilians were living in that house," he said.

The top NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, apologized for "this tragic loss of life" and suspended use of the sophisticated rocket system pending a thorough review.

The rockets were fired by the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, at insurgents who had attacked U.S. and Afghan forces, wounding one American and one Afghan, NATO said. However, the projectiles veered off target and blasted the home in northern Nad Ali district, which includes Marjah, NATO added.

Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar said the president "is very upset about what happened" and has been "very seriously conveying his message" of restraint "again and again."

Inside Marjah, sporadic firefights increased by midday as small sniper teams fired at U.S. Marines before withdrawing, hoping to lure them into chasing them into a larger ambush.

"Literally every time we stand up, we take rounds," warned one Marine over the radio.

Marines said their ability to fight back has been tightly constrained by strict new rules of engagement that make their job more difficult and dangerous. Under the rules, troops cannot fire at people unless they commit a hostile act or show hostile intent.

"I understand the reason behind it, but it's so hard to fight a war like this," said Lance Corp. Travis Anderson, 20, from Altoona, Iowa. "They're using our rules of engagement against us," he said, stating that his platoon had repeatedly seen men dropping their guns into ditches before walking away to melt among civilians.

Allied officials have reported two coalition deaths so far -- one American and one Briton killed Saturday. Afghan officials said at least 27 insurgents have been killed in the offensive.

In unrelated incidents in southern Afghanistan, NATO said two service members died Sunday -- one from small-arms fire and the other from a roadside bomb explosion. The international force did not disclose their nationalities, but the British defense ministry reported that a British soldier died Sunday of wounds suffered in an explosion.

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Afghan Leaders Call Surge, "Imbecilic and Tragic"

By Gordon Duff

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24677.htm

February 14, 2010 "Veterans Today" - - Last year a number of contractors were thrown out of Afghanistan over the infamous “but-crack” video showing nude imbeciles involved in an unsanitary ceremony.  Little did we know that these must have been the people who planned the American “Surge” meant to stabilize Afghanistan, supplied the intelligence for General McChrystal, may actually have written his report.  Top leaders of the Afghan people weighed in on our operation in Helmand province with American Marines and British troops.  They call it “imbecilic” and “tragic,” faulting nearly every aspect as uninformed, misinformed or simply wrong.

Tribal “Jirgas” (councils) of the real government of Afghanistan, the actual rulers of that fractured state are behind one thing now, getting America out of Afghanistan and getting rid of Karzai, who they see is, not only an American puppet but one of the most useless human beings ever born.  Why mince words.  Actually, I am, their real words are much worse than anything that could be printed, their rage, their words and their tears.

A MASSIVE BLUNDER

Word has been pouring out of Afghanistan.  Every move America makes is hitting blogs around the world through a network of Afghani ex-patriots who are in continual communication.  The word is out:  Our “invasion” that combined Afghani forces with American and British has not gone after Taliban strongholds at all but rather attacked areas controlled by Karzai opponents who were ready to negotiate a legitimate government.

To the people of Afghanistan, the Karzai government was put in place out of utter idiocy in the first place, a failure of the Bush administration to understand that Afghanistan was not going to be ruled by brutal warlords from the “Northern Alliance” who are the ethnic enemies of the majority of the population of Afghanistan.  Placing weakling Mohammed Karzai in as president and supporting him thru a rigged election has only made things worse.

USING “COUNTER-INSURGENCY” TO RECRUIT TERRORSTS

American, Britain and the “Afghani Army” simply aren’t very good at many things, Afghanistan has proven this.  We don’t seem to be able to tell a poppy plant from wheat, we can’t find Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, and we don’t know the Taliban from our own “butt-crack.”  Reports on operations are clear.  We are managing to frighten, brutalize and anger hundreds of thousands of people who have nothing to do with the Taliban, not before anyway.

Now, “they” are rethinking this.  This is the message being received around the world.

Tribal leaders are saying:

We have millions of young men coming of age, America doesn’t realize this.  Each one will become a fighter with one purpose in life, to free their country and drive out foreign invaders.  Each child you see will be a trained soldier with a Kalashnikov.  We will fight for a century if we have to.  Ask Britain, ask Russia, they know.

Why did America have to come here, join with criminal elements, brutal drug lords, mass murderers, people whose only history is brutality toward their own, why was America so stupid as to think we would respect them when they and their stooges rain bombs down on our children?

THE FAILED SURGE IN IRAQ, THE REAL TRUTH

America calls it “the surge” or the “Sunni awakening.”  Either way, it was all a con.  General Petraeus paid millions in bribes to war lords, mostly Sunni and put the militia members who were fighting the United States on the payroll.  The fighting died down, most American troops withdrew to safe areas and we claimed a victory.  What did we really accomplish?

Well, years later, we are still there and Iraq is becoming less stable every day.  The “leaders” we paid rebuilt the old Baathist party, now, without Saddam to lead it, it is simply a massive crime organization involved in daily murders, kidnappings and racketeering.  We created a country plagued by a Mafia we built, now nobody is asking us to leave anymore, everyone is scared to death.

Thank you General Petraeus.  As with General Westmoreland in Vietnam, we “managed the news” and “stayed on message” but our strategy was a sham, it was simply a way to admit failure and lie about it.  We are planning the exact same thing in Afghanistan but it simply didn’t need to be that way.

WHAT A COMPETENT AND WELL INFORMED MILITARY LEADER MIGHT HAVE DONE

Sitting in Kabul or Washington, surrounded by drug dealers and thieves, even worse people in Kabul, it is hard to get good information and make good decisions.  Everyone you talk to has an agenda, everyone is lying.  Who are our advisors?  Well, first of all, the entire world knows that Karzai’s family is helping run the largest drug cartel in the world.  In fact, the biggest civil project America has done in Afghanistan was to repair a dam producing electricity for Kandahar, a dam that also provides irrigation for most of Afghanistan’s opium crop, one Americans are dying to keep secure today.

“Don’t worry, no poppy plants will be injured in the making of this picture.”

America had the chance to sit down with Pakistan and other regional powers, some that we don’t talk to and come up with an economic solution that could provide lasting stability for the tribal regions which are primarily inside Pakistan.  We failed to realize that 25 million Pashtuns live just the other side of the border in Pakistan.  With the right help for Pakistan, the right economic programs and leadership, both countries could be helped and lives, perhaps millions, could be saved without pouring billions of useless dollars into the pockets of defense contractors infesting the halls of Congress, some with the arrogance and blatant insensibility of our actual elected leaders.

IMRAN KHAN OF PAKISTAN, THE REGION’S ONLY RESPECTED LEADER

Combine Michael Jordan, Antonio Banderas and John F. Kennedy and you have Imran Khan, or that is how many in Afghanistan and Pakistan see him.  Cricket is “the” sport in Pakistan and he is the most famous player in the historyof that game.  He is also a political leader, outspoken, charismatic and in a country where most other leaders are Punjabi or Sindhi, Khan is a Pashtun.

Khan is known for his outspoken commentaries warning the west of Islamic extremism and advocating economic development over military solutions that Khan says only fuel terrorism.  Khan says:

My Generation grew up at a time when colonial hang up was at its peak. Our older generation had been slaves and had a huge inferiority complex of the British. The school I went to was a similar to all elite schools in Pakistan, despite becoming independent, they were, and still are, producing replicas of public school boys rather than Pakistanis. I read Shakespeare which was fine, but no Alama Iqbal.

The Islamic class was not considered to be serious, and when I left the school I was considered amongst the elite of the country because I could speak English and wore western clothes. Despite periodically shouting Pakistan Zindabad at school functions, I considered my own culture backward and Islam an outdated religion.

Amongst our group if any one talked about religion, prayed or kept a beard he was immediately branded a Mullah. Because of the power of the Western Media, all our heroes were western movie or pop stars.

In University not just Islam but all religions were considered anachronism. Science had replaced religion and if something couldn’t be logically proved it did not exist. All supernatural stuff was confined to the movies…Moreover, the European history had an awful experience with religion, The horrors committed by the Christian clergy in the name of God during the Inquisition had left a powerful impact on the western mind.

To understand why the west is so keen on secularism, one should go to places like Cordoba in Spain and see torture apparatus used during Spanish Inquisition. Also the persecution of scientists as heretics by the clergy and convinced the Europeans that all religions are regressive.

However, the biggest factor that drove people like me away from religion was the selective Islam practised by most of its preachers. In other words, there was a huge difference between what they practised and what they preached. Also, rather than explaining the philosophy behind the religion, there was an over emphasis on rituals.

 I feel that humans are different; to animals whereas the latter can be drilled, humans need to be intellectually convinced. That is why the Quran constantly appeals to reason. The worst of course, was the exploitation of Islam for political gains by various individuals or groups.

Hence, it was a miracle I did not become an atheist. The only reason why I did not was the powerful religious influence wielded by my mother on me since my childhood. It was not so much out of conviction but love for her that I stayed a Muslim.

Firstly, the inferiority complex that my generation had inherited, gradually went as I developed into a world class athlete. Secondly, I had the unique position of living between two cultures. I began to see the advantages and the disadvantages of both the societies.

In western societies, institutions were strong while they were collapsing in our country. However, there was an area where we were and still are superior, and that is our family life. I used to notice the loneliness of the old-age pensioners at Hove Cricket ground (during my Sussex years). Imagine sending your parents to Old Peoples’ Homes!

Even the children there never had the sort of love and warmth that we grew up with here. They completely miss out on the security blanket that a joint family system provides. However, I began to realise that the biggest loss to the western society and that in trying to free itself from the oppression of the clergy, they had removed both God and religion from their lives.

KHAN’S ROLE

With civil government in Pakistan collapsed under scandal and the Afghani government in Kabul ruling little of the country and mistrusted by the vast majority of its citizens, and NATO, led by the United States fearful of terrorism and Islamic extremism, Khan is the only well known individual with the trust and respect of Islam and the United States yet known for his outspoken independence.  Khan has not been a friend to the United States, quite the opposite.  He has been one of America’s greatest critics at a time known for America’s greatest failures.

His tough role of standing up to the west and to corrupt forces in his own country and his strong ties to Afghanistan make him the vital key to ending the cycle of terrorism and extremism in the region, a region whose potentials for conflict can be far more threatening than the current war in Afghanistan.

Tensions between India and Pakistan have been increasing daily with each accusing the other sponsoring terrorist group.  Terror attacks, shootings, bombings, occur daily in Pakistan and India and are on the increase.  The two regional nucear powers, both allies of the United States, are on a continual “war readiness” footing.

FINDING THE RIGHT ENEMY

Currently, no respected leader in Afghanistan will talk to any American, military leader or diplomat under any circumstances.  America believes it is negotiating with the Taliban and is moving foward with a “plan” but is operating under a series of misconceptions.  No non-Islamic forces will ever be allowed to operate in Afghanistan.  They will only cause tribal uprisings, creating terrorism, not ending it.  Why leaders like General McChrystal who knows this very well would purposefully ignore this fact is strange indeed.

The border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan are areas of lawlessness that can provide safe harbor foreign terrorists and have, in limited numbers, how limited, we will never know.  The same region is also home to millions of people who can be armed insurgents and radicalized “Jihadists” or live in relative peace, largely depending on factors now controlled by the United States.

LIVING WITH THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST

In the 80s, when the pro-Soviet government in Kabul called for Russian help against tribal opposition, America weighed in, arming Mujahideen insurgents, the exact same people we are fighting today, same people, same leaders, same beliefs, only a generation later.  When we had the chance to come into Afghanistan as a friend after the withdrawal of Russian forces and build a new economy there for pennies, we didn’t care.  The Soviet Union had collapsed and we lost interest.  We are now paying for those mistakes.

Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East.

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Nato rockets kill 12 Afghan civilians

by Declan Walsh and Stephen Bates

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63278&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 14, 2010

Two Nato rockets aimed at Taliban insurgents in Helmand missed their target today, killing 12 civilians sheltering in their home and dealing a sharp blow to hopes that civilian casualties would be avoided in the largest western-led operation of the nine-year Afghan war.

The incident occurred in Nad Ali, an insurgent-infested area where British troops are operating. A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said the rockets, which were fired by a sophisticated missile system, were a "US responsibility".

News of the deaths overshadowed cautiously optimistic reports from US commanders in nearby Marjah, a major hub of insurgents and drug smugglers where marines and Afghan soldiers pushed deep into a labyrinth of mud-walled compounds surrounded by landmines and booby traps.

The soldiers went carefully, preceded by explosives teams and sniffer dogs. Taliban snipers holed up in farmhouses offered sporadic, and sometimes sustained, resistance. One group came under fire moments after they hoisted an Afghan flag over a newly captured compound.

Elsewhere, gunfire forced the operation's American commander, Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, to take cover behind an earthen bank. "The fire we just took reflects how I think this will go, small pockets of sporadic fighting by small groups of very mobile individuals," he told an embedded AP reporter.

Operation Moshtarak – meaning "together" – involves 15,000 troops, mostly American, British and Afghan. The first US marines arrived in Marjah by helicopter before dawn on Saturday morning, while British forces are sweeping through Nad Ali.

The Taliban, estimated to number between 400 and 1,000 fighters, have heavily mined the area, and Nicholson predicted it could take 30 days to clear out all militants and explosives, although he was hopeful the job could be completed sooner.

Nato heavily telegraphed its intention to invade Marjah and Nad Ali, hoping to minimise civilian casualties. A Nato statement said the rockets that destroyed a house in Nad Ali landed 300 metres off target. They had been fired by a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System – a system that, according to several defence websites, is usually principally by US marines.

"We deeply regret this tragic loss of life," said General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan. "It's regrettable that in the course of our joint efforts, innocent lives were lost."

The deaths ratcheted up tensions with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who ordered an immediate investigation. High rates of casualties help Taliban recruitment in war-torn areas and stir public anger that has eroded support for the fragile government.

At a press conference in Kabul the defence minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, said the goal of the operation was "not to kill insurgents" but to "expand the government's influence and protect the civilian population".

Details of civilian casualties were sketchy tonight. A spokesman for the Red Cross said medics at a first aid post in Marjah had treated 30 people. He could not give a breakdown between civilian and military casualties.

Operation Moshtarak must succeed not only on the battlefield but in the follow-through by Afghan civilian and security forces. Kabul has promised to deploy 1,000 paramilitary police to Marjah in the coming days while the Nato civilian chief in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, said resource-laden "district development teams" were ready to deploy.

In London Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, told the BBC the "real test over the coming months" would be in "winning over some elements that have formally been opposed to us, that have been shooting at our troops".

The army said its air and ground assault – involving up to 1,500 Coldstream and Grenadier Guards, as well as troops from the Household Cavalry and the Royal Welsh regiment and nearly equal numbers of Afghan soldiers – had still not encountered major opposition.

A spokesman said the Taliban standard had been replaced by an Afghan flag over a village in the Chah triangle.

The Ministry of Defence named a soldier from the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards killed in an explosion on Saturday as Lance Sergeant Dave Greenhalgh, 25, from Ilkeston, Derbyshire. One US marine has also been killed.

The army spokesman said the next stage – "hot stabilisation" – would begin soon. Reconstruction equipment being brought in includes box sets for 20 schools, solar lights, mosque broadcast sets and replacement culvert pipes. Recruitment of working parties would begin within days, with cash being made available for up to 37 teams of local labourers to start repairing roads.

Victory in Marjah would represent a publicity coup for Barack Obama, who is struggling to bolster flagging US opinion. But many fighters are believed to have fled south to bases inside Pakistan or north into mountainous Urzugan province.

One Afghan official stressed that Marjah was just one of more than 700 districts in a country where broad swathes remain under Taliban influence. In a reminder of that threat, the Taliban released a video today of two French journalists kidnapped in December. On it, the two journalists plead for their release and urge the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to negotiate quickly with their captors.



 

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Moloch in Helmand: A Price Worth Paying for Imperial PR

by Chris Floyd

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63291&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 14, 2010
WATCH : Apocalypse Now - smell of napalm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPXVGQnJm0w&feature=player_embedded

The grand attack on Marja was scarcely out of the starting blocks before it claimed its first child sacrifices: five children blown to pieces in a rocket strike on "a compound crowded with Afghan civilians," the New York Times reports.

Up to 12 civilians in total were killed in the strike, which occurred, we're told, when American artillery landed "a few hundred yards away" from another "mud-walled compound" from which U.S. Marines were reportedly taking fire. In keeping with the way of the modern warrior, the computer-guided rockets were launched from a base more than 10 miles away:  "Don't fire until the GPS tracker sends back remote data indicating the whites of their eyes are within 500 yards, boys!"

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former black ops honcho now heading the entire "humanitarian" military mission in Afghanistan, immediately apologized for "this tragic loss of life," and even went so far as to pull the particular remote-control death device from the order of battle, for the moment. Well, Stanley, live by PR, die by PR -- and as we noted here yesterday, the entire operation reeks of "Hamburger Hill"-style futility: sending in a great wad of cannon fodder to foster the illusion of momentum and success in an endless, pointless war of corporate profiteering and imperial chest-beating.

But the deaths of the five slaughtered children in Marja -- just like the deaths of at least 500,000 Iraqi children from the pre-war, bipartisan sanction-strangulation of Iraq -- are "worth it," of course. For while General Black Ops might take a single weapons system out to the woodshed for half an hour, he and his commander-in-chief will certainly not stop the all-out assault on the town, which is packed with civilians after U.S. forces encircled Marja just before the attack, cutting off the people who had been fleeing the widely-telegraphed operation.

The invading forces are also packed with civilians -- the many media embeds that General Black Ops encouraged to provide the steady stream of heroic "Normandy landing" and "Battle of Stalingrad" type stories, with rugged leathernecks slogging their way through enemy fire, cracking wise and fighting on despite their wounds. But speaking of the filmic framing provided by the media embeds, here's a curious fact: all the U.S. press reports state that the attack is being led by American forces, while the UK media are blazing banner tabloid headlines about "Our Boys Leading the Way in Helmand."

Oh well, victory has a thousand fathers, they say. And we know what the stench rising from the bodies in Marja says to our leaders: "It smells like ... victory."

 

 

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Will Obama's Record War Budget Lead to a US Victory in Afghanistan? Don't Bet On it!



by Jack A. Smith

Global Research, February 14, 2010
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63295&hd=&size=1&l=e

President Barack Obama has increased the Pentagon's perennially-bloated annual spending spree to its greatest magnitude since World War II $708 billion. Congress eventually will overwhelmingly approve Obama's war budget request for fiscal year 2011, which takes effect in October.

 

The Obama administration's funding recommendation was announced Feb. 1. The next day Reuters reported that "Shares of major U.S. defense contractors rose on Monday after the Obama administration unveiled a defense budget... that seeks a 3.4 percent increase in the Pentagon's base budget and $159 billion to fund missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan."

 

Also released Feb. 1 was the Pentagon's Congressionally-mandated Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which calls for a considerable expansion of U.S. military power, especially in bolstering counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns.

 

The QDR is a strategic guide for America's present and future wars, updated every four years. The new version remains based on an interventionist foreign/military policy that has not changed in essence since the early Cold War years.

 

As described by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the 2011 war budget reflects the QDR's call for "rebalancing America's defense posture by emphasizing capabilities needed to prevail in current conflicts, while enhancing capabilities that may be needed in the future."

 

In addition to the Pentagon request, President Obama also seeks a supplementary $33 billion this year for "Overseas Contingency Operations," the bureaucratically bland title chosen to replace the Bush Administration's "War on Terrorism." The title is about all that has changed in the "terrorism" wars since Bush left office except for the new administration's grave expansion of the Afghan conflict.

 

The additional money is to pay for the 30,000 troops Obama most recently ordered to Afghanistan, bringing U.S. troop strength to over 100,000, joined by over 40,000 NATO troops, and scores of thousands of mercenaries and contractors. This war is said to cost about $1 million per U.S. soldier per year.

 

The Obama Administration's $708 billion for fiscal 2011 compares to the $680 billion President Obama approved for this year, which itself was 4.1% higher than President George W. Bush's $651 billion funding for fiscal 2009. A decade ago annual "defense" spending was $280 billion.

 

At minimum not including the expensive Pentagon infrastructure that supports America's wars in the Middle East and Central Asia the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan adventures is over $1 trillion so far. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated two years ago that the final cost to the U.S. of both wars, when all aspects are included, will be over $3 trillion.

 

The amount of money Washington is spending in Afghanistan alone this year, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Feb 1, is "more than any other country in the world spends on defense, with the exception of China," with four times more people and a defense budget less than one-fifth that of the United States.

 

Addressing Washington's war money, writer and global analyst Chalmers Johnson comments "It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military."

 

Total U.S. annual "security" spending is over twice that acknowledged in the annual Pentagon budget. Omitted are many expenses from veteran's benefits, homeland security, and interest on past military debts, to nuclear weapons, the cost of America's intelligence agencies, and war-related spending absorbed by other government departments.

 

This means that the U.S., which contains 4.54% of the world's population, accounts for over 50% of global military expenditures, thus spending more on "security" than all the other countries combined. America's main and seemingly only enemy is al-Qaeda, with perhaps 2,000 decentralized adherents worldwide with varying degrees of commitment and ability.

 

In his State of the Union Address last month, President Obama specifically exempted "security" money from the "freeze" on many domestic expenses in the national budget, which amounts to some $3.8 trillion, the highest annual amount on record. About a third of this total $1.3 trillion, another record is in excess of tax receipts and will be paid with interest, along with many trillions more, by future generations of Americans.

 

In the interim, China and a few other countries are expected to continue lending money to a debt-ridden Uncle Sam who refuses to introduce a system of progressive taxation to absorb the intemperate accumulation of wealth by the richest 10% of Americans households (which in 2007 enjoyed a net worth of 71.4% of all the assets in the country), or to substantially cut military spending for aggressive wars of choice.

 

America's hugely disproportionate war funding is more the product of an economic construct known at military Keynesianism (excessive government spending for militarism in order to foster capitalist economic growth) than the official myth of being surrounded by a multitude of formidable enemies. Most of the war money Commander in Chief Obama requested will be directed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The budget includes:

 

 $25 billion for 10 new Navy ships; $11 billion for 43 more F-35 fighter planes;  $10 billion for missile defense;  $56 billion for the Pentagon's "Black Budget" (classified programs known only by code names);  $7 billion (to the Department of Energy) for nuclear weapons;  Funding to increase the size of the of the 56,000 Special Operations Command by 2,800  fighters, plus new equipment;   $10 billion to buy more Army and Marine helicopters for small-scale wars;  Money for enough new advanced unmanned drones to increase seek-and-destroy missions by 75%, including doubling production of the advanced MQ-9 Reaper and 26 extended-range Predators (spending for these drones jumps from $877.5 million in 2010 to $1.4 billion in 2011);  Many billions to train, equip and pay for the U.S.- controlled Afghan and Iraq armies;  $1.2 billion more to Pakistan for counterinsurgency;  $140 million to Yemen to fight al-Qaeda.  Additional billions will be spent in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, buying off the armed opposition and bribing officials.

 

The industry portion of the military-industrial complex is delighted with Obama, according to Todd Harrison, a Senior Fellow for Defense Budget Studies, at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment. In an interview conducted Feb. 4 by the Council on Foreign Relations, he said of the new war budget:

"Given a bigger defense budget and few major program cuts, the defense establishment is elated.... The defense-industry base people read too much into a Democratic administration coming into office and there being real pressure on the federal budget overall because of soaring deficits. They... construed massive cuts in defense spending in the future, particularly in acquisitions. That hasn't proven to be true. This administration hasn't cut defense spending at all but increased it to record levels, and it looks like for the foreseeable future defense acquisitions are going to continue increasing.... People started to realize, 'Hey, this president isn't bad for the defense industry.'"


The U.S. government's extraordinary war expenditures are intended to secure America's position as the world's unipolar hegemon far more than "fighting terrorism" in small, weak countries all the more so as Washington's domination over global affairs is being challenged by rising nations in the developing world and breakaways by once obedient countries, as in Latin America.

 

Anatol Lieven, author of "America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism," put it this way:  "U.S. global power, as presently conceived by the overwhelming majority of the U.S. establishment, is unsustainable.... The empire can no longer raise enough taxes or soldiers, it is increasingly indebted, and key vassal states are no longer reliable.... The result is that the empire can no longer pay for enough of the professional troops it needs to fulfill its self-assumed imperial tasks."

 

The main reason the new Quadrennial Defense Review is greatly expanding the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism aspects of the war machine is because the U.S., for all its devastating military power, has been fought to a stalemate in both Iraq and Afghanistan by much smaller, poorly armed guerrilla forces for nearly seven and over eight years respectively.

 

The main emphasis in the fiscal 2011 war budget is on prevailing in Afghanistan, or at least in conveying the impression that U.S. has not been defeated by a force of fewer than 20,000 scattered irregulars belonging to the Taliban and other groups fighting against the U.S. invaders.

 

It is worthwhile to note that by Washington's own assessment, there are less than 100 members of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and a vague "several hundred" possibly in Pakistan. Both the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban groups are independent of each other and are only interested in fighting against the U.S. within their own countries, not in attacking America.

 

Former Indian ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar, writing in his country's English-language daily newspaper The Hindu Feb. 4, commented thusly on Washington's multi-billion dollar effort to control Afghanistan:

"The spectre that is haunting Washington today cannot be overstated: a prolonged war in Afghanistan is unsustainable financially, materially and politically; the NATO allies lack faith in the U.S.'s war strategy; domestic public opposition to the war is cascading in the Western countries; the war has become an Albatross' cross hindering the optimal pursuit of U.S. global strategies in a highly volatile international situation posing multiple challenges; the war radicalizes the Muslim opinion worldwide and pits America against Islam....



"What lies ahead? Make no mistake that the Taliban are returning to Afghanistan¹s power structure ‹ quite plausibly under Mullah Omar's leadership. The U.S. expectation to 'split' the Taliban will likely prove misplaced. As months ebb away, fighting intensifies and Omar is in no particular hurry, Washington's pleas to Islamabad will become more and more insistent to bring the so-called Quetta Shura to the negotiating table."


Quetta is across the border in Pakistan. The Shura is the leadership organization of the Afghan Taliban which has been domiciled in Quetta with Islamabad's approval since a month after President Bush invaded their country in October 2001. What Bhadrakumar is suggesting is that the only way Washington can end its long and dreadfully expensive impasse in Afghanistan is to make a deal with the Quetta Shura providing the Taliban with a substantial coalition role in the Afghan provincial and national government.

 

This is hardly what President Bush had in mind a month after 9/11 when he launched a foolish, macho invasion of Afghanistan rather than depend on worldwide police work and other means to disrupt al-Qaeda. The Pentagon juggernaut "defeated" the Taliban in a matter of weeks, but it couldn't conquer the Afghan resistance after all these years. The same was true of the illegal and unjust invasion of Iraq, of course.

 

Victory was President Obama's goal as well when he greatly expanded the Afghan war in order to break the stalemate, but negotiations and a return of the Taliban in a coalition government may well be the best outcome he can bring about.

 

All Obama has gained politically at home for his "Bush Lite" war maneuvers is the near-unanimous support the pro-war Republicans, who otherwise view him with contempt. Most of the Democratic electorate, which constitutes the broad base of the peace movement, seems to oppose the Afghan war and its expansion, but has stayed away antiwar protests because of reluctance to take an open public stand against Obama. This is changing as the disillusionment sinks in, as least among the party's liberal and progressive sector.

 

The test to see if Democrats come back to the antiwar movement will be the mass march and rally in Washington March 20 being organized by a large coalition of national and local peace groups. The White House will be watching carefully. If it is a highly successful event, it will give pause to an administration sensitive to insistent political currents; if it is relatively small, it could mean full speed ahead for the war machine.

 

In a Feb. 3 AlterNet article titled, "The Defense Industry is Pleased with Obama," writer Laura Flanders expressed the liberal dilemma in these words: "Who says the president is failing to show leadership? In one area at least, there¹s no sign of flag or falter. If anything, the administration¹s only becoming more forthright. Sad to say, that area is military build-up."

 

The Pentagon has learned some lessons since it stormed into Afghanistan and then Iraq, and wound up with unanticipated black eyes. In this sense, President Obama's 2011 war budget and QDR are less aimed at Afghanistan and more at future "Overseas Contingency Operations" against alleged "rogue," "failed," "undemocratic," "leftist," or "terrorist" states. It's Bush all over again, but next time it's supposed to be done right.

 

Washington, with its "rebalanced defense posture" and unlimited military checkbook, even as the country sinks in debt, will in time attack another small country when one more "contingency" inevitably develops. The White House no doubt expects to win big when it does, given full spectrum dominance, drones and helicopters, the enhanced Special Operations Command, and soldiers, marines, NATO troops, mercenaries, and contractors. But at this stage, with America's track record, it wouldn't be smart to place any bets.

 

Jack A. Smith is editor of the Activist Newsletter http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com, and former editor of the now defunct U.S. Guardian newsweekly. He may be reached at jacdon@earthlink.net.

 

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Afghanistan war: Marjah battle as tough as Fallujah, say US troops

By Julius Cavendish Julius Cavendish
Sun Feb 14, 11:17 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100214/wl_csm/280218
 
Kabul, Afghanistan – Thousands of US and Afghan troops ground their way towards the center of the Taliban stronghold of Marjah today despite encountering fierce sniper fire and even greater numbers of home-made bombs, booby traps, and minefields than anticipated.

US Marines raised an Afghan flag inside the town limits but pockets of Taliban militants dug in, with some veterans comparing the intensity of the fighting to that encountered when they stormed the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2005.

"In Fallujah, it was just as intense. But there, we started from the north and worked down to the south. In Marjah, we're coming in from different locations and working toward the centre, so we're taking fire from all angles," Captain Ryan Sparks told Reuters.

The operation to clear Taliban insurgency from their biggest stronghold in Helmand province looks increasingly like an acid test of Western military and political strategy in Afghanistan, with the outcome likely to deal a powerful propaganda blow one way or the other.

With US General Stanley McChrystal’s reinvigorated counter-insurgency campaign placing the emphasis on protecting communities rather than killing militants, the first measure of success for the thousands of US, NATO, and Afghan troops involved in Operation Moshtarak (the Dari word for ‘together’) will be avoiding civilian casualties.

The vast majority of Marjah’s civilian inhabitants, of whom there are somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000, have stayed put after a NATO information campaign entreated them to “keep your heads downâ€

Afghan officials say the involvement of Afghan forces in unprecedented numbers – 60 percent of the front-line forces are said to be Afghan – will help alleviate the threat because Afghan soldiers are better able to distinguish between “terrorists and farmers.”

Civilian casualties a key metricSo far this advantage and the coalition’s tactics of attacking in overwhelming numbers but with a restrained use of its overwhelming firepower has largely worked, with civilian casualties limited to 12 killed when a rocket landed 300 meters (nearly 1,000 feet) from its target, and seven wounded in separate incidents.

In an indication of how important the issue of civilian casualties may prove to be, General McChrystal promptly offered his apologies to President Hamid Karzai and launched an investigation into the incident. Mr. Karzai only signed off on the operation hours before it began and senior members of his administration reportedly had reservations about advising inhabitants to shelter in their homes rather than fleeing Marjah.

Ghafar Jan, a 32-year old farm laborer living in Marjah, reached by telephone, said that powerful explosions had cast a pall of dust and smoke over the town, and that the “lightning” of rockets was visible from his house.

“The Taliban will fight until the last minute because the attack is coming from all directions so I don’t think they can fall backward to safety,” Jan said. “I don’t know what will happen. God knows what will happen.”

Taliban bravado?The top Taliban commander in Marjah, Mullah Abdul Razaq Akhund, insisted that his fighters had pushed back the NATO and Afghan allies who were, he claimed, involved in a face-saving operation masking their defeat in Afganistan.

“Tens of foreign soldiers have been killed by roadside bombs and we have also destroyed many vehicles. By the grace of God we have had few casualties,” he said.

He was contradicted by NATO reports that two of its troops — one American, one British - had been killed in the fighting.

Meanwhile, Helmand Governor Mohammad Gulab Mangal said that a government-in-waiting is ready to sweep in once coalition forces have cleared the town of Taliban, bringing with them up to 2,000 Afghan police to provide security. Civil servants and development specialists will organize the local administration. Previous town officials were killed, co-opted by the insurgents, or forced to flee. With a new administration, in theory, will come schools, hospitals, and jobs.

“The most important thing will be the aftermath,” says Haroun Mir, an Afghan analyst in Kabul. “How quickly will the coalition countries fix the town? How quickly will the Afghan government provide services to people? And how quickly will they be able to provide justice and security?”

Mir notes that in the past some police officers had pursued vendettas against people they accused of colluding with the Taliban.North of Marjah, coalition forces are also battling Taliban militants in Nad-i-Ali district, supposedly an area under government control. Although fighting there has been less intense than some of the battles raging in Marjah, it is an indication of the difficulty of holding ground, let alone building on it.

Of particular importance in any area restored to government control will be providing alternative livelihoods to poppy farmers: central Helmand is a drugs-producing hub with many locals complicit in the narcotics industry. “I’m sure they are well-prepared for that,” says Mir.

“All we want is peace,” said Ghafar Jan, the farm labourer. “People are tired of fighting, people are hungry now, and there is no medicine for the sick. I don’t care who is in control. I want those who can bring peace, justice and Sharia law."

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The Marines move on Marja: A perilous slog against Afghanistan's Taliban

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Monday, February 15, 2010; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/14/AR2010021401783_pf.html

MARJA, AFGHANISTAN -- For the Marines of Charlie Company's 3rd Platoon, Sunday's mission was simple enough: Head west for a little more than a mile to link up with Alpha Company in preparation for a mission to secure the few ramshackle government buildings in this farming community.

It would take nine hours to walk that distance, a journey that would reveal the danger and complexity of the Marines' effort to wrest control of Marja from the Taliban.

The operation to secure the area, which began with an airlift of hundreds of Marines and Afghan soldiers on Saturday and continued with the incursion of additional forces on Sunday, is proceeding more slowly than some U.S. military officials had anticipated because of stiff Taliban resistance and a profusion of roadside bombs.

In perhaps the most audacious Taliban attack since the operation commenced, a group of insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades attempted to storm a temporary base used by Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion of the 6th Marine Regiment on Sunday evening. The grenade launch was followed by three men attempting to rush into the compound. The Marines presumed the men to be suicide bombers and threw grenades at them, killing all three.

The attack on the Bravo patrol base was one of several attempts to overrun Marine positions Sunday. All were repelled.

"The enemy is trying last-ditch efforts," said the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Cal Worth.

The intensity of Taliban opposition is forcing the Marines to move cautiously, which sometimes means spending hours to advance only a few hundred yards, as Charlie Company's 3rd Platoon discovered Sunday.

At 6:30 a.m., the Marines disembarked from their trucks, which had been parked single-file along a de-mined path cut through a muddy field seeded with homemade bombs. Tires served as urinals. Shaving, the Marines' daily ritual no matter how grim the environment, occurred atop the vehicles.

Thirty minutes later, it was clear that the armored trucks were not going to get the Marines to their destination. The temporary bridge across the canal ahead of them, installed by combat engineers the day before, was starting to slip. And the road ahead was deemed to be littered with improvised explosive devices.

The first shots

So at 7:30, they set off by foot, accompanied by a contingent of Afghan soldiers fresh out of boot camp. To avoid homemade bombs, they walked across the fields, trudging through mud and over small opium-producing poppy plants.

They hadn't been walking 15 minutes when the first shots rang out. Everyone dropped to the ground.

They looked for the shooter. But there were no more shots, just the crowing of a rooster.

There would be no straight path to the destination. The adobe-walled compounds along the way -- and for hundreds of feet to the north and south of their route -- would have to be cleared.

The plan was that the Afghan soldiers would knock on doors whenever possible. In this counterinsurgency operation, the Marines have been told that the people of Marja are the prize. Don't alienate them. Don't knock down doors unnecessarily.

A few minutes later, another shot echoed across the poppy field. Word quickly made it down the line: A Marine ahead fired on a menacing dog while searching a housing compound.

Before anyone could find the owner to make amends, a rattle of gunfire came toward the Marines from the west. The Marines and the Afghan soldiers returned fire with M4 carbines and belt-fed machine guns.

Eighteen minutes later, what sounded like a lawn-mower engine could be heard overhead. A small, unarmed drone, launched from a nearby base, circled above. It revealed what the Marines couldn't immediately see from the field: Three insurgents, one of whom was carrying a walkie-talkie, had been killed.

As a squad from the 3rd Platoon moved gingerly forward, unsure if there were more insurgents unseen by the drone, Worth received a report over his radio: The Marines from Bravo had just hoisted the Afghan flag at a bazaar to the northwest.

Each of his companies have been given Afghan flags, he said. He made it clear that the Stars and Stripes was not to be raised in Marja.

"No end-zone dances," he said. "This is their country."

By then it was safe to approach the owner of the dog, a middle-aged farmer named Jawad Wardak, who was standing in front of his spacious mud-walled house with five young men who he said were his sons and nephews. There were large stacks of dried poppy plants on his driveway, and his fields were filled with small poppy saplings, which will grow to harvest height by spring.

"I'm very sorry about your dog," Worth said. "Hopefully we haven't done any damage to your home."

Wardak shrugged. "It's no problem," he said.

Worth didn't want to pass up the opportunity to make a friend. "We're bringing the government of Afghanistan back here," he said.

Wardak said nothing.

"You will see more forces moving through here so that the Taliban goes away," Worth continued.

Some of the Afghan soldiers assigned to the 3rd Platoon also didn't want to miss an opportunity. One of them asked Wardak's nephew for food.

"We'll give you a meal," Worth said to the soldier. "This is not why we're here. We don't want to impose ourselves. We're guests here."

But the nephew came out with three large pieces of flatbread anyway, and the soldier left content.

'Expand from here'

Across a dirt road from Wardak's house was an irrigation canal. Fording it would require stepping through thigh-high water, but getting back in the trucks was not an option. A team of route-clearance Marines, with devices that detect and detonate roadside bombs, was discovering devices every few hundred yards. By the end of the day, it would find a dozen on the road paralleling the 3rd Platoon's journey.

It was even worse on other routes. On a road perpendicular to the one the 3rd Platoon was following, Charlie Company's 2nd Platoon discovered a 10-foot wall embedded with 70 bombs.

As soon as the Marines had crossed the canal, Worth noted that his Marines did not plan to check every house on the way to their objective. "We're engaged in a counterinsurgency," he said. "We're not going to be kicking down every door."

As he uttered the word "door," a piercing crackle of gunfire came from a housing compound to the northwest of Wardak's house. Everyone dove to the ground.

The Marines responded with their rifles. When that didn't seem to do the trick, they fired mortars and shoulder-launched rockets. After 10 minutes, the firing ceased. Four insurgents lay dead.

Worth said the slow, methodical pace the Marines are using to move into the area has kept them from "desperate situations" that result in units calling in air and artillery strikes, which have greater potential of causing civilian casualties.

Even so, he said, he aims to secure Marja's government center soon and then extend anti-Talilban clearing operations to other parts of the area. "We're going to expand from here," he said. "We'll bring more locals into the security bubble as quickly as we can."

Two hours later, at 4:30 p.m., the Marines walked into a walled-off courtyard used by Alpha Company. They were wet and tired but had suffered no casualties. Their mission had been accomplished.

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.Home » Blogs » Americas

US offensive moves to TV


By John Terrett in  Americas on February 14th, 2010
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/americas/2010/02/14/us-offensive-moves-tv


As NATO troops and the Afghan military battle the Taliban, their political masters are fighting to win the hearts and minds of Americans by taking to the TV airwaves.

As NATO troops and the Afghan military battle the Taliban in Helmand, their political masters are fighting to win the hearts and minds of Americans by taking to the TV airwaves - in particular the influential Sunday political broadcasts.  
 
Vice President Joe Biden was on NBC's "Meet The Press," outlining what the Obama administration hopes to achieve with the latest offensive.
 
“We’ll get further co-operation from the people in the region – the Pashto tribes – who will see more accommodation coming out of the Taliban most of whom are Pashto realizing that they cannot realise their expectations through intimidation and force.”
 
The man who held Biden's job 'til just over a year ago and who is usually one of Obama's most critical voices - the former Bush administration Vice President Dick Cheney - had no argument with the President's policy in Afghanistan when he appeared on ABC's "This Week."
 
“I’m a complete supporter of what they’re doing in Afghanistan I think the President made the right decision to send troops into Afghanistan.”
 
But retired U.S. Marine Corps General, Jim Jones, who as National Security Adviser is charged with overseeing all U.S. national security issues, was tight lipped when he arrived at "Fox News Sunday," for another national broadcast to sell the President's message.
 
"Good morning," he said - though little else, at least not to me and my cameraman.
 
Inside the studio, however, General Jones stressed that this is more about winning over the people of Afghanistan and reconstructing Helmand Province than just a military campaign.
 
“It is the first major operation in which we will demonstrate – I think successfully – that the new elements of the strategy which combine not only security operations but economic reform and good governance at the local and regional level with a much more visible presence of Afghan forces will take place .”
 
That'll be a hard task in the face of reports that civilians have been killed in the latest offensive.
 
As he left the buiulding, General Jones refused to take questions from me about that or about comments by a senior commander that the anti-Taliban operation could take weeks to complete.
 
Analysts say whether it's weeks or months, success in the long-run depends on the careful deployment of Afghan forces. 
 
Azeem Ibrahim, of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government told al Jazeera:
 
"A clear measure will be, after this operation is complete, is how quickly the Afghan National forces can move into the area and start undertaking development work, and this has to be undertaken by the Afghan and not by the NATO troops."
 
In other words it's a classic catch 22!
 
NATO troops are needed to clear Helmand of mines and booby traps but every civilian killed or injured serves as a recruiting tool for the Taliban.

[Triadtropz]

You might need to change the leftist title...the US is winning...

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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
10:39 Mecca time, 07:39 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/2010215191137598388.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Afghan offensive meets resistance  
 

Afghan and Nato troops have been hit by  sniper attacks and booby-traps [AFP]

 
Nato-led and Afghan forces have met sporadic resistance on the third day of a major offensive to secure a town in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province.

Troops taking part in Operation Moshtarak were reportedly targeted with heavy gunfire, sniper fire and booby-traps as they attempted to push forward in Marjah and the surrounding areas on Monday.

"We are making steady progress, but being very methodical about detecting and clearing routes in an area heavily saturated with IEDs [improvised explosive devices]," Abraham Sipe, a US Marine captain, told the Reuters news agency.
   
"In many parts of Marjah, we have seen very little opposition. There are areas where Marines have met with stiff resistance, but they are making steady progress throughout the area."

US Marine units were twice beaten back by heavy gunfire as they tried to reach a market in the town and another armoured column reported that it had come under fire from three different sniper teams.

"It's a pretty busy day but we expected that because we are penetrating," Lieutenant Colonel Brian Christmas, the commander of 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, told The Associated Press news agency.

Ambush tactics

Zeina Khodr, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul, said the resistance, although limited, showed that Taliban fighters were still operating around Marjah.


In video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8A5A89wx9Y&feature=player_embedded

Al Jazeera's James Bays reports on the offensive to recapture Marjah
 
"Although we are not seeing, for example, face-to-face combat it seems that the Taliban is not going away for now," she said.

"This has been their tactics, ambushing international forces, roadside bombings. The forces are advancing but it is a slow process simply because the area is heavily booby-trapped." 

However, Afghan military leaders said that Taliban fighters had fled as about 15,000 US, British and Afghan soldiers had moved in to take control of Marjah and Nad Ali.

"All of the areas of Marjah and Nad Ali have been taken by combined forces. They are under our control, almost all Nad Ali and Marjah," General Aminullah Patiani, the senior Afghan commander in Operation Mushtarak, said.
   
"The Taliban have left the areas but the threat from IEDs remains."

Rahim Wardak, Afghanistan's defence minister, called on any remaining Taliban fighters to put down their weapons and take up a government reintegration offer.
   
"I want to call on all Afghan Taliban, the ones who are besieged or maybe hiding ... put down your arms and join our reconciliation programme, take part with us in the rebuilding of our country," he said.

Civilian deaths

Operation Moshtarak is the first major test of the strategy of Barack Obama, the US president, to take on the Taliban and end the eight-year conflict with one of the biggest offensives since the 2001 US-led invasion.


In depth
  Holbrooke on 'Operation Moshtarak' 
  Operation Moshtarak at a glance
  Gallery: Operation Moshtarak
  Video: Forces 'positive' on Afghan assault
  Video: Afghanistan's influential elders
  Video: Afghanistan's displaced face harsh winter
  Focus: To win over Afghans, US must listen
  Timeline: Afghanistan in crisis

 

It is designed to clear Taliban fighters from the Marjah region of the southern province and hold it so that the civilian administration can establish itself.

"The objective here is to protect the people and help the government provide services to the people of Afghanistan, even in the most difficult areas," Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to the region, told Al Jazeera.

Afghan officials say they have a "government-in-a-box" ready to sweep in and set up institutional services and security that will ensure the Taliban do not return to areas captured by US-led forces.

However, the long-term success of the offensive is likely to depend on securing the support of the local population, something which will be made more difficult by civilian casualties in the offensive.

Nato on Monday expressed its "deep regret" over the deaths of 15 civilians during the offensive in three separate incidents.

Twelve Afghans - six women and six children - were killed when rockets hit their houses suspected to be sheltering Taliban fighters. Three more civilians were shot dead after they ignored warnings from Nato soldiers to stop.

General Stanley McChrystal, the head of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, called the loss of life "regrettable" and said the operation was being conducted with "the protection of Afghan people in mind".

"We extend our heartfelt sympathies and will ensure we do all we can to avoid future incidents," he said in a statement on Sunday.
 
 

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Civilian Death Toll Rises in Afghan Offensive

Tuesday , February 16, 2010
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,586084,00.html

A U.S. soldier returns fire as others run for cover during a firefight with insurgents in Marjah, Afghanistan.


MARJAH, Afghanistan — Three more Afghan civilians were killed in the assault on a southern Taliban stronghold, NATO forces said Tuesday, highlighting the toll on the population from an offensive aimed at making them safer.

The deaths — in three separate incidents — come after two errant U.S. missiles struck a house on the outskirts of the town of Marjah on Sunday, killing 12 people, half of them children. Afghan officials said Monday three Taliban fighters were in the house at the time of the attack.

About 15,000 NATO and Afghan troops are taking part in the massive offensive around Marjah — the linchpin of the Taliban logistical and opium poppy smuggling network in the militant-influenced south. U.S. Marines are spearheading the assault.

As the assault aimed at breaking the Taliban stranglehold over southern Afghanistan continued, the extremist group received a blow with the news that the Taliban's top military commander has been arrested in Pakistan.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the No. 2 behind Afghan Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and a close associate of Usama bin Laden, was captured in the port city of Karachi, U.S. and Pakistani officials said, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the information. The arrest appeared to have occurred as many as 10 days ago, and it was unclear if it had had any effect on the Marjah battle.

The offensive is the biggest joint operation since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, and a major test of a retooled NATO strategy to focus on protecting civilians, rather than killing insurgents.

But in the fourth day of an assault that could take weeks, the drumbeat of gunfire and controlled detonations of planted bombs sparked fears that civilians will bear the burden of the fight.

In two of the incidents NATO confirmed Tuesday, Afghan men came toward NATO forces and ignored shouts and hand signals to stop, NATO said. Troops opened fire and killed them.

In the third incident, two Afghan men were caught in the crossfire between insurgents and NATO forces. Both were wounded and one died of his injuries despite being given medical care, NATO said.

Taliban fighters have stepped up counterattacks against Marines and Afghan soldiers in Marjah, slowing the allied advance to a crawl despite Afghan government claims the insurgents were broken and on the run.

Though NATO has only confirmed 15 civilian deaths, an Afghan human rights group said Tuesday that they have counted 19 civilians killed since the beginning of the operation. Four of those were people who were caught in the crossfire when they had to leave their homes for various reasons.

"Their neighbors tell us that the bodies are outside and they want someone to pick them up. They say they're scared if they go outside they will also be shot dead," said Ajmal Samadi, the director of Afghanistan Rights Monitor. It was unclear whether NATO or insurgent forces were to blame for the deaths, he said.

In the streets, Taliban fighters appeared to be slipping under the cover of darkness into compounds already deemed free of weapons and explosives, then opening fire on the Marines from behind U.S. lines.

Explosions could be heard around town Tuesday as Marines endeavored to push further through streets littered with bombs and booby traps.

Squads with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines fanned out into compounds to search for explosive devices and insurgents, as an armored-vehicle convoy moved forward. A mine-roller leading the way continuously detonated planted bombs as it advanced.

Residents said they were scared to be seen with NATO forces.

"Don't take pictures or the Taliban will come back to kill me," Wali Mohammad told an AP reporter as Marines searched his compound.

He said he strongly suspected insurgents would return to the area as soon as the Marines moved on.

He denied that the Taliban had holed up in his house during Monday's fighting, but said they often shot at U.S. and Afghan troops from his neighbors' house.

"When they come, we try to tell them not to use our house, but they have guns so they do what they want," the poppy farmer said.

The Marines' goal for many days has been to link up with other companies that airdropped into the city Saturday, but progress has been slow.

"It's really crucial that we get through today," said Lima Company Capt. Joshua Winfrey.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai approved the assault on Marjah only after instructing NATO and Afghan commanders to be careful about harming civilians. "This operation has been done with that in mind," the top NATO commander, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, said Monday.

Despite those instructions, NATO reported its first civilian deaths Sunday, saying two U.S. rockets veered off target by up to 600 yards (meters) and slammed into a home — killing six children and six adults.

In London, Britain's top military officer, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, called the missile strike a "very serious setback" to efforts to win the support of locals, who are from the same Pashtun ethnic group as the Taliban.

NATO suspended the use of the rocket system that killed the civilians following the 12 deaths, pending an investigation.

In a separate incident unrelated to the Marjah offensive, a NATO airstrike in neighboring Kandahar province killed five civilians and wounded two. NATO said in a statement they were mistakenly believed to have been planting roadside bombs.

Afghan commanders spoke optimistically about progress in Marjah, a town of about 80,000 people seen as key to securing the restive south.

"It is very weak resistance, sporadic resistance by the enemy in some villages in Marjah area," Chief of Army Staff Bismullah Mohammadi said. Other officials have said Taliban fighters were fleeing across the border and the town should soon be cleared of insurgents.

In Marjah, however, there has been little sign the Taliban are broken. Instead, small, mobile teams of insurgents have repeatedly attacked U.S. and Afghan troops with rocket, rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire in recent days.

Taliban fighters moved close enough to the main road to fire repeatedly on columns of mine-clearing vehicles.

Allied officials have reported only two coalition deaths so far — one American and one Briton killed Saturday. There have been no reports of wounded. Afghan officials said at least 27 insurgents were killed so far in the offensive.

As long as the town remains unstable, NATO officials cannot move to the second phase — restoring Afghan government control and rushing in aid and public services to win over inhabitants who have been living under Taliban rule for years.

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February 15th, 2010
05:13 PM ET
http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/15/coalition-teams-meet-with-tribal-elders/?hpt=T2
 
Coalition teams meet with tribal elders

WASHINGTON - U.S., British and Afghan officials met with tribal elders in the southern Afghanistan city of Marjah Monday to assure them the international community and Afghan government are committed to stabilizing and developing the area, now the scene of a major NATO operation against the Taliban.

At the tribal meetings known as "shuras," the message was "we are still in the early days of the military operations but we are here and we are here to stay," Rory Donohoe, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) representative in Helmand province told CNN in a phone interview, as he sat 25 kilometers from the battlefield.

Donohue, who has been working with provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan for three years, said he found a generally optimistic attitude from the Afghans he spoke with. "Even influential elders who we honestly didn't think would be supportive are aligning themselves with us," Donohoe said. "They see the work everyone has done in other areas of Helmand and are looking to seeing those benefits too." (Photo above: Afghan elders, trailed by children, leave following a meeting with U.S. Marines in Trikh Nawar, northeast of Marjah, on Monday.)

Donohoe stressed that this operation is different from previous operations in Afghanistan, because all the relevant agencies - including USAID, the U.S. State Department and British organizations - were all intensely involved in the planning with the Afghan government, including how actions would unfold and how they could assist the local population during operations.

Currently a joint U.S.-British "hot stabilization team" is sitting alongside with Marines at the edge of the battlefield, ready to move into Marjah to assist the local government in rebuilding local damage caused by the fighting, and to re-establish Afghan government services to local residents.

Donohoe said U.S. civilian personnel will take their cues from the Marines as to when conditions are safe enough to move in. The deputy district governor for Marjah currently is also currently waiting at Marine headquarters in Helmand with a "district support team," which is made up of State Department, USAID and British stabilization experts. Once the Marines say it is safe to go in, the deputy district governor will lead additional shuras with local elders to set medium- and longer-term priorities.

As the fighting continues, U.S., British and Afghan officials are already meeting to go over a line-by-line budget of what the Afghan government will need to deliver services, according to Donohoe. Both he and Matt Freear, with the British-led Helmand provincial reconstruction team, stressed planning for all these phases is being done down to the most minute levels.

In addition to making sure the facilities are secure and there are enough personnel, efforts include equipping Afghans with enough fuel, cell phones, textbooks and other items to make sure the stabilization runs smoothly. While the U.S. or British could purchase these items for the Afghans, attention is being paid to procuring them locally to get the economy moving.

"This can't be done by quick fix," Freear said. "It has to be done methodically."

Immediate stabilization efforts will include several aspects, according to Freear. First, the shuras will give the Afghan population an opportunity to develop a relationship with government officials, build trust and confidence in the government, and let Afghan officials know what is expected of them.

Meanwhile a "cash for work" program, Freear said, will provide an "instant sign that we, in support of the Afghan government can provide help." The program will employ local citizens in projects, such as repairing battle damage, to provide freedom of movement for the population by dredging canals, building sanitation projects and launching other reconstruction work, such as building schools.

A third aspect of the stabilization effort is deployment of the national Afghan police force for three months, while more local police are recruited. The police, Freear said, will be a "key part of providing security" during the stabilization phase.

As immediate stabilization efforts move forward, the Helmand Provisional Reconstruction Team, made up of 200 Americans, British, Danish and Estonian civilians, is working on longer-term reconstruction projects.

One major goal is to resume construction on the main north-south highway connecting Marjah to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. In addition to allowing farmers to get their crops to markets, the hope is the road will inspire good governances because Afghan officials will be able to travel more freely through the province.

The U.S. also is working on a robust agricultural program for farmers in advance of the upcoming planning season. Because now is the time for farmers to being deciding what to plant this summer, the U.S. wants them to plant "good" crops, such as pomegranates, and the U.S. will be providing agricultural vouchers, seed and discounted fertilizer.

–CNN's Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jill Dougherty contributed to this report.

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South Asia
Feb 17, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LB17Df02.html 
 
Pakistan delivers a Taliban treat


By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - With the Pakistan military to a large degree setting the rules of the game with Washington for reconciliation with the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's supreme commander in Afghanistan, has become the army's first major delivery for the United States' end game in Afghanistan.

Baradar is reported to have been arrested several days ago in the southern port city of Karachi in a raid by Pakistani and US intelligence officials. He is now being interrogated by these officials, according to reports.

The White House, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have made no comment.

However, a senior Taliban leader, speaking to Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity, said, "This is not the first time that such a claim has been made about his arrest. Only four days ago, he was in contact with us."

Pakistani security officials have confirmed with ATol, also on the condition of anonymity, that Baradar was arrested in Baldia Town, Karachi.

Mullah Baradar has represented Taliban leader Mullah Omar in all peace talks with Washington, mediated by Saudi Arabia, in the past two years, and the idea of his arrest appears to be to split the Taliban cadre operating in southwestern Afghanistan. This, it is hoped, will isolate Mullah Omar and put pressure on him to take part in negotiations. Mullah Omar has steadfastly claimed that he will not enter into any talks until all foreign troops leave Afghanistan.

This raises a difficult issue. Mullah Baradar is the only prominent Populzai (Durrani) tribe member in the predominantly Ghalzai Taliban cadre (rival tribes for centuries). If he agrees to cooperate with Pakistan and the US, it is by no means certain he will be able to exert any pressure on Taliban commanders in his individual capacity, that is, without Mullah Omar's backing.

At home in Karachi
Every winter over the past years, Mullah Baradar, along with other Taliban leaders and commanders, stayed in Lea Market in southern Karachi, from where they visited posher areas in Gulshan-e-Iqbal in eastern Karachi to collect donations from Islamic seminaries.

Inter-Services Intelligence was aware of their movements but never intercepted them because they were not considered a threat to the internal security of the country. The military did not want to mess with them as it was convinced that once foreign forces finally withdrew from Afghanistan, these Taliban would in one way or another be a part of the political set-up.

Now, though, Pakistan's relationship with Washington has evolved (see Pakistan's military sets Afghan terms Asia Times Online, February 9, 2010), and Pakistan simply caught the biggest fish around to help Washington start direct talks with the Taliban.

Nonetheless, this might to some extent be a case of smoke and mirrors as all such previous exercises have failed. As a result of the Taliban's strict code, once a powerful commander is apprehended, his influence is reduced to zero. A prime example of this occurred in 2003, when Mullah Abdul Razzaq, a former Taliban minister, was arrested in Pakistan. (See US turns to the Taliban Asia Times Online, June 14, 2003.) The authorities tried to use him to set up a channel of communication with the Taliban, but it was a non-starter has he no longer had clout. Razzaq was freed and subsequently rejoined the Taliban.

A former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Zaeef, is another example. The Americans have tried their best to use Zaeef in the reconciliation process, but without success.

Mullah Baradar's arrest could bring some limited benefits as he might divulge the whereabouts of some Taliban leaders, such as Mullah Hasan Rahmani and Mullah Jalil, who used to stay with him in Karachi.

However, getting any information on Mullah Omar will be difficult as he moves around a lot. Not even the Pakistan army, even though it is close to the US, will be so generous as to allow the arrest of Mullah Omar and thereby lose its biggest bargaining chip.

The notion of mounting pressure on Mullah Omar through Mullah Baradar could also backfire in that it might push Mullah Omar further towards al-Qaeda, which has raised impressive militias in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, especially in Mohmand and Bajaur tribal agencies and North Waziristan.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com 
 
 

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Five civilians killed in Nato rocket attack in Afghanistan

Incident follows death of 12 civilians after stray Nato rockets were fired in Helmand yesterday


by James Meikle, Declan Walsh and Stephen Bates

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63303&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 15, 2010

A Nato airstrike against suspected insurgents has killed five civilians in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan today.

A Nato statement said a joint patrol of Nato and Afghan troops saw individuals digging along a path in the Zhari district of Kandahar province today and mistakenly concluded that they were planting an improvised explosive device. Two civilians were also wounded in the strike.

The incident follows the deaths yesterday of 12 Afghan civilians, who were killed by two stray Nato rockets in neighbouring Helmand province.

Major General Michael Regner, Isaf's joint command deputy chief of staff for joint operations, said: "We regret this tragic accident and offer our sympathies to the families of those killed and injured.

"Our combined forces take every precaution to minimise civilian casualties, and we will investigate this incident to determine how this happened."

Earlier today, the head of Britain's armed forces admitted that the killing of 12 Afghan civilians yesterday was "a very serious setback" to military operations against the Taliban.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said the incident had damaged efforts to win the support of local communities, but added that accidents were inevitable during conflict.

The civilians died when two rockets from a high mobility artillery rocket system hit a house on the outskirts of the town of Marjah, in an area of Helmand province being targeted by a joint US and Afghan force.

Stirrup, the chief of the defence staff, said: "It is a very serious setback. It is not one which can't be overcome and of course the Afghans themselves, the local government, play a key role in this and they have already swung into action in that regard. But we are there to provide security for the population."

He told the BBC Today programme: "This operation … is not about battling the Taliban, it is about protecting the local population, and you don't protect them when you kill them. It is always damaging, but of course in any conflict situation accidents happen and we must remember that most of the civilian casualties are not caused by Isaf [the international security assistance force] – they are caused by the Taliban."

He said it was crucial that people "perceive the Afghan national security forces as protecting them, as providing them with security, and therefore we have to do all we can to eliminate civilian casualties".

The defence minister, Bill Rammell, expressed regret over the incident, as did the Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who has suspended use of the missile system involved in the mistake.

Speaking on GMTV, Rammell said: "I regret the loss of a British soldier but also the loss of civilian lives. This incident involved American troops. General McChrystal has rightly suspended the use of this particular rocket system pending an investigation, because we are determined to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties to win the hearts and minds of the local population."

The Afghan interior minister, Mohammad Atmar, said nine civilians and two or three insurgents were among those killed, suggesting insurgents may have been firing at troops from a civilian compound. "The reality is this ... the enemy did capture some civilians in their house and they were firing at our forces from this house. Unfortunately our forces didn't know that civilians were living in that house," he said at a press conference at Lashkar Gah.

Snipers have been holding up attempts to clear the town of Taliban fighters, the US marines said.

The civilian deaths in the last 24 hours have overshadowed reports of early successes against the Taliban in Operation Moshtarak – the biggest offensive undertaken by western and Afghan forces in the nine-year war.

The operation involves 15,000 troops, mostly US, British and Afghan. The first US marines arrived in Marjah – a major hub of insurgents and drug smugglers – by helicopter before dawn on Saturday morning, while British forces are sweeping through Nad Ali. One British soldier has been killed in the operation. He was named as Lance Sergeant Dave Greenhalgh, 25, from the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards.

Taliban fighters – estimated at between 400 and 1,000 – have heavily mined the area. The operation's US commander, Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, predicted it could take 30 days to clear out all militants and explosives, but said he was "cautiously optimistic" the job could be completed sooner.

Nato heavily telegraphed its intention to invade Marjah and Nad Ali, hoping to minimise civilian casualties. The civilian deaths added to tensions with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who ordered an immediate investigation. High rates of casualties help Taliban recruitment in war-torn areas and stir public anger that has eroded support for the fragile Afghan government.

A British soldier from 36 Engineer Regiment died this afternoon as a result of an explosion in Helmand province, the MoD said. Next of kin have been informed. Two more British soldiers also died yesterday. One, from 2nd battalion the Duke of Lancaster's regiment, was shot in a gun battle in the Musa Qala area of southern Afghanistan, and the other, from 6 Rifles, serving as part of 3 Rifles Battle Group, died in an explosion while on foot patrol to the north-east of Sangin. The deaths were unconnected with Operation Moshtarak.



 

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Afghan resistance statement

Statement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on the 20th Anniversary
of the flight of the Invading Soviet Forces from Afghanistan


Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63304&hd=&size=1&l=e
 

Rabi' al-awwal 01, 1431 A.H, Monday February 15, 2010

In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate

Twenty years ago, on 15.2.1989, the Red Army of the former Soviet Union fled our country with disgrace and failure after passage of ten years from their invasion, terrors and showdown of muscles (in our country).

Though during the said ten years, the Red Army and their internal surrogates—the Khalqis and Parchamites-- martyred more than 1.5 million Afghans; forced 6 million others to take refuge and wounded or detained hundreds of thousands of Afghans. However, in the end, Govrbacheve, leader of the former Soviet Union, referred to the invasion as "a bleeding cancerous wound". The Red Army, under the arrogant General Boris Gromove, pulled out of Afghanistan shamefully and with complete flop after losing 15 thousand invading soldiers; with 50 thousands more, being injured and 1400 either detained or lost without any trace.

In 1986, after coming to power, Goverbacheve gave one year to the army to prove their upper hand in the war but when they failed to deliver because of the holy Jihad of the Afghan Mujahid nation, the political and military leadership of the former Soviet Union decided in November 1986 to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan and used the Geneva Accords as a convincing pretext for the pull-out.

Today, after twenty years from the Red Army withdrawal, Obama has given 18 months to Mc Crystal, US Chief General in Afghanistan, to prove that he can turn the tide against the Islamic Emirate but the historical experiences of the Mujahid Afghanistan and the ground realities indicate America is readily walking on the step of the former Soviet Union. Surely, they will face fiasco after one and half year as they are facing failure today.

Rationally, if the invading crusaders have not been able to subjugate the Afghan Muslim Mujahid people by martyring, wounding and detaining more than one hundred thousands Afghans during the past eight years, then how can they would be able to subjugate them in the coming 16 months or through ostensible military operations like the ones in areas as Marjah and Nad Ali.

The American and NATO rulers should know, if they need 15 thousands well-armed troops to take only one district, then there are 350 districts in Afghanistan, they would need 5,250,000 more troops to take them, whereas you are not able to supply logistics even for the said 15 thousands troops.

Similarly, KGB believed that they will control Afghanistan within 3 months and gave more budget to KHAD (intelligence Agency) than to the ministry of defense of the former Khalqi regime, today America has allocated huge budget for the Black Water, CIA and the Special Force to subjugate the Afghan people through terrorizing them and maligning the good name of Mujahideen but these endeavors already have been tried by the former Soviet Union in the recent history. However, they utterly failed. The invading America is following their steps.

The showdown and arrogance of the invaders versus the Afghans have now lost their splendor. The resistance and Jihad of our Muslim people against the atrocities and coercion is a good lesson for all invaders. The moribund rulers of the White House would find it more beneficial if they ponder over the historic lesson instead of turning to a showdown of forces. Obama like Gorbacheve needs to realistically view the ground realities in order to put an end to tyrannizing and repressing the Afghans and further disgracing America.

While congratulating the Muslim and Mujahideen people and all the Islamic Ummah on the collapse and disintegration of the communist empire thanks to the Islamic Jihad of the Afghans, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan gives good news and assurance to the heroic Afghan people that today’s arrogant America and their war-mongering crusading coalition will meet the fate of the former Soviet Union who were disgraced and routed.

The moribund Mc Crystal, like the defeated Boris Gromove, will admit his defeat and rout by kowtowing before the Jihadic magnanimity and Islamic faith of the Afghan people, if God willing.

"Those who have wronged, will know how terrible Return they will have (in the Hereafter). (Al-Quran)

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan




 

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Collateral Accumulation: Passing on the Abiding Wisdom of Empire

by Chris Floyd

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63305&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 15, 2010



Another day, another mass slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan. This time the cull of "collateral damage" came not from the world-historical agon at Marja, where Anglo-American sahibs are leading a contingent of colonial troops in a heavily hyped, made-for-media operation that blew a household of civilians, including five children, to smithereens in its opening salvos.

No, the new bloodbath occurred many miles away, in Kandahar, after a NATO patrol evidently saw some Afghan civilians going about their own business in their own country. Naturally, this shocking state of affairs was thought to pose a dire threat to the uninvited invaders who have been rampaging around the country for more than eight years -- so, naturally, an airstrike was called in. Five human beings going about their own business in their own country were then blown to bits, and two more were wounded.

The double whammy of bad PR following these unrelated rub-outs has prompted some of the leading lions of Great Britain's armed forces -- worthy heirs to their world-spanning forbears, upon whose military glories the sun, it was said, never set -- to offer some words of wisdom to those to whom they have now passed the White Man's oh-so-heavy, oh-so-unwanted burden of global domination.

No less a personage than Her Majesty's Air Chief Marshall Jock Stirrup -- who also serves as Her Majesty's Chief of Her Majesty's Defence Staff -- stepped forward to offer the young American pups a pearl drawn from Britain's voluminous treasury of imperial experience. And what was that pearl? Why, here it is, from the Guardian:



"This operation … is not about battling the Taliban, it is about protecting the local population, and you don't protect them when you kill them."


By gad, sir, you've hit the nail on the head there, and no mistake. Killing people is indeed a rather ineffective way of protecting them. What piercing insight! What clarity of vision! "You don't protect people when you kill them." Is it any wonder that Britannia ruled the waves for so long?

Ah yes, but what can one do? The lesser breeds must be policed, after all. Nations must be invaded and occupied for years on end -- even centuries, as the Brits can tell you! -- and so one is bound to have these little bits of unpleasantness crop up from time to time in one's colonial bailiwick. Best take it with a stiff upper lip -- oh, and be sure to blame the recalcitrant tribes for their damnable refusal to accept the altruistic benefits poured out upon their captive land by one's humanitarian war machine. Right, Jock?



"Of course in any conflict situation accidents happen and we must remember that most of the civilian casualties are not caused by ISAF [the international security assistance force] – they are caused by the Taliban."


So that's all right then. If the native insurgents would just stop using violence to advance their agenda the way we use violence to advance our agenda, why then, we would stop using violence to advance our agenda. It's as simple as that. It's their own damn fault. After all, it is a well-known fact of history -- not to mention international law -- that foreign invaders are not responsible in any way for any violence that occurs in the course of their invasion and occupation of other lands by force. Or as Punch might say to Judy: "If you'll just lie down, I'll stop hitting you."

Then again, the Right Honourable Air Marshall, his American partners -- and indeed, their many media embeds -- might do well to ponder the Joseph Conrad quote with which Sukhdev Sandhu concluded his review of Mike Davis' classic 2001 work, Late Victorian Holocausts:



As Conrad's Marlow said in Heart of Darkness: "The conquest of the earth, which means the taking away from those who have a different complexion and slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much."



 

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A Code for Ethnic Cleansing in Afghanistan?

Operation Moshtarak

By YVONNE RIDLEY

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63309&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 15, 2010

As I write this, two NATO rockets have just slaughtered around a dozen innocent Afghan civilians during the latest military assault in the war torn country.

Ordinary Afghan men, women and children are paying the blood price for a war launched by politicians from the West.

Soldiers, including American and British, who signed up to escape the poverty in their respective recession-hit countries are also giving the ultimate sacrifice.

And all this is being done in the name of freedom and liberty by career politicians who are dripping in the blood of innocents – weasels who will never have to sacrifice anything.

And judging from Tony Blair’s callous demeanour as he gave evidence during the ongoing Iraq Inquiry, being a political leader whether Prime Minister or President, means never even having to say sorry.

Until we introduce a new system, which brings political leaders to account, they will continue to operate above the law.

So expect an Afghanistan Inquiry in a few years time when the new generation of Bush and Blairs line up to defend the indefensible.

The Afghan Army and British and US troops have so far driven tens of thousands of innocent people out of their villages in Helmand.

Already the town of Marjah has been evacuated, as part of the massive military assault on the Pashtun population of Helmand.

The operation is called Moshtarak, a Dari name for "together". And together these forces are taking part in what is nothing more than ethnic cleansing.

Quite how the legal advisers to Barack Obama and Gordon Brown have sold this is beyond me – but I am not a lawyer, merely an onlooker who is bound to raise the question: "Why is ethnic cleansing being carried out in Afghanistan?"

Furthermore, I believe Moshtarak will sow the seeds for endless civil war in the future once the foreign troops have pulled out as they inevitably will.
So why do I say Moshtarak is nothing more than an ethnic cleansing exercise. Well consider this…

· 3-5 per cent of the Afghan National Army come from the southern areas of the country. Most are native Dari speakers rather than of Pashto, which makes the ANA outsiders.

· 42 per cent of the population of Afghanistan is Pashtun yet less than 30 per cent of the ANA are Pashtun.

· 25 percent of the population are Tajic but they now account for 41 percent of all trained ANA troops.

As I said before, I am not a legal expert but I am surprised that human rights groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others have not picked up on this fact.

Perhaps it is something they are investigating, so apologies in advance to Sam Zarifi, Amnesty’s Asia Pacific director, and others if they are preparing reports on this very subject.

Surely questions about the ethnic make up of the Afghan Army should be raised not least of all because it is quite clear that American and NATO policies on Afghanistan are not working.

The issue of womens’ rights was cited as the cause for going in to Afghanistan but we know that there are not huge numbers of career women emerging from the rubble.

The liberation of Afghan women is not a priority, never has been and never will be until women’s rights are taken seriously in the West. We need to put our own house in order before we start dictating to others about the treatment of women elsewhere.

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, the US, UK et al have failed miserably on the ground because they have only sought to promote the interests of regional powers.

I understand that there are talks, albeit backdoor ones, between the West and the Taliban by those who realise there can be no peaceful resolution to the problem of Afghanistan without engaging with the Taliban and giving them a stake in the future of their country.

It’s not rocket science, if they are excluded from the peace process, there can be no peace.

This is the real solution in Afghanistan. Jaw, jaw not war, war.

Which makes me wonder by Barack Obama and Gordon Brown continue to send brave young men into a battle which can’t be won in a country where another set of brave young men want to repel what they see as occupiers of their lands.

And this latest military operation might see those same NATO forces being charged with crimes against humanity by taking part in an ethnic cleansing operation … history has taught us, if nothing else, that it’s the grunts on the ground who end up in the dock.

I have visited Afghanistan many times now, and the message I receive is always the same: "Get NATO troops out of our country."

It’s a message from Afghan women who are suffering more hardships than ever and are no where near being liberated … in fact many of them ask me what it means. What they want is security, education, a decent healthcare system and jobs for their men.

And to reinforce that, I met the amazing Malalai Joya, Afghanistan’s youngest ever woman MP, who was suspended from Karzai’s "democratic government’ for speaking her mind. She told me: "We are trapped between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and American and NATO forces and their warlords on the other."

But who is going to listen to a mere Afghan woman? Well certainly not Barack Obama or Gordon Brown and certainly not Hamid Karzai. Whenever I return to the UK from Afghanistan I’m rarely asked my opinion by the mainstream media, because I carry a similar message and if we don’t tell the men what they want to hear then they won’t listen.

But it’s a message I receive as I travel around Afghanistan talking to real people not politicians – I don’t go embedded with anyone’s army and nor do I stay holed up in a compound in Kabul … that is no reflection or criticism of journalists who genuinely do want to get out like me and talk to real people.

Most of them from the West are restricted from moving around the war torn country by insurance companies – I have no such problem since few insurance companies will give me any cover since my arrest and detention at the hands of the Taliban in 2001!

The bottom line is that the war in Afghanistan is not being waged to liberate women: instead it is turning them into widows. Nor does the war have anything to do with domestic security … the Taliban pose no threat outside their borders and never have. Can anyone tell me the last time an Afghan was engaged in terrorism outside his country?

The Taliban have not launched a global jihad, but they are simply doing what the previous generation of mainly Afghan Pashtuns did during the time of the Russian occupation … they are putting up a resistance to foreign occupying forces and a hostile Afghan army and police. The ANA and the police do not represent interests of the Pashtun people who are the majority ethnic group in the country.

If driving out Pashtun populations from their homes under Operation Moshtarak is not ethnic cleansing, I’d like to know what legal advisers in The White House, Downing Street and NATO call it.

And if NATO forces hold the same reservations as me then it is their duty not to obey illegal orders.

Yvonne Ridley is a British Journalist and author of In The Hands of the Taliban which is due to be updated and republished later this year.

 

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February 15, 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/joya-condemns-ridiculous-military-strategy-1899547.html


Joya condemns 'ridiculous' military strategy


By Glyn Strong

Joya: believes that corruption is endemic, citing uranium deposits and opium as incentives for Nato and Afghan officials to retain a presence in Helmand

Afghanistan's "most famous woman" has voiced deep scepticism about Operation Moshtarak's aims and its impact on Afghan civilians.

"It is ridiculous," said Malalai Joya, an elected member of the Afghan parliament. "On the one hand they call on Mullah Omar to join the puppet regime. On another hand they launch this attack in which defenceless and poor people will be the prime victims. Like before, they will be killed in the Nato bombings and used as human shields by the Taliban. Helmand's people have suffered for years and thousands of innocent people have been killed so far." Her fears were confirmed when Nato reported yesterday that a rocket that missed its target had killed 12 civilians at a house in Marjah.

Dismissing Allied claims that Nato forces won't abandon Afghan civilians after the surge, she said: "They have launched such offensives a number of times in the past, but each time after clearing the area, they leave it and [the] Taliban retake it. This is just a military manoeuvre and removal of Taliban is not the prime objective."

Ms Joya believes that corruption is endemic, citing uranium deposits and opium as incentives for Nato and Afghan officials to retain a presence in Helmand. Operation Moshtarak is described as an inclusive offensive, depending for its longer-term success on involvement of Afghan forces. But Ms Joya said: "The Afghan police force is the most corrupt institution in Afghanistan. Bribery is common and if you have money, by bribing police from top to bottom you can do almost anything. In many parts of Afghanistan, people hate the police more than the Taliban. In Helmand, for instance, people are afraid of police who commit violence against people and make trouble. The majority of the police force in this province are addicted to opium and cannabis."

The suspended MP was not invited to the recent London Conference that discussed her country's future, but she is pessimistic about its outcome. Politicians regard Joya as a loose cannon: quick to criticise but slow to suggest solutions.

Her uncompromising position has, however, earned her legions of supporters. It has also gained her enemies and, after allegedly insulting her fellow parliamentarians in 2007, she was suspended from operating as an MP.

Reflecting on the London Conference, Joya said: "Ordinary Afghan people say it was like a meeting of vultures coming together to discuss how to deal with the prey which is Afghanistan." Joya sees moves towards any reconciliation with the Taliban - an exclusively male and cruelly anti-female group - as a betrayal.

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Occupying forces send Afghan crack only to Iran

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:27:26 GMT
http://presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=118740&sectionid=3510212

   
 
Deadly narcotics like compact heroin, crack, is only produced, under the guidance of certain Western countries in Afghanistan, for consumption in Iran, commander of the drug squad says.

"During the latest visit to neighboring countries, we found no signs of crack use. Crack is produced in Afghanistan under the guidance of western countries and sent to Iran," Commander of the drug squad General Hossein-Abadi told IRNA.

Crack is a purified and potent form of cocaine that is smoked rather than snorted. The freebase narcotic is considered a highly addictive drug. But what is known as Crack in Iran is the compact heroine that is often compounded with psychedelic drugs, potent acids, Ammoniac, stimulant drugs (amphetamine) and etc.

Hossein-Abadi said Europe is the main producer of the basic ingredients of crack and other narcotics extracted from heroin.

"Some 13,000 tonnes of acetic anhydride and hydrochloric acid, which are the main ingredients for producing crack, are brought to Afghanistan from Europe. The production of crack will cease if the acids are not provided," he said.

"Heroin appears to constitute 80 percent of the drugs seized by the Iranian police. It seems that western countries have direct influence in drug trafficking," Hossein-Abadi noted.

"All western countries worry about is business. According to UN statistics, one kilogram of heroin that is sold for $2,180 in Afghanistan, costs $80,000 in London," he said.

"Crack has become popular because it has very strong psychological addictive properties. Crack gives an instant high and then the user wants more," the commander of the drug squad said.

"It carries a lot of health risks, particularly with its association to violent crime. To feed their addiction, users spend hundreds of dollars a day and they get that money from burglary, robbery and shoplifting," Hossein-Abadi finalized.

NAT/TG/DT

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Taliban rejects US report on top commander

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:00:52 GMT
http://presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=118723&sectionid=351020403

   
 

File photo

Afghan Taliban Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has rejected a US report claiming that a Taliban commander has been arrested in Pakistan.

Mujahid told Reuters that Mullah Baradar is still in Afghanistan and actively organizing military and political activities of the terrorist network.

"He has not been captured. They want to spread this rumor just to divert the attention of people from their defeats in Marjah and confuse the public."

Zabihullah was referring to Operation Moshtarak in which thousands of US-led troops are working to capture Taliban strongholds in areas around Marjah and Nad Ali.

Earlier US officials said the military commander had been captured in a secret US-Pakistani raid in Karachi. They said Baradar was the most significant militant figure detained since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

According to US media reports, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was arrested in a secret operation several days ago, but the release of information of Baradar's arrest was delayed at the request of the White House for fear it would prevent other Taliban officers from cutting off communication with their leader.

Baradar heads the Taliban's military council and was elevated in the body after the 2006 death of military chief Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani. Baradar is known to coordinate the movement's military operations throughout the South and Southwest of Afghanistan. His area of direct responsibility covers Kandahar, Helmand, Nimroz, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces.

MP/TG/DT

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Mullah Baradar arrest reports propaganda: Rehman Malik

Tuesday, 16 Feb, 2010
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/12-us+pakistan+capture+taliban+top+commander--bi-04 


     Pakistan's government is a close US ally in the war on Al-Qaeda and the eight-year conflict against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan —File photo Front Page


ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Tuesday branded as “propaganda” reports that the top Taliban military commander had been arrested in a joint Pakistani-US spy operation.

Speaking to reporters outside parliament in Islamabad, the cabinet minister stopped short of either confirming or denying the media reports.

The New York Times and other US media cited US government officials as saying that US and Pakistani intelligence services arrested Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi “several days ago”.

“We are verifying all those we have arrested. If there is any big target, I will show the nation,” Malik said.

“If the New York Times gives information, it is not a divine truth, it can be wrong. We have joint intelligence sharing and no joint investigation, nor joint raids,” Malik added.

“We are a sovereign state and hence will not allow anybody to come and do any operation. And we will not allow that. So this (report) is propaganda,” he added.

Pakistan's government is a close US ally in the war on Al-Qaeda and the eight-year conflict against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan, but the relationship is controversial in an increasingly anti-American country.

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AFGHANISTAN: Offensive delays polio immunization drive in Helmand

IRIN News
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63331&hd=&size=1&l=e

Children in Helmand’s Nad Ali District are missing out on polio immunization due to ongoing military operations

KABUL, 15 February 2010 (IRIN) - Under-five children in Nad Ali District, Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, are missing out on polio immunization due to an ongoing military operation against the Taliban by Afghan and NATO forces.

A three-day sub-national polio immunization campaign, targeting 2.8 million children began on 14 February in the south, southeast, west and east of the country, the Ministry of Public Health said.

Of the 500,000 children targeted for polio immunization in Helmand, about 170,000 were not accessed on 14 February - mostly in Nad Ali, Musa Qala and Sangeen districts - Tahir Pervaiz Mir, polio eradication officer for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Afghanistan, told IRIN.

"Polio immunization would not be conducted in Nad Ali and Marjah due to the ongoing conflict there," Enayatullah Ghafari, provincial director of the health department, told IRIN.

Poliovirus is believed to be virulent in Nad Ali: Two polio cases have been confirmed there this year, according to the UN. "We are concerned about the transmission of poliovirus from Nad Ali District," said Mir.

Health workers say they were able to reach children in Taliban-controlled areas in Helmand and elsewhere in the country during several polio immunization campaigns in 2009. Taliban leaders reportedly issued a "support letter" for each polio immunization round through the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Provincial health officials said efforts were under way to regain access to children in Musa Qala and Sangeen districts for the current immunization drive. "[The Taliban] have given us a green light and we hope to be able to immunize children in the two districts soon," said Ghafari.

About 15,000 Afghan and foreign forces are fighting Taliban insurgents in Marjah and Nad Ali in what has been described as NATO’s biggest military operation in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001.

WHO says about 84 percent of Afghanistan is polio-free but the disease remains virulent in 13 insecure districts in the south and southeast, where health workers have little or no access, and where most of the 38 polio cases in 2009 were reported. Four polio cases, three in Helmand and one in the neighbouring province of Farah, have been reported so far in 2010, according to WHO.

ad/cb

 

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Fierce resistance to US Afghan offensive

By Channel 4 News
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63335&hd=&size=1&l=e


February 16, 2010
Watch :
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid62612474001?bctid=66701910001

Coalition forces continue to clear the Taliban from strongholds in southern Afghanistan despite heavy fighting in some areas of Helmand province while the civilian death toll reaches 20.


US Marines leading one of Nato's biggest offensives against Taliban Islamic militants in Afghanistan are facing fierce resistance in the Majar district of Helmand, bogged down by heavy gunfire, snipers and booby traps.

There have been conflicting assessments of what progress Nato has made in Operation Moshtarak, but it seemed clear that the campaign to seize areas before planned troop reductions next year could drag on for weeks.

Coalition forces continued to push ahead in the offensive is the first test of US President Barack Obama's plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Hearts and minds
Nato and the Afghan government's credibility rests on limiting civilian casualties during the offensive.

Defence secretary Bob Ainsworth said the "hard" work to win hearts and minds during Operation Moshtarak was starting today - as the campaign's civilian death toll continued to grow.

Two US missiles killed 12 civilians by accident on Sunday in an attack on Marjah, a farming area believed to be a breeding ground for insurgents and lucrative opium poppy cultivation, which Western countries say funds the insurgency.

Three Afghan civilians were accidentally killed in separate incidents during the offensive, Nato said.

It also said that a Nato airstrike on suspected insurgents in Kandahar province, not part of the current offensive, had accidentally killed five civilians and wounded two.

After the operation's opening phase was pronounced otherwise a success, Mr Ainsworth said: "The most important phase of the operations begins now - winning over the hearts and minds of the people...so that they don't tolerate the Taliban in their midst, so that they are not intimidated by them and so the insurgency cannot re-establish itself in the area.

"That's the hard bit, and while the operations have gone extremely well, the difficult bit will be the months ahead as we try to secure and retain control of the area and influence of the people."

So far Moshtarak has claimed the life of one British soldier since the operation started on Saturday - Lance Sergeant Dave Greenhalgh, 25, from 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards. Although three other servicemen have been killed elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Rifleman Mark Marshall, 29, of 6 Rifles, a Police Community Support Officer, died on Sunday in Sangin, Helmand province.

A British soldier also died on Sunday in small arms fire in the Musa Qala area, with another serviceman killed yesterday near Sangin while dealing with a roadside bomb.

The deaths bring the total number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan to 261.



 

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NATO Reports 3 More Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

VOA

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63338&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 16, 2010

NATO forces say three more Afghan civilians were killed during a major offensive against the Taliban in the southern province of Helmand.

A statement from the international force Tuesday said two civilians were killed in separate incidents after being shot for failing to heed warnings to stop approaching troops.

Another man was reported killed after getting caught in the crossfire between coalition forces and insurgents.

NATO commanders say protecting civilians is a major priority in the offensive. That effort suffered a setback Sunday when rockets fired by coalition forces hit a home in Marjah, killing 12 civilians, including six children.

Afghanistan's interior minister, Mohammed Hanif Atmar, is quoted in a NATO statement as saying the strike was targeting insurgents who, as it turned out, were holding civilians captive. Previous reports said the rockets had veered off course.

Overall, Afghan and NATO military commanders are reporting steady progress in the assault on the town of Marjah, a major Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan.

Senior officers also admit that allied troops are taking heavy fire and coming under sniper attacks in some areas, and that roadside bombs have considerably slowed down their advance.

Afghan officials said Monday that the Marjah offensive killed at least 35 militants during the first two days of combat.

About 15,000 U.S., British and Afghan troops are involved in the biggest joint operation since the war in Afghanistan began in late 2001.





 

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Afghan resistance statement

Invitation of the Islamic Emirate to (independent) Journalists to Visit Marjah


Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan


http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63339&hd=&size=1&l=e

Tuesday, 16 February 2010

Since the enemy have forced the international media through coercion and cash incentives to make partial reporting about (the current fighting) to make it possible to hide their shameful defeat in the Marjah area of Nad Ali district, Helmand province, therefore, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan requests all independent mass media outlets of the world to send their reporters to Marjah; see the situation with their own eyes and convey the facts to the public of the world.

Such visit will portray the ground realities and will show who have the upper hand in the area; what are the facts and who control vast areas of Marjah? In fact, the invading forces have made no spectacular advancement since the beginning of the operations. They have descended from helicopters in limited areas of Marjah and now are under siege.

The invaders are not able to come out of their ditches. Wherever they intend to move, they come under severe attacks of Mujahideen and face explosions of planted mines. Then they retreat hastily. The enemy troops have lost their morale. The local people are beholding the foreign troops crying loudly.

If the coalition invading forces give permission to independent reporters, they will unearth many secrets.

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan




 

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South Asia
Feb 18, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LB18Df01.html 
 
The meaning of Marjah


By Kamran Bokhari, Peter Zeihan and Nathan Hughes

On February 13, some 6,000 United States Marines, soldiers and Afghan National Army troops launched a sustained assault on the town of Marjah in Helmand province. Until this latest offensive, the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) effort in Afghanistan had been constrained by other considerations, most notably Iraq.

Western forces viewed the Afghan conflict as a matter of holding the line or pursuing targets of opportunity. But now, armed with larger forces and a new strategy, the war - the real war - has begun. The most recent offensive - dubbed Operation Moshtarak ("Moshtarak" is Dari for "Together") - is the largest joint US-NATO-Afghan operation in history. It also is the first major offensive conducted by the first units deployed as part of the surge of 30,000 troops promised by US President Barack Obama.
The United States originally entered Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks. In those days of fear and fury, American goals could be simply stated: A non-state actor - al-Qaeda - had attacked the American homeland and needed to be destroyed. Al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan at the invitation of a near-state actor - the Taliban, which at the time were Afghanistan's de facto governing force.

Since the Taliban were unwilling to hand al-Qaeda over, the United States attacked. By the end of the year, al-Qaeda had relocated to neighboring Pakistan and the Taliban retreated into the arid, mountainous countryside in their southern heartland and began waging a guerrilla conflict. In time, American attention became split between searching for al-Qaeda and clashing with the Taliban over control of Afghanistan.

But from the earliest days following 9/11, the White House was eyeing Iraq, and with the Taliban having largely declined combat in the initial invasion, the path seemed clear. The US military and diplomatic focus was shifted, and as the years wore on, the conflict absorbed more and more US troops, even as other issues - a resurgent Russia and a defiant Iran - began to demand American attention. All of this and more consumed American bandwidth, and the Afghan conflict melted into the background. The United States maintained its Afghan force in what could accurately be described as a holding action as the bulk of its forces operated elsewhere. That has more or less been the state of affairs for eight years.

That has changed with the series of offensive operations that most recently culminated at Marjah.

Why Marjah? The key is the geography of Afghanistan and the nature of the conflict itself. Most of Afghanistan is custom-made for a guerrilla war. Much of the country is mountainous, encouraging local identities and militias, as well as complicating the task of any foreign military force. The country's aridity discourages dense population centers, making it very easy for irregular combatants to melt into the countryside. Afghanistan lacks navigable rivers or ports, drastically reducing the region's likelihood of developing commerce. No commerce to tax means fewer resources to fund a meaningful government or military and encourages the smuggling of every good imaginable - and that smuggling provides the perfect funding for guerrillas.

Rooting out insurgents is no simple task. It requires three things:

1. Massively superior numbers so that occupiers can limit the zones to which the insurgents have easy access.
2. The support of the locals in order to limit the places that the guerillas can disappear into.
3. Superior intelligence so that the fight can be consistently taken to the insurgents rather than vice versa.

Without those three things - and American-led forces in Afghanistan lack all three - the insurgents can simply take the fight to the occupiers, retreat to rearm and regroup and return again shortly thereafter.

But the insurgents hardly hold all the cards. Guerrilla forces are by their very nature irregular. Their capacity to organize and strike is quite limited, and while they can turn a region into a hellish morass for an opponent, they have great difficulty holding territory - particularly territory that a regular force chooses to contest. Should they mass into a force that could achieve a major battlefield victory, a regular force - which is by definition better-funded, -trained, -organized and -armed - will almost always smash the irregulars. As such, the default guerrilla tactic is to attrit and harass the occupier into giving up and going home. The guerrillas always decline combat in the face of a superior military force only to come back and fight at a time and place of their choosing. Time is always on the guerrilla's side if the regular force is not a local one.

But while the guerrillas don't require basing locations that are as large or as formalized as those required by regular forces, they are still bound by basic economics. They need resources - money, men and weapons - to operate. The larger these locations are, the better economies of scale they can achieve and the more effectively they can fight their war.

Marjah is perhaps the quintessential example of a good location from which to base. It is in a region sympathetic to the Taliban; Helmand province is part of the Taliban's heartland. Marjah is very close to Kandahar, Afghanistan's second city, the religious center of the local brand of Islam, the birthplace of the Taliban, and due to the presence of American forces, an excellent target.

Helmand alone produces more heroin than any country on the planet, and Marjah is at the center of that trade. By some estimates, this center alone supplies the Taliban with a monthly income of US$200,000. And it is defensible: the farmland is crisscrossed with irrigation canals and dotted with mud-brick compounds - and, given time to prepare, a veritable plague of improvised explosive devices.

Simply put, regardless of the Taliban's strategic or tactical goals, Marjah is a critical node in their operations.

The American strategy
Though operations have approached Marjah in the past, it has not been something NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) ever has tried to hold. The British, Canadian and Danish troops holding the line in the country's restive south had their hands full enough.

Despite Marjah's importance to the Taliban, ISAF forces were too few to engage the Taliban everywhere (and they remain as such). But American priorities started changing about two years ago. The surge of forces into Iraq changed the position of many a player in the country. Those changes allowed a reshaping of the Iraq conflict that laid the groundwork for the current "stability" and American withdrawal. At the same time, the Taliban began to resurge in a big way. Since then, the George W Bush and then Barack Obama administrations inched toward applying a similar strategy to Afghanistan, a strategy that focuses less on battlefield success and more on altering the parameters of the country itself.
As the Obama administration's strategy has begun to take shape, it has started thinking about endgames. A decades-long occupation and pacification of Afghanistan is simply not in the cards. A withdrawal is, but only a withdrawal where the security free-for-all that allowed al-Qaeda to thrive will not return. And this is where Marjah comes in.

Denying the Taliban control of poppy farming communities like Marjah and the key population centers along the Helmand River Valley - and areas like them around the country - is the first goal of the American strategy. The fewer key population centers the Taliban can count on, the more dispersed - and militarily inefficient - their forces will be. This will hardly destroy the Taliban, but destruction isn't the goal. The Taliban are not simply a militant Islamist force. At times they are a flag of convenience for businessmen or thugs; they can even be, simply, the least-bad alternative for villagers desperate for basic security and civil services. In many parts of Afghanistan, the Taliban are not only pervasive but also the sole option for governance and civil authority.

So destruction of what is in essence part of the local cultural and political fabric is not an American goal. Instead, the goal is to prevent the Taliban from mounting large-scale operations that could overwhelm any particular location. Remember, the Americans do not wish to pacify Afghanistan; the Americans wish to leave Afghanistan in a form that will not cause the United States severe problems down the road. In effect, achieving the first goal simply aims to shape the ground for a shot at achieving the second.

That second goal is to establish a domestic authority that can stand up to the Taliban in the long run. Most of the surge of forces into Afghanistan is not designed to battle the Taliban now but to secure the population and train the Afghan security forces to battle the Taliban later. To do this, the Taliban must be weak enough in a formal military sense to be unable to launch massive or coordinated attacks. Capturing key population centers along the Helmand River Valley is the first step in a strategy designed to create the breathing room necessary to create a replacement force, preferably a replacement force that provides Afghans with a viable alternative to the Taliban.

That is no small task. In recent years, in places where the official government has been corrupt, inept or defunct, the Taliban have in many cases stepped in to provide basic governance and civil authority. And this is why even the Americans are publicly flirting with holding talks with certain factions of the Taliban in hopes that at least some of the fighters can be dissuaded from battling the Americans (assisting with the first goal) and perhaps even joining the nascent Afghan government (assisting with the second).

The bottom line is that this battle does not mark the turning of the tide of the war. Instead, it is part of the application of a new strategy that accurately takes into account Afghanistan's geography and all the weaknesses and challenges that geography poses. Marjah marks the first time the US has applied a plan not to hold the line, but actually to reshape the country. We are not saying that the strategy will bear fruit. Afghanistan is a corrupt mess populated by citizens who are far more comfortable thinking and acting locally and tribally than nationally. In such a place indigenous guerrillas will always hold the advantage. No one has ever attempted this sort of national restructuring in Afghanistan, and the Americans are attempting to do so in a short period on a shoestring budget.

At the time of this writing, this first step appears to be going well for American-NATO-Afghan forces. Casualties have been light and most of Marjah already has been secured. But do not read this as a massive battlefield success. The assault required weeks of obvious preparation, and very few Taliban fighters chose to remain and contest the territory against the more numerous and better armed attackers. The American challenge lies not so much in assaulting or capturing Marjah but in continuing to deny it to the Taliban. If the Americans cannot actually hold places like Marjah, then they are simply engaging in an exhausting and reactive strategy of chasing a dispersed and mobile target.

A "government-in-a-box" of civilian administrators is already poised to move into Marjah to step into the vacuum left by the Taliban. We obviously have major doubts about how effective this box government can be at building up civil authority in a town that has been governed by the Taliban for most of the last decade. Yet what happens in Marjah and places like it in the coming months will be the foundation upon which the success or failure of this effort will be built. But assessing that process is simply impossible, because the only measure that matters cannot be judged until the Afghans are left to themselves.

(This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR.) 
   
 
 

 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010
13:21 Mecca time, 10:21 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/20102174756956799.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
US claims Afghan offensive progress 
 

Despite claims of early gains in the offensive, officials say there are 'tough days ahead' [AFP]

 
US military officials have said they are now in control of crucial areas in Marjah in Helmand province as a major offensive in Afghanistan against the Taliban enters its fifth day.

But Afghan intelligence sources, speaking to Al Jazeera on Wednesday, cast doubt on the claim.

About 15,000 Afghan, Nato and US troops are involved in the offensive dubbed Operation Mushtarak.

A Taliban spokesman also disputed the US military's claims, saying the fighters have Nato forces under seige.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Helmand, said the Taliban had put out a statement saying "this is going to be a shameful defeat for international forces".

He said Brigadier-General Larry Nicholson, the commander of US marines in the province, avoided sounding upbeat about the operation, while cautioning that "there were tough days ahead".

Nicholson echoed "comments from the governor of Helmand, who ... believes there are significant numbers of Taliban still in some of these villages, he believes some of them are foreign fighters, among them Pakistanis, who are holding out in some of these areas", our correspondent said.

Civilian deaths

Nato-led and Afghan forces have clashed with Taliban fighters in Marjah and the nearby district of Nad Ali in the continuing offensive that also seeks to eradicate drug traffickers that have controlled the region for years.

Three more Afghan civilians have died during the offensive, taking the total killed since the start of the operation to 15, Nato forces said.

The commander of British troops in southern Afghanistan said two missiles that struck a home on Sunday, killing 12 people, did hit their intended target.


In depth :
  Holbrooke on 'Operation Moshtarak' 
  Operation Moshtarak at a glance
  Gallery: Operation Moshtarak
  Video: Forces 'positive' on Afghan assault
  Video: Afghanistan's influential elders
  Video: Taliban second in command captured
  Focus: To win over Afghans, US must listen
  Timeline: Afghanistan in crisis

 

It was originally thought the rockets missed their target.


Major-General Nick Carter's comments came as Afghan authorities handed over the bodies for burial. He said Taliban fighters were in the house.

Nato has said the aim of the operation is to re-establish Afghan government control in the area so security and civil services such as police stations, schools and clinics can be set up.

Hoping to avoid prolonged gun battles, US soldiers called for long-range artillery support to disperse sniper squads delaying their advance into Marjah in the Taliban's southern heartland.


For the first time since the offensive started on Saturday, US forces fired non-lethal artillery "smoke shells'' in a bid to intimidate Taliban fighters, who reportedly lobbed rockets and mortars at them.

"We are trying not to be decisively engaged so we can progress, but we're having some difficulty right now," Captain Joshua Winfrey, Lima company commander, said.

Despite the continued firefights, marine officials said the resistance was more disorganised than in previous days.

"We're not seeing co-ordinated attacks like we did originally," Captain Abraham Sipe, a US army spokesman, said.

"We're still getting small-arms fire but it's sporadic, and hit-and-run tactics."

Nato officials have reported the deaths of only two international forces troops during the operation so far, with one American and one Briton killed on Saturday.

Booby-trapped streets

In Marjah, US marine and Afghan squads have been skirting the booby-trapped streets of the town, where Taliban snipers have been firing from haystacks built over small canals.

The marines' goal has been to link up with other companies that were airdropped into the town on Saturday, but progress has been slow.

Residents said they were scared to be seen with Nato forces.

As the fighting entered its fifth day, Pakistani intelligence officials said a US missile strike had killed at least three people near the Afghan border.

The two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly to the media, said Wednesday's attack destroyed a home in Tabbi Tool Khel village of North Waziristan in Pakistan.

The CIA has targeted homes, vehicles and suspected al-Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan's volatile North and South Waziristan tribal regions since December when a bomber killed seven of its employees in Afghanistan.
 
 

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Colonialist Motives Behind Marjah Operations

Sahar - Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63342&hd=&size=1&l=e

16 february 2010

It is now for one week that the invading enemy have launched military operations named " together" against Mujahideen in Marjah, a part of Nad Ali district, Helmand province. They have put more than 15,000 American, NATO and the hireling Afghan troops against a minuscule number of Mujahideen in the area. More than 60 helicopters, armed with hellfire missiles, and hundreds of tanks are taking part in the operation.

Marja has remained in the hands of Mujahideen for the last few years. Other parts of Helmand province like Baghiran, Dishu, and Washer districts are already under the administration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. So question rises why the enemy chose Marjah, a small area, to launch operations. Ostensibly, the enemy say that they want to put pressure on Taliban to accept the government terms of re-integration and reconciliation announced at the end of London Conference on 28th of last month. In fact, Marjah is a geopolitically important area because it borders on Baluchistan, Pakistan where China has a vast developmental project in the shape of Gwadaer seaport.

The invading America wants to control the transit way to Gwader in order to ensure a short-cut for supply of its logistics which are now shipped through Karachi sea port, Pakistan and through Tajikistan to the north of Afghanistan. They also want stymie Chinese involvement in the Gwadar project. Similarly, in light of the new round of the politically tense situation between Washington and Tehran over uranium enrichment and Iran’s missiles program, the White House wants to install new espionage equipments in Mrjah close to the Iranian border. In addition to this , British invaders have been extracting uranium in Sangin district which is fraught with raw uranium.

Local Mujahideen say, the British invading forces have brought heavy excavation equipments to the district for extraction of uranium in Sangin.

The British are also involved in drug trafficking in Helmand province. They are secretly taking heroin in British planes to black markets in Europe. No question, the war fought under the name of terrorism has other political and economic motives including expansionist goals rather than the so-called announced War on Terror. However, the Afghani Mujahideen have been sacrificing their lives to ensure independence of their country and put an end to the colonialist game started under the unjustified reasons and causes.

Despite the media fanfare and partial reporting of the Western media, Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in Marjah have besieged the enemy troops. Fresh reports from the area say: " In fact, the invading forces have made no spectacular advancement since the beginning of the operations. They have descended from helicopters in limited areas of Marjah and now are under siege.

The invaders are not able to come out of their ditches. Wherever they intend to move, they come under severe attacks of Mujahideen and face explosions of planted mines. Then they retreat hastily. The enemy troops have lost their morale. The local people are beholding the foreign troops crying loudly. "

We want all freedom- loving forces in the world to support the legitimate cause of the Afghan Mujahideen led by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and save the humane values from the claws of colonialism. Right now, the occupying forces are trampling down on human dignity, freedom, security and values under the farcical name of terrorism.







 

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Afghanistan: Over 1200 families flee allied attacks



Daily Telegraph

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63351&hd=&size=1&l=e

February 16, 2010

AT least 1240 families fled a massive military onslaught against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, Helmand authorities said today.

No camps were set up for the displaced in case they became permanent structures, said Daud Ahmadi, spokesman for Helmand governor Mohammad Gulab Mangal.

"We deliberately did not give permission for the camps to be set up for the 1240 families who are displaced because we did not want the camps to become permanent," he said.

The refugees were "either living with their relatives or have rented houses for themselves" in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, Ahmadi said, adding that a number of international agencies were providing assistance.

But Lashkar Gah was only one destination for the displaced.

Ahmadi was unable to say how many people fled elsewhere.

Some 15,000 US, UK, NATO and Afghan troops were pursuing a major operation in the Marjah and Nad Ali districts of Helmand to push out Taliban militants who, together with drug lords, controlled the area for years.

Operation Mushtarak ("together" in Dari) was launched before dawn Saturday and expected to last some weeks, as troops appeared to be bogged down by snipers and homemade bombs planted by the Taliban.

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week that food and emergency shelter were being organised for refugees fleeing to Lashkar Gah, 12 miles north of Marjah.

But Bijan Farnoudi, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said it was difficult for people to move between targeted areas and Lashkar Gah because the roads were littered with mines, blocked by troops and dotted with checkpoints.




 

[bigron]

Afganistan: If the enemy vanishes -- kill civilians

by Robin Beste

Stop the War Coalition, February 16, 2010
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m63358&hd=&size=1&l=e

WATCH :

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=307906462434


NATO'S CURRENT offensive in the Afghan town of Marjah is being portrayed as a low casualty mission in the "good war" to get rid of the Taliban.

If you were to believe the news broadcasts, it's already a success.

Since the assault was always intended to be as much a publicity stunt as serving any military objective, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown will certainly be pleased at how the media has snapped into line and acted as stenographers for Nato press releases.

The truth is, most of the few hundred Taliban fighters in Marjah vanished well before the much touted offensive began, not being stupid enough to face up to 15,000 of the most heavily armed troops on the planet.

Much of what we've seen on the TV screens looks like random firing into empty space to give the cameras footage for the evening news bulletins.

But, with very few enemy to engage, it wasn't long -- two days in fact-- before tragedy struck when a missile attack looking for Taliban to kill managed to slaughter 12 civilians, five of them children -- the very people this war was supposedly tailored to keep out of harm's way.

The attack on Marjah is no different from the numerous other Nato "clear, hold and build" missions -- except in the number of troops and the amount of media ballyhoo.

And there's no reason why this should be different in the outcome, with the Taliban withdrawing tactically and biding its time, before infiltrating back into the town once the overblown Operation Moshtarak and its accompanying media circus, has moved on to some other flashpoint of resistance to foreign occupation.

The only reason the invading armies continue fighting a war that cannot be won is in the hope that some escape route can be found from Obama and Brown's "war of necessity" that restores Western powers' credibility for invading other countries with impunity.

While the media concentrated all its resources on reporting the instant "success" in Marjah, yet another act of mass murder took place in the Kandahar province, with five civilians killed by a Nato air strike when they were assumed to be "persons planting an IED explosive device", recalling another "regretable incident" last August in the same region, when a group of farmers were killed loading cucumbers onto a lorry, which were mistaken to be munitions.

The civilian deaths in Kandahar and Marjah are a brutal reminder of the heavy price many Afghans will pay in the months and years to come to save the face of those responsible for prosecuting a futile and unjustifiable war.






 

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NATO Changes Story: House Full of Afghan Civilians Deliberately Hit

Three More Civilians Killed in Offensive Today

by Jason Ditz, February 16, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/02/16/nato-changes-story-house-full-of-afghan-civilians-deliberately-hit/

Usually when militaries change their official story about killing civilians it is designed to explain away innocent deaths as an accident. Today, however, NATO took the exact opposite approach with Sunday’s Marjah killings, revising their story to insist the killings were not an equipment error, but were part of a deliberate US targeting of a house full of civilians.

The initial story on Sunday was that the US troops tried to fire the rockets at suspected militants resisting the US-led invasion of the town. NATO claimed the rocket malfunctioned and veered 300 meters off course, destroying a house full of women and children.

The claims led to NATO announcing that the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HiMARS) responsible for firing the missiles would be suspended from use pending further review.

The review didn’t take long, however, as NATO announced today that the HiMARS did not malfunction, and the missile hit the house deliberately. Officials are now suggesting that there may have been militants in or near the house, though there appears to be no evidence of that and only civilians were killed in the house’s destruction.

NATO has promised to curb the number of air strikes against houses in Marjah in an attempt to reduce the number of civilians it kills in the invasion. Readers will recall that NATO urged civilians not to flee before the invasion. Three more civilians were reported killed today around Marjah, however, suggesting that as the offensive drags on civilians will continue to face danger.

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US Curbs Marjah Air Strikes

Trying to Avoid Dropping Bombs Near Homes

by Jason Ditz, February 16, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/02/16/us-curbs-marjah-air-strikes/

With Sunday’s civilian killings fresh in their minds, the United States has reportedly curbed the situations in which ground troops will be allowed to call in air strikes in the Marjah region. No longer will planes be allowed to launch air strikes near civilian homes, “unless troops face imminent danger.”

On Sunday US forces attempted to fire rockets at a group of militants in Marjah, only to have those rockets veer 300 yards off target and destroy a home full of civilians, killing 12 of them. NATO has since barred the “High Mobility Artillery Rocket System” from use until further review.

Air strikes, however, have been causing civilian deaths for years in Afghanistan. Most recently, an air strike yesterday in neighboring Kandahar Province killed five civilians. NATO said they called the strike in against what they thought were people “planting an IED explosive device,” though they admitted that after the investigated it turned out the people were just civilians by the side of the road.

NATO in general and the United States in particular have repeatedly promised wholesale changes to their policies aimed at dramatically reducing the number of civilians they kill. So far those policies have not had the desired effect and civilian tolls continue to soar in the nation, fueling tensions between the international forces and the Afghan populace.