Afghanistan: the lost decade | Editorial. There is one set of figures about the war in Afghanistan that puts the problems of trying to end it into their true perspective. The US is spending $120bn more in fighting the war this year than the Afghan exchequer is raising in tax revenue. Even the cost of the war to Britain, at £6bn (according to a former UK ambassador's evidence to the foreign affairs select committee) is over three times what Kabul can afford.
So in what sense is Kabul ready to take over Afghanistan's security when foreign troops stop combat operations in less than three years' time? Ten years on from the Bonn conference in 2001, with so many mistakes made, the basic questions only pile up. Then, Pakistan's strategic relationship with US was not in doubt. Now, after a year in which that alliance has been stretched to breaking point, not least by the recent Nato airstrike in which 24 Pakistani troops were killed, it is. There are slivers of good news. This is as much a British military delusion as an American one. Congressional investigation uncovers Afghan horror hospital. Urban Target Complex National Monument. [Image: Yodaville, via Google Maps]. Yodaville is a fake city in the Arizona desert used for bombing runs by the U.S. Air Force. Writing for Air & Space Magazine back in 2009, Ed Darack wrote that, while tagging along on a training mission, he noticed "a small town in the distance—which, as we got closer, proved to have some pretty big buildings, some of them four stories high.
" As towns go, this one is relatively new, having sprung up in 1999. But nobody lives there. As one instructor tells Darack, "The urban layout is actually very similar to the terrain in many villages in Iraq and Afghanistan. " The Urban Target Complex, or UTC, was soon "lit up with red tracer rounds and bright yellow and white rocket streaks," till it "looked like it was barely able to keep standing": The artillery and mortars started firing, troops advanced toward the target complex, and aircraft of all types—carefully controlled by students on the mountain top—mounted one attack run after another. Another Killing Machine: Another Newly Invented Machine in Afghanistan. No country in the world has suffered so much and for so long at the hands of two super powers in the last thirty years than Afghanistan. One after the other they invaded Afghanistan wreaking complete havoc and causing tremendous loss of life and property as well as destroying the entire infrastructure of that wretched country.
The Soviet bear started the process in 1979 but once its leg was firmly caught in the jaws of the Afghan trap the US entered the arena to inflict a humiliating defeat upon its arch enemy in retaliation for its own defeat in Vietnam. Afghanistan was then abandoned leaving it to the Mujahedeen first and later to the Taliban and Northern Alliance to bitterly fight over for control of that unfortunate country. All told two generations of Afghans have had their lives torn apart by the demons of war let loose by the Soviets and the US. The US strode on the stage once again when it invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after the attack on the twin towers in New York.
Deadwood - By Rajiv Chandrasekaran. When Richard Holbrooke became the Obama administration's Afghanistan point man in January 2009, Summer Coish was keen to join his civilian operation. She had the requisite credentials: a master's in public health and experience working on foreign development projects. For the previous five years, she had been splitting her time between New York and Kazakhstan, where she and a friend had started a glossy biannual magazine about Central Asia.
Although she dug a little deeper into her savings to print each issue of Steppe, the publishing venture had swelled the list of contacts on her mobile phone. She knew more Afghan entrepreneurs -- from the founder of the country's most successful television station to the owner of the largest bottled-drinks company -- than anyone else seeking a job with USAID.
Coish, a tall blonde with a fondness for dangle earrings acquired in far-off bazaars, was just the sort of person Holbrooke desired for his Washington team. Everyone seemed bent on departure. The American Agenda in Afghanistan: a Civilian’s Review. Kabul. One thing true we can say about war is that truth is its greatest casualty. I am a volunteer teacher. Four years ago I responded to a call from then candidate Barack Obama for a new kind of soldier to wage peace, one without a uniform, without a gun. On the three-year anniversary of my moving in with the orphans here in Afghanistan, I listened to gun battle and explosions in my Kabul neighborhood for ten hours through the night and into the morning. While CNN reported the insurgency event had ended I shook my head. “Nope,” I muttered to myself, listening to stray bullets fly over my room.
Two weeks later, President Obama swung through for what appeared to be his first re-election stump speech. “One” there are 400 American military bases of one sort or another in Afghanistan. “Two” out of the 3,005 coalition military fatalities in this war, 1,956 have occurred in the time since my arrival here. “Three” 2011 saw the greatest single year in civilian deaths for the entire war. I’m Out. The Afghan Disaster. By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY The PR disasters over the last three months — including pictures of American troops urinating on Afghan corpses, the burning of Qurans, and the massacre of Afghan civilians, including women and children, by at least one deranged American soldier — have morphed into a grand strategic debacle.
From the perspective of the Afghan insurgency, these are gifts that will keep on giving. Why do I use the modifier grand strategic? Because these incidents have (1) increased the moral strength of the Afghan insurgents by handing them a coup to rally supporters and attract the uncommitted to their cause. They also widen the existing rift between the United States military and the Karzai government, which in any case is viewed by many Afghans as a corrupt, illegitimate, quisling lapdog of the US. Criteria to judge for yourself whether or not our dismissal of these incidents as isolated occurrences and apologies will counter the damage described above. Deal to Continue Afghanistan Night Raids Is Near. Matt Robinson/Reuters American soldiers waited for a helicopter to pick them up after a night raid by the 101st Airborne Division in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, in February. The night raids’ deep unpopularity with the Afghan public has long put Mr.
Karzai at odds with his American backers, who say the operations are among the most effective tools they have to combat the . An agreement on the raids, after months of sometimes contentious negotiations, would allow Kabul and Washington to move toward completion of a broader pact that lays out the strategic relationship between the two countries after the official end of the combat mission here in 2014. Afghan and American officials hope to have that broader agreement concluded in time for a NATO summit meeting planned for May in Chicago. Most of the officials commented on the condition of anonymity because the agreement had not been concluded. “We are very close to signing” an agreement on the raids, said Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Mr.
Top general can't spin Afghan failures - Afghanistan. After an Afghan soldier killed two British troops in Kabul on Monday, Gen. John Allen, chief of the international forces in Afghanistan, told reporters in Washington it was the 40th such attack in recent years. “An erosion of trust has emerged,” he conceded. Such tactful understatement was the order of the day as Allen tried to put the best face on President Obama’s floundering war policy.
Fielding friendly questions at the Brookings Institution from Michael O’Hanlon, a war supporter, Allen gave an assessment of the war that was positive in general but downbeat to the point of discouraging in many of its specifics. The contrast is the norm in Washington as the Obama administration continues to wage an unpopular war with the support of an acquiescent Congress and sympathetic analysts like O’Hanlon. The general’s candor sometimes belied his spin. So was Allen’s heavily qualified claim that after a decade the Afghan people accept the U.S. military presence. Allen concluded by saying U.S. Top US Commander Examines Leadership Issues in Afghan Killings. Luis Ramirez | Pentagon March 26, 2012 The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Marine Corps General John Allen, said Monday he is looking into possible leadership failures that might have led to the killing of 17 Afghan villagers, allegedly by a U.S. soldier this month.
U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. Officials say the investigation around the deaths continues - including a review of the command climate in Bales’s unit to see what factors might have contributed to the killings in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, General Allen suggested a major probe is under way in the wake of high-profile incidents, including the recent inadvertent Quran burnings by U.S. service members and a video that earlier circulated showing Marines urinating on Afghan corpses.
“Each one of those was a result of a leadership failure in some form or another,” he said. Support for Afghan War Falls in U.S., Poll Finds. The survey found that more than two-thirds of those polled — 69 percent — thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan. Just four months ago, 53 percent said that Americans should no longer be fighting in the conflict, more than a decade old. The increased disillusionment was even more pronounced when respondents were asked their impressions of how the war was going.
The poll found that 68 percent thought the fighting was going “somewhat badly” or “very badly,” compared with 42 percent who had those impressions in November. The latest poll was conducted by telephone from March 21 to 25 with 986 adults nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. The Times/CBS News poll was consistent with other surveys this month that showed a drop in support for the war. Negative impressions of the war have grown among Republicans as well as Democrats, according to the Times/CBS News poll. Michael E. US paid close to $50,000 per shooting spree death, American official tells NBC. By NBC News and news services Updated at 11 a.m. ET: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- The United States paid close to $50,000 in compensation for each Afghan killed in the shooting spree attributed to a U.S. soldier in southern Afghanistan, a U.S. official told NBC News on Sunday.
The official, who asked not to be named, would not say exactly how much was paid to the families, but added the amount was close to the $50,000 reported by Afghan officials. "The amount reflects the extraordinarily devastating nature of the incident," he said. Average annual income in Afghanistan is $425, according to the BBC. U.S. officials paid $50,000 to the Afghan families of the dead.
Meantime, Karilyn Bales tells Today's Matt Lauer that her husband "is like a big kid. " Staff Sgt. Bales charged with 17 counts of murder in Afghanistan massacre Agha Lalai told the AP that each wounded person has received $11,000 and that they were told the money was from U.S. The defense attorney for Army Staff Sgt. The conflicting Afghan shooting reports - GlobalPost. KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Conflicting reports from eyewitnesses, U.S. officials and local leaders show, if anything, how little is known for certain about what happened in the early morning hours of March 11, when Staff Sgt.
Robert Bales allegedly massacred 16 Afghan civilians, including nine women and children. About the only facts the U.S. military and local Afghans agree on is the number of people killed during the shooting — which took place in two remote villages in Kandahar Province, a half-mile from a U.S. military outpost — and that the killings occurred sometime in the early morning hours. While Sgt. Bales is in custody in the United States for the shooting, locals swear that multiple soldiers participated and that they communicated via walkie-talkies, indicating the attack might have been a more organized operation.
“ISAF is looking into all the witnesses accounts who are deemed credible and we will investigate that,” Lt. Brian Badura said. Credible is the key word. Kandahar massacre par for the course in Afghanistan. There are still many questions surrounding the horrific massacres in Afghanistan: did Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, now formally accused of 17 murders, act alone? What could make someone snap so suddenly and completely? Is the US military to blame for not screening their soldiers properly? One thing, however, is becoming clear: the US war effort in Afghanistan is drawing to a painful and shameful close. Ever since the rampage in Kandahar on March 11, the airwaves, newspapers and web pages have been devoted to a harsh reexamination of our goals and accomplishments in Afghanistan.
The results are disheartening. More from GlobalPost in Kandahar: Eyewitnesses describe the Kandahar shooting Maj. Sgt. The United States has long since lost its “Good Guy” status in Afghanistan. After the massacre, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, known for his emotional outbursts, labeled Americans “demons.” Night raids are a frequent occurrence in southern Afghanistan. Karzai has demanded that the raids be stopped. Afghanistan and the Roman Empire. As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stepped off the plane in Afghanistan recently, he accurately summed up the evils of war. Arriving to calm Afghani reaction to the massacre of sixteen civilians in their homes by a U.S. soldier, Panetta said that "war is hell.
" The Secretary went on to predict that these "incidents are going to take place. This is not the first and probably won't be the last. " In other words, as U.S. military tentacles wrap themselves around the world just as the Roman Empire spread its military dominance from Baghdad to Britain, Panetta was serving notice on the American public that the violence and pattern of disturbing behavior on the part of American troops is less than an aberration but represents an endless war culture that may be expected to continue. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) told Meet the Press host David Gregory last week that the 'Taliban are basically decimated to a larger degree" and that 'we are winning. " Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of 24 U.S. Debating the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement. "There is too much to lose, too many more soldiers to be debased into monsters, too many more innocent lives to be lost.
" Kabul In Afghanistan, the tragic Kandahar killing spree has prompted renewed talk about the proposed U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement. At stake in these discussions is the security of Afghanistan, the U.S. and the region. Citizens in the U.S. and Afghanistan should be urgently exchanging their views or concerns about this partnership. Many are not even aware of it. Currently, citizens of Syria and the world can at least discuss Mr Kofi Annan’s warning that the situation in Syria should be handled “very, very carefully” to avoid an escalation that would de-stabilize the region, after an earlier warning against further militarization of the Syrian crisis.
The previous UN Envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, did try. Tax-payers from the 50 coalition countries involved in the Afghan war should be alarmed at how and where their money is spent. The Afghan Parliament The UN. War in Afghanistan. Obama: Killing Afghans as serious as killing Americans. The Art of Lying. Soldiers as Terrorists. NPR and NYT on Americans v. Afghans - Glenn Greenwald. Anand Gopal — Afghan killings product of failed strategy. NATO’s measured exit plan in Afghanistan faces new obstacles. American Morlocks: Monsters of a murderous Afghan policy - Afghanistan. Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.