News on Afghanistan - Page 72

mlurp · #**711** (**permalink**) 09-14-2012, 12:27 PM

Well the film has made the rounds in Afghanistan, with the results one would think it would.
What gets me is they should know most American's were not involved period with this movie. And with all the aid we give them, plus the lost lives given in their names to defend their country.

Quote:

.Hundreds of angry Afghans protest anti-Islam film

By AMIR SHAH | Associated Press – 41 mins ago. 14 Sept. 2012 .......

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Hundreds of Afghans — some shouting "Death to America" — burned the U.S. flag and an effigy of President Barack Obama on Friday during a protest against an anti-Islam film outside the eastern city of Jalalabad.

The film depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman.

Since it surfaced on the Internet, it has prompted violent protests at U.S. embassies in the Middle East. The American ambassador and three other U.S. staff members were killed when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was attacked.

Mohammad Zhirullah, a protester who spoke to The Associated Press on the phone from the site, said the crowd called on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sever relations with the United States.

Now that is something I can agree with.

"When the movie was shown around the world, it broke the heart of every Muslim," Zhirullah said. "We condemn this act and those who are behind it should be put on trial and should be hanged to death. ... It cannot be tolerated by the Afghan people."

It is unclear who organized the demonstration, which lasted about an hour, in the Marko area of Nangarhar province between Jalalabad and the Pakistan border.

http://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-angry...110643583.html

mlurp · #**712** (**permalink**) 09-15-2012, 04:47 PM

To keep these links in reach of the readers.

There is plenty to read at each of these site.

Asia News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Middle East News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Africa News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Europe News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Latin America News Headlines - Yahoo! News

iCasualties | OEF | Afghanistan | Fatalities Details

............................................. NEW ITEMS ................................................

ARMED FORCES JOURNAL

The Public Record | Intrepid New Journalism

Again my thanks to each reader.

mlurp · #**713** (**permalink**) 09-15-2012, 04:54 PM

This has been going on for a while now, yet this movie some jerks made to upset any Muslims might have made this Afghan decide to do this where he might not have before. Just IMHO. RIP and paryers to the family and their friends.

Quote:

.2 NATO soldiers killed in Afghan insider attack

By DEB RIECHMANN | Associated Press – 3 hrs ago. 15 Sept. 2012 .........

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan local policeman killed two soldiers with the NATO military coalition in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, the latest in a surge of insider attacks that are fracturing trust between Afghan forces and their international partners.

The shooting came a day after insurgents in the same region stormed a sprawling British base, killing two U.S. Marines and wounding several other international troops in an attack inspired by an anti-Islam film produced in the United States and the presence on the compound of a high-profile target, Britain's Prince Harry.

NATO would not say exactly where the latest insider attack occurred or if the gunman was a bonafide Afghan policeman or an insurgent who infiltrated the force. Police inspector Hismatullah Baulatzia in the city of Lashkar Gah said the attack happened there, in the capital of Helmand province. It was not clear, he said, if the gunman was a member of the Local Afghan Police, a village-level fighting force overseen by the central government.

So far this year, 47 international service members have died at the hands of Afghan soldiers or policemen or insurgents wearing their uniforms. At least 12 such attacks came in August alone, leaving 15 dead and raising concerns that the country will not be able to take charge of its own security as planned by 2014.

The incidents have prompted the Afghan military to run deeper background checks on its troops, leading to the dismissal or detention of hundreds. Meanwhile, the U.S. has halted the training of about 1,000 trainees in the Afghan Local Police, one of several measures being taken to stem the attacks.

A U.S. official said that the two killed in Saturday's insider attack were not American. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the countries involved hadn't released the information yet.

The raid a day earlier took place in an area just to the northwest, NATO said. Nearly 20 insurgents armed with guns, rocket-propelled grenades and explosive vests infiltrated the perimeter of Camp Bastion shortly after 10 p.m. Friday, starting a firefight that didn't end until Saturday morning.

............................................... CONTINUED ..............................................

2 NATO soldiers killed in Afghan insider attack - Yahoo! News

Asia News Headlines: Asia News Headlines - Yahoo! News

mlurp · #**714** (**permalink**) 09-17-2012, 02:07 PM

What is this? Can it be true? Yes it is a start.

Quote:

.Troops pack up gear to ship out of Afghanistan

By DEB RIECHMANN | Associated Press – 34 mins ago. 17 Sept. 2012 .......

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — It was nearly 2 a.m. when U.S. Army Pfc. Zach Randle jumped out of his bulky armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan for what he hoped would be the last time.

"I don't want to see it again. It's been through a lot," Randle said of the 19-ton (17-metric ton) vehicle that was his ride — and sometimes his bed — during a six-month deployment to volatile Kandahar province.

"It protected us, but I'm just in a hurry to turn it in to be closer to going home," said Randle, who has now left Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama's drawdown of 33,000 U.S. troops by Sept. 30. The pullout — 10,000 last year and 23,000 more this year — will be finished within days. That will leave 68,000 American troops in this country to fight militants and help prepare Afghan forces to take over security nationwide.

While some service members go home, others are busy preparing thousands of vehicles and other equipment for shipment. It's a laborious task that's more difficult than it was in Iraq because of landlocked Afghanistan's tough mountainous terrain, lack of roads and its mountain passes that will soon be covered with snow.

Between now and the end of 2014, when most U.S. troops will have left, the Americans will move an estimated 50,000 vehicles, including tens of thousands of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles like the one Randle drove into the equipment yard. They'll also ship an estimated 100,000 metal containers — each about 20 feet long. End-to-end, the containers would stretch nearly 400 miles (600 kilometers).

Shipping has picked up in recent months, as base closure teams have spread out across Afghanistan to help soldiers sort, pack and load up their gear. As of the beginning of September, 208 U.S. and NATO coalition bases have been closed, 310 have been transferred to the Afghan government and 323 remain open, according to the coalition.

The packing up is going on as the war still rages. Just since Friday, insurgents attacked a base in neighboring Helmand province, killing two U.S. Marines and destroying six Harrier fighter jets. Afghan police gunned down four more American service members, and a NATO airstrike mistakenly killed eight Afghan women looking for firewood.

As American forces keep fighting, thousands of civilian and military personnel will continue prepping vehicles for flight, taking tedious inventory of bullets, night scopes, radios and even recreational baseball bats. They'll also clean and crate tons of other gear, anything from bags of nails to generators.

Brig. Gen. Kristin French, commanding general of the Joint Sustainment Command in Afghanistan, likens the teams to "wedding planners" helping to organize the move.

"We are trying to take the burden off the war fighter and give it to our folks who have the mission to do it," French said at her office at Kandahar Air Field. "If we're busy trying to clean up our backyards, we're not doing what our focus is and that is to continue to transition security to the Afghan security forces and partner with them."

Vehicles are being gathered in Kandahar, Bagram Air Field near Kabul and Camp Barmal in northern Afghanistan. Containers are being staged for shipment at nine locations around the country, she said.

Some equipment is taken by truck, train, ships or planes to military depots in the United States. MRAPS are rolled onto airplanes. Some Humvees sit in shipping containers for a test trip on a railroad leaving Afghanistan via Uzbekistan to the north. Other equipment will also go north through Central Asia or else be trucked into Pakistan — some of it down to the port of Karachi, where it will sail back to the United States or other destinations.

Various items will stay in Afghanistan to be used by the Americans troops not going home — yet. Still other materiel will be transferred to the Afghan government, tossed out, taken to a scrap heap or shipped to other countries for use by U.S. forces.

For now, Randle and several dozen other U.S. Army soldiers from the 4th Brigade Combat Team 82nd Airborne Division, based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are happy to get rid of their vehicles and all the equipment.

The late-night arrival of their convoy late last month stirred up dust in the equipment yard at Kandahar Air Field. The heavily armed personnel carriers and utility trucks slowed to a halt, then sat idling noisily as the soldiers gathered their gear inside and began climbing out and into formation in the yard.

"They are part of the 23,000 soldier off-ramp," said Lt. Col. Stanley J. Sliwinski, Jr., who assumed command of 401st Army Field Support Brigade in Kandahar in July and was waiting for the convoy when it arrived. "Most of these soldiers will turn in their equipment tonight and they will fly home within the next three days."

Home, that is, after about three weeks at Fort Bragg.

.................................................. ... CONTINUED ........................................

Troops pack up gear to ship out of Afghanistan - Yahoo! News

22 great comments.

Asia News Headlines: Asia News Headlines - Yahoo! News

mlurp · #**715** (**permalink**) 09-18-2012, 02:23 PM

Have you heard about the new temp order that no American troops will work beside any Afghan troops in the field. I sure hope this order lasts for a long while.

Quote:

Blast kills 8 South Africans, 4 others in Kabul

By AMIR SHAH and PATRICK QUINN | AP – 6 hrs ago. 18 Sept. 2012 .....

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a mini-bus carrying foreign aviation workers to the airport in the Afghan capital early Tuesday, killing at least 12 people including eight South Africans. A militant group said the attack aimed to avenge an anti-Islam film that ridicules the Prophet Muhammad.
The powerful early morning blast was the first in Kabul since a video clip of the film was posted on the Internet last week, sparking angry protests across the Muslim world including in Afghanistan. It was also the second — and deadliest — attack that Afghan militants have said they carried out as revenge strikes in response to the film.
Haroon Zarghoon, a spokesman for the Islamist militant group Hizb-i-Islami, claimed responsibility for the dawn attack in telephone call to The Associated Press. He said it was carried out by a 22-year-old woman named Fatima. Suicide bombings carried out by women are extremely rare in Afghanistan — and few if any women drive cars.
"The anti-Islam film hurt our religious sentiments and we cannot tolerate it," Zarghoon said. "There had been several young men who wanted to take revenge but Fatima also volunteered and we wanted to give a chance to a girl for the attack to tell the world we cannot ignore any anti-Islam attack."
Zarghoon warned of more attacks against foreigners working for NATO and said Hizb-i-Islami had been scouting targets since a video clip of the film was posted on the Internet last week. The bombing was a worrisome escalation of violence in the capital, where most attacks are usually blamed on the Haqqani network — a Pakistan-based militant group affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida.
"Foreign troops are fighting against Afghans and foreign civilians are tasked to spy for them. They all are our enemy and will be our target," Zarghoon told AP from an unknown location.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, which he said killed eight South Africans, a Kyrgyzstani and three Afghans. Some of the dead were working for a South African Aviation company called ACS/BalmOral, which said in a statement that they were notifying the families of those killed.

............................................... CONTINUED ..........................................

Blast kills 8 South Africans, 4 others in Kabul - Yahoo! News

18 comments. Plus other news at the link below.

Asia News Headlines: Asia News Headlines - Yahoo! News

mlurp · #**716** (**permalink**) 09-19-2012, 01:32 PM

I sure hope this man who made this film using deception to get it done understand what a mess he has made.

In places like Afghan where we and others are fighting to stop terror, his film can change it to war on Islam. And that will create a total mess.

Quote:

.Militants claim Afghan attack is revenge for film

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and PATRICK QUINN | Associated Press – 21 hrs ago. Posted 19 Sept. 2012 ..........

Associated Press/Ahmad Jamshid - A French soldier investigates the scene of a suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012. A suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a mini-bus …more

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Islamic militants sought Tuesday to capitalize on anger over an anti-Islam video that was produced in the United States, saying a suicide bombing that killed 12 people in Afghanistan was revenge for the film and calling for attacks on U.S. diplomats and facilities in North Africa.

The attempt by extremists across the region to harness Muslim fury over a film that denigrates the Prophet Muhammad posed new concern for the United States, whose embassies and consulates have been targeted, and in some cases breached, during riots and protests over the past week.

At the same time, Western leaders welcomed statements by Middle East governments that condemned the violence against diplomatic facilities on their soil, even as they expressed anger over the video. Some of those governments replaced autocratic regimes in popular uprisings that swept the region, allowing for greater leniency toward protest.

At least 28 people have died in violence linked to the film in seven countries, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans killed in a Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The toll also includes 12 protesters killed in riots over the film last week.

Some officials in Libya have said the attack on the consulate was planned in advance by militants. However, the White House said Tuesday the assault appeared to have been sparked by anger over the film, though the investigation continues.

The crisis has become a major foreign policy challenge for Washington in the final weeks of a presidential election campaign that has largely focused on economic challenges. The uproar over the video, "Innocence of Muslims," which was made by an Egyptian-born American citizen and posted on YouTube, reflects seemingly intractable tension between Western principles of free speech and Islamic beliefs that brook no insult directed at the prophet.

The crisis offered fresh impetus for Islamic militants who have long plotted and carried out attacks on Western targets.

............................................... CONTINUED ..............................................

Militants claim Afghan attack is revenge for film - Yahoo! News

162 comments.

More Here: http://news.yahoo.com/middle-east/

mlurp · #**717** (**permalink**) 09-20-2012, 01:13 PM

Good luck with this...

Quote:

.Afghan president urges peace, despite attacks

By AMIR SHAH and HEIDI VOGT | Associated Press – Wed, Sep 19, 2012.

......................................... Posted 20 Sept. 2012 .......................................

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Afghan president on Wednesday urged his nation to rally behind the push for peace negotiations with insurgents despite persistent violence, evoking the memory of a former leader who was assassinated while trying to broker talks with the Taliban.

"We should all strive for peace," said Hamid Karzai, adding that doing so continues the mission of slain former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, killed by a suicide bomber posing as an emissary from the insurgents.

Karzai spoke at a memorial marking the one-year anniversary of Rabbani's death, which badly shook confidence in the chance that a peaceful resolution could be achieved.

The ceremony came a day after a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a minibus carrying foreign aviation workers to the airport in Kabul, killing at least 12 people, including nine foreigners.

A militant group said the attack aimed to avenge an anti-Islam film that ridicules the Prophet Muhammad. The film has sparked angry protests across the Muslim world, including in Afghanistan, after a video clip of it was posted on the Internet last week.

On Wednesday, attacks in three different provinces killed four police, two security guards and two civilians.

The attacks come at a time when the Afghan-U.S. alliance appears increasingly shaky and many Afghans predict civil war after the majority of international forces depart at the end of 2014.

And the Afghans may have to stand on their own more quickly than previously envisioned. A rash of attacks by Afghan police and soldiers against their international counterparts has prompted the NATO military coalition to restrict joint operations with Afghan forces.

................................................. CONTINUED ............................................

Afghan president urges peace, despite attacks - Yahoo! News

Asia News Headlines: Asia News Headlines - Yahoo! News

faithful_servant · #**718** (**permalink**) 09-24-2012, 02:34 PM

Before Staff Sergeant Matthew Sitton was blown up and killed in Afghanistan, he wrote to U.S. Representative Bill Young about incompetent leadership and meaningless risk-taking in this hollow war. Matthew was on his third Afghan tour.

The Soldier’s words are emblematic of the realities and frustrations of a war that many Americans do not realize is still on. The veteran wrote, “As a Brigade, we are averaging at a minimum an amputee a day from our soldiers because we are walking around aimlessly through grape rows and compounds that are littered with explosives.”

Combine that lethal meandering with the fact that our troops are inadequately trained in Ground Sign Awareness (GSA), and are nearly blind when it comes to combat tracking, and it is no wonder that we take so many casualties. Much of the billions of dollars that we spent on counter-IED gadgets were wasted. We burned the money. Most counter-IED appliances cannot be used in the places where our people walk.

In southern Afghanistan, all but a few gadgets are useless in those fields, grape rows, and villages. Dogs are of limited use. Matthew wrote truthfully that many missions are about nothing in particular. They are busywork, combat style, in fields of bombs, where small-arms ambushes and snipers are the daily norm. Plenty of veterans can vouch for the authenticity of Matthew’s observations. Ask them.

Yet the enemy is not the cause of most frustrations. This is war. We try to frustrate each other and this is expected. The worst frustrations are caused by our own leadership, by our Afghan cohorts, and because we create our own obstacles. Nothing is more maddening than watching the incompetence of our own side become more disadvantageous than enemy bombs and bullets. We are not just fighting the enemy. We are fighting against ourselves.

For example, after 11 years of war, our leadership is still forcing unarmed MEDEVAC helicopters to fly over Afghanistan. They force our pilots and crews to fly into danger, unarmed, while displaying the Red Cross, the symbol of the Crusaders. I would give a hundred bucks to fly a Red Cross-emblazoned Blackhawk into a hot LZ with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey aboard.

Secretary Panetta and our Generals pretend that we must display Red Crosses to be in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. This is false. We are not obligated to display the Red Cross. None of our allied partners display them on their helicopters in Afghanistan. The Norwegians and other armies removed them. It was nothing more than common sense.

The Taliban pay no heed to the Geneva Conventions. When our MEDEVACs do display the Red Cross, it is illegal for them to carry offensive weapons. The Taliban know this. A helicopter wearing the Red Cross is defenseless. Red Crosses do not just offend the religious sensibilities of the Taliban: they embolden them. The Taliban consider our MEDEVACs to be an easy kill. And they are.

Is it any wonder that we are losing this war? Red Crosses themselves are not entirely to blame, obviously, but they are indicative of poor generalship, and we have had that in abundance. Pundits blame this disaster on former President Bush, on Obama, on the press, on our ISAF partners, and most of all on the Neolithic Afghan “government,” all of which are rancid ingredients of this unhealthy pie. But the reality is that the U.S. military leadership has failed. Who does the President ask for options? He asks the Generals. Our Generals have helped morph Afghanistan into a bomb and opium factory.

Even if our Presidents had made perfect decisions, incompetent military leadership and the inability of our current leaders to execute maneuvers more complex than blunt trauma would still have hobbled them. It took years for us to get serious about training Afghan forces. When we finally got underway, we did it sloppily, and we have lost many men due in part to our haste and our poor security measures.

America needs a purge of its top military Generals. Not a wholesale purge, as there are some good leaders, but we have too many Generals and attempts to weed them down have failed. We need to get back to basics.

After 11 years, our troops are inadequately and inappropriately trained, and wrongly outfitted. Money has never been the issue. Americans were not stingy. The money supply was generous. We used the money to buy monster trucks with space-tech gadgets that cannot go off-road on even semi-rough terrain, and counter-IED gear that cannot find simple bombs, because the bombs are too simple. Most of Afghanistan has no roads. Using these monster trucks is like running missions while staying on railroad tracks. The enemy knows exactly where we will be. They are not running from us. If you sit still, they will come. Believe me.

In Zhari District, the enemy is accurate with their 82mm recoilless rifles, which easily penetrate our armor. The enemy can stop us with a real or a decoy IED, and then take out four vehicles in thirty seconds.

Inside the wire, Green on Blue and insider attacks have reached an all-time high. Our Afghan counterparts murder our troops on a weekly basis. (Green on Blue refers to Afghan forces attacking ISAF forces. Insider attacks refer to Afghan contractors, etc., doing the same, and include Green on Blue.)

When you ask top commanders about the war, the response is something straight out of Apocalypse Now. The supreme officer in our military is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey. Just this week, Dempsey is quoted on the JCS website:

“The surge had its intended effect,” Dempsey added. “I think it was an effort that was worth the cost -- and don’t forget, it did have its cost. But I think it will prove, as we look back on it, to have set the conditions necessary for us to achieve the objectives by the end of 2014.”

Who does Dempsey think that he is talking to with his comment, “and don’t forget, it did have its cost”? We get it, General Dempsey. Loud and clear. We wonder if you do.

General Dempsey is a favorite on the milblog Small Wars Journal. The SWJ editor-in-chief is a journalist named Dave Dilegge, a retired service member, and a director at the Small Wars Foundation. With those credentials, we might expect that Dilegge spends much time downrange to help tune his BS sensors. If not downrange … at minimum, we would expect him to be at work in a dark basement poring over information streaming in from myriad sources.

The truth of the matter is that amateur journalist and editor Dave Dilegge owns and operates a food truck in Largo, Florida.

General Dempsey seems to have booked the food truck. He does a good job pushing his word out through the service window. This is a safe way to peddle information. Critics who actually spend time on the ground in Afghanistan are dangerous, on the other hand: they know too much.

Some of us want more than street food. We want to know why Camp Bastion security was breached, and we want to know how the Taliban destroyed a Marine Corps Harrier squadron. Who has been held responsible? Who was fired? HQ in Kabul refused to give me the name of who was in charge of Bastion security. Typical cover-up.

American taxpayers paid hard earned money for those Harriers, and now they are wreckage. $200 million is gone. We lost two U.S. Marines who were trying to save those jets, including the squadron commander, who by all accounts was an outstanding officer. Our men are gone.

Why is it that sangers (guard towers) sometimes are unmanned in Afghanistan? Since 2010, I have written about unmanned sangers at least twice, and now word comes that unmanned sangers were the norm at the Bastion base complex.

If we are satisfied with this level of bull****, we might as well stick to Michael Moore for war news and leadership. The Taliban are not frustrating: they are the enemy. Martin Dempsey is frustrating.

One small indicator of Dempsey’s incompetence is his failure to remove Red Crosses from our MEDEVACs. This lack of common sense and imbibing of bureaucratic Pentagon kool-aid by our top military commanders transcends the AfPak war and brings into question the integrity of our national defense.

As a matter of national security, and as an American, I feel vulnerable knowing that our military is administered by political Generals rather than led by seasoned war fighters. The word administered is appropriate.

Even during the height of the dry season, on embarrassingly flat terrain, our Space Wonders get bogged down in irrigation puddles.

The Pentagon brags about these machines. They might look spacious from the outside, but when you crawl inside, they are so stuffed with mysteries and switches and gauges and displays that you could think that you are heading to the moon. You could probably microwave popcorn in there.

These monster trucks will look impressive during parades at home. With the band playing, flags waving, and cheerleaders dancing, taxpayers can get a glimpse of the hardware that we bought for our boys.

Yet these Parade Props are easily blown up, and destroyed with recoilless rifles, because the roads are their railroad tracks. The enemy knows where they will travel. When it rains, forget it. In the hills and mountains, forget it. Small roads. Deep sands. No way. These things are worth half the sum of their parts.

more here

mlurp · #**719** (**permalink**) 09-24-2012, 03:28 PM

much FS for the reality. And this is the version we received. Long after the attack. Read it slowly.

While considering why we have not left yet.

Quote:

.Taliban release video on Afghan base attackers

By HEIDI VOGT and RAHIM FAIEZ | Associated Press – 3 hrs ago. 24 Sept. 2012

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban published a video Monday they say shows insurgents preparing for the brazen attack on a major NATO base earlier this month, just as NATO forces released data showing that insurgent attacks decreased in August.

The twin releases are a reminder of the escalating battle for public opinion between the insurgency and the international military as U.S. and allied troops draw down. The Taliban continue to contend that they are fighting at full force while the international alliance says that they have been weakened.

No mention of each country involved or it's citzens .

In the Sept. 14 attack on Camp Bastion in Helmand province, 15 insurgents dressed in U.S. Army uniforms breached the base's perimeter fence then used automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers to fire on planes and people around the base's airstrip. They managed to kill two Marines and destroy six fighter jets costing tens of millions each before they were stopped. All but one of the assailants were killed in the fighting.

The Taliban video shows men wearing U.S. Army uniforms as they practice cutting through a chain-link fence and charging through the opening. One man indicates targets with a pointer and a whiteboard showing drawings of planes and fortifications. He speaks Pashtun, a major language in southern Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. Words on the whiteboard are written in Urdu, a language more common in Pakistan.

A Taliban spokesman emailed the link to the video to the media but it was not possible to verify the authenticity of the footage. Nothing in the video indicates when or where it was filmed.

Yet it did happen and that is more important than the above.

The NATO statistics showed that insurgent attacks decreased 9 percent in August, compared with the same month last year — continuing a falloff that started in July after a spike in attacks in May and June.

NATO said the shortened poppy harvest in the spring meant that the usual summer fighting season started earlier. Regionally, attacks decreased in the east and south, but increased in the west and north, according to the data.

Overall, NATO's figures show insurgent attacks are down 5 percent for the year so far, compared with the same period of 2011.

Australian Army Brig. Gen. Roger Noble, deputy to the deputy chief of staff for operations of the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan, told reporters in Kabul earlier this month that fighting in the south — the Taliban strongholds of Kandahar and Helmand provinces — has moved away from the bigger towns and cities.

"If you think back to 2010, people were talking about central Helmand being the center of fighting, but it's been pushed out and away from most of the major population centers," he said. "But there is still plenty of fighting and it is dangerous and having a direct effect in casualties on the coalition and also, increasingly, on the Afghan security forces."

Nearly two years after President Barack Obama announced that he was sending another 33,000 troops to take on the Taliban, those reinforcements have just completed their return to the United States. That leaves about 68,000 American troops, along with their NATO allies and Afghan partners, to carry out an ambitious plan to put the Afghans fully in the combat lead as early as next year.

____

Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report from Kabul.

Taliban release video on Afghan base attackers - Yahoo! News

234 comments. Now you know why I add the number of comments.

Asia News Headlines: Asia News Headlines - Yahoo! News

mlurp · #**720** (**permalink**) 09-26-2012, 02:08 PM

Is this more of the above letter FS posted? Useless patrolling just to show we are there?
Whatever RIP and prayer for each family.

Quote:

..NATO: 2 service members killed in Afghanistan

Associated Press – 7 hrs ago.. 26 Sept. 2012 ..........

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide attack on a NATO patrol in eastern Afghanistan killed two service members in the U.S.-led coalition on Wednesday, NATO and Afghan officials said.

The attack included small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and a man wearing a vest laden with explosives, said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the coalition.

The coalition gave no other details, but Din Mohammad Darwesh, a spokesman in Logar province, said the suicide bomber, who was on foot, struck the international soldiers as they were patrolling a section of Pul-i-Alam, the provincial capital.

The nationalities of the soldiers killed were not disclosed.

So far this year, 285 NATO service members have been killed in Afghanistan.

NATO: 2 service members killed in Afghanistan - Yahoo! News

Asia News Headlines: Asia News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

LinkBacks (?) LinkBack to this Thread: http://www.politicalwrinkles.com/history-geography-military/10837-news-afghanistan.html
Posted By	For	Type	Date
News on Afghanistan - Page 62 - Political Wrinkles	This thread	Refback	08-23-2012 08:10 PM

The Following User Says Thank You to mlurp For This Useful Post:
mr. wonder

The Following User Says Thank You to faithful_servant For This Useful Post:
mlurp