Osama Bin Laden Is Dead - It's Time To Begin Our Withdrawal From Afghanistan

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Taliban refused to turn over Osama Bin Laden to the United States. By doing so, they became his allies, and we went to war in Afghanistan. Although it became necessary to remove the Taliban in the process of chasing Bin Laden, we gradually lost our focus on the primary mission. It should never have been about anything but capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden and those who planned and executed the 9/11 attacks.

Instead, we became involved in nation-building, trying to bring a primitive country from the dark ages to modern times with only a handful of soldiers. Our leaders ignored the traditions of corruption, tribes, drugs, and religion, believing in their intellectually superior minds that we could wave our hands and create a Jeffersonian democracy.

As usual, our troops have performed magnificently. Because the Taliban was chased into the mountains with their tails between their legs, the Afghan people have had a chance to enjoy the fruits of our warriors' efforts. Few of them have embraced us or our ideals. They remain a primitive people for the most part, and they despise foreign occupation - regardless of the reason.

The president of Afghanistan is working against us and continuing the culture of corruption in his country. He wants to work with the Taliban to bring them into the government - kind of like letting the fox into the hen house. When - not if - that happens, the Taliban will only wait until we are gone before they try to return Afghanistan to its brutal past.

Whether we leave today or twenty years from now, the Afghan people - like their Iraqi counterparts - will determine the future of their country. Maintaining their culture of corruption is not worth another American life.

The sacrifices of our troops in Afghanistan ultimately resulted in the death of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Almost all the Al Qaeda planners of 9/11 are dead or locked up. The few that remain can still be taken out with accurate intelligence and professional special operations forces. We have accomplished our primary mission in Afghanistan, and we have been victorious. It's time to bring the troops home.

On our way out of Afghanistan, the last soldier to board an airplane should turn to the Afghans with one final message:

"Do what you will with your own country; but if you attack us again, we will destroy you. Any questions?"

Charles M. Grist
www.MyLastWar.com

Afghanistan - America's Decade In A "Half War"

The Taliban

"The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue."  Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-Tung) on guerrilla warfare

When America first entered Afghanistan, we did so with about a hundred special ops troops. We knew that Osama Bin Laden was at Tora Bora, but we didn't drop the 82nd Airborne in to surround the place. We let the Northern Alliance, the guerrillas who opposed the Taliban, lead the way. As a result, Bin Laden and his cronies escaped to Pakistan where they live in relative harmony today, the rare drone attack notwithstanding.

The biggest mistake we made was not using the full power of the U.S. military to destroy Al Qaeda in the beginning. Had we done so, we could have brought our troops home in victory, having punished those who attacked us on September 11th.

Instead, we began to fight a guerrilla war in a country that was only slightly above the stone age. The average Afghan was tribal and really only cared about those in his family or village. He was incapable of understanding the lofty ideals of Jeffersonian democracy. As in wars past, our presence in Afghanistan became the issue. Remembering foreign invaders over thousands of years, many Afghans classified us with the colonial powers of the past.

Because the Afghan war quickly became a politicians' war (as in Vietnam, as in Iraq), American troops are dying in valleys that have never been cleared since the beginning of the war. The Afghan president criticizes our motives and our nation, even as he and his drug-dealing relatives shove greenbacks into their pockets. New guerrillas are created every day in the bee's nest of Pakistan, and no war can ever be won as long as the enemy has a safe haven to train, resupply, and recruit.

Our troops have performed in a heroic manner in every way. As in Iraq and Vietnam, they have made friends, shown the people the best that America has to offer, and they have killed, wounded, or imprisoned thousands of bad guys. But, in the end, America cannot be involved in nation building in a place like Afghanistan. When we leave, it will be the strong who will survive. That may very well mean the Taliban, their buddies in Al Qaeda, the drug lords, or a combination of all of them. The culture of corruption is part of the Afghan way of life. Only the Afghans themselves can ever change that.

Afghanistan is another of America's "half wars". We may prosecute such wars with good intentions, but when we have no endgame, we are stepping into one of those infamous quagmires. We cannot "impose" democracy on people who don't really understand what it is. And we certainly can't fight a war without a clear definition of victory.

We went to Afghanistan to get Al Qaeda, but we let ourselves get sucked into the vortex of a guerrilla war where the definition of victory is lost in the fog and mist of those mountain valleys.

Now all we can do is maintain the status quo until Obama's withdrawal date, and the Taliban and Al Qaeda will wait patiently for us to leave. After all, they've been doing this type of thing for thousands of years.

About the time I arrived in Vietnam, America had begun withdrawing under President Nixon's "Vietnamization" plan. As we conducted our patrols in the jungle, we wondered who would be the last soldier to die in Vietnam.

The troops in Afghanistan are probably asking themselves the same thing.

Charles M. Grist

www.MyLastWar.com 

British Medic Among Those Awarded Medals For Heroism in Afghanistan

L/Cpl Kylie Watson

The article below describes the heroism of Lance Corporal Kylie Watson and Royal Marine Mark Jackson, both of whom were awarded medals for heroism in Afghanistan. I was honored to serve with soldiers from the United Kingdom during my tour in Iraq in 2004. They are an extraordinary group of warriors.

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Courageous Army medic awarded Military Cross

By Brian Brady, Whitehall Editor
Sunday, 27 March 2011

An Army medic who put herself in "mortal danger" to treat a wounded Afghan soldier under heavy Taliban fire has been awarded the Military Cross, Britain's third-highest medal for gallantry.

Lance Corporal Kylie Watson, who gave the casualty medical care in exposed open ground for 20 minutes before getting him to a helicopter, is one of more than 130 servicemen and women commended for bravery in the latest military honours list.

The medic, who also made a 100-yard dash through enemy fire to help another Afghan soldier, was praised for her "immense courage [and] willingness to put her own life at risk".

L/Cpl Watson, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, stemmed the soldier's bleeding despite being hampered by other Afghan troops, and got the injured man to a helicopter landing site 200 yards away.

The incidents were a vivid illustration of the pressures faced by medical personnel on the front line of the battle against the Taliban. Nine months ago, L/Cpl Watson herself gave a graphic account of the casualties she had to deal with, in an interview with The Independent.

"The first time a bullet went through the side of this guy's face and exited on the other side," she said, during Operation Black Prince, which targeted insurgents in Helmand province. "He suffered some injuries to his jaw but nothing more serious. A little later a guy who was standing on a sangar [watchtower] got shot in the arm."

L/Cpl Watson's MC was awarded for her actions during the same tour, when she risked her life under enemy fire to help the Afghan soldiers. In the second rescue, she delivered life-saving first aid to a soldier who had been shot twice in the pelvis.

Her citation said: "Watson's immense courage, willingness to put her own life at risk and absolute bravery saved the life of one warrior and acted as an inspiration to her platoon and their Afghan National Army partners."

Other servicemen honoured include Royal Marine Mark Jackson, awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross after picking up and throwing back an enemy grenade before lying on a comrade to shield him from the blast.

Marine Jackson was on look-out duty at a remote patrol base in Helmand province on 24 August last year when he heard a metallic thud and saw a cylindrical object rolling towards the feet of a fellow sentry.

Immediately realising it was a home-made hand grenade, he grabbed it and threw it back – at the same time leaping on his comrade to protect him.

His medal citation said: "Improvised grenades such as these are notoriously volatile and this one could have detonated at any moment. Jackson was well aware of the risk, his only thought was for the life of his comrade who, had he hesitated for one moment, would have been killed."

The awards were announced as the Ministry of Defence (MoD) revealed British troops working with Afghan police had chased insurgent fighters out of an area of Helmand and destroying a huge cache of their weapons. The MoD said Popalzai Kalay had been cleared by soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 5th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland, together with Afghan police. The aim was to pre-empt an anticipated spring offensive by insurgent fighters in the area.

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We are indeed fortunate to have allies like those in the United Kingdom.

Charles M. Grist
http://www.mylastwar.com/

Afghanistan: A Tragic Past, A Violent Present, And A Hazy Future

The global intelligence experts at Stratfor have produced an excellent essay on the past, present, and likely future of Afghanistan. If you want to understand that troubled nation, read this:

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Militancy and the U.S. Drawdown in Afghanistan

September 2, 2010
By Scott Stewart

The drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq has served to shift attention toward Afghanistan, where the United States has been increasing its troop strength in hopes of forming conditions conducive to a political settlement. This is similar to the way it used the 2007 surge in Iraq to help reach a negotiated settlement with the Sunni insurgents that eventually set the stage for withdrawal there. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, the Taliban at this point do not feel the pressure required for them to capitulate or negotiate and therefore continue to follow their strategy of surviving and waiting for the coalition forces to depart so that they can again make a move to assume control over Afghanistan.

Indeed, with the United States having set a deadline of July 2011 to begin the drawdown of combat forces in Afghanistan — and with many of its NATO allies withdrawing sooner — the Taliban can sense that the end is near. As they wait expectantly for the departure of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from Afghanistan, a look at the history of militancy in Afghanistan provides a bit of a preview of what could follow the U.S. withdrawal.

A Tradition of Militancy

First, it is very important to understand that militant activity in Afghanistan is nothing new. It has existed there for centuries, driven by a number of factors. One of the primary factors is the country’s geography. Because of its rugged and remote terrain, it is very difficult for a foreign power (or even an indigenous government in Kabul) to enforce its writ on many parts of the country. A second, closely related factor is culture. Many of the tribes in Afghanistan have traditionally been warrior societies that live in the mountains, disconnected from Kabul because of geography, and tend to exercise autonomous rule that breeds independence and suspicion of the central government. A third factor is ethnicity. There is no real Afghan national identity. Rather, the country is a patchwork of Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara and other ethnicities that tend also to be segregated by geography. Finally, there is religion. While Afghanistan is a predominantly Muslim country, there is a significant Shiite minority as well as a large Sufi presence in the country. The hardcore Deobandi Taliban are not very tolerant of the Shia or Sufis, and they can also be harsh toward more moderate Sunnis who do things such as send their daughters to school, trim their beards, listen to music and watch movies.

Any of these forces on its own would pose challenges to peace, stability and centralized governance, but together they pose a daunting problem and result in near-constant strife in Afghanistan.

Because of this environment, it is quite easy for outside forces to stir up militancy in Afghanistan. One tried-and-true method is to play to the independent spirit of the Afghans and encourage them to rise up against the foreign powers that have attempted to control the country. We saw this executed to perfection in the 1800s during the Great Game between the British and the Russians for control of Afghanistan. This tool was also used after the 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and it has been used again in recent years following the 2001 U.S. invasion of the country. The Taliban are clearly being used by competing outside powers against the United States (more on this later).

But driving out an invading power is not the only thing that will lead to militancy and violence in Afghanistan. The ethnic, cultural and religious differences mentioned above and even things like grazing or water rights and tribal blood feuds can also lead to violence. Moreover, these factors can (and have been) used by outside powers to either disrupt the peace in Afghanistan or exert control over the country via a proxy (such as Pakistan’s use of the Taliban movement). Militant activity in Afghanistan is, therefore, not just the result of an outside invasion. Rather, it has been a near constant throughout the history of the region, and it will likely continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

Foreign Influence

When we consider the history of outside manipulation in Afghanistan, it becomes clear that such manipulation has long been an important factor in the country and will continue to be so after the United States and the rest of the ISAF withdraw. There are a number of countries that have an interest in Afghanistan and that will seek to exert some control over what the post-invasion country looks like.

The United States does not want the country to revert to being a refuge for al Qaeda and other transnational jihadist groups. At the end of the day, this is the real U.S. national interest in Afghanistan. It is not counterinsurgency or building democracy or anything else.

Russia does not want the Taliban to return to power. The Russians view the Taliban as a disease that can infect and erode their sphere of influence in countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and then move on to pose a threat to Russian control in the predominately Muslim regions of the Caucasus. This is why the Russians were so active in supporting the Northern Alliance against the Taliban regime. There are reports, though, that the Russians have been aiding the Taliban in an effort to keep the United States tied down in Afghanistan, since as long as the United States is distracted there it has less latitude to counter Russian activity elsewhere.

On the other side of that equation, Pakistan helped foster the creation of the Pashtun Taliban organization and then used the organization as a tool to exert its influence in Afghanistan. Facing enemies on its borders with India and Iran, Pakistan must control Afghanistan in order to have strategic depth and ensure that it will not be forced to defend itself along its northwest as well. While the emergence of the Pakistani Taliban and the threat it poses to Pakistan will alter Islamabad’s strategy somewhat — and Pakistan has indeed been recalculating its use of militant proxies — Pakistan will try hard to ensure that the regime in Kabul is pro-Pakistani.

This is exactly why India wants to play a big part in Afghanistan — to deny Pakistan that strategic depth. In the past, India worked with Russia and Iran to support the Northern Alliance and keep the Taliban from total domination of the country. Indications are that the Indians are teaming up with the Russians and Iranians once again.

Iran also has an interest in the future of Afghanistan and has worked to cultivate certain factions of the Taliban by providing them with shelter, weapons and training. The Iranians also have been strongly opposed to the Taliban and have supported anti-Taliban militants, particularly those from the Shiite Hazara people. When the Taliban captured Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998, they killed 11 Iranian diplomats and journalists. Iran does not want the Taliban to become too powerful, but it will use them as a tool to hurt the United States. Iran will also attempt to install a pro-Iranian government in Kabul or, at the very least, try to thwart efforts by the Pakistanis and Americans to exert control over the country.

A History of Death and Violence

It may seem counterintuitive, but following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the casualties from militancy in the country declined considerably. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies Armed Conflict Database, the fatalities due to armed conflict in Afghanistan fell from an estimated 10,000 a year prior to the invasion to 4,000 in 2002 and 1,000 by 2004. Even as the Taliban began to regroup in 2005 and the number of fatalities began to move upward, by 2009 (the last year for which the institute offers data) the total was only 7,140, still well-under the pre-invasion death tolls (though admittedly far greater than at the ebb of the insurgency in 2004).

Still, even with death tolls rising, the U.S. invasion has not produced anywhere near the estimated 1 million deaths that resulted during the Soviet occupation. The Soviets and their Afghan allies were not concerned about conducting a hearts-and-minds campaign. Indeed, their efforts were more akin to a scorched-earth strategy complete with attacks directed against the population. This strategy also resulted in millions of refugees fleeing Afghanistan for Pakistan and Iran and badly disrupted the tribal structure in much of Afghanistan. This massive disruption of the societal structure helped lead to a state of widespread anarchy that later led many Afghans to see the Taliban as saviors.

Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the communist government in Kabul was able to survive for three more years, backed heavily with Soviet arms, but these years were again marked by heavy casualties. When the communist government fell in 1992, the warlords who had opposed the government attempted to form a power-sharing agreement to govern Afghanistan, but all the factions could not reach a consensus and another civil war broke out, this time among the various anti-communist Afghan warlords vying for control of the country. During this period, Kabul was repeatedly shelled and the bloodshed continued. Neither the Soviet departure nor the fall of the communist regime ended the carnage.

With the rise of the Taliban, the violence began to diminish in many parts of the country, though the fighting remained fierce and tens of thousands of people were killed as the Taliban tried to exert control over the country. The Taliban were still engaged in a protracted and bloody civil war against the Northern Alliance when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001. During the initial invasion, very few U.S. troops were actually on the ground. The United States used the Northern Alliance as the main ground-force element, along with U.S. air power and special operations forces, and was able to remove the Taliban from power in short order. It is important to remember that the Taliban was never really defeated on the battlefield. Once they realized that they were no match for U.S. air power in a conventional war, they declined battle and faded away to launch their insurgency.

Today, the forces collectively referred to as the Taliban in Afghanistan are not all part of one hierarchical organization under the leadership of Mullah Mohammad Omar. Although Mullah Omar is the dominant force and is without peer among Afghan insurgent leaders, there are a number of local and regional militant commanders who are fighting against the U.S. occupation beside the Taliban and who have post-U.S. occupation interests that diverge from those of the Taliban. Such groups are opportunists rather than hardcore Taliban and they might fight against Mullah Omar’s Taliban if he and his militants come to power in Kabul, especially if an outside power manipulates, funds and arms them — and outside powers will certainly be seeking to do so. The United States has tried to peel away the more independent factions from the wider Taliban “movement” but has had little success, mainly because the faction leaders see that the United States is going to disengage and that the Taliban will be a force to be reckoned with in the aftermath.

Once U.S. and ISAF forces withdraw from Afghanistan, then, it is quite likely that Afghanistan will again fall into a period of civil war, as the Taliban attempt to defeat the Karzai government, as the United States tries to support it and as other outside powers such as Pakistan, Russia and Iran try to gain influence through their proxies in the country.

The only thing that can really prevent this civil war from occurring is a total defeat of the Taliban and other militants in the country or some sort of political settlement. With the sheer size of the Taliban and its many factions, and the fact that many factions are receiving shelter and support from patrons in Pakistan and Iran, it is simply not possible for the U.S. military to completely destroy them before the Americans begin to withdraw next summer. This will result in a tremendous amount of pressure on the Americans to find a political solution to the problem. At this time, the Taliban simply don’t feel pressured to come to the negotiating table — especially with the U.S. drawdown in sight.

And even if a political settlement is somehow reached, not everyone will be pleased with it. Certainly, the outside manipulation in Afghanistan will continue, as will the fighting, as it has for centuries.

Militancy and the U.S. Drawdown in Afghanistan is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

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With Obama's announced drawdown of troops to begin in July, 2011, we are only fighting a holding action. This means that "victory" (in the true sense of the word) is unlikely in such a short time frame.

The enemy knows this, and they will simply  wait us out.

Charles M. Grist
http://www.mylastwar.com/

Big Problems in Afghanistan

"Send us to war to win, or don't send us at all."
From the book "My Last War: A Vietnam Veteran's Tour in Iraq" by Charles M. Grist

I once read an assessment of the French campaign in Indochina, a hard-fought effort that ended with their defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 by the Viet Minh, the forerunners of the Viet Cong.

This assessment said that the French ultimately lost because they could not control the countryside. Because they limited their primary efforts to defending the cities and towns, the Viet Minh overran the small hamlets and villages, terrorizing and murdering anyone who opposed them.

The American stategy in Vietnam was to take the fight to the guerrillas, not limiting the war to the defense of the major cities, but using our airmobile capabilities to keep the enemy on the run. Our civil affairs soldiers worked hard to win "the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people.

Of course, the political will of America was defeated by the willingness of the communists to simply outlast us. We were not defeated militarily in Vietnam; we were defeated politically. The peace talks that extracted us from Vietnam let the enemy wait until we were gone. Then the communists achieved their final victory.

Now it appears that the Obama administration's strategy may very well mimick the French. By giving up on the countryside and defending only the cities, the Taliban will have a free rein, and they will use this to cement their power among the people.

Furthermore, by telling the Taliban that we will begin withdrawing our forces from Afghanistan in 2011, we have given them a timetable. All they have to do is wait for us to leave. Then, like the Vietnamese communists, these Islamic fundamentalist fanatics will do what they want.

Once again, America is involved in a "half-war" in Afghanistan. If the war cannot be won, or if we are unwilling to do what must be done to win it, then we must pull our troops out now.

I was in Vietnam after the withdrawal had begun. As we endured our hazardous infantry missions in the jungle, we would joke that we didn't want to be the last G.I. to die in Vietnam.

I wonder if some of our troops in Afghanistan are now asking themselves the same question.

The following article and video are from Military.com and the Associated Press:

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Video Shows Taliban Swarm Former US Base
April 20, 2010
Associated Press

KABUL -- Taliban fighters swarmed over a mountaintop base abandoned last week by the U.S. military following some of the toughest fighting of the Afghan war, according to footage on a major satellite television station.

The video aired Monday by Al-Jazeera television is a morale booster for Taliban fighters, though the U.S. insists the decision to withdraw from the base in the Korengal Valley was sound and the area has no strategic value.

The footage showed armed men walking through the former U.S. base, which was strewn with litter and empty bottles, and sitting atop sandbagged gun positions overlooking the steep hillsides and craggy landscape. Fighters said they recovered fuel and ammunition. But a U.S. spokesman said ammunition had been evacuated and the fuel handed over to local residents.


"We don't want Americans, we don't want Germans or any other foreigner. We don't want foreigners, we want peace. We want Taliban and Islam -- we don't want anything else," one local resident said on the tape.

Another man identified by Al-Jazeera as a local Taliban commander said the militants intended to use the base for attacks on U.S. forces.

Maj. T.G. Taylor, a spokesman for U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, said the Americans destroyed major firing positions and observation posts before they left, and if militants tried to use the base "we have two companies that can do an air assault there anytime we want."

The pullout last week of the remaining 120 U.S. Soldiers from the Korengal was part of a strategy announced last year by the top U.S. and NATO commander, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to abandon small, difficult-to-defend bases in remote, sparsely populated areas and concentrate forces around major population centers.

Many of those outposts were established years ago to monitor Taliban and al-Qaida infiltration from Pakistan but proved difficult to resupply and defend.

Last October, about 300 insurgents nearly overran a U.S. outpost in Kamdesh located north of the Korengal Valley, killing eight Americans and three Afghan soldiers. It was the bloodiest battle for U.S. forces since an attack on another remote outpost in July 2008, when nine Americans died.

"When we repositioned our forces we knew that there was a real possibility of insurgent forces going into there, but we still believe that decision was the correct one based on the resources that we have available and the objectives that we want to achieve," said a U.S. spokesman, Col. Wayne Shanks.

The withdrawal from Korengal, which U.S. troops dubbed the "Valley of Death," marked the end of near-daily battles with insurgents in the 6-mile (10-kilometer) valley in Kunar province. More than 40 U.S. troops were killed there over the last five years.

They included three Navy SEALS who died in a 2005 ambush. Insurgents also shot down a helicopter carrying Special Forces sent to rescue the SEALS, killing another 16 Americans.

Also Monday, an American Soldier was killed and several wounded in an explosion at an Afghan National Army facility just outside the capital, Kabul, Shanks said. The blast originally was reported to have killed an Afghan soldier.

Afghanistan's intelligence service also announced the arrest of nine members of a militant cell and seized nearly a quarter-ton of explosives, foiling a plot to stage suicide bombings and other attacks in Kabul.

The cell could have been linked to five would-be suicide bombers arrested April 8 at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kabul. Officials said at the time the five were planning to hide out with a support network in the capital before launching attacks.

Intelligence service spokesman Saeed Ansari said four of the suspects were arrested Monday while traveling in a vehicle in the city's eastern district, while five others were picked up at an Islamic school in Kabul.

He said security forces also confiscated six rifles, two machine guns, two rocket-propelled grenades, 440 pounds (200 kilograms) of explosives, six suicide bomb vests and a vehicle. The dates of the arrests were not disclosed.

The suspects, one of whom was a Pakistani citizen, ranged in age from 16 to 55 and had been given specific responsibilities within the group such as arranging accommodation or transporting arms, Ansari said. Three of the group were identified as would-be suicide bombers, although Ansari said the cell possessed enough explosives and vests to equip up to six suicide attackers.

He said the group was acting under orders from a Pakistan-based Taliban faction, which rented a house in eastern Kabul, shipped weapons across the border, and provided funds for the purchase of a vehicle to be used in suicide attacks.

The last major attack within Kabul took place Feb. 26 when suicide bombers struck two small hotels in the center of the city, killing at least 16 people, including six Indians. Afghan authorities blamed the attack on Lashkar-e-Taiba, the same Pakistan-based Islamist militia that India blames for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks that killed 166 people.

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As we old Florida boys like to say, it's time to either "fish or cut bait". As a retired solder, I say do what has to be done to win (including cleaning out the Al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan), or get out altogether. If you can't control the countryside, then the war cannot be won.

I have heard stories of troops in Afghanistan with insufficient water, ammunition, supplies, artillery, mortar, or air support. For the courageous American warriors who are giving 150% to complete this treacherous mission, such poor support is intolerable. I remember being told to "conserve ammunition" in Vietnam, a comment that reflected the inadequate support that we were receiving as our troops were being withdrawn.

After all, the original mission in Afghanistan was to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and those who planned, organized and executed 9/11.

The mission was not to bring the Afghans from the stone age to the modern era with only a handful of troops.

Charles M. Grist
www.MyLastWar.com

Marines Taking the Fight to the Taliban

The Marines continue to do a magnificent job in the war in Afghanistan. The following article from Military.com and the Associated Press tells the story of a difficult mission:

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Marines Dropped Behind Taliban Lines
February 19, 2010
Associated Press

MARJAH, Afghanistan --- Elite Marine recon teams were dropped behind Taliban lines by helicopter Friday as the U.S.-led force stepped up operations to break resistance in the besieged insurgent stronghold of Marjah.

About two dozen Marines were inserted before dawn into an area where skilled Taliban marksmen are known to operate, an officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

Other squads of Marines and Afghan forces began marching south in a bid to link up with Marine outposts there, meticulously searching compounds on the way. The 7-day-old Marjah offensive is the biggest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and a test of President Obama's strategy for reversing the rise of the Taliban while protecting civilians.

Several residents interviewed said some Taliban fighters in the area were non-Afghan.

"Some of them are from here. Some are from Pakistan. Some are from other countries, but they don't let us come close to them so I don't know where they are from," said poppy farmer Mohammad Jan, 35, a father of four.

A NATO statement said troops are still meeting "some resistance" by insurgents who engage them in firefights, but homemade bombs remain the key threat to allied and Afghan forces.

Six coalition troops were killed Thursday, NATO said, making it the deadliest day since the offensive began. The death toll so far is 11 NATO troops and one Afghan soldier. Britain's Defense Ministry said two British soldiers were among those killed Thursday.

No precise figures on Taliban deaths have been released, but senior Marine officers say intelligence reports suggest more than 120 have died. The officers spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

U.S. and Afghan troops encountered skilled sharpshooters and better-fortified Taliban positions Thursday, indicating that insurgent resistance in their logistics and opium-smuggling center was far from crushed.

A Marine general said Thursday that U.S. and Afghan allied forces control the main roads and markets in town, but fighting has raged elsewhere in the southern farming town. A British general said he expected it would take another month to secure area.

Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of U.S. Marines in Marjah, told The Associated Press that allied forces have taken control of the main roads, bridges and government centers in the town of 80,000 people about 360 miles (610 kilometers) southwest of Kabul.

"I'd say we control the spine" of the town, Nicholson said as he inspected the Marines' front line in the north of the dusty, mud-brick town. "We're where we want to be."

Throughout Thursday, U.S. Marines pummeled insurgents with mortars, sniper fire and missiles as gunbattles intensified. Taliban fighters fired back with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles, some of the fire far more accurate than Marines have faced in other Afghan battles.

The increasingly accurate sniper fire --- and strong intelligence on possible suicide bomb threats --- indicated that insurgents from outside Marjah are still operating within the town, Nicholson said.

Under NATO's "clear, hold, build" strategy, the allies plan to secure the area and then rush in a civilian Afghan administration, restore public services and pour in aid to try to win the loyalty of the population in preventing the Taliban from returning.

But stubborn Taliban resistance, coupled with restrictive rules on allies' use of heavy weaponry when civilians may be at risk, have slowed the advance through the town.

British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, NATO commander in southern Afghanistan, told reporters in Washington via a video hookup that he expects it could take another 30 days to secure Marjah.

NATO has given no figures on civilian deaths since a count of 15 earlier in the offensive. Afghan rights groups have reported 19 dead. Since those figures were given, much of the fighting has shifted away from the heavily built-up area where most civilians live.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly criticized the use of airstrikes and other long-range weaponry because of the risk to civilians. Twelve of the 15 deaths reported by NATO happened when two rockets hit a home on Sunday.

Also Thursday, a NATO airstrike in northern Afghanistan missed a group of insurgents and killed seven Afghan policemen, the Interior Ministry said. A NATO statement acknowledged the report and said it and the ministry were investigating.

In eastern Afghanistan, eight Afghan policemen defected to the Taliban, according to Mirza Khan, the deputy provincial police chief.

The policemen abandoned their posts in central Wardak province's Chak district and joined the militants there, he said. One of them had previous ties to the Taliban, he said, but would not elaborate.

"These policemen came on their own and told us they want to join with the Taliban. Now they are with us," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Muhajid said.

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My brother-in-law, Ron Spitzer, is a Marine who served during the Vietnam era. He has always exemplified a Marine to me. I know the success of the young Marines of today makes him proud, as it does all of us.

Charles M. Grist
www.MyLastWar.com

Victory: The Conquest of the Enemy - or His Unconditional Surrender

Try to picture this scenario.

You stand still while I draw a circle on the ground around you. Now, here are the rules for this game.

If I want to hit you, I can throw rocks at you from outside the circle, or I can step inside the circle, punch you in the mouth, and then jump outside the circle. You, unfortunately, can only hit me back when I am inside the circle, not when I am in my “safe haven” outside the circle. You can throw a few rocks at me when I’m outside the circle, but all I have to do is to move or hide to avoid getting hit.

This, my friends, is Afghanistan. We are in the circle. The insurgents can enter the country to attack us, and then run to safety into Pakistan (or Iran). We can fly some drones over them and fire a few missiles, but all they need to do to survive is stay out of sight. We have all the rules; the bad guys have none.

This was also Vietnam. While our soldiers were “imprisoned” within the borders of South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese moved at will through neighboring Laos and Cambodia. They had their “safe havens” where they trained, resupplied, and “relaxed”. No fear of being attacked by us – except in 1970 when we briefly kicked their rear ends in Cambodia before politics forced us to return to the "walls" of South Vietnam.

In fact, we waged a bloody war against North Vietnam – inside South Vietnam, but we never mounted a land invasion of the north. We bombed their bridges, factories, and military facilities, but they simply rebuilt them. We waged a long, “half war” in Vietnam; we are at risk of waging another such war in Afghanistan.

When the Al Qaeda animals attacked us, we went after them. President Bush said you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. There shouldn’t have been one square inch of ground on the face of the earth where these bastards could hide from us. Yet we drove them into Pakistan, thus creating a brand new safe haven to use as a base for creating new terrorists.

Now we are withdrawing from the Afghan countryside, moving our troops back to protect the population centers because we don’t have enough soldiers to secure the entire country. If we will simply look back in history at the French colonial experience in Indochina (Vietnam), we will see that France chose to primarily secure the cities and population centers. That strategy allowed the Viet Minh (the forerunners of the Viet Cong) to infest the countryside at will.

The Viet Minh, as you may know, dealt the French a devastating defeat at Dien Bien Phu and drove them out of Indochina with their tails between their legs.

If we have any chance to succeed in Afghanistan, it will require that we listen to our military commanders. We must give them the resources they need to protect both the cities and the countryside. We must also convince Pakistan that they must save their own country from the Islamic fundamentalist plague. The best way to do that is to join forces with us in a massive ground offensive in the tribal areas. Once we wipe out the terrorists and their bases, we will leave, and Pakistan can establish law and order in these mountain strongholds.

There is only one way to fight the war in Afghanistan. We must fight it to win. Victory, by surrender or by conquest, is the only way to defeat any enemy…

Charles M. Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com
Also check out:
www.MyLastWar.com - The website for the book about the C.O.B.R.A. Team
www.TheCobraTeam.com - My Team's website.

Taliban Moves Closer to Pakistan's Nukes

Other than the ominous march of Iran toward nuclear weapons, the next greatest fear is that the Taliban - who were run out of Afghanistan in 2003 by the United States - will someday get hold of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Sadly, the Pakistani leadership still believes their greatest threat is India, when the disease within their borders is the bigger danger.

Here is a good article from David Ignatius:

* * * *

Moment of Truth in Pakistan

By David Ignatius
Sunday, May 3, 2009

President Obama convened a crisis meeting at the White House last Monday to hear a report from Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had just returned from Pakistan. Mullen described the worrying situation there, with Taliban insurgents moving closer to the capital, Islamabad.

"It had gotten significantly worse than I expected as the Swat deal unraveled," Mullen explained in an interview. He was referring to a truce brokered in February in the Swat Valley, about 100 miles north of Islamabad. The Pakistani military had expected that the cease-fire would subdue Taliban fighters in Swat. Instead, the Muslim militants surged south into the district of Buner, on the doorstep of the capital.

Listening to Mullen's report at the White House were two senior officials -- Defense Secretary Bob Gates and special envoy Richard Holbrooke -- who were serving in government back in 1979, when a Muslim insurgency toppled the Iranian government, with harmful consequences that persist to this day. The two policy veterans "made the argument that it's worth studying the Iran model," recalls a senior official who took part in the White House meeting.

This was Pakistan week for the administration's foreign policy team, behind the self-congratulatory hubbub over the first 100 days. At a news conference Wednesday, Obama said that he was "gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan." He said his biggest worry was that "the civilian government there right now is very fragile."

The challenge in Pakistan is eerily similar to what the Carter administration faced with Iran: how to encourage the military to take decisive action against a Muslim insurgency without destroying the country's nascent democracy.

And there's a deeper psychological factor, too: how to exercise U.S. power effectively without triggering a backlash from a proud and prickly Muslim population that is scarred by what it sees as a history of American meddling.

"My experience is that knocking them [the Pakistani government and military] hard isn't going to work," said Mullen. "The harder we push, the further away they get." For the crackdown on the Taliban to be successful, he said, "it has to be their will, not ours."

What encourages U.S. officials is that recent events have been a wake-up call for a Pakistani elite in denial about the Taliban threat. One top civilian official said that he was less worried now than three weeks ago, because the military and civilian leaders in Islamabad have realized the danger they face. The Pakistani military has begun an effort to push back the Taliban, with mixed results. The Taliban responded fiercely to an assault Tuesday in Buner and seized three police stations, kidnapping dozens of police and paramilitary troops.

"My biggest concern is whether [the Pakistani government] will sustain it," Mullen said. He has told his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, that "we are prepared to assist whenever they want." During his recent visit, Mullen toured two Pakistani counterinsurgency training camps and came away impressed.

Mullen said that he hopes the Pakistanis will adopt a classic three-part counterinsurgency strategy -- clearing areas of Taliban control, holding those areas with enough troops so that the local population feels secure and then building through economic development, with U.S. help.

Politically, the United States is looking increasingly to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whose Muslim League dominates the crucial Punjab region. Officials note that 60 percent of the Pakistani population lives in Punjab and that Sharif's popularity rating there is over 80 percent.

President Asif Ali Zardari is far weaker, politically, and that worries the administration. He'll visit Washington this week to discuss the crisis with Obama.

U.S. officials are exploring ways to reduce the political strain on Zardari caused by U.S. drone attacks on al-Qaeda sanctuaries in the tribal areas. Pakistanis protest these attacks as violations of sovereignty, even though they had been blessed in secret by Zardari's government. This tension could be eased by some public formula for dual control. Explains a senior Obama administration official: "We're looking at how we might find some common way ahead where utilization of the asset could benefit the Pakistanis."

The growing crisis mentality in Washington poses its own threat to a sound Pakistan policy. It could produce red-hot American rhetoric and a corresponding U.S. impatience -- and that, in turn, would only make the Pakistanis more uneasy. Success depends on Islamabad's recognition that it's their problem and that they must act decisively.

The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address is davidignatius@washpost.com.

* * * *

As all these fundamentalist Muslims inch their way toward nuclear weapons, the world gets a little scarier every day.

Charles M. Grist
www.TheCobraTeam.com
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

Democrats Scrap “War on Terror”; The Taliban Threatens Washington Anyway

Okay, the new administration is a more “touchy-feely” kind of group. They don’t like the term “War on Terror” because they don’t want to offend Muslims. Well, gee, the good Muslims are supposed to be against terrorism anyway, so who are we afraid of offending?

This article from Military.com and the Associated Press talks about the latest threat from the leader of the Taliban. This character says his loony group is going to attack Washington, D.C.:

* * * *

Pakistani Taliban Threatens Washington

March 31, 2009
Associated Press

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - The commander of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility Tuesday for a deadly assault on a Pakistani police academy and said the group was planning a terrorist attack on the U.S. capital.

Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head from the U.S., said Monday's attack outside the eastern city of Lahore was in retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border.

"Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone. He provided no details.

Mehsud and other Pakistani Taliban militants are believed to be based in the country's lawless areas near the border with Afghanistan, where they have stepped up their attacks throughout Pakistan.

The Taliban leader also claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed four soldiers Monday in Bannu district and a suicide attack targeting a police station in Islamabad last week that killed one officer.

Such attacks pose a major test for the weak, year-old civilian administration of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that has been gripped with political turmoil in recent weeks.

The gunmen who attacked the police academy in Lahore on Monday killed seven police and two civilians, holding security forces at bay for about eight hours before being overpowered by Pakistani commandos. Some of the attackers wore police uniforms, and they took hostages and tossed grenades during the assault.

Earlier Tuesday, a spokesman from a little-known militant group linked to the Pakistani Taliban also claimed credit for the attack and a similar ambush-style attack against the Sri Lankan cricket team earlier this month in Lahore. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the two claims.

Omar Farooq, who said he is the spokesman for Fedayeen al-Islam, said the group would carry out more attacks unless Pakistani troops withdraw from tribal areas near the Afghan border and the U.S. stops its drone strikes. The group previously said it was behind the deadly September bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad that killed 54 people.

Mehsud declined to comment on Fedayeen al-Islam's claim that it carried out the attack or to say whether the group is linked to his own.

"At this time, I will not give any detail," Mehsud said.

The Pakistani Taliban leader also said he was not deterred by the U.S. bounty on his head.

"I wish to die and embrace martyrdom," he said.

The Pakistani Taliban has links with al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban militants who have launched attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan from a base in the border region between the two countries.

Pakistan faces tremendous U.S. pressure to eradicate militants from its soil and has launched several military operations in the Afghan border region.

The U.S. has stepped up drone attacks against militants in the area, causing tension with Pakistani officials who protest they are a violation of the country's sovereignty and kill innocent civilians.

Monday's highly coordinated attack highlighted that militants in the country pose a threat far outside the border region. It prompted Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik, Pakistan's top civilian security official, to say that militant groups were "destabilizing the country."

The gunmen killed six police during the assault, and one died late Monday from his injuries, said Lahore's commissioner, Major Azam Khan. He said Tuesday that the initial investigation revealed that two civilians were also shot and killed, but he did not reveal their identities.

More than 90 officers were wounded in the assault, according to officials.

After gunmen stormed the academy, masses of security forces surrounded the compound, exchanging fire in televised scenes reminiscent of the militant siege in the Indian city of Mumbai in November and the attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team.

Khan said three of the attackers blew themselves up when commandos retook the police academy to avoid arrest. Authorities arrested four others at the scene.

Wasim Ahmad Sial, a senior Lahore police official, said authorities have obtained fingerprints of the attackers who blew themselves up and have determined one of their identities. He did not provide further details.

Punjab police chief, Khawaja Khalid Farooq, told reporters Tuesday that a suspected militant who was captured at the scene of the attack had provided "genuine and actual leads that are beneficial for interrogation."

He said about 50 other people in Lahore were detained overnight for questioning.

* * * *

As far as radical Islam goes, the terror war continues....

Charles M. Grist
www.TheCobraTeam.com
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

America Faces New Challenges in Afghan War

With two members of the C.O.B.R.A. Team on the ground in Afghanistan (Aaron Self – Cobra Two; Chad Higginbotham – Cobra Three), I am keeping close tabs on this important front in the war on terror. In the following Associated Press article, the top commander in Afghanistan says the insurgents have fought us to a stalemate.

This doesn’t mean our soldiers aren't winning the battles; it means we don’t have enough soldiers to seize and hold critical areas. It also means we must deal with the humanitarian issues, increase the pace of the training for the Afghan military and police, and solve the problem of the safe havens in Pakistan.

Yes, it is a messy situation.

* * * *

Afghan War at Stalemate, McKiernan Says

February 19, 2009
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan offered a grim view Wednesday of military efforts in southern Afghanistan, warning that 17,000 new troops will take on emboldened Taliban insurgents who have "stalemated" U.S. and allied forces.

Army Gen. David McKiernan also predicted that the bolstered numbers of U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan - about 55,000 in all - will remain near those levels for up to five years.

Still, McKiernan said, that is only about two-thirds of the number of troops he has requested to secure the war-torn nation.

McKiernan told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that the extra Army and Marine forces will be in place by the summer, primed for counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban but also ready to conduct training with Afghan police forces.

McKiernan said what the surge "allows us to do is change the dynamics of the security situation, predominantly in southern Afghanistan, where we are, at best, stalemated.

"I'm not here to tell you that there's not an increased level of violence, because there is," he said.

The 17,000 additional troops, which President Barack Obama approved Tuesday to begin deploying this spring, will join an estimated 38,000 already in Afghanistan.

Another 10,000 U.S. Soldiers could be headed to Afghanistan in the future as the Obama administration decides how to balance its troop levels with those from other nations and the Afghan army. The White House has said it will not make further decisions about its next moves in Afghanistan until it has completed a strategic review of the war, in tandem with the Afghan government.

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said Wednesday that the foreign ministers of those countries will travel to Washington next week to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other officials as the U.S. formulates a policy review.

Appearing on "The NewsHour" on PBS, Holbrooke was asked how the Obama administration sees victory in Afghanistan. "First of all, the victory, as defined in purely military terms, is not achievable, and I cannot stress that too highly," he said. "What we're looking for is the definition of our vital national security interests."

Holbrooke described his recent trip to the region and the delegations coming to Washington as "a manifestation of a new, intense, engaged diplomacy designed to put Afghanistan and Pakistan into a larger regional context and move forward to engage other countries in the effort to stabilize this incredibly volatile region."

Whatever the outcome of the review, McKiernan said, "we know we need additional means in Afghanistan, whether they are security or governance-related or socioeconomic-related."

The estimated level of 55,000 troops needs "to be sustained for some period of time," he said, adding that could be as long as three to five years.

Some of the 17,000 U.S. troops soon headed overseas will be training Afghanistan police while battling insurgents as the nation's August elections approach. They include an Army combat brigade from Washington state and a Marine expeditionary brigade made up of troops from Camp Lejune in North Carolina and Camp Pendleton in southern California.

McKiernan said they would be sufficient for what he believes needs to be done through summer, when the fighting tends to be heaviest.

With the added ground troops, McKiernan said it's possible the military will scale back airstrikes that have been blamed for civilian casualties and angered the Afghan population.

The Taliban insurgents, some of whom have worked in concert with al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, have increasingly focused on what McKiernan described as small-scale attacks on government targets, police and official convoys. Last week militants launched a bold strike on government buildings in downtown Kabul.

McKiernan said the number of insurgents has not grown, but they are "very resilient" and "they have continuously adapted their tactics."

"We're not going to run out of people that either international forces or Afghan forces have to kill or capture," McKiernan said.

Ultimately, the conflict will be solved not by military force - but through the political will of the Afghan people, the general said.

"The insurgency is not going to win in Afghanistan," McKiernan insisted. "The vast majority of the people that live in Afghanistan reject the Taliban or other militant insurgent groups. They have nothing to offer them. They do not bring any hope for a better future."

Robert H. Scales, a retired Army two-star general who visited southern Afghanistan last October as a military adviser, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that he agrees there is essentially a stalemate in that area, which is a traditional stronghold for the Taliban movement. But he said that does not mean U.S. and allies forces are losing.

"It's reached the point where neither side has gained an advantage," Scales said, adding that he believes the south - particularly in the opium-producing Helmand Province - is the area with the greatest potential for U.S. gains against the Taliban, especially with more U.S. forces due to deploy there.

The rising violence in Afghanistan is conducted by militants who operate out of sanctuaries in Pakistan tribal regions along the border of the two nations. McKiernan called the stability of both countries "a regional challenge" and credited Pakistan with trying harder to secure the border.

"It's not enough; we need to do more," McKiernan said. "But it is a start."

He called it "in our vital national security interest to succeed" in Afghanistan.
"It's a country that is absolutely worth our commitment," McKiernan said. "And it's a region that is absolutely worth the commitment of the international community to ensure that it's stable at the end of this."

* * * *

We extend our support and encouragement to our fellow warriors who are risking everything for America in the cities, villages, hills and mountains of Afghanistan.

Charles M. Grist
www.TheCobraTeam.com
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

Taliban Admits Receiving Supplies From Iran

If anyone has any doubts that we are in a proxy war against Iran (both in Afghanistan and Iraq), then check out this article:

* * * *

London Daily Telegraph
September 15, 2008

Taliban Claim Weapons Supplied By Iran

By Kate Clark, in Kabul

A Taliban commander has credited Iranian-supplied weapons with successful operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The comments by the commander, who would not be named but operates in the south east of the country where there has been a surge in Taliban attacks, were a rare admission of co-operation between elements within the Iranian regime and forces fighting British and American troops in Afghanistan.

"There's a kind of landmine called a Dragon. Iran's sending it," he said. "It's directional and it causes heavy casualties.

"We're ambushing the Americans and planting roadside bombs. We never let them relax."

The commander, a veteran of 30 years who started fighting when the Soviet Union was occupying Afghanistan, said the Dragon had revolutionised the Taliban's ability to target Nato soldiers deployed in his area.

"If you lay an ordinary mine, it will only cause minor damage to Humvees or one of their big tanks. But if you lay a Dragon, it will destroy it completely," he said.

A "Dragon" is the local nickname for a type of weapon known internationally as an Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP) or "shaped charge" and has been used with devastating effect in Iraq by Iranian-backed groups. It is shaped so that all the explosive force is concentrated in one direction - the target - rather than blasting in all directions and weakening its impact.

A former mujahideen fighter who knows the Afghan arms market well and who asked to be known as Shahir said the Dragon mines came directly from Iran.

Iran has denied these allegations, but Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador in Kabul, said the British Army, which is deployed in south-western Afghanistan, had intercepted consignments of weapons which they believe were "donated by a group within the Iranian state".

The only other possible source, the arms expert said, would be Pakistan's Tribal Areas where a relatively sophisticated arms industry has grown up. "Until now," he said, "no-one in the Tribal Areas has been able to copy these mines. Both the metal and the explosives are different, very high quality and very effective, obviously not Chinese or Pakistani."

He said there were two routes for Iranian weaponry getting to the Taliban. "There are people inside the state in Iran who donate weapons. There are also Iranian businessmen who sell them."

Iranian-made weapons, he said, whether smuggled or donated, were the most popular among Taliban fighters and fetch premium prices on the open market. "A Kalashnikov rifle made in Iran costs two to three hundred dollars more than one made anywhere else" he said. "Its beauty lies in the fact that it can also fire grenades, up to 300 meters. This is something new and it's in great demand."

Iran, a theocratic, Shia Muslim state should have little common cause with the Taliban, an extremist Sunni Muslim movement which massacred hundreds of Afghan Shia civilians and killed nine Iranian diplomats when it was in power.

Only the worsening relations between Iran and America might explain the weapons supply.

Sir Sherard said Iran was playing "a very dangerous game".

He added: "I suspect some of their agencies genuinely don't know what others are up to. We've seen a limited supply of weapons by a group within the Iranian state, not necessarily with the knowledge of all other agencies of the Iranian state, sending some very dangerous weapons to the Taliban in the south."

Kate Clark's full report is on BBC2's Newsnight on Monday Sept 15 at 10.30pm, and the BBC World Service on Thursday Sept 18 at 10.10am.

* * * *

The stakes are increasing as Iran continues its aggressive confrontation with the rest of the world via its surrogate terrorist groups.

Can you imagine Ahmadinejad with a nuclear weapon?

Charles M. Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

One Unit’s Last Mission in Afghanistan

The following article from the Wall Street Journal is an excellent “war correspondent’s” story about what it was like to accompany a group of soldiers on their last patrol before returning to the States. (The above photo shows other soldiers in Afghanistan.):

* * * *

Wall Street Journal
July 5, 2008
Pg. 1

The Last Patrol

U.S. Troops in Afghanistan, Set to Leave, Are Called Back For One More Mission. Will Their Luck Run Out?

By Michael M. Phillips

NARAY, Afghanistan -- It's 4 a.m., and a slender crescent moon casts a pale light over Spc. Sean Geer. He has nine bottles of water and 10 loaded rifle magazines strapped to his body armor. He has a bandana tied under his helmet to soak up the sweat. He has removed the pointer and middle fingers from his glove to give him a better feel for the trigger.

"Ready for a fun one?" Spc. Geer radios in hushed tones to a buddy. It's another patrol, and one of the other cavalry scouts jokes that this war feels like a barroom fight where you can't cry uncle.

"Enjoy your cigarettes," says a lieutenant. "Then we'll go."

Sean Geer's war is supposed to be over. But it's going to be a long, hot day.

Few war stories disturb soldiers more than the one about the man who gets hit just before he's due to go home. Not far from here, an Army medic was killed by a hidden bomb days before he was to leave. An officer in Spc. Geer's squadron, 1-91 Cavalry, stepped on a land mine within weeks of the end of his combat tour, shattering his foot.

On Sunday, Spc. Geer and his fellow scouts thought such worries were behind them. They were back in camp cleaning their gear. Sergeants were collecting night-vision goggles, ammunition and the grenade launcher. They were waiting for the helicopter ride that would start them on their journey home.

Then this comes along: The colonel needs someone to do a mission. He hands it to the captain and the captain calls the lieutenant. The lieutenant tells the sergeants and before long, the scouts know their war is on again.

They all know it stinks, but what can they do? What began as an effort to topple the Taliban government has become a drawn-out guerrilla war, and there's always another patrol -- another insurgent to be killed or another heart to be won.

The seven-year conflict has become a growing concern to Pentagon brass, rivaling the war in Iraq. Taliban insurgents have intensified attacks in the east and the south, making June the deadliest month so far for the U.S.-led coalition. The government of Hamid Karzai still struggles to exert its authority, and the lawless tribal areas bordering Pakistan have become a haven for militants. The Pentagon said this week that it is extending the tour by an extra month of 2,200 Marines sent to Afghanistan this spring to bolster coalition forces.

Spc. Geer's new orders come at a moment when he's rethinking the war. Right after he arrived in the country, he thought constantly about being shot. His mother died when he was 10 years old. When the fighting gets crazy, he drops to his knee, drinks some water and asks her to look out for him: "Tell the people who don't know I love them that I do."

At 16 years old, he dropped out of high school in Ventura, Calif., worked in a coffee shop, fixed hot rods and ran with the drug crowd. By 19 he had had enough. He got his diploma and joined the Army. Now 22 and just over a year away from the end of his enlistment, he's planning a career as an entrepreneur. He and another scout are in the middle of starting an online clothing company with T-shirts that reflect their combat experience. One shows the outline of a soldier scaling a mountain in front of a faded American flag.

"There's got to be more out there," Spc. Geer says. "We've got to be able to do more with our lives than fight this war."

When he gets word the platoon has one more patrol, he trusts his buddies to cover his back. First Platoon, Bulldog Troop hasn't lost a man during 14 months in combat, 14 months of humping heavy gear up and down steep mountains, 14 months of firefights with an enemy who's never quite in view.

That evening, First Lt. Henry "Hank" Hughes IV, the platoon leader, briefs the men. The 24-year-old comes from a long military line. One ancestor was a captain in the Philadelphia militia in the Revolutionary War. His great grandfather served in World War I, his grandfather in World War II and his father in Bosnia. His mother was a captain in the signal corps.

The lieutenant studied English and film at Boston University, where he developed a fondness for French films. He used to think of himself as something of a pacifist, but joined the Army knowing full well he'd end up at war. Now he commands 26 men, most of them not much younger than himself. Only one of his scouts has been wounded in action; Spc. Thomas Alford was shot through the jaw and neck. At his insistence, he was back with the platoon three months later.

On a white board, the lieutenant sketches the snaking curves of the Kunar River, which runs close to the Pakistan border, and draws the contours of the ridge that overlooks the village of Nangal, a couple of miles south of the Army base. In June, insurgents left the villagers an anonymous note warning them against educating women. Shortly afterwards, someone set fire to the girls' school there. When the villagers rushed to put it out, they were shot at from the ridges above town.

The Afghan government, wanting to cement its ties in the village, has dispatched the Afghan National Army to drive to Nangal, chat with local elders and hand out pens, paper and other school supplies. Lt. Hughes's platoon is going along to help protect against insurgent attacks; the Americans have heavier weapons and can call in air and artillery support, if needed.

With half of his men, Lt. Hughes will leave at dawn and go on foot to the ridge overlooking the town. The other half, in heavily armed Humvees, will escort the Afghan troops and stay outside the village to maintain security.

After the scouts leave the briefing, Lt. Hughes turns to his platoon sergeant. "Too easy," he says.

"Every plan is easy until the first shot is fired," replies Sgt. First Class Michael Burns, 38, of Fort Wayne, Ind. "Then it all goes to hell."

In Monday's pre-dawn light, Lt. Hughes, Spc. Geer and the other scouts set out past the razor wire. The lieutenant cheerfully greets the Afghan security guards at the front gate, and in a loud, clear voice says the name of a town far down the valley, well beyond Nangal, in case they're working for the other side, too.

The troops walk down the dirt road in a staggered column, leaving enough room between men so a hidden bomb or lucky mortar shot would kill only one of them. They move silently, except for the crunch of boots on rock. They pass a few bearded herders hissing at their goats.

At a quarter to five the scouts turn right up the steep hillside. Generations of farmers have built waist-high stone walls on the slope, turning it into a giant staircase of narrow terraces for planting crops. The men zigzag arduously up the terraces, reaching down to hoist each other up when the walls get higher and the rocks looser.

As they climb, a single gunshot sounds in the distance.

"You hear that?" asks Spc. Justin Jones, 24, of Jasper, Ala. It's his job to call in artillery fire if the scouts get into trouble.

"Yeah -- probably over the ridge," Spc. Geer says. It's impossible to tell where it came from, where it went or if it had anything to do with them. They trudge on.

The men have spent months carrying heavy loads in the high Hindu Kush mountains. But in recent weeks they've spent more time at the main squadron base and have lost some of their edge. As they walk, Lt. Hughes notices a young girl bounding up the terraces with her goats.

"There's the embarrassing part," he says. "An 11-year-old girl is going to pass us."

At 5:30 a.m., the sun emerges over the mountain peaks. Spc. Matthew Short, a 21-year-old from Winter Haven, Fla., reaches the top of the 900-foot ridge. He looks over, expecting to see Nangal below. It isn't there.

"We're on the wrong spur," he yells to the lieutenant.

Hundreds of yards of open ground lie between this ridge and the next. Lt. Hughes leaves half the patrol to provide cover while he, Spc. Geer, Spc. Short and two others press ahead.

Twenty-five minutes later, the men reach the top. The village still isn't in sight. The lieutenant orders the men on the first ridge to join them.

"Whose idea was it to walk anyway?" Lt. Hughes asks Spc. Geer.

"Word on the street is that it was yours, sir," the specialist answers.

Spc. Geer finishes a bottle of water, takes out his knife and slices it up. He has heard around camp that the insurgents are short of canteens and he doesn't want to help them out by leaving plastic bottles around.

Spc. Short and the lieutenant pull out their maps to figure out what has gone wrong. As best they can make out, either the maps are wrong or the satellite coordinates they were given are wrong. In any case, they have no other choice than to keep climbing.

"It never ends," gasps Spc. Short, as he tops the third ridge and sees two more ahead, like pleats in a skirt.

"It's alright," says Spc. Austin Nenneman, a 21-year-old radio operator from Sacramento, Calif. "We're almost out of this place."

A goat trail cuts steeply across the front of the fifth ridge. The lieutenant reaches the top first, and finds a sweeping view of Nangal and, sprouting from the hard, brown soil, wild marijuana. "There's weed all over here," he says when Spc. Short reaches the crest.

"Weed and surfboards?" Spc. Short asks hopefully.

The hilltop is fortified with stone trenches and bunkers, apparently built when Afghan guerillas fought the Soviets decades ago. The lieutenant puts a machine gunner on either end of his position. Riflemen overlook the village, which consists of a dozen of so flat houses.

Sgt. Michael Harrington, 28, from Muskegon, Mich., jokingly asks the lieutenant for permission to fire his grenade launcher. "It's the last mission," he pleads.
"Stop saying it's the last mission," Spc. Geer snaps.

At 7:30 a.m., the soldiers watch the Humvees carrying the other half of the platoon alongside the Kunar River road, spouting plumes of dust. The Afghan soldiers arrive soon after in tan pickup trucks.

Lt. Hughes and his men are watching the ridgelines for attackers when the river valley fills with a deep, thudding boom. Moments later there's a loud whiz from above. The big guns back at the base are firing artillery rounds into the mountains to the north. The shells can travel almost 19 miles, too far for the scouts to hear them crash back to earth.

Spc. Geer takes up a position behind a tumbledown rock wall, looking towards the river. His arms are a canvas of tattoos. His mother's death date is tattooed onto his neck with a winged heart and a cross. "Mom," it says.

Under the left sleeve of his camouflage fatigues, from shoulder to elbow, is a blue Virgin Mary, surrounded by roses and $100 bills. "Forgive me Father, for blood will spill," it says.

Spc. Geer says the tattoo symbolizes his guilt and his aspirations. "I'm sorry for what I've done here, and I'd like to be a business professional once I get out," he says.

After a few hours, the lieutenant receives word that the Afghan soldiers and their Humvee escort have safely returned to base. Just before 11 a.m., the scouts start back down the hill. As he jumps down the dried terraces, Spc. Geer thinks about the price of war; the killing bothers him as much as the dying.

"I wish there were another way to do this, but there's not," he says. "Death is the only language they understand."

The troops head for the road this time, making their way past stone houses and surprised farmers. A one-eyed man with a thick white beard walks by. "Salaam aleikum," Spc. Geer says, the traditional Arabic phrase meaning "'peace be with you." The man smiles and waves.

At noon, after eight hours and 3,000 feet of climbing, the scouts return to base. They drop in the shade, most of them too tired to strip off their sweat-soaked body armor.

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We must never forget that the War on Terror is being fought on multiple fronts throughout the world. Keep our troops in your prayers.

Charles M. Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com

Militant Attacks From Pakistan Must Be Stopped

Afghanistan’s leader has threatened to send soldiers into Pakistan to fight militants. He is only doing what he must to protect his country.

If Pakistan won’t deal with these insurgents, either the Afghans or the Coalition must do so:

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New York Times
June 16, 2008
Pg. 6

Karzai Threatens To Send Soldiers Into Pakistan

By Carlotta Gall

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan threatened on Sunday to send soldiers into Pakistan to fight militant groups operating in the border areas to attack Afghanistan. His comments, made at a news conference in Kabul, Afghanistan, are likely to worsen tensions between the countries, just days after American forces in Afghanistan killed 11 Pakistani soldiers on the border while pursuing militants.

“If these people in Pakistan give themselves the right to come and fight in Afghanistan, as was continuing for the last 30 years, so Afghanistan has the right to cross the border and destroy terrorist nests, spying, extremism and killing, in order to defend itself, its schools, its peoples and its life,” Mr. Karzai said.

“When they cross the territory from Pakistan to come and kill Afghans and kill coalition troops, it exactly gives us the right to go back and do the same,” he said.

Mr. Karzai repeated that he regarded the Pakistani government as a friendly government, but he urged it to join Afghanistan and allied nations to fight those who wanted to destabilize both countries, and to “cut the hand” that is feeding the militants.

The prime minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gilani, said the border was too long to prevent people from crossing, “even if Pakistan puts its entire army along the border.”

“Neither do we interfere in anyone else’s matters, nor will we allow anyone to interfere in our territorial limits and our affairs,” The Associated Press quoted Mr. Gilani as having said.

Mr. Karzai named several militant leaders, including Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani who has sent scores of fighters and suicide bombers to Afghanistan, and Maulana Fazlullah, a firebrand militant leader from the Swat Valley. Both men have recently negotiated peace deals with the Pakistani government, but vowed to continue waging jihad in Afghanistan.

“Baitullah Mehsud should know that we will go after him now and hit him in his house,” Mr. Karzai said.

The president also taunted the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar, calling him a Pakistani, since he has been based in this country since fleeing Afghanistan in 2001.

“And the other fellow, Pakistani Mullah Omar, should know the same,” Mr. Karzai said. “This is a two-way road in this case, and Afghans are good at the two-way-road journey. We will complete the journey and we will get them and we will defeat them. We will avenge all that they have done to Afghanistan for the past so many years.”

“Today’s Afghanistan is not yesterday’s silent Afghanistan,” he warned. “We have a voice, tools and bravery as well.”

Mr. Karzai’s comments came two days after Taliban fighters assaulted the main prison in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, blowing up the mud walls, killing 15 guards and freeing about 1,200 inmates. It is not known if the fighters received assistance from outside Afghanistan.

Mr. Karzai has adopted a tougher stance in recent months toward Pakistan and even toward foreign allies like the United States and Britain, a shift that analysts say is driven by political concerns at home, with presidential elections due next year.

He says Pakistan has been giving sanctuary to militants for several years and his frustration has grown as the threat has grown. He has often accused the premier Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, of training and assisting militant groups, to undermine his government and maintain a friendly proxy force for the day that United States and NATO troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

His relations with the president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, have deteriorated over the years, amid mutual recriminations that the other side was not doing enough to curb terrorism. Mr. Musharraf always denied that the Taliban was operating from Pakistani territory and accused Mr. Karzai of failing to put his own country in order.

Mr. Karzai has welcomed the electoral victories of the secular, democratic parties in Pakistan, since he had longstanding good relations with the late Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan Peoples Party, and in particular with another coalition partner, the Awami National Party.

In a recent interview, Mr. Karzai expressed optimism that relations between the countries would improve under the new government, in particular because of its opposition to militant Islamism.

Yet Afghanistan has watched Pakistan’s peace deals with militant groups with concern and has protested that cross-border infiltration has already increased.

In southern Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai said, British commanders reported that 70 percent of the Taliban fighters killed in recent fighting in the Garmser district were from Pakistan, and 60 percent were Pakistanis.

Mr. Karzai complained that the Pashtuns, the ethnic group that lives on both sides of the border, have been used by the Inter-Services Intelligence and have suffered the most at the hands of the militants. Mr. Karzai is an ethnic Pashtun and spoke out for his fellow tribesmen in Pakistan as well as in his own country.

The militants “have been trained against the Pashtuns of Pakistan and against the people of Afghanistan, and their jobs are to burn Pashtun schools in Pakistan, not to allow their girls to get educated, and kill the Pashtun tribal chiefs,” Mr. Karzai said.

“This is the duty of Afghanistan to rescue the Pashtuns in Pakistan from this cruelty and terror,” he said. “This is the duty of Afghanistan to defend itself and defend their brothers, sisters and sons on the other side.”

Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

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Charles M. Grist
www.AmericanRanger.blogspot.com