US, NATO set to launch massive assault against Taliban-led militants

[yellow people]

Suicide bombers attack NATO base in Afghan east


Suicide bombers attack NATO base in Afghan east

KABUL | Fri Sep 24, 2010 9:01am EDT

KABUL (Reuters) - Several suicide bombers attacked a NATO-run base in southeastern Afghanistan on Friday, NATO and Afghan officials said, with at least two insurgents killed in the latest assault in the volatile Taliban stronghold. A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the attack was launched on a forward operating base (FOB) in Gardez city in Paktia province, not far from Afghanistan's porous border with Pakistan.

Rising violence and casualties are of deep concern in Washington, where U.S. President Barack Obama is due to conduct a strategy review of the increasingly unpopular war in December. Afghanistan is under renewed scrutiny after last weekend's parliamentary election was hit by violence and widespread claims of fraud, the second flawed poll in 13 months. The Taliban and other insurgents such as the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network have launched a series of brazen assaults on foreign bases and government buildings in the past year in a bid to topple the government and force out foreign troops.

"We did have an attempted suicide attack on FOB Gardez, and there are reports of two enemies killed in action wearing suicide vests," ISAF spokesman James Judge said. There was no word on any possible ISAF casualties. U.S. troops make up most of the ISAF force in Paktia and a U.S.-run provincial reconstruction team is based in Gardez. Rohullah Samon, a spokesman for the Paktia governor, said several armed insurgents and suicide bombers attacked the base.

"A suicide bomber driving a car blew himself up at the military gate in a attempt to let other fighters in," Samon said. He said two insurgents were killed and an Afghan security guard and an Afghan soldier were wounded. Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said 10 of the Islamist group's fighters were involved and said some had managed the make it inside the base. The Taliban often make exaggerated or unconfirmed claims about such attacks.

In late August, foreign and Afghan troops killed 24 insurgents as they fought off pre-dawn attacks in neighboring Khost province on the Pakistan border. Violence is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001, with military and civilian casualties at record levels as the Taliban spread the insurgency into once stable areas in the north and west.

In the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, a child was killed and 27 civilians wounded when a suicide car bomber attacked a passing ISAF convoy, a spokesman for the governor of Balkh province said. There was no indication of casualties among the ISAF convoy and it appeared the attack was mistimed, hitting the bus instead, the spokesman said.

 

[yellow people]

Afghan, NATO forces kill 30 insurgents in assault


Afghan, NATO forces kill 30 insurgents in assault

KABUL | Sat Sep 25, 2010 3:46am EDT

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan and NATO-led forces killed at least 30 insurgents in an air and ground assault in eastern Afghanistan Saturday, NATO forces said in a statement. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said more than 250 Afghan security forces and coalition troops battled insurgents in Laghman province, southeast of the capital Kabul, after coming under small-arms fire.

There were no immediate reports of coalition or civilian casualties in the assault, which ISAF said was continuing. Rising violence and casualties are of deep concern in Washington, where U.S. President Barack Obama is due to conduct a strategy review of the increasingly unpopular war in December.

Afghanistan is under renewed scrutiny after last weekend's parliamentary election was hit by violence and widespread claims of fraud, the second flawed poll in 13 months following a presidential election. Two ISAF service members were killed by a homemade bomb in eastern Afghanistan Friday, ISAF said in a separate statement.

At least five insurgents were killed in a gunbattle that erupted after suicide bombers attacked a NATO-run base in eastern Paktia province. In a separate incident, a child was killed and 27 civilians were wounded in another suicide attack on an ISAF convoy in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

(Writing by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

 

[yellow people]

Brit Aid Worker Taken Hostage In Afghanistan


Breaking News

7:10pm Sunday September 26, 2010

Brit Aid Worker Taken Hostage In Afghanistan

Graham Fitzgerald, Sky News Online

A female British aid worker and three local staff have been taken hostage in northeastern Afghanistan.

They were travelling in a convoy of two vehicles which were attacked by insurgents in Kunar Province. The Briton, who was working for US aid organisation DAI and is thought to have been with the UN before that, has not been identified. The Foreign Office has confirmed a UK citizen is missing in Afghanistan. It said in a statement: "We are working with other international partners to urgently investigate these reports."

Dr Karen Woo, the British doctor killed in Afghanistan in August

It has been reported the four captives were taken away to nearby mountains on foot and that police they are searching the area with tribal elders. The US military, which has a strong presence in the area, is also thought to be involved in the operation. The kidnapping comes after British doctor Karen Woo and nine other aid workers and translators were killed by gunmen in the north-eastern province of Badakhshan in what police said was a robbery. Dr Woo worked for Christian charity the International Assistance Mission, providing eye care in remote villages.

 

[yellow people]

Suicide attack kills Afghan official, son and bodyguards


Suicide attack kills Afghan official, son and bodyguards

GHAZNI, Afghanistan | Tue Sep 28, 2010 1:41am EDT

GHAZNI, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber on a motorcycle has killed the deputy governor of Afghanistan's Ghazni province, Mohammad Kazim Allahyar, his son and two bodyguards who were in the same car, a top police official said. Delawar Zahid, police chief of Ghazni province, which lies around two hours' drive southwest of the capital Kabul, said that the men were near the airport in Ghazni city when the bomber struck. "Allahyar was on his way to work when a suicide bomber on a motorbike targeted his car," Zahid said. "Allahyar, his son and two bodyguards were martyred."

(Reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Nick Macfie)

 

[yellow people]

U.S. troops refuse to testify in Afghan murder case


U.S. troops refuse to testify in Afghan murder case

By Laura Myers TACOMA, Washington | Mon Sep 27, 2010 6:41pm EDT

TACOMA, Washington (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier charged with murdering civilians and other crimes in Afghanistan made his first court appearance on Monday, as 11 other soldiers invoked their constitutional right not to testify in the case. Nine of the soldiers who declined to take the witness stand are among a dozen infantrymen of the 5th Stryker Brigade, based in Washington state, who are charged in a case stemming from their deployment in Afghanistan's Kandahar province.

The first soldier formally accused in the case, Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 22, is charged with premeditated murder in the deaths of three Afghan civilians, assaulting a fellow soldier and "wrongfully photographing and possessing visual images of human casualties." In two of the slayings, fragmentary grenades were thrown at the victims and they were shot, according to charge sheets. The third victim also was shot.

Morlock, from Wasilla, Alaska, wore standard Army combat fatigues and sat silently during Monday's proceedings. He was not expected to testify. If found guilty of all the charges against him, Morlock, could face the death penalty. He is the first to be brought before a military court for a so-called Article 32 hearing, in which prosecutors and defense lawyers present evidence to an investigating officer who decides whether there should be a formal court-martial.

The hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, was expected to last a day, with the investigating officer taking up to several weeks to decide whether a court-martial was warranted, Army Maj. Kathleen Turner said. Morlock's civilian lawyer, Michael Waddington, suggested in court that the defendant was under the influence of various prescription drugs when questioned by an investigator, Anderson Wagner, in May.

Wagner acknowledged knowing Morlock had been taking muscle relaxants, sleeping pills, pain killers and other medications at the time he was interviewing the defendant, but he insisted Morlock seemed "very articulate," was able to answer questions quickly, and did not seem impaired. Four other U.S. soldiers were charged in June with the same murders as Morlock, and seven additional servicemen have been charged since then with other crimes stemming from the investigation, including conspiracy to cover up the slayings.

Four of the soldiers are charged with keeping body parts, including finger bones, a skull, leg bones and a human tooth. Court documents say Morlock threatened a fellow soldier by showing him "fingers removed from a corpse." The 5th Stryker Brigade soldiers deployed to Kandahar a year ago, and the slayings occurred between January and May, according to charges by army prosecutors.

The case threatens to become the most high-profile investigation of alleged crimes by U.S. military personnel during almost nine years of war in Afghanistan. Pentagon officials, while stressing the charges have yet to be proven, acknowledged the nature of the allegations was damaging to the image of the United States and its military around the world.

(Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Paul Simao)

 

[yellow people]

Taliban contacts still at embryonic stage: NATO envoy


Taliban contacts still at embryonic stage: NATO envoy

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during an event marking International Literacy Day in Kabul September 28, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Omar Sobhani

WASHINGTON | Wed Sep 29, 2010 7:16am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some senior Taliban leaders appear to be open to reconciliation with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, but contacts are in the embryonic stage and not likely to bear fruit soon, NATO's top civilian in Afghanistan said on Tuesday. Mark Sedwill, who was visiting Washington to prepare for a NATO summit in Lisbon in November, said Karzai's government had been undertaking a "genuine effort" to reach out to insurgents who were willing to renounce violence, accept the constitution and re-enter Afghan society.

"There are significant leaders there who seem to be weary of the fight and seem to be willing to contemplate a future within the mainstream," Sedwill told reporters at a news conference at the National Press Club. Sedwill, the former British ambassador to Kabul, said it was hard to determine if the Taliban contacts represented individuals or groups of people who might be willing to abandon the struggle.

But he said it was "unlikely the Taliban as a movement is going to enter into a major political negotiation." He also cautioned against overstating "the speed and prospects of that process completing any time soon." "My sense is ... essentially we're at the embryonic stage," Sedwill said. "The channels of communication are open. I wouldn't at this stage say that we've reached the point of real negotiation."

General David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan and Sedwill's military counterpart, has said there have been contacts between Kabul and very senior members of the Taliban. He, too, indicated the contacts were at an early stage and said it was premature to say whether those Taliban were willing to accept Karzai's terms for pursuing reconciliation.

Sedwill was visiting Washington in preparation for a NATO summit in Lisbon at which leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are expected to consider the way ahead in Afghanistan. The meeting will set the stage for the U.S. President Barack Obama's strategy review in December, which is likely to look at the scope and scale of U.S. troop reductions the administration has promised beginning in July.

(Reporting by David Alexander, editing )

 

[yellow people]

Plot to attack European cities foiled: report

An armed police officer waits to cross the road opposite Downing Street as a tour bus passes behind him, in Westminster, central London, September 29, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Andrew Winning

LONDON | Wed Sep 29, 2010 8:57am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Intelligence agencies have disrupted plans for multiple attacks on European cities by a group thought to be linked to al Qaeda, Britain's Sky News said on Tuesday. Militants based in Pakistan were planning simultaneous strikes in London, as well as cities in France and Germany, the channel's foreign affairs editor, Tim Marshall, said.

Asked about the Sky News report, U.S. security officials said they could not confirm that a plot had been disrupted. But they said they believed that the threat of a plot or plots was continuing. U.S. counter-terrorism agencies are poring over intelligence reports suggesting a major attack plot is currently in the works against unspecified targets in Western Europe or possibly the United States, they said.

Four U.S. security officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that initial intelligence reports about the threat first surfaced roughly two weeks ago, around the time of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Sky News' Marshall said an increase in drone attacks in Pakistan in the past few weeks was linked to attempts by Western powers to disrupt the plot, which was at an "advanced but not imminent stage."

British security sources declined to comment on the Sky News report. Britain in January raised its international terrorism threat level to "severe" -- the second highest level of alert in the five-tier system. The head of Britain's MI5 Security Service, Jonathan Evans, said on September 16 there remained "a serious risk of a lethal attack taking place."

EIFFEL TOWER ALERT

The Eiffel Tower and the surrounding Champ de Mars park were briefly evacuated on Tuesday because of a bomb alert, the fourth such alert in the Paris region in as many weeks, but a search turned up nothing, police said. French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said on September 20 France faced a real terrorism threat due to a backlash from al Qaeda militants in North Africa, with fears growing of an attack from home-grown cells within French borders.

Citing unidentified intelligence sources, Sky said the planned attacks would have been similar to the commando-style raids carried out in Mumbai by Pakistan-based gunmen in 2008. The heavily armed militants launched an assault on various targets in Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal hotel and the city's main train station.

The United States appeared to have widened drone aircraft attacks against al Qaeda-linked militants in Pakistan and might have killed a senior leader of the group, Pakistani and U.S. officials said on Tuesday. U.S. officials declined to comment on specific plots in Europe or elsewhere but acknowledged that targeted drone strikes in Pakistan were meant to disrupt militant networks planning attacks.

"It shouldn't surprise anyone that links between plots and those who are orchestrating them lead to decisive American action," a U.S. official told Reuters. "The terrorists who are involved are, as everyone should expect, going to be targets. That's the whole point of all of this." The U.S. national security officials said that most of the threat reporting suggested that the targets of whatever plots were under way were in Europe.

One of the officials said, however, that there was particular concern that U.S. interests in Europe might be targeted. Two officials also said that they could not rule out the possibility that some of the threat reporting could relate to attack plots under way which might be directed at targets inside the United States. One of these officials added that the intelligence reporting was tangled and could mean that more than one plot has been set in motion.

U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper declined to comment directly on any European plot but stressed that al Qaeda remained committed to attacking Europe and the United States. We are not going to comment on specific intelligence, as doing so threatens to undermine intelligence operations that are critical to protecting the U.S. and our allies," Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris, Estelle Shirbon and William Maclean in London, and Philip Stewart and Mark Hosenball in Washington; editing by Andrew Dobbie and Frances Kerry.)

 

[yellow people]

Militants set fire to NATO tankers in Pakistan


Militants set fire to NATO tankers in Pakistan

Police collect bullets shells next to burning oil tankers on a highway near Shikarpur, about 39 km (24 miles) from Sukkur in Pakistan's Sindh province, October, 1, 2010. Suspected militants in Pakistan set fire to tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan on Friday, officials said, a day after three soldiers were killed in a cross-border NATO air strike. Credit: Reuters/Athar Hussain

By Faisal Aziz
KARACHI | Fri Oct 1, 2010 7:53am EDT

KARACHI (Reuters) - Suspected militants in Pakistan set fire to more than two dozen tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan on Friday, officials said, a day after three soldiers were killed in a cross-border NATO air strike. Angered by repeated incursions by NATO helicopters over the past week, Pakistan has blocked a supply route for coalition troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistan is a crucial ally for the United States in its efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, but analysts say border incursions and disruptions in NATO supplies underline growing tensions in the relationship. A senior Pakistani intelligence official said the border incursions could lead to a "total snapping of relations." Senior local officials blamed "extremists" for the attack on the tankers in the southern town of Shikarpur.

About 12 people, their faces covered, opened fire with small arms into the air to scare away the drivers and then set fire to 27 tankers. "Some of them have been completely destroyed and others partially. But there is no loss of human life," Shikarpur police chief Abdul Hameed Khoso told Reuters.
Police arrested 10 people after the attack, including five netted from a raid on an Islamic seminary, or madrassa.

The tankers were parked at a filling station on their way to Afghanistan from Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi. On Thursday, three Pakistani soldiers were killed and three wounded in two cross-border incursions by NATO forces chasing militants in Pakistan's northwestern Kurram region. It was the third cross-border incident in a week, the Pakistan military said. NATO said the helicopters briefly crossed into Pakistan airspace after coming under fire from people there.

OTHER OPTIONS?

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, speaking in parliament, said Pakistan was a partner in the war against Islamist militancy, but would allow no infringement of its sovereignty. "I want to assure the entire nation from this house that we will consider other options if there is interference in the sovereignty of our country," Gilani said without elaborating. Pakistan's ambassador to Belgium lodged a protest with NATO's deputy general secretary over the incursions, the Pakistan embassy said in a statement received in Islamabad.

Despite tensions, analysts say a rift is unlikely between Pakistan's and its Western allies as each side needs the other. The European Union said it had decided to more than double its Pakistan flood aid to 150 million euros ($205 million). On Thursday, hours after the cross-border attack, Pakistani authorities halted tankers carrying supplies for the NATO forces passing through the Khyber tribal region on the Afghan border.

About three-quarters of all cargo for NATO forces in Afghanistan travels through Pakistan, most of it via two border crossings: Chaman north of Quetta in Baluchistan and Torkham at the Khyber Pass. Another third flows into Afghanistan through the northern distribution network across Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Sensitive gear like ammunition, weapons and critical equipment is flown in. Officials say supplies for NATO forces through Chaman continue uninterrupted.

PAKISTAN UNDER SPOTLIGHT

Pakistan has again come under the international spotlight after Western intelligence sources said a plot to stage coordinated attacks in Europe had been disrupted by a recent upsurge in missile strikes by U.S. drones. Security officials said they had no evidence of a terror plot being hatched in Pakistan's tribal areas, described as global hub of militants by the United States. Most recent drones strikes have taken place in the northwestern North Waziristan region.

"It's no secret that there are terrorists from all nationalities in North Waziristan. They are Arabs, Uzbeks, Pakistani, Afghan, Chechans, German, Brits, Americans, everyone. And they are threat to us, to their own countries and to the entire world," a senior security official said. "But to say that we have any specific information that they were plotting attacks against this country or that country, then sir, we don't have any concrete information or intelligence about that."

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shaikh and Zeeshan Haider; Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Ron Popeski)

 

[yellow people]

Q+A: How damaging is NATO supply halt to US-Pakistan ties?


Q+A: How damaging is NATO supply halt to US-Pakistan ties?

By Michael Georgy ISLAMABAD | Fri Oct 1, 2010 7:51am EDT

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities, angered by repeated incursions by NATO helicopters over the past week, have blocked a supply route for the troops in Afghanistan. Suspected militants in Pakistan set fire to more than two dozen tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan, officials said on Friday, a day after three Pakistani soldiers were killed in a cross-border NATO air strike. Here are some questions and answers on the strategic route, part of a network crucial to U.S. efforts to pacify Afghanistan.

WILL THIS DAMAGE THE NATO ALLIANCE IN AFGHANISTAN?

The move pointed to tensions between the United States, which leads NATO troops in Afghanistan, and Pakistan, a frontline state in the American war on militancy. Pakistan has said it would consider "response options" if NATO forces continued to violate its sovereignty. An escalation of drone attacks in September to a record monthly high of 21 since the attacks began in 2008 has made the Pakistanis more sensitive to issues of sovereignty.

But as the strikes from the unmanned aircraft have shown, many issues in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan are not black or white and resulting grey areas leave room for compromise, making them easier to work through. Analysts say the operations are dependent on Pakistani intelligence. Closing the border underscored the leverage Pakistan has over Washington as U.S. troops struggle to contain a raging Taliban insurgency before a withdrawal starts in July 2011.

Pakistan, however, is unlikely to keep the border shut for an extended period, aware that it cannot afford to antagonize an ally which provides $2 billion in military aid a year. Keeping foreign money flowing here may be more important than ever as Pakistan tries to recover from summer floods that inflicted billions of dollars in damage. The relationship between Islamabad and Washington has, in any event, often been fraught with difficulties. The border closure -- others have occurred before -- is unlikely to hurt ties enough to affect the war in Afghanistan.

WHERE DO THE ROUTES PASS?

There are two routes through Pakistan into Afghanistan. The one that was closed off goes through the Khyber Pass in northwest Pakistan to the border town of Torkham and on to Kabul. That is the easiest land route for supplies and military equipment into Afghanistan, by ship to the Pakistani port of Karachi, and then by truck through Pakistan and into Afghanistan. The other passes through Pakistan's Baluchistan province to the border town of Chaman and on to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

The U.S. military and NATO have given no details of the supplies they get via Pakistan or a breakdown of how much comes on the two routes. The U.S. Defense Department says the U.S. military sends 75 percent of supplies for the Afghan war through or over Pakistan, including 40 percent of fuel. Sensitive gear like ammunition, weapons and critical equipment is flown in, the Pentagon says.

WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE?

Taliban militant attacks had already forced the United States and other Western forces to look for alternatives through Central Asia and Russia into northern Afghanistan. The Northern Distribution Network (NDN), as the United States refers to it, was launched in 2009. It involves Russia, Latvia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Also, the United States operates a military air base in Kyrgyzstan which serves as an important support hub for Afghan operations as well as an aircraft refueling point.

(Editing by Chris Allbritton and Ron Popeski)

 

[yellow people]

Drone strike kills 8 Germans in northwest Pakistan


Drone strike kills 8 Germans in northwest Pakistan

Mon, Oct 4 2010

By Michael Georgy
ISLAMABAD | Mon Oct 4, 2010 7:57pm EDT

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. drone strike killed eight militants of German nationality in northwest Pakistan on Monday, Pakistani intelligence officials said. They died when two missiles from a suspected CIA pilotless aircraft struck a mosque in Mirali in North Waziristan, the officials added. The attack came a day after the United States and Britain warned of an increased risk of terrorist attacks in Europe. Western security officials said last week they believed a group in northern Pakistan were connected to a plot to stage attacks. The militants were members of a group called Jihad Islami, the Pakistani intelligence officials said without elaborating.

There was no independent verification and militants often dismiss official reports of successful operations against them. "People were gathering at the mosque for prayers when a missile hit the building," Mohammad Alam, a resident of Mirali, told Reuters by telephone, describing Monday's drone strike. "The area has been cordoned off by militants and they are not allowing anyone there." The State Department warned American citizens to exercise caution if traveling in Europe. Britain raised the threat level to "high" from "general" for its citizens traveling to Germany and France.

U.S.-PAKISTAN TENSIONS

The immediate trigger for Sunday's travel alerts was intelligence about a plot against European targets reportedly originating with a group of individuals in mountainous northern Pakistan, some of them believed to be European citizens. One security official in Germany said last week word of the plot had probably originated from the interrogation of a German-Afghan suspect in Afghanistan. The suspect believed to be behind the intelligence was identified by media as Ahmed Sidiqi, a German of Afghan origin. German media said he came from Hamburg and had been held in the U.S. military prison of Bagram in Afghanistan since July.

German counter-terrorism expert Guido Steinberg told Reuters Sidiqi was a member of a cell of militants from Hamburg that was believed to be a central component of the conspiracy. Steinberg said the cell left for Pakistan in March 2009 and joined Pakistan-based members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Central Asian militant organization. CNN reported the 11-strong group included a German of Syrian descent and a German of Iranian descent while an associate of the plot was a Frenchman of Algerian origin, it said.

Sidiqi divulged new, unverified information every day, CNN reported German intelligence sources as saying. The United States has increased drone aircraft strikes on al Qaeda-linked militants in Pakistan's northwest, with 21 attacks in September alone, the highest number in a single month. It is as yet unclear, however, how closely these intensified drone strikes are linked to the reported plot in Europe. NATO helicopters from Afghanistan have also attacked militant targets within Pakistan, drawing anger in Islamabad which has condemned these as violation of sovereignty.

Pakistan blocked one of the supply routes for NATO troops in Afghanistan after a helicopter strike last week killed three Pakistani soldiers in the western Kurram region. NATO incursions and closure of the route have raised tensions between the United States and Pakistan, whose long relations have are often uneasy. The CIA has also been trying to eliminate leaders of the Haqqani network, an Afghan Taliban faction operating out of North Waziristan which is one of the most effective forces fighting U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan. North Waziristan, a forbidding tribal area, is home to a variety of militants fighting the Pakistani government or battling U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan, or both.

Some are foreigners who have taken up the cause of holy war against the West and see North Waziristan as a safe haven or training ground. U.S. officials say drones are valuable weapons which have killed high-profile Taliban and al Qaeda figures in an area in northwest Pakistan described as a global hub for militants. Pakistan worries the strikes undermine efforts to deal with militancy because civilian casualties inflame public anger and bolster support for the fighters. Elimination of high-profile targets could not be possible without Pakistani intelligence, however, analysts say.

(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider in ISLAMABAD and William Maclean in LONDON; editing by Myra MacDonald)

 

[yellow people]

'German Taliban' video posted on al-Qaeda website


'German Taliban' video posted on al-Qaeda website

Rob Crilly in Islamabad
Published: 1:27PM BST 05 Oct 2010

A recruiting video produced by German militants and posted on an al-Qaeda website has cast fresh light on how European Islamists are joining insurgents fighting in Pakistan's mountainous tribal areas.

The 51-minute film shows German-speaking gunmen, armed with AK-47s, light machine guns and mortars, apparently taking on Pakistani troops in South Waziristan and Orakzai, areas close to the border with Afghanistan. They include a clean-shaven man of Caucasian appearance, who wears a baseball hat pulled low on his face and sunglasses.

The role of the "German Taliban", as analysts have dubbed them, emerged last week when security sources said eight Germans were believed to be at the centre of a plot by al-Qaeda cells to launch commando attacks on European cities. German authorities believe at least 70 German nationals have travelled to Pakistan for training, with about a third returning home.

A drone strike on Monday killed eight militants, including possibly five Germans, according to Pakistani security sources, as part of a US surge in attacks to kill the plotters. The new video is filmed in the style of a travelogue – offering a running commentary on the beauty of the region's forested valleys and scenic waterfalls – but includes a chilling call to arms in German, exhorting young Muslims to join them in their fight against Pakistan and its American ally.

"Join the Taliban and the Mujahedeen in the holy war against the infidel government so we can establish sharia law in Pakistan and avenge all the crimes against us," says a bearded fighter. The video was produced by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is closely linked to al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, and appears to include footage shot from April to June this year.

Imtiaz Gul, author of The Most Dangerous Place which details the region's militant links, said: "The IMU is clearly trying to recruit people in Germany using these videos, addressing German Muslims, who may have grown up in Germany but have come from Turkish, Algerian or Arab roots."

 

[yellow people]

Taliban commander behind kidnapping of British journalist seized by Nato


Taliban commander behind kidnapping of British journalist seized by Nato

A Taliban commander behind the kidnap of Stephen Farrell, a British journalist, has been seized by Nato troops.

By Ben Farmer in Kabul
Published: 4:54PM BST 05 Oct 2010

Stephen Farrell was kidnapped in Afghanistan Photo: AP

Nato said the unnamed militant was "directly involved" in the kidnap of the New York Times reporter, which triggered a controversial and bloody special forces raid to release him. Mr Farrell spent four days in captivity in northern Afghanistan in September 2009 after he was taken while reporting on the aftermath of a German air strike which killed scores of civilians in Kunduz province.

The then British defence and foreign secretaries authorised a special forces night raid to free him, after consulting Gordon Brown. However the daring assault ended in a bloodbath and Mr Brown later appeared to try to distance himself from the decision. Mr Farrell, who still works for the New York Times, was successfully freed, but a British soldier, Mr Farrell's Afghan colleague and a woman and child died in the shoot out.

The commander was seized in Takhar province without a shot being fired. He led the Taliban's shadow government in the Chahar Darah district of Kunduz, where militants have successfully opened a "northern front" against the local German contingent of troops. A Nato statement said he maintained links to high-level Taliban leaders in Pakistan, as well as their allies in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

It said he had: "terrorised the local populace by forcibly collecting taxes from residents, intimidating relatives of police and conducting attacks against government buildings". Mr Farrell and his colleague Sultan Munadi were taken while visiting where two hijacked fuel tankers had been hit by Nato bombs.

A large crowd of Afghan civilians was unloading fuel from the trucks when they were hit and an investigation found scores of innocent people were incinerated or badly burned in the strike. After Corporal John Harrison, a paratrooper serving with the special forces, and Mr Munadi died in the raid, military sources criticised Mr Farrell for ignoring police advice and venturing into a known Taliban stronghold.

 

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Taliban and Afghan government hold talks to end war: report


Taliban and Afghan government hold talks to end war: report

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai speaks during the opening ceremony of the peace jirga in Kabul in this June 2, 2010 file photo.
Credit: Reuters/Omar Sobhani

WASHINGTON | Wed Oct 6, 2010 3:38am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Representatives of the Taliban and President Hamid Karzai's government have started secret talks to negotiate an end to the war in Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing Afghan and Arab sources. The sources, who were not named by the Post, were quoted as saying they believe the Taliban representatives are authorized to speak for the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban organization based in Pakistan, and its leader, Mohammad Omar.

The sources quoted by the Post stressed that the current discussions are in the preliminary stages. The newspaper said the talks followed inconclusive meetings hosted by Saudi Arabia that wrapped up more than a year ago. Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omer, speaking in Kabul, declined to confirm or deny the report of new meetings. "There were contacts in the past and may now be direct or indirect ones. There have been regular contacts over the past two years," he said, when asked about the Washington Post story.

"There haven't been any substantive talks, there have been contacts only." Afghanistan has been beset by war for decades. U.S. forces led an invasion in 2001 to topple the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan who harbored the al Qaeda network responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States that year. Fighting has dragged on for nine years. "They are very, very serious about finding a way out," one source close to the talks said of the Taliban, according to the Post.

The newspaper noted that Omar's representatives have insisted publicly that negotiations were impossible until foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan. But the Post said the Quetta Shura has begun to discuss a broad agreement that would include participation of some Taliban figures in Afghanistan's government and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops on an agreed timeline.

The Quetta Shura is the remains of the Afghan Taliban government overthrown and driven into Pakistan by the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The Post quoted several sources as saying that the talks with the Quetta Shura did not involve the Haqqani network, the target of U.S. drone attacks in northwestern Pakistan. The Haqqani network is based mainly in Pakistan's North Waziristan and adjoining provinces in Afghanistan.

U.S. CHANGE OF HEART

Afghan, Arab and European sources cited by the Post said they saw a change of heart by the United States toward backing such negotiations, saying the Obama administration only recently appeared open to talks rather than resisting them. Earlier on Tuesday, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said a broad Taliban shift toward reconciliation with the Afghan government was unlikely for now.

"I think it is too soon to suggest that there is ... a wider movement afoot, that the tide is turning in terms of re-integration and reconciliation," Morrell told reporters at a briefing at the Pentagon. Afghan President Hamid Karzai launched an effort this year to reach out to elements of the Taliban that might be willing to reconcile with the government, renounce violence and accept the new constitution. He has formed a 70-member peace council in recent weeks to work toward negotiations.

General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces in Afghanistan, has acknowledged contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But he added it was premature to say whether those Taliban were willing to accept Karzai's terms for pursuing reconciliation. NATO's top civilian in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, last week described contacts as being in an "embryonic stage" and unlikely to bear fruit soon.

(Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin in KABUL, writing by Will Dunham, editing by Eric Walsh and Ron Popeski)

 

[yellow people]

Gunmen attack NATO supply trucks in Pakistan


Gunmen attack NATO supply trucks in Pakistan

Paramilitary soldiers stand guard near burning oil tankers, which were carrying supplies to foreign forces in Afghanistan, after they were attacked in the outskirts of Quetta October 6, 2010. Gunmen in Pakistan attacked and set fire to 20 trucks transporting supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan on Wednesday, police said. Credit: Reuters/Stringer

By Gul Yusufzai
QUETTA, Pakistan | Wed Oct 6, 2010 3:58am EDT

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Gunmen in Pakistan set fire to 20 trucks carrying supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan on Wednesday, police said, the latest in a series of assaults on the logistical backbone of the war in Afghanistan. Pakistani authorities, angered by repeated incursions by NATO helicopters from Afghanistan, last week blocked a supply route for the troops in Afghanistan. The latest attack on fuel tankers took place on another route near the southwestern city of Quetta. NATO incursions and the border closure have raised tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan, long-time but uneasy allies.

U.S. pressure on Islamabad to crack down on militants in its northwest tribal areas who cross the border to attack Western troops in Afghanistan is also source of friction. An alleged al Qaeda plot to attack European targets has put Pakistan's performance against militants under scrutiny again. A British man killed by an air strike in Pakistan had ties with the would-be Times Square bomber, a Pakistani intelligence official, who declined to be named, told Reuters. He said the Briton, Abdul Jabbar, had also been in the process of setting up a branch for the Taliban in Britain.

"He had some links to Faisal Shahzad but the nature of the ties are not clear," the official said, referring to the Pakistani-born U.S. citizen who was sentenced to life in prison in the United States this week for trying to set off a car bomb in New York's busy Times Square. Those links are likely to fuel concerns that al Qaeda and groups linked to it, such as Pakistan's Taliban, which trained Shahzad, are becoming an increasing threat to Western nations.

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in early September vowed to launch attacks in the United States and Europe "very soon." It had previously made similar threats but Shahzad's plot was the closest it has come to success. The TTP claimed responsibility for most of the latest attacks on NATO trucks. Nearly 70 vehicles have been hit. On Wednesday, 14 gunmen in two pickup trucks opened fire on the trucks and torched them, killing a driver.

The bulk of supplies for the foreign forces in Afghanistan moves through Pakistan which is itself battling a deadly homegrown Taliban insurgency. Analysts say supply routes to Afghanistan give Pakistan leverage over the U.S.' war efforts in Afghanistan, although Pakistan often cites security concerns as reasons for closures. Tensions could deepen if Washington demands more cooperation from Pakistan before a gradual U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has raised concerns over the country's stability, starts in July 2011.

Pakistan is unlikely to budge. Cracking down on groups such as the Haqqani network, one of the most effective fighting forces in Afghanistan, would not make strategic sense. Pakistan regards the Afghan Taliban faction as a counterweight to India's increasing involvement in Afghanistan. European and American counter-terrorism officials have said that concerns about a group of about 100 German Islamists who had traveled between Germany and the tribal border areas of Pakistan contributed to the latest security alert in Europe.

A new White House assessment concludes that Pakistan has been unwilling to aggressively pursue al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban militants in a Pakistani tribal region. The White House assessment, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday and confirmed by Reuters, faults the Pakistan government and military for lacking the will to take action against the militants in North Waziristan.

INCURSIONS

Pakistan has repeatedly said it is doing all it can to fight the militancy, pointing to the thousands of people it has lost in a wave of attacks over the past three years. It has, however, said it will not tolerate any incursions by foreign troops. The Pentagon said on Tuesday that NATO will soon release the results of a joint probe by with Pakistan into last week's killing of three Pakistani soldiers in cross-border strike by NATO helicopters.

Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell did not elaborate on the findings but appeared to play down the likelihood of any major revelations. He described the helicopter strike as a "regrettable mistake." The U.S. has also ramped up a covert campaign of drone strikes against militant targets within Pakistan's borders, further deepening concern of a more aggressive U.S. war strategy.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by David Fox)

 

[yellow people]

Betrayal of an all-American hero


Betrayal of an all-American hero

When American football star Pat Tillman died in 'friendly fire' in Afghanistan, the US Army tried to cover it up. A new documentary tells the story of his family's fight for the truth

By Mick Brown
Published: 9:00AM BST 07 Oct 2010

Pat Tillman, who was shot by his own comrades in AfghanistanPhoto: PA

Tillman, standing second from the left, with his squad in Afghanistan

Tillman with his wife, Marie

Pat Tillman's mother, Mary, at her home in San Jose, California, with some of the papers relating to his case. The family spent four years trying to uncover the truth about Pat's death

When Pat Tillman and his brother Kevin enlisted in the US Army in 2002 it was a source of both pride and apprehension for his family. America was still reeling from the attacks on the World Trade Center. 'We were at war,’ their father, Patrick Tillman Sr, says, 'and the idea that my kids would allow someone else to fight their battles for them… I don’t think that sat well with either of them.’

For the US military, Pat Tillman’s enlistment provided an opportunity of a different kind. Tillman was a celebrated sportsman, a professional footballer playing for the Arizona Cardinals who turned down a three-year, $3.6 million contract so that he could serve his country. No scriptwriter in the Pentagon press bureau could have devised a more persuasive poster boy. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sent Tillman a personal note commending the 'proud and patriotic’ thing that he was doing.

When Tillman died in Afghanistan in April 2004, shot three times in the head, the news was greeted with an effusion of grief and patriotic pride. A Pentagon press release described him as having made 'the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror’, a spokesman for the White House talked of him as 'an inspiration both on and off the football field’, while the senator for Arizona, John McCain, spoke of how Tillman’s death would be 'a heavy blow to our nation’s morale’.

Tillman was awarded the Silver Star, the third highest military decoration in the US Army, given for 'gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States’. The citation described how he had 'put himself in the line of devastating enemy fire’, and how 'while mortally wounded, his audacious leadership and courageous example’ had inspired his men to fight, driving back the enemy and resulting in his platoon’s safe passage from an 'ambush kill zone’.

But Pat Tillman did not die as a result of enemy fire. The three bullets in his head had been fired by his own comrades. The saga has now been told in an extraordinary new documentary, The Tillman Story. The fruit of three years’ work by the producer John Battsek and the director Amir Bar-Lev, the film examines how the US army attempted to cover up the fact that Tillman died from so-called 'friendly fire’ and, in the words of one former soldier, 'pin a recruiting poster on his coffin’, and his family’s struggle to find out the truth.

At first glance Pat Tillman seemed every inch the quintessential American hero. Square-jawed, ruggedly handsome and powerfully built, he looked like a cross between an action movie star and the archetypal testosterone-fuelled 'jock’. But Tillman was a much more complicated figure than that. A few weeks after his death, at a memorial service held in his home town of San Jose, California, a friend described him as a man 'on a constant quest to improve himself’.

The eldest of three sons of a lawyer, Patrick Sr, and a special-needs teacher, Mary, Pat Tillman was an outstanding scholar as well as an outstanding athlete, graduating summa cum laude, the highest academic honour, from his college in Arizona before being drafted into professional NFL football in 1998 with the Arizona Cardinals. Tillman, his father says, 'pushed himself on just about every level’. As a boy, he would carry around a book of quotations – Churchill, Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln – circling and memorising the ones he found most inspiring.

As a professional footballer, he owned neither a mobile phone nor a car, and would cycle to training in a T-shirt and flip-flops, a paperback book in his pocket. His reading ran from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau to Noam Chomsky. On the day after 9/11, Tillman gave an interview in which he talked about freedom, patriotism and 'what the flag stands for’. 'A lot of my family has… gone and fought in wars,’ he said, 'and I really haven’t done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that.’ Six months later, having completed the last game of the season and returned from a honeymoon in the South Pacific with his childhood sweetheart, Marie, Tillman and his brother Kevin announced that they were enlisting in the army.

Tillman was the first NFL professional since the Second World War to voluntarily leave the game for military service, and his recruitment was a public relations gift for the army. Rumsfeld, after sending Tillman his personal letter of congratulations on June 28 2002, emailed the Secretary of the Army, Tom White, noting that Tillman 'sound [sic] like he is world-class. We might want to keep our eye on him.’ But Tillman refused to play the role of poster boy. He declined to explain why he had enlisted, turning down all interview requests from the media and asking family members not to comment. He was quietly offered a 'safe’ posting at home, but turned that down too.

After basic training, Pat and Kevin were assigned to the US Army Rangers, an elite combat corps, with the rank of 'specialist’ – between private and corporal – and in March 2003 they were among the first US forces deployed in the invasion of Iraq. Doubts soon began to set in. At 25, Pat was older than most of his platoon, and according to his mother he grew frustrated at the lack of intellectual stimulation. 'It disturbed him that the military didn’t use people to their full potential and that things were done that seemed to make no sense.’ He also began to question the prosecution and legality of the war in Iraq.

Returning home after his first tour of duty, Tillman told his mother that the war was 'pretty much bullshit’. Among the things they discussed was his concern that he seemed to undergo more psychological evaluations than other soldiers in his platoon. 'I said, “Maybe it’s because they’re curious about you,” ’ Mary recalls. ' “Why would you give up so much to join the military?”’ In the years following his death, the family were eventually able to obtain two of these evaluations under the Freedom of Information Act.

'They said things like, he didn’t respect authority, all kinds of stuff…’ Mary says. 'Pat didn’t suffer fools gladly, that’s for sure. But when there was authority to respect, he respected it.’ Whether the army was concerned about Tillman’s views or felt he had served its purpose, he was offered an honourable discharge and the chance to take up a new football contract. He refused. 'Pat had signed up to fight for three years, he was going to fight for three years. That was the deal,’ his father says – and in early April 2004 Pat and Kevin were redeployed with their 'Black Sheep’ platoon to Afghanistan.

On April 22 Tillman’s platoon was engaged in a 'clearing operation’, sweeping villages for Taliban fighters in a region of south-eastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan, when one of the platoon’s Humvee vehicles broke down. A request by the platoon leader, Lt David Uthlaut, to his command centre 65 miles away in the city of Khost to airlift the vehicle was refused. Instead, it was ordered that it should be towed to safety behind a civilian truck that had been hired locally; at the same time the platoon should proceed with the mission to have 'boots on the ground’ in the village of Manah before dusk.

The only way to achieve this was to split the platoon in two: 'Serial 1’ pushing on towards Manah, while 'Serial 2’ took responsibility for the broken Humvee. Serial 1, including Uthlaut and Tillman, set off towards Manah, passing along the road through a canyon, while Serial 2 turned back along the road towards Khost. They had travelled only a short distance when it became apparent that the civilian truck would be unable to continue on the rocky terrain. Instead, they then followed the route that Serial 1 had taken through the canyon.

It was at this point that Serial 2 came under attack from what the soldiers thought were either rocket-propelled grenades or mortar and small arms fire. They returned fire, blitzing the higher ground with mortar and machine-guns. The sound of explosions and gunfire alerted Serial 1 at the far end of the canyon. Uthlaut tried, and failed, to make radio contact with Serial 2, while Tillman, another soldier, Bryan O’Neal, and an Afghan militiaman named Thani set off up the hill for a position on the ridgeline overlooking the road.

The lead vehicle of Serial 2 came into view. Seeing the Afghan militiaman, the squad leader, Sgt Greg Baker, opened fire. Hit by eight bullets, the Afghan died instantly. Following Baker’s lead, others in the lead vehicle now began spraying the ridgeline with machine-gun fire. Tillman frantically waved his arms, yelling, 'Cease fire! Friendlies!’, as he and O’Neal scrambled to take shelter behind some rocks. He then threw a smoke grenade as a signal that they were 'friendlies’. There was a lull in the fire. When Tillman broke cover, the soldiers in Baker’s vehicle opened fire again.

Machine-gun fire struck the body armour on his chest and he dropped to a squatting position. According to O’Neal, Tillman continued yelling, 'I’m Pat Tillman! Cease fire!’ But the firing continued. He was hit three times in the head. His last words were 'I’m Pat ----ing Tillman’. The death of America’s most famous soldier came at a particularly critical time for the US military. In early April 2004 American forces had suffered a humiliating setback in the abortive attempt to capture the Iraqi city of Fallujah, and the 131 US casualties that month would be the highest in nine months. America was fast growing disillusioned with its 'war on terror’.

On the day that Pat Tillman was killed Donald Rumsfeld was addressing the Newspaper Assoc_iation of America, imploring them not simply to write about 'the attacks and setbacks’ but to 'give context’ to the events in Iraq and Afghanistan. What was required, it seemed, was something positive. What was required was a hero. On the evening of April 22 Tillman’s family were informed of his death. 'We were told Pat had been shot in the head getting out of a vehicle,’ his mother remembers. 'That’s all we knew.’

On April 30 – only two days after the first images of the abuse of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison had been shown on American television, with public faith in the prosecution of the war sinking to its lowest ebb – it was announced that Tillman had been awarded the Silver Star, and posthumously promoted from specialist to corporal. The army wanted to give Tillman a full military funeral with honours, but his wife, Marie, refused. Apparently mindful of how the army might continue to use him in the event of his death, Pat had given Marie written instructions that 'I do not want military involvement’ at his funeral. But Pat Tillman was too public a figure for his death to be allowed to pass quietly.

On May 3 3,000 people attended a memorial service in San Jose, which was televised nationally. Among the army officers who gathered around to comfort his family was Lt Gen Philip Kensinger, the head of the army’s Special Operations Com_mand, which oversees all special combat corps. Only later would it emerge that even as he was consoling Tillman’s family, Kensinger was fully aware that their son had died from friendly fire. Four months later, at the beginning of the new football season, the NFL would mount its own day of commemoration, with all teams wearing a memorial decal on their helmets in Tillman’s honour.

In Arizona, his number 40 shirt was 'retired’ in a ceremony at a Cardinals game. President Bush appeared on a video screen offering tributes. In Afghanistan, a series of highly unusual steps had been put in train in the immediate aftermath of Tillman’s death. Other members of the platoon were ordered to say nothing of the incident, and phone and internet connections at the base were shut down. His brother Kevin, who had not witnessed the incident and knew only that Pat had been killed but not how, was put in 'quarantine’, and within days would be sent home with Pat’s body, accompanied by another soldier who was under strict instructions not to tell Kevin or the family what had happened.

In contravention of army protocol, which stipulates that the uniforms of fallen soldiers be returned to America, Pat’s uniform, helmet and combat vest were destroyed, along with his notebook. Within hours, an army captain, Richard Scott, was ordered to prepare a report on the incident. His draft investigation, prepared in a matter of days, was condemnatory. Tillman’s death, Scott concluded, was fratricide – the military term for friendly fire – and the result of an act of 'gross negligence’ by soldiers in Serial 2. He recommended to headquarters that there should be a further investigation by the army’s Criminal Investigation Command to establish whether there had been 'criminal intent’ in the killing.

But Scott’s conclusions were not, it seemed, what the army wanted to hear. Instead, another investigation – to be known as a '15-6’ – was ordered at battalion level. (It would be a further two years before it emerged, in yet another inquiry, that Scott’s initial report had been quietly buried, his references to 'negligent homicide’ and the recommendation for a criminal investigation excised.) In a subsequent investigation two years later, another high-ranking officer, Brig Gen Howard Yellen, would describe how the 15-6 report was received among the chain of command.

It was 'sort of like, “here is the steak dinner, but we’re giving it to you on this, you know, garbage can cover”. You know, “You got it. You work it.”’ Mary Tillman is in no doubt about what she thinks Yellen’s statement meant: 'We’ve got Abu Ghraib, all this other stuff [the garbage], but this soldier [the steak] who is very high profile has been killed; we can use this to our advantage. Unfortunately, he was killed by friendly fire. That means we’re going to have to spin it. You’ve got it, you work it. It’s a grotesque way of saying it. And yet that’s what he says.’

Sitting in the lounge of a San Jose hotel, Mary Tillman has a serene and thoughtful demeanour that does not immediately suggest the moral indignation that has driven her in her quest to establish the truth of what actually happened to her son. 'To lie is the most horrible thing, and we have been lied to,’ she says. 'It’s an atrocity that they would take a young man with honourable intentions who’d served his country and then lie about how he died to promote a war. To use him as a propaganda tool, basically. That is immoral.’ The first Mary Tillman learnt of her son having died from friendly fire was on May 28 2004 – five weeks after his death – in a telephone call from a reporter for the Arizona Republic newspaper.

The army, apparently fearing that the information was about to be leaked, had decided to release it officially. The following day, Lt Gen Kensinger issued a terse statement that 'while there was no one specific finding of fault’ an investigation (the 15-6) had concluded that Tillman had 'probably’ died as a result of friendly fire in the course of 'an intense firefight lasting approximately 20 minutes’, during an ambush conducted by '10 to 12 enemy personnel’. When Mary was first shown the results of the 15-6 investigation in June 2004 she was immediately struck by all the unanswered questions that remained.

She drafted a list of her concerns to Senator John McCain, along with a request for her son’s autopsy and the field hospital report into his death. It was the beginning of a paper trail of some 6,000 pages of military documents, most of them heavily redacted, the names of officers and soldiers blanked out, that she would follow over the next three years, attempting to piece together the truth of what had happened to her son. The more Mary read, the more the anomalies began to stack up. According to witnesses on the ground, there had been no 'intense firefight’ with the enemy.

No one in Serial 2 nor any of their vehicles had been hit by enemy fire. At worst, it seemed that they had been subject only to harassing fire at a distance from a handful of Taliban. It emerged that the driver of the lead vehicle had recognised Tillman, O’Neal and the Afghan soldier as 'friendlies’ and had yelled at his fellow soldiers to stop firing, but his shouts had gone unheard, or been ignored. Another soldier in the vehicle acknowledged that he too had seen 'arms waving’, but maintained that he did not think that they were trying to signal cease fire. 'Others were firing and I wanted to stay in the firefight,’ he said.

A third said he had seen two figures and just aimed where everyone else was shooting – apparently a clear breach of the US Army rules of engagement that require 'positive identification’ of a target before opening fire. To Mary this suggested not so much soldiers confused by the fog of war as driven by 'a lust to fight’. Official accounts suggested that the lead vehicle in Serial 2 was moving when the shots that killed Tillman were fired. But Specialist Bryan O’Neal, who had been beside Tillman when he died, explicitly stated that the vehicle 'stopped, re-engaged us, drove forward and re-engaged us again’.

'When you start reading things and they just don’t add up, it’s very disturbing,’ Mary says. 'You begin to think that anything is possible.’ In November 2004, as a result of pressure from Mary Tillman and Senator John McCain, the acting Army Secretary, Les Brownlee, ordered a further investigation into Tillman’s death. Conducted by a brigadier general, Gary M Jones, the report – made up of 2,100 pages of transcripts and detailed descriptions of the incident – concluded that the army had known almost immediately that Tillman had died of fratricide but maintained that there had been 'no reluctance’ to report the facts of the incident, and that any failure to immediately notify the family had been born of a desire to avoid giving them 'an inaccurate or incomplete picture’ before a full investigation.

The destruction of Tillman’s uniform, body armour and combat vest may have contributed to perceptions that 'the army was trying to hide that this was fratricide’, but 'nothing could be further from the truth’: the items were permeated with blood and posed 'a biological hazard’, and retaining the physical evidence 'could have had a significant negative impact on the morale of Cpl Tillman’s unit’. Among the most telling witnesses in the report were Capt Richard Scott, who had conducted the initial investigation within days of Tillman’s death. He told Jones that elements of his report had been excised, and that sworn statements given to him by soldiers on the ground had later been changed, 'to, I think, help some individuals’.

This had made it appear that Tillman had died in a single volley of gunfire in a matter of seconds, rather than in three separate bursts that had taken place over some minutes – a critical distinction in arguing that this was negligence rather than simply 'the fog of war’. But Scott’s observations were ignored in Jones’s final conclusions that repeated the story that Tillman had been shot from a vehicle travelling at a speed of '25-30mph’ and that the occupants 'had visibility of and directed fire at’ him 'for only 4-5 seconds’.

Brig Gen Jones further concluded that Lt Gen Kensinger, the senior army representative at the memorial service, was not aware of the possibility of fratricide until after the service was over. It would later emerge that this too was not the case. When Patrick Tillman Sr attended an army briefing in June 2004 about his son having died from friendly fire, his response took aback everybody who was present. 'Why then,’ he asked, 'did you give him a Silver Star?’ 'They said something like, “We gave him a Silver Star for attitude,” ’ Tillman Sr tells me. 'I have an uncle who got one in the Second World War, and I know what it takes to get one, and that just didn’t make any sense to me.’

Tillman Sr has the steely, no-nonsense manner of a man who does not take kindly to being lied to. 'They gave him a medal and he didn’t deserve it. And that’s no insult to Pat to say that. He didn’t need a decoration. He was an outstanding human being and an outstanding soldier.’ In April 2005, after Tillman Sr received his briefing from Brig Gen Jones and Jones’s report into his son’s death, he wrote Jones a scalding letter. Picking apart the assertion that the shooting had happened in '4-5 seconds’, Tillman Sr pointed to the evidence that his son had actually been fired on from at least two separate locations while the shooters were stationary.

He was hit first by machine-gun fire to his body armour, knocking him down. Two further rounds fired by another weapon took off the back of his head. Then a third – in army jargon – 'kill shot’ entered the top of his head as he fell. He and O’Neal were standing only 40 yards from the shooters – close enough for whoever had shot him to clearly identify him as a 'friendly’. This was no 'fog of war’. Turning to the cover-up, Tillman Sr went on that rather than fratricide having been 'suspected’, it was known instantly. Fourteen people had witnessed it, and a colonel had been at the scene within hours.

'Telling us the truth about how Pat died was the least you could do,’ Tillman Sr wrote to Jones. 'Every one of you have disregarded your duty, acting deliberately and shamelessly to kill my son and lie about it.’ He concluded his letter: 'In sum, ---- you… and yours.’ By now the Tillman case was becoming a national cause célèbre, avidly reported in the media, and pored over in the blogosphere. In March 2006 the Defence Department Inspector General’s office published its own inquiry into the army’s handling of the affair. This declared the killing of Tillman to be 'an accident’, but found that there had been 'critical errors’ in reporting his death that had led to 'inaccuracies, misunderstandings and perceptions of concealment’, but that there had been no cover-up.

At the same time, a report by the army’s Criminal Investigation Command concluded that there was no evidence that Tillman’s death was 'anything other than accidental’, and that the soldiers in Serial 2 who killed him had not committed the offences of negligent homicide or aggravated assault: 'Under extreme circumstances and in a very compressed time frame, the members of Serial 2 had a reasonable belief that death or harm was about to be inflicted on them and believed it was necessary to defend themselves.’ To Tillman Sr, the Inspector General’s report was just one more serving of 'the ration of crap’ that he believes the army has dished out since his son’s death.

'I will not assume that there was some mistake made, or some fog of war and that this was simply an unfortunate accident,’ he says. 'I won’t do it. The reports all say this was done improperly, or this was an oversight. It was just one screw-up after another. But if you start from the top and work your way down, it makes perfect sense: everything was done in accordance to plan. People don’t burn evidence; you don’t destroy a soldier’s diary, it’s just not done. Some very serious people were involved in falsifying several homicide investigations and issuing my son a Silver Star.

And when you look at some of the communications – [Brig Gen Yellen’s statement] “we handed you the steak…” – it’s painfully obvious this thing was choreographed.’ Just how far up the chain of command the alleged cover-up ran would finally become apparent in March 2007, when a confidential army memo was leaked to the Associated Press news agency. The memo had been sent by Major Gen Stanley McChrystal of Joint Special Operations Command to Gen Kensinger, Gen John Abizaid, the head of US Central Command, and Gen Bryan Douglas Brown, the head of the US Special Operations Command.

It was dated April 29 2004, the day before the army released the fictionalised account of Tillman’s death in the Silver Star citation – which had been approved by McChrystal himself. In the memo McChrystal warned that the army investigation then nearing completion would find it 'highly possible’ that Tillman was killed by friendly fire, and that 'Potus’ – the President of the United States, George Bush – should beware of any comments he might make 'about Corporal Tillman’s heroism and his approved Silver Star medal in speeches currently being prepared’.

'I felt that it was essential that you received this information as soon as we detected it,’ the memo went on, 'in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country’s leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public.’ In a speech two days later at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Bush commended Pat Tillman for feeling 'called to defend America’, but conspicuously avoided any mention whatsoever of the manner of his death. To Mary Tillman, the most incriminating word in McChrystal’s memo is the smallest. 'He says “if” the circumstances of Pat’s death become public, not “when”. Why would it say “if” if they weren’t trying to keep it quiet?’

 

[yellow people]

cont'd

Tillman’s parents believe that if the President knew, it seems inconceivable that his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, didn’t. Indeed, Tillman Sr believes that Rumsfeld would have known that his son had died of friendly fire 'within hours’. 'They were unbelievably prompt in destroying Pat’s things and in quarantining people,’ he says. 'They were Johnny-on-the-spot. That information went right up to somebody who had some serious authority, and by that I mean the authority to falsify this setting.’

In April 2007, largely as a consequence of Tillman Sr’s efforts, a Congressional inquiry was convened to examine whether the alleged cover-up over Tillman’s fratricide was a result of 'incompetence, miscommunication or a deliberate strategy’. In August Rumsfeld himself appeared in front of the Congressional committee, along with four, now retired, army generals – Abizaid, Brown, Kensinger and Richard B Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In a series of questions about how, when and where they had learnt of Tillman’s death and the fact that he had died from friendly fire, the phrase 'I can’t recall’, or some variation thereof, was used 82 times. Abizaid claimed that there had been a delay of '10-20 days’ before he had received the leaked memo of April 2004, because he was in Iraq, and that he found out about the 'suspected’ fratricide only 'some time between May 6-13’ when the memo finally caught up with him.

But Mary Tillman discovered a press release on the Department of Defence’s own website stating that on April 29 – the day the memo was sent – Abizaid was in fact in Afghanistan, talking to Tillman’s platoon leader, Lt Uthlaut. 'I asked him about Pat Tillman,’ the press release quoted Abizaid as saying. 'He said, “Pat Tillman was a great Ranger and a great soldier”, and what more can I say about him?’ 'The only reason he would have been there is because he knew Pat had been killed by friendly fire,’ Mary believes.

'And he went to find out what Uthlaut knew.’ She says she passed this information to the Congressional committee, but it was not raised when Abizaid was questioned. Rumsfeld – the man who had personally welcomed Tillman into the armed forces – claimed he could not 'recall precisely’ when or how he had learnt of Tillman’s death, and that he had learnt that it was from friendly fire 'probably around May 20’ – almost a month after the fatality.

When Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat congressman on the committee, suggested that Rumsfeld had 'covered up’ the Tillman matter Rumsfeld snapped back: 'That’s just false… You have not a scrap of evidence or a piece of paper or a witness that would attest to that. I have not been involved in any cover-up whatsoever.’ Kevin Tillman, who remained in the army through his three-year term, and who has always refused to discuss publicly his brother’s death, also testified before the committee.

In an impassioned and deeply moving address he spoke of the web of 'deliberate and calculated lies’ that the army had woven around Pat’s death, and the 'horrific’ attempt to 'hijack his virtue and his legacy’. 'The least this country can do for him in return is to discover who was responsible for his death, who lied and covered it up, who instigated these lies and benefited from them, then ensure that justice is meted out to the culpable.’ To Amir Bar-Lev, the director of The Tillman Story, one of the great tragedies of the saga is how the myth came to obscure the man.

Tillman, he says, 'was taken twice from his family, the first time by death, and the second time by the appropriation that happened, not just by the military but by the culture at large. The government tried to appropriate him as their hero but so did everyone else. The Californians can say he was a great Californian, the Arizonians can say he was a great Arizonian, the right can say he was a great warrior, and the left can say he was a great leftist. The irony is that at the same time as we lionised Pat we dismissed his wishes for privacy.

We were going to have him whether he and his family liked it or not.’
For Mary Tillman, what the army did to her son made a mockery of everything he went to war for – honesty, integrity, the defence of the truth. 'If you ask me if I trust our system now, the answer is I’m pretty disgusted by it. Unfortunately in our culture people survive more effectively through lies and deception and dishonourable behaviour than they do the reverse. And that’s very sad.’

The official inquiries into Pat Tillman’s death are now closed. At the end of it all a total of seven soldiers were disciplined; nobody was charged with 'negligent homicide’ or with perjury. In the years in which she was investigating what happened to her son, Mary gave up her job as a special-needs teacher. She now works for a Catholic organisation arranging funerals, a job she describes as 'very rewarding and humbling’. The Tillman family, she says, have 'moved on’. 'We can find joy in our lives again, but still not lose sight of the importance of getting at the truth, for Pat’s legacy, and for all the other soldiers and their families.

A lot of people don’t really understand the depth of what happened to Pat – “Oh, he’s not the only one to die of friendly fire.” But it has absolutely nothing to do with the friendly fire; it’s all the deceptions around it. That’s why the message of the film is so important.’ She pauses. 'Nothing is going to bring Pat back, but at the same time, because of the person he was, we had to go to the greatest lengths we could to do as much as we could. And I think he would nod his head and say, yes that’s a good thing.’

 

[yellow people]

Army 'lied about US football hero's death'


Army 'lied about US football hero's death'

By Martina Smit and agencies
Published: 12:01AM BST 24 Apr 2007

All-American hero Pat Tillman was shot dead in friendly fire

The brother of Pat Tillman, the American football star killed under friendly fire in Afghanistan, has accused the Pentagon of "deliberate" lies over how he died. With his explosive testimony before a Congress committee today, Kevin Tillman broke a three-year silence over his brother's death. His convoy was only a short distance from where Tillman was gunned down in what army chiefs first portrayed as an act of heroism.

"It was utter fiction," he said, accusing the military of "deliberate and careful misrepresentations." The shooting received worldwide attention because the young soldier had turned his back on a $3.7 million (£2 million) professional football contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the forces after the Sept 11 terror attacks.

The House committee on oversight and government reform today started a hearing into misinformation from the US military. They will also look into the 2003 rescue of private Jessica Lynch in Iraq - a story embellished by the military after her videotaped rescue by special forces.

The Pentagon initially said Tillman had been killed while storming an enemy post, and even posthumously awarded him the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. However, he had in fact been shot by members of his own platoon who, in the twilight, mistook him for the enemy after they had just escaped an ambush.

The army only told Tillman's family the truth five weeks after his memorial service had been shown on national television. "I was ordered not to tell them (the family)," testified Bryan O'Neal, the Army Ranger who was next to Tillman when he died. O'Neal said he was given the order by then-Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey, the battalion commander who oversaw their platoon.

"He basically just said, 'Do not let Kevin know, he's probably in a bad place knowing that his brother's dead."' He added that Bailey made clear he would "get in trouble" if he told. In the hours immediately after his brother's death, "crucial evidence was destroyed - including Pat's uniform, equipment and notebook," Kevin Tillman said.

"The autopsy was not done according to regulation and the field hospital report was falsified. "We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public. Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed."

The committee asked how high up the chain of command the information about Tillman's friendly fire death went. Tillman's mother Mary said she believed the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld must have known before the family. "The fact that he would have died by friendly fire and no one told Rumsfeld is ludicrous."

Still hampered by her injuries, Lynch walked slowly to the witness table and took a seat alongside Tillman's family members. "The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate tales," she said.

Two Pentagon officials who completed investigations into Tillman's death, General Thomas Gimble and General Rodney Johnson, are still due to testify. Dr Gene Bolles, the neurosurgeon who treated Ms Lynch in Germany after her rescue in Iraq, has been subpoenaed to appear as a witness.

 

[yellow people]

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[yellow people]

Trial urged for U.S. soldier accused of Afghan murders

By Bill Rigby SEATTLE | Thu Oct 7, 2010 3:34pm EDT

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A U.S. Army colonel has recommended the court-martial of the first of 12 American soldiers charged with murdering Afghan civilians for sport and other crimes, sources familiar with the case said on Thursday. The investigating officer who presided over last week's initial hearing in the case found sufficient evidence for Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock to stand trial on three counts of premeditated murder and other offenses for which he could face the death penalty, according to the sources.

The case has drawn intense media attention because Morlock and fellow soldiers are accused of taking ghoulish photos of corpses and keeping body parts as war trophies -- inflammatory charges that echo worldwide outrage at pictures of nude Iraqi prisoners of war taken by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The U.S. Army confirmed that the investigating officer's report was complete but declined to comment on its contents.

The report is now in the hands of a special court-martial convening authority, said Army spokeswoman Major Kathleen Turner at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, where Morlock's brigade is based, and where the so-called Article 32 hearing was held on September 27. For the military equivalent of a trial to be held, the recommendation must ultimately be affirmed by a general court-martial convening authority, a process that could take several weeks.

"We're still early in the process, and there has been no final decision on the disposition of the case yet," Turner said. It is still possible that Morlock could be spared a court-martial. "The court-martial convening authority could disagree with the investigating officer's recommendation, so until he or she waives a decision here, it's still open," said one military source familiar with the case, who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the matter.

Morlock, a corporal from Wasilla, Alaska, is the first of five infantrymen charged with murder in the investigation. Seven others are charged with less serious offenses. The case against all 12 stems from their recent deployment as part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, recently renamed the 2nd Stryker Brigade, in Kandahar province, a stronghold for Taliban insurgents.

Morlock's civilian lawyer, Michael Waddington, has said his client is innocent and that the case against him was based on thin evidence, including statements the corporal made while under the influence of prescription drugs he was taking for pain relief, stress and sleep problems. Pentagon officials, while stressing the charges have yet to be proven, acknowledged the nature of the allegations are damaging to America's image, and the image of the U.S. military in particular, around the world. A Pentagon spokesman said that the next Article 32 hearing in the case is set for October 19 for a soldier charged with conspiracy to commit murder of Afghan civilians.

(Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Laura Myers in Seattle; Editing by Vicki Allen)

 

[yellow people]

Afghan security contractor oversight poor


Afghan security contractor oversight poor: Senate report

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) answers reporters' questions during the 2009 Reuters Washington Summit in Washington in this October 19, 2009 file photo. Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

By David Alexander
WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 8, 2010 1:26am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Senate inquiry into private security contracting in Afghanistan concluded on Thursday that funds had sometimes been funneled to warlords who were linked to the Taliban, murder and kidnapping. The inquiry, by the Senate Armed Service Committee, found private security forces were often poorly trained and supervised by their companies and inadequately overseen by Defense Department contract managers.

"All too often our reliance on private security contractors in Afghanistan has empowered warlords, powerbrokers operating outside Afghan government control," Democratic Senator Carl Levin said in releasing the report. "There is significant evidence that some security contractors even worked against our coalition forces, creating the very threat they are hired to combat," he added. "These contractors threaten the security of our troops and risk the success of our mission."

Richard Fontaine, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said the committee report "fills out a picture many have already suspected -- that taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan at times end up in the hands of those we are fighting." "It is another wake-up call that the U.S. needs to take aggressive steps to get a better handle on contractors and subcontractors in Afghanistan," said Fontaine, who authored a June report on contracting. "Getting a better handle on who is doing what, with what money and where that money is going, should be priority number one," he said.

Some 26,000 private security personnel -- a large proportion of them Afghan nationals -- were operating in Afghanistan under U.S. Defense Department contracts as of May 2010, the report said, citing figures from the U.S. Central Command's Armed Contractor Oversight Directorate. Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree in August giving foreign security contractors four months to disband. The Interior Ministry said on Sunday it had moved to shut down eight firms, seizing 400 weapons.

SOURCE OF FRICTION

Private security firms in Afghanistan provide guards for everything from embassies and aid agencies to supply convoys and U.S. military bases. While providing vital services in the war-torn country, they have become a point of friction because of the involvement of some in high-profile shooting and other incidents.

The report documented one case, at the Shindand Airbase in Herat Province, where it said ArmorGroup North America was hired to provide security and used two competing warlords in the region to provide the men for the guard force. The report said that over the course of the contract at the base, warlords and guards involved were implicated in murder, revenge attacks, bribery and anti-coalition activities.

One of the warlords even hosted an August 2008 Taliban meeting that was raided by U.S. and Afghan forces, it added. Officials at ArmorGroup's parent company, Wackenhut Services, could not immediately be reached for comment. The report concluded that the proliferation of private security personnel in Afghanistan was inconsistent with the counterinsurgency strategy being pursued by U.S.-led NATO forces seeking to defeat the Taliban insurgency and stabilize the country.

U.S. officials have indicated it would be difficult to get rid of all security contractors quickly because of the essential role they fill. General David Petraeus, head of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said last month that Karzai was prepared to allow contractors to remain at fixed bases like the Kabul electrical generating station, as well as embassies and other infrastructure sites. But the convoy escort firms would be disbanded, he said.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)