U.S. Deaths Rise in Afghanistan

June Is Deadliest Month for Troops as Country Sees Taliban Resurgence

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 2, 2008; A01

June was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the war there began in late 2001, as resilient and emboldened insurgents have stepped up attacks in an effort to gain control of the embattled country.

An American flag is folded in honor of Marine
Pfc. Dawid Pietrek, 24, of Bensenville, Ill.,
during his funeral at Arlington National
Cemetery. The Polish immigrant was one of
four Marines killed by a roadside bomb June 14
in Afghanistan's Farah province. Story, B3.
(By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)

Defense officials and Afghanistan experts said the toll of 28 U.S. combat deaths recorded last month demonstrates a new resurgence of the Taliban, the black-turbaned extremists who were driven from power by U.S. forces almost seven years ago. Taliban units and other insurgent fighters have reconstituted in the country's south and east, aided by easy passage from mountain redoubts in neighboring Pakistan's lawless tribal regions.

The officials and experts said the spike in troop deaths should not be the only measure of the growing conflict in Afghanistan, but they acknowledged that the Taliban's persistent attacks on military units and civilians have frustrated U.S. and international efforts to help the Afghan government secure the country.

"What it points to is that the opposition is becoming more effective," said Barnett R. Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University. "It is having a presence in more areas, being better organized, better financed and having a sustainable strategy. In all, their strategic situation has improved."

Violence in rural areas controlled by the Taliban and in eastern provinces along the border with Pakistan has increased in recent weeks as insurgents have begun using more makeshift bombs, borrowing a tactic honed by insurgents in Iraq. According to top U.S. commanders, the number of violent incidents has risen nearly 40 percent during the first half of 2008 compared with last year.

The grim total surpassed the 27 troop fatalities in Afghanistan in June 2005. But that total included the 16 troops killed on a single day in a helicopter crash.

The 28 U.S. troops were killed by roadside bombs, small-arms fire and rocket attacks and in unspecified combat operations. The total nearly equaled the 29 announced U.S. troop deaths last month in Iraq, where violence has abated in the wake of the buildup of U.S. forces that began last year.

There have been 533 U.S. combat deaths to date in Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes Afghanistan and other areas. About 32,000 American troops are stationed in Afghanistan, along with about 30,000 from other countries. The United States has 145,000 troops in Iraq, according to the Defense Department.

British troops also experienced one of their worst months for combat fatalities since the invasion of Afghanistan, with 13 killed in June.

Although the summer traditionally brings increased fighting in Afghanistan, where mountainous terrain becomes more passable, Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, have called the past month a particularly difficult time.

The department's first congressionally mandated report on Afghanistan last week predicted increased violence throughout 2008. U.S. and international forces are fighting both an entrenched Taliban and extremist groups, including al-Qaeda, that are using Pakistani tribal areas to recruit and train fighters before sending them across the border.

Defense officials point to the situation in Pakistan as a central problem. As the Pakistani government has reduced pressure on militants in largely ungoverned tribal areas, insurgents have increased their movement and attacks.

"That has proven to be particularly problematic lately," said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon's press secretary. As in Iraq, he added, "a military solution will not suffice. There has to be better governance, less corruption, more economic development and more vigilance paid to counternarcotics in order to ultimately bring peace and stability to Afghanistan."

Seth Jones, a Rand Corp. expert on Afghanistan, said some areas, such as Helmand province, have experienced an increase in violence because U.S. troops have moved into areas controlled by insurgents. In some rural areas, however, insurgents have moved in and are facing little or no government influence.

"As you track these numbers month by month, you do see peaks and valleys in levels of violence," Jones said. "It is not surprising to see peaks in the spring and summer. The biggest concern is the sheer levels of violence incrementally increasing since 2002. The biggest concern is that violence levels are higher than they ever have been."

Some experts, including those at the Pentagon, say that the war in Afghanistan will probably become more violent before it calms, meaning the next U.S. president could inherit an increasingly bloody conflict.

"A lot of it is psychological warfare, with the belief that what they have to do is stay in the game," said Marvin G. Weinbaum, an Afghanistan expert at the Middle East Institute. "They want to draw attention to themselves as a serious force, with the expectation that the international community is going to tire of this and is going to back off."

He added: "They don't expect to take over the country in the short term; they're playing for the longer term. What they have done recently is to accelerate the strategy."

In Courts, Afghanistan Air Base May Become Next Guantanamo

By Del Quentin Wilber

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 29, 2008; Page A14

Jawed Ahmad, a driver and assistant for reporters of a Canadian television network in Afghanistan, knew the roads to avoid, how to get interviews and which stories to pitch. Reporters trusted him, his bosses say.

Then, one day about seven months ago, the 22-year-old CTV News contractor vanished. Weeks later, reporters would learn from Ahmad's family that he had been arrested by U.S. troops, locked up in the U.S. military prison at Bagram air base and accused of being an enemy combatant.

Lawyers representing Ahmad filed a federal lawsuit early this month challenging his detention on grounds similar to those cited in successful lawsuits on behalf of captives at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The lawyers are hoping to turn Ahmad's case and a handful of others into the next legal battleground over the rights of terrorism suspects apprehended on foreign soil. More lawsuits are expected on behalf of Bagram detainees in coming months, the lawyers said.

The lawsuits seek the right of habeas corpus for the detainees. Habeas corpus is a centuries-old legal doctrine that gives people taken into custody the right to challenge their detention before a judge.

Although legal experts expressed uncertainty about the potential for success, the detainees' lawyers say they are optimistic. They note the Supreme Court's decision two weeks ago that granted detainees at Guantanamo Bay the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.

"They stopped sending people to Guantanamo and are sending them to Bagram instead," said Barbara J. Olshansky, who represents Ahmad and is the legal director of the International Justice Network, a nonprofit organization that provides legal support to detainees. "In some ways, we have a stronger case than Guantanamo."

The U.S. military referred questions about the habeas corpus petitions to the Justice Department and declined to confirm whether any of those who filed suits are being held at Bagram. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, saying lawyers are reviewing the Supreme Court's June 12 decision in Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. U.S.

In legal filings, however, the Justice Department has fiercely fought the Bagram suits, arguing that "Bagram airfield is in the zone of war" and not in a peaceful locale such as Guantanamo.

"To provide alien enemy combatants captured at the battlefield and detained in a theater of war the privilege of access to our civil courts is unthinkable both legally and practically," the government argued.

Human rights groups and activists have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. military prison at Bagram, about 40 miles north of Kabul. The prison has grown steadily over the years and has about 600 detainees, military officials said. The military is planning to spend $60 million to build a new, larger facility that would house the same number of captives but could accommodate as many as 1,000.

Some of the Bagram prisoners have been there since 2002, activists said. Although the vast majority were picked up in Afghanistan, activists and lawyers say at least a few were arrested in other countries.

"It provides a convenient place to hold people who you might not want the world to know you are holding," said Tina Monshipour Foster, a lawyer who represents Bagram detainees.

Military officials would not say whether people arrested in other countries are housed at Bagram. But they said they regularly review each detainee's status, release those who are no longer thought to be combatants and turn others over to Afghan authorities.

Haji Wazir, whose federal lawsuit was filed in 2006, has been held as an enemy combatant since 2002, according to lawyers and human rights activists. But he "is not a commander, not a member of the Taliban or al-Qaeda," said Lal Gul, chairman of the Afghan Human Rights Organization. "He is a businessman."

Gul also complained about the arrest of Ahmad, whose bosses say they are frustrated that he has not had his day in court.

"We have been told nothing about him," said Robert Hurst, president of CTV News, who spent several days with Ahmad in 2006 while visiting Afghanistan. "When we ask, we are told we don't have the right to even ask that question. . . . Our reporters felt very secure around him. He is an excellent young journalist."

Legal experts say they are not sure how the courts will treat the lawsuits. The Supreme Court's majority opinion in the Guantanamo cases, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, focused only on detainees held at the naval base in Cuba. In it, Kennedy took pains to examine the particular circumstances surrounding the detentions, according to David Cole, a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Among the factors that tilted the ruling in favor of the detainees: The government had complete control over Guantanamo, the detainees had been held for years without trial, and the prison was not near a battlefield.

Lawyers may be successful in applying similar tests to those being held elsewhere, Cole said.

"Bagram will be the next battleground," he said. "Kennedy's decision in Boumediene leaves open the question as to what other places the writ of habeas corpus extends."

Other legal scholars said they think the courts will be reluctant to grant Bagram detainees such hearings, because the prison is in an area that the U.S. military considers a war zone.

Kennedy alluded to that issue when he wrote that "if the detention facility were located in an active theater of war, arguments that issuing the writ would be 'impracticable or anomalous' would have more weight."

"It seems unlikely that the conditions there are comparable to the conditions" at Guantanamo Bay, said Jonathan Siegel, a law professor at George Washington University.

But Siegel added that Kennedy and other justices "expressed impatience with the notion that the United States can hold people indefinitely without charge."

AT LAST, SOME TRUTH ABOUT IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

By Eric Margolis

PARIS - After a sea of lies and a tsunami of propaganda, the ugly truth behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally emerged into full view this week.

Four major western oil companies, Exxon, Mobil, Shell, BP and Total, are about to sign US-brokered no-bid contracts with the US-installed Baghdad regime to begin exploiting Iraq’s oil fields. Saddam Hussein had kicked these firms out three decades ago when he nationalized Iraq’s foreign-owned oil industry for the benefit of Iraq’s national development. The Baghdad regime is turning back the clock.

This agreement comes as talks are continuing between the Washington and its Baghdad client regime over future US basing rights in Iraq. After some face-saving Iraqi objections, it is expected that Baghdad will sign a compact with Washington giving US forces control of Iraq and its air space in a manner very similar to Great Britain’s colonial arrangement with Iraq.

Interestingly, the same oil companies that used to exploit Iraq when it was a British colony are now returning. As former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted, the Iraq war was all about oil. VP Dick Cheney stated in 2003 that the invasion of Iraq was about oil, and for the sake of Israel.

Meanwhile, according to Pakistani and Indian sources, Afghanistan just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1680 km long pipeline project expected to cost $ 8 billion. If completed, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) will export gas and, later, oil from the Caspian Basin to Pakistan’s coast where tankers will transport it to the west.

The Caspian Basin located under the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakkstan, holds an estimated 300 trillion cubic feet of gas and 100-200 billion barrels of oil. Securing the world’s last remaining known energy Eldorado is strategic priority for the western powers. China can only look on with envy.

But there are only two practical ways to get gas and oil out of land-locked Central Asia to the sea: through Iran, or through Afghanistan to Pakistan. For Washington, Iran is tabu. That leaves Pakistan, but to get there, the planned pipeline must cross western Afghanistan, including the cities of Herat and Kandahar.

In 1998, the Afghan anti-Communist movement Taliban and a western oil consortium led by the US firm Unocal signed a major pipeline deal. Unocal lavished money and attention on Taliban, flew a senior delegation to Texas, and also hired an minor Afghan official, one Hamid Karzai.

Enter Osama bin Laden. He advised the unworldly Taliban leaders to reject the US deal and got them to accept a better offer from an Argentine consortium, Bridas. Washington was furious and, according to some accounts, threatened Taliban with war.

In early 2001, six or seven months before 9/11, Washington made the decision to invade Afghanistan, overthrow Taliban, and install a client regime that would build the energy pipelines. But Washington still kept up sending money to Taliban until four months before 9/11 in an effort to keep it `on side’ for possible use in a war or strikes against Iran.

The 9/11 attacks, about which Taliban knew nothing, supplied the pretext to invade Afghanistan. The initial US operation had the legitimate objective of wiping out Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida. But after its 300 members fled to Pakistan, the US stayed on, built bases – which just happened to be adjacent to the planned pipeline route – and installed former Unocal `consultant’ Hamid Karzai as leader.

Washington disguised its energy geopolitics by claiming the Afghan occupation was to fight `Islamic terrorism,’ liberate women, build schools, and promote democracy. Ironically, the Soviets made exactly the same claims when they occupied Afghanistan from 1979-1989. The cover story for Iraq was weapons of mass destruction, Saddam’s supposed links to 9/11, and promoting democracy.

Work will begin on the TAPI once Taliban forces are cleared from the pipeline route by US, Canadian and NATO forces. As American analyst Kevin Phillips writes, the US military and its allies have become an `energy protection force.’
From Washington’s viewpoint, the TAPI deal has the added benefit of scuttling another proposed pipeline project that would have delivered Iranian gas and oil to Pakistan and India.

India’s energy needs are expected to triple over the next decade to 8 billion barrels of oil and 80 million cubic meters of gas daily. Delhi, which has its own designs on Afghanistan and has been stirring the pot there, is cock-a-hoop over the new pipeline plan. Russia, by contrast, is grumpy, having hoped to monopolize Central Asian energy exports.

Energy is more important than blood in our modern world. The US is a great power with massive energy needs. Domination of oil is a pillar of America’s world power. Afghanistan and Iraq are all about control of oil.

AFGHANISTAN: Top UN official highlights plight of children

Photo: Sayed Sarwar Amani/IRIN

An Afghan boy in police uniform
in Kandahar province in November 2007

KABUL, 3 July 2008 (IRIN) - Nowhere in the world are children suffering as much as in Afghanistan, a top UN official has said.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, told reporters in Kabul on 3 July that during her six-day visit to Afghanistan she had found that “it takes an Afghan child a very long time to smile.” The conflict had killed, maimed and affected an increasing number of children, she said.

Coomaraswamy did not give any specific figures but said the number of children exploited by anti-government forces for military purposes had increased over the past few months. Children had also been used as “suicide attackers” by the Taliban, she said.

“This is a terrible situation… we urge all parties to the conflict, especially anti-government forces, to take measures to prevent the use of children in conflict.”
Children were also being recruited into the Afghan National Police and pro-government militias, where they were vulnerable to sexual abuse, Coomaraswamy said. “This is illegal and should be eradicated.”

Photo: Hazrat Bahar/IRIN

A child killed in aerial strikes by international forces in Khost
Province, southeastern Afghanistan, in June 2008. Conflict
has killed and maimed an increasing number of children in Afghanistan

“Easy targets”

According to the UN, children have been detained by all the warring parties, but no one knows exactly how many children are being held in detention centres - even those run by US forces and the government.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said children were often at even greater risk than those directly involved in the conflict.

“Children are easy targets… They are especially vulnerable to two insurgent techniques utilised in Iraq and then in Afghanistan: suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices, also called roadside bombs,” the UNICEF Child Alert Report 2007 stated.

Afghan children have also been killed, wounded, displaced and traumatised by the “intensive use of air power” by international forces, the report said.

Attacks on schools

Over six million students are now enrolled at schools, with almost 40 percent of them girls, according to the Ministry of Education. However, an increasing number of attacks on schools by gunmen associated with Taliban insurgents and other anti-government elements have seriously threatened educational progress.

There have been 311 confirmed attacks on schools in the past 18 months, resulting in 84 deaths and 115 injuries (to schoolchildren, teachers and other school employees). Hundreds of schools in insecure areas have had to close, UNICEF reported.

Insecurity, conservative attitudes and poverty have denied education to over two million school-age children, mainly in the volatile south and southeastern provinces, aid agencies said.

Photo: Akmal Dawi/IRIN

Radhika Coomaraswamy (centre), Special Representative of
the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict,
during a press conference on 3 July in Kabul

New task force

UN officials in Kabul said a comprehensive report on the plight of Afghan children affected by the conflict would be submitted to the UN Security Council in October 2008.

Coomaraswamy said the aim of her visit to Afghanistan was to set up a task force to manage a Monitoring and Report Mechanism (MRM) to report to the Security Council on the “six grave violations” concerning children and armed conflicts - “the killing or maiming of children; recruitment or use of children as soldiers; rape and other grave sexual abuse of children; abduction of children; attacks against schools or hospitals; denial of humanitarian access for children”.

The MRM task force will be headed by the UN but will also include non-governmental organisations and the government, Coomaraswamy said.

Over half of Afghanistan’s estimated 26.6 million people - about 13.9 million - are under 18, and almost six million are under five, according to UNICEF.

Afghanistan also has the second highest infant mortality rate in the world, after Sierra Leone, with 165 deaths per every 1,000 live births, UNICEF reported in June.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHCR) said in a report in April that in a survey involving interviews with 2,250 children, over 42 percent said they did not have access to basic health services.

Afghan civilian deaths up 60 per cent

STEPHEN GRAHAM

Associated Press

June 29, 2008 at 12:56 PM EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan — The number of civilians killed in fighting between insurgents and security forces in Afghanistan has soared by two-thirds in the first half of this year, to almost 700 people, a senior UN official said Sunday.

The figures are a grim reminder of how the nearly seven-year war has failed to stabilize the country and suggest that ordinary civilians are bearing a heavy toll, particularly from stepped-up militant attacks.

John Holmes, the world body's humanitarian affairs chief, said the insecurity was making it increasingly difficult to deliver emergency aid to poor Afghans hit by the global food crisis.

“The humanitarian situation is clearly affected and made worse by the ongoing conflict in different parts of the country,” Mr. Holmes told reporters in Kabul during a multi-day visit.

Enlarge Image

An alleged suicide car is seen on fire
after a suicide attack on U.S. troops
in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 13.
The blast killed at least six Afghan
civilians and wounded up to 20 others,
officials said. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

“Most of those casualties are caused by the insurgents, who seem to have no regard for civilian life, but there are also still significant numbers caused by the international military forces,” he said.

Mr. Holmes said UN figures show that 698 civilians have died as a result of the fighting in the first half of this year. That compares to 430 in the first six months of 2007, a rise of 62 per cent.

Militants caused 422 of the recorded civilian casualties, while government or foreign troops killed 255 people, according to the U.N. numbers. The cause of 21 other deaths was unclear.

Mr. Holmes said the proportion of civilian casualties caused by security forces had dropped from nearly half last year and that clashes had become less dangerous to ordinary Afghans.

“It is clear that the international military forces are making every effort to minimize civilian casualties and recognize the damage this does and want to deal with that,” he said.

“Nevertheless these problems are still there and we need to deal with them and make sure that the safety of civilians comes first and international humanitarian law is respected by everybody.”

NATO's reaction to the UN figures was cool.

“The UN Human Rights rapporteur made an accusation (in May) that we had killed 200, and I said then that those numbers were far, far higher than we would recognize, and that is still the case,” said Mark Laity, a spokesman for the alliance in Kabul.

Mr. Laity provided no alternative figures.

Afghan leaders including President Hamid Karzai have accused NATO and the U.S.-led coalition of recklessly endangering civilians by using excessive force, including air strikes, in residential areas.

Foreign commanders insist they take all reasonable precautions to avoid killing innocents and say militants routinely fire on them from houses and flee into villages.

Mr. Holmes said he came to Afghanistan because the humanitarian situation was “serious and is getting worse.”

Drought in parts of northern and western Afghanistan has exacerbated food shortages caused by rising global prices for staples such as wheat and rice.

Mr. Holmes said the UN was providing food aid to 2.5 million people but would soon join the government in appealing to international donors for more funds to expand the program.

He said UN agencies and aid groups were finding it hard to reach vulnerable communities because of the risk that its staff would be attacked. He said the world body would try to negotiate “days of tranquility or humanitarian corridors” with militants so that aid could get through safely.

UN food convoys have suffered 11 armed attacks this year, including one on Sunday in which several trucks were burned, and lost a total of 340 tons of food, he said.

Fired Kandahar police chief says Canadians let him down

GRAEME SMITH

From Friday's Globe and Mail

July 3, 2008 at 7:06 PM EDT

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Stripped of his uniform and placed under investigation after last month's spectacular jailbreak, Kandahar's former police chief lashed out Thursday at what he described as Canada's failure to help capture the hundreds of prisoners who escaped the shattered prison.

Sayed Agha Saqib, dining on a lavish meal of lamb and chicken at his home in Kandahar city last night, asked why Canadian soldiers did not chase the fugitives running away from Sarpoza prison on June 13.

“My police didn't have modern weapons, and they didn't have night-vision goggles,” Mr. Saqib said. “So why did you want us to go into those fields? It was the responsibility of NATO and the ANA [Afghan National Army].”

A Canadian commander has said it was not his troops' responsibility to round up the confused mix of Taliban and criminals who straggled through the fields south of the prison in the hours after the jailbreak. The Canadians gave information about the fugitives' location to Mr. Saqib that night, saying it was a police matter.

Sayed Agha Saqib, former chief of police of Kandahar

When daylight broke the next morning, Mr. Saqib said, his police searched the area near the prison but found no escapers.

Afghan commandos also landed helicopters near a cluster of villages roughly 15 kilometres south of Sarpoza later in the day and conducted a sweep. But only three of about 400 Taliban suspects have been recaptured, two weeks after the jailbreak.

More broadly, Mr. Saqib described the prison break as a military failure in the districts around Kandahar city. The raiding party of insurgents, which he estimated at 100 to 200 fighters, should never have been allowed to reach the city limits, he said.

“Who came to release the prisoners?” he asked. “It was the Taliban. What is NATO doing here in Afghanistan? They are fighting the Taliban. So why didn't NATO and the ANA keep the Taliban away from the city?”

Looking tired and wearing a few days grey stubble, the former career officer said he's finished with police work. Mr. Saqib said his government has “victimized” him and left him hunting for a job, unlike his predecessor, who was shuffled off to a less-prominent posting last year. His best option might be opening a private business in his home city of Jalalabad, he said.

He also remains under investigation for his role in the jailbreak, along with two other senior security officials in Kandahar who were fired last week. A fourth official, prison warden Colonel Abdul Qadir, has been arrested.

Mr. Saqib said the warden has strong links with tribal and political figures, and will likely escape prosecution.

“He will use his connections and get free,” he said.

The former police chief blames Col. Qadir for slowing his response to the jailbreak. The first explosion was so loud that Mr. Saqib initially thought it was a bombing in the centre of the city, and he climbed to the roof of police headquarters to see whether any fires were burning nearby. He saw nothing but started getting reports from his outposts of a blast on the western edge of the city, near the jail.

He immediately phoned Col. Qadir to ask about the situation, he said, but the warden told him he'd checked with the prison guards and everything was fine. Insurgents had attacked a fuel tanker on the highway near the jail, the warden told the police chief, but the prison was not damaged.

“This was all part of a premeditated plan,” the former chief says, hinting darkly at others officials' deals with the insurgents while denying any complicity himself.

He paused to wash his hands after the evening meal, and talked about how such disasters might be avoided in future. The Afghan police need training, equipment and mentoring of the kind received by the national army, he said.

He recommended rotating police units from dangerous areas to safer districts in the same way that Afghan army soldiers are moved around the country, and paying a premium for serving in combat zones.

The foreign troops must also stop relying on local militias for security, he added. Irregular forces and untrained local police are often tolerated as a stop-gap measure in places where the uniformed police aren't strong enough to maintain security by themselves, but Mr. Saqib said they undermine the police organization.

“If the police have family in the village and the Taliban come from the same village, what can the police do? They know where you live.”