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Afghan Taliban expands activities from restive south to peaceful northeast
by Abdul Haleem, Zhang Jianhua
KABUL, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants have expanded activities from the restive southern region to the peaceful northeast in a bid to divert security forces' attention and reduce pressure.
The insurgents had kidnapped nearly a dozen Afghan police in the northern Badakhshan province early this month and the troops set them free over the weekend, Afghan and NATO officials have confirmed.
"ISAF would also like to offer congratulations on behalf of all troops contributing nations of the coalition, on the successful rescue of 11 Afghan National Police personnel, who were kidnapped by insurgents in Aq Shir village of Wardooj district in Badakhshan province,"spokesman of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson told journalists on Monday.
He emphasized that 25 opposition fighters were detained during the operation led by Afghan security forces.
Badakhshan, some 315 km northeast of Afghan capital Kabul has been regarded as a peaceful province in the conflict-ridden Afghanistan.
Although, the Taliban insurgents fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces have conducted series of attacks in northern provinces in recent years including several deadly ones that had eliminated high ranking officials including police chief and provincial governor of Kunduz province, Badakhshan remained peaceful.
Nonetheless, the anti-government militants took many by surprise when they abducted 11 policemen early this month.
The insurgents laid ambush on police convoy, killing two police officers and injuring three others in Aq Shir village of Wardooj district on Dec. 5.
Zabihullah Mujahid who claims to speak for the Taliban outfit in talks with media claimed of responsibility, saying besides killing over a dozen police officers, the militants had also taken away several others.
Abdul Marour Rasikh, spokesman for Badakhshan's provincial administration, confirmed the clash and counter-operation carried out by Afghan security forces. "All the 11 policemen have been set free by security forces," Rasikh told Xinhua.
He added that four insurgents had been killed and 31 others captured during the operation wrapped up on Friday.
Badakhshan had remained out of Taliban control during the outfit's six year reign in the country's 90 percent territory before its collapse in late 2001.
Afghanistan soldiers killing Australians linked to insurgency: Defense Force
CANBERRA, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Australian troop commander in Afghanistan on Tuesday said Afghan soldiers who killed four Australian troops in separate attacks have been all linked to the insurgency.
Australia commanding officer of the Mentoring Task Force (MTF-3) in Uruzgan Province Lieutenant Colonel Chris Smith, said there was no connection between the three attacks, in which 10 other Australian soldiers were wounded.
"We don't fully understand the motives of all of those individuals but we have some hints," he was quoted by ABC News on Tuesday.
"It would appear that all three are unrelated and it would appear that they are insurgent related ... either directly or indirectly."
Smith reported that one of the individuals was found to have Taliban propaganda.
"We believe that plus some other indicators would suggest that he has come to dislike foreign intervention in Afghanistan. But we are not sure of what the reason is," he said.
He said insurgents helped another make his getaway, and the most important aspects they have learned from this incident was focusing intelligence resources on the Afghan National Army (ANA) to try and identify, through some indicators, individuals who might be likely to do something like this.
Earlier on May 30, an Afghan soldier shot dead Lance Corporal Andrew Jones, an army cook. He fled but was tracked to his home district and killed by US troops when he resisted arrest.
After the incident, on October 29, three Australian troops, Corporal Ashley Birt, 22, Lance Corporal Luke Gavin, 27, and Captain Bryce Duffy, 26, were killed and wounding seven others by an Afghan soldier who opened fire on a group of Australian soldiers at a patrol base in northern Kandahar province. He was immediately shot dead.
In the latest incident on November 8, an Afghan soldier shot and wounded three Australians troops and remained unfound. Defence force was therefore conducting investigations of these attacks.
Afghan Government Must Not Ignore Past Decade's Gains
TOLOnews.com Monday, 19 December 2011
Afghanistan should not sacrifice the gains made over the past decade by holding peace talks with Taliban, defenders of those gains warned on Monday.
Significant achievements since the Taliban regime fell in 2001 include more rights for women, freedom of speech and an active civil society.
Rights activists cautioned that opening an office for the Taliban outside the country will not be for the benefit of Afghanistan because it will legitimize the Taliban.
Peace negotiations with the Taliban seemed to have stalled after the assassination of High Peace Council chief Burhanudin Rabbani in September. But rumours that the Taliban were on the brink of opening an office in Qatar revived the possibility of talks.
"The Afghan government can in no way go beyond the Afghan Constitution in which civil rights and peace are firmly entrenched," Shukria Barikzai, head of the Defence Committee in the Afghan Parliament, said. "It should not allow other countries to open an office for the Taliban."
"The Afghan government should act according to its commitments to the Afghan people, the international community and the Afghan constitution," Nasrullah Stanikzai, a Kabul University professor, said.
Those not in favour of talking to the Taliban say that if those gains are ignored, the country will revert to a Taliban-style regime which is unacceptable for Afghans. They pointed to this spring's uprising in a number of Middle East countries where the people claimed their rights and freedoms by sacrificing themselves.
"We can't let the achievements earned by blood and sacrifice fall into the hands of those who want to deny those achievements and rights," the former Afghan Ambassador to Libya, Mohammad Natiqi, said. "We should never ignore our achievements like human rights, the Afghan constitution, democracy, civil society, a free media and women's rights by talking to the Taliban," he added.
Australia should defend asylum policy: UN refugee agency
by Vienna Ma
CANBERRA, Dec. 20 ( Xinhua) -- The United Nations' refugee agency said on Tuesday the deaths of asylum seekers on a boat near Indonesia reinforced the need for international solidarity on refugee policy.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said it is deeply saddened by the loss of life in the sinking. The UNHCR hopes to work with Indonesian authorities to register survivors as asylum seekers and determine if they could be given refugee status.
"The incident is a tragic reminder of the desperate and dangerous measures people will resort to when they are fleeing persecution in their home countries and seeking better protection and a brighter future," it said in a statement.
"This tragedy also reinforces the need for renewed international solidarity and cooperation to find protection options for people that would help reduce the need for these perilous journeys by boat."
Australian Federal Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the government had been concerned such loss of life was inevitable under the current asylum seeker policy impasse.
He said the government wants the opposition to support legislation amending the Migration Act to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to be sent to Malaysia for processing.
"We believe that in order to have a proper deterrent to stop people risking their lives at sea then you need to have a properly constructed regional offshore processing arrangement," Bowen told Sky News.
"We are seeing ... people smugglers having no regard for human life whatsoever and putting more people onto dangerous boats.
The Australian Greens' Immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson- Young said the best way to reduce the number of people using people smugglers was to beat their business model. It is reported that the asylum seekers paid up to 6,200 U.S. dollars each for their failed attempt to reach Australia.
She said increasing Australia's humanitarian intake and resettling more asylum seekers from camps in Indonesia and Malaysia was one of the measures to prevent similar tragedy while Labor government recently changed its party platform to aspire to lift Australia's refugee intake to 20,000 from 13,750. "What we can do is try to give people safer options," Hanson- Young said. "We should be offering more support to do that."
However, the opposition said the tragedy is linked to Labor government's decision to dismantle aspects of the coalition's border protection policy following the 2007 federal election.
Coalition senator Mitch Fifield said temporary protection visas were being abandoned as was an offshore processing center on Nauru.
"Sadly we have seen over 14,000 people come by boat courtesy of people smugglers and we have seen over 260 boats," Fifield told Sky News.
"This is a tragedy, but it is hard to get away from the fact that the uptake in the people-smuggler business happened after the current government changed their policies."
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said Labor refuses to acknowledge it is responsible for an asylum seeker policy that encourages people to get on boats.
"This government has processed no one offshore," he said.
"We made very clear to the government over many months why we believed the Malaysian policy was a failure," he said on ABC Television.
"It is incumbent upon the government to put a concrete proposal to the coalition so we can work together."
He claimed that there were no concrete proposal by the Labor government and he believed the coalition's policy to reopen an asylum seeker processing center on Nauru can be done under current law.
An asylum boat carrying more than 250 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, headed for Australia, sank and capsized in high seas earlier on Saturday.
Indonesian officials reported 49 people had been rescued. Some survivors were found on an island, 200 kilometers away from the site of the shipwreck, and were taken to hospital in the town of Puger to be treated for severe dehydration.
Obama and Afghanistan: Is it time for the UK to go its own way?
Key decisions on troop withdrawals are likely to wait until next May - when the Presidential election, rather than British interests, and likely to be paramount
Guardian.co.uk By Nick Hopkins Monday 19 December 2011
During questions in the House of Commons today, defence secretary Philip Hammond was asked (not for the first time) when the UK would announce how many British troops will withdraw from Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014.
And (not for the first time) Hammond said that this depended on the United States. The UK will show its hand once President Obama has made up his mind about the American withdrawal.
Obama is unlikely to do that before next May, when there is a conference in Chicago on the future of Afghanistan.
Two questions spring to mind: why are we waiting? And what benefit can we gain? The answers seem to be - nobody really knows, and not very much.
By next summer, the US will still have 68,000 troops left in Afghanistan. Most of them will have to be out by the end of 2014 to meet the time-table for transition - when the country's security will be entirely in the hands of local forces, and Nato's remaining troops will be in a non-combat role.
So Obama's decision is really about the speed of withdrawal over the next three years. He has many factors to consider, and it would seem far-fetched to assume British interests will be at the forefront of his thinking.
Or Afghanistan's interests for that matter.
Nato commanders already know what they want; they have told the President that they need to keep force levels at the same high level until the Autumn of 2013 - then end of that year's fighting season.
This, they argue, will give Nato one more full year of fighting the Taliban with a really substantial force, and allow the Afghan security forces another year to develop before shouldering the responsibility for themselves.
They don't want a drip drip withdrawal in 2013, they want a waterfall in 2014. Whether you agree with that strategy or not, there is no reason to wait until the middle of next year to decide. No reason, that is, unless you are fighting a presidential election.
By next May, Obama will have five months of campaigning left. A cynic might think - what better time to swerve around the advice of his generals and announce a crowd-pleasing withdrawal of troops before the end of the year?
Only President Obama gains from waiting until the middle of next year. In the meantime everyone else must make a variety of contingency plans and wait for the white smoke to rise from the White House chimney.
Nato's withdrawal looks like it is being dictated by an internal political drumbeat, not a military one, or one that asks the most important question - what is best for the future of Afghanistan?
The UK's position in all this is even more perplexing. At a meeting of the National Security Council last week, the Prime Minister was given various potential timetables for British withdrawal from Helmand but, as Hammond reiterated today, the UK will not make its move until Obama has made up his mind.
This is even more illogical when you think that, in some respects, the UK has already - unilaterally - made an important announcement.
In a speech at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank earlier this month, Hammond said that the UK would not backfill for the US Marines, 18,000 of whom could leave Helmand next year.
The US Marines have been in some of the most violent districts of Helmand, including Sangin. Who will look after these areas when they have gone? Not the Brits, says Hammond. He insists we will not step one inch out of our current area of operations.
"US commanders understand that. People in the White House and Pentagon understand that ... we could not have been clearer in making that point. We are not, and will not extend the area of operations."
Afghan forces will be expected to take the place of the Americans, whether they are ready or not. Other Nato countries may even have to send their troops to Helmand because the UK has drawn a line in the sand.
Right or wrong, the UK has set out its stall. We are already going it alone. Presumably Downing Street, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, are relying on this being reflected in America's plans for Helmand.
Put simply, Britain doesn't want to be left 'carrying the baby' when the Marines head home. But if the British declaration is supposed to 'inform' US thinking, then it would be better still if the UK went a step further and set out as soon as possible British plans for pulling out of Helmand.
It would give the British battlegroups a chance to plan properly, rather than on the hoof.
But we are not going to do that. We will wait on Uncle Sam. Or rather we will wait on Obama, as he keeps a weather eye on the polls over the next six months.
If the White House agreed with the military advice, Obama could announce a decision tomorrow. He took a bold decision once before, by surging 30,000 extra troops into the country two years ago.
But nobody is expecting him to be so bold again.
The mantra for Nato commanders is that the pull-out will be 'conditions based', but the conditions look like they are increasingly rooted in domestic US politics, and not in the security of Afghanistan.
Eight terrorists detained in western Afghan Herat province
Xinhua Dec. 19, 2011
HERAT, Afghanistan - Personnel of Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) have detained eight terrorists in different parts of western Herat province and recovered explosive materials, provincial department of NDS said on Monday.
"Eight terrorists have been detained by NDS during separate operations in Pashtun Zarghun, Guzara districts and Herat city over the past one week," Herat's NDS or intelligence agency said in a press release.
It said the detainees were loyal to Taliban insurgents and had planned to attack security forces and government officials in Herat city and surrounding areas in the province, some 640 km west of the capital city of Kabul.
"The captured terrorist had planned to carry out some five massive attacks on security forces and high-ranking officials in Herat but their vicious attacks have been thwarted by determined NDS workforce," it said, adding a handful of powerful explosives including suicide vests were found and seized by NDS.
The Taliban insurgents, who launched in May this year a rebel offensive against Afghan and NATO forces, have yet to make comments.
Herat city was among seven areas where Afghan security forces took security responsibilities from NATO forces in July this year, in the first part of a security transition process which will run to 2014 when Afghanistan will take over the full leadership of its own security duties from the United States and the NATO forces.
Killing the Cranes
The Christian Science Monitor By Steve Weinberg 19/12/2011
Probably no journalist understands the country known as Afghanistan better than Edward Girardet, who has written about events there for the Monitor and other publications since 1979. It is impossible to know from a distance whether Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and other American foreign-policy decisionmakers have read Girardet’s reportage carefully, superficially, or not at all. But if they have read it carefully, then their military and diplomatic maneuvering on behalf of the United States make even less sense than previously.
Girardet is no foreign-policy ideologue – just the opposite, in fact. However, given his up-close observation combined with his unparalleled network of sources, he could logically come to no other conclusion than this: Any foreign interloper in Afghanistan will never “win” anything lasting or meaningful, whatever the goal. It is not a conclusion he shares joyfully, having risked his physical health, mental stability, and very life for 32 years to share such depressing news.
The meaning of the book’s title, Killing the Cranes, will not be immediately clear to the uninitiated. Yet it says so much in just three words. They come from a conversation Girardet had in March 2004 with Masood Khalili, a former resistance fighter then serving as Afghanistan’s ambassador to India. Siberian cranes are large birds that honk loudly during flight. Every March, they fly from the southern wetlands of Afghanistan to western Siberia and the Russian Arctic. Year after year, starting in 1978, Khalili had watched friends and enemies die during warfare within Afghanistan’s rugged borders. Now, in 2004, he was wondering why no cranes had migrated yet so late in March. He gazed silently upward, then said to Girardet, “Have we even killed all the cranes?”
Girardet, like most authors, aspires to write definitive books. But he cannot do that with Afghanistan because, as he says, “there is nothing definitive about Afghanistan.” Historically and currently, Afghanistan still exists as an identifiable entity. It can be described as a land of deserts and mountains at the cusp of Central Asia (surrounded by present-day Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan), and the Indian subcontinent. But due to invasions against the amorphous ruling parties from within and outside national borders, stability in Afghanistan has been elusive, and life itself is more fraught than in most geographic locales. A centuries-old tradition of impressive hospitality to visitors has dissipated to a point where “basic humanity seems to have vanished,” as Girardet puts it in one of many, many haunting phrases.
Trying to understand such chaos is difficult for any of us – and even for the most skilled foreign correspondent. Yet Girardet is the most fair and accurate armchair guide a Westerner can consult. To ignore his accumulated wisdom is intellectually wasteful. Because the US government can be counted among the most recent invaders, up-to-date information is vital. Why was Bush – and why is Obama – so resistant to the fact that many, almost surely most, Afghans see Americans with weapons “as an unwelcome foreign occupation force”? Girardet’s book could lift the fog enveloping the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and Congressional policy decisions.
Part of the fog apparently derives from the failure of outsiders to understand that talking about Afghanistan in an undifferentiated manner is ludicrous. “I quickly grasped that every valley, district, province and region was distinct, with its own peculiar characteristics,” Girardet writes. “One could not assume that what one witnessed in one part of the country was the same as another.... All tribal, clan, and ethnic groups were different, so I made a point of traveling with diverse guerrilla factions throughout the southern, eastern, and northern parts of the country.”
As he travels through treacherous regions to gain accurate information, Girardet inserts himself into the narrative over and over, making the book into a war correspondent’s memoir as well as a third-person field report. He does so effectively, without apparent ego. “Killing the Cranes” deserves a large, thoughtful readership.
Perhaps if enough readers of influence pay attention, the Siberian cranes will return to fly peacefully in Afghan skies.
Steve Weinberg is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, author of eight nonfiction books, and an investigative reporter with 40 years’ experience.
Haqqani Says U.S. Job Was ‘Thankless Assignment’
Wall Street Journal By Tom Wright December 20, 2011
Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, will give testimony later Tuesday to a Pakistani commission that is looking in to the events surrounding the U.S. covert raid in May on Abbottabad, a garrison town where Navy SEALs located and killed Osama bin Laden.
Mr. Haqqani was ambassador at the time and was charged with dealing with U.S. officials after the raid and attempting to ensure the world did not think Pakistan’s state had been harboring bin Laden. (Mr. Haqqani last month was forced to step down as ambassador amid allegations he helped craft a memo asking for Washington’s help in neutering the political power of Pakistan’s armed forces, charges which he says are untrue.)
Excerpts from a copy of the written statement, which is scheduled to be heard by the commission at a meeting starting at 3.30 p.m. Indian time today, are below. It’s interesting reading, showing the pessimism of a senior Pakistani official caught between anti-Pakistan sentiment in the U.S. and anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan.
The job of ambassador is a “tough and thankless assignment,” Mr. Haqqani says in the statement. U.S. officials were “threatening in their tone” after the bin Laden raid. Attempts by Mr. Haqqani to improve relations with the U.S., meanwhile, were cast by nationalists at home, angered at the unilateral raid on Pakistani territory, as unpatriotic behavior, he writes.
Abbottabad Commission Testimony—Dec. 20.
I was serving as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States when the Abbottabad incident took place.
I was on my way to Islamabad via London and Dubai when the operation took place and I first found out about it upon landing at Heathrow airport in the early morning of May 2. I was instructed to immediately turn around, which I did, and returned to Washington by around 5 pm local time.
My instructions were to ensure that the U.S. government, Congress and media do not blame Pakistan’s government, armed forces or intelligence services for allowing Osama bin Laden’s presence in the country, as that would have been a violation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1267 and 1373.
I was also to protest the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by U.S. forces in conducting the operation and to point out how that violated the norms of international conduct between two sovereign countries.
Over the next few days, I faithfully and diligently carried out my instructions. I met with the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Deputy National Security Adviser of the President of the United States to register protest over violation of Pakistani sovereignty. Under my instructions, officers of the embassy met their respective counterpart officials in the U.S. government to do the same.
I also protested reports in the U.S. media, attributed to U.S. officials and members of Congress, that Pakistan was somehow complicit or responsible in bin Laden’s stay in Pakistan.
Cypher telegrams comprising record of these meetings were duly sent to the Foreign Office in Islamabad.
For their part, the U.S. officials were intransigent and even threatening in their tone, another fact that I informed Islamabad of in official communications. They were not only unwilling to apologize for violating Pakistani sovereignty but demanded that Pakistan cooperate in giving access to data and persons found from the house in Abbottabad where the raid was conducted. They also demanded the return of the wreckage of the stealth helicopter that had been damaged and left behind during the operation.
A few days later, the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency visited Islamabad for discussions with all branches of the government. During the same time, I was also asked to be present in Islamabad for consultations.
[Mr. Haqqani reproduces a statement by the United Nations Security Council welcoming the death of bin Laden.]
U.S. officials pointed to UNSC resolutions and this statement by the Security Council President to justify their unilateral action in Abbottabad in disregard of Pakistani sovereignty.
I may add that while in Pakistan, violation of our sovereignty was seen as the principal issue, in the U.S. everyone in and out of U.S. government was focused on Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.
As such, the task before the Pakistan embassy in Washington was to ensure that the negative mood in the U.S. does not result in aggressive sanctions or restrictions on Pakistan by the U.S. Congress.
Over the next several days, I appeared on numerous U.S. television and radio programs, addressed several think tanks and met with dozens of U.S. Congressmen and Senators to give them the Pakistani perspective and to defend our institutions of state against charges of violating U.N. resolutions and providing sanctuary to the Al-qaeda leader or turning a blind eye to his presence in the country.
At the same time, our embassy continued to relay the Pakistani sentiment about U.S. violating our sovereignty and conducting a stealth attack inside our territory.
The record of every meeting with U.S. officials, Congressmen, and Senators as well as details of my efforts and that of my team were duly sent to the Foreign Office in cypher telegrams or by Fax and the Commission may requisition the same.
[Mr. Haqqani goes on to refute charges the Pakistani embassy in Washington had overstepped its authority in issuing visas to U.S. officials during his tenure.]
Conclusion
The U.S. and Pakistan have a very difficult relationship that has been further complicated by the strong sentiments aroused by violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by the United States on May 2 as well as before and after.
Public opinion in Pakistan is strongly unfavorable towards the U.S. Similarly, a recent opinion poll shows that 55% of Americans deem Pakistan an enemy while only 7% see us as a friend. (26% did not consider Pakistan a friend or enemy and 12% did not have an opinion.)
Under such circumstances, anyone tasked with the job of representing Pakistan in the United States faces a tough and thankless assignment. Everything he/she says to win friends and influence people favorably in the U.S. plays into the hands of those agitating against the U.S. in Pakistan. The Pakistani representative is then cast as going against the wishes and sentiments of the Pakistani people.
On the other hand, the conduct of foreign policy and diplomacy cannot be based only on opinion and incorrect information repeated in the media.
In the aftermath of May 1-2, my embassy and I acted fully in accordance with my directions as received from the Foreign Ministry. The voluminous record of our correspondence with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should serve as evidence thereof.
You can follow Tom and India Real Time on Twitter @TomWrightAsia and @indiarealtime.
Overstretched U.S. drone pilots face stress risk
Reuters By Phil Stewart Mon Dec 19, 2011
WASHINGTON - Flying drone aircraft over Afghanistan from the comfort of a military base in the United States is much more stressful than it might seem, even for pilots spared the sacrifice of overseas deployment and separation from family and friends.
America's insatiable demand for drone technology is taking a heavy toll on Air Force crews, according to a six-month Air Force study, with just under a third of active duty pilots of drones like the Predator reporting symptoms of burnout and 17 percent showing signs of "clinical distress."
That's when stress starts undermining their performance at work and their family lives.
"Clinical distress takes it to a different level," said Dr. Wayne Chappelle, who co-authored the study. In comparison, about 28 percent of returning U.S. soldiers from Iraq were diagnosed with "clinical distress," the Air Force said.
The Air Force study also turned up a surprise for some top brass - the main source of stress for crews manning the Air Force's drone fleet wasn't firing Hellfire missiles or taking out targets on the battlefield.
Although a small number of pilots were seen at high risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, the biggest factor wearing down drone crews were things like long hours and inadequate staffing, which have pushed the Air Force's 350-odd drone pilots and the crews supporting them to their limits.
"We've kind of been in a surge mode with our remotely piloted aircraft since 2007 in terms of crew ratios that aren't as good as we would like them to be," said Lieutenant General Larry James, the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
In 2007, the Air Force was flying just 10 to 15 combat air patrols, known as CAPS in military-speak. That means that at any time there were up to 15 drones in the air peering down at different parts of world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
That compares to more than 60 CAPS at any given time the Air Force flew this past summer, a temporary surge which the Air Force rolled back to 57 to help relieve some of the stress, James said.
MORE EYES IN THE SKY
Although the United States formally ended the war in Iraq last week and is gradually drawing down in Afghanistan, that doesn't mean demand for drones will decline. Indeed, the opposite appears likely.
"As you lose eyes on the ground, you may want more eyes in the air," James said.
Although combat was not reported to be one of the main "stressers" for any of those surveyed, it had affected some drone crews - who witnessed, and maybe even participated in, some of the most grizzly aspects of war from afar.
The bulk of what drone crews do is surveillance, monitoring suspects or compounds. But they also sometimes take out targets.
That means pressing a button that can lead to someone's death half a world away, then ending your shift to meet family at, say, a child's soccer practice. The transition can be difficult for soldiers at places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.
"We try to select people who are well-adjusted. We select family people. People of good moral standing, background, integrity," said Lieutenant Colonel Kent McDonald, who was also involved with the study.
"And when they have to kill someone, and when they're involved with missions when they're observing people over long periods of time, and then they either kill them or see them killed, it does cause them to re-think aspects of their life and it can be bothersome."
Among the most alarming aspects of the study were the results of one particular category of drone crew - sensor operators for Global Hawk drones.
Thirty-four percent of them reported burnout and 25 percent showed clinical distress, the study found. But Air Force officials blamed this partly on experiences from actual combat in previous, manned missions.
"Unfortunately there were members from the Global Hawk center operator community who were deployed in another capacity and they did experience combat," McDonald said of the survey group. "There were a couple of members lost they were very close to."
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
by Abdul Haleem, Zhang Jianhua
KABUL, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants have expanded activities from the restive southern region to the peaceful northeast in a bid to divert security forces' attention and reduce pressure.
The insurgents had kidnapped nearly a dozen Afghan police in the northern Badakhshan province early this month and the troops set them free over the weekend, Afghan and NATO officials have confirmed.
"ISAF would also like to offer congratulations on behalf of all troops contributing nations of the coalition, on the successful rescue of 11 Afghan National Police personnel, who were kidnapped by insurgents in Aq Shir village of Wardooj district in Badakhshan province,"spokesman of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson told journalists on Monday.
He emphasized that 25 opposition fighters were detained during the operation led by Afghan security forces.
Badakhshan, some 315 km northeast of Afghan capital Kabul has been regarded as a peaceful province in the conflict-ridden Afghanistan.
Although, the Taliban insurgents fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces have conducted series of attacks in northern provinces in recent years including several deadly ones that had eliminated high ranking officials including police chief and provincial governor of Kunduz province, Badakhshan remained peaceful.
Nonetheless, the anti-government militants took many by surprise when they abducted 11 policemen early this month.
The insurgents laid ambush on police convoy, killing two police officers and injuring three others in Aq Shir village of Wardooj district on Dec. 5.
Zabihullah Mujahid who claims to speak for the Taliban outfit in talks with media claimed of responsibility, saying besides killing over a dozen police officers, the militants had also taken away several others.
Abdul Marour Rasikh, spokesman for Badakhshan's provincial administration, confirmed the clash and counter-operation carried out by Afghan security forces. "All the 11 policemen have been set free by security forces," Rasikh told Xinhua.
He added that four insurgents had been killed and 31 others captured during the operation wrapped up on Friday.
Badakhshan had remained out of Taliban control during the outfit's six year reign in the country's 90 percent territory before its collapse in late 2001.
Afghanistan soldiers killing Australians linked to insurgency: Defense Force
CANBERRA, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Australian troop commander in Afghanistan on Tuesday said Afghan soldiers who killed four Australian troops in separate attacks have been all linked to the insurgency.
Australia commanding officer of the Mentoring Task Force (MTF-3) in Uruzgan Province Lieutenant Colonel Chris Smith, said there was no connection between the three attacks, in which 10 other Australian soldiers were wounded.
"We don't fully understand the motives of all of those individuals but we have some hints," he was quoted by ABC News on Tuesday.
"It would appear that all three are unrelated and it would appear that they are insurgent related ... either directly or indirectly."
Smith reported that one of the individuals was found to have Taliban propaganda.
"We believe that plus some other indicators would suggest that he has come to dislike foreign intervention in Afghanistan. But we are not sure of what the reason is," he said.
He said insurgents helped another make his getaway, and the most important aspects they have learned from this incident was focusing intelligence resources on the Afghan National Army (ANA) to try and identify, through some indicators, individuals who might be likely to do something like this.
Earlier on May 30, an Afghan soldier shot dead Lance Corporal Andrew Jones, an army cook. He fled but was tracked to his home district and killed by US troops when he resisted arrest.
After the incident, on October 29, three Australian troops, Corporal Ashley Birt, 22, Lance Corporal Luke Gavin, 27, and Captain Bryce Duffy, 26, were killed and wounding seven others by an Afghan soldier who opened fire on a group of Australian soldiers at a patrol base in northern Kandahar province. He was immediately shot dead.
In the latest incident on November 8, an Afghan soldier shot and wounded three Australians troops and remained unfound. Defence force was therefore conducting investigations of these attacks.
Afghan Government Must Not Ignore Past Decade's Gains
TOLOnews.com Monday, 19 December 2011
Afghanistan should not sacrifice the gains made over the past decade by holding peace talks with Taliban, defenders of those gains warned on Monday.
Significant achievements since the Taliban regime fell in 2001 include more rights for women, freedom of speech and an active civil society.
Rights activists cautioned that opening an office for the Taliban outside the country will not be for the benefit of Afghanistan because it will legitimize the Taliban.
Peace negotiations with the Taliban seemed to have stalled after the assassination of High Peace Council chief Burhanudin Rabbani in September. But rumours that the Taliban were on the brink of opening an office in Qatar revived the possibility of talks.
"The Afghan government can in no way go beyond the Afghan Constitution in which civil rights and peace are firmly entrenched," Shukria Barikzai, head of the Defence Committee in the Afghan Parliament, said. "It should not allow other countries to open an office for the Taliban."
"The Afghan government should act according to its commitments to the Afghan people, the international community and the Afghan constitution," Nasrullah Stanikzai, a Kabul University professor, said.
Those not in favour of talking to the Taliban say that if those gains are ignored, the country will revert to a Taliban-style regime which is unacceptable for Afghans. They pointed to this spring's uprising in a number of Middle East countries where the people claimed their rights and freedoms by sacrificing themselves.
"We can't let the achievements earned by blood and sacrifice fall into the hands of those who want to deny those achievements and rights," the former Afghan Ambassador to Libya, Mohammad Natiqi, said. "We should never ignore our achievements like human rights, the Afghan constitution, democracy, civil society, a free media and women's rights by talking to the Taliban," he added.
Australia should defend asylum policy: UN refugee agency
by Vienna Ma
CANBERRA, Dec. 20 ( Xinhua) -- The United Nations' refugee agency said on Tuesday the deaths of asylum seekers on a boat near Indonesia reinforced the need for international solidarity on refugee policy.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said it is deeply saddened by the loss of life in the sinking. The UNHCR hopes to work with Indonesian authorities to register survivors as asylum seekers and determine if they could be given refugee status.
"The incident is a tragic reminder of the desperate and dangerous measures people will resort to when they are fleeing persecution in their home countries and seeking better protection and a brighter future," it said in a statement.
"This tragedy also reinforces the need for renewed international solidarity and cooperation to find protection options for people that would help reduce the need for these perilous journeys by boat."
Australian Federal Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the government had been concerned such loss of life was inevitable under the current asylum seeker policy impasse.
He said the government wants the opposition to support legislation amending the Migration Act to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to be sent to Malaysia for processing.
"We believe that in order to have a proper deterrent to stop people risking their lives at sea then you need to have a properly constructed regional offshore processing arrangement," Bowen told Sky News.
"We are seeing ... people smugglers having no regard for human life whatsoever and putting more people onto dangerous boats.
The Australian Greens' Immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson- Young said the best way to reduce the number of people using people smugglers was to beat their business model. It is reported that the asylum seekers paid up to 6,200 U.S. dollars each for their failed attempt to reach Australia.
She said increasing Australia's humanitarian intake and resettling more asylum seekers from camps in Indonesia and Malaysia was one of the measures to prevent similar tragedy while Labor government recently changed its party platform to aspire to lift Australia's refugee intake to 20,000 from 13,750. "What we can do is try to give people safer options," Hanson- Young said. "We should be offering more support to do that."
However, the opposition said the tragedy is linked to Labor government's decision to dismantle aspects of the coalition's border protection policy following the 2007 federal election.
Coalition senator Mitch Fifield said temporary protection visas were being abandoned as was an offshore processing center on Nauru.
"Sadly we have seen over 14,000 people come by boat courtesy of people smugglers and we have seen over 260 boats," Fifield told Sky News.
"This is a tragedy, but it is hard to get away from the fact that the uptake in the people-smuggler business happened after the current government changed their policies."
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said Labor refuses to acknowledge it is responsible for an asylum seeker policy that encourages people to get on boats.
"This government has processed no one offshore," he said.
"We made very clear to the government over many months why we believed the Malaysian policy was a failure," he said on ABC Television.
"It is incumbent upon the government to put a concrete proposal to the coalition so we can work together."
He claimed that there were no concrete proposal by the Labor government and he believed the coalition's policy to reopen an asylum seeker processing center on Nauru can be done under current law.
An asylum boat carrying more than 250 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, headed for Australia, sank and capsized in high seas earlier on Saturday.
Indonesian officials reported 49 people had been rescued. Some survivors were found on an island, 200 kilometers away from the site of the shipwreck, and were taken to hospital in the town of Puger to be treated for severe dehydration.
Obama and Afghanistan: Is it time for the UK to go its own way?
Key decisions on troop withdrawals are likely to wait until next May - when the Presidential election, rather than British interests, and likely to be paramount
Guardian.co.uk By Nick Hopkins Monday 19 December 2011
During questions in the House of Commons today, defence secretary Philip Hammond was asked (not for the first time) when the UK would announce how many British troops will withdraw from Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014.
And (not for the first time) Hammond said that this depended on the United States. The UK will show its hand once President Obama has made up his mind about the American withdrawal.
Obama is unlikely to do that before next May, when there is a conference in Chicago on the future of Afghanistan.
Two questions spring to mind: why are we waiting? And what benefit can we gain? The answers seem to be - nobody really knows, and not very much.
By next summer, the US will still have 68,000 troops left in Afghanistan. Most of them will have to be out by the end of 2014 to meet the time-table for transition - when the country's security will be entirely in the hands of local forces, and Nato's remaining troops will be in a non-combat role.
So Obama's decision is really about the speed of withdrawal over the next three years. He has many factors to consider, and it would seem far-fetched to assume British interests will be at the forefront of his thinking.
Or Afghanistan's interests for that matter.
Nato commanders already know what they want; they have told the President that they need to keep force levels at the same high level until the Autumn of 2013 - then end of that year's fighting season.
This, they argue, will give Nato one more full year of fighting the Taliban with a really substantial force, and allow the Afghan security forces another year to develop before shouldering the responsibility for themselves.
They don't want a drip drip withdrawal in 2013, they want a waterfall in 2014. Whether you agree with that strategy or not, there is no reason to wait until the middle of next year to decide. No reason, that is, unless you are fighting a presidential election.
By next May, Obama will have five months of campaigning left. A cynic might think - what better time to swerve around the advice of his generals and announce a crowd-pleasing withdrawal of troops before the end of the year?
Only President Obama gains from waiting until the middle of next year. In the meantime everyone else must make a variety of contingency plans and wait for the white smoke to rise from the White House chimney.
Nato's withdrawal looks like it is being dictated by an internal political drumbeat, not a military one, or one that asks the most important question - what is best for the future of Afghanistan?
The UK's position in all this is even more perplexing. At a meeting of the National Security Council last week, the Prime Minister was given various potential timetables for British withdrawal from Helmand but, as Hammond reiterated today, the UK will not make its move until Obama has made up his mind.
This is even more illogical when you think that, in some respects, the UK has already - unilaterally - made an important announcement.
In a speech at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank earlier this month, Hammond said that the UK would not backfill for the US Marines, 18,000 of whom could leave Helmand next year.
The US Marines have been in some of the most violent districts of Helmand, including Sangin. Who will look after these areas when they have gone? Not the Brits, says Hammond. He insists we will not step one inch out of our current area of operations.
"US commanders understand that. People in the White House and Pentagon understand that ... we could not have been clearer in making that point. We are not, and will not extend the area of operations."
Afghan forces will be expected to take the place of the Americans, whether they are ready or not. Other Nato countries may even have to send their troops to Helmand because the UK has drawn a line in the sand.
Right or wrong, the UK has set out its stall. We are already going it alone. Presumably Downing Street, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, are relying on this being reflected in America's plans for Helmand.
Put simply, Britain doesn't want to be left 'carrying the baby' when the Marines head home. But if the British declaration is supposed to 'inform' US thinking, then it would be better still if the UK went a step further and set out as soon as possible British plans for pulling out of Helmand.
It would give the British battlegroups a chance to plan properly, rather than on the hoof.
But we are not going to do that. We will wait on Uncle Sam. Or rather we will wait on Obama, as he keeps a weather eye on the polls over the next six months.
If the White House agreed with the military advice, Obama could announce a decision tomorrow. He took a bold decision once before, by surging 30,000 extra troops into the country two years ago.
But nobody is expecting him to be so bold again.
The mantra for Nato commanders is that the pull-out will be 'conditions based', but the conditions look like they are increasingly rooted in domestic US politics, and not in the security of Afghanistan.
Eight terrorists detained in western Afghan Herat province
Xinhua Dec. 19, 2011
HERAT, Afghanistan - Personnel of Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) have detained eight terrorists in different parts of western Herat province and recovered explosive materials, provincial department of NDS said on Monday.
"Eight terrorists have been detained by NDS during separate operations in Pashtun Zarghun, Guzara districts and Herat city over the past one week," Herat's NDS or intelligence agency said in a press release.
It said the detainees were loyal to Taliban insurgents and had planned to attack security forces and government officials in Herat city and surrounding areas in the province, some 640 km west of the capital city of Kabul.
"The captured terrorist had planned to carry out some five massive attacks on security forces and high-ranking officials in Herat but their vicious attacks have been thwarted by determined NDS workforce," it said, adding a handful of powerful explosives including suicide vests were found and seized by NDS.
The Taliban insurgents, who launched in May this year a rebel offensive against Afghan and NATO forces, have yet to make comments.
Herat city was among seven areas where Afghan security forces took security responsibilities from NATO forces in July this year, in the first part of a security transition process which will run to 2014 when Afghanistan will take over the full leadership of its own security duties from the United States and the NATO forces.
Killing the Cranes
The Christian Science Monitor By Steve Weinberg 19/12/2011
Probably no journalist understands the country known as Afghanistan better than Edward Girardet, who has written about events there for the Monitor and other publications since 1979. It is impossible to know from a distance whether Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and other American foreign-policy decisionmakers have read Girardet’s reportage carefully, superficially, or not at all. But if they have read it carefully, then their military and diplomatic maneuvering on behalf of the United States make even less sense than previously.
Girardet is no foreign-policy ideologue – just the opposite, in fact. However, given his up-close observation combined with his unparalleled network of sources, he could logically come to no other conclusion than this: Any foreign interloper in Afghanistan will never “win” anything lasting or meaningful, whatever the goal. It is not a conclusion he shares joyfully, having risked his physical health, mental stability, and very life for 32 years to share such depressing news.
The meaning of the book’s title, Killing the Cranes, will not be immediately clear to the uninitiated. Yet it says so much in just three words. They come from a conversation Girardet had in March 2004 with Masood Khalili, a former resistance fighter then serving as Afghanistan’s ambassador to India. Siberian cranes are large birds that honk loudly during flight. Every March, they fly from the southern wetlands of Afghanistan to western Siberia and the Russian Arctic. Year after year, starting in 1978, Khalili had watched friends and enemies die during warfare within Afghanistan’s rugged borders. Now, in 2004, he was wondering why no cranes had migrated yet so late in March. He gazed silently upward, then said to Girardet, “Have we even killed all the cranes?”
Girardet, like most authors, aspires to write definitive books. But he cannot do that with Afghanistan because, as he says, “there is nothing definitive about Afghanistan.” Historically and currently, Afghanistan still exists as an identifiable entity. It can be described as a land of deserts and mountains at the cusp of Central Asia (surrounded by present-day Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan), and the Indian subcontinent. But due to invasions against the amorphous ruling parties from within and outside national borders, stability in Afghanistan has been elusive, and life itself is more fraught than in most geographic locales. A centuries-old tradition of impressive hospitality to visitors has dissipated to a point where “basic humanity seems to have vanished,” as Girardet puts it in one of many, many haunting phrases.
Trying to understand such chaos is difficult for any of us – and even for the most skilled foreign correspondent. Yet Girardet is the most fair and accurate armchair guide a Westerner can consult. To ignore his accumulated wisdom is intellectually wasteful. Because the US government can be counted among the most recent invaders, up-to-date information is vital. Why was Bush – and why is Obama – so resistant to the fact that many, almost surely most, Afghans see Americans with weapons “as an unwelcome foreign occupation force”? Girardet’s book could lift the fog enveloping the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and Congressional policy decisions.
Part of the fog apparently derives from the failure of outsiders to understand that talking about Afghanistan in an undifferentiated manner is ludicrous. “I quickly grasped that every valley, district, province and region was distinct, with its own peculiar characteristics,” Girardet writes. “One could not assume that what one witnessed in one part of the country was the same as another.... All tribal, clan, and ethnic groups were different, so I made a point of traveling with diverse guerrilla factions throughout the southern, eastern, and northern parts of the country.”
As he travels through treacherous regions to gain accurate information, Girardet inserts himself into the narrative over and over, making the book into a war correspondent’s memoir as well as a third-person field report. He does so effectively, without apparent ego. “Killing the Cranes” deserves a large, thoughtful readership.
Perhaps if enough readers of influence pay attention, the Siberian cranes will return to fly peacefully in Afghan skies.
Steve Weinberg is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, author of eight nonfiction books, and an investigative reporter with 40 years’ experience.
Haqqani Says U.S. Job Was ‘Thankless Assignment’
Wall Street Journal By Tom Wright December 20, 2011
Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, will give testimony later Tuesday to a Pakistani commission that is looking in to the events surrounding the U.S. covert raid in May on Abbottabad, a garrison town where Navy SEALs located and killed Osama bin Laden.
Mr. Haqqani was ambassador at the time and was charged with dealing with U.S. officials after the raid and attempting to ensure the world did not think Pakistan’s state had been harboring bin Laden. (Mr. Haqqani last month was forced to step down as ambassador amid allegations he helped craft a memo asking for Washington’s help in neutering the political power of Pakistan’s armed forces, charges which he says are untrue.)
Excerpts from a copy of the written statement, which is scheduled to be heard by the commission at a meeting starting at 3.30 p.m. Indian time today, are below. It’s interesting reading, showing the pessimism of a senior Pakistani official caught between anti-Pakistan sentiment in the U.S. and anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan.
The job of ambassador is a “tough and thankless assignment,” Mr. Haqqani says in the statement. U.S. officials were “threatening in their tone” after the bin Laden raid. Attempts by Mr. Haqqani to improve relations with the U.S., meanwhile, were cast by nationalists at home, angered at the unilateral raid on Pakistani territory, as unpatriotic behavior, he writes.
Abbottabad Commission Testimony—Dec. 20.
I was serving as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States when the Abbottabad incident took place.
I was on my way to Islamabad via London and Dubai when the operation took place and I first found out about it upon landing at Heathrow airport in the early morning of May 2. I was instructed to immediately turn around, which I did, and returned to Washington by around 5 pm local time.
My instructions were to ensure that the U.S. government, Congress and media do not blame Pakistan’s government, armed forces or intelligence services for allowing Osama bin Laden’s presence in the country, as that would have been a violation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1267 and 1373.
I was also to protest the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by U.S. forces in conducting the operation and to point out how that violated the norms of international conduct between two sovereign countries.
Over the next few days, I faithfully and diligently carried out my instructions. I met with the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Deputy National Security Adviser of the President of the United States to register protest over violation of Pakistani sovereignty. Under my instructions, officers of the embassy met their respective counterpart officials in the U.S. government to do the same.
I also protested reports in the U.S. media, attributed to U.S. officials and members of Congress, that Pakistan was somehow complicit or responsible in bin Laden’s stay in Pakistan.
Cypher telegrams comprising record of these meetings were duly sent to the Foreign Office in Islamabad.
For their part, the U.S. officials were intransigent and even threatening in their tone, another fact that I informed Islamabad of in official communications. They were not only unwilling to apologize for violating Pakistani sovereignty but demanded that Pakistan cooperate in giving access to data and persons found from the house in Abbottabad where the raid was conducted. They also demanded the return of the wreckage of the stealth helicopter that had been damaged and left behind during the operation.
A few days later, the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency visited Islamabad for discussions with all branches of the government. During the same time, I was also asked to be present in Islamabad for consultations.
[Mr. Haqqani reproduces a statement by the United Nations Security Council welcoming the death of bin Laden.]
U.S. officials pointed to UNSC resolutions and this statement by the Security Council President to justify their unilateral action in Abbottabad in disregard of Pakistani sovereignty.
I may add that while in Pakistan, violation of our sovereignty was seen as the principal issue, in the U.S. everyone in and out of U.S. government was focused on Osama bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.
As such, the task before the Pakistan embassy in Washington was to ensure that the negative mood in the U.S. does not result in aggressive sanctions or restrictions on Pakistan by the U.S. Congress.
Over the next several days, I appeared on numerous U.S. television and radio programs, addressed several think tanks and met with dozens of U.S. Congressmen and Senators to give them the Pakistani perspective and to defend our institutions of state against charges of violating U.N. resolutions and providing sanctuary to the Al-qaeda leader or turning a blind eye to his presence in the country.
At the same time, our embassy continued to relay the Pakistani sentiment about U.S. violating our sovereignty and conducting a stealth attack inside our territory.
The record of every meeting with U.S. officials, Congressmen, and Senators as well as details of my efforts and that of my team were duly sent to the Foreign Office in cypher telegrams or by Fax and the Commission may requisition the same.
[Mr. Haqqani goes on to refute charges the Pakistani embassy in Washington had overstepped its authority in issuing visas to U.S. officials during his tenure.]
Conclusion
The U.S. and Pakistan have a very difficult relationship that has been further complicated by the strong sentiments aroused by violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by the United States on May 2 as well as before and after.
Public opinion in Pakistan is strongly unfavorable towards the U.S. Similarly, a recent opinion poll shows that 55% of Americans deem Pakistan an enemy while only 7% see us as a friend. (26% did not consider Pakistan a friend or enemy and 12% did not have an opinion.)
Under such circumstances, anyone tasked with the job of representing Pakistan in the United States faces a tough and thankless assignment. Everything he/she says to win friends and influence people favorably in the U.S. plays into the hands of those agitating against the U.S. in Pakistan. The Pakistani representative is then cast as going against the wishes and sentiments of the Pakistani people.
On the other hand, the conduct of foreign policy and diplomacy cannot be based only on opinion and incorrect information repeated in the media.
In the aftermath of May 1-2, my embassy and I acted fully in accordance with my directions as received from the Foreign Ministry. The voluminous record of our correspondence with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should serve as evidence thereof.
You can follow Tom and India Real Time on Twitter @TomWrightAsia and @indiarealtime.
Overstretched U.S. drone pilots face stress risk
Reuters By Phil Stewart Mon Dec 19, 2011
WASHINGTON - Flying drone aircraft over Afghanistan from the comfort of a military base in the United States is much more stressful than it might seem, even for pilots spared the sacrifice of overseas deployment and separation from family and friends.
America's insatiable demand for drone technology is taking a heavy toll on Air Force crews, according to a six-month Air Force study, with just under a third of active duty pilots of drones like the Predator reporting symptoms of burnout and 17 percent showing signs of "clinical distress."
That's when stress starts undermining their performance at work and their family lives.
"Clinical distress takes it to a different level," said Dr. Wayne Chappelle, who co-authored the study. In comparison, about 28 percent of returning U.S. soldiers from Iraq were diagnosed with "clinical distress," the Air Force said.
The Air Force study also turned up a surprise for some top brass - the main source of stress for crews manning the Air Force's drone fleet wasn't firing Hellfire missiles or taking out targets on the battlefield.
Although a small number of pilots were seen at high risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, the biggest factor wearing down drone crews were things like long hours and inadequate staffing, which have pushed the Air Force's 350-odd drone pilots and the crews supporting them to their limits.
"We've kind of been in a surge mode with our remotely piloted aircraft since 2007 in terms of crew ratios that aren't as good as we would like them to be," said Lieutenant General Larry James, the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
In 2007, the Air Force was flying just 10 to 15 combat air patrols, known as CAPS in military-speak. That means that at any time there were up to 15 drones in the air peering down at different parts of world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
That compares to more than 60 CAPS at any given time the Air Force flew this past summer, a temporary surge which the Air Force rolled back to 57 to help relieve some of the stress, James said.
MORE EYES IN THE SKY
Although the United States formally ended the war in Iraq last week and is gradually drawing down in Afghanistan, that doesn't mean demand for drones will decline. Indeed, the opposite appears likely.
"As you lose eyes on the ground, you may want more eyes in the air," James said.
Although combat was not reported to be one of the main "stressers" for any of those surveyed, it had affected some drone crews - who witnessed, and maybe even participated in, some of the most grizzly aspects of war from afar.
The bulk of what drone crews do is surveillance, monitoring suspects or compounds. But they also sometimes take out targets.
That means pressing a button that can lead to someone's death half a world away, then ending your shift to meet family at, say, a child's soccer practice. The transition can be difficult for soldiers at places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.
"We try to select people who are well-adjusted. We select family people. People of good moral standing, background, integrity," said Lieutenant Colonel Kent McDonald, who was also involved with the study.
"And when they have to kill someone, and when they're involved with missions when they're observing people over long periods of time, and then they either kill them or see them killed, it does cause them to re-think aspects of their life and it can be bothersome."
Among the most alarming aspects of the study were the results of one particular category of drone crew - sensor operators for Global Hawk drones.
Thirty-four percent of them reported burnout and 25 percent showed clinical distress, the study found. But Air Force officials blamed this partly on experiences from actual combat in previous, manned missions.
"Unfortunately there were members from the Global Hawk center operator community who were deployed in another capacity and they did experience combat," McDonald said of the survey group. "There were a couple of members lost they were very close to."
www.afghanistannewscenter.com