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Afghan probe team finds multiple soldiers behind Kandahar killings
KABUL, March 18 (Xinhua) -- More than a dozen U.S. soldiers had reportedly been involved in the Kandahar killing of 16 civilians, a local newspaper reported on Sunday, citing members of the Afghan parliament who were part of an investigation to probe the incident.
"The delegation sent to Kandahar by the Afghan House of Representatives (Lower House of Parliament) reported on Saturday that two groups of (American) soldiers totaling 15 to 20 troops carried out the planned attack with air support," Daily Outlook Afghanistan reported.
The incident described by many Afghans as "carnage" happened on March 11 when a rogue U.S. soldier came out of his base in Panjwai district and entered a few houses nearby, opened indiscriminate fire leaving 16 people dead including three women and nine children and nine others injured.
However, a U.S. investigation has repeatedly maintained that only one soldier has committed the killing who had been detained.
Despite Afghans' strong demand that the suspect be tried publicly in the country, the U.S. military transferred the accused soldier, who has been identified as Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, to the United States.
The report, citing a parliamentarian, Mohammad Naeem Lali Hamidzai, said that before the civilians being killed by American soldiers, two women had been sexually assaulted.
The Afghan government has yet to release the findings of a team who were assigned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate into the killings.
The incident further strained the relationship between Washington and Kabul, which has already been clouded by other recent incidents including the burning of Quran at a U.S. base in Afghanistan and reports of U.S. service members urinating on the corpses of Taliban soldiers.
Money, career woes plagued Afghan killings suspect
By DAN SEWELL and DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP | Associated Press
LAKE TAPPS, Wash. (AP) — A diverging portrait of the Army sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers is emerging as records and interviews show a man appreciated by friends and family who won military commendations, yet one who faced professional disappointment, financial trouble and brushes with the law.
The deeper picture included details on how Robert Bales was bypassed for promotion, struggled to pay for his house and eyed a way out of his job at a Washington state military base months before he was accused of the horrific nighttime slaughter in two Afghanistan villages.
While Bales, 38, sat in an isolated cell at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.'s military prison Saturday, classmates and neighbors from suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, remembered him as a "happy-go-lucky" high school football player who took care of a special needs child and watched out for troublemakers in the neighborhood.
But court records and interviews show that the 10-year veteran — with a string of commendations for good conduct after four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan — had joined the Army after a Florida investment job went sour, had a Seattle-area home condemned, struggled to make payments on another and failed to get a promotion or a transfer a year ago.
His legal troubles included charges that he assaulted a girlfriend and, in a hit-and run accident, ran bleeding in military clothes into the woods, court records show. He told police he fell asleep at the wheel and paid a fine to get the charges dismissed, the records show.
Military officials say that after drinking on a southern Afghanistan base, Bales crept away on March 11 to two slumbering villages overnight, shooting his victims and setting many of them on fire. Nine of the 16 killed were children and 11 belonged to one family.
"This is some crazy stuff if it's true," Steve Berling, a high school classmate, said of the revelations about the father of two known as "Bobby" in his hometown of Norwood, Ohio.
Bales hasn't been charged yet in the shootings, which have endangered complicated relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan and threatened to upend U.S. policy over the decade-old war.
His former platoon leader said Saturday Bales was a model soldier inspired by 9/11 to serve, who saved lives in firefights on his second of three Iraq deployments.
"He's one of the best guys I ever worked with," said Army Capt. Chris Alexander, who led Bales on a 15-month deployment in Iraq.
"He is not some psychopath. He's an outstanding soldier who has given a lot for this country."
But pressing family troubles were hinted at by his wife, Kari, on multiple blogs posted with names like The Bales Family Adventures and BabyBales. A year ago, she wrote that Bales was hoping for a promotion or a transfer after nine years stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Wash.
"We are hoping to have as much control as possible" over the future, Kari Bales wrote last March 25. "Who knows where we will end up. I just hope that we are able to rent our house so that we can keep it. I think we are both still in shock."
After Bales lost out on a promotion to E7 — a first-class sergeant — the family hoped to go to either Germany, Italy or Hawaii for an "adventure," she said. They hoped to move by last summer; instead the Army redeployed his unit — the 2nd Infantry Division of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, named after armored Stryker vehicles — to Afghanistan.
It would be Bales' fourth tour in a war zone. He joined the military two months after 9/11 and spent more than three years in Iraq during three separate assignments since 2003. His attorney said he was injured twice in Iraq — once losing part of his foot — but his 20 or so commendations do not include the Purple Heart, given to soldiers wounded in combat.
Alexander said Bales wasn't injured while he oversaw him during their deployment — Bales' second in Iraq. He called Bales a "very solid" noncommissioned officer who didn't have more difficulty than his fellow soldiers with battlefield stress. Bales shot at a man aiming a rocket-propelled grenade at his platoon's vehicle in Mosul, Iraq, sending the grenade flying over the vehicle.
"There's no doubt he saved lives that day," Alexander said. The charges he killed civilians is "100 percent out of character for him," he said.
Bales always loved the military and war history, even as a teenager, said Berling, who played football with him in the early 1990s on a team that included Marc Edwards, a future NFL player and Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots.
"I remember him and the teacher just going back and forth on something like talking about the details of the Battle of Bunker Hill," he said. "He knew history, all the wars."
Bales exulted in the role once he finally achieved it. Plunged into battle in Iraq, he told an interviewer for a Fort Lewis base newspaper in 2009 that he and his comrades proved "the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy."
Bales joined the Army, Berling said, after studying business at Ohio State University — he attended three years but didn't graduate — and handled investments before the market downturn pushed him out of the business. Florida records show that Bales was a director at an inactive company called Spartina Investments Inc. in Doral, Fla.; his brother, Mark Bales, and a Mark Edwards were also listed as directors.
"I guess he didn't like it when people lost money," Berling said.
He was struggling to keep payments on his own home in Lake Tapps, a rural reservoir community about 35 miles south of Seattle; his wife asked to put the house on the market three days before the shootings, real estate Philip Rodocker said.
"She told him she was behind in our payments," Rodocker told The New York Times. "She said he was on his fourth tour and it was getting kind of old and they needed to stabilize their finances."
The house was not officially put on the market until Monday; on Tuesday, Rodocker said, Bales' wife called and asked to take the house off the market, talking of a family emergency.
Bales and his wife bought the Lake Tapps home in 2005, according to records, for $280,000; it was listed this week at $229,000. Overflowing boxes were piled on the front porch, and a U.S. flag leaned against the siding.
The sale may have been a sign of financial troubles. Bales and his wife also own a home in Auburn, about 10 miles north, according to county records, but abandoned it about two years ago, homeowners' association president Bob Baggett said. Now signs posted on the front door and window by the city warn against occupying the house.
"It was ramshackled," Baggett said. "They were not dependable. When they left there were vehicles parts left on the front yard...we'd given up on the owners."
New details about the sergeant rippled across the country on Saturday.
"It's our Bobby. He was the local hero," said Michael Blevins, who grew up down the street from him in Norwood, Ohio. The youngest of five boys respected older residents, admonished troublemakers and loved children, even helping another boy in the area who had special needs.
In Washington state, court records showed a 2002 arrest for assault on a girlfriend. Bales pleaded not guilty and was required to undergo 20 hours of anger management counseling, after which the case was dismissed.
A separate hit-and-run charge was dismissed in Sumner, Wash.'s municipal court three years ago, according to records. It isn't clear from court documents what Bales hit; witnesses saw a man in a military-style uniform, with a shaved head and bleeding, running away.
When deputies found him in the woods, Bales told them he fell asleep at the wheel. He paid about $1,000 in fines and restitution and the case was dismissed in October 2009.
Dan Conway, a military attorney who represented one of four Lewis-McChord soldiers convicted in the deliberate killings of three Afghan civilians in 2010, said whether legal scrapes affect a soldier's career depends in part on whether they prompt the Army to issue administrative penalties. The punishments are typically recorded in official personnel files.
Over the past decade, Conway said, the military has sometimes been lax in administering such punishments. As a result, soldiers who might be bad apples sometimes remain in service longer than they otherwise might have.
"It's something you want to note," Conway said. "The best predictor of future violence is past violence."
Bales' lawyer, John Henry Browne of Seattle, said he didn't know if his client had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder at the time of the shootings, but said it could be an issue at trial if experts believe it's relevant.
He also said Friday he didn't know if his client had been drinking the night of the massacre.
Browne didn't return telephone calls on Saturday. His legal team has said Browne will be meeting with Bales at Fort Leavenworth next week.
_____
Sewell reported from Norwood, Ohio. Also contributing were Associated Press writers Gene Johnson in Seattle, Manuel Valdes in Auburn, Wash., Haven Daley in Lake Tapps, Wash., Jennifer Kay in Miami and AP National Security Writer Robert Burns in Washington.
Taliban demands Afghan trial for alleged shooter
By the CNN Wire Staff
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A Taliban commander expressed skepticism that one soldier carried out a massacre last week that left 16 Afghan civilians dead, and anger that the suspect subsequently was flown out of Afghanistan.
"We don't think that one American was involved," the Taliban official told CNN, refusing to give his name or be otherwise identified. "The foreigners and the puppet regime (in Afghanistan) are blind to the truth of what happened here.
"But if this was the act of one soldier, we want this soldier to be prosecuted in Afghanistan, and according to Islamic law. The Afghans should prosecute him."
The commander also explained that the Islamic fundamentalist group had halted talks with U.S. officials. It had set up an office in Qatar on January 3 to reach "an understanding with the international community" and discuss specific issues with American officials.
In a statement Thursday, the Taliban said work from its Qatar office was being suspended, a decision made due to what the group called U.S. officials' "alternating and ever-changing position." Preliminary talks had already begun over the exchange of prisoners, the Taliban said.
The Taliban commander said the burning of Qurans in February by U.S. troops and issues surrounding the U.S. possibly transferring five Taliban members from the U.S. prison facility in Guantanamo Bay to Qatar were the main reasons for the decision.
"The peace talks with the Americans were limited to discuss the prisoner deal. And those promises were not kept by the Americans," he said.
The Taliban official had harsh words for the U.S. regarding the March 11 rampage in two villages in the district of Panjwai in Kandahar province, though he did not tie that directly with the group's decision to suspend talks.
A resident of one of the villages, Ali Ahmed, described to CNN how what he and some others claimed were multiple attackers had come into a home before dawn that morning, asked his uncle where the Taliban were and then shot him dead.
"Finally, they came to this room and martyred all the children," Ahmed said from the home, claiming a 2-month-old child was among the nine children killed. Later, he said some of the dead were piled in a room and set on fire.
U.S. officials have said that one man, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, left his outpost and single-handedly carried out the massacre in two villages.
He is currently at the U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, pending trial, having flown back to the United States last week.
The incident, as well as the fact the suspect isn't set to be tried in Afghanistan where the crime occurred, has infuriated many Afghans and heightened tensions between that nation and the United States.
After the shooting spree, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that relations between the two countries were at the "end of the rope." The incident came weeks after U.S. troops burned Qurans at a coalition base in Afghanistan, sparking outrage and fierce protests across the central Asian nation.
Yet Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States insisted Sunday that his nation trusts the U.S. investigation into the rampage.
"We do trust the United States and we do know how important this relationship is, and we are working as a partner to resolve all the issues as a partner," Ambassador Eklil Hakimi told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
Hakimi said both the shooting rampage and Quran burning are tragic, but he acknowledged they come after more than 10 years of a U.S. presence in his country that has claimed the lives of more than 1,700 U.S. troops, according to the official U.S. military count.
"We do understand sacrifices that our allies, especially our main allies, the United States -- that they have suffered quite a lot, those men in uniform, those women in uniform," Hakimi said. "Those are the things that we are grateful (for) and we are appreciating that."
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta promised Karzai a full investigation and said the United States will bring the shooter to justice.
"He accepted that and hoped that it could be a transparent process so that the Afghanistan people would see that the U.S. is indeed going to not only prosecute this individual but ensure he's held accountable," Panetta said after meeting Karzai on Wednesday.
"I also indicated to him that we take these kinds of incidents seriously. We need to look at just exactly was involved here that caused this terrible crime," Panetta said. "Was it related to combat stress? Other factors? We need to pay attention to those so it won't happen again."
The shooting prompted Karzai to demand that foreign troops pull back from their outposts in Afghan villages and confine themselves to military bases. In his meeting with Panetta, Karzai also demanded that the transfer of security responsibilities from Washington to Kabul be accelerated.
Family friends who knew Bales, the shooting spree suspect, growing up in the Cincinnati suburb of Norwood, Ohio, described him as "quiet" and "very nice." The Army said that he enlisted in the military two months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Bales went on to serve four combat tours, the last one to Afghanistan beginning in January. And in between them, he settled down with his wife and their two young children near Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Washington.
The family owned a townhouse in a modest, middle-class neighborhood in Auburn, about 30 minutes from the base, before purchasing a house in 2006 for $280,000 near Lake Tapps, according to realty records.
Tim Burgess, whose Auburn townhouse shared a wall with that of the Bales family, on Sunday described his former neighbor as "a really good guy (who) just wanted to serve."
"I know he just wanted to go back and serve overseas, that was his goal," Burgess recalled from their conversations, while noting the two hadn't spoken in about five years.
Robert Baggett, president of the Riverpark Homeowners Association, said Sunday that -- after the Bales family moved to Lake Tapps -- there were occasionally renters in the residence.
But several years ago, their townhouse was foreclosed upon, according to Baggett and Burgess. The Bales also didn't pay homeowners association fees for "at least three or four years," said Baggett.
"We don't know what happened," Baggett said of the Bales and their Auburn property, which Sunday had a notice that read "Do Not Occupy" on its front door.
One of Bales' lawyers, John Henry Browne, said upon arriving at the Kansas City, Missouri, airport -- where he'd come so he can drive to meet with his client -- that all the reports surrounding Bales have been a "shock" to those who know him as a "very mild mannered person and a great person."
Browne added that the entire situation was unique and challenging.
"You couldn't imagine a more difficult case, I don't think," the lawyer said. "This case has political ramifications, it has legal ramifications, it has social ramifications."
CNN's Sara Sidner in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Paul Vercammen in Auburn, Washington, contributed to this report.
U.S. Goals In Afghanistan Remain Same Despite Setbacks
March 18, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A top U.S. general says U.S. goals in Afghanistan remain the same despite recent setbacks.
Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, vowed a full probe into the killing of 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province on March 11.
A U.S. soldier, Robert Bales, is the sole suspect in the tragedy and is now being held in isolation at a U.S. military prison in the United States.
Dempsey said 2013 would be a "milestone" as Afghan forces take the lead in security operations before taking full control a year later.
Speaking on U.S. television, Dempsey also said Pakistan was now a stable country and expressed optimism Washington and Islamabad can repair relations, hurt by the November killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a mistaken NATO air strike and accusations by the United States that Pakistan is not doing enough to fight extremists in its tribal areas.
Based on APP reporting
Afghanistan acts to curb flight of capital
By Matthew Green, FT.com via CNN News March 19, 2012
(Financial Times) -- Afghanistan has taken new steps to combat rampant capital flight after the central bank found that the amount of dollars flown out of Kabul doubled to $4.6bn last year.
Afghan officials believe many of the brick-sized stacks of $100 bills stuffed into boxes, bags and suitcases by Dubai-bound passengers belong to drug lords or criminal cartels.
Western allies, who have spent billions shoring up the Afghan state, fear such flows will encourage the kind of grand-scale corruption that has alienated people from the government of Hamid Karzai, the president, and boosted support for the Taliban.
The $4.6bn of declared dollar exports via Kabul airport last year was almost equivalent to Afghanistan's 2010-11 state budget of $4.8bn.
The sum amounts to more than $150 for each Afghan citizen, in a country with average per capita income of only $1,100 (purchasing power parity) according to the World Health Organisation, or under $500 in gross income terms according to the UN.
Officials suspect that large quantities of cash also leave the country without being recorded.
Noorullah Delawari, the central bank governor, said he had imposed a new rule that restricts passengers to carrying a maximum of $20,000. Anyone wishing to move more money abroad will have to make a wire transfer through a bank.
Mr Delawari said the rule, introduced this month, closed a loophole in Afghan law that allowed passengers to carry as much money as they liked out of the country provided they filled in a form.
"It will have a major impact on financing terrorism as well as on money laundering," he told the Financial Times.
A new class of war entrepreneurs enriched by an economic bubble fuelled by Nato contracts and aid money have become accustomed to stashing their cash in foreign accounts and real estate in Dubai.
Influential Afghans think nothing of carrying large quantities of cash out of the country. According to a cable from the US Embassy in Kabul that was later published on the website WikiLeaks, Zia Masood, the former vice-president, was once stopped entering Dubai carrying cash worth $52m and released without question.
A former vice-president of Lloyds Bank in California, Mr Delawari was appointed in November, replacing Abdul Qadir Fitrat. Mr Fitrat fled to the US in fear of his life in June after naming borrowers linked to a scandal that brought down Kabul Bank, the biggest private lender.
Mr Delawari said his suspicions were aroused when official records showed that SR1.5bn ($400m) left the country last year. Afghanistan has negligible trade with Saudi Arabia, although counter-terrorism officials suspect the Taliban raises significant funds from wealthy donors in the Gulf. Afghan officials believe some of the money laundered through Afghanistan is imported via Pakistan and Iran.
The measures have angered some Afghan currency traders, who say they will sharply increase the cost of legitimate transactions. Mr Delawari said he had received a call from a foreign exchange dealer who had claimed Afghan currency merchants would lose $250m a year as a result of the rule. The governor said he responded by hanging up his phone.
Mr Delawari said the central bank had placed monitors at the airport to help security forces enforce the new measures. But questions remain over whether criminal networks may find ways to circumvent Mr Delawari's rule in a country where bribery is rife and where perpetrators of financial crimes are rarely punished.
Officials fear much of the money flowing out of the country is linked to the burgeoning heroin industry. The World Bank said last year that gross revenues from the opium trade were estimated to be equivalent to up to a third of Afghanistan's measured gross domestic product.
Mr Delawari said the central bank was making progress in recovering funds from Kabul Bank, which suffered a run in 2010 that almost brought down the banking system. The bank, which has bad loans of more than $800m, has since been placed into receivership.
The governor said receivers had rescheduled some $400m of loans, and seized property and other assets worth $200m. The central bank is now conducting an audit of another 10 banks and looking at ways to tighten supervision. "We know there are some flaws, some loopholes in the law," Mr Delawari said. "We have learnt a lot from Kabul Bank."
Hero Guard Gives Life To Defend Afghan Schools
March 18, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Malali Bashir
While media attention was focused on the aftermath of the Koran burning in Afghanistan last month, a story that otherwise would have made headlines everywhere went virtually unnoticed. It's the story of Shah Mahmood, a young Afghan from war-ravaged Helmand Province in Southern Afghanistan who saved a school by giving his life.
Shah Mahmood was apparently doing his routine duty of guarding two schools in the Dasht area of Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah, when two men appeared with explosives and an intent to blow up the schools. Mohammad resisted but was severely beaten by the two armed men.
The official Kandahar media office's press release had more details:
"Leaving him unconscious and thinking that Shah Mahmood was dead, the terrorists started to plant land mines inside the school building. However, Shah Mahmood stood up and opened fire on the men with his gun killing one and wounding the other."
Shah Mahmood and the wounded attacker were later taken to a Lashkar Gah emergency room. "Unfortunately Shah Mohammad, as a result of the severe beating [at the hands] of the Taliban, died there," the press release added.
Insurgents have been blowing up schools across Afghanistan because they think the students are taught Western and un-Islamic values and lessons. Southern Afghanistan is considered a stronghold of the Taliban, so few schools are open in that region. Sensing that the situation had gotten out of control, the Afghan government reached a deal with the Taliban, according to Kabul-based research organization Afghan Analysts Network.
Amid this all, a young Afghan sacrificed his life to save these schools, a seemingly rare story of proud defiance against violent extremism.
To highlight the issue and encourage media coverage, I started a Facebook Group for Shah Mahmood. It was flooded with comments. They include: "Shah Mahmood, we are proud of you," "Shah Mahmood, you are the real hero of Afghan people," and, "Shah Mahmood's principle was patriotism and he proved that."
The group's members eventually asked the Afghan government to do the following:
Name a Helmand city square, a road, and one of the schools after Shah Mahmood
Inaugurate an educational award in Shah Mahmood's name
Provide care for Shah Mahmood's family and ensure their safety and education
The Facebook campaign attracted international attention. Shah Mahmood was described by his father and other relatives as a kind and generous man who was engaged and trying to bring his bride home soon. Since the tragedy, Shah Mahmood's family of 19 has moved to the city of Lashkar Gah; but his father says they don't even have money for rent.
Now, BBC's Pashto service has quoted Afghanistan's education minister, Dr. Farooq Wardak, as saying that President Hamid Karzai issued personal instructions to the government to continue to pay Shah Mahmood's salary to his grieving family. As well, Wardak said, one of the schools will be renamed from Shamsul-Uloom to Shah Mahmood to honor the man who gave his life to save the school and its students.
U.S.-Afghan divide seen in perceptions of village massacre
Americans view the killing of 16 villagers as an aberration and a betrayal of U.S. values. For Afghans, the incident is similar to many others, accidental or otherwise, that cause civilian deaths.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King March 17, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - There are days here, in these war-haunted times, when it seems that death might come in any guise, and from any direction. From a bomb buried in the earth. From the sky. From a rusted motorbike haphazardly parked in a busy marketplace, with no one paying it and its deadly package any notice.
Or from a soldier who breaks down doors in the dead of night, with murder in mind.
Despite a shared sorrow and bewilderment, a jarring disparity has emerged in the way Americans and Afghans view the killings of 16 villagers in rural Kandahar province, allegedly at the hands of a lone U.S. Army staff sergeant named Robert Bales.
Those fundamentally differing perceptions reflect deep divisions over the manner in which this decade-old conflict has been fought, and in how it may finally end.
From the American standpoint, the narrative of a U.S. military man leaving his isolated outpost and slaughtering defenseless men, women and children — some too tiny to register what was happening, others waking in terror, only to be methodically stalked room to room — represents a profound aberration from accepted norms, a betrayal of every value U.S. forces are sworn to uphold.
From the Afghan side, though, March 11 was a day not so different from many others in the course of years of war.
The Kandahar killings made headlines around the world, but in the days just before and afterward, more than a dozen other Afghan noncombatants were killed or wounded in war-related circumstances. Most of these fatalities and maimings caused little public outcry; the grief that sprang from them was, by fate and by necessity, an almost entirely private affair.
"Our lives are not valued," said Mohammad Sabir, who said he lost four family members in a U.S.-led raid in eastern Afghanistan's Paktia province in 2010. "If an Afghan dies, no one cares about it."
In a kind of perverse symmetry, a roadside bomb in Oruzgan province, presumably planted by Taliban insurgents, killed 13 people four days after the Kandahar shootings, including nine children, the same number killed in the horrific earlier attack.
Afghan civilians were killed in war-related incidents at a rate of more than eight per day last year: 3,021 in all, according to the United Nations. Insurgents were blamed for nearly four in five of those deaths.
U.S. military officials constantly rail against negligence or deadly intent when the Taliban and other assailants stage suicide attacks or set off roadside bombs, which are primarily meant for Western troops but may just as easily kill anyone passing by.
Bombs intended for members of the Afghan security forces are often planted in places where civilians are likely to be hurt or killed by them as well. On Wednesday, three days after the Kandahar killings, a bomb strapped to a motorbike in Kandahar city killed an intelligence officer, but also wounded a civilian who was passing by.
And accidents, in their most genuine sense, do happen. On Friday, death rained down from the sky on an Afghan family on the outskirts of the capital, Kabul. A Western military helicopter, for as yet undetermined reasons, crashed, killing 12 Turkish military service members. Four Afghans died in their home, including two women and a boy, according to Kabul police.
To the NATO force, it is a source of epic and enduring frustration that most Afghans tend to make little distinction between civilian deaths caused by the Taliban and affiliated militant groups, and those attributed to foreign forces. And many people here see virtually no difference between a coldly calculated rampage such as the one said to have occurred in Kandahar's Panjwayi district and the inadvertent civilian casualties caused by airstrikes or night raids or other Western military operations.
In American minds, the moral distinction between the accidental and the deliberate, between the carefully judged risk and the deranged act, is incalculable. But for Afghans, the result — the shrouded bodies, the wailing relatives, the bite of shovels into dusty ground — speaks to the numbing sameness of unexpected and violent death.
Victims of wartime suffering here draw differing conclusions as to whether the losses they have borne should lead to a speedier pullout of U.S. and other foreign troops, and whether the banning of Western troops in rural areas, as President Hamid Karzai appeared to be advocating last week, would make things better. Maybe, they say, a precipitous pullback of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces would make everything worse.
Abdul Hadi, 55, who lost two sons and a grandson in 2010 to what he believed was Western gunfire after a suicide bombing in Kandahar, says not a day passes that he does not think of that day's events.
"Americans are wearing a friend's mask and killing us," he said.
But even after such a loss, he believes the too-rapid departure of U.S. troops could plunge the country into deeper chaos, perhaps even a civil war.
"It's too easy for all Western forces to leave us," he said. "They have got to finish what they have started. We are not in a position to stand on our own feet."
In the last week, Karzai has appeared to be trying to assuage the anger of bereaved Panjwayi villagers, and at the same time maintain lines of communication with his Western patrons.
Though publicly declaring Friday that he was "at the end of the rope" with civilian casualties, the Afghan leader also spoke with U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, and asserted that more dialogue was needed on all questions, including where American-led forces were to be deployed.
In a telephone conversation Friday with President Obama, Karzai agreed to talk more about the issue of whether U.S. forces should pull up stakes in village outposts, both sides said. NATO has a summit scheduled in May in Chicago.
Although the deaths in Panjwayi did not result in violent nationwide demonstrations such as those that followed the burning of Korans at an American air base last month, the fallout from the killings may prove long lasting in a deeper, more heartsick way.
Devout Muslims felt obliged to take to the streets for large-scale demonstrations against the burning of the holy books, but remembrances of war dead tend to be more subdued and more scattered.
"I'm the one who feels the pain, no one else," said Abdul Haq, whose brother was killed in a Taliban attack late last year. "It's the same everywhere. The West is careless of our suffering."
laura.king@latimes.com
Special correspondents Aimal Yaqubi and Hashmat Baktash in Kabul and a special correspondent in Kandahar province contributed to this report.
Iran general urges Afghans to fight US
The Associated Press By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Saturday, March 17, 2012
TEHRAN, Iran - A senior Iranian military commander urged Afghans on Saturday to use force to kick American troops out of their country, hinting that "new resistance groups" could launch attacks on U.S. interests in Afghanistan.
Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, a senior figure in the powerful Revolutionary Guard and the deputy head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there are indications that Afghans will "soon open new fronts" against "the obsolete, worn-out American empire."
The U.S. has accused Iran's Revolutionary Guard of supplying powerful roadside bombs to militants in Afghanistan fighting NATO forces. Iran has denied that it is supplying arms to fighters in Afghanistan.
Anti-U.S. sentiments have grown in Afghanistan after the killing of 16 civilians, including nine children, allegedly by a U.S. soldier in southern Kandahar province, as well the accidental burning of Quran holy books by American troops. The U.S. soldier has been identified as Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 38.
"Based on the existing indications, new fronts will soon be opened against invaders in order to ground the obsolete, worn-out American empire," Jazayeri said. "Creation of resistance groups and hitting American interests are among measures that can be taken."
He did not elaborate. The comments by Jazayeri were posted Saturday on the Guard's website, sepahnews.com. It is the strongest comments ever by an Iranian official against American troops in Afghanistan.
"The Americans must know that the Afghan nation ... is tired of the illegitimate presence of invaders ... and deserve to use force and offensive operations to kick invading enemies from their soil," he said.
Jazayeri said Afghans should make their territory unsafe for American troops.
"The United States should not be immune from the biting attacks for insulting Quran and massacring the innocent Afghan and Pakistani people. American troops must experience the bitter taste of revenge so that they won't feel security in any part of the region," he said.
The U.S. and Tehran are at odds over Iran's controversial nuclear program, and some analysts fear that Iran will respond with proxy forces if the confrontation becomes violent.
Bodies of Turkish soldiers died in plane crash in Afghanistan return home
ANKARA, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Bodies of 12 Turkish soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan were brought home early on Sunday, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.
The plane, carrying the deceased, landed at the Etimesgut Military Airport in the Turkish capital of Ankara, the report said, adding the bodies were taken to a forensic medicine institute.
The Turkish military helicopter, a Sikorsky, with the Kabul Regional Command assigned under the International Security Assistance Force, crashed into a house on the outskirts of the Afghan capital of Kabul on Friday, killing 12 Turkish soldiers on board and four Afghan civilians on the ground.
Turkey has about 1,800 troops in Afghanistan and leads NATO's operations in Kabul province. The force has suffered relatively few casualties because of its noncombat role.
In 2009, two Turkish soldiers, one of them a colonel, were killed in a traffic accident in northern Afghanistan.
Congress' Split On Afghanistan Isn't Along Party Lines
NPR By David WelnaMarch 17, 2012
Fallout is expected on Capitol Hill next week over what appears to be a killing spree by a U.S. soldier that took the lives of 16 civilians in Afghanistan.
With House members returning from a break, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. John Allen is set to testify before both the House and Senate armed services committees.
And just as the nation is divided over the war in Afghanistan, so too is Congress.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. is in charge of messaging for the Senate Republicans. Usually, he can be relied on to hammer President Obama's policies, but when it comes to the war in Afghanistan, Thune refuses to seize on the latest atrocity there to go after the president.
"I don't think you can allow ... what was an awful, tragic event — but a random event — [to] influence too much our goals there, and I think the president has said that. [Defense] Secretary [Leon] Panetta has said that, and I don't think there's a lot of disagreement up here," Thune said.
That certainly holds true for some top congressional Republicans.
"The president has a plan to transition this mission over to the Afghan army over the next couple of years," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. said. "I know it's been a very challenging period, but I think we ought to stick with the plan that's been laid out by the administration."
'Political Rhetoric' Divides Republicans
But other leading Republicans fault that plan, which removes 23,000 U.S. troops next year and the 65,000 others by the end of 2014.
"Political timetables based on arbitrary deadlines rather than conditions on the ground is a bad idea and so I'm not satisfied with the administration's proposals," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who claims that Obama is more fixated on his re-election than on success in Afghanistan.
Rick Santorum lobbed similar criticism this week on the presidential campaign trail, and rival Mitt Romney has called for bolstering the U.S. military in general by 100,00 active duty troops.
But on CBS' Face The Nation, Newt Gingrich declared that the time has come for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan.
"I think we need to reconsider the whole region. We need to understand that our being in the middle of countries like Afghanistan is probably counterproductive," Gingrich said. "We're not prepared to be ruthless enough to force them to change, and yet we're clearly an alien presence."
That got Republicans fighting among themselves.
"If all you've got to offer is political rhetoric and you're trying to sort of get a political advantage in a primary or a general election to undercut the plan, shame on you," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "That's not in America's self interest."
Democrats Ready To Leave, But When?
Congressional Democrats, too, are divided. When asked this week about his views on Afghanistan, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada stood by the president. "I think that we should stick by what we have," said Reid. "We're drawing down in Afghanistan and we should stick by the timeline."
Still, far more Democrats than Republicans in Congress question the wisdom of prolonging a war that's ground on for more than a decade.
"We should've been out of there a long time ago." said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has twice visited Afghanistan. "It's not a place for us, to be trying to nation-build. We need to come back home, rebuilding America." Manchin is also seeking re-election this fall. "We're not going to change Afghanistan or the Afghan mindset," he said.
Manchin is among two dozen senators, including two Republicans, who signed a letter to Obama last week, which stated: "It is time to bring our troops home from Afghanistan."
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, also signed the letter. "The president wants $88 billion more for next year," he said. "We've already spent about $1.5 trillion total [for] Afghanistan and Iraq."
Baucus said that Congress might not grant Obama's $88-billion Afghan funding request, and said he would vote against that level of funding for the war in Afghanistan.
Arduous path to Afghan 'end-game'
BBC News By Lyse Doucet17 March 2012
Kabul - In Afghanistan, the focus now is on the "end game". But the end is in doubt, and tension mounts over the rules of this game.
A much-touted plan for "transition," meant to provide foreign armies with an orderly, honourable exit by 2014, lurches from crisis to crisis. In the last week alone, there seemed to be an incident almost every day.
"The end of the rope," is now President Hamid Karzai's depiction of this imperilled relationship.
That was his angry mood after an emotional meeting with a delegation of tribal elders and villagers who came from Kandahar to discuss last Sunday's night-time massacre of 16 Afghans. When I called out a question at the end of the gathering, the president clearly wanted to publicly cast doubt on the US account that it was the work of one rogue American soldier who "snapped".
"These horrible activities cannot be tolerated," he declared, in a reference to night raids and other Nato military operations he has repeatedly railed against. A day earlier, he had called on Nato forces to pull out of villages and go back to their bases. Hardening tone
In public, his US and other Nato allies are scrambling to maintain a confident narrative of "enduring partnership".
In private, they express exasperation with an unpredictable president while trying to focus on their main priority in this end-game: securing enough gains on the battlefield against a resurgent Taliban, and training enough Afghans to continue the fight on their own.
Senior Afghan military officers agree with their Nato counterparts that they are not ready yet. Even the president has been ready to grudgingly discuss military tactics his allies still consider essential, but his tone is clearly hardening.
Still, Nato sources are confident they may finally be able to sign a long-awaited strategic partnership between the US and Afghanistan that would keep some US troops on bases here beyond 2014. There is even hope for a compromise on the most sensitive issue of night raids.
If it is clinched, the achievement would be the crowning moment of the Nato summit set for Chicago in May.
The US is also hoping it can use that occasion to report some progress in their fragile dialogue with the Taliban, even though the Taliban suspended the process this week because of what they called "the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans".
But the few months until May are a long time in the midst of what the US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta keeps referring to as "the hell of war".
He has repeatedly expressed regret over the tragic incident in Kandahar. But in the same breath, he has warned it is not the first incident and will not be the last. Searching questions
Afghans have been invoking an Afghan proverb with similar sentiments, "Every day, it gets worse, it doesn't get better."
I heard it from an Afghan instructor Lt Nasser while he was teaching Afghans at Kabul's Military Training Centre how to throw grenades.
There were loud exclamations of "Allah u Akbar" (God is Great) as plastic versions were hurled at the "dushman" - the enemy.
"We do our best training them but we can't predict what will happen in the future," Lt Nasser remarked philosophically.
Nato soldiers have also been troubled by incidents when Afghans in uniform have opened fire on them.
At what is Afghanistan's main military training centre, the staggering sums and commitment that Nato, and most of all the US, have ploughed into this mission are abundantly evident.
"The difference is astronomical," marvelled Canadian Major Carl Bennett as he swept his arm across a sprawling compound of training fields laced with roads plied by a constant flow of new military hardware.
"There was nothing here a few years ago."
But when I ask one young Afghan guard about the US military, he blurts a dismissive insult: "kafirs!" (infidels).
Moments later, he added: "There was more respect years ago. Our Afghan leaders also need to do more to build trust."
More than a decade since the Taliban was ousted and Western allies embraced a new relationship with Afghanistan, searching questions are being asked about why this partnership is still marked by so many mishaps and misunderstandings.
At a popular cafe reputed to offer "the best coffee in Kabul" even Afghans who have been able to benefit from Western scholarships and salaries are perplexed.
"It is difficult to digest and understand how, after so many years of engagement, the international community still doesn't realise what Afghans are sensitive about," remarked Suleman Fatimi who has worked both in government and the private sector.
He cited the recent inadvertent burning of the Koran at a US military base as a glaring example.
"We had all hoped for a smooth road until 2014," added Waheed Omer, a former Afghan presidential aide.
"Every incident," he regretted, "takes the ground from under those of us who would like to see a long-term strategic partnership."
Afghans have a wide range of concerns about this end-game that are not just about military engagement.
Some are more worried about what is certain to be a messy presidential election also set for 2014. The last contest was marred by allegations of fraud and Western meddling, and speculation is already growing over whether President Karzai will keep his pledge to stand down.
Others are focused on ensuring badly needed civilian aid does not dry up, too.
"The Afghan government is just focusing on survival now," remarked one Western aid official who has spent years in the region. "They're trying to get as much as they can from the international community before the pull out."
And there is growing concern about widespread corruption.
At the Afghan parliament, outspoken MP Ramazon Bashardost declared: "We still need financial and military support. President Karzai couldn't even afford to buy tea for the palace without foreign money!"
Dressed in a white tunic trimmed with the colours of the Afghan Flag, he exclaimed: "The foreigners can stay 100 years if they meet the needs of the Afghan people instead of corrupt warlords."
For now, everyone is just trying to make it through the next two years. They could make all the difference between something which could be called a success, and an utter failure.
"We're in the end game," affirmed Major Bennett", "but I guarantee you that if we pull out now, we will be back here in 20 years, starting all over from scratch."
Pakistan conveys condolences to Turkey over soldiers' deaths
ISLAMABAD, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar Sunday spoke to her Turkish counterpart Dr. Ahmet Davutoglu and offered profound condolences on the deaths of 12 Turkish soldiers in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on March 16.
The helicopter crashed into a house on the outskirts of the Afghan capital of Kabul on Friday, killing 12 Turkish soldiers on board, according to Turkish military and the NATO in Afghanistan.
"Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, on behalf of the Government and people of Pakistan, offered profound condolences on the loss of lives of twelve Turkish military personnel during a tragic helicopter accident," a Foreign Ministry statement said.
Expressing her deepest sympathies, the Foreign minister said that her prayers are with the families of those who died in the accident, the statement said.
She said that people of Pakistan were together with the Turkish people in their hour of grief, it said.
The cause of the crash is yet to be determined by the investigation team, the Turkish military said in a statement posted on its website.
Russia Demands Nato Not Leave Afghanistan Unstable
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 18 March 2012
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said international military forces must remain in Afghanistan until they properly fulfill the UN Security Council mandate they entered the country with, insisting that Russia had a right to demand this, during an interview with TOLOnews.
Lavrov said the Nato-led mission entered Afghanistan with a mandate to establish a stable government and an adequate defence force, and they should not leave until that job is done.
"We see it from the point of international law. The presence of the international stabilisation force in Afghanistan has been mandated by the UN Security Council. The mandate is clear. They must fulfill this mandate before they leave, and before they leave, they must report to the Security Council that the mandate has been fulfilled," Lavrov said during the Moscow-based interview on Saturday.
"Everyone understands that by the time the international forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan, the Afghan government itself must possess the capabilities to maintain law and order and to be able to address all security problems inside the country."
He said Russia had a right to demand for the mandate to properly implement because of its support of the Nato-led mission in providing transit possibilities through Russian territories.
"I think the Northern Route has become the major supply route for Isaf in Afghanistan - I think two third of deliveries are done by the northern route," he said.
"We believe this is our contribution to fulfill the mandate which the international forces received from the Security Council and we have the right to demand this mandate, to which we contribute, is implemented before the operation is over."
Lavrov said Russia was especially concerned about the growing insurgency in the north of Afghanistan which had previously been more stable as terrorists were pushing further north and infiltrating Russia's Central Asian neighbours.
He said that the US plan to maintain military bases in Afghanistan after 2014 was illogical and would not help regional instability, suggesting the plan was tantamount to a failed Nato mission.
"It's strange that while insisting that in 2014 the American troops, Nato troops I assume, will leave Afghanistan, at the same time Washington is discussing with Afghanistan very purposefully about establishing four or five military bases for the post 2014 period," he said.
"If you need the military presence, then you are continuing to implement the mandate of the Security Council. If you don't want to implement the mandate of the Security Council or if you believe that you have implemented the mandate already, but still want to establish and keep the military bases, I don't think that's logical."
"We want to understand what the reason is for it and why this is needed. We don't think it would be helpful for the stability in the region." Lavrov said Russia supported all efforts towards "national reconciliation" in Afghanistan but refused to be drawn specifically on whether the Afghan government should engage in talks with the Taliban, saying it was not Russia's place to give assessments of the political discussions going on within a sovereign country. ---- For the exclusive full interview with the Russian Foreign Minister, during which Lavrov also discusses how Russia is cooperating to fight drug proliferation from Afghanistan and regional concerns over Iran's nuclear development programme, tune in to TOLOnews tonight (Sunday) 7.30pm.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
KABUL, March 18 (Xinhua) -- More than a dozen U.S. soldiers had reportedly been involved in the Kandahar killing of 16 civilians, a local newspaper reported on Sunday, citing members of the Afghan parliament who were part of an investigation to probe the incident.
"The delegation sent to Kandahar by the Afghan House of Representatives (Lower House of Parliament) reported on Saturday that two groups of (American) soldiers totaling 15 to 20 troops carried out the planned attack with air support," Daily Outlook Afghanistan reported.
The incident described by many Afghans as "carnage" happened on March 11 when a rogue U.S. soldier came out of his base in Panjwai district and entered a few houses nearby, opened indiscriminate fire leaving 16 people dead including three women and nine children and nine others injured.
However, a U.S. investigation has repeatedly maintained that only one soldier has committed the killing who had been detained.
Despite Afghans' strong demand that the suspect be tried publicly in the country, the U.S. military transferred the accused soldier, who has been identified as Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, to the United States.
The report, citing a parliamentarian, Mohammad Naeem Lali Hamidzai, said that before the civilians being killed by American soldiers, two women had been sexually assaulted.
The Afghan government has yet to release the findings of a team who were assigned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate into the killings.
The incident further strained the relationship between Washington and Kabul, which has already been clouded by other recent incidents including the burning of Quran at a U.S. base in Afghanistan and reports of U.S. service members urinating on the corpses of Taliban soldiers.
Money, career woes plagued Afghan killings suspect
By DAN SEWELL and DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP | Associated Press
LAKE TAPPS, Wash. (AP) — A diverging portrait of the Army sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers is emerging as records and interviews show a man appreciated by friends and family who won military commendations, yet one who faced professional disappointment, financial trouble and brushes with the law.
The deeper picture included details on how Robert Bales was bypassed for promotion, struggled to pay for his house and eyed a way out of his job at a Washington state military base months before he was accused of the horrific nighttime slaughter in two Afghanistan villages.
While Bales, 38, sat in an isolated cell at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.'s military prison Saturday, classmates and neighbors from suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, remembered him as a "happy-go-lucky" high school football player who took care of a special needs child and watched out for troublemakers in the neighborhood.
But court records and interviews show that the 10-year veteran — with a string of commendations for good conduct after four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan — had joined the Army after a Florida investment job went sour, had a Seattle-area home condemned, struggled to make payments on another and failed to get a promotion or a transfer a year ago.
His legal troubles included charges that he assaulted a girlfriend and, in a hit-and run accident, ran bleeding in military clothes into the woods, court records show. He told police he fell asleep at the wheel and paid a fine to get the charges dismissed, the records show.
Military officials say that after drinking on a southern Afghanistan base, Bales crept away on March 11 to two slumbering villages overnight, shooting his victims and setting many of them on fire. Nine of the 16 killed were children and 11 belonged to one family.
"This is some crazy stuff if it's true," Steve Berling, a high school classmate, said of the revelations about the father of two known as "Bobby" in his hometown of Norwood, Ohio.
Bales hasn't been charged yet in the shootings, which have endangered complicated relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan and threatened to upend U.S. policy over the decade-old war.
His former platoon leader said Saturday Bales was a model soldier inspired by 9/11 to serve, who saved lives in firefights on his second of three Iraq deployments.
"He's one of the best guys I ever worked with," said Army Capt. Chris Alexander, who led Bales on a 15-month deployment in Iraq.
"He is not some psychopath. He's an outstanding soldier who has given a lot for this country."
But pressing family troubles were hinted at by his wife, Kari, on multiple blogs posted with names like The Bales Family Adventures and BabyBales. A year ago, she wrote that Bales was hoping for a promotion or a transfer after nine years stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Wash.
"We are hoping to have as much control as possible" over the future, Kari Bales wrote last March 25. "Who knows where we will end up. I just hope that we are able to rent our house so that we can keep it. I think we are both still in shock."
After Bales lost out on a promotion to E7 — a first-class sergeant — the family hoped to go to either Germany, Italy or Hawaii for an "adventure," she said. They hoped to move by last summer; instead the Army redeployed his unit — the 2nd Infantry Division of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, named after armored Stryker vehicles — to Afghanistan.
It would be Bales' fourth tour in a war zone. He joined the military two months after 9/11 and spent more than three years in Iraq during three separate assignments since 2003. His attorney said he was injured twice in Iraq — once losing part of his foot — but his 20 or so commendations do not include the Purple Heart, given to soldiers wounded in combat.
Alexander said Bales wasn't injured while he oversaw him during their deployment — Bales' second in Iraq. He called Bales a "very solid" noncommissioned officer who didn't have more difficulty than his fellow soldiers with battlefield stress. Bales shot at a man aiming a rocket-propelled grenade at his platoon's vehicle in Mosul, Iraq, sending the grenade flying over the vehicle.
"There's no doubt he saved lives that day," Alexander said. The charges he killed civilians is "100 percent out of character for him," he said.
Bales always loved the military and war history, even as a teenager, said Berling, who played football with him in the early 1990s on a team that included Marc Edwards, a future NFL player and Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots.
"I remember him and the teacher just going back and forth on something like talking about the details of the Battle of Bunker Hill," he said. "He knew history, all the wars."
Bales exulted in the role once he finally achieved it. Plunged into battle in Iraq, he told an interviewer for a Fort Lewis base newspaper in 2009 that he and his comrades proved "the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy."
Bales joined the Army, Berling said, after studying business at Ohio State University — he attended three years but didn't graduate — and handled investments before the market downturn pushed him out of the business. Florida records show that Bales was a director at an inactive company called Spartina Investments Inc. in Doral, Fla.; his brother, Mark Bales, and a Mark Edwards were also listed as directors.
"I guess he didn't like it when people lost money," Berling said.
He was struggling to keep payments on his own home in Lake Tapps, a rural reservoir community about 35 miles south of Seattle; his wife asked to put the house on the market three days before the shootings, real estate Philip Rodocker said.
"She told him she was behind in our payments," Rodocker told The New York Times. "She said he was on his fourth tour and it was getting kind of old and they needed to stabilize their finances."
The house was not officially put on the market until Monday; on Tuesday, Rodocker said, Bales' wife called and asked to take the house off the market, talking of a family emergency.
Bales and his wife bought the Lake Tapps home in 2005, according to records, for $280,000; it was listed this week at $229,000. Overflowing boxes were piled on the front porch, and a U.S. flag leaned against the siding.
The sale may have been a sign of financial troubles. Bales and his wife also own a home in Auburn, about 10 miles north, according to county records, but abandoned it about two years ago, homeowners' association president Bob Baggett said. Now signs posted on the front door and window by the city warn against occupying the house.
"It was ramshackled," Baggett said. "They were not dependable. When they left there were vehicles parts left on the front yard...we'd given up on the owners."
New details about the sergeant rippled across the country on Saturday.
"It's our Bobby. He was the local hero," said Michael Blevins, who grew up down the street from him in Norwood, Ohio. The youngest of five boys respected older residents, admonished troublemakers and loved children, even helping another boy in the area who had special needs.
In Washington state, court records showed a 2002 arrest for assault on a girlfriend. Bales pleaded not guilty and was required to undergo 20 hours of anger management counseling, after which the case was dismissed.
A separate hit-and-run charge was dismissed in Sumner, Wash.'s municipal court three years ago, according to records. It isn't clear from court documents what Bales hit; witnesses saw a man in a military-style uniform, with a shaved head and bleeding, running away.
When deputies found him in the woods, Bales told them he fell asleep at the wheel. He paid about $1,000 in fines and restitution and the case was dismissed in October 2009.
Dan Conway, a military attorney who represented one of four Lewis-McChord soldiers convicted in the deliberate killings of three Afghan civilians in 2010, said whether legal scrapes affect a soldier's career depends in part on whether they prompt the Army to issue administrative penalties. The punishments are typically recorded in official personnel files.
Over the past decade, Conway said, the military has sometimes been lax in administering such punishments. As a result, soldiers who might be bad apples sometimes remain in service longer than they otherwise might have.
"It's something you want to note," Conway said. "The best predictor of future violence is past violence."
Bales' lawyer, John Henry Browne of Seattle, said he didn't know if his client had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder at the time of the shootings, but said it could be an issue at trial if experts believe it's relevant.
He also said Friday he didn't know if his client had been drinking the night of the massacre.
Browne didn't return telephone calls on Saturday. His legal team has said Browne will be meeting with Bales at Fort Leavenworth next week.
_____
Sewell reported from Norwood, Ohio. Also contributing were Associated Press writers Gene Johnson in Seattle, Manuel Valdes in Auburn, Wash., Haven Daley in Lake Tapps, Wash., Jennifer Kay in Miami and AP National Security Writer Robert Burns in Washington.
Taliban demands Afghan trial for alleged shooter
By the CNN Wire Staff
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A Taliban commander expressed skepticism that one soldier carried out a massacre last week that left 16 Afghan civilians dead, and anger that the suspect subsequently was flown out of Afghanistan.
"We don't think that one American was involved," the Taliban official told CNN, refusing to give his name or be otherwise identified. "The foreigners and the puppet regime (in Afghanistan) are blind to the truth of what happened here.
"But if this was the act of one soldier, we want this soldier to be prosecuted in Afghanistan, and according to Islamic law. The Afghans should prosecute him."
The commander also explained that the Islamic fundamentalist group had halted talks with U.S. officials. It had set up an office in Qatar on January 3 to reach "an understanding with the international community" and discuss specific issues with American officials.
In a statement Thursday, the Taliban said work from its Qatar office was being suspended, a decision made due to what the group called U.S. officials' "alternating and ever-changing position." Preliminary talks had already begun over the exchange of prisoners, the Taliban said.
The Taliban commander said the burning of Qurans in February by U.S. troops and issues surrounding the U.S. possibly transferring five Taliban members from the U.S. prison facility in Guantanamo Bay to Qatar were the main reasons for the decision.
"The peace talks with the Americans were limited to discuss the prisoner deal. And those promises were not kept by the Americans," he said.
The Taliban official had harsh words for the U.S. regarding the March 11 rampage in two villages in the district of Panjwai in Kandahar province, though he did not tie that directly with the group's decision to suspend talks.
A resident of one of the villages, Ali Ahmed, described to CNN how what he and some others claimed were multiple attackers had come into a home before dawn that morning, asked his uncle where the Taliban were and then shot him dead.
"Finally, they came to this room and martyred all the children," Ahmed said from the home, claiming a 2-month-old child was among the nine children killed. Later, he said some of the dead were piled in a room and set on fire.
U.S. officials have said that one man, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, left his outpost and single-handedly carried out the massacre in two villages.
He is currently at the U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, pending trial, having flown back to the United States last week.
The incident, as well as the fact the suspect isn't set to be tried in Afghanistan where the crime occurred, has infuriated many Afghans and heightened tensions between that nation and the United States.
After the shooting spree, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that relations between the two countries were at the "end of the rope." The incident came weeks after U.S. troops burned Qurans at a coalition base in Afghanistan, sparking outrage and fierce protests across the central Asian nation.
Yet Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States insisted Sunday that his nation trusts the U.S. investigation into the rampage.
"We do trust the United States and we do know how important this relationship is, and we are working as a partner to resolve all the issues as a partner," Ambassador Eklil Hakimi told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
Hakimi said both the shooting rampage and Quran burning are tragic, but he acknowledged they come after more than 10 years of a U.S. presence in his country that has claimed the lives of more than 1,700 U.S. troops, according to the official U.S. military count.
"We do understand sacrifices that our allies, especially our main allies, the United States -- that they have suffered quite a lot, those men in uniform, those women in uniform," Hakimi said. "Those are the things that we are grateful (for) and we are appreciating that."
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta promised Karzai a full investigation and said the United States will bring the shooter to justice.
"He accepted that and hoped that it could be a transparent process so that the Afghanistan people would see that the U.S. is indeed going to not only prosecute this individual but ensure he's held accountable," Panetta said after meeting Karzai on Wednesday.
"I also indicated to him that we take these kinds of incidents seriously. We need to look at just exactly was involved here that caused this terrible crime," Panetta said. "Was it related to combat stress? Other factors? We need to pay attention to those so it won't happen again."
The shooting prompted Karzai to demand that foreign troops pull back from their outposts in Afghan villages and confine themselves to military bases. In his meeting with Panetta, Karzai also demanded that the transfer of security responsibilities from Washington to Kabul be accelerated.
Family friends who knew Bales, the shooting spree suspect, growing up in the Cincinnati suburb of Norwood, Ohio, described him as "quiet" and "very nice." The Army said that he enlisted in the military two months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Bales went on to serve four combat tours, the last one to Afghanistan beginning in January. And in between them, he settled down with his wife and their two young children near Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Washington.
The family owned a townhouse in a modest, middle-class neighborhood in Auburn, about 30 minutes from the base, before purchasing a house in 2006 for $280,000 near Lake Tapps, according to realty records.
Tim Burgess, whose Auburn townhouse shared a wall with that of the Bales family, on Sunday described his former neighbor as "a really good guy (who) just wanted to serve."
"I know he just wanted to go back and serve overseas, that was his goal," Burgess recalled from their conversations, while noting the two hadn't spoken in about five years.
Robert Baggett, president of the Riverpark Homeowners Association, said Sunday that -- after the Bales family moved to Lake Tapps -- there were occasionally renters in the residence.
But several years ago, their townhouse was foreclosed upon, according to Baggett and Burgess. The Bales also didn't pay homeowners association fees for "at least three or four years," said Baggett.
"We don't know what happened," Baggett said of the Bales and their Auburn property, which Sunday had a notice that read "Do Not Occupy" on its front door.
One of Bales' lawyers, John Henry Browne, said upon arriving at the Kansas City, Missouri, airport -- where he'd come so he can drive to meet with his client -- that all the reports surrounding Bales have been a "shock" to those who know him as a "very mild mannered person and a great person."
Browne added that the entire situation was unique and challenging.
"You couldn't imagine a more difficult case, I don't think," the lawyer said. "This case has political ramifications, it has legal ramifications, it has social ramifications."
CNN's Sara Sidner in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Paul Vercammen in Auburn, Washington, contributed to this report.
U.S. Goals In Afghanistan Remain Same Despite Setbacks
March 18, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A top U.S. general says U.S. goals in Afghanistan remain the same despite recent setbacks.
Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, vowed a full probe into the killing of 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province on March 11.
A U.S. soldier, Robert Bales, is the sole suspect in the tragedy and is now being held in isolation at a U.S. military prison in the United States.
Dempsey said 2013 would be a "milestone" as Afghan forces take the lead in security operations before taking full control a year later.
Speaking on U.S. television, Dempsey also said Pakistan was now a stable country and expressed optimism Washington and Islamabad can repair relations, hurt by the November killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a mistaken NATO air strike and accusations by the United States that Pakistan is not doing enough to fight extremists in its tribal areas.
Based on APP reporting
Afghanistan acts to curb flight of capital
By Matthew Green, FT.com via CNN News March 19, 2012
(Financial Times) -- Afghanistan has taken new steps to combat rampant capital flight after the central bank found that the amount of dollars flown out of Kabul doubled to $4.6bn last year.
Afghan officials believe many of the brick-sized stacks of $100 bills stuffed into boxes, bags and suitcases by Dubai-bound passengers belong to drug lords or criminal cartels.
Western allies, who have spent billions shoring up the Afghan state, fear such flows will encourage the kind of grand-scale corruption that has alienated people from the government of Hamid Karzai, the president, and boosted support for the Taliban.
The $4.6bn of declared dollar exports via Kabul airport last year was almost equivalent to Afghanistan's 2010-11 state budget of $4.8bn.
The sum amounts to more than $150 for each Afghan citizen, in a country with average per capita income of only $1,100 (purchasing power parity) according to the World Health Organisation, or under $500 in gross income terms according to the UN.
Officials suspect that large quantities of cash also leave the country without being recorded.
Noorullah Delawari, the central bank governor, said he had imposed a new rule that restricts passengers to carrying a maximum of $20,000. Anyone wishing to move more money abroad will have to make a wire transfer through a bank.
Mr Delawari said the rule, introduced this month, closed a loophole in Afghan law that allowed passengers to carry as much money as they liked out of the country provided they filled in a form.
"It will have a major impact on financing terrorism as well as on money laundering," he told the Financial Times.
A new class of war entrepreneurs enriched by an economic bubble fuelled by Nato contracts and aid money have become accustomed to stashing their cash in foreign accounts and real estate in Dubai.
Influential Afghans think nothing of carrying large quantities of cash out of the country. According to a cable from the US Embassy in Kabul that was later published on the website WikiLeaks, Zia Masood, the former vice-president, was once stopped entering Dubai carrying cash worth $52m and released without question.
A former vice-president of Lloyds Bank in California, Mr Delawari was appointed in November, replacing Abdul Qadir Fitrat. Mr Fitrat fled to the US in fear of his life in June after naming borrowers linked to a scandal that brought down Kabul Bank, the biggest private lender.
Mr Delawari said his suspicions were aroused when official records showed that SR1.5bn ($400m) left the country last year. Afghanistan has negligible trade with Saudi Arabia, although counter-terrorism officials suspect the Taliban raises significant funds from wealthy donors in the Gulf. Afghan officials believe some of the money laundered through Afghanistan is imported via Pakistan and Iran.
The measures have angered some Afghan currency traders, who say they will sharply increase the cost of legitimate transactions. Mr Delawari said he had received a call from a foreign exchange dealer who had claimed Afghan currency merchants would lose $250m a year as a result of the rule. The governor said he responded by hanging up his phone.
Mr Delawari said the central bank had placed monitors at the airport to help security forces enforce the new measures. But questions remain over whether criminal networks may find ways to circumvent Mr Delawari's rule in a country where bribery is rife and where perpetrators of financial crimes are rarely punished.
Officials fear much of the money flowing out of the country is linked to the burgeoning heroin industry. The World Bank said last year that gross revenues from the opium trade were estimated to be equivalent to up to a third of Afghanistan's measured gross domestic product.
Mr Delawari said the central bank was making progress in recovering funds from Kabul Bank, which suffered a run in 2010 that almost brought down the banking system. The bank, which has bad loans of more than $800m, has since been placed into receivership.
The governor said receivers had rescheduled some $400m of loans, and seized property and other assets worth $200m. The central bank is now conducting an audit of another 10 banks and looking at ways to tighten supervision. "We know there are some flaws, some loopholes in the law," Mr Delawari said. "We have learnt a lot from Kabul Bank."
Hero Guard Gives Life To Defend Afghan Schools
March 18, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Malali Bashir
While media attention was focused on the aftermath of the Koran burning in Afghanistan last month, a story that otherwise would have made headlines everywhere went virtually unnoticed. It's the story of Shah Mahmood, a young Afghan from war-ravaged Helmand Province in Southern Afghanistan who saved a school by giving his life.
Shah Mahmood was apparently doing his routine duty of guarding two schools in the Dasht area of Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah, when two men appeared with explosives and an intent to blow up the schools. Mohammad resisted but was severely beaten by the two armed men.
The official Kandahar media office's press release had more details:
"Leaving him unconscious and thinking that Shah Mahmood was dead, the terrorists started to plant land mines inside the school building. However, Shah Mahmood stood up and opened fire on the men with his gun killing one and wounding the other."
Shah Mahmood and the wounded attacker were later taken to a Lashkar Gah emergency room. "Unfortunately Shah Mohammad, as a result of the severe beating [at the hands] of the Taliban, died there," the press release added.
Insurgents have been blowing up schools across Afghanistan because they think the students are taught Western and un-Islamic values and lessons. Southern Afghanistan is considered a stronghold of the Taliban, so few schools are open in that region. Sensing that the situation had gotten out of control, the Afghan government reached a deal with the Taliban, according to Kabul-based research organization Afghan Analysts Network.
Amid this all, a young Afghan sacrificed his life to save these schools, a seemingly rare story of proud defiance against violent extremism.
To highlight the issue and encourage media coverage, I started a Facebook Group for Shah Mahmood. It was flooded with comments. They include: "Shah Mahmood, we are proud of you," "Shah Mahmood, you are the real hero of Afghan people," and, "Shah Mahmood's principle was patriotism and he proved that."
The group's members eventually asked the Afghan government to do the following:
Name a Helmand city square, a road, and one of the schools after Shah Mahmood
Inaugurate an educational award in Shah Mahmood's name
Provide care for Shah Mahmood's family and ensure their safety and education
The Facebook campaign attracted international attention. Shah Mahmood was described by his father and other relatives as a kind and generous man who was engaged and trying to bring his bride home soon. Since the tragedy, Shah Mahmood's family of 19 has moved to the city of Lashkar Gah; but his father says they don't even have money for rent.
Now, BBC's Pashto service has quoted Afghanistan's education minister, Dr. Farooq Wardak, as saying that President Hamid Karzai issued personal instructions to the government to continue to pay Shah Mahmood's salary to his grieving family. As well, Wardak said, one of the schools will be renamed from Shamsul-Uloom to Shah Mahmood to honor the man who gave his life to save the school and its students.
U.S.-Afghan divide seen in perceptions of village massacre
Americans view the killing of 16 villagers as an aberration and a betrayal of U.S. values. For Afghans, the incident is similar to many others, accidental or otherwise, that cause civilian deaths.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King March 17, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - There are days here, in these war-haunted times, when it seems that death might come in any guise, and from any direction. From a bomb buried in the earth. From the sky. From a rusted motorbike haphazardly parked in a busy marketplace, with no one paying it and its deadly package any notice.
Or from a soldier who breaks down doors in the dead of night, with murder in mind.
Despite a shared sorrow and bewilderment, a jarring disparity has emerged in the way Americans and Afghans view the killings of 16 villagers in rural Kandahar province, allegedly at the hands of a lone U.S. Army staff sergeant named Robert Bales.
Those fundamentally differing perceptions reflect deep divisions over the manner in which this decade-old conflict has been fought, and in how it may finally end.
From the American standpoint, the narrative of a U.S. military man leaving his isolated outpost and slaughtering defenseless men, women and children — some too tiny to register what was happening, others waking in terror, only to be methodically stalked room to room — represents a profound aberration from accepted norms, a betrayal of every value U.S. forces are sworn to uphold.
From the Afghan side, though, March 11 was a day not so different from many others in the course of years of war.
The Kandahar killings made headlines around the world, but in the days just before and afterward, more than a dozen other Afghan noncombatants were killed or wounded in war-related circumstances. Most of these fatalities and maimings caused little public outcry; the grief that sprang from them was, by fate and by necessity, an almost entirely private affair.
"Our lives are not valued," said Mohammad Sabir, who said he lost four family members in a U.S.-led raid in eastern Afghanistan's Paktia province in 2010. "If an Afghan dies, no one cares about it."
In a kind of perverse symmetry, a roadside bomb in Oruzgan province, presumably planted by Taliban insurgents, killed 13 people four days after the Kandahar shootings, including nine children, the same number killed in the horrific earlier attack.
Afghan civilians were killed in war-related incidents at a rate of more than eight per day last year: 3,021 in all, according to the United Nations. Insurgents were blamed for nearly four in five of those deaths.
U.S. military officials constantly rail against negligence or deadly intent when the Taliban and other assailants stage suicide attacks or set off roadside bombs, which are primarily meant for Western troops but may just as easily kill anyone passing by.
Bombs intended for members of the Afghan security forces are often planted in places where civilians are likely to be hurt or killed by them as well. On Wednesday, three days after the Kandahar killings, a bomb strapped to a motorbike in Kandahar city killed an intelligence officer, but also wounded a civilian who was passing by.
And accidents, in their most genuine sense, do happen. On Friday, death rained down from the sky on an Afghan family on the outskirts of the capital, Kabul. A Western military helicopter, for as yet undetermined reasons, crashed, killing 12 Turkish military service members. Four Afghans died in their home, including two women and a boy, according to Kabul police.
To the NATO force, it is a source of epic and enduring frustration that most Afghans tend to make little distinction between civilian deaths caused by the Taliban and affiliated militant groups, and those attributed to foreign forces. And many people here see virtually no difference between a coldly calculated rampage such as the one said to have occurred in Kandahar's Panjwayi district and the inadvertent civilian casualties caused by airstrikes or night raids or other Western military operations.
In American minds, the moral distinction between the accidental and the deliberate, between the carefully judged risk and the deranged act, is incalculable. But for Afghans, the result — the shrouded bodies, the wailing relatives, the bite of shovels into dusty ground — speaks to the numbing sameness of unexpected and violent death.
Victims of wartime suffering here draw differing conclusions as to whether the losses they have borne should lead to a speedier pullout of U.S. and other foreign troops, and whether the banning of Western troops in rural areas, as President Hamid Karzai appeared to be advocating last week, would make things better. Maybe, they say, a precipitous pullback of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces would make everything worse.
Abdul Hadi, 55, who lost two sons and a grandson in 2010 to what he believed was Western gunfire after a suicide bombing in Kandahar, says not a day passes that he does not think of that day's events.
"Americans are wearing a friend's mask and killing us," he said.
But even after such a loss, he believes the too-rapid departure of U.S. troops could plunge the country into deeper chaos, perhaps even a civil war.
"It's too easy for all Western forces to leave us," he said. "They have got to finish what they have started. We are not in a position to stand on our own feet."
In the last week, Karzai has appeared to be trying to assuage the anger of bereaved Panjwayi villagers, and at the same time maintain lines of communication with his Western patrons.
Though publicly declaring Friday that he was "at the end of the rope" with civilian casualties, the Afghan leader also spoke with U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, and asserted that more dialogue was needed on all questions, including where American-led forces were to be deployed.
In a telephone conversation Friday with President Obama, Karzai agreed to talk more about the issue of whether U.S. forces should pull up stakes in village outposts, both sides said. NATO has a summit scheduled in May in Chicago.
Although the deaths in Panjwayi did not result in violent nationwide demonstrations such as those that followed the burning of Korans at an American air base last month, the fallout from the killings may prove long lasting in a deeper, more heartsick way.
Devout Muslims felt obliged to take to the streets for large-scale demonstrations against the burning of the holy books, but remembrances of war dead tend to be more subdued and more scattered.
"I'm the one who feels the pain, no one else," said Abdul Haq, whose brother was killed in a Taliban attack late last year. "It's the same everywhere. The West is careless of our suffering."
laura.king@latimes.com
Special correspondents Aimal Yaqubi and Hashmat Baktash in Kabul and a special correspondent in Kandahar province contributed to this report.
Iran general urges Afghans to fight US
The Associated Press By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Saturday, March 17, 2012
TEHRAN, Iran - A senior Iranian military commander urged Afghans on Saturday to use force to kick American troops out of their country, hinting that "new resistance groups" could launch attacks on U.S. interests in Afghanistan.
Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, a senior figure in the powerful Revolutionary Guard and the deputy head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there are indications that Afghans will "soon open new fronts" against "the obsolete, worn-out American empire."
The U.S. has accused Iran's Revolutionary Guard of supplying powerful roadside bombs to militants in Afghanistan fighting NATO forces. Iran has denied that it is supplying arms to fighters in Afghanistan.
Anti-U.S. sentiments have grown in Afghanistan after the killing of 16 civilians, including nine children, allegedly by a U.S. soldier in southern Kandahar province, as well the accidental burning of Quran holy books by American troops. The U.S. soldier has been identified as Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 38.
"Based on the existing indications, new fronts will soon be opened against invaders in order to ground the obsolete, worn-out American empire," Jazayeri said. "Creation of resistance groups and hitting American interests are among measures that can be taken."
He did not elaborate. The comments by Jazayeri were posted Saturday on the Guard's website, sepahnews.com. It is the strongest comments ever by an Iranian official against American troops in Afghanistan.
"The Americans must know that the Afghan nation ... is tired of the illegitimate presence of invaders ... and deserve to use force and offensive operations to kick invading enemies from their soil," he said.
Jazayeri said Afghans should make their territory unsafe for American troops.
"The United States should not be immune from the biting attacks for insulting Quran and massacring the innocent Afghan and Pakistani people. American troops must experience the bitter taste of revenge so that they won't feel security in any part of the region," he said.
The U.S. and Tehran are at odds over Iran's controversial nuclear program, and some analysts fear that Iran will respond with proxy forces if the confrontation becomes violent.
Bodies of Turkish soldiers died in plane crash in Afghanistan return home
ANKARA, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Bodies of 12 Turkish soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan were brought home early on Sunday, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.
The plane, carrying the deceased, landed at the Etimesgut Military Airport in the Turkish capital of Ankara, the report said, adding the bodies were taken to a forensic medicine institute.
The Turkish military helicopter, a Sikorsky, with the Kabul Regional Command assigned under the International Security Assistance Force, crashed into a house on the outskirts of the Afghan capital of Kabul on Friday, killing 12 Turkish soldiers on board and four Afghan civilians on the ground.
Turkey has about 1,800 troops in Afghanistan and leads NATO's operations in Kabul province. The force has suffered relatively few casualties because of its noncombat role.
In 2009, two Turkish soldiers, one of them a colonel, were killed in a traffic accident in northern Afghanistan.
Congress' Split On Afghanistan Isn't Along Party Lines
NPR By David WelnaMarch 17, 2012
Fallout is expected on Capitol Hill next week over what appears to be a killing spree by a U.S. soldier that took the lives of 16 civilians in Afghanistan.
With House members returning from a break, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. John Allen is set to testify before both the House and Senate armed services committees.
And just as the nation is divided over the war in Afghanistan, so too is Congress.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. is in charge of messaging for the Senate Republicans. Usually, he can be relied on to hammer President Obama's policies, but when it comes to the war in Afghanistan, Thune refuses to seize on the latest atrocity there to go after the president.
"I don't think you can allow ... what was an awful, tragic event — but a random event — [to] influence too much our goals there, and I think the president has said that. [Defense] Secretary [Leon] Panetta has said that, and I don't think there's a lot of disagreement up here," Thune said.
That certainly holds true for some top congressional Republicans.
"The president has a plan to transition this mission over to the Afghan army over the next couple of years," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. said. "I know it's been a very challenging period, but I think we ought to stick with the plan that's been laid out by the administration."
'Political Rhetoric' Divides Republicans
But other leading Republicans fault that plan, which removes 23,000 U.S. troops next year and the 65,000 others by the end of 2014.
"Political timetables based on arbitrary deadlines rather than conditions on the ground is a bad idea and so I'm not satisfied with the administration's proposals," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who claims that Obama is more fixated on his re-election than on success in Afghanistan.
Rick Santorum lobbed similar criticism this week on the presidential campaign trail, and rival Mitt Romney has called for bolstering the U.S. military in general by 100,00 active duty troops.
But on CBS' Face The Nation, Newt Gingrich declared that the time has come for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan.
"I think we need to reconsider the whole region. We need to understand that our being in the middle of countries like Afghanistan is probably counterproductive," Gingrich said. "We're not prepared to be ruthless enough to force them to change, and yet we're clearly an alien presence."
That got Republicans fighting among themselves.
"If all you've got to offer is political rhetoric and you're trying to sort of get a political advantage in a primary or a general election to undercut the plan, shame on you," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "That's not in America's self interest."
Democrats Ready To Leave, But When?
Congressional Democrats, too, are divided. When asked this week about his views on Afghanistan, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada stood by the president. "I think that we should stick by what we have," said Reid. "We're drawing down in Afghanistan and we should stick by the timeline."
Still, far more Democrats than Republicans in Congress question the wisdom of prolonging a war that's ground on for more than a decade.
"We should've been out of there a long time ago." said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has twice visited Afghanistan. "It's not a place for us, to be trying to nation-build. We need to come back home, rebuilding America." Manchin is also seeking re-election this fall. "We're not going to change Afghanistan or the Afghan mindset," he said.
Manchin is among two dozen senators, including two Republicans, who signed a letter to Obama last week, which stated: "It is time to bring our troops home from Afghanistan."
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, also signed the letter. "The president wants $88 billion more for next year," he said. "We've already spent about $1.5 trillion total [for] Afghanistan and Iraq."
Baucus said that Congress might not grant Obama's $88-billion Afghan funding request, and said he would vote against that level of funding for the war in Afghanistan.
Arduous path to Afghan 'end-game'
BBC News By Lyse Doucet17 March 2012
Kabul - In Afghanistan, the focus now is on the "end game". But the end is in doubt, and tension mounts over the rules of this game.
A much-touted plan for "transition," meant to provide foreign armies with an orderly, honourable exit by 2014, lurches from crisis to crisis. In the last week alone, there seemed to be an incident almost every day.
"The end of the rope," is now President Hamid Karzai's depiction of this imperilled relationship.
That was his angry mood after an emotional meeting with a delegation of tribal elders and villagers who came from Kandahar to discuss last Sunday's night-time massacre of 16 Afghans. When I called out a question at the end of the gathering, the president clearly wanted to publicly cast doubt on the US account that it was the work of one rogue American soldier who "snapped".
"These horrible activities cannot be tolerated," he declared, in a reference to night raids and other Nato military operations he has repeatedly railed against. A day earlier, he had called on Nato forces to pull out of villages and go back to their bases. Hardening tone
In public, his US and other Nato allies are scrambling to maintain a confident narrative of "enduring partnership".
In private, they express exasperation with an unpredictable president while trying to focus on their main priority in this end-game: securing enough gains on the battlefield against a resurgent Taliban, and training enough Afghans to continue the fight on their own.
Senior Afghan military officers agree with their Nato counterparts that they are not ready yet. Even the president has been ready to grudgingly discuss military tactics his allies still consider essential, but his tone is clearly hardening.
Still, Nato sources are confident they may finally be able to sign a long-awaited strategic partnership between the US and Afghanistan that would keep some US troops on bases here beyond 2014. There is even hope for a compromise on the most sensitive issue of night raids.
If it is clinched, the achievement would be the crowning moment of the Nato summit set for Chicago in May.
The US is also hoping it can use that occasion to report some progress in their fragile dialogue with the Taliban, even though the Taliban suspended the process this week because of what they called "the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans".
But the few months until May are a long time in the midst of what the US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta keeps referring to as "the hell of war".
He has repeatedly expressed regret over the tragic incident in Kandahar. But in the same breath, he has warned it is not the first incident and will not be the last. Searching questions
Afghans have been invoking an Afghan proverb with similar sentiments, "Every day, it gets worse, it doesn't get better."
I heard it from an Afghan instructor Lt Nasser while he was teaching Afghans at Kabul's Military Training Centre how to throw grenades.
There were loud exclamations of "Allah u Akbar" (God is Great) as plastic versions were hurled at the "dushman" - the enemy.
"We do our best training them but we can't predict what will happen in the future," Lt Nasser remarked philosophically.
Nato soldiers have also been troubled by incidents when Afghans in uniform have opened fire on them.
At what is Afghanistan's main military training centre, the staggering sums and commitment that Nato, and most of all the US, have ploughed into this mission are abundantly evident.
"The difference is astronomical," marvelled Canadian Major Carl Bennett as he swept his arm across a sprawling compound of training fields laced with roads plied by a constant flow of new military hardware.
"There was nothing here a few years ago."
But when I ask one young Afghan guard about the US military, he blurts a dismissive insult: "kafirs!" (infidels).
Moments later, he added: "There was more respect years ago. Our Afghan leaders also need to do more to build trust."
More than a decade since the Taliban was ousted and Western allies embraced a new relationship with Afghanistan, searching questions are being asked about why this partnership is still marked by so many mishaps and misunderstandings.
At a popular cafe reputed to offer "the best coffee in Kabul" even Afghans who have been able to benefit from Western scholarships and salaries are perplexed.
"It is difficult to digest and understand how, after so many years of engagement, the international community still doesn't realise what Afghans are sensitive about," remarked Suleman Fatimi who has worked both in government and the private sector.
He cited the recent inadvertent burning of the Koran at a US military base as a glaring example.
"We had all hoped for a smooth road until 2014," added Waheed Omer, a former Afghan presidential aide.
"Every incident," he regretted, "takes the ground from under those of us who would like to see a long-term strategic partnership."
Afghans have a wide range of concerns about this end-game that are not just about military engagement.
Some are more worried about what is certain to be a messy presidential election also set for 2014. The last contest was marred by allegations of fraud and Western meddling, and speculation is already growing over whether President Karzai will keep his pledge to stand down.
Others are focused on ensuring badly needed civilian aid does not dry up, too.
"The Afghan government is just focusing on survival now," remarked one Western aid official who has spent years in the region. "They're trying to get as much as they can from the international community before the pull out."
And there is growing concern about widespread corruption.
At the Afghan parliament, outspoken MP Ramazon Bashardost declared: "We still need financial and military support. President Karzai couldn't even afford to buy tea for the palace without foreign money!"
Dressed in a white tunic trimmed with the colours of the Afghan Flag, he exclaimed: "The foreigners can stay 100 years if they meet the needs of the Afghan people instead of corrupt warlords."
For now, everyone is just trying to make it through the next two years. They could make all the difference between something which could be called a success, and an utter failure.
"We're in the end game," affirmed Major Bennett", "but I guarantee you that if we pull out now, we will be back here in 20 years, starting all over from scratch."
Pakistan conveys condolences to Turkey over soldiers' deaths
ISLAMABAD, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar Sunday spoke to her Turkish counterpart Dr. Ahmet Davutoglu and offered profound condolences on the deaths of 12 Turkish soldiers in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on March 16.
The helicopter crashed into a house on the outskirts of the Afghan capital of Kabul on Friday, killing 12 Turkish soldiers on board, according to Turkish military and the NATO in Afghanistan.
"Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, on behalf of the Government and people of Pakistan, offered profound condolences on the loss of lives of twelve Turkish military personnel during a tragic helicopter accident," a Foreign Ministry statement said.
Expressing her deepest sympathies, the Foreign minister said that her prayers are with the families of those who died in the accident, the statement said.
She said that people of Pakistan were together with the Turkish people in their hour of grief, it said.
The cause of the crash is yet to be determined by the investigation team, the Turkish military said in a statement posted on its website.
Russia Demands Nato Not Leave Afghanistan Unstable
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 18 March 2012
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said international military forces must remain in Afghanistan until they properly fulfill the UN Security Council mandate they entered the country with, insisting that Russia had a right to demand this, during an interview with TOLOnews.
Lavrov said the Nato-led mission entered Afghanistan with a mandate to establish a stable government and an adequate defence force, and they should not leave until that job is done.
"We see it from the point of international law. The presence of the international stabilisation force in Afghanistan has been mandated by the UN Security Council. The mandate is clear. They must fulfill this mandate before they leave, and before they leave, they must report to the Security Council that the mandate has been fulfilled," Lavrov said during the Moscow-based interview on Saturday.
"Everyone understands that by the time the international forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan, the Afghan government itself must possess the capabilities to maintain law and order and to be able to address all security problems inside the country."
He said Russia had a right to demand for the mandate to properly implement because of its support of the Nato-led mission in providing transit possibilities through Russian territories.
"I think the Northern Route has become the major supply route for Isaf in Afghanistan - I think two third of deliveries are done by the northern route," he said.
"We believe this is our contribution to fulfill the mandate which the international forces received from the Security Council and we have the right to demand this mandate, to which we contribute, is implemented before the operation is over."
Lavrov said Russia was especially concerned about the growing insurgency in the north of Afghanistan which had previously been more stable as terrorists were pushing further north and infiltrating Russia's Central Asian neighbours.
He said that the US plan to maintain military bases in Afghanistan after 2014 was illogical and would not help regional instability, suggesting the plan was tantamount to a failed Nato mission.
"It's strange that while insisting that in 2014 the American troops, Nato troops I assume, will leave Afghanistan, at the same time Washington is discussing with Afghanistan very purposefully about establishing four or five military bases for the post 2014 period," he said.
"If you need the military presence, then you are continuing to implement the mandate of the Security Council. If you don't want to implement the mandate of the Security Council or if you believe that you have implemented the mandate already, but still want to establish and keep the military bases, I don't think that's logical."
"We want to understand what the reason is for it and why this is needed. We don't think it would be helpful for the stability in the region." Lavrov said Russia supported all efforts towards "national reconciliation" in Afghanistan but refused to be drawn specifically on whether the Afghan government should engage in talks with the Taliban, saying it was not Russia's place to give assessments of the political discussions going on within a sovereign country. ---- For the exclusive full interview with the Russian Foreign Minister, during which Lavrov also discusses how Russia is cooperating to fight drug proliferation from Afghanistan and regional concerns over Iran's nuclear development programme, tune in to TOLOnews tonight (Sunday) 7.30pm.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com