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Commander Apologizes for Afghan Airstrike
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN June 8, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The NATO and United States troop commander in Afghanistan flew to the eastern part of the country on Friday to apologize personally to surviving family members for a coalition airstrike earlier this week that local officials said killed 18 civilians.
The apology by the commander, Gen. John R. Allen, was the first admission by coalition forces that the strike on Wednesday had killed civilians, and his rare decision to meet with families close to the site of the attack, in Logar Province, was a sign that his command took the episode seriously. President Hamid Karzai has condemned the strike in strong terms and cut short a trip to China to press forward an investigation.
A joint Afghan and coalition investigation into the circumstances that led to the strike, the number of civilians killed and the procedures that were used is still under way, said Lt. Cmdr. Brian T. Badura, a coalition spokesman.
The airstrike, which occurred in the early morning, targeted a Taliban commander who was taking shelter with some of his men in a home where a wedding had taken place, according to locals, in the village of Sagawand in the Baraki Barak district of Logar Province, a Pashtun area in eastern Afghanistan.
The civilian casualties, which appear likely to be the worst so far this year involving international forces, come two months after the primary responsibility for night raids was handed to the Afghans as part of a memorandum of understanding between Afghanistan and the United States. The transfer of responsibility to the Afghans was meant in part to diminish situations like this one. The episode raised new questions about procedures and criteria for airstrikes, human rights advocates said.
During Friday’s trip to Logar Province, General Allen said: “I am here not only as the commander of the coalition forces but also as a father, to apologize for the tragedy that occurred two days ago. Additionally, I am committed to ensuring we do the right thing for the families of those we inadvertently harmed, as well as for the community in which they lived.”
In comments to The Associated Press, General Allen said that the joint Afghan-NATO force carrying out the operation had come under fire and that the troops did not know there were civilians in the house.
“They were taken under fire,” he said. “A hand grenade was thrown. Three of our people were wounded. We called for the people who were shooting to come out, and then the situation became more grave and innocent people were killed.”
According to a doctor who spoke to some women who survived the bombing, the Taliban prevented the civilians from leaving the house when the joint force shouted for the civilians to come out. A United Nations human rights team that has been investigating the circumstances surrounding the attack said its researchers had also heard that civilians were prevented from leaving the house, but with two versions of the details. In one, the Taliban told the women, elderly men and children that if they walked outside, they would be shot. In the other, the Taliban fighters prevented their going.
“You will never know for sure what motivated people to stay inside,” said James Rodehaver, the acting head of human rights for the United Nations team.
“All you can go on is whether they say they felt coerced or threatened, and that’s standard in a situation where you have fighters taking cover with civilians,” he said. “Could you seriously expect that a civilian would flee their home when armed men are awaiting them outside?”
The larger question the episode raises for human rights advocates is whether killing these particular Taliban fighters justified the use of air power, which always poses risks to any civilians who are nearby.
“You have to ask: what was the value of these Taliban that the military would risk using something as indiscriminate as air power on a civilian house?” said Mr. Rodehaver. “It’s a matter of proportionality and distinction of targets, and it was fully apparent that this was a civilian residence.”
In northern Afghanistan on Friday, the Taliban detonated an explosive device at a security wall around the jail in Sar-i-Pul Province, allowing those inside to escape through the hole. Several people, including three police officers and four prisoners, were killed in the blast and ensuing fighting, said Abdul Jabar Haqbeen, governor of Sar-i-Pul. More than a dozen escaped, Mr. Haqbeen said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the jail break in a statement posted on their Web site.
Habib Zahori contributed reporting from Kabul.
Disguised Afghan Bomber Kills 4 French Troops
VOA News June 9, 2012
A suicide bomber disguised as a woman wearing a burqa blew himself up in a market in eastern Afghanistan Saturday, killing four French NATO service members and wounding five.
A statement from the office of French President Francois Hollande says three of the wounded are in serious condition.
President Hollande dispatched Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to Afghanistan following the attack.
Afghan officials say the attack happened in Kapisa province, where the majority of soldiers are French.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying both French and Afghan forces suffered casualties.
Mr. Hollande announced last month France will withdraw most of its troops in Afghanistan by the end of the year, two years ahead of the timetable agreed by NATO.
The Kapisa bombing was the second deadly attack on NATO troops Saturday. Earlier, NATO reported that one of its service members was killed in a bomb blast.
2 Afghan army soldiers killed in restive south
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Two Afghan army soldiers were killed Saturday in a blast in the country's restive southern province of Helmand.
"The two army soldiers were killed when their van running along a road touched off an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in Gereshk district this morning," a provincial police spokesman Farid Farhang told Xinhua.
Separately, a total of 15 Taliban insurgents have been killed in an on-going joint operation carried out by Afghan army and police in Kajaki district, the spokesman added.
He said over 50 anti-vehicle mines and IEDs have also been found during the raid which kicked off on Wednesday.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced the launching of a spring offensive dubbed "Al- Farooq" from May 3 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in the country.
Taliban carried out a suicide bombing in eastern Kapisa province, killing four French soldiers with the NATO-led coalition and injuring eight others including three Afghan civilians earlier Saturday.
Pakistan Rejects US Rhetoric on 'Safe Havens'
VOA News June 9, 2012
Pakistan is reacting strongly to U.S. allegations it is letting militants use Pakistani soil as a safe haven and base of operations.
The Foreign Ministry slammed Washington and comments by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta Saturday, charging that Panetta "is oversimplifying some very complex issues."
It also said the allegations raised by Panetta during a recent trip to Kabul were also "misplaced and unhelpful in bringing about peace and stability in the region."
The foreign ministry statement followed similarly critical remarks by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, made to Chinese state-run television late Friday.
"It is proven in the world now that all the world together has not been able to defeat this monster called terrorism in Afghanistan so to expect Pakistan to face it alone is unfair, Pakistan is doing its best,” Zardari said.
New York Times newspaper reporter and Afghan analyst Ismail Khan told VOA's Deewa Radio that Panetta's comments, and the Pakistani response, should come as no surprise.
"Whenever there is a surge in violence in Afghanistan, or the casualty rises, U.S. officials attribute the increasing attacks to terrorists in the tribal areas of Pakistan," said Khan.
Panetta has said stabilization efforts in Afghanistan will remain difficult as long as militants had safe havens in Pakistan. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry says it is following a "well thought-out strategy to eradicate extremism and terrorism, and will follow its own timeline."
Relations between Islamabad and Washington have been strained over a host of issues recently, including Pakistan's closing the border to NATO trucks in response to the killing of 24 Pakistani troops by NATO forces.
The statement from the Pakistani foreign ministry comes as U.S. assistant defense secretary Peter Lavoy visits Islamabad in a fresh attempt to end Islamabad's six-month blockade of NATO supplies bound for Afghanistan.
Pakistan closed the border to NATO supply convoys following air strikes last November that killed 24 soldiers. Relations between the two nations also sank after Pakistan was humiliated by the U.S. raid that killed terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil last May.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.
Parting Gift for Afghans: A Military McMansion
Three Years Late, an $89 Million Base for Afghan Troops May Be Too Complicated for Them to Operate; 'Deep Fryers? Really?'
Wall Street Journal By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS June 8, 2012
ZARGHUN SHAHR, Afghanistan - In a dusty valley here, construction workers are racing to finish a fiber-optic-equipped military base for a wood-burning army.
The $89 million U.S.-funded forward operating base, called Super FOB, is being built to house the Afghan army brigade that patrols Paktika province, along the contentious Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
But Super FOB is being completed, and due to be expanded, after the U.S. and its allies have decided the Afghan security forces should be about a third smaller than envisioned when the base was conceived by U.S. and Afghan strategists.
The base, already more than three years behind schedule, is so elaborate it will require fuel and technical skills that many U.S. officers doubt the Afghan army will possess once American troops withdraw.
It is also being built to American specifications, with a huge, propane-powered kitchen whose stoves the Afghans say they won't use. Instead, they are getting wood stoves designed for their tastes.
"Deep fryers? Really?" said Lt. Col. Rafael Paredes, deputy commander of the 172nd Infantry Brigade, which inherited the five-year-old project from previous U.S. units. "The intention is good," he added. But the U.S.-led coalition "could have done the thing better."
The U.S. has funded dozens of bases for Afghan army units. The bill has come to $6.7 billion in projects completed, under way or planned since fiscal 2005.
Col. Edward Bohnemann, commander of the 172nd Infantry Brigade, tried last summer to kill a plan to spend an additional $43 million to expand the capacity of the 300-acre Super FOB to house two more Afghan battalions, according to his spokesman. The troops would be better positioned elsewhere, Col. Bohnemann argued, according to his spokesman.
His entreaties went nowhere.
Super FOB will be finished in June, according to a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is in charge of the U.S.-funded base-building operation. The expansion project will be completed next spring, and is now expected to cost $25 million, bringing the total base cost to roughly $114 million, the spokesman said.
"Super FOB is no more unique" than any of the other 16 brigade bases now in various stages of construction, said Lt. Cmdr. Robert Wadsworth, a NATO engineering officer. Six corps-size bases are being set up, each with a $300 million to $350 million price tag.
Super FOB was conceived and contracted in the early stages of the decade-old war, when NATO envisioned an Afghan army based in garrisons built to Western standards.
In 2009, when Super FOB was supposed to be completed, the coalition lowered its ambitions for future bases to "austere standards" that meet the needs and abilities of Afghan soldiers, according to a NATO report. The new standards include using local materials and construction equipment, as well as wood-burning stoves.
Super FOB, however, was already under way.
The Afghans plan to move in about 2,000 men, about half of the base's pre-expansion capacity, said Afghan Brig. Gen. Zemaray Khan, commander of the 2nd Brigade, 203rd Corps.
Jocelyne Nassar, chief administrative officer of Nassar Group International, the Lebanese contractor building the base, blamed the three-year delay in completing Super FOB on logistical, political, weather and security issues.
Shipping containers filled with roofing and other material are stuck in Pakistan, according to officials familiar with the project, hampered by Islamabad's decision late last year to shut down U.S. supply routes.
In a written response to questions about the delays, Ms. Nassar said, "The project has been the target of many attacks both physically on the ground/roads and mentally through enormous pressure applied on NGI's management team by individuals or organizations hoping to either interrupt the works of this strategic project, or blackmail the owners in a country where this practice is unfortunately common." She didn't identify those individuals or organizations.
NGI has installed generators the Afghans seem unlikely to be able to maintain, fueled with 250,000-gallon diesel tanks the Afghans seem unlikely to have the fuel to fill because of lack of money and logistics.
"They'll use all of their fuel just heating the place" instead of fueling their vehicles, predicts a U.S. officer. "They won't be able to patrol."
At full capacity, the generators would create 33% more power than the base consumes, according to U.S. estimates.
The base contains 122 buildings, many with lowered ceilings that absorb sound, terrazzo floors and forced-air heating and cooling. Fiber-optic Internet service is on its way. The hand-built stone wall surrounding the base cost $2.5 million.
There is a wastewater plant, a soccer field with bleachers, an underground sewer system and a fire station. The kitchen has separate fish-prep, chicken-prep and beef-prep areas. It also has deep fryers, a salad room and sneeze-guarded, stainless-steel service lines.
Afghan military cooks traditionally do their food preparation on the floor, and prefer to make large pots of rice and meat stew. When Afghan commanders inspected construction recently, they complained that the U.S.-supplied propane stoves are too small to hold such large pots. Now the contractor is installing a kitchen annex with 10 wood-burning stoves set into the ground that Afghan cooks can stand on as they stir.
"We require a different way of cooking," Gen. Zemaray says. He predicts the Defense Ministry will issue enough diesel fuel to run Super FOB's generators, and says he has asked Kabul to send him a 71-man technical team able to maintain the sewage-treatment facility, power grid and other advanced systems. NATO, meanwhile, is training Afghan technicians to maintain the new bases.
The Afghans and Americans agree the Afghan army will need a base in Paktika to stop the flow of insurgents. The U.S. has already begun scaling back its own bases in the province, even bulldozing some outposts.
Maj. Gen. Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said the Afghan army should have the capability to supply bases such as Super FOB after the U.S. coalition hands over security responsibilities. "By 2014, we expect that the Afghan army should be ready to supply and do everything they were doing, and be independent," he said.
The latest Super FOB dispute came when the Afghans demanded a 2,000-square-meter, or about 22,000-square-feet, mosque, built by Afghans. The Lebanese contractor and the Americans were reluctant to agree, worried about security and liability issues that might arise from allowing outside workers onto the unfinished base. But in the aftermath of the recent burning of Qurans by U.S. troops, which prompted riots around Afghanistan, U.S. commanders didn't want to be misinterpreted as forbidding a mosque on an Afghan base. They relented and negotiated an arrangement that would allow the mosque workers onto a secured part of the base. —Maria Abi-Habib and Nathan Hodge contributed to this article.
Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com
Top US defence official arrives for NATO supply talks
ISLAMABAD, June 9 (Xinhua) -- A senior US defence official has arrived in Islamabad for talks with Pakistani officials on the reopening of supply routes for NATO forces in Afghanistan, the US embassy said on Saturday.
US Assistant Defence Secretary Peter Levoy, leading an American delegation, will meet foreign, defence and finance ministry officials to discuss ways how to normalize relationship between the close allies.
Pakistan closed NATO supply line as a protest against airstrike on Pakistani border posts in November by US fighter jets, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers.
The US has so far refused to tender apology over the strike despite Pakistan's formal demand.
The already tense relationship saw further decline when a tribal court in Pakistan handed down a 33-year rigorous imprisonment to a Pakistani surgeon for helping the CIA reaches Osama bin Laden.
The US criticized the guilty verdict to Dr Shakil Afridi and as a protest slashed Pakistan's 33 million U.S. dollars aid. Islamabad has rejected the US call for release of Dr Afridi.
Continuation of US drone strikes in Pakistan's Waziristan tribal region is another issue that has badly affected bilateral relations.
In order to find out solution to these issues and to reduce tension, the US defence team is scheduled to hold talks with Pakistani military and civilian officials later Saturday and in the coming days.
The US embassy in Islamabad confirmed arrival of the team and said that meetings with the Foreign Secretary, Jalil Abbas Jilani and Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh have been scheduled.
Sources said that Pakistani and the US officials have held series of talks in Islamabad prior to the visit of Assistant Defence Secretary Peter Levoy and a final agreement on NATO supply line is expected to reach during the meetings.
The talks were deadlocked over taxes and additional transit fee Islamabad is demanding for each truckload of NATO supplies crossing its border into Afghanistan. Washington, however, thinks Pakistan's demand is not pragmatic and that it will not be ' price gouged'.
Islamabad seeks to charge 5000 U.S. dollars for each NATO container but Washington considers the amount too high.
It is believed that being a senior official from Washington, Levoy would have the mandate to take a decision on the contentious issue of taxation.
Unexploded munitions a dangerous legacy of war in Afghanistan
CNN By Mohammed Jamjoom and Ingrid Formanek June 8, 2012
The sounds of battle echo across a desolate stretch of land just east of Bagram Air Base, America's biggest base in Afghanistan. As it turns out, it's just battle practice.
"Training exercises on our big weapons to include our small arms," explains Sergeant 1st Class Steve Cunningham, of the 381st Military Police Unit. "Just put some ammo down range. The Afghan people let us do this to make sure our weapons stay functional for future missions."
He says rehearsals like this help his troops keep their skills sharp, adding that they're skills U.S. troops need to keep Afghans safe.
But villagers living around the East River Range couldn't disagree more -- they argue U.S. military exercises here are putting them in danger.
"Kids wander around and touch what they find," says Wali Muhammad Kuchi, a nomadic shepherd who is sitting across the road watching soldiers fire volleys of rounds into the mountainside. "These kids, they don't know what is and isn't full of explosives."
A handful of boys standing around him are waiting for the soldiers to leave. They'll scavenge for left over metal casings and fragments to sell for much needed cash for their families.
One boy tells us one kilogram, or about 2.2 pounds, of scrap metal will earn him roughly 150 Afghanis, or $3.
Wali Muhammad lost a leg and an arm to Soviet landmines in the 1980s, and he worries for the safety of his 13 year-old son, Esakhil -- one of the boys who will soon be out in the range searching for metal.
According to Mohammed Sediq Rashid, Chief of Operations of the Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan (or MACCA), at least 12 civilians from villages surrounding the range area have been maimed by unexploded ordnance, or UXOs, in the last four years. At least one was killed.
The shepherds are also at risk. They graze their sheep on slopes littered with bullets, grenades, and in a recent case, an anti-aircraft rocket, according to the U.S. military.
In a frayed cloth tent next to the range, we find 17 year-old Abdul Rahman. He winces from pain as he tells us how he lost part of his left arm.
"We are nomads. We take our herds to the mountain site for feeding. I saw something there," describes Abdul Rahman. "When I picked it up and then hit it with a stone it exploded."
His father, Zayar Gul, recounts how he rushed his son to nearby Bagram Air Base for emergency treatment. He says they were turned away by local guards at the gate. A U.S. military official at the base said he wasn't aware of the case.
Abdul Rahman was eventually taken to the Kabul Emergency Surgical Center, and then transferred to an eye hospital to save his sight. Four weeks after the explosion, he's still wearing sunglasses to protect his injured eyes.
The 17-year-old also lost part of his other arm in a similar explosion several years ago. He believes that in both incidents he was hurt by unexploded U.S. ordnance.
As Gul describes what happened to his son, his anger grows.
"It wasn't just something thrown from the sky. If it wasn't for the Americans doing their military exercises here, why would my son have been blown up?"
Gul's leg was severed by a Soviet era landmine, but he says it's U.S. forces who are now sowing destruction.
"We can't do any other kind of work," says Gul, "We don't have houses and we can't go to the cities. But they, the Americans, have made this place like fire for us."
All along the 20 kilometer (12.4 mile) stretch of flat terrain at East River Range is wide open land, with very little to indicate there's any danger. Fencing is nonexistent, and the few signs there warning that this area is a firing range are in faded English. For a largely illiterate population that speaks mostly Dari and Pashto, it's almost impossible for them to understand their lives are at risk.
Three decades of successive wars made Afghanistan one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. But now, UXOs account for three times as many casualties as mines -- and most of them are children, according to MACCA.
United Nations estimates that roughly 10 million landmines still remain in Afghanistan. Most of them are Soviet made, the deadly legacy left over from Afghanistan's war with that country.
But these days, Mohammad Sediq Rashid, MACCA's Chief of Operations says U.S. forces need to fully recognize their responsibility -- and that to a degree, they have failed in their duty to protect Afghan civilians.
"They should do something to make sure that the civilians are protected after the war is finished or after the training is finished," says Rashid.
Bagram's Deputy Garrison Commander, Michael Hartman, is in charge of the range. He acknowledges the U.S. military needs to do more at various sites throughout the country, and says he empathizes with the local population.
"I'm a grandfather and I'm hearing these stories of kids out there getting injured," he says. "I have seven grandkids. My oldest is 13, my youngest is seven. So, in addition to being a concerned grandparent, I know how I'd feel if my kids got injured. I think we have to do a better job of marking."
To that end, he says the military plans to soon place big concrete blocks about 200 meters apart on the flat terrain part of the range -- and intends to mark them with the international symbols that indicate a minefield.
"We think using those markings, red on one side, white on the other, is something they'll recognize," Hartman explains.
"The second part of that would be to have a warning or safety warnings," adds Hartman, "'unexploded ordnance or impact area' -- written in there in three languages -- English, Pashto and Dari -- because that's the languages that are understood here."
He adds that people in the area know it's a firing range, "but usually economics drive them to go out there and scavenge metals."
As members of the 381st Military Police Unit finish up their exercises, they pick up spent shell casings from the road. Cunningham says his unit does the right thing.
"I'd say that we're really big on picking up the metal that we lay down," he explains.
"We pick up the trash and we pick up after ourselves. We brought it with us, we're taking it back with us."
Still, these troops won't venture far beyond the road because they know there are decades worth of explosive remnants of war out there.
But Wali Muhamad has other worries.
"The remains from the foot solders aren't that dangerous," he says, "it's the things that are dropped first from the helicopters -- those things are very dangerous and lots of people have lost body parts because of that."
The range is used to test fire everything from 40mm grenades to 2.75-inch rockets fired by helicopters, all the way up to Hellfire missiles, says Hartman. 20mm rounds are fired off A-10 jets, and 30mm rounds are fired off the Apache helicopters.
We asked what posed the greatest risk to civilians in the area. Hartman said that while he's not an explosive ordnance disposal expert, it's "usually the 40mm rounds, 40mm grenades that are usually fired with a shoulder, a rifle, Mark 19, or some other weapons system."
Casualty reports from East River Range started coming in to MACCA in 2008. Rashid says it's been tough to communicate with the Americans. Ahead of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, he's worried about UXOs that will be left behind by coalition forces.
"We need to know the possible location of unexploded ordnance," says a somewhat frustrated Rashid. "We need to know the possible areas that are affected by improvised explosive devices. We need to have information ... before the international community forces leave -- they should pass it on to us so that the mine action program of Afghanistan is aware of these problems and able to address those legacies of the war in the years to come."
The U.S. military says it is aware of the dangers.
"We're at war," explains Hartman, "and you know, war is an inherently dangerous business. And we try to mitigate that danger by consolidating those routine, so to speak, firing and expenditure of weapon munitions into a controlled area as best we can."
Hartman, who arrived in Afghanistan in February, says he's not sure exactly what will be done to clean up UXOs from the East River Range, but says a concerted effort is now being made to minimize future casualties.
But for Abdul Rahman and others living close to the range, it's too late. They say this is their land, and they have nowhere else to go.
Politics by Other Means
Wall Street Journal By MARK MOYAR June 8, 2012
Last week, on the eve of publication of David E. Sanger's "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power," the New York Times ran an excerpt that detailed secret American cyberattacks on Iran. Sens. John McCain and Saxby Chambliss promptly demanded an investigation, charging that this and other recent leaks of secret information were coming from administration officials more concerned about the president's re-election than about the nation's security.
Robert Mueller, the FBI director, has indeed opened an investigation. It will be interesting to see how it plays out if, as seems probable, some of the leaks came from senior White House officials. Mr. Sanger's book and Daniel Klaidman's "Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency" divulge the details of top-level deliberations—details that were almost certainly known only to the administration's inner circle. The leaked information, moreover, fits suspiciously well into the tough-on-defense narrative that Barack Obama's re-election team is crafting.
Given the extraordinary access that Messrs. Sanger and Klaidman apparently had, we would do well to give their books the most careful attention. Their narratives are likely to be the most thorough accounts of America's recent national-security efforts that we shall receive before the November election. While the authors' closeness to the administration is cause for caution, it does have the advantage of insulating them from the charge of partisan hostility when they criticize the administration.
Mr. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent of the New York Times, and Mr. Klaidman, a special correspondent at Newsweek, are veteran reporters who write well, and both exploit their administration sources to good effect. Neither, however, seems to have many sources within the military or intelligence communities. Nor does either reveal much about their leaders—people like Gen. David Petraeus, Adm. Mike Mullen and Adm. Dennis Blair, who in Bob Woodward's 2010 book, "Obama's Wars," frequently questioned White House policies. An account that incorporates all the key perspectives must await another day. Even so, both authors present large amounts of valuable information, most of it unrelated to Iran or cyberwarfare; and at times they challenge what we might call the voter-courting, David Axelrod version of recent history.
Mr. Klaidman's "Kill or Capture," focused primarily on counterterrorism, depicts Mr. Obama as a balancer of pragmatism and liberal ideology, with pragmatism usually winning the day. What pragmatism means is not always clear. At times, the term seems to refer to the pragmatism of Defense Secretary Robert Gates—aimed at finding a solution without regard for ideology. At other times, it's the pragmatism of Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff—aimed at taking the most politically advantageous course.
Mr. Klaidman contends that Emanuel-like pragmatism led Mr. Obama to abandon causes popular with liberals but not with the general public, like prosecuting terrorists in civilian courts. As Mr. Klaidman sees it, the frequent anti-terrorist drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere show a combination of Gates and Emanuel pragmatism at work. Mr. Emanuel himself, Mr. Klaidman notes, prodded the CIA to divulge classified information about the drone strikes because "the muscular attacks could have a huge political upside for Obama."
On the matter of terrorist detentions, Mr. Obama's ideological principles prevailed. Liberal ideology, Mr. Klaidman explains, kept the president from establishing a viable terrorist-detention system; the result was a policy that compelled the administration to kill terror suspects rather than capture them. This outcome appalled not only intelligence professionals, who now had no one to interrogate, but also Obama loyalists like National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.
In one of his most telling passages, Mr. Klaidman depicts a passive commander in chief who often procrastinated in the hopes that problems would go away, a sharp divergence from the engaged and proactive president of the official narrative. "The president's own elusiveness created confusion about who was in control of policy," Mr. Klaidman writes. "In this vacuum his advisers fought brutally, each side invoking the president in support of its cause."
Both Mr. Klaidman and Mr. Sanger praise Mr. Obama for finding and killing Osama bin Laden. Both accept the White House's claim that an Obama missive to CIA Director Leon Panetta on June 2, 2009, spurred the CIA to a more vigorous pursuit of al Qaeda's leader. Thus, they join the White House in shifting some of the credit for finding bin Laden from the CIA to Mr. Obama. Here the authors' narrowness of sources led them astray. The author Peter Bergen, while researching his just-published book "Manhunt," about the search for bin Laden, asked five senior CIA officials about this claim and learned that all five found "laughable" the suggestion that Mr. Obama's exhortation resulted in increased attention or effort.
Messrs. Klaidman and Sanger both echo the official Obama-administration argument that the bin Laden raid was tremendously risky for the president, but they fail to address the potential objections. Wouldn't inaction have been riskier, subjecting Mr. Obama to charges of letting the world's worst terrorist get away—the same charges that Democrats leveled at George W. Bush after Tora Bora, the redoubt from which bin Laden escaped in late 2001? And if risking the lives of Navy SEALs was so politically hazardous, why hasn't Mr. Obama suffered political damage for the lives lost during innumerable special-operations missions against less important targets in Afghanistan?
Mr. Sanger, whose "Confront and Conceal" covers a wider range of national-security topics than Mr. Klaidman's book, makes a strong case that the bin Laden raid carried large risks of antagonizing Pakistan. The best evidence is the actual Pakistani backlash, which has included reduced cooperation on counterterrorism. He notes that the White House's boastful publicizing of the raid exacerbated Pakistani anger over America's intrusion. We also learn that the bragging so infuriated Mr. Gates that he advised Mr. Donilon to adopt a new communications strategy titled "Shut the f— up."
In his chapters on Afghanistan, Mr. Sanger asserts that Mr. Obama did not like the idea of sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in December 2009—the so-called surge. But he did it anyway, to "fulfill his campaign promise to focus on the Afghan War." Neither hawks nor doves are likely to find solace in such a revelation.
During 2010, Mr. Sanger continues, the slow progress of counterinsurgency and nation building soured Mr. Obama on the war. The following year, his disenchantment led him to reject a recommendation from Gen. Petraeus, then the top commander in Afghanistan, to keep most of the surge troops in place through 2012. Mr. Sanger says that it was the right decision, because Mr. Obama's drones strikes had by this time removed any threats to the U.S. homeland from Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Here, too, the experts in the military and intelligence community need to be heard. In recent months, leading CIA counterterrorism experts like Andrew Liepman have said publicly that al Qaeda has been weakened but not defeated. The Quetta Shura Taliban, the Haqqani Network and the Pakistani Taliban—all of which have histories of collaborating with and morphing into al Qaeda—remain strong in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The first two are enjoying robust support from the Pakistani government, thanks partly to Mr. Obama's Afghan retrenchment, which has heightened Pakistan's fears of Indian meddling in Afghanistan and thereby increased Pakistan's need for Afghan friends.
Among the most noteworthy of Mr. Sanger's discoveries is that the administration now plans to reduce America's "footprint" in Afghanistan to between 10,000 and 15,000 troops, stationed at a handful of bases. Mr. Obama has thus adopted a plan crafted by Vice President Biden a few years ago, which Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and other experts fiercely opposed because they knew that it would deprive counterterrorist forces of the intelligence required to find the enemy.
In addition, Mr. Sanger observes, America's ability to kill terrorists with drones is on the decline. Mr. Obama's intensification of the drone strikes has enraged the Pakistanis, leading them in April 2012 to demand an end to all such strikes. Pakistani complaints and reduced Pakistani cooperation have contributed to a precipitous drop in the number of strikes, from 117 in 2010 to 64 in 2011 and 17 in the first five months of 2012.
For more insight into the difficulties of shrinking the American footprint, we should look at recent events in Iraq, which are missing from the accounts of Mr. Klaidman and Mr. Sanger, not to mention the re-election spin doctors. When the Obama administration pulled the remaining U.S. conventional forces out of Iraq late last year, it vowed to maintain a large counterterrorism capability in the country, composed of CIA officers and private contractors. But, as Siobhan Gorman and Adam Entous recently reported in The Wall Street Journal, the Iraqi government soon imposed inordinate constraints on U.S. personnel and cut off sources of information. Unable to carry out its mission in full, the CIA is slashing its presence in Iraq to 40% of previous levels. The Afghans may treat us no better if we withdraw our troops into fortresses to protect purely American interests while ignoring the ethnic civil war that would likely break out.
The departure of U.S. combat forces has also allowed Iraq to fall into the lap of our most dangerous adversary, Iran. The state-sponsored smuggling of oil to Iran from Iraq is undermining the sanctions with which the United States seeks to throttle the Iranian regime. The Iraqi government has permitted Iranian aircraft to fly weapons to Syria's security forces despite heated American objections. Earlier this week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki needed outside help in handling recalcitrant political opponents. He didn't wake Mr. Obama with a phone call at 3 a.m. Instead, he dialed the Iranians. —Mr. Moyar is the author of "A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq."
E-Mails By U.S. Taliban Hostage Express 'Shame' At Being American
VOA News June 8, 2012
A U.S. magazine has published e-mails written by an American soldier being held hostage by the Taliban that suggest he was considering deserting the U.S. military even before his capture three years ago.
In e-mails to his parents, Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl said he was disgusted with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and that he was "ashamed to even be American."
Bergdahl, now 26, was taken prisoner by the Taliban on June 30, 2009.
He is at the center of a proposed prisoner swap in which he would be traded for five Taliban members currently held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Bergdahl's e-mails were published in an article in "Rolling Stone" magazine.
Based on reporting by AP and Rolling Stone
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN June 8, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The NATO and United States troop commander in Afghanistan flew to the eastern part of the country on Friday to apologize personally to surviving family members for a coalition airstrike earlier this week that local officials said killed 18 civilians.
The apology by the commander, Gen. John R. Allen, was the first admission by coalition forces that the strike on Wednesday had killed civilians, and his rare decision to meet with families close to the site of the attack, in Logar Province, was a sign that his command took the episode seriously. President Hamid Karzai has condemned the strike in strong terms and cut short a trip to China to press forward an investigation.
A joint Afghan and coalition investigation into the circumstances that led to the strike, the number of civilians killed and the procedures that were used is still under way, said Lt. Cmdr. Brian T. Badura, a coalition spokesman.
The airstrike, which occurred in the early morning, targeted a Taliban commander who was taking shelter with some of his men in a home where a wedding had taken place, according to locals, in the village of Sagawand in the Baraki Barak district of Logar Province, a Pashtun area in eastern Afghanistan.
The civilian casualties, which appear likely to be the worst so far this year involving international forces, come two months after the primary responsibility for night raids was handed to the Afghans as part of a memorandum of understanding between Afghanistan and the United States. The transfer of responsibility to the Afghans was meant in part to diminish situations like this one. The episode raised new questions about procedures and criteria for airstrikes, human rights advocates said.
During Friday’s trip to Logar Province, General Allen said: “I am here not only as the commander of the coalition forces but also as a father, to apologize for the tragedy that occurred two days ago. Additionally, I am committed to ensuring we do the right thing for the families of those we inadvertently harmed, as well as for the community in which they lived.”
In comments to The Associated Press, General Allen said that the joint Afghan-NATO force carrying out the operation had come under fire and that the troops did not know there were civilians in the house.
“They were taken under fire,” he said. “A hand grenade was thrown. Three of our people were wounded. We called for the people who were shooting to come out, and then the situation became more grave and innocent people were killed.”
According to a doctor who spoke to some women who survived the bombing, the Taliban prevented the civilians from leaving the house when the joint force shouted for the civilians to come out. A United Nations human rights team that has been investigating the circumstances surrounding the attack said its researchers had also heard that civilians were prevented from leaving the house, but with two versions of the details. In one, the Taliban told the women, elderly men and children that if they walked outside, they would be shot. In the other, the Taliban fighters prevented their going.
“You will never know for sure what motivated people to stay inside,” said James Rodehaver, the acting head of human rights for the United Nations team.
“All you can go on is whether they say they felt coerced or threatened, and that’s standard in a situation where you have fighters taking cover with civilians,” he said. “Could you seriously expect that a civilian would flee their home when armed men are awaiting them outside?”
The larger question the episode raises for human rights advocates is whether killing these particular Taliban fighters justified the use of air power, which always poses risks to any civilians who are nearby.
“You have to ask: what was the value of these Taliban that the military would risk using something as indiscriminate as air power on a civilian house?” said Mr. Rodehaver. “It’s a matter of proportionality and distinction of targets, and it was fully apparent that this was a civilian residence.”
In northern Afghanistan on Friday, the Taliban detonated an explosive device at a security wall around the jail in Sar-i-Pul Province, allowing those inside to escape through the hole. Several people, including three police officers and four prisoners, were killed in the blast and ensuing fighting, said Abdul Jabar Haqbeen, governor of Sar-i-Pul. More than a dozen escaped, Mr. Haqbeen said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the jail break in a statement posted on their Web site.
Habib Zahori contributed reporting from Kabul.
Disguised Afghan Bomber Kills 4 French Troops
VOA News June 9, 2012
A suicide bomber disguised as a woman wearing a burqa blew himself up in a market in eastern Afghanistan Saturday, killing four French NATO service members and wounding five.
A statement from the office of French President Francois Hollande says three of the wounded are in serious condition.
President Hollande dispatched Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to Afghanistan following the attack.
Afghan officials say the attack happened in Kapisa province, where the majority of soldiers are French.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying both French and Afghan forces suffered casualties.
Mr. Hollande announced last month France will withdraw most of its troops in Afghanistan by the end of the year, two years ahead of the timetable agreed by NATO.
The Kapisa bombing was the second deadly attack on NATO troops Saturday. Earlier, NATO reported that one of its service members was killed in a bomb blast.
2 Afghan army soldiers killed in restive south
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Two Afghan army soldiers were killed Saturday in a blast in the country's restive southern province of Helmand.
"The two army soldiers were killed when their van running along a road touched off an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in Gereshk district this morning," a provincial police spokesman Farid Farhang told Xinhua.
Separately, a total of 15 Taliban insurgents have been killed in an on-going joint operation carried out by Afghan army and police in Kajaki district, the spokesman added.
He said over 50 anti-vehicle mines and IEDs have also been found during the raid which kicked off on Wednesday.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced the launching of a spring offensive dubbed "Al- Farooq" from May 3 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in the country.
Taliban carried out a suicide bombing in eastern Kapisa province, killing four French soldiers with the NATO-led coalition and injuring eight others including three Afghan civilians earlier Saturday.
Pakistan Rejects US Rhetoric on 'Safe Havens'
VOA News June 9, 2012
Pakistan is reacting strongly to U.S. allegations it is letting militants use Pakistani soil as a safe haven and base of operations.
The Foreign Ministry slammed Washington and comments by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta Saturday, charging that Panetta "is oversimplifying some very complex issues."
It also said the allegations raised by Panetta during a recent trip to Kabul were also "misplaced and unhelpful in bringing about peace and stability in the region."
The foreign ministry statement followed similarly critical remarks by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, made to Chinese state-run television late Friday.
"It is proven in the world now that all the world together has not been able to defeat this monster called terrorism in Afghanistan so to expect Pakistan to face it alone is unfair, Pakistan is doing its best,” Zardari said.
New York Times newspaper reporter and Afghan analyst Ismail Khan told VOA's Deewa Radio that Panetta's comments, and the Pakistani response, should come as no surprise.
"Whenever there is a surge in violence in Afghanistan, or the casualty rises, U.S. officials attribute the increasing attacks to terrorists in the tribal areas of Pakistan," said Khan.
Panetta has said stabilization efforts in Afghanistan will remain difficult as long as militants had safe havens in Pakistan. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry says it is following a "well thought-out strategy to eradicate extremism and terrorism, and will follow its own timeline."
Relations between Islamabad and Washington have been strained over a host of issues recently, including Pakistan's closing the border to NATO trucks in response to the killing of 24 Pakistani troops by NATO forces.
The statement from the Pakistani foreign ministry comes as U.S. assistant defense secretary Peter Lavoy visits Islamabad in a fresh attempt to end Islamabad's six-month blockade of NATO supplies bound for Afghanistan.
Pakistan closed the border to NATO supply convoys following air strikes last November that killed 24 soldiers. Relations between the two nations also sank after Pakistan was humiliated by the U.S. raid that killed terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil last May.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.
Parting Gift for Afghans: A Military McMansion
Three Years Late, an $89 Million Base for Afghan Troops May Be Too Complicated for Them to Operate; 'Deep Fryers? Really?'
Wall Street Journal By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS June 8, 2012
ZARGHUN SHAHR, Afghanistan - In a dusty valley here, construction workers are racing to finish a fiber-optic-equipped military base for a wood-burning army.
The $89 million U.S.-funded forward operating base, called Super FOB, is being built to house the Afghan army brigade that patrols Paktika province, along the contentious Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
But Super FOB is being completed, and due to be expanded, after the U.S. and its allies have decided the Afghan security forces should be about a third smaller than envisioned when the base was conceived by U.S. and Afghan strategists.
The base, already more than three years behind schedule, is so elaborate it will require fuel and technical skills that many U.S. officers doubt the Afghan army will possess once American troops withdraw.
It is also being built to American specifications, with a huge, propane-powered kitchen whose stoves the Afghans say they won't use. Instead, they are getting wood stoves designed for their tastes.
"Deep fryers? Really?" said Lt. Col. Rafael Paredes, deputy commander of the 172nd Infantry Brigade, which inherited the five-year-old project from previous U.S. units. "The intention is good," he added. But the U.S.-led coalition "could have done the thing better."
The U.S. has funded dozens of bases for Afghan army units. The bill has come to $6.7 billion in projects completed, under way or planned since fiscal 2005.
Col. Edward Bohnemann, commander of the 172nd Infantry Brigade, tried last summer to kill a plan to spend an additional $43 million to expand the capacity of the 300-acre Super FOB to house two more Afghan battalions, according to his spokesman. The troops would be better positioned elsewhere, Col. Bohnemann argued, according to his spokesman.
His entreaties went nowhere.
Super FOB will be finished in June, according to a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is in charge of the U.S.-funded base-building operation. The expansion project will be completed next spring, and is now expected to cost $25 million, bringing the total base cost to roughly $114 million, the spokesman said.
"Super FOB is no more unique" than any of the other 16 brigade bases now in various stages of construction, said Lt. Cmdr. Robert Wadsworth, a NATO engineering officer. Six corps-size bases are being set up, each with a $300 million to $350 million price tag.
Super FOB was conceived and contracted in the early stages of the decade-old war, when NATO envisioned an Afghan army based in garrisons built to Western standards.
In 2009, when Super FOB was supposed to be completed, the coalition lowered its ambitions for future bases to "austere standards" that meet the needs and abilities of Afghan soldiers, according to a NATO report. The new standards include using local materials and construction equipment, as well as wood-burning stoves.
Super FOB, however, was already under way.
The Afghans plan to move in about 2,000 men, about half of the base's pre-expansion capacity, said Afghan Brig. Gen. Zemaray Khan, commander of the 2nd Brigade, 203rd Corps.
Jocelyne Nassar, chief administrative officer of Nassar Group International, the Lebanese contractor building the base, blamed the three-year delay in completing Super FOB on logistical, political, weather and security issues.
Shipping containers filled with roofing and other material are stuck in Pakistan, according to officials familiar with the project, hampered by Islamabad's decision late last year to shut down U.S. supply routes.
In a written response to questions about the delays, Ms. Nassar said, "The project has been the target of many attacks both physically on the ground/roads and mentally through enormous pressure applied on NGI's management team by individuals or organizations hoping to either interrupt the works of this strategic project, or blackmail the owners in a country where this practice is unfortunately common." She didn't identify those individuals or organizations.
NGI has installed generators the Afghans seem unlikely to be able to maintain, fueled with 250,000-gallon diesel tanks the Afghans seem unlikely to have the fuel to fill because of lack of money and logistics.
"They'll use all of their fuel just heating the place" instead of fueling their vehicles, predicts a U.S. officer. "They won't be able to patrol."
At full capacity, the generators would create 33% more power than the base consumes, according to U.S. estimates.
The base contains 122 buildings, many with lowered ceilings that absorb sound, terrazzo floors and forced-air heating and cooling. Fiber-optic Internet service is on its way. The hand-built stone wall surrounding the base cost $2.5 million.
There is a wastewater plant, a soccer field with bleachers, an underground sewer system and a fire station. The kitchen has separate fish-prep, chicken-prep and beef-prep areas. It also has deep fryers, a salad room and sneeze-guarded, stainless-steel service lines.
Afghan military cooks traditionally do their food preparation on the floor, and prefer to make large pots of rice and meat stew. When Afghan commanders inspected construction recently, they complained that the U.S.-supplied propane stoves are too small to hold such large pots. Now the contractor is installing a kitchen annex with 10 wood-burning stoves set into the ground that Afghan cooks can stand on as they stir.
"We require a different way of cooking," Gen. Zemaray says. He predicts the Defense Ministry will issue enough diesel fuel to run Super FOB's generators, and says he has asked Kabul to send him a 71-man technical team able to maintain the sewage-treatment facility, power grid and other advanced systems. NATO, meanwhile, is training Afghan technicians to maintain the new bases.
The Afghans and Americans agree the Afghan army will need a base in Paktika to stop the flow of insurgents. The U.S. has already begun scaling back its own bases in the province, even bulldozing some outposts.
Maj. Gen. Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said the Afghan army should have the capability to supply bases such as Super FOB after the U.S. coalition hands over security responsibilities. "By 2014, we expect that the Afghan army should be ready to supply and do everything they were doing, and be independent," he said.
The latest Super FOB dispute came when the Afghans demanded a 2,000-square-meter, or about 22,000-square-feet, mosque, built by Afghans. The Lebanese contractor and the Americans were reluctant to agree, worried about security and liability issues that might arise from allowing outside workers onto the unfinished base. But in the aftermath of the recent burning of Qurans by U.S. troops, which prompted riots around Afghanistan, U.S. commanders didn't want to be misinterpreted as forbidding a mosque on an Afghan base. They relented and negotiated an arrangement that would allow the mosque workers onto a secured part of the base. —Maria Abi-Habib and Nathan Hodge contributed to this article.
Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com
Top US defence official arrives for NATO supply talks
ISLAMABAD, June 9 (Xinhua) -- A senior US defence official has arrived in Islamabad for talks with Pakistani officials on the reopening of supply routes for NATO forces in Afghanistan, the US embassy said on Saturday.
US Assistant Defence Secretary Peter Levoy, leading an American delegation, will meet foreign, defence and finance ministry officials to discuss ways how to normalize relationship between the close allies.
Pakistan closed NATO supply line as a protest against airstrike on Pakistani border posts in November by US fighter jets, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers.
The US has so far refused to tender apology over the strike despite Pakistan's formal demand.
The already tense relationship saw further decline when a tribal court in Pakistan handed down a 33-year rigorous imprisonment to a Pakistani surgeon for helping the CIA reaches Osama bin Laden.
The US criticized the guilty verdict to Dr Shakil Afridi and as a protest slashed Pakistan's 33 million U.S. dollars aid. Islamabad has rejected the US call for release of Dr Afridi.
Continuation of US drone strikes in Pakistan's Waziristan tribal region is another issue that has badly affected bilateral relations.
In order to find out solution to these issues and to reduce tension, the US defence team is scheduled to hold talks with Pakistani military and civilian officials later Saturday and in the coming days.
The US embassy in Islamabad confirmed arrival of the team and said that meetings with the Foreign Secretary, Jalil Abbas Jilani and Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh have been scheduled.
Sources said that Pakistani and the US officials have held series of talks in Islamabad prior to the visit of Assistant Defence Secretary Peter Levoy and a final agreement on NATO supply line is expected to reach during the meetings.
The talks were deadlocked over taxes and additional transit fee Islamabad is demanding for each truckload of NATO supplies crossing its border into Afghanistan. Washington, however, thinks Pakistan's demand is not pragmatic and that it will not be ' price gouged'.
Islamabad seeks to charge 5000 U.S. dollars for each NATO container but Washington considers the amount too high.
It is believed that being a senior official from Washington, Levoy would have the mandate to take a decision on the contentious issue of taxation.
Unexploded munitions a dangerous legacy of war in Afghanistan
CNN By Mohammed Jamjoom and Ingrid Formanek June 8, 2012
The sounds of battle echo across a desolate stretch of land just east of Bagram Air Base, America's biggest base in Afghanistan. As it turns out, it's just battle practice.
"Training exercises on our big weapons to include our small arms," explains Sergeant 1st Class Steve Cunningham, of the 381st Military Police Unit. "Just put some ammo down range. The Afghan people let us do this to make sure our weapons stay functional for future missions."
He says rehearsals like this help his troops keep their skills sharp, adding that they're skills U.S. troops need to keep Afghans safe.
But villagers living around the East River Range couldn't disagree more -- they argue U.S. military exercises here are putting them in danger.
"Kids wander around and touch what they find," says Wali Muhammad Kuchi, a nomadic shepherd who is sitting across the road watching soldiers fire volleys of rounds into the mountainside. "These kids, they don't know what is and isn't full of explosives."
A handful of boys standing around him are waiting for the soldiers to leave. They'll scavenge for left over metal casings and fragments to sell for much needed cash for their families.
One boy tells us one kilogram, or about 2.2 pounds, of scrap metal will earn him roughly 150 Afghanis, or $3.
Wali Muhammad lost a leg and an arm to Soviet landmines in the 1980s, and he worries for the safety of his 13 year-old son, Esakhil -- one of the boys who will soon be out in the range searching for metal.
According to Mohammed Sediq Rashid, Chief of Operations of the Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan (or MACCA), at least 12 civilians from villages surrounding the range area have been maimed by unexploded ordnance, or UXOs, in the last four years. At least one was killed.
The shepherds are also at risk. They graze their sheep on slopes littered with bullets, grenades, and in a recent case, an anti-aircraft rocket, according to the U.S. military.
In a frayed cloth tent next to the range, we find 17 year-old Abdul Rahman. He winces from pain as he tells us how he lost part of his left arm.
"We are nomads. We take our herds to the mountain site for feeding. I saw something there," describes Abdul Rahman. "When I picked it up and then hit it with a stone it exploded."
His father, Zayar Gul, recounts how he rushed his son to nearby Bagram Air Base for emergency treatment. He says they were turned away by local guards at the gate. A U.S. military official at the base said he wasn't aware of the case.
Abdul Rahman was eventually taken to the Kabul Emergency Surgical Center, and then transferred to an eye hospital to save his sight. Four weeks after the explosion, he's still wearing sunglasses to protect his injured eyes.
The 17-year-old also lost part of his other arm in a similar explosion several years ago. He believes that in both incidents he was hurt by unexploded U.S. ordnance.
As Gul describes what happened to his son, his anger grows.
"It wasn't just something thrown from the sky. If it wasn't for the Americans doing their military exercises here, why would my son have been blown up?"
Gul's leg was severed by a Soviet era landmine, but he says it's U.S. forces who are now sowing destruction.
"We can't do any other kind of work," says Gul, "We don't have houses and we can't go to the cities. But they, the Americans, have made this place like fire for us."
All along the 20 kilometer (12.4 mile) stretch of flat terrain at East River Range is wide open land, with very little to indicate there's any danger. Fencing is nonexistent, and the few signs there warning that this area is a firing range are in faded English. For a largely illiterate population that speaks mostly Dari and Pashto, it's almost impossible for them to understand their lives are at risk.
Three decades of successive wars made Afghanistan one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. But now, UXOs account for three times as many casualties as mines -- and most of them are children, according to MACCA.
United Nations estimates that roughly 10 million landmines still remain in Afghanistan. Most of them are Soviet made, the deadly legacy left over from Afghanistan's war with that country.
But these days, Mohammad Sediq Rashid, MACCA's Chief of Operations says U.S. forces need to fully recognize their responsibility -- and that to a degree, they have failed in their duty to protect Afghan civilians.
"They should do something to make sure that the civilians are protected after the war is finished or after the training is finished," says Rashid.
Bagram's Deputy Garrison Commander, Michael Hartman, is in charge of the range. He acknowledges the U.S. military needs to do more at various sites throughout the country, and says he empathizes with the local population.
"I'm a grandfather and I'm hearing these stories of kids out there getting injured," he says. "I have seven grandkids. My oldest is 13, my youngest is seven. So, in addition to being a concerned grandparent, I know how I'd feel if my kids got injured. I think we have to do a better job of marking."
To that end, he says the military plans to soon place big concrete blocks about 200 meters apart on the flat terrain part of the range -- and intends to mark them with the international symbols that indicate a minefield.
"We think using those markings, red on one side, white on the other, is something they'll recognize," Hartman explains.
"The second part of that would be to have a warning or safety warnings," adds Hartman, "'unexploded ordnance or impact area' -- written in there in three languages -- English, Pashto and Dari -- because that's the languages that are understood here."
He adds that people in the area know it's a firing range, "but usually economics drive them to go out there and scavenge metals."
As members of the 381st Military Police Unit finish up their exercises, they pick up spent shell casings from the road. Cunningham says his unit does the right thing.
"I'd say that we're really big on picking up the metal that we lay down," he explains.
"We pick up the trash and we pick up after ourselves. We brought it with us, we're taking it back with us."
Still, these troops won't venture far beyond the road because they know there are decades worth of explosive remnants of war out there.
But Wali Muhamad has other worries.
"The remains from the foot solders aren't that dangerous," he says, "it's the things that are dropped first from the helicopters -- those things are very dangerous and lots of people have lost body parts because of that."
The range is used to test fire everything from 40mm grenades to 2.75-inch rockets fired by helicopters, all the way up to Hellfire missiles, says Hartman. 20mm rounds are fired off A-10 jets, and 30mm rounds are fired off the Apache helicopters.
We asked what posed the greatest risk to civilians in the area. Hartman said that while he's not an explosive ordnance disposal expert, it's "usually the 40mm rounds, 40mm grenades that are usually fired with a shoulder, a rifle, Mark 19, or some other weapons system."
Casualty reports from East River Range started coming in to MACCA in 2008. Rashid says it's been tough to communicate with the Americans. Ahead of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, he's worried about UXOs that will be left behind by coalition forces.
"We need to know the possible location of unexploded ordnance," says a somewhat frustrated Rashid. "We need to know the possible areas that are affected by improvised explosive devices. We need to have information ... before the international community forces leave -- they should pass it on to us so that the mine action program of Afghanistan is aware of these problems and able to address those legacies of the war in the years to come."
The U.S. military says it is aware of the dangers.
"We're at war," explains Hartman, "and you know, war is an inherently dangerous business. And we try to mitigate that danger by consolidating those routine, so to speak, firing and expenditure of weapon munitions into a controlled area as best we can."
Hartman, who arrived in Afghanistan in February, says he's not sure exactly what will be done to clean up UXOs from the East River Range, but says a concerted effort is now being made to minimize future casualties.
But for Abdul Rahman and others living close to the range, it's too late. They say this is their land, and they have nowhere else to go.
Politics by Other Means
Wall Street Journal By MARK MOYAR June 8, 2012
Last week, on the eve of publication of David E. Sanger's "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power," the New York Times ran an excerpt that detailed secret American cyberattacks on Iran. Sens. John McCain and Saxby Chambliss promptly demanded an investigation, charging that this and other recent leaks of secret information were coming from administration officials more concerned about the president's re-election than about the nation's security.
Robert Mueller, the FBI director, has indeed opened an investigation. It will be interesting to see how it plays out if, as seems probable, some of the leaks came from senior White House officials. Mr. Sanger's book and Daniel Klaidman's "Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency" divulge the details of top-level deliberations—details that were almost certainly known only to the administration's inner circle. The leaked information, moreover, fits suspiciously well into the tough-on-defense narrative that Barack Obama's re-election team is crafting.
Given the extraordinary access that Messrs. Sanger and Klaidman apparently had, we would do well to give their books the most careful attention. Their narratives are likely to be the most thorough accounts of America's recent national-security efforts that we shall receive before the November election. While the authors' closeness to the administration is cause for caution, it does have the advantage of insulating them from the charge of partisan hostility when they criticize the administration.
Mr. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent of the New York Times, and Mr. Klaidman, a special correspondent at Newsweek, are veteran reporters who write well, and both exploit their administration sources to good effect. Neither, however, seems to have many sources within the military or intelligence communities. Nor does either reveal much about their leaders—people like Gen. David Petraeus, Adm. Mike Mullen and Adm. Dennis Blair, who in Bob Woodward's 2010 book, "Obama's Wars," frequently questioned White House policies. An account that incorporates all the key perspectives must await another day. Even so, both authors present large amounts of valuable information, most of it unrelated to Iran or cyberwarfare; and at times they challenge what we might call the voter-courting, David Axelrod version of recent history.
Mr. Klaidman's "Kill or Capture," focused primarily on counterterrorism, depicts Mr. Obama as a balancer of pragmatism and liberal ideology, with pragmatism usually winning the day. What pragmatism means is not always clear. At times, the term seems to refer to the pragmatism of Defense Secretary Robert Gates—aimed at finding a solution without regard for ideology. At other times, it's the pragmatism of Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff—aimed at taking the most politically advantageous course.
Mr. Klaidman contends that Emanuel-like pragmatism led Mr. Obama to abandon causes popular with liberals but not with the general public, like prosecuting terrorists in civilian courts. As Mr. Klaidman sees it, the frequent anti-terrorist drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere show a combination of Gates and Emanuel pragmatism at work. Mr. Emanuel himself, Mr. Klaidman notes, prodded the CIA to divulge classified information about the drone strikes because "the muscular attacks could have a huge political upside for Obama."
On the matter of terrorist detentions, Mr. Obama's ideological principles prevailed. Liberal ideology, Mr. Klaidman explains, kept the president from establishing a viable terrorist-detention system; the result was a policy that compelled the administration to kill terror suspects rather than capture them. This outcome appalled not only intelligence professionals, who now had no one to interrogate, but also Obama loyalists like National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.
In one of his most telling passages, Mr. Klaidman depicts a passive commander in chief who often procrastinated in the hopes that problems would go away, a sharp divergence from the engaged and proactive president of the official narrative. "The president's own elusiveness created confusion about who was in control of policy," Mr. Klaidman writes. "In this vacuum his advisers fought brutally, each side invoking the president in support of its cause."
Both Mr. Klaidman and Mr. Sanger praise Mr. Obama for finding and killing Osama bin Laden. Both accept the White House's claim that an Obama missive to CIA Director Leon Panetta on June 2, 2009, spurred the CIA to a more vigorous pursuit of al Qaeda's leader. Thus, they join the White House in shifting some of the credit for finding bin Laden from the CIA to Mr. Obama. Here the authors' narrowness of sources led them astray. The author Peter Bergen, while researching his just-published book "Manhunt," about the search for bin Laden, asked five senior CIA officials about this claim and learned that all five found "laughable" the suggestion that Mr. Obama's exhortation resulted in increased attention or effort.
Messrs. Klaidman and Sanger both echo the official Obama-administration argument that the bin Laden raid was tremendously risky for the president, but they fail to address the potential objections. Wouldn't inaction have been riskier, subjecting Mr. Obama to charges of letting the world's worst terrorist get away—the same charges that Democrats leveled at George W. Bush after Tora Bora, the redoubt from which bin Laden escaped in late 2001? And if risking the lives of Navy SEALs was so politically hazardous, why hasn't Mr. Obama suffered political damage for the lives lost during innumerable special-operations missions against less important targets in Afghanistan?
Mr. Sanger, whose "Confront and Conceal" covers a wider range of national-security topics than Mr. Klaidman's book, makes a strong case that the bin Laden raid carried large risks of antagonizing Pakistan. The best evidence is the actual Pakistani backlash, which has included reduced cooperation on counterterrorism. He notes that the White House's boastful publicizing of the raid exacerbated Pakistani anger over America's intrusion. We also learn that the bragging so infuriated Mr. Gates that he advised Mr. Donilon to adopt a new communications strategy titled "Shut the f— up."
In his chapters on Afghanistan, Mr. Sanger asserts that Mr. Obama did not like the idea of sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in December 2009—the so-called surge. But he did it anyway, to "fulfill his campaign promise to focus on the Afghan War." Neither hawks nor doves are likely to find solace in such a revelation.
During 2010, Mr. Sanger continues, the slow progress of counterinsurgency and nation building soured Mr. Obama on the war. The following year, his disenchantment led him to reject a recommendation from Gen. Petraeus, then the top commander in Afghanistan, to keep most of the surge troops in place through 2012. Mr. Sanger says that it was the right decision, because Mr. Obama's drones strikes had by this time removed any threats to the U.S. homeland from Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Here, too, the experts in the military and intelligence community need to be heard. In recent months, leading CIA counterterrorism experts like Andrew Liepman have said publicly that al Qaeda has been weakened but not defeated. The Quetta Shura Taliban, the Haqqani Network and the Pakistani Taliban—all of which have histories of collaborating with and morphing into al Qaeda—remain strong in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The first two are enjoying robust support from the Pakistani government, thanks partly to Mr. Obama's Afghan retrenchment, which has heightened Pakistan's fears of Indian meddling in Afghanistan and thereby increased Pakistan's need for Afghan friends.
Among the most noteworthy of Mr. Sanger's discoveries is that the administration now plans to reduce America's "footprint" in Afghanistan to between 10,000 and 15,000 troops, stationed at a handful of bases. Mr. Obama has thus adopted a plan crafted by Vice President Biden a few years ago, which Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and other experts fiercely opposed because they knew that it would deprive counterterrorist forces of the intelligence required to find the enemy.
In addition, Mr. Sanger observes, America's ability to kill terrorists with drones is on the decline. Mr. Obama's intensification of the drone strikes has enraged the Pakistanis, leading them in April 2012 to demand an end to all such strikes. Pakistani complaints and reduced Pakistani cooperation have contributed to a precipitous drop in the number of strikes, from 117 in 2010 to 64 in 2011 and 17 in the first five months of 2012.
For more insight into the difficulties of shrinking the American footprint, we should look at recent events in Iraq, which are missing from the accounts of Mr. Klaidman and Mr. Sanger, not to mention the re-election spin doctors. When the Obama administration pulled the remaining U.S. conventional forces out of Iraq late last year, it vowed to maintain a large counterterrorism capability in the country, composed of CIA officers and private contractors. But, as Siobhan Gorman and Adam Entous recently reported in The Wall Street Journal, the Iraqi government soon imposed inordinate constraints on U.S. personnel and cut off sources of information. Unable to carry out its mission in full, the CIA is slashing its presence in Iraq to 40% of previous levels. The Afghans may treat us no better if we withdraw our troops into fortresses to protect purely American interests while ignoring the ethnic civil war that would likely break out.
The departure of U.S. combat forces has also allowed Iraq to fall into the lap of our most dangerous adversary, Iran. The state-sponsored smuggling of oil to Iran from Iraq is undermining the sanctions with which the United States seeks to throttle the Iranian regime. The Iraqi government has permitted Iranian aircraft to fly weapons to Syria's security forces despite heated American objections. Earlier this week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki needed outside help in handling recalcitrant political opponents. He didn't wake Mr. Obama with a phone call at 3 a.m. Instead, he dialed the Iranians. —Mr. Moyar is the author of "A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq."
E-Mails By U.S. Taliban Hostage Express 'Shame' At Being American
VOA News June 8, 2012
A U.S. magazine has published e-mails written by an American soldier being held hostage by the Taliban that suggest he was considering deserting the U.S. military even before his capture three years ago.
In e-mails to his parents, Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl said he was disgusted with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and that he was "ashamed to even be American."
Bergdahl, now 26, was taken prisoner by the Taliban on June 30, 2009.
He is at the center of a proposed prisoner swap in which he would be traded for five Taliban members currently held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Bergdahl's e-mails were published in an article in "Rolling Stone" magazine.
Based on reporting by AP and Rolling Stone
www.afghanistannewscenter.com