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US Troop Deaths Top 2,000 in Afghanistan
VOA News August 22, 2012
The number of U.S. military members killed in the war in Afghanistan has surpassed 2,000, with more than half the deaths coming in the past 27 months.
The increased casualty rate came after U.S. President Barack Obama sent thousands of extra troops into the country to intensify the U.S.-led NATO coalition's battle against insurgents.
Those troops are withdrawing, along with their international counterparts, as Afghan forces take increasing security control ahead of a 2014 deadline for foreign combat troops to leave Afghanistan.
The Afghan army and police have endured a larger number of casualties since the war began in 2001. Statistics dating back to 2007 show more than 6,500 Afghan security forces have been killed.
The United Nations has reported that more than 13,000 Afghan civilians have also died as a result of the conflict since 2007.
U.S. military officials have expressed concern about a recent series of attacks by Afghan forces on international troops that have killed 10 service members, mostly Americans. At least 39 coalition members have been killed in such attacks this year.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey arrived in Afghanistan Monday for talks with NATO and Afghan commanders that focused on the killings.
Afghan militants on Tuesday fired rockets at a plane used by the top U.S. military officer, but a spokeswoman says he was "nowhere near" the aircraft at the time. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
Police Chief Fired Over Afghan Insider Attack On NATO
August 21, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
An Afghan district police chief has been fired after one of his men killed a NATO soldier.
Officials said on August 21 that the police chief of Spin Boldak district in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar was sacked over the latest incident, when a member of the Afghan National Police opened fire on his foreign colleagues, killing one and wounding another on August 19.
The move marks the start of a crackdown on the increasing number of insider attacks.
It came after President Barack Obama and top U.S. military officers expressed growing concern over insider attacks in which uniformed Afghans turn their weapons against their NATO allies.
The death toll from insider attacks has reached 40 this year, or around 13 percent of all international coalition deaths in 2012.
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
U.S. Boosts Security For Afghan Contractors
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE August 21, 2012
The U.S. military has added previously undisclosed security measures for contractors in Afghanistan, amid a wave of insider attacks by Afghan soldiers and police and the continuing withdrawal of coalition troops.
Separately, the top U.S. general's plane was hit by insurgent fire early Tuesday as it sat on a runway at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Indirect rounds fired shortly after midnight damaged the C-17 transport plane of Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and another helicopter, according to the U.S.-led coalition.
The general and his entourage weren't on the plane at the time and weren't injured, the coalition said, adding the entourage took another military aircraft to leave Afghanistan. The attack came just months after an Afghan civilian tried to drive a stolen vehicle into the U.S. defense secretary's plane during a similar visit.
In scheduled meetings with U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and Afghan military officials, Gen. Dempsey had focused on the rise in attacks on U.S. military forces by Afghan police and army personnel.
The U.S.-led coalition has also ordered tighter "force protection" measures for contract personnel who are involved in military training, according to Royal Canadian Air Force Maj. Steve Neta, a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization training mission in Afghanistan.
A NATO document viewed by The Wall Street Journal outlines a number of extra precautions for contractors, including requiring personnel to travel in more heavily armored convoys with military-compatible communications, GPS trackers and specific weaponry.
Maj. Neta said the coalition, as a matter of policy, doesn't discuss specific protection measures.
"We did make revisions to a policy relating to our contractors, although this wasn't precipitated by any one event," he said. "Force protection is a fundamental element to our operations here and we feel that our personnel understand that measures are implemented in the interest of providing as safe an environment as possible."
The increased security for contractors was put in place in recent months alongside efforts to increase security for coalition troops. Contractors and coalition troops alike have been increasingly targeted recently by uniformed Afghan soldiers and policemen, in so called "green-on-blue" attacks. Over the past two weeks, at least 10 U.S. troops have been killed in attacks by Afghan troops on their international colleagues.
The coalition recently instituted a new policy requiring troops to carry loaded magazines on base. The military has also assigned "guardian angels" to watch Afghan forces during meetings and patrols, ready to shoot anyone who turns a weapon on U.S. and international personnel.
The sweeping changes for contractors would make it potentially more difficult to carry on some essential work, according to one person familiar with the matter.
"Our estimate for full compliance based on the cost of equipping all vehicles and other measures required for full compliance runs to tens of millions of dollars," this person said. "We expect that implementing all aspects of the requirements would not be accomplished until after 2014."
The new security measures for contractors haven't had any "operational impact," Maj. Neta said.
The bulk of U.S. and international forces are slated to withdraw by 2014. Contractors are worried that the cost of doing business—and the potential risk to employees—will rise as uniformed troops depart.
The military relies extensively on contractors in Afghanistan. At the height of the conflict, for instance, the military was spending around $150 million a month on a food-supply contract to support around 100,000 troops.
By the end of September, the U.S. military presence will be reduced to 68,000 troops. As the U.S. and its allies prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan, private contractors have taken on roles traditionally considered in the purview of the military, from flying spyplanes to operating drones and sifting intelligence.
The outsourcing has risks. The military doesn't typically announce the deaths of private employees, but some contractors providing support have been killed. Last year, Pentagon contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. LMT +0.51% disclosed that two of the company's employees were killed in a rocket attack on a forward base in Afghanistan.
The contractors had been helping operate the Persistent Threat Detection System, a tethered balloon that is outfitted with high-tech surveillance cameras and communications gear.
In a recent interview, Lockheed's chief executive, Robert Stevens, said defense contractors were assessing the costs and the risks of keeping personnel in Afghanistan as the uniformed military presence shrinks.
"If there's an expectation that says companies are going to be there, then we're going to ask, are we going to get enough security?" he said. "Who's going to support this, from where? What would the logistics footprint look like, what would the personnel requirement look like, what would the security environment look like? Those are all reasonable questions." —Maria Abi-Habib in Kabul contributed to this article.
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com
India ratifies SAARC agreement on natural disasters
KATHMANDU, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- India became the first country to ratify the SAARC Agreement on Rapid Response to Natural Disasters, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Secretariat in the Nepali capital Kathmandu said on Wednesday.
Concerned at the increasing frequency and scale of natural disasters in the South Asian region and their damaging impacts, the agreement provides for a Natural Disaster Rapid Response Mechanism to enable member states to adopt a coordinated and planned approach to provide timely relief and humanitarian assistance in emergencies arising out of natural disasters.
It was signed by the SAARC foreign ministers during the 17th SAARC Summit held in Addu City of Maldives in November last year.
On behalf of the Indian government, Jaideep Mazumdar, charge d' affaires at the Embassy of India in Kathmandu, handed over the original Instrument of Ratification of the Agreement to SAARC Secretary General Ahmed Saleem.
"At the meeting with the charge d'affaires of the Indian Embassy, the Secretary General complimented the Government of India for taking the initiative to sign the Agreement and hoped that other countries will follow suit as early as possible," the SAARC Secretariat said in a statement.
Founded in 1985, the SAARC comprises eight South Asian nations, namely Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
Clarify U.S. Policy on Afghanistan: Designate Haqqani Network Terrorists
The Heritage Foundation By Lisa Curtis August 21, 2012
For the past two years, the Obama Administration has pursued on-again, off-again reconciliation talks with Taliban leaders in an effort to bring an end to the Afghan war. As part of this process, it has wrestled with how to handle the Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate organization headquartered in Pakistan’s tribal border areas that has extensive influence in eastern Afghanistan and is responsible for some of the most vicious attacks against coalition forces.
Congress recently passed legislation, which President Obama signed into law on August 10, requiring the Administration to determine within 30 days whether the Haqqani network should officially be classified as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) and, if not, to explain its rationale. The decision will be watched closely in the region and will signal—to Afghans, Pakistanis, and terrorist leaders alike—the degree of U.S. commitment to uprooting terrorism from the region.
The U.S. should stand by its counterterrorism principles and identify this deadly terrorist organization for what it is. This would reduce Pakistani space for further delaying military operations against the group and assist the U.S. in attacking the group’s financial network.
Designation Supports U.S. Strategy
There is an active debate within the U.S. Administration about whether the Haqqani network will be part of a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan. Some in the Administration argue that designating the group as a terrorist organization would preclude the U.S. from being able to negotiate with its members. A related argument holds that because of their extensive influence and deep tribal networks in eastern Afghanistan, the Haqqanis will eventually have to be part of a negotiated settlement.
The power and influence of the Haqqani network should not be the determining factor in deciding whether the U.S. declares it an FTO. Instead, the Administration should understand that an FTO designation would help the U.S. achieve its objectives in the region in the following ways:
It would publicly stigmatize the organization, which can assist in garnering cooperation from foreign governments, including Pakistan. It would bring clarity and precision to the interagency process for implementing policies that weaken the group and shut down its ability to conduct attacks.[1] It would help pressure the group financially, particularly regarding its fundraising activities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. has already sanctioned nine Haqqani leaders, but designating the entire network could help tighten the noose on the organization. A recent report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point details how the Haqqani network has evolved into a “sophisticated, diverse, and transnational crime network.” The report notes that the Haqqanis have never faced a sustained campaign against their financial networks.[2]
Need for Consistency and Clarity
Failing to designate the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization, especially following such high-profile attention on the issue, would demoralize Afghans who are fighting for a better future for their country and look to the U.S. to help them achieve it. The U.S. needs to clarify its goals in Afghanistan and be more consistent in its messaging to Pakistan. Islamabad points to inconsistent U.S. policies toward the Taliban and Haqqani network to justify its own continued ambiguous policies toward these groups waging war against the U.S.
Not designating the Haqqani network as an FTO would also give the Pakistani government an excuse for continuing to delay military operations against the group’s sanctuary on its territory, which is necessary to weaken the organization. According to U.S. media reports, after the June 1 attack against Camp Salerno, an important U.S. base in Khost province, Pakistani Chief of the Army Ashfaq Kayani told U.S. officials that he would launch a military operation against the Haqqanis over the next year. If General Kayani perceives that the U.S. is backing away from a confrontational approach toward the Haqqani network, he will likely feel less compelled to follow through on his pledge.
The Haqqani network has had ample chance to demonstrate willingness to negotiate. The Administration should weigh the likelihood of engaging in productive talks with the group against the mortal threat that it remains to U.S. troops and civilians in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Administration should have designated the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization immediately following the September 13, 2011, attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul to signal that it would not countenance attacks on U.S. civilians.
The Haqqani network would likely be more willing to engage in negotiations if weakened on the battlefield in Afghanistan and within its sanctuary inside Pakistan. Thus, the U.S. should put military and other pressure on the Haqqanis to convince them that they stand to gain more by participating in peace talks than by fighting coalition and Afghan forces. Failing to designate the group as a terrorist organization would be unlikely to motivate the leadership to join negotiations and would almost certainly discourage the Pakistanis from squeezing the group militarily.
End the Waffling
Designating the Haqqani network as an FTO would help U.S. efforts to counter the group by improving interagency efforts to block its access to financing. It would also help convince the Pakistanis to target the organization militarily on their territory. Continuing to delay a decision on the issue will only undermine confidence in U.S. strategy and create confusion about overall U.S. objectives in the region.
Lisa Curtis is Senior Research Fellow for South Asia in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation.
Despite drones and blimps, rocket attacks in Afghanistan prove hard to stop
NATO officials say Afghan militants fired rockets on Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, damaging a plane used by American Gen. Martin Dempsey.
Christian Science Monitor By Jeremy Kelly, Contributor August 21, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - The attack on Bagram Air Field, which damaged Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey’s plane, is a common phenomenon on most military bases across Afghanistan.
The sprawling Bagram base, or the equally large Kandahar Air Field, are attractively large targets for militants who might not have the stomach to launch a frontal assault on foreign or Afghan troops.
NATO officials today said they were unsure of the exact type of weapon fired at Bagram, which immobilized General Dempsey’s C-17 transport plane and slightly injured two American maintenance crew, but Chinese-made 107mm rockets are one of the most common used in such attacks.
The rockets can be easily set up on a rock or another firm surface and crudely aimed in the direction of its target, sometimes up to three miles away. Accuracy is mostly guesswork, which probably explains why there are comparatively few casualties despite them being a common occurrence.
Ensuring militants aren’t detected by the plethora of technology held by the US – and other foreign – militaries has become a game of cat-and-mouse.
Getting the trigger on a delay mechanism has become the most important part to avoid being caught. The omnipresent surveillance blimps, early-warning rocket detectors and, most worrying for militants, pilot-less drones circling nearby, mean that once a rocket is launched, coalition forces will usually know pretty quickly exactly where it came from.
Whoever set up the rocket would want to have already fled the area or be prepared for almost immediate retaliation by NATO forces.
But militants have started to adapt.
At a US base in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan in 2010, the base was regularly getting hit by rockets and mortars. Every time one hit, coalition forces would scramble to the launch site, sometimes less than two miles from the base’s perimeter. Each time, they found nothing.
It led to theories on how the (presumed) man whom US soldiers dubbed “Rocket Man” and, slightly more creatively, “Elton John,” was managing to fire the rockets on delay. Perhaps he had set up a mobile phone trigger system or just a simple clock-based timer. Yet the best theory was even cheaper, and simpler: He was using a block of ice.
The block would be set up to so after it melted, the change in weight on the contraption would make two trigger wires connect and the rocket would be launched.
Whatever it was, it worked: A year later on the base, rockets were still being fired and no suspect had been caught.
Americans tune out Afghan war as fighting rages on
Associated Press By DEB RIECHMANN 22/08/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - It was once President Barack Obama's "war of necessity." Now, it's America's forgotten war.
The Afghan conflict generates barely a whisper on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. It's not a hot topic at the office water cooler or in the halls of Congress — even though more than 80,000 American troops are still fighting here and dying at a rate of one a day.
Americans show more interest in the economy and taxes than the latest suicide bombings in a different, distant land. They're more tuned in to the political ad war playing out on television than the deadly fight still raging against the Taliban. Earlier this month, protesters at the Iowa State Fair chanted "Stop the war!" They were referring to one purportedly being waged against the middle class.
By the time voters go to the polls Nov. 6 to choose between Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the war will be in its 12th year. For most Americans, that's long enough.
Public opinion remains largely negative toward the war, with 66 percent opposed to it and just 27 percent in favor in a May AP-GfK poll. More recently, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 60 percent of registered voters felt the U.S. should no longer be involved in Afghanistan. Just 31 percent said the U.S. is doing the right thing by fighting there now.
Not since the Korean War of the early 1950s — a much shorter but more intense fight — has an armed conflict involving America's sons and daughters captured so little public attention.
"We're bored with it," said Matthew Farwell, who served in the U.S. Army for five years including 16 months in eastern Afghanistan, where he sometimes received letters from grade school students addressed to the brave Marines in Iraq — the wrong war.
"We all laugh about how no one really cares," he said. "All the 'support the troops' stuff is bumper sticker deep."
Farwell, 29, who is now studying at the University of Virginia, said the war is rarely a topic of conversation on campus — and he isn't surprised that it's not discussed much on the campaign trail.
"No one understands how to extricate ourselves from the mess we have made there," he said. "So from a purely political point of view, I wouldn't be talking about it if I were Barack Obama or Mitt Romney either."
Ignoring the Afghan war, though, doesn't make it go away.
More than 1,950 Americans have died in Afghanistan and thousands more have been wounded since President George W. Bush launched attacks on Oct. 7, 2001 to rout al-Qaida after it used Afghanistan to train recruits and plot the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
The war drags on even though al-Qaida has been largely driven out of Afghanistan and its charismatic leader Osama bin Laden is dead — slain in a U.S. raid on his Pakistani hideout last year.
Strangely, Afghanistan never seemed to grab the same degree of public and media attention as the war in Iraq, which Obama opposed as a "war of choice."
Unlike Iraq, victory in Afghanistan seemed to come quickly. Kabul fell within weeks of the U.S. invasion in October 2001. The hardline Taliban regime was toppled with few U.S. casualties.
But the Bush administration's shift toward war with Iraq left the Western powers without enough resources on the ground, so by 2006 the Taliban had regrouped into a serious military threat.
Candidate Obama promised to refocus America's resources on Afghanistan. But by the time President Obama sent 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan in December 2009, years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan had drained Western resources and sapped resolve to build a viable Afghan state.
And over time, his administration has grown weary of trying to tackle Afghanistan's seemingly intractable problems of poverty and corruption. The American people have grown weary too.
While most Americans are sympathetic to the plight of the Afghan people, they have become deeply skeptical of President Hamid Karzai's willingness to tackle corruption and political patronage and the coalition's chances of "budging a medieval society" into the modern world, says Ann Marlowe, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, a policy research organization in Washington.
"With millions of veterans home and talking with their families and friends ... some knowledge of just how hard this is has percolated down," said Marlowe, who has traveled to Afghanistan many times.
It has also been hard to show progress on the battlefield.
World War II had its Normandy, Vietnam its Tet Offensive and Iraq its Battle of Fallujah. Afghanistan is a grinding slough in villages and remote valleys where success is measured in increments.
The Afghan war transformed into a series of small, often vicious and intense fights scattered across a country almost as large as Texas.
In July, 40 U.S. service members died in Afghanistan in the deadliest month for American troops so far this year. At least 31 have been killed this month — seven when a helicopter crashed during a firefight with insurgents in what was one of the deadliest air disasters of the war. Ten others were gunned down in attacks from members of the Afghan security forces — either disgruntled turncoats or Taliban infiltrators.
Many argue that bin Laden's death justifies a quick U.S. exit from Afghanistan. Others say it's important to stay longer to shore up the Afghan security forces and help build the government so that it can stand on its own. An unstable Afghanistan could again offer sanctuary to militants like al-Qaida who want to harm American and its allies, they say.
"Those of us who have been at this for a long time continue to think that it's important, and that we have a chance now of a path forward with a long-term perspective that will produce the results," said James Cunningham, the new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
The U.S.-led coalition's combat mission will wind down in the next few years, leading up to the end of 2014 when most international troops will have left or moved into support roles.
Military analysts say the U.S. envisions a post-2014 force of perhaps 20,000 to hunt terrorists, train the Afghan forces and keep an eye on neighboring Iran and other regional powerhouse nations.
Americans aren't likely to know the number until later this year. But will anyone other than families of service personnel take note?
"I have heard others say that the danger that their spouses or children are serving in is just simply not being cared about," said Fred Wellman, a 22-year Army veteran who did three tours in Iraq. "I think a lot of veterans feel it is just forgotten."
Political satirist Garry Trudeau captured the apathy about the war in a comic strip this year showing a U.S. servicewoman stationed in Afghanistan calling her brother back home.
After he complains that his children have the flu and how he's struggling to keep up with their hectic hockey schedule, he asks her where she's calling from. She tells him she's in Afghanistan.
"Oh, right, right ..." her brother replies. "Wait, we're still there?"
Associated Press Writers Kristin Hall in Nashville, Tennessee and Jennifer Agiesta in Washington contributed to this report.
In Afghan Bazaar, U.S. Goods At Bargain Prices
NPR By Sean Carberry August 21, 2012
"Welcome to the Bush Bazaar," says Zach Warren, an American who has spent years working in Afghanistan. He's giving me a tour of Kabul's shopping districts as we buzz around the city on his rickety motorcycle, slicing through the city's traffic.
It's one of the worst-kept secrets in Kabul that most everything in the Bush Bazaar was pilfered from NATO trucks and bases — except for the counterfeits.
The suspect origin of the goods helps explain the everyday low prices at the Bush Bazaar, named after former President George W. Bush, who launched the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan back in 2001.
"This was obviously named before the Obama administration, and the name just sort of stuck," Warren explains. "So, this is the bazaar where goods that have quote, unquote, 'fallen off U.S. trucks,' are assembled and sold again."
Vendors are selling industrial-sized cans of ketchup or cleaning supplies — items that look exactly like what you'd see in a pantry at Bagram Air Field, the huge U.S. base north of Kabul. The prices in the bazaar are less than half the usual cost.
We enter one shop that is full of MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat. These are the prepackaged military rations that are for military personnel and are not meant to be sold commercially. There are giant, tan-colored packets of "maple-flavored syrup," and "breakfast cake" MREs.
We speak with the owner of the shop, Fahim, who says he's had this shop for two years. Like other vendors in the bazaar, he's reluctant to discuss the details of his business operations with a couple of Westerners and an audio recorder.
"He says he buys it from a shop at Bagram," translates Warren. "And my guess is you can be assured that doesn't happen."
So, if you find yourself in Kabul and want to buy MREs and combat boots that your American tax dollars have already paid for, the Bush Bazaar is the best place to shop.
Busy Markets
But it's by no means the only place to shop in Kabul.
A decade of foreign assistance has not created any Western-style mega-malls in Kabul, but it has helped keep the traditional markets well-stocked, like the ancient Old City Bazaar, which is still considered the city's central market.
"It's one of the biggest bazaars, and you can buy virtually anything here from dates to mangoes to toilet paper," Warren says.
The bazaar snakes through dirty streets and alleys lined by old buildings in various states of disrepair. Shop after shop is packed with cheap household goods, mostly imported from Iran, Pakistan, and China.
We turn down an alley into what seems to be the home improvement section of the bazaar — there's shop after shop full of tools and pulleys and shovels.
"You don't have Wal-Mart-style convenience stores," says Warren. "You have rows of a particular product. Teapots, for example. This area here, this is all for serving tea."
Despite all the teapots and ladles, I note that there's actually no tea in this section.
"No, there's no tea. Probably have to go somewhere else for that," says Warren.
On the subject of tea, as we walk along, several vendors call for us to visit their shops.
"In some ways here the hospitality is quite aggressive," explains Warren. He says that there's an old expression that says you can decline the first invitation to join someone for tea.
"If they say it a second time, they really do want you to come for tea — they're not just saying it," continues Warren.
"If they say it a third time, they're kind of ticked at you if you don't," he says. Warren explains that in Afghan culture it's an honor to host a guest. "Especially if you have a foreigner who's come from a long way away, it's a big honor," he says.
The bazaar seems to wind on endlessly. About 80 percent of the vendors and customers are men and boys. There are few women, and even fewer Westerners.
"To be honest, I don't spend too much time here because it's a security risk for me," says Warren. "It was a lot better in 2005-2006, and [has] progressively gotten worse. During the midday like this we're fine. But you wouldn't want to be here later at night."
Nice that he waited until after we are deep in the center of the bazaar to mention that point.
In Toll of 2,000, New Portrait of Afghan War
New York Times By JAMES DAO and ANDREW W. LEHREN The Reach of War August 21, 2012
His war was almost over. Or so Marina Buckley thought when her son Lance Cpl. Gregory T. Buckley Jr. told her that he would be returning from southern Afghanistan to his Marine Corps base in Hawaii in late August, three months early.
Instead, Lance Corporal Buckley became the 1,990th American service member to die in the war when, on Aug. 10, he and two other Marines were shot inside their base in Helmand Province by a man who appears to have been a member of the Afghan forces they were training.
A week later, with the death of Specialist James A. Justice of the Army at a military hospital in Germany, the United States military reached 2,000 dead in the nearly 11-year-old conflict, based on an analysis by The New York Times of Department of Defense records. The calculation by The Times includes deaths not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and other nations where American forces are directly involved in aiding the war.
Nearly nine years passed before American forces reached their first 1,000 dead in the war. The second 1,000 came just 27 months later, a testament to the intensity of fighting prompted by President Obama’s decision to send 33,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2010, a policy known as the surge.
In more ways than his family might have imagined, Lance Corporal Buckley, who had just turned 21 when he died, typified the troops in that second wave of 1,000. According to the Times analysis, three out of four were white, 9 out of 10 were enlisted service members, and one out of two died in either Kandahar Province or Helmand Province in Taliban-dominated southern Afghanistan. Their average age was 26.
The dead were also disproportionately Marines like Lance Corporal Buckley. Though the Army over all has suffered more dead in the war, the Marine Corps, with fewer troops, has had a higher casualty rate: At the height of fighting in late 2010, 2 out of every 1,000 Marines in Afghanistan were dying, twice the rate of the Army. Marine units accounted for three of the five units hardest hit during the surge.
Suffering the most casualties was the Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment out of Camp Pendleton, Calif. Twenty-five of its Marines died and more than 180 were wounded, many with multiple amputations, during a bloody seven-month deployment in Helmand that began in fall 2010.
The analysis also shows that Army casualties during the surge fell heaviest on two bases with frequently deployed units: Fort Campbell in Kentucky, home to the 101st Airborne Division, which recorded the most Army deaths in the surge, and Fort Drum in New York, home to the 10th Mountain Division.
The summer remained the peak season for fighting, with the single highest period for American deaths being July, August and September 2010, when at least 143 troops died. And as has been the case since at least 2008, improvised explosive devices, known as I.E.D.’s, remained a leading cause of death and injury, along with small-arms fire, the analysis showed.
But this year, a new threat emerged: attacks by Afghans dressed in the uniforms of Afghan security forces. In just the past two weeks, at least 9 Americans have been killed in such insider attacks, and for the year to date, at least 39 non-Afghan troops, most of them American, have been killed by men dressed as members of the Afghan security forces, the most since the war began.
Those insider attacks have increased concerns about NATO’s ability to turn security operations over to Afghan forces by 2014, the deadline set by President Obama for withdrawing the remaining American forces. For families, the deaths have raised hard questions about whether the Pentagon is doing enough to protect its troops from their own allies.
Though Afghanistan is now considered the nation’s longest war, at 128 months and counting, the number of dead is fewer than half the total in the Iraq war, where more than 4,480 died in eight years. More active-duty and reserve soldiers killed themselves last year, 278, than died in combat in Afghanistan, 247.
None of that brings solace to the families of the dead. For the Buckleys, of Oceanside, N.Y., their son’s death so near the end of his tour, so late in the long war and possibly at the hand of a purported ally, was uniquely anguishing.
As Mrs. Buckley recounted things her son loved — basketball, girls, movies, the beach — bitterness choked her words.
“Our forces shouldn’t be there,” she said. “It should be over. It’s done. No more.”
A Unit Hit Hard
The Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., was emblematic of the surge. Sent into Sangin, Afghanistan’s opium-producing heartland, in 2010, the battalion faced a formidable enemy expert in the use of I.E.D.’s., losing 25 Marines in a seven-month tour, the second most of any American unit in the entire war, a Times analysis shows.
Mark Moyar, an independent national security analyst who has studied the battalion’s operations, said that the British who had preceded the Marines in Sangin, a district in Helmand, focused on economic development and political outreach to undermine the insurgency. But the Taliban also operated with near impunity in parts of the district, he said.
The battalion took a different approach, pushing into Taliban-dominated villages. Fighting was intense, with civilians often getting caught in the middle, and casualties piled up fast.
On Oct. 8, barely two weeks after the battalion landed, it lost its first Marine, Lance Cpl. John T. Sparks. Five days later, four Marines of the battalion died when their armored truck was destroyed by a powerful bomb. Three more died the next day when they stepped on a mine during a foot patrol.
The rapid-fire deaths prompted calls in Washington for the battalion to pull back. But senior Marine commanders — including the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jason Morris — prevailed on Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates to leave them in place.
“Everyone was shocked, including me, that we lost that many guys that quickly,” Colonel Morris said. “But honestly, me and most of my Marines would have rather come home in body bags than let the Taliban claim a victory.”
Deanna Giles, the mother of a squad leader from the battalion, remembers those days all too well. Amid the blur of casualty reports, Ms. Giles began watching for strange cars in her neighborhood in Kankakee, Ill., fearing the next one would bear horrible news.
Anxiously seeking information or solace, she took to Internet chat rooms, forming a powerful digital bond with other families from the battalion, whom she never met in person.
“You began to care about people in a way you could not have before the Internet age,” Ms. Giles said.
Her son, Sgt. Caleb Giles, came home alive. Patty Schumacher’s son, Lance Cpl. Victor A. Dew, did not.
Ms. Schumacher had begged her son to defer enlisting until the war ended. When he refused, she urged him to take a job with a presidential security detail. He again said no, determined to be an infantryman and to go to war.
“Boy, did my heart sink,” she recalled. “But I was also proud of him for following his true desires. As a parent you just suck it up, hold your heart and take a deep breath and hope all goes well.”
In late August 2010, Lance Corporal Dew proposed to his girlfriend, then was deployed a month later. Within weeks of arriving in Helmand, he died with three other Marines in a powerful I.E.D. blast. At age 20, he became the 1,259th American to die in the war.
Inside his coffin, his fiancée placed a photograph of herself, wearing her wedding gown.
Ms. Schumacher maintains a Facebook page to keep his memory fresh, and occasionally toasts him at dinner. She still cries, too, though the tears are hard to predict, prompted by stray images and fleeting sounds that remind her of him: a smile, a song, a joke.
“When do you get better? You don’t ever get better,” she said. “You just get better in your grieving. There will always be something that triggers it. And then you are back on that emotional roller coaster.”
Attacks From Afghans
Staff Sgt. Scott E. Dickinson was coming home early. He was originally scheduled to remain in Helmand until November 2012, but the Pentagon was pulling Marines out of Afghanistan quickly, looking to get the surge forces out of the country by fall and shrink the American footprint to about 70,000 troops. He would be home in Hawaii within a week or two, he told his father early this month.
Not long after that conversation, his father, John Dickinson, saw an article about a soldier who had died just a week before he was to come home. “I thought, ‘He’s not safe until he sets foot in Hawaii,’ ” recalled Mr. Dickinson, an architect in San Diego.
He was right. Sergeant Dickinson, 29, a supply specialist who had volunteered to help train Afghan forces, died with Lance Corporal Buckley on Aug. 10. They were among six Marines killed that day in two separate attacks by men who appeared to be Afghan security force members.
The Pentagon asserts that most of those attacks have been the result of personal grudges, disputing Taliban claims to have widely infiltrated the Afghan security forces.
But the attacks have also raised anew concerns about the integrity of the Afghan forces that NATO expects to secure the entire nation after NATO troops withdraw in 2014.
More fundamentally, the continued deaths, occurring even as American forces are conducting fewer combat missions, have prompted service members and military families to wonder: has the decade-long American presence in Afghanistan made a difference?
Colonel Morris, the former commander for the Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, has little doubt that it has. After months of fierce fighting, he saw clear changes when he left Sangin in early 2011. Those improvements remain, he asserts, with residents participating in elections and going to school with less fear of Taliban intimidation — though such intimidation is far from gone.
“Every single Marine in my battalion could see the impact they had,” he said. “It was a validation of everything they had sacrificed for.”
Despite his son’s death, Mr. Dickinson agrees. Marina Buckley is not so sure.
“He was the most lovable, caring human being,” she said of her son. “He wore his heart on his sleeve. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”
He had wanted to join the Marine Corps ever since 9/11, despite her many attempts to dissuade him. By the time he was in high school a Marine Corps flag hung in his bedroom and her efforts to get him to go to college — Adelphi University accepted him his senior year — had failed.
“I’d say, ‘Why the Marines?’ ” she said, and he would reply with a joke. “I can pick up a lot of chicks with that uniform,” he would say.
But his ambition was serious: he wanted to serve, then become a Suffolk County police officer. He came to relish the brotherhood of the Marines and adored his first posting, in Hawaii. But deployment was different. The loneliness, the heat and the Meals Ready to Eat wore on him, Ms. Buckley said.
And he never felt secure living alongside Afghans, she said.
“If they want to kill themselves, let them,” she said of the Afghan people. “But they are killing people who shouldn’t be killed, who have lives here, and family here, and brothers and sisters here.”
Eddie Goldberger contributed reporting, and Jack Begg, Alain Delaquérière and Jack Styczynski contributed research.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
VOA News August 22, 2012
The number of U.S. military members killed in the war in Afghanistan has surpassed 2,000, with more than half the deaths coming in the past 27 months.
The increased casualty rate came after U.S. President Barack Obama sent thousands of extra troops into the country to intensify the U.S.-led NATO coalition's battle against insurgents.
Those troops are withdrawing, along with their international counterparts, as Afghan forces take increasing security control ahead of a 2014 deadline for foreign combat troops to leave Afghanistan.
The Afghan army and police have endured a larger number of casualties since the war began in 2001. Statistics dating back to 2007 show more than 6,500 Afghan security forces have been killed.
The United Nations has reported that more than 13,000 Afghan civilians have also died as a result of the conflict since 2007.
U.S. military officials have expressed concern about a recent series of attacks by Afghan forces on international troops that have killed 10 service members, mostly Americans. At least 39 coalition members have been killed in such attacks this year.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey arrived in Afghanistan Monday for talks with NATO and Afghan commanders that focused on the killings.
Afghan militants on Tuesday fired rockets at a plane used by the top U.S. military officer, but a spokeswoman says he was "nowhere near" the aircraft at the time. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
Police Chief Fired Over Afghan Insider Attack On NATO
August 21, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
An Afghan district police chief has been fired after one of his men killed a NATO soldier.
Officials said on August 21 that the police chief of Spin Boldak district in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar was sacked over the latest incident, when a member of the Afghan National Police opened fire on his foreign colleagues, killing one and wounding another on August 19.
The move marks the start of a crackdown on the increasing number of insider attacks.
It came after President Barack Obama and top U.S. military officers expressed growing concern over insider attacks in which uniformed Afghans turn their weapons against their NATO allies.
The death toll from insider attacks has reached 40 this year, or around 13 percent of all international coalition deaths in 2012.
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
U.S. Boosts Security For Afghan Contractors
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE August 21, 2012
The U.S. military has added previously undisclosed security measures for contractors in Afghanistan, amid a wave of insider attacks by Afghan soldiers and police and the continuing withdrawal of coalition troops.
Separately, the top U.S. general's plane was hit by insurgent fire early Tuesday as it sat on a runway at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Indirect rounds fired shortly after midnight damaged the C-17 transport plane of Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and another helicopter, according to the U.S.-led coalition.
The general and his entourage weren't on the plane at the time and weren't injured, the coalition said, adding the entourage took another military aircraft to leave Afghanistan. The attack came just months after an Afghan civilian tried to drive a stolen vehicle into the U.S. defense secretary's plane during a similar visit.
In scheduled meetings with U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and Afghan military officials, Gen. Dempsey had focused on the rise in attacks on U.S. military forces by Afghan police and army personnel.
The U.S.-led coalition has also ordered tighter "force protection" measures for contract personnel who are involved in military training, according to Royal Canadian Air Force Maj. Steve Neta, a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization training mission in Afghanistan.
A NATO document viewed by The Wall Street Journal outlines a number of extra precautions for contractors, including requiring personnel to travel in more heavily armored convoys with military-compatible communications, GPS trackers and specific weaponry.
Maj. Neta said the coalition, as a matter of policy, doesn't discuss specific protection measures.
"We did make revisions to a policy relating to our contractors, although this wasn't precipitated by any one event," he said. "Force protection is a fundamental element to our operations here and we feel that our personnel understand that measures are implemented in the interest of providing as safe an environment as possible."
The increased security for contractors was put in place in recent months alongside efforts to increase security for coalition troops. Contractors and coalition troops alike have been increasingly targeted recently by uniformed Afghan soldiers and policemen, in so called "green-on-blue" attacks. Over the past two weeks, at least 10 U.S. troops have been killed in attacks by Afghan troops on their international colleagues.
The coalition recently instituted a new policy requiring troops to carry loaded magazines on base. The military has also assigned "guardian angels" to watch Afghan forces during meetings and patrols, ready to shoot anyone who turns a weapon on U.S. and international personnel.
The sweeping changes for contractors would make it potentially more difficult to carry on some essential work, according to one person familiar with the matter.
"Our estimate for full compliance based on the cost of equipping all vehicles and other measures required for full compliance runs to tens of millions of dollars," this person said. "We expect that implementing all aspects of the requirements would not be accomplished until after 2014."
The new security measures for contractors haven't had any "operational impact," Maj. Neta said.
The bulk of U.S. and international forces are slated to withdraw by 2014. Contractors are worried that the cost of doing business—and the potential risk to employees—will rise as uniformed troops depart.
The military relies extensively on contractors in Afghanistan. At the height of the conflict, for instance, the military was spending around $150 million a month on a food-supply contract to support around 100,000 troops.
By the end of September, the U.S. military presence will be reduced to 68,000 troops. As the U.S. and its allies prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan, private contractors have taken on roles traditionally considered in the purview of the military, from flying spyplanes to operating drones and sifting intelligence.
The outsourcing has risks. The military doesn't typically announce the deaths of private employees, but some contractors providing support have been killed. Last year, Pentagon contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. LMT +0.51% disclosed that two of the company's employees were killed in a rocket attack on a forward base in Afghanistan.
The contractors had been helping operate the Persistent Threat Detection System, a tethered balloon that is outfitted with high-tech surveillance cameras and communications gear.
In a recent interview, Lockheed's chief executive, Robert Stevens, said defense contractors were assessing the costs and the risks of keeping personnel in Afghanistan as the uniformed military presence shrinks.
"If there's an expectation that says companies are going to be there, then we're going to ask, are we going to get enough security?" he said. "Who's going to support this, from where? What would the logistics footprint look like, what would the personnel requirement look like, what would the security environment look like? Those are all reasonable questions." —Maria Abi-Habib in Kabul contributed to this article.
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com
India ratifies SAARC agreement on natural disasters
KATHMANDU, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- India became the first country to ratify the SAARC Agreement on Rapid Response to Natural Disasters, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Secretariat in the Nepali capital Kathmandu said on Wednesday.
Concerned at the increasing frequency and scale of natural disasters in the South Asian region and their damaging impacts, the agreement provides for a Natural Disaster Rapid Response Mechanism to enable member states to adopt a coordinated and planned approach to provide timely relief and humanitarian assistance in emergencies arising out of natural disasters.
It was signed by the SAARC foreign ministers during the 17th SAARC Summit held in Addu City of Maldives in November last year.
On behalf of the Indian government, Jaideep Mazumdar, charge d' affaires at the Embassy of India in Kathmandu, handed over the original Instrument of Ratification of the Agreement to SAARC Secretary General Ahmed Saleem.
"At the meeting with the charge d'affaires of the Indian Embassy, the Secretary General complimented the Government of India for taking the initiative to sign the Agreement and hoped that other countries will follow suit as early as possible," the SAARC Secretariat said in a statement.
Founded in 1985, the SAARC comprises eight South Asian nations, namely Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
Clarify U.S. Policy on Afghanistan: Designate Haqqani Network Terrorists
The Heritage Foundation By Lisa Curtis August 21, 2012
For the past two years, the Obama Administration has pursued on-again, off-again reconciliation talks with Taliban leaders in an effort to bring an end to the Afghan war. As part of this process, it has wrestled with how to handle the Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate organization headquartered in Pakistan’s tribal border areas that has extensive influence in eastern Afghanistan and is responsible for some of the most vicious attacks against coalition forces.
Congress recently passed legislation, which President Obama signed into law on August 10, requiring the Administration to determine within 30 days whether the Haqqani network should officially be classified as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) and, if not, to explain its rationale. The decision will be watched closely in the region and will signal—to Afghans, Pakistanis, and terrorist leaders alike—the degree of U.S. commitment to uprooting terrorism from the region.
The U.S. should stand by its counterterrorism principles and identify this deadly terrorist organization for what it is. This would reduce Pakistani space for further delaying military operations against the group and assist the U.S. in attacking the group’s financial network.
Designation Supports U.S. Strategy
There is an active debate within the U.S. Administration about whether the Haqqani network will be part of a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan. Some in the Administration argue that designating the group as a terrorist organization would preclude the U.S. from being able to negotiate with its members. A related argument holds that because of their extensive influence and deep tribal networks in eastern Afghanistan, the Haqqanis will eventually have to be part of a negotiated settlement.
The power and influence of the Haqqani network should not be the determining factor in deciding whether the U.S. declares it an FTO. Instead, the Administration should understand that an FTO designation would help the U.S. achieve its objectives in the region in the following ways:
It would publicly stigmatize the organization, which can assist in garnering cooperation from foreign governments, including Pakistan. It would bring clarity and precision to the interagency process for implementing policies that weaken the group and shut down its ability to conduct attacks.[1] It would help pressure the group financially, particularly regarding its fundraising activities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. has already sanctioned nine Haqqani leaders, but designating the entire network could help tighten the noose on the organization. A recent report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point details how the Haqqani network has evolved into a “sophisticated, diverse, and transnational crime network.” The report notes that the Haqqanis have never faced a sustained campaign against their financial networks.[2]
Need for Consistency and Clarity
Failing to designate the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization, especially following such high-profile attention on the issue, would demoralize Afghans who are fighting for a better future for their country and look to the U.S. to help them achieve it. The U.S. needs to clarify its goals in Afghanistan and be more consistent in its messaging to Pakistan. Islamabad points to inconsistent U.S. policies toward the Taliban and Haqqani network to justify its own continued ambiguous policies toward these groups waging war against the U.S.
Not designating the Haqqani network as an FTO would also give the Pakistani government an excuse for continuing to delay military operations against the group’s sanctuary on its territory, which is necessary to weaken the organization. According to U.S. media reports, after the June 1 attack against Camp Salerno, an important U.S. base in Khost province, Pakistani Chief of the Army Ashfaq Kayani told U.S. officials that he would launch a military operation against the Haqqanis over the next year. If General Kayani perceives that the U.S. is backing away from a confrontational approach toward the Haqqani network, he will likely feel less compelled to follow through on his pledge.
The Haqqani network has had ample chance to demonstrate willingness to negotiate. The Administration should weigh the likelihood of engaging in productive talks with the group against the mortal threat that it remains to U.S. troops and civilians in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Administration should have designated the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization immediately following the September 13, 2011, attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul to signal that it would not countenance attacks on U.S. civilians.
The Haqqani network would likely be more willing to engage in negotiations if weakened on the battlefield in Afghanistan and within its sanctuary inside Pakistan. Thus, the U.S. should put military and other pressure on the Haqqanis to convince them that they stand to gain more by participating in peace talks than by fighting coalition and Afghan forces. Failing to designate the group as a terrorist organization would be unlikely to motivate the leadership to join negotiations and would almost certainly discourage the Pakistanis from squeezing the group militarily.
End the Waffling
Designating the Haqqani network as an FTO would help U.S. efforts to counter the group by improving interagency efforts to block its access to financing. It would also help convince the Pakistanis to target the organization militarily on their territory. Continuing to delay a decision on the issue will only undermine confidence in U.S. strategy and create confusion about overall U.S. objectives in the region.
Lisa Curtis is Senior Research Fellow for South Asia in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation.
Despite drones and blimps, rocket attacks in Afghanistan prove hard to stop
NATO officials say Afghan militants fired rockets on Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, damaging a plane used by American Gen. Martin Dempsey.
Christian Science Monitor By Jeremy Kelly, Contributor August 21, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - The attack on Bagram Air Field, which damaged Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey’s plane, is a common phenomenon on most military bases across Afghanistan.
The sprawling Bagram base, or the equally large Kandahar Air Field, are attractively large targets for militants who might not have the stomach to launch a frontal assault on foreign or Afghan troops.
NATO officials today said they were unsure of the exact type of weapon fired at Bagram, which immobilized General Dempsey’s C-17 transport plane and slightly injured two American maintenance crew, but Chinese-made 107mm rockets are one of the most common used in such attacks.
The rockets can be easily set up on a rock or another firm surface and crudely aimed in the direction of its target, sometimes up to three miles away. Accuracy is mostly guesswork, which probably explains why there are comparatively few casualties despite them being a common occurrence.
Ensuring militants aren’t detected by the plethora of technology held by the US – and other foreign – militaries has become a game of cat-and-mouse.
Getting the trigger on a delay mechanism has become the most important part to avoid being caught. The omnipresent surveillance blimps, early-warning rocket detectors and, most worrying for militants, pilot-less drones circling nearby, mean that once a rocket is launched, coalition forces will usually know pretty quickly exactly where it came from.
Whoever set up the rocket would want to have already fled the area or be prepared for almost immediate retaliation by NATO forces.
But militants have started to adapt.
At a US base in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan in 2010, the base was regularly getting hit by rockets and mortars. Every time one hit, coalition forces would scramble to the launch site, sometimes less than two miles from the base’s perimeter. Each time, they found nothing.
It led to theories on how the (presumed) man whom US soldiers dubbed “Rocket Man” and, slightly more creatively, “Elton John,” was managing to fire the rockets on delay. Perhaps he had set up a mobile phone trigger system or just a simple clock-based timer. Yet the best theory was even cheaper, and simpler: He was using a block of ice.
The block would be set up to so after it melted, the change in weight on the contraption would make two trigger wires connect and the rocket would be launched.
Whatever it was, it worked: A year later on the base, rockets were still being fired and no suspect had been caught.
Americans tune out Afghan war as fighting rages on
Associated Press By DEB RIECHMANN 22/08/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - It was once President Barack Obama's "war of necessity." Now, it's America's forgotten war.
The Afghan conflict generates barely a whisper on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. It's not a hot topic at the office water cooler or in the halls of Congress — even though more than 80,000 American troops are still fighting here and dying at a rate of one a day.
Americans show more interest in the economy and taxes than the latest suicide bombings in a different, distant land. They're more tuned in to the political ad war playing out on television than the deadly fight still raging against the Taliban. Earlier this month, protesters at the Iowa State Fair chanted "Stop the war!" They were referring to one purportedly being waged against the middle class.
By the time voters go to the polls Nov. 6 to choose between Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the war will be in its 12th year. For most Americans, that's long enough.
Public opinion remains largely negative toward the war, with 66 percent opposed to it and just 27 percent in favor in a May AP-GfK poll. More recently, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 60 percent of registered voters felt the U.S. should no longer be involved in Afghanistan. Just 31 percent said the U.S. is doing the right thing by fighting there now.
Not since the Korean War of the early 1950s — a much shorter but more intense fight — has an armed conflict involving America's sons and daughters captured so little public attention.
"We're bored with it," said Matthew Farwell, who served in the U.S. Army for five years including 16 months in eastern Afghanistan, where he sometimes received letters from grade school students addressed to the brave Marines in Iraq — the wrong war.
"We all laugh about how no one really cares," he said. "All the 'support the troops' stuff is bumper sticker deep."
Farwell, 29, who is now studying at the University of Virginia, said the war is rarely a topic of conversation on campus — and he isn't surprised that it's not discussed much on the campaign trail.
"No one understands how to extricate ourselves from the mess we have made there," he said. "So from a purely political point of view, I wouldn't be talking about it if I were Barack Obama or Mitt Romney either."
Ignoring the Afghan war, though, doesn't make it go away.
More than 1,950 Americans have died in Afghanistan and thousands more have been wounded since President George W. Bush launched attacks on Oct. 7, 2001 to rout al-Qaida after it used Afghanistan to train recruits and plot the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
The war drags on even though al-Qaida has been largely driven out of Afghanistan and its charismatic leader Osama bin Laden is dead — slain in a U.S. raid on his Pakistani hideout last year.
Strangely, Afghanistan never seemed to grab the same degree of public and media attention as the war in Iraq, which Obama opposed as a "war of choice."
Unlike Iraq, victory in Afghanistan seemed to come quickly. Kabul fell within weeks of the U.S. invasion in October 2001. The hardline Taliban regime was toppled with few U.S. casualties.
But the Bush administration's shift toward war with Iraq left the Western powers without enough resources on the ground, so by 2006 the Taliban had regrouped into a serious military threat.
Candidate Obama promised to refocus America's resources on Afghanistan. But by the time President Obama sent 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan in December 2009, years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan had drained Western resources and sapped resolve to build a viable Afghan state.
And over time, his administration has grown weary of trying to tackle Afghanistan's seemingly intractable problems of poverty and corruption. The American people have grown weary too.
While most Americans are sympathetic to the plight of the Afghan people, they have become deeply skeptical of President Hamid Karzai's willingness to tackle corruption and political patronage and the coalition's chances of "budging a medieval society" into the modern world, says Ann Marlowe, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, a policy research organization in Washington.
"With millions of veterans home and talking with their families and friends ... some knowledge of just how hard this is has percolated down," said Marlowe, who has traveled to Afghanistan many times.
It has also been hard to show progress on the battlefield.
World War II had its Normandy, Vietnam its Tet Offensive and Iraq its Battle of Fallujah. Afghanistan is a grinding slough in villages and remote valleys where success is measured in increments.
The Afghan war transformed into a series of small, often vicious and intense fights scattered across a country almost as large as Texas.
In July, 40 U.S. service members died in Afghanistan in the deadliest month for American troops so far this year. At least 31 have been killed this month — seven when a helicopter crashed during a firefight with insurgents in what was one of the deadliest air disasters of the war. Ten others were gunned down in attacks from members of the Afghan security forces — either disgruntled turncoats or Taliban infiltrators.
Many argue that bin Laden's death justifies a quick U.S. exit from Afghanistan. Others say it's important to stay longer to shore up the Afghan security forces and help build the government so that it can stand on its own. An unstable Afghanistan could again offer sanctuary to militants like al-Qaida who want to harm American and its allies, they say.
"Those of us who have been at this for a long time continue to think that it's important, and that we have a chance now of a path forward with a long-term perspective that will produce the results," said James Cunningham, the new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
The U.S.-led coalition's combat mission will wind down in the next few years, leading up to the end of 2014 when most international troops will have left or moved into support roles.
Military analysts say the U.S. envisions a post-2014 force of perhaps 20,000 to hunt terrorists, train the Afghan forces and keep an eye on neighboring Iran and other regional powerhouse nations.
Americans aren't likely to know the number until later this year. But will anyone other than families of service personnel take note?
"I have heard others say that the danger that their spouses or children are serving in is just simply not being cared about," said Fred Wellman, a 22-year Army veteran who did three tours in Iraq. "I think a lot of veterans feel it is just forgotten."
Political satirist Garry Trudeau captured the apathy about the war in a comic strip this year showing a U.S. servicewoman stationed in Afghanistan calling her brother back home.
After he complains that his children have the flu and how he's struggling to keep up with their hectic hockey schedule, he asks her where she's calling from. She tells him she's in Afghanistan.
"Oh, right, right ..." her brother replies. "Wait, we're still there?"
Associated Press Writers Kristin Hall in Nashville, Tennessee and Jennifer Agiesta in Washington contributed to this report.
In Afghan Bazaar, U.S. Goods At Bargain Prices
NPR By Sean Carberry August 21, 2012
"Welcome to the Bush Bazaar," says Zach Warren, an American who has spent years working in Afghanistan. He's giving me a tour of Kabul's shopping districts as we buzz around the city on his rickety motorcycle, slicing through the city's traffic.
It's one of the worst-kept secrets in Kabul that most everything in the Bush Bazaar was pilfered from NATO trucks and bases — except for the counterfeits.
The suspect origin of the goods helps explain the everyday low prices at the Bush Bazaar, named after former President George W. Bush, who launched the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan back in 2001.
"This was obviously named before the Obama administration, and the name just sort of stuck," Warren explains. "So, this is the bazaar where goods that have quote, unquote, 'fallen off U.S. trucks,' are assembled and sold again."
Vendors are selling industrial-sized cans of ketchup or cleaning supplies — items that look exactly like what you'd see in a pantry at Bagram Air Field, the huge U.S. base north of Kabul. The prices in the bazaar are less than half the usual cost.
We enter one shop that is full of MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat. These are the prepackaged military rations that are for military personnel and are not meant to be sold commercially. There are giant, tan-colored packets of "maple-flavored syrup," and "breakfast cake" MREs.
We speak with the owner of the shop, Fahim, who says he's had this shop for two years. Like other vendors in the bazaar, he's reluctant to discuss the details of his business operations with a couple of Westerners and an audio recorder.
"He says he buys it from a shop at Bagram," translates Warren. "And my guess is you can be assured that doesn't happen."
So, if you find yourself in Kabul and want to buy MREs and combat boots that your American tax dollars have already paid for, the Bush Bazaar is the best place to shop.
Busy Markets
But it's by no means the only place to shop in Kabul.
A decade of foreign assistance has not created any Western-style mega-malls in Kabul, but it has helped keep the traditional markets well-stocked, like the ancient Old City Bazaar, which is still considered the city's central market.
"It's one of the biggest bazaars, and you can buy virtually anything here from dates to mangoes to toilet paper," Warren says.
The bazaar snakes through dirty streets and alleys lined by old buildings in various states of disrepair. Shop after shop is packed with cheap household goods, mostly imported from Iran, Pakistan, and China.
We turn down an alley into what seems to be the home improvement section of the bazaar — there's shop after shop full of tools and pulleys and shovels.
"You don't have Wal-Mart-style convenience stores," says Warren. "You have rows of a particular product. Teapots, for example. This area here, this is all for serving tea."
Despite all the teapots and ladles, I note that there's actually no tea in this section.
"No, there's no tea. Probably have to go somewhere else for that," says Warren.
On the subject of tea, as we walk along, several vendors call for us to visit their shops.
"In some ways here the hospitality is quite aggressive," explains Warren. He says that there's an old expression that says you can decline the first invitation to join someone for tea.
"If they say it a second time, they really do want you to come for tea — they're not just saying it," continues Warren.
"If they say it a third time, they're kind of ticked at you if you don't," he says. Warren explains that in Afghan culture it's an honor to host a guest. "Especially if you have a foreigner who's come from a long way away, it's a big honor," he says.
The bazaar seems to wind on endlessly. About 80 percent of the vendors and customers are men and boys. There are few women, and even fewer Westerners.
"To be honest, I don't spend too much time here because it's a security risk for me," says Warren. "It was a lot better in 2005-2006, and [has] progressively gotten worse. During the midday like this we're fine. But you wouldn't want to be here later at night."
Nice that he waited until after we are deep in the center of the bazaar to mention that point.
In Toll of 2,000, New Portrait of Afghan War
New York Times By JAMES DAO and ANDREW W. LEHREN The Reach of War August 21, 2012
His war was almost over. Or so Marina Buckley thought when her son Lance Cpl. Gregory T. Buckley Jr. told her that he would be returning from southern Afghanistan to his Marine Corps base in Hawaii in late August, three months early.
Instead, Lance Corporal Buckley became the 1,990th American service member to die in the war when, on Aug. 10, he and two other Marines were shot inside their base in Helmand Province by a man who appears to have been a member of the Afghan forces they were training.
A week later, with the death of Specialist James A. Justice of the Army at a military hospital in Germany, the United States military reached 2,000 dead in the nearly 11-year-old conflict, based on an analysis by The New York Times of Department of Defense records. The calculation by The Times includes deaths not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and other nations where American forces are directly involved in aiding the war.
Nearly nine years passed before American forces reached their first 1,000 dead in the war. The second 1,000 came just 27 months later, a testament to the intensity of fighting prompted by President Obama’s decision to send 33,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2010, a policy known as the surge.
In more ways than his family might have imagined, Lance Corporal Buckley, who had just turned 21 when he died, typified the troops in that second wave of 1,000. According to the Times analysis, three out of four were white, 9 out of 10 were enlisted service members, and one out of two died in either Kandahar Province or Helmand Province in Taliban-dominated southern Afghanistan. Their average age was 26.
The dead were also disproportionately Marines like Lance Corporal Buckley. Though the Army over all has suffered more dead in the war, the Marine Corps, with fewer troops, has had a higher casualty rate: At the height of fighting in late 2010, 2 out of every 1,000 Marines in Afghanistan were dying, twice the rate of the Army. Marine units accounted for three of the five units hardest hit during the surge.
Suffering the most casualties was the Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment out of Camp Pendleton, Calif. Twenty-five of its Marines died and more than 180 were wounded, many with multiple amputations, during a bloody seven-month deployment in Helmand that began in fall 2010.
The analysis also shows that Army casualties during the surge fell heaviest on two bases with frequently deployed units: Fort Campbell in Kentucky, home to the 101st Airborne Division, which recorded the most Army deaths in the surge, and Fort Drum in New York, home to the 10th Mountain Division.
The summer remained the peak season for fighting, with the single highest period for American deaths being July, August and September 2010, when at least 143 troops died. And as has been the case since at least 2008, improvised explosive devices, known as I.E.D.’s, remained a leading cause of death and injury, along with small-arms fire, the analysis showed.
But this year, a new threat emerged: attacks by Afghans dressed in the uniforms of Afghan security forces. In just the past two weeks, at least 9 Americans have been killed in such insider attacks, and for the year to date, at least 39 non-Afghan troops, most of them American, have been killed by men dressed as members of the Afghan security forces, the most since the war began.
Those insider attacks have increased concerns about NATO’s ability to turn security operations over to Afghan forces by 2014, the deadline set by President Obama for withdrawing the remaining American forces. For families, the deaths have raised hard questions about whether the Pentagon is doing enough to protect its troops from their own allies.
Though Afghanistan is now considered the nation’s longest war, at 128 months and counting, the number of dead is fewer than half the total in the Iraq war, where more than 4,480 died in eight years. More active-duty and reserve soldiers killed themselves last year, 278, than died in combat in Afghanistan, 247.
None of that brings solace to the families of the dead. For the Buckleys, of Oceanside, N.Y., their son’s death so near the end of his tour, so late in the long war and possibly at the hand of a purported ally, was uniquely anguishing.
As Mrs. Buckley recounted things her son loved — basketball, girls, movies, the beach — bitterness choked her words.
“Our forces shouldn’t be there,” she said. “It should be over. It’s done. No more.”
A Unit Hit Hard
The Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., was emblematic of the surge. Sent into Sangin, Afghanistan’s opium-producing heartland, in 2010, the battalion faced a formidable enemy expert in the use of I.E.D.’s., losing 25 Marines in a seven-month tour, the second most of any American unit in the entire war, a Times analysis shows.
Mark Moyar, an independent national security analyst who has studied the battalion’s operations, said that the British who had preceded the Marines in Sangin, a district in Helmand, focused on economic development and political outreach to undermine the insurgency. But the Taliban also operated with near impunity in parts of the district, he said.
The battalion took a different approach, pushing into Taliban-dominated villages. Fighting was intense, with civilians often getting caught in the middle, and casualties piled up fast.
On Oct. 8, barely two weeks after the battalion landed, it lost its first Marine, Lance Cpl. John T. Sparks. Five days later, four Marines of the battalion died when their armored truck was destroyed by a powerful bomb. Three more died the next day when they stepped on a mine during a foot patrol.
The rapid-fire deaths prompted calls in Washington for the battalion to pull back. But senior Marine commanders — including the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jason Morris — prevailed on Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates to leave them in place.
“Everyone was shocked, including me, that we lost that many guys that quickly,” Colonel Morris said. “But honestly, me and most of my Marines would have rather come home in body bags than let the Taliban claim a victory.”
Deanna Giles, the mother of a squad leader from the battalion, remembers those days all too well. Amid the blur of casualty reports, Ms. Giles began watching for strange cars in her neighborhood in Kankakee, Ill., fearing the next one would bear horrible news.
Anxiously seeking information or solace, she took to Internet chat rooms, forming a powerful digital bond with other families from the battalion, whom she never met in person.
“You began to care about people in a way you could not have before the Internet age,” Ms. Giles said.
Her son, Sgt. Caleb Giles, came home alive. Patty Schumacher’s son, Lance Cpl. Victor A. Dew, did not.
Ms. Schumacher had begged her son to defer enlisting until the war ended. When he refused, she urged him to take a job with a presidential security detail. He again said no, determined to be an infantryman and to go to war.
“Boy, did my heart sink,” she recalled. “But I was also proud of him for following his true desires. As a parent you just suck it up, hold your heart and take a deep breath and hope all goes well.”
In late August 2010, Lance Corporal Dew proposed to his girlfriend, then was deployed a month later. Within weeks of arriving in Helmand, he died with three other Marines in a powerful I.E.D. blast. At age 20, he became the 1,259th American to die in the war.
Inside his coffin, his fiancée placed a photograph of herself, wearing her wedding gown.
Ms. Schumacher maintains a Facebook page to keep his memory fresh, and occasionally toasts him at dinner. She still cries, too, though the tears are hard to predict, prompted by stray images and fleeting sounds that remind her of him: a smile, a song, a joke.
“When do you get better? You don’t ever get better,” she said. “You just get better in your grieving. There will always be something that triggers it. And then you are back on that emotional roller coaster.”
Attacks From Afghans
Staff Sgt. Scott E. Dickinson was coming home early. He was originally scheduled to remain in Helmand until November 2012, but the Pentagon was pulling Marines out of Afghanistan quickly, looking to get the surge forces out of the country by fall and shrink the American footprint to about 70,000 troops. He would be home in Hawaii within a week or two, he told his father early this month.
Not long after that conversation, his father, John Dickinson, saw an article about a soldier who had died just a week before he was to come home. “I thought, ‘He’s not safe until he sets foot in Hawaii,’ ” recalled Mr. Dickinson, an architect in San Diego.
He was right. Sergeant Dickinson, 29, a supply specialist who had volunteered to help train Afghan forces, died with Lance Corporal Buckley on Aug. 10. They were among six Marines killed that day in two separate attacks by men who appeared to be Afghan security force members.
The Pentagon asserts that most of those attacks have been the result of personal grudges, disputing Taliban claims to have widely infiltrated the Afghan security forces.
But the attacks have also raised anew concerns about the integrity of the Afghan forces that NATO expects to secure the entire nation after NATO troops withdraw in 2014.
More fundamentally, the continued deaths, occurring even as American forces are conducting fewer combat missions, have prompted service members and military families to wonder: has the decade-long American presence in Afghanistan made a difference?
Colonel Morris, the former commander for the Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, has little doubt that it has. After months of fierce fighting, he saw clear changes when he left Sangin in early 2011. Those improvements remain, he asserts, with residents participating in elections and going to school with less fear of Taliban intimidation — though such intimidation is far from gone.
“Every single Marine in my battalion could see the impact they had,” he said. “It was a validation of everything they had sacrificed for.”
Despite his son’s death, Mr. Dickinson agrees. Marina Buckley is not so sure.
“He was the most lovable, caring human being,” she said of her son. “He wore his heart on his sleeve. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”
He had wanted to join the Marine Corps ever since 9/11, despite her many attempts to dissuade him. By the time he was in high school a Marine Corps flag hung in his bedroom and her efforts to get him to go to college — Adelphi University accepted him his senior year — had failed.
“I’d say, ‘Why the Marines?’ ” she said, and he would reply with a joke. “I can pick up a lot of chicks with that uniform,” he would say.
But his ambition was serious: he wanted to serve, then become a Suffolk County police officer. He came to relish the brotherhood of the Marines and adored his first posting, in Hawaii. But deployment was different. The loneliness, the heat and the Meals Ready to Eat wore on him, Ms. Buckley said.
And he never felt secure living alongside Afghans, she said.
“If they want to kill themselves, let them,” she said of the Afghan people. “But they are killing people who shouldn’t be killed, who have lives here, and family here, and brothers and sisters here.”
Eddie Goldberger contributed reporting, and Jack Begg, Alain Delaquérière and Jack Styczynski contributed research.
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