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ISAF Sends Team To Investigate Afghan Casualties In Laghman
September 17, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement that it was sending a team to Afghanistan's Laghman Province to investigate civilian casualties as a result of a NATO air strike.
NATO confirmed an air strike on September 16 "on a large group of armed individuals showing hostile intent," according to the ISAF statement.
ISAF said the air strike killed several insurgents but also caused "the unintentional deaths of a number of Afghan civilians."
Local Afghan officials said eight women gathering wood were killed in the NATO attack, near the village of Alingar.
The ISAF statement said coalition forces took civilian casualties "seriously" and promised a complete assessment of the incident.
ISAF offered its "sincerest regret to the families" of civilian victims of the strike.
Karzai Denounces Coalition Over Airstrikes
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG September 16, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Two of the most contentious issues dividing the United States and President Hamid Karzai’s administration re-emerged as the Afghan leader condemned American-led forces for killing eight women in airstrikes on Sunday and denounced his American allies for continuing to hold hundreds of Afghan prisoners.
After the coalition initially said that it needed time to investigate Afghan reports of the deaths, by evening it confirmed that the civilians had died in airstrikes launched early Sunday in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. It said the strikes were carried out “solely with the intent of countering known insurgents,” and offered its sympathies to the families of those slain. It did not give a number of dead; Afghan officials said eight women who were out collecting firewood had died.
While Mr. Karzai’s condemnation was likely to rankle some Western officials, it was in keeping with how he has responded to the killing of Afghan bystanders by both coalition forces and the Taliban, which is responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Instead, the presidential palace reserved its strongest language for the continued detention of some 600 Afghans at what was once the main American prison here. Mr. Karzai’s office said in a statement that keeping the prisoners was a “serious breach” and a “serious violation” of a deal struck this year, under which the United States agreed to transfer control of the prison to Afghan authorities on Sept. 9.
“The continued holding of Afghans in American custody runs in contradiction with the spirit of mutual friendship,” it said. “The people of Afghanistan consider the issue of prisons and detention of their fellow citizens a matter of their national sovereignty.”
After a summer in which American and Afghan officials were more often than not on the same page, the confrontational tone of the statement was a sharp reminder of the acrimony that has often characterized relations between Mr. Karzai and his American benefactors. As recently as March, Mr. Karzai referred to Americans as “demons.”
The statement came after Mr. Karzai met with Ambassador Marc Grossman, the United States special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who was in Kabul on a previously unannounced visit. The men discussed the prison issue and stalled efforts to strike a peace deal with the Taliban, the palace said.
The Americans were holding roughly 3,000 people at the prison, which is next to Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, when the United States and Afghanistan signed a memorandum of understanding in March that laid out a six-month timetable for the transfer. But Afghan officials say 600 people detained since March remain in American custody, along with about 30 of the original prisoners considered too dangerous to release but too difficult to prosecute because of a lack of admissible evidence.
American officials have not said anything about the 600 figure, but they have acknowledged holding the men detained before the deal was struck. They also have said they want the Afghans to agree to detain those men indefinitely under stipulations in the Geneva Convention that permit wartime detentions without trial.
Sunday’s statement from Mr. Karzai’s office said Afghan judicial authorities would soon “express their views” on how or whether a system of indefinite detention would comply with Afghanistan’s laws.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Afghanistan’s national security adviser, said in an interview last week that the Afghan government would eventually implement such a system but wanted control of the prisoners immediately. The Americans want a guarantee that the Afghans will leave intact the American detention system that allows the indefinite holding of prisoners deemed dangerous if there is insufficient evidence to try them.
“It is like the egg and the chicken,” said Mr. Spanta, who is viewed as one of Mr. Karzai’s more pro-Western advisers. Mr. Spanta said in the interview that he needed “a little space, two or three days, to find a diplomatic solution.” But with no solution at hand, the Karzai administration appeared to be taking the negotiations public with Sunday’s statement.
In response, the American Embassy stressed that “there is no question of our commitment to fully implement” the prison transfer accord. “Ambassador Grossman made clear in his discussion with the president that the United States fully respects Afghan sovereignty,” it said in a statement.
Sunday’s civilian deaths were the latest case of innocents being caught up in an operation by the coalition, which has reduced civilian casualties in part by limiting the use of air power.
The airstrikes took place in the Alingar district of Laghman Province. The coalition said the strikes were called in around 2 a.m. during a firefight with insurgents that had been spotted moving through the area.
According to Maj. Lori Hodge of the Air Force, coalition forces “engaged with precision munitions and direct fire” — airstrikes and gunfire — with about 45 insurgents. She could not say how many insurgents were killed.
Coalition forces were apparently unaware that village women sometimes go into the woods in the early hours of the morning to fetch wood for cooking fires they need to have going by breakfast time.
Alissa J. Rubin and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.
Four US Troops Killed in Afghan Inside Attack; 8 Coalition Troops Killed in 3 Days
By ERIN McLAUGHLIN | ABC News
Four American service members were killed by an Afghan policeman early today, the third attack on coalition forces in three days, bringing the death toll in the recent violence to eight.
The attacks -- two "green on blue" incidents and an assault on a coalition base by 15 Taliban fighters -- come as tensions flared across the Muslim world over an anti-Islam film that was produced in the United States.
In the latest attack, an Afghan police officer turned his gun on NATO troops at a remote checkpoint in southern Afghanistan before dawn. Four U.S. soldiers were killed before the shooter escaped, bringing the total of coalition troops killed to six in just two days.
International Security Assistance Force officials say the attacker is still at large, and noted it's unclear if there were multiple assailants. It is still unclear exactly what transpired at the checkpoint, according to Afghan officials, who say American forces responded to an attack on the checkpoint to help the Afghan police.
"The checkpoint was attacked last night. Then the police started fighting with the Americans," Ghulam Gilani, deputy police chief of Zabul province, said. "Whether they attacked the Americans willingly, we don't know."
A Taliban spokesman said the police involved were not affiliated with the Taliban insurgency.
Also today, NATO confirmed that an airstrike that killed as many as 45 insurgents also killed five to eight Afghan civilian casualties -- including women and children.
"ISAF takes full responsibility for this tragedy," the coalition said in a statement released after the strike.
The civilian casualties can only increase tensions in the country, and villagers who drove the bodies of the dead to the privincial capital, Mehterlam chanted "Death to America," Laghman provincial government spokesman Sarhadi Zewak said.
"Protecting Afghan lives is the cornerstone of our mission and it saddens us when we learn that our action might have unintentionally harmed civilians," said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for international military in Afghanistan.
So far this year, 51 coalition troops have been killed by Afghan service members. At least 12 such attacks happened in August alone, leaving 15 dead.
News of the shooting comes after one of the biggest attacks ever on an ISAF base. On Friday, 15 Taliban attackers, dressed in U.S. Army uniforms, attacked Camp Bastion in Afghan's Helmand province.
According to the ISAF, the insurgents used automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and explosive suicide vests in the late night attack. Two U.S. Marines were killed, and nine others were wounded, including one civilian contractor.
During the attack, which officials say appeared to be well planned and rehearsed, the insurgents destroyed six Harrier fighter jets, worth about $20 million each, and damaged two others. They also damaged six hangars and destroyed three refueling stations.
The last attack in which so many U.S. aircraft were destroyed at one time is believed to have been more than 40 years ago, during the Vietnam War.
All but one of the insurgents were killed by return gunfire, and a 15th was captured. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for the controversial video made in the United States that insults the Prophet Muhammad.
Prince Harry, a member of the U.K. military in Afghanistan is based at Camp Bastion. When he was first stationed there, the Taliban said they were out to kill him, although NATO officials say he was several miles away, and was never in danger during this attack.
On Saturday, two British troops were killed in an attack in Helmand province carried out by a gunman in the uniform of a government-backed militia.
Recent months have seen a string of attacks by Afghan forces against their international counterparts, who are working towards handing over security responsibilities to the Afghans as international troops draw down.
This weekend's attacks come amid turmoil throughout the Middle East, where anti-American protests have flared up, ostensibly in response to the online video mocking the Prophet Muhammad.
An attack on the American embassy in Libya last week led to four deaths, including the American ambassador to Libya. The protests have prompted the removal of U.S. personnel from their posts in Sudan and Tunisia.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice told Jake Tapper on "This Week" the attack was not premeditated, contradicting top Libyan officials who say the attack was planned in advance.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the turmoil raging across the Muslim world will likely continue for days, but the violence appears to be leveling off.
He said the Pentagon has "deployed our forces to a number of areas in the region to be prepared to respond to any requests that we receive to be able to protect our personnel and our American property."
ABC News' Muhammad Lila and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Afghan soldier wounds foreign contractors; mob tries to storm U.S. base in Kabul
By Sayed Salahuddin and Richard Leiby, Monday, September 17, 8:05 PM The Washington Post
KABUL — An Afghan soldier opened fire on six Lebanese civilian contractors working for U.S.-led NATO forces in southern Afghanistan on Sunday night, causing minor injuries, coalition officials said Monday. The attack was the third by rogue Afghan security personnel during the weekend, when foreign six troops were killed.
The member of the Afghan National Army fired shots at six contractors riding in a vehicle near Camp Garmsir, a shared base in southern Helmand province, said Lt. Col. Hagen Messer, a coalition spokesman. Some of them were wounded, but Messer said he could not provide a specific number.
Another Afghan soldier disarmed the attacker and took him into custody, Messer said, adding that the assailant thought he was targeting foreign troops.
Over the weekend, six international troops — four Americans and two British — died after Afghan forces opened fire on them, the latest deaths in a spate of so-called insider attacks that have killed 51 NATO troops so far this year.
In Kabul, meanwhile, about 500 Afghan demonstrators attacked police with stones and sticks Monday while trying to storm a U.S. military base in the capital, authorities said. It was the first violent anti-American protest in Afghanistan over a movie that Muslims worldwide have condemned as blasphemous.
Fifteen police were wounded, none seriously, Interior Ministry spokesman Mohammad Najib said. The protesters also destroyed a police vehicle and torched a police post, he said.
Some demonstrators said they turned against the police after being prevented from breaching the main gate and walls surrounding Camp Phoenix, a U.S. Army base in the eastern part of the capital.
“We wanted to attack Camp Phoenix to kill the Americans but were stopped by the Afghan police, and we had to attack the police,” said protester Ajmal Hotak, a 26-year-old shopkeeper.
Chanting “Death to all infidel countries,” the demonstrators demanded punishment for those who made the anti-Muslim film. They also called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
North of the city, hundreds of other protesters gathered outside Bagram Airfield, the main U.S. military base in the country, and staged a peaceful demonstration, officials said.
Monday’s demonstration in Kabul came after clerics in mosques near Camp Phoenix urged residents after early-morning prayers to take to the streets and close the base, Hotak said.
By contrast, last week clerics across Afghanistan, at the behest of the government, exhorted people during Friday prayers to refrain from violence.
The violence at the early-morning march was minimal compared with past anti-Western demonstrations that have killed foreigners, including aid workers, and led to the deaths of dozens of protesters. In February, after U.S. soldiers at the Bagram base disposed of copies of the Koran by burning them, at least 20 demonstrators died over several days of protest.
In a statement issued later Monday, Gen. John R. Allen, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, made a point of praising Kabul’s police chief for “maintaining control” of the demonstration.
“We all admire his courage and his leadership, and that of his brave police,” Allen said, referring to chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi.
Salangi was among the policemen hit by stones hurled by protesters.
Afghanistan anti-US protests heartfelt and spontaneous
Demonstrations against the anti-Islam YouTube clip turned violent in Kabul Monday. Afghan clerics haven't pushed for public protests. Instead demonstrators took their cues from news of riots elsewhere.
By Tom A. Peter | Christian Science Monitor
Demonstrations against the anti-Islam YouTube video flared in Kabul on Monday, following days of unrest and similar protests throughout the Middle East and Africa. Afghanistan has seen several small-scale protests in recent days, but Monday marked the first time since the release of the controversial video that hundreds of demonstrators gathered for a protest that turned violent.
The protesters marched down a major road on the outskirts of Kabul toward Camp Phoenix, a NATO base here. Police officials say the demonstration lasted about 90 minutes and escalated when demonstrators began throwing large rocks at police, injuring dozens of people. Protesters also set fire to two police vehicles, leaving one completely destroyed, and damaged several local shops.
“The people were really angry,” says Rashid Khan, a grocer whose store was damaged during the demonstrations. “Even if they tried to burn my shop I wouldn’t have tried to stop them.”
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In the wake of international incidents involving the desecration of Islamic symbols or beliefs, Afghanistan has often been one of the first and only Muslim countries to see widespread, violent demonstrations. Following the controversial video, however, Afghanistan remained largely quiet, with many local religious leaders reportedly calling for calm, even as the Middle East and Africa erupted in violence.
For the American and international officials in Afghanistan working to stabilize the country as much as possible before the end of their combat mission in 2014, the calls for calm are a welcome sign that many Afghan leaders see greater advantage in stability than unrest at this point.
Protesters in Kabul say that Monday’s demonstration was not provoked by any single group or individual, but rather was a display of solidarity with other Muslims who have acted out in response to the film.
“The main reason for our demonstration was that other Muslims from around the world have condemned and reacted against this film that has disrespected our holy prophet,” says Malim Abdul Ghani, a teacher who participated in the demonstration. “This cannot be tolerated by any single Muslim in the world so we wanted to show our unity with other Muslims around the world and condemn this film and the people who made it.”
Still, many Afghans, including demonstrators like Mr. Ghani, say that they’re disappointed the protest spiraled into violence. Afghanistan has seen a number of demonstrations in response to Islamic issues, such as those in April of 2011 following a Quran burning led by fringe American pastor Terry Jones.
An unfortunate irony of such demonstrations remains that the people killed and injured or those whose property is destroyed are almost exclusively Afghans unconnected to the source of the public anger. Shortly after the 2011 Quran burning protests, mullahs in Kandahar reminded locals that Mr. Jones burned only one Quran while demonstrators in Afghanistan's second largest city had inadvertently burned many more when they set fire to local shops, all of which kept a copy of the Muslim holy book.
“The people need to think about how they demonstrate. They’re just causing problems for their own government and their own people,” says Mohamoud Daoud Amin, deputy to the Kabul police chief. “There were some civilians' shops and property destroyed by the demonstrations. These demonstrations just cause problems for the local people.”
SEE ALSO – Blasphemy riots: 6 examples around the world
It remains uncertain whether protests will continue in Afghanistan, however, with unrest currently taking place without the overt support of religious leaders there is some optimism that the demonstrations are likely to fizzle out. Additionally the Afghan government has blocked YouTube to stop people from seeing the video that sparked the unrest.
“Hopefully the protests will not grow, but I am not fully confident,” says Mirwais Yasini, the first deputy speaker of Afghanistan's lower house of parliament. “The society here is unpredictable. We have to wait until next Friday, that will be really important. If we make it peacefully to Friday, hopefully things will be over.”
Demonstrations throughout the Muslim world traditionally take place following the afternoon prayer on Friday, the main congregational prayer in Islamic society.
* Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report
Nearly 50 Police Injured in Violent Protest over Anti-Islamic Film in Kabul
TOLOnews.com By Sonil Haidari, Wali Arian Monday, 17 September 2012
Hundreds of Afghan protesters Monday started demonstrating over anti-Islamic film in east of Kabul, chanting slogans and clashing with Afghan security forces, local officials said.
Nearly 50 police were injured, Kabul police chief Ayub Salangi said.
During the protests in the Hotkhil area of Pul-e-Charkhi in Kabul's east, gun shots could be heard and protesters threw stones at security forces.
The protesters shouted "death to America" and "death to infidels."
"The demonstration became violent by the people -- up to 40 to 50 policemen were injured after the protesters threw stones at the forces," Salangi said.
The demonstration started about 07:00AM and ended 10:30AM after more security forces arrived in the area.
Local officials said that protestors also hurt civilians in the area, while setting alight shops, tires, a private foreign company building and a police checkpoint.
A police vehicle was also destroyed in the demonstration.
Officials said the most of the protesters were students and young people, adding that the exact number of casualties is not clear.
Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi urged the Afghan people to cease from further violence.
Most of the residents of Pul-e- Charkhi condemned the violence.
One resident told TOLOnews: "This is unbelievable. They are hurting their people, setting on fire the shops, cars."
"They turned the demonstration to violence. It would be good if they had had a peaceful demonstration. Most of them don't know what is the meaning of protest and democracy," said another resident.
Meanwhile, there have been reports of more protests against the film in other provinces.
The US Embassy in Kabul said that they received reports of multiple protests in different locations of the city, including 200 - 300 demonstrators on Jalalabad Road.
"The Embassy is carefully monitoring the situation," it said.
"We wish to remind US citizens that past demonstrations in Afghanistan have escalated into violent attacks on Western targets."
On Sunday, hundreds of university students in the main towns of Kabul and Herat peacefully demonstrated against the film produced in the US and deemed offensive to Islam, saying the US would only create more enemies by allowing such material.
"Anyone else who watches this film will not react in an academic way -- they would react strongly against the film which will harm the US the most," a protestor from Kabul University told TOLOnews.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the film last week Wednesday in an emailed statement to media and the following day postponed a diplomatic trip to Norway in expectation of riots.
The Afghan government ordered internet providers to block YouTube, and many have complied, some even blocking Google, Gmail, and certain search terms.
YouTube has refused to remove the 14-minute clip of the film from its website saying that it did not breach the site's regulations.
Tough words from general on Afghan insider attacks
By ROBERT BURNS | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The persistent problem of rogue Afghan soldiers and police turning their guns on U.S. and allied troops is a "very serious threat" to the war effort, which is predicated on placing security responsibility in Afghan hands, the U.S. military's top officer said Sunday.
In unusually blunt remarks to the Pentagon's own news service, the American Forces Press Service, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said the Afghan government needs to take the problem as seriously as do U.S. commanders and officials.
"We're all seized with (the) problem," Dempsey was quoted as saying. "You can't whitewash it. We can't convince ourselves that we just have to work harder to get through it. Something has to change."
Dempsey and other U.S. officials have remarked extensively in recent weeks on the need to improve the screening of Afghan recruits and to take other precautionary measures in the face of a series of attacks that so far this year have killed at least 51 allied troops, mostly of them Americans.
"But we've got to make sure our Afghan counterparts are as seized about it as we are," Dempsey said. "We have to get on top of this. It is a very serious threat to the campaign."
Dempsey commented after attending a meeting in Romania of NATO military representatives. He said they discussed the situation in Afghanistan, including plans for the remaining two years of the campaign and the insider attack problem.
In the latest instances of such attacks, two British soldiers were killed by an Afghan policeman in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday and four American troops were killed in a similar attack Sunday in Zabul province.
Dempsey said an assault on Camp Bastion, a British air base in Helmand province, on Friday in which two U.S. Marines were killed and six U.S. Harrier fighter jets were destroyed, should not be categorized as an insider attack even though the attackers were wearing U.S. Army uniforms.
He said an initial review of the matter had determined that the attackers had no inside assistance at Bastion. Other officials said the attack was clearly a well-planned, well-rehearsed assault carried out by Taliban fighters.
It was not immediately clear how the attackers got the U.S. uniforms or how they managed to do such extensive damage at Bastion
Afghanistan rejects US administrative detention of citizens
September 17, 2012 Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan – The Afghan president's office says a judicial panel has ruled that administrative detention runs counter to the country's laws, potentially thwarting a U.S. plan to hand over Afghan detainees that American officials believe should continue to be held without recourse to a trial.
The president's office says in a statement issued Monday that the detention of Afghan citizens without a court trial "has not been foreseen in Afghan laws."
The United States has agreed to hand over all Afghan detainees captured in the country to the national government, but has also argued that it cannot risk the release of some high value detainees to the notoriously corrupt Afghan court system. Even though the deadline for the handover has passed, the Americans are still holding more than 600 Afghans.
Afghan villagers take up arms to drive out the Taliban
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
QADIS, Afghanistan, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The uprising of villagers against the harsh policies of the Taliban, which started four months ago in Ghazni province, some 125 km south of Kabul, has spread to the western province of Badghis province and the trend is gaining momentum.
"Up to 1,000 people are taking up arms at the present time and the number will swell as we intensify our efforts to drive out the Taliban militants from Jawand and Qadis districts in Badghis province," Mullah Abdul Hakim, who leads the armed villagers, told Xinhua over the weekend.
Abdul said that their group would support the police and the army in driving out the Taliban.
In June this year, a group of six students in Andar district of Ghazni province took up arms against Taliban fighters after their school was closed by the Taliban insurgents operating in the area.
Supported by villagers, the student uprising swelled to about 100 forcing the Taliban militants to retreat from several villages within weeks and allowing the school to reopen.
The leader of the uprising in Ghazni province, Lutfullah Kamran, a clean-shaven engineer, vowed to drive all the Taliban insurgents from the whole province.
Kamram, reportedly a former Taliban fighter, became fed up with the fundamentalist group's harsh policies, particularly its order to close all schools, clinics, and bazaars. He said that what the Taliban is doing would eventually lead to extreme poverty of the people in Andar district.
Similar village uprisings against the Taliban were also reported in the eastern Paktia, Nuristan, Nangarhar and western Ghor province as well as in several other provinces.
"We are fed up with the Taliban-imposed totalitarian reign and the elders have decided to join the uprising that our brothers in Ghazni had launched," one villager said.
A statement released by the Paktia provincial administration on Sept. 10 has confirmed local uprising against Taliban militants in Ayub Zazai district.
"The locals in Ayub Zazai district stood against Taliban militants on Monday morning (Sept. 10) and kicked them out from several villages. The aim of the revolt was to drive out the militants, including foreign fighters, who are killing innocent civilians and targeting local elders, teachers, religious people," the statement of the Paktia provincial administration said.
According to the statement, the villagers, some of them armed only with sticks, succeeded in evicting the Taliban militants from several villages even without the support of government forces.
The uprising, according to the statement, began when the villagers found that Taliban fighters shot and killed a local religious figure named Zahurruddin, a teacher Abdul Raziq, and two staff members of a school in the area.
"It is Taliban's cruelty, injustice and tyranny that caused us to take up arms; otherwise, we want peace and stability," the statement added.
According to the statement, the Talibans stop vehicles and buses and take people hostage for ransom. They also extort money and they force people to pay 'Zakat' or charity in crop harvesting time and torture people who do not comply with their edict.
"We do not want fighting, we do not want killing, we want reconstruction, we want our government to support so that we can work in our farms," said Mohammad Akbar, a resident who was holding an AK-47.
Meanwhile, a total of 25 people were killed and 65 others were injured when a bomb hurled by Taliban insurgents hit a funeral ceremony in Dur Baba district of eastern Nangarhar province on Sept. 4.
NATO releases details of brazen raid on base in Afghanistan
CNN By Barbara Starr, Chris Lawrence and Joe Sterling September 17, 2012
Afghan insurgents who staged a daring, well-planned raid on Camp Bastion, the military base where Britain's Prince Harry is deployed, were wearing U.S. Army uniforms, NATO said a day after the attack.
It's extremely rare for Afghan insurgents to use U.S. uniforms in their attacks. The last time CNN can identify was more than two years ago, when NATO repelled attacks on two bases in Khost province in August 2010.
No coalition troops were killed in that attack, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said at the time.
At least two U.S. Marines were killed in the brazen strike late on Friday, and six jets were destroyed, ISAF said as it released more details about the raid.
Well-trained, well-rehearsed fighters carried out the sustained assault in Helmand province, ISAF said.
About 15 insurgents organized into three teams penetrated the base's perimeter fence and did considerable damage, destroying six refueling stations and damaging six aircraft hangars.
The attackers toted automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and suicide vests.
They destroyed six AV-8B Harrier jets and damaged two others before the attack ended, the coalition said.
Fourteen of the fighters were killed and one was wounded and captured, ISAF said.
Eight coalition military personnel and one civilian contractor were also wounded.
It is too soon to say whether the attackers had "inside knowledge," ISAF spokesman James Graybeal said.
ISAF would not say how the attackers got the uniforms, but CNN staff who have spent time in Afghanistan say they are for sale in markets there.
There has been at least one other case of Afghan insurgents wearing U.S. uniforms, in May 2010.
And in Iraq five years ago, there was a dramatic and successful raid using the tactic.
Attackers wearing what appeared to be American uniforms were responsible for the kidnapping and killing of five U.S. soldiers in Karbala, Iraq, in 2007.
Prince Harry is an Apache helicopter pilot based at Camp Bastion, but the British Ministry of Defence categorically rejected reports in Sunday's British press that he was just a few hundred yards away from the gun battle.
Harry, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and third in line to the British throne, "was in no way in any danger" during the latest attack, ISAF spokesman Maj. Martin Crighton said earlier.
On Saturday, ISAF said the camp is secure and the strike would not "impact" air and ground operations.
Camp Leatherneck, the U.S. side of the base, was not affected by the attack, Maj. Adam N. Wojack, an ISAF spokesman, told CNN.
The joint base is located in a remote desert region of Helmand, the southern province in the Taliban heartland.
The Taliban said it carried out the strike, calling it a response to the anti-Islam film stoking anger among Muslims. Yet Crighton said there had no organized demonstrations outside its gates before the assault.
Afghanistan has seen only relatively small and peaceful demonstrations against the film during a week in which there were protests across predominantly Muslim-countries and other locations.
Separately, four American troops were killed by Afghan police on Sunday, an administration official said after NATO's International Security Assistance Force reported the attack.
The latest attack on coalition troops by their supposed Afghan allies brings the number of people killed in so-called "green on blue" incidents to more than 50 this year.
The killing of the four Americans on Sunday is the latest in a series of incidents in which members of Afghan security forces have been suspected of turning their weapons on coalition or Afghan soldiers, known as green-on-blue attacks.
Sunday's killings came only a day after the British Ministry of Defence announced that two troops had been killed in Helmand province's Nahr-e Saraj district.
In that attack, a man wearing an Afghan police uniform fatally shot two members of the 3rd Battalion at a checkpoint, according to Maj. Laurence Roche, a spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said in a statement released by the ministry.
The killing occurred the same day that another British soldier died in in a separate incident in Nahr-e Saraj, according to the ministry. He was killed when his vehicle struck a bomb.
CNN's Chelsea J. Carter, Adam S. Levine, Kevin Flower, Jessica King and Greg Botelho contributed to this report.
NATO disasters stack up in Afghanistan
More 'insider' slayings, as well as a NATO airstrike that killed eight women, follow a Taliban attack that destroyed more than $150 million worth of equipment.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King September 16, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - In a disastrous day for the NATO force in Afghanistan, four American troops were gunned down Sunday by Afghan police, a U.S. airstrike killed eight Afghan women foraging for fuel on a rural hillside, and military officials disclosed that a Taliban strike on a southern base had destroyed more than $150 million worth of planes and equipment — in money terms, by far the costliest single insurgent attack in 11 years of warfare.
The confluence of events underscored some of the conflict's most damaging trends: an unrelenting tide of "insider" attacks, in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on coalition allies; the daily loss of civilian lives to war's ravages; and the continuing ability of insurgent forces to inflict disproportionate havoc on the far more powerful Western military.
The lethal encounter between U.S. forces and Afghan police took place soon after midnight in Zabol province in the south, military and Afghan officials said. The provincial governor, Mohammad Ashraf Naseri, said the shooting occurred at a joint base in Zabol's Mezan district.
The NATO force confirmed the deaths without disclosing the nationality, but U.S. officials said the troops were American. The killings came less than 24 hours after two British soldiers were gunned down by an Afghan policeman and brought to 51 the number of Western service members killed this year by Afghan security forces.
Both Western and Afghan officials acknowledge insider shootings have become an extremely serious problem — about 15% of all coalition deaths come at the hands of Afghan forces — and they have taken urgent steps to stop the attacks. Forces on both sides are undergoing cultural training to try to avoid deadly misunderstandings. NATO troops have been ordered to keep rounds chambered in their weapons at all times, and armed Western troops called "guardian angels" have been posted to watch over others in mess halls, sleeping tents and gyms. Thousands of members of a locally recruited village militia were ordered rescreened for links with the insurgency.
How to reduce such attacks is the subject of considerable debate among U.S. and NATO officials. Moves that slow the training of Afghans to take over security in their own country could undercut the goal of a Western military withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. And steps seen as too heavy-handed could be taken by Afghans as an insult in a culture where perceived slights can swiftly lead to more violence.
The eight women killed in an airstrike in Laghman province, in eastern Afghanistan, were poor villagers who were gathering brush for cooking fires, provincial authorities said. In addition to those killed, seven people were reported injured. Villagers loaded the bodies into trucks and drove them to the provincial governor's office, parading them through the streets in protest.
The NATO force acknowledged that five to eight civilians were accidentally killed in a strike targeting a group of insurgents, and expressed regret.
A spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization coalition, Air Force Capt. Dan Einert, said the bombardment followed a "significant engagement" Sunday morning in the remote Alingar district of Laghman province. He said a unit of NATO's International Security Assistance Force positively identified a group of about 45 insurgents with hostile intent and called in the airstrike, which killed a large number of them.
"Unfortunately, we are aware of civilian casualties as a result of this strike," he said.
In recent years, NATO and Afghan government forces have been responsible for a shrinking proportion of civilian deaths, with nearly all such deaths and injuries blamed on insurgents. But airstrikes remain the single largest cause of civilian casualties inflicted by international forces.
Meanwhile, Western officials disclosed early Sunday that an insurgent raid at Camp Bastion, in Helmand province, had been far more serious than initially reported. Military officials had already reported the deaths of two U.S. Marines in the strike that began Friday evening and continued into the early hours of Saturday. On Sunday, however, they reported that the insurgents had managed to destroy six sophisticated AV-8B Harrier jets, together with three refueling stations. Two other Harrier aircraft were "significantly damaged," as were six soft-skin aircraft hangars.
Bastion, where Britain's Prince Harry is deployed as part of an Apache helicopter crew, is considered one of the most heavily fortified bases in Afghanistan. That a relatively small squad of insurgents was able to breach the perimeter and inflict such a degree of damage surprised the U.S. and British command.
In London, a Defense Ministry spokesman, speaking under the customary request of anonymity, said Sunday that the prince's deployment would continue. "In light of this event, there aren't any plans for him to be withdrawn," he said.
laura.king@latimes.com
Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report.
Troops pack up gear to ship out of Afghanistan
DEB RIECHMANN | September 17, 2012 02:22 PM EST The Associated Press via The Huffington Post
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It was nearly 2 a.m. when U.S. Army Pfc. Zach Randle jumped out of his bulky armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan for what he hoped would be the last time.
"I don't want to see it again. It's been through a lot," Randle said of the 19-ton (17-metric ton) vehicle that was his ride – and sometimes his bed – during a six-month deployment to volatile Kandahar province.
"It protected us, but I'm just in a hurry to turn it in to be closer to going home," said Randle, who has now left Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama's drawdown of 33,000 U.S. troops by Sept. 30. The pullout – 10,000 last year and 23,000 more this year – will be finished within days. That will leave 68,000 American troops in this country to fight militants and help prepare Afghan forces to take over security nationwide.
While some service members go home, others are busy preparing thousands of vehicles and other equipment for shipment. It's a laborious task that's more difficult than it was in Iraq because of landlocked Afghanistan's tough mountainous terrain, lack of roads and its mountain passes that will soon be covered with snow.
Between now and the end of 2014, when most U.S. troops will have left, the Americans will move an estimated 50,000 vehicles, including tens of thousands of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles like the one Randle drove into the equipment yard. They'll also ship an estimated 100,000 metal containers – each about 20 feet long. End-to-end, the containers would stretch nearly 400 miles (600 kilometers).
Shipping has picked up in recent months, as base closure teams have spread out across Afghanistan to help soldiers sort, pack and load up their gear. As of the beginning of September, 208 U.S. and NATO coalition bases have been closed, 310 have been transferred to the Afghan government and 323 remain open, according to the coalition.
The packing up is going on as the war still rages. Just since Friday, insurgents attacked a base in neighboring Helmand province, killing two U.S. Marines and destroying six Harrier fighter jets. Afghan police gunned down four more American service members, and a NATO airstrike mistakenly killed eight Afghan women looking for firewood.
As American forces keep fighting, thousands of civilian and military personnel will continue prepping vehicles for flight, taking tedious inventory of bullets, night scopes, radios and even recreational baseball bats. They'll also clean and crate tons of other gear, anything from bags of nails to generators.
Brig. Gen. Kristin French, commanding general of the Joint Sustainment Command in Afghanistan, likens the teams to "wedding planners" helping to organize the move.
"We are trying to take the burden off the war fighter and give it to our folks who have the mission to do it," French said at her office at Kandahar Air Field. "If we're busy trying to clean up our backyards, we're not doing what our focus is and that is to continue to transition security to the Afghan security forces and partner with them."
Vehicles are being gathered in Kandahar, Bagram Air Field near Kabul and Camp Barmal in northern Afghanistan. Containers are being staged for shipment at nine locations around the country, she said.
Some equipment is taken by truck, train, ships or planes to military depots in the United States. MRAPS are rolled onto airplanes. Some Humvees sit in shipping containers for a test trip on a railroad leaving Afghanistan via Uzbekistan to the north. Other equipment will also go north through Central Asia or else be trucked into Pakistan – some of it down to the port of Karachi, where it will sail back to the United States or other destinations.
Various items will stay in Afghanistan to be used by the Americans troops not going home – yet. Still other materiel will be transferred to the Afghan government, tossed out, taken to a scrap heap or shipped to other countries for use by U.S. forces.
For now, Randle and several dozen other U.S. Army soldiers from the 4th Brigade Combat Team 82nd Airborne Division, based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are happy to get rid of their vehicles and all the equipment.
The late-night arrival of their convoy late last month stirred up dust in the equipment yard at Kandahar Air Field. The heavily armed personnel carriers and utility trucks slowed to a halt, then sat idling noisily as the soldiers gathered their gear inside and began climbing out and into formation in the yard.
"They are part of the 23,000 soldier off-ramp," said Lt. Col. Stanley J. Sliwinski, Jr., who assumed command of 401st Army Field Support Brigade in Kandahar in July and was waiting for the convoy when it arrived. "Most of these soldiers will turn in their equipment tonight and they will fly home within the next three days."
Home, that is, after about three weeks at Fort Bragg.
When Randle, 20, returns to Clarksville, Tennessee, he will climb behind the wheel of a black sports sedan he's buying from the family of an American service member who was killed in Afghanistan. "It was his car, a Mazda 6, black," Randle said, standing under a three-quarters moon.
One of Randle's fellow soldiers at the equipment yard, Army Capt. Matthew Cahill, said they would offload about $18 million worth of equipment.
"I'm glad to get rid of it. It's a lot of stuff – a lot of stuff to keep accountable for. It's nice to finally start making the process back home," Cahill said.
The troops spent hours turning in their equipment and chatting about going home.
Cahill, 31, has a daughter turning 1 this month back home in Newburyport, Massachusetts. "I was at home when she was born," he said. "Now, she's standing up on her own so I got to get back."
Pvt. Kevin Patterson, 21, of Carson City, Nevada, was craving his grandmother's "famous tacos."
He was also happy to be alive.
"Every night when you go to bed and you're in one piece, you think `Thank God, I'm still here,'" Patterson said. "And when you finish and when you're on your way home like this, you think `It's amazing. I made it through.'"
It was after midnight when the troops finished unpacking their gear in the gravel yard.
After that, four of the vehicles were driven to another yard overseen by Capt. Nicholas Tommaso, 27, of New York state.
His job involves sorting through a myriad of electronic vehicle identification codes, transportation control movement documents, green stickers and bumper numbers. When he figures out where a vehicle is going, it is weighed and measured so others will know if it will fit on the plane ordered to fly it out. Then it is moved across the street to another yard to be washed and inspected by customs workers.
"We've been moving everything by air now," Tommaso said. "We moved out about 200 pieces in August alone."
The stuff that's not on wheels ends up at still another yard.
There, inside a giant white tent, soldiers unload boxes filled with everything from rubber O-rings and speedometers for military vehicles to paper plates and bags of grommets.
"It's like you opened your garage and you hadn't cleaned it out in a couple years," said Lt. Col. Michelle Letcher, commander of the 18th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion. "We are busy now. We came in July and now we are really ready for people to start pushing the stuff through."
Every item needs to be checked for dirt, bugs, mold and anything else that would prevent it from passing customs inspections in the U.S. or other nations where it's headed. Each has an identification number that's jotted on a pad, then entered into a computer that tells the military what it is and where it's needed. A printer spits out a shipping label, and the item is readied for its journey back to the U.S. or elsewhere.
A few days earlier, the soldiers at the tent opened a box arriving from the battlefield and found Louisville Slugger baseball bats.
They decided to keep one, and when they need a break from their tedious work, they go outside the tent and bat stones into the yard.
Afghan soldiers pay the price as US forces told not to interact with them
American soldiers denied permission to patrol with Afghan forces adding strain to already fraught relationship
The Independent By John Wendle Monday 17 September 2012
The line of American soldiers stood facing a jumble of Afghan soldiers. They were trying to get ready to practice some basic drills; clearing rifles and machine guns, applying tourniquets, carrying stretchers and marksmanship. Then the improvised explosive device went off and everyone went running in different directions.
The line of American soldiers stood facing a jumble of Afghan soldiers. They were trying to get ready to practice some basic drills; clearing rifles and machine guns, applying tourniquets, carrying stretchers and marksmanship. Then the improvised explosive device went off and everyone went running in different directions.
The thump and boom of the IED rolled over the defensive wall of the base. The gathered Afghan soldiers peered over at the dark brown cloud billowing up from a village just 300 metres outside the wire. Reports started crackling in over the Afghan lieutenant's radio from the engaged unit. Then the bursts of an Afghan army heavy machine gun kicked in along with the rolling cracks of small arms fire.
Since a wave of violence has been unleashed across Muslim countries in recent days over the US-made anti-Islam video posted on YouTube, Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) has denied some American units permission to patrol - effectively locking them down on their bases. For days now US soldiers here at Combat Outpost Garda, in Wardak Province, have spent their time sleeping, working out, eating, playing video games, talking on Skype, watching YouTube videos and starting the tiresome process of breaking down their base - anything but patrolling with their Afghan counterparts.
The Afghan soldiers have paid the price. Nearly every day that they've gone out in the past week into the narrow strip of orchards and houses that lie at the bottom of this wide mountain valley, they've been hit with IEDs or ambushed by small arms fire. Though they have not suffered any losses of soldiers or equipment, their relationship with the men who are supposed to be their mentors until the withdrawal of US forces in 2014 has been strained.
Early on Sunday morning, American troops had to tell Afghan Captain Sayed Abdullah they could not accompany his men on a planned mission. His reaction was one of resignation and anger. "This is dangerous for us," he told the American soldier bearing the news. "We have no mine detectors."
Now, with four American soldiers killed by Afghan forces or men dressed in Afghan uniforms on Sunday, and eight killings in total in three incidents over three days, the restrictions have increased. Now the American commander at COP Garda cannot even go to the Afghan Army compound down the hill from the US compound. All interaction between US and Afghan forces has been be suspended for the next 24 hours.
The decision to order US forces to not conduct patrols and to not interact with Afghan forces is adding yet more strain to a relationship that has become more and more fraught as the US prepares the Afghan Army and Police for the day when they will not be able to turn to the US and Nato for assistance in 2014, or to "pull the rug out from under the Afghan forces feet" in the words of one US commander.
Afghanistan: Monkey bites a growing threat
Associated Press September 17, 2012
Among all the challenges facing our troops in Afghanistan, who would think of monkey bites?
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us that in just four months, 10 service members in Afghanistan were bitten by monkeys. The incidents were examined by the U.S. Army and reported in the October 2012 issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
A CDC summary of the article said that most of the monkeys involved were pets owned by Afghan National Security Forces and Afghan civilians.
Monkey bites can spread rabies, tetanus or other bacterial infections as well as B-virus infection to humans, the CDC reports.
Bites can be minimized by enforcing military policies that prohibit pet adoption and animal contact, and secondary infections can be reduced by providing better training to military health-care providers on how to treat animal bites, the article's authors concluded.
Afghanistan to Notify UN Over Shelling from Pakistan
TOLOnews.com By Sharif Amiri Sunday, 16 September 2012
The Afghan government will raise the controversial cross-border shelling from Pakistan into Afghanistan's eastern regions with the United Nations Security Council, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Janan Mosazai said Sunday.
Attacks from Pakistan have displaced hundreds of Afghan residents who were facing threats from living in the eastern border region, Mosazai said in a press briefing in Kabul.
"The Afghan Minister of Foreign Affairs will address the issue of Pakistan's cross-border shelling at the United Nations Security Council Summit," Mosazai said, adding that the attacks have had a negative impact on relations between the two countries.
The rocket attacks from Pakistan have killed as many as 12 Afghan civilians in Kunar, Nangarhar, and Nuristan provinces since the start of the shelling more than a year ago, and it has displaced hundreds of others fleeing the threat.
The ongoing shelling was the main cause of the dismissal of Afghanistan's Minister of Defence and Minister of Interior at the start of August this year after the lawmakers held them to account for not doing enough to prevent the attacks.
A tripartite committee comprised of Afghan and Pakistani governments security officials and Isaf commanders was formed to address border issues, including the shelling, but the tension has not eased as attacks on both sides continue.
Pakistan security officials accuse the Afghan government of providing safe haven to insurgents who have crossed the border and attacked Pakistani checkpoints. The Afghan government accuses Pakistan of the same thing, except it accuses insurgents of crossing from Pakistan and attacking Afghan security forces.
Pakistan has said it will launch a massive military operation in the tribal areas close to the Afghan border to clear the area of insurgents, however fears are that it will only drive more people including insurgents into Afghan territory.
The international community has accused Pakistan of giving a "safe haven" to insurgents, particularly the Haqqani Network which has executed many high profile attacks on Afghan and foreign forces in Afghanistan.
Afghan Mullahs Fine Man Nearly $1.6K, Whip Girl for 'Relationship'
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaei Sunday, 16 September 2012
Religious elders ordered a 16-year-old girl in Afghanistan's eastern Ghazni province to be whipped over an "illegal relationship" with a young man, local officials told TOLOnews.
The girl was whipped with 80 lashes under the mullahs' edict, and the young man – whose age was not disclosed – was ordered to pay around 80,000 Afs ($1,600) as a punishment, according to Ghazni provincial head of women's affairs Shukria Wali.
The whipping happened two weeks ago in the girl's home in the Hout Qoul area of Ghazni's Jaghori district, Wali said.
However, it is not clear what was the nature of the relationship or whether it was consensual because local officials declined to discuss the matter in detail.
"The girl was freed after 80 lashes at her house and she is still in the district. The man was fined nearly 80,000 Afghani by the religious leaders," Wali told TOLOnews.
One resident of Jaghori said that "the girl was badly beaten by her family."
Wali added that she was concerned about the issue being dealt with by the religious elders, saying the case should have been referred to the judicial authorities in the Jaghori district.
"It would be better if the case was solved by the provincial government's justice department. The man has been freed and he is in the district," she said.
Ghazni parliamentarian Chaman Shah Etmadi said that the religious elders were not allowed to meet out punishment.
"It creates a kind of fear among the people. No one can do such a thing. We have a justice department and they can solve it," Etmadi told TOLOnews.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said that it has sent a delegation to the area to investigate the claims, but declined to discuss details.
Pakistan to Renew Refugee Cards for 3 Years
TOLOnews.com By Yama Ahmadi Sunday, 16 September 2012
Pakistan has agreed to allow Afghan refugees to stay in the country for another three years, Afghan Minister of Refugees and Repatriations Jamahir Anwari said on Sunday.
The decision was the result of trilateral discussions between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR), Anwari said at a press conference in Kabul.
"Fortunately, we agreed on all issues. Refugees will not be repatriated forcefully and the required refugee cards will be renewed for another three years," Anwari said.
"Another important issue that you are all aware was that we agreed on a regional strategy to solve the issues of all Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan," he added.
The Minister urged the refugees to return voluntarily to Afghanistan, noting several development projects in Kabul, Herat and Bamyan which will provide employment opportunities to the refugees.
"We have development projects underway in Kabul, Bamiyan and Herat provinces which provides employment opportunities to the repatriated," Anwari said.
Pakistan had previously declared a mid-year deadline for the Afghan refugees, particularly those in Waziristan, to return to Afghanistan but this agreement appears to have tackled the issue.
New Ring Road to Tackle Traffic Load in Kabul
TOLOnews.com By Zabiullah Jhanmal Sunday, 16 September 2012
A new ring road crossing three eastern provinces will ease the traffic load in Kabul city, Deputy Minister of Public Works Ministry Najibullah Ozhan said Sunday.
The planned ring road starts from the Darunta area near Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, passes through Logar province and will cross parts of Kabul province including Dashte Barchi, Paghman, and Farza districts, all the way to the main city.
"We are trying to ease the traffic load in Kabul by building this road," Ozhan said.
"The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have shown some interest in funding this project," Ozhan said, but he did not say how much the project would cost.
The practical phase of the road construction will begin after the land required to build it has been acquired. The road will ease traffic in Kabul as it will provide drivers with another route to travel between the north and the east, he added.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
September 17, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement that it was sending a team to Afghanistan's Laghman Province to investigate civilian casualties as a result of a NATO air strike.
NATO confirmed an air strike on September 16 "on a large group of armed individuals showing hostile intent," according to the ISAF statement.
ISAF said the air strike killed several insurgents but also caused "the unintentional deaths of a number of Afghan civilians."
Local Afghan officials said eight women gathering wood were killed in the NATO attack, near the village of Alingar.
The ISAF statement said coalition forces took civilian casualties "seriously" and promised a complete assessment of the incident.
ISAF offered its "sincerest regret to the families" of civilian victims of the strike.
Karzai Denounces Coalition Over Airstrikes
New York Times By MATTHEW ROSENBERG September 16, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Two of the most contentious issues dividing the United States and President Hamid Karzai’s administration re-emerged as the Afghan leader condemned American-led forces for killing eight women in airstrikes on Sunday and denounced his American allies for continuing to hold hundreds of Afghan prisoners.
After the coalition initially said that it needed time to investigate Afghan reports of the deaths, by evening it confirmed that the civilians had died in airstrikes launched early Sunday in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. It said the strikes were carried out “solely with the intent of countering known insurgents,” and offered its sympathies to the families of those slain. It did not give a number of dead; Afghan officials said eight women who were out collecting firewood had died.
While Mr. Karzai’s condemnation was likely to rankle some Western officials, it was in keeping with how he has responded to the killing of Afghan bystanders by both coalition forces and the Taliban, which is responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Instead, the presidential palace reserved its strongest language for the continued detention of some 600 Afghans at what was once the main American prison here. Mr. Karzai’s office said in a statement that keeping the prisoners was a “serious breach” and a “serious violation” of a deal struck this year, under which the United States agreed to transfer control of the prison to Afghan authorities on Sept. 9.
“The continued holding of Afghans in American custody runs in contradiction with the spirit of mutual friendship,” it said. “The people of Afghanistan consider the issue of prisons and detention of their fellow citizens a matter of their national sovereignty.”
After a summer in which American and Afghan officials were more often than not on the same page, the confrontational tone of the statement was a sharp reminder of the acrimony that has often characterized relations between Mr. Karzai and his American benefactors. As recently as March, Mr. Karzai referred to Americans as “demons.”
The statement came after Mr. Karzai met with Ambassador Marc Grossman, the United States special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who was in Kabul on a previously unannounced visit. The men discussed the prison issue and stalled efforts to strike a peace deal with the Taliban, the palace said.
The Americans were holding roughly 3,000 people at the prison, which is next to Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, when the United States and Afghanistan signed a memorandum of understanding in March that laid out a six-month timetable for the transfer. But Afghan officials say 600 people detained since March remain in American custody, along with about 30 of the original prisoners considered too dangerous to release but too difficult to prosecute because of a lack of admissible evidence.
American officials have not said anything about the 600 figure, but they have acknowledged holding the men detained before the deal was struck. They also have said they want the Afghans to agree to detain those men indefinitely under stipulations in the Geneva Convention that permit wartime detentions without trial.
Sunday’s statement from Mr. Karzai’s office said Afghan judicial authorities would soon “express their views” on how or whether a system of indefinite detention would comply with Afghanistan’s laws.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Afghanistan’s national security adviser, said in an interview last week that the Afghan government would eventually implement such a system but wanted control of the prisoners immediately. The Americans want a guarantee that the Afghans will leave intact the American detention system that allows the indefinite holding of prisoners deemed dangerous if there is insufficient evidence to try them.
“It is like the egg and the chicken,” said Mr. Spanta, who is viewed as one of Mr. Karzai’s more pro-Western advisers. Mr. Spanta said in the interview that he needed “a little space, two or three days, to find a diplomatic solution.” But with no solution at hand, the Karzai administration appeared to be taking the negotiations public with Sunday’s statement.
In response, the American Embassy stressed that “there is no question of our commitment to fully implement” the prison transfer accord. “Ambassador Grossman made clear in his discussion with the president that the United States fully respects Afghan sovereignty,” it said in a statement.
Sunday’s civilian deaths were the latest case of innocents being caught up in an operation by the coalition, which has reduced civilian casualties in part by limiting the use of air power.
The airstrikes took place in the Alingar district of Laghman Province. The coalition said the strikes were called in around 2 a.m. during a firefight with insurgents that had been spotted moving through the area.
According to Maj. Lori Hodge of the Air Force, coalition forces “engaged with precision munitions and direct fire” — airstrikes and gunfire — with about 45 insurgents. She could not say how many insurgents were killed.
Coalition forces were apparently unaware that village women sometimes go into the woods in the early hours of the morning to fetch wood for cooking fires they need to have going by breakfast time.
Alissa J. Rubin and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.
Four US Troops Killed in Afghan Inside Attack; 8 Coalition Troops Killed in 3 Days
By ERIN McLAUGHLIN | ABC News
Four American service members were killed by an Afghan policeman early today, the third attack on coalition forces in three days, bringing the death toll in the recent violence to eight.
The attacks -- two "green on blue" incidents and an assault on a coalition base by 15 Taliban fighters -- come as tensions flared across the Muslim world over an anti-Islam film that was produced in the United States.
In the latest attack, an Afghan police officer turned his gun on NATO troops at a remote checkpoint in southern Afghanistan before dawn. Four U.S. soldiers were killed before the shooter escaped, bringing the total of coalition troops killed to six in just two days.
International Security Assistance Force officials say the attacker is still at large, and noted it's unclear if there were multiple assailants. It is still unclear exactly what transpired at the checkpoint, according to Afghan officials, who say American forces responded to an attack on the checkpoint to help the Afghan police.
"The checkpoint was attacked last night. Then the police started fighting with the Americans," Ghulam Gilani, deputy police chief of Zabul province, said. "Whether they attacked the Americans willingly, we don't know."
A Taliban spokesman said the police involved were not affiliated with the Taliban insurgency.
Also today, NATO confirmed that an airstrike that killed as many as 45 insurgents also killed five to eight Afghan civilian casualties -- including women and children.
"ISAF takes full responsibility for this tragedy," the coalition said in a statement released after the strike.
The civilian casualties can only increase tensions in the country, and villagers who drove the bodies of the dead to the privincial capital, Mehterlam chanted "Death to America," Laghman provincial government spokesman Sarhadi Zewak said.
"Protecting Afghan lives is the cornerstone of our mission and it saddens us when we learn that our action might have unintentionally harmed civilians," said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for international military in Afghanistan.
So far this year, 51 coalition troops have been killed by Afghan service members. At least 12 such attacks happened in August alone, leaving 15 dead.
News of the shooting comes after one of the biggest attacks ever on an ISAF base. On Friday, 15 Taliban attackers, dressed in U.S. Army uniforms, attacked Camp Bastion in Afghan's Helmand province.
According to the ISAF, the insurgents used automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and explosive suicide vests in the late night attack. Two U.S. Marines were killed, and nine others were wounded, including one civilian contractor.
During the attack, which officials say appeared to be well planned and rehearsed, the insurgents destroyed six Harrier fighter jets, worth about $20 million each, and damaged two others. They also damaged six hangars and destroyed three refueling stations.
The last attack in which so many U.S. aircraft were destroyed at one time is believed to have been more than 40 years ago, during the Vietnam War.
All but one of the insurgents were killed by return gunfire, and a 15th was captured. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for the controversial video made in the United States that insults the Prophet Muhammad.
Prince Harry, a member of the U.K. military in Afghanistan is based at Camp Bastion. When he was first stationed there, the Taliban said they were out to kill him, although NATO officials say he was several miles away, and was never in danger during this attack.
On Saturday, two British troops were killed in an attack in Helmand province carried out by a gunman in the uniform of a government-backed militia.
Recent months have seen a string of attacks by Afghan forces against their international counterparts, who are working towards handing over security responsibilities to the Afghans as international troops draw down.
This weekend's attacks come amid turmoil throughout the Middle East, where anti-American protests have flared up, ostensibly in response to the online video mocking the Prophet Muhammad.
An attack on the American embassy in Libya last week led to four deaths, including the American ambassador to Libya. The protests have prompted the removal of U.S. personnel from their posts in Sudan and Tunisia.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice told Jake Tapper on "This Week" the attack was not premeditated, contradicting top Libyan officials who say the attack was planned in advance.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the turmoil raging across the Muslim world will likely continue for days, but the violence appears to be leveling off.
He said the Pentagon has "deployed our forces to a number of areas in the region to be prepared to respond to any requests that we receive to be able to protect our personnel and our American property."
ABC News' Muhammad Lila and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Afghan soldier wounds foreign contractors; mob tries to storm U.S. base in Kabul
By Sayed Salahuddin and Richard Leiby, Monday, September 17, 8:05 PM The Washington Post
KABUL — An Afghan soldier opened fire on six Lebanese civilian contractors working for U.S.-led NATO forces in southern Afghanistan on Sunday night, causing minor injuries, coalition officials said Monday. The attack was the third by rogue Afghan security personnel during the weekend, when foreign six troops were killed.
The member of the Afghan National Army fired shots at six contractors riding in a vehicle near Camp Garmsir, a shared base in southern Helmand province, said Lt. Col. Hagen Messer, a coalition spokesman. Some of them were wounded, but Messer said he could not provide a specific number.
Another Afghan soldier disarmed the attacker and took him into custody, Messer said, adding that the assailant thought he was targeting foreign troops.
Over the weekend, six international troops — four Americans and two British — died after Afghan forces opened fire on them, the latest deaths in a spate of so-called insider attacks that have killed 51 NATO troops so far this year.
In Kabul, meanwhile, about 500 Afghan demonstrators attacked police with stones and sticks Monday while trying to storm a U.S. military base in the capital, authorities said. It was the first violent anti-American protest in Afghanistan over a movie that Muslims worldwide have condemned as blasphemous.
Fifteen police were wounded, none seriously, Interior Ministry spokesman Mohammad Najib said. The protesters also destroyed a police vehicle and torched a police post, he said.
Some demonstrators said they turned against the police after being prevented from breaching the main gate and walls surrounding Camp Phoenix, a U.S. Army base in the eastern part of the capital.
“We wanted to attack Camp Phoenix to kill the Americans but were stopped by the Afghan police, and we had to attack the police,” said protester Ajmal Hotak, a 26-year-old shopkeeper.
Chanting “Death to all infidel countries,” the demonstrators demanded punishment for those who made the anti-Muslim film. They also called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
North of the city, hundreds of other protesters gathered outside Bagram Airfield, the main U.S. military base in the country, and staged a peaceful demonstration, officials said.
Monday’s demonstration in Kabul came after clerics in mosques near Camp Phoenix urged residents after early-morning prayers to take to the streets and close the base, Hotak said.
By contrast, last week clerics across Afghanistan, at the behest of the government, exhorted people during Friday prayers to refrain from violence.
The violence at the early-morning march was minimal compared with past anti-Western demonstrations that have killed foreigners, including aid workers, and led to the deaths of dozens of protesters. In February, after U.S. soldiers at the Bagram base disposed of copies of the Koran by burning them, at least 20 demonstrators died over several days of protest.
In a statement issued later Monday, Gen. John R. Allen, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, made a point of praising Kabul’s police chief for “maintaining control” of the demonstration.
“We all admire his courage and his leadership, and that of his brave police,” Allen said, referring to chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi.
Salangi was among the policemen hit by stones hurled by protesters.
Afghanistan anti-US protests heartfelt and spontaneous
Demonstrations against the anti-Islam YouTube clip turned violent in Kabul Monday. Afghan clerics haven't pushed for public protests. Instead demonstrators took their cues from news of riots elsewhere.
By Tom A. Peter | Christian Science Monitor
Demonstrations against the anti-Islam YouTube video flared in Kabul on Monday, following days of unrest and similar protests throughout the Middle East and Africa. Afghanistan has seen several small-scale protests in recent days, but Monday marked the first time since the release of the controversial video that hundreds of demonstrators gathered for a protest that turned violent.
The protesters marched down a major road on the outskirts of Kabul toward Camp Phoenix, a NATO base here. Police officials say the demonstration lasted about 90 minutes and escalated when demonstrators began throwing large rocks at police, injuring dozens of people. Protesters also set fire to two police vehicles, leaving one completely destroyed, and damaged several local shops.
“The people were really angry,” says Rashid Khan, a grocer whose store was damaged during the demonstrations. “Even if they tried to burn my shop I wouldn’t have tried to stop them.”
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In the wake of international incidents involving the desecration of Islamic symbols or beliefs, Afghanistan has often been one of the first and only Muslim countries to see widespread, violent demonstrations. Following the controversial video, however, Afghanistan remained largely quiet, with many local religious leaders reportedly calling for calm, even as the Middle East and Africa erupted in violence.
For the American and international officials in Afghanistan working to stabilize the country as much as possible before the end of their combat mission in 2014, the calls for calm are a welcome sign that many Afghan leaders see greater advantage in stability than unrest at this point.
Protesters in Kabul say that Monday’s demonstration was not provoked by any single group or individual, but rather was a display of solidarity with other Muslims who have acted out in response to the film.
“The main reason for our demonstration was that other Muslims from around the world have condemned and reacted against this film that has disrespected our holy prophet,” says Malim Abdul Ghani, a teacher who participated in the demonstration. “This cannot be tolerated by any single Muslim in the world so we wanted to show our unity with other Muslims around the world and condemn this film and the people who made it.”
Still, many Afghans, including demonstrators like Mr. Ghani, say that they’re disappointed the protest spiraled into violence. Afghanistan has seen a number of demonstrations in response to Islamic issues, such as those in April of 2011 following a Quran burning led by fringe American pastor Terry Jones.
An unfortunate irony of such demonstrations remains that the people killed and injured or those whose property is destroyed are almost exclusively Afghans unconnected to the source of the public anger. Shortly after the 2011 Quran burning protests, mullahs in Kandahar reminded locals that Mr. Jones burned only one Quran while demonstrators in Afghanistan's second largest city had inadvertently burned many more when they set fire to local shops, all of which kept a copy of the Muslim holy book.
“The people need to think about how they demonstrate. They’re just causing problems for their own government and their own people,” says Mohamoud Daoud Amin, deputy to the Kabul police chief. “There were some civilians' shops and property destroyed by the demonstrations. These demonstrations just cause problems for the local people.”
SEE ALSO – Blasphemy riots: 6 examples around the world
It remains uncertain whether protests will continue in Afghanistan, however, with unrest currently taking place without the overt support of religious leaders there is some optimism that the demonstrations are likely to fizzle out. Additionally the Afghan government has blocked YouTube to stop people from seeing the video that sparked the unrest.
“Hopefully the protests will not grow, but I am not fully confident,” says Mirwais Yasini, the first deputy speaker of Afghanistan's lower house of parliament. “The society here is unpredictable. We have to wait until next Friday, that will be really important. If we make it peacefully to Friday, hopefully things will be over.”
Demonstrations throughout the Muslim world traditionally take place following the afternoon prayer on Friday, the main congregational prayer in Islamic society.
* Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report
Nearly 50 Police Injured in Violent Protest over Anti-Islamic Film in Kabul
TOLOnews.com By Sonil Haidari, Wali Arian Monday, 17 September 2012
Hundreds of Afghan protesters Monday started demonstrating over anti-Islamic film in east of Kabul, chanting slogans and clashing with Afghan security forces, local officials said.
Nearly 50 police were injured, Kabul police chief Ayub Salangi said.
During the protests in the Hotkhil area of Pul-e-Charkhi in Kabul's east, gun shots could be heard and protesters threw stones at security forces.
The protesters shouted "death to America" and "death to infidels."
"The demonstration became violent by the people -- up to 40 to 50 policemen were injured after the protesters threw stones at the forces," Salangi said.
The demonstration started about 07:00AM and ended 10:30AM after more security forces arrived in the area.
Local officials said that protestors also hurt civilians in the area, while setting alight shops, tires, a private foreign company building and a police checkpoint.
A police vehicle was also destroyed in the demonstration.
Officials said the most of the protesters were students and young people, adding that the exact number of casualties is not clear.
Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi urged the Afghan people to cease from further violence.
Most of the residents of Pul-e- Charkhi condemned the violence.
One resident told TOLOnews: "This is unbelievable. They are hurting their people, setting on fire the shops, cars."
"They turned the demonstration to violence. It would be good if they had had a peaceful demonstration. Most of them don't know what is the meaning of protest and democracy," said another resident.
Meanwhile, there have been reports of more protests against the film in other provinces.
The US Embassy in Kabul said that they received reports of multiple protests in different locations of the city, including 200 - 300 demonstrators on Jalalabad Road.
"The Embassy is carefully monitoring the situation," it said.
"We wish to remind US citizens that past demonstrations in Afghanistan have escalated into violent attacks on Western targets."
On Sunday, hundreds of university students in the main towns of Kabul and Herat peacefully demonstrated against the film produced in the US and deemed offensive to Islam, saying the US would only create more enemies by allowing such material.
"Anyone else who watches this film will not react in an academic way -- they would react strongly against the film which will harm the US the most," a protestor from Kabul University told TOLOnews.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the film last week Wednesday in an emailed statement to media and the following day postponed a diplomatic trip to Norway in expectation of riots.
The Afghan government ordered internet providers to block YouTube, and many have complied, some even blocking Google, Gmail, and certain search terms.
YouTube has refused to remove the 14-minute clip of the film from its website saying that it did not breach the site's regulations.
Tough words from general on Afghan insider attacks
By ROBERT BURNS | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The persistent problem of rogue Afghan soldiers and police turning their guns on U.S. and allied troops is a "very serious threat" to the war effort, which is predicated on placing security responsibility in Afghan hands, the U.S. military's top officer said Sunday.
In unusually blunt remarks to the Pentagon's own news service, the American Forces Press Service, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said the Afghan government needs to take the problem as seriously as do U.S. commanders and officials.
"We're all seized with (the) problem," Dempsey was quoted as saying. "You can't whitewash it. We can't convince ourselves that we just have to work harder to get through it. Something has to change."
Dempsey and other U.S. officials have remarked extensively in recent weeks on the need to improve the screening of Afghan recruits and to take other precautionary measures in the face of a series of attacks that so far this year have killed at least 51 allied troops, mostly of them Americans.
"But we've got to make sure our Afghan counterparts are as seized about it as we are," Dempsey said. "We have to get on top of this. It is a very serious threat to the campaign."
Dempsey commented after attending a meeting in Romania of NATO military representatives. He said they discussed the situation in Afghanistan, including plans for the remaining two years of the campaign and the insider attack problem.
In the latest instances of such attacks, two British soldiers were killed by an Afghan policeman in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday and four American troops were killed in a similar attack Sunday in Zabul province.
Dempsey said an assault on Camp Bastion, a British air base in Helmand province, on Friday in which two U.S. Marines were killed and six U.S. Harrier fighter jets were destroyed, should not be categorized as an insider attack even though the attackers were wearing U.S. Army uniforms.
He said an initial review of the matter had determined that the attackers had no inside assistance at Bastion. Other officials said the attack was clearly a well-planned, well-rehearsed assault carried out by Taliban fighters.
It was not immediately clear how the attackers got the U.S. uniforms or how they managed to do such extensive damage at Bastion
Afghanistan rejects US administrative detention of citizens
September 17, 2012 Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan – The Afghan president's office says a judicial panel has ruled that administrative detention runs counter to the country's laws, potentially thwarting a U.S. plan to hand over Afghan detainees that American officials believe should continue to be held without recourse to a trial.
The president's office says in a statement issued Monday that the detention of Afghan citizens without a court trial "has not been foreseen in Afghan laws."
The United States has agreed to hand over all Afghan detainees captured in the country to the national government, but has also argued that it cannot risk the release of some high value detainees to the notoriously corrupt Afghan court system. Even though the deadline for the handover has passed, the Americans are still holding more than 600 Afghans.
Afghan villagers take up arms to drive out the Taliban
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
QADIS, Afghanistan, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The uprising of villagers against the harsh policies of the Taliban, which started four months ago in Ghazni province, some 125 km south of Kabul, has spread to the western province of Badghis province and the trend is gaining momentum.
"Up to 1,000 people are taking up arms at the present time and the number will swell as we intensify our efforts to drive out the Taliban militants from Jawand and Qadis districts in Badghis province," Mullah Abdul Hakim, who leads the armed villagers, told Xinhua over the weekend.
Abdul said that their group would support the police and the army in driving out the Taliban.
In June this year, a group of six students in Andar district of Ghazni province took up arms against Taliban fighters after their school was closed by the Taliban insurgents operating in the area.
Supported by villagers, the student uprising swelled to about 100 forcing the Taliban militants to retreat from several villages within weeks and allowing the school to reopen.
The leader of the uprising in Ghazni province, Lutfullah Kamran, a clean-shaven engineer, vowed to drive all the Taliban insurgents from the whole province.
Kamram, reportedly a former Taliban fighter, became fed up with the fundamentalist group's harsh policies, particularly its order to close all schools, clinics, and bazaars. He said that what the Taliban is doing would eventually lead to extreme poverty of the people in Andar district.
Similar village uprisings against the Taliban were also reported in the eastern Paktia, Nuristan, Nangarhar and western Ghor province as well as in several other provinces.
"We are fed up with the Taliban-imposed totalitarian reign and the elders have decided to join the uprising that our brothers in Ghazni had launched," one villager said.
A statement released by the Paktia provincial administration on Sept. 10 has confirmed local uprising against Taliban militants in Ayub Zazai district.
"The locals in Ayub Zazai district stood against Taliban militants on Monday morning (Sept. 10) and kicked them out from several villages. The aim of the revolt was to drive out the militants, including foreign fighters, who are killing innocent civilians and targeting local elders, teachers, religious people," the statement of the Paktia provincial administration said.
According to the statement, the villagers, some of them armed only with sticks, succeeded in evicting the Taliban militants from several villages even without the support of government forces.
The uprising, according to the statement, began when the villagers found that Taliban fighters shot and killed a local religious figure named Zahurruddin, a teacher Abdul Raziq, and two staff members of a school in the area.
"It is Taliban's cruelty, injustice and tyranny that caused us to take up arms; otherwise, we want peace and stability," the statement added.
According to the statement, the Talibans stop vehicles and buses and take people hostage for ransom. They also extort money and they force people to pay 'Zakat' or charity in crop harvesting time and torture people who do not comply with their edict.
"We do not want fighting, we do not want killing, we want reconstruction, we want our government to support so that we can work in our farms," said Mohammad Akbar, a resident who was holding an AK-47.
Meanwhile, a total of 25 people were killed and 65 others were injured when a bomb hurled by Taliban insurgents hit a funeral ceremony in Dur Baba district of eastern Nangarhar province on Sept. 4.
NATO releases details of brazen raid on base in Afghanistan
CNN By Barbara Starr, Chris Lawrence and Joe Sterling September 17, 2012
Afghan insurgents who staged a daring, well-planned raid on Camp Bastion, the military base where Britain's Prince Harry is deployed, were wearing U.S. Army uniforms, NATO said a day after the attack.
It's extremely rare for Afghan insurgents to use U.S. uniforms in their attacks. The last time CNN can identify was more than two years ago, when NATO repelled attacks on two bases in Khost province in August 2010.
No coalition troops were killed in that attack, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said at the time.
At least two U.S. Marines were killed in the brazen strike late on Friday, and six jets were destroyed, ISAF said as it released more details about the raid.
Well-trained, well-rehearsed fighters carried out the sustained assault in Helmand province, ISAF said.
About 15 insurgents organized into three teams penetrated the base's perimeter fence and did considerable damage, destroying six refueling stations and damaging six aircraft hangars.
The attackers toted automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and suicide vests.
They destroyed six AV-8B Harrier jets and damaged two others before the attack ended, the coalition said.
Fourteen of the fighters were killed and one was wounded and captured, ISAF said.
Eight coalition military personnel and one civilian contractor were also wounded.
It is too soon to say whether the attackers had "inside knowledge," ISAF spokesman James Graybeal said.
ISAF would not say how the attackers got the uniforms, but CNN staff who have spent time in Afghanistan say they are for sale in markets there.
There has been at least one other case of Afghan insurgents wearing U.S. uniforms, in May 2010.
And in Iraq five years ago, there was a dramatic and successful raid using the tactic.
Attackers wearing what appeared to be American uniforms were responsible for the kidnapping and killing of five U.S. soldiers in Karbala, Iraq, in 2007.
Prince Harry is an Apache helicopter pilot based at Camp Bastion, but the British Ministry of Defence categorically rejected reports in Sunday's British press that he was just a few hundred yards away from the gun battle.
Harry, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and third in line to the British throne, "was in no way in any danger" during the latest attack, ISAF spokesman Maj. Martin Crighton said earlier.
On Saturday, ISAF said the camp is secure and the strike would not "impact" air and ground operations.
Camp Leatherneck, the U.S. side of the base, was not affected by the attack, Maj. Adam N. Wojack, an ISAF spokesman, told CNN.
The joint base is located in a remote desert region of Helmand, the southern province in the Taliban heartland.
The Taliban said it carried out the strike, calling it a response to the anti-Islam film stoking anger among Muslims. Yet Crighton said there had no organized demonstrations outside its gates before the assault.
Afghanistan has seen only relatively small and peaceful demonstrations against the film during a week in which there were protests across predominantly Muslim-countries and other locations.
Separately, four American troops were killed by Afghan police on Sunday, an administration official said after NATO's International Security Assistance Force reported the attack.
The latest attack on coalition troops by their supposed Afghan allies brings the number of people killed in so-called "green on blue" incidents to more than 50 this year.
The killing of the four Americans on Sunday is the latest in a series of incidents in which members of Afghan security forces have been suspected of turning their weapons on coalition or Afghan soldiers, known as green-on-blue attacks.
Sunday's killings came only a day after the British Ministry of Defence announced that two troops had been killed in Helmand province's Nahr-e Saraj district.
In that attack, a man wearing an Afghan police uniform fatally shot two members of the 3rd Battalion at a checkpoint, according to Maj. Laurence Roche, a spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said in a statement released by the ministry.
The killing occurred the same day that another British soldier died in in a separate incident in Nahr-e Saraj, according to the ministry. He was killed when his vehicle struck a bomb.
CNN's Chelsea J. Carter, Adam S. Levine, Kevin Flower, Jessica King and Greg Botelho contributed to this report.
NATO disasters stack up in Afghanistan
More 'insider' slayings, as well as a NATO airstrike that killed eight women, follow a Taliban attack that destroyed more than $150 million worth of equipment.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King September 16, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - In a disastrous day for the NATO force in Afghanistan, four American troops were gunned down Sunday by Afghan police, a U.S. airstrike killed eight Afghan women foraging for fuel on a rural hillside, and military officials disclosed that a Taliban strike on a southern base had destroyed more than $150 million worth of planes and equipment — in money terms, by far the costliest single insurgent attack in 11 years of warfare.
The confluence of events underscored some of the conflict's most damaging trends: an unrelenting tide of "insider" attacks, in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on coalition allies; the daily loss of civilian lives to war's ravages; and the continuing ability of insurgent forces to inflict disproportionate havoc on the far more powerful Western military.
The lethal encounter between U.S. forces and Afghan police took place soon after midnight in Zabol province in the south, military and Afghan officials said. The provincial governor, Mohammad Ashraf Naseri, said the shooting occurred at a joint base in Zabol's Mezan district.
The NATO force confirmed the deaths without disclosing the nationality, but U.S. officials said the troops were American. The killings came less than 24 hours after two British soldiers were gunned down by an Afghan policeman and brought to 51 the number of Western service members killed this year by Afghan security forces.
Both Western and Afghan officials acknowledge insider shootings have become an extremely serious problem — about 15% of all coalition deaths come at the hands of Afghan forces — and they have taken urgent steps to stop the attacks. Forces on both sides are undergoing cultural training to try to avoid deadly misunderstandings. NATO troops have been ordered to keep rounds chambered in their weapons at all times, and armed Western troops called "guardian angels" have been posted to watch over others in mess halls, sleeping tents and gyms. Thousands of members of a locally recruited village militia were ordered rescreened for links with the insurgency.
How to reduce such attacks is the subject of considerable debate among U.S. and NATO officials. Moves that slow the training of Afghans to take over security in their own country could undercut the goal of a Western military withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. And steps seen as too heavy-handed could be taken by Afghans as an insult in a culture where perceived slights can swiftly lead to more violence.
The eight women killed in an airstrike in Laghman province, in eastern Afghanistan, were poor villagers who were gathering brush for cooking fires, provincial authorities said. In addition to those killed, seven people were reported injured. Villagers loaded the bodies into trucks and drove them to the provincial governor's office, parading them through the streets in protest.
The NATO force acknowledged that five to eight civilians were accidentally killed in a strike targeting a group of insurgents, and expressed regret.
A spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization coalition, Air Force Capt. Dan Einert, said the bombardment followed a "significant engagement" Sunday morning in the remote Alingar district of Laghman province. He said a unit of NATO's International Security Assistance Force positively identified a group of about 45 insurgents with hostile intent and called in the airstrike, which killed a large number of them.
"Unfortunately, we are aware of civilian casualties as a result of this strike," he said.
In recent years, NATO and Afghan government forces have been responsible for a shrinking proportion of civilian deaths, with nearly all such deaths and injuries blamed on insurgents. But airstrikes remain the single largest cause of civilian casualties inflicted by international forces.
Meanwhile, Western officials disclosed early Sunday that an insurgent raid at Camp Bastion, in Helmand province, had been far more serious than initially reported. Military officials had already reported the deaths of two U.S. Marines in the strike that began Friday evening and continued into the early hours of Saturday. On Sunday, however, they reported that the insurgents had managed to destroy six sophisticated AV-8B Harrier jets, together with three refueling stations. Two other Harrier aircraft were "significantly damaged," as were six soft-skin aircraft hangars.
Bastion, where Britain's Prince Harry is deployed as part of an Apache helicopter crew, is considered one of the most heavily fortified bases in Afghanistan. That a relatively small squad of insurgents was able to breach the perimeter and inflict such a degree of damage surprised the U.S. and British command.
In London, a Defense Ministry spokesman, speaking under the customary request of anonymity, said Sunday that the prince's deployment would continue. "In light of this event, there aren't any plans for him to be withdrawn," he said.
laura.king@latimes.com
Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report.
Troops pack up gear to ship out of Afghanistan
DEB RIECHMANN | September 17, 2012 02:22 PM EST The Associated Press via The Huffington Post
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It was nearly 2 a.m. when U.S. Army Pfc. Zach Randle jumped out of his bulky armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan for what he hoped would be the last time.
"I don't want to see it again. It's been through a lot," Randle said of the 19-ton (17-metric ton) vehicle that was his ride – and sometimes his bed – during a six-month deployment to volatile Kandahar province.
"It protected us, but I'm just in a hurry to turn it in to be closer to going home," said Randle, who has now left Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama's drawdown of 33,000 U.S. troops by Sept. 30. The pullout – 10,000 last year and 23,000 more this year – will be finished within days. That will leave 68,000 American troops in this country to fight militants and help prepare Afghan forces to take over security nationwide.
While some service members go home, others are busy preparing thousands of vehicles and other equipment for shipment. It's a laborious task that's more difficult than it was in Iraq because of landlocked Afghanistan's tough mountainous terrain, lack of roads and its mountain passes that will soon be covered with snow.
Between now and the end of 2014, when most U.S. troops will have left, the Americans will move an estimated 50,000 vehicles, including tens of thousands of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles like the one Randle drove into the equipment yard. They'll also ship an estimated 100,000 metal containers – each about 20 feet long. End-to-end, the containers would stretch nearly 400 miles (600 kilometers).
Shipping has picked up in recent months, as base closure teams have spread out across Afghanistan to help soldiers sort, pack and load up their gear. As of the beginning of September, 208 U.S. and NATO coalition bases have been closed, 310 have been transferred to the Afghan government and 323 remain open, according to the coalition.
The packing up is going on as the war still rages. Just since Friday, insurgents attacked a base in neighboring Helmand province, killing two U.S. Marines and destroying six Harrier fighter jets. Afghan police gunned down four more American service members, and a NATO airstrike mistakenly killed eight Afghan women looking for firewood.
As American forces keep fighting, thousands of civilian and military personnel will continue prepping vehicles for flight, taking tedious inventory of bullets, night scopes, radios and even recreational baseball bats. They'll also clean and crate tons of other gear, anything from bags of nails to generators.
Brig. Gen. Kristin French, commanding general of the Joint Sustainment Command in Afghanistan, likens the teams to "wedding planners" helping to organize the move.
"We are trying to take the burden off the war fighter and give it to our folks who have the mission to do it," French said at her office at Kandahar Air Field. "If we're busy trying to clean up our backyards, we're not doing what our focus is and that is to continue to transition security to the Afghan security forces and partner with them."
Vehicles are being gathered in Kandahar, Bagram Air Field near Kabul and Camp Barmal in northern Afghanistan. Containers are being staged for shipment at nine locations around the country, she said.
Some equipment is taken by truck, train, ships or planes to military depots in the United States. MRAPS are rolled onto airplanes. Some Humvees sit in shipping containers for a test trip on a railroad leaving Afghanistan via Uzbekistan to the north. Other equipment will also go north through Central Asia or else be trucked into Pakistan – some of it down to the port of Karachi, where it will sail back to the United States or other destinations.
Various items will stay in Afghanistan to be used by the Americans troops not going home – yet. Still other materiel will be transferred to the Afghan government, tossed out, taken to a scrap heap or shipped to other countries for use by U.S. forces.
For now, Randle and several dozen other U.S. Army soldiers from the 4th Brigade Combat Team 82nd Airborne Division, based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are happy to get rid of their vehicles and all the equipment.
The late-night arrival of their convoy late last month stirred up dust in the equipment yard at Kandahar Air Field. The heavily armed personnel carriers and utility trucks slowed to a halt, then sat idling noisily as the soldiers gathered their gear inside and began climbing out and into formation in the yard.
"They are part of the 23,000 soldier off-ramp," said Lt. Col. Stanley J. Sliwinski, Jr., who assumed command of 401st Army Field Support Brigade in Kandahar in July and was waiting for the convoy when it arrived. "Most of these soldiers will turn in their equipment tonight and they will fly home within the next three days."
Home, that is, after about three weeks at Fort Bragg.
When Randle, 20, returns to Clarksville, Tennessee, he will climb behind the wheel of a black sports sedan he's buying from the family of an American service member who was killed in Afghanistan. "It was his car, a Mazda 6, black," Randle said, standing under a three-quarters moon.
One of Randle's fellow soldiers at the equipment yard, Army Capt. Matthew Cahill, said they would offload about $18 million worth of equipment.
"I'm glad to get rid of it. It's a lot of stuff – a lot of stuff to keep accountable for. It's nice to finally start making the process back home," Cahill said.
The troops spent hours turning in their equipment and chatting about going home.
Cahill, 31, has a daughter turning 1 this month back home in Newburyport, Massachusetts. "I was at home when she was born," he said. "Now, she's standing up on her own so I got to get back."
Pvt. Kevin Patterson, 21, of Carson City, Nevada, was craving his grandmother's "famous tacos."
He was also happy to be alive.
"Every night when you go to bed and you're in one piece, you think `Thank God, I'm still here,'" Patterson said. "And when you finish and when you're on your way home like this, you think `It's amazing. I made it through.'"
It was after midnight when the troops finished unpacking their gear in the gravel yard.
After that, four of the vehicles were driven to another yard overseen by Capt. Nicholas Tommaso, 27, of New York state.
His job involves sorting through a myriad of electronic vehicle identification codes, transportation control movement documents, green stickers and bumper numbers. When he figures out where a vehicle is going, it is weighed and measured so others will know if it will fit on the plane ordered to fly it out. Then it is moved across the street to another yard to be washed and inspected by customs workers.
"We've been moving everything by air now," Tommaso said. "We moved out about 200 pieces in August alone."
The stuff that's not on wheels ends up at still another yard.
There, inside a giant white tent, soldiers unload boxes filled with everything from rubber O-rings and speedometers for military vehicles to paper plates and bags of grommets.
"It's like you opened your garage and you hadn't cleaned it out in a couple years," said Lt. Col. Michelle Letcher, commander of the 18th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion. "We are busy now. We came in July and now we are really ready for people to start pushing the stuff through."
Every item needs to be checked for dirt, bugs, mold and anything else that would prevent it from passing customs inspections in the U.S. or other nations where it's headed. Each has an identification number that's jotted on a pad, then entered into a computer that tells the military what it is and where it's needed. A printer spits out a shipping label, and the item is readied for its journey back to the U.S. or elsewhere.
A few days earlier, the soldiers at the tent opened a box arriving from the battlefield and found Louisville Slugger baseball bats.
They decided to keep one, and when they need a break from their tedious work, they go outside the tent and bat stones into the yard.
Afghan soldiers pay the price as US forces told not to interact with them
American soldiers denied permission to patrol with Afghan forces adding strain to already fraught relationship
The Independent By John Wendle Monday 17 September 2012
The line of American soldiers stood facing a jumble of Afghan soldiers. They were trying to get ready to practice some basic drills; clearing rifles and machine guns, applying tourniquets, carrying stretchers and marksmanship. Then the improvised explosive device went off and everyone went running in different directions.
The line of American soldiers stood facing a jumble of Afghan soldiers. They were trying to get ready to practice some basic drills; clearing rifles and machine guns, applying tourniquets, carrying stretchers and marksmanship. Then the improvised explosive device went off and everyone went running in different directions.
The thump and boom of the IED rolled over the defensive wall of the base. The gathered Afghan soldiers peered over at the dark brown cloud billowing up from a village just 300 metres outside the wire. Reports started crackling in over the Afghan lieutenant's radio from the engaged unit. Then the bursts of an Afghan army heavy machine gun kicked in along with the rolling cracks of small arms fire.
Since a wave of violence has been unleashed across Muslim countries in recent days over the US-made anti-Islam video posted on YouTube, Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) has denied some American units permission to patrol - effectively locking them down on their bases. For days now US soldiers here at Combat Outpost Garda, in Wardak Province, have spent their time sleeping, working out, eating, playing video games, talking on Skype, watching YouTube videos and starting the tiresome process of breaking down their base - anything but patrolling with their Afghan counterparts.
The Afghan soldiers have paid the price. Nearly every day that they've gone out in the past week into the narrow strip of orchards and houses that lie at the bottom of this wide mountain valley, they've been hit with IEDs or ambushed by small arms fire. Though they have not suffered any losses of soldiers or equipment, their relationship with the men who are supposed to be their mentors until the withdrawal of US forces in 2014 has been strained.
Early on Sunday morning, American troops had to tell Afghan Captain Sayed Abdullah they could not accompany his men on a planned mission. His reaction was one of resignation and anger. "This is dangerous for us," he told the American soldier bearing the news. "We have no mine detectors."
Now, with four American soldiers killed by Afghan forces or men dressed in Afghan uniforms on Sunday, and eight killings in total in three incidents over three days, the restrictions have increased. Now the American commander at COP Garda cannot even go to the Afghan Army compound down the hill from the US compound. All interaction between US and Afghan forces has been be suspended for the next 24 hours.
The decision to order US forces to not conduct patrols and to not interact with Afghan forces is adding yet more strain to a relationship that has become more and more fraught as the US prepares the Afghan Army and Police for the day when they will not be able to turn to the US and Nato for assistance in 2014, or to "pull the rug out from under the Afghan forces feet" in the words of one US commander.
Afghanistan: Monkey bites a growing threat
Associated Press September 17, 2012
Among all the challenges facing our troops in Afghanistan, who would think of monkey bites?
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us that in just four months, 10 service members in Afghanistan were bitten by monkeys. The incidents were examined by the U.S. Army and reported in the October 2012 issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
A CDC summary of the article said that most of the monkeys involved were pets owned by Afghan National Security Forces and Afghan civilians.
Monkey bites can spread rabies, tetanus or other bacterial infections as well as B-virus infection to humans, the CDC reports.
Bites can be minimized by enforcing military policies that prohibit pet adoption and animal contact, and secondary infections can be reduced by providing better training to military health-care providers on how to treat animal bites, the article's authors concluded.
Afghanistan to Notify UN Over Shelling from Pakistan
TOLOnews.com By Sharif Amiri Sunday, 16 September 2012
The Afghan government will raise the controversial cross-border shelling from Pakistan into Afghanistan's eastern regions with the United Nations Security Council, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Janan Mosazai said Sunday.
Attacks from Pakistan have displaced hundreds of Afghan residents who were facing threats from living in the eastern border region, Mosazai said in a press briefing in Kabul.
"The Afghan Minister of Foreign Affairs will address the issue of Pakistan's cross-border shelling at the United Nations Security Council Summit," Mosazai said, adding that the attacks have had a negative impact on relations between the two countries.
The rocket attacks from Pakistan have killed as many as 12 Afghan civilians in Kunar, Nangarhar, and Nuristan provinces since the start of the shelling more than a year ago, and it has displaced hundreds of others fleeing the threat.
The ongoing shelling was the main cause of the dismissal of Afghanistan's Minister of Defence and Minister of Interior at the start of August this year after the lawmakers held them to account for not doing enough to prevent the attacks.
A tripartite committee comprised of Afghan and Pakistani governments security officials and Isaf commanders was formed to address border issues, including the shelling, but the tension has not eased as attacks on both sides continue.
Pakistan security officials accuse the Afghan government of providing safe haven to insurgents who have crossed the border and attacked Pakistani checkpoints. The Afghan government accuses Pakistan of the same thing, except it accuses insurgents of crossing from Pakistan and attacking Afghan security forces.
Pakistan has said it will launch a massive military operation in the tribal areas close to the Afghan border to clear the area of insurgents, however fears are that it will only drive more people including insurgents into Afghan territory.
The international community has accused Pakistan of giving a "safe haven" to insurgents, particularly the Haqqani Network which has executed many high profile attacks on Afghan and foreign forces in Afghanistan.
Afghan Mullahs Fine Man Nearly $1.6K, Whip Girl for 'Relationship'
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaei Sunday, 16 September 2012
Religious elders ordered a 16-year-old girl in Afghanistan's eastern Ghazni province to be whipped over an "illegal relationship" with a young man, local officials told TOLOnews.
The girl was whipped with 80 lashes under the mullahs' edict, and the young man – whose age was not disclosed – was ordered to pay around 80,000 Afs ($1,600) as a punishment, according to Ghazni provincial head of women's affairs Shukria Wali.
The whipping happened two weeks ago in the girl's home in the Hout Qoul area of Ghazni's Jaghori district, Wali said.
However, it is not clear what was the nature of the relationship or whether it was consensual because local officials declined to discuss the matter in detail.
"The girl was freed after 80 lashes at her house and she is still in the district. The man was fined nearly 80,000 Afghani by the religious leaders," Wali told TOLOnews.
One resident of Jaghori said that "the girl was badly beaten by her family."
Wali added that she was concerned about the issue being dealt with by the religious elders, saying the case should have been referred to the judicial authorities in the Jaghori district.
"It would be better if the case was solved by the provincial government's justice department. The man has been freed and he is in the district," she said.
Ghazni parliamentarian Chaman Shah Etmadi said that the religious elders were not allowed to meet out punishment.
"It creates a kind of fear among the people. No one can do such a thing. We have a justice department and they can solve it," Etmadi told TOLOnews.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said that it has sent a delegation to the area to investigate the claims, but declined to discuss details.
Pakistan to Renew Refugee Cards for 3 Years
TOLOnews.com By Yama Ahmadi Sunday, 16 September 2012
Pakistan has agreed to allow Afghan refugees to stay in the country for another three years, Afghan Minister of Refugees and Repatriations Jamahir Anwari said on Sunday.
The decision was the result of trilateral discussions between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR), Anwari said at a press conference in Kabul.
"Fortunately, we agreed on all issues. Refugees will not be repatriated forcefully and the required refugee cards will be renewed for another three years," Anwari said.
"Another important issue that you are all aware was that we agreed on a regional strategy to solve the issues of all Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan," he added.
The Minister urged the refugees to return voluntarily to Afghanistan, noting several development projects in Kabul, Herat and Bamyan which will provide employment opportunities to the refugees.
"We have development projects underway in Kabul, Bamiyan and Herat provinces which provides employment opportunities to the repatriated," Anwari said.
Pakistan had previously declared a mid-year deadline for the Afghan refugees, particularly those in Waziristan, to return to Afghanistan but this agreement appears to have tackled the issue.
New Ring Road to Tackle Traffic Load in Kabul
TOLOnews.com By Zabiullah Jhanmal Sunday, 16 September 2012
A new ring road crossing three eastern provinces will ease the traffic load in Kabul city, Deputy Minister of Public Works Ministry Najibullah Ozhan said Sunday.
The planned ring road starts from the Darunta area near Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, passes through Logar province and will cross parts of Kabul province including Dashte Barchi, Paghman, and Farza districts, all the way to the main city.
"We are trying to ease the traffic load in Kabul by building this road," Ozhan said.
"The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have shown some interest in funding this project," Ozhan said, but he did not say how much the project would cost.
The practical phase of the road construction will begin after the land required to build it has been acquired. The road will ease traffic in Kabul as it will provide drivers with another route to travel between the north and the east, he added.
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