Taliban hit U.S. military chief's plane

[Shah-i-Kot]

Taliban hit U.S. military chief's plane Staff & Agencies

On Line: 21 August 2012 15:52
In Print: Wednesday 22 August 2012






Taliban fighters fired rockets into an American base in Afghanistan and damaged the parked plane of the visiting chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, the U.S.-led military coalition said Tuesday.
The general was safe in his quarters at the time but had to take another aircraft out of the country, The Associated Press reported.

The rocket strike that hit the C-17 military transport plane of U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey was yet another propaganda coup for the Taliban after they claimed to have shot down a U.S. helicopter last week.

It also followed a string of killings of U.S. military trainers by Afghan security forces or the Taliban dressed in Afghan uniform. Such attacks killed 10 U.S. troops in the last two weeks alone.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place late Monday night at the Bagram Air Field outside Kabul, saying Dempsey's plane was targeted by the Taliban "using exact information" about where it would be.

Two maintenance workers were slightly injured by shrapnel from the two rockets fired into, coalition spokesman Jamie Graybeal said.

Dempsey "was nowhere near" the plane when the rockets hit near where the aircraft was parked, the spokesman added.

Dempsey finished his mission in Afghanistan and had left by Tuesday morning on a different plane, said Graybeal. A helicopter on the base was also damaged in the attack, according to NATO.

"Because there was some damage to the exterior of the aircraft, Gen. Dempsey left Afghanistan on a different C-17," Pentagon spokeswoman Maj. Cathy Wilkinson said.

Graybeal cast doubt on the idea that Dempsey's plane may have been hit by any precision attack. He said that insurgent rocket and mortar attacks are "not infrequent" at Bagram and that such fire most often comes from so far away that it's virtually impossible to hit specific targets.

Wilkinson also said it was unlikely the attack was aimed specifically at Dempsey's plane. "Indirect fire at Bagram is not unusual, so we don't believe his aircraft was targeted."

Bagram is a sprawling complex about an hour's drive north of Kabul that usually serves as the first point of entrance for U.S. officials visiting the country. It is the hub for military operations in the east of the country and the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan.

Dempsey was in Afghanistan to discuss the state of the war after a particularly deadly few weeks for Americans in the more than 10-year-old war as international forces begin drawing down.

He and the chief of U.S. Central Command, Marine Gen. James R. Mattis, met with NATO and U.S. Afghan commander Gen. John Allen in Kabul and also with a number of senior Afghan and coalition leaders.

Among the topics was the escalating number of "insider attacks" in which Afghan police or soldiers or militants dressed in Afghan uniform turn their guns on coalition military trainers. Once an anomaly, such attacks have been climbing in recent months. There have been 32 such attacks so far this year, up from 21 for all of 2011, according to NATO.

Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar last week said the insider killings were the result of a Taliban campaign of infiltration, though NATO has said it's too early to tell if the attacks were related to the insurgency of caused by personal disputes turned deadly.

The Taliban also claimed to have shot down a U.S. military helicopter that crashed during a firefight with Taliban fighters in a remote area of southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing seven Americans and four Afghans on board in one of the deadliest air disasters of the war.

[asad71]

That should further expedite the exit of the invaders.

[Tor Gul]

That should further expedite the exit of the invaders.

won't matter one way or the other, won't speed it up & won't slow it down

[Shah-i-Kot]

Dempsey’s plane hit

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/editorials/23-Aug-2012/dempsey-s-plane-hit

August 23, 2012 |



The Taliban’s rocket strike in the early hours of Tuesday may not have caused any serious damage to General Martin Dempsey’s aircraft parked at the Bagram airport but the incident did give them the publicity mileage they sought and brought into sharp focus their dangerous reach. The Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, on a visit to Afghanistan, was asleep in his quarters at the time and remained unharmed; the only casualties were two of the maintenance staff who suffered cuts and bruises mild enough to bring them back on duty by the evening. The exterior of the plane was damaged and the General had to fly back in another one. A helicopter standing nearby was also damaged. The Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said that the attack was based on “precise intelligence” provided from inside the base, a claim that the American officials at the airport disputed, adding that the insurgents firing rockets at the airport is not something new; it occurred off and on and the attackers even did not know it was the General’s aircraft they were hitting. It was a “lucky shot”, they maintained.
In disregard of whether spokesman Mujahid’s boast of “precise intelligence” was based on a factual position or not, the daring strike at Bagram, which the US officials say is not the first one, does underscore Mullah Omar’s boast of a few days ago, that the Taliban have made deep inroads into this once secure and thriving area under the Nato forces. If they can manage to sneak, with heavy weapons, so often within a striking distance of this sensitive airport, it establishes the foreign troops’ vulnerability to their attacks less than 40 kilometres away from the capital of a country they have been occupying for nearly 11 years. The New York Times, reporting the incident of the rocket fire on General Dempsey’s aircraft, says, “the area is important because of the airfield and because the main road passes north through Bagram and the Salang Tunnel, and eventually into Uzbekistan, in an indisputable resupply corridor.”
The main item on the CJCSC’s agenda for discussing with local commanders and the Afghan government during his visit was what has come to be called the “green-on-blue” or “insider attacks” i.e. the Afghan security personnel opening fire on their trainers. There have been 40 deaths as a result of these attacks so far this year, nine of them being just in the past two weeks, as against a much smaller number during the whole of last year. The US main worry is its inquiries’ findings that the trend does not reveal the Taliban’s infiltration into the security ranks. Analysts have put the blame on cultural and behavioural differences between the Afghans and their trainers. But that alone does not explain the whole story; the underlying element of Afghan abhorrence of the foreign military presence must also be acknowledged. One wonders whether the countermeasures like keeping the guns loaded when coming into contact with the trainees or a constant monitoring of their activities would help. The “green-on-blue attacks” also point to the unstable condition that the insurgency in the country has created, which does not augur well for the hoped-for post-withdrawal peace in Afghanistan, not the least because of the sizeable presence of the so-called non-combatant foreign troops to be used in case of any turmoil. Sooner a full withdrawal settlement properly negotiated with local stakeholders takes place the better it will be for the prospects of peace in Afghanistan.