Category Archives: Mission to Afghanistan

Taliban commander turns self in… for reward on ‘Wanted’ poster

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I have always wondered if this would work…

From WAPO:

Sometimes, capturing a Taliban commander requires vast resources and complex operations. Last week in eastern Afghanistan, it required neither.
The wanted poster for Mohammad Ashan.

Mohammad Ashan, a mid-level Taliban commander in Paktika province, strolled toward a police checkpoint in the district of Sar Howza with a wanted poster bearing his own face. He demanded the finder’s fee referenced on the poster: $100.

Afghan officials, perplexed by the man’s misguided motives, arrested him on the spot. Ashan is suspected of plotting at least two attacks on Afghan security forces. His misdeeds prompted officials to plaster the district with hundreds of so-called “Be on the Lookout” posters emblazoned with his name and likeness.

 

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” How military leaders have let us down ”

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Armed Forces Journal:

string(29) ” Truth, lies and Afghanistan ”

By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

string(29) ” By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS ” By LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

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I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

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‘Suicide attack bid’ on US Defence Secretary

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H/T Tundra T

The Sun UK:

 – Car bursts into flames on runway
– Fears Leon Panetta’s plane was target

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta

Drama … US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta feared to have been target of assassination bid
Exclusive
By DAVID WILLETTS, Defence Correspondent
Published: Today at 13:59

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta is feared to have been the target of a suicide attack at Camp Bastion today.

A vehicle got on to the runway and burst into flames as Mr Panetta’s plane landed in Afghanistan this morning.

The suspected attack also hurt a British squaddie but the extent of the injuries are currently unknown.

The drama unfolded just hours ago on the sprawling base — Britain’s main outpost in the warzone.

Defence supremo Mr Panetta flew into Afghanistan today to quell fears after a US soldier went on the rampage killing 16 innocent Afghans.

But as his plane was landing a vehicle appeared on the runway and subsequently caught fire.

Sources at the scene claim it was a suicide attack — but those allegations have not yet been officially confirmed.

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Leon Panetta's plane was landing at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan

Camp Bastion … Leon Panetta’s plane was landing at British base in Afghanistan

 

An individual inside the vehicle is receiving medical care for burns, sources say.

More here at the New York Times. The question of course is, ‘Was it a Chevy Volt?’

In which case, no cause for alarm.

 

 

Afghan president endorses clerics’ code that allows wife beating, segregation of sexes

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Toronto Star

(Amazingly enough)

Published On Tue Mar 06 2012

  • Hamid Karzai's endorsement of the Ulemic Council 's code of conduct worries activists.

Hamid Karzai’s endorsement of the Ulemic Council ‘s code of conduct worries activists.

MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Heidi Vogt Associated Press

KABUL—Afghanistan’s president on Tuesday endorsed a “code of conduct” issued by an influential council of clerics that activists say represents a giant step backward for women’s rights in the country.

President Hamid Karzai’s Tuesday remarks backing the Ulema Council’s document, which allows husbands to beat wives under certain circumstances and encourages segregation of the sexes, is seen as part of his outreach to insurgents like the Taliban.

Both the U.S. and Karzai hope that the Taliban can be brought into negotiations to end the country’s decade-long war. But activists say they’re worried that gains made by women since 2001 may be lost in the process.

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan prior to the 2001 U.S. invasion, girls were banned from going to school and women had to wear burqas that covered them from head to toe. Women were not allowed to leave their homes without a male relative as an escort.

The “code of conduct” issued Friday by the Ulema Council as part of a longer statement on national political issues is cast as a set of guidelines that religious women should obey voluntarily, but activists are concerned it will herald a reversal of the trend in Afghanistan since 2001 to pass laws aimed at expanding women’s rights.

Among the rules: Women should not travel without a male guardian and women should not mingle with strange men in places like schools, markets or offices. Beating one’s wife is prohibited only if there is no “Shariah-compliant reason,” it said, referring to the principles of Islamic law.

Asked about the code of conduct at a press conference in the capital, Karzai said it was in line with Islamic law and was written in consultation with Afghan women’s groups. He did not name the groups that were consulted.

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There is another way to look at Obama’s obsequiousness

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Obama’s act of self flagellation, as well as his order to have the generals of the US army also castigate themselves before a murderous bunch of animal-raping misogynistic savages in Afghanistan and the rest of the Islamic world, is perceived by his critics as an act of surrender and appeasement. And certainly that is a likely reason for it as well as the notion that by doing so, one averts more hostility towards US and allied troops in Afghanistan.

The other possible explanation is that Obama is so utterly confident in his superiority to these people that he feels he and the other US commanders are in such a position of strength that the real cost of these acts of contrition are not measurable. And this might also be true. Despite the truth of all these analysis, it was the wrong thing to do.

The right thing would be to say that prisoners who defiled the Koran (if you buy into that narrative at all) by using it to write incendiary remarks or communicate plans to attack, or in fact the people who printed versions of the Koran, the implications being that Iran did it, with changed or modified text to create additional hostility towards non-Muslims, lose their privilege of having this fetid journal of a madman in their cells and they get burned. If they don’t like that, then don’t abuse the privilege of being allowed to have this crappy book in jail.

Why Apologize to Afghanistan?

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National Review:

An anti-U.S. protest in Mehterlam, Afghanistan, February 23, 2012

Andrew C. McCarthy 

We have officially lost our minds.

The New York Times reports that President Obama has sent a formal letter of apology to Afghanistan’s ingrate president, Hamid Karzai, for the burning of Korans at a U.S. military base. The only upside of the apology is that it appears (based on the Times account) to be couched as coming personally from our blindly Islamophilic president — “I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. . . . I extend to you and the Afghani people my sincere apologies.” It is not couched as an apology from the American people, whose frame of mind will be outrage, not contrition, as the facts become more widely known.

The facts are that the Korans were seized at a jail because jihadists imprisoned there were using them not for prayer but to communicate incendiary messages. The soldiers dispatched to burn refuse from the jail were not the officials who had seized the books, had no idea they were burning Korans, and tried desperately to retrieve the books when the situation was brought to their attention. 

Of course, these facts may not become widely known, because no one is supposed to mention the main significance of what has happened here. First, as usual, Muslims — not al-Qaeda terrorists, but ordinary, mainstream Muslims — are rioting and murdering over the burning (indeed, the inadvertent burning) of a book. Yes, it’s the Koran, but it’s a book all the same — and one that, moderate Muslims never tire of telling us, doesn’t really mean everything it says anyhow.

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Ezra Levant on the current Afghan koran-burning riots.

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It is hard to believe that it is riot season again in Afghanistan. It seems like way less than a year ago when Muslims, at the deft leadership of the president of Afghanistan, rioted and burned down the UN building in Kabul and killed a bunch of people and now here it is again already.

I went looking for video of it to see what the celebrities are wearing to the riots this year but it was basically rehashed versions of the same knit caps, Jughead hats and nightgowns we saw at last years riots. In any case, Ezra Levant weighs in on this years riots and offers a good review for those that don’t have the time to watch them all themselves.