Category Archives: Mission to Afghanistan

STRATFOR: Taliban leaders make conditions for end of war

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From WWW.STRATFOR.COM

November 4, 2010
Several high-ranking Taliban leaders met in late October to discuss their conditions for ending the war in Afghanistan, an unnamed source close to the Taliban said, Afghan Islamic Press reported Nov. 4. The leaders agreed on seven articles that would be presented if the West asked for talks. The leaders said the United States should release all prisoners from Guantanamo; release Taliban detainees from Bagram, Pol-e Charkhi and other prisons; remove the names of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan leaders from a U.S. blacklist; announce the withdrawal of all U.S.-led foreign forces within two months; cease all military operations throughout the country; recognize the Islamic Movement of the Taliban as a political party; and replace the Afghan Constitution with Islamic law. The source said the leaders would be flexible once talks began and that they want to open a dialogue with Washington before the government in Kabul joins. He reiterated that the conditions were the unofficial Taliban position.

Afghanistan and Iranian funding.

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This article from Let them fight or bring them home.

A few days ago, Stratfor reported that the Iranian government had been funneling money into the Karzai government through Karzai’s Chief of Staff, Umar Daudzai. In the early days of the story, both Harmid and Umar denied the funding and the Iranians denied giving it. That was October 24th.

On October 25th, the Iranian Embassy in Kabul formally denied the report that Tehran sent cash payments to Umar, calling the report “ridiculous and insulting,” Later the same day, US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley released a statement that they (the administration, presumably), were skeptical of Tehran’s intentions……..????

On October 26th the Iranian government acknowledged (of course) sending regular installments to Kabul also stating that the payments were for Afghanistan’s infrastructure so that the foreign [devils] would no longer have a reason to stay in Afghanistan.

Apparently Tehran didn’t get the same memo the Obama administration apparently missed; the one stating that our intentions for being there were for reasons of US security and not Afghanistan’s need for a face lift to it’s infrastructure. I wonder what kind of ‘infrastructure changes you make to rocky goat paths through the mountains..?

For the rest of this article about a subject upon which I am quite divided, Please click through here:

No evidence Khadr ‘a good kid,’ doctor says

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From The National Post:

Canadian defendant Omar Khadr attends his hearing in the courthouse for the U.S. military war crimes commission at the Camp Justice compound on Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba.

Janet Hamlin/Pool/Postmedia News

Canadian defendant Omar Khadr attends his hearing in the courthouse for the U.S. military war crimes commission at the Camp Justice compound on Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba.

Steven Edwards, Postmedia News · Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010

NEW YORK — There is no evidence Omar Khadr has ever independently sought to promote peace with the West and renounce Muslim jihad, the internationally acclaimed psychiatrist who pioneered efforts to quantify evil reveals ahead of testifying about his examination of the Canadian-born terror suspect.

In an exclusive interview, Dr. Michael Welner says Khadr is known to have expressed peace-loving intentions only to “those advancing his public image” from behind the razor wire at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Dr. Welner also discounts much-cited comments by some U.S. guards at Guantanamo that the Toronto native is a “good kid” and “salvageable” — calling them “shallow in their prognostic significance.”

“When one leaps to the conclusion about Omar Khadr’s future because he is friendly, one might recall that Osama bin Laden has always been described as gentle, likable and charming,” New York-based Dr. Welner told Postmedia News.

“There is no record of [Mr. Khadr’s] publicly repudiating al-Qaida, as civilized Muslims should, not even a letter composed for him by Dennis Edney,” he added in a reference to one of Mr. Khadr’s two Canadian lawyers. There is “no call . . . to radical Islamists to mature beyond their elemental intolerance.”

Dr. Welner, 46, spoke as the Canadian government faces the prospect of soon receiving a call for Mr. Khadr to be transferred to a Canadian jail in the event he is convicted of war crimes charges he faces in a Guantanamo military commission.

Fifteen when captured, but now 24, Mr. Khadr could plead guilty as early as Monday if he sticks with a deal sources say has been put together by the U.S. government. It would see him sentenced to eight years imprisonment, with Washington’s pledge he could serve seven of them in Canada after the first year in one of the Guantanamo camps.

Mr. Khadr is accused in the fatal wounding of a U.S. serviceman during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan, and faces up to life imprisonment if convicted without any plea deal being effected.

Dr. Welner, whose bid to achieve a scientific-legal standardization of evil led him to develop a Depravity Scale (www.depravityscale.org), spent seven to eight hours over two days interviewing Mr. Khadr during videotaped sessions at Guantanamo, and has studied mounds of documented material. Continue Reading →

Setting the record straight on the Khadr family.

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Found this story over at Blazing Cat Fur:

Sins of the Father: ‘Ahmed Khadr was very close to bin Laden’

Mohamed Fadil, a confidante of Ahmed Saeed Khadr who worked alongside him for almost five years, poses for a portrait in Toronto.

Tyler Anderson/National Post

Mohamed Fadil, a confidante of Ahmed Saeed Khadr who worked alongside him for almost five years, poses for a portrait in Toronto.

Stewart Bell, National Post · Friday, Oct. 15, 2010

Sometimes when Mohamed Fadil is at the mosque or having a meal with friends, he hears mention of his former boss, the late patriarch of the Khadr family, Ahmed Saeed Khadr. They’ll say he gave up his life in Canada to help the needy in Afghanistan. “They say, ‘He’s a great man who left a legacy behind,’ ” Mr. Fadil said. “They don’t know what he did.”

But Mr. Fadil said he knows.

Until now, Mr. Fadil has kept quiet about what he saw when he worked alongside Mr. Khadr in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the late 1980s. They crossed paths again in the late 1990s until Mr. Khadr fled Kabul following the 9/11 attacks.

But he said he decided to break his silence to set the record straight about the “breach of trust” he claims Mr. Khadr committed by using charities as a cover while he waged and facilitated violence.

While the Khadr family name is now widely associated with Omar Khadr, Mr. Fadil’s account bolsters the case that the young Canadian at Guantanamo Bay is to some extent paying for the sins of his father.

Among Mr. Fadil’s claims:

  • Mr. Khadr was an influential advisor to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri. He also kept Egyptian terrorists on his payroll, notably Abu Khabab, a bomb expert who experimented with chemical weapons and ran one of al-Qaeda’s most notorious terrorist training camps.
  • Despite raising money in Canada for the needy, Mr. Khadr neglected his charity duties to participate in fighting in Afghanistan and allowed more than 100 Egyptian militants to use his office as a transit point for their journey to jihad in Afghanistan.
  • Mr. Khadr is linked to several deadly attacks, notably the 1989 assassination of Abdullah Azzam, a popular Islamic scholar. Mr. Fadil also alleged that Mr. Khadr repeatedly plotted to kill him, apparently viewing him as a rival and a threat to his fundraising efforts in Canada. “Khadr tried to kill me three times,” Mr. Fadil said.
  • The Khadr family has denied the allegations. They accused Mr. Fadil of spreading “rumours and half-truths” and said he was only trying to get back at the family for telling the CIA and CSIS what they know about him. Continue Reading →

    • Internal Dissent: Should Canada’s military pay for a full-time Muslim advisory panel?

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    From Canada’s National Post:

    MCpl Robert Bottrill / Canadian Forces

    Canadian troops guard an officer while he discusses reconstruction with a local Afghan official.

    Every morning, the National Post editorial board start their work day by discussing the assignments that lie ahead — editorial topics, blog posts, op-ed columns, etc. Typically, the process is a swift, unremarkable division of work load and writing duties amongst the editorial board members and columnists with a known interest in timely news items. Today, while discussing the decision by National Defence Minister Peter MacKay to cancel a planned speech by Imam Zijad Delic, sharp divisions emerged between Comment section editor Jonathan Kay and Post columnist Barbara Kay. Their discussion is reproduced below in truncated form.

    Barbara Kay: Why is there a paid “Muslim Working Group” permanently embedded in at National Defence, whose job it is to advise the government on their foreign policy wherever it touches on areas of Muslim density? Why not a “Christian Working Group” or a “Sikh Working Group”? Can you imagine if there were a “Jewish Working Group” to advise on the Middle East? Don’t make me laugh. To me this is a scandal, and I don’t understand why it has not been addressed. Some of the people in this group hold very insalubrious views or are attached to groups with discomfiting agendas.

    Jonathan Kay: If we were at war with people who claimed to be fighting for Sikhism, or Judaism, or Christianity, it would be perfectly legitimate and beneficial for Defence to have working groups that would help them understand how best to wage the battle against those fighting under the banner of those creeds. I don’t know why the DND’s effort in this area is a matter of controversy among Canadian conservatives — unless it were a forum for radicals, which, given MacKay’s action in this case, it clearly is not.

    Barbara: Should we have had a German working group during the Second World War? If the government wishes to know the views of Muslims — not self-appointed spokespeople, which these members are — they can canvas them in any number of ways. Or they can hire an ad hoc consultant for discrete problems. And from what I have seen, non-Muslim experts are more objective on Muslim cultures than many Muslims are. Once you have embedded a group in your department, you are going to find it hard to disagree with what they tell you and still maintain a collegial relationship. Sorry, but this is an unacceptable commingling of church and state, and I consider it indefensible for any religious group to have such an entitlement. Nobody approached Tarek Fatah or Salim Mansur to be part of this group, which tells you a lot right there. Why not include these experts, some of Canada’s most reasonable, patriotic Muslims? Continue Reading →

    This is our future: David Harris

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    Recent terror threats have been stopped, but we have refused to heed the warnings. Ottawa Citizen

    ????

    By David Harris, Citizen Special August 28, 2010 3:02 AM

    This is your future. That was my wretched thought on behalf of Canadians as I watched Thursday’s Project Samossa news conference.

    Samossa was the major national security investigation that erupted this week in counterterrorism raids and the arrest of four Muslim-Canadians. The government’s charges against three of them imply a wealth of evidence that will shock the conscience of Canadians.

    These charges and limited revelations suggest that we could be front-row witnesses to the most vile of manifestations of the Islamist jihad in this country. The allegation is that people living among us and enjoying the immense privileges of Canadian citizenship, are siding with enemy forces aiming to kill and maim our boys and girls serving in Afghanistan — and maybe residents of Ottawa and other Canadian centres, too.

    We shouldn’t be surprised.

    The Toronto 18 showed us the savagery of the 7th-century war that is being imported into our 21st-century neighbourhoods. Defendants included those who should have been a credit to educated youth. From some we would have expected gratitude of immigrants who had been welcomed to a gentle and generous nation. Canadians’ reward was instead a conspiracy to rent Toronto with explosives, and blast our Parliament with invasion and a prime ministerial beheading.

    Further hints — and only hints — of our growing predicament come from a series of recent convictions.

    Think of Momin Khawaja, the handsome Department of Foreign Affairs software consultant and moonlighter in international bomb-making. Then there was Said Namouh, Quebec-based Moroccan bomb-plotter, and the Groupe Fatah Kamel, which drove a French counterterror magistrate to pin Canada as an international centre of North African Islamic extremism.

    These threats were headed off by good luck and good security work, but are auguries of future violence, economy-defying instability and further pressure on civil liberties.

    But why must this be our future? Because we refuse to heed warnings, learn basic lessons and act in a responsible way to preserve our well-being. Continue Reading →

    Taliban: “… and we killed them all.”

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    The Taliban today took responsibility for the cold blooded murder of 8 medical doctors in Afghanistan calling them “Christian Missionaries”

    One has to ask oneself, how the Taliban and indeed Muslims in general, would define a “Christian Missionary” in order to justify slaughtering them for no other reason.

    Clearly, Doctors would be busy relieving the pain and suffering of the unwell, and healing injuries, and so creating a crisis of confidence in Islamic doctrine, which seems more about self sacrifice for an abstract Islam as well as hate for all those who are not sufficiently Muslim and of course, killing people.In other words, the chances of these doctors being actual Christian missionaries in any sense that we might understand it is unlikely. But the Taliban felt the need to define them as such in order to slaughter them.

    Here is the actual quote of the Taliban who today took ‘credit’ for this slaughter.

    “Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed claimed responsibility for the death of eight foreign medics who were found shot dead Aug. 6, AFP reported Aug. 7. Mujahed said, “Yesterday at around 8:00 a.m., one of our patrols confronted a group of foreigners. They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all.”

    Quote courtesy of Stratfor:

    I don’t know what our troops are doing in Afghanistan, but so long as they are there, I hope they are killing a lot of Taliban.

    Eeyore for Vlad.

    John Bernard on the new ROE

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    Here is an article from John Bernard from www.letthemfight.blogspot.com whom I interviewed last week.

    For those who held out hope that the ROE was going or undergo a ‘positive transformation’ under General Petraeus, you will be disappointed. This is the point where I am suppose to say; ‘I told you so’.

    The truth is that there is very little satisfaction in a comment like that because in almost every case; the moment has passed. The salient points, the truths, the opportunities for change have usually passed; subtly, unnoticed and the great harm those points might have stopped, will, in this case, most certainly lead to the death of someone’s loved one; a cost of arrogance.

    When the initial story broke 3 days ago, it went almost entirely unnoticed and even for those who read it, the most egregious element of the story seemed to be missed entirely and that is the highlighting of General Petraeus’s unchallenged ego. In a war that has seen a growing number of well-informed, well-educated and experienced individuals challenging the strategy and it’s ROE, there is also this relentless effort to push forward even in light of a growing body of evidence that it is a losing strategy. Even the entire spectrum of the media seems incapacitated or unwilling to accept the possibility that there seems to be a problem.

    The Gulf Oil Spill, the Boy Scouts, Charlie Rangel’s broken compass, Lindsay Lohan, the cost of Mastiffs, Reality TV, Obama’s Maine vacation all seem to bear greater significance in the American psyche than does the plight of young Men and Women who have, in the taking of their oaths, pledged to lay down their lives at the whim of madmen. It just isn’t ‘sexy’ enough.

    This morning I got a note from Andy Bostom, a good friend with a passion for the welfare of our troops, with what is now the official release of the good General’s assessment of the ROE and his intent. From the story: “Going several steps better, General Petraeus has reportedly expanded the ban on air strikes and artillery fire to all types of buildings, tree-lined areas and hillsides where it is difficult to distinguish who is on the ground.” The fact is, not only has he deemed the ROE as proper, he has deemed it not tight enough.

    For the rest of this article please click over to:

    No Fire Support; No Glasses; More ‘Chai’; No Warrior Friendly Change!

    Interview with John Bernard: Transcription

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    Dumbing-Down Our National Interest

    by Baron Bodissey

    John BernardJohn Bernard is a twenty-six year veteran of the United States Marine Corps, and in his retirement blogs at Let Them Fight or Bring Them Home. His mission is to highlight the absurd rules of engagement imposed upon members of the U.S. military, and to expose the insane and dangerous policies of our political leaders.

    Last week Vlad Tepes interviewed Mr. Bernard on skype. Unfortunately, the sound quality of the resulting video is so low that it is difficult to hear it clearly. With Vlad’s help I transcribed the entire conversation, and am posting it below. To improve the flow of the narrative, I edited out all the hesitations, placeholders, self-corrections, and repeated words and phrases.

    John Bernard is an example of the extraordinary quality we have come to expect from American soldiers, sailors, and Marines. He is intelligent, lucid, well-informed, and devastating in his analysis. If only our political leaders would pay heed to him.

    Those who are interested may watch the entire interview on Vimeo, or in two parts on YouTube: Part 1 and Part 2.


    Interview With John Bernard

    Let Them Fight or Bring Them Home!

    July 26, 2010

    Your principal concerns are the rules of combat that make the war in Afghanistan dangerous and absurd. Is that correct?

    Yes. You look at the rules of engagement as a stand-alone doctrine, or a stand-alone directive, then it’s an almost impossible fight.

    You can’t discuss the rules of engagement without discussing strategy that bears that. In every strategy — I don’t care whether it’s on the battlefield or if it’s on the streets with the police force — everybody that bears arms is governed by a specific set of rules that tell them when they can engage whoever it is that they have the authority to engage.

    In this particular case, the strategy changed somewhere around 2009 to almost exclusively counterinsurgency doctrine. And counterinsurgency doctrine really is run very much more tightly than the police on the street. So rules of engagement are intentionally tight to allow them to operate under the doctrine of counterinsurgency.

    Can you give us a couple of examples of the rules of combat as they now apply in Afghanistan?

    Absolutely. The rules of engagement — and again, this is a fluid document, it’s a fluid set of rules. They do change occasionally. The only thing people need to understand is that there’s nothing published, or nothing for public consumption. They reside inside a secret directive. So even getting this to the floor of Congress is difficult, because people who hold the keys, shall we say, to the chest of secrets do not want to let that directive out.

    So instead all we can do is relay what we’ve been given by mouth, and we know that that’s correct, because that’s frankly the way the average soldier and Marine receives those orders as well. They may be written in some kind of localized document, but you’re not going to get them in anything that comes out of the Pentagon.

    So, to give you an idea: when they were first released last year — released publicly, sometime around June of last year — one of the more egregious ones was that there weren’t going to be any more surprise night searches of civilian compounds within Afghanistan. I mean, that’s basically that you have to tell everybody in advance that you’re coming in to search their house, search a specific house, that you suspected of carrying weapons or materials that might be used by the Taliban.

    Again: this is a war zone. This isn’t downtown Los Angeles. And even if it was, this particular Los Angeles does not reside within the borders of the United States. So it shouldn’t be governed by the Constitution; it should be governed by the rules of war.

    You certainly have a legitimate concern that if somebody is either hiding Taliban, hiding weapons, hiding materials for war that can be used against you, you have a right — you’d think you have a right — to go in and find out what those are. So this thing basically set up the circuits for failure. Continue Reading →

    John Bernard: Rules of engagement in Afghanistan

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    John Bernard runs a website specifically dealing with the rules of engagement in Afghanistan. His site is letthemfight.blogspot.com.

    I had the opportunity to interview him for 20 minutes this morning and here is part I of that interview.

    Thanks to Andrew Bostom for making the introduction. Mr. Bernard was very interesting to talk to, and gave me lots of food for thought. I hope you all will feel the same.

    Eeyore for Vlad.

    Part II

    Quebec: Bomb rips through Canadian Forces recruitment centre.

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    From The National Post

    Group claims responsibility for Quebec army office bomb

    ??

    A police officer stands watch over the site of a bomb blast in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec.

    Peter McCabe/Canwest News Service

    A police officer stands watch over the site of a bomb blast in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec.

    Marianne White, Canwest News Service · Friday, Jul. 2, 2010

    A little known anti-military radical group has claimed responsibility for the bombing that ripped through a Canadian Forces recruitment office in Trois-Rivieres, Que., early Friday.

    The blast occurred at 3 a.m. when the building was empty. The extent of the damage has not yet been assessed, but the building’s windows and door were shattered.

    Police received a bomb-threat call 20 minutes before the explosion, and no one was injured in the attack, which the Canadian Forces said it considers a “single and isolated incident.”

    A group calling itself Resistance internationaliste — claiming to have carried out two other bombings in the province — issued a statement Friday alleging it detonated an explosive in the centre. In a two-page email, the group lashed out at Canada’s military practices and ideals, the war in Afghanistan and police “violence” at last weekend’s G20 summit in Toronto. Continue Reading →

    Christians sentanced to death in Afghanistan for not being Muslim

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    Remember this short video of the Ambassador to Canada from Afghanistan?

    I really have a hard time supporting the mission there under those circumstances.

    The story below found on Gates of Vienna

    From Asia News:

    Appeal for Afghan Christians, sentenced to death for their faith
    by Santosh Digal
    A group of Afghan Christian refugees, who escaped to India to save their lives, describe the hardships they face in their homeland, where Muslim converts to Christianity are put to death. They call on the international community to put pressure on the Afghan government to spare those sentenced to death.

    New Delhi (AsiaNews) – VijayKumar Singh, from the India Bible Publishers and the Delhi Bible Fellowship, has launched an appeal to the Christians of India and the world to pray and express their support for Afghan Muslim converts to Christianity who were convicted on conversion charges and sentenced to death on 31 May. Speaking to AsiaNews, Sing said, “We need Christians’ help all over the world to stop the Afghan government from arresting Dari-speaking Afghan Christians and condemning them to death by public execution.”

    Afghans consider their country to be 100 per cent Muslim. A local TV station, Noorin TV, recently broadcast a documentary showing photos and videos of secret “Afghan Christian Converts”, which revealed names and showed the faces of alleged Afghan Christian converts.

    This was enough to spark riots and demonstrations throughout Afghanistan with protesters demanding strong action to enforce the Afghan constitution, based on Sharia, arrest the culprits, and execute anyone who renege his or her religion in favour of another. Continue Reading →

    Gen. Lewis Mackenzie on NATO, Serbia, and Afghanistan.

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    On March 9th 2010 the Free Thinking Films organization held a charity event to raise money for schools in Afghanistan. One of the speakers was Major General (retired) Lewis Mackenzie. Here is his opening statements on the issue of Canada’s involvement.

    Much more to come on that evening. Here is General Mackenzie’s recommendations for Afghanistan:

    Below, is an older clip of General Mackenzie on the issue of Kosovo, Serbia, and the U.N. April 4 2008