9 U.S. troops reported killed in Afghanistan

[T19]

9 U.S. troops reported killed in Afghanistan

 

By Jason Straziuso, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

 

 

 

 

A U.S. Marine, from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, speaks on radio during a patrol in the town of Garmser in Helmand Province of Afghanistan, Sunday, July 13, 2008. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Rafiq Maqbool

 

KABUL, Afghanistan - A multi-pronged militant assault on a small, remote U.S. base killed nine American soldiers and wounded 15 Sunday in the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan in three years.

 

The attack on the U.S. outpost came the same day a suicide bomber targeting a police patrol killed 24 people, including 19 civilians, while U.S. coalition and Afghan soldiers killed 40 militants elsewhere in the south.

 

The militant assault on the American troops began around 4:30 a.m. in a dangerous region close to the Pakistan border. It lasted throughout the day.

 

Militants fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars from homes and a mosque in the village of Wanat in the mountainous northeastern province of Kunar, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

 

Nine U.S. troops were killed in the attack, a western official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the troops' nationalities.

 

NATO confirmed nine of its soldiers had been killed and 15 wounded. Four Afghan soldiers were also wounded, NATO said.

 

 

"Although no final assessment has been made, it is believed insurgents suffered heavy casualties during several hours of fighting," NATO said in a statement.

 

Lt.-Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, the top U.S. military spokeswoman in Afghanistan, said she could not comment because the fight was ongoing.

 

The attack appeared to be the deadliest for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since June 2005, when 16 American troops were killed - also in Kunar province - when their helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.

 

Those troops were on their way to rescue a four-man team of navy SEALs caught in a militant ambush. Three SEALs were killed, the fourth was rescued days later by a farmer.

 

Sunday's attack came during a period of rising violence in Afghanistan. Monthly death tolls of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan surpassed U.S. military deaths in Iraq in May and June. Last Monday, a suicide bomber attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing 58 people in the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since 2001.

 

In two other incidents this month, an Afghan government commission found that U.S. aircraft killed 47 civilians during a bombing run in Nangarhar province, while a separate incident in Nuristan province is alleged by an Afghan officials to have killed 22 civilians.

 

The high casualty tolls have prompted the International Committee of the Red Cross this week to ask all sides to show restraint and avoid civilian casualties. But violence continued around the country on Sunday.

 

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up next to a police patrol Sunday in the southern province of Uruzgan, killing 24 people.

 

The bomb attack on a police patrol at a busy intersection of the Deh Rawood district killed five police officers and 19 civilians, wounding more than 30 others, said Juma Gul Himat, Uruzgan's police chief. Most of those killed and wounded were shopkeepers and young boys selling goods in the street, he said.

 

Elsewhere, Taliban militants executed two women in central Afghanistan late Saturday after accusing them of working as prostitutes on a U.S. base.

 

The women, dressed in blue burkas, were shot and killed just outside Ghazni city in central Afghanistan, said Sayed Ismal, a spokesman for Ghazni's governor. He called the two "innocent local people."

 

Taliban fighters told Associated Press Television News the two women were executed for allegedly running a prostitution ring catering to U.S. soldiers and other foreign contractors at a U.S. base in Ghazni city.

 

1st Lt. Nathan Perry, a U.S. military spokesman, said he had not heard allegations of "anything close to that nature."

 

Meanwhile, at least 40 militants were killed following an attack on Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces in Helmand province, the coalition said in a statement.

 

The militants attacked the combined forces near Sangin on Saturday from "multiple concealed and fortified positions," the coalition said. Thirty "enemy boats" and several small bridges have been destroyed on the Helmand River during two days of fighting, it said.

 

A soldier with NATO's International Security Assistance Force died in a roadside blast in Helmand province Sunday, a statement said. The soldier's nationality was not released and it wasn't clear if the death was connected to the two-day battle.

 

More than 2,300 people - mostly militants - have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of official figures.

 

In the country's north, a soldier serving with ISAF died of wounds caused by an explosion Saturday, the military alliance said in a statement. The statement did not give any further details of the explosion. The soldier's nationality was not been disclosed.

 

There are nearly 53,000 troops from 40 countries serving the ISAF in Afghanistan.

 

In the eastern Logar province, meanwhile, gunmen kidnapped parliament member Abdul Wali and his driver on Sunday, said provincial police chief Gen. Mohammad Mustafa.

[T19]

RIP

 

Seems over 2300 Taliban have died in Afghanistan this year. Lets hope these 9 brave men will be remembered for thier deeds and sacrifices

[Rod]

Until we decide to take out their bases in Pakistan we will continue to face a war of attrition with these terrorists. You can't win an insuregency if you allow them to have safe heavens beyond your reach just across the border. POTUS better squeeze Pakistan a little more to stop this "truces" in the tribal areas that is nothing but surrendering Federal control to the insurgents in exchange for an illusory peace.

[Guest aevans]

Until we decide to take out their bases in Pakistan we will continue to face a war of attrition with these terrorists. You can't win an insuregency if you allow them to have safe heavens beyond your reach just across the border. POTUS better squeeze Pakistan a little more to stop this "truces" in the tribal areas that is nothing but surrendering Federal control to the insurgents in exchange for an illusory peace.

 

If not Pakistan, it will be somewhere else. Might as well get used to the idea that we'll just go on playing whack-a-mole until the voting public gets tired of it.

[Vijay Reddy]

The British forces in Helmand recently found that one of the "Taliban" they killed was a SERVING Pakistan Army Colonel. I recently met a US officer who returned from serving in the Kunar area and he told me that everyone in his unit and others in the area knew that the "Taliban" they fought included several regular members of the Pakistani Frontier Corps. One of the Frontier Corps guys actually shot US Army Major Larry Baugess during a border meeting. There are numerous instances of US forces capturing on video how Pakistan army vehicles were sent into Afghanistan to collect the Taliban wounded and ship them back to Pakistan. Yet the brilliant Washington State Department minds want to solve this problem by supplying vehicles and weapons to the same Frontier Corps. Did these guys learn anything from 9/11?

[Briganza]

The British forces in Helmand recently found that one of the "Taliban" they killed was a SERVING Pakistan Army Colonel.

 

Interesting, not heard that. How did they know he was a serving officer? There is also not much talk of finding bodies as they tend not to try and hold ground and when they do they do not often find bodies just claret.

[George Newbill]

You are either with us or against us, bomb the foggy bottom!

[Vijay Reddy]

Interesting, not heard that. How did they know he was a serving officer? There is also not much talk of finding bodies as they tend not to try and hold ground and when they do they do not often find bodies just claret.

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle4295422.ece

 

The role of the ISI in supporting the Taliban insurgency is a highly sensitive issue, which Western officials decline to discuss openly. The British and US governments have both avoided directly accusing Pakistan of aiding insurgent groups. Britain in particular is reliant on the ISI for information connected to domestic terror plots planned in Pakistan.

 

However, privately there is acknowledgement that a level of complicity is a reality.

 

“There is an acceptance that elements of the ISI are engaged with the insurgents,” said one source serving in the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) for Afghanistan yesterday. “The issue that remains unresolved is the degree of higher level acceptance of this, and how much they (the ISI) can actually be controlled.”

 

British officers confirmed to The Times an incident last summer in which a Taliban corpse found on the battlefield in Helmand turned out to be carrying papers identifying the body as that of a serving ISI colonel.

 

When British officials challenged the Islamabad government on the issue, they received an explanation that the man was ’on leave’ at the time of his death.

[George Newbill]

Right....

[Vijay Reddy]

The Pakistani military never reconciled themselves to the post 9/11 world reality where jihadist thugs are no longer accepted as policy devices. Just reading their Urdu press, I get a sense for their thinking. They strongly believe that a "few strong blows" would cause the "weaker" NATO states to pack up and leave Afghanistan, after which Americans will be forced to make a truce with "moderate" Taliban. After the Americans leave, Afghanistan would once again become a Pakistani buffer state.

[Briganza]

Thanks, I had not heard that or any talk of it.

[Marek Tucan]

On leave my ass?

[Sardaukar]

Lovely "allies".

 

How about starting to fund destabilization and terror campaign in Pakistan...as a similar "friendly gesture"

[Junior FO]

...

Edited September 20, 2024 by Junior FO

[Vijay Reddy]

Link

 

Ex-Taliban fighter tells of training, cash, orders from Pakistani military

 

Jun 26, 2008

 

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A former Taliban fighter has provided a gripping first-hand account of being secretly trained by members of the Pakistani military, paid $500 a month and ordered to kill foreigners in Afghanistan.

 

Mullah Mohammed Zaher offered a vivid description of a bomb-making apprenticeship at a Pakistani army compound where he says he learned to blow up NATO convoys.

 

He's one of three former Taliban fighters introduced to The Canadian Press by an Afghan government agency that works at getting rebels to renounce the insurgency.

 

Zaher insists he was neither forced to go public with his story nor coached by Afghan officials, whose routine response to terrorism on their soil is to blame neighbouring Pakistan.

 

Pakistan officially sides with the West against the insurgents and vigorously denies mounting accusations that it is a two-faced participant in the war on terror.

 

A report produced for the Pentagon and released this month by the Rand Corp., a U.S. think-tank, claims individuals in the Pakistani government are involved in helping the insurgents.

 

An illiterate, career warrior, Zaher has not seen the 177-page report. But he made a series of claims in a 90-minute interview that supported its broad conclusions - and offered a deluge of new details.

 

He described how men in khaki army fatigues housed, fed, paid and finally threatened insurgents into carrying out attacks on foreign troops.

 

Perhaps most startling of all was his description of the repeated warning from Pakistani soldiers about where trainees would be sent if they refused to fight: Guantanamo Bay.

 

He said there was an inside joke among insurgents whenever the Pakistanis turned over a high-profile rebel to the Americans for detention at the U.S.-run prison camp in Cuba.

 

"Whenever we heard on the news that Pakistan caught a Taliban commander, we used to say: 'He stopped obeying them'," Zaher said through a Pashto-language interpreter.

 

Two other former insurgents interviewed by The Canadian Press said they were aware of colleagues being trained in Pakistan, but said such fighters were part of an elite minority.

 

Mullah Janan said he heard that some of his Taliban comrades had received training in Pakistan, with many more receiving shelter or medical treatment across the border.

 

When infighting broke out between Taliban factions, Janan said, mediators from Pakistan even came across the border to help settle the dispute.

 

Zaher said he was among the elite.

 

He said he arrived in 2003 for his first of several training sessions at a walled military compound in the Nawakilli area outside Quetta, Pakistan.

 

He said he was greeted warmly by men in military fatigues, introduced to his fellow trainees and taken to a single-storey white building where for the next 20 days he would eat, sleep and learn the finer points of waging jihad.

 

On his first day there he quietly sipped tea and gobbled down a hearty meal of chicken curry, and said he was brought to a classroom the next morning.

 

He said he remembers only the last name of the man in the khaki uniform, Khattak, who presided over the orientation session.

 

The man told his pupils their homeland had been invaded again by non-Muslims, just as it had been by the Soviets in the 20th century and the British in the 19th.

 

Zaher said the group was told that the infidels had been stopped before and they must be stopped again.

 

"You are supposed to get good training here - and you are supposed to go and kill them there," Zaher recalled being told.

 

"We have to kick their asses out of Afghanistan and send them back to their own country ... We have to fix mines for them, destroy them and get them out of Afghanistan."

 

Zaher said he learned to produce a variety of explosives. They ranged from a crude bomb with wiring and fertilizer stuffed into a plastic jug, to more sophisticated remote-contolled devices.

 

"I can even make a bomb by buying stuff at the bazaar - for $10."

 

Zaher said he attended three sessions at the compound, lasting from 20 days to two months.

 

A half-dozen trainees would sleep on the floor in a common dormitory in the single-storey white building, he said.

 

On a typical day, they had breakfast at 10 a.m., lunch at 2 p.m., and spent every other waking hour learning how to kill foreigners.

 

Zaher said he doesn't know how many soldiers died from the bombs he planted on roads in Zhari, Panjwaii, Khakrez and Maywand districts of Kandahar province. And he said he has no idea whether the vehicles he blew up were Canadian, American or British.

 

He showed no remorse.

 

On the contrary, his dark eyes softened, his smile sparkled and his nasally voice quivered with excitement as he listed the places where he had ended enemies' lives.

 

"Sure, I've killed many foreigners," he said. "I was very happy when I killed people. That was supposed to be my task - and it made me very happy."

 

Zaher said he doesn't know much about Canada except that it's a foreign country.

 

The Canadian military began moving operations from Kabul to Kandahar in August 2005, initially establishing a provincial reconstruction team. By February 2006, some 2,000 Canadian troops had arrived and taken charge of security in Kandahar province.

 

Zaher said he left the insurgency about two-and-a-half years ago - around the time the Canadians entered Kandahar in force.

 

He wanted to come back home.

 

Upon being offered amnesty under the Afghan government's reconciliation program, he crammed his family and a few possessions into their Mazda minivan, rolled out of Pakistan in the middle of the night and moved into Kandahar city's District Six.

 

Zaher has since trimmed his once-bountiful beard and turfed his turban in favour of a white skull cap.

 

But he eagerly showed off old pictures of himself holding rocket launchers, AK-47 assault rifles and dressed in trademark Taliban garb.

 

Zaher said he was a district commander outside the capital under the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan. After the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-led forces in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, he returned to Kandahar and struggled to adapt to the changed life.

 

He said he grew tired of being harassed, threatened and extorted by corrupt officials in the new Afghan government.

 

Like many of his friends, he fled to Pakistan in 2003.

 

Almost immediately upon arriving in Quetta, he said he received phone calls from his old allies offering him a lucrative opportunity to work with the Pakistanis.

 

He called them generous employers.

 

They gave him a motorbike and later upgraded it to the minivan. He said he lived in a rent-free house in Quetta big enough to accommodate him, his wife and their 10 children.

 

And he said he could ask anytime for an advance of up to three months on his salary.

 

Because he was illiterate, Zaher said the soldier who handed over the cash accepted an ink thumbprint as proof of payment.

 

But the generosity came with strings attached.

 

He was expected to spend about half the year fighting in Afghanistan.

 

If he wanted to see his family in Pakistan, he had to find someone to replace him in Afghanistan. It was like shift work. "He would come from Pakistan, replace me, and I would go home to Quetta. It was very important for me to find a replacement."

 

There was another catch.

 

Each time he received his payment, and every time he went for training, soldiers would remind him about what happened to trainees who refused to fight in Afghanistan.

 

"'If you don't go there, you will go to Guantanamo'," Zaher said.

 

"People who were saying they didn't want to do the training ... they were sent to Guantanamo. They were accused of being Talibs and they're getting punished over there."

 

The Pakistani government has strongly denied allegations that hardline Islamist factions within its security forces have been helping the Taliban.

 

How could the army possibly be aiding the insurgency, Pakistani officials argue, when pro-Taliban rebels have killed far more soldiers from Pakistan than any other country?

 

The Rand Corp. report offered several possible reasons why certain elements in the Pakistani government would support the Taliban.

 

Islamic militancy is only one of those factors, wrote Seth Jones, the report's author.

 

His report said Pakistanis want to continue exerting more influence in Afghanistan than their arch-nemesis, India - an emerging economic superpower that has helped bankroll a number of construction projects including Afghanistan's new parliament building.

 

Jones suggested some people in Pakistan may want to hedge their bets in Afghanistan in case of a NATO defeat, maintaining close ties to the rebels as a backup plan.

 

Finally, Jones said they want to keep Pakistan's Pashtun population loyal - an unstable Afghanistan next door will solidify their sense of belonging to Pakistan.

 

Among former insurgents, Pakistan's involvement is described as a matter of fact.

 

Mullah Mirza Akhun said he met some of his old friends two months ago when he travelled to Quetta to get medical treatment for his mother.

 

"I met some Taliban there - and they offered me a job," said the Kandahar resident, a self-described former Taliban commander.

 

"I was told by some of my friends that the Pakistani government can give you training to destroy Afghanistan."

 

"But I refused."

[Vijay Reddy]

http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=298701

 

 

Report of Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) Travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan

 

...

 

 

We were advised by senior U.S. military officials that the day we arrived in Afghanistan, during a firefight in the vicinity of the border with Pakistan, Pakistani forces sent ambulances to retrieve wounded Taliban or al Qaeda affiliated fighters and to bring them back within Pakistan.

[John_Ford]

Element of the Airborne Brigade out of Italy. Don't have specifics but the LP/OP went down with all hands. Supposedly over a 100 bad guys found dead in the vic. come morning. Supposedly hand to hand at some point. Hope you made the bastards pay dearly guys.

[Rod]

That's over 7,200 virgins by their own imaginations...

 

Element of the Airborne Brigade out of Italy. Don't have specifics but the LP/OP went down with all hands. Supposedly over a 100 bad guys found dead in the vic. come morning. Supposedly hand to hand at some point. Hope you made the bastards pay dearly guys.

[Colin]

http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2008/07...s_drift_af.html

[Guest aevans]

That's over 7,200 virgins by their own imaginations...

 

Every time you kill a jihadi, Allah kills 72 virgins?

[crazyinsane105]

Link

 

Oh please, if the Pakistani government was really that intent on taking back on Afghanistan, it would do so by simply denying NATO logistical help and not letting any NATO and US troops to fly over Pakistani soil. Why go through all the trouble of arming Islamic fundamentalists who will simply set their eyes on Pakistani soil once NATO leaves when its so much simpler to pull the plug on NATO?

[Vijay Reddy]

If Pakistan overtly pulls the plug on the war on terror, the US will have no choice but to sanction Pakistan and the economy will go down the tubes in days. U

 

Pakistan did not agree to help the US because it had a choice. UN Security Council resolution 1373 and 1267, both under Article VII, require all countries to stop aiding Taliban and Al Qaeda and authorizes use of force by the Security Council to enforce the resolutions. Look up both the resolutions - Pakistan has no choice but to publicly support the fight against the Taliban. That is why the Pakistani military is playing a double game - get $$$ but support the jihadists behind the scenes.

 

As Musharraf himself noted in his book - Pakistan only cooperated because of the threat to be bombed into Stone Age and for fear of sanctions. BTW, I see you have no answer for how an active duty ISI Colonel is found dead among "Taliban" in Helmand or why Frontier Corps men fight alongside the Taliban, send Ambulances to evacuate Taliban etc.

 

The deniability isn't plausible any more. That dog don't hunt.

[Vijay Reddy]

BTW Folks, there is a lot of discussion in Pakistani English and Urdu forums that this attack was led by some retired Pakistani military officers as a revenge "message" in response to the US bombing of a Pakistani border post three weeks ago. Some reports indicate the attackers numbered more than 500 armed men. The Taliban typically don't have the ability to organize themselves in battalion sized units. If investigations bear out a Pakistan military link, remember you heard this here first.

 

Edit - fixed typos

Edited July 18, 2008 by Vijay Reddy

[Archie Pellagio]

Oh please, if the Pakistani government was really that intent on taking back on Afghanistan, it would do so by simply denying NATO logistical help and not letting any NATO and US troops to fly over Pakistani soil. Why go through all the trouble of arming Islamic fundamentalists who will simply set their eyes on Pakistani soil once NATO leaves when its so much simpler to pull the plug on NATO?

 

What rock have you been living under for the last seven years?

 

The sorts of goings on within pakistan are no by any means simple, and the domestic politics dictate a lot of double facedness and taking from peter and giving to paul.

[m1a1mg]

Oh please, if the Pakistani government was really that intent on taking back on Afghanistan, it would do so by simply denying NATO logistical help and not letting any NATO and US troops to fly over Pakistani soil. Why go through all the trouble of arming Islamic fundamentalists who will simply set their eyes on Pakistani soil once NATO leaves when its so much simpler to pull the plug on NATO?

That is a dramatically simplistic idea that leaves so much out. The Pakistani government of Mushi is not our friend. They were doing what they had to do to survive.