This was fairly obvious but unwritten in this form until now

Dozens Die In NATO's Offensive in Afghanistan

By Griff Witte and Javed Hamdard
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 19, 2007; A14

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 18 -- Dozens of people have died in intense fighting in recent days as NATO-led forces have opened a new front in Afghanistan's volatile south, Afghan and international security officials said Monday.

Approximately 50 to 60 insurgents have been killed or injured in the fighting in Uruzgan province, a remote and relatively lawless region that had not been a major battleground this year, according to a NATO forces spokesman, U.S. Army Maj. John Thomas.

Thomas said one NATO soldier and two Afghan police officers had also been killed and 10 civilians had been injured.

But according to Mulvi Hamdullah, head of the provincial council in Uruzgan, the toll among civilians was far higher -- between 50 and 60 dead. "The fighting is still going on," he said in an interview late Monday night.

Hamdullah said local Afghans had organized a makeshift ambulance brigade to carry about 30 wounded civilians out of the isolated, mountainous battle zone for treatment. "We ask that the government and NATO forces help us to take the injured to the hospital. So far they haven't helped us at all," he said.

Violence has been sharply rising in Afghanistan in recent weeks. Much of the fighting has occurred in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, which had largely slipped out of government control over the past couple of years.

Thomas said the fighting in neighboring Uruzgan reflects a decision by NATO commanders to expand the battlefield. The NATO-led force, he said, "is choosing to go into an area to establish control. Before, the insurgents might have been left alone because it wasn't a focus."

Hamdullah said that approximately 1,500 anti-government fighters -- including Afghans, Chechens, Arabs and Pakistanis -- had congregated in the Chowreh district of Uruzgan and that most of the fighting in recent days was taking place there.

"The security has been very bad in Chowreh. The government knew about it, but it hadn't taken any action," said Sona Nilofar, a member of parliament from Uruzgan.

The past three days have been particularly bloody in Afghanistan. Late Sunday, U.S.-led coalition forces fought lengthy battles with suspected militants in Kandahar and Helmand. The coalition said that dozens of Taliban fighters were killed and that two coalition service members were injured.

In a separate incident in Kandahar on Sunday, three coalition service members and their Afghan interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb. Also on Sunday, a Taliban suicide bomber killed at least 24 people in Kabul and a U.S.-led air attack left seven children and several militants dead in the eastern province of Paktika.

U.S.-led forces said Monday that they were not aware children were present in a suspected al-Qaeda hideout when they decided to launch the strike late Sunday.

There has been rising anger in Afghanistan toward international forces for not doing more to protect noncombatants. Afghan officials say more than 130 Afghan civilians have been killed in U.S.-led and NATO-led operations in the past six months.

The U.S.-led coalition apologized Monday for the killing of the children but blamed militants for hiding among civilians. "We are truly sorry for the innocent lives lost in this attack," U.S. Army Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition spokesman, said in a statement. "We had surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications there were children inside the building."

The compound included a mosque and a madrassa, or religious school. According to the coalition, survivors of the airstrike said that before the attack, children in the madrassa had been beaten and pushed away from the door when they tried to go outside.

A spokesman for the governor of Paktika confirmed that militants had been active in the area in recent days, but said the loss of civilian life was "not acceptable." U.S. forces reported Monday that they were meeting with tribal elders in the area to try to reduce tensions.

Insurgency-related violence has killed more than 2,400 people in Afghanistan this year, according to a count by the Associated Press based on official figures.

How to lose AfghanistanAir strikes against a counter-insurgency should be a last resort. But the US is undertaking them - and creating more enemies.

A headline like Seven afghan children killed in US-led airstrike, which I read in Monday's New York Times, can't help but make you angry. Angry about the dead children, of course, but also angry about the knowledge that there are bound to be others out there angrier over their deaths than I am. They'll have brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, uncles and fathers, mothers, and cousins.

Many of them, naturally enough, will become America's enemies.

And with enough such enemies, we'll lose in Afghanistan. We'll lose because, at the end of the day, even wars that aren't fundamentally unjustified and infeasible can still be lost if they're prosecuted in a sufficiently inept manner. And that's just what seems to be happening in Afghanistan today. As the New York Times reported, the dead children "may well add to the growing anger many Afghans feel about civilian casualties from American and Nato military operations," anger stoked by the deaths of more than 130 civilians at American hands over the past six months.

Of course, any military operation carries some risk of civilian casualties and other forms of collateral damage that can doom a counterinsurgency operation. Air strikes are, however, especially risky in this regard. That's why the US army's highly touted new field manual on counterinsurgency warns that the "employment of airpower in the strike role should be done with exceptional care":

Bombing, even air strikes, should be weighed against the risks, the primary danger being collateral damage that turns the population against the government and provides the insurgents with a major propaganda victory. Even when justified under the law of war, bombing a target that results in civilian casualties will bring media coverage that works to the benefit of the insurgents. A standard insurgent and terrorist tactic for decades against Israel has been to fire rockets or artillery from the vicinity of a school or village in the hope that the Israelis would carry out a retaliatory air strike that kills or wounds civilians - who are then displayed to the world media as victims of aggression. Insurgents and terrorists elsewhere have shown few qualms in provoking attacks that ensure civilian casualties if such attacks fuel anti-government and anti-US propaganda. Indeed, insurgents today can be expected to use the civilian population as a cover for their activities.

But while military leaders clearly know this on some level - it's right there in the manual - they obviously aren't acting on their knowledge. Indeed, even in Iraq itself where David Petraeus, the author of the counterinsurgency manual quoted above, is in command, we're deploying more air strikes, not fewer. The first four and a half months of 2007 have already seen more air strikes than in all of 2006.

As William S. Lind observed on June 11, the rise in strikes is indicative of the ongoing failure of the "surge" on the ground. After all, "calling in air is the last, desperate and usually futile action of an army that is losing" its ground-based counterinsurgency efforts. "Worse," he writes, "the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and General Petraeus's best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping 'fourth generation' war."

As far as Iraq goes, I'd just as soon see the United States give up as try to further perfect our techniques. Afghanistan, however, is still worth getting right. And who knows what will come up in the future. But if anything, things are moving in the wrong direction. Afraid of being left out of the counterinsurgency game, the US Air Force is writing its own manual, and we can bet it'll find plenty of room for air power. And when that air power gets used, you can bet we'll make two new enemies for every one we kill.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/...ghanistan.html

June 20th.

Guardian
U.S. Deaths in Afghanistan, Region

Wednesday June 20, 2007
By The Associated Press

As of Tuesday, June 19, 2007, at least 337 members of the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures June 19, 2007

The latest identifications reported by the military:

- Three soldiers died Sunday in Panjway after an explosive detonated near their vehicle. Killed were Army Capt. Joshua E. Steele, 26, North Henderson, Ill.; Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher D. Henderson, 35, Hillsboro, Ore.; and Army Sgt. 1st Class John M. Hennen, 26, Vinton, La.

Steele and Henderson were assigned to the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division (Transition Team), Fort Riley, Kan. Hennen was assigned to the Louisiana National Guard's 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment, Lake Charles, La.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...721864,00.html
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CNN(US)
Missile strike ambushes Taliban
June 19, 2007

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) -- A missile attack killed at least 20 pro-Taliban militants and wounded 10 in a Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border on Tuesday, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The attack struck a madrasa, or religious school, being used as a training camp by militants in Mamy Rogha, a village near Datta Khel district, 60 km (40 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

The Pakistani army had not carried out any operations in the area, army spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad said, adding that initial reports suggested the explosion occurred while the militants were making a bomb.

Pakistani military spokesmen have offered such explanations in the past when U.S. forces in Afghanistan have launched strikes on militant targets in Pakistani territory in order to avoid admitting any violation of territorial sovereignty.

Aaj and Dawn television news channels both reported that the militants were killed in a missile attack. Aaj put the number killed at 28.

Last September, the Pakistan government struck a controversial peace deal with militants in North Waziristan.

Under the terms of the treaty, foreign fighters were bound to either surrender or be expelled, but critics said the pact created a sanctuary for militants in North Waziristan.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/as...eut/index.html
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The Times
June 20, 2007
How misery of heroin was brought home to Afghanistan
Anthony Loyd in Lashkar Gar

...Opium has been a part of most Afghan households traditionally, used either to cure pain or alleviate the boredom of jobs involving repetitive and uncomfortable manual work, such as carpet weaving and farming.

Yet since the fall of the Taleban in 2001 sveral factors have contributed to ignite heroin addiction throughout the country. First, thousands of refugees, returning to Afghanistan from Iran and Pakistan, where heroin use is profligate, brought their addictions home.

Secondly, processing labs used to refine opium into heroin, which until a few years ago were based in neighbouring countries, are now thriving inside Afghanistan, increasing the drug’s availability dramatically. Furthermore, high levels of unemployment, war trauma, and wide-scale bereavement have fuelled the population’s appetite for the drug.

Though intravenous use as yet remains rare the powderi, as heroin-smoking addicts are referred, can buy low-grade brown heroin for as little as $2 (£1) a gram. High-grade white or crystal costs $16 a gram.

Afghanistan now displays every sign of following in the footsteps of Iran, where society is ravaged by addiction. A 2005 United Nations survey estimated that, nationwide, 3.8 per cent of Afghanistan’s population were habitual drug users, a figure including more than 200,000 opiate addicts.

Commonly, heroin was found to be the preserve of males, and opium used by women.

“The heroin problem is definitely getting worse,” said Dr Zia. “We already had 70,000 opium addicts in Helmand. In some districts in every fourth or fifth family you have at least one addict. Here about 5 per cent of the population are addicted.”

Children are becoming increasingly affected. Infants are commonly given opium to stop them crying, while at an early age child labourers in the poppy fields become familar with licking the resin from their fingers during harvest. Dr Zia has consulted two families in which every member, child and adult, is a heroin addict.

So far Wadan can offer residential places only to men. Because of the strictures of the conservative Pashtun society, the size of the clinic is considered too small for male and female addicts to cohabit. However, it has treated more than 300 Afghans, mostly women, in their homes as part of an outreach project, and this year will move to a larger building that is hoped to include a wing for women.

Although Dr Zia claims a high success rate in treating addicts, drug rehabilitation is rare in Afghanistan. Wadan runs four other clinics in the country, but the stigma of addiction and the scarcity of rehab centres mean that few addicts will ever find a way to check their drug use. Paradoxically, many young male addicts, finding themselves ostracised by their families, seek sanctuary by joining the police.

“Most of our police in the far districts are addicts,” said Dr Zia. “One of our addicted officers, Fayezullah, told me that the safest place for an addict is a police post or check-point. Stop a car, stop a bike, take some money, buy some heroin.”

Rising tide

920,000 estimated addicts in Afghanistan

5 rehabilitation clinics in Afghanistan, with fewer than 100 beds in total

10% Afghanistan farmland dedicated to growing opium

157,000 extra hectared (388,000 acres) devoted to farming opium since defeat of the Taliban

Sources: Afghanistan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1957365.ece
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As Karzai seems more vunerable, another political party appears in AFG...
Asia Times
Jun 20, 2007
A political revival in Afghanistan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KABUL - About four decades ago, a group of teachers and students, inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, joined forces in Kabul University to launch Muslim Youth, a movement for an Islamic revolution in Afghanistan. This later became a national movement and a major regional vehicle of resistance against Soviet hegemonic designs.

By the 1990s, these ideological mercenaries had defeated the Soviet superpower, but the outcome was not an Islamic revolution but factional fighting and bloodshed that divided the north and the south of Afghanistan between what were seen as power-hungry goons.

The Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996 and the fractious mujahideen scattered, many finding sanctuary in Iran and Pakistan.

The US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 once again placed them at a crossroads. About half of them chose the path of armed resistance and the remainder chose to begin their political careers afresh, right in front of Kabul University, where the dream of an Islamic revolution had been envisaged in the 1960s.

The Kabul administration and its Western backers see these reborn politicians as Islamabad's trump card in Afghanistan, after Pakistan lost the Taliban when it entered the United States' "war on terror".

Veteran mujahid Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, loosely aligned with the Taliban-led insurgency, recently proposed dialogue with Kabul, and this coincided with a sudden surge in the political activities of his Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan (The Islamic Party - HIA). This caused some consternation in the capital, already worried because of the growing insurgencies in the country and the gathering of northern warlords under a new umbrella called the United Front.

In the past few months, HIA has opened new offices and relaunched its newspaper, Shahadat. Questions have been raised about HIA's financing, with some pointing to Islamabad once again supporting its favorite group in Afghanistan.

"So far we have only opened three offices, but people are alarmed. One office was in Kabul and two opened [in the past 15 days] in Jalalabad and Herat. To me it is a very slow development, but people are talking too much about the opening up of these offices," said Abdul Hadi Argundwal, the new president of HIA and a former powerful commander against the Soviets in the 1980s in the province of Paghman.

"There is one thing, however. After September 11 [2001], we were blamed as being al-Qaeda, and hundreds of our innocent members were rounded up as suspects. Several still are languishing in Gitmo [Guantanamo Bay, Cuba] prison. People thought that the HIA had vanished from the Afghan horizon. But when recently I inaugurated the Herat office, 3,500 people attended the ceremony.

"We didn't invite anybody, but the message went across by word of mouth that HIA is being relaunched and people voluntarily came forward. Of 3,500 people, 400 were women, fully covered in hijab. Journalists questioned me about whether we had changed our position on the question of women participating in politics. I replied that women are part of society and they have an equal right to participate in politics, but they should have a separate sphere in which to act," said Argundwal, speaking fluent English with an American accent.

"Since it was a big gathering, their participation in a separate corner was permissible. The government cannot gag us in opening up these offices because we are a registered political party."

Many observers believe HIA will provide the country's next president. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, HIA was banned from contesting as a party, so it members stood as individuals. HIA has subsequently been accepted as a party and has about 35 to 40 members in the 249-seat Parliament.

"The HIA has always been the single largest group among all ethnic sections of Afghan society," Argundwal said. "Once we went to our old constituencies, our supporters provided us with money and we were able to open up our offices. We will open more offices in the coming days in Khost, Mazar-e-Sharif and in Kunar. We already have a network of sub-offices and have started emerging in the province of Nangarhar."

Undoubtedly, HIA has stirred the political climate in Afghanistan, with the temperature raised even further by the recent assassination of HIA member and former interim premier Ustad Farid. Farid was a member of the Meshrano Jirga - the Upper House.

"There is quite a story behind the killing of Ustad Farid," Argundwal said. "There is some propaganda that the HIA is only popular among Pashtuns, but we have popular leaders like Farid, a Tajik, in Kapisa and Kohistan [north of Kabul]. Once Brother Hekmatyar announced the offer for dialogue with the Afghan government, the players who consider northern Afghanistan as their fiefdom on an ethnic basis really felt threatened.

"They assumed that if Hekmatyar came back to Kabul, he would immediately win influence, not only in the south but also in the north. So the killing was a part of a campaign to deprive the HIA of local leadership," Argundwal said.

The decision by the administration of President Hamid Karzai to allow HIA into politics was a ploy to encourage Hekmatyar loyalists, still engaged in guerrilla warfare against foreign forces, to shun violence and become part of the mainstream. But this has become a double-edged sword.

Information coming from the border areas of southeastern Afghanistan suggests a strong regrouping of military commanders under the banner of Hekmatyar, especially in Ghazni, Logar, Khost, Kunar and Gardez. HIA is also spreading its political wings in these regions.

Argundwal believes that peace is the need of the hour and the government should work hard to bring disaffected factions together, including the Taliban and individuals like Hekmatyar, to form a national consensus government.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IF20Df01.html
===============================================
Karzai puts a brave face on things...
International Herald Tribune
Taliban terror attacks due to frustration, Karzai argues
By C.J. Chivers
June 19, 2007

KABUL: Taliban insurgents have shifted their tactics to rely more on terrorist attacks in part out of frustration with their flagging insurgency campaign, according to President Hamid Karzai and the commander of American military forces in Afghanistan.

Karzai also said that recent suicide bombings and other attacks against the police had been part of the Taliban's reaction to the development of an Afghan Army.

More Afghan Army units have been fighting with American and NATO soldiers this year, and the United States has made clear that its long-term ambition is to prepare Afghan soldiers and police to operate independently.

Karzai suggested that the Taliban had not expected foreign trainers to be able to create an indigenous fighting force, and that the insurgents have become alarmed. As a result, he said, the Taliban have been targeting police units, which are not yet as developed as the army, with hopes of preventing them from improving, too.

"They did not believe you would stand with us the way you did in raising our army," Karzai said, referring to the American government and NATO. "Now that we are focusing on the police, they are doing their best to undermine that effort."

The senior American officer in the region, Admiral William Fallon of the United States Central Command, generally agreed with Karzai's assessment.

"I share your opinion of the Taliban," he said. "My sense is that they may be doing these awful things out of frustration."

The exchange between the two men occurred Monday during a visit to Karzai's palace by officials from both governments; Karzai and the admiral allowed a reporter for The New York Times to attend.

...The meeting at the palace was one of several between Fallon and Afghan, American and NATO officials. The admiral spent two days in Afghanistan as part of a tour of several nations, including Iraq and Pakistan.

While in Afghanistan, he visited Herat and received briefings about the development of road networks in the region and the planned opening of a bridge over the Panj River, to Tajikistan, which American officials and Karzai said could spur trade in the region. Much of his focus was on improving Afghan police and army units.

But the difficulties undermining plans for Afghanistan were evident as well, as violence continued in the capital and out, and as Afghans expressed anger at civilian casualties caused by fighting and airstrikes.

In recent weeks, there has been frequent fighting in southern, central and eastern Afghanistan, and the Taliban have conducted bombings elsewhere.

The attacks include bombings against police units in Kunduz, another attack in Kandahar that killed three American police trainers and an interpreter, and also the bus bombing on Sunday.

The Taliban's exact motivations are not clear. Fallon noted that the insurgency was not homogeneous, but included a mix of ideologically driven fighters, foreigners, local criminals, poppy growers and young men for hire.

One American official said that the Taliban may attack the police not just out of concern about their growing effectiveness but also because they are more vulnerable than the army.

Afghan Army units are often accompanied by American soldiers, who can arrange air support and reinforcements. Afghan police units are often alone in small outposts in remote regions, and thus easier to attack.

Karzai also seemed to take care to avoid overstating the Taliban threat, suggesting that the insurgency's pace of operations was possible because the Afghan government was not yet robust.

"The Taliban are not strong," he said. "They are weak - very, very weak. It is not them that causes the trouble. It is our weakness that is causing trouble."

Full article: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/19/news/afghan.php

The US - and therefore the Coalition - seem to be losing the propaganda war...
MSNBC
Botched Afghan raids elicit rancor against U.S.
American, NATO troops have killed at least 230 civilians this year

June 19, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan - Goodwill toward foreign forces is eroding across Afghanistan because airstrikes and botched raids by U.S. and NATO troops have killed at least 230 civilians this year, an umbrella group for aid agencies said Tuesday.

The complaint followed reports of dozens of civilian deaths in recent days during fierce fighting sparked by a Taliban offensive in Uruzgan, a key southern province. Insurgents also pushed Afghan police out of a remote district in neighboring Kandahar province.

Noncombatant casualties the past several days — whether caused by foreign troops or the Taliban — have fed public anger toward President Hamid Karzai's government and the foreign soldiers supporting it. Karzai has pleaded repeatedly for international forces to coordinate more closely with Afghan authorities to protect civilians in battle zones.

U.S. and NATO commanders say their forces do all they can to avoid civilian casualties.

A group representing 94 foreign and Afghan aid agencies, including Oxfam, Save the Children and CARE International, laid much of the blame for civilian deaths on U.S. actions, contending indiscriminate use of force is causing the death of innocents.

"Such operations have frequently been by carried out by forces or agencies outside NATO command, often American forces in Operation Enduring Freedom, and sometimes in conjunction with Afghan forces," the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said in a statement.

'Undermining support'
The aid group said international and Afghan forces were responsible for the deaths of at least 230 civilians this year, including 60 women and children. Among them, it said, were nine people killed in a "botched house raid," dozens in airstrikes and 14 "for simply driving or walking too close to international military personnel or vehicles."

"Initial goodwill towards the international military presence in 2002 has substantially diminished in many parts of the country," the statement said. "Excessive use of force and abusive raids and searches are undermining support not just for foreign and Afghan militaries but those involved in humanitarian and development work."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19318275/
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An example....
Daily Telegraph - Australia
Claims troops let dog maul dead body
From correspondents in Kandahar

June 19, 2007

AN angry Afghan family and a lawmaker said today that foreign troops had shot dead a young man who had been asleep on a rooftop overnight and allowed their dog to maul the corpse.

Neither the NATO- or US-led forces in Afghanistan could immediately confirm their participation in the incident, which residents said came as the soldiers conducted house-to-house searches in volatile Kandahar city at midnight yesterday.

The troops entered the houses by using small stick bombs to blow open the front doors, Kandahar provincial council member Besmillah Afghanmal said, citing the distraught family.

At one house the blast woke a 20-year-old man who had been asleep on the rooftop and he jumped up. Troops on the ground shot him, the legislator and relatives alleged.

Eleven people, including two of the dead man's brothers, were arrested.

The young man, named Janan, was working as a tailor, his brother said at the house. He showed the body to reporters and pointed out tears in his clothes and claw marks and scratches from the dog.

Desecration of a corpse is deeply insulting in Islam.

"This is inhumane, this is cruel," the brother, who gave his name only as Besmillah, said.

"This is an insult to the dead body, this an insult to our religion and culture."

Relatives at the house for the funeral said President Hamid Karzai should do something.

"He must go, if he cannot at least stop the foreign soldier beasts from attacking innocent people sleeping in peace in their houses," one furious man said.

Janan's grandmother screamed and tore at her hair. "They invaded our country, now they even invade houses and women's bedrooms at midnight," she said.

The deputy director of police for the area, who was at the house to investigate, said the raid had not been co-ordinated with Afghan police.

"We were not informed," said the officer, named only Najeebullah.

Mr Karzai has repeatedly called on foreign soldiers here to fight Taliban extremists to only conduct operations and house searches with the participation of the local security forces.

Afghans have regularly criticised the soldiers for the aggressive way in which they carry out searches.

There has also been widespread condemnation of the number of civilians being killed in Afghanistan, most of them in insurgent attacks, but also in international military action.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegrap...012768,00.html

On BBC Radio 4 TODAY 0730 news bulletin 10 minutes ago.

AMBASSADOR SAYS BRITAIN AFGHANISTAN "A MARATHON - NOT A SPRINT" BRITAIN MUST STAY FOR AT LEAST 30 YEARS

Newly appointed UK Ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Gerard Cooper-Coles has told the BBC that the UK will need to maintain a presence in Afghanistan for at least 30 years to deal with the current situation. Sir Gerard is regarded as a "heavy hitter" in diplomatioic circles, and his appointment signals an upgrading of Britain's efforts in the country.

The Embassy in Afghanistan looks set to become one of Britain's largest, with a staff incorporating large numbers of experts in Counter Terrorism and Narcotics Eradication. and Economic Development.

Originally Posted by Stonker

On BBC Radio 4 TODAY 0730 news bulletin 10 minutes ago.

AMBASSADOR SAYS AFGHANISTAN "A MARATHON - NOT A SPRINT" BRITAIN MUST STAY FOR AT LEAST 30 YEARS

Full interview with the ambassador, and analysis by John Simpson (0810-0820 hrs approx)

Available for 'listen again' online shortly. HERE

In their 0900 news bulletin, the BBC reported that Sir Gerard doubted the commitment of the US to the 'long haul' in Afghanistan.

Which makes this (available online - see below) all the more compulsory listening:

The 'problems' of Afghanistan aid
File On 4
Tuesday 19 June 2007 at 2000 BST,
repeated Sunday 24 June at 1700 BST.

President Hamid Karzai's government could be undermined
As the death toll continues to grow in Afganistan the mismanagement of donor aid is threatening the stability of the country.

The issue threatens to destabilise the government of President Hamid Karzai, three years into his five year term.
The main beneficiaries could be members of the former Taliban regime.
Kate Clark investigates the growing crisis.

Hear the full story on Radio 4:
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme..._4/6745047.stm
Listen Now
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/news....radio4/fileon4

Download as MP3 (7 days only)
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/do...2000_40_st.mp3

Podcast
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/do...ileon4/rss.xml

Transcripts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme..._4/3708232.stm

If there is demand (1 or 2 PMs is all it needs) I will upload the entire prog to a fileshare site for retrieval through this thread.

[Newly appointed UK Ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Gerard Cooper-Coles has told the BBC that the UK will need to maintain a presence in Afghanistan for at least 30 years to deal with the current situation. Sir Gerard is regarded as a "heavy hitter" in diplomatioic circles, and his appointment signals an upgrading of Britain's efforts in the country.]


Wow! Thirty years sounds like quite a commitment. Was it a commitment? What is the specific national interest it will serve, I wonder? Thirty years of NGO's, thirty years of sales of Toyota Land Cruisers, thirty year long gravy train. The City should start selling Afghan bonds. Question. Seeing how there will never be an actual commitment does that mean the soldiers there for 30 years will be in temporary accommodation for thirty years

I wonder why General Sir Richard Dannatt did not mention the British Army’s 30 year commitment to Afghanistan in last weeks important speech? One would have thought with that sort of commitment he could raise an entire new force to commit for 30 years on top of existing forces. He would easily get cross party consensus for earmarked funds and forces for 30 years, seeing how it is so much in the national interest, so to do.

Originally Posted by Stonker

If there is demand (1 or 2 PMs is all it needs) I will upload the entire prog to a fileshare site for retrieval through this thread.

What if just I(nicely)ask? Thanks 'Stonks'...