MORE AUSTRALIAN'S KILLED IN FUTILE AFGHANI INVASION THAT IS REMINISCENT OF FAILED VIETNAM INVASION

Two Australian soldiers killed by bomb on first tour of Afghanistan
June 8, 2010 - 12:05PM
By Tetractys Merkaba in red, & AFP, AAP and Paul Tatnell in black.

Two Australian soldiers and a sniffer dog have been killed by a roadside bomb during their first tour of duty in Afghanistan.

The Diggers -A nice propagandistic label, that is untrue, because, as previously discussed, the digger appellation, was originally applied to the A.N.Z.A.C's of WW1 who engaged in the failed invasion of Gallipoli. This label is designed to steer your mind into thinking that these invaders are cut from the same cloth as the original diggers- belonged to the Mentoring Task Force and are the first Australians to die in 11 months, bringing the total number of deaths in the campaign to 13.

Acting Defence Force chief David Hurley said the troops were based in Brisbane with the 2nd combat engineer regiment.

They were killed by a roadside bomb explosion in the Mirabad Valley on Monday morning Afghanistan time.

One soldier was killed instantly. The second was given emergency first aid by his fellow soldiers and taken to a nearby hospital but later died.

Lieutenant-General Hurley said the two soldiers, who were part of a foot patrol, were evacuated to the Tarin Kowt base by helicopter following the explosion.

"It was about 10 minutes out to the site and back.

"It was 38 minutes from wheels off, from the incident being announced, to the two soldiers returning to the base."

Lieutenant-General Hurley said Monday had been "a hard day in theatre".

"There's a lot of troops in action and a lot going on.

"This has just been a difficult day for us."

He said military investigators were already looking into the deaths.

"We have sent in our weapons intelligence team to conduct a technical inspection," he said.

Asked if the NATO-led coalition was winning the almost decade long war, he said: "Bodies aren't going to tell whether you win or lose this war.

"Some good things are happening and we're heading in the right direction."

Lieutenant-General Hurley said it was the first time since the Vietnam war that two Australian soldiers had died in combat on the same day.

10 NATO soldiers killed

In total 10 NATO soldiers were killed on Monday.

Lieutenant-General Hurley said there were no other Australian or Afghan casualties.

"However, an explosive detection dog also died in the incident," he said.

An investigation will be held to determine the "exact details of the incident".

"I speak for the entire ADF [Australian Defence Force] and Defence community when I tell you I am deeply saddened by the loss of these two brave Australian soldiers," Lieutenant-General Hurley said.

Houston devastated

Defence force chief Angus Houston in a statement read out by his deputy said he was devastated to hear about the deaths.

"Foremost in my thoughts at this time are the families of these two soldiers ... who today are suffering overwhelming shock and anguish." It was a pity that these soldiers and there families were not foremost in Houston's mind before they were killed in a futile, dangerous and unsuccessful invasion.

It was too early for words to provide comfort to the families of the men, but Air Chief Marshal Houston said he wanted them to know both were outstanding Australians. I say they have paid too high a price for their ignorance, that their leaders in the chain of command failed them by allowing them to participate in a pointless & failing invasion.

"Quietly serving our nation and demonstrating every day the very best of what Aussies pride themselves on displaying to the world - courage, determination, mateship and selfless service."

He also had a message to Australian troops still serving in Afghanistan.

"I ask you to look after and support each other. Because you know damn well that the Un-Australian "Defence" Force, the Australian Government, the opposition, & the corporate media will not support you under any circumstances. In fact, ALL of these aforementioned groups will seek to capitalise on your efforts for their own gain.

"We will support you but I need you to make sure you seek any assistance that you may need to come to terms with your loss.

"Draw strength from one another and pay tribute to your mates."

Air Chief Marshal Houston, who is overseas with Senator Faulkner, asked the media to respect the wish of the families not to make public the names of the dead soldiers.

Constant dangers: Faulkner

The deaths were a reminder of the constant dangers faced by Australian troops in Afghanistan, Defence Minister John Faulkner said in a statement, which was read out by Defence Personnel Minister Greg Combet.

"While all Australians will mourn along with those two families, the immensity of their grief cannot be shared," Senator Faulkner said.

"The manner of their deaths from an insidious and indiscriminate improvised explosive device again shows the callous and truly despicable nature of our enemy." I say that it is not callous to defend your homeland against an invading force. It is callous, and truly despicable to try to capitalise on these deaths to score political points, or, to sell newspapers.

It was a great loss to the nation -but obviously not significant enough to end this pointless and futile invasion- and Senator Faulkner sent his sincere condolences to the families of both men.

Seven US soldiers killed

Five US soldiers were killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) in eastern Afghanistan, while another American died in a separate IED attack and the seventh one from small arms fire in the south, said Lieutenant Colonel Beth Robbins in Washington. Three other NATO service members from other countries were also killed in attacks on Monday, two of whom were the Australians.

The French government announced that one of the deaths was a sergeant in the French Foreign Legion.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy "forcefully condemned this blind violence and expressed France's determination to continue working as part of the International Security Assistance Force [ISAF]", his office said. France too knows how to use propaganda to shift blame from themselves as an invasive force, and onto the victim of this invasive force when they defend themselves. Israel has been unsuccessfully trying this tactic to defend its disgraceful attack on the humanitarian boats running the Giza Blockade recently.

Suicide attack on an Afghan police training centre

Separately, two foreign contractors, -notice how casually the phrase foreign contractors is inserted. This means private employees of a private corporation and is another example of the blurring of the lines between the private and the government. This is because your government is actually a registered for profit corporation, and lets not get into the murky waters of the connections between the people who walk from government to private company and -stand up Mr. Dick Cheney- back to government and then to the the private sector again- one of them an American, were killed on Monday in a suicide attack on an Afghan police training centre in the southern city of Kandahar, the US embassy said. Three militants armed with bombs and guns were killed in the attack.

One of the rebels -dehumanizing these people helps the ignorant to work out the good & bad guys easily, just the same as the movies- detonated a bomb-filled car along the wall of the facility hoping to punch open a route for his comrades, the interior ministry said in Kabul.

The two others were shot dead by police guards, ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

There was no claim of responsibility for the bombing but Afghanistan's Taliban is leading a nearly nine-year insurgency to bring down the Western-backed government and evict foreign troops.

Elsewhere, in the southern province of Ghazni, police said five Afghan security guards were killed in two separate attacks while they were escorting NATO logistics convoys.

"There were two roadside bomb attacks against the convoys in Andar and Ab Band districts. Three guards were killed in Andar district and two were killed in Ab Band district," said Ghazni police chief Khial Baz Shairzai.

NATO, US and Afghan troops are preparing their biggest offensive yet against the Taliban in Kandahar province, with total foreign troop numbers in the country set to peak at 150,000 by August.

US President Barack Obama hopes the counter-insurgency strategy focused on the south can allow US troops to start withdrawing next year.

According to an AFP tally, based on one kept by the independent website icasualties.org, 245 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year. Last year was the deadliest yet with 520 killed.

Monday's toll was the highest for a single day since the deaths of 11 French soldiers on one day in August 2008. The latest deaths follow Sunday's killings of five NATO soldiers, four of them Americans, in two separate attacks and a vehicle accident.

Plan to reintegrate Taliban fighters

In Madrid, US special envoy Richard Holbrooke said more funds for Afghanistan's plan to reintegrate Taliban fighters who renounce violence -More employment of the Orwellian language known as 'doublespeak'- were likely to be pledged next month at a conference in Kabul.

The July 20 conference is a follow-up to a London summit in January, when donors pledged an initial $US140 million to a so-called Afghanistan Peace and Reconciliation Programme trust fund.

"Almost $US200 million has been committed under a programme led by the Japanese ... and there will more developments on this at the Kabul conference," Mr Holbrooke said.

US soldier charged with murdering civilians

In Washington a US army spokeswoman said an American soldier had been charged with the murder of three civilians in Afghanistan -It's murder when it is not authorised, or not performed by an authorised agent, or, it was authorised, but the wrong guy was hit, or, it was authorised and the right guy was hit, but we were not technically supposed to hit him- and four others had been implicated but not charged in the crimes.

Specialist -What is a "specialist"?- Jeremy Morlock, 22, was charged on Friday with premeditated murder and assault in three separate incidents that occurred in Kandahar province between January and May this year.

AFP, AAP and Paul Tatnell

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/world/two-australian-soldiers--killed-by-bomb-on-first-tour-of-afghanistan-20100608-xreo.html

GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS: FULL TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH THE TIMES

From The Times January 25, 2010
General Petraeus, head of US Central Command
Deborah Haynes Afghanistan

It seems that the Pakistanis are talking at all levels to Afghan Taleban and President Karzai will be announcing this reconciliation plan for low to mid-level Taleban...

It is really reintegration to be technically accurate.

What are the chances of engagement with the senior Taleban leaders?

I’m not sure I would completely subscribe to the characterisation that the Pakistanis are talking to the Taleban at all levels. What you have are two different endeavours. One is reintegration and that is what we anticipate the Afghan Government to announce as a policy developed in co-ordination certainly with the international community and Isaf elements that are focused on that particular topic. Obviously that’s an important component of any comprehensive approach to a situation such as that in Afghanistan.

In Iraq as you know very well having interviewed me on that topic the Iraqi form of reintegration, of reconciliation with low and mid-level leaders and fighters proved to be an important factor in the reduction of violence and the reconciliation of tens of thousands of individuals who were either actively or tacitly involved with the Sunni insurgent elements that contributed to much of that violence that led to the surge.

In Afghanistan there are every week instances in which Taleban or other insurgent elements come to Afghan or Isaf tactical level leaders and want to talk. In some cases literally want to lay down their weapons and in a number of cases have actually done that in recent months. We think as the combination of additional pressure from the surge of US and other Isaf contributing nations forces takes place, as the additional operations ... are launched, that additional pressure the additional focus that will also allow to develop Afghan security forces, host nation governance and capacity, all of that will provide a number of different incentives for low and mid-level leaders in particular to consider becoming part of the new Afghanistan, part of the solution in the new Afghanistan rather than a continuing part of the problem.

The concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taleban or other insurgent leaders, perhaps involving some Pakistani officials as well, is another possibility. Although many observers think that that is probably one for the mid or long term rather than the short term given that many of those leaders will feel that they are resurgent right now rather than under the kind of pressure that might lead them to seriously consider laying down their arms and indeed directing that large insurgent elements pursue reconciliation rather than continued violence.

Mid or long term meaning in months?

Mid or long term. Again it depends on the pace of the campaign plan, the operational tempo, the dynamics of the battlefield if you will but at an operational and strategic level not just at a tactical level.

Senior commanders right up to the very top if they’re willing?

As Secretary Gates observed recently. He noted the possibility of that is probably unlikely given the dynamics at present but I don’t think it is something that anyone rules out. Again that was not an option pursued in Iraq. We certainly never approached the most senior al-Qaeda in Iraq or the most senior Sunni extremist leaders. However there were certainly some fairly high-level insurgent leaders who did indeed reconcile with the Iraqi Government so it is not something that can be ruled out but it is also not something that I would anticipate as they say in the United States: coming soon to a theatre near you.

Another goal from the London conference is a tentative timetable, and I know you don’t like timetables, for the transfer of security of Afghan provinces. What do you think is a realistic timeline for this?

I haven’t heard of a timetable. Nor of discussions of a timetable other than of course what was in the President’s speech about beginning a transition of certain security tasks based on conditions. Conditions meaning enemy situation, Afghan Security Force capacity and capability and so forth. So what there has been focus on however has been to refine the discussion of indeed what those conditions should include, what considerations should be part of discussions about transition and indeed what transition actually means. Is it just the lead for security responsibility or is it transfer of all governance and service and security tasks from Isaf to Afghanistan and again at what level? Is it sub district, district, province, how to go forward with it. There has been a lot of good discussion on that and we’ll see really where the state of those discussions by the London conference because they are still very much, they’re continuing in quite an intensive manner.

Helmand is obviously of particular interest to Britain. With another 10,000 US Marines due to deploy to the province as part of the surge, will the US take control of northern Helmand to free up the British to focus on LKG, Garmsir and Gareshk in the centre?

Well that again has yet to be announced shall we say. Certainly there’s a terrific amount of coordination ongoing both in terms of tactical and operational co-ordination of the conduct of future operations and also co-ordination about literally what additional US forces, US assets in some cases other nations’ assets and how all of those are going to be meshed together as it is currently of course under regional command south and I don’t want to get ahead of Isaf commander nor the intermediate joint commander or for that matter the RC south commander in laying out how it’s envisioned that this will go forward.

So you don’t want to say who is going to be in command of Helmand?

I think that would probably be premature. But there are certainly discussions of that ongoing and then there are discussion understandably about how best to do command and control of what is currently regional command south as you have an influx of a substantial number of additional forces and as you get multiple more brigades just in Helmand province not to mention also of course other forces going into Kandahar and other areas of regional command south.

How many surge forces are already on the ground?

The first two combat battalions are now on the ground in terms of the surge forces those are both marine units and the first of the army ground battalions in now also in the process of deploying in addition to numerous what we call enabler forces. These are engineers who are doing the infrastructure development in addition of a dance of other forces.

The Iraq surge was accompanied by an initial rise in coalition deaths. Do you predict that given we have a surge going on in Afghanistan now this could be Nato’s bloodiest year over there?

Honestly I don’t know. Certainly I have said that it will be tougher before it gets easier as I did also in advance of the surge in Iraq. The circumstances are different. First of all you don’t have a vastly higher level of violence already. The level of violence in Iraq when the surge was launched was several orders of magnitude greater than that in Afghanistan. In December 2006 when the decision was made to conduct the surge into Iraq there were 53 dead bodies every day, every 24 hours on average, in Baghdad alone from sectarian violence there were some others from other categories of violence. The spiral of violence in Iraq, of sectarian violence in particular, had gone nearly out of control.

We are going to have to make sacrifices before things get better?

Again as I have said it will get harder before it gets easier and that will result from offensive operations intended in Helmand among others to take away Taleban sanctuaries and safe havens that they’ve been able to establish over the course of the last two or three years in particular.

Do you have a prediction of when the violence will peak?

The summer fighting season has traditionally been the time when the violence has been highest.

Could this be the last summer of violence? And afterwards you are hoping that we won’t see that again next year?

I think again that would be premature to make that kind of prediction. I have said that I have not assessed that Afghanistan could be turned as quickly as Iraq was turned. That it will be difficult to assemble all the same factors that we were able to bring together in Iraq to reduce the violence as rapidly as was the case, in hindsight at least. It didn’t feel rapid when we lived through it. It took a good six to nine months of very heavy fighting and then the militia battles of March and April of 2008, six months after that. But the reduction in violence did indeed begin and was fairly sharp starting in the late June, early July 2007 timeframe and it really continued on down, it would plateau a bit then continued down further.

There are cycles in Afghanistan and over time what we want to do of course is to drive the peak violence in the summer down and the level of violence in the winter down also but again I think it would be premature to predict that the combination of Isaf and Afghan forces can yet produce the factors that collectively could result in that kind of reduction.

Resolve will be tested?

I think the question is whether or not the combination of Isaf, international community and Afghan efforts can produce demonstrable evidence of progress that gives the publics of the contributing nations, all of them, the kind of sense that was produced over time in Iraq that this endeavour, the objectives of this endeavour can be obtained over time.

What will you be looking for?

Some of the same indicators as we saw in Iraq. Indeed the momentum that the Taleban for example has achieved in recent years can be reversed. That over time the security bubbles can be extended. That the population can be better protected over time. That Afghan forces are developing in a positive manner. That Afghan governmental capacity capability and performance progresses and so on.

You were a fan of British Special Forces in Iraq.

I was, I am and I always will be the biggest fan of BSF wherever they may be and also of British forces in general with whom I’ve been privileged to work in the Balkans, in Iraq and now of course in Afghanistan and a host of other places.

How important a role do British SF play in Afghanistan?

A very important role. They are, they always have been and they continue to be nothing short of terrific. In particular their innovativeness and capacity for independent action continue to be very impressive.

America is committing 30,000 additional forces for Afghanistan. What are you hoping countries like Germany will potentially be sending? What hopes do you have for that?

My understanding is that the latest number that other Isaf contributing nations have already pledged I think it is somewhere around 7,500 and there are hopes certainly that other counties that have not yet officially or publicly made pledges will announce those as well. It is not the role for a US CENTCOM commander. I’ll defer that to my close friend and colleague the Nato supreme allied commander.

Money was a key weapon in Iraq, with the Sons of Iraq programme for example?.

It is important for people to understand that the Sons of Iraq programme initially took off before we announced salaries for the Sons of Iraq. It was truly based out of a desire to maintain security in areas once al-Qaeda and other extremist elements had been cleared from them... Over time there was a desire for compensation, reasonably understandable, and we had the Cerp [Commander's Emergency Response Programme] dollars to do that. In fact for now probably somewhere around nine months all of those Sons of Iraq have been on the Iraqi payroll and it’s now about 50,000 of them who have shifted to the payrolls of various Iraqi ministries.

I understand the pilot scheme in Afghanistan has not been as effective.

There is not for Afghanistan something quite comparable to the Sons of Iraq. There are a number of different initiatives that are being pursued. There is a local defence initiative in which small special forces teams locate with villagers, develop trust and confidence over periods of months and with the approval of the Afghan Government allow certain members of those villages to carry weapons and to augment the security of areas that in some cases is not that well assured by still small Afghan security forces and they then they have the link to a quick reaction force and so forth.

Literally live in the villages with them?

Initially Special Forces will live with them and then overtime they will move to other villages and then again the local defence forces, some of whom may be paid over time but relatively small numbers of those. That is one concept and this is actually ongoing.

When did that start?

Several months ago.

There is the Afghan Population Protection Programme. That has been used in limited form in Wardak and Logar provinces southwest of Kabul really as a short-term measure to add rapidly to the roles that will ultimately be the Ministry of Interior forces. Some local forces who are selected by tribal leaders from those areas and again it is assessed to have had modestly positive results and those forces over time will be incorporated into the Ministry of Interior.

Are they being paid?

Yes, they are paid by the Ministry of Interior.

Then you have the various initial stages of reintegration efforts that are taking place in part just because the situations demand that tactical-level Afghan and Isaf leaders respond to low-level Taleban leaders who literally come in with their hands up and want to lay down their weapons. In those cases local officials are brought into this and there are local arrangements that are brokered even as the formal development of a reintegration programme at the highest levels of the Afghan Government together with the international community is being finalised.

The surge has begun. You were in this position in Iraq, everyone was watching, how do you feel in terms of is it a winnable mission? Can you see a successful end to this?

The surge has begun... General McCrystal has described the situation in a way that I think is accurate and that is serious but doable. There are no illusions about the magnitude of the difficulty. Everyone clearly recognises the magnitude of the difficulty. I have recognised this all the way back in September 2005 when I was asked by then Secretary Rumsfeld to come home after a second tour in Iraq, this is when I was a three-star General, via Afghanistan and do an assessment of the training equipment programme and the situation in Afghanistan, which I did and came back and in reporting that out to him at that time when the level of violence was vastly lower than it has been over the past year, or two, I said that I thought that Afghanistan likely would be the longest campaign in the long war just because of the various factors on the ground and the enormous challenges that reside there. That turned out to be fairly prophetic.

There are no illusions about this being in any stretch of the imagination easy and everyone recognises the difficulty. Having said that everyone also recognises the imperative of doing all that is possible to achieve a hugely important mission, one that is of enormous importance to all our countries and that is to ensure that Afghanistan does not become once again a sanctuary or a safe haven for transnational extremist elements like al-Qaeda. It was in Kandahar that 9/11 attacks were planned. It was in training camps in eastern Afghanistan where the initial preparation of the attackers was carried out before they went to Hamburg and flights schools in the US. It is important to recall the seriousness of the mission and why it is that we are in Afghanistan in the first place and why we are still there after years and years of hard work and sacrifice that have passed.



Iraq

How worried are you that this furore over the decision to blacklist several hundred candidates could trigger fresh unrest over there and delay the US withdrawal plans?

I’m considerably much less worried than I was say last weekend when this was all really appearing that it actually could boil over and result in a reversal of the effect of two and an half years of reconciliation among different groups. It appears however in the last 48 to 72 hours that Iraqi leaders have really gripped this issue.

It turns out now that each party has at least double-digit numbers of individuals on this particular list of over 500 names and that it is reportedly 55 per cent or so Shia and 45 per cent or so Sunni. So if it ever was as was reported a predominately Sunni list and predominately focused on sidelining Sunni candidates that is not the case now and it appears there is going to be, as has been the case in Iraq on a number of previous occasions when there has been quite considerable political drama, that Iraqi leaders will resolve the issue without unhinging and undoing again two and a half years of very hard work at reconciling all of the factions inside the new Iraq.

So no panic.

No panic.

No timetable changes.

No timetable changes. Still a weather eye though at this issue and a number of other issues and I think residual concern from this particular issue by Iraqi leaders about how leaders of a previous organisation that was supposed to have been defunct by the legislation that established the accountability and justice commission that replaced the former de-Baathification committee, those leaders seemingly hijacking the new organisation without having been confirmed as the leadership of it and being manipulated by reportedly the Iranian Quds force.

You said that US intelligence believes that Peter Moore spent some time in Iran but Britain’s FCO insists there is no evidence of this. Who is mistaken?

We’ll throw it back to the intelligence community and let them tell us what they think.

You haven’t heard any different? You still think he was held in Iran?

I have heard no different information.

Do you know how long?

I do not. No.



Yemen

How worried are you that it could become the next Afghanistan in terms of providing a safe haven for al-Qaeda to launch global attacks.

A number of us have been focused on Yemen for well over two years.

From the time when we were examining how foreign fighters were being trained and then how foreign fighter facilitators were operating who enabled foreign fighters to come into Iraq through Syria and many different roads lead to what was then termed al-Qaeda in Yemen and this past year was franchised by the al-Qaeda senior leadership as al-Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsular.

In 2006 there was a very important prison break in which the current leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular and some 20 to 25 other important al-Qaeda members were able to escape from prison in Yemen. We knew even further back that al-Qaeda had a presence in Yemen. It tried to sink the Cole, did do considerable damage to it and have carried out various attacks over the years on various Western targets and Yemeni governmental targets again in various locations in Yemen.

And we saw again links to al-Qaeda in Yemen that included foreign fighter facilitators, the establishment of training camps and a variety of different communications all traced back to Yemen that helped facilitate the flow of foreign fighters from various countries in the greater region into Damascus and then on into Iraq where a number of them were blowing themselves up or providing expertise in explosives or other tactics, techniques and procedures being practiced by al-Qaeda in Iraq.

At that time we were focused on it in 2007 there were over 120 foreign fighters per month entering Iraq. That flow has now been reduced to under 10 a month by the actions that we and our Iraqi partners and some tremendous UK Special Operations forces took together inside Iraq and then by actions that regional partners took to make it much more difficult for military-aged males to fly from their countries to Damascus on a one-way plane ticket, for example.

And then also a number of different operations that were carried out through co-ordinated intelligence and other activities as a result of the focus that we were all taking collectively on the effort to reduce that flow of fighters into Iraq. So coming into this job in late October 2008 I announced right away that we were going to focus more attention and resources on Yemen. Made an initial trip to Yemen shortly after taking command. We developed in concert with the embassy in Yemen and with intelligence organisations and with the State Department a military campaign plan for Yemen that I approved in late April of 2009.

Made another trip to Yemen in July that has now been acknowledged. That was a very, very positive trip and we launched the efforts to expand our assistance to certain Yemeni forces, expand our intelligence sharing, and development efforts and all of that led to the ability to enable the actions that have been taken against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula over the course of the past couple of months. The most well known of which were various strikes on December 17, December 24 and a variety of other actions that have taken place in which cumulatively two training camps have been destroyed, three suicide bombers were killed, the fourth one who was with them was wounded and captured with his suicide vest still on by the Yemeni Sensitive Site Exploitation Team, one quite senior al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular leader was killed, others have been wounded or very nearly missed and a degree of disruption has been inflicted on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular. But certainly activities continue, threat streams continue and efforts to plan attacks in Yemen and elsewhere in the world continue.

You want to double the military assistance given to Yemen. In what form will this be? Training? Drones?

The large ticket items that were in programmes that are part of the defence budget that were proved by congress and signed by the President are for items of equipment, such as helicopters, some coast guard vessels and then a variety of other less expensive items of military equipment and then some training, education.

What about airstrikes and drone attacks. Will that have to happen given the threat?

Well the Yemeni forces in fact carried out an air strike most recently two or three days ago. It is possible that those Yemeni activities could continue.

Can you envisage any further US involvement in terms of troops there, any deployment?

Obviously it depends on what the Yemeni leadership wants. They have very clearly ruled out the possibility of US forces being involved in ground combat operations and have done so publicly and that is not in the realm of the possible. But again a variety of different training and assistance activities based on a schedule that we agreed mutually is certainly in the realm of the possible and indeed the kind of activities that we carry on with the majority of the countries in the central command area of responsibility.



Iran

You told CNN that the US has contingency plans to address...

No, actually what I told Christiane Amanpour is that it would literally be irresponsible if Central Command was not considering a variety of contingencies including those involving Iran and planning for those contingencies.

What are the contingency plans for Iran?

Well would you like me to spell all of them out for you.

Well, yes.

[Laughs] Again it wouldn’t be productive I don’t think to go into any kind of discussion beyond really the answer that I gave to Christiane. Nice try though.

AFGHANISTAN WILL TAKE "LONGER" TO TACKLE THAN IRAQ, GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS SAYS

From The Times January 25, 2010

Deborah Haynes, Defence Editor The new American-led surge in Afghanistan will take longer to fight the insurgency than a similar injection of force in Iraq three years ago when violence fell sharply within months, the top US general in the region told The Times.

General David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, also warned that the fight in Helmand province, Afghanistan, where British and US forces are based, as well other areas, would become even tougher before the situation improved.

Frontline offensives will run alongside initiatives to reach out to Taleban elements. When the time was right, General Petraeus said, there was a possibility that Afghan officials would hold reconciliation talks with senior Taleban and other insurgent leaders, perhaps also involving Pakistan.

In 2005, the commander predicted that Afghanistan would be the longest campaign in the war on terror. “That turned out to be fairly prophetic,” he said, speaking at his headquarters in Tampa, Florida.

“It will get harder before it gets easier and that will result from offensive operations intended in Helmand [province] and others to take away Taleban sanctuaries and safe havens.”

The first two Marine battalions, which are part of a surge of 30,000 extra US troops announced by President Obama last month, are already on the ground in Helmand and an Army battalion is in the process of deploying. The majority of US troops are due to be in place by the end of August, along with several thousand extra soldiers from other countries, including Britain.

Violence in Afghanistan typically increases over the summer months and General Petraeus forecast that this year would again be bloody. He also said that it was premature to make predictions about whether the situation would improve by 2011.

“I have not assessed that Afghanistan could be turned as quickly as Iraq was turned — that it will be difficult to assemble all the same factors that we were able to bring together in Iraq to reduce the violence as rapidly,” said the general, who commanded US-led forces in Iraq during the surge.

George Bush, then President, sent 30,000 additional troops to the country in the first half of 2007 when it was on the brink of civil war. They pushed into no-go areas in and around Baghdad, killing or capturing al-Qaeda and other Sunni fighters as well as convincing insurgents — dismayed by the sectarian killings — to switch sides in return for money. Violence fell dramatically within nine months of the first troops being deployed.

The US military and other Nato forces in Afghanistan are trying to use public anger over an increasing number of attacks to prompt Afghans to repel the Taleban in the same way that Iraqis rejected al-Qaeda, although the level of civilian casualties is much lower than it was in Iraq.

There are also attempts to create local, anti-Taleban militias and to broker deals with low-level Taleban elements, willing to switch allegiance.

Every week Taleban fighters approach US and other Nato or Afghan forces wanting to talk and on occasion lay down their weapons, General Petraeus said.

“In those cases local officials are brought into this and there are local arrangements that are brokered even as the formal development of a reintegration programme at the highest level of the Afghan Government together with the international community is being finalised.”

He was referring to a plan expected to be presented by President Karzai at the London conference on Afghanistan this week.

As for higher up the Taleban chain of command, General Petraeus said: “The concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taleban or other insurgent leaders, perhaps involving some Pakistani officials as well, is another possibility.”

He said, however, that many observers believed this would take time.

Asked whether it would include the top leadership, he said: “It’s not something that can be ruled out but it’s also not something that I would anticipate, as they say in the United States, ‘Coming soon to a theatre near you’.”

As head of Central Command, General Petraeus is also responsible for American security interests in 19 other nations through the Arabian Gulf region and into Central Asia. Also high on his agenda is Yemen, where al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is based.

He welcomed a series of strikes by the Yemeni Government over the past two months that he said had destroyed two training camps, killed three would-be suicide bombers and resulted in the capture of a fourth.

“A degree of disruption has been inflicted on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but certainly activities continue, threat streams continue and efforts to plan attacks in Yemen and elsewhere in the world continue.”

The US is planning to double its security assistance to the impoverished nation next year to $150 million (£93 million). The aid will include helicopters, some coastguard vessels as well as training.

General Petraeus said that there were no plans for American ground forces to deploy to Yemen but indicated that the two countries would continue to work closely together to tackle the issue.

“A variety of different training and assistance activities based on a schedule that we agreed mutually is certainly in the realm of the possible.”

In a sign of strong relations between America and Yemen, a curved sword in a jewelled sheath, which was presented to General Petraeus’s predecessor, Admiral William Fallon by the Yemeni President in July 2007, sits in a cabinet of gifts received by the head of Central Command from various dignitaries across the region.

BRITISH TROOPS FACE FIVE MORE YEARS IN HELMAND

From The Times January 25, 2010

British soldiers of 3 Rifles on patrol with the Afghan National Army near Sangin, Helmand Province
Tom Coghlan, Defence Correspondent, and Jerome Starkey in Kabul

British troops will have to fight the Taleban for another five years, according to a leaked draft of the communiqué that will conclude the London conference on Afghanistan this week.

Participating governments are also expected to agree to bribes totalling hundreds of millions of pounds which will be paid to leading insurgents in the hope that they will stop fighting.

The controversial plan is likely to anger relatives of British soldiers killed by the Taleban in Helmand province. Last night the MoD said that a 251st serviceman had died, while the most senior US commander in the war zone predicted that the violence would get worse before it got better.

Gordon Brown, the host of the summit which begins on Thursday, will present the plan for stabilising Afghanistan. It foresees a bloody endgame, with Afghan forces only gradually taking on their rightful role over several years.

The draft closing statement lays down a timeline which is significantly less optimistic than that envisaged by President Obama, who has suggested that US forces would aim to begin drawing down troops from mid-2011.

It commits Afghan forces to “taking the lead and conducting the majority of operations in the insecure areas of Afghanistan within three years and taking responsibility for physical security within five years”.

“Providing conditions are met”, it adds, some of the more stable regions of the country may be put under the control of Afghan security forces at the end of this year or in early 2011, with Western troops providing support.

Yesterday Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, acknowledged that the transition to a more peaceful Afghanistan would be a lengthy process. “We’ll be able to hand over parts of Afghanistan long before we hand over other parts,” he said.

A similar note of caution was struck by the top US general, David Petraeus, who told The Times in an interview that fighting in Helmand and elsewhere in the south could intensify this summer. He warned that the particular combination of factors that produced a decisive drop in violence following the 2007 Iraq surge were unlikely to be replicated as quickly or dramatically in Afghanistan.

The centrepiece of the London conference, attended by countries with troops in Afghanistan, will be the reconciliation plan. It promises “an honourable place in society” to those who cut their ties with “al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups”. It will be underwritten by a “Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund” over the next three years.

The Times has learnt that the US, Britain and Japan are the principal donors to the scheme, the details of which were thrashed out in a meeting involving diplomats from 20 countries in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago.

“The hope is the Afghans will present the plan in London. Then the Americans, the British and the Japanese will open up the purse strings and bankroll it to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars,” said a senior official briefed on the discussions.

The Government will seek to justify the London plan by arguing that peace in Afghanistan requires all sides to be involved in the process. “When people say to me, ‘Should the Afghan Government be talking to the Taleban?’, I have a simple answer: ‘Yes, they should’,” David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, told the BBC.

AMERICAN SOLDIER ADMITS TO RAPING GIRLS IN ABU GHRAIB

SPECIAL REPORT by Tetractys Merkaba

Israel shrugs off fury over settlement drive

Jason Koutsoukis, Jerusalem and Anne Davies, Washington
November 19, 2009 - 12:00AM

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed aside international anger about the expansion of Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem by defining the new plans as ''standard procedure''.

On Tuesday the Jerusalem municipality approved the construction of another 900 housing units in Gilo, which is built on land annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War and is regarded as an illegal settlement by the United Nations.

''The construction in Gilo has been going on for decades, and there is nothing new in the planning procedures,'' said a spokesman for Mr Netanyahu.

Gilo, south of the Jerusalem centre, has 40,000 Jewish residents and completes a ring of Jewish neighbourhoods through East Jerusalem that Palestinians argue prevents the eastern side of the city from becoming a future capital of a Palestinian state.

The new construction plans raised the ire of the US, Britain and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said: ''We find the Jerusalem planning committee decision to move forward the approval process for the expansion of Gilo, in Jerusalem, as dismaying.''

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement: ''At a time when we are working to relaunch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed.''

The White House went further and reprimanded Israel about other activities related to housing.

''The US also objects to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes,'' Mr Gibbs said.

''Our position is clear: the status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties.''

Diplomatic sources said that Israeli officials ignored a request on Monday by US President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell to halt the Gilo decision.

Mr Ban also issued a tersely worded statement deploring the Israeli Government's decision on the Gilo settlement, stressing that it was built on Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

''The Secretary-General reiterates his position that settlements are illegal, and calls on Israel to respect its commitments under the road map to cease all settlement activity, including natural growth,'' a statement issued by his office said, referring to the peace plan that foresees two states - Israel and Palestine - living side by side in peace and security.

Since Mr Obama was sworn into office in January, a key plank of his strategy to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians has been to demand that Israel cease all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israel has repeatedly refused to consider a construction freeze of any kind in East Jerusalem, offering instead to impose a temporary construction freeze in the West Bank during the resumption of future negotiations with the Palestinians.

Despite its ostensibly tough stance, the Obama Administration has sent mixed signals.

Last month US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Mr Netanyahu's offer as ''unprecedented''.

But in the face of a furious response from the Arab world, and the announcement by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that he would quit politics, Mr Obama has renewed his insistence that Israel halt all settlement construction.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/world/israel-shrugs-off-fury-over-settlement-drive-20091118-imhm.html

November 6, 2009

Hasan Was ‘Mortified’ About Deployment to War

By JAMES DAO

WASHINGTON — Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., started having second thoughts about his military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.

He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan.

“He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”

Major Hasan was taken into custody by the Fort Hood police after the shooting spree, in which 11 people, many of them soldiers, were killed, and at least 31 others were wounded. The shootings occurred at a readiness center where soldiers are put through a series of medical, dental, legal and other paces in preparation for being deployed.

Though Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas reported that Major Hasan was to be deployed later this month, that could not be confirmed with the Army Thursday night.

Nader Hasan said his cousin never mentioned in recent phone calls to Virginia that he was going to be deployed, and he said the family was shocked when it heard the news on television Thursday afternoon.

“He was doing everything he could to avoid that,” Mr. Hasan said. “He wanted to do whatever he could within the rules to make sure he wouldn’t go over.”

Several years ago, that included retaining a lawyer and making inquiries about whether he could get out of the Army before his contract was up, because of the harassment he had received as a Muslim. But Nader Hasan said the lawyer had told his cousin that even if he paid the Army back for his education, it would not allow him to leave before his commitment was up.

“I think he gave up that fight and was just doing his time,” Mr. Hasan said.

Nader Hasan said his cousin’s parents had both been American citizens who owned businesses, including restaurants and a store, in Roanoke, Va. He declined to confirm reports that they were Jordanian, but said the parents, who are both dead, had immigrated from a small town near Jerusalem many years ago.

Records show that Major Hasan had received his undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech University and his medical degree at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.

He did his residency at Walter Reed Medical Center and then worked there for several years before being transferred to the Darnell Army Medical Center at Fort Hood earlier this year.

Major Hasan was not married and had two brothers, one living in Virginia and another in Jerusalem, his cousin said. The family, by and large, had prospered in the United States, with various members working in law, banking and medicine, Mr. Hasan said.

The Associated Press, quoted federal law enforcement officials saying Major Hasan had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that mentioned suicide bombings and other threats.

But Nader Hasan, 40, a lawyer living in Northern Virginia, described his cousin as a respectful, hard-working man who had devoted himself to his parents and his career.

He said his cousin had been a practicing Muslim who had become more devout after the deaths of his parents, in 1998 and 2001. But he said he had not expressed anti-American views or radical ideas.

“His parents didn’t want him to go into the military,” Mr. Hasan said. “He said, ‘No, I was born and raised here, I’m going to do my duty to the country.’ ”

Iraq signs mega oil deal with BP, CNPC

Ammar Karim
November 4, 2009 - 7:09AM

Iraq formally signed a deal with Britain's BP and China's CNPC on Tuesday to almost triple production at a giant southern oilfield.

"The two companies will invest $US50 billion ($A55.25 billion) in the project," Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, told reporters.

The 20 year-contract is expected to boost production at the Rumaila field from the current one million barrels per day (bpd) to around 2.8 million bpd within its first six years, the minister said.

Rumaila is already integral to Iraq's oil output, contributing almost half of the nation's current production of around 2.5 million bpd, and is estimated to hold further reserves of 17.7 billion barrels.

In return for their enormous investment, BP and CNPC have agreed to accept payment of two dollars per additional barrel produced at Rumaila.

"We have shown we can attract international companies to invest in Iraq and to boost production through service contracts," Shahristani said.

"They will not have a share of Iraqi oil and our country will have total control over production. Work begins tomorrow (Wednesday)," he said.

The two companies will operate through a joint venture in which Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) will have 25 per cent, BP 38 per cent and CNPC 37 per cent.

Shahristani said development of the oil field will cost $US25 billion ($A27.62 billion) and the other 25 billion will be the operating costs.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward said: "We expect to invest around $US15 billion ($A16.57 billion). It's a very significant undertaking for BP.

"We are going to focus on building the capacity and capabilities in Iraq, in the Iraqi oil industry for the benefit of Iraq and the people of Iraq. We are looking forward for the beginning of long and mutual relationship," he said.

Jiang Jemin, CEO of CNPC, said the three shareholders have "reached a common understanding on mutual efforts to reach the (targeted) level of production ahead of schedule".

Iraq has the world's third largest proven oil reserves of 115 billion barrels, behind only Saudi Arabia and Iran.

However, there has been little exploration or development of fields in the past three decades because of wars and the international embargo imposed on Iraq in 1990 following Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

Income from oil sales, especially earnings from exports of around two million barrels a day, provides some 85 per cent of Iraqi government revenues.

This story was found at: http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-business/iraq-signs-mega-oil-deal-with-bp-cnpc-20091104-hvmu.html

MORE 9/11 PROPAGANDA-THIS ONE IS FROM ENGLAND

• PRINT THIS PAGE

From The Times

October 30, 2009

Pakistan Army picks up trail of al-Qaeda operative wanted for 9/11

(Faisal Mahmood/Reuters)

Pakistani soldiers observe from a mountain during an operation organised by the army at the Sherwangi Tor village in South Waziristan

Zahid Hussain in Shawangai

Pakistani troops fighting Islamist militants in the mountains of South Waziristan have picked up the trail of a leading al-Qaeda figure wanted in connection with the attacks on America on September 11, 2001.

The Times was shown yesterday the German passport of Said Bahaji, a close associate of the September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. The army said that it found the passport and other documents in a mud compound in the village of Shawangai.

The documents, which show that Bahaji, 34, has been in Pakistan since early September 2001, appear to provide the strongest evidence yet of a direct link between Pakistani militants and al-Qaeda’s high command.

The army said that the village, captured this week in the latest effort to drive out militants who have been extending their operations ever closer to the capital, Islamabad, served as al-Qaeda’s command base. The Times saw documents showing the recent presence of other European citizens.

The battle for Shawangai lasted several days. “They were ferocious fighters and we had to battle hard to capture the village,” Lieutenant-Colonel Inam Rashid, the commanding officer who led the assault, said. His men had killed some of the militants but many others had escaped. Bahaji’s fate was unknown.

Another officer said: “We do not know whether he was killed or fled.”

Bahaji, a German citizen born to a Moroccan father and German mother, briefly served with the German Army before coming into contact with al-Qaeda. He was part of the Hamburg cell, sharing an apartment in 2001 with Mohammed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks.

The passport showed that Bahaji arrived in Karachi on September 4, 2001. A senior Pakistani investigator said that he was accompanied by Abdullah Husayni, a Belgian, and Ammar Moula, an Algerian with a French passport. Both were closely linked with al-Qaeda.

There was no indication that Bahaji ever left Pakistan. Pakistani investigators said that he stayed in Karachi in a hotel for several days where he was in contact with al-Qaeda members. He is believed to have moved to South Waziristan in 2002. The militants have been gathering strength in the region ever since.

Yesterday the mountains around Shawangai echoed to the sound of artillery fire as the army laid siege to the town of Kaniguram about 12 miles away. “It is going to be a tough fight but we will drive them out in the next few days,” Brigadier Ihsan Ullah said.

Kaniguram, with a population of 90,000 before the offensive, is considered a significant militant fortress. It sits at the centre of a network of roads leading to far-flung corners of the tribal region. Almost the entire population has fled. The town is under the control of the hardline Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, whose leader, Tahir Yuldashev, was killed in a US drone attack last month.

Officers said that about 1,500 Uzbek fighters were entrenched in Kaniguram. “They would fight to the death,” Major-General Khalid Rabbani, the regional commander, said.

The capture of the town could clear the way for troops to advance towards Saragoha, another key militant base.

More than 30,000 Pakistani forces backed by F16 jets launched an offensive this month to flush out al-Qaeda and Taleban militants from their stronghold in South Waziristan after a series of terrorist attacks across the country.

The government troops have made significant advances, capturing key areas such as Kotkai, the home town of Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taleban movement.

This is the army’s third campaign in South Waziristan. The last two in 2004 and 2007 ended in failure, forcing the authorities to sign a peace deal with the militants that analysts say turned the area into an al-Qaeda and Taleban base.

Officers have vowed that this time they will not stop until the region is cleared of the militants.

The fighting has forced about 200,000 people from the battle zone, creating a humanitarian crisis as civilians try to escape before the harsh winter. A US-based rights group warned of a “catastrophe” if aid was not allowed in to help civilians trapped in the area.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement yesterday that the Pakistani authorities should ensure that civilians who could not escape the fighting had access to basic necessities.

October 28, 2009 from the New York Times

Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll

By DEXTER FILKINS, MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN

This article is by Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan.

Ahmed Wali Karzai said in an interview that he cooperated with American civilian and military officials, but did not engage in the drug trade and did not receive payments from the C.I.A.

The relationship between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging, several American officials said. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government, the officials said.

Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city — the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s founder. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. “He’s our landlord,” a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Karzai also helps the C.I.A. communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban. Mr. Karzai’s role as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban is now regarded as valuable by those who support working with Mr. Karzai, as the Obama administration is placing a greater focus on encouraging Taliban leaders to change sides.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment for this article.

“No intelligence organization worth the name would ever entertain these kind of allegations,” said Paul Gimigliano, the spokesman.

Some American officials said that the allegations of Mr. Karzai’s role in the drug trade were not conclusive.

“There’s no proof of Ahmed Wali Karzai’s involvement in drug trafficking, certainly nothing that would stand up in court,” said one American official familiar with the intelligence. “And you can’t ignore what the Afghan government has done for American counterterrorism efforts.”

At the start of the Afghan war, just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, American officials paid warlords with questionable backgrounds to help topple the Taliban and maintain order with relatively few American troops committed to fight in the country. But as the Taliban has become resurgent and the war has intensified, Americans have increasingly viewed a strong and credible central government as crucial to turning back the Taliban’s advances.

Now, with more American lives on the line, the relationship with Mr. Karzai is setting off anger and frustration among American military officers and other officials in the Obama administration. They say that Mr. Karzai’s suspected role in the drug trade, as well as what they describe as the mafialike way that he lords over southern Afghanistan, makes him a malevolent force.

These military and political officials say the evidence, though largely circumstantial, suggests strongly that Mr. Karzai has enriched himself by helping the illegal trade in poppy and opium to flourish. The assessment of these military and senior officials in the Obama administration dovetails with that of senior officials in the Bush administration.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money are flowing through the southern region, and nothing happens in southern Afghanistan without the regional leadership knowing about it,” a senior American military officer in Kabul said. Like most of the officials in this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the information.

“If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” the American officer said of Mr. Karzai. “Our assumption is that he’s benefiting from the drug trade.”

American officials say that Afghanistan’s opium trade, the largest in the world, directly threatens the stability of the Afghan state, by providing a large percentage of the money the Taliban needs for its operations, and also by corrupting Afghan public officials to help the trade flourish.

The Obama administration has repeatedly vowed to crack down on the drug lords who are believed to permeate the highest levels of President Karzai’s administration. They have pressed him to move his brother out of southern Afghanistan, but he has so far refused to do so.

Other Western officials pointed to evidence that Ahmed Wali Karzai orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots for his brother’s re-election effort in August. He is also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots.

“The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone,” General Flynn said.

In the interview in which he denied a role in the drug trade or taking money from the C.I.A., Ahmed Wali Karzai said he received regular payments from his brother, the president, for “expenses,” but said he did not know where the money came from. He has, among other things, introduced Americans to insurgents considering changing sides. And he has given the Americans intelligence, he said. But he said he was not compensated for that assistance.

“I don’t know anyone under the name of the C.I.A.,” Mr. Karzai said. “I have never received any money from any organization. I help, definitely. I help other Americans wherever I can. This is my duty as an Afghan.”

Mr. Karzai acknowledged that the C.I.A. and Special Operations troops stayed at Mullah Omar’s old compound. And he acknowledged that the Kandahar Strike Force was based there. But he said he had no involvement with them.

A former C.I.A. officer with experience in Afghanistan said the agency relied heavily on Ahmed Wali Karzai, and often based covert operatives at compounds he owned. Any connections Mr. Karzai might have had to the drug trade mattered little to C.I.A. officers focused on counterterrorism missions, the officer said.

“Virtually every significant Afghan figure has had brushes with the drug trade,” he said. “If you are looking for Mother Teresa, she doesn’t live in Afghanistan.”

The debate over Ahmed Wali Karzai, which began when President Obama took office in January, intensified in June, when the C.I.A.’s local paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, shot and killed Kandahar’s provincial police chief, Matiullah Qati, in a still-unexplained shootout at the office of a local prosecutor.

The circumstances surrounding Mr. Qati’s death remain shrouded in mystery. It is unclear, for instance, if any agency operatives were present — but officials say the firefight broke out when Mr. Qati tried to block the strike force from freeing the brother of a task force member who was being held in custody.

“Matiullah was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mr. Karzai said in the interview.

Counternarcotics officials have repeatedly expressed frustration over the unwillingness of senior policy makers in Washington to take action against Mr. Karzai — or even begin a serious investigation of the allegations against him. In fact, they say that while other Afghans accused of drug involvement are investigated and singled out for raids or even rendition to the United States, Mr. Karzai has seemed immune from similar scrutiny.

For years, first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration have said that the Taliban benefits from the drug trade, and the United States military has recently expanded its target list to include drug traffickers with ties to the insurgency. The military has generated a list of 50 top drug traffickers tied to the Taliban who can now be killed or captured.

Senior Afghan investigators say they know plenty about Mr. Karzai’s involvement in the drug business. In an interview in Kabul this year, a top former Afghan Interior Ministry official familiar with Afghan counternarcotics operations said that a major source of Mr. Karzai’s influence over the drug trade was his control over key bridges crossing the Helmand River on the route between the opium growing regions of Helmand Province and Kandahar.

The former Interior Ministry official said that Mr. Karzai was able to charge huge fees to drug traffickers to allow their drug-laden trucks to cross the bridges.

But the former officials said it was impossible for Afghan counternarcotics officials to investigate Mr. Karzai. “This government has become a factory for the production of Talibs because of corruption and injustice,” the former official said.

Some American counternarcotics officials have said they believe that Mr. Karzai has expanded his influence over the drug trade, thanks in part to American efforts to single out other drug lords.

In debriefing notes from Drug Enforcement Administration interviews in 2006 of Afghan informants obtained by The New York Times, one key informant said that Ahmed Wali Karzai had benefited from the American operation that lured Hajji Bashir Noorzai, a major Afghan drug lord during the time that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, to New York in 2005. Mr. Noorzai was convicted on drug and conspiracy charges in New York in 2008, and was sentenced to life in prison this year.

Habibullah Jan, a local military commander and later a member of Parliament from Kandahar, told the D.E.A. in 2006 that Mr. Karzai had teamed with Haji Juma Khan to take over a portion of the Noorzai drug business after Mr. Noorzai’s arrest.

Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul, and Mark Mazzetti and James Risen from Washington. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington.

In Deadliest Month, 53 U.S. Troops Die in Afghanistan

By ALISSA J. RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan — Eight Americans died in combat in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, bringing October’s total to 53 and making it the deadliest month for Americans in the eight-year war. September and October were both deadlier months overall for NATO troops.

The troops, along with an Afghan civilian accompanying them, were killed in several attacks involving “multiple, complex” improvised bombs, according to a statement from the NATO-led coalition.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, said that Taliban in Zabul Province were responsible. He said they had blown up two armored vehicles carrying the troops. He also said that the Taliban had engaged in a fierce firefight lasting more than a half-hour with Afghan police in Zabul and killed eight officers. His report could not be verified because the American military is with-holding additional information until the families of the dead had been notified.

On Oct. 26, two incidents involving helicopter crashes resulted in the death of eleven American troops and three drug enforcement agents, but hostile fire was almost certainly not a factor in those cases, according to a military spokesman.

The October toll of 53 American soldiers killed exceeds that of August, when 51 died, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks military losses in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The United States has been increasing the number of soldiers and marines in Afghanistan and many have gone into some of the toughest areas of the country. Southern Afghanistan has been the most contested ground with both locally-based insurgents and fighters that cross the border from Pakistan.

“A loss like this is extremely difficult for the families as well as for those who served alongside these brave service members,” said Capt. Jane Campbell of the Navy, a spokeswoman for the international troops.

The mounting casualties come as President Barack Obama is deliberating over whether to send more troops to Afghanistan and whether to undertake a full counter-insurgency strategy, which requires a larger commitment of resources. The American public is split on whether to put more troops in harm’s way.

Also on Tuesday, the American and NATO-led forces said an Army plane that had been missing since Oct. 13 was found with the remains of three civilian crew members on Oct. 21 in the high mountains of northeastern Afghanistan over Nuristan Province, where the military has been conducting extensive operations. The army said the plane’s disappearance had not been announced until recovery efforts were complete.

The aircraft was stripped of all sensitive materials and destroyed in place, according to a statement from the NATO-led forces. The case is under investigation, but the military said it did not think that hostile action was the cause of the crash.

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting.

Defence Minister John Faulkner reaffirms Australia's commitment to Afghanistan

• AAP
• From:AAP
• October 25, 2009 1:55PM

• DEFENCE Minister John Faulkner has confirmed Australia's commitment to the war in Afghanistan in meetings with members of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Europe.

• Senator Faulkner met with NATO and non-NATO counterparts on Friday to discuss the international community's efforts in Afghanistan.

• He also met with defence ministers of 42 other ISAF nations in Bratislava, Slovakia, where they discussed NATO's strategic planning framework for Afghanistan for the coming year.

• The defence minister said the meeting provided him with the opportunity to ``clearly outline Australia's commitment in Afghanistan.''

• ``I emphasised our focus on training and mentoring the Afghan National Army 4th Brigade in Oruzgan until they are able to take responsibility for the security and stability of the province,'' Senator Faulkner said in a statement.

• Central to discussions were ISAF commander General Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the campaign in Afghanistan, the need for continuing support for the Afghan National Security Forces, and complementing military efforts with civil assistance and governance improvements at all levels, he said.

• The defence minister also participated in meetings with counterparts from the US, UK, NATO, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands and AfghanistanSenator Faulkner also thanked the Netherlands for the Dutch military's leadership and role in Oruzgan and urged NATO to ``speedily resolve'' a replacement, following the planned withdrawal of Dutch forces in August next year.