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114,000 US contractors active in Afghan war

Press TV – October 18, 2012

There are currently more private contractors working for the US military and other government agencies in Afghanistan than uniformed American military troops, reports indicate.

As of July, nearly 114,000 contractors were working for the US Defense Department in Afghanistan, compared to the 90,000 American troops in the country at the time, AFP reported Thursday, quoting “official statistics.”

The figures about the presence of a high number of US contractors working in Afghanistan emerged again after reports of a newly-released video showing American security contractors drunk and high on narcotics while on duty.

The US-based broadcaster ABC News, which released the footage and first reported on the incident, also cited a February 2011 report by a bipartisan commission set up to scrutinize the extraordinary use of contractors by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan which concluded that the United States had wasted tens of billions of the nearly $177 billion that was spent on those contracts and grants since 2002.

The report, titled “At What Risk? Correcting Over-reliance on Contractors in Contingency Operations,” also stated that “about 200,000 contractor employees are working in Iraq and Afghanistan,” roughly equal to the American military forces deployed there in years prior to the report.

Numerous other reports verify such figures and also emphasize the relatively high number of casualties among the US contract workers that are often not reported and not accounted for.

According to official statistics released by Pentagon in May 2010, the total number of US military contractors working in Afghanistan, Iraq and its Central Command (covering the Middle East region) were 250,335, of which over 112,000 worked in Afghanistan, nearly 96,000 worked in Iraq and about 43,000 worked for the US Central Command (USCENTCOM).

The data also indicated that over 53,000 of the contractors were US citizens, 95,000 were third country nationals, and nearly 102,000 were locally employed.

Pointing to the relatively high number of casualty figures among US contractors working in Afghanistan, The New York Times reported earlier this year that in 2011 “at least 430 employees of American contractors were reported killed in Afghanistan,” compared to 418 American soldiers killed in the country in the same year, adding that the same trend was also true during the US occupation of Iraq.

The report, however, emphasized that the US military does not keep track of the casualties suffered by its contractors, noting that the country’s Department of Labor would hold the data only for American casualties that have been reported by US contractors hiring them. It added that there is hardly any counting of casualties suffered by US contract workers that are citizens of other nations.

The Times report also stressed that for every contractor killed in countries invaded by the US, “many more are seriously wounded.” It cites Labor Department’s statistics as reporting that in addition to the 430 contractors reported killed in Afghanistan in 2011, another 1,777 American contractors in the country got wounded.

October 18, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Georgia: Commander of U.S. Marine Corps in Europe Meets Ivanishvili

Civil Georgia | October 5, 2012

Bidzina Ivanishvili and Commander of the U.S. Marine Corps in Europe, Lt Gen John M. Paxton, outside Ivanishvili’s compound in Tbilisi.
Photo: Ivanishvili’s press office

Tbilisi – Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose Georgian Dream coalition won the parliamentary elections, said Georgia, which has two battalions stationed in the Helmand province of Afghanistan, would “definitely continue” cooperation with the U.S. over Afghanistan.

He made the remarks on October 5 after meeting with commander of the U.S. Marine Corps in Europe, Lt Gen John M. Paxton, who is visiting Georgia.

“Georgia has been a very valuable and trusted ally for many years; we work very closely together in Afghanistan, particularly in Helmand province and we have enjoyed a great relationship trying to develop NCO leadership, officer skills and work on enhanced security cooperation,” Lt Gen Paxton said after the meeting.

“We are here to congratulate Mr. Ivanishvili and to wish him a smooth transition of power. We are here to just reaffirm that the United States stands by Georgia,” he said and added he was looking forward not only to working relationship in Afghanistan but also to continued good relations in years ahead.

“This was my first meeting with the U.S. military, who have provided a huge assistance to establishing of the Georgian army and to its reforms in line with the NATO standards,” Ivanishvili said. “I knew it, but I was very glad to hear that Georgian [troops] have special importance in the NATO forces [in Afghanistan] and that together with the U.S. [troops] are [performing combat duties] in difficult areas”

“Of course we should do everything possible in order to [continue] our partnership with the United States in Afghanistan and in such hotspots,” Ivanishvili said and added that Georgia was playing “a role of a real junior friend” to the United States and “we will definitely continue cooperation in the future too.”

The Commander of U.S. Marine Corps in Europe met on October 5 with Chief of Joint Staff of the Georgian armed force Lt Gen Devi Chankotadze.

“The sides focused on an enhanced military cooperation between the countries. Chief of JS underlined that Georgia will continue cooperation with the United States in the same format and stressed the role the U.S. plays in modernization of the Georgian army and in developing interoperability with NATO,” the Georgian Ministry of Defense said. “Lt Gen Devi Chankotadze affirmed that Georgia stands ready to continue cooperation with NATO and the United States in the post-ISAF period too.”

Also on October 5, the Commander of U.S. Marine Corps in Europe visited National Training Centre, Krtsanisi, outside Tbilisi where he attended training of the Georgian servicemen, who are gearing up for the Afghan deployment.

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October 7, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Stop the War to hold two London rallies

Press TV – October 3, 2012

British anti-war campaigners, the Stop the War Coalition, have organized two protest rallies for next week against the war in Afghanistan and the threats on Iran and Syria.

The Sunday rally in London’s Trafalgar Square will be held on the 11th anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan to commemorate those killed in an event dubbed Naming of the Dead.

The protest will also call for an end to the British government’s involvement in the “unjustified and futile war” and bring the troops home by Christmas.

Paul Flynn who was recently sacked from the British parliament for saying the government has been lying about Afghanistan will be among the participants in the event.

Also on Tuesday, the Stop the War Coalition will hold a rally at the University of London Union against the “western intervention in Syria” and the threats of military action against Iran.

The Stop the War Coalition’s core idea of a joint rally against the intervention in Syria and the threats on Iran is that Syria is only an excuse for an attack on Iran.

“An attack on Iran remains the ultimate goal for the US. Intervention in Syria is a stepping stone toward that goal,” the group said in a statement on its website.

The group is also warning that any intervention will have “huge regional and global consequences” and will at best “deny the Syrian people the right to determine their own future.”

“It will place the opposition leadership in the hands of the western powers and their allies, who will act in their own interests,” the group said.

The rallies come amid sporadic reports and confirmations by British officials including Foreign Secretary William Hague that London is helping Syrian terrorists with military equipment and intelligence supplies.

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October 4, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Afghanistan: U.S. out, China surges in

By Barry Lando | September 27, 2012

There’s got to be some symbolism—if not irony–in the fact that just as the last of the 33,000 troops surged by Obama two years ago supposedly to pacify Afghanistan pulled out, the highest ranking Chinese official to visit Afghanistan in almost half a century pulled in—arriving in Kabul for a secret round of meetings with top Afghan officials.

Question: How will China deal with the country that proved such an expensive and bloody disaster for both the U.S., its NATO allies–and the U.S.S.R before them?

In a brief visit, unreported until he had left Kabul,  Zhou Younkang, China’s chief of domestic security, met with Afghani leaders, including President Hamid Karzai. They talked about drugs, international crime, terrorism, and developing Afghanistan’s huge natural resources—just as visiting Americans have done for years.

The result, a cluster of agreements, among them an announcement that 300 Afghan police officers will be sent to China for training over the next four years.

Which is another irony of sorts—coming at the same time as news that the U.S. and its allies have been obliged to scale back joint operations with the Afghan military and police, because they can no longer trust the men they’ve trained. American troops in the field with their Afghan allies now keep weapons ready and wear body armor even when they’re eating goat meat and yoghurt.

So far this year 51 American and NATO troops have been gunned down by Afghan military or police:  a startling 20% of all NATO casualties this year.

The off-the-wall video from California ridiculing the prophet Mohammed has only further fueled anti-American hatred.

As the New York Times quoted one 20 year old Afghan soldier, NATO casualties could even be higher.

“We would have killed many of them already,” he said, “but our commanders are cowards and don’t let us.”

There are still some 68,000 American troops based in Afghanistan, but the plans are for them all to be out by the end of 2014. Which means that China will be confronting serious security problems of its own in Afghanistan. They already have direct investments of more than $200 million in copper mining and oil exploration, and have promised to build a major railroad east to Pakistan or north to Turkestan.

But they could pour in billions more if Afghanistan were a secure, well-ordered country, free from the Taliban, free from kleptocratic war lords and venal government bureaucrats, patrolled by well-trained Afghan soldiers and police:  in other words, exactly the kind of country the U.S. would like to have left behind—and didn’t.

Instead, of course, despite America’s huge sacrifice in men and treasure –more than half a trillion dollars since 2001–things haven’t worked out that way.  [For a dramatic, running count of the enormous hemorrhage that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still represent to the U.S. economy check out costofwar.com.]

Meanwhile, corruption is rampant, and it’s by no means certain that Afghanistan has—or ever will have–a national army and police force worthy of the name.

The U.S. Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, peered into the Pentagon’ s 1.1 billion dollars fuel program to supply the Afghan Army, and concluded that there was no way to be ascertain how much if any of that fuel is really being used by Afghan security forces for their missions. There was also no way to know how much was stolen, lost or diverted to the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Almost half a billion dollars worth of receipts detailing with fuel payments over the past four years have been shredded.

With the Americans heading for the exits, the challenge facing the Chinese—and anyone else, like India–interested in investing in the country–is how to navigate this imbroglio.

Indeed, the Chinese have apparently already run into problems in Afghanistan. Work at the Mes Aynak copper mine in Logar Province is already behind schedule, and no work has begun on the promised Chinese-built railroad yet. Various impediments have turned up, like recalcitrant bureaucrats, tensions provoked by the need to displace local populations, the discovery of Buddhist ruins, as well as ramshackle Soviet-era mines that first had to be cleared.

And then there’s the rival, rapacious warlords, who see the country’s resources as a way of fueling their own ambitions—like General Abdul Rashid Dotsum, who the government has accused of attempting to extort illegal payoffs from the Chinese oil company.

However, in their dealings throughout the developing world, from despots to democracies, the Chinese have shown themselves adept at navigating such quagmires. There’s no talk from Beijing of Chinese “exceptionalism”. They’ve been taking on the world as it is—not as someone in a Chinese think tank would want to remake it.

They’ve generally turned a blind eye to considerations of human rights, opted to pay off or work with the powers that be, and used offers of huge new infrastructure projects as bait, steadily increasing their share of the globe’s resources.

Many potential investors still shy away from Afghanistan. They have no idea what lies on the other side of the political abyss after 2014 when the U.S. completes its withdrawal.

China is also wary, but they’re also seriously planning their Afghan strategy for the post-American future.

As Wang Lian, a professor with the School of International Studies at the Paking University in Beijing, put it,  ”Almost every great power in history, when they were rising, was deeply involved in Afghanistan, and China will not be an exception.”

Unmentioned, of course, was what an unmitigated disaster that involvement turned out to be for the USSR, the US–and Afghanistan.

We’ll see how China fares.

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September 28, 2012 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is the Afghan Surge Really Over?

By Peter Hart – FAIR – 09/21/2012

Misleading media reports today are announcing the end of the U.S.  troop surge in Afghanistan.

USA Today:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the Washington Post:

There are many more along the same lines.

It’s important to understand that the troop reductions are only part of the total troop surge that happened under Obama.

As FAIR noted last year (Media Advisory, 6/23/11) there were two major increases in the number of U.S. troops in 2009:

When Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. had about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan. Obama has initiated two major troop increases in Afghanistan: about 20,000 additional troops were announced in February 2009, followed by the December 2009 announcement that an another 33,000 would be deployed as well; other smaller increases have brought the total to 100,000.

The surge that is “ending” today refers to the 33,000 that were sent in December. But the troops that were sent in the earlier Obama surge are still there. As the USA Today article notes, there are still 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, roughly double the number that were in the country when Obama took office.

These headlines might give the impression that the Afghan War is winding down. Based on the troop levels alone, that would be highly misleading.

September 21, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

After NATO Strike Kills 8 Afghan Women, Pundits Still Wonder: Why Do They Hate Us?

By Peter Hart – FAIR – 09/17/2012

The protests and violence in Egypt, Libya and Yemen have caused a notable uptick in media discussions about, as Newsweek’s cover puts it, “Muslim Rage.”

Part of the corporate media’s job is to make sure real political grievances are mostly kept out of the discussion. It’s a lot easier to talk about angry mobs and their peculiar religion than it is to acknowledge that maybe some of the anger has little to do with religion at all.

Take the news out of Afghanistan yesterday: A NATO airstrike killed eight women in the eastern province of Laghman who were out collecting firewood. This has happened before. And attacks that kill a lot of Afghans–whether accidental or not–tend to be covered the same way–quietly, and with a focus not on the killing but on the ramifications.

So yesterday if you logged into CommonDreams, you may have seen this headline:

NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan Kills 8 Women

Now look for the same news in the New York Times today (9/17/12). It’s there–but the headline is this:

Karzai Denounces Coalition Over Airstrikes

The Times gave a clear sense of what was important: “Mr. Karzai’s condemnation was likely to rankle some Western officials…” the paper’s Matthew Rosenberg explained, who went on to explain that

the confrontational tone of the statement was a sharp reminder of the acrimony that has often characterized relations between Mr. Karzai and his American benefactors.

In the Washington Post, the NATO airstrikes made the front page–sort of. Readers saw this headline at the website:

4 troops killed in southern Afghanistan insider attack

As you might have already guessed, the killings of Afghan women are a secondary news event:

Four U.S. troops were killed Sunday at a remote checkpoint in southern Afghanistan when a member of the Afghan security forces opened fire on them, military officials said. The attack brought to 51 the number of international troops shot dead by their Afghan partners this year. The insider attack came on the same day that NATO warplanes killed nine women gathering firewood in the mountains outside their village in an eastern province, according to local officials.

One has to wonder whether, absent the deaths of U.S. troops, the airstrike would have made the news at all.

September 17, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Media hype 9/11, ignore 1m Iraqi victims: Ahmadinejad

Press TV – September 11, 2012

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has criticized Western media for creating hype over the September 11 attacks and ignoring more than one million victims of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The materialistic view of Zionists has destroyed the sacredness of media and today media no longer regulate the relations among humans, but have turned into a means of domination and gaining power,” Ahmadinejad said on Monday.

The Iranian chief executive stated that a major part of the events surrounding the September 11 attacks was merely a “media operation”, adding, “Today American forces would not be in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Persian Gulf, if it was not for the media coverage of this incident.”

Why have the media that provoked public sentiments and emotions during the September 11 incident, remained silent regarding more than one million victims that have been killed in the aftermath of the attack?, he asked.

On September 11, 2001, a series of coordinated attacks were carried out in the United States leaving almost 3,000 people dead.

The US, under the administration of former President George W. Bush, invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after claiming that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by members of al-Qaeda harbored by the then Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The US also attacked Iraq in 2003 claiming that the Middle Eastern country was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Washington’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed the lives of more than a million people.

September 11, 2012 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Unexploded Israeli cluster bomb kills Lebanese woman

Press TV – September 4, 2012

A woman has been killed and a soldier seriously injured after an unexploded cluster bomb detonated in Nabatiye Governorate in southern Lebanon, Press TV reports.

The incident occurred on Tuesday when a bomblet exploded in Bint Jbeil, the second largest town in the in southern Lebanon.

The injured soldier was rushed to the nearest hospital.

US reports say Israel dropped some 4.5 million cluster munitions in Lebanon during the last days of its military offensive on the country in 2006.

The move made Lebanon one of the worst affected countries by the internationally-banned arms, along with Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya.

Six years after the 2006 war, Lebanon has not yet finished clearing the cluster munitions and landmines in the south, with Israel refusing to provide UN authorities with maps of the locations of the munitions it dropped.

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September 4, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US stops training Afghan forces due to rise in ‘insider attacks’

Press TV – September 2, 2012

The United States has stopped training Afghan forces due to rising incidents of the so-called insider attacks in Afghanistan.

The Washington Post reports that the commander of the US Special Forces has suspended training for all new Afghan recruits until Afghan soldiers are re-investigated for their possible ties to Taliban militants.

The US daily says the re-vetting process will affect more than 27,000 Afghan troops.

“We have a very good vetting process,” the paper quotes an unnamed senior special operations official as saying.

“What we learned is that you just can’t take it for granted. We probably should have had a mechanism to follow up with recruits from the beginning.”

Recently, the insider attacks by Afghan soldiers on US-led foreign troops in Afghanistan have increased.

Afghan forces have killed at least 45 foreign forces, mostly US soldiers, in such attacks so far in 2012.

On August 29, an Afghan soldier opened fire on a group of Australian troops in the southern district of Tarin Kowt, killing three of them.

Earlier in August, six US soldiers were killed in a series of such attacks in a single day.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has expressed deep concern about the rise in the insider attacks.

September 2, 2012 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Uzbek bill flies in face of US hopes of military presence

Press TV – August 30, 2012

Uzbekistan’s upper house of parliament has endorsed a bill, banning the country’s hosting of foreign military bases, amid the US hopes of military presence in the country.

“Uzbekistan will have no foreign military bases and facilities on its territory,” ITAR-TASS quoted Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov as saying in Tashkent on Thursday.

The proposed law, yet to be fatefully signed by President Islam Karimov, authorizes the country to quit interstate organizations that form military blocs.

Komilov likewise said Uzbekistan would “reserve the right to leave any interstate structures if they become military-political blocs.”

The bill came against a backdrop of growing rumors of Uzbekistan’s plan to host a US military base to replace a major airbase, leased by the US military, in neighboring Kyrgyzstan.

In February, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev said Bishkek planned to close the base, which is located at a major airport in the Kyrgyz capital, and is reportedly being used as a transit center for Washington’s operations in Afghanistan.

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August 30, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is the US really going to withdraw from Afghanistan?

By Boris Volkhonsky | The Voice of Russia | August 27, 2012

On Sunday, as reported by Reuters, a senior US logistics commander in charge of transferring excess non-military equipment to Afghan forces Brigadier-General Steven Shapiro rejected accusations from front line combat troops that the complicated rollback from bases across Afghanistan was disrupting NATO-led operations against insurgents.

He said that around 400 bases had been already successfully closed or handed to Afghan security forces from a high of around 800 last October as part of a withdrawal of foreign troops from combat operations winding up in 2014.

The story goes on to say that the pullout of more than $60 billion worth of war-fighting equipment from Afghanistan is expected to be one of the most complicated logistical exercises in recent history, much more difficult than the pullout from Iraq.

By September the US administration is planning to cut the number of the US troops by 28,000 servicemen, which is regarded as a major PR action ahead of November presidential elections.

All this hardly makes the US servicemen remaining in Afghanistan too happy.

“It’s a nightmare. We barely have enough guys to cover our area, let alone get ready to pack up,” a US officer recently told Reuters in volatile eastern Kunar province.

Indeed, the whole situation poses too many questions, for most of which there are no ready answers.

First, the only visible result of the already started pullout process is the increasing number of defections among Afghan military and security force, and correspondingly – a growing number of insider (so called “green-on-blue”) attacks by people clad in Afghan uniform on NATO soldiers.

The diminishing number of Western troops is likely to encourage Afghans trained and equipped by their mentors to turn the arms, even more frequently, against their former patrons.

Second, all military – combat and non-combat – equipment has been accumulated in Afghanistan for more than two years. Now the task is to withdraw it in less than two years. The task itself seems unrealistic, especially with the strained relationship between the US and Pakistan – the only country capable of providing the shortest way for the pullout.

Despite the fact that recently Pakistan agreed to reopen the southern supply route for NATO forces in Afghanistan, even the present Pakistani leadership is under constant pressure from the society and political parties in order to reassess the relationship with the US. And taking into consideration that no later than 2013 the current leadership is more than likely to lose power, the prospects for a much more anti-American forces leadership to prevail is more than real. This will definitely pose additional difficulties for the NATO command.

This leaves few options open. One of them is using the northern route via Central Asia and Russia, which is much more expensive and not likely to make most of the transit countries happy. The other implies leaving most of the equipment at the Afghans’ disposal. But this variant is fraught with the risks that the equipment and arms will be used by those very forces the US is taking so much pain to fight.

Taking all these factors into consideration, one may easily come to a conclusion that whatever is explicitly said about the US plans concerning Afghanistan hardly reflects the truth.

And the truth is that the 400 bases allegedly “closed or handed to Afghan security forces” are small combat outposts and observation positions of minor importance. The big ones, like Shindand air base in Herat province (in close vicinity to Iran), or Kandahar and Bagram air bases remain basically untouched. And there is all reason to believe that the highly publicized pullout does not concern these major installations which play a crucial role in the US strategy of establishing its dominance in the “Greater Middle East” enabling American military to control a vast territory far beyond Afghanistan.

This also explains why both contenders in the US presidential race keep mum on the issue of Afghanistan. In reality, neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney is going to fulfill Obama’s imprudent promise to withdraw from Afghanistan. However unpopular the war might be, the role of the global gendarme is much more important than the public opinion.

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August 28, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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