THE FORGOTTEN WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

News

12/07/13 ToloNews: 19 Insurgents Killed, 3 Injured in Operations Nineteen insurgents were killed and three were injured during a series of coordinated operations over the past 24 hours carried out by the Afghan National Army (ANA), Afghan National Police (ANP) and National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan Ministry of Interior said in a statement on Saturday.

12/07/13 janes: SVBIED attack wounds four ISAF soldiers in Afghanistan's Kandaha FOUR International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers of undisclosed nationalities were wounded along with at least six civilians when a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (SVBIED), driven by an unidentified militant, detonated near an ISAF patrol in the Maiwand district of Afghanistan's Kandahar province on 5 December, Afghan Islamic Press reported. No claim of responsibility was immediately made.

12/07/13 Reuters: Hagel in Kabul amid crisis over vital U.S., Afghan security pact U.S. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel arrived in Afghanistan for a weekend visit on Saturday but had no plans to meet President Hamid Karzai amid tensions over his refusal to sign a deal governing the post-2014 U.S. military presence, a senior U.S. official said.

12/07/13 NBCNews: Wounded in Afghanistan, troops begin healing in Germany When a rocket blast struck him in southern Afghanistan nearly two weeks ago, cleaving a nine-inch gash in the back of his neck, Marine Corporal Michael Hall began a journey that has become a signature route home for thousands of American service-members.

12/06/13 AP: UK Marine Gets Minimum 10 Years for Afghan Murder A British Royal Marine convicted of murdering a wounded Taliban insurgent was sentenced Friday to a minimum of 10 years in prison. A military judge told Sgt. Alexander Blackman he had "betrayed your corps and all British service personnel who have served in Afghanistan." Two other marines were acquitted of the September 2011 killing in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. They were charged after military authorities found footage of the incident on a helmet camera belonging to one of the men.

12/06/13 VOA: Afghan Women At A Crossroads As coalition partners, including the U.S. military, draw down from Afghanistan, handing over full responsibility to the Afghan forces by the end of next year, an important question lingers: will Afghanistan’s government protect the progress made to advance the human rights of Afghan women, or will there be a reversal in that progress?

12/05/13 USAToday: Highway 1 shows the difficulties ahead in Afghanistan Insurgent attacks are regular occurrences on the strategic highway, and there is a question whether Afghan forces will ever be able to secure it. Light, pale dust trail several U.S. soldiers as they head past twisted and blackened tanker trucks on Highway 1 in search of the insurgents who set them on fire.

12/05/13 WREX: Civilian worker from southwestern Illinois killed in Afghanistan A 64-year-old Belleville man is dead after what his brother called a rocket explosion at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. Kenneth Haas said his brother Albert, a Vietnam veteran, volunteered to work at Bagram as a civilian aircraft mechanic. He died on November 29. Haas' family was flown by his employer, AAR Airlift of Palm Bay, Florida, to Delaware to meet his casket. Services are scheduled for Friday at Renner Funeral Home in Belleville.

12/05/13 LATimes: Watchdog faults U.S. military's oversight of aid to Afghanistan A federal watchdog agency on Thursday accused the U.S. military in Afghanistan of failing to conduct an adequate risk assessment for managing and accounting for $3 billion in military aid spent by U.S. taxpayers on Afghan security forces in their fight against Taliban insurgents.

12/04/13 Reuters: Afghan ministers will not sign U.S. pact unless demands met - Karzai Afghan President Hamid Karzai will not allow any of his ministers to sign a security pact with the United States unless key demands are met, the president's spokesman said on Wednesday.

12/04/13 rferl: For Source Of Latest U.S.-Afghan Row, Look To Pakistan To get to the source of the latest dispute between Afghanistan and t United States, you might have to travel down the road to Pakistan. That's because Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province has been the scene of a weeklong NATO supply route blockade that has disrupted crucial military supplies heading for Afghanistan.

12/04/13 janes: SVBIED attack kills four police officers in Afghanistan's Wardak AT LEAST four senior police officers were killed and 17 other police personnel were wounded when a Taliban militant rammed a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (SVBIED) into the district police headquarters in Nerkh district in Afghanistan's Wardak province on 2 December, Khaama Press reported. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack.

12/04/13 cphpost: Afghan interpreters given Danish visas Four Afghan interpreters who assisted Danish forces in Afghanistan could be on their way to being granted asylum in Denmark reports the Ministry of Defence. Three have already been granted visas so they can have their asylum applications processed, and two more have been offered the chance to apply for visas.

12/04/13 WaPo: Army general’s report defends decision to build $36 million headquarters in Afghanistan This past summer, the Army began investigating why the military spent nearly $36 million to construct a well-appointed 64,000-square-foot headquarters in southwestern Afghanistan that commanders in the area did not want and has never been used.

12/04/13 rferl: NATO Chief Pressures Kabul To Sign Security Agreement NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has urged Afghanistan's government to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the United States as a matter of urgency. Rasmussen warned that no troops and military equipment will be available in Afghanistan if the framework isn't in place from January 1, 2015.

12/04/13 ToloNews: 27 Insurgents Killed, 6 Injured in Operations Twenty seven insurgents were killed and 6 were injured during a series of coordinated operations over the past 24 hours carried out by the Afghan National Army (ANA), Afghan National Police (ANP) and National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan Ministry of Interior said in a statement on Wednesday.

12/04/13 BND: Rocket attack kills Belleville man at Afghanistan air base Albert Henry Haas, 64, loved his job as a civilian aircraft mechanic at Bagram Air Base, near the Afghanistan capital of Kabul. Haas, an Army veteran of Vietnam, volunteered for duty at Bagram, where he worked on both helicopters and fixed-wing airplanes after decades as a aircraft mechanic in the United States.

12/04/13 Reuters: US stops cargo shipments on Afghanistan-Pakistan land route, citing fears about protests The U.S. military has halted ground shipments of cargo leaving Afghanistan via its key Pakistan supply route to ensure the safety of drivers following protests in Pakistan over American drone strikes, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.

12/04/13 NYTimes: Time Running Out on Security Deal With Afghanistan, NATO Warns International officials signaled new urgency on Wednesday for the United States and Afghanistan to reach agreement on a long-term security deal, but officials suggested that there had been little movement on either side of the deadlock.