DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: Prince Harry Coming Home From Afghanistan ~ Recalls Killing Taliban

Asia News Report: DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: Prince Harry Coming Home From Afghanistan ~ Recalls Killing Taliban

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Jill Lawless - London — The Associated Press
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 21, 2013: Capt. Wales is coming home to be Prince Harry once again.

The British Ministry of Defence revealed Monday that the 28-year-old prince is returning from a 20-week deployment in Afghanistan, where he served as an Apache helicopter pilot with the Army Air Corps. It did not immediately divulge his exact whereabouts.

In interviews conducted in Afghanistan, the third in line to the British throne described feeling boredom, frustration and satisfaction during a tour that saw him kill Taliban fighters on missions in support of ground troops. He also spoke of his struggle to balance his job as an army officer with his royal role – and his relief at the chance to be “one of the guys.”

“My father’s always trying to remind me about who I am and stuff like that,” said Harry, the younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana. “But it’s very easy to forget about who I am when I am in the army. Everyone’s wearing the same uniform and doing the same kind of thing.”

Stationed at Camp Bastion, a sprawling British base in the southern Afghan desert, the prince – known as Capt. Wales in the military – flew scores of missions as a co-pilot gunner, sometimes firing rockets and missiles at Taliban fighters.

“Take a life to save a life. That’s what we revolve around, I suppose,” he said. “If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game.”

Harry’s second tour in Afghanistan went more smoothly than the first, in 2007-2008, which was cut short after 10 weeks when a magazine and websites disclosed details of his whereabouts. British media had agreed to a news blackout on security grounds.

This time, the media were allowed limited access to the prince in return for not reporting operational details.

A member of the air corps’ 662 Squadron, the prince was part of a two-man crew whose duties ranged from supporting ground troops in firefights with the Taliban to accompanying British Chinook and U.S. Black Hawk helicopters as they evacuated wounded soldiers.

He said that while sometimes it was necessary to fire on insurgents, the formidable helicopter – equipped with wing-mounted rockets, Hellfire laser-guided missiles and a 30mm machine gun – was usually an effective deterrent.

“If guys get injured, we come straight into the overhead, box off any possibility of an insurgent attack because they look at us and just go, ‘Right, that’s an unfair fight, we’re not going to go near them,’” Harry said.

Harry shared a room with another pilot in a basic accommodation block made from shipping containers, and passed the time between callouts playing video games and watching movies with his fellow officers. His security detail accompanied him on base, but not when flying.

“It’s as normal as it’s going to get,” Harry said of the arrangement. “I’m one of the guys. I don’t get treated any differently.”

But he said he still received unwanted attention at Camp Bastion, which is home to thousands of troops.

“For me, it’s not that normal, because I go into the cookhouse and everyone has a good old gawp, and that’s one thing that I dislike about being here,” he said. “Because there’s plenty of guys in there that have never met me, therefore look at me as Prince Harry and not as Capt. Wales, which is frustrating.”

Ever since Harry graduated from the Sandhurst military academy in 2006, his desire for a military career has collided with his royal role. After his curtailed first Afghan deployment, he retrained as a helicopter pilot in order to have the chance of being sent back.

The speed and height at which Apaches fly make them hard for insurgents to shoot down, but Harry’s squadron commander, Maj. Ali Mack, said the prince had still faced real danger.

“There is nothing routine about deploying to an operational theatre – where there is absolutely an insurgency – and flying an attack helicopter in support of both ISAF and Afghan security forces,” Mack said.

The danger was underscored soon after Harry arrived at Camp Bastion in September, when insurgents attacked the adjacent U.S. base, Camp Leatherneck, killing two U.S. Marines and wounding several other troops.

Harry said he would have preferred to have been deployed on the ground with his old regiment, the Household Cavalry, rather than spending his tour of duty at Camp Bastion, a fortified mini-city replete with shops, gyms and a Pizza Hut restaurant.

Harry said it was “a pain the arse, being stuck in Bastion.”

“I’d much rather be out with the lads in a PB (patrol base),” he said. “The last job was, for me personally, better.”

Despite the frustrations of base life, Harry said he relished the flying: “As soon as we’re outside the fence, we’re in the thick of it.”

“Yes, OK, we’re supposedly safe, but anything can go wrong with this thing, but at the end of the day we’re out there to provide cover and protection for the guys on the ground,” he said.

Many of Harry’s family have also seen combat – most recently his uncle, Prince Andrew, who flew Royal Navy helicopters during the 1982 Falklands War. His grandfather, Prince Philip, served on Royal Navy battleships during World War II.

His older brother William, who is second in line to the throne, is a Royal Air Force search-and-rescue pilot. He, too, has expressed a desire to serve on the front line, but officials consider it too dangerous.

Harry said he thought William should be allowed to serve in combat.

“Yes, you get shot at. But if the guys who are doing the same job as us are being shot at on the ground, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us being shot at as well.

“People back home will have issues with that, but we’re not special. The guys out there are. Simple as that.”

He said that while William was envious of his Afghan experience, his elder brother’s job had its advantages.

“He gets to go home to his wife and his dog, whereas out here we don’t,” Harry said. “We’re stuck playing PlayStation in a tent full of men.”

After the respite from scrutiny, the prince is returning to a Harry-hungry media eager for images of the eligible bachelor, and stories of his off-duty escapades.

Just before he went to Afghanistan, Harry hit the headlines during a game of strip billiards at a Las Vegas hotel. He apologized for the incident. “It was probably a classic example of me probably being too much army, and not enough prince,” he said.

But the prince did not attempt to hide his frustration with the intense coverage he faces. “I probably let myself down, I let my family down, I let other people down,” Harry said. “But at the end of the day I was in a private area and there should be a certain amount of privacy that one should expect.”

Later in the year, he hopes to join a group of injured servicemen on a charity race to the South Pole, and in July he is due to become an uncle when William’s wife Catherine gives birth to her first child.

Harry said that he “can’t wait” to be an uncle, but hoped that Kate would be given privacy during her pregnancy.

And he conceded that he felt more comfortable as Capt. Wales than as Prince Harry.

He said he tried to balance three facets of his life – “one in the army, one socially in my own private time, and then one with the family and stuff like that.”

“So there is a switch and I flick it when necessary,” he said. “Army comes first. It’s my work at the end of the day.”

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Jill Lawless - London — The Associated Press
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DTN News - SPECIAL REPORT: The Afghanistan Massacre On The Roof of The World

Asia News Report: DTN News - SPECIAL REPORT: The Afghanistan Massacre On The Roof of The World
*The first British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839 ended three years later in disaster. In an exclusive extract from his new book, William Dalrymple draws parallels with the current campaign

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By William Dalrymple - Telegraph UK
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 18, 2013: At the end of Kim, Kipling has his eponymous hero say, “When everyone is dead, the Great Game is finished. Not before.” In the 1980s, it was the Russians’ withdrawal from their failed occupation of Afghanistan that triggered the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. Less than 20 years later, in 2001, British and American troops arrived in Afghanistan, where they proceeded to begin losing what was, in Britain’s case, its fourth war in that country. As before, in the end, despite all the billions of dollars handed out, the training of an entire army of Afghan troops and the infinitely superior weaponry of the occupiers, the Afghan resistance succeeded again in first surrounding then propelling the hated Kafirs into a humiliating exit.

On my extended visits to Afghanistan to research my new book, in 2009 and 2010, I was keen to see as many of the places and landscapes associated with the First Afghan War as was possible. I particularly wanted to retrace the route of the British forces’ retreat of January 1842 and get to Gandamak, the site of the British last stand.

The route of the retreat backs on to the mountain range that leads to Tora Bora and the Pakistan border, the Ghilzai heartlands that have always been – along with Quetta – the Taliban’s main recruiting ground. I had been advised not to attempt to visit the area without local protection, so eventually set off in the company of a regional tribal leader who was also a minister in Karzai’s government: a mountain of a man named Anwar Khan Jagdalak, a former village wrestling champion and later captain of the Afghan Olympic wrestling team, who had made his name as a Jamiat-e-Islami Mujahideen commander in the jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s.

It was Jagdalak’s Ghilzai ancestors who inflicted some of the worst casualties on the British army of 1842, something he proudly repeated several times as we drove through the same passes. “They forced us to pick up guns to defend our honour,” he said. “So we killed every last one of those bastards.” None of this, incidentally, has stopped Jagdalak from sending his family away from Kabul to the greater safety of Northolt in north London.

On the day we were to drive to Gandamak, I had been told to report at 7am to Jagdalak. Threading my way through a slalom of checkpoints and razor wire surrounding his ministry, I arrived to find Jagdalak being hustled into a convoy of heavily armoured SUVs by his ever-present phalanx of bodyguards, walkie-talkies crackling and assault rifles primed.

Jagdalak drove himself, while pick-ups full of heavily armed Afghan bodyguards followed behind. As we headed through the capital, evidence of the failure of the current occupation lay all around us. Kabul remains one of the poorest and scrappiest capital cities in the world, despite the US pouring around $80 billion into Afghanistan.

We bumped along potholed roads, past the blast walls of the US Embassy and the Nato barracks that has been built on the very site of the British cantonment of 170 years ago, then headed down the zigzagging road into the line of bleak mountain passes that link Kabul with the Khyber Pass.

It is a suitably dramatic and violent landscape: faultlines of crushed and tortured strata groaned and twisted in the gunpowder-coloured rockwalls rising on either side of us. Above, the jagged mountain tops were veiled in an ominous cloud of mist. As we drove, Jagdalak complained bitterly of the western treatment of his government. “In the 1980s when we were killing Russians for them, the Americans called us freedom fighters,” he muttered as we descended the first pass. “Now they just dismiss us as warlords.”

We left the main road at Sarobi, where the mountains debouch into a high-altitude ochre desert dotted with encampments of Ghilzai nomads, and headed into Taliban territory; a further five pick-up trucks full of Jagdalak’s old Mujahideen fighters, all brandishing rocket-propelled grenades and with faces wrapped in their turbans, appeared from a side road to escort us.

At the village of Jagdalak, on January 12 1842, the last 200 frostbitten British soldiers found themselves surrounded by several thousand Ghilzai tribesmen; only a handful made it beyond the holly-oak hedge erected to block their way and on which many British soldiers impaled themselves. Our own welcome was, thankfully, somewhat warmer. The proud villagers took their old commander, now a government minister, on a trip through hills smelling of wild thyme and wormwood, and up through mountainsides carpeted with hollyhocks and mulberries and shaded by white poplars. Here, at the top of the surrounding peaks, near the watchtower where the stripped, naked and freezing sepoys had attempted to find shelter, lay the remains of Jagdalak’s old Mujahideen bunkers and entrenchments from which he had defied the Soviet army. Once the tour was completed, the villagers feasted us, Timurid style, in an apricot orchard at the bottom of the valley: we sat on carpets under a trellis of vine and pomegranate blossom, as course after course of kebabs and raisin pullao were laid in front of us.

During lunch, as my hosts casually pointed out the site of the holly-oak barrier and other places in the village where the British had been massacred in 1842, we compared our respective family memories of that war. I talked about my great-great-uncle, Colin Mackenzie, who had been taken hostage nearby, and I asked if they saw any parallels with the current situation. “It is exactly the same,” said Jagdalak. “Both times the foreigners have come for their own interests, not for ours. They say, 'We are your friends, we want to help.’ But they are lying.”

“Whoever comes to Afghanistan, even now, they will face the fate of Burnes, Macnaghten and Dr Brydon,” agreed Mohammad Khan, our host in the village and the owner of the orchard where we were sitting. Everyone nodded sagely into their rice: the names of the fallen of 1842, long forgotten in their home country, were still common currency here.
“Since the British went, we’ve had the Russians,” said one old man to my right. “We saw them off, too, but not before they bombed many of the houses in the village.” He pointed at a ridge full of ruined mudbrick houses on the hills behind us.

“We are the roof of the world,” said Khan. “From here, you can control and watch everywhere.”

“Afghanistan is like the crossroads for every nation that comes to power,” agreed Jagdalak. “But we do not have the strength to control our own destiny. Our fate is determined by our neighbours.”

It was nearly 5pm before the final flaps of naan bread were cleared away, by which time it became clear that it was now too late to head on to Gandamak. Instead we went that evening by the main highway direct to the relative safety of Jalalabad, where we discovered we’d had a narrow escape. It turned out that there had been a battle at Gandamak that very morning between government forces and a group of villagers supported by the Taliban. Nine policemen had been killed and 10 taken hostage over a dispute about compensation for opium poppies which the government forces had come to destroy. The sheer size and length of the feast and our own gluttony had saved us from walking straight into an ambush. The battle had taken place on exactly the site of the British last stand of 1842.

The following morning in Jalalabad, we went to a jirga, or assembly, of Ghilzai tribal elders, to which the greybeards of Gandamak had come, under a flag of truce, to discuss what had happened the day before. As Predator drones took off and landed incessantly at the nearby airfield, we chatted over a pot of green tea.

“Last month,” said one tribal elder from Gandamak, “some American officers called us to a hotel in Jalalabad for a meeting. One of them asked me, 'Why do you hate us?’ I replied, 'Because you blow down our doors, enter our houses, pull our women by the hair and kick our children. We cannot accept this. We will fight back, and we will break your teeth, and when your teeth are broken you will leave, just as the British left before you. It is just a matter of time.”’

“What did he say to that?”

“He turned to his friend and said, 'If the old men are like this, what will the younger ones be like?’ In truth, all the Americans here know their game is over. It is just their politicians who deny this.”

“These are the last days of the Americans,” said the other elder. “Next it will be China.”


*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By William Dalrymple - Telegraph UK
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DTN News - KARZAI AT PENTAGON: Panetta Hosts Arrival Ceremony, Meets With Afghan President At Pentagon

Asia News Report: DTN News - KARZAI AT PENTAGON: Panetta Hosts Arrival Ceremony, Meets With Afghan President At Pentagon

Source: DTN News 
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 12, 2013:  Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday met with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at the Pentagon to discuss the security transition in Afghanistan.

At a press conference after the meeting, Panetta said he had an hour-long, one-on-one meeting with Karzai to discuss "the ongoing transition to Afghan security lead, as well as the commitment of the United States to Afghanistan" after the completion of the transition by the end of 2014.

Panetta said both leaders believe the transition plan is " working, and we're fully committed to finishing the job," and they believed they are "moving in the right direction."

At a welcoming ceremony earlier in the day, Panetta assured Karzai of continued U.S. commitment as the last chapter of security transition has begun. According to U.S. President Barack Obama's withdrawal plan, U.S. combat forces will be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, after transferring security lead to the Afghans.

Meanwhile, the two countries are negotiating a bilateral security agreement that would define the U.S. role in Afghanistan post-2014. Karzai, who will meet Obama on Friday, said at the Pentagon he believed the United States and Afghanistan can work out the way forward for a bilateral security agreement "that will ensure the interests of Afghanistan, and also the interests of the United States."

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith - DTN News 
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DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: U.S. Army 1st Lt. Ryan Schulte On Security Alert In Farah City, Afghanistan

Asia News Report: DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: U.S. Army 1st Lt. Ryan Schulte On Security Alert In Farah City, Afghanistan

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources U.S. Department Of Defense
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 10, 2013: U.S. Army 1st Lt. Ryan Schulte uses his advanced combat optical gunsight to scan for security threats during a key leader engagement in Farah City, Afghanistan, on Jan. 3, 2013. 

Schulte is the security force platoon leader for Provincial Reconstruction Team Farah. The team’s mission is to train, advise and assist Afghan government leaders at the municipal, district and provincial levels in Farah province of Afghanistan.   

DoD photo by Chief Petty Officer Josh Ives, U.S. Navy. (Released)

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources U.S. Department Of Defense
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DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: U.S. Army Gun In The Deh Rawud District of Afghanistan

Asia News Report: DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: U.S. Army Gun In The Deh Rawud District of Afghanistan 

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources U.S. Department Of Defense
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 10, 2013: A U.S. Army gun crew uses a M777 A2 howitzer to fire illumination rounds from Forward Operating Base Hadrian in the Deh Rawud district of Afghanistan on Jan. 8, 2013. 

The crew from 1st Section Bravo Battery 1-9 Field Artillery of Fort Stewart, Ga., has been conducting intensive training and fire missions to support operations in Uruzgan province.   

DoD photo by Capt. Jesse Platz, U.S. Army. (Released)

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources U.S. Department Of Defense
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DTN News - AFGHANISTAN WAR NEWS: U.S. Troops, Train, Advise Afghans In Farah Province

Asia News Report: DTN News - AFGHANISTAN WAR NEWS:  U.S. Troops Train, Advise Afghans In Farah Province

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources U.S. Department Of Defense
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 3, 2013: Soldiers with Provincial Reconstruction Team Farah prepare for a morning mission to Bala Boluk, Afghanistan, Jan. 2, 2013. 

The team's mission is to train, advise, and assist Afghan government leaders at the municipal, district and provincial levels in Farah province. The civil-military team is comprised of members of the U.S. Navy, Army, State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources U.S. Department Of Defense
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DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: New Pakistan Outreach Could Aid Afghan Peace Deal

Asia News Report: DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: New Pakistan Outreach Could Aid Afghan Peace Deal

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Sebastian Abbot and Heidi Vogt - Associated Press
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - October 28, 2012: Pakistan has increased efforts to reach out to some of its biggest enemies in Afghanistan, a significant policy shift that could prove crucial to U.S.-backed efforts to strike a peace deal in the neighboring country.

The target of the diplomatic push has mainly been non-Pashtun political leaders who have been at odds with Pakistan for years because of the country's historical support for the Afghan Taliban, a Pashtun movement.

Many of the leaders fought against the Taliban when the fundamentalist Islamic group seized control of Afghanistan in the 1990s with Pakistan's help, and have accused Islamabad of maintaining support for the insurgents following the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 — allegations denied by the government.

Many experts agree that Pakistan continues to see the Taliban as an ally, albeit a shaky one, in countering the influence of archenemy India in Afghanistan. But they also say Islamabad no longer believes the insurgents can take over the country or wants them to, a common misperception in the West.

"A Taliban victory on the other side of the border would give a huge boost to domestic militants fighting the Pakistani state," said Zahid Hussain, a journalist who has written extensively about Islamabad's war against the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistan is also worried that unrest in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of most foreign troops in 2014 could provide the Pakistani Taliban with greater space to establish sanctuaries across the border.

The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban are allies but have focused on different enemies. The Afghan Taliban battle local and foreign forces in Afghanistan, while the Pakistani Taliban mainly wage war against Islamabad.

These concerns have led Pakistan to the conclusion that a peace agreement that includes all Afghan groups is in its best interests, and contact with its traditional foes among the non-Pashtuns is necessary to achieve that goal, said Moeed Yusuf, South Asia adviser for the United States Institute of Peace.

"I think the fundamental point here is that there is a serious realization among some people who matter in Pakistan that they can't continue to put all their eggs in the Taliban basket because it is too shaky," said Yusuf. "This is a major shift, and a shift that I think everybody should welcome."

The outreach comes as Pakistan, Afghanistan and the U.S. have stepped up efforts to breathe new life into the Taliban peace process, which has been hamstrung by distrust among all the parties involved.

The U.S. and Pakistan recently set up working groups to identify which Taliban leaders would be open to reconciliation and to ensure those holed up on Pakistani territory would be able to travel to the site of talks. Pakistan and Afghanistan have been in discussions to revive a joint commission set up to discuss the peace process.

Pakistan is seen as key to a peace deal because of its ties with the Taliban, and there is hope that Islamabad's increased engagement with non-Pashtuns in Afghanistan will facilitate the process.

"I think one of Pakistan's realizations is that if you want to play a bigger role to reconcile all these groups, you need to reach out to every group," said Rahimullah Yousufzai, a Pakistani journalist and expert on the Taliban. "They will be pushing the Taliban to share power with all these people, but it won't be easy because the Taliban aren't known to share power and the U.S. doesn't want to give them a major share."

Islamabad's historical support for the Taliban and other Pashtuns in Afghanistan, who make up about 40 percent of the population of 190 million, is partly rooted in the sizable number of Pashtuns who live in Pakistan. The ethnic group has always been seen as the best bet for furthering Pakistan's interests in the country.

Pakistan first advertised its overtures to non-Pashtuns in Afghanistan in February when Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar met with a range of ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara leaders during a visit to Kabul. Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf followed suit in July when he traveled to Afghanistan and invited the group to the opening of the new Pakistani Embassy in Kabul.

There have also been less publicized contacts by Pakistan's ambassador to Kabul, Mohammad Sadiq, and the country's army and intelligence service, according to Pakistani and Afghan officials.

Khar said the policy shift had been in the works for a while but was like a steering a large ship in a new direction.

"You're not able to do it immediately," said the foreign minister.

Pakistan's powerful army is the true arbiter of the country's Afghan policy, but experts expressed doubt that the Foreign Ministry would have pushed ahead without the support of the generals, who have historically had the closest relationship to the Taliban.

One key Afghan leader who has met with the Pakistanis, Abdullah Abdullah, said he appreciated the country's recent attempt to reach out because it was done publicly. The influential politician, who was runner-up to Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the 2009 election, said Pakistani intelligence officials contacted him in previous years, but he refused to speak with them because he did not believe communication should be carried out in secret.

"I see a lot of good in reaching out, in engagement, in dialogue," said Abdullah, who is half Pashtun but draws much of his support from the Tajik community.

The outreach has rattled the Taliban, who have warned Pakistani officials that they can't trust the non-Pashtuns, Yousufzai said.

Pakistan will have to overcome significant distrust among the non-Pashtuns. The government has old ties to some of the leaders, who worked with Pakistan in the 1980s to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but Islamabad's subsequent support for the Taliban created a huge amount of bad blood.

Despite that, the Pakistanis are hopeful.

"The Pakistani side's view of Afghan negotiations is that you kill on one day and kiss on the next, so while this will be very tough, they think that it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that they may actually get somewhere," said Yusuf, the South Asia analyst.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Sebastian Abbot and Heidi Vogt - Associated Press
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