Trajan12
Deity
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/98368F2C-CD20-46F8-ABDB-C7D7661D820C.htm
And how about this one!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061023/ap_on_re_as/afghan_army_training
Not only in Afghanistan!
I for one think this is great. If we can wrap up in Afghanistan then we can move back to Iraq. How is it looking to you?
A six-hour battle between Nato troops and fighters in southern Afghanistan has left 55 fighters and one soldier dead.
Nato said that 20 Afghan fighters were also wounded in the battle that took place in the Daychopan district of Zabul province on Monday.
Major Luke Knittig, a spokesman for Nato's international security assistance force said that troops are moving into areas where fighters are active in order to increase security so that reconstruction and development can take place.
"What you are seeing in the southern provinces is our troops moving out with a purpose, which is to where we're seeing insurgent activity," Knittig said.
The nationality of the dead Nato soldier has not been released, but there are many American troops operating in Zabul.
Nato offensive
Nato and Afghan troops killed 70 suspected fighters who attacked a military base north of Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan on Saturday.
The alliance and Afghan troops fought back for several hours with small arms fire, attack helicopters and airstrikes.
Nato and Afghan troops are pressing ahead with a new joint offensive called Operation Eagle, aimed at keeping pressure on the Taliban through the winter.
The 32,000-strong Nato-led force took command of security operations in all of Afghanistan last month.
And how about this one!
.CAMP BERMEL, Afghanistan - Minutes after U.S. Army engineers were ambushed in far eastern Afghanistan, the 25 Taliban attackers were running for their lives.
Though U.S. troops were based nearby, it was Afghan soldiers who raced to the scene last week, jumping from brown pickup trucks and charging up the mountain. Helicopter gunships also swooped in, and 22 Taliban were killed and three captured. One Afghan soldier died.
Marine trainers at Camp Bermel and their Army counterparts at nearby Camp Orgun-e say Afghan soldiers are brave and eager to fight, but add that progress is slow because of a generally low level of education, the language barrier, low pay and ethnic tensions among Afghans.
Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and the Afghan defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, congratulated the soldiers during a weekend trip to Paktika province to assess the Afghan army's training and performance.
Eikenberry acknowledged "some real daunting problems" in creating a national army but said the troops have made great strides.
"I talked to the Marine lieutenant colonel who was with that Afghan National Army unit and he said he's never seen a more fearless group of soldiers go into enemy fire and simply overpower the enemy with their sheer tenacity," Eikenberry said.
A strong Afghan army is key to the West's strategy for eventually turning over the country's security to Afghan forces. With no national military just five years ago, Afghanistan has basically created an army from scratch and now fields some 36,000 soldiers.
Their performance is in stark contrast to the 100,000-member Iraqi army, which faces Sunni-Shiite divisions and whose ranks have been infiltrated by sectarian militias.
Seth Jones, an analyst with the RAND Corp. think tank, said Afghan troops generally perform better than those in Iraq, which has a bigger problem with soldiers abandoning their posts.
"Now that might not be saying a lot," he said. "But I do think that the Afghan security forces began from a better baseline compared to the Iraqi groups. The fact that you've had several decades of war in Afghanistan means everyone knows how to handle a weapon."
Wardak, the Afghan defense minister, agrees.
"We're a fighting nation," he said, alluding to Afghans' long history of fighting invaders — and fighting among themselves. "We can fight as well as anyone. If we have the combat enablers (trainers), we will definitely be able to defend this border" with Pakistan.
There are 68 U.S. and NATO training teams working with Afghan forces.
"The ANA (Afghan National Army soldiers) are vicious, looking at the way they attacked the hill," said Sgt. Joseph Fincher, 24, of Fort Worth, Texas, one of 17 Marines training Afghans at Camp Bermel, a stone's throw from the border with Pakistan. "I'm just excited the ANA is eager to do this. After seeing them in action there's no doubt they're fighting for their country."
One Afghan in the fight last week recalled with pride how his fellow soldiers led the attack.
"The ambushed Americans retreated and we rushed in. We were fighting ahead of the Americans," said Mohwad Ghrozi, a 25-year-old from Kunar province who said he saw eight wounded insurgents kill themselves with grenades.
Sgt. David Bowman, a National Guardsman from Portland, Ore., who is training soldiers at Camp Orgun-e, said progress "comes and goes"
"They're eager to fight the enemy," he said. "Sometimes it's to the point of negating the American actions because they're so eager. Sometimes it's like taking a bunch of 9-year-olds to Chuck E. Cheese's."
Capt. Mark Larson of Madison, Wis., said most Afghan soldiers are not literate. "You make progress, but it's frustrating," he said of the training.
And though the new army is multiethnic, a point of pride with Eikenberry, that can cause problems.
A Pashtun soldier, for instance, might feel he is being picked on by a Tajik officer, and other Pashtuns will jump to the soldier's defense, a breakdown in discipline that wouldn't happen in the U.S. military.
Larson notes the ethnic divisions are hundreds of years old. "I'm not exactly sure how we're going to be able to overcome that."
Another problem is pay — Afghan soldiers make just $70 a month.
"Sometimes you see the higher-ups take theirs and then some and leave crumbs for the soldiers," Larson said. "It's really bad for morale. I think until they get their pay situation figured out there's going to be problems."
Bowman sees some of the downsides as growing pains, and compares the birth of the Afghan army to that of the U.S. military.
"It's taken us 230 years to get to where we are now, and we're still progressing, still improving," he said
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061023/ap_on_re_as/afghan_army_training
Not only in Afghanistan!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061030/ap_on_re_mi_ea/pakistan_militants_attackedKHAR, Pakistan - Pakistani troops and helicopters firing missiles killed as many as 80 militants training at a religious school used as an al-Qaida training center near the Afghan border, officials said.
Local leaders said all those slain when the school, or madrassa, was destroyed were civilians.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said initial estimates based on intelligence sources on the ground indicated that the attack killed about 80 suspected militants, who appeared to be in their 20s and were from Pakistan and other countries.
"These militants were involved in actions inside Pakistan and probably in Afghanistan," Sultan told The Associated Press.
The bodies of 20 men killed in the attack were lined up in a field near the madrassa, in Chingai village near Khar, the main town in the Bajur tribal district, before an impromptu burial attended by thousands of local people, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
Dozens of villagers sifted through the rubble of the madrassa, shifting blocks of smashed concrete and mud bricks aside to try to find survivors. Some picked up body parts scattered across the area and placed them in plastic bags normally used for fertilizer.
"We heard helicopters flying in and then heard bombs," said one of the villagers, Haji Youssef. "We were all saddened by what we have seen."
Among the dead was Liaquat Hussain, a local Islamic cleric who ran the madrassa, locals said. Several of his aides also died, they said.
The attack came two days after 5,000 pro-Taliban tribesmen held an anti-American rally in the Bajur area near Damadola, a village close to the site of an alleged U.S. missile attack that killed several al-Qaida members and civilians in January.
"We received confirmed intelligence reports that 70-80 militants were hiding in a madrassa used as a terrorist-training facility, which was destroyed by an army strike, led by helicopters," Sultan said.
An Associated Press reporter living in the area said he saw several helicopters hovering near his house early Monday before hearing a series of explosions, apparently caused by missiles being fired into the madrassa compound.
Helicopters fired four to five missiles into the madrassa, Sultan said.
The strike came on the day a peace deal was expected to be signed between Bajur tribal leaders and the military, similar to an accord signed earlier this year in nearby North Waziristan.
"This attack is very strange as we were told Sunday that the peace agreement would be signed today," local lawmaker Mohammed Sadiq said.
Sultan declined to say if an accord was scheduled to be signed Monday, but added that militants cannot hide behind peace deals. He said the purported militants using the madrassa had rejected orders to end their activities.
A senior intelligence official in Bajur also said a local al-Qaida leader, Faqir Mohammed, who led Saturday's rally, was believed to have been inside the madrassa.
It was unclear if Mohammed was among those killed, said the official, who declined to be identified further because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Siraj ul-Haq, a Cabinet minister from the North West Frontier Province, condemned the attack and announced he would resign from the government in protest.
"The government has launched an attack during the night, which is against Islam and the traditions of the area," ul-Haq told the AP during the funeral. "They (the victims) were not given any warning. This was an unprovoked attack on a madrassa. They were innocent people."
Ul-Haq, who belongs to the powerful Islamic political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, said protests would be staged throughout the northern tribal region on Tuesday to denounce the attack.
Pakistan has been trying to defeat militants along its porous border with Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion of that country in 2001 fanned increased terrorist activity on the Pakistan side of the frontier.
Pakistan became a key U.S. ally in its war on terror after the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., and has deployed about 80,000 soldiers to flush out Taliban and al-Qaida members hiding in the mountainous frontier tribal region.
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding along the Pakistan-Afghan border.
I for one think this is great. If we can wrap up in Afghanistan then we can move back to Iraq. How is it looking to you?
You dont understand how a war works. Anyway if we can get the Iraqis this electrified maybe we can stop those nasty militias!
