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Part of the US’ disengagement strategy from Afghanistan relies on training the Afghan National Army to take up security duties, preventing a rapid Taliban walk-though of their lines. But all too frequently, our ANA “partners” seem anything but: An Afghan soldier turned his gun on American military personnel while they were playing volleyball at [...]  President Obama is famously a basketball fan, preferring to watch games rather than TV talking heads during his weekend downtime. Now the country he leads is contemplating the notion of putting up a fadeaway jumper on its way to the Afghan exit: The Obama administration is considering transferring to Afghan custody a senior Taliban [...] Meet Sgt. Collin Raaz, Marine scout sniper, combat leader, double amputee. One step either way. A matter of inches. Then a long road ahead. Part 2 of eight here. Pakistan’s interior minister thanked his disaffected Taliban brothers for not killing any Shiites on their festival day: Speaking to reporters in the capital, Islamabad, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said he had appealed to the Taliban to “respect” the Shiite observances and “I want to thank them for doing that.” It was unclear whether Malik, [...] Henry Mortimer Durand takes a lot of hits in modern days. The line he negotiated between the government of Afghan Amir Abdur Rahman Khan and the British Raj in India split the Pashtun people in two, leaving one ungovernable half in Pakistan, and their equally tempestuous cousins in Afghanistan. Pashtuns here, and Pashtuns there, [...] NATO’s senior civilian in Afghanistan sees the Taliban on the ropes, and predicts that – with continued US investments in training security forces – a potential positive outcome in that war-blasted land: In mid-October something interesting happened in Afghanistan. In Helmand province, the Pashtun heartland, U.S. Marines prepared to fight their way north as [...] The US military was and is desperate to understand the human terrain of the Afghan battlefield. The chief sources of expertise lay in the field of anthropology, but the “American Anthropological Association issued a report condemning the Human Terrain program as a violation of professional ethics”. But that didn’t stop them, ten years on, [...] Ollie North gets a look at the US Marine Corps’ rapid deployment capability. ; You’ve got to love an organization that can take an existing refueling tanker and turn it into a novel close air support platform without getting all wrapped up the federal acquisition regulations. Or I have to love them, [...] As the US prepares to more rapidly draw down its force levels in Afghanistan, and transition those remaining to a support and training role, the efforts of one Afghan National Army fortress may prove instructional: Weeks after the U.S. Army turned over its base here in the Pech Valley to Afghan troops in March, [...] ISAF has turned to winning Afghan hearts and minds, 140 characters at a time: U.S. forces feared they were losing the information war to the Taliban and now are fighting back with Twitter – using those brisk 140-character messages to get out the other side of the story. “The Taliban were just constantly putting [...] |
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