[AFG] German ordered airstrike

[Skybird]

Since days German newspaper lob shells at suspected positions of opposing opinions, so do politicians in and outside Germany. The event causes such a stirr becasue too many people run around with misled ideas about what the Afghanistan thing is - a war. Having thought of it for too long as anything but that, demonstrations of the harsh reality catches them off guard. And then the lies to the public - result in a bizarr separation between reality, and calls for consequences that have little to do with it, but adress fantasies. In other words: more lies for the public.

The German newspapers leave much to be desired so far, almost all reports indeed are comments and run a politically motivated agenda (we are in election campaign). The most detailed and objective report, which also makes a lot of sense, has been given by - the Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...502832_pf.html

Surprising it is that local Afghan authorities praise the attack.

At midday Saturday, after visiting the hospital and flying over the bombing site in a helicopter, the team met with two local officials. The NATO officers were expecting anger and calls for compensation. What they received was a totally unanticipated sort of criticism.

"I don't agree with the rumor that there were a lot of civilian casualties," said one key local official, who said he did not want to be named because he fears Taliban retribution. "Who goes out at 2 in the morning for fuel? These were bad people, and this was a good operation."

A few hours later, McChrystal arrived at the reconstruction team's base in Kunduz. A group of leaders from the area, including the chairman of the provincial council and the police chief, were there to meet him. So, too, were members of an investigative team dispatched by President Hamid Karzai.

McChrystal began expressing sympathy "for anyone who has been hurt or killed."

The council chairman, Ahmadullah Wardak, cut him off. He wanted to talk about the deteriorating security situation in Kunduz, where Taliban activity has increased significantly in recent months. NATO forces in the area, he told the fact-finding team before McChrystal arrived, need to be acting "more strongly" in the area.

His concern is shared by some officials at the NATO mission headquarters, who contend that German troops in Kunduz have not been confronting the rise in Taliban activity with enough ground patrols and comprehensive counterinsurgency tactics.

"If we do three more operations like was done the other night, stability will come to Kunduz," Wardak told McChrystal. "If people do not want to live in peace and harmony, that's not our fault."

McChrystal seemed to be caught off guard.

"We've been too nice to the thugs," Wardak continued.

As McChrystal drove to the bombing site -- defying German suggestions that the area was too dangerous -- one senior NATO official noted that the lack of opposition from local officials, despite relatively clear evidence that some civilians were killed, could help to de-escalate tensions.

"We got real lucky here," the official said.

But McChrystal still had a message to deliver. Even if the Afghan officials were not angry, he certainly did not seem pleased.

I just add that the German intel services and Bundeswehr claim to have information tnat the Taliban plan terror attacks directed against Germany/Germans in order to influence the upcoming federal elections in Germany, and that the hijacking of two rolling liquid explosive bombs (=fuel trucks) have to be seen in this light also.

IMO it was a valid strike at a taregt of military interest, wehre unfortunately civilians got killed, too, but it were miliutants and their means of support and their ressources that were targetted. This was no intended killing of civilians, as some political nutheads over already have claimed. the proposed scale of the attack, that the US bomber pilot recommended to be carried out by using 2000 pound bombs, had been reduced by the German Colonel giving the commands to the use of one 500 pound bomb per truck.

If the German colonel made any mistake, then that he trusted a local informant as the deciding source of info. He could as well have been a Taliban provoking civilian losses to score in the propaganda war.

But the briefings proved to be more valuable -- and alarming -- than the team had expected.

Klein told the team, led by British Air Commodore Paddy Teakle, the NATO mission's director of air operations, that he had asked a U.S. B-1B bomber flying over northern Afghanistan to search for two fuel trucks that had been hijacked Thursday evening. The bomber located the trucks, which by then were stuck on a small island in the middle of the Kunduz River, shortly after midnight Friday. The B-1 crew reported seeing rocket-propelled grenades and small arms among some of the people at the site, Klein said.

After 10 minutes over the site, the bomber left to refuel. Klein summoned a new warplane, declaring the incident an imminent threat.

"My feeling was that if we let them get away with these tankers, they will prepare them to attack police stations or even the PRT," or provincial reconstruction team, he said.

Twenty minutes later, two F-15E Strike Eagles arrived. A video camera pod beamed live images to Klein's command center. He and his troops could see the trucks -- and scores of people around them.

His intelligence chief had spoken to an Afghan source who insisted that everyone at the site was an insurgent. The description of the scene the source provided was similar to what Klein was seeing beamed from the F-15.

"The whole story matched 100 percent," Klein said.

But there was no way to tell whether the dots on the screen were insurgents, as the source maintained.

"We heard there was a tanker and everyone was going to collect free fuel, so I went with them," said Mohammed Shafiullah, the 10-year-old with the leg wound. He rode a donkey from his village and took in the scene from the western riverbank.

He probably would not have been alive had the airstrike coordinator at Klein's command center not rejected the F-15 pilot's recommendation to use 2,000-pound bombs on the trucks, which would have created far wider devastation. Instead, the coordinator demanded that 500-pound GBU-38 bombs be used.

Klein ordered the strike about 2:30 a.m. Two minutes later, the bombs had hit their targets.

Willlkommen zum Krieg, Herr Jung (German defence minister who still rejects that there is a war happening in Afghanistan, so does the German foreign minister and the chancellor and all the government as well).

Since Germany has been running a political ghost flight regarding it's Afghanistan policies from the very beginning on, I want those troops out of there.

[Schroeder]

There is no war going on there, move along, nothing to see here.

[Skybird]

Now that is rich, really :

the truck-hijacking Taliban (yes, the Taliban and no other) call for a UN and human rights investigation of the air strikes.



The same Taliban that used fuel trucks before to drive them into crowds and explode them, and attacked and set ablaze fuel convoys at the Kaiba pass and at one opportunity detonated two dozens of them with villagers being in the vicinity.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8241499.stm

News like this increase my suspicion that that Afghan informant that called the German intel guys on telephone and told them that at 2 am in the night and distant from any nearby settlements with lights he nevertheless could see all people being there were Taliban (thats because they wear so shiny uniforms that separate them from civilians), possibly was a Taliban agent trying to provoke civilian losses.

Not that it matters. With the German camp just 4 or 5 kilometers away, those trucks had to be taken out for sure, and quickly. Though the strike night was turning out as a PR desaster, the trucks going off in a terror attack inside the German defence perimeter would have been far worse a scenario.


P.S.

It's all about the German elections, I assume.

[Biggles]

Originally Posted by Skybird

If the German colonel made any mistake, then that he trusted a local informant as the deciding source of info. He could as well have been a Taliban provoking civilian losses to score in the propaganda war.

That is a grave error if you ask me. To trust one (unknown?) source that tells you things like this out of the blue...I'd look into it more before heading into action.

On the other hand, I do see the logic in the attack and do not reject the strike itself as a bad move. But it could've been done smoother, or so I believe.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Biggles

That is a grave error if you ask me. To trust one (unknown?) source that tells you things like this out of the blue...I'd look into it more before heading into action.

On the other hand, I do see the logic in the attack and do not reject the strike itself as a bad move. But it could've been done smoother, or so I believe.

Well, it was first a B1 one spotting the trucks, but it had to refuel, they then called a Strike Eagle which gave worse quality pictures. Then the human intel came in. It just fit in. Nevertheless, despite the sense of urgency, it should have been not taken as trustworthy. Since months it is known that the Taliban plan to influence the German federal elections, like Spain was bombed during campaigns, too - and it worked, Spain withdrew from Iraq short time later. For the Taliban it was assumed they would strike either in Afghanistan, or even in Germany. Mybe they have struck - by making the bundeswehr admitting itself into a PR desaster. so far Afghanistan has not discussed in campaigning, not with one word. But now, it is a campaign theme.

[Tribesman]

Since months it is known that the Taliban plan to influence the German federal elections, like Spain was bombed during campaigns, too - and it worked, Spain withdrew from Iraq short time later.

It worked in Spain if the plan was for the government to lose all credibility by blaming Basque seperatists .
The Taliban must have been very very clever in being able to plan for Anzars governments stupidity in continuing to claim it was the Basques after it was well known it wasn't them.
Actually come to think of it if the Taliban had a plan then surely it would be to get the Spanish out of ISAF where they are fighting the Taliban, yet Spain increased its commitment in Afghanistan didn't it .

[Skybird]

Spain. Iraq. Contemplate.

[Tribesman]

Spain. Iraq. Contemplate.

Contemplate?
Simple.
Two parties, one that had sold a pile of crap one that was selling a pile of crap .
The one that sold was in the lead in the polls
The bombings .
The one that sold was still in the lead in the polls
They blamed ETA .
The one that sold was still in the lead in the polls
It emerges that it wasn't ETA.
No change in the polls as both parties had spun the same line

Then comes.....
The party that sold the pile of crap insist it was still ETA
They instantly lose the lead and subsequently the election.

Contemplate.
For your theory to work the Taliban or Al-Qaida would have to rely on Anzars government lying after the truth had come out as that is what swung the election.
Since that is a ridiculous theory it can't be right.
I am sure you remember the nationwide demonstrations , the bombing united the population which is the opposite of what the terrorists would have wanted, Anzar blew it with his silly claims after the facts had already emerged.

[Skybird]

Blunt and brief summary of the status quo:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...647531,00.html

US President Barack Obama and the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, want to try a new approach, but many analysts believe the war can no longer be won.

(...)

...public support for the mission -- which received broad international backing when it began -- is gradually being undermined. According to recent polls, more than half of all Americans are now against the war in Afghanistan. And only 25 percent support President Obama's plan to send more soldiers into the area.

(...)

A controversy has broken out in the Obama administration over priorities in the region. Hillary Clinton has pleaded in favor of sending in more soldiers and strengthening the focus on Afghanistan, while Vice President Joseph Biden has warned against losing sight of the importance of Pakistan, an unstable nuclear power that serves as a safe haven for the Taliban and Al-Qaida.

(...)

The Dutch and Canadian governments have announced that they intend to withdraw their contingents by the year 2011.

(...)

There are some who say it's as good as over in Afghanistan. The confidence of the general population has been lost; too many civilians have been killed. This is the way Thomas Ruttig, a member of a group of experts known as the Afghanistan Analysts Network, sees the situation. Having served as an election observer in Paktia province, he now says that, in his view, the Afghans don't need agricultural experts from Kentucky. They need to have their fields cleared of mines, they need loans so that they can pay for irrigation systems, fertilizer, and seeds, they need functioning markets -- and more than anything else they need peace.

There are numerous things that have gone right in Afghanistan since the fall of 2001. But many major objectives have not been achieved. Osama bin Laden got away. Al-Qaida set up new training camps in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, a few hundred kilometers away. The political system in Afghanistan continues to be a farce. Court decisions can be bought. Most of the women who live in rural areas continue to have no rights. The Afghan police don't protect their citizens. More often than not they use their powers as law enforcement officers to squeeze money out of the populace. Administrative officials won't do anything unless they are paid bribes and often use their positions of power to make life hard for people.

The fraud perpetrated during Afghanistan's second presidential election was systematically organized in some parts of the country. This was seen to by the candidates' regional networks. An investigative commission is examining around 700 complaints that have been judged to be relevant.

There is the case of Delaga Bariz, district chief of Shorabak in Kandahar province, who maintains that ballot boxes were stuffed with 23,900 votes for Karzai. Allegedly the Bariz tribesmen in Shorabak had decided to vote for Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's strongest rival. But then some of Karzai's people showed up and took the ballot boxes to Kabul, Delaga Bariz says.

The independent Afghanistan Analysts Network documented a case from the area around the town of Spin Boldak in the south. There the head of the border police had promised to monitor the election personally in six districts. The night before August 20, a large number of ballot boxes were brought to his home and members of the independent election commission are said to have been forced to fill them with votes for the incumbent president. On election day, the police chief took the filled ballot boxes to official polling stations for counting.

President Karzai's younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, lives in Kandahar. As head of the provincial council, he is one of the most powerful figures in the region and organizes political support for his brother. But he claims not to have had anything to do with the election fraud.

The relationship between President Karzai and Washington had cooled considerably by the end of the Bush era, as a result of weariness and disappointment on both sides. Karzai repeatedly expressed scathing public criticism of reckless bombardments by US planes in which Afghan civilians regularly died. But the Americans had expected gratitude and loyalty from him, not what they saw as insubordination and criticism.

The Obama administration immediately put even more distance between itself and the West's former favorite. Karzai had sought and formed sordid alliances with war criminals and drug barons for the purpose of preserving his power. He had also taken steps to distance himself from the West. He can certainly not be considered a true democrat -- anyone who thought that was mistaken right from the start.

Now the State Department has announced that, if Karzai is declared the winner of the presidential election, his future vice president, Mohammed Fahim, will be banned from entering the United States -- because of his alleged links to the drug trade.

Just how badly the relationship between the Afghan and American governments has broken down was shown the day after the election at a luncheon given in the presidential palace for Obama's special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, an experienced diplomat with a penchant for straight talking. He and Karzai, the proud Pashtun, are like fire and water. Karzai doesn't like the way Holbrooke behaves as the representative of a global power, while for his part Holbrooke is irritated by Karzai's recalcitrance.

President Karzai was in a good mood when he received his guest in a paneled room on the ground floor of the palace. "May I ask you a difficult question?" Holbrooke asked. He felt that a runoff election between Karzai and Abdullah could increase the democratic credibility of the resultant government and reduce criticism in the West of the military operation in Afghanistan.

Karzai sensed a trap. He thought Holbrooke was looking for a last chance to force him out of office and help the preferred rival candidate, Abdullah, take over the presidency. His tone became sharp as he said this constituted an interference in Afghan affairs, adding that it was the role of the independent election commission to decide on the need for a runoff election.

There are two versions as to how the luncheon continued from that point on. According to one version they sat there silently and ate their desserts. According to the other version, Karzai immediate stood up and asked his guest to leave -- whereby things got very heated.

Trapped in the Afghan maze.

From the beginning on.

On a sidenote, for the first time ever German politics has started to whipser about an exist strategy or an exit timetable. The number being whispered is "2015".

Expect it to change to something earlier.

The strategic heritage of the Afghanistan war? It has turned obvious that NATO no longer is an alliance - but a lack of that, which is obvious in many other symptoms different from the Afghanistan and Iraq rows, too. After the end of the cold war, NATO failed to redefine and reinvent itself successfully - the Americans had unrealistic expectations to turn it into a global actor, and the Europeans had no vision how to keep it together while focussing on it's localised defensive role, and beign unwilling to adequately come up for their defence interests by themselves: much of Europe's anger at the US often is just motivated by rejected anger about itself.

Thats where we are now. Quite a high price for the Afghanistan - well what? Afghanistan mission? Afghanistan war? Operation? Project? Intention? Declaration of ambitions?

Self-deceptions, I would say, and say since years.