Mision FAS: Afganistán

[Siracusa]

Si, pero esos 4.000 nuevos soldados son para entrenar nuevas fuerzas de seguridad afganas, ya que ahi es donde hay que invertir. Parece que se empiezan a dar cuenta de que los afganos son los que mejor hacen el trabajo, luchar y morir.
Hola a todos es mi primera vez!

[gato]

Hola, Siracusa, bienvenido. En principio puedes tener razón lo que dices, pero hay que tener en cuenta quién manda a ese personal y cómo les mandan (jefes corruptos, falta de moral, etc). La solución nativa es eficaz cuando existe un vínculo fuerte con el instructor o la cadena de mando. Recuerda que precisamente el empleo de tribus nativas en la operación de cerco a Tora Bora permitió que la banda de Ben Laden escapase tras negociar con líderes locales (cosa muy de la cultura afgana). En fin, tiempo al tiempo, pero con tipos como el nuevo gobernador de Badghis, tú me dirás....

[gato]

Mandos USA denuncian que el ISI continúa apoyando a los talibanes,

Pakistan's ISI still linked to militants, U.S. says

Fri Mar 27, 8:36 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has indications that elements of Pakistan's ISI military intelligence agency provide support to Taliban or al Qaeda militants, senior U.S. military officers said on Friday.
Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said the agency must end such activities.
The officers made their remarks as the United States unveiled a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which promises more aid for Pakistan but seeks increased cooperation in the fight against al Qaeda and Taliban militants in return.
Mullen noted Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence service had links to militants on both its western border with Afghanistan and its eastern border with India.
"Fundamentally, the strategic approach with the ISI must change and their support ... for militants, actually on both borders, has to fundamentally shift," he told CNN television's "Situation Room" program.
Asked if there were still elements within the ISI who sympathized with or supported al Qaeda and the Taliban, Mullen said: "There are certainly indications that that's the case."
Although links between the ISI and Islamist militants are widely suspected, it is rare for senior U.S. officials to talk publicly about them, for fear of damaging possible cooperation with Pakistani authorities.
The New York Times, citing anonymous U.S. officials, reported on Wednesday that the Taliban's widening campaign in southern Afghanistan was made possible in part by direct support from ISI operatives.
A senior U.S. intelligence official, asked on Friday to describe the problem of ISI information-sharing with militants, said, "too big, too often."
He said Pakistan had in the past failed to act on "actionable intelligence" that could lead to a strike against militants.
U.S. FUNDING IN 1980S
Petraeus, speaking on PBS television's Newshour program, noted some militant groups had been established by the ISI, with U.S. funding, with the aim of helping drive Soviet forces out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
"Those links were very strong and some of them, I think, unquestionably ... do remain, to this day. It is much more difficult to tell at what level those links are still established," he said.
Petraeus said there were some cases "in the fairly recent past" in which the ISI appeared to have warned militants that their location had been discovered.
"It's a topic that is of enormous importance, because if there are links and if those continue and if it undermines the (anti-militant) operations, obviously that would be very damaging to the kind of trust that we need to build," he said.
Petraeus' headquarters is responsible for U.S. military operations in a volatile swath of the world which stretches from the Middle East into Central and South Asia.
The intelligence official said the United States and Pakistan viewed militant groups differently, and that Pakistan focused on those it saw as the biggest threats to itself, which meant it overlooked some groups with a higher U.S. priority.
"Our intelligence shows that these groups also threaten them, so we are asking them to be a little bit more enlightened, to rethink their security calculus in a way that we think is consistent with ours," he said.
(Reporting by Andrew Gray and Randall Mikkelsen; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

[sombra]

Tengo un ejemplo de lo que comenta gato. En distritos de Farah (donde a veces nos toca ir con la QRF y donde nos han matado a varios soldados), los talibanes no luchan por expulsar a las instituciones locales, sino que permiten que reciban fondos de las organizaciones internacionales para extorsionarles y así financiarse. Creo que a todos estos neopensadores de las estrategias contrainsurgentes basadas en repartir pasta y en decir que \\\"semos mu wenos\\\" se les olvida, efectivamente, que la lucha contrainsurgente requiere el control del terreno. Si no...pasa esto:

Posted on Fri, Mar. 27, 2009
Commentary: How U.S. aid ends up financing the Taliban
Fetrat Zerak | The Institute for War & Peace Reporting

last updated: March 26, 2009 01:39:32 PM

FARAH, Afghanistan – Mirahmad, who like many Afghans uses only one name, was delighted when he learned that the state-sponsored National Solidarity Program was about to provide $40,000 to dredge an irrigation canal.

As the official in charge of regulating the water supply in the Pushtrod district of his native province of Farah, the money would help Mirahmad ensure that local farmers had enough water to irrigate their fields.

His joy was short-lived, however.

\\\"The Taliban asked for 40 percent of the money,\\\" he said. \\\"Otherwise they were not going to let us do the work. So we had to buy them a new four-wheel-drive truck.\\\"

So, while the Taliban are driving around in their new vehicle, Mirahmad is trying desperately to stretch the remaining funds to complete the project.

\\\"We are worried about the budget,\\\" he said. \\\"It may not be enough to do the job. We will have a lot of problems with water.\\\"

In district after district of remote and volatile Farah province, located in the western part of the country near the border with Iran, the Taliban are taking control.

But rather than seeking to oust local government, they are seeking to extort some of the millions in foreign assistance that has been provided to local authorities for reconstruction projects.

First and foremost among these assistance programs is the NSP, a nationwide reconstruction initiative, launched in 2003 by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development with financing from the United States, as well as other members of the international community.

One of the central missions of the NSP – which has handed out hundreds of millions of dollars over the past six years – is to foster good local governance by helping communities identify and implement local development projects.

But in Farah, at least, a substantial portion of that money is going to the Taliban, who use the cash to buy guns and ammunition.

Local officials say they\\\'re left to either give in to the Taliban\\\'s demands or halt reconstruction projects entirely.

In Farah, at least one official has decided he\\\'d rather do without than share foreign financing with the Taliban.

\\\"We have received numerous complaints regarding (the Taliban taking NSP money),\\\" said Shah Mahmoud, deputy chief of the rural rehabilitation and development department in Farah. \\\"So we have stopped sending money to some projects. We will not send a penny until serious steps are taken to solve the problem.\\\"

That means that some projects have been left half-finished, a situation that infuriates many local residents.

\\\"In all of Khak Safed district there is only one school, and it is closed,\\\" said Haji Abdul Basir, a representative of the village of Dewal Surkh. \\\"There are 800 families here. So, we decided to use our NSP money to build a school, but Taliban gunmen stopped us.\\\"

But Basir disagrees with the government\\\'s solution of cutting off financing altogether.

\\\"If they give us additional funding, we can always bargain with the Taliban,\\\" he said. \\\"But if the money is cut, then what future do our children have?\\\"

For their part, the Taliban take a hard-line approach.

\\\"This money is the spoils of war,\\\" said Mullah Shah Mohammad, a senior Taliban representative in the Khak Safed and Pushtrod districts. \\\"It was given to these people by the infidels. It is our absolute right to take this money and continue our jihad, and the people are cooperating with us on this.\\\"

But some residents call it robbery.

\\\"What the Taliban are doing is illegal,\\\" said Basir. \\\"This is the people\\\'s money, and it should not be used for the goals of one specific group.\\\"

Many, however, take a pragmatic view of the situation.

\\\"It\\\'s OK to give the Taliban some money,\\\" said Abdul Jabar, a resident of the village of Dukin in Pushtrod. \\\"On the one hand, you give them some assistance, and on the other, it allows us to complete the projects very easily. No one dares to create any problems.\\\"

Toza Gul, a resident of the village of Narmakai in Pushtrod, said that while residents and the Taliban often clash, for the most part they are able to negotiate their differences.

\\\"Two weeks ago, the situation got really dangerous,\\\" he said. \\\"The Taliban and the local people were arguing over the money, and they almost started fighting with each other. But the Taliban were smart and they backed off. They allowed the people to continue working on a road which connects the district with the provincial centre.\\\"

Some think local residents will eventually tire of having to pay tribute to the Taliban.

\\\"The Taliban have two goals here,\\\" said Juma Khan Qayed, a senior planning official in Farah. \\\"First, they want money to make themselves stronger. Second, they want to show their power, to prove that no one can govern the districts except the Taliban.

\\\"But this will widen the gap between them and the people, and in the end the locals will rise up against the Taliban.\\\"

ABOUT THE WRITER

Fetrat Zerak is a reporter in Afghanistan who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Readers may write to the author at the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, 48 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8LT, U.K.; Web site: http://www.iwpr.net. For information about IWPR\\\'s funding, please go to http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?top-supporters.html.

This essay is available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy Newspapers, McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.

© 2009, The Institute for War & Peace Reporting

[Siracusa]

Esta claro que no se puede ir tirando el dinero en saco vacio, pero es comprensible estar a favor de crear una fuerza de seguridad afgana bien pagada, la cual yo pienso que seria menos corrupta, esta claro que la corrupcion siempre va a estar ahi, pero invertir en hacerla mas eficaz, mejor armada y preparada. Tambien esta claro que esto no habria pasado si paises como España, Italia, etc... hicieran lo que tienen que hacer, ¿porque emos enviado soldados no?, quien se mete en las FFAA entra para luchar, con todas sus consecuencias, no para las ayudas humanitarias... que lo veo muy bien, pero no es su trabajo. Aunque a ellos poco les tengo que decir... la clase politica española es la que tiene que cambiar, y la sociedad española tiene que entender que tenemos un ejercito y no unas hermanitas de la caridad.

[kilo009]

Hay previsiones de enviar la Gendarmería Europea a Afganistán, nuestra Guardia Civil tiene cada vez más papeleta para ir marcha a tierras afganas.

[ZULU]

Unidades de ingenieros del ET trabajan, en Afganistán, en la construcción de una base para 1.100 soldados.

Martes 31 de marzo de 2009 (Confidencial Digital)

El Ministerio de Defensa no quiere dar explicaciones, pero un grupo de ingenieros militares trabaja ya sobre el terreno para realizar las gestiones de la construcción de una nueva base con capacidad para 1.100 efectivos. Y han instalado la oficina de proyecto para desarrollar la obra.
Según las fuentes consultadas por El Confidencial Digital, la nueva base española próxima al actual emplazamiento de Herat, está en su recta final para la inminente construcción. La pasada semana comenzaron los trabajos básicos después de que la Comisión enviada desde Madrid finalizara la valoración de los terrenos, contratos, etc.

Además, como indicio del comienzo de las obras, las mismas fuentes indican que ya está instalada la oficina de proyecto que dirigirán los ingenieros militares –Ejército de Tierra- de la Unidad de Apoyo al Despliegue (UAD) de Salamanca, destacados en la zona para este cometido.

Hay que recordar que el Estado Mayor del Ejército de Tierra que dirige el general Fulgencio Coll ha consultado con el Mando de Canarias (MCANA) si el refuerzo comprometido con la OTAN para las elecciones locales puede aportarse desde las Islas, de la Brigada Ligera de Canarias XVI (BRILCAN XVI). La respuesta ha sido afirmativa, pero condicionado por los fondos disponibles para instrucción, adiestramiento y los cursos de formación de los militares a desplegar. Lea aquí los detalles sobre el despliegue de las unidades canarias.

Por otro lado, los mandos consultados por ECD interpretan que la salida de las misiones de Kosovo y Chad está relacionada con este despliegue en Afganistán que el Ministerio de Defensa de Carme Chacón no quiere reconocer a pesar de las iniciativas en marcha.

[ZULU]

Parece ser que se esta dispuesto a enviar guardias civiles, hay que esperar la confirmación

[ZULU]

varias cosas para hoy

El PP censura que Chacón ocultase la máxima condecoración de cinco militares

http://www.libertaddigital.com/nacional ... 276355227/

¿Nos aclaramos? ¿Misión humanitaria, de guerra o ambas?

[ZULU]

España cierra filas con la nueva estrategia afgana de Obama

Y

Francia no enviará más soldados a Afganistán