Mision FAS: Afganistán
Moderadores: Mod. 4, Mod. 5, Mod. 3, Mod. 2, Mod. 1
Malas noticias para ISAF. Parece que se confirma el primer ataque con MANPADS de la campaña insurgente. Fue contra un C130 en Nimroz, muy cerquita de Herat, ojo al dato.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/ ... 90045/1003...The sources said the Taliban attempted to bring down an American C-130 Hercules airplane flying over the southwestern province of Nimroz on July 22. The crew reported that a missile system locked on to their aircraft and that a missile was fired.
It closed in on the large C-130, pursuing it as the pilots made a series of violent evasive maneuvers and jettisoned flares to confuse the heat sensors in the nose of the surface-to-air missile, or SAM.
Crew members said they saw what they thought was a missile passing very close to the aircraft. The C-130 was not damaged in the attack.
NATO officials on Friday refused to confirm or deny that such an attack had taken place.
"If there was such an incident of the type you describe in Nimroz, it is classified," a NATO spokesman said. "I can't release it, if in fact it did occur."
However, a surface-to-air missile alert was put out for Western aircraft traveling in the southwest of Afghanistan in the last week, which affected civilian and military aircraft.
It was confirmed by civilian air operators in Helmand province. The alert remains in place.
Western military commanders have been aware of concerted efforts by the Taliban to obtain shoulder-launched, surface-to-air missiles called MANPADS (man-portable air-defense system).
The recent attack was probably with a SAM-7 shoulder-launched missile, an early model of Soviet or Chinese origin, the sources said. Though relatively primitive, they are still a potent weapon, particularly against low-flying helicopters, such as the workhorse Chinook transporters used by NATO forces in the southern Helmand province...
La necesidad permite lo prohibido.
Los alemanes alertan sobre la agresiva campaña de propaganda de los talibanes, que está calando entre la prensa occidental.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,27 ... l-1573-rdfMedia | 03.08.2007
"Terrorists Score a Major Victory If They Silence Us"
They may have archaic social ideas, but the Taliban are using modern propaganda tools
Jo Groebel, head of the German Digital Institute in Berlin, spoke with DW-WORLD.DE about the Taliban's increasing manipulation of the western media to further its own goals.
In recent days, the German government has lashed out at the Taliban's "wicked propaganda" and accused the Islamist terror group of waging a "media war" against the western world. The condemnation follows inaccurate information by the Taliban that it had executed two German hostages in Afghanistan.
In reality, one of the two kidnapped German construction engineers was shot and killed while the other remains in captivity. The Taliban have demanded Germany pulls its 3,000 troops out of Afghanistan as the main condition for freeing the hostage.
DW-WORLD.DE spoke with Jo Groebel, director of the Berlin-based German Digital Institute and former head of the European Media Institute, about whether the media needs to be more prudent when reporting on terrorism.
The German government has spoken in recent days of the Taliban waging a propaganda war. Do you agree with that?
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Foreign Minister Steinmeier's office said it was involved in a "media war" with the Taliban
I totally agree that terrorism, in particular Taliban terrorism, is indeed all about the media and propaganda. I think it's obvious that the victims of the kidnappings or killings are not primarily the real goal. The real goal is to create news, to create coverage of these killings and to create panic around the world. The victims are primarily used for that goal. Modern terrorism is, per definition almost, all about creating fear and panic and, in particular, demonstrating power and control around the world. And that's definitely true of the Taliban.
What do you think the Taliban aim to achieve by trying to grab media attention and coverage?
On the one hand the Taliban want to stabilize their own infrastructure, their group and community philosophy and thinking. And at the same they want to perceive themselves and make people believe they are a real threat to the world. And obviously they're succeeding in that. Let's be clear about it, the Taliban don't have global weapons, they don't have -- at least until now -- any real chance of being a major threat to the world community. And yet through the coverage in the media, they create exactly that -- namely the impression that they are a global threat even though they are actually a regional threat and don't have global support.
The German government has criticized reporting by some German media in recent days, saying that they have offered a platform for the terrorists. Do you think that criticism is justified?
Only to a certain extent. Of course the media needs to report on events as long as that reporting doesn't create a new threat. As soon as terrorists succeed in creating a situation where information and reporting is suppressed, they have achieved some success. Terrorists believe in systems, structures and societies that suppress freedom of expression.
To an extent, I can understand the German government when it says the media need to be very careful in its reporting and not end up serving the terrorists. At the same time, we need to accept that we live in a free society. There is hardly any way to suppress information, voluntarily or involuntarily, because if it's not broadcast via official channels then it's sure to be distributed via blogs or elsewhere on the Internet. So even if one would assume that there is a possibility or even a necessity to not immediately report on terrorist activities, I'm afraid it wouldn't work anyway.
I have to say too that I think the German reporting so far on the Taliban and terrorist activities has been responsible and not prone to exaggeration, sensationalism and creating panic.
To talk about a concrete example of how the media should cover terrorism -- the BBC's channel 4 recently aired an interview with the Taliban's military chief, Mansur Dadullah, in which he called for the mass kidnapping of foreigners in Afghanistan. Do you think something like that is acceptable?
Bildunterschrift: Western media need to evaluate the news they present
That can only be answered on a case to case basis. On the one hand, to have an interview with a real-life Taliban leader is a major journalistic scoop. On the other, you have to ask yourself the question whether such an interview, or indeed offering him a platform, is still primarily fulfilling the need for information. If the answer is yes in a particular case, then I would say the interview is still justified.
But there's no doubt that there's always a dilemma in such cases where you have weigh the need to inform the public against the danger of offering a mouthpiece to terrorists. What is important is to put things in perspective. That means not just giving a Taliban leader a platform to express himself, but also to comment and evaluate what's going on. When in doubt, my answer is always: if the reporting doesn't directly threaten lives, then freedom of expression has to dominate.
The German government says the Taliban carefully monitors German debates on Afghanistan and instantly reacts to any statements. Shouldn't then some of the criticism aimed at the media be directed towards politicians who jump at every opportunity to express their views about the security situation in the country or troops?
Politics is, much like the media, all about making things public. Thus there is a very strong alliance between politics and politicians on one hand and media on the other because, of course, politicians need the media to express themselves. Unlike what the German government says, it must be said that in comparison to politicians, the media has been reporting on the Taliban's activities in Afghanistan in a pretty modest manner.
But once again, I have to stress that if the terrorists manage to silence us and stifle expression, then they have already scored a major victory.
Sonia Phalnikar interviewed Jo Groebel
La necesidad permite lo prohibido.
el Telegraph informa que se ha lanzado un ataque aéreo contra líderes talibanes mientras presenciaban una "ejecución" en un distrito bajo su control en Helmand. Por cierto, que dicen que a Dadullah en mayor le dio matarile el SBS, y reaparece el caso de los niños degolladores.
Nato airstrike kills senior Taliban leaders
By Tom Coghlan in Bermal, Paktika Province
Last Updated: 2:29am BST 04/08/2007
Nato is reported to have killed at least two senior Taliban leaders in an airstrike north of Helmand as they were watching a public execution.
The bombing took place in the northern district of Baghran on Thursday, a district entirely controlled by the Taliban.
The Taliban's commander for southern Afghanistan, Mansoor Dadullah, was among those targeted, according to unconfirmed reports.
advertisementThe Afghan Defence Ministry said that the airstrike took place as Taliban leaders gathered to watch the public hanging of several alleged government spies.
Dadullah replaced his older brother Mullah Dadullah Akhund after he was killed by the Special Boat Service (SBS) in Helmand on May 17th.
The younger Dadullah was interviewed by Channel 4 last week promising a wave of kidnaps of foreigners in the province. He threatened to have them beheaded by child executioners.
The Afghan defence ministry claimed that intelligence reports indicated the presence of Mansoor Dadullah at the targeted meeting. The senior Taliban commander for Helmand, Mullah Rahim, was also reported killed.
Doctors in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah reported that 20 people were admitted to the main hospital from Baghran district, ranging in age from eight to 50 years old, while Kandahar hospital also admitted 12 men.
Nasibullah, one of the injured, said the bomb hit a crowded market killing dozens of civilians and that no Taliban were in the area.
One military source, who did not wish to be named denied allegations of civilian casualties.
"We are 100 per cent clear that this was entirely Taliban. Those in hospital are fighting age males. This is the Taliban trying to cover the fact that they got caught out."
A statement put out by the US-led coalition in Afghanistan last night said that it had targeted two "notorious Taliban commanders": "During a sizable meeting of senior Taliban commanders, coalition forces employed precision-guided munitions on their location after ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area."
Nato has systematically targeted the Taliban leadership with airstrikes for the past year and claims to have seriously depleted the Taliban's command and control structure. According to figures collated by Western diplomats in Kabul, around 45 middle and high level Taliban commanders in Helmand have been killed to date.
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kilo009
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Mira lo que dice el Times:
Lo que se sabía ya sobre el tráfico de armas y explosivos por la frontera iraní, muy cerquita de donde está nuestro despliegue. Todo a través del tráfico de drogas, comprando armas al gobierno iraní y traficándola con los talibanes. Se habla concretamente del suministro de ManpadIran gives Taliban hi-tech weapons to fight British Tim Albone, Islam Qala, Herat province
British troops in Helmand province fighting the Taliban face a new danger as sophisticated Iranian weapons and explosives are being smuggled into Afghanistan.
In the dusty frontier town of Islam Qala, near Herat, on the Afghan side of the border with Iran, weapons and explosives such as armour-piercing roadside bombs are being trafficked to the insurgents.
The news that Taliban rebels are being armed with Iranian-supplied weapons poses an added threat to the 5,000 British troops battling insurgents in southern Afghanistan. “I have to tell the truth. It is clear to everyone that Iran is supporting the enemy of Afghanistan, the Taliban,” Colonel Rahmatullah Safi, head of border police for western Afghanistan, told The Sunday Times.
Afghan intelligence sources believe that many deals between the Taliban and the Iranians are conducted through a drug smuggler in southern Afghanistan who acts as a middle man. He is from the minority Baluch tribe; as well as smuggling heroin through Iran to Europe, he is also believed to have bought weapons off the Iranian government and sold them on to the Taliban.
The deadliest weapons known to cross the border are Iranian-made armour-piercing explosives. Colonel Thomas Kelly, an American under the command of Nato, said that the explosives that have been used to deadly effect in Iraq have been found recently in western Afghanistan.
“These are very sophisticated IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and they’re really not manufactured in any other place to our knowledge than Iran,” he said, adding that the explosives were factory made. He stopped short of saying they were supplied by the Iranian government.
Along with supplies of Kalashnikov assault rifles and mortars, Afghan military sources fear that the Iranians may also have supplied heat-seeking missiles. International forces rely heavily on helicopters to transport troops as the roads are too dangerous to drive along, but they are especially vulnerable to this kind of weaponry.
It was the introduction of western-supplied Stinger missiles that brought the Soviet army to its knees during its ill-fated 10-year campaign in Afghanistan. Many of these weapons are now dated, however, and the Stingers are no longer operational. What is of particular concern to British and US troops is that the Taliban could get their hands on the modern Manpad (man-portable air defence system), a highly mobile shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile.
The American government has accused Iran’s Quds force, an elite arm of the Revolutionary Guards, of arming and training Shi’ite extremist groups in Iraq. Afghan officials fear that Iran has overcome its theological differences with the largely Sunni Taliban to fight a bigger enemy.
“The Taliban are Sunni extremists and the Iranians definitely don’t want them to take control of Afghanistan again, but right now they support them as there is a bigger enemy, America. The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Haji Rafiq Shahir, a law professor at Herat University.
A western official in Kabul said he was aware that the Iranian government had offered weapons to the Taliban: “The Iranian government offered weapons for free but the Taliban refused as they didn’t want to be beholden to them.”
The official added that he was unaware of any specific arms sales, but added: “From an Iranian position it’s easy to feel encircled, particularly when you consider they are paranoid to begin with. They see the British as the manipulative Machiavellian characters and the Americans as our dim cousins who carry out the dirty work for us.”
Iranian paranoia is enhanced by the American bases springing up along Afghanistan’s western border in Herat and Shindand along with the British base, Camp Bastion, in Helmand.
Mohammad Reza Bahrami, the Iranian ambassador to Kabul, has strongly denied all accusations that his country is supplying weapons to insurgents. He claimed that Iran is one of the biggest donors to the troubled nation.
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Fracaso en la lucha contra la producción de opio en Afganistán:
Las inversiones británicas para luchar con el opio no han servido para nada por lo que parece. Afganistán incluso ha roto sus registros en cuanto a superficie cultivada. Especialmente preocupante es la sona de Helmad.Record crop of heroin poppies hits anti-drug effort in Afghanistan
Britain’s multimillion-pound counter-narcotics operation in Afghanistan was exposed as a failure yesterday, as the country was poised to report a record poppy crop this year.
Britain is leading international efforts against opium production in Afghanistan. Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office minister responsible for the region, said that he was extremely disappointed with the latest results. The United Nations is expected to reveal this month that Afghanistan broke its own record for poppy production last year, when 165,000 hectares were cultivated.
“Afghanistan is facing another year of very high poppy cultivation, driven by continued high figures in the south and, to a lesser extent, the east,” Lord Malloch-Brown said. “This second increase in as many years is extremely disappointing. Yet again, Helmand [province] looks likely to be the main driver of cultivation. Early indications suggest that cultivation will exceed last year’s total.”
Helmand’s place at the top of the drugs league table for the second consecutive year is a particular embarrassment for the Government. Last year 69,000 hectares were devoted to poppy cultivation in Helmand. This year the figure will be higher and good weather means that the yield from the crop will be even greater.
The province is home to 6,000 British troops engaged in fighting the Taleban, but they are barred by Nato’s rules of engagement from taking any direct action against poppy cultivation, even though 90 per cent of the heroin sold on British streets comes from Afghanistan. A senior Foreign Office official said yesterday that Britain had spent £290 million on a counter-narcotics campaign in Afghanistan, although he admitted that it could another 15 or 20 years to win the campaign against drugs production.
Despite the latest setback British officials insisted that new efforts would be made to tackle the cultivation and trade by boosting the Afghan Government’s own counter-narcotics operations. These include offering governors rewards for poppy eradication, offering farmers alternative crops and boosting the Afghan criminal justice system to deal more effectively with drugs traffickers.
British Forces may also play a supporting role in assisting Afghan counter-narcotics operations. This could involve providing airlifts for Afghan forces and setting up security cordons to protect Afghan counter-narcotics officers. They are also considering targeting specific traffickers with close connections to the Taleban.
“We are looking at what might be possible on the basis of counter-insur-gency action to target, in particular, Talebs who are involved in the drugs trade,” one diplomat said.
British officials believe that the answer to fighting poppy production lies in restoring security to the most lawless areas of Afghanistan, in the south and east. They point out that in areas of relative security and prosperity in the north and centre of the country, poppy production has decreased this year. Six of the thirty-four provinces in Afghanistan produced no poppy crop this year.
Britain is planning to spend an additional £22.5 million for Afghan antidrugs forces and the US said yesterday that it would contribute a further £250 million to the effort.
The British cooperation with America on the drugs strategy appeared to contrast with evidence of strains between military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan. The New York Times reported yesterday that a senior British commander in Helmand had ordered US special forces to leave the province earlier this summer.
The unprecedented move was triggered by the growing civilian casualties caused by American airstrikes against suspected Taleban targets. The growing casualty rate was undermining efforts to improve relations between the civilian population and British Forces.
Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, said in Kabul that the British commander concerned was expressing a personal view and not a new military strategy. “It is the reporting of an observation of a British officer on a particular part of the American military,” he said. “It is not the view of the Helmand task force commander, it is not the view of our Government, it is not the view of the Americans, it is not the view of the alliance,” he said.
“These things can be said in the heat of battle. These are very difficult circumstances.”
Atacada una patrulla afgana que trabajaba con la PRT de Qala-e-Naw
http://www.mde.es/NotasPrensa?id_nodo=4 ... _nota=1494Una patrulla del Ejército Nacional Afgano sufrió hoy (a las 6.00 horas de la mañana, hora española) un ataque con armas ligeras y granadas, en la ruta que une las localidades de Bala Murghab y Ghormach, al noroeste de Afganistán. La patrulla atacada iba acompañada por 27 militares españoles, ninguno de los cuales ha resultado herido.
Siguiendo los planes de ISAF, los soldados españoles realizaban una misión de apoyo al Ejército afgano para evaluar la situación de seguridad en la zona y actualizar el despliegue de las Fuerzas de Seguridad afganas.
Los soldados españoles que formaban la patrulla están integrados en el PRT (equipo de reconstrucción provincial) español, situado en Qala-e-Naw, ciudad que se encuentra a unos 90 kilómetros al sur de donde ocurrió el incidente.
La patrulla, a la que los soldados españoles daban apoyo, la formaban unos 40 militares afganos, entre quienes se han producido al menos tres muertos. La patrulla en la que se integraban los españoles pidió y recibió por parte de ISAF apoyo aéreo para provocar la dispersión de los atacantes.
Tras el ataque, se tomaron las medidas apropiadas para proteger a los efectivos, que estuvieron en la zona en una localización segura antes de replegarse a Bala Murghab. Dos militares afganos heridos fueron evacuados a las bases españolas de Qala-e-Naw y Herat respectivamente, para ser tratados allí.
Por el momento se desconoce el origen del ataque. No se descarta que pudiera proceder de algún grupo insurgente talibán, de señores de la guerra de la zona o de narcotraficantes.
Cry havoc and unleash the hawgs of war - Otatsiihtaissiiststakio piksi makamo ta psswia