Afghan gov't torpedoes secret US-Taliban talks

[Ogopogo]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/ ... 8734.shtml


August 29, 2011 11:15 AM


Afghan gov't torpedoes secret US-Taliban talks



Afghan President Hamid Karzai gestures as he leaves the presidential palace in Kabul Aug. 14, 2011. (AFP/Getty Images)


KABUL - Infuriated that Washington met secretly at least three times with a personal emissary of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Afghan government intentionally leaked details of the clandestine meetings, scuttling the talks and sending the Taliban intermediary into hiding, The Associated Press has learned.

In a series of interviews with diplomats, current and former Taliban, Afghan government officials and a close childhood friend of the intermediary, Tayyab Aga, the AP learned Aga is hiding in Europe, and is afraid to return to Pakistan because of fears of reprisals. The United States has had no direct contact with him for months.

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A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the talks imploded because of the leak and that Aga, while alive, had disappeared. The United States will continue to pursue talks, the official said. Current and former U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the talks.

The United States acknowledged the talks after Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who apparently fears being sidelined by U.S.-Taliban talks, confirmed published accounts about them in June, but has never publicly detailed the content, format or participants. The first was held in late 2010 followed by at least two other meetings in early spring of this year, the former U.S. official said. The sessions were held in Germany and Qatar, he said.

A childhood friend of Aga's who spoke to the AP on condition he not be identified because he feared retaliation, said Aga was in Germany. A diplomat in the region said Aga fled to a European country after his contacts with the United States were revealed.

Collapse of the direct talks between Aga and U.S. officials probably spoiled the best chance yet at reaching Omar, considered the linchpin to ending the Taliban fight against the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan. The contacts were preliminary but had begun to bear fruit, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

Perhaps most importantly they offered the tantalizing prospect of a brokered agreement between the United States and the Taliban one that would allow the larger reconciliation of the Taliban into Afghanistan political life to move forward. The United States has not committed to any such deal, but the Taliban wants security assurances from the United States.

The talks were deliberately revealed by someone within the presidential palace, where Karzai's office is located, said a Western and an Afghan official. The reason for the leak was Karzai's animosity toward the U.S. and fear that any agreement Washington brokered would undermine his authority, they said.

The AP sought comment from Karzai's office but was referred to palace press department spokesman Hamid Elmi, who did not answer his phone during repeated calls.

Pakistan had also been kept in the dark about the talks, people knowledgeable about them said. An Afghan official with contacts with the Taliban said the insurgents decided not to tell Pakistan about the meetings with the United States.

At the time of the leak, Washington had already offered small concessions that the U.S. intended as "confidence-building measures," a former senior U.S. official said. They were aimed at developing a rapport and moving talks forward, said a current U.S. official on condition he not be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic.

The concessions included treating the Taliban and al Qaeda differently under international sanctions. The Taliban argued that while al Qaeda is focused on worldwide jihad against the West, Taliban militants have focused on Afghanistan and have shown little interest in attacking targets abroad.

Other goodwill gestures that were not made public included Aga's safe passage to Germany, U.S. officials said. The U.S. also offered assurances that it would not block the Taliban from opening an office in a third country, the official said.

Aga slowly established his bona fides with the U.S. officials, who had initial doubts both about his identity and his level of contact and influence with Omar, a former and current U.S. official with knowledge of the discussion said. For example, a coded reference to the talks appeared on a Taliban-affiliated website following one meeting, just as Aga said it would, one official said.

The whereabouts and eventual release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl of Hailey, Idaho, who was captured more than two years ago in eastern Afghanistan, featured prominently in the talks, according to Aga's childhood friend and a senior Western diplomat in the region. The U.S. negotiators asked Aga what could be done to gain Bergdahl's release.

Aga sought the freedom of Taliban fighters in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Air Field, north of the Afghan capital where an estimated 600 Afghans are being held. Still at Guantanamo Bay is former Taliban Defense Ministry Chief of Staff Mullah Mohammed Fazil, Taliban intelligence official Abdul Haq Wasiq and former Herat governor Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa. Afghanistan's High Peace Council tasked by Karzai with the job of finding a negotiated settlement with insurgents has requested Khairkhwa's release

[Ogopogo]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-574 ... ails-show/

June 8, 2012 2:51 AM

Bowe Bergdahl, U.S. soldier held by Taliban, was "ashamed to be American," emails show



This image from a video released by a Taliban affiliated group on Nov. 24, 2010, shows captive U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl alongside his suspected captor, Mullah Sangeen Zadran. (CBS)

(AP) WASHINGTON - Emails an American soldier reportedly sent to his parents before he was captured by the Taliban three years ago suggest he was disillusioned and considering deserting.

Bowe Bergdahl told his parents he was "ashamed to even be American" and was disgusted with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and with the Army, according to emails quoted in Rolling Stone magazine.

Bergdahl, a 26-year-old Army sergeant from Hailey, Idaho, was taken prisoner on June 30, 2009, in Afghanistan.

The military has never detailed circumstances of his disappearance or capture, and he is not classified as a deserter. He was initially listed as "duty status unknown" and is now considered "missing-captured." He is the only U.S. prisoner of war from the Afghanistan conflict, and U.S. officials say they are actively trying to free him.

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The White House declined comment on the emails or Bergdahl's possible motivation for leaving his base in eastern Afghanistan in 2009.

Bergdahl is the subject of a proposed prisoner swap in which he would be traded for five Taliban adherents imprisoned by the United States at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Taliban have walked away from the deal and larger negotiations with the United States, but the Obama administration is still pushing a negotiated settlement between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan.

The Rolling Stone article, to be published Friday, also quotes other soldiers and associates of Bergdahl's as saying that he had talked about walking to Pakistan if his deployment was "lame" and that shortly before his disappearance he had asked whether he should take his weapon if he left the base. Friends and other soldiers describe a survivalist mentality, and Bergdahl's father, Bob, told the magazine that his son was "living in a novel."

"The future is too good to waste on lies," one email reads. "And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong."

The emails were provided to the magazine by Bergdahl's family in Idaho, which has gone public with its own discontent with U.S. efforts to free their son. There is no way to authenticate the emails.

Some of Bergdahl's reported words read like a suicide note.

"I am sorry for everything," he wrote. "The horror that is America is disgusting."

He mailed home boxes containing his uniform and books.
© 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... r-20120607

[mindyrbusiness]

Veiled suicide bomber kills four French soldiers in Afghanistan
Suicide Bomber Dressed in Burqa

By Sanjeev Miglani

KABUL | Sat Jun 9, 2012 3:55pm EDT

(Reuters) - A suicide bomber dressed in a burqa blew himself up near a French patrol in Afghanistan on Saturday, killing four soldiers and wounding five as the Taliban step up a spring offensive.

The attack - one of the deadliest on the French contingent in months - occurred in the mountainous Kapisa province in the east of the country, an area mainly patrolled by a French force under NATO command.

"It was an unfortunate incident. There was a patrol of coalition soldiers in a small bazaar and they were attacked by a suicide bomber wearing a burqa," Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told Reuters.

French President Francois Hollande restated his plan to withdraw all combat troops from Afghanistan by end-2012, well before NATO allies, as he offered condolences to the victims' families.

"This operation will start in July and be finished by the end of 2012," Hollande, who took office in mid-May, said as he visited his political fiefdom 500 km (310 miles) south of Paris on the eve of a parliamentary election.

Hollande, informed of the killings while travelling by car to the town of Tulle where he will case his vote, said Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and army chief Edouard Guillaud planned to be in Afghanistan on Sunday.

Le Drian, speaking on TF1 television shortly before leaving, said the soldiers who died along with an Afghan interpreter were on their way to meet village chiefs to talk about development projects when the attacker struck.

Until Saturday's incident, 83 French soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led military intervention began in 2001, the fourth highest number of military deaths by nation, behind the United States, Britain and Canada.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in the Nijrab district of the province, saying in an email message that a suicide attacker had struck the foreign soldiers.

Violence has surged across Afghanistan in recent weeks, with the Taliban vowing to target the Western-backed Afghan government and security forces, as well as the 130,000 foreign troops in the country, most of whom are due to leave by the end of 2014.

France plans to withdraw a majority of its roughly 3,400 troops by the end of this year, two years ahead of the timetable agreed by NATO. French troops have suffered a series of attacks including several by rogue Afghan soldiers, triggering demands in France for their troops to be brought home early.

Last month Hollande, during a visit to the Kapisa province days after he took over the presidency, defended the decision to pull some 2,000 combat troops out early, saying the job of fighting terrorism was nearly done, and France would focus on cooperating on the civilian front.

French officials said on Saturday 200 to 300 soldiers would leave in July before a second wave of withdrawal in October.

France's decision has raised concerns that other members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition may follow its example and accelerate their withdrawal plans, handing security prematurely to fledgling Afghan forces.

Kapisa is one of the provinces scheduled to be handed over to Afghan forces in the current third phase of transition before 2014.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi and Brian Love in Paris, and Alizabeth Pineau in Tulle, France; Editing by Daniel Magnowski and Alessandra Rizzo)
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U.S. troops do the "vampire" shift to avoid Afghan sniper
http://www.reuters.com/article/slidesho ... 120607#a=1
(Note strong language in paragraph 12)

By Rob Taylor

(Reuters) - U.S. Staff-Sergeant Joshua Danison cranes his neck to survey jagged ridges vertical and black above him on the eastern edge of Afghanistan, then reels off the rules here for survival as a Chinook transport helicopter thumps away into the darkness.

"Welcome to Combat Outpost Pirtle-King. Here we only move around at night. If you must move in daytime, make sure you stay close in against the northern walls, as most attacks come from there," he says. "If you must move in the open, do it at a run."

NATO commanders cite security gains, eleven years in the war, ahead of a 2014 withdrawal by most foreign combat troops, but there are still pockets like this, where the insurgent threat is so potent that U.S. soldiers can barely move.

COP Pirtle-King, or PK, is a low collection of rockfill walls, trenches and camouflage net, built to help secure the sole road running through the strategic Kunar River Valley and intersect insurgent supply routes from Pakistan.

But the forested mountains on both sides provide perfect cover for the insurgents, including a persistent sniper whose aim has been steadily getting closer to the handful of U.S. and Afghan troops here.

Faced with the threat of so-called plunging fire, soldiers have adjusted routines to carry out most tasks at night, apart from sporadic daytime patrols and manning a trio of guard towers where guns angle up to point high into the rocks above.

When not filling sandbags and extending their walls or doing vehicle maintenance in darkness, they sleep through the daytime heat or just read books and talk within the dusty walkways inside the walls, waiting to repel the next attack.

"PK is kinda like the childhood fortress that we never got when we were kids," quips Danison, 31, a race car fan from Concord in North Carolina, who spends his days following the fortunes of drivers half a world away.

"It is pretty interesting, the lifestyle is a lot different, being on kind of a vampire cycle, but it's pretty cool at the same time. We all enjoy it here," he says.

In a guard post along the northern wall, two bullet holes through the plywood remind soldiers here from Alpha Company of the 1-12 Infantry Regiment of the threat posed by a sniper they know as "dushman", which is Dari for "enemy".

"It reminds us of 'douche'," says Sgt Rios Omar, 21, from Brawley California, using an American expletive. "There aren't many good snipers in this country, but this guy is good."

Written in biro beside the splintered holes is a defiant challenge: "f-word you, you missed me twice."

USE LATRINES AT YOUR OWN RISK

Dushman shoots from somewhere on a green spur known as "the finger", above curved hills known as "A Cup" and "C Cup", but only vaguely similar to breasts. Sometimes fire comes from both sides of the valley, from the south and north.

"That kind of crossfire is usually a sign it's not Taliban, but more likely Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin. They're a bit more together," says Danison. "We have pushed them back into the hills though. They used to fire from pretty much right in front."

U.S. troops in full body armor run across the central vehicle park and any open area to reach their rooms or shift between fortified positions, and use the exposed wooden latrines and showers at their own risk.

"If you have to go, we recommend you wait until night," Danison says. "Here at Pirtle-King, we're pretty much in a fishbowl, so we typically operate at night. It just mitigates any exposure during the day."

In a cluster of small rooms more like a submarine than a ground base, as many as 15 soldiers sleep in bunks stacked four high against a plywood wall marked outside by a target drawn where a Taliban rocket grenade hit but did not detonate.

"Bet you can't do it again," reads a sign spray-painted in black. A double-head axe on the wall is called the "Alamo Axe", in a dark-humored reference to last ditch defense in the unlikely case the Taliban ever tried to overrun the post.

Pirtle-King, named after two soldiers killed at a smaller observation post near here in 2009, is one of a handful of bases here due to be shut down as U.S. troops withdraw from the area and handover to Afghan forces in the Kunar Valley.

Battalion Commander Lt-Col Scott Green says Kunar will make the transition successfully, as Afghan security forces were making strong improvements, including running the majority of patrols beyond the walls of Pirtle-King.

"We are moving security forces deeper into the valleys," Green says. "I know it's taking time and is not moving as fast as we would like, but we can do it here."

(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Nick Macfie)