Once again from Kabul, Time’s John Wendle:
The growing divide between Afghan soldiers and their mentors has already been stretched to the breaking point after six days of violent and deadly protests over the Koran burning …
Taliban
Killed at Their Desks: The Growth of the (Human) IED Threat — and Mutual Mistrust — in Afghanistan
Saturday’s killing of two U.S. military officers inside the highly-protected Afghan Interior Ministry in Kabul by a Taliban-allied shooter is an apt microcosm of the decade-long conflict. The Pentagon was quick to label the …
Koran-Burning Backlash Seems to Ease
…according to John Wendle of Time:
“…as the sun began to set and temperatures again dropped below freezing, fears of more extreme violence and chaos have proven unfounded. Death tolls ranged from four to 12 across the …
The Cost of Speaking Out
So what happens to a military officer who speaks out against the grain? It’s an apt question, given Army Lieut. Colonel Daniel Davis’ recent treatise (or was it a screed?) in Armed Forces Journal on what he perceives as the …
“[The Taliban] didn't reach the tempo they had the year before. It was down about 9% overall in a year...their complex attacks are down about 36% compared to last year. Their offensive activities are down…between 13 and about 25% here as we went out of the summer into the fall.”
Grain-of-Salt Alert
We’re going to be hearing more in the coming weeks and months about how the Afghan army is increasingly ready to shoulder more of the burden of defending its nation from the Taliban. But there’s a Marine assessment from last fall now floating around, and it gives the ground truth a good scrub. Among the lowlights:
Afghans are
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“Truth, Lies and Afghanistan”
That’s the title of a column by an active-duty Army officer published on-line Sunday by the independent Armed Forces Journal.
Army Lieut. Colonel Daniel L. Davis writes about what he says he witnessed traveling 9,000 miles around Afghanistan over the past year:
What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S.
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Q&A With the Pakistan Foreign Minister
Over on Time’s Global Spin blog, Aryn Baker speaks with Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar:
TIME: Many are saying that America has already lost the war in Afghanistan.
HRK: I wouldn’t want to comment on that
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The Man Who Believed Himself
TOKYO – Wars can attract some odd, fringe characters, but I never met anyone stranger or more out on the fringe than Jonathan Keith Idema, who died recently in Mexico of complications from AIDS.
A career con artist and military wannabe, Idema showed up early during the war in Afghanistan. He posed variously as a government …
Women in Combat: Dying to Kill
Female suicide bombers are better than their male counterparts, at least in some ways, according to an Army assessment:
Although women make up roughly 15% of the suicide bombers within groups which utilize females, they were
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What Makes Insurgents Tick?
It’s not – surprise! – what you think:
…We see insurgency as a form of collective, goal-focused activity that comes about when nefarious people exploit the weaknesses of a political system…And since insurgency is
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Throwbots
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIS-MOcSCZw]
We’ve seen flying robots – drones – spying on the enemy, and beefy tracked robots disabling IEDs. So why not the ultimate traveling ‘bot – one that’s thrown by soldiers? Don’t laugh – the Pentagon’s anti-IED shop is planning to send 400 tossbots to Afghanistan …