[Al Arabiya Latest] Colonel Abdulghias, an Afghan pilot with a tough, weathered face, still remembers the name of a Russian airman who taught him how to fly 25 years ago.
"I was young and I wanted to be a pilot. I met a Russian pilot near Herat. His name was Kachalov," he said, rubbing his forehead as he tried to recollect his memories.
"I said: 'Hey, I want to be a helicopter pilot. Teach me!' He laughed at me and agreed."
Now 47, Abdulghias is doing a job his Russian mentor could not have possibly imagined: He is helping the United States resurrect the Afghan National Army Air Corps -- a force all but destroyed in the U.S.-led war against the Taliban in 2001.
Created with Russian help in 1921, the Afghan air force reached its heyday during the Soviet-backed rule of the 1980s, operating hundreds of combat aircraft and helicopters.
But it is now a mere shadow of its former self, with just a few dozen battered Soviet aircraft at its disposal.
Bringing it back to its former strength is a key part of a broader U.S. plan to build a strong enough Afghan army that could one day take over security in the war-wrecked country.
It is a formidable task at a time when the Taliban insurgency is at its fiercest, and sceptics say it could be years if not decades before Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest nations, could maintain an effective force of its own.
"Air power is critical for Afghanistan," said U.S. Col. James A. Garrett, deputy to the Commanding General of the Combined Airpower Transition Force.
"The ruggedness of the terrain, the remoteness of the population, and the widespread nature of the insurgency make air power vital to a strong, supportive Afghan National Army."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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[Maghrebia] Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Monday (September 28th) signed a joint declaration calling for a new definition of terrorism, ANSA reported. The statement, issued at the conclusion of the 2nd Africa-South America Summit (ASA) on Venezuela's Isla Margarita, criticised "the attempt to link peoples' legitimate struggle for freedom and self-determination with terrorism". At the same time, the heads of state affirmed their determination to fight terrorism in all its forms.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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#3
Some in the Arab world has tried something like this a number of times in the past. Basically, the idea is to define everything the US does against Al Q and everything Israel does to defend itself.
Unfortunately for the advocates of the idea, it would also define Egypt's action against the Muslim brotherhood, Sudan's genocide against Darfur, etc. as terrorism also.
This definition change is a basic idea of liberation theology.
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/30/2009 3:47 Comments ||
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UN-needed
UN-wanted
UN- necessaey, and
UN-important.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/30/2009 13:26 Comments ||
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#7
There must be a legitimate struggle for freedom and self-determination that hasn't resorted to terrorism (that is targeting civilians to promote political change).
The US Revolution comes to mind. I could be wrong but I think India succeeded because they avoided terrorism. Oh, and they started their struggle at roughly the same time as the Palestinians and others.
[Al Arabiya Latest] A Yemeni Shiite rebel leader on Tuesday denied government claims that the sect's insurgents want to set up a Shiite state in north Yemen, describing the conflict as a fight for rights.
Several Arab countries are concerned over the influence of Shiite Muslim Iran, which they believe is trying to extend its influence by supporting the sect's minorities in the region.
The rebel leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, said some soldiers were cooperating with the rebels despite an "Operation Scorched Earth" launched by the government in early August to try to crush the insurgency by the rebels -- locally known as the Houthis after their leaders' clan.
The government has portrayed the conflict as an effort by extremists of the Shiite Zaydi sect to re-establish a cleric-ruled state, or "Imamate" in religious parlance that fell in 1962 leading to the creation of the Yemeni republic.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, himself a Zaydi, has avoided sectarian language, but government rhetoric elsewhere regularly attacks the rebel movement over their Zaydi beliefs.
"The authority's accusations about the Imamate are just a media war and misleading public opinion. We are not asking for positions, we are asking for rights and justice. The essence of the crisis is political," Houthi said on the rebels' website.
He denied that Iran was backing the rebels or providing arms, which he said some in the army had smuggled to them.
"We have been able to obtain a huge amount of equipment and weapons from (seized) army positions and it is not strange that there are some noble people of conscience in the army who have cooperated with us," Houthi said.
Zaydis, who adhere to a different sect from Shiite Islam followed in Iran, are thought to form around a third of Yemen's population of around 23 million.
Saleh said on Saturday the army was ready to fight Shiite rebels for years if necessary, calling on them to accept a ceasefire his government has proposed.
The international aid group Oxfam said last week Yemen could soon face a humanitarian crisis as a result of the escalation of fighting. Since disturbances first broke out in 2004 around 150,000 Yemenis have been displaced, aid groups say.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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yeah yeah, sure. 12vers are going to relinquish control of sada.
[Kyodo: Korea] North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has given guidance to light industrial establishments in Pyongyang, the official Korean Central News Agency reported Tuesday. KCNA did not say when Kim visited the newly built Taedonggang Foodstuff Factory and the Pyongyang Textile Machine Plant, but it was the first time that KCNA has reported Kim"s activity since Sept. 18, when he held talks in Pyongyang with Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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The Soylent factory...
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/30/2009 10:01 Comments ||
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[Kyodo: Korea] North Korea"s vice minister of foreign affairs, Pak Kil Yon, told the United Nations on Monday that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula hinges on decisions made by the United States. ""The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula depends on whether or not the U.S. changes its nuclear policy toward Korea,"" Pak said in a speech to the General Assembly.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
He's entirely correct, If he doesn't stop stalling we'll Denuclearize the nation for him.
But It'll be a lot messier.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/30/2009 13:32 Comments ||
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RJ- mebbe so, but not until 2012 at the earliest
(damn)
[Kyodo: Korea] North Korea"s vice minister of foreign affairs, Pak Kil Yon, has said that pending issues with Japan including the abduction issue should be discussed with Japan bilaterally, a U.N. diplomatic source said Monday. The remark made in his talks with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on Sunday indicates that Pyongyang is willing to resume bilateral talks with Japan.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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Wonder what euphemism they used to describe the abductions?
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
09/30/2009 8:36 Comments ||
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[Dawn] As American troops move deeper into southern Afghanistan to fight Taliban insurgents, US officials are expressing new concerns about the role of fugitive Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and his council of lieutenants, who reportedly plan and launch cross-border strikes from safe havens around the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, according to The Washington Post.
But US officials acknowledge they know relatively little about the remote and arid Pakistani border region, have no capacity to strike there, and have few windows into the turbulent mix of Pashtun tribal and religious politics that has turned the area into a sanctuary for the Taliban leaders, who are known collectively as the Quetta Shura.
Ignorance so profound they won't have any idea why badmen Taliban and Al Qaeda-niks are suddenly turning up dead of acute Predator poisoning.
Pakistani officials, in turn, have been accused of allowing the Taliban movement to regroup in the Quetta area, viewing it as a strategic asset rather than a domestic threat, while the army has been heavily focused on curbing violent extremists in the northwest border region hundreds of miles away.
As a result, Pakistani and foreign analysts here said, Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, has suddenly emerged as an urgent but elusive new target as Washington grapples with the Taliban's rapidly spreading arc of influence and terror across Afghanistan.
'In the past, we focused on al-Qaeda because they were a threat to us. The Quetta Shura mattered less to us because we had no troops in the region,' said Anne W. Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan. 'Now our troops are there on the other side of the border, and the Quetta Shura is high on Washington's list.'
Patterson also acknowledged that the United States is far less familiar with the vast desert region than with the northwestern tribal areas, where it has been cooperating closely with Pakistan for several years in the hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders and where it periodically kills insurgents with missiles fired from remotely piloted aircraft. The United States does not carry out such drone strikes in the Quetta region.
As Patterson put it, bluntly: 'Our intelligence on Quetta is vastly less. We have no people there, no cross-border operations, no Predators.'
"Please don't throw us in that briar patch," the ambassador added, pleadingly.
According to Pakistani analysts, the Taliban's presence in the Quetta region is more discreet than it was earlier in the decade, when Omar fled there from US and Afghan military attacks. He was joined by thousands of fighters, who blended into ethnic Pashtun neighborhoods and refugee camps.
But although Omar and his associates now keep a low profile and move constantly among villages and mosques in the lawless Pashtun strip between Quetta and the border, Pakistani and foreign experts said Balochistan has reemerged as a Taliban sanctuary, recruiting ground and command post.
'Quetta is absolutely crucial to the Taliban today,' said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani expert on the Taliban, in a telephone interview. 'From there they get recruits, fuel and fertilizer for explosives, weapons, and food. Suicide bombers are trained on that side. They have support from the mosques and madrassas.'
Michael Semple, a former UN official in Afghanistan now based in Islamabad, described the Quetta region's refugee camps as 'a great reserve army' for the Taliban. He said Pashtun tribes in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan, the Taliban's ethnic and spiritual base, have strong ties with those on the Pakistan side. 'They are intermarried, they have Pakistani ID cards, and you can't tell the difference,' Semple said.
On the other hand, he said, reports of Taliban leaders living openly in Quetta, even attending weddings, are nonsense. 'They are deeply suspicious of the Pakistanis, and they have their own agenda,' he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
I love that picture. "He who smelt it dealt it"
#2
After 8 years, why do US officials have little knowledge of the Quetta region? I though OBL was in Baluchi years ago and we have known Omar was for sure. As for the picture, i agree something smells. Also, now that it has gotten their attention, an article a few days ago mentioned fighters resting up were leaving the area for Karachi--I would hope we have better monitoring the coastal area, too. Cut the import/export business off at the dock or at least RFID everything.
#3
Even Americans have been known to lie tell less than the whole truth at times, Lumpy Elmoluck5091, especially when listening to cell phone calls and reading emails.
PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > US PLANS WILL LEAD TO PAKISTANI CIVIL WAR [US Suppor for concept of GREATER BALOCHISTAN] + DOES BALOCHISTAN HAVE 6.0 TRILYUHN BARRELS OF OIL?
Gazans will be permitted to export lulavim that is a palm frond, one of the 4 species used during the festival of booths (aka tabernacles, sukkot)
to Israel after Religious Services Minister Ya'acov Margi received special permission to do so from Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Margi was approached by importers of lulavim to intervene after suppliers in Egypt, Israel's main source, tripled their prices palms grow in Israel but are more expensive even than the Egyptian ones.
Israeli importers told The Jerusalem Post that Egyptian suppliers in El-Arish and other locations who provide the bulk of lulavim formed a price cartel this year and demanded $1.50 per lulav, about three times the price demanded in previous years. the other 3 species are branches of the willow, myrtle and the fruit of a citron (aka etrog) tree- they all grow well in Israel
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/30/2009 15:38 ||
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Ma'an/Agencies - Israeli sources reported the landing of two projectiles they said were launched from Gaza in the western Negev Tuesday evening.
Sources said the projectiles were launched approximately one hour apart and caused no injuries.
"I am not ruling out the possibility that Hamas is testing our nerves and level of preparedness," Ashkelon Beach Regional Council head Yair Farjoun was quoted as telling the Israeli English news website Ynet following the incident. "Our response must be swift and powerful. We cannot allow the current situation to continue," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Israel, it is but you with GOD, there you must follow.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Pro-Palestinian activists sought Tuesday to have Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak arrested in Britain, they said ahead of a planned protest against his visit here.
Barak was due to attend a fringe meeting at the governing Labor Party's annual conference in Brighton, on England's south coast, where demonstrators said they would protest on Tuesday evening.
"The presence of Ehud Barak in Brighton while Britain's party of government is meeting is a disgrace," said Betty Hunter, general secretary of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Iranian MPs told world powers on Tuesday not to repeat "past mistakes" in this week's Geneva talks and instead to use the historic meeting as a chance to end deadlock.
The MPs joint-statement came as the republic said it would soon inform the United Nations nuclear watchdog of a timetable for inspection of a newly disclosed uranium enrichment plant.
Raising the stakes ahead of Thursday's rare meeting, 239 lawmakers signed a statement expressing support for negotiations based on proposals put forward by Iran, which do not mention Tehran's own nuclear program.
May 2nd, 2013 at 2:30 pm looks like it's still open at the Qom plant. Can any IAEA inspectors make themselves available at that time?
"We remind the negotiating countries that this is an historic opportunity which can be a way out of the current deadlock and solve the problems," the MPs said in a statement quoted by state broadcaster IRIB.
"We recommend the 5+1 (six powers) to use this historic opportunity," it said. "If the group of 5+1 repeats past mistakes instead of using this opportunity, the Iranian parliament would take other decisions as it did in the past."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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[Iran Press TV Latest] Two days before the high-level talks begin in Geneva on Iran's nuclear program, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana asserts that Iran should provide "guarantees" on its enrichment program.
"My expectation, or my hope, is that we will be able to get engaged in order to get the guarantees from Tehran, that the program in which they are engaged in is a peaceful program," Solana told reporters at an EU defense conference in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Solana claimed that Iran would have a hard time proving that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes, but the P5+1 is nevertheless determined to keep in touch with the Tehran government.
'P5+1' refers to the group of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, UK, US, France, China, and Russia, plus Germany.
Iranian officials say the long-awaited talks would provide a good opportunity to discuss a whole range of regional and global issues.
Washington, taking and active participation in the talks for the first time, has made the repeated claim that it will 'make sure' that the meeting would focus on Tehran's nuclear case.
Iranian officials have in turn emphasized that they have no objections to the talks, though they will not compromise on the country's inalienable nuclear rights.
Washington and European powers have been accusing Tehran of refining uranium for nuclear weapons development, despite many evidences to the contrary. Iran, however, continues to dismiss the allegation, saying its nuclear activities are solely aimed at peaceful energy production and under close monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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[Iran Press TV Latest] Russia's top diplomat at the upcoming Geneva negotiations of the 'P5+1' group with Iran has warned against using Tehran's recent missile tests as a pretext for imposing further sanctions.
Iran successfully tested long range Shahab-3 and Sejil missiles Monday in the third stage of a defense drill meant to bolster the country's defense capabilities.
The optimized Shahab-3 can hit targets at as far as 1,300 to 2,000 kilometers, while the solid-fuel-powered Sejil has an operational range of 2000 to 2500 kilometers.
"When and whether sanctions against Iran will become inevitable is a completely separate issue, one that we are yet to address," The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Interfax News Agency.
"It should be investigated," he said, "And there's no reason to immediately start dealing with the matter at that angle."
Iran and the six major powers -- Russia, China, Britain, France and the US plus Germany, referred to as the P5+1 group -- have agreed on October 1 as the date to hold wide-ranging talks addressing global issues along with Tehran's nuclear program.
Iran faces pressure to halt its nuclear enrichment, as world powers claim its program is aimed at building a nuclear bomb.
Tehran, however, has denied seeking nuclear weapons, arguing that such weapons are against its core religious and national principles as well as practically useless, and has called for the removal of all weapons of mass destruction across the globe.
The Russian diplomat once again called for a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear issue.
"The substance of the Russian position is that now, at this stretch of time, we should pool our resources together and do everything possible in the interests of a diplomatic, political solution to the Iranian nuclear problem," Ryabkov said.
China has also expressed opposition against any non-diplomatic solution to issues concerning the Iranian nuclear program.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/30/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Don't worry. It can't be said that anybody has done anything hasty yet.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Kyodo: Korea] North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has given guidance to light industrial establishments in Pyongyang, the official Korean Central News Agency reported Tuesday. KCNA did not say when Kim visited the newly built Taedonggang Foodstuff Factory and the Pyongyang Textile Machine Plant, but it was the first time that KCNA has reported Kim"s activity since Sept. 18, when he held talks in Pyongyang with Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo.
[Dawn] As American troops move deeper into southern Afghanistan to fight Taliban insurgents, US officials are expressing new concerns about the role of fugitive Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and his council of lieutenants, who reportedly plan and launch cross-border strikes from safe havens around the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, according to The Washington Post. 
[Iran Press TV Latest] Russia's top diplomat at the upcoming Geneva negotiations of the 'P5+1' group with Iran has warned against using Tehran's recent missile tests as a pretext for imposing further sanctions. 
