[Khaama (Afghanistan)] President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. expressed optimisms to achieve peace with the support of the people while calling the government's efforts as successful in regional and international level in obtaining their content regarding the reconciliation process.
In a meeting with the tribal elders and influential members of Kandahar, Paktia and eastern zone councils, President Ghani insisted that peace and stability have been one of the main demands of the people and said the government will achieve it with the help of the people.
President Ghani also added that Afghanistan has been facing Pakistain in an undeclared war during the past 14 years and the requested the Afghan people to assist the government in ending the ongoing war.
He said peace and stability could not be ensured through negotiations with the outsiders only.
"We have a rich country but poor people," President Ghani said. "By ensuring peace and stability, we can have a fundamental use of facilities and resources for the welfare of our people and development of the country."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The Afghan National Army (ANA) will receive 55 Mobile Strike Force vehicles under a contract by the US Department of Defense (DoD).
According to a statement by the Department of Defense, the vehicles would be built by Textron Marine & Land Systems.
"Textron Marine & Land Systems, New Orleans, Louisiana, was awarded a $56,176,864 firm-fixed-price foreign military sales (Afghanistan) contract for 55 Mobile Strike Force vehicles with related fielding hardware and field service representative services for system deprocessing," the statement said.
The statement further added that the work will be performed in Slidell, Louisiana, with an estimated completion date of April 28, 2016.
The MSFV is a 4×4 armored vehicle and the variants to be delivered includes MSFV with enclosed turret; MSFV with Objective Gunner's Protection Kit; and an MSFV ambulance.
The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) are also expected to receive 2,293 Medium Tactical Vehicles (MTVs) under a contract by the US Army worth $369 million.
The contract has been awarded to the Navistar International Corporation (NYSE: NAV) -- a holding company whose subsidiaries and affiliates produce International® brand commercial and military trucks, proprietary diesel engines, and IC Bus™ brand school and commercial buses.
The Navistar Defense said production will commence immediately, with deliveries starting in January 2016 and concluding in 2019.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] UNITED NATIONS: The self-styled Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) group is making inroads in Afghanistan, winning over a growing number of sympathisers and recruiting followers in 25 of the country's 34 provinces, a United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... (UN) report said Friday.
The jihadist group, which controls large areas of Syria and Iraq, has been trying to establish itself in Afghanistan, challenging the Taliban on their own turf.
Afghan cops told UN sanctions monitors that about 10 percent of the Taliban insurgency are IS sympathisers, according to the report by the UN's Al Qaeda monitoring team.
"The number of groups and individuals who are openly declaring either loyalty to or sympathy with ISIL continues to grow in a number of provinces in Afghanistan," said the report.
Afghan government sources said "sightings of the groups with some form of ISIL branding" or sympathy were reported in 25 provinces in the war-torn country, it added.
The IS-backed groups "regularly engage" Afghan military forces, but fighting with other parts of the insurgency are rare, except in Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province where they are battling the Taliban for control of the drug trade.
Among the prominent IS fighters, the report singled out Abdul Rauf Khadem, a former Taliban adviser to Mullah Omar ... a minor Pashtun commander in the war against the Soviets who made good as leader of the Taliban. As ruler of Afghanistan, he took the title Leader of the Faithful. The imposition of Pashtunkhwa on the nation institutionalized ignorance and brutality in a country already notable for its own fair share of ignorance and brutality... , who visited Iraq in October 2014 and has since formed his own group in Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... and Farah provinces.
Khadem allegedly has been recruiting followers by paying out large sums of money.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
if only we had publicly announced it was a War on Theocracy not a war on terror
and properly occupied afghanistan
we had a decade. that is an entire generation of high school students that could have been given a secular education divorced from religion
one decade and you can break the chain
but we missed it, and we failed to educate the women and girls, or include RAWA in the first afghan government
we gave in to the theocrats when we shouldnt, and now the religious ground is fertile for IS
#2
The reason why Vlad = Russia took the Crimea from Ukraine, + is now in Syria.
The other reason is Russia's base fears of self-proclaimed, future East Asia + post-US World #1 CHINA'S LT designs on Central Asia + espec the Russian Far East.
* See also RELATED LUCIANNE > [AFP] RUSSIA BUILDS UP SYRIA BASE AS US SUFFERS SETBACK.
* BIGNEWSNETWORK > [VOA News] AFGHAN OFFICIAL: FORCES REPEL MAJOR ISLAMIC STATE ATTACK, KILL 35 MILITANTS.
* THANH NIEN NEWS > NEARLY 30,000 FOREIGN FIGHTERS WENT TO SYRIA AND IRAQ.
[DAWN] The corpse count in a crush at the annual Haj pilgrimage outside Makkah rose to 769, Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... said on Saturday, as arch-rival Iran said Saudi officials should be tried in an international court for what it called a crime.
The worst disaster to befall the Islamic event in a quarter of a century occurred on Thursday as two large groups of pilgrims arrived together at a crossroads in Mina, a few kilometres outside the holy city.
"The latest statistics up to this hour reveal 769 dead. That is an increase of 52 on the previous figures," Saudi health minister Khalid al-Falih told a news conference.
"Those are the ones who died in various hospitals since the event," he said, adding that 934 people were maimed.
Iran, which is locked in a series of proxy wars in Arab countries around the Saudi kingdom, says that at least 136 Iranians are among the dead, sparking protests and outrage in the Islamic Theocratic Republic on Friday.
Over 300 other Iranians remain unaccounted for, including former ambassador to Leb Ghazanfar Roknabadi, Fars news agency reported.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Maybe the 300-odd all defected?
Ya know, wars have been started for less.
Jus' sayin'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/27/2015 13:11 Comments ||
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[RFA] Chinese officials have issued a ban on 22 Muslim names in Hoten prefecture in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, threatening to forbid children with such names from attending school unless their parents change them.
A Uighur woman named Turakhan who lives in a suburban village of Niya county in Hoten prefecture said that the village chief and police had informed every resident about "the list of forbidden Muslim names."
She said, "My daughter's name is Muslim, so the village police came to our house and told us that we must change our daughter’s name as soon as possible. The police explained to us that a name such as Muslim was officially forbidden. Under such circumstances, we were forced to change our daughter’s name."
A photo of the official announcement banning 15 popular Muslim first names for males and seven for females first appeared on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, and was widely circulated by the messaging app WeChat.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] China and the United States will improve cooperation on fighting militancy, including intelligence exchanges, and work together to bring peace to Afghanistan, China's foreign ministry said after a leaders' summit in Washington.
China says it faces a serious threat from bandidosLions of Islam in its far western region of Xinjiang, where hundreds have died in violence in recent years.
However, women are made to be loved, not understood... exiles and rights groups say China has never presented convincing evidence of the existence of a cohesive bad boy group fighting the government, and that much of the unrest can be traced back to frustration at controls over the culture and religion of the Uighur people who live in Xinjiang.
Worries over human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... violations have also meant China has traditionally received little cooperation from Western countries in dealing with the issue.
The ministry said on its website China and the U.S. had reaffirmed their opposition to any form of militancy and agreed to improve bilateral and multilateral cooperation.
"Both sides will look to broadly increase anti-terrorism cooperation, including how to deal with cross-border foreign terrorists, cracking down on terror financing and increasing intelligence exchanges on terror threats," it said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
As the Chinese seem to have our entire classified archive now, they'll get to work on sorting it out. If they figure out anything, they'll maybe let us know.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
09/27/2015 10:54 Comments ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] An alleged Islamic myrmidon charged with involvement in the destruction of religious buildings in the historic city of Timbuktu in Mali in 2012 has been tossed in the slammer Book 'im, Mahmoud! and was sent to the International Criminal Court ... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ... early Saturday to face justice.
Ahmad Al Mahdi Al Faqi, known as Abu Tourab, is the first suspect in the court's custody charged with the war crime of deliberately destroying religious or historical monuments.
"The people of Mali deserve justice for the attacks against their cities, their beliefs and their communities," the court's chief prosecutor, Fatou Nesouda, said in a statement.
She called the destruction "a callous assault on the dignity and identity of entire populations, and their religious and historical roots."
Al Faqi was surrendered to the court by Niger based on an arrest warrant issued a week ago. He was transferred to The Hague in the early hours of Saturday. No date was immediately set for his arraignment.
The court said in a statement he was a member of Ansar Dine, a bully boy group with links to al-Qaeda that ruled across northern Mali in 2012.
He is charged in the destruction of 10 historic buildings including mausoleums and a mosque in Timbuktu.
The entire city of Timbuktu is listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. At the peak of its influence in the 15th and 16th centuries, Timbuktu counted 180 schools and universities which received thousands of students from all over the Moslem world.
Islamic gunnies who overran Timbuktu in 2012 destroyed 14 of the city's 16 mausoleums, one-room structures that house the tombs of the city's great thinkers. The snuffies condemned the buildings as totems of idolatry.
The bandidosmurderous Moslems were driven out after nearly a year by a French military intervention.
Fourteen mausoleums destroyed in 2012 have since been restored by the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... .
Prosecutors allege that Al Faqi was linked to an Islamic court set up by snuffies in Timbuktu and participated in carrying out its orders.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2015 00:00 ||
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[Rudaw] Shiite firebrand ...firebrands are noted more for audio volume and the quantity of spittle generated than for any actual logic in their arguments... leader Moqtada Tater al-Sadr ... the Iranian catspaw holy man who was 22 years old in 2003 and was nearing 40 in 2010. He spends most of his time in Iran, safely out of the line of fire, where he's learning to be an ayatollah... called on Iraqis and his party's followers to resume demonstrations against the Iraqi government after the Eid of Sacrifice ends tomorrow.
"Next Friday, Iraqis should pour into streets to call for the implementing of reforms and reiterate their demands from the government," said Sadr in a statement on Saturday.
He added: "We call on all Iraqis to abide by the demonstration laws to secure the lives of protesters."
In the past, Sadr has called on his followers to take to the streets in protest. On August 24, the prominent Shiite leader officially called on his people to demonstrate in the capital.
"We announce to all people, and to the Sadrists in particular, the need to participate in protests this Friday in Baghdad," a Sadr spokesperson said. "The Sadrist participants should merge with the other protesters in a single, national Iraqi crucible."
Protesters in Baghdad erupted into the streets about four months ago, demanding the government fight corruption and punish officials guilty of graft.
Following the protests, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced a series of cost-cutting reforms, slashing deputy positions in the presidency and premiership as well as in government. He also reduced the excessive number of official bodyguards.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/27/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq
#1
Gather yur salad shooters, yur show time roterissie ovens, pocket fisherpersons and yur waterless cookware we're gonna have a mass demonstration.
A summer of stalemate in the effort to reclaim the Iraqi provincial capital of Ramadi, despite US-backed Iraqi troops vastly outnumbering Daesh fighters, calls into question not only Iraq's ability to win a test of wills over key territory but also the future direction of Washington's approach to defeating the extremist group.
Why is this our problem again? Champ pulled us out of there, remember? It's Iraq's problem now. And Iran's, and Syria's, and Russia's.
The Ramadi standoff, with no immediate prospect of an Iraqi assault on the city, drags on even as the US prepares to makeover its approach to countering Daesh in Syria and congressional Republicans cite Ramadi as evidence of a failed American strategy. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a leading critic, says it's clear the US is not winning, "and if you're not winning in this kind of warfare, you are losing."
John the strategist. You couldn't defeat the Democrats...
The Obama administration insists patience will pay off, even in Ramadi, where in May, Daesh won control against a much larger Iraqi force, shattering claims by US military officials that the group was on the defensive across Iraq.
Patience is not all we have: we also have some nifty hashtags...
Afterward, Defence Secretary Ash Carter said the Iraqis, who had no US-trained soldiers with them and had fled Ramadi, "showed no will to fight."
[AnNahar] Russia kept up its military buildup in Syria on Saturday with a fresh transport flight into a new airbase in the heartland of its regime ally, a Syrian military source told Agence La Belle France Presse.
It was the 15th straight day that a Russian transport aircraft had flown in troops and equipment to the Hmeimim base in Latakia province on the Mediterranean coast, the source said on condition of anonymity.
"For the past two weeks and again today a Russian cargo plane has landed every morning at Hmeimim," the source said, adding that they all had fighter escorts.
U.S. satellites have recorded increased activity by Russian forces at the base inside the Bassel Assad civil and military airport.
Washington and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... say that recent spottings of helicopters, bombers, ground attack aircraft, tanks and soldiers prove that Russia is building an airbase.
If such a buildup is officially verified -- and more importantly deployed -- it would be the Russia's first military engagement in a distant theatre of war since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979.
One senior Syrian official called Russia's military involvement a "turning point" in more than four years of devastating civil war.
"Russia wants to remind the U.S. that its relations with Damascus date back more than 50 years and that this country is in its sphere of influence," the official said.
Done wirh full appreciation for President Obama and his negotiators, no doubt.
[Ynet] Iran has signed contracts worth $21 billion to buy satellite equipment and aircraft from Russia, Manouchehr Manteghi, the managing director of Iran Aviation Industries Organization, said in an interview with Russian agency Sputnik on Saturday.
Manteghi said the contracts had been signed at the MAKS-2015 air show in Russia last month.
The contracts involved satellite-related equipment as well as the Sukhoi Superjet 100 regional passenger aircraft, Sputnik said.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/27/2015 00:00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#3
I hope IRAN remembers that Russia historically keeps its best MilTechs for itself, as best illustrated by all of the sinkings, crashings, + coming afire, etc. that Russ MilEqmt/MilSys have been linked to over the DECADES, to includ since 1991 + 9-11.
IRAN = likely better off buying from the US-West, or stealing + "reverse-engineering" from same.
[ISRAELNATIONALNEWS] Syria gives Hezbollah 75 Russian tanks to make armored division. Russia assures Israel that it has always been responsible in Middle East.
Syria is going to give 75 Russian tanks to the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Rai reports.
The tanks are models T-55 and T-72 and intended to help Hezbollah create an armored division, supposedly to fight against al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. In addition, Russia has approved a plan for 100 Iranian officers and special forces troops to help teach Hezbollah urban warfare skills.
The report further claimed that Russia, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah have opened a "joint operations room" to coordinate their fight against ISIS.
The newspaper quotes official sources as saying that each party will be responsible for particular areas of Syria, with Russia operating in Latakia, Hama and some parts of the Aleppo province, while Iran will be defending the capital Damascus and down to Quneitra on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. The report also states that some 100 Iranian special forces trained in urban warfare have arrived in Damascus
Hezbollah will reportedly be taking up positions around Homs, where the ancient city of Palmyra — now largely decimated by Islamic State — is located. The Syrian army has received substantial support from thousands of fighters dispatched from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon — and most notably fellow Iranian client Hezbollah.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
these tanks are probably destined to defend a mini Syrian Alawite/Shia state from Damascus to the Mediterranean
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/27/2015 1:04 Comments ||
Top||
#2
these tanks are probably destined to defend a mini Syrian Alawite/Shia state from Damascus to the Mediterranean
I do hope IDF ground command won't let IAF hog all the potential target practice.
#3
Not far from the U.S. Air Force Base at Ali Al Salem, Kuwait you will find a massive testament to Russian armor and indigenous, ME combined arms capability.
[AlAhram] Efforts to evacuate civilians as part of a six-month truce in flashpoint Syrian villages stalled Saturday when protesters blocked a key route, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
"Dozens of men... cut off the road that was to be used to evacuate civilians from Fuaa and Kafraya," the last two regime-held villages in northwest Idlib province, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
A UN-brokered ceasefire deal to include Fuaa, Kafraya and Zabadani -- the only remaining rebel bastion along Syria's border with Leb -- was reached Thursday between warring parties in Syria.
The agreement included the withdrawal of rebel fighters from Zabadani to Idlib, in exchange for the evacuation of 10,000 civilians from Fuaa and Kafraya.
"The evacuations were supposed to start this morning, but they have been delayed until tomorrow or the next day," Abdel Rahman told AFP on Saturday.
Young men from the town of Saraqeb blocked the road that Syria's Red Islamic Thingy would have used to escort civilians out of Fuaa and Kafraya and south into regime-controlled territory in Hama province, he said.
"Some of them were protesting the fact that Saraqeb was not included in the ceasefire, and others were protesting the ceasefire as a whole," he added.
Held by opposition fighters, Saraqeb is regularly bombarded by the Syrian regime's military aircraft.
On Saturday alone, at least six regime air raids struck the town, the Observatory said.
Elsewhere in Syria, seven non-combatants were killed when regime forces fired a missile on a neighbourhood in the central city of Homs on Saturday.
The Observatory said most of those killed were children, and that dozens more were maimed.
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.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] President Mohammad 
International Criminal Court
Moqtada 
