Obama vows not to rush Afghan troop decision

THE STANS

Afghan police open fire at demonstration
Afghan police Monday opened fire and turned a water cannon on demonstrators angry about allegations that Western troops torched a Koran, wounding at least three people, officials and witnesses said. Clashes erupted as police tried to prevent around 300 students, most of them men, from marching on parliament, the city's criminal investigation police chief, Sayed Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, told AFP. The UN mission in Kabul responded with an appeal for calm with a run-off presidential election less than a fortnight away. "Police fired at the crowd, one bullet hit me. I was closing my shop at the time," Sherullah, an 18-year-old man who suffered a bullet wound to his hip, said from his hospital bed.

"They (policemen) were just firing. They were firing at the people," he said. Sayedzada denied that police fired towards the crowd, saying they only aimed their guns in the air. They also used water cannon, the police chief added. But a doctor at the emergency ward of Ibn Sina hospital said that at least three men suffering from "bullet wounds" had been admitted for treatment. More than 15 police were also wounded in clashes between the angry mob and security forces, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said. An AFP reporter at the scene saw about three dozen people, mainly young students, herded into a police vehicle and taken away. "We were demonstrating, we wanted to protest the burning of Koran by the foreign forces but the police came and started beating us," a young man, refusing to give his name, said from the back of a police vehicle.Another man, one side of his face covered in blood, said: "They beat us up, they fired at the people."

In a similar protest in Kabul on Sunday, demonstrators torched an effigy of US President Barack Obama and attacked police. Police responded by firing into the air to disperse the crowd. The protests come amid a growing tide of resentment towards the presence of around 100,000 Western troops in Afghanistan trying to tame a raging Taliban insurgency. Even Afghan President Hamid Karzai, brought to power after the toppling of the Taliban with US support, is souring towards his old allies. "Is the United States a reliable partner with Afghanistan? Is the West a reliable partner with Afghanistan?" Karzai told CNN in an interview on Sunday. "Have we received the commitments that we were given? Have we been treated like a partner?" Haroun Mir, head of Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies, said the protests in Kabul appeared to have been well-organised and doubted they were simply spontaneous eruptions of anger. "Getting people onto the streets in Afghanistan is very difficult, it takes quite some organising, especially two days in a row. Someone wants to send a message to the Afghan government and to coalition forces in Afghanistan," Mir told AFP.

"People in Kabul have always been in favour of the coalition presence in Afghanistan. So this is not spontaneous by Kabuli people. "If it continues for a few more days we will see that it is not spontaneous and there is some political agenda behind it. And then we will have a clearer idea of who is behind it and what political signal they want to send." The demonstrations have added to tension in the build-up to a run-off election between Karzai and his former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah on November 7. "We want to appeal for calm. We recognise that emotions are high but this issue needs to be resolved by talking not by resorting to violence," Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the UN mission in Kabul, told AFP. "There is nothing to indicate the demonstrations are politically motivated but we do need to recognise the constitutional right of people to demonstrate peacefully."

by Staff Writers
Jacksonville, Florida (AFP) Oct 26, 2009
US President Barack Obama vowed Monday after his latest Afghan war council that he would not rush a decision on whether to send tens of thousands more troops into the eight-year conflict.

Obama flew to a naval air station in Florida to address servicemen and women after meeting his top national security advisors, as critics accused him of "dithering" in a vital test of his role as US commander-in-chief.

"I will never hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests, I also promise you this -- and this is very important as we consider our next steps in Afghanistan," Obama told the military personnel.

"I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way.

"I won't risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary, and if it is necessary, we will back you up.

"Because you deserve the strategy, the clear mission, the defined goals and the equipment and support you need to get the job done."

Obama critics, some senior Republicans among them, have complained Obama's weeks-long security review is dragging on too long. Former vice president Dick Cheney last week accused the president of "dithering" and "waffling."

The president's war council on Monday ran longer than expected, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, but added there was no change to the expectation that Obama would announce the eagerly awaited decision "in the coming weeks."

Obama said last week that he might make up his mind on war commander General Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops before the Afghan run-off election on November 7, but might not announce the decision.

Political pressure over the increasingly unpopular war is mounting on Obama, following revelations of corruption in the Afghan government, a quickening insurgency and a spike in deaths of US and NATO troops.

In his remarks at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Florida, Obama paid tribute to 14 American service personnel killed in two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, saying they died to thwart Al-Qaeda's hopes of a terror haven.

"Our prayers are with these service members, their civilian colleagues and the families who loved them," said Obama.

"While no words can ease the ache in their hearts today, may they find some comfort in knowing this: like all those who give their lives in service to America, they were doing their duty and they were doing this nation proud.

"They were willing to risk their lives, in this case, to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies. And today, they gave their lives ... to protect ours."

As expectations mounted that Obama is reaching a critical point in his decision making on the war, Senator John Kerry, who played a key role in brokering the run-off election, warned of the risks of McChrystal's request.

"He understands the necessity of conducting a smart counterinsurgency in a limited geographic area. But I believe his current plan reaches too far, too fast," said Kerry, who met Obama at the White House last week.

"We do not yet have the critical guarantees of governance and of development capacity, the other two legs of counterinsurgency," Kerry told the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Obama's war council, part of an exhaustive review of US war strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was scheduled to include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Vice President Joe Biden, via video link on Monday.

The Washington Post earlier reported that the war review would consider the results of a top secret Pentagon war game on two possible options for future Afghan strategy.

The exercise examined the likely outcome of sending 44,000 more troops to conduct a full-scale counterinsurgency effort aimed at building a stable Afghan government that can control most of the country, the report said.

But it also examined adding 10,000 to 15,000 more soldiers and Marines as part of an approach dubbed "counterterrorism plus," the paper said.

earlier related report
NATO's deadliest days in Afghanistan
The deaths of 14 Americans in two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan was the biggest single-day loss of US personnel in the country since June 2005.

A total of 435 foreign troops, about half of them Americans, have died so far this year, according to an AFP toll based on a tally of coalition deaths tracked by the independent website icasualties.org.

Here are some of the bloodiest incidents involving international forces in the country since the US-led military operation to oust the Taliban from power began in October 2001.

--2005--

- June 28: 16 US military personnel, including eight Navy Seals, die when a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade hits their Chinook helicopter near Asadabad, in Kunar province, 150 kilometres (93 miles) east of Kabul.

--2007--

- April 8: Six Canadian soldiers are killed when a bomb explodes near their vehicle in southern Afghanistan.

- July 4: Six Canadian soldiers and their Afghan interpreter are killed when a booby-trapped device hits their vehicle in the south.

- July 23: Four NATO soldiers are killed by an improvised explosive device in the south. Two others, including one Norwegian, are killed in two separate incidents in the south and east.

- November 10: Six NATO soldiers and two Afghan troops are killed in a Taliban ambush in northeast Afghanistan.

--2008--

- July 13: Nine US soldiers are killed in clashes in eastern Kunar province.

- August 18: Ten French soldiers are killed and 21 others injured in a Taliban ambush, about 50 kilometres from Kabul.

--2009--

- September 17: Six Italian troops are killed and three others wounded in a suicide bomb attack in Kabul.

- October 3: Eight US soldiers and two Afghan troops are killed in fierce fighting against hundreds of militants in eastern Nuristan province, bordering Pakistani tribal areas that are havens for Al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathisers.

- October 26: Seven US troops and three civilians are killed in a helicopter crash in western Badghis province. A separate collision between two helicopters in southern Afghanistan kills another four US service members.

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THE STANS

Pentagon conducts secret war game on Afghan options: report
Washington (AFP) Oct 26, 2009
Top Pentagon military officers conducted a secret war game this month to evaluate the two primary military options considered under a broad White House review of the Afghan war, The Washington Post reported Monday. Citing unnamed senior military officials, the newspaper said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen led the exercise himself. The game examined the likely ... read more

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