See: 3 Afghan soldiers go missing from Cape Cod base
"Afghan soldiers left Cape, headed for Canada; 3 officers detained after vanishing from training conference" by Peter Schworm and Bryan Bender | Globe Staff September 22, 2014
Three military officers from Afghanistan who disappeared Saturday while taking part in a training conference on Cape Cod were detained Monday at the Canadian border near Niagara Falls, authorities said.
The Afghan soldiers, last seen at the Cape Cod Mall two days earlier, were taken into custody without incident some 500 miles away while attempting to cross into Canada at the famed Rainbow Bridge checkpoint, according to the Massachusetts National Guard and Massachusetts State Police. Canadian authorities turned over the men to the US Customs and Border Protection agency late Monday afternoon, officials said.
The other border.
Governor Deval Patrick, speaking before the three men were found, said there was speculation within the military that the officers had planned to seek asylum. Authorities said the officers were on a pass for a trip to the mall and were reported missing at 9 p.m. Saturday.
“The officers were participating in a chaperoned event to introduce them to cultural aspects of American life,’’ the Massachusetts National Guard said in a statement Monday night.
This is all tax dime?
There was no indication they had committed any crimes, and officials insisted the men had been cleared by the US military to attend the training conference and were not considered security threats. But the mystery surrounding their whereabouts drew national attention and sparked concerns about the men’s motives.
It was the second such recent disappearance. Two Afghan police officers training with the US Drug Enforcement Administration disappeared while taking a tour of Washington, D.C., and were detained in the Buffalo area Thursday, where authorities believe they were trying to reunite with family.
In Monday’s incident, the three Afghan officers were detained at about 10 a.m., the National Guard said. The men, thought to be at least initially in the custody of Canadian authorities, were holding visas to stay in the United States through the middle of the week, according to a law enforcement official who was briefed on the case.
Major Jan Mohammad Arash, Captain Mohammad Nasir Askarzada, and Captain Noorullah Aminyar of the Afghan army had flown to the United States Sept. 11 for the weeklong training exercise at Camp Edwards, a part of Joint Base Cape Cod. The program, which ends Wednesday, brings together 200 military personnel and other participants from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, and Pakistan.
Eerie, isn't it? Never mind the potential terrorists in our midst, mingling with the illegal immigrants kids that got sent there anyway (state hushed it up after public disapproved).
The annual conference began in 2004 and has been held in various countries. The conference is intended “to promote cooperation” and help the armed forces from different nations, especially the United States and Central and South Asian countries, to work more closely together, according to the US Central Command, which sponsored the conference.
Participants receive training in responding to domestic emergencies and in various United Nations peacekeeping operations. The Massachusetts National Guard hosted this year’s event.
Major Tiffany Collins, also with Central Command, said that the three soldiers were among 14 Afghans participating in the program. Collins said she was unaware of any similar events involving foreign military personnel invited to the United States.
Hours before the three officers were detained, a spokesman for US Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East and South Asia, downplayed concerns about any potential threat to public safety.
“As long as they are here on a visa, it’s not as if they are breaking any laws,” said spokesman Mark Blackington . “They might get in trouble with their own people, but I’m not really aware of any manhunt going on.”
The Afghans may have been motivated to remain in the West by the continued political turmoil in their country, including a recently deadlocked election to replace Hamid Karzai with a new president.
“People are concerned about the uncertainty in the country and the future, particularly young people,” said Ali Amhed Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister. “Many just want a better life. I sense this might be the reason for [the soldiers] to leave the country.”
The months-long standoff over the election result, followed by a disputed runoff, was finally settled Sunday with an agreement to establish a unity government.
In recent years there have been many cases of Afghans traveling abroad and then never returning, including “low-level officers but also high-ranking officials,” Jalali said.
“The violence influences many people. It is not just people who are leaving but people who are taking their money out of the country,” said Jalali, who teaches at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, which is part of the US Department of Defense.
William Joyce, a Boston immigration lawyer and retired immigration judge, said the men would need to demonstrate a “well-founded fear of persecution” to be granted asylum. Years of war and ongoing political instability would give the men “a fighting chance” to receive political asylum, he said. “I think they are good candidates,” he said. “It’s a Third World country with a lot of discord.”
The men could live here legally until their case was heard, a process that could take months or even years, he said.
“They are entitled to pursue a claim like anyone else,” he said.
Colonel James Sahady, a spokesman for the Massachusetts National Guard, said the men had valid visas and passports and were free to come and go from the base.
Blackington, of the US Central Command, said the men’s backgrounds were carefully vetted before they were cleared to attend the program. “They have to be fairly experienced people to be invited,” he said.
Ralph A. Vitacco, selectmen chairman in Sandwich, which abuts the military reservation, said he had no major concerns about safety or security after the soldiers went missing over the weekend. Vitacco called the incident “an anomaly’’ and said the town had a great relationship with the base.
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"Afghan soldiers’ strange trip included stop at Cape strip club" by Maria Sacchetti | Globe staff September 23, 2014
At Zachary’s Pub in Mashpee, a club featuring “all-nude” women, Keno, and $4 beers, an anxious-sounding security official from Camp Edwards wanted to know whether anyone had spotted three soldiers from Afghanistan....
The men were in the United States to take classes in handling emergencies, but vanished Saturday after an off-duty trip to a shopping mall. They showed up Monday at the northern US border trying to cross into Canada, and on Tuesday, the details of their 500-mile journey remained a mystery perhaps to all but federal officials jailing them in upstate New York, where the men are facing deportation.
An Afghan diplomat said Tuesday that their motives for fleeing are unclear, but said the men posed no threat to the United States. The official described them as middle-ranking soldiers who passed a strict security clearance to come to the United States.
“There is not any threat whatsoever,” said Meerwais Nab, minister counselor for political and security matters at the embassy in Washington. He added: “They are officers. They were part of a security team here. They are normal people.”
Nab said Afghan consular officers had not been able to speak with the men by Tuesday afternoon, but they were trying to “facilitate their safe return” to Afghanistan, just as they did with two Afghan police officers who vanished from Drug Enforcement Administration training in Virginia earlier this month.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Major Jan Mohammad Arash, Captain Mohammad Nasir Askarzada, and Captain Noorullah Aminyar are in federal immigration custody in Batavia, N.Y.
“They are being charged with administrative immigration violations and placed into removal proceedings,” said Shawn Neudauer, spokesman for ICE, which is under the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration officials did not elaborate on the charges.
In a report this year, the State Department called Afghanistan “extremely dangerous,” particularly for security forces, 13 years after the US invasion and during a recently deadlocked presidential election that was resolved Sunday. Car bombs, kidnappings, and organized crime related to the opium trade are constant threats. Even traffic is a nightmare: the capital, Kabul, has only a few working traffic lights, and potholed streets with no marked lanes.
“They are not ordinary Afghans,” Nab said of the soldiers. “They are part of the Afghan government who are facing and fighting the Taliban on a daily basis. . . . It’s a big danger.”
Related: Your Nation Need AmeriKan Help?
I gave you the number to call. I would expect more potholed streets. Some help they give, turning your place to rubble.
The soldiers, who range in age from their 20s to late 40s, had flown to the United States earlier this month for a weeklong training exercise at Camp Edwards, a part of Joint Base Cape Cod. The program, which ends Wednesday, assembled 200 military personnel and other participants from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, and Pakistan.
Lieutenant Colonel James Sahady of the Massachusetts National Guard, which is hosting the training program, said the participants spent time in classrooms learning to plan emergency responses and work with civilian groups to stabilize their homelands. He said none were involved in any shooting exercises.
AmeriKa training its elite enforcers for empire.
During time off, participants took short trips to experience American culture. Often chaperones went along, because many of the participants are not fluent in English.
Thursday, they went to Wal-Mart and the Dollar Store. Friday, they toured Falmouth.
Reportedly that night, the three soldiers were in a group that went to Zachary’s, about 5 miles from Camp Edwards, where they were staying. Sahady said he could not confirm that the men went to the strip club or that the base later called Zachary’s to find them.
However, Sahady said the three men left the base Saturday with about 50 others in two small school buses to tour Craigville Beach and the Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis. Some stopped for ice cream. Others went shopping. When they assembled for the bus ride back, the three men were missing.
On Monday, after the soldiers were detained at the Canadian border, Halpern said his phone starting ringing off the hook. A DJ and two dancers said the men had been at Zachary’s Pub on Friday night. Halpern alerted Mashpee police Chief Rodney Collins, who confirmed the report to the Globe.
“I assume they were looking at naked women, but that’s pure speculation,” Collins said.
Don't let word of that get back home.
Some have speculated that the soldiers would apply for asylum in the United States, but that remained unclear Tuesday. US immigration courts declined to provide information about their hearings.
I'm tired of my "newspaper" being filled with "speculation!"
Federal records show that a little more than 100 Afghans received asylum here last year.
Nab, at the Afghan Embassy, said he expected the soldiers would return home.
“They are enrolled in the army with a commitment to do this,” he said. “This is their job.”
Ever hear the words "I quit?"
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"Afghan soldiers who fled Cape feared death at home; Soldiers sought Canada asylum" by Maria Sacchetti | Globe Staff October 01, 2014
BATAVIA, N.Y. — They watched a YouTube video to find the best way to cross the border into Canada. They made their getaway during a group outing to Walmart. And they spent more than $1,600 on taxis to travel from Cape Cod to a border checkpoint in Niagara Falls — just steps away, they hoped, from asylum and a new life.
The three Afghan soldiers who fled a training exercise on Camp Edwards last month never made it past the famed Rainbow Bridge to Canada. Instead, they are fighting deportation from a US immigration jail in this town surrounded by cornfields and cabbage patches — and on Tuesday, explained for the first time why they disappeared.
To send them back to the Afghan army, they say, would be to give them a death sentence. Family members of two soldiers have reported recent death threats. The men fear that if they return, they could be the victim of a Taliban assassin’s bullet.
Nice way to leave the place, Oba.... oh, right, not leaving.
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The soldiers said the Taliban are targeting them for fighting alongside the Americans, and they are constantly dodging sniper fire for $400 to $500 a month in pay and little protection.
They sought asylum in Canada because they figured it was more likely to grant them protection than the United States.
“For me is not important, Canada or America,” he said. “I need just asylum.”
The men, who spoke to the Globe in separate interviews Tuesday at a federal detention center in upstate New York, are set to appear in immigration court in Batavia on Wednesday.
Their saga began after they met at a training conference at Camp Edwards last month. Before then, the three soldiers said, they had been strangers, facing the same threats of crime, terror, and drug trafficking from different parts of the Central Asian nation.
It was the first trip to the United States for Captain Mohammad Nasir Askarzada, the youngest of the three. But the other two, Arash and Captain Noorullah Aminyar, said they had trained in the United States before, Arash for eight months in 2009 in San Antonio and Aminyar for 10 months in 2012 in Georgia and Texas.
Arash and Aminyar said they could have defected on those earlier trips but did not because they were career soldiers. Now, they say, the situation in Afghanistan has worsened.
WHAT?
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Back on the Cape, US soldiers frantically searched for the men at the Walmart and even a strip club, where the owner said he believes the men visited....
Globe is going to get some cover on that soon because that is the last reference to skin you will see.
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"Lawyer for fugitive Afghan soldiers says US fighting bid for release" by Maria Sacchetti | Globe staff October 02, 2014
The hearing capped an embarrassing series of events for US and Afghan officials. The soldiers are among five Afghan officers who vanished last month from training to improve their skills fighting drugs, terror, and other crimes in Afghanistan. The Central Asian nation, which inaugurated a new leader this week, is considered extremely dangerous.
A week before the soldiers disappeared from Cape Cod, two Afghan police officers skipped out on a Drug Enforcement Administration training session in Virginia. They were later found in Buffalo and have since returned home.
The Embassy of Afghanistan has expressed a hope that the three Afghan soldiers would return to their wives and children.
Ooooh.
On Wednesday, the Afghan government did not send a representative to the hearing and did not respond to requests for comment.
To qualify for asylum, the soldiers must show they fear persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular group that faces persecution.
Immigration lawyers said the soldiers could argue for asylum based on their support for American soldiers, fears of the Taliban, and even the publicity surrounding their cases.
Wow. If that gets you persecuted, this government f***ed up big time.
“These aren’t just any soldiers,” said Matthew Kolken, a Buffalo immigration lawyer who is not involved in the case. “These are soldiers that have been invited to the United States to participate in an exercise by the American government, which means they are more at risk to be targeted by the Taliban upon their return.”
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, urged the federal government to thoroughly investigate the Afghans’ cases.
“These guys may be fine, or they may be dangerous,” she said. “I don’t have faith in our asylum system to really determine that, and that’s very concerning.”
Can't blame her for feeling that way.
She added that agencies hosting similar trainings, such as the DEA or Camp Edwards, should monitor visitors’ whereabouts more closely in future.
They are too busy monitoring innocent Americans to do that.
“This strikes me as a failure in supervision on the part of their sponsoring agency, the people who were responsible for them,” she said.
That's my government these days, one big failure.
But Lieutenant Colonel James Sahady at Camp Edwards, which hosted the training camp, said the rest of the 200 participants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Mongolia returned home. “Nobody else attempted to defect,” he said.
Asylum seekers from Afghanistan have soared in recent years, according to the United Nations, with Afghans topping the list of those seeking asylum globally in 2012; they now rank third behind Syria and Iraq. Fewer obtain protection in the United States, partly because North America is harder to reach. Last year, 113 Afghans received asylum in the United States.
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Related:
"The men’s departure is not the first time foreign military officers and police have vanished from training in the United States. A week before the three Afghan soldiers slipped away from Camp Edwards, two Afghan police officers left a Drug Enforcement Administration training in Virginia and were found in Buffalo, also near the Canadian border. In 2010, military officials acknowledged that at least 17 Afghan military officers had decamped from a military language school in Texas in recent years. Media reports said most had been accounted for, though Defense officials could not provide a full accounting this week. Last year, 13 military students vanished from US training programs, a small portion of the 77,000 invited to study here, according to the Department of State."
So there could be terrorist cells inside the U.S. right now?
Also see:
Afghanistan says soldiers will not be harmed if they return
Can they guarantee that?
Afghan soldiers’ fears are no joke
Do I look like I'm laughing here?
