Related: Afghan Troop Trainees Field Trip Was to Strip Club
"Bond granted to 2 Afghan military officers" by Maria Sacchetti | Globe Staff October 22, 2014
A federal immigration judge said Wednesday that two Afghan military officers who disappeared from Camp Edwards last month could be released on $25,000 bond as they pursue asylum here, according to federal immigration officials.
Immigration Judge Steven Connelly set bail for Afghan army Captain Mohammad Nasir Askarzada and Captain Noorullah Aminyar, who have been held in an immigration jail in northern New York since Sept. 22, when they and Major Jan Arash were stopped while trying to cross into Canada to request asylum in that country.
It is the same amount the judge ordered earlier this month for Arash, who has not raised enough money to post bail, his lawyer, Matthew Borowski, said in an interview before the hearing.
Borowski said this week that donors had raised more than $10,000 for Arash, who is also seeking asylum. Borowski could not immediately be reached Wednesday after the court hearing, but he has said a $25,000 bond is high.
The average bond nationwide is $5,200, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Federal immigration prosecutor Marvin J. Muller III opposed bond, calling the men flight risks. Officials have said the men were not dangerous and had passed strict vetting procedures to obtain visas to travel to the United States.
All three are being held for civil immigration violations in Batavia, N.Y. The immigration court is inside the jail.
The soldiers vanished in September during an outing on Cape Cod, where they were training with officials from other countries. In interviews, the Afghan officers said they feared that if they returned to Afghanistan the Taliban would kill them for fighting alongside the Americans, and they also feared reprisals from the Afghan government for seeking asylum.
Canada turned away the men because of an agreement between Canada and the United States that requires foreigners to seek asylum in the nation where they first arrive.
The Afghan government has urged the officers to return home, saying they would not be harmed and would only face the ordinary punishment of a solider who went AWOL.
Arash has a deportation hearing scheduled for Dec. 9. On Wednesday, the judge set Askarzada’s deportation hearing for Jan. 6 and Aminyar’s for Jan. 8, officials said.
If released from custody, Aminyar could stay with a cousin in California, Borowski told the judge. Apartments in Buffalo and Virginia are also available to the men, he said.
Globe kept the cover on the strip club story.
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Maybe you guys should have went to the cafe in Kabul.
"A mullah who raped a 10-year-old girl in his mosque was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a dramatic trial here in Kabul on Saturday during which his accuser, weeping and shaking, summoned the courage to confront him. Women’s activists attending the packed proceedings hailed the sentence as a victory because the mullah was successfully prosecuted under a 2009 law meant to fight violence against women in a country where rape had long been treated as adultery, implicitly placing partial blame on the victim."
How are the prisons in Afghanistan these days?
"Afghan prison renovation incomplete, auditor says" Associated Press October 29, 2014
KABUL — The renovation of Afghanistan’s main prison, which began five years ago, has yet to be completed, and the State Department has terminated the contract despite the United States spending $18.5 million, a report said Tuesday.
Who stole the money, and in which Dubai bank accounts did they end up?
Federal auditor SIGAR, which oversees reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, reported that work on Pol-i-Charkhi prison is only half finished despite the US government spending almost all of the $20.2 million contract value.
The prison, built in 1973 to house approximately 5,000 prisoners, is now heavily overcrowded with 7,400 inmates, said the report, based on an April-September assessment.
SIGAR said the Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs had already paid Al-Watan Construction Co., an Afghan firm, the sum despite its lagging results.
It also found that not all the work had been done according to contract terms.
The report said the contractor improperly covered 30-year-old wood trusses with new roofing material, rather than replacing them with new metal trusses as required under the contract.
Meanwhile in western Herat province, an Afghan police chief said that gunmen attacked a checkpoint in the capital city, also called Herat, killing two police officers.
The chief of the provincial criminal investigation division, Gul Agha Hashimi, said seven civilians were also wounded when two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on the checkpoint at around 2 p.m.
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Related: Afghans Despise AmeriKan Detention Dungeons
Seemed like an appropriate link for this holiday season.
"US and British troops end combat operations in key Afghan province" by Azam Ahmed | New York Times October 27, 2014
Reading that name is usually followed by the words "Oh, no."
KABUL — Combat operations in the province of Helmand officially ended Sunday for the US Marines and British troops stationed there, bringing an end to a decadelong struggle to keep a major Taliban stronghold and the region’s vast opium production in check.
Officials commemorated the handover during simultaneous ceremonies at Camp Leatherneck for the Marines and Camp Bastion for the British forces, conjoined bases that made up the coalition headquarters for the region.
The Afghan army’s 215th Corps will assume full control of the camps, a 6,500-acre parcel of desert scrubland in Southwest Afghanistan — and with it responsibility for securing one of the most violent provinces in the country.
No wonder those guys wanted to bolt to Canada.
While some US combat troops will remain in Afghanistan through the end of the year, the closing of Camp Bastion signified the end of all British operations in the country. During the nation’s long tenure in Helmand, which began in 2006, British forces lost 453 servicemen.
The handover came amid the deadliest period on record for Afghan forces. In the six months since March, more soldiers and police officers have died than any period since the start of the war, evidence that the Afghan forces are truly in the lead, and of the grinding battle that lies ahead.
Yeah, hurray!
Played out this summer, areas once deemed relatively secure grew problematic, while trouble spots became engulfed in violence.
Nowhere has that fight been more apparent, or deadly, than in Helmand.
Helmand was the first site of the United States’ 2010 troop surge, when thousands of military personnel were dispatched into Afghanistan to beat back a resurgent Taliban. Hundreds of coalition troops lost their lives to ambushes and roadside bombs in the bleak deserts and verdant valleys of Helmand.
Districts such as Sangin and Marja, home to some of the most violent fighting of the past 13 years, became household names as the United States wound down its war in Iraq and accelerated its involvement in Afghanistan.
Yeah, right.
For the British forces, Helmand was the centerpiece of a multiyear counternarcotics effort that largely failed to stem poppy cultivation.
And we know why. Opium funds black budgets for government intelligence agencies and bolsters the bottom lines of banks that can't survive without drug cash.
The province, which is home to more than 80 percent of the nation’s opium production, remains the heart of the illicit drug trade. According to a UN report, 2013 saw more land used to cultivate the crop than any year since the international community began recording the figure.
Obama calls it victory. What is he on?
Still, officials Sunday expressed cautious optimism that the Afghans would be ready to handle the fight on their own. While the Taliban tested districts across northern Helmand, claiming checkpoints, causing hundreds of casualties and sowing fear into the local population, the movement failed to claim any district centers from the government.
They need an ISIS of their own.
“Because of the competence, resolve, and combined skills of the ANSF, insurgent networks have become ineffective in Helmand province,” said a statement from the International Security Assistance Force, referring to the Afghan National Security Forces.
Oh, yeah?
In reality, locals say, the Taliban have never been stronger in the province.
And you wonder why I'm sick of reading this stuff?
In the face of Western assertions, they added, the Taliban have claimed stretches of area surrounding the government centers and have dominated rural areas, as well as the flourishing drug trade.
Yeah, the Taliban have set up a shadow government for years now, but don't let that spoil the high.
Related: The New York Times Smokes Opium
It is no myth, either.
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Related: How Britain fell from grace as a global military power
And so has the U.S.:
"The new Afghan president travels to China this week, signaling the pivotal role he hopes Beijing will play in Afghanistan's future, not only in the economic reconstruction of the war-ravaged country after U.S. and allied combat troops leave by the end of the year but also in a strategic foreign policy aimed at building peace across a region long riven by mistrust and violence.
Is this what the U.S. thought it was getting when it stole the election from Abdullah and installed this former World Bank official?
Uh-oh!
Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai will leave Kabul on Tuesday for a three-day visit to China, where he will meet President Xi Jinping, as well as potential investors to bankroll Afghanistan's development as it emerges from 30 years of war impoverished, wracked by corruption, and still struggling to contain the Taliban insurgency.
He will lead a delegation of Afghan businessmen at a summit where he hopes to attract Chinese investment to develop a mining industry as the bedrock of the economy, after more than a decade of dependence on international military and aid largesse."
We won the war and China is going to reap the rewards?
Related: Your Nation Need AmeriKan Help? Dial ‘1-800-air power’!
The call just came in.
