Not anymore:
"Ex-leader in Taliban killed, officials say" by Joseph Goldstein, New York Times February 10, 2015
KABUL — A former Taliban commander who had recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group was killed in a military operation in Helmand province Monday, according to Afghan officials and a tribal elder in the area.
In announcing the death of the commander, Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim, the Afghan spy agency said that it had been tracking him for a month and that he and five of his men had been killed in a “successful military operation” in the Kajaki district of Helmand.
Khadim was a former detainee at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, and after his release he became a high-enough commander in the Taliban to warrant making the United Nations sanctions list.
Right. So on account of this ghost all the innocent men at Gitmo must be kept there forever.
The deputy governor of the region, Mohammad Jan Rasolyaar, said the strike that killed Khadim had come from a US drone. He said Khadim and the other militants were killed when the missile struck their car.
A spokesman for the US-led military coalition in Afghanistan, Colonel Brian Tribus, confirmed that the coalition had conducted a “precision strike” in Helmand that killed “eight individuals threatening the force.”
But US officials would not say who was targeted in the strike or whether it was a part of the military operation against Khadim.
If confirmed, the strike would be the first known military operation undertaken against the Islamic State in Afghanistan, more than 1,000 miles from the group’s home territory in Syria and Iraq.
I am finding this all so SILLI, folks.
In the past few months, Khadim and a few other former Taliban commanders in Afghanistan were said to have proclaimed their allegiance to the Islamic State and had begun seeking recruits. But the development seemed to point less to a major expansion of the Islamic State than to a deepening of divisions within the Taliban.
There has been little evidence that the Islamic State’s leadership has operational control in any areas within Afghanistan, unlike in Syria and Iraq, where the group announced its presence by storming towns and killing Shi’ites and other religious minorities.
And now there top surrogate has been killed.
But the Islamic State has announced its interest in Afghanistan and Pakistan and reportedly has sent envoys there to recruit. In far-flung corners of Afghanistan, local reports are circulating of mysterious groups of foreign fighters, often flying black flags and believed to represent the Islamic State.
The accounts have mostly been difficult to confirm as they involved parts of the country dominated by the Taliban and beyond the government’s reach.
In at least one case, some of the government’s information about an encampment of the fighters came from a passing shepherd.
But Khadim’s decision to begin openly recruiting for a local cell of the Islamic State under his command drew significant attention not only in Kabul but in Washington, in part because of his time at Guantánamo.
According to people who knew Khadim, he had become disillusioned with the Taliban’s leadership and openly doubted whether the Taliban’s reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was still alive.
I have become disillusioned, too.
A tribal elder, also from the Kajaki district, said Khadim and four others had been killed while returning from a livestock market, where they had gone “to preach and encourage people to join Islamic State” before an audience of hundreds.
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What, no photo?
Related: The Afghan Militant in the Photo? The Wrong Man, and He’s Not Happy
This next piece of propaganda is right out of the playbook:
"Seized laptop spurs US raids on Al Qaeda; Data taken in operation with Afghanistan" by Matthew Rosenberg and Eric Schmitt, New York Times February 13, 2015
WASHINGTON — As an October chill fell on the mountain passes that separate the militant havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a small team of Afghan intelligence commandos and US special operations forces descended on a village where they believed a leader of Al Qaeda was hiding.
That night the Afghans and Americans got their man, Abu Bara al-Kuwaiti. They also came away with what officials from both countries say was an even bigger prize: a laptop computer and files detailing Al Qaeda operations on both sides of the border.
PFFFFFFFFFFFT!
US military officials said the intelligence seized in the raid was possibly as significant as the information found in the computer and documents of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after members of the Navy SEALs killed him in 2011.
They are really troweling out the BS, huh?
In the months since, the trove of intelligence has helped fuel a significant increase in night raids by US special operations forces and Afghan intelligence commandos, Afghan and US officials said.
That's the excuse they are using to escalate operations when we are told AmeriKan involvement is lessening. Thank God we're winning!
The spike in raids is at odds with policy declarations in Washington, where the Obama administration has deemed the US role in the war essentially over. But the increase reflects the reality in Afghanistan, where fierce fighting in the past year killed record numbers of Afghan soldiers, police officers and civilians.
What they are saying there is the government is lying to you.
US and Afghan officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing operations that are largely classified, said US forces were playing direct combat roles in many of the raids and were not simply going along as advisers.
“We’ve been clear that counterterrorism operations remain a part of our mission in Afghanistan,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said Thursday. “We’ve also been clear that we will conduct these operations in partnership with the Afghans to eliminate threats to our forces, our partners and our interests.”
The raids appear to have targeted a broad cross-section of Islamist militants. They have hit both Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, going beyond the narrow counterterrorism mission that Obama administration officials had said would continue after the formal end of US-led combat operations last December.
The tempo of operations is “unprecedented for this time of year” — that is, the traditional winter lull in fighting, a US military official said. No official would provide exact figures because the data is classified. The Afghan and US governments have also sought to keep quiet the surge in night raids to avoid political fallout in both countries.
And the propaganda pre$$ has, save for this article, pretty much obliged.
“It’s all in the shadows now,” said a former Afghan security official who informally advises his former colleagues. “The official war for the Americans — the part of the war that you could go see — that’s over. It’s only the secret war that’s still going. But it’s going hard.”
Yes, if the new$paper doesn't tell me about a war it doesn't exist!
US and Afghan officials said the intelligence gleaned from the October mission was not the sole factor behind the uptick in raids. Around the same time that Afghan and US intelligence analysts were poring over the seized laptop and files, Afghanistan’s newly elected president, Ashraf Ghani, signed a security agreement with the United States and eased restrictions on night raids by US and Afghan forces that had been put in place by his predecessor, Hamid Karzai. Karzai had also sought to limit the use of US air power, even to support Afghan forces.
Gee, what a coincidence!
Karzai’s open antipathy to the United States helped push the Obama administration toward ordering a more rapid drawdown than US military commanders had wanted. And while the timetable for the withdrawal of most US troops by the end of 2016 remains in place, the improving relations under Ghani pushed the Obama administration to grant US commanders greater latitude in military operations, US and Afghan officials said.
We were told the withdrawal of most troops was going to be the end of last year!
US commanders welcomed the new freedom. Afghan forces were overwhelmed fighting the Taliban in some parts of the country during last year’s fighting season, which typically runs from spring into autumn.
It's year-round now!
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"Taliban attack kills 20 Afghan police" New York Times February 18, 2015
KABUL — Four Taliban suicide bombers wearing Afghan police uniforms stormed a heavily fortified provincial police headquarters in central Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing at least 20 officers and wounding eight others.
The attack in Logar province came as police were filing into the dining hall. Because of their uniforms, the attackers were waved past a preliminary checkpoint to a parking lot near the entrance of the building, said Din Mohammed Darwish, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
One of the bombers then detonated his explosives, while three others fought their way through additional checkpoints and past concrete barriers, Darwish said. Police gunned down two attackers but one reached the dining hall, where he set off a vest packed with explosives.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack. While the Taliban have targeted smaller security posts across Afghanistan in recent months, the attack was the deadliest of its kind since 21 soldiers were killed in Kunar province in April. In November, the Taliban targeted an army post in Helmand province, killing at least 14 soldiers in hours of fighting.
The Taliban have maintained an intense fighting tempo this winter, during a season when violence in Afghanistan typically subsides. The efforts have been devastating for the security forces, who are responsible for keeping the country safe with vastly reduced combat support from international forces.
That not including the renewed night raids?
More than 5,000 security forces were killed in 2014, by far the deadliest year since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and more than the entire coalition death toll since then.
And they called it victory.
Afghan and Western officials fear 2015 will be worse. Coalition troops largely spent the last two years on the sidelines, allowing the Afghan forces to take the lead in combating the insurgency, but this year signals a complete transition to Afghan control.
After a high of nearly 130,000 foreign forces, just 3,000 remain in Afghanistan, largely confined to training and support roles.
Just keeping things quiet, 'eh, NYT?
President Obama has promised to bring the remaining Americans home by the end of 2016.
He promised they would be home by the end of 2014!
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Casualties of civilians surge in Afghanistan, UN reports" by Azam Ahmed, New York Times February 19, 2015
The lies are no longer funny, sorry.
KABUL — Last year was the deadliest for civilians caught up in Afghanistan’s war since the United Nations began keeping records in 2009, the world body said Wednesday — a harbinger of the new dynamic of the conflict, in which insurgents and Afghan forces increasingly engage in face-to-face battles.
By almost any metric, 2014 was a grim year. Civilian casualties, which include both deaths and injuries, were up 22 percent from the previous record set in 2013, and they surpassed 10,000 for the first time since the United Nations’ record-keeping began in Afghanistan. The number of women and children wounded or killed also reached highs.
I'm looking at this, reading this, and all I can think of is abysmal failure -- and yet my government and its military mouths are proclaiming success at the end of last year.
Casualties caused by roadside bombs, suicide attackers, and explosive devices soared to record levels. And for the Afghan security forces, 2014 was the deadliest year since the start of the war in 2001.
In large part, the surge in casualties is a result of the altered nature of the war. Almost no troops from the US-led international coalition are fighting anymore, and the air support once available to keep the Taliban from massing in large groups has been reduced.
Except they are back doing night raids (keep that quiet, NYT!)!
As a result, Afghan forces are facing the insurgents in a head-on fight that has taken a tremendous toll on Afghans in general. Such ground engagements accounted for 34 percent of civilian casualties in 2014.
Ground fighting amplifies the fog of war, making the assignment of responsibility more difficult even as the violence increases.
(Sigh)
Of the 3,605 Afghans killed or wounded during ground operations last year, it was unclear in about 30 percent of the cases which side was responsible. While the insurgents were deemed to be responsible for the largest share of ground-related casualties — 43 percent — the government and its allies were responsible for 26 percent, a large increase from previous years.
I'm sure that made them like us even more!
The report released Wednesday by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan built on the organization’s midyear update, released last summer, which laid out similar trends.
The data offer a rare insight into the toll the war is taking on Afghans at a time when less and less information is publicly available.
Can't you guys find it out, intrepid reporters and all?
With the Afghan forces now fully in the lead, the ministries most involved in the fight, defense and interior, have released information on casualties only sporadically and never anything specifically about civilians.
Among the more surprising developments reported by the United Nations was the effect of cross-border shelling into Afghanistan from Pakistan, which has been the subject of heavy complaints by the Afghan government. Such episodes, 41 in all, accounted for 1 percent of civilian casualties last year, with 71 people wounded and 11 killed, the United Nations said. All but one of those shellings were in the eastern province of Kunar, with the other in the southeastern province of Khost.
The Taliban and other antigovernment groups continued to cause a vast majority of civilian casualties, at 72 percent of the total, the United Nations said.
Yeah, it's always the "bad guys" killing more than the forces of empire.
The use of improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks caused a combined 4,560 deaths and injuries to Afghan civilians.
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