Developing Afghanistan U.S. C-130 Deal

The Pentagon is working out the details of a scheme to equip the Afghanistan Air Force with four C-130H Transport plane.

"The USAF HAS Developed a strategy to aggressively Pursue Delivering two C-130H aircraft in late CY 2013 and two additional C-130H aircraft before the end of CY 2014," Ed Gulick, Air Force spokesman, wrote in a statement. He added in the second quarter That of Afghan pilots this year will travel to "various locations" in the U.S. for training on the flat.

"Air Force leadership Recognizes the need to address the aussitôt [Afghan Air Force] requirement for medium airlift capability, and is Committed to Provide year effective and sustainable airlift capability for our Afghan partners as soon as possible," Gulick wrote.

Kabul's Detention Of Western Contractors Spurs Tensions

Afghanistan detained several Western employees of a top supplier to the U.S. military in an escalating dispute over taxes, as tax feuds raise tensions between Washington and Kabul, company representatives and coalition officials said.
Representatives of Netherlands-based Supreme Group, the U.S. military's main food supplier in Afghanistan, were attending a routine meeting at the Afghan Revenue Department on Tuesday as part of continuing negotiations over the company's tax bill. A witness said the meeting ended unexpectedly when officials from the Afghan Attorney General's office told the Westerners they were being arrested in connection with Supreme's unpaid taxes.
"The prosecutors asked, 'Are you going to pay your taxes?' " the witness said. "And…then these two officers with guns came in and they immediately started to take everybody's phones."
Officials in the Afghan Finance Ministry and Attorney General's office confirmed the arrests of the contractors, who are British, French and Dutch, but didn't respond to requests to discuss the reasons for the arrests. The Western contractors were taken to a detention facility in Kabul and held overnight before being released late Wednesday, Supreme said.
The arrests and similar tax disputes threaten to cast a pall over U.S.-Afghan relations at a particularly sensitive moment: U.S. troops are accelerating their withdrawal, bringing an end to an internationally financed reconstruction boom.

Afghanistan: National Directorate of Security attacked by suicide bombers

A squad of suicide bombers stormed a complex of Afghan secret service Wednesday 16 in the center of Kabul, killing two guards before being slaughtered. Thirty-three civilians were wounded.

The last attack in the capital dated back to December 17, while the author of these lines was there. A car bomb had jumped in front of the buildings of the American company Contrack working for the Afghan army, leaving one dead and a dozen wounded, including five foreigners.

Wednesday 16 noon, a loud explosion heard in several districts of Kabul marked the beginning of the attack, in a large busy street near the Interior Ministry and the Green Zone, within which are especially embassies and international organizations.

Six terrorists packed with explosives

According Shafiqullah Taheri, a spokesman for the National Directorate of Security (National Directorate of Security, NDS) first attacker detonated a car bomb at the entrance of the complex, before being followed by five other attackers are out of a second vehicle.

Two Diverging Roads for Afghanistan

As the 2014 date for the withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan approaches, the country faces two starkly different futures. One is a return to the civil war conditions of the 1990s that brought disaster and disunity. In this scenario Afghanistan is abandoned by the international community before falling prey to the machinations of neighbors who bankroll conflict between rival ethnic groups, potentially bringing about the country's dissolution as a unitary state. The other is the emergence of a stable, prosperous Afghanistan bankrolled by these same neighbors. In this scenario economic self-interests trump old parochial politics.
But how can two such divergent paths proceed from the same Afghan starting point? The neighbors and rivalries are the same, with the Afghans politically fractured and the West marginalized in both cases. The direction depends on whether Afghanistan breaks its longstanding lack of economic integration with the outside world. Growing Asian economies could make life-transforming investments in Afghanistan, restoring its old role as an overland trade entrepôt and ensuring a new role as mineral treasure house. Instability and violence could derail this process, and the short-term thinking of Afghanistan's current political class presents an almost greater challenge.The pessimistic path has been well trodden over Afghanistan's past 35 years. Over the past century and a half a series of Afghan rulers cultivated economic isolationism and religious xenophobia as a protective survival response to successive "Great Game" rivalries over their country. Indeed, Afghanistan had the almost unique misfortune of attracting new geopolitical conflict whenever a previous one subsided. In the 19th century British India and Czarist Russia both preserved and clashed over Afghanistan as a buffer state between their respective colonial empires. In the 20th century Afghanistan became a proxy battleground in the Cold War. And Afghanistan opened the 21st century under Taliban rule, hosting Osama bin Laden who organized a terrorist attack on the United States. The culmination of each of these geopolitical rivalries was one or more foreign invasions, foreign occupations and foreign withdrawals, of which the 2014 departure will be the fourth for Afghanistan since 1841.

Obama: U.S. to speed up Afghan troop transition

President Barack Obama Friday NATO troops Said Would speed up a transfer of lead security responsibility to Afghan forces, this spring, in a sign the pace of U.S. troop Withdrawals Could quicken.

After meeting President Hamid Karzai to chart Afghanistan's future, Obama insisted the United States there HAD Achieved target icts of "decapitating" Al-Qaeda, DESPITE falling short of heady early goals for Afghan reconstruction.

The two leaders is at a crucial moment in the final chapter of a long, bloody war, as Obama and balances shape the future of Afghanistan with U.S. fight tiredness and a desire to Spend America's dwindling resources at home.

"Starting this spring, our troops will Have a different mission - training, advising, Assisting Afghan forces. It will be a historic moment and another step Toward full Afghan sovereignty," Obama Told joined news conference.

"Because of the progress made has-beens That in terms of Afghan security forces, Their capacity to take the lead, we are ble to meet (transition) and accelerate em Somewhat goals," Obama said.

NATO planes HAD Previously Called for foreign forces, transfer lead to fighting duties against the Taliban by the middle of the year this. Obama was careful to stress however That will still fight U.S. troops Alongside Afghans.

That Karzai added from the spring, "the Afghan forces, will be fully responsible for Providing security and protection to the Afghan people.

U.K. Orders Anti-Sniper System For Use by Troops in Afghanistan

Britain has ordered a French-built anti-sniper system to help protect troops in Afghanistan, even as spending on military equipment to defeat the Taliban is in decline as the drawdown of combat troops gathers pace.

The U.K. Defence Ministry revealed in late December that it was spending around 5 million pounds ($8 million) on an urgent operational requirement (UOR) to provide troops with equipment that uses a laser to detect the glass lenses used by the Taliban on sniper rifle sights.

The purchase coincided with the MoD’s first public breakdown of how it had spent billions of pounds over the past four years equipping the military in Afghanistan and Iraq with UOR kits.

French company Cilas is due to begin deliveries of its SLD 500 system this week, having beat three other contenders for a deal signed Nov. 26, a company executive said.

The system is designed to spot snipers using optical sights by shining a laser in the direction of potential opponents. The system detects refraction when the laser hits the glass surface of a scope or binoculars.

The past year has seen a number of British troops killed or wounded by Taliban small arms fire.

The award to Cilas follows the MoD’s cancellation last year of another UOR small-arms detection program using lightweight acoustic systems carried by individual soldiers capable of pinpointing the location of rifle fire.

The program was axed midyear before a contractor was selected.

France’s Direction Générale de l’Armement procurement office funded much of the development of the SLD 500 but did not order it for the French Army. Several other countries have bought the system, the Cilas executive said. The U.S. Marine Corps purchased systems for evaluation but, as far as is known, did not buy the equipment for fielding.

News of the Cilas success follows an announcement by government officials during a trip to Afghanistan by British Prime Minister David Cameron just before Christmas that a further 230 million pounds would be spent on military equipment ahead of the withdrawal of combat troops by the end of 2014.

The post-2014 Afghanistan: how many troops should leave behind?

A decision on the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the combat mission of NATO in 2014 she intervene at the end of next week's visit of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Washington? This is unlikely because U.S. officials remain divided on the personnel deployed at the end of the withdrawal.

The United States currently have  66 000 100 000 soldiers of the combat mission in Afghanistan and NATO want to keep bases and troops in the country after 2014. General John Allen, chief of military operations in Afghanistan, has proposed keeping 6,000, 10,000 or 20,000 men in the country after the NATO mission, according to military sources cited by the New York Times. These soldiers should train and support the Afghan army, and perhaps conduct operations "against terrorism.

A report by the Institute for the Study of War needs analysis and concludes that these numbers are expected to reach nearly 30,000 men. The authors have developed two scenarios, some common parameters are:

- Staffs and command structures: 920 h

- Command and control: from 1 900 to 2 150 h

- Support to the Afghan forces from 16 000 to 20 000 h (four security forces, support brigades)

- Operations: 4475 or 7650 (if a combat brigade is deployed in RC East.

Afghanistan: British soldier killed by a shot from the inside

A British soldier of the armed forces of NATO was killed by a man wearing the uniform of the Afghan army, the first victim in 2013 attacks inside Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

A person wearing the uniform of the Afghan army turned the gun against members of the armed forces of NATO in southern Afghanistan yesterday, killing one of them, said in a statement the coalition which does not give details about the victim.

The British authorities have confirmed the death of one of their soldiers by an alleged member of the Afghan National Army in the district of Nahr-e-Saraj in Helmand province, a prey to the Taliban insurgency, but without revealing identity.

The attacker was also killed in the attack, also said a spokesman of the NATO mission.

This new attack inside comes as Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in Washington for talks with U.S. officials on the stability of his country after the combat mission of the 100,000 NATO troops in late 2014.

After this deadline, Afghan forces only ensure the protection of the territory against Taliban insurgents, who currently refuse to join a peace process to prevent a new civil war in the country.

401st Completes M1114 Vehicle Transfer to Afghan National Army

A historic mission for the 401st Army Field Support Brigade came to an end, Nov. 12, when AFSBn-Bagram issued 49 M1114 vehicles to the Afghan National Army, under a Foreign Military Sales case.

The 49 vehicles were the last of more than 950 vehicles that were involved in the program that lasted about two and one-half years. Before the vehicles were turned over to the ANA, they were completely checked and restored to a fully mission capable status at AFSBn-Bagram and Camp Lindsey near Kandahar. In some cases, the vehicle was practically rebuilt from the ground up, while other vehicles required only minor repair and refurbishment.

"Almost every component [of the vehicle] was touched," said Michael A. Fiame, 401st AFSB equipment specialist. "The suspension, tires, whatever was needed."

For approximately one year, AFSBn-BAF conducted a maintenance mentorship program in which Afghan soldiers worked alongside battalion mechanics to learn more about the vehicles and improve their proficiency in maintaining them. They worked on the very vehicles that were turned over to the ANA under the sales case.

Counter IED Lab Saves Lives in Afghanistan

                                                       

Of all the weapons deployed by terrorists the improvised explosive device (IED) is the most effective, causing more combat casualties than any other method of attack in Afghanistan.

NATO Exploitation Level Two for C-IED requires intermediate processing of information in theatre for investigation of IED events. This implies a forward deployed asset with sufficient capacity to deal with a wide variety of data input and a team of specialists to analyse, interpret and disseminate the product derived from such investigation. That is exactly what the EDA laboratory, built by Indra in Spain, has provided for the Multinational TEL (MN TEL) deployed last year.

The laboratory was deployed to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) theatre of operations under the management of France, which assumed Lead Nation responsibility for the project.

Captain Jean-Charles Dhyser of the French corps of military engineers was tasked by the Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA - France’s defence procurement management authority) with overseeing the development of the laboratory in collaboration with the EDA. Once deployed, he acted in the capacity of technical advisor and EOD expert to the commander of the MN TEL.

Long-term engagement

“It is important to note that this is a long term project and what we have deployed so far is just a trial version. Nevertheless, we have managed a marriage of all the principles involved and can already identify at least five individuals who have been caught making IEDs as a result of the TEL’s activity. Which is what this project is all about – the ultimate objective is the saving of lives,” he said.

Afghanistan: 3000-9000 U.S. soldiers deployed beyond 2014

According to a new plan, the Pentagon plans on keeping in Afghanistan 3000-9000 men after 2014, thousands of American soldiers less than originally planned, we read in the pages of the Saturday Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Previously, U.S. General John Allen, head of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, had proposed to keep the country from 6000 to 15,000 soldiers of the United States after the combat mission of NATO.

The WSJ reports that under the plan mentioned, the U.S. maintained military contingent in Afghanistan after 2014 will continue training the Afghan army and participate in the fight against terrorism.