Free Republic

A report from a top U.S. military watchdog has finally acknowledged that the UH-60A+ Black Hawks that the United States is supplying to the Afghan Air Force are less capable and harder to maintain than the Russian-made Mi-17 Hip helicopters they have now. The review raises concerns that this could limit Afghanistan’s ability to conduct operations across the country unless steps are taking to mitigate the loss of capability, something we at The War Zone have long warned could easily be the case. The Pentagon’s own Office of the Inspector General included these frank admissions in a routine, periodic update...

This report examines the U.S. counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan, detailing how DOD and State, USAID, and the DEA tried to deter farmers and traffickers from growing and trading of opium.

Hat Tip: Jerry Todd How many of us have or could endure ONE WEEK of this guys experience??? An interesting read from a Recon Marine in Afghanistan ; an insider's view of what is really going on. This Marine is articulate, has a flare for colorful language and descriptive prose regarding scorpions, chiggers and sand fleas: "It's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains , along the Dar'yoi Pamir River, watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake-out, my friend, and...

KABUL/PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah has been killed in a U.S.-Afghan air strike in Afghanistan, a senior Afghan Defence Ministry official said on Friday, a killing likely to ease tension between the United States and Pakistan. Mullah Fazlullah in an undated photo. U.S. Department of State/via REUTERS An official at the NATO-led Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan confirmed Fazlullah was killed on Thursday. The U.S. military said earlier in Washington it had carried out a strike aimed at a senior militant figure in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, which is on the Pakistani border, and...

The U.S. will take advantage of the temporary cease-fire with the Taliban declared in Afghanistan to train its firepower on ISIS Khorasan and al Qaeda remnants, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said at a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels Friday. “Should the Taliban take full advantage of the cease-fire in the best interest of the Afghan people, then many of the surveillance assets we have overhead could be reoriented to ISIS-K, to al-Qaeda, and other foreign terrorists who have no business being in Afghanistan in the first place,” Mattis told reporters. “And obviously, those forces that would have been...

Kazakhstan Grants U.S. Access to Ports for Afghan-Bound Goods By gaining access to Aktau and Kuryk, the United States adds additional routes to circumvent Russia. Mar 7, 2018 Lawmakers in Kazakhstan have approved an agreement allowing the United States to use two of the nation’s Caspian Sea ports as transit points for shipping nonmilitary material to Afghanistan. By gaining access to the ports of Aktau and Kuryk, the United States will gain an additional option in circumventing Russia, which has previously also provided transit options for NATO supplies to Afghanistan. Speaking on March 7, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Kairat Adrakhmanov repeatedly...

PINEHURST, NC (WTVD) -- The widow of Army Specialist Chris Harris and their newborn daughter scheduled a special photo shoot with the men and women her husband bravely fought alongside in Afghanistan. Specialist Harris died in August of 2017 while serving our country, just days after learning he would be a dad. Chris' unit gathered to commemorate the birth of Christian Michelle Harris, born on March 17th. "Knowing that we could come home to a baby girl, that was awesome," said Sgt. Nathan Arthur Bagley. "When everyone came home, that was the day she was born so that made it...

U.S. Marines in Afghanistan killed dozens of Taliban leaders last week using rocket artillery after tracking them to a meeting in volatile Helmand Province, according to the top American general in Afghanistan Wednesday. U.S. Forces Afghanistan said more than 50 Taliban commanders, including the deputy Taliban shadow governor of Helmand was killed. Taliban leaders from six other provinces across Afghanistan were killed as well in the strike in the Musa Qala district of Helmand, according to the statement. Twenty other Taliban leaders were killed in air strikes earlier this month by drones and Air Force A-10 Warthog jets based in...

WASHINGTON — An Afghan man, who awarded a Medal of Bravery to U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year, has been killed by Taliban. Zabihullah Mujahid a Taliban spokesperson in a tweet Sunday took responsibility for the attack. “One of those criminals who had taken a medal to U.S. President Trump is killed in the blast in Logar. His name is Gul Nabi who had designed the medal.” Afghan officials criticized the targeted killing of civilians who “support the policy of peace.”

Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl’s light, dishonorable discharge without incarceration for leaving his post in 2009 and causing severe injuries and possibly related deaths of several fellow soldiers in Afghanistan. Sgt. Bergdahl’s return was procured by Mr. Obama in 2014 in exchange for five Taliban commanders who have gone back to plotting the destruction of the United States and our allies. Here’s a snapshot into Bowe Bergdahl’s view of the nation that sacrificed so much to secure his return: In an e-mail to his parents before he took French leave in 2009, Bergdahl said he was ‘ashamed to be an American’...

A Berthoud High School graduate was killed in action Monday while serving in Afghanistan, weeks before his unit's deployment in the country was scheduled to end. The U.S. Department of Defense announced Tuesday that Spc. Gabriel D. Conde, 22, died of small arms fire in the Tagab District while supporting Operation Freedom's Sentinel, according to a release from the department. The incident is still under investigation. Conde was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, U.S. Army Alaska, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

The journalists died when a bomber disguised as a TV cameraman detonated a second bomb at the site of an earlier explosion. Both attacks were claimed by Islamic State. The first blast happened at around at 8 a.m. local time in the Shashdarak area of the city, where the US embassy and Afghan government buildings are located, prompting journalists to rush to the scene. The second explosion came as the attacker, posing as a cameraman, detonated explosives as journalists huddled around the scene, Kabul City Police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai told CNN. In a statement issued via the social media app...

A middle-aged Swedish woman was raped and abused by two Afghan asylum seekers in their asylum accommodation, Fria Tider reports. The woman, who was a member of a Facebook group against migrant deportations, tried to prove that xenophobes are wrong about the fact that Afghans are dangerous. The woman was raped and harassed on 26 December last year. She wanted to meet someone during a night out and when she was unsuccessful, decided to go with the two Afghan men, she told the police. She met the two unaccompanied refugees from Afghanistan outside a pub and decided to accompany them...

Pope combat controller awarded Air Force Crossby Airman 1st Class Jason A. Neal43rd Airlift Wing Public Affairs01/13/03 - POPE AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. (AFPN) -- Senior Air Force leaders awarded the Air Force Cross to Tech. Sgt. John Chapman here Jan. 10. RELATED LINKS Printable Version Chapman, a combat controller killed in Afghanistan while saving the lives of his entire team, was posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross, which is second only to the Medal of Honor as an award for valor. Secretary of the Air Force James G. Roche said Chapman was "an American's American" and a hero....

John Chapman among 7 killed in Afghanistan trying to rescue comrade Wednesday, March 13, 2002 By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer WINDBER, Pa. -- He was born in Connecticut; he wasn't a hometown boy. Truth is, most of the 4,600 people around this northern Somerset County town didn't even know Air Force Tech. Sgt. John Chapman. As Air Force Tech Sgt. John Chapman's casket is lowered into the ground in Windber, Somerset County, one of his team members is consoled; another stands at attention. Chapman was one of seven soldiers who died in the mountains of east Afghanistan when they...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — They call it the Battle of Roberts Ridge.The 15-hour firefight cost more American lives — seven — than any other engagement in the war against terrorism. It was named after the first American to die amidst the snowy, 10,000-foot mountains of eastern Afghanistan. But so many troops performed with such extraordinary courage during that long night and day that it could just as easily have been named after any one of at least a dozen men. This is the story of that March 4 battle, and of one of those heroes.A fusillade of fireIt...

Former Fort Myers teacher among U.S. casualties in Afghanistan [left teaching for more pay in army] Army Ranger, Marc A. Anderson - a former math teacher at a FL public school. Wednesday, March 6, 2002 By MARY KELLI BRIDGES, mkbridges@naplesnews.com and KARIE PARTINGTON, kjpartington@naplesnews.com Students in Cathy Kane's Fort Myers Middle School social studies class watched on television Tuesday as the flag-draped coffins of seven soldiers were carried off a plane in Germany. They knew that the body of Army Ranger Spc. Marc A. Anderson — a former teacher at the school — was among them. The 30-year-old Anderson ...

It was March 4, 2002. American special operations forces were fighting to establish observation posts high above Afghanistan’s Shah-i-Kot Valley, as conventional troops continued their push through the valley floor below. One of those men, Air Force Technical Sgt. John Chapman, was alone in the pitch-black, wounded and slowly regaining his consciousness in the thigh-deep snow of a 10,469-foot peak known as Takur Ghar, as scores of Al Qaeda fighters closed in. The operators were due to lift-off from their Gardez base around midnight and quietly land near the base of the peak before climbing to the top. But maintenance...

One of the biggest ongoing problems of U.S. foreign policy is a failure to understand what we’re really up against. This problem is nothing new, although Barack Obama took it to new heights by banning all mention of Islam and jihad from counterterror training, with many of his loyalists still in place and hampering our ability to deal realistically with the jihad threat today. This myopia goes back decades. In Theodore H. White’s America In Search of Itself, there is this telling passage about the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979: Of the negotiating effort, the most biting summary was...

Who Was Tamerlane? Timur was a 14th Century Turko-Mongol military leader who conquered most of the Muslim world, central Asia, and parts of India. His Timurid Empire rivaled the size and power of the Mongolian domain forged by Genghis Khan a century earlier.Known by his nickname, Tamerlane, it's unclear why many people in the Western world have never heard of this brutal and ingenious warlord. To rectify this neglect, the following is a list of interesting facts about Tamerlane. The list includes notable events in his life; analyzes his acerbic personality, and remarks on current impressions of this fascinating...