The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread January 2014

[McG]

Explosion Hits Afghan Capital, No Casualties
American Press
04 Jan 2014

KABUL, Afghanistan  The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan says an explosion has occurred near one of its bases in central Kabul.

A coalition spokeswoman said the explosion occurred Saturday evening "in the vicinity" of Camp Eggers, a coalition base that is close to Afghanistan's presidential palace and many embassies.

The spokeswoman said the cause of the explosion was still being investigated and that it caused no casualties.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/taliban-attack-kills-nato-soldier-afghanistan-21419787

 

[GAP]

The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread January 2014              

News only - commentary elsewhere, please.
Thanks for helping this "news only" thread system work!

 

[Edward Campbell]

A lengthy, but very useful, report by Sean Maloney (RMC) here, dealing with the "perceptions of success and failure."

PDF copy is here.

 

[McG]

NATO service member killed in attack on coalition base in south Afghanistan
The Associated Press
20 January 2014

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - An assault by suicide bombers and gunmen against a NATO base in southern Afghanistan on Monday killed one service member, the coalition said.

The statement said the attack involved a suicide car bomb and gunmen wearing vests with explosives.

It added that all the attackers were killed and that the base received moderate damage to its perimeter.

The nationality of the service member was not released.

Jawed Faisal, a spokesman for the governor of eastern Kandahar, said nine insurgents took part in the attack against the base in Zhari district.

Zhari is located west of Kandahar city.

The Taliban have intensified a campaign against Afghan and international forces as foreign troops withdraw this year.

The southern province of Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Afghan+president+again+demands+airstrikes+says+condition/9405349/story.html

 

[GAP]

Articles found January 23, 2014


5 years and 3 contractors later, Afghanistan school still deemed unsafe
Edmund DeMarche January 22, 2014 FoxNews.com
Article Link



A school being built in Afghanistan with foreign contractors and funds from American taxpayers has become a money pit that is not even safe for students, a U.S. government watchdog said.

The Mazar-e-Sharif school in the northern Afghanistan region of Balkh, one of 16 schools built in the war-torn nation under a U.S. Agency for International Development plan, has been deemed structurally unsafe, according to Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko. But the faculty and students assigned to the school are so frustrated that they had been holding class there, anyway, according to Sopko's report, which was released Wednesday.

After five years of construction, the school is still not completed and will require multiple repairs before it can be transferred to Afghan authorities, a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction's office said.

Some of the building's problems included leaks, crossing sewer lines and an incomplete electrical system that has numerous deficiencies, the report said. The architecture is so poor that a second floor terrace slopes into a classroom, causing floods whenever it rains, according to the report. The report said critical structural calculations were missing during the audit, which was called "a significant oversight" given the chances of a roof caving in or collapse of the septic tank system.

The investigation was conducted during visits in March and October 2013 and focused the audit on the Mazar-e-Sharif school.

USAID provided about $17.1 million to the Army Corps of Engineers in 2008 to construct 16 facilities across the war-torn country. These facilities followed a standard design that included 10 classrooms, four laboratories and other amenities. The Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $2.9 million contract to an Iraqi company to build three facilities in the area. The Iraqi company was issued 62 deficiency notices involving its poor work, the report said. Two other companies worked on the project and the project is still not complete.

These schools are intended to prepare students to become teachers at the secondary level.

The director of the Balkh facility pointed out that it lacks air conditioning rendering classrooms unusable during summer months, according to the report. USAID officials said they do not consider air conditioning a necessity and will not include the expense.

The agencies are seeking a contractor and hope to complete the project by mid-2014. They have since asked the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education to see to it the building stays vacant until the repairs.

Balkh province is near the Uzbekistan border, has a population of more than 1.1 million people and is divided into 15 districts. On average, only 31 percent of households use safe drinking water, according to the World Food Program.
end

 

[McG]

Afghanistan suicide bomber attacks on army bus kills 4
22 people wounded in the Kabul bomb blast
The Associated Press
26 January 2014

An Afghan official says a suicide bomber has attacked a military bus in Kabul, killing at least four people.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said the bomber waited on foot Sunday in the east of the city for the bus to arrive before setting off his explosives. He said the dead included two soldiers and two civilians, one of whom was a woman. He says 22 others were wounded.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in an email sent to media

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/afghanistan-suicide-bomber-attacks-on-army-bus-kills-4-1.2511465

Deadly suicide bombing hits Kabul
BBC News
26 January 2014

The Taliban said they carried out the attack in the south-east of the city.

They have stepped up their campaign ahead of the departure of Nato-led combat troops at the end of 2014.

The latest attack is the third by the insurgents in Kabul in just over a week. On 17 January, 21 people died in a gun and bomb attack on a restaurant.

In Sunday's attack, two soldiers on the bus and two civilians on the road died when the suicide bomber detonated his vest, a spokesman for the ministry of defence said.

The BBC's David Loyn in Kabul says government buses carrying security forces and workers to ministries in the capital are a common sight - and an easy target.

Earlier this month, a spokesman told the BBC the militants are "confident of victory" over Nato-led forces and already control large areas of the country.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25900737

 

[McG]

Will the Taliban take over in Afghanistan?
John Simpson, BBC News
27 January 2014

From the end of this year Afghanistan will be on its own. No matter how bad things get, no American or British government will come back to help.

So once the Afghan national forces are left largely to their own devices, will they be able to cope with the challenge? Or will the Taliban win the war, and control Afghanistan as they did from 1996 to 2001?

Most experts think the chances of an outright Taliban victory are slight.

Nowadays the Afghan army and police are an impressive body of men (and to a relatively small extent, of women), who have been thoroughly trained and show a real pride in themselves.

Their equipment is first class and their commanders are selected on the basis of ability.

They are as different from the feeble, unwilling Afghan soldiers and policemen I used to report on 20 years ago as it is possible to imagine.

The Taliban found it relatively easy to beat the mujahideen government and they managed to convince sizeable numbers of uncommitted warlords they were going to win, and won them over to their side.

Today Afghanistan is a different country: there is much more money around, and it seems altogether more advanced.

Corruption is everywhere, especially in government, but no-one who remembers the disastrous years of Taliban rule, when corruption reached new heights, is likely to believe the Taliban will be any better.

You only have to be in your 20s to remember what life under the Taliban was like.

If you whistled a tune, or allowed your shalwar kameez to ride up above your ankle, or flew a kite, or played chess, or owned a picture of any living creature, you could be arrested, beaten, or even executed.

The Taliban raided houses, confiscating television sets and video-tapes, and hung them from the lamp-posts as a warning.

It was the most extreme society I have ever seen, anywhere in the world. Iran at its revolutionary height seemed liberal by comparison.

Before they captured Kabul, no one gave the Taliban a serious chance of winning.

The first time I realised they might win was in the early months of 1996, when I was in Kandahar and watched their leader, Mullah Omar, lift the Prophet's cloak out of a container where it had been kept for more than 1,000 years, and hold it up to show to the huge, adoring crowd.

This time, the Taliban do not show the same kind of intensity.

But they are better organised than they used to be, and they are battle-hardened from fighting the British and Americans. Both armies have real respect for their fighting qualities.

I interviewed their spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahed, over the phone while I was in Afghanistan this time. It was the first full interview he had done for well over a year.

The Americans maintain that Mujahed is not one person, but several; but the man I spoke to remembered that I had interviewed him four years ago, and that an American aircraft had flown over him menacingly while our interview was going on.

Mujahed defended the record of the Taliban when they were in power.

"If you speak to the ordinary people of Afghanistan, if you ask the real representatives of the Afghan people, especially those who are in the villages and remote areas, they will tell you that in Afghanistan there was a sound Islamic emirate government. This system contains guidance for individuals and for society collectively, and it brought positive development," he told me.

Might there, I asked, be all-out civil war when the British and Americans leave?

"It is not the responsibility of the West to bring peace to Afghanistan and to be concerned about us. They should withdraw their forces from Afghanistan because their presence is the cause of catastrophe... They should put an end to their aggression, and after that the Afghans themselves will know what to do," he replied.

And what would that be?

It seems to me that if the new president, who will be voted in at the elections in April, is skilful, then he may be able to do a deal with at least some parts of the Taliban.

Those who reject it will continue fighting, but there will be fewer of them.

As part of the price for the deal, the new president will have to introduce more Islamic practices.

But whether the West likes it or not, the Taliban represent an important element in the make-up of Afghanistan.

If there is to be any kind of peace, it will be impossible to exclude them altogether.

As the withdrawal of British, American and other forces from Afghanistan draws closer, the Taliban and their allies are raising the number of their attacks.

Their aim is clearly to give the impression that they have driven the foreign troops out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25879217