Mission & Justice

18/5/08

The Pakistan army has taken issue with coalition forces in Afghanistan over a missile attack launched by a US drone aircraft that killed 14 people, an army spokesman said yesterday. Two missiles hit a house on Wednesday in the village of Damadola in Bajaur, a Pakistani tribal region where al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups are active, a security official said. “We have informed the coalition headquarters in Afghanistan … we have raised this issue in tripartite commission,” army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said. The commission comprises the military commanders from the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan and the Afghan and Pakistani armies.

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Tom Coghlan; 17/5/08

Western secret services in Afghanistan are acting like South American “death squads”, a United Nations human rights expert has claimed. Professor Richard Alston of the United Nations Human Rights Council said the intelligence agencies and Afghan militias were targeting suspected insurgency leaders with “impunity”. Their missions, he said, were “unaccountable to any international military authority”. Although Professor Alston refused to identify which intelligence services he was talking about, his comments follow criticism of the activities of CIA units, often by military personnel from other nations operating in Afghanistan.

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Paul Maley; 13/5/08

A six-month-old baby and a teenage girl were killed during a firefight in Afghanistan between Australian troops and Taliban militants. But a report into the battle, in which Australian soldier Luke Worsley also died, has not recommended the Diggers change their rules of engagement. The Vice Chief of the Defence Force, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, yesterday said the baby was in a room from where a man and a woman, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, opened fire on Australian troops on November 23 last year.

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11/5/08

Slowly, and sadly, the consequences of Australia’s open-ended commitment of troops to Afghanistan are becoming apparent. Last week, the funeral was held for Lance Corporal Jason Marks, the fifth Australian soldier to be killed there since 2002. His death reminds us of the practical perils facing young Australians sent to perform a deadly task in our name. Other news from Afghanistan last week highlights other perils facing our soldiers. Allegations of mistreatment of prisoners captured by Australians reveal they operate in a legal and moral minefield — complexities typical of any war, but which have a unique character in Afghanistan.

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Brendan Nicholson; 10/5/08

Three investigations are under way into allegations that Australian troops maltreated Afghan civilians captured during a raid on a bomb-making facility. The Australian Defence Force chief, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said in Afghanistan that an initial inquiry carried out in country indicated there was no truth in the allegations but he had immediately sent two teams to the country to investigate further. One team consists of military police, who would thoroughly investigate the allegations. The second team would carry out a longer-term administrative investigation to see if any issues emerged that needed to be dealt with. As well, the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has launched

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6/5/08

Five Afghan detainees who were released from Guantanamo Bay last week have been sent to jail upon their arrival in Afghanistan. They had been detained at Guantanamo Bay with the Al Jazeera cameraman, Sami al-Hajj. Al-Hajj and the Afghan detainees were on the same plane after they were released from the US military prison. he detainees, who have been taken to the Pul-i-Charkhe prison on the outskirts of Kabul, the Afghan capital, will now face Afghan courts. Detainees from Guantanamo Bay and any other US prison facility are usually transferred to Afghan custody once they are released.

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James Emery; 6/5/08

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the export value of Afghanistan’s opium production was about $4 billion last year, of which 24 percent went to those working at the lower to middle end of the opium chain. The bulk of the money goes to regional and international trafficking organizations that have ties with the Taliban, terrorists, and multinational criminal organizations. “Counter-narcotics is one of the key challenges,” said Ashraf Haidari, political counselor at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, D.C. “I think that unless we resolve the narcotics problem, it can undo many of our achievements, especially the governance and the rule of law. Narcotics traders are corrupting everyone that is not paid well; the police primarily, but also the judicial system up to institutions that constitute the face of the government.”

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Tom Hyland; 4/5/08

Prisoners captured by Australian and Dutch troops in Afghanistan allege they have been beaten after being handed over to the notorious Afghan secret police. While the Australian Defence Force says there is no evidence prisoners taken by Australian troops have been mistreated, official documents show three have complained they were beaten around the head by secret police after being captured by the Dutch-Australian taskforce. The Dutch documents show prisoners are routinely handed over to Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), which human rights groups accuse of torturing and abusing prisoners.

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Mark Dodd; 29/4/08

Australian troops in Afghanistan face a “difficult and dangerous and bloody” year, and the nation must be prepared for further deaths, Kevin Rudd warned yesterday. In his bleakest yet assessment of the challenge facing coalition forces in Afghanistan, the Prime Minister said history was against foreign military forces operating in the war-torn country but Australia was in for the “long haul”. His grim warning follows the death of special forces soldier Lance Corporal Jason Marks, 27, from the Sydney-based 4th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment. Four other commandos received serious wounds. Corporal Marks was the fifth Australian soldier to die in Afghanistan since coalition troops launched their campaign against the Taliban and al-Qa’ida in 2002. Four Australians have now died since October last year.

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19/4/08

More than 300,000 USA military veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression, new research released yesterday estimates. The study by a team at the Rand Corporation, a non-profit US think tank, showed mental disorders were more prevalent and lasting than previously known, surfacing belatedly and lingering after troops had been discharged. The study also concluded that about 320,000 veterans of those conflicts experienced a “probable” traumatic brain injury (TBI) during deployment, but the long-term impact on mental health was unclear. Military officials praised the Rand study, which was consistent with their own studies, and said it would reinforce efforts to try to improve mental healthcare. The findings were extrapolated from a survey of 1926 recently returned service members. The sample was designed to represent the 1.6 million troops who had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002.

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