A gunman in an Afghan police uniform has killed six service members in eastern Afghanistan, Nato forces say.
The man opened fire during a training mission in Pachir Wagam district, Nangarhar province, said Nato. He was also killed in the incident.
Local officials said they believed the incident was not premeditated, but had arisen out of "a misunderstanding".
Nato has not revealed the nationalities of the dead soldiers, but local sources said they were American.
"An individual in an Afghan border police uniform turned his weapon against International Security Assistance Forces (Isaf) during a training mission today, killing six service members in eastern Afghanistan," Monday's statement said.
This is the country we're supposed to turn into a First World democracy - one where shooting 6 people dead is classed as a "misunderstanding".
Being brought coffee instead of tea is a misunderstanding; this is the cold-blooded, cowardly murder of men doing their duty.
Still, we shouldn't be too harsh - perhaps the killer misinterpreted the Koran? Apparently it does happen.
Mohammed Jawad was released and arrived in his native Afghanistan earlier this week. His family says he was 12 at the time of his detention in 2002.
He was in custody for seven years. The Pentagon, however, disputes his age.
Mr Jawad had been accused of injuring two US soldiers and their interpreter by throwing a grenade at their vehicle.
Much of the case against him had been ruled inadmissible by a US military judge in 2008.
Mr Jawad's release was ordered last month by US District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle, who described the US government's case against him as "an outrage" that was "riddled with holes".
US government lawyers had said they were considering pursuing a criminal case against Mr Jawad, but no charges were filed.
US President Barack Obama has pledged to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay by January 2010.
Mr Jawad's lawyers said his family would sue for compensation in US courts, but added that he needed as much financial assistance as possible in the short term.
"The way forward right now is to avail the Afghanistan government and the US government of funding to help train him and get him back to normalcy," Mr Jawad's lawyer Major Eric Montalvo was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying.
"So to not give him any compensation - any way to help him back to civilisation - this is unacceptable," Mr Montalvo told a press conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
"There is no difference between being confined in Guantanamo Bay or being left out in the wild without assistance," he said.
Mr Jawad's family say he was 12 when he was arrested in 2002.
The Pentagon says a bone scan showed he was about 17 when taken into custody.
Mr Montalvo, a US military lawyer, says Mr Jawad, who does not have a birth certificate, was between 12 and 15 years old at the time of arrest.
"I was an innocent child when they put me in prison," Mr Jawad told The Associated Press in an interview.
His family and lawyers say Mr Jawad was subjected to torture while in detention.
Innocent child... Suffered torture... For people who don't even have birth certificates for their children, they've certainly been briefed well on the best things to say to ensure a lot of money comes their way.
If he actually did this, the thought that he will profit from it is truly obscene.
The above image is a montage of 200 men killed fighting in Afghanistan.
Since it was created, it has gone out of date; another British soldier has died after succumbing to injuries received in a bomb blast, and the death toll currently stands at 201.
Earlier in the week, Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth, a man who has never served in the military and was flirting with radical Marxism well into his thirties, blamed the 'defeatist attitude' of the British public for letting down our soldiers.
Of course, one can stand firmly behind our soldiers and all their NATO allies without necessarily supporting the war in Afghanistan, and most sensible people realise this.
Perhaps Mr Ainsworth should do his job, and garner support by actually explaining the purpose of the war. Whilst he is at it, he could complete the far more important task of equipping the troops on the ground with what they actually need.
Several senior commanders have come forward to say he is capable of doing neither.
In an article written in today's Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens says:
The explanation shifts and wobbles as the months pass. One minute, we are global social workers, then a sort of drugs squad, then we are promoting feminism or training the Afghan army.
Or perhaps we are introducing ‘democracy’ in a country where men vote as their tribal leaders tell them.
As a last resort, we are spun some tale that by fighting over mud villages near Lashkar Gah, we are protecting Britain from terrorist plots – though all the evidence shows that terrorist plots can be and are begun in Britain, with no aid from supposed ‘training camps’ in Afghanistan.
Although he seems quite glib about some issues, I'm inclined to agree with him; however good the intentions of trying to make Afghanistan a better place may be, I'm not sure they are realistically achievable.
AFGHANISTAN has quietly passed a law permitting Shiite men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation that President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.
The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to gain permission from their husbands to work.
''It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her,'' the US charity Human Rights Watch said.
This is the government we are paying with the blood of our young men to prop up.
The problem with Afghanistan is that pretty much everyone in a position of power is a backward, bloodthirsty Islamist - it is simply a question of degrees.
Meanwhile, as the death toll soars and the practices of the Taliban enter normal society once more via the back door, female U.S. Marines are donning headscarves 'to bond with local women':
That was the drill for female American Marines who set out on patrol this week with a mission to make friends with Afghan women in a war zone by showing respect for Muslim standards of modesty.The all-female unit of 46 Marines is the military’s latest innovation in its rivalry with the Taliban for the populace’s loyalty. Afghan women are viewed as good intelligence sources, and more open to the basics of the military’s hearts-and-minds effort — hygiene, education and an end to the violence.
“It’s part of the effort to show we’re sensitive to local culture,” said Capt. Jennifer Gregoire, of East Strasburg, Pennsylvania. She leads the Female Engagement Team in the Now Zad Valley of Helmand province, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.
“If you show your hair, its kind of like seeing a nude picture here, because women are very covered up,” she said.
Silly question, I know, but aren't these Marines there to help liberate Afghan women from tyrannical oppression, rather than adapting to medieval customs themselves?
It truly beggars belief. These women are the ultimate example, supposedly, of women succeeding in a man's world.
Increasingly, I think this war is a fool's errand. This country cannot be occupied, and it isn't in our interests to do so anyway; if we are concerned about security, then our borders deserve more attention than they currently get.
The Taliban and the training camps can be kept at bay with drones, airstrikes and special forces; but pretending Afghanistan has a democratic future with the way things currently stand is simply delusional.
***Update*** 21:45 16th August 2009
Sadly, even this post is now out of date; a further three British soldiers have died in Afghanistan.
Recently an American television programme, 'The Wanted', highlighted the case of Mullah Krekar, a known terrorist cleric from Northern Iraq who sought asylum in Norway.
Naturally, the Norwegian authorities will not deport him, lest his human rights be violated - even though the Kurdish authorities have guaranteed he will not face the death penalty if convicted.
The Progress Party have pledged to get rid of him should they gain power in the upcoming Norwegian elections:
How long will the terrorist, mullah Krekar, be able to menace citizens before he is send out of Norway? Although the Kurdish authorities promise that he will not get the death penalty, the Labor Party insists that Krekar will not be deported. The Progress Party believes Krekar should be held in custody until he can be sent out of the country. Norway has been a refuge for terrorists, and even Osama bin Laden would receive protection in Norway. His friends, at least, will stay in Norway. Taliban minister, Abdul Rauf Mohammad, has lived in Norway since 2001. The same men who threw acid in the eyes of the young Afghan girls that wanted to go to school would be allowed to stay in Norway.
Krekar came to Norway as war refugee in 1991. Although he claimed prosecution in Iraq, he has repeatedly visited the country. Kurdish authorities have wished that he’d be extradited on the basis that he has led a terrorist organization called Ansar Al-Islam. The terror organization announced once in a letter that all Christians in Iraq had to get out or they would be killed. Ansar Al-Islam is affiliated with Al Qaida and is allegedly behind the killings of several Kurds civilians.
Norway’s authorities have point blank refused to extradite him, because they fear that Krekar could be sentenced to death. Now, however, TV2 reports that the Kurdish authorities will guarantee the security of the former leader of the Ansar al-Islam. The government guarantees that Krekar will not be subjected to torture or inhuman treatment. The matter should be clear-cut. The Labor Party’s Bjarne Håkon Hanssen, Jens Stoltenberg, and Jonas Gahr Støre have previously stated that Krekar cannot be kicked out before we are able guarantee for his safety.
But no, it is not as easy as it appears. Jonas Gahr Støre does not believe in the Iraq’s regional authorities’ promises. He will fight with tooth and nails that Krekar, who is behind a series of murders and has several times in recent years talked enthusiastically about the murder of western citizens, will stay in Norway, because of the security reasons. I agree with Carl I. Hagen: "All actions of this government suggests that Mullah Krekar’s safety and security comes before the security of the kingdom.”
This is not only a disgrace for Norwya’s immigration policy. But it is also a shame to all those currently serving in Afghanistan and Iraq for peace. It also dishonors those who work either in aid or human rights organizations in Muslim countries. People like Mullah Krekar endangers all that.
The Progress Party believes the TV2’s documentation is good enough for Mullah Krekar to be extradited from Norway. Norway’s immigration and asylum policy should not apply terrorists or people who support the killing of civilians.
Until Krekar can be put on a plane out of Norway, he should be in custody the same manner others in similar situation are being treated. When the Progress Party takes over the government, we will ensure that all necessary documentation will be prepared and Krekar will sit on an airplane on the way home within 100 days.
You'll notice thought that this is not solely about Mullah Krekar.
Whilst British and European troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, allegedly keeping us safe, a former Taliban minister and his family are living safely in Norway, on the Norwegian taxpayer.
How can this be right or just?
Meanwhile, here in Britain, it has been revealed that convicted terrorists are living in bail hostels after their release from prison:
At least 20 men suspected of harbouring al-Qaida sympathies and convicted of terrorism offences have been released from British prisons this year, according to probation staff.
The men had reached the two-thirds point of their sentence and therefore qualified for release back into the community, where the majority are being supervised by probation staff as they reside in hostels.
Many have been placed on curfews or placed under strict licence conditions in a bid to ensure they are kept under close supervision. But the revelation that convicted terrorists are being housed in hostels is likely to trigger a national debate on how best the authorities can deal with what is considered by many experts to be a new type of serious offender.
Most of the men released so far were convicted for offences associated with the possession of terrorist material or literature or aiding others who went on to carry out terrorist attacks both in the UK and abroad. The probation union, Napo, claims that nine men convicted for terrorist offences are being housed in hostels in London, two in the Midlands and another four in Yorkshire.
Probation staff say that, although many of those released may pose a real threat, the normal tools used to assess the risk of reoffending are of limited value because of the motivation which led to their crime.
"It is extremely difficult to work with any individual whose criminal behaviour is politically motivated," said Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo. "The psychology is totally different from the vast majority of persons convicted of criminal offences whose activity is either acquisitive or, in cases of violence, often pathological."
However, with an estimated 160 people convicted of terrorism offences inspired by al-Qaida currently residing in Britain's jails, there is growing pressure on the authorities to give details of how they intend to deal with convicted terrorists.
While most are considered "minor" offenders, several convicted of more serious offences are due to be released soon. Andrew Rowe was given a seven-and-a-half year sentence after being caught with details of how to fire mortar bombs and secret codes to facilitate terror attacks. He is due to appear before the parole board within weeks.
Raids on his home uncovered a handwritten guide to firing battlefield weapons, videos of the 9/11 atrocities and tapes of Osama bin Laden. He had used the names of specific models of mobile phones as code for words and phrases such as "airline crew", "explosives" and "army base". His socks carried traces of TNT and plastic explosives.
A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said anyone convicted of terrorist offences and sentenced to more than 12 months' imprisonment would be subject to probation supervision on release from prison.
"They have to adhere to a set of strict conditions and are subject to recall to custody if they breach their conditions or their behaviour indicates that it is no longer safe to allow them to remain in the community," she said. The Home Office has also pledged to deport any convicted terrorists who are foreign nationals.
We should go further; any terrorist should be stripped of their British citizenship and deported. If our security is worth the blood of our troops, then it should be taken far more seriously.
The American soldier captured by insurgents in Afghanistan has been named by the U.S. Army.
He is Private First Class Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, of Ketchum, Idaho, and the Army confirmed for the first time today that he is being held hostage by the Taliban.
This disturbing video was released, in which Pfc Bergdahl talks of his family, and his fears that he will never see them again:
As was expected, the Taliban are cynically using him to spread propaganda, in violation of international law. He is clearly being prompted in parts, an he urges the American government to withdraw their forces and go home.
From The Times:
Appearing nervous and frightened, he answers questions in English while drinking green tea.
“I was captured outside of the base camp. I was behind a patrol, lagging behind the patrol and I was captured,” the soldier tells an unseen questioner.
The US Defense Department said in a statement that Pfc Bergdahl was a member of the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, based in Fort Richardson, Alaska. His status was changed two weeks ago from “whereabouts unknown” to “missing-captured”, it said.
“The use of the soldier for propaganda purposes we view as against international law,” said Captain Jon Stock, a military spokesman in Kabul. “We are continuing to do whatever possible to recover the soldier safe and unharmed.”
The US military has been distributing leaflets this week seeking Pfc Bergdahl's release. A military spokeswoman said that it was the first case she was aware of in which a US service member had been captured and held by the Taleban in Afghanistan.
“Well, I am scared. I’m scared I won’t be able to go home. It is very unnerving to be a prisoner,” Pfc Bergdahl says.
“I have my girlfriend, who is hoping to marry. I have my grandma and grandpas. I have a very, very good family that I love back home in America.”
A voice off camera prompts:“Miss them.”
The soldier continues: “And I miss them every day that I’m gone. I miss them and I’m afraid that I might never see them again and that I’ll never be able to tell them that I love them again. I’ll never be able to hug them.”
In other clips, he appears to be in good health and is shown eating rice.
At one point the voice says in English: “Any message to your people?”
“Yes. To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it’s like to miss them: you have the power to make our government bring them home,” the soldier says.
“Please, please bring us home so that we can go back to where we belong and not over here wasting our time and our lives.”
Asked about the US-led invasion that toppled the hardline Taleban government in 2001, Pfc Bergdahl replies: “Since I’ve been here and I’ve seen how these people live and function, we have indeed invaded an independent state.
“We’re told that civilian casualties that soldiers like myself inflict ... are simply something that we have to accept in a time of war and that we’re told that they don’t matter,” he adds.
His captors show his military dog tags to the camera, with his name visible.
A Taleban commander in southeastern Paktika province has said that his group have the soldier. The June 30 abduction is believed to be the first time militants have snatched an American soldier in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.
The US-based monitoring group IntelCenter said that the video contained a production group logo that has been associated with Taleban-related videos in the past.
Incredibly, one of the contributors at The Times article writes the following:
Alastair Northedge wrote:
Curious this language of 'hostage taking'. Civilians are taken hostage; soldiers are taken prisoner. I understand perfectly well that you are using slanted language in order to delegitimise the Taleban. In this case, it is so excessive as to be obvious.
Well, soldiers are captured by other soldiers; they are taken hostage by cowardly thugs who hide behind women and prams, only facing their foe when he is heavily outnumbered.
Keep Private Bergdahl and his family in your thoughts.
Yesterday say eight British soldiers die in Afghanistan in a 24 hour period.
The total casualty rate now exceeds the Iraq war, standing at 184.
Understandably, many are now questioning the purpose of Britain's presence in the benighted country - but David Miliband has the answers:
David Miliband warned that Britain would not be safe until it had built sufficient security in Afghanistan.
He said that it was essential to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming an "incubator for terrorism" and a launch pad for attacks on the UK and the West.
Mr Miliband said that it had been a "grievous few days" for the families of those who had been killed, for the Army, and for the whole country.
"We know that they are engaged in a very, very difficult mission and we have a responsibility to engage the country in understanding that mission and supporting it," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
"This is about the future of Britain because we know that the badlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan – that border area – have been used to launch terrible attacks, not just on the United States, but on Britain as well.
"We know that until we can ensure there is a modicum of stability and security provided by Afghan forces for their own people, we are not going to be able to be secure in our own country."
Well - finally I understand why this obscene, disingenuous liar was tipped as the next leader of the Labour Party.
First of all - we are never going to secure freedom in Afghanistan, at least not as we understand the term.
It is still a violent hellhole riddled with Islamists over a hundred years after we left with our tail between our legs last time; doubtless it still will be a hundred years after we have left after this effort.
I think attacking the Taliban was a very reasonable response to the 9/11 attacks; but I feel we have done all we can. All that is going to change, if anything, is what the Islamic militia we leave in charge is calling itself.
Now our young men die to prop up a government which wished to legalise spousal rape and has no jurisdiction outside the presidential compound under the auspices of this somehow being 'freedom' or 'liberal democracy'.
I admit, if our troops left it is perfectly conceivable that Afghanistan and then Pakistan could become 'a crucible of terror' (more so, because they already are); but we can minimise the extent to which this is our problem by actually securing our borders.
This is the issue which shows up Brown, Miliband and the rest for what they are; they do not care about this country. If they did, they would devise an effective immigration policy and actually worry about who comes here and who stays before sending its young men to die in far off deserts.
What, on a practical level, is likely to make Britain safer; our young men being blown to bits in Helmand, or tracking down the 300 or so Pakistani students who disappeared after their visas expired from one university last year?
British army foot patrols to extend the authority of the Afghan government in Kabul, or looking at some of the 2,000 or so illegal immigrants who try to sneak into Britain from Calais daily, many of them Afghans?
Sadly, unless we secure our borders and clamp down on those on our own soil who wish us ill in any sense, I'm not sure that Britain has a future. Here is an extract from an article by Saira Khan, a Pakistani born in Britain:
The Government has estimated that there are up to 570,000 illegal immigrants in Britain, but with so many visas being applied for with malicious intent, that figure could run to millions. Not that there is any attempt by the Government to chase it down.
Although there are no official figures for the number of overstayers from Pakistan, or from anywhere else for that matter, there is enough anecdotal evidence to show that it is a growing problem. Between 2003 and 2006, at Portsmouth University alone, 379 students from Pakistan were offered places but failed to register.
Considering that the number of Pakistani students in Britain has more than doubled since 2001, from fewer than 5,000 then to 10,600 today, the national figure of absconders could run into several thousand.
Immigration Minister Phil Woolas has admitted that the student visa system is ‘the major loophole in Britain’s border controls’, but I think the entire visa system is one big loophole.
If the U.K. is to have a future, this is what needs to be fought.
As if coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan don't face enough dangers already, it has been revealed that one of the Taliban leaders fighting in Helmand province was released from Guantanamo Bay - after telling a review board it would be fine to fight Jihad against Americans and Jews - if they 'were invading his country'.
KABUL, Afghanistan -- As Marine Corps forces roll into southern Afghanistan, they face an enemy familiar to US officials -- Mullah Zakir, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who now leads a reconstituted Taliban.
Abdul Qayum Zakir, also known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, is from Helmand Province and has taken a circuitous route to become head of the radical Islamic group.
Zakir was a senior fighter during the Taliban regime in the 1990s. In a memorandum prepared for his administrative review board at Guantanamo, Zakir apparently "felt it would be fine to wage jihad against Americans, Jews, or Israelis if they were invading his country."
And he acknowledged that he was "called to fight jihad in approximately 1997," when he joined the Taliban.
In 2001, he surrendered to US and Afghan forces in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif as the regime was collapsing. He spent the next several years in custody, was transferred to Guantanamo around 2006, then to Afghanistan government custody in late 2007, and was eventually released around May 2008. American officials won't say why he was let go and have not released a photograph of him.
Zakir wasted little time rekindling his relationship with the Taliban, especially its inner shura, or leadership council, based in Pakistan. According to some accounts, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar appointed Zakir as a senior military commander in mid-2008. He quickly developed a reputation as a charismatic leader.
By this time, the Taliban had established a system of shadow-government structures in parts of Afghanistan: provincial governors, military commanders, and mullahs who served on Islamic courts.
The Taliban's goal, as with many insurgent groups, has been to provide more effective law and order than the Afghan government. But it has been one of the most oppressive governments in modern history, banning many forms of entertainment, prohibiting women from working, and conducting public executions of suspected collaborators.
It was in this context that Zakir made his defining contribution to the southern insurgency -- and created an opportunity for US forces to exploit. Early this year, he began to reorganize the Taliban. He helped create an "accountability commission" to monitor and evaluate the performance of key Taliban leaders and track spending.
In some ways, Zakir's efforts paralleled those of the United States, which was laying out a new Afghanistan strategy under the Obama administration at about the same time. The Taliban, apparently concerned that some governors and military commanders had become ineffective and bracing for the growing US military presence, announced its own new strategy in April.
They called it Operation Nasrat ("victory") and pledged to use "ambushes, offensives, explosions, martyrdom-seeking attacks, and surprise attacks." The Taliban also warned that they would attack "military units of the invading forces, diplomatic centers, mobile convoys and high-ranking officials" of the Afghan government.
As Marines move through Helmand, they will be on the lookout for Zakir and his support network. But like many senior Taliban leaders, Zakir spends a lot of time in Pakistani cities like Quetta and Karachi, frightened he'll be killed in an attack.
Zakir's restructuring presents an opportunity for NATO and Afghan forces. As in any business reorganization, firing senior leaders is bound to create a contingent of disgruntled individuals who may be co-opted to turn against the Taliban. A number of fired Taliban commanders have apparently refused to give up their jobs.
As part of the current US military offensive, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson stated that "where we go, we will stay and where we stay, we will hold, build, and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces."
The allies will need the support, or at least acquiescence, of local Afghans -- including tribes and subtribes that oppose the Taliban but have been intimidated because Afghan and NATO forces have failed to protect them.
The face of the Taliban may not be new, but defeating the Taliban and other insurgent groups requires taking advantage of their vulnerabilities and better understanding local politics in Afghanistan.
I thought the point of fighting this war was to destroy the Taliban; how can we do that when we can't even neutralise a dangerous fanatic who was held in our custody for several years?
This weekend saw three British soldiers die within 24 hours. I think real questions need to be asked about what this war has achieved and can achieve.
An American soldier captured in Afghanistan earlier this week has been sold to a notorious militant clan.
The Haqqani network is a group run by Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani and is widely considered one of the most ruthless Islamist outfits in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
According to the CIA, it is closely aligned with al Qaeda's central leadership.
An American soldier captured in southeastern Afghanistan is being held by a notorious militant clan, a senior U.S. military official said.
The American and three Afghan soldiers were captured by low-level militants and then quickly "sold" to the clan led by warlord Siraj Haqqani -- believed to be deeply involved in the action.
The Haqqanis operate on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and are well known to the U.S. military. They are assembling shuras, or local councils of leaders, to talk and try to "legitimize" what they have done, the official said.
U.S., Afghan and Pakistani troops are sealing off the area and also are talking to tribal chiefs, village elders and leaders.
They are telling them to "do the right thing and solve this," the official said.
The U.S. military is telling people not to let Haqqani operatives move through their area and to find the American and return him.The military wants to make sure there is "no shelter" for the militants holding him.
The Taliban who captured the soldier allege he was drunk, but the American authorities insist he was on duty at the time.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the capture of the soldier, with a commander saying he had been drunk when he was captured.
The soldier visited a military post in the Yousaf Khel district in the Paktika province on Tuesday and got drunk, the Taliban commander said, according to U.S. media.
He was ambushed while returning to his car and was taken to a safe place along with three Afghan soldiers he was with, the commander said.
The U.S. military has denied the soldier was drunk, though officials did say the soldier was on duty when he went missing in the area.
He was captured by low-level militants and then sold to the clan by warlord Siraj Haqqani in south-eastern Afghanistan, an official told CNN.
The Haqqanis operate on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and are well known to the U.S. military.
They are the most important insurgent group operating in that area. Haqqani himself has been accused of masterminding beheadings and suicide bombings by the U.S.
U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said: 'We have all available resources out there looking for him and hopefully providing for his safe return.'
Mathias did not provide details on the soldier, the location where he was captured or the circumstances. The news broke as thousands of U.S. Marines launched a major anti-Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan. The missing soldier was not part of that operation.
'We are not providing further details to protect the soldier's well-being,' she said.
Afghan Police Gen. Nabi Mullakheil said the soldier went missing in the Mullakheil area of eastern Paktika province, where there is an American base.
The soldier was noticed missing during a routine check of the unit on Tuesday and was first listed as 'duty status whereabouts unknown,' a U.S. defence official said on condition of anonymity.
It wasn't until Thursday that officials said publicly that he was missing and described him as 'believed captured.'
Details of such incidents are routinely held very tightly by the military as it works to retrieve a missing or captured soldier without giving away any information to captors.
The missing man is an enlisted soldier, and his family has been notified.
Various news reports today suggest that an American soldier has been captured alive by militants in Afghanistan - an unprecedented occurrence in the war so far.
Whilst the Taliban and assorted Afghan militias have captured aid workers, journalists and other civilians in the past, this is the first time that an Allied soldier has been captured alive.
From the LA Times:
An American soldier is believed to have been captured by insurgents in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said today.
The soldier has been missing from his unit since Tuesday, said Army Capt. Elizabeth Mathias. Citing concern for his safety, she did not disclose the circumstances of his disappearance, explain how military authorities had concluded that he was being held, or say whether there had been any communication with insurgents about the missing man.
The brief military statement was not definitive about a capture having occurred; Mathias said the soldier was "believed" to have fallen into the hands of "militant forces."
There was no immediate public claim of responsibility from any insurgent group. A number of militant commanders, not all of them affiliated with the Taliban, operate in eastern Afghanistan.
However, the Reuters news agency quoted a senior Taliban commander, Mullah Sangeen, as saying the soldier was captured this week as he left a base in Paktika province on patrol.
If the reports are borne out and an American soldier was seized alive, it would be an unprecedented coup for the insurgents. They could exploit a capture for propaganda purposes or demand concessions such as a prisoner exchange.
The news comes on the day that U.S. forces have launched a massive operation to clear southern Helmand Province of Taliban influence:
Thousands of US Marines stormed into an Afghan river valley by helicopter and land early today, launching the first major military offensive of Barack Obama's presidency with an assault deep into Taleban-held territory.
Operation Khanjar, which the Marines call simply "the decisive op", is intended to seize virtually the entire lower Helmand River valley, a heartland of the Taleban insurgency and the world's biggest heroin producing region.
It is the biggest operation launched by the US Marines Corps since the retaking of Fallujah in 2004 and seeks to break the grinding stalemate between Nato forces and the Taleban in the province.
US commanders stressed this morning their desire to move quickly and decisively with overwhelming force to seize the entire southern Helmand River valley from Taleban control ahead of the delayed Afghan Presidential elections on August 20.
"Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," Marine Corps Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marines in southern Afghanistan said in a statement.
He told his staff before the operation: "The intent is to go big, go strong and go fast, and by doing so we are going to save lives on both sides."
The 4,000 men from US 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade enjoy the support of their own integrated air wing, giving them more air support than the entire 8,000 strong British force has had at its disposal.
The US force went into action with the support of 650 Afghan troops, an operation by foreign ground troops on a scale unseen in Afghanistan since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
The operation would have an initial highly aggressive stage lasting 36 hours, AFP reported.
Also reported today was the news that two British soldiers died yesterday in an explosion. The soldiers, from the Welsh Guards and the Royal Tank Regiment, were on patrol near Lashkar Gah in Helmand province on Wednesday afternoon.
***Update 3rd July 12:12***
One of the British soldiers killed was Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, 39, the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards.
He is the most senior British soldier to die in action since Lieutenant-Colonel 'H' Jones was shot dead during the Falklands campaign in 1982.
Trooper Joshua Hammond, 19, was also killed when th Viking armoured vehicle was blown up. Six soldiers were wounded, some critically.
171 British soldiers have now died in Afghanistan.
The current goings on in Pakistan hold a valuable lesson for all of us. They tell us in no uncertain terms that many interpretations of Islam cannot be appeased or accommodated; there is no victory and no peace until the infidels feel themselves defeated.
I suppose the Pakistani army learned this the hard way, although it was always fairly obvious that the Taliban were not going to just back down and go away after being given free reign in one province; as every good zealot knows, if the enemy is weak enough to have one chink in his armour he has two, and then a third - it is just a question of finding them.
The Pakistani authorities now seem to be fighting as successful a campaign as possible against the Taliban. Removing civilians from the Swat valley was tactically a very wise move, depriving the insurgents of their recruits and their human shields in one fell swoop. But every wise move has its down side - the human suffering, obviously, but also the fact that many of the nearly three million refugees are now seething with anger at the government.
The Taliban are especially dangerous because they are not just at war with infidels but with other interpretations of Islam.
Earlier this month suicide bombers found and killed Dr. Sarfaraz Naeemi - a Pakistani scholar who had called suicide bombings illegitimate in Islam.
The problem is that the Taliban is just one manifestation of the tribal rivalries which marr Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly the frontier; many have equally extreme and old fashioned Islamic practices written into their culture. The mainstream politicians of both countries are forced to make concessions in order to exist.
This has some rather interesting parallels. Winston Churchill experienced this region as a young war journalist in 1897. First, here is what tribal elders who remember their relatives talking about the war against the British said:
Back in Islamabad, another retired general, Talat Masood, says that while the army can beat the Taliban, 'it cannot beat the Pashtun tribes'.
Success depends on the Taliban being seen as extremists and outsiders, who subvert, rather than express, the frontier's Pashtun identity. Here the example of Churchill's campaign in 1897 is not encouraging.
Among the people of the frontier, I discover a rich oral tradition, which remembers Swat's 'Mad Mullah' and his comrades as 'mujahideen' - the term for holy warriors once used about the Pashtuns who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan.
'He was a little mad, but he was pious,' says Hazrat Ahmed, 70, in the camp at Katlang. 'So when he said that if they fought the British they would defeat them, the people believed him. There are a lot of graves of martyrs who died fighting the British in 1897.
'Now some people admire the Taliban. Others say they are foreigners, and not good Muslims. Insh'allah [God willing] whoever is right about the Taliban there will be a victory for Muslims, because when Islam is finished, the world will end.'
Nizar Mohammed, 76, explains: 'The jihad against the British was a special type of war, what we call a ghazar. That means a war in which the Prophet has a personal stake. That's how our people saw it.'
Pashtun children still learn songs that commemorate the battles of 1897 and the years that followed.
One of the most haunting celebrates a warrior called Beram Khan. It imagines the words of his wife: 'O Beram Khan, if your body comes back with countless bullets in your chest, I will never mind. But I don't want to hear that you left the battlefield fearing death. O Beram Khan, if you are martyred defending your country, I will weave your shroud with the hair from my head.'
From his very different perspective, Churchill paid an equivalent tribute. Although the fighters of Mohmand and Dir had 'struck a blow at civilisation, civilisation will ungrudgingly admit they are a brave and warlike race. The valley and its people have become historic.'
The journalists reporting from this region acknowledge they are not the first to cover such a conflict:
But we weren't the first to cover a conflict against jihadists trying to overthrow a government in this region. Among our predecessors was an Army captain turned reporter who came this way in 1897: the future Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill, then aged 23.
That summer the frontier tribes were inspired by radical mullahs to drive out the British. When the revolt started, Churchill was on leave in England from his regiment, which was based 2,000 miles from the front in Bangalore, south India.
But thanks to his acquaintance with the British commander, the curiously-named General Sir Bindon Blood, he secured what would now be termed a media 'embed'. Churchill's first book, The Story Of The Malakand Field Force, was the result.
Reading it now, the parallels between that distant campaign and Pakistan's present crisis seem close, a point clearly recognised by Pakistan's army.
Its chief spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, says: 'Going through the old Imperial gazetteers, you see ambushes are taking place in exactly the same locations now as they were in the 1890s.
The causes for the uprising and the phenomenon of tribes uniting is also described:
Kumbar Bazaar was the home of Sufi Mohammed, the fundamentalist ideologue who led 10,000 frontier Pakistanis to fight the jihad against US forces in Afghanistan after 9/11.
His simple, unprepossessing house has now been trashed by the army, which reduced some of his extensive jihadist library to a pulp by running the books through his washing machine. He is now among the country's most wanted men.
It was Mohammed who earlier this year negotiated a peace deal under which Pakistan's homegrown Taliban were allowed to run the district of Swat, the next valley across from Dir to the east, and it was this deal's speedy breakdown that triggered the army offensive launched on April 26.
Mohammed does not like to compromise. 'We hate democracy,' he told a crowd in Swat's capital, Mingora, earlier this year. 'We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by infidels.'
Mohammed's damaged home, where the sitting room bears the slogan 'Jihad Is Great' engraved in the plaster in letters a foot high, commands a magnificent view of the mountains around the valley.
Although almost everyone in the area speaks Pashto, the area is far from homogenous. The history of Dir and Swat, which during the Empire were ruled by princes who swore allegiance to the Crown, is different from the wilder tribal areas to the southwest. There the writ of Pakistani law has never run, and one of them, South Waziristan, has long been thought to harbour Osama bin Laden.
Similarly, the radical movement in Dir and Swat is different from the bigger, highly organised Taliban in Waziristan, which has been closely linked with Al Qaeda since 2001 and was responsible for the murder of Benazir Bhutto last winter.
Between 2004 and 2007, while Sufi Mohammed was in prison, the main leader in Dir and Swat was his son-in-law, a former ski-lift operator named Maulana Fazlullah. He built Taliban support through Mullah Radio, an illegal FM station that broadcast his sermons and those of his junior commanders, along with lists of those the movement was targeting for assassination - usually by decapitation.
Now, however, the insurgents from different tribal areas are starting to unite. 'Integration and networking are taking place,' says Lieutenant-General Durrani. 'You now have what amounts to a bigger, Pakistan-wide Taliban group, and it's in their interest to help each other. They're not goofs or fools.'
Brigadier Amal Zada adds: 'Communication intercepts show the militants in Dir have been asking for reinforcements from Swat, Bajaur [another tribal area], North and South Waziristan and from across the Afghan border.'
General David Petraeus, the American commander who led the 'surge' in Iraq and is now responsible for the whole of Asia from Pakistan to the Middle East, has said repeatedly that this alliance, which is also responsible for the spate of terrorist bombings in Pakistan's big cities, poses a threat so great that the country's very existence is at stake.
He might be right. But this is not the first time militants from disparate frontier tribes have been spurred on by radical mullahs to fight as one. It also happened in 1897, as described by Churchill.
Just as in 2009, the 1897-8 campaign began in Swat, when thousands of tribesmen attacked British forts at Malakand and Chakdara less than 20 miles from Kumbar Bazaar.
And just as the 2009 conflict shows every sign of doing, it went on to involve operations the length and breadth of the frontier, from Buner, 40 miles to the north of what is now Islamabad, through the Dir, Bajaur, Mohmand and Khyber areas all the way to Waziristan. The Empire had to mobilise 75,000 troops.
It is easy to see why Churchill felt he could not stay away. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had died at 45, and Winston was convinced he must make his mark while young.
'The rising of 1897 is the most successful attempt to date to combine the frontier tribes,' wrote Churchill. 'It will not be the last. The simultaneous revolt of distant tribes is an evidence of secret workings. These features will be more pronounced in the future.'
Like his distant successors, Churchill believed these frontier battles had an 'existential' significance: 'Civilisation is face to face with militant Mohammedanism. When we reflect on the moral and material forces arrayed, there need be no fear of the ultimate issue, but the longer the policy of half measures is adhered to, the more distant the end of the struggle will be.'
His description of the enemy sounds familiar. Churchill singled out a 'Mad Mullah': 'A wild enthusiast convinced of his divine mission preached a crusade, here called Jihad, against the infidel. Even after the fighting - when the tribesmen reeled back from the terrible army they had assailed, leaving a quarter of their number on the field - the faith of the survivors was unshaken.'
In fact, the evidence suggests the 1897 uprising was even more organised than Churchill thought. Behind the 'Mad Mullah', whose fiery sermons could be said to equate to Fazlullah's FM talk shows, stood a group of radical frontier clerics.
As in 2009, the fate of the eastern side of the frontier was bound up with events in Afghanistan. In 1897, the mullahs attended secret meetings in Kabul with Abdur Rehman, the Afghan 'Iron Amir', still smarting from being forced to cede chunks of his country to the British in 1893.
Costly as it was, the 1897-8 campaign ended in victory for the British. But as Churchill realised, it was not the end of the story: 'I do not see any sign of permanency in the settlements that have been made with the tribesmen in Dir, Swat and Bajaur. They have been punished, not subdued; rendered hostile, but not harmless.
Some of the parallels are too big to ignore; the fact is that whilst the army can defeat the Taliban, the chances of defeating their interpretation of Islam seem slim indeed.
As our own young men are dying in Afghanistan, the Taliban are still able to commit atrocities against female school pupils, and the tribal elders are still able to influence the policy of the government paid for with Western blood and Western money in their favour.
Mohammed Abushamma, 20, from Islington, north London, has been jailed for three-and-a-half years for attempting to fly to Afghanistan and fight coalition forces.
His defence barrister, Imran Khan, said that Abushamma was rebelling again his illustrious family - his grandfather was the first president of Sudan.
From the BBC:
Abushamma, 20, from Islington, north London, was arrested at Heathrow Airport in April last year, along with co-defendant Qasim Abukar.
Abukar, from Tufnell Park, north London, went missing halfway through his court case. He was found not guilty in his absence at Croydon Crown Court.
Abushamma pleaded guilty to preparing acts of terrorism.
Mr Justice Bean said: "You were setting out to overthrow the Afghan government by force, fighting against that government and the coalition forces in order to advance the ideological cause of militant Islamism."
The court heard that Abushamma carried out detailed online research into jihad and indicated he would be involved in violence "with a Koran in one hand and an AK47 in the other."
As young British men are dying with alarming frequency in Afghanistan, British Army officers bumped into an Afghan in a rather unexpected place - Sandhurst Military Academy.
The illegal immigrant was on a coach full of officers - but was only noticed after the vehicle was inside the gates of the elite military academy.
The Army today launched an investigation into its security measures after an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan managed to get inside Sandhurst military academy by stowing away on a coach full of officers.
The man is thought to have slipped on board the coach at Calais as it carried troops back to Britain from 28 Engineer Regiment’s barracks in Hamlyn, Germany.
He was finally spotted crouching in a stairwell next to the bus toilet by two junior officers as they got off the coach. By that time the bus was already inside the gates of the academy at Camberley, Surrey.
An MoD spokeswoman said: “We can confirm that an individual was discovered on board a coach within the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, having stowed onboard during the coach’s transit from Germany.
The man, who claimed to be a minor but is believed to be older, was arrested by Thames Valley police and handed over to the UK Border Agency.
A UK Border Agency spokesman said: “As soon as this individual was discovered he was taken into custody, detained and finger-printed so he could be checked against a range of criminal and immigration watch-lists.
“People with no right to be in the UK will be removed at the earliest opportunity.”
British troops fighting in Afghanistan have found a dead Taliban insurgent with a tattoo of the Aston Villa FC emblem.
From the Mail:
Army top brass fear the Taliban is recruiting Brummie Muslims to fight in Afghanistan after a dead insurgent was found - with an Aston Villa FC tattoo.
Military spies have also reported hearing Taliban fighters talking with distinctive Birmingham accents over the airwaves.
A senior military source said: 'It's been well-known for some time among soldiers in Afghanistan that at least one Aston Villa fan was fighting for the Taliban.
'A body of one of the men was found to have an AVFC tattoo on it.
'We've known for a long time that foreign fighters, many with thick Birmingham accents, have been recruited to fight against us for the Taliban.
'Some of the linguistics specialists have picked up West Midland and Manchester accents too.'
The Foreign Office yesterday confirmed RAF radio operators had reported hearing Midlands accents while listening in to Taliban fighters talking on the ground.
An insider said: 'There will always be a number of people who are radicalised in this country and want to leave the UK.
'The details of Aston Villa fans in the Taliban does not shock or surprise me.
'We have never had any hard and fast evidence to tie all of these snippets of information together, but we are sure they equate to a wider ongoing radicalism in the UK.'
A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: 'Some young Taliban fighters have been heard with strong Black Country accents.
'Wherever there is any firm evidence of Brits going abroad to wage jihad we work with governments to stop them.
'There is a long-term set of work with the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan to look at issues of radicalisation both in the UK and abroad.
'It is important that British Muslim communities make clear that they reject this kind of activity.'
But don't let this distract you - the most important thing in Britain today is preventing any dissenting voices on immigration and multiculturalism being heard - with violence if necessary.
If anything sums up the criminal insanity of our immigration policies, it is surely this - young men given everything by this country going to Afghanistan in the hope of killing and maiming our troops.
Joanie de Rijke (above) is a Dutch journalist who was kidnapped by the Taliban in the Sorobi district of Afghanistan last year. She was there to report on the deaths of ten French commandos, hacked to pieces by Taliban fighters.
She arranged to meet a Taliban commander, in order to 'hear their side of the story'. When the fighters came to the meeting, they simply kidnapped her. Despite this, she still refuses to admit she was taking unnecessary risks.
She was held for six days before the magazine she worked for paid a ransom to free her. She was raped by the commander during her ordeal, and she has now written a book called 'Held by the Taliban'.
Some feel that she is being overly lenient to her abductors, however. Here are some passages from her on the experience:
"I can't be angry with them, because they let me live."
"I couldn't be sure whether the ransom would be paid, which meant I didn't know what was going to happen to me. To break the constant tension, you have to talk to each other. The situation was very tense. The whole atmosphere was very tense. The commander, one moment he was friendly to me and the next moment he went mad because - I don't know - of some news he got, and then he threatened to kill me. So, there was always tension. And to break that tension, you had to talk and laugh a bit. It was a matter of surviving."
On the rape ordeal:
"It's not black and white. It was the commander who raped me. I wanted to give vent to my hatred, to chop his head off and kick it off the cliff. He was schizophrenic: the following day, he said he was sorry. In that sort of situation - no matter how awful - you develop a bond with those people. You have to, if you want to survive. You could say the hatred and that bond go side by side.
"Just let me make one thing clear: I hate him for what he did to me. I hate him because he raped me. I was very, very mad and I wanted to kill him right away. But the day after it happened, he more or less asked me to forgive him. That was very confusing for me. It was a very schizophrenic situation because he had mood swings. I just had to cope with that. Normally you can show that you are angry but I couldn't of course. I had to get on with them. I just couldn't say to this commander what I was really thinking because then he would have killed me right away."
Ms de Rijke says that she was nevertheless shown respect.
"These things can exist side by side. That doesn't mean that I'm suffering from Stockholm syndrome."
I can understand that she feels grateful she got away at all. I just feel she is directing that gratitude at the wrong people.
Geert Wilders is now being condemned for a statement he made about her case during a parliamentary debate:
'She showed understanding for this horrible deed and then was given tea and biscuits,' Wilders said in parliament. That is symbolic for the 'moral decline of our elite', he was quoted as saying. Politicians, civil servants, mangers and 'subsidy swallowers' have all lost their way and are suffering from Stockholm syndrome, he said.
But doesn't he have a point? The modern way is to conceal whilst pretending to reveal. No one seems interested in why what happened did happen, the worldview and belief system which drives such behaviour - a worldview which can be seen increasingly in many Western cities. We half-heartedly condemn whilst trying to understand, to reconcile our view of one happy world with just why they hate us so much, hold us in so much contempt.
As far as I'm aware (and I don't speak Dutch, so I may well have missed something) Miss de Rijke has condemned the man who raped her, as an individual.
What she has failed to do is think about why he behaved like that, why it is apparently so dangerous for a blonde Dutch woman to travel to certain parts of the world in the first place. An act such as this deserves no understanding, only condemnation.
But the elite were too busy shouting Wilders down to take a moment for introspection, despite the fact that he clearly condemned the despicable crimes against de Rijke:
GroenLinks leader Femke Halsema accused Wilders of having no ethical boundaries. 'You should be ashamed,' she said. 'Not one millimeter,' Wilders replied.
Prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende said the statement was 'painful and tasteless'. De Rijke is 'once again the victim because she cannot defend herself,' the PM said.
De Rijke promptly defended herself and denounced the statement, insisting that if Wilders read her book he would see he is wrong.
Well, I've read some of her quotes translated into English, as displayed above, and I'm not sure he is.
I know 'Gordon Brown caught lying again' is hardly a major or surprising headline, but this one was pretty blatant even for a member of New Labour.
On Monday Brown was in Afghanistan to meet British troops and play the big I am. Whilst there, he warned of a 'crucible of terror' emanating from Afghanistan and the Pakistan border regions which needed to be smashed to keep Britain's streets safe. He also acknowledged that the stability of Pakistan had a direct impact on the safety of Britons in the streets of London.
There is a reason why this is so - and is has little to do with a 'crucible of terror' and everything to do with Britain's lax immigration laws and its lack of will even to enforce the ones it has.
This is the bottom line, and it is utterly astounding that anyone could think otherwise. Brown, like all mainstream politicians, is playing a game when it comes to mass immigration. He and his ilk, including the Tories, have indicated time and time again that they are unable or unwilling to listen to the majority of the British people on this most pressing of issues.
Now, after it emerged that eleven Pakistani nationals in this country were being investigated for terrorism charges, Immigration Minister Phil Woolas admitted that student and tourist visas were the Achilles' heel of Britain's immigration policy.
The Pakistani government seem to feel that these raids and the subsequent investigation were a 'slur' on them (God forbid, after they recently handed over an entire province to the tender mercies of the Taliban):
In an interview with the Guardian, Asif Durrani, Pakistan's deputy high commissioner to London, said Britain appeared vindictive against Pakistani nationals and said claims that Islamabad was soft on terror were slurs.
Durrani, a diplomat for 23 years with previous postings in Kabul and the United Nations, said: "Pointing a finger towards Pakistan was shocking for us ... it was uncalled for and shocking."
Well, that's as maybe. But whatever the outcome of the terrorism investigation, those eleven men should not have been in this country - and there are thousands more that should not either. Only one of them was studying at a reputable institution. The Pakistani government are angry and claim 'thousands' of teenagers will now not be able to get into Britain, although I'm sure the stricter controls will only be very brief - the public have a short memory.
My question is, why are 'thousands' of Pakistani students coming here, particularly when the government has admitted that its checks are not up to scratch?
On Sunday, former Apprentice star and British Pakistani Saira Khan told the story of how she had reported her cousin to MI5. He came to Britain on a six month tourist visa to visit her and her husband and see the sights - then he promptly vanished, after meeting a mysterious 'uncle' that Khan claims she was unaware of and had never seen before.
Khan says that there is no system in place to monitor or find those who abscond and then are absorbed into the community after overstaying their visas and vehemently insists she wants to see him found and deported:
It has not only caused a huge family rift, but has also opened my eyes to some of the darker practices among some people in my community.
I am referring, in particular, to the widespread belief that it is entirely acceptable to use travel and study visas to circumvent normal immigration rules.
Fifteen days after he had landed, Kamran packed his bags, with all the nice new clothes I had bought him, and disappeared. In doing so he broke the conditions of his visa, which tied him to staying with Steve and me as his sponsors.
Like many before him – it is impossible to say how many because no official records are kept of those who abscond – he has been absorbed and is being protected by a community that is as colossal as it is impenetrable.
The Government has estimated that there are up to 570,000 illegal immigrants in Britain, but with so many visas being applied for with malicious intent, that figure could run to millions. Not that there is any attempt by the Government to chase it down.
Although there are no official figures for the number of overstayers from Pakistan, or from anywhere else for that matter, there is enough anecdotal evidence to show that it is a growing problem. In 2007, at Portsmouth University alone, 379 students from Pakistan were unaccounted for when their visas expired.
Considering that the number of Pakistani students in Britain has more than doubled since 2001, from fewer than 5,000 then to 10,600 today, the national figure of absconders could run into several thousand.
So that is 379 missing Pakistanis, most of them young men (the demographic most likely to become terrorists or radicalised) missing from ONE university.
Is this not absolutely astounding? How can Gordon Brown send young men to die in far off deserts whilst talking about 'national security' when our borders are this porous, our controls this ineffective?
It absolutely beggars belief. But, as always, there's more; yesterday, Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced that the government had not necessarily ruled out taking Guantanamo Bay detainees once the camp finally closes.
He insisted that Britain must do its bit to aid Obama's decision to free the terror suspects, and confirmed that the UK was open to 'considering any request'.
There are around 240 men who have not yet been placed:
The US is working out what to do with around 240 inmates at the camp so it can be closed by the January deadline set by the new president.
Some may be put on trial in the US, released there or sent overseas. Several European countries, including Portugal and Lithuania, are reported to have offered to take in ex-prisoners.
So, they haven't even decided which are innocent yet, but some might be sent here (or, indeed to countries which we have no real border controls with, which amounts to the same thing).
So much for being tough on terrorism - it's all just guff, like everything from this dying government. Let's just hope that this monumental incompetence, blindness and stupidity does not lead to a major terrorist attack.
If it doesn't, it will surely be through accident rather than design.
New evidence has come to light of British passport-holders operating with terrorists and insurgents against British and coalition forces in Afghanistan.
A British bombmaker is fighting for the Taliban against British troops in Afghanistan, it has been revealed.
DNA from a terror suspect with British nationality has been found on an unexploded roadside bomb planted by the Taliban.
The sample matched with a database of UK terror suspects and confirms mounting fears that British nationals are now fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The DNA sample was taken from an roadside bomb that was diffused by bomb disposal experts in Helmand Province.
It is believed to be an exact match with a known Muslim extremist who was naturalised in England after arriving from Pakistan, according to the Sun.
He was radicalised in Britain before disappearing two years ago and heading to Afghanistan. Recent intelligence reports show that rising numbers of home-grown jihadists have joined the Taliban so they can kill British soldiers.
Carla Bland, whose 21-year-old brother Wayne was killed in a bomb blast in August told the paper: 'These people are traitors and sick in the head.
'It’s hard enough for the soldiers over there without having to face their own people as well.
'My brother was trying to help Muslim people. These bombers aren’t helping Afghans - they’re just making it worse for everyone.'
Senior military sources say UK troops are engaged in a 'surreal mini-civil war' in the dusty badlands of Helmand Province.
Surveillance operations from the warzone has picked up voices talking with West Midlands and Yorkshire accents, according to official briefing documents.
The electronic 'chatter' shows that young disaffected Muslims are travelling to southern Afghanistan to commit violence against British targets.
MI5 has estimated that up to 4,000 British Muslims had travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan for military training, with 'dozens' switching to the front-line.
RAF spy planes have 'listened in' to the conversations of Taliban fighters, and officials now believe the British jihadists are mounting missions against British and Western targets in the warzone.
A Ministry Of Defence spokesman refused to comment on the latest report.
I think evidence such as this really puts the multicultural dream into some perspective.
What could possibly possess young men born and bred in Britain to hate this country so much they wish to travel to a war zone to perpetuate violence against British troops?
Some argue they are underprivileged or disaffected, but the fact is they are enormously privileged just by virtue of being born or allowed to remain in this country. If that's not the case, why do so many more seek to live here?
The elephant in the room here is that Islam as a creed is disastrously incompatible with our values and way of life.
Mass immigration from the Third World must be one the most tragic mistakes ever to be made - and this is one of a variety of compelling reasons why that mistake should be halted and reversed where possible.
To have people capable of waging guerrilla warfare in our midst, at our expense and by invitation, surely demonstrates that adequately?
So, to continue from the last post, who is Yvonne Ridley, the woman we saw recently leading the 'Viva Palestina' convoy to Gaza? What is her agenda?
At the lecture I described in the first part, she was introduced to us as an ordinary, liberated, British woman and mother who had simply found the truth of Islam, with no political or other agenda. I will now expose this for the outright lie it is.
British-born, award-winning journalist Yvonne Ridley is well known in the Muslim world for her outspoken views and defence of Islam. She endeared herself to the Muslim community in Britain when she reverted to Islam 30 months after making international headlines when she was captured by the Taleban on an undercover assignment in Afghanistan. She was a senior reporter of the Sunday Express at the time, having spent nearly 10 years in Fleet Street working for several prestige titles including The Sunday Times, The Observer, Daily Mirror and Independent on Sunday...
I found an interview she gave to the BBC shortly after her conversion was announced. It confirms a few of the points she told us in the lecture which I described in my first post, including here first thought about the Taliban soldier capturing her being 'he's gorgeous'.
More on the Taliban:
"I couldn't support what they did or believed in, but they were demonised beyond recognition, because you can't drop bombs on nice people."
She says of reading the Koran and converting:
"I was absolutely blown away by what I was reading - not one dot or squiggle had been changed in 1,400 years.
"I have joined what I consider to be the biggest and best family in the world. When we stick together we are absolutely invincible."
She also described the Koran as 'a Magna Carta for women', and stated Islamic abuses of women stem from local cultures rather than Islam, as Islam 'makes it clear women are equal'.
One thing they miss, though - Ridley was 'defending Muslims' and radical Islamic causes long before she became a Muslim herself. Oh yes, indeed.
You could not make this stuff up. What is this individual, Daoud Zaaroura, up to these days? You may well ask - he is the chief executive of the North of England Refugee Service.
His biography:
"...Daoud Za'aroura is a Palestinian refugee, born in 1947 in a little town near Nazareth (Saffouri). In 1948 his family left Palestine to Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian refugees who have lived since then in Palestinian refugees camps. As a young Palestinian he joined the Palestinian resistance movement and was active within the Palestinian political groups. He left the Middle East in 1992 and arrived in Britain where he was granted political asylum. Since then he has been working with refugees and homeless people in a charitable refugee organisation in Britain. He continues to be involved in refugee issues and social justice research.
He and Ridley met in Cyprus whilst she was on an assignment; in 1992, they had a daughter together, so presumably that's what got him into the UK.
When they met, he was still an active officer in the PLO. I shan't comment on the wisdom of letting such a man run a 'refugee' service - you, the reader can make up your own mind about whether this is sensible or desirable. But please bear in mind that 'resistance movement' is a coy euphemism for 'terrorist organisation' - and one of the most vicious and violent the world has ever known.
However, these are the sorts of circles in which she has moved since her younger days. On this basis, I find it very hard to believe that she only troubled herself to find out about Islam after her release from Taliban captivity.
Don't most non-Muslim women who marry Muslim men have to convert? Wouldn't her daughter have been born and raised a Muslim? Even if she didn't convert, wouldn't she have been at least a little curious? Why does it seem she took on his politics but not his religion?
For the record, I recognise the PFLP is technically a secular, Marxist branch of the Palestinian terror tree. But to be accepted under the PLO umbrella, there must have been some recognition of the majority agenda - Islamic supremacy and Arab nationalism.
There is a conspiracy theory which suggests Ridley's capture was staged, part of a ploy to draw attention to various Islamic 'resistance' movements and rehabilitate the Taliban in the same vein as the PLO.
Frankly, I think the whole situation is bizarre enough, although I'm sure her ex-husband could have pulled some strings somewhere. Many believe that she would have been killed as a spy had it not been for her already impressive CV of militant Islamic connections.
After her release and conversion, Ridley's life becomes a murky stew of warped views, questionable motives and shady connections. You have to ask whether Islam can change someone totally - or perhaps like attracts like?
Soon after her conversion, she started insisting that the CIA and Mossad were conspiring to kill her in order to escalate the war in Afghanistan. No reason was given why they would do this or desire it - apart from the worldwide conspiracy against peace-loving Muslims, obviously.
Ridley supports the vast majority of the Muslims jailed for terror offences in the UK, no matter how extreme. Her website hosts poems and letters by jailed Babar Ahmad (who, as I reported earlier, also counts Sadiq Khan MP amongst his friends), awaiting extradition to the US for hosting terrorist funding websites.
Among the websites he hosted and ran was 'azzam.com' a site which raised funds for Mujahideen fighting British, American and coalition troops in Afghanistan. The organisation 'Stop Political Terror', formerly 'Stop Police Terror', is also heavily involved in the campaign to prevent his extradition - and Ridley was closely linked to this organisation.
A barrister friend assures me that Ahmad would not have been in jail for 5 years awaiting extradition unless the evidence was 'overwhelming enough to convict him here'.
In fact, comparing democratic Western leaders and institutions to the bloody, murdering, terrorist ones she supports and apologises for is a bit of a forte of hers. I believe the psychological explanation for this phenomenon is 'projection'.
She wrote an article on her website saying she wouldn't blame Iraqi terrorists for cutting off George Bush's head, or at least wanting to; she compared Tony Blair to Pol Pot, and calls Israel
"...that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East" and further that her party, the Respect Party, "is a Zionist-free party...if there was any Zionism in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists," while both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were "riddled with Zionists." [9][10]
Presumably, these would be the same 'Zionists' or, if we're being honest, Jews who want to kill her because she's just so important it would intensify a foreign war.
Despite claiming these organisations wished to kill her, she was allowed into the US for a university speaking tour. She mocked US intelligence services:
In an article about her conversion she taunted members of US intelligience agencies as "incompetant spooks"and joked about "opening a Madrassah for [al-Qaeda] recruits from my flat in Soho".
Ridley calls the PLO and the Taliban resistance to coalition forces in Afghanistan 'humanitarian organisations', and when asked about British Muslims found with footage of Western hostages being beheaded in Iraq, her response was thus (according to her own Wikipedia page):
At the "Muslimer i Dialog" conference in Copenhagen in September 2005, Ridley was asked if she didn't see it as a problem that militant Islamists distribute recruiting videos of Iraqi insurgents killing hostages. She replied that it was necessary for Muslims to have these videos at home as an alternative form of news to what she perceived as the propaganda of Western media. At the same meeting she compared British Prime MinisterTony Blair with Pol Pot.
As far as I can tell, the 'Yvonne Ridley' Wikipedia page many of these quotes come from is maintained by herself and her supporters - she is referred to as 'sister' throughout.
Now, the following is very serious, and reveals much about her character and her interpretation of Islam. Here is a set of quotes from radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, taken from his wiki page - please read them carefully:
"These missions would increase the number of satellites for military purposes. It would increase the slavery of governance of other countries by America. It is a punishment from God. Muslims see it that way. It is a trinity of evil because it carried Americans, an Israeli and a Hindu, a trinity of evil against Islam. The fact that the motor of the craft fell on Palestine [a town in Texas] – all these are messages from God. It is a strong message, for the Israeli, to be taken up there to space and he spoke about the Holocaust, to try to make religious advancement from it and gain some moral high ground, hence you have seen this message over Palestine."
"Killing of the kafir (non-believer) for any reason you can say it is OK, even if there is no reason for it." He called on his followers to poison, ambush and kill non-believers and added: "You must have a stand with your heart, with your tongue, with your money, with your hand, with your sword, with your Kalashnikov. Don't ask shall I do this, just do it."[16]
He suggested that people coined the term suicide attack to put others off it. "It is not called suicide - this is called shahada, martyring, because if the only way to hurt the enemies of Islam except by taking your life for that, then it is allowed," adding: "The person who hinders Allah's rule, this man must be eliminated".
In January 2006 while on trial, he accused the Jewish people of being "blasphemous, treacherous and dirty" and explained that this was "why Hitler was sent into the world".[18]
He also called for "a world dominated by a caliph, sitting in the White House".[16] Whilst under cross-examination Hamza claimed the Jews control the Foreign Office, the media and the money supply in Britain and the USA.[19]
OK. Nice chap, right? What does Yvonne think? He phoned her after news of her conversion broke:
He said, 'Sister Yvonne, welcome to Islam, congratulations'.
"I explained I hadn't yet taken my final vows and he said, 'Don't be pressured or pushed, the whole community is there for you if you need any help, just call one of the sisters.'
"I thought, I can't believe it, this is the fire and brimstone cleric from Finsbury Park mosque and he is quite sweet really.
"I was just about to hang up when he said, 'But there is just one thing I want you to remember. Tomorrow, if you have an accident and die, you will go straight to hellfire'.
"I was so scared that I carried a copy of the vows in my purse until my final conversion last June."
A sweet guy. Someone who believes Hitler was born to teach the Jews a lesson. You have to ask yourself at this point what sort of person would want to be associated with the religion of a man like him. What impressed Ridley most, however, was how generous he was in lending her Islamic texts.
Anyway, after her conversion Ridley became even more prominent in the Muslim world. She joined the Islam Channel, then al-Jazeera, then Press TV, all of them English-speaking Muslim backed channels with an agenda.
In fact, she was instrumental in setting up the English section of al-Jazeera and helping it spread, propagating the lie that Western media outlets were more biased than the Islamist shills she worked for.
On at least two of these channels she hosted programmes called 'The Agenda with Yvonne Ridley' - apparently without irony.
In 2005 she courted yet more controversy by backing the radical cleric Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his campaign of violence in Iraq and Jordan, describing the victims of the 9 November 2005 Amman bombings in Jordan, which saw 60 persons killed and 115 injured, as:
"Iraqi collaborators, Saudi, Indonesian and Chinese intelligence officers and the upper echelons of society." The outpouring of public outrage manifested in spontaneous demonstration she described as staged and the work of "Jordanian troops out of uniform" and "government lackeys" together with "Christian and Muslim Bedouins" who had all been commandeered or paid to demonstrate by the Jordanian government and the CIA."
Al-Zarqawi was denounced by his family after the bombings, a move that Ridley thought "cowardly." She said of al-Zarqawi himself that she would "rather put up with a brother like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi any day than have a traitor or sell-out for a father, son or grandfather" – a reference to Jordanian royal family. [13].
In 2006 she was active in the propaganda campaign against Israel in its struggle with Hezbollah, which had breached its borders and captured and killed a number of Israeli soldiers. Here is a video of her speaking outside the Israeli (or possibly American) embassy on 22/10/06:
To screams of 'Allahuakbar' and 'long live Hezbollah', Ridley mounts the platform. She launches into a rant - the people in the embassy are 'behind the wire', under siege. Hezbollah 'whupped the arse' of the world's fourth most powerful army. By that, I assume she's referring to the 121 Israelis who died in the 2006 Lebanon War, 44 of them civilians.
She then informs us that 'drinking Coca-Cola is the same as drinking the blood of Palestinian children' and 'shopping at Marks & Spencer is the same as giving bullets to Israeli soldiers to shoot into the backs of Palestinian schoolgirls'. She calls Israel an apartheid state, quoting the words of that well known authority on morality, leader of the Iranian Revolution Ayatollah Khomeinei.
After that, she blesses the 'Palestinian resistance movement' and the Second Intifada which was responsible for the deaths of 1,079 Israelis, 731 of them civilians.
But then, 2006 seems to be the year in which Yvonne sank further and further into extremism. In June 2006, this had occurred:
At a meeting of the Respect party on 6 June 2006, following a controversial police raid in Forest Gate, East London, on 2 June 2006, Ridley urged all Muslims in Britain to "boycott the police and refuse to co-operate with them in any way, shape or form until the boys are released," including "asking the community copper for directions to passing the time of day with a beat officer." Her comments were labelled as "sheer, undiluted madness" by Shadow Home SecretaryDavid Davis.
Yeah, David Davis usually hits the nail on the head, I find. But when George Galloway thinks your beliefs are too extreme, well, maybe the message should be heeded.
After the Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev (accused of the Moscow theater hostage crisis and blamed for the Beslan school massacre) was killed, Ridley wrote an article referring to Basayev as a "shaheed". She went on to refer to Basayev as leader of "an admirable struggle to bring independence to Chechnya". [17]
As you can see, with Yvonne Ridley there is no attempt to claim the middle ground - she is an unashamed extremist.
Now, last but not least, we will look at her recent activities in the 'free Gaza' movement, which she joined in August 2008. This movement took a flotilla of boats from Cyprus to 'break the Israeli blockade' around the Gaza strip and deliver aid and supplies.
They completed this mission, and Ridley was given a genuine Palestinian diplomatic passport by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who described her as 'an ambassador for Palestine'. Here you can see her pathetic attempts to reconcile her beliefs with reality at the Rafah border crossing:
Finally, it all came full circle with the setting up of 'Viva Palestina' and the £1 million, 100 vehicle aid convoy which drove from London to Gaza. After the 25 day journey, she wrote the following article for the 'Viva Palestina' website:
"I'VE never been a huge flag-waving fan of the Union Jack because to me it was largely a symbol of the old British Empire and all the bad things it once represented in terms of occupation, slavery, tyranny and imperialistic wars."
Yes, it must be nice to be part of a 'worldwide family', as you term your religion, that would never dream of being involved in any such shenanigans. Never mind the fact that Islam is synonymous with slavery, tyranny, occupation and imperialistic wars. Never mind the fact that Muslims would rather die and violently slaughter innocents around the world for a 20,770 / 22,072 km2 (151st in the world) 8,019 / 8,522 sq mi strip of land, Israel, because people who aren't Muslims dare to live there and run a successful, modern state - when they could be enjoying the 13,953,041 km2 (2nd) (5,382,910 sq mi) which is the Arab League alone.
Still, why would a little thing like reality intrude?
She continues:
"I can't really remember the urge to pick up the Union Jack again declaring to the world: "I am proud to be British".
As Leo Tolstoy once remarked, such patriotism in its simplest form is nothing more than a "means of obtaining for rulers their ambitions" as well as a sign from us lesser mortals as our "slavish enthralment to those in power".
So it was rather a peculiar feeling when I watched several members of Viva Palestina cloak themselves in the Union Jack for the final stages of our 5,000 mile journey from London to Gaza. In truth, the British flag was flown throughout our marathon journey across nine countries and the message was loud, proud and clear at each border crossing: "We are British, the convoy is British and we support the Palestinian people."
Clearly this woman is not familiar with the term 'irony'. She claims patriotism is a means of 'claiming for rulers their ambitions' - but what is her slavish love for the Islamic world and every Muslim-backed power struggle going?
The convoy was not 'British' - it was largely made up of Muslims and deluded idiots, with a few people who can't see beyond the goodness of their own hearts for good measure.
To finish, I would like to say something to Yvonne Ridley which I'm sure she'll be familiar with:
"Not in my name."
That's what she said about the struggle to remove the Taliban from power. I repeat it back to her now about her and Galloway's shameless attempts to pretend the British people are all duped dhimmis who can't see through the 'Palestinian liberation struggle'. It's nationalism and chauvinism in its purest, ugliest, most dangerous form, pure and simple.
You're not fit to hold the Union Flag Yvonne, let alone wax lyrical about the 'noble Desert Rats'. I had two relatives who served with the British army in North Africa, and I can assure you they didn't do it with the dream of a Muslim Britain or Europe - they were fighting against evil, oppressive beliefs, not for them.
A student of history and politics, teacher, sometimes writer, English patriot and unashamedly 'Eurocentric'.
A fan of truth, of our ancient liberties, of Western Civilisation - determined to defend them all in any way, at any cost.
I am working to overcome the double standards which now rule much of our life and conspire to silence us completely on certain issues.
A Dutch Perspective on the Meaning of the Westminster Quarters
During WWII and the occupation by the Nazis of the Netherlands, it was under occupation rule forbidden to listen to the BBC. (The fine was the death penalty). Still some people listened to the BBC.
Every BBC broadcast was introduced by the chimes of Big Ben. My grandparents lived under this awful Nazi occupation and listened to the BBC in the cellar. In those dark days the chimes of your Big Ben were their only promise and hope for democracy and freedom to this country of mine.
Happy birthday Big Ben. 150 years old. I dont know what your magic is. The promising sound of freedom and democracy, the amazing chimes of liberty?
But as an old tower you are still a gorgeous stone bloke with a beautiful voice.
“How dreadful are the curses which Islam lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property‹either as a child, a wife, or a concubine must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
Far from being moribund, Islam is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -the science against which it had vainly struggled -the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
— Sir Winston Churchill, The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).
Churchill on Us
"We have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy."
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