Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

Global Post
April 22, 2012

Eight American soldiers died of drug overdoses while the US Army has investigated 56 soldiers on suspicion of using or distributing heroin, morphine or other opiates during deployments in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011, military statistics reveal.

Meanwhile, heroin use is on the rise in the Army overall, CNN reported, with the number of soldiers testing positive for heroin growing from 10 instances in 2002 to 116 in 2010.

Meanwhile, some Afghan forces that are being trained by the US military to take over the mission by 2014 have been found dealing drugs to American soldiers, according to Judicial Watch, a conservative US watchdog group.

According to Fox News, a December 2011 report from Army Criminal Investigation Command showed that at one forward operation base, hash, pot and heroin were purchased “from various Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police personnel.”

Read on: www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/afghanistan/120422/american-soldiers-drug-overdoses-us-army-heroi

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Kansas City Star
By Jon Stephenson
March 9, 2012

More than 3,000 detainees held by the U.S. military will be transferred to Afghan control within six months under an agreement signed Friday between the United States and Afghanistan.

While the United States will retain the power to veto any detainee’s release, the prisoner agreement meets a key demand of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government as the two sides try to hammer out the details of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan following the expected end of American combat operations by 2014.

The first batch of about 500 detainees is likely to be transferred within 45 days from the U.S.-run detention center at the Bagram military complex, north of Kabul.

The agreement would apply only to Afghan detainees, said a senior U.S. official involved in the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. About 50 non-Afghans — primarily al Qaida suspects from Pakistan, Arab countries and elsewhere — will remain in U.S. custody at Bagram. …

Read on: www.kansascity.com/2012/03/09/3480328/us-agrees-to-hand-over-prisoners.html

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MSN Health & Fitness
By Steven Reinberg
March 7, 2012

Service in Iraq and Afghanistan appears to be the cause of increasing mental-health problems

Suicides among U.S. soldiers rose 80 percent from 2004 to 2008, an Army study found.

As many as 40 percent of these suicides may have been linked to combat experience in Iraq, yet nearly a third of the soldiers who committed suicide saw no combat at all, said the researchers, from the U.S. Army Public Health Command.

“Our study confirmed earlier studies by other military researchers that found increased risk of suicide among those who experience mental-health diagnoses associated with the stresses of war,” said lead researcher Michelle Canham-Chervak, a senior epidemiologist with the command.

“This study suggests that an army engaged in prolonged combat operations is a population under stress, and that mental-health conditions and suicide can be expected to increase under these circumstances,” Canham-Chervak said. “By establishing that soldiers who are diagnosed with a mental-health disorder or substance abuse are at greater risk of suicide, we then have a place to target our prevention strategies.”

The report was published in the March 7 online edition of the journal Injury Prevention.

The findings are based on analysis of data from the U.S. Army Behavioral Health Integrated Data Environment, a registry containing information — including consultations, diagnoses and treatment — on suicides from many military sources.

This analysis found that the rates of suicide among Army personnel from 1977 to 2003 were mostly in keeping with trends in the general population, and were actually slightly lower than expected in that 27-year period, the researchers said.

In 2004, however, suicides started to increase. By 2008 they had risen by more than 80 percent, to a rate higher than in the civilian population. …

Read on: http://health.msn.com/health-topics/anxiety/us-army-suicides-rising-sharply-study-finds

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CBS News
February 22, 2012

An Afghan protestor, left, shouts slogans near burning security booth in front of the US base of Bagram during an anti US demonstration in Bagram north of Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012. More than 2,000 angry Afghans, some firing guns in the air, protested on Tuesday against the improper disposal and burning of Qurans and other Islamic religious materials at an American air base in Bagram north of Kabul.

Police say anti-American demonstrations are under way on the outskirts of the Afghan capital and in another city over an incident that the U.S. says was inadvertent burning of Muslim holy books at a military base.

Kabul provincial police spokesman Ashmatullah Stanekzai says hundreds of people are gathering on Wednesday outside the Camp Phoenix base on the main highway linking Kabul with the eastern Jalalabad city, closing the main trade route.

Police in Jalalabad say thousands are gathering in parts of the city to demonstrate.

The U.S. apologized Tuesday for the burning of books, including Qurans, that had been pulled from the shelves of a detention center library adjoining Bagram air base because they contained extremist messages or inscriptions. …

Read on: www.cbsnews.com/8301-501712_162-57382397/police-anti-american-demos-in-afghanistan-cities/

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AP
By Amir Shah and Patrick Quinn
February 23, 2012

Afghan police on Thursday fired shots in the air to disperse hundreds of protesters who tried to break into an American military base in the country’s east to vent their anger over this week’s Quran burnings incident.

The fresh violence came one day after clashes between Afghan troops and protesters broke out in the capital and in three eastern provinces over the incident, leaving at least seven people dead and dozens wounded.

The Quran burnings have roiled Afghans and set off riots in an illustration of the intensity of the anger at what they perceive as foreign forces flouting their laws and insulting their culture. The U.S. has apologized for the burnings, which took place at a military base near Kabul, and said it was a mistake.

In the eastern Laghman province, protesters hurled rocks on Thursday and tried to remove the razor wire from the perimeter of the American base in Mehterlam, the provincial capital.

The demonstrators failed to push through and get inside the walls of the facility…

Read on: http://news.yahoo.com/afghans-angry-over-quran-burnings-attack-us-084708643.html

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PressTV
February 19, 2012

Whenever the U.S. military leadership talks about the decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, it sounds as though all is going swimmingly. Sure, there’s the occasional colonel who starts speaking out of turn about how bad things are, but mostly top officials are solid in their optimism.

Not so with the U.S. intelligence community, which is offering extremely bleak assessments in public testimony to Congress, conceding that the situation is actually going extremely poorly. …

DIA head Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess warned of “endemic corruption and persistent qualitative deficiencies in the army” as preventing serious security gains, adding that the Taliban “remains confident of eventual victory.” Antiwar

“I would like to begin with current military operations in Afghanistan, where we assess that endemic corruption and persistent qualitative deficiencies in the army and police forces undermine efforts to extend effective governance and security,” Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee at its annual worldwide threat hearing. latimes.com

Read on: www.presstv.ir/usdetail/227408.html

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Huffington Post (blog)
Nick Turse
February 13, 2012

The Pentagon’s Afghan Basing Plans for Prisons, Drones, and Black Ops

In late December, the lot was just a big blank: a few burgundy metal shipping containers sitting in an expanse of crushed eggshell-colored gravel inside a razor-wire-topped fence. The American military in Afghanistan doesn’t want to talk about it, but one day soon, it will be a new hub for the American drone war in the Greater Middle East.

Next year, that empty lot will be a two-story concrete intelligence facility for America’s drone war, brightly lit and filled with powerful computers kept in climate-controlled comfort in a country where most of the population has no access to electricity. It will boast almost 7,000 square feet of offices, briefing and conference rooms, and a large “processing, exploitation, and dissemination” operations center — and, of course, it will be built with American tax dollars.

Nor is it an anomaly. Despite all the talk of drawdowns and withdrawals, there has been a years-long building boom in Afghanistan that shows little sign of abating. In early 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had nearly 400 bases in Afghanistan. Today, Lieutenant Lauren Rago of ISAF public affairs tells TomDispatch, the number tops 450.

The hush-hush, high-tech, super-secure facility at the massive air base in Kandahar is just one of many building projects the U.S. military currently has planned or underway in Afghanistan. While some U.S. bases are indeed closing up shop or being transferred to the Afghan government, and there’s talk of combat operations slowing or ending next year, as well as a withdrawal of American combat forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the U.S. military is still preparing for a much longer haul at mega-bases like Kandahar and Bagram airfields. …

Read on: www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-turse/450-bases-and-its-not-ove_b_1273018.html

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Xinhua
November 24, 2011

Pakistan has decided to take up the issue of strikes by the CIA-run unmanned aircraft in the country’s tribal regions, which the government, rights groups and tribesmen said killed innocent people, reported local TV channel Dawn on Thursday.

The U.S. drones routinely fire missiles into Pakistani tribal regions which the American officials have claimed to be bases for the militants who launch cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

Pakistan repeatedly asks the Unites States to stop drone strikes but Americans have ruled out any change in the policy. The issue of drone attacks is one of the irritants in the bilateral relationship.

After the U.S. refusal to halt the strikes, Pakistan has decided to approach the UN to seek its help to stop these attacks, which Pakistan insists is counter-productive in the war on terror.

Dawn reported Pakistani government has started collecting data about the U.S. drone attacks and casualties.

The government has directed the administrative officials in the tribal regions to provide details about the strikes to vigorously pursue the case.

Pakistan is discussing its new strategy to be adopted in the UN, the report said.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-11/24/c_122332575.htm

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Florida Times-Union
October 28, 2011

Corruption is part of the culture in Afghanistan, and the United States has been the great enabler.

That is the only conclusion that can be reached by an impressive report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting, the result of three years of work.

A total of $12 million every day for 10 years has been lost in fraud and waste.

In an era when the United States is facing great financial challenges, this is an outrage.

At least $31 billion has been lost in waste and fraud, perhaps as much as $60 billion. Why the great disparity? Because the financial controls are basically nonexistent. And the actual documents of the investigation have been sealed for 20 years as if this is the investigation into the assassination of a president. …

This is like doing business with Tony Soprano.

For instance, the U.S. pays Afghan contractors to provide trucking services. Then they hire subcontractors. The subcontractors then pay insurgent groups for protection because insurgents either control the roads or have the ability to attack. …

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2011-10-28/story/breathtaking-fraud-afghanistan

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ABC News
By The Associated Press
October 25, 2011

As of Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, at least 1,700 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count.

The AP count is six less than the Defense Department’s tally, last updated Tuesday at 10 a.m. EDT.

At least 1,425 military service members have died in Afghanistan as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.

Outside of Afghanistan, the department reports at least 102 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, 12 were the result of hostile action.

The AP count of total OEF casualties outside of Afghanistan is the same as the department’s tally.

The Defense Department also counts three military civilian deaths.

Since the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, 14,611 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-military-deaths-afghanistan-1700-14811327

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