Appeals Court Rules Against Bagram Detainees

Posted on May 23, 2010 by abby

COMMON DREAMS– Detainees at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their imprisonment the way detainees in Guantanamo Bay have, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The United States is holding the detainees at the military prison on Afghan territory through a cooperative arrangement with Afghanistan, three appeals court judges said in a unanimous decision turning aside the request of a Tunisian and two Yemeni prisoners.

The jurisdiction of the U.S. courts does not extend to foreigners held at Bagram in the Afghan theater of war, added the judges, who said a U.S. district judge should have thrown out the detainees’ petitions.

“While we cannot say that extending our constitutional protections to the detainees would be in any way disruptive of that relationship” with the Afghan government, “neither can we say with certainty what the reaction of the Afghan government would be,” said the opinion written by Judge David Sentelle.

The petitions to the U.S. court system by the three men sought the same right to challenge their indefinite detention that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, won in the U.S. Supreme Court.

During appeals court arguments in January, the other two appeals judges in the case, Harry Edwards and David Tatel, seemed to struggle with the problem of whether they could craft a narrowly constructed opinion that would affect only the three men and not lay the groundwork for opening up the judicial branch of government to many other detainee cases now and in the future.

Friday’s decision spelled out that issue and referred back to January’s argument.

“The court engaged in an extended dialog with counsel for the petitioners in which we repeatedly sought some limiting principle that would distinguish Bagram from any other military installation. Counsel was able to produce no such distinction,” the ruling noted.

Sentelle wrote that the three detainees “seem to be arguing that the fact of United States control of Bagram under the lease of the military base is sufficient … we reject this extreme understanding.”

Under that interpretation, noncitizens held in any U.S. military facility in the world arguably could challenge their detention, said the appeals court opinion.

Sentelle, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is an appointee of President Ronald Reagan. Edwards was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, and Tatel by President Bill Clinton.

Written by Pete Yost

Afghan War Cost Now Outpaces Iraq’s

Posted on May 21, 2010 by abby

USA TODAY– The monthly cost of the war in Afghanistan, driven by troop increases and fighting on difficult terrain, has topped Iraq costs for the first time since 2003 and shows no sign of letting up.

Pentagon spending in February, the most recent month available, was $6.7 billion in Afghanistan compared with $5.5 billion in Iraq. As recently as fiscal year 2008, Iraq was three times as expensive; in 2009, it was twice as costly.

The shift is occurring because the Pentagon is adding troops in Afghanistan and withdrawing them from Iraq. And it’s happening as the cumulative cost of the two wars surpasses $1 trillion, including spending for veterans and foreign aid. Those costs could put increased pressure on President Obama and Congress, given the nation’s $12.9 trillion debt.

“The overall costs are a function, in part, of the number of troops,” says Linda Bilmes, an expert on wartime spending at Harvard University. “The costs are also a result of the intensity of operations, and the number of different places that we have our troops deployed.”

Obama made clear Wednesday that the U.S. role in Afghanistan would remain long after troops are withdrawn, a process planned to begin in July 2011. “This is a long-term partnership,” he said during a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Continued American support will be crucial as U.S. troop levels and costs in Afghanistan escalate:

•The number of U.S. servicemembers in Afghanistan has risen to 87,000, on top of 47,000 from 44 other countries. At the same time, the number of U.S. servicemembers in Iraq has dropped to 94,000. By next year, Afghanistan is to have 102,000 U.S. servicemembers, Iraq 43,000.

•Afghanistan will cost nearly $105 billion in the 2010 fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, including most of $33 billion in additional spending requested by Obama and pending before Congress. Iraq will cost about $66 billion. In fiscal 2011, Afghanistan is projected to cost $117 billion, Iraq $46 billion. To date, Pentagon spending in Iraq has reached $620 billion, compared with $190 billion in Afghanistan.

•Costs per servicemember in Afghanistan have been roughly double what they are in Iraq since 2005. That is due to lower troop levels, Afghanistan’s landlocked location, lack of infrastructure, high cost of fuel and less reliable security. “The cost just cascades,” says Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “That’s always been an issue in Afghanistan.”

“Iraq, logistically, is much easier,” says Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress. “You get the stuff to Kuwait and just drive it up the road.”

Photo by US Army

US Is Using Private Spy Ring to Gather Information Abroad

Posted on May 18, 2010 by abby

NY TIMES– Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation.

Earlier this year, government officials admitted that the military had sent a group of former Central Intelligence Agency officers and retired Special Operations troops into the region to collect information — some of which was used to track and kill people suspected of being militants. Many portrayed it as a rogue operation that had been hastily shut down once an investigation began.

But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government officials and businessmen, and an examination of government documents, tell a different a story. Not only are the networks still operating, their detailed reports on subjects like the workings of the Taliban leadership in Pakistan and the movements of enemy fighters in southern Afghanistan are also submitted almost daily to top commanders and have become an important source of intelligence.

The American military is largely prohibited from operating inside Pakistan. And under Pentagon rules, the army is not allowed to hire contractors for spying.

Military officials said that when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in the region, signed off on the operation in January 2009, there were prohibitions against intelligence gathering, including hiring agents to provide information about enemy positions in Pakistan. The contractors were supposed to provide only broad information about the political and tribal dynamics in the region, and information that could be used for “force protection,” they said.

Some Pentagon officials said that over time the operation appeared to morph into traditional spying activities. And they pointed out that the supervisor who set up the contractor network, Michael D. Furlong, was now under investigation.

But a review of the program by The New York Times found that Mr. Furlong’s operatives were still providing information using the same intelligence gathering methods as before. The contractors were still being paid under a $22 million contract, the review shows, managed by Lockheed Martin and supervised by the Pentagon office in charge of special operations policy.

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US Pays Taliban Members to Switch Sides

Posted on May 16, 2010 by abby

TIMES OF INDIA– US President Barack Obama has signed a $680 billion defence appropriations bill with one provision giving commanders the ability to pay Taliban members to switch sides, but some experts feel the programme may buy only temporary loyalty.

The payments to Taliban would be made under a Taliban reintegration provision under the Commander’s Emergency Response Programme (CERP), which is now receiving $1.3 billion in the bill pay for military operations in the 2010 fiscal year, signed by Obama on Wednesday.

CERP funding is also intended for humanitarian relief and reconstruction projects at commanders’ discretion.

The buyout idea, according to Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is to separate local Taliban from their leaders, replicating a programme used to neutralise the insurgency against Americans in Iraq.

“Afghan leaders and our military say that local Taliban fighters are motivated largely by the need for a job or loyalty to the local leader who pays them and not by ideology or religious zeal,” Levin said in a Senate floor speech Sep 11.

“They believe an effort to attract these fighters to the government’s side could succeed, if they are offered security for themselves and their families, and if there is no penalty for previous activity against us.”

The top commander in Afghanistan has backed the plan for the Taliban. “Most of the fighters we see in Afghanistan are Afghans, some with (a) foreign cadre with them,” said Gen. Stanley McChrystal in a July 28 Los Angeles Times interview.

Most are not ideologically or even politically motivated, he said in the interview.

“Most are operating for pay; some are under a commanders charismatic leadership; some are frustrated with local leaders.”

But Nicholas Schmidle, an expert on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region for the non-partisan New America Foundation, cited by CNN said that while the plan has a “reasonable chance for some success”, the old Afghan saying – “You can rent an Afghan, but you can’t buy him” – will eventually be borne out.

“So long as the Americans are keenly aware of this, you’re buying a very, very, very temporary allegiance,” he said. “If that’s the foundation for moving forward, it’s a shaky foundation.”

CNN security analyst Peter Bergen said the idea of paying off Taliban members to quit is nothing new. “There’s been an amnesty programme for low-level Taliban in place for many years now and thousands of people have taken advantage of it,” he said.

Brother of Afghan Leader on CIA Payroll

Posted on May 3, 2010 by abby

NY TIMES– Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

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Photo by flickr user J_D_R

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