US Feature: General Petraeus and the Kagans --- How "Private Analysts" Become "De Facto Military Advisors"

Kimberly Kagan backs increased US military forces in Afghanistan, June 2010: "We can reverse the Taliban's momentum"

---

Petraeus allowed his biographer-turned-paramour, Paula Broadwell, to read sensitive documents and accompany him on trips. But the entree granted the Kagans, whose think-tank work has been embraced by Republican politicians, went even further. The four-star general made the Kagans de facto senior advisers, a status that afforded them numerous private meetings in his office, priority travel across the war zone and the ability to read highly secretive transcripts of intercepted Taliban communications, according to current and former senior U.S. military and civilian officials who served in the headquarters at the time.

The Kagans used those privileges to advocate substantive changes in the U.S. war plan, including a harder-edged approach than some U.S. officers advocated in combating the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction in eastern Afghanistan, the officials said.

The pro-bono relationship, which is now being scrutinized by military lawyers, yielded valuable benefits for the general and the couple.

Click to read more ...

US Feature: A Map of President Obama's 284 Drone Strikes in Pakistan

See also US Feature: Obama's Man Writing the "Playbook" for the "War on Terror"

---

Slate presents a map, based on information to June from the New American Foundation and updated with media reports since then, of US drone strikes in Pakistan in the Bush and Obama Administrations.

While striking, the map may be conservative in its presentation. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found earlier this month that "the Long War Journal and the New America Foundation have been under-recording credible reports of drone civilian casualties in Pakistan by a huge margin".

Afghanistan Latest: Dozens Killed in Suicide Attack on Mosque (Pajhwok)

A suicide attacker killed nearly 36 people, including security men and civilians, when he blew himself up outside a mosque in the Mainmana City, capital of northern Faryab province on Friday.

The brazen attack took place at about 9:30 am in front of a mosque’s entrance in the provincial capital when worshippers were congregating for the Eid al-Adha celebration.

Police official Maj. Mohammad Naeem said the attacker detonated his explosives among the security forces when police chief and other security officers were leaving the mosque after Eid prayer.

Click to read more ...

Pakistan to Yemen to North Africa Feature: The CIA Seeks More Drones

Protest in Pakistan earlier this month against US drone strikes

---

The CIA is urging the White House to approve a significant expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, a move that would extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force, U.S. officials said.

The proposal by CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots, officials said.

If approved, the CIA could add as many as 10 drones, the officials said, to an inventory that has ranged between 30 and 35 over the past few years.

Click to read more ...

Afghanistan Latest: At Least 12 Killed by Car Bomb This Morning

Photo: ReutersA female car bomber has killed at least 12 people, nine of them foreigners, this morning.

The attack took place at about 6:45 a.m. (0215 GMT) on the edge of the capital Kabul near the airport. The bomber blew herself up alongside a minivan, carrying foreigners who worked for the courier company ACS. Two police were wounded. 

A senior police officer said six of the dead foreigners were Russian and South Africans. One of the Afghans killed was a street-side tyre fixer.

Click to read more ...

Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Re-Focusing on the Conflict

The moment that crowds charged the US Embassy in Yemen on Thursday

See also Iran Propaganda Feature: Fars News Makes Up Interview with "Bahrain Opposition Leader
Thursday's Libya, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Extraordinary Death, "Everyday" Death
MENA Video Special: The Biggest and Most Important Protests are in Syria

---

2146 GMT: Syria. Earlier we reported that the Free Syrian Army conducted an offensive against Assad positions in the Saleh el Dine district of Aleppo. We also reported that there were rumors that the Assad military retreated after the battle. Now, we've found many videos showing fighters inside the district today, claiming that they have captured the entire area. But this may be the most compelling evidence.

The video below claims to show the district being shelled, an activity that would not be possible if Assad troops were still in the district. Another video shows fires burning there, reportedly the result of the shelling:

The key to winning any battle is to maintain the initiative. The Assad regime is failing to do that. The FSA is mixing up attacks in the east with assaults on the military airport, and really disrupted the pattern of battle last weekend when they briefly captured a major military base in the heart of the city. The center of the city has been shelled for four days, and now this turn of events suggests that, at least for the moment, the Assad regime is more content to sit back and shell opposition forces than fight them on the streets.

Click to read more ...

Afghanistan Feature: How Will US "Withdraw" When It Has 550 Bases? (Turse)

Camp BagramAfghanistan may turn out to be one of the great misbegotten “stimulus packages” of the modern era, a construction boom in the middle of nowhere with materials largely shipped in at enormous expense to no lasting purpose whatsoever. With the U.S. military officially drawing down its troops there, the Pentagon is now evidently reversing the process and embarking on a major deconstruction program. It’s tearing up tarmacs, shutting down outposts, and packing up some of its smaller facilities. Next year, the number of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition bases in the southwest of the country alone is scheduled to plummet from 214 to 70, according to the New York Times.

But anyone who wanted to know just what the Pentagon built in Afghanistan and what it is now tearing down won’t have an easy time of it.

Click to read more ...

Iran Snapshot: 3 "Iranian Citizens" Arrested for Bombing in Afghanistan That Killed 36

Aftermath of the Bomb in ZaranjThe Afghan National Directorate of Security claims that it has arrested three Iranian citizens over a suicide bombing on Tuesday in southwestern Afghanistan, close to the Iranian border.

The blast in Zaranj, the centre of Nimroz province, killed at least 36 people and injured dozens more injured. Three suicide bombers detonated their explosives in central areas of the city, while three others were killed by the police before they could set off their bombs.

The NDS claims that the arrested individuals have confessed to being trained on Iranian soil in military bases. However, an official from the NDS says it does not have full details of whether the Iranian government is complicit in the attack and adds that the attackers also received training in Pakistan.

Click to read more ...

Pakistan Feature: The Murder of Farida Afridi, Activist for Women's Rights (Crowstaff)

Farida AfridiLast week Farida "Kokikhel" Afridi, director of the Society for Appraisal and Women Empowerment in Rural Areas (SAWERA), a Pakistani non-governmental organisation dedicated to women's and children's rights, was murdered in the Khyber tribal region area as she travelled to her office. Witnesses saying they saw two motorcyclists following Afridi before they opened fire and sped away --- she was shot once in the head and twice in the neck, dying in hospital of her wounds.

The 25-year-old activist co-founded SAWERA with her sister Noorzia in 2004. Despite threats, she criticised the government, the Taliban, and the patriarchal nature of Pakistani society, which she saw as one of the main obstacles to women's empowerment.

The Express Tribune wrote in an editorial of tribute and regret:

Farida Afridi was shot dead in cold blood for the crime of being a decent, caring human being. As the executive director of the human rights NGO, Sawera, Afridi was working in Fata performing the most thankless of jobs: trying to improve the plight of women in an area where many people have never even considered the concept of women’s rights.

Chris Crowstaff of Safe World for Women, a partner of SAWERA, offers further recollections.

Click to read more ...

Afghanistan Opinion: Let's Be Clear --- "The Surge" Was A Failure of US Strategy and Policy (Cohen)

Rajiv Chandrasekaran's newly-released book, Little America: The War Within The War for Afghanistan (see extract in separate EA feature) has prompted soul-searching amongst US analysts about what went wrong, more than a decade after the situation was supposedly resolved with the ousting of the Taliban.

Michael Cohen's comment for The Progressive Realist resonates, in part because it returns to the key period in 2009 --- covered extensively by EA at the time --- when the US military bounced President Obama into an expanded intervention. Ostensibly, this was for development and political resolution as well as the vanquishing of the Taliban; in practice, the development and political resolution never followed the additional boots on the ground.

Click to read more ...