Taliban Resurgent, America Blows Up A Hospital

[Berkut]

Why do people care so much about whether a topic deserves a new thread or not?

Either comment about the topic if it interests you, or don't if it doesn't, and the thread will live or die on its merits.

I think the topic of the *current* state of affairs in Afghanistan is perfectly reasonable, and there is no reason that it has to be tacked onto an existing thread that hasn't been posted in in days.

On the topic, I think the US policy in Afghanistan under Obama has been, well, not terrible, but mostly pretty non-existent. It seems like Obama's foreign policy in most cases is basically "How can we do nothing as much as possible without getting too much flack for it?". He mostly seems like he just wishes these FP issues would just go away.

And the results are pretty much exactly what you would expect from such a policy. Which doesn't necessarily make it the wrong policy, btw. You can make a perfectly reasonable argument that Afghanistan, at some point, will simply need to figure out for itself what I wants to be. My problem though is that I don't think that is the principle motivating the Obama administration. Rather, it is "Oh what, Afghanistan? Again? Why do I have to deal with that place?"

[The Minsky Moment]

the northern city of Kunduz, a major transportation hub

There is a north-south and an east-west road that go through the city.  No rail line.  A dinky airport that runs a couple flights to Kabul.  Wouldn't call it a "major transportation hub." Mazur-I-Sharif, which is hardly a metropolis, is a good deal more significant in as a transport hub in the north.

[Grey Fox]

Tim, never stop making new threads. You are the blood of this board.

[jimmy olsen]

Maybe the Pentagon should double check the intelligence given us by Afghan officials before blowing stuff up? I know it's a little radical, but just a thought.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/04/doctors_without_borders_says_u_s_may_have_committed_war_crime.html

Doctors Without Borders Says U.S. May Have Committed War Crime

By Daniel Politi

Doctors Without Borders said it was closing its hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz on  Sunday, a day after it was hit by what seems to have been a U.S. airstrike. The medical charity, commonly known by its French name Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF, increased the death toll in the bombing, saying the total fatalities amount to 22, including 12 staff members and 10 patients, and 37 people were wounded. Three of the patients who were killed in the attack were children, reports the New York Times.

"Under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed, MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body," the charity said in a statement on Sunday. "Relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient." The sentiment echoes what U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said on Saturday. "If established as deliberate in a court of law, an airstrike on a hospital may amount to a war crime," Zeid said in a statement.

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan has estimated that a preliminary investigation into the incident would be completed within days.

The medical group is pushing back on claims that Taliban fighters were using its hospital as a firing point to strike at coalition forces. The active governor of Kunduz told the Washington Post that Taliban fighters had been firing "small and heavy" weapons from the grounds of the hospital, which they used as a base. "The hospital campus was 100 percent used by the Taliban," the acting governor, Hamdullah Danishi, said. "The hospital has a vast garden, and the Taliban were there. We tolerated their firing for some time" before responding.

Without directly mentioning the claims, MSF made clear it saw the contention was nonsense. "Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the hospital compound prior to the US air strike on Saturday morning," MSF said. The charity also pointed out the claims that the grounds around the hospital were used by Taliban fighters don't stand up to scrutiny. On Twitter, MSF noted that the hospital itself was "repeatedly and precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched."

Doctors w/o Borders ✔ @MSF_USA
The main bldg where staff was caring for patients- repeatedly, very precisely hit during aerial raid. Rest of compound left mostly untouched
1:11 AM - 5 Oct 2015
  194 194 Retweets   68 68 favorites

MSF insists there were no insurgent fighters in the hospital at the time of the bombing.* "The gates of the hospital compound were closed all night so no one that is not staff, a patient or a caretaker was inside the hospital when the bombing happened," the group said, according to Reuters. "In any case, bombing a fully functioning hospital can never be justified."

*Update, Oct. 5, 2015, at 12:41 a.m.: This piece initially quoted the Associated Press claiming its own video footage of the burned compound appeared to show weapons on windowsills at the hospital. That claim was later retracted by the AP: "further review of the images cast doubt on whether they were rifles and a machine gun or simply charred debris from the bombing."

[Monoriu]

Tim, never stop making new threads. You are the blood of this board.

[jimmy olsen]

And what will accountability entail I wonder?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/07/us-afghanistan-attack-congress-idUSKCN0S01S420151007

Pentagon calls Afghan hospital strike a mistake, seeks accountability

WASHINGTON  |  By Yeganeh Torbati and Patricia Zengerle

The U.S. military took responsibility on Tuesday for a deadly air strike on a hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz, calling it a mistake and vowing to hold people accountable.

Saturday's strike on an Afghan hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), killed 22 people and deeply angered the medical charity. MSF officials have blamed the United States, demanding an independent investigation into an attack it called a war crime.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the Pentagon "deeply regrets" the loss of life. "The U.S. military takes the greatest care in our operations to prevent the loss of innocent life, and when we make mistakes, we own up to them. That's exactly what we're doing right now," Carter, who was traveling in Europe, said in a statement.

"We will do everything we can to understand this tragic incident, learn from it, and hold people accountable as necessary," he said.

Earlier in Washington, the American commander of international forces in Afghanistan, Army General John Campbell, called the strike a mistake made within the U.S. chain of command.

The comments by Carter and Campbell were the most direct acknowledgement yet by the U.S. government that the strike on the hospital was carried out by U.S. forces. On Monday, Campbell said only that U.S. forces had responded to a request for support from Afghan forces.

In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Campbell also made clear he favored a rethink of a plan to withdraw almost all U.S. troops by the end of next year. He said rising threats in Afghanistan from the Islamic State and al Qaeda were among factors informing his recommendations to the White House on future troop levels.

Campbell said U.S. forces had responded to a request from Afghan forces and provided close air support as they engaged in a fight with Taliban militants in Kunduz, a provincial capital that the Taliban captured late last month.

"To be clear, the decision to provide aerial fires was a U.S. decision made within the U.S. chain of command," Campbell said. He added that U.S. special forces nearby were communicating with the aircraft that delivered the strikes.

"A hospital was mistakenly struck," Campbell said. "We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility."

President Barack Obama expected steps to be taken to prevent such an incident from recurring, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Tuesday.

The government of President Ashraf Ghani, heavily dependent on Washington for military support and far less critical of the United States than his predecessor Hamid Karzai, has held back from directly criticizing the United States.

But an Afghan military officer took issue with the idea that Afghan forces had called for a strike against the hospital.

Abdullah Guard, commander of Afghan special forces in Kunduz, said his men had been under heavy fire in the area near the hospital, fighting a Taliban force estimated at around 500 men.

"It is possible our forces might have called for an air strike to hit the enemy position, but that doesn't mean to go and bomb the hospital," he told Reuters. He was speaking before Campbell's testimony on Tuesday, in which the American general made clear the decision to conduct the strike was a U.S. one.

Campbell said on Tuesday he had directed forces under his command to undergo training to review operational authorities and rules of engagement to prevent further incidents like Kunduz.


RENEWED ATTENTION ON MISSION

The incident, along with the Taliban's capture of Kunduz, has cast renewed attention on the 14-year U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

Many members of Congress are deeply concerned about Obama's plans for a final withdrawal of U.S. forces. The president is reassessing the timetable for a drawdown that currently envisages removing all but about 1,000 U.S. soldiers by the end of 2016.

"The world walked away from Afghanistan once before and it descended into chaos that contributed to the worst terrorist attack ever against our homeland," said Senator John McCain, the Republican chairman of the armed services committee, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that were planned by al Qaeda militants sheltered by the then-ruling Taliban in Afghanistan.

"We cannot afford to repeat that mistake," McCain said.

Campbell said counterterrorism missions would be less effective if the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was limited to a small force based in the capital. He said there were some 1,000-3,000 Islamic State members in Afghanistan, although many of them were disaffected Taliban members who were "rebranding" themselves.

He declined to provide specifics about recommendations he had made to the White House about force levels, but said they included an option for more troops than just a small embassy-based force. There are currently around 9,800 American troops in Afghanistan.

When asked by Senator Angus King whether his judgment was that conditions in Afghanistan would require revision of the withdrawal plan, Campbell responded: "Yes, sir."


(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati, Patricia Zengerle and Doina Chiacu, Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; Editing by Frances Kerry)

[Valmy]

Those responsible will be brought before a military tribunal?