DTN News - WHITE HOUSE / PENTAGON NEWS: President Barack Obama Praises Gates, Nominates New Security Team‏

DTN News - WHITE HOUSE / PENTAGON NEWS: President Barack Obama Praises Gates, Nominates New Security Team‏

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service

(NSI News Source Info)

WASHINGTON, - April 28, 2011: - President Barack Obama today thanked Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for his service as he officially announced his intention to nominate CIA Director Leon E. Panetta to lead the Pentagon after Gates retires June 30.

Obama said Gates will go down in history as one of the finest defense secretaries in U.S. history.

The president also nominated Army Gen. David H. Petraeus to succeed Panetta at the CIA and Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John R. Allen to succeed Petraeus as commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Obama also is nominating Ryan C. Crocker to return from retirement and serve as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. The nominations are subject to Senate confirmation.

"Given the pivotal period that we're entering, I felt that it was absolutely critical that we had this team in place so that we can stay focused on our missions, maintain our momentum and keep our nation secure," Obama said in the White House East Room.

Gates will step down after serving more than four and a half years in office. President George W. Bush nominated Gates for the job at a time when prospects in Iraq looked bleak. The surge of U.S. forces into Iraq was hitting its stride, and hundreds of attacks occurred each day on coalition forces in the country.

"Today, every American must know that because he helped to responsibly wind down the war in Iraq, we're in a better position to support our troops and manage the transition in Afghanistan," Obama said. "Because he challenged conventional thinking, our troops have the lifesaving equipment they need, and our military is better prepared for today's wars.

"And because he courageously cut unnecessary spending," the president continued, "we'll save hundreds of billions of dollars that can be invested in the 21st-century military that our troops deserve."

The United States military has fought in two wars every day of Gates' tenure. Service members have also stood watch elsewhere around the globe. "It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve and to lead our men and women in uniform and our defense civilians," he said. "They are the best America has to offer.

"My highest priority from my first day in office," he added, "has been to do everything I could for our uniformed men and women in harm's way to help them accomplish their mission, to come home safely, and if wounded, to get them the best possible care from battlefield to homefront. I've done my best to care for them as though they were my own sons and daughters, and I will miss them deeply."

The president said Panetta has the right skills to trake over for Gates. "The patriotism and extraordinary management skills that have defined Leon's four decades of service is exactly what we need in our next secretary of defense," Obama said. "As a former congressman and White House chief of staff, Leon knows how to lead, which is why he is held in such high esteem not only in this city, but around the world."

Panetta has served as CIA director for more than two years. The president said he has played a decisive role in the fight against violent extremism.

"He understands that even as we begin the transition in Afghanistan, we must remain unwavering in our fight against al-Qaida," Obama said. "And as a former [Office of Management and Budget] director, he will ensure that even as we make tough budget decisions, we will maintain our military superiority and keep our military the very best in the world."

Panetta thanked the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency for their superb, but unheralded work.

"I spent 40 years in public service, and it began when I served in the Army as an intelligence officer in the 1960s," he said. "I was proud to wear the uniform of our country, and my respect and admiration for our nation's armed forces has only grown in the decades since."

Obama stressed continuity, noting that Petraeus will carry on Panetta's work at the CIA. After 35 years in uniform, the general will retire from the Army to become the next CIA director, effective early September, pending Senate confirmation.

"As a lifelong consumer of intelligence, he knows that intelligence must be timely, accurate and acted upon quickly," Obama said. "He understands that staying a step ahead of nimble adversaries requires sharing and coordinating information, including with my director of national intelligence, Jim Clapper."

Obama said he values Petraeus' flexibility and adaptability. "Just as General Petraeus changed the way that our military fights and wins wars in the 21st century, I have no doubt that Director Petraeus will guide our intelligence professionals as they continue to adapt and innovate in an ever-changing world," the president said.

And Allen is the right man for the job in Afghanistan, the president said.

"As a battle-tested combat leader, in Iraq he helped turn the tide in Anbar province," he said. "As deputy commander of Central Command, he's respected in the region and has been deeply involved in planning and executing our strategy in Afghanistan."

Biographies: Robert M. Gates Leon E. Panetta Army Gen. David H. Petraeus Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John R. Allen

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service

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DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: Afghanistan TODAY December 25, 2010 - Leaders Surprise Coalition Troops On Christmas

DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: Afghanistan TODAY December 25, 2010 - Leaders Surprise Coalition Troops On Christmas

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By ISAF Joint Command

(NSI News Source Info) KABUL, Afghanistan - December 25, 2010: Italian Air Force Gen. Vincenzo Camporini, Italian chief of defense; U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander, International Security Assistance Force; and Italian Army Brig. Gen. Marcello Bellacicco, commander, Regional Command-West, met with coalition soldiers and delivered holiday messages of thanks and encouragement in Bakwah District, Farah province today.

“I know that it is difficult for you to be here, especially this time of the year,” said Camporini. “Boun Natale (Merry Christmas) and Grazie (thank you)”, said Petraeus, as many looked both surprised and impressed when the general addressed them in Italian. He then asked the soldiers to gather around him to be closer and more personal. Bakwah is one of the more volatile areas in RC-West, and the soldiers based there often engage insurgents in kinetic activities. However, many civilian-military cooperation initiatives and developments continue to improve the situation there. “Our soldiers here are doing wonderful work in tough places,” Petraeus said. “It’s a privilege for the other 48 ISAF countries to serve with the Italians.”

*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News, contact: dtnnews@ymail.com

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DTN News: Afghanistan TODAY July 16, 2010 - The U.S. Goes Local in Anti-Taliban Fight

DTN News: Afghanistan TODAY July 16, 2010 - The U.S. Goes Local in Anti-Taliban Fight

Source: DTN News - this article / report compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources including TIME By MARK THOMPSON

(NSI News Source Info) WASHINGTON, USA - July 16, 2010: The good news is that the U.S. government is on the verge of creating thousands of jobs. The bad news is that they're in Afghanistan. But General David Petraeus is hoping that hiring up to 10,000 Afghans and arming them to keep the Taliban out of their villages will help turn things around in the nine-year-old war. Petraeus won the tepid backing of Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the plan, nurtured by his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal, after just two weeks in command of allied forces in Afghanistan. It requires a delicate balancing act - the creation of local forces strong enough to shut the Taliban out of areas where neither Afghan nor NATO troops operate, but not so strong as to undermine the authority of Karzai's central government. While progress is slow in fielding Afghan national security forces to fight the Taliban, U.S. officials believe that a growing number of Afghans are receptive to this more localized initiative. Marine Major General Richard Mills, running operations in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province, said Thursday he is seeing locals growing increasingly anti-Taliban. "We have strong anecdotal evidence that as Taliban tax collectors enter Marjah at night and enter other parts of this province, that they are repulsed and sent away by the people," he told reporters at the Pentagon in a teleconference. Taliban recruiters also are "being rejected and told to disappear," Mills added. "We're beginning to see the emergence of the people wanting to defend themselves." (Watch an audio slideshow about Afghanistan.) Petraeus won Karzai's backing for the plan by giving the Afghan Interior Ministry control of the new localized police forces, which will supplement the 130,000-strong Afghan army and the 100,000 members of the Afghan national police. While their role is supposed to be defensive, that may be easier to promise than deliver in a country run by warlords and their local militias for the past 30 years. Some fear that the new rental cops could be easily turned into militias. "These would be local community policing units," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell insisted Wednesday. "They would not be militias." (See how a U.S.-backed Afghan militia transformed a valley of death.) Petraeus' calendar for showing progress is another challenge. A major review of the U.S. war strategy for Afghanistan is less than six months away, and President Obama wants to begin reducing U.S. troops there a year from now. Building even rudimentary security forces takes time, giving this latest initiative just a whiff of desperation as the clock ticks down. It's "a temporary solution to a very real, near-term problem," Morrell said, adding that the force shouldn't take long to train. "This is about putting locals to work so that they can be on watch in their communities for people who shouldn't be there," he said. "And then work with the established security organizations - the army, the police, the coalition - to make sure they don't menace their communities." But the local police forces won't always be operating solo, Petraeus explained at his Senate confirmation hearing last month. Some of them will be "working around our great special-forces A teams who are out there very courageously in villages, and helping to empower and to support local elements that want to resist the Taliban." Petraeus performed a similar, if not identical, magic trick when he and 30,000 additional U.S. troops surged into Iraq in 2007. Many credited that surge with turning Iraq around. But many U.S. military officers say a more important factor was the willingness of the so-called Awakening movement - Sunnis in western Iraq, many of them former insurgents - to fight al-Qaeda. Ultimately, about 100,000 Iraqis ended up on the U.S. payroll through the Awakening movement. But in Afghanistan, any "awakening" is to begin - and remain - under the control of the government. Similar units have recently been created in different regions of Afghanistan, largely in the east and south, with mixed results. Such homegrown security forces tend to work better than those imported as part of a central army. "It encourages neighborhood responsibility for their own security," Mills said. It gives locals "an opportunity for them to defend their own territory, in which they have, of course, a very, very vested interest." Not only are locals intimately familiar with the topography, they also know the local bad guys better than any outsider does. But the challenge for Petraeus and Karzai will be to keep local bad guys off the police payroll.

*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News, contact: dtnnews@ymail.com

DTN News: U.S. May Label Pakistan Militants As Terrorists

DTN News: U.S. May Label Pakistan Militants As Terrorists

* US could label Pakistan-based militants 'terrorists': NYT - The Times of India (Click link)

Source: DTN News - this article / report compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources including Times of India, BBC News & The New York Times - by MARK LANDLER and THOM SHANKER

(NSI News Source Info)WASHINGTON, U.S.A. - July 14, 2010: The new American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is pushing to have top leaders of a feared insurgent group designated as terrorists, a move that could complicate an eventual Afghan political settlement with the Taliban and aggravate political tensions in the region.

General Petraeus introduced the idea of blacklisting the group, known as the Haqqani network, late last week in discussions with President Obama’s senior advisers on Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to several administration officials, who said it was being seriously considered. Such a move could risk antagonizing Pakistan, a critical partner in the war effort, but one that is closely tied to the Haqqani network. It could also frustrate the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who is pressing to reconcile with all the insurgent groups as a way to end the nine-year-old war and consolidate his own grip on power. The case of the Haqqani network, run by an old warlord family, underscores the thorny decisions that will have to be made over which Taliban-linked insurgents should win some sort of amnesty and play a role in the future of Afghanistan. Mr. Karzai has already petitioned the United Nations to lift sanctions against dozens of members of the Taliban, and has won conditional support from the Obama administration, so long as these people sever ties to Al Qaeda, forswear violence and accept the Afghan Constitution. “If they are willing to accept the red lines and come in from the cold, there has to be a place for them,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said to reporters at a briefing on Tuesday. From its base in the frontier area near the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani is suspected of running much of the insurgency around Kabul, the Afghan capital, and across eastern Afghanistan, carrying out car bombings and kidnappings, including spectacular attacks on American military installations. It is allied with Al Qaeda and with leaders of the Afghan Taliban branch under Mullah Muhammad Omar, now based near Quetta, Pakistan. But the group’s real power may lie in its deep connections to Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, which analysts say sees the Haqqani network as a way to exercise its own leverage in Afghanistan. Pakistani leaders have recently offered to broker talks between Mr. Karzai and the network, officials said, arguing that it could be a viable future partner. American officials remain extremely skeptical that the Haqqani network’s senior leaders could ever be reconciled with the Afghan government, although they say perhaps some midlevel commanders and foot soldiers could. Some officials in Washington and in the region expressed concerns that imposing sanctions on the entire network might drive away some fighters who might be persuaded to lay down their arms. The idea of putting the Haqqani network on a blacklist was first made public on Tuesday by Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, who has just returned from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mr. Levin did not disclose any conversations he might have had with General Petraeus on the subject. The Haqqani network is perhaps the most significant threat to stability in Afghanistan, said Mr. Levin, a powerful voice in Congress on military affairs as chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Mr. Levin also advocated increasing attacks against the organization by Pakistan and by the United States, using unmanned drone strikes. “At the moment, the Haqqani network — and their fighters coming over the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan — is the greatest threat, at least external threat, to Afghanistan,” Mr. Levin said at a morning breakfast with correspondents. “More needs to be done by Pakistan,” he added. “The Pakistanis have said they now realize, more than ever, that terrorism is a threat to them — not just the terrorists who attack them directly, but the terrorists who attack others from their territory.” Placement on the State Department’s list would mainly impose legal limits on American citizens and companies, prohibiting trade with the Haqqani network or its leaders and requiring that banks freeze their assets in the United States. But Mr. Levin noted that the law would also require the United States government to apply pressure on any nation harboring such a group, in this case Pakistan. In Kabul, a spokesman for General Petraeus said he would not comment on any internal discussions. But in public General Petraeus has expressed alarm about the network and has talked about his desire to see the Pakistani military act more aggressively against the group’s stronghold in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. In testimony before Mr. Levin’s committee last month, General Petraeus said he viewed the network as a particular danger to the mission in Afghanistan. He said he and other senior military officers had shared information with their counterparts in Pakistan that showed the Haqqani network “clearly commanded and controlled” recent attacks in Kabul and against the Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, which is controlled by the United States. The focus on a political settlement is likely to intensify next week at a conference in Kabul, to be headed by Mr. Karzai and attended by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other officials. Mr. Karzai recently signed a decree authorizing the reintegration of lower-level Taliban fighters, and Mr. Holbrooke said the meeting would kick off that program, which will be financed by $180 million from Japan, Britain and other countries, as well as $100 million in Pentagon funds. But Mr. Karzai is eager to extend an olive branch to higher-level figures as well. His government wants to remove up to 50 of the 137 Taliban names on the United Nations Security Council’s blacklist. Mr. Holbrooke, the special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the administration supported efforts to cull the list, but would approve names only on a case-by-case basis. Certain figures, like Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, remain out of bounds, he said. For its part, the United States is trying to keep the emphasis on the low-level fighters, rather than the leadership. The planned American military campaign in Kandahar, officials said, could weaken the position of Taliban leaders, making them more amenable to a settlement. Still, the United States backs “Afghan-led reconciliation,” Mr. Holbrooke said. And he said the administration was encouraged by recent meetings between Mr. Karzai and Pakistani leaders, which he said were slowly building trust between these often-suspicious neighbors. “Nothing could be more important to the resolution of the war in Afghanistan,” he said, “than a common understanding between Afghanistan and Pakistan on what their strategic purpose is.”

Related Contents:

*LeT men cross over from Pak to fight Afghan war *29 Pakistani lawmakers have fake degrees: Probe *Indo-Pak talks to pave way for structured dialogue: Gilani *Pakistan police arrest hundreds of suspected militants

Defense Focus: Age Of Wars Indian Forces

Defense Focus: Age Of Wars Indian Forces

(NSI News Source Info) WASHINTON - April 29, 2009: India has poor special forces, but its enormous manpower gives it a powerful advantage in maintaining security and fighting guerrilla conflicts. A newly raised soldier of Indian Army Jammu Kashmir Light Infantry Regiment (JKLIR) shouts during a passing out parade on the outskirts of Srinagar, India, Wednesday, April 22, 2009. Four hundred and fourteen recruits from Jammu and Kashmir state were formally inducted into JKLIR after training. This model flies in the face of the fashionable and currently widely accepted theories of military force deployment and weapons procurement spearheaded by the United States and followed by almost of all of the major industrialized democracies.

Indeed, French President Nicolas Sarkozy embarked on an ambitious program last year to drastically cut the size and manpower numbers of the French armed forces while pouring far more investment into high-tech weapons, space-based command and communications and long-distance force-projection capabilities instead. It always sounds so attractive, and it was the mantra that Donald Rumsfeld followed during his six years as defense secretary of the United States. But it didn't work well at all for the United States and its armed forces. The U.S. military had to pour a disproportionate percentage of its combat forces into a long and exhausting guerrilla conflict against Baathist and other Sunni Muslim guerrillas operating among a minority of only around 30 percent or less of the total population of Iraq, an average-sized country that is only as large as California and with a population half the size. But in fighting counterinsurgency wars and in struggling to prevent the erosion of the state to entropy or chaos -- generating forces of fourth-generation war -- the most important goal for armies to achieve is the protection of the population from being terrorized and coerced by the ruthless guerrilla forces seeking to co-opt them. U.S. Gen. David Petraeus has applied that principle with brilliant success in central Iraq over the past two years after about four years of continual failure before him. Petraeus was able to pull off his achievement despite a strict limitation on the number of troops he was able to concentrate on the ground. And the super-expensive high-tech weaponry that Rumsfeld loved proved to be totally irrelevant to his achievement. Petraeus was able to pull off his success by co-opting and paying local Iraqi tribal leaders who had been disgusted by the out-of-control violence and cruelty of al-Qaida and other insurgent forces. The Indian army continues to fight guerrilla and terrorist challenges on a number of fronts, and it has achieved considerable success against them using two low-tech and very old-fashioned and unfashionable forces. It has not sought to bribe or politically co-opt its enemies as the British Empire did for centuries around the world with mixed but generally positive results and as Petraeus more recently did in Iraq. The Indians have relied on strong passive border defenses to keep mujahedin Islamist guerrillas from wreaking havoc in Muslim-majority Jammu & Kashmir or across their eastern border from Bangladesh. But above all else, they have trusted in having large numbers of relatively low-trained and lightly equipped combat soldiers who can flood areas threatened by guerrillas for long periods at a time.

US Envoy Richard Holbrooke’s Portfolio Includes India, Says US Gen. David Petraeus

US Envoy Richard Holbrooke’s Portfolio Includes India, Says US Gen. David Petraeus

(NSI News Source Info) WASHINGTON - April 26, 2009: The portfolio of the new US envoy Richard Holbrooke includes India even though his title – envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan – does not indicate so, says US Gen. David Petraeus. Members of Code Pink protest as Commander of the U.S. Central Command Gen. David Petraeus testifies during a hearing before the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill April 24, 2009 in Washington, DC. The hearing was focused on base posture and supplemental request of the central command. The general, who commands American forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan as the US Central Command chief, also emphasised the need to address the Kashmir dispute, saying that a reduction in tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir would help the fight against extremists. ‘There are people who have rightly said that Ambassador Holbrooke's title should be Afghan, Pakistan and India,’ Gen. Petraeus told a subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations. ‘Now, let me just tell you, his portfolio very much includes India and, in fact, the Central Asian states and the other neighbours there.’ The general’s comments are bound to irk New Delhi which refuses to accept any international mediation in its relations with other South Asian nations. India is particularly sensitive to third party mediation in its disputes with Pakistan and has rejected all previous offers to help resolve the Kashmir issue that has plagued relations between South Asia’s two nuclear states for more than 60 years. When President Obama announced that he plans to appoint a special envoy for South Asia, the Indian government lobbied successfully to keep India out of the new envoy’s portfolio. Gen. Petraeus’s remarks, however, indicate that while the word India has been dropped from Ambassador Holbrooke’s title, his functions include consulting India on all major issues, as he has been doing since his appointment. But Mr Holbrooke has made it clear that he is not going to mediate between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir dispute. Gen. Petraeus, however, observed that if the international community could resolve the Kashmir dispute or reduce the tensions generated by this issue, Pakistan would have had a greater focus on fighting the extremists on its western border. ‘If you could resolve that conundrum or even reduce the tensions; that could contribute to an ability to focus more intellectually as well as just sheer forces physically on the internal extremist threat,’ he said. ‘It is very important to reduce the tensions between India and Pakistan so that Pakistan can both intellectually and physically focus on the most pressing threat to their existence, which is the internal extremist threat, rather than the traditional threat of India.’ The general said that the need to reduce tensions between the two South Asian neighbours becomes clearer when an observer looks at the number of their forces tied up on the Indian border, and at the percentage of their defence budget devoted to the standoff. Underlining the importance of keeping India involved in US efforts to defeat extremist forces in the South Asian region, Gen. Petraeus noted that Ambassador Holbrooke's first trip to the region didn't include just Afghanistan and Pakistan. He then continued on into India.

Obama Admits US Not Winning War In Afghanistan

Obama Admits US Not Winning War In Afghanistan

(NSI News Source Info) March 8, 2009: US president Barack Obama has admitted the US is not winning its war in Afghanistan. Asked in an interview with The New York Times if the US was winning in Afghanistan, the Mr Obama said: “No” while adding: “Our troops are doing an extraordinary job in a very difficult situation. “But you’ve seen conditions deteriorate over the last couple of years. The Taliban is bolder than it was. I think ... in the southern regions of the country, you’re seeing them attack in ways that we have not seen previously.”

Artillerymen prepare to fire a 155mm Howlitzer at a Taliban position October 22, 2008 from Camp Blessing in the Kunar Province of eastern Afghanistan. Their unit, Charlie Battery, 3rd Battalion of the 321 Field Artillery, has fired more than 5,900 shells since they deployed to Afghanistan less than a year ago, making it the busiest artillery unit in the U.S. Army, according to to military officers. They most often fire in support of Army infantry units fighting Taliban insurgents in the nearby Korengal Valley, the site of some of the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan. In the interview, posted on the paper’s website yesterday, Mr Obama said: “The national government still has not gained the confidence of the Afghan people. “And so it’s going to be critical for us to not only, get through these national elections to stabilise the security situation, but we’ve got to recast our policy so that our military, diplomatic and development goals are all aligned to ensure that al-Qaeda and extremists that would do us harm don’t have the kinds of safe havens that allow them to operate.” Mr Obama said there may be opportunities to reach out to moderates in the Taliban, but the situation in Afghanistan was more complicated than the challenges the American military faced in Iraq. US troops were able to persuade Sunni Muslim insurgents in Iraq to co-operate in some instances because they had been alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda terrorists. But Mr Obama warned that Afghanistan was a less-governed region with a history of fierce independence among tribes, creating a tough set of circumstances for the US to deal with. The idea of co-operation with some in the Taliban has been talked about for many months by American military commanders including General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command. “If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us,” said Mr Obama. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and the Pakistani region, but the situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex.” Last month, defence secretary Robert Gates said Washington could accept a political agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban if the insurgents would lay down their arms and accept the government’s terms. At the same time, Mr Obama left open the possibility that US operatives might capture terror suspects abroad without the co-operation of a country where they were found. “There could be situations — and I emphasise ‘could be’ because we haven’t made a determination yet — where, let’s say that we have a well-known al-Qaeda operative that doesn’t surface very often, appears in a third country with whom we don’t have an extradition relationship or would not be willing to prosecute, but we think is a very dangerous person,” he said. Mr Obama added that the US did not torture its suspects and noted in some cases that those being held would have an opportunity to challenge their detention in US courts.