Hate calls made to families of RAF members from Pakistan

Taliban terrorises RAF families

By TOM NEWTON DUNN Defence EditorAugust 22, 2007
COMMENT ON THIS STORY
TALIBAN fanatics terrorised the wife of an RAF officer by phoning her and saying: “You’ll never see your husband alive — we have just killed him.”
Rebels in Afghanistan are targeting British forces’ families with hate calls after tapping into Our Boys’ mobile phones.
The tearful wife rang the RAF fearing the worst after receiving the midnight call — and was told her husband was safe and well.
But the Taliban calls are a sick new plot to destroy morale, and British forces in Afghanistan have now been BANNED from using mobiles.
Army chiefs believe extremists are using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment to trace home numbers when forces call their loved ones in Britain.
Intelligence analysts have tracked the hate calls to numbers in Pakistan, a hotbed for Islamic extremism and the Taliban’s prime recruiting ground.


Pakistan’s notorious ISI spy agency — a known supporter of the Taliban — is believed to be intercepting Our Boys’ calls. It is also feared the Taliban may be getting intercept information from Iran.
Now all British troops’ welfare calls have to be made on secure military phone lines. But squaddies are fuming as they are only allowed 30 minutes’ call time each week.
One senior officer said: “We assume these days that every conversation over mobile phones is being heard by our enemies.
“They have some pretty powerful friends and allies, who are giving them some very sophisticated help. They will use that information in any way they can to damage us, whether it is physically or mentally.”
Hate calls are the latest tactic in the ever-more sophisticated war raging in Afghanistan’s lawless south.
A British forces spokesman in Afghanistan confirmed the hate calls, adding: “We are fully aware of the security implications of using personal mobile phones in Afghanistan and have therefore imposed a ban on their use to protect individuals and their families.”
The MoD confirmed that families of troops in Iraq have also suffered from “nuisance calls” in the past year.

Afghan soldiers mass on border, ready and willing to take on old foe(Pakistan)

Afghan soldiers mass on border, ready and willing to take on old foe

In the late-morning lull that followed the thump of shellfire and chatter of machineguns, the preparations for a small war seemed to be unfolding in the orchards and paddy fields beneath the towering Spingar mountain range.
Scores of heavily armed Afghan troops and fighters from special border police units – determined, professional and evidently spoiling for a fight – gathered around their senior officers for orders. Artillery men waited beside their 122mm field guns hidden among the mulberry groves. And in nearby village bazaars tribesmen clustered around their elders, asking for weapons of their own so that they could join the fray.
Yet the enemy was not the Taleban, nor an infiltrating column of al-Qaeda fighters. Instead, in the remote border district of ’Ali Kheyl in eastern Afghanistan, Afghan security forces have found themselves pitted against an older and bigger enemy: Pakistan.
Clashes between the two neighbours – two of the West’s biggest allies in the War on Terror – began here last Sunday morning when Paki-stani forces fired on an Afghan post at Toorgawe, a strategic point on the border. The fighting is the most serious of its kind for years.
Since Sunday evening there has been a build-up of forces in the contested zone as hundreds of regular Afghan soldiers from the 203rd “Thunder” Corps, who had been fighting the Taleban, have deployed to the area to reinforce the beleaguered border police, bringing with them heavy artillery sent up from Kabul. “We can’t wait any more,” Brigadier Sanaoull Haq, a staff officer in the corps, said. “Now if anything further happens we will reply in kind.”
Each side accuses the other of initiating the bombardments, which so far have left 13 Afghans dead and 51 wounded. Foreign diplomats in Kabul fear that the situation, which has united Afghan nationalist sentiment across every ethnic divide, may escalate. It threatens to wreck any semblance of security cooperation between the countries, to the detriment of Nato’s struggle with the Taleban.
Tension has been growing for months along the 1,615-mile (2,600km) border shared by the two nations. Afghanistan has consistently accused the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, of equipping and training Taleban fighters in camps inside Pakistan, then allowing them to cross into Afghanistan.
Pakistan has recently started building a security fence in selected areas of the border, ostensibly to halt the flow of insurgents. This, in turn, has provoked more Afghan wrath.
The Kabul Government does not recognise the border, drawn up by the British in 1893. Named the Durand line after Sir Mortimer Durand, then Foreign Secretary of the British Indian Government, the demarcation was intended to divide warlike Pashtun tribes antipathetic to British influence. Now Afghanistan sees the security fence as the de facto consolidation of a border dividing them from tribal areas in Pakistan that they claim as their own.
“The Durand line is a suffocating imposition under which we suffer,” said General Abdur Rahman, the chief of Afghanistan’s border police, as he briefed his men at Ghumruk, a customs post near the contested section of frontier, on Thursday. Seven of his men have been killed since the fighting started, yet he insisted that his orders so far were only to defend Afghan territory.
“We have donated our men’s blood to keep even a single foot of Pakistan from stepping inside our border,” he added. “But our orders from the Interior Ministry are to hold our positions, avoid trouble, and not fire unless fired upon.”
There was no security fence being built by Pakistan at Toorgawe. Instead, the Afghans say that their police in the post were attacked without warning simply because of its desirable strategic location.
“Wherever they see one of our border positions on a high pass they try to influence it,” said Brigadier Haq. “Since the Mujahidin times the Pakistanis have thought our country is their own. Then the Taleban came and still the Pakistanis could put up border posts wherever they wanted.
“Now we have a central government and an army of our own and the Pakistanis are angry. They can’t tolerate us or our border.” In the initial absence of regular troops hundreds of Pashtun tribesmen from local villages rushed to support the Afghan border police during the attacks on Sunday.
“We were carrying rifles, axes and swords,” said Nawruz, one of the tribesmen who participated. “I took 15 men with me from my village. We got into a trench and started firing back at the Pakistani militia. One of my friends died beside me, killed by a Pakistani mortar round.”
On Monday a joint Afgh-an-American delegation flew across the border for talks with Pakistani officers aimed at producing a ceasefire. The meeting was held in a schoolhouse in Teri Mangel, a small town in the Kurram tribal area of Pakistan. Yet after the negotiations concluded the delegation was fired upon. An American soldier was killed and four others wounded.
Though Nato and Pakistan, keen to play down the incident, say the attack was the work of a single rogue member of a Pakistani militia, two Afghan delegates present as part of the delegation who were separately interviewed byThe Times, Governor Rahmatullah Rahman and Colonel Shamsur, say they were fired on by up to a dozen uniformed Pakistani militiamen.
“There were two groups of Pakistani militia shooting at us,” said Governor Rahmatullah. “One group was placed among rocks and it fired at the delegation as it drove from the school to be picked up by a helicopter. The other group fired at the delegation’s security guards in the school’s courtyard. The attackers were in uniform. I saw at least ten.”
Despite this attack, a border ceasefire held until Thursday, when renewed artillery exchanges began in the morning and lasted until midday. Though both the Pakistani militia in Kurram and the Afghans in ’Ali Kheyl are Pashtuns of the same Zazi tribe, their kinship seems to be no barrier to the desire to fight one another.
“When it is a question of territory or land even if it is your own brother you don’t care,” said Malik Khir Gul Khan, one of the Afghan tribal elders.
“Under our code of Pashtun-wali if your brother takes your house or land then you have to kill him or die trying.”
So far Nato and American-led coalition forces have kept their forces away from the area of fighting, though Captain Aziz, an Afghan army commander at Ghumruk, said on Thursday that he had seen an eight-man team of American troops move forward to observe the clashes until they, too, were shelled and withdrew.
Afghanistan’s 46,000-strong army is in no position to take on the military might of Pakistan, besides which diplomatic pressure on both countries makes it extremely unlikely that the scope of fighting will spread between regular forces. However, the fighting has sparked antiPakistani sentiment among the Afghan border tribes at a time when the fortunes of every foreign player trying to stabilise Afghanistan are dependent on the two neighbours cooperating.
“Only this morning I have had tribal elders offer me 400 men to fight the Pakistanis,” said Captain Aziz. “I have to keep ordering them to stay in their villages. Man, woman and child, in this area they are all ready to give their blood in a fight with Pakistan.”

Pakistani paramilitary soldier killed American soldiers

‘Paramilitary man shot at ISAF delegates’
PESHAWAR: A Pakistani paramilitary soldier belonging to areas close to Waziristan shouted Allah-u-Akbar (God is great) and opened fire as he saw Americans on Monday, sources in Kurram Agency said on Tuesday. A Pakistani and a US soldier were killed moments after they walked out from a school building near the Pak-Afghan border in the Kurram tribal region after a “flag meeting” on Monday. “A paramilitary soldier, who belonged to the Bhittani tribe and was deployed there for the security of American and Afghan military officials, opened fire, and cross-fire followed in which he was killed,” the sources told Daily Times on condition of anonymity. Information regarding the paramilitary soldier’s involvement in the shooting was “obtained from different people”, the sources added. Military spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad said he had “no information” that linked a Pakistani paramilitary soldier to the killing of the American. “I’ve no such information and an investigation has been ordered,” he told Daily Times. “I don’t have preliminary results of the investigation.” He blamed the attack on unidentified “miscreants”.The Associated Press quoted an unnamed US military official as saying in Washington that US soldiers had “gotten into a truck and were preparing to leave when a Pakistani militiaman walked up and opened fire. Return US fire killed the gunman.” Arshad said he did not see the Kabul-datelined AP story. The Bhittani tribe lives in areas from Tank to Lakki Marwat along the border with South Waziristan and is regarded as one of “the most conservative and fiercest” of all Pukhtoon tribes. iqbal khattak

U.S. Launches Artillery Into Pakistan

U.S. Launches Artillery Into Pakistan
In Self-Defense, U.S. Forces in Afghanistan Launch Artillery Into Pakistan, Commander Says
By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan - Asserting a right to self-defense, American forces in eastern Afghanistan have launched artillery rounds into Pakistan to strike Taliban fighters who attack remote U.S. outposts, the commander of U.S. forces in the region said Sunday.
The skirmishes are politically sensitive because Pakistan's government, regarded by the Bush administration as an important ally against Islamic extremists, has denied that it allows U.S. forces to strike inside its territory.
The use of the largely ungoverned Waziristan area of Pakistan as a haven for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters has become a greater irritant between Washington and Islamabad since Pakistan put in place a peace agreement there in September that was intended to stop cross-border incursions.
Army Col. John W. Nicholson, commander of the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, said in an Associated Press interview that rather than halt such incursions, the peace deal has led to a substantial increase.
Pakistani border forces, which had been active in stopping Taliban incursions into Afghanistan as recently as last spring, stopped offensive actions against them once the peace deal took effect, he said.
"That did relax some of the pressure on the enemy," Nicholson said.
The Pakistan army's top spokesman said Sunday that coalition forces operating in Afghanistan are not allowed to fire into Pakistani territory, but acknowledged that artillery fire from the coalition had landed inside Pakistan in recent days. Pakistan also plans to seek "clarification" about Nicholson's comments.
Members of Nicholson's brigade, which is based at Fort Drum, N.Y., recently were told that instead of going home this month after a yearlong tour, they will stay for an extra four months, until June.
Nicholson told the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Richard Cody, that this news hit soldiers and their families hard, but that they are now adjusting well. Cody is traveling in Afghanistan.
The brigade of about 3,500 soldiers is being kept in Afghanistan because senior commanders decided they needed more forces to deal with an anticipated Taliban offensive this spring. The offensive is expected to focus not only on eastern Afghanistan but also the south, where the traditional Taliban stronghold of Kandahar is seen as a prized target. NATO forces operate in that area.
Nicholson described the fighting along the border, particularly in Afghanistan's Paktika and Khost provinces, as intense. In some cases, he said, the Taliban have crossed the border at night, using wire cutters to breach the perimeter of small U.S. outposts, "trying to get hand grenades into our bunkers."
"I mean we're talking World War I type of stuff," Nicholson said. "These are some very sharp, intense fights" initiated by an enemy he described as resilient and undeterred by superior U.S. firepower.
"They'll keep coming back," he said.
When Taliban forces on the Pakistan side of the border fire on U.S. outposts on the Afghan side, the Americans are equipped to quickly pinpoint the launch location using radar and then strike back with artillery, he said.
"We do not allow the enemy to fire with impunity on our soldiers, and we have the inherent right of self defense," he said, speaking by video teleconference from his headquarters at Jalalabad air field. "Even if those fires are coming from across the border (in Pakistan), we have the right to defense ourselves, and we exercise that right." He added later, "We do fire missions across the border."
Nicholson responded to questions from an AP reporter after the commander spoke by video teleconference with Cody.
Cody had planned to fly to Jalalabad to meet with Nicholson and other commanders but poor weather forced him to remain at Bagram, the main American air base in Afghanistan.
Nicholson told Cody that U.S. forces have made important strides this winter in persuading local Afghans to side with the U.S.-backed government and to be less accommodating to the Taliban. The Taliban have been resurgent in some parts of the country after being driven from power by U.S. forces in 2001.
Nicholson's area of responsibility includes the border provinces from Nuristan to Paktika. He said his forces are not required to get approval from Pakistan before responding to an attack. But he emphasized that efforts are made to warn Pakistani government forces along the border to clear the intended target area before U.S. artillery is launched.
"We make every effort to communicate with the Pakistan military," he said, Nicholson said the computers used to target U.S. artillery are programmed with the map coordinates of Pakistani border posts.
"If a fire mission is being called that would impact on a Pakistan border post, we typically will not shoot we will not shoot that mission," he said.
The United States has given radios to Pakistan border posts so they can communicate with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, he said. If U.S. troops are unable to contact them directly before launching an artillery assault, an illumination round is fired first as a means of warning the Pakistanis that high explosives will follow.
The Pakistani army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, told the AP by telephone in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, "Pakistan would not allow any coalition forces to violate the international border. This is the understanding between us and the coalition forces."
He added, "In case of any target inside Pakistani territory, the intelligence would be passed on to us and we would take action. This is the policy and we strictly adhere to the policy and we would not allow any violation of Pakistani border."
Associated Press writer Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
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