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Russians Arming Taliban in Afghanistan Fight with the US

The Russians are supporting the Taliban in northern Afghanistan by sharing intelligence with the former leaders of Afghanistan and also by ferrying in weapons and equipment by helicopter and by boat. The later parts are denied by Russian government officials.

The head of the US Central Command, General Joseph Votel had stated earlier this year that the Russians are trying to peddle their influence and that they were sending arms and equipment to the Taliban forces in the north.

Moscow has openly stated that it has an intelligence-sharing relationship with the Taliban regarding the ISIS threat. But they have staunchly denied that the Russian military is aiding or arming the Taliban. Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid also denied any Russian monetary or material assistance.
On Wednesday, the police chief of the northern province of Baghlan, Brig. Gen. Ikramuddin Sarai, told Pajhwok Afghan News that Russian and other foreign military advisers had arrived to support the Taliban amid heavy clashes. Similar reports surfaced last month in the southern province of Uruzgan, in which police chief Ghulam Farooq Sangari told Voice of America’s Afghan service that advisers — including two women dressed in doctor’s uniforms and guarded by four armed Taliban along with an Afghan translator — were in various locations. The accusation was denied by Russian officials.
However, another senior Afghan government security official told Fox News that they have solid, although classified, documents indicating Russia is supporting the Taliban through its ally Iran, under the rationale that they are trying to bring the terrorist group to the negotiating table to form a peace treaty similar to the one recently signed by militant group Hezb-e-Islami.
“Iran — a Shia country — has its advisers in the north,” an intelligence source told Fox News. “The small pockets of Shia in Afghanistan used to get attacked by the Taliban; now they are not harming them or forcing them to pay taxes.”

US intelligence has reported that Russian arms, were used to attack US forces in southern Afghanistan in southern Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan Provinces

To read the entire article from Fox News, click here:

Photo courtesy BBC

Airborne & Special Operations Museum to Honor K-9 Warriors

The Airborne and Special Operations Museum (ASOM) in Fayetteville, NC will be honoring a very important part of the Special Operations success in recent years by honoring the K-9 heroes of the military.

On May 29, the ASOM will pay tribute to the canine members of the Special Operations community with a Memorial Day service held in partnership with the Special Operations Forces K9 Memorial Foundation at noon.

“These truly daring and brave dogs often lead their soldier team-members in the most dire conditions to save lives and complete the mission,” said Paul Galloway, executive director of the Airborne & Special Operations Museum Foundation. “They’ve given their lives for their country, and we are grateful to be able to honor them on this special day.”
The special guest speaker for the event will be Laura Miller, who served as a veteran technician in the Army for 26 years. Miller is vice president of the SOF K9 Memorial Foundation, which she co-founded in 2010, and is the author of a children’s book, “How I Became a K-9 Commando.”
Following the ceremony, Miller will read from the book in the museum’s video theater. The book tells the story of a Dutch-born pup who becomes a special operations military working dog.

The military began the “K-9 Corps” 75 years ago, but after Vietnam, the use of dogs was curtailed for the mainly law enforcement type of operations. Dogs were used for bomb sniffing, drug detection and for the quelling of riots and/or protests.

Marine Corps Special Operations dog tries on his handler’s helmet prior to an operation. (Photo courtesy US Marine Corps)

But the rise of the use of dogs by Special Operations troops has made them a common sight on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. There are currently more than 2500 working dogs on duty with the military. Over 700 at any given time are deployed overseas.

These dogs are fiercely loyal, courageous and have saved many operators’ lives during the wars ongoing. Cry havoc…and let slip, the dogs of war.

To read the Fayetteville Observer’s entire article click here:

Photo courtesy of the Fayetteville Observer

US Intelligence Chief Warns of Deteriorating Security in Afghanistan

For the Trump Administration, facing a question whether to increase the US troop levels in Afghanistan, this can’t be good news. US National Intelligence Director Dan Coats said on Thursday that even if the US and its allies increase their military aid to the war-torn country, the security situation there is still likely to deteriorate.

LTG Vincent Stewart, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s director, also testified before a Senate panel on Thursday that the situation is grim and that the US must do “something very different” in Afghanistan or else the Taliban will make new advances on the battlefield. He maintained that the current stalemate in fighting could then tip in the Taliban’s favor.

“The political and security situation in Afghanistan will also almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in the military assistance by the US and its partners,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said at the hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban,” Coats told lawmakers in presenting an annual assessment of threats to US national security.
US-led forces have been fighting in Afghanistan for 16 years, making it America’s longest war, yet the situation there remains a stalemate.
The Taliban, which first emerged in the mid-1990s in southern Afghanistan, managed to conquer most of the country before its 2001 ouster with the help of a range of foreign jihadists, including Pakistanis, Saudis and Chechens.
But it has been on the rebound, Coates said, and continues to gain strength. “The Taliban are likely to continue to make gains, especially in rural areas,” said the US spy chief, adding that efforts to bolster local military have been less fruitful than hoped.

Under the original plan by the Obama Administration, the United States was to withdraw all its military forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2016. Those plans have proven very premature as the security situation was deemed critical. The US still has 8400 troops on the ground with NATO forces adding an additional 5000.

President Trump is weighing whether to send as many as an additional 5000 troops into the fray to defeat both ISIS and the Taliban in the country.

To read the entire article from the Nation, click here:

Photo courtesy DOD

Special Operations Forces Focus on Advisory Role Paying Off

For the past decade plus, Special Operations Forces have been utilized heavily on the Direct Action, (DA) side of operations including Counter-Terrorism (CT) in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.

But the pendulum is swinging back toward the traditional advisory role of SOF as the allies in Syria, Iraq, and in Afghanistan begin to improve militarily. The classic role of SOF is to train and advise foreign military units to do the bidding of the United States. While DA mission has always been and will always be a part of the SOF community, it should not be their main focus.

Now as these allies become more proficient, the onus goes on them to conduct these missions with US SOF support. And it is beginning to work.

After 9/11, however, SOF began to be used in more “precision, highly kinetic strike forces enabled by technology and linked through a digitally networked battlefield.” But by and large, the new counter-terrorism strategy in Iraq and Syria may prove to be something of a reset to SOF’s former tactics.
The number of SOF in Iraq and Syria has now reached about 10,000, giving them the means to provide “meaningful support to the variety of indigenous forces fighting ISIS,” Robinson writes.
Furthermore, SOF now accompany local forces to secure locations near the front lines. They no longer give tactical advice from distant headquarters, where they had to analyze operations through “the soda-straw perspective of drone feeds,” Robinson says.
This allows them to see local forces in action, and therefore give better advice.
For example, when SOF advisers provided assistance that galvanized to the 16th Iraq army division in East Mosul, they provided assistance that galvanized the unit.
Over the last year, SOF has increasingly provided more fire support. US Apache helicopters were first used in June 2016 to capture Qayyarah, which is now a staging base for coalition forces’ assault on Mosul. This base now has an ICU, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems set up to support the assault.

With the increased prowess of the fighting capabilities of our allies, it will allow the SOF operators of the US to take the training of the allied units to higher levels and will ease the burden of constant operations from USSOCOM.

To read the entire article from the Business Insider, click here:

Photo courtesy DOD

Turkey Threatens Military Action against U.S.-allied Kurds

The government of Turkey in response to the news that the Trump Administration is going to arm the Syrian Kurds with heavy weapons has threatened to take military action against them.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spoke to the media on Wednesday and said that the US and Turkey were having open discussions but was confident that the two sides would work things out.

Mattis also vowed that the US would help Turkey defend its southern border stating that it is “Europe’s southern border” as well.

“Turkey’s message to the Trump administration was that Turkey reserves the right to take military action,” said a senior Turkish official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Turkey has already conducted limited strikes against the U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria in recent weeks, but it could increase the tempo of those strikes, Turkish officials said. American officials have complained bitterly to Turkey, a NATO ally, about the airstrikes, which have targeted the principal U.S. partner in Syria in the fight against the Islamic State.
Any further military action could also potentially complicate the offensive on Raqqa, the Islamic State’s symbolic capital and its last major stronghold after the Iraqi city of Mosul, which is besieged by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces. U.S. officials are concerned that Turkey could send forces into northern Syria and draw the Kurdish fighters away from the Raqqa battle.
Turkey views the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, as an existential threat. The YPG, which dominates a U.S.-supported force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
In a news conference Wednesday, Erdogan said that Turkey’s “patience has ended” and that he hoped the United States would reverse its decision.
“We want to know that our allies will stand not with a terrorist organization but with us,” he said.

This puts the planned assault on the ISIS-held city of Raqqa in jeopardy. The US feels that the YPG group of Kurds is the best available unit to launch the attack.

In an attempt to allay Turkish fears, a Defense Department spokesman on Wednesday at the Pentagon said that any material given to the Syrian Kurds would be carefully monitored to “make sure that it’s being used for exactly the purpose that we intend.”

To read the entire article from the Washington Post, click here:

Photo courtesy Reuters

United States Focusing on the Wrong Enemy in Afghanistan?

The US and their Afghan allies have been hammering the Islamic State offshoot in recent weeks including dropping the MOAB (Mother of all Bombs) recently on tunnel strongholds where the terrorist group has been hiding.

But according to an OPED in the New York Times, the US may be focusing on the wrong enemy and not the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The battle being waged in Nangarhar Province in recent weeks has claimed the lives of two American Special Operations Force soldiers and at least one top leader of the terrorist group. The US has issued a statement that they’re trying to wipe out the group by the end of 2017.

But the United States’ obsession with the Islamic State in Khorosan – a minor group in Afghanistan – distracts attention from a more urgent task: negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban which controls close to half of Afghanistan.
Two years after its emergence in Afghanistan, the Islamic State affiliate is still struggling to consolidate its organizational capacity. The few major attacks it has claimed were mostly sectarian and aimed at soft targets: two gatherings of Shiites and a hospital in Kabul, and, in Pakistan, a Sufi Shrine in Sindh and a hospital in Quetta.
Although the Islamic State in Khorosan and the Taliban follow politically contrasting goals and constitute different types of threats, the Taliban’s manpower is 50 times greater according to estimates from Afghan and Western analysts in Kabul.

While the author here, Borhan Osman believes that a peace treaty with the Taliban is the way to go, that would never work. The Taliban are interested in only one thing and that is absolute power in Afghanistan. To think otherwise is foolhardy. As for the writer’s other theory that the recent MOAB bombing by Trump will cause more fighters to flock to ISIS side there…It doesn’t seem to hold water.

The group is down to 600 fighters from more than 3000 a year ago. Most of their senior leadership have been killed in airstrikes. The strategy seems to be to eliminate the Islamic State affiliate first and then concentrate on the Taliban.

To read the entire article from the New York Times click here:

Photo courtesy Reuters

Colts Hire Ex-SF Officer Brian Decker as Player Personnel Strategist

Brian Decker, the man who revamped the Special Forces Selection and Assessment Course (SFAS), has brought his ability to evaluate a certain indicator of success from the military to the NFL (National Football League). He’s now been hired by the Indianapolis Colts to head a new program to ensure player success.

His metric collects over 1200 different points of data on each player that will point to whether a player will be able to succeed in the NFL. The same traits that the military looks for in Special Operators: selflessness, character, determination, leadership, and grit are the same qualities that can transcend into success in the world of professional football.

“At the time, Decker ran the Army’s Special Forces selection assessment as the commander. He and his men was responsible for evaluating the best Soldiers the Army had to offer. He evaluated the best of the best soldiers, with unbelievable resumes and the ultimate physical specimens. Decker helped pick where each one would fit in to the Special Forces, also known as the “Green Berets.”
“When Decker took over the prestigious selection assessment, he revamped some of the course material and it received rave reviews. Special Forces candidates would take a series of tests designed to be a reliable predictor of success.”
“After three years (serving the Army), Decker had devised a program that collected 1,200 data points on each candidate, from peak physical performance to psychometrics, the science of measuring mental processes. He could effectively predict the profile of a Green Beret: college-educated with an IQ around 122, in his early 30s, probably from a suburb of a major city, someone who responded to trauma in his life with increased self-motivation.”

The Cleveland Browns hired Decker a few years ago as a player personnel strategist but he was let go in a front office purge before he could fully implement his system.

To read the entire article from FanSided click here:

Photo courtesy ESPN

Jordanians, US Kick Off “Eager Lion” Joint Exercise

The government of Jordan with the cooperation of the United States is hosting the annual joint training exercise “Eager Lion” which will take place over the next 11 days.

During a press conference at the Joint Special Operations Command, Director of Joint Military Training at the Jordan Armed Forces-Arab Army (JAF) Brig. Gen. Khaled Shraah said that the drills are being conducted with the participation of ground, naval and air forces, amounting to around 7,400 participants representing JAF and US forces.

US and Jordanian officials said the manoeuvres would include border security, cyber-defence, and “command and control” exercises to bolster coordination in response to threats including “terrorism”.
“Joint efforts and coordination and the exchange of expertise … are needed at the time when the region is facing the threat of terrorism,” Jordanian Brigadier-General Khalid al-Sharaa, who will head the exercise, told reporters.
US Major-General Bill Hickman, deputy commanding officer for the American army in the region, said this year’s Eager Lion exercise – the seventh so far – is “the largest and most complex to date”.
The highlight of this year’s war games, he said, will be that “for the first time ever a global strike mission” will be conducted by “two US Air Force B-1B bomber aircraft” – a long-range multi-mission bomber.

The military exercise will see the participation of Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, the UAE, Lebanon, the UK, France, Kenya, Italy, Pakistan, the US, Belgium, Poland, Holland, Australia, Greece, Japan, as well as representatives of NATO.

Last year, about 6000 troops took part in the exercise which has been on-going since 2011. Jordan is a key ally of the United States in the region and has received upwards of $1 billion dollars of aid in the years 2015-2017.

To read the entire article from Al-Jazeera, click here:

Photo courtesy Reuters

US Raising the Stakes in Somalia, Despite Losing Navy SEAL Last Week

The US is going to raise the pressure on the al-Shabab terrorist group despite the loss of a Navy SEAL operator and two other wounded in an operation last week.

U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) said that the battle took place in Barii, a small town 40 miles west of Mogadishu. It was reportedly a Somali-led operation, U.S. forces reportedly came under fire when American aircraft were used to help deploy Somali commandos. Navy SEALs have been advising the Somali units.

There was also an international conference occurring in London at the same time. This is intended to increase the security and government reform in Somalia. The aim is to create a new international partnership agreement to stabilize Somalia. The aim is to stabilize the country and turn things over to Somali forces with an exit strategy for the allied countries by 2020.

In early March, the Pentagon requested new rules of engagement for its operations in Somalia to remove constraints on airstrikes and raids targeting people suspected of being al-Shabab militants. On March 24, General Waldhauser reiterated the call for more flexibility in decision-making to fight al-Shabab, saying that “it’s very important and very helpful for us to have [a] little more flexibility, a little bit more timeliness, in terms of decision-making process. . . . It allows to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion. . . . [I]f we were given . . . those permissions and authorities, [it] will be very helpful to us.”
On March 29, President Trump granted wider scope to launch U.S. military operations by designating Somalia an “area of active hostilities” where war-zone targeting rules will apply for at least 180 days. Subsequently, General Waldhauser appeared ambiguous about the new authorities, stating “we have not been given loosened rules for authority to strike. What we have been given is we’ve been given authority to assist AMISOM forces that are on missions where, if they cannot take care of the situation on their own, then we are authorized to assist them there. We are also authorized to develop targets on our own and take appropriate action if required.”
Just a few days later, on April 24, a letter written by USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance requested the geographic coordinates of aid groups working in Somalia. “Due to the need for increased operational security in Somalia, and based on best practices in other complex emergencies, humanitarian and development organizations may want to provide information about their fixed locations in Somalia for deconfliction,” it stated.

The US has furnished training and equipment to the Somalis, has helped pay for the security forces and has been conducting raids on located al-Shabab forces. The US is planning on stepping up the tempo despite the loss of the Navy’s special operator to weaken the terror group and to further bolster Somalia’s forces.

To read the Washington Post entire article click here:

Photo courtesy of AP

Troops Complained About Nude Photos Last Year Reports Say

ABC News has reported that the scandal involving the publishing nude photos of female members in the military was reported to the Pentagon months before. In an anonymous survey conducted by the military in 2016, sexual harassment and assault, over 6000 female military members complained about the practice.

The survey was sent to 735,000 military members and over 150,000 responded. The social media questions were asked for the first time because the military reported that this was becoming a concern. So the various commands had to be receiving complaints about this practice or they encountered them thru word of mouth in the individual units or organizations.

In a report issued Monday, the Pentagon said that nearly 6,200 military members said that sexually explicit photos of them were taken or shared against their will by someone from work, and it made them “uncomfortable, angry or upset.” And, across the services, female Marines made up the largest percentage of women who complained.
More than 22,000 service members said they were upset or angry when someone at work showed or sent them pornography. And, again, female Marines represented the highest percentage of complaints from women.
The responses reflect a growing concern across the military about inappropriate social media behavior. The scandal came to light last month when sexually explicit photos of female and male Marines were being shared on a secret Facebook page. The revelation triggered a wide-ranging criminal investigation that now encompasses all the services, and has prompted changes and restrictions in military social media policies.
The latest survey results, however, make it clear that the issue has long been simmering in the military.
Nate Galbreath, deputy director of the Pentagon’s sexual assault prevention office, said the results “tell us that this is a problem and we have to start having more conversations about social media behavior.”

While the number of sexual assaults and unwanted contacts is far down from the numbers posted just a few years ago, the fact that nearly 15,000 responded that they were indeed victims of this speaks to a bigger issue. Of the reported 14,900 members stating that they received unwanted sexual contact, 6300 of them were men.

That’s nearly 10 percent of the members responding to the survey. And since these types of issues largely go unreported, the Pentagon still has a lot of work to do in this area.

To read the entire article from ABC News, click here:

Photo courtesy DOD