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A team of 15 Canadian soldiers has been dispatched to Kandahar on a month-long assignment to assess whether dozens of military containers are still seaworthy enough to be brought home.

Over 375 shipping containers full of military supplies remain stranded at Kandahar Airfield nearly 18 months after Canada's withdrawal from the war-torn province, and almost two years since combat operations ceased.

National Defence says the material is considered low priority and that all high-value and sensitive equipment has been returned to Canada.

A spokeswoman for the country's operational command, Capt. Jennifer Stadnyk, said certification of as many as 150 of the containers has expired and the technical assistance team will have to access whether they can still meet the standards set out by international shipping companies.

Defence sources said if the containers don't pass, the military will have to find a way to dispose of the material.

The seemingly endless delay in repatriation of the containers, which were supposed to travel overland, was brought on by the extended closure of the Afghan border with Pakistan.

It has turned into a long, costly logistics nightmare for the military, which had intended to have everything home to fully re-equip and refurbish the army.

The equipment includes tires, spare parts, tents and other gear, and officials say their absence does not directly impede the army's regeneration.

Last fall documents obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information legislation showed the Canadian government has faced increased withdrawal costs because the containers still have to be stored and guarded.

Pakistan cut off NATO's supply lines through its country in November 2011 after a U.S. air raid mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, and the border remained shut until July 2012.

In winding up Canada's five-year involvement in Kandahar, the military funnelled its gear into two streams.

The first was an air bridge that saw Canadian C-17s and rented transports fly sensitive equipment and vehicles out to a friendly port, where it was loaded on cargo ships bound for Canada. The second route was to drive non-sensitive material over land through Pakistan, where it was loaded on a cargo ship in the port of Karachi.

When the Pakistan border clapped shut, only 186 of the estimated 632 containers destined for overland transport had made it back to Canada. Of those, a significant number were pilfered.

The documents show an average loss rate among the containers of 27 per cent. Thieves who pried open the metal containers would steal the contents, replace them with sandbags and weights, and then reseal the containers.

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KOCHI: India has launched an ambitious programme to use its array of geo-stationary satellites (G-sats) to monitor missile activities in an area of 6,000 km. With this, the country's constellation of G-sats will become the first line of defence in its anti-missile shield. This programme is independent of the observation grid installed by defence and intelligence agencies. The advantage of using geo-stationary satellites is their fixed position at a height of 36,000 km and synchronised with the earth's movement.

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A top source told TOI that special lens and processing electronics are being developed to significantly improve the power of G-sat cameras and telescope. "The Centre has given ISRO the go-ahead. The programme is into a crucial development phase,'' he said.

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Artillerymen at Fort Bragg first unit in U.S. Army to receive digitized towed howitzer M119A3.
Artillerymen at Fort Bragg, N.C., became the first unit in the Army to receive digitized M119A3 howitzers, which will make it possible for Soldiers to start firing rounds and evade return fire quicker in combat. The M119 is a lightweight 105 mm howitzer that provides suppressive and protective fires for infantry brigade combat teams.

The upgraded M119A3 is equipped with a digital fire control system that includes an inertial navigation unit, guided-precision system technology and other features that will give the weapon the ability to determine its precise geographical location on its own.

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SEOUL—North Korea on Saturday fired three short-range guided missiles into the sea off the eastern coast of the Korean peninsula, South Korea's defense ministry said.

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MOSCOW, May 17 (RIA Novosti) - Russian experts are developing robots designed to minimize casualties in terrorist attacks and neutralize terrorists, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday.

Robots could also help evacuate injured servicemen and civilians from the scene of a terrorist attack, said Rogozin, who oversees the defense industry.

Other antiterror equipment Russia is developing includes systems that can see terrorists through obstacles and effectively engage them in a standoff mode at a long distance without injuring their hostages, he said.

Rogozin did not say when the equipment might be deployed by Russia’s security and intelligence services.

Human Rights Watch has criticized fully autonomous weapons, known as "killer robots," which would be able to select and engage targets without human intervention and called for the preemptive prohibition on such weapons.

“Fully autonomous weapons do not exist yet, but they are being developed by several countries and precursors to fully autonomous weapons have already been deployed by high-tech militaries,” HRW said in a statement on its website. “Some experts predict that fully autonomous weapons could be operational in 20 to 30 years.”

“These weapons would be incapable of meeting international humanitarian law standards, including the rules of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity. The weapons would not be constrained by the capacity for compassion, which can provide a key check on the killing of civilians,” the human rights watchdog said. “Fully autonomous weapons also raise serious questions of accountability because it is unclear who should be held responsible for any unlawful actions they commit."

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AT A CLASSIFIED COMMANDO BASE, Afghanistan — One day this month, a pair of Russian Mi-17 assault helicopters delivered two teams of Afghan commandos, their faces obscured by black masks, in a touch-and-go landing at this camp in a lush valley encircled by frosty peaks about 50 miles from Kabul.

Related

• 3 G.I.’s Killed in Afghan Bombing (May 15, 2013)
  
  
• Commander Denies U.S. to Blame in Afghan Deaths (May 14, 2013)
  
  
• Afghans Say an American Tortured Civilians (May 13, 2013)
  
  

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Afghan commandos train at camp. The United States says a combination of Afghan and allied troops will assume an increasing share of the combat burden.


A training squadron drawn from the most secretive counterterrorism units fielded by the United States and its NATO allies watched as the Afghan commandos stormed and cleared a three-story office building that was left conspicuously unfinished — the kind of structure favored by insurgents.
This is the combination of Afghan and allied troops that the Obama administration and the government in Kabul say will assume an increasing share of the combat burden in Afghanistan as the NATO alliance gradually hands over responsibility for security operations to Afghan troops.
As other troops are withdrawn, Special Operations forcesare expected to make up almost one-third of the American military presence in Afghanistan by next February. Their specialty — advising local military units on the front lines and hunting down top insurgent or terrorist leaders — will become the major focus of the alliance’s effort here either until American troops are withdrawn by the target date of December 2014 or the Afghan government asks them to stay past then.
On any day in Afghanistan, about 60 Special Operations teams are working with Afghan local police forces to provide security in villages; 50 more are assigned to Afghan strike forces, including 9 commando battalions and special police units and 19 provincial response companies.
The most elite units are housed at secret bases like this one, where assault helicopters stand by to carry them on their missions. Other commando battalions and provincial response companies are scattered among population centers and along the ring road linking Afghanistan’s major cities.
For American commanders, the transition to Afghan leadership on security has been a challenge, requiring a sharp increase in the intensity of training.
It has also required a significant reorganization of planning — and a change in the culture of American Special Operations forces, which, for the first time since the war began, answer to a single commander responsible for coordinating what had been separate, even conflicting, efforts.
“The dirty little secret among S.O.F. is that we were competing among ourselves,” said Maj. Gen. Tony Thomas, the senior commander overseeing all American and allied Special Operations forces, or S.O.F., in Afghanistan.
“We didn’t necessarily share information to the greatest extent possible,” said General Thomas, an Army Ranger with a long career in Special Operations. “It wasn’t about who got the credit or glory — but we were all so focused on our individual mission that we didn’t always synchronize the effort in the most efficient way for a common goal.”
There have been times when one strike team was targeting a suspected insurgent without knowing that a training team was courting his close kinsman to raise a local police force from their home village.
That began to change just under a year ago when General Thomas took charge of a new military organization here — the Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan, making him, in essence, the first to lead a division-sized deployment of Special Operations forces. Under his command are all the various “tribes” of American Special Operations forces: Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and Marine Corps Special Operations units, as well as the top-tier strike teams that hunt down or kill high-value terrorist and insurgent leaders.
Senior officials say the new level of coordination has paid dividends in the form of initiatives like a centralized system for allocating drones, helicopters and airplanes that has allowed the 200 Special Operations aircraft to increase their sortie rate to 6,000 missions a month from 4,000.
Even as the number of American troops will be cut in half from 68,000 by next February under President Obama’s withdrawal orders, the number of Special Operations forces will remain the same through the Afghan presidential election, which is scheduled for next spring, but could be delayed until closer to December 2014.
While the bulk of the American and allied conventional forces remaining in Afghanistan will make the transition to a support role — and will be increasingly based at large military headquarters — the 10,000 American Special Operations troops will continue to be deployed alongside Afghan units. (Including NATO and coalition troops, the total Special Operations deployment here numbers 13,700.)

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Several thousand soldiers have spread across three northeastern states where President Goodluck Jonathan imposed a state of emergency after Boko Haram seized territory and declared war against the government.
“There have been air strikes since Wednesday,” defence spokesman Brigadier General Chris Olukolade told AFP, specifying that they were continuing Friday.
“Every one of their strongholds is under attack,” he said, adding that he believed “there are a lot of casualties,” without providing a figure.
The offensive is ongoing in all three states put under emergency decree, including Adamawa and Yobe, but Borno state is expected to see the most intense fighting.
Many have warned that there is a risk of high civilian deaths and Nigeria’s military has been accused of massive rights violations in the past, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
The operation is the largest against Boko Haram since 2009, when soldiers flooded Borno’s capital Maiduguri, killing more than 800 people and forcing the insurgents underground for a year.
In the town of Gamburu Ngala on the border with Cameroon in northern Borno, residents said that heavily armed troops and tanks arrived on Wednesday, sealing off previously unmanned border posts.
Northeast Nigeria, the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency, has porous borders with Cameroon, Chad and Niger, with criminal groups and militants flowing freely between the countries.
“Since January the border posts have been abandoned…but now these posts have been taken over by soldiers,” said resident Haruna Garba.
Olukolade confirmed that forces had been sent to the region, but would not say whether the borders had been sealed.
Reports of Boko Haram’s presence in Cameroon first emerged in February, following the kidnap there of a French family visiting a game park near the Nigerian border.
The abduction was claimed by Boko Haram and the family was released in April.
Soldiers have surrounded the town of Krenuwa in Marte district, also in northern Borno and one of the areas where Boko Haram has taken power, chased away all government officials and removed Nigerian flags, residents said.
Abur Kullima told AFP Friday that he fled his home in Krenuwa in fear of the coming assault.
He said that after the state of emergency was declared in a national broadcast late Tuesday, Islamist gunmen began moving through the district trying to mobilise people “in preparation to face Nigerian troops.”
“I was so scared for my life and my family’s, which led me to decide to leave,” he told AFP from Gamburu Ngala, where he is staying with a friend.
Anyone who tries to leave Krenuwa is screened by the soldiers who have encircled the town, he said.
Boko Haram has become notorious for blending in with the local population, both in towns and major cities where they have carried out suicide bombings as well as gun and bomb assaults.
The group says it is fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north, but its demands have repeatedly shifted.
Some believe it has sought closer ties to foreign extremist groups like Al-Qaeda’s North Africa affiliate, but most analysts believe its agenda is primarily domestic.
Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer but the population remains extremely poor and many of Boko Haram’s fighters are believed to be youths radicalised out of frustration with government corruption.
The conflict is estimated to have cost 3,600 lives since 2009, including killings by the security forces

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/05/c...on-boko-haram/

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The families of the 62 soldiers killed in the crash of Yakovlev-42 occurred ten years ago on Mount Pilav of Trabzon (Turkey) have inherited the land where the event took place.

Fatma Karahan was the owner of the land where the plane crashed in an accident that killed 75 people, twelve crew Ukrainian, Belarusian and 62 Spanish one returning from their peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

Fatma had the farm 'Hasretlik kuzularim' five acres, within the Mount Pilav, that after his death at 82 years last January, a victim of cancer, inherited her husband beneficially, Abdülkadir Karahan, 86.

But before she died she wrote in her will that the land was donated after his death, families of the Spanish soldiers. In his last moments of life, relate, watched from his window to the ground where soldiers died and cried remembering the tragedy experienced firsthand.


He remembered year after year, the families of the victims or Spanish authorities went to the place to celebrate their anniversary at the same place of the accident where a monument stands in his memory, and inside your property.

She said before he died: "I cry with them on this ground. The plane carrying the angels fell to my heart.'m Not going to sell my property, which for more than ten years I can not forget that his blood runs that land. Such was his tomb. My only wish is that anyone can come back to this earth, thanks to their families. "

Since that May 26, 2003 nothing was the same for Fatma, and the incident would mark his last days of life, they say. He recalled how "the ashes, in the mountains of Macka, flowed as if they were their children ... Every time I remembered he began to mourn."

Fatma, a mother of eight children, had to explain the first transfer of land to build the memorial monument. They accepted his decision. Years ago that receive high amounts of money to buy this land over 2,100 meters high. However, the old saying that money was only bread, and there had been too much blood spilled.

The elderly lived three miles from the crash site, but nevertheless regularly visited the site to lay flowers. Her husband, Abdülkadir Karahan, said: "It is Spanish families from their land grant as a good deed. Come to mourn. Here are the blood of these young and this is their place."

Now the husband has been implemented in the Turkish Finance Ministry stated by Fatma. The Ministry took over the land, which now must donate to the families of the victims by the Embassy of Spain, with which it already has contacted.

The news appeared last month in Turkish media crowd, and yesterday thanks to a contact at the embassy, ​​the Association of Relatives of the Victims of the Yak-42 met this "beautiful gesture", which are deeply grateful.

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