Civilians die in Afghan offensive

At least 12 Afghan civilians have been killed during a major military offensive in the south of the country, the Nato-led military force said.

The victims died after a rocket hit their house on Sunday, the second day of Operation Moshtarak, which aims to wrest control of the town of Marjah and neighbouring areas in Helmand province from the Taliban.

"Two rockets from a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System [HIMARS] launched at insurgents firing upon Afghan and Isaf forces impacted approximately 300 metres off their intended target, killing 12 civilians in Nad Ali district," the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said in a statement.

The statement said that the intended target of the rocket had been a Taliban compound from which fighters had shot and injured one Nato and one Afghan soldier.

The Nato-led force said that General Stanley McChrystal, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, had apologised to Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, over the deaths.

'Regrettable' deaths

Earlier, Karzai ordered an investigation into the incident near Marjah, which came after he had warned foreign forces to take all measures to protect civilians.

The Isaf statement quoted McChrystal as saying: "The current operation in central Helmand is aimed at restoring security and stability to this vital area of Afghanistan.

"It's regrettable that in the course of our joint efforts, innocent lives were lost.

"We extend our heartfelt sympathies and will ensure we do all we can to avoid future incidents," he said. (change the record already)

Nato and US officials had earlier hailed the success, so far, of Operation Moshtarak, meaning "together" in the local Dari language.

At least 27 fighters were reported to have been killed during the first day of fighting, while Nato said it had uncovered bomb-making materials and a weapons cache.

However, there will be concerns about the effect that civilian casualties will have on the long-term aim of keeping Marjah, a town of about 80,000 people in the central Helmand River valley, out of the hands of the Taliban and drug traffickers.

Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from the capital Kabul, said that a high death toll could cause the whole operation to "backfire".

"To win this war you are going to need the support of the people," she said.

"The Afghan government is facing a real test. It has to make good on promises of security and services in central Helmand."

'Winning trust'

Ali Ahmed Jalali, the former interior minister of Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera: "Marjah is a microcosm of the approach adopted by the international forces to clear an area and rebuild it and win the trust of the population.

"If the Marjah operations does lead to better stability in the area and if that is done properly, that will send a message to other parts of the country – but Marjah is only one of 385 districts in the country," he said.

At least 15,000 US, British and Afghan soldiers have been involved in operations around Marjah.

James Jones, the US president's senior security adviser, said in Washington that the offensive was "going very well".

"It's an important moment in time because this is the first time we put together all of the elements of the president's new strategy."

But US military officials acknowledged that it could take weeks to secure Marjah and the surrounding areas.

"That doesn't necessarily mean an intense gun battle, but it probably will be 30 days of clearing," Brigadier General Larry Nicholson said.

The Afghan and foreign troops have met only sporadic resistance from Taliban fighters, but have been targeted with improvised explosive devices and booby-traps.

Source: al-Jazeerah

insh'Allah, innit?

what are we doing out there... again??

Keeping them at bay. Why, what did you think?

Abu ratshit lied:


Quote:

NATO terrorists murder more civilians

Nope they took great care to warn the civilians there over some time that they would attack, thousands have left.

What I call murder is Taliban arseholes killing a little girl because she went to the new school! Pricks also killed her teacher. That is murder!

Quote:

impacted approximately 300 metres off their intended target

Doesn't sound like terrorism, or murder. Nice try though, abu.

Nah the story's changed, it was the right target now, they meant to slaughter all the kids inside that house.

Yeah yeah. Woe is you. Yawn.

I'm serious go read the news.

They have put the weapons system back into use and say it wasn't an accident at all but was done on purpose.

abu_rashid wrote on Feb 18^th, 2010 at 3:25pm:

I'm serious go read the news. They have put the weapons system back into use and say it wasn't an accident at all but was done on purpose.

You speak as if you thought they could do anything without Allah willing it. Are you slowly moving away from Islam? Good for you!
Believing that Allah ordains every single event - that's the road to madness.

Insurgents put up resistance in Taliban town
AP

   *
     Buzz up!65 votes
Taliban Commander Talking to Interrogators Play Video FOX News  – Taliban Commander Talking to Interrogators


MARJAH, Afghanistan – U.S. Marines pummeled insurgents with mortars, sniper fire and missiles as fighting intensified Thursday in two areas of the Taliban southern stronghold of Marjah, where U.S. and Afghan forces are facing stubborn resistance in an operation now in its sixth day.

Marines traded machine-gun fire after coming under attack by insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades. One Marine company attacked Taliban positions surrounding them at dawn.

Marines and Afghan troops continued to battle "stiff resistance" in different parts of town, a Marine spokesman said Thursday

"We're seeing more fortified positions. They're standing their ground, essentially," Lt. Josh Diddams said. "You don't know where you're going to get a little pop up of insurgents who are going to stay and fight."

The fighting in Marjah has followed a similar pattern over the past few days: relatively light in the morning with sniper fire intensifying through midday before subsiding at nightfall.

But there were also pockets of calm. Families trickled back and shops reopened in a northern part of town as a small measure of normalcy returned to parts of Marjah that are under Afghan and NATO control.

Their donkeys laden down with their belongings, several families could be seen coming back to their homes in a sign that some civilians believed the fighting is over in zones secured by NATO troops.

Several storekeepers reopened their shops in the bullet-riddled northern bazaar in the northern part of town, as customers lined up to buy goods for the first time in nearly a week.

This is the biggest offensive since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, and a test of President Barack Obama's strategy for reversing the rise of the Taliban while protecting civilians.

Five NATO service members and one Afghan soldier have been killed since the attack on Marjah, the hub of the Taliban's southern logistics and drug-smuggling network, began Saturday. About 40 insurgents have been killed, Helmand Gov. Gulab Mangal said.

NATO had previously reported six deaths, but said Thursday that one death had mistakenly been reported twice. Once the town of 80,000 people is secure, NATO plans to rush in civil administrators to revive schools, health clinics and electricity in hopes of winning public support to discourage the Taliban from returning.

But in a sign of the difficulty that NATO faces in trying to reverse the rise of militants, eight members of the Afghan National Police on Wednesday night defected to the Taliban, a police official said Thursday

Eight policemen in Wardak province's Chak district abandoned their posts and joined with Taliban militants in the area late Wednesday, said Mirza Khan, deputy provincial police chief. Khan said one of the policemen had previous ties with the Taliban. The incident is under investigation.

A Taliban spokesman called The Associated Press to confirm the defection.

"These policemen came on their own and told us they want to join with the Taliban," Zabiullah Mujahid said. "Now they are with us."

He said they came with their weapons and ammunition. Mujahid said more than 20 police switched over, but the group commonly gives inflated numbers.

As Marines and Afghan soldiers press their offensive in Marjah, they have been forced to hold their fire because insurgents are shooting from inside or next to mud-walled compounds where civilians are present — and restraint slows their advance.

Brig. Gen. Mohiudin Ghori, the brigade commander of Afghan troops in Marjah, said in some cases women and children may have been ordered to stand on a roof or in a window of buildings where Taliban fighters are shooting.

NATO has confirmed 15 civilian deaths in the operation. Afghan rights groups say at least 19 have died.

___

Faiez reported from Helmand province. Associated Press writers Tini Tran and Heidi Vogt in Kabul contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100218/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

Quote:

You speak as if you though they could do anything without Allah willing it...

And you speak like a true Christian, who has no idea how predestination and free will work.

abu_rashid wrote on Feb 18^th, 2010 at 9:54pm:

Quote: You speak as if you though they could do anything without Allah willing it... And you speak like a true Christian, who has no idea how predestination and free will work.

Whichever way Christianity has worked out that paradox, it has nothing to do with Islamic understandings of it. To you, everything is Allah's will (insh'allah) and there is no free will. So you don't even conceive of it as a paradox.
Yet your mind cannot actually operate like that, so you will blame people (especially westerners) as if you believed that they have free will. The syntax of your mind commits apostasy with every thought concerning human agency.



Cognitive dissonance, thy name is Islam.

No, to us everything is of course Allah's will, since an ominscient God has full knowledge of all things. It is your 3 headed idol in which each part is supposedly not aware of what the others are doing that leads to the confusions you suffer. Where one of your idols supposedly thought he was sacrificing himself, and forgot he was a god and able to resurrect himself. And that was meant to be some kind of all encompassing sacrifice (nevermind that you can't sacrifice something you can quite easily retake).

And we have free will.

Are you saying that the crusading western hordes in Afghanistan are slaughtering innocent Muslim civilians against Allah's will? That Allah does not author their every act? Not just foresee but expressly permit?

Quote:

Are you saying that the crusading western hordes in Afghanistan are slaughtering innocent Muslim civilians against Allah's will?

Can you quote me stating it? If you can, then that's what I'm saying, if you can't, then stop imagining and start thinking for a change.

abu_rashid wrote on Feb 19^th, 2010 at 6:02am:

Quote: Are you saying that the crusading western hordes in Afghanistan are slaughtering innocent Muslim civilians against Allah's will? Can you quote me stating it?

Yes, here it is:


abu_rashid wrote on Feb 18^th, 2010 at 3:25pm:

They have put the weapons system back into use and say it wasn't an accident at all but was done on purpose.

On purpose. Now who can detrmine his own action, act 'on purpose' against Allah's purpose?
Shurely not the infidel. Shome mishtake.

soren you're a dope, really.

The action of a human being is carried out without any knowledge of the divine will. Therefore his action cannot be linked in this way. Sure God knew he was going to carry it out, but he did not know that when he carried it out, therefore his action is not based on that.

It's really quite simple. The divine knowledge and the human knowledge are not from the same perspective. Therefore the intention of the individual cannot be "blamed" on the knowledge of the Creator.

Do you suppose that God is none the wiser? He's contained within space-time like us? Since you do worship a human being, I guess that's probably an accurate appraisal of your beliefs isn't it...

Is that so?

So why do you Mohamedans say insh'Allah as often as yobs say fvcken', then?

"in sha' allah" means "if God wills", of course a believer in the omnipotent and omniscient creator of us all would not say a future event is certainly going to happen without following it up by "in sha' allah".

abu_rashid wrote on Feb 19^th, 2010 at 8:08pm:

"in sha' allah" means "if God wills", of course a believer in the omnipotent and omniscient creator of us all would not say a future event is certainly going to happen without following it up by "in sha' allah".

SO it all depends on what Allah wills. Nothing in, nothing out without his OK.


Not even a thought or an intention can be conceived by man without Allah first willing it. Everything is entirely, utterly, completely under his control. He even wills acts of rebllion against him. Even acts and thought of bloodthirsty crusading infidel innocent-muslim-slaughtering sons of pigs and apes and what have you. Even the joos. Especially the joos and especially  especially if they are zionist joos. They are completely in the grip of Allah's will.

Inshallah-la-la in the evening, shalala in the morning, as these sensitive  sufi poets commemorate it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5kBF8cByIYi

Just a question soren, did God not will the Babylonians to destroy the temple? Didn't he use the Israelites to smite the Amalekites? women, children old folks and all?? Read your own Bible for a change, and you'll find all the answers you're smugly mocking and giggling about there.

We are talking about Allah and his control of every act and event. Now. Here. In our lives.

Bible classes are two doors down the corridor.

There is only one God.

If you prefer we can use the Semitic name Allah (which is cognate in the Biblical languages also as Alaha and Eloh for Aramaic and Hebrew respectively). Since after all God does come from Gott, the Germanic pagan idol, so you're right, let us use instead the term preferred in the languages of monotheistic revelation, of the Qur'an, NT and OT.

Now answer my question please, if you'd be so kind.

What are you asking me?
Whether the Muslim belief in an Allah who is the author of every trivial act and event is irreconcilable with your language of blame, that is, the language of agency? Yes, it is.
Do Muslims suffer from a constant cognitive dissonance between the absolutist dogma  of an interventionist Allah and the ordinary perception of life, expressed in language that attributes agency to people? Yes, that is also true.  

Do Muslims have any  way,  other than peppering their speech with insh’Allah, to resolve this cognitive dissonance? No they don’t.
Can they face this dissonance? No. When it is pointed out to them they start talking about Babylonia and etymology or whatever else, just to avoid facing this irresolvable dissonance in the heart of their lives.
What else do you want to know?

Sorry soren, but no matter how well you word it, "cognitive dissonance" anyone?, the same arguments apply to all deists who believe in an interventionist supreme being, Islam is not alone, nor the first, or the last religion to ask it's followers to ignore the glaring contradictions, and inconsistencies in their teachings.

What they require is a cognitive vacuum, which is appropriate for something that so obviously sucks! ;)

mozzaok wrote on Feb 20^th, 2010 at 5:22pm:

Sorry soren, but no matter how well you word it, "cognitive dissonance" anyone?, the same arguments apply to all deists who believe in an interventionist supreme being, Islam is not alone, nor the first, or the last religion to ask it's followers to ignore the glaring contradictions, and inconsistencies in their teachings. What they require is a cognitive vacuum, which is appropriate for something that so obviously sucks! ;)

You are right up to a point.

Jews do not believe that god is in control of every act and event. Jews believe that the 'world', the human world, is a joint venture between god and man. Being chosen, for the jews, means carrying the burden of this 'working with god'. That is why Moses argues with god: why pick me?

It is only the Mohamedans, having completely misundersood the jews in Araby in the 7th century, who came up with a god who not only occasionally interferes (in mysterious ways) but is the explicit author of every event and act, leaving man completely out of the work of creating the human world.

This is what I mean by Mohamedanism being a parody.  They missed the main bit.

As for Christianity (a jewish 'susperstition' for gentiles, if you like), it is not different from judaism in this particular regard  but is as far apart from Mohamedanism as judaism is.

I do not doubt for a moment that some christians (but not any jews) will not see this differentiation, and to that extent I agree with you completely - they believe in nonsense. But for Mohamedans, this all-controlling Allah is a central article of faith, not an error of comprehension of their religion.

So they believe in nonsense as a matter of first principle and not believing in such nonsense, to Mohamedans, is the error.i

abu_rashid wrote on Feb 17^th, 2010 at 6:39pm:

Nah the story's changed, it was the right target now, they meant to slaughter all the kids inside that house.

You just can't help but lie like the muzzie faggot you are. How are the honour killings going in muzzie land?

More terrorist attacks by the NATO militants on innocent Muslim civilians.

Really know how to win the hearts & minds don't they...

---

Nato raid 'kills Afghan civilians' Aghanistan government officials say at least 19 civilians have been killed by a Nato air attack on a convoy of vehicles in Uruzgan, a province in the country's south. Nato confirmed that it fired on Sunday on a group of vehicles that it believed contained fighters, only to discover later that women and children were in the cars. Isaf, Nato's force in Afghanistan, did not provide a figure of how many died. Amanullah Hothaki, the head of the provincial council for Uruzgan, said 19 people were killed in the attack, which hit three minibuses as they drove down a main road.

http://english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images//2010/2/20/20102206137106734_5.jpg Uruzgan is policed by Dutch troops whose imminent pullout poses a challenge to Nato's Isaf [AFP]

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Lashkar Gah in Helmand, said an "aerial weapons team" fired at mini-buses carrying civilians.

"We understand they [civilians] came under attack from what Nato says was an aerial weapons team," he said.

"That sounds to me like helicopters. The Nato spokesman I have spoken to ... says there was a Nato operation against the Taliban in the nearer area, and Nato thought they were reinforcements for the Taliban coming.

"And that's why they launched this airstrike. But he says it's clear now it was clearly a mistake, and that in many of these mini-buses there were women and children."

General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, released a statement apologising for the deaths, our correspondent said.

"We are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocoent lives," McChrystal was quoted by Bays as saying.

"I've made it clear to our forces that we're here to protect the Afghan people and inadvertentlly killing and injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We'll redouble our efforts to regain that trust."

Zemeri Bashary, the Afghan interior ministry spokesman, said he had reports of 27 people killed.

He said there were 42 people in the vehicles, all of them civilians.

Source: al-Jazeerah

The thing about Islamists is that they need to be bled, like the germans and the japanese, until they know they are beaten. They will not stop until they think they are beaten. And that will take a lot of killing.

As long as they remain overtly hostile, there is no reason to stop killing them. And so the Crusades will go on, as they have for the last 900 years.