THE SPOILS ENGLISH
Friday, August 19, 2011
A secret war in 120 countries
By Nick Turse
Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done ... for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the United States military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.
After a US Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden's chest and another in his head while storming his compound in Pakistan, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it's well known that US Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict
zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.
Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the George W Bush presidency. By the end of this year, US Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of traveling - a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence - in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged - provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.
The rise of the military's secret military
Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.
Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the army's "Green Berets" and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States' most specialized and secret missions.
These include assassinations, counter-terrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.
One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal "kill/capture" campaign that John Nagl, a past counter-insurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counter-terrorism killing machine".
This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.
Growth industry
From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command.
Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.
Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command - the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 - indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. "I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000," he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.
During his recent senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.
A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite US forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that "as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia".
During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before 9/11, the lit portions of the planet - mostly the industrialized nations of the global north - were considered the key areas. "But the world changed over the last decade," he said. "Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south ... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren't."
To that end, Olson launched "Project Lawrence", an effort to increase cultural proficiencies - like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs - for overseas operations. The program is named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed "Lawrences of Wherever".
While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government.
According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.
Special Operations Command won't disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. "We're obviously going to have some places where it's not advantageous for us to list where we're at," says Nye. "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have - it may be internal, it may be regional."
But it's no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups.
In the Philippines, for instance, the US spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.
Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism's National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America's most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.
So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. "Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises."
The Pentagon's power elite
Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces - like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines - a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.
With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon.
With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people's heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM's prime contracts awarded to small businesses - those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons - have jumped six-fold.
Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself.
As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM "is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies".
Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military.
Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army", today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive's private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.
In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.
That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: "I am convinced that the forces ... are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."
Recently at the Aspen Institute's Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that US Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them. When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, "Are you talking about unattributed explosions?"
What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasized, US Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America's elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger.
Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a "special" force this large, this active, and this secret - and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available. It just won't be coming from Olson or his troops. "Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it," he said in response to questions about SOCOM's secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military's secret military, said Olson, wants "to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do."
Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist. The associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a new senior editor at Alternet.org, his latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books). This article is a collaboration between Alternet.org and TomDispatch.com.
source
Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done ... for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the United States military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.
After a US Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden's chest and another in his head while storming his compound in Pakistan, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it's well known that US Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict
zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.
Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the George W Bush presidency. By the end of this year, US Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of traveling - a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence - in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged - provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.
The rise of the military's secret military
Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.
Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the army's "Green Berets" and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States' most specialized and secret missions.
These include assassinations, counter-terrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.
One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal "kill/capture" campaign that John Nagl, a past counter-insurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counter-terrorism killing machine".
This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.
Growth industry
From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command.
Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.
Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command - the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 - indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. "I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000," he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.
During his recent senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.
A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite US forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that "as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia".
During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before 9/11, the lit portions of the planet - mostly the industrialized nations of the global north - were considered the key areas. "But the world changed over the last decade," he said. "Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south ... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren't."
To that end, Olson launched "Project Lawrence", an effort to increase cultural proficiencies - like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs - for overseas operations. The program is named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed "Lawrences of Wherever".
While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government.
According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.
Special Operations Command won't disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. "We're obviously going to have some places where it's not advantageous for us to list where we're at," says Nye. "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have - it may be internal, it may be regional."
But it's no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups.
In the Philippines, for instance, the US spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.
Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism's National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America's most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.
So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. "Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises."
The Pentagon's power elite
Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces - like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines - a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.
With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon.
With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people's heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM's prime contracts awarded to small businesses - those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons - have jumped six-fold.
Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself.
As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM "is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies".
Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military.
Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army", today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive's private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.
In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.
That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: "I am convinced that the forces ... are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."
Recently at the Aspen Institute's Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that US Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them. When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, "Are you talking about unattributed explosions?"
What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasized, US Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America's elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger.
Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a "special" force this large, this active, and this secret - and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available. It just won't be coming from Olson or his troops. "Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it," he said in response to questions about SOCOM's secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military's secret military, said Olson, wants "to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do."
Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist. The associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a new senior editor at Alternet.org, his latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books). This article is a collaboration between Alternet.org and TomDispatch.com.
source
Up to six killed in attack on bus in southern Israel: August 18th, '11
Up to six people have been killed and several wounded following co-ordinated attacks on a bus in southern Israel, reports have said.
The series of attacks on Thursday 18th, are believed to have targeted a passenger bus, a private car, and a group of IDF.
The series of attacks on Thursday 18th, are believed to have targeted a passenger bus, a private car, and a group of IDF.
Suicide Bombers Hit UK Offices In Kabul
Suicide bombers have attacked the British Council offices in Kabul on the public holiday marking Afghanistan's independence from Britain.
At least three people were killed in an initial attack, the city's criminal investigations chief told the AFP news agency.
But a fresh explosion took the death toll to at least eight. Most of the dead are thought to be police.
"Eight people, mostly police, are killed and 10 others injured," Siddiq Siddiqui of Afghanistan's interior ministry said.
"There is one person, one of the attackers who is still alive and resisting. The area has not yet been cleared."
The Times' Kabul correspondent Jerome Starkey told Sky News gun battles continued amid the bombed offices.
He said British forces at the scene had begun pushing the cordon around the building back.
"There were shots coming out of the wreckage of the British Council," Mr Starkey said.
"Apache helicopters have been circling around the building and the battle is still ongoing."
It is unclear if any Britons have been killed or injured in the attack.
The Taliban has claimed it launched the attack on the British cultural institution in Kabul to mark the country's independence from Britain in 1919.
At least three people were killed in an initial attack, the city's criminal investigations chief told the AFP news agency.
But a fresh explosion took the death toll to at least eight. Most of the dead are thought to be police.
"Eight people, mostly police, are killed and 10 others injured," Siddiq Siddiqui of Afghanistan's interior ministry said.
"There is one person, one of the attackers who is still alive and resisting. The area has not yet been cleared."
The Times' Kabul correspondent Jerome Starkey told Sky News gun battles continued amid the bombed offices.
He said British forces at the scene had begun pushing the cordon around the building back.
"There were shots coming out of the wreckage of the British Council," Mr Starkey said.
"Apache helicopters have been circling around the building and the battle is still ongoing."
It is unclear if any Britons have been killed or injured in the attack.
The Taliban has claimed it launched the attack on the British cultural institution in Kabul to mark the country's independence from Britain in 1919.
Short news clip of the British Council facility in Kabul after Mujahideen suicide attack: August 19th, '11
The centre of Britain's soft power in Afghanistan was attacked by Mujahideen suicide attackers on August 19th.
Is anywhere safe in Kabul?
Is anywhere safe in Kabul?
Foto Tuyul Ditangkap Warga, Akhirnya Diamankan di Kantor Polisi
Penangkapan sosok makhluk yang diyakini sebagai tuyul dilakukan secara tidak sengaja. ‘Tuyul’ itu ditangkap Gatot Suwuno (55) saat dirinya tengah berada di sebuah warung kopi. Saat ditangkap, di tangan tuyul itu terdapat uang Rp 200 ribu. Gatot, yang juga dianggap sebagai paranormal oleh warga langsung berinisiatif menangkap tuyul tersebut saat Yanto, pemilik warung mengaku sering kehilangan uang.
Tuyul yang tengah memegang pantat istri Yanto itu pun langsung ditangkap Gatot dan dimasukkan ke dalam toples kue berukuran 30 cm sesuai ukuran tubuh tuyul. “Uang yang dikembalikan ke saya hanya Rp 100 ribu,” kata Gatot saat ditemui di Polsek Menganti, Kamis (18/8/2011).
Waktu dimasukkan toples, lanjutnya, ukuran tuyul tersebut menurut Gatot masih 30 cm pakai celana dalam merah. Namun, lama kelamaan tubuh tuyul itu makin menyusut kecil. Setelah itu, untuk menyesuaikan bentuk tuyul itu Gatot memasukkannya ke dalam botol syrup.
Sebelum dimasukkan ke dalam botol, Gatot membungkus tuyul tersebut dengan kain kafan. Ia juga memberikan tiga simpul, masing-masing di bagian kaki, badan dan ubun-ubun kepala. “Saya takut kalau makin menyusut, nanti si tuyul gampang ilang lagi. Maka itu dibungkus dan ditali kain kafan,” terangnya.
Polisi terlihat berhat-hati dan tidak ingin terjadi sesuatu dengan botol yang di dalamnya berisikan sosok yang dikabarkan sebagai tuyul. Untuk itu, polisi akan melarung botol berisi tuyul itu ke Sungai Gunungsari Surabaya. “Habis ini, kita akan membantu Pak Gatot melarung botol itu ke sungai besar di Gunungsari. Kalau dibuka, nanti ucul maneh (lepas lagi),” kata Kapolsek Menganti AKP Dedi Iskandar, Kamis (18/8/2011).
Sayangnya, sebelum melarung botol berisi ‘tuyul’ itu, polisi enggan membuka botol untuk mengetahui isi sebenarnya. Pasalnya, Gatot (55) warga Laban Kulon RT 13 RW 1 Menganti Gresik, orang yang menangkap ‘tuyul’ kabarnya sering diminta tolong warga untuk menyembuhkan orang dari kesurupan. Bahkan, Gatot dikabarkan sudah dua kali ini berhasil menangkap tuyul.
“Waktu penangkapan, sudah banyak warga yang mengetahui. Informasinya ini penangkapan ini yang kedua kalinya. Yang pertama ditangkap, tapi warga tidak melaporkan ke polsek, dan langsung melarungnya ke sungai,” tuturnya. “Kita tidak berani coba-coba membuka. Kalu dibuka dan muncul tenan (sungguhan) bisa timbul masalah,” katanya. “Nanti kalau sudah dilarung dan terkena air, satu sampai dua jam, sudah hilang. Meskipun ada orang yang menemukan botol itu, kalau sudah kena air ya hilang,” terangnya. (Sumber)
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Foto tuyul yang tertangkap warga dan dimasukan di botol akhirnya diamankan di kantor polisi
Waktu dimasukkan toples, lanjutnya, ukuran tuyul tersebut menurut Gatot masih 30 cm pakai celana dalam merah. Namun, lama kelamaan tubuh tuyul itu makin menyusut kecil. Setelah itu, untuk menyesuaikan bentuk tuyul itu Gatot memasukkannya ke dalam botol syrup.
Sebelum dimasukkan ke dalam botol, Gatot membungkus tuyul tersebut dengan kain kafan. Ia juga memberikan tiga simpul, masing-masing di bagian kaki, badan dan ubun-ubun kepala. “Saya takut kalau makin menyusut, nanti si tuyul gampang ilang lagi. Maka itu dibungkus dan ditali kain kafan,” terangnya.
Polisi terlihat berhat-hati dan tidak ingin terjadi sesuatu dengan botol yang di dalamnya berisikan sosok yang dikabarkan sebagai tuyul. Untuk itu, polisi akan melarung botol berisi tuyul itu ke Sungai Gunungsari Surabaya. “Habis ini, kita akan membantu Pak Gatot melarung botol itu ke sungai besar di Gunungsari. Kalau dibuka, nanti ucul maneh (lepas lagi),” kata Kapolsek Menganti AKP Dedi Iskandar, Kamis (18/8/2011).
Sayangnya, sebelum melarung botol berisi ‘tuyul’ itu, polisi enggan membuka botol untuk mengetahui isi sebenarnya. Pasalnya, Gatot (55) warga Laban Kulon RT 13 RW 1 Menganti Gresik, orang yang menangkap ‘tuyul’ kabarnya sering diminta tolong warga untuk menyembuhkan orang dari kesurupan. Bahkan, Gatot dikabarkan sudah dua kali ini berhasil menangkap tuyul.
“Waktu penangkapan, sudah banyak warga yang mengetahui. Informasinya ini penangkapan ini yang kedua kalinya. Yang pertama ditangkap, tapi warga tidak melaporkan ke polsek, dan langsung melarungnya ke sungai,” tuturnya. “Kita tidak berani coba-coba membuka. Kalu dibuka dan muncul tenan (sungguhan) bisa timbul masalah,” katanya. “Nanti kalau sudah dilarung dan terkena air, satu sampai dua jam, sudah hilang. Meskipun ada orang yang menemukan botol itu, kalau sudah kena air ya hilang,” terangnya. (Sumber)
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tertangkapnya tuyul yang sedang membuntuti ibu-ibu yang mau berbelanja
Di Desa Laban Kecamatan Menganti Gresik dibikin heboh dengan tertangkapnya tuyul yang sedang membuntuti ibu-ibu yang mau berbelanja dan salah satu dari warga berhasil menangkapnya..... wallohu a'lam bishowaf,
tuyul yang tersimpan dalam botol ini lengkap berkafan kain putih,mungkin itu pakayai yang dipakai tuyul semasa dia tertangkap,bagaimana dia tertangkap itu aku kurang pasti,yang jelas dalam botol ini memang tuyul!
tuyul yang tersimpan dalam botol ini lengkap berkafan kain putih,mungkin itu pakayai yang dipakai tuyul semasa dia tertangkap,bagaimana dia tertangkap itu aku kurang pasti,yang jelas dalam botol ini memang tuyul!
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