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General John Nicholson, the Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan and NATO's Resolute Support Mission, speaks during an opening ceremony of the "Invictus Games" at the Resolute Support Headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan on May 13. Massoud Hossaini / AP file

But while there are fewer U.S. service members in Iraq and Syria than in Afghanistan, the ground commander in Baghdad continues to send out a notification when an incident results in a U.S. death.

And one senior defense official warned that Nicholson's new policy will mean less transparency and more ambiguity about the war in Afghanistan at a time when many Americans don't know what is happening there. "It's a step in the wrong direction," the official said.

The official explained that putting out information about the operational event has nothing to do with identifying the individual casualties. In fact, reporting the incident as it occurs goes back to Vietnam, the official said, citing news reports about helicopter crashes and intense firefights before next of kin were notified. Military historian William Hammond, author of the book

The Pentagon also used to identify a casualty immediately after the individual's next of kin was notified, the official said, until the 24-hour-notification requirement was introduced in 2009.

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Another senior defense official expressed concern about the new policy because it may mean that Afghans become the initial source of information about American casualties. "It's just not appropriate and it's not the way we have been doing things for more than a decade," the official said.

Ultimately, Gen. Nicholson has final say over what information is released and when, both Pentagon and U.S. military officials said. As long as he is commander, the first acknowledgment of the death of an American in Afghanistan will include a note than next of kin have been notified.

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US Is Now Waiting Days to Announce Deaths In Afghanistan - NBCNews.com

And thesurge Donald Trump is poised to authorize is not it.

US soldiers walk near a police checkpoint in Afghanistan. (Reuters / Lucas Jackson)

None of us would say that we are on a course to success here in Afghanistan, said Senator John McCain, speaking for a five-member bipartisan Senate delegation at a Kabul press briefing on July 4. The senators didnt have to skip the July 4 parades to discover that. The United States continues its longest warnow in its 16th yearwithout a clue about how to win or how to get out. President Trump shows no sign of changing course: At the end of this month, he is slated to sign off on sending a few thousand more troops to Afghanistan.

Since invading in 2001, the United States has poured more than $117 billion into Afghanistan, one of the worlds poorest countries. The United States has also suffered the loss of 2,400 American soldiers lives and over 20,000 wounded. Weve spent $11 billion in equipping the Afghanistan National Army, which is still unable to defend itself. The United States has had as many as 63,500 boots on the ground in Afghanistan; about 8,800 remain today. Afghani casualties are estimated at over 225,000, with a staggering 2.6 million Afghani refugees abroad, and another 1 million displaced internally.

The war has enjoyed bipartisan support from the beginning. Bush launched it. Obama began his administration approving a surge of 30,000 troops for what he called the good war. His hopes of bolstering the government, training a competent military, and getting out were dashed. Now, with the Taliban back in control of about a third of the country, Trump is reportedly about to repeat the surgeadding 3,000 to 5,000 troopsenough, at best, to avoid losing.

The United States went into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks to get bin Laden, quash Al Qaeda and punish the Taliban for harboring them. Bin Laden is dead; Al Qaeda has metastasized across the region; the Taliban have been hunted for 16 years. No administration, Democratic or Republican, has the stomach for dispatching the number of troops or wreaking the level of violence necessary to have even a shot at suppressing the armed resistance. Afghanistan is not called the graveyard of empires for nothing.

With no exit plan, we get babble instead of strategy. The McCain delegation criticized Trump for not filling diplomatic posts in Afghanistan, as if another permanent ambassador or a special representative might make a difference. Asked to define winning, McCain offered up only gaining an advantage on the battlefield. He elaborated: Winning is getting major areas of the country under control and working towards some kind of ceasefire with the Taliban. But weve had major areas under control before, and the Taliban continued to resist, while corruption and division continued to cripple the Afghan government.

Even the normally sensible Senator Elizabeth Warren, accompanying McCain, served up platitudes. Criticizing Trump for not articulating a clear strategy, she said, This trip only reaffirmed my belief that we need comprehensive, whole-of-government strategy. Nobody on the ground here believes there is a military-only solution. The administration owes it to the American people and to our men and women putting their lives at risk, to provide that clear vision of where were headed. But it is quite clear where were headedto more years of endless war without victory, wasting more lives and resources.

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California Representative Barbara Lee offers a clearer vision. In late June, Lee gained the bipartisan support needed to adopt her amendment to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which passed days after the 9/11 attacks by a vote of 420-1 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate. (Lee was the sole dissenting vote.) The AUMF empowered the president to target anyone connected with the 9/11 attacks, whether states or non-states. It turned into exactly what Lee warned against: a blank check to wage war anywhere, any time, for any length, by any president. By 2016, according to a congressional Research Service report, the 2001 AUMF had been invoked publicly as authority for at least 37 military actions in 14 countries across the world, including the Philippines, Georgia, Libya, Somalia, and Horn of Africa. Most recently, Obama and Trump stretched it to cover our intervention in Syria.

In the Senate, Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Jeff Flake have introduced a new Authorization for Military Force that would repeal the 2001 AUMF while providing new authority for the war on terror. While repealing the authorization wouldnt bring the war to a sudden end, it would force a clear debate on the limits of presidential authority going forward. A debate about what we are doing in Afghanistan might even break out.

After the Iraq debacle, the military perfected technology and tacticsfrom drones to special operations forces to covert raidsneeded to sustain endless war without numerous boots on the ground. But Americans have little appetite for wars without victory. In the past two presidential elections, they have voted for the candidate who expressed the greater skepticism about wars and regime change, as both Obama and Trump did. A recent academic study suggests that the hidden costs of war may have played a role in Trumps victory. The authors, Douglas Kriner, a political scientist at Boston University, and Francis Shen, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, found that after controlling for a range of variables, Trump significantly outperformed Romney in counties that shouldered a disproportionate share of the war burdendefined as military casualtiesin Iraq and Afghanistan. A hidden anti-war vote may be growing in the very communities that supply the nations soldiers.

Trump, despite his professed America First posture, seems intent on doubling down on a failed course. Amid North Korean missile tests and Russiagate, the coming escalation in Afghanistan hasnt garnered much attention. But the Pentagons push to get Trump to dispatch of more troops will insure that he is ensnared in a war with no exit.

We dont need to waste more lives and resources in Afghanistan. We dont need a comprehensive strategy for more war in Afghanistan. We need a simple decision to get out.

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There's Only One Way to End the War in Afghanistan - The Nation.

A 19-year-old U.S. soldier has been killed in an attack in southern Afghanistan as he was taking part in counter-terror operations.

Pfc. Hansen B. Kirkpatrick of Wasilla, Alaska, had been stationed in Fort Bliss, Texas.

Two other service members were wounded in Monday's attack in Helmand province, according to a statement from the United States Armed Forces-Afghanistan.

The group came under "indirect fire," according to the military, meaning an attack using rockets or mortars. A U.S. military spokesman in Kabul tells NPR's Tom Bowman that munitions hit a building while the group was inside it.

The injured service members' wounds are "not considered life-threatening," the military's statement said, and they are currently being hospitalized.

"At a time when we remember the patriots who founded our nation in freedom, we are saddened by the loss of one of our comrades who was here protecting our freedom at home," Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said in a statement. "We will keep his family in our thoughts and prayers as we reflect on the sacrifice he and others have made to secure our freedoms and help make Afghanistan a better place."

Kirkpatrick is the eighth U.S. service member killed in Afghanistan this year, according to icasualties.org, a private website that tracks combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He is the first fatality since an "insider attack" by an Afghan soldier killed three U.S. service members in June. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that assault, The Two-Way reported. An Afghan source tells NPR that the Afghan soldier involved in the killings was investigated several times for suspected ties to the Taliban.

Kirkpatrick was killed in the Nawa district, Tom reports. He is the first U.S. fatality there since 2012, according to icasualties.org.

According to The Associated Press, "there has been a recent increase in U.S. military deaths and injuries in Afghanistan as the fighting season with the Taliban becomes more intense and American forces work more closely with their Afghan partners in the battle."

The United States is considering sending thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, after Nicholson requested the force be increased to break what he called a "stalemate" in the war. The conflict is now in its 16th year.

Most, if not all, of those new troops would be involved in training and not the counterterror mission. The training includes increasing the number of Afghan commandos and building up the Afghan Air Force.

Last month, President Trump gave Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the authority to set U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. "We are not winning in Afghanistan right now, and we will correct this as soon as possible," Mattis told lawmakers last month.

In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year, Nicholson requested thousands more troops and billions more dollars. "Offensive capability is what will break the stalemate in Afghanistan," he said.

Mattis traveled to Afghanistan in April and said at the time that the Trump administration was reviewing its policy in the country. That strategy is expected to be presented later this month.

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US Soldier Killed, 2 Others Wounded In Southern Afghanistan - NPR

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistans former military dictator, had secretly authorized the drone strikes, and some of the drones operated from bases inside Pakistan a policy that continued under his civilian successors. Under his rule, Pakistan audaciously denied having anything to do with the Afghan Taliban or its most sinister component, the Haqqani network.

But the United States presented evidence of Pakistans links to Afghan militants just as Pakistan transitioned from military to civilian rule in 2008. As Pakistans ambassador to the United States for the new civilian government, I urged Pakistans civil and military leaders to engage with Americans honestly instead of sticking to blanket denials.

Islamabads response was to argue that Pakistan does, indeed, support insurgents in Afghanistan, but it does so because of security concerns about India, which is seen by generals and many civilian leaders as an existential threat to Pakistan.

But that excuse is based on exaggerations and falsehoods. India has no offensive military presence in Afghanistan and there has never been any evidence that the Afghans are willing to be part of Indias alleged plan for a two-front war with Pakistan.

Afghanistans president, Ashraf Ghani, recently asked India to train Afghan military officers and repair military aircraft after frustration with Pakistan, which failed to fulfill promises of restraining the Taliban and forcing them to the negotiating table.

Pakistans leaders question Afghanistans acceptance of economic assistance from India even though Pakistan does not have the capacity to provide such aid itself.

It seems that Pakistan wants to keep alive imaginary fears, possibly to maintain military ascendancy in a country that has been ruled by generals for almost half of its existence. For years Pakistani officials falsely asserted that India had set up 24 consulates in Afghanistan, some close to the Pakistani border. In fact, India has only four consulates, the same number Pakistan has, in Afghanistan.

Lying about easily verifiable facts is usually the tactic of governments fabricating a threat rather than ones genuinely facing one. As ambassador, I attended trilateral meetings where my colleagues rejected serious suggestions from Afghans and Americans to mitigate apprehensions about Indian influence in Afghanistan.

While evidence of an Indian threat to Pakistan through Afghanistan remains scant, proof of the presence of Afghan Taliban leaders in Pakistan continues to mount. Mullah Omar, the Talibans leader, reportedly died in a Pakistani hospital in 2013 and his successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was killed in an American drone strike in Baluchistan Province in Pakistan last year.

The United States should not let Pakistan link its longstanding support for hard-line Pashtun Islamists in Afghanistan to its disputes with India.

Both India and Pakistan have a lot of blood on their hands in Kashmir and seem in no hurry to resolve their disagreement, which is rooted in the psychosis resulting from the subcontinents bitter partition. The two countries have gone through 45 rounds of summit-level talks since 1947 and have failed to reach a permanent settlement.

Linking the outcome in Afghanistan to resolution of India-Pakistan issues would keep the United States embroiled there for a very long time. The recent rise in Islamophobia in India and a more aggressive stance against Pakistan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi should not detract from recognizing the paranoiac nature of Pakistans fears.

The Bush administration gave Pakistan $12.4 billion in aid, and the Obama administration forked over $21 billion. These incentives did not make Pakistan more amenable to cutting off support for the Afghan Taliban.

The Trump administration should now consider taking away Pakistans status as a major non-NATO ally, which would limit its priority access to American military technology. Aid to Pakistan should be linked to a sequence and timeline for specific actions against Taliban leaders.

Sanctions against individuals and institutions involved in facilitating Pakistan-based Taliban leaders and pursuing Taliban reconciliation talks without depending on Pakistan could be other measures signaling a firmer United States stance.

Moving away from an incentive-based approach would not be punishing Pakistan. The United States would be acting as a friend, helping Pakistan realize through tough measures that the gravest threat to its future comes from religious extremism it is fostering in its effort to compete with India.

Negotiating a peaceful settlement with the Taliban also remains desirable, but it is important to remember the difficulties 21st-century negotiators face while seeking compromise with seventh-century mind-sets.

Husain Haqqani, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in Washington, was Pakistans ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 7, 2017, in The International New York Times.

Link:
To Win Afghanistan, Get Tough on Pakistan - New York Times

Afghanistan is ready for the "huge honour" of making their landmark Lord's debut, officials said ahead of next week's match, after a fairy-tale rise catapulted them into the elite club of Test nations last month.

The young side will be taking on the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), led by former New Zealand skipper Brendon McCullum, in what officials hope will be an "historic" 50-overs match at the Home of Cricket on July 11.

Quick Single: ICC announces two new Test nation

Sri Lanka legend Kumar Sangakkara and West Indies great Shivnarine Chanderpaul, both of whom are playing domestic cricket in the United Kingdom, will also feature for the MCC.

The Afghan side includes Indian Premier League stars Mohammad Nabi and teenage leg-spinner Rashid Khan, who took 17 wickets in his debut this year. Nabi was previously on the MCC Young Cricketers scheme.

Other players include captain Asghar Stanikzai, Noor Ali Zadran, Javed Ahmadi, Nasir Jamal, Samiullah Shenwari, Afsar Zazai, Shafiqullah Shafaq, Rahmat Shah, Gulbadin Naib, Dawlat Zadran, Shapoor Zadran and Farid Malik.

Both Afghanistan and Ireland were confirmed as full members at an International Cricket Council (ICC) meeting during its annual conference in London late June and will be eligible to play five-day Test cricket, widely regarded as the sport's supreme format.

"It will be a huge honour and experience for the team, as we will be playing for the first time there (at Lord's)," an Afghanistan Cricket Board spokesperson told AFP on Thursday.

Walking onto the pitch at Lord's will cap a dizzying rise for cricket-mad Afghanistan. Many Afghans' first contact with the game only took place during the 1980s and 1990s, in Pakistani refugee camps sheltering millions who fled the Soviet invasion.

The game struggled in the late 1990s under the regime of the hardline Islamist Taliban, who viewed sports as a distraction from religious duties.

But it has become hugely popular in the country since the Taliban were toppled in a US-led invasion in 2001.

Recent successes, particularly in last year's ICC World Twenty20 where Afghanistan defeated eventual champions West Indies in the group stage, have further raised the country's profile.

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Afghanistan's fairy-tale begins at Lord's - cricket.com.au