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By Renee Ittner-McManus

Catawba Trail Elementary second-grader Zoe Thompson got more than she bargained for when she lined up with classmates Friday for a field day race. At the end of the lane lay more than bragging rights for the teams winner: her dad, Capt. Joseph Thompson, fresh off the plane from a 12-month tour of Afghanistan, was there to surprise her.

Second-grader Zoe Thompson is surprised by the return of her father, Capt. Joseph Thompson, from his 12-months of service in Afghanistan. (Photo by Renee Ittner-McManus/RIM Photography. Click on photos to enlarge.)

Had the clock been running, her bolt to jump into the arms of her father may have set a school record. I didnt even know he was a coming! exclaimed Zoe. He came out of nowhere!

That nowhere was Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan where Thompson served as a logistician with the Armys 831st Surface Deployment Distribution Command. Hes now happy to report he has a much closer duty station: right here at Ft. Jackson. I gave 12 months to my country and now Im going to give back to my daughter, he said.

Thats a good thing since the list of activities Zoe has planned for the father/daughter reunion may take more than his 30 days of leave. It starts with dinner out at Buffalo Wild Wings, then golf, bowling, skating lessons and any place with a pool or water, as they head into a week of spring break.

The two stayed in touch while he was overseas via video calls and phone calls at least once a week. School staff has been especially accommodating, he said, using technology in the classroom so he could keep updated with his daughters school projects. Its like a family here: very, very supportive, Thompson

Pictured with the Thompsons are Catawba Trail Principal Denise Barth. (Photo by Renee Ittner-McManus/RIM Photography)

said.

Catawba Trail Elementary principal Denise Barth agrees the schools ties with the military are strong. The school not only boasts a club specifically for its many military dependents, a partnership with Ft. Jacksons 260th battalion brings about 20 soldiers a month on campus to mentor the students during its lunch and learn program. The students, in return, help with cards and care packages for deployed soldiers overseas for the holidays.

Fittingly, today, soldiers were on hand running the schools third annual Operation Field Day which made the reunion especially powerful, said Barth.

Thompson couldnt agree more. There are always tears, tears of joy, he said. I was surprised I was still standingmy knees felt weak. My daughter brings out my soft side.

Zoe summed it up best, Its not a good day, its the best day!

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From Afghanistan to Catawba Trail Elementary, Zoe Thompson reunites with her dad - ColaDaily.com

The Afghan government is trying to grab the attention of President Donald Trump and gain greater U.S. support by dangling its massive and untouched wealth of minerals, including lithium, the silvery metal used in mobile phone and computer batteries that is considered essential to modern life.

But tapping into that wealth, which also includes coal, copper, rare earths and far more that estimates say could be worth from $1 trillion to $3 trillion, is likely a long way off.

Security has worsened in Afghanistan the past year, with Taliban insurgents seizing territory and inflicting increasing casualties on Afghan forces. The regions with the greatest lithium deposits, for example, are currently too dangerous to enter.

So far, Trump's policy on Afghanistan remains unknown.

He has said little about America's longest-running war, beyond saying on the campaign trail that he wishes the United States were not involved in Afghanistan. Last month, the top U.S. military commander called for an increase in American forces to help bring security, a call Kabul enthusiastically backed. But the White House has not said which direction it will go toward beefing up the American role, drawing it down further or something else entirely. There are currently around 8,400 U.S. troops in the country, involved in training Afghan forces and in counter-terrorism operations.

Kabul clearly hopes the promise of mineral wealth will entice Trump into making a greater commitment.

"Afghanistan can be an appropriate place for U.S. industry, and specifically the mining sector, to look at opportunities for investment" because so few potential deposits have been mined, said Mohammad Humayon Qayoumi, chief adviser to Afghan president on infrastructure, human capital and technology.

"Afghanistan has always been interested in the U.S. investing in many areas, specifically the mining area. Within mining, there are some areas that are strategic materials such as lithium," Qayoumi told The Associated Press.

President Ashraf Ghani spoke with Trump in December, and they discussed the mineral wealth. "There was a quite good matter of interest from President Trump's administration," Qayoumi said. The two leaders spoke again in February for the first time since the inauguration in talks that focused on the security situation.

A White House official said the U.S. sees sustainable economic development as "essential" to Afghanistan's stability, including in the mining sector. He said the U.S. will work with Afghan businessmen and officials on reforms that "enhance private sector development" and contribute to development. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Mineral resources have been touted as potentially transformative for Afghanistan, a key to lifting it out of poverty and bringing major wealth for development.

Interest was particularly spiked by a 2007 report by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Afghan government that found the country's deposits of a wide variety of minerals were much larger than had been known from surveys decades earlier by the Soviets.

The mountainous, land-locked nation has huge, largely untouched reserves of copper, iron ore, chromite, mercury, zinc, gems, including rubies and emeralds, as well as gold and silver. Particularly alluring is its lithium, crucial to laptop and cellphone batteries.

But getting those minerals out of the ground and doing it in a way that actually benefits the country as a whole has been elusive.

The war has scared away investors. Also, corruption is rife, and many of the mines that do exist are controlled by local warlords who reap the profits. The Taliban are believed to earn millions from illegal mining.

In 2016, anti-corruption watchdog Global Witness warned that the mining sector was fueling the war. It pointed to lapis lazuli a blue stone found almost exclusively in Afghanistan saying local strongmen, lawmakers and Taliban insurgents were all in a violent competition over control of the mines, earning $20 million a year from illegal mining and in the process destabilizing northeastern Badakhshan province.

Integrity Watch Afghanistan said in a 2015 report that the great majority of more than 300 mining contracts awarded so far "may have been exploited by local strongmen under the protection of warlords." It examined five mines and estimated the government was losing tens of millions of dollars from those mines alone because of corruption that means taxes, rents and royalties are not collected.

The main lithium deposits are in three regions Ghazni province in the east and Herat and Nimroz provinces in the west. Herat and Nimroz are the scene of regular fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban, and the areas of Ghazni where the lithium is located have a strong Taliban presence.

The government's mines and petroleum ministry has also been in disarray. The minister's post has been empty for nearly a year since the resignation of Daud Shah Saba, who often complained of "powerbrokers" controlling the mineral resources. Finally, last week, the government named Nargis Nehan, a prominent rights and anti-corruption campaigner, as acting minister.

Introducing her, Second Vice President Sarwar Danesh vowed action to reform the sector, "sever the hands of traitors" controlling minerals and bring "balanced development."

Wahidullah Shahrani, who served as mines and petroleum minister from 2010 to 2013, said that at that time there was a major push by the government and international partners to lay a path for developing the sector. They worked out a clear timeline and strategy. Lithium was identified as a priority.

But since then, the security situation has dramatically worsened as U.S. troops numbering more than 100,000 in 2011 began to withdraw and hand over the fight against the Taliban to Afghan forces. Multiple areas that were once considered safe have fallen into turmoil.

Shahrani said the priority now is for the ministry to clean up management of the mineral sector and draw up a plan going forward.

The U.S. can play a major role in helping that.

"The government of Afghanistan right now doesn't have either the financial or the technical resources," he said.

Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:
Afghanistan dangles lithium wealth to win Trump support - ABC News

As the military campaign to recapture the city of Raqqa intensifies with the arrival of U.S. forces in Syria, and the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul reaches its last stages, the decimation of the Islamic State groups self-styled caliphate appears imminent. In preparation for ISISs final act, much has been written on what Iraq and Syria will look like in the wake of its reign. However, beyond discussion about the terrorist diaspora that will descend upon the United States and Europe as thousands of foreign fighters return home, little attention has been paid to the future territorial ambitions of the ISIS core. In September 2014, at the height of ISISs power, local Iraqis and Syrians comprised 90 percent and 70 percent respectively of ISISs military cadre in its so-called Islamic State. When the caliphate falls, what will this core tenet of fighters -- discarded by their home communities and fluent in the jihadi organizations military and ideological tradecraft -- pick as their next theater?

It may be tempting to address this question from a military perspective alone -- especially in light of President Trumpsmultibillion-dollar fortification of the defense budget -- but an understanding of ISISs ideological infrastructure provides a more accurate guidebook. The Islamic State groups ideological beliefs and military activity are often analyzed separately, by different U.S. agencies, with de-radicalization efforts aimed at ideology, and military activity informing Americas battlefield response. However, a close read of this influential ISIS manifesto suggests that this siloed approach may be misdirecting the United States broader counterterrorism campaign. Pairing the main tenets of ISIS ideology with the groups past military activities helps to better understand the organizations operational goals, its ideological selection of targets, and the tactics it uses to ensure longevity. Using these three factors to forecast what country ISIS will seize as its next territorial conquest, Afghanistan emerges as an attractive and tenable target.

The Management of Savagery

While relatively unknown to the Western world, a booklet called The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass has been claimed by several ISIS commanders as part of the organizations curriculum. Published to the Internet in 2004 under the pseudonym Abu Bakr Naji, Management of Savagery was originally written for al-Qaeda but was rejected by leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for being too radical. Its strategy did, however, resonate with top ISIS commanders Baathist roots, and it subsequently spilled over to guide that organizations two-tiered crusade to consolidate the Muslim world territorially and ideologically.

Management of Savagery is striking because it resembles a comprehensive military plan more than the outline of a specified Islamist ideology; it outlines a series of military campaigns with the ultimate goal of restoring the caliphate and establishing an Islamic state. First, in the stage of the power of vexation and exhaustion, Naji instructs militants to exhaust the chosen state and overthrow the governing authorities, creating savagery and chaos in order to force the targeted society to suffer from the absence of security. Second, the stage of the administration of savagery prescribes the militants management of the regions of savagery, which, if successful, will enable them to consolidate control throughout the conquered territory.

ISISs Campaign Strategy Applied to Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a viable target because ISISs stage-one goal of vexing and exhausting the state has already been accomplished by domestic actors. The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan, and the foreign military presence is perpetual yet fluctuating. Against that backdrop, political violence, corruption, and a stagnating economy have broken down Afghanistans political space. In the eyes of the Islamic State group, this makes Afghanistan an easy operational target because the countrys lack of democracy and security helps ISIS exacerbate existing societal divides. ISISs affiliate in Afghanistan, known as the Khorasan Province, has successfully exercised this tactic to gain territory in at least seven Afghan provinces. It is important to note that similar to ISISs tactic of seizing upon historically significant territory that negates the sovereignty of Iraq and Syrias state borders, the Khorasan Province claims jurisdiction over a historical region incorporating parts of modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. Defining territory based upon its historical importance to Islam, as opposed to nation-state borders, furthers ISISs goal of delegitimizing Afghanistans institutions and planting fertile roots for a prospective takeover by ISIS core.

Second, Management of Savagery, in addition to ISISs record of attacks around the globe, reflects that the group seeks to eliminate what it considers apostate Muslims in addition to foreign infidels. Foreign troops in Afghanistan deployed by NATO, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia have been frequent targets of ISISs vendetta against what it considers infidels. Additionally, similar to the Taliban, ISIS views much of Afghanistan as occupied by apostate Muslims given the countrys reenergized focus on education -- especially for women -- in the early 2000s. This apostate narrative is furthered by the fact that ethnic and tribal affiliations shape the average Afghans identity more profoundly than an adherence to Islam. Thus, Afghanistans role as host to so-called apostates and infidels makes it an attractive theater for ISIS to target both enemy groups on one territorial battleground.

Finally, looking to the regions where ISIS has most effectively acquired affiliates and sympathetic proxies -- Egypt, Libya, Pakistan -- it has done so by absorbing existing Islamist militants into its fold. In Afghanistan, the Khorasan Province is already capitalizing on the countrys historical struggle with Islamist and tribal factions. While it competes with the Taliban -- which benefits from their Deobandi and Pashtun roots in the local population -- ISIS has exploited personal and factional grievances within established militant networks, along with bribery, to co-opt defection. Former Taliban commander and Guantanamo Bay detainee Abdul Rauf Aliza defected from the Taliban and became the Khorasan Provinces deputy commander. Additionally, multiple commanders and officials of the Pakistani Taliban publicly defected to pledge allegiance to the Khorasan Province. By absorbing Taliban members and other Islamist militants into its ranks, ISIS has increased its human capital while gaining operatives with knowledge of Afghanistan and Pakistans unique histories, geographies, and socio-political environments. Notably, this method also masquerades as ISISs ability to administer and manage savagery.

While we cannot know whether ISIS will try to manufacture another caliphate after Iraq and Syria fall from its grasp, the organizations promotion of territory as a central component of its brand makes it likely that ISIS will at least attempt to recreate its claim to divinely sanctioned land. Given that the international community was blindsided by the conception of ISISs first caliphate, the United States should rely on ISISs ideology for more than a rhetorical battle about terrorisms terminology. By extending the tactics outlined in Management of Savagery to the battlefield, the United States and its allies may be able to prevent Afghanistan from becoming the next Islamic State.

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Will ISIS Rebuild in Afghanistan? - RealClearWorld

Afghanistan and Singapore yesterday signed an agreement under which Kabul will send senior officials to Singapore to attend customised programmes on public administration, civil service development, vocational training, urban planning and sustainable development.

Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, who is in Singapore on his first official visit, witnessed the signing of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) on technical cooperation together with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Mr Ghani's visit is also the first official visit by an Afghan president to Singapore.

At the Istana, he called on President Tony Tan Keng Yam.

The two presidents reaffirmed the friendly relations between both countries, and agreed that there was scope to enhance cooperation and exchanges in areas of mutual interest, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement.

Later, Mr Lee and Mr Ghani discussed opportunities for collaboration in areas such as public service training and anti-corruption measures. They also spoke about national and regional developments, and expressed support for the international community's efforts in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has sent 700 officials to Singapore for training in areas such as public administration and governance, under the Singapore Cooperation Programme that started in 1992.

Dr Tan and Mr Lee said Singapore will share its development experience with Afghanistan, and will also support the Central Asian country's development through the programme.

Mr Ghani was hosted to lunch by Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean.

They discussed developments in their respective regions, and explored potential areas of bilateral and security cooperation.

Mr Ghani wrapped up his visit at a National University of Singapore Society dialogue, during which he acknowledged the challenges of terrorism, corruption and criminal networks in Afghanistan, but said the resource-rich country held many business opportunities.

He highlighted the areas of energy, mineral mining and water management as some examples.

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Afghanistan, Singapore reaffirm friendly relations - The Straits Times

LONDON: Afghanistan are set for another milestone after it was announced on Friday they will play their first match at Lords, taking on a side led by former New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum.

Now one of the worlds leading associate, or junior cricket, countries Afghanistan are closing in on becoming a Test match nation.

They are top of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Intercontinental Cup standings, with the winner set to gain Test status next year.

Their 50-over match against MCC at Lords, the home of cricket, will take place on July 11.

Two Afghan players, Mohammad Nabi and Hamid Hassan, were previously on the MCC Young Cricketers scheme.

MCC president Matthew Fleming said: I am thrilled that we will be welcoming Afghanistan to Lords this summer. I have seen first-hand the talent and passion for cricket the nation has and this fixture can only be a good thing for the ongoing development of Afghan cricket.

It is the latest landmark on a very exciting journey for Afghan cricket and MCC will need to field an extremely strong side in order to compete, the former England one-day international all-rounder added.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2017

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Afghanistan to make Lord's debut in July - DAWN.com