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Hecker assumes command of US, NATO air forces in Afghanistan Stars and Stripes KABUL, Afghanistan Maj. Gen. James B. Hecker became the top Air Force general in Afghanistan on Tuesday by assuming command of the 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force and the NATO Air Command. Hecker took over from Air Force Maj.

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Hecker assumes command of US, NATO air forces in Afghanistan - Stars and Stripes

An American special forces soldier has been killed in a combat operation against Islamic State extremists in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said Sunday.

"The soldier was mortally wounded late Saturday during an operation in Nangarhar Province" in eastern Afghanistan, Navy Capt. Bill Salvin said in a message on the official Twitter account of the NATO-led Resolute Support mission.

The soldier was a special forces operator helping Afghan forces battle ISIS militants and was killed in the Achin district of Nangarhar province.

The circumstances of the death were unclear and Salvin said more information could be released later, Reuters reported.

The Pentagon said the soldiers identity would be released pending notification of next of kin.

The ISIS terror group has a growing presence in eastern Afghanistan, where it has battled both Afghan forces and the much larger and more powerful Taliban.

Insurgents killed at least 13 Afghan security forces in separate attacks, officials said Sunday.

Munir Ahmad Farhad, spokesman for the governor of the northern Balkh province, said a roadside bomb killed nine security forces and wounded several others the night before in the Chimtal district, where they were waging an ongoing operation against the Taliban. He said five insurgents have been killed and dozens wounded.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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US special forces soldier killed in Afghanistan operation ...

Late one night in February, villagers in the Dast-e-Archi district of northern Afghanistan heard strange sounds from the nearby Panj river, which marks the border with Tajikistan.

One farmer said he saw the bright lights of planes landing close to the riverbank, just inside Afghan territory in an area controlled by Taliban militants.

Word of American airstrikes or raids against insurgents travels fast in Kunduz province, but the next morning no one had any information about such an operation. The villagers concluded that the planes belonged to another powerful country seeking to press its influence in Afghanistan.

It would have had to be the Russians, said the farmer, who asked to be identified as Gul Agha. These areas are outside government control so the question is raised, why were the planes landing there?

Reports have swirled for months across northern Afghanistan that Russia is increasing its support for the Taliban, providing weapons and financing to the militant group that has battled U.S. and international forces since 2001.

If true, it would be a sharp reversal of Moscows troubled Cold War adventures in Afghanistan, where leaders of what became the Taliban helped drive out Soviet soldiers who invaded in 1979 to prop up a communist government in Kabul. Back then, it was the U.S. under President Reagan that backed the Afghan mujahedin, or freedom fighters, against the Soviets.

Russias return to Afghanistan, according to analysts and Western diplomats in Kabul, is intended to counter the spread of Islamic State-affiliated militants in Central Asia and further challenge the United States at a time when the Trump administration has failed to articulate a plan for ending the Afghan war.

Trump has not appointed an ambassador to Kabul and has barely spoken about the longest conflict in U.S. history, although commanders have said they want to add to the 8,400 American troops still stationed here.

The U.S. has become less active while Russia has increased its activities, said a Western diplomat in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity under diplomatic protocol.

U.S. and Afghan officials have reacted with alarm since Alexander Mantytskiy, the Russian ambassador to Kabul, acknowledged in December that Moscow maintained contact with the Taliban. Earlier this month, Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, told Congress that it was fair to assume Russia was supporting the Taliban, although he did not disclose details.

Russia denies supplying the Taliban with weapons and insists its contacts are solely aimed at bringing the insurgents to the negotiating table. Zamir Kabulov, President Vladimir Putins special envoy to Afghanistan, has called the allegations of material support to the insurgents absolute lies...aimed at justifying the failure of the U.S. military and politicians.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid also denied that the group received money or arms from Russia.

But an official with the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency, said Russian intelligence agents were providing the Taliban with strategic advice, money and arms, including old anti-aircraft rockets.

The Russian support has played a role in the Talibans advances in Kunduz, where they have twice briefly seized the provincial capital, Afghanistans fifth-largest city, said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

It also represents another effort by Putin to exert power globally while weakening the U.S.

Russia has intervened in the Syrian war on behalf of President Bashar Assad, and U.S. intelligence officials believe Putin directed a secret campaign to tilt the 2016 presidential election in Trumps favor.

U.S. officials see Russia as a threat to an already struggling government in Kabul which is losing an increasing amount of territory and troops to Taliban advances and to Afghan civilians, who are being killed and injured in record numbers, mainly in Taliban attacks.

We know that actions by Russia in Afghanistan are meant to undermine the work of the United States and NATO to support the Afghan government, said Capt. William Salvin, spokesman for the U.S.-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan.

The Afghan official said Russian intelligence agents have held meetings with Taliban representatives in Tajikistan and Moscow, and occasionally enter Afghan territory in border provinces like Kunduz. He added that Russians were serving as creative minds and strategists for the Taliban at a kind of academy in Iran.

Northern Afghanistan, particularly Kunduz, is of particular interest to Russia because Kabuls control in the area is limited and the province borders Tajikistan, a Russian ally that has helped mediate contacts with the Taliban.

In northern Afghanistan, Russian activity is well known to everybody, said Haroun Mir, a political analyst who regularly travels to the area.

Mir said Russia has increased contacts with the Taliban over the last year, coinciding with the spread of Islamic State militants. Afghan and Western officials believe that many of the militants fled an army crackdown in Pakistans tribal belt and are of Central Asian origin, raising fears in Moscow that they could strike Russian interests.

Waheed Muzhda, a former official in the Taliban government that ruled Kabul until the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, said Russian outreach to the Taliban began a decade ago, when it twice invited insurgent representatives to Moscow to express concern over Uzbek militants fighting alongside them.

Tayyab Agha, head of the Talibans political wing, assured Moscow that the militants would not create problems for Russia in Central Asia, Muzhda said.

Russia now appears to be using those contacts to portray itself as a peacemaker.

Moscow has held two multinational meetings on Afghanistan since December and scheduled a third for mid-April, at which representatives from 12 countries, including China, Pakistan, Iran, India and Afghanistan, are expected to attend.

The United States which has failed repeatedly to goad the Taliban into talks declined to participate, saying it had not been consulted in advance.

Although the Russian initiative is seen as a long shot, analysts said it could emerge as a counterweight to U.S. influence in Afghanistan.

When we had increasing contacts with the Taliban, Russia was very suspicious, and now that they are, we dont like it, said Barnett Rubin, a former State Department official in Afghanistan during the Obama administration who is now associate director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.

For whatever motive, [Russia] is doing what should be done, which is trying to bring the Taliban into a regional political solution to the conflict in Afghanistan.

Special correspondent Liuhto reported from Kabul and Times staff writer Shashank Bengali from Mumbai, India. Special correspondent Mansur Mirovalev contributed to this report from Moscow.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia

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In Afghanistan, Russia is working with its Cold War foe the Taliban, complicating the US' longest war - Los Angeles Times

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AFGHANISTAN An Army Special Forces soldier was killed while conducting counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan late Saturday, April 8th US forces in Afghanistan have announced in a release.

The soldier was mortally wounded while helping Afghan forces conduct operations against Khorasan, the local branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Navy Capt. Bill Salvin, a spokesman for the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan, told CNN.

The commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson, offered deepest condolences to the family and friends of our fallen comrade on behalf of all US forces there. We will always remember our fallen comrades and commit ourselves to deliver on their sacrifice.

US troops regularly perform counterterrorism operations against the ISIS affiliate, which has a presence in Nangarhar Province, where the soldier was killed. Those operations are sometimes carried out in conjunction with Afghan forces.

The US counterterrorism mission is separate from the NATO-led effort to train, advise and assist the Afghan army and police force.

There are about 8,400 US troops in Afghanistan. This is the first US combat death in Afghanistan in 2017. The number of US casualties in Afghanistan has fallen sharply since the end of US-led combat operations in 2014.

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US special operations soldier killed in Afghanistan - fox6now.com

By David Frommer By David Frommer April 10 at 6:00 AM David Frommer currently serves as a chaplain in the California Army National Guard and as cantor at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco.

I looked at the flier advertising my upcoming Seders at Bagram Air Fieldin Afghanistan: Commemorate The Miracle that The LORD Redeemed Our Forefathers and Us from Egypt, praising the LORD for all the Miracles HE continues to do for us. As a summary of how Southern Baptists, like its author, the command chaplain, understand the holiday of Passover, it was perfect. As a reflection of my Reform Jewish approach to everything from theology to publicity, it needed some work.

Looks good, sir, I wrote back to the lieutenant colonel. I would only recommend changing everything. How about this? From musket balls to matzah balls, American Jews have observed the Festival of Passover while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces throughout our nations history. Join the Jewish Community in a celebration of Freedom as we share songs, stories and, of course, great food!

It was catchy, but several key points of my alternate text were also completely aspirational. With just a few weeks until the Seder in 2016, the Jewish Community at Bagram was about as concrete as the Ten Lost Tribes its numbers entirely unknown since the last rabbi rotated out of theater several months before I arrived.

And as for great food, unless the installations dining facility agreed to support my special meals request for Passover-friendly fare, the entire menu would consist of packaged kosher Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) the kind of food not even airlines serve anymore.The religious support team at Bagram had apparently acquired plenty of Seder kits from the Defense Logistics Agency, which included critical ritual equipment such as packets of horseradish sauce and freeze-dried shank bones, but their condition after weeks of travel and months of storage in a war zone was anyones guess. The more I thought about it, the more the fliers original wording seemed appropriate. It would take a miracle for this to work.

After years of celebrating Passover at home, I didnt expect to learn much more from the experience. The story was certainly dramatic, even if I wasnt sure about its supernatural moments, but watching my grandparents nod off as the Seders length outstripped the Academy Awards was hardly what youd call inspiring. Besides, I was less concerned on my way to Bagram with lessons than with logistics.

As major Jewish holidays go, Passover is perhaps the least compatible with the unfamiliar surroundings and limited culinary resources of a place such as Afghanistan. Whereas apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah were as ubiquitous as coffee and hash browns easily substituted as latkes for Hanukkah, celebrating Passover forthe Army felt like a cross between staging a scene from The Ten Commandments and surviving an elimination challenge on Top Chef.

As the first and only cantor serving in military chaplaincy, I wanted to set a good example. But my five years of training at Hebrew Union College in New York hadnt prepared me for coordinating a Seder with Army sergeants who found themselves flummoxed by many of the holidays basic terms starting with charoset, which proved impossible even to pronounce, let alone prepare.

* * *

I did my best to avoid as many potential pitfalls as possible ahead of time by soliciting frequent status updates from the master sergeant who ran the bases chapel. How are we doing on Seder kits? I asked, a couple of weeks before my arrival.

Dont worry, sir, he assured me. All our kits are from 2014, but we called in veterinary services to test them, and they said the food is still okay to eat.

Okay for us, I wondered, or okay for the animals? Just because some undernourished Afghan mountain goat wouldnt keel over from eating a 2-year-old package of kosher beef stew didnt give me high hopes for how it would affect my own digestive system, delicately pampered with organic, free-range matzoh during my childhood on the Upper East Side.

Where are we with the SMR to the DFAC? Well need an answer on that ASAP, I urged upon my arrival, trying to use as many acronyms as possible to show I meant business.

At our last IPR, it was a NOGO, the sergeant replied, but you have DIRLAUTH to try to convince them otherwise.

I had to seek help, if not admit defeat. Er, whats DILTHAUR?

DIRLAUTH. Direct Liaison Authority, he translated.

Where exactly is the SNAFU? I pressed. I was running low on acronyms but refused to abandon my position.

Its the tchar-o-sit, he said, mispronouncing the fruit, nut and wine mixture to sound like a phrase in Pashto. The DFAC NCOIC told me they cant make anything with wine, and they dont have cinnamon anywhere in the AO.

Fine, Ill send an RFI to DLA for cinnamon if I have to, and DIRLAUTH the wine myself! I concluded, confident Id made my point, if not sure of what Id actually said.

[Go ahead and debate the Middle East at your Passover Seder]

I had bigger worries beyond the food. All my preparations would be for naught if troops decided they would rather observe Passover by watching a movie at the USO. Before leaving California, I joked that if I didnt find any Jewish personnel, it would be more dangerous to return home and try to justify to my wife, Carla, why Id missed my familys Seder than it would be to stay in Afghanistan. Since the sole purpose of my short mobilization was to support Passover for Jewish personnel, I needed evidence of a mission accomplished, no matter what. I had brought several Army yarmulkes with me, in case I needed to convert some non-Jewish soldiers for a quick photo op, but I was hoping it wouldnt come to that.

As I circulated Bagram in my first few days there, I tried to advertise my own camouflage yarmulke as much as possible, pushing it higher and higher on my head until I started to look like one of Santas elves. I peppered my conversation with Yiddish phrases whenever I noticed someone with a last name I recognized from Hebrew school.

Fortunately, turnout for the first night of Passover far exceeded my expectations. Of the 28 people who joined me, half were Jews, while the rest were assorted non-Jewish guests, including three Protestant chaplains and one Catholic chaplain many of whom were attending their first Seder. Perhaps none of the Jews had a more surprising story than a private first class who had been born and raised in the Haredi community of Borough Park, Brooklyn. I didnt believe him until he showed me a picture of himself as a teenager with payot and a shtreimel.

He had eventually separated from the Orthodox community; now, in his mid-20s, he was starting a new chapter as a combat medic in the Armys 10thMountain Division. Like a lot of Jews in the military from traditional backgrounds, he tried to observe a stricter form of kashrut for Passover, so I was glad to be able to provide him with glatt kosher charoset, hard-boiled eggs and other delicacies from Jewish support organizations like koshertroops.com.

The rest of us enjoyed a delicious gluten-free meal provided by a joint civilian-military team of five heroic dining personnel, who not only delivered the food to the chapel before we started, but also stayed until the very end to help clean up enduring all 13 verses of Who Knows One. We left the kosher MREs off to the side for only the most dedicated enthusiasts, one of whom turned out to be a Protestant chaplain with a baffling addiction to gefilte fish. I tried to match his eagerness but quickly set my own piece aside when I smothered it with 2014-vintage horseradish sauce and it started fizzing like a science experiment. The Seder lasted almost three hours, but morale remained high and no one left early less because of my cantorial arias, it turned out, and more because of the rare opportunity to drink alcohol on their deployment.

* * *

As my time in Afghanistan ended last year, my reflections centered on the inspiration I took from the Jewish personnel I met there. Not only were they separated from their families, but often, due to simple numbers and geography, they were also the only Jewish person serving in their particular region of Afghanistan, a country bigger in size than France. They were genuinely excited to share and enjoy the music, the stories and the traditions of a favorite holiday theyd grown up with at home, even if only for a few hours with a makeshift community of largely non-Jews.

Definitely cool to get back in touch with Judaism for a little bit while here, a Jewish signal officer from Cleveland emailed me a few days later. Throughout the generations, Jews have created community and joined in religious ritual, defying all inconvenience and improbability a greater miracle, I think, than the parting of any sea or the preservation of any Seder kit.

A year later, however, I find I appreciate a broader lesson from the experience, as well. Our country is fractured along different divides racial, political, socioeconomic, religious, etc. Where can we look for a model of collaboration that persists, even in the face of stressful and difficult circumstances?

The military may seem an unlikely place to seek help for our national discourse, but perhaps a model can be found in its Chaplain Corps. Just as the Israelites redemption was critically assisted by Pharaohs daughter and the Egyptian midwives, my Passover Seders in Afghanistan could not have succeeded without the support of my fellow chaplains and noncommissioned officers none of whom were Jewish.

[What the Hanukkah story teaches us about the Trump administration]

The Constitution guarantees soldiers the right of religious freedom, but it doesnt require the military to make that easy for them. The institution of the Chaplain Corps goes beyond the letter of the law to ensure that its spirit our American value of honoring differences is what guides the Armys approach to accommodating soldiers of every faith. Like our country at this moment, the military is always inclined to favor uniformity over diversity, but its chaplains exist to balance that inclination with generosity and prevent it from descending into callousness or bigotry.

Passover challenges us to remember the stranger, for we were all strangers once in a strange land. As strange as Afghanistan was, the U.S. Army was a lot stranger. I had to spend time in both to realize that pluralism in America is not just a value, but a miracle well worth celebrating.

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How I led a Passover Seder in Afghanistan (complete with Army-issued horseradish) - Washington Post