US Wasting Money on Afghanistan Infrastructure While US Infrastructure Continues Decline

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Joshua Foust tweeted a link to a story in today’s Washington Post about the most recent report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Foust’s tweet succinctly summed up the situation: “#SIGAR body slams the war in Afghanistan… again, and no one will probably ever care.” He followed that up with more: “This will destroy you if you dwell on it too much, but the blithe way DC encourages zero memory and zero accountability really is awful.”

Coming on the heels of the exposure of General William Caldwell’s disgusting 2010 coverup of hellish conditions at Afghanistan’s Dawood National Military Hospital in Kabul, it’s hard to see how Foust can be wrong in his pessimism. Where was the outrage over such horrid coniditions? Why is Caldwell still in the military?

The SIGAR report eviscerates the US counterinsurgency strategy that is based on the assumption that building a Western type of “infrastructure” will produce an Afghan populace that develops such adulation for the purveyors of such cultural “improvement” that they will immediately in fall in line with all other desires of the West.

The Post story opens:

A U.S. initiative to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on construction projects in Afghanistan, originally pitched as a vital tool in the military campaign against the Taliban, is running so far behind schedule that it will not yield benefits until most U.S. combat forces have departed the country, according to a government inspection report to be released Monday.

A few paragraphs later, we get more of the explanation of how the strategy was supposed to work:

Many U.S. military commanders, diplomats and reconstruction experts have long believed that large infrastructure projects were essential to fixing Iraq and Afghanistan.

The next sentence, however, suggests that David Petraeus saw through this strategy and understood what really mattered in the “battle for hearts and minds”: Read more →

Pakistan Press Reporting UK Lawmakers Wrote Letter Urging Obama to Stop Drone Strikes in Pakistan

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Virtually every press outlet I scan in Pakistan is reporting today that a group of at least twelve member of the House of Lords and House of Commons have written a letter variously reported as addressed to Barack Obama, the United States and to NATO, urging an end to US drone strikes in Pakistan. So far, however, I have seen no mention of the letter in the British or US press. [Update: Chris Woods of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism points out in comment number 1 below that the letter was sent to the London Times and provides a link to its full text.]

It appears that two major concerns are stated in the letter. First, it is claimed that the drone strikes put the UK and US at risk because the drone strikes provide justification for terrorist strikes. Second, the letter expresses concern for the killing of innocent people in the drone strikes. There is also concern that the strikes do damage to Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Here is the description from the Express Tribune:

A squad of UK parliamentarians have written to President Barack Obama to stop drone attacks in Pakistan, Radio Pakistan reported on Thursday.

The 12 parliamentarians in a letter written to the United States said that the Britain and Western countries are under threat because drone attacks provide justification for future terrorist activities.

The letter also stated that innocent people are killed in drone strikes.

The parliamentarians said that the attacks are creating hatred for the US amongst Pakistanis and they are also harming a British allied country’s sovereignty.

Both Dawn and Pakistan Today list the same twelve MP’s (although in different order in their lists) as having signed the letter. From Dawn:

George Galway, Yasmin Qureshi, John Hemming, Jeraldko Famin, Paul Flain and Simon Disnek include members of House of Commons while Lord Nazir Ahmad, Lord Hussain, Lord Steel Acowood, Lord Jad, , Lord E Escadel and Lord Eubarry are from House of Lords who have signed the letter written to the US President.

This is a very interesting development, coming just on the heels of complaints from the left in Denmark:

Danish lawmakers are levelling unprecedented criticism at the US president, Barack Obama, for his use of remote-controlled attack drones in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Rasmus Helveg Petersen, Radikale foreign policy spokesperson, told Politiken newspaper that Obama’s actions mirror those of the terrorists he professes to be fighting against.

“It’s terrible,” said Petersen. “The United States has no right to carry out these types of executions of suspected political adversaries. It contravenes international law.”

Petersen added that executing political adversaries within another country’s borders was tantamount to terrorism.

But there is even more:

The comments came after Søren Pind, of the opposition party Venstre, in an interview with the magazine Ræson, likened the drone attacks to “assassination”.

“I criticised George Bush for allowing torture during his presidency,” Pind told Politiken. “But what he is doing is much worse and violates the principals of the Western world.”

Finally, the article quotes “Ole Wæver, who teaches political science at the University of Copenhagen” who points out that Obama has not lived up to the expectations of Danes and that he has “used up his goodwill account.”

With the opening ceremony of the London Olympics just hours away and the nonstop coverage of the Romney gaffe-orama, it will be very difficult for the drone letter to break into the British press, but if it does, it is hard to see how the Obama administration can avoid putting out a response of some sort.

Conflation of Military and Sports to Give Us Basketball Game on Ship Used for Rendition, Torture

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Colorado-born Abdulrahman al-Awlaki will never get to choose between college sports and the military. A drone strike ordered by Obama killed him in October.

The sickness in American culture today that praises violence has seeped into college athletics in a manner that leaves me cold. I am appalled when college football or baseball teams “honor” the military by incorporating camouflage motifs into their uniforms. College sports are college sports and the military is the military. Yes, in both college sports and the military young people of the same age group are the primary participants, but sports at one time were merely entertaining pastimes and the military ultimately comes down to being about killing and maiming. Directing the team spirit of college sports toward military praise always comes off to me as an attempt to move praise of the military to a level of unquestioning support that can only have bad consequences.

We have been reminded recently that unquestioning support of college sports also leads to bad consequences. The debacle at Penn State was enabled in large part by the elevation of the Penn State football coaching staff to a level where they were treated as completely above the law, even when it came to sexual abuse of young boys. Unquestioning support of the military (George W. Bush: “You’re either with us or against us”) likewise has enabled it to move above the law. The Great War on Terror under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney relied heavily on the illegal practices of rendition and torture. Barack Obama, as suggested by Tom Junod, seems to have moved another large step beyond the law into extrajudicial killing:

But what if the the kind of militant who was captured and tortured under Bush is the kind of militant who is simply being killed under President Obama?

Listen to the announcer’s words near the beginning of this YouTube of the national anthem being played at a game at this year’s NCAA College World Series in Omaha. Why is it necessary to say “And now ladies and gentlemen, please join us in honoring America and those who support our freedom at home and abroad” at a college baseball game? Isn’t honoring the country enough? Why do we need more of a military reference beyond the military color guard? This was not a one-off event. Virtually the same script was used at every regional and super-regional game I attended here in Gainesville where teams were vying for the right to go to Omaha, so it clearly is part of the script put into place by the NCAA. Normal home games for the Gators during the regular season did not employ the language.

But now the conflation of the military and college sports has moved to a level where the symbolism is just too warped for me to allow it to go unchallenged. Last year, I was content merely to spout lots of snark on Twitter about conflating college sports and the military while the 2011 Carrier Classic was played on the USS Carl Vinson. This year, however, my Florida Gators will be playing in the game and it will be held on the USS Bataan. I have written previously on the Bataan. It has a particularly upsetting history, as I quoted Clive Stafford-Smith and the Reprieve project: Read more →

GAO Catches DoD Changing Definitions to Claim Progress Training Afghans, Misses Real Risks

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Patrick Eddington pointed us toward a report (pdf) released yesterday by the GAO. The report is titled “Afghanistan Security: Long-standing Challenges May Affect Progress and Sustainment of Afghan National Security Forces”. GAO describes their reasons for the report (which is also Congressional testimony):

This testimony discusses findings from GAO reports and ongoing work that cover (1) progress reported and tools used to assess ANSF capability, (2) challenges affecting the development of capable ANSF, and (3) use of U.S. Security Force Assistance Advisory Teams to advise and assist ANSF.

The report does a very good job of catching the Defense Department redefining the highest category of ANSF capability in order to claim progress in the percentage of units that have achieved the highest level. However, as Eddington pointed out in his tweet, GAO falls far short of its second goal of enumerating the “challenges affecting the development of capable ANSF”, as the report is entirely silent on the two biggest hurdles faced: defections and green on blue killings.

Here is Reuters’ Missy Ryan describing the use of changed descriptors to claim progress:

The Pentagon’s decision to change the standards used to grade the success of Afghan police and soldiers, who are a centerpiece of U.S. strategy for smoothly exiting the war in Afghanistan, helped it present a positive picture of those forces’ abilities, a U.S. government watchdog reported on Tuesday.

“These changes … were responsible, in part, for its reported increase in April 2012 of the number of ANSF units rated at the highest level,” the Government Accountability Office said in a new report on Afghan national security forces, known as ANSF.

In a twice-annual report to Congress in April 2012, the Defense Department reported that Afghan police and soldiers “continued to make substantial progress,” classifying 15 out of 219 army units as able to operate ‘independently with assistance’ from foreign advisors. Almost 40 out of 435 police units got the same rating.

And what was the redefinition of terms that was used? Merely a slight change that completely negates its meaning:

“Key definitions used in capability assessments … have changed several times,” the GAO said. Its report said the Pentagon’s highest rating for Afghan forces had changed from ‘independent’ in early 2011 to ‘independent with advisors’ later that year.

Gosh, the only way that DoD could show that the ANSF had increased the number of units rated at the highest level of capability was to redefine that highest level of capability. So, instead of “independent”, the most capable units are now “independent with advisors”, which is, you know, NOT independent. Read more →

Huge Backlog Remains in Karachi for NATO Supplies; Driver Killed Near Peshawar

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The Express Tribune reports today that despite the fact that the NATO supply route through Pakistan reopened three weeks ago, the huge backlog of thousands of trucks at the port in Karachi has still not yet seen the first truck leave. The trucks that are moving along the supply route at this time are those that were at or close to the border at the time of the closing. We also learn that today marked the first attack on a supply convoy inside Pakistan since the route reopened, with one driver being killed by gunmen.

The number of trucks and cargo containers waiting in Karachi is huge:

The ban on Nato supplies routes through Pakistan may have officially been lifted three weeks ago but the containers carrying goods for international forces stationed in Afghanistan remain stranded at the Karachi Port Trust (KPT).

/snip/

“There has been no clearance of Nato cargo at KPT so far, but we expect the process will begin in the current week,” Hayat told The Express Tribune adding there was no hindrance on the part of the KPT as consignees needed to get their cargoes cleared from the customs department.

There are 3,851 vehicles and 1,983 containers belonging to Nato currently stranded at the KPT.

NATO owes a large bill for storage during the long closure of the route:

When the supply routes were resumed some three weeks ago, port authorities expected to receive up to Rs2.2 billion from Nato for storing its containers and vehicles for an extended period of time. Known as demurrage charges, the expected amount has now exceeded Rs2.5 billion, according to Hayat.

Meanwhile, a small convoy of trucks was attacked near Peshawar:

Gunmen in the outskirts of Peshawar Tuesday attacked a container truck carrying supplies to Nato troops in Afghanistan, killing the driver, officials said.

/snip/

Tuesday’s attack took place near the market in Jamrud town on the outskirts of Peshawar, the main city in the troubled northwest, local administration official Bakhtiar Khan said.

“Two armed men riding on a motorbike opened fire on a container carrying supplies for Nato troops across the border and killed its driver,” Khan told AFP, adding that the driver’s helper was seriously wounded.

Another administration official said the truck was part of a convoy of three or four vehicles travelling without security protection when they came under attack.

Although they have not yet claimed responsibility, it seems likely the Pakistani Taliban carried out the attack:

However, the Pakistani Taliban had threatened earlier to attack the supply trucks and kill its drivers if they tried to resume supplies to troops in Afghanistan, and right-wing and extremist religious groups have held large demonstrations against the resumption of supply lines.

Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan had told AFP that the Taliban “will not allow any truck to pass and will attack it,” hours after Pakistan confirmed it had decided to reopen vital Nato supply routes into Afghanistan which have been closed since November.

“We will not only attack the supply truck but will also kill the drivers (of Nato supply trucks),” Ehsan had said.

Clearing the backlog from Karachi and getting the supplies through Pakistan into Afghanistan is looking like it will be a very long, expensive and dangerous process.

When Green on Blue Attacks Aren’t “Technically” Green on Blue Attacks

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On April 30, AP’s Robert Burns revealed that the number of attacks on NATO soldiers by Afghan military and police had been systematically under-reported because only attacks resulting in fatalities were reported. An attack in Herat, Afghanistan over the weekend now raises the possibility that another category of Afghan attacks on personnel associated with the NATO coalition’s efforts is also under-reported. In Sunday’s attack, three contractors involved in training Afghan forces were killed, but the Reuters report on this attack mentions that since those killed were contractors and not military personnel, the attack was not “technically” a green on blue attack. Ironically, Burns’ exposure of the under-reporting on non-fatal attacks has resulted in at least some them now being reported, and there was one today.

Burns’ report opens with his discovery of the under-reporting:

The military is under-reporting the number of times that Afghan soldiers and police open fire on American and other foreign troops.

The U.S.-led coalition routinely reports each time an American or other foreign soldier is killed by an Afghan in uniform. But The Associated Press has learned it does not report insider attacks in which the Afghan wounds — or misses — his U.S. or allied target. It also doesn’t report the wounding of troops who were attacked alongside those who were killed.

CNN was the first to report the Herat attack yesterday. It is important to note that they first cite information from an Afghan police official before they cite NATO:

An Afghan policeman opened fire at a training center in western Afghanistan on Sunday, killing three Americans, a police official told CNN.

The Afghan official, who declined to be named, said the three victims were most probably trainers at the West Zone Police Training Center in Herat province. The shooter was also killed, the official said.

NATO spokesman Maj. Adam Wojack said the three killed were civilian contractors working for the International Security Assistance Force. He could not confirm their nationality or what their specific jobs were.

Today’s story from Reuters on the multiple NATO-related deaths in Afghanistan yesterday has the line about this event not “technically” being a green on blue event: Read more →

Taliban Role Large in Green on Green Attacks

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At least eleven Afghan soldiers were killed yesterday in two separate attacks. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for both attacks. In the Washington Post’s coverage of the attacks, they take second billing to the attack on the NATO fuel tankers. In both cases, however, apparent Afghan soldiers were involved in the attacks on their fellow troops:

Afghan authorities were investigating whether the checkpoint attack in Helmand’s remote and arid Washer district was organized with the help of an Afghan soldier whose whereabouts since the raid were unknown, said Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand’s governor.

“Police reinforcements were sent, and they killed seven Taliban in gun battles,” Ahmadi said.

“We suspect the missing soldier was involved in a plot in the killings of the nine army soldiers but have to investigate this point,” he said.

/snip/

Also Wednesday, a man wearing an Afghan army uniform blew himself up at a checkpoint in the eastern province of Logar, killing three Afghan troops, the Associated Press reported. The Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack.

The New York Times devotes a separate article to the two attacks, and places it in a larger context of increasing deaths among Afghan troops, many of which they attribute to Taliban infiltration of the ranks of Afghan forces. [The Times places the death toll at 11 instead of 12, reporting only 2 deaths in the suicide bombing instead of 3.] The Times notes the strategy behind the Taliban’s attacks:

With the American-led coalition increasingly ceding a greater role in the fight to Afghan forces, one of the chief aims of the Taliban and its insurgent allies has been to show that the Afghan Army and police force are incapable of protecting themselves, never mind ordinary people.

The article goes on to note that there have been 227 deaths of Afghan forces in the last four months, compared to 162 coalition deaths. A rather harsh explanation is provided for why this is noteworthy:

While General Azimi offered no comparative data for Afghan casualties during the same period in previous years, the Afghan Army has in the past often suffered fewer deaths than coalition forces because its soldiers tended to back away from fighting the Taliban.

The Times discusses the infiltration strategy of the Taliban while relaying results of an Afghan court convicting an Afghan soldier in an earlier green on blue attack that killed 4 French soldiers:

The Taliban said the convicted soldier was an infiltrator and praised him for his bravery. The insurgents routinely claim as their own Afghan soldiers who turn their weapons on coalition allies, although coalition and Afghan officials say most of the cases appear to be caused by personal animosity, not insurgent infiltration.

Since coalition reporting of green on blue events is so short on details, discriminating between true infiltrators and events where “personal animosity” takes over on the spur of the moment is not possible in all cases. However, yesterday’s event in which an Afghan soldier facilitated an attack by a larger group of the Taliban on an outpost is not the first time we have seen evidence of obvious coordination between an Afghan soldier and an outside group of attackers. Infiltration seems certain in these sorts of attacks.

The issue of infiltration is a bit murkier in the case of the suicide bomber. The Times points out that Afghan army uniforms are readily available for purchase. Since Afghanistan maintains a biometric database on its forces, if the suicide bomber’s body can be fingerprinted or a face or iris scan can be carried out, it will be possible to say with some certainty whether he was a member of the Afghan forces. Given the coalition’s hesitance to provide details, however, it seems very unlikely the results of such an analysis will be released.

Taliban Destroy 22 Supply Trucks in Afghanistan: No “Protection” Money on Northern Route?

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Google Map showing relative locations of Aibak and the Salang tunnel in Afghanistan. (Click on map for a larger view.)

When the flow of supply trucks through Pakistan into Afghanistan restarted earlier this month, I pointed out a report from the Express Tribune on the large amounts of cash paid to the Taliban as “protection” money. A detail in that report is that the protection money paid is to “Afghan Taliban and local militants who are active on the Pak-Afghan borders”.

Today, the Taliban have claimed responsibility for an attack that destroyed 22 NATO supply trucks, most of which were fuel tankers. The attack was in Aibak, in Samangan province. The screen capture of a Google map of the area shown here indicates that Aibak is only 117 miles from the northern opening of the Salang tunnel that is the key choke point on the “northern route” that NATO used for supplies while the Pakistan crossings were closed. Does today’s attack mean that the Taliban in the north of Afghanistan have now placed a marker indicating that protection money will have to paid to them as well? It is not clear whether they were paid protection money while the Pakistan route was closed and it has now stopped or if they are angling for a hefty protection fee when this route is used for evacuation of NATO equipment as the drawdown moves into its active phase soon.

Here is Reuters’ description of the attack:

 A bomb planted by the Taliban destroyed 22 NATO trucks carrying supplies to their forces in northern Afghanistan, the Taliban and police said on Wednesday.

Eighteen fuel trucks and four supply vehicles were parked in Aibak, the capital of Samangan province, when a bomb ripped through them, wounding one person, local police said.

“At 2 a.m. the mujahideen attacked the invader NATO trucks,” the Taliban said in a statement, referring to the wagons which had been driven from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan’s north.

The Taliban in this region have been flexing their muscle lately:

The trucks were attacked in the same province where prominent anti-Taliban lawmaker Ahmad Khan Samangani was killed on Saturday at his daughter’s wedding, in a suicide bomb attack that killed 22 other guests.

It will be very interesting to see if reports of protection money along the norther route begin to surface.

One more aspect of this attack bears watching. From the AP story on the attack as carried by Dawn:

 ”We put explosives on a fuel tanker. When it exploded, we fired on the trucks,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press in a telephone call.

Sidiq Azizi, a spokesman for the province, said many tankers and semi-trailers caught fire after the bomb went off around 2 a.m.

By mid-day, heavy black smoke still poured from the Rabatak area of the province where the truckers had stopped to rest. Firefighters were spraying water on the burning vehicles.

”There was a big boom,” Azizi said.

”It’s possible that is was a magnetic bomb from insurgents. We are investigating.”

The referral to a magnetic bomb is interesting. Going back to the Reuters report:

Separately, police in neighboring Baghlan province said they had detained 10 suspected Taliban members with so-called magnetic bombs, which they were trying to attach to supply trucks.

Will NATO try to assert that the magnetic bombs are supplied by Iran? Recall that Iran was accused of using a magnetic bomb in India to attack an Israeli diplomat in reprisal for the presumed Israeli magnetic bombs that have been used to kill Iranian nuclear scientists. The US made accusations of Iran helping the Taliban back in 2010 but never provided conclusive evidence for the Sunni Taliban and Shia Iranian regime working together. Will the accusations resurface based on the magnets?

More Damage from Panetta’s Vaccine Ruse: UN Doctor on Polio Vaccine Drive Shot; Hundreds of Thousands Denied Polio Vaccine

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As one of only three countries in the world where polio is still endemic, Pakistan launched a three day vaccination drive yesterday with a target of vaccinating the 318,000 children in North and South Waziristan who have not received their vaccinations. Across all of Pakistan, the goal is to vaccinate 34 million children under the age of five. The drive is being held despite a push by the Taliban to prevent vaccinations in tribal areas. The Taliban’s ban on vaccinations is aimed at stopping US drone strikes in the tribal areas and is in response to the vaccination ruse by the CIA.  Dr. Shakeel Afridi pretended to be doling out hepatitis vaccines in a failed attempt to retrieve DNA samples for the CIA from the bin Laden compound when it was under surveillance prior to the attack that killed Osama bin Laden. Today, a UN doctor and his driver were wounded when a shooter opened fire on them in Karachi. The doctor was reported to be working on the vaccine program.

Dawn reported yesterday that a jirga was convened today in the tribal areas to try to find a solution to the Taliban’s vaccine ban. That article gives good background information on the ban:

Although a nationwide anti-polio campaign was launched on Monday, the authorities were yet to convince the Taliban shura on the importance of getting children of North and South Waziristan vaccinated against the debilitating disease.

/snip/

Commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who leads the powerful Taliban Shura, had banned the anti-polio drive in North Waziristan on June 16 and said that children would not take polio drops unless the government stopped drone strikes in the area.

He was followed by Commander Mullah Nazir in South Waziristan and other militant commanders in FRs D.I. Khan and Kohat.

In South Waziristan, the ban is much stricter because it prohibits vaccination against all eight childhood diseases, including polio.

“We have asked health workers to be careful and don’t put their lives at risk,” the official said, adding that they were waiting for the government’s response.

However, the Taliban ban is not the only barrier to vaccines:

He [the official quoted above] said the military operation in Orakzai and Khyber agencies was one of the factors which deprived children of the much needed vaccines.

Just the two tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan account for a large number of unvaccinated children: Read more →

Rehman: Drones in Pakistan “Radicalize Footsoldiers, Tribes and Entire Villages”

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I had missed Christiane Amanpour’s Monday evening interview with Pakistan’s Ambassador Sherry Rehman, but an article in today’s Express Tribune alerted me to it. Video from the interview is embedded above. Putting aside the ridiculous crap added by CNN producers (I’m assuming Amanpour has better journalistic sense than to clutter news with this crap) alluding to “the marriage from hell” and the god-awful Elton John reference, the key revelation in the interview is that Rehman maintains that even though the US apologized and Pakistan reopened supply routes, that does not mean that Pakistan has agreed to more drone strikes. Further, Rehman emphasized how the strikes produce more insurgents.

From the Express Tribune article:

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Ambassador Rehman said America’s drone war “radicalises foot soldiers, tribes and entire villages in our region. And what we see, really, is that increasingly Pakistan is feared as a predatory footprint.”

In response to a question, she denied the assertions that apology over the Salala incident meant that Pakistan had allowed the drone programme to continue. However, she said that the apology over the incident that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers has “opened the space for an opportunity where we can have constructive conversations that might be to the satisfaction of both sides. Right now, we have not given a go-ahead at all”.

But she categorically emphasised that Pakistan’s concerns over the drone strikes could not be ‘brushed aside’.

Ambassador Rehman said that CIA’s covert drone war ‘tests’ the relationship between Pakistan and the US at every juncture. “We honestly feel that there are better ways of eliminating al Qaeda now, which can be done with our help. And we have been doing that consistently. We’re the heavy lifters in this relationship.”

CNN chose not to include in the video this bit of the interview which the Express Tribune found significant:

When questioned about whether Pakistan accepted the accounting of how the Obama administration identified militants, Rehman said it was worrisome “because this leads to what you call signature strikes, if I’m not mistaken, where a certain level of suspected activity generates or motivates the trigger for – I really don’t know what motivates the trigger for X level or Y level of drone strikes.”

I guess CNN doesn’t want us worrying about how the Obama administration might be killing people who don’t deserve it. That would upset the bullshit story they are trying to reinforce. They probably should add a note warning us not to read Glenn Greenwald on this question, either.

At least Rehman understands that when you take the signature strike concept to its extreme and send in follow-on strikes to hit people who are digging through the rubble of the first strike in a search for possible survivors, you are going to radicalize those most closely affected by these actions: the tribes and villages who lose members in these horrific strikes. The CIA’s choice to kill in this manner is clearly assuring the CIA of an even larger group of targets in the future, because for each victim killed in this manner, many new insurgents take up arms.