This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• The NATO summit is this weekend… and leaders are struggling to come together and present a united front on commitments.
• Col. Michael D. Wirt, a brigade surgeon with the 101st Airborne, has meticulously cataloged a database of the wounds and injuries he’s treated in Afghanistan, with extensive accompanying details. His careful documentation highlights the otherwise scattered nature of our knowledge about the impacts of the last decade of combat.
• NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker.
• As part of economic reconstruction efforts, Afghanistan plans to start pumping oil within five months. This will be the first time the country has done this.
• Pakistan is making rumblings about allowing NATO to begin using the supply route to Afghanistan, which is getting it invited to the upcoming NATO summit. Pakistani negotiators suggested a $5000 per-truck transit fee, an amount which is a “sticking point” in talks.
• The parents of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a US soldier held by the Taliban since 2009, are now speaking out about their son, and the negotiations process to get him back.
• Nearly half a million Pakistanis have been forced to flee from border regions because of fighting spillover from Afghanistan and nearly a quarter million have registered for aid.
• The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill was on NPR’s Fresh Air, interviewed by Terry Gross about Yemen, AQAP and US drone policy.
• Yemen’s Press and Publication Court is trying two Sana’a-based journalists with Al Jazeera for covering the revolution in a suit filed by Saleh’s regime in June of 2011.
• North Korea has resumed construction of a nuclear reactor.
• The Free Syrian Army is receiving new, better weapons as of late — paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated with assistance by the US.
• The Atlantic’s In Focus photo blog gathered together a stunning and stomach-turning (no, seriously, very very graphic and the graphic photos are shown in full) post of recent photography from the Mexican drug war. 
• Researchers find striking neurological similarities between returning combat soldiers and career pro athletes when it comes to a degenerative brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is believed to be caused by blast exposure. Traumatic brain injury, confirmed in nearly a quarter million troops, is considered a precursor to CTE.
• On Wednesday, the Army launched a probe of PTSD diagnoses and treatment at all of its medical facilities since 2001.
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has introduced the Gender Equality in Combat Act, which, if passed, would require the Pentagon to set a date by the end of the year for allowing women on the front lines. 
• The top five recipients of GI Bill education funds in the 2010-11 academic were highly problematic for-profit institutions, known to target veterans.
• The Hill is up in arms over the latest defense appropriations bill, the House GOP version of which abandons last year’s attempt at fiscal austerity and ups defense spending by $8m as well as increasing funding for nuclear weapons and slowing down the processes of force reductions. The President has threatened a veto.

Photo: Kabul, Afghanistan. A French soldier reads a book about Afghanistan while waiting at the airport for his flight out. Musadeq Sadeq/AP. 

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• Violence is threatening the ceasefire in Syria, and the UN Security Council moved to authorize the deployment of unarmed monitors to try and preserve it.
• A new report from Human Rights Watch, “In Cold Blood,” details extra-judicial executions by Assad’s forces in Syria.
• This week, violence spilled over from Syria into Lebanon and Turkey.
• Bahraini journalist Ahmed Al Bosta was beaten and arrested in Manama.
• A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed that allows night raids in Afghanistan to continue, but under the auspices of Afghan forces.
• Afghanistan’s defense minister has announced plans to make personnel cuts to the Afghan security forces after NATO’s 2014 drawdown, amounting to a planned force reduction of about 230,000.
• Afghan president Hamid Karzai has brought up the idea of an early presidential election before the transition.
• Pakistan sets new conditions for re-engagement with the US, including and end to drone attacks and an end to the use of Pakistan as a land route for arms transport to Afghanistan.
• Myanmar and its Karen rebels are in peace negotiations made more favorable by the recent political wins for Aung San Suu Kyi and her party. 
• Awkward but predictable: North Korea’s much-hyped long-range rocket broke apart shortly after launch, probably not even reaching the first stage of separation. Here is the White House statement (as well as the NORAD/Northcom statement).
• The 20th anniversary of the war in Bosnia served as a reminder of wounds that have persisted over the past two decades.
• Rwanda also reflected on a painful anniversary, marking the 1994 genocide.
• Sudan breaks off talks with South Sudan.
• Two Marines were killed during a training exercise when their V-22 crashed in Morocco.
• London’s Metropolitan Police say that their Anti-Terrorism Hotline may have been hacked and conversations recorded. 
• About 110,000 active-duty service-members took prescription sedatives, anti-depressants, narcotics, anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety drugs last year. 8% of the active-duty Army is on sedatives; 6% are on anti-depressants. This marks an eightfold increase since 2005. The Battleland Blog calls this ”yet another mental IED planted by recycling troops back into combat.”
• The Army surveyed 40,000 of its members to check up on its own report card and gets an A for having pulled through the last decade. Three cheers for bending but not breaking.
• Active duty Army whistleblower LTC Daniel Davis was on Democracy Now!
• A new report from CNAS looks at veterans post-service and their transition into civilian life.
• Homelessness among female veterans is climbing, even as overall veteran homelessness declines.
• And, for some nerdy fun, a statistical analysis of The Hunger Games: “Hunger Games survival analysis: in a Cox proportional hazards model, which covariates are associated with the odds (or hazard ratios) being ever in your favor?”

Photo: An Afghan horseman rides beside Qargha Lake in Kabul at sunset. April 5. Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty.

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• News today: Maulana Muhammad Qasim, provincial leader of Pakistani political party Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, was killed this morning in Quetta, Balochistan.
• Micah Zenko curates some expert opinions on whether we’ll “win” in Afghanistan.
• Anatol Lieven, one of the best names in Afghan expertise, writes about the Afghan war in the New York Review of Books: “This has always been an Afghan civil war…”
• There’s growing concern over Iranian meddling in Afghanistan to exploit the situation and increase violence.
• US drone attacks launched from Afghanistan will end after 2014, according to the Afghan foreign minister.
• A story in the Washington Post about the exploitation of the young bacha bazi, or Afghan “dancing boys” taken as underage lovers for older men. Matthieu Aikins tweeted a few on point responses to that regarding increasing heteronormativity.
• The US put a bounty on Lashkar e-Taiba leader Hafiz Saeed, who openly mocks the $10m being offered for information leading to his capture.
• It has already been an incredibly deadly year in Karachi.
• Rare interviews with Syrian soldiers shed light on ongoing horrors.
• Detained Palestinian hunger striker Hana Shalabi, who spent more than 40 days on hunger strike, has been released.
• Bahrain’s best friend in Congress is now the representative from American Samoa, Rep. Eni Faleomavaega, who has been heavily influenced by pro-government lobbying.
• Iraqi universities face a number of political challenges.
• Qatar is refusing to hand over fugitive Iraqi VP Tareq Hashemi.
• The online forums for Al Qaeda went dark for the longest time since they began operation. They usually disappear and reappear, but this seems different. On Wednesday, one main site went live again, but others remain down. Terrorism scholars Aaron Zelin and Will McCants are interviewed about it here.
• A look inside the mission to catch Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.
• How the war on terror played its part in the Mali coup.
• The second US drone in four months has crashed in the Seychelles.
• Are nuclear drones going to be a thing?
• FARC, Colombia’s main rebel group, has released captives that had been being held for twelve years.
• A federal appeals court will hear the case of whether confidential IRA tapes made as part of an oral history project with Boston College should be released.
• Viktor Bout (“The Merchant of Death”), former Soviet arms dealer, has been sentenced to 25 years in his terrorism conviction. Russia does not approve.
• The research arm of the Pentagon, DARPA, has a big interest in neuroscience, which yields all sorts of questions of bioethics. 
• The first detachment of 200 Marines arrived in Darwin, Australia to be part of a permanent joint training hub as part of a US shift towards the Asia-Pacific region.
• News organizations including McClatchy, the Washington Post and the NYT filed an objection to the Pentagon’s plans to close a terrorism hearing scheduled for next week.

Photo: Sayagaz, Arghandab, Afghanistan. A member of coalition Special Operations Forces gathers firewood during snowfall. March 11. US Navy/Mass Comm Specialist 2nd Class Jacob L. Dillon. 

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• News this Morning: Two days away from major international talks about Syria, violence continues to flare.
• Women Under Siege is crowd-mapping sexual violence in Syria. An amazing project.
• Foreign companies like KFC, Cinnabon and Four Seasons hotels continue to keep shop in Damascus.
• The discussion continues about Sgt. Bales, what exactly happened that night and what will happen now. The Pentagon has confirmed that it payed family members $50,000 a piece. 
• Yalda Hakim of the Australian SBS network has become the first Western journalist to enter the village where the massacre occurred. She interviewed survivors and Afghan guards on duty that night about what happened.
• A US government audit shows that security costs for the US in Afghanistan are set to rise by as much as 46%.
• Billions of dollars in cash are smuggled out of Afghanistan every year. This year $4.5bn was flown out of the country (compare that to USAID’s assistance to Afghanistan in 2011, which was around 2.5bn.
• Human Rights Watch released a report on the hundreds of women jailed for “moral crimes” in Afghanistan.
• The Arab League came to Baghdad. Check out my round-up on that from yesterday.
• The US has cut off aid to Mali following the coup. Assistance to the Malian government totaled $140m a year.
• Sudan and South Sudan are dangerously close to war. Senior envoys have met in Ethiopia to try and calm the situation.
• The revolution in Yemen has been accompanied by a sharp increase in US attacks against militants inside Yemen.
• Drones are always a popular topic of discussion and reporting, but there was a lot this week in particular. Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland of the New America Foundation report that drone strikes inside Pakistan in the first three months of this year are down sharply. PRI’s The World ran a piece on UAV proliferation. The Center for Democracy and Technology has an excellent timeline of the process and planning for implementation of domestic drones in the US.
• The Smithsonian interviewed counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke about Stuxnet.
• A cybersecurity bill has been introduced in the House by Republican sponsors. It parallels a similar Senate bill.
• The Washington Post profiled the heavy smoking, “irascible” convert to Islam who heads the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.
• The war in Afghanistan has seen a steep drop in public support inside the US. An NYT/CBS poll shows that currently 69% of the population thinks we should not be at war in Afghanistan, up from 53% four months ago.
• A touching and beautifully put-together NYT documentary by Micah Garon profiled USAF Lt. Col. John Darin Loftis who was recently killed in Afghanistan.
• IAVA released its annual survey of members this Monday. Veterans listed as their top concerns in this order: employment, mental health, disability benefits, health care, education, suicide and families.
• NBC has been doing a really nice job this week of focusing on employment for returning veterans.
• And… if you haven’t read Mitch Prothero’s piece for Vice on playing paintball with Hezbollah, you have to.

Photo: Soldiers wait in a transport plane to depart from Afghanistan to a transit station in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP/Getty.

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• Journalist Matthieu Aikins has the cover story for GQ this month, and it’s a very well-done account of the siege of the US Embassy in Kabul last September.
• Graft is a major obstacle to progress in the Afghan transitional process.
• President Karzai has backed newly-released, strict guidelines for Afghan women, decided upon by the clerics of the Ulema Council, in what is seen as a big step back for gender equality in the Afghan transition.
• Rifts and rivalry have been exposed within Tehreek e-Taliban (TTP), the Pakistani branch of the militant group. Deputy commander Maulvi Faqir Muhammad was fired, sparking anger and talk of a splinter group.
• China plans to increase its defense spending by 11.2% in the coming year. In 2012, Asia is expected to overtake Europe in its military spending, led by China.
• Humanitarian aid finally reached the Baba Amro district of Homs. 
• Syria’s deputy oil minister, Abdo Hussameldin, has become the highest ranking official to defect from Bashar al-Assad’s government to the rebels, doing so in a YouTube video this week.
• The intervention debate within the US has ramped up considerably as the administration inches toward action.
• New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks writes movingly about Anthony Shadid’s last days.
• French photographer William Daniels writes for TIME about the last days with Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik, and his own escape from Homs.
• War is erupting in the south of Yemen between government forces and a group known as Ansar al-Shar’ia.
• The “Kony 2012” campaign, which I think we can agree makes it sound like Invisible Children is trying to get Joseph Kony elected president, has had some serious and important rebuttals and takedowns: The Atlantic, The Atlantic, UN Dispatch, Visible Children.
• A group of female veterans have released a statement calling on the Pentagon to drop Rush Limbaugh’s show from Armed Forces Radio, and more than 18,000 people have signed a petition in a similar vein.
• A new lawsuit has been filed over negligence and lack of action to prevent and prosecute military rape against Panetta, Gates and Rumsfeld by eight Marines and Navy officers. Their stories are horrific and demonstrate the shameful treatment of women and rape victims inside the system. A New York Times editorial yesterday called the rate of rape in the US military “intolerably high.”
• The Director of National Intelligence has released data on Guantanamo Bay recidivism and the numbers on re-engagement of former detainees. Lawfare points to a particularly important chart.
• Assessing the key quotes and arguments in Eric Holder’s speech defending targeted killing.
• This Week in Wannabe Jihadists: A Brooklyn-born man, 24-year-old Betim Kaziu was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his attempt to join Al Qaeda or the Taliban. A former Army soldier from Maryland, Craig Benedict Baxam, is going on trial for trying to join Al-Shabaab.
• Al Qaeda’s English language outreach programs have faltered seriously.
• A congressional report (prepared for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission by Northrup Grumman) says that China has progressed to testing their cyberattack capabilities. [pdf]
• After talks were set to resume with Iran, a new report is circulating that satellite imagery shows a hidden Iranian nuclear plant.

Photo: Feb 24. A boy walks down a shelled out street in Baba Amro, Homs. The building on the right is where photographer William Daniels stayed with other journalists, including Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik. William Daniels - Panos for TIME.

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• The Free Syrian Army has cut a retreat from the strategic city of Homs, after 26 days of siege by Assad’s forces. The Red Cross will be allowed in today to the Baba Amro quarter.
• Thirteen Syrians died getting injured Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy out of the country. His colleague, wounded Le Figaro journalist Edith Bouvier, is currently in Beirut and is expected to return home today.
• Rémi Ochlik and Marie Colvin have reportedly been buried in Syria. 
• Mother Jones obtained a 718-page Syrian government “hit list” containing thousands of names.
• The Pentagon revealed part of a deal struck with Guantanamo detainee Majid Khan, whose arraignment was Wednesday, to postpone his sentencing until 2016. Khan, a former Baltimore resident and alleged courier, pleaded guilty to five war crimes. He has promised cooperation and in exchange, his sentencing four years from now will be for no more than 19 years in prison. The deal he has struck requires him to reveal “complete and accurate information in interviews, depositions and testimony wherever and whenever requested by the prosecutors.”
• Nuclear talks in Pyongyang went surprisingly well, with North Korea engaging in what would appear to be a stark policy shift and agreeing to halt their nuclear program and allow IAEA inspection in exchange for food aid.
• A review of a new book: Warfare in Independent Africa.
• A poor, unfortunate man who shares a name with senior Al-Qaeda official Saif Al-Adel was detained at Cairo’s airport.
• There was a lot (a lot) of discussion about Obama and section 1022 of the NDAA. The White House on Tuesday in Presidential Policy Directive 14, created a set of rules that essentially waive much of that controversial section of the defense legislation involving military custody for terror suspects. Weighing in on this: Lawfare, Forbes, The Atlantic, Lawfare, Huffington Post.
• In related news, The Washington Post reports this morning that the military commissions system is now a place of relative leniency for detainees facing charges.
• How much does it cost the US to keep one soldier in Afghanistan for a year? $850,000.
• The remains of the last American servicemember to be MIA in Iraq, Staff Sgt. Ahmed Kousay al-Taie, have been identified. He was an Army interpreter and was kidnapped at gunpoint in Baghdad in 2006.
• The Taliban and NATO got into yet another snarky Twitter battle.
• Things got more heated between Sudan and South Sudan as Khartoum bombed two oil wells deep inside it’s southern counterpart’s territory and is massing troops at the border.
• The US detention center at Bagram Air Field has had a horrible and embarrassing history: from the beating deaths of two detainees and reports of secret torture chambers to the recent unrest-inducing Quran burnings.
• An excellent blog post up at SWAN about media narratives on female veterans.
• Panetta has asked for another review of Madigan Army Medical Center, whose behavioral program is under scrutiny for changing PTSD diagnoses.

Photo: 10 Feb, 2012. Afghan border police and Marines board a CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter near Combat Outpost Torbert at the start of Operation Shahem Tohan (Eagle Storm), scouring highways for insurgents and smugglers. Cpl. Reece Lodder/USMC.

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• Last night, veteran foreign correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Shadid of the New York Times died of an apparent asthma attack while on assignment inside Syria. The genuine outpouring of grief on social media has been a testament to how much of an inspiration and a model for journalism and reporting he has been to so many, myself included. This is a great loss. Read his work for the NYT here.
• Rolling Stone got its hands on a draft copy of LTC Daniel Davis’s report, “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort.”
• Civilian contractor deaths outnumbered US military deaths in Afghanistan this year. The risks to them highlight the minimal attention paid to them in casualty counts and the actions of private contracting companies toward their employees.
• The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan released its assessment report on civilians in the Afghan conflict for 2011.
• NPR interviewed former Army Sgt Kayla Williams about the status of women in the military and she had very wise things to say.
• On a similar note, I have a deconstruction of Rick Santorum’s position on women in the military up over at The Risky Shift.
• The Joint IED Defense Organization released a Counter-IED Strategic Plan, which essentially paints a grim and expensive picture of the future of the fight against these weapons.
• An NPR discussion on Syria asks if it’s time for military intervention.
• Obama’s 2013 budget request calls for defense cuts, which Lieberman called a risk to national security.
• Defense Sec’y Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dempsey testified in front of the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday and were grilled over the budget (particularly base closures and nuclear cuts). Chairman of HASC, Buck McKeon, called the Obama defense cuts a “strategy founded on hope.”
• The Tunisian defense minister looks to foster a military relationship with the US, calling for US support after a Wednesday meeting of a joint Tunisian-American military commission.
• Bahrain and Libya both marked the anniversaries of the births of their protest movements and revolutions (February 14th and February 17th, respectively).
• The Pakistani military has rejected Human Rights Watch’s criticisms of a judicial commission set up to investigate the death of journalist Saleem Shahzad, calling HRW’s statements ‘derogatory, biased and contradictory.”

Photo: Rangers from 1st Bn, 75th Ranger Regiment in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan await extraction by a CH-47. US Army Pfc. Pedro Almodovar. Via the US Army Flickr.

In the 20th century, artillery was the greatest producer of troop casualties. The IED is the artillery of the 21st century.

— Lieutenant General Michael Barbero, Director, Joint IED Defeat Organization

To Read: The Joint IED Defense Organization’s newly released “Counter-IED Strategic Plan.”

[Defense Dept photo via.]

Morning Reading. Rolling Stone got its paws on a draft copy of LTC Davis’s much talked about report, “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort.” Davis recently published an Armed Forces Journal article decrying the Pentagon’s rosy and deceptive portrait of supposed progress in Afghanistan. A full report was promised, which he has submitted for internal review, but according to military officials the Pentagon is refusing to release it. 

Rolling Stone has now published in full the unclassified version of the report that is currently circulating among US government officials. In it Davis opens with:

Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable.

[Rolling Stone]