War Is Boring

Nearly a year before a gunman burst into the Century Aurora 16 movie theater and murdered 12 people in Aurora, Colorado, police in the Denver suburb prepared for the worst. Along with police across the Denver region, they scrambled to respond to simulated terrorist attacks during an exercise modeled on the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, where coordinated bombings and shootings by militants killed 164 people.

The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has pinned its hopes on a new local-militia program to help shore up street-level security ahead of the coalition’s planned 2014 departure after more than a decade of war.

by ROBERT BECKHUSEN A DEA sting operation targeting a cell of would-be cartel assassins ended in a violent warehouse showdown over the weekend. Among their ranks: one active-duty Army soldier, and one former G.I. According to a criminal complaint released yesterday in federal court (.pdf), the showdown occured around 12:30 p.m. Saturday as armed federal agents closed [...]

An early March skirmish in a restive Afghan province illustrates the growing, but still limited, capabilities of one of Afghanistan’s largely-unheralded security forces. On March 9, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force reported that an Afghan Provincial Response Company, supported by U.S. Special Forces, had killed three insurgents during a mission to rescue a pinned-down reconstruction team.

U.S.-led coalition forces are racing against the clock to train a new local police force in one vital Afghan town. But it is not easy convincing eligible men to enlist.

The effort to shore up security in Afghanistan is shifting.

Two years before the scheduled departure of foreign forces from Afghanistan, the U.S.-led coalition is trying to shore-up security by blocking key Taliban supply lines.

Ali Mohamed has a surprise for his U.S. Army advisers. An explosive one. It’s right here in his backpack.

AFGHANISTAN: International Special Operations forces play an important but largely unheralded role in Afghanistan. American Army Rangers, Green Berets and Delta Force, along with Navy SEALs and Air Force specialists work with the best from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and a host of other allied nations to kill and capture insurgents and terrorists. They also train Afghan militia, police and soldiers.

Afghan security forces will take over as U.S.-led international troops gradually withdraw from Afghanistan through 2014. At least that’s the plan. Poor leadership could undermine Afghan efforts to secure their own country. “There’s a gross lack of leadership in Afghanistan,” says “Tom,” a U.S. Army Special Forces officer assigned to train Afghan police in Laghman province, east of Kabul.

U.S. and Romanian Special Forces train Afghan special police in Laghman, Afghanistan, in February 2012.

U.S. Special Forces and commandos from other nations are slated to remain in Afghanistan even after the coalition’s more than 100,000 conventional troops withdraw by the end of 2014. One of the Special Forces’ major responsibilities is training and leading Afghan police forces, widely seen as the first line of defense against Taliban infiltration.