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A Firefight Exposes Afghan Weakness By MARIA ABI-HABIB WSJ OCTOBER 16, 2010 KABUL-When Taliban militants invaded the towering Kunduz villa of an American development agency in July, employees say they were trapped, besieged and soon were dodging indiscriminate rocket fire from their would-be rescuers-the Afghan army and police. Four of the roughly 13 staff and security guards in the compound were killed, and five more seriously injured. Survivors blame the Afghan forces, and the German military for leaving the rescue effort to the locals. "The Germans kept saying: 'The Afghan army has the situation under control,' " one Western survivor recounted. "And I kept saying the Afghan army is part of the problem!" Concerns about local forces loom as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization meets in Lisbon next month to decide which areas of Afghanistan will be the first to have their security handed over to the Afghan army and police, ahead of a planned drawdown of U.S. -led troops next summer. The meeting also will come a month after officials disclosed the U.S. is supporting peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban by giving insurgent leaders safe passage, in hopes of reducing the country's constant violence. The transition is scheduled to begin July 2011 and be completed by 2014.An account of the six-hour siege on the U.S. agency on July 2, drawn from interviews with witnesses and survivors and an internal investigation by the aid agency, shows an Afghan force that appears ill-equipped to take over national security from their foreign counterparts. Survivors say their lives were saved, in the end, only by the intervention of American troops. The German military oversees security for the Kunduz province. Afghan and German military and police officials say their forces handled the situation appropriately. Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, a few years ago was considered one of the country's safest provinces. It has since regressed; the U.S. Army deployed troops there earlier this year to try to roll back a Taliban resurgence. The July 2 attack targeted the headquarters of Development Alternatives Inc., one of the largest U.S. State Department-funded contractors in Afghanistan. DAI also is at the center of what the U.S. and U.K. governments say could be another botched rescue attempt: The U.S. is probing whether DAI worker Linda Norgrove was killed late last week by a U.S. rescuer's hand grenade. The July attack came a month after DAI moved into its Kunduz headquarters. Hired by the U.S. Agency for International Development, DAI was there for a community development and governance project. Like most of the hundreds of international development and aid organizations operating in Afghanistan, DAI relied on a private company to provide security-a contingent of about 10 men from Edinburgh International, or EI, a British organization also hired by USAID. In the event of an attack on the DAI office, a gated four-story house that towered over the small shack-like homes beside it, EI's job was to fight off insurgents and protect DAI staff until Afghan or NATO troops arrived. President Hamid Karzai has mandated that private security firms be disbanded and replaced with Afghan police by next year-raising additional concerns among aid organizations about security. At about 3:15 a.m. on July 2, a vehicle jammed with explosives blew open the entry gate, killing two Afghan security guards working for EI. Six insurgents swarmed the building, blocking the route to a 'safe room' in the basement and forcing staff to seek refuge on the roof. Two EI guards, one from the Philippines and another from Germany, fought the insurgents inside the house. The German guard was shot dead. The other, severely injured, retreated to the roof, where a DAI employee guarded the entrance with an AK-47 belonging to an injured EI employee. The uninjured tended to the wounded with supplies from a single medical kit, ripping up T-shirts for makeshift tourniquets. About 15 to 20 minutes after the attack began, the Afghan army and police occupied a four-story hotel about 30 yards across the street from the DAI compound. Afghan soldiers started launching rocket-propelled grenades at the DAI building, according to an Afghan witness and government officials. Some of these RPGs hit the roof. Shrapnel from one hit an expatriate in the face, causing serious injuries, according to internal DAI briefings. "There were at least two different shooters wearing camouflage on two different levels of the hotel," the Western survivor recounted. "Maybe about 90% of fire on the compound" came from the hotel, he said. He said he counted dozens of RPG blasts. DAI and EI called the German military, which maintains a base a few miles away, to intervene. The German commander in Kunduz "offered his support to the Afghan National Security Forces, but was declined due to sufficient ANSF forces at the site," said German military spokesman Maj. Stephan Wessel. Maj. Wessel said the Germans sent out a drone to observe the attack and decided that the Afghan forces had control of the situation. The besieged staff kept calling the Germans for help-about a dozen times through the six-hour ordeal, according to those familiar with the situation and DAI and EI internal communications viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The German spokesman declined to comment on how many calls were received. Kunduz's police chief, Mohammed Razaq Yaqubi, and Gen. Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghan ministry of defense, praised the Afghan troops' efforts and said Afghan forces didn't mishandle the operation. But provincial Gov. Mohammed Omar-who was killed last week in a Taliban attack-acknowledged shortcomings in an interview last month, before his death. "The [Afghan army] commandos were using RPGs, but the way they were using RPGs wasn't perfect," he said. "I mean, there was no need for using the RPGs." EI declined to comment on the July 2 attack. A spokesman for DAI declined to discuss the performance of Afghan security forces. At about 4:30 a.m., Shaun Sexton, a British EI employee, was told by the Afghan army on-scene commander to come down from the roof because the building had been cleared of Taliban militants, according to the survivor and accounts of incident briefings received by DAI staff. Mr. Sexton, another EI guard and two DAI employees left their colleagues on the roof and went down the stairs. Two Taliban fighters hiding between the fourth and third floors opened fire, killing Mr. Sexton on the spot and injuring a DAI female staffer in the arm. Another EI employee shot and killed one of the insurgents. The second fighter retreated. The three survivors fled back to the roof and again called the German military for help. The Germans didn't come. At 7 a.m., a DAI survivor managed to get through to an American unit on the phone. Forces from the U.S. 10th Mountain Division arrived soon after, and the building was cleared. As is frequently the case in joint operations, the U.S. said Afghan forces led the rescue. -Habib Khan Totakhil and Mohammed Ibrahim Alkozai contributed to this article. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-os...@yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor biso...@intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscr...@yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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