Global News Journal

U.S. border agents under fire as Mexican smugglers fight back

Gunmen shot and killed U.S. Border Patrol agent Robert Rosas in California near the U.S.-Mexico border fence on July 23, the first such fatal shooting in more than a decade. In rugged desert where people smugglers and drug traffickers roam, Rosas was tracking a suspicious group of people near the rural town of Campo, about 60 miles (97 kms) east of San Diego.

After radioing for backup, he got out of his vehicle and started to follow members of the group as it split up. He was attacked, robbed of his weapon and shot several times in the head and abdomen.

Mexican police have rounded up five suspects believed to be coyotes, or people smugglers, and drug gang members, although the FBI, which is heading the investigation, considers the case unsolved.

While it unfolds, the probe into the murder of 30 year-old Rosas, father of two small children and whose memorial service is on Friday, is a test for U.S.-Mexican cooperation. Both countries are at pains to show a unified alliance in the drug war, underscored again by U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske’s visit to Mexico this week.

But Rosas’ murder is also a warning that Mexican organized crime is increasingly undaunted by U.S. law enforcement. In Mexico, well-armed drug cartels take on the army at will. Mexico’s escalating drug war has killed some 12,800 people since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched his army-backed crackdown on cartels.

Is Germany at ‘war’ in Afghanistan? Defence Minister says ‘no’

Germany’s defence minister gets his tongue in a twist every time he tries to explain why the German army is not in a “war” in Afghanistan, even though more and more German soldiers are coming home in coffins.

“If we were to speak of ‘war’ then we would only be focusing on the military aspect in the region and that would be a mistake,” Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said after three more German soldiers were killed on Tuesday, raising the total to 35.

“The goal of the German army is, alongside providing security, to help the country rebuild and with its development. We are not occupiers. Unfortunately there are situations where our soldiers have to fight. But we’re not looking for fights.”

Jung sounded even more opposed to the term “war” in a television interview: “That is not war. In a war you don’t build schools, you don’t set up the water and power supplies and you don’t build kindergartens and hospitals and you don’t train the military and the police.”

Jung is not in an enviable position as the conservative defence minister of a deeply pacifist country that has had to jump over some very long shadows of its troubled past before it was able to send troops abroad as part of international peacekeeping operations. That Germany is even part of a military deployment abroad and getting involved in combat despite the ghosts of its past is something that I could not possibly have imagined when I first came to the country in 1989.

Yet Germany has the third-largest contingent of NATO forces in Afghanistan — 3,720 soldiers concentrated in the north — even if the German forces are not allowed to shoot unless fired upon first and their Tornado aircraft are restricted to unarmed reconnaissance flights.

Public opinion is nevertheless overwhelmingly against Germany’s involvement in the NATO mission in Afghanistan — even though West Germany was a prime beneficiary of NATO’s unyielding support during the Cold War. With their post-World War Two indoctrination against war on both sides of the former Iron Curtain, it is hard to underestimate the deep anti-war sentiment throughout Germany — they are weaned on the notion of Nie Wieder Krieg! (War never again!). And Jung’s party, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, is eager to win the parliamentary elections in three months — and does not want any turbulence or a national debate about Afghanistan to get in the way.

from The Great Debate UK:

From afar, G8 seeks a handle on Afghanistan

- Luke Baker is a political and general news correspondent at Reuters. -

The mountains and deserts of southern Afghanistan are far removed from the elegant charms of Trieste in northern Italy, but there will be a link between the two this weekend.

Foreign ministers from the Group of Eight nations meet in the Italian city on the Adriatic on Thursday for three days of talks, with the state of play in Afghanistan, as well as developments in Iran and the Middle East, front and centre of their agenda.

Nearly eight years and tens of billions of dollars on from the U.S.-led invasion that overthrew the Taliban, the United States and its allies appear no closer to bringing long-term stability to the country, with the Taliban resurgent throughout the south and west and the instability expanding across the border into Pakistan.

One of the major areas of unrest is Helmand, a vast desert and mountain province in the far south where around 8,000 British troops have been deployed for 3-1/2 years and 10,000 U.S. Marines are steadily being sent in as reinforcements.

While 18,000 troops backed by helicopters, jets, Predator drones, armoured vehicles and endless advanced weaponry may sound like more than enough of a match for bands of bearded militants who usually aren't armed with much more than a Kalashnikov rifle, it's not always the case.

Helmand, split down the middle by the Helmand river, is larger than Switzerland and has a daunting mix of terrain that the Taliban and their followers are far more familiar with than foreign troops sweating in heavy, cumbersome combat gear. And it's not just the challenges of the topography, it's the sheer size of the area that stretches any army's capability.