From The Washington Post:
Vehicle crashes on runway during Panetta visit in Afghanistan
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — An Afghan civilian stole a military pickup truck, rammed through a fence and crashed into a ditch by a runway around the time that a plane carrying Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta landed at an airfield in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, U.S. officials said. Panetta was unharmed and carried on with his visit as planned.
Pentagon officials said they could not immediately confirm that the incident was an attempt to attack Panetta or that it was linked to his visit. They said the driver’s motives are under investigation.
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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Afghanistan for an unannounced visit to meet with troops and Afghan officials just days after a U.S. Soldier allegedly killed 16 Afghan civilians.
A map locating Camp Bastion in Helmand province, Afghanistan
“There is no evidence right now that the driver had any idea who was on that aircraft,” said Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. “We do not have an indication it was intended as an attack.”
The incident occurred around the time of Panetta’s 11 a.m. arrival at Camp Bastion, a British base adjoining Camp Leatherneck, a major U.S. Marine base in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. The Afghan man caught on fire by means that remain unclear, but his vehicle did not explode, and he was apprehended by security forces, officials said.
A coalition service member was injured in the incident, which was not disclosed by Pentagon officials for 10 hours after some details of it had leaked to the British press.
“At no point was the secretary or anyone on the aircraft in any danger from this incident,” the NATO command in Kabul said in a statement.
Kirby said the suspect in custody is an Afghan who stole a small pickup truck from a NATO soldier on the base shortly before driving it onto the runway. The soldier was wounded during the carjacking, Kirby said.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said the service member was seriously injured from being struck by the stolen vehicle.
The Afghan “was driving at a high rate of speed,” Kirby said.
Officials said he was not a member of the Afghan armed forces but apparently worked at the base as a civilian.
After the crash, “security personnel responded, and for reasons that are totally unknown to us at this time, our personnel discovered that he [the Afghan] was ablaze,” Little said. He said the man ran and jumped onto a truck, and base personnel put out the fire. The man was treated for “considerable burn wounds,” Little said.
“We don’t know all the facts, but we have no indication that the secretary was ever at risk,” Little said. He said no explosives were found on the Afghan or in the vehicle. “It is my understanding that the car itself never caught on fire and did not explode,” he said.
“We don’t know for sure if the stolen vehicle incident was in any way connected to the secretary’s arrival or visit,” and it did not affect the visit at all, he said.
The secretary’s plane was diverted to a different runway shortly after the incident. “We learned of this incident on the ramp,” Little said. He said the incident is still under investigation and that he did not know exactly when the vehicle crashed. “I don’t know if the car came on while we were landing or before or slightly after,” Little said.
The incident occurred three days after a U.S. soldier slipped away from his small base in Kandahar province and killed as many as 16 Afghan villagers in a pre-dawn shooting rampage — a massacre that has provoked widespread outrage across Afghanistan. Afghan lawmakers and other officials have demanded that the soldier be put on trial in an Afghan court.
But a senior defense official disclosed Wednesday that the shooting suspect, an Army staff sergeant, has been moved out of Afghanistan.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Afghanistan for an unannounced visit to meet with troops and Afghan officials just days after a U.S. Soldier allegedly killed 16 Afghan civilians.
A map locating Camp Bastion in Helmand province, Afghanistan
He still faces charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But the move indicates that he will not be tried in Afghanistan.
The airfield runway incident was one of the most serious security breaches during an unannounced visit by a U.S. Cabinet member to a war zone in recent years.
During past visits to Iraq or Afghanistan, American diplomats and military officials have gone to great lengths to keep such trips secret until the senior officials landed, out of fear that insurgents would have time to plan sophisticated attacks.
In Iraq, insurgents sometimes fired rockets into the Green Zone moments after news of high-profile visits broke.
Camp Bastion is one of the biggest NATO bases in Afghanistan. U.S. Marines and British soldiers deployed there have fought intense battles with the Taliban in recent years in an effort to wrest control of regions essential to the lucrative poppy trade.
Panetta, making his third trip to Afghanistan, pledged during the visit that arecent string of setbacks would not force the United States to alter its strategy here.
During the visit, the senior Marine Corps commander in southern Afghanistan said there was little that U.S. forces could do to make night raids, which have drawn repeated criticism from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, more palatable to senior Afghan leaders.
The night raids have been a major stumbling block between U.S. and Afghan officials who are trying to negotiate an agreement that sets up a long-term security relationship between the two countries.
“I don’t know how much more accommodating we can be with what is a critical element of a counterinsurgency fight,” said Maj. Gen. Mark Gurganus, the senior Marine commander for troops in Helmand province. All of the night raids are being conducted by joint teams of U.S. and Afghan forces, Gurganus said.
Speaking to U.S. and Afghan troops at Camp Leatherneck, Panetta sought to tamp down worries about the course of the U.S. war effort following Sunday’s killings by the U.S. soldier in Kandahar province, as well as nationwide riots in the aftermath of an inadvertent burning of Korans last month by U.S. troops.
U.S. officials showed a base surveillance video of the staff sergeant surrendering to Afghan security guards in an effort to prove that he was a lone gunman and to knock down rumors that other U.S. troops might have been involved, a U.S. official said.
“We have been tested time and time again over a decade of war,” Panetta told the U.S. and Afghan troops who gathered in a stuffy tent. “That is the nature of war. ... Each of these incidents is deeply troubling, and we have to learn lessons from each of these incidents.”
But he said the incidents do not reflect the “overwhelming majority of ISAF troops and Afghan troops who are doing the job of protecting the country and doing it in outstanding fashion.” He referred to the International Security Assistance Force, as the U.S.-led NATO coalition is called.
In a departure from past practice, about 200 Marines at Camp Leatherneck were told to set their rifles outside before hearing Panetta speak. Gurganus said he made the decision to have the Marines do so out of respect for the two dozen Afghan soldiers who attended the meeting without weapons.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Afghanistan for an unannounced visit to meet with troops and Afghan officials just days after a U.S. Soldier allegedly killed 16 Afghan civilians.
A map locating Camp Bastion in Helmand province, Afghanistan
“I wanted the Marines to look just like their Afghan partners,” Gurganus said. “This is not a big deal.”
Little said later that Gurganus’s decision had nothing to do with the vehicle incident.
Panetta’s security team was armed as normal. In a sign of the heightened tensions, even some Marines initially assumed that they were told to leave their weapons outside for security reasons.
“Someone got itchy, and we just adjust,” Sgt. Maj. Brandon Hall, a senior noncommissioned officer at Leatherneck, said of the decision.
Panetta also spoke to a battalion from the Republic of Georgia that suffered five killed since arriving in November. The battalion’s commander lost both of his legs and is recuperating at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Panetta read the troops a letter from their commander, Lt. Col. Alex Tugushi. “Your pain is Georgia’s pain,” Panetta read. The commander lamented that he could not complete his tour and told the troops that they will go down in Georgian history.
Meanwhile, Pentagon officials released new statistics showing falling violence levels in an effort to prove that the war effort is not faltering.
Attacks against U.S. and Afghan troops are down 24 percent over the past 12 weeks compared with a similar period a year ago, the figures show. Even in eastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan, attacks have started to drop after holding steady or rising most of last year.
Attacks in the east on U.S. and Afghan troops fell by 36 percent over the same period, according to the latest U.S. military figures. Pentagon officials tout the statistics as proof that the current approach is working, though some of the drop in violence could also be attributed to an unusually harsh winter. Snowed has blocked passes that insurgents rely on to move fighters and weapons in from Pakistan.
Despite the drop in violence, the United States faces major hurdles in its effort to end U.S. military operations here by late 2014.
Londono reported from Kabul.
