Tagged: Military

Afghanistan faces the daunting prospect of a drastic reduction in foreign aid, which currently makes up about 90 percent of the country's revenue. Some have seen an economic life raft in geological surveys that indicate huge deposits of copper, iron, uranium and lithium in various parts of the country. But multinational mining firms have been slow to invest in Afghanistan — not least because of questions about stability after American troops draw down.

Mullah Mira Jan, the tribal leader of Ainak village, says he was promised a job mining copper on this hillside in eastern Afghanistan — but that was about 40 years ago. Mira Jan takes out a faded ID card with a picture stapled in and points to the line for occupation.

The case of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the U.S. soldier charged with killing 17 Afghan villagers, has led the Army to review how troops are screened for post-traumatic stress disorder. The Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs say they have invested heavily in the treatment of PTSD to deal with a growing caseload.

But the stigma associated with the disorder continues to complicate efforts to treat it. It has also fueled serious misconceptions about its effects — such as the notion that PTSD causes acts of extreme violence.

In a nondescript apartment room in Turkey, just across the border from Syria, clouds of cigarette smoke drift toward the ceiling as Syrian opposition activists ponder how to keep people and supplies moving across the border.

Abu Jafaar is the alias of a Syrian smuggler who has been dodging Syrian army patrols for the past several months.

He says the smugglers are still getting back and forth, but the Syrian army has begun occupying entire villages to block their path. They have to be very careful when villagers rise up and protest, because that attracts the security forces.

Syrian civilians fleeing the army's assault on rebel-held neighborhoods are also crossing the border, into Turkey and Lebanon, with tales of horrific damage and brutal killings.

It's one of the most serious actions the U.S. government could ever take: targeting one of its own citizens with lethal force.

Since last year, U.S. drones have killed three Americans overseas. But Attorney General Eric Holder says the ongoing fight against al-Qaida means those kinds of deadly strikes are now a way of life. And judging from the reaction to his national security speech at Northwestern University Law School on Monday, so is the hot debate over the legality of the U.S. drone program.

At the Fort Polk military base in the pine forests of central Louisiana, the Army has created a miniature version of Afghanistan — with mock villages and American soldiers working alongside Afghan role-players.

This is the training ground for a new American approach in Afghanistan as the U.S. begins to look ahead to the goal of bringing home the U.S. forces by the end of 2014. The idea is that Afghan forces have to be good enough to defend their country against the Taliban, and to make that happen, the U.S. Army is creating small U.S. training teams at Fort Polk.

In one of these fake villages, which the soldiers call Marghoz, there's a jumble of brick buildings, with a blue-domed mosque in the middle.

The movie Act of Valor, which opened in theaters last weekend and earned nearly $25 million, was commissioned by the Navy's Special Warfare Command to drum up recruits for its elite SEALs program. But this is by no means the first movie made with the military's cooperation.

Hollywood's relationship with the military can be traced back to the 1927 film Wings, which won a Best Picture Oscar, says Jordan Zakarin, an editor with hollywoodreporter.com. That film was proposed to the Department of War, directed by a veteran and given planes, guns and other military equipment. But the partnership between Hollywood and the military didn't truly blossom until World War II.