Military Resistance 14J6
[Thanks to SSG N (ret’d) who sent this in. She writes: “And only five days pastnative American Holocaust Day.”]
Chinese Veterans March On Defense Ministry Demanding Better Benefits:
“Tuesday’s Demonstration Was Unusual In Its Length And Its Location”
“Protests Of Any Size Often Are Swiftly Broken Up By Police. Authorities Appearing To Let The Demonstration Unfold Peacefully”
“We’ve Gotten Nothing Since Retiring From Service: No Pensions, No Social Security”
“‘We’ve Been Neglected,’ The Former Soldier From Shanxi Said. ‘We’re Here To Seek What We Deserve’”
Chinese veterans in green fatigues gather outside the Defense Ministry in Beijing on Tuesday to demand better benefits. PHOTO: NG HAN GUAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 11, 2016 By CHUN HAN WONG, Wall Street Journal & Nomaan Merchant, The Associated Press.
BEIJING—
More than 1,000 former members of China’s military on Tuesday staged a rare protest at Defense Ministry headquarters, calling for better veterans benefits, underscoring Beijing’s challenge in managing troops demobilized from its vast armed forces.
The protesters, mostly middle-aged men dressed in green camouflage fatigues, gathered outside the ministry’s Bayi Building in central Beijing in the morning and sang songs and waved banners into the night.
They demanded better government support for military retirees.
Grievances over military pensions have flared into mass protests from time to time in China, but Tuesday’s demonstration was unusual in its length and its location.
Large shows of public dissent in front of major government offices in the Chinese capital are unusual, and protests of any size often are swiftly broken up by police.
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It wasn’t clear if any protesters were detained during Tuesday’s protest, with authorities appearing to let the demonstration unfold peacefully.
[What a surprise. The government of corrupt billionaires is not yet ready or stupid enough to turn loose police against veterans, and by extension, the whole army. Not yet. When the Chinese capitalist debt bubble explodes into mass unemployment, then we will see what the veterans and soldiers have to say to the oligarchs. T]
While Chinese authorities routinely suppress discussions about the military and soldiers' issues, one human-rights activist, Huang Qi, told the AP that veterans have staged more than 50 protests this year alone.
However, demonstrations on such a large scale are extremely rare in the center of the heavily policed capital.
The veterans discord comes as China implements an ambitious restructuring of its armed forces. President Xi Jinping aims to transform the world’s largest military into a smaller and more capable fighting force.
The plan, which Mr. Xi began implementing around the beginning of the year, calls for paring 300,000 troops from the 2.3 million-strong People’s Liberation Army, the biggest cut in two decades.
China’s defense and public-security ministries didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
At least six million PLA veterans are on state welfare, thousands of whom have staged well-organized protests in recent years over what they see as insufficient state support.
Beijing has promised to improve its treatment of veterans. At an annual parliamentary meeting in March, the government pledged to spend 39.8 billion yuan ($5.9 billion) this year on allowances for demobilized troops, a 13% increase over 2015.
The government typically has offered subsidies to former soldiers and reserved jobs for them at state-run firms, but many veterans say that local authorities often fail to follow through on these pledges, or that the benefits aren’t adequate for their daily needs.
The promise of increased aid this year, however, hasn’t assuaged participants at Tuesday’s protest.
Several said they have been campaigning for years to seek the benefits they say the government had promised them upon leaving the armed forces.
“We’ve gotten nothing since retiring from service: no pensions, no social security,” said a 55-year-old protester from China’s northern Shanxi province, who didn’t give his name.
A former army driver who served for 14 years, he said he has worked various odd jobs to make ends meet since leaving the PLA two decades ago.
"They protested because they don't have a job now after serving a long period of time in the army, some for a dozen years." "They are asking for employment."
One of the largest veterans’ protests took place in June 2015 when a crowd of several thousand, mostly veterans of China’s brief 1979 border war with Vietnam, wearing uniforms and medals, protested outside Beijing offices of the Central Military Commission, which commands the armed forces and is headed by Mr. Xi.
Analysts expect such tensions to worsen as the PLA pares its ranks, putting large numbers of service members out of work amid a slowdown in China’s economy.
Neil Diamant, a professor at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania who has studied PLA veterans’ protests, said the central government in Beijing often doesn’t allocate enough money to regional authorities for funding welfare programs for demobilized troops. “This results in widespread efforts to limit expenditures at the local level,” Mr. Diamant said. “The more veterans there are at any point in time, the more difficult this becomes.”
Meanwhile on Tuesday outside the Defense Ministry, ranks of veterans broke into song from time to time as they stood in formation, belting out lines such as “unity is strength.”
Hundreds of police and plainclothes officers kept watch, maintaining a security cordon around the protesters with tape, police vehicles and buses.
“We’ve been neglected,” the former soldier from Shanxi said. “We’re here to seek what we deserve.”
AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS
Taliban Enters Capital Of Helmand Province After Weeks Of Fighting:
“Their Most Successful Assault To Date On The Strategic Southern City”
“Public Bravado Replaced By Closed-Door Emergency Meetings And Appeals For Help”
“Pervasive Corruption In The Security Forces. He Said The Practice Of ‘Selling Ranks’ Had Weakened Military Morale And ‘Made The Taliban Stronger Than Us’”
The Taliban already controlled three-quarters of the province, and since mid-September it had launched a new offensive, harrying the edges of the capital while overrunning several district centers and attacking security checkpoints.
October 10, 2016 By Pamela Constable, WASHINGTON POSTBy CHAD GARLAND AND ZUBAIR BABAKARKHAIL, STARS AND STRIPES. Sayed Salahuddin contributed to the Post report.
KABUL — When Taliban fighters penetrated the capital of Helmand province for the first time Monday, killing at least 14 people in a bombing and related attacks, it was their most successful assault to date on the strategic southern city and opium trade center, which the insurgents have been trying to capture for months.
Government forces pushed them out after several hours, and officials declared the situation under control, but by then some panicked residents had fled the beleaguered city, and the psychological damage had been done.
The Taliban had not raised their flag over Lashkar Gah, but they had come awfully close.
Cell service in Lashkar Gah appeared to have been cut earlier in the day, but Twitter users posted updates apparently from the area, including one image of a pillar of smoke rising above the city.
Afghan special forces prepare for battle with the Taliban outside of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province on Monday. (Abdul Malik/Reuters)
Monday’s ground assault and bombing came two days after Gen. John W. Nicholson, the top U.S. and NATO military commander in Afghanistan, flew from Kabul to Lashkar Gah and promised worried local leaders that international forces would do everything possible to make sure the city does not collapse.
“We are with you and we will stay with you,” Nicholson told the group gathered inside a police compound, adding that Western nations had recently pledged new military and economic support to Afghanistan “because we believe in you.”
Even if the Taliban keeps trying to attack, he vowed, “Lashkar Gah will not fall.”
Lt. Gen. Abdullah Khan Habibi, the Afghan defense minister, accompanied Nicholson and promised the group his forces would “defend Lashkar Gah with our own blood.” Helmand Gov. Hayatullah Hayat declared that Taliban fighters were making “a last push” to capture the city but that “they will take that hope to their graves.”
By Monday, the public bravado had been replaced by closed-door emergency meetings and appeals for help.
Hayat, while declaring the situation under control by afternoon, acknowledged that local security forces were “really tired” after weeks of defending the city against Taliban aggression.
In a telephone interview, he said provincial security officials had asked the central government to send “fresh troops so our guys can cycle out and get some rest.”
To the elders who gathered anxiously Saturday to hear what the visitors had to say, Monday’s attack came as no surprise.
The Taliban already controlled three-quarters of the province, and since mid-September it had launched a new offensive, harrying the edges of the capital while overrunning several district centers and attacking security checkpoints.
The elders knew the militant Islamists were itching to capture Lashkar Gah, where they could establish a launching pad for more offensives and move their leaders from neighboring Pakistan. They knew it would also give the insurgents much greater control over the region’s hugely profitable opium poppy trade.
They were alarmed by the erratic performance of Afghan troops, more numerous and better equipped but less motivated than the insurgents.
They were frustrated by political infighting in Kabul. They wondered why the Americans, with so many warplanes and attack helicopters at the ready, weren’t doing more to help.
So they listened politely to the speeches, fingering their prayer beads and fidgeting with frustration.
And then they spoke.
One elder, Hajji Ahmad Jan, rose and graciously welcomed the visitors, but then his tone shifted abruptly.
“We are sacrificing so much here, and what have we gained?” he said, pointing to a legislator whose brother had just been killed in fighting.
Then he turned and addressed Nicholson. “You got rid of the Taliban in three days once. Why can’t you do the same thing now?”
Another complained to a reporter about pervasive corruption in the security forces. He said the practice of “selling ranks” had weakened military morale and “made the Taliban stronger than us.”
One man seemed to speak for everyone when he made a brief, impassioned plea to the visiting officials.
“Our homes are being destroyed, our youths are being killed, people are suffering every day and being forgotten,” he said.
“If, God forbid, we lose Lashkar Gah, then Helmand will collapse and the whole region and Afghanistan will collapse.
In western Farah province, Afghan forces called for reinforcements after insurgents surrounded an outpost there.
MORE:
As Helmand Risks Falling To The Taliban, "Some Sell Their Weapons, Their Ammunition, Even Their Buildings, To The Insurgents"
"Sometimes They Sell The Soldiers, Too, Along With Their Equipment"
"The People Are So Disgusted With The Government That Now They Are More Inclined To Support The Taliban”
“A Year Ago, The Government Controlled 80% Of The Province. "Now, For At Least The Past Month, More Than 85% Of Helmand Is Under The Control Of The Taliban”
October 12, 2016 By: Lynne O'Donnell and Karim Sharifi, The Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — For the past month, the Taliban have held control over most of Afghanistan's Helmand province, where the majority of the world's opium is grown — and as insurgent attacks intensify around the provincial capital, residents are blaming rampant government corruption for the rising militant threat.
At an international aid conference last week, Afghanistan's leaders raised $15 billion from their international backers and pledged to clamp down on graft.
But corrupt officials have hollowed out the national security forces, selling weapons and even government buildings to the Taliban, and alienated local populations.
One Afghan official said that Helmand residents were so angry at corruption that they were turning to the Taliban, despite memories of the extremist group's harsh rule.
Afghanistan is consistently rated by the corruption watchdog Transparency International as one of the world's most corrupt countries, along with Somalia and North Korea.
"It is estimated that an eighth of all the money that goes to Afghanistan is lost to corruption," it said in a report released ahead of the aid conference.
The U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, John Sopko, who is charged with tracing billions of dollars of American aid, estimates that while the United States pays salaries for 320,000 Afghan soldiers and police nationwide, the actual number of troops is just 120,000.
The remainder are so-called "ghost soldiers."
Corrupt commanders claim salaries and benefits for soldiers and police who either don't exist, have agreed to hand over part of their pay in exchange for not going to work, or who have been killed in battle.
Of the 26,000 security force personnel officially assigned to Helmand, up to half are ghost soldiers, according to Sopko's most recent report.
Helmand is particularly afflicted by corruption, thanks in large part to its opium fields. The majority of the world's heroin originates in this southern province bordering Pakistan. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime last year valued the crop at $3 billion a year, equivalent to around 20 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product.
It helps fund the Taliban insurgency, and local officials and military leaders profit from the industry too.
They receive bribes to turn a blind eye, and sell their military equipment to cash-rich militants.
Local officials and residents say that corruption occurs at every level in the province and everything is for sale, from government jobs, to ammunition and weapons and state-owned buildings.
Across Helmand, soldiers and police regularly change sides and give up their vehicles and weapons rather than defend themselves against attack, said Attaullah, a member of the provincial council.
"Some sell their weapons, their ammunition, even in some cases their buildings, to the insurgents," said Attaullah, who like many Afghans has only one name. "Sometimes they sell the soldiers, too, along with their equipment."
A year ago, the government controlled 80 percent of the province. "Now, for at least the past month, more than 85 percent of Helmand territory is basically under the control of the Taliban and other terrorist groups," said Abdul Ahad Massomi, a former governor of Gereshk district, which has shifted between Taliban and government control for years.
The insurgents and other drug-trafficking groups have joined forces to push the government out of the opium trade, said a former central government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue.
The Taliban have full control of five of Helmand's 14 districts and are in effective control of eight others, where just small pockets of territory are still government-held.
The militants are now closing in on the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, with a spate of assaults and attacks having killed dozens of people in recent weeks. The Taliban have been on the offensive in Helmand since the start of the fighting season in April, and the latest attacks on Lashkar Gah suggest a final push before the insurgents retreat for the winter.
The Taliban don't "want to take over the city, but they do want the government and the people to know that they have the ability to take over," the former central government official said. "It's about drugs, money and power."
Razia Bloch, a member of the provincial council, says each morning she fears the Taliban will take over Lashkar Gah and declare the province fully under their control.
She said that the militants are so close that from the district governor's building the white Taliban flag can be seen flying, just a few kilometers away.
The fall of Helmand province would deal a heavy blow to U.S. and Afghan officials, who consistently issue assurances that it will never fall. It would also bring the militants closer to their real prize, neighboring Kandahar province, the base of their 1996-2001 government.