British hostage 'killed by captors' in Afghanistan as US forces led rescue bid

[bemildred]

Source: Guardian.UK

US special forces in Afghanistan stormed a compound in a pre-dawn raid yesterday, where 36-year-old Linda Norgrove was being held in the village of Dineshgal, Kunar province, in the east of the country.

A tribal elder was quoted as saying that the kidnappers had killed Norgrove during the assault. A suicide vest was found nearby, but it was not clear if it had been detonated or if other explosives had been used to kill the aid worker. "There is nothing at all to suggest that US fire was the cause," a Foreign Office spokesman added. Seven insurgents are also understood to have died during the rescue bid.

"The captors killed the British woman as the trying to rescue her," Jan Mohammed Khan, a tribal elder from the Norgal district of Kunar, told the agency by telephone. The account could not be verified. An unnamed Afghan intelligence source was quoted by Sky news, claiming Norgrove was killed when a grenade was thrown into the room in which she was being held.

The remote valley where she is believed to have been held in mountainous Kunar province, which borders Pakistan, is known for its difficult heavily forested terrain, heavily forested and remote. It is also notoriously unstable.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/09/british-aid-worker-afghanistan-nato

[timefortherevolution]

1. What was she doing there?

I have a hard time driving through my major city in the daytime, would love to know what
goes through the heads of people like this woman.

[EFerrari]

2. People like this woman? You mean, aid workers that keep trying to do their jobs

in countries we've screwed three ways to Sunday?

:wtf:

[daleo]

3. Probably all kinds of motives

Some are just trying to help, i.e. liberal internationalists of one type or another.

Some have religious motives i.e Christian missionaries who may or may not proselytize.

Some have political motives i.e. undercover western agents or informants.

Some may be a mixture of the above.

I think Graham Greene wrote a few books on the subject.

[Shanti Mama]

4. I have at least a dozen friends/acquaintances in Afghanistan

Doing aid/development work. They are risking their lives every day to try to make things right. They don't work for US mercenary companies. They mostly work for small NGOs, non-sectarian. A few are with the UN. Most don't have kids but some do.

I'm not sure what goes through their heads, but I know they care deeply about humankind. And quite a few support the presence of US troops in Afghanistan. They have a much better understan.ding of the complexity of the situation than we do

[tabasco]

9. You're not quite ready for the revolution.

You don't understand courage and commitment.

[JI7]

15. time for the revolution ? what revolution is that ?how wouldyou go about it?

[bemildred]

5. Linda Norgrove's Afghanistan captors 'set off explosion' during rescue attempt

The parents of Linda Norgrove are waiting to be told how the kidnapped Scottish aid worker died when US special forces stormed a mud-walled compound in eastern Afghanistan.

According to conflicting reports her captors either threw a grenade into the room where the 36-year-old was being held, or detonated a suicide vest.

The unsuccessful rescue mission came three weeks after Norgrove was seized by insurgents in the mountainous province of Kunar, near the Pakistan border, on her way to view an irrigation project she had overseen.

She had been working with the US aid organisation Development Alternatives Inc (DAI) and had been based in Jalalabad. An intrepid traveller, she had risked the journey into one of Afghanistan's most dangerous areas in the company of three trusted workers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/10/linda-norgrove-afghanistan-aid-worker

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bemildred]

6. Afghans overruled before failed bid to rescue hostage

KABUL: Questions have been raised over the failed attempt by US special forces to free a British aid worker kidnapped in Afghanistan.

---

However, the Telegraph learnt that local Afghan leaders wanted to negotiate with Ms Norgrove's kidnappers to win her freedom but that they were overruled by NATO commanders who feared she was about to be smuggled to Pakistan and handed to al-Qaeda militants.

Ms Norgrove, 36, from Uig on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, had been in Afghanistan since 2005. She was going to a ceremony to open a 24-kilometre irrigation canal at Salar when she was abducted on September 26 with three Afghan colleagues.

---

Troops who battled through small arms fire to reach the compound where she was being held found her dying on the ground. Medical treatment failed to save her. Six of the kidnap gang are thought to have been killed in the fighting.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/afghans-overruled-before-failed-bid-to-rescue-hostage-20101010-16dzt.html

[pampango]

7. BBC: UK hostage Linda Norgrove 'killed by vest bomb'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11510115

US troops in Afghanistan were seconds from rescuing a UK hostage when she was killed by a vest bomb held or worn by a kidnapper, the BBC understands. They reached the building where Linda Norgrove, 36, was held and were "very, very close" to her, the BBC was told.

It is understood tribal elders negotiating her release asked Nato not to intervene so they had more time.

David Cameron has said it was right for the special forces to try to rescue the aid worker, from Lewis, Western Isles.

The prime minister said: "Decisions on operations to free hostages are always difficult, but where a British life is in such danger, and where we and our allies can act, I believe it is right to try.

[Kurovski]

10. Kick. (nt)

[ProudDad]

11. The latest is that she was killed by US soldiers...

Just another piece of "collateral damage" in the permanent war economy of the USAmerikan Empire...

Who gives a shit -- certainly no one in Washington...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8055794/Linda-Norgrove-aid-worker-killed-by-friendly-fire.html

The Global War on Terra(tm)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbQScYx5quc

And from Andrew Basevich today:

http://www.alternet.org/story/148456/why_we_can%27t_win_the_%22war_on_terror%22?page=entire

"So an officer corps once intent above all on avoiding protracted wars now specializes in quagmires. Campaigns don’t really end. At best, they peter out.

"Formerly trained to kill people and break things, American soldiers now attend to winning hearts and minds, while moonlighting in assassination. The politically correct term for this is "counterinsurgency."

"Now, assigning combat soldiers the task of nation-building in, say, Mesopotamia is akin to hiring a crew of lumberjacks to build a house in suburbia. What astonishes is not that the result falls short of perfection, but that any part of the job gets done at all.

"Yet by simultaneously adopting the practice of “targeted killing,” the home builders do double-duty as home wreckers. For American assassins, the weapon of choice is not the sniper rifle or the shiv, but missile-carrying pilotless aircraft controlled from bases in Nevada and elsewhere thousands of miles from the battlefield -- the ultimate expression of an American desire to wage war without getting our hands dirty."

[joshcryer]

13. I love how that headline says "killed by friendly fire" and the article says "may have been."

So cute.

[ProudDad]

14. Read Basevich' "Washington Rules"

Wonderfully lucid book that lays it all out.

And Obama bit; hook, line and sinker for the whole military bullshit line! For "Washington Rules"...

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.