First, it was 17 who had gone AWOL, and that was bad enough. Now, that number has almost tripled, and the most recent to disappear did so last Thursday. "EXCLUSIVE: Number of Afghans Gone AWOL in U.S. Reaches 46," by Jana Winter for Fox News, July 7:
LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas -- A be-on-the-lookout alert issued last month for 17 Afghan military men who walked away from an Air Force base in Texas has turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. No fewer than 46 members of the Afghan military have gone absent without leave from the Defense Language Institute's English Language Center at Lackland Air Force Base in recent years, FoxNews.com has learned.
From a series of interviews with civilians and military personnel conducted over the course of a week, and according to documents obtained from a variety of sources, FoxNews.com has learned that five of these Afghan deserters remain at large; eight are in custody; at least 18 are in Canada and one has been granted conditional U.S. residency. The most recent to disappear fled the Texas base just last Thursday, hours after his graduation ceremony.
Some of the men disappeared before completing the Defense Language Institute (DLI) program. Others graduated from DLI but vanished before their scheduled flights back to Afghanistan. Many never showed up at the U.S. military base where they were scheduled to attend specialized formal training. A smaller percentage of the group went AWOL while attending the formal training programs.
Military and law enforcement officials say it's not uncommon for foreign military personnel who come to the U.S. for training to get lured in by hopes of a better life. But the number of AWOL Afghans has become a growing problem.
Last year alone, 21 Afghan military students disappeared from DLI -- a much higher rate than students from other countries who attend the school. Two of the men went AWOL weeks after graduating from the program; the others vanished before completing it.
"In 2009, the Defense Language Institute English Language Center reported two other students from countries other than Afghanistan went missing," Gary Emery, spokesman for Lackland AFB, told FoxNews.com. "They include one Iraqi who requested asylum in Houston and one Djiboutian whose status is unknown."
On June 17, FoxNews.com revealed exclusively that a nationwide be-on-the-lookout (BOLO) bulletin had been issued for 17 Afghans who had gone AWOL from DLI. The alert, which was compiled by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force, included photos and dates of birth of the 17 men and was widely distributed to law enforcement agencies across the country.
FoxNews.com quickly found at least 11 of the 17 AWOL Afghans on Facebook.
Since then, FoxNews.com has learned that the problem of Afghan military members going AWOL is more pervasive than suggested by the June bulletin, which included outdated and incomplete information. The BOLO alert included men who had been apprehended more than six months before it was issued, and it failed to include the name and photo of the most recent Afghan to vanish from DLI -- a pilot who disappeared in March -- as well as 28 others who have gone AWOL in recent years.
"Since 2002, 745 students have passed through the U.S. on this training and only 46 have actually gone absent without leave, and in 2009 there was a peak of 21 students," Col. Stewart Cowen, NATO spokesman, Afghanistan, told FoxNews.com.
Citing statistics provided by the Department of Homeland Security, Cowen said 25 of the 46 remain unaccounted for.
At least 18 of those are known to be in Canada. (Multiple sources told FoxNews.com that there is believed to be a strong network of former AWOL Afghans now living in Canada or illegally in the U.S., and students can easily find out how to get to Canada or leave town.)
The number of Afghan DLI students and former students who have gone AWOL, by year:
2005: At least one
2006: At least three
2007: Three
2008: At least six
2009: At least 21
2010: At least two
Last year, at least 17 Afghans went AWOL from DLI -- and at least four more disappeared after graduation and before or during their next training assignment or before a scheduled flight back to Afghanistan. Seven students vanished in December alone.
Click here for detailed information about the Afghans who have gone AWOL.
This list and the information it provides are fascinating. Note in particular the sense of entitlement from one Mirwais Qassimi, who claimed: "I am not missing. just I left US and came to Canada and I am living here since October 2008. As human, it is my right to live in a peaceful country." (Gee, why doesn't Afghanistan fit the bill?)
It was only after seeing a dramatic spike in the number of AWOL Afghans late last year that the U.S. and Afghanistan took action to address the problem....
Are these the disgruntled vets Janet Napolitano was talking about?
*** 9:3 ***
So long as they're in the Lone Star State, maybe they should get down to Houston, where they'd be welcome with open arms at the NASA Johnson Space Center:
(President Obama) wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering.
-- NASA Administrator Charles Bolden
None of that's true, of course. The contribution to science and engineering by Moslems is miniscule at best.
Turnspeak. Always more and more turnspeak. But the amateurish Obama Administration did come up with a meaty substantive accomplishment today, when acknowledged crook Eric Holder sued the state of Arizona for the heinous crime of enforcing the law.
*** 8:12 ***
Teaching our Moslem allies rocket science makes sense. That way they won't have to buy their ICBMs from North Korea.
Good God. I don't know where to start with this story.
*21 Afghans disappeared last year*—*after* they realized it was a growing problem. One disappeared *last Thursday*—long after the US military authorities must have realized they had to keep an eye on these guys.
Notice—*all* the AWOL foreign trainees are from *Muslim countries*—Afghanistan, Iraq, and Djibouti. I notice that British and Argentinian and other foreign trainees are not going AWOL.
With a problem this big, *why* are we still bringing Afghans into the Untied States? Why isn't Canada sending these guys back? Have we even asked? Why the hell would Canada want Afghan AWOLs in their country?
The idea that FOXNews tracked some of these AWOLs down via *FaceBook* is amusing, but also appalling. I live just a few miles from Fremont, California, which has the largest Afghan population in the United States. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of these missing Afghans are living there.
This would be bad enough if these Afghans were just entering the US illegally via these training programs, abusing America's largess, wasting the military's time and abusing the American taxpayer, so that they could live and work in the US.
But the biggest threat—needless to say—is not AWOLs who want to open mini-marts or even sponge off American welfare programs—it is the open invitation to Jihadists that this unbelievably moronic US policy offers.
I would 'miss' the plane back to Afghanistan, wouldn't you?
The fiasco in Iraq -- the Shi'a will never surrender power, and the Sunnis will never acquiesce in their newly inferior status, and both, being Muslims, are unused to compromise and inured to violence and aggression (the Sunnis more to giving, and the Shi'a to receiving) -- is now followed by the not-quite-yet-as-expensive fiasco in Afghanistan.
This disappearance of members of the Afghan military who have been selected presumably for both their promise and their trustworthiness, is merely a small example of the larger problem.
And that larger problem -- the squandering rather than husbanding of resources, and the dreamy belief that we can handle the world-wide problem of Jihad best by continuing to pretend that its sources are not in the texts of Islam, and that most Muslims reject Jihad (they do not, they embrace it, and they share the goals, if not the methods, of those who run the various terrorist groups whose differences are made much of, but those differences are in the end trivial)-- and the inattention to much more effective and much cheaper ways to handle the matter, to reduce it to manageable size, before it is too late (especially in Western Europe), is part of what maddens.
And now look at another confusion: Michael Steele, the Republican Party Chairman, dares to suggest that Obama has made Afghanistan his "war of choice." And this comment, which Steele has been forced to backtrack from, by Republicans themselves, offered them a way to distance themselves from the Afghan fiasco, and to place the blame for it on Obama. Both the Bush Administration, and the Obama Administration, have failed to craft policies based on a recognition of the meaning, and therefore the menace, of the ideology of Islam. They have talked of, and regarded this as, a "war" in the traditional guns and tanks and planes sense, even if the guns are the very latest, and the tanks not tanks but I.E.D.-proofed (a little late, I'm afraid) vehicles, and the planes include drones (whose early development and effective use puts us in Israel's debt, and not for the first time).
It is not. It is an ideological war. It is a war which is not a "Long War" but that goes on forever. It is not a war in which a "victory" is achieved, but a war in which one holds the other side permanently at bay, while doing everything to weaken the hold of the ideology of Islam on the minds of many of its adherents. It is not a problem to which there is a "solution" but a situation to be managed.
There are many intelligent things that could have been, and can still be done, to weaken, through dividing and demoralizing, the Camp of Islam.
We might have saved three trillion dollars.
And I might have been able to replace my old car with something, say, from round about 2007 or 2008.
Another Twilight Zone episode for the tattered WTF?-File.
We're paying to train MUSLIM pilots? That's MUSLIMS in aircraft? Hello?
And, "No fewer than 46..." Does that mean, "Perhaps as many as 56, 66, 76?" Inquiring islamophobes need to know!
Start looking in Dearborn, Mich.
And yes, Poetcomic, I would 'miss' the plane back to Afghanistan too.
Tragically all the GOP offers in terms of foreign policy is just a rehash of the Bush years - more war and occupation in Islamic states, not to mention blowing hundreds of billions of dollars.
They also show zero understanding of the foe they face just much like our generals do, who still think they are fighting the Warsaw Pact and can work with the locals by bribing and playing nice with them.
And worse like the Muslims they are quite oblivious to the thousands of dead and wounded Americans their wars have generated over the course of years and perhaps decades if the GOP wins the White House in 2012.
To me that is the most horrific aspect of it all. We have a bunch of stupid, corrupt, bloodthirsty old men and women who don't have the slightest qualm in sending young men and women to die in useless war only to score brownie points with a mass of stupid voters who couldn't find Afghanistan on a map. And then have to nerve to excoriate anyone who questions their insane policy.
Flush the entire lot down a toilet I say.
I think I saw one of those guys hangin' around with the other illegals at Home Depot lookin' for work...
There no mystery to this. They thought they had reached janna and decided to go searching for their 72 virgins.
Seriously, they are probably in one of our sanctuary cities, or in Detroit, or otherwise being sheltered by the faithful in one mosque or another. When they are found, whoever it is who has been sheltering them needs to have the book thrown at them for sheltering a fugitive.
Yeah, and by ALL MEANS let's not lose our "diversity" in the military. Also as far as the NASA thing goes, WTF are we looking at here, slimes in space? Mu-slime dominant behaviour among a bunch of astronauts in a confined space for long periods of time? Space terrorism? Oh yeah - GREAT EFFING IDEA. Are we sick of this effing BS yet?
You make some very valid points. In fact, I am reminded of the "picture" of the man who grabs the tail of a rabid dog. What can he do but hold on, and yet, he cannot hold on forever; and again, he must not let go lest he be bitten. And all effort he uses to hold on and stay away from the teeth is effort wasted just as soon as he lets go.
Every time man tries to change "the hearts and minds" of another people, he bites off too much to chew effectively. I do not see any "administration" conquering the people of Afghanistan and changing their hearts and minds to accept what they are given. And to bring some to this country to learn English...would it not be easier to teach them English there at home? At least if they played hooky from class, we would not be in any greater danger than we are at present. And if they went missing after class, what would it matter?