At least 45 Afghan children suffering from severe burns and osteoporosis - a low bone density condition - have been sent to Germany to receive treatment, Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) officials announced on Tuesday.

The initiative has been arranged with the help of Peace Village International – a German medical organization.

ARCS' International Relations and Media Officer, Sarma Afzali, said this is not the first time Afghan kids suffering from conditions that are particularly difficult to treat have been sent abroad, and, in the case of this initiative, to Germany. "It is the 70th group that has been sent to Germany for treatment, and includes 45 kids, including 10 girls and 35 boys," Afzali said on Tuesday.

According to an agreement between ARCS and Peace Village International, at least 45 to 80 Afghan youth get to travel to Germany for expert treatment every year. Within the next five days, some 55 patients who have received care through the program will return home to Afghanistan.

The kids are selected by Peace Village International, and their families often see the initiative as their only hope for treatment.

How can I thank you
For opening your heart to me
For trusting me with
your deepest feelings, your love
Your dreams
When we open up to one another
we are stripped naked
vulnerable, exposed, 
trusting one another not to take advantage
Thank you for loving me 
For not taking advantage of my vulnerability
As I give you My heart
I promise that I will treasure your heart
And guard your precious feelings
Always and forever
For I love you like no other 

(WASHINGTON) -- Over the past three years more than 13,000 Afghan soldiers and policemen have been killed fighting the Taliban. That staggering statistic will likely continue to rise as the 4,302 Afghan security personnel killed and 8,009 wounded so far this year is a rate almost 40 percent higher than this time last year.

The latest Afghan casualty numbers released by the Pentagon on Friday are based on information provided by the Afghan National Defense Security Force which includes the Afghan Army, Afghan National Police, Afghan Air Force and the Afghan Local Police.

They show that from January 1 to July 31, 2015 4,302 Afghan security personnel were killed in action and 8,009 wounded in combat with the Taliban. That’s a 36 percent increase over the same time frame last year when there were 3,337 killed and 5,746 wounded.

For comparison 2,215 American service members died and 20,027 were wounded during the 13 year U.S combat mission in Afghanistan that ended in December, 2014. Some 10,000 U.S troops remain in Afghanistan to train Afghan troops, but hardly ever leave their bases as Afghan security forces have taken the lead for security in recent years.

The high fatality rates continue the trend that began in 2013 when Afghan security troops assumed the lead for security throughout Afghanistan.

Some 4,350 Afghan security personnel were killed in action in 2013 and that number increased the following year to 4,634 in 2014. The 9,000 deaths led Lt. General Joseph Anderson to say last November the casualty rates. At the time Anderson was the second highest ranking U.S general in Afghanistan.

U.S military officials say the high casualty rates for Afghan troops reflects the increased security role of the nearly 327,000 Afghan troops and police.

“The Afghan security forces are holding their own and doing fairly well,” said Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, the top military spokesman in Afghanistan, told Pentagon reporters on Thursday. Shoffner said the number of Taliban initiated attacks is down eight percent this year from last year.

A Pentagon report released in June said the highest casualty rates were among the Afghan National Police and the Afghan Local Police who are most likely to face Taliban attack “primarily because they are often employed at isolated checkpoints and are not as well armed or trained” as the Afghan Army.

It said the number of Afghan casualties were “highest during the first few months of 2015, reaching approximately 80 percent higher than the same period last year.”

The casualty rates were said to be “of serious concern” but the report said Afghan force “remain cohesive and do not show indications that they will fail under the strain as they continue to demonstrate tactical superiority over insurgents and maintain consistent control over Afghanistan’s populated areas.”

The U.S has been working with the Afghan police to change their tactics and procedures to better protect their forces from roadside bombs. Afghan police operate in non-armored vehicles that are likely to suffer greater damage from roadside bombs than military vehicles.

...you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, '
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

*poem written in 1895 by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling

 In this July 22, 2015 file photo, U.S Army Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner salutes at Kabul International Airport base in

Kabul, Afghanistan.

The Islamic State is making small inroads in Afghanistan and could grow into a more worrisome threat, a U.S Army general said Thursday.Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon from his offices in Kabul, Shoffner said the Islamic State, which rose to prominence by capturing large swaths of Syria and Iraq, is not yet capable of coordinating military operations in more than one part of Afghanistan at a time.

One of those good news/bad news stories: good news is I was cleared by DODIG. Bad news is CID is still investigating me and the Army still pursuing charges. Points for tenacity I guess, says Lt Col Jason Amerine on his social media.

A Green Beret war hero whom the Army placed under investigation after he blew the whistle on the Obama administration’s hostage rescue failures did not disclose classified information when he filed a counter complaint, according to a Pentagon analysis.

The disclosure is a new twist in the fate of Army Lt Col Jason Amerine. The Army high command at the Pentagon sacked him from his hostage rescue job and placed him under criminal investigation on suspicion of providing classified information to Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republic.

Col. Amerine, one of the first Americans to land in Afghanistan in the 2001 invasion, filed a whistleblower retaliation Hotline complaint last January with the Defense Department inspector general.

In it, a Hunter aide says, he laid out everything he conveyed to Mr. Hunter’s office as he sought congressional intervention in how the FBI, State Department, Pentagon and other agencies try to win the freedom of Americans held by Muslim extremists.

The IG reported to Mr. Hunter’s office via email that the staff for the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded his complaint “contained no classified information.”

A photo of Army Lt. Col. Jason Amerine and his team

The DoD IG has not completed its probe into whether Col. Amerinewas the victim of Army retaliation that violated the Military Whistleblower Protection Act.

An IG supervisory investigator for whistleblower reprisals sent a letter to Col. Amerine this month saying it will not meet the 180-day limit on such investigations because the final report “is currently undergoing administrative and legal sufficiency reviews.” The letter said the report should be completed in the next three months.

Also still pending is the investigation of Col. Amerine by the Army Criminal Investigation Command, commonly referred to as CID.

Joe Kasper, Mr. Hunter’s chief of staff, said that probe was pushed by Army general with whom the congressman has clashed on several issues, including a much-maligned intelligence collection computer network. The congressman views the Army investigation as a way to get back at him, Mr. Kasper said.

This is because it was Mr. Hunter to whom Col. Amerine went to blow the whistle on what he believed was a dysfunctional hostage rescue program. Mr. Hunter used the information to convinced the administration to appoint one official to coordinate all hostage rescue activities.

Mr. Hunter set up a meeting between Col. Amerine and the FBI. The FBI then went to the Army to complain the Green Beret was “outside his lane” and may have divulged classified information, Mr. Kasper said. The CID investigation ensued.

Mr. Kasper said the odd thing is, neither the IG nor CID has interviewed the congressman.

“The IG review won’t merit criticism as long as they are genuinely evaluating the facts, and we’ll know more upon their conclusion how much integrity their review process actually holds,” Mr. Kasper said. “But, so far, neither the IG nor the Army has approached Representative Hunter for a description of the extent of his involvement and conversations, so it’s impossible not to question both the IG or the Army.

He added, “There are no secrets or surprises here, and that includes the expectation that the Army will try to put the screws to Amerine. So it’s really up to the IG to show just how the system can respond when either the Aemyor an outside agency attempts to retaliate against a decorated war hero like Amerine, or anyone for that matter.”

A CID spokesman has said the agency is conducting a fair investigation, not a reprisal.

yes love
my sweetheart

 my wife
 im here

A trio of attacks Friday across the Afghan capital left at least 48 people dead, more than 300 injured, myriad businesses shuttered and people’s nerves shattered.

It was the deadliest day in Kabul since 2011, with the highest number of civilians killed and injured since the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan began systematically recording civilian casualties here in 2009.

“Those responsible for suicide and complex attacks in civilian-populated areas can no longer shrug off the disproportionate harm to the civilian population they cause,” said Nicholas Haysom, the secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan.

“The Afghan people are resilient, but the suffering caused by these tactics in terms of civilian deaths, injuries and the loss of family members is extreme, irreversible and unjustifiable in any terms.”

The third attack occurred late Friday when Taliban fighters tried to storm a U.S special forces base, detonating a car bomb and other blasts, followed by a firefight that lasted more than two hours.

Nine people were killed in the violence, in the Qasaba neighborhood, eight of them civilians working for international coalition forces. The other was a U.S military service member, according to officials.

The Taliban also claimed responsibility for an evening attack in which a suicide bomber, dressed in a police uniform, detonated explosives near the gates of a police training academy. An Interior Ministry spokesman said that at least 24 people were believed dead and nearly 20 were wounded, including police and civilians.

The two attacks constituted the first Taliban-claimed incidents in Afghanistan after an announcement late last month that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the group’s founder and longtime leader, had died in 2013.

The July 29 announcement, confirmed by the Kabul government, led to the abrupt postponement of a meeting between representatives of the government of Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president, and a Taliban delegation. The talks were aimed at moving forward with peace talks.

The first attack Friday, in which at least 15 civilians were killed and nearly 300 wounded, according to Afghan officials, involved a truck laden with explosives that was detonated near an outpost of the Afghan national security forces in the east Kabul neighborhood of Shah Shahid.

The explosives were set off near a busy road, home to hundreds of houses and shops. Dozens of businesses lay in ruins after the explosion, for which no group immediately claimed responsibility.

Friday’s attacks resulted in the highest civilian death toll in Kabul since at least 70 died in December 2011 violence on the Muslim holy day of Ashura.