SWJ Admin Note # 2017-4

1. SWJ is back after a short sabbatical.

2. The top 3 articles in the SWJ/MWG Writing Contest will be announced on 26 June. Checks to all 23 finalists will be mailed shortly after.

3. Playing catch-up concerning e-mails, hope to all answered by the end of the week. For the time being, when submitting an article to submit@smallwarsjourna.com please cc dave@smallwarsjournal.com.

4. More to follow.

Dave Dilegge

Three U.S. Soldiers Killed by Afghan Commando by Habib Khan Totakhil and Jessica Donati, Wall Street Journal

An Afghan commando turned his weapon on U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, killing three American soldiers and wounding one who is in critical condition, Afghan and coalition officials said Saturday.

The shooting took place in Achin district of Nangarhar province, where a joint U.S. and Afghan operation to dislodge Islamic State fighters from their stronghold in the mountains there has been under way for months.

Several U.S. and Afghan soldiers have been killed in the push to drive Islamic State out of villages that it had occupied in the area years previously. Fleeing Islamic State fighters are now holed up in the mountains there, where the U.S. military in April dropped the largest non-nuclear weapon in its arsenal ever on an Islamic State cave-and-tunnel complex…

Afghan soldiers frequently turn their weapons on their U.S. and Afghan allies, and the Taliban often claim such attackers are members of the insurgency that have infiltrated Afghan forces.

Earlier in the day, Afghan officials said a U.S. airstrike killed at least two Afghan policemen and wounded three others in southern Helmand province, in the latest friendly fire incident in the south where the Taliban are closing in on the provincial capital…

Read on.