Caitlan Coleman Boyle, 31, from Stewartstown, Pennsylvania — who was abducted while traveling in Afghanistan with her husband, Joshua Boyle, 34, of Perth-Andover, Canada, and had three children in captivity — described the brutal treatment her family endured in captivity, in an exclusive broadcast interview with ABC News.

She said some of their guards “hated children” and targeted their eldest son for beatings, sometimes with a stick, claiming the young boy was “making problems” or being “too loud.” When Coleman Boyle tried to intervene, she was beaten as well. “I would get beaten or hit or thrown on the ground,” Coleman Boyle said.

According to her husband, Coleman Boyle sustained serious injuries while fighting to keep their captors from her children.

“She had a broken cheekbone,” Boyle said. “She actually broke her own hand punching one of them. She broke her fingers, so she was very proud of that injury.”

She accused her captors of even more grievous crimes, saying the guards murdered their unborn daughter in a “forced abortion,” and she was later raped by two men in retribution for trying to report the crime to their superiors.

“They just kept saying that this will happen again if we don’t stop speaking about the forced abortion, that this happened because we were trying to tell people what they had done and that it would happen again,” Coleman Boyle said.

The two told ABC News they are speaking out so soon after their release because they want justice for their abusers, hoping Taliban leaders will be put on trial for war crimes or otherwise be held accountable in the tribal justice system.

“Our focus is on trying to hold accountable those who have committed grave human rights violations against us and against others,” Boyle said. “I lost a daughter. That was more of a crushing blow to me than the years. What they did was a crime against humanity by international law.”

The couple was abducted while traveling in eastern Afghanistan’s war-torn Ghazni province in 2012, taken prisoner by the Haqqani network, an extremist element of the Afghan Taliban, and quickly transported to Pakistan. Coleman Boyle, who was pregnant at the time of their capture, gave birth to three children while in captivity.

The family was frequently moved to different locations through Pakistan’s tribal belt. According to Boyle, who says he was shackled for the duration of his captivity, the family was usually held in a single room, often underground, sometimes on a concrete floor, sometimes on a dirt floor. The parents used discarded items as makeshift toys for their children.

“We would just teach them to use things like bottle caps or bits of cardboard, garbage essentially, but what we could find to play with,” Coleman Boyle said.

He said they taught their eldest son the alphabet, geography and constellations and tried their best to make the horrible tolerable. They used British history — the tale of the execution of Charles I in 1649 — to make up a game about beheadings, to ease their eldest son’s fear, should their captors do the same to his parents.

“He certainly knew that this type of thing could happen to his family, so he had great fun pretending to be Oliver Cromwell chasing Charles I around and trying to behead him,” she said. “So we made it a game so that he wasn’t afraid, because there was, you know, there was nothing we could do if it came to that except try to make him less afraid.”

Danger, however, was never far from their minds. Coleman Boyle said they told their son “some” of what was happening to them but tried to keep “the worst bits” from him.

“But he had to know that these people were bad that he was interacting with, outside of his family,” she said. “That everyone else he saw, you couldn’t trust.”

The physical abuse of the family escalated, Boyle said, when the Haqqani network demanded he join the extremist group as a Western propagandist.

“They had come four different times, to offer employment in the group ... and I made it very clear that I’d rather be the hostage than be on your side of the cage.” Boyle said. “I’d rather be inside than outside.”

His refusal had serious consequences.

“There were beatings. There was violence. Then they’d come to make the offer again. Still said no. More beatings, more violence. Maybe that’ll be the solution. Still no,” Boyle said. “And after the final time — that’s when they killed our daughter. And after that, there were no more intimations of recruitment.”

More here

Somalia was the site of one of the U.S. military’s biggest disasters in living memory.

Two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and 18 U.S. soldiers killed in a failed operation to capture a warlord in the capital Mogadishu. The incident prompted President Bill Clinton to order an American withdrawal from the country and shaped U.S. military policy in Africa for years to come.

But not only have American troops returned to Somalia, but early this year, the United States suffered its first military casualty in the country since Black Hawk Down. A U.S. Navy SEAL—Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Kyle Milliken—was killed during a joint U.S.-Somali raid targeting Al-Shabab, the Al-Qaeda affiliate waging war against Somalia’s Western-backed government.

The death, combined with an aggressive stance adopted by President Donald Trump and a sharp rise in airstrikes targeting both Al-Shabab and a small, local branch of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), has left some experts questioning whether the United States is embarking on another long war in Somalia, just as its military activity elsewhere—in Iraq and Syria, for instance—appears to be winding down.

U.S. Marines file into an amphibious vehicle for evacuation from Mogadishu, Somalia, after a bloody two-year U.N. peacekeeping mission on March 2, 1995. The mission ended in disaster for the United States, as two helicopters were shot down and 18 U.S. servicemen killed.STRINGER/REUTERS

Robyn Mack, a spokeswoman for the U.S. military command in Africa (AFRICOM), told Newsweek that 27 strikes had been carried out in Somalia in 2017 as of November 13. AFRICOM later released a statement detailing a strike against Al-Shabab militants on November 14, taking the year’s total to 28.

That figure eclipses the number carried out in 2016, according to most sources: theLong War Journal and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism—both of which record U.S. military actions in Somalia—counted 15 and 14 strikes in Somalia in 2016, respectively.

The Pentagon also confirmed on Thursday that the number of troops in Somalia stands close to 400, a significant increase from the estimated 50 on the ground earlier in the year.

Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie Jr., director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, denied that there has been a “ramp-up” in activity in Somalia and said that recent strikes were the result of long-term vetting of targets. “There’s no particular rhythm to it, except that as they become available and as we’re able to process them and vet them, we strike them,” McKenzie said in a press briefing.

Covert U.S. operations have been ongoing in Somalia since at least the early 2000s, but Washington has always sought to keep troops at arm’s length from the chaos on the ground. U.S. military actions have been largely limited to drone and airstrikes, with Washington insisting its presence was in an advise-and-assist role and that Somali security forces were taking the lead.

Milliken’s death in May cast doubt on that claim. A top U.S. general said that Milliken was on an “advise, assist and accompany mission” with Somali forces, and that U.S. forces and their Somali counterparts were traveling in a single group when they came under fire. Thomas Shannon, a senior State Department official who was acting as Rex Tillerson’s deputy at the time of Milliken’s death, told Newsweek in May that U.S. troops were not on the frontline in Somalia, but that “advise and assist is sometimes from a distance and sometimes not.”

Kyle Milliken, a U.S. Navy Seal, was killed in a May 5 operation targeting Al-Shabab militants in Somalia.U.S. NAVAL SPECIAL WARFARE COMMAND

Tricia Bacon, a former counterterrorism analyst at the State Department and now assistant professor at American University, says that American troops appear to expanding their roles. “I think that there is already some mission creep going on and there is a possibility of more,” Bacon says.

Ostensibly, the U.S. mission in Somalia is purely based on security. For the past decade, Somalia’s fragile federal government and embattled national army has been fighting against Al-Shabab, an Islamist militant group that formalized its ties with Al-Qaeda in 2012.

The Somalis have been assisted in this by a 22,000-strong African Union force—known as AMISOM—which has done most of the ground-level fighting in recent years and has received significant funding from the United States, among others.

While AMISOM and Somali forces have retaken major urban centers previously under Al-Shabab’s control, the group’s capacity for violence appears undiminished. Al-Shabab was blamed for a massive truck bombing that killed more than 300 people in Mogadishu in October. The attack was the deadliest in Somalia’s history.

Somali soldiers patrol on the scene of the explosion of a truck bomb that killed over 300 people in the center of Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 15.MOHAMED ABDIWAHAB/AFP/GETTY

The battle against Al-Shabab has been complicated by several factors. Firstly, AMISOM is scheduled to withdraw from Somalia by 2020. The drawdown due to begin with 1,000 troops leaving in December, a move opposed by Washington. Secondly, a small ISIS branch has sprung up in northern Somalia—led by an Al-Shabab defector, Abdiqadir Mumin—and has begun launching minor attacks.

AFRICOM spokeswoman Mack says that the “overarching goal” of the Pentagon’s operations in Somalia is to help its government “provide a safe and secure environment for the people of Somalia, and deter organizations such as Al-Shabab and ISIS.” (The U.S. launched its first airstrikes against ISIS in Somalia earlier in November.) On the question of AMISOM’s withdrawal, Mack says that the U.S. is urging for a “well thought-out, conditions-based handoff” to ensure that Somalia’s security forces do not relinquish the gains made against Al-Shabab.

In a bid to bolster those counterterrorism efforts, President Trump broadened the scope of U.S. airstrikes in Somalia in March. The president designated large parts of the country as areas of active hostilities, reducing the requirement for high-level, interagency vetting of targets before strikes are carried out. Mack says that the additional authority granted by Trump “helps deny terrorists safe havens from which they could attack U.S. citizens or U.S. interests in the regions or our allies.”

But the enhanced authorities also appear to have led to civilian casualties. U.S. and Somali forces conducted a joint raid on the town of Bariire, 30 miles west of Mogadishu, in August. Somali forces killed 10 civilians—including three children—in the raid, prompting protests from the families of those killed, who are members of a powerful clan in Somalia that has traditionally backed the government. AFRICOM confirmed in August that it had taken a “supporting role” in the operation and was investigating allegations of civilian deaths.

Relatives prepare to pray near the wrapped bodies of people killed in an attack by Somali forces and supported by U.S. troops before their burial, in Mogadishu, Somalia, on August 31.FEISAL OMAR/REUTERS

Bronwyn Bruton, the deputy director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, says that the enhanced authorities granted by Trump “have been detrimental to the fight in Somalia” by increasing civilian casualties and forcing U.S. forces to take sides in clan warfare.

“The U.S. is also suffering a blow to its reputation in the country,” Bruton says. “The U.S. was the only actor in this entire conflict that was actually seen to put a premium on protecting civilian lives...That had real value in terms of promoting democracy and winning hearts and minds—and that advantage has been lost.”

The next few months could prove determinative to the U.S. military’s long-term strategy in Somalia. The country’s president, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, who was elected in February, has increased operations against Al-Shabab since the Mogadishu truck bombing. How the strategy progresses may provide an indication of how well Somalia will fare when AMISOM pulls out, and whether the U.S. may need to hang around to pick up any slack.

According to Bacon, Somalia will remain a priority due to Al-Shabab’s links with Al-Qaeda. And while the Trump administration will likely continue to focus on counterterrorism rather than state-building, Bacon says that the possibility of more U.S. boots on the ground should not be ruled out.

“It is difficult to predict what the Trump administration will do but it has seemed more willing to deploy U.S. troops than the last administration, so I would think this option would be on the table,” she says.

(newsweek)

(CHICAGO) — An increase in suicide rates among U.S. teens occurred at the same time social media use surged and a new analysis suggests there may be a link.

Suicide rates for teens rose between 2010 and 2015 after they had declined for nearly two decades, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Why the rates went up isn’t known.

The study doesn’t answer the question, but it suggests that one factor could be rising social media use. Recent teen suicides have been blamed on cyberbullying, and social media posts depicting “perfect” lives may be taking a toll on teens’ mental health, researchers say.

“After hours of scrolling through Instagram feeds, I just feel worse about myself because I feel left out,” said Caitlin Hearty, a 17-year-old Littleton, Colorado, high school senior who helped organize an offline campaign last month after several local teen suicides.

“No one posts the bad things they’re going through,” said Chloe Schilling, also 17, who helped with the campaign, in which hundreds of teens agreed not to use the internet or social media for one month.

The study’s authors looked at CDC suicide reports from 2009-15 and results of two surveys given to U.S. high school students to measure attitudes, behaviors and interests. About half a million teens ages 13 to 18 were involved. They were asked about use of electronic devices, social media, print media, television and time spent with friends. Questions about mood included frequency of feeling hopeless and considering or attempting suicide.

The researchers didn’t examine circumstances surrounding individual suicides. Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said the study provides weak evidence for a popular theory and that many factors influence teen suicide.

The study was published Tuesday in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.

Data highlighted in the study include:

—Teens’ use of electronic devices including smartphones for at least five hours daily more than doubled, from 8 percent in 2009 to 19 percent in 2015. These teens were 70 percent more likely to have suicidal thoughts or actions than those who reported one hour of daily use.

—In 2015, 36 percent of all teens reported feeling desperately sad or hopeless, or thinking about, planning or attempting suicide, up from 32 percent in 2009. For girls, the rates were higher — 45 percent in 2015 versus 40 percent in 2009.

—In 2009, 58% of 12th grade girls used social media every day or nearly every day; by 2015, 87% used social media every day or nearly every day. They were 14% more likely to be depressed than those who used social media less frequently.

“We need to stop thinking of smartphones as harmless,” said study author Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University who studies generational trends. “There’s a tendency to say, ‘Oh, teens are just communicating with their friends.’ Monitoring kids’ use of smartphones and social media is important, and so is setting reasonable limits, she said.

Dr. Victor Strasburger, a teen medicine specialist at the University of New Mexico, said the study only implies a connection between teen suicides, depression and social media. It shows the need for more research on new technology, Strasburger said.

He noted that skeptics who think social media is being unfairly criticized compare it with so-called vices of past generations: “When dime-store books came out, when comic books came out, when television came out, when rock and roll first started, people were saying ‘This is the end of the world.'”

With its immediacy, anonymity, and potential for bullying, social media has a unique potential for causing real harm, he said.

“Parents don’t really get that,” Strasburger said.

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