2002 – Hamid Karzai became the first Afghan leader to visit Washington in 39 years; President George W. Bush promised a “lasting partnership” with Afghanistan.
2002 – US forces and Afghan militiamen attacked and killed 6 al Qaeda gunmen, who had been holed up at the Mir Wais Hospital in Kandahar.
2002 – At a meeting of the United Nations Security Council’s committee on Iraq trade sanctions, Britain requests a formal “clarification” from Security Council member Syria on allegations that Iraqi crude oil is flowing through a pipeline to Syria and being exported, or at least substituted in Syrian refineries allowing for more Syrian crude oil exports, in violation of United Nations sanctions. Analysts have placed the amount of crude oil being sent from Iraq to Syria at between 150,000 and 200,000 barrels per day.
2003 – US and Afghan forces battled rebels aligned with renegade leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the largest -scale fighting in 10 months. 18 enemy fighters were killed in 2 days of fighting. Norwegian F -16s participated in bombing enemy targets.
2003 – DoD submitted a request for Coast Guard forces in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. The Commandant, ADM Thomas Collins, approved that request and ordered the deployment of eight 110-foot patrol boats, crews, and support units. The cutters were CGCs: Wrangell, Adak, Aquidneck, Baranof, Grand Isle, Bainbridge Island, Pea Island, and Knight Island.
2003 – Hans Blix reports to the UN Security Council on the progress of weapons inspections in Iraq, 60 days after they began. The 15-page report states that although Iraq had been quite co-operative, there was an absence of full transparency including the deliberate concealment of documents. The report also states that inspectors have evidence that Iraq produced thousands of litres of anthrax in the 1990s and that the deadly bacteria “might still exist”. It also says that Iraq may have lied about the amount if VX nerve gas it has produced, and that it has failed to account for 6500 chemical bombs.
2005 – According to an insider’s written account, female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by using techniques such as sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear.
2005 – Iraq battened down for the 1st free balloting in half a century, imposing a 7 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew and closing Baghdad Int’l Airport. Iraqis overseas began three days of voting in 14 nations.
2005 – Authorities in Iraq said they have arrested three close associates of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
2010 – An International Conference on Afghanistan was held at Lancaster House in London, where members of the international community discussed the further progress on the Petersberg agreement from 2001 on the democratization of Afghanistan after the ousting of the Taliban regime. The one-day conference, hosted by the United Kingdom, the United Nations, and the Afghan government, meant to chart a new course for the future of Afghanistan and brought together foreign ministers and senior representatives from more than 70 countries and international organizations.
2013 – American fighter aircraft F-16 flying out of Aviano Air Base loses radio contact and crashes in the Adriatic Sea.
2015 – The US Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James picks the Boeing 747-8 for the next replacement of Air Force One.
2015 – A federal judge in Albuquerque, New Mexico sentences an ex-Los Alamos physicist Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, who pleaded guilty in 2013 to offering to spy on the US to help Venezuela develop a nuclear weapon, to five years imprisonment.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/january-28/
